The New York herald., 1876-07-05
The Second Hundredth Year-Have
We Degenerased Moraliys


We enter on the second hundredth year of
our existence as an independent nation, hav-
ing fitly celebrated our first centennial an
niversary. There has been a universal ex-
ultation in the wonderful progress of the
country in all the material elements of pros
perity; but there is ut the same time a widely
diffused feeling that we have declined in the
moral qualities which make nation truly
great If this were true We should have lit
tie reason for rejoicing, for q decay Of man
illness, virtue, patriotism and attachment to
free institutions would be an evil for which
no advance in physical well-being could
atone. We do not believe that the country
is in state Of moral decadence. We do not
believe that our citizens are degenerate sons
of worthy sires. There have, indeed, been
some recent instances of official corruption,
but considering that we have eighty thou
sand public officers, the dishonesty of
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 virtuous lineage. Admit
ting that there is 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 conclusive
evidence that we have not fallen below 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 unquestion-
ably sincere There was never drawer
fighting, never more resolute and self
sacrificing devotion to 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 readiness to
peril ease, wealth, safety, life itself, in o
cause believed to be just
Nor has the country departed from the
sound political principles on which our
government was founded. When the South
undertook to secede what did it do? Did it
renounce the principles of free government ?
Did it abjure that great chart of wisely regu-
lated liberty, the federal constitution? On
the contrary, it readopted that instrument
almost word for word. The Southern Con-
federacy was organized on the pattern of
the federal government with precisely the
same officers, the same mode of election, the
same distribution of powers, the same guar
antees of personal freedom the same appor-
tionment of powers between the central
government and the State governments 1t
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 degener-
ated from the views of 1776, but the North
had made great progress.
The abolition of slavery by the same gen.
Grafton which celebrates the Centennial an
niversary is a conclusive refutaton of the
idea that we have fallen below the moral
standard of our ancestors. They acquiesced
in great wrong to humanity which became
pie of this generation have sacrificed hun
dreds of thousands of lives and burdened
themselves with thousands of millions of
debt, not in asserting their own liberties and
the liberties of their posterity, as our Revo-
lutionary fathers did, but in asserting the
rights of desrised and downtrodden race
This is not degeneration, but moral prog
ress.
We might easily extend the list of things
in which the men of '76 had no moral ad-
vantage over the present generation, but
these instances may suffice as specimens.
The WEATHER DURING THE CENTENNIAL