THE SPEECH OF THE UNKNOWN.
“Gibbet? They may stretch our necks on all the gibbets in the land—
they may turn every rock into a scaffold—every tree into a gallows, every
home into a grave, and yet the words on that Parchment can never die!
“They may pour our blood on a thousand scaffolds, and yet from every
drop that dyes the axe, or drips on the sawdust of the block, a new martyr
to Freedom will spring into birth!
“The British King may blot out the Stars of God from His sky, but he
cannot blot out His words written on the Parchment there! The works
of God may perish—His Word, never!
“These words will go forth to the world when our bones are dust. To
the slave in the mines they will speak—Hope—to the mechanic in his
workshop—Freedom—to the coward-kings these words will speak, but not
in tones of flattery? No, no! They will speak like the flaming syllables
on Belshazzar's wall—the days of your pride and glory are numbered!
The days of Judgment and Revolution draw near!
“Yes, that Parchment will speak to the Kings in a language sad and
terrible as the trump of the Archangel. You have trampled on mankind
long enough. At last the voice of human woe has pierced the ear of God,
and called His Judgment down! You have waded on to thrones over
seas of blood—you have trampled on to power over the necks of millions—
you have turned the poor man's sweat and blood into robes for your delicate
forms, into crowns for your anointed brows. Now Kings—now purpled
Hangmen of the world—for you come the days of axes and gibbets and
scaffolds—for you the wrath of man—for you the lightnings of God!—
“Look! How the light of your palaces on fire flashes up into the midnight
sky!
“Now Purpled Hangmen of the world—turn and beg for mercy!
“Where will you find it?
“Not from God, for you have blasphemed His laws!
“Not from the People, for you stand baptized in their blood!
“Here you turn, and lo! a gibbet!
“There—and a scaffold looks you in the face.
“All around you—death—and nowhere pity!
“Now executioners of the human race, kneel down, yes, kneel down
upon the sawdust of the scaffold—lay your perfumed heads upon the block
—bless the axe as it falls—the axe that you sharpened for the poor man's
neck!
“Such is the message of that Declaration to Man, to the Kings of the
world! And shall we falter now? And shall we start back appalled when
our feet press the very threshhold of Freedom? Do I see quailing faces
around me, when our wives have been butchered—when the hearthstones
of our land are red with the blood of little children?
“What are these shrinking hearts and faltering voices here, when the very
Dead of our battlefields arise, and call upon us to sign that Parchment, or
be accursed forever?
“Sign! if the next moment the gibbet's rope is round your neck! Sign!
if the next moment this hall rings with the echo of the falling axe! Sign!
By all your hopes in life or death, as husbands—as fathers—as men—sign
your names to the Parchment or be accursed forever!
“Sign—and not only for yourselves, but for all ages. For that Parchment
will be the Text-book of Freedom—the Bible of the Rights of Man
forever!
“Sign—for that declaration will go forth to American hearts forever, and
speak to those hearts like the voice of God! And its work will not be
done, until throughout this wide Continent not a single inch of ground owns
the sway of a British King!
“Nay, do not start and whisper with surprise! It is a truth, your own
hearts witness it, God proclaims it.—This Continent is the property of a
free people, and their property alone. God, I say, proclaims it! Look at
this strange history of a band of exiles and outcasts, suddenly transformed
into a People—look at this wonderful Exodus of the oppressed of the Old
World into the New, where they came, weak in arms but mighty in God-like
faith—nay, look at this history of your Bunker Hill—your Lexington—
where a band of plain farmers mocked and trampled down the panoply of
British arms, and then tell me, if you can, that God has not given America
to the free?
“It is not given to our poor human intellect to climb the skies, to pierce
the councils of the Almighty One. But methinks I stand among the awful
clouds which veil the brightness of Jehovah's throne. Methinks I see the
Recording Angel—pale as an angel is pale, weeping as an angel can weep
—come trembling up to that Throne, and speak his dread message—
“`Father! the old world is baptized in blood! Father, it is drenched
with the blood of millions, butchered in war, in persecution, in slow and
grinding oppression! Father—look, with one glance of Thine Eternal eye,
look over Europe, Asia, Africa, and behold evermore, that terrible sight,
man trodden down beneath the oppressor's feet—nations lost in blood—
Murder and Superstition walking hand in hand over the graves of their
victims, and not a single voice to whisper, `Hope to Man!'
“He stands there, the Angel, his hands trembling with the black record
of human guilt. But hark! The voice of Jehovah speaks out from the
awful cloud—`Let there be light again. Let there be a New World. Tell
my people—the poor—the trodden down millions, to go out from the Old
World. Tell them to go out from wrong, oppression and blood—tell them
to go out from this Old World—to build my altar in the New!'
“As God lives, my friends, I believe that to be HIS voice! Yes, were
my soul trembling on the wing for Eternity, were this hand freezing in death,
were this voice choking with the last struggle, I would still, with the last
impulse of that soul, with the last wave of that hand, with the last gasp of
that voice, implore you to remember this truth—God has given America to
the free! Yes, as I sank down into the gloomy shadows of the grave, with
my last gasp, I would beg you to sign that Parchment, in the name of the
God, who made the Saviour who redeemed you—in the name of the millions
whose very breath is now hushed in intense expectation, as they look
up to you for the awful words—`You are free!”'
O, many years have gone since that hour—the Speaker, his brethren, all,
have crumbled into dust, but it would require an angel's pen to picture the
magic of that Speaker's look, the deep, terrible emphasis of his voice, the
prophet-like beckoning of his hand, the magnetic flame which shooting from
his eyes, soon fired every heart throughout the hall!
He fell exhausted in his seat, but the work was done. A wild murmur
thrills through the hall.—Sign? Hah? There is no doubt now. Look!
How they rush forward—stout-hearted John Hancock has scarcely time to
sign his bold name, before the pen is grasped by another—another and
another! Look how the names blaze on the Parchment—Adams and Lee
and Jefferson and Carroll, and now, Roger Sherman the Shoemaker.
And here comes good old Stephen Hopkins—yes, trembling with palsy,
he totters forward—quivering from head to foot, with his shaking hands he
seizes the pen, he scratches his patriot-name.
Then comes Benjamin Franklin the Printer, and now the tall man in the
dark robe advances, the man who made the fiery speech a moment ago—
with the same hand that but now waved in such fiery scorn he writes his
name.[1]
And now the Parchment is signed; and now let word go forth to the
People in the streets—to the homes of America—to the camp of Mister
Washington, and the Palace of George the Idiot-King—let word go out to
all the earth—
And, old man in the steeple, now bare your arm, and grasp the Iron
Tongue, and let the bell speak out the great truth:
Fifty-six Traders and Farmers and Mechanics have this day shook
the shackles of the World!
Hark! Hark to the toll of that Bell!
Is there not a deep poetry in that sound, a poetry more sublime than
Shakspeare or Milton?
Is there not a music in the sound, that reminds you of those awful tones
which broke from angel-lips, when the news of the child of Jesus burst on
the Shepherds of Bethlehem?
For that Bell now speaks out to the world, that—
God has given the American Continent to the free—the toiling
millions of the human race—as the last altar of the rights of man
on the globe—the home of the oppressed, forevermore!
Let us search for the origin of the great truth, which that bell proclaimed,
let us behold the great Apostle who first proclaimed on our shores, all
men are alike the children of God.
