Today is a national day of Thanksgiving as decreed by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Many Baptist congregations assemble to celebrate recent Union victories and listen to special presentations from guest speakers.
One such Thanksgiving celebration is held at the Washington Avenue Baptist Church of Brooklyn, New York. The guest speaker is the Rev. Dr. Jeffery of Philadelphia. A New York Times correspondent is present and reports on the day’s festivities at Washington Avenue Baptist and other local churches:
At the Washington-avenue Baptist Church, Brooklyn, Rev. Dr. JEFFREY, of Philadelphia, delivered an eloquent discourse from the text:
“And the Lord wrought a great victory.” — 2 SAM., xxiii., 12.
We have not come together, said he, to render thanks simply for victories gained. Our joy over them has already been expressed, amid booming cannon, waving flags, and the mutual outpouring of friendly emotion. We have come to rejoice in them as the pledge that our noble institutions are to be perpetuated. The war has taught the value of the Union. Alluding to Slavery in terms of the strongest abhorrence, he said that even the destruction of that terrible evil would not have compensated for the destruction of the Union, that glorious temple of liberty, A happy contrast was presented between the character of this attempt at revolution and others, whose records brighten the page of history. While they ateempted to overthrow despotism the rebels designed to establish a Government whose corner-stone should be slavery.
Finally, we rejoice in these victories as God’s work. The war is for the cleansing away of vast evils, which impede the progress of this people in working out the grand idea of equal rights for all men. God has heard the cry of the oppressed, and woe to him who would stay the fall of that institution whose curse has rested so heavily upon us.
He cro???d with an earnest appeal to all Christians to do their duty to the country, to vote right, to labor for truth, that our noble Constitution may be transmitted unimpaired to posterity.
A collection was taken up at the close of the sermon for the colored sufferers by the late not. Dr. JEFFERY stating that the colored Baptist Church in Vicksburgh had been heavily afflicted from this cause.
Rev. Dr. STORRS being out of town, his place was filled by Rev. Dr. MEADE, of Massachusetts, who delivered an able, patriotic and well-timed discourse upon the present aspect of our national affairs.
The Brooklyn Tabernacle, Rev. Mr. BARTLETT, Pastor, was open during the morning, and a large number of the congregation assembled and celebrated Thanksgiving by patriotic interchange of sentiments, singing and prayer. A list of the Union victories during the month of July, was read from a newspaper, and was deemed by all who heard it to be the best possible discourse for the occasion. Rev. Mr. BARTLETT is in the country and unwell — having contracted disease from the battle-field of Gettysburgh, whither he went to recover the remains of a relative.
Among Massachusetts congregations, an address is delivered at the Brookline Baptist Church, where John N. Murdock invokes Psalm 129 in speaking on the subject of “Our Civil War : Its Causes and its Issues.”
Murdock, unlike most Northern clergymen and civil and political leaders North and South, blames African slavery as a secondary issue to the war. Primary, he insists, is the anti-democratic, aristocratic foundation of Southern society. Following an historical accounting of how the South came to be aristocratic, he declares:
….The questions involved in the system of African slavery have been in debate among us from the beginning of our national life. At first it was not a debate of sections or States, so much as of sociologists and moralists, of different schools. Neither its advocates nor its impugners belonged to any section. North, South, East or West. It could find quite as many apologists in Connecticut as in Maryland, and as many opponents in Virginia as in Massachusetts. Tlie stipulations relating to it in the Federal Constitution, commonly called “the Compromises of the Constitution,” were compromises between fundamental political and moral theories, held both at the South and at the North, and the existing slave system, rather than compromises between the Northern and Southern sections. It was a pact between free and slave labor, rather than between free and slave States. For with a single exception, all the States, whose people were parties to the Federal Constitution, were, at the time, slave States. And it was then the purpose and belief of the best men of all sections, that the system would come to a gradual but sure end. This expectation was soon realized in the Eastern and Middle States ; a result due in part to economic considerations, but more to the quickened public conscience, which apprehended the essential wrong of the relation. The system was seen to be in conflict with the fundamental ideas of our political life, and with the laws of natural justice and Christian morality.
But in the Southern States the system was less repugnant to the social instincts of the people; though many wise and good men did not fail to condemn it, as a wrong to the slave and a curse to society. Soon, however, it became the source of enormous profit to the planters, and grew into a vast class interest. Now it began to be cherished with the tenacity which interest always inspires. Protests against its wrongfulness became less welcome to Southern people, and so less frequent. From the general admission that slavery is a great evil, they passed to the general assertion that it is a great blessing. It came to be openly claimed that some men were born not only to serve others, but to be owned by them. The relation was no longer regarded as an anomaly, but as pertaining to the natural order of society. With these views the Northern people did not, and could not coincide. But chiefly to keep terms with the Southern people, and to enjoy the benefits of their trade, no general or effective disclaimer was ever put forth. The first appearance of any thing like a concerted protest, on the part of the North, was in reference to the admission of Missouri into the Union as a slave State. The North resisted, but were finally worsted in the conflict. From that day slavery became a political power, and was, in fact, dominant in the Government. It demanded for successive Presidential incumbents Southern men, or Northern men subservient to Southern views and interests. Like a great ulcer, which gathers into itself all the other foul humors of the body, slavery gradually came to absorb all the other sources of animosity cherished by the descendants of the Cavaliers against the descendants of the Puritans. Opposition to slavery was stigmatized as the old Puritan fanaticism. It was claimed for it that it must not only live unquestioned, but live wheresoever it would. It must be legalized in all the territories of the United States. It must be protected in the National Courts of judicature throughout the North. Northern citizens must become the captors and persecutors of fugitives from its bonds. They must cease to question its morality, or to discuss the social questions involved in it. In short, slavery was put forward as a symbol and test of the supremacy of the Southern people in the Government. They used it as a means of ruling. Long as the Northern people would submit to their dictation, they were content to remain with us; while the least show of independence would at once bring the threat of disunion. The alternative which they have presented to us, for the last generation, has been, subjection or separation : if not one relation, then the other. And the war which is upon us to-day is simply the effort of these would-be-masters to divide the country which they could no longer rule — to subvert the Government which they could no longer control. It was not the question of slavery or no slavery which incited the Southern revolt against the Government. Neither the Northern people, nor any considerable portion of them, have ever presented such an issue. The Southern leaders knew that they could enjoy slavery where they had planted it, and that they could extend it at will, limited only by their power of propagation. Slavery has been the pretext rather than the cause of separation. It was chosen simply because it was a more effective wedge than the tariff, or the sub-treasury. It was more involved in Southern interest and prejudice, on the one hand, and more repugnant to the Northern conscience, on the other. But nothing that you could have done for slavery would have prevented the rupture: nothing that you can do in this line will heal it. The oracles of the rebellion have over and over again declared that they would themselves destroy every vestige of slavery, if such a measure should become necessary, to effect their final separation from the Northern people. They despise us as a base and ignoble rabble. They hate us as thwarting their will and obstructing their power. This contempt and hate have been working for years; and they have at last broken forth in the awful flame of war. They were carefully fanned by every consideration that could excite a fiery and impetuous race. Loose theories of government have been inculcated and kept before the people. The sovereignty of the State has been magnified, and that of the Nation eclipsed. It was insisted that the State was to be obeyed, whatever it might require. Thus the very foundations of authority were undermined, and a whole people were prepared for revolt and civil war.
I by no means intend to belittle the agency of slavery in bringing upon us the present crisis. It must be held as an evidence of the utter viciousness of the system, that it has fostered the arrogance, and nursed the prejudice, and entailed the ignorance which have worked together for our national undoing. It has hastened the crisis. It has given unity to our enemies. It has furnished them the means of subsistence. It has been set forth as the pretext for war against the government and people. But he sadly mistakes the temper of the leaders of Southern opinion, and the whole tendency of Southern civilization, who thinks there would have been no rupture if there had been no slavery. It might not have been during this generation, or the next, but sooner or later it would have burst forth. The aristocratic and democratic elements in this government were destined, in the course of events, to come into open conflict….
Sources: “Discourse by Rev. Dr. Jeffery,” New York Times, August 7, 1863 (link); John N. Murdock, “Our civil war : its causes and its issues : a discourse delivered in the Baptist church, Brookline, on the occasion of the national thanksgiving, August 6, 1863” (link)
