n r> A TT n b. U Ix A. 1 1 U J fed iti.i.iVKi;r.i> r.r.i'OKi; TIH: CITY COUNCIL AND CITIZENS OF BOSTON, OXE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THK DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, JULY 4, 1876. HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP Ji s t a IT : P1MNTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL. MDCCCT.XXVI. OEATIOIST DELIVERED BEFORE THE CITY COUNCIL AND CITIZENS OF BOSTON, ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, JULY 4, 1876. BY HON, EGBERT C, WINTHROP. - BOSTONIA CONDimAJ) 1630 8 o s t n : PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL. MDCCCLXX VI. CITY OF BOSTON. IN COMMON COUNCIL, July 6, 1876. Resolved , That the thanks of the City Council are due, and they are hereby tendered, to the Hon. ROBERT C. WIN- THROP for the very appropriate, interesting and eloquent oration delivered by him before the Municipal Authorities of this city, upon the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of American Independence ; and that he be requested to furnish a copy of the same for publication. Sent up for concurrence. J. Q. A. BEACKETT, President. IN BOARD OF ALDERMEN, July 10, 1876. Concurred. JOHN T. CLARK, Chairman. Approved July 11, 1876. SAMUEL C. COBB, Mayor. SEEVICES AT MUSIC HALL. THE oration was delivered in Music Hall, which was appropriately decorated for the occasion. A large audience was present. After music by the Germania Band, the Mayor, the Hon. SAMUEL C. COBB, addressed the audience in the following words : " The audience will please give attention while prayer is offered by the Rev. HENRY W. FOOTE." Eev. HENRY W. FOOTE, pastor of King's Chapel, then offered the following prayer : PRAYER BY THE REV. MR. FOOTE. Lord God of our fathers, whose faithfulness and mer- cies are unto children's children, to such as remember thy commandments to do them, we thank thee that we can come to thee in the name, and as disciples, of our Lord Jesus Christ. On this memorial day, as we rejoice before thee with grateful millions, we ask that the gladness of our country may be filled with thankfulness for thy mercies, and that thou wilt sanctify the proud memories and the glad hopes of this hour. We bless thee, O thou who art the God of nations and of men, that thou wast with our fathers in the days of old ; that thou didst bring them 6 SERVICES AT MUSIC HALL. hither across the trackless deep, the seed-grain of a great nation; that thou didst cast out the heathen before them to make room for the vine of thy choos- ing, and that our hills are covered with its shadow and the boughs thereof are like the goodly cedar. We thank thee that thou wast with our fathers in the tune of battle to strengthen their hearts through weary years of war, to strengthen their hands to smite mighty kings, and to give them the sure fruits of peace. We bless thy name that thou wast with them in the spirit . of wisdom and under- standing, to inspire their hearts with those great principles of liberty and justice which shine as stars to lead all nations to a better day; and we bless thee that thou wast with them in the spirit of knowledge and of thy fear, to establish their work in a nation that should endure for centuries. We remember be- fore thee with thankfulness the great and heroic men whom thou didst raise up to be their leaders in the time of war, then* counsellors in the days of peace; we bless thee for their patience in adversity, their soberness in triumph, their wisdom, their purity, their patriotism, their faith in thee ; and we pray that, as thy servant shall speak to us of the mighty and enduring work which they wrought, the memorial of their virtues may abide in our hearts, and the power of their example strengthen us daily to thy service and thy praise. We thank thee, O our guardian JULY 4, 187G. 7 God, that as a reunited people, this nation bows before thee in this memorable hour; that thou hast put away all feeling of bitterness from between us, and from the ]S"orth and the South, the East and the West, we come up together into thy kingdom of peace and love. Bless, we pray thee, our mother- country and her Queen; remove all memories of ancient strife from our hearts, and grant that the ties of blood and of faith may bind us together through centuries to come. Rule thou in the hearts of our rulers in the spirit of loyalty and incorrupt faithful- ness, and grant that this people may be indeed a nation whose God is the Lord, built upon that right- eousness which alone can 'exalt a people. Hear us, we pray thee; strengthen us in thy faith and love, and let thy kingdom come and thy will be done. We ask it as disciples of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. At the conclusion of the prayer, the Germania Band played a selection, after which the Mayor introduced the reader of the Declaration of Independence, in the following words : FELLOW-CITIZENS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, On the 4th of July, 1776, a document was pub- lished in Philadelphia, solemnly proclaiming the birth of a nation. The passage of time has made that dec- laration good, and has placed that new-born nation 8 SERVICES AT MUSIC HALL. on a pinnacle of greatness and power, making the date an era in the history of civil liberty and of the world's civilization. It is fit that that historic paper should be read on this Centennial Anniversary in all the assemblies of the people throughout the land. It will now be read here ; and I regard it as a felic- itous circumstance that its momentous utterances should reach us to-day through the lips of one whose ancestor's name stands subscribed to it, and who represents, in name and blood, a succession of illus- trious men who, hi the highest stations of honor and public service, have borne a conspicuous part in the national history and counsels, from the first day to the last of the intervening century. I present to you BROOKS ADAMS, Esq. The Declaration of Independence was then read by MR. ADAMS, after which the Mayor spoke as follows : - In casting about for one who might worthily grace this Centennial occasion by taking the chief part in its observance, we did not have to search long before coming to a name so identified with the high accom- plishments of the scholar, the orator, and the states- man, that the bare mention of it was equivalent to an election. We have considered it a fortunate coincidence that the gentleman designated for this service, by the JULY 4, 1876. 9 qualifications I have mentioned, bears the name of one who was conspicuous in the annals of Boston more than a century before the Declaration of Inde- pendence, the name of one who presided with honor and dignity over the destinies of the infant city in the days when it was but a straggling village on the shore of this peninsula. We all know that neither the century of our national existence, nor the two centuries and a half that have passed since the settlement of Boston, have dimmed the lustre of that name and lineage. I present to you, fellow-citizens, the Honorable ROBERT C. WESTTHROP. At the conclusion of the Mayor's remarks, the Hon. ROBERT C. WINTHROP delivered the following oration. ORATION. AGAIN and again, Mr. Mayor and Fellow Citizens, in years gone by, considerations or circumstances of some sort, public or private, I know not what, have prevented my acceptance of most kind and flattering invitations to deliver the Oration in this my native city on the Fourth of July. On one of those occasions, long, long ago, I am said to have playfully replied to the Mayor of that period, that, if I lived to witness this Centennial Anniversary, I would not refuse any service which might be required of me. That pledge has been recalled by others, if not remembered by myself, and by the grace of God I am here to-day to fulfil it. I have come at last, in obedience to your call, to add my name to the distinguished roll of those who have discharged this service in unbroken succession since the year 1783, when the date of a glorious act of patriots was substituted for that of a dastardly deed of hirelings, the 4th of July for the 5th of March, as a day of annual celebration by the people of Boston. In rising to redeem the promise thus inconsider- 12 ORATION. ately given, I may be pardoned for not forgetting, at the outset, who presided over the Executive Council of Massachusetts when the Declaration, which has just been read, was first formally and solemnly proclaimed to the people, from the balcony of yonder Old State House, on the 18th of July, 1776 ; * and whose privilege it was, amid the shoutings of the assembled multitude, the ringing of .the bells, the salutes of the surrounding forts, and the firing of thirteen volleys from thirteen successive divisions of the Continental regiments, drawn up "in corre- spondence with the number of the American States United," to invoke " Stability and Perpetuity to American Independence! God save our American States!" That invocation was not in vain. That wish, that prayer, has been graciously granted. We are here this day to thank God for it. We do thank God for it with all our hearts, and ascribe to Him all the glory. And it would be unnatural if I did not feel a more than common satisfaction, that the privilege of giving expression to your emotions of joy and gratitude, at this hour, should have been assigned to the oldest living descendant of him by whom that invocation was uttered, and that prayer breathed up to Heaven. And if, indeed, in addition to this, as you, Mr. * James Bowdoin. JULY 4, 1876. 13 Mayor, so kindly urged in originally inviting me, the name I bear may serve in any sort as a link between the earliest settlement of New England, two centuries and a half ago, and the grand culmination of that settlement in this Centennial Epoch of American Independence, all the less may I be at liberty to express anything of the compunction or regret, which I cannot but sincerely feel, that so responsible and difficult a task had not been imposed upon some more sufficient, or certainly upon some younger, man. Yet what can I say? What can any one say, here or elsewhere, to-day, which shall either satisfy the expectations of others, or meet his own sense of the demands of such an occasion? For myself, certainly, the longer I have contemplated it, the more deeply I have reflected on it, so much the more hopeless I have become of finding myself able to ive any adequate expression to its full significance, its real sublimity and grandeur. A hundred-fold more than when John Adams wrote to his wife it would be so forever, it is an occasion for " shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of the continent to the other." Ovations, rather than orations, are the order of such a day as this. Emo- tions like those which ought to fill, and which do fill, all our hearts, call for the swelling tones of a multitude, the cheers of a mighty crowd, and refuse 14 ORATION. to be uttered by any single human voice. The strongest phrases seem feeble and powerless ; the best results of historical research have the dryness of chaff and husks, and the richest flowers of rhetoric the drowsiness of w poppy or mandragora," in presence of the simplest statement of the grand consummation we are here to celebrate : A Cen- tury of Self-Government Completed ! A hundred years of Free Republican Institutions realized and rounded out ! An era of Popular Liberty, continued and prolonged from generation to generation, until to-day it assumes its full proportions, and asserts its rightful place, among the Ages ! It is a theme from which an Everett, a Choate, or even a Webster, might have shrunk. But those voices, alas! were long ago hushed. It is a theme on which any one, living or dead, might have been glad to follow the precedent of those few incom- parable sentences at Gettysburg, on the 19th of November, 1863, and forbear from all attempt at extended discourse. It is not for me, however, to copy that unique original, nor yet to shelter my- self under an example, which I should in vain aspire to equal. And, indeed, Fellow Citizens, some formal words must be spoken here to-day, trite, familiar, com- monplace words, though they may be; some words of commemoration; some words of congratulation; JULY 4, 1876. 15 some words of glory to God, and of acknowledgment to man; some grateful lootings back; some hopeful, trustful, lookings forward, these," I am sensible, cannot be spared from our great assembly on this Centennial Day. You would not pardon me for omitting them. But where shall I begin? To what specific sub- ject shall I turn for refuge from the thousand thoughts which come crowding to one's mind and rushing to one's lips, all jealous of postponement, all clamoring for utterance before our Festival shall close, and before this Centennial sun shall set? The single, simple Act which has made the Fourth of July memorable for ever, the mere scene of the Declaration, would of itself and alone supply an ample subject for far more than the little hour which I may dare to occupy; and, though it has been described a hundred times before, in histories and addresses, and in countless magazines and journals, it imperatively demands something more than a cursory allusion here to-day, and challenges our attention as it never did before, and hardly ever can challenge it again. Go back with me, then, for a few moments at least, to that great year of our Lord, and that great day of American Liberty. Transport yourselves with me, in imagination, to Philadelphia. It will require but little effort for any of us to do so, for all 16 ORATION. our hearts are there already. Yes, we are all there, - from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf, we are all there, at this high noon of our Nation's birthday, in that beautiful City of Brotherly Love, rejoicing in all her brilliant displays, and partaking in the full enjoyment of all her pag- eantry and pride. Certainly, the birthplace and the burial-place of Franklin are in cordial sympathy at this hour; and a common sentiment of congratulation and joy, leaping and vibrating from heart to heart, outstrips even the magic swiftness of magnetic wires. There are no chords of such elastic reach and such electric power as the heartstrings of a mighty Nation, touched and tuned, as all our heartstrings are to-day, to the sense of a common glory, throbbing and thrilling with a common exultation. Go with me, then, I say, to Philadelphia; not to Philadelphia, indeed, as she is at this moment, with all her bravery on, with all her beautiful garments around her, with all the graceful and generous con- tributions which so many other Cities and other States and other Nations have sent for her adorn- ment, not forgetting those most graceful, most welcome, most touching contributions, in view of the precise character of the occasion, from Old England herself; but go with me to Philadelphia, as she was just a hundred years ago. Enter with me her noble Independence Hall, so happily restored and conse- JULY 4, 1876. 17 crated afresh as the Runnymede of our Nation; and, as we enter it, let us not forget to be grateful that no demands of public convenience or expediency have called for the demolition of that old State House of Pennsylvania. Observe and watch the movements, listen attentively to the words, look steadfastly at the countenances, of the men who compose the little Congress assembled there. Braver, wiser, nobler men have never been gathered and grouped under a single roof, before or since, in any age, on any soil beneath the sun. What are they doing? What are they daring? Who are they, thus to do, and thus to dare? Single out with me, as you easily will at the first glance, by a presence and a stature not easily over- looked or mistaken, the young, ardent, accomplished Jefferson. He is only just thirty-three years of age. Charming in conversation, ready and full in council, he is " slow of tongue," like the great Lawgiver of the Israelites, for any public discussion or formal discourse. But he has brought with him the reputa- tion of wielding what John Adams well called " a masterly pen." And grandly has he justified that reputation. Grandly has he employed that pen already, in drafting a Paper which is at this moment lying on the table and awaiting its final signature and sanction. Three weeks before, indeed, on the previous 7th 18 ORATION. of June, his own noble colleague, Richard Henry Lee, had moved the Resolution, whose adoption, on the 2d of July, had virtually settled the whole ques- tion. Nothing, certainly, more explicit or emphatic could have been wanted for that Congress itself than that Resolution, setting forth as it did, in language of striking simplicity and brevity and dignity, " That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." That Resolution was, indeed, not only comprehen- sive and conclusive enough for the Congress which adopted it, but, I need not say, it is comprehensive and conclusive enough for us ; and I heartily wish, that, in the century to come, its reading might be sub- stituted for that of the longer Declaration which has put the patience of our audiences to so severe a test for so many years past, though, happily, not to-day. But the form in which that Resolution was to be announced and proclaimed to the people of the Colonies, and the reasons by which it was to be justified before the world, were at that time of intense interest and of momentous importance. No graver responsibility was ever devolved upon a young man of thirty-three, if, indeed, upon any man of any age, JULY 4, 1876. 19 than that of preparing such a Paper. As often as I have examined the original draft of that Paper, still extant in the Archives of the State Department at Washington, and have observed how very few changes were made, or even suggested, by the illus- trious men associated with its author on the com- mittee for its preparation, it has seemed to me to be as marvellous a composition, of its kind and for its purpose, as the annals of mankind can show. The earliest honors of this day, certainly, may well be paid, here and throughout the country, to the young Virginian of " the masterly pen." And here, by the favor of a highly valued friend and fellow-citizen, to whom it was given by Jefferson himself a few months only before his death, I am privileged to hold in my hands, and to lift up to the eager gaze of you all, a most compact and convenient little mahogany case, which bears -this autograph inscription on its face, dated " Monticello, November 18,1825:" w Thomas Jefferson gives this Writing Desk to Joseph Coolidge, Jun r . as a memorial of his affection. It was made from a drawing of his own, by Ben Randall, Cabinet-maker of Philadelphia, with whom he first lodged on his arrival in that City in May, 1776, and is the identical one on which he wrote the Declaration of Independence." " Politics, as well as Religion," the inscription pro- 20 ORATION. ceeds to say, w has its superstitions. These, gaining strength with time, may, one day, give imaginary value to this relic, for its association with the birth of the Great Charter of our Independence." Superstitions! Imaginary value! Not for an instant can we admit such ideas. The modesty of the writer has betrayed even "the masterly pen." There is no imaginary value to this relic, and no superstition is required to render it as precious and priceless a piece of wood, as the secular cabinets of the world have ever possessed, or ever claimed to possess. ]STo cabinet-maker on earth will have a more enduring name than this inscription has secured to :? Ben Randall, of Philadelphia." ~No pen will have a wider or more lasting fame than his who wrote the inscription. The very table at Runny mede, which some of us have seen, on which the Magna Charta of England is said to have been signed or sealed five centuries and a half before, even were it authen- ticated by the genuine autographs of every one of those brave old Barons, with Stephen Langton at their head, who extorted its grand pledges and promises from King John, so soon to be violated, could hardly exceed, could hardly equal, in interest and value, this little mahogany desk. What mo- mentous issues for our country, and for mankind, were locked up in this narrow drawer, as night after night the rough notes of preparation for the Great JULY 4, 1876. 21 Paper were laid aside for the revision of the morning ! To what anxious thoughts, to what careful study of words and phrases, to what cautious weighing of statements and arguments, to what deep and almost overwhelming impressions of responsibility, it must have been a witness! Long may it find its appro- priate and appreciating ownership in the successive generations of a family, in which the blood of Vir- ginia and Massachusetts is so auspiciously com- mingled! Should it, in the lapse of years, ever, pass from the hands of those to whom it will be so precious an heirloom, it could only have its fit and final place among the choicest and most cherished treasures of the Nation, with whose Title Deeds of Independence it is so proudly associated ! But the young Jefferson is not alone from Virginia, on the day we are celebrating, in the Hall which we have entered as imaginary spectators of the scene. His venerated friend and old legal preceptor, George Wythe, is, indeed, temporarily absent from his side; and even Richard Henry Lee, the original mover of the measure, and upon whom it might have devolved to draw up the Declaration, has been called home by dangerous illness in his family, and is not there to help him. But " the gay, good-humored " Francis Lightfoot Lee, a younger brother, is there. Benjamin Harrison, the father of our late President Harrison, is there, and has just reported the Decla- 22 ORATION. ration from the Committee of the Whole, of which he was Chairman. The "mild and philanthropic" Carter Braxton is there, in the place of the lamented Peyton Randolph, the first President of the Con- tinental Congress, who had died, to the sorrow of the whole country, six or seven months before. And the noble-hearted Thomas Nelson is there, the largest subscriber to the generous relief sent from Yirginia to Boston during the sore distress oc- casioned by the shutting up of our Port, and who was the mover of those Instructions in the Convention of Yirginia, passed on the 15th of May, under which Richard Henry Lee offered the original Resolution of Independence, on the 7th of June. I am particular, Fellow Citizens, in giving to the Old Dominion the foremost place in this rapid survey of the Fourth of July, 1776, and in naming every one of her delegates who participated in that day's doings; for it is hardly too much to say, that the destinies of our country, at that period, hung and hinged upon her action, and upon the action of her great and glorious sons. Without Yirginia, as we must all acknowledge, without her Patrick Henry among the people, her Lees and Jefferson in the forum, and her Washington in the field, I will not say, that the cause of American Liberty and American In- dependence must have been ultimately defeated, - no, no; there was no ultimate defeat for that cause in JULY 4, 1876. 28 the decrees of the Most High ! but it must have been delayed, postponed, perplexed, and to many eyes and to many hearts rendered seemingly hopeless. It was Union which assured our Independence, and there could have been no Union without the influence and cooperation of that great leading Southern Colony. To-day, then, as we look back over the wide gulf of a century, we are ready and glad to forget every thing of alienation, every thing of contention and estrangement which has intervened, and to hail her once more, as our Fathers in Faheuil Hall hailed her, in 1775, as " our noble, patriotic sister Colony, Virginia." I may not attempt, on this occasion, to speak with equal particularity of all the other delegates whom we see assembled in that immortal Congress. Their names are all inscribed where they can never be oblit- erated, never be forgotten. Yet some others of them so challenge our attention and rivet our gaze, as we look in upon that old time-honored Hall, that I cannot pass to other topics without a brief allusion to them. Who can overlook or mistake the sturdy front of Roger Sherman, whom we are proud to recall as a native of Massachusetts, though now a delegate from Connecticut, that "Old Puritan," as John Adams well said, " as honest as an angel, and as firm in the cause of American Independence as Mount Atlas," represented most worthily to-day by the distinguished 24 ORATION. Orator of the Centennial at Philadelphia, as well as by more than one distinguished grandson in our own State? Who can overlook or mistake the stalwart figure of Samuel Chase, of Maryland, " of ardent passions, of strong mind, of domineering temper, of a turbulent and boisterous life," who had helped to burn in effigy the Maryland Stamp Distributor eleven years before, and who, we are told by one who knew what he was saying, " must ever be conspicuous in the catalogue of that Congress " ? His milder and more amiable colleague, Charles Carroll, was engaged at that moment in pressing the cause of Independence on the hesitating Convention of Maryland, at Annapolis; and though, as we shall see, he signed the Declaration on the 2d of August, and outlived all his compeers on that roll of glory, he is missing from the illustrious band as we look in upon them this morning. I cannot but remember that it was my privilege to see and know that vener- able person in my early manhood. Entering his drawing-room, nearly five-and-forty years ago, I found him reposing on a sofa and covered with a shawl, and was not even aware of his presence, so shrunk and shrivelled by the lapse of years was his originally feeble frame. Quot librae in duce summo! But the little heap on the sofa was soon seen stirring, and, rousing himself from his mid-day nap, he rose JULY 4, 1876. 25 and greeted me with a courtesy and a grace which I can never forget. In the ninety-fifth year of his age, as he was, and within a few months of his death, it is not surprising that there should be little for me to recall of that interview, save his eager inquiries about James Madison, whom I had just visited at Montpe- lier, and his affectionate allusions to John Adams, who had gone before him; and save, too, the exceeding satisfaction for myself of having seen and pressed the hand of the last surviving signer of the Declaration. But Caesar Rodney, who had gone home on the same patriotic errand which had called Carroll to Maryland, had happily returned in season, and had come in, two days before, " in his boots and spurs," to give the casting vote for Delaware in favor of Independence. And there is Arthur Middleton, of South Carolina, the bosom friend of our own Hancock, and who is associated with him under the same roof in those ele- gant hospitalities which helped to make men know and understand and trust each other. And with him you may see and almost hear the eloquent Edward Rutledge, who not long before had united with John Adams and Richard Henry Lee in urging on the several Colonies the great measure of establishing permanent governments at once for themselves, a decisive step which we may not forget that South Carolina was among the very earliest in taking. She 26 ORATION. took it, however, with a reservation, and her dele- gates were not quite ready to vote for Independence, when it was first proposed. But Richard Stockton, of New Jersey, must not be unmarked or unmentioned in our rapid survey, more especially as it is a matter of record that his original doubts about the measure, which he is now bravely supporting, had been dissipated and dispelled " by the irresistible and conclusive arguments of John Adams." And who requires to be reminded that our w Great Bostonian," Benjamin Franklin, is at his post to-day, representing his adopted Colony with less support than he could wish, for Pennsylvania, as well as New York, was sadly divided, and at times almost paralyzed by her divisions, but with patriotism and firmness and prudence and sagacity and philosophy and wit and common-sense and courage enough to constitute a whole delegation, and to represent a whole Colony, by himself ! He is the last man of that whole glorious group of Fifty, or it may have been one or two more, or one or two less, than fifty, - who requires to be pointed out, in order to be the observed of all observers. But I must not stop here. It is fit, above all other things, that, while we do justice to the great actors in this scene from other Colonies, we should not overlook the delegates from our own Colony. It is JULY 4, 1876. 27 fit, above all things, that we should recall something more than the names of the men who represented Massachusetts in that great Assembly, and who boldly affixed their signatures, in her behalf, to that immortal Instrument. Was there ever a more signal distinction vouch- safed to mortal man, than that which was won and worn by John Hancock a hundred years ago to-day? Not altogether a great man; not without some grave defects of character; we remember nothing at this hour save his Presidency of the Congress of the Declaration, and his bold and noble signature to our Magna Charta. Behold him in the chair which is still standing in its old place, the very same chair in which "Washington was to sit, eleven years later, as President of the Convention which framed the Constitution of the United States; the very same chair, emblazoned on the back of which Franklin was to descry " a rising, and not a setting sun," when that Constitution had been finally adopted, behold him, the young Boston merchant, not yet quite forty years of age, not only with a princely fortune at stake, but with a price at that moment on his own head, sitting there to-day in all the calm composure and dignity which so peculiarly characterized him, and which nothing seemed able to relax or ruffle. He had chanced to come on to the Congress during the previous year, just as Peyton Randolph had been 28 ORATION". compelled to relinquish his seat and go home, return- ing only to die; and, having been unexpectedly elected as his successor, he hesitated about taking the seat. But grand old Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, we are told, was standing beside him, and with the ready good humor that loved a joke even in the Senate House, he seized the modest candidate in his athletic arms, and placed him in the presidential chair; then, turning to some of the members around, he ex- claimed: "We will show Mother Britain how little we care for her, by making a Massachusetts man our President, whom she has excluded from pardon bv a public proclamation." Behold him! He has risen for a moment. He has put the question. The Declaration is adopted. It is already late in the evening, and all formal promulga- tion of the day's doings must be postponed. After a grace of three days, the air will be vibrating with the joyous tones of the Old Bell in the cupola over his head, proclaiming Liberty to all mankind, and with the responding acclamations of assembled multitudes. Meantime, for him, however, a simple but solemn duty remains to be discharged. The paper is before him. You may see the very table on which it was laid, and the very inkstand which awaits his use. 3^o hesitation now. He dips his pen, and with an untrembling hand proceeds to execute a signature, which would seem to have been studied in the JULY 4, 1876. 29 schools, and practised in the counting-room, and shaped and modelled day by day in the correspond- ence of mercantile and political manhood, until it should be meet for the authentication of some immor- tal act; and which, as Webster grandly said, has made his name as imperishable, " as if it were written between Orion and the Pleiades." Under that signature, with only the attestation of a secretary, the Declaration goes forth to the Ameri- can people, to be printed in their journals, to be proclaimed in their streets, to be published from their pulpits, to be read at the head of their armies, to be incorporated for ever into their history. The British forces, driven away from Boston, are now landing on Staten Island, and the reverses of Long Island are just awaiting us. They were met by the promulga- tion of this act of offence and defiance to all royal authority. But there was no individual responsibility for that act, save in the signature of John Hancock, President, and Charles Thomson, Secretary. ]S"ot until the 2d of August was our young Boston mer- chant relieved from the perilous, the appalling gran- deur of standing sole sponsor for the revolt of Thirteen Colonies and Three Millions of people. Sixteen or seventeen years before, as a very young man, he had made a visit to London, and was present at the burial of George II., and at the coronation of George III. He is now not only the witness but the 30 ORATION. instrument, and in some sort the impersonation, of a far more substantial change of dynasty on his own soil, the burial of royalty under any and every title, and the coronation of a Sovereign, whose sceptre has already endured for a century, and whose sway has already embraced three times thirteen States, and more than thirteen times three millions of people ! Ah, if his quaint, picturesque, charming old man- sion-house, so long the gem of Beacon Street, could have stood till this day, our Centennial decorations and illuminations might haply have so marked, and sanctified, and glorified it, that the rage of recon- struction would have passed over it still longer, and spared it for the reverent gaze of other generations. But his own name and fame are secure; and, what- ever may have been the foibles or faults of his later years, to-day we will remember that momentous and matchless signature, and him who made it, with noth- ing but respect, admiration and gratitude. But Hancock, as I need not remind you, was not the only proscribed patriot who represented Massa- chusetts at Philadelphia on the day we are commem- orating. His associate in General Gage's memorable exception from pardon is close at his side. He who, as a Harvard College student, in 1743, had main- tained the affirmative of the Thesis, " Whether it be lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Com- monwealth cannot otherwise be preserved," and who JULY 4, 1876. 31 during those whole three-and-thirty years since had been training up himself and training up his fellow- countrymen in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and of Liberty ; he who had replied to Gage's recommendation to him to make his peace with the King, " I trust I have long since made my peace with the King of Kings, and no personal considerations shall induce me to abandon the righteous cause of my country ; " he who had drawn up the Boston Instructions to her Representatives in the General Court, adopted at Faneuil Hall, on the 24th of May, 1764, the earliest protest against the Stamp Act, and one of the grandest papers of our whole Revolutionary period ; he who had instituted and organized those Committees of Correspondence, without which we could have had no united counsels, no concerted action, no union, no success ; he who, after the massacre of March 5, 1770, had demanded so heroic- ally the removal from Boston of the British regi- ments, ever afterwards known as " Sam. Adams's regiments," telling the Governor to his face, with an emphasis and an eloquence which were hardly ever exceeded since Demosthenes stood on the Bema, or Paul on Mars Hill, " If the Lieutenant-governor, or Colonel Dalrymple, or both together, have authority to remove one regiment, they have authority to remove two; and nothing short of the total evacua- tion of the Town, by all the regular troops, will 32 ORATION. satisfy the public mind or preserve the peace of the Province;" -he, "the Palinurus of the American Revolution," as Jefferson once called him, but thank Heaven ! a Palinurus who was never put to sleep at the helm, never thrown into the sea, but who is still watching the compass and the stars, and steer- ing the ship as she enters at last the haven he has so long yearned for: the veteran Samuel Adams, the disinterested, inflexible, incorruptible statesman, - is second to no one in that whole Congress, hardly second to any one in the whole thirteen Colonies, in his claim to the honors and grateful acknowledg- ments of this hour. We have just gladly hailed his statue on its way to the capitol. ISTor must the name of Robert Treat Paine be forgotten among the five delegates of Massachusetts in that Hall of Independence, a hundred years ago to-day; an able lawyer, a learned judge, a just man; connected by marriage, if I mistake not, Mr. Mayor, with your own gallant grandfather, General Cobb, and who himself inherited the blood and illus- trated the virtues of the hero and statesman whose name he bore, Robert Treat, a most distinguished officer in King Philip's War, and afterwards a worthy Governor of Connecticut. And with him, too, is Elbridge Gerry, the very youngest member of the whole Continental Congress, just thirty-two years of age, who had been one of JULY 4, 1876. 33 the chosen friends of our proto-martyr, General Joseph Warren; who was with Warren, at Water- town, the very last night before he fell at Bunker Hill, and into whose ear that heroic volunteer had whispered those memorable words of presentiment, " Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori ; " who lived himself to serve his Commonwealth and the Nation, ardently and efficiently, at home and abroad, ever in accordance with his own patriotic injunction, "It is the duty of every citizen, though he may have but one day to live, to devote that day to the service of his country," and died on his way to his post as Vice-President of the United States. One more name is still to be pronounced. One more star of that little Massachusetts cluster is still to be observed and noted. And it is one, which, on the precise occasion we commemorate, one, which during those great days of June and July, 1776, on which the question of Independence was immediately discussed and decided, had hardly " a fellow in the firmament," and which was certainly "the bright, particular star " of our own constellation. You will all have anticipated me in naming John Adams. Beyond all doubt, his is the Massachusetts name most prominently associated with the immediate Day we celebrate. Others may have been earlier or more active than he in preparing the way. Others may have labored 34 ORATION. longer and more zealously to instruct the popular mind and inflame the popular heart for the great step which was now to be taken. Others may have been more ardent, as they unquestionably were more prominent, in the various stages of the struggle against Writs of Assistance, and Stamp Acts, and Tea Taxes. But from the date of that marvellous letter of his to Nathan Webb, in 1755, when he was less than twenty years old, he seems to have forecast the destinies of this continent as few other men of any age, at that day, had done; while from the moment at which the Continental Congress took the question of Independence fairly in hand, as a question to be decided and acted on, until they had brought it to its final issue in the Declaration, his was the voice, above and before all other voices, which commanded the ears, convinced the minds, and inspired the hearts of his colleagues, and triumphantly secured the result. I need not speak of him in other relations or in after years. His long life of varied and noble service to his country, in almost every sphere of public duty, domestic and foreign, belongs to history; and history has long ago taken it in charge. But the testimony which was borne to his grand efforts and utterances, by the author of the Declaration himself, can never be gainsaid, never be weakened, never be forgotten. That testimony, old as it is, familiar as it is, belongs JULY 4, 1876. 35 to this day. John Adains will be remembered and honored for ever, in every true American heart, as the acknowledged Champion of Independence in the Continental Congress, " coming out with a power which moved us from our seats," " our Colossus on the floor." And when we recall the circumstances of his death, the year, the day, the hour, and the last words upon his dying lips, " Independence for ever," - who can help feeling that there was some myste- rious tie holding back his heroic spirit from the skies, until it should be set free amid the exulting shouts of his country's first National Jubilee! But not his heroic spirit alone! In this rapid survey of the men assembled at Philadelphia a hundred years ago to-day, I began with Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, and I end with John Adams, of Massachusetts; and no one can hesitate to admit that, under God, they were the very alpha and omega of that day's doings, the pen and the tongue, the masterly author, and the no less masterly advocate, of the Declaration. And now, my friends, what legend of ancient Rome, or Greece, or Egypt, what myth of prehistoric mythology, what story of Herodotus, or fable of -ZEsop, or metamorphosis of Ovid, would have seemed more fabulous and mythical, did it rest on any remote or doubtful tradition, and had not so many of 36 ORATION. us lived to be startled, and thrilled and awed by it, - than the fact, that these two men, under so many different circumstances and surroundings, of age and constitution and climate, widely distant from each other, living alike in quiet neighborhoods, remote from the smoke and stir of cities, and long before railroads or telegraphs had made any advances towards the annihilation or abridgment of space, should have been released to their rest and sum- moned to the skies, not only on the same day, but that day the Fourth of July, and that Fourth of July the Fiftieth Anniversary of that great Declaration which they had contended for and carried through so triumphantly side by side ! What an added emphasis Jefferson would have given to his inscription on this little desk, " Poli- tics, as well as Religion, has its superstitions," could he have foreseen the close even of his own life, much more the simultaneous close of these two lives, on that Day of days! Oh, let me not admit the idea of superstition! Let me rather reverently say, as Webster said at the time, in that magnificent Eulogy which left so little for any one else to say as to the lives or deaths of Adams and Jefferson: "As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care?" JULY 4, 1876. 37 And now another Fifty Years have passed away, and we are holding our high Centennial Festival ; and still that most striking, most impressive, most memor- able coincidence in all American history, or even in the authentic records of mankind, is without a visible monument anywhere! In the interesting little city of Weimar, renowned as the resort and residence of more than one of the greatest philosophers and poets of Germany, many a traveller must have seen and admired the charming statues of Goethe and Schiller, standing side by side and hand in hand, on a single pedestal, and offering, as it were, the laurel wreath of literary priority or pre-eminence to each other. Few nobler works of art, in conception or execution, can be found on the Continent of Europe. And what could be a worthier or juster commemoration of the marvellous coinci- dence of which I have just spoken, and of the men who were the subjects of it, and of the Declaration with which, alike in their lives and in their deaths, they are so peculiarly and so signally associated, than just such a Monument, with the statues of Adams and Jefferson, side by side and hand in hand, upon the same base, pressing upon each other, in mutual acknowledgment and deference, the victor palm of a triumph for which they must ever be held in common and equal honor! It would be a new tie between Massachusetts and Virginia. It would be a 38 ORATION. new bond of that Union which is the safety and the glory of both. It would be a new pledge of that restored good-will between the North and South, which is the herald and harbinger of a Second Cen- tury of National Independence. It would be a fit recognition of the great Hand of God in our history ! At all events, it is one of the crying omissions and neglects which reproach us all this day, that "glorious old John Adams" is without any propor- tionate public monument in the State of which he was one of the very grandest citizens and sons, and in whose behalf he rendered such inestimable services to his country. It is almost ludicrous to look around and see who has been commemorated, and he neg- lected! He might be seen standing alone, as he knew so well how to stand alone in life. He might be seen grouped with his illustrious son, only second to himself in his claims on the omitted posthumous honors of his native State. Or, if the claim of noble women to such commemorations were ever to be recognized on our soil, he might be lovingly grouped with that incomparable wife, from whom he was so often separated by public duties and personal dangers, and whose familiar correspondence with him, and his with her, furnishes a picture of fidelity and affection, and of patriotic zeal and courage and self-sacrifice, almost without a parallel in our Revolutionary Annals. JULY 4, 1876. 39 But before all other statues, let us have those of Adams and Jefferson on a single block, as they stood together just a hundred years ago to-day, as they were translated together just fifty years ago to-day: - foremost for Independence in their lives, and in their deaths not divided! Next, certainly, to the completion of the National Monument to Washington, at the Capital, this double statue of this " double star " of the Declaration calls for the contributions of a patriotic people. It would have something of special appropriateness as the first gift to that Boston Park, which is to date from this Centennial Period. I have felt, Mr. Mayor and Fellow Citizens, as I am sure you all must feel, that the men who were gathered at Philadelphia a hundred years ago to-day, familiar as their names and their story may be, to ourselves and to all the world, had an imperative claim to the first and highest honors of this Centen- nial Anniversary. But, having paid these passing tributes to their memory, I hasten to turn to consid- erations less purely personal. The Declaration has been adopted, and has been sent forth in a hundred journals, and on a thousand broadsides, to every camp and council chamber, to every town and village and hamlet and fireside, throughout the Colonies. What was it? What did it declare? What was its rightful interpretation 40 ORATION. and intention? Under what circumstances was it adopted? What did it accomplish for ourselves and for mankind? A recent and powerful writer on " The Growth of the English Constitution," whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the Commencement of Old Cambridge University two years ago, says most strikingly and most justly: "There are certain great political docu- ments, each of which forms a landmark in our politi- cal history. There is the Great Charter, The Petition of Rights, the Bill of Eights." " But not one of them," he adds, " gave itself out as the enactment of any thing new. All claimed to set forth, with new strength, it might be, and with new clearness, those rights of Englishmen, which were already old." The same remark has more recently been incorporated into w A Short History of the English People." w In itself," says the writer of that admirable little volume, " the Charter was no novelty, nor did it claim to establish any new Constitutional principles. The Charter of Henry I. formed the basis of the whole; and the additions to it are, for the most part, formal recognitions of the judicial and administrative changes introduced by Henry II." So, substantially, so, almost precisely, it may be said of the Great American Charter, which was drawn up by Thomas Jefferson on the precious little desk which lies before me. It made no pretensions JULY 4, 1876. 41 to novelty. The men of 1776 were not in any sense, certainly not in any seditious sense, greedy of novel- ties, - ^avidi novai-um rerum." They had claimed nothing new. They desired nothing new. Their old original rights as Englishmen were all that they sought to enjoy, and those they resolved to vindicate. It was the invasion and denial of those old rights of Englishmen, which they resisted and revolted from. As our excellent fellow-citizen, Mr. Dana, so well said publicly at Lexington, last year, and as we should all have been glad to have him in the way of repeating quietly in London, this year, "We were not the Revolutionists. The King and Parliament were the Revolutionists. They were the radical innovators. We were the conservators of existing institutions." 3sTo one has forgotten, or can ever forget, how early and how emphatically all this was admitted by some of the grandest statesmen and orators of England herself. It was the attempt to subvert our rights as Englishmen, which roused Chatham to some of his most majestic efforts. It was the attempt to subvert our rights as Englishmen, which kindled Burke to not a few of his most brilliant utterances. It was the attempt to subvert our rights as English- men, which inspired Barre and Conway and Camden with appeals and arguments and phrases, which will keep their memories fresh when all else associated 42 ORATION. with them is forgotten. The names of all three of them, as you well know, have long been the cherished designations of American Towns. They all perceived and understood that we were contending for English rights, and against the viola- tion of the great principles of English liberty. Nay, not a few of them perceived and understood that we were fighting their battles as well as our own, and that the liberties of Englishmen upon their own soil were virtually involved in our cause and in our contest. There is a most notable letter of Josiah Quincy, Jr.'s, written from London at the end of 1774, a few months only before that young patriot returned to die so sadly within sight of his native shores, in which he tells his wife, to whom he was not likely to write for any mere sensational effect, that " some of the first characters for understanding, integrity, and spirit," whom he had met in London, had used lan- guage of this sort : " This Nation is lost. Corruption and the influence of the Crown have led us into bondage, and a Standing Army has riveted our chains. To America only can we look for salvation. 'Tis America only can save England. Unite and persevere. You must prevail you must triumph." Quincy was careful not to betray names, in a letter which might be intercepted before it reached its destination. But we know the men with whom he JULY 4, 1876. 43 had been brought into association by Franklin and other friends, men like Shelburne and Hartley and Pownall and Priestley and Brand Hollis and Sir George Saville, to say nothing of Burke and Chat- ham. The language was not lost upon us. We did unite and persevere. We did prevail and triumph. And it is hardly too much to say that we did " save England." We saved her from herself; saved her from being the successful instrument of overthrowing the rights of Englishmen; saved her "from the poisoned chalice which would have been commended to her own lips;" saved her from " the bloody instructions which would have returned to plague the inventor." Not only was it true, as Lord Macaulay said in one of his brilliant Essays, that "England was never so rich, so great, so formidable to foreign princes, so absolutely mistress of the seas, as since the alienation of her American Colonies ; " but it is not less true that England came out of that contest with new and larger views of Liberty; with a broader and deeper sense of what was due to human rights; and with an experience of incalculable value to her in the management of the vast Colonial Sys- tem which remained, or was in store, for her. A vast and gigantic Colonial System, beyond doubt, it has proved to be ! She was just entering, a hundred years ago, on that wonderful career of con- quest in the East, which was to compensate her,- 44 ORATION. if it were a compensation, for her impending losses in the West. Her gallant Cornwallis was soon to receive the jewelled sword of Tippoo Saib at Ban- galore, in exchange for that which he was now des- tined to surrender to Washington at Yorktown. 'It is certainly not among the least striking coincidences of our Centennial Year, that, at the very moment when we are celebrating the event which stripped Great Britain of thirteen Colonies and three millions of subjects, now grown into thirty-eight States and more than forty millions of people, she is welcom- ing the return of her amiable and genial Prince from a royal progress through the wide-spread regions of w Ormus and of Ind," bringing back, to lay at the foot of the British throne, the homage of nine prin- cipal Provinces and a hundred and forty-eight feudatory States, and of not less than two hundred and forty millions of people, from Ceylon to the Himalayas, and affording ample justification for the Queen's new title of Empress of India! Among all the parallelisms of modern history, there are few more striking and impressive than this. The American Colonies never quarrelled or cav- illed about the titles of their Sovereign. If, as has been said, " they went to war about a preamble," it was not about the preamble of the royal name. It was the Imperial power, the more than Imperial pre- tensions and usurpations, which drove them to JULY 4, 1876. 45 rebellion. The Declaration was, in its own terms, a personal and most stringent arraignment of the King. It could have been nothing else. George III. was to ns the sole responsible instrument of oppression. Parliament had, indeed, sustained him; but the Colonies had never admitted the authority of a Parliament in which they had no representation. There is no passage in Mr. Jefferson's paper more carefully or more felicitously worded, than that in which he says of the Sovereign, that "he has com- bined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction for- eign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pre- tended legislation" A slip of " the masterly pen " on this point might have cost us our consistency; but that pen was on its guard, and this is the only allusion to Lords or Commons. We could recognize no one but the Monarch. We could contend with nothing- less than Royalty. We could separate our- selves only from the Crown. English precedents had abundantly taught us that kings were not beyond the reach of arraignment and indictment; and arraignment and indictment were then our only means of justifying our cause to ourselves and to the world. Yes; harsh, severe, stinging, scolding, I had almost said, as that long series of allegations and accusations may sound, and certainly does sound, as wu read it, or listen to it, in cold blood, a 46 ORATION. century after the issues are all happily settled, it was a temperate and a dignified utterance under the cir- cumstances of the case, and breathed quite enough of moderation to be relished or accepted by those who were bearing the brunt of so terrible a struggle for life and liberty and all that was dear to them, as that which those issues involved. Nor in all that bitter indictment is there a single count which does not refer to, and rest upon, some violation of the rights of Englishmen, or some violation of the rights of humanity. We stand by the Declaration to-day, and always, and disavow nothing of its reasoning or its rhetoric. And, after all, Jefferson was not a whit more severe on the King than Chatham had been on the King's Ministers six months before, when he told them to their faces: "The whole of your polit- ical conduct has been one continued series of weakness, temerity, despotism, ignorance, futility, negligence, blundering, and the most notorious ser- vility, incapacity, and corruption." Nor was Wil- liam Pitt, the younger, much more measured in his language, at a later period of our struggle, when he declared: "These Ministers will destroy the empire they were called upon to save, before the indignation of a great and suffering people can fall upon their heads in the punishment which they deserve. I uilirm the war to have been a most accursed, wicked, JULY 4, 1876. 47 barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical war." I need not say, Fellow Citizens, that we are here to indulge in no reproaches upon Old England to- day, as we look back from the lofty height of a Cen- tury of Independence on the course of events which severed us from her dominions. We are by no means in the mood to re-open the adjudications of Ghent or of Geneva; nor can we allow the ties of old traditions to be seriously jarred, on such an occasion as this, by any recent failures of extradi- tions, however vexatious or provoking. But, cer- tainly, resentments on either side, for any thing said or done during our Revolutionary period, after such a lapse of time, would dishonor the hearts which cherished them, and the tongues which ut- tered them. Who wonders that George the Third would not let such Colonies as ours go without a struggle? They were the brightest jewels of his crown. Who wonders that he shrunk from- the responsibility of such a dismemberment of his em- pire, and that his brain reeled at the very thought of it? It would have been a poor compliment to us, had he not considered us worth holding at any and every cost. We should hardly have forgiven him, had he not desired to retain us. Nor can we alto- gether wonder, that with the views of kingly pre- rogative which belonged to that period, and in which 48 OKATION. he was educated, he should have preferred the policy of coercion to that of conciliation, and should have insisted on sending over troops to subdue us. Our old Mother Country has had, indeed, a pe- culiar destiny, and in many respects a glorious one. Not alone with her drum-beat, as Webster so grandly said, has she encircled the earth. Not alone with her martial airs has she kept company with the hours. She has carried civilization and Christianity wherever she has carried her flag. She has carried her noble tongue, with all its incomparable treasures of literature and science and religion, around the globe ; and, with our aid, for she will confess that we are doing our full part in this line of extension, it is fast becoming the most pervading speech of civilized man. We thank God at this hour, and at every hour, that " Chatham's language is our mother tongue," and that we have an inherited and an indisputable share in the glory of so many of the great names by which that language has been illustrated and adorned. But she has done more than all this. She has planted the great institutions and principles of civil freedom in every latitude where she could find a foothold. From her our Revolutionary Fathers learned to understand and value them, and from her they inherited the spirit to defend them. Not in vain had her brave barons extorted Magna Charta JULY 4, 1876. 49 from King John. Not in vain had her Simon de Montfort summoned the knights and burgesses, and laid the foundations of a Parliament and a House of Commons. ^NTot in vain had her noble Sir John Eliot died, as the martyr of free speech, in the Tower. ISTot in vain had her heroic Hampden resisted ship-money, and died on the battle-field. JSTot in vain for us, certainly, the great examples and the great warnings of Cromwell an'd the Common- wealth, or those sadder ones of Sidney and Russell, or that later and more glorious one still of William of Orange. The grand lessons of her own history, forgotten, overlooked, or resolutely disregarded, it may be, on her ow T n side of the Atlantic, in the days we are commemorating, were the very inspiration of her Colonies on this side; and under that inspiration they contended and conquered. And though she may sometimes be almost tempted to take sadly upon her lips the words of the old prophet, "I have nourished and brought np children, and they have rebelled against me," she has long ago learned that such a rebellion as "ours was really in her own interest, and for her own ultimate welfare; begun, continued, and ended, as it was, in vindication of the liberties of Englishmen. I cannot forget how justly and eloquently my friend, Dr. Ellis, a few months ago, in this same 50 ORATION. hall, gave expression to the respect which is so widely entertained on this side of the Atlantic for the Sovereign Lady who has now graced the British throne for nearly forty years. No passage of his admirable Oration elicited a warmer response from the multitudes who listened to him. How much of the growth and grandeur of Great Britain is asso- ciated with the names of illustrious women! Even those of us who have no fancy for female suffrage might often be well-nigh tempted to take refuge, from the incompetencies and intrigues and corrup- tions of men, under the presidency of the purer and gentler sex. What would English history be with- out the names of Elizabeth and Anne ! What would it be without the name of Victoria, of whom it has recently been written, " that, by a long course of loyal acquiescence in the declared wishes of her people, she has brought about what is nothing less than a great Revolution, all the more beneficent because it has been gradual and silent!" Ever honored be her name, and that of her lamented consort ! "Ever beloved and loving may her rule be ; And when old Time shall lead her to her end, Goodness and she fill up one monument ! " The Declaration is adopted and promulgated; but we may not forget how long and how serious a re- JULY 4, 1876. 51 luctance there had been to take the irrevocable step. As late as September, 1774, Washington had pub- licly declared his belief that Independence " was wished by no thinking man." As late as the 6th of March, 1775, in his memorable Oration in the Old South, with all the associations of "the Boston Massacre " fresh in his heart, Warren had declared that " Independence was not our aim." As late as July, 1775, the letter of the Continental Congress to the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London had said : " North America, my Lord, wishes most ar- dently for a lasting connection with Great Britain, on terms of just and equal liberty; " and a simultaneous humble petition to the King, signed by every mem- ber of the Congress, reiterated the same assurance. And as late as the 25th of August, 1775, Jefferson himself, in a letter to the John Randolph of that day, speaking of those who " still wish for reunion with their parent country," says most emphatically, rr I am one of those ; and would rather be in depend- ence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation on earth, or than on no nation." Not all the blood of Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker Hill, crying from the ground long before these words were written, had extinguished the wish for reconciliation and reunion even in the heart of the very author of the Declaration. Tell me not, tell me not, that there was any thing 52 ORATION. of equivocation, any thing of hypocrisy, in these and a hundred other similar expressions which might be cited. The truest human hearts are full of such inconsistency and hypocrisy as that. The dearest friends, the tenderest relatives, are never more over- flowing and outpouring, nor ever more sincere, in feelings and expressions of devotion and love, than when called to contemplate some terrible impending necessity of final separation and divorce. The ties between us and Old England could not be sundered without sadness, and sadness on both sides of the ocean. Franklin, albeit his eyes were w unused to the melting mood," is recorded to have wept as he left England, in view of the inevitable result of which he was coming home to be a witness and an instrument; and I have heard from the poet Rogers's own lips, what many of you may have read in his Table-Talk, how deeply he was impressed, as a boy, by his father's putting on a mourning suit, when he heard of the first shedding of American blood. JS"or could it, in the nature of things, have been only their warm and undoubted attachment to Eng- land, which made so many of the men of 1776 reluctant to the last to cross the Rubicon. They saw clearly before them, they could not help seeing, the full proportions, the tremendous odds, of the contest into which the Colonies must be plunged by such a step. Think you that no- apprehensions and JULY 4, 1876. 53 anxieties weighed heavily on the minds and hearts of those far-seeing men? Think you that as their names were called on the day we commemorate, be- ginning with Josiah Bartlett, of ~New Hampshire, or as, one by one, they approached the Secretary's desk on the following 2d of August, to write their names on that now hallowed parchment, they did not realize the full responsibility, and the full risk to their country and to themselves, which such a vote and such a signature involved? They sat, indeed, with closed doors; and it is only from traditions or eaves-droppings, or from the casual expressions of diaries or letters, that we catch glimpses of what was done, or gleanings of what was said. But how full of import are some of those glimpses and gleanings! :? Will you sign ? " said Hancock to Charles Car- roll, who, as we have seen, had not been present on the 4th of July. " Most willingly," was the reply. K There goes two millions with a dash of the pen," says one of those standing by; while another re- marks, " Oh, Carroll, you will get off, there are so many Charles Carrolls." And then we may see him stepping back to the desk, and putting that addition "of Carrollton " -to his name, which will desig- nate him for ever, and be a prouder title of nobility than those in the peerage of Great Britain, which 54 ORATION. were afterwards adorned by his accomplished and fascinating grand-daughters. :? We must stand by each other we must hang together," is presently heard from some one of the signers ; with the instant reply, w Yes, we must hang together, or we shall assuredly hang separately." And, on this suggestion, the portly and humorous Benj. Harrison, whom we have seen forcing Hancock into the Chair, may be heard bantering our spare and slender Elbridge Gerry, levity provoking levity, - and telling him with grim merriment that, when that hanging scene arrives, he shall have the advantage : " It will be all over with me in a moment, but you will be kicking in the air half an hour after I am gone ! " These are among the K asides " of the drama, but, I need not say, they more than make up in significance for all they may seem to lack in dignity. The excellent William Ellery, of Rhode Island, whose name was afterwards borne by his grandson, our revered Channing, often spoke, we are told, of the scene of the signing, and spoke of it as an event which many regarded with awe, perhaps with uncer- tainty, but none with fear. " I was determined," he used to say, " to see how all looked, as they signed what might be their death warrant. I placed myself beside the Secretary, Charles Thomson, and eyed each closely as he affixed his name to the document. JULY 4, 1876. 55 Undaunted resolution was displayed in every coun- tenance." 'You inquire," wrote John Adams to William Plumer, " whether every member of Congress did, on the 4th of July, 1776, in fact, cordially approve of the Declaration of Independence. They who were then members all signed it, and, as I could not see their hearts, it would be hard for me to say that they did not approve it; but, as far as I could penetrate the intricate internal foldings of their souls, I then believed, and have not since altered my opinion, that there were several who signed with regret, and several others with many doubts and much luke- warmness. The measure had been on the carpet for months, and obstinately opposed from day to day. Majorities were constantly against it. For many days the majority depended upon Mr. Hewes of North Carolina. While a member one day was speaking, and reading documents from all the Colo- nies to prove that the public opinion, the general sense of all, was in favor of the measure, when he came to North Carolina, and produced letters and public proceedings which demonstrated that the majority of that Colony were in favor of it, Mr. Hewes, who had hitherto constantly voted against it, started suddenly upright, and lifting up both his hands tcf Heaven, as if he had been in a trance, cried out, ? It is done, and I will abide by it.' I would 56 ORATION. give more for a perfect painting of the terror and horror upon the faces of the old majority, at that critical moment, than for the best piece of Raphael.". There is quite enough in these traditions and hear- says, in these glimpses and gleanings, to show us that the supporters and signers of the Declaration were not blind to the responsibilities and hazards in which they were involving themselves and the coun- try. There is quite enough, certainly, in these and other indications, to give color and credit to what I so well remember hearing the late Mr. Justice Story say, half a century ago, that, as the result of all his conversations with the great men of the Revolution- ary Period, and especially with his illustrious and venerated chief on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, John Marshall, he was con- vinced that a majority of the Continental Congress was opposed to the Declaration, and that it was car- ried through by the patient, persistent, and over- whelming efforts and arguments of the minority. Two of those arguments, as Mr. Jefferson has left them on record, were enough for that occasion, or certainly are enough for this. One of the two was, w That the people wait for us to lead the way; that they are in favor of the meas- ure, though the instructions given by some of their representatives are not." And most true, ihdeed, it was, my friends, at that day, as it often has been JULY 4, 1876. 57 since that day, that the people were ahead of their so-called leaders. The minds of the masses were made up. They had no doubts or misgivings. They demanded that Independence should be recognized and proclaimed. John Adams knew how to keep up with them. Sam. Adams had kept his finger on their pulse from the beginning, and had "marked time " for every one of their advancing steps. Pat- rick Henry and Richard Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson, and some other ardent and noble spirits, were by no means behind them. But not a few of the leaders were, in fact, only followers. :? The peo- ple waited for them to lead the way." Independence was the resolve and the act of the American people, and the American people gladly received, and enthu- siastically ratified, and heroically sustained the Dec- laration, until Independence was no longer a question either at home or abroad. Yes, our Great Charter, as we fondly call it, though with something, it must be confessed, of poetic or patriotic license, was no temporizing concession, wrung by menaces from reluctant Monarchs; but was the spontaneous and imperative dictate of a Nation resolved to be free ! The other of those two arguments was even more conclusive and more clinching. It was, " That the question was not whether by a Declaration of Inde- pendence we should make ourselves what we are 8 58 ORATION. not, but whether we should declare a fact which aleady exists." w A fact which already exists ! " Mr. Mayor and Fellow Citizens, there is no more interesting histori- cal truth to us of Boston than this. Our hearts are all at Philadelphia to-day, as I have already said, rejoicing in all that is there said and done in honor of the men who made this day immortal, and hailing it, with our fellow-countrymen, from ocean to ocean, and from the lakes to the gulf, as our National Birthday. And nobly has Philadelphia met the requisitions, and more than fulfilled the expectations, of the occasion; furnishing a fete and a pageant of which the whole Nation is proud. Yet we are not called on to forget, we could not be pardoned, indeed, for not remembering, that, while the Dec- laration was boldly and grandly made in that hal- lowed Pennsylvania Hall, Independence had already been won, and won here in Massachusetts. It was said by some one of the old patriots, John Adams, I believe, that " the Revolution was effected before the war commenced ; " and Jefferson is now our authority for the^assertion that "Independence ex- isted before it was declared." They both well knew what they were talking about. Congresses in Car- penters' Hall, and Congresses in the old Pennsyl- vania State House, did grand things and were composed of grand men, and we render to their JULY 4, 1876. 59 memories all the homage and all the glory which they so richly earned. But here in Boston, the capi- tal of Massachusetts, and the principal town of British North America at that day, the question had already been brought to an issue, and already been irrevocably decided. Here the manifest destiny of the Colonies had been recognized and accepted. It was upon us, as all the world knows, that the blows of British oppression fell first and fell heaviest, fell like a storm of hail-stones and coals of fire; and where they fell, and as soon as they fell, they were resisted, and successfully resisted. Why, away back in 1761, when George the Third had been but a year on his throne, and when the printer's ink on the pages of our Harvard " Pietas et Gratulatio " was hardly dry ; when the Seven Years' War was still unfinished, in which New England had done her full share of the fighting, and reaped her full share of the glory, and when the British flag, by the help of her men and money, was just floating in triumph over the whole American continent, a mad resolution had been adopted to reconstruct Oh, word of ill-omen ! the whole Colonial system, and to bring America into closer conformity and subjection to the laws of the Mother Country. A Revenue is to be collected here. A Standing Army is to be established here. The Nav- igation Act and Acts of Trade are to be enforced 60 ORATION. and executed here. And all without any representa- tion on our part. The first practical step in this direction is taken. A custom-house officer, named Cockle, applies to the Superior Court at Salem for a writ of assistance. That cockle-shell exploded like dynamite! The Court postpones the case, and orders its argument in Boston. And then and there, in 1761, in our Old Town House, afterwards known as the Old State House, alas, alas, that it is thought necessary to talk about removing or even reconstructing it! James Otis, as John Adams himself tells us, " breathed into this nation the breath of life." " Then and there," he adds, and he spoke of what he witnessed and heard, " then and there the child Independence was born. In fifteen years, i. e., in 1776, he grew up to manhood, and declared himself free." The next year finds the same great scholar and orator exposing himself to the cry of " treason " in denouncing the idea of taxation without representa- tion, and forthwith vindicating himself in a masterly pamphlet which excited the admiration and sympathy of the whole people. Another year brings the first instalment of the scheme for raising a revenue in the Colonies, in the shape of declaratory resolves; and Otis meets it plumply and boldly, in Faneuil Hall, at that moment freshly rebuilt and reopened, with the JULY 4, 1876. 61 counter declaration that "every British subject in America is, of common right, by act of Parliament, and by the laws of God and Nature, entitled to all the essential privileges of Britons." And now George Grenville has devised and pro- posed the Stamp Act. And, before it is even known that the Bill had passed, Samuel Adams is heard reading, in that same Faneuil Hall, at the May meeting of 1764, those memorable instructions from Boston to her representatives: