Sermon of Reverend James Freeman Clarke: April 21, 1861

If the true position of a nation is its highest moral attitude, then we may say that these free States were never in a better condition than they are to-day. The end is not yet; no, and though they take Washington, take our President prisoner, seize the archives, and install themselves in the Capitol, that is not the end. So long as the magnificent spirit which actuates the whole North to-day continues, the spirit of devoted patriotism, of perfect unanimity of sentiment, of generous self-sacrifice, of calm, quiet courage, which does not boast at the beginning nor flinch at the end, so long the nation is safe. . . .

This is a sort of Pentecostal Day, in which the whole multitude are of one heart and one soul; nor says any one that aught that he possesses is his own, but we have all things in common. . . .

For the sake of national prosperity, for the sake of outward union, for the sake of a mere mercantile peace, we have here at the North been conniving for years at a system of despotism more cruel than exists elsewhere on the face of the earth.

Now we are punished in just those three points. Our prosperity has received a terrible check, our Union is dissolved, and our peace has terminated in what threatens to be an awful war. . . .

Let us stand by each other now in these dark hours, trusting in God's eternal justice and truth. He that is for us is more than they that be against us.

SOURCE: Edwin Everett Hale, Editor, James Freeman Clarke: Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence, p. 271-2