Thanksgiving

19 riumph here—as, if at all true to ourselves we must and shall—we shall have convinced the world f the permanency and strength of free institut ons, and indeed so have developed that strength in grand naval and military organizations, that we shall hear no more sneering at " the bubble-bursting Kepublic of the West." Sure we are—the more sure from all their malignant manifestations in this, our sore trial—that the old Empires in their essential antagonism to our nstitutions, and the intense hatred they cannot ut cherish toward a social system elevating into lf-government the masses of the race, as from the first they have prophesied our destruction, so they stand ready now to aid and exult in it. And it needs this great demonstration, not only of our inalienable right, but of our inherent power of selfgovernment; this bringing forth of old banners ; this marshaling of countless men; this lavishing of wealth ; this triumph of the old flag, the old patriotism, the old unparalyzed, undivided, indomitable national life over an antagonism within, compared with which all foreign invasion were as nothing; it needs just this, I say, to teach a gazing and gainsaying world that, ordained of God for a great philanthropic mission into all nations, ours is as well the resistless power as the steadfast purpose to achieve it, even should it lead us into conflict with the despotisms of the world. Meanwhile, beyond all these simply temporal

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