Men heard that eloquence in 1776, in that manifold and mighty appeal by the genius and wisdom of that new America, to persuade the people to take on the name of nation, and begin its life. By how many pens and tongues that great pleading was conducted; through how many months before the date of the actual Declaration, it went on, day after day; in how many forms, before how many assemblies, from the village newspaper, the more careful pamphlet, the private conversation, the town-meeting, the legislative bodies of particular colonies, up to the hall of the immortal old Congress, and the master intelligences of lion heart and eagle eye, that ennobled it,--all this you know. But the leader in that great argument was John Adams, of Massachusetts. He, by concession of all men, was the orator of that Revolution,--the Revolution in which a nation was born. Other and renowned names, by written or spoken eloquence, coöperated effectively, splendidly, to the grand result,--Samuel Adams, Samuel Chase, Jefferson, Henry James Otis in an earlier stage. Each of these, and a hundred more, within circles of influence wider or narrower, sent forth, scattering broadcast, the seed of life in the ready virgin soil. Each brought some specialty of gift to the work: Jefferson, the magic of style, and the habit and the power of delicious dalliance with those large, fair ideas of freedom and equality, so dear to man, so irresistible in that day; Henry, the indescribable and lost spell of the speech of the emotions, which fills the eye, chills the blood, turns the cheek pale,--the lyric phase of eloquence, the "fire-water," as Lamartine has said, of the Revolution, instilling into the sense and the soul the sweet madness of battle; Samuel Chase, the tones of anger, confidence, and pride, and the art to inspire them. John Adams's eloquence alone seemed to have met every demand of the time; as a question of right, as a question of prudence, as a question of immediate opportunity, as a question of feeling, as a question of conscience, as a question of historical and durable and innocent glory, he knew it all through and through; and in that mighty debate, which, beginning in Congress as far back as March or February; 1776, had its close on the second and on the fourth of July, he presented it in all its aspects, to every passion and affection,--to the burning sense of wrong, exasperated at length beyond control by the shedding of blood; to grief, anger, self-respect; to the desire of happiness and of safety; to the sense of moral obligation, commanding that the duties of life are more than life; to courage, which fears God, and knows no other fear; to the craving of the colonial heart, of all hearts, for the reality and the ideal of country, and which cannot be filled unless the dear native land comes to be breathed on by the grace, clad in the robes, armed with the thunders, admitted an equal to the assembly of the nations; to that large and heroical ambition