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01 Letterandtoast for the Committee of the Paine Celebration,boston January 27, 1862 New York, New York The occasion of an invitation to the Paine Celebration in Boston provided an opportunity for Rose to make a freethinker’s case for action on the abolition of slavery. The freethinkers and secularists who attended these annual events regarded belief in religion as mental enslavement, the underlying cause of all other oppression. Thus, for ideological reasons or simply due to indifference or racism, they tended not to take action on abolition, preferring to focus first on freeing minds from superstition. Rose never felt she had to choose between these two essential struggles. During the Civil War years, in particular, she spoke with great passion on the antislavery issue, viewing emancipation as the only meaningful goal of the war. At the end of her letter, Rose appended a toast, presumably to be read at the celebration—which began with a fervent statement of support for the Union in the war, and ended with a demand for an “Edict of Emancipation.” Rose’s letter and her toast were published in the Boston Investigator on February 5, 1862. n New York, Jan., 27, 1862 To the Committee of the Paine Celebration, Boston: Dear Friends:—Your favor of the 23d came duly to hand. Please to accept our warmest thanks for your kind invitation. I need not dwell on the assurance that it would give us great pleasure could we avail ourselves of this favorable opportunity to enjoy with you the next annual festivity of the Paine Celebration, but, unfortunately, indisposition will not permit me to leave home at this inclement season of the year. Allow me, however , to assure you that though absent in person, we will be present with you in thought and feeling. Who that has Freedom at heart can be indifferent to the natal day of the Author of the “Rights of Man”—of one of the purest and most devoted champions of civil and religious Liberty? “These are the times that try men’s souls.” When the nation groans under the desolating effect of a civil war—a war instigated by the fiendish desire to subvert our free institutions to the use of slavery, and to trample the immortal declaration of human equality under foot, can we help recalling the following glowing and soul-stirring words of Thomas Paine, on contemplating the sad 0 ernestIne l.rose event of a departure from the principles of Freedom upon which alone a Republic can be maintained? In comparing such an event with the fall of ancient empires, he said:— “But when the Empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than decaying brass or crumbling marble can inspire. It will not then be said, Here stood a temple of vast antiquity, here rose a Babel of Invisible height, or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, oh! painful to relate, the noblest work of human wisdom, the greatest scene of human glory, the fair cause of Freedom rose and fell!” What Thomas Paine then deplored even in the distant possibility, was not the destruction of Fifth Avenue palaces, State Street mansions, the marble Capitol, or the White House, but the downfall of free institutions based upon the declaration of man’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Then let every friend of Thomas Paine resolve, like him, to devote himself to the promotion of human Freedom; and as the greater includes the lesser, remember that the first of rights is the right of man to himself, and in honoring the memory of Thomas Paine proclaim the rights of man without distinction of sex, country, or color. Permit me, with the above lines, to send to your celebration the following toast. Yours, with affection, Ernestine L. Rose [Toast to] The President, Cabinet, and Commander-in-Chief—The captain, mates, and pilot of the National Ship Republic—May they soon awaken from the lethargy in which the opiate of slavery has so long kept them, to the consciousness of the facts—1st, that there is a war; 2d, that it cannot be brought to a successful termination by the sugar-plums fired from Sherman’s pop-gun on the “hospitable shores” of South Carolina, but by bullets directed with a fearless and energetic hand; 3d, that no lasting peace and prosperity can be secured, until the primary cause of this civil war is removed, and as...

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