Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/101

 CURTIS

It has freed the Russian serfs. It has united Germany against ecclesiastical despotism. It has flashed into the night of Spain. It has eman- cipated Italy and discrowned the pope as king. In England, repealing the disabilities of Catholic and Hebrew, it forecasts the separation of Church and State, and step by step trans- forms monarchy into another form of republic.

And here at home, how glorious its story ! In a tremendous war between men of the same blood — men who recognize and respect each other's valor — we have proved what was always doubted : the prodigious power, endurance and resources of a republic; and in emancipating an eighth of the population we have at last gained the full opportunity of the republican principle. Sir, it is the signal felicity of this occasion that on the one hundredth anniversary of the first battle of the war of American independence, I may salute you, who led to victory the citizen sol- diers of American liberty, as the first elected president of the free Republic of the United States. Fortunate man! to whom God has given the priceless boon of associating your name with that triumph of freedom which will present- ly bind the East and the West, the North and the South, in a closer and more perfect union for the establishment of justice and the security of the blessings of liberty than these States have ever known.

Fellow citizens, that union is the lofty task which this hallowed day and this sacred spot 75

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