Read Ebook: Our Union and Its Defenders An Oration Delivered Before the Citizens of Burlington N.J. on the Occasion of Their Celebration of the Eighty-Sixth Anniversary of Independence Day July 4th 1862 by Pugh J Howard John Howard

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Our Union and its Defenders:

BY J. HOWARD PUGH, M. D.

PHILADELPHIA: KING & BAIRD, PRINTERS, No. 607 SANSOM STREET. 1862.

CORRESPONDENCE.

DOCT. J. HOWARD PUGH,

DEAR SIR:

Having listened, with so much pleasure and profit, to the appropriate and impressive address with which you favored us upon the occasion of the recent celebration of "Independence Day," we feel that we would be failing in duty to those of our fellow-citizens who were deprived of that gratification, were we to allow the occasion to go by and be forgotten, without taking measures to have your remarks placed upon record, and to secure their dissemination among the reading and thinking members of the community. Our own sentiments are so ably and admirably expressed therein, that we wish to have the privilege of presenting them in that shape to all our friends, not only in our own community, but wherever we can reach them--for even by those who assisted at the original delivery, they will bear perusing often and pondering well. We trust they will carry conviction to the misguided, and strengthen the convictions of the wavering. With this view, we would request the favor of a copy of your address, for publication.

Very respectfully,

Your fellow citizens,

FRANKLIN WOOLMAN, THOMAS ROBB, THOS. MILNOR, JOHN D. MOORE, JOHN RODGERS, N. T. HIGBIE, M. KNOWLTON, J. D. ABERCROMBIE, RICH. SHIPPEN, WM. R. ALLEN, JAS. STERLING, FRED. BROWN.

GENTLEMEN:

Your kind and flattering favor of the 8th inst., is before me. You can judge better than I, and if you think there is anything, in my Oration, at all likely to strengthen or enlighten the patriotism of a single American, I shall cordially co-operate with you in publishing it. For, however much I may fear that its usefulness will fall far short of your wishes, yet, I know that no man now has a right to withhold a word, or refuse a deed which he has any just reason to suppose will aid, in the least, the cause of his country. Such reason you have given me in your kind and partial estimate of my effort, and for this I sincerely thank you.

Trusting that our beloved country, so dear to all our hearts, so freighted with all our hopes, may soon emerge triumphant from the fierce struggle with its foes,

I remain,

Very faithfully yours,

J. HOWARD PUGH.

To Messrs. WOOLMAN, ROBB, MILNOR and others, Committee.

OUR UNION AND ITS DEFENDERS.

In the ways of Providence, there is always fitness in the smallest as in the greatest things. It is on the Fourth of July, in midsummer, that we hold the anniversary festivals of American Independence. And it is a beautiful ordering of the Providence that rules the seasons and the nations, that the time of these anniversaries is so well suited to the occasion. For it is fitting, that in the midst of glorious summer days, when the earth lies richest in the sunlight; when the fields are golden with the harvests; when the air is fragrant with the scent of flowers and the new hay; when, in a word, the beauty and the bounty of nature, unite to fill the heart with gladness and with gratitude, we should meet in kindred joy and thankfulness to celebrate our nation's natal day. For sunshine is the symbol of prosperity, and summer the symbol of peace; and the wondrous bounty of the season fitly typifies the fruits of that civil and religious liberty, to establish which our fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honour. Not that all these anniversaries have been, or will be days of jubilee. Not that the chill and sombreness of winter have not settled, will not settle, upon some. For many stormy years were passed, before the hope that dawned on that July morning in '76 became a full and crowned reality. And then, you remember the day of the grand jubilee proper, the fiftieth anniversary of our Independence, when both Jefferson--the author, and Adams--the most eloquent supporter, of the declaration, died. And then, you remember to-day one year ago, when the American Congress met in a beleaguered city, within the sound of rebel cannon, with rebel ensigns flaunting almost in the face of the Capitol, met in solemn and determined counsel to devise ways and means to save the nation from destruction at the hands of its own misguided children. And then, to-day; what shall I say of to-day? To-day, when sorrow sits brooding in a million homes, when the shadow of civil war still rests like a pall upon the nation, when in the beautiful Virginia that Washington loved, his children are grappling in the struggle of death. Still, it is true, that in the eighty odd years of our Independence that have passed, there have been few of these anniversary days that have not wholly been days of jubilee, and with the blessing of God a little longer on our Union armies, there will be fewer yet in the eighty years that are to come; fewer yet, I trust, in all the vast and pregnant future upon which the summer will not smile in poetic fitness, and which a grateful people will not greet with shouts of gladness and with songs of praise.

It is one of the uses of history to teach us what are the noblest uses of life; what deeds live longest in the memories of men; what motives give greatest strength and nobility to character; what fruition follows godlike sacrifices for truth and duty; what ideas and principles, embodied in life, lift men above the common level and crown them with immortal honours. It is one of the uses of a day like this to turn us back to higher sources of inspiration, that we may be the more manfully fitted for the duties of our time, that we may learn the cost of liberty, and the worth of patriotism, and the sacredness of principle, and the holiness of duty. It is one of the uses of a day like this to teach us that our selfish aims and interests and motives, our lives of luxury and frivolity, of leisure-loving and wealth-seeking, all sink to a level of lowest significance, when contrasted with great heroic virtues such as bore our fathers through the storm and struggle of the Revolution. And when these lessons have been learned by a people, and when in the Providence of God the darkest hours of their history have come; when they are compelled themselves to strike for liberty or see it perish; when they have risen to that height of patriotism that they exclaim with old John Adams in '76, that all that they have, and all that they are, and all that they hope for in this life, they are ready to stake upon the altar of their country; when, filled with such inspiration, they go forth from homes of happiness and peace to fields of carnage and of death, then, above all, does it belong to the uses of a day like this to teach the mourning women of the land, and the children that are fatherless, that these dying and dead soldiers are one with the heroes of the Revolution; that our country's history will embalm their names with equal honour and a common love, and that a grateful people throughout all the long and coming years will "keep their memory green."

And this Nation which our Fathers founded, and which thus expanded into eighty years of such vigorous life; how fares it now? It is racked and rent with civil war. In little more than a year, a hundred new battle-fields have been added to its history. Whole States are given up to desolation. The land is filled with mourners. Hearts are broken to-day, that a year ago beat high with hope, and love, and happiness. Childhood, and womanhood, and tottering age, its props all gone, are mingling their tears and prayers to-day, in the bitterness of a sorrow that will never end on earth.

Before the bombardment of Sumter, party prejudice and strife were strong as ever. Men differed in opinion, and differed with great bitterness, about all the measures of Government. The cabinet of Buchanan became disintegrated with conflicting views of his policy. This policy was praised by many--blamed by more. Equal differences of opinion met the policy of the new President. Many thought his course too timid and temporizing; many thought it too aggressive and bold, and feared that "it would exasperate the South." But when the bombardment came, then all men saw at a glance that a Government that could not feed its own starving garrisons--that could not command its own forts--was no government at all. They saw at once that the struggle was one of life and death. And then the Nation rose, and then the war began. The latent patriotism of the people, that had been growing and intensifying for three-quarters of a century, burst forth, at last, like a flame; and from that day to this, the only question before us--the question to be decided by cannon, and bullets, and bayonets--has been one of the existence of the American Union. And whenever men now talk about conciliation, and compromise, and peace, while five hundred thousand rebels are in arms, they are men of that doubtful patriotism, which would not shrink to see the great American Union blotted from the list of Nations.

There is still another reason why we will not consent to the disruption of the Union. Because the probability is too great that it would end here, and in all the world, and for a thousand years the experiment of popular government. Already the South disdains the rule of the people. In a population of ten millions, they have but three hundred thousand slaveholders. Yet, almost every man in power is a slaveholder. Hence, government with them is already in the hands of a class. And then, the tone of their press, and the speeches of their statesmen have aimed for years to degrade labour, have betrayed a growing dislike for the equality of rights demanded by our institutions, and have been coloured with all the assumption and the arrogance of an aristocracy.

And then, the doctrine of Secession, which, thirty years ago, we had supposed was crushed forever under the gigantic tread of Webster's logic and the strokes of Jackson's iron will--this principle of disintegration upon which they would base their government, would sooner or later drive them into despotism. And this principle would not be without effect upon the North, for it has many advocates here already. Men are as apt in learning lessons of evil as of good. One successful rebellion would become the parent of others. The theory of our government presupposes the existence of various and diverse local interests, to be controlled by local governments. It is impossible for these interests not to be sometimes subordinated to the general welfare. Establish two confederacies, and the constant temptation would be held out to States with similar local interests, fretting under imaginary grievances, or maddened by party spirit, to strike off from the parent State on the one hand, and form alliances with similarly disaffected portions on the other. The interests of the Western and Southwestern States are quite as closely connected by the waters of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri, as the interests of either are with the States upon the Atlantic seaboard, and would be quite as likely to be formed, ultimately, into a third and independent government as to remain united with the old. Oregon and California, washed by the waves of another ocean, and thousands of miles from the central government, would be especially difficult to hold by the North. And the worst future of any such subdivisions would be the necessity that must arise for large and ever-increasing military establishments, both of the army and navy. A frequently recurring or a prolonged state of war not only eats up the substance and palsies the industry of a people, but it is incompatible with the enlarged liberties we claim for the citizen. The qualities of mind and heart which make the greatest generals are not commonly those which inculcate the highest regard for individual rights. The glare and glitter of military reputation cannot outshine, in all the avenues to power, the less ostentatious merits of the statesman and scholar without imperilling free institutions. We risk little from these causes now. No American general now, were he to manifest within a year more than the genius of the first Napoleon, could undertake to establish a dictatorship over the American people, without immediately falling from the pedestal of power. For we have not forgotten our earliest teachings. We have not forgotten that the name of Washington belongs to our history. We have been educated in the meaning of his great and glorious life, and no man now can command any large influence in American affairs, who is not as ready to lay down power as to take it up. But, let this people learn to lean, for half a century, upon the military arm; place them in a position in which questions must frequently arise to be settled only by the sword; agitate the peaceful current of their lives with ever-recurring waves of war; allow their individuality, their liberty of thought and speech, to become absorbed, year after year, in that oneness of purpose, that subordination to another's will, which military law requires, and they will become as ready, as others have before them, to seek rest, stability and peace at the expense of liberty and equality, under the rigour of despotic rule.

There is every reason to believe that, if the question of disunion had been fairly submitted to the people of the South, before the breaking out of the war, they would have decided overwhelmingly against it. The whole region had been so long saturated and cursed with the political heresies of Calhoun, that their regard for State rights, their feeling of State pride, had diminished greatly that sentiment of nationality so characteristic of the North. But every other reason I have given to-day in favour of the value of this Union, every other reason that can be given, applies with equal force to the South as to the North. They can no more afford to do without the Union, than we can. Neither can do without it, and ever prosper. And once clear away the bitterness of passion, the pride, the rancour and the unreasonableness that belongs to a state of actual conflict, and the masses of the South will admit the fact. And when men say the Union is already dissolved, because the sections are at war, they exhibit little knowledge of human nature or of human history. Have they forgotten that almost every country on the globe has had its great rebellion--has been scourged with civil war? Do they believe that the animosities now existing between the North and South are any more bitter, or likely to prove any more lasting, than those engendered by the civil wars of England, or of France, or of Spain? I know these animosities will live long enough--too long; this generation will not survive them. Too much anguish, and passion, and venom for that. But history will reproduce itself here as elsewhere; and when we remember the past, and how soothing are the influences of trade and commerce--how mutually dependent are the products and the industries of the sections--how we are bound together by railroads, and telegraphs, and water-courses, and ties of consanguinity,--there is every reason to believe that, the rebellion conquered, the return of good feeling would be more speedy and more complete than has usually followed the scourge of civil war.

Thus, fellow citizens, have I attempted to show to you to-day what they fight for who fight for the Union--what those forces are that nerve the arms and inspire the souls of the people: 1st, the sentiment of nationality--a love of country, not bounded by State lines, but including the whole country, with its historic names and memories; 2nd, a belief that no permanent peace could follow a dissolution of the Union, and that the wars it would produce would prove vastly more desolating and unending than the one now waging; and, 3d, the probability, the almost certainty, that such dissolution would finally result in the entire abandonment of the democratic principle in government.

The Declaration of Independence which had just been read by JOHN RODGERS, ESQ.

Transcriber's Notes:

--Text in italics is enclosed by underscores .

--Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

--Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

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