Address Before the Alumni Association of the University of North Carolina

Excerpt from Address Before the Alumni Association of the University of North Delivered in Gerard Hall, June 2, 1847, the Evening Preceding Commencement

The Press began its work in 1639 a century afterwards it had earned the prohibitibn of England, and was strong enough to defy ii and at this day, it asserts its freedom by an influence which is only not despotic because it is not harmonious. 'far outstripping by its enterprise the fertility of our own writers, the American press appropriates unshrinkingly the literary treasures of the whole earth while it almost' forbids Importation of books by the cheap ness with which it reprints them, and the facility with which it scatters them among all classes of the reading community.' But the most striking displays of its activity and power are only to be witnessed in the field of Journalism, where it more than equals France in knows no other rival throughout the world.

It printed the first newspaper in America in the year 1704; in 1828 it had joined an additional number of eight hundred and fifty and, at this day, it acts upon the popular mind through the teeming columns of more than two thousand journals. Sharing, as well as stimulating, the progressive spirit of the age, it advances into the wilderness with our hardy pioneers keeps company with our commerce among the islands of the sea; and contends for supremacy with the sword upon every battle-field which is won by our victorious arms. Already it sends us shipping lists from the Sandwich Islands, chronicles the news of the day in La Vera Cruz, and echoes back the thunder of our cannon from the shores of the far Pacific. Becoming thus the missionary as well as the schoolmaster of republicanism, it plants among other nations the seeds of freedom, which it has itself ripened upon our soil; and having first contributed to the glory of America at home, it crowns its labor of patriotism by making it better known, and therefore more honored, abroad.

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