Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions (Volume 4); 1878-1886 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886. Excerpt: ... THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SURRENDER OF LORD CORNWALLIS. ORATION DELIVERED AT YORKTOWN, VIRGINIA, OCTOBER 19,1881. Mr. President, And Fellow-citizens Of The United States: --I Am profoundly sensible of the honor of being called to take so distinguished a part in this great Commemoration, and most deeply grateful to those who have thought me worthy of such an honor. But it was no affectation when, in accepting the invitation of the Joint Committee of Congress, I replied that I was sincerely conscious of my own insufficiency for so high a service. And if I felt, as I could not fail to feel, a painful sense of inadequacy at that moment, when the service was still a great way off, how much more must I be oppressed and overwhelmed by it now, in the immediate presence of the occasion As I look back to the men with whom I have been associated in my own Commonwealth, --Choate, Everett, Webster, to name no others, --I may well feel that I am here only by the accident of survival. But I cannot forget that I stand on the soil of Virginia, --a State which, of all others in our Union, has never needed to borrow an orator for any occasion, however important or exacting. Her George Mason and Thomas Jefferson, her James Madison and John Marshall, were destined, it is true, to render themselves immortal by their pens, rather than by their tongues. The pens which drafted the Virginia Bill of Rights, the Declaration of American Independence, and so much of the text, the history, the vindication, and the true construction of the American Constitution, need fear comparison with none which have ever been the implements of human thought and language. But from her peerless Patrick Henry, through the long succession of statesmen and patriots who have illustrated her annals, d