The dangers and duties of the present crisis! : a discourse delivered in the Union Church, St. Louis, January 4, 1861 / Page: 13 of 18
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13
In such a strife, it will be difficult to tell what were the greater
sorrow, victory or defeat. And victors and vanquished might sit down
together on the battle-field, and weep over the result. When little
Benjamin had been well-nigh exterminated by the combined force of
Israel, there was no exultation, but lamentation rather. "And the
people came to the house of God, and abode there till even before God,
and lifted up their voices and wept sore: and said ' O Jehovah, God
of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel that there should be to-day
one tribe lacking in Israel.' And the children of Israel repented
them for Benjamin their brother, and said, ' there is one tribe cut off
from Israel this day.'
And yet this was a just war, in punishment of a foul and unnatural
wrong, yet its success was lamentation and woe.
This, if South Carolina stood alone. But she would not. Force
would arouse sympathy. There is a principle in the human bosom
that repels force with force. Thus they that take the sword, perish by
the sword. When a king of Great Britain, provoked by some insub-
ordination of his northern subjects, said that he would turn Scotland
into a hunting ground, one of her noble chieftains rose from the council
board, and said, " if that be your purpose, then may it please your Maj-
esty I will go home and get my hounds ready." This feeling is still
stronger here. An appeal to arms will unite the entire South as one
man. And the strife will not be that of thirty-two against one, but of
eighteen against fifteen states. The mouth of every conservative
Union man would be stopped, and counsels of peace would be drowned
in the voice of our brother's blood, crying to us from the ground.
If strife once begins, then the hope of speedy reconciliation dies ;
perhaps the hope of any future reconciliation. Terms would be pro-
posed only after each party had exhausted itself, and was crushed with
debt. Even then a peace might leave the question at issue, unsettled
as in the war of 1812.
Our previous difficulties have been settled by compromises. It was
so even in Jackson's day. That great warrior and statesman " spoke
daggers, but used none," and the excitement was far less general then
than now. The whisky insurrection is no guide. Resistance to a law
on the part of the distillers of a single district, presents no parallel to a
supposed animosity against the distinguishing element in the social
organization of fifteen states.
Think well before you take the sword: sit down; rather kneel down
and count the cost. Yet some talk of going down to compel our
Southern brethren to submit-as flippantly as if they were going out
to shoot a pack of wolves, that had been prowling around our farms.
Christian brethren must bite the dust in any strife we inaugurate.
Brethren, I show you a better way, that would inaugurate an era
)
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Anderson, S. J. P., (Samuel James Pierce), 1841-1873. The dangers and duties of the present crisis! : a discourse delivered in the Union Church, St. Louis, January 4, 1861 /, pamphlet, Date Unknown; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth497972/m1/13/?rotate=270: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Schreiner University.