he
task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through
themselves us, of this goodly land, and to uprear upon its hills and its
valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; it is ours only
to transmit these--the former unprofaned by the foot of an invader, the
latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation--to the
latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task
gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and
love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully
to perform.

How then shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the approach
of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect
some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a
blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with
all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military
chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink
from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand
years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer:
If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from
abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and
finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die
by suicide.

I hope I am over-wary; but if I am not, there is even now something
of ill omen amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which
pervades the country--the growing disposition to substitute the wild and
furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the
worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice. This
disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now
exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a
violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny. Accounts
of outrages committed by mobs form the everyday news of the times.
They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; they are
neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor the burning suns
of the latter; they are not the creature of climate, neither are they
confined to the slave holding or the non-slave holding States. Alike
they spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves,
and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever
then their cause may be, it is