Indeed, to this day, more than half a century after it was written it still has virtue to quicken the breath and stir the pulses of a sympathetic reader out of their normal time.

A great passion for freedom and righteousness irradiates like a central light the whole memorable document.

It begins by a happy reference to an earlier convention, held some fifty-seven years before in the same place, and which adopted a declaration holding "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness;" and how at the trumpet-call of its authors three millions of people rushed to arms "deeming it more glorious to die instantly as free men, than desirable to live one hour as slaves"; and how, though few in number and poor in resources those same people were rendered invincible by the conviction that truth, justice, and right were on their side.

But the freedom won by the men of 1776 was incomplete without the freedom for which the men of 1833 were striving.
The authors of the new declaration would not be inferior to the authors of the old "in purity of motive, in earnestness of zeal, in decision of purpose, intrepidity of action, in steadfastness of faith, in sincerity of spirit." Unlike the older actors, the younger had eschewed the sword, the spilling of human blood in defence of their principles.

Theirs was a moral warfare, the grappling of truth with error, of the power of love with the inhumanities of the nation.