Others there are among those twoscore and eleven whom we should be glad to delineate, as we dearly love to look at them gathered in the morning light of that first Fourth of July; but there is such a serious, thoughtful air, such a felt pressure weighting all brows and hearts, that the loaded hour presses down and hushes all such light thoughts. A prayer so simple, earnest, child-like, and trusting,—uttered amid impressive silence by John Adams,—that it seems to bear the great question up to the Great Heart, hushes the assembly to a balanced calm, and opens the business.
Large sealed packages from Washington, brought on horseback all the way from New York, are then read. They speak of his few men,—most of them without arms, clothing, or food,—in presence of 45,000 fresh and well-supplied English and German troops, under the command of Lord Howe, of his brother the Admiral, and of Sir Henry Clinton. Other letters were read from South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, and New York, urging the wise men to declare the old, unequal partnership with England at an end,—a partnership to which, they felt, that the colonial partners had furnished the capital and labor, and from which the English associates drew all the profits.
In the name of the Profit, they virtually said, war. Then followed a pause in the proceedings, which at length the full, firm voice of John Adams broke. His speech, rising and rising like a freshet over that tall occasion, swept away by its resistless logical momentum the forces of sophism, carried in its strong hurry all the impediments to its march, brimmed over with its swelling forces the whole territory of debate, until at last, the gathered mass, hurled full against the barriers of prejudice, conservatism, doubt, and fear, prostrated forever the props and supports of British usurpation in the Colonies. It is a singular fact that no reporters were present to take down or even outline this speech. Gathered up, however, from tradition and memory by Daniel Webster, about half a century afterwards, it has floated and collected in almost every school-house and college, and there formed eddies, whirlpools, and geysers, which have sucked in and spouted out much gyrating declamation.
Other speakers followed the fiery Adams, most urging, a few deprecating, immediate action. We need not note here their range, fire, or effect.
At last the patriotic battle abates; and the committee of five,—Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston,—forming around the tall, dignified, picturesque figure of their chairman, advance in front of the president’s seat. There is an expectant, oppressive hush, a sudden settling back into seats; and all eyes, like sunflowers, turn towards the scarlet-waistcoated son of the Revolution. The neatly written paper is slowly unrolled, and its weighty truths, crowding up to its very rim, begin at once to discharge themselves.
That large electrical battery has been ever since at work, charging nationalities and peoples, galvanizing the feeble to effort, producing sparks whenever the current has been interrupted, recovering back to vital action sick communities, and arousing to better health from that hopeless despair which a long course of royal quack doctoring had produced, constitutions, systems, or states originally strong, energetic, and vigorous. Without analyzing or dwelling upon the full, electrical streams then and there evolved by that American independence machine, we will only record here that two principal jets, namely, that of the equality of all in their creation, and the other, that all governments rest solely upon the consent of the governed, have poured upon paralyzed and crippled humanity such a current of blessings, that the old Asiatic, African, and European practices of blood-letting for liberal plethora, drugs for congested rights, anodynes for consciences politically discontented, and cathartics for purging away healthy food necessary for civil nutrition, are fast becoming unpopular.
George III. got a terrible peppering from that machine; but as he lived forty-four years afterwards, it is fair to presume that his royal, burly Hanoverian person, rolling over and over in bucolic clover, repaired without difficulty dents and shocks caused by applications administered at such a distance. For seven years following he was in a great state of irritation, and worked hard to prevent the results with which that Declaration concluded, namely, a determination to cut all connection with him and his little island ways.
How this great struggle, thus earnestly begun, was carried on, and its final issue, must be the office of future chapters to tell.
That first Fourth caused a very gunpowdery smell throughout the Colonies for seven succeeding years, and has touched off more fire-crackers since than would fence in China with a wall higher than its present one.
The lever then thrust beneath the corner-stone of civil right, to pry it out of its undisturbed imbedment into its appropriate place, was handled by ungloved hands; but the anniversary of the event itself cannot be now handled by the municipal jollifiers in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans, and even Chicago, with less than six pairs of gloves each, while the very common councilmen sometimes get twelve pairs apiece for the occasion.