In this conflict we have passed midnight. The world is destined to be republican. Those who obey the laws will make the laws.
Our country—the United States—the great Republic—owns the fairest portion of half the world. We have now sixty millions of free people. Look upon the map of our country. Look upon the great valley of the Mississippi—stretching from the Alleghenies to the Rockies. See the great basin drained by that mighty river. There you will see a territory large enough to feed and clothe and educate five hundred millions of human beings.
This country is destined to remain as one. The Mississippi River is Nature's protest against secession and against division.
We call that nation civilized when its subjects submit their differences of opinion, in accordance with the forms of law, to fellow-citizens who are disinterested and who accept the decision as final.
The nations, however, sustain no such relation to each other. Each nation concludes for itself. Each nation defines its rights and its obligations; and nations will not be civilized in respect of their relations to each other, until there shall have been established a National Court to decide differences between nations, to the judgment of which all shall bow.
It is for the Press—the Press that photographs the human activities of every day—the Press that gives the news of the world to each individual—to bend its mighty energies to the unification and the civilization of mankind; to the destruction of provincialism, of prejudice—to the extirpation of ignorance and to the creation of a great and splendid patriotism that embraces the human race.
The Press presents the daily thoughts of men. It marks the progress of each hour, and renders a relapse into ignorance and barbarism impossible. No catastrophe can be great enough, no ruin wide-spread enough, to engulf or blot out the wisdom of the world.
Feeling that it is called to this high destiny, the Press should appeal only to the highest and to the noblest in the human heart.
It should not be the bat of suspicion, a raven, hoarse with croaking disaster, a chattering jay of gossip, or a vampire fattening on the reputations of men.
It should remain the eagle, rising and soaring high in the cloudless blue, above all mean and sordid things, and grasping only the bolts and arrows of justice.