"But the history of liberty—the history of men struggling to be free, the history of men who have acquired and are exercising their freedom, the history of those great movements in the world by which liberty has been established and perpetuated—forms a subject which we cannot contemplate too closely. This is the real history of man,—of the human family,—of rational, immortal beings. This theme is one: the free of all climes and nations are themselves a people. Their annals are the history of freedom. Those who fell victims to their principles in the civil convulsions of the short-lived republics of Greece, or sunk beneath the power of her invading foes; those who shed their blood for liberty amidst the ruins of the Roman republic; the victims of Austrian tyranny in Switzerland and of Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands; the solitary champions, or the united bands of high-minded and patriotic men, who have, in any region or age, struggled and suffered in this great cause, belong to that people of the free, whose fortunes and progress are the most noble theme which man can contemplate."—Everett.
"There has been in the historical course of the United States the higher development of the civil and political organization of society,—the commonwealth and the nation. Their sequence is not the mere accident of history, nor the induction of an arbitrary theory, nor the assumption of a legal formula; but it has been justified in the reason of the state. It is an organization ampler and nobler than they who in the generations have builded in it could wholly comprehend; and, working steadily and faith fully in their own day,they have wrought in the ages, building better than they knew. It has been vindicated in political science in the pages of its few masters. It fills the almost prophetic conception of Milton,—'not many sovereignties united in one commonwealth, but many commonwealths in one united and intrusted sovereignty.'"—Mulford.
"After the performing so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing that is mean and little, not so much as to think of, much less to do, anything but what is great and sublime."—Milton.
"To show as great justice, temperance, and moderation in the maintaining your liberty as you have shown courage in freeing yourselves from slavery."—Id.
"Of those who were slaves at the beginning of the rebellion, full one hundred thousand are now in the United States military service, about one-half of which number actually bear arms in the ranks; thus giving the double advantage of taking so much labor from the insurgent cause and supplying the places which otherwise must be filled with so many white men. So far as tested it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers as any. No servile insurrection or tendency to violence or cruelty has
