THE DISCOVERY AND COLONIZATION OF AMERICA, AND IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES. A LECTURE DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, IN BY EDWARD EVERETT. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1853. 3 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE: METCALF AND COMPANY, STEREOTYPERS AND PRINTERS. LECTURE. MR. PRESIDENt and GentlemEN OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY ALTHOUGH I appear before you at the season at which the various religious, moral, and philanthropic societies usually hold their annual meetings to discuss the stirring and controverted topics of the day, I need not say to you that the proprieties of this occasion require me to abstain from such subjects; and to select a theme falling, to some extent at least, within the province of an historical society. I propose, accordingly, this evening, to attempt a sketch of the history of the discovery and colonization of America and of immigration to the United States. I can of course offer you, within the limits of a single address, but a most superficial view of so vast a subject; but I have thought that even a sketch of a subject, which concerns us so directly and in so many ways, would suggest important trains of reflection to thoughtful minds. Words written or spoken are at best but a kind of short-hand, to be filled up by the reader or hearer. I shall be gratified if, after honoring my hasty sketch with your kind attention, you shall deem it worth filling up from your own stores of knowledge and thought. You will forgive me, if, in the attempt to give a certain completeness to the narrative, I shall be led to glance at a few facts, which, however interesting, may seem to you too familiar for repetition. In the last quarter of the fifteenth century, an Italian mari ner, a citizen of the little republic of Genoa, who had hitherto gained his livelihood as a pilot in the commercial marine of different countries, made his appearance successively at various courts in the South and West of Europe, soliciting patronage and aid for a bold and novel project in navigation. The state of the times was in some degree favorable to the adventure. The Portuguese had for half a century been pushing their discoveries southward upon the coast of Africa, and they had ventured into the Atlantic as far as the Azores. Several conspiring causes, and especially the invention of the art of printing, had produced a general revival of intelligence. Still, however, the state of things in this respect was at that time very different from what we witness in the middle of the nineteenth century. On the part of the great mass of mankind, there was but little improvement over the darkness of the Middle Ages. The new culture centred in the convent, the court, and the university, places essentially distrustful of bold novelties. The idea of reaching the East by a voyage around the African continent had begun to assume consistency; but the vastly more significant idea, that the earth is a globe and capable of being circumnavigated, had by no means become incorporated into the general intelligence of the age. The Portuguese navigators felt themselves safe as they crept along the African coast, venturing each voyage a few leagues farther, doubling a new headland, ascending some before unexplored river, holding a palaver with some new tribe of the native races. But to turn the prows of their vessels boldly to the west, to embark upon an ocean, not believed, in the popular geography of the day, to have an outer shore, to pass that bourne from which no traveller had ever returned, and from which experience had not taught that any traveller could return, and thus to reach the East by sailing in a western direction, this was a conception which no human being is known to have formed before Columbus, and which he proposed to the governments of Italy, of Spain, of Portugal, and for a long time without success. The state of science was not such as to enable men to discriminate between the improbable and untried on the one hand, and the impossible and absurd on the other. They looked upon Columbus as we did thirty years ago upon Captain Symmes. But the illustrious adventurer persevered. Sorrow and disappointment clouded his spirits, but did not shake his faith nor subdue his will. His well-instructed imagination had taken firm hold of the idea that the earth is a sphere. What seemed to the multitude even of the educated of that day a doubtful and somewhat mystical theory; what appeared to the uninformed mass a monstrous paradox, contradicted by every step we take upon the broad, flat earth which we daily tread beneath our feet; - that great and fruitful truth revealed itself to the serene intelligence of Columbus as a practical fact, on which he was willing to stake all he had, -- character and life. And it deserves ever to be borne in mind, as the most illustrious example of the connection of scientific theory with great practical results, that the discovery of America, with all its momentous consequences to mankind, is owing to the distinct conception in the mind of Columbus of this single scientific proposition, the terraqueous earth is a sphere. After years of fruitless and heart-sick solicitation, after offering in effect to this monarch and to that monarch the gift of a hemisphere, the great discoverer touches upon a partial success. He succeeds, not in enlisting the sympathy of his countrymen at Genoa and Venice for a brave brother sailor; not in giving a new direction to the spirit of maritime adventure which had so long prevailed in Portugal; not in stimulating the commercial thrift of Henry the Seventh, or the pious ambition of the Catholic King. His sorrowful perseverance touched the heart of a noble princess, worthy the throne which she adorned. The New World, which was just escaping the subtle kingcraft of Ferdinand, was saved to Spain by the womanly compassion of Isabella. |