SPECIMEN OF THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE. 165 immediately published, not only in New Orleans, but in Georgia and South Carolina, and spread over the Southfar and wide. We have in our possession copies of it from several different editions. This was the work of November, 1860. SPECIMEN OF HIS THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE. A few passages from this discourse are here given, simply to show the lead which the Church took, through her ablest ministers, at the earliest moment, and before the secession of a single State. His treasonable exhortations are found in the introduction, and pervade every part of his discourse. We give a sample of them: In the triumph of a sectional majority, we are compelled to read the probable doom of our once happy and united Confederacy. * * * The hour has come. At a juncture so solemn as the present, with the destiny of a great people waiting upon the decision of an hour, it is not lawful to be still. Whoever may have influence to shape public opinion, at such a time must lend it, or prove faithless to a trust as solemn as any to be accounted for at the bar of God. Truer words were never spoken, both as to the duty and the responsibility. Dr. Palmer had such influence; but how disastrously did he use it! But hear him further: Is it immodest in me to assume that I may represent a class whose opinions in such a controversy are of cardinal importance-the class which seeks to ascertain its duty in the light simply of conscience and religion, and which turns to the moralist and the Christian for support and guidance? The question, too, which now places us upon the brink of revolution, was, in its origin, a question of morals and religion.* It was debated in ecclesiastical councils before it entered Legislative halls. The right determination of this primary question will * * * Why cannot Prof. Christy, and all that class of Northern "allies" of the South, as Jefferson termed such men in his day,-who are ever declaiming, when the Church takes action upon slavery, that she is meddling with that which does not properly concern her,-learn a lesson here from their friends? Dr. Palmer allows slavery, the "question" to which he here refers, a place within the domain of "morals and religion;" but they call it “politics.' go far towards fixing the attitude we must assume in the coming struggle. How clearly does he recognize the fact that the people of God, and the mass of the community too, look to their religious teachers for guidance; and how momentous must be the guilt if they lead them astray,-into treason, rebellion, and war, against lawful authority embodied in a Government which their own ablest statesmen declared, during the very month when Dr. Palmer preached, had done the South no manner of harm!* * Mr. Stephens, the rebel Vice-President, in a speech before the Georgia Legisinture, November 14, 1860, says: "The first question that presents itself is, Shall the people of the South secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think they ought. * Το make a point of resistance to the Government; to withdraw from it, when a man has been constitutionally elected, puts us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution. Many of us have sworn to support it. * Let not the South, let us not be the ones to commit the aggression. We went into the election with this people. The result was different from what we wished; but the election has been constitutionally held. Were we to make a point of resistance to the Government, and go out of the Union on that account, the record would be made up hereafter against us. * I do not anticipate that Lincoln will do any thing to jeopard our safety or security. *** He can do nothing unless he is backed by power in Congress. The House of Representatives is largely in the majority against bim. In the Senate he will also be powerless. There will be a majority of four against him. *** Why, then, I say, should we disrupt the ties of this Union when his hands are tied, when he can do nothing against us? *** My countrymen, I am not of those who believe this Union has been a curse up to this time. This Government of our fathers, with all its defects, comes nearer the objects of all good Governments than any other on the face of the earth. This is my settled conviction. Contrast it now with any on the face of the earth. * * * This Model Republic is the best which the history of the world gives any account of. * 家 Where will you go, following the sun in his circuit round the globe, *** to find a Government that better protects the liberties of its people, and secures to them the blessings we enjoy? I think that one of the evils that beset us is a surfeit of liberty, an exuberance of the priceless blessings for which we are ungrateful. * * * Suppose it be admitted that all of these are evils in the system, do they overbalance and outweigh the advantages and great good which this same Government affords, in a thousand innumerable ways that cannot be estimated? Have we not at the South, as well as at the North, grown great, prosperous, and happy under its operation? Has any part of the world ever shown such rapid progress in the development of wealth, and all the material resources of national power and greatness, as the Southern States have under the General Government, notwithstand WAR WELCOMED.-THE UNION DENOUNCED. 167 RESISTANCE COUNSELLED. THE LAST DITCH. But to proceed with this traitorous and war-exhorting discourse. On speaking of the "trust" committed to the South, "to preserve and transmit our existing system of domestic servitude," he says: This trust we will discharge in the face of the worst possible peril. Though war be the aggregation of all evils, yet, should the madness of the hour appeal to the arbitration of the sword, we will not shrink even from the baptism of fire. If modern crusaders stand in serried ranks upon some plain of Esdraelon, there shall we be in defence of our trust. Not till the last man has fallen behind the last rampart, shall it drop from our hands; and then only in surrender to the God who gave it. This, we presume, is the true origin of the favorite phrase, so far as the present war is concerned,-which has filled so large a space in Southern belligerent literature, of "dying in the last ditch." As to the "surrender” of the "trust" of preserving and transmitting slavery, for which the rebellion was undertaken, events look very much as though God had already made the demand. WAR WELCOMED. THE UNION DENOUNCED. But there is more treason and war here, and so much indeed that one can almost take the sentences at random : The moment must arise when the conflict must be joined, and victory ing all its defects? * * * This appeal to go out, with all the provisions for good that accompany it, I look upon as a great, and I fear a fatal temptation. When I look around and see our prosperity in every thing, agriculture, commerce, art, science, and every departinent of education, physical and mental as well as moral advancement, and our colleges, I think, in the face of such an exhibition, if we can without the loss of power, or any essential right or interest, remain in the Union, it is our duty to ourselves and to posterity to do so." While this FOREMOST STATESMAN of the South was thus truthfully portraying before the Georgia Legislature the blessings of the Union, and the great prosperity and good of every kind, to every part of the country, resulting from the action of the General Government, THE LEADING CLERGYMEN of the South, in that very month of November, were, from the pulpit and the press, striving to bring that Government into contempt in the eyes of all men, and were exhorting to treason and rebellion against it, braving defiantly all the horrors of war! * decide for one or the other. * longer than a moment? In our natural recoil from the perils of revolu tion, and with our clinging fondness for the memories of the past, we may perhaps look around for something to soften the asperity of the issue, for some ground on which we may defer the day of evil, for some hope that the gathering clouds may not burst in fury upon the land. * Is it possible that we can hesitate Then, after answering the objections of those who might be supposed to be not quite ready for the wicked work to which he exhorts them, and to strengthen the timid, he proceeds: * * * # But the plea is idle. * I say it with solemnity and pain, this Union of our forefathers is already gone. * I throw off the yoke of this Union as readily as did our ancestors the yoke of King George III., and for causes immeasurably stronger than those pleaded in their celebrated Declaration. Then, after replying to other objections of the wavering and the Union-loving, he urges "the Southern States" to "reclaim the powers they have delegated;" to "take all the necessary steps looking to separate and independent existence;" and "thus, prepared for every contingency," to "let the crisis come." Fearing that these exhortations may not be effective, he flatters Southern pride a little : The position of the South is at this moment sublime. If she has grace given her to know her hour, she will save herself, the country, and the world. It will involve, indeed, temporary prostration and distress; the dikes of Holland must be cut to save her from the troops of Philip. But I warn my countrymen, the historic moment, once passed, never returns. THE PROPHECY FULFILLED UNEXPECTEDLY. It is a noticeable fact, and finds its illustrations all over the Southern rebel States, that the very evils which the rebels imagined were to be averted by their revolt, are the evils which their rebellion has brought upon them. Dr. DR. PALMER'S SERMON STEEPED IN SIN. 169 Palmer, in view of the consequences of "submitting to Lincoln," thus warns: Our children will go forth beggared from the homes of their fathers. Fishermen will cast their nets where your proud commercial navy now rides at anchor, and dry them upon the shore now covered with your bales of merchandise. Sapped, circumvented, undermined, the institutions of your soil will be overthrown; and within five-and-twenty years, the history of St. Domingo will be the record of Louisiana. The picture here drawn of New Orleans is wellnigh true, but from "resistance" rather than "submission," and much sooner than was anticipated; and so of the South at large. We hope the horrors of St. Domingo are not to be added to what they already suffer, but if they are, posterity will blame none but the rebels themselves. On the last page of this eloquent utterance of treason, Dr. Palmer says: I am impelled to deepen the sentiment of resistance in the Southern mind, and to strengthen the current now flowing toward a union of the South in defence of her chartered rights. It is a duty which I shall not be called to repeat, for such awful junctures do not occur twice in a century. HIS SERMON STEEPED IN SIN, GUILT, AND CRIME. No man who has correct ideas of the moral responsi bility of a minister of the Gospel in the pulpit,-to God and religion, to society and civil government, can rise from the perusal of this discourse, delivered at such a juncture and in such a place, without a painful sense of the great guilt of making such an utterance. Our hope is, that such men may see the sin and repent of it before they die. IT WAS A SIN, AND AN EXHORTATION TO SIN. It will be seen from the date of the discourse, that three weeks before the secession of the first State, and before |