achieve what we did achieve.

Standing here, on this great anniversary at the very end of the century,
facing the new century, it is impossible that one should not look back,
and equally impossible that one should not look forward. We are just at
the close of what we call, and call rightly, a century of great
achievements. We pride ourselves upon the work this country has
accomplished. We point to a government based upon the consent of the
governed, such as the world has never seen; wealth which has been piled
up such as no country has ever attained within that time, or double or
quadruple that time. It is such a condition of life as never existed in
any other country. From Mount Desert to the Golden Gate, yes, from the
islands which Columbus saw, thinking he had found the East Indies, to
the East Indies themselves, where, even as I speak, the American flag
is being planted, our possessions and our wealth extend. We have, though
following the arts of peace, an army ready to rise at the sound of the
bugle greater than Rome was ever able to summon behind her golden
eagles. We are right to call it a century of achievement. We pride
ourselves upon it. Now, who achieved that? Not we, personally; our
fathers achieved it; your fathers and my fathers; your fathers, when
they left England and set their prows westward and landed upon the
rock-bound coast; when they drew up their compact of civil government,
which was a new thing in the history of the world. We did our part in
the South, and when the time came they staked all that they had upon the
principle of a government based only upon the consent of the governed.

We pride ourselves upon the fact that we can worship God according to
the dictates of our own conscience. We speak easily of God, "whose
service is perfect freedom," but it was not we, but our fathers who
achieved that. Our fathers "left us an heritage, and it has brought