previous next


Edward Everett.

The furious war speech of Edward Everett on the 4th of July finds a complete refutation in a letter addressed by him to a great ‘"conciliation meeting,"’ held in Faneuil Hall, Boston, February 5th, 1861, just five months before. The following is an extract from that letter:

‘ ‘"To expect to hold fifteen States in the Union by force is preposterous. The idea of a civil war, accompanied, as it would be, by a servile insurrection, is too monstrous to be entertained for a moment. If our sister States must leave us, in the name of Heaven, let them go in peace."’

’ That is enough! The man who could utter the sentiments of that letter and then make the speech of the 4th of July, cannot respect himself, much less be held in respect by any one else.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Edward Everett (2)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
April, 7 AD (2)
February 5th, 1861 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: