The American
people, intrenched in freedom at home, take their love for it with them
wherever they go, and they reject as mistaken and unworthy the doctrine
that we lose our own liberties by securing the enduring foundations of
liberty to others. Our institutions will not deteriorate by extension,
and our sense of justice will not abate under tropic suns in distant
seas. As heretofore, so hereafter will the nation demonstrate its
fitness to administer any new estate which events devolve upon it, and
in the fear of God will "take occasion by the hand and make the bounds
of freedom wider yet." If there are those among us who would make our
way more difficult, we must not be disheartened, but the more earnestly
dedicate ourselves to the task upon which we have rightly entered. The
path of progress is seldom smooth. New things are often found hard to
do. Our fathers found them so. We find them so. They are inconvenient.
They cost us something. But are we not made better for the effort and
sacrifice, and are not those we serve lifted up and blessed?
We will be consoled, too, with the fact that opposition has confronted
every onward movement of the Republic from its opening hour until now,
but without success. The Republic has marched on and on, and its step
has exalted freedom and humanity. We are undergoing the same ordeal as
did our predecessors nearly a century ago. We are following the course
they blazed. They triumphed.
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