Where of old the Indian strayed, Should again the war trump peal, There shall Valor's work be done; Ex. CLXIX.-REASONS FOR CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY. From an address delivered at Chicago, July 10, 1858. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. WE are now a mighty nation; we are thirty or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about onefifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eightytwo years, and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly smaller extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened a long way back as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the principle they were contending for; and we understand that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity we now enjoy has come to us. We hold an annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time; of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it, and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves; we feel more attached the one to the THE FOURTH OF JULY. 261. other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men for these celebrations. But after we have done all this, we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these, men among us descended by blood from our ancestors, who are not descendants of these men of the Revolution, they are men who have come from EuropeGerman, Irish, French and Scandinavian-who have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none; they can not carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;" and then they feel that the moral sentiment taught in that day evinces their relation to those men; that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. electric cord in our Declaration which links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together; that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. That is the CLXX. THE FOURTH OF JULY. DAY of glory! welcome day! J. PIERPONT. On the rocks where pilgrims kneeled, O'er the trembling seas. God of armies! Did thy "stars Blast his arms and wrest his bars On our standard, lo! they burn, God of peace! whose spirit fills By the patriot's hallowed rest, By the Pilgrims' toils and cares, Ex. CLXXI.-THE CRISIS. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. THE crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands, sands! This day we fashion Destiny; our web of fate we spin; By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and shame; By all the warning words of truth with which the Prophets came; By the future which awaits us; by all the hopes which cast SECESSION AS VIEWED BY A VIRGINIAN. 263. Their faint and trembling beams across the blackness of the Past, And in the awful name of Him who for earth's freedom died; O, ye people! O, my brothers! let us choose the righteous side! So shall the hardy pioneer go joyful on his way, To wed Penobscot's waters to San Francisco's bay; To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain, And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train; sea, And mountain unto mountain call, PRAISE GOD, FOR WE ARE FREE! Ex. CLXXII.-SECESSION AS VIEWED BY A VIRGINIAN. Speech in the House of Delegates of Virginia, March 30th, 1861. JOSEPH SEGAR. FOR what, Mr. Speaker, are we plunging into the dark abyss of disunion? In God's name, tell me! I vow I do not know, nor have I ever heard one sensible or respectable reason assigned for this harsh resort. We shall lose everything; gain nothing but war, blood, carnage, famine, starvation, social desolation, wretchedness in all its aspects, ruin in all its forms. We shall gain a taxation, to be levied by the new government, that will eat out the substance of the people, and make them "poor indeed." We shall gain alienation and distrust in all the dear relations of life. We shall gain ill-blood between father and son, and brother and brother, and neighbor and neighbor. Bereaved widowhood and helpless orphanage we shall gain to our heart's content. Lamentation, and mourning, and agonized hearts we shall gain in every corner where "wild war's deadly blast" shall blow. We shall gain the prostration-most lamentable calamity will it be of that great system of internal development, which the statesmen of Virginia have looked to as the basis of all her future progress and grandeur, and the great hope of her speedy regeneration and redemption. We shall gain repudiation, not that Virginia will ever be reluctant to redeem her engagements, but that she will be disabled by the heavy burdens of secession and war. We shall gain the blockade of our ports, and entire exclusion from the commerce, and markets, and storehouses of the world. We shall gain the hardest times the people of this once happy country have known since the War of Independence. I know not, indeed, of one single interest of Virginia that will not be wrecked by disunion. And, entertaining these views, I do shrink with horror from the very idea of the secession of the State. I can never assent to the fatal measure. No! I am for the Union yet. Call me submissionist, or traitor, or what else you will, I am for the Union while Hope's light flickers in the socket. In Daniel Webster's immortal words, give me "Liberty and Union-now and forever-one and inseparable." Ex. CLXXIII.-FALSE PROPHETS. EMELINE S. SMITH. WHO said that the stars on our banner were dim- Look up, and behold! how bright, through each fold, Some wandering meteors only have paled— They shot from their places on high; But the fixed and the true still illumine the blue, Who said the fair temple, so patiently reared Was built insecure-that it could not endure- False, false, every word; for that fame is upheld Some columns unsound may have gone to the ground, |