LOYAL PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 863 BROADWAY. No. 16. ADDRESS READ AT THE INAUGURAL MEETING OF THE LOYAL NATIONAL LEAGUE, BY THE REQUEST OF THE LEAGUE, IN UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK, ON THE 11th OF APRIL, 1863. It is just and wise that men engaged in a great and arduous cause should profess anew, from time to time, their faith, and pledge themselves to one another, to stand by their cause to the last extremity, even at the sacrifice of all they have and all that God has given them—their wealth, their blood, and their children’s blood. We solemnly pledge all this to our cause, for it is the cause of our Country and her noble history, of freedom, and justice, and truth—-it is the cause of all we hold dearest on this earth: we profess and pledge this—plainly, broadly, openly in the cheering time of success, and most fervently in the day of trial and reverses. We recollect how, two years ago, when reckless arrogance attacked Fort Sumter, the response to that boom of treasonable cannon was read, in our city, in the flag of our country—waving from every steeple and school-house, from City Hall and Court House, from every shop window and market stall, and fluttering in the hand of every child, and on the head-gear of every horse in the busy street. Two years have passed; uncounted sacrifices have been made—sacrifices of wealth, of blood, and limb, and life—of friendship and brotherhood, of endeared and hallowed pursuits and sacred ties—and still the civil war is raging in bitterness and heart-burning—still we make the same profession, and still we pledge ourselves firmly to hold on to our cause, and persevere in the struggle into which unrighteous men, bewildered by pride, and stimulated by bitter hatred, have plunged us. We profess ourselves to be loyal citizens of these United States; and by loyalty we mean a candid and loving devotion to the object to which a loyal man—a loyal husband, a loyal friend, a loyal citizen—devotes himself. We eschew the attenuated arguments derived by trifling scholars from meagre etymology. We take the core and substance of this weighty word, and pledge ourselves that we will loyally—not merely outwardly and formally, according to the letter, but frankly, fervently and according to the spirit— adhere to our country, to her institutions, to freedom, and her power, and to that great institution called the government of our country, founded by our fathers, and loved by their sons, and by all right-minded men who have become citizens of this land by choice and not by birth—who have wedded this country in the maturity of their age as verily their own. We pledge ourselves as National men devoted to the Nationality of this great people. No government can wholly dispense with loyalty, except the
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