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Caption: Convocation - 1896 (Forefathers' Convocation)
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Pilgrim had no relations to divert his thought from an ultimate nationality of his own. and upon the lin< which h had been following since the old days when he was cheated and robbed and imprisoned and scat* to red abroad, bj hnglish power,even in hi- attempts to rain refuge across the North Sea. The Puritan theocracy served its time and its purpose in the plan of t he Almighty and then broke do .vn, and we are glad of it. American air would not sustain it The trend of lite in the New World was against, it. W hen, seventy years after the landing, the two colonies became one they moved forward on lines projected at Plymouth, and steadily and surely towards independ nee and nationality. Time and exigencies made Separatists of the American Puritans. They all moved together toward a great climax, that climax an English nation substantially upon the plan started in the cabin of the "Mayflower" and established upon the rock at Plymouth. There was never any alliance of State and Church in the old Colony. The civil and military organizations were always separate there. All who led well-ordered liv - were welcomed and the suffrage was universal. Piety was common and the reign of the law was supreme, They had been the first to combine sovereignty md liberty in one plan. This was the plan upon which L new nation would grow. It was incompatible with the religious and political conditions which prevailed over the sea, and it was out of joint with the plan of vernment in the Mother-land, Separation was logj ,| a nd inevitable. Brewster and Bradford and Winv and Standish were the men whose spirits inspired V Otis and Franklin and the Adamses and Henry and W hington and Jefferson and Hamilton and John Marshall and all the other patriotsof the Revolution :i,i fathers of the Constitution, The famous declarat j o n by which the American people became a nation, nm ,. ( | sovereignty and attained Independence, was , logical and imperative sequence i)\' Separatism
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