nd her; we belittle her towering stature and conceal the
singular design of Providence in her creation.

America is the country of human dignity and human liberty.

When the fathers of the republic declared "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," a cardinal principle was enunciated which in its truth was
as old as the race, but in practical realization almost unknown.

Slowly, amid sufferings and revolutions, humanity had been reaching out
toward a reign of the rights of man. Ante-Christian paganism had utterly
denied such rights. It allowed nothing to man as man; he was what
wealth, place, or power made him. Even the wise Aristotle taught that
some men were intended by nature to be slaves and chattels. The sweet
religion of Christ proclaimed aloud the doctrine of the common
fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of men.

Eighteen hundred years, however, went by, and the civilized world had
not yet put its civil and political institutions in accord with its
spiritual faith. The Christian Church was all this time leavening human
society and patiently awaiting the promised fermentation. This came at
last, and it came in America. It came in a first manifestation through
the Declaration of Independence; it came in a second and final
manifestation through President Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation.

In America all men are civilly and politically equal; all have the same
rights; all wield the same arm of defense and of conquest, the suffrage;
and the sole condition of rights and of power is simple manhood.

Liberty is the exemption from all restraint save that of the laws of
justice and order; the exemption from submission to other men, except as
they represent and enforce those laws. The divine gift of liberty to man
is God's recognition of his greatness and his dignity. The sweetness of
man's life and the power of growth lie in liberty. The loss of liberty
is the loss of light and sunshine, the loss of life's best portion.
Humanity, under the spell of heavenly memories, never ceased to dream of
liberty and to aspire to its possession. Now and then, here and there,
its refreshing breezes caressed humanity's brow. But not until the
republic of the West was born, not until the Star-Spangled Banner rose
toward the skies, was liberty caught up in humanity's embrace and
embodied i