"Let peace, descending from her native heaven, bid her olives spring amidst the joyful nations; and plenty, in league with commerce, scatter blessings from her copious hand!"
About this Quote
A fervent, almost liturgical wish animates the lines, casting peace as a celestial patron who brings the olive, emblem of truce and reconciliation, to take root among nations. The movement from "descending" to "spring" fuses heaven and earth, implying that tranquility is a gift from above yet must be cultivated in human soil. Personified Plenty joins hands with Commerce, not as greed and acquisition but as a benevolent alliance that distributes well-being with a copious hand. It is a vision of moral order linked to material prosperity: when swords fall silent, markets open, harvests stabilize, and communities flourish.
The classical imagery signals the idiom of the late eighteenth century, when American public language often drew on Roman personifications like Pax and Abundantia. The olive evokes the olive branch of antiquity, a symbol that the early United States eagerly adopted to mark a break from imperial war-making. The phrase "joyful nations" widens the horizon beyond a single people; the appeal imagines a community of states bound less by conquest than by exchange. Commerce, in this framing, becomes an instrument of peace rather than its rival, echoing the era’s faith in doux commerce, the softening influence of trade on manners and politics.
Attached to the name of Daniel Boone, the sentiment gains a frontier resonance. Boone’s world was marked by hardship, violence, and precarious settlements dependent on trade routes and seasonal abundance. A call for peace promises security for families and fields; a celebration of commerce promises connection between remote homesteads and wider markets; an invocation of plenty promises relief from scarcity. The rhetoric is aspirational, even utopian, yet practical in its sequence: peace first, prosperity next, and the means is exchange rather than domination. It reads as both prayer and policy, urging a young nation to seek its greatness not on the battlefield but in the steady traffic of goods, goodwill, and shared prosperity.
The classical imagery signals the idiom of the late eighteenth century, when American public language often drew on Roman personifications like Pax and Abundantia. The olive evokes the olive branch of antiquity, a symbol that the early United States eagerly adopted to mark a break from imperial war-making. The phrase "joyful nations" widens the horizon beyond a single people; the appeal imagines a community of states bound less by conquest than by exchange. Commerce, in this framing, becomes an instrument of peace rather than its rival, echoing the era’s faith in doux commerce, the softening influence of trade on manners and politics.
Attached to the name of Daniel Boone, the sentiment gains a frontier resonance. Boone’s world was marked by hardship, violence, and precarious settlements dependent on trade routes and seasonal abundance. A call for peace promises security for families and fields; a celebration of commerce promises connection between remote homesteads and wider markets; an invocation of plenty promises relief from scarcity. The rhetoric is aspirational, even utopian, yet practical in its sequence: peace first, prosperity next, and the means is exchange rather than domination. It reads as both prayer and policy, urging a young nation to seek its greatness not on the battlefield but in the steady traffic of goods, goodwill, and shared prosperity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
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