living God foully spurned;--save, oh: save your firesides from the contagion,

your country from the crime, and perhaps thousands, yet unborn, from the shame,

and sin, and sorrow of this example!

 

--CHARLES PHILLIPS, _Appeal to the jury in behalf of Guthrie._

 

So I appeal from the men in silken hose who danced to music made by slaves and

called it freedom, from the men in bell-crown hats who led Hester Prynne to her

shame and called it religion, to that Americanism which reaches forth its arms

to smite wrong with reason and truth, secure in the power of both. I appeal from

the patriarchs of New England to the poets of New England; from Endicott to

Lowell; from Winthrop to Longfellow; from Norton to Holmes; and I appeal in the

name and by the rights of that common citizenship--of that common origin, back

of both the Puritan and the Cavalier, to which all of us owe our being. Let the

dead past, consecrated by the blood of its martyrs, not by its savage hatreds,

darkened alike by kingcraft and priestcraft--let the dead past bury its dead.

Let the present and the future ring with the song of the singers. Blessed be the

lessons they teach, the laws they make. Blessed be the eye to see, the light to

reveal. Blessed be tolerance, sitting ever on the right hand of God to guide the

way with loving word, as blessed be all that brings us nearer the goal of true

religion, true republicanism, and true patriotism, distrust of watchwords and

labels, shams and heroes, belief in our country and ourselves. It was not Cotton

Mather, but John Greenleaf Whittier, who cried:

 

Dear God and Father of us all, Forgive our faith in cruel lies, Forgive the