n brought under suspicion by the
flatulent oratory of our Fourth-of-Julys; but truth it remains. Our
nation did enunciate a grand idea never equally felt by any other. Our
nation has said, and said with the sword in its right hand, "Every man
born into this world has the right from God to make the most and best
of his existence, and society is established only to further and guard
this sacred right." We thus established a new scale of justice; we
raised a demand for the individual which had not been so made before.
Freedom and order were made one; both were identified with justice,
simple, broad, equal, universal justice. The American idea, then, what
is it? _The identification of politics with justice_, this it is. With
justice, and this, too, not on a scale of conventional usage, but
on the scale of natural right. That, as I read, is the American
idea,--making politics moral by their unity with natural justice,
justice world-old and world-wide.

This conception--obscurely seen and felt, and mixed with the
inevitable amount of folly and self-seeking, yet, after, all,
this conception--our nation dared to stand up and announce, and to
consecrate it by the shedding of blood, calling God and all good men
to witness. The deed was grand; the hearts of men everywhere were more
or less its accomplices; all the tides of history ran in its favor;
kings, forgetting themselves into virtue and generosity, lent it
good wishes or even good arms; it was successful; and on its primary
success waited such prosperities as the world has seldom seen.

But, because the deed was noble, great costs must needs attend it,
attend it long. And first of all the cost of _applying our principle
within our own borders_. For, when a place had been obtained for us
among nations, we looked down, and, lo! at our feet the African--in
chains. A benighted and submissive race, down-trodden and despised
from of old, a race of outcasts, of Pariahs, covered with the shame of
servitude, and held by the claim of that terrible talisman, the
word _property_,--here it crouched at our feet, lifting its hands,
imploring. Yes, America, here is your task now; never flinch nor
hesitate, never begin to question now; thrust your right hand deep
into your heart's treasury, bring forth its costliest, purest justice,
and lay its immeasurable bounty into this sable palm, bind its
blessing on this degraded brow. Ah, but America did falter and
question. "How can I?" it said. "