the States of Greece in all times! How distinct were the nations of Attica, of Laconia, of Thessaly, of Bœotia, and how utterly insufficient the oracle, the Amphyctionic Assembly, the games, the great first epic, to restrain Athens and Sparta and Thebes from contending, by diplomacy, by fraud, by battle, for the mastery! And yet even in the historical age, when the storm of Eastern invasion swept that blue sea, and those laughing islands, and iron-bound coast, over, above, grander and more useful than the fear and policy which counselled temporary union, were there not some, were there not many, on whose perturbed and towering motives came the thought of that great, common, Greek name; that race, kindred at last, though policy, though mines of marble, though ages had parted them, that golden, ancient, polished speech, that inherited ancestral glory, that national Olympus, that inviolated, sterile and separate earth, that fame of camps, that fire of camps which put out the ancient life of the Troy of Asia; and was it not such memories as these that burn and revel in the pages of Herodotus? Did not Sparta and Athens hate one another and fight one another habitually, and yet when those Lacedæmonian levies gazed so steadfastly on the faces of the fallen at Marathon, did they not give Greek tears to Athens and Greek curses to Persia, and in the hour of Platæa did they not stand together against the barbarian? What else formed the secret of the brief spell of Rienzi's power, and burned and sparkled in the poetry and rhetoric of his friend Petrarch, and soothed the dark hour of the grander soul of Machiavel, loathing that Italy, and recalling that other day when "eight hundred thousand men sprang to arms at the rumor of a Gallic invasion?" Is not Prussia afraid of Austria, and Saxony of Bavaria, and Frankfort jealous of Dresden, and so through the twenty-seven or eight or thirty States, great and small; and yet the dear, common fatherland, the old German tongue, the legend of Hermann, the native and titular Rhine flowing rapid, deep, and majestic, like the life of a hero of antiquity-do not these spectacles and these traditions sometimes wake the nationality of Germany to action, as well as to life and hope? But if you would contemplate nationality as an active virtue, look around you. Is not our own history one witness and one record of what it can do? This day and all which it stands for, did it not give us these? This glory of the fields of that war, this eloquence of that revolution, this wide one sheet of flame which wrapped tyrant and tyranny and swept all that escaped from it away, forever and forever; the courage to fight, to retreat, to rally, to advance, to guard the young flag by the young arm and the young heart's blood, to hold up and hold on till the magnificent consummation crowned the work—were not all these imparted as inspired by this imperial sentiment? Has it not here begun the master-work of man, the creation of a national life? Did it not call out that prodigious development of wisdom, the wisdom of constructiveness which illustrated the years after the war, and the framing and adopting of the Constitution? Has it not, in the general, contributed to the administering of that government wisely and well since? Look at it! It has kindled us to no aims of conquest. It has involved us in no entangling alliances. It has kept our neutrality dignified and just. The victories of peace have been our prized victories. But the larger and truer grandeur of the nations, for which they are created and for which they must one day, before some tribunal give account, what a measure of these it has enabled us already to fulfil! It has lifted us to the throne and has set on our brow the name of the great Republic. It has taught us to demand nothing wrong, and to submit to nothing wrong; it has made our diplomacy sagacious, wary, and accomplished; it has opened the iron gate of the mountain, and planted our ensign on the great, tranquil sea; it has made the desert to bud and blossom as the rose; it has quickened to life the giant brood of useful arts; it has whitened lake and ocean with the sails of a daring, new and lawful trade; it has extended to exiles, flying as clouds, the asylum of our better liberty; it has kept us at rest within all our borders; it has repressed without blood the intemperance of local insubordination; it has scattered the seeds of liberty, under law and under order, broadcast; it has seen and helped American feeling to swell into a fuller flood; from many a field and many a deck, though it seeks not war, makes not war, and fears not war, it has borne the radiant flag all unstained; it has opened our age of lettered glory; it has opened and honored the age of the industry of the people! We have done with the nature of American nationality, with its contrasts, analysis and fruits. I have less pleasure to remind you that it has conditions also, and ethics. And what are some of these? This is our next consideration. And the first of these is that this national existence is, to an extraordinary degree, not a growth, but a production; that it has origin in the will and the reason, and that the will and the reason must keep it alive, or it can bear no life. I do not forget that a power above man's power, a wisdom above man's wisdom, a reason above man's reason, may be traced without the presumptuousness of fanaticism in the fortunes of America. I do not forget that God has been in our history. Beyond that dazzling progress of art, society, thought, which is of His ordaining, although it may seem to a false philosophy a fatal and inevitable flow under law-beyond this I do not forget that there have been, and there may be again interpositions, providential, exceptional, and direct, of that Supreme Agency without which no sparrow falleth. That condition of mind and of opinion in Europe, and more than anywhere else, in England, which marked the period of emigration, and bore flower, fruit and seed after its kind in the new world; that conflict and upheaval and fermenting in the age of Charles the First, and the Long Parliament, and Cromwell, and Milton --violated nature asserting herself; that disappearance of the old races here, wasting so mysteriously and so seasonably that drear death giving place as in nature to a better life; that long colonial growth in shade and storm and neglect, sheltered imperfectly by our relations to the mother country, and not yet exposed to the tempest and lightning of the high places of political independence; burdened and poor, but yet evolving, germinant, prophetic; that insane common attack of one tyranny on so many charters; that succession of incompetent English commanders and English tactics against us in the war; that one soul breathed in a moment into a continent; the Declaration so timely, and so full of tone; the name, the services, the influence of Washington - these are "parts of His ways,' and we may understand and adore them. I do not forget either that in the great first step we had to take that difficulty so stupendous, of beginning to mould the colonies into a nation, to overcome the prejudices of habit and ignorance, the petty cavils of the petty, the envy, the jealousy, the ambition, the fears of great men and little men; to take away partition walls, roll away provincial flags and hush provincial drums, and give to the young Republic E Pluribus Unum, to set out onward and upward on her Zodiac path,— I do not forget that in this, too, there were helps of circumstances for which no philosophy and no pride can make us unthankful. Take one. Have you ever considered, speculating on the mysteries of our national being, how providentially the colonial life itself, in one respect, qualified for Union, and how providentially it came to pass that independence and nationality were born in one day? Suppose that from the times when they were planted respectively, these colonies had been independent of one another, and of every one-suppose this had been so for one hundred and fifty years, for one hundred and seventy years; that in the eye of public law they had through all that time ranked with England, with France; that through all that time they had made war, concluded peace, negotiated treaties of commerce and of alliance, received and sent ministers, coined money, superintended trade, "done all other things which independent States of right may do; and then that a single foreign power had sought to reduce them. I do not say that that power would have reduced them. I do not say that necessity, that prudence, which is civil necessity, would not have taught them to assist one another, and that in one sense, and that a just one, they would have fought and triumphed togethBut when that victory was won and the cloud rolled off seaward, would these victors have flown quite so easily into a common embrace and become a single people? This long antecedent several independence; this long antecedent national life would it not have indurated them and separated them? These old high actions and high passions flowing diverse; these opposed banners of old fields; this music of hostile marches; these memories of an unshared past; this history of a glory in which one only had part, - do you think they could have been melted, softened, and beaten quite so easily into the unity of a common life? Might not the world have seen here, instead, another Attica, and Achaia and Lacedæmonia, and Mes er. --- sina, and Naples and Florence and Saxony? Did not that colonial life, in its nature that long winter and lingering spring-discipline and prepare men for the future of their civil life, as an April snow enriches the earth it seems to bury? Did it not keep back the growths which might otherwise have shot up into impracticable ranknesses and diversities? Did it not divert men from themselves to one another from Massachusetts and Virginia and New York, to the forming or the possible America? Instead of stunting and enfeebling, did it not enlarge and strengthen? And when all that host flocked together, to taste together the first waters of independent life, and one high, common, proud feeling pervaded their ranks, lifted up all hearts, softened all hearts at once and a Rhode Island General was seen to fight at the Eutaws; and a New Yorker, or one well beloved of Massachusetts, at Saratoga; and a Virginian to guide the common war, and a united army to win the victory for all-was not the transition, in a moment so sublime, more natural, less violent, more easy to the transcendent conception of nationality itself? I do not deny, too, that some things subordinate and executory are a little easier than at first; that the friction of the machine is less somewhat; that mere administration has grown simpler; that organizations have been effected which may move of themselves; that departments have been created and set going, which can go alone; that the Constitution has been construed authoritatively; that a course, a routine has been established in which things-some things-may go on as now, without your thought or mind. Bold he is, moreover, I admit, not wise, who would undertake to determine what chance, or what Providence may do, and what man may do in the sustentation of national life. But remember, that is a false philosophy and that is no religion which absolves from duty. That is impiety which boasts of a will of God, and forgets the business of man. Will and reason created, will and reason must keep. Every day, still, we are in committee of the whole on the question of the Constitution or no Constitution. Eternal vigilance is the condition of union, as they say it is of liberty. I have heard that if the same Omnipotence which formed the universe at first should suspend its care for a day, primeval chaos were come again. Dare we risk such a spec |
