its great and lasting imbecility and reproach. It lies in the fact that it is a

party of one idea; but that is a noble one--an idea that fills and expands all

generous souls; the idea of equality of all men before human tribunals and human

laws, as they all are equal before the Divine tribunal and Divine laws.

 

I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and all the world

knows, that revolutions never go backward. Twenty senators and a hundred

representatives proclaim boldly in Congress to-day sentiments and opinions and

principles of freedom which hardly so many men, even in this free State, dared

to utter in their own homes twenty years ago. While the government of the United

States, under the conduct of the Democratic party, has been all that time

surrendering one plain and castle after another to slavery, the people of the

United States have been no less steadily and perseveringly gathering together

the forces with which to recover back again all the fields and all the castles

which have been lost, and to confound and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the

betrayers of the Constitution and freedom forever.

 

--W.H. SEWARD.

 

FOOTNOTES:

 

[Footnote 1: From an editorial by D.C. in _Leslie's Weekly_, June 4, 1914. Used

by permission.]

 

CHAPTER VII