We are as devoted to the Union as any portion of the American people (I use the phrase as meaning the people of the Union); but we see in a national consolidated government evils innumerable to us.

Local self-government, whether in the town, county, or State, is of incalculable advantage, supplying the opportunities of political education, and also a local administration adapted precisely to local wants.

Against that exacting centralization, absorbing everything, of which Paris is the example, I oppose the American system of self-government, which leaves the people to themselves, subject only to the paramount conditions of national life.

No local claim of self-government can for a moment interfere with the supremacy of the Nation, in the maintenance of Human Rights.

According to the wisdom of Plutarch, we must shun those pestilent persons who would “carry trifles to the highest magistrate,” and, in the same spirit, reject that pestilent supervisorship which asserts a regulating power over local…

This is the precious principle of self-government, which is at once educator and agency.

But the rights of all must be placed under the protection of all; nor can there be any difference in different parts of the country.

Here the rule must be uniform, and it must be sustained by the central power radiating to every part of the various empire.

Call it imperialism, if you please: it is simply the imperialism of the Declaration of Independence, with all its promises fulfilled.

It simply requires the abolition of any discrimination among citizens, inconsistent with Equal Rights.

If not by Act of Congress, let it be by a new Amendment of the Constitution; but it must be at once.

It is shocking to the moral sense, and degrading to the understanding.

As in the Nation there can be but one sovereignty, so there can be but one citizenship.

The unity of sovereignty finds its counterpart and complement in the unity of citizenship, and the two together are the tokens of a united people.

Thus are the essential conditions of national life all resolved into three,--one sovereignty, one citizenship, one people.

The late Rebellion against the nation was in the name of State Rights; therefore State Rights in their denationalizing pretensions must be overthrown.

By irresistible law, water everywhere seeks its level, and finds it; and so, by law as irresistible, man seeks the level of every other man in rights, and will find it.

Human passions and human institutions are unavailing to arrest it, as Nature is stronger than man, and the Creator is mightier than the creature.

The recognition of this law is essential to the national cause; for so you will work with Nature rather than against it, and at the same time in harmony with the Declaration of Independence.

We do not extinguish Slavery, we do not trample out the Rebellion, until the vital truth declared by our fathers is established, and Nature in her law is obeyed.

In England there is Liberty without Equality; in France, Equality without Liberty.

The victory of ideas is grander far than any victory of blood.

What battle ever did so much for humanity as the Sermon on Mars Hill?

What battle ever did so much as the Declaration of Independence?

All hail to the Republic, redeemed and regenerated, One and Indivisible!