Sons of the American Revolution

“ Many of the intelligent yeomanry and of the great bulk of independent landholders who had tasted the sweets of mediocrity, equality, and liberty read every unconditional ratification of the new system in silent anguish, folded the solemn page with a sigh, and wept over the manes of the native sons of America, who had sold their lives to leave the legacy of freedom to their children. ”

“ When the drama of the Revolution opened, these same "Black Boys" stood up manfully for the cause of American freedom, and nobly assisted in achieving, on many a hard-fought battlefield, the independence of our country. ”

“ It is of great importance, not only to understand the nature of the superiority of the individuals who have made themselves a name above their fellow-beings, but to estimate the degree in which the excellence for which they were distinguished was shared by those among whom they lived. Inattention to this duty might present Patrick Henry and James Otis, Washington, Jefferson, and Samuel Adams, as the causes of the American Revolution, which they were not. ”

“ In the sages of the American revolution, we recognise every variety of character that ennobles man and confers upon him dignity and merit. To rouse the people to a becoming sense of their inalienable and chartered rights, and to induce them to rise in the majesty of their might and vindicate them, was the first great business of the illustrious patriots who boldly planned and nobly achieved American independence. ”

“ Patriots like Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, and so many others had already achieved immortality through their victory in the Revolution. But soon after, these extraordinary leaders faced another task unlike any other—the task of building a brand new nation. So they designed a system of government, rooted in common laws, history, and traditions that would secure the liberty, equality, and rights they had fought for and fought to defend in the American Revolution. ”

“ These observations are not confined to any particular nation or character. The historians of Britain and the philosophers and poets of France, Germany, and England are perhaps equally culpable; and it is to be regretted that America has not preserved a national character of her own, free from any symptoms of pernicious deviation from the purest principles on morals, religion, and civil liberty. She has been conducted through a revolution that will be ever memorable, both for its origin, its success, and the new prospects it has opened both at home and abroad. ”

“ They will never forget the energetic struggles of their father to secure the natural rights of men. These are improved in society and strengthened by civil compacts. These have been established in the United States by a race of independent spirits who have freed their posterity from the feudal vassalage of hereditary lords. ”

“ Revolution is a tornado where prudence seldom enters to neutralize its baneful effects; but when such men as those who constituted the first American congress in Philadelphia combine, men who could command the whirlwind of passion, and conduct the lightning of revenge by the silken cords of reason, and the steel rods of unbending patriotism to a desired and useful destination, revolution is stripped of its bane and is crowned with unfading glory. Such were the signers of the declaration—such was the American revolution. ”

“ It was not the will of God that the new state should be formed of these materials; that such men should be the fathers of a progeny, born on the American soil, who were one day to assert American liberty by their eloquence, and defend it by their valor. ”

“ The revolving wheel whirled the old colonies out of existence, and cunningly framed and polished new state governments. The Revolution turned the British empire down, and pushed the United States of America up. The Revolution rolled to the bottom of the wheel Governor Gage of Massachusetts, and Governor Tryon of North Carolina, and Governor Dunmore of Virginia; and up to the top revolved Patrick Henry, and Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. The Revolution was like a religious conversion: it set the American people out of their old ways, and into a new upward path. ”

“ What the French took from the Americans was their theory of revolution, not their theory of government—their cutting, not their sewing. Many French nobles served in the war, and came home republicans and even democrats by conviction. It was America that converted the aristocracy to the reforming policy, and gave leaders to the Revolution. "The American Revolution," says Washington, "or the peculiar light of the age, seems to have opened the eyes of almost every nation in Europe, and a spirit of equal liberty appears fast to be gaining ground everywhere." ”

“ At the same time that these wayward appearances began early to threaten their internal felicity, the inhabitants of America were, in general, sensible that the freedom of the people, the virtue of society, and the stability of their commonwealth could only be preserved by the strictest union; and that the independence of the United States must be secured by an undeviating adherence to the principles that produced the Revolution. ”

“ I call it a Revolution, for it is a rebellion only on their side; it is a Revolution for the American people. [Applause.] This is the true character of the great struggle for the preservation of our nationality, a struggle which was initiated, not when the first gun was fired upon Fort Sumter, but when the slave aristocracy uttered the first threat of disunion; which arrived at its crisis when the slave aristocracy failed in its attempt to obtain complete control of our National Government, and struck the blow against the life of the nation ”

“ For very pride in my country I must choose thus, for the alternate view takes the meaning out of American history, reduces the War of Independence to a war of plunder, and the Colonial heroes to a band of pious hypocrites. What, indeed, shall we teach our children to be proud of if we reject the higher interpretation of the deeds of the Fathers? The American Revolution as a campaign of conquest is not unique in history ”

“ But above all, what this Congress can be remembered for is opening the way to a new American revolution--a peaceful revolution in which power was turned back to the people--in which government at all levels was refreshed and renewed and made truly responsive. This can be a revolution as profound, as far-reaching, as exciting as that first revolution almost 200 years ago--and it can mean that just 5 years from now America will enter its third century as a young nation new in spirit, with all the vigor and the freshness with which it began its first century. ”

“ The members were invited to embody as a society of friends, to perpetuate the memory of the Revolution, and to engage to be vigilant in preserving inviolate the exalted rights and liberties of human nature, for which they had fought and bled. ”

“ What more could America give a child? Ah, much more! As I read how the patriots planned the Revolution, and the women gave their sons to die in battle, and the heroes led to victory, and the rejoicing people set up the Republic, it dawned on me gradually what was meant by my country. ”

“ The history of the Revolution impresses us with the greatness and bravery of the American nation; and every American should feel proud of his ancestors for the efforts they made, under so many discouragements, to secure their liberties; but it would be a mistake to suppose that nothing but exalted heroism was exhibited. Human nature showed its degeneracy in the camp and on the field of battle, among heroes and among patriots. The perfection of character, so far as man is ever perfect, was exhibited indeed, by Washington, but by Washington alone. ”

“ The one indispensable man in the Revolution was George Washington; for there was no other in the colonies who was so central, so immovable, a force. But the Revolution would also have failed but for Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, and the other civilians who built up the new government. ”

“ And let no one who glories in the revolutionary struggles of our fathers for their freedom deny the right of the American bondsman to imitate their high example. And those who rejoice in the deeds of a Wallace or a Tell, a Washington or a Warren ”

“ Quite naturally, the American Revolution stimulated greatly the cause of education, both of the Whites and of the Negroes, when it was declared to be both the duty and the right of man under the new institutions. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison, were foremost in commending gradual emancipation after education and training for citizenship. ”

“ Yet granting all this, the fact remains, that in the Revolutionary War the Americans stood towards the British as the Protestant peoples stood towards the Catholic powers in the sixteenth century, as the Parliamentarians stood towards the Stewarts in the seventeenth, or as the upholders of the American Union stood towards the confederate slave-holders in the nineteenth; that is, they warred victoriously for the right in a struggle whose outcome vitally affected the welfare of the whole human race. ”

“ We are proud of the part our class played in the stern struggle for independence and we say that the truth about 1776, the truth about the revolutionary period, both before and after the war for independence was over, shall conquer the lies of the present American ruling class. ”

“ No—they are fighting in the great cause, (now, henceforth, and forever inseparable,) of Liberty and Union. And when, as the result of this rebellion, slavery shall disappear from our country, the words of the Sermon on the Mount, announcing the brotherhood of man, and adopted by our fathers in the Declaration of American Independence, may be inscribed on our banner, 'that all men are created Equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable Rights ”

“ A revolution in the institutions, in the mode of life, in notions begun—it is going on, will grow and mature, either for good or evil. Civil war, this most terrible but most maturing passion, has put an end to the boyhood and to the youth of the American people. ”

“ The opinions of a man of such sobriety of manners, political experience, and general knowledge of morals, law, and government will ever have a powerful effect on society, and must naturally influence the people, more especially the rising generation, the young men, who have not had the opportunity of acquainting themselves with the character, police, and jurisprudence of nations, or with the history of their own country, much less with the principles on which the American Revolution was grounded. ”

“ He farther observed that "the interests and passions of the revolted 'Americans concenter in the cause of the Congress and those of the loyalists break and subdivide into various pursuits, with which the cause of the King has little or nothing to do." ”

“ Doing honor to the memory of the Revolutionary Fathers, the American people will surely not permit the splendor of later successes to make them forget that the same dutiful spirit of patriotism which victoriously struggled through the agonies of their first contest will also in our days have to overcome the dangers brought forth by the very power and greatness of the Republic ”

“ A Ruling Class Disfranchised.—As the sovereignty of the planters had been the striking feature of the old régime, so their ruin was the outstanding fact of the new. The situation was extraordinary. The American Revolution was carried out by people experienced in the arts of self-government, and at its close they were free to follow the general course to which they had long been accustomed. The French Revolution witnessed the overthrow of the clergy and the nobility; but middle classes who took their places had been steadily rising in intelligence and wealth. ”

“ And when Modern Revolution has thus been carried to the heart of the whole world--if it ever shall be, as I hope it will--then may we hope to see a resurrection of that proud spirit of our fathers which put the simple dignity of Man above the gauds of wealth and class, and held that to, be an American was greater than to be a king. ”

“ The names and subsequent history of those families who remained loyal during the American Revolution, are worthy of record; most of whom have, I believe, prospered in the world since the confiscation of their property. ”

“ Revolutionary struggles, predicated solely upon political ambition and partisan principles, often produce the most bitter persecution between those whose ties of consanguinity and friendship are seldom severed by other incidents. To the credit of our nation, instances of this kind were very rare during the struggle for American independence. In the field of battle, sire and son fought shoulder to shoulder; in the public assemblies, they united their eloquence in rousing the people to action. ”

“ This was not sufficient to dissipate the apprehensions of gentlemen who had been uniform and upright in their intentions and immovably fixed in the principles of the Revolution, and had never turned their eyes from the point in pursuit, until the independence of America was acknowledged by the principal monarchs in Europe. ”

“ The American Revolution.—It was not Satan who caused the heroic struggle of the American colonies, giving them power to win their freedom and independence, to the end that a nation might arise upon this chosen soil with a mission to foster and protect the infant and growing Church of Christ. ”

“ They were convinced that rational liberty might be maintained, their favorite system of republicanism might be revived, established, and supported, and the prosperity of their country heightened, at a less gorgeous expense than a resort to the usages of monarchic states, and the introduction of hereditary crowns and the proud claims of noble ancestry, which usually involve the mass of the people in poverty, corruption, degradation, and servility. ”