oratory, thundered from the cannon's mouth, hung out in streaming banners
whose "every hue was born in heaven," felt in firm resolve, illustrated in
response to the call of country and of law. Where is our government? Not
at Washington alone. That is but its symbol. It is throughout all our
Loyal States. It is enthroned on the granite hills of New Hampshire, sends
its voice along the Alleghanies, and on the swelling floods of the
Mississippi, and spreads its wing over the children of the West, even to
the shores of Oregon. It lives in every cottage, and every mansion, and
has a throne in every true, free, noble, Christian heart.

That it is a _good_ government, you have only in imagination to blot from
the face of the earth whatever has grown up under its protection and
encouragement, by the will and the blessing of the Almighty, during the
fourscore years of its existence; level all the cities, sink the commerce,
prostrate the schools and churches, obliterate all the science, history
and thought it has fostered, quench the light of oratory, turn back the
wheel of improvement, and leave us at the opening of 1776; estimate all
the freedom of act, of utterance, of industry; reckon the sum of human
comforts, even of luxuries, it has brought to our hand. Look at all our
ships, our mechanism, our homes, our sanctuaries, our institutions of
morality, of mercy and of religion; our wealth, intelligence, order,
power; consider the elevation given to millions in the worst form of
civilization in the land, showing that such is the vitalizing force of our
national life, that even slavery here, bad as it is--and we know of
nothing worse as a system--lifts men above the natural license of savage
existence. Consider all this, and much more, that I may not stop to utter,
and you cannot--you _do_ not--no sane mind _can_ question the supreme
excellence--I had almost said the _divine_ excellence--of our
government. And if there were need of other proof, we have only to remind
you with what promptness the call of our noble Chief Magistrate was
answered from every free State--from the city and the hamlet; from the
bank, the bar, the press and the pulpit; from the workshop and the soil;
from the calm and comfort of home and ease and affluence, and from the
cottage of the poor, as if the pulse of the government were beating in
every vein, and the will of the Cabinet had its home in every bosom!
Strong men, young men, aged men, men of leisure,