the
pole. Lay the sweet babe before the starved lion, and his want will
not bow to your compassion. So in slaves; it matters not whether
slaves to rebellion or to aristocracy. So in all men and in all women,
the want of liberty, as the want of bread, is a vital principle in the
blood. It is the motive power. Without it man is but a log, and is
suited to rule over frogs only; or, like the silent water, becomes a
loathsome stagnation. You may suppress, but you can not appease or
destroy this divine inheritance in man. On this uniform idea the laws
of society depend, and union can have no other. Raise the banner of
freedom to all, and you have an imperishable Constitution, supported
by the gushing blood of the millions, and immortalized in the spirit
of the nation. This is our work: To comprehend liberty, to establish a
constitution, and perpetuate union. We began at union, the right-hand
figure, borrowing ten, as in mathematics, from the next higher order,
observing the rule of maintaining an equal difference by paying what
is borrowed.

We saw that fighting for union and slavery left us just what we began
with. So we borrowed from the Constitution Fremont's Proclamation, and
carried the popular response to the next Congress, and under the
second period we wrote the liberty of three millions! We have now to
work out the main principle or highest order, to test the virtue of
the people, to see whether, when rebellion is put down, the nation can
survive; and there is now left us no escape from death or disgrace
except in the announcement of freedom as a principle. Do this, and you
have enlisted new recruits from men who will nobly dare to die, but
never will retreat. Do this, and the mothers of the country will
continue to lay their precious sons upon the altar, not as "Union
soldiers," as before, but as heroes of a new republic. Do this, and
woman, the subtle architect of society, will teach you how to walk the
very verge of death with an unflinching hope of life; her faith will
separate your light from darkness, truth from error, liberty from
slavery. She will demonstrate for you that self-reliance is the
condition of all creations, that as "the flower looks to no power
outside itself to unfold its tendrils and accomplish its mission," so
this nation is self-sufficient. In its warm beating heart lies its
folded banner, and each man and woman must unfurl it as the seaman
unfurls his sail. Nail Freedom to your banner, and