rotection and has become a
declared public enemy, it is our duty to strike down slavery which would
blight this territory. These truths are not exaggerated, they are
diminished rather than magnified in my statement, and you cannot tell
how powerfully they are influencing us unless you are standing in our
midst in America; you cannot understand how firm that national feeling
is which God has bred in the North on this subject. It is deeper than
the sea, it is firmer than the hills, it is serene as the sky over our
head where God dwells.

We believe that the war is a test of our institutions, that it is a
life-and-death struggle between the two principles of liberty and
slavery, that it is the cause of the common people the world over. We
believe that every struggling nationality on the globe will be stronger
if we conquer this odious oligarchy of slavery and that every oppressed
people in the world will be weaker if we fail. The sober American
regards the war as part of that awful yet glorious struggle which has
been going on for hundreds of years in every nation between right and
wrong, between virtue and vice, between liberty and despotism, between
freedom and bondage. It carries with it the whole future condition of
our vast continent, its laws, its policy, its fate. And standing in view
of these tremendous realities we have consecrated all that we have, our
children, our wealth, our national strength, and we lay them all on the
altar and say, "It is better that they should all perish than that the
North should falter and betray this trust of God, this hope of the
oppressed, this western civilization." If we say this of ourselves,
shall we say less of the slave-holders? If we are willing to do these
things, shall we say, "Stop the war for their sakes!" If we say this of
ourselves, shall we have more pity for the rebellious, for slavery
seeking to blacken a continent with its awful evil, desecrating the
social phrase, "National Independence," by seeking only an independence
that shall enable them to treat four millions of human beings as
chattels? Shall we be tenderer over them than over ourselves? Standing
by my cradle, standing by my hearth, standing by the altar of the
church, standing by all the places that mark the name and memory of
heroic men who poured out their lives for principle, I declare that in
ten or twenty years of war we will sacrifice everything we have for
principle. If the love of popular liberty is