The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1876-07-19

IL required, IN the beginnings as 1t
does now, heroism of brain as we'll
as body-men like Samuel Adams,
who never held any Office but presi-
dent Of the town meeting, but who
with this potential and only body of
deliberation of the colonists, watched
and waited, and finally outwitted the
coroneted parliament of Great Britain.
Men like John Ballard, who, over.
hearing one of the governors grooms
say, "there will be hell to pay for the
Americans tomorrow" left on the in.
slant and went to send Paul Revere on
his famous ride, so that next day when
the red-coats did move, patriots sprang
up like fabled myrmidons from be-
hind tree and fence,-dropped from
the clouds, rose out Of the ground, it
seemed to the astonished Britons, un-
til they fled before the minute-men of
Concord and Middlesex, as sands be-
fore the Simoom of the desert. Men
who could frame the very best govern
ment of the centuries, and at the same
time keep on fighting and MAX
ing love through Bunker Hill and
Long Island, Princeton, Trenton, and
Saratoga, Valley Forge and York
town. Such we're the men who gave
to us, and to ali time the "Gorvern-
ment of the people, by the people, and
for the people," which, according to
the sublime prediction of Abraham
Lincoln, shall not perish from the
earth.
With the termination of the revo-
luton began our progress. The gems
of art and manufacture were set in
rings of overwhelming influence. The
green belts of agriculture were drawn
out like lines of latitude and longitude.
The three years war followed to es-
tablish our naval prestige, and pro.
tect with our flag, the rich argosies of
our commerce upon the high seas. The
two years war with Mexico, gave us
the Pacific slope, with its rich depos-
its of the metals, and its fairy fertile
vallays for sunny homes, and highways
for our kipgly lines of traffic. The
benediction of the skies lit on land
and lake aud river. The diameters of
| national advancement were projected
across the continent-the virgin forests
yielded to the rough embrace of the
hardy pioneer; from this union sprung
hamlets-hamlets grew into villages,
villages into towns, and towns into
cities. Our population doubled every
fifteen years, our wealth every ten
years. The small brooks turned their
countless mills of manufacture-the
thunderous music of machinery vi
brated on the air-north, south, east
and west, with their variety of soils,
and products and climates, their fer
tile margins, poured round with the
two oceans, like the shield of Achilles,
with its ornamental edging-the in.
land streams stretching like silver
chains, into highways for mutual aids
and exchange of commodities, the
common school houses nesting along
our Observation-Disclosures pointing
from the thousand SUBMITS of our
land "the way to heayen"-colleges of
education, art and science-the happy
homes, free from oppression and fear;
these were the results Of our progress,
and such the vision that Everett saw
when he exclaimed, atlantis hath
risen from the ocean,"
But to this unexampled progress
there came a sudden, and we'll nigh
fatal check. The peril forsseen and
foretold by De Tocqueville, arose.
The dream that Edmund Burke en-
tertained of the Republic, with slavery
as tolerable element, was dissolved.
The alarm bells of civil war were
rung in the streets of our own Rich
mond. The old flag that had flashed
its "line of light" around the world, was
torn from its proud position by fratri-
cidaI hands, and the baptism of blood
descended again upon the land. The
wheels of progress stood still. Men
almost doubted the evidence of their
senses. The ominous calm that pre-
ceies the storm held the event in
allegiance for time, then the angry
waves of contending armies rushed
against each other with violence that
shook the very earth to its center. In
to this conflict you remember, were
thrown on the one side the prayers Of
the people for larger liberty and surer
laws, and on the other, the curses Of
every aristocratic government on the
globe. And the masses everywhere
shrank at the menace of danger. The
result of the years, the symmetry of
society, the rounded institutions Of
religion and the family, were all in
mortal peril. The freedom that had
struggled down through all the ages,