adowing glory of this result. This was the
dream of the truest friends of man from the beginning; for
this the noblest blood of martyrs has been shed; for this has
mankind waded through seas of blood and tears. There it is
now; there it stands, the noble fabric in all the splendor of
reality.

It is in a solemn and inspiring time, therefore, that we meet to
dedicate this building, and the occasion is fitting to the time. We may
now see, as never before, the deeper significance, the larger meaning of
these pioneers, whose plain lives and homely annals are glorified as a
part of the story of the building of a better system of social justice
under freedom, a broader, and as we fervently hope, a more enduring
foundation for the welfare and progress under individual liberty of the
common man, an example of federation, of peaceful adjustments by
compromise and concession under a self-governing Republic, where
sections replace nations over a Union as large as Europe, where party
discussions take the place of warring countries, where the _Pax
Americana_ furnishes an example for a better world.

As our forefathers, the pioneers, gathered in their neighborhood to
raise the log cabin, and sanctified it by the name of home, the dwelling
place of pioneer ideals, so we meet to celebrate the raising of this
home, this shrine of Minnesota's historic life. It symbolizes the
conviction that the past and the future of this people are tied
together; that this Historical Society is the keeper of the records of a
noteworthy movement in the progress of mankind; that these records are
not unmeaning and antiquarian, but even in their details are worthy of
preservation for their revelation of the beginnings of society in the
midst of a nation caught by the vision of a better future for the world.

Let me repeat the words of Harriet Martineau, who portrayed the American
of the thirties:

I regard the American people as a great embryo poet, now
moody, now wild, but bringing out results of absolute good
sense; restless and wayward in action, but with deep peace at
his heart; exulting that he has caught the true aspect of
things past and the depth of futurity which lies before him,
wherein to create something so magnificent as the world has
scarcely begun to dream of. There is the strongest hope of a
nation that is capable of being possessed with an idea.

And recall her appeal t