knows it : and to be free, it is sufficient that she wills it."
CHAPTEK XXI.
A CLOSINQ APPEAL TO THE AMERICAN
PUBLIC.
" 0, sons of America ! list to the cry I
The loud fearful warning th<it rings to the sky !
Shall foul blackenod falsehood unanswered be borne,
And Americans branded with insult and scorn ?
Strike ! strike for the country, the freedom ye crave,
Eeljgion, and home, and the Puritan's grave ;
1 fight as they fought on the land and the sea,
And die as they died, hut in leaving it free /"
Are you not ready for an offering at this great crisis ?
"When your nation is panting under trial and peril !
Your nation, tlie star from God ! The diamond from
on high, to give the world brightness ! Have the best
days of America ended ? It is for you, Americans, to
make it happy, great, and good, if jom will continue
to be free !
For you, Americans, love of country is not a word, but
a living, active thing ! Warm with heroic zeal, devotion ♦
and sacrifice, an indestructible spark, which will burn
and glow in every true American heart, though the
world itself were a pile of ruins. Sacrifice, too, was
the law of our country's being ; but God was its great
support ! And its maternity and humanity must again
save us ! What do we claim, then, for our country ?
The same active initiation, the same self-forgetfulness.
,.^
<^/^ir-^^2 lJ
^
J'F.NWitiSEli
liilm
.4»!U«».
CLOSING APPEAL. 325
the same moral willingness, the same desire for the pa-
tient duty of a lifetime in its service, that love for God
and country has before inspired ! It is our people who
have exposed all former systems of government ever
imposed on the rights of men ! It is our people only,
who have a full and vast significance ! It is our peo-
ple who broke the charm of inequality by fire and
by blood, and they taught the race that neither mitres
nor crowns confer supernatural power, but that Liberty
is a sympathy with all the people, and their institu-
tions emanate from and are removable by them ! Amer-
icans have thus demonstrated to the world, that liberty
and happiness are perpetuated by an unembarrassed
religious freedom, by which they mean to be distin-
guished, if necessary, at the cost of life itself !
They planted the seed of Union, Faith, and National
Honor, and in that brotherhood are willing to bind
every European Christian without reference to sect or
creed. But that innate desire to remove anything
which puts itself between the soul and its Creator, was
the primary and ef&cient cause of their demonstrations
for American liberty. That intractable love of freedom
which Americans now possess seems to have been in-
stinctive in all who have occupied this soil. Even the
aborigines, discovered to the Anglo-Saxon, unshaken
courage and noble daring, in the forests of the IS: ew
"World ! And we have no record where an Indian ever
yet attempted, upon American soil, to save his life by
8>ii ignoble concession ! We are the great, the grand,
the only practical demonstration, my countrymen, of a
people endowed by God with all the elements to govern
326 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
themselves ! And when we regard the natural causes
which have influenced our individual and national des-
tiny, in connection with the moral reasons which first
sent the settlers to discuss their rehgious rights, we can-
not believe the Anglo-American power is ever to be
arrested !
Our vast territory, our genial climate, our inland
seas, our glowing soil, incite to enterprise and thrift,
and offer incentives to intelhgence and patriotism with-
out a parallel ! And forces the conviction on every true
heart, that we are the vine which God has blessed.
And, if now we are firm in the battle of freedom and
true to our God, our country, and our nationality;
grounded, as Americans, on the principles of enlight-
ened liberty, sustained by the wisdom and virtue of a
free peoj)le; we shall alone fill the area between the tro-
pics and the poles, and spread our living liberty from
the Atlantic to the Pacific shores ! Who can limit the
knowledge to be attained under a government like
ours, which not only increases the infinite science of
discoveries and augments the means of support, but
whose people, educated in the natural doctrine of
equality, and conscious of the enjoyment of equal
rights, feel and recognize their own personahty in every
pursuit of life !
And when our territory equals, as it will, more than
three-fourths of Europe, and one hundred and fifty
millions of freemen shall cover this domain^ speaking
the same language, and subject to the same laws, what
mind can grasp the might and magnitude of free
America 1
CLOSING APPEAL. 327
The federal compact, formed bj the New-England
colonies in 1643, to resist the Indians, Avas the first
Union made by the Anglo-Saxon upon our soil, and
prepared the way for their Declaration of Eights in the
Congress of 1775, for the unprovoked attack upon Amer-
ican liberties. And the Colonists at that day, in re-
monstrating with the British Government, warned it
against those Jesuit enemies which did not then over-
come this country, simply because the people who
favored liberty and nourished the Protestant element,
were powerful enough to exact obedience, in spite of
the reigning government. The politico-religious fea-
ture, therefore, entered into our great American Party
of the Revolution, and became the stimulant to the de-
fenders of our liberties, as it was under Charles the
First of England ! And while it gave unanimity to
the Protestant element, it made more obstinate British
resistance. When Arnold was left in Canada with an
insufBicient force of a thousand men, these Jesuit ene-
mies made it the occasion to excite the foes of America
to vengeance, and the Priests absolutely refused the
sacraments to all who declared in favor of the Ameri-
can cause. When this news reached the provinces, a
Roman Catholic priest was sent off from Maryland to
dispense spiritual succor to the Canadians, of which
they were thus deprived ; but the remedy was too late !
And the articles of confederation and perpetual union
between the thirteen original States was not ratified
until March, 1781, because the Roman Catholics of
Maryland opposed and refused to unite, so steadfast has
ever been the Romish priesthood to our liberty. All
328 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
tlie States except Delaware had been united three years
before, and that moved into the ranks one year in ad-
vance of Maryland ! But never as now have we seen
the need of casting off the leprosy of usurpation, and
so clearly defining that liberty which is the energy and
spring of our whole political system. And what Amer-
ican is not glad to rise at such a moment, to af&x a
higher value upon our political institutions, and more
fully to embrace and comprehend the principles and
privileges of American citizenship? The almighty
echo of public opinion cries out for change, and
the great American Party responds to the call ; and
upon its success depends our advancement in all that
is bright and glorious, and happy, and with which our
national honor is inseparably interwoven ! We see our
National Administration in the hands of a foreign Eo-
man Catholic hierarchy, whose principal agent is the
Jesuit Bishop of New- York. The Postmaster-Gene-
ral, an Irish Catholic, who, more than once rejected by
the people of Pennsylvania, went into the Cabinet, at
the dictation of the Pope of Eome, to obtain direct ac-
cess to the postal concerns and dearest rights of the
American people, who have for nearly three years been
subject to his miserable espionage. Letters of Protest-
ant Americans have no guarantee that they will reach
their destination, more than in Italy or France ! And
in New-Jersey it is a fact so well authenticated, as to
come before the courts there, that the contents of
letters were obtained by opening them, and used in the
last election to defeat the American cause. But for a
District- Attorney appointed by the Pierce Administra-
CLOSING APPEAL. 329
tion, this trial would already have taken place, and its
more general publicity given to the country.
In the State Department at Washington not only a
majority of the subordinates are foreign Eoman Cath-
olics, but occupy the most important posts in the trust
and confidence of the American Government. "Are
you a Roman Catholic foreigner ?" is the question put
to the applicant, and if answered in the affirmative, the
sons of Revolutionary officers, who gave their houses to
the flames and their bodies to the bayonet, are inde-
cently thrust aside. We see our naturalization laws
evaded — criminals and paupers voting Americans down
at their own ballot box ! Yf e see our Public and Free
Schools, the great instruments to uphold and preserve
our freedom, desecrated, and the Bible driven out,
expelled, and burned. We see military companies pa-
rading our streets, with the foreign military costume
of aliens. The police of the large cities not merely
foreigners, but thirty nine in New York City alone
are branded as criminals from the prisons of Eu-
rope ! These, fellow-countrymen, are the hordes which
rush to our shores for democratic liberty, and have
imposed upon them by the Jesuit masters the obliga-
tion to go aimed to our ballot box and vote against
the Americans at all hazards. This is one of the ac-
tive means by which the Pope charged f John Hughes,
in his last departure from Europe, to "spread Roman-
ism in America, and to crush out Republicanism."
We have seen the falsity and speciousness of that act
of Maryland toleration exposed, and a treatise recently
published by Rev. Ethan Allen of Baltimore county,
830 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
furnishes the proof that the property of Clayborne, who
made the first settlement by Protestants, was seized
and confiscated by Lord Baltimore from his bereaved
widow. And thus has vanished the only pretext of
liberty ever assumed by the Eomish See in this or
any country. We have seen too the oppression placed
upon our American laborers, artisans, metallurgists,
and mechanics, by emptying the work houses of Eu-
rope upon the soil — who are baited by politicians,
with the prospect of real estate, the gift of our public
domain, purchased by American suffering and blood.
And employed also to do the work of American men
who force the respectable citizens of their own country
to reduce their wages to the pauper rates of Europe, or
starve. Thus has a double blow been aimed at the
citizens of our country, by debarring their children
from education, the twin sister of freedom.
And taken now^ in all its aspects, this crisis is dearer to
3^ou, ni}^ countrymen and countrywomen, than that even
which first lifted the leaden seal of despotism from our
borders. Not only are the liberties of our country as-
sailed and outraged by the direst foe that ever cursed
humanity, but all that concerns death and the grave
is perilled, as well as its freedom, its honor, and its na-
tionality. It is not the sun, the soil, or the climate that
made you, my countrymen, men^ but that breathing
part of your machinery which came from the hand
of God, and made you pregnant with invention and en-
ergy, and so fertile in resource as to become the artificer
of your own government before you submitted to it !
Then by right, open wide your mouths, that the
CLOSING APPEAL. 331
world may know tlie temperament of your minds. It
is only upon cZeac? matter, that gastric juice of America,
needs now to act. Demand tliat the most rigid effective
emigration laws be made and enforced — demand that
the naturalization acts be wholly repealed, or the pro-
bationary term be made at least twenty-One years —
demand a capitation tax for all who shall be allowed in
future to come upon the soil — demand that all paupers
and criminals be returned to the jails and almshouses of
their native lands, and at the cost of the party by
whom they are transported. And to this end re-
quire such documents as will prove the same — de-
mand that no alien or Papist shall hold oflBice, or in any
other way interfere with our political rights — demand
that the Bible be restored to every institution through-
out the land, where Americans are placed for edu-
cation — demand that the Jesuits be expelled from
the country, and allow none but Americans to rule
America ! And like Behemoths of old, never bend
to the muddy sediment which has disturbed our
peace, and made you actors in this tempestuous re-
volution. Discard all former party harnessing; go
into the pit and gallery as well as the box of our great
national theatre ; drop your former party profession,
and come with a will into the American cause. Night
can no more happen before the sun goes down, than
this nation be destroyed, if her men are true. Better,
my countrymen, to give your constitution to Hotten-
tots, or your government to Indians, than to refuse the
assistance of that telescope which the American party
now offers to the American mind ! Then, in God's
832 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
name, battle for your country. Arnold, you remem-
ber, was once surrounded by tbe glorious prestige of
victory in our Eevolutionary struggle, but his infamous
treason blotted out his former glory. And no matter,
under what party standard you have rallied, no matter
what political services you have rendered, no matter
what elevated stations you have filled, you cannot be
excused nor deemed the less culpable, if you now re-
fuse your active aid and sympathy for your country, and
the principles of that party, which put a still more
glorious halo around the American name. This party
is daily recruiting out of the mass of our population,
over which reason is hourly extending its dominion,
and its ultimate success is as certain as the irresistible
progress of its intelligence which alone can command
its salvation. Come then, citizen and Christian, sons
and daughters, and show the power of that sacrifice
and love which bore our little army, of less than three
millions, to triumj^h, and with one grand union "bf Am-
erican feeling, achieve by this battle the enlightened
sense of national interest, the feeling of inherent right,
and the consciousness of undoubted power. We have
allowed our nation to be debased until its institutions
are perverted, its legislature is corrupted, its adminis-
tration is polluted; and though the measure of our
provocation is full, thank God there is spirit enough,
virtue enough, heroic resentment enough in the hearts
of the American people, to arouse and bring down
guilt with thunder, and in working our national
reparation, to sweep out the offender and the offence
with the force and fury of the whirlwind! And
CLOSING APPEAL. S3S
to bring back, by this merciful chastisement and timely
admonition, our original experience of the purer prin-
ciples of our national action. The people, now too
strong for their rulers, require a correction of their
abuses — an abridgment of Executive patronage †” a
diminution of their public burdens — and a just distri-
bution of its trusts, dignities, and rewards. It is the
men with coats of triple steel that America now wants,
to stand, like Moses, in the gap, and inspire with aAve
our oppressors and persecutors, foreign and native!
Men who, like those who adorn and honor this work,
come not for a sceptre,, but to conquer a crown, and
pluck out the thorns which are strewed along our way-
sides to prick our country with their deadly stings. In
this American constellation Ave find Millard Fillmore,
an American not merely by connection with the jDres-
ent national party who bears that cognomen, but
whose character as a man, and whose administration as
President of the country, has irrefutably settled the
conviction in every mind, that his heart and sympa-
thies are all American. And like the illustrious
Father and founder of this Republic, he has stood as
the faithful sentinel upon the watchtower of Freedom,
and, amid the pelting of the pitiless storm, remained
faithful to Liberty, the Union, and the Constitution !
Here, too, is Bartlett, ready, like Joseph, to forestall
the evil and arrest the grievous dearth, which has be-
fallen his country. Prentice, who, ever vigilant, spies
out the rudest operations of American experience, ex-
poses truth from its depth by a lengthy chain, and
sends corruscations of intellectual light, which, like the
334 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
solar, radiates and converges upon tlie minds of the
people. Eayner, tlie able, eloquent, fearless, and faith-
ful North Carolinian, who, in the true American spirit,
had rather meet danger than Avait for it. Broom, from
the patriot army of United Americans, who bore aloft
the national standard, and led the vanguard as a forlorn
hope, at the earliest dawn of that American move which
now presents a full-orbed sun. Stuart, the heroic Vir-
ginian, who, having sat around the Council Board of
Fillmore, revolted at the sight of our sinking prospect,
and in his unswerving integrity and patriotic zeal, en-
rolled himself among the active and faithful defenders
of American principles. Brooks, too, is here, into
whose hands a good Providence was pleased to deliver
the Jesuit Eomish Bishop, John Hughes of New York.
He continues alive, but Mr. Brooks produced an indi-
rect debility, from which, in the opinion of Americans,
he cannot possibly recover. The offence of Brooks was
in coming boldly to the defence of a bill introduced
by Mr. James O. Putnam of Buffalo, to protect the
rights of Poman Catholic American citizens. The
Trustees of the St. Louis Church refused to yield the
property to the control of the Pope's agent, the Bishop.
He appealed to the Pope, who cursed and excommuni-
cated them from all the rites and worship of his
Church. Like men, these trustees went up to the
New York Legislature, and asked redress from Ameri-
can law ! The prayer was granted for their protection,
in common with all other religious denominations,
Avhen John, the Archbishop, selected Mr. Brooks as the
individual through whom to offer insult and heap re-
CLOSING APPEAL. 335
proach, upon tlie enactors of tliis American law. And
having broken the egg, he proceeded to make the
omelet, when Brooks cut the claws of this lion, and
afterwards drew out his teeth, to keep him secure. And
proving him a monarch worth twentj-five millions of
propert}^ belonging to the people in his hands, he inflicted
the humiliation and exposure, and left him dethroned.
" My son, thou art invincible," rang throughout the
land, and in defiance of treasure, curses, edicts, and
legions of reinforcements at the ballot-box, the people
returned him to his present post, after proclaiming him,
in the din and tumult of rapturous joy, the next Gover-
nor of New York, by universal acclamation !
ISTor can we neglect to recur with pride and plea-
sure to the name of Col. J. N. Reynolds, of New York
city, who has brought to the aid of the American
cause his giant powers, in its time of need, and by his
exposition of the principles which govern its action,
placed the American Party under grateful obligations,
and won for it the admiration and respect of the lead-
ing journal of Europe.
Among the thousands enlisted in our great American
cause, bearing high commissions in this great national
army, we cannot omit to mention the name of William
Scudder Tisdale, of New York, as an example singu-
larly worthy of imitation, in the purity and worth of
his patriotic sacrifices. The direct descendant of Capt.
William Scudder, who, from the beginning of the
American Revolution, was in its active service, chiefly
under Washington, and also under Lee. He was taken
prisoner, and remained a captive for three years and a
336 THE GREAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
half, when lie was exchanged for an Englisli officer
of his rank, and continued upon duty till the close of
the war. In all the American army there was but one
Champe found to whom Washington and Lee felt
willing to entrust the difficult, dangerous, and coura-
geous mission of capturing the traitor Arnold in the
enemy's camp. And we know of no true American
who would be more ready to prove another Champe,
under a similar emergency, than this brave, determined,
and true patriot son ! The inherited spirit of patriotic
sacrifice he has beautifully illustrated, by the vigor
and fearlessness with which at an early age he has
espoused, from the rostrum, and as editor of the
American Sentinel^ Poughkeepsie American^ Champion of
American Lahor^ American Champion^ and The New
York Crusader^ the cause of his country, for which he is
ever ready to fight or willing to die. Hence there is a
marked appropriateness, in this national exigency, of
holding up to the emulation of young American men
an example of such intense and intelligent patriotic
fervor, free from political aspiration or pecuniary re-
ward ! And to him the author is indebted for much
of the valuable data afforded to this work. As the
scaffolding is often stronger than the house, so the
means by which the present national organization has
been extended, deserves not less from the gratitude of
the American people, than those by whom the idea was
developed. It has been by intrepidity, energy, and
zeal, on the part of the active working members, that
thousands have been induced to enlist in the great
American battle of principle against power, and in the
CLOSING APPEAL. . 337
active service of the countr}^, all over tlie Union. In
this connection, the name of Sidney Kopman, Esq., of
New York, deserves honorable j^^'aise. To his intel-
lectual, earnest, and indefatigable exertions, at least
four hundred members attribute their connection with
this great national party. Among these are many
distinguished for the efficiency of their service, and
who have disseminated its principles broadcast, and
organized for duty throughout the land. To him
the author is also under obligations for important
information, now given to the public. These are the
men the nation wants. I^ot those v.dio denounce)
deplore, look like mortar Pharisees, and do nothing I
Alexander smiled, when he who had conquered the
world was offered freedom by a few Megareans ; but
when told it had only been extended to Hercules, he
received the tribute with complacency. And in ex-
tending now to Col. Josiah F. Polk, of "Washington,
respectful homage for his long and able defence of the
great Protestant element of America, he is assured it
can only be offered to the patriotic and strong I For
twenty years has this great defender expounded our
American principles, and exposed our national danger.
No champion of soul-liberty has yet appeared more
eminently fortified b}" patient investigation and thor-
ough research, to expose the enormities of Jesuitism,
or who, far in advance of public opinion, predicted its
diabolical design, to subvert our government.
Able, eloquent, courageous, and incorruptible, this
son of the soil could not be terrified or swerved by the
patronage of an Executive Avhich had been sold to
15
338 THE GKEAT AMERICAN BATTLE.
Eome, and for whicli like all other honest and faithful
servants in the service of the Government, this good
and noble American was set aside, to make way for
the incompetent or corrupt, whose cardinal virtues are
prostrate submission to the Papal supremacy. With
life in one scale and death in the other, there is no class
upon whom Americans have more right to make a re-
quisition than upon the Protestant clergy of the coun-
try. By which is distinctly meant, every anti-Popish
ambassador, without regard to name, sect, or creed. If
the tones of mad and stormful indignation have pierced
the nation's heart, at the desecration of the Word of
God — if this struggle against soul-bondage is agitating
every bosom and driving the country to despair, v/hy,
in God's name, are not all his professed Ministers
marching into the front files of this battle, to claim
His glory as its inevitable heritage. There is a bar-
renness, a desolation, in the thought that they are slow
in this American move, to light the blazing torch of
truth and bear its cheerful light and heat into every
recess of the land. Among those who have appeared,
to elucidate the circumstances which surround us, to
offer instruction and incite to effort at this epoch, are-'
Drs. E. J. Breckenridge, Murray, (Kirwan,) Inskip,
Cheever, De Witt, James, Cox, Plummer, Eice, Jaco-
bus, Boardman, Bethune, Kennedy, and Kirk, who,