“We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has

followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us…half our people who are not descendants at all of these men …have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with

those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that

glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that "Wehold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and then they feel that

that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, (loud

and long continued applause) and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic

hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.” -Abe Lincoln, July 4, 1858