Repository: UIHistories Project: War Publications - WWI Compilation 1923 - Article 8 [PAGE 5]

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was that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. None of these men found it particularly inconsistent with the above thesis to hold human slaves in a peculiarly debasing form of bondage known as African slavery. Such a practice was, of course, not consistent with the profession given above, and when this profession was once made, so great is the power of the winged word that the practise had to cease in time or the profession had to be renounced. That profession was not, alas! the statement of a fact in existence at that time, but a prophecy of something to come; and one of those peculiar prophecies,—thank God,—the mere formation of which helps to their realization. It behooves us Americans, who have entered this great contest for human liberty, to remember how easily such a conflict may degenerate and how necessary it is to hold it on a high plane, worthy of our aspiration and our sacrifice. We ought not to forget that the price of liberty is still eternal vigilance, watching not merely over our enemies, but over ourselves, our desires, our ambitions, our conduct In spite of that magnificent announcement in the Declaration of Independence, which sounded a new note in the history of the world, leading directly to the French Revolution and all its consequences, it was nearly ninety years before we in this country were willing to draw the logical conclusion and to take the decisive step in our own policy so imperatively called for by the sentiments and language of this declaration. Eighty-five years after the Declaration of Independence was given to the world, calling forth sentiments and aspirations that seemed to have died out in the world's breast, a considerable proportion of the intelligent, liberty-loving, warm-hearted American citizens pledged their lives and fortunes and sacred honor to a war in defense of this same institution of African slavery. And it was not until they were thoroughly defeated, until a million precious lives had been sacrificed, uncounted billions of money had been destroyed, that they finally acquiesced in an outcome of the Civil War, which was nothing but the logical development of the Declaration which their ancestors had adopted, and to which they had pledged their support and enthusiasm for near5