" 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 dead in Great Britain you
will not understand us, but if the love of liberty lives as it once
lived, and has worthy successors of those renowned men that were our
ancestors as much as yours, and whose example and principles we inherit
as so much seed corn in a new and fertile land, then you will understand
our firm invincible determination to fight this war through at all
hazards and at every cost.
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