ADDRESS DELIVERED AT CHARLESTOWN, AUGUST 1, 1826, IN COMMEMORA TION OF JOHN ADAMS AND THOMAS JEFFERSON. FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS, We are assembled, beneath the weeping canopy of the heavens, in the exercise of feelings, in which the whole family of Americans unites with us. We meet to pay a tribute of respect to the revered memory of those, to whom the whole country looks up as to its benefactors; to whom it ascribes the merit of unnumbered public services, and especially of the inestimable service of having led in the councils of the Revolution. It is natural, that these feelings, which pervade the whole American people, should rise into peculiar strength and earnestness in your hearts. In meditating upon these great men, your minds are unavoidably carried back to those scenes of suffering and of sacrifice into which, at the opening of their arduous and honored career, this town and its citizens were so deeply plunged. You cannot but remember, that your fathers offered their bosoms to the sword, and their dwellings to the devouring flames, from the same noble spirit which animated the venerable patriarchs whom we now deplore. The cause they espoused was the same which strewed your streets with ashes, and drenched your hill-tops with blood. And while Providence, in the astonishing circumstances of their departure, seems to have appointed that the revolutionary age of America should be closed up, by a scene as illustriously affecting, as its commencement was appalling and terrific; you have justly felt it your duty,—it has been the prompt dictate of your feelings,-to pay, within these hallowed precincts, a well-deserved tribute to the great and good men to whose counsels, under God, it is in no small degree owing, that your dwellings have risen from their ashes, and that the sacred dust of those who fell reposes in the bosom of a free and happy land. It was the custom of the primitive Romans, to preserve in the halls of their houses the images of all the illustrious men, whom their families had produced. These images are supposed to have consisted of a mask exactly representing the countenance of each deceased individual, accompanied with habiliments of like fashion with those worn in his time, and with the armor, badges, and insignia of his offices and exploits; all so disposed around the sides of the hall as to present in the attitude of living men the long succession of the departed; and thus to set before the Roman citizen, whenever he entered or left his habitation, the venerable array of his ancestors revived in this imposing similitude. Whenever, by a death in the family, another distinguished member of it was gathered to his fathers, a strange and awful procession was formed. The ancestral masks, including that of the newly deceased, were fitted upon the servants of the family, selected in the size and appearance of those whom they were intended to represent, and drawn up in solemn array to follow the funeral train of the living mourners, first to the market-place, where the public eulogium was pronounced, and then to the tomb. As he thus moved along, with all the dark fathers of his name, resuscitated in the lineaments of life, and quickening, as it were, from their urns, to enkindle his emulation, the virtuous Roman renewed his vows of pious respect to their memory, and his resolution to imitate the fortitude, the frugality, and the patriotism of the great heads of his family.* Fellow citizens, the great heads of the American family are fast passing away; of the last, of the most honored, two are now no We are assembled not to gaze with awe on the artificial and theatric images of their features, but to contemplate their venerated characters, to call to mind their invaluable services, to cherish their revered memory; to lay up the image of their virtues in our hearts. The two men, who stood in a relation, in which no more. * Polyb. Historiar. lib. VI. others now stand to this whole continent, have fallen. The men whom Providence marked out among the first of the favored instruments, to lead this chosen people into the holy land of liberty, have discharged their high office, and are no more. The men, whose ardent minds prompted them to take up their country's cause, when there was nothing else to prompt, and every thing to deter them; the men who afterwards, when the ranks were filled with the brave and resolute, were yet in the front of those brave and resolute ranks; the men, who, when the wisest and most sagacious were needed to steer the newly launched vessel through the broken waves of the unknown sea, sat calm and unshaken at the helm; the men, who, in their country's happier days, were found most worthy to preside over the great interests of the land they had so powerfully contributed to rear into greatness,—these men are now no more. They have left us not singly and in the sad but accustomed succession, in which the order of nature calls away the children of men; but having lived, and acted, and counselled, and dared, and risked all, and triumphed, and enjoyed together, they have gone together to their great reward. In the morning of life,-without previous concert, but with a kindred spirit,-they plunged together into a conflict, which put to hazard all which makes life precious. When the storm of war and revolution raged, they stood side by side, on such perilous ground, that, had the American cause failed, though all else had been forgiven, they were of the few whom an incensed empire's vengeance would have pursued to the ends of the earth. When they had served through their long career of duty, forgetting the little that had divided them, and cherishing the great communion of service, and peril, and success, which had united them, they walked, with honorable friendship, the declining pathway of age; and now they have sunk down together, in peace, into the bosom of a redeemed and grateful country. Time, and their country's service, and kindred hearts, a like fortune and a like reward united them; and the last great scene confirmed the union. They were useful, honored, prosperous, and lovely in their lives, and in their deaths, they were not divided. Happiest at the last, they were permitted almost to choose the hour of their departure; to die on that day, on which those who loved them best could have wished they might die. It is related as a singular felicity of the great philosopher Plato, that he died, at a good old age, at a banquet, surrounded with flowers and perfumes, amidst festal songs, on his birth-day. Our Adams and Jefferson died on the birth-day of the nation; the day which their own deed had immortalized, which their own prophetic spirit had marked out, as the great festival of the nation; not amidst the festal songs of the banquet, but amidst the triumphal anthems of a whole grateful people. At the moment that Jefferson expired, his character was the theme of eulogy, in every city and almost every village of the land; and the lingering spirit of his great co-patriot fled, while his name was pronounced with grateful recollection, at the board of patriotic festivity, throughout a country, that hailed him as among the first and boldest of her champions, even in the days when friends were few and hearts were faint. Our jubilee, like that of old, is turned into sorrow. Among the crumbling ruins of Rome, there is a shattered arch, reared by the emperor Vespasian, when his son Titus returned from the destruction of Jerusalem. On its broken pannels and falling frieze are still to be seen, represented as borne aloft in the triumphal procession of Titus, the well known spoils of the second temple, the sacred vessels of the holy place, the candlestick with seven branches, and, in front of all, the silver trumpets of the jubilee, in the hands of captive priests, proclaiming not now the liberty, but the humiliation and the sorrows of Judah. From this mournful spectacle, it is said, the pious and heart-stricken Hebrew, even to the present day, turns aside in sorrow. He will not enter Rome, through the gate of the arch of Titus, but winds his way through the by-paths of the Palatine, and over the broken columns of the palace of the Cæsars, that he may not behold the sad image of the trumpets of the jubilee, borne aloft in the captive train. The jubilee of America is turned into mourning. Its joy is mingled with sadness; its silver trumpet breathes a mingled strain. Henceforward and forever, while America exists among the nations of the earth, the first emotion on the fourth of July shall be of joy and triumph in the great event which immortalizes the day,-the second shall be one of chastised and tender recollection of the venerable men, who departed on the morning of the jubilee. This mingled emotion of triumph and sadness has sealed the moral beauty and sublimity of our great anniversary. In the simple commemoration of a victorious political achievement, there seems not enough to occupy all our purest and best feelings. The fourth of July was before a day of unshaded triumph, exultation, and national pride; but the angel of death has mingled in the all-glorious pageant, to teach us we are men. Had our venerated fathers left us on any other day, the day of the united departure of two such men would henceforward have been remembered but as a day of mourning. But now, while their decease has gently chastened the exultations of the triumphant festival; the banner of independence will wave cheerfully over the spot where they repose. The whole nation feels, as with one heart, that since it must sooner or later have been bereaved of its revered fathers, it could not have wished that any other had been the day of their decease. Our anniversary festival was before triumphant; it is now triumphant and sacred. It before called out the young and ardent, to join in the public rejoicings; it now also speaks, in a touching voice, to the retired, to the grey-headed, to the mild and peaceful spirits, to the whole family of sober freemen. With some appeal of joy, of admiration, of tenderness, it henceforth addresses every American heart. It is henceforward, what the dying Adams pronounced it, a great and a good day. It is full of greatness, and full of goodness. It is absolute and complete. The death of the men, who declared our independence, their death on the day of the jubilee, was all that was wanting to the fourth of July. To die on that day, and to die together, was all that was wanting to Jefferson and Adams. Think not fellow-citizens, that, in the mere formal discharge of my duty this day, I would overrate the melancholy interest of the great occasion. Heaven knows, I do any thing but intentionally overrate it. I labor only for words, to do justice to your feelings and to mine. I can say nothing, which does not sound as cold, as tame, and as inadequate to myself as to you. The theme is too great and too surprising, the men are too great and good to be spoken of, in this cursory manner. There is too much in the contemplation of their united characters, their services, the day and coincidence of their death, to be properly described, or to be fully felt at once. I dare not come here and dismiss, in a few |