American Revolution

Excerpt from The American Revolution: A Lecture, Delivered Before the Dublin Young Mens' Christian Association in Connection With the United Church of England and Ireland, October 30th, 1862 It is with feelings of no ordinary diffidence that I appear before you this evening - diffidence inspired at once by the distinguished audience in whose presence I find myself, and by the topic which I have undertaken to treat. I am not ignorant that I now address an audience whose cars have become familiar with strains of eloquence such as I can have no pretension to offer you, and I know that I have to deal with a topic not only of extreme difficulty and delicacy, but one respecting which the sympathies of the public have already taken a decided course, and that course in the direction, I deeply regret to think, the reverse of that in which my own sympathies run. So strongly, indeed, do I feel the force of this consideration, that wore I to consult my own tastes merely, the revolution in America is certainly not the subject which I should have selected for this occasion. It has, however, been intimated to me that it is the wish of your Association that I should address you upon this question (hear); and under these circumstances, the question being one to which I have given some study, I do not conceive that I should be justified in resisting your very flattering request. I propose, therefore, to bring under your attention this evening the revolution in America (hear). I undertake the task - I say it with the most unaffected sincerity - with a profound sense of my own utter inability to do justice, but still with the hope that I may say enough to induce those who hear me to reconsider their opinions (hear), and I add, in the full confidence that I shall receive at your hands that indulgence which an honest attempt to state the truth on an important subject seldom fails to meet from an Irish audience. And here, at the outset, I think it will conduce to a clearer comprehension of what is to follow if I state frankly the conclusions which I have myself come to respecting the matter in hand. I hold, then, that the present convulsion in America is the natural fruit and inevitable consequence of the existence of slavery in that continent (hear); and as slavery has been the cause of the outbreak, so I conceive slavery is the stake which is really at issue in the struggle. I hold that the success of the North means, if not the immediate emancipation of slaves, at least the immediate arrest of slavery (hear), with the certainty of its ultimate extinction; and, on the other hand, that the success of the South means the establishment of slavery on a broader and firmer basis than has hitherto sustained it, with its future indefinite extension. I hold, moreover, that the form of society which has been reared on slavery in the Southern States is substantially a new fact in history, being at once in its nature retrograde and aggressive - retrograde as regards the constituents which compose it, and aggressive as regards all other forms of social life with which it may come into contact, - a system of society which combines the strength of civilization with all the evil instincts of barbarism (hear). Such, as I conceive, is the phenomenon now presented by the Southern Confederacy; and the struggle which we witness is but the effort of this new and formidable monster to disengage itself from the restraints which free society, in self-defense, was drawing around it, in order to secure for its development a free and unbounded field (hear). About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com