there could not be selected a President, a cabinet, a congress, and perhaps a court, abundantly competent to administer the government itself.  Nor do I say that this is not true also in the army of our late friends, now adversaries in this contest; but if it is, so much the better reason why the government which has conferred such benefits on both them and us should not be broken up.  Whoever in any section proposes to abandon such a government, would do well to consider in deference to what principle it is that he does it; what better he is likely to get in its stead; whether the substitute will give, or be intended to give, so much of good to the people?  There are some foreshadowings on this subject.  Our adversaries have adopted some declarations of independence in which, unlike the good old one penned by Jefferson, they omit the words, “all men are created equal.”  Why?  They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which, unlike our good old one signed by Washington, they omit “We, the people,” and substitute “We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States.”  Why?  Why this deliberate pressing out of view the rights of men and the authority of the people?

This is essentially a people’s contest.  On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men,—­to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.  Yielding to partial and temporary departures from necessity, this is the leading object of the government for the existence of which we contend.

I am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate this.  It is worthy of note that while in this, the government’s hour of trial, large numbers of those in the army and navy who have been favoured with the offices have resigned and proved false to the hand which had pampered them, not one common soldier or common sailor is known to have deserted his flag.

Our popular government has often been called an experiment.  Two points in it our people have already settled,—­the successful establishing and the successful administering of it.  One still remains,—­its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it.  It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections.  Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.