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We Have Counted the Cost of This Contest and Find Nothing So Dreadful As Voluntary Slavery

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We Have Counted the Cost of This Contest and Find Nothing So Dreadful As Voluntary Slavery CONSTITUTIONAL CLAIMS We have counted the cost of this contest and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. With an humble confidence in the mercies of the supreme and impartial Judge and Ruler of the Universe, we most devoutly implore his divine goodness to protect us happily through this great conflict, to dispose our adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable terms, and thereby to relieve the empire from the calamities of civil war. John Dickenson and Thomas Jefferson, Continental Congress, July 6, 1775. Declaration of Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms INTRODUCTION The Civilization which we now know and enjoy has come down to us from four main sources. The Greeks, the Romans, and the Christians laid the foundations, and in the order named, and the study of the early history of our Western Civilization is a study of the work and the blending of these three main forces. It is upon these three foundation stones, superimposed upon one another, that our modern European and American civilization has been developed. The Germanic tribes, overrunning the boundaries of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, added another new force of largest future significance, and one which profoundly modified all subsequent progress and development. To these four main sources we have made many additions in modern times, building an entirely new superstructure on the old foundations, but the groundwork of our civilization is composed of these four foundation elements. The work of Greece lies at the bottom and, in a sense, was the most important of all the earlier contributions to our education and civilization. These people, known as Hellenes, were the pioneers of Western Civilization. To the East lay the older political despotisms, with their caste-type and intellectually stagnant organization of society, and to the North and West a little-known region inhabited by barbarian tribes. It was in such a world that our Western Civilization had its birth. The Greeks, from their geographical position, formed the natural vanguard of European liberty against Persian ambition; and they pre-eminently displayed the salient points of distinctive national character, which have rendered European civilization so far superior to Asiatic. The result of the war with Persia was the triumph of this new western democratic civilization, prepared and schooled for great national emergencies by a severe but effective training, over the uneducated hordes led to battle by the autocracy of the East. This was the first, but not the last, of the many battles which western democracy and civilization has had to fight to avoid being crushed by autocracy and despotism. Marathon broke the dread spell of the Persian name and freed the more progressive Greeks to pursue their intellectual and political development. Above all it revealed the strength and power of the Athenians to themselves, and in the half-century following the most wonderful political, literary, and artistic development the world had ever known ensued, and the highest products of Greek civilization were attained. Through the whole epoch of her prosperity, through the long Olympiads of her decay, through centuries after her fall, Athens looked back on the day of Marathon as the brightest of her national existence. The day of Marathon is the critical epoch in the history of the two nations. It broke for ever the spell of Persian invincibility, which had paralyzed men's minds. It generated among the Greeks the spirit which beat back Xerxes, and afterwards led on Xenophon, Agesilaus, and Alexander, in terrible retaliation, through their Asiatic campaigns. It secured for mankind the intellectual treasures of Athens, the growth of free institutions the liberal enlightenment of the Western world, and the gradual ascendency for many ages of the great principles of European civilization. Cyrus, the great Persian general, the greatest of all Eastern conquerors, consolidated a number of provinces and kingdoms into one grand empire, commonly known as the Persian or Medo-Persian. It embraced one hundred and twenty-seven states or provinces, which included all the countries from the Indus to the Mediterranean and from the Black and Caspian Seas on the north to the Indian Ocean on the south; an empire which included some of the most magnificent cities of the world, cities unrivaled in wealth, in beauty, in splendor and fortifications. The Persian Empire endured for two hundred years under the rule of the Cyrus dynasty, while the empire of Alexander the Great, which was, as is known, the inheritor of the Persian Empire, survived only during his lifetime, and fell apart immediately after he died. Cyrus, notwithstanding his seeming love for war and conquest, possessed a kindly and generous disposition. Almost universal testimony has ascribed to him the purest and most beneficent character of any Eastern monarch. Indeed some have exalted him to be the prototype and fore-runner of Christ. Upon the capture of Babylon he set free the Hebrews, whom the Babylonians had held in long captivity, and aided them in rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple, which had been sacked and burned by Nebuchadnezzar. Cyrus exhibited a compassionate spirit toward his enemies and a unique tolerance toward all religions. The great conqueror who arose in Persia over 2,500 years ago did not behave as did the kings of Assyria and Babylonia, who exiled conquered nations and imported other nations to replace them. He also did not yearn, as did Alexander the Great and his descendants, to smother the conquered nations with his country's culture, nor did he make any attempt, as did the descendants of Mohammed, to impose his language and religion upon the defeated nations. Cyrus dealt forthrightly with the vanquished. There was no other non-Israelite ruler who merited praise from the greatest prophets of Israel as did Cyrus from the prophet Isaiah, whom Bible critics call by the name of Isaiah the Second: It is I who says of Cyrus, He is My shepherd! And he will perform all My desire: even saying of Jerusalem, She will be built, and of the temple, Your foundation will be laid. Isaiah 44:28 Thus says YHVH to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have taken hold of, to subdue nations before him and loose the armor of kings, and to open before him the two-leaved doors, so that the gates will not be shut: I will go before you, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the doors of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places: that you may know that I am YHVH, who call you by your name, even the God of Israel. Isaiah 45:1-3 Without a doubt, Cyrus deserved this praise, not merely because of his proclamation and the permission which he gave the Babylonian exiles to return to their land and to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Cyrus was also one of the greatest figures, from a general historical point of view. Cyrus' rise from governor of a small principality by the name of Anshan in Elam, to the founder of the largest empire to arise in the world until that time, is by itself one of the most marvelous events in the history of nations. He was succeeded by Darius and Xerxes. The latter led a vast army of three million soldiers besides a great number of attendants and slaves into Attica and laid Athens into ruins, but his fleet was cut to pieces by the Grecian ships. He made a precipitated trip back to his capital Susa, where he dwelt in his palace, which, including the treasures, cost the enormous sum of sixty million dollars. The Bible story of Esther throws a vivid light upon the Persians, for undoubtedly the Ahasuerus of the Hebrews is the Xerxes of the Persians. This monarch finally fell a victim to palace intrigue and was slain in his own chamber and with him fell the power and supremacy of the Persian kingdom. Alexander, the son of Philip of Macedonia, was the destined destroyer of the Persian Empire. In the three great battles of Granicus, Isus and Arbela, the fate of the Persians was decided. When Alexander was pushing in close pursuit of Darius, the third and last of the Persian Kings, he came upon the body of the murdered king, who had been treacherously assassinated by one of his own generals. He burst into tears and covering the remains with his own mantle, said, "With this pathetic scene closes the story of the Persian Empire." These great monarchs of the ancients left an impression upon the world's history and civilization that will never be erased. No student of history can believe that these great empires that existed so many years before Christ were without a purpose, that these great conquerors, though possessed of ignoble motives, failed to make a contribution to civilization. These Oriental empires seem to have served a four-fold purpose to preserve and carry forward the achievements in the arts, sciences and philosophies of the Oriental world and transmit them, principally through Greece and Rome, to the Western World, to prove the insufficiency of material power, riches, grandeur, luxury and magnificence to satisfy and save man. It appears also to have been their purpose to furnish an agency for the Judahite Dispersion and thereby disseminate the germs of the world religion.
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