re nothing. We have
the best Government in the world, but it has, since the time of the
fathers, for the most part, been the worst administered. Instead of
being made to work in the interest of freedom, the opposite has been the
fact, and the whole influence and patronage of the Government for years
have been in favor of the slave element. Prior to the incoming of the
present Administration, this gradual deterioration in the animus of the
Federal Government had culminated in a condition so disgraceful and
shameful, that it is enough to dye the cheek of any honest man with red,
only to think of it. It was time, if ever, for the climax to be put upon
it all, and now it will be a thing to give endless thanks for, if enough
virtue and manliness and true patriotism are left in the loyal States to
bring the nation, under God, safely through the troubles and disasters
into which its supineness, its temporizing and subserviency to wrong
have led it.

Oh, could I speak with the convincing tones of a prophet or an angel,
instead of the weak voice of a woman, I would make myself heard
throughout the length and breadth of the land by every man, of whatever
caste or color, whatever birth or tongue, whatever nationality or
political creed, North, East, West, South, and especially this great
West, of which I am so proud and confident, and would say to them:

'Rise! quit you like men--be strong! Upon you the ends of the world have
come. If you have manhood, assert it now! If you are worthy the name of
American, make it _now_ to be honored among the nations. If there is any
incentive in the glory of the career that would open to the accelerated
progress of a Union at last free and redeemed, without a tyrant or a
slave, let it nerve your hearts and inspire your exertions _now_. If you
do not desire the self-gratulations of the crowned despots of the world,
and the despair and lamentation of their subject millions, see to it
that this great experiment of self-government fail not _now_. If you
would gladden the hearts of our friends in other lands, the Brights and
Cobdens, the Gasparins and Laboulayes, liberal men, who love truth,
justice, right, freedom, who are 'one with their kind,' be ambitious of
cooeperating with them in the work of human elevation and amelioration.'

Those who seize upon great opportunities are the men whom History
rescues from oblivion, and sets in the memory of mankind forever,
whether with blessings or cursings