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PREFACE.

THE design of this compilation is to present a sheaf of ripened grain grown on American soil; to include the noblest specimens of the learning, and eloquence, and wisdom, and patriotism of those who, by the judgment of their own time and the concurrent verdict of posterity have been recognized as the foremost men and the clearest thinkers in the growing state. Such sheaves have been garnered before. But the later events, hardly yet rounded into completeness, furnish to the reaper a broader field, upturned by the tillage of war, whence has sprung a new harvest of glorious and abounding grain not less precious than that oft reaped before. This work has naturally classified itself into three parts: the first including papers which illustrate the formative period of the nation's history-culminating in the Revolution; the second, those produced in a time, not at all of inaction, but of vigorous and healthful yet of peaceful development; the third, those poured forth in hot and tumultuous haste, blazing with patriotic fire, when the Rebellion was earthquake, and tempest, and pestilence in one. Following the papers in the chronological order of their arrangement, one may trace in the first period the progress of public thought; the hope and wish that wrongs might be righted within the pale of the colonial system; doubts of success ripening into conviction that separation was imperative; lofty purpose culminating in the Declaration of Independence; the period closing with the glorious sunset of the great commander. Guided by no such sequence of ideas and events in the second period, we simply include several of its historic papers, matchless in eloquence and wisdom. In the third period, recognizing the fact that the real cause of strife was the cancer of Human Slavery, we have arranged, also in the order of time, papers which illustrate the growth of public opinion; the enlightenment of the public conscience;

the courage of those who protested against wrong, in the teeth of bitter denunciation; the grand uprising of the nation, when War, full panɔplied, sprang into the arena, and the sword was ung into the oscillating scales; the prudent, faithful, godlike words of the people's President the voice that cried, "Let the oppressed go free"; the agony that rent the land when the assassin's bullet pierced at once the nation's head and the people's heart; the requiems for the martyred President; and finally, the philosophic reviews of the nation's life, completing the fuli measure of a century's existence. Beginning, then, with the first · papers of this volume, and reading thoughtfully and carefully, in the order given, with such collaterals as time and circumstances may offer, the reader as he closes the book will discover that he has perused an Epitome of the first century of American History. And the most impressive lesson of these pages, having its germs in the very earliest, with illustrations and enforcements in every other, formulated an hundred times, in terms the most logical, the most authoritative, the most eloquent, the most impassioned; emphasized by the thunder of cannon, and sanctified by the blood of heroes and martyrs—is that these United States of America, were, and are, and must remain, not an aggregate of provinces, but One People-a Nation.

NEW YORK, June 1, 1880.

S. H. P.

PERIOD FIRST.

FOUNDATION.

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!
Humanity, with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang. what hammers beat.
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
Tis of the wave and not the rocks
'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee,-are all with thee!

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

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AMERICAN PATRIOTISM.

PROTEST OF BOSTON AGAINST TAXATION.

SAMUEL ADAMS.

Boston, May 24, 1764.

To Royal Tyler, James Otis, Thomas Cushing, and Oxenbridge Thacher, Esquires:

GENTLEMEN-Your being chosen by the freeholders and inhabitants of the Town of Boston to represent them in the General Assembly the ensuing year, affords you the strongest testimony of that confidence which they place in your integrity and capacity. By this choice they have delegated to you the power of acting in their public concerns in general as your own prudence shall direct you, always reserving to themselves the constitutional right of expressing their mind, and giving you such instructions upon particular matters as they at any time shall judge proper.

We therefore, your constituents, take this opportunity to declare our just expectations from you, that you will constantly use your power and influence in maintaining the valuable rights and privileges of the province, of which this town is so great a part, as well those rights which are derived to us by the royal charter, as those which being prior to and independent of it, we hold essentially as free-born subjects of Great Britain.

That you will endeavor, as far as you shall be able, to preserve that independence in the House of Representatives which characterizes a free people, and the want of which may in a great measure prevent the happy efforts of a free government; cultivating as you shall have opportunity that harmony and union there which is ever desirable to good men, which is founded on principles of virtue and public spirit, and guarding against any undue weight which may tend to disadjust that critical balance upon which our happy constitution and the blessings of it do depend. And for this purpose we particularly recommend it to you to use your endeavors to have a law passed, whereby the seats of such gentlemen as shall accept of posts of

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