Sumner in person, would alone have rescued
from neglect any ordinary Fourth-of-July oration.
The services and aids of Spain, material and moral, pecuniary and
diplomatic, to the American Revolutionary cause,--the introduction,
through the fortunes of Captain John Lee of Marblehead, of the American
question into the policy and polities of Spain,--the effect of the
arrival of our National Declaration of the 4th of July, 1776, on the
fate of that gallant New England cruiser, then detained as a pirate,
for his heroic exploits under our infant and unknown flag,--the
incidents of vast and varied labor and accomplishment in our behalf,
connected with the name and administration of the eminent Spanish
minister and statesman, Florida Blanca,--the weaving and spreading out
of that network of influences and circumstances, in the toils of which
France and Spain entangled Great Britain, until she found herself
confronted by much of the physical and all the moral power of the
Continent, and from which all extrication was made hopeless, until the
American Colonies should be free,--the origin of "the armed
neutrality," and the shock it gave to the naval power of England, in
the very crisis of the hopes of American liberty,--are presented in a
narrative, clear, condensed, and original.
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