it—immovable as its mountains.
And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this generation and on us sink deep into our hearts. Those are daily dropping from among us who established our liberty and our government. The great trust now descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us as our appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defense and preservation; and there is opened to us also a noble pursuit to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us.
Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled conviction, and a habitual feeling that these twenty-four states are one country. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And by the blessing of God may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration, forever.
Lecturer Frances Wright Speaks on Independence Day
“Patriotism, in the exclusive meaning, is surely not made for America.”
Scottish-born Frances Wright was the first woman to gain fame giving public lectures in America, and more than once she was nearly mobbed for this audacity.
After her first visit to the United States, Frances Wright produced
Views of Society and Manners in America
, an 1821 book in favor of American life. She returned to America in 1824 and this time stayed for good—the good being social reform, including the founding of Nashoba, a colony for free blacks in Tennessee. Although that venture failed, she continued writing and lecturing to promote abolition as well as universal education and equal rights for women.
She lived for a time in New Harmony, Indiana, the cooperative colony founded by Robert Owen, the Welsh social reformer. At New Harmony, she delivered her Independence Day address on July 4, 1828. Her definitions of “patriotism” and America as “the favored scene of human improvement” emphasize the liberal views that permeated her lectures on marriage and religion as well as on social reform.
With parallel structure that begins with “It is for Americans,” Frances Wright forcefully uses anaphora, the repetition of a phrase, in six consecutive sentences to tell Americans what “it is for them” to do to celebrate and extend their independence.
***
…OUR HEARTS SHOULD expand on this day, which calls to memory the conquest achieved by knowledge over ignorance, willing cooperation over blind obedience, opinion over prejudice, new ways over old ways—when, fifty-two years ago, America declared her national independence, and associated it with her republic federation. Reasonable is it to rejoice on this day, and useful to reflect thereon; so that we rejoice for the real, and not any imaginary, good; and reflect on thepositive advantages obtained, and on those which it is ours farther to acquire.
Dating, as we justly may, a new era in the history of man from the Fourth of July, 1776, it would be well—that is, it would be useful—if on each anniversary we examined the progress made by our species in just knowledge
And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this generation and on us sink deep into our hearts. Those are daily dropping from among us who established our liberty and our government. The great trust now descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us as our appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defense and preservation; and there is opened to us also a noble pursuit to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us.
Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled conviction, and a habitual feeling that these twenty-four states are one country. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And by the blessing of God may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration, forever.
Lecturer Frances Wright Speaks on Independence Day
“Patriotism, in the exclusive meaning, is surely not made for America.”
Scottish-born Frances Wright was the first woman to gain fame giving public lectures in America, and more than once she was nearly mobbed for this audacity.
After her first visit to the United States, Frances Wright produced
Views of Society and Manners in America
, an 1821 book in favor of American life. She returned to America in 1824 and this time stayed for good—the good being social reform, including the founding of Nashoba, a colony for free blacks in Tennessee. Although that venture failed, she continued writing and lecturing to promote abolition as well as universal education and equal rights for women.
She lived for a time in New Harmony, Indiana, the cooperative colony founded by Robert Owen, the Welsh social reformer. At New Harmony, she delivered her Independence Day address on July 4, 1828. Her definitions of “patriotism” and America as “the favored scene of human improvement” emphasize the liberal views that permeated her lectures on marriage and religion as well as on social reform.
With parallel structure that begins with “It is for Americans,” Frances Wright forcefully uses anaphora, the repetition of a phrase, in six consecutive sentences to tell Americans what “it is for them” to do to celebrate and extend their independence.
***
…OUR HEARTS SHOULD expand on this day, which calls to memory the conquest achieved by knowledge over ignorance, willing cooperation over blind obedience, opinion over prejudice, new ways over old ways—when, fifty-two years ago, America declared her national independence, and associated it with her republic federation. Reasonable is it to rejoice on this day, and useful to reflect thereon; so that we rejoice for the real, and not any imaginary, good; and reflect on thepositive advantages obtained, and on those which it is ours farther to acquire.
Dating, as we justly may, a new era in the history of man from the Fourth of July, 1776, it would be well—that is, it would be useful—if on each anniversary we examined the progress made by our species in just knowledge
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