dogmas of Puritanism, to stimulate the mischievous spirit of the race to evil works.  Admirably have they fulfilled their destiny.  To the preaching and writings of the men and women descended from Lyman Beecher has more misery ensued, than from any other one source, for the last century.  “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has slain its hundreds of thousands, and the sermons of Henry Ward Beecher have made to flow an ocean of blood.

The example of Pymm, Cromwell, Whaley, and Goff, and their fate, has taught the Puritans no useful lesson.  They seem to think to triumph in civil war, as their ancestors did, regardless of the danger that a reaction may bring to them, is all they can desire.  The fate of these men has no warning.  Reactions sometimes come with terrible consequences.  They cannot see Cromwell’s dead body hanging in chains.  They will not remember the fate of Whaley and Goff, whose bones are mouldering in their own New Haven, after flying their country and, for years, hiding in caves and cellars from the revengeful pursuit of resentful enemies.  The Pymms and the Praise-God-bare-bones of the thirty-ninth Congress may and (it is to be hoped) will yet meet the merited reward of their crimes of persecution and oppression.

At the time of which I write, there were many remaining in Connecticut who participated in the conflicts and perils of the Revolution.  These men were all animated with strong national sentiments, and felt that every part of the Union was their country.  They idolized Washington, and always spoke with affectionate praise of the Southern spirit, so prominent in her troops during the war.  The conduct of the South (and especially that of Georgia toward General Greene, in donating him a splendid plantation, with a palatial residence, upon the Savannah River, near the city of Savannah, to which he removed, lived, and in which he died,) was munificent, and characteristic of a noble and generous people.

But these were passing away, and a new people were coming into their places.  The effects of a common cause, a common danger, and a united success, were not felt by these.  New interests excited new aspirations.  The nation’s peril was past, and she was one of the great powers of the earth, and acknowledged as such.  She had triumphantly passed through a second war with her unnatural mother, in which New England, as a people, had reaped no glory.  In the midst of the struggle, she had called a convention of her people, with a view of withdrawing from the Union.  Her people had invited the enemy, with their blue-light signals, to enter the harbor they were blockading, and where the American ships, under the command of one of our most gallant commanders, had sought refuge.  They were sorely chagrined, and full of wrath.  They hated the South and her people.  It was growing, and they were nursing it.  Even then we were a divided people, with every interest conserving to unite us—­the South producing and consuming; the North manufacturing, carrying, and selling for, and to, the South.  The harmony of commerce, and the harmony of interest, had lost its power, and we were a divided people.  The breach widened, war followed, and ruin riots over the land.  The South was the weaker, and went down; the North was the stronger, and triumphed—­and the day of her vengeance has come.