r when the colonies crossed the threshold of national existence.

The colonies had carried on a correspondence among themselves upon
important matters; the New England settlements formed a confederation in
1643, that was the prototype of the present Union; and the convention at
Albany, in 1754, considered in connection with various resolutions and
declarations, indicated a growing desire "to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common
defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of
liberty" to the successive generations that should occupy the American
continent.

For these exalted purposes the Constitution was framed, and the Union
established; and the Constitution and the Union will remain as long as
these exalted purposes, with any considerable share of fidelity, are
secured. The Union will not be destroyed by declamation, nor can
declamation preserve it. Words have power only when they awaken a
response in the minds of those who listen. The Union will be judged,
finally, by its merits; and they are not powerful enemies for evil who
attack it through the press and from the rostrum; but rather they who,
clothed with authority, brief or permanent, interpret the constitution
so as to defeat the end for which it was framed. Nor are they the best
friends of the Union who lavishly bestow upon it nicely-wrought
encomiums, as though the gilding of rhetoric and the ornament of praise
could shield a human institution from the judgment of a free people; but
rather they who, under Heaven, and in the presence of men, seek to so
interpret the constitution as, in the language and in the order of its
preamble, "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure
domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty" to themselves and
their posterity. Words are powerless, and enemies--envious, jealous, or
deluded--are powerless, when they war upon a system of government that
secures such exalted results. And, if in these later days of our
national existence patriotism has been weakened, respect and reverence
for the constitution and the Union have been diminished, it is because
the actual government under the constitution has, in the judgment of
many, failed to realize the government of the constitution.

But let no one despair of the Republic. Men are now building better than
they know; poss