Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/73

 WEBSTER dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their last feeble and linger- ing glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored through- out the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, ''What is all this worth r' nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first and Union afterward"; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart — -Liberty and Vmon, now and for ever, one and inseparable!*^