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The great French historian and statesman, Guizot, has reminded us in that popular history of his own land to which he devoted the last labors of his life, that in 1776, before the Declaration of Independence, "the Virginians had adopted at the close of their proclamations the proudly significant phrase God save the liberties of America!"" Let that Virginia phrase be the fervent phrase of us all in all time to come; and let the legend we have stamped upon our coin and inserted in the very eagle's beak, be indelibly impressed on every patriotic heart,-" In God we trust."

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Fellow citizens of the United States,-citizens of the old thirteen of the Revolution and citizens of the new twenty-five whose stars are now glittering with no inferior lustre in our glorious galaxy,—yes, and citizens of the still other States which I dare not attempt to number, but which are destined at no distant period to be evolved from our imperial Texas and Territories,—I hail you all as brothers to-day and call upon you all as you advance in successive generations to stand fast in the faith of the fathers and to uphold and maintain unimpaired the matchless institutions which are now "You are the advanced guard of the human race; you have the future of the world," said Madame de Staël to a distinguished American, recalling with pride what France had done for us at Yorktown.

ours:

Let us lift ourselves to a full sense of such a responsibility for the progress of freedom in other lands as well as in our own. It is not ours to intervene for the redress of grievances or for the establishment of independence elsewhere, as France did here, with fleets and armies. But we can and must intervene and we are intervening daily and hourly for better or worse-by the influence and the force of our example. Next, certainly, to promoting the greatest

good of the greatest number at home the supreme mission of our country is to hold up before the eyes of all mankind a practical, well-regulated, successful system of free, constitutional government, purely administered and loyally sup ported, giving assurance and furnishing proof that true liberty is not incompatible with the maintenance of order, with obedience to law, and with a lofty standard of political and social virtue. Every failure here, every degree of failure here, through insubordination or discord, through demoralization, corruption, or crime, throws back the cause of freedom everywhere and presents our country as a warning instead of as an encouragement to the liberal tendencies of other governments and other lands. We cannot escape from the responsibility of this great intervention of American example; and it involves nothing less than the hope or the despair of the ages!

Let us strive, then, to aid and advance the liberty of the world in the only legitimate way in our power by patriotic fidelity and devotion in upholding, illustrating, and adorning our own free institutions. "Spartam nactus es; Hanc exorna!" There is no limit to our prosperity and welfare if we are true to those. institutions. We have nothing now to fear except from ourselves. There is no boundary line for separating us without cordons of custom-houses and garrisons of standing armies which would change the whole character of those institutions.

We are one by the configuration of nature and by the strong impress of art,-inextricably intertwined by the lay of our land, the run of our rivers, the chain of our lakes, and the iron network of our crossing and recrossing and ever multiplying and still advancing tracks of trade and travel. We are one by the memories of our fathers. We are one

by the hopes of our children. We are one by a constitution and a Union which have not only survived the shock of foreign and of civil war but have stood the abeyance of almost all administration, while the whole people were waiting breathless, in alternate hope and fear, for the issues of an execrable crime.

We are one-bound together afresh-by the electric chords of sympathy and sorrow, vibrating and thrilling, day by day of the livelong summer through every one of our hearts for our basely wounded and bravely suffering President, bringing us all down on our knees together in common supplications for his life, and involving us all at last in a common flood of grief at his death!

I cannot forget that as I left President Garfield after a friendly visit at the executive mansion last May, his parting words to me were, "Yes, I shall be with you at Yorktown." We all miss him and mourn him here to-day; and not only the rulers and people of all nations have united with us in paying homage to his memory, but nature herself, I had almost said, has seemed to sympathize in our sorrow, giving us ashes for beauty and parched and leaden leaves on all our forests, instead of their wonted autumn glories of crimson and gold. But I dare not linger amid festive scenes like these, on that great affliction, which has added indeed "another hallowed name to the historical inheritance of our Republic," but which has thrown a pall of deepest tragedy upon the falling curtain of our first century. Oh, let not its influences be lost upon us for the century to come, but let this very field, consecrated heretofore by a great surrender of foreign foes, be hereafter associated also with the nobler surrender to each other of all our old sectional animosities and prejudices and let us be one henceforth

and always, in mutual regard, conciliation, and affec tion!

Go on, hand in hand, O States, never to be disunited! Be the praise and the heroic song of all posterity! Join your invincible might to do worthy and godlike deeds! And then -But I will not add, as John Milton added, in closing his inimitable appeal on Reformation in England, two centuries and a half ago-" A cleaving curse be his inheritance to all generations who seek to break your Union!" No imprecations or anathemas shall escape my lips on this auspicious day. Let me rather invoke, as I devoutly and fervently do, the choicest and richest blessings of heaven on those who shall do most in all time to come to preserve our beloved country in unity, peace, and concord!

HAMLIN

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ANNIBAL HAMLIN, an American statesman, was born in Paris, Maine, August 27, 1809. He learned the printer's trade in early youth, then studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1833. He practised his profession in Hampden, Penobscot, Maine, until 1848, but he had meanwhile served in the State legislature, 1836-40, and been Democratic representative in Congress, 1842-46. From 1848-57 ae sat in United States Senate, but resigned in the latter year to be inaugurated governor of Maine, to which office he had been elected as a Republican. A month later, having been chosen senator for a full term, he resigned the governorship and returned to the Senate. In 1861 he became vice-president of the United States, having been elected on the Republican ticket with Abraham Lincoln the previous autumn, and he presided over the Senate during his entire term as vice-president. He was collector of the port of Boston, 1865-66, and minister to Spain, 1881-83. He died at Bangor, Maine, July 4, 1891. Hamlin was originally a Democrat, but being a strong anti-slavery man he separated from his party and in a speech in the Senate, June 12, 1856, detailed his reasons for his change of party. During his term of office as vice-president the most cordial relations existed between him and President Lincoln.

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SPEECH ON THE COMPROMISE BILL

DELIVERED IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, JULY 22, 1848

AM admonished, Mr. President, by the whisperings within these walls that we are to be pressed to a decision of this great question at the present sitting. If therefore I would offer any suggestions which will control my vote and command my action, I must embrace the present as the only opportunity.

The question which we are now called upon to decide is of momentous importance. Yet from its decision I have no disposition to shrink. It is indeed startling that in the middle of the nineteenth century-in this model republic, with the sun of liberty shining upon us, and while the governments

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