d a race of men living in that day whom we claim as
our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the
principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what
they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now
enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves
of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done and who
did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from
these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel more attached the
one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In
every way we are better men in the age and race and country in which we
live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have
not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We
have--besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors--among us
perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men;
they are men who have come from Europe, German, Irish, French, and
Scandinavian,--men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose
ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals
in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their
connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot
carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel
that they are part of us; but when they look through that old Declaration
of Independence, they find that those old men say that "We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"; and then
they feel that that moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their
relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in
them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of
the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration;
and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links
the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link
those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds
of men throughout the world.

Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of "don't
care if slavery is voted up or voted down," for sustaining the Dred Scott
decision, for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean
anything at all, we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the
Declaratio