Fellow-citizens, such is the issue of principle, such are the platforms and candidates. And now, I ask frankly, Are you for Slavery, or are you for Liberty? Or, changing the form of the question, Are you for the Rebellion, or are you for your country? For this is the question you must answer by your votes. In your answer, do not forget, I entreat you, its infinite, far-reaching, many-sided importance. This is no ordinary election. It is a battle-field of the war; and victory at the polls will assure victory everywhere. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Farragut, all are watching for it. Their trumpets are ready to echo back our election bells.
In every aspect the contest is vast. It is vast in its relations to our own country,—vaster still in its relations to other countries. Overthrow Slavery here, and you overthrow it everywhere,—in Cuba, Brazil, and wherever a slave clanks his chain. The whole execrable pretension of “property in men,” wherever it now shows its audacious front, will be driven back into kindred night. Nor is this all. Overthrow Slavery here, and our Republic ascends to untold heights of power and grandeur. Thus far its natural influence has been diminished by Slavery. Let this shameful obscuration cease, and our example will be the day-star of the world. Liberty, everywhere, in all her struggles, will be animated anew, and the down-trodden in distant lands will hail the day of deliverance. But let Slavery prevail, and our Republic will drop from its transcendent career, while the cause of liberal institutions in all lands is darkened. There have been great battles in the past, on which Human Progress has been staked. There was Marathon, when the Persian hosts were driven back from Greece; there was Tours, when the Saracens were arrested midway in victorious career by Charles Martel; there was Lepanto, when the Turks were brought to a stand in their conquests; there was Waterloo. But our contest is grander. We are fighting for national life, assailed by belligerent Slavery; yet such is the solidarity of nations, and so are mankind knit together, that our battle now is for the liberty of the world. The voice of victory here will resound through the ages.
Never was grander cause or sublimer conflict. Never holier sacrifice. Who is not saddened at the thought of precious lives given to Liberty’s defence? The soil of the Rebellion is soaked with patriot blood, its turf is bursting with patriot dead. Surely they have not died in vain. The flag they upheld will continue to advance. But this depends upon your votes. Therefore, for the sake of that flag, and for the sake of the brave men that bore it, now sleeping where no trumpet of battle can wake them, stand by the flag.
Tell me not of “failure.” There can be but one failure, and that is the failure to make an end of Slavery; for on this righteous consummation all else depends. Let Liberty be with us, and no power can prevail against us. Let Slavery be acknowledged, and there is no power which will not mock and insult us. Such is the teaching of history, in one of its greatest examples. Napoleon, when compelled to exchange his empire for a narrow island prison, exclaimed in bitterness of spirit, “It is not the Coalition which has dethroned me, but liberal ideas.” Not the European Coalition, marshalling its forces from the Don to the Orkneys, toppled the Man of Destiny from his lofty throne; but that Liberty which he had offended. He saw and confessed the terrible antagonist, when he cried out, “I cannot reëstablish myself; I have shocked the people; I have sinned against liberal ideas, and I perish.” Memorable words of instruction and warning! Ideas rule the world, and, unlike batteries and battalions, they cannot be destroyed or cut in pieces. May we so press this contest as not to shock mankind or sin against Liberty! May we so close this contest as to win God’s favor! Nature has placed the eye in the front, that man shall look forward and upward; and it is only by contortion that he is able to look behind. Therefore, in looking forward and upward, we follow Nature. An ancient adventurer, escaping from the realms of Death, looked behind, and he failed. We, too, shall fail, if we look behind. Forward, not backward, is the word,—firmly, courageously, faithfully. There must be no false sentiment or cowardice, no fear of “irritating” Rebels. When the Almighty Power hurled Satan and his impious peers
“headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell