from the heavy tread of oligarchies, from the sharp fangs of despots, from the woes and fears of bloody revolutions, from poverty, heart-brokenness, and living death, millions have found here that freedom, which they sighed for as their richest boon in life, and the most blessed inheritance they could transmit to their children. Here has grown into gigantic proportions a nation presenting the grandest development the world has ever seen of human intelligence and progress, and holding in its outstretched hands to all the earth the choicest fruits man has ever tasted of regulated and constitutional liberty. To mortal prescience that nation seemed immortal-those fruits perennial and undecaying. But in the midst of peace, prosperity, and seeming contentment, all is plunged into confusion. and dismay. The lurid cloud of war envelopes the land, the tread of armed legions shakes the earth, the thunders of battle fill the air, blood stains the ground, the groans of the dying fill the ears of night, and the wails of the bereaved rise to heaven from countless habitations! What enemy has done this? Have the despotisms of the Old World, tired of America's example and glory, massed their mighty columns to bear her down into the dust? Has her ancient foe challenged her to a third war of Independence? Has other nation invaded her peaceful shores? No, my friends; would God it were any or all of these, rather than what it is! Her own sons are her assailants! Americans are pouring out the life-blood of America ! The heirs of liberty are destroying their precious birthright! The children of the Constitution are

any

hacking and battering that glorious fabric, every seam of which was cemented with their fathers' blood, and every arch of which is vocal with the prayers and benedictions of the illustrious dead! And all for what? Who has oppressed, who wronged them? The voice of the universal brotherhood of man acquits this nation of wrong to them. What, then, urges on this demoniac onslaught? Let us not fear to speak the word again. Let us be true, though we die for it! Speak it, write it, print it, proclaim it, that it is THE ARISTOCRACY OF SLAVERY hurling itself against the buttresses of the Constitution, to clear it out of their pathway to empire! It is the lust of power, the greed of gain, the arbitrary will of inborn despots, that hurries them on in their hellish work. Will they triumph? Not if the sons of America, native and adopted, are faithful, and brave, and enduring. And shall we not be so? Shall we falter in the trying hour? Shall we fear to go forward? Fear, ten thousand times more, to go backward a single step! The Star of Hope leads onward; then let our march and our cry be ONWARD! ever ONWARD!

CAMP JACKSON:

ITS HISTORY AND SIGNIFICANCE.*

Great events make anniversaries, and all civilized peoples observe and commemorate them. To St. Louis, now in the hundredth year of its existence, no day has become more memorable than the tenth day of May, eighteen hundred and sixty-one; when was witnessed by her citizens, on this spot, within her own corporate limits, the first collision between our noble Union, and those recreant State authorities, which desired and intended to wrest Missouri by violence from the Union's embrace. This generation in St. Louis will not forget" that day. The Secessionists of St. Louis will remember it as a day that suddenly nipped the treason of their leaders in the bud; and her patriots will cherish it as the day that rescued them and Missouri from the grasp of traitors, which, once fixed upon her, might not to this hour have been thrown off. History, too, will assign that day a position of prime importance in the course of events succeeding the fall of Sumter; for had the designs which caused the assemblage of citizen

* An Oration delivered in St. Louis, May 11, 1863, on the Anniversary of the Capture of Camp Jackson.

soldiery at Camp Jackson been accomplished, who can estimate the extent of the injury to the Union cause in Missouri, and throughout this great Central Valley? God only knows whether the whole course of the dread conflict which has now been waged for more than two years, might not have been changed, disastrously to our country. Let us then render devout thanks to Him, for the day itself, and for the privilege of meeting here in peace to commemorate it!

You will not, my friends, fail to remember the wild excitement in our city and State, which followed the capture of Camp Jackson, and the use which was, only too successfully, made of that event, to inflame disloyalty and rebellion through all the borders of Missouri. To have attended to what was then said and written in denunciation of the capture, one would have thought that such an outrage as the world had not before known, had been perpetrated upon an innocent body of citizen soldiers, lawfully convened for a laudable purpose; and that those who composed the capturing force were demons in human shape, worthy only of execration in time, and of damnation in eternity; to the latter of which Missouri traitors would gladly and quickly have consigned them-if they could!

As to the character of the soldiery mustered at Camp Jackson, it is not just or true to class them all as traitors, or secessionists, or sympathizers with secession. While it is impossible to say at this time, even if it could ever have been said, who of the officers and men composing the encampment were loyal to the flag which floated over them, and who were not, it is,

I doubt not, strictly true that many were there who were loyal; who were unaware of the infamous designs of those who ordered their assembling; and who would have been deeply shocked, had they been led forth to do the work which the State authorities purposed should be done. Of them, as they were prior to, and upon the day of, the capture of Camp Jackson-not as many of them afterwards became-I would use no other words than those of pity for the unfortunate association which made them the victims of cunning and unscrupulous traitors. But of those there who knew the design of the encampment, and lent themselves to the first organized attempt to array Missouri against the glorious flag under which they were born, and by the protection of which they had lived and prospered, it is enough to say, that more devilish traitors never lived; and that such of them as have not already fallen in the rebel ranks, by Union ball or bayonet, should be thankful to their dying hour that the surrender of Camp Jackson saved them then from the traitor's ignominious fate, if, indeed, their being saved should be a ground of thankfulness in them, or anybody else on earth.

It is important, my friends, to put on record, so far as an address like this can accomplish it, the true character of that ill-starred camp, and of the men who planned and executed its capture. Diligent efforts have been made to cover up the truth about it, and to transmit its history to the future in a cloud. One aim of this discourse will be to set forth the simple truth, in connected form, so that whosoever may hear or read it, may know assuredly that the suppression of Camp