lt male
citizens.

"The first representative government lasted a century. In that time
civilization had taken an advance far excelling the progress made in
three centuries previous. So surely does the mind crave freedom for its
perfect development. The consciousness of liberty is an ennobling
element in human nature. No nation can become universally moral until it
is absolutely FREE.

"But this first Republic had been diseased from its birth. Slavery had
existed in certain districts of the nation. It was really the remains of
a former and more degraded state of society which the new government, in
the exultation of its own triumphant inauguration, neglected or lacked
the wisdom to remedy. A portion of the country refused to admit slavery
within its territory, but pledged itself not to interfere with that
which had. Enmities, however, arose between the two sections, which,
after years of repression and useless conciliation, culminated in
another civil war. Slavery had resolved to absorb more territory, and
the free territory had resolved that it should not. The war that
followed in consequence severed forever the fetters of the slave and was
the primary cause of the extinction of the male race.

"The inevitable effect of slavery is enervating and demoralizing. It is
a canker that eats into the vitals of any nation that harbors it, no
matter what form it assumes. The free territory had all the vigor,
wealth and capacity for long endurance that self-dependence gives. It
was in every respect prepared for a long and severe struggle. Its forces
were collected in the name of the united government.

"Considering the marked inequality of the combatants the war would
necessarily have been of short duration. But political corruption had
crept into the trust places of the government, and unscrupulous
politicians and office-seekers saw too many opportunities to harvest
wealth from a continuation of the war. It was to their interest to
prolong it, and they did. They placed in the most responsible positions
of the army, military men whose incapacity was well known to them, and
sustained them there while the country wept its maimed and dying sons.

"The slave territory brought to the front its most capable talent. It
would have conquered had not the resources against which it contended
been almost unlimited. Utterly worn out, every available means of supply
being exhausted, it collapsed from internal weakness.

"The general gove