The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Note.
• The Lord's Supper. Sermon Delivered Before the Second Church In Boston September 9, 1832
• Historical Discourse, At Concord, On the Second Centennial Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town, September 12, 1835.
• Appendix.
• Address At the Dedication of the Soldiers' Monument In Concord April 19th, 1867.
• Appendix.
• Address On Emancipation In the British West Indies.
• War
• The Fugitive Slave Law. Lecture Read In the Tabernacle, New York City, March 7, 1854.
• The Assault Upon Mr. Sumner. Speech At a Meeting of the Citizens In the Town Hall, In Concord, May 26, 1856.
• Speech At the Kansas Relief Meeting In Cambridge, Wednesday. Evening, September 10, 1856.
• Remarks At a Meeting For the Relief of the Family of John Brown, At Tremont Temple, Boston, November 18, 1859.
• John Brown. Speech At Salem, January 6,
• Theodore Parker. an Address At the Memorial Meeting At the Music Hall, Boston, June 15, 1860.
• American Civilization.
• The Emancipation Proclamation. an Address Delivered In Boston In September, 1862.
• Abraham Lincoln. Bemarks At the Funeral Services Held In Concord, April 19, 1886.
• Harvard Commemoration Speech. July 21, 1865.
• Editors' Address. Massachusetts Quarterly Review, December, 184[editor: Illegible Number]
• Woman. a Lecture Read Before the Woman's Bights Convention Boston, September 20, 1855.
• Address to Kossuth. At Concord, May 11, 1852.
• Robert Burns. Speech At the Celebration of the Burns Centenary, Boston, January 25, 1869.
• Walter Scott. Remarks At the Celebration By the Massachusetts Historical Society of the Centennial Anniversary of His Birth, Boston, August 15, 1871.
• Remarks At the Meeting For Organizing the Free Religious Association, Boston, May 30, 1867.
• Speech At the Second Annual Meeting of the Free Religious Association, At Tremont Temple, Friday, May 28, 1869.
• The Fortune of the Republic. Lecture Delivered At the Old South Church, Boston, March 30, 1878.

HARVARD COMMEMORATION SPEECH.
july 21, 1865.

HARVARD COMMEMORATION SPEECH.
July 21, 1865.

Mr. ChairmanandGentlemen:

With whatever opinion we come here, I think it is not in man to see, without a feeling of pride and pleasure, a tried soldier, the armed defender of the right. I think that in these last years all opinions have been affected by the magnificent and stupendous spectacle which Divine Providence has offered us of the energies that slept in the children of this country,—that slept and have awakened. I see thankfully those that are here, but dim eyes in vain explore for some who are not.

The old Greek Heraclitus said, “War is the Father of all things.” He said it, no doubt, as science, but we of this day can repeat it as political and social truth. War passes the power of all chemical solvents, breaking up the old adhesions and allowing the atoms of society to take a new order. It is not the Government, but the War, that has appointed the good generals, sifted out the pedants, put in the new and vigorous blood. The War has lifted many other people besides Grant and Sherman into their true places. Even Divine Providence, we may say, always seems to work after a certain military necessity. Every nation punishes the General who is not victorious. It is a rule in games of chance that the cards beat all the players, and revolutions disconcert and outwit all the insurgents.

The revolutions carry their own points, sometimes to the ruin of those who set them on foot. The proof that war also is within the highest right, is a marked benefactor in the hands of Divine Providence, is its morale. The war gave back integrity to this erring and immoral nation. It charged with power, peaceful, amiable men, to whose life war and discord were abhorrent. What an infusion of character went out from this and other colleges! What an infusion of character down to the ranks! The experience has been uniform that it is the gentle soul that makes the firm hero after all. It is easy to recall the mood in which our young men, snatched from every peaceful pursuit, went to the war. Many of them had never handled a gun. They said, “It is not in me to resist. I go because I must. It is a duty which I shall never forgive myself if I decline. I do not know that I can make a soldier. I may be very clumsy. Perhaps I shall be timid; but you can rely on me. Only one thing is certain, I can well die, but I cannot afford to misbehave.”

In fact the infusion of culture and tender humanity from these scholars and idealists who went to the war in their own despite,—God knows they had no fury for killing their old friends and countrymen,—had its signal and lasting effect. It was found that enthusiasm was a more potent ally than science and munitions of war without it. “It is a principle of war,” said Napoleon, “that when you can use the thunderbolt you must prefer it to the cannon.” Enthusiasm was the thunderbolt. Here in this little Massachusetts, in smaller Rhode Island, in this little nest of New England republics it flamed out when the guilty gun was aimed at Sumter.

Mr. Chairman, standing here in Harvard College, the parent of all the colleges; in Massachusetts, the parent of all the North; when I consider her influence on the country as a principal planter of the Western States, and now, by her teachers, preachers, journalists and books, as well as by traffic and production, the diffuser of religious, literary and political opinion;—and when I see how irresistible the convictions of Massachusetts are in these swarming populations,—I think the little state bigger than I knew. When her blood is up she has a fist big enough to knock down an empire. And her blood was roused. Scholars changed the black coat for the blue. A single company in the forty-fourth Massachusetts regiment contained thirty-five sons of Harvard. You all know as well as I the story of these dedicated men, who knew well on what duty they went,—whose fathers and mothers said of each slaughtered son, “We gave him up when he enlisted.” One mother said, when her son was offered the command of the first negro regiment, “If he accepts it, I shall be as proud as if I had heard that he was shot.” These men, thus tender, thus high-bred, thus peaceable, were always in the front and always employed. They might say, with their forefathers the old Norse Vikings, “We sung the mass of lances from morning until evening.” And in how many cases it chanced, when the hero had fallen, they who came by night to his funeral on the morrow returned to the warpath to show his slayers the way to death!

Ah! young brothers, all honor and gratitude to you,—you, manly defenders, Liberty's and Humanity's body-guard! We shall not again disparage America, now that we have seen what men it will bear. We see—we thank you for it—a new era, worth to mankind all the treasure and all the lives it has cost; yes, worth to the world the lives of all this generation of American men, if they had been demanded.