ideas she represents. I
have called these, already, the _Northern_ idea. But if the nature of
our political philosophy be closely scanned, if we exactly analyze the
genius of our institutions in their proper and unbiased action, we shall
be forced to acknowledge that it was the _Puritan_ idea which
predominated; that it is, in fact, the saving clause in the gospel of
our national salvation. And New England was the first home of the
Puritans--the focus from which have radiated the myriad beams of the
light of which they were the repositories to the remotest corners of the
land. Let no one be alarmed at the mention of the word _Puritan_. There
are some people who have no other notion of a Puritan than that of a
close-cropped, saturnine personage, having a nasal twang, who is
forevermore indulging an insane propensity to sing psalms, quote
Scripture, or burn witches. These are the people who can never see into
the profound deep of a great truth, but are quite ready to laugh at its
travesty or caricature. And what high or holy truth has not been
caricatured? For one, I envy not the head or the heart of him who can
think the name of Puritan a badge of shame or reproach, and who has no
sympathy nor admiration for the stern resolution, the wondrous
fortitude, the deep enthusiasm for freedom, the unwavering faith, and
the high religious devotion of those men and women who first lit a torch
in the wilderness, soon to become the beacon light of the world.

Nor would I be understood to mean a wholesale and indiscriminate
adoration of the Puritans as a _sect_. The appellation, which was
bestowed upon them in opprobrium, and which they certainly wore in no
meek manner, but evidently gloried in as a word of highest praise and
honor, I use as a convenient one to characterize the idea I would
represent. These men were but the chosen instruments in the hands of Him
who no doubt has ever ordered the course of affairs in the world, to
open up a new epoch in its history. The time was ripe--the men had been
moulded--and through them the free principles which had been culminating
through the ages, which had stirred the souls, animated the
imaginations, and quickened the desires of the best and noblest of the
race from its birth till now, were at last to find a resistless voice, a
limitless scope, an unrepressed expansion, on a new and magnificent
theatre. For freedom is of no time, nor clime, nor color, nor sect, nor
nationality. She is the