Now, a man has a right to his own
 opinions about what America is.

She touches different emotion, different
 people.

To some, America is power. 

To others she is wealth [audio skip]. The higher
 standard of living yet known.

To some she has miracles of machines, ideas,

 and manpower which cover the face

 of our part of the earth.

Harbors and boats, 

mines and shovels, machines and men,

 mines and planes and trains and ships

 and raw material.

 Power from the earth and the products of
 our minds and hands.

All of it is a [audio skip]. But is it basically America?

Is America a thing of steel?

[explosion]

Take away our cities, our machines, our
 wealth,

 would America not still be here?

To many America is a way of life.

Take away even that. 

To most of us America is freedom of the individual 
and freedom to worship God.


Yes, take away even freedom.

For would the spirit that first built our nation,

 not build it back,

the spirit of the people?

These people gave it to us.

Some call it the spirit of 1776,

but actually it's a spirit of 1585, when

 these first English colonists [audio skip] to the New
 World

 rode off Roanoke Island

 in what is now Dare County, North
 Carolina.

Rolling in the distance.

[music]

 Twenty-two years before Jamestown, 

thirty-five years before Plymouth Rock, the spirit

 that has built America landed with these
 first

 English colonists.

[music]

They were not powerful.

They were not giants.

They did not think of themselves as heroes.

Their reasons for coming here were simple,
 but basic ones

as they might tell us if they lived today.

My name is John Borden.

I liked to work the land,

 but land in England was owned by
 the nobility.

I came here for a place of my own,

 for my children after me.

My name is Carson, a fisherman.

My wife died.

I was lonely so I started over with the
 others.

I am Governor John White in charge of
 this colony.

When we landed, I was not [audio skip] unafraid.

I tell you, far from home and safety.

[audio skip] news of a wilderness.

[music]

My name is Old Tom,

Tom Harris.

I was a beggar in England, so I came
 along

 because they loaded food and drink
 aboard and for

 not much better reason.

But here in the New World, it was me that
 rang the bell,

called up people together, told them that

 Virginia Dare was born. The first
 English

 child born in this new world.

And now Port Raleigh was a home.

[music]

I baptize the Virginia

in the name of the father

 and of the son

and of the Holy Ghost.

Amen.

[music]

 What spirit is it these people have?

 What is the spirit they had, which
 remains basic

 to America?

 Could it not be simply this:

 a willingness to accept the challenge
 of a new world?

 To blaze trails in a wilderness?

They gave us the spirit,

that's why we remember them.

That's why the Department of the Interior
 has reconstructed Fort Raleigh

and dedicated it as a national historic site.

That's why modern Americans commemorate
 them each year

 as they wander around with cameras and
 children.

A boy from Maryland plays with a
 cannonball probably

 fired by a first colonist.

A girl from Ohio examines a rusted sickle
 that once

 cleared out a dot in the wilderness.

A Coast Guardsmen from Florida sees a model
 of the smallest

 first colony ship,

smaller than a modern lifeboat.

From all states of the union come
 visitors to wander

 around the earth and fort

that once protected Sir Walter Raleigh's
 colony from Indian attacks.

In Fort Raleigh at the spot where the
 first colonists landed,

 stands this outdoor theater

 where on summer evenings is performed

Paul Green's historic drama, The Lost
 Colony.

And it's right that this was a first of
 America's now many

 outdoor dramas and right that it is

 performed chiefly by natives of Dare
 County.

This lady, who plays the Indian [?] in
 the play

 each night, is a Dare County housewife by
 day.

Johnny Westcott is a colonist and a sport
 fishing boat captain.


Mrs. Evans is a colonist woman and a hotel
 clerk in Manteo.

 And the schoolboy's of Dare [?] a set of Indians

as you've ever seen.

Actors from other sections of North
 Carolina are here, too.

The lady who plays Queen Elizabeth in the Lost Colony drama

 is the widow of the Chapel Hill,
 North Carolina writer

 and artist William Meade Prince.

Sir Walter Raleigh,

who in actual history sent the first
 English colony to America,

 is played in the drama by a high

 school teacher from Goldsboro.

The man who smokes the Indian peace pipe
 is from

 Charlotte and he's stabbed

 in a later scene by a Tar Heel member of
 the Westminster Choir.

And the colonist who falls with an arrow
 in his back

teaches English at Duke University.

In addition to these actors from Dare
 County and North Carolina,

 national celebrities and statesmen come
 here, too,

 anxious to relive, if only for a night,

the story of the first colony.

Lindsay Warren, Controller General of
 the Nation.

James Webb. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Georgia Carol.

Director Samuel Seldon helps playwright
 Lynn Riggs

and Kay Kyser helps UNC's

Charlie Justice with his Indian
 makeup in his own way.

Native actors and professional
 celebrities and diplomats

 join audiences from all states to relive

 here the story of the first English
 colony

 to America,

but leave the theater, leave Fort Raleigh.

Wherever you go in Dare, the wind and
 the waves

 seem to bring you the voices of the
 first colonists.

The sand shore reminds you that they
 walked here

 centuries before you.

John Borden, a farmer.

Old Tom, the beggar.

Governor White.

Carson, the lonely fisherman, who may have
 realized first

 the significance of the fact that here

 the ocean, the sound and the [audio skip] water lakes

 are almost touching.

No fisherman is likely to overlook that.

And the waters are filled with fish

 of all kinds.

[music]

Perhaps it was Carson who first touched
 a net to

 the waters of the Dare coast,

long centuries ago

 in his far off generation,

 and who first told in the twilight hours

 of the monstrous fish

 that swim off shore.

[music]

And here, no doubt once walked Old Tom,

 the beggar of Devonshire along this

 sand beach where the same

 constant breezes cooled him

and the same Atlantic washed at his
 feet.

And no doubt Old Tom would flex his muscles

 and inhale deeply the salt tinged air

 and dream his dreams of the far away
 days

 in his youth when there was no mist in
 his eyes

 and there was future in his dreams,

when he was strong and his body was free
 with energy.

[music]

Yes, perhaps 

 Old Tom has sat on this very spot,

 opened his lunch, enjoyed here the small
 amount

 of food that was rationed to him at
Fort Raleigh.

[music]

We may assume that many of the colonists
often would walk up

 the sand dunes, 

which are the highest on this New World coast.

Turn their children loose to play on these sand hills

as the parents

 lazily trace their shadows

 in the sand.

[music]

Here a man may spend long hours walking

 the ridges and the valleys,

 climbing to the peaks from which he may
 look out over

 sparkling lakes of fresh water

 resting in the sun.

[music]

When I tell you, looking out over endless 
[audio skip]

 even Old Tom would know he was

 considerably more than a beggar.

[music]

There is a narrow strip of land that juts
 out to sea near Fort Raleigh,

runs down thirty miles

 of ocean coast to the Cape, which the
 Indians named Hatteras.

And we may wonder what the first
 colonists thought

 of this desolate and beautiful beach

 cloaked in loneliness,

 dotted with shells.

 Where the waves lash the shore in
 storm seasons.

The graveyard of our present day
 Atlantic.

[waves crashing]

What would the governor-poet John White
 tell us

 in his quiet way?

 Perhaps of God?

Perhaps of the littleness of man when he
 surveys

 the work of God,

 when all men has built is insignificant
 when

 compared to His creation.

[waves crashing]

And perhaps Governor White would speak of
 the village places

 with the sound harbors and the soil
 where flowers grow.

 Of the warm land

 with the Gulf Stream washing close
 off shore

 and open pastures and open fields.

Of the lonely place where a man might

 rear his children in the way he would
 have them walk.

[music]

What would John White tell us of the
 peaceful life?

What did he think of this tropical
 wilderness nestled between

 the ocean and the sound with freshwater

 lakes nearby where birds of all kinds

 have their feeding grounds

 near where they lay their eggs

 in the warm sand?

[music]

And as he watched these baby birds,

 bound to the land like man,

would he not look to the skies

 and marvel and wonder and wish?

 Would he not remember again the soaring
 dream of

 flight that great and

 challenging wilderness,

 the skies?

[music]

 And it was in Dare County that two
 modern Americans accepted this
 challenge.

The conquest of this second new world.

With them was the same American pioneer spirit

 with Wilbur and Orville Wright.

 They built their plane right here at Kitty
 Hawk

 and flew it from where the stone marker

sits at the base of Kill Devil Hill,

 a few miles from Fort Raleigh.

The scene on this morning in 1903
 was not unlike

 these pictures of a later flight

when both brothers flew together.

However, the still photograph taken
 of the first flight does vary in detail.

Johnny Moore was there.

One of eight men who saw the first place flight.

A.W. Drinkwater, telegraph operator at Manteo,

wired out the news of the Wright Brother's
 conquest of the air.

No doubt there was excited reaction to
 that first telegram in

 1903, wasn't there, Mr. Drinkwater?

That wire to the Cleveland Leader newspaper.

What was the response in Cleveland?

They refused to pay the telegraph
 charges onto it,

 which only amounted to a quarter of a 
cent a word

 and wired back the correspondent

[?]

 cut out the wildcat stuff that they
 couldn't handle it.

And in other large cities? In New York?

Well, the New York Herald had their staff
 correspondent, Byron Meyer Newton,

and when he sent in his story, they
 suspended him

 for six weeks until they could get
 affidavits

 from the keeper of Coast Guard station,
 Captain Ward,

 and the postmaster at Mateo and myself,
 that the Wrights had actually flown.

I see.

Then surely Orville Wright was excited
 when he sent his first telegram?

That was to his sister Katharine. 

Simply said, "Fight successful.

 We'll be home for Christmas."

[music]

The monument of granite

 to two modern [audio skip]. In 1901, that man would never fly,

and who in 1903 [audio skip]. A new world

 wilderness?

 We've changed the face of the American
 continent,

but our heroes are the same.

We've changed our county itself.

[audio skip] Hatteras light is legends old,

 but the people are the same.

To some, America is strength and power.

To others, wealth and luxury.

To most of us, America is freedom and the
 right to worship

 God who gave us life.

But also, America is still the struggling

 spirit of these first Americans

 who gathered one morning at dawn and
 began their final

 march into the great unknown of history.

For the first colony is the Lost Colony.

So some have said they failed,

 but actually they fail no more than did
 the first military

 waves at Anzio and Salento failed.

Rather, they succeeded in that

they showed others the way and they first
 brought here

 the will to challenge wildernesses, to
 develop new worlds,

the spirit which has built America.

 If they could come back today,

 if they could see the many new worlds
 that we have opened

 since their time,

new worlds in the minds of men.

If they could walk the streets of our
 cities,

work modern farms. If they could

 fly from Washington to Seattle with the
 sun.

Would they not say, "What nation is this?

What people are these who challenge a
 thousand

 new worlds at once?"

And we could tell them, "This is your nation,
 we are your people.

We do challenge a thousand new
 worlds, but for

 each wilderness open

we discover a dozen more beyond it

challenging us on.

 Even that wilderness still challenges us
 that conquered you.

Man does not yet live peacefully with man,

but that wilderness we will master, too.

That wilderness we must master

if we would keep faith with your spirit."

[music]

In 1589, the first colonists left

 the word "Croatoan" carved on a tree

 and vanished into the wilderness.

Almost four hundred years ago, they put their

fires out with sand,

but the flame they brought here has never
 gone out.

It is still the light and hope of this
 nation

 and the world.

[music]

Someday you will come to Dare, enter the
 fort where

 English America began,

stand near where a mother once reared
 Virginia Dare

 as her own challenge to the wilderness.

Come to the place where two modern
 Americans

 first conquered the new world of the air.

Walk the long white beaches of Dare

and you will see here that from Dare
 County

we have gone far in this nation to the
 writing

 of constitutions and exploring of
 distant stars.

You will know that we have gone far and
 will go further.

For even Dare, the birthplace,

 is still half wilderness.

[music]