the ground that the North had consented to recognize slavery to gain the Union, and however opposed to its existence, the com pact should be observed by the North as much with regard to slavery as to every other provision. With the leaders of the abolition movement it was the " higher law" of justice and humanity they were bound to obey, and not the Constitution, — that, as some of them declared, was a " league with hell,"— and they justified the invasion of John Brown, and made a hero of him. I once heard Wendell Phillips say in an impas sioned speech — and America has produced but few such wonderful orators — after Mas sachusetts, in obedience to the Fugitive Slave Law, had returned a slave, " God damn the Commonwealth of Massachusetts;" and in a speech after the war began, he said that when he heard of the attack on Fort Sum ter, in his joy he threw his hat as high in the air as he could throw it, knowing that by war only could slavery be abolished. The most eloquent speeches of Webster, Choate, and other orators of that period were on the value of the Union. Mr. Cushing felt as they did, and in a Fourth of July oration delivered at Newburyport, in 1850, on the occasion of laying the corner stone of the new City Hall, the Union was his topic. After depicting the blessings of the Union, the calamities that would follow disunion, the dangers to which the Union was exposed, and urging his hearers faith fully to observe and maintain both the let ter and spirit of the Constitution, he closed thus : — "The living men who uttered the Declara tion of Independence have all passed away from time to eternity. But their spirits watch over us from the bright spheres to which they have ascended. We stand in their presence. They shall be our witnesses as we solemnly renew this day our vows of unalterable attachment to the Union, and that — "' . ., nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing '
shall .prevail against it, and to this we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, so help us God!" When Mr. Cushing dismissed the Demo cratic Convention at Charleston, his last words were: " I pray you, gentlemen, in re turning to your constituents and the bosom of your families, to take with you as your guiding thought the sentiment, — the Con stitution and the Union." As the theme for Fourth of July elo quence the preservation of the Union and the danger of a dissolution can no longer be used. No one fears now; the crisis has been passed, the great cause of bitterness between the North and the South has been removed, and both sections are glad. But this generation, looking backward, can hard ly realize how dark the future of their coun try seemed to many honest men a few years before the war, and how they dreaded a sec tional conflict. Mr. Cushing was called ambitious. So were Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and a long list of prominent men of the past; and now almost every young talented American expects to be President, — and with some reason, in the light of our past history. Yet he certainly followed his convictions, more than pure ambition in his career, or often he would have adopted a different course; would have abandoned old ideas, and followed the drift of public opinion, as did other prominent Massachusetts men, to their great personal advantage. His personal integrity no one ever ques tioned, — a rare virtue in a public man, as we have learned by many modern examples. He was indifferent to money, and disregarded it in his public and professional service. He was called a partisan. If to be a par tisan means to follow one's party blindly, he was too independent, too strong in his own opinions, to be one. He was born more to command than to obey; to be a leader rather than a follower; to impress his own views on others, not to receive theirs. If he had been a devoted partisan, he would
