Massachusetts.

Plymouth is the place where the Pilgrims landed in 1620. Just two
hundred years had passed since that time, and this meeting was to
celebrate the memory of the brave men and women who had risked so much
to found new homes in what was then a bleak wilderness.

The speech which Mr. Webster delivered was one of the greatest ever
heard in America. It placed him at once at the head of American orators.

John Adams, the second president of the United States, was then living,
a very old man. He said, "This oration will be read five hundred years
hence with as much rapture as it was heard. It ought to be read at the
end of every century, and, indeed, at the end of every year, forever and
ever."

But this was only the first of many great addresses by Mr. Webster. In
1825, he delivered an oration at the laying of the cornerstone of the
Bunker Hill monument. Eighteen years later, when that monument was
finished, he delivered another. Many of Mr. Webster's admirers think
that these two orations are his masterpieces.

On July 4th, 1826, the United States had been independent just fifty
years. On that day there passed away two of the greatest men of the
country--John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Both were ex-presidents, and both had been leaders in the councils of
the nation. It was in memory of these two patriots that Daniel Webster
was called to deliver an oration in Faneuil Hall, Boston.