New-England first formed those institutions which liberty requires for beneficient activity; and from her, both before and since the Revolution, they have been copied throughout the Land.
Henry Ward Beecher
The Public Record
Henry Ward Beecher was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, known for his support of the abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God's love, and his 1875 adultery trial. His rhetorical focus on the love of Christ has influenced mainstream Christianity through the 21st century.
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Having given to America its ideas and its institutions, I think the North is bound to stand by them.
For the last fifty years, upon the national platform have stood arrayed two champions in mortal antagonism--New-England and the near North--representing personal freedom, civil liberty, universal education, and a religious spirit which…
The New-England theory of Government has always been in its element--first, independent men; then democratic townships; next republican States, and, in the end, a Federated Union of Republican States.
Yet, New-England, strong at home, compact, educated, right-minded; has gradually lost influence, and the whole North with her.
The South, the truest representation of Absolutism under republican forms, is mightier in our National Councils and Policy to-day than New-England, the mother and representative of true republicanism and the whole free North.
And now it has come to pass that, in the good providence of God, another opportunity has been presented to the whole North to reassert her place and her influence, and to fill the institutions of our country with their original and proper…
But I think that God sent New-England to these shores as his own messenger of mercy to days and ages, that have yet far to come ere they are born!
She has not yet told this Continent all that is in her heart.
She has sat down like Bunyan's Pilgrim, and slept in the bower by the way, and where she slept she has left her roll--God grant that she hath not lost it there while she slumbered!
Is it my excited ear that hears an airy phantasm whispering? or do I hear a solemn voice crying out, "Arise?
If he must stand by what he is, how surely must he be given over to weakness, to abuse, to oppressions.