FOUNDING OF THE ACADEMY 19 
“The suggestion was sometimes made that the nation is engaged in a fearful 
struggle for existence, and the moment was not well chosen to press such a 
measure. But I thought otherwise. I thought it just the fitting time to act. I 
wanted the savans of the old world, as they turn their eyes hitherward, to see 
that amid the fire and blood of the most gigantic civil war in the annals of nations, 
the statesmen and people of the United States, in the calm confidence of assured 
power, are fostering the elevating, purifying, and consolidating institutions of 
religion and benevolence, literature, art and science. I wanted the men of 
Europe, who profess to see in America the failure of republican institutions, to 
realize that the people of the United States, while eliminating from their system 
that ever-disturbing element of discord, bequeathed to them by the colonial and 
commercial policy of England, are cherishing the institutions that elevate man 
and ennoble nations. ‘The land resounds with the tread of armies, its bright 
waters are crimsoned, and its fields reddened with fraternal blood. Patriotism 
surely demands that we strive to make this now discordant, torn, and bleeding 
nation one and indivisible. The National Academy of Sciences will, I feel sure, 
be now and hereafter another element of power to keep in their orbits, around 
the great central sun of the Union, this constellation of sovereign commonwealths. 
“This act of incorporation may not be, is not, perfect. The task has been one 
of difficulty and delicacy. The number of members must be limited, while the 
most eminent men of science must be recognized, and sectional claims harmonized. 
If unintentional injustice has been done to any one, if msitakes have been made, 
time will, I trust, correct the injustice and the mistakes. Changes will surely 
come. ‘ Death is in the world,’ and this original list of honored names will not 
remain long unbroken. If men of merit have been forgotten in this act of incor- 
poration, the Academy should seize the first and every occasion to right the 
seeming wrong. 
“This Academy is destined, I trust, to live as long as the republic shall endure, 
and to bear upon its rolls the names of the savans of coming generations. Let it 
then advance high its standard. Let it be as inflexible as justice, and as uncom- 
promising as truth. Let it speak with the authority of knowledge, that pretension 
may shrink abashed before it, and merit everywhere turn to it confident of 
recognition. 
“In the Providence of God, the Thirty-seventh Congress was summoned to the 
consideration of measures of transcendent magnitude. It enacted measures, empow- 
ering the government to raise hundreds of millions of dollars and millions of men, 
to protect the menaced life of the nation and preserve the vital spirit of freedom. 
It dealt with great questions of revenue and of finance. It obliterated an abhor- 
rent system from the national capital, and engraved freedom upon every rood of 
the national territory. It consecrated the public domain to homesteads for the 
homeless and landless, and authorized the construction of a railway to unite the 
Atlantic and the Pacific seas. The enactment of this act to incorporate the 
