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tions designed for the honor of our country and the wel-
fare of mankind. I introduce to you the Hon. John S.
Preston, of South Carolina.
COL. PRESTON'S ORATION.
Fellow-Citizens, Ladies and Gentlemen:
Surely American History is an anomaly; there is no
record which furnishes an example for it, or even a fair
analogy. On the surface, the details of our order of
Civilization seem the same with those which have mark-
ed the incipient progress of nations in all ages, as the
fundamental principles of human action seem ever to be
the same. We have certainly like physical necessities,
supplied by like labour, with like fruits; we have
similar civil regulations, and we worship the same God
by the same name and with the same tongue and hope
that other people have. Yet what people before us have
based their civil regulations on the "equality of man"?
What people, in all time before us, have deemed it an
essential necessity and acted on it as such, and assimi-
lated it to their whole being, to worship God according
to each man's conscience, and freed absolutely from all
human rule, on the assumption that the true worship of
God is inconsistent with human dictation?
We have thus taken the great fundamental principles
of human economy, and infused into them--informed
them--vitalized them, by a new Genuis, a new Spirit,
unknown before us. We will search in vain for it
through the histories of Antiquity. It was not known to
Moses or the prophets. Egypt, nor Assyria, nor Persia,
nor Babylon, dreamed of it. It may have glimmered on
the mind of Greece, in whose prolific thought all things
seemed to grow. But Rome and Arabia knew it not.
Later ages began to feel its yearnings, but grve it no
birth. It is alone--our heaven-born heritage. In prac-
tical socialism, in civilism, in Religion, we have adopted
new and untried forms, and worked from them new and
unknown results! We have not created--man does not
that--but we have worked the Divine essences into
strange and wonderful shapes.
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How this is, why it is, and what is to come of it, seems
appropriate to our consideration at the moment we are
inaugurating one of the most glorious, hopeful, and, as
we fondly believe, heaven-blessed results. Let us then,
spend this hour in the contemplation, and I dare pray
you be not startled from its gravity by the rude, un-
polished words of your speaker. Let us see how we
are here, and why we are here, amid these "many-
folded mountains," where nature still sits in virgin purity
and primeval grandeur--here within this boundless tem-
ple, not built by hands--offering these gorgeous and
solemn ceremonies, and invoking God's own presence
with us. How and why are we here, my countrymen,
gilding the front of Autumn with our banners, convoked
by God's own chosen messengers, and bowing our
heads as they raise their reverent hands to ask His
blessing on our deeds? Oh for a tongue that could re-
cite the holy Epic of these good men's acts! Oh for a
Muse that could record in swelling symphonies the re-
sounding tread with which His people have marched
forward, out of their bondage, to this crowning deed of
Christian patriotism! Listen to the story, told in hum-
blest of words, and let your hearts compass, and be exalted
by, the theme.
The Protestant Church of England is the witness to us
of Divine truth; American civilization comes of the
Protestant Church, and is to us the witness of the
highest human truth, and causes this University to be
founded; therefore, this University is founded in Truth.
I shall prove these assumptions, and deduce from them
that Faith and Wisdom demand of us to rear this
structure, and that it is well for us to be here to-day.
When the dark ages settled over all Greek and Roman
civilization, when papal aggression had blasted every
form of Liberty, Learning, as well as Religion, shrunk
away in terror, and sought shelter in the cavernous
cloisters of the monkish convents. Here for centuries
they suffered a feeble and distorted existence, but the
Spirit of Truth, always the companion and guardian of
knowledge, gave them enduring vigor, and added to
them gradually new fountains of living waters, until
they rose and swelled, and, overleaping the walls and
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