o be respected, and choose peace or war as
our interest guided by justice, should counsel?

"The acceptance of this invitation, therefore, far from
conflicting with the counsel or the policy of Washington, is
directly deducible from and conformable to it. Nor is it
less conformable to the views of my immediate predecessor,
as declared in his Annual Message to Congress of the 2d
December, 1823."

President John Quincy Adams. Communication to the House of
Representatives, in answer to their Resolution of Inquiry,
regarding the proposed Panama Congress, March 15, 1826.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE REDEDICATED TO THE PRESERVATION OF
THE AMERICAN SYSTEM, BY PRESIDENT LINCOLN, AT
GETTYSBURG.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on
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 war, testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield 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
the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this.

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not
consecrate--we can not hallow--this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated 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 devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not 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 the earth."

President Lincoln. Address at the Dedication of the National
Cemetery at Gettysburg, November