National liberation

“ But it is to be feared that in America, the factors which make this war of liberation not only righteous but compulsory are still imperfectly grasped.
The liberty of the little nations is necessary to our own peace, freedom and safety. That is the last remaining discovery which the American people must make. ”

“ The Constitution is not mean, stingy, and pettifogging, but open-handed, liberal, and just, inclining always in favor of Freedom, and enabling the Government, in time of war, not only to exercise any Rights of War, including liberation of slaves, but also to confer any largess or bounty—it may be of money, or, better still, of freedom—for services rendered. ”

“ But since I control free men by the imperious will of a chief, it is necessary that we all feel—general, officers, and soldiers—that in this coming war it is a combat to the death between our principles and the pretensions of despots. We must work for the rights of each citizen and the safety of all. We must work for the constitution which we have sworn by, and for the sacred cause of liberty and equality. In short, we must work for the National Sovereignty, by which only we shall be able to resist any such combination of force and danger as there may be ”

“ We conjure the commander of the armed forces and the Supreme Council for the love of their country to use every means for the liberation of the nation and the preservation of her soil. Laying in their hands the disposal of our persons and property for such time as the war of freedom against despotism, of justice against oppression and tyranny, shall last, we desire that they always have present this great truth: that the preservation of a people is the highest law. ”

“ The Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia sees the main condition for victory over Bolshevism in the UNITY OF ALL NATIONAL FORCES AND SUBORDINATION TO THE COMMON TASK OF OVERTHROWING THE BOLSHEVIK POWER. This is why the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia supports all revolutionary and anti-Stalin, anti-Bolshevik opposition while at the same time decisively rejecting all reactionary projects that are tied to the suppression of the people’s rights. ”

“ Such an act, closing this long struggle by assurance of peace to the Territory, if not of tranquillity to the whole country, will be more grateful still as herald of that better day, near at hand, when Freedom will find a home everywhere under the National Government, when the National Flag, wherever it floats, on sea or land, within the national jurisdiction, will cover none but freemen, and the Declaration of Independence, now reviled in the name of Slavery, will be reverenced as the American Magna Charta of Human Rights. ”

“ Our aim is national unity without slavery. Not 'the Union as it was, and the Constitution as it is,' but a nation without slavery, the Constitution the Magna Charta which shall secure liberty to all... The wandering stars must be brought back with their lustre brightened by the ordeal through which they have passed... We can have no national harmony and union without freedom. ”

“ Every interest of the insurgents, every dollar of their property, every institution, however peculiar, every life in every rebel State, even, if necessary, should have been sacrificed, before one dollar or one man should have been drawn from the free States. How much more, then, was it the President's duty to confer freedom on the four million slaves, transform them into a peaceful army for the Union, cripple the rebellion, and establish justice, the only sure foundation of peace! I therefore hail the day when the Government shall recognize that it is a war for freedom. ”

“ Turning from these unpleasant views of violence and wrong, I congratulate you on the liberation of our fellow-citizens who were stranded on the coast of Tripoli and made prisoners of war. In a government bottomed on the will of all the life and liberty of every individual citizen become interesting to all. ”

“ Say, fellow citizens, will you palsy the hands of your friends and sicken their hearts, and gladden the souls of your enemies, by a base refusal to enter upon a career of glory which is now opening so propitiously before you? The genius of universal emancipation, bending from her lofty seat, invites you to accept the wreath of national independence. The voice of your friends, swelling upon the breeze, cries to you from afar—Raise your standard! Assert your independence! ”

“ Is it a demanding necessity that the world will decide belongs to us to meet, thus to prove our manhood and love of liberty? Have not two centuries of cruel and unrequited servitude in this country, alone entitled the children of this generation to the rights of men and citizens? Have we not done our share towards creating a national existence for those who now enjoy it to our degradation, ever devising evil for our suffering, heart-crushed race?
Who that will carefully note the many historical reminiscences, made mention of by those who are ready to do justice to us, can doubt our bravery? ”

“ The people owe to you the glory of a new constitution, but they require and expect that peace and tranquillity which cannot exist without a firm and effectual organization of the government. We, gentlemen, devoted to the revolution and united in the name of liberty, the guarantees alike of individual and common rights and safety,—we, called by the most imperative duty from all parts of the kingdom, founding our confidence on your wisdom and our hopes on your services,—we will bear without hesitation to the altar of the country the oath which you may dictate to its soldiers. ”

“ Yet I will be a peaceable citizen. My head, my hand, and my heart shall be at liberty to retrieve the loss of liberty, and remove the defects of that system in a constitutional way. I wish not to go to violence, but will wait, with hopes that the spirit which predominated in the Revolution is not yet gone, nor the cause of those who are attached to the Revolution yet lost. I shall therefore patiently wait in expectation of seeing that government changed, so as to be compatible with the safety, liberty, and happiness of the people. ”

“ This is the moment to rally round the national colours—the Tricoloured Standard of 1788—the standard of liberty, equality, and public order. It is you alone who can now protect the country from foreign attacks, and internal dissensions. It is you alone who can secure the independence and the honour of France. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Fighting are the powers of internationalism headed by the clique of Stalin, dreaming of a world revolution and the destruction of the national independence of other countries and peoples. Fighting are freedom loving nations, thirsting to live their own life, directed by their personal historical and national development. ”

“ Events, which no man could have foreseen or controlled, had gathered for judgment, and at last a great nation had decreed freedom to a poor, debauched and servile race. But who should lead them, who should now defend them against themselves—give shape and system to their undisciplined wishes—carry them safely through the anarchy of unbounded liberty, and crystallize them into a STATE, whose only sure basis is the Rights and Duties of Labor, Thought, Speech and Worship, the Rights and Duties of Manhood? ”

“ Complete liberty and exact equality in the enjoyment of all civil, political, and public rights should be established and effectually maintained throughout the Union by efficient and appropriate state and federal legislation. Neither the law nor its administration should admit any discrimination in respect to citizens by reason of race, creed, color, or previous condition of servitude.
4. The national government should seek to maintain honorable peace with all nations, protecting its citizens everywhere, and sympathizing with all peoples who strive for greater liberty. ”

“ But I confess frankly that I look with more hope and confidence to Liberation than to Confiscation. To give freedom is nobler than to take property, and on this occasion it cannot fail to be more efficacious, for in this way the rear-guard of the Rebellion will be changed into the advance-guard of the Union. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Let this bill pass, and then will be accomplished the first practical triumph of Freedom, for which good men have longed, dying without the sight,—for which a whole generation has petitioned, and for which orators and statesmen have pleaded. Slavery will be banished from the national capital. ”

“ But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth and cover the whole land. Are they not already in the land? Will liberation make them any more numerous? Equally distributed among the whites of the whole country, and there would be but one colored to seven whites. ”

“ It is this great institution to which we certainly owe the triumph amongst us of the sacred cause of liberty, which both causes our national independence to be respected abroad, whilst preserving the action of laws from all attack at home. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Either we should set our slaves at liberty, immediately, and colonize them in the western territory;5 or we should immediately take measures for the gradual abolition of it, so that it may become a known, and fixed point, that ultimately, universal liberty, in these united states, shall triumph.--This is the least we can do in order to evince our sense of the irreparable outrages we have committed, to wipe off the odium we have incurred, and to give mankind a confidence again in the justice, liberality, and honour of our national proceedings. ”

“ Every person shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and expression and publication of his opinion either orally, in writing or in the form of art or through any other form of expression, subject to observance of restrictions imposed by law for the respect of the rights or reputations of others, the protection of national security or of public order or of public health or morals. ”

“ My answer is: it is never too late to tell the story of what patriotic men suffered in the defence of Constitutional liberty, and of the Union of States, which union was cemented by the blood of our Revolutionary sires. ”

“ We have carried on a great war against those who wanted to disrupt the Republic for the purpose of making slavery the corner-stone of a new empire. We have reconstructed the disorganized rebel States upon the basis of universal liberty and equal rights. We have enabled the whole people thereof to set up governments of their own; and behold eight of these States have already resumed their old places in the Union ”

“ For more than two hundred years, we have. Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. ”

“ In a word, all the grandeur and prosperity of those happy United States, who, at the same time they nobly secure the complete assertion of American independence, reflect on every part of the world the light of a far superior civilization.
“‘What better pledge can be given of a persevering national love of liberty, when those blessings are evidently the result of a virtuous resistance to oppression, and institutions founded on the rights of men and the republican principle of self-government? ”

“ And Slavery is trembling as trembled before
The oppression which fled from our fathers of yore,
[53] The oppression which fled from our fathers of yore.
We’re coming, we’re coming, with banners unfurled!
Our motto is Freedom—“our country, the World!”
Our watch-word is Liberty—Tyrants, beware!
For the Liberty army will bring you despair,
For the Liberty army will bring you despair.
We’re coming, we’re coming, we’ll come from afar,
Our standard we’ll nail to Humanity’s car. ”

“ From the Congo to Cuba, from South Viet Nam to Algiers, in India, Brazil and Iran, men, women, and children are straightening their backs and listening to the evil promises of Communist tyranny, and the honorable promises of Anglo American liberty. And those people will decide not only their own future, but ours; how the cause of freedom fares around the world. That will be their decision.
In the United States, we are striving to establish a rule of law instead of a rule of force. ”