of your society--which are called "New England ideas." They are as
perfect as the catechism. [Applause and laughter.] I have heard them
supplemented by a sort of codicil, to the effect that a large part of
our country--probably one-half--is still disturbed, and that the
Northern man is not welcome there. I know of my own knowledge that
two-thirds of the territory of the United States are not yet settled. I
believe that when our Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock, they
began the war of civilization against barbarism, which is not yet ended
in America. The Nation then, as Mr. Beecher has well said, in the strife
begun by our fathers, aimed to reach a higher manhood--a manhood of
virtue, a manhood of courage, a manhood of faith, a manhood that aspires
to approach the attributes of God Himself.

Whilst granting to every man the highest liberty known on earth, every
Yankee believes that the citizen must be the architect of his own
fortune; must carry the same civilization wherever he goes, building
school-houses and churches for all alike, and wherever the Yankee has
gone thus far he has carried his principles and has enlarged New England
so that it now embraces probably a third or a half of the settled part
of America. That has been a great achievement, but it is not yet
completed. Your work is not all finished.

You who sit here in New York, just as your London cousins did two
hundred and fifty years ago, know not the struggle that is beyond. At
this very moment of time there are Miles Standishes, under the cover of
the snow of the Rocky Mountains, doing just what your forefathers did
two hundred and fifty years ago. They have the same hard struggle before
them that your fathers had. You remember they commenced in New England
by building log cabins and fences and tilling the sterile, stony, soil,
which Mr. Beecher describes, and I believe these have been largely
instrumental in the development of the New England character. Had your
ancestors been cast on the fertile shores of the lower Mississippi, you
might not be the same vigorous men you are to-day. Your fathers had to
toil and labor. That was a good thing for you, and it will be good for
your children if you can only keep them in the same tracks. But here in
New York and in Brooklyn, I do not think you now are exactly like your
forefathers, but I can take you where you will see real live Yankees,
very much the same as your fathers were. In New York with wealth an