Casting our eyes over the history of nations, with horror we discern the succession of murderous slaughters by which their progress is marked. Even as the hunter follows the wild beast to his lair by the drops of blood on the ground, so we follow Man, faint, weary, staggering with wounds, through the Black Forest of the Past, which he has reddened with his gore. Oh, let it not be in the future ages as in those we now contemplate! Let the grandeur of man be discerned, not in bloody victory or ravenous conquest, but in the blessings he has secured, in the good he has accomplished, in the triumphs of Justice and Beneficence, in the establishment of Perpetual Peace!
As ocean washes every shore, and with all-embracing arms clasps every land, while on its heaving bosom it bears the products of various climes, so Peace surrounds, protects, and upholds all other blessings. Without it, commerce is vain, the ardor of industry is restrained, justice is arrested, happiness is blasted, virtue sickens and dies.
Peace, too, has its own peculiar victories, in comparison with which Marathon and Bannockburn and Bunker Hill, fields sacred in the history of human freedom, lose their lustre. Our own Washington rises to a truly heavenly stature, not when we follow him through the ice of the Delaware to the capture of Trenton, not when we behold him victorious over Cornwallis at Yorktown, but when we regard him, in noble deference to Justice, refusing the kingly crown which a faithless soldiery proffered, and at a later day upholding the peaceful neutrality of the country, while he met unmoved the clamor of the people wickedly crying for War. What glory of battle in England's annals will not fade by the side of that great act of justice, when her Parliament, at a cost of one hundred million dollars, gave freedom to eight hundred thousand slaves? And when the day shall come (may these eyes be gladdened by its beams!) that shall witness an act of larger justice still,—the peaceful emancipation of three million fellow-men "guilty of a skin not colored as our own," now, in this land of jubilant freedom, bound in gloomy bondage,—then will there be a victory by the side of which that of Bunker Hill will be as the farthing candle held up to the sun. That victory will need no monument of stone. It will be written on the grateful hearts of countless multitudes that shall proclaim it to the latest generation. It will be one of the famed landmarks of civilization,—or, better still, a link in the golden chain by which Humanity connects itself with the throne of God.
As man is higher than the beasts of the field, as the angels are higher than man, as Christ is higher than Mars, as he that ruleth his spirit is higher than he that taketh a city,—so are the victories of Peace higher than the victories of War.
Far be from us, fellow-citizens, on this festival, the pride of national victory, and the illusion of national freedom, in which we are too prone to indulge! None of you make rude boast of individual prosperity or prowess. And here I end as I began. Our country cannot do what an individual cannot do. Therefore it must not vaunt or be puffed up. Rather bend to unperformed duties. Independence is not all. We have but half done, when we have made ourselves free. The scornful taunt wrung from bitter experience of the great Revolution in France must not be levelled at us: "They wish to be free, but know not how to be just."[115] Nor is priceless Freedom an end in itself, but rather the means of Justice and Beneficence, where alone is enduring concord, with that attendant happiness which is the final end and aim of Nations, as of every human heart. It is not enough to be free. There must be Peace which cannot fail, and other nations must share the great possession. For this good must we labor, bearing ever in mind two special objects, complements of each other: first, the Arbitrament of War must end; and, secondly, Disarmament must begin. With this ending and this beginning the great gates of the Future will be opened, and the guardian virtues will assert a new empire. Alas! until this is done, National Honor and National Glory will yet longer flaunt in blood, and there can be no True Grandeur of Nations.
To this great work let me summon you. That Future, which filled the lofty vision of sages and bards in Greece and Rome, which was foretold by Prophets and heralded by Evangelists, when man, in Happy Isles, or in a new Paradise, shall confess the loveliness of Peace, may you secure, if not for yourselves, at least for your children! Believe that you can do it, and you can do it. The true Golden Age is before, not behind. If man has once been driven from Paradise, while an angel with flaming sword forbade his return, there is another Paradise, even on earth, which he may make for himself, by the cultivation of knowledge, religion, and the kindly virtues of life,—where the confusion of tongues shall be dissolved in the union of hearts, and joyous Nature, borrowing prolific charms from prevailing Harmony, shall spread her lap with unimagined bounty, and there shall be perpetual jocund Spring, and sweet strains borne on "the odoriferous wing of gentle gales," through valleys of delight more pleasant than the Vale of Tempe, richer than the Garden of the Hesperides, with no dragon to guard its golden fruit.
Is it said that the age does not demand this work? The robber conqueror of the Past, from fiery sepulchre, demands it; the precious blood of millions unjustly shed in War, crying from the ground, demands it; the heart of the good man demands it; the conscience, even of the soldier, whispers, "Peace!" There are considerations springing from our situation and condition which fervently invite us to take the lead. Here should join the patriotic ardor of the land, the ambition of the statesman, the effort of the scholar, the pervasive influence of the press, the mild persuasion of the sanctuary, the early teaching of the school. Here, in ampler ether and diviner air, are untried fields for exalted triumph, more truly worthy the American name than any snatched from rivers of blood. War is known as the Last Reason of Kings. Let it be no reason of our Republic. Let us renounce and throw off forever the yoke of a tyranny most oppressive of all in the world's annals. As those standing on the mountain-top first discern the coming beams of morning, so may we, from the vantage-ground of liberal institutions, first recognize the ascending sun of a new era! Lift high the gates, and let the King of Glory in,—the King of True Glory,—of Peace! I catch the last words of music from the lips of innocence and beauty,[116]—
"And let the whole earth be filled with His Glory!"