sufficient to sustain a continued combination of parties or to give
more than wholesome animation to public sentiment or legislative
debate. Our political creed is, without a dissenting voice that can be
heard, that the will of the people is the source and the happiness of
the people the end of all legitimate government upon earth; that the
best security for the beneficence and the best guaranty against the
abuse of power consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency
of popular elections; that the General Government of the Union and the
separate governments of the States are all sovereignties of limited
powers, fellow-servants of the same masters, uncontrolled within their
respective spheres, uncontrollable by encroachments upon each other;
that the firmest security of peace is the preparation during peace of
the defenses of war; that a rigorous economy and accountability of
public expenditures should guard against the aggravation and alleviate
when possible the burden of taxation; that the military should be kept
in strict subordination to the civil power; that the freedom of the
press and of religious opinion should be inviolate; that the policy of
our country is peace and the ark of our salvation union are articles of
faith upon which we are all now agreed. If there have been those who
doubted whether a confederated representative democracy were a
government competent to the wise and orderly management of the common
concerns of a mighty nation, those doubts have been dispelled; if there
have been projects of partial confederacies to be erected upon the
ruins of the Union, they have been scattered to the winds; if there
have been dangerous attachments to one foreign nation and antipathies
against another, they have been extinguished. Ten years of peace, at
home and abroad, have assuaged the animosities of political contention
and blended into harmony the most discordant elements of public
opinion. There still remains one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice
of prejudice and passion, to be made by the individuals throughout the