The colony, which began with bad men, was increased by worse.

The Company, not content with the “hundred dissolute persons” supplied by the king’s order, entreated for more, until Captain John Smith, the hero of Virginia, was moved to express his disgust.

While all this cumulative evidence shows that the settlers did better in Virginia than in England, it fails to support the Rebel pretension of to-day.

And yet, in face of these impartial and unimpeachable authorities, we are constantly told that Virginia was settled by “cavaliers.

I hope I do not take too much time in exposing a vainglorious pretension, which has helped to give the Rebellion a character of respectability it does not deserve.

I dismiss it to general contempt, as one of the lies by which Slavery, the greatest lie of all, is recommended to the weak who can be deceived by names.

But you will not fail to remark how naturally Slavery flourished among such a congenial people.

Not in Slavery or its battles is “chivalry” found, not in vain pretension, not in any indignity to the poor and lowly.

I come back to the postulate with which I began, that the present war is simply a conflict between Slavery and Liberty.

To my mind it is more satisfactory than that other statement, often made, that it is a conflict between Aristocracy and Democracy.

For centuries there has been a conflict between Aristocracy and Democracy, or, in other words, the few on one side have been perpetually striving to rule and oppress the many.

But now, for the first time in the world’s annals, a people professing civilization has commenced war to uphold the intolerable pretension of compulsory labor without wages, and that most disgusting coïncident, the whipping of women and…

And also know, that, if you would find a prototype in brutality, you must turn your back upon civilized history, and repair to those distant islands which witnessed an oligarchy of cannibals, or go to barbarous Africa, which has been kept…

The conflict is directly between Slavery and Liberty.

But because Slavery aims at the life of the Republic, the issue involves our national existence; and because our national death would be the despair of Liberty everywhere, it involves this great cause throughout the world.

And so I would not for one moment lose sight of the special enemy; for our energies can be properly directed only when we are able to confront him.

Give me to see!” said the old Greek; and this must be our exclamation now.

Slavery, from the beginning, has been a disturber, as it is now a red-handed traitor.

I do not travel back before the Revolution, but, starting from that great event, I show you Slavery always offensive, and forever thrusting itself in the path of national peace and honor.

Throughout these contests Slavery was vulgar, brutal, savage, while its braggart orators and chaplains heralded its claims.

Hogarth, in his famous picture of Bruin, painted Slavery, when he portrayed an immense grizzly bear hugging, as if he loved it, an enormous gnarled bludgeon, with a brand of infamy labelled on every knot, such as Lie Twelve, Lie Fifteen…

In the States where it flourished speech and press were both despoiled of freedom, and the whole country seemed to be fast sinking under its degrading tyranny.

Thus is this Rebellion, by unquestionable pedigree, derived from Slavery, and the parent lives in the offspring.

Therefore, if you are in earnest against the Rebellion, you must be in earnest, also, against Slavery; for the two are synonymous, or convertible terms.

It is Slavery armed and equipped in deadly grapple with Liberty.