ALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 07126 0716

Kew England society in the city of New York,
Annual report. [41st] 1846.

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Gift of
George Wheatland
1954

tTPHAM'S OEATION

DELIVERED BEFORE

THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY,

IN THE

CITY OF NEW YORK.

AN

ORATION

DELIVERED BEFORE

THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY,

THE CITY OF NEW YORK,

DECEMBER 22, 1846.

By CHARLES W. UPHAM.

SECOND EDITION.

BOSTON:
JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY.
1847.

At a meeting of the Board of Officers of The New-England Society in the
City of New York, held at the Astor House December 30th, 1846, it was, on mo
tion of Mr. Fessenden, seconded by Mr. Babcock,
Resolved, that a Committee be appointed by the Chair to wait upon Rev.
Charles W. Upham, to tender him the thanks ofthe Society for his Oration de
livered on the late Anniversary, and to request a copy of the same for publication ;
and that when said Oration is received, it be published on behalf of the Society,
under the direction of seid Committee. Copy from the Minutes.
Alfred A. Weeks, Secretary.

C«l\>

BOSTON :
PRINTED BY FREEMAN AND B0LLE3,
DEVONSHIRE STREET.

ORATION

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New England Society,
in the City of New York.
The topics that claim our consideration, on this
Anniversary, are so obvious, and so inseparable
from the occasion and the sentiments awakened by
it, and those sentiments are so uniform in all hearts,
that no ingenious and elaborate exordium is needed
to bring your minds into an appropriate frame. The
field over which our meditations are led this day, is
not a remote point from our spontaneous and in
voluntary associations, to be reached only by long-
drawn approaches, but opens at once upon the
vision. On the 22d of December, in the year 1620, a
company of Englishmen landed on the shore of what
has since been the township of Plymouth, in the
present State of Massachusetts. This circumstance
has long been regarded, with a just and felicitous
discrimination, as the opening scene in the drama
of civilized humanity in the New World.

Voyagers had often before, we know not from
how early a period, visited the coasts of America.
Scientific philologists, and philosophical students
of manners, customs, and other memorials, have
imagined themselves to have traced, more or less
clearly, evidence of transmigrations from the older
continents to this, in the ages of a remote antiquity.
European settlements, many of which quickly dis
appeared, but, in some instances, giving rise to
permanent and populous Provinces and States, were
commenced at dates anterior to the landing of the
Pilgrims on the day we commemorate.
But the attending and resulting circumstances of
that event are so peculiar in their character, so
momentous in their bearings, and so wide-spread in
their influence, that, by general consent, the open
ing of the continent of America to the civilization
of Christendom, is everywhere getting to be con
sidered as dating from the hour when the Pilgrims
landed at Plymouth. It may safely be taken for
granted, that, whatever particular interest different
localities may feel in contemplating the origin of
their own communities, whether before or after the
22d of December, 1620, all will acquiesce and con
spire in regarding the Rock of Plymouth as the
point from which the ever-advancing and ever-ex
panding wave of Anglo-Saxon liberty and light be
gan to flow over America. Taking this compre
hensive view ofthe subject, presenting the occasion

as the best example and highest instance of the va
rious settlements by Europeans and Christians on
the American continent, we may rely upon the sym
pathy of those of our fellow-citizens of a different
colonial origin from ourselves, who may honor us
with their presence, in the sentiments and associa
tions to which we yield our own minds and hearts.
While, as the descendants of New-England men,
with filial and grateful reverence, we pay honor to
their memory, it is my purpose, so far as the privi
lege and ability are given me to determine the spirit
of the day, that the contemplation of your ancestral
glories shall convey to your hearts lessons which
may be profitably pondered by all Americans, in
whatever portion of the republic they may have their
abode, and from whatever sources they have sprung.
Before taking up the topics suggested by any
more limited view of the subject, I wish to concen
trate attention upon the event we commemorate in
the light I have suggested, as, by way of eminence,
marking the era of the contact and intercommuni
cation of the two hemispheres of our globe. Let
us pause, at the outset, and open our minds to re
ceive and appreciate the interest and grandeur of
the thought.
From the beginning of time, the great oceans
had been impassable walls, keeping the oppo
site sides of our planet in distant and complete

6
separation. A mysterious, but all-wise, Providence
held them apart. For thousands of years, the earth,
as it revolved on its axis, had presented to the sun
and the stars the vast double continent of America,
shrouded in moral and intellectual darkness. Ex
tending from pole almost to pole, it embraced, in
its geographical features, all the forms of sublimity
and beauty of scenery, and every advantage which
can flow from the arrangement of land and water,
rivers and lakes, mountains and meadows ; and in
the several departments of the mineral, vegetable
and animal kingdoms, an unrivalled richness of ma
terial and magnificence of display. Its surface, for
the most part, remained under the deep shadows
of primeval forests, and was traversed by roaming
tribes of benighted savages. It is true that, on
some parts ofthe continent, there are vestiges of a
peculiar and inexplicable form of barbaric splendor,
in vast and shapeless mounds of earth, and structures
of masonry and statuary ; but there is no indication
whatever of the existence and action, at any time
or to any extent, on any part of its entire length
and breadth, of an element of moral, social and
political progress.
The character of the aboriginal American cannot
fail to be a subject of interest in all coming times.
It exhibited many of the traits and faculties of hu
man nature in an extraordinary development of dig
nity and strength. Fortitude and manly endurance,

heroism and patriotism, will ever find their bright
est exemplars in warrior chiefs whose spheres of
glory were the wild scenes and gloomy recesses of
American forests. But the traditions that relate
their story can scarcely be made to take their place
among the records of real and authenticated events.
They pass before the mind like shadowy visions of
the imagination. We read them as we do the pages.
of an epic. The mysterious destiny of extinction,
which is taking effect upon the race, pressing it off
from the surface of the earth, seems to apply to its
history also, which is crowded out from its proper
department, exhaled as it were into ideal forms, and
transferred to the sphere of fancy and romance.
The reason of this is obvious. Their origin and
progress are buried in utter oblivion. We behold
them, as they appeared but for a moment, as in a
dream, and then vanished away. They have told
us no story of their earlier fortunes, and they have
left no traces of their existence, or influence upon
the condition of mankind. In that highest sense of
history, in which it is to be regarded as the narra
tive of the continuous progress of humanity, as the
memorial of stages of advancement, one leading on
to another, by the law of cause and effect in the
moral world, no space is occupied by the American
tribes ; and it is the same, in the comprehensive
view I am now taking of the connection of the ca
reer of the human race with the two grand divi-

8

sions of the earth, as if the foot of man had never
trodden the soil of America until the Europeans
colonized it.
But while silence and darkness thus brooded over
the western hemisphere for more than fifty centuries,
the eastern was the theatre of a series of movements
and vicissitudes, constituting the substance of an
cient history, by which Providence was enunciating
to mankind the successive primary lessons of its ed
ucation, and preparing it to enter upon the career
of moral and social advancement designed for it by
nature, and which, imperceptible in its early stages,
has become a visibly rapid progress in our day, but
must be seen in results far higher than have yet
been reached, before this earth can reflect in un-
dimmed lustre the glory of Him who created it for
the abode of man, and placed him upon it to cul
tivate and adorn its surface, develop its infinite
riches, and bring out, into the highest enjoyment
and the brightest light, all the capacities and beau
ties of its occupants and objects.
Before we bring the Old World to the period of
contact with the New, let us pass, in brief and
comprehensive enumeration, the grand events,
which rise like Alpine summits along the outline of
its history, and mark the gradual adaptation of man
kind for the new and more quickening influences
which sprung into action when America was intro-

duced within the circle of the civilization of Christ
endom. The great empires, which had first passed over
the field of vision of inspired prophets, followed
each other on the stage of historic reality. The
successive and slowly advancing preliminary steps, <
by which a revelation of divine truth sufficient to
satisfy the wants, and able to elevate and purify to
the highest degree the nature, of the soul of man,
was to be ushered in, one by one took place. The
lust of empire, calling to its aid the passions of hu
manity in ages of violence and ignorance, had swept
vast armies over the face of nations, and, under an
overruling Hand, had stirred, and impelled, and
guided the currents of power and thought. At
length, through the agency, direct and remote, of
these, and all the subsidiary events and influences
in their train, the energies of intellect had become
sufficiently exercised to give rise to systems of phi
losophy and processes of mental culture and reflec
tion, and thus to provide a foundation for the recep
tion of a spiritual theology, and the elements of a
true and absolute morality, depending upon and em
braced within it.
While such influences had been at work over the
Gentile world, how wonderful were the arrange
ments by which a suitable centre of diffusion was
provided for the heavenly illumination ! At a
period far down beyond the most distant glimmer-

10
ings of profane history, a particular family was
selected and led by the Divine Hand to a region,
situated at the threshold of the three great conti
nents, on a conspicuous spot, near which all com
munications of commerce, travel and war, from or
» to Europe, Asia and Africa, necessarily passed.
For wise and obvious purposes, the chosen family
was there kept secluded from the rest of the world
for centuries. How admirably adapted was the
territory to this purpose ! It was a fertile and
most salubrious valley, between ranges of moun
tain-barriers rising through the clouds, in many
points, to wintry elevations of temperature, com
prising, at different altitudes on its descending
slopes, every variety of climate and production,
and watered through its entire length by a river,
rising among wild mountains at one extremity, ex
panding at intervals into small inland seas, and at
the other extremity not flowing, as rivers else
where do, into an open sea — for that would have
defeated the design of the temporary seclusion of
the nation — but mysteriously vanishing beneath
the barren sands of inhospitable and untraversable
deserts. While the Divine Wisdom required the
sequestration of that people for such a length of
time from the rest of the world, and their imprison
ment within such limited boundaries, its Benevo
lence selected for their residence a region contain
ing within its narrow confines every variety of soil

11
and temperature. The Israelite, as he reclined at
sultry noon beneath the grateful shade of the palm
and the olive, on the banks of the Jordan, beheld
on either side, as in panoramic epitome, from the
luxuriance of the warmest valleys, to the far-off
mountain pinnacles scathed by the upper lightnings
and gleaming in crests of perennial snows, all the
gradations of animate and inanimate nature, as they
are distributed through the latitudes of the globe
from the torrid line to the frozen pole.
Here, while the work of preparation was going
on without, amidst the innumerable forms of poly
theism in the Gentile world, the great elemental
truth of the Unity of God was sacredly preserved
until the fulness of the times for its universal dis
semination arrived. The purposes for which the
Hebrew people had been selected and separated
were then accomplished. Temple and ritual, pro
phecy and priesthood, sacrifice and offering, were
all consummated in the life, death, and resurrection
of Him who was to be the Light of the World.
Judea was now ready to be released from her se
clusion, and at this stage of the divinely arranged
plan her people were required to go forth, and act
upon, and mix with, the rest of the nations. In
accordance with that principle, so signally de
veloped in many other conjunctures of human his
tory, the wrath of man was made to subserve the
Providence of God. The storm of war burst with

12
all its devastating and destructive horrors upon the
Holy Land. The eagles of Rome were planted
upon the ruins of its City and Temple. Not one
stone was left upon another of the walls of Jerusa
lem, and the captive people were scattered by the
conqueror among all the nations. They carried
their Scriptures, in whose prophetic visions and
foreshadowing symbols the seeds of Christianity
were wrapped up, with them into every scene of
their exile, and every path of their wanderings.
The wisdom of the Divine Being in the selection
of Judea to be the centre from which the light of
true religion was to irradiate the surrounding
world, was proved by the immediate results.
During the first age of the Church, in which Christ
ianity attained a diffusion more rapid and extensive
than it has in all subsequent centuries, it spread
over a similar extent of territory and population,
and penetrated to an equal distance, in Europe,
Asia, and Africa. In the developments of the ages
yet to come, when the routes of travel and inter
communication between the three ancient conti
nents, and between America and the East, shall be
laid through Palestine, whose scenes will thus
become familiar to all mankind, then will the Pro
vidence, which made that the theatre of the reli
gious history of the race, become justified and dis
played in all its lustre and glory.
It is unnecessary for me to remind you of the

13
prominent events and influences brought to bear
upon the condition of mankind, subsequent to the
Christian revelation — the decline and fall of the
Roman dominion, including, before it fell, the es
tablishment of Christianity as the religion of the
empire — the influx and commixture of vast tribes
of barbarians — the rise and spread of the Mahom
etan power, preserving affrighted Christendom from
the complete stupor into which superstition, igno
rance, and priestcraft, if aided by entire security,
would have lulled it — the Crusades, gathering into
mighty hosts the population of States, transferring
them by thousands and tens of thousands into new
scenes, thus awakening in their minds fresh and
stirring ideas and on their return bringing back
and scattering over benighted and barbarian Europe
the elements of oriental refinement and elegance —
the amazing impulse given to thought and knowl
edge by the invention and use of the movable type
— the opening of straight paths across the mighty
deep by the discovery of the polarity of the mag
netized needle, " the faithful pilot," as the mari
ner's compass has been felicitously personified by
the most eloquent of American writers,* offering his
services without money and without price to every
navigator, sitting serene, steadfast, and unwearied
at the helm through all storms, and without star,
or landmark, or plummet, steering over the widest
* Edward Everett — Orations, p. 255.

14
oceans with unerring accuracy and absolute assur
ance — and at last, the Reformation, breaking the
lethargy of uniformity, in which Christendom was
sleeping the sleep of death, and through the infinite
divisions and conflicts of creed and practice to
which it gave rise, disclosing and enforcing the
great vital principle of true reform and renova
tion — the rights, the claims, and the power of
every individual soul.
The combinations were now completed. Beneath
the surface and in the heart of society the ingredi
ents were mingling and working, whose final results
will be the enfranchisement and elevation of hu
manity. But in the Old World, the forms of op
pression, superstition and error had become so
intertwisted and riveted to each other and to the
radical elements of our social nature, and had
spread such a thick incrustation, as it were, over
its entire surface, that the expansive force of inter
nal elements alone could not have thrown them off
without an explosion which would have prostrated
in desolation and scattered in fragments the whole
fabric of society. It was necessary that an influ
ence, cooperating with that within, should be
brought to bear from without, and then the process
of melioration would at once be safe and sure,
the forms and monuments of error and evil would
melt gradually away, and the structures of truth,
freedom, and righteousness, rise in their places.

15
At this moment, then, we witness — beyond all
comparison — the most sublime occurrence in human
history. No one event, with the exception, of
course, of those which belong to the sphere of re
vealed religion, in all the past or future annals of
the world, can approach it. We behold the Al
mighty Hand drawing forth, as from the depths of
darkness and vacuity, the American continents,
and bringing them into electric contact and com
munication with surcharged Europe. The ideas
struggling into existence there, and struggling in
vain against the mountain-weight of ancient abuses,
prejudices and ignorance, and the banded power of
all interested in the then existing state of things,
were welcomed to a free exercise and display on
the unoccupied shores of America, and flourish
ing here into maturity, have passed back again to
aid in the regeneration of the Old World. The em
pire of darkness had, from the beginning, prevailed
over this hemisphere. The elements of the world's
redemption had been imparted to the opposite
hemisphere. In order that they might take full
effect, and renovate the entire race of man, an ac
tion and re-action were required to be established
between these two great divisions of the earth.
Europe, which in this view of the subject may be
regarded as including the entire eastern hemi
sphere, and America, came into communication;
and from that moment humanity received an impulse

16
which has visibly and steadily accelerated its pro
gress. The effects produced by the free and fearless
experiments in the department of government and
human rights, here in process, upon the feudal fix
tures and rigid conservatism of the Old World, and
in the opposite direction, in the forms of literature,
science, fashion, and emigration, although in par
ticular instances and phases dreaded and lamented
by some, are, upon the whole, most salutary and
reciprocally beneficent. It is not to be imagined that
so mighty a power as the moral influence upon each
other of continents in inter-communication, will al
ways operate gently and insensibly. The subtle elec
tricity is continually diffusing and equalizing its life-
sustaining and life-imparting energies — it ever flows
from cloud to earth, and from earth to cloud. From
time to time, however, particular combinations oc
cur, of atmosphere, wind, and heat, which give to
this ordinarily imperceptible and always salutary
process a visible and terrific form — the lightnings
flash, and the deep thunder rolls. But the storm
is of brief duration, its fury is rapidly expending,
the darkness is breaking and disappearing, the land
scape is refreshed, the air is growing purer and
more exhilarating, and the sky is brightening over
our heads.
Turning from the contemplation of the event we
commemorate in this broad and philosophical aspect,

17
let us now endeavour to bring it, in its actual de
tails, before our imagination.
The Mayflower, weather-beaten and tempest-
tossed, has reached the shores of America. The
Divine superintendence, while it has preserved her,
and the precious freight she bears, from being
swallowed up in the sea, so overruled the winds
and currents, and, as is thought by some, the mo
tives of her commander, that she made the coast
at a very different point from that designed by the
colonists, and where — although industry, temper
ance, intelligence, and hardy enterprise have gath
ered in our day as happy and prosperous a popula
tion as can be found in any quarter of the world —
the aspect and conformation of the land present as
unwelcome and desolate a spectacle as weary mari
ner ever looks upon. Reefs and shoals are strown
along in front of the shore to forbid and repel ap
proach. Above and beyond the beaches, all that
can be seen are desert banks and hills of sand.
Cheerless and dreary as it now appears, although
crowned with light-houses and interspersed with
the innumerable sails of a vast coasting trade and
foreign commerce, how dismal and disheartening the
scene must have been to the Pilgrims, as they ap
proached it amidst the storms and ice of winter !
At length, after many days and nights spent in ex
ploring Cape Cod and Barnstable Bay, in search of
a safe and convenient resting-place, they came to

18
anchor in the harbour of Plymouth. As the boat,
containing the first division of the passengers, put
off from the side of the vessel, a scene was pre
sented inexhaustibly rich in all of visible and moral
interest that can be needed to kindle the imagina
tion, fill the meditative mind, or awaken in the
heart tender and admiring affections. The painter
and the poet have already drawn inspiration from it,
and it will forever attract and sustain the highest
powers of their genius.
" Wild was the day ; the wintry sea
Moaned sadly on New-England's strand,
When first the thoughtful and the free,
Our fathers, trod the desert land." *
The waters, darkened by the clouds which, in
that season, so prevailingly overhang them, — the
rocky, ice-clad coast — the islands and the main, a
frozen, shelterless solitude — sky, sea, shore, were
all invested with their most forbidding aspect. The
shivering exiles slowly approach in their deeply-
laden long-boat. They search for a safe and con
venient landing-place, and make their way towards
a rock with a low and level surface, imbedded in
the gravelly beach, and extending from the bank
into the surf. As they leaped upon that rock,
desolate as was the scene around them, and dark
as was their prospect, a burden was lifted, at once,
* William Cullen Bryant.

19
from their long-oppressed bosoms. As the solid
continent was felt beneath their feet, their devout
hearts ascended in unutterable gratitude to that
Divine mercy which had borne them over the
boisterous deep, and guided them in that perilous
season through the dangers of a coast which mari
ners approach even now, at all seasons, with pe
culiar anxiety, and which had opened to them an
asylum where their views of Christian freedom and
social progress might be indulged without let or
hindrance from man. But great as was their joy,
fervent as their gratitude, and lofty and far-reaching
as their faith in the Providence of whose great de
signs they were the instruments, little could they
foresee or imagine the lustre of renown which
would reflect back through all subsequent ages
upon that hour of their experience.
As time discloses the grand and beneficent re
sults to humanity, in all climes and regions, of the
colonization of America by enlightened, free, and
Christian men — as the practicability of popular
sovereignty and social*institutions, based upon the
principle of unlimited progress and reform, be
comes more and more signally displayed in America,
and more and more appreciated in the Old World,
the halo of glory encircling the Pilgrim Fathers will
brighten in the retrospect of grateful generations.
Already is a homage rendered, and a triumph
awarded them, greater than ever monarch or war-

20
rior won. On each recurring anniversary their de
scendants, dwelling in the ancient Commonwealth
including within its limits the Rock of Plymouth,
assemble in joyful and reverent crowds around it ;
and in the remotest quarters of their dispersion
throughout the vast republic, sprung from founda
tions which they laid, pressing on, as they do,
among the very foremost at the extreme verge of
our ever-expanding empire, the posterity of the
Pilgrims look back with filial love and increasing
interest to the day and the scene we are commemo
rating. The 22d of December is becoming honored
and consecrated by public observances at the prin
cipal centres of population in all parts of the Union ;
and it needs no greater insight of the future than
all eyes possess, to behold, before many years have
passed, the sons of New-England gathering, as you
are gathered here, on the return of this day, in
cities whose foundations remain to be laid, and in
capitals of States whose stars are yet to rise into
the crowded galaxy of our flag, beyond the Rocky
Mountains, and on the shoreif of that western ocean,
which, as the very charters of the earliest Colonies
witness, was the only limit the first founders of our
country would recognize or brook to their visions
of liberty and happiness for the whole continent.
" Where the sun, with softer fires,
Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep,
The children of the Pilgrim sires
This hallowed day, like us, shall keep."

21
Perhaps it may be expected by some that I
should recount, on this occasion, the fearful suffer
ings, the wasting privations, the heroic endurance,
and the brave deeds of the earliest Pilgrim colo
nists ; the difficulties they met and surmounted,
and the persevering fidelity with which they held
on, while so many ofthe first adventurers to Ame
rica retreated from the enterprise or sunk beneath
its trials and exposures, to the noble purpose of
securing to their descendants a permanent home of
liberty and religion on this continent. The theme
is both fruitful and attractive. Whoever seeks for
topics of the noblest dignity or the tenderest in
terest, will find them in the chronicles that have
been fortunately preserved of the first settlers of
the shores of Massachusetts Bay.* And, indeed,
all along the track of the history of the Colonies,
the brightest illustrations of personal bravery, for
titude, and magnanimity, and of political integrity
and wisdom, are thickly scattered. But others
have treated these subjects more fully than my
limits permit, and with such success as leaves no
occasion for a repetition. Venturing to assume,
therefore, that your own recollections of what you
* Two very valuable and interesting volumes have recently been
published, comprising the most important and authoritative documents,
under the editorial care of Rev. Alexander Young, D. D., of Bos
ton, and enriched, in the notes, with the stores of his learning. The
one is entitled, " Chronictes of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of
Plymouth ; " the other " Chronicles ofthe First Planters ofthe Colony
of Massachusetts Bay."

22
have heard and read will supply enough to bring
your minds and hearts into sympathy with the oc
casion, I propose to' draw from the contemplation
of the character and history of the first and the
early subsequent generations of New-England, some
general considerations, which may serve to enable
us and our successors better to fulfil the great pur
poses to which America was consecrated by the
virtue, the faith, and the prayers of the Pilgrim
Fathers. It would be impossible, in a single discourse, to
do full justice to the great and noble denomination
of men to which the founders of New-England be
longed. The Puritans are acknowledged by their
enemies to have breathed the spirit of liberty into
the British constitution ; and the freedom and pros
perity of America are the record of their glory. So
great is the preponderance of their services to man
kind over all the faults that can be charged upon
them, that those who most affectionately and proudly
cherish their memory fear not, but rejoice, to have
their merits brought into discussion. Their errors
provide the shade needful to give full effect to the
light that beams from their virtues. Denying my
self, on the present occasion, the gratification of
expatiating, in detail, upon the character and career
of the Puritans, I would only observe that the mon
uments of their wisdom, heroism, and greatness

23
tower far, far above all other objects of political
interest, in the perspective of the past, and in the *
spectacle of the present. Those monuments are
the Commonwealth of England, with the civil wars
that led to it, and the Colonization of New-England,
terminating in the establishment of the Republic of
the United States of America. What description,
or body of men, since the world began, has accom
plished, by mere human means, a work to be com
pared with this ?
The history ofthe Commonwealth of England has
never yet been adequately written. When justice
shall have been done to the illustrious theme, it will
be acknowledged that in no movement of mankind
has the mind of a people exhibited a grander devel
opment, or the cause of human rights and social re
form been more faithfully, intelligently and bravely
vindicated. In the earnest struggles and lofty as
pirations of the champions of liberty and humanity,
the profoundest depths of political science were then
fathomed and explored ; and if it had been possible
in the Old World, at that period, for a government
founded upon the principles of freedom, and ex
pressing the will and sovereignty of the people, to
have succeeded, the English Commonwealth would
have been permanently established, and the great
spirits who administered it, in its different stages,
have enjoyed, from the first, what will be rendered
to them at last — the admiration of the world.

24
As it respects the monument reared by the Puri
tans on this side of the ocean, I would only say,
that the most condensed and summary review of the
free institutions they planted, and which, protected
by their courage and constancy, and deriving the
principle of inextinguishable vitality from their spi
rit, are now flourishing, maturely developed, in
republican States gathering under the American
Union, would occupy a wider space than can be al
lowed to an anniversary address. History, in its
most elaborate and classical form, requires its am
plest folds to embrace them ; and in this, the most
appropriate office of history, foreign and domestic
genius are emulating each other.
Descending from these higher and more compre
hensive views, I desire to call your attention to one
or two particular points in the example of the Pil
grim Fathers, which may be profitably pondered at
the present time.
One of the chief elements of their character, and
sources of their strength and success, was their ap
preciation of the greatness and importance of the
sphere which every man occupies, in his individual
capacity, as distinguished from his relations to the
State, or to society in any of its forms. The energy
and influence of each private person, the contribu
tion each individual may make to the general wel
fare, the might with which a free arm, working the

25
will of a free spirit, is clothed, without aid from
government, and in spite of the frowns of govern
ment, in fields of action which government cannot
close, — this element of character was developed
by the early colonists with more power than by any
other community.
The Christian revelation, by bringing all mankind
into an equal and immediate relation to the Univer
sal Father, had announced the dignity of each sep
arate soul. But the political institutions and social
forms of mankind, in all nations, had been wrought
by ambition, love of power, superstition and igno
rance, into a system in which individual rights were
entirely .overlooked or deliberately sacrificed. The
State, as such, or, as it really was practically, the
ruling power, was everything ; the People were
nothing. Instead of the king being for the welfare
ofthe country, the country and all who belonged
to it were for the welfare of the king. Instead of
the priest being for the good of the church, the
church was for the good of the priest. The ten
dency of every institution and mode of social ac
tion, political, ecclesiastical and military, was to
merge the bulk of mankind into masses, and limit
free individual action to monarchs, popes, and gen
erals. The few, who were the heads of the State
or Church, exercised arbitrary and unlimited sway;
the vast residue of mankind walked the weary round
of prescribed and servile labors, whose fruits they

26
were not permitted freely to enjoy, and to which
they were forbidden to aspire. Their wills were
enslaved, and their actions controlled by the influ
ence of a despotism, operating either through the
arbitrary edicts of irresponsible rulers, or fixed
usages, with which long-continued and hopeless
subjection had crushed their spirits into an implicit
acquiescence. The Reformation had, to some ex
tent, startled the masses to a perception of their
rights as individuals ; but the fatal schemes to
which its leaders lent their ears, pursuing the pest
ilent phantom of uniformity, which, from the begin
ning to this hour, has defrauded the soul of man of
its birthright and kept the fires of persecution burn
ing, again sealed the prospects of individual free
dom of spirit. The great discoveries of that period,
and the stirring influences that followed in their
train, held out, for a season, encouragement that
essential reforms might be effected ; but the result
of the operation of new ideas in the civil wars of
England, and of the struggles for the rights of man
kind, as individuals, in other parts of the Old World,
even up to the present time, afford conclusive evi
dence that, if a fairer field had not been opened in
America, the cause of the people, as such, could
never have made effectual efforts to throw off the
burdens fastened upon transatlantic Christendom by
ages of feudal bondage.
But from the moment the European colonist

27
planted his foot on this continent, the energies, the
rights, and the dignity of man, as an individual,
were secured for ever. The necessities of his sit
uation rendered this result inevitable. The contri
butions of every hand were needed to perform the
labors indispensable to the existence of the com
pany, and of every head to devise and conduct the
means of encountering the difficulties with which
they were surrounded. The unlimited extent of
the territory, and the limited productiveness of the
soil, led them to scatter over the face of the coun
try, at some distance from each other in the same
community, and to select for their townships the
most fertile and otherwise eligible districts, how
ever remote from previous settlements. Every
head of a family had obtained by religious illumina
tion and faith, before he left his home in the old
country, strong and clear conceptions of the sanc
tity and value of his own spirit, and of his dignity
as the disciple of Him, who, in becoming the only
master of the soul, had redeemed it from all sub
jection to human authority. The reception of the
grace of God into his heart, of which his speculative
theology and practical piety both gave evidence,
imparted to him an inward sense of equality with
the highest potentates of earth. He, who looked
forward with calm assurance to a heavenly crown
of glory and immortality, would have felt no abase
ment in the presence of kings. After his establish-

28
ment in the wilds of America, he surveyed the
broad acres which were all his own, and his exclu
sively, unencumbered by feudal or baronial vassal
age, subject to no tribute, taxation, or service. As
far as his eye could reach into the depths of the
forest, to the summits of the hills, along the courses
of the streams, and over the bosom of the ocean,
there was none to dispute his possession, or inter
fere with his movements, or in any way restrain or
affect the exercises of his will or his faculties. Such
a person, thus situated, could not but have con
stantly exulted in his freedom, and have felt with
every pulsation his power and his dignity as a man.
The first settlers of America, by the very act of
their emigration, proclaimed their sense of the su
preme importance of man as an individual — of his
superiority in that aspect to all the properties he
possesses as a member of political society, as the
subject and citizen of a State. They had long felt
government only in its pressure, and had cherished
the idea of a removal beyond its reach, whatever
amount of suffering that removal in other respects
might occasion, as the greatest of blessings. " Open
to us " they exclaimed, " a refuge from civil and
ecclesiastical oppression, and we will fly to it, no
matter how fiercely the wide ocean opens its mouth
to swallow us, or with what terrors the wintry wil
derness may threaten us." And when, on arranging
their condition in America, they found it necessary

29
to construct a government for the preservation of
order and justice, and for the regular administration
of the ordinances and public services of religion,
they carefully sought to reserve to themselves as
much power as possible, depositing as large a pro
portion as they could of what it was absolutely ne
cessary to delegate, within a sphere so limited as
to be under their own eyes, in the parish and the
town, and transacting in primary assemblies, as far
as practicable, their own public business.
It is true, that, misled by the spirit still disas
trously prevalent, they soon began to employ the
enginery of State and Church to work out Utopian
schemes of reform — by legislation and discipline
encroaching upon private rights, and invading per
sonal freedom at every point where the slightest
evil was supposed to lurk. But these attempts to
subdue the individual character into conformity
with standards set up by authority, were ultimately
found to be vain and fruitless. The circumstances
of their situation, already sketched, the ideas at the
foundation of their religious faith and experience,
and the systems of education they established, pre
vailed over all counteracting influences, and gave a
development and force to individual intellect and
will — to every original peculiarity and tendency
of genius — of which the results are seen in the
wonderful progress and present prosperity of the
States they founded, and in the enterprise, energy,

30
ingenuity, and success of their descendants wher
ever scattered. The power of character, growing
out of this free development of the turn of mind of
every individual, and the feeling connected with it,
that each one may and must choose his own course,
open his own path, and determine his own condi
tion, has made New-England impregnable, and
covered her comparatively stubborn and sterile soil
with abundance. This is the secret magic by
which her sons command success and wealth wher
ever they wander. The States included under
that name have contracted limits, and are subject
to many disadvantages ; on the expanding map, or
in the multiplying census of the Union, they may
appear feeble and insignificant. But their prospe
rity is sure, and will be perpetual. No power of
party, no sectional prejudice, no error of policy,
no injustice of government, can permanently or es
sentially check the career of progress in wealth
and civilization, along which the energies of indi
vidual ingenuity, enterprise, intelligence, and in
dustry have from the beginning impelled them.
When this force of individual character, this con
sciousness of inherent power, is once brought into
exercise, and becomes habitual, entering into the
frame of the mind, then is man clothed with his
true strength. Obstacle, peril and suffering, serve
only to reveal in the heart sources of energy, hid
den and undreamed-of before. The great master of

31
the drama and of human nature expounds the prin
ciple.  " The fire i' the flint

Shows not, till it be struck."
One of the most accomplished of the Latin clas
sics declares the effect which trial and difficulty
exert in bringing out this mighty force of character,
" Adversa magnos probant." All history and obser
vation demonstrate it. The mind, thrown upon its
own resources, and summoning them resolutely to
the effort, rises with every emergency, and con
fronts and surmounts all that can be brought
against it. Such was the discipline of the early
New-England character. Cold, hunger, disease,
desolation, grappled with it in vain, at the begin
ning. Neither the tomahawk nor war-whoop of
the Indian, nor all the terrors which hung over
their defenceless hamlets, could subdue hearts
armed with this inward strength. It grew with
constant and healthful vigor through all vicissi
tudes. The neglect of the mother-country could
not cast a shade dark or damp enough to wither
it — the most violent storms of its anger could not
break it. Charters were torn away by the ruthless
hand of arbitrary power, and every resource of des
potism was exhausted to curb and crush it. But
all was in vain. The people, severally and univer
sally, had realized their rights and their power,

32
as men ; and a determination to advance their own
condition, to retain and enlarge their privileges,
thus pervading the entire population, made them
superior to all local disadvantages, and triumphant
over all opposition. It placed their prosperity be
yond the reach of power or fortune. So long as
the arm of the settler could wield an axe, or his
hand cast a vote ; so long as the district school-
house opened its doors to impart the knowledge
and the mental culture, enabling him to under
stand and maintain his rights, or the village church
lifted its spire into the heavens to remind him of
that immortal element, which, glowing in his
breast, placed him on a level with the highest of
his fellow-men, it would be impossible to enslave
him, or prevent his progress.
It is the great advantage of free institutions, when
aided by suitable provisions of education, that they
give opportunity for natural diversities to display
themselves. No permanent castes hang their dead
weights on the community. Each individual, as he
enters the scenes of active life, instead of being
compelled to walk in the same path with his ances
tors, chooses his own occupation, marks out a new
course for himself, and by a special combination
adapts the voluntary conditions of his existence to
his own peculiar tastes and faculties. This impul
sive projection of each individual, according to his
peculiar nature, into the engagements and struggles

33
of business and of life in all its forms ; this self-
originating and self-stimulating earnestness of pur
suit, taking effect upon a whole people, is well
worthy of the study of the philosophic mind. We
sometimes hear it spoken of with a sneer. The
determined assurance, and ingenious contrivances,
and indefatigable perseverance by which: New-Eng-
landers push their fortunes in the world, in partic
ular instances may justly excite ridicule, contempt,
or aversion ; but regarded in a comprehensive and
general aspect, as a pervading and distinctive ele
ment of national character, such a spirit of enter
prise rises into greatness, and becomes truly impos
ing. It secures perpetual and boundless progress.
It diffuses prosperity. It evokes all latent power.
It silently, and by a most benignant process, wins
for a nation nobler victories and a greater dominion
than the mightiest armies could have achieved.
It was not a mere personal boast, but the authen
tic and genuine utterance of this unconquerable and
all-conquering spirit of individual enterprise and
energy, when, a short time since, a distinguished
merchant, himself a most signal illustration, in his
history and fortune, of the power of such a spirit to
command wealth and influence, in an argument on
the protective policy of the country, speaking in the
name of the industry of New-England, said to the
national legislators, "Alter, reduce, destroy the
tariff; pass whatever laws you may, adopt whatever

34
policy you choose, we will make money." Surely,
the history of the action of government upon the la
bor, business, and capital of New-England, through
the entire period of its dependence on the mother-
country, and I may say, without involving myself in
party passions, up to this very hour, bears one con
tinued triumphant testimony to the superiority of
energy and intelligence, pervading a people, to all
the powers that government can possibly exert.
When their industry, bravery, hardihood, and skill,
in all the multiplied forms and channels of foreign
commerce, were reaping harvests of wealth on ev
ery sea, you closed their ports by embargo and war.
They at once transferred the scene of their achieve
ments. Forests vanished before them ; new re
gions poured forth riches from their fresh and un
exhausted bosoms ; and everywhere the sounds of
the water-wheel, the trip-hammer, and the steam-
engine were heard mingling with the voices of na
ture and of men. If, after having compelled them
to give this direction to their capital and enterprise,
reversing the policy of your laws, you attempt to
crush the manufacturing and mechanical interests
of such a people, their ingenuity and energy, con
stituting an inexhaustible resource, because one to
which all severally contribute spontaneously, per
petually, and to the whole extent of their power,
will probably be found able to elude the blow, and
make it subserve the very objects it was designed

35
to injure. But if driven from their mills and work
shops, they will again spread the wings of com
merce, and, despite of your utmost efforts, place
themselves ahead of all competitors on the tide of
prosperity. This principle of individual intelligence, ingenu
ity, and resolution, pervading the people of New-
England, is covering the land with its monuments
and trophies. In every form in which skill can
combine with labor, in mechanism, in the infinite
applications of science and processes of art, in pa
tient researches into nature, and in all departments
of mental activity ; in solitary adventure, or in as
sociated companies, religious, moral, political, or
financial — directing the resources of multitudes
with the accuracy and efficiency of a single intelli
gence and will — it is working incalculable effects.
It turns barrenness into fertility, straightens the
winding and crooked paths, smooths down every
rugged obstacle, accelerates speed, reduces cost,
multiplies business, creates wealth, draws useless
rivers from their ancient beds into navigable and
secure artificial channels, awakens the hum of in
ventive, animated, and well-rewarded industry along
the banks of every descending stream, opens with
its touch the bosom of the earth to give forth its
mineral treasures, converts the ice of our northern
lakes into a most welcome article of world-wide
commerce, and sinking its quarries into the bare

36
and desolate mountains, manipulates the shapeless
granite into forms of architectural grace and beauty,
and spreads them in classic colonnades and lofty
structures along the streets of distant cities.
Sons of New England ! your ancestors relied
upon the power of their own arms, upon their own
ingenuity, skill, and personal industry and enter
prise. They never looked for the chief blessings
of life to the government. They did not expect
that freedom, prosperity or happiness were to be
secured to their posterity by legislation, or any
form of political administration ; but they planted
the seed which was to bear the precious fruits, in
the awakened, enlightened, and invigorated mental
energies of their descendants. For this they pro
vided their system of universal education ; and if
you would be worthy of your ancestry, you must
do likewise. Look not to legislation, or to official
patronage, or to any public resources or aids, to
make yourselves or your children prosperous, pow
erful and happy. But trust to your and their ener
gy of character and enlightened minds, and perse
vering enterprise and industry. Cherish these
traits, and they will work out in the future the
same results as in the past. The earth will every
where blossom beneath you. You will be sure of
exerting your rightful influence in every commu
nity. You will be placed beyond the reach of in
justice and oppression. Rash and weak counsels

37
may involve the foreign relations of the confede
racy ; short-sighted or perverse legislation may do
its worst to embarrass your interests ; but if you
resolutely apply your own resources of industry,
skill, and enterprise to circumstances as they rise,
you will be able to turn them to your advantage,
and the great essential of democratic sovereignty
will be guaranteed to you, the pursuit and the at
tainment of individual happiness and prosperity.
Another feature in the character of the Pilgrim
Fathers, to which I wish particularly to turn your
attention, is their trust in an overruling and co
operating Providence. In their records, journals,
and other writings, no sentiment has greater pro
minence than this. It was an abiding and a prac
tical principle. It imparted habitual contentment,
gratitude, courage, patience, and assurance of ulti
mate success. In the greater part of their number,
it was not a mere speculative faith, but a personal
experience. While the mind, in the present state of being, is
enclosed in these material bodies, with no capacity
to attain to communicable knowledge beyond the
reach of the perceptions of sense and the deduc
tions to be derived from them, one person will
never be able to pronounce absolutely upon the
manner or the degree to which the soul of another
person is cognizant of God. We know, or, by a

38
proper use of our faculties of consciousness and
self-inspection, can know, how clearly and how
high our own souls have risen into the presence
and communion of God. The observation of life, if
not the happy experience of our own spirits, gives
evidence that virtue, in the highest or indeed
the only true sense, as founded upon an habitual
and spontaneous recognition of duty to God, brings
the heart of man into an immediate relation to the
Divine Being, imparts to it of the very fulness of
the Deity, and lifts it into a heavenly frame. The
exaltation of character produced by such virtue is
as truly as beautifully described by the poet, whose
own genius was translated, by the contemplation of
God, into the divinest nature : —
" Love Virtue ; she alone is free :
She can teach you how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime ;
Or if virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her."
This elevation of the habitual promptings of the
ordinary actions and familiar duties of daily life
into the sphere of piety and faith, into a constant,
living, trusting connection with God — the form of
virtue which Milton describes — must be allowed,
even by those who sympathize the least with them,
to have marked, to an eminent degree, the charac
ter of the Pilgrim Fathers. If ever men gave pre
sumptive evidence of habitual communion with the

39
Most High, and reference to him in action and in
conversation, they did.
" In those days," said one of their number,
looking back, after the lapse of nearly half a cen
tury, to the time when, in his youth, he participated
in the privations and perils of the first settlement
of the country, "In those days God did cause his
people to trust in Him, and to be contented with
mean things." And after alluding to the more
comfortable and secure condition of the generation
that had risen around him, and mentioning several
particulars in which their situation was much " bet
ter," he asked, " have you better hearts than your
forefathers had 1 "*
That which gave the forefathers " better hearts,"
was, as he stated- it, " Trust in God." They re
joiced in the shelter of an overruling Providence,
and, in the meanness and sufferings of their state,
they looked forward with glad exultation and habit
ual exhilaration of soul, and with as absolute a vision
as ever illuminated inspired prophet, to glorious
results, one day to be evolved, for the reformation
of Christendom and the advancement of mankind,
from the work whose small beginnings they had
been selected to conduct.
I need not enumerate the occasions in their his
tory, or the features of their usages and institu-
* Captain Roger Clap's Memoirs, in Young's Chronicles of Massa
chusetts, p. 353.

40
tions, which strikingly display this sentiment. I
am not affirming more than all acquainted with the
annals of the American Colonies will promptly cor
roborate, when I state that, without its influence
pervading their counsels, and clothing their arms
with its invincible strength, not one of the great
struggles for liberty, of which the Revolution was
the closing act, would have been successful, or at
tempted. At several periods the Colonies persevered in as
serting their rights and confronting arbitrary power,
when they were utterly destitute of all human
means of defence or resistance. In such cases
they relied upon the interposition of Providence,
with the same security with which a general, when
the tide of battle fluctuates, reposes on his reserved
legions. They did not feel authorized, because
they were temporarily overthrown, to compromise
with the enemies of their liberty, or by any capitu
lation surrender the cause. They had an assurance
that Providence was on their side, and they felt
that it would be treachery to their Almighty ally
for them to strike the flag of freedom. This trust
in God nailed it to the mast ; and there its folds
were often seen floating in the heavens, when the
last of its brave defenders had fallen in the fight.
The history of the world presents no spectacle
more sublime than the heroic and devout confi
dence, with which, when no longer able to lift a

41
hand in the cause of liberty and right, they left the
issue to their Divine Protector.
Five years after the Charter of the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay had been brought over by Win
throp, when the entire population consisted of a
few infant villages and scattered hamlets, informa
tion was received that their enemies in the mother-
country had succeeded in obtaining the appoint
ment of a Commission, at the head of which were
the two Archbishops, with authority to regulate
the Plantations of New-England, to establish the
national church on the ruins of Independent Con
gregationalism, to rescind the Charter, to over
throw the government, and to impose arbitrary
laws. The colonists rose in resistance, few and
feeble as they were, with as much promptitude and
determination as they did when numbering millions,
more than a century and a quarter afterwards, on
the imposition of the duty upon stamps and teas.
They erected fortifications, raised a beacon-light
on the highest eminence in Boston, to give the
alarm on the approach of the Commissioners or
their agents, and forbidding* the circulation of brass
farthings, ordained that musket balls should take
their place in the currency and exchanges of the
people. But well knowing that their utmost
strength would be unavailing against the power
of the throne, they consulted the ministers, as was
their custom in cases of extremity, in reference to
6

42
their duty in the last resort, and the answer was —
" We ought to defend our lawful possessions, if we
are able ; if not, to avoid and protract." The
idea of a voluntary submission was never tolerated
for a moment. Again, a quarter of a century after
wards, the Governor of New York, writing con
cerning them, said, " The colony of Boston re
mains constant to its old maxims of a free State,
dependent on none, but God." At length the long-
deferred blow was struck. The Charter, under
whose benignant shelter the liberties of Massachu
setts had been rooted, and had grown up, and
which had once been bravely recovered by the
people rising in open and successful rebellion, was
torn for ever from their tenacious grasp. The deed
was accomplished, and there was no hope left.
They were urged by all the arguments and persua
sions that could be addressed to their helplessness,
their despair, and their worldly interests, to ac
quiesce in the proceedings of the government, and
make a virtue of necessity, to obtain, by a volun
tary surrender, as favorable terms as possible.
And what was the answer of the representatives of
the people to these solicitations 1 " The civil
liberties of New-England," say they, " are part of
the inheritance of our fathers ; and shall we give
that inheritance away 1 Is it objected that we shall
be exposed to great sufferings ? Better suffer
than sin. It is better to trust the God of our
fathers than to put confidence in princes. If we

43
suffer because we dare not comply with the will of
men against the will of God, we .suffer in a good
cause, and shall be accounted martyrs in the next
generation, and at the great day." Upon full con
sideration, and after an extended debate, breathing
such sentiments as these, the question was put to
vote, and the decision stands recorded in these
words, " The deputies consent not."
This spirit, was, if possible, still more boldly dis
played by Connecticut, a few years afterwards,
when temporarily crushed down by the same arbi
trary power. The historian of the United States
thus tells the story :
" Andros found the assembly in session, and de
manded the surrender of its Charter. The brave
Governor Treat pleaded earnestly for the cherished
patent, which had been purchased by sacrifices and
martyrdoms, and was endeared by halcyon days.
The shades of evening descended during the pro
longed discussion ; an anxious crowd of farmers had
gathered to witness the debate. The Charter lay
on the table. Of a sudden, the lights are extin
guished ; and, as they are rekindled, the Charter
had disappeared. William Wadsworth, of Hartford,
stealing noiselessly through the opening crowd,
concealed the precious parchment in the hollow of
an oak, which was older than the Colony, and is yet
standing to confirm the tale." *
* History of the Colonization of the United States, by George Ban
croft. Vol. II., p. 432.

44
This heroic procedure is recognized at once, in
its sublimity, when read in its true interpretation,
as expressive of unquestioning trust in the favor and
interposition of Heaven. The concealment and
preservation of the Charter, was, in itself, the de
claration of an assurance that, as a few short years
disclosed, an overruling Providence would restore
its original authority, and renew, with increase, the
privileges that flowed from it. When the sacred
instrument, on the recurrence of happier times, was
taken from its hiding-place, it was, as the historian
informs us, " discolored, but not effaced ; " and the
liberties it secured to that happy Commonwealth
were never again overthrown, but having been con
secrated by the noblest sacrifices and services of her
sons, in the councils and on the battle-fields of the
Union, are now imperishable and impregnable.
As I have before observed, this trust in God con
stituted, in the founders of New-England, the
strength of their hearts ; and if, at the close of the
first generation, an aged survivor apprehended that
the heart of the people had lost some of the strength
it derived from this source, there is still more rea
son to fear it now.
It is, I think, the great error and fault of our
times and country, that but little reliance is placed
on the overruling and cooperating agency of God,
and but little room allowed for it in the calculations
and projects of men. The philanthropists and re-

45
formers of the age, especially, seem to be unmind
ful of Providential agency. They, as well as the
politicians, speak and act as though the salvation
of mankind depended upon the adoption of certain
measures of theirs, and the cause of human liberty
and progress rested mainly on the success of their
schemes and efforts. Indeed, there is a too general
if not an almost universal, tendency to look to modi
fications of government, acts of legislation, and as
sociated movements, as the sole means of promoting
the welfare of communities. Men allow themselves
to identify the cause of liberty and righteousness
with their own favorite notions and projects ; and,
having come to the conclusion that they must have
their way or all will be lost, pursue their purposes
with a fanatical, overbearing, and unscrupulous
spirit. The oppressions and persecutions with which
mankind have been afflicted from the beginning
have sprung, not from malignity or cruelty, but
from the fatal persuasion that the welfare and re
demption of the race are inseparably connected with
the prevalence of some particular service, or creed,
or government. The same cause produces, as far
as circumstances allow, the same effect now. The
theologian, when he witnesses the decline of any of
his own favorite dogmas, feels that the rock, on
which the Saviour planted his Church, is crumbling
beneath it. The politician, when the elections have

46
terminated in the overthrow of his party and the ac
cess to power of his opponents, sinks into despair
of the republic. The philanthropist, when the par
ticular plan he has long been urging upon the pub
lic, as the only adequate means of meliorating the
condition and removing the wrongs of his fellow
men, is discredited and discarded, is too apt to aban
don his hopes of humanity, and lose his faith as well
as his temper. The element in which they are all
deficient, is an abiding, intelligent, steadfast assur
ance, that God, as well as they, is at work, reform
ing and blessing the world. Instead of assuming,
as they attempt to do, the entire command of events,
if they would but pause, from time to time, and trace
the steps ofthe All -wise and Omnipotent Disposer,
and await with serene and cheerful confidence the
movements of the Divine Agency, a path of most
efficient and benignant action would be opened to
them, and their efforts be crowned with sure and
permanent success.
The Providence of God over the moral world, on
which our fathers rested their chief hope, and the
belief of which was to them an inexhaustible foun
tain of strength, courage and patience, is more sig
nally displayed to us than it was to them. The
intermediate experience of the nations, and the in
creased illuminations of science, have disclosed the
laws which control the welfare of associated men,
as well as of individuals, with a clearness and cer-

47
tainty not vouchsafed to former ages. In those con
stant and steadfast laws, rather than in any extra
ordinary phenomena, we recognize the Providence
of God. In them we behold His hand working the
issues of his love.
Such is our speculative faith. Allow me to pre
sent an illustration of the manner in which it ought
to be practically applied.
Labor, in its multiplex and infinite forms, ope
rating with the instruments and on the condition of
matter or of mind, is the great creative principle of
private and public wealth, prosperity and refine
ment. When it acts under the guidance of skill and
intelligence — when it obeys the promptings of a
free spirit — when the arm of the laborer is invig
orated by a personal interest in the results of his
labor, it may with truth be said that it conquers all
things. It is clothed with strength which never
wearies, and to which nothing is impossible. Na
ture and life become its willing and rejoicing tribu
taries. The earth blossoms in its brightest beauty,
and teems with its most abundant bounties wherever
labor is intelligent and free.
But where the laborer is not a freeman, nor en
lightened by education, nor personally interested in
the products of his toil, a blight and a barrenness,
poverty and want, are sure to spread over the land,
no matter how great its physical resources, either
in the muscular strength and endurance of its peo
ple, or in the original fertility of its soil.

48
This indissoluble connection of the highest profit
ableness with the freedom and intelligence of labor,
is a law of God's moral government ; or it is, to
speak more accurately, one of the ordinary and
established methods in which the Divine Provi
dence visibly controls the progress and condition of
humanity. The entire surface and whole history of the
world display the perpetual and irresistible opera
tion of this law. It solves all the problems which
the fortunes and fates of nations present. Take the
case, for instance, of Ireland. A spot more lovely
or more favored by nature is not to be found on the
face of the globe ; — its climate healthful and in
spiring — its scenery most beautiful and variegated
— its soil fertile in every variety of essential pro
duce — its inhabitants brave, hardy, industrious,
and capable of continued toil to a degree never sur
passed, and partaking, as national and almost uni
versal characteristics, ofthe very soul of humor, of
inexhaustible cheerfulness, of the warmest affec
tions, and of the brightest intellect. But almost
from its first appearance on the field of history, it
has arrested the anxious and compassionate atten
tion of benevolent hearts to the convulsions and
sufferings of its population. At this very moment,
the piteous and dying outcries of famine, mingled
with the appalling shouts and execrations of mobs
of desperate men, come to us with every communi-

49
cation from the other side of the Atlantic. I need
not recount the efforts and struggles which have, to
this hour, been made to redeem that island from
wretchedness. Eloquence has lavished its richest
and sublimest resources of tender persuasion and
animating encouragement and terrific denunciation.
Patriotism, in all its forms, has offered itself up.
The wisdom of legislators and ministers of state
has been exercised in vain. Popular excitement in
vast assemblages, wide-spread associations, and uni
versal agitation, have been brought to bear. But
the evil has not been overcome, or even reduced.
The remedy is to be found in the reverent applica
tion of that law of Providence to which I am now
adverting. As, when the chemist brings two sub
stances into contact, the mysterious energies of
occult nature instantly evolve striking results — so
let those, in whose hands are the destinies of Ire
land, recognizing the Divine Law, by which pros
perity is made to spring from enlightened, free, and
interested industry, supply the conditions, leaving
God to work out the result. Establish the district
school, and allow the laborer to acquire a personal
and permanent interest in the soil he tills. Do
this, and you do all that man need or can do. God
will do the rest. He will spread peace and plenty
over its surface, and the Green Isle of the Ocean
will bloom in beauty, and reflect back from its land-
7

50
scape as bright a radiance as has ever glowed from
the genius of its orators and poets.
The subject of labor, particularly as exhibited
in the servile population of a portion of our own
country, is attracting absorbing attention at the
present time. I am aware of the prejudices that
are prone to arise against any one who ventures to
discuss it in an address to a mixed assembly ; but
as I am confident that the public good requires that
it should be presented to the consideration of the
people generally in the light reflected upon it by
the law of Providence now under our contemplation,
I feel constrained not to shrink from the opportu
nity and the duty of subjecting it to that light.
For many years we have seen a portion of our
immediate fellow-citizens arraying themselves into
associations, and resorting to the machinery and
expedients of political parties, for the purpose of
bringing the legislative action of the country to bear
against this species of labor, and compel its aboli
tion by legal enactments and alterations in the let
ter of the constitution. On the other hand, we see
those who imagine themselves interested in its
continuance, losing the propriety of their judgment
under the irritation into which they have permitted
themselves to be kindled, banding together for its
preservation, wielding, with a temper such as af
frighted despotism elsewhere manifests towards
those who threaten its overthrow, the weapons of

51
legal and illegal violence against all who question
its utility or righteousness, rendering the very dis
cussion of it penal and perilous to the life, strug
gling to spread it over new members of the Con
federacy, and actually plunging the Union into
bloody and destructive war, to conquer from a
neighbouring nation boundless regions of territory
for the purpose of extending this form of labor.
Keeping my eye fixed upon the operations of Provi
dence, I partake not in the apprehensions of one
of these descriptions of persons, and look upon the
efforts of the other with an assured conviction of
their impotence. On the one side I see men striv
ing with their puny arms and frail passions to
accomplish that which God, in his omnipotence, is
accomplishing by processes which neither need, nor
are aided by, their noisy outcries and convulsive
agitations ; and on the other side I behold politi
cians and rulers contending against the laws of the
Most High, and striving, with efforts as vain and
absurd as would be human combinations to delay
the progress of the seasons, to extend and perpet
uate over this fair and glorious continent an insti
tution into whose very vitals He has inserted the
ineradicable elements of decay and dissolution.
If any one demands evidence to justify this view
of the subject, let him float down rivers that divide
regions where, on the one hand, labor is free, and,
on the other, paralyzed by bondage ; on one shore

52
achieving its triumphs, under the stimulus of per
sonal interest, with the strength that resides in a
freeman's arm, and with the lights of skill and in
telligence ; and on the other, dragging its own
weight after it, moving with reluctant steps, and
requiring constant superintendence, guidance, and
compulsion. On one bank, multiplying millions
are rearing, at frequent intervals, queen-like cities,
and by spontaneous and gladsome toils and enlight
ened ingenuity and perseverance, imparting to the
yielding and grateful soil renewed supplies of rich
ness and fertility. On the other, waste, and neg
lect, and exhaustion, are spreading their mildew
influence. Such a river, with the contrasted scenes
on its opposite landscapes, becomes vocal with the
declaration that the very earth itself loves and
blesses freedom, and crowns with honor and pros
perity the intelligent labor which owns it.
An inspection of the map of the United States
displays the unrivalled natural advantages of Vir
ginia. The ocean embraces it in wide bays and
noble rivers. The air of heaven flows over it in
most balmy and salubrious breezes. Alluvial mea
dows, swelling uplands, green and lovely intervals,
romantic and towering mountains, diversify its sur
face, which extends beyond the summit ridge of the
Atlantic States, and admits it to a participation of
the benefits of the valley of the great West, whose
rivers fertilize its interior boundary. In extent of

53
territory, in natural productiveness, in the intel
lectual energies of its freeholders, and in its ances
tral treasures of wisdom and patriotism, the Old
Dominion has no superior in this Confederacy.
Under the census of 1820, the ratio of representa
tion in Congress was fixed at 40,000, population
being computed according to the provisions of the
Constitution, and Virginia was entitled to twenty-
two members. By the same apportionment, the
State of New York was entitled to thirty-four
members. Under the census of 1840, the ratio of
representation was fixed at 70,680. New York
retains the same number as under the census of
1820, namely, thirty-four, while Virginia has gone
down to fifteen ! a loss of nearly one-third of her
political power in twenty years ! How long will it
be before her patriotic and enlightened statesmen
will return to their senses on this subject, and fol
lowing the counsels of Jefferson, bravely meet the
question on its merits, and revive the wasting ener
gies of their people and their soil 1
It is now twenty-five years since the American
Confederacy was convulsed to its centre, and the
government threatened with dissolution, on the ad
mission of the territory of Missouri to the Union.
The party in Congress, resolved upon allowing the
institution of slavery to exist in that State, finally
prevailed. Looking at the progress and condition
of Ohio, and the other States which have grown up

54
under the celebrated Ordinance of 1787, and con
sidering the natural resources and advantages of
Missouri, it can scarcely be doubted that if it had
been consecrated to free labor, it would, before
this, have overflowed in prosperity, and other
States have been seen advancing into the circle of
the Union beyond its remotest borders. Now
what are the facts ? In his recent annual message,
the Governor of that State, in all the deliberate-
ness and solemnity of an official announcement, de
clares, " With our rich soil and genial climate, we
are not a prosperous and thriving people ; '; and
plainly, with faithful boldness, accounts for the
failure. " We depend," says he, " on physical
labor, and reject the superior advantages of mental
labor. We depend on brute force, and reject the
superior advantages of skill and science."
With such demonstrations, and they might easily
be indefinitely multiplied, will it be possible for
our countrymen, in any section of the Union, much
longer to keep themselves blind to the law of Pro
vidence, thus announcing itself, like the handwriting
of God on the walls of Belshazzar's palace, in let
ters of light and of fire ?
But, however it may be with others, may the
sons of New-England ever behold and confide in it.
Your fathers felt an assurance, founded, in them,
upon faith alone, that God was with them, and that
he would, at last, give a glorious fulfilment to the

55
hopes they had cherished, of freedom, happiness,
and righteousness, for their descendants, for their
country, and for mankind. What they beheld in
faith, we behold in vision. We see prosperity,
wealth, progress, and happiness, such as the world
never witnessed, and philosophers have scarce
dreamed of before, following in the steps of free
dom, intelligence and industry. Let us recognize
the law of Providence, and the hand of God ; and
let us never allow a doubt or a fear to come over
our hearts in reference to the cause of liberty and
humanity. I would earnestly press these considerations
upon those of our fellow-citizens who are endea
vouring to impart to the whole body of the people
the panic to which they have yielded up their own
minds, on the subject of slavery. They tell us that
its roots are sinking deeper, and its baleful shadow
falling broader over the continent. They point to
the new States that have brought their contributions
to sustain it to the houses of Congress and the elec
toral colleges of the Union. They are filled with
terror at the acquisition, by invasion and conquest,
of boundless territories, to be occupied by the insti
tution, and to give an interminable preponderance
to the political power of which it is the basis and
the bond.
I would urge and implore all such persons, to
turn from the contemplation of the miserable

56
machinations of sectional politicians, who in their
folly and blindness are endeavouring to employ the
power of our government to accomplish this pur
pose, and to lift their eyes to that august Provi
dence, which is steadily and surely baffling their
plans, and by its immutable laws securing to free
and enlightened labor the dominion of the earth.
Instead of being terrified and irritated at what men,
and parties, and earthly rulers are vainly attempt
ing, and spreading the unbelieving and malign in
fection among our fellow-citizens, let us, when the
Almighty is so visibly stretching forth his own arm,
" leave Him," as one ofthe greatest of the Puritans
said " alone to govern the world ; " not interpos
ing our agency unless in methods subsidiary to
His. Let us stand back, as it were, in reverent
silence, and rejoicing assurance, and witness the
movements of our God, as he goes forth in those
sublime elemental laws of his moral government by
whose resistless energy he is removing the obstruc
tions in the social and political world, which have
heretofore checked the prevalence of liberty, jus
tice, and happiness among men. The history of
nations, and especially the history and present con
dition of our own country, display the operation of
those laws ; and confiding in their continued opera
tion, let us look forward, with certainty, to their
triumphs in the future.
And while we thus trust to the Providence of God

57
to remove this great evil, let us do our part, in co
operation and subserviency to Him, in rendering
more efficient the agency he employs. Let us give
our influence and efforts to promote the circulation
of knowledge, to encourage freedom of thought,
enterprise and industry, and to impart to our fel
low-men, and confirm in our own hearts, the truths
of religion, and the sentiments of piety, which
clothe the spirit with a strength from God. When
the feet of the Pilgrims first struck the Rock of
Plymouth, these elements of character — sources of
the world's regeneration — gushed forth from it.
They were the living waters that sustained our
fathers in the wilderness, and they will at length
fertilize and gladden the whole continent.
Freedom and enterprise are swelling, with a ra
pidity which no calculation can follow, the millions
which overflow the boundaries of the north-western
States. They will bring into the bosom of the re
public more new States on the slopes of the Stony
Mountains, than could be carved out of the whole
of Mexico. They will forthwith, strangely con
founding the hopes of some, preoccupy the grand
and beautiful regions already conquered by our gal
lant armies. The climate, soil, and all the features
of that country will be found incompatible with any
other than free labor. Gradually our own territo
ries, and the States even where, as the Governor
of Missouri expresses himself, " physical labor "
8

58
has been longest depended upon, will throw off the
incubus, and welcome the blessings scattered by
liberty along her path.
My limits allow me no more extended and elabo
rate discussion. There is one topic, however,
which I must touch before I close.
Our fathers, as has been before intimated, enter
tained the idea, — sometimes the vision brightened
into clearness of delineation, sometimes it was
dimmed with shadows, but its outlines never van
ished wholly from their minds, — that a vast em
pire, to be limited only by the great oceans, was to
rise from the foundations they laid. In a prophetic
dream, which a poet of our own day imagines to
have visited one of the Pilgrim Fathers, he justly
represents the voice of their posterity as exclaiming
— " The continent is ours." * Besides particular
sentiments incidentally expressed, to be found in
their writings to this effect, the thought lay deep
beneath their institutions and whole public policy.
It was expressed in their charters. It supplied a
perpetual stimulus to their resolution, and made
that resolution absolutely unconquerable, to expel
the French from the western wilderness behind
them, and is seen to have exalted the patriotic en
thusiasm of such men as John Adams and Josiah
* Oliver Wendell Holmes.

59
Quincy, Jr., in the opening struggles of the Revolu
tionary controversy, suggesting to their ardent
minds the most lofty views of the future fortunes of
the country, which they had resolved to bear on
their arms, at every peril, into the family of inde
pendent nations.
The Constitution of the United States of Ame
rica, that greatest production of associated human
wisdom, the most beneficent plan ever contrived
for the government of men in bodies politic, affords,
if we will but be true to it, the means by which
gradually, — and far better would it be if it were
left peaceably to be done, — the whole continent
may be included within the protection and shelter
of one empire of liberty and order. The organiza
tion of State governments, within certain conven
ient limits, for all local purposes of legislation and
administration, and the Union of them into one
pervading government for purposes in which there
is a general interest, is a plan which, I most as
suredly believe, will be found to work more favora
bly the wider the regions over which it is extended.
As the system expands, territorial distance, and the
want of prompt inter-communication between re
mote members of the Confederacy, the only real
difficulties that threatened to be insurmountable,
are already greatly reduced, and almost absolutely
obliterated by recent achievements in science.
The American States have now continued in sub-

60
stantial union for seventy years. They went into
the Revolutionary War, when occupying a narrow
strip of the continent along the Atlantic shore ;
they now stretch their legislative and executive or
ganization to the Pacific. When their numbers
were few, and the limits of the country itself were
contracted, a disaffected section might entertain
the project of withdrawing from the Union; but
now its insignificance, if separated, is so palpable
as to forbid the idea. For half a century, the
question was discussed in newspapers, in periodi
cals, at college exhibitions, and in all private cir
cles, whether extension of territory would not
weaken the bonds of Union. It is high time to
drop it forever. There is not a State, a county, a
city, a town, a village, in the nation, in which, if
the popular sentiment were tested, allegiance to
the Union would not be found prevalent and ine
radicable. The only source, from which alienation to the
Union is to be apprehended, is on the part of those
persons who feel themselves implicated in objec
tionable institutions maintained and cherished in
some of the States. A certain description of igno
rant and insolent foreigners, not understanding our
beautiful Federal system, are doing what they can
to inflame this feeling. On this point I wish, be
fore I close, to draw a lesson of warning from an
error of our fathers. They were deluded by this

61
same idea. A Confederation was a favorite object
with them from the beginning. It was suggested
naturally in the train of associations attached to
their vision of a boundless empire of freedom and
virtue. But they were prevented from developing
it with efficacy by the apprehension that its mem
bers would be implicated . in the peculiarities of
each other. For this reason Rhode Island was ex
cluded ; and until the period of the Revolution the
plan of a Confederation was never made agreeable
to all the Colonies. If it had been otherwise — if,
leaving to each the care of its local concerns, from
the beginning, the several Colonies had sustained a
confederated council, for the consideration and pro
motion of the general good, no human intelligence
can calculate the effects upon the course of events.
Perhaps, essential independence would have been
secured without bloodshed, or any of the disastrous
economical and moral effects of a long war.
But, however that might have been, we are liv
ing in the enjoyment of the benefits of a Confede
racy that preserves us from intestine war, and con
fers upon us untold blessings. Instead of wishing
to go out from it because it includes conditions and
institutions which we do not fancy, let us rejoice
that it opens wide its arms to gather into its peace
ful fold, and under its remedial influences, all who
seek admission. Instead of feeling scandalized be
cause some States, in the exercise of their reserved
sovereignty, enact barbarous laws, and cherish un-

62
righteous institutions, if we appreciated all the salu
tary effects flowing from the Union, and kept clearly
in our minds the principle on which it was founded,
we should only regret that we cannot, at once, ex
tend it over all, even the most ill-governed and be
nighted races of the earth. Without entering upon
an enumeration of the beneficial influences of such
a Confederation upon all whom it includes, it an
swers my present purpose to observe that, in re
moving standing armies, fortified and garrisoned
towns, the iniquities that mark the borders of con
tiguous and unfriendly nations, and all the curses
that follow in the train of rival and warring States,
we have multiplied incalculably the chances, and
cleared away the chief obstructions to the progress
of reform. Indeed the abolition of standing armies
is the first step in the elevation of a people, and it
must be taken before any real progress can be
made. The permanent military organization of a
large proportion of the population, separated from
the ordinary avocations of life, is the last resort,
and the strong defence, of modern despotism. It
is the contrivance, by which kings turn the physical
power of the people against the people themselves.
The relief from a standing army, which we are
enjoying in this country, is itself a blessing greater
than was ever vouchsafed to a people before. To
appreciate it fully one must travel in other coun
tries. The military forces thought necessary to
protect the frontiers of the Union, and preserve

63
during peace the basis upon which, in the event
of a foreign war, the strength of the nation might be
organized for belligerent purposes, are at this mo
ment nearly all withdrawn from the country ; but
the frame of society throughout this great empire is
found able to stand without their aid. In all the
Northern States, and, indeed, over nearly the entire
surface of the Republic, there are not at the present
time more troops, of the regular army, all told,
than are permanently stationed in every third-rate
city of Europe. If there are persons among us, so
outraged by the existence of an institution that holds
in bondage a portion of the colored race in some
quarters of the Confederacy, as to countenance the
idea of a separation ofthe States, let them consider
that while such a result would not in all probability
reduce the evil, upon which their thoughts have be
come so painfully concentrated, it would inevitably
and instantly lead to the additional enslavement of
thousands and tens of thousands of the white popu
lation, in the form of permanent standing armies,
bristling along the borders of the multiplying frag
ments of the Union, and preying upon the resources,
the morals and the liberties of all the rest.
My last exhortation to the sons of New-England,
then, is to re faithful for ever to the Federal
Union. While they exercise, according to their
several convictions, their political rights in opposing
all partial and sectional legislation, resisting the
extension, by the national authority, of anti-repub-

»

64
lican institutions, and discountenancing unright
eousness and injustice in the mode in which the gov
ernment is administered, let them rejoice in the
assurance that, over whatever extent of territory
and from whatever motives of policy the Confed
eracy is spread, within its boundaries the arts of
Peace, which are their arts, and were the arts of
their fathers, will have an opportunity, such as has
never been secured before, to prevail over all other
arts. If, impelled by the enterprise which marks
their race, they follow with their traffic and ingen
ious industry the conquests of our armies, or open
the way for cultivation and civilization to advance
into the remotest regions of the West, or pursue
their avocations in any quarter of the Union, how
ever inconsistent with their views its peculiar insti
tutions may be, if they carry their household gods
with them, all others will gradually be converted to
their principles, and imbued with their spirit. If
the sons of New-England rear the school-house and
the church wherever they select their homes, if
they preserve the reliance upon their own individual
energies, the love of knowledge, the trust in Provi
dence, the spirit of patriotic faith and hope, which
made its most barren regions blossom and become
fruitful around their fathers, then will the glorious
vision of those fathers be realized, and the Conti
nent rejoice, in all its latitudes and from sea to sea,
in the blessings of freedom and education, of peace
and prosperity, of virtue and religion.