FOUNDING OF THE ACADEMY 1 9 



" 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. ^^ „v-^ 



" 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 C "^"^ < 



most eminent men of science must be recognized, and sectional claims harmonized. u— ^^ 



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 savatis 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 



