To remove the influences which had thus gradually
grown up among us, to deprive them of their deceptive advantages, to
test them by the light of wisdom and truth, to oppose the force which
they concentrate in their support--all this was necessarily the work of
time, even among a people so enlightened and pure as that of the United
States. In most other countries, perhaps, it could only be accomplished
through that series of revolutionary movements which are too often found
necessary to effect any great and radical reform; but it is the crowning
merit of our institutions that they create and nourish in the vast
majority of our people a disposition and a power peaceably to remedy
abuses which have elsewhere caused the effusion of rivers of blood and
the sacrifice of thousands of the human race. The result thus far is
most honorable to the self-denial, the intelligence, and the patriotism
of our citizens; it justifies the confident hope that they will carry
through the reform which has been so well begun, and that they will go
still further than they have yet gone in illustrating the important
truth that a people as free and enlightened as ours will, whenever
it becomes necessary, show themselves to be indeed capable of
self-government by voluntarily adopting appropriate remedies for every
abuse, and submitting to temporary sacrifices, however great, to insure
their permanent welfare.
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