Excerpt from Anniversary Address: Delivered at the Baptist Church, North Adams, Mass

Fellow Citizens: You have a right to rejoice. These jubilant cannon are none too loud. These bells and flags, these songs and shouts and swelling festal music, are none too glad and gay for such an hour as this. No joy can be too great for a Nation saved, a Republic redeemed, a slaveholding, man-hating conspiracy smote to dust.

Now we know the sweet and bitter in the cup of national experience, which has been pressed to the lips of every great people. We know the unutterable agonies of defeat, and the bliss and splendor of victory. Now we know the meaning of those wild shouts which burst from the lips of Athens, when the news of victory came from Marathon, Salamis and Platea - Xerxes and his Persian hordes had been beaten and rolled back and the civilization of Greece saved from destruction. The light of those victories streams upon your faces to-day, through the mists of more than twenty centuries.

No wonder they crowded those beautiful temples to celebrate their joy. No wonder they welcomed the victors with crowns and wreaths, and triumphal arches, and songs - with tears and worship.

We can now understand the emotions which swelled the breasts of the Fathers when the Eagles of victory perched upon their flag at Yorktown, and why they strewed the return of Washington and his heroes with flowers.

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