conflict of parties till the nation was involved in war and the
Union was shaken to its center. This time of trial embraced a
period of five and twenty years, during which the policy of the
Union in its relations with Europe constituted the principal basis
of our political divisions and the most arduous part of the action
of our Federal Government. With the catastrophe in which the wars
of the French Revolution terminated, and our own subsequent peace
with Great Britain, this baneful weed of party strife was
uprooted. From that time no difference of principle, connected
either with the theory of government or with our intercourse with
foreign nations, has existed or been called forth in force
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