What is our country? Not alone the land and the sea, the lakes and rivers, and valleys and mountains; not alone the people, their customs and laws; not alone the memories of the past, the hopes of the future: it is something more than all these combined. It is a divine abstraction. You cannot tell what it is; but let its flag rustle above your head, you feel its living presence in your hearts. They tell us that our country must die; that the sun and the stars will look down upon the great republic no more; that already the black eagles of despotism are gathering in our political sky; that, even now, kings and emperors are casting lots for the garments of our national glory. It shall not be! Not yet, not yet, shall the nations lay the bleeding corpse of our country in the tomb. If they could, angels would roll the stone from the mouth of the sepulcher. It would burst the casements of the grave and come forth a living presence, “redeemed, regenerated, disenthralled.” Not yet, not yet shall the republic die! The heavens are not darkened, the stones are not rent! It shall live, the incarnation of freedom; it shall live, the embodiment of the power and majesty of the people. Baptized anew, it shall stand a thousand years to come, the Colossus of the nations,—its feet upon the continents, its scepter over the seas, its forehead among the stars!—From “Notable Speeches by Notable Speakers of the Greater West,” by kind permission of the publishers; The Harr Wagner Company, San Francisco.
PIONEER CELEBRATION SPEECH
By Frederick Palmer Tracey
(Delivered before the society of California Pioneers, September 9, 1858, at their celebration of the eighth anniversary of the admission of the state into the Union.)
Mr. President, and Members of the Society of California Pioneers: The great Napoleon said, “I will review at Cherbourg the marvels of Egypt,” and that saying, just now inscribed upon the pedestal of his statue standing amidst the new and massive fortifications of Cherbourg, startles England as a menace of war. England may rest in quiet. There will be no attempt to renew the marvels of Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign. But both Napoleons may have dreamed that in the gigantic moles of Cherbourg they might rival the grandeur and strength of the Pyramids, and in its sculptures the glorious beauty of Memnon and the Sphinx. And, truly, the vast dead marvels of Egypt’s architecture may be rivaled. Other tombs and temples may be hewn in the rocks; other columns and obelisks may rise in beauty; other sphinxes may in silence propose their eternal riddles to other lands; and other pyramids may lift their mountain forms over the hushed plains crouching at their feet. Greater marvels even than Egypt ever saw may be born of necessity and science, and not Cherbourg alone, but this and other lands may yet behold them.
But who, in any age or country, or with any people, shall renew the marvels of California, and give to the world a second example of a nation so suddenly created, gifted with the strength of Hercules in its cradle,—born in the purple of its empire that shall endure forever? A little more than ten years ago, California lay in the indolence and silence of that summer noonday in which she had been basking for ages. A few idle villages slept by the shores of her bays; a few squalid ranches dotted the interior with patches of wretched cultivation. There were herds of cattle in her valleys, but they were almost valueless for the want of a market. There were churches, but their chiming bells woke only the echoes of a vast solitude. The sun ripened only the harvest of wild oats on the hills, and the beasts of prey made their lairs in security close by the abodes of men. Seldom did the vaquero in his solitary rounds hear the dip of the oar upon our rivers. Silence, deep and everlasting, brooded over all the land, and the lone oaks on the hills appeared like sentinels keeping guard around the sleeping camp of nature.
The cession of the country to the United States by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the discovery of gold in the early part of the year of 1848, changed the whole scene as if by the power of magic. As in the naumachia of old time, the dry arena was instantly converted into a great lake on which contending navies struggled for the mastery; so, instantly on the discovery of gold, California was filled with people as if they had risen from the earth. The port of San Francisco was crowded with vessels. The rivers were alive with the multitudes that made them their highway, and din of commerce broke forever the silence of centuries. It seemed as if the people had stolen the lamp of Aladdin, and wished for the creation, not of palaces merely, but of royal cities, and an empire of which these should be the chief places; and at their wish, the cities of our state arose, not by slow, toilsome growth, but complete and princely at their very birth. The rattle of the shovel and the pick was heard in every mountain gorge, and a wide stream of gold flowed from the Sierra to the sea. The plains, rejoicing in their marriage to industry, bore fruitfully their yellow harvests. Villages, hamlets, farmhouses, schools, and churches sprang up everywhere; wharves were built, roads were opened; stage-coaches and steamers crowded all profitable routes; lands, houses, and labor rose to an enormous value; and plenty, with her blessings, crowned the rolling year.
I paint no exaggerated picture of this magical change. We have seen it with our eyes; and though it seems like a dream, so is it unlike anything in the history of the world, in the range of human experience, or in the field where imagination is wont to revel. We know that it is all true, and its truth is its greatest marvel.
Yet it is not to be concealed that we have reason to fear that California’s future may not be as prosperous as her past. If free institutions shall be established here in the simplicity of truth and justice; if public morality shall be substituted for the wild, passionate life of our earlier times; if industry and frugality shall expel indolence and thriftlessness from among us; if the people shall be made to feel that California is their home, and be controlled by the great ambition of making it a home worth loving and defending; if we shall be united for the promotion and protection of our own state interests, and shall banish from among us all influence of those who do not belong to us,—then indeed we cannot fail to secure a glorious future for our young state. But if we fail in the great duties of upright men and patriotic citizens, we can only expect to—
“Run anew the evil race the old nations ran;