HOAR
The American people have got this one question to answer. They may
answer it now; they can take ten years, or twenty years, or a
generation, or a century to think of it. But it will not down. They must
answer it in the end: Can you lawfully buy with money or get by brute
force of arms the right to hold in subjugation an unwilling people and
to impose on them such constitution as you, and not they, think best for
them?
The question will be answered soberly and deliberately and quietly as
the American people are wont to answer great questions of duty. It will
be answered, not in any turbulent assembly, amid shouting and clapping
of hands and stamping of feet. It will be answered in the churches and
in the schools and in the colleges, it will be answered in fifteen
million American homes, and it will be answered as it has always been
answered. It will be answered right.
I have sometimes fancied that we might erect here in the capital of the
country a column to American liberty which alone might rival in height
the beautiful and simple shaft which we have erected to the fame of the
father of the country.
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