The Jubilee of the Constitution Delivered at New York, April 30, 1839, Before the New York Historical Society
- Pages
- about 32
- Category
- History
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 35 min at 250 wpm
From the opening
"The Jubilee of the Constitution, delivered at New York, April 30, 1839,
before the New York Historical Society."
Would it be an unlicensed trespass of the imagination to conceive that
on the night preceding the day of which you now commemorate the fiftieth
anniversary--on the night preceding that thirtieth of April, 1789, when
from the balcony of your city hall the chancellor of the State of New
York administered to George Washington the solemn oath faithfully to
execute the office of President of the United States, and to the best
of his ability to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the
United States--that in the visions of the night the guardian angel of
the Father of our Country had appeared before him, in the venerated form
of his mother, and, to cheer and encourage him in the performance of the
momentous and solemn duties that he was about to assume, had delivered
to him a suit of celestial armor--a helmet, consisting of the principles
of piety, of justice, of honor, of benevolence, with which from his
earliest infancy he had hitherto walked through life, in the presence of
all his brethren; a spear, studded with the self-evident truths of the
Declaration of Independence; a sword, the same with which he had led the
armies of his country through the war of freedom to the summit of
the triumphal arch of independence; a corselet and cuishes of long
experience and habitual intercourse in peace and war with the world of
mankind, his contemporaries of the human race, in all their stages of
civilization; and, last of all, the Constitution of the United States,
a shield, embossed by heavenly hands with the future history of his
country?
Yes, gentlemen, on that shield the Constitution of the United States was
sculptured (by forms unseen, and in characters then invisible to mortal
eye), the predestined and prophetic history of the one confederated
people of the North American Union.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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