and the master intelligences of lion heart and eagle eye, that ennobled
it,--all this you know. But the leader in that great argument was John
Adams, of Massachusetts. He, by concession of all men, was the orator of
that Revolution,--the Revolution in which a nation was born. Other and
renowned names, by written or spoken eloquence, cooperated effectively,
splendidly, to the grand result,--Samuel Adams, Samuel Chase, Jefferson,
Henry James Otis in an earlier stage. Each of these, and a hundred more,
within circles of influence wider or narrower, sent forth, scattering
broadcast, the seed of life in the ready virgin soil. Each brought some
specialty of gift to the work: Jefferson, the magic of style, and the
habit and the power of delicious dalliance with those large, fair ideas of
freedom and equality, so dear to man, so irresistible in that day; Henry,
the indescribable and lost spell of the speech of the emotions, which fills
the eye, chills the blood, turns the cheek pale,--the lyric phase of
eloquence, the "fire-water," as Lamartine has said, of the Revolution,
instilling into the sense and the soul the sweet madness of battle; Samuel
Chase, the tones of anger, confidence, and pride, and the art to inspire
them. John Adams's eloquence alone seemed to have met every demand of the
time; as a question of right, as a question of prudence, as a question of
immediate opportunity, as a question of feeling, as a question of
conscience, as a question of historical and durable and innocent glory, he
knew it all through and through; and in that mighty debate, which,
beginning in Congress as far back as March or February; 1776, had its close
on the second and on the fourth of July, he presented it in all its
aspects, to every passion and affection,--to the burning sense of wrong,
exasperated at length beyond control by the shedding of blood; to grief,
anger, self-respect; to the desire of happiness and of safety; to the sense
of moral obligation, commanding that the duties of life are more than life;
to courage, which fears God, and knows no other fear; to the craving of the
colonial heart, of all hearts, for the reality and the ideal of country,