XV.

FREE HOMES FOR FREE MEN.

G. A. GROW- 1860.

I would provide in our land policy for securing homesteads to actual settlers; and whatever bounties the government should grant to the old soldiers, I would have made in money and not in land warrants, which are bought in most cases by speculators as an easier and cheaper mode of acquiring the public lands. So they only facilitate land monopoly. The men who go forth at the call of their country to uphold its standard and vindicate its honor, are deserving, it is true, of a more substantial reward than tears to the dead and thanks to the living; but there are soldiers of peace as well as of war, and though no waving plume beckons them on to glory or to death, their dying scene is often a crimson one. They fall leading the van of civilization along untrodden paths, and are buried in the dust of its advancing columns. No monument marks the scene of deadly strife; no stone their resting place; the winds sighing through the branches of the forest alone sing their requiem. Yet they are the meritorious men of the Republic- the men who give it strength in war and glory in peace. The achievements of your pioneer army, from the day they first drove back the Indian tribes from the Atlantic seaboard to the present hour, have been the achievements of science and civilization over the elements, the wilderness, and the savage.

If rewards or bounties are to be granted for true heroism in the progress of the race, none is more deserving than the pioneer who expels the savage and the wild beast, and opens in the wilderness a home for science and a pathway for civilization.

XVI.

THE BACHELOR'S CANE-BOTTOMED CHAIR.

In tattered old slippers that toast at the bars,
And a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars,

Away from the world and its toils and its cares,
I've a snug little kingdom up four pair of stairs.

To mount to this realm is a toil, to be sure,
But the fire there is bright and the air rather pure;
And the view I behold on a sunshiny day

Is grand, through the chimny-pots over the way.

This snug little chamber is crammed in all nooks,

With worthless old knicknacks and silly old books,

And foolish old odds and foolish old ends,

Cracked bargains from brokers, cheap keepsakes from friends

Old armor, prints, pipes, china (all cracked,)

Old rickety tables, and chairs broken-backed;

A twopenny treasury, wondrous to see;

What matter? 'tis pleasant to you, friend, and me.

No better divan need the Sultan require.

Than the creaking old sofa that basks by the fire;
And 'tis wonderful, surely, what music you get
From the rickety, ramshackle, wheezy spinet.

That praying-rug came from the Turcoman's camp;
By Tiber once twinkled that brazen old lamp;
A Mameluke fierce, yonder dagger has drawn:
'Tis a murderous knife to toast muffins upon.

Long, long through the hours, and the night, and the chimes,
Here we talk of old books, and old friends, and old times;
As we sit in a fog made of rich Latakie

This chamber is pleasant to you, friend, and me.

But of all the cheap treasures that garnish my nest,
There's one that I love and cherish the best;
For the finest of couches that's padded with hair,

I never would change thee, my cane-bottomed chair.

'Tis a bandy-legged, high-shouldered, worm-eaten seat,
With a creaking old back, and twisted old feet;
But since the fair morning when FANNY sat there,

I bless thee and love thee, old cane-bottomed chair.

If chairs have but feelings in holding such charms,

A thrill must have passed through your old withered arms.

I looked and I longed, and I wished in despair;

I wished myself turned to a cane-bottomed chair.

It was but a moment she sat in this place,

She'd a scarf on her neck and a smile on her face!

A smile on her face, and a rose in her hair,

And she sat there and bloomed in my cane-bottomed chair.

And so I have valued my chair ever since,

Like the shrine of a saint, or the throne of a prince;
Saint FANNY, my patroness sweet I declare,
The queen of my heart and my cane-bottomed chair.

When the candles burn low, and the company's gone,
In the silence of night as I sit here alone -
I sit here alone, but we yet are a pair-
My FANNY I see in my cane-bottomed chair.

She comes from the past and revisits my room,
She looks as she then did, all beauty and bloom-
So smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair-
And yonder she sits, in my cane-bottomed chair.

XVII.

THE ALARM.

E. J. MORRIS-1861.

It is time, sir, that we should arouse. Men of America, why stand ye still? Arouse! Shake off your lethargy! All considerations of party should be lost with us, when our country is in danger. I am with every man who is for the Union, and against every man who is against it; and I am ready now to march up to our national altar, and swear, "The Union, by the Eternal, it must and shall be preserved!" If its enemies bring war out of it, it must be so, though none would regret it more than myself. Our national property, our citizens, public officers, and rights, must be protected

in all the States, and our men-of-war must be stationed off southern ports to collect the revenue; and, if necessary, blockade them. This may, and I think would, aided by time, and necessity, accomplish all; but unless we mean to give up our Government, and feed it as carrion to vultures, we ought not to be standing all the day idle. The enemy is battering at the very doors of the Capitol, and meditate a seizure of our national records, and the appropriation. of our army and navy. Shall we wait until our flag is no longer respected, or shall we strike for the Constitution and Union now? I have but little respect for that patriotism that goes moping about the streets, wringing its hands, and asking, "What is to be done?" It was just that kind of patriotism that Patrick Henry rebuked in the days of the Revolution, when, lifted above ordinary mortals by the superhuman power of his eloquence, he exclaimed against delay when the chains of colonial bondage werc clanking upon our shores, and within hearing of the patriots. The cords and sinews of the Government are snapping around us, and men are boasting that it is their hands which sever them. And yet there are no arrests for treason, as there ought to be, and would be, if the laws were "faithfully executed.”

I have said before, and I now repeat again, that my hope is not in the President, nor in the army or navy, but in the PEOPLE, who are a power above them all, and who will hold to a fearful accountability all who are unfaithful to their country. The blessings of this Union have dropped like the rains from heaven upon them, and they will see to its protection. It is of more value than all the population it now contains. Born of the struggles of the Revolution and baptised in the blood of a noble ancestry, it is committed to them to enjoy and transmit. My countrymen, you will preserve and guard it as it is.

XVIII.

THE SLAVE LAWS.

OWEN LOVEJOY-1860.

My honest conviction is, that all these slaveholding laws have the same moral power and force that rules among pirates have for the

distribution of their booty. I want to know by what right you can come and make me a slave? I want to know by what right you can say my child shall be your slave? I want to know by what right you say that the mother shall not have her child, given to her by God through the martyrdom of maternity? Hear that exquisite warble of a mother's love :

"Ere last year's sun had left the sky,
A birdling sought my Indian nest,

And folded, ah! so lovingly,

Its tiny wings upon my breast."

وو

Now, where is the wretch that would dare to go up and take that fluttering and panting bird from the bosom of its mother, and say, "It is mine; I will sell it like a calf; I will sell it like a pig? What right had that mother to her babe? Was it because she was Fanny Forrester, the gifted authoress; was it because she was the wife of a venerable and venerated missionary? No, it was because she was its MOTHER; and every slave mother has just as good a right to her babe as Fanny Forrester had to hers. No laws can make it right to rob her. I say in God's name, my child is mine; and yet I have no right to mine that a slave father has not to his child. Not a particle. The same argument that proves my right to my personal liberty, proves the right of every human being to his. The argument that proves my right to my children, gives the same title, the same sacred claim to every father. They, as I, get it from their God, and no human enactment can annul the claim. No, sir, never! Therefore, every slave has a right to his freedom, in spite of your slave laws. Every slave has a right to run away, in spite of your slave laws. I tell you, Mr. Chairman, and I tell you all, that if I were a slave, and had I the power, and were it necessary to achieve my freedom, I would not hesitate to fill up and bridge over the chasm that yawns between the hell of slavery and the heaven of freedom with the carcasses of the slain. Give me freedom. Hands off. Unthrottle that man. Give him his liberty. He is entitled to it from his God. With these views, I do not think, of course, it is any