334 WiSOOJSrSIN STATB AQBICULTUBAL SOCIETY, 
“that these United Colonies are, and of ris^ht ought to be, free and 
independent States.” 
It was thus that, at one breath, “ independence and union ” were 
declared and established. The confirmation of the first by war and 
of the second by civil wisdom was but the execution of the single 
design which it is the glory of this great instrument or our national 
existence to have framed and announced. The recognition of our 
independence, first by France and then by Great Britain, the closer 
union by the articles of confederation, and the final unity by the 
federal constitution were all but muniments of title of that “liberty 
and union, one and inseparable,” which were proclaimed at this 
place and on this day 100 years ago, which have been our posses¬ 
sion from that moment hitherto, and which we surely avow shall be 
our possession forever. 
Seven years of revolutionary war and twelve years of consummate 
civil prudence brought us, in turn, to the conclusive peace of 1783 
and to the perfected constitution of 1787. Few chapters of the 
world’s history covering such brief periods are crowded with so 
many illustrious names or made up of events of so deep and per¬ 
manent interest to mankind. I cannot stay to recall to your atten¬ 
tion these characters, or these incidents, or to renew the gratitude 
and applause with which we never cease to contemplate them. It 
is only their relation to the Declaration of Independence itself that 
I need to insist upon and to the new state which it brought into 
existence. In this view these progressive processes were but the 
articulation of the members of the state and the adjustment of its 
circulation to the new center of its vital power. These processes 
were all implied and included in this political creation, and were as 
necessary and as certain, if it were not to languish and to die, as in 
any natural creature. 
Within the hundred years, whose flight in our national history 
we mark to-day, we have had occasion to corroborate by war botb 
the independence and the unity of the nation. In our war against 
England for neutrality, we asserted and we established the abso¬ 
lute right to be free of European entanglements, in time of war as 
well as in time of peace, and so completed our independence of 
Europe. And by the war of the constitution — a war within the 
nation —the bonds of our unity were tried and tested, as in a fiery 
furnace, and proved to be dependent upon no shifting vicissitudes 
