If there is any one who is recognized as a fair exponent of our national
principles, it is our martyr-president Abraham Lincoln; whom Lowell calls,
in his noble Commemoration Ode at Cambridge,--

"New birth of our new soil, the first American."

What President Lincoln's political principle was, we know. On his journey
to Washington for his first inauguration he said, "I have never had a
feeling that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration
of Independence." To find out what was his view of those sentiments, we
must go back several years earlier, and consider that remarkable letter of
his to the Boston Republicans who had invited him to join them in
celebrating Jefferson's birthday, in April, 1859. It was well called by
Charles Sumner "a gem in political literature;" and it seems to me almost
as admirable, in its way, as the Gettysburg address.

"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free
society. And yet they are denied and evaded with no small show of
success. One dashingly calls them 'glittering generalities.' Another
bluntly styles them 'self-evident lies.' And others insidiously
argue that they apply only to 'superior races.'"

"These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and
effect,--the subverting the principles of free government, and
restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would
delight a convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people.
They are the vanguard, the sappers and miners of returning
despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us."