GREAT SPEECH,

DELIVERED IN NEW YORK CITY,

BY

HENRY WARD BEECHER,

ON THE

Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories

OF MAN AND SOCIETY,

January 14, 1855.

ROCHESTER:

STEAM PRESS OF A. STRONG & CO., COR. OF STATE AND BUFFALO STREETS.

1855.

Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories
OF MAN AND SOCIETY.

The Eighth Lecture of the Course before the Anti-Slavery Society, was delivered, January 14, 1855, at the Tabernacle, New York, by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. The subject, at the present time, is one of peculiar interest, as touching the questions of Slavery and Know-Nothingism, and, together with the popularity of the lecturer, drew together a house-full of auditors.

There were a number of gentlemen of distinction, occupying seats on the rostrum—among whom were the Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, James Mott, of Philadelphia, and Mr. Dudley, of Buffalo.

Mr. Beecher was introduced to the audience by Mr. Oliver Johnson, who said:

Ladies and Gentlemen: The speaker who occupied this platform on Tuesday evening last, in the course of his remarks upon the wide degeneracy of the American Clergy on the Slavery Question, reminded us that there was in a Brooklyn pulpit, a man. We thought you would be glad to see and hear such a rara avis, and therefore have besought him to come hither to-night to instruct us by his wisdom and move us by his eloquence. I trust that, whatever you may think of some other parts of the lecture of Wendell Phillips, you will, when this evening's performance is over, be ready at least to confess that in what he said of the Brooklyn preacher he was not more eulogistic than truthful.

Mr. Beecher, on presenting himself, was received with loud and hearty applause. He spoke as follows:

The questions which have provoked discussion among us for fifty years past have not been questions of fundamental principles, but of the application of principles already ascertained. Our debates have been between one way of doing a thing and another way of doing it—between living well and living better; and so through, it has been a question between good and better. We have discussed policies, not principles. In Europe, on the other hand, life-questions have agitated men. The questions of human rights, of the nature and true foundations of Government, are to-day, in Europe, where they were with our fathers in 1630.

In this respect, there is a moral dignity, and even grandeur, in the struggles, secretly or openly going on in Italy, Austria, Germany, and France, which never can belong to the mere questions of mode and manner which occupy us—boundary questions, banks, tariffs, internal improvements, currency; all very necessary but secondary topics. They touch nothing deeper than the pocket. In this respect, there would be a marked contrast between the subjects which occupy us, and the grander life-themes that dignify European thought, were it not for one subject—Slavery. That is the only question, in our day and in our community, full of vital struggles turning upon fundamental principles.

If Slavery were a plantation-question, concerning only the master and the slave, disconnected from us, and isolated—then, though we should regret it, and apply moral forces for its ultimate remedy, yet, it would be, (as are questions of the same kind in India or South America,) remote, constituting a single element in that globe of darkness of which this world is the core, and which Christianity is yet to shine through and change to light. But it is not a plantation-question. It is a national question. The disputes implied by the violent relations between the owner and the chattel may only morally touch us.—But the disputes between the masters and the Government, and between the Government, impregnated with Slavery, and the Northern citizen, these touch us sharply, and if not wisely met, will yet scourge us with thorns! Indeed, I cannot say that I believe that New England and the near North will be affected locally, and immediately by an adverse issue of the great national struggle now going on. But the North will be an utterly dead force in the American nation. She will be rolled up in a corner, like a cocoon waiting for its transmigration. The whole North will become provincial; it will be but a fringe to a nation whose heart will beat in the South.

But New-England was not raised up by Divine Providence to play a mean part in the world's affairs.

Remember, that New-England brought to America those principles which every State in the Union has more or less thoroughly adopted.

New-England first formed those institutions which liberty requires for beneficient activity; and from her, both before and since the Revolution, they have been copied throughout the Land. Having given to America its ideas and its institutions, I think the North is bound to stand by them.

Until 1800, the North had distinctive national influence, and gave shape, in due measure, to national policy, as she had before to national institutions.

Then she began to recede before the rising of another power. For the last fifty years, upon the national platform have stood arrayed two champions in mortal antagonism—New-England and the near North—representing personal freedom, civil liberty, universal education, and a religious spirit which always sympathises with men more than with Governments.

The New-England theory of Government has always been in its element—first, independent men; then democratic townships; next republican States, and, in the end, a Federated Union of Republican States. All her economies, her schools, her policy, her industry, her wealth, her intelligence, have been at agreement with her theory and policy of Government. Yet, New-England, strong at home, compact, educated, right-minded; has gradually lost influence, and the whole North with her.

The Southern League of States, have been held together by the cohesive power of Common Wrong. Their industry, their policy, their whole interior, vital economy, have been at variance with the apparent principles of their own State Governments, and with the National Institutions under which they exist. They have stood upon a narrow basis, always shaking under them, without general education, without general wealth, without diversified industry. And yet since the year 1800, they have steadily prevailed against Representative New-England and the North. The South, the truest representation of Absolutism under republican forms, is mightier in our National Councils and Policy to-day than New-England, the mother and representative of true republicanism and the whole free North.

And now it has come to pass that, in the good providence of God, another opportunity has been presented to the whole North to reassert her place and her influence, and to fill the institutions of our country with their original and proper blood. I do not desire that she should arise and put on her beautiful garments, because she is my mother, and your mother; not because her hills were the first which my childhood saw, that has never since beheld any half so dear; nor from any sordid ambition, that she should be great in this world's greatness; nor from any profane wish to abstract from the rightful