under a British king, set before them the glorious object of entire Independence, and it will breathe into them anew the breath of life. Read this Declaration at the head of the army: every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered, to maintain it, or to perish on the bed of honor. Publish it from the pulpit; religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand with it, or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; proclaim it there; let them hear it, who heard the first roar of the enemy's cannon; let them see it, who saw their brothers and their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support.

Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I begun, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and, by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment; Independence now; and Independence forever.

SLAVERY THE CORNER-STONE OF THE SOUTHERN CON FEDERACY.-ALEX. H. STEPHENS.

THE new Constitution has put at rest, forever, all agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. The foundations of our new government are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery-subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.

This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

The truth may be slow in development, as all truths are, and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo; it was so with Adam

Smith, and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is said that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the enslavement of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with proper materials-the granite-then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best not only for the superior, but for the inferior race that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator.

LAUS DEO.-JOHN G. WHITTIER.

[On hearing the bells ring for the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States.]

IT is done!

Clang of bell and roar of gun

Send the tidings up and down.

How the belfries rock and reel,

How the great guns, peal and peal,

Fling the joy from town to town!

Ring, O bells!

Every stroke exulting tells
Of the burial-hour of crime,

Loud and long, that all may hear,

Ring for every listening ear

Of Eternity and Time!

Let us kneel;

God's own voice is in that peal, And this spot is holy ground. Lord forgive us! What are we, That our eyes this glory see, That our ears have heard the sound!

For the Lord

On the whirlwind is abroad;

In the earthquake He hath spoken; He has smitten with his thunder The iron wall asunder,

And the gates of brass are broken!

How they pale,

Ancient myth, and song, and tale,

In this wonder of our days,

When the cruel rod of war

Blossoms white with righteous law, And the wrath of man is praise!

Blotted out!

All within and all about Shall a fresher life begin:

Freer breathe the universe As it rolls its heavy curse On the dead and buried sin !

It is done!

In the circuit of the sun
Shall the sound thereof go forth,
It shall bid the sad rejoice,
It shall give the dumb a voice,
It shall belt with joy the earth!

Ring and swing,

Bells of joy! on morning's wing Send the song of praise abroad; With a sound of broken chains

Tell the nation that He reigns,

Who alone is Lord and God!

THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.

THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.-WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

O THOU great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years,
Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield

The scourge that drove the laborer to the field.
And look with stony eye on human tears,
Thy cruel reign is o'er;

Thy bondmen crouch no more

In terror at the menace of thine eye;

For He who marks the bounds of gulity power,
Long suffering, hath heard the captive's cry,

And touched his shackles at the appointed hour,
And lo! they fall, and he whose limbs they galled
Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled.

A shout of joy from the redeemed is sent;
Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks;
Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks
Send up hosannas to the firmament.
Fields, where the bondman's toil
No more shall trench the soil,

Seem now to bask in a serener day;

The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs
Of Heaven with more caressing softness play,
Welcoming man to liberty like theirs.

A glory clothes the land from sea to sea,

For the great land and all its coasts are free.

Great as thou wert, and feared from shore to Я.re,
The wrath of God o'ertook thee in thy pride
Thou sitt'st a ghastly shadow; by thy side
Thy once strong arms hang nerveless evei more
And they who quailed but now

Before thy lowering brow

Devote thy memory to scorn and shame,

And scoff at the pale, powerless thing thou <r
And they who ruled in thine imperial name,
Subdued, and standing sullenly apart,
Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign
And shattered at a blow the prisoner's chain

157

Go, then, accursed of God, and take thy place
With baleful memories of the elder time,

With many a wasting pest, and nameless crime,
And bloody war that thinned the human race;
With the black death, whose way

Through wailing cities lay,

Worship of Moloch, tyrannies that built

The Pyramids, and cruel creeds that taught
To avenge a fancied guilt by deeper guilt-
Death at the stake to those that held them not.
Lo! the foul phantoms, silent in the gloom
Of the flown ages, part to yield thee room.

I see the better years that hasten by,

Carry thee back into that shadowy past,
Where, in the dusty spaces, void and vast,
The graves of those whom thou hast murdered lie.
The slave-pen through whose door

Thy victims pass no more,

Is there, and there shall the grim block remain
At which the slave was sold; while at thy feet
Scourges and engines of restraint and pain

Molder and rust by thine eternal seat.

There, mid the symbols that proclaim thy crimes,
Dwell thou, a warning to the coming times.

THE ISSUES-BIGLOW PAPERS.--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

Ir's war we're in, not politics;

It's systems wrastlin' now. not parties;

An' victory in the eend 'll fix

Where longest will an' truest heart is.
An' wut's the Guv'ment folks about?
Tryin' to hope ther's nothin' doin',
An' look ez though they didn't doubt
Sunthin' pertickler wuz a brewin'.

Ther's critters yit thet talk an' act

For what they call Conciliation;

They'd hand a buff'lo-drove a tract

When they wuz madder than all Bashan