Free nation

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ According to the philosophy of the Revolution, every man, every community, every state and every nation is bound to enforce, and cause to be enforced, this law of nature and of nations, which prevents the voluntary or involuntary alienation by any man, any community, any state or any nation of his or its rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ Deprived as we hitherto have been of the invaluable rights [56] of free citizens, we now—with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty Disposer of all events—behold a government erected by the majesty of the people, a government which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance, but generously affording to all liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship, deeming every one of whatever nation, tongue, and language equal parts of the great governmental machine. ”

“ Dropping, then, the encroachments which are made upon our liberty, peace, and quiet, by licentiousness, we are certainly a freer nation than any other we have an account of; and as free, it seems, as the very nature of government will permit. Every man is equally under the protection of the laws; may have equal justice against the most rich and powerful ”

“ The people are as capable of achieving their industrial freedom as they were to secure their political liberty, and both are necessary to a free nation. ”

“ We must therefore keep back all private feeling, and decide solely with a view to the lasting interests of our nation. This is an important occasion for us—it is perhaps the last time that we shall meet as a free people with a free government. ”

“ But the Nation they founded remains. The United States are still free and independent. The "government derives its just power from the consent of the governed," and fifty millions of free people remember with gratitude the heroes of the Revolution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free. ”

“ He went over the recent history of the country, expatiated on the national declaration so lately made, that all men are born equally free and independent and have natural and inalienable rights to liberty, and asked with what face a nation declaring such things could continue to hold thousands of their fellowmen in abject slavery. ”

“ 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 home 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!
And conquer we must when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, "In God is our trust!"
And the Star Spangled Banner In triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. ”

“ I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty. ”

“ 48 The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without any thing more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations. ”

“ Have we the right to crush and hold under our feet an unwilling and subject people whom we had treated as allies, whose independence we are bound in good faith to respect, who had established their own free government, and who had trusted us? ”

“ Such a wish is impossible in the United States. Institutions react upon the character of nations. He who sows wind will reap storm. History is the revelation of Providence. The Almighty rules by eternal laws not only the material but also the moral world; and as every law is a principle, so every principle is a law. Men as well as nations are endowed with free-will to choose a principle, but, that once chosen, the consequences must be accepted.
With self-government is freedom, and with freedom is justice and patriotism. With centralization is ambition, and with ambition dwells despotism. ”

“ Or is it to be in the spirit which has on the whole, and in spite of lapses, guided the progress of Western civilisation in the past, the spirit of respect for law and for the rights of the weak, the spirit of liberty which rejoices in variety of type and method, and which believes that the destiny towards which all peoples should be guided is that of self-government in freedom, and the co-operation of free peoples in the maintenance of common interests? ”

“ Or, shall we not rather show ourselves worthy of this high trust, maintain the advanced post which we have hitherto occupied with so much honor, prove, by our example, that a free government is the best pledge for peace and order and human happiness, and thus continue to light the other nations of the earth on their way to liberty? ”

“ You want the rights and liberties of the citizen protected! Then let us have the Union and peace restored upon the basis of equal justice to all men; let us have a country purged of those abnormities which shun the light of free discussion; let the natural rights of man be held sacred; let us have a Republic firmly established upon complete harmony between our social institutions and the fundamental principles underlying our political system,—and the rights and liberties of the citizen will no longer be in danger! ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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; ”

“ Not only the supremacy of old England is to be shaken off, but a new organization of society is to be built up on the basis of liberty and equality. That is the Declaration of Independence! That is the American Revolution! All men free and equal! Not even the broad desert of the Atlantic ocean stops the triumphant shout. Behold, the nations of the old world are rushing to arms. ”

“ We have examples of republics where the love of country and of liberty at one time were the dominant passions of the whole mass of citizens, and yet, with the continuance of the name and forms of free government, not a vestige of these qualities remaining in the bosoms of any one of its citizens. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 ”

“ There let them listen to the story of the birth of our Republic, and have it told simply and, if necessary, in their own tongues, so that all can feel how great were those who made the country free, and how wonderful is the boon of liberty now extended to the oppressed of other countries. ”

“ There is only needed an education of the people into the principles of free government “of the people, for the people, and by the people” to complete the most remarkable political revolution the world has yet known. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Are not those States nominally republics? What is there that interferes with the free disposition which they might make of themselves? Do they not possess all the rights and forms of popular sovereignty? ”

“ This plan of constitution was painted with the colors of a glowing fancy. First, to free every people, and then to unite all free peoples! None to be oppressed by the other. Each to be left to choose his own way to prosperity, speak his own tongue, cultivate his own land. ”

“ Is it strange that, penetrated and nerved with the high motives to be derived from these solemn considerations, the American people are prepared to accept the responsibilities of the great occasion, and even to wade through blood for the realization of the grandeur of those human hopes which are now intrusted to their keeping? One nation—one government—one universal freedom within those imperial boundaries which have heretofore been the theatre of our glorious achievements as a people! ”

“ I love our free and happy government, but not because it confers any new rights upon us. Our rights spring from a nobler source than human constitutions and governments,—from the favor of Almighty God.
“We are not indebted to the Constitution of the United States, or of this State, for the right of free discussion. We are thankful that they have hedged it about with so noble a defence. ”

“ Such are the opinions of every virtuous and enlightened patriot in Great Britain. Their petition to Heaven is—" That there may be one free country left upon earth, to which they may fly, when venality, luxury, and vice, shall have completed the ruin of liberty there."
Courage, then, my countrymen! our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth, for civil and religious liberty ? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The best energies of my life have been spent in endeavoring to establish and perpetuate the principles of free government, and I believe that the government, in passing through its present perils, will settle down upon principles consonant with popular rights, more permanent and enduring than heretofore. ”

“ In one case, nationality is founded on the perpetual supremacy of the collective will, of which the unity of the nation is the necessary condition, to which every other influence must defer, and against which no obligation enjoys authority, and all resistance is tyrannical. The nation is here an ideal unit founded on the race, in defiance of the modifying action of external causes, of tradition, and of existing rights. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And this trampling upon the most sacred rights—this sacrifice of the consciousness of a self-preserving principle, without which neither societies nor governments can exist, is not made by our generals in relation to subjects of their own sovereign, but to an independent nation, our ally, into whose territories we could not have entered but from its confidence in our friendship and good faith. ”

“ It is government by the will of rapacious individuals, in opposition to the will [13] of the community, made known and declared in the laws. A free state, at the same time that it is free itself, makes all its members free, by excluding licentiousness, and guarding their persons and property and good name against insult. It is the end of all just government, at the same time that it secures the liberty of the public against foreign injury, to secure the liberty of the individual against private injury. ”