which grew up in the fulness of time into thirteen and at last into twenty-four States, from their respective beginnings to the War of Independence, is full of interest and instruction, for whatever purpose or in whatever way you choose to read it. But there is one point of view in which, if you will look at the events which furnished the matter of that colonial history, I think you will agree with me that they assume a character of peculiar interest, and entitle themselves to distinct and profound consideration. I regard those events altogether as forming a vast and various series of influences, —a long, austere, effective course of discipline and instruction,—by which the settlers and their children were slowly and painfully trained to achieve their independence, to form their constitutions of State governments and of federal government, and to act usefully and greatly their part as a separate political community on the high places of the world. The Colonial period, as I regard it, was the charmed, eventful infancy.and youth of our national life. The revolutionary and constitutional age, from 1775 to 1789, was the beginning of its manhood. The Declaration of Independence, the succeeding conduct of the War of Independence, the establishment of our local and general governments, and the splendid national career since run,—these are only effects, fruits, outward manifestations! The seed was sown, the salient living spring of great action sunk deep in that long, remote, less brilliant, less regarded season,—the heroic age of America that preceded. The Revolution was the meeting of the rivers at the mountain. You may look there, to see them rend it asunder, tear it down from its summit to its base, and pass off to the sea. But the Colonial period is the country above, where the rivers were created. You must explore that region if you would find the secret fountains where they began their course, the contributory streams by which they grew, the high lands covered with woods, which, attracting the vapors as they floated about them, poured down rain and melted snow to swell their currents, and helped onward the momentum by which they broke through the walls of nature and shook the earth itself to its centre! One of our most accomplished scholars and distinguished public men speaks somewhere of the “Miracle of the Revolution.” I would say rather that 4
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=