ciples set out in the Declaration of
Independence were new; they are older than the Christian religion, or
Greek philosophy, nor was it because history is made by proclamation or
declaration; history is made only by action. But it was an historic day
because the representatives of three millions of people there vocalized
Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill, which gave notice to the world
that they were acting, and proposed to act, and to found an independent
nation, on the theory that "all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The wonder and
glory of the American people is not the ringing declaration of that day,
but the action, then already begun, and in the process of being carried
out in spite of every obstacle that war could interpose, making the
theory of freedom and equality a reality. We revere that day because it
marks the beginnings of independence, the beginnings of a constitution
that was finally to give universal freedom and equality to all American
citizens, the beginnings of a government that was to recognize beyond
all others the power and worth and dignity of man. There began the first
of governments to acknowledge that it was founded on the sovereignty of
the people. There the world first beheld the revelation of modern
democracy.

Democracy is not a tearing-down; it is a building-up. It is not a denial
of the divine right of kings; it supplements that claim with the
assertion of the divine right of all men. It does not destroy; it
fulfils. It is the consummation of all theories of government, to the
spirit of which all the nations of the earth must yield. It is the great
constructive force of the ages. It is the alpha and omega of man's
relation to man, the beginning and the end. There is and can be no more
doubt of the triumph of democracy in human affairs, than there is of the
triumph of gravitation in the physical world; the only question is how
and when. Its foundation lays hold upon eternity.

These are some of the ideals that the founders of our institutions
expressed, in part unconsciously, on that momentous day now passed by
one hundred and forty years. They knew that ideals do not maintain
themselves. They knew that they there declared a purpose which would be
resisted by the forces, on land and sea, of the mightiest empire of the
earth. Without the resolution of the p