New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1865-07-04
THE 18th OF July.


decllred this country Independent Of Great
Britain; 30 that there are Americans yet living
who Were born subjects OF George Ill, and dis
tinctiy remember tho appearance Of the immor-
tai Declaration which made them no longer
colonisis and subjects but frecmen and citizens
of Federal Republic. And the dim eyes OF
the Oldest among them may well fash with joy
Ous pride to-day, rs he gratefully recognizes the
fact q 1t, on this sJth birthday of our country,
she is far nearer to the realization Of the hopes,
the dreams, the sanguine predictions of her
.ounde.S than she ever WAS before.
For the American Republic was founded 81
principle, and that the grandest that ever yet
upheld mighty political fabric As tho late
Southern Coniederacy was based On the rights
of White men, by reason of their assumed su-
periority, TO hold Black men in bondagc-or on
Slavery as the natural AID most beneticent re-
lation Of inferior TO superior race--so the Re-
public was broadly and widely based on tn
natural and rightful Equality of Mankind.
Such cautious, conservative statesmen as
Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert
II. Livingston-not to speak of John Adams,
who, though impulsive, was also by nature con-
servative and aversc to abstractions-would
never have allowed Thomas Jeilerson's philoso'
phizing, ideallzing tendencies to lead them
astray from their great purpose-that OF resting
their Declaration on solid, pertinent, and tenaole
grounds. They found them in this compre'
hensive and novel assumptions:
ave hold these truths TO be seli-evident-
that all men arc created equal; that they are
endowed By their Creator with certain inallen-
able rishtS; that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness: That, to secure
these just rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed: That, whenever
any form Of government becomes destructive
of these cnds, it is the right of the People 10
alter or TO abolish it, and to institute q new gov
eminent. laying It's foundation on such princi'
pies, and organizing it. powers in such form, as
to them shall seem most likely to effect their
safety and Happiness"
All the modern CLOSES, intended to recon-
Gle this broad. bold, grand affirmation of funda-
mental truth with Slavery, or With the perpetual
subordnatiOn in any shape of one race TO
another, are sheer, impudent sophstries. These
fundamental propositions were not put forth as
abstraclions-as "glttering gcneralities
as iustilyi,g our resolve TO be henceiorth indie
pendent. They do not intimate that aught OF
right, equity, or equality, is properly surend.
cred in tho imaginary transit of communities
from state of nature TO one OF order and law;
on the contrary, they expressly affirm that these
rights are TO DC SECURED" by Government
that such is its aim and chief end. So, wherever
man claims property in other men, or race
pretends to own Or assumes to govern another
race, our National edifce is undermined our
National profession vi faith defied. and the
Republic put TO oren shame.
The prctenso that the authors end signers of
tho Declaration can not have meant what IS the
natural import Of their language, because some
Of them held, aud continued TO hold, slaves, is
at war with all human experience lawyer,
defending libertine, who should say, ~ sub
nit, your Honor, that the trainers Of this law
cannot have meant what this action implies
that they did; for / can prove that several
of them were men Of loose morals" would be
promptly stopped by the Judge. with All intima-
ton that he had no time 10 waste Oh such folly.
Yet We know that our Revolutionary fathers al
most unanimously condemned slaveholding as at
war with natural rght-JefferSou, who drafted
the Declaration. as pointedly Us any OF them.
9" We struggle for tho rights Of Human
Nature" said the last ColoJial Congress;
and patriot meeting at Darien Geo gia, in
l772, condemned American Slavery as heartily
as it did British Tyranny.
These required to pay to1e. sho'ad haze a ro'ee
in hryine them and in ,yTending tie proceeds-
those ,equired to- oDGy la,es shoRtd be furry rfre
scented in the bodies nhich make or modify Hose
iars.--Such Is the great truth proclaimed in the
Declaration, reGchoed and confirmed from the
throats of the viCtors' cannon al Saratoga and
Yorktown. Shall not ours, which was tirst
to proclaim, DO the first great nation whose re.
coenition Of that truth is mode consistent and
competei
May this days observances do much toward
bringing home TO the understandings, the con-
sciences of our people the truth of Equal Human
Rights, and may that truth, thus reinforced,
speedily make triunphantly the ci!cuit OF the
globe