The truth of all this has been brought under suspicion by the
flatulent oratory of our Fourth-of-Julys; but truth it remains. Our
nation did enunciate a grand idea never equally felt by any other. Our
nation has said, and said with the sword in its right hand, "Every man
born into this world has the right from God to make the most and best
of his existence, and society is established only to further and guard
this sacred right." We thus established a new scale of justice; we
raised a demand for the individual which had not been so made before.
Freedom and order were made one; both were identified with justice,
simple, broad, equal, universal justice. The American idea, then, what
is it? _The identification of politics with justice_, this it is. With
justice, and this, too, not on a scale of conventional usage, but
on the scale of natural right. That, as I read, is the American
idea,--making politics moral by their unity with natural justice,
justice world-old and world-wide.
This conception--obscurely seen and felt, and mixed with the
inevitable amount of folly and self-seeking, yet, after, all,
this conception--our nation dared to stand up and announce, and to
consecrate it by the shedding of blood, calling God and all good men
to witness.
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