Those of you who are kind enough to wish to favor my speaking--and you will observe that my voice is slightly husky, from having spoken almost every night in succession for some time past,--those who wish to hear me will do me the kindness simply to sit still, and to keep still; and I and my friends the Secessionists will make all the noise. [Laughter.]
There are two dominant races in modern history--the Germanic and the Romanic races. The Germanic races tend to personal liberty, to a st.u.r.dy individualism, to civil and to political liberty. The Romanic race tends to absolutism in government; it is clannish; it loves chieftains; it develops a people that crave strong and showy governments to support and plan for them. The Anglo-Saxon race belongs to the great German family, and is a fair exponent of its peculiarities. The Anglo-Saxon carries self-government and self-development with him wherever he goes. He has popular GOVERNMENT and popular INDUSTRY; for the effects of a generous civil liberty are not seen a whit more plain in the good order, in the intelligence, and in the virtue of a self-governing people, than in their amazing enterprise and the scope and power of their creative industry. The power to create riches is just as much a part of the Anglo-Saxon virtues as the power to create good order and social safety.
The things required for prosperous labor, prosperous manufactures, and prosperous commerce are three. First, liberty; second, liberty; third, liberty. [Hear, hear!] Though these are not merely the same liberty, as I shall show you. First, there must be liberty to follow those laws of business which experience has developed, without imposts or restrictions or governmental intrusions. Business simply wants to be let alone.
[Hear, hear!] Then, secondly, there must be liberty to distribute and exchange products of industry in any market without burdensome tariffs, without imposts, and with-out vexatious regulations. There must be these two liberties--liberty to create wealth, as the makers of it think best, according to the light and experience which business has given them; and then liberty to distribute what they have created without unnecessary vexatious burdens.
The comprehensive law of the ideal industrial condition of the word is free manufacture and free trade. [Hear, hear! A voice: "The Morrill tariff." Another voice: "Monroe."] I have said there were three elements of liberty. The third is the necessity of an intelligent and free race of customers. There must be freedom among producers; there must be freedom among the distributors; there must be freedom among the customers. It may not have occurred to you that it makes any difference what one"s customers are, but it does in all regular and prolonged business. The condition of the customer determines how much he will buy, determines of what sort he will buy. Poor and ignorant people buy little and that of the poorest kind. The richest and the intelligent, having the more means to buy, buy the most, and always buy the best. Here, then, are the three liberties: liberty of the producer, liberty of the distributor, and liberty of the consumer. The first two need no discussion; they have been long thoroughly and brilliantly ill.u.s.trated by the political economists of Great Britain and by her eminent statesmen; but it seems to me that enough attention has not been directed to the third; and, with your patience, I will dwell upon that for a moment, before proceeding to other topics.
It is a necessity of every manufacturing and commercial people that their customers should be very wealthy and intelligent. Let us put the subject before you in the familiar light of your own local experience.
To whom do the tradesmen of Liverpool sell the most goods at the highest profit? To the ignorant and poor, or to the educated and prosperous? [A voice: "To the Southerners." Laughter.] The poor man buys simply for his body; he buys food, he buys clothing, he buys fuel, he buys lodging. His rule is to buy the least and the cheapest that he can. He goes to the store as seldom as he can; he brings away as little as he can; and he buys for the least he can. [Much laughter.] Poverty is not a misfortune to the poor only who suffer it, but it is more or less a misfortune to all with whom he deals. On the other hand, a man well off--how is it with him? He buys in far greater quant.i.ty. He can afford to do it; he has the money to pay for it. He buys in far greater variety, because he seeks to gratify not merely physical wants, but also mental wants. He buys for the satisfaction of sentiment and taste, as well as of sense.
He buys silk, wool, flax, cotton; he buys all metals--iron, silver, gold, platinum; in short he buys for all necessities and all substances.
But that is not all. He buys a better quality of goods. He buys richer silks, finer cottons, higher grained wools. Now a rich silk means so much skill and care of somebody"s that has been expended upon it to make it finer and richer; and so of cotton and so of wool. That is, the price of the finer goods runs back to the very beginning, and remunerates the workman as well as the merchant. Now, the whole laboring community is as much interested and profited as the mere merchant, in this buying and selling of the higher grades in the greater varieties and quant.i.ties.
The law of price is the skill; and the amount of skill expended in the work is as much for the market as are the goods. A man comes to market and says: "I have a pair of hands," and he obtains the lowest wages.
Another man comes and says: "I have something more than a pair of hands; I have truth and fidelity." He gets a higher price. Another man comes and says: "I have something more; I have hands, and strength, and fidelity, and skill." He gets more than either of the others.
The next man comes and says: "I have got hands, and strength, and skill, and fidelity; but my hands work more than that. They know how to create things for the fancy, for the affections, for the moral sentiments"; and he gets more than either of the others. The last man comes and says: "I have all these qualities, and have them so highly that it is a peculiar genius"; and genius carries the whole market and gets the highest price.
[Loud applause.] So that both the workman and the merchant are profited by having purchasers that demand quality, variety, and quant.i.ty. Now, if this be so in the town or the city, it can only be so because it is a law. This is the specific development of a general or universal law, and therefore we should expect to find it as true of a nation as of a city like Liverpool. I know that it is so, and you know that it is true of all the world; and it is just as important to have customers educated, Intelligent, moral, and rich out of Liverpool as it is in Liverpool.
[Applause.] They are able to buy; they want variety, they want the very best; and those are the customers you want. That nation is the best customer that is freest, because freedom works prosperity, industry, and wealth. Great Britain, then, aside from moral considerations, has a direct commercial and pecuniary interest in the liberty, civilization, and wealth of every nation on the globe. [Loud applause.] You also have an interest in this, because you are a moral and religious people. ["Oh, oh!" laughter and applause.] You desire it from the highest motives; and G.o.dliness is profitable in all things, having the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come; but if there were no hereafter, and if man had no progress in this life, and if there were no question of civilization at all, it would be worth your while to protect civilization and liberty, merely as a commercial speculation. To evangelize has more than a moral and religious import--it comes back to temporal relations. Wherever a nation that is crushed, cramped, degraded under despotism is struggling to be free, you, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Paisley, all have an interest that that nation should be free. When depressed and backward people demand that they may have a chance to rise--Hungary, Italy, Poland--it is a duty for humanity"s sake, it is a duty for the highest moral motives, to sympathize with them; but besides all these there is a material and an interested reason why you should sympathize with them. Pounds and pence join with conscience and with honor in this design. Now, Great Britain"s chief want is--what?
They have said that your chief want is cotton. I deny it. Your chief want is consumers. [Applause and hisses.] You have got skill, you have got capital, and you have got machinery enough to manufacture goods for the whole population of the globe. You could turn out fourfold as much as you do, if you only had the market to sell in. It is not so much the want, therefore, of fabric, though there may be a temporary obstruction of it; but the princ.i.p.al and increasing want--increasing from year to year--is, where shall we find men to buy what we can manufacture so fast? [Interruption, and a voice, "The Morrill tariff," and applause.]
Before the American war broke out, your warehouses were loaded with goods that you could not sell. [Applause and hisses.] You had over-manufactured; what is the meaning of over-manufacturing but this: that you had skill, capital, machinery, to create faster than you had customers to take goods off your hands? And you know that rich as Great Britain is, vast as are her manufactures, if she could have fourfold the present demand, she could make fourfold riches to-morrow; and every political economist will tell you that your want is not cotton primarily, but customers. Therefore, the doctrine, how to make customers, is a great deal more important to Great Britain than the doctrine how to raise cotton. It is to that doctrine I ask from you, business men, practical men, men of fact, sagacious Englishmen--to that point I ask a moment"s attention. [Shouts of "Oh, oh!" hisses, and applause.] There are no more continents to be discovered. [Hear, hear!]
The market of the future must be found--how? There is very little hope of any more demand being created by new fields. If you are to have a better market there must be some kind of process invented to make the old fields better. [A voice, "Tell us something new," shouts of order, and interruption.] Let us look at it, then. You must civilize the world in order to make a better cla.s.s of purchasers. [Interruption.] If you were to press Italy down again under the feet of despotism, Italy, discouraged, could draw but very few supplies from you. But give her liberty, kindle schools throughout her valleys, spur her industry, make treaties with her by which she can exchange her wine, and her oil, and her silk for your manufactured goods; and for every effort that you make in that direction there will come back profit to you by increased traffic with her. [Loud applause.] If Hungary asks to be an unshackled nation--if by freedom she will rise in virtue and intelligence, then by freedom she will acquire a more multifarious industry, which she will be willing to exchange for your manufactures. Her liberty is to be found--where? You will find it in the Word of G.o.d, you will find it in the code of history; but you will also find it in the Price Current [Hear, hear!]; and every free nation, every civilized people--every people that rises from barbarism to industry and intelligence, becomes a better customer.
A savage is a man of one story, and that one story a cellar. When a man begins to be civilized, he raises another story. When you Christianize and civilize the man, you put story upon story, for you develop faculty after faculty; and you have to supply every story with your productions.
The savage is a man one story deep; the civilized man is thirty stories deep. [Applause.] Now, if you go to a lodging-house, where there are three or four men, your sales to them may, no doubt, be worth something; but if you go to a lodging-house like some of those which I saw in Edinburgh, which seemed to contain about twenty stories ["Oh, oh!" and interruption], every story of which is full, and all who occupy buy of you--which is the better customer, the man who is drawn out, or the man who is pinched up? [Laughter.] Now, there is in this a great and sound principle of economy. ["Yah, yah!" from the pa.s.sage outside the hall, and loud laughter.] If the South should be rendered independent--[at this juncture mingled cheering and hissing became immense; half the audience rose to their feet, waving hats and hand-kerchiefs, and in every part of the hall there was the greatest commotion and uproar.] You have had your turn now; now let me have mine again. [Loud applause and laughter.] It is a little inconvenient to talk against the wind; but after all, if you will just keep good-natured--I am not going to lose my temper; will you watch yours? [Applause.] Besides all that, it rests me, and gives me a chance, you know, to get my breath. [Applause and hisses.] And I think that the bark of those men is worse than their bite. They do not mean any harm--they don"t know any better. [Loud laughter, applause, hisses, and continued up-roar.] I was saying, when these responses broke in, that it was worth our while to consider both alternatives. What will be the result if this present struggle shall eventuate in the separation of America, and making the South--[loud applause, hisses, hooting, and cries of "Bravo!"]--a slave territory exclusively,--[cries of "No, no!" and laughter]--and the North a free territory,--what will be the final result? You will lay the foundation for carrying the slave population clear through to the Pacific Ocean. This is the first step.
There is not a man that has been a leader of the South any time within these twenty years, that has not had this for a plan. It was for this that Texas was invaded, first by colonists, next by marauders, until it was wrested from Mexico. It was for this that they engaged in the Mexican War itself, by which the vast territory reaching to the Pacific was added to the Union. Never for a moment have they given up the plan of spreading the American inst.i.tutions, as they call them, straight through toward the West, until the slave, who has washed his feet in the Atlantic, shall be carried to wash them in the Pacific. [Cries of "Question," and up-roar.] There! I have got that statement out, and you cannot put it back. [Laughter and applause.] Now, let us consider the prospect. If the South becomes a slave empire, what relation will it have to you as a customer? [A voice: "Or any other man." Laughter.] It would be an empire of 12,000,000 of people. Now, of these, 8,000,000 are white, and 4,000,000 black. [A voice: "How many have you got?" Applause and laughter. Another voice: "Free your own slaves."] Consider that one third of the whole are the miserably poor, unbuying blacks. [Cries of "No, no!" "Yes, yes!" and interruption.] You do not manufacture much for them. [Hisses, "Oh!" "No."] You have not got machinery coa.r.s.e enough.
[Laughter, and "No."] Your labor is too skilled by far to manufacture bagging and linsey-woolsey. [A Southerner: "We are going to free them, every one."] Then you and I agree exactly. [Laughter.] One other third consists of a poor, unskilled, degraded white population; and the remaining one third, which is a large allowance, we will say, intelligent and rich.
Now here are twelve million of people, and only one third of them are customers that can afford to buy the kind of goods that you bring to market. [Interruption and uproar.] My friends, I saw a man once, who was a little late at a railway station, chase an express train. He did not catch it. [Laughter.] If you are going to stop this meeting, you have got to stop it before I speak; for after I have got the things out, you may chase as long as you please--you would not catch them. [Laughter and interruption.] But there is luck in leisure; I "m going to take it easy.
[Laughter.] Two thirds of the population of the Southern States to-day are non-purchasers of English goods. [A voice: "No, they are not"; "No, no!" and uproar.] Now you must recollect another fact--namely, that this is going on clear through to the Pacific Ocean; and if by sympathy or help you establish a slave empire, you sagacious Britons--["Oh, oh!"
and hooting]--if you like it better, then, I will leave the adjective out--[laughter, Hear! and applause]--are busy in favoring the establishment of an empire from ocean to ocean that should have fewest customers and the largest non-buying population. [Applause, "No, no!"
A voice: "I thought it was the happy people that populated fastest."] "
Now, what can England make for the poor white population of such a future empire, and for her slave population? What carpets, what linens, what cottons can you sell them? What machines, what looking-gla.s.ses, what combs, what leather, what books, what pictures, what engravings? [A voice: "We "ll sell them ships."] You may sell ships to a few, but what ships can you sell to two thirds of the population of poor whites and blacks? [Applause.] A little bagging and a little linsey-woolsey, a few whips and manacles, are all that you can sell for the slave. [Great applause and uproar.] This very day, in the slave States of America there are eight millions out of twelve millions that are not, and cannot be your customers from the very laws of trade. [A voice: "Then how are they clothed?" and interruption.] * * *
But I know that you say, you cannot help sympathizing with a gallant people. [Hear, hear!] They are the weaker people, the minority; and you cannot help going with the minority who are struggling for their rights against the majority. Nothing could be more generous, when a weak party stands for its own legitimate rights against imperious pride and power, than to sympathize with the weak. But who ever sympathized with a weak thief, because three constables had got hold of him? [Hear, hear!] And yet the one thief in three policemen"s hands is the weaker party.
I suppose you would sympathize with him. [Hear, hear! laughter, and applause.] Why, when that infamous king of Naples--Bomba, was driven into Gaeta by Garibaldi with his immortal band of patriots, and Cavour sent against him the army of Northern Italy, who was the weaker party then? The tyrant and his minions; and the majority was with the n.o.ble Italian patriots, struggling for liberty. I never heard that Old England sent deputations to King Bomba, and yet his troops resisted bravely there. [Laugh-ter and interruption.] To-day the majority of the people of Rome is with Italy. Nothing but French bayonets keeps her from going back to the kingdom of Italy, to which she belongs. Do you sympathize with the minority in Rome or the majority in Italy? [A voice: "With Italy."] To-day the South is the minority in America, and they are fighting for independence! For what? [Uproar. A voice: "Three cheers for independence!" and hisses.] I could wish so much bravery had a better cause, and that so much self-denial had been less deluded; that the poisonous and venomous doctrine of State rights might have been kept aloof; that so many gallant spirits, such as Jackson, might still have lived. [Great applause and loud cheers, again and again renewed.] The force of these facts, historical and incontrovertible, cannot be broken, except by diverting attention by an attack upon the North. It is said that the North is fighting for Union, and not for emanc.i.p.ation. The North is fighting for Union, for that ensures emanc.i.p.ation. [Loud cheers, "Oh, oh!" "No, no!" and cheers.] A great many men say to ministers of the Gospel: "You pretend to be preaching and working for the love of the people. Why, you are all the time preaching for the sake of the Church." What does the minister say? "It is by means of the Church that we help the people," and when men say that we are fighting for the Union, I too say we are fighting for the Union. [Hear, hear! and a voice: "That "s right."] But the motive determines the value; and why are we fighting for the Union? Because we never shall forget the testimony of our enemies. They have gone off declaring that the Union in the hands of the North was fatal to slavery. [Loud applause.] There is testimony in court for you. [A voice: "See that," and laughter.] * * *
In the first place I am ashamed to confess that such was the thoughtlessness--[interruption]--such was the stupor of the North--[renewed interruption]--you will get a word at a time; to-morrow will let folks see what it is you don"t want to hear--that for a period of twenty-five years she went to sleep, and permitted herself to be drugged and poisoned with the Southern prejudice against black men.
[Applause and uproar.] The evil was made worse, because, when any object whatever has caused anger between political parties, a political animosity arises against that object, no matter how innocent in itself; no matter what were the original influences which excited the quarrel.
Thus the colored man has been the football between the two parties in the North, and has suffered accordingly. I confess it to my shame. But I am speaking now on my own ground, for I began twenty-five years ago, with a small party, to combat the unjust dislike of the colored man.
[Loud applause, dissension, and uproar. The interruption at this point became so violent that the friends of Mr. Beecher throughout the hall rose to their feet, waving hats and handkerchiefs, and renewing their shouts of applause. The interruption lasted some minutes.] Well, I have lived to see a total revolution in the Northern feeling--I stand here to bear solemn witness of that. It is not my opinion; it is my knowledge.
[Great uproar.] Those men who undertook to stand up for the rights of all men--black as well as white--have increased in number; and now what party in the North represents those men that resist the evil prejudices of past years? The Republicans are that party. [Loud applause.] And who are those men in the North that have oppressed the negro? They are the Peace Democrats; and the prejudice for which in England you are attempting to punish me, is a prejudice raised by the men who have opposed me all my life. These pro-slavery Democrats abuse the negro.
I defended him, and they mobbed me for doing it. Oh, justice! [Loud laughter, applause, and hisses.] This is as if a man should commit an a.s.sault, maim and wound a neighbor, and a surgeon being called in should begin to dress his wounds, and by and by a policeman should come and collar the surgeon and haul him off to prison on account of the wounds which he was healing.
Now, I told you I would not flinch from any thing. I am going to read you some questions that were sent after me from Glasgow, purporting to be from a workingman. [Great interruption.] If those pro-slavery interrupters think they will tire me out, they will do more than eight millions in America could. [Applause and renewed interruption.] I was reading a question on your side too. "Is it not a fact that in most of the Northern States laws exist precluding negroes from equal civil and political rights with the whites? That in the State of New York the negro has to be the possessor of at least two hundred and fifty dollars"
worth of property to ent.i.tle him to the privileges of a white citizen?
That in some of the Northern States the colored man, whether bond or free, is by law excluded altogether, and not suffered to enter the State limits, under severe penalties? and is not Mr. Lincoln"s own State one of them? and in view of the fact that the $20,000,000 compensation which was promised to Missouri in aid of emanc.i.p.ation was defeated in the last Congress (the strongest Republican Congress that ever a.s.sembled), what has the North done toward emanc.i.p.ation?" Now, then, there "s a dose for you. [A voice: "Answer it."] And I will address myself to the answering of it. And first, the bill for emanc.i.p.ation in Missouri, to which this money was denied, was a bill which was drawn by what we call "log-rollers," who inserted in it an enormously disproportioned price for the slaves. The Republicans offered to give them $10,000,000 for the slaves in Missouri, and they outvoted it because they could not get $12,000,000. Already half the slave population had been "run" down South, and yet they came up to Congress to get $12,000,000 for what was not worth ten millions, nor even eight millions. Now as to those States that had pa.s.sed "black" laws, as we call them; they are filled with Southern emigrants. The southern parts of Ohio, the southern part of Indiana, where I myself lived for years, and which I knew like a book, the southern part of Illinois, where Mr. Lincoln lives--[great uproar]--these parts are largely settled by emigrants from Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina, and it was their vote, or the Northern votes pandering for political reasons to theirs, that pa.s.sed in those States the infamous "black" laws; and the Republicans in these States have a record, clean and white, as having opposed these laws in every instance as "infamous." Now as to the State of New York; it is asked whether a negro is not obliged to have a certain freehold property, or a certain amount of property, before he can vote. It is so still in North Carolina and Rhode Island for white folks--it is so in New York State. [Mr. Beecher"s voice slightly failed him here, and he was interrupted by a person who tried to imitate him. Cries of "Shame!" and "Turn him out!"] I am not undertaking to say that these faults of the North, which were brought upon them by the bad example and influence of the South, are all cured; but I do say that they are in process of cure which promises, if unimpeded by foreign influence, to make all such odious distinctions vanish.
There is another fact that I wish to allude to--not for the sake of reproach or blame, but by way of claiming your more lenient consideration--and that is, that slavery was entailed upon us by your action. [Hear, hear!] Against the earnest protests of the colonists the then government of Great Britain--I will concede not knowing what were the mischiefs--ignorantly, but in point of fact, forced slave traffic on the unwilling colonists. [Great uproar, in the midst of which one individual was lifted up and carried out of the room amidst cheers and hisses.]
The CHAIRMAN: If you would only sit down no disturbance would take place.
The disturbance having subsided,
MR. BEECHER said: I was going to ask you, suppose a child is born with hereditary disease; suppose this disease was entailed upon him by parents who had contracted it by their own misconduct, would it be fair that those parents that had brought into the world the diseased child, should rail at that child because it was diseased. ["No, no!"] Would not the child have a right to turn round and say: "Father, it was your fault that I had it, and you ought to be pleased to be patient with my deficiencies." [Applause and hisses, and cries of "Order!" Great interruption and great disturbance here took place on the right of the platform; and the chairman said that if the persons around the unfortunate individual who had caused the disturbance would allow him to speak alone, but not a.s.sist him in making the disturbance, it might soon be put an end to. The interruption continued until another person was carried out of the hall.] Mr. Beecher continued: I do not ask that you should justify slavery in us, because it was wrong in you two hundred years ago; but having ignorantly been the means of fixing it upon us, now that we are struggling with mortal struggles to free ourselves from it, we have a right to your tolerance, your patience, and charitable constructions.
No man can unveil the future; no man can tell what revolutions are about to break upon the world; no man can tell what destiny belongs to France, nor to any of the European powers; but one thing is certain, that in the exigencies of the future there will be combinations and recombinations, and that those nations that are of the same faith, the same blood, and the same substantial interests, ought not to be alienated from each other, but ought to stand together. [Immense cheering and hisses.] I do not say that you ought not to be in the most friendly alliance with France or with Germany; but I do say that your own children, the offspring of England, ought to be nearer to you than any people of strange tongue. [A voice: "Degenerate sons," applause and hisses; another voice: "What about the Trent?"] If there had been any feelings of bitterness in America, let me tell you that they had been excited, rightly or wrongly, under the impression that Great Britain was going to intervene between us and our own lawful struggle. [A voice: "No!" and applause.] With the evidence that there is no such intention all bitter feelings will pa.s.s away. [Applause.] We do not agree with the recent doctrine of neutrality as a question of law. But it is past, and we are not disposed to raise that question. We accept it now as a fact, and we say that the utterance of Lord Russell at Blairgowrie--[Applause, hisses, and a voice: "What about Lord Brougham?"]--together with the declaration of the government in stopping war-steamers here--[great uproar, and applause]--has gone far toward quieting every fear and removing every apprehension from our minds. [Uproar and shouts of applause.] And now in the future it is the work of every good man and patriot not to create divisions, but to do the things that will make for peace. ["Oh, oh!" and laughter.] On our part it shall be done. [Applause and hisses, and "No, no!"] On your part it ought to be done; and when in any of the convulsions that come upon the world, Great Britain finds herself struggling single-handed against the gigantic powers that spread oppression and darkness--[applause, hisses, and uproar]--there ought to be such cordiality that she can turn and say to her first-born and most ill.u.s.trious child, "Come!" [Hear, hear! applause, tremendous cheers, and uproar.] I will not say that England cannot again, as. .h.i.therto, single-handed manage any power--[applause and uproar]--but I will say that England and America together for religion and liberty--[A voice: "Soap, soap," uproar, and great applause]--are a match for the world.
[Applause; a voice: "They don"t want any more soft soap."] Now, gentlemen and ladies--[A voice: "Sam Slick"; and another voice: "Ladies and gentlemen, if you please,"]--when I came I was asked whether I would answer questions, and I very readily consented to do so, as I had in other places; but I will tell you it was because I expected to have the opportunity of speaking with some sort of ease and quiet. [A voice: "So you have."] I have for an hour and a half spoken against a storm--[Hear, hear!]--and you yourselves are witnesses that, by the interruption, I have been obliged to strive with my voice, so that I no longer have the power to control this a.s.sembly. [Applause.] And although I am in spirit perfectly willing to answer any question, and more than glad of the chance, yet I am by this very unnecessary opposition to-night incapacitated physically from doing it. Ladies and gentlemen, I bid you good-evening.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
THE GETTYSBURGH ADDRESS,
NOVEMBER 19, 1863.
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. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so n.o.bly 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 G.o.d, 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.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS,
MARCH 4, 1865.
FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:
At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at first.
Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.
The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it with war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves const.i.tuted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither antic.i.p.ated that the cause of the conflict might cease when, or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same G.o.d, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just G.o.d"s a.s.sistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men"s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of G.o.d, must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern there any departure from those Divine attributes which the believers in a living G.o.d always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pa.s.s away. Yet if G.o.d wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman"s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as G.o.d gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation"s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
HENRY WINTER DAVIS,