O P ua i J tn George Davidson Professor of Geography University of California ORATION THE DEMOCRACY CITY AND COUNTY OF PHILADELPHIA, IN INDEPENDENCE SQUARE. BY DANIEL DOUGHERTY, ESQ. PHILADELPHIA: WILLIAM RICE. BOOK AND JOB PHI NT EH PENNSYLVANIA* BUILDING. 40 S. THIRD STREET. 1856. ORATION DELIVERED BEFORE THE DEMOCRACY OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF PHILADELPHIA, IN INDEPENDENCE SQUARE, BY DANIEL DOUGHERTY, ESQ. PHILADELPHIA: WILLIAM RIE, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, PENNSYLVANIAN BUILDING, 46 S. THIRD STREET. 1856. -ps > CORRESPONDENCE. PHILADELPHIA, July 9, 185G. DEAR SIR: The undersigned, your fellow-citizens, respectfully ask of you the favor of submitting a copy of your masterly Oration, delivered on the "Fourth," to the Democracy of Philadelphia, in Independence Square, for publication in pamphlet form, and we hope that you will have no hesitation in acceding to this request of Your friends, RICHARD VAUX, JOHN W. FORNEY, J. ROSS SNOWDEN, WILLIAM C. PATTERSON, WILLIAM BADGER, GEORGE II. MARTIN, JOSHUA T. OWENS. DANIEL DOUGHERTY, ESQ. S. E. Cor. Eighth and Locust Streets, ) July 10 1856. J GENTLEMEN: I cheerfully comply with your request, and send you the manuscript, though I am fully conscious it does not possess the merit which you assign it. Truly yours, DANIEL DOUGHERTY. To Messrs. Richard Vaux, John W. Forney, J. Ross Snowden, William C. Patterson, Wm. Badger, Geo. II. Martin, and Joshua T. Owens. M29OL93 ORATION. THERE are a few spots about the earth, some separated by seas and distant thousands of leagues from others, which the voice of the world has proclaimed holy, and around which the memories of mankind will cling with everlasting reverence. Such is Sinai, where God proclaimed to man the rules of human action. Such, too, is Calvary, where, amid the darkness of the sun, the rocking of the earth, and the rising of the dead, the Saviour died, even as the portals of heaven opened. After these, sanctified by the Divine Presence, may be men tioned Marathon, where the dauntless soldiers of glorious Greece achieved the liberty of Athens, and won imperishable renown. Runnymead, where the English barons wrung from a tyrant king the Magna Charta. The Pilgrim s Rock, where the found ers of New England sought a shelter from the religious persecu tions of the Old World. The quiet town of St. Mary s, where religious freedom first found a foothold in the new. And that other spot the spot that made this day immortal, where, Pallas-like, a new-born nation sprung into giant life where man reclaimed his long lost prerogatives, and asserted the justice of heaven in his own equality where freedom made her last and noblest stand against the encroachments of time-covered 6 and world-cursed tyranny where the great work was begun in which Americans will ever toil and never tire, until wrong is righted, every throne levelled with the dust, oppression swept from the earth, the world regenerated, and mankind free. Upon this hallowed spot, this heaven-smiling morn, we meet to bow our heads and hearts in humble adoration to the Almighty Power, on whom we relied in the hour of our extremest need, and whose protecting care we implore, now in the day of our abundance to reaffirm our never dying gratitude to our departed fathers to renew the holy vows of political equality, and declare our fixed resolve to transmit unimpaired, to posterity, the inesti mable heritage bequeathed to us. When first through chaos rolled the voice of God, "Let there be light, and there was light;" when the Omnipotent spoke, and this beautiful world, obedient, sprung into its fixed existence then in the image of his Maker with a soul that shall never die, "In beauty clad, With health in every vein, And reason throned upon his brow, Stepped forth immortal man." Yes; for man, God called forth the new created world, and gave to him and his posterity, perpetual " dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth." Thus, to the morning of creation, to the threshold of time, to God himself, can man trace back the title of his nobility. It was the divine economy that all men should stand forth erect and free, bound as one people in the ties of endless brother hood, each striving for the general good, the earth bountifully yielding her luscious fruits, all created things subject to their Control, and they to God alone. But man, though clothed with an eternity of bliss, listened to the voice of the tempter, yielded and fell from his high estate, "Brought death into the world, and all our woe." The designs of heaven were thwarted fierce contention and inveterate hate usurped the seat of love -justice affrighted, fled crime mocked at mercy might triumphed over right custom sanctioned wrong, and man became a slave to do the bidding of his master. And thus through thousands of years the innumera ble hosts that spread themselves over the world, formed in the same mould with us, of the same majestic presence, with minds to ponder, and hearts to feel, and arms to strike, bowed their heads in abject submission to succeeding tyrants, and made their existence but to live, labor and die. Open the pages of history, trace back the course of empire even to Egypt, Assyria and Babylon, whence it is lost in the twi light of fable, and what is it but a story of uncounted and never- ending wrongs? Does history describe, in glowing language, the pursuits of prosperous people ? How governments spoke by the voice of the governed? How justice and equality reigned supreme in coun cil? How virtue was respected the domestic ties regarded merit and mind the only steps to distinction, while peace, with its attendant blessings, crowned a happy world ? Ah, no ! It tells how nations rose by conquest to renown, and sunk by servility to oblivion. How oppression, despotism and cruelty covered the earth. How generation after generation, century after century, mankind were stripped of every preroga tive, and robbed of every right, while wars waged for mad ambi tion, shook the earth, and sent their shrieks along the sky. History, with minutest skill, describes a man, miscalled mon arch. The millions are forgotten. It fills chapters in narrating the prowess of the victor. The people are never named save to tell the number of the slain, or captives chained to the chariot wheels to grace the triumph of the conquerer. Liberty became a homeless wanderer through the world. True, for a time, she flashed her glories over Greece. In after years, she dimly shone along the plains of Italy, and over the waters of the Adriatic. She sought the Alpine hills of Switzer land, and where er she rested for a day, her presence shed joy and gladness, but never found a fast and fitting home. Thus oppression spread its iron sway over a prostrate world. Each century served but to rivet the tighter, and shackle the stronger the will and might of enslaved man. His mind, his very soul was not his own. If he but breathed the name of country, the tyrant called it treason, and struck his head from off his body. To worship his God was to mount from the funeral pile through the flames of martyrdom to heaven. But even then, in the darkest hour, the high court of eternal justice decreed the liberation of mankind and the doom of its oppressors. The curtain of the deep was drawn aside, and beyond the blue waves that dashed their white spray upon Europe s shore, far away towards the setting sun, lo ! a continent appears ! where nature herself assumes a grander air, and speaks in sublimer tones the wonders of the Deity, Here, on the unpolluted soil of America, a bright existence w r as to dawn upon down-trodden man here should he assume the authority delegated to him in Paradise here should the big waters of a people s might be let loose, and in the great flood of freedom perish the last vestige of governmental wrong. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the religious strifes, the civil broils and bloody wars that made Europe one Golgotha, served to scatter along these eastern shores a brave and hardy people, who, in a common hatred of oppression, for- got the differences of country, race and religion, to rejoice in the native liberty of the new-found land. Such was the people appointed to carry out the great work of man s political regeneration such the people whom heaven decreed should fight the great battle on which was staked the freedom or slavery of the world. And, to make the victory grander, they were matched against the mighty power that claimed jurisdiction over earth and sea who boasted her banner played in every breeze that the sun never sunk on her possessions that her arms were invincible, and her name the synonym of victory. The people of the American colonies accepted the high trust delegated to them. It was not for themselves they fought it was for their children s children to the remotest posterity ; it was for the cause of freedom all over the world. Everything considered, they were as favorably circumstanced as any people. They groaned under no galling yoke of oppres sion no wail of woe sent a shudder through the land they were not compelled to stand abashed beneath the gaze of a superior, or brook the presence of a master. They were the favorites of the mother country, had their collonial assemblies, and made their local laws. They enjoyed personal security and private property. But the hour had arrived when a pernicious principle was to be crushed, lest it might enslave their children. They denied the right of a distant parliament to legislate for them. They refused to compromise an eternal truth. They were willing to spend " millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute." Rather than submit to the Stamp Act, they were ready to bleed. Sooner than yield to the encroachments of a king, they were prepared to die. In yonder venerated Hall they deliberated and decided. Upon this immortal spot they startled the tyrants of the earth from their long sleep of security, by the declaration of a principle 2 10 never before successfully asserted since the fall of Adam, that liberty and equality were the birthright of all men, and linked inseparably! to their nature. They declared that these were colonies no longer, but sovereign States, and with the approving smiles of God, should continue so forever. How they met the shock of arms, history delights to tell; what they suffered, will ever be the theme of speech and story. Through five long and dreary years, enduring hardships of the severest kind, frequently without the necessaries of life, they bore themselves as freedom s soldiers alone could do. Though many were the acts of cruelty which disgraced the British arms and cried aloud for vengeance, yet they chained their just resent ments, and no cruel or ignoble act stained the pure record. But one traitor dimmed the glory of their arms. Even when defeat followed defeat, and despair seemed to cover their cause, con fiding alone in heaven, they clung as brothers to each other, until the tyrant s hordes shrunk from our shores to leave the land forever free. Oh, Americans ! my countrymen ! how deep and profound is the debt of gratitude we owe the men of 76. How our hearts should swell with emotion at the bare mention of their honored names, and our lives be devoted to the preservation of their priceless boon. Yet even now, when the last of that noble race still lingers in our midst when the forms of many still live in our recollection when that Hall stands untouched by time, there are Americans degenerate sons cursed with ingratitude; "the marble-hearted fiend," who would desecrate the memories of the dead, destroy the happiness of the living, and wither the hopes of the future, by dashing aside as a worthless toy, that which was achieved at the price of rivers of blood and mountains of slain. To have stopped with the Revolution, would have been to risk if not to have lost all. Perhaps, for a time, we might have been 11 spared a foreign yoke ; but internal differences and domestic jeal ousies would have engendered conflicts that might end again in monarchy. The struggle had been severe the victory grand; to have risked the prize would have been an insult to heaven, a crime against humanity. Therefore, the American fathers met in council to establish a lasting peace where they had met to wage a glorious war. Even in Independence Hall the representatives of the old thirteen States, headed by Washington, in a spirit of mutual concession and lofty patriotism, dictated the sacred instrument that makes us one people, enabling us to guard with jealous care the rights of the humblest citizen at home, and maintain the nation s honor against an embattled world. Mark its language, and contrast it with the documents of kings : "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." And may that Constitution, and every letter and line, be pre served unaltered and untouched, and the blessings of liberty shall endure until the earth shall crumble, and the stars be plucked forever from the sky. Then, for the first time, a government was formed that derived its just powers from the consent of the governed. Liberty achieved, Independence acknowledged, the Constitution adopted, the United States took her place in the Olympian race, to contend with the nation for the prize of pre-eminence. The titled minions of the earth scoffed aloud at what they con ceived to be a chimera of Democracy, but soon a look of dread came o er them as they beheld rising the magnificent reality. 12 In the short space of time, spanned by a single life, as if by "the touch of the enchanter s wand," the people have built a government, before which the mightiest realms of the earth pale their splendors as do the stars of night before the refulgent glory of the coming day. Population has increased from three to thirty millions. Instead of thirteen, thirty-one stars now shine in the clear blue of this glorious flag. The multitudinous pursuits of enlightened life are cultivated to their highest pitch. The press is mighty and free. Peace and contentment smile alike around the poor man s hearth and the rich man s hall. Education scat ters its priceless gift to every home in the land. Religion gathers around its altars the faithful of every creed. Statesmen have arisen ^fit to govern all the world and rule it when tis wild est." Orators have appeared who have rivalled the great masters of antiquity. The doors of the American Parthenon are ever open to invite the humble, but aspiring youth, to enter and fill the loftiest niche. The highest dignity is within the grasp of all ; for the lowly boy, born and reared in our own sweet valley of Cum berland, shall, when the spring comes round again, be clothed by the people with the first of mortal honors that of guiding for a time the American Republic upon her highway of glory. The European emigrants leave their native fields for the American forests, and soon become life-long devoted to the country that adopts them as her own. Commerce, with its golden chains, links our shores with the farthest corners of the earth. The Alleghenies are climbed by the steam-car, or dashed aside to make way for the channel upon which trade floats her inland argosies. The American advances westward, and the wilderness falls, and on its ruins rise splendid cities and cultivated fields. He reaches the broad river, and soon its glassy surface is cleft by a thousand keels. He strikes the quarry, and the white marble comes forth to beautify cities, and to be chiseled into monuments to com- 13 memorate the mighty deeds of the nation, and to transmit to pos terity the features of the great. He perforates the mountain, and drags to the sunlight the exhaustible treasures of its mines. He searches the stream, and behold ! its waters run bright with shining gold. The metallic rod is raised aloft, and the storm is robbed of its terrors ; the wires are thrown about the land, and the lightning leaps to do our bidding. Our statesmen dictate new rules for the peace of nations and freedom of the seas. Our soldiers may they never fight but in a righteous cause have planted our banner in triumph upon foreign strands. Our sailors land upon the shores of Japan, and its gates are open the first time for centuries. The sun of American Republicanism looms proudly up in the Western sky, and shedding back its rays over the darkened plains of the Old World, beholds the millions rising and preparing to demand a restoration of their natal rights. Europe already quakes to its centre with the throes of a gigantic revolution. It may be stifled for years, perhaps for generations, but it will come as sure as the day follows the night. The people are thinking. Education is being diffused among the masses. Intolerance is departing; the Irish Catholic is emancipated; and the Protestant worships in his chapel beneath the shadow of the Vatican. Ireland, Poland, Hungary and Italy, have raised aloft the angry arm of rebellion. It has been stricken to their side by treachery, but the life-blood still warms its veins, and feeds it with strength for another and successful blow. France has twice burst into a flame ; the flame again is smothered, but the fire still burns. In England, the Chartists gather a hundred thousand strong on Kennington Common to petition parliament for univer sal suffrage, and the press thunders at the throne the demand, that England s councils and England s arms shall be led by men of mind, not those whose only merit is titled blood. 14 These, these are the fruits of the seed sown in the soil beneath our feet. These are the achievements wrought by the people they alone who really rule by "Divine right," and are the " Lord s annointed." Our past is but a life a day in history. Our future when all over this broad continent our institutions shall have peace fully extended each year new States rising and rushing to join the happy throng sister republics seeking the shelter of our flag a hundred millions of freemen speaking the same language, and obeying the same laws! 0! to sketch the future of our beloved country, would require the pen of an angel dipped in etherial fire ! Should not a contemplation of these things make our hearts leap beyond the barriers of party, to link in love all who claim America as their home and acknowledge allegiance to the Con stitution ? But how intense our delight, how unbounded our joy, who can this day proudly boast that we are a part and portion of the De mocracy of America, the instruments with which heaven has worked these blessed changes in the past, and to whom alone is intrusted our country s mission in the future. Let our aim be to smooth down the asperities of party feeling to frown upon the turbulent spirits who seek to widen the political differences of the people. Let our hearts expand with an enlarged patriotism. Let us respect the opinions of others, and seek to win them to our side by the dear memories which cluster around this holy spot. As each grave political question presents itself for our conside ration, let us weigh it in the scales with Democracy and the Con stitution ; if it balance with these, let our every effort be devoted to its triumph ; if not, let us wage honorable war against it until we have accomplished its destruction. Let the "Farewell Ad dress" be reverenced by us, and our children be taught to obey 15 its sacred injunctions. Let us not be tempted to our fall by the demon of discord, who seeks, Lucifer-like, to have us driven from this political paradise or if you do "Let me prophesy, The blood of Americans shall manure the ground, And future ages groan for this foul act ; Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels, And in this seat of peace, tumultuous wars Shall kin with kin, and kind with kind confound; Disorder, horror, fear and mutiny, Shall here inhabit, and this land be call d The field of Golgotha, and dead men s sculls ; ! if you rear this house against this house, It will the wofullest division prove That ever fell upon this cursed earth ; Prevent, resist it, let it not be so, Lest child, child s children cry against you woe!" But confiding in the principles of Democracy, cherishing as holy the Constitution of our common country like to the Pontic sea no rather let me say like our own Mississippi, whose waters indissolubly link the North and the South together the American Union, unchecked by a returning flood, shall flow forever on through the countless ages of the future until it, with all, is lost in the great gulf of eternity. IH UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. Fine schedule: 25 cents on first day overdue 50 cents on fourth day overdue day overdue. SEP 17 1947 51967 1 1 IN STACKE 18197S 6 SEP 2 5 1367 SEP 9 67-lAl LOAN DEPTJ JUN l 1978 MAY IN STACKp IBCD cmc nail 1 * - pert JAM ! LD 21-100m-12, 46(A2012sl6)4120 Manufactured by IGAYLORD BROS. Inc. Syracuse, N. Y. Stockton, Calif. M290193 , P5- THE UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY