Today’s tract is, well, not a tract. I am still finding it a challenge to locate online transcriptions of Union tracts. I have, however, located several sermons pronounced before, during and after the war. In place of Union tracts, I am pleased to bring sermons by Northern preachers for your perusal.
(Most of these sermons will need to be broken into several Tuesdays due to their length)
THE DEATH OF FREEDOM – Part 1
A sermon preached at Wilbraham, Mass., May 28, 1854, on the occasion of the passage of the Nebraska Bill, by the Senate of the United States, on the midnight of Thursday, May 25, 1854
“THE BEAUTY OF ISRAEL IS SLAIN UPON THY HIGH PLACES; 2 Samuel i. 19
“AND SAUL WAS CONSENTING UNTO HIS DEATH; Acts viii. 1
“THERE WAS DARKNESS OVER ALL THE LAND.” Matt. xxviii. 45
We gather to-day around the corpse of Freedom. Our nation has given up the ghost. Her deadly sickness has met with but feeble resistance to its progress; and today it waves its black banner in acknowledged triumph over her prostrate, corrupting form. The beauty of Israel is slain upon her high-places. As we bend over this fallen glory and strength, I shall try to speak of that vanished strength and glory, of the means and the foe that murdered it:
“Show you sweet” Freedom’s “wounds, poor, poor, dumb mouths! And bid them speak for me.”
I ask you to consider your duty as Christians in this dreadful hour, and to see with the eye of prophecy either her resurrection in a greatness never before displayed, like that of her Divine Author on His reappearance from the grave – a resurrection that shall send despair and ruin through the ranks of her murderers, or, if we are permanently stupefied by the dragon that has triumphed over us, behold with the same clear vision the still more fearful spectacle of a contending, ruined, obliterated nation.
“A curse shall light upon the limbs of men, Domestic fury and fierce civil strife Will cumber all the parts of this fair land.”
You may say “This is a sick man’s dream.” “Is not this a free land? Has it not been consecrated by the prayers and sacred sufferings of the Pilgrims, honored by the patriotic valor of the revolutionary fathers, made illustrious by the wisdom of Washington and Jefferson, of Hamilton and Adams? Is it not a land whose institutions are based on the broadest principles of liberty – a land of wealth and enterprise, comfort and culture, churches and piety? And can this land be wrapped in its grave clothes, and be even now an offense and a loathing among the nations of the earth? Impossible! Does not trade rush through its crowded channels? Does not the earth bring forth abundantly, laughing ever with its munificent harvests? Does not labor’ strike with its hundred hands at the golden gates of the morning’? Does not steam toil in our factories, and whirl its products over all the land? Do not sweet bells call to church? Are we not the greatest, freest, happiest of nations? ” Alas! ” Gray hairs were on him, and he knew it not.” “When ye say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon him, and he cannot escape.” Material life flows on after the spiritual has gone. Chemical laws keep the atoms of a dead body for a while as compact as when it tented a soul.
There is no national life. What exists, exists in obstruction, weakness, obscury. Last Thursday we surrendered all our glorious heritage. We gave up the Declaration of Independence, the revolutionary speeches, and battles of fire and blood, the Constitution of our country, the names of our Pilgrim and Puritan ancestry, our hopes and prospects, our morals and religion. We have laid them all at the feet of Slavery. We confess ourselves her slaves. We open our gates for her triumphal march to unquestioned, universal power.
I ask no pardon for bringing this subject before you on this sacred day. I have waited till the strife raging at the seat of government should end, feeling that I had no need to stimulate you to your duty to pray for those there and then engaged in the contest, and that this word should be spoken when that battle was decided. I had hoped against hope that the right would triumph, and that I could have congratulated you on the first national step that liberty had taken towards a final victory. But that day is not yet, if ever. A far different task awaits me, and by God’s grace I hope to discharge it. Let us, with sackcloth and ashes upon our souls, sit around this corpse of American Freedom deliver its funeral serm-non, and gather, if we can, some reasons for its resurrection, and of our part and lot in bringing about the glory of that distant hour. Let us try to answer the question, how can these things be?
Five years ago, or fifty, — any previous year since we became a nation, such a deed could not have happened. Southerner and Northerner would have responded in burning indignation to a charge of his devotion to such a crime, Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing? Does not my belief that slavery is an evil, my sensitiveness to the honor of the country through its pledge faithfully made in the compromise agreement of 1820, show the injustice of your imputations? ” And yet this act is a necessary result of all previous acts. It is the perfect fruit of germs long since planted, and constantly nurtured. It is a link in an iron chain of our whole national history. In the first Concession made to the slave powers, this monster was born.
PART TWO >>
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Source: University of Michigan, Making of America, National Sermons, The Death of Freedom
Further Reading
Reverend E.E. Adams. B&R Samizdat Express 2008, Kindle Edition, $0.99
Unknown author. Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library 2006, Paperback, 514 pages, $22.26
William Rounseville Alger. Cornell University Library 1861, Paperback, 24 pages, $8.99
James M. McPherson. Oxford University Press, USA 2003, Paperback, 952 pages, $10.50
As Civil War scholarship continues to grow and gain momentum in these few short months leading up to the sesquicentennial memorials, one field of study remains largely neglected. While there is some renewed interest in the role and influence of religion and spirituality before, during, and after the Civil War; this subject remains vastly uncovered in popular discussions.
I sat in the crook of a majestic Tupelo, bewildered and betwixt. Shadows, formed by a yellow half-moon, taunted my imagination. Beyond the stinging and ringing in my head came the ratcheting click-click-click of the King Rail and the throaty yelp of the Black Crowned Heron. Rather than speaking to me, they seemed to speak about me. A mosquito buzzed relentless about my ear as if it too had something to say.
