Gentlemen, having passed through the ordeal of an earnest life, with the prospect of yet having to steer through stormy gales, it is natural that, while I grasp my helm, I gaze at History, as my compass.  And there is no history more instructive than yours, because you have concentrated within the narrow scope of a few years that natural process of national life, which elsewhere was achieved only through centuries.  It would be a mistake, and a mistake not without danger, to believe that your nation is still in its youth because it has lived but seventy-five years.  The natural condition of nations is not measured by years, but by those periods of the process of life which I have mentioned.  And there is no nation on earth in whose history those periods were so distinctly marked as in yours.  First, you had to be born.  That is the period of your glorious struggle for independence.  Endless honour be to those who conducted it!  You were baptized with blood, as it seems to be the destiny of nations; but it was the genius of Freedom which stood god-father at your baptism, and gave to you a lasting character by giving you the Christian name of “Republic.”  Then you had to grow, and, indeed, you have grown with the luxuriant rapidity of the virgin nature of the American soil.  Washington knew the nature of this soil, fertilized by the blood of your martyrs and warmed by the sun of your liberty.  He knew it, when he told your fathers that you wanted but twenty years of peaceful growth to defy any power whatsoever in a just cause.  You have grown through those twenty years, and wisely avoided to endanger your growth by undertaking a toil not becoming to your growing age; and there you stood about another twenty years, looking resolutely but unpretendingly around, if there be anybody to question that you were really a nation.  The question was put in 1812, and decided by that glorious victory, the anniversary of which you celebrate to-day.  That victory has a deeper meaning in your history than only that of a repulsed invasion.  It marks a period in your national life—­the period of acknowledged, unshakeable security of your national existence.  It is the consummation of your declaration of independence.  You have proved by it that the United States possess an incontestable vitality, having the power to preserve that independent national position which your fathers established by the declaration of independence.  In reality, it was the victory of New Orleans by which you took your seat amongst the independent nations of the world never to be contested through all posterity.

If the history of New Orleans showed the security of your national existence, the victorious war against Mexico proved that also your national interests must be respected.  The period of active vitality is attained.  It remains yet to take your seat, not amongst the nations of the earth, for that you have since the day of New Orleans, but amongst the powers on earth.  What is the meaning