The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1863-12-04
ADDRESS OF MR.. BEECHER,

Rev. Mr.. Beec',er, On pre- enting him
self, was received with great enthusiasm,
the gentlemen cheering and the ladies ex-
pressing their pleasure by waving their
lily white handkerchiefs He said that he
accepted their congratulations with un-
feigned pleasure and gratitude. They
would never know how sweet it was to be
praised by ones own cOuntrymen until
they were banished for time from it and
stood among those who on every side dis
liked American institutions and ideas. 1t
required no courage, as it required no re-
ward, to have stood for American ideas
upon British soil and if he had found no
word of welcome, he still should have
been abundantly paid in the approval of
saying something for liberty and the land
that enshrined it in her very institutions.
(Applause.) He was honored by them to-
night, not because be was simply an AMIR
ican citizen, but because he had been
made to be representative of American
ideas, and their reception of him was a
testimony of the value which they put up
on them it was a renewed witness and
confession on their part of the inestimable
value of these principles in which our in
stitutions were radicated, and for which
we were now at war, and for which VT
were held up as spectacle before men
and angels.
AS American ideas were to act an I'M
pOrtant part in the future, it would be well
to consider what they were as distinguished
from European ideas They should not be
looked for in any material prosperity of
this great people. Our climate, soil, mines,
rivers and harbors were happy accidents
We had nothing to do in making them,
but only in inheriting their blessings Our
industry and wealth were more nearly re-
lated to US, but they did not distinguish us
from other nations. Our mechanic arts,
discoveries and ingenuities did not charac-
terize US, but We must look for American
ideas, as distinguished from European,
nearer to the sources of our national life
They were the radical ideas held by us, in
cOrpOrated into society and into civil gov
ernment-radieal ideas of the nature of
man, of the nature of his rights, and Of the
nature OF the society which he FORMS
Americans held to the liberty, civil and
personal, of the individual man. 1t was
not right, but necessity. With less
than liberty: man was less than man
and was man as God thought of him when
He meant to create him, only when he has
been thoroughly developed and rounded
out in all his members in the atmosphere
of liberty. This was seminal point of
American Institutions, and from that
avowed principle, fundamental to the ma
ture of man and derived historically and
philosophically from the teachings of Chris
tianity, sprung the first governments.
which were deduced legitimately and loei.
cally from the foregoing principle. Spring.
ing from that idea of human rights belong
ing to the individual, was the great
American doctrine that civil society must
be organized so as to secure and to defend
the rights and the attributes of its individ-
nal citizens; that State was strong in the
degree in which its private citizens were
strong; and that the State was weak in
proportion as its integral parts were de-
prived of liberty. The European doctrine
in the main made the State strong through
its government; the American idea made
the State strong through its governed
members. The third American idea was,
that civil governments derived their powers
directly from the citizens, and they were to
be held directly responsible to the people
for the exercise of those powers. The we'll
being of society and government, accord
ing TO these views, demanded that the peo-
pie shall become moral and intellectual,
educated so as both to know what things
were best and wisest, and how they should
be secured and maintained. Those were
American ideas, not because we discov-
cred them. hut simply because we adopted