Laudator Temporis Acti

Edward Everett (1794-1865), "Address," in Revised Report Made to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, Relative to the Soldiers' National Cemetery, at Gettysburg (Harrisburg: Singerly & Myers, 1867), pp. 198-231 (at 230):

The bonds that unite us as one people—a substantial community of origin, language, belief, and law, (the four great ties that hold the societies of men together;) common national and political interests; a common history; a common pride in a glorious ancestry; a common interest in this great heritage of blessings; the very geographical features of the country; the mighty rivers that cross the lines of climate and thus facilitate the interchange of natural and industrial products, while the wonder-working arm of the engineer has levelled the mountain-walls which separate the East and West, compelling your own Alleghenies, my Maryland and Pennsylvania friends, to open wide their everlasting doors to the chariot-wheels of traffic and travel; these bonds of union are of perennial force and energy, while the causes of alienation are imaginary, factitious and transient.

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