The forest has
fallen by the ax of our woodsmen; the soil has been made to teem by the
tillage of our farmers; our commerce has whitened every ocean. The
dominion of man over physical nature has been extended by the invention
of our artists. Liberty and law have marched hand in hand. All the
purposes of human association have been accomplished as effectively as
under any other government on the globe, and at a cost little exceeding
in a whole generation the expenditure of other nations in a single year.
Such is the unexaggerated picture of our condition under a Constitution
founded upon the republican principle of equal rights. To admit that
this picture has its shades is but to say that it is still the condition
of men upon earth. From evil--physical, moral, and political--it is not
our claim to be exempt. We have suffered sometimes by the visitation of
Heaven through disease; often by the wrongs and injustice of other
nations, even to the extremities of war; and, lastly, by dissensions
among ourselves--dissensions perhaps inseparable from the enjoyment of
freedom, but which have more than once appeared to threaten the
dissolution of the Union, and with it the overthrow of all the
enjoyments of our present lot and all our earthly hopes of the future.
The causes of these dissensions have been various, founded upon
differences of speculation in the theory of republican government; upon
conflicting views of policy in our relations with foreign nations; upon
jealousies of partial and sectional interests, aggravated by prejudices
and prepossessions which strangers to each other are ever apt to
entertain.
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