o all that calls to us from the past and entreats us in the
future, that we faint and fail under the stress of our one short effort,
then indeed is our Democracy our shame and curse. Let us show now what
manner of people we are. Let us be clear-sighted and far-sighted to see
how great is the issue that hangs upon the occasion. It is not a mere
military reputation that is at stake, not the decay of a generation's
commerce, not the determination of this or that party to power. It is
the question of the world that we have been set to answer. In the great
conflict of ages, the long strife between right and wrong, between
progress and sluggardy, through the Providence of God we are placed in
the van-guard. Three hundred years ago a world was unfolded for the
battle-ground. Choice spirits came hither to level and intrench. Swords
clashed and blood flowed, and the great reconnoissance was successfully
made. Since then both sides have been gathering strength, marshalling
forces, planting batteries, and to-day we stand in the thick of the
fray. Shall we fail? Men and women of America, will you fail? Shall the
cause go by default? When a great Idea, that has been uplifted on the
shoulders of generations, comes now to its Thermopylae, its glory-gate,
and needs only stout hearts for its strong hands,--when the eyes of a
great multitude are turned upon you, and the fates of dumb millions in
the silent future rest with you,--when the suffering and sorrowful, the
lowly, whose immortal hunger for justice gnaws at their hearts, who
blindly see, but keenly feel, by their God-given instincts, that somehow
you are working out their salvation, and the high-born, monarchs in the
domain of mind, who, standing far off, see with prophetic eye the two
courses that lie before you, one to the Uplands of vindicated Right, one
to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, alike fasten upon you their hopes,
their prayers, their tears,--will you, for a moment's bodily comfort
and rest and repose, grind all these expectations and hopes between the
upper and nether millstone? Will you fail the world in this fateful hour
by your faint-heartedness? Will you fail yourself, and put the knife to
your own throat? For the peace which you so dearly buy shall bring to
you neither ease nor rest. You will but have spread a bed of thorns.
Failure will write disgrace upon the brow of this generation, and shame
will outlast the age. It is not with us as with the South. She can