724 State Papers and Addresses

the forefathers could scarcely have imagined?—How did these makers of the
Constitution manage so wonderfully to build this lasting temple of Democracy?"
Thus have foreign scholars expressed their admiration and amazement.
But here at home, we know the answers. This America of our was born of
principles not confined within the borders of any separate community of citizens
or of any special class of society. The ideal of Liberty did not exist exclusively
within the dreams of our Prophets, nor in the language of our orators, nor in
the intellectual concept of our thinkers. Rather these words and thoughts were
merely the reflections and the echoes of the thing itself.

Thomas Paine was the Prophet who first used the expression "United States
of America, " but before he ever did so, Americans had died for Liberty in the
trenches of Bunker Hill; Pennsylvania had given us Valley Forge; and every
hamlet and farm from the rocks of the North to the savannahs of the South
had sent its boys to march under the Stars and Stripes—the symbolic emblem
of thirteen states, but only one Nation.

That was the reality of Thomas Paine's prophecy.

Daniel Webster's were the words "Liberty and Union, one and inseparable,
now and forever!" But the knowledge that freedom and unity were twin pillars
of our Nation had already been learned on the decks of the Bon Homme Richard
and the ramparts of Yorktown. The words of the Orator were only the eloquent
echoes of John Paul Jones' cannonades, and of the battle cries of the men whose
charge broke the last stand of Lord Cornwallis.

One of those men in that historic charge was Alexander Hamilton, who
lived to give his mighty brain to the work of formulating the Constitution.
When the Constitution came to be written on paper, it began with the words,
"We, the People, in order to form a more perfect Union... " But the words
had already been written on the hearts of many Americans—written there so
indelibly that we read them in our own hearts today. "We, the people... "
have indeed inherited that "more perfect Union" which the representatives of
our separate states created so many years ago.

No, here in America we see no reason to wonder that a great Nation has
been formed from the sum of 48 smaller nations. Each of these nations—states,
we call them— remains today an identity unto itself. It chooses its own political
leaders. It enacts its own laws, levies its own taxes, maintains its own militia,
sings its own anthem—has its own sense of pride, its boundaries, its literature
and, to some degree, its own language.

Yet far from being a detriment to Unity or a threat to freedom, these 48
regional principalities are actually the stones out of which we have built the
temple.

It is not a question of our Union being only as1 strong as its weakest link.
That analogy is completely false applied to these United States. It is bad logic
to liken such a living organism as this Union to as inanimate an object as a
chain. In a much more apt sense, we are a family— a large, patriarchial group
living in the same strong castle, subsisting upon the same good earth, prospering