Here our war for independence—the American Revolution—came
to its official end, and our country embarked on the course from which
it has never swerved—the course of democracy and peace. The actual
event was a simple one. It consisted merely in the ratification by the
Continental Congress of the final treaty of peace between our new
nation and the old mother country—England. It did not take long.
Thomas Jefferson, who was chairman of the ratification committee, read
the treaty and the Congress voted to accept. That was all. Perhaps
an hour was consumed. But, when that brief formal transaction was
over, the United States was a full member of the family of nations.
It had ceased to be a group of rebelling colonies. Its national in-
dependence was established before the world. So it was in Maryland's
Old Senate Chamber that our country became a power. History tells
us the rest. The United States has been a power for democracy and
peace ever since.

And what today is so important? The desire of the free world is for
democracy and peace. Plans for human progress of every kind depend
on democracy and peace. And the world well knows what nation,
above all others, stands for these principles. Our own country. Looked
at in the light of these truths, our beautiful Old Senate Chamber is
now passing into a new era in its long history. Today it does not have
just the national meaning that we are accustomed to give it. As-
sociated, as it is, with the birth of the greatest democratic and pacific
power of the world, it now is coming to symbolize the spirit of our
American government. Within its walls was done the first work toward
establishing a government that would serve the normal peacetime needs
of a free people—and has gone on to serving the normal peacetime
needs of all free peoples. Within its walls was drawn up the first
American treaty establishing commercial relations with friendly powers.
Within its walls, Thomas Jefferson proposed that the vast lands of the
American West should not be seized by the wealthy and privileged, but
should be kept for the benefit of homesteaders, of the common man.
Within its walls also that great Virginia gentleman proposed that, after
the year 1800, there should be no extension of slave territory. And it
was in the Old Senate Chamber too that Jefferson was appointed our
diplomatic representative before the courts of Europe, an appointment
that can be said to foreshadow our present State Department. Our

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