Sir, in the efforts of the people—of the people struggling for their rights—moving, not in organized, disciplined masses, but in their spontaneous action, man for man, and heart for heart—there is something glorious. They can then move forward without orders, act together without combination, and brave the flaming lines of battle without entrenchments to cover or walls to shield them.
No dissolute camp has worn off from the feelings of the youthful soldier the freshness of that home, where his mother and his sisters sit waiting, with tearful eyes and aching hearts, to hear good news from the wars; no long service in the ranks of a conqueror has turned the veteran’s heart into marble. Their valor springs not from recklessness, from habit, from indifference to the preservation of a life knit by no pledges to the life of others; but in the strength and spirit of the cause alone, they act, they contend, they bleed. In this they conquer.
The people always conquer. They always must conquer. Armies may be defeated, kings may be overthrown, and new dynasties imposed, by foreign arms, on an ignorant and slavish race, that cares not in what language the covenant of their subjection runs, nor in whose name the deed of their barter and sale is made out.
But the people never invade; and, when they rise against the invader, are never subdued. If they are driven from the plains, they fly to the mountains. Steep rocks and everlasting hills are their castles; the tangled, pathless thicket their palisado; and nature, God, is their ally! Now he overwhelms the hosts of their enemies beneath his drifting mountains of sand; now he buries them beneath a falling atmosphere of polar snows; He lets loose his tempest on their fleets; He puts a folly into their counsels, a madness into the hearts of their leaders; He never gave, and never will give, a final triumph over a virtuous and gallant people, resolved to be free.
“For Freedom’s battle once begun,
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son
Though baffled oft, is ever won.”
TO THE SURVIVORS OF BUNKER HILL.
BY DANIEL WEBSTER.