Record Data
Transcription
The Fourth of July.
We have as yet heard of no preparations being made in our city to celebrate the coming Fourth of July. We hope that some of our citizens will take the matter in hand and make arrangements for a celebration. The grand and mystic memories it brings with it, intensified, enlarged into the most magnificent proportions, and made doubly dear to every patriotic heart in the nation by the danger which threatens the Government which sprang into being from the action of this day, demand that it shall be celebrated in grateful remembrance, by the descendents of the men of ’76. For the first time in many decades does this day come to us with a personal significance. Hitherto we have met, on is annual recurrence, as children mingling in the pleasures of a May day festival. – But peace no more smiles upon our land. Mighty events, carrying with their issue the weal or woe of all time, are crowding thick and fast upon us. Terrible responsibilities, the trust our fathers committed to our care, the experiment of the competence of the people for self-government, the inalienable rights of man, Freedom, Justice, Government, the Unity of the American Republic, all these momentous issues are staked on the patriotism of the men of the present. And it is [meet?] that the great [natal?] day of our nation should not pass unremembered. The fruits that flow from it have blessed us as a people and honored us as a nation for eighty-five years. The memories that cluster around it come to us to day not as limbs dry and dusty, but green with the new glories the grand events of the present invoke. We, the children of the men of ’76, have shown by the great armies of bristling bayonets marching all over land, that we are not unworthy sons of our patriot sires. The tender pathos which the story of our past inspires, nerved a whole nation as one man; and they go down to do battle for the Union. Patriotism speaks in earnestness; the hearts of the people are quick to respond to her call, as their [arms?] are strong to strike ready blows in her defence. While our brethren are marching as our fathers marched, in defence of the Liberty and Independence which their efforts achieved, shall we so far forge; their heroism and their sufferings as to pass by unnoticed and in silence, the greatest day in our history. – We trust not. We hope that arrangements will be immediately made to celebrate it as it should be, as the great natal day American Independence, Liberty and Union.
