Nor have our American brothers laid down their lives in vain. They came in their hundreds of thousand from the other side of the Atlantic to vindicate the cause of an outraged humanity and a menaced liberty. The freewill offering of their sacrifice has been accepted. They have been summoned to some other and higher phase in the life of heavenly citizenship.
The mystery of suffering, sorrow and pain awaits its Divine interpretation hereafter. Not yet can we hope to see through the mist that veils the future. But the Cross is our pledge of the fruitfulness of self-sacrifice.
May America and Great Britain go forward charged with the privilege of a common stewardship for the liberties of mankind! May the glorious witness of these brave lives, whom we commemorate to-day, enrich us, whose course on earth is not yet run, with the inspiring vision of the sanctity and self-abnegation of true patriotism! The warfare against the countless forms of violence, injustice, and falsehood will never cease: may the example of our brothers exalt and purify our aims!
A few words as to the vicissitudes of the precious manuscript of this book.
As the author tells us, he began to write down this record of the affairs of the New Plymouth Settlement in the year 1630, ten years after their arrival, continuing the writing of it from time to time up to the year 1650, when he compiled the Register of Passengers on the Mayflower, their marriages, the birth of their descendants, and their deaths. In form, the original manuscript is a parchment-bound folio, measuring about 11 inches high, 8 inches wide, and 1½ inches thick.
Some inscriptions on fly leaves in it, give, tersely, its ownership up to 1728. “This book was writ by Governor William Bradford, and given by him to his son Major William Bradford, and by him to his son Major John Bradford: writ by me, Samuel Bradford, March 20th, 1705.”
An entry by Thomas Prince, dated June 4th, 1728, intimates that Major John Bradford turned over the manuscript to him for the New England Library of Prints and Manuscripts, which he had been collecting since 1703, when he entered Harvard College. Since then it is supposed that sundry authors have drawn upon its material, and that Governor Hutchinson had access to it when he wrote the second volume of his History, published in 1767.
From this time all traces of its presence in New England disappear, and it was not until almost a century later that it was discovered and identified in the Library of the Bishop of London, at Fulham Palace. It is supposed that the manuscript found its way to England some time between the years 1768 and 1785, being deposited under the title of “The Log of the Mayflower,” at Fulham Palace as the Public Registry for Historical and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to the Diocese of London, and to the Colonial and other Possessions of Great Britain beyond the seas—New Plymouth being, ecclesiastically, attached to the Diocese of London.
When compiling his “History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America,” published in 1844, Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, and later of Winchester, delved into the archives of Fulham Palace, and brought under contribution a number of unpublished manuscripts, from which he gave extracts. In 1855 this work fell into the hands of John Wingate Thornton, and, through him, came under the eye of Barry, the author of “The History of Massachusetts,” who recognized that the passages quoted in Wilberforce’s work must come from none other than Bradford’s long-lost annals. Charles Deane was consulted and communicated with Joseph Hunter in England, who visited Fulham Palace Library, and established incontestably the identity of “The Log of the Mayflower” with Bradford’s History. It is still unknown exactly how it found its way to London—but in all probability it was brought over during the War of Independence.