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Rh

., May 6, 1863.

Miss :—The call for a Convention in New York to express the feelings of woman in view of the condition of the country, is timely. I regret that I can not be present to share the inspiration of the occasion, and as far as possible to aid in making an impression worthy of the hour. We call this an alarming crisis because it is a struggle involving our lives, our liberty, and our happiness. It must be borne in mind that this nation is great not simply from the number of States it has held in union, but from its creative genius. We are told that this is the best expression of a republican form of government. It is so because it is self-sustaining, self-reliant, and therefore may be self-governing. The stern, smooth-faced Puritan fled from religious persecution in the Old World to find room for an idea in the New; and the planting of one religious idea has yielded a rich harvest of sects, each an improvement on the last.

Yesterday politics had its center in a party; to-day, in the nation; to-morrow, it will find an equilibrium in the individual. This is a stern work, wearing furrows in the cheeks of statesmen, shaking the frame-work of the Government, letting the blood and drinking the treasure of the nation. It can not be avoided. God has said, "And unto you a child is born," and his name shall be called Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the Holy of Holies, the Universal Republic. And as God rested after the first creation, so shall this nation find its Sabbath of rest when this struggle for freedom is over, and from the little child to the bowed-down man, all shall breathe through the new Constitution a fresher, more glorious life. Viewed from the daily papers, the battle is long, terrific, and uncertain. Go to the stricken hearthstones, and we exclaim, "Oh, that this cup might pass from us!" Visit the solemn battle-field, and in anguish we murmur, "My God, why hast Thou forsaken us?" Retiring to the high mountain of our faith, we see in this painful view the magnitude of our cause, and that slowly but surely this contest will end triumphantly. From this point we mark the milestones that show we have made indelible foot-prints toward Liberty and Union.

The choice by the people of a Republican President, the firing on Sumter, the defeat at Manassas, the recognition of Hayti, the treaty with England for the suppression of the foreign slave-trade, the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the decision of Attorney-General Bates in favor of universal citizenship, the conversion to the anti-slavery sentiment of Dickinson and Butler, the President's Proclamation, and the arming of the blacks, are signs in the political zodiac, showing our revolution certain as that of the rolling suns in the material heavens. Only Liberty can be our watchword henceforth! To this standard alone will the country, both North and South, rally when a few more days of leadership are over. God saw to this in the frame-work of every living thing, when He made his wants to be a blessing with freedom and a curse without it. Open the cage-door to the pining fox, loathing his master's beef and pudding, and see if his instincts are not true as the needle to the pole. Lay the sweet babe before the starved lion, and his want will not bow to your compassion. So in slaves; it matters not whether slaves to rebellion or to aristocracy. So in all men and in all women, the want of liberty, as the want of bread, is a vital principle in the blood. It is the motive power. Without it man is but a log, and is suited to rule over frogs only; or, like the silent water, becomes a loathsome stagnation. You may suppress, but you can not appease or destroy this divine inheritance in man. On this uniform idea the laws of society depend, and union can have no other. Raise the banner of freedom to all, and you have an imperishable Constitution, supported by the gushing blood of the millions, and immortalized in the spirit of the nation. This is our work: To comprehend liberty, to establish a constitution, and perpetuate union. We began at union, the right-hand figure, borrowing ten, as in mathematics, from the next higher order, observing the rule of maintaining an equal difference by paying what is borrowed.

We saw that fighting for union and slavery left us just what we began with. So we borrowed from the Constitution Fremont's Proclamation, and carried the popular response to the next Congress, and under the second period we wrote the liberty of three millions! We have now to work out the main principle or highest order, to test the virtue of the people, to see whether, when rebellion is put down, the nation can survive;