Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/128

94 of the right of property in man!” says Madison. “Let slavery be abolished by law!” says Washington. Not only the supremacy of old England is to be shaken off, but a new organization of society is to be built up on the basis of liberty and equality. That is the Declaration of Independence! That is the American Revolution! All men free and equal! Not even the broad desert of the Atlantic ocean stops the triumphant shout. Behold, the nations of the old world are rushing to arms. Bastiles are blown into the dust, as by the trumpets of Jericho, and, like a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day, the great watchword of the American Revolution shows forever the way to struggling humanity. All men are created free and equal! Whence the supernatural power in these seven words?

Turn your eyes away from the sublime spectacle of 1776, from that glorious galaxy of men whose hearts were large enough for all mankind, and let me recall you to the sober year of 1857. There is Springfield, the capital of Illinois, one of those States which owe their greatness to an ordinance originally framed by the same man whose hand wrote the Declaration of Independence. In the hall of the assembly there stands Mr. Douglas, who initiates an eager crowd into the mysteries of “popular sovereignty.” He will tell you what it meant, when the men of 1776 said that “all men are created free and equal.” He says:

No man can vindicate the character, the motives and the conduct of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, except upon the hypothesis that they referred to the white race alone, and not to the African, when they declared all men to have been created free and equal—that they were speaking of British subjects on this continent being free and equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain—that they were entitled to the same inalienable rights, and