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slavery alone, but its worse roots, caste and prejudice, and all the undemocratic and unjust treatment of our fellow-citizens and fellow-men, and complete the work that is so gloriously begun.* III. The consequences of this decision are twofold: those that concern foreign states, those that will affect our own.

First. This election will be an important step in the liberation of Europe. As the "bubble democracy" has not "burst," that of aristocracy must. The two systems are wrestling for the mastery of the world. Three millions of bayonets support a half dozen thrones on the necks of a hundred millions of men. Those hundred millions have heard this great decision; their half a score of masters have heard it also. Victoria sees in it the hand of America, her nation's first born, writing the doom of her family on the walls of her palace. Napoleon beholds in it his dream dissolving, of Mexican domination and California acquisition. The breakwater he had hoped to have set across our Southern line to the deluge of democracy is swept away, and the refluent waves will not only drown his American pretensions but his central throne.

Already the Times confesses its influence on the rising demands of the disfranchised masses of Britain. Already the secretary of her treasury declares that manhood is the only right basis for suffrage. Already the peasants and patriots of the ⚫ continent are uniting together for the common weal.

The suddenness and completeness of our emancipation is but a type of that which will yet renew the face of the earth. In a day has this nation been born. In one shall those of England, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Russia; not in their pres

* In the light of the present position of Mr. Chase, his private words, written to Theodore Parker, are worthy of our attention. They are found in the appen. dix to his Life, pp. 519-521. Thus writes this humble-hearted yet strong-hearted man of God: "My conscience tells me that you overrate me greatly. I am only fit to do the common work that lies right before me from day to day, and in truth, I have no aspiration to do any other. I never could fancy myself a great man, or ever realize that I occupied a great position, and I suppose both of these ideas are necessary to great achievement, especially political achievement." Again, p. 520, he says, "I don't pretend to be a very wise or expert statesman, or anything of that sort; but a roughly-trained practical man, who wishes to do something for truth, justice, and human progress, and who would prefer that what little he does or says should be so spoken of, that nothing in his example of word or deed shall even seem to contribute to the upholding of wrong." How perfect is this portrait of a true judge!

ent disintegrated and hostile condition, but like ours, a unity of life, of liberty, of name; one nation, free, fraternal, Christian.

Second. But more important duties invite our service. We too have a future as well as a present and a past; and it would ill become us in our rejoicings over what we have attained to be unmindful of what yet remains to be accomplished.

This battle has settled two great questions that have been in fierce debate and in perilous position throughout our history. It has shown that the nation is rooted and grounded in the doctrine of Union and the doctrine of liberty. These pillars of its common weal it will stand by so long as its nationality endures. There is yet one step it must take, fraternity. The French democrats wisely put this as the climax of their creed. It is there and everywhere the highest grace, and the last attained. We have decided for democracy. We must carry out the principles of democracy. That principle is no distinction of man from man by any accidents of color or clime. "All ye are brethren" is its sole creed. We have yet failed to embrace this truth. The Cleveland Platform declared the right of all men to suffrage. Congress in its territorial constitutions, Maryland and Missouri in their new free constitutions, limit that right to white men. They are not yet wholly free. Only by consistently obeying this call of God can we preserve that whereto we have attained. Cromwell and Napoleon both failed in the great revolutions they achieved; and why? Because they were false to the fundamental principle of those revolutions. The Pilgrims of Plymouth gave Cromwell the model of a free commonwealth. Equality and fraternity were the foci of its orbit. He created himself lord, and the Lord of lords cast him down headlong, and his work fell with him into a grave, where it has lain for more than two centuries. Napoleon was the child of democracy. He denied the mother that bore him, and was cast out and trodden under foot of his enemies. This grace he could not reach. The peasant Frenchman his equal and brother? never. Do not we feel like him? Would we not welcome to our tables to-day a rebellious slaveholder sooner than his loyal slave, even if the latter was as well mannered as the former? Would we place one of this class in our stores or shops, however capable? Would we accept the brightest scholar in the land, if of this race, as a professor in our schools,

or the most eloquent preacher, whose lips God has anointed with grace, as our pastor and guide?

This prejudice exists only in this fraction of our continent. It must be overcome here. Brazil, Mexico, the West Indies are without it. Europe and the East are without it. The conductor on the cars from Cairo to Alexandria was as black as ebony; while nearly all the passengers were either Europeans or Arabs; and the African was the easy master of the turbulent Asiatics and the haughty Caucasians.

To the removal of this prejudice every lover of Christ and his country should devote himself; and this because it is the only way of duty, the only way of salvation. If we pause now, we fall back into a deeper pit than that out of which God has most mercifully and most miraculously delivered us.

That such is our peril, the history of the great party whose career is just closing clearly shows. No party ever had a more glorious beginning. It sprang into life as the friend of man. Its name came from France, and was considered synonymous with the rights of man everywhere. Its great leaders, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, Gallatin, were the ardent defenders of the French democrats, and organized their party on the basis of fighting their battles with and for them on every sea and against every foe, Austrian, Russian, British and all.

They won the power, and war arose in consequence of their principles. For war never would have come with England had the Federalists kept the government. In the height of the war the Federalists assailed them and were annihilated. An era of good feeling arose. The Democrats refused to apply their principles to their own people. They rejected the headstone of their corner, the equal rights of all men, and it has become the head-stone of their grave. Jefferson favored slavery, of which he had declared God had no attribute that did not make war upon it. He urged its extension beyond the Mississippi. The democracy passed the Missouri Compromise, and in that day dying it died. Never since has it breathed its natal air. Never since has it been the defender of the rights of man.

What then is the service to which the Master calls us? This, and this only to abolish from the national action and the national heart all distinctions arising from color or origin; all thought and feeling that such distinctions are divinely

intended to separate members of the same human family, who are and must ever be one in blood and in destiny, in sin and in salvation, in Adam and in Christ.

1. In the discharge of this duty we must seek to abolish the unrighteous distinctions which are made in the composition and control of our armies. Two features therein are contrary to every national idea, their separation into regiments by themselves, their exclusion from the honors they have won. There should be no black regiments by the decree of the government. If persons of this hue should of themselves organize such a regiment, the government might accept them as they accept Irish or German regiments. But had it been announced to our foreign-born population: "You can only serve in regiments of your own nationality; you are forbidden to march in the same company with American troops;" how would they have scorned the summons of such a government! How justly would they have said, "Let Americans save America, if they persist in oppressing us with such invidious distinctions!" Equally just would it have been for colored Americans to have said: "You compel us to keep in regiments by ourselves; we will march in no regiments at all. You brand us with prejudicial infamy; we will not voluntarily accept the insult. If your government shall draft us and compel us to fight, we are powerless to resist; but not of ourselves will we rally to the flag, that is not fraternal."

This distinction must be abolished. A citizen if he volunteers should join what regiment he chooses; if he is drafted, those that most need his musket. The idea of color or origin should be as far from the mind of the provost marshal as is that of nationality or name. We shall then cease to read of the valor of white or colored troops as separate bodies, but of men and patriots, whose complexion may be various, but whose blood and bravery are one.

The second military iniquity we should abolish is the refusal to grant them commissions and commands. This glaring injustice will be patent to every eye, if we consider what would be the feelings and conduct of other privates should such a law degrade them. Were it announced to the army that only West Point graduates could hold commissions; that their valor, their skill, their experience can only elevate them to a sergeant's

bands, how long would they serve such a land? Yet there are a hundred thousand of our soldiers who fight under this insulting opprobrium. However valorous, however endowed with military genius, however prodigal of life, they are not only compelled to serve in the ranks, but to see less competent white men set over them, and that solely on the ground of their complexion. This great injustice, this democratic lie, must be abandoned. It is part and parcel of the system of aristocracy that we have formally decreed shall vanish away. The work has been initiated by the conferring of a lieutenant's commission on one of these soldiers. It should be hastened forward. Congress should abolish the unjust distinction, and the man, whatever his complexion or origin, who wins his shoulder straps, should wear them studded, if he deserves it, with the three stars of a lieutenant-general.

2. We must grant them civil equality and fraternity.

The question of negro suffrage is assuming an importance, not only to the true democrat and Christian, but to the most feeble or most false professor of democracy and Christianity. It will be found that here as in the army we must call on those we yet despise to come and save us. Professor Lieber shows that by abolishing slavery we have increased the basis of representation in the Southern states by the two fifths of the slaves who were before constitutionally excluded. If these are forbidden to vote it increases the power of the white man in those states against his fellow of the North, by that large addition to a census-counted but non-voting population. If the rebels should be allowed to return with any powers and privileges, such as would have been accorded them in the late peace conferences, they would avail themselves of this iniquity to re-establish themselves in more than their former power. Our only and sure cure for this peril, is for Congress to decree the right of suffrage for national officers to be without respect of color.

Again, the loyal white men of the South must call on their equally loyal brothers, often of more white than colored descent, to come and save them from the voting of their Secession neighbors. These once active rebels, when these states resume their forms of civil life, will outnumber their loyal neighbors, and snatch again the scepter after having thrown down the sword with which they had sought the murder of the very

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