The Success of American Democracy — A History Lesson
Historic Sermon given by the Abolitionist Preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, in Brooklyn, NY at Plymouth Church on April 13, 1862. On the one year anniversary Sunday of the attack on Fort Sumter.
If you want to feel like an incredibly proud and patriotic American this Fourth of July, take 30 minutes to revisit a lesson on what makes American Democracy so great!
This piece of American history was adapted digitally for your ease of reading for the first time ever.
A Sermon by Henry Ward Beecher.
“ So the king of the South shall come into his kingdom, and shall return into his own land. But his sons shall be stirred up, and shall assemble a multitude of great forces: and one shall certainly come, and overflow, and pass through: then shall he return, and be stirred up even to his fortress. And the king of the South shall be moved with choler, and shall come forth and fight with him, even with the king of the North: and he shall set forth a great multitude; but the multitude shall be given into his hand. And when he hath taken away the multitude, his heart shall be lifted up; and he shall cast down many ten thousands; but he shall not be strengthened by it. For the king of the North shall return, and shall set forth a multitude greater than the former, and shall certainly come after certain years with a great army and with much riches. And in those times there shall many stand up against the king of the South; also the robbers of thy people shall exalt themselves to establish the vision: but they shall fall. So the king of the North shall come, and cast up a mount, and take the most fenced cities: and the arms of the South shall not withstand, neither his chosen people, neither shall there be any strength to withstand. But he that cometh against him shall do according to his own will, and none shall stand before him; and he shall stand in the glorious land, which by his hand shall be consumed. He shall also set his face to enter with the strength of his whole kingdom. And equality “ — or conditions of equality -” shall be with him; thus shall he do.” — Dan. xi. 9–17.
I do not use these words in any close historical sense. They are a very poetic and glowing description of a conflict in which, with a singular fitness to our times, both the terms North and South, and the events which were predicted, are strikingly suggestive. And although a sharp exegesis might destroy some parts of the seeming analogy, I shall consider them as a splendid poetic imagery. As such, I think you will agree with me that it is a remarkable passage, and that it not only describes the past with great accuracy, but throws a blazing light upon the times that are to come. We are in the midst of times the most exciting; times that demand faith; times in which the teachings and prophecies of Scripture come with peculiar emphasis.
You will remember the scenes of one year ago. It was just such a bright and beautiful day as this has been. The air was full of news. These great cities boiled like caldrons. The people had learned that the guns had opened upon Fort Sumter. Treason was consummated! Our hearts yearned toward the brave garrison. We hoped that the leaders and their companions in arms would sustain the stronghold. Our hearts felt the cold breath of horror, when at last it was known that the flag of the Union had been assaulted. The forts that had belched their fire upon that flag had been built underneath its protection. They had carried it for years upon their flag-staff. The very guns that were flaming upon it had been founded and forged under its flowing folds. The men that aimed them had been born and reared under its protection. That flag had been the honored ensign of our people in their memorable struggle for independence. It had seen the British arms laid down before it. It had been honored in every land. Our men-of-war had borne it, without disgrace, to every part of the world. Nor was there a port upon the globe where men chose or dared to insult that national emblem. That inglorious wickedness was reserved to our own people! It was by American hands that it was dishonored, slit with balls, and trailed in the dust!
That a crime so unnatural and monstrous was then going on, made the anniversary of this day memorable above all Sabbaths of our history. It was an infernal insurrection against liberty, good government, and civilization, on the most sacred day of the week! We shall not soon experience a like excitement again. Although but a year ago, it seems ten years. And, in ordinary history, ten years are not so full of matter as has been this single year. It is full of events visible, but yet more full of those things that do not come under corporeal observation.
Such has been the intensity of public feeling, that it has seemed as if nothing was doing. We have chidden those in’ authority, and felt that due speed had not been made. But within one twelvemonth a gigantic army has been raised and drilled; all its equipments created; all the material of war produced and collected together. The cannon that now reverberate across the continent, a twelvemonth ago were sleeping ore in the mountains. The clothing of thousands was fleece upon the backs of sheep. As we look back, we can scarcely believe our own senses, that so much has been done; although, at every single hour of it, it seemed as if little was being done, — for all the speed and all the power of this great government were not so fast and eager as our thoughts and desires were.
A navy has sprung forth, almost at a word; and, stranger still, by the skill of our inventors and naval constructors, a new era has been inaugurated in naval warfare. It is probable that forts and ships have come to the end of one dispensation, and that the old is to give place hereafter to the new.
The history of this year is the history of the common people of America. It is memorable on account of the light that it throws upon them. We are fond of talking of American ideas. There are such things as American ideas, distinctive, peculiar, national. Not that they were first discovered here, or that they are only entertained here; but because more than anywhere else they lie at the root of the institutions, and are working out the laws and the policies of this people.
The root idea is this: that man is the most sacred trust of God to the world; that his value is derived from his moral relations, from his divinity. Looked at in his relations to God and the eternal world, every man is so valuable that you cannot make distinction between one and another. If you measure a man by the skill that he can exhibit, and the fruit of it, there is great distinction between one and another. Men are not each worth the same thing to society. All men cannot think with a like value, nor work with a like product. And if you measure man as a producing creature — that is, in his secular relations — men are not alike valuable. But when you measure men on their spiritual side, and in their affectional relations to God and the eternal world, the lowest man is so immeasurable in value that you cannot make any practical difference between one man and another. Although, doubtless, some are vastly above others, the lowest and least goes beyond your power of conceiving, and your power of measuring. This is the root idea, which, if not recognized, is yet operative. It is the fundamental principle of our American scheme, that man is above nature. Man, by virtue of his original endowment and affiliation to the Eternal Father, is superior to every other created thing. There is nothing to be compared with man.
All governments are from him and for him, and not over him and upon him. All institutions are not his masters, but his servants. All days, all ordinances, all usages, come to minister to the chief and the king, God’s son, man, of whom God only is master. Therefore he is to be thoroughly enlarged, thoroughly empowered by development, and then thoroughly trusted. This is the American idea, — for we stand in contrast with the world in holding and teaching it; that men, having been once thoroughly educated, are to be absolutely trusted.
The education of the common people follows, then, as a necessity. They are to be fitted to govern. Since all things are from them and for them, they must be educated to their function, to their destiny. No pains are spared, we know, in Europe, to educate princes and nobles who are to govern. No expense is counted too great, in Europe, to prepare the governing classes for their function. America has her governing class, too; and that governing class is the whole people. It is a slower work, because it is so much larger. It is never carried so high, because there is so much more of it. It is easy to lift up a crowned class. It is not easy to lift up society from the very foundation. That is the work of centuries.
And therefore, though we have not an education so deep nor so high as it is in some other places, we have it broader than it is anywhere else in the world; and we have learned that for ordinary affairs intelligence among the common people is better than treasures of knowledge among particular classes of the people. School-books do more for this country than encyclopedias.
And so there comes up the American conception of a common people as an order of nobility, or as standing in the same place to us that orders of nobility stand to other peoples. Not that, after our educated men and men of genius are counted out, we call all that remain the common people. The whole community, top and bottom and intermediate, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the leaders and the followers, constitute with us the commonwealth; in which laws spring from the people, administration conforms to their wishes, and they are made the final judges of every interest of the State. In America there is not one single element of civilization that is not made to depend, in the end, upon public opinion. Art, law, administration, policy, reformations of morals, religious teaching, all derive, in our form of society, the most potent influence from the common people. For although the common people are educated in preconceived notions of religion, the great intuitions and instincts of the heart of man rise up afterwards, and in their turn influence back. So there is action and reaction.
It is this very thing that has led men that are educated, in Europe, to doubt the stability of our nation. Owing to a strange ignorance on their part, our glory has seemed to them our shame, and our strength has seemed to them our weakness, and our invincibility has seemed to them our disaster and defeat. This impression of Europeans has been expressed in England in language that has surprised us, and that one day will surprise them. We know more of it in England because the English language is our mother tongue, and we are more concerned to know what England thinks of us than any other nation.
But it is impossible that nations educated into sympathy with strong governments, and with the side of those that govern, should sympathize with the governed. In this country the sympathy goes with the governed, and not with the governing, as much as in other countries it goes with the governing, and not with the governed. And abroad they are measuring with false rules, and by a home-bred and one-sided sympathy.
It is impossible for men who have not seen it to understand that there is no society possible that will bear such expansion and contraction, such strains and burdens, as a society made up of free educated, common people, with democratic institutions. It has been supposed that such a society was the most unsafe, and the least capable of control of any. But whether tested by external pressure, or, as now, by the most wondrous internal evils, an educated democratic people are the strongest government that can be made on the face of the earth. In no other form of society is it so safe to set discussion at large. Nowhere else is there such safety in the midst of apparent conflagration. Nowhere else is there such a rule, when there seems to be such anarchy. A foreigner would think, pending a presidential election, that the end of the world had come. The people roar and dash like an ocean. “No government,” he would say, “was ever strong enough to hold such wild and tumultuous enthusiasm, and zeal, and rage.” True. There is not a government strong enough to hold them. Nothing but self-government will do it: that will. Educate men to take care of themselves, individually and in masses, and then let the winds blow; then let the storms fall; then let excitements burn, and men will learn to move freely upon each other, as do drops of water in the ocean. Our experience from generation to generation has shown that, though we may have fantastic excitements; though the whole land may seem to have swung from its moorings on a sea of the wildest agitation, we have only to let the silent dropping paper go into the box, and that is the
end of the commotion. Today, the flames mount to heaven; and on every side you hear the most extravagant prophecies and the fiercest objurgations; and both sides know that, if they do not succeed, the end of the world will have come. But tomorrow the vote is declared, and each side goes home laughing, takes hold of the plough and the spade; and they are satisfied that the nation is safe after all.
And we have come to ridicule the idea of danger from excitements. Where else was there ever a nation that could bear to have every question, no matter how fiery or how fierce, let loose to go up and down, over hill and through a valley, without police or government restraint upon the absolute liberty of the common people? Where else was ever a government that could bear to allow entire free discussion? We grow strong under it. Voting is the cure of evil with us. Liberty, that is dangerous abroad, is our very safety. And since our whole future depends upon our rightly understanding this matter,- the liberty of the common people, and the glory of the common people, — and since this government of our educated common people is to be the death of slavery, and to spread over this continent an order of things for which in past experience there is no parallel, and for which men’s ideas are not prepared,-we do well to
take heed of this memorable year of the common people. For histories will register this year of 1861–62 as the year of the common people of America.
I. One year ago there fell a storm upon the great heart of the common people, which swayed it as the ocean swayed. It has not calmed itself yet. It was that shot at the American flag that touched the national heart. No one knew before what a depth of feeling was there. We did not know how our people had clustered about that banner all their ideas of honor and patriotism and glory. We did not know how the past and future met and stood together upon that flag in the imagination of every American. In an hour all this was disclosed. And what was the manifestation of that hour? All things that separated the common people of America were at once forgotten. There rose up, with appalling majesty, the multitude of the common people. The schemes of treachery, the political webs that had been framed, went down in a moment; and the voice of the common people called upon the government to be energetic, to take courage, and to rescue the land.
But I would not have you suppose that the common people gave forth merely an unreasoning zeal, -a furious burst of patriotic emotion. The common people of the North had, and they still have, a clear, comprehensive, and true idea of American nationality, such as we looked for in vain in many of the leaders of past times. They had taken in the right view of national unity. They had a right view of the trust of territory held in common by all, for all, on this continent. They felt, more than any others, that Divine Providence had given to this people, not a northern part, not a middle ridge, not a southern section, but an undivided continent. They held it, not for pride, not for national vanity, not to be cut and split into warring sections, but as a sacred trust, held for the most sublime ends of human happiness, in human liberty. And the instincts and intuitions of the common people it was that made this, not a struggle for sectional precedence, but a struggle for the maintenance of the great national trust, and for the establishment of American ideas over the whole American continent. And our government felt that they could lean back on the brave heart of the great intelligent people.
While, then, men of our own blood are ignorant and blind; while even to this hour the ablest statesmen in the British Parliament are declaring, though in a friendly spirit in most respects, that it were better that an amicable settlement and separation should take place, and that they should live apart who cannot live peaceably together, our common people are greater than parliaments or than ministers; and they see, and feel, and know, that God has rolled upon them a duty, not of present peace, but of future stability, national grandeur, and continental liberty. This is the doctrine of the common people, and it will stand.
For that idea our common people are giving their sons, their blood, and their treasure, and they will continue to the uttermost to give them.
For this sake, you will see what a common people can do. One of the most difficult things for any people to do, for any reason, is to lay aside their animosities and malignant feelings. But this great common people have laid aside every animosity, every party feeling, and all political disagreements; and for one year they have maintained an honest unity. I am more proud of the substantial unity that has been wrought out in the North, than of any battle that has been fought. It is the noblest evidence of the strength of our form of government.
The common people have given without stint their sons, their substance, and their ingenuity: and they are not weary of giving. They have consented patiently to the interruption of their industries, and to all the burdens which taxes bring. Taxes touch men in a very tender place; for human nature resides very strongly in the particular neighborhood where taxes anchor. And if anything takes hold of men and brings them to their bearings, it is the imposition of burdens that are felt in the pocket. I sometimes think that men can carry burdens on their hearts more easily than on their exchequer. But they have taken both the burdens of taxation and bereavements, they have given both blood and money; and they are willing to bear the load as long as it is necessary to secure this continent to liberty.
They have demanded of this administration which they themselves ordained, that it should not spare them. The only thing that the people have ever been disposed to blame the government for has been, that it has not moved fast enough; that it has not done enough. “Take more; call for more; do more “ is the demand of the people upon the government.
They have accepted the most unwonted and dangerous violations of the fundamental usages of this land with implicit submission. They are a proud people, jealous of their rights; a proud people, the flash of whose eye is like blood when they are wronged in their fundamental rights; and yet, the precious writ of habeas corpus has been suspended, and they have consented. They have been restricted in their intercourse to a degree altogether unprecedented, and they have judged it expedient to submit.
They have submitted to the limitation of speech and discussion, — a thing most foreign to American ideas. The arrest of men without legal process or accusation, and their imprisonment and long duress without trial, — these are new in our times and in this land. And yet, under all these interruptions of our most grave and important principles and rights, the people have been calm; they have trusted their government; and they have been willing to wait.
These are dangerous things, even in extremity; but for their sakes who control the affairs of this nation, and that they might have the most unlimited power to crush the rebellion, and establish liberty, the common people, with magnanimous generosity, have yielded up these imperishable rights.
When the whole national heart beat with gratification at the arrest of men who had been at the root of this grand treachery, mark, I beseech of you, the bearing of the common people of America. If there was one thing about which they were expected to rage like wolves, it was this. Nothing in external circumstances could be more irritating and aggravating than those exhibitions of foreign feeling which came to our knowledge. I know that the diplomatic language of the two governments was very smooth and unexceptionable; and I am informed that the tone of many of the local papers of England was kind; but all the English papers that I saw, with one or two exceptions, were of such a spirit that I will characterize them only by saying that good breeding was not common where the editors of them lived. If there was one single missile more offensive than another, it was eagerly sought out. Tried on the side of revenge; tried on the side of national animosities; tried by foreign impertinence and unkindness; tried at home in the midst of treachery, in the midst of war, in the midst of troubles and burdens, and in the midst of an interrupted commerce,- mark the heroic conduct of this great American people.
Government pronounced its judgment against the feelings and expectations of the common people. Slidell and Mason were to be given up. There was silence instantly, and thoughtfulness, throughout this land. Then came acquiescence, full, cheerful, uncomplaining. I have yet to see a single paper that seriously, after the appearance of the letter of the Secretary of State, made one complaint or ill-natured remark. Such a thing was never before seen in the history of the world. Mason and Slidell might have been taken from Washington to Boston Harbor under the care of a single officer, without molestation from the common people of America. These are the common people that they are pleased to call the mob of America; but not among crowned heads and privileged classes, not among any other people on the earth, is there such stability, such order, such self-restraint, such dignity, and such sublime nobility, as there is among the educated common people of America. God bless them! Under the terrible inflictions of battle, under griefs innumerable, in the midst of desolations that go to the very heart of families, there is the same noble, patient, uncomplaining cheerfulness and devotion to this great cause.
II. The history of this year has silently developed many convictions based upon great truths. It has, in the first place, revolutionized the whole opinion of men as to the relative military power of the Free States and Slave States of America. It was an almost undisputed judgment, that the habits of the South bred prowess; that they were chivalric; that their educated men were better officers than ours; and that their common people, in the hour of battle, would be better soldiers than the laboring classes of the North. It never was our faith, it never was our belief, but that the laboring and educated common people were just as much better for military development, when the time came, as for ordinary industrial purposes. Events have justified our impressions in this regard.
Let us look, for a moment at the line of battle. Passing by the earlier conflicts prematurely brought on, in which the advantage was, without good conduct on either side, in favor of Southern men, what is the general conclusion from that line of conflicts that subsequently followed each other almost without interruption, from Hilton Head, Beaufort, Roanoke, Newbern, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Somerset, Nashville, Island Number Ten, Pittsburg Landing?
Without further particularizing, what have been the general results of this series of conflicts? The rebels are swept out of the upper and eastern parts of Virginia. They have lost one portion of North Carolina. Their seaboard is almost taken from them. They have been driven from Kentucky and Missouri, and in Tennessee they are close pressed on Memphis itself. They are on the eve, apparently, of losing the great metropolis of the Southwest. And has there been one single field in which Northern endurance and courage have not been made to appear eminent over Southern? In the battle of Pittsburg Landing what a disparity there was in generalship between the North and the South! That battle was won by the soldiers. The Southwestern men had every advantage in military skill, and on our side the only advantage was that we had men who would not be beaten. Our soldiers had little help of generalship. It was hands, and not brains, that conquered there.
This matter, then, will, from this time forth, stand on different ground. It is not for the sake of vainglory that I make these allusions. If it were not that I have a moral end in view, I should think them unseasonable; but we shall never have peace until we have respect, we shall never have respect so long as a boasting Southern effete population think that they can overmaster Northern sturdy yeomen.
When they know what Northern muscle and blows mean, they will respect them; and when they respect them, we shall be able to live in harmony with them: and not till then.
But there are many other things that have evolved in the history of the year. There have been convictions wrought in the minds of the thinking common people that will not be easily worn out. There is coming to be a general conviction, that men brought up under the influence of slavery are contaminated to the very root, and that they cannot make good citizens of a republic. The radical nature of slavery is such as to destroy the possibility of good citizenship in the masses of men. Exceptions there are, because even in the Slave States there are large neighborhoods where slavery does not exist, and where many men are superior to their circumstances. But the average tendency of slave influences is to narrow men; to make them selfish; to unfit them for public spirit; to destroy that large patriotism from which comes the feeling of nationality.
I think there is a widening conviction, that slavery and its laws, and liberty and its institutions, cannot exist under one government. And I think that, if it were not for the impediment of supposed constitutional restrictions, there would be an almost universal disposition to sweep, as with a deluge, this gigantic evil out of our land. The feeling of the people in this matter is unmistakable. The recommendation of the President of these United States, which has been corroborated by the resolution of Congress, is one of the most memorable events of our history. The fact that a policy of emancipation has been recommended by the Chief Magistrate, and endorsed by Congress, cannot be overestimated in importance. Old John Quincy Adams lifted his head in the grave, methinks, when that resolution was carried, — he was almost condemned for treason because he dared to introduce in Congress a subject that looked toward emancipation. Last Friday — a day not henceforth to be counted inauspicious- was passed the memorable bill giving liberty to the slave in the District of Columbia. One might almost say, if the President had signed it, “Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” It is worth living for a lifetime to see the capital of our government redeemed from the stigma and shame of being a slave mart. I cannot doubt that the President of the United States will sign that bill. It shall not shake my confidence in him, but it certainly will not change my judgment that it should be signed, if he does not sign it. It would have been better if it had been signed the moment that it was received; but we have found out by experience that though Abraham Lincoln is sure, he is slow; and that though he is slow, he is sure!
I think that it is beginning to be seen that the North, for its own sake, must exert every proper constitutional influence, and every moral influence, to cleanse the South from the contamination of slavery. What gambling-houses and drinking-saloons are to the young men of a neighborhood, taking hold of their animal passions, and corrupting them where human nature is most temptable, undermining their character, and wasting their stamina, that Southern marts are to our common people. The animal parts of our nature come naturally into sympathy with the South. The Southern institution is an academy of corruption to the animal feelings of the whole people, and it will continue to be throwing back into our system elements of inflammation and trouble as long as it exists. I dread such a settlement of this controversy as will follow whenever all malignant passions and political machinations shall have swept the bad men of the North and of the South together again for future legislation.
We have begun, also, to suspect another thing, which we shall learn more and more thoroughly; and that is, that hereafter, in this nation, the North must prevail. For The North is the nation, and the South is but the fringe. The heart is here; the trunk is here; the brain is here. The most exquisite compliment ever paid to New England was in the secret scheme and machination of the leaders of the rebellion, which it was supposed would be successful. They meant to threaten secession and war, and arouse a party in the North that would unite with them, and then reconstruct in such a way as to leave New England out, and take all the rest of the nation in. Had they succeeded, they would have been in the condition of a man that should go to bed whole at night, and wake up in the morning without his head! For the brain of this nation is New England. There is not a part that does not derive its stimulus and supply from that fountain of laws and ideas. Well may they wish to exclude from their corrupt constitution and laws that part of this nation which has been the throne of God. Well may they desire to separate themselves from that portion of our country which has been the source of all that is godlike in American history. But I do not think that they will cut off our head. And hereafter I think it will be felt more and more that the North is the nation: not New England, but the whole North from ocean to ocean, — all that is comprised in the Northern loyal Free States. It is the foundation of industry; it is the school of intelligence; it is the home of civilized institutions; it is the repository of those principles which are the foundation of our political fabric; and if we hope to save the government and our peculiar ideas, it is the North that must save them, and not the South. We may just as well say it as to disguise it. Whatever may be wise or unwise, expedient or inexpedient, in times of party management, I do not hesitate to say, and I repeat it again and again, that the North is this nation, and that the North must govern it: not against the Constitution, but by the Constitution; not against law, but through law; not for selfishness, but for the well-being of the whole; not to aggrandize itself, but to enrich every State in the Union., from the North to the South, and from the East to the West. The South are prodigal sons; they are wasters; they are destroyers. The North has conservative forces; and now that she has come to govern, she will be derelict, she will forfeit every claim to respect, and she will bring the judgment of God on her head, if she hesitates to take the government, and maintain it till she has carried the principles of the American people of this continent triumphantly through.
Since, then, her ascendency means liberty, the thrift of the common people, and the progress of civilization, the North owes it to the nation itself not to yield up that ascendency. One side or the other must prevail. Let it be that side that carries forward to the future the precious legacies of the past. There go two principles looking to the future. One is represented by our flag, and all its starry folds. Liberty; democratic equality; Christianity; God, the only king; right, the only barrier and restraint; and then, God and right being respected, liberty to all, from top to bottom, and the more liberty the stronger and safer,that is the Northern conception. And that is the precious seed that shall pierce to State after State, rolling westward her empire. What has the North done? Look at Michigan; look at Ohio; look at Indiana; look at Illinois; look at Wisconsin; look at Iowa. These are the fruits of Northern ideas. And where is the South? Look at Missouri; look at Texas. See what States she rears. And which of these shall be the seed-planter of the future? Which shall carry the victorious banner? Shall the South carry her bastard bunting, bearing the pestiferous seed of slavery, degradation, and national rottenness? Or shall the North, advancing her banner, carry with her stars and stripes all that they symbolize, — God’s glory in man’s liberty? I think — and I thank God for it that the great heart of this people is beginning to accept this destiny, and that it is becoming the pride of their future.
There is but one other thing that I will say, for I do not wish to weary you with too long a discussion of that which is dear to my own heart as life itself. While there have been many incidental ills and evils occasioned by the present conflict, it has had one good effect in amalgamating this heterogeneous people.
Since we have received millions from foreign lands, there have been some political jealousies toward those belonging to other nations. I think you have seen the end of that most un-American Native-Americanism. There is not one nation that has not contributed its quota to fight the battles of liberty. The blood of the Yankee has met the blood of the Irishman. Right along-side of our Curtis was the noble Sigel. Right by the side of the wounded American lay the wounded German. Two tongues met when they spoke the common words, Country, Liberty, God, and Freedom. And now there is no foreign blood among us. They are ours. They have earned their birth here. Their nativity is as if our mothers bore them and nursed them. America has received all her foreign population, now, with a more glorious adoption, and they are our kindred. God be thanked for this substantial benefit. War, with all its horrors, is not without its incidental advantages.
Is the year, then, that is just past, to have a parallel and sequence in the year that is to come? What is to be the future? What are our prospects and hopes? I am not a prophet. I cannot lift the veil from what is before us. I can only express my own judgment. Perhaps. You think I am sanguine. I think I am not sanguine, though I am hopeful. And yet I have no other thought than that victory awaits us at every step. We are able to bear our share of defeat. If the blessing of liberty is too great to be purchased at so cheap a price, let God tell us the price, and we are ready to pay it. We have more sons to give. We can live lower, and on less. Our patience is scarcely drawn upon. The sources of our prosperity are hardly touched. And I think I may say for you, and the great American common people, “ We will give every dollar that we are worth, every child that we have, and our own selves; we will bring all that we are, and all that we have, and offer them up freely; but this country shall be one, and undivided. We will have one Constitution, and one liberty, and that is universal.” The Atlantic shall sound it, and the Pacific shall echo it back, deep answering to deep, and it shall reverberate from the Lakes on the North to the unfrozen Gulf on the South, — “ One nation; one Constitution; one starry banner!” Hear it,
England! — one country, and indivisible. Hear it, Europe! — one people, and inseparable. One God; one hope; one baptism; one Constitution; one government; one nation; one country; one people, cost what it may, we will have it!
