, is inconsistent with the terms of our national
birthright. Depend upon it, not the assertion of Liberty, but whatever
is opposed to Liberty, is the innovating and agitating element in this
country. It interrupts the legitimate current of our destiny. It shocks
the popular heart with inconsistency. It becomes mixed with the ashes of
the old heroes, and the land keeps heaving with the fermentation. One
assumption is too impudent, too nakedly in contradiction with the
fundamental ideas of our Republic ever to be admitted--the assumption
that the man who speaks for freedom, who sympathizes with the broadest
doctrine of human rights, and sets around these the eternal barriers of
justice, is an innovator and an agitator. I ask--what made our
Revolution legitimate? What were the central ideas that throbbed in the
breasts of its heroes and martyrs? Take down the old muskets bent in the
hot encounter, and printed with many a death-gripe; take down the old
uniforms, clipped by Hessian sabres and torn by British bullets; take
down the dusty muster-rolls, scrawled with those venerable names--names
that now "are graven on the stone," names that are buried in the sod,
names that have gone up to immortality--and ask, for what was this great
struggle? Was it not for freedom, based upon the conception of the right
and supremacy of freedom? And is _this_ the legitimate conclusion of
that sublime postulate--this other Fact which, never retreating, always
advancing, follows the steps of Freedom over the continent like a
shadow, looms up like a phantom against the Rocky Mountains, and darkens
the fairest waters? On the contrary, is not Freedom that old truth, that
conceded premise that does _not_ agitate? Liberty, Human Rights,
Universal Brotherhood, was it not for these ideas ye fought--was it not
these ye planted in the soil, and laid with the corner-stone of our
institutions? My friends, I know, and you know, could those men give
palpable sign and representation, the answer that would come, as in one
quick flash from bayonet to bayonet, in one long roll of drums, from
Lexington to Yorktown.

These peculiar privileges, then, to which I have referred, differ from
those of other nations inasmuch as they are not grafted expedients, but
legitimate fruits. Unless we change the premises of our Republic, and
shift the foils in our historical argument, these are necessary
conclusions. They are necessary conclusions, if our symbols represent
rea