In November, 1910, there was held in the city of Chicago an anniversary celebration of the life and work of Theodore Parker, a New England Congregational clergyman who lived from 1810 to 1860. When professional philosophers, reformers, and preachers were discussing, in an academic fashion, the question of human freedom, while under our banner of professed "human rights for all," the shackles were on the hands of four millions of slaves, while professional statesmen were temporizing with this iniquitous system and proposing compromises, all of which affected slave owners, and none of them made the slave free, Theodore Parker, in season and out of season at times appropriate and inappropriate, was a flaming firebrand of passionate utterance against the hideous hypocrisy of our national pretense while the rattle of these shackles was in our ears. It was nothing to him that the solid South was against him; it was of no weight to him that many of the "respectable moneyed men" of New England were engaged in the slave trade, and that "practical men of affairs" counseled moderation, toleration, and caution in dealing with so "delicate" a subject. He saw only the horrible facts of human slavery, and that this slavery existed in a land on whose national banner were inscribed the words: "We believe it to be a self-evident truth that _all men_ are created free and equal," and the only delicacy he felt was that the national conscience should be aroused to its hypocrisy, self-deceit, inconsistency, and dishonor, and that the slave-holding and slave-trading business should cease in this "land of the free and home of the brave." We, to whom the Emancipation Proclamation has been familiar ever since its promulgation, cannot conceive the terrible stir, the bitter antagonism, the fierce hostility Parker's clear and ringing words caused at the time of their utterance. In vain his fellow-preachers begged him to be more cautious, to adopt a more conciliatory tone. Like Campanello, who took a bell for his crest, and for his motto the words, "I will not keep silent," he quietly but firmly, calmly but resolutely, refused, and rang out all the louder and more insistently his call to the drugged conscience, sleeping honor, and deadened humanities of his fellow citizens. It was he who inspired in Lincoln that memorable phrase made forever world-famed by his glorious Gettysburg speech: "Government of the people, by the people, for the people." Lincoln spoke November 19, 1863. Parker had written in November, 1846, these words: Let the world have peace for five hundred years, the aristocracy of blood will have gone, the aristocracy of gold will have come and gone, that of talent will also have come and gone, and the aristocracy of goodness, which is the democracy of man, the government _of_ all, _for_ all, _by_ all, will be the power that is. Democracy is direct self-government over all the people, by all the people, for all the people.