n
is still in its youth because it has lived but seventy-five years. The
natural condition of nations is not measured by years, but by those
periods of the process of life which I have mentioned. And there is no
nation on earth in whose history those periods were so distinctly marked
as in yours. First, you had to be born. That is the period of your
glorious struggle for independence. Endless honour be to those who
conducted it! You were baptized with blood, as it seems to be the
destiny of nations; but it was the genius of Freedom which stood
god-father at your baptism, and gave to you a lasting character by
giving you the Christian name of "_Republic_." Then you had to
grow, and, indeed, you have grown with the luxuriant rapidity of the
virgin nature of the American soil. Washington knew the nature of this
soil, fertilized by the blood of your martyrs and warmed by the sun of
your liberty. He knew it, when he told your fathers that you wanted but
twenty years of peaceful growth to defy any power whatsoever in a just
cause. You have grown through those twenty years, and wisely avoided to
endanger your growth by undertaking a toil not becoming to your growing
age; and there you stood about another twenty years, looking resolutely
but unpretendingly around, if there be anybody to question that you were
really a nation. The question was put in 1812, and decided by that
glorious victory, the anniversary of which you celebrate to-day. That
victory has a deeper meaning in your history than only that of a
repulsed invasion. It marks a period in your national life--the period
of acknowledged, unshakeable security of your national existence. It is
the consummation of your declaration of independence. You have proved by
it that the United States possess an incontestable vitality, having the
power to preserve that independent national position which your fathers
established by the declaration of independence. In reality, it was the
victory of New Orleans by which you took your seat amongst the
independent nations of the world never to be contested through all
posterity.

If the history of New Orleans showed the security of your national
existence, the victorious war against Mexico proved that also your
national interests must be respected. The period of active vitality is
attained. It remains yet to take your seat, not amongst the
_nations_ of the earth, for _that_ you have since the day of
New Orleans, but amongst the _powers_