Beadle's Dime National Speaker, Embodying Gems of Oratory and Wit, Particularly Adapted to American Schools and Firesides: Speaker Series Number 2, Revised and Enlarged Edition
General
Beadle's Dime National Speaker, Embodying Gems of Oratory and Wit, Particularly Adapted to American Schools and Firesides: Speaker Series Number 2, Revised and Enlarged Edition
Recitations
year, has sunk more deeply into the hearts of his countrymen.
OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE.--_Edward Everett's Oration at the Webster Statue
Inauguration_, 1860.
What else is there, in the material system of the world, so wonderful
as this concealment of the Western Hemisphere for ages behind the
mighty vail of waters? How could such a secret be kept from the
foundation of the world till the end of the fifteenth century? What
so astonishing as the concurrence, within less than a century, of the
invention of printing, the demonstration of the true system of the
heavens, and this great world-discovery? What so mysterious as the
dissociation of the native tribes of this continent from the civilized
and civilizable races of man? What so remarkable, in political
history, as the operation of the influences, now in conflict, now in
harmony, under which the various nations of the old world sent their
children to occupy the new; great populations silently stealing into
existence; the wilderness of one century swarming in the next with
millions; ascending the streams, crossing the mountains, struggling
with a wild hard nature, with savage foes, with rival settlements of
foreign powers, but ever onward, onward? What so propitious as this
long colonial training in the school of chartered government? and
then, when the fullness of time had come, what so majestic, amidst all
its vicissitudes and all its trials, as the Grand Separation--mutually
beneficial in its final results to both parties--the dread appeal to
arms, that venerable Continental Congress, the august Declaration,
the strange alliance of the oldest monarchy of Europe with the Infant
Republic? And, lastly, what so worthy the admiration of men and
angels as the appearance of him the expected--him the Hero--raised
up to conduct the momentous conflict to its auspicious issue in the
Confederation, the Union, the Constitution?
Is this a theme not unworthy of the pen and the mind of Webster?
Then consider the growth of the country, thus politically ushered
into existence and organized under that Constitution, as delineated
in his address on the laying the corner-stone of the extension of
the Capitol--the thirteen colonies that accomplished the Revolution
multiplied to thirty-two independent States, a single one of them
exceeding in population the old thirteen; the narrow border of
settlement along the coast, fenced in by France and the native tribes,
expanded to the dimensions of the continent; Louisiana, Florida,
Texas, New Mexico, California, Oregon--territories equal to the
great monarchies of Europe--added to the Union; and the two millions
of population which fired the imagination of Burke, swelled to
twenty-four millions, during the lifetime of Mr. Webster, and in seven
short years, which have since elapsed, increased to thirty!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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