LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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BITS OF ORE FROM RICH MINES 
 
 {patriotic Buoo^ts 
 
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 FIRST IN WAR. i 
 FIRST IN PEACE J 
 
 1 
 
 FRANKLIN WASHINGTON JEFFERSON 
 WEBSTER LINCOLN BEECHER 
 
 Gathered by John R. Howard 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT 
 
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 Copyright ix ,899 by Fords, Ho^VARD, & Hulbert. 
 
 
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NOTE. 
 
 There can be no question but that war is 
 a stimulant of patriotism. A majority of 
 the men whose words are here gathered 
 wrote or spoke under that tremendous pres- 
 sure. And yet, the sum of their counsels is 
 to avoidance of war, towards aspiration for 
 a national greatness developing out of the 
 arts of peace. 
 
 Naturally, a reader familiar with the writ- 
 ings of any of them will miss here many 
 favorite passages : the scope of the compila- 
 tion being necessarily limited. The attentive 
 ^,ader, however, will be interested to trace 
 srein the vital germs of our entire American 
 story, the swift and strong expansion of 
 hich furnished the world with unceasing 
 wonder. Webster's pictures of the Colonial 
 settlements: the sentiments of Franklin, 
 Washington and Jefferson, showing their 
 love of the Mother-Country, indignation at 
 her oppressions of the Colonies, ardor for 
 
" Note. 
 
 Revolutionary success, sagacity in framing 
 the new government, wisdom in its adminis- 
 tration, and appeals for increasing devotion 
 to the Union, in which alone they found the 
 source of permanent strength and prosperity, 
 —these all stand out with striking distinct- 
 ness. There follows the intermediate 
 period of incubating Nullification and Seces- 
 sion, with Webster's teachings of national 
 honor in finance, and his grand arguments 
 for the Constitution and the Union, so 
 powerful in consolidating the national senti- 
 ment, in preparation for the war whose 
 horrors he foretold. 
 
 After this, the deluge of Secession and 
 Rebellion, set forth in Lincoln's clear, terse 
 English and with his inimitable force of 
 logic and good sense. The volume closes 
 with Beecher, who ranged from the Com- 
 promise day of Clay in 1S50, through the 
 Anti-slavery struggles, the War, and Recon- 
 struction, down to the death of Grant in 
 1885— a splendid array of reason and elo- 
 quence. 
 The notable thing about these men— rev- 
 
Note. iii 
 
 olutionary prophets all, except Webster — is 
 their conservatism, both in thought and in 
 expression. Even their most strenuous ap- 
 peals to sentiment are based on a rational 
 setting forth of facts, compelling confidence 
 in their conclusions. Their utterances of 
 patriotic fervor are at the opposite pole 
 from the demagogy of partisanship. And, 
 aside from their inculcations of national 
 honor, virtue, justice, the education of in- 
 telligence, freedom from foreign entangle- 
 ments, and independent friendliness to 
 other nations, perhaps the most valuable 
 lesson for the present generation is a realiza- 
 tion of the growth and importance of the 
 federal union of the several States. It began 
 weakly ; was subject to attack, first insidi- 
 ous, then violent ; survived after a mighty 
 struggle ; and now seems to us a matter of 
 course, as permanently established: — but, 
 from the outset to the end, whether for peace- 
 ful growth or warlike force, these clear-eyed 
 prophets saw its value, and proclaimed it 
 with effective iteration. While yet the 
 States, like the planets, hold each its in- 
 
iv Note. 
 
 dependent orbit, the system stands for " Our | 
 Country, our whole Country, one and indi- 
 visible." 
 
 For the text of the excerpts, the compiler 
 has depended chiefly on the following: 
 Franklin,— C^w//^/^ Works, Ed. by John ji 
 Bigelow (Putnam) ; Washington, — Writ- \ 
 ings,.Y.di. by Worthington A. Ford (Put- \ 
 nam) ; Jefferson,— Writings, Ed. by 
 Paul L. Ford (Putnam) ; Webster,— 6^r^^/ 
 Speeches, Ed. by E. C. Whipple (Little, I 
 Brown & Co.) ; Lincoln, Complete Works, \ 
 Ed. by John G. Nicolay and John Hay j 
 (Century Co.) ; Beecher, Patriotic Ad- \ 
 dresses, Ed. by J. R. Howard (Fords, How- j 
 ard, & Hulbert.) i 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE, 
 
 Benjamin Franklin: 1706-1790 . i 
 
 George Washington: 1732-1799 . 17 
 
 Thomas Jefferson: 1743-1826 . 51 
 
 Daniel Webster : 1782-1852 . . 79 
 
 Abraham Lincoln : 1809 -1865 , . 123 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher : 1813-1887 
 
 159 to 204 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. ^ 
 
 The sage whom two worlds claim ; the man, dis- 
 puted by the history of the sciences and the history of 
 empires. . . .one of the greatest men who ever served 
 the cause of liberty and of philosophy.— Mirabeau, 
 in the Frettch National Assembly. 
 
 To Lord Kames. 
 
 London, January, 1760. 
 No one can more sincerely rejoice than I 
 do, on the reduction of Canada, and this not 
 merely as I am a colonist, but as I am a 
 Briton. I have long been of the opinion, 
 that the foundations of the future grandeur 
 and stability of the British Empire lie in 
 America : and though like other foundations, 
 they are low and little seen, they are never- 
 theless broad, and strong enough to support 
 the greatest political structure human wis- 
 dom has ever yet erected. I am therefore 
 by no means for restoring Canada [to the 
 French], If we keep it, all the Country 
 from St. Lawrence to Mississippi will in 
 another century be filled with British people, 
 
Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 Britain itself will become vastly more popu- 
 lous, by the immense increase of its com- 
 merce ; the Atlantic Sea will be covered 
 with your trading ships ; and your naval 
 powers, thence continually increasing, will 
 extend your influences round the whole globe 
 and over the world ! 
 
 To M. DUBOURG. 
 
 London, October 2, 1770. 
 We of the colonies have never insisted 
 that we ought to be exempt from contribut- 
 ing to the common expenses necessary to sup- 
 port the prosperity of the empire. We only 
 assert that, having parliaments of our own, 
 and not having representatives in that of 
 Great Britain, our parliaments are the only 
 judges of what we can and what we ought 
 to contribute in this case ; and that the 
 English Parliament has no right to take our 
 money without our consent. ... I have, 
 indeed, no doubt that the parliament of 
 England will finally abandon its pretensions 
 and leave us to the peaceable enjoyment of 
 our rights and privileges. 
 
Benjamm Franklhi. 
 
 To Thomas Gushing, Speaker of the 
 Assembly of Massachusetts Bay. Re- 
 porting his conversation with Lord 
 Dartmouth. — London, 6 May, 1773. 
 Were I as much an EngHshman as I am 
 an American, and ever so desirous of estab- 
 Hshing the authority of Parliament, I protest 
 to your Lordship, I cannot conceive of a 
 single step the Parliament can take to in- 
 crease it that will not tend to diminish it, 
 and after abundance of mischief they must 
 finally lose it. 
 
 To Thomas Gushing. — 
 
 London, 5 Jan., 1774. 
 I shall continue to do all I possibly can this 
 winter to make an accommodation of our 
 differences ; but my hopes are small. Divine 
 Providence first infatuates the power it de- 
 signs to ruin. 
 
 To the Printer of the London Public 
 Advertiser (Anonymously sent), 1774. 
 Surely the great commerce of this nation 
 
 with the Americans is of too much import- 
 
Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 ance to be risked in a quarrel which has no 
 foundation but ministerial pique and obsti- 
 nacy ! . . . . Did ever any tradesman succeed 
 who attempted to drub customers into his 
 shop ? 
 
 To James Bowdoin. — 
 
 London, 25 Feb., 1775, 
 
 If we continue firm and united, and reso- 
 lutely persist in the non-consumption agree- 
 ment, this adverse ministry cannot probably 
 stand another year .... The eyes of all 
 Christendom are upon us, and our honor as 
 a people is become a matter of the utmost 
 consequence to be taken care of. If we 
 tamely give up our rights in this contest, a 
 century to come will not restore us in the 
 opinion of the world ; we shall be stamped 
 with the character of dastards, poltroons 
 and fools. . . . Present inconveniences are 
 therefore to be born with fortitude, and bet- 
 ter times expected. 
 
 To Mr. Strahan (King's Printer).— 
 Philadelphia, 7 July, 1775. 
 
 Mr. Strahan : — You are a member of 
 Parliament, and one of that majority which 
 
Benjamin Franklin. 5 
 
 has doomed my country to destruction. 
 You have begun to burn our towns and 
 murder our people. Look upon your hands ; 
 they are stained with the blood of your re- 
 lations ! You and I were long friends ; you 
 are now my enemy, and I am 
 Yours, 
 
 B. Franklin. 
 
 To Lord Howe.— 
 
 Philadelphia, July 20, 1776. 
 To me it seems, that neither the obtain- 
 ing or retaining of any trade, however valu- 
 able soever, is an object for which men may 
 justly spill each other's blood : that the true 
 and sure means of extending and securing 
 com.merce is the goodness and cheapness of 
 commodities : and that the profit of no trade 
 can ever be equal to the expense of compell- 
 ing it and of holding it, by fleets and 
 armies. 
 
 To Samuel Cooper.— 
 
 Paris, May i, 1777. 
 Those who live under arbitrary power do 
 nevertheless approve of liberty, and wish for 
 
Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 it ; they almost despair of receiving it in 
 Europe ; they read the translations of our 
 separate Colony constitutions with rap- 
 ture : . . . . Hence it is a common observa- 
 tion here that our cause is the cause of all 
 mankind, and that we are fighting for their 
 Hberty in defending our own. It is a glori- 
 ous task assigned us by Providence, which 
 has, I trust, given us spirit and virtue equal 
 to it, and will at last crown it with success. 
 
 To Chas. de Weissentein [a secret 
 agent of England]. — Passy, July i, 1778. 
 
 You think we flatter ourselves and are 
 deceived into an opinion that England must 
 acknowledge our independency. We, on the 
 other hand, think you flatter yourselves in 
 imagining such an acknowledgment a vast 
 boon. . . . We have never asked it of you ; 
 we only tell you that you can have no treaty 
 with us but as an independent state ; and 
 you may please yourselves and your chil- 
 dren with the rattle of the right to govern 
 us, as long as you have done with your 
 King's being King of France, without giving 
 
Benjamm Franklin. 
 
 us the least concern, if you do not attempt 
 to exercise it. 
 
 To James Lovell.— 
 
 Passy, July 22, 1778. 
 The taking of unfair advantage of a 
 neighbor's necessities, though attended with 
 temporary success, always breeds bad blood. 
 
 Information to Those Who Would 
 Remove to America.— 1782. 
 
 In Europe it [birth] has indeed its value ; 
 but it is a commodity that cannot be carried 
 to a worse market than America, where 
 people do not inquire concerning a stranger, 
 What z's he ? but, What can he do} If he 
 has any useful art, he is welcome. 
 
 Industry and constant employment are 
 great preservatives of the morals and the 
 virtue of a nation. 
 
 To THE Bishop of St. Asaph, Dr. Ship- 
 ley. — Passy, March 17, 1783. 
 Let us now forgive and forget. Let each 
 country seek its advancement in its own in- 
 ternal advantages of arts and agriculture, 
 
Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 not in retarding and preventing the prosper- 
 ity of the other. America will, with God's 
 blessing, become a great and happy coun- 
 try ; and England, if she has at length gained 
 wisdom, will have gained something more 
 valuable, and more essential to her pros- 
 perity, than all she has lost. 
 
 To Robert R. Livingstone.— 
 
 Passy, 22 July, 1783. 
 I have seen so much embarrassment and 
 so little advantage in the restraining and 
 compulsive systems, that I feel myself 
 strongly inclined to believe that a state 
 which leaves her ports open to all the w'orld 
 upon equal terms will by that means have 
 foreign commodities cheaper, sell its own 
 productions dearer, and be, as a whole, the 
 most prosperous. 
 
 [Our constitutions] are much admired by 
 the politicians here. It is particularly a mat- 
 ter of wonder that, in the midstof a cruel war 
 raging in the bowels of our country, our 
 sages should have the firmness of mind to 
 sit down calmly and form such complete 
 plans of government. 
 
Benjami?t Franklin. 
 
 To Sir Joseph Banks.— 
 
 Passy, 27 July, 1783. 
 In my opinion there never was a good 
 war or a bad peace. What vast additions 
 to the conveniences and comforts of living 
 might mankind have acquired, if the money 
 spent on wars had been employed in works 
 of public utility ! 
 
 To David Hartley (One of the 
 English Peace Commissioners). — 
 
 Passy, 6 Sept., 1783. 
 
 We are more thoroughly an enlightened 
 people, with respect to our political interests, 
 than perhaps any other under heaven. 
 Every man among us reads. . . . Our do- 
 mestic misunderstandings, when we have 
 them, are of small extent. . . . The great 
 body of intelligence among our people sur- 
 rounds and overpowers our petty dissensions, 
 as the sun's great mass of fire diminishes 
 and destroys his spots. Do not, therefore, 
 any longer delay the evacuation of New 
 York, in the vain hope of a new revolution 
 in your favor. 
 
Pafriotic Nuggets, 
 
 There is no truth more clear to me than 
 this, that the great interest of our two coun- i 
 tries is a thorough reconciliation. 
 
 To JOSIAH QUINCY. — i 
 
 Passy, II Sept., 1783. I 
 
 I lament with you the many mischiefs, the i 
 
 injustice, the corruption of manners, etc., \ 
 
 that attended a depreciating currency. It is i 
 
 some consolation to me, that I washed my [ 
 
 hands of that evil by predicting it in Con- ; 
 gress, and proposing means that would have 
 
 been effectual to prevent it, if they had been j 
 
 adopted. I 
 
 To THE President of Congress.— ] 
 Passy, 13 Sept., 1783. | 
 
 Our safety consists in a steady adherence , 
 to our friends, and our reputation in a faith- j 
 ful regard to treaties. 
 
 To Robert Morris. — | 
 Passy, 5 Dec, 1783. 1 
 I see, in some resolutions of town meet- 
 ings, a remonstrance against giving Congress | 
 the power to take, as they call it, the people's ! 
 
Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 money out of their pockets, though only to 
 pay the interest and principal of debts duly 
 contracted. They seem to mistake the point. 
 Money, justly due from the people, is their 
 creditors' money, and no longer the money 
 of the people. 
 
 The Impolicy of War. 
 
 I agreed with you perfectly in your dis- 
 approbation of war .... I think it 
 wrong in point of human prudence, for 
 whatever advantage one nation would obtain 
 from another. ... it would be much 
 cheaper to purchase such advantage with 
 ready money, than to pay the expense of ac- 
 quiring it by war. ... It seems to me that 
 if statesmen had a little more arithmetic, or 
 were more accustomed to calculations, wars 
 would be much less frequent. 
 
 To Chas. Thomson, Secretary of Congress. 
 
 — Passy, 13 May, 1783. 
 
 Thus the great and hazardous enterprise 
 
 we have been engaged in, is, God be 
 
 praised, happily completed, an event I 
 
12 
 
 hardly expected I should live to see. A few I 
 years of peace, well employed, will restore 
 and increase our strength, but our future 
 safety will depend on our union and virtue. 
 
 To B. Vaughan,— 
 
 Passy, 14 Tvlarch, 1785. . 
 
 Justice is as strictly due between neighbor j 
 nations as between neighbor citizens. A ' 
 highwayman is as much a robber when he : 
 plunders in a gang as when single ; and a na- j 
 tion that makes an unjust war is only a -j 
 great gang. \ 
 
 Address to the Constitutional | 
 Convention.— Sept., 1787. j 
 I confess that I do not entirely approve of j 
 this Constitution at present ; but. Sir, I am ■ 
 not sure I shall never approve of it ; for, 
 having lived long, I have experienced many \ 
 instances of being obliged, by better infor- 
 mation and fuller consideration, to change 1 
 opinions even on important subjects which I 
 I once thought right, but found to be other- 
 wise. . . , Though many private persons , 
 
Benjamin Frankl/n. 13 
 
 think almost as highly of their own infalUbil- 
 ity as that of their [religious] sect, few ex- 
 press it so naturally as a certain French 
 lady, who in a little dispute with her sister, 
 said : " But I meet with nobody but myself 
 that is always in the right." In these sen- 
 timents, Sir, I agree to this Constitu- 
 tion. ... [I] doubt, too, whether any con- 
 vention we can obtain may be able to make 
 a better Constitution. . . . On the whole, 
 Sir, I cannot help expressing a wish that 
 every member of the convention who may 
 still have objections to it would with me 
 on this occasion doubt a little of his own in- 
 fallibility, and, to make majiifest our una- 
 nimity, put his name to this instrument. 
 
 To Mrs. Jane Mecum.— 
 
 Philadelphia, 26 Nov., 1788. 
 
 I have long been accustomed to receive 
 more blame, as well as more praise, than I 
 have deserved. It is the lot of every public 
 man, and I leave one account to balance the 
 other. 
 
14 Patriotic Ntiggets. 
 
 Prospect for Emigrants to America. 
 
 No rewards are given to encourage new 
 settlers to come among us, whatever degree 
 of property they may bring with them, nor 
 any exemptions from common duties. Our 
 country offers to strangers nothing but a 
 good climate, fertile soil, wholesome air, free 
 government, wise laws, liberty, a good 
 people to live among, and a hearty welcome. 
 Those Europeans who have these or greater 
 advantages at home, would do well to stay 
 where they are. 
 
 The Ancient Jews and the Anti- 
 Federalists. 
 One would have thought that the appoint- 
 ment of men [Moses and Aaron] who had 
 distinguished themselves in procuring the 
 liberty of their nation, and had hazarded 
 their lives in openly opposing the will of a 
 powerful monarch who would have retained 
 that nation in slavery, might have been an 
 appointment acceptable to a grateful people ; 
 and that a constitution framed for them by 
 the Deity himself, might on that account have 
 
Benja^nin Franklin. 15 
 
 been secure of a universally welcome recep- 
 tion. Yet there were, in every one of the 
 thirteen tribes, some discontented, restless 
 spirits, who were continually exciting them 
 to reject the proposed new government. . . . 
 I beg I may not be understood to infer, 
 that our general convention was divinely in- 
 spired when it formed the new federal con- 
 stitution, merely because that constitution 
 has been unreasonably and violently opposed; 
 yet I must own I have so much faith in the 
 general government of the world by Provi- 
 dence that I can hardly conceive a transac- 
 tion of such momentous importance to the 
 welfare of millions now existing and to exist 
 in the posterity of a great nation, should 
 be suffered to pass without being in some 
 degree influenced, guided and governed by 
 that omnipotent, omnipresent and beneficent 
 Ruler in whom all inferior spirits live, move 
 and have their being. 
 
 To Samuel Moore. — 
 
 Philadelphia, 5 Nov., 1789. 
 I hope the fire of liberty, which you men- 
 tion as spreading itself over Europe, will act 
 
1 6 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 upon the inestimable rights of man, as 
 common fire does upon gold ; purify without 
 destroying them ; so that a lover of liberty 
 may find a cou7itry in any part of Christen- 
 dom. 
 
 On the Abolition of Slavery.— 
 
 9 November, 1789. 
 
 Slavery is such an atrocious debasement 
 
 of human nature, that its very extirpation, if 
 
 not performed with solicitous care, may 
 
 sometimes open a source of serious evils. 
 
 To M. LeRoy.— 
 
 Philadelphia, Nov. 13, 1789. 
 Our new Constitution is now established, 
 and has an appearance that promises per- 
 manency ; but in this world nothing can be 
 said to be certain, except death and taxes. 
 
GEORGE WASHINGTON. 
 
 " Illustrious man ! deriving honor less from the 
 splendor of his situation than from the dignity of his 
 mind ; before whom all borrowed greatness sinks into 
 insignificance."— Charlks James Fox, in the British 
 Parliament. 
 
 To George William Fairfax, in 
 England. May 31, 1775. 
 The once happy and peaceful plains of 
 America are either to be drenched with 
 blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alterna- 
 tive ! But can a virtuous man hesitate in 
 his choice } 
 
 To THE President of the Congress, 
 upon his appointment as Commander- 
 in-Chief. June 16, 1775. 
 Mr. President : — Though I am truly 
 sensible of the high honor done me in this 
 appointment, yet I feel great distress from 
 
Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 a consciousness that my abilities and mili- 
 tary experience may not be equal to the 
 extensive and important trust. However, 
 as the Congress desire it, I will enter upon 
 the momentous duty and exert every power 
 I possess in their service, for the support of 
 the glorious cause. ... As to pay, Sir, I 
 beg leave to assure the Congress that as no 
 pecuniary consideration could have tempted 
 me to accept this arduous employment at 
 the expense of my domestic ease and happi- 
 ness, I do not wish to make any profit from 
 it. I will keep an exact account of my 
 expenses. Those I doubt not they will dis- 
 charge, and that is all I desire. 
 
 First Order to Continental Army. 
 
 July 4, 1775. 
 It is hoped that all distinctions of Colo- 
 nies will be laid aside ; so that one and the 
 same spirit may animate the whole, and the 
 only contest be, who shall render, on this 
 great and trying occasion, the most essential 
 service to the great and common cause in 
 which we are all engaged. 
 
George Was/izngton. 19 
 
 Army Order: Prohibition of 
 Gaming. 1776. 
 At this time of public distress, men may 
 have enough to do in the service of God and 
 their country, v^'ithout abandoning them- 
 selves to vice and immorality. It is a noble 
 cause in which we are engaged : it is the 
 cause of virtue and mankind ; every advan- 
 tage and comfort to us and our posterity de- 
 pend upon the vigor of our exertions ; in short 
 Freedom or Slavery must be the result of our 
 conduct ; there can, therefore, be no greater 
 inducement to men to behave well. 
 
 Army Order. 
 
 July 31, 1776. 
 It is with great concern, the General under- 
 stands that Jealousies, etc, are arisen among 
 the troops from the different Provinces, 
 . . . The General most earnestly entreats 
 the officers and soldiers to consider, . . . 
 that all distinctions are sunk in the name of 
 an American. To make this name honor- 
 able, and to preserve the liberty of our 
 Country, ought to be our only emulation. 
 
Pat7'iotic Nuggets. 
 
 and he will be the best Soldier and the best 
 Patriot, who contributes most to this 
 glorious work, whatsoever be his station, or 
 from whatsoever part of the Continent, he 
 may come. 
 
 To THE Congress. 1777. 
 I find they [the Congress] have done me 
 the honor to intrust me with powers in my 
 military capacity, of the highest nature and 
 almost unlimited in extent. Instead of 
 thinking myself freed from all civil obliga- 
 tions, by this mark of their confidence, I 
 shall constantly bear in mind, that as the 
 sword was the last resort for the preserva- 
 tion of our liberties, so it ought to be the 
 first thing laid aside, when those liberties are 
 firmly established. 
 
 To THE President of the Congress. 
 Winter of Valley Forge. Dec. 23, 1777. 
 I can assure those gentlemen [the Penn- 
 sylvania Assembly], that it is a much easier 
 and less distressing thing, to draw remon- 
 strances in a comfortable room by a good 
 
George Washington. 21 
 
 fireside, than to occupy a cold, bleak hill and 
 sleep under frost and snow, without clothes 
 or blankets. However, although they seem 
 to have little feeling for the naked and dis- 
 tressed soldiers, I feel superabundantly for 
 them, and, from my soul, I pity those miser- 
 ies, which it is neither in my power to relieve 
 or prevent. 
 
 It is for these reasons, therefore, that I 
 have dwelt upon this subject ; and it adds not 
 a little to my other difficulties and distress, to 
 find, that much more is expected from me 
 than is possible to be performed, and that 
 upon the ground of safety and policy I am 
 obliged to conceal the true state of the army 
 from public view, and thereby expose myself 
 to detraction and calumny. 
 
 Letter to his agent, Lund Washing- 
 ton, who had saved Mt. Vernon from 
 destruction at the hands of the British, by 
 furnishing them supplies. April 30, 1781. 
 It would have been a less painful circum- 
 stance to me to have heard, that in conse- 
 quence of your non-compliance with their 
 
22 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 request, they have burned my House and laid 
 the Plantation in ruins. You ought to have 
 considered yourself as my representative, 
 and should have reflected on the bad ex- 
 ample of communicating with the enemy, 
 and making a voluntary offer of refresh- 
 ments to thenTwith a view to prevent con- 
 flagration. 
 
 Reply to Col. Lewis Nicola, proposing 
 that Washington should make himself 
 King. May 22, 1782. 
 With a mixture of great surprise and 
 astonishment, I have read with attention 
 the sentiments you have submitted to my 
 perusal. Be assured. Sir, no occurrence in 
 the course of the war has given me more 
 painful sensations, than your information of 
 there being such ideas existing in the army, 
 as you have expressed, and I must view with 
 abhorrence and reprehend with severity. . . . 
 Let me conjure you, then, if you have any 
 regard for your Country, concern for your- 
 self or posterity, or respect for me, to banish 
 these thoughts from your mind, and never 
 
George Washington. 
 
 communicate, as from yourself or any one 
 else, a sentiment of the like nature. 
 
 To THE Governors of All tke States. 
 
 June 8, 1783. 
 The citizens of America, placed in the 
 most enviable condition, as the sole lords 
 and proprietors of a vast tract of continent, 
 comprehending all the various soils and 
 climates of the world, and abounding with 
 all the necessaries and conveniences of life, 
 are now, by the late satisfactory pacification, 
 acknowledged to be possessed of absolute 
 freedom and independency. They are, from 
 this period, to be considered as the actors 
 on a most conspicuous theatre, which seems 
 to be peculiarly designated by Providence 
 for the display of human greatness and 
 felicity. 
 
 The foundation of our empire v/as not 
 laid in the gloomy age of ignorance and su- 
 perstition : but at an epocha when the rights 
 of mankind were better understood and 
 more clearly defined, than at any former 
 period. 
 
24 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 There are four things, which, I humbly i 
 conceive, are essential to the well-being, I | 
 may even venture to say, to the existence of i 
 the United States, as an independent power. ' 
 
 First. An indissoluble union of the States 
 under one federal head. 
 
 Secondly. A sacred regard to public : 
 justice. J 
 
 Thirdly. The adoption of a proper peace ' 
 establishment [of military defence] : and 1 
 
 Fourthly. The prevalence of that pacific 1 
 and friendly disposition among the people 
 of the United States, which will induce them I 
 to forget their local prejudices and policies ; 
 to make those mutual concessions, which 
 are requisite to the general prosperity ; and, j 
 in some instances, to sacrifice their individ- i 
 ual advantages to the interest of the com- i 
 munity. 
 
 These are the pillars on which the glorious 
 fabric of our independency and national 
 character must be supported. Liberty is the 
 basis ; and whoever would dare to sap the 
 foundation, or overturn the structure, under . 
 whatever specious pretext he may attempt 
 
George WasJiington. 25 
 
 it, will merit the bitterest execration, and the 
 severest punishment which can be inflicted 
 by his injured country. 
 
 It is indispensable to the happiness of the 
 individual States, that there should be 
 lodged somewhere a supreme power to regu- 
 late and govern the general concerns of the 
 confederated republic, without which the 
 Union cannot be of long duration. 
 
 Whatever measures have a tendency to 
 dissolve the Union, or contribute to violate 
 or lessen the sovereign authority, ought to 
 be considered as hostile to the liberty and 
 independency of America and the authors of 
 them treated accordingly. 
 
 In this state of absolute freedom and per- 
 fect security, who will grudge to yield a very 
 little of his property to support the common 
 interest of society, and insure the protection 
 of government ?. . . . Where is the man to 
 be found, who wishes to remain indebted 
 for the defence of his own person and pro- 
 perty, to the exertions, the bravery, and the 
 
26 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 blood of others, without making one gener- 
 ous effort to repay the debt of honor and 
 gratitude? In what part of the continent 
 shall we find any man, or body of men, who 
 would not blush to stand up and propose 
 measures, purposely calculated to rob the 
 soldier of his stipend, and the public creditor 
 of his due ? 
 
 The militia of this country must be con- 
 sidered as the palladium of our security, and 
 the first effectual resort in case of hostil- 
 ity. It is essential, therefore, that the same 
 system should pervade the whole ; that the 
 formation and discipline of the militia of the 
 Continent should be absolutely uniform, and 
 that the same species of arms, accouter- 
 ments, and military apparatus should be in- 
 troduced in every part of the United States. 
 No one, who has not learned it from experi- 
 ence, can conceive the difficulty, expense, 
 and confusion, which result from a contrary 
 system, or the vague arrangements which 
 have hitherto prevailed. 
 
George Washington. 27 
 
 First Inaugural Address. 
 
 April 30, 1789. 
 No people can be bound to acknowledge 
 and adore the invisible hand, which conducts 
 the affairs of men, more than the people of 
 the United States. Every step, by which 
 they have advanced to the character of an 
 independent Nation, seems to have been 
 distinguished by some token of providential 
 agency. And, in the important revolution 
 just accomplished in the system of their 
 united government, the tranquil deliberations 
 and voluntary consent of so many distinct 
 communities, from which the event has 
 resulted, cannot be compared with the means 
 by which most governments have been es- 
 tabhshed, without some return of pious 
 gratitude along with an humble anticipation 
 of the future blessings which the past seem 
 to presage. 
 
 There is no truth more thoroughly estab- 
 lished, than that there exists in the economy 
 and course of nature an indissoluble union 
 between virtue and happiness, between duty 
 
Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 and advantage, between the genuine maxims 
 of an honest and magnanimous policy, and 
 the solid rewards of public prosperity and 
 felicity ; since we ought to be no less per- 
 suaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven 
 can never be expected on a nation that dis- 
 regards the eternal rules of order and right, 
 which Heaven itself has ordained ; and since 
 the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, 
 and the destiny of the republican model of 
 government, are justly considered as deeply, 
 perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment 
 intrusted to the hands of the American 
 people. 
 
 To Dr. David Stuart. 
 
 June, 1790. 
 
 If there was the same propensity in man- 
 kind for investigating the motives, as there 
 is for censuring the conduct of public char- 
 acters, it would be found, that the censure 
 so freely bestowed, is oftentimes unmerited 
 and uncharitable. 
 
George Washmgton. 29 
 
 To Dr. David Stuart. 
 
 June, 1790, 
 That there is a diversity of interests in the 
 Union, none has denied. That this is the 
 case also in every State, is equally certain ; 
 and that it even extends to the counties of 
 individual States, can be readily proved. . . . 
 To constitute a dispute there must be two 
 parties. To understand it well both parties, 
 and all the circumstances, must be fully heard; 
 and to accommodate difTerences, temper and 
 mutual forbearance are requisite. Common 
 danger brought the States into confederacy, 
 and on their union our safety and importance 
 depend. A spirit of accommodation was the 
 basis of the present Constitution. 
 
 First Annual Address to Congress. 
 January 8, 1790. 
 Among the many interesting objects, 
 which will engage your attention, that of 
 providing for the common defence will 
 merit particular regard. To be prepared 
 for war is one of the most effectual means 
 of preserving peace. 
 
30 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 A free people ought not only to be armed, 
 but disciplined ; to which end a uniform and 
 well-designated plan is requisite. 
 
 To His Agent. 
 
 November, 1790. 
 I had rather have heard, that my repaired 
 coach vi'as plain and elegant than rich and 
 
 elegant. 
 
 Second Annual Address to Congress. 
 
 December 8, 1790. 
 To the House of Representatives : 
 
 Allow me, moreover, to hope that it will 
 be a favorite policy with you, not merely to 
 secure a payment of the interest of the debt 
 funded, but as far and as fast as the grow- 
 ing resources of the country will permit, to 
 exonerate it of the principal itself. The ap- 
 propriations you have made of the western 
 lands explain your disposition on this sub- 
 ject, and I am persuaded that the sooner 
 that valuable fund can be made to contri- 
 bute, along with other means, to the actual 
 reduction of the public debt, the more salu- 
 
George Washington. 31 
 
 tary will the measure be to every public 
 interest, as well as the most satisfactory to 
 our constituents. 
 
 Third Annual Address to Congress. 
 October 25, 1791. 
 It is sincerely to be desired that all need 
 of coercion in future may cease ; and that 
 an intimate intercourse may succeed, calcu- 
 lated to advance the happiness of the Indians 
 and to attach them firmly to the United 
 States. ... A system corresponding with 
 the mild principles of religion and philan- 
 thropy toward an unenlightened race of 
 men, whose happiness materially depends on 
 the conduct of the United States, would be as 
 honorable to the national character as con- 
 formable to the dictates of sound policy. 
 
 Fifth Annual Address to Congress. 
 December, 1793. 
 The United States ought not to indulge a 
 persuasion that, contrary to the order of 
 human events, they will forever keep at a 
 distance those painful appeals to arms, with 
 
32 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 which the history of every other nation 
 abounds. There is a rank due to the United 
 States among nations which will be withheld, 
 if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of 
 weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we 
 must be able to repel it ; if we desire to secure 
 peace, one of the most powerful instruments 
 of our rising prosperity, it must be known that 
 we are at all times ready for war. 
 
 No pecuniary consideration is more urgent 
 than the regular redemption and discharge 
 of the public debt. On none can delay be 
 more injurious, or an economy of time more 
 valuable. 
 
 Sixth Annual Address to Congress. 
 Nov. 19, 1794. 
 While there is a cause to lament, that 
 occurrences of this nature [the Whiskey Re- 
 bellion in Pennsylvania] should have dis- 
 graced the name, or interrupted the tran- 
 quillity of any part of our community, or 
 should have diverted to a new application 
 any portion of the public resources, there 
 
George Washington. 33 
 
 are not wanting real and substantial conso- 
 lations for the misfortune. It has demon- 
 strated that our prosperity rests on solid 
 foundations ; by furnishing an additional 
 proof that my fellow-citizens understand the 
 true principles of government and liberty ; 
 that they feel their inseparable union ; that, 
 notwithstanding all the devices, which have 
 been used to sway them from their interest 
 and duty, they are now as ready to maintain 
 the authority of the laws against licentious 
 invasions as they were to defend their rights 
 against usurpation. 
 
 It has been a spectacle displaying to the 
 highest advantage the value of republican 
 government, to behold the most and the 
 least wealthy of our citizens standing in the 
 same ranks as private soldiers ; pre-eminently 
 distinguished by being the army of the con- 
 stitution ; undeterred by a march of three 
 hundred miles over rugged mountains, by 
 the approach of an unclement season, or by 
 any other discouragement. 
 
34 Patriotic Nitggets. 
 
 Seventh Annual Address to Con- 
 gress. December, 1795. 
 
 With burthens so light as scarcely to be 
 perceived, with resources fully adequate to 
 our present exigencies, with governments 
 founded on thegeniune principles of rational 
 liberty, and with mild and wholesome laws, 
 is it too much to say that our country exhib- 
 its a spectacle of national happiness never 
 surpassed, if ever before equalled ? 
 
 To inforce upon the Indians the obser- 
 vance of justice, it is indispensable that there 
 shall be competent means of rendering 
 justice to them. 
 
 Farewell Address to the People of 
 THE United States. [Withdrawing 
 himself as a Candidate for the Presi- 
 dency.] 
 
 September 19, 1796. 
 
 Satisfied, that, if any circumstances have 
 
 given peculiar value to my services, they were 
 
 temporary, I have the consolation to believe, 
 
 that, while choice and prudence invite me to 
 
George Was/n'ngton. 
 
 quit the political scene, patriotism does not 
 forbid it. 
 
 It is of infinite moment, that you should 
 properly estimate the immense value of 
 your national Union to your collective and 
 individual happiness ; — that you should cher- 
 ish a cordial, habitual, and immovable at- 
 tachment to it : accustoming yourselves to 
 think and speak of it as of the Palladium of 
 your political safety and prosperity ; watch- 
 ing for its preservation with jealous anxiety ; 
 discountenancing whatever may suggest 
 even a suspicion that it can in any event be 
 abandoned ; and indignantly frowning upon 
 the first dawning of every attempt to alienate 
 any portion of our Country from the rest, 
 or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now 
 link together the various parts. 
 
 The name of AMERICAN, which be- 
 longs to you, in your national capacity, 
 must always exalt just pride of Patriotism, 
 more than any appellation derived from local 
 discriminations. 
 
36 Piifriof/r A%-i,'-^As'. 
 
 While, then, every part of our couiury 
 thus feels an immediate and peculiar inter- 
 est in Union, all the parts combined in the 
 united mass of means and efforts cannot 
 fail to find greater strength, greater resource, 
 proportionably greater security from external 
 danger, a less frequent interruption of their 
 peace by foreign nations ; . . . Hence, like- 
 wise, they will avoid the necessity of those 
 overgrown military establishments, which, 
 under any form of government, are inaus- 
 picious to liberty, and which are to be 
 regarded as particularly hostile to republican 
 Libert3\ 
 
 Is there a doubt, whether a common 
 government can embrace so large a sphere ? 
 — Let experience solve it. . . . We are 
 authorized to hope, that a proper organiza- 
 tion of the whole, with the auxiliary agency 
 of governments for the respective subdivi- 
 sions, will afford a happy issue to the experi- 
 ment. 
 
 This Government, the offspring of our 
 
Grcvyc^ ]]\is/i/figfon. 37 
 
 own choice uninfluenced and unawed, 
 adopted upon full investigation and mature 
 deliberation, completely free in its principles, 
 in the distribution of its powers, uniting 
 security with energy, and containing within 
 itself a provision for its own amendment, 
 has a just claim to your confidence and 
 your support. 
 
 The basis of our political systems is the 
 right of the people to make and to alter 
 their Constitutions of Government. — But 
 the Constitution which at any time exists, 
 till changed by an explicit and authentic act 
 of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory 
 upon all. — The very idea of the power and 
 right of the people to establish Government 
 presupposes the duty of every individual to 
 obey the established Government. 
 
 All obstructions to the execution of the 
 Laws, all combinations and associations, 
 under whatever plausible character, with the 
 real design to direct, control, counteract, 
 or awe the regular deliberation and action 
 of the constituted authorities, are destructive 
 
3S Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 of this fundamental principle, and of fatal 
 tendency. 
 
 I have already intimated to you the danger 
 of Parties in the State, with particular 
 reference to the founding of them on Geo- 
 graphical discriminations. — Let me now take 
 a more comprehensive view, and warn you 
 in the most solemn manner against the 
 baneful effects of the Spirit of Party, gener- 
 ally. 
 
 This Spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable 
 from our nature, having its root in the 
 strongest passions of the human mind. — It 
 exists under different shapes in all Govern- 
 ments, more or less stifled, controlled, or 
 repressed : but, in those of the popular form, 
 it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is 
 truly their worst enemy. ... It ser\'es 
 always to distract the Public Councils, and 
 enfeeble the Public Admistration. 
 
 There is an opinion, that parties in free 
 countries are useful checks upon the Admin- 
 istration of the Government, and serve to 
 keep alive the spirit of Liberty. —This 
 
George Washington. 39 
 
 witliin certain limits is probably true ; . . . 
 From their natural tendency, it is certain 
 there will always be enough of that spirit for 
 every salutary purpose. — and there beinj; 
 constant danger of excess, the effort ought 
 to be. by force of public opinion, to mitigate 
 and assuage it. — A fire not to be quenched ; 
 it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent 
 us bursting into tlamc, lest, instead of warm- 
 ing, it should consume. 
 
 It is important, likewise, that the habits of 
 thinking in a free country should inspire 
 caution m those intrusted with its adminis- 
 tration, to cont'ine themselves within their 
 respective constitutional spheres, avoiding 
 in the exercise of the powers of one depart- 
 ment to encroach upon another. . , . If. in 
 the opinion of the People, the distribution of 
 the modification of the Constitutional powers 
 be in any particular wrong, let it be cor- 
 rected by an amendment, in the way which 
 the Constitution designates. — But let there 
 be no change by usin'pation ; for though 
 this, in one instance, mav be the instrument 
 
40 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 of good, it is the customary weapon by wiiicli 
 free governments are destroyed. 
 
 Promote, then, as an object of primary im- 
 portance, institutions for the general diffusion 
 of knowledge. In proportion as the structure 
 of a government gives force to public opinion, 
 it is essential that public opinion should be 
 enlightened. 
 
 Observe good faith and justice towards all 
 Nations ; cultivate peace and harmony with 
 all. 
 
 Nothing is more essential, than that per- 
 manent, inveterate antipathies against par- 
 ticular nations, and passionate attachment 
 for others, should be excluded ; and that in 
 place of them just and amicable feelings 
 towards all should be cultivated. The na- 
 tion, which indulges towards another habitual 
 hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some 
 degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity 
 or its affection, either of which is sufficient 
 to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. 
 
George Washington. 41 
 
 The great rule of conduct for us, in regard 
 to foreign nations, is, in extending our com- 
 mercial relations, to have with them as little 
 I political connection as possible. . 
 
 I Europe has a set of primary interests, 
 
 ' which to us have none, or a very remote re- 
 
 I lation. — Hence she must be engaged in fre- 
 
 I quent controversies, the causes of which are 
 
 1 essentially foreign to our concerns. . . . 
 
 I Our detached and distant situation invites and 
 
 I enables us to pursue a different course. . . . 
 
 I Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a 
 
 I situation ? — Why quit our own to stand upon 
 
 , foreign ground ? — Why, by interweaving our 
 
 j destiny with that of any part of Europe, en- 
 
 I tangle our peace and prosperity in the toils 
 
 ! of European ambition, rivalship, interest, 
 
 ' humor, or caprice } 
 
 j 'Tis our true policy to steer clear of perma- 
 
 I nent alliances, with any portion of the foreign 
 
 world. . . . Taking care always to keep 
 
 ourselves, by suitable establishments on a 
 
 respectably defensive posture, we may safely 
 
Patriotic Nicggcts. 
 
 trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary 
 emergencies. 
 
 Harmony, and a liberal intercourse with 
 all nations, are recommended by policy, hu- 
 manity, and interest. But even our com- 
 mercial policy should hold an equal and 
 impartial hand ; neither seeking nor granting 
 exclusive favors or preferences ; . . . . con- 
 stantly keeping in view, that 'tis folly 
 in one nation to look for disinterested favors 
 from another,— that it must pay with a por- 
 tion of its independence for whatever it may 
 accept under that character. 
 
 In offering to you, my Countrymen, these 
 counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I 
 dare not hope they will make the strong and 
 lasting impression I could wish ; .... But, 
 if I may even flatter myself, that they may 
 be productive of some partial benefit ; some 
 occasional good ; that they may now and 
 then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, 
 to warn against the mischiefs of foreign in- 
 trigue, to guard agamst the impostures of 
 pretended patriotism, this hope will be a full 
 
George Washington. 43 
 
 recompense for the solicitude for your wel- 
 fare, by which they have been dictated. 
 
 Eighth Annual Address to Congress. 
 December 7, 1796. 
 To an active external commerce, the pro- 
 tection of a naval force is indispensable, 
 ^'^his is manifest with regard to wars, in 
 which a state itself is a party. But besides 
 this, it is in our own experience, that the most 
 sincere neutrality is not a sufficient guard 
 against the depredations of nations at war. 
 To secure respect to a neutral flag requires 
 a naval force, organized and ready to vin- 
 dicate it from insult or aggression. This 
 may even prevent the necessity of going to 
 war, by discouraging belligerent powers from 
 committing such violations of the rights of 
 the neutral party, as may, first or last, leave 
 no other option. 
 
 It will not be doubted, that, with reference 
 either to individual or national welfare, agri- 
 culture is of primary importance. In pro- 
 portion as nations advance in population and 
 
44 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 other circumstances of maturity, this truth 
 becomes more apparent. 
 
 A primary object of such a national insti- 
 tution [University] should be the education 
 of our youth in the science of government. 
 In a republic, what species of knowledge 
 can be equally important ? and what duty 
 more pressing on its legislature than to pat- 
 ronize a plan for communicating it to those 
 who are to be the future guardians of the 
 liberties of the country ? 
 
 The institution of a military academy is 
 also recommended by cogent reasons. How- 
 ever pacific the general policy of a nation 
 be, it ought never to be without an ade- 
 quate stock of military knowledge for emer- 
 gencies. The first would impair the energy 
 of its character, and both would hazard its 
 safety or expose it to greater evils when war 
 could not be avoided — besides, that war 
 might often not depend upon its own 
 choice. 
 
 In proportion as the observance of pacific 
 
George Was/ii'ngton. 45 
 
 maxims might exempt a nation from the ne- 
 cessity of practising the rules of miUtary art, 
 ought to be its care in preserving and trans- 
 mitting, by proper establishments, the know- 
 ledge of that art. Whatever argument may 
 be drawn from particular examples, super- 
 ficially viewed, a thorough examination of the 
 subject will evince that the art of war is at 
 once comprehensive and complicated, that it 
 demands much previous study ; and that the 
 possession of it, in its most improved and 
 perfect state, is always of great moment to 
 the security of a nation. 
 
 The compensation to the officers of the 
 United States, in various instances, and in 
 none more than in respect to the most im- 
 portant stations, appear to call for legislative 
 revision. The consequences of a defective 
 provision are of serious import to the govern- 
 ment. If private wealth is to supply the 
 defect of public retribution, it will greatly 
 contract the sphere within which the selec- 
 tion of character for office is to be made, and 
 will proportionally diminish the probability 
 
46 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 of a choice of men able as well as upright. 
 Besides that, it would be repugnant to the 
 vital principles of our government, virtually 
 to exclude from public trusts talents and 
 virtue unless accompanied by wealth. 
 
 It will afford me a heartfelt satisfaction to 
 concur in such further measures as will as- 
 certain to our country the prospect of a 
 speedy extinguishment of the [public] debt. 
 Posterity may have cause to regret if from 
 any motive intervals of tranquillity arc left 
 unimproved for accelerating this valuable 
 end. 
 
 The situation in which I now stand, for 
 the last time, in the midst of the represent- 
 atives of the people of the United States, 
 naturally recalls the period when the admin- 
 istration of the present form of government 
 commenced ; and I cannot omit the occasion 
 to congratulate you and my country on the 
 success of the experiment, nor to repeat my 
 fervent supplications to 'the Supreme Ruler 
 of the Universe and Sovereign Arbiter of 
 Nations that his providential care may still 
 
George Washington. 47 
 
 be extended to the United States; that the 
 virtue and happiness of the people may be 
 preserved ; and that the government, which 
 they have instituted for the protection of 
 their liberties, may be perpetual. 
 
 Miscellanea. 
 
 Of all dispositions and habits which lead to 
 political prosperity, religion and morality are 
 indispensable supports. In vain would that 
 man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who 
 should labor to subvert these great pillars 
 of human-happiness, these firmest props of 
 the duties of men and citizens. The mere 
 politician, equally with the pious man, ought 
 to respect and cherish them. 
 
 Every nation has a right to establish that 
 form of government under which it con- 
 ceives it may live most happy ; provided it 
 infracts no right, or is not dangerous to 
 others ; and no governments ought to inter- 
 fere with the internal concerns of another, 
 except for the security of what is due to 
 themselves. 
 
48 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 To the efficacy and permanency of the 
 Union, a Government for the whole is indis- 
 pensable. No alliaftces, however strict, 
 between the parts, can be an adequate 
 substitute ; they must inevitably experience 
 the infractions and interruptions, which all 
 alliances in all times have experienced. 
 
 The very idea of the power and the right 
 of the people to establish government, pre- 
 supposes the duty of every individual to 
 obey the established government. 
 
 In every nomination to office, I have 
 endeavored, as far as my own knowledge 
 extended, or information could be obtained, 
 to make fitness of character my primary 
 object. 
 
 America may think herself happy in hav- 
 ing the Atlantic for a barrier. 
 
 Let us, as a nation, be just ; let us fulfill 
 the public contracts, which Congress had 
 undoubtedly a right to make, with the same 
 good faith we suppose ourselves bound to 
 perform our private engagements. 
 
George Washington. 49 
 
 Commerce and industry are the best mines 
 of the nation. 
 
 A difference of opinion on political points 
 is not to be imputed to freemen as a fault. 
 It is to be presumed, that they are all actu- 
 ated by an equally laudable and sacred 
 regard for the liberties of their country. 
 
 Arms should be the last resort. 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
 
 " All honor to Jefferson ; to the man who, in the con- 
 crete pressure of a struggle for national independence 
 by a single people, had the coolness, forecast and ca- 
 pacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary docu- 
 ment 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 oppres- 
 sion." — Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Autobiography. 
 
 In 1769, I became a member of the legis- 
 lature [of Virginia] by the choice of the 
 county in which I live, and so continued 
 until it was closed by the Revolution. I 
 made one effort in that body for the permis- 
 sion of the emancipation of slaves, which 
 was rejected ; and, indeed, during the regal 
 government, nothing liberal could expect 
 success. Our minds were circumscribed 
 within narrow limits, by an habitual belief 
 that it was our duty to be subordinate to the 
 mother country in all matters of govern- 
 
52 Patriotic N^uggets. 
 
 ment, to direct all our labors in subservience 
 to her interests, and even to observe a 
 
 bigoted intolerance tor all religions but hers. 
 
 The difficulties with our representatives 
 were of habit and despair, not of retlection 
 and conviction. Experience soon proved 
 that they could bring their minds to rights, 
 on the tirst summons of their attention. 
 
 Ai'Tor.ioGRAruv. 
 
 Being elected one for my own county 
 [to the preliminary Convention, 1774], I pre- 
 pared a draught of instructions to be given to 
 the delegates whom we should send to the 
 [First Continental] Congress, and which I 
 meant to propose at our meeting. In this I 
 took the ground which, from the beginning 
 1 had thought the only one orthodox or ten- 
 able, which was that the relation between 
 Great Britain and these Colonies was exactly 
 the same as that of England and Scotland. 
 after the accession of James, and until the 
 Union, and the same as her present relations 
 with Hanover, having the same Executive 
 
T/ui?/ias /tJJ\rson. 5 3 
 
 chief but no other necessary poHtical connec- 
 tion ; and that our emigration from England 
 to this country gave her no more rights 
 I over us, than the emigration of the Danes 
 and Saxons gave to the present autliorities 
 of the mother country, over England. . . .ex- 
 ' patriation being a natural right, and acted 
 ' on as such, by all nations, in all ages. 
 
 To John Randolph. 
 
 Monticello, August 25, 1775. 
 j I . . . . would rather be in dependence on 
 ' Great Britain, properly limiicd, than on any 
 , other nation on earth, or than on no nation. 
 ' But I am one of those, too, who, rather than 
 ' submit to the rights of legislation for us, 
 I assumed by the British Parliament, and which 
 I late experience has shown they will so cruelly 
 > exercise, would lend my hand to sink the 
 I whole Island in the ocean. 
 I 
 
 I To John Randolph. 
 
 I November, 1775. 
 
 \ Believe me, dear sir, there is not in the 
 j British empire a man who more cordially 
 
-> 
 
 54 Patriotic Xuggets. 
 
 loves a union with Great Britain than I do. 
 But by the God that made me, I will cease 
 to exist before I yield to a connection on such 
 terms as the British Parliament propose ; and 
 in this, I think I speak the sentiments of 
 America. We want neither inducement nor 
 power, to declare and assert a separation. 
 It is will, alone, which is wanting, and that 
 is growing- apace under the fostering hand 
 of our king. 
 
 Declaration of Independence [The 
 Slave Trade — One of the Charges 
 against the King, Which Was Omitted 
 by Congress]. 1776. 
 He has waged cruel war against human 
 nature itself, violating its most sacred rights 
 of life and liberty in the persons of a dis- 
 tant people who never offended him, capti- 
 vating and carrying them into slavery in 
 another hemisphere, or to incur miserable 
 death in their transportation thither. This 
 piratical welfare, the opprobrium of infidel 
 powers, is the warfare of the Christian King 
 of Great Britain. Determined to keep open 
 
Thomas Jefferson. 5 5 
 
 a market where men should be bought and 
 sold, he has prostituted his negative for sup- 
 : pressing every legislative attempt to pro- 
 hibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. 
 
 Declaration of Independence. 
 4 July, 1776. 
 We hold these truths to be self-evident ; 
 , that all men are created equal ; that they are 
 I endowed by their creator with certain ina- 
 I lienable rights ; that among these are life, 
 I liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that to 
 secure these rights, governments are insti- 
 tuted among men. deriving their just powers 
 ' from the consent of the governed ; that, 
 whenever any form of government becomes 
 I destructive of these ends, it is the right of 
 ' the people to alter or abolish it, and to insti- 
 ' tute a new government, laying its foundations 
 I on such principles, and organizing its powers 
 ' in such form, as to them shall seem most 
 I likely to effect their safety and happiness. . . . 
 
 i Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while 
 I evils are sufferable, than to right themselves 
 ' by abolishing the forms to which they are 
 
56 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 accustomed. But when a long train of 
 abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably 
 the same object, evinces a design to reduce 
 them under absolute despotism, it is their 
 right, it is their duty, to throw off such gov- 
 ernment, and to provide new guards for 
 their security. 
 
 We, therefore, the representatives of the 
 United States of America, in general Con- 
 gress assembled, appealing to the supreme 
 judge of the world for the rectitude of our 
 intentions, do, in the name, and by the 
 authority of the good people of these Colo- 
 nies, solemnly publish and declare that these 
 United Colonies are, and of right ought to be 
 free and independent States ; . . . . And for 
 the support of this declaration, with a firm 
 reliance on the protection of divine provi- 
 dence, we mutually pledge to each other our 
 lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. 
 
 Autobiography. 
 If the present Congress [1783] errs in too 
 much talking how can it be otherwise, in a 
 body to which the people send one hun- 
 
Thomas Jefferson . 5 7 
 
 dred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to 
 question every thing, yield nothing, and 
 talk by the hour ? That one hundred and 
 I fifty lawyers should do business together, 
 ought not to be expected. 
 
 I Ordinance of 1784. For the Government 
 
 of New Territories, 
 t Resolved, That the territory ceded by in- 
 dividual States to the United States, whenso- 
 ( ever the same shall have been purchased of 
 ( the Indian inhabitants and offered for sale 
 by the United States, shall be formed into 
 I ^additional States. . . . provided, That 
 . both the temporary and permanent govern- 
 I ments be established on these principles as 
 \ their basis : 
 
 ' I. That they shall forever remain a part 
 of the United States of America. . . . 
 
 5. That after the year 1800 of the Christian 
 era there shall be neither slavery nor involun- 
 tary servitude in any of the said States, other- 
 wise than in punishment of crimes, whereof 
 the party shall have been duly convicted to 
 have been personally guilty, [This Anti-sla- 
 
f 
 
 58 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 very provision Icilled the bill at that time. 
 It was included in the Permanent " Ordi- 
 nance of 1787," with the addition, however, 
 of a Fugitive Slave provision.] 
 
 To J. Banister. 
 
 Paris, 1785. 
 It appears to me, then, that an American, 
 coming to Europe for education, loses in 
 his knowledge, in his morals, in his health, 
 in his habits, and in his happiness. 
 
 To A Friend. 
 
 Paris, January 25, 1786. 
 Our present federal limits are not too 
 large for good government, nor will the in- 
 crease of votes in the Congress produce any 
 ill effect. On the contrary, it will drown the 
 little divisions at present existing there. 
 Our Confederacy must be viewed as the 
 nest, from which all America, North and 
 South, is to be peopled. 
 
 To James Monroe. 
 
 August II, 1786. 
 A naval force can never endanger our 
 
T/iomas Jefferson. 59 
 
 liberties, nor occasion bloodshed ; a land 
 force would do both. 
 
 To Edward Carrington. 
 
 Paris, January i6, 1787. 
 The basis of our governments being the 
 opinion of the people, the very first object 
 should be to keep that right ; and were it 
 left to me to decide whether we should have 
 a government without newspapers or news- 
 papers without a government, 1 should not 
 hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But 
 I should mean that every man should re- 
 ' ceive those papers and be capable of read- 
 I ing them. 
 
 To George Wythe. 
 
 :. Paris, August 13, 1787. 
 
 i If all the sovereigns of Europe were to set 
 
 themselves to work to emancipate the minds 
 
 of their subjects from their present ignorance 
 
 and prejudices, and that as zealously as 
 
 they now endeavor the contrary, a thousand 
 
 1 years would not place them on that high 
 
 ground, on which our common people are 
 
6o Patriotic Xuggets. 
 
 now setting out. Ours could not have been 
 so fairly put into the hands of their own 
 common sense, had they not been separated 
 from their parent stock and kept from con- 
 tamination, either from them, or the other 
 people of the old world, by the intervention 
 of so wide an ocean. To know the worth 
 of this, one must see the want of it here. /'I 
 think by far the most important bill in our 
 whole code is that for the diffusion of 
 knowledge among the people. No other 
 sure foundation can be devised, for the 
 preservation of freedom and happiness. 
 
 If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or 
 priests are good conservators of the public 
 happiness, send him here. It is the best 
 school in the universe to cure him of that 
 folly. He will see here with his own eyes, 
 that these descriptions of men are an aban- 
 doned confederacy against the happiness of 
 the mass of the people. Preach, my dear 
 sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and 
 improve the law for educating the common 
 people. 
 
Th omas Jefferson . 6 r 
 
 '\:o His Daughter. 
 
 March, 17S7. 
 It is part of the American character to 
 consider nothing as desperate, to surmount 
 every difficulty by resolution and contrivance. 
 Remote from all other aid, we are obliged to 
 invent and to execute ; to find means within 
 ourselves, and not to lean on others, y 
 
 To General Washingion. 
 
 Paris, 1788. 
 I was much an enemy to monarchy before 
 I came to Europe. 1 am ten thousand times 
 more so, since I have seen what they are. 
 There is scarcely an evil known in these 
 countries, which may not be traced to their 
 king as its source, nor a good which is not 
 derived from the small fibers of republican- 
 ism existing among them. I can further 
 say with safety there is not a crowned head 
 in Europe, whose talents or merit would 
 entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the 
 people of any parish in America. 
 
62 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 To David Humphreys. 
 
 March 18, 1789. 
 Whenever our affairs go obviously wrong 
 the good sense of the people will interpose, 
 and set them to rights. The example of 
 changing a constitution, by assembling the 
 wise men of the State, instead of assembling 
 armies, will be worth as much to the world 
 as the former examples we had given them. 
 
 To James Madison. 
 
 Paris, August 28, 1789. 
 I know of but one code of morality for 
 men, whether acting singly or collectively. 
 He who says I will be a rogue when I act in 
 company with a hundred others but an 
 honest man when I act alone, will be be- 
 lieved in the former assertion, but not in the 
 latter. 
 
 To Mr. Madison. 
 
 Paris, September 6, 1789. 
 No society can make a perpetual constitu- 
 tion, or even perpetual law. The earth be- 
 longs always to the living generation. They 
 
Thomas Jefferson. 63 
 
 may manage it then, and what proceeds 
 from it, as they please, during their usufruct. 
 
 To THE Mayor of Alexandria, Va. 
 March 11, 1790. 
 It is indeed an animating thought that, 
 / while we are securing the rights of ourselves 
 and our posterity, we are pointing out the 
 way to struggling nations who wish, like us, 
 to emerge from their tyrannies also. 
 Heaven help their struggle, and lead them, 
 ; as it has done us, triumphantly through 
 I them. 
 
 I To A Friend. 
 
 December 23, 1791. 
 I I would rather be exposed to the inconve- 
 I niences attending too much liberty, than 
 ' those attending too small a degree of it. 
 
 Report on Convention with Spain. 
 March 22, 1792. 
 Most codes extend their definitions of 
 treason to acts not really against one's coun- 
 try. They do not distinguish between acts 
 against the Government and acts against the 
 
64 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 Oppressio7is of the Government. The latter 
 are virtues : yet have furnished more victims 
 to the Executioner than the former. Be- 
 cause real Treasons are rare ; Oppressions 
 frequent. The unsuccessful Struggles against 
 Tyranny have been the chief Martyrs of 
 Treason laws in all countries. . . . We 
 should not v^ish, then, to give up to the 
 Executioner, the Patriot who fails and fllees 
 to us. Treasons, then, taking the simulated 
 with the real, are sufficiently punished by 
 Exile. 
 
 To Elbridge Gerry. 
 
 January 26, 1799. 
 
 I am for a government rigorously frugal 
 and simple, applying all the possible savings 
 of the public revenue to the discharge of the 
 national debt ; and not for a multiplication of 
 officers and salaries merely to make parti- 
 sans, and for increasing, by every device, the 
 public debt, on the principle of its being a 
 public blessing. 
 
 I am for free commerce with all nations ; 
 
Thomas Jefferson . 6 5 
 
 political connection with none ; and little or 
 no diplomatic establishment. 
 
 I am for freedom of religion, and against 
 all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascend- 
 ancy of one sect over another ; for freedom 
 of the press, and against all violations of the 
 Constitution to silence by force and not by 
 reason the complaints or criticisms, just or 
 unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of 
 their agents. 
 
 And I am for encouraging the progress 
 of science in all its branches ; and not for 
 raising a hue and cry against the sacred name 
 of philosophy ; for awing the human mind by 
 stories of rawhead and bloody-bones to a 
 
 L 
 
 distrust of its own vision, and to repose im- I 
 plicitly on that of others ; to go backwards \ 
 ■instead of forwards to look for improve- 
 ment ; to believe that government, religion, 
 morality, and every other science were in the 
 highest perfection in ages of the darkest 
 ignorance ; and that nothing can ever be 
 devised more perfect than what was estab- 
 lished by our forefathers. 
 
C6 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 First Inaugural Address. 
 
 March 4, 1801. 
 All, too, will bear in mind this sacred 
 principle, that though the will of the majority 
 is to in all cases to prevail, that will, to be 
 rightful, must be reasonable ; that the min- 
 ority possess their equal rights, which equal 
 laws must protect, and to violate would be 
 oppression. 
 
 Every difference of opinion is not a differ- 
 ence of principle. We have called, by dif- 
 ferent names, brethren of the same principles. 
 We are all republicans, we are all federalists. 
 If there be any among us who would wish to 
 dissolve this Union, or to change its republi- 
 can form, let them stand undisturbed, as 
 monuments of the safety with which error 
 of opinion may be tolerated where reason is 
 left free to combat it. < 
 
 I know, indeed, that some honest men 
 have feared that a republican government 
 cannot be strong ;....! believe this, on 
 the contrary the strongest government on 
 earth. I believe it is the only one where 
 
Thomas Jefferson. 67 
 
 every man, at the call of the law, would 
 fly to the standard of the law ; would 
 meet invasions of public order as his own 
 personal concern. 
 
 Sometimes it is said that Man cannot be 
 trusted v^ith the government of himself. 
 Can he, then, be trusted with the govern- 
 ment of others ? Or have we found angels 
 in the forms of kings to govern him ? Let 
 
 I History answer this question. 
 
 I 
 
 I A wise and frugal government, which 
 shall restrain men from injuring one another, 
 
 i shall leave them otherwise free to regulate 
 their own pursuits of industry and improve- 
 ment, and shall not take from the mouth of 
 
 I labor the bread it has earned ; this is the 
 
 ' sum of good government, and this is neces- 
 sary to close the circle of our felicities. 
 
 Equal and exact justice to all men, of 
 whatever state and persuasion, religious or 
 ', political : Peace, commerce, and honest 
 ] friendship with all nations, entangling alli- 
 ances with none : The support of the State 
 
68 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 governments in all their rights, as the most 
 competent administration for our domestic 
 concerns and the surest bulwarks against 
 anti-republican tendencies: The preserva- 
 tion o^ the General Government in its v^'hole 
 constitutional vigor, as the sheet-anchor of 
 our peace at home and safety abroad : A 
 jealous care of the right of election by the 
 people, a mild and safe corrective of abuses, 
 which are lopped by the sword of revolution 
 where peaceable remedies are unprovided : 
 Absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the 
 majority, the vital principle of republics, from 
 which there is no appeal but to force, the 
 vital principle and immediate parent of des- 
 potism : A well-disciplined militia, our best 
 reliance in peace and for the first moments 
 of war, till regulars may relieve them : The 
 supremacy of the civil over the military au- 
 thority : ' Economy in public expense, that 
 labor may be lightly burthened : i The honest 
 payment of our debts and sacred preservation 
 of the public faith : Encouragement of 
 agriculture, and of commerce as its hand- 
 maid : The diffusion of information, and ar- 
 
Thomas Jefferson. 69 
 
 raignment of all abuses at the bar of the 
 public reason : Freedom of religion, freedom 
 of the press, and freedom of person under the 
 protection of the Habeas Corpus : and Trial 
 by juries impartially selected. 
 
 These principles form the bright constella- 
 tion which has gone before us, and guided 
 our steps, through an age of Revolution and 
 Reformation. . . . 
 
 They should be of the creed of our political 
 
 faith, the text of civil instruction, the touch- 
 
 , stone by which to try the services of those 
 
 we trust ; and should we wander from them 
 
 I in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten 
 
 I to retrace our steps and regain the road 
 
 ( which alone leads to peace, liberty and 
 
 safety. 
 
 i 
 
 { To George Jefferson. 
 
 March 27, 1801. 
 
 The public will never be made to believe 
 
 that the appointment of a relative is made 
 
 on the ground of merit alone, uninfluenced 
 
 by family views ; nor can they ever see, with 
 
 approbation, offices, the disposal of which 
 
70 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 they intrusted to their Presidents for public 
 purposes, divided out as family property. . . . 
 It is true that this places the relations of a 
 President in a worse situation than if he were 
 a stranger, but the public good, which can 
 not be affected if its confidence be lost, re- 
 quires this sacrifice. Perhaps, too, it is 
 compensated by sharing in the public esteem. 
 
 First Annual Message to Congress. 
 December i, 1801. 
 One of the Tripolitan cruisers having fallen 
 in with, and engaged the small schooner 
 Enterprise, commanded by Lieutenant 
 Sterret, which had gone as a tender to our 
 larger vessels, was captured, after a heavy 
 slaughter of her men, without the loss of a 
 single one on our part. The bravery ex- 
 hibited by our citizens on that element will, 
 I trust, be a testimony to the world that it 
 is not the want of that virtue which make 
 us seek their peace, but a conscientious de- 
 sire to direct the energies of our nation to 
 the multiplication of the human race, and 
 not to its destruction. 
 
Thomas Jefferso7i. 7 1 
 
 Sound principles will not justify our tax- 
 ing the industry of our fellow-citizens to ac- 
 cumulate treasure for wars to happen we 
 1 know not when, and which might not perhaps 
 happen but from the temptations offered by 
 that treasure. 
 
 Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, 
 \ and navigation, the four pillars of our pros- 
 ^ perity, are the most thriving when left most 
 I free to individual enterprise. 
 
 I Second Message to Congress. 
 
 I December 12, 1802. 
 
 I 
 
 I When effects so salutary result from the 
 I plans you have already sanctioned, when 
 merely by avoiding false objects of expense 
 jwe are able, without a direct tax, without 
 ; internal taxes, and without borrowing, to 
 make large and effectual payments toward 
 •e discharge of our public debt and the 
 emancipation of our posterity from that moral 
 canker, it is an encouragement, fellow-citi- 
 zens, of the highest order, to proceed as we 
 have begun, in substituting economy for tax- 
 
72 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 ation, and in pursuing what is useful for a 
 nation placed as we are, rather than what is 
 practised by others under different circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Third Message to Congress. 
 
 October 17, 1803. 
 We should be most unwise, indeed, were 
 we to cast away the singular blessings of 
 the position in which nature has placed us, 
 the opportunity she has endowed us with of 
 pursuing, at a distance from foreign conten- 
 tions, the paths of industry, peace, and happi- 
 ness ; of cultivating general friendship, and 
 of bringing collisions of interest to the um- 
 pirage of reason rather than of force. 
 
 Fourth Message to Congress. 
 November 8, 1804. 
 To those who expect us to calculate 
 whether a compliance with unjust demands 
 will not cost us less than a war, we must 
 leave as a question of calculation for them, 
 also, whether to retire from unjust demands 
 will not cost them less than a war. We can 
 
Thomas JeffersoJi . 7 3 
 
 do to each other very sensible injuries by war, 
 but the mutual advantages of peace make 
 that the best interest of both. 
 
 Second Inaugural Address. 
 March 4, 1805. 
 
 With nations, as with individuals, our in- 
 terests soundly calculated, will ever be found 
 inseparable from our moral duties : and his- 
 tory bears witness to the fact, that a just na- 
 tion is trusted on its word, when resource is 
 had to armaments and wars to bridle others. 
 
 Sixth Annual Message to Congress. 
 December i, 1806. 
 
 Were armies to be raised whenever a speck 
 of war is visible in our horizon, we never 
 should have been without them. Our re- 
 sources would have been exhausted on dan- 
 gers which have never happened, instead of 
 being reserved for what is really to take 
 place. 
 
74 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 To Samuel Kerchival. 
 
 July 12, 1816. 
 
 Some men look at constitutions with 
 sanctimonious reverence, and deem them 
 like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to 
 be touched. They ascribe to the men of 
 the preceding age a wisdom more than hu- 
 man, and suppose what they did to be be- 
 yond amendment, I knew that age well ; 
 I belonged to it, and labored with it. It de- 
 served v^'ell of its country. It was very like 
 the present, but without the experience of the 
 present ; and forty years of experience in 
 government is worth a century of book-read- 
 ing ; and this they would say themselves, 
 were they to rise from the dead. I am cer- 
 tainly not an advocate for frequent and un- 
 tried changes in laws and constitutions. I 
 think moderate imperfections had better be 
 borne with; because, when once known, 'we 
 accommodate ourselves to them, and find 
 practical means of correcting their ill effects. 
 But I know also, that laws and institutions 
 must go hand in hand with the progress of 
 the human mind. 
 
Thou I a s Jefferson . 7 5 
 
 To A Friend. 
 I am not a Federalist, because I never 
 submitted the whole system of my opinions 
 to the creed of any party of men whatever, 
 in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in 
 any thing else where I was capable of think- 
 ing for myself. Such an addiction is the last 
 degradation of a free and moral agent. If I 
 could not go to Heaven but with a party, 
 I would not go there at all. 
 
 Autobiography. 
 
 Written in 1821. 
 
 The bill [in the Virginia Assembly 1779] 
 on the subject of slavery was a mere digest 
 of the existing laws. . . . the principles of 
 the Amendment, however, were agreed on, 
 that is to say, the freedom of all born after a 
 certain day, and deportation after a certain 
 age, but it was found that the public mind 
 would not yet bear the proposition, nor will 
 it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is 
 not far distant when it must bear it, or 
 worse will follow. Nothing is more cer- 
 
']() Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 tainly written in the book of fate than that 
 these people are to be free. 
 
 To President Monroe. 
 
 October 24, 1823. 
 
 Our first and fundamental maxim should 
 be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils 
 of Europe. 
 
 Our second, never to suffer Europe to 
 intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs. 
 
 America, North and South, has a set of 
 interests distinct from those of Europe, and 
 peculiarly her own. She should therefore 
 have a system of her own, separate and 
 apart from that of Europe. 
 
 To James Heaton. Concerning the Abo- 
 lition of Slavery. May 26, 1826. 
 The revolution in public opinion which 
 this case requires, is not to be expected in a 
 day, or perhaps in an age ; but time, which 
 outlives all things, will outlive this evil also. 
 My sentiments have been forty years before 
 the public, and had I repeated them forty 
 times, they would only become the more 
 
Tho7itas Jefferson. JJ 
 
 stale and threadbare. Although I shall not 
 live to see them consummated, they will not 
 die with me ; but, living- or dying, they will 
 ever be in my most fervent prayers. 
 
 To Mr, Weightman. 
 
 Monticello, June 24, 1826. 
 I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, 
 have met and exchanged there congratula- 
 tions personally with the small band, the 
 remnant of that host of worthies, who joined 
 with us on that day [July 4, 1776], in the 
 bold and doubtful election we were to make 
 for our country, between submission or the 
 sword ; and to have enjoyed with them the 
 consolatory fact that our fellow citizens, 
 after half a century of experience and pros- 
 perity, continue to approve the choice we 
 made. 
 
 All eyes are opened or opening, to the 
 rights of man. The general spread of the 
 light of- science has already laid open to 
 every view the palpable truth, that the mass 
 of mankind has not been born with saddles 
 
78 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 on their backs, nor a favored few booted and 
 spurred, ready to ride tiiem legitimately, by 
 the grace of God. These are grounds of 
 hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual 
 return of this day forever refresh our recol- 
 lections of these rights, and our undimin- 
 ished devotion to them. 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 " He taught the principles of political Union to his 
 generation. He produced those convictions which 
 sustained the North in its subsequent contest to pre- 
 serve the integrity of the Nation. There can be no 
 estimate of the services he rendered to the country by 
 his grand and patriotic efforts." — Dr. John Lord. 
 
 It is certain, that, although many of them 
 were republicans in principle, we have no 
 evidence that our New England ancestors 
 would have emigrated, as they did, from 
 their own native country, would have become 
 wanderers in Europe, and finally would have 
 undertaken the establishment of a colony 
 here, merely from their dislike of the politi- 
 cal systems of Europe. They fled not so 
 much from the civil government, as from 
 the hierarchy, and the laws w^hich enforced 
 conformity to the church establishment. . . . 
 Thanks be to God, that this spot was honored 
 as the asylum of religious liberty ! May its 
 standard, reared here, remain forever ! May 
 it rise up as high as heaven, till its banner 
 
8o Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 shall fan the air of both continents, and 
 wave as a glorious ensign of peace and se- 
 curity to the nations ! 
 
 Whatever constitutes country, except the 
 earth and the sun, all the moral causes of 
 affection and attachment which operate upon 
 the heart, they had brought with them to 
 their new abode. Here were now their 
 families and friends, their homes, and their 
 property. Before they reached the shore, 
 they had established the elements for a social 
 system, and at a much earlier period had 
 settled their forms of religious worship. . . . 
 The morning that beamed on the first night 
 of their repose saw the Pilgrims already at 
 home in their country. There were political 
 institutions, and civil liberty, and religious 
 worship. Poetry has fancied nothing, in the 
 wanderings of heroes, so distinct and char- 
 acteristic. 
 
 Happy auspices of a happy futurity ! Who 
 would wish that his country's existence had 
 otherwise begun ? Who would desire the 
 power of going back to the ages of fable ? 
 
Daniel Webster. 
 
 Who would wish for an origin obscured in 
 the darkness of antiquity? Who would wish 
 for other emblazoning of his country's her- 
 aldry, or other ornaments of her genealogy, 
 than to be able to say, that her first existence 
 was with intelligence, her first breath the 
 inspiration of liberty, her first principle, the 
 truth of divine religion ? 
 
 Of our system of government the first 
 thing to be said is, that it is really and prac- 
 tically a free system. It originates entirely 
 with the people, and rests on no other foun- 
 dation than their assent. 
 
 For the purpose of public instruction, we 
 hold every man subject to taxation in pro- 
 portion to his property, and we look not to 
 the question, whether he himself have, or 
 have not, children to be benefited by the 
 education for which he pays. . . . We hope 
 for a security beyond the law, and above the 
 law, in the prevalence of an enlightened and 
 well-principled and moral sentiment. 
 
 We are bound to maintain public liberty, 
 and, by the example of our own systems, to 
 
82 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 convince the world that order and law, reli- 
 oion and morality, the rights of conscience, 
 the rights of persons, and the rights of prop- 
 erty, may all be preserved and secured, in 
 the most perfect manner, by a government 
 entirely and purely elective. If we fail in 
 this, our disaster will be signal. 
 
 The Revolution in Greece. 
 
 January 19, 1824. 
 It is certainly true that the just policy of 
 this country is, in the first place, a peaceful 
 policy. No nation ever had less to expect 
 from forcible aggrandizement. The mighty 
 agents which are working out our greatness 
 are time, industry, and the arts. Our aug- 
 mentation is by growth, not by acquisition ; 
 by internal development, not by external 
 accession. No schemes can be suggested 
 to us so magnificent as the prospects which 
 a sober contemplation of our own condition, 
 unaided by projects, uninfluenced by ambi- 
 tion, fairly spreads before us. 
 
 From the earliest settlement of these 
 
Daniel Webster. 83 
 
 states, their inhabitants were accustomed, in 
 a greater or less degree, to the enjoyment of 
 the powers of self-government : and for the 
 last half-century they have sustained systems 
 of government entirely representative, yield- 
 ing to themselves the greatest possible 
 prosperity, and not leaving them without 
 distinction and respect among the nations of 
 the earth. This system we are not likely to 
 abandon ; and while we shall no farther re- 
 commiend its adoption to other nations, in 
 whole or in part, than it may recommend 
 itself by its visible infiuence on our own 
 growth and prosperity, we are, nevertheless, 
 interested to resist the establishment of 
 doctrines Vv^hich deny the legality of its foun- 
 dations. 
 
 The Bunker Hill Monument ; Laying 
 THE Corner Stone. June 17, 1825. 
 
 Venerable men ! 1 You have come down 
 to us from a former generation. Heaven has 
 bounteously lengthened out your lives, that 
 you might behold this joyous day. You are 
 
 » The veterans of 1775. 
 
84 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 now where you stood fifty years ago, this very 
 hour, with your brothers and with your neigh- 
 bors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for 
 your country. Behold, how altered ! The 
 same heavens are indeed over your heads : the 
 same ocean roils at your feet ; but all else 
 how changed ! You hear now no roar of 
 hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of 
 smoke and flame rising from burning 
 Charlestown. The ground strewed with the 
 dead and dying ; the impetuous charge ; 
 the steady and successful repulse ; the loud 
 call to repeated assault ; the summoning of all 
 that is manly to repeated resistance ; a thou- 
 sand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in 
 an instant to whatever of terror there may 
 be in war and death ; — all these you have 
 witnessed, but you witness them no more. 
 All is peace. The heights of yonder metrop- 
 olis, its towers and roofs, which you then 
 saw filled with wives and children and 
 countrymen in distress and terror, and look- 
 ing with unutterable emotions for the issue 
 of the combat, have presented you to-day 
 with the sight of its whole happy population. 
 
Daniel Webster. 85 
 
 come out to welcome and greet you with a 
 universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by 
 a felicity of position appropriately lying at the 
 foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to 
 cling around it, are not means of annoyance 
 to you, but your country's own means of 
 distinction and defence. All is peace ; and 
 God has granted you this sight of your 
 country's happiness, ere you slumber in the 
 grave. He has allowed you to behold and 
 to partake the reward of your patriotic toils, 
 and he has allowed us, your sons and 
 countrymen, to meet you here, and in the 
 name of the present generation, in the name 
 of your country, in the name of liberty, to 
 thank you ! 
 
 The great wheel of political revolution 
 began to move in America. Here its rota- 
 tion was guarded, regular and safe. 
 Transferred to the other continent, from 
 unfortunate but natural causes, it received 
 an irregular and violent impulse ; it whirled 
 along with a fearful celerity ; till at length, 
 like the chariot-wheels in the races of an- 
 
86 Patriotic Ntiggets. 
 
 tiquity, it took fire from the rapidity of its 
 own motion, and blazed onward, spreading 
 conflagration and terror around. 
 
 We learn from the result of this experi- 
 ment, how fortunate was our own condition, 
 and how admirably the character of our 
 people was calculated for setting the great 
 example of popular governments. 
 
 If, in our case, the representative system 
 ultimately fail, popular governments must be 
 pronounced impossible. No combination of 
 circumstances more favorable to the experi- 
 ment can ever be expected to occur. The 
 last hopes of mankind therefore, rest with us ; 
 and if it should be proclaimed, that our ex- 
 ample had become an argument against the 
 experiment, the knell of popular liberty would 
 be sounded throughout the earth. 
 
 There remains to us a great duty of de- 
 fence and preservation ; and there is opened 
 to us, also, a noble pursuit, to which the spirit 
 of the times strongly invites us. Our proper 
 business is improvement. . . . Let our con- 
 ceptions be enlarged to the circle of our 
 
Da7iiel Webster. 87 
 
 duties. Let us extend our ideas over the 
 wiiole of the vast field in which we are called 
 to act. Let our object be, OUR country, 
 
 OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT 
 
 OUR COUNTRY. And, by the blessings of 
 God, may that country itself become a vast, 
 splendid monument, not of oppression and 
 terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Lib- 
 erty, upon which the world may gaze with 
 admiration forever ! 
 
 Completion of the Bunker Hill 
 Monument. June 7, 1843. 
 Heaven has not alloted to this generation 
 an opportunity of rendering high services, 
 and manifesting strong personal devotion, 
 such as they rendered and manifested, 
 and in such a cause as that which roused the 
 patriotic fires of their youthful breasts, and 
 nerved the strength of their arms. But we 
 may praise what we cannot equal, and cele- 
 brate actions which we were not born to per- 
 form. 
 
 Some differences may, doubtless, be 
 traced at this day between the descendants 
 
Patriotic Nuggets, 
 
 of the early colonists of Virginia and those of 
 New England, owing to the different influ- 
 ences and different circumstances under 
 which the respective settlements were made ; 
 but only enough to create a pleasing variety 
 in the' midst of a general family resem- 
 blance. . . . The great and common cause 
 of the Revolution bound them to one 
 another by new links of brotherhood ; and at 
 length the present constitution of govern- 
 ment united them happily and gloriously, to 
 form the great republic of the world, and 
 bound up their interests and fortunes, till the 
 whole earth sees that there is now for them, 
 in present possession as well as in future 
 hope, but " One Country, One Consti- 
 tution, AND One Destiny." 
 
 Spain descended on the New World in 
 the armed and terrible image of her mon- 
 archy and her soldiery ; England approached 
 it in the winning and popular garb of per- 
 sonal rights, public protection and civil 
 freedom. England transplanted liberty to 
 America; Spain transplanted power. Eng- 
 land, through the agency of private compan- 
 
Daniel Webster. 
 
 ies and the efforts of individuals, colonized 
 this part of North America by industrious 
 individuals, making their own v^'ay in the 
 v^'ilderness, defending themselves against 
 the savages, recognizing their right to the 
 soil, and with a general honest purpose of 
 introducing knowledge as well as Christian- 
 ity among them, Spain stooped on South 
 America, like a vulture on its prey. Every- 
 thing was force. Territories were acquired 
 by fire and sword. Cities were destroyed 
 by fire and sword. Hundreds of thousands 
 of human beings fell by fire and sword. 
 Even conversion to Christianity was at- 
 tempted by fire and sword. 
 
 The great elements, then, of the American 
 system of government, originally introduced 
 by the colonists, and which were early in 
 operation, and ready to be developed, more 
 and more, as the progress of events should 
 justify or demand, were, — 
 
 Escape from the existing political systems 
 of Europe, including its religious hierarchies, 
 but the continued possession and enjoyment 
 
90 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 of its science and arts, its literature, and its 
 manners ; 
 
 Home government, or the power of mak- 
 ing in the colony the municipal laws which 
 were to govern it ; 
 
 Equality of rights ; 
 
 Representative assemblies, or forms of 
 government founded on popular elections. 
 
 Let us hold fast the great truth, that com- 
 munities are responsible as well as individ- 
 uals ; that no government is respectable, 
 which is not just ; that without unspotted 
 purity of public faith, without sacred public 
 principle, fidelity, and honor, no mere forms 
 of government, no machinery of laws, can 
 give dignity to political society. 
 
 The Monroe Doctrine. 
 
 April 14, 1826. 
 We mean by our policy of neutrality, that 
 the great objects of national pursuit with us 
 are connected with peace. We covet no 
 provinces ; we desire no conquests ; we 
 entertain no ambitious projects of aggran- 
 dizement by war. This is our policy. But 
 
Daniel Webster, 91 
 
 it does not follow from this, that we rely less 
 than other nations on our own power to vin- 
 dicate our own rights. We know that the 
 last logic of kings is also our last logic ; that 
 our own interests must be defended and 
 maintained by our own arm ; and that peace 
 or war may not always be of our own 
 choosing. 
 
 I must now ask the indulgence of the com- 
 mittee to an important point in the discussion, 
 I mean the declaration of the President in 
 1823.1 
 
 Sir, I look on the message of December, 
 1823, as forming a bright page in our his- 
 tory. I will help neither to erase it or tear 
 it out ; nor shall it be, by any act of mine, 
 
 »In the message of President Monroe to Congress at 
 the commencement of the session of 1823-24, the follow- 
 ing passage occurs :— " In the wars of the European 
 powers, in matters relating to themselves, we have 
 never taken any part, nor does it comport with our 
 policy so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded 
 or seriously menaced, that we resent injuries or make 
 preparations for defence. With the movements in this 
 hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately con- 
 nected, and by causes which must be obvious to all en- 
 ( lightened and impartial observers. . . . With thQ 
 
92 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 blurred or blotted. It did honor to the sa- 
 gacity of the government, and I will not di- 
 minish that honor. It elevated the hopes, 
 and gratified the patriotism, of the people. 
 Over those hopes I will not bring a mildew ; 
 nor will I put that gratified patriotism to 
 shame. 
 
 Adams and Jefferson. 
 
 Aug. 2, 1826. 
 Adams and Jefferson are no more. On 
 our fiftieth anniversary, the great day of 
 national jubilee, in the very hour of public 
 rejoicing, in the midst of echoing and re-echo- 
 ing voices of thanksgiving, while their own 
 names were on all tongues, they took their 
 flight together to the world of spirits, 1 
 
 existing colonies or dependencies of any European 
 power, we have not interfered and shall not interfere. 
 Rut with the governments who have declared their 
 independence and maintained it, and whose indepen- 
 dence we have on great consideration and on just 
 principles acknowledged, we could not view any inter- 
 position for the purpose of oppressing, or control- 
 ling in any other manner their destiny, in any other 
 light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly dis- 
 position toward the United Stales. 
 » Both died July 4th, 1826. 
 
Daniel Webster. 93 
 
 Adams and Jefferson are no more. As 
 human beings, indeed, they are no more. 
 . . . . But how httle is there of the great 
 and good which can die ! To their country 
 they yet live, and live forever. They live in 
 all that perpetuates the remembrance of 
 men on earth ; in the reproofs of their own 
 great actions, in the offspring of their in- 
 tellect, in the deep-engraved lines of public 
 gratitude, and in the respect and homage of 
 mankind. 
 
 No two men now live, fellow-citizens, 
 perhaps it may be doubted whether any two 
 men have ever lived in one age, who, more 
 than those we now commemorate, have im- 
 pressed on mankind their own sentiments in 
 regard to politics and government, infused 
 their own opinions more deeply into the 
 opinions of others, or given a more lasting 
 direction to the current of human thought. 
 Their work doth not perish with them. . . . 
 No age will come in which the American 
 Revolution will appear less than it is, one of 
 the greatest events in human history. No 
 
94 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 age will come in which it shall cease to be 
 seen and felt, on either continent, that a 
 great advance, not only in American affairs, 
 but in human affairs, was made on the 4th 
 of July, 1776. 
 
 As a composition, the Declaration [of Inde- 
 pendence] is Mr. Jefferson's. It is the pro- 
 duction of his mind, and the high honor of 
 it belongs to him, clearly and absolutely. 
 
 The Congress of the Revolution, fellow- 
 citizens, sat with closed doors, and no report 
 of its debates was ever made. The discus- 
 sion, therefore, which accompanied this great 
 measure, has never been preserved, except 
 in memory and by tradition. But it is, I be- 
 lieve, doing no injustice to others to say, 
 that the general opinion was, and uniformly 
 has been, that in debate, on the side of inde- 
 pendence, John Adams had no equal. The 
 great author of the Declaration himself had 
 expressed that opinion uniformly and 
 strongly. 
 
 Let us, then, bring before us the assembly, 
 
Daniel Webster. 95 
 
 which was about to decide a question thus 
 big with the fate of empire. Let us open 
 their doors and look in upon their dehbera- 
 tions. Let us survey the anxious and care- 
 worn countenances, let us hear the firm-toned 
 voices, of this band of patriots. 
 
 Hancock presides over the solemn sitting ; 
 and one of those not yet prepared to pro- 
 nounce for absolute independence is on the 
 floor, and is urging his reasons for dissenting 
 from the Declaration. . . . 
 
 It was for Mr. Adams to reply to argu- 
 ments like these. We know his opinions, 
 and we know his character. He would 
 commence with his accustomed directness 
 and earnestness. 
 
 " Sink or swim, live or die, survive or per- 
 ish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. 
 It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we 
 aimed not at independence. But there's a 
 Divinity which shapes our ends. The in- 
 justice of England has driven us to arms ; 
 and, blinded to her own interest for our good, 
 she has obstinately persisted, till independ- 
 ence is now within our grasp. . . . Read 
 
96 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 this Declaration at the head of the army , 
 every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, 
 and the solemn vow uttered, to maintain it, 
 or to perish on the bed of honor. Publish 
 it from the pulpit ; religion will approve it, 
 and the love of religious liberty will cling 
 round it, resolved to stand with it, or fall 
 with it. Send it to the public halls ; proclaim 
 it there ; let them hear it who heard the first 
 roar of the enemy's cannon ; let them see it 
 who saw their brothers and their sons fall 
 on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets 
 of Lexington and Concord, and the very 
 walls will cry out in its support. " 
 
 " Sir, I know the uncertainty of human 
 affairs, but I see, I see clearly, through this 
 day's business. You and I, indeed, may 
 rue it. We may not live to the time when 
 this Declaration shall be made good. We 
 may die ; die colonists ; die slaves ; die, it 
 may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. 
 Be it so ! Be it so ! If it be the pleasure 
 of Heaven that my country shall require the 
 poor offering of my life, the victim shall be 
 
Daniel Webster. 97 
 
 ready, at the appointed hour of sacrifice, 
 come when that hour may. But while I do 
 live, let me have a country, or at least the 
 hope of a country, and that a free coun- 
 try. . . . We shall make this a glorious, 
 an immortal day. When we are in our 
 graves, our children will honor it. They will 
 celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, 
 with bonfires, and illuminations. . . . Sir, 
 before God, I believe the hour is come. My 
 judgment approves this measure, and my 
 whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all 
 that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am 
 now ready here to stake upon it ; and I leave 
 off as I begun, that live or die, survive or per- 
 ish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living 
 sentiment, and by the blessing of God it 
 shall be my dying sentiment, — Independence 
 now, and Independence for ever ! " 
 
 And so that day shall be honored, illustri- 
 ous prophet and patriot ! so that day shall be 
 honored, and as often as it returns, thy re- 
 nown shall come along with it, and the glory 
 of thy life, like the day of thy death, shall 
 not fail from the remembrance of men. 
 
Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 The Reply to Hayne, of South Caro- 
 lina. Jan. 26 and 27, 1830. 
 I shall not acknowledge that the honor- 
 able member goes before me in regard for 
 whatever of distinguished talent or dis- 
 tinguished character South Carolina has 
 produced. 1 claim part of the honor, I 
 partake in the pride, of her great names. 
 I claim them for countrymen, one and all, 
 the Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, 
 the Sumpters, the Marions, Americans all, 
 whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by 
 State lines, than their talents and patriotism 
 were capable of being circumscribed within 
 the same narrow limits. In their day and 
 generation, they served and honored the 
 country, and the whole country ; and their 
 renown is of the treasures of the whole 
 country. 
 
 Mr. President, I shall enter on no en- 
 comium upon Massachusetts ; she needs 
 none. There she is. Behold her, and 
 judge for yourselves. There is her history ; 
 the world knows it by heart. The past, at 
 
Daniel Webster, 99 
 
 least, is secure. There is Boston, and Con- 
 cord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill ; and 
 there they will remain forever. The bones 
 of her sons, falling in the great struggle for 
 Independence, now lie mingled with the soil 
 of every State from New England to 
 Georgia ; and there they will lie forever. 
 And, Sir, where American liberty raised its 
 first voice, and where its youth was nurtured 
 and sustained, there it still lives, in the 
 strength of its manhood and full of its orig- 
 inal spirit. If discord and disunion shall 
 wound it, if party strife and blind ambition 
 shall hawk at and tear it, if folly and mad- 
 ness, if uneasiness under salutary and neces- 
 sary restraint, shall succeed in separating it 
 from the Union, by which alone its existence 
 is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the 
 side of that cradle in which its infancy was 
 rocked ; it will stretch forth its arm with 
 whatever of vigor it may still retain over the 
 friends who gather around it ; and it will 
 fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proud- 
 est monuments of its own glory, and on the 
 very spot of its origin. 
 
I oo Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 The inherent right in the people to reform 
 their government I do not deny : and they 
 have another right, and that is, to resist un- 
 constitutional laws, without overturning the 
 government. It is no doctrine of mine that 
 unconstitutional laws bind the people. 
 
 The right of a State to annul a law of 
 Congress cannot be maintained, but on the 
 ground of the inalienable right of man to re- 
 sist oppression ; that is to say, upon the 
 ground of revolution. I admit that there is 
 an ultimate violent remedy, above the Consti- 
 tution and in defiance of the Constitution, 
 which may be resorted to when a revolution 
 is to be justified. But I do not admit, that, 
 under the Constitution and in conformity 
 with it, there is any mode in which a State 
 government, as a member of the Union, can 
 interfere and stop the progress of the 
 general government, by force of her own 
 laws, under any circumstances whatever. 
 
 The people have wisely provided, in the 
 Constitution itself, a proper, suitable mode 
 and tribunal for settling questions of Con- 
 
Daniel Webster. 
 
 stitutional law. . . . The Constitution itself 
 has pointed out, ordained, and established 
 that authority. How has it accomplished this 
 great and essential end } By declaring, Sir, 
 that " the Constitution, a?id the laws of the 
 United States made in pursuance thereof, 
 shall be the supreme law of the land, any- 
 thing in the Co7istitution or laws of any 
 State to the contrary Jiotivithstandingy .... 
 But who shall decide this question of inter- 
 ference } To whom lies the last appeal ? 
 This, Sir, the Constitution itself decides also, 
 by declaring, that " the judicial power 
 shall extefid to all cases arising under the 
 Constitution and laws of the United States." 
 These two provisions cover the whole 
 ground. They are, in truth, the keystone 
 of the arch ! With these it is a govern- 
 ment ; without them it is a confederation. 
 
 When my eyes shall be turned to behold 
 for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not 
 see him shining on the broken and dishonored 
 fragments of a once glorious Union ; on 
 States dissevered, discordant, belligerent ; on 
 a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it 
 
I02 ratriotic Nuggets. 
 
 may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their last 
 feeble and lingering glance rather behold 
 the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now 
 known and honored throughout the earth, 
 still full high advanced, its arms and 
 trophies streaming in their original luster, 
 not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single 
 star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such 
 miserable interrogatory as " What is all this 
 worth? " nor those other words of delusion 
 and folly, " Liberty first and Union after- 
 wards ; " but everywhere, spread all over in 
 characters of living light, blazing on all its 
 ample folds, as they float over the sea and 
 over the land, and in every wind under the 
 whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to 
 every true American heart, — Liberty and 
 Union, now and for ever, one and insepa- 
 rable ! 
 
 The Constitution not a Compact. 
 February i6, 1833. 
 
 Sir, I love Liberty no less ardently than 
 the gentleman himself, in whatever form 
 she may have appeared in the progress of 
 
Daniel Webster. 103 
 
 human history. As exhibited in the master 
 states of antiquity, as breaking out again 
 from amidst the darkness of the Middle 
 Ages, and beaming on the formation of new 
 communities in modern Europe, she has, 
 always and everywhere, charms for me. 
 Yet, Sir, it is our own liberty, guarded by 
 constitutions and secured by Union, it is 
 that liberty which is our paternal inheritance, 
 it is our established, dear-sought, peculiar 
 American liberty, to which I am chiefly 
 devoted, and the cause of which I now 
 mean, to the utmost of my power, to main- 
 tain and defend. 
 
 The first resolution declares that the 
 people of the United States ''acceded'' to 
 the Constitution, or to the constitutional 
 compact, as it is called. This word " ac- 
 cede," not found either in the Constitution 
 itself, or in the ratification of it by any one of 
 the States, has been chosen for use here, 
 doubtless, not without a well-considered 
 purpose. 
 
 The natural converse of accession is seces- 
 
104 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 sion ; and, therefore when it is stated that 
 the people of the States acceded to the 
 Union, it may be more plausibly argued, 
 that they may secede from it. . . . The 
 people of the United States have used no 
 such form of expression in establishing the 
 present government. They do not say that 
 they accede to a league, but they declare 
 that they ordain and establish a Consti- 
 tion. . . , Inasmuch as they were already 
 m union, they did not speak of acceditig to 
 the new Articles of Confederation, but of 
 ratifyijig and confirjnitig them ; . . . . 
 No State is at liberty to secede, on the 
 ground that she and other States have done 
 nothing but accede. She must show that she 
 has a right to reverse what has been 
 ordained, to unsettle and overthrow what 
 has been established, to reject what the 
 people have adopted, and to break up what 
 they have ratified; because these are the 
 terms which express the transactions which 
 have actually taken place. In other words, 
 she must show her right to make a revolu- 
 tion. 
 
Daniel Webster. 105 
 
 To begin with nullification, with the 
 avowed intent, nevertheless, not to proceed 
 to secession, dismemberment, and general 
 revolution, is as if one were to take the 
 plunge of Niagara, and cry out that he 
 would stop half-way down. In the one 
 case, as in the other, the rash adventurer 
 must go to the bottom of the dark abyss 
 below, were it not that that abyss has no 
 discovered bottom. 
 
 Public Dinner in New York. 
 
 March 10, 1831. 
 Who is there among us, that, should he 
 find himself on any spot of the earth where 
 human beings exist, and where the exist- 
 ence of other nations is known, would not 
 be proud to say, I am an American } I am 
 a countryman of Washington } I am a citi- 
 zen of that republic, which, although it has 
 suddenly sprung up, yet there are none on 
 the globe who have ears to hear, and have 
 not heard of it ; who have eyes to see, and 
 have not read of it ; who know anything, and 
 yet do not know of its existence and its 
 glory } 
 
]o6 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 There are two principles, Gentlemen, 
 strictly and purely American, which are now 
 likely to prevail throughout the civilized 
 world. Indeed, they seem the necessary 
 result of the progress of civilization and 
 knowledge. These are, first, popular gov- 
 ernments, restrained by written constitu- 
 tions ; and secondly, universal education. 
 Popular governments and general education, 
 acting and reacting, mutually producing and 
 reproducing each other, are the mighty agen- 
 cies which in our days appear to be exciting, 
 stimulating, and changing civilized societies. 
 Man, everywhere, is now found demanding 
 a participation in government, — and he will 
 not be refused : and demands knowledge as 
 necessary to self-government. 
 
 The Character of Washington (Cen- 
 tennial Anniversary). Feb, 22, 1832. 
 One of the most striking things ever said 
 of him is, that ^' he changed mankind' s ideas 
 of political greatness."'^ To command- 
 ing talents, and to success, the common 
 
 ' Fisher Ames. 
 
Daniel Webster. 107 
 
 elements of such greatness, he added a 
 disregard of self, a spotlessness of motive, a 
 ready submission to every public and pri- 
 vate duty, which threw far into the shade 
 the whole crowd of vulgar great, .... 
 His love of glory, so far as that may be sup- 
 posed to have influenced him at all, spurned 
 everything short of general approbation. It 
 would have been nothing to him, that his 
 partisans or his favorites outnumbered, or 
 outvoted, or outmanaged, or outclamored, 
 those of other leaders. He had no favorites ; 
 he rejected all partisanship : and, acting hon- 
 estly for the universal good, he deserved, 
 what he has so richly enjoyed, the universal 
 love. 
 
 His fame is as durable as his principles, as 
 lasting as truth and virtue themselves. 
 While the hundreds whom party excitement, 
 and temporary circumstances, and casual 
 combinations, have raised into transient 
 notoriety, sink again, like thin bubbles, 
 bursting and dissolving into the great ocean, 
 Washington's fame is like the rock which 
 
ro8 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 bounds that ocean, and at whose feet its 
 billows are destined to break harmlessly for 
 ever. 
 
 Washington, therefore, could regard, and 
 did regard, nothing as of paramount politi- 
 cal interest, but the integrity of the Union 
 itself. With a united government, well 
 administered, he saw that we had nothing 
 to fear ; and without it, nothing to hope. 
 The sentiment is just, and its momentous (! 
 truth should solemnly impress the whole 1 
 country. } 
 
 Executive Patronage and Removals \ 
 
 FROM Office. October 12, 1836. \ 
 
 Mr. President, as far as I know, there is j 
 
 no civilized country on earth, in which, on a ' 
 change of rulers, there is such an itiqiiisi- 
 t ion for spoil as we have witnessed in this 
 
 free republic. I 
 
 This principle of claiming a monopoly of j 
 
 office by the right of conquest, unless the ' 
 public shall effectually rebuke and restrain it, 
 
 will entirely change the character of our \ 
 
Datiiel Webster. 109 
 
 government. It elevates party above coun- 
 try ; it forgets the common weal in the pur- 
 suit of personal emolument ; it tends to 
 form, it does form, we see that it has 
 formed, a political combination, united by 
 no common principles or opinions among 
 its members, either upon the powers of the 
 government, or the true policy of the coun- 
 try ; but held together simply as an associa- 
 tion, under the charm of a popular head, 
 seeking to maintain possession of the gov- 
 ernment by a vigorous exercise of its 
 patronage; .... Sir, if this course of 
 things cannot be checked, good men will 
 grow tired of the exercise of political privi- 
 leges. They will have nothing to do with 
 popular elections. They will see that such 
 elections are but a mere selfish contest for 
 office ; and they will abandon the govern- 
 ment to the scramble of the bold, the daring, 
 and the desperate. 
 
 In all popular governments, a FREE press 
 is the most important of all agents and 
 instruments. . . . While it acts in a man- 
 
1 lo Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 ner worthy of this distinction, the press is a 
 fountain of light, and a source of gladdening 
 warmth. It instructs the public mind, and 
 animates the spirit of patriotism. . . . 
 But remember, Sir, that these are the 
 attributes of a free press only. And is a 
 press that is purchased or pensioned more 
 free than a press that is fettered ? Can the 
 people look for truths to partial sources, 
 whether rendered partial through fear or 
 through favor? 
 
 An open attempt to secure the aid and 
 friendship of the public press, by bestowing 
 the emoluments of office on its active con- 
 ductors, seems to me, of everything we have 
 witnessed, to be the most reprehensible. It 
 degrades both the government and the press. 
 
 Speech On Banking. 
 
 January 31, 1834. 
 
 The very man, of all others, who has the 
 
 deepest interest in a sound currency, and 
 
 who suffers most by mischievous legislation 
 
 in money matters, is the man who earns his 
 
Dattiel Webster. 1 1 1 
 
 daily bread by his daily toil. A depreciated 
 currency, sudden changes of prices, paper 
 money, falling between morning and noon, 
 and falling still lower between noon and 
 night, — these things constitute the very 
 harvest-time of speculators, and of the whole 
 race of those who are at once idle and crafty ; 
 and of that other race, too, the Catilines of 
 all times, marked, so as to be known for 
 ever, by one stroke of the historian's pen, 
 those greedy of other meat's property and 
 prodigal of their own. 
 
 Whoever attempts, under whatever popu- 
 lar cry, to shake the stability of the public 
 currency, bring on distress in money matters, 
 and drive the country into the use of paper 
 money, stabs your interest and your happi- 
 ness to the heart. 
 
 Reception at New York. 
 
 March 15, 1837. 
 
 He who tampers with the currency robs 
 
 labor of its bread. He panders, indeed, to 
 
 greedy capital, which is keen-sighted, and 
 
 may shift for itself ; but he beggars labor. 
 
1 1 2 Pat7-iotic Nuggets. 
 
 which is honest, unsuspecting, and too busy 
 for the present to calculate for the future. 
 
 Did wild schemes and projects ever benefit 
 the industrious ? Did irredeemable bank 
 paper ever enrich the laborious ? Did vio- 
 lent fluctuations ever do good to him who 
 depends on his daily labor for his daily 
 bread? Certainly never. All these things 
 may gratify greediness for sudden gain, or 
 the rashness of daring speculation ; but they 
 can bring nothing but injury and distress to 
 the homes of patient industry and honest 
 labor. 
 
 Reply to Mr. Calhoun. 
 
 March 22, 1838. 
 The Secretary of the Treasury .... as- 
 sures us, that, bad as the times were, and 
 notwithstanding the floods of bad paper 
 which deluged the country, members of 
 Congress should get gold and silver. . . . 
 If there be bad money in the country, I 
 think that Secretaries and other executive 
 officers, and especially the members of Con- 
 
Daniel Webste}'. 
 
 g^ress, should be the last to receive any good 
 money ; because they have the power, if 
 they will do their duty, and exercise it, of 
 making the money of the country good for 
 all. 
 
 "The Log Cabin Candidate." [Wm. 
 Henry Harrison.] August 12, 1840. 
 It touched a tender point in the public 
 feeling. It naturally roused indignation. 
 What was intended as reproach was imme- 
 diately seized on as merit. " Be it so ! Be 
 it so ! " was the instant burst of the public 
 voice. " Let him be the log-cabin candi- 
 date." . . . . It is only shallow-minded pre- 
 tenders who either make distinguished ori- 
 gin matter of personal merit, or obscure origin 
 matter of personal reproach. ... A man 
 who is not ashamed of himself need not be 
 ashamed of his early condition. 
 
 Address to the Ladies of Richmond. 
 October 5, 1840. 
 We applaud the artist whose skill and 
 genius present the mimic man upon the can- 
 
1 1 4 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 vas ; we admire and celebrate the sculptor 
 who works out that same image in enduring 
 marble ; but how insignificant are these 
 achievements, though the highest and the 
 fairest in all the departments of art, in com- 
 parison with the great vocation of human 
 mothers ! They work not upon the canvas 
 that shall perish, or the marble that crum- 
 bles into dust, but upon mind, upon spirit, 
 which is to last for ever, and which is to 
 bear, for good or evil, throughout its dura- 
 tion, the impress of a mother's plastic hand. 
 
 Reception at Boston. 
 
 September 30, 1842. 
 Every settlement of national differences 
 between Christian states by fair negotiation, 
 without resort to arms, is a new illustration 
 and a new proof of the benign influence of 
 the Christian faith. 
 
 Repudiation does nothing but add a sort 
 of disrepute to acknowledged inability. 
 
 The Landing at Plymouth. 
 
 December 22, iS_i3. 
 Circumstances have wrought out for us a 
 
Daniel Webster. 115 
 
 state of things which, in other times and 
 other regions, philosophy has dreamed of, 
 and theory has proposed, and speculation 
 has suggested, but which man has never 
 been able to accomplish. I mean the govern- 
 ment of a great nation over a vastly extended 
 portion of the surface of the earth, by means 
 of local institutions for local purposes, and 
 general institutio7is for general purposes. 
 
 I care not beneath what zone, frozen, 
 temperate, or torrid ; I care not of what 
 complexion, white or brown ; I care not 
 under what circumstances of climate or cul- 
 tivation, — if I can find a race of men on an 
 inhabitable spot of earth whose general 
 sentiment it is, and whose general feeling it 
 is, that government is made for man, — man, 
 as a religious, moral, and social being, — and 
 not man for government, there I know that 
 I shall find prosperity and happiness. 
 
 The Girard Will Case. 
 Philadelphia, February 20, 1844. 
 No literary efforts, no adjudications, no 
 
1 1 6 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 constitutional discussions, nothing that has 
 been said or done in favor of the great 
 interests of universal man, has done this 
 country more credit, at home and abroad, 
 than the establishment of our body of clergy- 
 men, their support by voluntary contribu- 
 tions, and the general excellence of their 
 character for piety and learning. 
 
 The great truth has thus been proclaimed 
 and proved, a truth which I believe will in 
 time to come shake all the hierarchies of 
 Europe, that the voluntary support of such 
 a ministry, under free institutions, is a prac- 
 ticable idea. 
 
 The Rhode Island Government. 
 January 27, 1848. 
 What distinguishes American govern- 
 ments as much as any thing else from any 
 governments of ancient or of modern times, 
 is the marvelous felicity of their representa- 
 tive system. . . . The power is with the 
 people ; but they cannot exercise it in masses 
 or per capita ; they can only exercise it by 
 
Daniel Webster. 117 
 
 their representatives. The whole system 
 with us has been popular from the begin- 
 ning. 
 
 We are not to take the will of the people 
 from public meetings, nor from tumultuous 
 assemblies, by which the timid are terrified, 
 the prudent are alarmed, and by which so- 
 ciety is disturbed. These are not American 
 modes of signifying the will of the people, 
 and they never were. . . . What is this 
 but anarchy ? What liberty is there here, 
 but a tumultuary, tempestuous, violent, 
 stormy liberty, a sort of South American 
 liberty, without power except in its spasms, 
 a liberty supported by arms to-day, crushed 
 by arms to-morrow ? Is that our liberty ? 
 
 All that is necessary here is, that the will 
 of the people should be ascertained, by some 
 regular rule of proceeding, prescribed by pre- 
 vious law. . . . and thence arises the neces- 
 sity for suffrage, which is the mode whereby 
 each man's power is made to tell upon the 
 constitution of the government, and in the 
 enactment of laws. 
 
1 1 8 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 Speech at Marshfield. 
 
 September i, 1848. 
 At this moment, there is no object upon 
 earth so much attracting the gaze of the in- 
 telligent and civilized nations of the earth as 
 this great republic. All men look at us, all 
 men examine our course. . . . They see us 
 as that star of empire which half a century 
 ago was represented as making its 
 way westward. I wish they may see it as a 
 mild, placid, though brilliant orb, moving 
 athwart the whole heavens to the enlighten- 
 ing and cheering of mankind ; and not as a 
 meteor of fire and blood terrifying the na- 
 tions. 
 
 For the Constitution and the 
 Union. March 7, 1850. 
 
 Secession ! Peaceable session ! Sir, your 
 eyes and mine are never destined to see that 
 miracle. The dismemberment of this vast 
 country without convulsion ! The breaking 
 up of the fountains of the great deep with- 
 out ruffling the surface ! Who is so foolish, 
 I beg everybody's pardon, as to expect to see 
 
Daniel Webster, 119 
 
 any such thing ? Sir, he who sees these 
 States, now revolving in harmony around a 
 common center, and expects to see them quit 
 their places and fly off without convulsion, 
 may look the next hour to see the heavenly 
 bodies rush from their spheres, and jostle 
 against each other in the realms of space, 
 without causing the wreck of the universe. 
 
 No, sir ! No, sir ! I will not state what 
 might produce the disruption of the Union ; 
 but. Sir, I see as plainly as I see the sun in 
 heaven what that disruption itself must pro- 
 duce ; I see that it must produce war, and 
 such a war as I will not describe. 
 
 Reception at Buffalo. 
 
 May 22, 1851. 
 I believe in party distinctions. I am a 
 party man. There are questions belonging 
 to party in which I take an interest, and 
 there are opinions entertained by other par- 
 ties which I repudiate ; but what of all that } 
 If a house be divided against itself, it will 
 fall, and crush everybody in it. We must 
 
ratriotic Nuggets. 
 
 see that we maintain the government which 
 is over us. We must see that we uphold the 
 Constitution, and we must do so without re- 
 gard to party. 
 
 The Addition to the Capitol. 
 July 4, 1 85 1. 
 I will venture. ... to state, in a few 
 words, what I take these American political 
 principles in substance to be. They consist, 
 as I think, in the first place, in the establish- 
 ment of popular governments, on the basis 
 of representation ; . . . The next funda- 
 mental principle in our system is, that the 
 will of the majority, fairly expressed through 
 the means of representation, shall have the 
 force of law. . . . And, as the necessary 
 result of this, the third element is, that the 
 law is the supreme rule for the government 
 of all. . . . And, finally, another most 
 important part of the great fabric of Ameri- 
 can liberty is, that there shall be written 
 constitutions, founded on the immediate au- 
 thority of the people themselves, and regu- 
 lating and restraining all the powers conferred 
 
Daniel Webster. I2I 
 
 upon government, whether legislative, ex- 
 ecutive, or judicial. 
 
 This, fellow-citizens, I suppose to be a just 
 summary of our American principles. 
 
 And I now proceed to add, that the strong 
 and deep-settled conviction of all intelligent 
 persons amongst us is, that, in order to sup- 
 port a useful and wise government upon 
 these popular principles, the general educa- 
 tion of the people, and the wide diffusion of 
 pure morality and true religion, are indis- 
 pensable. Individual virtue is a part of pub- 
 lic virtue. 
 
 I now do declare, in the face of all the in- 
 telligent of the age, that, for the period which 
 has elapsed from the day that Washington 
 laid the foundation of this Capitol to the pre- 
 sent time, there has been no country upon 
 earth in which life, liberty, and property have 
 been more amply and steadily secured, or 
 more freely enjoyed, than in these United 
 States of America. . . . Who is there that 
 can stand upon the foundation of facts, ac- 
 knowledged or proved, and assert that these 
 
122 Patriotic Nuggets. , 
 
 our republican institutions have not answered I 
 the true ends of government beyond all pre- ' 
 cedent in human history ? 
 
 We cannot, we dare not, we will not be- 
 tray our sacred trust. . . . The bow that 
 gilds the clouds in the heavens, the pillars 
 that uphold the firmament, may disappear 
 and fall away in the hour appointed by the 
 will of God ; but until that day comes, or so 
 long as our lives may last, no ruthless hand 
 shall undermine that bright arch of Union 
 and Liberty which spans the continent from 
 Washington to California. 
 
 And now, fellow-citizens, with hearts void 
 of hatred, envy, and malice towards our own 
 countrymen, or any of them, or towards the 
 subjects or citizens of other governments, or 
 towards any member of the great family of 
 man ; but exulting, nevertheless, in our own 
 peace, security, and happiness, in the grate- 
 ful remembrance of the past, and the glori- 
 ous hopes of the future, let us return to our 
 homes, and with humility and devotion offer 
 our thanks to the Father of all our mercies, 
 political, social, and religious. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Here was a type of the true elder race, 
 And one of Plutarch's men talked with us, face to face. 
 —James Russell Lowell. 
 
 New Salem, Ills. 
 
 June 13, 1836. 
 To the Editor of the Journal : — 
 
 In your paper of last Saturday, I see a 
 communication over the signature of 
 " Many Voters," in whicli the candidates 
 who are announced in the Journal are 
 called upon to " show their hands." Agreed. 
 Here's mine. 
 
 I go for all sharing the privileges of the 
 government who assist in bearing its bur- 
 dens ; consequently, I go for admitting all 
 whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes 
 or bear arms (by no means excludmg females). 
 
 If elected I shall consider the whole 
 people of Sangamon my constituents, as 
 \ well those that oppose as those that .support 
 me. 
 
124 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 Speech at Springfield. Ills. 1 
 June 26, 1857. 
 I think the authors of that notable instru- 
 ment [the Declaration of Independence] 
 intended to include ^z/Zmen, but they did not 
 intend to declare all men equal /;^ all re- 
 spects. They did not mean to say all were 
 equal in color, size, intellect, moral develop- 
 ments, or social capacity. They defined 
 with tolerable distinctness in what respects 
 they did consider all men created equal — 
 equal with "certain inalienable rights, 
 among which are life, liberty, and the pur- 
 suit of happiness." This they said, and 
 this they meant. They did not mean to 
 assert the obvious untruth that all men \ 
 were then actually enjoying that equality, ' 
 nor yet that they were about to confer it \ 
 immediately upon them. In fact, they had j 
 no power to confer such a boon. They 1 
 meant simply to declare the right, so that . 
 the enforcement of it might follow as fast as ' 
 circumstances should permit. 
 
Abraham Lincoln. 125 
 
 Speech at Springfield, Ills. 
 
 June 16, 1858. 
 In my opinion, it [agitation] will not 
 cease until a crisis shall have been reached 
 and passed. " A house divided against 
 itself can not stand." 1 I believe this govern- 
 ment can not 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. Either the opponents of slavery 
 will arrest the further spread of it, and 
 place it where the public mind shall rest in 
 the belief that it is in course of ultimate ex- 
 tinction ; or its advocates will push it for- 
 ward till it shall become alike lawful in all 
 the States, old as well as new, North as 
 well as South. 
 
 Speech at Chicago. 
 
 July 10, 1858. 
 Those arguments that are made, that the 
 
 See Webster, p. 
 
126 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 inferior race are to be treated with as much 
 allowance as they are capable of enjoying ; 
 that as much is to be done for them as their 
 condition will allow — what are these argu- 
 ments ? They are the arguments that kings 
 have made for enslaving the people in all 
 ages of the world. You will find that all 
 the arguments in favor of king-craft were of 
 this class; they always bestrode the necks 
 of the people — not that they wanted to do it, 
 but because the people were better off for 
 being ridden. 
 
 Douglas Debate. 
 
 October 7, 1858. 
 If you will take the Judge's [Douglas's] 
 speeches,and select the short and pointed sen- 
 tences expressed by him,— as his declaration 
 that he " don't care whether slavery is voted 
 up or down" [in the Territories], —you will 
 see at once that this is perfectly logical, if 
 you do not admit that slavery is wrong. 
 If you do admit that it is wrong. 
 Judge Douglas cannot logically say he don't 
 care whether a wrong is voted up or voted 
 
Abraham Li7icoln. 127 
 
 down. ... he cannot logically say that 
 anybody has a right to do wrong. 
 
 To Republicans of Boston, Mass. 
 April 6, 1859. 
 
 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, can not long retain it. 
 
 Cooper Institute Speech, New York. 
 February 27, i860. 
 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, can not stand. 
 
 Some of you [Southerners] delight to 
 flaunt in our faces the warning against sec- 
 
128 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 tional 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 en- 
 forcing the prohibition of slavery in the 
 North-Western Territory, which act em- 
 bodied 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 La Fayette 
 that he considered that prohibition a wise 
 measure, expressing in the same connection 
 his hope that we should some time have a 
 confederacy of free States. 
 
 Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sec- 
 tionalism has still arisen upon this same sub- 
 ject, 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 to- 
 
Abraha7n Lincoln. 129 
 
 gether with his example pointing to the right 
 application of it. 
 
 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 effec- 
 tively. Let us be diverted by none of those 
 sophistical contrivances wherewith we are 
 so industriously plied and belabored — con- 
 trivances such as groping for some middle 
 ground betw^een right and 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. 
 
 On His Way to Washington as Presi- 
 dent Elect. February, 1861. 
 At Columbus, O. — It is true, as has been 
 
130 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 said by the President of the Senate, that 
 very great responsibility rests upon me in 
 the position to which the votes of the 
 American people have called me. I am 
 deeply sensible of that weighty responsi- 
 bility. I cannot but know what you all 
 know, that without a name, perhaps without 
 a reason why I should have a name, there 
 has fallen upon me a task such as did not 
 rest even upon the Father of his Country, 
 and so feeling, I can turn and look for that 
 support without which it will be impossible 
 for me to perform that great task. I turn, 
 then, and look to the great American people, 
 and to that God who has never forsaken 
 them. 
 
 At Philadelphia. — Your worthy mayor 
 has expressed the wish, in which I join with 
 him, that it were convenient for me to 
 remain in your city long enough for me to 
 consult your merchants and manufacturers ; 
 or, as it were, to listen to those breathings 
 rising within the consecrated walls wherein 
 the Constitution of the United States, and, I 
 
Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 will add, the Declaration of Independence, 
 were originally framed and adopted. I 
 assure you and your mayor that I had hoped 
 on this occasion, and upon all occasions dur- 
 ing my life, that I shall do nothing inconsistent 
 with the teachings of these holy and most 
 sacred walls. I have never asked anything 
 that does not breathe from those walls. All 
 my political warfare has been in favor of 
 the teachings that come forth from these 
 sacred walls. May my right hand forget 
 its cunning and my tongue cleave to the 
 roof of my mouth if ever I prove false to 
 those teachings ! 
 
 I have often inquired of myself what 
 great principle or idea it was that kept this 
 Confederacy so long together. !t was not 
 the mere matter of the separation of the colo- 
 nies from the motherland, but that senti- 
 ment in the Declaration of Independence 
 which gave Hberty, not alone to the people 
 of this country, but hope to all the world, for 
 all future time. . . . Now, my friends, can 
 this country be saved on that basis ? If 
 
132 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 it can, I will 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 giv- 
 ing up that principle, I was about to say I 
 would rather be assassinated on this spot 
 than surrender it. 
 
 My friends, this is wholly an unprepared 
 speech. I did not expect to be called 
 on to say a word when I came here. I 
 supposed I was merely to do something 
 toward raising a flag ; I may, therefore, 
 have said something indiscreet. But I have 
 said nothing but what I am willing to live 
 by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty 
 God, to die by. 
 
 First Inaugural Address. 
 
 March 4, 1861. 
 A disruption of the Federal Union, here- 
 tofore only menaced, is now formidably at- 
 tempted. I hold that in the contemplation 
 of universal law and of the Constitution, the 
 
Abraham Lincoln. 133 
 
 Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetu- 
 ity is implied, if not expressed, in the 
 fundamental law of all national governments. 
 It is safe to assert that no government pro- 
 per ever had a provision in its organic law 
 for its termination. 
 
 If the United States be not a government 
 proper, but an association of States in the 
 nature of a contract merely, can it, as a con- 
 tract, be peaceably unmade by less than all 
 the parties who made it } One party to a 
 contract may violate it — break it, so to 
 speak; but does it not require all to lawfully 
 rescind it ? Descending from these general 
 principles, we find the proposition that, in 
 legal contemplation the Union is perpetual 
 confirmed by the history of the Union 
 itself. 
 
 It follows from these views that no State, 
 upon its own mere motion can lawfully get 
 out of the Union ; that resolves and ordinan- 
 ces to that effect are legally void ; and that 
 acts of violence, wuthin any State or States, 
 
134 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 against the authority of the United States, 
 are insurrectionary or revolutionary, accord- 
 ing to circumstances. 
 
 I therefore consider that, in view of the 
 Constitution and the laws, the Union is un- 
 broken ; and to the extent of my ability 
 I shall take care, as the Constitution itself 
 expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws ot 
 the Union shall be faithfully executed in all 
 the States. 
 
 In doing this there needs to be no blood- 
 shed or violence ; and there shall be none, 
 unless it be forced upon the national au- 
 thority. 
 
 The power confided to me will be used to 
 hold, occupy, and possess the property and 
 places belonging to the government, and 
 to collect the duties and imposts ; but beyond 
 what may be necessary for these objects, 
 there will be no invasion, no using of force 
 against or among the people anywhere. 
 
 No organic law can ever be framed with 
 a provision specifically applicable to every 
 
AbrahaDi Lincoln. 135 
 
 question which may occur in practical ad- 
 ministration. No foresight can anticipate, 
 nor any document of reasonable length con- 
 tain, express provisions for all possible 
 questions. Shall fugitives from labor be 
 surrendered by national or by State author- 
 ity? The Constitution does not expressly 
 say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the 
 Territories ? The Constitution does not ex- 
 pressly say. Must Congress protect slavery 
 in the Territories } The Constitution does 
 not expressly say. From questions of this 
 class spring all our constitutional controver- 
 sies, and we divide upon them into majorities 
 and minorities. 
 
 If the minority wall not acquiesce, the 
 majority must, or the government must 
 cease. There is no other alternative ; for 
 continuing the government is acquiescence 
 on one side or the other. If a minority in 
 such case will secede rather than acquiesce, 
 they make a precedent which, in turn, will 
 divide and ruin them ; for a minority of 
 their own will secede from them whenever 
 
1 36 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 a majority refuses to be controlled by such 
 a minority. 
 
 A majority held in constraint by constitu- 
 tional checks and limitations, and always 
 changing easily with deliberate changes of 
 popular opinions and sentiments, is the only 
 true sovereign of a free people. Whoever 
 rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy 
 or to despotism. 
 
 Physically speaking, we can not separate ; 
 w^e cannot remove our respective sections 
 from each other, nor build an impassable 
 wall between them. A husband and wife 
 may be divorced, and go out of the presence 
 and beyond the reach of each other ; but the 
 different parts of our country can not do 
 this. They can not but remain face to face, 
 and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, 
 must continue between them. Is it possible, 
 then, to make that intercourse more advan- 
 tageous or more satisfactory after separation 
 than before 1 
 
 The Chief Magistrate derives all his au- 
 
Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 terred none upon him to fix the term for the 
 separation of the States. The people them- 
 selves can do this also if they choose ; but 
 the executive, as such, has nothing to do 
 with It. His duty is to administer the pres- 
 ent government, as it came to his hands, and 
 to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his sue- 
 cessor. 
 
 By the frame of the government under 
 which we live, this same people have wisely 
 given their public servants but little power 
 for mischief ; and have, with equal wisdom 
 provided for the return of that little to their 
 own hands at very short intervals. While 
 the people retain their virtue and vigilance 
 no administration, by any extreme of wicked- 
 ness or folly, can very seriously injure the 
 government in the short space of four years. 
 
 My countrymen, one and all, think calmly 
 and well upon this whole subject. Nothing 
 valuable can be lost by taking time If 
 there be an object to hurry any of vou, in 
 hot haste, to a step which you would never 
 
1 38 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 take deliberately, that object will be frus- 
 trated by taking time ; but no good object 
 can be frustrated by it. 
 
 In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-coun- 
 trymen, and not in mine, is the momentous 
 issue of civil war. The government will 
 not assail you. You can have no conflict 
 without being yourselves the aggressors. 
 You have no oath registered in Heaven 
 to destroy the government; while I shall 
 have the most solemn one to "preserve, 
 protect, and defend it." 
 
 I am loath to close. We are not enemies, 
 but friends. We must not be enemies. 
 Though passion may have strained, it must 
 not break our bonds of affection. The 
 mystic chords of memory, stretching from 
 every battlefield and patriot grave to every 
 living heart and hearthstone all over this 
 broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the 
 Union when again touched, as surely they 
 will be, by the better angels of our nature. 
 
AbrahaDi Lincoln. 
 
 ^^9 
 
 Message to Congress— Special Ses- 
 sion. July 4, 1861. 
 In this act, [the attack on Fort Sumter] 
 discarding all else, they have forced upon 
 the country the distinct issue : " immediate 
 dissolution, or blood." 
 
 And this issue embraces more than the 
 fate of these United States. It presents to 
 the whole family of man the question, 
 whether a constitutional republic, or democ- 
 racy,— a government of the people, by the 
 same people— can or cannot maintain its 
 territorial integrity against its own domestic 
 Iocs. ... It forces us to ask : " Is there, 
 in all republics, this inherent and fatal weak- 
 ness } " " Must a government of necessity 
 be too strong for the liberties of its own 
 people, or too weak to maintain its own ex- 
 istence } " 
 
 ^ It might seem, at first thought, to be of 
 little difference whether the present move- 
 ment at the South be called " secession " or 
 "rebellion." The movers, however, well 
 understand the difference, . . . They knew 
 
I40 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 their people possessed as much of moral 
 sense, as much of devotion to law and order 
 and as much pride in and reverence for the 
 history and government of their common 
 country, as any other civilized and patriotic 
 people. . . . They invented an ingenious 
 sophism, which, if conceded, was followed 
 by perfectly logical steps, through all the 
 incidents, to the complete destruction of the 
 Union. The sophism itself is, that any 
 State of the Union may, consistently with 
 the National Constitution, and therefore 
 lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the 
 Union without the consent of the Union or 
 of any other State. 
 
 What is a " sovereignty," in the political 
 sense of the term ? Would it be far wrong 
 to define it " a political community, without 
 a political superior"? Tested by this, no 
 one of our States except Texas ever was a 
 sovereignty. And even Texas gave up the 
 character on coming into the Union. 
 
 The States have their status in the Union, 
 
Abraham Lincoln. 141 
 
 and they have no other legal status. If they 
 break from this, they can only do so against 
 law and by revolution. The Union, and 
 not themselv^es separately, procured their 
 independence and their liberty. 
 
 The nation purchased with money the 
 countries out of which several of these States 
 -were formed. Is it just that they shall 
 go off without leave, and without refund- 
 ing.? .... If one State may secede, so may 
 another : and when all shall have seceded 
 none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite 
 just to creditors ? Did we notify them of 
 this sage view of ours when we borrowed 
 [ their money ? 
 
 Our popular Government has often been 
 \ called an experiment. Two points in it our 
 ; people have already settled — the successful 
 I establishing and the successful administer- 
 ^1 ing of it. One still remains — its successful 
 I maintenance against a formidable internal 
 \ attempt to overthrow it. 
 
 It was with the greatest regret that the 
 
142 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 executive found the duty of employing the 
 war-power in defense of the government 
 forced upon him. lie could but perform 
 this duty or surrender the existence of the 
 government. No compromise by public 
 servants could, in this case, be a cure ; not 
 that compromises are not often proper, but 
 that no popular government can long sur- 
 vive a marked precedent that those who 
 carry an election can only save the Govern- 
 ment from immediate destruction by giving 
 up the main point upon which the people 
 gave the election. The people themselves, 
 and not their servants, can safely reverse 
 their own deliberate decisions. 
 
 To Horace Greeley. 
 
 Aug. 22, 1862. 
 As to the policy I " seem to be pursuing," 
 as you say, I have not meant to leave any 
 one in doubt. I would save the Union, I 
 would save it in the shortest way under the 
 Constitution. . . . My paramount object is 
 to save the Union, and not either to save or 
 destroy slavery. 
 
Abraham Lincoln. 143 
 
 If I could save the Union without freeing 
 any slave, I would do it : if I could save it by 
 freeing all the slaves, I would do it ; and if I 
 could do it by freeing some and leaving 
 others alone, I would also do that. 
 
 What I do about slavery and the colored 
 race, I do because I beheve it helps to save 
 this Union ; and what I forbear, I forbear 
 because I do not believe it would help to 
 save the Union. 
 
 I shall do less whenever I shall believe 
 what I am doing hurts the cause, and I 
 shall do more whenever I believe doing 
 more helps the cause. I shall try to correct 
 errors when shown to be errors, and I shall 
 adopt new views so fast as they shall appear 
 to be true views. 
 
 Preliminary Proclamation of Eman- 
 cipation. September 22, 1862. 
 I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the 
 United States of America, and commander- 
 in-chief of the army and navy thereof, do 
 hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, 
 
144 
 
 as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for 
 the object of practically restoring the Con- 
 stitutional relation between the United States 
 and each of the States, and the people 
 thereof, in which States that relation is or 
 may be suspended or disturbed. 
 
 That it is my purpose, upon the next meet- 
 ing of Congress, to again recommend the 
 adoption of a practical measure tendering 
 pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or 
 rejection of all Slave States, so-called, the 
 people whereof may not then be in rebellion 
 against the United States, and which States 
 may then have voluntarily adopted, or 
 thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate 
 or gradual abolishment of slavery within 
 their respective limits ; . . . . 
 
 That on the first day of January, in the 
 year of our Lord one thousand eight hun- 
 dred and sixty-three, all persons held as 
 slaves within any State or designated part 
 of a State the people whereof shall then be 
 in rebellion against the United States, shall 
 be then, thenceforward, and forever free ; 
 and the Executive Government of the United 
 
Abraham Lincoln. 145 
 
 States, including the military and naval 
 authority thereof, will recognize and main- 
 tain the freedom of such persons, and will 
 do no act or acts to repress such persons, or 
 any of them, in any efforts they may make 
 for their actual freedom. 
 
 Second Annual Message to Congress. 
 December i, 1862. 
 
 A nation may be said to consist of its ter- 
 ritory, its people, and its laws. The terri- 
 tory is the only part which is of certain 
 durability. '* One generation passeth away, 
 and another generation cometh, but the 
 earth abideth forever." It is of the first im- 
 portance to duly consider and estimate this 
 ever-enduring part. . . . 
 
 Our national strife springs not from our 
 permanent part, not from the land we 
 inhabit, not from our national homestead. 
 There is no possible severing of this but 
 would multiply, and not mitigate, evils 
 among us. In all its adaptations and apti- 
 tudes it demands union and abhors separa- 
 tion. In fact, it would ere long force re- 
 
146 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 union, however much of blood and treasure 
 the separation might have cost. 
 
 Our strife pertains to ourselves — to the 
 passing generations of men ; and it can, with- 
 out convulsion, be hushed forever with the 
 passing of one generation, 
 
 [This Message proposed a Constitutional 
 Amendment offering compensation by the 
 United States to all States which should 
 abolish slavery before January i, 1900 ; con- 
 firming the liberty of all slaves freed by the 
 chances of war, with compensation to loyal 
 owners ; and providing for governmental 
 aid in colonizing free colored persons with 
 their own consent. This proposition arose 
 from Mr. Lincoln's sense of justice to the 
 loyal slave-holding Border States, and was 
 meant to provide against the inevitable de- 
 struction of their slave-property when the 
 Final Proclamation should be made. But 
 Congress did not second him, and nothing 
 came of it.] 
 
 Fellow-citizens, we can not escape Iiis- 
 tory. We, of this Congress and this Ad- 
 
Abraham Lincoln. 147 
 
 ministration, will be remembered in spite of 
 ourselves. No personal significance or in- 
 significance can spare one or another of us. 
 The fiery trial through which we pass will 
 light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the 
 latest generation. We say we are for the 
 Union. The world will not forget that we 
 say this. We know how to save the Union. 
 The world knows we do know how to save 
 it. We — even we here — hold the power 
 and bear the responsibility. In giving free- 
 dom to the slave we assure freedom to the 
 free — honorable alike in what we give and 
 what we preserve. We shall nobly save or 
 meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. 
 Other means may succeed ; this could not 
 fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, 
 just, — a way which, if followed, the world 
 will forever applaud, and God must forever 
 bless. 
 
 Final Emancipation Proclamation. 
 January ist, 1863. 
 I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the 
 United States, by virtue of the power in me 
 
148 Patriotic Ntcggcts. 
 
 vested as commander-in-chief of the army 
 and navy of the United States, in time of 
 actual armed rebellion against the authority 
 and government of the United States, and 
 as a tit and necessary w^ar measure for sup- 
 pressing such rebellion, do, on this first_day 
 of January, in the year of our Lord one 
 thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and 
 in accordance with my purpose so to do, 
 publicly proclaimed for the full period of 
 100 days, from the day first above men- 
 tioned, order and designate as the States 
 and parts of States wherein the people 
 thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion 
 against the United States, the following, 
 to wit : . . . . 
 
 And by virtue of the power and for the pur- 
 pose aforesaid, I do order and declare that 
 all persons held as slaves within said 
 designated States and parts of States, are, 
 and henceforward shall be, free ; and that 
 the Executive Government of the United 
 States, including the military and naval 
 authorities, thereof, will recognize and 
 maintain the freedom of said persons. . , . 
 
Abraham Lincoln. 149 
 
 And upon this act, sincerely believed to 
 be an act of justice, warranted by the Con- 
 stitution upon military necessity, I invoke 
 the considerate judgment of mankind, and 
 the gracious favor of Almighty God. 
 
 ToThe Working-Men of Manchester 
 England. January 19, 1863. 
 I have the honor to acknowledge the 
 address and resolutions which you sent me 
 on the eve of the New Year. ... I know 
 and deeply deplore the sufferings which the 
 working-men at Manchester and in all Eu- 
 rope, are called to endure in this crisis. . . . 
 Through the action of our disloyal 
 citizens, the working-men of Europe have 
 been subjected to severe trials, for the 
 purpose of forcing their sanction to that 
 attempt. Under the circumstances I cannot 
 but regard your decisive utterances as an in- 
 stance of sublime Christian heroism which 
 has not been surpassed in any age or in any 
 country. ... I do not doubt that the 
 sentiments you have expressed will be sus- 
 tained by your great nation ; and on the other 
 
150 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 hand, I have no hesitation in assuring you 
 that they will excite admiration, esteem, and 
 the most reciprocal feelings of friendship 
 among the American people. 
 
 To General John M. Schofield. 
 
 [As to Missouri.] May 27, 1863 
 Let your military measures be strong 
 enough to repel the invader and keep the 
 peace, and not so strong as to unnecessarily 
 harrass and persecute the people. It is a 
 difficult role, and so much greater will be the 
 honor if you perform it well. If both fac- 
 tions, or neither, shall abuse you, you will 
 probably be about right. Beware of being 
 assailed by one and praised by the other. 
 
 The Gettysburg Address. 
 
 November 19, 1863. 
 Forescore 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 
 
Abraka?n Lincoln. 151 
 
 war, testing whether that nation, or any 
 nation so conceived and so dedicated, can 
 long endure. We are met on a great battle- 
 field 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 can not dedi- 
 cate — we can not consecrate — we can not 
 hallow — this ground. The brave men, living 
 and dead, who struggled here, have conse- 
 crated it, far above our poor 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 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 devo- 
 tion to that cause for which they gave the 
 last full measure of devotion ; that we 
 here highly resolve that these dead shall not 
 
152 Patriotic Nuggets, 
 
 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, for the people, shall not perish from 1 
 the earth. ; 
 
 To A. G. Hodges. I 
 
 April 4, 1864. I 
 I claim not to have controlled events, but * 
 confess plainly that events have controlled 
 me. ... If God now wills the removal of 
 a great wrong, and wills also that we of the 
 North, as well as you of the South, shall pay '- 
 fairly for our complicity in that wrong, im- 1 
 partial history will find therein new cause to 1 
 attest and revere the justice and goodness . 
 of God. 
 
 Informal Speech, After His Second \ 
 Election. November 10, 1864. 
 The election, along with its incidental and J 
 undesirable strife, has done good, too. It ' 
 has demonstrated that a people's govern- 
 ment can sustain a national election in the 
 midst of a great civil war. Until now, it 
 
Abraham Lmcoln. 153 
 
 has not been known to the world that this 
 was a possibility. ... It shows, also, to 
 the extent yet known, that we have more 
 men now than we had when the war began. 
 Gold is good in its place, but living, brave, 
 patriotic men, are better than gold. 
 
 Fourth Annual Message to Con- 
 gress. December 6, 1864. 
 In stating a single condition of peace, I 
 mean simply to say, that the war will cease 
 on the part of the government whenever it 
 shall have ceased on the part of those who 
 began it. 
 
 Second Inaugural Address. 
 
 March 4, 1865. 
 Neither party expected for the war the 
 magnitude or the duration which it has 
 already attained. Neither anticipated that 
 the cause of the conflict might cease with, or 
 even before, the conflict itself should cease 
 .... The Almighty has his own purposes 
 .... Fondly do we hope — fervently do we 
 pray — that this mighty scourge of war may 
 
154 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 speedily pass away. Yet. if God 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, - The judgments of the Lord 
 are true and righteous altogether." 
 
 With malice toward none ; with charity for 
 all ; 1 with firmness in the right, as God gives j 
 us to see the right, let us strive on to 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 orphan j 
 _to do all which may achieve and cherish a j 
 just and lasting peace among ourselves, and I 
 with all nations. \ 
 
 To Thurlow Weed. ^ 
 
 March 15, 1865. i 
 
 Every one likes a compliment. Thank you , 
 
 for yours on my little notification speech 1 
 
 1 See Webster, page 122. 
 
Abraham Lincoln. 155 
 
 and on the recent inaugural address. I 
 expect the latter to wear as well as — perhaps 
 better than — anything I have produced ; but 
 I believe it is not immediately popular. Men 
 are not flattered by being shown that there 
 has been a difference of purpose between 
 the Almighty and them. ... It is a truth 
 which I thought needed to be told, and, as 
 whatever of humiliation there is in it falls 
 most directly on myself, I thought others 
 might afford for me to tell it. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's Last Speech. 
 
 April II, 1865. 
 By these recent successes [the evacuation 
 of Petersburg and Richmond, and Lee's Sur- 
 render] the reinauguration of the national 
 authority — reconstruction — which has had a 
 large share of thought from the first, is 
 pressed much more closely upon our atten- 
 tion. It is fraught with great difficulty. 
 Unlike a case of war between indepen- 
 dent nations, there is no authorized organ 
 for us to treat with — no one man has authority 
 to give up the rebellion for any other man. 
 
1 56 Patriotic Ni4ggets. ; 
 
 We simply must begin with and mould from 
 disorganized and discordant elements. Nor : 
 is it a small additional embarrassment ; 
 that we, the loyal people, differ among our- 
 selves as to the mode, manner, and measure | 
 of reconstruction. 
 
 We all agree that the seceded States, so- | 
 called, are out of their proper practical re- j 
 lation with the Union, and that the sole object 
 of the government, civil and military, in re- * 
 gard to those States, is to again get them into j 
 that proper practical relation. I believe that \ 
 it is not only possible, but in fact easier to do J 
 this without deciding or even considering ^ 
 whether these States have ever been out of \ 
 the Union, than with it. Finding themselves , 
 safely at home, it would be utterly immater- • 
 ial whether they had ever been abroad. Let 
 us all join in doing the acts necessary to re- 
 storing the proper practical relations between 
 these States and the Union, and each for- 
 ever after innocently indulge his own 
 opinion whether in doing the acts he 
 brought the States from without into the 
 
Abrahaf?i Lhicoln. 157 
 
 Union, or only gave them proper assistance, 
 they never having been out of it. 
 
 So great peculiarities pertain to each State, 
 and such important and sudden changes 
 occur in the same State, and withal so new 
 and unprecedented is the whole case that no 
 exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be 
 precribed as to details and collaterals. 
 Such exclusive and inflexible plan would 
 surely become a new entanglement. Im- 
 portant principles may, and must, be inflexi- 
 ble. 
 
HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
 
 "To his undying: fame the world and his memory 
 stand in no need of witnesses." 
 
 —William Ewart Gladstone. 
 
 Shall We Compromise? 
 
 February 21, 1850. 
 These oppugnant elements, Slavery and 
 Liberty, — inherent in our political system, 
 animating our constitution, checkering our 
 public policy, breeding in statesmen opposite 
 principles of government, and making our 
 whole wisdom of public legislation on many 
 of the greatest questions cross-eyed and con- 
 tradictory, — these elements are seeking each 
 other's life. One or the other must die. 
 
 Let no man suppose that the contentions 
 which now agitate the land have sprung 
 from the rash procedure of a few men — 
 the hot heads either of the North or of the 
 South. We are in the midst of a collision 
 not of men, but of principles and political 
 institutions. 
 
i6o Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 We believe that the compromises of the 
 Constitution looked to the destruction of sla- 
 very and not to its establishment. 
 
 There never was a plainer question for 
 the North. It is her duty openly, firmly, 
 and forever to refuse to slavery another inch 
 of territory, and to see that it never gets 
 any by fraud. . . .The path of Duty, though 
 a steep one, and often toilsome, is always 
 straight and plain. Those are the labyrin- 
 thine roads, which, winding through sloughs 
 and thickets, or embosked and dark, seek to 
 find a way around the rocks and steeps, and 
 to come to the gate of Success without 
 climbing the hill of Difficulty. 
 
 Article in the Independent [Fremont 
 Campaign]. June 26, 1856. 
 
 Mr. Buchanan, in his letter of acceptance, 
 holds out to the North the ever grateful and 
 always deceitful promise of peace. . . . 
 Every vote for him is a vote for war. No 
 doubt Mr. Buchanan may desire to admin- 
 ister for peace. But when a man has gone 
 
Henry JVard Beecher. i6i 
 
 oat into the rapids, what he wishes has very 
 little to do with the question of his going 
 over the falls. . . . The [Democratic] Plat- 
 form lies before the public as a man-of-war 
 lies peacefully at anchor. Her sides are 
 still. Her decks are quiet. Her magazine 
 sleeps. She is peaceful indeed, and yet she 
 is stuffed full of materials that only need a 
 quickening, and every port-hole will fly open, 
 every cannon blaze, and the whole ship belch 
 thunder and lightning with broadsides of 
 death. 
 
 Until liberty controls the institutions of 
 liberty, until freemen rule in the land of 
 freedom, we shall have nothing but disturb- 
 ance. 
 
 The Nation's Duty to Slavery. 
 October 30, 1859. 
 After John Brown's Raid. 
 I certainly think that even slaves would be 
 made immeasurably better by liberty ; but I 
 do not believe they would be made better by 
 liberty gained by insurrection or rebellion in 
 
i62 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 the peculiar circumstances which surround 
 them at the South. . . . Freedom, with a law 
 and government, is an unspeakable good, 
 but without them is a mischief. And any 
 
 thing that tends to incite among men a vague ' 
 
 insurrectionary spirit is a great and cruel , 
 
 wrong to them. | 
 
 ] 
 
 We must quicken all the springs of feel- \ 
 ing in the Free States in behalf of human 
 
 liberty, and create a public sentiment, based , 
 
 upon truths of Christian manhood. For if j 
 
 we act to any good purpose on ihe minds of . 
 
 the South, we must do it through a salutary j 
 
 and pure public sentiment in the North. j 
 
 When we have corrected our own prac- j 
 
 tice, and set an example of the right spirit, \ 
 
 then we shall have a position from which to j 
 
 exert a beneficial public influence on the : 
 
 minds of Southern slaveholders. For this j 
 
 there must be full and free discussion. ''{ 
 
 Under our institutions, public opinion is the ,i 
 
 monarch ; and free speech and debate form ] 
 
 public opinion. J 
 
Henry Ward Beecher. 163 
 
 If you wish to work for the enfranchise- 
 ment of the African, seek to make him a 
 better man. Teach him to be an obedient 
 servant, and an honest, true, Christian man. 
 These virtues are God's step-stones to Hb- 
 erty. . . . Truth, honor, fidelity, manhood, — 
 these things in the slave will prepare him 
 for freedom. It is the low animal condi- 
 tion of the African that enslaves him. 
 It is moral enfranchisement that will break 
 his bonds. 
 
 Against a Compromise of Principle. 
 November 29, i860. 
 Crowns were once made of gold beaten 
 out on the people's back. Now the strong- 
 est crowns are made of paper, — the paper 
 votes of the common people. 
 
 It is always safe to be right ; and our 
 business is not so much to seek peace as to 
 seek the causes of peace. Expedients are 
 for an hour, but principles are for the ages. 
 
 Can any man believe that peace can come 
 by comproinise } It is a delusive hope. « „ . 
 
164 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 Compromises are only procrastinations of 
 an inevitable settlement, with the added 
 burden of accumulated interest. 
 
 Our Blameworthiness. 
 
 January 4, 1861. 
 The same thing leads to the oppression 
 of laborers among us that leads to oppres- 
 sion on the plantation. The grinding of the 
 poor, the advantages which capital takes of 
 labor, the oppression of the farm, the oppres- 
 sion of the road, the oppression of the shop, 
 the oppression of the ship, are all of the 
 same central nature, and as guilty before 
 God as the more systematic and overt 
 oppressions of the plantation. It is always 
 the old human heart that sins. North or 
 South ; and the natures of pride and of dis- 
 honesty are universal. We have our own 
 account to render. 
 
 I should violate my own convictions, if, 
 in the presence of more nearly present and 
 more exciting influences, I should neglect 
 to mention the sins of this nation against the 
 
Henry IVard Beecher, 165 
 
 Indian, who, as much as the slave, is dumb, 
 but who, unlike the slave, has almost 
 none to think of him, and to speak of his 
 wrongs. ... It is a sorry commentary on a 
 Christian nation, and indeed upon religion 
 itself, that the freest and most boastfully re- 
 ligious people on the globe are absolutely 
 fatal to any weaker people that they touch. 
 
 If the Bible can be opened that all the 
 fiends of hell may, as in a covered passage, 
 walk through it to do mischief on earth, I say, 
 blessed be infidels ! . . . . [But] wherever 
 the Bible has been allowed to be free, wher- 
 ever it has been knocked out of the king's 
 hand, and out of the priest's hand, it has 
 carried light like the morning sun, rising over 
 hill and vale round and round the world ; and 
 will do it again ! 
 
 The Battle Set in Array. 
 
 April 14, 1861. 
 The whole lesson of the past, then, is that 
 safety and honor come by holding fast to 
 one's principles; by pressing them with 
 
1 66 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 courage ; by going into darkness and defeat 
 cheerfully for them. 
 
 Eighty years of unexampled prosperity 
 have gone far toward making us a people 
 that judge of moral questions by their rela- 
 tion to our convenience and ease. . . . 'And 
 now if it please God to do that which daily 
 we pray that he may avert, — if it please God 
 to wrap this nation in war, — one result will 
 follow : we shall be called to suffer for our 
 faith. We shall be called to the heroism of 
 doing and daring, and bearing and suffering, 
 for the things which we believe to be vital to 
 the salvation of this people. 
 
 On these conditions we may have peace. 
 If we reject these conditions we are to have 
 separation, demoralization of government, 
 and war. . . . If you have peace, you are to 
 stigmatize the whole history of the past ; you 
 are to yield your religious convictions ; you 
 are to give over the government into the 
 hands of factious revolutionists ; you are to 
 suppress every manly sentiment, and every 
 
Henry Ward Beecher. 167 
 
 sympathy for the oppressed. . . . Give me 
 a war redder than blood and fiercer than fire, 
 if this terrific infliction is necessary that I 
 may maintain my faith of God in human 
 liberty, my faith of the fathers in the instru- 
 ments of liberty, my faith in this land as the 
 appointed abode and chosen refuge of liberty 
 for all the earth ! War is terrible, but that 
 abyss of ignominy is yet more terrible. 
 
 The National Flag. ^ 
 
 May, 1 86 1. 
 A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's 
 flag, sees not the flag but the nation itself. 
 And whatever may be its symbols, its insig- 
 nia, he reads chiefly in the flag the govern- 
 ment, the principles, the truths, the history, 
 that belong to the nation that sets it forth. 
 
 This nation has a banner, too ; and until 
 recently wherever it streamed abroad men 
 saw daybreak bursting on their eyes. . . . 
 The stars upon it were to the pining nations 
 
 1 Delivered to two companies of the " Brooklyn 
 Fourteenth Volunteer Regiment,'" many of them 
 members of Plymouth Church. 
 
Patriotic Nitggets, 
 
 like the bright morning stars of God, and the 
 stripes upon it were beams of morning light. 
 As at early dawn the stars shine forth even 
 while it grows light, and then as the sun 
 advances that light breaks into banks and 
 streaming lines of color, the glowing red and 
 intense white striving together and ribbing 
 the horizon with bars effulgent, so, on the 
 American flag, stars and beams of many- 
 colored light shine out together. ... It is 
 the banner of dawn. It means Liberty ; and 
 the galley-slave, the poor oppressed conscript, 
 the trodden-down creature of foreign des- 
 potism, sees in the American flag that very 
 promise and prediction of God, — " The people 
 which sat in darkness saw a great light ; and 
 to them which sat in the region and shadow 
 of death light is sprung up." 
 
 How glorious, then, has been its origin ! 
 How glorious has been its history ! How 
 divine is its meaning ! In all the world is 
 there another banner that carries such hope, 
 such grandeur of spirit, such soul-inspiring 
 truth, as our dear old American flag, made 
 
Henry Ward Beecher. 169 
 
 by liberty, made for liberty, nourished in its 
 spirit, carried in its service, and never, not 
 once in all the earth, made to stoop to des- 
 potism ! Never, — did I say ? Alas ! Only 
 to that worst despotism. Southern Slavery, 
 has it bovired ! Remember, every one of you, 
 that the slaveholders of the South, alone of all 
 the world, have put their feet upon the Amer- 
 ican flag ! 
 
 Accept it, then, in all its fullness of mean- 
 ing. It is not a painted rag. It is a whole 
 national history. It is the Constitution. It 
 is the government. It is the free people that 
 stand in the government on the Constitution. 
 Forget not what it means ; and for the sake 
 of its ideas, rather than its mere emblazonry, 
 be true to your country's flag. By your 
 hands lift it ; but let your lifting it be no 
 holiday display. It must be advanced "<5^- 
 cause of the truth.'" 
 
 The Camp, its Dangers and Duties. 
 
 May, 1 86 1. 
 It has been the policy of this nation to dis- 
 courage standing armies. It is a wise 
 
1 70 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 policy, and it never appeared so wise as now. 
 Standing armies are always dangerous ; and 
 I can hardly doubt that, had there been a 
 hundred thousand soldiers subject to the 
 control of the men just ejected from this 
 government, our liberties would have been 
 in peril. . . . The theory of our people has 
 been, that, as the common people framed 
 their government, administer their govern- 
 ment, and are the sources of power and of 
 political influence in that government, so 
 and in like manner the common people shall 
 be their own soldiers, and do their own 
 fighting, when it is necessary. War will 
 not be unnecessarily provoked when the men 
 that provoke the war are obliged themselves 
 to wage it. 
 
 Modes and Duties of Emancipation. 
 November 26, 1861. 
 If there be in the hand of the war-power, 
 as John Quincy Adams thought there was, 
 a right of emancipation, then let that be 
 shown, and, in God's name, be employed ! 
 But if there be given to us no right by our 
 
Henry Ward Beecher. i^ji 
 
 Constitution to enter upon the States with a 
 legislation subversive of their whole interior 
 economy, not all the mischiefs of slavery, 
 and certainly not our own impatience under 
 its burdens and vexations, should tempt us 
 to usurp it. This conflict must be carried on 
 through our institutions, not over them. 
 Revolution is not the remedy for rebellion. 
 The exercise on the part of our government 
 of unlawful powers cannot be justified, ex- 
 cept to save the nation from absolute de- 
 struction. . . . This is not a plea against 
 immediate emancipation ; it is but a solemn 
 caution, lest, smarting from wrong, we 
 seize the opportunity inconsiderately to de- 
 stroy one evil by a process that shall leave 
 us at the mercy of all others that time may 
 bring. 
 
 The Success of American Democracy. 
 April 13, 1862. 
 There are such things as American ideas, 
 distinctive, peculiar, national. Not that 
 they were first discovered here, or that they 
 are entertained only here ; but because more 
 
172 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 than anywhere else they lie at the root of in- 
 stitutions, 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. . . . We stand in contrast 
 with the world in holding and teaching it ; 
 that men, having been once thoroughly 
 educated, are to be absolutely trusted. 
 
 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 govern- 
 ing class, too ; and that governing class is 
 the whole people. It is a slower work, be- 
 cause it is so much larger. 
 
 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. 
 
Henry Ward Beecher. 173 
 
 A foreigner would think, pending a presi- 
 dential 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 gover?i- 
 7}ie7it strong enough to hold them. Nothing 
 but j-^^-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. 
 
 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 dan- 
 gerous abroad, is our very safety. 
 
 National Injustice and Penalty. 
 September 28, 1862. 
 It is important to know that the govern- 
 
174 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 ment of God over nations is conducted by 
 an administration of natural laws. ... It is 
 said that natural laws are stated and immut- 
 able. That is very well for a popular expres- 
 sion, but it will not bear examination. For 
 there is nothing that is less immutable than 
 a law ; nothing that is adapted to have more 
 elasticity ; nothing that may be more end- 
 lessly varied by the degree of intelligence 
 that you bring to bear upon it, and the ad- 
 vantage which you choose to take of it. . . 
 And the difference between civilization and 
 barbarism is the difference between knowing 
 how to use natural laws and not knowing 
 how to use them. 
 
 It takes longer to make a nation account- 
 able than an individual. But in its longer 
 period a nation is held accountable for just 
 exactly the same things that an individual is. 
 For a million men have no right, because 
 they are a million, to do what each individ- 
 ual one of them has no right to do, against a 
 natural law. 
 
 The South has taken such an unfortunate 
 
Hejiry Ward Beecher. 175 
 
 position in this war, for slavery, and she has 
 sinned against such great light, that God is 
 bringing down upon her condign punishment. 
 We, too, are suffering in the North, and 
 in the same way that we ought to. ... I 
 am not making complaint against the South 
 distinctively, but against the Nation. And 
 by the time you have paid two thousand 
 million dollars of taxes, and have but just be- 
 gun, I think that the Lord will have got back 
 pretty much all that the North has made out 
 of slavery ! God is a great tax-gatherer ; he 
 is out now on that errand ; and he will have 
 a prosperous time ! 
 
 The Ground and Forms of Govern- 
 ment. November 22, 1862. 
 
 Governments are always the legitimate 
 outworkings of the condition of those gov- 
 erned ; and there cannot, for any prolonged 
 period, be a government that is not, in the 
 nature of things, adapted to those under 
 it. . . . Governments are shadows that na- 
 tions and peoples themselves cast ; and they 
 usually measure in some degree the propor- 
 
176 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 tions of the peoples or nations that cast 
 them. . . . When all men are ignorant, you 
 will have absolute monarchies ; when a part 
 are intelligent and the rest are ignorant, you 
 will have aristocracies ; and when the whole 
 are intelligent, you will have democracies, or 
 republican governments. 
 
 Republican governments cannot be had 
 by any mere legislation. They must be the 
 effect of compelling causes. Government is 
 an outworking of the spirit of the people, 
 and it holds a constant relation to their 
 actual condition. If men are ignorant, or 
 morally low, even under republics, they 
 will cease to be self-governing. . . . Yet, 
 in spite of all delays and retrocessions and 
 plottings, unquestionably the human race is 
 developing right on toward this final and best 
 form of government. . . . And the tendency 
 of the whole world at present, in every, one 
 of its departments, is to develop the common 
 people. 
 
 If you examine the tendency of inven- 
 tions and mechanic arts, you shall find that, 
 
Henry Ward Beecher. 177 
 
 although they work for all men, they do 
 not work half so much for the rich, the 
 strong, and the wise, as they do for the 
 poor, the weak, and the ignorant. . . . 
 There is not a truckman in New York that 
 does not live better than Alexander lived. 
 There is not a seamstress that does not have 
 on her table things that would have made 
 Queen Elizabeth stare. Take the bill of 
 provender, I was going to say, of Shakes- 
 peare's time. You might almost call it fodder, 
 it was so coarse, and so much like animal's 
 food. We should think ourselves treated 
 worse than the prisoners at Sing Sing, if we 
 had to live as the royalty did three or four 
 hundred years ago. They would have been 
 glad to live as our poor people live now, who 
 are clothed better than they were, who have 
 better houses than they had, and whose in- 
 struments of labor necessitate less drudgery 
 than theirs did. 
 
 And that which is true of mechanic arts is 
 also true of literature. If you go back to 
 the time of Sterne and Swift, you shall not 
 
178 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 find, I had almost said, a single generous, 
 humanitarian sentiment in their writings. . . . 
 The literature of the globe to-day is humane, 
 at least, if it is not spiritual. 
 
 More and more every year pictures are 
 coming to be owned by persons of moderate 
 and slender means, because they have an ap- 
 petite for beauty, and must have beauty to 
 feed it. 
 
 Once nobody could own a book unless he 
 had a fortune. Now a man that cannot 
 afford to own a book ought to die. 
 
 And as in respect to these elements, so in 
 respect to learning and education. Always 
 the rich have been able to educate their 
 children. Not always have the poor been 
 able to do it. But now everything is work- 
 ing toward the education of the common 
 people. 
 
 Money, — will that buy you ? Then stand 
 for liberty. A slave made free will pur- 
 chase a hundred dollar's worth at your fac- 
 tory where a slave in bondage will purchase 
 
Henry Ward Beecher. 179 
 
 one dollar's worth. . . . The first state of a 
 man, like the first state of a tree, may be 
 simplicity, and he may be, as it were, a single 
 whip ; but as he begins to grow he will 
 throw out branches, and these branches will 
 throw out other branches, and those will 
 throw out others, and he will take in more 
 by root and leaf. Every interest that makes 
 money and intelligence pleads for a policy of 
 liberty. 
 
 Liberty Under Laws. 
 
 December 28, 1862. 
 What, then, is Liberty, — the source or 
 fountain of which all other liberties are but 
 streams or defluctions ? . . . . There can be 
 no such thing as absolute liberty, — that is, 
 the liberty of acting according to our own 
 wishes, without hindrance and without 
 limitation : for man is created to act by 
 means of certain laws. ... As toward God, 
 liberty means obedience to laws ; and it is 
 only when we are disputed in the right of 
 this obedience by men, that we begin to get 
 an idea of liberty. 
 
I So Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 It is this obedience to law that makes such 
 liberty safe, and gives society such benefits 
 from it. If it was a liberty that gave a man 
 a right to do anything that he pleased, it 
 might be dangerous. It would then be what 
 is in the Bible called licentiousness. But 
 where it consists in the right of a man to 
 follow out divine laws as they are written in 
 him, then the more broad that liberty is, the 
 more perfectly regulated and ordered and 
 safe will the man's life be. 
 
 It is a serious responsibility that goes with 
 liberty : if you have it, you must use it in 
 the fear of God for the good of others as 
 well as for your own good. 
 
 Speech in Manchester, England. 
 October 9, 1863. 
 
 Let me say one word here about the Con- 
 stitution of America. It recognizes slavery 
 as di fact ; but it does not recognize the 
 doctrine of slavery in any way whatever. It 
 was a fact ; it lay before the ship of state, as 
 a rock lies in the channel of the ship as she 
 
H€7iry Ward Beecher. i8i 
 
 goes into harbor ; and because a ship steers 
 round a rock, does it follow that that rock is 
 in the ship ? And because the Constitution 
 of the United States made some circuits to 
 steer round that great fact, does it follow 
 that therefore slavery is recognized in the 
 Constitution as a right or a system ? 
 
 What was it, then, when the country had 
 advanced so far towards universal emancipa- 
 tion in the period of our national forma- 
 tion, that stopped this onward tide ? Two 
 things, commercial and political. First, the 
 wonderful demand for cotton throughout 
 the world, precisely when, from the invention 
 of the cotton gin, it became easy to turn it 
 to service. Slaves that before had been 
 worth from three to four hundred dollars 
 began to be worth six hundred dollars ; 
 that knocked away one-third of adherence 
 to the moral law. Then they became worth 
 seven hundred dollars, — and half the law 
 went ; then eight or nine hundred dollars, — 
 and there was no such thing as moral law : 
 then one thousand or twelve hundred 
 
1 82 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 dollars,— and slavery became one of the 
 Beatitudes. 
 
 The institutions of America were shaped 
 by the North ; but the policy of her govern- 
 ment, for half a hundred years, by the 
 South. . . . And now, since Britain has 
 been snubbed by the Southerners, and 
 threatened by the Southerners, and dom- 
 ineered over by the Southerners — yet now 
 Great Britain has thrown her arms of love 
 around the Southerners and turns from the 
 Northerners. [Cr/Vj of No, no/ ] She don't ? 
 I have only to say that she has been caught 
 in very suspicious circumstances. [Laughter 
 and applause?\ I so speak, perhaps as much 
 as anything else, for this very sake — to bring 
 out from you this expression. ... I want 
 you to say to me, and through me to my 
 countrymen, that those irritations against the 
 North, and those likings for the South, that 
 have been expressed in your papers, are not 
 the feelings of the great mass of your nation. 
 {Great cheering, the audience rising.] Those 
 cheers already sound in my ears as the com- 
 
Henry Ward Beccher. i S3 
 
 ing acclamations of friendly nations — those 
 waving handkerchiefs are the white banners 
 that symbolize peace for all countries. 
 {^Cheers ^^ Join with us then, Britons. 
 {Cheers ?[ From you we learnt the doctrine 
 of what a man was worth ; from you we 
 learnt to detest all oppressions ; from you we 
 learnt that it was the noblest thing a man 
 could do to die for a right principle. And 
 now, when we are set in that very course, 
 and are giving our best blood for the most 
 sacred principles, let the world understand 
 that the common people of Great Britain 
 support us. 
 
 The question was put to the South, and 
 with the exception of South Carolina, every 
 State iji the South gave a popular vote 
 against secession ; and yet, such was the 
 jugglery of political leaders, that before a 
 few months had passed, they had precipitated 
 every State into secession. That never could 
 have occurred had there been in the Southern 
 States an educated common people. But the 
 slave power cheats the poor whites of intel- 
 ligence, in order to rob the poor blacks. 
 
184 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 Against all these facts, it is attempted to 
 make England believe that slavery has had 
 nothing to do with this war. You might as 
 well have attempted to persuade Noah that 
 the clouds had nothing to do with the flood. 
 
 Speech in Edinburgh, Scotland. 
 October 24, 1863. 
 
 If you let a steam engine, when it is full of 
 steam, hiss at the rivets, with the scape- 
 valve open, it cannot explode ; but if the 
 steam is shut up, and the valve closed, it 
 will be still for a moment, and then, like thun- 
 der, it will go off ! So it was in regard to 
 this subject [Abolition of Slavery]. Those 
 who discussed it, became convinced of its 
 truth ; but those who would not permit it to 
 be spoken of, and shut it up, brought on ex- 
 plosion. 
 
 Farewell Breakfast, Manchester, 
 
 England. October 24, 1863. 
 I do not mean merely what you mean here 
 by the "intelligent classes." The phrase 
 with us includes farmers, mechanics, the very 
 
Henry Ward Beecher. 185 
 
 bulk of our people. For it is the legitimate 
 effect of democratic instruction, that no line 
 can be drawn between the college-educated 
 man at the top, and the common-school-ed- 
 ucated man at the bottom. A thoroughly 
 educated common people, with collegiate 
 men to be their leaders and mouthpieces, in 
 sympathy with them, — all moving together, — 
 is better than any society where the bottom 
 is ignorant, and the top is educated. 
 
 Farewell Breakfast, Liverpool, 
 England. October 30, 1863. 
 
 It takes time for a great unorganized, and 
 to a certain extent unvoting, public opinion, 
 underneath institutions, to create that grand 
 swell that lifts the whole ark up. 
 
 Great Britain is herself undergoing a pro- 
 cess of gradual internal change. All living 
 nations are undergoing such changes. No 
 nation abides fixed in institutions, until it 
 abides in death. 
 
 It is said that up to the time of the trouble 
 of the Trent, England was with us, but from 
 
1 86 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 that time she went rapidly over the other 
 way. That was merely the occasion, but 
 not the cause. I understand it to have been 
 this — that there were a great many men and 
 classes of men in England that feared the 
 reactionary influences of American ideas 
 upon the internal conflicts of England her- 
 self. 
 
 There is to be a commerce yet on this 
 globe, compared with which all we have 
 ever had will be but as the size of the hand 
 compared with the cloud that belts the 
 hemisphere. There is to be a resurrection 
 of nations ; there is to be a civilization that 
 shall bring even that vast populous conti- 
 nent of Asia into new forms of life, with new 
 demands. There is to be a time when lib- 
 erty shall bless the nations of the earth and 
 expand their minds in their own homes ; 
 when men shall want more and shall buy 
 more, . . . Instead, therefore, of wasting 
 energy, peace, and manhood in miserable, 
 petty jealousies, trans-Atlantic or cis-Atlan- 
 tic, the business of England, as of America, 
 
Henry Ward Beecher. 187 
 
 should be to strike those key-notes of lib- 
 erty, to sound those deep chords of human 
 rights, that shall raise the nations of the 
 earth and make them better customers be- 
 cause they are broader men. 
 
 I do not say that our American example 
 will reach to the essential reconstruction of 
 any principles in your edifice. . . . There is 
 a latent feeling that American ideas are in 
 natural antagonism with aristocracy. They 
 are not. American ideas are merely these — 
 that the end of government is the benefit 
 of the governed. . . . And if that idea is con- 
 sistent with monarchy and aristocracy, why 
 should you fear any change ? 
 
 More than warehouses, more than ships, 
 more than all harvests and every material 
 form of wealth is the treasure of a nation in 
 the manhood of her tnen. We could have 
 afforded to have our stores of wheat 
 burnt, — there is wheat to plant again. We 
 could have afforded to have our farms 
 burnt, — our farms can spring again from 
 beneath the ashes. If we had sunk our 
 
1 88 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 ships, — there is timber to build new ones. 
 Had we burnt every house, — there is stone 
 and brick left for skill again to construct 
 them. Perish every material element of 
 wealth, but give me the citizen intact : give 
 me the man that fears God and therefore 
 loves man, and the destruction of the mere 
 outside fabric is nothing — nothing ! 
 
 How many families do I know, in which 
 once was the voice of gladness, where now 
 mother and father sit childless ! How many 
 heirs of wealth, how many scions of old 
 families, well cultured, the heirs to every 
 apparent prosperity in time to come, flung 
 themselves into their country's cause, and 
 died bravely fighting for it. And every such 
 name has become a name of power, and who- 
 ever hears it hereafter shall feel a thrill in his 
 heart, — self devotion, heroic patriotism, love 
 of his kind, love of liberty, love of God ! 
 
 Home-Reception in Brooklyn. 
 November 19, 1863. 
 I do not hesitate to say, what I did not say 
 in Great Britain, that, not for any material 
 
Hen7'y Ward BeecJier, 
 
 reason, but for a moral reason, we need her ; 
 and I say more than that, for moral reasons 
 she needs us. For the sake of man, for the 
 cause of God, for the hope of civilization, 
 the two great nations of the earth, carrying 
 a civilization which is derived from and 
 which carries with it the common people 
 and their uplifting in civilization — these two 
 great Christian nations — • .... let these 
 stand together to pour out to every part of 
 the earth the influence of Christianity, civil- 
 ization, and human liberty. 
 
 Fort Sumter Flag-Raising. 
 
 April 14, 1865. 
 Rebellion has perished. But there flies 
 the same flag that was insulted. With 
 starry eyes it looks all over this bay for the 
 banner that supplanted it, and sees it not. 
 You that then, for the day, were humbled, 
 are here again, to triumph once and forever. 
 In the storm of that assault this glorious 
 ensign was often struck ; but, memorable 
 fact, not one of its stars was torn out, by 
 shot or by shell. It was a prophecy ! 
 
190 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 Reverently, piously, in hopeful patriotism, 
 we spread this banner on the sky, as of old 
 the bow was planted on the cloud; and, 
 with solemn fervor, beseech God to look 
 upon it, and make it the memorial of an 
 everlasting covenant and decree that never 
 again on this fair land shall a deluge of 
 blood prevail. 
 
 Rise up, then, glorious Gospel banner, 
 and roll out these messages of God. Tell 
 the air that not a spot now sullies thy white- 
 ness. Thy red is not the blush of shame, 
 but the flush of joy. Tell the dews that 
 wash thee that thou art as pure as they. 
 Say to the night, that thy stars lead toward 
 the morning: and to the morning, that a 
 brighter day arises with healing in its 
 beams. And then, O glorious flag, bid the 
 sun pour light on all thy folds with double 
 brightness, whilst thou art bearing around 
 and round the world the solemn joy — a race 
 set free ! A nation redeemed ! 
 
 A people educated and moral are compe- 
 tent to all the exigencies of national life. 
 
Henry Ward Beecher, 191 
 
 A vote can govern better than a crown. We 
 have proved it. A people intelligent and 
 religious are strong in all economic ele- 
 ments. They are fitted for peace and 
 competent to war. They are not easily 
 inflamed ; and when justly incensed, not 
 easily extinguished. They are patient in 
 adversity, endure cheerfully needful burdens, 
 tax themselves for real wants more royally 
 than any prince would dare to tax his 
 people. 
 
 It is not our business to subdue nations, 
 but to augment the powers of the common 
 people. The vulgar ambition of mere dom- 
 ination, as it belongs to universal human 
 nature, may tempt us ; but it is withstood by 
 the whole force of our principles, our habits, 
 our precedents, and our legends. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 April 23, 1865. 
 Lincoln was a man from the common 
 people that never forgot his kind. And 
 now that he who might not bear the march, 
 
192 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 and the toil, and the battle with these hum- 
 ble citizens has been called to die by the 
 bullet, as they were, do you not feel that there 
 was a peculiar fitness to his nature and life 
 that he should in death be joined with them 
 in a final common experience to whom he 
 had been joined in all his sympathies ? 
 
 Lincoln was slain ; America was meant. 
 The man was cast down ; the government 
 was smitten at. It was the President who 
 was killed. It was national life, breathing 
 freedom and meaning beneficence, that was 
 sought. . . . The blow, however, has sig- 
 nally failed. The cause is not stricken ; it is 
 strengthened. This nation has dissolved — ■ 
 but in tears only. It stands, four-square, 
 more solid to-day than any pyramid in 
 Egypt. This people are neither wasted, nor 
 daunted, nor disordered. Men hate slavery 
 and love liberty with stronger hate and love 
 to-day than ever before. The government is 
 not weakened, it is made stronger. How 
 naturally and easily were the ranks closed ! 
 
He7iry Ward Beecher. 193 
 
 Republican institutions have been vindi- 
 cated in this experience as they never were 
 before ; and the v^^hole history of the last 
 four years, rounded up by this cruel stroke, 
 seems now in the providence of God to have 
 been clothed with an illustration, with a sym- 
 pathy, with an aptness, and with a signifi- 
 cance, such as we never could have expected 
 or imagined. God, I think, has said, by the 
 voice of this event, to all nations of the 
 earth, '* Republican liberty, based upon true 
 Christianity, is firm as the foundation of the 
 globe." 
 
 Conditions of a Restored Union. 
 October 29, 1865. 
 
 Suffrage in our community is not a privi- 
 lege, or a prerogative, but a natural right. 
 That is to say, if there is any such thing as a 
 natural right, a man has a natural right to 
 determine the laws that involve his life, and 
 liberty, and property. ... It is not giving 
 the colored man a privilege to allow him to 
 vote ; it is developing a long dormant natural 
 right. He has a right to citizenship because 
 
I 94 Patrwfic Nuggets. 
 
 he is a man, unless he has forfeited it by 
 crime. 
 
 1 know there are many to whom this sub- 
 ject is unwelcome, and who say, " It seems 
 as though there never would be an end of 
 this negro agitation." There are many that 
 say, " Ever since I was born I have break- 
 fasted, and dined, and supped upon this 
 Negro. He is in the pulpit, in conventions, in 
 caucuses, everywhere !".... Just as quick 
 as you are willing to trust your own Ameri- 
 can principles, just as quick as you put into 
 practice your own American doctrine that 
 all men are born equal, and have i?ialien- 
 able rights^ he will sink out of notice as a 
 vexation. 
 
 Letter to the Cleveland (O.) 
 Convention. August 30, 1866. 
 Civilization is a growth. None can escape 
 that forty years in the wilderness who travel 
 from the Egypt of ignorance to the prom- 
 ised land of civilization. The freedmen 
 must take their march. I have full faith in 
 the results. If they have the stamina to 
 
Henry Ward Beecher. 195 
 
 undergo the hardships which every uncivil- 
 ized people has undergone in its upward 
 progress, they will in due time take their 
 place among us. That place cannot be 
 bought, nor bequeathed, nor gained by 
 sleight of hand. It will come to sobriety, 
 virtue, industry, and frugality. 
 
 Letter to a Parishioner. 
 
 September 8, 1866. 
 As I look back upon my course, I see no 
 deviation from the straight line which I have 
 made, without wavering, for now thirty years 
 in public life, in favor of justice, liberty, and 
 the elevation of the poor and ignorant. . . . 
 Not by the luster of arms, even in a just 
 cause, would I seek her [the Nation's] glory, 
 but by a civilization that should carry its 
 blessings down to the lowest classes, and 
 nourish the very roots of society by her moral 
 power and purity, by her public conscience, 
 her political justice, and by her intelligent 
 homes, filling up a continent, and rearing a 
 virtuous and noble citizenship. 
 
196 Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 National Unity. 
 
 November 18, 1869. 
 As the Nile in its great annual rise brings 
 down something of the soil of every forma- 
 tion through a thousand miles, and deposits 
 it as slime for the sun to turn to soil and 
 fruitfulness ; as the Mississippi with its 
 great tributary, the Missouri, carries to the fat 
 regions around its delta a tribute gathered 
 from almost every point of latitude and 
 longitude on the continent, so upon these 
 United States, with annual deposit, come the 
 immigrating freshets of the world. It falls 
 upon us like mud. It shall be our richest 
 soil. When it is aerated, and when intelli- 
 gence and religion and liberty shall have 
 penetrated it, it will be most precious. 
 
 Our institutions are the best if they are 
 the best served ; but the poorest if poorly 
 served. Republican institutions demand en- 
 ergetic and virtuous citizens. 
 
 Knowledge is that which a man knows. 
 Intelligence is that which knows it. Know- 
 
Henry Ward Beecher. 197 
 
 ledge bears the same relation to intelligence 
 which invested wealth does to that spirit of 
 enterprise which creates wealth. . . . Mere 
 knowledge will not save men. Intelligence 
 is a preservative force. 
 
 The problems of an old society and of a 
 new one are not the same. Intelligence is 
 of more value to us than high culture, 
 though high culture may be more valuable to 
 an old monarchy than general intelligence ; 
 and of more value to us, by and by, than 
 just now. It is giving eyes to the whole 
 people to give them intelligence. 
 
 Democracy does not mean a universal 
 level. It does not mean compulsory equal- 
 ity. It means equitable opportunity. . . . 
 There is a public sentiment of the public 
 school which is just as real, and as vital, and 
 as despotic even, as the public sentiment of 
 the great community ; and it is a good thing 
 to bring down to the original starting point 
 all the elevations and inequalities which the 
 various forces of active life produce, and to 
 say to all the boys, " Your feet must stand 
 
198 Patriotic Nuggets, 
 
 on the same level : now shoot your heads as 
 high as you please ! " 
 
 You cannot anywhere else so ill afford to 
 be parsimonious, and call it economy, as in 
 the administration of your common-schools. 
 
 Secure more buildings, larger buildings, 
 better furniture, more teachers, with ampler 
 support (for the support of the common- 
 school teachers, especially of women teachers, 
 is a shame and disgrace to our civilization), 
 with more capacity, bringing hither the 
 noblest men and the noblest women. This 
 is political wisdom. 
 
 Things belonging to any single State alone, 
 and not to all the States in common, must 
 be under the supreme disposal of that State. 
 This simple doctrine of State Rights — not 
 State Sovereignty — will carry good govern- 
 ment with it through all the continent. No 
 central government could have sympathy and 
 wise administrative adaptation to the local 
 peculiarities of this huge nation, couched 
 down between two oceans, whose Southern 
 
Henry Ward Beecher, 199 
 
 line never freezes, and whose Northern bor- 
 der never melts. 
 
 The States are so many points of vitality. 
 The nation, Hke a banyan tree, lets down a 
 new root where each new State is established, 
 and when centuries have spread this gigantic 
 commercial tree over a vast space, it will be 
 found that the branches most remote from 
 the center do not draw their vitality through 
 the long intricate passages from the parent 
 trunk, but each outlying growth has roots of 
 its own, and draws straight from the ground, 
 by organisms of its own, all the food it wants 
 without dissociating its top from the parent 
 branches. 
 
 Past Perils and Perils of To-Day. 
 November 29, 1877. 
 The Hebrew literature is colored with in- 
 tense patriotism .... This whole human 
 life on earth was to them the symbol of the 
 wanderings of " strangers and pilgrims " ; 
 and when, at length, a clear conception of 
 another life dawned, they called Heaven the 
 
200 Patriotic Ntiggets. 
 
 Nciv Jerusalem. Thus the heaven and the 
 earth, time and eternity, were dressed out in 
 the robes of their national history. 
 
 It was a wholesome practice. It harvested 
 every great deed and achievement of their 
 race, and made it seed-corn for the future ; 
 it trained their children to heroism, to pa- 
 triotism, to a religion which enshrined them 
 both. 
 
 The peculiarity of our early ancestry was 
 not that they loved liberty — everything in 
 heaven, on earth, and in the sea does that ; 
 but they discerned the royal fact, which others 
 had missed who threw off law to find liberty, 
 that by taking on law men are made free. 
 
 Human nature is the toughest thing that 
 man ever works on. To take four million 
 men of an inferior race, educated in the 
 school of slavery and, by a constitutional 
 vote of the people, make them as if they had 
 never been ignorant slaves, is impossible ; 
 and if men have expected it, it only shows 
 to what overfed enthusiasm they were led. 
 
Henry Ward Bccchcr. 
 
 Men grow ; and of all growths there is 
 othing that grows so slowly as manhood. 
 ?he reason why it grows so slowly is that 
 bere is so much of it, that it is so subtle/"^, 
 nd that is so precious in its results — for the \ 
 est things are the scarcest, and are the long- I 
 st in coming to perfection. 
 
 There is a danger from suppressed repudia- 
 ion. . . . And suppressed repudiation is 
 ,11 the more dangerous than any open and 
 vowed repudiation. . . . Whoever tam- 
 >ers with established standards tampers 
 ^nth the very marrow and vitality of public 
 aith. 
 
 No act of Congress can ever make one 
 )ound equal to two pounds. No act of Con- 
 ;^ress can ever make a thing inferior equal 
 o a superior. Silver coin must be made pro- 
 )ortionate to the value of gold, as deter- 
 nined in the open markets of the world, 
 ill paper currency must be convertible into 
 ^old. Any other course is to teach men to 
 :heat by law ; it is to teach honest men to 
 :heat without knowing that they cheat ; it is 
 
,o. Patriotic Nuggets. 
 
 crime and misdemeanor : and if men m Con- 
 gress do not know it. what are they there for ? 
 
 TO THE SOCIETY OF THE ARMY OF ; 
 
 THE POTOMAC. June, 187»- 
 
 Every soldier should be a citizen, every 
 citfrn Ihould be a soldier. An army ought 
 "be a body foreign to the commu.y 
 
 in which it exists, but sprung J™"' '^^f ' ^ . 
 ing to it, continually returnmg to it and pen ^ 
 etrating it with its own spirit. | 
 
 national peace society. 
 
Henry Ward Beec her. 203 
 
 This nation is indebted to the West Point 
 Mihtary Academy for as noble a band of 
 graduates as the world can produce. The 
 standard of honor is nowhere higher Re- 
 spect and reverence for law and hberty are 
 nowhere more profound. Scrupulous fidel- 
 ity to duty is nowhere more nearly a reli- 
 gion. . . . What university, what college, 
 what theological seminary, can point to its 
 two thousand graduates and say, " There 
 has never been an instance of dishonesty in 
 the administration of public moneys?" 
 The only institution in this country that can 
 say this is that Academy. 
 
 Eulogy on Grant. 
 
 October 22, 1885. 
 First came the disbanding of the army. 
 That was so easily done that the world has 
 never done justice to the marvel. The 
 I soldiers of three great armies dropped their 
 j arms at the word of command, dissolved 
 I their organizations, and disappeared. To- 
 day the mightiest force on earth ; to-morrow 
 they were not ! As a summer storm dark- 
 
2o^ Patriotic Nuggets- 
 
 :;:h Hs thunder, empties ^^^ ^ 
 
 there a cabal of officers, nor any affray ol 
 loldLl-for every soldier was yet more a 
 
 citizen. 
 
 f 
 
 The tidings of Grant's death, long expec d . 
 .ave a shoclc to the whole world. Govern 
 f.ents, rulers, eminent statesman, and schol- 
 ars from all civilized nations gave smcere j 
 tokens of sympathy. For the hour, sym- . 
 pathy roUedVwave over all our own land 
 U closed the last furrow of .«»■■■ "^''"" \ 
 euished the last prejudice, it effaced he . 
 fa'vestige of hatred,-and cursed be the , 
 hand that shall bring them back , 
 
 Johnston and Buckner [of the Conleder 
 ates] on one side of his bier, Sherman and , 
 Sheridan [of the Federals] upon the oAe 
 
 hP has come to his tomb a silent symbol 
 that ifberThad conquered slavery, patriot- , 
 ism rebellion, and peace war. 
 
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 Papers and Addresses during the Semi-Centennial Cele- 
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