, 1876-08-02
THE SECOND HUNDREDTH YEAR
HAVE WE DEGENERATED
MORALITY
FFrom the Nee York Herald

We enter on the second hundredth year
of our existence as an independent nation,
having ftlv celebrated our first centennial
anniversary. There has been a universal
exu!tation in the wonderful progress OF
the country in all the material elements OF
prosperity but there is at the same time
q widely diffused feeling that we have de-
clined in the moral qualities which make
a nation truly great. If this were true we
should have little reason for rejoicing Tor
q decay of manliness, virtue, patriotism
and attachment to free institutions would
be an evil for which no advance ia physl-
cal well-being could atone. We do not
believe that the country is in a state OF
moral decadence. We do not believe that
our citizens are degenerate sons OF worthy
sires. There have, indeed, been some re-
cent instances of official corruption, but,
considering that we have eighty thousand
public officers, the dishonesty Of a dozen or
so does not prove that the whole public
service is rotten, much less that the great
body of our citizens have disgraced their
Writ 5is iiueaga. Admitting that there s
a necessity for reform in official life, let US
inspect some of the items on the other side
of the account.
In the first place, then, there is concIu-
siye evidence that we have not fallen be-
low our ancestors in bravery, endurance
and soldier-like qualities. Our civil war
is too recent for any doubts on this great
head. The combatants on both sides
were unquestionNbIy sincere. There was
never Drawer fighting, never 4 more reSo-
Lutte and self-sacriicing devotion to a cause
which the combatants believed to be right
than was exhibited by the heroic men who
took up arms in the secession controversy.
IF any part of the country has degenerated
it is not in physical courage, nor IN readl-
ness to peril ease, wealth, safety, lite Itself,
in a cause believed to be just.
Nor las the country departed from the
sound political principles on which our
government was founded. When the
South undertook to secede what didit do
Did it renounce the principles OF free gov
ernment Did it ALLURE that great chart
of wisely regulated liberty, the federal
constitution 2 On the contrary, it re-
adopted that instrument almost word tor
word The Southern Contederacy was
organized on the pattern of the federal
government, with precisely the same 9th
GERS, the same mode Of election, the same
distribution of powers, the same guarantees
Of personal freedom, the same app or
tionment of powers between the central
government and the State governments
It is a signal proof of the fidelity Of our
whole people to republican institutions
that the confederate constitution differed
but little from the federal constitution
except that eleven States were parties to
it instead of thirty-four. 1t protected
slavery, but so did the federal constitution
until the new amendments were adopted.
In respect to slavery the South had not
much degenerated from the views OF 1776
but the north had made great progress.
The abolition of slavery by the same
generation which celebrates the Centennial
anniversary is a conclusive refutation OF
the idea that we have fallen below the
moral standard of our ancestors. They
acquiesced in a great wrong to humanity
which became intolerable to their descen-
dahts. The people of this generation
have sacrificed, hundreds of thousands