The Blue reflects the crowding stars,
Bright Union-emblem of the free ;
Come, all of ye, and let it wave—
That floating piece of poetry.

Our fathers came and planted fields,

And manly Law, and schools and truth;
They planted Self-Rule, which we'll guard,
By word and sword, in age. in youth.

Broad Freedom came along with them
On History's ever-widening wings.
Our blessing this, our task and toil;
For" arduous are all noble things."

Let Emp'ror never rule this land,
Nor fitful Crowd, nor senseless Pride.
Our Master is our self-made Law;
To him we bow, and none beside.

Then sing and shout for our free land,
For glorious FREELAND'S victory;
Pray that in turmoil and in peace
FREELAND our land may ever be;

That faithful we be found, and strong,
When History builds as corals build,
Or when she rears her granite walls—

Her moles with crimson mortar filled.

The Chairman introduced Hon. CHARLES KING, who was welcomed with enthusiastic applause.

SPEECH OF THE HON. CHAS. KING, LL. D.

FELLOW-CITIZENS,-You see before you a man for many years withdrawn by the nature of his pursuits from all political affairs, but yet with a heart that beats as warmly toward the interest, and welfare, and honor of the country, as the youngest in this vast concourse. [Cheers.] I come before you, therefore, to speak in behalf of a cause common to every American heart. We are here to-day to co-operate in putting down the most wicked, wanton, causeless rebellion that ever offended the justice of God or stained the annals of man. [Applause.] We have been called upon by those in authority to send forth new regiments to the field, and recruits to the old regiments whom the fortune of war has decimated, and we come together now to pledge ourselves, that so far as each one of us is concerned, those men shall not be wanting, and those regiments shall be filled up. Can there be a more sacred cause than this? Can anything appeal more strongly to our interests, our feelings, our honor, our patriotism, than this? Can we submit to the shame and degradation of permitting our sons and our brothers who have gone forth at their country's call, to stand exposed and unaided, to be cut down and decimated by the enemy, while we are calmly carrying on our daily avo

cations at home? [Cries of "No, No."] Surely not; it cannot be ! [Cries of "Never! Never!"] Let us resolve here, once for all, that we will support our brothers in the field-that we will put everything at hazard to conquer the Rebellion and re-establish the Union. [Cheers.] We have heretofore lacked in earnestness of purpose in the conduct of the war. We have dealt too mildly with those whom but a little while ago we regarded as our friends. They are no longer friends, but deadly enemies. They make war in earnest. They omit no means of strengthening their hands and weakening ours. They fight with no remembrance that we were once brothers. Why, then, should we remember it? They fight us like incarnate fiends; let us, at least, meet them as our deadliest foes. [Applause.] Let us now go forth and make the war as fierce and bloody as it is possible for a civilized nation to make it. No moderation is shown to us; let us show none to them. We are far more powerful in numbers, and better prepared than our enemies. We have heretofore acted too much on the defensive; let us now act on the offensive. [Cheers.] Let us henceforth strike rapid and constant blowsblows that shall tell. Let us no longer hear that the Army of the Potomac is "safe." Safe! Great God! The army should be triumphant. [Loud applause.] We have no criticism to make. I only speak common-sense when I say that war is a fierce game; that they only prevail who wage it in earnest. War cannot be waged in silken gloves. When we send forth our armies, it must be understood that they go to battle.

Gentlemen, I speak to you as a citizen of New-York, older than any one that I look upon here, quite as much interested in everything that concerns the city and the country as any of you. Indeed, I have done almost everything that a man of my age can do to give success to the war. I have sent sons and grandsons to it, and I am ready, if necessary, to go myself. [Loud cheers.] And I promise you that neither of those sons will ever dishonor the name he bears or the education he received. [Cheers.] They are false friends and pernicious counselors who, in so great a cause as this, would interpose side issues, and would seek to advance mean and miserable personal or party aims and ambitions, by sowing the seeds of discord and jealousy among our public men, whether in civil or military life. Let all such discussion-all intermediate questions or discussion, which of necessity must be subordinate to the great and vital question of our National existence, which is now in the debate of arms-be postponed till the battle is won. Then there will be a great nation-calm in conscious strength, to judge and to determine all political questions. Now, let there be only a nation of soldiers, resolved upon trampling treason in the dust, and eager and earnest for aggressive war. Aggressive, I repeat, in every form that the laws of war permit. Now our armies in the field are made the special guardians for the benefit of rebel women and children—of the property which the husbands and fathers have abandoned in order to join the rebel army-and upon many a bloody field our wounded and dying have been obliged to put up with such wayside fare and nourishment as the chance of battle left for them, while hard by, rebel houses, and rebel gardens, and rebel granaries, abounding in comforts which might have saved life, and certainly would have mitigated suffering, are sacredly guarded by our troops for the benefit of the rebel families. This may be magnanimous, but it is not war. I would have all this changed. [Cheers.]

I am for the war in its fiercest form-always and in all things, however, having regard to our own character and superior civilization. [Applause.] Our antagonists claim that they are the muster race, and, as such, entitled to rule the land and give law to the baser sort, whom, as by one general term of reproach, they stigmatize as Yankee. This claim of superiority, indeed, was announced in a recent article of one of the leading newspapers in Richmond, as among the determining causes of this rebellion. We of the North, it was said, confident in our numbers and wealth, seemed to forget that we were an inferior race, and to be disposed to throw off the yoke of the chivalry, and set up for ourselves; and thence the necessity, it was argued, that the master race should assert its supremacy, and bring us back to wonted submissiveness. The Yankee must be made to take off his hat when in the presence of a Southern gentleman! Perhaps so! But before that lesson is learned, a good many Southern heads will fall. Why, in every element that constitutes true manhood-in physical power, in educated mind, in religious instruction, in habits of self-command, in the dignity of bread-winning industry, in the knowledge of his own rights, and in respect for the rights of others-in all that constitutes a man and a citizen-the Northern race is far, very far, superior to the Southern race. [Cheers.] With this moral and physical superiority, how ean it be otherwise than that, admitting equal courage on both sides, (and that is a generous concession to the South,) with our great preponderance of numbers, we must, when once fairly aroused, effectually subdue them! [Cheers]

We are to listen to no talk of compromise, of negotiation, and, least of all, of foreign mediation. Compromise of what? Our right to exist as a nation? for that is the whole question. Negotiation with whom? Rebels in arms, traitors that have struck at the bosom of our common mother! And who among us would listen for an instant to mediation on the part of either France or England? [Loud cheers, and cries of "No one!"] Under what pretence of right shall either of those nations, or both together, venture to interfere in our domestic quarrel? It is an offensive assumption of European superiority which we will not brook. We are a people of ourselves, and by ourselves-competent to manage our own affairs, without the aid or counsel of others-owing allegiance to, God-but none to any earthly powers-and thoroughly resolved to submit to no dictation or intervention from any such powers.

No, friends, this is no time for parley, for negotiation, for half-way measures of any sort. The people are far ahead of the Government. They are in earnest, and will not be paltered with; they mean to put down the rebellion, and to punish the traitors with the most condign punishment. They have a policy, whoever else may lack one. They mean war, in earnest, and they mean that war deals with men only as friends and as enemies. [Applause.] It has no cognizance of political questions, of social institutions; it deals plainly and directly with men, and the only question it asks of them, without regarding race or color, is," Are you for us or against us?" If for us, come and help; if against us, we shall know how to deal with you. This is war, according to common-sense and universal usage. A general in the field is bound to succeed, and in order to that to use all lawful means conducive to success. He may take the life-none deny that of the enemy. Shall he, then,

hesitate about taking his property whenever and wherever it can be useful to his own force? [Cheers.]

He may seize his crops, his cattle, and why not his slaves? What right has a general in the field to expose our sons and our brothers to the horrors of unequal war, when thousands stand ready to help him if he will only say the word? A general in the field knows nothing of slavery that is a political and social question, with which it is none of his business to deal. He has to do only with the means of successfully prosecuting war, and wherever these means are to be found he must use them. This is so plain, that but for the prejudice of color none would hesitate about it; and yet it is not conceivable that the existence, possibly, of this great Continental Republic, the lives of our sons and brothers, should depend upon a question of complexion. If the issue be between the preservation of the Union and the preservation of slavery, who shall hesitate? It may, indeed, be-who shall say that it is not?-within the inscrutable purposes of Providence that, whereas all this great disaster and crime arises from slavery and the disappointed, mad ambition of slaveholding leaders, the result of this dire conflict shall be the total extinction of the great evil which has thus culminated in the greater crime of rebellion?

But of that I am not here to speak. All I urge is, that in the war to the death we use all the means which, according to all the usage of civilized war, we are entitled to use; and that while our adversaries stop at no expedients to strengthen their hands, we shall not weaken ours by half-way, halting, mean and miserable hesitations.

See to it, you my friends; let us all, individually and collectively, see to it that henceforth the lightning's flash shall tell of assault, of battle, of victory-of the enemy overthrown and subdued-of our old and honored flag restored in all its amplitude to every contested point throughout the land-of treason vanquished, and of the Union reaffirmed and consolidated. Men of New-York, this you can greatly help to do. Fail not, then, as you value your peace on earth, your hopes of Heaven. [Prolonged applause.]

After music by the band, WM. ROSS WALLACE spoke, with thrilling and dramatic effect, an ode prepared by him for the occasion. The following is the

ODE

BY WILLIAM ROSS WALLACE.

Keep step with the music of Union,
The music our ancestors sung,
When States, like a jubilant chorus,
To beautiful sisterhood sprung!
O! thus shall their great Constitution,
That guards all the homes of the land,

A mountain of freedom and justice,

For millions eternally stand.

North and South, East and West, all unfurling

ONE Banner alone o'er the sod,

ONE voice from America swelling

In worship of Liberty's God!

Keep step with the music of Union,
What grandeur its flag has unrolled-
For the loyal, a star-lighted Heaven,
For traitors, a storm in each fold!
The glorious shade of Mount Vernon
Still points to each patriot's grave,
Still cries-"O'er the long mighty ages
That Eagle of Lexington wave.'

North and South, East and West, &c.
Keep step with the music of Union,
The forests have sunk at the sound,
The pioneer's brows been with triumph
And Labor's broad opulence crowned;
Oh! yet must all giant rude forces

Of Nature be chained to our cars-
All mountains, lakes, rivers and oceans
Crouch under the Stripes and the Stars.
North and South, East and West, &c.

Keep step with the music of Union,
Thus still sball we nourish the light
Our fathers lit for the chained nations
That darkle in Tyranny's night!
The blood of the whole world is with us,
O'er ocean by Tyranny hurled,

And they who would dare to insult us
Shall sink with the wrath of the world.

North and South, East and West, &c.

Keep step with the music of Union,
All traitors shall fall at our march,
But patriots bask in the blessing

Flashed down from yon heavenly arch!
Then hurrah for the Past with its glory!
For the strong, earnest Present, hurrah !
And a cheer for the starry browed Future
With Freedom, and Virtue, and Law.

North and South, East and West all unfurling
ONE Banner alone o'er the sod,

ONE voice from America swelling

In worship of Liberty's God!

SPEECH OF GEN. HIRAM WALBRIDGE.

Gen. WALBRIDGE was then introduced, by his Honor the Mayor; who observed, in presenting him, that he would present to them their distinguished fellow-citizen, who as early as April, 1861, was in favor of calling, at once, six hundred thousand men to suppress the rebellion. Gen. WALBRIDGE said :

MR. MAYOR, FRiends and FeLLOW-CITIZENS:

Fourteen months

in the

presence

of

ago, from this very platform, the city of New-York, a quarter of a million of loyal citizens, declared that

she would not sit tamely by and behold a wicked, reckless, malignant