Free country

“ Leave them not to be held or sold by others. Leave them free as the Father of his country left his, and let your name go down to posterity, as his came down to us, a slaveholder, to be sure, but a repentant one. Make the noble resolve, that so far as you are personally concerned, "America shall be Free." ”

“ Millions have battled for empire, and great armies have been inspired by the hope of pillage; but for the first time in the history of this world millions of men battled for the right, fought to free not themselves, but others, not for prejudice, but for principle, not for conquest, but for conscience.
The men whom we honor were the liberators of a Nation, of a whole country, North and South—of two races. They freed the body and the brain, gave liberty to master and to slave. They opened all the highways of thought, and gave to fifty millions of people the inestimable legacy of free speech. ”

“ To tell my people how to make this country truly great and truly free, how to keep it free from the sordid things, the cruel things, the unjust, the unclean, the loathsome things that have debased and degraded the older nations, that are debasing and degrading even your young, great nation. ”

“ A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!
O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. ”

“ Thus was founded the great colony of free humanity, which has not old England alone, but the world for its mother country. And in the colony of free humanity, whose mother country is the world, they established the Republic of equal rights where the title of manhood is the title to citizenship. ”

“ Take this--make peace. Is not this as much territory, which was formerly slave territory, as the republic can digest, and assimilate to freedom at once. Make this a homogeneous country--make it free, and then improve and develop the mighty empire you have left. If you succeed in subduing the entire territory in rebellion, can the nation assimilate and make it homogeneous? Are the people in the Gulf states sufficiently intelligent to make freedom a blessing? You can people, educate, and bring up to the capability of self-government, the territory you have within your lines. ”

“ From an address put forth by the colonists of Liberia to the free people of color of the United States, we make a few extracts:
"The first consideration which caused our voluntary removal to this country, and the object which we still regard with the deepest concern, is liberty — liberty in the sober, simple, but complete sense of the word; not a licentious liberty, nor a liberty without government, or which should place us without the restraint of salutary laws; but that liberty of speech and conscience which distinguishes the free enfranchised citizens of a free state. ”

“ Such are the effects of free government, founded on equal rights, supported by wise and merciful laws faithfully executed!—There is but one alloy to our pleasure of meeting you—we dread your return to Europe. The despots of that country envy your increasing glory, founded on virtue, which they cannot imitate ”

“ Everything around you invites you to freedom; The country in which you live was conquered by your fathers. It owes its prosperity solely to their care and to yours, this land belongs to you, it must be independent. ”

“ The doctrine sometimes advanced by men, with more zeal than wisdom, that whenever war exists in one part of the country the constitutional guaranties of personal liberty, and of the rights of property, are suspended everywhere, has no foundation in the principles of the common law, the teachings of our ancestors, or the language of the Constitution, and is at variance with every just notion of a free government. ”

“ It was never assumed in the United States that the citizen of a free country has a right to do whatever he pleases; on the contrary, social obligations were there imposed upon him more various than anywhere else. ”

“ The necessity of holding strictly to the principle upon which free governments are constructed, and to those precise lines which fix the partitions of power between different branches, is as plain, if not as cogent, as that of resisting, as our fathers did, the strides of the parent country against the rights of the Colonies ”

“ Now, I admit this principle in its fullest extent, and without hesitation. That country is equally free to all the people of the United States. The government can sell the lands not already covered by valid titles ”

“ The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. ”

“ Doubt not but that the day is at hand on which, with the annihilation of despotism and your now degraded condition, you will rise to the rank of a free nation, to which your geographical position and the course of events naturally call you. ”

“ When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he made no further answer than by telling me, “that I had not been long enough among them to form a judgment; and that the different nations of the world had different customs;” ”

“ By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree: small “independent” farmers, artisans, etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; ”

“ They were consciously planning that men of every class should be free and America a place to which men out of every nation might resort who wished to share with them the rights and privileges of freemen. ”

“ We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in. ”

“ It presents, for the first time, the question, whether that government, which was established for the promotion of justice, which was founded on the great principles of the revolution, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, can, consistently with the genius of our institutions, become a party to proceedings for the enslavement of human beings cast upon our shores, and found, in the condition of freemen, within the territorial limits of a free and sovereign state? ”

“ Coming to us from any other land, the cry for freedom sent through American bosoms a thrilling emotion. We stopped not to inquire who they were that would be free. If they were men, we knew they had a right to liberty. No matter how the yoke had been fastened on them,—whether by inheritance, or conquest, or political compromise,—we felt that it ought to be broken. And although to break it the whole social fabric of their oppressors must be overturned, still we said, Let the yoke be broken! ”

“ It is not enough that we increase our men and means. We shall never succeed until we accept the idea latent in this conflict. Slavery must be crushed. Liberty must have absolute and unquestioned dominion on this continent. We will not have oppression under the symbol of a sceptre or of a whip—neither exported 332from abroad nor sprouting from our own soil! This continent is dedicated to Liberty. It is the mission of this generation of men to establish free institutions from ocean to ocean. ”

“ It is we, we who make up the public opinion of the North, we who consent that these free States shall be the hunting-ground, where these, our poor brothers and sisters, are the game; it is we that withhold from them the bread of life, the inalienable rights of man. ”

“ Though the cry of nationality rings for ever in our ears, the word here has embodied to most no other hope than this, that we should when free be able to enter with more energy upon pursuits already adopted by the people of other countries. ”

“ Success in war and some development in wealth naturally engendered self-confidence. I apprehend that the secret and unavowed consciousness of power, creating the desire to be a nation rather than a mere colony dependent on Great Britain,--or, if colonies, yet free and untrammelled by the home government,--had as much to do with the struggle for independence as the discussion of rights, at least among the leaders of the people, both clerical and lay. ”

“ Thanks to the wisdom, loyalty, patriotism, courage, and statesmanship developed by the crisis, the nation rejected equally the idea of making the country all slaves, and permitting two separate nations, with hostile civilizations, side by side, with a chafing, bloody border between them, but chose to give us one country, one citizenship, and one liberty for all the people, and hence we are here this evening. ”

“ When the united colonies revolted from Great Britain, they did it upon this principle, "that all men are by nature and of right ought to be free."--After a long, successful, and glorious struggle for liberty, during which they manifested the firmest attachment to the rights of mankind, can they so soon forget the principles that then governed their determinations? Can Americans, after the noble contempt they expressed for tyrants, meanly descend to take up the scourge? ”

“ This is to be followed by the freedom of the Spanish and French colonies,—also of the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the Danish. Then, rising in aspiration, the Philosopher, exalting the good of humanity over that of any nation, proclaims that the root of future wars must be destroyed, that the ocean may not be reddened with blood; but this destiny will be postponed, “if America does not become entirely free.” ”

“ Individuals from all sections of our own country, bearing on them the imperial character of their nation, had transmitted it by the dark-skinned race, to vivify with liberty and self-government, the great slave-land of the world. ”

“ Those who enter into such engagements, without the express or tacit consent of their sovereign, offend against their duty as citizens. But if their sovereign leaves them at liberty to follow their inclination for a military life, they are perfectly free in that respect. [Modern nations, and especially the United States, have left their citizens free to expatriate themselves at pleasure.] Now, every free man may join whatever society he pleases, according as he finds it most to his advantage. ”

“ If the United States proves false to these principles of civil and religious liberty, it will have inflicted the greatest blow on the system of free popular government that has ever been inflicted. Here we have had a virgin continent on which to try the experiment of making out of divers race stocks a new nation and of treating all the citizens of that nation in such a fashion as to preserve them equality of opportunity in industrial, civil, and political life. Our duty is to secure each man against any injustice by his fellows. ”

“ We will transmit to them institutions free from the vices and encumbrances of which European nations vainly strive to deliver themselves; free from the necessity of large and dangerous standing armies; free from that pernicious centralization of power which springs from the dangers occasioned by the close proximity of powerful and hostile neighbors; free from the blight of an aristocracy, and free from the curse of slavery. [Loud applause.] We will transmit to them liberty and equal rights, secured by laws respectable and respected ”

“ We stand pledged to see that both the continents of America are left free to be used by their peoples as those peoples choose to use them, under a principle of national sovereignty as absolute and unchallenged as our own. ”

“ We will neither tax our Colonies for our benefit nor tax ourselves in the vain hope of benefiting them thereby. What we will do is to insist that the tie which unites us in one mighty State shall be the tie of freedom—freedom political and commercial. That is the motto which we must blazon on the banner of Empire. ”

“ The answer will be very different in different cases, according to the means by which the different national elements in such a territory have been brought together. They may form what I have already called an artificial nation, united by an act of its own free will. Or it may be simply a case where distinct nations, distinct in every thing which can be looked on as forming a nation, except the possession of an independent government, are brought together, by whatever causes, under a common ruler. ”

“ The ultimate meaning of the expression "that to secure these rights Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," seems therefore to be that by the law of nature and of nations there is a universal right of free statehood of all communities on the face of the earth within territorial limits of suitable size for the development and operation of a just public sentiment. ”

“ Now, if the slaveholder has a right to be secure at home in the enjoyment of Slavery, so also has the freeman of the North—and every person there is presumed to be a freeman—an equal right to be secure at home in the enjoyment of Freedom. The same principle of State Eights by which Slavery is protected in the Slave States throws an impenetrable shield over Freedom in the Free States. And here, let me say, is the only security for Slavery in the Slave States, as for Freedom in the Free States. ”

“ But what are lands, and seas, and skies to civilized man, without society, without knowledge, without morals, without religious culture; and how can these be enjoyed, in all their extent and all their excellence, but under the protection of wise institutions and a free government? Fellow-citizens, there is not one of us, there is not one of us here present, who does not, at this moment, and at every moment, experience, in his own condition, and in the condition of those most near and dear to him, the influence and the benefits of this liberty and these institutions. ”