Before man made us citizens, great nature made us free.--_Lowell._
I must have liberty, withal as large a charter as the wind, to blow on whom I please.--_As You Like It._
Three great sea voyages have had greater influence upon the history and progress of the human race than any event which has happened since the birth of Christ. The history of these voyages and their consequences is the history of our country. Columbus, the inspired mariner of Genoa, with a sublime courage almost without a parallel in history, set sail; himself sailing into immortality, his caravels opening a pathway through the unknown seas, until guided by propitious stars and favoring winds they anchored at the gateway of the greatest continent of the earth. A country compared to which, "the promised land flowing with milk and honey," is but a beggar's pittance. A country upon whose shores the tides of two great oceans ebb and flow; a country whose mountains are filled with silver and gold, with coal and with iron, and whose fertile valleys are threaded by the grandest network of navigable rivers on the globe; a country with almost every variety of climate, of fruit and of flower; this is the gem which Columbus snatched from the sea.
But a country reserved for the representatives of every variety of the human race. Old superstitions, old tyrannies and old despotisms perished with the nations that they could not save. What though for a few centuries the ghosts of these departing spirits did haunt our shores, they could not stand before that advancing host of freemen, every one of whom bore a scepter and wore a crown.
But the best that the heart felt and the mind conceived in those civilizations which flourished on the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile, the shores of the Mediterranean, at Athens, and on the banks of the Tiber, was embalmed and transmitted through the centuries to find here the only soil in which it could have development and growth.
Again the horizon is whitened by a sail. Not the caravels of Columbus, but the Mayflower, bearing the Pilgrim Fathers and the germs of our Republican institutions. Fleeing from oppression beyond the sea, coming to dwell in the wilderness, with old Plymouth Rock for their cathedral, their music the restless murmur of the sea, while the scene is lighted by the lamps of heaven, the Pilgrim Fathers married Civil and Religious Liberty to our country forever.