abroad. It is to that Union we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I do not seek to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that, on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth?'nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and Union afterwards; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart — Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!

From the "Speech at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the Bunker Hill Monument."

74. OBJECT OF THE MONUMENT.

LET it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate national hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. It is higher, purer, nobler. We consecrate our work to the spirit of national independence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it forever. We rear a memorial of our conviction of that unmeasured benefit which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy influences which have been produced, by the same events, on the general interests of mankind. We come, as Americans, to mark a spot which must forever be dear to us and our posterity. We wish that whoever, in all coming time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection, from maternal lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here, and be proud in the midst of its toil. We wish that in those days of disaster, which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be assured that the foundations of our national power are still strong. We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit.

From his "Report of the Secretary of War." December 1831.

75. POLICY OF REMOVING THE INDIANS.

THE associations which bind the Indians to the land of their forefathers are strong and enduring; and these must be broken by their emigration. But they are also broken by our citizens, who every day encounter all the difficulties of similar changes in pursuit of the

1 A native of New Hampshire, but for many years a citizen of Michigan: conspicuous in public life, and a writer of high authority on Indian and military affairs, and the settlement of the north-west.

means of support. And the experiments that have been made satisfactorily show that, by proper precautions and liberal appropriations, the removal and establishment of the Indians can be effected with little comparative trouble to them, or us. . . . If they remain, they must decline, and eventually disappear. Such is the result of all experience. If they remove, they may be comfortably established, and their moral and physical condition ameliorated.

The great moral debt we owe to this unhappy race is universally felt and acknowledged. Diversities of opinion exist respecting the proper mode of discharging this obligation, but its validity is not denied.

Indolent in his habits, the Indian is opposed to labor; improvident in his mode of life, he has little foresight in providing, or care in preserving. Taught from infancy to reverence his own traditions and institutions, he is satisfied of their value, and dreads the anger of the Great Spirit, if he should depart from the customs of his fathers. Devoted to the use of ardent spirits, he abandons himself to its indulgence without restraint. War and hunting are his only occupations. Shall they be advised to remain, or remove? If the former, their fate is written in the annals of their race; if the latter, we may yet hope to see them renovated in character and condition, by our example and instruction, and their exertions.

SAMUEL HOUSTON.' 1793-1863.

From a "Speech in the United States Senate," January 29, 1855.

THERE is a remedy, and that remedy must be applied, or the Indians exterminated, at an expense ten times beyond what would civilize, in half a century, every red man who walks upon the soil of America. I have seen tribes rise from a state of barbarism to a condition in which they are as civilized in their institutions, in their religion, and in their social refinement and habits, as citizens of the United States; and all this has been done within half a century. I will show you, sir, how that is. In 1842 and 1843 Texas had a war on hand, which had been brought about by an exterminating policy proclaimed by a new administration, and peace was not restored until 1843, when the head of the government of Texas went about the work of their civilization. He went into the wilderness, on the prairies, and there met the Indians, who would not trust themselves within the timbered land, nor near any place where there was a possibility of

1 Celebrated as the leader in Texan independence. When a young man, he lived for months among the Indians.

ambuscade. A treaty was there made, which not only stayed the tomahawk and the scalping-knife, but preserved peace and safety on the frontier until 1849. We were for six years without massacre, without conflagration, without prisoners being taken. Not a Texan was killed in that time by the Indians.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.' 1801-.

"Oration on Lafayette," July 16, 1834.

77. HIS MILITARY SERVICES IN AMERICA.

TRERE were, indeed, other and heroic volunteers from European countries; but they were either exiles who had no homes, or they were soldiers by profession, who followed the sword wherever a harvest was to be reaped with it. Lafayette set a noble example to the republican chiefs. He declined the tender of a commission as majorgeneral, with the emoluments, and stipulated, on the contrary, for leave to serve without reward, and even without a command, until he should have made a title to it by actual achievements. He won his commission by the blood he gave to his adopted country in the battle of the Brandywine, by rallying the troops in the retreat at Chester Bridge, and by his brave resistance and capture, with the aid of militiamen, of a superior force of British and Hessian regulars; and thus, without exciting murmurs among his compatriots, and with the thanks of Congress, he rose to the command of a division in the army of the United States. Lavish of gold, as he had already shown that he was lavish of blood, he clothed and equipped these troops, numbering two thousand, at his own expense; and they soon became, under his exact but affectionate discipline, the favorite corps of the whole army.

1 A prominent statesman, formerly Governor of New York, of which state he is a native. He is known in literature by many addresses, speeches, and diplomatic papers, often of high merit.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.1 1809-1865.

"Speech at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg," November 19, 1863. 78. OBLIGATION TO THE PATRIOT DEAD.

FOURSCORE and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 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

1 Born in Kentucky; a prominent lawyer and statesman of Illinois; was elected President of the United States in 1960; was eminent for his profound appreciation of the subsequent struggle, and for his patriotic appeals in behalf of the nation. Assassinated April 13, 1865.

great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field 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 larger 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 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 shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that governments of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

CHARLES SUMNER. 1811-. (Manual, p. 487.)

From the "Speech in the United States Senate on the Nebraska and Kansas Bill," May 25,

1854.

79. PROSPECTIVE RESULTS OF THE Bill.

SIR, the bill which you are now about to pass is at once the worst and the best bill on which Congress ever acted. Yes, sir, worst and best at the same time.

It is the worst bill, inasmuch as it is a present victory of slavery. In a Christian land, and in an age of civilization, a time-honored statute of freedom is struck down, opening the way to all the countless woes and wrongs of human bondage. Among the crimes of history, another is about to be recorded, which no tears can blot out, and which, in better days, will be read with universal shame.

But there is another side, to which I gladly turn. Sir, it is the best bill on which Congress ever acted; for it annuls all past compromises with slavery, and makes all future compromises impossible. Thus it puts freedom and slavery face to face, and bids them grapple. Who can doubt the result? It opens wide the door of the future, when, at last, there will really be a North, and the slave power will be broken; when this wretched despotism will cease to dominate over our govgovernment, no longer impressing itself upon everything at home and abroad; when the national government shall be divorced in every way from slavery, and according to the true intention of our fathers, free