kindred names, with kindred
blood! From the broad savannas of the South, from the newer regions of
the West, from amidst the hundreds of thousands of men of Eastern origin
who cultivate the rich valley of the Genesee or live along the chain of
the Lakes, from the mountains of Pennsylvania, and from the thronged
cities of the coast, welcome, welcome! Wherever else you may be
strangers, here you are all at home. You assemble at this shrine of
liberty, near the family altars at which your earliest devotions were
paid to Heaven, near to the temples of worship first entered by you, and
near to the schools and colleges in which your education was received.
You come hither with a glorious ancestry of liberty. You bring names
which are on the rolls of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. You come,
some of you, once more to be embraced by an aged Revolutionary father,
or to receive another, perhaps a last, blessing, bestowed in love and
tears, by a mother, yet surviving to witness and to enjoy your
prosperity and happiness.

But if family associations and the recollections of the past bring you
hither with greater alacrity, and mingle with your greeting much of
local attachment and private affection, greeting also be given, free and
hearty greeting, to every American citizen who treads this sacred soil
with patriotic feeling, and respires with pleasure in an atmosphere
perfumed with the recollections of 1775! This occasion is respectable,
nay, it is grand, it is sublime, by the nationality of its sentiment.
Among the seventeen millions of happy people who form the American
community, there is not one who has not an interest in this monument, as
there is not one that has not a deep and abiding interest in that which
it commemorates.

Woe betide the man who brings to this day's worship feeling less than
wholly American! Woe betide the man who can stand here with the fires of
local resentments burning, or the purpose of fomenting local jealousies
and the strifes of local interests festering and rankling in his heart!
Union, established in justice, in patriotism, and the most plain and
obvious common interest,--union, founded on the same love of liberty,
cemented by blood shed in the same common cause,--union has been the
source of all our glory and greatness thus far, and is the ground of
all our highest hopes. This column stands on Union. I know not that it
might not keep its position, if the American Union, in the mad conflict