INDEPENDENCE DAY.

July 4, 1898.

Great preparations had been made for a fitting celebration of the National
Holiday, and the early morning found all means of transportation to the
exposition grounds crowded by the anxious throngs which came early, many of
them from adjoining states, to see for the first time the exposition, and it
soon became evident that this was to be the day of largest attendance on the
exposition grounds.

The program planned included a paraade of the Midway features under the command
of General Manager Clarkson.  At 10 o'clock the parade marched through the
avenues on the bluff tract headed by the Exposition Guards and the Exposition
Band; Frank C. Bostock, with numerous aides commanded no less than five
divisions, including nearly all of the Exposition Midway attractions and many
novelty features, and was reviewed by the Exposition Officials, the
distinguished guests and speakers of the day, from the Music Pavillion.

After the parade the exercises of the day were held from the Music Pavilion,
and consisted of the following program:

Music by Fourth Regiment Band of Sioux City, Iowa,  after which an interesting
innovation occurred by the announcement by President Wattles of the receipt of
a telegam stating that General Shafter had demanded unconditional surrender of
the Spanish troops of Santiago.
Prayer was then offered by Rev. T.J. Mackey.  The Exposition Chorus sang
"America".  The Declaration of Independence was read by Hon. John C. Wharton,
and the orator of the day, Hon. James M. Beck, was then introduced and spoke as
follows:

"AS AN EAGLE STIRRETH UP HER NEST".

My Fellow Countrymen:

From the city of the Declaration of Independence where Henry spoke, Jefferson
wrote, Franklin counseled, Adams debated, Morris administered, and Washington
unsheathed his sword, within whose walls is Germantown, and near to whose gates
are Brandywine and Valley Forge, I bring you a fraternal greeting. 
Philadelphia felicitates Omaha.  Pennsylvania salutes Nebraska and her sisters
of the Great West.  They congratulate you on this imposing pageant of art and
industry, representing the resources of a section, over which, when the great
Declaration was given to the world, the banner of Spain floated in triumph. 
Its marvelous growth, under free institutions is a vindication beyond the power
of mere words, of those sublime truths, to which our fathers gave undying
expression one hundred and twenty-two years ago to-day.

In the contrasts of history can be often seen the divine purpose, which runs
through the ages.  When La Salle, in 1682, traversed the Mississippi, and,
standing at its mouth, claimed the vast territory which it drained for his
royal master, and named it in his honor "Louisiana", the grand monarque was
even then constructing in the insolence of his unbridled power, and on a scale
of imperial magnificence, the palace of Versailles.  Its splashing fountains,
endless chambers of crystal, flowery parterres, and gorgeous frescoes
proclaimed the power of the so-called "Sun King", whose "l'Etat c'est Moi", was
the extreme of regal despotism. Later, this Trans-Mississippi region, after
languishing beneath the yoke of the Spanish Bourbons, became part of Napoleon's
dream of universal empire.  It is an inspiring reflection that the hand, which
drafted the Declaration of Independence, rescued this vast empire form the iron
grasp of the modern Caesar, and dedicated it to free institutions forever more. 
Vanished is the power of the "Sun King," Spanish Bourbon, and the
granite-souled Emperor.  The tyranny which created that wonderful apotheosis of
personal absolutism, the palace of Versailles, has been swept away by the
dynamic force of democratic ideas, and today in this region, once believed to
be a desert, but now the home of twenty-two millions of freemen, the people
have erected these splendid palaces of triumphant democracy.

We can reverently thank the Ruler of Nations, by Whose ordinanace the Republic
came into being and to serve Whose wise purposes it continues to exist, that
upon no preceding anniversary has our country exercised so wide an influence
among the nations of the earth, or used it for any loftier or nobler purpose. 
The Republic is in arms today, not because it loves peace less, but because it
loves justice more.  Never did nation make war with a less selfish purpose. 
The American people, until patience had ceased to be a virtue, sympathized with
their noble President in the wish that this cup of bitterness might be spared
our lips.  No lust of military glory or territorial aggrandizement inspired our
action.  We had been slow to believe the oft-repeated stories of mediaeval
barbarities in Cuba, and our traditional policy was opposed to intervention in
the domestic affairs of another Power.  A certain spirit of noblesse oblige
restrained us from striking a weaker foe even in a just cause.  It was not
until a daughter of Nebraska had died in Cuban waters, and her husband, its
honored Senator, had, in a speech of great eloquence and yet greater pathos,
given us "the true and sensible avouch of his own eyes", that our pacific
purposes gave place to the passionate indignation of freemen, that the spirit
of the Crusaders swept through our veins, and the cry "God wills it", was heard
on every hand.  We then took a high resolve in the spirit of our fathers, that
our blood should be as dust and our treasure as water to stop this barbarity
forever.  We have thus disproved the libel against the American character, that
our aims are purely material, and that our unequaled growth in wealth has
choked the finer sensibilities of the soul.  Let those who heard unheeded the
moan of Cretan and the death rattle of the Armenian, and yet taunted us with
the blind worship of wealth, forever hold their peace.  We have vindicated the
rights of humanity and shown that there is one nation, whose conscience is not
dead, and of whom it cannot be truly said that the "age of chivalry is gone and
one of calculators and economists has succeeded.  We are moved by his spirit,
who a generation ago believed that the elemental demands of justice rose higher
than mere form, precedent, or convention.  Though dead, John Brown yet
speaketh, and "his soul is marching on."  The old bell, which more than a
century ago rang out our freedom, though mute to the ear of flesh, is still
grandly proclaiming, even to the islands of the sea, "liberty throughout all
the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof."

As we meet this morning, we can give especial thanks for the swift and
triumphant vindication of our cause.  With the proud fleet of Cervera
annihilated and Santiago doomed, the vulture of Spanish oppression lies
prostrate under the talons of the eagle.  Again the great Declaration, whose
basic principle is the political equality of the individual, has been justified
in the splendid manhood and invincible bravery of our soldiers and sailors. 
With fear and trembling many awaited the dawn of this day, lest our brave sons
at Santiago, facing a hidden and powerful foe under conditions of unparalleled
difficulty, should be betrayed into disaster by their very confidence.  But
fear is past and only the songs of triumph are now heard throughout the land. 
The citizen soldiery of the Republic, at whose martial prowess supercilious
foreign critics sneered, have again given immortal proof to the world that "our
flag is still there."

Our rejoicing, however, may well be tempered today by the appreciation of the
tremendous responsibilities, which by no wish or purpose of ours are suddenly
devolved upon us.  Dewey's genius and valor not unworthy of a land which gave
Paul Jones, Greble, Bainbridge, Decatur, Porter, and Farragut to history - have
blazed the path to victory and have confronted the American people with a
responsibility more momentous and pregnant with future consequences than has
ever weighed upon our nation on any national anniversary since the Civil War. 
That involved our existence, this may define our position and relations to the
rest of the world.  To give back the conquered territory to Spain may be to
subject a weak and helpless people to its vindictive revenge; to give these
various possessions in two hemispheres to their own people may be to make them
the prey for the powers of Europe, whose selfish greed for territory is now
finding expression in China; for us to surrender these conquered islands to any
other nation is to incur the enmity of the rest, and perhaps involved
civilization in a war, which might wrap the world in its devouring flame, and
yet, - to permanently annex them to the Republic is to cross a greater Rubicon
than that at whose brink even Caesar halted, and with consequences scarcely
less momentous.  Jefferson's words to James Monroe, which inspired the Monroe
Doctrine, may well be recalled as applicable to the present crisis in our
national life.  "The question," said he, "is the most momentous, which has ever
been offered to my contemplation since that of independence; that made us a
nation, this sets our compass and points the course which we are to steer
through the ocean of time opening on us."
Is the Western Hemisphere large enough for the influence and progress of the
American people, or must we surrender, commercially and politically, our policy
of isolation and claim an influence which shall be as limitless as the world is
round?  The Atlantic coast was our cradle, lusty youth found us on the banks of
the Mississippi, vigorous maturity has brought us to the Pacific.  What of that
momentous morrow - the twentieth century?  Are we, like Alexander, to stop at
the margin of the sea and mourn that it forever bars our further progress, or
are we, like the inspired pilot of Genoa, to launch the bark of our national
destiny into an unknown sea, in search of new and untried routes to national
prosperity?

Well may we, my fellow countrymen, in this great crisis of our national life,
remember the beginning of the Republic and the teachings of our fathers.  Such
remembrance is not merely a grateful tribute to the dead, but will help us
discharge our duty to the unborn.  Let us, then, in the spirit of the great law
giver and leader of an oppressed people.

"Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations.
"As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad
her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings.
"So the Lord alone did lead him and there and was no strange God with him."

This very striking metaphor of Moses suggests a great truth in connection with
our development as a nation, that it has never been permitted to remain long
within the nest of any traditional policy.  There is a natural conservatism in
the Anglo-Saxon race, and a distrust and dread of innovation.  It has ever been
slow to leave the beaten paths of the fathers.  Nor need this be deprecated,
for it ensures a reasonable continuity of policy.  Every great step forward has
been due, not to the leadership of our great men, nor to any conscious and
deliberate purpose of the people, but wholly to a divine guidance, which,
working through the force of unforeseen circumstances, and a certain
unconscious intuitive impulse of the masses, has destroyed the nest of
tradition and thrust us as young eagles into the void.  The great actors of the
revolutionary epic had their traditions, and an ancestry in which they gloried,
and yet were forced by the logic of events to disregard both.  Their
traditional policy was loyalty to the King, hatred of France, with whom they
had contested for the possession of North America, pride in the English Empire,
and disinclination towards any union between themselves.  When the Revolution
broke out nothing was further from their purpose than separation from England. 
Said John Adams:  "There was not a moment during the Revolution when I would
not have given everything I possessed for a restoration to the state of things
before the contest began, provided we could have had a sufficient security for
its continuance."  Dr. Franklin, the most trusted, sagacious, and far-seeing
statesman of his generation, said before the battle for a separation, or a hint
that such a thing would be advantageous to America."  Mr. Jay said:  "During
the course of my life, and until the second petition of Congress in 1775, I
never had heard an American of any class, or of any description, express a wish
for the independence of the Colonies."  The author of the Declaration of
Independence said:  "It has always been, and still is, my opinion and belief
that our country was prompted and impelled to independence by necessity, not by
choice.  I never heard a whisper, before the commencement of hostilities, of a
disposition to separate from Great Britain."  Washington in 1774, denounced as
"malevolent falsehoods" the assertions that "There is any intention in the
American colonies to set up for independent States."  In 1776 he wrote:  When I
took command of the army I abhorred the idea of independence; now I am
convinced nothing else will save us."

"Building better than they knew" - as all master builders of a nation - our
fathers were led, by impulses which they could not appreciate or understand, to
disregard every tradition which they held dear, to renounce allegiance to the
King, separate from the great English Empire, make formal alliance with their
hated enemy, France, and create a union of which each had been but too jealous.

The Constitution of the United States was not the deliberate wish of the
people, but was created by their necessities; it met no one's entire approval,
was only adopted after bitter debates of four months duration, and was the
result of a compromise begotten by the stern and pressing necessities of the
situation.  Only a choice between chaos and a Constitution induced the jarring,
discordant and jealous States to surrender any portion of their sovereignty,
and yet this Constitution, in its present form the child of no brain and the
creation of no wish, is the admiration of the world, and has been pronounced by
the noblest and most scholarly statesman of our time, whose death we even now
mourn, to have been the most perfect ever struck off by the brain and purpose
of man at a given time.

Nor has this truth been less marked in our own time and generation.  The
Emancipation Proclamation clearly violated the traditional policy of our
country, which recognized the existence of slavery.  Jefferson's  stern
denunciation of the slave trade, which he had inserted in the first draft of
the great Declaration, was stricken out by Congress, and the Constitution
itself distinctly recognized the existence of this baleful domestic
institution.  Its destruction was not due to the conscious and deliberate
purpose of any statesman.  Lincoln at the beginning of his administration
distinctly disclaimed any purpose to interfere with it, and it was not until
the blood, which had been shed from Bull Run to Antietam, cried as from the
ground that again the nest of tradition was destroyed and the eagle essayed a
new and nobler flight.  No one recognized this more clearly than did the great
war President, and in his second inaugural he plainly voiced his belief that
not only the removal of slavery but the Civil War itself had come by no human
wisdom, but by a divine judgment.

The same momentous fact is true today.  Once again the nation feels a
mysterious and puissant impulse.  It has ever been the traditional policy of
the Republic not to interfere in the domestic affairs of a friendly Power, and
the Monroe Doctrine distinctly disclaimed any intention to interfere with
existing colonial dependencies in America of European Powers, but as Lexington
inflamed a continent and created a new nation, as Fort Sumter rudely shattered
our dream of peace and compelled us to remove by the sword the running sore of
slavery, the explosion of the Maine and the cruelties to the Cuban people have
compelled us to discard our traditional and valued policy of non-interference,
and directly interfere with the domestic affairs of another nation.

We need not regret the transitory influence of the past.  Blind adherence to
tradition is not the highest patriotism, but is a form of intellectual slavery
not worthy of a free and progressive people.  An assumption that the teachings
of our fathers expressed the finality of political wisdom is contradicted by
the uniform experience of mankind.  I yield to no one in my reverential respect
for the founders of this Republic.  No Government has had greater men, and
History can be searched in vain for any loftier lives or wiser minds than
Washington and Franklin, Jefferson and Hamilton, Madison and Monroe.  The
eloquent judgment of the elder Chatham has received the considerate approval of
mankind, when, speaking of the first Continental Congress, he said, "I must
declare and vow that in all my reading and study- and I have read Thucydides
and have studied and admired the master States of the world- that for solidity
of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, under such a
complication of circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference
to the General Congress at Philadelphia."  Nevertheless the Almighty never
intended that wisdom should die either with one man, one generation, one race,
one century, or one epoch.  Least of any people should America doubt the
"increasing purpose" of the ages and the widening of thought "with the process
of the suns."

Because our fathers thought that the stage coach was adequate to their needs,
shall we abandon the locomotive?  The old wooden battleships, such as the "Bon
Homme Richard" and the "Constitution", won imperishable laurels for the
American Navy, but shall we therefore place these obsolete sailing vessels in
conflict with modern steel battleships?  Because the Continentals defended
Bunker Hill and achieved the crowning triumph of Yorktown with flint-lock
muskets, shall we discard the repeating rifle?  If Franklin impressed his
personality upon the world with a hand-press, shall we less avail ourselves of
those throbbing engines which make possible the modern newspaper?  Our fathers
recognized that wise nations, as wise individuals, change their minds when
occasion justifies, but fools never.  Let us not ascribe to them an
infallibility which they do not claim for themselves.  Democracy acknowledges
no living sovereign, much less those who are said to "rule us form their urns." 
The decadence of Spain, which has cost her the empire of the world, and now
brought her to the verge of final ruin, is due to her "inordinate tenacity of
old opinions, old beliefs, and hold habits," which Buckle finds to be her
predominant national characteristic.  He adds:  "By encouraging the notion that
all the truths most important to know are already known, they repress those
aspirations and dull that generous confidence in the future without which
nothing really great can be achieved.  A people who regard the past with too
wistful an eye will never bestir themselves to help the onward progress.  To
them antiquity is wisdom, and every improvement is a dangerous innovation." 
The nation which has most consistently and continuously followed the worship of
ancestry is China, and as a result it is today the helpless prey of other
Powers, although in numbers and resources it is potentially the most powerful
on the earth.

We must not as a people permit the past to fetter the present.  That way
retrogression lies, and our duty as a nation is to be determined by the
present, not by past conditions.  We cannot even stand still.  We must move
onward.  From civilization we derive inestimable rights, to her we owe
immeasurable duties, and to shirk these is cowardice and moral death.  No
nation can live to itself, even if it would.  The economic developments of the
nineteenth century have produced a solidarity of humanity, which no racial
prejudice or international hatred can destroy.  Each nation is its brother's
keeper, and the greater the power, the greater the responsibility.  If this be
so, no nation owes a great duty to civilization to be potential in the councils
of the world than the United States.  For it to skulk and shirk behind the
selfish policy of isolation and to abdicate a destined world supremacy, would
be the colossal crime of history.  God has given us the power, woe be unto us
if we do not use it.  The stern but just law, which has governed the nations in
all history, is that he alone shall have, who uses.  Its ethical sanction is
found in that parable of the talents, in which the Great Teacher laid down the
moral law that no man or nation has an indefeasible title to property,  that
all is holden of God, and tenure depends upon rightful use.  From Spain, as
from an unprofitable and slothful servant, are about to be taken colonies which
she has failed to develop in harmony with modern progress.  Let our people,
instead of questioning the law, remember that we too shall perish when we cease
to develop the talents committed to our charge.  Of every rotten tree the
eternal inquiry of the Great Woodman is heard, "Why cumbereth it the ground?"

In discussing any questions, therefore, which may result from the present war
with Spain, let us not give undue or conclusive value to the opinions of the
past.  The conditions under which we must act are essentially different from
those which existed in our father's time, and the poet of democracy said
nothing more worthy of remembrance by us a people than that-

"New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth; 
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast
of truth."

Steam and electricity have destroyed our "distant and detached position," of
which Washington spoke in the immortal Farewell Address, and upon which he
predicated in the infancy of the Republic a policy of isolation.  Then we were
the weakest Power in the world, today we are the strongest.  Then we were three
millions in number, scattered over three hundred thousand square miles of
territory, today we are seventy-five millions of people, inhabiting a continent
from ocean to ocean, fronting the Orient and the Occident, and possessed of
resources which are inexhaustible.  Then we were almost exclusively an
agricultural country, today we are the greatest agricultural, mining, and
manufacturing nation of the globe, and second only to England in commercial
prestige.  Then it required five weeks to visit or communicate with Europe, and
the Atlantic Ocean seemed a natural barrier, today we can flash a message
around the world in a few hours, and can learn of its affairs almost as they
occur.  The citizen of New York can today reach London with more facility than
the first President could leave Mount Vernon and proceed to Philadelphia. 
When, therefore, Washington, at a time when the great European Powers had been
thrown by the French Revolution into a state of chaos, advised the infant
Republic, newest among nations and weakest in credit, numbers and resources, to
avoid any interference in the affairs of the greater world beyond the seas,
lest as a lamb it should be devoured by a pack of wolves, he counseled, as he
always did, with a wisdom unimpeachable; but those who would forever keep the
Republic in her swaddling clothes, and who for this purpose invoke the great
name of Washington, should first convince us that if he were the President of
the most powerful nation in the world he would advise it to yield precedence to
lesser and weaker Powers.  Would he not feel that this Colossus among nations
should not lisp in the language of its infancy, but should say with St. Paul,
"When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a
child, but when I became a man I put away childish things."

Out nation is today feeling that instinct of expansion, which is the
predominant characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race.  It is bred in our bone and
courses with our lifeblood, and the statesmen of our day must take it into
account and endeavor to wisely control it.  There is with us, as with our great
mother empire, a national instinct for territorial growth, "so powerful and
accurate, that statesmen of every school, willing or unwilling, have found
themselves carried along by a tendency which no individuality can resist or
greatly modify."  We could as hopefully bid the Mississippi cease its flow
toward the sea, or the Missouri to remain chained within its rocky sources, as
to prevent the onward movement of this great, proud, generous, and aggressive
people.  This was true of the day of our weakness, it is true in this, the day
of our strength.

The first effort of the newly recognized Republic was to acquire territory. 
When at the close of the Revolution our peace commissioners met in Paris, the
problem arose as to the true boundaries of the new nation.  We have solemnly
convenanted with France that we would not sign any treaty of peace with England
unless our ally concurred.  France insisted that the vast area between the
rivers, which flowed into the Atlantic, and the Mississippi, was Spanish
territory.  Our commissioners felt that our national destiny justified a claim
to the east bank of the Mississippi, and they so far "stooped to conquer" as to
secretly execute without the knowledge or concurrence of France, a treaty with
England, which gave us the territory to the Father of Waters.  Congress at
first was disposed to condemn this act of their commissioners, and disclaim the
territory beyond the Alleghenies, which were felt by many to be the boundaries
which Nature had set to the advance of the Republic.  The most radical agreed
that the Mississippi was our true boundary, and yet the commercial necessity of
its free navigation caused our fathers, a few years later, to reverse this
narrow conception of their national destiny, and constrained as sincere and
lofty a statesman as Jefferson to sacrifice his cherished theories as to the
constitutional powers of the Federal government by purchasing on his own
responsibility, and without the authority of either the Constitution or of
Congress, this great empire between the Mississippi and the Pacific.  A great
party vainly opposed the purchase of this region, and in so doing, destroyed
only itself.  Speaking in one of its thirty great opulent cities, at an
Exposition which represents the resources of its twenty-two millions of
freemen, let me quote the words of Senator White spoken on the floor of the
Senate in 1803.  He said:  "But as to Louisiana, this new, immense, unbounded
world, if it should ever be incorporated into this Union which I have no idea
can be done, but by altering the Constitution, I believe it will be the
greatest curse that could at present befall us.  It may be productive of
innumerable evils, and especially one that I even fear to look upon."  And then
he added, "Gentlemen on all sides, with very few exceptions agree that the
settlement of this country will be highly injurious and dangerous to the United
States.  *  *  *  We have already territory enough, and when I contemplate the
evils that may arise to these states from this intended corporation of
Louisiana into the Union, I would rather see it given to France, to Spain or to
any other nation of the earth, upon the mere condition that no citizen of the
United States should ever settle within its limits, than to see the territory,
sold for $100,000,000, and we retain the sovereignty."

The opposition to the acquisition of Louisiana was repeated in the matter of
the disputed territory of Oregon, which an influential Senator said was "not
worth a pinch of snuff," and but for Whitman's perilous journey across the
Continent, would have been forever lost to the Union; but the impulse of our
people towards expansion triumphed in the matter of Louisiana and Oregon, as
also in that of Texas, California and Alaska, and today our territorial
possessions stretch so far into the Pacific, that the sum which casts its last
rays upon the farthest Aleutian Island is already illumining the rocky coast of
Maine.  San Francisco, once our western limit, is now but midway between our
eastern and western possessions, and the shores of Puget Sound, originally our
most northern frontier, are now more than a thousand miles south of that final
shore, which stretches toward the Pole and into the Arctic Ocean.

I would not be understood as arguing in favor of the annexation of any of the
islands, of which we have taken possession for the purposes of the war, or
indeed of any policy of indiscriminate territorial acquisition.  These are
questions about which men of equal intelligence and patriotism may reasonably
differ, and both the limitations and the proprieties of the occasion forbid
their discussion.  I have been protesting, however, against the tyranny of
tradition, intellectual slavery, which compels obedience to past ideals, and
the assumption that there should be any policy which forbids the further
expansion of the republic.


Let us equally beware of that fatal error of empires and Republics, that a
nation is necessarily great in proportion to its area and population.  To no
principle of public policy has history given a more uniform and emphatic
contradiction.  As Mr. Lowell has beautifully said, "The greatness of a nation
is weighed in scales more delicate than the balance of trade.  On the maps you
can cover Athens with a pin point and Judea with a finger tip, and yet in those
magnificent places impulses have been given which have not ceased to direct
civilization."  If mere numbers and area determined greatness, China would be
the greatest nation in the world, and yet greater than all Cathay was that
little capital of Attica, Athens, which has flamed as a torch of culture over
the ages, and lives in memory as the "City of the violet crown."  Expansion is
not necessarily strength, but may involve weakness, and we should not add to
our already onerous responsibilities without undoubted compensatory advantages,
or unless our duty to humanity clearly requires us to take weaker nations under
our fostering influence.

There is one tradition of our fathers, which we cannot too strictly respect,
and whose value time cannot "wither nor custom stale."  It is the spirit of
justice, to which, by that instrument whose adoption we celebrate today, our
country is solemnly dedicated forevermore.  The richest country in the world,
though it were paved with gold, were dear enough, if purchased at the price of
this ideal.  In achieving its high destiny the Republic must therefore respect
the noble and cosmopolitan spirit in which it was formed.  To appreciate it we
must comprehend the meaning and purposed of the Declaration.  It is commonly
believed that it is noteworthy in our annals, because by that instrument, and
on the day on which it was proclaimed, our country severed its relations with
Great Britain.  This is a mistake.  The formal act of severance from Great
Britain did not occur on the Fourth of July nor by the Declaration.  One June
7th, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, at the instance of Virginia,
introduced his three famous resolutions, the first of which was, "That these
United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states,
that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that the
political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought
to be totally absolved."  They were debated with great earnestness on the 8th
and 10th of June, by which time it became clear that a majority of the colonies
was prepared to adopt them, but for the sake of greater unanimity, the
consideration of the question was postponed until July 1st, and the committee
composed of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and
Robert R. Livingston, was appointed to prepare a formal declaration to the
world.  On the first day of July, Congress, sitting as a committee of the
whole, resumed consideration of the question and it was passed by the
committee.  On the following day, July 2, 1776, Rodney having "come post from
the Delaware Counties," and Pennsylvania having changed her vote, the House
unanimously adopted the original resolution.  If, therefore, the commencement
of the republic is to date from the formal resolution of severance rather than
from the real severance, which commenced with the first Continental Congress,
then on July 2nd, 1776, the United States began their separate and independent
existence.  This was clearly the belief of those who participated in the
proceedings, and was expressed by John Adams in his memorable letter of July
3rd, 1776, to his wife, when he said, "But the day is past.  The second day of
July, 1776, will be a memorable epoch in the history of America.  I am apt to
believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great
anniversary festival.  It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance,
by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.  *  *  *  You may think me
transported with enthusiasm, but I am not; I am well aware of the toil and
blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and
support and defend these states, yet through all the gloom I can see the rays
of light and glory."

What, then, was the purpose of the great Declaration, and what has given it not
only undying significance for all future time, but especial value for us today? 
It was this:  Our fathers appreciated that their act was essentially
revolutionary, that it had no sanction in any code of municipal or
international law, and that its only justification must be found in that higher
law of the human conscience by which in the last analysis all political acts
must be judged.  They therefore felt that their action required formal
justification, and it was for the purpose of satisfying the conscience of
mankind as to the justice of an act essentially revolutionized that the
Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4th, 1776.  It was not,
therefore, intended for the colonists.  For them a recital of their grievances
was superfluous, for the wrongs done them were ineffaceably seared into their
memories.  Nor was the Declaration an appeal to public sentiment in England,
for their "humble petition" of 1776 had been contemptuously spurned both by the
King and his subservient Parliament.

Our fathers felt that further discussion with England was useless.  Its purpose
was, therefore, to solemnly challenge the justice of the world to the necessity
of the separation.  This is clearly shown by its noble preamble:  "When, in the
course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another,  *  *  * a decent
respect to the opinion of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the separation."  This paper, therefore, assumes - vainly
as it then seemed, in an age in which might was supposed to make right - that
there was a law of right and wrong, rising higher than laws, precedents, or
conventions, regulated the intercourse of nations as well as individuals.  It
believed in moral responsibility for nations as for men, and it avowed a belief
in a great human conscience which, towering above the selfish interest of
nations and races, would approve the right and condemn the wrong.  It assumed
that this approval was more to be desired than national advantage.  It
established civilization as a judge between contending nations, with posterity
as a court of last resort.  It proclaimed the solidarity of humanity, and
placed it higher than the tie of nationality; it argued-not with the ethics of
a rifle or the morality of the cannon only-but with the power of the
untrammeled reason, the righteousness of the separation at the bar of History,
it satisfied the reason of man by adding, "In proof of this let facts be
submitted to a candid world."  Nay, it recognized that even above the
conscience of mankind there was the "Ruler of Nations", by Whom all acts would
be finally and infalliby, judged, and therefore the great Declaration concluded
by solemnly "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of
our intentions."

Such was the spirit, such the purpose, such the crowning glory of the noblest
State paper ever drafted by the hand of man or proclaimed by any people.  It
proclaimed a new principle in the history of human affairs, that not by armies
and navies alone, nor by the power of economic resources, but by the standards
of eternal justice should a nation in the fear of God determine its action.  In
like spirit was the parting precept of the Father of his Country, the "counsels
of an old and affectionate friend," voiced in that immortal farewell message,
which was his benediction to the people whom he loved so well:-

"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations.  Cultivate peace and
harmony with all.  Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be
that good policy does not equally enjoin it?  It will be worthy of a free,
enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation to give to mankind the
maganimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted
justice and benevolence."

With this spirit we need not fear to face the future.  No problem to confront
us will prove too great for our solution, and no work too great for our
achievement.  To faintly grasp the future of this country is to bewilder and
exhaust the imagination.  The past is but the "happy prologue to the swelling
act of an imperial theme."  Today as never before we face the world as a united
country.  If wounds there have been, they are healed; if causes for quarrel, it
has gone.  East and west, from the Father of Waters, north and south of Mason
and Dixon's Line, we are one today, my fellow countrymen, one, in the proud
possession of the glorious past, one, in a resolute purpose to meet the duties
of the hour, and one, in an abiding faith in the future of our beloved country. 
Never before did her flag float as a symbol of possession over so vast a
dominion.  Not only from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf, and from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, but in those islands of the sea, where the Caribbean breaks, and
in that farther archipelago, laved by the China Sea, the Star-Spangled Banner
floats today in proudest triumph.  Our boast is that of the mother empire, of
whose teeming womb we are born that night no longer falls upon our possession,
for when these joyous festivities shall have ended and they shall fade from
yonder lagoon, and when the moon shall silver with its mellow glory these noble
temples of art and industry, the sun will be flooding the harbor of Manila, and
illumining that glorious flag, under which Dewey and his heroes defended this
country's honor.  For one land, one people, one flag, and one destiny, let us
reverently thank the God of our fathers.  May the glory of the Republic be as
lasting as the day, which shines upon her flag, and her beneficent influence
upon future generations as ceaseless as the majestic flow of the Mississippi to
the sea!
_______________________

When the early afternoon papers reached the grounds bearing the news of the
destruction of Spanish Admiral Cervera's fleet and of General Shafter's
ultimatum to the Spanish army in Santiago, bedlam broke loose and tremendous
enthusiasm found expression in cheer after cheer.  The managers of the
Exposition who had labored in hopes that the war might cease and that liberal
patronage might thereby be assured, now for the first time felt confident of
ultimate success, and the day was one of congratulations and good will. 
Elaborate fireworks closed the celebration, one of the set pieces of the
display representing the bombardment of Cervera's fleet, creating the wildest
enthusiasm.  At 11 o'clock P.M. a grand colored fire illumination of the entire
Midway completed the demonstration, and thus one of the great days of the
Exposition ended.