But, indeed, though a fit, it is an inadequate emblem. Towering
high above the column which our hands have builded, beheld, not by the
inhabitants of a single city or a single State, but by all the families
of man, ascends the colossal grandeur of the character and life of
Washington. In all the constituents of the one, in all the acts of the
other, in all its titles to immortal love, admiration, and renown, it is
an American production. It is the embodiment and vindication of our
transatlantic liberty. Born upon our soil, of parents also born upon it;
never for a moment having had sight of the Old World; instructed,
according to the modes of his time, only in the spare, plain, but
wholesome elementary knowledge which our institutions provide for the
children of the people; growing up beneath and penetrated by the genuine
influences of American society; living from infancy to manhood and age
amidst our expanding, but not luxurious civilization; partaking in our
great destiny of labor, our long contest with unreclaimed nature and
uncivilized man, our agony of glory, the war of Independence, our great
victory of peace, the formation of the Union, and the establishment of
the Constitution,--he is all, all our own! Washington is ours.
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