Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society: Great Speech Delivered in New York City

Mr. Beecher, on presenting himself, was received with loud and hearty applause. He spoke as follows: The questions which have provoked discussion among us for fifty years past have not been questions of fundamental principles, but of the application of principles already ascertained. Our debates have been between one way of doing a thing and another way of doing it—between living well and living better; and so through, it has been a question between good and better. We have discussed policies, not principles. In Europe, on the Other hand, life-questions have agitated men. The questions of human rights, of the nature and true foundations of Government, are to-day, in Europe, where they were with our fathers in 1630. In this respect, there is a moral dignity, and even grandeur, in the struggles, secretly or openly going on in Italy, Austria, Germany, and France, which never can belong to the mere questions of mode and manner which occupy us—boundary questions, banks, tariffs, internal improvements, currency; all very necessary but secondary topics. They touch nothing deeper than the pocket. In this respect, there would be a marked contrast between the subjects which occupy us, and the grander life-themes that dignify European thought, were it not for one subject—Slavery. That is the only question, in our day and in our community, full of vital struggles turning upon fundamental principles. If Slavery were a plantation-question, concerning only the master and the slave, disconnected from us, and isolated—then, though we should regret it, and apply moral forces for its ultimate remedy, yet, it would be, (as are questions of the same kind in India or South America,) remote, constituting a single element in that globe of darkness of which this world is the core, and which Christianity is yet to shine through and change to light. But it is not a plantation-question. It is a national question. The disputes implied by the violent relations between the owner and the chattel may only morally touch us.—But the disputes between the masters and the Government, and between the Government, impregnated with Slavery, and the Northern citizen, these touch us sharply, and if not wisely met, will yet scourge us with thorns! Indeed, I cannot say that I believe that New England and the near North will be affected locally, and immediately by an adverse issue of the great national struggle now going on. But the North will be an utterly dead force in the American nation. She will be rolled up in a corner, like a cocoon waiting for its transmigration. The whole North will become provincial; it will be but a fringe to a nation whose heart will beat in the South. But New-England was not raised up by Divine Providence to play a mean part in the world's affairs