Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
See the different results of causes so unlike. The North manages the
commercial affairs of the land, the ships, mills, farms, and shops; the
spiritual affairs, literature, science, morals, education,
religion;--writes, calculates, instructs, and preaches. But the South
manages the political affairs, and has free-trade or tariff, war or
peace, just as she will. Of the eight Presidents who were elected in
fifty years, only three were northern men. Each of them has retired from
office, at the end of a single term, in possession of a fortune, but
with little political influence. Each of the five southern Presidents
has been twice elected; only one of them was rich. There is no accident
in all this. The State of Rhode Island has men that can administer the
Connecticut or the Mississippi; that can organize Niagara into a cotton
factory; yes, that can get dominion over the ocean and the land: but the
State of South Carolina has men that can manage the Congress, can rule
the North and South, and make the nation do their bidding.
So the South succeeds in politics, but grows poor, and the North fails
in politics, but thrives in commerce and the arts. There great men turn
to politics, here to trade. It is so in time of peace, but, in the day
of trouble, of storms, of revolution like the old one, men of tall
heads will come up from the ships and the shops, the farms and the
colleges of the North, born discoverers and organizers, the aristocracy
of God, and sit down in the nation's councils to control the State. The
North made the revolution, furnished the men, the money, the ideas, and
the occasion for putting them into form. At the making of the
Constitution, the South out-talked the North; put in such claims as it
saw fitting, making the best bargain it could, violating the ideas of
the Revolution, and getting the North, not only to consent to slavery,
but to allow it to be represented in Congress itself. Now, the South
breaks the Constitution just when it will, puts northern sailors in its
jails, and the North dares not complain, but bears it "with a patient
shrug." An eastern merchant is great on a southern exchange, makes
cotton rise or fall, but no northern politician has much weight at the
South, none has ever been twice elected President. The North thinks it
is a great thing to get an inoffensive northern man as Speaker, in the
House of Representatives. The South is an aristocracy, which the
democracy of the North would not tolerate a year, were it at the North
itself. Now it rules the land, has the northern masses, democrats and
whigs, completely under its thumb. Does the South say, "Go," they
hasten; "Come," they say "Here we are;" "Do this," they obey in a
moment; "Whist," there is not a mouse stirring in all the North. Does
the South say "Annex," it is done; "Fight," men of the North put on the
collar, lie lies, issue their proclamations, enroll their soldiers, and
declare it is moral treason for the most insignificant clergyman to
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