Thanksgiving sermon, delivered in the First Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, on Thursday, Nov. 29, 1860 / Page: 4 of 16
This pamphlet is part of the collection entitled: Sam Lanham Collection - Civil War Era Pamphlets and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Schreiner University.
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4
cal revolutions may occur among the races which are now enacting the great drama
of history ; all such inquiries are totally irrelevant because no prophetic vision can
pierce the darkness of that future. If this question should ever arise, the generation
to whom it is remitted will doubtless have the wisdom to meet it, and Providence will
furnish the lights in which it is to be resolved. All that we claim for them and for
ourselves is liberty to work out this problem guided by nature and God, without ob-
trusive interference from abroad. These great questions of Providence and history
must have free scope for their solution ; and the race whose fortunes are distinctly
implicated in the same is alone authorized, as it is alone competent, to determine
them. It is just this impertinence of human legislation, setting bounds to what God
only can regulate, that the South is called this day to resent and resist. The country
is convulsed simply because "the throne of iniquity frameth mischief by a law."
Without, therefore, determining the question of duty for future generations, I simply
say, that for us, as now situated, the duty is plain of conserving and transmitting the
system of slavery, with the freest scope for its natural development and extension.
Let us, my brethren, look our duty in the face. With this institution assigned to our
keeping, what reply shall we make to those who say that its days are numbered ?
My own conviction is, that we should at once lift ourselves, intelligently, to the high-
est moral ground and proclaim to all the world that we hold this trust from God, and
in its occupancy we are prepared to stand or fall as God may appoint. If the critical
moment has arrived at which the great issue is joined, let us say that, in the sight of
all perils, we will stand by our trust ; and God be with the right !
The argument which enforces the solemnity of this providential trust is simple and
condensed. It is bound upon us, then, by the principle of self-preservation, that "first
law" which is continually asserting its supremacy over all others. Need I pause to
show how this system of servitude underlies and supports our material interests ?
That our wealth consists in our lands and in the serfs who till them? That from the
nature of our products they can only be cultivated by labor which must be controlled
in order to he certain ? That any other than a tropical race must faint and wither
beneath a tropical sun? Need I pause to show how this system is interwoven with
our entire social fabric ? That these slaves form parts of our households, even as our
children ; and that, too, through a relationship recognized and sanctioned in the
Scriptures of God even as the other ? Must I pause to show how it has fashioned
our modes of life, and determined all our habits of thought and feeling, and moulded
the very type of our civilization ? How then can the hand of violence be laid upon
it without involving our existence ? The so-called free States of this country are
working out the social problem under conditions peculiar to themselves. These con-
ditions are sufficiently hard, and their success is toouncertain, to excite in us the least
jealousy of their lot. With a teeming population, which the soil cannot support-with
their wealth depending upon arts, created by artificial wants-with an eternal friction
between the grades of their society-with their labor and their capital grinding
against each other like the upper and nether mill-stones-with labor cheapened and
displaced by new mechanical inventions, bursting more asunder the bonds of brother-
hood ; amid these intricate perils we have ever given them our sympathy and our
prayers, and have never sought to weaken the foundations of their social order. God
grant them complete success in the solution of all their perplexities ! We, too, have
our responsibilities and trials ; but they are all bound up in this one institution, which
has been the object of such unrighteous assault through five and twenty years. If we
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Palmer, B. M. (Benjamin Morgan), 1818-1902. Thanksgiving sermon, delivered in the First Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, on Thursday, Nov. 29, 1860 /, pamphlet, Date Unknown; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth498613/m1/4/?q=War+of+the+Rebellion.: accessed June 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Schreiner University.