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fie 'ilftlfovd oVairttr.
THE LITERATURE
OF THE
Abolition Yankee.
AN ADDRESS
Delivered before the Keystone
Club of Bedford. Pa.,
Monday Evening, November 2ft. 1865.
By j tlfS F. Nlir\K, Kvq., of York. Pa.
forrespondeßee.
Bedford. Pa.. Nov. 23. 1865
JtxKS F. SiirSK, ESQ :
Dear Fir: —The undersigned having been ap
;nted a committee bv the Keystone Club of Bed
: r J, to request for publication a copy of your truly
able lecture, delivered before that association.
Monday evening. 2ftth inst.. take this mode of |
reforming that moat agreeable duty, Hoping tharf !
.. a will not fail to favor us with the desired copy. '
Vp re rosin
Respectfully yours.
0 E. SHANNON. i
W. T DAI GHERTY, J Committee. .
N.J.LYONS, \
York. Pa., Nov. 2b. 1865
To O. E. Shannon, 11'. T. Dougherty rind -Y.
li/oiis. Esq's. Committee:
Hemlemkv The copy of my lecture before the
Keystone Club of Bedford, which you requested in
i ar note of the 23d inst.. is herewith placed at
'oar disposal, with sincere thanks for the kind I
Spirit which dictated the request.
Very trulv and respectfully. vours.
JAMES F. SHUNK.
! propose, to night, to discuss, as ful- '<
!y as I can, within the limits of an i
hour, the Literature of the Abolitioti Yan- I
■.if. Tlie subject is almost a novel one. \
WVhave had no time and lieen in no !
mood during the past five years, to ex- |
amine the structure of the Yankee's
prose, to count the feet in his couplets, ;
ur to discuss the merits or the morality
of either. He has given Us muling of'
another and heavier kind, which could ;
not lie put off. He hits entertained us ;
with tax-bills which took away our
money, and proclamations which stood
in stead of our laws, has diverted our
attention from the light and demoraliz
ing literature of the stalls, to the peru
-a! of healthy tracts, showing to our j
delighted minds the blessings of ana-;
fional debt and the joys of an early
death in the arms of Conscription. To
suppose a people with such pressing lit
erature as this thrust into their hands,
capable of reading anything else, is to
give mankind credit for an amount of
industry andaileal of
~rt that there is no writing in the Kng-1
-h language so thrilling, or which ex- ;
cites such livelv personal interest in the :
* I
reader, as the notice that he has been
drafted and has ten days allowed him in ;
which to prepare for glory or death.— !
The hard prose of the Conscription Act, j
has shaken hearts with a mightier touch
than the loftiest lines of Skakspeare or
the tenderest melody of Hums, pre- i
cisely in the proportion as it is sadder j
and more tragic for a human creature 1
to read his own doom than to dream o-1
vt-r the woes and tears of visionary men j
and women, or of generations that are
in the dust. Nor is the tax-collector a
•< ttcr friend to study than the provost
marshal. It is inipossibleto read poetry j
with satisfaction when you are engaged j
in estimating the comparative advan
tage of being shot or starved, conscript
ed or sold out of a home. < Kles, ballads, j
plays, histories,novels, are alike impo- |
tent to engage the attention of the eit- j
l.'t-n, who is listening to thebreathingof!
igovernment spy at his keyhole, wait- j
agfor the rap of a provost-guard at I
lib door, or watching from his window
for the approach of the bayonets which i
are to stimulate his patriotism. Since, j
then, the awful scenes of the years just j
pari, have afforded us no time to charm
•■ur mind- with the fancies of the world's
C-'-ri men, it is not likely that we I
"hould have given many midnights to I
seribblings of the meanest race that j
H \>r read books or wrote them. I lenee !
' is that my subject is not a hackneyed <
one.
Before we go further it is well to un
"island that by the Abolition Yankee \
f refer, and refer solely, to that hand of i
•" 7
"ftlignants who now dominate over
N,, w England, and, as h&- been most
truly said, "rule us for their pleasure i
an, i plunder us for their profit." There
'ft Democracy in the Eastern States j
l "hieh we must all respect and clingto, i
' merely because they are one with :
u " in devotion to the constitution of our ;
'"try, one with us in their contempt;
,r the "higher law," one with us in the
,i jV . . ' .
eriumation to preserve this govern
it as a heritage for white men and I
'""■ children, hut because they brave
steadfastly, and year by year, cast
■"•♦ utterly hopeless for present effect,
"'he calm belief that God will bring j
letter days, and that, in any event, ;
'is letter to be right than to be pop- !
" :r - livery word that we can utter '
'"nunciation of the cruel and corrupt !
!lt "mists is a word of praise to the j
men who have stood up against !
11 in his home, and who have fearless- ;
"'•ught to wipe from their own stati-s j
"hgnaa of his crimes and to re
the rest of the land from the
ms'oi his rule. The names of such j
• l> l'ierce andTouccy andSeyniour
' the Curtises'are thrice dear to us j
they haveproclaimed the truth j
"'oofi steadfast to it in the face of;
.. """ l ferocious and lawless majority
A r held a land under its heel.
said that my subject is a novel
i m . 11 n "vertheless, one of the most
"""Gnt that ran engage your atten-
®lje Ucbfori) #<Gdlc.
BY MEYERS & MENGEL.
tion. It is impossible to overrate the
power of books, of reading of all kinds.
A printed word is the most potent in
fluence on earth. The speech of an or
ator, no matter how eloquent he may
be, no matter how much his music may
charm the ear of those who hear him,
dies out of the mind. You are delight-
Ed with it; you repeat it; you chat ü
bout it with your friends. But time
weakens the impression. The words
begin to fail and to be forgotten ; new
I sights and sounds crowd them out of
recollection. But a printed book is a
nother thing. It addresses itself per
| sistently, constantly and forever, to the
I eye and to the mind. Children read it
: although it may be but the rubbish of
i a library. It fastens its impression on
young minds and old,with a firm, sharp
touch which is beyond the power of
spoken words, and which, if it begins
to fade, can be deepened and renewed
j as often as you take up the forgotten
pages, it never dies. Every where in
the land you will find books, written
| by inconsiderable and even contempti
i bio men, bought by chance and preserv
ed by accident, which have influenced
i the minds of the millions who make
up the people. To ignore such an influ
ence, or to attempt to slight it, is as idle
an undertaking as to seek to stay the
flow of the tides or stop the sun in his
rising. Y<g must accept it; you must re
; cognize it—the only thing you can do
' is to regulate it, and divert a flood which
j cannot be checked into channels from
! which you and your children may draw
| the water of life.
The abolition Yankees were the first
i people in the country to recognize this
j power. Deny them everything else —
| take away from them all the virtues to
which they have no claim, honor, pa
triotism, common honesty—you must
still concede to them the craft which sc
; lects the fittest means for a chosen end.
They know the value of types and ink,
| the power of newspapers, the might of
books, the witchery of words which ad
dress the eye and which speak to a peo
ple in their homes, by their hearth
stones, and all the time.
i t is hardly necessary to say anything
to a Pennsylvania audience, especially
if there are any middle-aged persons
; among it, of Yankee cunning. The time
| is even within my recollection, when
the vendors of tin-ware, clocks and
split-leather Iwots, swooped, summer by
i summer, from the recesses of the North
through the peaceful defiles and valleys
of this innocent old .State, 011 their an
nual pilgrimage of swindling. Thou
i f'■e&- t f he?sSßln Yias Ffot yet'iYided, have
| been vexed out of all patience by those
i deceptive pots and kettles whijjh glit
j tered so fair in the sunshine, and lost
; their bottoms with such provoking a
lacritv when they were set upon the
fire. Thousands of stalwart men, not
: old enough now to escape the grasp of
a Conscription Act, have had their toes
< peep out and their feet go bare through
! those boots which the entieingeloquence
■of the wagon-man would not suffer
| them to refuse. Clocks are still stand
ing 011 the mantel-piece of manyacoun-
I try homestead whose moveless hands,
' although unable to tell the time, speak
loud enough of the rogue who brought
them from the East. The yeomanry
j of Pennsylvania purchased their knowl
! edge of the Yankee, dearly, with hard
! cash, and with a good deal of it. But
they hare the knowledge, and, if they
I remember it and apply it now, they
i have driven no hard bargain.
| The tin-ware, the split-leather, the
clock businesses, have all passed away.
' The gentlemen who vended those val
■ uahle commodities have retired upon
their fortunes. Someof them have be-
I come saints, and are preaching the gos
, iel; some of them Senators and are
doctoring the Constitution; some of
them contractors, and have set their
squadrons on the field armed withcast
j iron sabres, mounted on skeleton hors-
I es, and clad in picturesque rags of shod-
Jdy; someof them poets,and are tun
! ing their lyres in praise of John Brown
and the noble black ; but all of them —
Senator, saint, shoddy-contractor and
tuneful warbler alike, are simply clock
i and tin-podlers in a new disguise.
Their lyrics and their essays are of a
piece with their kettles and their shoe
leather. They are a sham. The artist
1 who ha< spent his early years in the
contrivance of mechanical cheats is not
j likely, wnen he turns his attention to
j poetry, to forsake his old tricks, or es
j tablish any very close correspondence
with the Muses. His sauce-pans and
his similes, his shoe-pegs and his meta
phors, are equally ingenious frauds. He
is alike a dishonest tinker, whether he
i wields the pen, or holds the lap-stone.
Hence, the Abolition Literature is not
the out-cropping of spontaneous genius,
nor even the result of honest and pa
tient labor. It is made to sell, to cheat,
to deceive, not to improve or instruct.
Its histories are artful and malicious
inventions, designed to varnish the in
; famies which have blackened the whole
I history of the Party of Negro Emanci
pation, and to defame the Party of the
constitution which held these States in
j firm and glorious Union as long as the
| reins of power were in their hands. Its
theology has nothing in it of the spirit
of Christ and the Apostles, or of the
longlineof worthies of ullages, of which
j each sect and sub-division of the Church
| can claim its share, whose patient, inno-
I cent, prayerful lives were given to seek
ing a clearer knowledge of God and
bringing aliens and wanderers into
closer communion with him. On the
contrary, it is a kind of mixed, mad
nonsense, made up of a series of inco-
BEDFORD. PA.. FRIDAY MORNING, JANUARY 5. 1866.
herent interpretations of the Gospel, or
strictures upon it. by insolent exhorters
who rate their own bellowings higher
than the thunders of Sinai. No two of
them precisely agree in tiie portions of
the Sacred Book which they scout and
defy; in the exact texts which are to
he cast out and rejected; but they are
beautifully united in scorning and sneer
ing at all of it which does not accord
with the schemes, the passions, or the
aggrandizement of each.
The songs of this Abolition Litera
ture are by no means suggestive of the
trill of birds which sing because song
is their natural speech. The nasal pipe
of the Puritan has nothing of the war
bleof thewoodsaboutit. Hisatteinpts
to chirp after the fashion of Nature's
born minstrels afford no pleasure, it
is true; but it is the pleasure of a down
right, hearty, shaking laugh at the lu
dicrous failure of the poor devil, who
fancies, because he has counterfeited
nutmegs with success, he can manipu
late melody, and cheat you as readily
in song.
To affect a thorough acquaintance
with everything the Abolition Yankee
has put into print, would imply an im
mense amount of leisure and a very
small amount of tasteonthe part of the
person who might set up any such claim.
As it is not necessary to drink perpetu
ally of the waters of the Nile, or even
to take more than a single glass of il to
taste its flavor and judge its quality,
so with the tide of literary trash which,
year by year, rolls from its New Eng
land fountains through ten thousand
channels over all the rest of the land.
It is as monotonous a mass as the cur
rent of the great "Father of Waters,"
and, I may add, quite as muddy. In
deed, one of the most amazing things
about the productions of these people,
is the sameness of their modes of think
ing, their habit of looking at a subject
and their fashion of discus-ingit. Their
minds seem to be cast in one mould.
Intellectually they areas much alikeas
little pigs are physically. They are al 1
equally incapable of soaringfor one mo
ment above the bleak area of the sheep
walks and onion-patches on which they
were born. They are all alike possess
ed with the idea that New England is
not merely the centre of American civ
ilization, literature and art, but that
she holds all that we haveof these things
within her borders. Their admiration
of one another is in proportion to their
contem jit for everybody else. ()f course
they are notaboveplunderingand chea
ting each other, and the smartest man
fortune fastest by dishonest /-Tumng.
But, plundered and pluiKltor, the sharp
fellow who has won, and the unlucky
rogue who has lost, unite in exalting
the fame of their common mother, and
in despising those dull, "outside barba
rians," to whom we have the misfor
tune to belong. In short, they arealike
malignant, greedy, cunning, arrogant
and unprincipled, and while these traits
crop out more distinctly in some of their
books than in others, they are not alto
gether missing in any of them.
There is an idea which these people
have carefully fostered, and which has
gained a certain prevalence through
the agency of their political allies in
this State, that they are naturally the
intellectual superiors of our own citi
zens; especially that they are horn to
a pre-eminence in the world of letters.
This idea is asdestituteasanvthingean
be of foundation in truth. I admit
freely that they read more books, write
more books and print more books than
are read, written, or produced by all
the rest of the country besides; and
we must concede to them, therefore, a
greater amount of activity withthepen
and with the press than we claim for
ourselves. But that is all that we con
cede. Tell me how many kitts of
mackerel, or pounds of cod-fish, were
caught last year. 011 the Yankee coast,
under the stimulus of the enormous
Government bounty; how many yards
of calico and bales of shoddy were
thrown out by themillsof Lowell, how
many bushels of onions Weathersfield
and her fragrant sister towns oast upon
the market, how many cheeses came
from the dairies of Connecticut, and
how many clams from the shores of
Rhode Island, and 1 can form some idea
of how much the country owes New
England for her annual contribution to
the common stock of wealth. But books
iielong to a class of merchandise widely
different from all these. Their quality
is the measure of the debt we owe the
people who give them to us. Their
bulk, their weight, their numbers, a
vail nothing toward an estimate of the
minds from which they emanate. A
pocket copy of Shakspeare is worth all
the trash under which the presses of
New England ever groaned, all the
millions of pages which her diligent
scribblers ever fastened between covers.
To thank a nation of untiring literary
hacks simply for giving you plenty of
books, is to rate poetry along with
cheese and codfish.
The original Abolitionists were,
with few exceptions, infidels. The rea
son for this fact, is quite plain. It was
impossible to reconcile their political
and moral doctrines with the will of
God as revealed in his written word.
Men who projected the rude rending of
a peaceful and prosperous country,
whose pathway to the accomplishment
of their dear designs must needs be
soaked with blood and strewn with*
corpses, could find no warrant for their
schemes, but only awful rebuke, in the
teachings of the Prince of Peace.
Hence, since God's word could not be
construed so as to sanctify their plans,
they rejected it utterly. They sought
their bloody patent in a "higher 7 air,"
discerned and interpreted by them
selves. This "law" was not only en
tirely at variance with the Holy Scrip
tures, but it made obedience to the
Government of the country a gross and
unpardonable sin. It is hardly neces
sary to repeat that famous sentence
which Garrison inscribed at the head
of " The Liberator ," as its nrotto, and
which was the watch-word of the orig
inal Abolitionists for a quarter of acen
turv—" The (institution of the United
State* IN a ( hvenant with Death and an
Agreement nit It Ilett T'
At the earliest period of their exist
ence, before they had even attained
sufficient importance to be courted by
demagogues for their vote, they mani
fested by the expression of this and
kindred sentiments, that disregard for
the decencies and humanities of life,
that contempt for the feelings and the
judgment of others, which has charac
terized them ever since. They ignored I
the possibility of the existence of an j
honest opinion opposed to any scheme
or dogma of theirs. Theyshoeked the
religious feelings of pious people who
had been trained to respect the Gospel,
the name and teachings of Christ, by
the most awful blasphemy. They hoot
ed at the clergy and denounced them as
a pack of crafty wolves, preying on
their flocks and gathering an easy sub
sistence by playing on the fears and the
superstitions of mankind. Theodore
Parker, their ablest writer, could not
conceal his scorn for the popular faith
in the Redeemer. He spoke of Christ
as a man of considerable talents and
fair character, personally unpopular
because somewhat in advance of his
age. He sneered at the Jzord's Supper
in so many words, as 'V/ mere eating of
baker's bread and drinking of grocer's
wine." Abby Kellcy took somewhat
different ground, and byway of recon
ciling her brethren to the plan of salva
tion, roundly assorted that Jem* Christ
was a negro. Their newspapers, their
tracts, their anniversary addresses, the
stump speeches with which under the
name of sermons they profaned the
Sabbath, were stuffed with such senti
ments as these. I think, however, that
their blasphemy culminated in the cel
ebrated declaration of Henry (\ Wright,
published in " The Liberator "lf God
Almighty has the power to abolish sla
very, and does not do so immediately,
IIK ISA VERY GREAT SCOUNDREL!"
If we believe that this Abolition ex
sco'C J ,r Uo(J > us
of the pulpits of the Nortn,
believe that God confided His chosen
work to a generation of infidels who
exhausted their mother tongue in re
viling Him as a "scoundrel," in de
nouncing His Sacred Supper as a mere
drinking-bout and His revealed will as
a lie.
Of the Literature of the Abolitionists
up to the time when they grew to be a
political force, little need he said. It
consisted chiefly of newspaper articles,
abusing everybody hut themselves, ser
mons by divines who got their texts
out of the"higher law," tracts written
by meddlesome old women in England,
biographies of runaway negroes man
ufactured by long-hffired, hungry scrib
blers in Boston, and ballads of the pre
cise pattern of Greeley's u Ode to the
American Flag"—
' Tear down the flaunting lie'
Half-mast the starry flag !
Insult no sunny sky
"With hate's polluted rag I" etc.
Contempt for Government , was the
great distinguishing featureof their ear
ly writings ; but whetherthey despised
the Government of God, or that of the
Constitution, the Scriptures, or the flag,
the most, it is extremelydiffieult to de
cide.
They gradually grew into numerical
importance. Theartistic exaggeration
and pathetic painting of I'nrfr Tom's
Cabin ; worked on thousands of weak
heads and soft hearts and gave the par
ty an impetus greater than that derived
from the combined written and spoken
falsehoods of the twenty years previ
ous. Politicians began to court an al
liance with thesedespised people, whom
they had steadily denounced as fanat
ics, and with whom any correspondence
had, hitherto, been considered as fatal
to the prospects of a public man. You
all know theresult. The "Republican"
party adopted the doctrines of the Ab
olitionists and swallowed up the orig
inal Society, leaders and all, in its over
whelming ranks. Demagogues who
had spent the best part of their lives in
| warning the public against the "atro-
I cious designs" of Garrison, Phillips and
j Parker, strove to out-strip each other
in devotion to the emancipation of the
negro, and in contempt for any consti
tution, or law, which stood in the way
of it. They gained power, they l>e
| came masters of the Government, and
they have been ruling us since 1860, if
not in accordance with the provisions
of the "higher law," most certainly ae
| cording to some kind of law not writ
ten in the common statute-book and al
together beyond the capacity of com
mon people to interpret, or understand.
The Abolitionists were now the dis
pensers of patronage. Sword and purse
were theirs. The rights and liberties
i of the whole people were at the dispo
sal of their ruthless will. They no lon
ger assembled in cock-lofts to hatch
treason, they sent kidnappers swarm- i
ingover the country, to discern it in
men's eyes, to read it in theeolorof the
ribbons about a baby's neck, or the
trimming of its mother's bonnet, and
to drag these incipient traitors, sucking
conspirators and petticoated fa tali lies,
to such dungeons as the humanity of
Beast Butler and his kind might assign
them. The seouters at lawful power
became the sticklers for the most iron
despotism. The "polluted rag" and
the "flaunting lie," to which Greeley
had addressed his beautiful ballad, he
came "the dear old flag," and men who
had bled under it when Yankee blue
lights were luring the enemy to our
coast, were beaten and imprisoned be
cause they refused to degrade those
grand old colors byflinging them to the
breeze at the bidding of a brutal mob.
Canting wretches who had wept over
the separation of young niggers in the
South; whose pocket-handkerchiefs had
been soaked over the agonizing recital
by some fugitive Sambo, of the shock
which parting from his grandmother
had cost him, clamored loudly for a
law which rent every dear domestic tie
known to our blood, which tore husband
and wife, mother and son, brother and
sister, asunder and forever; which sent
the boys of a household, not to seek
their subsistence in some new field of
labor, but to lay down their young lives
amid the hideous scenes of bloody bat
tle, or the want and misery of a South
ern prison ! The "party of freedom,"
a.-> they still style themselves, proved
to lie the party of Slavery whose shack
les bound the wri.-ts of their own race.
I am not discussingthe merits or the
success of the late war, nor will it he
time to do so until its fruits shall have
ripened. If it was for the Union, the
Abolitionists are seeking with all their
might to make it ineffective by shut
ting the gatvs of the Union on the
States which are seeking in good faith
to return to its pale. If it was for the
negro, when we see the negro safely,
satisfactorily and finally disposed of, it
will he high time to congratulate each
other 011 the good work and award to
the Abolition party the praise of hav
ing brought it about with such an eco
nomical expenditure of blood and mon
ey. My object now is simply to show
the marvellous inebnsisteucy between
their sentimental philanthropy when
out of power and their brutal inhu
manity when they gained it.
But grossly inconsistent as the aboli
tionists themselves have been, what
shall we say of the reverend clergy who
have struck hands with them ? One
would fancy that there could be little in
common between men who claim to be
ministers of God and expounders of his
word, and blatant infidels who spit on
the Book and defy the master. <}rant
ing even to these clerical gentlemen a
spirit tolerant enough to edure in- uU "
- • —-- AucH'umioom-M 1 vspeet
J for their own cloth would seem to re
! quire that they should be somewhat shv
j of a party which could so recently find
no more endearing name for them than
"wolves" and "impostor-." But it
I would really appear that affection for
the negro is a stronger sentiment than
love of God or self respect. Half the
pulpits of the country have echoed du
ring Hie past five years with the ha
rangues of wondering intruders who
never had a Bible in their hand, except
when they swore on one that they were
too old for the draft. Reverend gentle
men have suffered their flocks to he ad
dressed by a class of men whose morals
would exclude them from any decent
household, not to say any pious one.
The blasphemer and the bigot have
fondly embraced .each other, and sit,
cheek by jowl, grinning overthe blood
shed and ruin of the most terrible of
civil wars. Stump-speakers have turn
ed preachers and preachers have turned ,
stump-speakers in such vast numbers,
that achurch-goiugman lias sometimes,
toinspcctthepulpit.examinethe hymn
books that lie in theseats.look curious
ly up at the organ, and trace out the
saintly figures on the painted glass to
satisfy himself that he is not in a pot
house, or at a ward meeting. Aisle and
chancel, transept and spire, mere ar
chitectural outlines—are all that are left
to identify hundreds of churches in this
land as temples of God.
The consequence of this alliance be
tween the infidel and the clerical Abo
litionist, lias been the production of a I
new class of books, tracts and papers.
There are tens of thousands of pure
minded and conscientious women, of
honorable and reverent men, whose,
minds could never be reached by the
blasphemous arguments and appliance
of the original, scoffing Abolitionists.
They have been reared in the fear of
God and taught to respect God's Book, j
To impress their minds, appeal- must
have the gloss of religion, at least, even
if they have nothing of it- spirit. This j
want has occasioned the production of I
by far the greatest mas-of publications i
that have been issued in the Abolition i
interest. They are written sometimes
by feeble-minded divines, who really
believe what they say, sometimes by
well-meaning females, who mistake the
pangs of dyspepsia for the wrestlings of
religious experience, but, most general
ly, they are the work of crafty rogues
who deliberately concoct them with the
design of poisoning the minds of the
rising generation. It is against this vast
mass of demoralizing and false litera
ture that we have special occasion to be
watchful. It comes to us in the most
unsuspicious shapes. The tirst primer
which you put into the hands of your
baby, if it emanates from a Yankee
press, has an instalment of poison adapt
ed to a child learning its letters. Sun
day-school books are chosen receptacles
for the abominable doctrines of the Ab
olitionists. Biographies of eminent ne
groes, distinguished on their death-beds
for devoted love to God and lively grat
itude to John Brown, l>eguile the mind
VOL. 61.—WHOLE No. 5,329.
of many a little boy whose unconscious
parents fancy that he is engaged in.S'me
day reading.' They thus allow him to
become an admirer of horse-stealing,
and to acquire a profound respect for
murder, and to form, under their very
eye-, a noble ambition to emulate the
great Brown in those evangelical ac
complishments. Little newspapers, too,
with wood-cuts, poetry and short tales,
are provided in abundance to feed the
intellectual uppetiteof the young. They
affect to be devoted to religious instruc
tion, but, if you scan them carefully,
you are certain to find the inevitable
iroo! cropping out and overgrowing all
the flowers of rhetoric and figures of
speech. 1 remember one of them pre
sented to me in a railroad car by a pale
gentleman with damp, long hair, stra
bismal eyes and craggy features, clad in
full black and with a crape hat-band.
It Was embellished with a picture of a
malignant and vicious-lookingold man,
nursing a young and extremely black
nig. A gallows stood in the back-ground
and underneath was the inscription—
" The Saint on his way to glory." Of
course it was "Old John." 1 said noth
ing, but uttered a mild, mental aspira
tion that tixe worthy missionary might,
at an early period , join "the Saint," in
"< dory," or wherever else he may hap
pen to be situated. This is but a small
incident, but it i-. significant as showing
the kind of trash which is being thrust
into the hands of the people at every
turn.
As children grow older, "Histories,"
"Geographies," and "Readers" are pro
vided for them, all issuing from the
same mint and graven with the same
device. Histories of the United States
are stuffed full of pictures of the "Pil
grim Fathers," the Bunker Hill Monu
ment and Boston, as seen from all points
of the compass, while the letter-press
isdevoted to the work of magnfying the
piety of the "pilgrims" and the patri
otisniof their descendants. The "Read
er-" contain selections from the Yankee
poet-, all made in the same spirit of self
glorification, choice passages from the
speeches of Mr. Sumner, Wendell Phil
lip-, Garrison and other eminent patri-
ots, and minute rules to perfect the pu
pil in the art of pronouncing the Eng
lish language through the nose—the ap
proved Yankee fashion.
Besides these various appliances there
is an immense fund of magazine and
periodical literature smuggled over our
borders and into our houses, all satura
ted with the same falsehood, injustice
and malignity. The Atlantic Monthly
can ai teasi ciaim ine merit 01 obtain
ing its subscribers on no false pretence.
Itis notoriously an Abolition magazine.
It i- open in its villany, and its editors
are not only gentlemen void of the
moral sense, but entirely regardless of
the fact that other people possess it.
But the Harpers stand at the head of a
different class of publishers. They are
guilty of a perpetual and scandalous
fraud upon the public. They affect to
issttea "neutral" magazineand weekly.
They call the latter a "Journal of Civ
ilization," and the former a literary pe
riodical. Cntil it begun to pen/ to de
nounce the Democracy of this country
they toadied to it with a servility which
was absolutely disgusting. They de
nounced John Brown, in 1809, in the
most savage terms, and had their paper
filled with pictures of the raid, design
ed to show the love of the negroes for
their masters and the atrocity of old
Brown's bloody attempt to sever the
"patriarchal relation." Even when the
war was just impending, when Beaure
gard had donned the Confederate uni
form. when Davis was sitting at the
head of the new government which
was certainly as flatly in rebellion then
as ever afterwards, they published the
likenesses of those two person.-, gave
flattering biographies of them, and
never intimated a hint of disapproval j
of the work on which they had entered.
They showed then the same ~j>i rit which
they had displayed long before, when
they emlteliished their "Journal of Civ
ilization" with an immense wood-cut
of a brutal prize fight, because they
could not bear to resign the sixpences
of the shoulder-hitters and blackguards
of New York to their competitors of
the other pictorial weeklies. They
sought to appease the decent portion of
their readers, on that occasion, by giv
ing. on their editorial page, a flaming
moral article on the wickedness and
indecency of human creatures pound
ing each other as represented in the
picture!
As soon as the war had fairly broken
out and their Southern subscription list
was hopelessly cut off, they commenced
to print the most insulting Abolition
sheet in the country. Not content with
reviling the people actually engaged in
the rcb llion, they have continued, ever
since, to libel, by word and picture, the
great Democratic party of the North.
They have filled both "Weekly" and
"Magazine" with sickening, sneaking
tales, apparently the emanations of one
addled head, designed to magnify the
virtues of the angular old maids of the
east and to illustrate the infamy of the
"Copperheads,'-' as they delight to call
us. The plot of these stories seems to
to kept in type, and the adjectives, love
talk, descriptions of hospitals, scenery,
etc., filled in according to the taste of
of the compositor. It is the simplest
thing in the world to write one. lieu
ben Tarbutton goes soldiering (theboun
ty in Reuben's district, I may remark,
wasfloOO) and leaves Nellie Doolittle
disconsolate. Nellie devotes herself to
knitting stockings for the negro troops
until news comes of Reuben's demise,
which, of course, takes place in the very
middle of the deadly breach. Nellie,
! thereupon, having dried up her tears
I on her apron, concludes to soothe Reu
i ben's departed spirit by ministering to
: his companions who are left behind,
; and forthwith becomes an army nurse,
i Finally, she happens to be wandering
through the wards of a strange hospital
when shehearsa familiar voice exclaim
ing, "Oh! that I could but see Nellie,
and die happy!" She bounds forward,
tears back the curtain, there is a simul
taneous squeal— "Reuben!" "Nettie!"
and these two pure-hearted young be
ings are locked in each other's arms.—
Of course, Reuben wasn't killed at all.
The story was invented by a base Cop
perhead who was his rival, and hadn't
pluck enough to go to the war. He was
merely wounded by a 20 inch cannon
ball in the chest—soon gets on his legs—
they are married—settle down in a neat
cottage with an eligible onion patch at
tached—are blessed with a brood of
healthy young Abolitionists who come
by twins, and (here the moral sneaks
inj are steady purchasers of ail the stuff
the Harpers print. Fortunately it is in
the power of the Democracy of this
country who have bought, in past times,
j thousandsof books and periodicals with
I the name of the Harpers on them, to
i cut down the circulation of this non
sense sensibly and right speedily. That
I is the only way to reach such mercena
i ry ouls as theirs.
There is another kind of Abolition
Literature of which I have a word to
say, although there is hardly time left
in which to say it. It is the poetry
! written by that vast body of domestic
patriots who prefer the work of anima
ting their neighbors with a military
spirit to that of showing one in their
own persons. The amount of jingle of
j this kind which has appeared during
the past five years is one of the most
distressing consequences of the war. It
has employed a large amount of mus
cle (for the labor of producing it is pure
ly mechanical) which, considering the
political sentiments of the writers might
have been more gracefully employed in
carrying a gun. Still, it is valuable,
j for it illustrates the cowardice and hy
! poorisv of the Yankee Abolitionist more
clearly than anything that hasever come
! from his pen. it is really almost in
credible that men exist shameless o
nough to print the martial appeals and
threatenings in which scores of these
| rhymesters have indulged, while toast
i ing their shins between drinks in a cus
j torn house clerkship, or engaged in the
j perilous work of weighing out links of
j sausage and plugs of tobacco from a
! sutler's wagon. How they can face
their names in print appended to*ex
: hortations to "rouse," to "march," to
i "conquer," and to "die," and to do oth
j er ferocious things of that nature, is
l more than I can comprehend. One spe
cimen of this species of writing, select
ed at random from a large collection, is
! all that my limits will allow me to give.
' "You must meet them breast to breast '
j fU. ' •-. I'-.vU Wmt -
: Not with wards —they laugh them to scorn.
And tears they despise—
But with swords in your hands,
And Death in your eyes!'"
Can you believe it that tin's most des
perate bard, who is resolved to meet
' the rebels "breast to breast," who car
ries "death" even in his "eyes," (he
ought, for the safety of society, to be
i compelled to wear has been
engaged for the past five years in the
peaceful occupation of driving a quill
in the New York Custom house! There
are scores more of his kind. They have
I all passed safely through the war. But
they have been the most marvellously
afflicted class of people in the world.
There is no disease known to medical
science which these loyal warblers have
not carried to the exemption office. In
deed the fact is worthy of physiological
and metaphysical investigation that the
power of rhyming developes itself a
mong Yankee Abolitionists, only in
those who are .over forty-five years of
age or in bad health. No man, of all
the New England choir who solicited
his countrymen, in song, to carry arms
in the late war, admitted his own abil
ity to shoulder a musket and take the
field.
1 have endeavored merely to sketch
evil and tiic danger of this Yankee
.. oolition influence as developed in lit
j erature. It is a subject which could not
| be exhausted in many addresses, and
which, I trust, will be kept alive in our
newspapers, by our firesides and every
where. The remedy is as simple as the
evil is patent. Let us buy no more of
their books, or buy only those which we
have cautiously examined. 1 do not
propose 1o exclude the publications of
these Abolitionists from our houses be
cause they advocate political views in
opposition to ours. I am willing to
concede the largest liberty of thinking
upon all public questions, and regard
the Abolition fashion of suppressing
newspapers, imprisoning editors, and
kidnapping speakers as one of the gra
vest of crimes. But it is because their
hooks are grossly immoral, shockingly
blasphemous; because they make a
murderer and horse thief a god, and call
the Divine Father of us nil a "scoun
drel;" because they teach disobedience
to law as a virtue, and lawless despo
tism as the right of a dominant partv;
it is for these reasons that we should
snatch their polluted pages from the
fingers of children and close our doors
against a plague more terrible than the
locusts or the lice of Egypt.
Lot us beware of the incursions of
their agents, colporteurs and tract-ped
lers. Let us search a publication which
is brought to us by such hands as care
fully as the officers of quarantine in
spect an infected ship. Let us encour
agehome books, home magazines, home
newspapers which inculcate at least a
decent reverence for (tod and a common
respect for the Constitution. We have
the whole range of English literature
from which to fill the shelves of our
1 ibrar ies, and if we produce fewer books
than the Yankees, they area great deal
better ones. Let us have the satisfac
tion of knowing that those miserable
people, if they will still persist in wri
ting falsehoods and blasphemies and
printing them, are also doomed, exclu
sively, to the task of paying for them
and reading them. Pennsylvania will
then tiecome as hopeless a' market for
their poetry and their tracts as it is now
for their boots, kettles, and all the me
chanical cheats with which they begui
led us thirty years ago.