Best patriotic speech for competition
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: I desire to address you very briefly on subjects connected with our present national difficulties. But it will not be necessary for me to attempt to retrace the history of the war. It is written in the memory and upon the hearts of all our people. I desire only to present to you some general views in relation to it, which will enable me better to explain and you better to understand the course which I have pursued as your representative for the last two years. During that whole period subjects of the deepest interest have engaged all minds and hearts, from the fireside of the humblest citizen to the balls of Congress and the council chambers of the President. By a clear understanding of this course of your representative, you will be able to determine for yourselves the propriety of his views. I have endeavored to perform my duty with a heart faithful to your rights and your honor, but you shall be the judges of my success.
I have changed no opinion, that I know of, during the varying circumstances and in the fearful necessities of this war. Men may well change their opinions when circumstances change as they have done to often during the past two years; and he is not a wise man, nor an expedient one, who does not employ circumstances and guide himself by them to some extent, always, however, being true to principle. I saw the size of this rebellion, but I could hardly realize the fact that civil war was to come in this fearful form upon us, nor could you. The idea Was strange to the American mind, that treason or rebellion could exist against a Government so free and popular as ours. Who was there, we thought, to rebel against the people? In all other revolutions it is the people who have revolted against the Government; but here, it would seem, there could be no civil war or revolt, unless it was against the people themselves. But so it was. I did what I could to prevent it; and if the proposition I offered had been accepted, I think I might say with confidence there would have been no war, and I should have had the satisfaction of believing that I had done something in the way of saving my country from its greatest calamity; but that honor was not reserved for me, nor that blessing for my country. The compromise was rejected; the rebellion and the war followed. It was a rebellion without just cause; so I then thought and so I still think. The Administration up to that time, Mr. LINCOLN having been inaugurated, had done nothing of injustice to any section, or State, or individual. Throughout this great land no single individual could be pointed out, to whom the Government had done injustice; no man from whom the Government had taken property, or whose liberties had been encroached upon; no man who had been unjustly imprisoned.