Excerpt from Transactions of the Essex Agricultural Society, for the Year 1861

Since your last public festival, another year with its rolling seasons has passed away, and again we are gathered together, to hold friendly communion, to witness the result of each other's new experiences, to exchange congratulations upon what has been accomplished, to gather fresh courage for futnre labors, and reverently to acknowledge and devoutly to thank that kind Providence, which, sending the sunshine and the rain alike upon the just and the unjust, has smiled upon our efforts and has crowned all with his blessing. We meet to-day under circumstances peculiar and unparalleled in the history of this Society, now celebrating its forty-fourth anniversary. To be sure, all Nature is the same, - in none of her great operations has there been any change. No earthquake has shaken, no famine scourged the land, no pestilence has walked in the darkness or wasted at noon-day. The seasons have come and gone in their appointed order. Seed time and harvest have not failed. Upon the hills and valleys, the fields and mead ows, which, when we last met, were rejoicing in the ripening crops, and from which our barns and granaries were plenteous ly filled, descended as of old the white frost and mantling snows of winter. Then came once more the welcome spring, with its warm south winds and gentle rains, and swelling buds, and fresh verdure upon the hills, with all its new and won drous birth of vegetable life, till the summer's sun poured out its full effulgence to nourish the labor of man and ripen the fruits of the earth, - and until new again the autumn, in all her golden pomp has come, bearing in her bounteous arms the varied products of the soil, to reward the labors of the hus bandman and to gladden the hearts of the sons of toil.

But while nature has thus been the same, unvarying, benefi cent and true, in the political relations of men, in public affairs, a fearful revolution has sprung up, and is now in mid and mad career. Instead of being at peace with all the world, instead of living in harmony with each other, the United States are involved in a bloody war, -and worst of all, a war in which those who for so many years have dwelt in prosperity and happiness together, are contending. With and have turned their swords against each other. It is a war in which are in volved two momentous issues, perhaps the most momentous which have ever been staked in any struggle since Christian civilization began. The first issue is, whether the experiment, the last, greatest, best experiment of a free government, is a failure or a success; whether the hope of the world, the desire of ages, for which patriots in all times and in all lands have struggled and died, a Free Republic, - so vast in extent and rich in resources as to wield imperial power, so based upon jus tice and truth, imbued with knowledge and morality, and actuated by virtue and honor, as to exercise that power for the benefit of mankind, - whether such a republic can exist and survive, and go on culminating in glory and might, and be for a light and a joy to all the nations, or whether it must follow in the sad train of barbarous kingdoms and despotic powers, and like the dynasties which survive only in their crumbling ruins, go out in anarchy and blood. This is the issue in which all Christendom is interested.

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