Having taken half a continent in the name of humanity, shall we hold it in the name of a few millions? Not as jealous lords of a rich domain, but as priests of a noble cult shall we best acquit ourselves of the task our Fathers set us. And it is the duty of a priest to minister to as many souls as he can reach. The most revered of our living teachers has passed this word:—
It is the mission of the United States to spread freedom throughout the world by teaching as many men and women as possible in freedom’s largest home how to use freedom rightly through practice in liberty under law.
And our ardor shall not be dampened by the reflection that perhaps the Fathers builded better than they knew. “Do you really think they looked so far ahead?” it is often asked. “Did the founders of the Republic foresee the time when foreign hordes would alight on our shores, demanding a share in this goodly land that was ransomed with the blood of heroes?” Fearful questions, these, to make us pause in the work of redeeming mankind! If our Fathers did not foresee the whole future, shall we therefore be blind to the light of our own day? If they had left us a mere sketch of their idea, could we do less than fill in the outlines? Since they left us not a sketch, but a finished model, the least we can do is to go on copying it on an ever larger scale. Neither shall we falter because the execution of the enlarged copy entails much labor on us and on our children. When Moses told the Egyptian exiles that they should have no god but the One God, he may not have guessed that their children would be brought to the stake for refusing other gods; and yet nineteen centuries of Jewish martyrdom go to show that the followers of Moses did not make his lack of foresight an excuse for abandoning his Law.
Let the children be brought up to know that we are a people with a mission, and that mission, in the words of Dr. Eliot, to teach the uses of freedom to as many men as possible “in freedom’s largest home.” Let it be taught in the public schools that the most precious piece of real estate in the whole United States is that which supports the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty; that we need not greatly care how the three million square miles remaining is divided among the people of the earth, as long as we retain that little island. Let it further be repeated in the schools that the Liberty at our gates is the handiwork of a Frenchman; that the mountain-weight of copper in her sides and the granite mass beneath her feet were bought with the pennies of the poor; that the verses graven on a tablet within the base are the inspiration of a poetess descended from Portuguese Jews; and all these things shall be interpreted to mean that the love of liberty unites all races and all classes of men into one close brotherhood, and that we Americans, therefore, who have the utmost of liberty that has yet been attained, owe the alien a brother’s share.
To this position we are brought by a construction of the Declaration of Independence which makes of it the law of the land, binding on American citizens individually and collectively, and in all circumstances whatever. Out of this position there is one avenue of escape, and only one. We may refuse to read in the Declaration a sincere expression of the faith of 1776, and construe it instead as a bombastic political manifesto, advanced by the leaders of the rebellion as an excuse for a gigantic land-grab.
Let the descendants of the Puritans take their choice of these two interpretations. For my part, I have chosen. I have chosen to read the story of ’76 as a chapter in sacred history; to set Thomas Jefferson in a class with Moses, and Washington with Joshua; to regard the American nation as the custodian of a sacred trust, and American citizenship as a holy order, with laws and duties derived from the Declaration.
For very pride in my country I must choose thus, for the alternate view takes the meaning out of American history, reduces the War of Independence to a war of plunder, and the Colonial heroes to a band of pious hypocrites. What, indeed, shall we teach our children to be proud of if we reject the higher interpretation of the deeds of the Fathers? The American Revolution as a campaign of conquest is not unique in history; on the contrary, it has been more than once surpassed, both in respect to the prowess of the conquerors and to the magnificence of the prize. Outside the physical realm, where our inventions and discoveries and the material development of a continent belong, this country has contributed nothing of moment to the world’s progress, unless it is that political adaptation of the Golden Rule which is indicated in the Declaration and elaborated in the Constitution. In the arts and sciences we sit, for the most part, at the feet of foreign masters; in jurisprudence we have borrowed from the Romans, and the elements of liberal government we have from our next of kin, the English. The notion of the dignity of man, which is the foundation of the gospel of democracy, is derived from Hebrew sources, as the Psalm-singing founders of New England would be the first to acknowledge. It was not entirely due to accident nor to the exigencies of pioneer life that the meeting-house and the town hall were one in the New England settlements. The influence of the Bible is plainly stamped on the works of the Puritans. What, then, shall we claim as the great American achievement, our peculiar treasure in the midst of so much borrowed glory? A magnificent espousal of humanity—that or nothing can we call our own.
Seeing that they brought nothing into the world that was all their own, our glorious dead are not glorious unless we make them so, by imputing to them the noblest motives that their case will permit, and rating their works at not less than face value. Pride demands it, and, fortunately for our country’s honor, justice supports the claims of pride. Neither the cynics nor the enthusiasts shall have the last word in the matter. In the writings of their contemporaries, in the casual sayings of their intimates, in the critical comments of those who came next after them, we find convincing evidence that in the minds of the leaders of ’76 the most advanced political thought of the age crystallized into a mighty conviction—the conviction of the inherent nobility of humankind, which makes it treason for any man to enslave his neighbor.
That is the thought that was sent out into the world on July 4, 1776, and because that thought has shaped our history, we call it the basic law of our land, and the Declaration of Independence our final authority. If under that authority the immigrant appears to have rights in our land parallel to our own rights, we shall not lightly deny his claims, lest we forfeit our only title to national glory.