Make New York a
second Carthage, and Boston a second Athens, and Philadelphia a second
Antioch, and Washington a second Rome, and we simply repeat the old
experiments. Did not the Romans have nearly all we have, materially,
except our modern scientific inventions?

But has America no higher destiny than to repeat the old experiments,
and improve upon them, and become rich and powerful? Has she no higher
and nobler mission? Can she lay hold of forces that the Old World never
had, such as will prevent the uniform doom of nations? I maintain that
there is no reason that can be urged, based on history and experience,
why she should escape the fate of the nations of antiquity, unless new
forces arise on this continent different from what the world has known,
and which have a conservative influence. If America has a great mission
to declare and to fulfil, she must put forth altogether new forces, and
these not material. And these alone will save her and save the world. It
is mournful to contemplate even the future magnificent material glories
of America if these are not to be preserved, if these are to share the
fate of ancient wonders. It is obvious that the real glory of America is
to be something entirely different from that of which the ancients
boasted. And this is to be moral and spiritual,--that which the
ancients lacked.

This leads me to speak of the moral consequences of the discovery of
America,--infinitely grander than any material wonders, of which the
world has been full, of which every form of paganism has boasted, which
nearly everywhere has perished, and which must necessarily perish
everywhere, without new forces to preserve them.

In a moral point of view scarcely anything good immediately resulted, at
least to Europe, by the discovery of America. It excited the wildest
spirit of adventure, the most unscrupulous cupidity, the most
demoralizing speculation. It created jealousies and wars. The cruelties
and injustices inflicted on the Indians were revolting. Nothing in the
annals of the world exceeds the wickedness of the Spaniards in the
conquest of Peru and Mexico. That conquest is the most dismal and least
glorious in human history. We see in it no poetry, or heroism, or
necessity; we read of nothing but its crimes. The Jesuits, in their
missionary zeal, partly redeemed the cruelties; but they soon imposed a
despotic yoke, and made their religion pay. Monopolies scandalously
increased, and the New World