So complete a system of government never before existed, and it became the admiration of the lovers of liberty throughout the world. The prayers of its founders, as they passed from earth, were for its perpetuity. It was received by their children and cherished as an inheritance above all price. With them the man who dared to lisp of its destruction was branded as a traitor and an enemy of mankind.
—John D. Defrees, 1864[1]
John Dougherty Defrees (1810–1882) was an American newspaperman and politician.
- ^ Defrees, John D. (1864). Remarks made by John D. Defrees before the Indiana Union Club of Washington, D.C. Gale Cengage Learning. ISBN 9781432818272.