I pledge allegiance
to the flag of The United States of
America,
And to the republic, for which it stands,
One nation, under God, indivisible,
With
liberty and justice for all.
AMERICA THE
BEAUTIFUL (1895)
Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929)
O beautiful for
spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple
mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy
good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for
pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare
for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul
in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for
heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than
self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success
be nobleness
And every gain divine!
O beautiful for
patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster
cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy
good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
STAR SPANGLED BANNER (1812)
Francis Scott Key (1779-1843)
O! say, can you
see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly
we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming:
Whose broad
stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the
ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming,
And the rocket's
red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through
the night that our flag was still there;
O! say, does
that Star-spangled Banner still* wave
O'er the land of
the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore,
dimly seen through the mists of the deep
Where the foe's
haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that
which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully
blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches
the gleam of the morning's first beam --
In full glory
reflected, now shines on the stream;
'Tis the
Star-spangled Banner, O! long may it wave
O'er the land of
the free and the home of the brave.
And where is
that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc
of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a
country should leave us no more?
Their blood has
washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could
save the hireling and slave.
From the terror
of flight or the gloom of the grave!
And the
Star-spangled Banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of
the free and the home of the brave.
O! thus be it
ever when free men shall stand
Between their
loved homes and the foe's desolation;
Bless'd with
victory and peace, may our Heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power
that hath made and preserved us a nation
Then conquer we
must, for our cause it is just --
And this be our
motto -- "In God is our trust!"
And the
Star-spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of
the free and the home of the brave.
---
* current usage
has changed "still" to "yet" thereby changing the
final stanza
from a question to an exclamation.
THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT
November 11, 1620 [This was November 21, old style calendar]
In the name of
God, Amen. We, whose names are
underwritten,
the Loyal
Subjects of our dread Sovereigne Lord, King James,
by the Grace of
God, of Great Britaine, France, and Ireland,
King, Defender
of the Faith, &c.
Having
undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of
the Christian
Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country,
a Voyage to
plant the first colony in the Northerne Parts
of Virginia;
doe, by these Presents, solemnly and mutually
in the Presence
of God and one of another, covenant and
combine
ourselves together into a civill Body Politick,
for our better
Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance
of the Ends
aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof do enact,
constitute, and
frame, such just and equall Laws, Ordinances,
Acts,
Constitutions, and Offices, from time to time,
as shall be
thought most meete and convenient for the
Generall Good of
the Colonie; unto which we promise
all due
Submission and Obedience.
In Witness whereof
we have hereunto subscribed our names
at Cape Cod the
eleventh of November, in the Raigne of our
Sovereigne Lord,
King James of England, France, and Ireland,
the eighteenth,
and of Scotland, the fiftie-fourth,
Anno. Domini,
1620.
Mr.
John Carver Mr.
Stephen Hopkins Edward Liester
Mr.
William Bradford Digery Priest
Mr.
Edward Winslow Thomas Williams
Mr.
William Brewster Gilbert Winslow
Isaac
Allerton Edmund Margesson
Miles
Standish Peter Brown
John
Alden Richard Bitteridge
John
Turner George Soule
Francis
Eaton Edward Tilly
James
Chilton John Tilly
John
Craxton Francis Cooke
John
Billington Thomas Rogers
Joses
Fletcher Thomas
Tinker
John
Goodman John Ridgate
Mr.
Samuel Fuller Edward Fuller
Mr.
Christopher Martin Richard Clark
Mr.
William Mullins Richard Gardiner
Mr.
William White Mr. John Allerton
Mr.
Richard Warren Thomas
English
John
Howland Edward Doten
A MODEL OF
CHRISTIAN CHARITY (1630)
John Winthrop (1588-1649)
A MODEL THEREOF
God Almighty in
His most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed of the condition of
mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in
power and dignity; others mean and in subjection.
THE REASON HEREOF
First, to hold conformity with the
rest of His works, being delighted to show forth the glory of His wisdom in the
variety and difference of the creatures; and the glory of His power, its
ordering all these differences for the preservation and good of the whole; and
the glory of His greatness, that as it is the glory of princes to have many
officers, so this great King will have many stewards, counting Himself more
honored in dispensing His gifts to man by man than if He did it by His own
immediate hands.
Secondly, that He might have the
more occasion to manifest the work of His Spirit: first upon the wicked its
moderating and restraining them, so that the rich and mighty should not eat up
the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against their superiors and shake
off their yoke; secondly in the regenerate, in exercising His graces, in them, as in the great ones, their love,
mercy, gentleness, temperance, etc.; in the poor and inferior sort, their faith
patience, obedience etc.
Thirdly, that every man might have
need of other, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in
the bonds of brotherly affection. From hence it appears plainly that no man is
made more honorable than another or more wealthy, etc., out of any particular
and singular respect to himself, but for the glory of his creator and the
common good of the creature, man.
Therefore God still reserves the property of these gifts to Himself as
[in] Ezekiel 16.17. He there calls wealth His gold and His silver. [in]
Proverbs 3.9, he claims their service as His due, honor the Lord with thy
riches etc. All men being thus (by
divine providence) ranked into two sorts, rich and poor; under the first are
comprehended all such as are able to live comfortably by their own meanes
duly improved; and all others are poor
according to the former distribution
There are two rules whereby we are
to walk towards each other: justice and
mercy. These are always distinguished in
their act and in their object, yet may they both concur in the same subject
in each respect; as sometimes there may be an occasion of showing mercy to a
rich man in some sudden danger of distress, and also doing of mere justice to a
poor man in regard of some particular contract, etc.
There is likewise a double law by which we are regulated in our
conversation one towards another in both the former respects: the law of nature
and the law of grace, or the moral law or the law of the Gospel, to omit the
rule of justice as not properly belonging to this purpose otherwise than it may
fall into consideration in some particular cases. By the first of these laws
man as he was enabled so withal [is] commanded to love his neighbor as himself.
Upon this ground stands all the precepts of the moral law, which concerns our
dealings with men. To apply this to the works of mercy, this law requires two
things: first, every man afford his help to another in every want or distress;
secondly, that he performed this out of the same affection which makes him
careful of his own goods, according to that of our Savior. Matthew:
"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you” This was practiced by
Abraham and Lot in entertaining the Angels and the old man of Gibeah.
The law of grace of the Gospel hath
some difference from the former, as in these respects: First, the law of nature
was given to man in the estate of innocency; this of the Gospel in the estate
of regeneracy. Secondly, the former propounds one man to another, as the same
flesh and image of God; this as a brother in Christ also, and in the communion
of the same spirit and so teacheth us to
put a difference between Christians and others. Do good to all, especially to
the household of faith: Upon this
ground the Israelites were to put a difference between the brethren of such as
were strangers though not of Canaanites. Third, the law of nature could give no
titles for dealing with enemies, for all are to be considered as friends in the state of innocency, but the Gospel
commands love to an enemy- Proof. If thine Enemy hunger, feed him; Love your
Enemies, do good to them that hate you. Matthew: 5:44.
II
Thus stands the cause between God
and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out
a commission, the Lord hath given us
leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these actions,
upon these and those ends, we have
hereupon besought Him of favour and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to
hear us, and bring us in peace to
the place we desire, then hath he ratified this covenant and sealed our
commission, [and] will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in
it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the
ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace
this present world and prosecute our
carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity,
the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us; be revenged of such a
perjured people and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.
Now the only way to avoid this
shipwreck and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah
to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end we must
be knit together in this work as one man. We must entertain each other in
brotherly affection, we must be willing
to abridge ourselves of our superfluities,
for the supply of other's necessities. We must uphold a familiar
commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must
delight in each other, make other's conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labour and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission
and community in the work, our community as members of the same body. So shall
we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God,
and delight to dwell among us as His own people, and will command a blessing
upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power,
goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find
that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall
make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations “the
lord make it like that of New
England." For we must
consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all
people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work
we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw His present help from us, we
shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths
of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake.
We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their
prayers to be turned into curses upon us 'til we be consumed out of the good
land whither we are agoing.
And to Shut up this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful
servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deuteronomy 30. Beloved, there is now set before us
life and good, death and evil. in that we are commanded this day to love the
Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments
and His ordinance and His laws, and the articles of our covenant with Him,
that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in
the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so
that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our
pleasures and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we
shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to
possess it.
Therefore let us choose life,
that we and our seed
may live by obeying His
voice and cleaving to Him,
for He is our life and
our prosperity.
THE DECLARATION
OF INDEPENDENCE (1776)
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
In Congress,
July 4, 1776: The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of
America
When in the Course of human events
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the
separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety
and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are
accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,
and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient
sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains
them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present
King of Great
Britain is a
history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let
Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws,
the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Government to
pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in heir
operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has
utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws
for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would
relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable
to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative
bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of
their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance
with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative
Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights
of the people.
He has refused for a long time,
after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative
Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for
their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers
of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the
population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for
Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their
migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration
of Justice, by Refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent own his
Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of
their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New
Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to Harass our people, and eat out
their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of
peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the
Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to
subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged
buy our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For
quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them by a mock
Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Consent; For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of
Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended
offenses: for abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring
Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its
Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for
introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our
Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally and
Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring
themselves invested with powers to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by
declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged
our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting
large Armies of Foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation
and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy scarcely
paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a
civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens
taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become
the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their
Hands.
He has excited domestic
insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our
frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions
We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions
have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus
marked by every act which may define a Tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a
free people.
Nor have We been wanting in
attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of
attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement
here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have
conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations,
which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too
have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must,
therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold
them as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore the Representatives of
the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the
Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the Name,
and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and
declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and
Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British
Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great
Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent
States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances,
establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent
States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm
reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other
our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
GETTYSBURG ADDRESS (1863)
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Given November 19, 1863 on the
battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Four score and seven years ago, our
fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty,
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil
war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to
dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here
gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot
dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor
power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we
say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living,
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here
have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to
the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of
devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in
vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from
this earth.
“SECOND
INAUGURAL ADDRESS” (March 4, 1865)
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
At this second appearing to take the
oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address
than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course
to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years,
during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every
point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and
engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.
The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known
to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and
encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to
it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to
this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil
war. All dreaded it - all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was
being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without
war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war -
seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties
deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation
survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war
came.
One eighth of the whole population
were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in
the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful
interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen,
perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents
would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do
more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected
for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained.
Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even
before, the conflict itself might cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and
a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to
the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange
that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread
from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be judged.
The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered
fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of
offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by
whom the offense cometh!” If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of
those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which,
having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that
He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by
whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine
attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do
we hope-fervently do we pray-that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass
away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the
bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be bunk, and
until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another dawn
with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said
“the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with
charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the
work we are on; to bind the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have
borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan - to do all which may
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all
nations.
ALWAYS THERE ARE
THE CHILDREN (November 12, 1974)
Nikki Giovanni (1943--)
and always there are the children
there will be
children in the heat of day
there will be
children in the cold of winter
children like a quilted blanket
are welcomed in
our old age
children like a block of ice to a desert
sheik
are signs of
status in our youth
we feed the
children with our culture
that they might
understand our travail
we nourish the
children on our gods
that they may
understand respect
we urge the
children on the tracks
that our race
will not fall short
but our children
are not ours
nor we theirs they are future we are past
how do we
welcome the future
not with the
colonialism of the past
for that is our problem
not with the
racism of the past
for that is their problem
not with the
fears of our own status
for history is lived not dictated
we welcome the
young of all groups
as our own with
the solid nourishment
of food and
warmth
we prepare the
way with the solid
nourishment of
self-actualization
we implore all
the young to prepare for the young
because always
there will be children
I HAVE A DREAM (1963)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
I am happy to join with you today in
what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the
history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great
American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation
Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon of light and of hope
to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering
injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their
captivity.
But one hundred years later, the
Negro still is not free; one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is
still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of
discrimination; one hundred years later, the
Negro lives on a
lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity;
one hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of
American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.
So we’ve come here today to
dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital
to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words
of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a
promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was the
promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed
the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has
defaulted on this promissory note in so
far as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred
obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has
come back “insufficient funds.” We refuse to believe that there are
insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so
we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches
of freedom and security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed
spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is not time to engage
in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy; now is the time to rise
from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit oath of racial
justice; now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial
injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood; now is the time to make justice a
reality for all God’s children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook
the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate
discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
Nineteen sixty-three is not an end,
but a beginning And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and
will now be content, will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to
business as usual.
There will be neither rest nor
tranquillity in America until the
Negro is granted
his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the
foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must
say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of
justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of
wrongful deeds.
Let us not seek to satisfy our
thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must
forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We
must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again
and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with
soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which
has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white
people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here
today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and they
have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
This offense we share mounted to storm the battlements of injustice must be
carried forth by a biracial army. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the
pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those
who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We
can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable
horrors of police brutality.
We can never be satisfied as long as
our bodies, heavy with fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of
the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as
the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.
We can never be satisfied as long as
our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by
signs stating “for whites only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in
Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for
which to vote. No, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until
justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you
have come here out of excessive trials and tribulation. Some of you have come
fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest
for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the
winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering.
Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi; go back to
Alabama; go back to South Carolina; go back to Georgia; go back to Louisiana;
go back to the slums and ghettos of the northern cities, knowing that somehow
this situation can, and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of
despair.
So I say to you, my friends, that
even though we must face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a
dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this
nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - we hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the
red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners
will be able to sit own together at the table of brotherhood.’
I have a dream that one day, even
the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice,
sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of
freedom and justice.
I have a dream my four little
children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream
today!
I have a dream that one day, down in
Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping
with the words of interposition and nullification, that one day, right there in
Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with
little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream
today!
I have a dream that one day every
valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough
places shall be made plain, and the crooked places shall be made straight and
the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith
that I go back to the South with.
With this faith we will be able to
hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be
able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony
of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to
work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together,
to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This
will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new
meaning - “my country ‘tis of thee; sweet land of liberty; of thee I sing; land
where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride; from every mountain side,
let freedom, ring” - and if America is to be a great nation, this must come
true.
So let freedom ring from the
prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty
mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening
Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the
snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous
slopes of California.
But not only that.
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain
of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain
of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and
molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when we allow freedom to ring,
when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and city,
we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children-black men and
white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants-will be able to join
hands and to sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, free
at last; thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
¶ INAUGURAL ADDRESS (January 20, 1961)
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker,
Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President
Truman, reverend clergy, fellow citizens, we observe today not a victory of
party but a celebration of freedom- symbolizing an end as well as a beginning-
signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty
God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and
three-quarters ago.
The world is very different now. For
man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty
and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which
our forbears fought are still at issue around the globe-the belief that the
rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of
God.
We dare not forget today that we are
the heirs of that first revolution.
Let the word go
forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has
been passed to a new generation of Americans-born in this century, tempered by
war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage-and
unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which
this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today, at
home and around the world.
Let every nation know whether it
wishes us will or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden meet any
hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the
success of liberty.
This much we pledge and more.
To those old allies whose cultural
and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends.
United, there is little we cannot do in a host of co-operative ventures,
Divided, there is little we can do-for
we dare not meet a powerful challenge, at odds, and split asunder.
To those new states whom we welcome
to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control
shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We
shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always
hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom-and to remember that,
in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger
ended up inside.
To those people in the huts and
villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we
pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is
required-not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their
votes, but because it is right.
If a free
society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
To our sister republics south of our
border, we offer a special pledge-to convert our good words into good deeds-in
a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting
off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become
the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with
them to opposed aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let
every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its
own house.
To that world assembly of sovereign
states: the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments
of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we new our pledge of
support-to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective-to strengthen
its shield for the new and the weak-and to enlarge the area in which its writ
may run.
Finally, to those nations who would
make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both
sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction
unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental
self-destruction.
We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are
sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain that they will never be employed. But neither can two great and powerful
groups of nations take comfort from our present course-both sides overburdened
by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the
deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that
stays the hand of Mankind’s final war.
So let us begin anew-remembering on
both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always
subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to
negotiate.
Let both sides explore what problems
unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.
Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise
proposals for the inspection and control of arms-and bring the absolute power
to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.
Let both sides seek to invoke the
wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars,
conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the
arts and commerce.
Let both sides unite to heed in all
corners of the earth the command of Isaiah to “undo the heavy burdens and let
the oppressed go free.”
And if a beachhead of co-operation
may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating not a
new balance of power but a new world of law where the strong are just and the
weak secure and the peace preserved.
All this will not be finished in the
first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days,
nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on
this planet. But let us begin.
In your hands, my fellow citizens,
more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since
this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to
give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who
answered the call to service surround the globe.
Now the trumpet summons us again-not
as a call to bear arms, though arms we need-not as a call to battle, though
embattled we are-but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle,
year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”- a struggle
against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance,
North and South, East and West that can assure a more fruitful life for all
mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?
In the long history of the world,
only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its
hour of maximum danger; I do not shrink from this responsibility-I welcome it.
I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or
any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to
this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it-and the glow from
that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans, ask not
what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world, ask
not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom
of man.
Finally, whether you are citizens of
America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of
strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only
sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds; let us go forth to lead
the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on
earth God’s work must truly be our own.
THE GIFT
OUTRIGHT (1961)
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
(January 20, 1961, Inauguration of
John F. Kennedy)
The land was
ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land
more than a hundred years
Before we were
her people. She was ours
In
Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were
England’s still colonials,
Possessing what
we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by
what we now no more possessed.
Something we
were withholding made us weak
Until we found
out that was ourselves
We were
withholding from our land of living.
And forthwith
found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were
we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of
gift was many deeds of war)
To the land
vaguely realizing westward,
But still
unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was,
such as she would become.
PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION ACCEPTANCE SPEECH (1968)
Richard M. Nixon (1913-1995)
America is in trouble today not
because her people have failed but because her leaders have failed.
When the strongest nation in the
world can be tied down for four years in a war in Vietnam with no end in sight;
When the richest nation in the world
can’t manage its own economy;
When the nation with the greatest
tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented lawlessness;
When a nation that has been known
for a century for equality of opportunity is torn by unprecedented racial
violence;
And when then President of the
United States cannot travel abroad or to any major city at home without fear of
a hostile demonstration - then it’s time for new leadership for the United
States of America.
My fellow Americans, tonight I
accept the challenge and the commitment to provide that new leadership for
America.
Tonight, I see the face of a child.
He lives in a great city. He is
black , or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters.
What matters, he’s an American child.
That child in that great city is
more important that any politician’s promise. He is America. He is a poet. He
is a scientist, he is a great teacher, he is a proud craftsman. He is
everything we ever hoped to be and everything we dare to dream to be.
He sleeps the sleep of a child and
he dreams the dreams of a child.
And yet when he awakens, he awakens
to a living nightmare of poverty, neglect, and despair.
He fails in school.
He ends up on welfare.
For him the American system is one
that feeds his stomach and starves his soul. It breaks his heart. And in the
end it may take his life on some distant battlefield.
To millions of children in this rich
land, this is their prospect of the future.
But this is only part of what I see
in America.
I see another child tonight.
He hears a train go by at night and
he dreams of far away places where he’d like to go.
It seems like an impossible dream.
But he is helped on his journey
through life.
A father who had to go to work
before he finished the sixth grade, sacrificed everything he had so that his
sons could go to college.
A gentle, Quaker mother, with a
passionate concern for peace, quietly wept when he went to war but understood
why he had to go.
A great teacher, a remarkable
football coach, an inspirational minister encouraged him on his way.
A courageous wife and loyal children
stood by him in victory and also defeat.
And in his chosen profession of
politics, first there were scores, then hundreds, then thousands, and finally
millions who worked for his success.
And tonight he stands before you -
nominated for President of the United States of America.
SUMMARY OF THE
WORLD
Anonymous
If we could shrink the Earth’s
population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human
ratios remaining the same, it would look like this:
* There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western
Hemisphere, including North and South America, and eight from Africa.
* Fifty-one would be female, and 49 would be male.
*
Seventy would be non-white,
while 30 would be white.
* Sixty-six would be non-Christian and 33 Christian.
* Eighty would live in substandard housing.
* Half would suffer from malnutrition.
* Seventy would be unable to read.
* One would be near death, and one would be near birth.
* Only one would have a college education.
* Half of the entire village’s wealth would be in the hands of
only six people, and all six would be citizens of the United States.
NOBEL PRIZE ACCEPTANCE SPEECH (1950)
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
I feel that this award was not made
to me as a man but to my work-a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human
spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the
materials of the human spirit something which did not exist there before. So
this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication
for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its
origin. But
I would like to
do the same with the acclaim, too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from
which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to
the same anguish and travail, among whom is already one who will some day stand
here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and a
universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it.
There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: when
will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has
forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone
can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony
and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must
teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching
himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything
but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking
which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and
compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so he labors under a curse. He writes
not of love, but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value,
of victories without hope and worst of all without pity or compassion. His
griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the
heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he
will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to
accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply
because he will endure; that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and
faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying
evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny,
inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man
will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone
among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit
capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s,
duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by
lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride
and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.
The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the
props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
ON OUR BIRTHDAY - AMERICA AS IDEA (1976)
Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989)
The United States is a nation
consciously conceived, not one that evolved slowly out of an ancient past. It
was a planned idea of democracy, of liberty of conscience and pursuit of
happiness. It was the promise of equality of opportunity and individual freedom
within a just social order, as opposed to the restrictions and repressions of
the Old Worlds. In contrast to the militarism of Europe, it would renounce
standing armies and “sheathe the desolating sword of war.” It was an experiment
in Utopia to test the thesis that,
given freedom, independence, and local self-government, people, in
Kossuth’s words, “will in due time ripen into all the excellence and all the
dignity of humanity.” It was a new life for the oppressed, it was the
enlightenment, it was optimism.
Regardless of hypocrisy and
corruption, of greed, chicanery, brutality and all the other bad habits man
carries with him whether in the New World or Old, the founding idea of the
United States remained, on the whole, dominant through the first hundred years.
With reservations, it was believed in by Americans, by visitors who came to aid
our Revolution or later to observe our progress, by immigrants who came by the
hundreds of thousands to escape an intolerable situation in their native lands.
The idea shaped our politics, our
institutions, and to some extent our national character, but it was never the
only influence at work. Material circumstances exerted an opposing force. The
open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of
natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be
exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive
bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the
Old World from which we had fled. The human resources we drew upon were
significant: Every wave of immigration brought here those people who had the
extra energy, gumption, or restlessness to uproot themselves and cross an
unknown ocean to seek a better life. Two other factors entered the shaping
process - the shadow of slavery and the destruction of the native Indian.
At its Centennial the United States
was a material success. Through its second century the idea and the success
have struggled in continuing conflict. The Statue of Liberty, erected in 1886
,still symbolized the promise to those “yearning to breathe free.” Hope, to
them, as seen by a foreign visitor, was “domiciled in America as the Pope in
Rome.” But slowly in the struggle the idea lost ground, and at a turning point
around 1900, with American acceptance of a rather half-hearted imperialism, it
lost dominance. Increasingly invaded since then by self-doubt and disillusion,
it survives in the disenchantment of today, battered and crippled but not
vanquished.
What has happened to the United
States in the twentieth century is not a peculiarly American phenomenon but a
part of the experience of the West. In the Middle Ages, plague, wars, and
social violence were seen as God’s punishment upon man for his sins, If the
concept of God can be taken as man’s conscience, the same explanation may be
applicable today. Our sins in the twentieth century - greed, violence,
inhumanity - have been profound, with
the result that the pride and self-confidence of the nineteenth century have
turned to dismay and self-disgust.
In the United States we have a
society pervaded from top to bottom by contempt for the law. Government - including the agencies of law
enforcement - business, labor, students, the military, the poor no less than the
rich, outdo each other in breaking the rules and violating the ethics that
society has established for its protection. The average citizen, trying to hold
a footing in standards of morality and conduct he once believed in, is daily
knocked over by incoming waves of venality, vulgarity, irresponsibility,
ignorance, ugliness, and trash in all senses of the word. Our government
collaborates abroad with the worst enemies of humanity and liberty. It wastes
our substance on useless proliferation of military hardware that can never buy
security no mater how high the pile. It learns no lessons, employs no wisdom,
and corrupts all who succumb to Potomac fever.
Yet the idea does not die. Americans
are not passive under their faults. We expose them and combat them. Somewhere
every day some group is fighting a public abuse - openly and, on the whole,
notwithstanding the FBI, with confidence in the First Amendment. The U.S. has
slid a long way from the original idea. Nevertheless, somewhere between Gulag
Archipelago and the featherbed of cradle-to-grave welfare, it still offers a
greater opportunity for social happiness - that is to say, for well-being
combined with individual freedom and initiative - than is likely elsewhere. The
ideal society for which mankind has been striving through the ages will remain
forever beyond our grasp. But if the great question, whether it is still
possible to reconcile democracy with social order and individual liberty, is to
find a positive answer, it will be here.