difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and
political principles. You have, in a common cause, fought and
triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are
the work of joint counsels and joint efforts--of common dangers,
sufferings, and successes."

The sentiment of Nationality is the sentiment of the Declaration of
Independence; it is the sentiment of the fathers; it is the
sentiment which carried us through the war of the Revolution, and
through the war of the late Rebellion; and it is a sentiment which
the people of the United States ought forever to cultivate and
cherish.

The great idea to which the Nation, according to Mr. Lincoln, was
dedicated by the fathers is expressed in the Declaration in these
familiar phrases: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed."

An intelligent audience will not wish to hear discussion as to the
import of these sentences. Their language is simple, their meaning
plain, and their truth undoubted. The equality declared by the
fathers was not an equality of beauty, of physical strength, or of
intellect, but an equality of rights. Foolish attempts have been
made by those who hate the principles of the fathers to destroy the
great fundamental truth of the Declaration, by limiting the
application of the phrase "all men" to the men of a single race.

But Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration leaves no room to
doubt what he meant by these words. The gravest charge he made
against the King of Great Britain in the original draft of the
Declaration of Independence was the following:

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its
most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant
people, who never offended him, capturing and carrying them into
slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their
transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of
infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great