But a country reserved for the representatives of every variety of
the human race. Old superstitions, old tyrannies and old despotisms
perished with the nations that they could not save. What though for
a few centuries the ghosts of these departing spirits did haunt our
shores, they could not stand before that advancing host of freemen,
every one of whom bore a scepter and wore a crown.
But the best that the heart felt and the mind conceived in those
civilizations which flourished on the banks of the Euphrates and the
Nile, the shores of the Mediterranean, at Athens, and on the banks of
the Tiber, was embalmed and transmitted through the centuries to find
here the only soil in which it could have development and growth.
Again the horizon is whitened by a sail. Not the caravels of Columbus,
but the Mayflower, bearing the Pilgrim Fathers and the germs of our
Republican institutions. Fleeing from oppression beyond the sea, coming
to dwell in the wilderness, with old Plymouth Rock for their cathedral,
their music the restless murmur of the sea, while the scene is lighted
by the lamps of heaven, the Pilgrim Fathers married Civil and Religious
Liberty to our country forever.
This continent is the great family mansion which God has built and
furnished with unlimited supplies for the purpose of reassembling the
scattered members of the human family, to enjoy together the fruits
of liberty, fraternity and prosperity. The Indian was already here,
but he was not permitted to level the forests, navigate the rivers,
till away the fertility of the soil, or to rob the mountains of their
wealth of gold, silver, iron and stone, until the other members of the
family arrived. When the roll was called, the Englishman, the German,
the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Indian, each answered to his name.
When the Negro's name was called there was silence, each looked at the
other. The Negro was not here. He had no ship. He could not come. In
which condition of affairs his white brother rigged out a vessel and
brought him over. Our third great voyage is ended, bearing momentous
issues, another ship comes in from the sea. It is the old Dutch
man-of-war with her cargo of twenty Negroes, which landed at Jamestown,
Va., in 1619. Ever since the landing of this vessel the Negro has
answered "present" whenever his country called. When called upon to
drain the swamps and till the fair plantations of the South, though
beaten, cursed and robbed, rewarded with the severance of the tenderest
ties of affection, he answered, "present," every day for two hundred
and fifty years. American Independence, like every good gift, has been
bought with blood. And the first blood shed in its behalf was that of
the Negro patriot, Crispus Attucks. When the Revolutionary heroes were
being overcome by the British at the battle of Bunker's Hill, it was
Peter Salem, a Negro, who shot Major Pitcairn and turned the tide of
battle there.