Union And Anti Slavery Speeches PDF Download

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE REBELLION: ITS ORIGIN AND LIFE IN SLAVEBY. In placid bay, on the south-eastern coast of the United States, stands a noble fortress, erected by the American Government, for the protection of a Southern commercial capital and the interior region connected with it. Through many years and at vast expense, New England granite was quarried, and by tens of thousands of tons transported ocean-wise, to drop into that bay the foundations of that fortress, and upon them to build its massive walls. It was completed; and behind its frowning battlements that commercial capital reposed in security, odorous of southern flowers and warm with the rays of a southern sun. That fortress was Sumter?that capital, CharlesTon; one named for a patriot of '76, the other for a British King; each appropriately named. The plain and solid granite fabric looked the republican hero?the ornate and aristocratic city typified the king. Both were destined to historic immortality. A Speech delivered in Mercantile Library Hall, St. Louis, April 14, 1862; having been previously spoken, in substance at Union, Mo., April 7, 1862. In the fortress was a little band of seventy men, with less than three days' food in store, and above them waved the American flag; on the neighboring shores, behind ominous batteries, under a banner till then unknown, were a hundred times their number, in warlike array. It was night. The silent stars looked down upon the bay, the city, the batteries, the fortress, the seven thousand men, and the seventy; and nothing told them that ere they shone upon the brow of another night, a shock would thrill from that spot along the world's nerves, which might not cease to vibrate while the world stands. The surrender of that fortress was demanded, ?ruthlessly and unrighteously dema...