Boardman, Henry A. The American Union: A Discourse delivered on Thursday, December 12, 1850, the Day of the Annual Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania, and repeated on Thursday, December 19, at the Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo and Co., 1851. Sixth Edition. [9357]
9 x 5 3/4, lacks the wrapper, 56 clean pp. Good. Pamphlet.
After reviewing the history of the birth of the United States, Boardman treats with the possible dissolution of the Union over slavery. He blames both slaveholders and abolitionists.
"There are, however - the fact cannot be disguised - parties actually at work in endeavoring to destroy the Union. A party at the South and another party at the North, the poles apart in their speculative views of the subject which agitates them, and inflamed with a bitter mutual hostility, have virtually joined hands for the purpose of demolishing this government. This is not, indeed, as to one of these parties, the ostensible object they have in view; but it is essentially involved in that object, and they know it. They must, therefore, be held to the responsibility of aiming at a dissolution of the Union, equally with those inhabitants of the Southern States who avow this as their aim. The subject which has occasioned this commotion is SLAVERY. The Southern Disunionists would secede because Congress, at its late session, passed certain acts abridging, as they allege, the rights of the slaveholding States; and the Northern Disunionists insist upon the repeal of a law passed at the same time, entitled the Fugitive Slave Law, even though its abrogation should involve a dissolution of the Union.
Henry Augustus Boardman, D.D. (1808-1880), Presbyterian minister, born at Troy, New York. Dr. Boardman was the valedictorian of his Yale class in 1829, and he graduated at Princeton Seminary in 1833. His only pastorate was one of forty-six years at the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. He contributed several valuable books to the reading public. “Dr. Boardman was evangelical and elevated in his thoughts, and pure, simple, and direct in his style. His published works have been useful to the Church and honorable to his scholarship.” – M’Clintock & Strong.