158 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OF 



It seems to me that there is no consideration better calculated to 

 deepen in the mind of every reflecting citizen a reverence for the Union 

 than a just sense of its origin ; and that is to be acquired by the studious 

 asking and answering of this question, How was this Union formed? 

 Has the origm of the Union a date — a day or a year? Can we find its 

 epoch — as of independence, or of fhe confederation, or of the Constitu- 

 tion? Was it done in convention? Did men come together by some dele- 

 gated authority and deliberate in solemn council, and ordain a Union? 

 Never. It was the work of time, the natural consequence of events, a 

 growth from circumstances, or whatever other phrase may be used as a 

 substitute for an express acknowledgment of a Providence in the destinies 

 of mankind. It is not possible to trace the Union to any premeditated 

 plan, the idea of any one man, or the concert of any body of men. You 

 can find no authority to pronounce it the direct product of human fore- 

 sight, of political wisdom and experience. You cannot point to any 

 day in our history, and say that on such a day Union existed, and on 

 the day before there was nothing of the kind. In truth the Union was 

 not made, il grew. It grew as the tree grows, planting its roots deeper 

 and deeper, and lifting its branches stronger and stronger and higher 

 and higher, its vital forces coursing upward and outward to its lightest 

 leaf. The Union grew as the forest grows, and the seed was not sown 

 by man's hand. This element of government is at the same time an 

 element of national character. It is part of the life of Saxon liberty, 

 and it came with the Saxon race to be developed and expanded in a 

 land which seems to have been reserved to be the Saxon's heritage. 



Whatever may have been accomplished when European enterprise 

 began its work on this continent with those long unknown or forgotten 

 discoveries of the Scandinavian navigators, who, 500 years before Col- 

 umbus, were the first to behold these western shores, those obscure 

 voyages left no abiding influence here. The Northman had no distinct 

 destiny here ; and idle as it would be now to speculate on such a fu- 

 ture as there might have been if Scandinavian discovery had been fol- 

 lowed by conquest and softie n»ent, one cannot help thinking how fruit- 

 less would have been the strife between the savage 7iadve races and the 

 fierce uncivilized barbarians of the northern seas. This land was not 

 meant for the Northman's home. The voyages of the eleventh and 

 twelfth centuries passed away, leaving no trace behind them, and, 

 what was more important, leaving the land open to the enterprise of 

 other and distant generations who had a destiny here. 



When, in the fi{tef:nth century, the south of Europe was stirred by 

 the spirit of maritime adventure, and Portugal took the lead in it, the 

 enterprise of that kingdom found a southern and not a western direction, 

 in the voyages along the western coast of Africa, planned by that re- 

 markable personage. Prince Henry (a Plantagenet by the mother's 

 side, let me say in passing.) This land was not given to the race of 

 Portugal first, though they were among modern discoverers. 



When Spain slowly followed the career of which the neighboring 

 kingdom had set the example, and when Columbus had nearly crossed 

 the Atlantic, steering due westward to the continent of North America, 

 then only a few days' sail distant, a flight of b>rds, as is familiarly re- 

 membered from the well known story, were seen winging their way 



