I do not
say that this declaration is personally binding on those who joined in
making it; any more than individual members of Congress are personally
bound to pay a public debt created under a law for which they voted.
But it was a solemn, public, official pledge of the national honor,
and I can not imagine upon what grounds the repudiation of it is to
be justified. If it be said that we are not bound to keep faith with
rebels, let it be remembered that this promise was not made to rebels
only. Thousands of true men in the South were drawn to our standard by
it, and hundreds of thousands in the North gave their lives in the
belief that it would be carried out. It was made on the day after the
first great battle of the war had been fought and lost. All patriotic
and intelligent men then saw the necessity of giving such an assurance,
and believed that without it the war would end in disaster to our cause.
Having given that assurance in the extremity of our peril, the violation
of it now, in the day of our power, would be a rude rending of that good
faith which holds the moral world together; our country would cease to
have any claim upon the confidence of men; it would make the war not
only a failure, but a fraud.
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