3i0 
WISCONSIN STATE AORIGULTURAL SOCIETY, 
intelligence, the courage, the constancy, the spirit of the people 
themselves. If these have risen to a height, and grown to a 
strength and unanimity that our judgment measures as adequate to 
the struggle for independence and the whole sum of their liberties, 
they will accept that issue and follow that lead. They have taken 
up arms to maintain their rights, and will not lay them down until 
those rights are assured. What the nature and sanctions of this 
security are to be, they understand must be determined by united 
counsels and concerted action. These they have deputed us to set¬ 
tle and proclaim, and this we have done to-day. What we have 
declared, the people will avow and confirm. Henceforth it is to 
this people a war for the defense of their united independence 
against its overthrow by foreign arms. Of that war there can be 
but one issue. And for the rest, as to the constitution of the new 
states, its species is disclosed by its existence. The condition of 
the people is equal; they have the habits of freemen and possess • 
the institutions of liberty. When the political connection with the 
parent state is dissolved they will be self-governing and self-gov- 
‘ erned of necessity. As all governments in this world, good and 
bad, liberal or despotic, are of men, by men, and for men, this new 
state, having no estates or ranks, or degrees discriminating among 
men in its population, becomes at once a government of the people, 
by the people, and for the people. So it must remain, unless for¬ 
eign conquest or domestic usurpation shall change it. Whether it 
shall be a just, wise, or prosperous government, it must be a popu¬ 
lar government, and correspond with the wisdom, justice, and for¬ 
tunes of the people.” 
ATTRACTIONS OF SELF-GOVERNMENT. 
And so this people, of various roots and kindred of the Old 
World — settled and transfused in their cisatlantic homes into har¬ 
monious fellowship in the sentiments, the interests, the habits, the 
alfections which develop and sustain a love of country — were 
committed to the common fortunes which should attend an absolute 
trust in the primary relations between man and his fellows, and be¬ 
tween man and his Maker. This Northern Continent of America 
had been opened and prepared for the transplantation of the full- 
grown manhood of the highest civilization of the Old World to a 
place where it could be free from mixture or collision with com- 
