Churchill's speech was given on June 4, 1940 in Parliament to report the success of Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk. There was no audio recording from this speech although Churchill will record himself reciting the speech in 1949 with many parts of the original left out. From the moment that the French defences at Sedan and on the Meuse were broken at the end of the second week of May, only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the south could have saved the British and French Armies who had entered Belgium at the appeal of the Belgian King; but this strategic fact was not immediately realised. The French High Command hoped they would be able to close the gap, and the Armies of the north were under their orders. Moreover, a retirement of this kind would have involved almost certainly the destruction of the fine Belgian Army of over 20 divisions and the abandonment of the whole of Belgium. Therefore, when the force and scope of the German penetration were realised and when a new French Generalissimo, General Weygand, assumed command in place of General Gamelin, an effort was made by the French and British Armies in Belgium to keep on holding the right hand of the Belgians and to give their own right hand to a newly created French Army which was to have advanced across the Somme in great strength to grasp it. However, the German eruption swept like a sharp scythe around the right and rear of the Armies of the north. Eight or nine armoured divisions, each of about four hundred armoured vehicles of different kinds, but carefully assorted to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units, cut off all communications between us and the main French Armies. It severed our own communications for food and ammunition, which ran first to Amiens and afterwards through Abbeville, and it shore its way up the coast to Boulogne and Calais, and almost to Dunkirk. Behind this armoured and mechanised onslaught came a number of German divisions in lorries, and behind them again there plodded comparatively slowly the dull brute mass of the ordinary German Army and German people, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts which they have never known in their own. I have said this armoured scythe-stroke almost reached Dunkirk-almost but not quite. Boulogne and Calais were the scenes of desperate fighting. The Guards defended Boulogne for a while and were then withdrawn by orders from this country. The Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles, and the Queen Victoria’s Rifles, with a battalion of British tanks and 1,000 Frenchmen, in all about four thousand strong, defended Calais to the last. The British Brigadier was given an hour to surrender. He spurned the offer, and four days of intense street fighting passed before silence reigned over Calais, which marked the end of a memorable resistance. Only 30 unwounded survivors were brought off by the Navy, and we do not know the fate of their comrades. Their sacrifice, however, was not in vain. At least two armoured divisions, which otherwise would have been turned against the British Expeditionary Force, had to be sent to overcome them. They have added another page to the glories of the light divisions, and the time gained enabled the Graveline water lines to be flooded and to be held by the French troops. Thus it was that the port of Dunkirk was kept open. When it was found impossible for the Armies of the north to reopen their communications to Amiens with the main French Armies, only one choice remained. It seemed, indeed, forlorn. The Belgian, British and French Armies were almost surrounded. Their sole line of retreat was to a single port and to its neighbouring beaches. They were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and far outnumbered in the air. When, a week ago today, I asked the House to fix this afternoon as the occasion for a statement, I feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in our long history. I thought-and some good judges agreed with me-that perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 men might be re-embarked. But it certainly seemed that the whole of the French First Army and the whole of the British Expeditionary Force north of the Amiens-Abbeville gap would be broken up in the open field or else would have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition. These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called upon the House and the nation to prepare themselves a week ago. The whole root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great British Armies in the later years of the war, seemed about to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity. That was the prospect a week ago. But another blow which might well have proved final was yet to fall upon us. The King of the Belgians had called upon us to come to his aid. Had not this Ruler and his Government severed themselves from the Allies, who rescued their country from extinction in the late war, and had they not sought refuge in what was proved to be a fatal neutrality, the French and British Armies might well at the outset have saved not only Belgium but perhaps even Poland. Yet at the last moment, when Belgium was already invaded, King Leopold called upon us to come to his aid, and even at the last moment we came. He and his brave, efficient Army, nearly half a million strong, guarded our left flank and thus kept open our only line of retreat to the sea. Suddenly, without prior consultation, with the least possible notice, without the advice of his Ministers and upon his own personal act, he sent a plenipotentiary to the German Command, surrendered his Army, and exposed our whole flank and means of retreat. I asked the House a week ago to suspend its judgment because the facts were not clear, but I do not feel that any reason now exists why we should not form our own opinions upon this pitiful episode. The surrender of the Belgian Army compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea more than 30 miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off, and all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned the finest Army his country had ever formed. So in doing this and in exposing this flank, as anyone who followed the operations on the map will see, contact was lost between the British and two out of the three corps forming the First French Army, who were still farther from the coast than we were, and it seemed impossible that any large number of Allied troops could reach the coast. The enemy attacked on all sides with great strength and fierceness, and their main power, the power of their far more numerous Air Force, was thrown into the battle or else concentrated upon Dunkirk and the beaches. Pressing in upon the narrow exit, both from the east and from the west, the enemy began to fire with cannon upon the beaches by which alone the shipping could approach or depart. They sowed magnetic mines in the channels and seas; they sent repeated waves of hostile aircraft, sometimes more than a hundred strong in one formation, to cast their bombs upon the single pier that remained, and upon the sand dunes upon which the troops had their eyes for shelter. Their U-boats, one of which was sunk, and their motor launches took their toll of the vast traffic which now began. For four or five days an intense struggle reigned. All their armoured divisions-or what Was left of them-together with great masses of infantry and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon the ever-narrowing, ever-contracting appendix within which the British and French Armies fought. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy, with the willing help of countless merchant seamen, strained every nerve to embark the British and Allied troops; 220 light warships and 650 other vessels were engaged. They had to operate upon the difficult coast, often in adverse weather, under an almost ceaseless hail of bombs and an increasing concentration of artillery fire. Nor were the seas, as I have said, themselves free from mines and torpedoes. It was in conditions such as these that our men carried on, with little or no rest, for days and nights on end, making trip after trip across the dangerous waters, bringing with them always men whom they had rescued. The numbers they have brought back are the measure of their devotion and their courage. The hospital ships, which brought off many thousands of British and French wounded, being so plainly marked were a special target for Nazi bombs; but the men and women on board them never faltered in their duty. Meanwhile, the Royal Air Force, which had already been intervening in the battle, so far as its range would allow, from home bases, now used part of its main metropolitan fighter strength, and struck at the German bombers and at the fighters which in large numbers protected them. This struggle was protracted and fierce. Suddenly the scene has cleared, the crash and thunder has for the moment-but only for the moment-died away. A miracle of deliverance, achieved by valor, by perseverance, by perfect discipline, by faultless service, by resource, by skill, by unconquerable fidelity, is manifest to us all. The enemy was hurled back by the retreating British and French troops. He was so roughly handled that he did not harry their departure seriously. The Royal Air Force engaged the main strength of the German Air Force, and inflicted upon them losses of at least four to one; and the Navy, using nearly 1,000 ships of all kinds, carried over 335,000 men, French and British, out of the jaws of death and shame, to their native land and to the tasks which lie immediately ahead. We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations. But there was a victory inside this deliverance, which should be noted. It was gained by the Air Force. Many of our soldiers coming back have not seen the Air Force at work; they saw only the bombers which escaped its protective attack. They underrate its achievements. I have heard much talk of this; that is why I go out of my way to say this. I will tell you about it.   This was a great trial of strength between the British and German Air Forces. Can you conceive a greater objective for the Germans in the air than to make evacuation from these beaches impossible, and to sink all these ships which were displayed, almost to the extent of thousands? Could there have been an objective of greater military importance and significance for the whole purpose of the war than this? They tried hard, and they were beaten back; they were frustrated in their task. We got the Army away; and they have paid fourfold for any losses which they have inflicted. Very large formations of German aeroplanes-and we know that they are a very brave race-have turned on several occasions from the attack of one-quarter of their number of the Royal Air Force, and have dispersed in different directions. Twelve aeroplanes have been hunted by two. One aeroplane was driven into the water and cast away by the mere charge of a British aeroplane, which had no more ammunition. All of our types-the Hurricane, the Spitfire and the new Defiant-and all our pilots have been vindicated as superior to what they have at present to face. When we consider how much greater would be our advantage in defending the air above this Island against an overseas attack, I must say that I find in these facts a sure basis upon which practical and reassuring thoughts may rest. I will pay my tribute to these young airmen. The great French Army was very largely, for the time being, cast back and disturbed by the onrush of a few thousands of armoured vehicles. May it not also be that the cause of civilisation itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen? There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past-not only distant but prosaic; these young men, going forth every morn to guard their native land and all that we stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and shattering power, of whom it may be said that: Every morn brought forth a noble chanceAnd every chance brought forth a noble knight,deserve our gratitude, as do all the brave men who, in so many ways and on so many occasions, are ready, and continue ready to give life and all for their native land. I return to the Army. In the long series of very fierce battles, now on this front, now on that, fighting on three fronts at once, battles fought by two or three divisions against an equal or somewhat larger number of the enemy, and fought fiercely on some of the old grounds that so many of us knew so well-in these battles our losses in men have exceeded 30,000 killed, wounded and missing. I take occasion to express the sympathy of the House to all who have suffered bereavement or who are still anxious. The President of the Board of Trade [Sir Andrew Duncan] is not here today. His son has been killed, and many in the House have felt the pangs of affliction in the sharpest form. But I will say this about the missing: We have had a large number of wounded come home safely to this country, but I would say about the missing that there may be very many reported missing who will come back home, some day, in one way or another. In the confusion of this fight it is inevitable that many have been left in positions where honor required no further resistance from them. Against this loss of over 30,000 men, we can set a far heavier loss certainly inflicted upon the enemy. But our losses in material are enormous. We have perhaps lost one-third of the men we lost in the opening days of the battle of 21st March, 1918, but we have lost nearly as many guns — nearly one thousand-and all our transport, all the armoured vehicles that were with the Army in the north. This loss will impose a further delay on the expansion of our military strength. That expansion had not been proceeding as far as we had hoped. The best of all we had to give had gone to the British Expeditionary Force, and although they had not the numbers of tanks and some articles of equipment which were desirable, they were a very well and finely equipped Army. They had the first-fruits of all that our industry had to give, and that is gone. And now here is this further delay. How long it will be, how long it will last, depends upon the exertions which we make in this Island. An effort the like of which has never been seen in our records is now being made. Work is proceeding everywhere, night and day, Sundays and week days. Capital and Labor have cast aside their interests, rights, and customs and put them into the common stock. Already the flow of munitions has leaped forward. There is no reason why we should not in a few months overtake the sudden and serious loss that has come upon us, without retarding the development of our general program. Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our Army and so many men, whose loved ones have passed through an agonising week, must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster. The French Army has been weakened, the Belgian Army has been lost, a large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith had been reposed is gone, many valuable mining districts and factories have passed into the enemy’s possession, the whole of the Channel ports are in his hands, with all the tragic consequences that follow from that, and we must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or at France. We are told that Herr Hitler has a plan for invading the British Isles. This has often been thought of before. When Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his Grand Army, he was told by someone. “There are bitter weeds in England.” There are certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary Force returned. The whole question of home defense against invasion is, of course, powerfully affected by the fact that we have for the time being in this Island incomparably more powerful military forces than we have ever had at any moment in this war or the last. But this will not continue. We shall not be content with a defensive war. We have our duty to our Ally. We have to reconstitute and build up the British Expeditionary Force once again, under its gallant Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gort. All this is in train; but in the interval we must put our defences in this Island into such a high state of organisation that the fewest possible numbers will be required to give effective security and that the largest possible potential of offensive effort may be realised. On this we are now engaged. It will be very convenient, if it be the desire of the House, to enter upon this subject in a secret Session. Not that the government would necessarily be able to reveal in very great detail military secrets, but we like to have our discussions free, without the restraint imposed by the fact that they will be read the next day by the enemy; and the Government would benefit by views freely expressed in all parts of the House by Members with their knowledge of so many different parts of the country. I understand that some request is to be made upon this subject, which will be readily acceded to by His Majesty’s Government. We have found it necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not only against enemy aliens and suspicious characters of other nationalities, but also against British subjects who may become a danger or a nuisance should the war be transported to the United Kingdom. I know there are a great many people affected by the orders which we have made who are the passionate enemies of Nazi Germany. I am very sorry for them, but we cannot, at the present time and under the present stress, draw all the distinctions which we should like to do. If parachute landings were attempted and fierce fighting attendant upon them followed, these unfortunate people would be far better out of the way, for their own sakes as well as for ours. There is, however, another class, for which I feel not the slightest sympathy. Parliament has given us the powers to put down Fifth Column activities with a strong hand, and we shall use those powers subject to the supervision and correction of the House, without the slightest hesitation until we are satisfied, and more than satisfied, that this malignancy in our midst has been effectively stamped out. Turning once again, and this time more generally, to the question of invasion, I would observe that there has never been a period in all these long centuries of which we boast when an absolute guarantee against invasion, still less against serious raids, could have been given to our people. In the days of Napoleon the same wind which would have carried his transports across the Channel might have driven away the blockading fleet. There was always the chance, and it is that chance which has excited and befooled the imaginations of many Continental tyrants. Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye. We must never forget the solid assurances of sea power and those which belong to air power if it can be locally exercised. I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old. Source: https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches/

June 1, 1865 Delivered by Charles Sumner in Boston In the universe of God there are no accidents. From the fall of a sparrow to the fall of an empire or the sweep of a planet, all is according to Divine Providence, whose laws are everlasting. No accident gave to his country the patriot we now honor. No accident snatched this patriot, so suddenly and so cruelly, from his sub-lime duties. Death is as little an accident as life. Never, perhaps, in history has this Providence been more conspicuous than in that recent procession of events, where the final triumph is wrapped in the gloom of tragedy. It is our present duty to find the moral of this stupendous drama. For the second time in our annals, the country is summoned by the President to unite, on an appointed day, in commemorating the life and character of the dead. The first was on the death of George Washington, when, as now, a day was set apart for simultaneous eulogy throughout the land, and cities, towns, and villages all vied in tribute, Since this early observance for the Father of his Country more than half a century has passed, and now it is repeated in memory of Abraham Lincoln. Thus are Washington and Lincoln associated in the grandeur of their obsequies. But this is not accidental. It is from the nature of things, and because the part Lincoln was called to perform resembled in character the part performed by Washington. The work left undone by Washington was continued by Lincoln. Kindred, in service, kindred in patriotism, each is surrounded in death by kindred homage. One sleeps in the East, the other sleeps in the West; and thus, in death, as in life, one is the complement of the other. The two might be compared after the manner of Plutarch; but it must suffice for the present to glance only at points of resemblance and of contrast, so as to recall the parts they respectively performed. Each was head of the Republic during a period of surpassing trial; and each thought only of the public good, simply, purely, constantly, so that single-hearted devotion to country will always find a synonym in their names. Each was national chief during a time of successful war. Each was representative of his country at a great epoch of history. Here, perhaps, resemblance ends and contrast begins. Unlike in origin, conversation, and character, they were unlike also in the ideas they served, except as each was servant of his country. The war conducted by Washington was unlike the war conducted by Lincoln, as the peace which crowned the arms of the one was unlike the peace which began to smile upon the other. The two wars did not differ in scale of operations and in tramp of mustered hosts more than in the ideas involved. The first was for National Independence; the second was to make the Republic one and indivisible, on the indestructible foundation of Liberty and Equality. The first cut the connection with the mother country, and opened the way to the duties and advantages of Popular Government; the second will have failed, unless it consummates all the original promises of the Declaration our fathers took upon their lips when they became a Nation. In the relation of cause and effect the first was natural precursor and herald of the second. National Independence became the first epoch in our history, whose mighty import was exhibited when Lafayette boasted to the First Consul of France, that, though its battles were but skirmishes, they decided the fate of the world. The Declaration of our fathers, entitled simply “The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America,” is known familiarly as the Declaration of Independence, because the remarkable words with which it concludes made independence the final idea, to which all else was tributary. Thus did the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled solemnly publish and declare “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved;…and for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” To sustain this mutual pledge Washington drew his sword and led the national armies, until at last, by the Treaty of Peace in 1783, Independence was acknowledged. Had the Declaration been confined to this pledge, it would have been less grand. Much as it might have been to us, it would have been less of a warning and trumpet-note to the world. There were two other pledges it made. One was proclaimed in the designation “United States of America,” which it adopted as the national name; and the other was proclaimed in those great words, fit for the baptismal vows of a Republic,–“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” By the sword of Washington Independence was secured; but the Unity of the Republic and the principles of the Declaration were left exposed to question. From that early day, through various chances, they were assailed and openly dishonored, until at last the Republic was constrained to take up arms in their defence. And yet, since enmity to the Union proceeded entirely from enmity to the great ideas of the Declaration, history must record that the question of the Union itself was absorbed in the grander conflict to uphold the primal truths our fathers had solemnly proclaimed. Such are the two great wars where these two chiefs bore each his part. Washington fought for National Independence, and triumphed, making his country an example of mankind. Lincoln drew a reluctant sword to save those great ideas, essential to the life and character of the Republic, which unhappily the sword of Washington failed to put beyond the reach of assault. By no accident did these two great men become representatives of their country at these two different epochs, so alike in peril, and yet so unlike in the principles involved. Washington was the natural representative of National Independence. He might also have represented National Unity, had this principle been challenged to bloody battle during his life; for nothing was nearer his heart than the consolidation of our Union, which in his letter to Congress transmitting the Constitution, he declares to be “the greatest interest of every true American.” Then again, in a remarkable letter to John Jay, he plainly says that he does “not conceive we can exist long as a nation without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner as the authority of the State governments extends over the several States.” But another person was needed, of different birth and simpler life, to represent the ideas now impugned. Washington was of ancient family, traced in English heraldry. Some of his ancestors sleep in close companionship with the noble name of Spencer. By inheritance and marriage he was rich in lands, and, let it be said in respectful sorrow, rich also in slaves, so far as slaves breed riches rather than curses. At the age of fourteen he refused a commission as midshipman in the British Navy. At the age of nineteen he was Adjutant General, with the rank of major. At the age of twenty-one he was selected by the British Governor of Virginia as Commissioner to the French posts. At the age of twenty-two he was at the head of a regiment, and was thanked by the House of Burgesses. Early in life he became an observer of forma and ceremony. Always strictly just, according to prevailing principles, and at his death ordering the emancipation of his slaves, he was more a general and statesman than philanthropist; nor did he seem inspired, beyond the duties of patriotism, to active sympathy with Human Rights. In the ample record of what he wrote or said there is no word of adhesion to the great ideas of the Declaration. Such an origin, such an early life, such opportunities, such a condition, such a character, were all in contrast with the origin, early life, opportunities, condition, and character of him we commemorate to-day. Abraham Lincoln was born, and, until he became President, always lived in a part of the country which at the period of the Declaration of Independence was a savage wilderness. Strange, but happy, Providence, that a voice from that savage wilderness, now fertile in men, was inspired to uphold the pledges and promises of the Declaration! The Unity of the Republic, on the indestructible foundation of Liberty and Equality, was vindicated by the citizen of a community which had no existence when the Republic was formed. His family may be traced to Quaker stock in Pennsylvania, but it removed first to Virginia, and then, as early as 1780, to the wilds of Kentucky, which at that time was only an outlying territory of Virginia. His grandfather and father both lived in peril from Indians, and the former perished by their knife. The future President was born in a log-house. His mother could read, and perhaps write. His father could do neither, except so far as to sign his name rudely, like a noble of Charlemagne. Trial, privation, and labor entered into his early life. Only at seven years of age, for a very brief period, could he enjoy school, carrying with him Dilworth’s Spelling-Book, one of the three volumes that formed the family library. Shortly afterwards his father turned his back upon that Slavery which disfigured Kentucky, and placing his poor effects upon a raft which his son had helped him construct, set his face towards Indiana, already guarded against Slavery by the famous Northwestern Ordinance. In this painful journey the son, who was only eight years old, bore his share of the burdens. On reaching the chosen home in a land of Liberty, the son aided his father in building the cabin, composed of logs fastened together by notches, and filled in with mud, where for twelve years afterwards he grew in character and knowledge, as in stature, learning to write as well as read, and especially enjoying Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Aesop’s Fables, Weems’s Life of Washington, and the Life of Henry Clay. At the age of ten he lost his mother. At the age of nineteen he became a hired hand, at $10 dollars a month, on a flatboat laden with stores for the plantations on the Mississippi, and in this way floated on that lordly river to New Orleans, little dreaming that only a few years later iron-clad navies would at his command float on that same proud stream. Here also was he learner. From the slaves he saw on the banks he took a lesson of Liberty, which gained new charms by comparison with Slavery. In 1830 the father removed to Illinois, transporting his goods in a wagon drawn by oxen, and the future President, then twenty-one years of age, drove the team. Another cabin was built in primitive rudeness, and the future President split the rails for the fence to inclose the lot. These rails have become classical in our history, and the name of rail-splitter has been more than the degree of a college,–not that the splitting of rails is any way meritorious, but because the people are proud to trace aspiring talent back to humble beginnings, and they found in this tribute new opportunity to vindicate the dignity of free labor, and repel the insolent pretensions of Slavery. His youth was now spent, and at the age of twenty-one he left his father’s house to begin the world. A small bundle, a laughing face, and an honest heart,—these were his simple possessions, together with that unconscious character and intelligence which his country afterwards learned prize. In the long history of worth depressed there is no instance of such contrast between the depression and the triumph,—unless, perhaps, his successor as President may share with him this distinction. No academy, no university, no Alma Mater of science or learning had nourished him. No government had taken him by the hand and given him the gift of opportunity. No inheritance of land or money had fallen to him. No friend stood by his side. He was alone in poverty: and yet not all alone. There was God above, who watches all, and does not desert the lowly. Plain in person, life, and manners, and knowing absolutely nothing of form or ceremony, for six months with a village schoolmaster as his only teacher, he grew up in companionship with the people, with Nature, with trees, with the fruitful corn, and with the stars. While yet a child, his father had borne him away from a soil wasted by Slavery, and he was now citizen of a Free State, where Free Labor had been placed under safeguard of irreversible compact and fundamental law. And thus he took leave of youth, happy at least that he could go forth under the day-star of Liberty. The early hardships were prolonged into manhood. He labored on a farm as hired hand, and then a second time in a flatboat measured the winding Mississippi to its mouth. At the call of the Governor of Illinois for troops against Black Hawk, the Indian chief, he sprang forward with patriotic ardor, most prompt to enlist at the recruiting station in his neighborhood. The choice of his associates made him captain. After the war he became surveyor, and to his death retained a practical and scientific knowledge of this business. Here again was a parallel with Washington. In 1834 he was elected to the Legislature of Illinois, and three years later was admitted to the practice of the law. He was now twenty-eight years old, and, under the benignant influence of republican institutions, he had already entered upon the double career of lawyer and legislator, with the gates of the mysterious Future slowly opening before him. How well he served in these two characters I need not stop to tell. It is enough, if I exhibit the stages of advance, that you may understand how he became representative of his country at so grand a moment of history. It is needless to say that his opportunities of study as a lawyer were small, but he was industrious in each individual case, and thus daily added to his stores of professional experience. Faithful in all things, most conscientious in conduct at the bar, so that he could not be unfair to the other side, and admirably sensitive to the behests of justice, so that he could not argue on the wrong side, he acquired a name for honesty, which, beginning with the community where he lived, became proverbial throughout his State,—while his genial, mirthful, overflowing nature, apt at anecdote and story, made him, where personally known, a favorite companion. His opinions on public questions were formed early, under the example and teaching of Henry Clay, and he never departed from them, though constantly tempted, or pressed by local majorities, in the name of a false democracy. It is interesting to know that thus early he espoused those two ideas which entered so largely into the terrible responsibilities of his last years,—I mean the Unity of the Republic, and the supreme value of Liberty. He did not believe that a State, in its own mad will, had a right to break up this Union. As reader of Congressional speeches, and student of what was said by the political teachers of that day, he was no stranger to those marvelous efforts of Daniel Webster, when, in reply to the treasonable pretensions of Nullification, the great orator of Massachusetts asserted the indestructibility of the Union, and the folly of those who assail it. On the subject of Slavery, he had the experience of his own family and the warnings of his own conscience. Naturally, one of his earliest acts in the Legislature of Illinois was a protest in the name of Liberty. At a later day, he was in Congress for a single term, beginning in December, 1847, being the only Whig Representative from Illinois. His speeches during this brief period have the characteristics of his later productions. They are argumentative, logical, and spirited, with quaint humor and sinewy sententiousness. His votes were constant against Slavery. For the Wilmot Proviso he voted, according to his own statement, “in one way and another, about forty times.” His vote is recorded against the pretence that slaves are property under the Constitution. From Congress he passed again to his profession. The day was at hand, when all his powers, enlarged by experience and quickened to highest activity, would be needed to repel that haughty domination already overshadowing the Republic. The next field of conflict was in his own State, with no less an antagonist than Stephen A. Douglas, at that time in alliance with the Slave Power. The too famous Kansas and Nebraska Bill, introduced by the latter into the Senate, assumed to set aside the venerable safeguard of Freedom in the territory west of Missouri, under pretence of allowing the inhabitants “to vote Slavery up or to vote it down,” and this barbarous privilege was called by the fancy name of Popular Sovereignty. The champion of Liberty did not hesitate to denounce this most baleful measure in a series of popular addresses, where truth, sentiment, humor, and argument all blended. As the conflict continued, he was brought forward for the Senate against the able author of this measure. The debate that ensued is one of the most memorable in our political history, whether we consider the principles involved or the way it was conducted. It commenced with a close, well-woven speech from the Republican candidate, showing insight into the actual condition of things, in which were these memorable words: “’A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” Here was the true starting-point. Only a few days before his death, in reply to my inquiry, if at the time he had any doubt about this declaration, he said, “Not in the least. It was clearly true, and time has justified me.” With like plainness he exposed the Douglas pretence of Popular Sovereignty as meaning simply, “that, if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object,” and he announced his belief in “the existence of a conspiracy to perpetuate and nationalize Slavery,” of which the Kansas and Nebraska Bill and the Dred Scott decision were essential parts. Such was the character of this debate at the beginning, and so it continued on the lips of our champion to the end. The inevitable topic to which he returned with most frequency, and to which he clung with all the grasp of his soul, was the practical character of the Declaration of Independence in announcing the Liberty and Equality of all Men. No idle words were there, but substantial truth, binding on the conscience of mankind. I know not if this grand pertinacity has been noticed before; but I deem it my duty to say, that to my mind it is by far the most important feature of that controversy, and one of the most interesting incidents in the biography of the speaker. Nothing previous to his nomination for the Presidency is comparable to it. Plainly his whole subsequent career took impulse and complexion from that championship. And here, too, is our first debt of gratitude. The words he then uttered live after him, and nobody can hear of that championship without feeling a new motive to fidelity in in the cause of Liberty and Equality. As early as 1854, in a speech at Peoria against the Kansas and Nebraska Bill, after denouncing Slavery as a “monstrous injustice,” which enables the enemies of free institutions to taunt us as hypocrites, and causes the real friends of Freedom to doubt our sincerity, he complains especially that “it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence.” Thus, according to him, was criticism of the Declaration of Independence the climax of infidelity as citizen. Mr. Douglas opened the debate, on his side, at Chicago, July 9, 1858, by a speech, where he said, among other things, “I am opposed to negro equality. I repeat, that this nation is a white people….I am opposed to taking any step that recognizes the negro man or the Indian as the equal of the white man. I am opposed to giving him a voice in the administration of the Government.” Thus was the case stated on the side of Slavery. To this speech the Republican candidate replied the next evening, and he did not forget his championship of the Declaration. Quoting the great words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” he proceeds to say:– “This is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.—I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal, upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean the negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that Declaration is not the truth, let us get the statute-book in which we find it and tear it out. Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true, let us tear in out [ Cries of “No, no!” ] Let us stick to it, then; let us stand firmly by it, then.” Noble words, worthy of perpetual memory! And he finished his speech with a farewell truly apostolic:– “I leave you, hoping that the lamp of Liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.” He has left us now, and for the last time, and I catch the closing benediction of that speech, already sounding through the ages, like a choral harmony. The debate continued from place to place. At Bloomington, July 16th, Mr. Douglas denied again that colored persons could be citizens, and then broke forth upon the champion:— “I will not quarrel with Mr. Lincoln for his views on that subject. I have no doubt he is conscientious in them. I have not the slightest idea but that he conscientiously believes that a negro ought to enjoy and exercise all the rights and privileges given to white men; but I do not agree with him…. I believe that this government of ours was founded on the white basis. I believe that it was established by white men. . . . I do not believe that it was the design or intention of the signers of the Declaration of Independence or the framers of the Constitution to include negroes, Indians, or other inferior races, with white men, as citizens. . . . He wants them to vote. I am opposed to it. If they had a vote, I reckon they would all vote for him in preference to me, entertaining the views I do.” Then again at Springfield, the next day, Mr. Douglas repeated his denial that the colored man was embraced by the Declaration of Independence, and thus argued for the exclusion:— “Remember that at the time the Declaration was put forth, every one of the Thirteen Colonies were slaveholding colonies,—every man who signed that Declaration represented slaveholding constituents. Did those signers mean by that act to charge themselves and all their constituents with having violated the law of God in holding the negro in an inferior condition to the white man? And yet, if they included negroes in that term, they were bound, as conscientious men, that day and that hour, not only to have abolished Slavery throughout the land, but to have conferred political rights and privileges on the negro, and elevated him to an equality with the white man. . . . The Declaration of Independence only included the white people of the United States.” On the same evening, at Springfield, the Republican candidate, while admitting that negroes are not “our equals in color,” thus again spoke for the comprehensive humanity of the Declaration:— “I adhere to the Declaration of Independence. If Judge Douglas and his friends are not willing to stand by it, let them come up and amend it. Let them make it read, that all men are created equal except negroes. Let us have it decided, whether the Declaration of Independence, in this blessed year of 1858, shall be thus amended. In his construction of the Declaration last year, he said it only meant that Americans in America were equal to Englishman in England. Then, when I pointed out to him that by that rule he excludes the Germans, the Irish, the Portuguese, and all the other people who have come amongst us since the Revolution, he reconstructs his construction. In his last speech he tells us it meant Europeans. I press him a little further, and ask if it meant to include the Russians in Asia. Or does he mean to exclude that vast population from the principles of our Declaration of Independence? I expect erelong he will introduce another amendment to his definition. He is not at all particular. . . . It may draw white men down, but it must not lift negroes up.” Words like these are gratefully remembered. They make the Declaration, what the Fathers intended, no mean proclamation of oligarchic egotism, but a charter and freehold for all mankind. At Ottawa, August 21st, Mr. Douglas, still excluding the colored men from the Declaration, exclaimed:— “I believe this Government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever.” Again the Republican champion took up the strain. “Henry Clay once said of a class of men who would repress all tendencies to Liberty and ultimate Emancipation, that they must, if they would do this, go back to the era of our Independence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return,—they must blow out the moral lights around us,—they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate there the love of Liberty; and then, and not till then, could they perpetuate Slavery in this country. To my thinking, Judge Douglas is, by his example and vast influence, doing that very thing in this community, when he says that the negro has nothing in the Declaration of Independence.” At Jonesboro, September 15th, Mr. Douglas once more assailed the rights of the colored race. “I am aware that all the Abolition lecturers that you find travelling about through the country are in the habit of reading the Declaration of Independence to prove that all men were created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Mr. Lincoln is very much in the habit of following in the track of Lovejoy in this particular, by reading that part of the Declaration of Independence to prove that the negro was endowed by the Almighty with the inalienable right of equality with white men. Now I say to you, my fellow-citizens, that, in my opinion, the signers of the Declaration had no reference to the negro whatever, when they declared all men to be created equal.” At Galesburg, October 7th, the future president again upheld the Declaration:– “The Judge has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, and insisted that negroes are not included in that Declaration, and that it is a slander upon the framers of that instrument to suppose that negroes were meant therein; and he asks you, Is it possible to believe that Mr. Jefferson, who penned the immortal paper, could have supposed himself applying the language of that instrument to the negro race, and yet held a portion of that race in slavery? Would he not at once have freed them? I only have to remark upon this part of the Judge’s speech, that I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration. And I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience, that, while Mr. Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject, he used the strong language, that ’he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just.’” And at Alton, October 15th, he renewed this same testimony. “I assert that Judge Douglas and all his friends may search the whole records of the country, and it will be a matter of great astonishment to me, if they shall be able to find that one human being three years ago had ever uttered the astounding sentiment that the term ’all men’ in the Declaration did not include the negro. Do not let me be misunderstood. I know that more than three years ago there were men, who, finding this assertion constantly in the way of their schemes to bring about the ascendency and perpetuation of Slavery, denied the truth of it. I know that Mr. Calhoun, and all the politicians of his school, denied the truth of the Declaration. I know that it ran along in the mouth of some Southern men for a period of years, ending at last in that shameful, though rather forcible, declaration of Pettit, of Indiana, upon the floor of the United States Senate, that the Declaration of Independence was, in that respect, ’a self-evident lie,’ rather than a self-evident truth. But I say, with a perfect knowledge of all this hawking at the Declaration without directly attacking it, that three years ago there never lived a man who had ventured to assail it in the sneaking way of pretending to believe it, and then asserting it did not include the negro.” In another speech, during the same political contest, the champion spoke immortal words. After setting forth the sublime opening of the Declaration by our fathers, he said:— “This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the universe. This was their lofty and wise and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures,—yes, Gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man.” Lifted by the cause in which he was engaged, he appealed to his fellow-countrymen in tones of pathetic eloquence:— “Think nothing of me, take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever, but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man’s success. It is nothing. I am nothing. Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of Independence.” Thus, at that early day, before war had overshadowed the land, was he ready for the sacrifice. “Take me and put me to death,” said he, “but do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of Independence.” He has been put to death by the enemies of the Declaration; but, though dead, he will continue to guard that great title-deed of the human race. The debate ended. An immense vote was cast. There were 126,084 votes for the Republican candidates, 121,940 for the Douglas candidates, and 5,091 for the Lecompton candidates, another class of Democrats; but the supporters of Mr. Douglas had a majority of eight on joint ballot in the Legislature, and he was reelected to the Senate. Again returned to his profession, the future President did not forget the Declaration of Independence. To the Republicans of Boston, who had invited him to unite with them in celebrating the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, he sent an answer, under date of April 6, 1859, which is a gem in political literature, and here also he asserts the supremacy of those truths for which he had battled so well. In him the West spoke to the East, pleading for Human Rights, as declared by our fathers. “But, soberly, it is now no child’s play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation.“One would state with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail utterly with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society and yet they are denied and evaded with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them ’glittering generalities’; another bluntly calls them ’self-evident lies’; and others insidiously argue that they apply only to ’superior races.’ “These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect,—the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people. They are the vanguard, the miners and sappers of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. “This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. “All honor to Jefferson,—the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the  harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression!” Next winter the Western champion appeared at New York, and in a remarkable address at the Cooper Institute, February 27, 1860, vindicated the policy of the Fathers and the principles of the Republican party. Showing with curious skill and minuteness the original understanding on the power of Congress over Slavery in the Territories, he demonstrated that the Republican party was not in any just sense sectional; and then exposed the perils from the pretensions of slave-masters, who, not content with requiring that “we must arrest and return their slaves with greedy pleasure,” insisted that the Constitution must be so interpreted as to uphold the idea of property in man. The whole address was subdued and argumentative, while each sentence was like a driven nail, with a concluding rally that was a bugle-call to the lovers of right. “Let us have faith,” said he, “that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand.” A few months later, this champion of the Right, who would not see the colored man shut out from the promises of the Declaration, and insisted upon the exclusion of Slavery from the Territories, after summoning his countrymen to their duty, was nominated by a great political party as candidate for President. Local considerations, securing to him the support of certain States beyond any other candidate, exercised a final influence in determining this selection; but it is easy to see how, from position, character, and origin, he was at that moment especially the representative of his country. The Unity of the Republic was menaced: he was from that vast controlling Northwest which would never renounce its communications with the sea, whether by the Mississippi or by eastern avenues. The birthday Declaration of the Republic was dishonored in the denial of its primal truths: he was already known as a volunteer in its defence. Republican institutions were in jeopardy: he was the child of humble life, through whom republican institutions would stand confessed. These things, so obvious now in the light of history, were less apparent then in the turmoil of party. But that Providence in whose hands are the destinies of nations, which had found out Washington to conduct his country through the War of Independence, now found out Lincoln to wage the new battle for the Unity of the Republic on the foundations of Liberty and Equality. The election took place. Of the popular votes, Abraham Lincoln received 1,866,452, represented by 180 electoral ballots; Stephen A. Dougals received 1,375,157, represented by 12 electoral ballots; John C. Breckinridge received 847,953, represented by 72 electoral ballots; and John Bell received 590,631, represented by 39 electoral ballots. By this vote Abraham Lincoln became President. The triumph at the ballot-box was flashed by telegraph over the whole country, form north to south, from east to west. It was answered by defiance from the Slave-Masters, speaking in the name of State Rights and for the sake of Slavery. The declared will of the American people, registered at the ballot-box, was set at nought. The conspiracy of years blazed into day. The National Government, which Alexander H. Stephens characterized as “the best and freest government, the most equal in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and the most aspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men, that the sun of heaven ever shone upon,” and which Jefferson Davis himself pronounced “the best government which has ever been instituted by man,”—that National Government, thus painted even by its enemies, was spurned. South Carolina jumped forward first in crime; and before the elected President turned his face from the beautiful Western prairies to enter upon his dangerous duties, State after State had undertaken to abandon its place in the Union, Senator after Senator had dropped from his seat, fort after fort had been seized, and the mutterings of war had begun to fill the air, while the actual President, besotted by Slavery, tranquilly witnessed the gigantic treason, as he sat at ease in the Executive Mansion—and did nothing. It was time for another to come upon the scene. You cannot forget how he left his village home, never to return, except under the escort of Death. In words of farewell to neighbors thronging about him, he dedicated himself to his country and solemnly invoked the aid of Divine Providence. “I know not,” he said, “how soon I shall see you again”; and then, with prophetic voice, announced that a duty devolved upon him “greater than that which has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington,” and asked his friends to pray that he might receive that Divine assistance, without which he could not succeed, but with which success was certain. To power and fame others have gone forth with gladness and with song: he went forth prayerfully as to a sacrifice. Nor can you forget how at each resting-place on the road he renewed his vows, and when at Independence Hall his soul broke forth in homage to the vital truths there declared. Of all that he said on the journey to the national Capital, after farewell to his neighbors, there is nothing so prophetic as these unpremeditated words:— “All the Political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated in, and were given to the world from, this Hall. I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.—Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I shall consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on the spot.” Then, after adding that he had not expected to say a word, he repeated the consecration of his life, exclaiming, “I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by.” He was about to raise the national banner over the old Hall. But before this service, he took up the strain he loved so well, saying: “It is on such an occasion as this that we can reason together, reaffirm our devotion to the country and the principles of the Declaration of Independence.” Thus constantly did he bear testimony. Surely this grand fidelity will be ever counted among his chief glories. I know nothing in history more touching, especially when we consider that this devotion caused his sacrifice. “Were there as many devils in Worms as there are tiles upon the roofs, I would enter,” said Luther. Our reformer was less defiant, but hardly less determined. Three times had he announced that for the great truths of the Declaration he was willing to die; three times had he offered himself to this martyrdom. Slavery was already pursuing his life. An attempt was made to throw his train from the track, while a secreted hand-grenade further betrayed the diabolical purpose. Baltimore, directly on his way, was the seat of a murderous plot. Avoiding the conspirators, he came from Philadelphia to Washington unexpectedly in—the night,—and thus, for the moment cheating Assassination of its victim, entered the National Capital. From this time forward his career broadens into the history of his country and of the age. You all know it. Therefore a few glimpses will be enough, that I may exhibit its moral rather than its story. The Inaugural Address, the formation of his Cabinet, his earliest acts, his daily conversation, all attested to the spirit of moderation with which he approached his perilous position. At the same time he declared openly, that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual,—that no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union,—that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void,—that acts of violence within any State are insurrectionary or revolutionary,—and that, to the extent of his ability, he should take care, according to express injunction of the Constitution, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. While thus positive in upholding the National Unity, he was resolved that on his part there should be no act of offence,—and that there should be no bloodshed or violence, unless forced upon the country,—that it was his duty to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government,—but, beyond what was necessary for this object, there should be no exercise of force, and the people everywhere should be left in that perfect security most favorable to calm thought and reflection. But the madness of Slavery knew no bound. It was determined from the beginning that the Union should be broken, and no moderation could change this wicked purpose. A pretended power was organized, in the form of a Confederacy, with Slavery as the declared corner-stone. You know what ensued. Fort Sumter was attacked, and, after a fiery storm of shot and shell for thirty-four hours, the national flag fell. This was 13th April, 1861. War had begun. War is always a scourge, and it can never  be regarded without sadness. It is one of the mysteries of Providence, that it is still allowed to vex mankind. Few deprecated it more than the President. From Quaker blood and from reflection, he was essentially a man of peace. In one of his speeches during his short service in Congress, he arraigned military glory as “that rainbow that rises in showers of blood,—that serpent’s eye that charms but to destroy”; and when charged with the terrible responsibility of Government, he was none the less earnest for peace. He was not willing to see his beloved country torn by bloody battle, with fellow-citizens striking at each other. But after the criminal assault on Fort Sumter there was no alternative. The Republic was in peril, and every man, from President to citizen, was summoned to the defence. Nor was this all. An attempt was made to invest Slavery with national independence, and the President, who disliked both Slavery and War, described his own condition, when, addressing a member of the Society of Friends, he said, “Your people have had, and are having, very great trials. On principle and faith opposed to both war and oppression, they can only practically oppose oppression by war.” In these few words the whole case is stated,—inasmuch as, whatever might be the pretension of State Rights, the war became necessary to put down the hideous ambition of Slavery. The Slave-Masters put in execution a conspiracy long contrived, for which they had prepared the way,—first, by teaching that any State might at its own will break from the Union, and, secondly, by teaching that colored persons were so far inferior as not to be embraced in the promises of the Declaration of Independence, but were justly held as slaves. The Mephistopheles of Slavery, Mr. Calhoun, inculcated for years both these pretensions. But the pretension of State Rights was merely a cover for Slavery. Therefore, in determining that the Slave-Masters should be encountered, two things were resolved: first, that this Republic is one and indivisible; and, secondly, that no hideous power, with Slavery blazoned on its front, shall be created on our soil. Here was affirmation and denial: first, affirmation of the National Unity; and, secondly, denial of any independent foothold to Rebel Slavery. Accepting the challenge at Fort Sumter, the President became the voice of the Nation, which, with stern resolve, insisted that the Rebellion should be overcome by war. The people were in earnest, and would not brook hesitation. If ever in history war was necessary, if ever in history war was holy, it was the war then and there begun for the arrest and overthrow of Rebel Slavery. The case between the two sides is stated first in the words of Jefferson Davis, and then in the words of Abraham Lincoln. The representative of Slavery said:— “The time for compromise has now passed, and the South is determined to maintain her position, and make all who oppose her smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel, if coercion is persisted in.—Our separation from the old Union is now complete. No compromise, no reconstruction, is now to be entertained.” Abraham Lincoln said:– In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there need be no bloodshed or war. I am not in favor of such a course; and I may say in advance that there will be no bloodshed, unless it be forced upon the Government, and then it will be compelled to act in self-defence.” And so issue was joined. It was plain from the first cannon-shot that the Rebellion was nothing but Slavery in arms; but such was the power of Slavery, even in the Free States, that months elapsed before the giant criminal was directly assailed. Generals in the field were tender towards it, as if it were a church, or a work of the fine arts. Only under the teaching of disaster was the country moved. The first step in Congress followed the defeat at Bull Run. Still the President hesitated. Disasters thickened and graves opened, until at last the country saw that by justice only could we hope for Divine favor, and the President, who leaned so closely upon the popular heart, pronounced that great word by which slaves were set free. Let it be named forever to his glory, that even tardily he grasped the thunderbolt under which the Rebellion staggered to its fall; that, following up the blow, he enlisted colored citizens as soldiers, and declared his final purpose never to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation, nor to return into Slavery any person free by the terms of that instrument, or by any Act of Congress,—saying, grandly, “If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an Executive duty to reenslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to perform it.” It was sometimes said that the Proclamation was of doubtful constitutionality. If this criticism did not proceed from sympathy with Slavery, it evidently proceeded from prevailing superstition with regard to this idol. Future jurists will read with astonishment that such a flagrant wrong could be considered at any time as having any rights which a court was bound to respect, and especially that rebels in arms could be considered as having any title to the services of people whose allegiance was primarily due to the United States. But, turning from these conclusions, it seems obvious that Slavery, standing exclusively on local law, without support in natural law, must have fallen with the local government, both legally and constitutionally: legally, inasmuch as it ceased to have any valid legal support; and constitutionally, inasmuch as it came at once within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Constitution, where Liberty is the supreme law. The President did not act upon these principles, but, speaking with the voice of authority, said, “Let the slaves be free.” What Court and Congress hesitated to declare he proclaimed, and thus enrolled himself among the world’s Emancipators. From the Proclamation of Emancipation, placing its author so far above human approach that human envy cannot reach him, I carry you for one moment to our Foreign Relations. The convulsion here was felt in the most distant places,—as at the great earthquake of Lisbon, when that capital seemed about to be submerged, there was commotion of the waters in our Northern lakes. All Europe was stirred. There, too, was the Slavery question in another form. In an unhappy moment, under an ill-considered allegation of “necessity,”—which Milton tells us was the plea by which the Fiend “excused his devilish deeds,”—England accorded to Rebel Slavery the rights of belligerence on the ocean, and then proceeded to open her ports, to surrender her workshops, and to let loose her merchant ships in aid of this wickedness: forgetting all relations of alliance and amity with the United States, forgetting all distinctions of right and wrong, and forgetting, also, that a New Power founded on Slavery was a moral monster, with which a just nation could have nothing to do. To appreciate the character of this concession, we must comprehend clearly the whole, vast, unprecedented crime of the Rebellion, taking its complexion from Slavery. Undoubtedly it was criminal to assail the Unity of this Republic, and thus destroy its peace and impair its example in the world; but the attempt to build a New Power on Slavery as a corner-stone, and with no other declared object of separate existence, was more than criminal,—or rather it was a crime of that untold, unspeakable guilt, which no language can depict and no judgment can be too swift to condemn. The associates in this terrible apostasy might rebuke each other in the words of an old dramatist:— “Thou must do, then, What no malevolent star will dare to look on, It is so wicked; for which men will curse thee For being the instrument, and the blest angels Forsake me at my need for being the author; For ’t is a deed of night, of night, Francisco! In which the memory of all good actions We can pretend to shall be buried quick; Or, if we be remembered, it shall be To fright posterity by our example, That have outgone all precedents of villains That were before us.” Recognizing such a power, entering into semi-alliance with such a power, investing such a power with rights, opening ports to such a power, surrendering workshops to such a power, building ships for such a power, driving a busy commerce with such a power,—all this, or any part of this, is positive and plain complicity with the original guilt, and must be judged as we judge any other complicity with Slavery. To say that it was a necessity is only to repeat the perpetual plea by which slave-masters and slave-traders from the earliest moment have sought to vindicate their crime. A generous Englishman, the ornament of letters, from whom we learn in memorable lines “what constitutes a State,” has denounced all complicity with Slavery in words which strike directly at this plea of necessity. “Let sugar be as dear as it may,” wrote Sir William Jones to the freeholders of Middlesex, “it is better to eat none,—to eat honey, if sweetness only be palatable,—better to eat aloes or coloquintida, than violate a primary law of Nature impressed on every heart not imbruted by avarice, than rob one human creature of these eternal rights of which no law upon earth can justly deprive him.” England led in concession of belligerent rights to Rebel Slavery. No event of the Bebellion compares with this, in encouragement to transcendent crime, or in prejudice to the United States. Out of English ports and English workshops Rebel Slavery drew its supplies. In English ship-yards the cruisers of Rebel Slavery were built and equipped. From English foundries and arsenals Rebel Slavery was armed. And all this was made easy, when her Majesty’s Government, under pretence of an impossible neutrality, lifted Rebel Slavery to equality with the National Government, and gave to it belligerent power on the ocean. The early legend was verified. King Arthur was without sword, when suddenly one appeared, thrust out from a lake. “Lo!” said Merlin the enchanter, “yonder is that sword I spake of: it belongeth to the Lady of the Lake, and if she will, thou mayest take it; but if she will not, it will not be in thy power to take it.” And the Lady of the Lake yielded the sword, so says the legend, even as England yielded the sword to Rebel Slavery. The President saw the painful consequence of this concession, and especially that it was the first step towards acknowledgment of Rebel Slavery as an Independent Power. Clearly, if it were proper for a foreign power to acknowledge Belligerence, it might, at a later stage, be proper to acknowledge Independence; and any objection vital to Independence would, if applicable, be equally vital to Belligerence. Solemn resolutions of Congress on this question were communicated to foreign powers; but the unanswerable argument against any possible recognition of a New Power founded on Slavery, whether Independent or Belligerent, was stated by the President in a paper which I hold in my hand, and which has never before seen the light. It is a copy of a resolution drawn by himself, which he consigned to me, in his own autograph, for transmission to one of our valued friends abroad, as an expression of opinion on the great question involved, and a guide to public duty. “ Whereas, while heretofore states and nations have tolerated Slavery recently, for the first [time] in the world, an attempt has been made to construct a New Nation upon the basis of Human Slavery, and with the primary and fundamental object to maintain, enlarge, and perpetuate the same: Therefore Resolved, That no such embryo state should ever be recognized by or admitted into the family of Christian and civilized nations, and that all Christian and civilized men everywhere should by all lawful means resist to the utmost such recognition or admission.” You will see how distinctly any recognition of Rebel Slavery as an Independent Power is branded, and how “all Christian and civilized men everywhere” are summoned to “resist to the utmost such recognition”; and precisely for the same reason such “Christian and civilized men everywhere” should have resisted to the utmost any recognition of Rebel Slavery as a Belligerent Power. Had this benign spirit entered into the counsels of England when Slavery first took arms, this great historic nation would have shrunk at all hazard from that fatal concession, in itself a plain contribution to Slavery, and opening the way to infinite contributions, without which the criminal pretender must have speedily succumbed. There would have been no plea of “necessity.” But Divine Providence willed it otherwise. Perhaps it was essential to the full revelation of its boundless capacities, that the Republic should stand forth alone, in sublime solitude, warring for Human Rights, and thus become an example to mankind. Meanwhile the war continued with proverbial vicissitudes of this arbitrament. Battles were fought and lost. Other battles were fought and won. Rebel Slavery stood face to face in deadly conflict with the Declaration of Independence, when the President, with unconscious power, dealt another blow, second only to the Proclamation of Emancipation. This was at the blood-soaked field of Gettysburg, where the armies of the Republic encountered the armies of Slavery, and, after a conflict of three days, drove them back with destructive slaughter,—as at that decisive battle of Tours, on which hung the destinies of Christianity in Western Europe, the invading Mahometans, after prolonged conflict, were driven back by Charles “the Hammer.” No battle of the present war was more important. Few battles in history compare with it. A few months later, there was another meeting on that same field. It was of grateful fellow-citizens, gathered from all parts of the Union to dedicate it  to the memory of those who had fallen there. Eminent men of our own country and from foreign lands united in the service. There, too, was your classic orator, whose finished address was a model of literary excellence. The President spoke very briefly; but his few words will live as long as Time. Since Simonides wrote the epitaph for those who died at Thermopylae, nothing equal has ever been breathed over the fallen dead. Thus he began: “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a New Nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” How grandly, and yet simply, is the New Nation announced, with the Equality of All Men as its frontlet! The truths of the Declaration, so often proclaimed by him, and for which he was willing to die, are inscribed on the altar of the slain, while the country is summoned to their support, that our duty may not be left undone. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of Freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” That speech, uttered at the field of Gettysburg, and now sanctified by the martyrdom of its author, is a monumental act. In the modesty of his nature, he said: “The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.” He was mistaken. The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech. Ideas are more than battles. Among events assuring to him the general confidence against all party clamor and prejudice, this speech cannot be placed too high. To some who doubted his earnestness it was touching proof of their error. Others who followed with indifference were warmed with grateful sympathy. Many felt its exquisite genius, as well as lofty character. There were none to criticize. His reelection was not only a personal triumph, but a triumph of the Republic. For himself personally, it was much to find his administration ratified; but for republican ideas it was of incalculable value that at such a time the plume of the soldier had not prevailed. In the midst of war, the people at the ballot-box deliberately selected the civilian. Ye who doubt the destinies of the Republic, who fear the ambition of a military chief, or suspect the popular will, do not forget that at this moment, when the noise of battle filled the whole land, the country quietly appointed for its ruler this man of peace. The Inaugural Address which signalized his entry for a second time upon his great duties was briefer than any in our history; but it has already gone further, and it will live longer, than any other. It was a continuation of the Gettysburg speech, with the same sublimity and gentleness. Its concluding words were like an angelic benediction. And now there was surfeit of battle and of victory. Calmly he saw the land of Slavery enveloped by the national forces,—saw the great coil bent by his generals about it,—saw the mighty garrote, as it tightened against the neck of the Rebellion. Good news came from all quarters. Everywhere the army was doing its duty. One was conquering in Tennessee; another was watching at Richmond. The navy echoed back the thunders of the army. Place after place was falling,—Savannah, Charleston, Fort Fisher, Wilmington. The President left the National Capital to be near the Lieutenant-General. Then came the capture of Petersburg and Richmond, with the flight of Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet. Without pomp or military escort, the President entered the Capital of the Rebellion, and walked its streets, from which slavery had fled forever. Then came the surrender of Lee; that of Johnston was at hand. The military power of Rebel Slavery was broken like a Prince-Rupert’s drop, and everywhere within its confines the barbarous government tumbled in crash and ruin. The country was in ecstasy. All this he beheld without elation, while his soul was brooding on thoughts of peace and clemency. On the morning of Friday, 14th April, his youthful son, who had been on the staff of the Lieutenant-General, returned to resume his interrupted studies. The father was happy in the sound of his footsteps, and felt the augury of peace. During the same day the Lieutenant-General returned. In the intimacy of his family the President said, “This day the war is over.” In the evening he sought relaxation, and you know the rest. Alas! The war was not over. The minions of Slavery were dogging him with unabated animosity, and that night he became a martyr. The country rose at once in agony of grief, and everywhere strong men wept. City, town, and village were darkened by the general obsequies. Every street was draped. Only ensigns of woe were seen. He had become, as it were, the inmate of every house, and the families of the land were in mourning. Not in the Executive mansion only, but in uncounted homes, was his vacant chair. Never before such universal sorrow. Already the voice of lamentation is returning from Europe, where candor towards him had begun even before his tragical death. A short time ago he was unknown, except in his own State. A short time ago he visited New York as a stranger, and was shown about its streets by youthful companions. Five years later he was borne through those streets with funeral pomp such as the world never witnessed before. Space and speed were forgotten in the offering of hearts. As the surpassing pageant, with more than “sceptred pall,” moved on iron highways, over Counties and States, from ocean-side to prairie, the whole afflicted people bowed their uncovered heads. At the first moment it was hard to comprehend this blow, and many cried in despair. But the rule of God has been too visible of late to allow doubt of His constant presence. Did not our martyr in his last address remind us that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether? And who will say that his death was not a judgment of the Lord? Perhaps it was needed to lift the country into a more perfect justice and to inspire a sublime faith. Perhaps it was sent in love, to set a sacred, irreversible seal upon the good he had done, and to put Emancipation beyond all mortal question. Perhaps it was the sacrificial consecration of those primal truths embodied in the birthday Declaration of the Republic, which he had so often vindicated, and for which he had announced his willingness to die. He is gone, and he has been mourned sincerely. Only private sorrow would recall the dead. He is now removed beyond earthly vicissitudes. Life and death are both past. He had been happy in life: he was not less happy in death. In death, as in life, he was still under the guardianship of that Divine Providence, which, taking him early by the hand, led him from obscurity to power and fame. The blow was sudden but not unprepared for. Only on the Sunday preceding, as he was coming from the front on board the steamer, with a quarto Shakespeare in his hands, he read aloud the well-remembered words of his favorite “Macbeth”:— “Duncan is in his grave; After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well. Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further.” Impressed by their beauty, or by some presentment unuttered, he read them aloud a second time. As the friends about listened to his reading, they little thought how in a few days what was said of the murdered Duncan would be said of him. “Nothing can touch him further.” He is saved from the trials that were gathering. He had fought the good fight of Emancipation. He had borne the brunt of war with embattled hosts, and conquered. He had made the name of Republic a triumph and a joy in foreign lands. Now that the strife of blood was ended, it remained to be seen how he could confront those machinations which are only prolongation of the war, and the more dangerous because more subtle,—where recent Rebels, with professions of Union on the lips, but still denying the birthday Declaration of the Republic, vainly seek to organize peace on another Oligarchy of the skin. From all these trials he was saved. But his testimony lives, and will live forever, speaking by his life, quickened by the undying echoes of his tomb. Invisible to mortal sight, and now above all human weakness, he is still champion, as in his early conflict, summoning his countrymen back to the truths in the Declaration of Independence. Dead, he speaks with more than living voice. But the author of Emancipation cannot die. His immortality on earth has begun. Country and age are already enshrined in his example, as if he were the great poet gathered to his fathers. Back to the living hath he turned him, And all of the death has passed away; The age that thought him dead and mourned him Itself now lives but in his lay. If the President were on earth, he would protest against any monotony of panegyric. He never exaggerated. He was always cautious in praise, as in censure. In endeavor to estimate his character, we shall be nearer him in proportion as we cultivate the same spirit. In person he was tall and bony, with little resemblance to any historic portrait, unless he might seem in one respect to justify the epithet given to an early English king. As he stood, his form was angular, with something of that straightness in lines so peculiar in the figure of Dante by Flaxman. His countenance had more of rugged strength than his person, and, while in repose, inclined to sadness; yet it lighted easily. Perhaps the quality that struck most at first was his constant simplicity of manner and conversation, without form or ceremony beyond that among neighbors. His handwriting had the same simplicity. It was clear as that of Washington, but less florid. Each had been surveyor, and was perhaps indebted to this experience. But the son of the Western pioneer was more simple in nature, and the man appeared in the autograph. An integrity which has become a proverb belonged to the same quality. The most perfect honesty must be the most perfect simplicity. Words by which an ancient Roman was described picture him,—” Vita innocentissimus, proposito sanctissimus.” He was naturally humane, inclined to pardon, and never remembered hard things against himself. He was always good to the poor, and in dealings with them was full of those “kind little words which are of the same blood as great and holy deeds.” On the Saturday before his death I saw him shake hands with more than five thousand soldier patients in the tent-hospitals at City Point, and he told me afterwards that his arm was not tired. Such a character awakened the instinctive sympathy of the people. They saw his fellow-feeling, and felt the kinship. With him as President, the idea of Republican Institutions, where no place is too high for the humblest, was perpetually apparent; so that his simple presence was like a Proclamation of the Equality of all men. While social in nature and enjoying the flow of conversation, he was often reticent. Modesty was natural to such a character. Without affectation, so was he without pretension or jealousy. No person, civil or military, complains that he appropriated to himself any honor belonging to another. To each and all he gave the credit that was due. And this same spirit appeared in smaller things. In a sally of Congressional debate, he exclaimed, that a fiery slave-master of Georgia, who had just spoken, was “an eloquent man, and a man of learning, so far as he could judge, not being learned himself.”  (Congress. Globe, Appendix, 1st Session, 30th Congress, p. 1042) His humor, like his integrity, has become a proverb. Sometimes he insisted that he had no invention, but only memory. Good things heard he did not forget, and he was never without a familiar story. When he spoke, the recent West seemed to vie with the ancient East in apologue and fable. His ideas moved, as the beasts entered Noah’s ark, in pairs. His illustrations had a homely felicity, and seemed not less important to him than the argument, which he always enforced with a certain emphasis of manner and voice. This same humor was often displayed where there was no story, and with a point that might recall Franklin. I know not how the indifference to Slavery exhibited by so many could be exposed more effectively than when he said of a political antagonist thus offending, “I suppose the institution of Slavery really looks small to him. He is so put up by nature, that a lash upon his back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else’s back does not hurt him.” And then again there is a bit of reply to Mr. Douglas, most characteristic not only for humor, but as showing how little at that time he was looking to the great place he reached so soon afterwards. “Senator Douglas,” said he, “is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face post-offices, land-offices, marshalships and cabinet appointments, chargéships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. . . . On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank, face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages, all taken together, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon principle, and upon principle alone.” Here is a glimpse of himself, as honorable as curious. In a different vein, he said, while President, “The United States Government must not undertake to run the churches.” Here wisdom and humor vie with each other. He was original in mind as in character. His style was his own, having no model, but springing directly from himself. Failing often in correctness, it is sometimes unique in beauty and sentiment. There are passages which will live always. It is no exaggeration to say, that, in weight and pith, suffused in a certain poetical color, they call to mind Bacon’s Essays. Such passages make an epoch in State Papers. No presidential message or speech from a throne ever had anything of such touching reality. They are harbingers of the great era of Humanity. While uttered from the heights of power, the reveal a simple, unaffected trust in Almighty God, and speak to the people as equal to equal. He was placed by Providence at the head of his country during an unprecedented crisis, when the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and men turned for protection to military power. Multitudinous armies were mustered. Great navies were created. Of all these he was constitutional commander-in-chief. As the war proceeded, prerogatives enlarged and others sprang into being, until the sway of a Republican President became imperatorial, imperial. But not for one moment did the modesty of his nature desert him. His constant thought was his country, and how to serve it. He saw the certain greatness of the Republic, and was pleased in looking forward to that early day, when, according to assured calculation, its millions of people will count by the hundred; but he saw in this prodigious sway nothing but the good of man. Personal ambition at the expense of patriotism was as far removed from the simple purity of his nature as poison from a strawberry. And thus, with equal courage in the darkest hours, he continued on, heeding as little the warnings of danger as the temptations of power. “It would not do for a President,” he said, “to have guards with drawn sabres at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an Emperor.” In the same homeliness he spoke of his morning return to daily duty as “opening shop.” Though commissioning officers in multitudes beyond any other person of authentic history, he never learned the mystery of shoulder-straps or of buttons in the military and naval uniforms, except that he noticed three stars on the shoulders of the Lieutenant-General. When he became President, he was without any considerable experience in public affairs; nor was he much versed in history, whose lessons would have been valuable. Becoming more familiar with the place, his facility increased. He had “learned the ropes,” so he said. But his habits of business were irregular, and never those of dispatch. He did not see at once the just proportions of things, and allowed himself to be too much occupied by details. Even in small affairs, as well as great, there was in him a certain resistance to be overcome. There were moments when this delay caused impatience, and important questions seemed to suffer. But when the blow fell, there was nothing but gratitude, and all confessed the singleness with which he sought the public good. A conviction prevailed, that, though slow to reach his conclusion, he was inflexible in maintaining it. Pompey boasted that by the stamp of his foot he could raise an army. The President did this by a word, and more: according to his own saying, he “put his foot down,” and saved a principle. This firmness in the right, as he saw it, was an anchor which held always. Emancipation, once adopted, was safe against recall or change. From time to time his determination was repeated in terms which awakened a throb in every liberty-loving bosom,—as when, in the summer before the Presidential election, in his letter “To whom it may concern,” he announced “the abandonment of Slavery” as an essential condition for peace, and thus again proclaimed Emancipation,—or when, on another occasion, he said, in simple words, “And the promise, being made, must be kept,”—and then again exclaimed, loftily, in words good to repeat, “If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an Executive duty to reenslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to perform it.” All this was beautiful and grand. Sodom was burning, but there was no disposition to look back. In statement of moral truth and exposure of wrong he was at times singularly cogent. There was fire as well as light in his words. Nobody more clearly exhibited Slavery in is enormity. On one occasion, he branded it as a “monstrous injustice”; on another, he pictured the slave-masters as “wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces”; and then, on still another, he said, with fine simplicity of diction, “If Slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong.” Would you find condemnation more complete, you must go to John Brown, or to those famous words of John Wesley, where the great Methodist held up slavery as the “execrable sum of all villanies.” Another mind, more submissive to the truth he recognized, and less disposed to take counsel of to-morrow, would have hesitated less in carrying this judgment forward to its natural conclusion. Perhaps, his courage to apply truth was not always equal to his clearness in seeing it. Perhaps, the heights that he gained in conscience were not always sustained in conduct. And have we not been told that the soul can gain heights it cannot keep? Thus, while condemning Slavery, he still waited, till many feared that with him judgment would “lose the name of action.” Even while exalting Human Equality, assailed and derided by one of our ablest debaters, and insisting, with admirable constancy, that all, without distinction of color, are within the birthday promises of the Republic, he yet allowed himself to be pressed by his adversary to an illogical limitation of this self-evident truth, so that colored persons might be excluded from political rights. But he was willing at all times to learn, and not ashamed to change. Before death he expressed a desire that suffrage should be accorded to colored persons in certain cases; yet here again he failed to apply the great Declaration for which he so often contended. If suffrage be accorded to colored persons only in certain cases, then, of course, it can be accorded to whites only in the same cases,—or Equality ceases to exist. It was his own frank confession that he had not controlled events, but they had controlled him. At the important stages of the war, he followed rather than led. The people, under God, were masters. Let it not be forgotten that the national triumphs, and even Emancipation itself, sprang from the great heart of the American people. Individual services have been important, but there is no man who has been necessary. On one theme he inclined latterly to guide the public mind: it was the treatment of the Rebel leaders. His policy was never announced, and of course would have been subject to modification always in the light of experience. But it is known that at the moment of his assassination he was occupied by thoughts of lenity and pardon. He was never harsh, even in speaking of Jefferson Davis; and only a few days before his end, when one who was privileged to address him in that way said, “Do not allow him to escape the law, he must be hanged,” the President replied calmly, in the words so beautifully adopted in his last Inaugural Address, “Judge not, that ye be not judged”; and when pressed again by the remark that the sight of Libby Prison made it impossible to pardon him, the President repeated twice over the same words. The question of clemency to our Rebels is the very theme so ably debated between Caesar and Cato, while the Roman Senate was considering the punishment of the confederates of Catiline. Caesar consented to confiscation and imprisonment, but pleaded for life. Cato was sterner. It is probable that the President, who was a Cato in patriotism, would have followed the counsels of Caesar. Good-will to all men was with him a science as well as a sentiment. His nature was pacific, and throughout the terrible conflict his thoughts were always turned on peace. He wished peace among ourselves, and he wished peace with foreign powers. While abounding in gratitude to returned officers and men, who had fought the national battle so well, he longed to see the sword in its scabbard, never again to flash against the sky. His prudence found expression in the saying, “One war at a time”; but his whole nature seemed to say, “Peace always.” And yet it was his fortune to conduct one of the greatest wars in all time. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,”—so he worked and lived; and these words of his own might be his honest epitaph. His place in history may be seen from the transcendent events with which his name must be forever associated. The pyramids of our country are built by the people more than by any ruler; but the ruler of the people at such a moment cannot be forgotten. It is impossible to exaggerate the Proclamation of Emancipation as an historic event. Its influence cannot be limited to the present in place or time. It will reach beyond the national jurisdiction, and beyond the present age. Besides its immediate efficacy in liberating slaves at home, it rises already a landmark of Human Progress. From the solidarity of Slavery, the fall of this abomination among us must cause its fall everywhere,—so that in Cuba, Porto Rico, Brazil, or wherever else a slave now wears a chain, that Proclamation will be felt. Proudly will it be recognized always in the destinies of the Republic. Only a short time before, the Czar of Russia, also by proclamation, raised twenty millions of serfs to the dignity of freemen; but even this eminent act was less historic. Though of incalculable importance to the serfs, it was not the triumph of Popular Government, and it came from the East instead of the West. It is to the West that the world now looks for sunrise. “ Video solem orientem in occidente.” But the Emancipation Proclamation itself was an agency in the military overthrow of the Rebellion, which, if regarded as an achievement of war, is one of the greatest in the annals of war, but, if regarded in political consequences, is an epoch of history. Here, again, the magnitude of the event is fully appreciated only when it is considered that the triumph of the Republic is the triumph of Popular Institutions everywhere. It is much that the Republic has become impregnable, whether against “malice domestic” or “foreign levy”; but it is more that it has become an example to the world. That all this should be done under a President representing especially the people, speaking always in sympathy with the people in words of power never to be forgotten, and sealing his devotion with life, adds to the splendor of the example. Here are great heralds of fame, such as few have had as they entered the lofty portals. Our martyred dead is seen also in the company to which he is admitted, among the purest of all time,—martyrs, patriots, philanthropists, servants of truth and duty. Milton, Hampden, Sidney, Wilberforce, all will welcome the new-comer. Washington will lead the hosts of his own country to do him honor, from the Pilgrims of the Mayflower to the thronging crowds who have laid down their lives for the Republic. By the association of a similar death he passes into the same galaxy with Caesar, William of Orange, and Henry the Fourth of France, all of whom were assassinated,—and his star will not pale by the side of theirs. Caesar was a contrast in everything, unless in clemency, and the coincidence that each at the time of sacrifice was fifty-six years of age. How unlike in all else! Caesar was of brilliant lineage, which he traced on one side to the immortal gods, and on the other to a recent chief of Rome,—of completest education,—of amplest means,—of rarest experience,—of acknowledged genius as statesman, soldier, orator, and writer, being in himself the most finished man of Antiquity; but he was the enslaver of his country, whose personal ambition took the place of patriotism, and whose name has become the synonym of imperial power. Of princely birth and great riches, William of Orange began as page in the household of Charles the Fifth, on whose wide-spread dominions, the largest of modern history, the sun never set. The youthful page became companion and intimate of the powerful emperor. Unawed and unseduced, he upheld the liberties of his country, which he conducted wisely, surely, grandly,—anticipating the example of Washington. His name of “Silent” suggests the reticence of his American parallel, like whom he was also a liberator. Henry the Fourth, of the House of Bourbon, was a king memorable for practical sense, anecdote, and pregnant with, with a certain Gallic salt. He, too, knew the trials of civil war, which he closed in peace and crowned with mercy. The National Unity prevailed in him. The age of fifty-six witnessed also his death, leaving great plans unfulfilled, and his career emblazoned by the popular epic of his country, “La Henriade” of Voltaire. These are illustrious names; but there is nothing in them to eclipse the simple life of our President, whose example, commemorated by history and by song, will be the pride of humanity and a rebuke to every usurper. The cause he served was more than empire. The motive of his conduct was higher than success,—as devotion to Human Rights is higher than genius or power, as man is higher than aught else on earth. More like him in certain aspects was the Roman Emperor Vespasian, whose just sway was prolonged in Titus, his son. Without ancestry or rank, he rose to the loftiest power, and, when on these heights, never dissembled the humility of his origin. The simplicity and frugality of early life were continued on the throne of the world. There was in the Emperor a kindred humanity, and the same fondness for story and jest. But the common feature, bringing the two into one historic family, was generous indulgence to political opponents. It belongs to the fame of our President that in selections for the public service he forgot all personal differences. Capacity and devotion to the country were controlling recommendations, before which every thought of opposition or rivalry, or even of injury, disappeared. Here the Roman Emperor anticipated the American President; for the contemporary historian, in his brief record, presents him as “very little mindful of affronts and enmities, or vindictive on their account.” Such a character, whether at Rome or Washington, is an example for all. There is another character, taken away close upon the age of fifty-six, who seems to have revived in the President. Do not be astonished, when I mention St. Louis of France. Difference of epoch and of objects occupying attention cannot obscure certain kindred features, and especially the common consecration of their lives. The French monarch, though at the head of a military power, was a lover of peace, and cultivated justice towards his neighbors. Through him a barbarous institution was overthrown, and France advanced in civilization. The Trial by Battle, against which he launched a noble ordinance, was a curse not inferior to our Slavery. In an age of violence he was gentle. In an age of privilege, and wearing a crown, he was moved to the practice of Equality. History recalls with undisguised applause the simple justice he delighted to administer, sitting under an oak in the park of Vincennes. Our President launched his ordinance at a barbarous institution, and advanced his country. He, too, practiced Equality. And he, also, had his oak of Vincennes. It was that plain room where he was always so accessible as to make his example difficult for future Presidents. At stated times he was open to all who came with petitions, and they flocked across the continent. The transactions of that simple court of last resort would show how much was done to temper the law, to assuage sorrow, and to care for the widow and orphan; but its only record is in heaven. Such, fellow-citizens, are the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln. You have discerned his simple beginnings,—have watched his early struggles,—have gratefully followed his dedication to the truths our fathers declared,—have hailed him twice-elected head of the Republic, through whom it was known in foreign lands,—have recognized him at a period of national peril as representative of the unfulfilled promises made by our fathers, even as Washington was representative of National Independence, —and you have beheld him struck down at the moment of victory, when Rebel Slavery was everywhere succumbing. Reverently we acknowledge the finger of the Almighty, and pray that our great trials may not fail, to the end that the promises of the Fathers may be fulfilled,—those promises, so great and glorious, which make the Declaration a title-deed of mankind. Traitorous Assassination struck him down. Yet do not be too vindictive in heart towards the poor atom that held the weapon. Reserve your rage for the responsible power, which, not content with assailing the life of the Republic, outraged all law, human and divine,—organized Barbarism as a principle of conduct,—took the lives of faithful Unionists at home,—prepared robbery and murder on the northern borders,—has fired hotels, filled with women and children,—plotted to scatter pestilence and poison,—perpetrated piracy and ship-burning at sea,—starved American citizens in prolonged captivity,—inflicted the slow torture of Andersonville and Libby,—menaced assassination always,—and now, at last, true to itself, has assassinated our President: and this responsible power is none other than Slavery. It is Slavery that has taken the life of our beloved Chief Magistrate; and here is another triumph of its Barbarism. On Slavery let vengeance fall. Spare, if you please, the worm it employs; but do not, I entreat you, yield amnesty to this murderous wickedness. Ravaillac, who took the life of the French Henry, was torn in pieces on the public square before the City Hall by four powerful horses, each fastened to one of his limbs, and rending in opposite directions, until, at last, after fearful struggle, nothing of the wretched assassin remained to the executioner except his bloody shirt, which was at once handed over to be burned. Such be our vengeance; and let Slavery be the victim. And not only Slavery, which is another name for property in man, but also that other pretension, not less irrational and hateful, that Human Rights can depend on color. This is the bloody shirt of the assassin; let it be handed over to be burned. Such a vengeance will be a kiss of reconciliation; for it will remove every obstacle to peace and harmony. The people where Slavery once ruled will bless the blow that destroyed it. The people where the kindred tyranny of Caste once prevailed will rejoice that this fell under the same blow. They will yet confess that it was dealt in dealt in no harshness to them, in no unkindness, in no desire to humiliate, but simply and solemnly, in the name of the Republic and of Human Nature, for their good as well as ours, ay, for their good more than ours. By ideas, more than by armies, we have conquered. The sword of the Archangel was less mighty than the mission he bore from the Lord. But if the ideas giving us the victory are now neglected, if the pledges of the Declaration, which the Rebellion openly assailed, are left unredeemed, then have blood and treasure been lavished for nought. Alas for the dead who gave themselves so bravely to their country, alas for the living left to mourn the dead, if any relic of Slavery is allowed to continue!—especially if this bloody imposture, defeated in the pretension of property in man, is allowed to perpetuate an oligarchy of the skin! How shall these ideas be saved? How shall the war waged by Abraham Lincoln be brought to an end, so as to assure peace, tranquility, and reconciliation? All turns on the colored suffrage. This is the centre and pivot of national safety. A mistake now is worse than the loss of a battle. And yet here again we encounter the Rebellion in its odious pretensions, hardly less audacious than when it took up arms. Amidst its expiring camp-fires, the men who have trimmed them—with fresh oaths of allegiance on their lips—renew their early activity in plotting how to preserve an oligarchical power. The demon of Caste follows the demon of Slavery. In setting ourselves against this accursed succession, we follow the solemn behests of the Great Declaration, so constantly championed by the martyred President. And now, as I close this humble tribute, let me ask you to adopt that championship, which was his first title to national gratitude, and is now his best. Let each be standard-bearer of the Declaration. I cannot err, if, speaking at his funeral, I detain you to insist upon this absorbing duty, where for the moment all other duties are swallowed up. The argument for colored suffrage is overwhelming. It springs from the necessity of the case, as well as from the Rights of Man. This suffrage is needed for the security of the colored people, for the stability of the local government, and for the strength of the Union. Without it there is nothing but insecurity for the colored people, instability for the local government, and weakness for the Union, involving of course the national credit. Without it the Rebellion will break forth under a new alias, unarmed it may be, but with white votes to take possession of the local government and wield it at will, whether at home or in the national councils. If it be said that the colored people are unfit, then do I show that they are more fit than their recent masters, or than the “poor whites.” They have been loyal always; and who is he, that, under any pretence, exalts the prejudices of the disloyal above the rights of the loyal? Their suffrage is now needed,—more even than you ever needed their muskets or sabers. An English statesman, after the acknowledgment of the Spanish colonies as Independent States, boasted that he had called a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old. In similar spirit, we, too, must call a new ballot into existence to redress the tyranny that refuses justice to the colored race. The same national authority that destroyed slavery must see that this other pretension is not permitted to survive; nor is there any doubt that the authority which destroyed Slavery is competent to the kindred duty. Each belongs to that great policy of justice through which alone can peace become permanent and immutable. Nor may the Republic shirk this remaining service, without leaving Emancipation unfinished and the early promises of the Fathers unfulfilled. Vain the gift of Liberty, if you surrender the rights of the freedman to be judged by recent assertors of property in man. Burke, in his day, saw the flagrant inconsistency, and denounced it, saying that whatever such people did on this subject was “arrant trifling,” and, notwithstanding its plausible form, always wanted what he aptly called “the executive principle.” These words of warning were adopted and repeated by two later statesmen, George Canning and Henry Brougham; but they are so clear as not to need support of names. The infant must not be handed over to be suckled by the wolf; it must be carefully nursed by its parent; and since the Republic is parent of Emancipation, the Republic must nurse the immortal infant into maturity and strength. The Republic at the beginning took up this great work: the Republic must finish what it began; and it cannot err, if, in anxious care, it holds nothing done so long as anything remains undone. The Republic, with matchless energy, hurled forward victorious armies: the Republic must exact that “security for the future” without which this unparalleled war will have been waged in vain. The Republic to-day, with one consenting voice, commemorates the martyred victim: the same Republic, prompt in this service, must require that his promises to an oppressed race be maintained in all their integrity and completeness, in letter and in spirit, so that the cause for which he became a sacrifice shall not fail; his martyrdom was a new pledge, beyond any even in life. The colored suffrage is an overwhelming necessity. In making it an essential condition of restoration, we follow, first, the law of reason and of Nature, and, secondly, the Constitution, not only in its text, but in the light of the Declaration. By reason and Nature there can be no denial of rights on account of color; and we can do nothing thus irrational and unnatural. By the constitution it is stipulated that “the United States shall guaranty to every State a republican form of government”; but the meaning of this guaranty must be found in the birthday Declaration of the Republic, which is the controlling preamble of the Constitution. Beyond all question, the United States, when called to enforce the guaranty, must insist on the equality of all before the law, and the consent of the governed. Such is the true idea of republican government according to American institutions. The Slave-Masters, driven from their first intrenchments, already occupy inner defences. Property in man is abandoned; but they now insist that the freedman shall not enjoy political rights. Liberty has been won. The battle for Equality is still pending. And now a new compromise is proposed, in the name of State Rights. Sad that it should be so. But I do not despair. The victory may be delayed, but not lost. All who set themselves against Equality will be overborne; for it is the cause of Humanity. Not the rich and proud, but the poor and lowly, will be the favorites of an enfranchised Republic. The words of the Prophet must be fulfilled: “And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I WILL MAKE A MAN MORE PRECIOUS THAN FINE GOLD, EVEN A MAN, THAN THE GOLDEN WEDGE OF OPHIR.” I accept these sublime promises, and echo them back as assurance of triumph. Then will the Republic be all the heart can desire or imagination paint,–“ supremely lovely and serenely great, majestic mother” of a free, happy, and united people, with Slavery and all its tyranny beaten down under foot, so that no man shall call another master, and all shall be equal before the law. In this great victory death is swallowed up, and before us is the vision of the Republic performing all that was promised. How easy, then, the passage from sorrow to exultation! Fellow-citizens, be happy in what you have. Mourn not the dead, but rejoice in his life and example. Rejoice, as you point to this child of the people, who was lifted so high that Republican Institutions became manifest in him. Rejoice that through him Emancipation was proclaimed. Rejoice that under him “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” obtained a final verdict never to be set aside or questioned. Above all, see to it that his constant vows are performed, and the promises of the Fathers maintained, so that no person in the upright form of man is shut out from their protection. Do this, and the Unity of the Republic will be fixed on a foundation that cannot fail. The corner-stone of National Independence is already in its place, and on it is inscribed the name of GEORGE WASHINGTON. Another stone must also have place at the corner. It is the great Declaration itself, once a promise, at last a reality. On this adamantine block we will gratefully inscribe the name of ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Source: https://reader.library.cornell.edu/docviewer/digital?id=may905521#mode/1up

December 18, 1764 To the Honourable the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses of Great Britain in Parliament assembled: The Remonstrance of the Council and Burgesses of Virginia. It appearing by the printed votes of the House of Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled that in a committee of the whole House, the 17th day of March last, it was resolved that towards defending, protecting, and securing the British colonies and plantations in America, it may be proper to charge certain stamp duties in the said colonies and plantations; and it being apprehended that the same subject, which was then declined, may be resumed and further pursued in a succeeding session, the Council and Burgesses of Virginia, met in General Assembly, judge it their indispensable duty, in a respectful manner but with decent firmness, to remonstrate against such a measure, that at least a cession of those rights, which in their opinion must be infringed by that procedure, may not be inferred from their silence, at so important a crisis. They conceive it is essential to British liberty that laws imposing taxes on the people ought not to be made without the consent of representatives chosen by themselves; who, at the same time that they are acquainted with the circumstances of their constituents, sustain a proportion of the burden laid on them. This privilege, inherent in the persons who discovered and settled these regions, could not be renounced or forfeited by their removal hither, not as vagabonds or fugitives, but licensed and encouraged by their prince and animated with a laudable desire of enlarging the British dominion, and extending its commerce. On the contrary, it was secured to them and their descendants, with all other rights and immunities of British subjects, by a royal charter, which hath been invariably recognized and confirmed by his Majesty and his predecessors in their commissions to the several governors, granting a power, and prescribing a forum of legislation; according to which, laws for the administration of justice, and for the welfare and good government of the colony, have been hitherto enacted by the Governor, Council, and General Assembly, and to them requisitions and applications for supplies have been directed by the Crown. As an instance of the opinion which former sovereigns entertained of these rights and privileges, we beg leave to refer to three acts of the General Assembly passed in the 32d year of the reign of King Charles II (one of which is entitled An Act for raising a Public Revenue for the better Support of the Government of his Majesty's Colony of Virginia, imposing several duties for that purpose) which they thought absolutely necessary, were prepared in England, and sent over by their then governor, the Lord Culpepper, to be passed by the General Assembly, with a full power to give the royal assent thereto; and which were accordingly passed, after several amendments were made to them here. Thus tender was his Majesty of the rights of his American subjects; and the remonstrants do not discern by what distinction they can be deprived of that sacred birthright and most valuable inheritance by their fellow subjects, nor with what propriety they can be taxed or affected in their estates by the Parliament, wherein they are not, and indeed cannot, constitutionally be represented. and if it were proper for the Parliament to impose taxes on the colonies at all, which the remonstrants take leave to think would be inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the constitution, the exercise of that power at this time would be ruinous to Virginia, who exerted herself in the late war, it is feared, beyond her strength, insomuch that to redeem the money granted for that exigence her people are taxed for several years to come; this with the large expenses incurred for defending the frontiers against the restless Indians, who have infested her as much since the peace as before, is so grievous that an increase of the burden will be intolerable; especially as the people are very greatly distressed already from the scarcity of circulating cash amongst them, and from the little value of their staple at the British markets. And it is presumed that adding to that load which the colony now labours under will not be more oppressive to her people than destructive of the interests of Great Britain; for the plantation trade, confined as it is to the mother country, hath been a principal means of multiplying and enriching her inhabitants; and if not too much discouraged, may prove an inexhaustible source of treasure to the nation. For satisfaction in this point, let the present state of the British fleets and trade be compared with what they were before the settlement of the colonies; and let it be considered that whilst property in land may be acquired on very easy terms, in the vast uncultivated territory of North America, the colonists will be mostly, if not wholly, employed in agriculture; whereby the exportation of their commodities of Great Britain, and the consumption of their manufactures supplied from thence, will be daily increasing. But this most desirable connection between Great Britain and her colonies, supported by such a happy intercourse of reciprocal benefits as is continually advancing the prosperity of both, must be interrupted, if the people of the latter, reduced to extreme poverty, should be compelled to manufacture those articles they have been hitherto furnished with from the former. From these considerations it is hoped that the honourable House of Commons will not prosecute a measure which those who may suffer under it cannot but look upon as fitter for exiles driven from their native country, After ignominiously forfeiting her favours and protection, than for the prosperity of Britons who have at all times been forward to demonstrate all due reverence to the mother kingdom, and are so instrumental in promoting her glory and felicity; and that British patriots will never consent to the exercise of anticonstitutional power, which even in this remote corner may be dangerous in its example to the interior parts of the British Empire, and will certainly be detrimental to its commerce. Source: Virginia. General Assembly. House of Burgesses | Journals of the House of burgesses of Virginia, 1659/ 60-1693 | Richmond, Va. [The Colonial press, E. Waddey co. ] 1914

THE PETITION TO HIS MAJESTY. To the KING's MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY. MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN, YOUR Majesty's most loyal and dutiful Subjects, the COUNCIL, and the BURGESSES of Virginia, now met in General Assembly, not discouraged by a too well grounded Apprehension that their Conduct has been unfavourably represented to your Royal Ear, but relying with the most implicit Confidence on your Majesty's known Justice, and most gracious Disposition towards all your loving Subjects, how far so ever removed, humbly beg leave to approach your Royal Presence with the warmest Assurances of their most cordial and inviolable Attachment to your sacred Person and Government. THEY do, with the highest Sense of Gratitude, acknowledge the many great and signal Benefits they have reaped from their Parent Kingdom, under the glorious and auspicious Reigns of your Majesty and your Royal Ancestors ; and, with all Humility, submit to your Princely Consideration the Tenour of their whole Conduct, and that of their Forefathers, as the most lively Evidence of their Duty and Affection. THEY humbly embrace this Occasion to reiterate their unfeigned Thanks to your Majesty, for your gracious and ready Assent to the repeal of the late oppressive Stamp-Act; but, at the fame Time, they cannot sufficiently lament the Shortness of that Interval of Happiness they have enjoyed between so agreeable and pleasing an Event, and the enacting several late Acts of the British Parliament, equally burthensome to your Majesty's Colonies in general, and, as they most humbly conceive, equally derogatory to those constitutional Privileges and Immunities, which they, the Heirs and Descendants of free born Britons, have ever esteemed their unquestionable and invaluable Birthrights. THEY, therefore, prostrating themselves at the Foot of your Throne, most humbly implore your Fatherly Goodness and Protection of this and all their Sifter Colonies, in the Enjoyment of their antient and inestimable Right of being governed by such Laws only, respecting their internal Polity and Taxation, as are derived from their own Consent, with the Approbation of their Sovereign ; a Right, which, as Freemen founding their Claim upon the vital Principles of the British Constitution, they have exercised without Interruption ; and which, as they humbly conceive, has been frequently recognized and confirmed to them. And they do assure your Majesty with that Truth and Sincerity, which Duty, Gratitude and Affection to the best of Kings ought ever to inspire, that they will, at all Times, exert their best Endeavours, even at the Expence of their Lives and Fortunes, to promote the Glory of your Majesty's Reign, and the Prosperity of Great-Britain; upon which, they are convinced, their own Security and Happiness does essentially depend. THAT your Majesty may long and gloriously reign in the Hearts of a free and happy People, is the most ardent Prayer of your Majesty's most faithful and dutiful Subjects, The COUNCIL, and The BURGESSES and REPRESENTATIVES of the PEOPLE of VIRGINIA. THE MEMORIAL TO THE House of LORDS. To the Right Honourable the LORDS Spiritual and Temporal, in Parliament assembled, The Memorial of bis Majesty's most dutiful and loyal Subjects, the COUNCIL, and the BURGESSES and REPRESENTATIVES of the PEOPLE of VIRGINIA, now met in General Assembly, Humbly Represents, THAT your Memorialists are so truly sensible of the Happiness and Security they derive from their Connexions with and Dependance upon Great-Britain, the Parent Kingdom of this and all his Majesty's other Colonies in America, that they cannot but be impressed with the deepest Concern, that any unlucky Incident should ever have interrupted that salutary and pleasing Harmony, which they wish ever to subsist. They acknowledge the Wisdom and Justice of Parliament, in repealing the late oppressive Stamp-Act, though they must confider several recent Acts of the British Legislature as equally subversive of those constitutional Principles of Liberty and Freedom, which they and their Ancestors have ever esteemed their indisputable Birthrights, as the immediate Heirs and Descendants of free-born Britons. YOUR Memorialists cannot sufficiently lament, that the Remoteness of their Situation from the Seat of his Majesty's Empire too often exposes them to such Misrepresentations, as are apt to involve them in Censures of Disloyalty to their Most Gracious Sovereign, and the Want of a proper Respect and Deference to the British Parliament; whereas they have ever indulged themselves in the agreeable Persuasion, that they had entitled themselves to be considered as inferior to none of their Fellow-Subjects, in any Parts of his Majesty's Dominions, for Duty or Affection. They therefore humbly hope, that an Application to your Lordships, the fixed and hereditary Guardians of British Liberty, upon so important an Occasion, will not be thought improper, but that the Grievances of a whole People will be regarded as Objects worthy your most serious Attention. THEY presume not to claim any other than the natural Rights of British Subjects. The fundamental and vital Principles of their happy Government, so universally admired, is known to consist in this, that no Power on Earth has a Right to impose Taxes upon the People, or to take the smallest Portion of their Property, without their Consent, given by their Representatives in Parliament; this has ever been esteemed the chief Pillar of their Constitution, the very Palladium of their Liberties. If this Principle is suffered to decay, the Constitution must expire with it, as no Man can enjoy even the Shadow of Freedom, if his Property, acquired by his own Industry and the Sweat of his Brow, may be wrested from him, at the Will of another, without his own Consent. THIS Truth is so well established, that it is unnecessary to attempt a Demonstration of it to Englishmen, who feel the Principle firmly implanted in them, diffusing through their whole Frame Complacency and Chearfulness. IN this happy Situation lived the Ancestors of your Memorialists, when they first undertook, with the Approbation of their Sovereigns, but at the Expence of their Blood and their own Treasure, to explore and fettle these new Regions. The natural and constitutional Rights and Privileges which they had enjoyed in their native Country, your Memorialists humbly conceive, could not be loft or forfeited by their Migration to America, but were brought over by them intire, and transmitted to their Descendants inviolate. LET not your Memorialists, my LORDS, be misunderstood; they affect not, they do not wish an Independency of their Parent Kingdom, but rejoice in their reciprocal Connexions, which they know are essential to the Happiness of both. They have been cherished, they have been protected by their Mother Country, and acknowledge themselves bound by every Tie of Gratitude and Affection to embrace all Opportunities of promoting the Prosperity of Great-Britain, to the utmost of their Abilities. They chearfully acquiesce in the Authority of Parliament to make Laws for preserving this necessary Dependance, yet they cannot conceive, and humbly insist that it is not essential to this Purpose, or to support a proper Relation between a Mother Country and Colonies transplanted from her, that she should have a Right to raise Money upon them without their Consent. THE Trade of the Colonies, almost as soon as it became an Object worthy the National Attention, was laid under such Restrictions as were thought necessary to secure their Dependance, and promote the Interest of the whole extended Empire. The natural Rights and first Principles of the English Constitution were very early ingrafted into the Constitutions of the Colonies : Hence a Legislative Authority, ever essential in all free States, was derived and assimilated, as nearly as might be, to that in England; the Crown reserving to itself the executive Authority of Government and the Power of assenting and dissenting to all Laws; but the Privilege of choosing their own Representatives was continued in the People, and confirmed to them by repeated and express Stipulations. The Constitution and Government of this Colony being thus fixed and established, your Memorialists and their Ancestors enjoyed the Fruits of their own Labour, with a Security, which Liberty only can impart. Upon pressing and emergent Occasions, not within their own Powers of Redress, they frequently applied to their King and common Father, and repeatedly, they own it with Gratitude, have received reasonable Reliefs from their Mother Country. On the other Hand, when his Majesty has had Occasion for the Assistance of his dutiful Subjects in America, Requisitions have been constantly made from the Crown, by the King's Governors, to the Representatives of the People, who have complied with them, to the utmost Extent of their Abilities. The ample and adequate Provision made by the Assemblies of this Colony in the Reign of King Charles the Second, and upon his Requisition, for the Support of the civil Government, by an Impost of two Shillings Sterling per Hogthead upon all our Tobacco exported, one Shilling and three Pence per Ton upon Ships and Vessels, and fix Pence per Poll upon all Persons imported, except Mariners; the many and large Supplies voted during the Course of the last War, upon Requisitions from his Majesty and his Royal Grandfather, afford both early and recent Instances of the Disposition of the Assemblies of this Colony to do every Thing that could reasonably be asked or expected from them; and are at the fame Time incontestable Proofs that the Parliament of Great-Britain never, until very lately, assumed a Power of imposing Taxes on the People of the Colonies, for the Purposes of raising a Revenue, or supporting the Contingencies of Government. To fay that the Parliament of Great-Britain has a constitutional Authority and Right to impose internal Taxes on the Inhabitants of this Continent, who are not, and, from the Nature of their Situation, cannot be represented in the House of Commons, is, in a Word, as your Memorialists most humbly conceive, to command them to bid Adieu to their natural and civil Liberties, and prepare for a State of Slavery. The Commons of Great-Britain can impose no Tax on the People there, without burthening themselves in some Proportion; if their Taxes should be disagreeable and grievous to their Constituents, the Constitution has not left the People without a Remedy. But what, my LORDS, must be the Situation of the Colonists, if an Authority and Right to tax them should be established in the British Parliament? Unrepresented as they are, and for ever must be, their Grievances cannot be fairly and properly explained ; they have it not in their Power, if they are to be taxed, to point out the Mode least burthensome to themselves; the Parliament bears no Share of the Taxes imposed on the Colonies, and their Doom will generally be determined before they receive the least Intelligence that a Subject had been agitated in Parliament, whereby they or their Interests might be affected. The Notion of a virtual Representation has been so often and clearly refuted, that your Memorialists decline troubling your Lordships with any Observations on that Head. THE Stamp-Act, so often and justly complained of, confessedly imposed internal Taxes on the Colonies; and several late Acts of Parliament plainly, as your Memorialists conceive, tend to the fame Point. That the Parliament may make Laws for regulating the Trade of the Colonies has been granted; sometimes Duties have been imposed to restrain the Commerce of one Part of the Empire, that was like to prove injurious to another, and by this Means the general Welfare of the Whole may have been promoted: But a Tax imposed upon such of the British Exports, as are Necessaries of Life, to be paid by the Colonists upon Importation, and this, not with the most distant View to the Interests of Commerce, but merely to raise a Revenue, or in plainer Words, to compel the Colonists to part with their Money against their Inclinations, your Memorialists conceive to be a Tax internal to all Intents and Purposes. Or this Sort your Memorialists cannot but confider the late Act of Parliament, granting certain Duties in the British Colonies and Plantations in America ; the Preamble of the Act plainly speaks the Design of it; and can it, my LORDS, be thought just or reasonable that the Colonists, restricted as they are in their Trade of every Kind, should be compelled to pay Duties on the Articles enumerated in this Act? They have long been restrained from purchasing many of the Necessaries of Life at any other, than the British Market; they are confined in their Exports also; and now are told that they shall not have such Necessaries, without paying a Duty for them. The Stamp-Act imposed a Duty upon certain Instruments of Writing, and, by the late Act, the Colonies are to be compelled to pay a Duty upon every Slip of Paper, they use in the most ordinary Occurrences of Life. THE Purposes of Government, which are said to be the chief Objects of this Act, your Memorialists have shewn were long since provided for in this Colony ; this is again remarked, not that your Memorialists would claim any particular, exclusive Merit from it, but to shew how easily our internal Concerns may be mistaken at the Distance of three Thousand Miles ; for, had this been attended to, your Memorialists are unwilling to suppose, that the Parliament would have imposed Taxes on a Colony for Purposes amply provided for in that Colony. The Manner also in which this Act is to be executed, your Memorialists are apprehensive may, in Time, prove destructive to the Liberties of the People. THE Act suspending the Legislative Power of the Province of New-York, your Memorialists cannot but confider as still more alarming to the Colonies in general, though it has that single Province in View, as its immediate Object. If the Parliament has a Right to compel the Colonies to furnish a single Article for the Troops fent over to America, by the fame Rule, they may oblige them to furnish Cloaths, Arms, and every otter Thing, even the Pay of the Officers and Soldiers; a Doctrine replete with every Kind of Mischief, and utterly subversive of every Thing dear and valuable to us. For what Advantage could the People of the Colonies derive from their Right of choosing their own Representatives, if those Representatives, when chosen, not permitted to exercise their own Judgments, were under a Necessity (on Pain of being deprived of their Legislative Authority) of enforcing the Mandates of a British Parliament, though ever so injurious to the Interests of the Colony they represent? Your Memorialists could enlarge upon this disagreeable Subject, but fear they have already trespassed too far upon your Lordships Time and Patience. They have communicated to your Lordships, and it is hoped with the greatest Decency and Respect, the Sentiments of a free and loyal People. It only remains for them to beseech your Lordships, with that Earnestness which the Importance of the Subject inspires, to use your Parliamentary Power and Influence, in procuring a Repeal of the above recited Acts of Parliament, and in securing to us, his Majesty's most dutiful, though distant Subjects, the full Enjoyment and Privileges. THE REMONSTRANCE TO THE HOUSE of COMMONS. To the Honourable the KNIGHTS, CITIZENS, and BURGESSES of GREAT-BRITAIN, in Parliament assembled, THE COUNCIL, and the HOUSE of BURGESSES, the sole constitutional REPRESENTATIVES of his Majesty's most dutiful and loyal Subjects, the PEOPLE of Virginia, now met in General Assembly, having taken into their most serious Consideration the State of this Colony, with due Deference and Respect to the Wisdom of the Representatives of the Commons of Great-Britain, remonstrate as follows: IT is with equal Grief and Amazement that the Remonstrants have learnt, that they have been represented in Great-Britain as disloyal to their Most Gracious Sovereign, and disaffected to his Government, since, by their whole Conduct they have endeavoured to approve themselves second to none of their Fellow Subjects, in any Part of his Majesty's Dominions, for Duty and Affection. THEY are truly sensible of the Happiness and Security they derive from their Connexions with and Dependance upon Great-Britain, their Parent Kingdom; and as they have at all Times exerted their best Endeavours to make such suitable Returns, on their Parts, as might render the Continuance of those Connexions permanent, and equally desirable to both, they cannot but feel the deepest Concern, that any Incidents should have interrupted that pleasing Harmony, which they wish ever to subsist. As Members of the British Empire, they presume not to claim any other than the common, unquestionable Rights of British Subjects, who, by a fundamental and vital Principle of their Constitution, cannot be subjected to any Kind of Taxation, or have the smallest Portion of their Property taken from them by any Power on Earth, without their Consent given by their Representatives in Parliament; this Pillar of their Constitution, the very Palladium of their Liberties, hath been so zealously preserved by the House of Commons of Great-Britain, that they have never suffered any other Branch of their Legislature to make the smallest Amendment or Alteration in any of their Supply Bills, left it should be drawn into Precedent, and considered as a Coffin of so dear and essential a Right and Privilege. If this Principle is ever suffered to decay, the Constitution must pine away and expire with it ; as no Man can enjoy even the Shadow of Liberty or Freedom, if his Property, acquired by his own Labour and Industry, can be wrested from him at the Will of another. To attempt demonstrating this to an Englishman must surely be unnecessary; he feels the Principle within him, and it diffuses through his whole Frame that Complacency and Chearfulness, without which he could not live at Ease. OUR Ancestors, who, at the Expence of their Blood and Treasure, first explored and fettled these new Regions, being entitled to these natural and constitutional Rights, could not forfeit or lose them by their Migration to America, not as Vagabonds and Fugitives, but with the License and under the Encouragement of their Sovereigns, being animated with the laudable Desire of enlarging the English Dominion, and extending its Commerce; but on the contrary they brought these their common Birthrights over with them entire, and transmitted them inviolate to us their Posterity. LET not the Remonstrants be misunderstood, as affecting or wishing an Independency of Great-Britain ; they rather rejoice in that constitutional Connexion, which they know is essential to the Happiness of both; they have been cherished, they have been kindly protected by her, and cannot but indulge themselves with the Persuasion, that the Benefits which have redounded, and which daily accrue to their Mother Country from her Trade with the Colonies, have hitherto proved, and quate and ample Recompence for such Protection. They have acquiesced in the Authority of Parliament to make Laws for preserving a necessary Dependance, yet they cannot think it essential to this Purpose, or to preserve a proper Relation between a Parent Kingdom and Colonies transplanted from her, that she should raise Money upon them without their Consent. The Trade of the Colonies, almost as soon as it became an Object worthy the national Attention, was laid under such Restrictions, as were thought necessary to secure their Dependance and promote the Interest of the whole extended Empire. The natural Rights and first Principles of the English Constitution were very early ingrafted into the Constitutions of the Colonies: Hence a Legislative Authority, which has always been thought essential in every free State, was derived and assimilated, as nearly as might be, to that established in England; the Crown reserving to itself the executive Authority of Government and the Power of assenting and dissenting to all Laws; but the Privilege of choosing their own Representatives was continued in the People, and confirmed to them by repeated and express Stipulations. The Constitution and Government of this Colony being thus established and fixed, the Remonstrants and their Ancestors enjoyed the perfect Sweets of Liberty and Freedom. Upon pressing and emergent Occasions, not within their own Powers of Redress, they have frequently applied to their King and common Father, and often, they own it with Gratitude, have received reasonable Reliefs from their Mother Country. On the other Hand, when his Majesty has had Occasion for the Affiftance of his dutiful Subjects in America, Requisitions have been constantly made from the Crown by the King's Governors to the Representatives of the People, who have complied with them to the utmost of their Abilities. The ample and adequate Provision made by the Assembly of this Colony, so long ago as the Reign of King Charles the Second, and upon his Requisition, for Support of the civil Government, by an Impost of two Shillings Sterling per Hogshead on all Tobacco exported, one Shilling and three Pence Tonnage upon all Ships and Vessels, and fix Pence per Poll on all Persons imported, except Mariners, with the many and large Supplies, exceeding Half a Million voted during the Course of the last War, upon Requisitions made to the Assembly of this Colony by his Majesty and his Royal Grandfather, afford both early and recent Instances of the Disposition of the Assemblies of this Colony, to do every Thing that could reasonably be desired or expected of them; and at the fame Time are incontestable Proofs that the Commons of Great-Britain never, until very lately, assumed a Power of imposing Taxes on the People of the Colonies for the Purposes of raising a Revenue, or supporting the Contingencies of Government. To fay that the Commons of Great-Britain have a constitutional Right and Authority to give and grant, at their Pleasure, the Properties of the People in the Colonies, or to impose an internal Tax of any Kind upon them, who are not, and cannot, from the Nature of their Situation, be represented in their House of Commons, is in a Word, to command them to bid Adieu to their natural and civil Liberties, and to prepare for a State of the most abject Slavery. THE Commons of Great-Britain can impose no Taxes on the People there, without burthening themselves in some Proportion ; if the Taxes they impose should be thought grievous or unnecessary, the Constitution hath not left the People without a proper Remedy. But what must be the Situation of the Colonists, if the late and new broached Doctrine should prevail? Unrepresented as they are, and for ever must be, they can have no Opportunity of explaining their just Grievances; and if they are to be taxed, of pointing out the least inconvenient and burthensome Mode of doing it; in short, their Doom will generally be pronounced, before they can receive the least Intelligence that a Subject, whereby they or their Interests might be affected, hath been agitated in Parliament. THE Notion of a virtual Representation hath been so often and fully refuted, that it surely is unnecessary to multiply Words on that Head ; if the Property, the Liberties, the Lives of Millions of his Majesty's most dutiful Subjects are merely ideal, how deplorable must be their Condition! THE late oppressive Stamp-Act, so often and justly complained of, in repealing which, your Remonstrants have repeatedly acknowledged. the Wisdom and Justice of Parliament, did confessedly impose a Tax on the Colonists merely internal; and the Remonstrants cannot but confider several late Acts of the British Parliament, as tending directly to the fame Point. That the Parliament may make Laws for regulating the Trade of the Colonies, has been granted ; sometimes Duties have been properly enough imposed to restrain the Commerce of one Part of the Empire, that might prove injurious to another; and by this Means, the general Welfare of the whole may have been promoted; but a Tax imposed upon the real Necessaries of Life, for the sole Purpose of raising a Revenue, or in other Words, to compel the Inhabitants of the Colonies to pay large Sums of Money, whether they will or not, and this, not with a View to the general Interests of Commerce, the Remonstrants must ever think a mere internal Tax to all Intents and Purposes. Of this Sort they cannot but confider a late Act of Parliament " giving and granting certain Duties in the British Colonies and Plantations in America ;" the Preamble plainly speaks the Design of the Act; and can it be thought just, or reasonable, that the Colonists, restricted as they are in every Branch of their Trade, should be obliged to pay Duties on the Articles enumerated in this Act? They are, in the first Place, by former Laws prohibited from purchasing these Necessaries of Life at any other than the British Market ; they are confined in their Exports also ; by this they are to be compelled to pay severe Duties on such Necessaries. By the Stamp-Act they were forbid, under grievous Penalties, transacting all Sorts of important Business, except upon stampt Paper; by this Act they are inhibited the Use of Paper, in the most common and ordinary Occurrences, unless they will first submit to pay a Duty for it. The Purposes of Government, which are said to be the chief Objects of this Act, the Remonstrants have shewn, were long since provided for by an ample and perpetual Act of Assembly ; this is again remarked, not because the Remonstrants would claim any particular exclusive Merit from it, but to shew how easily their internal Concerns may be mistaken at the Distance of three Thousand Miles; they being unwilling to believe, that, had this Circumstance been attended to, the Parliament would have imposed Taxes on this Colony for Purposes already provided for. The Manner in which this Act is to be executed, the Remonstrants cannot but confider as extremely dangerous to the Liberties of the People. THE Act suspending the Legislative Power of the Province of New-York, the Remonstrants confider as still more alarming to the Colonies in general, though it has that single Province in View, as its immediate Object. If the Parliament has a Right to compel the Colonists to furnish a single Article for the Troops fent over to America, by the fame Rule of Right they may compel them to furnish Cloaths, Arms, and every other Necessary, even the Pay of the Officers and Soldiers ; a Doctrine replete with every Kind of Mischief, and utterly subversive of all that is dear and valuable to them. For what Advantage could the People of the Colonies derive from their Right of choosing their own Representatives, if those Representatives, when chosen, not permitted to exercise their own Judgments, were under a Necessity (on Pain of being deprived of their Legislative Authority) of enforcing the Mandates of a British Parliament? THUS have the Remonstrants expressed, and they trust with decent Firmness, the Sentiments of a free and loyal People; it is hoped that the Honourable House of Commons will no longer prosecute Measures, which they, who are designed to suffer under them, must ever consider as much fitter for Exiles, driven from their native Country after having ignominiously forfeited her Favours and Protection, than for the Posterity of Britons, who have been at all Times anxious and sollicitous to demonstrate their Respect and Affection for their Mother Kingdom, by embracing every Occasion to promote her Prosperity and Glory ; but that British Patriots will never consent to the Exercise of anti-constitutional Powers, which even in these remote Corners, may, in Time, prove dangerous in their Example to the interior Parts of the British Empire. Should the Remonstrants be disappointed in these Hopes, the necessary Result will be, that the Colonists, reduced to extreme Poverty, will be compelled to contract themselves within their little Spheres, and obliged to content themselves with their homespun Manufactures. WILLIAMSBURG: Printed by WILLIAM RIND, Printer to the Colony M.DCC.LXIX. Source: https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/pf/viewer.cfm?image=lg_petition1.jpg|lg_petition2.jpg|lg_petition3.jpg|lg_petition4.jpg|lg_petition5.jpg|lg_petition6.jpg|lg_petition7.jpg|lg_petition8.jpg|lg_petition9.jpg|lg_petition10.jpg|lg_petition11.jpg&imageTitle=Virginia%20House%20of%20Burgesses%20Petition&imagePath=/pf/images/&imageCurrent=1

February 27, 1860 Cooper Union, New York City Mr. President and fellow citizens of New York: - The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations following that presentation. In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in "The New-York Times," Senator Douglas said: "Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now." I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: "What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned?" What is the frame of government under which we live? The answer must be: "The Constitution of the United States." That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787, (and under which the present government first went into operation,) and twelve subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of which were framed in 1789. Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? I suppose the "thirty-nine" who signed the original instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present Government. It is almost exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether true to say they fairly represented the opinion and sentiment of the whole nation at that time. Their names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to quite all, need not now be repeated. I take these "thirty-nine," for the present, as being "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live." What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers understood "just as well, and even better than we do now?" It is this: Does the proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories ? Upon this, Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Republicans the negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue; and this issue - this question - is precisely what the text declares our fathers understood "better than we." Let us now inquire whether the "thirty-nine," or any of them, ever acted upon this question; and if they did, how they acted upon it - how they expressed that better understanding? In 1784, three years before the Constitution - the United States then owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other, the Congress of the Confederation had before them the question of prohibiting slavery in that Territory; and four of the "thirty-nine" who afterward framed the Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted on that question. Of these, Roger Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory. The other of the four - James M'Henry - voted against the prohibition, showing that, for some cause, he thought it improper to vote for it. In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the Convention was in session framing it, and while the Northwestern Territory still was the only territory owned by the United States, the same question of prohibiting slavery in the territory again came before the Congress of the Confederation; and two more of the "thirty-nine" who afterward signed the Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted on the question. They were William Blount and William Few; and they both voted for the prohibition - thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibition became a law, being part of what is now well known as the Ordinance of '87. The question of federal control of slavery in the territories, seems not to have been directly before the Convention which framed the original Constitution; and hence it is not recorded that the "thirty-nine," or any of them, while engaged on that instrument, expressed any opinion on that precise question. In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the Ordinance of '87, including the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was reported by one of the "thirty-nine," Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages without a word of opposition, and finally passed both branches without yeas and nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous passage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, Nicholas Gilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Clymer, Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, James Madison. This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, properly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the federal territory; else both their fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support the Constitution, would have constrained them to oppose the prohibition. Again, George Washington, another of the "thirty-nine," was then President of the United States, and, as such approved and signed the bill; thus completing its validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government, to control as to slavery in federal territory. No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal Government the country now constituting the State of Tennessee; and a few years later Georgia ceded that which now constitutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama. In both deeds of cession it was made a condition by the ceding States that the Federal Government should not prohibit slavery in the ceded territory. Besides this, slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under these circumstances, Congress, on taking charge of these countries, did not absolutely prohibit slavery within them. But they did interfere with it - take control of it - even there, to a certain extent. In 1798, Congress organized the Territory of Mississippi. In the act of organization, they prohibited the bringing of slaves into the Territory, from any place without the United States, by fine, and giving freedom to slaves so bought. This act passed both branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that Congress were three of the "thirty-nine" who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, George Read and Abraham Baldwin. They all, probably, voted for it. Certainly they would have placed their opposition to it upon record, if, in their understanding, any line dividing local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory. In 1803, the Federal Government purchased the Louisiana country. Our former territorial acquisitions came from certain of our own States; but this Louisiana country was acquired from a foreign nation. In 1804, Congress gave a territorial organization to that part of it which now constitutes the State of Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within that part, was an old and comparatively large city. There were other considerable towns and settlements, and slavery was extensively and thoroughly intermingled with the people. Congress did not, in the Territorial Act, prohibit slavery; but they did interfere with it - take control of it - in a more marked and extensive way than they did in the case of Mississippi. The substance of the provision therein made, in relation to slaves, was: First. That no slave should be imported into the territory from foreign parts. Second. That no slave should be carried into it who had been imported into the United States since the first day of May, 1798. Third. That no slave should be carried into it, except by the owner, and for his own use as a settler; the penalty in all the cases being a fine upon the violator of the law, and freedom to the slave. This act also was passed without yeas and nays. In the Congress which passed it, there were two of the "thirty-nine." They were Abraham Baldwin and Jonathan Dayton. As stated in the case of Mississippi, it is probable they both voted for it. They would not have allowed it to pass without recording their opposition to it, if, in their understanding, it violated either the line properly dividing local from federal authority, or any provision of the Constitution. In 1819-20, came and passed the Missouri question. Many votes were taken, by yeas and nays, in both branches of Congress, upon the various phases of the general question. Two of the "thirty-nine" - Rufus King and Charles Pinckney - were members of that Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for slavery prohibition and against all compromises, while Mr. Pinckney as steadily voted against slavery prohibition and against all compromises. By this, Mr. King showed that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery in federal territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his votes, showed that, in his understanding, there was some sufficient reason for opposing such prohibition in that case. The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the "thirty-nine," or of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have been able to discover. To enumerate the persons who thus acted, as being four in 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 1804, and two in 1819-20 - there would be thirty of them. But this would be counting John Langdon, Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, and George Read each twice, and Abraham Baldwin, three times. The true number of those of the "thirty-nine" whom I have shown to have acted upon the question, which, by the text, they understood better than we, is twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any way. Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine fathers "who framed the government under which we live," who have, upon their official responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they "understood just as well, and even better than we do now;" and twenty-one of them - a clear majority of the whole "thirty-nine" - so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and willful perjury, if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. Thus the twenty-one acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions, under such responsibility, speak still louder. Two of the twenty-three voted against Congressional prohibition of slavery in the federal territories, in the instances in which they acted upon the question. But for what reasons they so voted is not known. They may have done so because they thought a proper division of local from federal authority, or some provision or principle of the Constitution, stood in the way; or they may, without any such question, have voted against the prohibition, on what appeared to them to be sufficient grounds of expediency. No one who has sworn to support the Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he understands to be an unconstitutional measure, however expedient he may think it; but one may and ought to vote against a measure which he deems constitutional, if, at the same time, he deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, would be unsafe to set down even the two who voted against the prohibition, as having done so because, in their understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory. The remaining sixteen of the "thirty-nine," so far as I have discovered, have left no record of their understanding upon the direct question of federal control of slavery in the federal territories. But there is much reason to believe that their understanding upon that question would not have appeared different from that of their twenty-three compeers, had it been manifested at all. For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have purposely omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any person, however distinguished, other than the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution; and, for the same reason, I have also omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any of the "thirty-nine" even, on any other phase of the general question of slavery. If we should look into their acts and declarations on those other phases, as the foreign slave trade, and the morality and policy of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct question of federal control of slavery in federal territories, the sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have acted just as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those times - as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris - while there was not one now known to have been otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina. The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one - a clear majority of the whole - certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories; while all the rest probably had the same understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the original Constitution; and the text affirms that they understood the question "better than we." But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the original instrument, a mode was provided for amending it; and, as I have already stated, the present frame of "the Government under which we live" consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that federal control of slavery in federal territories violates the Constitution, point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus violates; and, as I understand, that all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides that no person shall be deprived of "life, liberty or property without due process of law;" while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution" "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution - the identical Congress which passed the act already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. Not only was it the same Congress, but they were the identical, same individual men who, at the same session, and at the same time within the session, had under consideration, and in progress toward maturity, these Constitutional amendments, and this act prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then owned. The Constitutional amendments were introduced before, and passed after the act enforcing the Ordinance of '87; so that, during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the Ordinance, the Constitutional amendments were also pending. The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen of the framers of the original Constitution, as before stated, were pre- eminently our fathers who framed that part of "the Government under which we live," which is now claimed as forbidding the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories. Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm that the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and carried to maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other? And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled with the other affirmation from the same mouth, that those who did the two things, alleged to be inconsistent, understood whether they really were inconsistent better than we - better than he who affirms that they are inconsistent? It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live." And so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century, (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century,) declare that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. To those who now so declare, I give, not only "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live," but with them all other living men within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with them. Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience - to reject all progress - all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we. If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live" were of the same opinion - thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. If any man at this day sincerely believes "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live," used and applied principles, in other cases, which ought to have led them to understand that a proper division of local from federal authority or some part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so. But he should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of declaring that, in his opinion, he understands their principles better than they did themselves; and especially should he not shirk that responsibility by asserting that they "understood the question just as well, and even better, than we do now." But enough! Let all who believe that "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask - all Republicans desire - in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guarantees those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content. And now, if they would listen - as I suppose they will not - I would address a few words to the Southern people. I would say to them: - You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us a reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite - license, so to speak - among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify. You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your section - gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year. You will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get no votes in your section, is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started - to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet it as if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No! Then you really believe that the principle which "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live" thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment's consideration. Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the Government upon that subject up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it, he wrote LaFayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy of free States. Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it. But you say you are conservative - eminently conservative - while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;" while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave another, no third man should object," fantastically called "Popular Sovereignty;" but never a man among you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live." Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations. Again, you say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that question reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What has been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times. You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander. Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live." You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live," declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us, in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves. Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was "got up by Black Republicanism." In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive slave insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable connecting trains. Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history, though not connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local revolts extending to a score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much fears, or much hopes for such an event, will be alike disappointed. In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, "It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu , filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up." Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of Virginia; and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding States only. The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the institution - the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now free from slavery. John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two things. And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helper's Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling - that sentiment - by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation? But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your Constitutional rights. That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right, plainly written down in the Constitution. But we are proposing no such thing. When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of yours, to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication. Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed Constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer's distinction between dictum and decision, the Court have decided the question for you in a sort of way. The Court have substantially said, it is your Constitutional right to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided Court, by a bare majority of the Judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact - the statement in the opinion that "the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution." An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it. Bear in mind, the Judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge their veracity that it is "distinctly and expressly" affirmed there - "distinctly," that is, not mingled with anything else - "expressly," that is, in words meaning just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no other meaning. If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others to show that neither the word "slave" nor "slavery" is to be found in the Constitution, nor the word "property" even, in any connection with language alluding to the things slave, or slavery; and that wherever in that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a "person;" - and wherever his master's legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as "service or labor which may be due," - as a debt payable in service or labor. Also, it would be open to show, by contemporaneous history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the Constitution the idea that there could be property in man. To show all this, is easy and certain. When this obvious mistake of the Judges shall be brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it? And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live" - the men who made the Constitution - decided this same Constitutional question in our favor, long ago - decided it without division among themselves, when making the decision; without division among themselves about the meaning of it after it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon any mistaken statement of facts. Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!" To be sure, what the robber demanded of me - my money - was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle. A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them. Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation. The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them. These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words . Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone - have never disturbed them - so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying. I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our Free-State Constitutions. Yet those Constitutions declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis, than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these Constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing. Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality - its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension - its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care - such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did. Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. Source: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-cooper-union-new-york-city Image of Text: https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/the-speech-that-won-lincoln-new-york Image of Cooper Union: Cooper Union 1875, courtesy Museum of the City of New York

March 16, 1964   To the Congress of the United States: We are citizens of the richest and most fortunate nation in the history of the world. One hundred and eighty years ago we were a small country struggling for survival on the margin of a hostile land. Today we have established a civilization of free men which spans an entire continent. With the growth of our country has come opportunity for our people--opportunity to educate our children, to use our energies in productive work, to increase our leisure-opportunity for almost every American to hope that through work and talent he could create a better life for himself and his family. The path forward has not been an easy one. But we have never lost sight of our goal: an America in which every citizen shares all the opportunities of his society, in which every man has a chance to advance his welfare to the limit of his capacities. We have come a long way toward this goal. We still have a long way to go. The distance which remains is the measure of the great unfinished work of our society. To finish that work I have called for a national war on poverty. Our objective: total victory. There are millions of Americans--one fifth of our people--who have not shared in the abundance which has been granted to most of us, and on whom the gates of opportunity have been closed. What does this poverty mean to those who endure it? It means a daily struggle to secure the necessities for even a meager existence. It means that the abundance, the comforts, the opportunities they see all around them are beyond their grasp. Worst of all, it means hopelessness for the young. The young man or woman who grows up without a decent education, in a broken home, in a hostile and squalid environment, in ill health or in the face of racial injustice-that young man or woman is often trapped in a life of poverty. He does not have the skills demanded by a complex society. He does not know how to acquire those skills. He faces a mounting sense of despair which drains initiative and ambition and energy. Our tax cut will create millions of new jobs--new exits from poverty. But we must also strike down all the barriers which keep many from using those exits. The war on poverty is not a struggle simply to support people, to make them dependent on the generosity of others. It is a struggle to give people a chance. It is an effort to allow them to develop and use their capacities, as we have been allowed to develop and use ours, so that they can share, as others share, in the promise of this nation. We do this, first of all, because it is right that we should. From the establishment of public education and land grant colleges through agricultural extension and encouragement to industry, we have pursued the goal of a nation with full and increasing opportunities for all its citizens. The war on poverty is a further step in that pursuit. We do it also because helping some will increase the prosperity of all. Our fight against poverty will be an investment in the most valuable of our resources--the skills and strength of our people. And in the future, as in the past, this investment will return its cost many fold to our entire economy. If we can raise the annual earnings of 10 million among the poor by only $1,000 we will have added 14 billion dollars a year to our national output. In addition we can make important reductions in public assistance payments which now cost us 4 billion dollars a year, and in the large costs of fighting crime and delinquency, disease and hunger. This is only part of the story. Our history has proved that each time we broaden the base of abundance, giving more people the chance to produce and consume, we create new industry, higher production, increased earnings and better income for all. Giving new opportunity to those who have little will enrich the lives of all the rest. Because it is right, because it is wise, and because, for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty, I submit, for the consideration of the Congress and the country, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The Act does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done. It charts a new course. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty. It can be a milestone in our one-hundred eighty year search for a better life for our people. This Act provides five basic opportunities. It will give almost half a million underprivileged young Americans the opportunity to develop skills, continue education, and find useful work. It will give every American community the opportunity to develop a comprehensive plan to fight its own poverty--and help them to carry out their plans. It will give dedicated Americans the opportunity to enlist as volunteers in the war against poverty. It will give many workers and farmers the opportunity to break through particular barriers which bar their escape from poverty. It will give the entire nation the opportunity for a concerted attack on poverty through the establishment, under my direction, of the Office of Economic Opportunity, a national headquarters for the war against poverty. This is how we propose to create these opportunities. First we will give high priority to helping young Americans who lack skills, who have not completed their education or who cannot complete it because they are too poor. The years of high school and college age are the most critical stage of a young person's life. If they are not helped then, many will be condemned to a life of poverty which they, in turn, will pass on to their children. I therefore recommend the creation of a Job Corps, a Work-Training Program, and a Work Study Program. A new national Job Corps will build toward an enlistment of 100,000 young men. They will be drawn from those whose background, health and education make them least fit for useful work. Those who volunteer will enter more than 100 Camps and Centers around the country. Half of these young men will work, in the first year, on special conservation projects to give them education, useful work experience and to enrich the natural resources of the country. Half of these young men will receive, in the first year, a blend of training, basic education and work experience in Job Training Centers. These are not simply camps for the underprivileged. They are new educational institutions, comparable in innovation to the land grant colleges. Those who enter them will emerge better qualified to play a productive role in American society. A new national Work-Training Program operated by the Department of Labor will provide work and training for 200,000 American men and women between the ages of 16 and 21. This will be developed through state and local governments and non-profit agencies. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans badly need the experience, the income, and the sense of purpose which useful full or part-time work can bring. For them such work may mean the difference between finishing school or dropping out. Vital community activities from hospitals and playgrounds to libraries and settlement houses are suffering because there are not enough people to staff them. We are simply bringing these needs together. A new national Work-Study Program operated by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare will provide federal funds for part-time jobs for 140,000 young Americans who do not go to college because they cannot afford it. There is no more senseless waste than the waste of the brainpower and skill of those who are kept from college by economic circumstance. Under this program they will, in a great American tradition, be able to work their way through school. They and the country will be richer for it. Second, through a new Community Action program we intend to strike at poverty at its source--in the streets of our cities and on the farms of our countryside among the very young and the impoverished old. This program asks men and women throughout the country to prepare long-range plans for the attack on poverty in their own local communities. These are not plans prepared in Washington and imposed upon hundreds of different situations. They are based on the fact that local citizens best understand their own problems, and know best how to deal with those problems. These plans will be local plans striking at the many unfilled needs which underlie poverty in each community, not just one or two. Their components and emphasis will differ as needs differ. These plans will be local plans calling upon all the resources available to the community-federal and state, local and private, human and material. And when these plans are approved by the Office of Economic Opportunity, the federal government will finance up to 9070 of the additional cost for the first two years. The most enduring strength of our nation is the huge reservoir of talent, initiative and leadership which exists at every level of our society. Through the Community Action Program we call upon this, our greatest strength, to overcome our greatest weakness. Third, I ask for the authority to recruit and train skilled volunteers for the war against poverty. Thousands of Americans have volunteered to serve the needs of other lands. Thousands more want the chance to serve the needs of their own land. They should have that chance. Among older people who have retired, as well as among the young, among women as well as men, there are many Americans who are ready to enlist in our war against poverty. They have skills and dedication. They are badly needed. If the State requests them, if the community needs and will use them, we will recruit and train them and give them the chance to serve. Fourth, we intend to create new opportunities for certain hard-hit groups to break out of the pattern of poverty. Through a new program of loans and guarantees we can provide incentives to those who will employ the unemployed. Through programs of work and retraining for unemployed fathers and mothers we can help them support their families in dignity while preparing themselves for new work. Through funds to purchase needed land, organize cooperatives, and create new and adequate family farms we can help those whose life on the land has been a struggle without hope. Fifth, I do not intend that the war against poverty become a series of uncoordinated and unrelated efforts--that it perish for lack of leadership and direction. Therefore this bill creates, in the Executive Office of the President, a new Office of Economic Opportunity. Its Director will be my personal Chief of Staff for the War against poverty. I intend to appoint Sargent Shriver to this post. He will be directly responsible for these new programs. He will work with and through existing agencies of the government. This program--the Economic Opportunity Act--is the foundation of our war against poverty. But it does not stand alone. For the past three years this government has advanced a number of new proposals which strike at important areas of need and distress. I ask the Congress to extend those which are already in action, and to establish those which have already been proposed. There are programs to help badly distressed areas such as the Area Redevelopment Act, and the legislation now being prepared to help Appalachia. There are programs to help those without training find a place in today's complex society--such as the Manpower Development Training Act and the Vocational Education Act for youth. There are programs to protect those who are specially vulnerable to the ravages of poverty--hospital insurance for the elderly, protection for migrant farm workers, a food stamp program for the needy, coverage for millions not now protected by a minimum wage, new and expanded unemployment benefits for men out of work, a Housing and Community Development bill for those seeking decent homes. Finally there are programs which help the entire country, such as aid to education which, by raising the quality of schooling available to every American child, will give a new chance for knowledge to the children of the poor. I ask immediate action on all these programs. What you are being asked to consider is not a simple or an easy program. But poverty is not a simple or an easy enemy. It cannot be driven from the land by a single attack on a single front. Were this so we would have conquered poverty long ago. Nor can it be conquered by government alone. For decades American labor and American business, private institutions and private individuals have been engaged in strengthening our economy and offering new opportunity to those in need. We need their help, their support, and their full participation. Through this program we offer new incentives and new opportunities for cooperation, so that all the energy of our nation, not merely the efforts of government, can be brought to bear on our common enemy. Today, for the first time in our history, we have the power to strike away the barriers [p.380] to full participation in our society. Having the power, we have the duty. The Congress is charged by the Constitution to "provide . . . for the general welfare of the United States." Our present abundance is a measure of its success in fulfilling that duty. Now Congress is being asked to extend that welfare to all our people. The President of the United States is President of all the people in every section of the country. But this office also holds a special responsibility to the distressed and disinherited, the hungry and the hopeless of this abundant nation. It is in pursuit of that special responsibility that I submit this Message to you today. The new program I propose is within our means. Its cost of 970 million dollars is 1 percent of our national budget--and every dollar I am requesting for this program is already included in the budget I sent to Congress in January. But we cannot measure its importance by its cost. For it charts an entirely new course of hope for our people. We are fully aware that this program will not eliminate all the poverty in America in a few months or a few years. Poverty is deeply rooted and its causes are many. But this program will show the way to new opportunities for millions of our fellow citizens. It will provide a lever with which we can begin to open the door to our prosperity for those who have been kept outside. It will also give us the chance to test our weapons, to try our energy and ideas and imagination for the many battles yet to come. As conditions change, and as experience illuminates our difficulties, we will be prepared to modify our strategy. And this program is much more than a beginning. Rather it is a commitment. It is a total commitment by this President, and this Congress, and this nation, to pursue victory over the most ancient of mankind's enemies. On many historic occasions the President has requested from Congress the authority to move against forces which were endangering the well-being of our country. This is such an occasion. On similar occasions in the past we have often been called upon to wage war against foreign enemies which threatened our freedom. Today we are asked to declare war on a domestic enemy which threatens the strength of our nation and the welfare of our people. If we now move forward against this enemy--if we can bring to the challenges of peace the same determination and strength which has brought us victory in war--then this day and this Congress will have won a secure and honorable place in the history of the nation, and the enduring gratitude of generations of Americans yet to come. LYNDON B. JOHNSON Source: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-proposing-nationwide-war-the-sources-poverty

A Speech upon the Foreign Slave Trade to the South Carolina State Legislature by L. W. Spratt. December 13, 1858 Mr. Speaker:—In advance of discussion on the resolutions I have had the honor to present;—if they be discussed, I would ask the indulgence of the House while I state a little more at length their aim and purport. It will be seen that they do not propose a further importation of foreign slaves.  Upon the propriety of that measure there well may be a diversity of opinion, and as it is a measure which will only come in question when the States of the South shall be in a condition to act for themselves upon the subject, it is enough for the present to consider the importance of emancipating slavery from the control of Congress, while we leave that question of ulterior policy to the time when it will come in proper order for investigation. It would be but fair to say, however, that even in reference to that ulterior policy I can have little question; and that, if restrictions by the general government should be removed, I would certainly oppose this imposition by the State. I have long been convinced that the foreign slave trade, and that alone, will solve the problem of progress of the South, and it will not be out of place, perhaps, even on the special question now before us, to briefly state the grounds of that conviction.  In the first place I conceive that it is the only road to political power, and that without political power there is no security for social and political rights. By reference to the census returns of 1808, it will be seen that the slave and hireling States were equal in number and nearly equal in population.  Since that time no slaves have come to the South, but since that time five millions of foreigners have come to the North, and while therefore the South at present has but fifteen States and ten millions of people, the North has seventeen States and sixteen millions of people, and an increase of at least three hundred thousand per annum from abroad.  In view of these facts it would seem certain that the South has come to be at the mercy of the North in legislation, and that these restrictions have been the causes of it. But, as equality was lost to the South by the suppression of the slave trade, so would it seem that the slave trade would of necessity restore it. That trade re-opened, slaves would come, if not to the sea-board, at least to the western frontier, and for all who come there would be a direct increase of representation in the national legislature.—There would also be a broader base for the ruling race to stand on. 3,500,000 slaves, support 6,000,000 masters now. Still more would give a broader basis for still more, and every slave that comes, therefore, might be said to bring his master with him, and thus to add more than twice his political value to the importance of the South. But to political power there is a necessity for States as well as men, and slaves would quite as surely give them to us. Ten thousand masters have failed to take Kansas, but so would not have failed ten thousand slaves. Ten thousand of the rudest Africans that ever set their feet upon our shores, imported, if need be, in Boston ships and under Boston slave drivers, would have swept the free soil party from that land.  There is not an abolitionist there who would not have purchased a slave at a price approaching the costs of importation, and so purchasing a slave, there is not an abolitionist there who would not have become as strong a propagandist of slavery as ever lived. As they would have taken Kansas, so if imported freely, would they take every territory offered to the west. And thus, in giving States and population to the south, it is reasonably certain that it is within the power of these rude untutored savages to decide this great political question, to restore the South to power, and, perhaps, to save this Union. As they give a road to power for the South, so also I have thought they give the only road. To an increase of power there must be population, and of such a population as is necessary to extend the institutions of the South, there is no other source than Africa. Europeans will not come. They would come to enterprises in connection with slave labor, if these were possible, but they will not come to [competition] with our slaves, and while therefore they come in millions to the North, they will not come to us. But if they should, it is to be feared they would not come to strengthen us, or to extend slavery, but to exclude the slave. If slaves were abundant, there would be offices of direction to which the foreigner could come;—if they were cheap, cheap enough to be employed in competition with European operatives in the arts, there would be opportunities of enterprise to which the foreigner could come, but not so abundant, nor so cheap; the hireling only comes to competition with them and to their exclusion, therefore, and thus it is that from Maryland and Delaware, and from the northern counties of Virginia, and from Baltimore, Richmond, Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans and St. Louis, slaves have been driven from almost all the employments to which they were accustomed, and have been sent in thousands to the rural districts of the further South.  Through such a population there is no road to power for the South.  Without slaves enough for combination, they would abolitionize the States they came to strengthen, and would break, the very centres of our institution. But grant the condition of abundant slaves at prices to be used in trade and we could draw an army of defenders from every State in Europe. As the foreign slave trade would give political power to the South, so also would it give prosperity and progress. There is one thing at the South, the importance of which I think is not sufficiently estimated and this is the want of opportunity. When slaves are offered in our markets, they are competed for by planters from the South and West.  To us they are worth what the lines of business open to them here, will justify; to planters from the South and West, they are worth the price that is justified by eight bales of Cotton per annum, at fifty dollars per bale. At such prices, they can hardly be employed on lighter lands in the older States; at such prices, they can never be employed by tradesmen in competition with pauper labour elsewhere.  The higher prices of labour raise the price of provisions upon artisans and operatives.  That still more increaes the charges upon mechanical employments; there thus comes to be no margin between the costs of labour and the value of its products,—and no opportunity, therefore, in ordinary lines of business.  Without such opportunity, there is no advancement in population; without advancement in population there is no profit in lines of Railroads and Steamboats; no increase in the value of lands and other permanent property, and so it is therefore, that beyond the cultivation of the soil and the sale and transportation of its products to a foreign market, it is hard to say what business there is in which enterprise and capital can be invested with the certainty of success; and while we teem with enterprise, while we pour millions into undertakings that never pay, and at the call of public spirit, are ready to pay many millions more, we do not stagnate, as is complacently asserted by holiday economists, for the reason that we have not enterprise, or fail for ihe reason that we are simpletons and sluggards, but we stagnate for the want of opportunity, and we fail for the reason, that we have hoped ageinst hope, and have staked our fortunes upon the achievement of success, where success was never possible. This tale of facts would be altered by the foreign slave trade. The slaves that come, could be purchased at the costs of importation. At such prices, they could find employment on our lighter soil: the means of living would become more abundant and more cheap; with cheap slaves and cheap subsistence, our enterprising tradesmen could compete with tradesmen in other sections, of the world; instead of importing articles and implements for use, we could supply ourselves; we could turn the tide of trash back upon the older countries; a larger population would result,—a larger amount of products and fabrics would solicit transportation; hotels, railroads and steamboats would begin to pay; wealth would flow in upon us;—importance would come to us and instead of standing as we now stand, in provincial admiration of the Hoes [???] and Vanderbilts of the North resplendent in the prosperity that has come upon them with 5,000,000 slaving foreigners, we ourselves could stand up still more resplendent in the prosperity to be poured upon us by the teeming thousands from the plains of Africa. That this is not a visonary speculation, may be seen from the records of our seaboard districts.  When foreign slaves were introduced, the rural parishes of Charleston district were the brightest spots in all America. Taken from the marts of Charleston to the lands adjacent they gave to every thing they touched the spring of progress. From the labour of one year, came as many more the next.  They gave drainage to the land, cultivation to the soil, and provisions in abundance to the artisans and operatives of the city. These, in turn, with labor and provisions cheap, struck boldly out upon the field of competition. Leather was tanned, cloth was manufactured, shoes, hats, clothes, and implements were made for consumption and for export. The town advanced; the country prospered; swamps were reclaimed; mansions rose; avenues were planted; pleasure grounds laid out; commerce started; ships sailed to every quarter of the world; parish churches in imposing styles of architecture were erected and spots more progressive, and more true to the principles of religion, and more warmed by hospitality were never seen than the town and parishes of Charleston District.—But upon the suppression of that trade their splendors waned; their glories departed; progress left them for the North; cultivation ceased; the swamps returned; mansions became tenantless and roofless; values fell; lands that sold for $50 per acre now sell for less than $5; churches are abandoned, trade no longer prosecuted—of twenty tanyards, not one remains—of shoes, hats and implements of industry once put upon the trade of foreign towns, none now are put upon our own; and Charleston, which was once upon the road from Europe to the North, now stands aside, and while once the metropolis ol America, is now the unconsidered seaport of a tributary province.  Such are the effects of the foreign slave trade as exhibited in the history of Charleston District.  The experience of that District, to a greater or a less extent, has been the experience of other sections of our Southern seaboard, and this would seem to be conclusive upon the question whether that trade would once, again, give progress to the South. So, also, is there reason to believe it would give integrity to the social constitution of the South. There are now 3,500,000 slaves to 6,000,000 masters, and thus, therefore, there are 3,000,000 masters without slaves. These, it is said, will be true to the South; and so they will be. If slavery be an evil, “the ulcer is at least their own, and they will let no others scratch it.” So, also, they would not let it be abolished, for they, too, would share in the ruin of its abolition. But while there is not a white man who would not own a slave if he could—and if there were slaves at importer’s prices, there is scarcely a white man who could not if he would—yet if he cannot do so, and at present prices many cannot; if forced to work in competition with the slave from the inability to get above him, there is no single white man who will not feel the instinct of repulsion—who will not use his franchise to widen his sphere—who will not elbow slaves from employments, rather than be elbowed from employments by slaves; and thus it is, that they have driven them from Northern States to the South—thus it is, that they have driven them from the larger cities of the South to the country—thus it is, that they feel themselves, and will force the Legislature to acknowledge, that there is a difference between free labor and slave labor—and thus it is, and must be, that until Ethiopia be colonized, man will ever act from the centre of his own individual interest. To be clear of this, there must be no conflict of interests—no class in competition with our slaves.  There would be no such class, if there were slaves, at prices low enough, for every line of business.  Such as might be imported would be so cheap; and it is thus, therefore, that the foreign slave trade, to every human apprehension, would harmonize discordant interests, and restore integrity the most perfect, to the social system of the South. In view of these considerations, then—in view of the assurance that the slave trade would restore political power to the South; that it would give progress to the South; that it would restore integrity to the social system of the South; I am free to confess that, for my own part, I would be willing, as a mere measure of policy, to reopen and legitimate, at once, the foreign slave trade. But there is another consideration, apart from the practical operation of that measure, which, in my opinion, renders it necessary that the South shall take a decided stand upon it: And it is a consideration which, I trust, will address itself to all who feel for the honor and importance of the South, whatever may be their convictions as to those ultimate results to which I have alluded. This Union is a democracy. Of that, I presume, there is little question. It is a democracy in name, and I suppose there are none to doubt but that it is also a democracy in nature. In fact, the social principle that triumphed in the revolution was simply this, that “Equality is the right of man;” and it is very certain that this Union, as a whole, has been at little pains to disaffirm it.  It entered the Constitution of our present government—it declared the law that majorities shall govern—that suffrage shall be universal—that all offices shall be elective, and that all restrictions on individual liberty shall be removed. It was at the dictate of this principle that the word slave was not admitted in the Constitution—that, in 1794, as far as we could, we prohibited the transportation of slaves from one foreign country to another—that, in 1808, we prohibited the introduction of slaves to this country—that, in 1819, we sent armed ships to cruise against the slave trade—that, in 1820, we made it piracy to engage in it—that, in 1820 also, we restricted slavery to the region south of 36-30—that, in 1842, we joined England in a maritime crusade against it, and that, in 1850, we cleansed the national capitol of the pollution of that execrable traffic. It is also under the influence of this principle that Abolition petitions have come to Congress—that we rejoice when European people cut the throats of their rulers, and that gentle-hearted dames and damsels, in shedding tears and ink upon the crimes and horrors of the age, see no single thing so deeply deplorable as the crime and horror of man’s dominion over man. But while this Union is a democracy, the South is not a democracy. It is so in its external character, and so in sentiment perhaps, for there are very many of us who yet sympathise in the feeling that equality is the right of man, but in its social condition the South is not a democracy. On the contrary, it is perhaps the purest form of aristocracy, the world has ever seen. Elsewhere, aristocracies have been forced and artificial, here it is natural and necessary, and the cases are as rare as comets, that individuals of the one class have passed into the other. The principle that equality is the right of man, is true to an extent, and to that extent we have adopted it. It is true that men of the same race are equal, and they are not divided, therefore, by any political distinctions. But it is not true that men of all races are equal. It is not true that the negro is the equal of the white man. He has never been able to rear a structure of civilization in his native land; he has not been able to sustain the structure prepared for him in the West Indies; he has not been able to stand up to the structure sustained over him at the North, and neither in his native land or in a foreign land, in a savage or a civilized condition, has he ever been able to illuminate one living truth with the rays of genius. Not so equal, he has not been admitted to an equality. He has not been forced to a position which nature has fitted him to claim. The South has been content to act rather on fact than theory. She has asigned him to his true condition—she has inexorably held him to it, and in doing so, she has announced in social practice, despite the teachings of philanthropy, what I now would have her proclaim to the world, that "equality it not the right of man, but is the right of equals only " Such being the social attitude of the South, I would ask whether we shall not affirm it and proclaim it? and whether it is not now the time, and this the occasion, upon which we should demand of the general government, the recognition of our right to be supreme upou the questions which affect it? Shall we not affirm it?  And why shall we not affirm it?  Is it for the reason that democracy is right? There is one sense in which it may be right. It is right, where one section of a people is elevated above another by political distinctions, merely,that those distinctions should be done away with. It was right that the distinctions between the Plebeian and Patrician should have given way in Rome; that the vassal should have risen to tbe level of the lord in France, and it is, right, perhaps, that the Commons should advance upon the hereditary peers of England, and tell them ever, as upon the passage of the reform bill, that they must pass their measures, or ' that the king should make a house of lords to pass them; and so it is right, perhaps, that peer and peasant, of the same race, and with no difference in natural ability to distinguish them, should come at length to the same horizontal plane of a democracy. It is right, at least in this, that it is natural and necessary that it should be so.  But is the social condition that results from that democratic plane a thing to be commended?  Let the inquirer look at the fearful vibrations from anarchy to despotism in Rome. Let him look at the rivers of blood that flowed from free and equal France along the streets of Paris. Let him look at the brigandage that rules in Mexico. Let him look at the fearful portents at the North. Let him took at the prostration of all that is elevated;—at the rise of all that is low. Let him look at the reptiles that crawl from the sinks of vice to brandish their forked tongues about the pillars of the capitol; at the bands of patriots that march the streets of New York with banners inscribed wiih “liberty” on one side, “we will have bread” upon the other, and then say, whether, if equality be indeed the right of man, there be not conditions in it ihat render it illusory, and whether inequalities of some sort,—whether distinct social orders, no matter how objectionable in theory—are not of necessity to social practice. Is it for the reason slavery is wrong, that we are not to affirm our attitude? That the slavery of one man to another no better than himself, is wrong, may be admitted. It is a condition that can only be maintained by force, and no condition may be right when force is necessary to sustain it. But is the slavery of the negro to the white man wrong?  To that as little force is necessary to hold oil and water at unequal levels.  Is it of injury to the negro?  I venture to affirm that no negroes that were ever born, have been so blessed, in themselves and their posterity, as the 400,000 Africans imported to this country.  Is it of injury to the white man?  I venture to affirm that there are no men, at any point upon the surfaice of this earth, so favored in their lot, so elevated in their natures, so just to their duties, so up to the emergencies and so ready for the trials of their lives, as are the 6,000,000 masters in the Southern States  Is it of injury to society?  In every state of society that is artificial—and all are artificial where classes arc placed in unnatural relations to each other— there must be collisions of conflicting interests, and the throes of an irregulated nature.  It is so, that social revolutions have disturbed the constitution of almost every nation. It is so, that the props of social order have been stiieken down in France, and it is so, that democracy advances upon the conservatisms of every European Constitution.  But from this source of evil the slave society is free; there can be no march of slaves upon the ranks of masters; they hate no reachings to a higher sphere; there is no contest of classes for the same position; each is in its order balanced, and I have a perfect confidence that when France shall fall again into the delirium of liberty—when the peerage of England shall have yielded to the masses—when democracy at the North shall hold its carnival—when all that is pure and noble shall have been dragged down—when all that is low and vile shall have mantled to the surface—when woman shall have taken the places and habiliments of man, and man shall have taken the places and habiliments of woman—when Free Love unions and phalansteries shall pervade the land—when the sexes shall consort without tbe restraints of marriage, and when youths and maidens, drunk at noon-day and half-naked, shall reel about the market places, the South will stand serene and erect as she stands now,—the slave will be restrained by power, the master by the trusts of a superior position,—she will move on with a measured dignity of power and progress as conspicuous as it is now; and if there be a hope for the North—a hope that she will ever ride the waves of bottomless perdition that roll around her—it is in the fact that the South will stand by her and will lend a helping hand to rescue and to save her. Why, then, shall we not affirm and proclaim the nature of our institution?  And why not demand of the government the recognition of our right to be supreme upon this question?  Is it that such legislation does not injure us?  It may be that to some, if not to all, the Southern States, there would be material advantage in a further importation of slaves.  To such this legislation is an injury. It may be that a further importation of slaves would give political power to the South; and to the South, therefore, this legislation is an injury.  But admit that to neither is there such a requisition, and still these Acts are of irreparable wrong and injury.  They are wrong in that they are the censure of the Government, of which we are an equal party; and an injury in the fact that they are a brand upon our institution.  The spread of slavery may be wrong, and therefore the Missouri Compromise; but slavery itself must be wrong, when the ships and seamen of our country are kept upon the seas to preclude the means to its formation. By no dexterity can we dodge the logical accuracy of this conclusion.  We may show, as we can show, that this union of unequal races is right; that it exhibits the best form of society the world has ever seen; that it exhibits order and the securities of order; that it has raised the savage to an agency in civilization; that it has given the ruling race a higher point to start from in its reach to nobler objects—still the mind will follow the wrong to its results; still, if the trade be piracy, the slave is plunder; if it be a crime to take him, it is a crime to keep him; and sense and reason tell us we abandon slavery, when we admit a wrong in the means to its formation. Why, then, shall we not demand the repeal of these restrictions?  Is it that it will precipitate an issue?  That is the one thing, perhaps, the most devoutly to be wished for.  The contest is impending and inevitable, unless we shall escape it in submission. The North has seventeen States and sixteen million people ; the South has fifteen States, and but ten million people; the North has thus the power of legislation, and she has shown that she will use it; she has used it already to the limits of endurance; she entertains petitions to abolish slavery; she has put restrictions on the slave trade; she has fixed limits to the spread of slavery; she has prohibited the trade in slaves within the limits of the Capitol; she has made an effort to grasp the helm of government; she is marshalling her forces for another grasp in 1860; she proscribes the men who will not literally carry out her evil edicts; and thus, therefore, there is revealed already the power and purpose of oppression.  But it is more important still, that there is, of that aggression, the necessity.  The proclivities of power are certain and resistless. It runs to oppression as naturally and necessarily as waters flow or sparks fly upwaids. No logic, no policy, no feeling, can avert it. Its leaders, so-called, are as powerless to control it as the reeds the current upon which they float. It is true, they may see the precipice and may recoil from the verge, but only to be trampled by the mass that plunges after; and we must stem the current, or we must erect political barriers against it.  If, then, it is our purpose to preserve the fortunes and the form of that society an Eternal Providence has committed to our keeping, the issue is inevitable, and wise and prudent men must own the sooner it is made the better. The power and patronage of the Government are already in the hands of our antagonists, and every hour’s delay but strengthens them and wears away from us the nerve and spirit of resistance. Then why not now demand repeal?  Is it for the reason that it is not policy to import more slaves? If so, we will not import them. The several Southern States can decide that question for themselves. If Texas, with her broad domain, may want them, she may admit them; if we may not want them, we may exclude them. It is not now policy to admit the introduction of free negroes, and we now exclude them without an Act of Congress. So, also, could we exclude the slave. Is it that it would not be right to import them?  If so, are we notable to restrain ourselves?  Must we have aid of Congress to keep us from the wrong? Is that Congress more wise, more prudent, more virtuous, than ourselves?  Do they know better than we do what is honest and becoming?  And are we willing to confess, not only that our slaves are plunder, and that they come to us through piracy, but that such is our state of helplessness and degradation if it were not for the General Government, we would rush again, with inebriate alacrity, to the criminal indulgence? But say that no Southern State may want them, or may ever want them— say even, that it may be wrong to import them— and yet is it of extreme importance that we should be supreme upon this question.  The power assumed by the General Government to legislate upon this subject, if supreme above tho States, will be as supreme at some other time to force them in, as it is now to keep them out; and will any say that it is safe and right to be upon both questions at the mercy of the General Government; that when the South shall be reduced to the condition of a conquered province—when manliness and independence shall have left us—when literature and fashion shall have followed to the North—when there will be no hope of political power from a further importation of slaves—no assurance that we will have the physical ability to control them, to our own security and order—that then it will not be of interest to the North to force them in, and that then it will not be of the very last importance to the South to keep them out. If this be so, it is now time for the South to determine whether she will be sui juris upon this vital subject, and if not prepared to hold our institution at the mercy of the North, it is now the time to strike for independence. Is it for the reason that the North will not yield to our demands? This is not to be assumed.  It is true the North will not allow the South a road to power if she can help it. But it must be remembered that the existence of the North depends upon the Union.  Her every interest is parasitic. Her cities are dependent on the South for custom. Her factories are dependent on the South for a market.  They would have our trade and custom upon their own terms; but they must have them: without them their factories would fail and New York would be shriveled to the dimensions of a common town. If the South were independent they could not have them; the South would trade direct to foreign countries; upon foreign fabrics ahe would exact no higher duties than on fabrics from the North. If the factories of the North can barely stand now, when protected by an average impost duty of twenty-five per cent., they could not then stand under such a competition; and the stake, therefore, is one of existence, which the North can never risk on such a venture.  The North would preserve dominion, but it is imperative upon her to preserve the Union. The madness of the North, increases, and the time may come when considerations of interest even will not control her action; but it has not come yet—and now I believe that there is not a demand to be made by the South, no matter how extravagant, which, if made as the condition of this Union, would not be accepted by the North. But say that it is so.  Say that though we repudiate restrictions on the slave trade, and demand the repeal of them, the North shall not assent to it. Then an issue will have been made, and if not conceded, it is possible the South may be forced to the intrepidity of acting for herself upon the subject.  But if not, she will at least have put herself right upon the record.  She will have averted the reproach of being a party to the censure of her own institutions—of concurring in her own condemnation—of meanly practising what she does not dare to preach—of holding to the world a sentiment which in every action of her life she contradicts—and it is time that she should do so. It is time that we should speak out like men upon this subject. If we practice slavery, let us avow it—let us own it as a right, rather than allow it to be imputed as a wrong—let us demand of our common Government that it will depart from the office of dis­crimination, and let us bare our institutions in their proper aspect and condition to the world, or let us bury them. Is it for the reason that we would shock the moral sentiment of other countries?  It is convenient for the North to execrate our institution, for she finds her profit in keeping it at a discount. It is convenient for England to execrate the institution, for she regards it as a principle of strength to the North, and as the prop therefore of her most imperious rival. But it is an error to suppose that any of these States are tender on the score of human rights. England crushes India—France, Algeria—Russia, Prussia and Austria have portioned Poland—all match to opportunity; and if forced to look for European morality in the history of European States, we will find everywhere an unequivocal assertion of the one great principle that strength is virtue, and weakness only crime. Nor is it true that European States are hostile to the spread, of slavery at the South. They are hostile to this Union, perhaps; they see in it a threatening rival in every branch of art, and they see that rival armed with one of the most potent productive agents the world has ever seen. They would crush India and Algeria to make an equal supply of cotton with the North, and failing in this, they would crush slavery to bring the North to a footing with them; but to slavery without the North they have no repugnance.—On the contrary, if it were to stand out for itself, free from the control of any other power, and were to offer to all a fair and open trade in its commodities, it would not only not be warred upon, but the South would be singularly favored; crowns would bend before her; kingdoms and empires would enter the lists for her approval, and quitting her free estate, it would be in her option to become the bride of the world, rather than remain, as now, the miserable mistress of the North.  The repugnance to Southern slavery therefore, is not due to its nature, but to the relations only in which, by the accidents of its history, it has been placed; and if there be a measure which will teach the North that the South is to be no longer the passive subject of oppression—which will teach the world that the North is not the Union, and which, therefore, will not only not shock the world, but will inspire a feeling of respectful consideration—it will be that which declares that the South will henceforth be supreme upon the questions which affect her own peculiar institutions. Is it from an unwillingness in this State to run again in advance of public opinion at the South?  I know there are those who have been panic- stricken at the fearful intrepidity of some of our political movements; but they mav be relieved of apprehension of any evil from it.—South Carolina has been too far advanced for placemen and politicians, if we have such characters among us.  But she has never been too far advanced for liberty and the respect of other Southern States.  She has made no call upon the South that has not been jusiified by the occasion; none that the South, to the best of her ability, has not ultimately answered; and if there be a State in this Union distinguished by the respect and confidence of other States, whose professions are unquestioned, whose principles are regarded as authority, and whose delegates, whether to the National Legislature or to Conventions of its own political section, are received with high consideration, and who are looked upon as banner-bearers in every just and honorable cause, that State is South Carolina.  That she is so distinguished, is for the reason only that her principles have always been pronounced; that her action has always been decided; that she has always been ready for emergencies without considerations of expediency; and if we would emulate the deeds of those who have gone before us, and would merit and transmit their honors and their virtues, it is now for us to follow their example. Mr. Speaker, it is possible that there never may be a peaceful solution to the questions at issue between these sections.  Within this Union there are distinct principles of nationality, and it is possible that they may never be torn apart without the throes of revolution.  It is an ordinance of nature, wise and right as nature’s ordinances always are, that the germs of animal life can only come through hemorrhage and rupture.  to existence. And it may be an ordinance of nature also, that the germs of society can only come through hemorrhage and rupture to development.  The Realm of Britain, pregnant of the principle that Equality is the right of man, was delivered only through the Revolution. This Union, pregnant of the greater principle, that equality is the right of equals only, may need another Revolution to deliverance. But if it be possible to escape that trial; if it be possible for the South to come, as she will come, to the functions of her social nature without the severance of existing lies, without the rupture of relations that are still fondly cherished, without embracing her hands in the blood of kindred, it must be in the way that we propose. It must be by giving play to the elements of her system, by permitting of the subject race enough to meet her requisitions, by giving her thus a path to political power, and through political power to the security of her rights. But without this, there is no power on earth to save this Union; and if there were, there would be no conceivable calamity so dreadful as its preservation. If slavery stand, and it must stand—for it is too abundant of blessings and too prodigal of promise to be given up—it must start from its repose—it must take the moral strength of an aggressive attitude. Though strong, strong as a tempest slumbering, with latent energies of infliction and endurance to meet the world in arms, it is still unsafe unless those energies are called to action. The passive subject of a foreign sentiment it has been too long already. It was thus that slavery fell in Domingo and Jamaica.  It is thus that it may fall in Cuba, and here, also, for here already the toils are thrown around it.  It is proscribed and reprobated—its foreign sources of support are cut away from it—the reins of its government are held by other hands than its own—its own property is used to corrupt its own people. Men, diffident of its endurance, move away from it. Its pious people are instructed to deplore it. Its women and children are taught to turn against it. Its friends who speak for its integrity, and who claim the means to its extension, are looked upon as agitators, and I now, who speak truly what I believe for its advancement and the advancement of humanity, in which, under Heaven, I believe it to be the most potent agent this world has ever seen—am sure tbat scarce a woman’s heart in all this land responds to what I say, or that, from the pious and pure, whom most I would wish to please, if to please them were consistent with my duty, will rise one prayer for the measure we propose. These things being so, it is time that slavery should be routed to a consciousness of responsibility for its own preservation; that it should become an actor in the drama of its own fate; that it should speak for itself upon this great question.  It never yet has spoken.  The world speaks of slavery, the North speaks of slavery, we speak of slavery at a thing apart from us, but slavery never yet has spoken, and it is time that it should speak.  When it does, its first utterance will be, “We must be free—free to expand according to our own nature—free of the touch of any hostile hand upon us—we are right in that existence which it has pleased Almighty God to give as, and we can admit no declaration of a wrong in the means to our advancement.” Mr. Speaker, we have been elected here at the South to a fearfully momentous trust. It is a trust of moment to have liberty and hopes at stake, with the hand of power already stretched to grasp them. But there is a trust for time and man of even greater moment.  It is the precept of human experience that equals must be equal, and that political distinctions must therefore yield to that necessity. But it is the precept, also, that to power and progress there must be separate orders in the State, and to us, the first in human history, has been committed a society combining these conditions.  There has been equality in France, but despotism has been a welcome refuge from its enormities; there were slaves in Greece and Rome, but they were the natural equals of their masters, and the relation therefore was forced and transitory ; but here there is a perfect compliance with the requisition—there is, among equals, equality the most perfect, and there are orders that can never merge; and in this the Eternal Ruler of the world has committed to us a sacred social truth, which we are under the most sacred obligations to transmit to other ages. To that transmission we are committed by the highest sanctions that were ever incumbent upon any people. If we do transmit it we shall find as our rewaid a career of greatness and of glory more extended than was ever opened to the hopes of man. If we do not, if we bend in the execution of that trust to the requisitions of another people not so charged with that responsibility, and so fail, we shall leave to our land and our posterity a heritage of calamity and crime, the darkest that ever came to any people.  States have been subjugated, and Rome was plundered by barbarians, yet carnage ended with resistance; but here, with subjugation comes a war of races, hand to hand, that will not end while a remnant of the weaker race remains. In view of these considerations, then—in view of the hopes and glories of success—in view of the crimes and calamities of failure—in view of the blessings to be conferred upon other lands and other ages, and of the smiles of an approving Heaven, it is incumbent upon us to start now upon the performance of our duty, and it is not an indiscreet or an unbecoming act in that performance to tell this government that, charged with this momentous trust, we cannot yield to them the office of determining its conditions—that that, of right, belongs to us, not to be affected by them, and that upon the rights and obligations of that office we can take no judgment but our own. To do this is the object of the resolutions I have had the honor to present, and I hope, therefore, that they will meet the approbation of the House. Source: https://archive.org/details/speechuponforeig00spra/page/n1/mode/2up