The compromise our fathers made was the coffin of honor and the cradle of war.
A brazen falsehood and a timid truth are the parents of compromise.
But some—the greatest and the best—believed in liberty for all. They repeated the splendid sayings of the Roman: "By the law of nature all men are free;"—of the French King: "Men are born free and equal;"—of the sublime Zeno: "All men are by nature equal, and virtue alone establishes a difference between them."
In the year preceding the Declaration of Independence, a society for the abolition of slavery was formed in Pennsylvania and its first President was one of the wisest and greatest of men—Benjamin Franklin. A society of the same character was established in New York in 1785; its first President was John Jay—the second, Alexander Hamilton.
But in a few years these great men were forgotten. Parties rivaled each other in the defence of wrong. Politicians cared only for place and power. In the clamor of the heartless, the voice of the generous was lost. Slavery became supreme. It dominated legislatures, courts and parties; it rewarded the faithless and little; it degraded the honest and great.
And yet, through all these hateful years, thousands and thousands of noble men and women denounced the degradation and the crime. Most of their names are unknown. They have given a glory to obscurity. They have filled oblivion with honor.
In the presence of death it has been the custom to speak of the worthlessness, and the vanity, of life. I prefer to speak of its value, of its importance, of its nobility and glory.
Life is not merely a floating shadow, a momentary spark, a dream that vanishes. Nothing can be grander than a life filled with great and noble thoughts—with brave and honest deeds. Such a life sheds light, and the seeds of truth sown by great and loyal men bear fruit through all the years to be. To have lived and labored and died for the right—nothing can be sublimer.
History is but the merest outline of the exceptional—of a few great crimes, calamities, wars, mistakes and dramatic virtues. A few mountain peaks are touched, while all the valleys of human life, where countless victories are won, where labor wrought with love—are left in the eternal shadow.
But these peaks are not the foundation of nations. The forgotten words, the unrecorded deeds, the unknown sacrifices, the heroism, the industry, the patience, the love and labor of the nameless good and great have for the most part founded, guided and defended States. The world has been civilized by the unregarded poor, by the untitled nobles, by the uncrowned kings who sleep in unknown graves mingled with the common dust.