The warm reception Albany has given me is like the point upon the letter "i"—­it decides its meaning.  The metropolis of the Empire State gave abundantly the first flowers to the garland of America’s sympathy for the condition of the Old World.  Many a flower was added to it from many a place.  Wherever there is a people there was a new garden of sympathy:  and wherever be the obligations I owe—­and gladly own—­to many a quarter of the United States, it is but a tribute due to justice publicly to avow, that Ohio, with the bold resolution of its youthful strength, and Massachusetts, with its consistent traditional energy, stood pre-eminent in the decided comprehension of America’s destiny—­and now the Capitol of the Empire State winds up the garland of America. New York achieves what New York has begun, and thus, in leaving America, I have an answer to bring to Europe’s oppressed millions; and the answer is satisfactory, because I know what position America will take in the approaching crisis of the world.

There are moments in the national life of a people, when to adopt a certain course becomes a natural necessity:  and in such moments the people always gets instinctively conscious of the necessity, and answers it by adopting a direction spontaneously.  That direction is decisive.  It must be followed:  and it is followed.  Pre-eminent patriots, joining in the people’s instinct, may become either the interpreters or the executors of it; but they can neither impart their own direction to the people, nor alter that which public opinion has fixed.  There are no other means to become a great man and a great patriot but by becoming the impersonification of the public sentiment, conscious of a surpassing public necessity.  Those who would endeavour to measure great things by a small individual scale, would always fall short in their calculations, and be left behind.

There have been already several such moments in your country’s brief but glorious history.  I will only mention your glorious Revolution of 1775.  Who made that Revolution?  The People; the unarmed heroes; the Public Opinion.  If the question had been left to the decision of some few, though the best and the wisest of all, they never would have advised a struggle; but would have arranged matters diplomatically.  You remember what anxious endeavours were made to prove that it was not the Americans who fired the first shot, and how exculpations were sent to England with protestations of allegiance.  All those little steps were vain.  The people felt that it was time to become an independent nation; and feeling the necessity of the moment, it took a direction by itself, and made the Revolution by itself.