no General because he has been a Democrat. Praise only the General, whether Republican or Democrat, who reaches the enemy by the shortest cut, and deals him the heaviest blow. (Great applause.)

3rd. Washington also exhorts us earnestly to maintain the credit of the nation. Find out what your honest debts are, and then make prompt and ample provision for their payment. On this point I need not enlarge. The people are already inspired with the proper sentiment in regard to this matter. While they make short work with greedy, unscrupulous contractors, they mean to fight this battle through with honest fists, and then settle the bills without grumbling. Their voice to the government is, "Spare no necessary expense, only fight this rebellion dead, and you may tax us to the very bottom of our pockets." (Cheers.)

4th. Finally, and most important of all, we are reminded that intelligence and virtue are the pillars of our Republic. Without morality, we are told, there can be no freedom and no prosperity; and without religion there can be no morality. These are the golden lessons of the hour. The South is now in rebellion because it has been demo. ralized; and demoralized to a large extent because its ministers of religion have been so scandalously false to the proper genius of the Gospel. The whole land needs evangelizing on a scale not yet realized. The future is big with responsibilities, which are destined to tax our faith and our patience to their utmost. Let us gird ourselves for this gigantic, momentous labor. We stand here in the breach not only for ourselves, and for our children, but for all mankind. Upon our shoulders is laid the task of building up here a noble Christian Republic, the light of whose example shall be for the guidance of all the nations of the earth.

But there remains another topic, on which I cannot be silent without being utterly false to the very spirit of the occasion which has now called us together. A topic ignored in the Address of Washington, as it is ignored also in our Constitution. But not ignored by Washington in his last will and testament, in which he gave freedom to his bondmen; nor ignored in the Constitution because of any want of fidelity to the rights of man. Washington regarded slavery as a curse and a sin. So likewise did the framers of our Constitution. They permitted, indeed, its continuance as a local institution, supported by local legislation. But they studiously excluded it from the great charter of our nationality, looking forward confidently to the time when it should go down out of our system, as we trust the last of the piratical craft of the Confederates will soon go down before our loyal cannon, and leave in an hour no bubble to mark the spot. Since then there has been a great apostasy. Slavery, instead of being merely tolerated for a season, is now embraced and eulogized as a Divine and beneficent institution; and we of the North are called upon to leap down into the same abyss of apostasy and shame. We will do no such thing. We stand by the better doctrine of our fathers. Slavery we denounce as a cruel wrong to the black man, as a fatal cancer eating its way to the very vitals of the white man. As a local institution, destined eventually to be uprooted and disappear, we can give it tolerance. But as a political power, enthroned in our national Capital, and dictating our national policy, we have registered in heaven our oath that it shall no more have dominion over us. The Constitution, framed in the interest of freedom and not of slavery, we have sworn shall be administered in the interest of freedom. No more slave territory, is now emblazoned upon our banner, never to be erased. What territory it now has, slavery may keep and curse, if it will; but it shall snatch no more. And what it has we will hem in closer and closer with free soil tilled by free men, till it shall be like the scorpion begirt with

fire. This is all we ask for. We counsel no violence to the provisions of our present Constitution. We pray for no better Constitution. We are altogether content with the Constitution as it is. Our single demand is, that it be administered in the spirit of its framers. Then shall we be insured against the hatching of another such rebellion as this, against which we are now in arms. Then may we anticipate the time, not far remote, when slavery itself shall be shaken from our bosom like a nightmare dream. (Renewed cheers.)

The sixth regular toast:

6. The Union-"The main pillar in the edifice of your real independence: the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize."

The President said—I have great pleasure in coupling with this toast the name of one, who, by his voice, his pen, and his untiring devotion, has rendered, signal service to the Union, and to its brave defenders. I present to you the Rev. Dr. Bellows, President of the United States Sanitary Commission. (Applause.)

SPEECH OF REV. HENRY W. BELLOWS, D.D.

Rev. Dr. BELLOWs responded. He said that the Union was a fact, and a very tough fact. The natural features of our country could not destroy its geographical integrity. The Almighty had established such geographical connections and relations between the parts of this country, shutting us between the lakes and the Gulf, and extending us from ocean to ocean, that this geographical fact cannot be lost sight of, and must be deferred to and respected. The Union, too, was an ethnological fact. We were one people. We were of one blood and one lineage, and one language; and by this relations and communications, affections, sympathies, intercourse, inter-marriages had been established between the various parts of this country. Our very difficulties were the very things which bound us together. The very fact that we understand each other's censure, and hear our sentiments hurled back to us in the same language, is the very reason that we are so much exasperated against one another. It was because we were brothers, and because this is a family quarrel, having all the animosity of a family quarrel. But they could not divide this people. Slavery, black as it was, and hateful and accursed as it was, had not the power to separate that which God, ethnologically and by identity of language, had united together. (Applause.) Then, too, the Union was a great economical fact. We were united by commercial and industrial relations in such a way that the country could not be broken up. It was a curious fact, to be observed about this time, that the Stocks of the disloyal States grew better and stronger in our market for every thrashing we gave them. The moment we had a victory, making the fact more apparent that the rebel States could not get out of the Union, it caused a rise in stock of the rebel States. That fact spoke louder than any other. When England saw that a victory which tended to demolish the rebels made their own property the more valuable, he would like to see what England would think of that. The Union was also a great political fact. We had political antecedents; we had a Constitution; we had affectionate memories of our fathers who created it. We had solemn oaths registered in Heaven of fidelity to that Constitution. That Constitution was solemnly rooted in the whole history of the country, and it was destined to keep us one people, and as to the Slavery question, if there was a mighty Anti-Slavery document in the world, it was the Constitution of the United States. (Applause.) What

was this rebellion? It was a rebellion against the Constitution, because it would not strengthen, and extend, and give political power to Slavery! What had made this wicked rebellion, but the simple fact that in this country, faithful to the Constitution for long years, during which the Constitution had been interpreted in behalf of Slavery, in the course of events, in the charge of those who wielded the power of the Government, the Constitution came to receive its natural interpretation, unfavorable to Slavery? The rebellion arose because the Constitution was an Anti-Slavery document from the moment that the political majority was enabled to interpret it in the interests of liberty. It was a most formidable battery-a most tremendous agency, against which nobody could say a word. They should so press it that it should do its whole work, and if he was not very much mistaken in the character of the people, whatever party should raise its head and endeavor to stay our hand by an effort to make a false peace, before the war had done its work, and this Constitution had been fully sped to its home, would be entirely put down by the moral sense of the people. The Union, too, was a great moral fact. It had become imbedded in the mind and had shaped the intellect of the people. It had become the expression of their hopes and desires in a political direction. It was also a great spiritual fact. There was intrusted to us a sacred duty to vindicate free institutions, and to turn that dreadful tide of reaction which, for the last few years, had been apparent, by which free institutions had been read backward. In conclusion the speaker alluded to the effect which had been produced abroad by American history, and of the false estimate that was formed of our institutions, as to their permanency, by reason of the smallness of our army and navy in times of peace. He gave the following toast :

The Union-The land and the waters, mountains and rivers, lineage and language, laws and Constitution, interests and instinct, affection and passion, duty and destiny, all cry out against its dissolution, and proclaim it perpetual. (Applause.)

The seventh regular toast.

7. The Constitution of the United States:-With all its privileges and blessings, may it be perpetuated to the latest posterity. (Applause.)

The Chairman remarked:-I beg to associate with this sentiment the name of William M. Evarts, Esq., a gentleman to whom we all delight to listen. (Loud cheers.)

SPEECH OF WILLIAM M. EVARTS, ESQ.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: It is my good fortune, by the kind invitation of your committee, to take part now, for the third time, in the celebration of this great national festival, under the auspices of the Republican Association; and the three occasions, including the present, are at three notable stages in the great national transaction for the inauguration of which, in support of the constitution, and for the triumphant maintenance of the constitution through which the Rupublican party is, in my judgment, mainly responsible. (Applause.) We celebrated the day in 1860, in advance of the Republican nomination for the Presidency, which had for its purpose to defend the Constitution against the encroachment of a great State interest, that was striving to impress a local institution upon the national life and character. We succeeded in the election, under the peaceful forms of the Constitution, and had transferred the power of the government from the faction that had so long wielded it, to hands that were faithful to the spirit of the Constitution. (Applause.) We celebrated this anniversary in 1861, in the waning months of the Administration of Mr. Buchanan, in the very midnight of the gloom

which prevailed over this country, from the period of the election of Mr. Lincoln, until the guns of Sumter proclaimed the breaking day. (Applause.) A military rebellion was planned and threatened, and had commenced the revolt which since has made such head. We celebrate it now, sir, when the armed rebellion has assumed its fullest proportions when the power of the country has been raised against it,-and when the declining fortunes of treason announce that, soon, reinstated and re-established, the Constitution will resume its sway over the whole territory of the Republic. (Loud Applause.) Mr. President, it was the Constitution as our fathers framed it, before the rebellion broke out; it is the same Constitution while the rebellion rages;—and it will be the same Constitution when the rebellion is over. (Applause.) And, without laying any stress upon the great topics of popular liberty, and of national strength and pride, which have been aimed at, at least, in other political constitutions, let us understand that the vital and peculiar principle of our Constitution is, that a great nation can be formed, with the strength of government and its fund of power so distributed as not to be an overmatch for the freedom of the people-that a nation can be constituted powerful enough to maintain itself in the family of nations, and to secure to its citizens the honor, respect, and protection which only a mighty nationality can commaud, and yet, by the division of the great fund of power essential to government, between the general and the local administration, the people can be protected in their freedom, and secured in the management of their every-day interests by representation, neither remote from them, nor insensible to every duty to them.

Mr. President, the first essential safeguard of this distribution of powers is, that the General Government shall deal only with that which is common and national, and the State Government shall have the exclusive administration of what is local and peculiar. The struggle, under such a distribution of power, constantly is, or constantly may be, for local institutions and interests, to strive to force themselves into National life and character; and, on the other hand, for the General Government to establish rules and laws for domestic institutions and interests, which its policy and its purpose, as the policy and the purpose of the majority of the Nation, may suggest. I hold that the fundamental principle of the Repulican party,-the key-note of its political purpose and action, has been, and is, to oppose this invasion by domestic aud peculiar interests, of the domain of National power. (Applause.) To stop the encroachment of slavery, and to destroy the political power of slavery, was the purpose and end, and will be to the last, as thus far it has been, the success of the Republican party. According to the experience of the Nation, when, by the suffrage under the Constitution, we had placed a Republican Administration in Washington, we had accomplished our political purpose, and secured the triumph of our principles. The Ballot, which our Constitution decreed should be the final arbiter in political controversies, had placed the control of the Government in our hands. But, a strange novelty in our affairs, an appeal was taken to arms; and we, the people of this country, have been obliged to try over again, by the bullet, and the bayonet, those questions which the will of the Nation had settled by the ballot. The Constitution is to be maintained--and it is always and in all things to be maintained--and when that question has been settled by the absolute suppression of the rebellion and the peaceful resumption of the dominion of the laws, then, but not till then, the triumph is complete.

And, now, Mr. President, allow ine to say, that the Constitution is equally concerned, and the maintenance of our liberties and our power is equally concerned, that the invasion by the General Government of the sphere of local and domestic institutions

and interests, shall never be permitted. It will be found that the good Ship of the Constitution has two broad sides, equally well armed, and whose thunders alike are sleepless when danger threatens. (Loud applause.) Whenever danger comes, as it has done, from local or State interests striving to control the Federal Government, wo have a broadside for the enemy in that quarter; and whenever the rage of the contest seeks to make the struggle revolutionary, and to carry the Federal Government into a suppression of the clear right of the States to the control of their domestic legislation, it will be found that the other broadside of the Constitution has as many tiers of guns, of as heavy metal, and with ammunition as effective, as when it was bearing upon its enemy on the other quarter. (Applause.) We are attached to our government, we know that it will bear the stress to which it is now subjected, and, in the future, we fear not but that it will outride every storm. Therefore, all fears and alarms that because we are sustaining the Constitution against one hostile power, we shall, by the zeal of the contest, be carried beyond the lines of duty, and press this war into a revolutionary interference with what the Constitution attributes to State control, are, in my judgment, wholly vain.

But, gentlemen, a word as to the Constitution and its relations to slavery as rising in In the first place, with all the reading that I have been able to give to tho Constitution, I have never been able to see, that, beyond a single clause in it of very narrow application, there was the least obligation, or the least duty, in regard to the protection or maintenance of slavery anywhere. (Applause.) We have, undoubtedly, a constitutional provision and duty, that in a certain specific case, where slavery presents itself outside of the State in which it prevails as a domestic institution, it shall be remanded to its home, there to be dealtt with. I refer, of course, to the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution. We have another provision, generally referred to as having some concern with slavery, which obliges the Federal Government to assist loyal State authorities in suppressing insurrections, too great for their own power to subdue. But that provision, gentlemen, applies to an insurrection of free white men, just as much as to an insurrection of black slaves; to an insurrection in Massachusetts, just as much as to an insurrection in South Carolina. It is in matter of general concern that the civil structure of the State shall not be overthrown by an armed rebellion, too powerful for the resources of the State to put down. Indeed, the only occasions, in our constitutional history, where this power of the Federal Government has been invoked, have been to suppress seditious combinations of white men in the free States of the country. Now, gentlemen, men think differently, in dealing with the subject of slavery, as to the end at which they should begin. Many men, enlightened, public-spirited, carnest, and zealous, think that the social structure of slavery must be undermined, in order to overthrow its encroaching political power. My own judgment and feeling have always been, that the political power of slavery must first be overthrown, in order that its social structure may be undermined. It is our duty to see to it that slavery gains not one ounce of strength, not one day of duration by any added support of the Federal Government. (Applause.) But, that duty discharged, it is our further duty to leave slavery to the disintegration. and destruction, which, thus thrown back and made a domestic and local institution, domestic and local control of it must, of necessity, occasion. The power of the Federal Government is what has kept it alive in many of the States of the Union, and gives it strength in all where it still maintains itself. In that, the free states have been guilty. But they have repented, and they have brought forth fruits meet for repentance. They no longer sustain or protect it. And just as surely as the weight of the Federal Govern