All the purposes of human association have been accomplished
as effectively as under any other government on the globe, and at
a cost little exceeding in a whole generation the expenditure of
other nations in a single year.
Such is the unexaggerated picture of our condition under a
Constitution founded upon the republican principle of equal
rights. To admit that this picture has its shades is but to say
that it is still the condition of men upon earth. From evil--
physical, moral, and political--it is not our claim to be exempt.
We have suffered sometimes by the visitation of Heaven through
disease; often by the wrongs and injustice of other nations, even
to the extremities of war; and, lastly, by dissensions among
ourselves--dissensions perhaps inseparable from the enjoyment of
freedom, but which have more than once appeared to threaten the
dissolution of the Union, and with it the overthrow of all the
enjoyments of our present lot and all our earthly hopes of the
future. The causes of these dissensions have been various, founded
upon differences of speculation in the theory of republican
government; upon conflicting views of policy in our relations with
foreign nations; upon jealousies of partial and sectional
interests, aggravated by prejudices and prepossessions which
strangers to each other are ever apt to entertain.
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