As the American youth for uncounted centuries shall visit the capital of his country—strongest, richest, freest, happiest of the nations of the earth—from the stormy coast of New England, from the luxuriant regions of the Gulf, from the lakes, from the prairie and the plain, from the Golden Gate, from far Alaska—he will admire the evidences of its grandeur and the monuments of its historic glory. He will find there rich libraries and vast museums, and great cabinets which show the product of that matchless inventive genius of America, which has multiplied a thousand fold the wealth and comfort of human life. He will see the simple and modest portal through which the great line of the Republic's chief magistrates have passed at the call of their country to assume an honor surpassing that of emperors and kings, and through which they have returned, in obedience to her laws, to take their place again as equals in the ranks of their fellow-citizens. He will stand by the matchless obelisk which, loftiest of human structures, is itself but the imperfect type of the loftiest of human characters. He will gaze upon the marble splendors of the Capitol, in whose chambers are enacted the statutes under which the people of a continent dwell together in peace, and the judgments are rendered which keep the forces of states and nation alike within their appointed bounds. He will look upon the records of great wars and the statues of great commanders. But, if he know his country's history, and consider wisely the sources of her glory, there is nothing in all these which will so stir his heart as two fading and time-soiled papers, whose characters were traced by the hand of the fathers a hundred years ago. They are the original records of the acts which devoted this nation forever to equality, to education, to religion, and to liberty. One is the Declaration of Independence, the other the Ordinance of 1787.
— GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR