This conception--obscurely seen and felt, and mixed with the inevitable amount of folly and self-seeking, yet, after, all, this conception--our nation dared to stand up and announce, and to consecrate it by the shedding of blood, calling God and all good men to witness. The deed was grand; the hearts of men everywhere were more or less its accomplices; all the tides of history ran in its favor; kings, forgetting themselves into virtue and generosity, lent it good wishes or even good arms; it was successful; and on its primary success waited such prosperities as the world has seldom seen. But, because the deed was noble, great costs must needs attend it, attend it long. And first of all the cost of _applying our principle within our own borders_. For, when a place had been obtained for us among nations, we looked down, and, lo! at our feet the African--in chains. A benighted and submissive race, down-trodden and despised from of old, a race of outcasts, of Pariahs, covered with the shame of servitude, and held by the claim of that terrible talisman, the word _property_,--here it crouched at our feet, lifting its hands, imploring. Yes, America, here is your task now; never flinch nor hesitate, never begin to question now; thrust your right hand deep into your heart's treasury, bring forth its costliest, purest justice, and lay its immeasurable bounty into this sable palm, bind its blessing on this degraded brow. Ah, but America did falter and question. "How can I?" it said. "This is a Negro, a _Negro_! Besides, he is PROPERTY!" And so America looked up, determined to ignore the kneeling form. With pious blasphemy it said, "He is here providentially; God in His own good time will dispose of him"; as if God's hour for a good effect were not the earliest hour at which courage and labor can bring it about, not the latest to which indolence and infidelity can postpone it. Then it looked away across oceans to other continents, and began again the chant, "Man is man; natural right is sacred forever; and of politics the sole basis is universal justice." Joyfully it sang for a while, but soon there began to come up the clank of chains mingling with its chant, and the groans of oppressed men and violated women, and prayers to Heaven for another justice than this; and then the words of its chant grew bitter in the mouth of our nation, and a sickness came in its heart, and an evil blush mounted and stood on its brow; and at length a devil spoke in its bosom and said, "The negro has no rights that a white man is bound to respect"; and ere the words were fairly uttered, their meaning, as was indeed inevitable, changed to this,--"A Northern 'mudsill' has no rights that a Southern gentleman is bound to respect"; and soon guns were heard booming about Sumter, and a new chapter in our history and in the world's history began.