What tee Age owes to America. 
341 
peting or hostile elements, and separated from the weakness and the 
burdens which it would leave behind. The impulses and attrac¬ 
tions which moved the emigration and directed it hither, various 
in form, yet had so much a common character as to merit the de¬ 
scription of being public, elevated, moral, or religious. They in¬ 
cluded the desire of new and better opportunities for institutions 
consonant with the dignity of human nature and with the immortal 
and infinite relations of the race. In the language of the times, 
the search for civil and religious liberty animated the Pilgrims, the 
Puritans, and the Churchmen, the Presbyterians, the Catholics, and 
the Quakers — the Huguenots, the Dutch, and the Walloons — the 
Waldeneses, the Germans, and the Swedes, in their several migra¬ 
tions which made up the colonial population. Their experience 
and fortunes here had done nothing to reduce, everything to con¬ 
firm the views and traits which brouarht them hither. To sever all 
O 
political relations, then, with Europe, seemed to these people but 
the realization of the purposes which had led them across the ocean 
— but the one thing needful to complete this continent for their 
home, and to give the absolute assurance of that higher life which 
they wished to lead. The preparation of the past and the enthusi¬ 
asms of the future conspired to favor the project of self-govern¬ 
ment, and invest it with a moral grandeur which furnished the best 
omens and the best guarantees for its prosperity. Instead of a ca¬ 
pricious and giddy exaltation of spirit, as at new gained liberty, a 
sober and solemn sense of the larger trust and duty took possession 
of their souls; as If the Great Master had found them faithful over 
a few things, and had now made them rulers over many. 
These feelings, common to the whole population, were not of 
sudden origin, and were not romantic, nor had they any tendency 
to evaporate in noisy boast, or run wild in air-drawn projects. The 
difference between equality and privilege, between civil rights and 
capricious favors, between freedom of conscience and persecution 
for conscience sake, were not matters of most debate or abstract 
conviction with our countrymen. The story of these battles of our 
race was the warm and living memory of their forefathers’ share in 
them, for which, “to avoid insufferable grievances at home, they 
had been enforced by heaps to leave their native countries.” They 
proposed to settle forever the question whether such grievances 
should possibly befall them or their posterity. They knew no plan 
