Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Address Delivered at a Barbacue: Given by the Citizens of Boyle County, K. Y., At Danville, July 4th, 1851
If any of you have come here expecting to hear from me the trumpeting of our own praises as a people, you will be disappointed. The truth is, I think we are no better than we should be. We should be better off, but for our own folly: and more prosperous, if it were not for our own vices. Under God we owe to others the good we enjoy, and our freedom from evil. We got it by inheritance from that great and peculiar race to which we belong. We are but a branch of that great anglo-saxon tree, whose roots have struck deeper, and its branches spread wider, while the tem pests of fourteen centuries have howled through them with all their changes and vicissitudes.
I believe in the Fourth of July. It is a day to make us humbler, to make us better. It is a day to teach us to look to the past 'with reverence and grati tude, and to the future with hopefulness and faith. It is a day to penetrate us with profoundest gratitude and thankfulness to our God, to our fathers' God, who hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell upon all the face of the earth, and hath determined thetimes before appointed and the bounds of their habita tion; who hath given us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. I believe in this great national sabbath, which teaches us to love each other more, and hold our country dearer; which brings us together to look in each others' faces, to grasp each others' hands, to forget past differences, lay aside party prejudices and animosities, and'to start afresh upon a new year with more love for each other, more zeal for each others' good, and more pure-hearted affection for the land of our dwelling-place and our love; to set out with strength of heart and purpose to be better neighbors, better Kentuckians, better Ame ricans, better Christians than ever before.
I said, awhile ago, that we belonged to a peculiar race, and that we inherit from it the chief elements of our happiness and success.
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