Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1904 — Untitled [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The real issue in this country is the eternal struggle between two principles —right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles which have stood face to face.from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other is the divine right of kings. It is the principle which says, “You work and toil and earn bread and I’ll eat it.” •e e • A house divided against Itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave nnd half free. Ido not expect the Uuion'to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but Ido expect it will cease to be divided. It will either become one thing or all the other—either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and put it in the course of ultimate extinction or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old well as new, North as well as South. Four score and seven years ngo our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men nre created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. Wo are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, wo cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us —that from these honored depd we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth. • • • Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, thnt this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills thnt it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsmen's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn witli the lash shall be paid with another drawn by the sword, as was said 3,000 years ngo, so still it must be said: “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” With inalice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan— to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.