Washington, Adams, Franklin, Rush, Paine—every one of them immortal
names—struggled with the task with which God had entrusted them. They
felt the great responsibility, and their faces, as they looked into each
other’s eyes, spoke their anxiety. Each knew that every other as well as
self had something in his heart that he dared not utter. They looked
inquiringly again and again for some yielding in some face. But they
hesitated all. And well they might; for it was not the fate of three
million people merely that was in their hands, but the future destinies
of the world. One of these men had said but little; but the set features
of his face showed a stern resolve; showed that he was waiting for the
proper time in which to speak. He knew that it would fall to him to
break the way; to say the words which each one felt but dared not speak;
and speak at last he did; and they were the words of mighty import that
came forth from him; words that were to deliver the people who had come
to their full time—a birth that should herald a new race of people to
the world; and they came forth from him as if all his powers were
concentrated in the effort; as if that effort were the last struggle of
the mother to bring forth her child; and the “four” caught up the child
and became god-father to it, and they bore it to the people. The people
recognised it as their own; took it to their hearts, and at once adopted
it. Its name was—Revolution—Independence; and the words rang up and down
the wave-washed shores, and fired the people with their
inspiration—revolution as the means, independence as the end.
One hundred years have come and gone since that eventful day, great with
the future’s destinies. Its hundredth anniversary has passed, and forty
million people have commemorated the work of those five men, of those
three million people:—commemorated it by reaffirming the truths that
then were uttered for the first time in the new world; commemorated them
by brilliant flights of oratory, by firing cannons and profuse displays
of “stars and stripes” harmoniously blended with the flags of almost
every other nation of the globe, whose sons and daughters were
participating in the glory of the day; with feasting, fireworks; with
general rejoicing everywhere. As if with a universal assent, these
swarming millions re-echoed with a will the words that that stern man
had uttered on that never-to-be-forgotten day a hundred years ago.