hold that the place is not
undistinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was
fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and
importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that
infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from maternal lips, and
that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the
recollections which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here,
and be proud, in the midst of its toil. We wish that, in those days of
disaster, which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come
upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be
assured that the foundations of our national power are still strong. We
wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of
so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all
minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally,
that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore,
and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which
shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it
rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest
light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its
summit.

We live in a most extraordinary age. Events so various and so important
that they might crowd and distinguish centuries are, in our times,
compressed within the compass of a single life. When has it happened
that history has had so much to record, in the same term of years, as
since the 17th of June, 1775? Our own Revolution, which, under other
circumstances, might itself have been expected to occasion a war of half
a century, has been achieved; twenty-four sovereign and independent
States erected; and a general government established over them, so safe,
so wise, so free, so practical, that we might well wonder its
establishment should have been accomplished so soon, were it not for the
greater wonder that it should have been established at all. Two or three
millions of people have been augmented to twelve, the great forests of
the West prostrated beneath the arm of successful industry, and the
dwellers on the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi become the
fellow-citizens and neighbors of those who cultivate the hills of New
England.[4] We have a commerce, that leaves no sea unexplored; navies,
which take no law from superior force; revenues, ade