THANKSGIVING SERMON. 33 ducted themselves like men; if the ministers of the Gospel and their churches had conducted themselves like Christians and as friends of peace — for myself I would have been the advocate of some amicable arrangement rather than have been forced to the arbitrament of the sword. But when, instead of this, I hear so few kind words, and these suppressed by violence or fear; when crafty politicians, eager for fame, and panting for place and power, blind and enslave the minds of the people; when I learn that this secession was preconcerted and determined on in years gone by, and was only “biding its time,” and that the time and the occasion for it were all arranged, and the signal given and the blow struck for causes over which the South not only had entire control, but itself created; when I read the ordinance of secession itself severing the tie that bound the people of the United States together so prosperously and happily, and all because the Slave States had for a time lost their supremacy; when, to insure this severance, men high in office, in the cabinet, in the army, in the navy, at home and abroad, became false to their oaths of citizenship and of office, spoilers of the public treas
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