¶But after that certain amount of material prosperity has been gained then the things that really count most are the things of the soul rather than the things of money, and I am sure that each of you if he will really think of what it is that made him most happy, of what it is that made him most respect his neighbors will agree with me.
¶¶Look back in your own lives, see what the things are that you are proudest of as you look back, and you will in almost every case and on every occasion find that those memories of pride are associated, not with days of ease, but with days of effort, the day when you had to do all that was in you for some worthy end, and the worthiest of all worthy ends is to make those that are closest and nearest to you—your wife and your children, and those near you—happy and not sorry that you are alive.
¶And after that has been done, to be able so to handle yourself that you can feel when the end comes that on the whole your community, your fellow men, are a little better off and not a little worse off because you have lived.
¶This kind of success is open to every one of us. The great prizes come more or less by accident, and no human being knows that better than any man who has won one of them. The great prizes come more or less by accident, but to each man there comes normally the chance so to lead his life that at the end of his days his children, his wife, those that are dear to him shall rise up and call him blessed, and so that his neighbors and those who have been brought into intimate association with him, may feel that he has done his part as a man in a world which sadly needs that each man should play his part well.[[1]]
¶¶Treat each man according to his worth as a man. Don’t hold for or against him that he is either rich or poor. But if he is rich and crooked, hold it against him; if not rich but crooked, then hold it against him. But if he is a square man, stand by him. Distrust all who would have any one class placed before any other. Other republics have fallen because of the unscrupulous rich or the unscrupulous poor who gained ascendancy, who substituted loyalty to class for loyalty to the people as a whole.
¶Abolish the insolence and arrogance of the rich who look down upon the poor; if they lost their wealth they would be ready to plunder the rich. The unscrupulous man who becomes rich would oppress the poor. The man who is true to you is ultimately righteous, and the man who will steal for you will steal from you. The man who will seek to persuade you that he will benefit you by wronging any one else will wrong you when it will benefit him.
¶What we must do as a Nation is to stand for the immutable principles of decency and virtue, regarding vice with abhorrence. If we make any artificial divisions we have done irreparable injury to the people.[[2]]
¶Let us be steadfast for the right; but let us err on the side of generosity rather than on the side of vindictiveness toward those who differ from us as to the method of attaining the right. Let us never forget our duty to help in uplifting the lowly, to shield from wrong the humble; and let us likewise act in a spirit of the broadest and frankest generosity toward all our brothers, all our fellow-countrymen; in a spirit proceeding not from weakness but from strength, a spirit which takes no more account of locality than it does of class or creed; a spirit which is resolutely bent on seeing that the Union which Washington founded and which Lincoln saved from destruction shall grow nobler and greater throughout the ages.
¶I believe in this country with all my heart and soul. I believe that our people will in the end rise level to every need, will in the end triumph over every difficulty that rises before them. I could not have such confident faith in the destiny of this mighty people if I had it merely as regards one portion of that people. Throughout our land things on the whole have grown better and not worse, and this is as true of one part of the country as it is of another.
¶For weal or woe we are knit together and we shall go up or go down together; and I believe that we shall go up and not down, that we shall go forward instead of halting and falling back, because I have an abiding faith in the generosity, the courage, the resolution, and the common-sense of all my countrymen.