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| President Abraham Lincoln gesturing as he delivers the Gettysburg Address |
“Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up a standard for the people. Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. And they shall call them, The holy people, the redeemed of the Lord: and thou shalt be called, Sought out, A city not forsaken." - Isaiah lXII. 10, 11, 12.
Message from President Lincoln
GREAT reformations in morals can never stop with individuals. Just as corruption of the citizen soon infects the institutions and the laws of the land, similarly the reformation of the citizen reforms laws and usages. It is this sort of reformation that the prophet celebrates. It is a proclamation therefore, of blessings from God, founded upon the willingness of the people to follow the Divine rule. These blessings are to result from righteousness. And the prophet, instructed of God, calls upon the nation to look forward and expect the coming of God, and to make preparation for it; and that in no small measure, we too have occasion for rejoicing as Christians, as churches, as philanthropists, and as a nation. I hold in my hand the latest Proclamation of President Lincoln.
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| Emancipation Proclamation |
Dates will begin from it. In the year of this Message of President Lincoln will begin a new cycle of our national career. If it is being considered in its relations to purity, to peace, to liberty, and to unity, it must also take rank as an eminent moral force. I should deem myself delinquent if I did not pause, and call your attention to some considerations of duty, arising from the great deliverance which God is about to give us. There are grave duties devolving upon us.
Our work is not to be done for us: our work is to be done through us, and by us. God is saying to us, “Prepare the way of the people, cast up the highway, gather out the stones, take away the obstructions and lift up a standard for the people." Get ready to begin the work.
Let me read some parts of President Lincoln's Message,
Fellow Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives: I recommend the adoption of a joint resolution by your honorable bodies, which shall be substantially as follows: Resolved, that the United States ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt a gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid to be used by such State in its discretion to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system. If the proposition contained in the resolution does not meet the approval of Congress and the country, there is the end.
But if it does meet such approval, I deem it important that the States and people immediately interested should at once be distinctly notified of the fact, so that they may begin to consider whether to accept or reject it.
Take notice that it has been openly declared by our Chief Magistrate that slavery is incompatible with good government. What a day we have reached! What a day has come to us!
The Death of Slavery
Fifteen or twenty years ago, they would have driven a man down the streets of New York before a mob, and rendered him liable to have his property sacked for supporting the ideas of the abolitionist. And now this is uttered by the Chief Magistrate of this nation, and is about to be made the subject of legislation in our land. Mark the words:
“The Federal Government would find its highest interest in such a measure as one of the most efficient means of self preservation.” It is the abolishment of slavery which is thus spoken of.
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| "Emancipation," Thomas Nast lithograph, circa 1865 |
Go back a few years, and imagine such a document issuing from President Buchanan’s administration. It makes one smile to mention it. Imagine the issue, by the President of the United States, of a document initiating emancipation, or the abolishment of slavery, as President Lincoln describes it. In the time of Mr. Pierce's administration. Imagine such a document issued from the administration of President Fillmore, or Polk, or Tyler, or Van Buren. To think of it takes a man's breath away!
But we have come quietly down by steps of four years, until at last this glorious period is reached, in our own day. The men are still young who saw the beginning of the great antislavery struggle, which seems likely to end soon. We have come quietly down to the period when a document is issued by the President of the United States inaugurating emancipation, and looking to the extinction of slavery in this nation, and pledging the power and resources of this great people to the work. There never was such a revolution since the world began, upon such a scale, involving such interests, and taking place within such a short time.
The Constitution & Liberty
This paper of emancipation completes a circle, and brings the Government of these United States back to that point at which it stood upon the adoption of our present Constitution. When our fathers found the articles of confederation, which were agreed upon during the revolutionary war to be insufficient and the government to be weak in the performance of its unavoidable functions, summoned that convention out of which grew the Constitution of the United States. Slavery still existed but in a languishing and declining condition.
It existed in most of the Northern States, but to a very limited extent. All the political ideas of the times were against it, and all the moral influences of the times were against it, and it was not uncommon to hear, not only from the men of Virginia, but the people of Carolina, admit the right of the African to liberty.
Slavery was not attempted to be defended upon original grounds, political or moral. And when the Constitution was adopted there was one universal wish and one universal expectation, that slavery would cease. The Constitution takes its form in consequence of that impression. They refused to dishonor that immortal document by allowing into it the word “slavery.”
It was understood that when that vile system passed away, there should be no such trace of it left. Unexpectedly it received development. In God's mysterious providence slavery had a part to play in the history of our country. It was to be an educating force in this nation. Among those things which God was to employ in working out the sublime results that he had prescribed, was slavery. There was a need for a “Judas” to a “Christ,” that the World's salvation might be brought out. So there must be a “Slavery” to “Liberty,” to betray it, that it might suffer, and revive, and triumph.
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| The Arrest of Christ (Kiss of Judas) - Giotto - c.1304 |
Slavery's Lessons & Punishment
The slave system impoverishes the community in every State where it exists. It may enrich a class in the community but it always impoverishes the community as a whole. It has therefore demonstrated itself to be unfit for universal economy. It has demonstrated itself to be malignant to the mechanics of arts. It has demonstrated itself to be hateful towards that last grand modern idea for the common people, work.
It has demonstrated itself to be utterly incompatible with general intelligence. Where slavery exists there must be ignorance. Ignorance is the swaddling-garment in which alone it can thrive. Where it is necessary for four million people to be ignorant, it is impossible that there would be an atmosphere of intelligence.
If the slaves must be ignorant, so must their fellows, the white people. But for the prevalent ignorance of the South, we should have been spared this gigantic rebellion. They could not understand. They have received every possible misrepresentation into naive ears. It is because they do not have the intelligence to know the truth that they have been so grossly misled by their perverted teachers and leaders.
It cost those Confederates nothing to throw away all the history of the past, and all the venerable associations of the fathers. It cost them nothing to pull down that dear old flag that has been carried so many years with such glory around the world, to tread it under foot, and to substitute it for a bastard rag. And round about this false symbol, this new flag of dishonor, they have gathered together, not so much to lay the foundation of new institutions and new States. They are saying to the World, "This rebellious rabble bears witness to the effect of slavery in educating citizens." That is the stuff that it turns them into. By nature they were as good as we were; but the Devil educated them, and the Lord educated us!
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| Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in his late 30's |