It has ravaged how many of our homes, it has wrung how many
of the hearts before me? North and South, we know the pang. We do not
count around us a few feeble veterans of the contest, but we are girt
with a cloud of witnesses. Behold them here to-day, sharing in these
pious and peaceful rites, the honored citizens whose glory it is that
they were minute men of American liberty and union! These men of to-day
interpret to us, with resistless eloquence, the men and the times we
commemorate. Now, if never before, we understand the Revolution. Now, we
know the secrets of those old hearts and homes.
No royal governor sits in yon stately capitol; no hostile fleet for many
a year has vexed the waters of our coast; nor is any army but our own
ever likely to tread our soil. Not such are our enemies to-day. They do
not come proudly stepping to the drum-beat, with bayonets flashing in
the morning sun. But wherever party spirit shall strain the ancient
guarantees of freedom, or bigotry and ignorance of caste shall strike at
equal rights, or corruption shall poison the very springs of national
life, there, minute men of liberty, are your Lexington Green and Concord
Bridge! And, as you love your country and your kind, and would have your
children rise up and call you blessed, spare not the enemy! Over the
hills, out of the earth, down from the clouds, pour in resistless might!
Fire from every rock and tree, from door and window, from hearth-stone
and chamber; hang upon his flank and rear from morn to sunset, and so
through a land blazing with holy indignation, hurl the hordes of
ignorance and corruption and injustice back, back in utter defeat and
ruin.
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