If we were base enough to desire it, it
is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in
submission and slavery. Our chains are forged; their clanking may be
heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable--and let it come!
I repeat it. Let it come! It is in vain to extenuate the matter.
Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace--but there is no peace. The war is
actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to
our ear the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the
field! Why are we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would
they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the
price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what
course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me
death!--Speech in Convention, March 25, 1775.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S SPEECH.

SPEECH AT THE DEDICATION OF THE NATIONAL CEMETERY AT GETTYSBURG,
PENNSYLVANIA, NOVEMBER 19, 1863.

"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
that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we
should do this. But in a large sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot
consecrate, we cannot 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 have not 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."

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN'