authority of the Executive, as the guardian of CHAP. VII. the liberties of the citizen. Sent abroad thereafter to fill the highest diplomatic office of the American Government as minister to England, he was called upon, under broad principles of the law of nations, to discuss and adjust several difficult and farreaching questions, which touched not merely the present, but also the future welfare and greatness of his country. Later, he was appointed to the wider and more responsible duties of Secretary of State during the close of Fillmore's Administration, when the whole diplomatic service of the American Government was intrusted to his care and direction. Crowning his official career, he was elected to the United States Senate, where the opening phases of the great slavery agitation engaged his earnest solicitude and temperate comment. His impaired health withdrew him from politics and enabled him to stand aloof from party heats and factional storms. This circumstance placed him in that neutral attitude in virtue of which he became the nominee for Vice-President of the Constitutional Union party in 1860, which professed to ignore the slavery issue and to stand as a peacecompelling umpire between the extremists of the North and the South.

Where, then, could be found an observer, critic, or commentator of nicer skill, of finer judgment, of more impartial temper? In the clamor and conflict of assertion and denial, of crimination and recrimination, the words of such a man, uttered on such an occasion as this dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery, in the presence of these august living witnesses, standing amidst the half-closed

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CHAP. VII. graves of the greatest battlefield of the war, become a testimony and a guide to the historian and to posterity, before which flimsy excuse and selfish appeal, choleric invective and maudlin sympathy, alike fade into insignificance. It must be remembered that his were not the hasty expressions of excitement or passion that marked the culmination of controversy and the outbreak of Nov.19,1863. hostilities. This was near the close of the third year of the war, when every claim had been heard, every protest weighed, every profession tested by the criterion of practical experiment. Neither was it the mere fervid outburst of an orator's heat. His indictment embodies the calm reflection of the thinker in his study, pronounced with the grave authority of the statesman on his tribune. Only a few of its salient paragraphs can here be quoted.

Beginning his oration with a recital of the mortuary honors which the Greeks paid the warriors who died in battle for the cause of their country, and passing from that theme to "our obligations to the martyrs and surviving heroes of the Army of the Potomac," the speaker went on with a master's skill to draw a picture of the great campaign and battle. Coming then to a new branch of his subject, he continued: "And now, friends, fellow-citizens, as we stand among these honored graves, the momentous question presents itself, Which of the two parties to the war is responsible for all this suffering, for this dreadful sacrifice of life; the lawful and constitutional Government of the United States, or the ambitious men who have rebelled against it? . . I call the war which the Confederates are waging against the Union a ‘re

bellion,' because it is one, and in grave matters it CHAP. VIL is best to call things by their right names. I speak of it as a crime, because the Constitution of the United States so regards it, and puts 'rebellion' on a par with 'invasion.' The constitution and law not only of England but of every civilized country, regard them in the same light; or rather they consider the rebel in arms as far worse than the alien enemy. To levy war against the United States is the constitutional definition of treason, and that crime is by every civilized government regarded as the highest which citizen or subject can commit. Not content with the sanctions of human justice, of all the crimes against the law of the land it is singled out for the denunciations of religion. The litanies of every church in Christendom whose ritual embraces that office, as far as I am aware, from the metropolitan cathedrals of Europe to the humblest missionary chapel in the islands of the sea, concur with the Church of England in imploring the Sovereign of the universe, by the most awful adjurations which the heart of man can conceive, or his tongue utter, to deliver us from 'sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion.' And reason good; for while a rebellion against tyranny,

a rebellion designed, after prostrating arbitrary power, to establish free government on the basis of justice and truth,- is an enterprise on which good men and angels may look with complacency, an unprovoked rebellion of ambitious men against a beneficent government, for the purpose-the avowed purpose of establishing, extending, and perpetuating any form of injustice and wrong, is an imitation on earth of that first foul revolt of

CHAP. VII. 'the Infernal Serpent,' against which the Supreme

Majesty of Heaven sent forth the armed myriads of his angels, and clothed the right arm of his Son with the three-bolted thunders of Omnipotence.

“Lord Bacon, in 'the true marshaling of the sovereign degrees of honor,' assigns the first place to 'the Conditores Imperiorum, founders of States and Commonwealths;'... and far more than to any of those to whom Bacon assigns this highest place of honor, whose names can hardly be repeated without a wondering smile,- Romulus, Cyrus, Cæsar, Ottoman, Ismael,- is it due to our Washington as the founder of the American Union. But if to achieve or help to achieve this greatest work of man's wisdom and virtue gives title to a place among the chief benefactors, rightful heirs of the benedictions of mankind, by equal reason shall the bold, bad men who seek to undo the noble work, Eversores Imperiorum, destroyers of States, who for base and selfish ends rebel against beneficent governments, seek to overturn wise constitutions, to lay powerful republican unions at the foot of foreign thrones, to bring on civil and foreign war, anarchy at home, dictation abroad, desolation, ruin,- by equal reason, I say, yes, a thousand-fold stronger, shall they inherit the execrations of the ages.

"But to hide the deformity of the crime under the cloak of that sophistry which strives to make the worse appear the better reason, we are told by the leaders of the Rebellion that in our complex system of government the separate States are 'sovereigns,' and that the central power is only an 'agency.' Certainly I do not deny that the separate States are clothed with sovereign powers for the