trol over their judgment and
their actions to insanity and fanaticism; and more than all,
fellow-citizens, if the purposes of fanatics and disunionists should be
accomplished, the patriotic and intelligent of our generation would seek
to hide themselves from the scorn of the world, and go about to find
dishonorable graves.

Fellow-citizens, take _courage_; be of _good cheer_. We shall come to no
such ignoble end. We shall live, and not die. During the period allotted
to our several lives, we shall continue to rejoice in the return of this
anniversary. The ill-omened sounds of fanaticism will be hushed; the
ghastly spectres of _Secession_ and _Disunion_ will disappear; and the
enemies of united constitutional liberty, if their hatred cannot be
appeased, may prepare to have their eyeballs seared as they behold the
steady flight of the American eagle, on his burnished wings, for years
and years to come.

President Fillmore, it is your singularly good fortune to perform an act
such as that which the earliest of your predecessors performed
fifty-eight years ago. You stand where he stood; you lay your hand on
the corner-stone of a building designed greatly to extend that whose
corner-stone he laid. Changed, changed is every thing around. The same
sun, indeed, shone upon his head which now shines upon yours. The same
broad river rolled at his feet, and bathes his last resting-place, that
now rolls at yours. But the site of this city was then mainly an open
field. Streets and avenues have since been laid out and completed,
squares and public grounds enclosed and ornamented, until the city which
bears his name, although comparatively inconsiderable in numbers and
wealth, has become quite fit to be the seat of government of a great
and united people.

Sir, may the consequences of the duty which you perform so auspiciously
to-day, equal those which flowed from his act. Nor this only; may the
principles of your administration, and the wisdom of your political
conduct, be such, as that the world of the present day, and all history
hereafter, may be at no loss to perceive what example you have made your
study.

Fellow-citizens, I now bring this address to a close, by expressing to
you, in the words of the great Roman orator, the deepest wish of my
heart, and which I know dwells deeply in the hearts of all who hear me:
"Duo modo haec opto; unum, UT MORIENS POPULUM ROMANUM LIBERUM RELINQUAM;
hoc mihi majus a diis immortalibus dari