miles across an ocean, unless they are governed to their own
satisfaction, and held as colonies with their own consent and
free will. An Imperial military sway may be as elastic and far-
reaching as the magnetic wires, it matters not whether three
thousand or fifteen thousand miles, over an uncivilized region
410 CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876.
or an unenlightened race. But who is wild enough to conceive,
as Burke said a hundred years ago, " that the natives of Hindos-
tan and those of Virginia could be ordered in the same manner;
or that the Cutchery Court and the grand jury at Salem could
be regulated on a similar plan " ? "I am convinced," said Fox,
in 1791, in the fresh light of the experience America had afforded
him, " that the only method of retaining distant Colonies with
advantage is to enable them to govern themselves."
Yes, from the hour when Columbus and his compeers discov
ered our continent, its ultimate political destiny was fixed. At
the very gateway of the Pantheon of American Liberty and
American Independence might well be seen a triple monument,
like that to the old inventors of printing at Frankfort, including
Columbus and Americus Vespucius and Cabot. They were the
pioneers in the march to Independence. They were the pre
cursors in the only progress of freedom which was to have no
backward steps. Liberty had struggled long and bravely in
other ages and in other lands. It had made glorious manifesta
tions of its power and promise in Athens and in Rome ; in the
mediaeval republics of Italy ; on the plains of Germany ; along
the dykes of Holland; among the icy fastnesses of Switz
erland ; and, more securely and hopefully still, in the sea-girt
isle of Old England. But it was the glory of those heroic old
navigators to reveal a standing-place for it at last, where its
lever could find a secure fulcrum, and rest safely until it had
moved the world ! The fulness of time had now come. Under
an impulse of religious conviction, the poor, persecuted Pil
grims launched out upon the stormy deep in a single, leaking,
almost foundering bark ; and in the very cabin of the " May
flower " the first written compact of self-government in the
history of mankind is prepared and signed. Ten years
afterwards the Massachusetts Company come over with their
Charter, and administer it on the avowed principle that the
whole government, civil and religious, is transferred. All the
rest which is to follow until the 4th of July, 1776, is only mat
ter of time and opportunity. Certainly, my friends, as we look
back to-day through the long vista of the past, we perceive that
it was no mere Declaration of men, which primarily brought
CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876. 411
about the Independence we celebrate. We cannot but rever
ently recognize the hand of that Almighty Maker of the
World, who " founded it upon the seas and established it upon
the floods." We cannot but feel the full force and felicity of
those opening words, in which the Declaration speaks of our
assuming among the powers of the earth, " that separate and
equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature s God
entitled us."
I spoke, Mr. Mayor, at the outset of this Oration, of " A
Century of Self-Government Completed." And so, in some
sort, it is. The Declaration at Philadelphia was, in itself, both
an assertion and an act of self-government ; and it had been
preceded, or was immediately followed, by provisions for local
self-government in all the separate Colonies ; Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, and South Carolina, conditionally, at least, hav
ing led the way. But we may not forget that six or seven years
of hard fighting are still to intervene before our Independence
is to be acknowledged by Great Britain ; and six or seven years
more before the full consummation will have been reached by
the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the organization
of our National System under the august and transcendent
Presidency of Washington.
With that august and transcendent Presidency, dating,
as it is pleasant to remember, precisely a hundred years from
the analogous accession of William of Orange to the throne
of England, our history as an organized Nation fairly begins.
When that Centennial Anniversary shall arrive, thirteen years
hence, the time may have come for a full review of our National
career and character, and for a complete computation or a just
estimate of what a Century of Self-Government has accom
plished for ourselves and for mankind.
I dared not attempt such a review to-day. This Anniversary
has seemed to me to belong peculiarly, I had almost said,
sacredly, to the men and the events which rendered the
Fourth of July so memorable for ever ; and I have willingly left
myself little time for any thing else. God grant, that, when
the 30th of April, 1889, shall dawn upon those of us who may
412 CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876.
live to see it, the thick clouds which now darken our political
sky may have passed away ; that wholesome and healing coun
sels may have prevailed throughout our land ; that integrity
and purity may be once more conspicuous in our high places ;
that an honest currency may have been reestablished, and pros
perity restored to all branches of our domestic industry and our
foreign commerce ; and that some of those social problems which
are perplexing and tormenting so many of our Southern States
may have been safely and satisfactorily solved !
For, indeed, Fellow Citizens, we cannot shut our eyes to the
fact, that this great year of our Lord and of American Liberty
has been ushered in by not a few discouraging and depressing
circumstances. Appalling catastrophes, appalling crimes, have
marked its course. Financial, political, moral, delinquencies and
wrongs have swept over our land like an Arctic or an Antarctic
wave, or both conjoined ; until we have been almost ready to
cry out in anguish to Heaven, " Thou hast multiplied the na
tion, but not increased the joy ! " It will be an added stigma,
in all time to come, on the corruption of the hour, and on all
concerned in it, that it has cast so deep a shade over our Cen
tennial Festival.
All this, however, we are persuaded, is temporary and excep
tional, the result, not of our institutions, but of disturbing
causes ; and as distinctly traceable to those causes, as the
scoriae of a volcano, or the debris of a deluge. Had there been
no long and demoralizing Civil War to account for such devel
opments, we might indeed be alarmed for our future. As it is,
our confidence in the Republic is unshaken. We are ready even
to accept all that has occurred to overshadow our jubilee, as a
seasonable warning against vain-glorious boastings ; as a timely
admonition that our institutions are not proof against licentious
ness and profligacy, but that " eternal vigilance is still the price
of liberty."
Already the reaction has commenced. Already the people
are everywhere roused to the importance of something higher
than mere partisan activity and zeal, and to a sense that some
thing besides " big wars " may be required to " make ambition
virtue." Everywhere the idea is scouted that there are any
CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876. 413
immunities or impunities for bribery and corruption ; and the
scorn of the whole people is deservedly cast on any one
detected in plucking our Eagle s wings to feather his own
nest. Everywhere there is a demand for integrity, for princi
ple, for character, as the only safe qualifications for public em
ployments, as well as for private trusts. Oh, let that demand
be enforced and insisted on, as I hope and believe it will
be, and we shall have nothing to fear for our freedom, and
but little to regret in the temporary depression and mortification
which have recalled us to a deeper sense of our dangers and
our duties.
Meantime, we may be more than content that no short-com
ings or failures of our own day can diminish the glories of the
past, or dim the brilliancy of successes achieved by our Fathers.
We can look back upon our history so far, and find in it enough
to make us grateful ; enough to make us hopeful ; enough to
make us proud of our institutions and of our country ; enough
to make us resolve never to despair of the Republic ; enough to
assure us that, could our Fathers look down on all which has
been accomplished, they would feel that their toils and sacrifices
had not been in vain ; enough to convince other nations, and
the world at large, that, in uniting so generously with us to
decorate our grand Exposition, and celebrate our Centennial
Birthday, they are swelling the triumphs of a People and a
Power which have left no doubtful impress upon the hundred
years of their Independent National existence.
Those hundred years have been crowded, as we all know,
with wonderful changes in all quarters of the globe. I would
not disparage or depreciate the interest and importance of
the great events and great reforms which have been witnessed
during their progress, and especially near their end, in almost
every county of the Old World. Nor would I presume to claim
too confidently for the closing Century, that when the records
of mankind are made up, in some far-distant future, it will be
remembered and designated, peculiarly and preeminently, as
The American Age. Yet it may well be doubted, whether the
dispassionate historian of after years will find that the influ
ences of any other nation have been of farther reach and wider
414 CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876.
range, or of more efficiency for the welfare of the world, than
those of our great Republic, since it had a name and a place on
the earth.
Other Ages have had their designations, local or personal or
mythical, historic or pre-historic ; Ages of stone or iron, of
silver or gold ; Ages of Kings or Queens, of Reformers or of
Conquerors. That marvellous compound of almost every thing
wise or foolish, noble or base, witty or ridiculous, sublime or
profane, Voltaire, maintained that, in his day, no man of
reflection or of taste could count more than four authentic Ages
in the history of the world : 1. That of Philip and Alexander,
with Pericles and Demosthenes, Aristotle and Plato, Apelles,
Phidias and Praxiteles : 2. That of Cgesar and Augustus, with
Lucretius and Cicero and Livy, Virgil and Horace, Varro and
Vitruvius : 3. That of the Medici, with Michel Angelo and
Raphael, Galileo and Dante : 4. That which he was at the
moment engaged in depicting, the Age of Louis XIV, which,
in his judgment, surpassed all the others !
Our American Age could bear no comparison with Ages like
these, measured only by the brilliancy of historians and
philosophers, of poets or painters. We need not, indeed, be
ashamed of what has been done for Literature and Science and
Art, during these hundred years, nor hesitate to point with
pride to our own authors and artists, living and dead. But the
day has gone by when Literature and the Fine Arts, or even
Science and the Useful Arts, can characterize an Age. There are
other and higher measures of comparison. And the very nation
which counts Voltaire among its greatest celebrities, the nation
which aided us so generously in our Revolutionary struggle,
and which is now rejoicing in its own successful establishment
of republican institutions, the land of the great and good
Lafayette, has taken the lead in pointing out the true grounds
on which our American Age may challenge and claim a special
recognition. An association of Frenchmen, under the lead of
some of their most distinguished statesmen and scholars, has
proposed to erect, and is engaged in erecting, as their contribu
tion to our Centennial, a gigantic statue at the very throat of
the harbor of our supreme commercial emporium, which shall
CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876. 415
symbolize the legend inscribed on its pedestal, " Liberty
enlightening the World ! "
That glorious legend presents the standard by which our Age
is to be judged ; and by which we may well be willing and
proud to have it judged. All else in our own career, certainly,
is secondary. The growth and grandeur of our territorial
dimensions ; the multiplication of our States ; the number and
size and wealth of our cities ; the marvellous increase of our
population ; the measureless extent of our railways and internal
navigation ; our overflowing granaries ; our inexhaustible mines;
our countless inventions and multitudinous industries, all
these may be remitted to the Census, and left for the students
of statistics. The claim which our country presents, for giving
no second or subordinate character to the Age which has just
closed, rests only on what has been accomplished, at home and
abroad, for elevating the condition of mankind ; for advancing
political and human freedom ; for promoting the greatest good
of the greatest number ; for proving the capacity of man for
self-government ; and for " enlightening the world " by the
example of a rational, regulated, enduring, Constitutional Lib
erty. And who will dispute or question that claim ? In what
region of the earth ever so remote from us, in what corner
of creation ever so far out of the range of our communication,
does not some burden lightened, some bond loosened, some
yoke lifted, some labor better remunerated, some new hope for
despairing hearts, some new light or new liberty for the be
nighted or the oppressed, bear witness this day, and trace itself
directly or indirectly back, to the impulse given to the world by
the successful establishment and operation of Free Institutions
on this American Continent !
How many Colonies have been more wisely and humanely and
liberally administered, under the warning of our Revolution !
How many Churches have abated something of their old intoler
ance and bigotry, under the encouragement of our religious
freedom ! Who believes or imagines that Free Schools, a Free
Press, the Elective Franchise, the Rights of Representation, the
principles of Constitutional Government, would have made the
notable progress they have made, had our example been want-
416 CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876.
ing I Who believes or imagines that even the Rotten Boroughs
of Old England would have disappeared so rapidly, had there
been no American Representative Republic ! And has there
been a more effective influence on human welfare and human
freedom, since the world began, than that which has resulted
from the existence of a great land of Liberty in this Western
hemisphere, of unbounded resources, with acres enough for a
myriad of homes, and with a welcome for all who may fly to it
from oppression, from every region beneath the sun ?
Let not our example be perverted or dishonored, by others or
by ourselves. It was no wild breaking away from all authority,
which we celebrate to-day. It was no mad revolt against every
thing like government. No incendiary torch can be rightfully
kindled at our flame. Doubtless, there had been excesses and
violences in many quarters of our land, irrepressible outbreaks
under unbearable provocations, " irregular things, done in
the confusion of mighty troubles." Doubtless, our Boston
mobs did not always move " to the Dorian mood of flutes and
soft recorders." But in all our deliberative assemblies, in all
our Town Meetings, in all our Provincial and Continental Con
gresses, there was a respect for the great principles of Law and
Order ; and the definition of true civil liberty, which had been
so remarkably laid down by one of the founders of our Common
wealth, more than a century before, was, consciously or uncon
sciously, recognized, "a Liberty for that only which is good,
just, and honest."
The Declaration we commemorate expressly admitted and
asserted that " governments long established should not be
changed for light and transient causes." It dictated no special
forms of government for other people, and hardly for ourselves.
It had no denunciations, or even disparagements, for monarchies
or for empires, but eagerly contemplated, as we do at this hour,
alliances arid friendly relations with both. We have welcomed
to our Jubilee, with peculiar interest and gratification, the rep
resentatives of the nations of Europe, all then monarchical,
to whom we were so deeply indebted for sympathy and for
assistance in our struggle for Independence. We have wel
comed, too, the personal presence of an Emperor, from another
CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876. 417
quarter of our own hemisphere, of whose eager and enlightened
interest in Education and Literature and Science we had learned
so much from our lamented Agassiz, and have now witnessed
so much for ourselves.
Our Fathers were no propagandists of republican institutions
in the abstract. Their own adoption of a republican form was,
at the moment, almost as much a matter of chance as of choice,
of necessity as of preference. The Thirteen Colonies had,
happily, been too long accustomed to manage their own affairs,
and were too wisely jealous of each other, also, to admit for an
instant any idea of centralization ; and without centralization a
monarchy, or any other form of arbitrary government, was out
of the question. Union was then, as it is now, the only safety
for liberty ; but it could be only a Constitutional Union, a
limited and restricted Union, founded on compromises and
mutual concessions ; a Union recognizing a large measure of
State rights, resting not only on the division of powers among
legislative and executive departments, but resting also on the
distribution of powers between the States and the Nation, both
deriving their original authority from the people, and exercising
that authority for the people. This was the system contem
plated by the Declaration of 1776. This was the system
approximated to by the Confederation of 1778-81. This was
the system finally consummated by the Constitution of 1789.
And under this system our great example of self-government
has been held up before the nations, fulfilling, so far as it has
fulfilled it, that lofty mission which is recognized to-day, as
" Liberty enlightening the World!"
Let me not speak of that example in any vain-glorious spirit.
Let me not seem to arrogate for my country any thing of supe
rior wisdom or virtue. Who will pretend that we have always
made the most of our independence, or the best of our liberty ?
Who will maintain that we have always exhibited the brightest
side of our institutions, or always entrusted their administra
tion to the wisest or worthiest men ? Who will deny that we
have sometimes taught the world what to avoid, as well as what
to imitate ; and that the cause of freedom and reform has some
times been discouraged and put back by our short-comings, or
27
418 CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876.
by our excesses? Our Light has been, at best, but a Revolving
Light ; warning by its darker intervals or its sombre shades, as
well as cheering by its flashes of brilliancy, or by the clear lustre
of its steadier shining. Yet, in spite of all its imperfections
and irregularities, to no other earthly light have so many eyes
been turned ; from no other earthly illumination have so many
hearts drawn hope and courage. It has breasted the tides of
sectional and of party strife. It has stood the shock of foreign
and of civil war. It will still hold on, erect and unextin-
guished, defying " the returning wave " of demoralization and
corruption. Millions of young hearts, in all quarters of our
land, are awaking at this moment to the responsibility which
rests peculiarly upon them, for rendering its radiance purer and
brighter and more constant. Millions of young hearts are re
solving, at this hour, that it shall not be their fault if it do not
stand for a century to come, as it has stood for a century past,
a Beacon of Liberty to mankind ! Their little flags of hope and
promise are floating to-day from every cottage window along the
roadside. With those young hearts it is safe.
Meantime, we may all rejoice and take courage, as we remem
ber of how great a drawback and obstruction our example has
been disembarrassed and relieved within a few years past. Cer
tainly, we cannot forget this day, in looking back over the cen
tury which is gone, how long that example was overshadowed, in
the eyes of all men, by the existence of African Slavery in so con
siderable a portion of our country. Never, never, however, it
may be safely said, was there a more tremendous, a more dread
ful, problem submitted to a nation for solution, than that which
this institution involved for the United States of America. Nor
were we alone responsible for its existence. I do not speak
of it in the way of apology for ourselves. Still less would
I refer to it in the way of crimination or reproach towards
others, abroad or at home. But the well-known paragraph
on this subject, in the original draught of the Declaration, is
quite too notable a reminiscence of the little desk before me, to
be forgotten on such an occasion as this. That omitted clause,
which, as Mr. Jefferson tells us, " was struck out in com
plaisance to South Carolina and Georgia," not without " tender-
CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876. 419
ness," too, as he adds, to some " Northern brethren, who, though
they had very few slaves themselves, had been pretty consider
able carriers of them to others," contained the direct allega
tion that the King had "prostituted his negative for suppressing
every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable
commerce." That memorable clause, omitted for prudential
reasons only, has passed into history, and its truth can never be
disputed. It recalls to us, and recalls to the world, the his
torical fact, which we certainly have a special right to re
member this day, that not only had African Slavery found its
portentous and pernicious way into our Colonies in their very
earliest settlement, but that it had been fixed and fastened upon
some of them by Royal vetoes, prohibiting the passage of laws to
restrain its further introduction. It had thus not only entwined
and entangled itself about the very roots of our choicest harvests,
until Slavery and Cotton at last seemed as inseparable as the
tares and wheat of the sacred parable, but it had engrafted
itself upon the very fabric of our government. We all know,
the world knows, that our Independence could not have been
achieved, our Union could not have been maintained, our Con
stitution could not have been established, without the adoption
of those compromises which recognized its continued existence,
and left it to the responsibility of the States of which it was
the grievous inheritance. And from that day forward, the
method of dealing with it, of disposing of it, and of extinguish
ing it, became more and more a problem full of terrible perplex
ity, and seemingly incapable of human solution.
Oh, that it could have been solved at last by some process
less deplorable and dreadful than Civil War ! How unspeakably
glorious it would have been for us this day, could the Great
Emancipation have been concerted, arranged, and ultimately
effected, without violence or bloodshed, as a simple and sublime
act of philanthropy and justice !
But it was not in the Divine economy that so huge an original
wrong should be righted by any easy process. The decree
seemed to have gone forth from the very registries of Heaven :
" Cuncta prius tentanda, sed immedicabile vulnus
Ense recidendum est."
420 CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876.
The immedicable wound must be cut away by the sword !
Again and again as that terrible war went on, we might almost
hear voices crying out, in the words of the old prophet : " O
thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet ?
Put up thyself into thy scabbard ; rest, and be still ! " But the
answering voice seemed not less audible : " How can it be
quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge ? "
And the war went on, bravely fought on both sides, as we
all know, until, as one of its necessities, Slavery was abol
ished. It fell at last under that right of war to abolish it,
which the late John Quincy Adams had been the first to an
nounce in the way of warning, more than twenty years before, in
my own hearing, on the floor of Congress, while I was your
Representative. I remember well the burst of indignation and
derision with which that warning was received. No prediction of
Cassandra was ever more scorned than his, and he did not live to
witness its verification. But whoever else may have been more
immediately and personally instrumental in the final result,