XI.
THE TREASON OF SLAVERY.
SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC,
BROOKLYN, ON THE 7TH OF OCTOBER, 1864.
The meeting at which this speech was delivered was one of the great and brilliant campaign meetings arranged by the Union men of Brooklyn. The reader will remember that, although nothing was said about slavery in the Democratic platform of 1864, Democratic papers and orators were in the habit of accusing the administration of Mr. Lincoln and the Union party of carrying on the war exclusively for the benefit of the negro, and of having thus diverted the war from its original and legitimate object. This circumstance induced the speaker to adopt the line of argument followed in this speech.
Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens:—
To ascribe great effects to small, far-fetched, and
merely incidental causes, is a manner of explaining
historical events which weak minds pass off, and weaker
minds take, as an evidence of superior sagacity. Even in
those cases where individuals are powerful enough to
produce great commotions on their own private motives, such
an historical theory is but rarely admissible; but where a
nation acts upon the impulses of the popular heart, it is
never so. There are those who find the cause of the downfall
of the Roman Republic in the financial embarrassments
of some of her ambitious men. There are those who find
the origin of the great religious Reformation of the
sixteenth century in the desire of some German ecclesiastics
