Land of the free

“ Most important of all has been the fact that an area of free land has continually lain on the western border of the settled area of the United States. Whenever social conditions tended to crystallize in the East, whenever capital tended to press upon labor or political restraints to impede the freedom of the mass, there was this gate of escape to the free conditions of the frontier. These free lands promoted individualism, economic equality, freedom to rise, democracy. ”

“ O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! ”

“ The home, the port, of liberty Thou hast been, and shall for ever be, Till time is o'er. Ere I forget to think upon My land, shall mother curse the son She bore. "Thou art the firm, unshaken rock On which we rest; And, rising from thy hardy stock, Thy sons the tyrant's power shall mock, And slavery's galling chains unlock, And free the oppressed; All who the wreath of freedom twine Beneath the shadow of their vine Are blest. "We love thy rude and rocky shore, And here we stand. ”

“ I maintain, with other writers upon this land question, that land is common property, the property of the whole people, and that it cannot be alienated from the people without producing the most fearful consequences. No man is free who is debarred in his right, to so much of the soil of his country as is necessary to support him in his right to life, for without the inherent right to unrestrained access to the soil he cannot support life, except in primitive society where land is plentiful, population sparse, and industry undiversified. ”

“ And this land of promise, this region which so long witnessed the extremes of political magnanimity and turpitude, this arena where the vital question of labor, as modified by involuntary servitude, and free activity, found its most practical solution—was, and is, legitimately, appropriately, and naturally, the scene of the fiercest strife for national existence—where the claims and the climax of freedom and faith culminated in all the desolation of civil war. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Again to the battle, Achaians!
Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance;
Our land, the first garden of Liberty’s tree—
It has been, and shall yet be the land of the free:
For the cross of our faith is replanted,
The pale dying crescent is daunted,
And we march that the foot-prints of Mahomet’s slaves
May be washed out in blood from our forefathers’ graves. ”

“ To make Restitution of the Earth, which hath been taken and held from the Common People by the power of Conquests formerly, and to set the oppressed free. Do not all strive to enjoy the land? The Gentry strive for land; the Clergy strive for land; the Common People strive for land; and Buying and Selling is an Art whereby People endeavour to cheat one another of the land. Now, if any can prove from the Law of Righteousness that the land was made peculiar to him and his successively, shutting others out, he shall enjoy it freely for my part. ”

“ But there are those who hope, and those who pray, that this condition will pass, that some day our whole land will be truly free, and the strong will cheerfully help to bear the burdens of the weak, and Justice, the seed, and Peace, the flower, of liberty, will prevail throughout all our borders. ”

“ It is the term applied to the region whose social conditions result from the application of older institutions and ideas to the transforming influences of free land. By this application, a new environment is suddenly entered, freedom of opportunity is opened, the cake of custom is broken, and new activities, new lines of growth, new institutions and new ideals, are brought into existence. ”

“ And in that land there are no six millions of grown men—I speak of the Free States—excluded from the constitution of their country and its electoral franchise; there, you will find a free Church, a free school, free land, a free vote, and a free career for the child of the humblest born in the land. ”

“ We declare that [14] all slaves that shall enter our kingdom, by land or by sea, shall be free; and further order, that every one born a slave in our dominions shall be considered as free from the very instant of his birth, and that he shall neither be sold nor bought. ”

“ Where their rulers will be them that love ’em and seek their best good, their own people, their peers, only wiser and more helpful than they be—as the Declaration of Independence sez free men must be, in a free land, judged by their peers, their equals. ”

“ First and foremost, we shall save the Territories from the five-headed Barbarism of Slavery, keeping them in their normal condition, as they came from the hand of God, free,—with Freedom written on the soil and engraved on the rock, while the winds whisper it in the trees, the rivers murmur it in their flow, and all Nature echoes it in joy unspeakable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nations have made an idol of Liberty, but what nation on the face of the earth is free? My youth is still like a blue and cloudless sky. If I set myself to obtain wealth or power, does it mean that I must make up my mind to lie, and fawn, and cringe, and swagger, and flatter, and dissemble? ”

“ Will they not remember the Southern bondman, in whom the love of freedom is as inherent as in themselves; and will they not, when contending for equal rights, use their mighty forces "to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free?" ”

“ If the North was as devoted to the cause of Freedom as the South is to Slavery, our national troubles would vanish like darkness before the sun. Our country would then become what it should be,—free, happy, prosperous, and respected by all the world. ”

“ One cannot help being struck here, in a high degree, by the contrast between the slave states and the free states; between the state whose principle is selfishness, and the state whose principle is human love; between the state where labour is slavery, and the state where labour is free, and the free are honoured. ”

“ And this system exists here in this country of your's, which boasts itself the asylum of the oppressed, the home of freedom, the one place in all the world where all men may find enfranchisement from all thraldoms of mind, soul, or body—the land elect of liberty. ”

“ If we enact laws and establish institutions, under whose benign influences that vast tract of territory shall at length teem with myriads of human beings, each one a free-born man; each one enjoying the inalienable right of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” ”

“ Why not, before the embarrassments of slave settlement arose, devote this new land to freedom,—not so much to freedom as that shining goddess of mercy and right and justice who rose clear and obvious to our purged vision out of the civil war, as to the less noble deities of economic well-being, thrift, and industrial comfort? ”

“ Cast aside every consideration that would darken the bright hopes of your enslaved countrymen. Be true to liberty, your country, and your God; and your native land, instead of being a lazar-house of slavery, will soon be the garden of freedom. Stand by the cause! Be not dismayed by obstacles you meet ”

“ Where the fires on Freedom's altars, with feeble flickerings burn;
The hearts that light and nurse them there, to us for guidance turn.
Millions of Freedom's children, of every clime and name,
Watch anxiously the western world, and glory in our fame.
The guide of nations! shall our path so blind and erring be,
That hope must die, where'er a heart is burning to be 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. ”

“ Know'st thou the land of the mountain and flood,
Where the pine of the forest for ages hath stood,
Where the eagle comes forth on the wings of the storm,
And her young ones are rock'd on the high Cairngor'm?
Know'st thou the land where the cold Celtic wave
Encircles the hills which its blue waters lave;
Where the virgins are pure as the gems of the sea,
And their spirits are light as their actions are free? ”

“ It cannot be denied that in a community spreading over a large extent of territory, and politically founded upon the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, but [Pg 120] differing so widely in the elements of their social condition, that the inhabitants of one-half the territory are wholly free, and those of the other half divided into masters and slaves, deep if not irreconcilable collisions of interest must abound. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This wonderful geographical advantage had, indeed, been rendered futile in the past by the jealous spirit and the exclusive enactments of her oppressor. But what might not be hoped in the future from a free people, quickened into fresh life by the breath of liberty? ”

“ Our country is called the land of liberty; we possess a just and invincible aversion to slavery at home and in our foreign colonies, and it is triumphantly said that a slave cannot breathe in England. ”

“ Rush, in the Continental Congress, wished "the Colonies to discourage slavery, and encourage the increase of the free inhabitants." Another member of the American Congress declared, in 1779, "Men are by nature free;" "the right to be free can never be alienated." ”

“ The sea is pure and free, the land is firm and stable,—but where they meet, the tide rises and falls, leaving a little belt of sodden mud, of slippery, slimy weeds, where the dead refuse of the sea is cast up to rot in the hot sun. ”

“ These privileges were fixed laws, by which the trade and industry of the citizens were encouraged, and their lives and properties ascertained and protected, and no longer subjected to the laws of mere will and pleasure: And therefore, while these free cities, enjoying their own liberties and laws, flourished under them, the provinces were miserably harrassed, pillaged, dispeopled, and impoverished, and the inhabitants exhausted, starved, butchered, and carried away captive. ”

“ Volumes upon volumes might be filled with extracts similar to the above, from the works of the deceased Statesmen and sages of the North, who, [Pg 243] while living, proved themselves equal to the task of exterminating from their own States the matchless curse of human slavery. Such are the men who, though no longer with us in the flesh, “still live.” A living principle—an immortal interest—have they, invested in every great and good work that distinguishes the free States. ”

“ 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 ? ”

“ In the field and in the forest, by the sweet running brook, and upon the burning sands, in the mountain pass, and in the stony streets of the populous city, within the chancel rail of holy churches, and at the dark entrance to the Bastile—in all these places, and in a thousand more, the hand of the oppressed has been lifted against the oppressor, the right to be free that God gave to men has struggled with the power which might has given, and, alas! ”

“ Freedom's soil hath only place For a free and fearless race, None for traitors false and base. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How shall I describe my first experience of free life? Nothing can be greater than the contrast it affords to a plantation experience, under the suspicious and vigilant eye of a mercenary overseer or a watchful master. Day and night are not more unlike. The mandates of Slavery are like leaden sounds, sinking with dead weight into the very soul, only to deaden and destroy. The impulse of freedom lends wings to the feet, buoys up the spirit within, and the fugitive catches glorious glimpses of light through rifts and seams in the accumulated ignorance of his years of oppression. ”

“ 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. ”