I. WHAT IS OUR COUNTRY.

We cannot honor our country with too deep a reverence; we cannot love her with an affection too pure and fervent; we cannot serve her with an energy of purpose or a faithfulness of zeal too steadfast and ardent. And what is our country? It is not the East, with her hills and her valleys, with her countless sails, and the rocky ramparts of her shores. It is not the North, with her thousand villages and her harvest home, with her frontiers of the lakes and the ocean. It is not the West, with her forest sea and her inland isles, with her luxuriant expanses, clothed in the verdant corn; with her beautiful Ohio and her verdant Missouri. Nor is it yet the South, opulent in the mimic snow of the cotton, in the rich plantations of the rustling cane, and in the golden robes of the rice field. What are these but the sister families of one greater, better, holier family, OUR COUNTRY?

—Thomas Grimke.

II. LIBERTY AND UNION.

I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and the honor of the whole country, and the preservation of the Federal Union. I have not allowed myself to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind; I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder; I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depths of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed.

While the Union lasts we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that, I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind!

When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood. Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured; bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, “What is all this worth?” nor those other words of delusion and folly, “Liberty first, and Union afterwards”; but everywhere spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea, and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.”

—Daniel Webster.

III. THE POLICY OF PEACE.

A peaceful intercourse with the nations of the earth points to that inspiring day which philosophers have hoped for, which poets have seen in their bright dreams of fancy, and which prophets have beheld in holy vision—when men shall learn war no more. Who can contemplate a state of the world like this and not feel his heart exult at the prospect? I am against war, because peace—peace is, above everything else, our policy. Our great mission as a people is to occupy this vast dominion—to level the forests and let in upon their solitudes the light of day; to clear the swamps and make them ready for the plow and the sickle; to spread over hill and dale the echoes of human labor and human happiness; to fill the land with cities and towns; to unite its most distant points by turnpikes and railroads; to scoop out canals and open rivers that may serve as highways for trade.

If we can preserve peace, who shall set bounds to our prosperity or our success? With one foot planted on the Atlantic and the other on the Pacific, we occupy a position between the two old continents of the world—a position which necessarily secures to us the commerce and the influence of both. If we abide by the counsels of common sense, if we succeed in preserving our liberties, we shall in the end exhibit a spectacle such as the world never saw.

I know that this one great mission is encompassed with many difficulties; but such is the energy of our political system, and such is its expansive capability, that it may be made to govern the widest space. If by war we become great, we cannot be free; if we will be both great and free, our policy is peace.

—John C. Calhoun.