The
steamship was unknown. The telegraph wire was no more imagined than it
was imagined that the Rhine might flow a river of flame or that the
Jungfrau or the Weisshorn might go out on a journey.
But there was this distributed spirit of freedom, propagating itself by
means which we cannot wholly trace, and to an extent which was scarcely
recognized, which brought volunteers in such numbers to our shores, that
Washington, you know, at one time, expressed himself as embarrassed to
know what to do with them; and there were fervent and high aspirations
going up from multitudes of households and of hearts in Central and in
Western Europe, which found realization in what we claim as the greatest
and most fruitful of American victories. [Applause.] The impulse given
by that victory to the same spirit is one on which we can never look
back without gratitude and gladness. It was an impulse not confined to
one nation but common to all which had had part in the struggle. We know
what an impulse it gave to everything greatest and best in our own
country. The spirit of popular exhilaration, rising from that victory at
Yorktown, was a force which really established and moulded our national
Government. The nation rose to one of those exalted points, those
supreme levels, in its public experience, where it found a grander
wisdom, where it had nobler forecast than perhaps it otherwise could
have reached.
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