All the purposes of human association have been accomplished as effectually as under any other Government on the globe, and at a cost little exceeding, in a whole generation, the expenditures of other nations in a single year.
"Such is the unexaggerated picture of our condition under a constitution founded upon the republican principle of equal rights.

To admit that this picture has its shades, is but to say, that it is still the condition of men upon earth.

From evil--physical, moral, and political--it is not our claim to be exempt.

We have suffered, sometimes by the visitation of Heaven through disease, often by the wrongs and injustice of other nations, even to the extremities of war; and lastly, by dissentions among ourselves--dissentions, perhaps, inseparable from the enjoyment of freedom, but which have more than once appeared to threaten the dissolution of the Union, and, with it, the overthrow of all the enjoyments of our present lot, and all our earthly hopes of the future.
The causes of these dissensions have been various, founded upon differences of speculation in the theory of republican government, upon conflicting views of policy in our relations with foreign nations; upon jealousies of partial and sectional interests, aggravated by prejudices and prepossessions, which strangers to each other are ever apt to entertain.
"It is a source of gratification and of encouragement to me, to observe that the great result of this experiment upon the theory of human rights, has, at the close of that generation by which it was formed, been crowned with success equal to the most sanguine expectations of its founders.
Union, justice, tranquillity, the common defence, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty--all have been promoted by the Government under which we have lived.

Standing at this point of time, looking back to that generation which has gone by, and forward to that which is advancing, we may at once indulge in grateful exultation and in cheering hope.