Fellow-citizens, take courage; be of good cheer. We shall come to no such ignoble end. We shall live, and not die. During the period allotted to our several lives we shall continue to rejoice in the return of this anniversary. The ill-omened sounds of fanaticism will be hushed; the ghastly spectres of Secession and Disunion will disappear; and the enemies of united constitutional liberty, if their hatred cannot be appeased, may prepare to have their eyeballs seared as they behold the steady flight of the American eagle, on his burnished wings, for years and years to come.
President Fillmore, it is your singularly good fortune to perform an act such as that which the earliest of your predecessors performed fifty-eight years ago. You stand where he stood; you lay your hand on the corner-stone of a building designed greatly to extend that whose corner-stone he laid. Changed, changed is everything around. The same sun, indeed, shone upon his head which now shines upon yours. The same broad river rolled at his feet, and bathes his last resting-place, that now rolls at yours. But the site of this city was then mainly an open field. Streets and avenues have since been laid out and completed, squares and public grounds enclosed and ornamented, until the city which bears his name, although comparatively inconsiderable in numbers and wealth, has became quite fit to be the seat of government of a great and united people.
And now, fellow-citizens, with hearts void of hatred, envy, and malice towards our own countrymen, or any of them, or towards the subjects or citizens of other governments, or towards any member of the great family of man; but exulting, nevertheless, in our own peace, security, and happiness, in the grateful remembrance of the past, and the glorious hopes of the future, let us return to our homes, and with all humility and devotion offer our thanks to the Father of all our mercies, political, social, and religious.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The “Pilgrims” are often confused with the “Puritans,” and the words are used interchangeably. Strictly speaking, the former were the English Independents or Congregationalists who came from Holland to Plymouth in 1620; the latter, the immigrants from England to Massachusetts Bay in 1629 and following years, some of whom, at the time of their arrival in New England, retained nominal connection with the Church of England. The church polity of the two parties, however, soon became the same.
[2] Henry Sargent’s “Landing of the Pilgrims,” in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth.
[3] The landing at Plymouth was on Dec. 11, 1620, Old Style, corresponding to December 21 according to the present calendar, though December 22 is generally observed.
[4] A plain eighteen miles northeast of Athens, between Mount Pentelicus and the sea, where, B. C. 490, 10,000 Greeks and 1,000 Platæans, under Miltiades, defeated 100,000 Persians, thereby destroying Darius’s scheme for subjugating Greece.
“The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free.”