Excerpt from An Historical Address, Delivered in Scituate, Rhode Island, Vol. 2 The great republic of the world celebrates its first century to-day! It has invited all nations to participate in the occasion by an exhibition of the products and workmanship of their respective countries, in the city where the assembled Congress framed, adopted, and sent forth, July Fourth, 1776, their Declaration of Independence. It has selected an orator and poet, and other exercises appropriate to the event to take place in the same city. Our own State has requested, through its legislature, that every town in our borders should have a local celebration; and Congress and the President have sent a similar appeal to every town in the Union. The extraordinary growth of the country in the last century, the very high position it occupies to-day, the success on so large a scale, and for so long a period, of a free government, would seem to demand an uncommon manifestation of the nation, on the happy event of completing our first one hundred years; and that to-day our Union is perfect and complete, with not a single star blotted out from our banner, and many more added to the original thirteen, standing to-day stronger and more immovable than ever. It was with fear and trembling, one hundred years ago, that the delegates from the colonies assembled in a small hall in Philadelphia, put forth their immortal Declaration, July 4, 1776. They were wise and prudent men - some of them, as was our own Hopkins, advanced in years; a few, like Hancock, were rich. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.