nd wrong, between progress and sluggardy, through
the providence of God we are placed in the vanguard. Three hundred
years ago a world was unfolded for the battle-ground. Choice spirits
came hither to level and intrench. Swords clashed and blood flowed,
and the great reconnaissance was successfully made. Since then both
sides have been gathering strength, marshalling forces, planting
batteries, and today we stand in the thick of the fray. Shall we fail?
Men and women of America, will you fail? Shall the cause go by
default? When a great idea, that has been uplifted on the shoulders of
generations, comes now to its Thermopylae, its glory-gate, and needs
only stout hearts for its strong hands,--when the eyes of a great
multitude are turned upon you, and the of dumb millions in the silent
future rest you,--when the suffering and sorrowful, the lowly, whose
immortal hunger for justice gnaws at hearts, who blindly see, but
keenly feel, by their God-given instincts, that somehow you are working
out their salvation, and the high-born, monarchs in the domain of mind,
who, standing far off; see with prophetic eye the two courses that lie
before you, one to the Uplands of vindicated Right, one to the Valley
of the Shadow of Death, alike fasten upon you their hopes, their
prayers, their tears,--will you, for a moment's bodily comfort and rest
and repose, grind all these expectations and hopes between the upper
and nether millstone? Will you fail the world in this fateful hour by
your faint-heartedness? Will you fail yourself; and put the knife to
your own throat? For the peace which you so dearly buy shall bring to
you neither ease nor rest. You will but have spread a bed of thorns.
Failure will write disgrace upon the brow of this generation, and shame
will outlast the age. It is not with us as with the South. She can
surrender without dishonor. She is the weaker power, and her success
will be against the nature of things. Her dishonor lay in her attempt,
not in its relinquishment. But we shall fail, not because of mechanics
and mathematics, but because our manhood and womanhood weighed in the
balance are found wanting. There are few who will not share in the
sin. There are none who will not share in the shame. Wives, would you
hold back your husbands? Mothers, would you keep your sons? From what?
for what? From the doing of the grandest duty that ever ennobled man,
to the grief of the greatest infamy that ever