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Milton with us, and pray with our prayer book, and who
gave us this mission, that we must abandon it, or aban-
don our communion with the civilization of the age.

Now fanaticism is always false, and no manifestation
of fanaticism since the world began ever exhibited such
a concentrated lie as that which is raising its hollow
outcry against the system of slavery as it exists in the
Southern States. And it is because of its hollow false-
hood that we must be the better prepared to refute its
scandal, and resist its aggressions, and give over its
followers to the infamous notoriety they have achieved,
while we preserve that system which saves us from the
sins and dangers growing naturally in the soil of Aboli-
tion.

In the States where this fanaticism is most rife, its
Associations seem to be the modern type of those pagan
mysteries which, under the plea of religious worship or
philanthropic purpose, practiced the most abdominable
and infamous license. I venture to assert that in none
of the mysteries of Hindostan, Persia or Greece, was the
debauchery of such gross moral turpitude as is daily
practiced, or directly resulting, from the Abolition So-
cieties. They have all the folly of Spiritualism, all the
beastliness of Mormonism. There is no exception to
this. Wherever a community resolves itself into an Ab-
olition Association, and demands that we shall give up
slavery, that instant, as if by natural forces, it becomes
the reservoir of all the contiguous vice and immorality.
The moment they demand of us to abolish slavery, in
the same breath they uniformly demand that the world
shall release them from all that binds man to God, and
all that is sacred between man and man. And such is
one of our enemies; but its despicable falsehood is our
strength rather than our weakness. There are other
extraneous enemies I might enumerate as demanding of
us strong muniments for our protection, but I will leave
them to be dealt with on another arena. The imme-
diate, predominant and distinct necessity which de-
mands of us such an institution as this University,
comes of the habitudes engendered by our climate, our
system of labor, and our relations, through it, to other
forms of society, and especially to the form of govern-

55

ment under which we must meet these incidents.
Where social restraints are limited solely by civil regula-
tions, unless the citizen is elevated by moral and intel-
lectual culture, social virtue, and consequently individ-
al and public morals, must degenerate.

With us, the segregation of the wealthy citizens leaves
very much to each man's sense of right, the preserva-
tion of order and the advance of society. Besides which
he is relegated almost entirely to his own resources for
the moral tone and the intellectual store which saves
him from vice and soothes his way of life. Never in any
previously existent form of society has the individual
citizen had such a dread responsibility as that which
pertains to the Southern planter; and he must meet it.
He cannot avoid it. His extraordinary duties are as
necessary, as imperative, as his daily food and clothing.
He must perform them or perish. And he cannot per-
form them efficiently for himself, or acceptably to his
country and his God, without the very highest moral
and intellectual culture. You cannot maintain this or-
der of things in which you find yourself placed, without
elevating your minds and hearts by precisely that nu-
triment which the University proposes to furnish.

But, again, take the area of the constituency of this
University, as indicated by a just explication of the
term "University of the South," and the earth scarcely
affords, in one mass, an equal extent of soil so fertile
and so fitted to the habitation and enjoyment of man.
Run a line, according to the unhappy political com-
promise of 1820, to the Rocky Mountains, and take the
Southern section for this area. It does seem to me if
ever an order of civilization may outshine the grandeur,
and outlive the ages of all the past, it must be this. So
perfectly, under our system, adapted as this region is to
the habitation and advance of man, that I cannot dis-
cern one, save one, element of decay. The first, the
chief, never ending necessity for the preservation of this
wonderful heritage is the true knowledge of God, and
the accumulating knowledge which He permits man to
gain and diffuse.

Be our system what it may--be our land never so fer-
tile--be our skies never so genial--without such knowl-