11 vital powers in full health and force, is infinitely the most precious of all earthly possessions. Its preservation is the most sacred trust that one generation can possibly devolve on another. The generation which betrays that trust, either by positive act or by default, commits an inexpiable wrong both against its ancestry and its posterity. But even this does not measure the responsibility of the crisis. No? only the physical unity of the Republic is at stake, and its very life, but what is of immensely greater consequence yet—the salvation of Human Rights. ' We are fighting not simply an American war, but a war for the race. It has been recognized, the world over, that our institutions are the supreme test whether sel-fgovernment is practicable or not. If our Republic perishes in the very morning of its existence—if, with all the immense advantages in its power, it but adds another to the long list of democratic governments which have gone down in blood—the proof will be considered complete, that human freedom, as understood hitherto, is but a delusion. Power’ and privilege will make good their old claims over the mass.es, and will take out a new and indefinite lease. On the other hand, if the Republic overmasters this most gigantic rebellion of history, it will have demonstrated the matchless power of free government most irresistibly. It will give all prescription and oppression their finishing stroke. It will smite away from the champions of prerogative their last and strongest argument— that free governments, however suited to calm times, had no strength to outride a storm. We shall have practically proved a free government, the strongest and safest government that can exist, by its triumphantly weathering a tempest that would have inevitably shipwrecked any other. Our example, during its period of seventy years, has had a mighty influence through the civilized world. It has produced forty civil revolutions. It has banished kings, extinguished dynasties, pushed empires a thousand years old to the verge of destruction, put the Supreme Pontiff'to flight, planted popular banners upon every palace on the continent this side of Russia, trumpeted through Europe ideas such as before were barely lisped there above a whisper,
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