whom they had declared incapable of
performing the duties of citizens. It is not necessary, and therefore I
will not disgust you with the hideous picture of that state of things
which followed upon the prevalence of this blasphemous theory. The bare
mention that such an opinion prevailed would be sufficient to call up in
the mind, even of those who had never witnessed its operation, images of
the most sickening and revolting character. Under the iron reign of this
crushing sentiment, most of us who are assembled here to-day drew our
first breath, and sighed away the years of our youth. No hope cheered
us; no noble object looming in the dim and distant future kindled our
ambition. Oppression--cold, cheerless oppression, like the dreary region
of eternal winter,--chilled every noble passion and fettered and
paralyzed every arm. And if among the oppressed millions there were
found here and there one in whose bosom the last glimmer of a generous
passion was not yet extinguished--one, who, from the midst of inglorious
slumberers in the deep degradation around him, would lift up his voice
and demand those rights which the God of nature hath bestowed in equal
gift upon all His rational creatures, he was met at once, by those who
had at first denied and then enforced, with the stern reply that for him
and for all his race, liberty and expatriation are inseparable.

Dreadful as the alternative was, fearful as was the experiment now
proposed to be tried, there were hearts equal to the task; hearts which
quailed not at the dangers which loomed and frowned in the distance, but
calm, cool, and fixed in their purpose, prepared to meet them with the
watchword, "Give me liberty or give me death."

Passing by intermediate events, which, did the time allow, it would be
interesting to notice, we hasten to the grand event--the era of our
separate existence, when the American flag first flung out its graceful
folds to the breeze on the heights of Mesurado, and the pilgrims,
relying upon the protection of Heaven and the moral grandeur of their
cause, took solemn possession of the land in the name of Virtue,
Humanity, and Religion.

It would discover an unpardonable apathy were we to pass on without
pausing a moment to reflect upon the emotions which heaved the bosoms of
the pilgrims, when they stood for the first time where we now stand.
What a prospect spread out before them! They stood in the midst of an
ancient wilderness, rank and comp