Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours
may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was
the last to desert, but that I never deserted her. I know that the great
volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that
reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a
current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over
the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed
no green spot or living thing; while on its bosom are riding, like demons
on the waves of hell, the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly
taunting all those who dare resist its destroying course with the
hopelessness of their effort; and, knowing this, I cannot deny that all
may be swept away. Broken by it I, too, may be; bow to it I never will.
The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us
from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.
If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions
not wholly unworthy of its almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate
the cause of my country deserted by all the world beside, and I standing
up boldly and alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.
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