CHAPTER V.

THE DECLARATION ASSERTS AN INDEPENDENT NATIONAL

LIFE.

"You will think me transported with enthusiasm; but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain the declaration; yet, through all the gloom, I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction.” —JOHN ADAMS.

"Jefferson poured the soul of the continent into the monumental act of Independence."-PRESIDENT STILES.

WRITTEN Words must represent facts or principles, or they are powerless. Many declarations of independence have been promulgated with great rhetorical display; but they have perished with the subsidence of passion and the men who gave them origin.

In like manner, a premature announcement of American independence would have brought only disgrace upon her suffering people, and ruin to her cause. The declaration could only be potential when sustained by great underlying realities. It was because the people of these colonies had sufficient reasons for separation from Great Britain; because Providence had allowed the institutions of tyranny to exert their legitimate influence on minds formed for a higher, nobler life; because, amid the mind-battles of more than a century, the shackles of the soul had been so far shaken off, that a real independence was felt and lived everywhere from Maine to Georgia, from the Atlantic sea-board to the Alleghanies; because God had led the people to real self-protection, and to all the high functions of government, that it was safe and right to make the declaration. Said Samuel Adams, "Is not America already independent? Why not, then, declare it?"