efficient as Beecher. The students of the
law-school had a pew in his little synagogue--it was after the fashion
of a square pew, with seats all around, and to this he would direct his
eye when pouring out his anathemas upon the South, Southern habits, and
Southern institutions; four out of five of the members of the school
were from the South.

It was his habit to ascribe the origin and practice of every vice to
slavery. Debauchery of every grade, name, and character, was born of
this, and though every one of these vices, in full practice, were
reeking under his nose, and permeating every class of his own people;
when seven out of every ten of the bawds of every brothel, from Maine
to the Sabine, were from New England, they were only odious in the
South. I remember upon one occasion he was dilating extensively upon
the vice of drunkenness, and accounting it as peculiar to the South,
and the direct offshoot of slavery, he exclaimed, with his eyes fixed
upon the students' pew: "Yes, my brethren, it is peculiar to the people
who foster the accursed institution of slavery, and so common is it in
the South, that the father who yields his daughter in wedlock, never
thinks of asking if her intended is a sober man. All he asks, or seems
desirous to know, is whether he is good-natured in his cups." Before
him sat his nest of young adders, growing up to inherit his religion,
talents, and vindictive spirit. Instilled into those from their cradles
were all the 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 cave