[Pamphlets. American history]

34
states together should not be effected without the keenest sufferings to the whole body politic. American independence must have its baptism of fire and of blood,
and the summit of Bunker Hill was the great altar of
sacrifice. The solemn appeal to arms had been made on
the 19th of April; the entire population of the country
had ratified the call and sent its chosen to the field;
and on the day we celebrate, three quarters of a century
ago, it was proved, by the steadiness and courage of the
citizen soldiers of America, in open battle, that the
cause of the country was safe. A twelvemonth was yet
to elapse before the final declaration was made; but the
independence of the United States was as effectually
asserted on the seventeenth of June, 1775, as on the
fourth of July, 1776. It was no more certain on the
third of September, 1783, when the definitive treaty of
peace was signed and sealed at Paris, by Adams, Franklin and Jay, than it was when Warren sealed it with his
blood eight years before.
It would require a volume to set forth all the consequences to America and the world, which have resulted
from the establishment of our independence; which have
already resulted from that event; and who shall presume
to break the seals of the volume of the future? This momentous step gave us at once a position in the family of
nations. It raised the colonial quarrel into a controversy of states, to be carried on before the great tribunal
of the public opinion of the world. The sharp encounter
of wits with provincial governors is over; the keen discussion of parliamentary right has gone by. No more