The parts of this great duty were unfolded in the due order of development, and sprang naturally out of the heredity and environment of the Brothers. The men and their surroundings given, the results were inevitable. It seems singular that just these men should have been selected by Providence, especially the black man, but the result shows that they were wisely chosen. The black was in the end found to be an essential factor.
I. Let me sketch these Three Brothers.
1. The First, the Cavalier, had been, in the old country, loyal to king and church, a supporter of the House of Stuart and of Archbishop Land. He was a representative of the rural population of England, men who loved broad acres and field sports. In his home in the new world his great ambition was to own a large plantation and multiply the number of his slaves, and thus imitate the baronial life of the mother country. He cared nothing for popular education, and thanked God that there was neither a school-house nor a printing-press in his domain.
2. The Second Brother, the Puritan, had become more accustomed to city life, and was addicted to trade and commerce as well as to farming. His zeal as a reformer in church and State brought him into collision with the House of Stuart, and indeed he was an exile in his new home on account of his religious and political principles. He desired to have “a church without a bishop and a State without a king.” He was earnest in promoting education as well as religion, and his identifying mark everywhere was the meeting-house and the school-house.
3. The Third Brother, the African, was not voluntary in coming to his new home nor in the choice of his occupation. He was a slave. He was strong in body, amiable in disposition, but at length became the innocent cause of much ill blood between the other brothers.
II. The duties assigned to these men.
1. The founding of a great empire.
Never was there a more inviting opportunity—a continent almost unoccupied, coast lined by two great oceans, with climate varied and healthy, and with boundless resources in fertile lands, rivers, lakes and mines; and never was an opportunity better improved—in less than three hundred years the new empire has nearly double the population of the mother country.
2. The second duty was to lead in three great steps in human progress. (1), The first step was to secure and maintain civil and religious liberty. This step was inevitable for the two English brothers. They had planted colonies and organized States. They had secured charters guaranteeing the rights of Englishmen. They had thus a training in the arts of government and had learned to value the blessings of constitutional liberty. In an evil hour the British Government began to invade these chartered rights. The Two Brothers were aroused. The Puritan was by inheritance and principle a foe of arbitrary power. He, of course, was deeply stirred. The Cavalier had indeed been a friend of the Stuarts. He could see no objection to arbitrary power when it was practised by himself and his party on others, but he naturally and suddenly came to see it in an entirely different light when he and his party were the victims; and for once the two brothers were in accord.
A contest was imminent. The British Government could settle it peacefully, if righteously; if not, in blood. It would not restore chartered rights. Then came the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, the new Republic, with the truest definition and guarantee of civil and religions liberty the world had ever seen. The first of the great steps in human progress, to which these men were called, was taken.