John Quincy Adams speaks from the dead

I speak to you with the voice as of one risen from the dead.... [C]ould the sepulchre unbar its gates, and open to me a passage to this desk...I would repeat the question...“Why are you assembled in this place”?—and one of you would answer me for all, —Because the Declaration of Independence, with the voice of an angel from heaven, “put to his mouth the sounding alchemy,” and proclaimed universal emancipation upon earth! It is not the separation of your forefathers from their kindred race, beyond the Atlantic tide. It is not the union of thirteen British Colonies into one People and the entrance of that People upon the theatre, where kingdoms, and empires, and nations are the persons of the drama. It is not that this is the birth-day of the North American Union, the last and noblest offspring of time. It is that the first words uttered by the Genius of our country, in announcing his existence to the world of mankind, was,—Freedom to the slave! Liberty to the captives! Redemption! redemption forever to the race of man, from the yoke of oppression! It is not the work of a day; it is not the labour of an age; it is not the consummation of a century, that we are assembled to commemorate. It is the emancipation of our race. It is the emancipation of man from the thraldom of man!

-John Quincy Adams, 1837