TEXT
"Call of America"
Senators, it is the fate of every self-governing people to be
tried by two assaults. The first is from within, through jealousy
of faction or ambition of leaders. The second is the assault from
without, springing from envy or hatred by foreign rivals. If a
nation cannot survive these assaults, she is overcome by internal
revolution, or subjugated by foreign foe. Only when a people by
trial proves itself able to withstand both assaults will
civilization admit it a place as a permanent nation of earth.
Among modern nations, France survived revolution from within,
but was overcome in assault from without under Wellington. England
triumphed in the revolution under Cromwell, and was victorious over
foreign foe at Waterloo. Our America endured the internal conflict
of '60 and '64, and molded a brotherhood of the south and north
into one invincible union.
Now sirs, true to the course of history, these United States
must meet the assault from without. It comes from Prussia.
Prussia -- whose people were ever received in friendship by our
people, and whose children were made our children. Yet in return
for our generosity, Prussian military masses, defiant to the peaceloving people of Germany, and unmindful of the friendship of
America, cruelly assails the United States, drowning her commerce
and murdering her citizens. All this because our country presumed
to enjoy liberty of life and property, and to live as a republic.
Then arose her sons to the call of the flag. Her daughters to
the call of the sons. All in one voice meet the foe with the cry:
'liberty or death.' Today, America, forced to war, still loving
peace, pledges every son and the woman of his house to the cause of
liberty and the honor of our flag. Here, this day, we lay down
every difference of the past, of section or politics, and now
proclaim one creed: our country, our whole country, and nothing
but our country, thank God.
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