fought for the principle that they were contending for, and we understand that by what they then did, it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now enjoy has come to us.  We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time,—­of how it was done, and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humour with ourselves,—­we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit.  In every way we are better men, in the age and race and country in which we live, for these celebrations.  But after we have done all this, we have not yet reached the whole.  There is something else connected with it.  We have, besides these men—­descended by blood from our ancestors—­among us, perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe,—­German, Irish, French, and Scandinavian,—­men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equal in all things.  If they look back through this history, to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none:  they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us; but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are.  That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together; that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.

Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of “don’t care if slavery is voted up or voted down”; for sustaining the Dred Scott decision; for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean anything at all,—­we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that the people of America are equal to the people of England.  According to his construction, you Germans are not connected with it.  Now, I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and indorsed, if taught to our children and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this government into a government of some other form?  Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition