This famous sermon by the most popular American preacher during the Civil War, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, was delivered in 1861 to the two Civil War Regiments of the “Brooklyn Fourteenth.” Many of them members of Rev. Beecher's Plymouth Church, located in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of New York City. The Church on that day contributed $3,000 to aid in the equipment of this Regiment.
FROM the earliest periods nations seem to have gone forth to war under some banner. Sometimes it has been merely the pennant of a leader, and was only a rallying signal. So, doubtless, the habit began of carrying banners, to direct men in the confusion of conflict, that the leader might gather his followers around him when he himself was liable to be lost out of their sight.
And thus in our day every nation has its peculiar flag. There is no civilized nation without its banner. A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself. And whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag, the government, the principles, the truths, the history that belong to the nation that sets it forth. When the French tricolor rolls out to the wind, we see France. When the new-found Italian flag is unfurled, we see resurrected Italy. When the other three-colored Hungarian flag shall be lifted to the wind, we shall see in it the long buried, but never dead, principles of Hungarian liberty. When the united crosses of St. Andrew and St. George set forth on a fiery ground the banner of Old England, we see not the cloth merely but the idea of that great monarchy.
Civil War, Brooklyn 14th Regiment Soldier, part of the New York State Militia, 1861
This nation has a banner, too; and until recently wherever it streamed abroad men saw day-break bursting on their eyes. Until lately, the American flag has been a symbol of Liberty and men rejoiced in it. No other flag on the globe had such an errand to carry forth hope and glory upon the sea and around the world. The stars upon it shone like bright morning stars of God to other suffering nations. The stripes upon it were beams of morning light. At early dawn the stars shine forth even while it grows light, and then as the sun advances that light breaks into banks and streaming lines of color. The glowing red and intense white striving together, and ribbing the horizon with bars radiant. On the American flag, stars and beams of many-colored lights shine out together.
And, wherever this flag goes, men behold it and in its sacred inscription they see no ramping lion, no fierce eagle, no embattled castles, or insignia of imperial authority. They see the symbols of light. It is the banner of Dawn. It means Liberty. The slave, the poor, the oppressed, the trodden-down creature of foreign despotism, sees in the American flag that very promise and prediction of God, “The people which sat in darkness saw a great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.”
If one asks me the meaning of our flag, I would say, “It means the whole glorious Revolutionary War, which was the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny. Their goal was to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known or has since known. The right of men to their own selves and to their liberties."
Our flag means, then, all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War; it means all that the Declaration of Independence meant; it means all that the Constitution of our people, organizing for justice, for liberty, and for happiness, meant. Our flag carries American ideas, American history and American feelings. Beginning with the Colonies, and coming down to our time, in its sacred heraldry, in its glorious insignia, it has gathered and stored chiefly this supreme idea: Divine right of liberty in man. Every color means liberty; every thread means liberty; every form of star and beam or stripe of light means liberty: not lawlessness, not license; but organized, institutional liberty, — liberty through law, and laws for liberty!
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| Confederate Soldier with Flag |
These Confederate traitors must use another flag for their work. So they forged an infamous flag to do infamous work. God be blessed, they left our bright and starry banner untainted and untouched by disfigurement and disgrace! I thank them that they took another flag to do the Devil's work and left our flag to do the work of God! [Applause.] May the day never pass when these men who would create oppression under our banner of the Stars and Stripes.
Our fathers were God-fearing men and God committed this banner into their hands. They have handed it down to us and I thank God that it is still in the hands of men that fear him and love righteousness. “Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed.”
And, it shall be displayed fully against the morning light. It will be born with the growing and the glowing day. It shall take the last red beams of the night from the Atlantic waves clear across our continent with eagle flight to the Pacific. This banner shall float with the meaning of all the liberty which it has ever meant! From the North, where snows and mountain ice stand solitary, clear to the glowing tropics and the Gulf, that banner that has waived until now shall wave and wave forever. Every star, every band, every thread and fold significant of Liberty! [Great applause]
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| Rev. Henry Ward Beecher |
Our States grew up under this flag. When our ships began to swarm upon the ocean pushing forth our commerce, they were inspired by the genial flame of liberty to carry forth our ideas. Then when Great Britain arrogantly demanded the right to intrude our American decks with her search-warrants, up went the lightning flag, and every star meant liberty, and every stripe streamed defiance.
How glorious, then, has been its origin! How glorious has been its history! How divine is its meaning! In all the world is there another banner that carries such hope, such grandeur of spirit, such soul-inspiring truth, as our dear old American flag. Made by liberty, made for liberty, nourished in its spirit, carried in its service, and never, not once in all the earth, made to stoop to despotism! Never, did I say? Alas! Only to that worst despotism, Southern slavery, has it bowed.
Remember, every one of you, that the slaveholders of the South, alone of all the world, have put their feet upon the American flag!
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| Heroic Flag Bearer on Cover of Harper's Weekly, September 20, 1862 |
And now this banner has been put on trial! It has been condemned. For what? Has it failed of duty? Has liberty lost color by it? Have moths of oppression eaten its folds ? Has it refused to shine on freemen and given its light to despots? No. It has been true, brave, loyal. It has become too much a banner of liberty for men who mean and plot despotism.
Remember, citizen! remember, Christian soldier! the American flag has been fired upon by Americans, and trodden down because it stood in the way of slavery! This is all that you have reaped for your long patience, for your many compromises, for your generous trust and your Christian forbearance! You may now see through all the South just what kind of patriotism slavery breeds!
East of the mountains, I suppose you might travel through all Washington's State and not see one star nor one stripe. Thank God, Washington is dead, and has not lived to see the infamy and the disgrace that have fallen upon that recreant State! In all North Carolina I fear you shall find not one American flag. In Florida you shall not find one. In Georgia, I know not, except in the mountain fastnesses, if there is one. With a like exception, there is not one in Alabama. Neither is their one in repudiating Mississippi, nor in Louisiana, nor in Texas, ungrateful, nor in Arkansas.
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| The personal battle flag of Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart |
If I go to Jerusalem, or among the Bedouin Arabs, I have but to show that symbol, and I am safe. If I go to Africa, and skirt its coasts among the natives, and exhibit the colors of my country, I am safe. I can go around the globe under the protection of this flag. But it is denied me to go to Washington. I cannot go from my door to the capital of this nation, because the American flag does not defend Americans on their own soil. I cannot go to Virginia, nor North Carolina, nor South Carolina, nor Florida, nor Georgia, nor Alabama, nor Mississippi, nor Louisiana, nor Texas, nor Arkansas, nor to most of Kentucky and Tennessee.
Now I demand that, when the American flag is next unfurled in South Carolina, it shall protect me there, as it protects a South Carolinian in New York. I demand that it shall protect me in Mobile, Alabama, as it protects a Mobilian here. I demand that this shall be a common country, and that all men shall enjoy the imperishable rights which the Constitution guarantees to every American citizen. I demand that there be a victory of this flag upon the whole and undivided land, the common possession of all and every one of its citizens!
If any man asks me whether I will consent to a compromise, I reply, Yes. I love compromises; they are dear to me. Give me a compromise that shall bring peace. Let me say, “Hang the ring leading traitors. Suppress their armies. Give peace to their fields. Lift up the banner and make a highway in which every true American citizen, minding his own business, can walk unmolested. Free the Territories, and keep them free.” That is our compromise.
And a parting message to these fine soldiers of the Union. We will not forget you! Go forth from us not to be easily and lightly passed over. The waves shall not close over the places which you have held; but when you return from the conquests of liberty with a reputation and a character established forever to your children and your children's children. It shall be an honor, it shall be a legend, it shall be a historic truth. Your descendants shall say, “Our fathers stood up in the day of peril, and laid again the foundations of liberty that were shaken; and in their hands the banner of our country streamed forth like the morning star upon the night.” God bless you!
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| 14th Brooklyn Militia, Company G, in Virginia in 1862 |