Our Country,whether bounded by the St. Johns and the Sabine, or however otherwise bounded1 or described, and be the measurements more or less,still our Country, to be cherished in all our hearts, to be defended by all our hands.
Toast at Faneuil Hall on the Fourth of July, 1845.
Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freemen with votes in their hands are left without education. Justice to them, the welfare of the States in which they live, the safety of the whole Republic, the dignity of the elective franchise,all alike demand that the still remaining bonds of ignorance shall be unloosed and broken, and the minds as well as the bodies of the emancipated go free.
Yorktown Oration, 1881.
Note 1. Toast offered by Stephen Decatur (17791820) at a public dinner at Norfolk, Va., April, 1816: Our country! in her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.
The same idea, called forth by the Mexican War, was expressed by John J. Crittenden of Kentucky: I hope to find my country in the right: however, I will stand by her, right or wrong. [back]