It will be for us
to change all this, and we shall do it. Our successful example will be
enough. Thus far we have been known chiefly through that vital force
which slavery could only degrade, but not subdue. Now at last, by the
death of slavery, will the republic begin to live. For what is life
without liberty? Stretching from ocean to ocean,--teeming with
population, bountiful in resources of all kinds, and thrice-happy in
universal enfranchisement, it will be more than conqueror. Nothing too
vast for its power; nothing too minute for its care. Triumphant over the
foulest wrong ever inflicted, after the bloodiest war ever waged, it
will know the majesty of right and the beauty of peace, prepared always
to uphold the one, and to cultivate the other. Strong in its own mighty
stature, filled with all the fulness of a new life, and covered with a
panoply of renown, it will confess that no dominion is of value which
does not contribute to human happiness. Born in this latter day, and the
child of its own struggles, without ancestral claims, but heir of
all the ages,--it will stand forth to assert the dignity of man, and
wherever any member of the human family is to be succored, there its
voice will reach,--as the voice of Cromwell reached across France
even to the persecuted mountaineers of the Alps.
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