The argument against hauling down the flag has gone a-glimmering. Every living American is proud that we raised the flag over Cuba, and still more proud that we hauled it down again, giving place to the free flag of Cuba, and every living American, and millions yet unborn, will be still more proud of their country if we do the same thing in the Philippines. Our safety, our interest, and our honor lie along this path. The future of free government in this world is bound up in this cause. Free government must depend upon the consent of the governed, and no such fatal blow was ever struck against it as when this republic conquered and held the Filipinos against their consent.
True democracy is the embodied spirit of the Declaration of Independence.
The Republican organization of today is no more the party of Lincoln in its heart than a last year's egg is what it was when laid. In its first platform it adopted the fundamentals of the Declaration of Independence. Today it practices in the Philippines all the atrocious tyrannies of George the Third, which caused the American revolution. And what is more, it protects the institution of human slavery in those islands in direct defiance of the Lincoln amendments to the Constitution. This issue will unite all Democrats.