Famous American statesmen & orators, past and present : with biographical sketches and their famous orations

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
DAVIS

GEORGE F. HOAR.

FAMOUS AMERICAN
STATESMEN 6- ORATORS

PAST AND PRESENT

WITH

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

— AND —

THEIR FAMOUS ORATIONS

IN SIX VOLUMES

VOLUME VI

ALEXANDER K. MCCLURE, LL.D.

EDITOR

Author of "Lincoln and Men of War Times" "Our Presidents
and How We Make Them" etc.

BYRON ANDREWS

National Tribune" Washingto
ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Author of "The Eastern Question" "The Life of Logan" "One of
the People" (McKinley)^ "Monroe and His Doctrine" etc*

of the "National Tribune" Washington^ D, C.
ASSOCIATE EDITOR

NEW YORK
F. F. LOVELL PUBLISHING COMPANY

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

COPYRIGHT, 1902,
F. F. LOVELL PUBLISHING CO.

— BECKTOLD—

KONTING AND BOOK MFG. CO.
ST. LOUIS. MO.

BE VE RIDGE. 3

Beveridge, Albert J., an American politician and
orator, born in Highland Co., Ohio, October 6, 1862. His
parents removed to Indiana soon after his birth, and his
boyhood was one of hard work. Securing an education
with difficulty he presently became a law clerk in Indiana
polis, and subsequently established a practice of his own.
He entered politics in 1884 by speaking in behalf of Elaine
and was prominent in later campaigns, particularly in that
of 1896, when his speeches attracted general attention. In
1899, he was chosen to the United States Senate as a
Republican. He is intensely partisan in his sympathies,
devoting more time to party, it has been said, than any
other man in his State. He is an able debater and a fluent,
ready, political speaker.

FOR THE GREATER REPUBLIC, NOT FOR
IMPERIALISM

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE UNION LEAGUE OF PHILA
DELPHIA, FEBRUARY 15, 1899.

i

GENTLEMEN OF THE UNION LEAGUE, — The Repub
lic never retreats. Why should it retreat ? The Repub
lic is the highest form of civilization, and civilization
must advance. The Republic's young men are the
most virile and unwasted of the world, and they pant
for enterprise worthy of their power. The Republic's
preparation has been the self-discipline of a century,
and that preparedness has found its task. The Re
public's opportunity is as noble as its strength, and that
opportunity is here. The Republic's duty is as sacred
as its opportunity is real, and Americans never desert
their duty.
1-6

4 BEVERIDGE.

The Republic could not retreat if it would ; whatever
its destiny, it must proceed. For the American Re
public is a part of the movement of a race, — the most
masterful race of history, — and race movements are
not to be stayed by the hand of man. They are
mighty answers to Divine commands. Their leaders
are not only statesmen of peoples — they are prophets
of God. The inherent tendencies of a race are its
highest law. They precede and survive all statutes,
all constitutions. The first question real statesman
ship asks is : What are the abiding characteristics of
my people? From that basis all reasoning may be
natural and true. From any other basis all reasoning
must be artificial and false.

The sovereign tendencies of our race are organiza
tion and government. We govern so well that we
govern ourselves. We organize by instinct. Under
the flag of England our race builds an empire out of
the ends of earth. In Australia it is to-day erecting
a nation out of fragments. In America it wove out
of segregated settlements that complex and wonderful
organization called the American Republic. Every
where it builds. Everywhere it governs. Every
where it administers order and law. Everywhere it
is the spirit of regulated liberty. Everywhere it obeys
that Voice ntft to be denied which bids us strive and
rest not, makes of us our brothers' keeper, and ap
points us steward under God of the civilization of the
world.

Organization means growth. Government means
administration. When Washington pleaded with the
States to organize into a consolidated people, he was

BEVERIDGE. £

the advocate of perpetual growth. When Abraham
Lincoln argued for the indivisibility of the Republic,
he became the prophet of the Greater Republic. And
when they did both, they were but the interpreters of
the tendencies of the race. That is what made them
Washington and Lincoln. Had they been separatists
and contractionists they would not have been Wash
ington and Lincoln — they would have been Davis and
Calhoun. They are the great Americans because they
were the supreme constructors and conservers of or
ganized government among the American people, and
to-day William McKinley, as divinely guided as they,
is carrying to its conclusion the tremendous syllogism
of which the works of Washington and Lincoln are the
premises.

God did not make the American people the mightiest
human force of all time simply to feed and die. He
did not give our race the brain of organization and
heart of domination to no purpose and no end. No;
he has given us a task equal to our talents. He has
appointed for us a destiny equal to our endowments.
He has made us the lords of civilization that we may
administer civilization. Such administration is needed
in Cuba. Such administration is needed in the Philip
pines. And Cuba and the Philippines are in our
hands.

If it be said that, at home, tasks as large as our
strength await us, — that politics are to be purified,
want relieved, municipal government perfected, the
relations of capital and labor better adjusted,^!
answer: Has England's discharge of her duty to the
world corrupted her politics? Are not her cities, like

6 BEVERIDGE.

Birmingham, the municipal models upon which we
build our reforms? Is her labor problem more per
plexed than ours? Considering the newness of our
country, is it as bad as ours ? And is not the like true
of Holland — even of Germany.

And what of England? England's immortal glory
is not Agincourt or Waterloo. It is not her merchan
dise or commerce. It is Australia, New Zealand, and
Africa reclaimed. It is India redeemed. It is Egypt,
mummy of the nations, touched into modern life.
England's imperishable renown is in English science
throttling the plague in Calcutta, English law adminis
tering order in Bombay, English energy planting an
industrial civilization from Cairo to the Cape, and
English discipline creating soldiers, men, and finally
citizens, perhaps, even out of the fellaheen of the dead
land of the Pharaohs. And yet the liberties of Eng
lishmen were never so secure as now. And that which
is England's undying fame has also been her infinite
profit, so sure is duty golden in the end.

And what of America? With the twentieth cen
tury the real task and true life of the Republic begins.
And we are prepared. We have learned restraint
from a hundred years of self-control. We are in
structed by the experience of others. We are advised
and inspired by present example. And our work
awaits us.

The dominant notes in American history have thus
far been self-government and internal improvement.
But these were not ends only; they were means also.
They were modes of preparation. The dominant notes
in American life heretofore have been self-government

BEVERIDGE. 7

and internal development. The dominant notes in
American life henceforth will be not only self-govern
ment and internal development, but also administration
and world improvement. It is the arduous but splen
did mission of our race. It is ours to govern in the
name of civilized liberty. It is ours to administer
order and law in the name of human progress. It is
ours to chasten, that we may be kind. It is ours to
cleanse, that we may save. It is ours to build, that
free institutions may finally enter and abide. It is
ours to bear the torch of Christianity where midnight
has reigned a thousand years. It is ours to reinforce
that thin red line which constitutes the outposts of
civilization all around the world.

If it be said that this is vague talk of an indefinite
future, we answer that it is the specific program of
the present hour. Civil government is to be perfected
in Porto Rico. The future of Cuba is to be worked
out by the wisdom of events. Ultimately, annexation
is as certain as the island's existence. Even if Cubans
are capable of self-government, every interest points
to union. We and they may blunder forward and
timidly try the devices of doubt ; but in the end Jeffer
son's desire will be fulfilled and Cuba will be a part
of the great Republic. And, whatever befalls, definite
and immediate work awaits us. Harbors are to be
dredged, sanitation established, highways built, rail
roads constructed, postal service organized, common
schools opened — all by or under the government of the
American Republic.

The Philippines are ours forever. Let faint hearts
anoint their fears with the thought that some day

S BEVERIDGE.

American administration and American duty there
may end. But they never will end. England's occu
pation of Egypt was to be temporary; but events,
which are the commands of God, are making it perma
nent. And now God has given us this Pacific empire
for civilized administration. The first office of admin
istration is order. Orders must be established
throughout the archipelago. The spoiled child, Agui-
naldo, may not stay the march of civilization. Rebel
lion against the authority of the flag must be .crushed
without delay, for hesitation encourages revolt; and
without anger, for the turbulent children know not
what they do. And then civilization must be organ
ized, administered, and maintained. Law and justice
must rule where savagery, tyranny, and caprice have
rioted. The people must be taught the art of orderly
and continuous industry. A hundred wildernesses
are to be subdued. Unpenetrated regions must be ex
plored. Unviolated valleys must be tilled. Unmas-
tered forests must be felled. Unriven mountains must
be torn asunder, and their riches of iron and gold and
ores of price must be delivered to the world. We are
to do in the Philippines what Holland does in Java, or
England in New Zealand or the Cape, or else work
out new methods and new results of our own nobler
than any the world has seen. All this is not indefinite ;
it is the very specification of duty.

The frail of faith declare that these peoples are not
fitted for citizenship. It is not proposed to make them
citizens. Those who see disaster in every forward
step of the Republic prophesy that Philippine labor will
overrun our country and starve our workingmen.

BEVERIDGE. 9

But the Javanese have not so overrun Holland; New
Zealand's Malays, Australia's bushmen, Africa's Kaf
firs, Zulus, and Hottentots, and India's millions of sur
plus labor have not so overrun England. Whips of
scorpions could not lash the Filipinos to this land of
fervid enterprise, sleepless industry, and rigid order.

Those who measure duty by dollars cry out at the
expense. When did America ever count the cost of
righteousness ? And, besides, this Republic must have
a mighty navy in any event. And new markets se
cured, new enterprises opened, new resources in tim
ber, mines, and products of the tropics acquired, and
the vitalization of all our industries which will follow
will pay back a thousandfold all the Government
spends in discharging the highest duty to which the
Republic can be called.

Those who mutter words and call it wisdom deny
the constitutional power of the Republic to govern
Porto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines; for if we have the
power in Porto Rico, we have the power in the Philip
pines. The Constitution is not interpreted by degrees
of latitude or longitude. It is a hoary objection.
There have always been those who have proclaimed
the unconstitutionality of progress. The first to deny
the power of the Republic's government were those
who opposed the adoption of the Constitution itself,
and they and their successors have denied. its vitality
and intelligence to this day. They denied the Repub
lic's government the power to create a national bank;
to make internal improvements; to issue greenbacks;
to make gold the standard of value; to preserve prop-

IO BEVERIDGE.

erty and life in States where treasonable Governors
refused to call for aid.

Let them read Hamilton, and understand the
meaning of implied powers. Let them read Marshall,
and learn that the Constitution is the people's ordi
nance of national life, capable of growth as great aC
the people's growth. Let them learn the golden rule
of constitutional interpretation. The Constitution
was made for the American people; not the American
people for the Constitution. Let them study the his
tory, purposes, and instincts of our race, and then read
again the Constitution, which is but an expression of
the development of that race. Power to govern terri
tory acquired ! What else does the Constitution mean
when it says, " Congress shall have power to dispose of
and make all needful rules and regulations respecting
the territory or other property of the United States ? "

But aside from these express words of the American
Constitution, the Republic has power to govern in the
Pacific, the Caribbean, or in any other portion of the
globe where Providence commands. Aside from the
example of Alaska, all our territories, and the experi
ence of a century, the Republic has the power to ad
minister civilization wherever interest and duty call.
It is the power which inheres in and is a part of the
Government itself. And the Constitution does not
deny the Government this inherent power residing in
the very nature of all government. Who, then, can
deny it? Those who do, write a new Constitution of
their own, and interpret that. Those who do, dis
pute history. Those who do, are alien to the instincts
of our race.

BEVERIDGE. II

All protests against the Greater Republic are tol
erable except this constitutional objection. But they
who resist the Republic's career in the name of the
Constitution are not to be endured. They are
jugglers of words. Their counsel is the wisdom of
verbiage. They deal not with realities, neither give
heed to vital things. The most magnificent fact in
history is the mighty movement and mission of our
race, and the most splendid phase of that world-re
deeming movement is the entrance of the American
people as the greatest force in all the earth to do their
part in administering civilization among mankind, and
they are not to be halted by a ruck of words called
constitutional arguments. Pretenders to legal learn
ing have always denounced all virile interpretations of
the Constitution. The so-called constitutional lawyers
in Marshall's day said that he did not understand the
Constitution, because he looked, not at its syllables,
but surveyed the whole instrument, and behold in its
profound meaning and infinite scope the sublime hu
man processes of which it is an expression. The Con
stitution is not a prohibition of our progress. It is
not an interdict to our destiny. It is not a treatise on
geography. Let the flag advance ; the word " re
treat " is not in the Constitution. Let the Republic
govern as conditions demand; the Constitution does
not benumb its brain nor palsy its hand.

The Declaration of Independence applies only to
peoples capable of self-government. Otherwise, how
dared we administer the affairs of the Indians? How
dare we continue to govern them to-day? Precedent
does not impair natural and inalienable rights. And

12 BEVERIDGE.

how is the world to be prepared for self-government?
Savagery can not prepare itself. Barbarism must be
assisted toward the light. Assuming that these people
can be made capable of self-government, shall we have
no part in this sacred and glorious cause ?

And if self-government is not possible for them,
shall we leave them to themselves? Shall tribal wars
scourge them, disease waste them, savagery brutalize
then more and more? Shall their fields lie fallow,
their forests rot, their mines remain sealed, and all
the purposes and possibilities of nature be nullified?
If not, who shall govern them rather than the kindest
and most merciful of the world's great race of admin
istrators, the people of the American Republic? Who
lifted from us the judgment which makes men of our
blood our brothers' keepers?

We do not deny them liberty. The administration
of orderly government is not denial of liberty. The
administration of equal justice is not denial of liberty.
Teaching the habits of industry is not denial of liberty.
Development of the wealth of the land is not denial
of liberty. If they are, then civilization itself is de
nial of liberty. Denial of liberty to whom? There
are 12,000,000 of people in the Philippines, divided
into thirty tribes. Aguinaldo is of the Tagal tribe of
2,000,000 souls, and he has an intermittent authority
over less than 50,000 of these.

To deliver these islands to him and his crew would
be to establish an autocracy of barbarism. It would
be to license spoliation. It would be to plant the re
public of piracy, for such a government could not
prevent that crime in piracy's natural home. It would

BEVERIDGE. 13

be to make war certain among the powers of earth,
who would dispute with arms each other's possession
of a Pacific empire from which that ocean can be
ruled. The blood already shed is but a drop to that
\vhich would flow if America should desert its post in
the Pacific. And the blood already spilled was poured
out upon the altar of the world's regeneration.
Manila is as noble as Omdurman, and both are holier
than Jericho.

Retreat from the Philippines on any pretext would
be the master cowardice of history. It would be the
betrayal of a trust as sacred as humanity. It would be
a crime against Christian civilization, and would mark
the beginning of the decadence of our race. And so,
thank God, the Republic never retreats.

The fervent moral resolve throughout the Republic
is not " a fever of expansion." It is a tremendous
awakening of the people, like that of Elizabethan Eng
land. It is no fever, but the hot blood of the most
magnificent young manhood of all time; a manhood
begotten while yet the splendid moral passion of the
war for national life filled the thought of all the land
with ideals worth dying for, and charged its very
atmosphere with noble purposes and a courage which
dared put destiny to the touch — a manhood which con
tains a million Roosevelts, Woods, Hobsons, and Du-
boces, who grieve that they, too, may not so conspicu
ously serve their country, civilization, and mankind.

Indeed, these heroes are great because they are
typical. American manhood to-day contains the mas
ter administrators of the world, and they go forth for
the healing of the nations. They go forth in the cause

14 BEVERIDGE.

of civilization. They go forth for the betterment of
man; they go forth, and the word on their lips is
Christ and his peace — not conquest and its pillage.
They go forth to prepare the peoples, through decades,
and may be centuries, of patient effort, for the great
gift of American institutions. They go forth, not
for imperialism, but for the Greater Republic.

Imperialism is not the word for our vast work.
Imperialism, as used by the opposers of national great
ness, means oppression, and we oppress not. Imper
ialism, as used by the opposers of national destiny,
means monarchy, and the days of monarchy are spent.
Imperialism, as used by the opposers of national prog
ress, is a word to frighten the faint of heart, and so
is powerless with the fearless American people.

Who honestly believes that the liberties of 80,000,-
ooo Americans will be destroyed because the Republic
administers civilization in the Philippines? Who
honestly believes that free institutions are stricken unto
death because the Republic, under God, takes its place
as the first power of the world? Who honestly be
lieves that we plunge to our doom when we march
forward in a path of duty prepared by a higher wisdom
than our own? Those who so believe have lost their
faith in the immortality of liberty. Those who so
believe deny the vitality of the American people.
Those who so believe are infidels to the providence of
God. Those who so believe have lost the reckoning of
events, and think it sunset when it is, in truth, only
the breaking of another day — the day of the Greater
Republic, dawning as dawns the twentieth century.

The Republic never retreats. Its flag is the only

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flag that has never known defeat. Where the flag leads
we follow, for we know that the hand that bears it on
ward is the unseen hand of God. We follow the flag-
and independence is ours. We follow the flag and
nationality is ours. We follow the flag and oceans are
ruled. We follow the flag and, in Occident and
Orient, tyranny falls and barbarism is subdued. We
follow the flag at Trenton and Valley Forge ; at Sara
toga and upon the crimson seas; at Buena Vista and
Chapultepec; at Gettysburg and Missionary Ridge;
at Santiago and Manila ; and everywhere and always it
means larger liberty, nobler opportunity, and greater
human happiness, for everywhere and always it means
the blessings of the Greater Republic. And so God
leads, we follow the flag, and the Republic never re
treats.

1 6 PORTER.

Porter, Horace, an American soldier and diplomat,
born at Huntingdon, Pa., April 15, 1837. He was educated
at the United States Military Academy, and during the 'Civil
War was an officer on the staffs of McClellan, Rosecrans
and Grant. He has since filled important posts and from
1897 has been ambassador to France. He is an able
speaker, and has published, " Campaigning with Grant. "
Among notable addresses by him are the speech, " Our
Guests," " The Triumph of American Invention," and a
speech commemorating General Sherman.

THE TRIUMPH OF AMERICAN INVENTION.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY,
DECEMBER 22, 1877.

MR. PRESIDENT, — I suppose it was a riiatter of nec
essity, calling on some of us from other States to speak
for you to-night, for we have learned from the his
tory of Priscilla and John Alden that a New-Eng-
lander may be too modest to speak for himself. But
this modesty, like some of the greater blessings of the
war, has been more or less disguised to-night.

We have heard from the eloquent gentleman on my
left all about the good-fellowship and the still better
fellowships in the rival universities of Harvard and
Yale. We have heard from my sculptor friend upon
the extreme right all about Hawthorne's tales, and all
the great Storys that have emanated from Salem; but
I am not a little surprised that in this age, when
speeches are made principally by those running for
office, you should call upon one engaged only in

PORTER. I/

running cars, and more particularly upon one brought
up in the military service, where the practice of run
ning is not regarded as strictly professional. It oc
curred to me some years ago that the occupation of
moving cars would be fully as congenial as that of
stopping bullets — as a steady business, so when I left
Washington I changed my profession.

I know how hard it is to believe that persons from
Washington ever change their professions. In this
regal age, when every man is his own sovereign, some
body had to provide palaces, and, as royalty is not sup
posed to have any permanent abiding-place in a coun
try like this, it was thought best to put these palaces
on wheels; and, since we have been told by reliable
•authority that " uneasy lies the head that wears a
crown," we thought it necessary to introduce every
device to enable those crowned heads to rest as easily
as possible.

Of course we cannot be expected to do as much for
the travelling public as the railway companies. They
at times put their passengers to death. We only put
them to sleep. We don't pretend that all the devices,
patents, and inventions upon these cars are due to the
genius of the management. Many of the best sug
gestions have come from the travellers themselves,
especially New-England travellers.

Some years ago, when the bedding was not sup
posed to be as fat as it ought to be, and the pillows were
accused of being constructed upon the homcepathic
principle, a New-Englander got on a car one night.
Now, it is a remarkable fact that a New-Englander
never goes to sleep in one of these cars. He lies awake

18 PORTER.

all night, thinking how he can improve upon every
device and patent in sight. He poked his head out of
the upper berth at midnight, hailed the porter and said,
" Say, have you got such a thing as a corkscrew about
you?"

" We don't 'low no drinkin' sperits aboa'd these yer
cars, sah," was the reply.

" Tain't that," said the Yankee, " but I want to get
hold onto one of your pillows that kind of worked its
way into my ear."

The pillows have since been enlarged.

I notice that in the general comprehensiveness of
the sentiment which follows this toast you allude to
that large and liberal class of patrons, active though
defunct, known as " deadheads." It is said to be a
quotation from Shakespeare. That is a revelation.
It proves conclusively that Shakespeare must at one
time have resided in the State of Missouri. It is well
known that the term was derived from a practice upon
a Missouri railroad, where, by a decision of the courts,
the railroad company had been held liable in heavy
damages in case of accidents where a passenger lost
an arm or a leg, but when he was killed outright his
friends seldom sued, and he never did; and the com
pany never lost any money in such cases.

In fact, a grateful mother-in-law would occasionally
pay the company a bonus.

The conductors on that railroad were all armed with
hatchets, and in case of an accident they were in
structed to go around and knock every wounded pas
senger in the head, thus saving the company large
amounts of money; and these were reported to the

PORTER. 19

general office as " deadheads," and in railway circles
the term has ever since been applied to passengers
where no money consideration is involved.

One might suppose, from the manifestations around
these tables for the first three hours to-night, that the
toast " Internal Improvements " referred more espe
cially to the benefiting of the true inwardness of the
New-England men ; but I see that the sentiment which
follows contains much more than human stomachs, and
covers much more ground than cars. It soars into the
realms of invention.

Unfortunately the genius of invention is always ac
companied by the demon of unrest. A New-England
Yankee can never let well enough alone. I have al
ways supposed him to be the person specially alluded
to in Scripture as the man who has found out many
inventions. If he were a Chinese pagan, he would in
vent a new kind of Joss to worship every week. You
get married and settle down in your home. You are
delighted with everything about you. You rest in
blissful ignorance of the terrible discomforts that sur
round you, until a Yankee friend comes to visit you.
He at once tells you you mustn't build a fire in that
chimney-place ; that he knows the chimney will smoke ;
that if he had been there when it was built he could
have shown you how to give a different sort of flare to
the flue.

You go to read a chapter in the family Bible. He
tells you to drop that; that he has just written an en
larged and improved version, that can just put that
old book to bed.

You think you are at least raising your children in
2- 6

20 PORTER.

general uprightness; but he tells you if you don't go
out at once and buy the latest patent article in the way
of steel leg-braces and put on the baby, that the baby
will grow up bow-legged.

He intimates, before he leaves, that if he had been
around to advise you before you were married, he
could have got you a much better wife.

These are some of the things that reconcile a man
to sudden death.

Such occurrences as these, and the fact of so many
New-Englanders being residents of this city and else
where, show that New-England must be a good place
— to come from.

At the beginning of the war we thought we could
shoot people rapidly enough to satisfy our consciences,
with single-loading rifles; but along came the inven
tive Yankee and produced revolvers and repeaters, and
Catling guns, and magazine guns — guns that carried
a dozen shots at a time.

I didn't wonder at the curiosity exhibited in this
direction by a backwoods Virginian we captured one
night. The first remark he made was, " I would like
to see one of them thar new-fangled weepons of yourn.
They tell me, sah, it's a most remarkable eenstru-
ment. They say, sah, it's a kind o' repeatable,
which you can load it up enough on Sunday to fiah
it off all the rest of the week."

Then there was every sort of new invention in the
way of bayonets. Our distinguished Secretary of
State has expressed an opinion to-night that bayonets
are bad things to sit down on. Well, they are equally
bad things to be tossed up on. If he continues to hold

PORTER. 21

up such terrors to the army, there will have to be im
portant modifications in the uniform. A soldier won't
know where to wear his breastplate.

But there have not only been inventions in the way
of guns but important inventions in the way of firing
them. In these days a man drops on his back, coils
himself up, sticks up one foot, and fires off his gun
over the top of his great toe.

It changes the whole stage business of battle. It
used to be the man who was shot, but now it is the
man who shoots that falls on his back and turns up his
toes. The consequence is that the whole world wants
American arms, and as soon as they get them they go
to war to test them. Russia and Turkey had no
sooner bought a supply than they went to fighting.
Greece got a schooner-load, and although she has not
yet taken a part in the struggle, yet ever since the
digging up of the lost limbs of the Venus of Milo it
has been feared that this may indicate a disposition on
the part of Greece generally to take up arms.

But there was one inveterate old inventor that you
had to get rid of, and you put him on to us Pennsyl-
vanians — Benjamin Franklin.

Instead of stopping in New York, in Wall Street,
as such men usually do, he continued on into Pennsyl
vania to pursue his kiting operations. He never could
let well enough alone. Instead of allowing the light
ning to occupy the heavens as the sole theater for its
pyrotechnic displays, he showed it how to get down on
to the earth, and then he invented the lightning-rod
to catch it. Houses that had got along perfectly well
for years without any lightning at all now thought

22 PORTER.

they must have a rod to catch a portion of it every time
it came around. Nearly every house in the country
was equipped with a lightning-rod through Franklin's
direct agency.

You, with your superior New-England intelligence,
succeeded in ridding yourselves of him; but in
Pennsylvania, though we have made a great many
laudable efforts in a similar direction, somehow or
other we have never once succeeded in getting rid of
a lightning-rod agent.

Then the lightning was introduced on the telegraph
wires, and now we have the duplex and quadruplex
instruments, by which any number of messages can be
sent from opposite ends of the same wire at the same
time, and they all appear to arrive at the front in good
order.

Electricians have not yet told us which message lies
down and wrhich one steps over it, but they all seem to
bring up in the right camp without confusion. I
shouldn't wonder if this principle were introduced be
fore long in the operating of railroads. We may then
see trains running in opposite directions pass each
other on a single-track road.

There was a New-England quartermaster in charge
of railroads in Tennessee, who tried to introduce this
principle during the war. The result was discourag
ing. He succeeded in telescoping two or three trains
-every day. He seemed to think that the easiest way
to shorten up a long train and get it on a short siding
was to telescope it. I have always thought that if
that man's attention had been turned in an astronom-

PORTER. 23

ical direction he would have been the first man to
telescope the satellites of Mars.

The latest invention in the application of electricity
is the telephone. By means of it we may be able soon
to sit in our houses and hear all the speeches without
going to the New-England dinner. The telephone
enables an "orchestra to keep at a distance of miles away
when it plays. If the instrument can be made to keep
hand-organs at a distance, its popularity will be inde
scribable. The worst form I have ever known an in
vention to take was one that was introduced in a coun
try town, when I was a boy, by a Yankee of musical
turn of mind, who came along and taught every
branch of education by singing. He taught geography
by singing, and to combine accuracy of memory with
patriotism, he taught the multiplication-table to the
tune of Yankee Doodle.

This worked very well as an aid to the memory in
school, but when the boys went into business it often
led to inconvenience. When a boy got a situation in
a grocery store and customers were waiting for their
change, he never could tell the product of two numbers
without commencing at the beginning of the table and
singing up till he had reached those numbers. In
case the customer's ears had not received a proper
musical training this practice often injured the busi
ness of the store.

It is said that the Yankee has always manifested a
disposition for making money, but he never struck a
proper field for the display of his genius until we got
to making paper money. Then every man who owned
a printing-press wanted to try his hand at it. I re-

24 PORTER.

member that in Washington ten cents' worth of rags
picked up in the street would be converted the next
day into thousands of dollars.

An old mule and cart used to haul up the currency
from the Printing Bureau to the door of the Treasury
Department. Every morning, as regularly as the
morning came, that old mule would back up and dump
a cart-load of the sinews of war at the Treasury.

A patriotic son of Columbia, who lived opposite, was
sitting on the doorstep of his house one morning, look
ing mournfully in the direction of the mule. A friend
came along, and seeing that the man did not look as
pleasant as usual, said to him, "What is the matter?
It seems to me you look kind of disconsolate this
morning."

" I was just thinking," he replied, " what would be
come of this government if that old mule was to break
down."

Now they propose to give us a currency which is
brighter and heavier, but not worth quite as much as
the rags. Our financial horizon has been dimmed by
it for some time, but there is a lining of silver to every
cloud. We are supposed to take it with 412^ grains
of silver — a great many more grains of allowance.
Congress seems disposed to pay us in the "dollar of
our daddies " — in the currency which we were famil
iar with in our childhood. Congress seems determined
to pay us off in something that is " childlike and
Bland."

But I have detained you too long already; the ex
cellent President of your Society has for the last five
minutes been looking "at me like a man who might be

PORTER. 25

expected, at any moment, to break out in the disconso
late language of Bildad the Shuhite to the patriarch
Job, " How long will it be ere ye make an end of
words?"

Let me say then, in conclusion, that, coming as I
do from the unassuming State of Pennsylvania, and
standing in the presence of the dazzling genius of
New-England, I wish to express the same degree of
humility that was expressed by a Dutch Pennsylvania
farmer in a railroad car at the breaking out of the
war. A New-Englander came in who had just heard
of the fall of Fort Sumter, and he was describing it to
the farmer and his fellow passengers. He said that
in the fort they had an engineer from New-England,
who had constructed the traverses, and the embrasures,
and the parapets in such a manner as to make every
body within the fort as safe as if he had been at home;
and on the other side the Southerners had an engineer
who had been educated in New-England, and he had
with his scientific attainments, succeeded in making
the batteries of the bombarders as safe as any harvest
field, and the bombardment had raged for two whole
days, and the fort had been captured, and the garrison
had surrendered, and not a man was hurt on either
side. A great triumph for science, and a proud day
for New-England education. Said the farmer, " I
suppose dat ish all risrht, but it vouldn't do to send
any of us Pennsylvany fellers down dare to fight mit
dose patties. Like as not ve vould shoost pe fools
enough to kill somepody."

26 WHITE.

White, Andrew D., an eminent American scholar and
diplomat, born at Homer, N. Y., November 7, 1832. He
was professor of history in the University of Michigan,
1857-64, and sat in the New York Senate, 1863-67. In
the last named year he was appointed the first president of
Cornell University, holding office till 1885. He was minis
ter to Germany, 1879-81, and in 1897 was appointed am
bassador to Germany, which position he still (1902) holds^
He is an able public speaker, and is held in high esteem as
a writer, " The Warfare of Science " being his most impor
tant work.

"THE APOSTLE OF PEACE AMONG THE
NATIONS/'

SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE PEACE CONFERENCE AT
THE HAGUE.

YOUR EXCELLENCIES, Mr. Burgomaster, Gentlemen
of the University Faculties, My Honored Colleagues
of the Peace Conference, Ladies and Gentlemen, — The
Commission of the United States comes here this day
to discharge a special duty. We are instructed to ac
knowledge, on behalf of our country, one of its many
great debts to the Netherlands.

This debt is that which, in common with the whole
world, we owe to one of whom all civilized lands are
justly proud, — the poet, the scholar, the historian, the
statesman, the diplomatist, the jurist, the author of the
treatise " De Jure Belli ac Pads."

Of all works not claiming divine inspiration, that
book, written by a man proscribed and hated both for
his politics and his religion, has proved the greatest

WHITE. 27

blessing to humanity. More than any other it has pre
vented unmerited suffering, misery, and sorrow; more
than any other it has ennobled the military profession ;
more than any other it has promoted the blessings of
peace and diminished the horrors of war.

On this tomb, then, before which we now stand, the
delegates of the United States are instructed to lay a
simple tribute to him whose mortal remains rest be
neath it — Hugo de Groot, revered and regarded with
gratitude by thinking men throughout the world as
" Grotius."

Naturally we have asked you to join us in this sim
ple ceremony. For his name has become too great to
be celebrated by his native country alone; too great
to be celebrated by Europe alone; it can be fitly cele
brated only in the presence of representatives from
the whole world.

For the first time in human history there are now
assembled delegates with a common purpose from all
the nations, and they are fully represented here. I
feel empowered to speak words of gratitude, not only
from my own country, but from each of these. I
feel that my own country, though one of the youngest
in the great sisterhood of nations, utters at this shrine
to-day, not only her own gratitude, but that of every
part of Europe, of all the great Powers of Asia, and
of the sister republics of North and South America.

From nations now civilized, but which Grotius knew
only as barbarous ; from nations which in his time were
yet unborn ; from every land where there are men who
admire genius, who reverence virtue, who respect patri
otism, who are grateful to those who have given their

28 WHITE.

lives to toil, hardship, disappointment, and sacrifice,
for humanity, — from all these come thanks and greet
ings heartily mingled with our own.

The time and place are well suited to the ackn9wl-
edgment of such a debt. As to time, as far as the
world at large is concerned, I remind you, not only that
this is the first conference of the entire world, but that
it has, as its sole purpose, a further evolution of the
principles which Grotius first, of all men, developed
thoroughly and stated effectively. So far as the
United States is concerned, it is the time of our most
sacred national festival — the anniversary of our na
tional independence. What more fitting period, then,
in the history of the world and of our own country,
for a tribute to one who has done so much, not only for
our sister nations, but for ourselves.

And as to the place. This is the ancient and honored
city of Delft. From its Haven, not distant, sailed the
" Mayflower " — bearing the Pilgrim Fathers, who, in
a time of obstinate and bitter persecution, brought to
the American continent the germs of that toleration
which had been especially developed among them dur
ing their stay in the Netherlands, and of which Gro
tius was an apostle. In this town Grotius was born;
in this temple he worshipped; this pavement he trod
when a child; often were these scenes revisited by
him in his boyhood; at his death his mortal body was
placed in this hallowed ground. Time and place, then,
would both seem to make this tribute fitting.

In the vast debt which all nations owe to Grotius,
the United States acknowledges its part gladly. Per
haps in no other country has his thought penetrated

WHITE. 29

more deeply and influenced more strongly the great
mass of the people. It was the remark of Alexis de
Tocqueville, the most philosophic among all students
of American institutions, that one of the most striking
and salutary things in American life is the widespread
study of law. De Tocqueville was undoubtedly right.
In all parts of our country the law of nations is espe
cially studied by large bodies of young men in col
leges and universities; studied, not professionally
merely, but from the point of view of men eager to
understand the fundamental principles of international
rights and duties.

The works of our compatriots, Wheaton, Kent,
Field, Woolsey, Dana, Lawrence, and others, in de
veloping more and more the ideas to which Grotius
first gave life and strength, show that our country has
not cultivated in vain this great field which Grotius
opened.

As to the bloom and fruitage evolved by these
writers out of the germ ideas of Grotius I might give
many examples, but I will mention merely three :

The first example shall be the act of Abraham Lin
coln. Amid all the fury of civil war he recognized the
necessity of a more humane code for the conduct of our
armies in the field ; and he entrusted its preparation to
Francis Lieber, honorably known to jurists through
out the world, and at that time Grotius's leading Amer
ican disciple.

My second example shall be the act of General
Ulysses Grant. When called to receive the surrender
of his great opponent, General Lee, after a long and
bitter contest, he declined to take from the vanquished

30 WHITE.

general the sword which he had so long and so bravely
worn; imposed no terms upon the conquered armies
save that they should return to their homes ; allowed no
reprisals; but simply said, " Let us have peace."

My third example shall be the act of the whole peo
ple of the United States. At the close of that most
bitter contest, which desolated thousands of homes,
and which cost nearly a million of lives, no revenge
was taken by the triumphant Union on any of the
separatist statesmen who had brought on the great
struggle, or on any of the soldiers who had conducted
it; and, from that day to this, north and south, once
every year, on Decoration Day, the graves of those
who fell wearing the blue of the North and the gray
of the South are alike strewn with flowers. Surely
I may claim for my countrymen that, whatever other
shortcomings and faults may be imputed to them, they
have shown themselves influenced by those feelings of
mercy and humanity which Grotius, more than any
other, brought into the modern world.

In the presence of this great body of eminent jurists
from the courts, the cabinets, and the universities of
all nations, I will not presume to attempt any full de
velopment of the principles of Grotius or to estimate
his work; but I will briefly present a few considera
tions regarding his life and work which occur to one
who has contemplated them from another and distant
country.

There are, of course, vast advantages in the study
of so great a man from the nearest point of view ; from
his own land, and by those who from their actual ex
perience must best know his environment. But a

WHITE. 31

more distant point of view is not without its uses.
Those who cultivate the slopes of some vast mountain
know it best; yet those who view it from a distance
may sometimes see it brought into new relations and
invested with new glories.

Separated thus from the native land of Grotius by
the Atlantic, and perhaps by a yet broader ocean of cus
tomary thinking; unbiassed by any of that patriotism
so excusable and indeed so laudable in the land where
he was born; an American jurist naturally sees, first,
the relations of Grotius to the writers who preceded
him. He sees other and lesser mountain peaks of
thought emerging from the clouds of earlier history,
and he acknowledges a debt to such men as Isidore of
Seville, Suarez, Ayala, and Gentilis. But when all
this is acknowledged he clearly sees Grotius, while
standing among these men, grandly towering above
them. He sees in Grotius the first man who brought
the main principles of those earlier thinkers to bear
upon modern times, — increasing them from his own
creative mind, strengthening them from the vast stores
of his knowledge, enriching them from his imagina
tion, glorifying them with his genius.

His great mind brooded over that earlier chaos of
opinion, and from his heart and brain, more than from
those of any other, came a revelation to the modern
world of new and better paths toward mercy and
peace. But his agency was more than that. His com
ing was like the rising of the sun out of the primeval
abyss; his work was both creative and illuminative.
We may reverently insist that in the domain of in-

32 WHITE.

ternational law, Grotius said " Let there be light/' and
there was light.

The light he thus gave has blessed the earth for
these three centuries past, and it will go on through
many centuries to come, illuminating them ever more
and more.

I need hardly remind you that it was mainly un
heeded at first. Catholics and Protestants alike failed
to recognize it. " The light shone in the darkness, and
the darkness comprehended it not."

By Calvinists in Holland and France, and by Luth
erans in Germany, his great work was disregarded if
not opposed; and at Rome it was placed on the Index
of books forbidden to be read by Christians.

The book, as you know, was published amid the
horrors of the Thirty Years' War; the great Gustavus
is said to have carried it with him always, and he evi
dently at all times bore its principles in his heart. But
he alone, among all the great commanders of his time,
stood for mercy. All the cogent arguments of Gro
tius could not prevent the fearful destruction of Magde
burg, or diminish, so far as we can now see, any of
the atrocities of that fearful period.

Grotius himself may well have been discouraged ; he
may well have repeated the words attributed to the
great Swedish chancellor whose ambassador he after
ward became, " Go forth, my son, and see with how
little wisdom the world is governed." He may well
have despaired as he reflected that throughout his
whole life he had never known his native land save in
perpetual, heartrending war; nay, he may well have
been excused for thinking that all his work for hu-

WHITE. 33

manity had been in vain when there came to his death
bed no sign of any ending of the terrible war of thirty
years.

For not until three years after he was laid in this
tomb did the plenipotentiaries sign the Treaty of
Munster All this disappointment and sorrow and life
long martyrdom invests him, in the minds of Ameri
cans, as doubtless in your minds, with an atmosphere
of sympathy, veneration, and love.

Yet we see that the great light streaming from his
heart and mind continued to shine; that it developed
and fructified human thought ; that it warmed into life
new and glorious growths of right reason as to in
ternational relations; and we recognize the fact that,
from his day to ours, the progress of reason in theory
and of mercy in practice has been constant on both
sides of the Atlantic.

It may be objected that this good growth, so far as
theory was concerned, was sometimes anarchic, and
that many of its developments were very different from
any that Grotius intended or would have welcomed.
For if Puffendorff swerved much from the teachings
of his great master in one direction, others swerved
even more in other directions, and all created systems
more or less antagonistic. Yet we can now see that
all these contributed to a most beneficent result, — to
the growth of a practice ever improving, ever deep
ening, ever widening, ever diminishing bad faith in
time of peace and cruelty in time of war.

It has also been urged that the system which Gro
tius gave to the world has been utterly left behind
as the world has gone on; that the great writers on

34 WHITE.

international law in the present day do not accept
it ; that Grotius developed everything out of an idea of
natural law which was merely the creation of his own
mind, and based everything on an origin of jural
rights and duties which never had any real being;
that he deduced his principles from a divinely planted
instinct which many thinkers are now persuaded never
existed, acting in a way contra:/ to everything re
vealed by modern discoveries in the realm of history.

It is at the same time insisted against Grotius that
he did not give sufficient recognition to the main basis
of the work of modern international jurists; to posi
tive law, slowly built on the principles and practice
of various nations in accordance with their definite
agreements and adjustments.

In these charges there is certainly truth; but I trust
that you will allow one from a distant country to
venture an opinion that, so far from being to the dis
credit of Grotius, this fact is to his eternal honor.

For there was not, and there could not be at that
period, anything like a body of positive international
law adequate to the new time. The spirit which most
thoroughly permeated the whole world, whether in
^war or peace, when Grotius wrote was the spirit of
Machiavelli, — unmoral, immoral. It has been domin
ant for more than a hundred years. To measure the
service rendered by the theory of Grotius, we have
only to compare Machiavelli's " Prince " with Gro-
tiusfc " De Jure Belli ac Pads." Grant that Grotius's
basis of international law was, in the main, a theory of
natural law which is no longer held : grant that he
made no sufficient recognition of positive law ; we must

WHITE. 35

nevertheless acknowledge that his system, at the time
he presented it, was the only one which could ennoble
men's theories or reform their practice.

From his own conception of the attitude of the Di
vine Mind toward all the falsities of his time grew a
theory of international morals which supplanted the
principles of Machiavelli : from his conception of the
attitude of the Divine Mind toward all the cruelties
which he had himself known in the Seventy Years'
War of the Netherlands, and toward all those of which
tidings were constantly coming from the German
Thirty Years' War, came inspiration to promote a
better practice in war.

To one, then, looking at Grotius from afar, as doubt
less to many among yourselves, the theory which Gro
tius adopted seems the only one which, in his time,
could bring any results for good to mankind.

I am also aware that one of the most deservedly emi
nent historians and publicists of the Netherlands dur
ing our own time has censured Grotius as the main
source of the doctrine which founds human rights
upon an early social compact, and, therefore, as one
who proposed the doctrines which have borne fruit
in the writings of Rousseau and in various modern
revolutions.

I might take issue with this statement; or I might
fall back upon the claim that Grotius's theory has
proved, at least, a serviceable provisional hypothesis;
but this is neither the time nor the place to go fully
into so great a question. Yet I may at least say that
it would ill become me, as a representative of the
United States, to impute to Grotius, as a fault, a the-

36 WHITE.

ory out of which sprang the nationality of my coun
try: a doctrine embodied in that Declaration of Inde
pendence which is this day read to thousands on thou
sands of assemblies in all parts of the United States,
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Great
Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

But, however the Old World may differ from the
New on this subject, may we not all agree that, what
ever Grotius's responsibility for this doctrine may be,
its evils would have been infinitely reduced could the
men who developed it have caught his spirit, — his spirit
of broad toleration, of wide sympathy, of wise modera
tion, of contempt for " the folly of extremes," of
search for the great principles which unite men rather
than for the petty differences which separate them?

It has also been urged against Grotius that his in
terpretation of the words jus gentium* was a mistake,
and that other mistakes have flowed from this. Grant
it; yet we, at a distance, believe that we see in it one
of the happiest mistakes ever made; a mistake com
parable in its fortunate results to that made by Co
lumbus when he interpreted a statement in our sacred
books, regarding the extent of the sea as compared
with the land, to indicate that the western continent
could not be far from Spain, — a mistake which prob
ably more than anything else encouraged him to sail
for the New World.

It is also not infrequently urged by eminent Euro
pean writers that Grotius dwelt too little on what in
ternational law really was, and too much on what, in
his opinion, it ought to be. This is but another form
* The right of nations, in other words, international law.

WHITE. 37

of an argument against him already stated. But is it
certain, after all, that Grotius was so far wrong in this
as some excellent jurists have thought him? May it
not be that, in the not distant future, international
law, while mainly basing its doctrines upon what na
tions have slowly developed in practice may also draw
inspiration more and more from " that Power in the
Universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteous

ness."

An American, recalling that greatest of all arbitra
tions yet knowrn, the German Arbitration of 1872, na
turally attributes force to the reasoning of Grotius.
The heavy damages which the United States asked
at that time, and which Great Britain honorably paid,
were justified mainly, if not wholly, not on the prac
tice of nations then existing, but upon what it was
claimed ought to be the practice; not upon positive
law, but upon natural justice: and that decision forms
one of the happiest landmarks in modern times ; it ended
all quarrel between the two nations concerned, and
bound them together more firmly than ever.

But while there may be things in the life and work
of Grotius which reveal themselves differently to those
who study him from a near point of view and to those
who behold him from afar, there are thoughts on which
we may all unite, lessons which we may learn alike,
and encouragements which may strengthen us all for
the duties of this present hour.

For, as we now stand before these monuments, there
come to us, not only glimpses of the irony of history,
but a full view of the rewards of history. Resound
ing under these arches and echoing among these col-

38 WHITE.

umns, prayer and praise have been heard for five hun
dred years. Hither came, in hours of defeat and hours
of victory, that mighty hero whose remains rest in
yonder shrine and whose fame is part of the world's
fairest heritage. But when, just after William the
Silent had been laid in the vaults beneath our feet,
Hugo de Groot, as a child, gazed with wonder on this
grave of the father of his country, and when, in his
boyhood, he here joined in prayer and praise and caught
inspiration from the mighty dead, no man knew that
in this beautiful boy, opening his eyes upon these
scenes which we now behold, not only the Netherlands,
but the whole human race, had cause for the greatest
of thanksgivings.

And when, in perhaps the darkest hour of modern
Europe, in 1625, his great book was born, yonder or
gan might well have pealed forth a most triumphant
Te Deum; but no man recognized the blessing which
in that hour had been vouchsafed to mankind ; no voice
of thanksgiving was heard.

But if the dead, as we fondly hope, live beyond the
grave; if, undisturbed by earthly distractions, they
are all the more observant of human affairs; if, freed
from earthly trammels, their view of life in our lower
world is. illumined by that infinite light which streams
from the source of all that is true and beautiful and
good, — may we not piously believe that the mighty
and beneficent shade of William of Orange recognized
with joy the birth-hour of Grotius as that of a compa
triot who was to give the Netherlands a lasting glory ?
May not that great and glorious spirit have also looked
lovingly upon Grotius as a boy lingering on this spot

WHITE. 39

where we now stand, and recognized him as one whose
work was to go on adding in every age new glory to
the nation which the mighty Prince of the House of
Orange had, by the blessing of God, founded and
saved; may not, indeed, that great mind have fore
seen in that divine light, another glory not then known
to mortal ken? Who shall say that in the effluence of
divine knowledge he may not have beheld Grotius, in
his full manhood, penning the pregnant words of the
" De Jure Belli ac Pads/' and that he may not have
foreseen — as largely resulting from it — what we behold
to-day, as an honor of the august Monarch who con
voked it, to the Netherlands who have given it splen
did hospitality, and to all modern states here repre
sented, — the first conference of the entire world ever
held, and that conference assembled to increase the se
curities for peace and to diminish the horrors of war.
For, my honored colleagues of the Peace Confer
ence, the germ of this work in which we are all so
earnestly engaged lies in a single sentence of Grotius's
great book. Others, indeed, had proposed plans for the
peaceful settlement of differences between nations, and
the world remembers them with honor : to all of them,
from Henry IV, and Kant, and St. Pierre, and Penn,
and Bentham, down to the humblest writer in favor
of peace, we may well feel grateful ; but the germ of ar
bitration was planted in modern thought when Gro
tius, urging arbitration and mediation as preventing
war, wrote these solemn words in the " De Jure Belli
ac Pacis " ; " Maxime autem christiani reges et civi-
tates tenentur hanc inire viam ad arma vitanda." *

* "But above all, Christian kings and states are bound to take
his way of avoiding recourse to arms."

40 WHITE.

My honored colleagues and friends, more than once
I have come as a pilgrim to this sacred shrine. In my
young manhood, more than thirty years ago, and at
various times since, I have sat here and reflected upon
what these mighty men here entombed have done for
the world, and what, though dead, they yet speak to-
mankind. I seem to hear them still.

From this tomb of William the Silent comes, in this
hour, a voice bidding the Peace Conference be brave,
and true, and trustful in that Power in the Universe
which works for righteousness.

From this tomb of Grotius I seem to hear a voice
which says to us, as the delegates of the nations : " Go
on with your mighty work : avoid, as you would avoid
the germs of pestilence, those exhalations of interna
tional hatred which take shape in monstrous falla
cies and morbid fictions regarding alleged antagonistic
interests. Guard well the treasures of civilization with
which each of you is entrusted ; but bear in mind that
you hold a mandate from humanity. Go on with your
work. Pseudo-philosophers will prophesy malignantly
against you ; pessimists will laugh you to scorn ; cynics
will sneer at you; zealots will abuse you for what you
have not done; sublimely unpractical thinkers will re
vile you for what you have done; ephemeral critics
will ridicule you as dupes; enthusiasts, blind to the
difficulties in your path and to everything outside their
little circumscribed fields, will denounce you as traitors
to humanity. Heed them not, — go on with your work.
Heed not the clamor of zealots, or cynics, or pessi
mists, or pseudo-philosophers, or enthusiasts or fault
finders. Go on with the work of strengthening peace

WHITE. 41

and humanizing war; give greater scope and strength
to provisions which will make war less cruel; perfect
those laws of war which diminish the unmerited suf
ferings of populations ; and, above all, give to the world
at least a beginning of an effective, practicable scheme
of arbitration."

These are the words which an American seems to
hear issuing from this shrine to-day; and I seem also
to hear from it a prophecy. I seem to hear Grotius say
ing to us : " Fear neither opposition nor detraction.
As my own book, which grew out of the horrors of the
Wars of Seventy and the Thirty Years' War, contained
the germ from which your great Conference has grown,
so your work, which is demanded by a world bent al
most to breaking under the weight of ever-increasing
armaments, shall be a germ from which future Con
ferences shall evolve plans ever fuller, better, and
nobler."

And I also seem to hear a message from him to the
jurists of the great universities who honor us with
their presence to-day, including especially that re
nowned University of Leyden which gave to Grotius
his first knowledge of the law; and that eminent Uni
versity of Konigsberg, which gave him his most phil
osophical disciple: to all of these I seem to hear him
say : " Go on in your labor to search out the facts and
to develop the principles which 'shall enable future
Conferences to build more and more broadly, more and
more loftily for peace."

And now, your excellencies, Mr. Burgomaster, and
honored deans of the various universities of the Neth
erlands, a simple duty remains to me. In accordance

42 WHITE.

with instructions from the President and on behalf of
the people of the United States of America, the Ameri
can Commission at the Peace Conference, by my hand,
lays on the tomb of Grotius this simple tribute. It
combines the oak, symbolical of civic virtue, with the
laurel, symbolical of victory. It bears the following
inscription :

" TO THE MEMORY OF HUGO GROTIUS

IN REVERENCE AND GRATITUDE

FROM THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ON THE OCCASION OF THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE

CONFERENCE AT THE HAGUE

JULY 4, 1899."

— and it encloses two shields, one bearing the arms of
the House of Orange and of the Netherlands, the other
bearing the arms of the United States of America ; and
both these shields are bound firmly together. They
represent the gratitude of our country, one of the
youngest among the nations of the earth, to this old
and honored Commonwealth, — gratitude for great serv
ices in days gone by, gratitude for recent courtesies and
kindnesses; and above all they represent to all time a
union of hearts and minds in both lands for peace be
tween the nations.

CORWIN. 43

Corwin, Thomas, an American orator and politician,
born in Bourbon county, Ky., July 29, 1794 ; died in Washing
ton, D. C., December 18, 1865. His early opportunities were
limited, but after' studying law he was admitted to the Ohio bar
in 1818, and in 1822 he entered the Ohio Legislature, where
he made a spirited speech against the introduction of the
whipping post into Ohio. In 1829 he was sent to Congress
as Representative, and was very prominent there as a Whig
leader. In 1840 Corwin was the successful candidate for
the governorship of Ohio, speaking several times a day
during a three months' campaign, but was defeated in a
similar campaign in 1842. He entered the National Senate
in 1844, and there distinguished himself as a determined
opponent of the war with Mexico. He was Secretary of the
Treasury under Fillmore, member of Congress, 1861-64,
and subsequently minister to Mexico. He was a brilliant
orator, both in the court-room and in Congress. His speech
in the Senate on the Mexican War in 1847, *s one °f his
most important addresses.

FROM SPEECH ON THE MEXICAN WAR.

DELIVERED IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, FEBRUARY
II, 1847.

THE President has said he does not expect to hold
Mexican territory by conquest. Why then conquer it ?
Why waste thousands of lives and millions of money
fortifying towns and creating governments, if, at the
end of the war, you retire from the graves of your
soldiers and the desolated country of your foes, only to
get money from Mexico for the expense of all your
toil and sacrifice? Who ever heard, since Christianity
was propagated among men, of a nation taxing its peo-

44 CORWIN.

pie, enlisting its young men, and marching off two
thousand miles to fight a people merely to be paid for it
in money? What is this but hunting a market for
blood, selling the lives of your young men, marching
them in regiments to be slaughtered and paid for like
oxen and brute beasts ?

Sir, this is, when stripped naked, that atrocious idea
first promulgated in the President's message, and now
advocated here, of fighting on till we can get our in
demnity for the past as well as the present slaughter.
We have chastised Mexico, and if it were worth while
to do so, we have, I dare say, satisfied the world that
we can fight. What now? Why the mothers of
America are asked to send another of their sons to
blow out the brains of Mexicans because they refuse
to pay the price of the first who fell there fighting for-
glory! And what if the second fall, too? The Execu
tive, the parental reply is, " We shall have him paid for;
we shall get full indemnity ! "

Sir, I have no patience with this flagitious notion of
fighting for indemnity, and this under the equally ab
surd and hypocritical pretence of securing an honorable
peace. An honorable peace ! If you have accomplished
the objects of the war — if indeed you had an object
which you dare to avow — cease to fight and you will
have peace. Conquer your insane love of false glory,
and you will " conquer a peace."

Sir, if your commander-in-chief will not do this, I
will endeavor to compel him, and as I find no other
means I shall refuse supplies — without money of the
people he cannot go further. He asks me for thaS.
money; I wish him to bring your armies home, to

CORWIN. 45

cease shedding blood for money; if he refuses, I will
refuse supplies, and then I know he must, he will cease
his further sale of the lives of my countrymen.

May we not, ought we not now to do this? I can
hear no reason why we should not, except this: It
is said that we are in war, wrongfully it may be, but,
being in, the President is responsible, and we must
give him the means he requires ! He responsible ! Sir,
we, we are responsible, if, having the power to stay
this plague, we refuse to do so. When it shall be so
— when the American Senate and the American House
of Representatives can stoop from their high position
and yield a dumb compliance with the behests of a
President who is, for the time being, commander of
your army ; when they will open the treasury with one
hand, and the veins of all the soldiers in the land with
the other, merely because the President commands,
then, sir, it matters little how soon some Cromwell
shall come into this hall and say, " The Lord hath no
further need of you here."

When we fail to do the work " whereunto we were
sent," we shall be, we ought to be, removed, and give
place to others who will. The fate of the barren fig-
tree will be ours — Christ cursed it and it withered.

Mr. President, I dismiss this branch of the subject,
and beg the indulgence of the Senate to some reflec
tions on the particular bill now under consideration.
I voted for a bill somewhat like the present at the last
session — our army was then in the neighborhood of
our line. I then hoped that the President did sincerely
desire a peace. Our army had not then penetrated far
into Mexico and I did hope that with the two millions

46 CORWIN.

then proposed we might get peace and avoid the slaugh
ter, the shame, the crime, of an aggressive, unprovoked
war. But now you have overrun half of Mexico, you
have exasperated and irritated her people, you claim
indemnity for all expenses incurred in doing this mis
chief and boldly ask her to give up New Mexico and
California; and, as a bribe to her patriotism, seizing on
her property, you offer three millions to pay the sol
diers she has called out to repel your invasion on con
dition that she will give up to you at least one third of
her whole territory. This is the modest — I should say,
the monstrous — proposition now before us as explained
by the chairman of the committee on foreign relations
[Mr. Sevier], who reported the bill. I cannot now give
my consent to this.

But, sir, I do not believe you will succeed. I am not
informed of your prospects of success \vith this meas
ure of peace. The chairman of the committee on
foreign relations tells us that he has every reason to
believe that peace can be obtained if we grant this ap
propriation. What reason have you, Mr. Chairman,
for that opinion ? " Facts which I cannot disclose to
you — correspondence which it would be improper to
name here — facts which I know, but which you are not
permitted to know, have satisfied the committee that
peace may be purchased if you will but grant these
three millions of dollars."

Now, Mr. President, I wish to know if I am re
quired to act upon such opinions of the chairman of
the committee on foreign relations, formed upon facts
which he refuses to disclose to me? No ! I must know
the facts before I can form my judgment. But I am to

CORWIN. 47

take it for granted that there must be some prospect of
an end to this dreadful war — for it is a dreadful war,
being, as I believe in my conscience it is, an unjust war.
Is it possible that for three millions you can purchase
a peace with Mexico? How? By the purchase of
California? Mr. President, I know not what facts the
chairman of the committee on foreign affairs may have
had access to. I know not what secret agents have been
whispering into the ears of the authorities of Mexico;
but of one thing I am certain, that by a cession of Cali
fornia and New Mexico you never can purchase a peace
with her.

You may wrest provinces from Mexico by war —
you may hold them by the right of the strongest — you
may rob her; but a treaty of peace to that effect with
the people of Mexico, legitimately and freely made,
you never will have! I thank God that it is so, as
well for the sake of the Mexican people as ourselves;
for, unlike the senator from Alabama [Mr. Bagby], I
do not value the life of a citizen of the United States
above the lives of a hundred thousand Mexican women
and children — a rather cold sort of philanthropy, in
my judgment. For the sake of Mexico, then, as well
as our own country, I rejoice that it is an impossibility
that you can obtain by treaty from her those terri
tories under the existing state of things.

I am somewhat at a loss to know on what plan of
operations gentlemen having charge of this war in
tend to proceed. We hear much said of the terror of
your arms. The affrighted Mexican, it is said, when
you shall have drenched his country in blood, will sue
for peace, and thus you will indeed " conquer peace."

48 CORWIN.

This is the heroic and savage tone in which we have
heretofore been lectured by our friends on the other
side of the chamber, especially by the senator from
Michigan [General Cass].

But suddenly the chairman of the committee on
foreign relations comes to us with a smooth phrase of
diplomacy made potent by the gentle suasion of gold.
The chairman of the committee on military affairs calls
for thirty millions of money and ten thousand regular
troops; these, we are assured, shall "conquer peace,"
if the obstinate Celt refuses to treat till we shall whip
him in another field of blood. What a delightful scene
in the nineteenth century of the Christian era !

What an interesting sight to see these two represen
tatives of war and peace moving in grand procession
through the halls of the Montezumas! The senator
from Michigan [General Cass], red with the blood of
recent slaughter, the gory spear of Achilles in his hand
and the hoarse clarion of war in his mouth, blowing a
blast " so loud and deep " that sleeping echoes of the
lofty Cordilleras start from their caverns and return
the sound, till every ear from Panama to Santa Fe is
deafened with the roar. By his side, with " modest
mien and downcast look," comes the senator from
Arkansas [Mr. Sevier], covered from head to foot
with a gorgeous robe, glittering and embossed with
three millions of shining gold, putting to shame " the
wealth of Ormus or of Ind." The olive of Minerva
graces his brow ; in his right hand is the delicate rebec,
from which are breathed, in Lydian measure, notes
" trr-t tell of naught but love and peace."

I fear very much you will scarcely be able to explain

CORWIN. 49

to the simple, savage mind of the half-civilized Mexi
cans the puzzling dualism of this scene, at once gor
geous and grotesque. Sir, I scarcely understand the
meaning of all this myself. If we are to vindicate our
rights by battles — in bloody fields of war — let us do
it. If that is not the plan, why then let us call back
our armies into our own territory, and propose a
treaty with Mexico, based upon the proposition that
money is better for her and land is better for us. Thus
we can treat Mexico like an equal and do honor to our
selves.

But what is it you ask? You have taken from
Mexico one fourth of her territory, and you now pro
pose to run a line comprehending about another third,
and for what ? I ask, Mr. President, for what ? What
has Mexico got from you for parting with two thirds
of her domain? She has given you ample redress for
every injury of which you have complained. She has
submitted to the award of your commissioners, and
up to the time of the rupture with Texas faithfully
paid it. And for all that she has lost (not through or
by you, but which loss has been your gain), what re
quital do we, her strong, rich, robust neighbor, make?
Do we send our missionaries there " to point the way
to heaven ? " Or do we send the schoolmasters to pour
daylight into her dark places, to aid her infant strength
to conquer freedom and reap the fruit of the inde
pendence herself alone had won?

No, no, none of this do we ! But we send regiments,
storm towns, and our colonels prate of liberty in the
midst of the solitudes their ravages have made. They
proclaim the empty forms of social compact to a peo-

50 CORWIN.

pie bleeding and maimed with wounds received in de
fending their hearthstones against the invasion of these
very men who shoot them down and then exhort them
to be free. Your chaplains of the navy throw aside the
New Testament and seize a bill of rights. The Rev.
Don Walter Colton, I see, abandons the Sermon on
the Mount, and betakes himself to Blackstone and
Kent, and is elected a justice of the peace! He takes
military possession of some town in California, and
instead of teaching the plan of the atonement and the
way of salvation to the poor, ignorant Celt, he pre
sents Colt's pistol to his ear, and calls on him to take
" trial by jury and habeas corpus," or nine bullets in
his head. Oh! Mr. President, are you not the lights
of the earth, if not its salt? You, you are indeed open
ing the eyes of the blind in Mexico, with a most em
phatic and exoteric power. Sir, if all this were not a
sad, mournful truth, it would be the very ne plus ultra
of the ridiculous.

But, sir, let us see what, as the chairman of the com
mittee on foreign relations explains it, we are to get
by the combined processes of conquest and treaty.

What is the territory, Mr. President, which you pro
pose to wrest from Mexico? It is consecrated to the
heart of the Mexican by many a well-fought battle
with his old Castilian master. His Bunker Hills, and
Saratogas, and Yorktowns are there. The Mexican
can say, " There I bled for liberty ! and shall I sur
render that consecrated home of my affections to the
Anglo-Saxon invaders? What do they want with it?
They have Texas already. They have possessed them
selves of the territory between the Nueces and the Rio

CORWIN. 51

Grande. What else do they want? To what shall I
point my children as memorials of that independence
which I bequeath to them when those battlefields shall
have passed from my possession ? "

Sir, had one come and demanded Bunker Hill of
the people of Massachusetts, had England's lion ever
showed himself there, is there a man over thirteen and
under ninety who would not have been ready to meet
him; is there a river on this continent that would not
have run red with blood ; is there a field but would have
been piled high with the unburied bones of slaughtered
Americans before these consecrated battlefields of lib
erty should have been wrested from us ? But this same
American goes into a sister republic and says to poor,
weak Mexico, " Give up your territory — you are un
worthy to possess it — I have got one half already — all
I ask of you is to give up the other ! "

England might as well, in the circumstances I have
described, have come and demanded of us, " Give up
the Atlantic slope — give up this trifling territory from
the Alleghany mountains to the 'sea; it is only from
Maine to St. Mary's — only about one third of your re
public, and the least interesting portion of it." What
would be the response ? They would say we must give
this up to John Bull. Why? " He wants room." The
senator from Michigan says he must have this. Why,
my worthy Christian brother, on what principle of
justice? "I want room!"

Sir, look at this pretence of want of room! With

twenty millions of people you have about one thousand

million of acres of land, inviting settlement by every

conceivable argument — bringing them down to a quar-

3-6

52 CORWIN.

ter of a dollar an acre, and allowing every man to
squat where he pleases. But the senator from Michi
gan says we will be two hundred millions in a few
years, and we want room. If I were a Mexican I
would tell you, " Have you not room in your own
country to bury your dead men? If you come into
mine we will greet you with bloody hands and wel
come you to hospitable graves."

Why, says the chairman of this committee on for
eign relations, it is the most reasonable thing in the
world ! We ought to have the Bay of San Francisco.
Why? Because it is the best harbor on the Pacific!
It has been my fortune, Mr. President, to have prac
tised a good deal in criminal courts in the course of
my life, but I never yet heard a thief arraigned for
stealing a horse plead that it was the best horse that
he could find in the country ! We want California.
What for? Why, says the senator from Michigan, we
will have it; and the senator from South Carolina,
with a very mistaken view, I think, of policy, says you
can't keep our people from going there. Let them go
and seek their happiness in whatever country or clime
it pleases them.

All I ask of them is, not to require this government
to protect them with that banner consecrated to war
waged for principles eternal, enduring truth. Sir,
it is not meet that our old flag should throw its protect
ing folds over expeditions for lucre or for land. But
you still say you want room for your people. This
has been the plea of every robber-chief from Nimrod
to the present hour. I dare say, when Tamerlane de
scended from his throne built of seventy thousand hu-

CORWIN. 53

man skulls, and marched his ferocious battalions to
further slaughter, I dare say he said, " I want room."

Bajazet was another gentleman of kindred tastes and
wants with us Anglo-Saxons — he " wanted room."
Alexander, too, the mighty " Macedonian madman,"
when he wandered with his Greeks to the plains of
India and fought a bloody battle on the very ground
where recently England and the Sikhs engaged in
strife for " room," was no doubt in quest of some
California there. Many a Monterey had he to storm
to get " room."

Sir, he made quite as much of that sort of history as
you ever will. Mr. President, do you remember the
last chapter in that history? It is soon read. Oh! I
wish we could but understand its moral. Ammon's
son (so was Alexander named), after all his victories,
died drunk in Babylon ! The vast empire he con
quered to " get room," became the prey of the gen
erals he had trained; it was disparted, torn to pieces,
and so ended. Sir, there is a very significant appen
dix ; it is this : The descendants of the Greeks — of
Alexander's Greeks — are now governed by a descend
ant of Attila!

Mr. President, while we are fighting for room let
us ponder deeply this appendix. I was somewhat
amazed the other day to hear the senator from Michi
gan declare that Europe had quite forgotten us till
these battles waked them up. I suppose the senator
feels grateful to the President for " waking up " Eu
rope. Does the President, who is, I hope, read in civic
as well as military lore, remember the saying of one
who had pored upon history long — long, too, upon

54 CORWIN.

man, his nature and true destiny? Montesquieu did
not think highly of this way of " waking up." "Happy,"
says he, " is that nation whose annals are tiresome."

The senator from Michigan has a different view of
this. He thinks that a nation is not distinguished un
til it is distinguished in war ; he fears that the slumber
ing faculties of Europe have not been able to ascertain
that there are twenty millions of Anglo-Saxons here
making railroads and canals, and speeding all the arts
of peace to the utmost accomplishment of the most re
fined civilization. They do not know it! And what
is the wonderful expedient which this democratic
method of making history would adopt in order to
make us known? Storming cities, desolating peace
ful, happy homes, shooting men — aye, sir, such is war
— and shooting women, too!

Sir, I have read in some account of your battle of
Monterey, of a lovely Mexican girl, who, with the
benevolence of an angel in her bosom and the robust
courage of a hero in her heart, was busily engaged
during the bloody conflict, amid the crash of falling
houses, the groans of the dying, and the \vild shriek
of battle, in carrying water to slake the burning thirst
of the wounded of either host. While bending over a
wounded American soldier a cannon-ball struck her
and blew her to atoms. Sir, I do not charge my brave,
generous-hearted countrymen who fought that fight
with this. No, no! We who send them — we who
know that scenes like this, which might send tears of
sorrow " down Pluto's iron cheek," are the invariable,
inevitable attendants on war — we are accountable for
this. And this — this is the way we are to be made

CORWIN. 55

known to Europe. This — this is to be the undying re
nown of free, republican America ! " She has stormed
a city — killed many of its inhabitants of both sexes —
she has room ! " So it will read. Sir, if this were our
only history, then may God of his mercy grant that
its volume may speedily come to a close.

Why is it, sir, that we, the United States, a people
of yesterday compared with the older nations of the
world, should be waging war for territory — for
" room ? " Look at your country, extending from the
Alleghany Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, capable
itself of sustaining in comfort a larger population than
will be in the whole Union for one hundred years to
come. Over this vast expanse of territory your popu
lation is now so sparse that I believe we provided, at
the last session, a regiment of mounted men to guard
the mail from the frontier of Missouri to the mouth of
the Columbia ; and yet you persist in the ridiculous as
sertion, " I want room." One would imagine, from
the frequent reiteration of the complaint, that you had
a bursting, teeming population, whose energy was
paralyzed, whose enterprise was crushed, for want of
space. Why should we be so weak or wicked as to offer
this idle apology for ravaging a neighboring republic?
It will impose on no one at home or abroad.

Do we not know, Mr. President, that it is a law never
to be repealed that falsehood shall be short-lived ? Was
it not ordained of old that truth only shall abide for
ever? Whatever we may say to-day, or whatever we
may write in our books, the stern tribunal of history
will review it all, detect falsehood, and bring us to
judgment before that posterity which shall bless or

56 CORWIN.

curse us, as we may act now, wisely or otherwise.
We may hide in the grave (which awaits us all) in
vain : we may hope there, like the foolish bird that hides
its head in the sand, in the vain belief that its body is
not seen; yet even there this preposterous excuse of
want of " room " shall be laid bare and the quick-com
ing future will decide that it was a hypocritical pre
tence under which we sought to conceal the avarice
which prompted us to covet and to seize by force that
which was not ours.

Mr. President, this uneasy desire to augment our
territory has depraved the moral sense and blunted the
otherwise keen sagacity of our people. What has been
the fate of all nations who have acted upon the idea
that they must advance! Our young orators cherish
this notion with a fervid but fatally mistaken zeal.
They call it by the mysterious name of " destiny."
" Our destiny," they say, is " onward," and hence they
argue, with ready sophistry, the propriety of seizing
upon any territory and any people that may lie in the
way of our " fated " advance. Recently these progres
sives have grown classical; some assiduous student of
antiquities has helped them to a patron saint. They
have wandered back into the desolated Pantheon, and
there, among the polytheistic relics of that " pale moth
er of dead empires," they have found a god whom these
Romans, centuries gone by, baptized " Terminus."

Sir, I have heard much and read somewhat of this
gentleman Terminus. Alexander, of whom I have
spoken, was a devotee of this divinity. We have seen
the end of him and his empire. It was said to be an
attribute of this god that he must always advance and

CORWIN. 57

never recede. So both republican and imperial Rome
believed. It was, as they said, their destiny. And for
a while it did seem to be even so. Roman Terminus
did advance. Under the eagles of Rome he was car
ried from his home on the Tiber to the farthest East on
the one hand, and to the far West, among the then bar
barous tribes of western Europe, on the other.

But at length the time came when retributive justice
had become " a destiny." The despised Gaul calls out
the contemned Goth, and Attila with his Huns answers
back the battle-shout to both. The " blue-eyed na
tions of the North," in succession or united, pour forth
their countless hosts of warriors upon Rome and
Rome's always-advancing god Terminus. And now
the battle-axe of the barbarian strikes down the con
quering eagle of Rome. Terminus at last recedes, slow
ly at first, but finally he is driven to Rome, and from
Rome to Byzantium. Whoever would know the fur
ther fate of this Roman deity, so recently taken under
the patronage of American democracy, may find ample
gratification of his curiosity in the luminous pages of
Gibbon's "• Decline and Fall."

Such will find that Rome thought as you now think,
that it was her destiny to conquer provinces and na
tions, and no doubt she sometimes said, as you say,.
" I will conquer a peace," and where now is she, the
mistress of the world? The spider weaves his web in
her palaces, the owl sings his watch-song in her tow
ers. Teutonic power now lords it over the servile rem
nant, the miserable memento of old and once omnipo
tent Rome. Sad, very sad, are the lessons which time
has written for us. Through and in them all I see

58 CORWIN.

nothing but the inflexible execution of that old law
which ordains as eternal that cardinal rule, " Thou
shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods, nor anything
which is his." Since I have lately heard so much about
the dismemberment of Mexico I have looked back to
see how, in the course of events, which some call
" Providence," it has fared with other nations who en
gaged in this work of dismemberment. I see that in
the latter half of the eighteenth century three powerful
nations, Russia, Austria and Prussia, united in the dis
memberment of Poland. They said, too, as you say,
" It is our destiny." They " wanted room." Doubt
less each of these thought, with his share of Poland, his
power was 'too strong ever to fear invasion, or even in
sult. One had his California, another his New Mexi
co, and the third his Vera Cruz. Did they remain un
touched and incapable of harm? Alas! no — far, very
far, from it. Retributive justice must fulfil its des
tiny, too.

A very few years pass off, and we hear of a new man.
a Corsican lieutenant, the self-named " armed soldier
of democracy," Napoleon. He ravages Austria, covers
her land with blood, drives the Northern Caesar from
his capital, and sleeps in his palace. Austria may now
remember how her power trampled upon Poland. Did
she not pay dear, very dear, for her California?

But has Prussia no atonement to make? You see
this same Napoleon, the blind instrument of Provi
dence at work there. The thunders of his cannon at
Jena proclaim the work of retribution for Poland's
wrongs; and the successors of the Great Frederick,
the drill-sergeant of Europe, are seen flying across the

CORWIN. 59

sandy plain that surrounds their capital, right glad if
they may escape captivity or death. But how fares it
with the Autocrat of Russia ? Is he secure in his share
of the spoils of Poland? No. Suddenly we see, sir,
six hundred thousand armed men marching to Mos
cow. Does his Vera Cruz protect him now? Far
from it. Blood, slaughter, desolation spread abroad
over the land, and finally the conflagration of the old
commercial metropolis of Russia closes the retribution
she must pay for her share in the dismemberment of
her weak and impotent neighbor.

Mr. President, a mind more prone to look for the
judgments of heaven in the doings of men than mine
cannot fail in this to see the providence of God. When
Moscow burned, it seemed as if the earth was lighted
up that the nations might behold the scene. As that
mighty sea of fire gathered and heaved and rolled up
ward and yet higher till its flames licked the stars and
fired the whole heavens, it did seem as though the God
of the nations was writing in characters of flame on
the front of his throne that doom that shall fall upon
the strong nation which tramples in scorn upon the
weak. And what fortune awaits him, the appointed
executor of this work, when it was all done? He too,
conceived the notion that his destiny was pointed on
ward to universal dominion. France was too small-
Europe, he thought, should bow down before him.

But as soon as this idea took possession of his soul,
he, too, becomes powerless. His Terminus must re
cede, too. Right there, while he witnessed the humilia
tion and doubtless meditated the subjugation of Rus
sia, He who holds the winds in his fist gathered the

60 CORWIN.

snows of the north and blew them upon his six hun
dred thousand men; they fled — they froze — they per
ished. And now the mighty Napoleon, who had re
solved on universal dominion, he, too, is summoned to
answer for the violation of that ancient law, " Thou
shalt not covet anything which is thy neighbor's."
How is the mighty fallen! He, beneath whose proud
footstep Europe trembled, he is now an exile at Elba,
and now finally a prisoner on the rock of St. Helena,
and there, on a barren island, in an unfrequented sea,
in the crater of an extinguished volcano, there is the
death-bed of the mighty conqueror. All his annexa
tions have come to that! His last hour is now come,
and he, the man of destiny, he who had rocked the
world as with the throes of an earthquake, is now
powerless, still — even as a beggar, so he died. On the
wings of a tempest that raged with unwonted fury, up
to the throne of the only Power that controlled him,
while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful
warrior, another witness to the existence of that eternal
decree that they who do not rule in righteousness shall
perish from the earth. He has found " room " at
last.

And France, — she, too, has found " room." Her
" eagles " now no longer scream along the banks of
the Danube, the Po, and the Borysthenes. They have
returned home, to their old eyrie, between the Alps,
the Rhine, and the Pyrenees. So shall it be with yours.
You may carry them to the loftiest peaks of the Cordil
leras, they may wave with insolent triumph in the
halls of the Montezumas, the armed men of Mexico
.may quail before them, but the weakest hand in Mexico,

CORWIN. 6r

uplifted in prayer to the God of Justice, may call
down against you a Power in the presence of which
the iron hearts of your warriors shall be turned into
ashes.

62 BRYANT.

Bryant, William Cullen, an American poet, journalist
and orator, born at Cummington, Mass., November 23,
1794; died in New York City, June 12, 1878. He took an
early interest in public affairs, and wrote political poems
when still a boy. In 1828 he became assistant editor of the
" Evening Post " of New York City, and four years later its
chief editor, in which position he remained for a half cen
tury. His poetry is of a thoughtful, meditative character,
and makes but slight appeal to the mass of readers. Dur
ing the later years of Bryant's life he was a favorite orator
on civic occasions, his speeches being always happily worded
and in excellent taste. His latest appearance in public was
on the occasion of his address at the unveiling of the Maz-
zini bust in Central Park on May 29, 1878. His address of
welcome to Kossuth is one ot his happiest efforts.

WELCOME TO LOUIS KOSSUTH.

DELIVERED AT A BANQUET GIVEN BY THE PRESS OF
NEW YORK, DECEMBER 15, 1851.

LET me ask you to imagine the contest, in which the
United States asserted their independence of Great
Britain, had been unsuccessful, that our armies, through
treason or a league of tyrants against us, had been
broken and scattered, that the great men who led them,
and who swayed our councils, our Washington, our
Franklin, and the venerable President of the American
Congress, had been driven forth as exiles. If there
had existed at that day, in any part of the civilized
world, a powerful republic, with institutions resting on
the same foundations of liberty, which our own
countrymen sought to establish, would there have been

BRYANT. 63

in that republic any hospitality too cordial, any sym
pathy too deep, any zeal for their glorious but unfortu
nate cause, too fervent or too active to be shown toward
these illustrious fugitives? Gentlemen, the case I have
supposed is before you. The Washingtons, the Frank
lins, the Hancocks of Hungary, driven out by a far
worse tyranny than was ever endured here, are wan
derers in foreign lands. Some of them have sought
a refuge in our country — one sits with his company our
guest to-night, and we must measure the duty we owe
them by the same standard which we would have had
history apply, if our ancestors had met with a fate like
theirs.

I have compared the exiled Hungarians to the great
men of our own history. Difficulty, my brethren, is
the nurse of greatness; a harsh nurse, who roughly
rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic
proportion. The mind grappling with great aims and
wrestling with mighty ingredients, grows, by a certain
necessity, to their stature. Scarce anything so con
vinces me of the capacity of the human intellect for in
definite expansion in the different stages of its being,
as this power of enlarging itself to the compass of sur
rounding emergencies. These men have been trained
to greatness by a quicker and surer method than a
peaceful country and a tranquil period can know.

But it is not merely or principally for their personal
qualities that we honor them; we honor them for the
cause in which they failed so gloriously. Great issues
hang upon that cause, and great interests of mankind
are crushed by its downfall. I was on the continent
of Europe when the treason of Gorgey laid Hungary

64 BRYANT.

bound at the feet of the Tsar. Europe was at that
time in the midst of the reaction ; the ebb tide was rush
ing violently back, sweeping all that the friends of free
dom had planned into the black bosom of the deep. In
France the liberty of the press was extinct — Paris in
a state of siege — the soldiery of that republic had just
quenched in blood the freedom of Rome — Austria had
suppressed liberty in northern Italy — absolutism was
restored in Russia, along the Rhine, and in the towns
and villages of Wiirtemburg and Bavaria, troops with
drawn from the barracks, and garrisons filled the
streets and kept the inhabitants quiet with the bayonet
at their breast. Hungary at that moment alone up
held, and upheld with a firm hand and dauntless heart,
the blazing torch of liberty. To Hungary were turned
the eyes, to Hungary clung the hopes of all who did
not despair of the freedom of Europe.

I recollect that while the armies of Russia were mov
ing like a tempest from the North upon the Hungarian
host, the progress of events was watched with the deep
est solicitude by the people of Germany. I was at that
time in Munich, the splendid capital of Bavaria. The
Germans seemed for the time to have put off their
usual character, and scrambled for the daily prints, wet
from the press, with such eagerness that I almost
thought myself in America. The news of the catas
trophe at last arrived; Gorgey had betrayed the cause
of Hungary, and yielded to the demands of the Rus
sians. Immediately a funeral gloom settled like a noon
day darkness upon the city. I heard the muttered ex
clamations of the people, " It is all over — the last hope
of European liberty is gone."

BRYANT. 65

Russia did not misjudge. If she had allowed Hun
gary to become independent, or free, the reaction in
favor of absolutism had been incomplete; there would
have been one perilous example of successful resistance
to despotism — in one corner of Europe a flame would
have been kept alive, at which the other nations might
have rekindled, among themselves, the light of liberty.
Hungary was subdued ; but does any one who hears me
believe that the present state of things in Europe will
last? The despots themselves fear that it will not;
and made cruel by their fears, are heaping chain on
chain around the limbs of their subjects.

They are hastening the event they dread. Every
added shackle galls, into a more fiery impotence, those
who wear them. I look with mingling hope and
horror to the day — a day bloodier, perhaps, than we
have yet seen — when the exasperated nations shall snap
their chains and start to their feet. It may well be
that Hungary, made less patient of the yoke by the
remembrance of her own many and glorious struggles
for independence, and better fitted than other nations, by
the peculiar structure of her institutions, for founding
the liberty of her citizens on a rational basis, will take
the lead. In that glorious and hazardous enterprise, in
that hour of care, need, and peril, I hope she will be
cheered and strengthened with aid from this side of the
Atlantic ; aid given not with the stinted hand, not with
a cowardly and selfish apprehension, lest we should not
err on the safe side — wisely if you please. I care not
with how broad a regard to the future, but in large,
generous, effectual measure.

And you, our guest, fearless, eloquent, large of heart

66 BRYANT.

and of mind, whose one thought is the salvation of
oppressed Hungary, unfortunate but undiscouraged,
struck down in the battle of liberty, but great in defeat,
and gathering strength for future triumphs, receive this
action at our hands, that in this great attempt of man
to repossess himself of the rights which God gave him,
though the strife be waged under a distant belt of
longitude, and with the mightiest despotism of the
world, the Press of America takes part with you and
your countrymen. I give you — " Louis KOSSUTH."

ADDRESS AT THE FOUNDING OF THE
METROPOLITAN ART MUSEUM.

DELIVERED AT THE UNION CLUB HOUSE, NOVEMBER
23, 1869.

WE are assembled, my friends, to consider the sub
ject of founding in this city a museum of art, a re
pository of the productions of artists of every class,
which shall be in some measure worthy of this great
metropolis and of the wide empire of which New York
is the commercial centre. I understand that no rivalry
with any other project is contemplated, no competition
save with similar institutions in other countries, and
then only such modest competition as a museum in its
infancy may aspire to hold with those which were
founded centuries ago, and are enriched with the addi
tions made by the munificence of successive generations.
No precise method of reaching this result has been
determined on, but the object of the present meeting
is to awaken the public, so far as our proceedings can
influence the general mind to the importance of taking

BRYANT. 67

early and effectual measures for founding such a
museum as I have described.

Our city is the third great city of the civilized world.
Our republic has already taken its place among the
great powers of the earth; it is great in extent, great
in population, great in the activity and enterprise cf
her people. It is the richest nation in the world if
paying off an enormous national debt with a rapidity
unexampled in history be any proof of riches ; the rich
est in the world if contented submission to heavy taxa
tion be a sign of wealth; the richest in the world if
quietly to allow itself to be annually plundered of
immense sums by men who seek public stations for
their individual profit be a token of public prosperity.

My friends, if a tenth part of what is every year
stolen from us in this way, in the city where we live,
under pretence of the public service, and poured pro
fusely into the coffers of political rogues, were ex
pended on a museum of art, we might have, deposited
In spacious and stately buildings, collections formed
of works left by the world's greatest artists, which
would be the pride of our country. We might have
an annual revenue which would bring to the museum
every stray statue and picture of merit for which there
should be no ready sale to individuals, every smaller
collection in the country which its owner could no
longer conveniently keep, every noble work by the
artists of former ages which by any casualty, after
long remaining on the walls of some ancient building,
should be again thrown upon the world.

But what have we done — numerous as our people
are, and so rich as to be contentedly cheated and

68 BRYANT.

plundered, what have we done toward founding such
a repository? We have hardly made a step toward it.
Yet, beyond the sea there is the little kingdom of Sax
ony, with an area even less than that of Massachusetts,
and a population but little larger, possessing a museum
of the fine arts, marvellously rich, which no man who
visits the continent of Europe is willing to own that
he has not seen.

There is Spain, a third-rate power of Europe, and
poor besides, with a museum of fine arts at her capital
the opulence and extent of which absolutely bewilder
the visitor. I will not speak of France or of England,
conquering nations, which have gathered their treas
ures of art in part from regions over-run by their
armies; nor yet of Italy, the fortunate inheritor of
so many glorious productions of her own artists. But
there are Holland and Belgium, kingdoms almost too
small to be heeded by the greater powers of Europe in
the consultations which decide the destinies of nations,
and these little kingdoms have their public collections
of art, the resort of admiring visitors from all parts of
the civilized world.

But in our country, when the owner of a private
gallery of art desires to leave his treasures where they
can be seen by the public, he looks in vain for any
institution to which he can send them. A public-
spirited citizen desires to employ a favorite artist upon
some great historical picture; there are no walls on
which it can hang in public sight. A large collection
of works of art, made at great cost, and with great
pains, gathered perhaps during a lifetime, is for sale
in Europe. We may find here men willing to con-

BRYANT. 69

tribute to purchase it, but if it should be brought to
our country there is no edifice here to give it hospi
tality.

In 1857, during a visit to Spain, I found in Madrid
a rich private collection of pictures, made by Medraza,
an aged painter, during a long life, and at a period
when frequent social and political changes in that
country dismantled many palaces of the old nobility
of the works of art which adorned them. In that col
lection were many pictures by the illustrious elder
artists of Italy, Spain, and Holland. The whole might
have been bought for half its value, but if it had been
brought over to our country we had no gallery to
hold it.

The same year I stood before the famous Campana
collection of marbles, at Rome, which was then wait
ing for a purchaser — a noble collection, busts and
statues of the ancient philosophers, orators, and poets,
the majestic forms of Roman senators, the deities of
ancient mythology,

" The fair humanities of old religion."

but if they had been purchased by our countrymen and
landed here, we should have been obliged to leave them
In boxes, just as they were packed.

Moreover, we require an extensive public gallery to
contain the greater works of our own painters and
sculptors. The American soil is prolific of artists.
The fine arts blossom not only in the populous regions
of our country, but even in its solitary places. Go
where you will, into whatever museum of art in the
Old World, you find there artists from the new,

70 BRYANT.

contemplating or copying the masterpieces of art which
they contain. Our artists swarm in Italy. When I
was last at Rome, two years since, I found the number
of American artists residing there as two to one com
pared with those from the British isles. But there are
beginners among us who have not the means of resort
ing to distant countries for that instruction in art
which is derived from carefully studying works of
acknowledged excellence. For these a gallery is
needed at home which shall vie with those abroad, if
not in the multitude, yet in the merit of the works it
contains.

Yet further, it is unfortunate for our artists, our
painters especially, that they too often find their genius
cramped by the narrow space in which it is constrained
to exert itself. It is like a bird in a cage which can
only take short flights from one perch to another and
longs to stretch its wings in an ampler atmosphere.
Producing w^orks for private dwellings, our painters
are for the most part obliged to confine themselves to
cabinet pictures, and have little opportunity for that
larger treatment of important subjects which a greater
breadth of canvas would allow them, and by which the
higher and nobler triumphs of their art have been
achieved.

There is yet another view of the subject, and a most
important one. When I consider, my friends, the
prospect which opens before this great mart of the
western world I am moved by feelings which I feel it
somewhat difficult clearly to define. The growth of
our city is already wonderfully rapid; it is every day
spreading itself into the surrounding region, and over-

BRYANT. 71

whelming it like an inundation. Now that our great
railway has been laid from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
Eastern Asia and Western Europe will shake hands
over our republic. New York will be the mart from
which Europe will receive a large proportion of the
products of China, and will become not only a centre
of commerce for the New World, but for that region
which is to Europe the most remote part of the Old.
A new impulse will be given to the growth of our city,
which I cannot contemplate without an emotion akin
to dismay. Men will flock in greater numbers than
ever before to plant themselves on a spot so favorable
to the exchange of commodities between distant re
gions ; and here will be an aggregation of human life,
a concentration of all that ennobles and all that de
grades humanity, on a scale which the imagination can
not venture to measure. To great cities resort not
only all that is eminent in talent, all that is splendid in
genius, and all that is active in philanthropy; but also
all that is most dexterous in villainy, and all that is
most foul in guilt. It is in the labyrinths of such
mighty and crowded populations that crime finds its
safest lurking-places; it is there that vice spreads its
most seductive and fatal snares, and sin is pampered
and festers and spreads its contagion in the greatest
security.

My friends, it is important that we should encounter
the temptations to vice in this great and too rapidly
growing capital by attractive entertainments of an in
nocent and improving character. We have libraries
and reading-rooms, and this is well; we have also
spacious halls for musical entertainments, and that also

72 BRYANT.

is well; but there are times when we do not care to
read and are satiate with the listening to sweet sounds,
and when we more willingly contemplate works of art.
It is the business of the true philanthropist to find
means of gratifying this preference. We must be
beforehand with vice in our arrangements for all that
gives grace and cheerfulness to society. The influ
ence of works of art is wholesome, ennobling, instruc
tive. Besides the cultivation of the sense of beauty —
in other words, the perception of order, symmetry,
proportion of parts, which is of near kindred to the
moral sentiments — the intelligent contemplation of a
great gallery of works of art is a lesson in history, a
lesson in biography, a lesson in the antiquities of differ
ent countries. Half our knowledge of the customs and
modes of life among the ancient Greeks and Romans is
derived from the remains of ancient art.

Let it be remembered to the honor of art that if it
has ever been perverted to the purposes of vice, it has
only been at the bidding of some corrupt court or at the
desire of some opulent and powerful voluptuary whose
word was law. When intended for the general eye
no such stain rests on the works of art. Let me close
with an anecdote of the influence of a well-known work.
I was once speaking to the poet Rogers in commenda
tion of the painting of Ary Scheffer entitled " Christ
the Consoler." " I have an engraving of it," he
answered, " hanging at my bedside, where it meets my
eye every morning." The aged poet, over whom
already impended the shadow that shrouds the entrance
to the next world, found his morning meditations
guided by that work to the founder of our religion.

POTTER. 73

Potter, Henry C., a distinguished American clergy
man, born at Schenectady, N. Y., May 25, 1835. ^e *s the
son of Alonzo Potter, a former bishop of Pennsylvania, and
entered the Episcopal ministry in 1857. After ministering
to parishes at Greensburg, Pa., and Troy, N. Y., he was
rector of Grace church, New York City, 1868-83. He was
elected assistant bishop of New York in the last named year,
becoming sole bishop of that diocese in 1887. He has
taken a deep interest in civic and national problems, upon
which he has written much and also spoken frequently in
public. He is an eloquent speaker, and his sermons and
political and social addresses are characterized by earnest
ness and sound judgment. Several collections of his ser
mons and other addresses have been made.

MEMORIAL DISCOURSE ON PHILLIPS
BROOKS.

" It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing : the
words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." —
John vi, 63.

THE discourse from which I take these words finds
both its occasion and its key in the miracle which pre
ceded it. In a day when some people are fond of say
ing that the most powerful motives that attract people
to the religion of Christ are what Bishop Butler called
" secondary motives," it is interesting to note that of
some, at any rate, this has been true from the begin
ning. Christ takes the five loaves and two fishes,
blesses them, divides them, and distributes them; and
lo, the hunger of a mighty throng is satisfied. His
boundless compassion finds no limit to its expression,

74 POTTER.

and the twelve baskets full of fragments tell of re
sources which no emergency could exhaust.

There must, indeed, have been some in that vast con
course who understood what the wonder meant.
There must have been some aching hearts, as well as
hungry mouths, that pierced through the shell of the
sign to the innermost meaning of that for which it
stood. But there were others, it would seem, who did
not. There were others to whom, then as now, an
other's affluence of gifts was only one more reason for
demands, and they the lowest, that could know no limit.
These people were there, over against Jesus then, as
there are people now who stand over any gifted nature
just to reveal how sensuous are their hungers and how.
much they must have to satisfy them.

And so it is that Jesus follows the miracle with the
sermon. It is, in one aspect of it, a counterpart of all
his preaching. A large proportion of those to whom
he spoke could see in his mighty works only their
coarser side and be moved by his miracle of enlarge
ment only to ask that it may be wrought again and
again to satisfy a bodily hunger. And so he sets to
work to lift it all, — the miracle, the bread with which
he wrought it, the hunger wich it satisfied — up into
that higher realm where, bathed in the light of heaven,
it shone a revelation of the aim of God to meet and
feed the hungers of the soul.

This is the thought that echoes and re-echoes, like
some great refrain, from first to last through all that
he says : " Labor not for the meat that perisheth, but
for that which endureth unto everlasting life." " My
Father giveth you the true bread from heaven." And

POTTER. 75

then, as if he would bring out into clearer relief the
.great thought that he is seeking to communicate, " I
am the bread of life : he that cometh to me shall never
hunger ; and he that believeth in me shall never thirst."
" The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will
give for the life of the world." " Verily, verily, I say
unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. For my
flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwell-
eth in me and I in him."

One can readily enough understand the enormous
shock of language such as this to a sensuous and sense-
loving people. To say, indeed, that it had no meaning
to them, would be as wide of the mark as to say that
it had no other meaning than that which they put upon
it. But it is, plainly, to show that other, inner mean
ing, which from the beginning to the end of the dis
course they seem so incapable of discerning, that the
whole discussion gathers itself up and opens itself out
in the words with which I began : " It is the Spirit
that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing : the words
that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are
life."

How the thunders of old disputes, like the rumbling
of heavy artillery through distant and long-deserted
valleys, come with these words, echoing down to us
from all the past ! It is a reflection of equal solemnity
and sadness that no ordinarily well-instructed Chris
tian disciple can hear the sixth chapter of St, John's
Gospel read as one of the Church's Lessons without
having called up before his mind's eye one of the bitter-

7 POTTER.

est and most vehement controversies which for a thou
sand years has rent the Church of God.

On the one side stand the mystics, and on the other
the literalists; and behind them both is that divinely-
instituted Sacrament which, as in turn the one or the
other has contended, is here, or is not here, referred
to. Happy are we if we have come to learn that here,
as so often in the realm of theological controversy,
both are right and both are wrong.

For on the one hand it is impossible to deal candidly
with these words of Christ's and not discern that they
are works of general rather than of specific import;
that they were spoken to state a truth rather than to
foreshadow a rite. On the other hand it is no less im
possible to read them and not perceive that there is in
them a distinct if not specific foreshadowing of that
holy ordinance which we know as the Eucharistic
Feast. It is indeed incredible that " just a year before
the Eucharist was instituted the Founder of this, the
most distinctive element of Christian worship, had no
thought of it in his mind. Surely, for long before
hand, that institution was in his thoughts; and, if so,
the coincidences are too exact to be fortuitous." *
This is the other aspect of the discourse.

But, as the great Bishop Durham has said, " the dis
course cannot refer primarily to the Holy Commun
ion, nor, again, can it be simply prophetic of that Sacra
ment. The teaching has a full and consistent meaning
in connection with the actual circumstances, and it
treats essentially of spiritual realities with which no
external act, as such, can be [co-] extensive."
* Plummer, St. John's Gospel, p. 146.

POTTER. 77

Calm words and wise, which touch unerringly the
core and substance of the whole matter and bring us
face to face with that larger truth which most of all
concerns us who are here to-day.

For, first of all, it belongs to you and me to remem
ber why we are here and in what supreme relation.
This is a Council of the Church ; and, whatever concep
tion some of us may have of that word in other and
wider aspects of its meaning, there can be no question
of its meaning here. The Church, with us and for the
present occasion, at any rate, is this Church whose sons
we are, whose Orders we bear, in whose Convention
we sit, whose Bishop we mourn, and whose Bishop you
are soon to elect.

In other words, that is an organized, visible, tang
ible, audible body, situate here in the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts, of which now at any rate I am talk
ing, and with which you are to be concerned. It is
an institution having an earthly as well as a heavenly
pedigree and history, and having earthly as well as
heavenly means to employ and tasks to perform.

There can be, there ought to be, no indefiniteness,
no uncertainty about this. Whatever of such indefi
niteness there may have been in the life and wrork of
the Church in other days, we have all, or almost all of
us, come to the conclusion that the time for it is ended
now. If the Church is to do her work in the world
she must have an organized life, and a duly commis
sioned ministry, and duly administered sacraments, and
a vast variety of means and agencies, instruments and
mechanisms, with which to accomplish that work.
And when we come to Convention we must talk about

? POTTER.

these things, and add up long rows of figures, and
take account of the lists of priests and deacons, and
the rest, and make mention of vestries, and guilds, and
parish houses, and sisterhoods, and all the various arms
and tools with which the Church is fighting the battle
of the Lord.

Yes, we must; and he who despises these things, or
the least of them, is just as foolish and unreasonable as
he who despises his eye or his hand when either are set
over against that motive-power of eye or hand which
we call an idea. One often hears, when ecclesiastical
bodies such as this have adjourned, a wail of dissatis
faction that so much time and thought should have
been expended in things that were, after all, only
matters of secondary importance; and the fine scorn
for such things which is at such times expressed is
often itself as excessive and as disproportionate to
greater and graver things as that of which it speaks.

But, having said this, is it not my plain duty to tell
you, brethren of the diocese of Massachusetts, that he
who stops over-long in the mere mechanism of religion
is verily missing that for which religion stands?
Here, indeed, it must be owned is, if not our greatest
danger, one of the greatest. All life is full of that
strange want of intellectual and moral perspective
which fails to see how secondary, after all, are means
to ends; and how he only has truly apprehended the
office of religion who has learned, when undertaking
in any wise to present it or represent it, to hold fast
to that which is the one central thought and fact of
all : " It is the Spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh

POTTER. 79

profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you,
they are spirit, and they are life."

And this brings me — in how real and vivid a way
I am sure you must feel as keenly as I — face to face
with him of whom I am set to speak to-day. In one
aspect of it my task — from which at the first view any
one might well shrink — is made comparatively easy by
words which have been spoken already.

Never before in the history, not only of our own
communion, but of any or all communions, has the de
parture of a religious teacher been more widely noted
and deplored than in the case of him of whom this
Commonwealth and this diocese have been bereaved.
Never before, surely, in the case of any man whom we
can recall, has the sense of loss and bereavement been
more distinctly a personal one, — extending to multi
tudes in two hemispheres who did not know him, who
had never seen or heard him, and yet to whom he had
revealed himself in such real and helpful ways.

It has followed, inevitably, from this, that that
strong tide of profound feeling has found expression
in many and most unusual forms, and it will be among
the most interesting tasks of the future biographer of
the late Bishop of Massachusetts to take note of these
various memorials and to trace in them the secret of
his unique power and influence.

But just because they have, so many of them, in
such remarkable variety and from sources so diverse,
been written or spoken, and no less because a Memoir
of Phillips Brooks is already undertaken by hands pre
eminently designated for that purpose, I may wisely
here confine myself to another and very different task.

8O POTTER.

I shall not attempt, therefore, even the merest outline
of a biographical review. I shall not undertake to
analyze, nor, save incidentally, even to refer to, the
influences and inheritances that wrought in the mind
and upon the life of your late friend and teacher. I
shall still less attempt to discover the open secret of his
rare and unique charm and attractiveness as a man;
and I shall least of all endeavor to forecast the place
which history will give to him among the leaders and
builders of our age. Brief as was his ministry in his
higher office, and to our view all too soon ended, I shall
be content to speak of him as a bishop, — of his divine
right, as I profoundly believe, to a place in the Episco
pate, and of the pre-eminent value of his distinctive
and incomparable witness to the highest aim and pur
pose of that office.

And first of all let me say a word in regard to the
way in which he came to it. When chosen to the Epis
copate of this diocese, your late bishop had already at
least once, as we all know, declined that office. It was
well known to those who knew him best that, as he
had viewed it for a large part of his ministry, it was a
work for which he had no especial sympathy either as
to its tasks, or, as he had understood them, its oppor
tunities.

But the time undoubtedly came when, as to this,
he modified his earlier opinions ; and the time came too,
as I am most glad to think, when he was led to feel
that if he were called to such an office he might find
in it an opportunity for widening his own sympathies
and for estimating more justly those with whom prev
iously he had believed himself to have little in common.

POTTER. 8 1

It was the inevitable condition of his strong and
deep convictions that he should not always or easily
understand or make due allowance for men of different
opinions. It was — God and you will bear me witness
that this is true! — one of the noblest characteristics of
his fifteen months' episcopate that, as a bishop, men's
rightful liberty of opinion found in him not only a
large and generous tolerance, but a most beautiful and
gracious acceptance. He seized, instantly and easily,
that which will be forever the highest conception of the
episcopate in its relations whether to the clergy or
the laity, its paternal and fraternal character; and his
" sweet reasonableness," both as a father and as a
brother, shone through all that he was and did.

For one I greatly love to remember this, — that when
the time came that he himself, with the simple natural
ness which marked all that he did, was brought to re
consider his earlier attitude toward the episcopal office,
and to express with characteristic candor his readiness
to take up its work if he should be chosen to it, he
turned to his new, and to him most strange task with
a supreme desire to do it in a loving and whole hearted
way, and to make it helpful to every man, woman, and
child with whom he came in contact. What could
have been more like him than that, in that last address
which he delivered to the choir-boys at Newton, he
should have said to them, " When you meet me let me
know that you know me." Another might easily have
been misunderstood in asking those whom he might
by chance encounter to salute him; but he knew, and
the boys knew, what he had in mind, — how he and
they were all striving to serve one Master, and how

82 POTTER.

each — he most surely as much as they — was to gain
strength and cheer from mutual recognition in the
spirit of a common brotherhood.

And thus it was always; and this it was that allied
itself so naturally to that which was his never-ceasing
endeavor — to lift all men everywhere to that which
was, with him, the highest conception of his office,
whether as a preacher or as a bishop, — the conception
of God as a Father, and of the brotherhood of all men
as mutually related in him.

In an address which he delivered during the last
General Convention in Baltimore to the students of
Johns Hopkins University, he spoke substantially these
words :

" In trying to win a man to a better life, show him
not the evil but the nobleness of his nature. Lead him
to enthusiastic contemplations of humanity in its per
fection, and when he asks, Why, if this is so, do not I
have this life? — then project on the background of his
enthusiasm his own life; say to him, ' Because you are
a liar, because you blind your soul with licentiousness,
shame is born, — but not a shame of despair. It is soon
changed to joy. Christianity becomes an opportunity,
a high privilege, the means of attaining to the most
exalted ideal — and the only means/

"Herein must lie all real power; herein lay Christ's
power, that he appreciated the beauty and richness of
Humanity, that it is very near the Infinite, very near
to God. These two facts — we are the children of God,
and God is our Father — make us look very differently
at ourselves, very differently at our neighbors, very

POTTER. 83

differently at God. We should be surprised, not at
our good deeds, but at our bad ones. We should ex
pect good as more likely to occur than evil ; we should
believe that our best moments are our truest. I was
once talking with an acquaintance about whose relig
ious position I knew nothing, and he expressed a very
hopeful opinion in regard to a matter about which I
was myself very doubtful.

" ' Why,' I said to him, ' You are an optimist/
" ' Of course I am an optimist/ he replied, ' because
I am a Christian/

" I felt that as a reproof. The Christian must be
an optimist."

Men and brethren, I set these words over against
those of his Master with which I began, and the two
in essence are one. " The words that I speak unto
you, they are spirit, and they are life." There is a
life nobler and diviner than any that we have dreamed
of. To the poorest and meanest of us, as to the best
and most richly-dowered, it is alike open. To turn
toward it, to reach up after it, to believe in its ever-
recurring nearness, and to glorify God in attaining to
it, this is the calling of a human soul.

Now then, what, I ask you, is all the rest of religion
worth in comparison with this? — not what is it worth
in itself, but what is its place relatively to this ? This,
I maintain, is the supreme question for the Episcopate,
as it ought to be the supreme question with the Min
istry of any and every order. And therefore it is, I
affirm, that, in bringing into the Episcopate with such

unique vividness and power this conception of his office,
4-6

84 POTTER.

your bishop rendered to his order and to the Church of
God everywhere a service so transcendent. A most
gifted and sympathetic observer of our departed
brother's character and influence has said of him, con
trasting him with the power of institutions, " His life
will always suggest the importance of the influence of
the individual man as compared with institutional
Christianity/'

In one sense, undoubtedly, this is true; but I should
prefer to say that his life-work will always show the
large and helpful influence of a great soul upon institu
tional Christianity. It is a superficial and unphilo-
sophical temperament that disparages institutions; for
institutions are only another name for that organized
force and life by which God rules the world. But it
is undoubtedly and profoundly true that you no
sooner have an institution, whether in society, in poli
tics, or in religion, than you are threatened with the
danger that the institution may first exaggerate itself
and then harden and stiffen into a machine; and that
in the realm of religion, pre-eminently, those wjiose
office it should be to quicken and infuse it with new
life should themselves come at last to " worship the
net and the drag." And just here you find in the his
tory of religion in all ages the place of the prophet and
the seer. He is to pierce through the fabric of the
visible structure to that soul of things for which it
stands. When, in Isaiah, the Holy Ghost commands
the prophet, " Lift up thy voice with strength ; lift
it up, be not afraid : say unto the cities of Judah, Be
hold your God ! " it is not alone, you see, his voice
that he is to lift up. No, no! It is the vision of the

POTTER. 8$

unseen and divine. " Say unto the cities of Judah,
Behold your God ! "

Over and over again that voice breaks in upon the
slumbrous torpor of Israel and smites the dead souls of
priests and people alike. Now it is a Balaam, now it
is an Elijah, a David, an Isaiah, a John the Baptist, a
Paul the Apostle, a Peter the Hermit, a Savonarola, a
Huss, a Whitefield, a Wesley, a Frederick Maurice, a
Frederick Robertson, a John Keble (with his clear
spiritual insight, and his fine spiritual sensibility), a
Phillips Brooks.

Do not mistake me. I do not say that there were
not many others. But these names are typical, and
that for which they stand cannot easily be mistaken.
I affirm without qualification that, in that gift of vision
and of exaltation for which they stand, they stand for
the highest and the best, — that one thing for which the
Church of God most of all stands, and of which so long
as it is the Church Militant it will most of all stand in
need : to know that the end of all its mechanisms and
ministries is to impart life, and that nothing which
obscures or loses sight of the eternal source of life can
regenerate or quicken; — to teach men to cry out, with
St. Augustine, " Fecisti nos ad te, Domine, et in-
quietum est cor nostrum donee requiescat in te: Thou
hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is
unquiet until it rests in thee," — this, however any one
may be tempted to fence and juggle with the fact, is
the truth on which all the rest depends.

Unfortunately it is a truth which there is much in
the tasks and engagements of the Episcopate to obscure.
A bishop is pre-eminently, at any rate in the popular

86 POTTER.

conception of him, an administrator; and howsoever
wide of the mark this popular conception may be from
the essential idea of the office, it must be owned that
there is much in a bishop's work in our day to limit
his activities, and therefore his influence, \vithin such
a sphere.

To recognize his prophetic office as giving expression
to that mission of the Holy Ghost of which he is pre
eminently the representative, to illustrate it upon a
wider instead of a narrower field, to recognize and seize
the greater opportunities for its exercise, to be indeed
" a leader and commander " to the people, not by means
of the petty mechanisms of officialism, but by the
strong, strenuous, and unwearied proclamation of the
truth; under all conditions to make the occasion some
how a stepping-stone to that mount of vision from
which men may see God and righteousness and become
sensible of the nearness of both to themselves, — this, I
think you will agree with me, is no unworthy use of
the loftiest calling and the loftiest gifts.

And such a use was his. A bishop-elect, walking
with him one day in the country, was speaking, with
not unnatural shrinking and hesitancy, of the new
work toward which he was soon to turn his face, and
said among other things, " I have a great dread, in the
Episcopate, of perfunctoriness. In the administration,
especially, of Confirmation, it seems almost impossible,
in connection with its constant repetition, to avoid it."

He was silent a moment, and then said, " I do not
think that it need be so. The office indeed is the same.
But every class is different; and then — think what it

POTTER. 87

is to them ! It seems to me that that thought can never
cease to move one."

What a clear insight the answer gave to his own
ministry. One turns back to his first sermon, — that
evening when, with his fellow-student in Virginia, he
walked across the fields to the log-cabin where, not
yet in Holy Orders, he preached it, and where after
ward he ministered with such swiftly increasing power
to a handful of negro servants. " It was an utter
failure/' he said afterward. Yes, perhaps; but all
through the failure he struggled to give expression to
that of which his soul was full ; and I do not doubt that
even then they who heard him somehow understood
him.

We pass from those first words to the last, — those of
which I spoke a moment ago, — the address to the choir
boys at Newton, — was there ever such an address to
choir-boys before? He knew little or nothing about
the science of music, and with characteristic candor he
at once said so. But he passed quickly from the music
to those incomparable words of which the music was
the mere vehicle and vesture. He bade the lads to
whom he spoke think of those who, long ago and all
the ages down, had sung that matchless Psalter, — of
the boys and men of other times, and what it had meant
to them. And then, as he looked into their fresh
young faces and saw the long vista of life stretching
out before them, he bade them think of that larger
and fuller meaning which was to come into those
Psalms of David, when he, — was there some prophetic
sense of how soon with him the end would be ? — when
he and such as he had passed away, — what new doors

88 POTTER.

were to open, what deeper meanings were to be dis
cerned, what nobler opportunities were to dawn, as the
years hastened swiftly on toward their august and
glorious consummation! How it all lifts us up as we
read it, and how like it was to that " one sermon "
which he forever preached !

And in saying so I do not forget what that was
which some men said was missing in it. His, they tell
us who hold some dry and formalized statement of the
truth so close to the eye that it obscures all larger vis
ion of it, — his, they tell us, was an " invertebrate theo-
l°gv-" Of what he was and spoke, such a criticism is
as if one said of the wind, that divinely-appointed sym
bol of the Holy Ghost, " it has no spine or ribs."

A spine and ribs are very necessary things; but we
bury them as so much chalk and lime when once the
breath has gone out of them! In the beginning we
read " And the Lord God breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life, and man became a living soul."

And all along since then there have been messengers
of God into whom the same divine breath has been,
as it were, without measure breathed, and who have
been the quickeners and inspirers of their fellows.
Nothing less than this can explain that wholly excep
tional and yet consistent influence which he whom
we mourn gave forth. It was not confined or limited
by merely personal or physical conditions, but breathed
with equal and quickening power through all that he
taught and wrote. There were multitudes who never
saw or heard him, but by whom nevertheless he was
as intimately known and understood as if he had been
their daily companion.

POTTER. 89

Never was there an instance which more truly ful
filled the saying, " The words that I speak unto you,
they are spirit, and they are life." They reached down
to the inmost need of empty and aching hearts and
answered it. They spoke to that in the most sin-
stained and wayward soul which is, after all, the image
of the invisible God, — spoke to it, touched it, con
strained it. " What has this fine-bred Boston scholar,"
plain men asked, when we bade him come to us and
preach in our Trinity — " what has such an one to say
to the business men of Wall Street ? " But when he
came, straightway every man found out that he had
indeed something to say to him, — a word of power, a
word of hope, a word of enduring joy and strength!

A kindred thinker of large vision and rare insight,
New England born and nurtured like himself,* speak
ing of him not long after his death, said :

" There are three forms pertaining to the Christian
truths : they are true as facts, they are true as doctrines
1 intellectually apprehended, they are true as spiritual ex
periences to be realized. Bishop Brooks struck di
rectly for the last. In the spirit he found the, truth;
and only as he could get it into a spiritual form did he
conceive it to have power.

" It was because he assumed the facts as true in the
main, refusing to insist on petty accuracy, and passed
by doctrinal forms concerning which there might be
great divergence of opinion, and carried his thought
on into the world of spirit, that he won so great a
hearing and 'such conviction of belief. For it is the

* The Rev. Theodore T. Hunger, D.D.

90 POTTER.

spirit that gives common standing-ground ; it says sub
stantially the same thing in all men. Speak as a spirit
to the spiritual nature of men, and they will respond,
because in the spirit they draw near to their common
source and to the world to which all belong.

" It was because he dealt with this common factor of
the human and the divine nature t^at he was so posi
tive and practical. In the spirit it is all yea and amen ;
there is no negative; in the New Jerusalem there is
no night. We can describe this feature of his ministry
by words from one of his own sermons : ' It has always
been through men of belief, not unbelief, that power
from God has poured into man. It is not the discrimi
nating critic, but he whose beating, throbbing life
offers itself a channel for the divine force, — he is the
man through whom the world grows rich, and whom
it remembers with perpetual thanksgiving/ '

And shall not you who are here to-day thank God
that such a man was, though for so brief a space, your
bishop? Some there were, you remember, who
thought that those greater spiritual gifts of his would
unfit him for the business of practical affairs. " A
bishop's daily round," they said, " his endless corre
spondence, his hurried journeyings, his weight of anx
ious cares, the misadventures of other men, ever
returning to plague him, — how can he bring himself
to stoop and deal with these ? "

But as in so much else that was transcendent in him,
how little here, too, his critics understood him! No
more pathetic proof of this has come to light than in
that testimony of one among you who, as his private

JOSEPH H. CHOATE.

POTTER. 91

secretary, stood in closest and most intimate relations
to him. What a story that is which he has given to us
of a great soul — faithful always in the greatest ? Yes,
but no less faithful in the least. There seems a
strange, almost grotesque impossibility in the thought
that such an one should ever have come to be regarded
as " a stickler for the canons."

But we look a little deeper than the surface, and all
that is incongruous straightway disappears. His was
the realm of a Divine Order, — his was the office of his
Lord's servant. God had called him. He had put
him where he was. He had set his Church to be his
witness in the world, and in it, all his children, the
greatest with the least, to walk in ways of reverent
appointment. Those ways might irk and cramp him
sometimes. They did: he might speak of them with
sharp impatience and seeming disesteem sometimes.
He did that too, now and then, — for he was human like
the rest of us ! But mark you this, my brothers, for,
in an age which, under one figment or another, whether
of more ancient or more modern license, is an age of
much self-will, — we shall do well to remember it, —
his was a life of orderly and consistent obedience to
rule. He kept to the Church's plain and stately ways :
kept to them and prized them too.

But all the while he held his soul wide open to the
vision of his Lord ! Up out of a routine that seemed
to others that did not know or could not understand
him, and who vouchsafed to him much condescending
compassion for a bondage which he never felt, and of
which in vain they strove to persuade him to com
plain, — up out of the narrower round in which so

92 POTTER.

faithfully he walked, from time to time he climbed, and
came back bathed in a heavenly light, with lips aglow
with heavenly fire. The Spirit had spoken to him, and
so he spoke to us. " The flesh profiteth nothing : it is
the Spirit that quickeneth. The words that I speak
unto you, they are spirit, and they are life."

And so we thank God, my brothers, not alone for
his message, but that it was given to him to speak it as
a bishop in the Church of God. We thank God that in
a generation that so greatly needs to cry, as our " Te
Deum " teaches us, " Govern us and lift us up ! " he
was given to the Church not alone to rule but to uplift.

What bishop is there who may not wisely seek to be
like him by drawing forever on those fires of the Holy
Ghost that set his lips aflame ? Nay, what soul among
us all is there that may not wisely seek to ascend up
into that upper realm in which he walked, and by whose
mighty airs his soul was filled? Unto the almighty
and ever-living God we yield most high praise and
hearty thanks for the wonderful prace and virtue de
clared in all his saints who have been the chosen ves
sels of his grace and the lights of the world in their
several generations; but here and to-day especially for
his servant, Phillips Brooks, sometime of this Com
monwealth and this diocese, true prophet, true priest,
true bishop, to the glory of God the Father.

PARKHURST. 93

Parkhurst, Charles H., an American clergyman,
prominent in municipal reforms, born at Framingham,
Mass., April 17, 1842. He studied theology and was pastor
of a Congregational church at Le'nox, Mass., 1874-80.
Since the year last named he has been pastor of the Pres
byterian church in Madison Square, New York City. He
became president of the Society for the Prevention of Crime
in 1891, and led in an attack upon the methods of the
police department of the metropolis. He also took a prom
inent part in the Lexow investigation, which succeeded and
has since been conspicuous in municipal reform movements
in New York. He is an energetic, able speaker.

SERMON ON GARFIELD.

DELIVERED SEPTEMBER 25, 1 88 1.

"Almost all things are by the law purged with blood." — He
brews ix, 22.

EVERYTHING that is great and good has to be paid
for. There is hardly anything in life that is pure
gratuity. Life is toilsome, and if we are upon a path
of ascent almost every step has to be taken irksomely
and with pain. It is so arranged. The cross and then
the crown.

That is God's thought, and so we find it wrought
everywhere into the structure of life, individual and
associate. In the market of the finer spiritual as well
as in that of the coarser material commodities every
thing is stamped with its cost-mark.

Our prayers are sometimes only an attempt to ob
tain God's benefits at special rates, or to evade pay-

94 PARKHURST.

ment altogether. We court the health which the cup
can give, but pray to be spared the cup : " Let this cup
pass from me."

We want to be clothed in robes of white, but pray
to be spared that tribulation out from which the white-
robed saints of apocalyptic vision were come: purged
(we ask to be), but by something other than blood.
But " almost all things are by the law purged with
blood."

That is one of those far-reaching thoughts of God,
lodged away back in the old altar-ritual of the Hebrews,
finer and truer than either priest or layman knew.
Nowhere so true, of course, as upon Calvary : " With
out shedding of blood is no remission." But the world
is full of its little Calvaries. Every good thing is
obtained by purchase, and every best thing is paid for
in blood. Almost all things are purged with blood,
and the pathway of life and the highway of history
leads continuously over a new Golgotha.

There are qualities of character, individual and na
tional, that are not wrought out by prosperity. Even
"the Captain of our salvation was made perfect
through sufferings." " Before I was afflicted I went
astray."

Life gets continually broken in upon, therefore in
vaded, startled. Nothing ought so little to surprise
us as a surprise. It keeps men's thoughts at a tension,
and makes hearts plastic. Said Jeremiah : " Moab
hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled
on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to
vessel; therefore his taste remained in him, and his
scent is not changed." " Hath settled on his lees."

PARKHURST. 95

It is a part of the holy discipline of God, then, to
trespass upon the quiet of individual life and the seren
ity of national life. It makes men think, think deeply,
think seriously ; and serious thought easily becomes de
vout, and devout thought is redemption. It is not
often that a joy reaches so deep a place in men's hearts
as a sorrow does; defeat touches men in a way that
victory does not. More heart, for some reason, gets
put into a devout sigh than into a doxology. " Sorrow
is better than laughter," said the Preacher, " for by
the sadness of the countenance the heart is made
better."

That is the meaning of tribulation; that is the deep
philosophy underlying the event around which our
thoughts cluster tearfully and prayerfully this morn
ing. " Tearfully and prayerfully ! " you see how easy
and natural the sequence. Of course, we can do but a
little in the way of understanding what in particular
God means by this or by any other of his afflictive dis
pensations.

God is his own interpreter, not you or I. Each
event has references forward and backward too reticent
for us to detect or trace. We do not want to belittle
the event or the holy author of it by translating it all
out into the terms of our common thinking. We love
to think of the sea as sloping down into the globe with
out trying to picture the deep, mysterious bottom upon
which it rests ; and of the mountains as spiring up into
the everlasting blue without attempting to delineate
that utmost finial of rock where the nether firmament
passes into the upper.

And so of this great mountainous sorrow, for which

96 PARKHURST.

our hearts, even more than our streets and churches,
are craped : we want to lay no profane hands upon its
vastness, nor to make the event small by trying to
make it near and intelligible.

An event, so vast that under the shadow of it the
whole civilized and Christianized world to-day stands
tearful and devout, is one whose truest meaning it lies
beyond the scope of our ken either to detect or suspect.
It lies deeply locked in the counsels of God. We do
not understand it. " God is his own interpreter and
he will make it plain." " Will make it plain." Not
now, but then and there. And so we are content to
leave it unexplained, inscrutable. We yield ourselves
to the mystery of it, to be softened and chastened by it.

And yet the chastening, in order to be chastening,
must lie along side of the thought of the divineness of
this strange tragedy. A human and bad element there
was in it certainly. But to have a holy discipline
wrought in us by it, we shall have to recognize with
exactly the same distinctness a divine and righteous
element. We have got to feel that in it God teaches
us, and stand face to face with him in the transaction.
If it is explained as the pure outcome of impersonal
historic forces, it fails to touch that spot in us when
we cherish the sanctities.

Equally so if we treat it only as the fruitage of
Guiteau's crazed brain or depraved heart. This is for
us an infamous tragedy because man was in it, but a
holy tragedy because God was in it. And our hearts
cannot be sufficiently grateful that it is in this latter
character, more than in the former, than men are feel
ing it and contemplating it, now in just these plaintive

PARKHURST. 97

days through which we are moving ; that the sense that
God's hand was in the act has sweetened our hearts
from all the bitterness incident to the remembrance
that Guiteau's hand was in it.

And if, when the turf has begun to grow green over
the dust of the dear and honored dead, if then with
seriousness, but without show of malignity or of spite,
and by quiet process of law, wisely applied and soberly
executed, the criminal shall suffer what he shall then be
adjudged to deserve, it will be the consummating touch
put to a picture which in point of grandeur and moral
sublimity is unmatched in the history of this or of any
people. And so we have brought this matter in our
hearts and in our discourse into the House of God
this morning, for the reason that God is in the event
and we want to find and feel him there.

Such a visitation as this, as we have seen, is the
means by which God works in men tenderness of heart,
and so opens the way for the cleansing and strengthen
ing of character, individual and national. The months
that have elapsed since the 2d of July have been long
ones and tender. They have been strange months.
They have worked strangely.

I do not know how to explain the temper of mind
that prevails to-day, here, elsewhere. I looked, that
waiting Monday afternoon, upon the cottage at Elberon
without understanding why I was unmanned by it. I
have read the sad story from day to day, gathering as
it has each morning a new burden of pathos, without
understanding the unbidden tears.

And it is so everywhere. Men are full of heart:
their thoughts work quietly and deeply. I do not

98 PARKHURST.

think there have been any two months in history that
quite parallel them. Feelings have greatly fluctuated;
and so our spirits have been strangely limbered, mel
lowed by them. We have become less and less em
bittered, but more and more burdened and stricken.
Each new aspect of the case seems only to have been
shaped in a way to let the blade down a little farther
into the quick: no feature but what has given a little
added tension to the strained chords of our sympathy.

For almost three months God has been steadily hold
ing us all against the grinding-stone of a grave and
anxious uncertainty. Mr. Garfield and his wife and
children have somehow slipped, each of them, into a
dear sort of membership in our own families. The
sick-bed has been set up in each household.

We have also watched with him. In his affliction
we have been afflicted. Our spirits have stood under
his, trying to buoy it up. These months have in this
way wrought in us a tenderness that only the eloquence
of an event could have availed to do.

And now, friends, this singular mellowness of mind
into which the tearful persuasiveness of the weeks has
been gently leading us is capacity for all kinds of beau
tiful outgrowth. When, to-morrow afternoon, the
world turns back once more from the newly-made
grave in Lakeview the critical question will be: What
will the world do with its sorrow7?

What is going to become of its sorrow? Nothing
dries sooner than a tear. Of course, the sorrow can
not remain sorrow. It is not in the nature of things.
The heart could not bear it. Even nature is wise
enough to dress in green its crumbling tenements of

PARKHURST. 99

vegetable and stone. The decaying" trunk converts
itself into moss, and so frames life out of death and
beauty out of despair.

And decayed hopes ought certainly to do as much.
The sorrow cannot remain sorrow, but it can pass over
into shapes that shall be fixed, and crystallize into
jewels of high resolve and firm loyalty that shall be a
permanent possession and a perpetual joy. And the
vast possibilities of our sorrow are evidenced by cer
tain practical results that the sorrow has already
yielded. For our encouragement I want to notice two
or three of these.

These last years have been a season in which irreli-
gion and unfaith have been displaying themselves with
rather more than usual resoluteness and bravado.
Christian scholarship has taxed itself to the utmost to
dislodge this unfaith. You have seen, perhaps, what is
sometimes called a cloud-banner : a little pennon of
mist that in certain conditions of the atmosphere will
gather above a mountain summit, and cling there in
the face of the boldest attempts of the sun to dissolve
it or of the wrinds to dislodge it. It will not be brushed
away. Shadowy and almost impalpable it maintains
itself on its bleak watch-tower with a pertinacity at
once grim and defiant.

But by-and-by subtle and invisible influences begin
to pervade the sky: the wind shifts, perhaps, or the
temper of the air is in some silent and stealthy way
modified; and now the shapes of floating vapor soften
their edges, their borders are combed out into a fleecy
fringe, the cloud-banner is noiselessly furled, and the

100 PARKHURST.

bare mountain peak stands out under the sunshine and
the blue.

That is the very sublimity of gentleness. And it is
in that way that God works, and has been working all
about among us during these disciplinary months. He
has not met scepticism with theism, as we do in our
arguing ; but the climate that was in men, and that by
its very nature condensed into unfaith and unreligion,
he gently displaced by another climate, in which un
faith just as easily dissolved.

And so by the breath of his spirit and the baptism
of an event, he has accomplished by a persuasion aimed
at the heart what Christian scholars have not availed
to do with their noisier logic addressed to the head.
" Man's necessity has been God's opportunity."

And so in the hour of their sad exigency, at the bid
ding of the government, at the instigation of the press,
secular as well as religious, but most of all at the im
pulse of a holy and devout longing for God's deliver
ance, men slipped into the churches — even those to
whom the church was an unwonted place — or in a still
and unostentatious way cried " O God ! " in the
solitary sanctuary of their own spirits. And that is
what the boasted atheism of the nineteenth century
does! Cries up to God that he would save the sick
man by the sea! There is gladness enough in that
fact, of a nation bowed in prayer before our Christian
God, almost to turn our Requiem into a Te Deum, and
to make of our churches temples of thanksgiving, even
though sable with the trappings of our woe.

Nor (most significant of all) has God's refusal to
answer the nation according to the specific form of its

PARKHURST. IOI

request chilled by one degree the religious fervor with
which the request was presented. If we can accord
any confidence to the countenances that men are wear
ing, to the words they are speaking, to the thoughts to
which they are giving expression through the medium
of the press, home and foreign, the bitter cup has only
chastened men into profounder devoutness, and, so far
from embittering them toward God and belief in God,
has only strengthened the texture of their faith and
drawn them yet further beneath the shadow of the
divine wing.

As it seems to me, it was one of the most thrilling
passages in the whole dramatic story, that holy hush in
the thronged streets of Washington, as the funeral
cortege was moving toward the Capitol, when the
Marine Band began slowly to play " Nearer, my God,
to Thee ! " And we shall turn away from the grave
to-morrow, reflecting how blessed and profound is even
the unconscious Christianity of the American people.

And then there are other results that have been al
ready wrought that only show how the sweetest of
flowers may unfold from the bitterest of buds. It has
been an immensely nationalizing event. Around Mr.
Garfield's bedside, and now around his grave, is no
North, no South, no East, no West. Not since the
war, and not since a long time before the war, have all
the sections of our country come so distinctly under
the pressure of one heart-beat. All the life-currents
of our people, just now, are driven by a single pulse.
We have prayed for him as a nation, we have watched
with him as a nation, we are weeping over him as a
nation, and now that he has passed yonder he shines

IO2 PARKHURST.

with purest light among the stars of our national
firmament.

In this way chords of national sympathy and fellow
ship have been struck that had almost forgotten to
vibrate. We have learned that the music is not all
out of the strings, and have discovered, it must seem,
that if we are all to become thoroughly, permanently,
and nationally one again it must be not along the ave
nue of our lower but along the avenue of our best
impulses, tuned as now to a key-note high and grand
enough to stir the best music that slumbers in every
several heart of the nation.

And we have gotten a little closer to one another in
a religious way, also, in these days of tender supplica
tion and cross-bearing. There has been no sect in our
prayers. We all came before the throne of mercy with
only the thought of him we were praying for and Him
we were praying to. For the time that was all there
was in our religion. In these two facts we all touched
one another. We all became in an unusual way mem
bers of one another. " To pray together " ( so some
one has said) " is the most touching paternity of hope
and sympathy which man can contract on earth."

We have felt, kneeling together around our national
altar, that there are lines along which even Protestant
and Catholic, Jew and Gentile draw into coalition with
one another. We have been reminded that cathedral,
synagogue, and church all build down into the same
soil, and all spin up into the same heaven.

The continents, too, have been made nearer. The
bells on both sides of the Atlantic are tolling one
requiem to-day, and the American and the English

PARKHURST. 103

heart are drawing near to God in one prayer and one
psalm. We lament sometimes the slow extension of
the Kingdom of Christ, but when we contemplate the
relations subsisting between nations, as a matter of
course, in the old savage centuries, we are made to
realize something of the achievements of the Gospel
of Peace, that the subjects of one realm can with
cordial tears supplicate the Throne of Grace in behalf
of another realm, foreign to it, and rival with it.

And then this stress of mind, too, has been working
within us deep and holy contempt for all kinds of politi
cal impurity. These months have been to us, in our
political relations and ambitions, months of schooling.
The country had been staggering under the burden of
an army of office-seekers, scrambling for preferment.
The shot fired in the depot at Washington was God's
voice calling the nation to order. It was recognized
as such, recognized abroad and recognized at home.

Business has gone on as usual since the 2d of July,
but there has been very little politics. The people are
not in a mood to bear it. The people have had a reve
lation; they have heard a voice. We have learned to
recognize that the 2d of July was the legitimate out
come of what was just as actually existent before the
2d of July, only without having come yet to its final
and loathsome demonstration. We have only been
eating the fruit. It is bitter, and in that fruit we have
learned to understand the essential quality of the tree.
There are some things that do not advertise their es
sential badness till they have come to their growth.

Guiteau is simply the naked, filthy incarnation of
political place-seeking. His case simply publishes the

104 PARKHURST.

possibilities of evil that lurk in every man that has a
mind to make country servant to his private interest.
The air has been cleared. Eyes have been opened.
We see in Guiteau the untinseled deformity of this
whole breed of political cormorants. In him the fact
has been shown to us without its disguises, and the
fact has been burned into the heart of the American
people by eighty days of waiting and weeping. " Al
most all things are by the law purged with blood."
The precious blood has been shed, may it be applied
by us to the end that we may be cleansed.

And may this tenderness of the general heart go
on issuing — as it has already begun to do — go on is
suing in completer consecration to country and to God,
prompting us to regard our civil obligations in the light
of Christian duties, to controvert every kind of politi
cal evil with Christian bravery and resoluteness, to
range ourselves with Christian alacrity on the side of
every force that makes for national righteousness, to
carry the interests of our country in tender and devout
hearts; especially to accord our hearty fellowship and
to yield our warmest sympathies to our new Executive
in the position of delicacy and difficulty in which he
now finds himself placed — these months have disci
plined him just as they have disciplined us all — and to
prayerfully expect from him great and good things,
and to stand by him cordially in every effort of his
to administer this country justly and in the fear of God.

Above all, to hold ourselves in the mighty hand of
God; to recognize that above the catastrophes of life
and empire God abides in the quietness and strength of
his unfaltering purpose of wisdom and of grace, that

PARKHURST. 10$

clouds may darken the earth but throw no shadow
against the sky, and that enthroned above earthly vicis
situdes and human administration, " the Lord
reigneth."

Standing in imagination at the grave of the nation's
dead, may we come more deeply than ever into the in
timacies of God, and even while drinking the bitter cup
have power and grace given unto us to say : " The
Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away: blessed
be the name of the Lord."

IO6 CUMMINGS.

Cummings, Amos J., an American politician and jour
nalist, born at Conkling, N. Y., May 15, 1841. He entered
a printing office at the age of twelve, remaining there till
he joined the Federal Army in 1862. Retiring from mili
tary service as sergeant-major in 1864, he engaged in jour
nalism, and until 1887 he occupied editorial positions upon
" The Tribune " and " The Sun," in New York City. In
that year he entered Congress, where he has since served
continuously. He is the author of several books, such as
"The Ziska Letters" and "The Sayings of Uncle Rufus."

ON THE NAVAL APPROPRIATION BILL.

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MON
DAY, APRIL 1 6, IQOO.

MR. CHAIRMAN, — I would be untrue to myself if I
did not congratulate the gentleman from Illinois who
has just taken his seat upon the masterful showing
which he has made in his report, and upon the conclu
sion of the arduous labors in committee that have ac
companied the birth of this bill. That the committee
itself did not come to a unanimous agreement is to me
a matter of regret. I myself agree in some things
with the minority and agree in others with the ma
jority. But I believed it to >be my duty, if I had any
fight to make, to make it upon the floor of this House,
as I have heretofore done, and I declined to sign the
minority report.

Mr. Chairman, the past shows that a powerful navy
for the American nation is a vital necessity. Without
it we may become the prey of the robber nations of the

CUMMINGS. IO7

earth; without a great navy, I will undertake to say,
we to-day might be at war with Great Britain over the
Alaska boundary. Her, rapacity toward the Boers is
due to her greed for gold; and there is as much gold
in Alaska as in the Transvaal. It is the fact that we
are prepared for war that saves us from trouble with
the powers of Europe. From the days of the battle of
Salamis down to the present a strong navy has been
the safety of a maritime nation. It was the battle of
Salamis that drove Xerxes from Greece, not the fight
at the pass of Thermopylae. It was the battle in the
bay that sent him whirling back across the Hellespont
into Asia, where he belonged.

When Hannibal invaded Italy and maintained him
self there for seventeen years without re-enforcement,
it was not the Roman legions that drove him to Africa ;
it was the Roman ships which conveyed Scipio's army
there and forced Hannibal to follow it in a vain effort
to defend Carthage. It was the navy that made Ven
ice the supreme mistress of the commerce of the world
for centuries. The Mediterranean Sea was practically
a Venetian lake because of the Venetian navy.

It was her navy that afterward made Holland the
mistress of the sea. And it was not until the English
navy had been built to proper proportions that Van
Tromp was compelled to pull down his broom and
acknowledge its supremacy.

It was our navy that won the most brilliant victory
in the Revolution. Admiral Paul Jones, in his fight
with the " Serapis " and the " Countess of Scarbo
rough " gave the Revolution an impetus that put be
hind our forefathers not only the sympathy of Europe,

108 CUMMINGS.

but substantial aid in the way of dollars and of French
battleships.

Paul Jones, an American admiral, was the only man
in either army or navy who had invaded England since
the days of the battle of Hastings. The whole Brit
ish coast was in alarm. He landed at different places
and drew in plunder the same as the English them
selves drew it in when they sacked the city of Pekin. .

It was by the aid of the French navy that we
achieved the final triumph of the American Revolution
— the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Without
the activity of the French fleet under the Comte de
Grasse, Cornwallis would have escaped. A British
fleet was hastening to his succor; but when its com
mander learned that a French fleet of superior force
was already in the Chesapeake, it turned back to New
York.

It was Nelson, and not Wellington, who was the
leading factor in the downfall of Napoleon. The vic
tories of the British navy at Aboukir, Copenhagen,
Cape St. Vincent, and Trafalgar destroyed all his
hopes. France was practically cut off from the rest of
the world. Her commerce was utterly ruined, and she
was compelled to feed upon herself until her resources
were exhausted.

It was the American navy that gave us peace in the
treaty of Ghent in the war of 1812. Hull had surren
dered an American army at Detroit. Commodore
Perry, within one hundred miles of that city, demol
ished a British fleet — the first time that American ves
sels had met an English fleet — and sent to Washing-

CUMMINGS. 109

ton the immortal despatch, " We have met the enemy,
and they are ours."

Scott had been driven back at Niagara and Lundy's
Lane; Wilkinson had made a fiasco on the northern
border ; but the guns of the American navy were heard
on Lake Champlain, where Commodore McDonough
sent the English fleet to the bottom.

Washington, your own proud capital, had been cap
tured by the British, and this building burned, our
monuments defaced, the White House destroyed, your
President became a fugitive in the forests of Virginia,
but the victories of Decatur, of Commodore Stewart,
of Bainbridge, and of old Isaac Hull in the " Constitu
tion " were a sufficient recompense for the destruction
of the city of Washington.

In only one instance in that war did the army
achieve a victory, and that was at the Saranac, for the
battle of New Orleans, it will be remembered, was
fought long after the treaty of peace was signed.

The total destruction of the Turkish navy by the
allied fleets of Navarino, rescued Greece from the
clutches of the followers of the Prophet and restored
to her her freedom.

It was the American navy that gave us the victory
in the war with Mexico. Taylor had marched across
the Nueces, across the Colorado, across the Rio
Grande ; he had taken Monterey ; he had reached the
plains o-f Buena Vista and wiped out Santa Anna's
army ; but it was Scott who went to the city of Mexico
through the aid of the American navy, which bom
barded the castle of San Juan de Ulloa and gave him a
landing place at Vera Cruz.

HO CUMMINGS.

It was the American navy that sounded the knell of
doom for the Confederacy when gallant old Farragut
broke the iron barrier, passed the forts of Jackson and
St. Philip, and captured the city of New Orleans. And
it was all done before McClellan left the Peninsula.
The Confederacy was split in twain when the Missis
sippi was opened. The fate of the Confederacy was
sealed the instant the ports of the South were declared
under blockade by President Lincoln. If the Confed
eracy had had a navy, and if things had been more
equal both on sea and on land, we should have had two
nations in existence to-day where there is only one.

It was the navy, I may add, that won the Spanish
war. I believe that if Schley and Sampson had been
left to their own inspiration, or had received the orders
that Dewey received, they would have gone into San
tiago harbor without sending an army down there to
storm San Juan and El Caney.

It was the navy, under Dewey, that destroyed the
Spanish fleet and won the empire in the East; and it
was the navy that finally brought proud Spain to her
knees with her hands held upward, acknowledging her
subjugation.

So, Mr. Chairman, I say that the navy is a vital
necessity to the United States as well as to all other
maritime nations. This vital necessity is recognized
by the people of the country — north and south, east
and west. The people to-day are clamoring for an in
crease of the navy because they know its usefulness,
because they know it is a never-failing defender, be
cause they know it is a never- failing aggressor, when

CUMMINGS. Ill

war breaks out. In a multiplicity of ships there is
safety.

Now, what have we done, and what are we doing-,
to carry out the wishes of the people ? We have three
battle-ships on the stocks, and no method of procuring
armor for them. We have three more battle-ships and
three armored cruisers authorized, and a string at
tached to each in the shape of a provision that they
shall not be even contracted for unless the best armor
manufactured can be obtained at $300 a ton. We
propose to authorize in this bill the building of two
more battle-ships, three more armored cruisers, and
three protected cruisers. Shall there be a string at
tached to them also? Can men face their constituents
after authorizing the construction of these battle-ships
and cruisers, and then refusing to provide the money
for furnishing the armor for them ? Why, sir, it seems
to me like voting for a declaration of war and refusing
the funds necessary to carry on the war. I believe that
the people demand to-day, not only the prompt con
struction of the ships already authorized, but also the
construction of as many more vessels.

For nearly five years have some of these ships re
mained without armor. I well remember speeches on
this floor in which we were told that we could get
armor for $200 a ton. Very well; we tried it. No
ships were built. The man wanted a twenty-year con
tract, with a pledge that a fleet of ships should be built
•each year, and went back on his promise ; he could not
furnish armor at $200 a ton. Then we reached a point
where, after authorizing the construction of ships, we

112 CUMMINGS.

attached a string to the authorization in another man
ner — this was June 10, 1896:

Provided, That the Secretary of the Navy is hereby
directed to examine into the actual cost of armor plate
and the price for the same which should be equitably
paid, and shall report the result of his investigation to
Congress at its next session, at a date not later than
January i, 1897; and no contract for armor plate for
the vessels authorized by this act shall be made until
such report is made to Congress.

That was the condition then, and a similar condition
exists to-day. The ships are authorized by you, and
then you attach a string and by pulling it get no ships
at all. The ships are still unbuilt. We have gone
through a war since then, and not one of these ships
was built before war was declared, and not one was
available during the war. . . .

Mr. Chairman, at the next session of Congress you
provided that the price should not exceed $400 per ton
for armor inferior to the Krupp armor, but at the last
session of Congress you provided that superior armor
should not be obtained unless it could be had at $300 a
ton — an impossible price. If you pay $400 a ton for
the old harveyized armor, certainly the new Krupp
armor is worth at least as much, and yet you limited
the price to $300 a ton. In other words, you provide
that the best armor shall be furnished at $100 per ton
less than the sum you have expressed yourselves will
ing to pay for inferior armor. You practically deter
mined, as I said before, that you would authorize the

CUMMINGS. 113

ships, but you took special caue to prevent the building
of them. . . .

I think that it is time, Mr. Chairman, that this coun
try understood that the lives of its sailors, its marines,
and others connected with the naval service have been
endangered and menaced when this government found
itself involved in war by the action of Congress in re
gard to this question of armor plate. I say that the
men who fought with Dewey at Manila and with
Schley at Santiago are entitled to the best protection
the government can give, by placing the best armor
on its battle-ships that can be made, by metallic furni
ture, and by all other life-saving devices.

We authorize two battle-ships here to-day, and six
cruisers, and here is the same old story and the same
old string over and over again. We will not contract
for them, gentlemen say, until we build an armor-plate
factory and can manufacture the armor for them our
selves. We will delay the construction three years
more, taking in the three battle-ships and three cruisers
authorized in the last session, and the three battle-ships
under contract, authorized in the first session of the
Fifty-fifth Congress, thus making a total delay of eight
years in the construction of some of these ships. On
the score of alleged economy you are opposing expen
diture that the world recognizes as an absolute neces
sity. . . .

Now, Mr. Chairman, I disagreed with the policy of
the Naval Committee in some respects, but I propose
to stand by it as far as my conscience will allow. I dis
agreed with the committee when they refused to pro
vide for the building of gunboats. The Secretary of

114 CUMMINGS.

the Navy had asked for the construction of thirteen
gunboats. When Admiral Dewey came before the
committee he testified that he thought he would rather
have battle-ships than gunboats. We had captured
four Spanish gunboats when Manila was taken — that
is, Dewey had raised the wrecks. Since then we have
bought a lot of little gunboats — some not as large as
canal-boats — from the Spanish government. Admiral
Dewey, while before the committee, said he thought
we did not want any more gunboats, and he would take
two or three battle-ships in the place of them. Well,
the committee gave him two battle-ships, although
the Secretary had not asked for them; but while Sec
retary Long was before the committee he said he would
have asked for them if he had thought he could get
them.

Now, I believe in gunboats. I think that boats the
size of the " Helena " and vessels of that class are the
very thing that the nation needs. \Ve must continue a
protectorate over Cuba at least until they form a gov
ernment, and it looks to me now as though they would
not be able to form one for the next five years, and we
must have ships for service on the coast of Porto Rico
and among the islands of Hawaii. There is nothing
so useful in such waters as gunboats. We certainly
need them for the Philippines. Those bought and cap
tured from the Spaniards may suffice for the present,
as Admiral Dewey suggests. I am in favor of keeping
these gunboats in the Philippines just as long as there
is a rebel in arms in those islands.

When the islands are conquered, I am in favor of
treating them exactly as we treat Cuba. They were

CUMMINGS. 115

both in rebellion against Spain, and of the two possibly
the Filipinos were a little more gallant in fighting the
Spaniards — at least fully as gallant as were the Cubans
— and they are entitled to the same treatment. Sure it
is that Aguinaldo and his Tagals supported Dewey's
attack on Manila as heartily as did Garcia the assault
of Shafter and Wheeler on Santiago. Gunboats are
needed there, and are certainly needed elsewhere. I
think it unwise to lop them off entirely in view of the
recommendation of Secretary Long. We ought at
least to split the difference with him and give him half
of what he asked for.

I differed with the committee on the question of
sheathed ships. While they took Dewey's word with
regard to the battle-ships and gunboats, they refused
to take his word as to sheathed ships. He said that a
sheathed ship would run two years and maintain her
speed without docking, whereas an unsheathed ship
had to be docked at least once in every nine months.
He acknowledged that the " Charleston " was lost on
a sunken reef in the Philippine Islands because she was
not sheathed. When asked whether, in his opinion,
she could have been saved if she had been sheathed, he
replied that at that same time a British war vessel ran
upon an unknown reef and was pulled off in safety
because she was sheathed. That seemed to me con
clusive evidence that the battle-ships which we were
authorizing in this bill should be sheathed.

But I compromised. We agreed to leave the matter
to the Secretary of the Navy, and if the Secretary
thinks it best to have them in the docks once in nine

months instead of once every two years he may sit
5-6

Il6 CUMMIXGS.

clown upon the project. I am willing to trust John D.
Long, and I believe the people are willing to do so. ...

Now, Mr. Chairman, the committee was unable to
agree as to the question of building ships at the navy-
yards. Well, there is a great deal to be said on both
sides of this question. I thought that with three
battle-ships and three armored cruisers not contracted
for, and with two more, battle-ships and six more
•cruisers, armored and protected, but not contracted
for, we could afford at least to again try the experi
ment of building them in the navy-yards. It is a fa
vorable time for doing so.

The Secretary of the Navy, however, is opposed to
it. He says they will cost twice as much as vessels
built elsewhere and take twice the time for construc
tion. He also thought the yards would be more or less
susceptible to political influences.

Possibly he is right. He undoubtedly knows far
more about that than I do. I have no doubt that it will
cost more to build these ships in the navy-yards than
it would to build them under contract, and for this rea
son: The work of the government is done under the
eight-hour system; the contractors work their men
from nine to ten, eleven to twelve hours. So that of
necessity it must cost more to build the ships in the
navy-yards than it would under contract. But I took
occasion to get a statement from Captain Sigsbee con
cerning the construction of vessels in the English, the
French, and the German navy-yards. The period cov
ered is approximately five years for France and Ger
many, and a little less for England, but in all cases
the period for dockyard and private construction is the

CUMMINGS. II/

same. The rate of wages was comparatively the same
in both the government and private yards. It took
much longer to construct the vessels in the government
than in the private yards. . . .

My friend from Illinois referred to the German
navy. That navy is to-day within 2,700 tons of the
strength of the American navy, and that is what made
Admiral Diedrich so cocky in the Bay of Manila.

The Emperor of Germany is " some pumpkins ; " he
" feels his oats." For two years he has been strug
gling to surpass this country in the size of its navy,
and to-day in the German Reichstag a bill is pending,
which will undoubtedly pass, doubling the size of the
German navy — increasing her tonnage over 400,000
tons. I think that is a strong argument in favor of
our building the ships we have already authorized as
soon as possible, and of authorizing the building of as
many others as we can afford to pay for.

I was not unsusceptible to the inquiry made by the
chairman of the great Committee on Appropriations,
while my friend from Illinois was occupying the floor,
He is one of the men who hold the purse-strings of the
nation. He takes acount of stock in every session of
Congress, and in view of the great volume of appro
priations made at each session he wants to cut his cloth
according to its length. He wants to know where " he
is at," and he received the desired information, and in
the same breath told you he was not opposed to your
bill.

Nor are the people opposed to it. They will tolerate
no more delay in this armor-plate matter. You can
not take up a newspaper from the St. Croix to the Rio

Il8 CUMMINGS.

Grande or from Puget Sound to Key Biscayne Bay
without finding paragraphs advocating the prompt in
crease of the navy. They recognize the fact that the
bombardment of New York by an enemy would entail
treble the cost of our entire navy.

I have always advocated its increase. No man in
this House rejoiced more than I rejoiced when men
from the South dominated the committee, and Mr.
Herbert, of Alabama, was made its chairman. Talk
about politics! You should have been here in the
Fifty-third Congress, when the leader of the minority,
the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Boutelle], used two
hours of the time of the committee in general debate,
taking in forty minutes of my time, using it in denun
ciation of the South, charging you with being inimical
to the navy. In the twenty minutes left I demon
strated the secret of your former enmity and prophe
sied a great change. . . .

If we are to have an increased navy it is time to stop
talking and begin work. Authorizing it will not build
it ; you must provide armor and do it promptly. Either
do this or stop the authorization of vessels. Do one
thing or the other. I believe that the people of the
country, ten to one, demand a decrease in the army and
an increase in the navy ; and as long as I remain in this
House I intend to voice that demand.

MOODY. 119

Moody, Dwight L., a famous American evangelist,.
born at Northfield, Mass., February 5, 1837 ; die'd there,
December 22, 1899. ^n earty youth he was a clerk in a
store, and, removing to Chicago in 1856, he soon engaged
in missionary work there. A few years later he began to
hold revival meetings, and, with the noted singer, Ira Sankey,
he made several tours through the United States and Great
Britain, holding revival services, often in the largest build
ings available for that purpose, which were attended by vast
throngs of people. He never entered the ministry, but at
intervals throughout his life preached at huge revival meet
ings. He was not a thinker, and his oratory was unpol
ished, but his great earnestness lent impressiveness to what
was said, and his influence over the emotional and unintel-
lectual among his hearers was very great. Moody estab
lished schools at Northfield and Chicago, and was the
author of several religious works.

WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?

I SUPPOSE there is no one here who has not thought
more or less about Christ. You have heard about
him, and read about him, and heard men preach about
him. For eighteen hundred years men have been talk
ing about him and thinking about him ; and some have
their minds made up about who he is, and doubtless
some have not. And although all these years have
rolled away, this question comes up, addressed to each
of us, to-day, " What think ye of Christ? "

I do not think why it should not be thought a proper
question for one man to put to another. If I were to
ask you what you think of any of your prominent men.

I2O MOODY.

you would already have your mind made up about him.
If I were to ask you what you thought of your noble
Queen, you would speak right out and tell me your
opinion in a minute.

If I were to ask about your prime minister, you
would tell me freely what you had for or against him.
And why should not people make up their minds about
the Lord Jesus Christ, and take their stand for or
against him ? If you think well of him, why not speak
well of him and range yourselves on his side? And if
you think ill of him, and believe him to be an imposter,
and that he did not die to save the world, why not lift
up your voice and say you are against him ? It would
be a happy day for Christianity if men would just take
sides — if we could know positively who was really for
him and who was against him.

It is of very little importance what the world thinks
of any one else. The Queen and the statesman, the
peers and the princes, must soon be gone. Yes ; it mat
ters little, comparatively, \vhat we think of them.
Their lives can interest only a few; but every living
soul on the face of the earth is concerned with this
Man. The question for the world is, " What think ye
of Christ?"

I do not ask you what you think of the Established
Church, or of the Presbyterians, or the Baptists, or
the Roman Catholics ; I do not ask you what you think
of this minister or that, of this doctrine or that; but I
want to ask you what you think of the living person O'f
Christ?

I should like to ask, Was he really the Son of God —
great God-Man? Did he leave heaven and come

MOODY. 121

down to this world for a purpose? Was it really to
seek and to save ? I should like to begin with the man
ger, and follow him up through the thirty-three years
he wras here upon earth. I should ask you what you
think of his coming into this world and being born in
a manger when it might have been a palace; why he
left the grandeur and the glory of heaven, and the
royal retinue of angels ; why he passed by palaces and
crowns and dominion and came down here alone ?

I should like to ask what you think of him as a
teacher. He spake as never man spake. I should like
to take him up as a preacher. I should like to bring
you to that mountain-side, that we might listen to the
words as they fall from his gentle lips. Talk about
the preachers of the present day! I would rather a
thousand times be five minutes at the feet of Christ
than listen a lifetime to all the wise men in the world.
He used just to hang truth upon everything. Yonder
is a sower, a fox, a bird, and he just gathers the truth
around them, so that you cannot see a fox, a sower,
or a bird without thinking what Jesus said. Yonder is
a lily of the valley, you cannot see it without thinking
of his words, " They toil not, neither do they spin."

He makes the little sparrow chirping in the air
preach to us. How fresh those wonderful sermons are,
how they live to-day ! How we love to tell them to our
children, how the children love to hear ! " Tell me a
story about Jesus," how often we hear it; how the
little ones love his sermons! No story-book in the
world will ever interest them like the stories that he
told. And yet how profound he was; how he puzzled
the wise men; how the scribes and the Pharisees could

122 MOODY.

never fathom him! Oh, do you not think he was a
wonderful preacher?

I should like to ask you what you think of him as a
physician. A man would soon have a reputation as a
doctor if he could cure as Christ did. No case was
ever brought to him but what he was a match for.
He had but to speak the word, and disease fled before
him. Here comes a man covered with leprosy.

" Lord, if thou wilt thou canst make me clean," he
cries.

" I will," says the Great Physician, and in an in
stant the leprosy is gone. The world has hospitals for
incurable diseases ; but there were no incurable diseases
with him.

Now, see him in the little home at Bethany, binding
up the wounded hearts of Martha and Mary, and tell
me what you think of him as a comforter. He is a
husband to the widow and a father to the fatherless.
The weary may find a resting-place upon that breast,
and the friendless may reckon him their friend. He
never varies, he never fails, he never dies. His sym
pathy is ever fresh, his love is ever free. O widow
and orphans, O sorrowing and mourning, will you not
thank God for Christ the Comforter?

But these are not the points I wish to take up. Let
us go to those who knew Christ, and ask what they
thought of him. If you want to find out what a man
is nowadays, you inquire about him from those who
know him best. I do not wish to be partial ; we will go
to his enemies, and to his friends. We will ask them,
What think ye of Christ ? We will ask his friends and

MOODY. 123

his enemies. If we only went to those who liked him,
you would say :

" Oh, he is so blind ; he thinks so much of the mart
that he can't see his faults. You can't get anything*
out of him unless it be in his favor; it is a one-sided
affair altogether."

So we shall go in the first place to his enemies, to
those who hated him, persecuted him, cursed and slew
him. I shall put you in the jury-box, and call upon
them to tell us what they think of him.

First, among the witnesses, let us call upon the
Pharisees. We know how they hated him. Let us
put a few questions to them. " Come, Pharisees, tell
us what you have against the Son of God, What da
you think of Christ? " Hear what they say! " This
man receiveth sinners." What an argument to bring
against him! Why, it is the very thing that makes
us love him. It is the glory of the gospel. He receives
sinners. If he had not, what would have become of
us ? Have you nothing more to bring against him than
this ? Why, it is one of the greatest compliments that
was ever paid him. Once more : " When he was
hanging on the tree, you had this to say of him, ' He
saved others, but he could not save himself and save us
too.' ' So he laid down his own life for yours and
mine. Yes, Pharisees, you have told the truth for
once in your lives! He saved others. He died for
others. He was a ransom for many ; so it is quite true
what you think of him — He saved others, himself he
cannot save.

Now, let us call upon Caiaphas. Let him stand up
here in his flowing robes; let us ask him for his evi-

124 MOODY.

•dence. " Caiaphas, you were chief priest when Christ
was tried; you were president of the Sanhedrim; you
were in the council-chamber when they found him
guilty; you yourself condemned him. Tell us; what
did the witnesses say? On what grounds did you
judge him? What testimony was brought against
him ? " " He hath spoken blasphemy," says Caiaphas.
" He said, ' Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sit
ting on the right hand of power, and coming in the
clouds of heaven.' When I heard that, I found him
guilty of blasphemy ; I rent my mantle and condemned
"him to death." Yes, all that they had against him was
that he was the Son of God ; and they slew him for the
promise of his coming for his bride !

Now let us summon Pilate. Let him enter the wit
ness-box.

" Pilate, this man was brought before you ; you ex
amined him; you talked with him face to face; what
think you of Christ ? "

" I find no fault in him," says Pilate. " He said he
was the King of the Jews, [just as he wrote it over the
cross] ; but I find no fault in him." Such is the testi
mony of the man who examined him! And, as he
stands there, the centre of a Jewish mob, there comes
along a man, elbowing his way in haste. He rushes
up to Pilate, and, thrusting out his hand, gives him a
message. He tears it open; his face turns pale as he
reads — " Have thou nothing to do with this just man,
for I have suffered many things this day in a dream
because of him." It is from Pilate's wife — her testi
mony to Christ. You want to know what his enemies
thought of him? You want to know what a heathen

MOODY. 125

thought ? Well, here it is, " no fault in him ; " and
the wife of a heathen, "this just man ! "

And now, look — in comes Judas. He ought to make
a good witness. Let us address him. " Come, tell us,
Judas, what think ye of Christ? You knew the mas
ter well; you sold him for thirty pieces of silver; you
betrayed him with a kiss; you saw him perform those
miracles; you were with him in Jerusalem. In Beth
any, when he summoned up Lazarus, you were there.
What think you of him? " I can see him as he comes
into the presence of the chief priests; I can hear the
money ring as he dashes it upon the table, " I have be
trayed innocent blood ! " Here is the man who be
trayed him, and this is what he thinks of him! Yes,
those who were guilty of his death put their testimony
on record that he was an innocent man.

Let us take the centurion who was present at the ex
ecution. He had charge of the Roman soldiers. He
had told them to make him carry his cross; he had
given orders for the nails to be driven into his feet and
hands, for the spear to be thrust in his side. Let the
centurion come forward. " Centurion, you had charge
of the executioners; you saw that the order for his
death was carried out; you saw him die; you heard
him speak upon the cross. Tell us, what think you of
Christ?" Hark! Look at him; he is smiting his
breast as he cries, " Truly, this was the Son of God! "

I might go to the thief upon the cross, and ask what
he thought of him. At first he railed upon him and
reviled him. But then he thought better of it : " This
man hath done nothing amiss," he says.

I might go further. I might summon the very devils

126 MOODY.

themselves and ask them for their testimony. Have
they anything to say of him? Why, the very devils
called him the Son of God! In Mark we have the
unclean spirit crying, " Jesus, thou Son of the most
High God." Men say, " Oh, I believe Christ to be the
Son of God, and because I believe it intellectually I
shall be saved." I tell you the devils did that. And
they did more than that, they trembled.

Let us bring in his friends. We want you to hear
their evidence. Let us call that prince of preachers.
Let us hear the forerunner ; none ever preached like this
man — this man who drew all Jerusalem and all Judaea
into the wilderness to hear him; this man who burst
upon the nations like the flash of a meteor. Let John
the Baptist come with his leathern girdle and his hairy
coat, and let him tell us what he thinks of Christ. His
words, though they were echoed in the wilderness of
Palestine, are written in the Book forever, " Behold the
Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the
world ! " This is what John the Baptist thought of
him. " I bare record that he is the Son of God." No
wonder he drew all Jerusalem and Judaea to him, be
cause he preached Christ. And whenever men preach
Christ, they are sure to have plenty of followers.

Let us bring in Peter, who was with him on the
mount of transfiguration, who was with him the night
lie was betrayed. Come, Peter, tell us what you think
of Christ. Stand in this witness-box and testify of
him. You denied him once. You said, with a curse,
you did not know him. Was it true, Peter? Don't
you know him ? " Know him ! " I can imagine Peter
saying: " It was a lie I told then. I did know him."

MOODY. 127

Afterward I can hear him charging home their guilt
upon these Jerusalem sinners. He calls him " both
Lord and Christ." Such was the testimony on the day
of Pentecost. " God hath made that same Jesus both
Lord and Christ." And tradition tells us that when
they came to execute Peter he felt he was not worthy
to die in the way his Master died, and he requested to
be crucified with his head downward. So much did
Peter think of him !

Now let us hear from the beloved disciple John. He
knew more about Christ than any other man. He has
laid his head on his Saviour's bosom. He had heard
the throbbing of that loving heart. Look into his gos
pel if you wish to know what he thought of him.

Matthew writes of him as the Royal King come
from his throne. Mark writes of him as the servanty
and Luke of the Son o<f Man. John takes up his pen,
and, with one stroke, forever settles the question of
Unitarianism. He goes right back before the time of
Adairu " In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God." Look
into Revelation. He calls him " the bright and the
Morning Star." So John thought well of him — be
cause he knew him well.

We might bring in Thomas, the doubting disciple.
You doubted him, Thomas? You would not believe
he had risen, and you put your fingers into the wound
im his side. What do you think of him ?

" My Lord and my God ! " says Thomas.

Then go over to Decapolis and you will find Christ
has been there casting out devils. Let us call the men

128 MOODY.

of that country and ask what they think of him. " He
hath done all things well," they say.

But we have other witnesses to bring in. Take the
persecuting Saul, once one of the worst of his enemies.
Breathing out threatenings he meets him. " Saul,
Saul, why persecutest thou me?" says Christ. He
might have added, " What have I done to you ? Have
I injured you in any way? Did I not come to bless
you ? Why do you treat me thus, Saul ? " And then
Saul asks, " Who art thou, Lord? "

" I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest."
You, see he was not ashamed of his name; although
he had been in heaven, " I am Jesus of Nazareth."
What a change did that one interview make to Paul!
A few years after we hear him say, " I have suffered
the loss of all things, and do count them but dross
that I may win Christ." Such a testimony to the
Saviour !

But I shall go still further. I shall go away from
earth into the other world. I shall summon the angels
and ask what they think of Christ. They saw him in
the bosom of the Father before the world was. Before
the dawn of creation; before the morning stars sang
together, he was there. They saw him leave the throne
and come down to the manger. What a scene for them
to witness! Ask these heavenly beings what they
thought of him then. For once they are permitted to
speak ; for once the silence of heaven is broken. Listen
to their song on the plains of Bethlehem, " Behold, I
bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be
to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city
of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." He

MOODY. 129

leaves the throne to save the world. Is it a wonder
the angels thought well of him?

Then there are the redeemed saints — they that see
him face to face. Here on earth he was never known,
no one seemed really to be acquainted with him ; but he
was known in that world where he had been from the
foundation. What do they think of him there? If
we could hear from heaven we should hear a shout
which would glorify and magnify his name. We are
told that when John was in the Spirit on the Lord's
Day, and being caught up, he heard a shout around
him, ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands
and thousands of voices, " Worthy is the Lamb that
was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom,
and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing ! "
Yes, he is worthy of all this. Heaven cannot speak
too well of him. Oh, that earth would take up the echo*
and join with heaven in singing, " Worthy to receive
power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and
honor, and glory, and blessing! "

But there is still another witness, a higher stilL
Some think that the God of the Old Testament is the
Christ of the New. But when Jesus came out of Jor
dan, baptized by John, there came a voice from heaven.
God the Father spoke. It was his testimony to Christ :
" This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
Ah, yes ! God the Father thinks well of the Son. And
if God is well pleased with him, so ought we. If the
sinner and God are well pleased with Christ, then the
sinner and God can meet. The moment you say, as
the Father said, " I am well pleased with him," and
accept him, you are wedded to God. Will you not

I3O MOODY.

believe the testimony? Will you not believe this wit
ness, this last of all, the Lord of hosts, the King of
kings himself? Once more he repeats it, so that all
may know it. With Peter and James and John, on
the mount of transfiguration, he cries again, " This is
my beloved Son; hear him." And that voice went
echoing and re-echoing through Palestine, through all
the earth from sea to sea; yes, that voice is echoing
still, Hear him ! Hear him !

My friend, will you hear him to-day ? Hark ! what
is he saying to you ? " Come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take
my yoke upon you and learn of me ; for I am meek and
lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Will
you not think well of such a Saviour? Will you not
believe in him? Will you not trust in him with all
your heart and mind? Will you not live for him? If
he laid down his life for us, is it not the least we can
do to lay down ours for him ? If he bore the Cross and
died on it for me, ought I not to be willing to take it
up for him ? Oh, have we not reason to think well of
him? Do you think it is right and noble to lift up
your voice against such a Saviour? Do you think it
is just to cry, " Crucify him ! crucify him ! " Oh, may
God help all of us to glorify the Father, by thinking
well of his only-begotten Son.

BROOKS. 131

Brooks, Phillips, a celebrated American clergyman and
pulpit orator, born in Boston, Mass., December 13, 1835;
died there, January 23, 1893. He studied theology, and,
entering the Episcopal ministry, he was rector of the Church
of the Advent, Philadelphia, 1859-60, and of Holy Trinity
church, in the same city, 1862-69. In the last named year
he was called to Trinity church, Boston, of which he con-
tinued the rector until elected to the bishopric of Massa
chusetts in 1891. While still in Philadelphia, he had
acquired a more than local reputation as an eloquent, forci
ble preacher, and long before his death he had become the
most eminent clergyman in the Episcopal Church, if not in
the United States. As a pulpit orator he was well known
in England also, having preached in many important churches
there. He was a man of the broadest sympathies and un
tiring in the duties of his profession. His delivery was
rapid, and his manner intensely earnest, while the magnetic
quality of his preaching attracted crowds to hear him
throughout his ministerial career. Some ten or more volumes
of his sermons and addresses have been published.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.*

" He chose David also his servant, and took him away from the
sheepfolds ; that he might feed Jacob his people, and Israel his
inheritance. So he fed them with a faithful and true heart, and
ruled them prudently with all his power." — Ps. Ixxviii, 71-73.

WHILE I speak to you to-day, the body of the Presi
dent who ruled this people is lying, honored and loved,
in our city. It is impossible with that sacred presence
in our midst for me to stand and speak of ordinary

* Sermon preached in Philadelphia while the body of the Presi
dent was lying in the city.

132 BROOKS.

topics which occupy the pulpit. I must speak of him
to-day ; and I therefore undertake to do what I had in
tended to do at some future time, to invite you to study
with me the character of Abraham Lincoln, the im
pulses of his life, and the causes of his death. I know
how hard it is to do it rightly, how impossible it is to
do it worthily. But I shall speak with confidence be
cause I speak to those who love him, and whose ready
love will fill out the deficiencies in a picture which my
words will weakly try to draw.

We take it for granted, first of all, that there is an
essential connection between Mr. Lincoln's character
and his violent and bloody death. It is no accident, no
arbitrary decree of Providence. He lived as he did,
and he died as he did, because he was what he was.

The more we see of events, the less we come to be
lieve in any fate or destiny except the destiny of char
acter. It will be our duty, then, to see what there was
in the character of our great President that created the
history of his life and at last produced the catastrophe
of his cruel death. After the first trembling horror,
the first outburst of indignant sorrow, has grown calm,
these are the questions which we are bound to ask and
answer.

It is not necessary for me even to sketch the biog
raphy of Mr. Lincoln. He was born in Kentucky fifty-
six years ago, when Kentucky was a pioneer State.
He lived, as boy and man, the hard and needy life of
a backwoodsman, a farmer, a river boatman, and,
finally, by his own efforts at self-education, of an ac
tive^ respected, influential citizen, in the half-organized
and manifold interests of a new and energetic commu-

BROOKS. 133

nity. From his boyhood up he lived in direct and vig
orous contact with men and things, not as in older
States and easier conditions with words and theories;
and both his moral convictions and his intellectual
opinions gathered from that contact a supreme degree
of that character by which men knew him, that charac
ter which is the most distinctive possession of the best
American nature, that almost indescribable quality
which we call in general clearness or truth and which
appears in the physical structure as health, in
the moral constitution as honesty, in the mental struc
ture as sagacity, and in the region of active life as prac
ticalness.

This one character, with many sides, all shaped by
the same essential force and testifying to the same
inner influences, was what was powerful in him and de
creed for him the life he was to live and the death he
was to die. We must take no smaller view than this of
what he was.

Even his physical conditions are not to be forgotten
in making up his character. We make too little always
of the physical ; certainly we make too little of it here
if we lose out of sight the strength and muscular ac
tivity, the power of doing and enduring, which the
backwoods-boy inherited from generations of hard-
living ancestors and appropriated for his own by a long
discipline of bodily toil. He brought to the solution
of the question of labor in this country not merely a
mind, but a body thoroughly in sympathy with labor,
full of the culture of labor, bearing witness to the dig
nity and excellence of work in every muscle that work
liad toughened and every sense that work had made

134 BROOKS.

clear and true. He could not have brought the mind
for his task so perfectly unless he had first brought the
body whose rugged and stubborn health was always
contradicting to him the false theories of labor and
always asserting the true.

As to the moral and mental powers which distin
guished him, all embraceable under this general descrip
tion of clearness of truth, the most remarkable thing is
the way in which they blend with one another, so that
it is next to impossible to examine them in separation.
A great many people have discussed very crudely
whether Abraham Lincoln was an intellectual man or
not; as if intellect were a thing always of the same
sort, which you could precipitate from the other con
stituents of a man's nature and weigh by itself, and
compare by pounds and ounces in this man with an
other.

The fact is, that in all the simplest characters that
line between the mental and moral natures is always
vague and indistinct. They run together, and in their
best combinations you are unable to discriminate, in
the wisdom which is their result, how much is moral
and how much is intellectual. You are unable to tell
whether in the wise acts and words which issue from
such a life there is more of the righteousness that
comes of a clear conscience, or of the sagacity that
comes of a clear brain. In more complex characters
and under more complex conditions the moral and the
mental lives come to be less healthily combined. They
co-operate, they help each other less. They come even
to stand over against each other as antagonists, till we
have that vague but most melancholy notion which per-

BROOKS. 135

vades the life of all elaborate civilization, that good
ness and greatness, as we call them, are not to be
looked for together ; till we expect to see and so do see
a feeble and narrow conscientiousness on the one hand,
and a bad, unprincipled intelligence on the other, divid
ing the suffrages of men.

It is the great boon of such characters as Mr. Lin
coln's that they reunite what God has joined together
and man has put asunder. In him was vindicated the
greatness of real goodness and the goodness of real
greatness. The twain were one flesh. Not one of all
the multitudes who stood and looked up to him for di
rection with such a loving and implicit trust can tell you
to-day whether the wise judgment that he gave came
most from a strong head or a sound heart. If you ask
them, they are puzzled. There are men as good as he,
but they do bad things. There are men as intelligent
as he, but they do foolish things. In him goodness and
intelligence combined and made their best result of
wisdom.

For perfect truth consists not merely in the right
constituents of character, but in their right and inti
mate conjunction. This union of the mental and moral
into a life of admirable simplicity is what we most
admire in children ; but in them it is unsettled and un
practical. But when it is preserved into manhood,
deepened into reliability and maturity, it is that glori
fied childlikeness, that high and reverend simplicity,
which shames and baffles the most accomplished astute
ness, and is chosen by God to fill his purposes when he
needs a ruler for his people, of faithful and true heart,
such as he had who was our President.

136 BROOKS.

Another evident quality of such a character as this
will be its freshness or newness, if we may so speak,
Its freshness or readiness, — call it what you will, — its
ablity to take up new duties and do them in a new way,
will result of necessity from its truth and clearness.
The simple natures and forces will always be the most
pliant ones. Water bends and shapes Itself to any
channel. Air folds and adapts itself to each new
figure. They are the simplest and the most infinitely
active things in nature.

So this nature, in very virtue of its simplicity, must
be also free, always fitting itself to each new need. It
will always start from the most fundamental and eter
nal conditions, and work in the straightest even al
though they be the newest ways, to the present pre
scribed purpose. In one word, it must be broad and
independent and radical. So that freedom and radical-
ness in the character of Abraham Lincoln were not
separate qualities, but the necessary results of his sim
plicity and childlikeness and truth.

Here, then, we have some conception of the man.
Out of this character came the life which we admire
and the death which we lament to-day. He was called
in that character to that life and death. It was just
the nature, as you see, which a new nation such as ours
ought to produce.

• All the conditions of his birth, his youth, his man
hood, which made him what he was, were not irregular
and exceptional, but were the normal conditions of a
new and simple country. His pioneer home in Indiana
was a type of the pioneer land in which he lived. If
ever there was a man who was a part of the time and

BROOKS. 137

country he lived in, this was. he. The same simple re
spect for labor won in the school of work and incor
porated into blood and muscle; the same unassuming"
loyalty to the simple virtues of temperance and indus
try and integrity; the same sagacious judgment which
had learned to be quick-eyed and quick-brained in the
constant presence of emergency; the same direct and
clear thought about things, social, political, and relig
ious, that was in him supremely, was in the people he
was sent to rule.

Surely, with such a type-man for ruler, there would
seem to be but a smooth and even road over which he
might lead the people whose character he represented
into the new region of national happiness and comfort
and usefulness, for which that character had been
designed.

But then we come to the beginning of all trouble.
Abraham Lincoln was the type-man of the country, but
not of the whole country. This character which we
have been trying to describe was the character of an
American under the discipline of freedom. There was
another American character which had been developed
under the influence of slavery. There was no one
American character embracing the land. There were
two characters, with impulses of irrepressible and
deadly conflict.

This citizen whom we have been honoring and prais
ing represented one. The whole great scheme with
which he was ultimately brought in conflict, and which
has finally killed him, represented the other. Beside
this nature, true and fresh and new, there was another
nature, false and effete and old. The one nature found

138 BROOKS.

itself in a new world, and set itself to discover the new
ways for the new duties that were given it. The other
nature, full of the false pride of blood, set itself to re
produce in a new world the institutions and the spirit
of the old, to build anew the structure of the feudalism
which had been corrupt in its own day, and which had
been left far behind by the advancing conscience and
needs of the progressing race.

The one nature magnified labor, the other nature
depreciated and despised it. The one honored the
laborer, and the other scorned him. The one was sim
ple and direct; the other, complex, full of sophistries
and self-excuses. The one was free to look all that
claimed to be truth in the face, and separate the error
from the truth that might be in it; the other did not
dare to investigate, because its own established prides
and systems were dearer to it than the truth itself, and
so even truth went about in it doing the work of error.
The one was ready to state broad principles, of the
brotherhood of man, the universal fatherhood and jus
tice of God, however imperfectly it might realize them
in practice ; the other denied even the principles, and so
dug deep and laid below its special sins the broad foun
dation of a consistent, acknowledged sinfulness.

In a word, one nature was full of the influences of
freedom, the other nature was full of the influences of
slavery.

In general these two regions of our national life
were separated by a geographical boundary. One was
the spirit of the North, the other was the spirit of the
South. But the Southern nature was by no means all
a Southern thing. There it had an organized, estab-

BROOKS. 139

lished form, a certain definite, established institution
about which it clustered. Here, lacking advantage, it
lived in less expressive ways and so lived more weakly.
There, there was the horrible sacrament of slavery,
the outward and visible sign round which the inward
and spiritual temper gathered and kept itself alive.
But who doubts that among us the spirit of slavery
lived and thrived ? Its formal existence had been swept
away from one State after another, partly on conscien
tious, partly on economical grounds, but its spirit was
here, in every sympathy that Northern winds carried
to the listening ear of the Southern slaveholder, and in
every oppression of the weak by the strong, every
proud assumption of idleness over labor which echoed
the music of Southern life back to us.

Here in our midst lived that worse and falser, nature,
side by side with the true and better nature -which God
meant should be the nature of Americans, and of which
he was shaping out the type and champion in his
chosen David of the sheepfold.

Here then we have the two. The history of our
country for many years is the history of how these two
elements of American life approached collision. They
wrought their separate reactions on each other. Men
debate and quarrel even now about the rise of North
ern Abolitionism, about whether the Northern Abo
litionists were right or wrong, whether they did harm
or good.

How vain the quarrel is ! It was inevitable. It was
inevitable in the nature of things that two such natures
living here together should be set violently against
each other. It is inevitable, till man be far more un-

I4O BROOKS.

feeling and untrue to his convictions than he has al
ways been, that a great wrong asserting itself vehe
mently should arouse to no less vehement assertion the
opposing right.

The only wonder is that there was not more of it.
The only wonder is that so few were swept away to
take, by an impulse they could not resist, their stand of
hatred to the wicked institution. The only wonder is
that only one brave, reckless man came forth to cast
himself, almost single-handed, with a hopeless hope,
against the proud power that he hated, and trust to the
influence of a soul marching on into the history of his
countrymen to stir them to a vindication of the truth
he loved. At any rate, whether the Abolitionists were
wrong or right, there grew up about their violence, as
there always will about the extremism of extreme re
formers, a great mass of feeling, catching their spirit
and asserting it firmly, though in more moderate de
grees and methods.

About the nucleus of Abolitionism grew up a great
American Anti-Slavery determination, which at last
gathered strength enough to take its stand to insist
upon the checking and limiting the extension of the
power of slavery, and to put the type-man, whom God
had been preparing for the task, before the world, to
do the work on which it had resolved. Then came dis
content, secession, treason. The two American na
tures, long advancing to encounter, met at last, and a
whole country, yet trembling with the shock, bears wit
ness how terrible the meeting was.

Thus I have tried briefly to trace out the gradual
course by which God brought the character which he

BROOKS. 141

designed to be the controlling character of this new
world into distinct collision with the hostile character
which it was to destroy and absorb, and set it in the
person of its type-man in the seat of highest power.
The character formed under the discipline of freedom
and the character formed under the discipline of slavery
developed all their difference and met in hostile con
flict when this war began.

Notice, it was not only in what he did and was to
ward the slave, it was in all he did and was everywhere
that we accept Mr. Lincoln's character as the true re
sult of our free life and institutions. Nowhere else
could have come forth that genuine love of the people
which in him no one could suspect of being either the
cheap flattery of the demagogue or the abstract phi
lanthropy of the philosopher, which made our Presi
dent, while he lived, the centre of a great household
land, and when he died so cruelly made every humblest
household thrill with a sense of personal bereavement
which the death of rulers is not apt to bring. Nowhere
else than out of the life of freedom could have come
that personal unselfishness and generosity which made
so gracious a part of this good man's character.

How many soldiers feel yet the pressure of a strong
hand that clasped theirs once as they lay sick and weak
in the dreary hospital ! How many ears will never lose
the thrill of some kind word he spoke — he who could
speak so kindly — to promise a kindness that always
matched his word! How often he surprised the land
with a clemency which made even those who ques
tioned his policy love him the more for what they
called his weakness, — seeing how the man in whom

142 BROOKS.

God had most embodied the discipline of freedom not
only could not be a slave, but could not be a tyrant ! In
the heartiness of his mirth and his enjoyment of simple
joys; in the directness and shrewdness of perception
which constituted his wit; in the untired, undiscour-
aged faith in human nature which he always kept ; and
perhaps, above all, in the plainness and quiet, unosten
tatious earnestness and independence of his religious
life, in his humble love and trust of God — in all, it was
a character such as only freedom knows how to make.

Now it was in this character rather than in any mere
political position that the fitness of Mr. Lincoln to
stand forth in the struggle of the two American na
tures really lay. We are told that he did not come to
the Presidential chair pledged to the abolition of
slavery. When shall we learn that with all true men
it is not what they intend to do, but it is what the
qualities of their natures bind them to do, that deter
mines their career !

The President came to his power full of the blood,
strong in the strength of freedom. He came there
free, and hating slavery. He came there, leaving on
record words like these spoken three years before and
never contradicted. He had said :

" A house divided against itself cannot stand. I
believe this Government cannot endure permanently,
half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to
be dissolved ; I do not expect the house to fall ; but I
expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all
one thing or all the other."

When the question came, he knew which thing he

BROOKS. 143

meant that it should be. His whole nature settled that
question for him. Such a man must always live as he
used to say he lived (and was blamed for saying it)
" controlled by events, not controlling them." And
with a reverent and clear mind, to be controlled by
events means to be controlled by God.

For such a man there was no hesitation when God
brought him up face to face with slavery and put the
sword into his hand and said, " Strike it down dead ! "
He was a willing servant then. If ever the face of a
man writing solemn words glowed with a solemn joy,
it must have been the face of Abraham Lincoln, as he
bent over the page where the Emancipation Proclama
tion of 1863 was growing into shape, and giving man
hood and freedom as he wrote it to hundreds of thou
sands of his fellow men. Here was a work in which
his whole nature could rejoice. Here was an act that
crowned the whole culture of his life.

All the past, the free boyhood in the woods, the free
youth upon the farm, the free manhood in the hon
orable citizen's employments — all his freedom gathered
and completed itself in this. And as the swarthy mul
titudes came in, ragged, and tired, and hungry, and ig
norant, but free forever from anything but the memo
rial scars of the fetters and the whip, singing rude
songs in which the new triumph of freedom struggled
and heaved below the sad melody that had been shaped
for bondage; as in their camps and hovels there grew
up to their half-superstitious eyes the image of a great
Father almost more than man, to whom they owed
their freedom, — were they not half right?

For it was not to one man, driven by stress of policy,

144 BROOKS.

or swept off by a whim of pity, that the noble act was
due. It was to the American nature, long kept by
God, in his own intentions till his time should come,
it last emerging into sight and power, and bound up
and embodied in this best and most American of all
Americans, to whom we and those poor frightened
slaves at last might look up together and love to call
him, with one voice, our Father.

Thus we have seen something of what the character
of Mr. Lincoln was, and how it issued in the life he
lived. It remains for us to see how it resulted also in
the terrible death which has laid his murdered body
here in our town among lamenting multitudes to-day.
It is not a hard question, though it is sad to answer.
We saw the two natures, the nature of slavery and the
nature of freedom, at last set against each other, come
at last to open war. Both fought, fought long, fought
bravely; but each, as was perfectly natural, fought
with the tools and in the ways which its own character
had made familiar to it.

The character of slavery was brutal, barbarous, and
treacherous; and so the whole history of the slave
power during the war has been full of ways of warfare
orutal, barbarous, and treacherous beyond anything
that man bred in freedom could have been driven to by
the most hateful passions. It is not to be marvelled at.
It is not to be set down as the special sin of the war.
It goes back beyond that. It is the sin of the system.
It is the barbarism of slavery. When slavery went to
war to save its life, what wonder if its barbarism grew
barbarous a hundred-fold !

One would be attempting a task which once was al-

BROOKS. 145

most hopeless, but which now is only needless, if he
set himself to convince a Northern congregation that
slavery was a barbarian institution. It would be hard
ly more necessary to try to prove how its barbarism
has shown itself during this war. The same spirit
which was blind to the wickedness of breaking sacred
ties, of separating man and wife, of beating women till
they dropped down dead, of organizing licentiousness
and sin into commercial systems, of forbidding knowl
edge and protecting itself with ignorance, of putting
on its arms and riding out to steal a State at the be
leaguered ballot-box away from freedom — in one word
(for its simplest definition is its worst dishonor), the
spirit that gave man the ownership in man in time of
peace has found out yet more terrible barbarisms for
the time of war.

It has hewed and burned the bodies of the dead. It
has starved and mutilated its helpless prisoners. It
has dealt by truth, npt as men will in a time of excite
ment, lightly and with frequent violations, but with a
cool and deliberate and systematic contempt. It has
sent its agents into Northern towns to fire peaceful
hotels where hundreds of peaceful men and women
slept. It has undermined the prisons where its vic
tims starved, and made all ready to blow with one blast
their wretched life away. It has delighted in the low
est and basest scurrility even on the highest and most
honorable lips. It has corrupted the graciousness of
women and killed out the truth of men.

I do not count up the terrible catalogue because I
like to, nor because I wish to stir your hearts to pas
sion. Even now, you and I have no right to indulge

146 BROOKS.

in personal hatred to the men who did these things.
But we are not doing right by ourselves, by the Presi
dent that we have lost, or by God who had a purpose in
our losing him, unless we know thoroughly that it was
this same spirit which we have seen to be a tyrant in
peace and a savage in war that has crowned itself
with the working of this final woe.

It was the conflict of the two American natures, the
false and the true. It was slavery and freedom that
met in their two representatives, the assassin and the
President ; and the victim of the last desperate struggle
of the dying slavery lies dead to-day in Independence
Hall.

Solemnly, in the sight of God, I charge this murder
where it belongs, on slavery. I dare not stand here
in his sight, and before him or you speak doubtful and
double-meaning words of vague repentance, as if we
had killed our President. We have sins enough, but
we have not done this sin save as by weak concessions
and timid compromises we have let the spirit of slavery
grow strong and ripe for such a deed. In the barbar
ism of slavery the foul act and its foul method had
their birth.

By all the goodness that there was in him; by all
the love we had for him (and who shall tell how
great it was) ; by all the sorrow that has burdened
down this desolate and dreadful week, — I charge this
murder where it belongs, on slavery, I bid you to
remember where the charge belongs, to write it on the
door-posts of your mourning houses, to teach it to
your wondering children, to give it to the history 'of

BROOKS. 147

these times, that all times to come may hate and dread
the sin that killed our noblest President.

If ever anything were clear, this is the clearest. Is
there the man alive who thinks that Abraham Lin
coln was shot just for himself; that it was that one man
for whom the plot was laid? The gentlest, kindest,
most indulgent man that ever ruled a State! The
man who knew not how to speak a word of harshness
or how to make a foe ! Was it he for whom the mur
derer lurked with a mere private hate?

It was not he, but what he stood for. It was law
and liberty, it was government and freedom, against
which the hate gathered and the treacherous shot was
fired. And I know not how the crime of him who
shoots at law and liberty in the crowded glare of a
great theatre differs from theirs who have levelled
their aim at the same great beings from behind a
thousand ambuscades and on a hundred battle-fields
of this long war. Every general in the field, and every
false citizen in our midst at home, who has plotted
and labored to destroy the lives of the soldiers of the
republic, is brother to him who did this deed. The
American nature, the American truths, of which our
President was the anointed and supreme embodiment,
have been embodied in multitudes of heroes who
marched unknown and fell unnoticed in our ranks.
For them, just as for him, character decreed a life and
a death. The blood of all of them I charge on the
same head. Slavery armed with treason was their
murderer.

Men point out to us the absurdity and folly of this

awful crime. Again and again we hear men say, " It
6—6

148 BROOKS.

was the worst thing- for themselves they could have
done. They have shot a representative man, and the
cause he represented grows stronger and sterner by his
death. Can it be that so wise a devil was so foolish
here? Must it not have been the act of one poor
madman, born and nursed in his own reckless
brain?"

My friends, let us understand this matter. It
was a foolish act. Its folly was only equalled by its
wickedness. It was a foolish act. But when did sin
begin to be wise? When did wickedness learn wis
dom? When did the fool stop saying in his heart,
" There is no God," and acting godlessly in the ab
surdity of his impiety ? The cause that Abraham Lin
coln died for shall grow stronger by his death, —
stronger and sterner. Stronger to set its pillars deep
into the structure of our nation's life; sterner to exe
cute the justice of the Lord upon his enemies. Stronger
to spread its arms and grasp our whole land into free
dom; sterner to sweep the last poor ghost of slavery
out of our haunted homes.

But while we feel the folly of this act, let not its
folly hide its wickedness. It was the wickedness of
slavery putting on a foolishness for which its wicked
ness and that alone is responsible, that robbed the
nation of a President and the people of a father. And
remember this, that the folly of the slave power in
strikingv the representative of freedom, and thinking
that thereby it killed freedom itself, is only a folly that
we shall echo if we dare to think that in punishing
the representatives of slavery who did this deed, we
are putting slavery to death.

BROOKS. 149

Dispersing armies and hanging traitors, impera
tively as justice and necessity may demand them both,
are not killing the spirit out of which they sprang.
The traitor must die because he has committed trea
son. The murderer must die because he has com
mitted murder. Slavery must die, because out of it,
and it alone, came forth the treason of the traitor
and the murder of the murderer.

Do not say that it is dead. It is not, while its essen
tial spirit lives. While one man counts another man
his born inferior fo>r the color of his skin, while both
in North and South prejudices and practices which the
law cannot touch, but which God hates, keep alive in
our people's hearts the spirit of the old iniquity, it is
not dead. The new American nature must supplant
the old. . We must grow like our President, in his
truth, his independence, his religion, and his wide hu
manity. Then the character by which he died shall be
be in us, and by it we shall live. Then peace shall
come that knows no war, and law that knows no trea
son; and full of his spirit a grateful land shall gather
round his grave, and in the daily psalm of prosperous
and righteous living thank God forever for his life
and death.

So let him lie here in our midst to-day, and let our
people go and bend with solemn thoughtfulness and
look upon his face and read the lessons of his burial.
As he paused here on his journey from the Western
home and told us what by the help of God he meant to
do, so let him pause upon his way back to his Western
grave and tell us with a silence more eloquent than
words how bravely, how truly, by the strength of God,

150 BROOKS.

he did it. God brought him up as he brought David
up from the sheepfolds to feed Jacob, his people, and
Israel, his inheritance. He came up in earnestness and
faith, and he goes back in triumph.

As he pauses here to-day, and from his cold lips
bids us bear witness how he has met the duty that was
laid on him, what can we say out of our full hearts but
this — " He fed them with a faithful and true heart, and
ruled them prudently with all his power." The " Shep
herd of the People! " that old name that the best rulers
ever craved. What ruler ever won it like this dead
President of ours? He fed us faithfully and truly.
He fed us with counsel when we were in doubt, with
inspiration when we sometimes faltered, with cau
tion when we would be rash, with calm, clear, trust
ful cheerfulness through many an hour when our hearts
were dark. He fed hungry souls all over the coun
try with sympathy and consolation. He spread be
fore the whole land feasts of great duty and devotion
and patriotism, on which the land grew strong. He fed
us with solemn, solid truths. He taught us the sacred-
ness of government, the wickedness of treason. He
made our souls glad and vigorous with the love of lib
erty that was in his. He showed us how to love
truth, and yet be charitable — how to hate wrong and
all oppression, and yet not treasure one personal injury
or insult. He fed all his people, from the highest to
the lowest, from the most privileged down to the most
enslaved. Best of all, he fed us with a reverent and
genuine religion. He spread before us the love and
fear of God just in that shape in which we need them
most, and out of his faithful service of a higher Mas-

BROOKS. 151

ter who of us has not taken and eaten and grown
strong? " He fed them with a faithful and true
heart."

Yes, till the last. For at the last, behold him
standing with hand reached out to feed the South with
mercy and the North with charity, and the whole land
with peace, when the Lord who had sent him called
him and his work was done !

He stood once on the battle-field of our own State,
and said of the brave men who had saved it words as
noble as any countryman of ours ever spoke. Let us
stand in the country he has saved, and which is to be
his grave and monument, and say of Abraham Lin
coln what he said of the soldiers who had died at
Gettysburg. He stood there with their graves before
him, and these are the words he said :

" We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we can
not hallow this ground. The brave men who struggled
here have consecrated it far beyond our power to add
or detract. The world will little note nor long re
member what we say here, but it can never forget what
they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be
dedicated to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task re
maining before us, ihat from these honored dead we
take increased devotion to that cause for which they
gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in
vain; and this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom, and that government of the people

IS2 BROOKS.

by the people and for the people shall not perish from
the earth.

May God make us worthy of the memory of Abra-
Lincoln !

EVERETT. 153

Everett, William, an American educator and public
speaker, born at Watertown, Mass., October 10, 1839. He
was the youngest son of the noted orator, Edward Everett,
and, studying law after leaving the university, was admitted
to the bar in 1866, but never practiced. In 1872 he entered
the Unitarian ministry, but has never had- charge of a par
ish. He was a professor of Latin in Harvard University,
1870-77, and principal of Adams Academy, at Quincy, Mass.,
1872-93. He was a member of Congress, 1893-94, return
ing after a few years to his former mastership at Quincy.
He has at times taken an active interest in politics, but has
exercised entire freedom of action and displayed great inde
pendence of party control. He is an eloquent political
speaker, fond of startling his listeners, and with a pungent,,
peppery manner of delivery.

PATRIOTISM.

ORATION DELIVERED JUNE 28, IQOO.

I DO not see how any one can rise on this occasion
without trembling. It has been illustrated by too many
distinguished names, it has brought forth too many
striking sentiments, not to give every orator the cer
tainty that he will fall short of its traditions and the
doubt if he will so disastrously. But of one thing I
am sure ; it behooves the speaker to-day to be candid :
no elegant or inflated common-places, concealing one's
real sentiments by the excuse of academic dignity of
courtesy, ought to sully the honesty with which breth
ren speak to each other. The first, the only aim of
every university is the investigation and propagation
of truth; truth in the convictions and truth in the ut
terance.

154 EVERETT.

My very first knowledge of the Phi Beta Kappa
dates back to early childhood. In the year 1846 I
was present at a portion of the Commencement exer
cises when the parts were sustained by Francis James
Child, George Martin Lane, Charles Eliot Norton, and
George Frisbie Hoar.

Those exercises were followed by a Commencement
dinner whose good cheer proved too much for a boy not
yet seven years old. It was a dinner at home; no one
ever wanted to eat too much at the official Commence
ment dinner. I heard, therefore, at my bedside the
next day the tale of Phi Beta Kappa, how Charles
Sumner had held his audience for two hours relating
the achievements of the* four Harvard graduates who
had lately died, Pickering, Stone, Allston, and Chan-
ning, winding up with the magnificent peroration
transferred, I believe, from an earlier address, in
which he appealed so earnestly for peace as the duty
of our age and answered Burke' s lament that the
age of chivalry had gone by, the declaration that the
age of humanity had come, that the coming time should
take its name, not from the horse but from man.

I can not even think of Phi Beta without these names
and these thoughts ringing in my ears and almost dic
tating my words.

It seems to me that an orator can hardly go wrong
if he holds fast to our motto, " Philosophy the guide,
or rather the sailing-master of life." There is little
doubt that when this motto was first given to a secret
fraternity, " veiled in the obscurity of a learned lan
guage," it meant that philosophy which rejects revela
tion, the philosophy of the encyclopaedists of France.

EVERETT. 155

Accordingly, when the veil was taken away from the
mystic characters Phi Beta Kappa, it was declared that
philosophy included religion. How many who accept
membership in it to-day direct their voyage of life by
philosophy or religion after it might not be safe to
say. It cannot, however, be wrong, whatever our sub
ject is, to steer our way in it with her at the helm.

I am not going to plunge into a discussion of what
philosophy means. It has been used to mean many
things, and to some it means nothing at all. When
Wackford Squeers, who sixty years ago we all knew
was of the immortals and who is now in danger of be
ing forgotten, was asked by any parent a question in
some occult branch of study, like trigonometry, he
was wont to answer, "Sir, are you a philosopher?"
And to the invariable negative he would then reply,
" Ah, then I can't explain it to you."

As one of Wackford Squeers' s humblest successors
I feel there is something not absurd in his counter-
question when I meet what are called practical men
discussing what they call the practical problems of
life.

He who, whether decked with a blue and pink rib
bon or not, steers his course with philosophy as his
guide, approaches all life's problems in another temper
and another spirit; he is working by other roads to
other ends from him who is guided by the passions
and worships the idols of the hour. Philosophy has
different meanings for different men but the gulf is
infinite between those who accept it with any meaning
and those who know it not, or know it only as an ob
ject of patronage or scorn.

156 EVERETT.

The philosopher walks by principle, not merely by
interest or passion; by the past and the future, not
merely by the unseen and the eternal, not merely by
the seen and temporal — by law and not only by acci
dent. It is not, as sometimes fancied, that he does not
see, and, seeing, does not heed these things; he does
not, as Plato bids him, turn his back on what this
world shows. He meets immediate duties; he lives
with contemporary men; he deals with existing de
mands. But he does all this by the light and guidance
of rules of which the servant of time and place knows
nothing.

I claim for this the assent of all my brothers here as
an intellectual fact; but I desire at the outset of what
I say to rouse your thoughts to it as the dictate of emo
tion and of conscience. Philosophy, the study of causes
in their deepest effects, beginning with the true use of
terms and proceeding by sound reasoning, has the
power to transmit and sanctify the most commonplace
transactions, the most hackneyed words.

The master of all philosophy began his work by
forcing his contemporaries to define the commonest
subjects of conversation. I would, as his follower,
ask you to apply that method to one of the favorite
watchwords, one of the pressing duties of to-day, and
see if philosophy has not something to define and cor
rect in a field where her s\vay is scarcely admitted.

You cannot talk for ten minutes on any of what are
rightly held to be the great interests of life without
feeling how loosely we use their names. We seem
not to be dealing with sterling coin, which has the
same value everywhere and always, but with counters

EVERETT. 157

that, passing with a conventional value here and now,
are worthless when we come to some great public or
private crisis.

Education, business, amusement, art, literature, sci
ence, home, comfort, society, politics, patriotism, re
ligion — how many men who use these words have
any true conception of their force? How many sim
ply mean that form of education, that line of business,
that sect in religion, that party in politics, to which
they are accustomed ?

How many are led by this loose yet limited use of
words into equally loose and equally narrow ways of
action? How many need a Socrates to walk through
the streets and force them to define their terms? And
how many, if he did appear again, would be ready to
kill him for corrupting the youth, and holding to a
god different from those the country worships?

Patriotism — love of country — devotion to the land
that bore us — is pressed upon us now as paramount to
every other notion in its claims on head, hand, and
heart. It is pictured to us not merely as an amiable and
inspiring emotion, but as a paramount duty which is
to sweep every other out of the way. The thought can
not be put in loftier or more comprehensive words than
by Cicero, " Cari sunt parentes, cari liberi, cari famili-
ares, propinqui; sed omnes omnium caritates una pa-
tria complexa est."

" Dear are parents, dear are children, dear are
friends and relations; but all affections to all men are
embraced in country alone."

The Greek, the Roman, the Frenchman, the Ger
man, talks about " fatherland," and we are beginning

158 EVERETT.

to copy them ; though to my ear the English " mother
country " is far more tender and true.

Cicero follows up his words by saying that for her
no true son would, if need be, hesitate to die. And his
words, themselves an echo of what the poets and ora
tors whose heir he was had repeated again and again,
/have been re-echoed and reiterated in many ages since
he bowed his neck to the sword of his country's enemy.

But to give life for their country is the least part of
what men have been willing to do for her. Human
life has often seemed a very trifling possession to be
exposed cheaply in all sorts of useless risks and feuds.
It has been the cheerful sacrifice of the things that
make life worth living, the eager endurance of things
far worse than death, which show the mighty power
which love of country holds over the entire being of
men.

Wealth that Crcesus might have envied has been
poured at the feet of our mother, and sacrifices taken
up which St. Francis never knew — ease and luxury, re
fined company, and cultivated employment have been
rejected for the hardships and suffering of the camp —
the sympathy and idolatry of home have been aban
doned for the tenfold hardships and sufferings of a
political career; and at the age when we can offer
neither life nor living as of any value to one's coun
try, those children and grandchildren which were to
have been the old man's and the old woman's solace are
freely sent forth in the cause of the country which
will send back nothing but a sword and cap to be
hung on the wall and never be worn by living man
again.

EVERETT. 159

Such are the sacrifices men have cheerfully made for
the existence, the honor, the prosperity of their coun
try.

But perhaps the power of patriotism is shown more
strongly in what it makes them do than in \vhat it
makes them give up. You know how many men have
been, as it were, born again by the thought that they
might illustrate the name and swell the force of their
country, achieving what they never would have aroused
themselves to do for themselves alone.

I do not mean the feats of military courage and
strategy which are generally talked of as the sum
of patriotic endeavor. I recollect in our war being
told by a very well-known soldier who is now a very
well-known civilian that it was conceited for me or any
other man to think in time of war he could serve his
country in any way but in the ranks.

But in fact every art and every science has won
triumphs under the stress of patriotism that it has
hardly known in less enthusiastic days. The glow
that runs through every line of Sophocles and Virgil,
as they sung the glories of Athens and Rome, is re
flected in the song of our own bards from Spenser
and Shakespeare to this hour; the rush and sweep of
Demosthenes and Cicero dwelling on the triumphs and
duties of their native lands are only the harbingers of
Burke and Webster on the like themes ; the beauty into
which Bramante and Angelo poured all their souls to
adorn their beloved Florence was lavished under no
other impulse than that which set all the science of
France working to relieve her agriculture and manu-

l6o EVERETT.

factures from the pressure laid upon her by the strange
vicissitudes of her Revolution.

Not all this enthusiasm has succeeded; there have
been patriotic blunders as well as patriotic triumphs,
but still it stands true that men are spurred on to make
the best of themselves in the days when love of country
glowed strongest in their hearts. It would seem as
if all citizens poured their individual affections and
devotions into one Superior Lake from which they
all burst in one Niagara of patriotism.

I am ashamed, however, to press such a common
place proposition before this audience and in this place,
where the walls are as redolent of love of country as
Faneuil Hall itself. The question is if philosophy, our
chosen guide of life, has anything to say of this same
love of country, — if she brings that under her rule, ao
site does so much else of life, supplementing, curtailing,
correcting, — or whether patriotism may bid defiance
to philosophy, claiming her submission as she claims
the submission of every other human interest, and
bidding her yield and be absorbed, or stand off and de
part to her visionary Utopia, where the claims of prac
tical duty and natural sentiment do not seek to follow
her.

For indeed we are told now that patriotism is not
merely a generous and laudable emotion, but a para
mount and overwhelming duty, to which everything
else which men have called duties must give way. If
a monarch, a statesman, a soldier stands forth pre
eminent in exalting the name or spreading the bounds
of his country, he is a patriot — and that is
enough.

EVERETT. l6l

Such a leader may be as perjured and blasphemous
as Frederick, or as brutal and stupid as his father; he
may be as faithless and mean as Maryborough, or as
dissolute and bloody as Julius Caesar; he may trample
on every right of independent natives and drive his
countrymen to the shambles like Napoleon; he may be
as corrupt as Walpole and as wayward as Chatham ; he
may be destitute of every spark of culture, or may pros
titute the gifts of the Muses to the basest ends; he may
have, in short, all manner of vices, curses, or defects;
but if he is true to his country, if he is her faithful
standard-bearer, if he strives to set and keep her high
above her rivals, he is right, a worthy patriot.

And if he seems lukewarm in her cause, if, however
wise and good and accomplished he may be in all other
relations, he fails to work with all his heart and soul to
maintain her position among the nations, he must be
stamped with failure if not with curse.

For the plain citizen who does not claim to be a
leader in peace or war, the duty is still clearer. He
must stand by his country, according to what those
who have her destiny in their control decide is her
proper course. In war or in peace he is to have but
one watchword.

In peace, indeed, his patriotic duty will chiefly be
shown by obeying existing laws, wherever they may
strike, even as Socrates rejected all thought of evading
the unjust, stupid, and malignant sentence that took
his life. But it is not thought inconsistent with that
true love of country to let one's opinions be known
about those laws, and about the good of the country
in general, in time of peace.

1 62 EVERETT.

In a free land like ours every citizen is expected to
be ready with voice and vote to do his part in correct
ing what is amiss, in protesting against bad laws, and,
as far as he may, defeating bad men whom he believes
to be seeking his country's ruin.

Nay, a citizen of a free country who did not so criti
cise would be held to be derelict to that highest duty
which free lands, differing from slavish despotisms, im
pose upon their sons.

But in time of war we are told that all this is
changed. As soon as our country is arrayed against
another under arms, every loyal son has nothing to do
but to support her armies to victory; he may desire
peace, but it must be " peace with honor," whatever
that phrase of the greatest charlatan of modern times
may mean. He must not question the justice or the
expediency of the war ; he must either fight himself or
encourage others to fight. Criticism of the manage
ment of the war may be allowable; of the fact of the
war, it is treason. And the word for the patriot is,
" Our country, right or wrong."

Right here, then, as I conceive it, Philosophy raises
her warning finger before the passionate enthusiast
and says : " Hold ! " In the name of higher thought,
of deeper law, of more serious principle, to which every
man here, every child of Harvard, every brother of this
society is bound to listen, Philosophy says " Hold ! "
With the terror of the voice within, with the majesty
of the voice from above to Americans now, and with
the spirit of Socrates returning to earth, it bids
them know what they mean by the words they use,
or they may be crowning as a lofty emotion that which

EVERETT. 163

is only an unreasoning passion, and clothing with the
robes of duty what is only a superstition.

This love of country, this patriotic ardor of ours,
must submit to have Philosophy investigate her claims,
to rule above all other emotions, not in the interest of
any less generous emotion, not to make men more sor
did or selfish, but simply because there is a rule called
truth, and a measure called right, by which every hu
man action is bound to be gauged, because all gods
,and men and fiends should league all their forces, and
with the golden chain of Olympus to draw its glory
down to their purposes they will only find themselves
drawn upward subject to its unchanging laws, the
weak members hanging in the air, and the vile ones
hurled down to Tartarus.

What is this country — this mother country, this
fatherland that we are bidden to love and serve and
stand by at any risk and sacrifice? Is it the soil? the
land? the plains and mountains and rivers? the fields,
and forests, and mines ? No doubt there is inspiration
from this very earth — from that part of the globe which
one nation holds, and which we call our country.

Poets and orators have dwelt again and again on the
undying attractions to our own land, no matter what
it is like, the Dutch marshes, the Swiss mountains, soft
Italy, and stern Spain equally clutching on the hearts
of their people with a resistless chain.

But a land is nothing without the men. The very
same countries, whose scenery, tame or bold, charming
or awful, has been the inspiration to gallant genera
tions, may, as the wheel of time turns, fall to indolent
savages, listless slaves, or sordid money-getters. Byron

164 EVERETT.

has told us this in lines which the men of his own time
felt were instinct with creative genius, but which the
taste of the day rejects for distorted thoughts in dis
torted verse:

" Clime of the forgotten brave !
Whose land from plain to mountain cave
Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave !
Shrine of the mighty ! can it be,
That this is all remains of thee ?
Approach, thou craven, crouching slave ;
Say, is not this Thermopylae ?
These waters blue that round you lave,

O servile offspring of the free —
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this ?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis !

'T were long to tell and sad to trace,
Each step from splendor to disgrace ;
Enough — no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell ;
Yes ; self-abasement paved a way
To villain-bonds and despot sway."

It is the nation, not the land, which makes the pa
triot ; if the nation degenerate, the land becomes only a
monument, not a dwelling: let the nation rouse itself
and the country may be a palace and a temple once
more.

But who are the men that made the nation? Ate
they the whole of the population or a part only? are
they one party only among the people, which is ready
perhaps to regard the other party not as countrymen,
but as aliens? Are the country the men who govern
her and control her destinies, the king, the nobles, the
popular representatives, the delegates to whom power is
transmitted when the people resign it?

EVERETT. 165

Once the king was the nation, with perhaps a few
counsellors; patriotism meant loyalty to the sovereign;
every man who on any pretext arrayed himself against
the Crown was a disloyal rebel, an unpatriotic traitor;
until at length God for his own purposes saw fit to ar
ray Charles the First against the people of England,
when, after years of civil war, and twice as many years
of hollow peace, and five times as many years when
discussion was stifled or put aside, the world came to
recognize that loyalty to one's king and love to one's
country are as different in their nature as the light of a
lamp and the light of the sun.

And yet, if a king understands the spirit and heart
of his nation, he may lead it so truly in peace or in
war that love of country shall be inseparable from de
votion to the sovereign. Modern historians may load
their pages as they please with revelations of the
meanness, the falsehood, the waywardness of Queen
Elizabeth ; yet England believed in her and loved her ;
and if England rose from ruin to prosperity in her
reign it was because her people trusted her. In her
day, as for two centuries before, Scotland, where three
different races had been welded together by Bruce to
produce the most patriotic of peoples, had scarcely a
true national existence, certainly nothing that men
could cling to with affection and pride, because kings
and commons were alike the prey of a poor, proud,
selfish nobility who suffered nobody to rule, scarcely
to live, but themselves; exempting themselves from
the laws which they forced upon their country.

An American cries out at the idea of a trusted aris
tocracy seeking to drag the force and affection of a na-

166 EVERETT.

tion of vassals, and calling that patriotism. Then
what will he say to the patriotism of some of those
lands which have made their national name ring
through the world for the triumphs and the sacrifices
of which it is the emblem?

What was Sparta? What was Venice? What was
Bern? What was Poland? Merely the fields where
the most exclusive aristocracies won name and fame
and wealth and territory only to sink their unrecog
nized subject citizens lower every year in the scale of
true nationality.

Not one of these identified the nation with the peo
ple. Or does an American insist on a democracy where
the entire people's voice speaks through rulers of its
choosing? Does he prefer the patriotism of Athens,
where thirty thousand democrats kept up an intermin
able feud with ten thousand conservatives, one ever
plunging the city into rash expeditions, the other, as
soon as its wealth gave it the upper hand, disfranchis
ing, exiling, killing the majority of the people, because
it could hire stronger arms to crush superior numbers ?

What was the patriotism of the Italian cities when
faction alternately banished faction, when Dante suf
fered no more than he would have inflicted had his side
got the upper hand ? What was the patriotism in either
Greece or Italy, which confined itself to its own city,
and where city enjoyed far more fighting against city
than ever thinking of union to save the common race
from bondage?

For years, for centuries, for ages, the nations that
would most eagerly repeat such sentiments as Cicero's
about love of country never dreamed of using the

EVERETT. 167

word in any sense that a philosopher, nay, that a plain,
truth-telling man, could not convict at once of mean
ness and contradiction.

But we of modern times look back with pity and con
tempt on those benighted ages which had not discov
ered the great arcanum of representative government,
whereby a free nation chooses the men to whom it in
trusts its concerns; its presidents and its prime minis
ters, its parliaments and congresses and courts. Yet
even this mighty discovery, whereby modern nations
are raised so far above those poor Old World crea
tures, the Greeks and Romans and mediaeval Italians,
has not so far controlled factional passion that many
countries do not live in a perpetual civil war which
Athens and Corinth would have been ashamed of. We
all know how our dear sister republics of Central and
Southern America, which, as Mr. Webster said, looked
to the great Northern Light in forming their constitu
tions, treat their elections as merely indications which
of two parties shall be set up to be knocked down by
rifles and bombshells, unless it retains its hold by such
means.

But how with ourselves ? How with England ? How
with France? How often do we regard our elected
governors as really standing for the whole nation and
deserving its allegiance.

In 1846 the President of the United States and his
counsellors hurried us into a needless, a bullying, a
wicked war. Fully a quarter of the country felt it was
an outrage and nothing else. But appeals were made
to stand by the government, against which our own
merciless satirist directed the lines which must have

1 68 EVERETT.

forever tingled in the ears and the consciences of the
men who supported what they knew was irretrievably
wicked.

" The side of our country must allus be took,

And President Polk, you know, he is our country ;
And the angel who writes all our sins in a book,
Puts the debit to him and to us the percontry."

No, brethren! no president, no prime minister, no
cabinet, no congress or parliament, no deftly organized
representative or executive body is or can be our coun
try. To pay them a patriot's affectionate allegiance is
as illogical as loyalty to James II. or to the French Na
tional Convention. Mere obedience to law when duly
enacted is one thing; Socrates may drink the hemlock
rather than run away from the doom to which a court
of his native city has consigned him; but when the
tribunals of that country perpetrated such a mockerv
of justice, Plato and Xenophon were right in cherish
ing to their dying day a poignant sense of outrage, an
implacable grudge against such a stepmother as blood
stained Athens.

But sometimes the voice of the wrhole people speaks
unmistakably; its ruler is the true agent and represen
tative of a united and determined people; the will of
the nation is unquestioned; who are you, who am I,
that we should dispute it and think ourselves wiser and
better than all our countrymen? Is not the whole na
tion the mother, whom to disobey is the highest sin?
No! the particular set of men who make up the na
tion at any time will die and pass away, and what
will their sons think of what they made their country
do?

EVERETT. 169

In 1854 the Emperor Nicholas, whose thoughts were
never far from Constantinople, picked an unintelligible
quarrel with the Sultan of Turkey. The unprincipled
adventurer who contrived to add new stains to the
name of Napoleon Bonaparte saw his chance to win
glory for the Gallic eagle; he plunged into war and
entrapped England unto it with him.

The wise old statesman who was at the head of
the English government knew the war was needless
and wrong; he did his utmost to stop it; but his coun
trymen preferred to listen to the reckless Palmerston,
and they lashed first themselves and then Aberdeen
into war.

The whole nation went mad. John Bright told them
the philosophic, the political, the Christian truth, and
Palmerston insulted him on the floor of the House of
Commons. Two years were consumed in the costly
and pestilential siege of Sebastopol ; a hollow peace was
patched up, of which the only significant article was
after a short interval impudently broken by Russia ; the
unspeakable Turk was given another thirty years' lease
of life.

And now I do not believe there is one grown man
in England among the sons and grandsons1 of those
who fought the Crimean war who does not believe
Aberdeen and Bright were right, that Palmerston and
England were wrong; and that the war \vas a national
blunder, a national sin, a national crime. When John
Bright stood almost against the whole nation, he was
neither self-conceited nor unpatriotic, but a great and
good man speaking as the prophet of God.

Yes, a whole people may be wrong, and deserve at

I7O EVERETT.

best the pity of a real patriot rather than his active love,
Our country is something more than the single proces
sion which passes across its borders in one generation ;
it means the land with all its people in all their periods ;
the ancestors whose exertions made us what we are,
and whose memory is precious to us; the posterity to
whom we are to transmit what we prize, unstained as
we received it ; and he who loves his country truly and
serves her rightly must act and speak not for the
present generation alone, but for all that rightly live,
every event in whose history is inseparable from every
other. If we pray, as does the seal of Boston, that
" God will be to us as he was to the fathers," then we
must be to God what our fathers were.

But after Philosophy has forced the vociferous pa
triot to define what he means by his country, she has a
yet more searching question to ask: What will you
do and what will you suffer for this country you love?
How shall your love be shown?

There is one of the old Greek maxims which says
in four words of that divine language what a modern
tongue can scarcely stammer in four times four :
" Sparta is thine allotted home; make her a home of
order and beauty." Whatever our country needs ta
make her perfect, that she calls on us to do.

I have run over to you some of the great sacrifices
and great exertions which patriots have made to make
their dear home perfect and themselves perfect for
her sake. But everything done or renounced to make
her perfect must recognize that she is not perfect yet;
and what our country chiefly calls on us for is not
mighty exertions and sacrifices, but those particular

HORACE GREELEY.

EVERETT. 171

ones, small or great, which shall do her real good and
not harm.

That her commerce should whiten every sea; that
her soil should yield freely .vegetable and mineral
wealth ; that she should be dotted with peaceful homes,
the abode of virtue and love; that her cities should be
adorned with all that is glorious* in art ; that famine and
poverty and plague and crime should be fought with all
the united energy of head and hand and heart; that
historians and poets and orators should continue to
make her high achievements and mighty aims known
to all her children and to the world; that the op
pressed of every land may find a refuge within her
borders; that she may stand before her sister nations
indeed a sister, loved and honored, — these are the com
monplaces, tedious, if noble to recount, of what patriot
ism has sought to do in many ages.

Yet every one of these things when actually
achieved, has had a worm at the core of the showy
fruit, which has made their mighty authors but little
better than magnificent traitors.

For every one of these has been achieved at the ex
pense of other nations, as ancient, as glorious, as dear
to their own children, as worthy of patriotic love
as their triumphant antagonists ; and every one has been
achieved at the still worse price of corruption and tyr
anny at home.

Every country has in times mistaken material for
moral wealth, and has grown corrupt as she grew
great; and every country in time has fancied that she
could not be great and honored while her sisters were
great and honored too; and has gone to war with

1/2 EVERETT.

them hoping to enlarge her borders at their expense
and to gain by their loss.

It is here, again, at this very point, that the philoso
pher calls upon the patriot to say what he means by his
cry, " Our country, right or wrong," the maxim of one
who threw away an illustrious life in that' worst of
wicked encounters, a duel.

If there are such words as right and wrong, and
those words stand for eternal realities, why shall not a
nation, why shall not her loving sons, be made to bow
to the same law, the utterance of God in history and in
the heart ? Can a king, can a president, can a congress,
can a whole nation, by its pride or its passions turn
wrong into right ; or what authority have they to trifle
or shuffle with either?

We are told that if we ever find ourselves at war
with another country, no matter how that war was
brought on, no matter what folly or wickedness broke
the peace, no matter how completely we might op
pose and deprecate it up to the moment of its outbreak,
no matter how, as truthful historians, we may condemn
it after it is over, no matter how iniquitous or tyran
nical our sense and our conscience tells us are the
terms on .which peace has been obtained, we ought,
during the war, to be heartily and avowedly for it.
:< We must not desert the flag." Patriotism demands
that we should always stand by our country as against
every other.

And what are the patriots in our rival country to
be doing the while? Are they to support the war
against us whether they think it right or wrong ? Are
they cheerfully to pay all taxes? Are they to volun-

EVERETT. 173

teer for every battle? Are they to carry on war to
the knife or the last ditch ? Is their love for their coun
try to be as unreasoning, as purely a matter of emotion,
as ours?

Certainly, if the doctrine of indiscriminate patriot
ism, " our country, right or wrong," is the true one. If
France and Germany fight, no matter what the cause,
every Frenchman must desire to see Germany humili
ated, and every German to see France brought to her
knees, and it is absolutely their duty to have all cogni
zance of right and wrong swallowed up in passionate
loyalty.

Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Bright were right in depre
cating the Crimean War up to the moment of its declar
ation; history says they were right now, but while the
war lasted it was their duty to sacrifice their sense of
right to help the government aims. Mr. Webster and
Mr. Clay were right in pouring out their most scathing
eloquence against the Mexican War; General Grant
was right in recording in his memoirs that he believed
it unjust and unnecessary; yet Mr. Webster and Mr.
Clay only fulfilled patriotic duty in sending their sons
to die, one by the sword and one by the fever, in the
same army where Grant did his duty by fighting
against his conception of right.

Brethren, I call this sentimental nonsense. It can
not be patriotic duty to say up to 1846 that our country
will be wrong if she fights, to say after 1849 tnat sne
was wrong in fighting, but to hold one's tongue, and
maintain her so-called cause in 1847 and 1848 though
we know it is wrong all along.

And, observe, these patriots make no distinction be-

174 EVERETT.

tween wars offensive and defensive, wars for aggres
sion and conquest and \vars for national existence. In
any war, in all wars in which our country gets engaged,
we must support her ; her honor demands that we shall
not back out.

Oh, Honor! that terrible word, the very opposite of
Duty ; unknown in that sense to the soldiers, the states
men, the patriots of Greece and Rome; honor, the in
vention of the Gothic barbarians, which more than
any other one thing has reduced poor Spain to her
present low estate.

There was a time when individual men talked about
their honor and stood up to be stabbed and shot at,
whether right or wrong, to vindicate it. That infer
nal fiction, the honor of the duel, was on the point, sixty
years ago, of drawing Macaulay into the field in de
fence of a few sarcastic paragraphs in a review which
he admitted himself were not to be justified. It was
very shortly after that, that Prince Albert came to
England with his earnest, simple, modest character:
he used all his influence to stop the practice and the
very idea of duelling; and now all England recognizes
that any and every duel is a sin, a crime, and a folly,
and that the code of honor has no defence before God
or man. When shall the day come when the nations
feel the same about public war? When shall the words
of our own poet find their true and deserved accept
ance, not as a poetical rhapsody, but as practical

truth ?

" Were half the power that fills the world with terror,

Were half the wealth bestowed on camp and courts.
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals and forts.

EVERETT. 175

" The warrior's name should be a name abhorred,

And every nation that should lift again
Its hand against its brother ; on its forehead
Should bear forevermore the curse of Cain."

Brethren, if there is anything- of which philosophy
must say it is wrong that thing is war. I do not mean
any particular school of philosophy, ancient or mod
ern. But I mean, if any one studies the nature of God
and man in the light of history, with a view to draw
from that study rules of sound thought and maxims
of right action, he must say war is wrong, an anti
quated, blundering, criminal means of solving a na
tional doubt by accepting the certainty of misery.

I began my address with Cicero's definition of
patriotism. I now recall to you his sentence wrung
from the heart of a man who had blazoned with his
eloquence the fame of many great soldiers, and was
not even himself without a spark of military ambi
tion : " Ego sic judico, inquissimam pacem justis-
simo bello esse anteferendam." — " This is my judg
ment, that the most unfair peace is preferable to the
justest war."

Granting — as I do not — that war is sometimes neces
sary; so cutting off a man's leg, or extirpating an or
gan may be necessary ; but it is always a horrible thing
all the same, and just as the conservative surgery of
our age is at work day and night to avoid -these de
structive operations, so the statesmanship of the day
ought to be at work, not specifically to secure arbitra
tion, as if that was anything more than a possible
method, but to stop war as an eternal shame.
I And granting war is sometimes necessary : if it is

EVERETT.

ever engaged in for any cause less than necessary, it is
wrong; and the country is wrong that engages in it.
•A doubtful war, a war about which opinions are di
vided, is for that very reason not doubtfully evil, and
the country that makes it is wrong.

Yes, brethren, a nation may be in the wrong, in
every war one nation must be in the wrong, and gen
erally both are; and if any country, yours or mine, is
in the wrong, it is our duty as patriots to say so, and
not support the country we love in a wrong because our
countrymen have involved her in it.

In the war of our Revolution, when Lord North had
the king and virtually the country with him, Fox la
mented that Howe had won the battle of Long Island
and wished he had lost it. What ! an Englishman wish
an English army to be defeated? Yes, because Eng
land was wrong, and Fox knew it and said so.

But there is a theory lately started, or rather an old
one revived, that war is a good thing in itself; that it
does a nation good to be fighting and killing the patriot
sons of another nation, who love their country as we
do ours. We are told that every strenuous man's life
is a battle of one kind, and that the virile character de
mands some physical belligerency. Yes, every man's
life must be to a great extent a fight, but this prepos
terous doctrine would make every man a prize-fighter.

They say war elicits acts of heroism and self-sacri
fice that the country does not know in the lethargy of
peace.

Heroism and self-sacrifice! There are more heroic
and sacrificial acts going on in the works of peace
than the brazen throat of war could proclaim in a

EVERETT.

twelvemonth. The track of every practising physician
is marked by heroic disregard of life that Napoleon's
Old Guard might envy. Every fire like that of Chi
cago, every flood like that of Johnstown, every plague
and famine like that of India, are fields carpeted with
the flowers of heroic self-sacrifice ; they spring up
from the very graves and ashes. And these flowers
do not have growing up beside them the poisoned
weeds of self-seeking or corruption which are sure to
precede, to attend, to follow every war.

The dove of peace that brings the leaves- of healing
does not have trooping at her wings the vultures that
treat their living soldiers like carrion. When Lucan
has seen throughout the catalogue of the national mis
eries that followed the quarrel of Caesar and Pompey,
he winds them all up in the terrible words, " multis
utile bellum " — " war profitable to many men."

There is now much questioning of the propriety of
capital punishment; it is strongly urged that the State
lias no right to take the life even of a hardened crim
inal, whose career has shown no trace of humanity or
usefulness, and has put the capstone of murder on every
other crime.

And yet we are told it is perfectly right to take a
young man of the highest promise, a blessing to all
who knew him, the very man to live for his country,
and send him to be cut down by a bullet or by dysen
tery in a cause he cannot approve.

But there is a still newer theory come up about war
as applied to ourselves. It seems that we share with
a very few other peoples in the world a civilization so
high, and institutions so divine that it is our duty and

EVERETT.

our destiny, to go about the globe swallowing up in
ferior peoples and bestowing on them, whether the}'
will or not, the blessings of the American constitu
tion ? — well, no ! not of the American constitution, but

of the American dominion and that when we are

once started on this work of absorption they are rebels
who do not accept the blessings. Now, if this pre
cious doctrine were true, it utterly annihilates the old
notion of patriotism and love of country ; for that no
tion called upon every nation, however small or weak
or backward, to maintain to the death its independence
against any other, however great or strong or pro
gressive.

According to this Mohammedan doctrine, this
" death or the Koran " doctrine, the Finns and Poles
are not patriots because they object to being absorbed
by Russia, and the Hamburgers are rebels for not ac
cepting the beneficent incorporation into France
graciously proffered to them by Marshal Davoust.

But I will not enlarge upon this delicate subject by
modern Americanism. It is bad enough for the na
tions we threaten to absorb. It is worse for us, the
absorbers. I will ask you to remember what befell a
noble nation which took up the work of benevolently
absorbing the world.

When Xerxes had been driven back in tears to Per
sia, his rout released scores of Greek islands and cities,
in the loveliest of lands and seas, and inhabited by the
highest and wisest of men. There is nothing in art or
literature or science or government that did not take its
rise from them. Their tyrant gone, they looked around
for a protector.

EVERETT. J79

They saw that Athens was mighty on the sea, and
they heard that she was just and generous to all who
sought her citadel. And they put themselves, their
ships and treasure, in the power of Athens, to use them
as she would for the common defense. And the league
was scarcely formed, the Persian was but just crushed,
when the islands began to find that protection meant
subjection.

They could not bear to think that they had only
changed masters, even if Aristides himself assigned
their tribute; and some revolted. The rebellion was
cut down, Athens went on expanding, she made her
subject islands pay money instead of ships, she trans
ferred the treasury to her own citadel; she spent the
money of her allies in those marvellous adornments
that have made her the crown of beauty for the world
forever.

Wider and wider did the empire of the Athenian
democracy extend. Five armies fought her battles in
a single year in five lands; Persia and Egypt, as well
as Sparta, feeling the valor of her soldiers.

And the heart of Athens got drunk with glory, and
the brain of Athens got crazed with power, and the
roar of her boasting rose up to heaven, joined with the
wail of her deceived and trampled subjects. And one
by one they turned and fell from her, and joined their
arms to her rival, who promised them independence;
and every fond and mad endeavor to retain her em
pire only sucked her deeper into the eddy of ruin ; and
at length she was brought to her knees before her
rival and her victorious fleet, and her impregnable
7-6

180 EVERETT.

walls were destroyed with the cry that now began the
freedom of Greece.

It was only the beginning of new slavery; enslaved
by the faithless Sparta, who sold half the cities back
to Persia. Patching up once more a hollow alliance
with Athens, enslaved by Macedonia, enslaved by
Rome, enslaved by the Turks, poor Greece holds at
last what she calls her independence under the protec
tion of the great civilizing nations who let her live be
cause they cannot agree how to cut up her carcass if
they slay her.

Brethren, even as Athens began by protection and
passed into tyranny and then into ruin, so shall every
nation be who interprets patriotism to mean that it is
the only nation in the world, and that every other
which stands in the way of what it chooses to call des
tiny must be crushed. Love your country, honor her,
live for her, if necessary die for her, but remember that
whatever you would call right or wrong in another
country is right and wrong for her and for you; that
right and truth and love to man and allegiance to God
are above all patriotism; and that every citizen who
sustains his country in her sins is responsible to hu
manity, to history, to philosophy, and to Him to whom
all nations are as a drop in the bucket, and the small
dust on the balance.

KILL. iSl

Hill, Benjamin H., an American politician and orator,,
born in Jasper county, Ga., September 14, 1823 ; died at
Atlanta, Ga., August 16, 1882. After his admission to the
Georgia bar he entered upon the exercise of his profession
at La Grange, in his native state, and, being sent to the
State Legislature in 1851, was for ten years a leader of the
Whigs in that body. He opposed the principle of secession
until his State had formally passed an ordinance of seces
sion, when he acquiesced in its decision. He was a con
spicuous supporter of the Confederacy thereafter, serving in
the Confederate Senate throughout its existence. At the
close of the Civil War he was imprisoned for a short time
by the Federal authorities. In 1870 he advised the people
of his State to accept the political situation in an important
" Address to the People of Georgia." He entered Congress
as a representative in 1875, and in 1877 was elected to the
United States Senate. Hill was a constitutional lawyer of
marked ability, and both in court and in Congress distin
guished himself by his eloquence. Among his best known
speeches are his reply to Elaine in the House of Repre
sentatives, his Senate speech against Mahone, and his
address on " The Perils of the Nation," delivered in 1868.

ON THE PERILS OF THE NATION.

DELIVERED BEFORE THE YOUNG MEN^S DEMOCRATIC
UNION, OCTOBER 8, l868.

PEOPLE OF THE NORTH, — In deference to the earn
est wishes of a committee from the Young Men's Dem
ocratic Union Club, and the request of personal friends,
some of whom differ with me in political views, I de
part from my original intention not to make a speech
in the North, and appear before you this evening.

1 82 HILL.

I do not come to ask any favor for the Southern
people. The representative, however, of that people
who have experienced burdens of despotic power, and
the insecurity of anarchy, I come, all the more earnest
ly, to address you in behalf of imperilled constitutional
free government. Will you hear me without passion?

The South — exhausted by a long war and unusual
losses — needs peace; desires peace; begs for peace.
The North — distrustful, if not vindictive — demands
guarantees that the South will keep the peace she so
much needs.

In countries where wars have been more frequent,
the important fact is well established by experiment,
that magnanimity in the conqueror is the very highest
guaranty of contented submission by the conquered.
It is to be regretted that you seem not to have learned
this lesson. A people who will not be magnanimous
in victory are not worthy to be, and will not always re
main, victors.

In the next place, if you of the North would only
open your eyes and see the plainest truth of the cen
tury — that the Southern people fought for what they
believed to be their right — you would find at once a
sufficient guarantee for peace. The South believed
honestly, fought bravely, and surrendered frankly ; and
in each of these facts she presents the most ample title
to credit. Why will you not see and admit the fact
which must go into history, that the Southern people
honestly believed they had a right to secede? Some
of the wisest framers of the constitution taught that
doctrine. Many of the ablest men in the North, as well
as in the South, of every generation, have taught this

HILL. 183

doctrine. Some of your own States made the recogni
tion of that right, the recognition of their ac
ceptance of union. Even your own Webster —
your orator without a rival among you, dead
or living — taught that this right existed for cause —
certainly for much less cause than now exists. Will
you, then, persist in saying that the Southern people
are all traitors for exercising, or attempting to exer
cise, what such men and such States taught was a
right? Will you say they did not honestly believe
such teachers? Was it their intent to commit
treason ?

Here lies the whole cause of our continued troubles.
The North will not admit what all other people know,
and what all history must concede — that the South hon
estly believed in the right of secession. As a result of
this infidelity to such plain fact, you assume that the
Southern people are criminals. This idea is the sum of
all your politics and statesmanship. It must be aban
doned. It must be repudiated thoroughly and prompt
ly. There can never be any peaceful and cordial re
union possible while one half the nation regard the
other half as criminals. How can you trust criminals ?
Why should you desire Union with criminals? If the
Southern people are honest, their assent to the non-
secession construction of the constitution is a sufficient
guarantee. If they are not honest, but criminals, no
promise they could make ought to be trusted. Power
is the only guaranty of fidelity in criminals, and if
you cannot believe and cannot trust the South, you
must, indeed, abandon the constitution and govern
with power forever, or you must give up the South

1 84 HILL.

as unworthy to federate with you in an equal govern
ment of consent.

I speak frankly. If you cannot abandon this miser
able theory and habit in your politics, in your religion,
and in your schools, of regarding the Southern people
as criminal traitors for attempting what good men, and
wise men, and great men taught was their right, you
will make peaceful reunion under free institutions ut
terly impossible.

You must hold them as friends, or let them go as
foreigners, or govern them as subjects. If you govern
them as subjects you must share the penalty, for the
same government can never administer freedom to one
half and despotism to the other half of the same na
tion.

Rise above your passions, then, and realize that here
in is your guaranty: The South believed honestly,
fought bravely, and surrendered frankly.

Again. The exhausted condition of the South ought
to inspire you with confidence in her professions of a
desire for peace. Are you afraid for her to recover
strength? Take care lest the desperation of exhaus
tion prove stronger than the sinews of prosperity.
Peace is not desirable without its blessings.

But you of the North will not try magnanimity : will
insist that the Southern people are traitors; and that
an exhausted people are dangerous, and you must have
guaranties. In your papers, from your pulpits, behind
your counters, on your streets, and along your high
ways, I hear the perpetual charge that the South fought
to destroy the government, committed treason and
murder, and every inhuman crime, and that she is still

HILL. lS$

intractable, and rebellious, and dangerous, and insin
cere, and must concede, and give guaranties.

Well, I am here to show you that the South has
made every concession that an honorable people would
exact, or an honest people could make. . . .

People of the North, will you not rise above passion,
and save your own honor, and our common free gov
ernment by doing plain justice to a people who ac
cepted your pledge, and trusted your honor ?

I beg you to understand the facts of actual history
before it is too late. I repeat and beg you to note what
the South has already conceded as the results of the
war:

First. The South conceded at Appomattox, that the
arguments of the ablest statesmen America ever pro
duced, in favor of the right of secession as a constitu
tional remedy, had been replied to in the only manner
they could be effectually replied to, by physical force;
and the South consented that this judgment, written
by the sword, should have legal force and effect.

Second. The South, by her own act, made valid the
emancipation of her slaves in the only way in which
that emancipation could be made valid, and thus gave
up the property the North sold her, without compen
sation.

Third. The South has solemnly repudiated her
debts, contracted in her defence, and has agreed to pay
a full share of the debt contracted for her subjuga
tion.

Fourth. The South has permitted without hindrance,
the Congress to enter her States and establish tribunals
unknown to the constitution, to govern a portion of

186 HILL.

their population in a manner different from the govern
ments of the States.

Fifth. The South has agreed to make the negroes
citizens and give them absolutely equal civil rights with
the whites, and to extend to them every protection of
law and every facility for education and improvement
which are extended to the whites.

Sixth. In a word, I repeat, the South has agreed to
everything which has been proposed by the civil or mil
itary governments of the United States and by every
department of that government, except the single de
mand to disfranchise their own best men from their
own State offices, at a time when their counsel are
most needed, or to consent that negroes and strangers
may disfranchise them.

For this, and for this only, all their other conces
sions are spit upon, and they are denounced as intract
able, insincere, rebellious, and unwilling to accept the
results of the war! Shame upon leaders who persist
in such charges; and shame upon a people who will
sustain such leaders! . . .

But what will the South do? I will tell you first
what the South will not do, in my opinion.

The South will not secede again. That was her
great folly — folly against her own interest, not wrong
against you. Mark this: That folly will not be re
peated. Even if the people of the South desire the
disruption of the federal government, their statesmen
have the sagacity to see that that result can more ef
fectually come of this secession of the North from the
constitution. Those ominous words " outside of the
constitution " are more terribly significant than those

HILL. IS/

other words " secession from the Union." The former
is a secession having all the vices of the latter greatly
increased and none of its virtues. Certainly none of
its manliness, straightforward candor, and justifica
tion. So note this : The South does not desire nor
seek disunion. If she desired it she does not deem
another secession necessary to bring it about. Disun
ion will come from Chicago, in spite of Southern op
position.

The South will not re-enslave the negro. She did
not enslave him in the first instance. That was your
work. The South took your slave-savage and gave
him the highest civilization ever reached by the negro.
You then freed him and kept the price of his slavery,
and you alone hold the property that was in human
flesh.

But the Southern whites will never consent to the
government of the negro. Never! All your money
spent in the effort to force it will be wasted. The
Southern whites will never consent to social and politi
cal equality with the negro. You may destroy your
selves in the effort to force it, and then you will fail.
,You may send down your armies and exhaust the re
sources of the whole country for a century and pile up
the public debt till it lean against the skies; and you
may burn our cities and murder "our people — our un
armed people — but you will never make them consent
to governments formed by negroes and strangers un
der the dictation of Congress by the power of the bay
onet. Born of the bayonet, this government must live
only by the bayonet.

188 HILL.

Now, I will tell you some things which, in my opin
ion, the South will do.

The South would accept the election of Mr. Sey
mour as a verdict of the Northern people that the gen
eral government was to be administered according to
the constitution, and she would rejoice and come out
of her sorrow strong, beautiful, and growing.

The South will accept the election of General Grant
as a verdict by the Northern people that the constitu
tion is a nullity and that they will that the general gov
ernment be administered outside of it. But the South
will then submit passively to your laws, but in her heart
hope will still cleave to the constitution. It is her only
port of safety from the storm of fanaticism, passion,
and despotism.

The South surrendered secession as a constitutional
remedy at Appomattox, but she did not surrender the
constitution itself, nor the great principles of freedom
it was intended to secure.

Whether Mr. Seymour or General Grant shall be
elected, the Southern States — each State for itself —
will quietly, peacefully, but firmly take charge of and
regulate their own internal domestic affairs in their
own way, subject only to the constitution of fthe
United States. What then will you of the North do?
What will President Grant do? Will you or he send
down armies to compel those States to regulate their
own affairs to suit you outside of the constitution?
Will you?

It is high time this people had recovered from the
passions of war. It is high time that counsel were
taken from statesmen, not demagogues. It is high

HILL. 189

time that editors, preachers, and stump speakers had
ceased slandering the motives and purposes of the
South. It is high time the people of the North and
the South understood each other and adopted means to
inspire confidence in each other. It is high time the
people of each State were permitted to attend to their
own business. Intermeddling is the crime of the cen
tury. If it was folly in the South to secede it was
crime in the North to provoke it. If it was error in
the South to dissolve the Union it is crime in the North
to keep it dissolved.

The South yields secession and yields slavery, and
yields them for equal reunion. People of the North,
now is the auspicious moment to cement anew and for
still greater glory our common Union. But it must be
cemented in mutual good will, as between equals and
under the constitution. Such a Union the South pleads
for. I care not what slanderers say, what fanaticism
represents, or how selfish and corrupt hate and ambi
tion pervert; I tell you there is but one desire in the
South. From every heart in that bright land, from her
cotton fields and grain farms, from her rich valleys and
metal-pregnant mountains, from the lullabies of her
thousands of rippling streams and moaning millions of
her primeval forest-trees, comes up to you but this
one voice — this one earnest, united voice : Flag of our
Union, wave on ; wave ever ! But wave over freemen,
not subject; over States, not Provinces; over a union
of equals, not of lords and vassals ; over a land of law,
of liberty, and of peace, and not of anarchy, oppres
sion, and strife!

People of the North, will you answer back in pa-

HILL.

triotic notes of cheering accord that our common con
stitution shall remain or in the discordant notes of sec
tional hate and national ruin that there shall be pro
tection for the North inside of the constitution and
oppression for the South outside of it?

If the latter then not only the Union, not only the
constitution, but that grand, peculiar system of free
federative governments so wisely devised by our fath
ers and known as the American system, and of which
the constitution is but the instrument and the Union
but the shadow — will die, must die, is dead !

Have you ever studied this American system of gov
ernment? Have you compared it with former sys
tems of free governments, and noted how our fathers
sought to avoid their fatal defects? I commend this
study to your prompt attention. To the heart that
loves liberty it is more enchanting than romance, more
bewitching than love, and more elevating than any
other science. If history proves any one thing more
than another it is that freedom cannot be secured in a
wide and populous country except upon the plan of a
federal compact for general interests, and untram
melled local governments for local interests.

Our fathers adopted this general plan with improve
ments in the details of profound wisdom which can
not be found in any previous system. With what a
noble impulse of common patriotism they came to
gether from distant States and joined their counsels to
devise and perfect this system, henceforth to be forever
known as the American system.

The snows that lodge on the summit of Mount
Washington are not purer than the motives that begot

HILL. IQI

it. The fresh dew-laden zephyrs from the orange
groves of the South are not sweeter than the hopes its
advent inspired. The flight of its own symbolic eagle,
though he blew his breath upon the sun, could not be
higher than its expected destiny ! Alas, are these mo
tives now corrupted ? Are these hopes poisoned ? And
is this high destiny eclipsed, and so soon, — aye, be
fore a century has brought to manhood its youthful
visage ? Stop before the blow is given and let us con
sider but its early blessings.

Under the benign influences of this promising Amer
ican system of government our whole country at once
entered upon a career of prosperity without a parallel
in human annals. The seventy years of its life brought
more thrift, more success, more individual freedom,
more universal happiness with fewer public burdens
than were ever before enjoyed or borne by any por
tion of the world in five centuries. From three mil
lions of whites we became thirty millions. From three
hundred thousand blacks we became four millions —
a greater relative increase than of the whites with all
the aid of immigration. From a narrow peopled slope
along the dancing Atlantic we stretched with wide
girth to the sluggish Pacific. From a small power
which a European despotism, in jealousy of a rival,
patronizingly took by the hand and led to independence,
we became a power whose voice united was heard
throughout the world and whose frown might well be
dreaded by the combined powers of earth. Our gran
aries fed and our factories clothed mankind. The buf
falo and his hunter were gone, and cities rose in the
forests of the former, and flowers grew, and hammers

IQ2 HILL.

rang, and prayers were said, in the playgrounds of the
latter. Millions grew to manhood without seeing a
soldier, or hearing a cannon, or knowing the shape or
place of a bayonet ! And is this happy, fruitful, peace
ful system dying — hopelessly dying? Has it but twen
ty days more to live a struggling life?

People of the North, the answer is with you. Rise
above passion, throw away corruption, cease to hate
and learn to trust, and this dying system will spring
to newer and yet more glorious life. The stake is too
great for duplicity and the danger too imminent for
trifling. The past calls to you to vindicate its wisdom ;
the present charges you with its treasures, and the fu
ture demands of you its hopes. Forget your anger
and be superior to the littleness of revenge. Meet the
South in her cordial proffers of happy reunion and turn
not from her offered hand.

From your great cities and teeming prairies, from
your learned altars and countless cottages, from your
palaces on sea and land, from your millions on the wa
ters and your multiplied millions on the plains, let one
united cheering voice meet the voice that now comes
so earnest from the South, and let the two voices go
tip in harmonious, united, eternal, ever-swelling chorus,
Flag of our Union ! wave on ; wave ever ! Aye, for it
waves over freemen, not subjects; over States, not
Provinces ; over a union of equals, not of lords and vas
sals; over a land of law, of liberty, and peace, not of
anarchy, oppression, and strife!

HAY. 195

Hay, John, a distinguished American diplomatist and
man of letters, born at Salem, Ind., October 8, 1838. He
studied law and shortly after his admission to the bar in
1 86 1 became an assistant secretary to President Lincoln.
He served for a time in the Federal army during the Civil
War and was subsequently secretary of legation at Paris and
Madrid, and charge d'affaires at Vienna. For six years he
was one of the editors of the New York Tribune, and from
1879 to ' 1 88 1, assistant secretary of State. He was ap
pointed ambassador to Great Britain in 1897, and in
September, 1898, was recalled in order to assume the office.
of secretary of state in the national cabinet. He has pub
lished several volumes of poems, and, with John NicoJay, a
Life of Abraham Lincoln in ten volumes. He is a skilful
diplomatist and an able, polished orator.

SECRETARY OF STATE'S TRIBUTE TO THE
DEAD PRESIDENT.

THE JOINT MEMORIAL SESSION OF THE UNITED STATES
SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
FEE 27, I9O2.

" For the third time the Congress of the United
States are assembled to commemorate the life and the
death of a President slain by the hand of an assassin.
The attention of the future historian will be attracted
to the features which reappear with startling sameness
in all three of these awful crimes : the uselessness, the
utter lack of consequence of the act; the obscurity, the
insignificance of the criminal; the blamelessness — so
far as in our sphere of existence the best of men may
be held blameless — of the victim. Net one of our

IQ4 HAY.

murdered Presidents had an enemy in the world; they
were all of such pre-eminent purity of life that no pre
text could be given for the attack of passional crime;
they were all men of democratic instincts, who could
never have offended the most jealous advocates of
equality; they were of kindly and generous nature, to
whom wrong or injustice was impossible ; of moderate
fortune, whose slender means nobody could envy.
They were men of austere virtue, of tender heart, of
eminent abilities, which they had devoted with single
minds to the good of the Republic. If ever men
walked before God and man without blame, it was
these three rulers of our people. The only temptation
to attack their lives offered was their gentle radiance —
to eyes hating the light that was offence enough.

" The stupid uselessness of such an infamy affronts
the common sense of the world. One can conceive
how the death of a dictator may change the political
conditions of an Empire; how the extinction of a nar
rowing line of kings may bring in an alien dynasty.
But in a well-ordered Republic like ours, the ruler may
fall, but the State feels no tremor. Our beloved and
revered leader is gone — but the natural process of our
laws provides us a successor, identical in purpose and
ideals, nourished by the same teachings, inspired by the
same principles, pledged by tender affection as well as
by high loyalty to carry to completion the immense
task committed to his hands, and to smite with iron
severity every manifestation of that hideous crime
which his mild predecessor, with his dying breath, for
gave. The sayings of celestial wisdom have no date;
the words that reach us, over two thousand years, out

HAY. 195

•of the darkest hour of gloom the world has ever known,
are true to life to-day : ' They know not what they do.5
The blow struck at our dear friend and ruler was as
deadly as blind hate could make it; but the blow
struck at anarchy was deadlier still.

THE PROBLEM OF ANARCHY.

" What a world of insoluble problems such an event
excites in the mind! Not merely in its personal, but
in its public aspects, it presents a paradox not to be
comprehended. Under a system of government so
free and so impartial that we recognize its existence
only by its benefactions ; under a social order so purely
democratic that classes cannot exist in it, affording
opportunities so universal that even conditions are as
changing as the winds, where the laborer of to-day is
the capitalist of to-morrow; under laws which are the
result of ages of evolution, so uniform and so bene
ficent that the President has just the same rights and
privileges as the artisan; we see the same hellish
growth of hatred and murder which dogs equally the
footsteps of benevolent monarchs and blood-stained
despots. How many countries can join with us in the
community of a kindred sorrow! I will not speak of
those distant regions where assassination enters into
the daily life of government. But among the nations
bound to us by the ties of familiar intercourse — who
can forget that wise and mild Autocrat who had earned
the proud title of the Liberator? that enlightened and
magnanimous citizen whom France still mourns? that
brave and chivalrous King of Italy who only lived for
his people? and, saddest of all, that lovely and sorrow-

196 HAY.

ing Empress, whose harmless life could hardly have
excited the animosity of a demon. Against that devil
ish spirit nothing avails — neither virtue nor patriotism,
nor age nor youth, nor conscience nor pity. We can
not even say that education is a sufficient safeguard
against this baleful evil — for most of the wretches
whose crimes have so shocked humanity in recent years
were men not unlettered, who have gone from the
common schools, through murder to the scaffold.

" Our minds cannot discern the origin nor conceive
the extent of wickedness so perverse and so cruel ; but
this does not exempt us from the duty of trying to
control and counteract it. We do not understand what
electricity is ; whence it comes or what its hidden prop
erties may be. But we know it as a mighty force for
good or evil — and so with the painful toil of years men
of learning and skill have labored to store and to sub
jugate it, to neutralize, and even to employ its destruc
tive energies. This problem of anarchy is dark and
intricate, but it ought to be within the compass of
democratic government — although no sane mind can
fathom the mysteries of these untracked and orbitless
natures — to guard against their aberrations, to take
away from them the hope of escape, the long luxury of
scandalous days in court, the unwholesome sympathy
of hysterical degenerates, and so by degrees to make
the crime not worth committing, even to these ab
normal and distorted souls.

" It would be presumptuous for me in this presence
to suggest the details of remedial legislation for a
malady so malignant. That task may safely be left
to the skjll and patience of the National Congress,

HAY.

^vhich has never been found unequal to any such emer
gency. The country believes that the memory of three
murdered comrades of yours — all of whose voices still
haunt these walls — will be a sufficient inspiration to
enable you to solve even this abstruse and painful prob
lem, which has dimmed so many pages of history with
blood and with tears.

A TYPICAL AMERICAN.

" Before an audience less sympathetic than this, I
should not dare to speak of that great career which we
have met to commemorate. But we are all his friends,
and friends do not criticise each other's words about
an open grave. I thank you for the honor you have
done me in inviting me here, and not less for the
kind forbearance I know I shall have from you in my
most inadequate efforts to speak of him worthily.

" The life of William McKinley was, from his birth
to his death, typically American. There is no envir
onment, I should say, anywhere else in the world which
could produce just such a character. He was born into
that way of life which elsewhere is called the middle
class, but which in this country is so nearly universal
c.s to make of other classes an almost negligible quan
tity. He was neither rich nor poor, neither proud nor
humble ; he knew no hunger he was not sure of satisfy
ing, no luxury which could enervate mind or body.
His parents were sober, God-fearing- people ; intelligent
and upright, without pretension and without humility.
He grew up in the company of boys like himself,
wholesome, honest, self-respecting. They looked down
on nobody; they never felt it possible they could be

198 HAY.

looked down upon. Their houses were the homes of
probity, piety, patriotism. They learned in the admir
able school readers of fifty years ago the lessons of
heroic and splendid life which have come down from
the past. They read in their weekly newspapers the
story of the world's progress, in which they were eager
to take part, and of the sins and wrongs of civilization
with which they burned to do battle. It was a serious
and thoughtful time. The boys of that day felt dimly,
but deeply, that days of sharp struggle and high
achievement were before them. They looked at life
with the wondering yet resolute eyes of a young
esquire in his vigil of arms. They felt a time was
coming when to them should be addressed the stern
admonition of the Apostle, " Quit you like men ; be
strong."

THE DAYS OF i860.

" It is not easy to give to those of a later generation
any clear idea of that extraordinary spiritual awaken
ing which passed over the country at the first red signal
fires of the war between the States. It was not our
earliest apocalypse; a hundred years before the nation
had been revealed to itself, when after long discussion
and much searching of heart the people of the colonies
had resolved, that to live without liberty was worse
than to die, and had therefore wagered in the solemn
game of war ' their lives, their fortunes, and their
sacred honor/ In a stress of heat and labor unutter
able, the country had been hammered and welded to
gether; but thereafter for nearly a century there had
been nothing in our life to touch the innermost foun-

HAY. 199

tain of feeling and devotion; we had had rumors of
wars — even wars we had had, not without sacrifices
and glory — but nothing which went to the vital self-
consciousness of the country, nothing which challenged
the nation's right to live. But in 1860 the nation was
going down into the Valley of Decision. The ques
tion which had been debated on thousands of platforms,
which had been discussed in countless publications,
which, thundered from innumerable pulpits, had caused
in their congregations the bitter strife and dissension
to which only cases of conscience can give rise, was
everywhere pressing for solution. And not merely in
the various channels of publicity was it alive and clam
orous. About every fireside in the land, in the conver
sation of friends and neighbors, and deeper still, in the
secret of millions of human hearts, the battle of opinion
was waging; and all men felt and saw — with more or
less clearness — that an answer to the importunate ques
tion : Shall the nation live ? was due, and not to be
denied. And I do not mean that in the North alone
there was this austere wrestling with conscience. In
the South as well, below all the effervescence and ex
citement of a people perhaps more given to eloquent
speech than we were, there was the profound agony of
question and answer, the summons to decide whether
honor and freedom did not call them to revolution and
war. It is easy for partisanship to say that the one
side was right and that the other was wrong. It is
still easier for an indolent magnanimityto say that both
were right. Perhaps in the wide view of ethics one is
always right to follow his conscience, though it lead
him to disaster and death. But history is inexorable.

2OO HAY.

She takes no account of sentiment and intention; and
in her cold and luminous eyes that side is right which
fights in harmony with the stars in their courses. The
men are right through whose efforts and struggles the
world is helped onward, and humanity moves to a
higher level and a brighter day.

" The men who are living to-day and who were
young in 1860 will never forget the glory and glamor
that filled the earth and the sky when the long twilight
of doubt and uncertainty was ending and the time for
action had come. A speech by Abraham Lincoln was
an event not only of high moral significance, but of
far-reaching importance; the drilling of a militia com
pany by Ellsworth attracted national attention; the
fluttering of the flag in the clear sky drew tears from
the eyes of young men. Patriotism, which had been a
rhetorical expression, became a passionate emotion, in
which instinct, logic and feeling were fused. The
country was worth saving; it could be saved only by
fire; no sacrifice was too great; the young men of the
country w7ere ready for the sacrifice; come weal, come
woe, they were ready.

M'KINLEY THE SOLDIER.

** Arty years of age William McKinley heard this
summons of his country. He was the sort of youth
to whom a military life in ordinary times would possess
no attractions. His nature was far different from that
of the ordinary soldier. He had other dreams of life,
its prizes and pleasures, than that of marches and bat
tles. But to his mind there was no choice or question.
The banner floating in the morning breeze was the

HAY. 201

beckoning1 gesture of his country. The thrilling notes
of the trumpet called him — him and none other — into
the ranks. His portrait in his first uniform is familiar
to you all — the short, stocky figure ; the quiet thought
ful face; the deep, dark eyes. It is the face of a lad
who could not stay at home when he thought he was
needed in the field. He was of the stuff of which good
soldiers are made. Had he been ten years older he
would have entered at the head of a company and come
out at the head of a division. But he did what he
could. He enlisted as a private; he learned to obey.
His serious, sensible ways, his prompt, alert efficiency
soon attracted the attention of his superiors. He was
so faithful in little things that they gave him more and
more to do. He was untiring in camp and on the
march; swift, cool and fearless in fight. He left the
Army with field rank when the war ended, brevetted
by President Lincoln for gallantry in battle.

" In coming years, when men seek to draw the moral
of our great Civil War, nothing will seem to them so
admirable in all the history of our two magnificent
armies as the way in which the war came to a close.
When the Confederate army saw the time had come,
they acknowledged the pitiless logic of facts and ceased
fighting. When the army of the Union saw it was
no longer needed, without a murmur or question, mak
ing no terms, asking no return, in the flush of victory
and fulness of might, it laid clown its arms and melted
back into the mass of peaceful citizens. There is no
event since the nation was born which has so proved
its solid capacity for self-government. Both sections
share equally in tint crown of glory. They had held

202 HAY.

a debate of incomparable importance and had fought it
out with equal energy. A conclusion had been reached
— and it is to the everlasting honor of both sides that
they each knew when the war was over and the hour
of a lasting peace had struck. We may admire the
desperate daring of others who prefer annihilation to
compromise, but the palm of common sense, and, I will
say, of enlightened patriotism, belongs to the men like
Grant and Lee, who knew when they had fought
enough, for honor and for country.

M'KINLEY THE LAWYER.

u William McKinley, one of that sensible million of
men, gladly laid down his sword and betook himself
to his books. He quickly made up the time lost in
soldiering. He attacked his Blackstohe as he would
have done a hostile intrenchment ; finding the range of
a country law library too narrow, he went to the
Albany Law School, where he worked energetically
with brilliant success; was admitted to the bar and
settled down to practise — a brevetted veteran of 24 —
in the quiet town of Canton, now and henceforth for
ever famous as the scene of his life and his place of
sepulture. Here many blessings awaited him : high
repute, professional success, and a domestic affection
so pure, so devoted and stainless that future poets,
seeking an ideal of Christian marriage, will find in it
a theme worthy of their songs. This is a subject to
which the lightest allusion seems profanation ; but it is
impossible to speak of William McKinley without re
membering that no truer, tenderer knight to his chosen
lady ever lived among mortal men. If to the spirits.

HAY. 203

of the just made perfect is permitted the consciousness
of earthly things, we may be sure that his faithful soul
is now watching over that gentle sufferer who counts
the long hours in their shattered home in the desolate
splendor of his fame.

" A man possessing the qualities with which nature
had endowed McKinley seeks political activity as nat
urally as a growing plant seeks light and air. A
wholesome ambition; a rare power of making friends
and keeping them; a faith, which may be called relig
ious, in his country and its institutions; and, flowing
from this, a belief that a man could do no nobler work
than to serve such a country — these were the elements
in his character that drew him irresistibly into public
life. He had from the beginning a remarkable equip
ment; a manner of singular grace and charm; a voice
of ringing quality and great carrying power — vast as
were the crowds that gathered about him, he reached
their utmost fringe without apparent effort. He had
an extraordinary power of marshalling and presenting
significant facts, so as to bring conviction to the aver
age mind. His range of reading was not wide; he
read only what he might some day find useful; and
what he read his memory held like brass. Those who
knew him well in those early days can never forget
the consummate skill and power with which he would
select a few pointed facts and, blow upon blow, would
hammer them into the attention of great assemblages
in Ohio, as Jael drove the nail into the head of the
Canaanite captain. He was not often impassioned ; he
rarely resorted to the aid of wit or humor ; yet I never
saw his equal in controlling and convincing a popular

234 HAY.

audience by sheer appeal to their reason and intelli
gence. He did not flatter or cajole them, but there
was an implied compliment in the serious and sober
tone in which he addressed them. He seemed one of
them ; in heart and feeling he was one of them. Each
artisan in a great crowd might say: That is the sort
of man I would like to be, and under more favoring cir
cumstances might have been. He had the divine gift of
sympathy, which, though given only to the elect, makes
all men their friends.

M'KINLEY THE CONGRESSMAN.

" So it came naturally about that in 1876 — the be
ginning of the second century of the Republic — he be
gan, by an election to Congress, his political career.
Thereafter for fourteen years this chamber was his
home. I use the word advisedly. Nowhere in the
world was he so in harmony with his environment as
here; nowhere else did his mind work with such full
consciousness of its powers. The air of debate was
native to him ; here he drank delight of battle with his
peers. In after days, when he drove by this stately
pile, or when on rare occasions his duty called him
here, he greeted his old haunts with the affectionate
zest of a child of the house; during all the last ten
years of his life, filled as they were with activity and
glory, he never ceased to be homesick for this hall.
When he came to the Presidency, there was not a day
when his Congressional service was not of use to
him. Probably no other President has been in such
full and cordial communion with Congress, if we may
except Lincoln alone. McKinley knew the legislative

HAY. 205

body thoroughly, its composition, its methods, its
habit of thought. He had the profoundest respect for
its authority and an inflexible belief in the ultimate rec-
titnde of its purposes. Our history shows how sure
an executive courts disaster and ruin by assuming an
attitude of hostility or distrust to the Legislature;
and, on the other hand, McKinley's frank and sincere
trust and confidence in Congress were repaid by prompt
and loyal support and co-operation. During his en
tire term of office this mutual trust and regard — so
essential to the public welfare — was never shadowed by
a single cloud.

" He was a Republican. He could not be anything
else. A Union soldier grafted upon a Clay Whig, he
necessarily believed in the ' American System ' — in
protection to home industries; in a strong, aggressive
nationality; in a liberal construction of the Constitu
tion. What any self-reliant nation might rightly do,
he felt this nation had power to do, if required by the
common welfare and not prohibited by our written
charter.

" Following the natural bent of his mind, he de
voted himself to questions of finance and revenue, to
the essentials of the national housekeeping. He took
high rank in the House from the beginning. His readi
ness in debate, his mastery of every subject he handled,
the bright and amiable light he shed about him, and
above all the unfailing courtesy and goodwill with
which he treated friend and foe alike — one of the surest
signatures of a nature born to great destinies — made
his service in the House a pathway of unbroken suc
cess and brought him at last to the all-important post

206 HAY.

of chairman of Ways and Means and leader of the
majority. Of the famous revenue act which, in that
capacity, he framed and carried through Congress, it
is not my purpose here and now to speak. The embers
of the controversy in the midst of which that law had
its troubled being are yet too warm to be handled on a
day like this. I may only say that it was never suf
ficiently tested to prove the praises of its friends or the
criticisms of its opponents. After a brief existence it
passed away, for a time, in the storm that swept the
Republicans out of power. McKinley also passed
through a brief zone of shadow, his Congressional dis
trict having been rearranged for that purpose by a hos
tile Legislature.

" Some one has said it is easy to love our enemies ;
they help us so much more than our friends. The
people whose malevolent skill had turned McKinley
out of Congress deserved well of him and of the Re
public. Never was Nemesis more swift and energetic.
The Republicans of Ohio were saved the trouble of
choosing a Governor — the other side had chosen
one for them. A year after McKinley teft Con
gress he was made Governor of Ohio, and two
years later he was re-elected, each time by majorities
uphoped-for and overwhelming. He came to fill a
space in the public eye which obscured a great portion
of the field of vision. In two National Conventions,
the Presidency seemed within his reach. But he had
gone there in the interest of others and his honor for
bade any dalliance with temptation. So his nay was
nay — delivered with a tone and gesture there was no
denying. His hour was not yet come.

HAY. 207

M'KINLEY THE ORATOR.

" There was, however, no long delay. He became
from year to year, the most prominent politician and
orator in the country. Passionately devoted to the
principles of his party, he was always ready to do any
thing, to go anywhere, to proclaim its ideas and to
support its candidates. His face and his voice became
familiar to millions of our people; and wherever they
were seen and heard, men became his partisans. His
face was cast in a classic mould; you see faces like it
in antique marble in the galleries of the Vatican and
In the portraits of the great Cardinal-statesmen of
Italy; his voice was the voice of the perfect orator —
ringing, vibrating, tireless, persuading by its very
sound, by its accent of sincere conviction. So prudent
and so guarded were all his utterances, so lofty his
courtesy, that he never embarrassed his friends, and
never offended his opponents. For several months be
fore the Republican National Convention met in
1896 it was evident to all who had eyes to see that
Mr. McKinley was the only probable candidate of his
party. Other names were mentioned, of the highest
rank in ability, character and popularity; they were
supported by powerful combinations, but the nomina
tion of William McKinley as against the field, was in
evitable.

" The campaign he made will be always memorable
in our political annals. He and his friends had thought
that the issue for the year was the distinctive and his
toric difference between the two parties on the subject
of the tariff. To this wager of battle the discussions

208 HAY.

of the previous four years distinctly pointed. But no
sooner had the two parties made their nominations
than it became evident that the opposing candidate de
clined to accept the field of discussion chosen by the
Republicans, and proposed to put forward as the main
issue the free coinage of silver. McKinley at once ac
cepted this challenge, and, taking the battle, for pro
tection as already won, went with energy into the dis
cussion of the theories presented by his opponents. He
had wisely concluded not to leave his home during the
canvass, thus avoiding a proceeding which has always
been of sinister augury in our politics ; but from the
front porch of his modest house in Canton he daily
addressed the delegations which came from every part
of the country to greet him in a series of speeches so
strong, so varied, so pertinent, so full of facts briefly
set forth, of theories embodied in a single phrase, that
they formed the hourly text for the other speakers of
his party, and give probably the most convincing proof
we have of his surprising fertility of resource and flex
ibility of mind. All this was done without anxiety or
strain. I remember a day I spent with him during that
busy summer. He had made nineteen speeches the day
before; that day he made many. But in the intervals
of these addresses he sat in his study and talked, with
nerves as quiet and a mind as free from care as if we
had been spending a holiday at the seaside or among
the hills.

M'KINLEY THE STATESMAN.

" When he came to the Presidency he confronted
a situation of the utmost difficulty, which might well

HAY. 209

have appalled a man of less serene and tranquil self-
confidence. There had been a state of profound com
mercial and industrial depression from which his friends
had said his election would relieve the country. Our
relations with the outside world left much to be de
sired. The feeling between the Northern and South
ern sections of the Union was lacking in the cordiality
which was necessary to the welfare of both. Hawaii
had asked for annexation and had been rejected by the
preceding administration. There was a state of
things in the Caribbean which could not permanently
endure. Our neighbor's house was on fire, and there
were grave doubts as to our rights and duties in the
premises. A man either weak or rash, either irresolute
or headstrong, might have brought ruin on himself and
incalculable harm to the country.

" Again I crave the pardon of those who differ with
me, if, against all my intentions, I happen to say a
word which may seem to them unbefitting the place and
hour. But I am here to give the opinion which his
friends entertained of President McKinley, of course
claiming no immunity from criticism in what I shall
say. I believe, then, that the verdict of history will be
that he met all these grave questions with perfect valor
and incomparable ability; that in grappling with them
he rose to the full height of a great occasion, in a man
ner which redounded to the lasting benefit of the coun
try and to his own immortal honor.

' The least desirable form of glory to a man of his
habitual mood and temper — that of successful war —
was nevertheless conferred upon him by uncontrollable
events. He felt it must come; he deplored its neces-

210 HAY.

sity; he strained almost to breaking his relations with
his friends, in order, first to prevent and then to post
pone it to the latest possible moment. But when the
die was cast, he labored with the utmost energy and
ardor, and with an intelligence in military matters
which showed how much of the soldier still survived in
the mature statesman to push forward the war to a
decisive close. War was an anguish to him ; he wanted
it short and conclusive. His merciful zeal communi
cated itself to his subordinates, and the war, so long"
dreaded, whose consequences were so momentous,
ended in a hundred days.

" Mr. Stedman, the dean of our poets, has called
him ' Augmenter of the State.' It is a proud title; if
justly conferred, it ranks him among the few whose
names may be placed definitely and forever in charge
of the historic Muse. Under his rule Hawaii has come
to us, and Tutuila ; Porto Rica and the vast archipelago
of the East. Cuba is free. Our position in the Carib
bean is assured beyond the possibility of future ques
tion. The doctrine called by the name of Monroe, so
long derided and denied by alien publicists, evokes now
no challenge or contradiction when uttered to the
world. It has become an international truism. Our
sister republics to the south of us are convinced that
we desire only their peace and prosperity. Europe
knows that we cherish no dreams but those of world
wide commerce, the benefit of which shall be to all na
tions. The State is augmented, but it threatens no na
tion under heaven. As to those regions which have
come under the shadow of our flag, the possibility of
their being damaged by such change of circumstances

HAY. 211

was in the view of McKinley a thing .unthinkable. To
believe that we could not administer them to their ad
vantage, was to turn infidel to our American faith of
more than a hundred years.

M'KINLEY THE DIPLOMAT.

" In dealing with foreign Powers he will take rank
with the greatest of our diplomatists. It was a world
of which he had little special knowledge before com
ing to the Presidency. But his marvellous adaptability
was in nothing more remarkable than in the firm
grasp he immediately displayed in international rela
tions. In preparing for war and in the restoration of
peace he was alike adroit, courteous and far-sighted.
When a sudden emergency declared itself, as in China,
in a state of things of which our history furnished no
precedent and international law no safe and certain
precept, he hesitated not a moment to take the course
marked out for him by considerations of humanity and
the national interests. Even while the legations were
fighting for their lives against bands of infuriated fan
atics, he decided that we were at peace with China ;
and while that conclusion did not hinder him from
taking the most energetic measures to rescue our im
perilled citizens, it enabled him to maintain close and
friendly relations with the wise and heroic Viceroys
of the South, whose resolute stand saved that ancient
empire from anarchy and spoliation. He disposed of
every question as it arose with a promptness and
clarity of vision that astonished his advisers, and he
never had occasion to review a judgment or reverse a

decision.
8-6

212 HAY.

" By patience, by firmness, by sheer reasonableness,
he improved our understanding with all the great
Powers of the world, and rightly gained the blessing
which belongs to the peacemakers.

M'KINLEY THE ECONOMIST.

" But the achievements of the nation in war and
diplomacy are thrown in the shade by the vast econo
mical developments which took place during Mr. Mc-
Kinley's administration. Up to the time of his first
election, the country was suffering from a long period
of depression, the reasons of which I will not try to
seek. But from the moment the ballots were counted
that betokened his advent to power, a great and mo
mentous movement in advance declared itself along
all the lines of industry and commerce. In the very
month of his inauguration steel rails began to be sold
at $18 a ton — one of the most significant facts of mod
ern times. It meant that American industries had ad
justed themselves to the long depression — that through
the power of the race to organize and combine, stimu
lated by the conditions then prevailing, and perhaps by
prospect of legislation favorable to industry, Amer
ica had begun to undersell the rest of the world. The
movement went on without ceasing. The President
and his party kept the pledges of their platform and
their canvass. The Dingley bill was speedily framed
and set in operation. All industries responded to the
new stimulus and American trade set out on its new
crusade, not to conquer the world, but to trade with it
on terms advantageous to all concerned. I will not
weary you with statistics, but one or two words seem

HAY. 213

necessary to show how the acts of McKinley as Presi
dent kept pace with his professions as candidate. His
four years of administration were costly ; we carried on
a war which, though brief, was expensive. Although
we borrowed $200,000,000 and paid our own expenses
without asking for indemnity, the effective reduction
of the debt now exceeds the total of the war bonds.
We pay $6,000,000 less in interest than we did before
the war and no bond of the United States yields the
holder 2 per cent, on its market value. So much for the
Government credit ; and we have $546,000,000 of gross
gold in the Treasury.

" But, coming to the development of our trade in
the four McKinley years, we seem to be entering the
realm of fable. In the last fiscal year our excess of ex
ports over imports was $664,592,826. In the last four
years it was $2,354,442,213. These figures are so
stupendous that they mean little to a careless reader —
but consider ! The excess of exports over imports for
the whole preceding period from 1790 to 1897 — from
Washington to McKinley — was only $356,808,822.

" The most extravagant promises made by the san
guine McKinley advocates five years ago are left out
of sight by these sober facts. The debtor nation has
become the chief creditor nation. The financial centre
of the world, which required thousands of years to
journey from the Euphrates to the Thames and the
Seine, seems passing to the Hudson between daybreak
and dark.

" I will not waste your time by explaining that I do
not invoke for any man the credit of this vast result.
The captain cannot claim that it is he who drives the

214 HAY.

mighty steamship over the tumbling billows of the
trackless deep; but praise is justly due him if he has
made the best of her tremendous powers, if he has
read aright the currents of the sea and the lessons of
the stars. And we should be ungrateful if in this hour
of prodigious prosperity we should fail to remember
that William McKinley with sublime faith foresaw it,
with indomitable courage labored for it, put his whole
heart and mind into the work of bringing it about;
that it \vas his voice which, in dark hours, rang out,
heralding the coming light, as over the twrilight wa
ters of the Nile the mystic cry of Memnon announced
the dawn to Egypt, waking from sleep.

M'KINLEY THE HARMONIZER.

" Among the most agreeable incidents of the Presi
dent's term of office were the two journeys he made to
the South. The moral reunion of the sections — so long
and so ardently desired by him — had been initiated by
the Spanish \var, when the veterans of both sides, and
their sons, had marched shoulder to shoulder together
under the same banner. The President in these jour
neys sought, with more than usual eloquence and
pathos, to create a sentiment which should end forever
the ancient feud. He was too good a politician to ex
pect any results in the way of votes in his favor, and
he accomplished none. But for all that the good seed
did not fall on barren ground. In the warm and chiv
alrous heart of that generous people, the echo of his
cordial and brotherly words will linger long, and his
name will be cherished in many a household where
even yet the lost cause is worshipped.

HAY. 215

" Mr. McKinley was re-elected by an overwhelming
majority. There had been little doubt of the result
among well-informed people; but when it was known,
a profound feeling of relief and renewal of trust were
evident among the leaders of capital and of industry,
not only in this country, but everywhere. They felt
that the immediate future was secure, and that trade
and commerce might safely push forward in every
field of effort and enterprise. He inspired universal
confidence, which is the lifeblood of the commercial
system of the world. It began frequently to be said
that such a state of things ought to continue ; one after
another, men of prominence said that the President was
his own best successor. He paid little attention to
these suggestions until they were repeated by some of
his nearest friends. Then he saw that one of the most
cherished traditions of our public life was in danger.
The generation which has seen the prophecy of the
Papal throne — Non videbis annos Petri — twice contra
dicted by the longevity of holy men was in peril of
forgetting the unwritten law of our Republic. Thou
shalt not exceed the years of Washington. The Presi
dent saw it was time to speak, and in his characteristic
manner he spoke, briefly, but enough. Where the
lightning strikes there is no need of iteration. From
that hour, no one dreamed of doubting his purpose of
retiring at the end of his second term, and it will be
long before another such lesson is required.

M'KINLEY THE PATRIOT.

" He felt that the harvest time was come, to garner
in the fruits of so much planting and culture, and he

2l6 HAY.

was determined that notl ing he might do or say
should be liable to the reproach of a personal interest.
Let us say frankly he was a party man ; he believed the
politics advocated by him and his friends counted for
much in the country's progress and prosperity. He
hoped in his second term to accomplish substantial re
sults in the development and affirmation of those poli
cies. I spent a day with him shortly before he started
on his fateful journey to Buffalo. Never had I seen
him higher in hope and patriotic confidence. He was
as sure of the future of his country as the Psalmist
who cried ' Glorious things are spoken of thee, thou
City of God.' He was gratified to the heart that we
had arranged a treaty which gave us a free hand in the
Isthmus. In fancy he saw the canal already built and
the argosies of the world passing through it in peace
and amity. He saw in the immense evolution of Amer
ican trade the fulfilment of all his dreams, the reward
of all his labors. He was — I need not say — an ardent
protectionist, never more sincere and devoted than
during those last days of his life. He regarded reci
procity as the bulwark of protection — not a breach,
but a fulfilment of the law. The treaties which for
four years had been preparing under his personal
supervision he regarded as ancillary to the general
scheme. He was opposed to any revolutionary
plan of change in the existing legislation ; he was care
ful to point out that everything he had done was in
faithful compliance with the law itself.

" In that mood of high hope, of generous expecta
tion, he went to Buffalo, and there, on the threshold
of eternity, he delivered that memorable speech, worthy

HAY. 217

for its loftiness of tone, its blameless morality, its
breadth of view, to be regarded as his testament to
the nation. Through all his pride of country and his
joy of its success runs the note of solemn warning, as
in Kipling's noble hymn, ' Lest we Forget/

" ' Our capacity to produce has developed so enor
mously and our products have so multiplied that the
problem of more markets requires our urgent and im
mediate attention. Only a broad and enlightened pol
icy will keep what we have. No other policy will get
more. In these times of marvellous business energy
and gain we ought to be looking to the future, strength
ening the weak places in our industrial and commercial
systems, that we may be ready for any storm or
strain.

" 'By sensible trade arrangements which will not in
terrupt our home production we shall extend the out
lets for our increasing surplus. A system which pro
vides a mutual exchange of commodities is manifestly
essential to the continued and healthful growth of our
export trade. We must not repose in fancied security
that we can forever sell everything and buy little or
nothing.

" i If such a thing were possible, it would not be
best for us or for those with whom we deal. . . .
Reciprocity is the natural outgrowth of our wonderful
industrial development under the domestic policy now
firmly established. . . . The period of exclusiveness
is past. The expansion of our trade and commerce is
the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofit
able. A policy of goodwill and friendly trade rela-

21 8 HAY.

tions will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are
in harmony with the spirit of the times; measures of
retaliation are not.'

" I wish I had time to read the whole of this wise
and weighty speech; nothing I might say could give
such a picture of the President's mind and character.
His years of apprenticeship had been served. He stood
that day past-master of the art of statesmanship. He
had nothing more to ask of the people. He owed them
nothing but truth and faithful service. His mind and
heart were purged of the temptations which beset all
men engaged in the struggle to survive. In view of
the revelation of his nature vouchsafed to us that
day, and the fate which impended over him, we can
only say in deep affection and solemn awe : ' Blessed are
the pure in heart, for they shall see God/ Even for
that vision he was not unworthy.

M'KINLEY THE HEROIC.

" He had not long to wait. The next day sped the
bolt of doom, and for a week after — in an agony of
dread, broken by illusive glimpses of hope that our
prayers might be answered — the nation waited for the
end. Nothing in the glorious life that we saw gradu
ally waning was more admirable and exemplary than
its close. The gentle humanity of his words when he
saw his assailant in danger of summary vengeance,
' Don't let them hurt him ;' his chivalrous care that
the news should be broken gently to his wife; the fine
courtesy with which he apologized for the damage
which his death would bring to the great Exhibition;
and the heroic resignation of his final words, ' It is

HAY. 219

God's way; His will, not ours, be done/ were all the
instinctive expressions of a nature so lofty and so
pure that pride in its nobility at once softened and en
hanced the nation's sense of loss. The Republic
grieved over such a son — but is proud forever of hav
ing produced him. After all, in spite of its tragic
ending, his life was extraordinarily happy. He had,
all his days, troops of friends, the cheer of fame and
fruitful labor; and he became at last,

On fortune's crowning slope,
The pillar of a people's hope,
The centre of a world's desire.

" He was fortunate even in his untimely death, for
an event so tragical called the world imperatively to
the immediate study of his life and character, and thus
anticipated the sure praises of posterity.

" Every young and growing people has to meet, at
moments, the problems of its destiny. Whether the
question comes, as in Egypt, from a sphinx, symbol of
the hostile forces of omnipotent nature, Who punishes
with instant death our failure to understand her mean
ing; or whether it comes, as in Jerusalem, from the
Lord of Hosts, who commands the building of His
temple, it comes always with the warning that the past
is past and experience vain : ' Your fathers, where
are they ? and the prophets, do they live forever ? '
The fathers are dead the prophets are silent ; the ques
tions are new, and have no answer but in time.

" When the horny outside case which protects the
infancy of a chrysalis nation suddenly bursts, and, in
a single abrupt shock, it finds itself floating on wings
which have not existed before, whose strength it has

220 HAY.

never tested, among dangers it cannot foresee and is
without experience to measure every motion is a prob
lem and every hesitation may be an error. The past
gives no clue to the future. The fathers, where are
they? and the prophets, do they live forever? We are
ourselves the fathers ! We ourselves the prophets !
The questions that are put to us we must answer with
out delay, without help — for the sphinx allows no one
to pass.

" At such moments, which have already occurred
at least twice in the brief history of our own lives, we
may be humbly grateful to have had leaders simple
in mind, clear in vision — as far as human vision
can safely extend — penetrating in knowledge of
men, supple and flexible under the strains and
pressures of society, instinct with the energy of new
life and untried strength, cautious, calm, and, above
all, gifted in a supreme degree with the most surely
victorious of all political virtues — the genius of in
finite patience.

FAME.

" The obvious elements which enter into the fame
of a public man are few and by no means recondite.
The man who fills a great station in a period of change,
who leads his country successfully through a time of
crisis; who, by his power of persuading and control
ling others, has been able to command the best thought
of his age, so as to leave his country in a moral or
material condition in advance of where he found it —
such a man's position in history is secure. If, in ad
dition to this, his written or spoken words possess the

HAY. 221

subtle quality which carry them far and lodge them in
men's hearts; and, more than all, if his utterances and
actions, while informed with a lofty morality, are yet
tinged with the glow of human sympathy, the fame of
such a man will shine like a beacon through the mists
of ages — an object of reverence, of imitation and of
love. It should be to us an occasion of solemn pride
that in the three great crises of our history such a
man was not denied us. The moral value to a nation
of a renown such as Washington's and Lincoln's and
McKinley's is beyond all computation. No loftier
ideal can be held up to the emulation of ingenuous
youth. With such examples we cannot be wholly ig
noble. Grateful as wre may be for what they did, let
AIS still be more grateful for what they were. While
cur daily being, our public policies, still feel the influ
ence of their work, let us pray that in our spirits their
lives may be voluble, calling us upward and onward.

" There is not one of us but feels prouder of his
native land because the august figure of Washington
presided over its beginnings, no one but vows it a
tenderer love because Lincoln poured out his blood
for it, no one but must feel his devotion for his coun
try renewed, and kindled when he remembers how
McKinley loved, revered and served it, showed in his
life how a citizen should live and in his last hour taught
us how a gentleman could die."

222 HIGGINSON.

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, an eminent Ameri
can lecturer and essayist, born in Cambridge, Mass., Decem
ber 22, 1823. He entered the Unitarian ministry early in
his career, and after being pastor at Newburyport, Mass.,
1847-50, he was pastor of an independent congregation at
Worcester, ki his native State, 1852-58. He was active in
the anti-slavery movement, and during the Civil War was
colonel of a Massachusetts regiment. He has been a mem
ber of the State Legislature and prominent in various reform
movements, but the larger part of his time since the Civil
War period has been devoted to literature, as the long list
of his published works gives abundant evidence. He was
long prominent in the lecture field, and at occasional social
functions is always a favorite speaker. His addresses are
always polished in style, and he possesses a particularly
happy manner of delivery. His oration upon Grant and
his plea for " Self Respect and Self Protection " are character
istic discourses.

DECORATION DAY ADDRESS AT MOUNT
AUBURN CEMETERY, MAY 30, 1870.

WE meet to-day for a purpose that has the dignity
and the tenderness of funeral rites without their sad
ness. It is not a new bereavement, but one which time
has softened, that brings us here. We meet not
around a newly-opened grave, but among those which
nature has already decorated with the memorials of
her love. Above every tomb her daily sunshine has
smiled, her tears have wept ; over the humblest she has
bidden some grasses nestle, some vines creep, and the
butterfly — ancient emblem of immortality — waves his
little wings above every sod. To nature's signs of
tenderness we add our own. Not " ashes to ashes,

HIGGINSON. 223

dust to dust," but blossoms to blossoms, laurels to the
laureled.

The great Civil War has passed by — its great
armies were disbanded, their tents struck, their camp-
fires put out, their muster-rolls laid away. But there
is another army whose numbers no presidential procla
mation could reduce ; no general orders disband. This
is their camping-ground, these white stones are their
tents, this list of names we bear is their muster-roll,
their camp-fires yet burn in our hearts.

I remember this " Sweet Auburn " when no sacred
associations made it sweeter, and when its trees looked
down on no funerals but those of the bird and the bee.
Time has enriched its memories since those days. And
especially during our great war, as the nation seemed
to grow impoverished in men, these hills grew richer
in associations, until their multiplying wealth took in
that heroic boy who fell in almost the last battle of the
war. Now that roll of honor has closed, and the work
cf commemoration begun.

Without distinction of nationality, of race, of re
ligion, they gave their lives to their country. Without
distinction of religion, of race, of nationality, we gar
land their graves to-day. The young Roman Catholic
convert, who died exclaiming " Mary ! pardon ! " and
the young Protestant theological student, whose fa
vorite place of study was this cemetery, and who asked
only that no words of praise might be engraven on his
stone — these bore alike the cross in their lifetime, and
shall bear it alike in flowers to-day. They gave their
lives that we might remain one nation, and the nation
holds their memory alike in its arms.

224 HIGGINSON.

And so the little distinctions of rank that separated
us in the service are nothing here. Death has given
the same brevet to all. The brillant young cavalry-
general who rode into his last action, with stars on his
shoulders and his death-wound on his breast, is to us
no more precious than that sergeant of sharpshooters
who followed the line unarmed at Antietam, waiting
to take the rifle of some one w'ho should die, because
his own had been stolen; or that private who did the
same thing in the same battle, leaving the hospital
service to which he had been assigned. Nature has
been equally tender to the graves of all, and our love
knows no distinction.

What a wonderful embalmer is death! We who
survive grow daily older. Since the war closed the
youngest has gained some new wrinkle, the oldest some
added gray hair. A few years more and only a few
tottering figures shall represent the marching files of
"the Grand Army ; a year or two beyond that, and there
shall flutter by the window the last empty sleeve. But
these who are here are embalmed forever in our imagi
nations ; they will net change ; they never will seem to
us less young, less fresh, less daring, than when they
sallied to their last battle. They will always have the
dew of their youth ; it is we alone who shall grow old.

And, again, what a wonderful purifier is death !
These who fell beside us varied in character ; like other
men they had their strength and their weaknesses, their
merits and their faults. Yet now all stains seem
washed away; their life ceased at its climax, and the
ending sanctified all that went before. They died for
their country; that is their record. They found their

. HIGGINSON. 225

way to heaven equally short, it seems to us from every
battle-field, and with equal readiness our love seeks
them to-day.

" What is a victory like? " said a lady to the Duke of
Wellington. The greatest tragedy in the world,
madame, except a defeat." Even our great war would
be but a tragedy were it not for the warm feeling of
brotherhood it has left behind it, based on the hid
den emotions of days like these. The war has given
peace to the nation ; it has given union, freedom, equal
rights ; and in addition to that, it has given to you and
me the sacred sympathy of these graves. No matter
what it has cost us individually — health or worldly
fortune — it is our reward that we can stand to-day
among these graves and yet not blush that we survive.

The great French soldier, La Tour D' Auvergne,
was the hero of many battles, but remained by his own
choice in the ranks. Napoleon gave him a sword and
the official title "First among the grenadiers of France."
When he was killed, the emperor ordered that his heart
should be entrusted to the keeping of his regiment —
that his name should be called at every roll-call, and
that his next comrade should make answer, " Dead
upon the field of honor." In our memories are the
names of many heroes; we treasure all their hearts in
this consecrated ground, and when the name of each
is called, we answer in flowers, " Dead upon the field
of honor."

226 HIGGINSOX.

*

ORATION UPON GRANT.

DELIVERED AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICES HELD IN
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, AUGUST 8, 1885.

IT was one of the most picturesque moments of the
history of Rome when, after the battle of Cannae was
lost and the Roman army almost annihilated — while
Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, was measuring by
bushels the gold rings of the slain Roman knights
— the whole people of the city went out to greet with
honor their defeated general Terentius Varro, and to
bear to him a vote of thanks from the senate for '*" not
having despaired of the republic."

The vast obsequies celebrated all over the land to-day
are not in honor of a defeated general, but of a vic
torious one ; yet the ground of gratitude is the same as
in that Roman pageant. Our Civil War, like that
between Rome and Carthage, began in defeat and was
transformed into victory, because he whom we cele
brate did not despair of the republic. From the time
when his successes at Fort Donelson and Vicksburg
first turned the tide of adversity until the day when he
received Lee's surrender it was to him we looked.

Nor was this all. There was in all this something
more than mere generalship. Generalship is undoubt
edly a special gift, almost amounting to genius — a
man is born to it, as he is for poetry, or chess-playing,
or commerce; and as in those other vocations, so in
this, his success in one direction does not prove him
equally strong in all. There are many ways in which
General Grant does not rank with the greatest of the

HIGGINSON. 227

sons of men. He was wanting in many of the gifts and
even tastes which raise man to his highest; he did not
greatly care for poetry, philosophy, music, painting,
sculpture, natural science. The one art for which he
had genius is one that must be fleeting and perishable
compared to these ; for the human race must in its prog
ress outgrow war. But a remarkable personal quality
never can be ignored; if not shown in one way it will
be shown in another; and this personal quality Grant
had. Let us analyze some of its aspects.

He was great, in the first place, through the mere
scale of his work. His number of troops, the vast
area of his operations, surpassed what the world had
before seen. When he took 15,000 prisoners at Fort
Donelson, the capture was three times as large as when
Burgoyne surrendered, in the only American battle
thought important enough to be mentioned by Sir Ed
ward Creasy in his "Fifteen Decisive Battles of the
World."

When, on July 4, 1863, he took Vicksburg, he re
ceived what was then claimed to be the greatest capture
of men and armament since the invention of gunpowder
and perhaps since the beginning of recorded history.
He captured 15 generals, 31,600 soldiers and 172 can
non. For victories less than this Julius Caesar was
made dictator for ten years, and his statue was carried
in processions with those of the immortal gods. Caesar
at Pharsalia took about 24,000 prisoners ; Napoleon at
Ulm, 23,000; Hannibal at Cannae but 20,000. Yet
these in Grant's case were but special victories. How
great, then, his power when at the head of the armies
of the United States! Neither of these great com-

228 HIGGINSON.

manders ever directed the movements of a million men.
The mere coarse estimate of numbers, therefore, is the
first measure of Grant's fame.

But mere numbers are a subordinate matter. He
surpassed his predecessors also in the dignity of the
object for which he fought. The three great generals
of the world are usually enumerated — following Ma-
caulay — as being Caesar, Cromwell and Napoleon.
Two of these fought in wars of mere conquest, and the
contests of the third were marred by a gloomy fanat
icism, by cruelty and by selfishness. General Grant
fought to restore a nation, that nation being the hope of
the world. And he restored it. His \vork was as
complete as it was important. Caesar died by violence ;
Napoleon died defeated ; Cromwell's work crumbled to
pieces when his hand was cold. Grant's career tri
umphed in its ending; it is at its height to-day.

It was finely said by a Massachusetts statesman that
we did not fight to bring our opponents to our feet, but
only to our side. Grant to-day brings his opponents
literally to his side when they act as pall-bearers around
his coffin.

The next thing remarkable about him was the spirit
in which he fought. He belonged in his whole tem
perament to the Anglo-Saxon or Germanic type of gen
erals, and not to the French or Latin type. It is said
that in the Duke of Wellington's despatches you never
find the word "glory," but always the word "duty,"
while in those of Napoleon Bonaparte you never find
the word "duty." but always "glory." Grant was in this
respect like Wellington. In his early western cam
paign he wrote to his father : "I will go on and do my

HIGGINSON. 229

duty to the best of my ability, and do all I can to bring
the war to a speedy close. I am not an aspirant to any
thing at the close of the war. . . . One thing I
am well aware of : I have the confidence of every man
in my command." Of course he had. Once convince
men that your motive is duty and their confidence is
yours.

When we come to the mere executive qualities in
volved in fighting, we find that Grant habitually com
bined in action two things rarely brought together —
quickness and perseverance. That could be said of him
which Malcolm McLeod said of Charles Edward, the
Pretender : " He is the bravest man, not to be rash,
and the most cautious man, not to be a coward, that I
ever saw."

He did not have the visible and conspicuous dash of
Sherman or Sheridan; he was rather the kind of man
whom they needed to have behind them. But in quick
ness of apprehension and action, where this quality was
needed, he was not their inferior, if they were even his
equals. He owed to it his first conspicuous victory at
Fort Donelson. Looking at the knapsacks of the slain
enemy, he discovered that they held three days' rations,
and knew, therefore, that they were trying to get away.
Under this stimulus he renewed the attack and the
day was won.

Moreover, it is to be noticed that he was, in all his
action as a commander, essentially original — a man of
initiative, not of routine. He was singularly free from
the habit of depending on others. When in Egypt an
official gave him an Arabian horse and advised that,
at first, he should simply pace the horse up and down,

230 HIGGINSON.

with one Of two attendants to hold him, Grant, who
had at West Point been the best rider in his class, said
briefly, " If I can mount a horse I can ride him, and
all the attendants can do is to keep away." It was the.
same with him through his military life; if he could
mount the horse he could ride it ; and what caused all
to turn to him, as much as anything, was his knowl
edge that he was an original force, not an imitator or
dependant.

And to crown all these qualities was added one
more, that of personal modesty. When, at Hamburg,
Germany, he was toasted as " the man who had saved
the nation," he replied, "What saved the Union was the
coming forward of the young men of the country."
He put down the pride of the German officers, the most
self-sufficient military aristocracy of the world, by
quietly disclaiming the assumption of being a soldier
at all. He said to Bismarck: "I am more a farmer
than a soldier. I take little or no interest in military
affairs, and although I entered army thirty-five years
ago and have been in two wars — the Mexican as a
young lieutenant, and later [mark the exquisite mod
eration of that "and later"] — I never went into the
army without regret, and never retired without pleas
ure." Such a remark from the greatest captain of the
age disarmed even German criticism.

When we turn from the military life of Grant to his
civil life, we find him at great disadvantage and enter
ing untried on a sphere where it is, perhaps, still too
early to judge him. He had been trained in the army,
a bad school for civil service through this reason, that
an army officer is obliged, if in command, to select his

HIGGINSON. 231

subordinates, trust a great deal to them, stand by them
under attack and not interfere very much with them till
they lose his confidence and he drops them. It is al
most impossible for him, as can be done in a counting
room or a workshop, to watch his subordinates, check
them, guide them and correct their mistakes from day
to day. The chief drawbacks of President Grant's ad
ministration came from this habit, and now that it is
past we can see that they left the man himself unstained.
There were, undoubtedly, men of the highest character
with whom he was brought in close contact whom he
could not appreciate and with whom he could not well
act. Thus he never did justice to Charles Sumner, but
we may well admit, at this distance of time, that Sum
ner did not quite do justice to him.

There is no doubt, I suppose, that Grant would have
died a happier man had he for a third time been
raised to the Presidency. There is nothing strange in
this. Nobody ever longed to be an ex-President, and
anybody might honorably long to be set above even
Washington by having a third Presidential term. To
call this C^esarism was idle; it was not in Grant to
make one conscious step to impair the liberties of his
country. Whether his third administration would not
have damaged those liberties indirectly and uncon
sciously, we never shall know; the majority of Ameri
cans apparently either feared some such result, or
found the precedent too dangerous to venture on. The
step never was taken at any rate; and the nation is
perhaps safer that it was not, but we must guard
against connecting this ambition in Grant's case with
anything base or unscrupulous.

232 HIGGINSON.

He was never tried by this test of a third term of
power; but a third term of ordeal came to him in 'a
wholly unexpected way, and increased his hold upon
us all. He told Bismarck, as we have seen, that he
never entered on a war without regret or retired from
it without pleasure. But he was destined to enter
on just one more campaign — against pain and disease
combined with sudden poverty. It was a formidable
coalition. It is sometimes said that it is easier to die
well than to live well, but it is harder than either to
grow old, knowing that one's great period of action is
past, and weighed down writh the double weight of
hopeless financial failure and irremediable bodily pain.
Either bankruptcy or physical torture has by itself
crushed many a man morally and mentally; but Grant's
greatest campaign was when he resisted them both.
Upon such a campaign as this he might well, as he
said, shrink from entering; but having been obliged to
enter upon it, he was still Grant. Thousands of
Americans have felt a sense of nearness to him and a
sense of pride in him during the last few months such
as they never felt before. He was already a hero in
war to us. The last few months have made him a hero
of peace, miles pacificus.

It has already been said that the supreme generals of
the world wrere Csesar, Cromwell, and Napoleon.
Grant was behind all three of these in variety of culti
vation and in many of the qualities that make a man's
biography picturesque and fascinating. He may be
said to have seemed a little prosaic, compared with any
one of these. But in moral qualities he was above
them all; more truthful, more unselfish, more simple,

HIGGINSON. 233

more humane. He fell short of Washington in this,
that he was not equally great in war and statesmanship ;
but his qualities were within reach of all; his very de
fects were within reach of all ; and he will long be with
Washington and Lincoln the typical American in the
public eyes. It is this typical quality after all that is
most valuable. What we need most to know is not that
exceptional men of rare gifts or qualities may arise here
— they may arise anywhere — but that there is such an
average quality among us that when a great personal
leadership is wanted it will be forthcoming, after a few
experiments. This is the secret of that popular prefer
ence always so obvious for an obscure origin in case of
a great man. The preference is equally recognized
among the philosophers ; "the interest of history," says
Emerson, "is in the fortunes of the poor." Indeed the
deeper feeling of the whole world has always recognized
this — it is to the proudest monarchy in Europe, the Cas-
tilian, that we owe the phrase, " the son of his own
works"* — Grant was the son of his own works. His
fame rests upon the broadest and surest of all pedestals,
as broad as common humanity. He seems greatest be
cause he was no detached or ideal hero, but simply the
representative of us all.

* " El hijo de sus obras."

234 HIGGINSON.

FOR SELF-RESPECT AND SELF-PROTEC
TION.

[Speech at the Annual Meeting of the American Woman Suf
frage Association, held at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November i,
1887.]

I HAVE the sensations of a revolutionary veteran, al
most, in coming back to the city of Philadelphia and
remembering our early meetings here in that time of
storm, in contrasting the audiences of to-day with the
audiences of that day, and in thinking what are the
difficulties that come before us now as compared with
those of our youth. The audiences have changed, the
atmosphere of the community has changed; nothing
but the cause remains the same, and that remains be
cause it is a part of the necessary evolution of demo
cratic society and is an immortal thing.

I recall those early audiences; the rows of quiet
faces in Quaker bonnets in the foreground; the rows
of exceedingly unquiet figures of Southern medical stu
dents, with their hats on, in the background. I recall
the visible purpose of those energetic young gentlemen
to hear nobody but the women, and the calm determina
tion with which their boot-heels contributed to put the
male speakers down. I recall their too assiduous at
tentions in the streets outside when the meetings broke
up; and if there was any of that self-sacrifice which the
chairman seems to imply, it did not refer to anything
that actually took place inside the hall, although even
the attempt on a man's part to get to the other end of
his speech was sometimes attended with difficulties.
The real test of chivalry, if there was one, consisted in

HIGGINSON. 235

^the subsequent escorting through the streets of Lucy
Stone and Susan B. Anthony in the Bloomer dresses of
those days, in the midst of a somewhat uncompli
mentary and peripatetic audience of small boys.

The times have changed. Much has come and gone
since then. The Southern medical students have disap
peared from the room, and almost, it may be, from Phil
adelphia. The change of fashion has swept away the
Quaker bonnets in one direction and the Bloomer
trousers in another.

The grand voices that cheered us then in great meas
ure have passed away. The heroic, changeless, firm,
granite attitude of Garrison, the fascinating eloquence
of Phillips, and the womanly counsel of Lucretia Mott
are all only noble memories for those who recall them ;
but the same cause fills this hall and these hearts to-day.
The same cause is ours, fresher and younger because
thirty years have gone by.

We need feel no anxiety about it. It comes before
us to-day with no new arguments, no new illustra
tions, only with new tests and new methods. It comes,
not with the vague and bodiless traditions of the
past, but with the twenty-six thousand women voters
of Kansas to-day behind it to strengthen it. It is the
cause of the future, the cause of the American people,
the inevitable, logical result of all our reasons, the
recognition of which alone justifies us in calling our
selves Republicans. Its future is absolutely certain.
Those who join themselves with it join to something
that they can hold to. It is true of this, as Frederick
Douglass said years ago of another organization,
" This is the deck; all else is the sea."

236 HIGGINSON.

I consider it, Mr. Chairman, a great merit of the
cause, that as the time goes on, and as it widens so
greatly the sphere of its adherents, it brings in a great
variety of forces to suggest new arguments; it gives
different points of view; different positions. We are
not now that simple homogeneous body, all united on
much the same arguments, all coming to the result in
much the same way, that we were at the outset. It has
developed, as the anti-slavery movement developed, a
great variety of angles of incidence, a great variety of
points of view ; and the spirit and freshness and vigor
of these meetings must come in a large degree from the
freedom of those wrho stand on this platform to speak
their own thought and approach the great question in
their own way.

Who of us that served in the anti-slavery ranks does
not remember those conflicts of opinion on the platform
that seemed at times likely to rend the whole movement
asunder ? I remember dear old Stephen Foster, that man
of iron. I remember with delight the time when he fol
lowed me in a speech in an anti-slavery convention at
Worcester. He said at the outset, "I love my friend
Higginson; but if there is anything I abhor, it is such
sentiments, as he has been expressing."

That was the genuine thing; that was reform. Re
formers are not always alike capable of that strict com
bination, that firm concentration, which makes conser
vatism so powerful. No liberal sect is ever found like
the Roman Catholic Church in its power of cementing
and organizing and binding. The force of reform is
its individual enthusiasm, resulting from each person
following out his own best view.

HIGGINSON. 237

Reformers are like Esquimaux dogs. Do you
know how Esquimaux dogs are fastened to the sledge ?
The owner of the dogs takes his sledge, catches his dog
with difficulty, and fastens him by a single thong to the
sledge. He catches another dog, puts his thong upon
him and fastens him too. He has twenty dogs at last
all harnessed to the sledge, each by his separate thong.
Why does he waste his labor in that way? Because,
whenever the experiment has been tried of putting Es
quimaux dogs into a single combined harness, the trou
ble was, they turned around and ate each other up.

That is the trouble with reformers. If you try to
make them think alike and act alike, destruction follows..
Each for himself, each approaching his movement in
his own way, and we have strength. I myself have
tested the ability of the woman suffrage reformers to
recognize this individuality of opinion; and those who
know the recent history of this reform know it is a
proof of the catholicity of this meeting that I have been
invited to stand here among the speakers.

I believe myself that the woman suffrage reform has
many points of view; and that in some points of view it
is almost perilous to approach it. I believe that we
never can safely rest the enfranchisement of any large
number of people upon any attempt to predict with pre
cision the specific or even the general tendency of the
votes which they shall cast. I dread all prediction of
that kind for the woman suffrage movement. I re
joiced to hear the first speaker [Mrs. Haggart] say this
evening that if she knew that every bad woman in the
country would be first at the polls, she still should ad
vocate woman suffrage just the same.

238 HIGGINSON.

If it were only mere policy, if it takes its chances of
success only on the chance of a prediction, it is unsafe.
It must rest on a principle to establish its permanent
work and value.

I dare say that in many respects woman's voting
would afford a better class of voters than the voters we
have now, but I do not wish to enfranchise her for this
reason. It might be a question then how long she
would stay a better class after she had voted. I knew
a man once who advocated woman suffrage on the
ground that voting was necessarily demoralizing; that
we had had men voting for a great while and they had
brought the country to the verge of ruin ; that women
would unquestionably, in the course of fifty years, if
enfranchised do the same thing, but that there would be
fifty years in the meanwhile and that the country would
last his time, which was all he cared for.

I distrust that line of argument. How do we know,
it might be said, how much of the present virtue of
women comes from the absence of voting? The argu
ment proves to my mind too much. I believe that the
majority of women would vote well. So we believed
when we enfranchised the blacks, that the majority of
them would vote well. But the thing we absolutely
knew was and the only thing we knew, that whether
they would vote well for the country or not the differ
ence between their having the ballot and not having it
meant for them freedom or slavery, and it was for that
reason that we enfranchised them.

We took the chances of all the rest. Have they voted
well ? It is hard to say. They half ruined South Car
olina financially. V/e know that. They voted against

HIGGINSON. 239

prohibition in Texas. We know that. That they
would vote against civil service reform is exceedingly
probable if they once knew clearly enough what it was.
What we know is that because we enfranchised them
they are still free, and that is enough for us to know.
That stamps success upon their enfranchisement, al
though a thousand Senator Ingallses rise with their
little voices at this late hour to protest against it and
say it was a mistake.

So it is in regard to women. I believe and hope that
the majority of women would vote as my friend, Mrs.
Howe, thinks, for peace. But I know on the other
hand that a Southern statesman said to me that the war
was prolonged two years after the men would have
given up, because the women of the South would not
let them. That same man told me that in his opinion
the practice of duelling at the South was sustained to
this day not by the voices of the men but of the
women.

Thus, while I believe that the vast majority of
women would throw their influence for peace, I yet
know the possibilities of a minority and I do not wish
to rest their enfranchisement on that ground. I be
lieve that the great majority of women would vote for
honest government if they only understood it, if they
would study it so as to understand it ; but I cannot for
get that all the ingenuity of Wall Street has never de
vised so perfectly ingenious and successful an instru
ment of fraud as the Woman's Bank of Boston, entirely
the product of a woman's brain ; and I do not wish to
rest the demand for suffrage on the superior honesty
of women.

240 HIGGINSON.

I believe that women would be the custodians of pub
lic property, as they are the custodians of private prop
erty. You know that almost every young married
man if he succeeds in making both ends meet on his lim
ited income at the end of the first year owes it to his
wife; and commonly ends in confessing that he lived
more economically the first year of his marriage than
the last year of his bachelorhood.

We may claim therefore that women are good, prac
tical custodians of property; and yet I cannot forget
that the Association of Collegiate Alumnae has just pub
lished from the educated daughter of a member of Con
gress, a Pennsylvania woman, one of the most deter
mined and desperate pleas in favor of German socialism
that I have ever seen in print. And I cannot forget
that it was a woman, Louise Michel, who uttered the
other day the wish that on the day of the execu
tion of the Chicago anarchists every court of justice
in the world might have dynamite put under it and be
exploded forever.

I do not therefore wish to claim woman suffrage on
any basis of absolute prediction of what will be. In
this I do not represent all of those who are with me. I
may belong to a more conservative class of woman suf
fragists. I am sometimes told I am too conservative.
I do not even dare to rest it on the ground as many do
that the superior insight of women will make them bet
ter judges of public characters and enable them to pene
trate more keenly the devices of scoundrels. I will
ingly believe that women may often have a good eye
for a demagogue. The women of Kansas seem to have
proved that when they disposed of Senator Ingalls.

HIGGINSON. 241

But I am one of those who believe that in Massachu
setts a service was rendered to the nation when we final
ly laid General Butler on the shelf ; and I am not at all
sure that the women of Massachusetts would have done
it. I think we did a good thing, irrespective of party,
when we put President Cleveland into the presidency,
and I have been repeatedly told that if it had been left
to women he never would have been chosen.

I do not venture therefore td rest the argument for
women suffrage on the ground that women are a race
of perfectly ideal saints who are to step up to our voting
places and vote a millennium as soon as we enfranchise
them. I do not know any speaker for woman suffrage
who goes so far as that, though some might go further
in that direction than I should. When George Eliot
made one of her characters say, "I am not denying that
women are foolish; God Almighty made 'em to match
the men," I recognize the truth of it, and I recognize
that those women, to match the men, have got to be en
franchised like the rest.

I believe, as I said, that every great extension of the
franchise brings its dangers. Has there been a moment
since the inauguration of our government that there
has not been somebody to declare the failure of univer
sal suffrage among men and say that our voting list was
too large already? It is the price we pay for demo
cratic government. We might have recognized it be
forehand; indeed, it was recognized beforehand.
Fisher Ames in comparing a monarchy and a republic,
said : "A monarchy is a fine, well-built ship ; it is beauti
ful to look at; it sails superblv. The difficulty is that
sometimes it strikes a rock and then it goes down. But

242 HIGGINSON.

a republic," he said, "is a kind of a great clumsy raft.
You can float anywhere on it; it will never sink but
your feet are always in the water."

I have no expectation that the admission of women
to the ballot will enable us to keep dry shod upon the
raft, and I am as sure as I can be of anything in the
future that when women are enfranchised they will
have some of their own sins to answer for, and not be
able to devote themselves entirely to correcting the sins
of men.

So surely as you have women statesmen you will
have women politicians; you will have women bosses,
women wire-pullers, women intriguers. The talent
that devised the Woman's Bank will be brought to bear,
as far as its power goes, upon the bank of the nation.
The power that advocates socialism now in the abstract
would advocate it then in the concrete. All this is in
the future. It is to be expected. No great extension
of the suffrage, and there never was any so great as
this, ever failed to bring with it risks and drawbacks
on the way, but the result of those risks and drawbacks
is a true republic, the result is a consistent democracy.
The result is a nation in which a man can hear the
glories of the republic sung, and not blush, as he has to
now, at the thought that those boasts are built upon the
disfranchisement of half the human race.

Why, in view of these incidental uncertainties,
should women be enfranchised? That is the point
where all suffragists, however they may differ as to
methods of processes, come together at last. No mat
ter how we may differ in details upon the platform you
will find if you venture to take advantage of those dif-

HIGGINSON. 243

ferences that we are a good deal like those old-fashioned
fighting Highlanders in Sir Walter Scott's story, of
whom Bailie Nicol Jarvie declares that no matter how
they may quarrel among themselves they are always
ready to combine at last against " all honest folk that
hae money in their pockets." Our combination is a
mild one so far as the pockets go. It is incarnated in
Miss Cora Scott Pond, the only person whom I have
ever encountered in my long experience of reformers
who could make a speech and ask for a little contri
bution and then take it up and make the audience feel
grateful to her.*

That part of the duty we do well. We do well also
the more strenuous and difficult parts, if, indeed, there
is any part of a reform more difficult on the whole than
raising money to carry it along.

I believe in woman suffrage for the sake of woman
herself. I believe in it because I am the son of a woman
and the husband of a woman and the father of a pro
spective woman. I remember that at one of the first
woman suffrage meetings I ever attended one of the
first speakers was an odd fellow from the neighboring
town, considered half a lunatic. That didn't make
much impression in those days when we were all con
sidered a little crazy, but he was a little crazier than the
rest of us. He pushed forward on the platform, seem
ing impatient to speak and throwing his old hat down
by his side, he said, "I don't know much about this sub
ject nor any other; but I know this, my mother was a

* Miss Pond's collection was being taken up during the speaker's
remarks.

9—6

244 HIGGIXSON.

woman." I thought it was the best condensed woman
suffrage argument I ever heard in my life.

Woman suffrage should be urged in my opinion not
from any predictions that amount to certainty, that
claim anything like certainty as to what women will do
with their votes after they get them, but on the ground
that by all the traditions of our government, by all the
precepts of its early founders, by all the axioms that lie
at the foundation of all our political principles, woman
needs the ballot for herself, for self-respect on the one
side and for self-protection on the other.

There was a time when whatever woman studied in
school the idea of teaching her the principles of govern
ment, of her studying political economy, would have
seemed an absurdity; it was hardly thought of. Her
path lay outside of it. She was not brought in contact
with it. There was no loss of self-respect in those days
to her in finding that in every great system of govern
ment she was omitted, and that, as Tennyson says in
his ''Princess," in every great revolution

" Millions of throats would bawl for civil rights ;
No woman named,"

How is it now ? Go into the nearest grammar school
to-morrow and what may you happen upon ? A mixed
class of boys and girls reciting the constitution of the
United States, or some one of the various manuals upon
the history of politics or the organization of our gov
ernment — reciting it together side by side, perhaps re
citing it to a woman. Or you may go even into a col
lege sometimes and find a whole class of young men
reciting to their teacher in political economy out of a

HIGGINSON. 24$,

handbook written by a woman, Millicent Garrett Faw-
cett.

After those boys and girls have attained their matur
ity and voting day comes, then they separate as they
come near the voting-place, and every boy goes inside
the door to put what he has learned in the school, of
that teacher, into practice; and the girls and their
teacher pass along, powerless to express in action a single
one of the principles they have been so studiously learn
ing. I have watched that thing and wondered how
women could bear it as they do; and at last I encoun
tered one woman who seemed to me to take on the
whole the most sensible view I ever encountered in the
matter, who told me that again and again on election
day she had gone out and walked up and down oppo
site the voting-place in her ward with tears streaming
from her eyes to see every ignoramus and every drunk
ard in the neighborhood going in there to cast his
vote, and she, a \voman, unable to do anything to
counteract it.

This is what I mean by a woman needing the ballot
for self-respect. She comes to the centennial celebra
tions here — I forget just what the last one was that they
had in Philadelphia but they have them every few years-
— she hears the great names cited, the great authorities,,
she goes home and looks up what those authorities said,
how they defined civil government or how they de
fined freedom. She takes Benjamin Franklin for in
stance, " that eminent Philadelphian," as he is called in
Philadelphia, " that eminent Bostonian who temporar
ily resided in Philadelphia," as they call him in Bos
ton. She looks in his writings and she finds that great

246 HIGGIXSON.

statesman saying, about 1770, so distinctly that words
cannot make it clearer, that " they who have no voice
nor vote in the electing of representatives do not enjoy
liberty but are absolutely enslaved to those who have
votes and to their representatives." And what is the
woman to think of that ?

Fifty years ago the man who was long considered
the leading jurist of the West, Judge Timothy Walker,
of Cincinnati, when asked "What is the legal position
of woman in America ? " said, " Write out as best you
can the definition of legal slavery and when you have
done that you have the legal position of a woman." The
woman finds that; she sees such statements as that
earlier or later. How can she feel ? How can she help
feeling that same loss of self-respect which a Jewish
wroman of the Jewish faith in old times could hardly
help feeling when she heard men giving thanks to the
Lord that they were not born women and heard women
with humble voices saying, " I thank thee, Lord, that
thou hast made me according to thy will ? "

How could she help feeling as she would feel in a
Mohammedan country when she found that in the great
and most sacred mosques the edict was that no idiot,
lunatic, or woman can enter here. The woman of old
times who did not read books of political economy or
attended public meetings could retain her self-respect;
but the woman of modern times with every step she
takes in the higher education finds it harder to retain
that self-respect while she is in a republican government
and yet not a member of it. She can study all the
books that I saw collected this morning in the political
economy alcove of the Bryn Mawr College; she can

HIGGINSON. 247

read them all ; she can master them all ; she can know
more about them perhaps than any man she knows ; and
yet to put one thing she has learned there in practice by
the simple process of putting a piece of paper into a bal
lot-box — she could no more do that than she could put
out her slender finger and stop the planet in its course.
That is what I mean by woman's needing woman suf
frage for self-respect.

Then as to self-protection. In what does protection
consist for us Americans ? In the power of writing a
remonstrance in the newspaper when the conductor of
a train does not stop as he promised or when an ash bar
rel is not taken at the proper moment from before our
back door? Is that the power that we have for self-
protection? It is indeed the beginning of power. It
is power because it has the ballot behind it ; because the
street department and the railroad department know
that they have to do with that part of the community
who have votes to back up what they say. Take away
those votes and how little is the power.

The woman has the voice but not the vote. We
know that there have been great changes in the position
of woman, great improvements in the law in regard to
women. What brought about those improve
ments? The steady labor of women like those on this
platform, going before legislatures year by year and
asking those legislatures to give them something they
were not willing to give, the ballot; but as a result of
it to keep the poor creatures quiet some law was passed
removing a restriction. The old English writer,
Pepys, in his diary, after spending a good deal of
money for himself, finds a little left and buys his wife

248 HIGGINSON.

a new gown because he says, "It is fit the poor wretch
should have something to content her." I have seen
many laws passed for the advantage .of women and they
were generally passed on that principle.

I remember going before the legislature of Rhode
Island once with Lucy Stone, and she unrolled with her
peculiar persuasive power the wrong laws that existed
in that Commonwealth in regard to women and after
the hearing was over the chairman of the committee,
a judge who has served for years on that committee,
came down and said to her, "I have come to say to you,
Mrs. Stone, that all you have said this morning is true,
and that I am ashamed to think that I who have been
chairman for years of this judiciary committee should
have known in my secret heart that it was all true and
should have done nothing to set those wrongs right
ttntil I was reminded of it by a woman."

Again and again I have seen that experience. Women
with bleeding feet, women with exhausted voices,
women with worn-out lives have lavished their strength
to secure ordinary justice in the form of laws, which a
single woman inside the State House, a single woman
there armed with the position of member of the legisla
ture and representing a sex who had votes could have
got righted within two years.

Every man knows the \veakness of a disfranchised
class of men. The whole race of women is disfran
chised and they suffer in the same way. It is not that
men are so selfish. It is not that they intend to do so
much wrong to women; but any of you who have
served in a legislative body as I have know how dif
ficult a thin^ it is to get attention for anything or any

HIGGINSON. 249

class of persons not represented on the floor; while a
single person who stands on the floor clothed with his
rights, with the other persons who have rights behind
him, can command attention though he be in the small
est minority. A single naturalized citizen in the legis
lature can secure justice for all naturalized citizens. A
single Roman Catholic member can secure justice for
all Roman Catholic citizens; because though he may
have been personally in the minority he represents votes
behind him.

The woman represents no votes and she is weak.
The best laws that are made for her in any State in the
Union are no sure guarantee for her. They may be
altered at any time so long as she is not there to speak
for herself. Some Russian emperor, when he was told
by an admirer, " Your Majesty, what do your people
need of a constitution ? Your Majesty is as good as a
constitution to your people," said, " Then I am but a
happy accident; that is all."

The best legislation women can get is nothing more
than a happy accident unless women are there to defend
it after they have got it. Again and again things have
been given to them after the labor of years, and,
perhaps, those same things have been taken from
them.

In the legislature of New York women were vested
with the power a few years ago to control their own
offspring as against the will of a dead father. A year
or two passed by, the law was revoked and the power
was lost. For several years back in Massachusetts a
married woman has had the right under the law to
dispose by will of five thousand dollars' worth of real

250 HIGGINSON.

estate if held in her own name. The woman who had
saved up her own earnings, who had made her own
investments, who held real estate in her own name,
could, to the extent of five thousand dollars, dispose of
it by will.

The last legislature, as that keen observer, Mr.
Sewell, tells us, by striking out a single word in a
single statute, the word " intestate," took away that
power and the woman no longer can dispose of her
five thousand dollars. No attention was attracted, no
agitation came because there was no woman there to
take it up and call attention to it.

I served two years in the Massachusetts legislature
and I remember that during one of those years there
came up a bill which attracted very little attention in
regard to the right of settlement in our towns. The
point seemed a little complicated and I passed it by,
being busy with other matters; but an official at the
State House, Mr. H. B. Wheelwright, an official of
the Board of State Charities, a man of great experience,
came to me and said, " Do you understand that bill? "
I said, " No. I was engaged on other matters and
paid but little attention to it." He said, " Let me ex
plain it to you." He sat down and explained it to me
and showed me that should that bill pass hundreds of
women in our factory towns in Massachusetts would
fail of obtaining, as they had heretofore obtained under
certain conditions, a settlement in those towns.

I asked those around me if they had noticed it.
They had not. I found on investigation that the bill
had come from the representatives of a certain town
and that the whole bill was got up to meet a certain par-

HIGGINSON. 251

ticular case. It was to relieve the overseers of the poor
in that town from the duty of disposing of a single
family; and for the sake of that, by this bill, thus
quietly introduced, hundreds and perhaps thousands
of women would suffer.

I took the points that he gave me, I made the state
ment, becoming simply his mouthpiece in the matter,
and the bill was easily defeated. But had a single
woman been on the floor herself to take note of the
bills that came up that concerned her sex do you sup
pose a bill like that would have come as it did near to
passage? If there is anything that is sure in public
affairs it is that we can trust people to look after them
selves.

I remember I was speaking of the ignorance of the
men recently naturalized who had been before the
Bureau of State Charities, and another State House
official said to me, " There is not an emigrant however
ignorant he may be who after he has lived six months
in Massachusetts, fails to understand three sets of laws
as well as you or I do; the settlement laws, the pauper
laws, the penal laws. They understand it whether we
do or not." Self-interest is what sharpens. When
you get women voting and not till then will you have
women substantially, and permanently protected.

It is for the self-respect and self-protection of women
that I want woman suffrage. If they vote for good
temperance laws, so much the better. If they make
property secure, so much the better. But the real need
of the suffrage is for women themselves. Self-respect
and self-protection, these are what the demand rests
upon; and in proportion as we concede to that de-

2^2 HIGGINSON.

mand we shall have a nation that also has for its reward
self -protection and self-respect.

How long will wromen have to point out these things ?
How long wrill men with feebler voices, because less
personal and less absorbingly interested, have to aid
them in pointing them out? It is not enough to have
our material successes. It is not enough to have the
magnificent record of our long civil war and of the
period of reconstruction that has followed. This na
tion won the respect of the world by its career in war.
What it has now before it is so to legislate for equal
justice as to retain the world's respect during coming
•centuries of happy peace.

CURTIS. 253

Curtis, George William, a noted American journalist^
essayist and public speaker, born in Providence, R. I., Feb
ruary 24, 1824; died at Livingston, Staten Island, N, Y.,
August 31, 1892. After spending some years in foreign
travel, he was for a short time one of the editors of the
" New York Tribune," and subsequently edited " Putnam's
Monthly." In 1853 he entered the lecture field, in which
he continued for a series of years with signal success.
From 1856 onward he took a vital interest in political move
ments, and during an unsuccessful candidacy for Congress
in 1864 he addressed audiences daily for six weeks. He
became the political editor of " Harper's Weekly " in 1863,
continuing to hold that position for the rest of his career,
and he contributed the Easy Chair department of " Harper's
Monthly " from the establishment of the periodical till
shortly before his death. From 1880 he was president of
the New York Association for Civil Service Reform. His
political speeches were marked by great earnestness of pur
pose, as well as eloquence, and his lectures and occasional
orations exhibit a polished, persuasive style.

ON THE SPOILS SYSTEM AND THE
PROGRESS OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.*

TWELVE years ago I read a paper before this asso
ciation upon reform in the Civil Service. The subject
was of very little interest. A few newspapers which
were thought to be visionary occasionally discussed it
but the press of both parties smiled with profound
indifference. Mr. Jenckes had pressed it upon an

* An address delivered before the American Social Science As
sociation at its meeting in Saratoga, New York, September 8,
1881.

254 CURTIS.

utterly listless Congress, and his proposition was re
garded as the harmless hobby of an amiable man, from
which a little knowledge of practical politics would
soon dismount him. The English reform, which was
by far the most significant political event in that
country since the Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832,
was virtually unknown to us. To the general public
it was necessary to explain what the Civil Service was,
how it was recruited, what the abuses were, and how
and why they were to be remedied. Old professional
politicians, who look upon reforms as Dr. Johnson de
fined patriotism, as the last refuge of a scoundrel,
either laughed at what they called the politics of idiocy
and the moon, or sneered bitterly that reformers were
cheap hypocrites who wanted other people's places and
lamented other people's sins.

This general public indifference was not surprising.
The great reaction of feeling which followed the war,
the relaxation of the long-strained anxiety of the na
tion for its own existence, the exhaustion of the vast
expenditure of life and money, and the satisfaction
with the general success, had left little disposition to do
anything but secure in the national polity the legitimate
results of the great contest. To the country, reform
was a proposition to reform evils of administration of
which it knew little, and which, at most, seemed to it
petty and impertinent in the midst of great affairs. To
Congress, it was apparently a proposal to deprive mem
bers of the patronage which to many of them was the
real gratification of their position, the only way in
which they felt their distinction and power. To such
members reform was a plot to deprive the bear of his

CURTIS. 255

honey, the dog of his bone, and they stared and
growled incredulously. •

This was a dozen years ago. To-day the demand
for reform is imperative. The drop has become a
deluge. Leading journals of both parties eagerly pro
claim its urgent necessity. From New England to
California public opinion is organizing itself in reform
associations. In the great custom-house and the great
post-office of the country — those in the city of New
York — reform has been actually begun upon definite
principles and with remarkable success, and the good
example has been followed elsewhere with the same
results. A bill carefully prepared and providing for
gradual and thorough reform has been introduced with
an admirable report in the Senate of the United States.
Mr. Pendleton, the Democratic Senator from Ohio,
declares that the Spoils System which has debauched
the Civil Service of fifty millions of people must be de
stroyed. Mr. Dawes, the Republican Senator from
Massachusetts, summons all good citizens to unite to
suppress this gigantic evil which threatens the Repub
lic. Conspicuous reformers sit in the Cabinet ; and in
this sorowful moment, at least, the national heart and
mind and conscience, stricken and bowed by a calamity
whose pathos penetrates every household in Christen
dom, cries to these warning words, " Amen ! Amen ! "
Like the slight sound amid the frozen silence of the
Alps that loosens and brings down the avalanche, the
solitary pistol shot of the 2d of July has suddenly
startled this vast accumulation of public opinion into
conviction, and on every side thunders the rush and
roar of its overwhelming descent, which will sweep

256 CURTIS.

away the host of evils bred of this monstrous
abuse.

This is an extraordinary change for twelve years,
but it shows the vigorous political health, the alert com
mon sense, and the essential patriotism of the country,
which are the earnest of the success of any wise reform.
The war which naturally produced the lassitude and
indifference to the subject which were evident twelve
years ago had made reform, indeed, a vital necessity,
but the necessity was not then perceived. The dangers
that attend a vast system of administration based to its
least detail upon personal patronage were not first ex
posed by Mr. Jenckes in 1867, but before that time they
had been mainly discussed as possibilities and infer-
€nces. Yet the history of the old New York council
of appointment had illustrated in that State the party
fury and corruption which patronage necessarily
breeds, and Governor McKean in Pennsylvania, at the
close of the last century, had made " a clean sweep "
of the places within his power. The spoils spirit
struggled desperately to obtain possession of the na
tional administration from the day of Jefferson's
inauguration to that of Jackson's, when it succeeded.
Its first great but undesigned triumph was the decision
of the First Congress in 1789, vesting the sole power
of removal in the President, a decision which placed
almost every position in the Civil Service uncondition
ally at his pleasure. This decision wras determined by
the weight of Madison's authority. But Webster,
nearly fifty years afterward, opposing his authority to
that of Madison, while admitting the decision to have
been final, declared it to have been wrong. The year

CURTIS. 257-

1820, which saw the great victory of slavery in the
Missouri Compromise, was also the year in which the
second great triumph of the spoils system was gained,
by the passage of the law which, under the plea of
securing greater responsibility in certain financial
offices, limited such offices to a term of four years.
The decision of 1789, which gave the sole power of
removal to the President, required positive executive
action to effect removal; but this law of 1820 vacated
all the chief financial offices, with all the places depend
ent upon them, during the term of every President,,
who, without an order of removal, could fill them all
at his pleasure.

A little later a change in the method of nominating
the President from a Congressional caucus to a na
tional convention still further developed the power of
patronage as a party resource, and in the session of
1825—26, when John Quincy Adams was President,,
Mr. Benton introduced his report upon Mr. Macon's
resolution declaring the necessity of reducing and reg
ulating executive patronage ; although Mr. Adams, the
last of the Revolutionary line of Presidents, so scorned
to misuse patronage that he leaned backward in stand
ing erect. The pressure for the overthrow of the con
stitutional system had grown steadily more angry and
peremptory with ffce progress of the country, the
development of party spirit, the increase of patronage,
the unanticipated consequences of the sole executive
power of removal, and the immense opportunity offered
by the four-years law. It was a pressure against
which Jefferson held the gates by main force, which
was relaxed by the war under Madison and the fusion'

CURTIS.

of parties under Monroe, but which swelled again into
a furious torrent as the later parties took form.
John Quincy Adams adhered, with the tough tenacity
of his father's son, to the best principles of all his
predecessors. He followed Washington, and observed
the spirit of the Constitution in refusing to remove for
any reason but official misconduct or incapacity. But
he knew well what was coming, and with characteristic
ally stinging sarcasm he called General Jackson's
inaugural address "a threat of reform." With Jack
son's administration in 1830 the deluge of the spoils
systems burst over our national politics. Sixteen
years later, Mr. Buchanan said in a public speech that
General Taylor would be faithless to the Whig party
if he did not proscribe Democrats. So high the deluge
had risen which has ravaged and wasted our politics
ever since, and the danger will be stayed only when
every President, leaning upon the law, shall stand fast
where John Quincy Adams stood.

But the debate continued during the whole Jackson
administration. In the Senate and on the stump, in
elaborate reports and popular speeches, Webster, Cal-
houn, and Clay, the great political chiefs of their time,
sought to alarm the country with the dangers of pat
ronage. Sargent S. Prentiss, in the House of Repre
sentatives, caught up and echoed the cry under the ad
ministration of Van Buren. But the country refused
to be alarmed. As the Yankee said of the Americans
at the battle of White Plains, where they were beaten,
" The fact is, as far as I can understand, our folks
didn't seem to take no sort of interest in that battle.'*
The reason that the country took no sort of interest

CURTIS. 259

In the discussipn of the evils of patronage was evident.
It believed the denunciation to be a mere party cry, a
scream of disappointment and impotence from those
who held no places and controlled no patronage. It
heard the leaders of the opposition fiercely arraigning
the administration for proscription and universal
wrong-doing, but it was accustomed by its English
tradition and descent always to hear the Tories cry that
the Constitution was in danger when the Whigs were
in power, and the Whigs under a Tory administration
to shout that all was lost. It heard the uproar like
the old lady upon her first railroad journey, who sat
serene amid the wreck of a collision, and when asked
If she was much hurt, looked over her spectacles and
answered, blandly, "Hurt? Why, I supposed they
always stopped so in this kind of travelling." The
feeling that the denunciation was only a part of the
game of politics, and no more to be accepted as a true
statement than Snug the joiner as a true lion, was
confirmed by the fact that when the Whig opposition
came into power with President Harrison, it adopted
the very policy which under Democratic administration
it had strenuously denounced as fatal. The pressure
for place was even greater than it had been twelve years
before, and although Mr. Webster as Secretary of
State maintained his consistency by putting his name
to an executive order asserting sound principles, the
order was swept away like a lamb by a locomotive.
Nothing but a miracle, said General Harrison's attor
ney-general, can feed the swarm of hungry office-
seekers.

Adopted by both parties, Mr. Marcy's doctrine that

260 CURTIS.

the places in the public service are the proper spoils
of a victorious party, was accepted as a necessary con
dition of popular government. One of the highest
officers of the government expounded this doctrine to
me long afterward. "I believe," said he, " that when
the people vote to change a party administration they
vote to change every person of the opposite party who
holds a place, from the President of the United States
to the messenger at my door." It is this extraordinary
but sincere misconception of the function of party in
a free government that leads to the serious defence of
the Spoils System. Now, a party is merely a volun
tary association of citizens to secure the enforcement
of a certain policy of administration upon which they
are agreed. In a free government this is done by the
election of legislators and of certain executive officers
who are friendly to that policy. But the duty of the
great body of persons employed in the minor adminis
trative places is in no sense political. It is \vholly
ministerial, and the political opinions of such persons
affect the discharge of their duties no more than their
religious views or their literary preferences. All that
can be justly required of such persons, in the interest
of the public business, is honesty, intelligence, capacity,
industry, and due subordination ; and to say that, when
the policy of the government is changed by the result
of an election from protection to free trade, every book
keeper and letter carrier and messenger and porter in
the public offices ought to be a free trader, is as wise
as to say that if a merchant is a Baptist every clerk in
his office ought to be a believer in total immersion.
But the officer of whom I spoke undoubtedly expressed

CURTIS. 26l

the general feeling. The necessarily evil consequences
of the practice which he justified seemed to be still
speculative and inferential, and to the national indif
ference which followed the war the demand of Mr.
Jenckes for reform appeared to be a mere whimsical
vagary most inopportunely introduced.

It was, however, soon evident that the war had
made the necessity of reform imperative, and chiefly
for two reasons : first, the enormous increase of pat
ronage, and second, the fact that circumstances had
largely identified a party name with patriotism. The
great and radical evil of the spoils system was care
fully fostered by the apparent absolute necessity to the
public welfare of making political opinion and sym
pathy a condition of appointment to the smallest place.
It is since the war, therefore, that the evil has run
riot and that its consequences have been fully revealed.
Those consequences are not familiar, and I shall not
describe them. It is enough that the most patriotic
and intelligent Americans and the most competent
foreign observers agree that the direct and logical re
sults of that system are the dangerous confusion of the
executive and legislative powers of the government;
the conversion of politics into mere place-hunting; the
extension of the mischief to State and county and city
administration, and the consequent degradation of the
national character; the practical disfranchisement of
the people wherever the system is most powerful; and
the perversion of a republic of equal citizens into a
despotism of venal politicians. These are the greatest
dangers that can threaten a republic, and they are due
to the practice of treating the vast system of minor

262 CURTIS.

public places which are wholly ministerial, and whose
duties are the same under every party administration,
not as public trusts, but as party perquisites. The
English-speaking race has a grim sense of humor, and
the absurdity of transacting the public business of a
great nation in a way which would ruin both the trade
and the character of a small huckster, of proceeding
upon the theory — for such is the theory of the Spoils
System — that a man should be put in charge of a loco
motive because he holds certain views of original sin,
or because he polishes boots nimbly with his tongue —
it is a folly so stupendous and grotesque that when it
is fully perceived by the shrewd mother-wit of the
Yankee it will be laughed indignantly and contemptu
ously away. But the laugh must have the method,
and the indignation the form, of law ; and now that the
public mind is aroused to the true nature and tendency
of the Spoils System is the time to consider the practic
able legal remedy for them.

The whole system of appointments in the Civil Serv
ice proceeds from the President, and in regard to his
action the intention of the Constitution is indisputable.
It is that the President shall appoint solely upon public
considerations, and that the officer appointed shall
serve as long as he discharges his duty faithfully.
This is shown in Mr. Jefferson's familiar phrase in his
reply to the remonstrance of the merchants of New
Haven against the removal of the collector of that port.
Mr. Jefferson asserted that Mr. Adams had
purposely appointed in the last moments of his ad
ministration officers whose designation he should have
left to his successor. Alluding to these appointments,

CURTIS. 263

lie says : " I shall correct the procedure, and that done,
return with joy to that state of things when the only
question concerning a candidate shall be, Is he honest?
Is he capable ? Is he faithful to the Constitution ? "
Mr. Jefferson here recognizes that these had been the
considerations which had usually determined appoint
ments; and Mr. Madison, in the debate upon the
President's sole power of removal, declared that if a
President should remove an officer for any reason not
connected with efficient service he would be impeached.
Reform, therefore, is merely a return to the principle
and purpose of the constitution and to the practice of
the early administrations.

What more is necessary, then, for reform than that
the President should return to that practice? As all
places in the Civil Service are filled either by his- direct
nomination or by officers whom he appoints, why has
not any President ample constitutional authority to
effect at any moment a complete and thorough reform ?
The answer is simple. He has the power. He has
always had it. A President has only to do as Wash
ington did, and all his successors have only to do like
wise, and reform would be complete. Every President
has but to refuse to remove non-political officers for po
litical or personal reasons ; to appoint only those whom
he knows to be competent; to renominate, as Monroe
and John Ouincy Adams did, every faithful officer
whose commission expires, and to require the heads of
departments and all inferior appointing officers to con
form to this practice, and the work would be done.
This is apparently a short and easy and constitutional
method of reform, requiring no further legislation or

264 CURTIS.

scheme of procedure. But why has no President
adopted it? For the same reason that the best of
Popes does not reform the abuses of his Church. For
the same reason that a leaf goes over Niagara. It is
because the opposing forces are overpowering. The
same high officer of the government to whom I have
alluded said to me as we drove upon the Heights of
Washington, " Do you mean that I ought not to ap
point my subordinates for whom I am responsible ? " I
answered : " I mean that you do not appoint them now ;
I mean that if, when we return to the capital, you hear
that your chief subordinate is dead, you will not ap
point his successor. You will have to choose among
the men urged upon you by certain powerful politi
cians. Undoubtedly you ought to appoint the man
whom you believe to be the most fit. But you do not
and cannot. If you could or did appoint such men
only, and that were the rule of your department and of
the service, there would be no need of reform." And
he could not deny it. There was no law to prevent
his selection of the best man. Indeed, the law assumed
that he would do it. The Constitution intended that
he should do it. But when I reminded him that there
were forces beyond the law that paralyzed the inten
tion of the Constitution, and which would inevitably
compel him to accept the choice of others, he said no
more.

It is easy to assert that the reform of the Civil Serv
ice is an executive reform. So it is. But the Execu
tive alone cannot accomplish it. The abuses are now
completely and agressively organized, and the sturdiest
President would quail before them. The President

CURTIS. 265

who should undertake, single-handed, to deal with
the complication of administrative evils known as the
Spoils System would find his party leaders in Congress
and their retainers throughout the country arrayed
against him; the proposal to disregard traditions and
practices which are regarded as essential to the very
existence and effectiveness of party organization would
be stigmatized as treachery, and the President himself
would be covered with odium as a traitor. The air
would hum with denunciation. The measures he
should favor, the appointments he might make, the
recommendations of his secretaries, would be opposed
and imperilled, and the success of his administration
would be endangered. A President who should alone
undertake thoroughly to reform the evil must feel it
to be the vital and paramount issue, and must be will
ing to hazard everything for its success. He must have
the absolute faith and the indomitable will of Luther.
" Here stand I ; I can no other." How can we expect
a President whom this system elects to devote himself
to its destruction ? General Grant, elected by a spon
taneous patriotic impulse, fresh from the regulated
order of military life and new to politics and politicians,
saw the reason and the necessity of reform. The hero
of a victorious war, at the height of his popularity, his
party in undisputed and seemingly indisputable su
premacy, made the attempt. Congress, good-naturedly
tolerating what it considered his whim of inexperience,
granted money to try an experiment. The adverse
pressure was tremendous. " I am used to pressure,"
said the soldier. So he was, but not to this pressure.
He was driven by unknown and incalculable currents.

266 CURTIS.

He was enveloped in whirlwinds of sophistry, scorn,
and incredulity. He who upon his own line had
fought it out all summer to victory, upon a line abso
lutely new and unknown was naturally bewildered and
dismayed. So Wellington had drawn the lines of
victory on the Spanish Peninsula and had saved Europe
at Waterloo. But even Wellington at Waterloo could
not be also Sir Robert Peel at Westminster. Even
Wellington, who had overthrown Napoleon in the field,
could not also be the parliamentary hero who for the
welfare of his country would dare to risk the overthrow
of his party. When at last President Grant said, " If
Congress adjourns without positive legislation on Civil
Service reform, I shall regard such action as a disap
proval of the system and shall abandon it," it was,
indeed, a surrender, but it was the surrender of a cham
pion who had honestly mistaken both the nature and
the strength of the adversary and his own power of
endurance.

It is not, then, reasonable, under the conditions of
our government and in the actual situation, to expect
a President to go much faster or much further than
public opinion. But executive action can aid most
effectively the development and movement of that
opinion, and the most decisive reform measures that
the present administration might take would be un
doubtedly supported by a powerful public sentiment.
The educative results of resolute executive action, how
ever limited and incomplete in scope, have been shown
in the two great public offices of which I have spoken,
the New York Custom House and the New York Post-
office. For nearly three years the entire practicability

GROVER CLEVELAND.

CURTIS. 267

of reform has been demonstrated in those offices, and
solely by the direction of the President. The value of
such demonstrations, due to the Executive will alone,
carried into effect by thoroughly trained and interested
subordinates, cannot be over-estimated. But( when
they depend upon the will of a transient officer and not
upon a strong public conviction, they are seeds that
have no depth of soil. A vital and enduring reform in
administrative methods, although it be but a return to
the constitutional intention, can be accomplished only
by the commanding impulse of public opinion. Per
manence is secured by law, not by individual pleasure.
But in this country law is only formulated public
opinion. Reform of the Civil Service does not con
template an invasion of the constitutional prerogative
of the President and the Senate, nor does it propose
to change the Constitution by statute. The whole sys
tem of the Civil Service proceeds, as I said, from the
President, and the object of the reform movement is
to enable him to fulfil.. the intention of the Constitu
tion by revealing to him the desire of the country
through the action of its authorized representatives.
When the ground-swell of public opinion lifts Congress
from the rocks, the President will gladly float with it
into the deep water of wise and patriotic action. The
President, indeed, has never been the chief sinner in
the Spoils System, although he has been the chief
agent. Even President Jackson yielded to party pres
sure as much as to his own convictions. President
Harrison sincerely wished to stay the flood, but it
swept him away. President Grant doubtfully and
with good intentions tested the pressure before yield-

268 CURTIS.

ing. President Hayes, with sturdy independence, ad
hered inflexibly to a few points, but his party chiefs
cursed and derided him. President Garfield — God
bless and restore him! — frankly declares permanent
and effective reform to be impossible without the con
sent of Congress. When, therefore, Congress obeys a
commanding public opinion, and reflects it in legisla
tion, it will restore to the President the untrammelled
exercise of his ample constitutional powers according
to the constitutional intention; and the practical ques
tion of reform is, How shall this be brought about?

Now, it is easy to kill weeds if we can destroy their
roots, and it is not difficult to determine what the
principle of reform legislation should be if we can agree
upon the source of the abuses to be reformed. May
they not have a common origin ? In fact, are they not
all bound together as parts of one system? The Rep
resentative in Congress, for instance, does not ask
whether the interests of the public service require this
removal or that appointment, but whether, directly or
indirectly, either will best serve his own interests. The*
Senator acts from the same motives. The President,
in turn, balances between the personal interests of lead
ing politicians — President, Senators, and Representa
tives all wishing to pay for personal service and to con
ciliate personal influence. So also the party labor re
quired of the place-holder, the task of carrying cau
cuses, of defeating one man and electing another, as
may be ordered, the payment of the assessment levied
upon his salary — all these are the price of the place.
They are the taxes paid by him as conditions of receiv
ing a personal favor. Thus the abuses have a common:

CURTIS. 269

source, whatever may be the plea for the system from
which they spring. Whether it be urged that the
system is essential to party organization, or that the
desire for place is a laudable political ambition, or that
the Spoils System is a logical development of our
political philosophy, or that new brooms sweep clean,
or that any other system is un-American — whatever
the form of the plea for the abuse, the conclusion is
always the same, that the minor places in the Civil
Service are not public trusts, but rewards and prizes
for personal and political favorites.

The root of the complex evil, then, is personal favor
itism. This produces Congressional dictation, Sena
torial usurpation, arbitrary removals, interference in
elections, political assessments, and all the consequent
corruption, degradation, and danger that experience
has disclosed. The method of reform, therefore, must
be a plan of selection for appointment which makes
favoritism impossible. The general feeling undoubt
edly is that this can be accomplished by a fixed limited
term. But the terms of most of the orifices to which
the President and the Senate appoint, and upon which
the myriad minor places in the service depend, have
been fixed and limited for sixty years, yet it is during
that very period that the chief evils of personal patron
age have appeared. The law of 1820, which limited
the term of important revenue offices to four years,
and which was afterward extended to other offices,
was intended, as John Quincy Adams tells us, to pro
mote the election to the presidency of Mr. Crawford,
who was then Secretary of the Treasury. The law
was drawn by Mr. Crawford himself, and it was intro-

270 CURTIS.

duced into the Senate by one of his devoted partisans.
It placed the whole body of executive financial officers
at the mercy of the Secretary of the Treasury and
of a majority of the Senate, and its design,
as Mr. Adams says, " was to - secure for Mr.
Crawford the influence of all the incumbents in office,
at the peril of displacement, and of five or ten times an
equal number of ravenous office-seekers, eager to sup
plant them." This is the very substance of the Spoils
System, intentionally introduced by a fixed limitation
of term in place of the constitutional tenure of efficient
service; and it was so far successful that it made the
custom house officers, district attorneys, marshals,
registers of the land office, receivers of public money,
and even paymasters in the army, notoriously active
partisans of Mr. Crawford. Mr. Benton says that the
four-years law merely made the dismissal of faithful
officers easier, because the expiration of the term was
regarded as " the creation of a vacancy to be filled by
new appointments." A fixed limited term for the
chief offices has not destroyed or modified personal in
fluence, but, on the contrary, it has fostered universal
servility and loss of self-respect, because reappointment
depends, not upon official fidelity and efficiency, but
upon personal influence and favor. To fix by law the
terms of places dependent upon such offices would be
like an attempt to cure hydrophobia by the bite of a
mad dog. The incumbent would be always busy keep
ing his influence in repair to secure reappointment, and
the applicant would be equally busy in seeking such in
fluence to procure the place, and as the fixed terms
would be constantly expiring, the eager and angry

CURTIS. 271

intrigue and contest of influence would be as endless
as it is now. This certainly would not be reform.

But would not reform be secured by adding to a
fixed limited term the safeguard of removal for cause
only? Removal for cause alone means, of course, re
moval for legitimate cause, such as dishonesty, negli
gence, or incapacity. But who shall decide that such
cause exists? This must be determined either by the
responsible superior officer or by some other authority.
But if left to some other authority the right of counsel
and the forms of a court would be invoked ; the whole
legal machinery of mandamuces, injunctions, certior-
aris, and the rules of evidence would be put in play to
keep an incompetent clerk at his desk or a sleepy watch
man on his beat. Cause for the removal of a letter-
carrier in the post-office or of an accountant in the cus
tom house would be presented with all the pomp of
impeachment and established like a high crime and mis
demeanor. Thus every clerk in every office would
have a kind of vested interest in his place because, how
ever careless, slovenly, or troublesome he might be,
he could be displaced only by an elaborate and doubtful
legal process. Moreover, if the head of a bureau or a
collector, or a postmaster were obliged to prove negli
gence, or insolence, or incompetency against a clerk as
he would prove theft, there would be no removals
from the public service except for crimes of which the
penal law takes cognizance. Consequently, removal
would be always and justly regarded as a stigma upon
character, and a man removed from a position in a
public office would be virtually branded as a convicted
criminal. Removal for cause, therefore, if the cause

2/2 CURTIS.

were to be decided by any authority but that of the
responsible superior officer, instead of improving,
would swiftly and enormously enhance the cost, and
ruin the efficiency, of the public service, by destroying
subordination, and making every lazy and worthless
member of it twice as careless and incompetent as he
is now.

If, then, the legitimate cause for removal ought to
be determined in public as in private business by the
responsible appointing power, it is of the highest public
necessity that the exercise of that power should be
made as absolutely honest and independent as possible.
But how can it be made honest and independent if it is
not protected so far as practicable from the constant
bribery of selfish interest and the illicit solicitation of
personal influence? The experience of our large pat
ronage offices proves conclusively that the cause of
the larger number of removals is not dishonesty or
incompetency ; it is the desire to make vacancies to fill.
This is the actual cause, whatever cause may be as
signed. The removals would not be made except for
the pressure of politicians. But those politicians would
not press for removals if they could not secure the
appointment of their favorites. Make it impossible for
them to secure appointment, and the pressure would
instantly disappear and arbitrary removal cease.

So long, therefore, as we permit minor appointments
to be made by mere personal influence and favor, a
fixed limited term and removal during that term for
cause only would not remedy the evil, because the in
cumbents would still be seeking influence to secure re-
appointment, and the aspirants doing the same to re-

CURTIS. 2/3

place them. Removal under plea of good cause would
be as wanton and arbitrary as it is now, unless the
power to remove were intrusted to some other discre
tion than that of the superior officer, and in that case
the struggle for reappointment and the knowledge that
removal for the term was practically impossible would
totally demoralize the service. To make sure, then,
that removals shall be made for legitimate cause only,
we must provide that appointment shall be made only
for legitimate cause.

All roads lead to Rome. Personal influence in ap
pointments can be annulled only by free and open
competition. By that bridge we can return to the
practice of Washington and to the intention of the Con
stitution. That is the shoe of swiftness and the magic
sword by which the President can pierce and outrun
the protean enemy of sophistry and tradition which pre
vents him from asserting his power. If you say that
success in a competitive literary examination does not
prove fitness to adjust customs duties, or to distribute
letters, or to appraise linen, or to measure molasses, I
answer that the reform does not propose that fitness
shall be proved by a competitive literary examination.
It proposes to annul personal influence and political
favoritism by making appointment depend upon proved
capacity. To determine this it proposes first to test
the comparative general intelligence of all applicants
and their special knowledge of the particular official
duties required, and then to prove the practical faculty
of the most intelligent applicants by actual trial in the
performance of the duties before they are appointed.
If it be still said that success in such a competition may

2/4 CURTIS.

not prove fitness, it is enough to reply that success in
obtaining the favor of some kind of boss, which is the
present system, presumptively proves unfitness.

Nor is it any objection to the reformed system that
many efficient officers in the service could not have
entered it had it been necessary to pass an examination ;
it is no objection, because their efficiency is a mere
chance. They were not appointed because of efficiency,
but either because they were diligent politicians or be
cause they were recommended by diligent politicians.
The chance of getting efficient men in any business
is certainly not diminished by inquiry and investigation.
I have heard an officer in the army say that he could
select men from the ranks for special duty much more
satisfactorily than they could be selected by an exami
nation. Undoubtedly he could, because he knows his
men, and he selects solely by his knowledge of their
comparative fitness. If this were true of the Civil
Service, if every appointing officer chose the fittest per
son from those that he knew, there would be no need
of reform. It is because he cannot do this that the
reform is necessary.

It is the same kind of objection which alleges that
competition is a droll plan by which to restore the con
duct of the public business to business principles and
methods, since no private business selects its agents
by competition. But the managers of private business
are virtually free from personal influence in selecting
their subordinates, and they employ and promote and
dismiss them solely for the interests of the business.
Their choice, however, is determined by an actual,
although not a formal, competition. Like the military

CURTIS. 275

officer, they select those whom they know by experience
to be the most competent. But if great business
houses and corporations were exposed to persistent,
insolent, and overpowering interference and solicita
tion for place such as obstructs great public depart
ments and officers, they too who resort to the form of
competition, as they now have its substance, and they
would resort to it to secure the very freedom which
they now enjoy of selecting for fitness alone.

Mr. President, in the old Arabian story, from the
little box upon the sea-shore, carelessly opened by the
fisherman, arose the towering and haughty demon,
ever more monstrous and more threatening, who would
not crouch again. So from the small patronage of
the earlier day, from a Civil Service dealing with a
national revenue of only $2,000,000, and regulated
upon sound business principles, has sprung the un-
American, un-Democratic, un-Republican system
which destroys political independence, honor, and
morality, and corrodes the national character itself.
In the solemn anxiety of this hour the warning, words
of the austere Calhoun, uttered nearly half a century
ago, echo in startled recollection like words of doom :
"If you do not put this thing down it will put you
down." Happily it is the historic faith of the race
from which we are chiefly sprung, that eternal vigi
lance is the price of liberty. It is that faith which has
made our mother England the great parent of free
States. The same faith has made America the political
hope of the world. Fortunately removed by our p@-
sition from the entanglements of European politics,

and more united and peaceful at home than at any time
10-6

276 CURTIS.

within the memory of living men, the moment is most
auspicious for remedying that abuse in our political
system whose nature, proportions, and perils the whole
country begins clearly to discern. The will and the
power to apply the remedy will be a test of the sagacity
and the energy of the people. The reform of which I
have spoken is essentially the people's reform. With
the instinct of robbers who run with the crowd and
lustily cry " Stop thief ! " those who would make the
public service the monopoly of a few favorites denounce
the determination to open that service to the whole
people as a plan to establish an aristocracy. The huge
ogre of patronage, gnawing at the character, the honor,
and the life of the country, grimly sneers that the
people cannot help themselves and that nothing can
be done. But much greater things have been done.
Slaverv was the Giant Despair of many good men of
the last generation, but slavery was overthrown. If
the Spoils System, a monster only less threatening than
slavery, be unconquerable, it is because the country has
lost its convictions, its courage, and its common-sense.
" I expect," said the Yankee as he surveyed a stout
antagonist, " I expect that -you're pretty ugly, but I
cal'late I'm a darned sight uglier/' I know that pat
ronage is strong, but I believe that the American
people are very much stronger.

ROSS. 277

Ross, Jonathan, an American jurist, born at Water-
ford, Vt., April 30, 1826, In the earlier portion of his
career he taught school in his native State, and afterwards
studying law he was admitted to the bar in 1856, and entered
upon his profession at St. Johnsbury, Vt. He had already
served three terms in the lower house of the State Legisla
ture when in 1870 he entered the State Senate, and in the
same year he was elected to the State Supreme bench. In
1890 he became chief justice of Vermont, and after the
death of Senator Morrill in 1898 Ross succeeded him in the
United States Senate. In January, 1900, he delivered a
notable speech in the Senate on " The Island Possessions of
the United States."

THE NATION'S RELATION TO ITS ISLAND
POSSESSIONS.

FROM SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE UNITED STATES
SENATE, JANUARY 23, IQOO.

IN regard to Cuba the duty is particular. It is so
constituted by the resolutions antedating the war and
by the provisions of the treaty. The preamble of the
joint resolution of Congress approved April 20, 1898,
counts upon the abhorrent conditions which have ex
isted in that island for more than three years, shocking
to the moral sense of the people of the United States,
a disgrace to Christian civilization, culminating in the
destruction of the " Maine " with two hundred and
sixty-six of its officers and crew, and thereupon it is
solemnly resolved: (i) That the people of the island
are, and of right ought to be free and independent;
(2) That it is the duty of this government to demand,

2/8 ROSS.

and it does demand, that Spain at once relinquish its
authority and government of the island; (3) Author
izes the President to use the entire land and naval
forces and to call out the militia to enforce the demand ;
(4) The United States disclaims any disposition or in
tention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or con
trol over the island except for the pacification thereof,
and then asserts its determination to leave the govern
ment and control of the island to its people.

These were followed by the act approved April 25th,
declaring that a state of war had existed between the
United States and Spain since April 2ist, and di
recting and empowering the President to use the entire
land and naval forces and to call into the service the
militia of the United States in the prosecution of the
war. The President exercised the power conferred,
obeyed the direction, prosecuted the war to a successful
termination, resulting first in the protocol and then in
the treaty ratified by the Senate, by which Spain re
linquishes her sovereignty over Cuba, and the United
States announces to the world that she is about to
occupy and while the occupation continues she —

will assume and discharge the obligations that may,
under international law, result from the fact of its
occupation for the protection of life and property.

The United States is now in the exercise of such
occupation. It has been claimed that she did not take
sovereignty over the island ; that on the relinquishment
by Spain it vanished into thin air to some place un
known, or, as one eminent writer on international law

ROSS. 279-

has said, was in abeyance until the inhabitants of the
island should be in condition to receive and exercise
it. Sovereignty is supreme or paramount control in
the government of a country. The United States is
now and has been since the signing of the protocol in the
exercise of this control in the government of the island.
It has not been a divided control, as sometimes happens
in the conflict of arms. Her control has been unques
tioned and undisputed. I think the United States,
upon the surrender of sovereignty over the island by
Spain, immediately following the signing of the proto
col, took sovereignty over the island, not as her own,
nor for her benefit, nor for the people of the United
States, but for the inhabitants of the island, for the
specified and particular purpose of pacification of the
island. What is meant by ' the pacification of the
island? It may be difficult to determine.

Persons and nations may differ in regard to the
state of things which must exist to have this accom
plished. The Cubans may say that they are pacified,
in a state of peace now, and therefore it is our duty to
withdraw and allow them to set up such a government
as they may choose. We may say that pacification
means more than absence of a state of war; that, con
sidering the state of things that had existed for three
or more years, it means until the inhabitants shall have
acquired a reliable, stable government. Are the Cu
bans capable of establishing and maintaining a stable
government ? Who shall decide ? If that be the mean
ing, what kind of a government? A monarchy, a
despotism abhorrent to the fundamental principles that
have ruled and inspired this nation from its origin?

280 ROSS.

Who can tell ? Then the announcement makes no pro
vision for any return by such government when estab
lished for the expenditures and obligations incurred in.
prosecuting the war and administering the sovereignty.
Is the United States to receive such compensation?
She became a volunteer in the war, and announced her
self such volunteer in taking the sovereignty until
pacification is accomplished. As such the United
States stands to-day before the civilized nations of
the world. The inhabitants of Cuba are the benefici
aries of this voluntarily assumed duty, and when a dif
ference arises between this government and them,
whether the duty has been performed and whether
this nation is to be compensated for the expense of its
administration, have a right to arraign this nation at
the bar of nations and demand that it give account of
the stewardship which it voluntarily assumed. The
determination of the rights of this nation and of the
Cubans under this assumed duty may involve many
nice questions and many difficulties.

Yet there are those who earnestly urge that Congress
should make a declaration that the nation holds Puerto
Rico and the Philippine Islands under the same unde
fined, yet in a sense particular, duty. In my judg
ment, such a course is beset with complications and
difficulties. By adopting it the nation would court
these and invite the inhabitants of the islands to en
gender perplexing questions and entanglements.
Under the treaty the nation takes the sovereignty of
Puerto Rico and of the Philippine Islands, under the
general duty to use it in such a manner as Congress
may judge will best subserve the highest interests of

ROSS. 28l

their inhabitants and the inhabitants of this nation. I
would announce no other duty in regard to them.
Many more complications and entanglements may arise
in the discharge of the particular duty to Cuba than
are likely to arise in the discharge of the general duty
to Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands.

It is urged that this nation should announce the
policy of its purpose in the administration of the
sovereignty. The flag of the nation has been planted
on those islands. That is the emblem of its policy
and ever has been, even when at half-mast, mourning
the loss of her sons slain in its defence. The flag never
did, and I hope never may, represent but one policy.
That policy is individual manhood; the right to enjoy
religious and civil liberty; the right of every man to
believe in and worship God according to the dictates of
his own conscience ; the right to stand protected equally
with every gther man before the law in the enjoyment
of freedom, of personal rights, and of property. Let
the flag, as the representative of these principles, be
planted and become dominant on and over every island
and every inhabitant. No other, no better, policy can
be proclaimed. In no other way can this Congress and
nation discharge its duty to the people of the United
States and to the people of the islands. Congress
should proclaim this policy by its acts and make no
attempt to do what it has no power to do — to pledge
or limit the action of future Congresses. What future
Congresses shall do is for them to determine and pro
claim. It cannot be assumed that wisdom will die
with the present Congress, nor that it is any part of its

282 ROSS.

duty to proclaim what future Congresses shall do.
Sufficient unto the day is the duty thereof.

If these principles are enforced as far as applicable
to the government of these islands, the inhabitants will
be blessed, whether they consent thereto in advance or
not. In a representative government the right to gov
ern is not derived from the consent of the governed
until they arrive at a stage of advancement which will
render them capable of giving an intelligent consent.
Four fifths of the inhabitants of this country have
given no consent except representatively. The consent
of women, as a rule, and of minors is never required
nor allowed to be taken. Wives and children are as
sumed to be represented by husbands and fathers.
Boys are to be educated, trained, and ripened into man
hood before they are capable of giving consent.
Doubtless the boys of fifteen in this country are better
prepared to give an intelligent consent than are the in
habitants of those islands. This is not their fault.
After having lived for more than three hundred years
under a government of oppression and practical denial
of all rights it is not wonderful that they are not cap
able of judging how they should be governed. They
are to be trained in these principles: first, by being
allowed, under experienced leaders, to put them in
practice in the simpler forms of government, and then
be gradually advanced in their exercise as their knowl
edge increases.

All accounts agree that the administration of justice
in the islands through the courts has been a farce ; that
no native could establish his rights or gain his cause,
however righteous, against the Spaniards and priests;

ROSS. 283

that therein bribery and every form of favoritism and
oppression prevailed. Under such training and abuse
falsehood and deceit have become prevalent. These
most discouraging traits of character cannot be
changed in a generation, and never except by pure,
impartial administration of justice through the courts,
regardless of who may be the parties to the contro
versies. In my judgment, the people of this nation
obtain more and clearer knowledge of their personal
and property rights through the administration of
justice in the courts than from all other sources.

All experience teaches that the requirements and im
partial practice of the principles of civil and religious
liberty cannot speedily be acquired by the inhabitants,
left to their own way, under a protectorate by this
nation. The experience of this nation in governing
and endeavoring to civilize the Indians teaches this. For
about a century this nation exercised in fact a protec
torate over the tribes and allowed the natives of the coun
try to manage their tribal and other relations in their
own way. The advancement in civilization was very
slow and har'dly perceptible. During the compara
tively few years that Congress has by direct legislation
controlled their relations to each other and to the reser
vations the advancement in civilization has been ten
fold more rapid. This is in accord with all experience.
The untaught cannot become acquainted with the diffi
cult problems of government and of individual rights
and their due enforcement without skilful guides.

No practical educator would think of creating a body
of skilled mechanics by turning the unskilled loose in
a machine shop. He would place there trained super-

284 ROSS.

intendents and guides to impart information to their
untaught brains and to guide their unskilled hands. It
is equally true that they would never become skilled
without using their brains and hands in operating the
machines. So, too, if this nation would successfully
bring the inhabitants of these islands into the practice
of the principles of religious and civil liberty it must
both give them the opportunity to be taught in and
to practice them, first in their simpler forms and then
in their higher application, but under competent and
trained teachers and guides placed over them by this
nation. It is equally true that the laws and customs
now prevailing must neither be pushed one side nor
changed too suddenly. They must be permeated grad
ually by the leaven of civil and religious liberty until
the entire population is leavened. To accomplish this
without mistake in the interest of the people of this
nation and of the inhabitants of the islands is a most
difficult task, demanding honesty, intelligence, and the
greatest care and good judgment. The task is rend
ered much more difficult because the people of the
islands have hitherto been governed by the application
of the direct opposite of these principles, and are com
posed of great numbers of tribes, speaking different
dialects and languages and governed by different cus
toms and laws.

The successful solution of this problem demands ac
curate knowledge of the present conditions of the entire
population and of the different classes, of their respec
tive habits, customs, and laws. As the principles of
civil and religious liberty are gradually intermingled
with their present customs, habits, and laws, changes

ROSS. 285

will be constantly going forward. An intimate
knowledge of these changes will also be necessary for
their successful government. Hence, as a first step
to a successful discharge of this duty, Congress should
create a department of government charged with the
sole duty to become accurately acquainted with and to
take charge of their affairs and place exact knowledge
of them before Congress for its guidance. They
should not, as now, be left in charge of departments
overloaded and overworked.

The second step to be taken is to remove all civil
appointments in the islands from the realm of politics.
The nation will utterly fail in the discharge of its duty
if the islands are made political footballs subject to
change in government with every political change in
the administration. The administration of the sove
reignty must be intelligent, honest, and uninterrupted.
A faithful, intelligent man with a full knowledge of
the situation must not be displaced to give place to one
ignorant of the conditions, however capable otherwise.
The duty rests upon the entire nation. It must be dis
charged for the interest of the whole nation. There
are honest, capable men in every political party. These
should be sought out and given place in the adminis
tration of this sovereignty, as nearly as may be in pro
portion to the strength of the several political parties
in the nation. Then when there is a political change
in the administration there will be no inducement to
make extensive changes in the administrative appoin
tees of the sovereignty.

Difficult as is the administration of this sovereignty,
if honestly and intelligently undertaken such adminis-

286 ROSS.

tration, I believe, will be beneficial both to the people
of this nation and to the inhabitants of the islands.
Difficulties which have come as these have come — un
sought — honestly and faithfully encountered, bring
wisdom and strength. The struggle for nearly a cen
tury in this nation over slavery gave wonderful wis
dom, strength and clearness of insight into the great
principles which the nation is now called upon to apply
to these oppressed islands. Stagnation is decay and
ultimate death. Honest struggle, endeavor, and dis
cussion bring light, growth, development, and
strength. The primary object to be attained by the
discharge of this duty is the elevation of the inhabitants
of the islands physically, mentally, and morally; to
make them industrious, honest, intelligent, liberty-
loving, and law-abiding. This end attained, the sec
ondary object — commercial and material growth among
them and among the surrounding millions — will surely
follow. The first unattained, the second, at best, will
be spasmodic and of little worth.

The intelligent, thoughtful observer sees more in
nature and in the ordering of the affairs of this world
than the unguided plans and devices of men and na
tions. For him the wisdom of the Eternal shapes the
affairs of men and of nations, sometimes even against
their selfish plans and desires. For such, his hand
planted the seed of individual manhood and for cen
turies watched over and cared for it in its slow growth
amidst infinite sufferings, struggles, and conflicts, until
at length planted on these shores, not entirely in its pur
ity, but at last brought to full fruitage in the terrible
struggles and conflicts which ended with the Civil

ROSS. 287

War. Under him no man, no nation, lives to itself
alone. If it has received much, much must it give
to the less favored. Under his guidance, I believe, the
discharge of this great and difficult duty has fallen,
unsought, to the lot of this nation. Then let the na
tion take up the duty which the Ruler of men and
nations has placed upon it; go forward in an honest,
unselfish, intelligent, earnest endeavor to discharge it
for the highest interest of the nation and of the islands
in the fear and under the direction of the Supreme
Ruler, who guided the fathers and founders; and the
nation will not, cannot, encounter failure.

288 VANCE.

Vance, Zebulon B., an American politician and orator,
born in Buncombe county, N. C., May 13, 1830 ; died in
Washington, D. C., April 14, 1894. After admission to the
North Carolina bar in 1853 he settled at Asheville, in his
native state, and the next year entered the State Legisla
ture. He was sent to Congress in 1858, and, although
opposed to secession, supported the action of his State in
that matter, and served for a time in the Confederate Army.
He was governor of North Carolina during much of the
period of the War, but after the occupation of that State by
the Union forces was imprisoned for some weeks in Wash
ington. Elected to the United States Senate in 1870, he was
refused admission, but on the removal of his political disa
bilities became a member of the Senate in 1879, continuing
in that capacity until his death. In 1876 he had been gov
ernor of his State for a third time. Vance was one of the
most popular Senators of his time, and was chairman of innu
merable Congressional committees. He was conspicuously
eloquent, and ardently championed the cause of free silver
and tariff reform.

THE SLAVERY QUESTION.

FROM SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENT
ATIVES, MARCH 1 6, i860.

THE scheme of removing and colonizing four mil
lion people is so utterly absurd in practice that it needs
only to be suggested to exhibit its entire impractica
bility. Amalgamation is so odious that even the mind
of a fanatic recoils in disgust and loathing from the
prospect of intermingling the quick and jealous blood

VANCE. 289

of the European with the putrid stream of African bar
barism.

What, then, is best and right to be done with our
slaves ? Plainly and unequivocally, common sense says
keep the slave where he is now — in servitude. The in
terest of the slave himself imperatively demands it. The
interest of the master, of the United States, of the
world, nay, of humanity itself, says, keep the slave in
his bondage ; treat him humanely, teach him Christian
ity, care for him in sickness and old age, and make his
bondage light as may be ; but above all, keep him a
slave and in strict subordination; for that is his nor
mal condition; the one in which alone he can promote
the interest of himself or of his fellows.

If this is not the language of political philosophy
and true philanthropy, if this is not right, then are my
most ardent convictions and the most generous im
pulses of my heart but shallow and false delusions;
and I pray to be enlightened, as one who would, if pos
sible, rise above all the surroundings of prejudice and
section to view this great question solely by the pure
and unflickering light of truth.

Such being our circumstances, and such our convic
tions, it is time for the opponents of slavery to know,
and to be warned, that it is something more than pe
cuniary interest that binds us to that institution. It
is not, as we are often tauntingly told, a desire for
gain, or an aversion to physical labor, that makes us
jealous of any interference with slavery.

The principle is more deeply seated than this. The
general welfare and prosperity of our country, the very
foundation of our society, of our fortunes, and, to a

290 VANCE.

greater or less extent, the personal safety of our peo
ple, combine to make us defend it to the last extrem
ity. And neither considerations of the Federal Union,
nor any other good, will allow us to permit any direct
interference with our rights in this respect.

But we are to be lulled to sleep, and our fear quieted,
as to the purposes of the Republican party, by the oft-
repeated assertions of your leaders, that you do not
intend to interfere with it in the States.- You say,
again and again, that you only intend to prevent its
extension into the Territories; and you complain that
southern men will unjustly continue to charge you
with interference with it inside the States. Mr. Se-
ward, in his recent opiate, says :

" 3. That the capital States [by which he is sup
posed to mean slave States] do not practically distin
guish between legitimate and constitutional resistance
to the extension of slavery in the common Territories
of the Union, and unconstitutional aggression against
slavery established by local laws in the capital States."

And Mr. Wade has laid it down recently, as one of
the grand principles of the Republican party, that there
shall be no interference with slavery inside the States.
I contend, sir, that to prohibit slavery in all the Ter
ritories, by an act of Congress, or to refuse to admit a
new State because she recognizes slavery, would be a
direct and unequivocal interference, about which com
mon sense will admit of no sort of doubt.

In the first place, because it materially impairs the
value of my property to restrain my power to remove

VANCE. 291

it; and especially to make it no longer my property
when I take it into what Mr. Seward himself acknowl
edges to be " the common territory." If your shoes
and cotton fabrics were prohibited by Congress from
entering the south, you would find their value im
paired most woefully, and would justly regard it as an
interference with the rights of trade.

In the second place, by surrounding the slave States
with free territory, and building us in with an impas
sable wall, you would eventually force the abolition of
slavery. Our population would become so dense, and
our slaves so numerous, that we could not live; their
value would depreciate to nothing, and we would not
be able to keep them.

Do you not call this interference ? If not, then what
is it ? A general desires to take a certain city ; thinking
it too strong to be won by storm, he sits down with his
army before it, draws his lines of circumvallation, cuts
off its supplies, and, shutting off all communication,
waits patiently for famine and domestic insurrection
to do their work. True, he says, " Don't be alarmed
in there; I am not going to interfere with your in
ternal affairs ; I have no right to do that ; in fact, one
of the rules of war in my camp is, no interference with
the internal affairs of this city; my only intention is
that you shall not spread, as you are a very sinful
people."

Yet that city, in spite of these protestations, would
soon find itself subjugated and ruined. You are inter
fering with our rights in the most dangerous manner
by thus seeking to violate one of the oldest and plainest
principles of justice and reason — that you cannot do

292 VANCE.

indirectly that which you are forbidden to do directly.
The voice of the nation speaking through its repre
sentatives by a majority of four to one, North and
South, affirmed this in 1838. In the twenty-fifth Con
gress, Mr. Atherton, of New Hampshire, moved a
series of resolutions on this subject, the third of which
sets forth —

" That Congress has no right to do that indirectly
which it cannot do directly; and that the agitation of
the subject of slavery in the District of Columbia or
the Territories, as a means, and with the view of dis
turbing or overthrowing that institution in the several
States is against the true spirit and meaning of the con
stitution, an infringement of the rights of the States
affected, and a breach of the public faith upon which
they entered into the Confederacy."

Upon this resolution the yeas were one hundred and
sixty-four, and the nays forty. Well may you com
plain that the South will not distinguish between your
resistance to the extension of slavery into the Terri
tories and a direct interference with its existence in the
States. The acutest minds can only see a different
means of attaining the same result.

In the third place, your agitation and eternal ha
rangues have a direct and inevitable tendency to excite
our slaves to insurrection. I know that you deny not
only an intention to do so, but the effect also.

But you speak in ignorance or disregard of hisfory.
It is unnatural to suppose that the noise of this great
conflict will not reach the negro's ear, and that your
violent professions of regard for his rights will not

VANCE. 293

make him believe that those who shelter him when he
runs away, will not also help him to cut his master's
throat. The constant denunciation of his owners by
your crazy fanatics will make him regard them as
monsters, and will cause him to cherish the coals of
rebellion until they burst forth into a consuming fire.

Wilberforce and Macaulay did not even intend to
abolish slavery in the West Indies when they began
their struggle for the rights of the negro — so they said
— and they scouted the idea with horror that their agi
tation would lead to servile war. And yet, when the
shrieks of murdered men and outraged women went
up through the hot roar of conflagration throughout
those lovely islands, the raging demons of lust and bru
tality bore upon their standards the name of Wilber
force, the philanthropist, beneath the effigy of a white
woman kneeling at the feet of a negro, and on which
was inscribed, " Liberty and white wives ! "

And so strongly do these facts press upon you, as
the legal result of your abolition teachings, that we
have witnessed the mortifying spectacle of gentlemen
rising on this floor and solemnly declaring that they
were not in favor of servile insurrection!

But all this injustice will you do, and all these dan
gers to our wives and children will you incur, rather
than permit slavery to enter another Territory, or per
mit it to come into the Union as a slave State, even
though the unanimous voice of the people thereof so
desired it. And this Territory, which you mock us
by calling " common," what do you intend to do with
it?

Sir, there are some districts in the south, in which

2Q4 VANCE.

the widows of slain Mexican volunteers will outnumber
the whole forces which some of your northern States
had in the field during that war. And yet these widows
and their orphans are not permitted to enter, with their
property, upon these fair lands which their husbands
purchased with their blood. They have not even the
satisfaction of seeing them sold for the use of the pub
lic treasury. You thrust them aside ; and, by what you
call a " homestead bill," propose to give them away to
those among you who cannot pay one shilling per acre
for homes.

The advocates of this agrarian iniquity unblushingly
avow that it will enable them to ship off the refuse
scum and redundant villainy of the cities of the north.
Your high-sounding catchwords of " homes for the
homeless " and " lands for the landless " can deceive
no one. Why not give also money to the moneyless,
and shoes to the barefoot? Why not imitate Rome,
when growing corrupt, and distribute largesses of
money and provisions among the people?

It would be the same, with the difference that Rome
robbed her provinces to feed her citizens, whilst you
would rob your citizens to feed the provinces. Nay,
you would feed the world; for every jail, workhouse,
and penitentiary in Europe would be emptied in our
Territories. The Atlantic Ocean would be bridged,
and swarms would pour across to enter into this land,
which is too good for southern slaveholders. The
good would come no faster, and of the bad we have
enough already. The old States lose their population
fast enough as it is, and no one should desire to increase
the depopulation. The true title of the bill, sir, should

VANCE. 295

read : " A bill to encourage foreign and domestic vag
abondism, by granting quarter sections of the public
land to each actual vagabond that cannot pay twelve-
and-a-half cents per acre for a home."

I would finally beg to say to these anti-slavery gen
tlemen, that for purposes of present advantage they
take but a limited view of the future of this great ques
tion. A world in arms could not abolish slavery in the
southern States to-day, or, if once abolished, a world
in arms would rise up and demand its restoration to
morrow. Our slaves are this moment more firmly
fixed in their bondage than at any previous moment in
our history. % Their labor has become an indispensable
necessity, not only to ourselves, but to the civilized
world; and statesmen, whether British or American,
know it.

Our united people will defend it with their blood in
the Union, and should your whole society, yielding to
a mad fanaticism, so trespass upon our rights as to
drive us from the Union, we would find ourselves able
to defend it as an independent nation. In fact, we
have all the capacities for a separate and independent
existence that are calculated to make a great and pros
perous State. We produce all the great items of raw
material necessary for manufactures ; the well-watered
valleys of the mountain regions in Virginia, Kentucky,
Tennessee, and North Carolina present the most desir
able seats for manufactories in the world.

The beautiful, healthful, and magnificent mountain
region of western Carolina, which I am proud to rep
resent on this floor, presents greater facilities itself
for manufacturing than all New England put together.

296 VANCE.

The coal fields of my State would feed the glowing fur
nace for ages to come; and the fertile plains of the
northwestern States do not furnish a finer region for
the production of the common articles of food, than
the great States of Kentucky, Tennessee, and North
Carolina.

Jn fact, we combine everything within ourselves that
is necessary for a separate and independent existence.
Norfolk, which I believe is in any event destined to
become a rival of New York and Liverpool, would
then become the great port of entry for the south ; and
the opening up of the great regions of the west by the
Southern Pacific Railroad, and the mingling of the
waters of the Ohio with those of the Chesapeake Bay,
by canal, would make her to rival the magnificence of
Tyre and Sidon. In all these mutations, whilst we
could flourish, your prosperity would be stricken down
to the dust, and your dependence upon raw material
would still hold you our obsequious dependent.

You talk now of forbearing to interfere with slavery
among us, because of the delicacy of the question and
the interest it involves to us; but you know that your
own prosperity is still more dependent upon its exist
ence. It is a tender regard for the goose that lays for
you the golden egg, that makes you profess to be un
willing to lay hands upon it. You know that slave la
bor has built all your cities and towns, has erected your
great warehouses, freights vour rich navies, and car
ries wealth and happiness throughout all the bleak and
sterile hills of New England.

You know that the shirt you wear, when you stand
up to denounce the slaveholder ; that the sugar that

VANCE. 297

sweetens your tea, when you sit down to the evening
and morning meal — nay, the very paper on which you
indite your senseless philippics against the south, are
the products of slave labor. You not only thus grow
rich upon what you call an iniquity, but you owe your
positions in this Hall to the prejudice which you feed
and pamper against slavery, and which alone consti
tutes your whole stock in trade.

Think not, therefore, that you can prevent the ex
tension of slavery, or abolish it where it is. For should
you succeed, as you threaten, in cooping us up and
surrounding us by Wilmot provisos, or by your home
stead bills, in filling up the common Territories with
northern and foreign squatters inimical to slavery, the
time will come when the southern people, gathering
up their households together, sword in hand, will force
an outlet for it at the cannon's mouth.

Long years might intervene before this necessity
came upon us, but come it certainly would, and we
would then go forth and find other lands whose soil
and climate were adapted to our institutions, from
which you would not dare to attempt to expel us. But
will you drive us to this course? Will the great con
servative masses of the northern people, who are in
heritors with us alike of the common glories of the
past, and heirs-apparent of the unspeakable glories of
our future, continue to urge this dire extremity upon
their southern brethren ?

Or will they not rather " be still, and behold how
God will brin(s: it to pass? " Will they not wait with
patience for this great and all-absorbing problem to
work itself out according to the immutable laws of

298 VANCE.

climate, soil, and all the governing circumstances with
which he has ever controlled the uprisings and the
down-sittings of men ?

In this way, and this only, as the waters of the great
sea purify themselves, will the good of both the Af
rican slave and his European master be accomplished;
without violence, without bloodshed, and without a
disruption of the bonds which bind together this blood-
bought and blood-cemented Union, which our fathers
founded in the agony of the greatest of human strug
gles, and builded with prayers to Heaven for its per
petuity.

This way alone will enable us to avoid that dread
day of disunion, of which I have thought in the bitter
ness of my spirit that I could curse it even as Job
cursed his nativity : " Let that day be darkness ; let
not God regard it from above, neither let the light
shine upon it. Let it not be joined unto the days of
the year ; let it not come into the number of the months.
Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark ; let it look
for light, but have none ; neither let it see the dawning
of the day."

TELLER. 299

/

Teller, Henry M., an American politician, born at
Granger, N. Y., May 23, 1830. After a few years spent in
teaching he studied law and was admitted to the bar, prac
tising his profession in Illinois for a time and subsequently
in Colorado. He was major-general of the Colorado militia,
1864-65, and in 1876 entered the United States Senate.
During a part of the administration of President Arthur,
from April, 1882, to March, 1885, Teller was Secretary of
the Interior, but returned to the Senate in the last named
year. He was re-elected in 1897 as an independent Silver
Republican. His oratory is rather florid in character. One
of his notable recent speeches was delivered in the Senate
in March, 1900, on the bill for the relief of Porto Rico.

ON PORTO RICO.

[Speech delivered in the Senate, March 14, 1900, during the
consideration of the bill temporarily to provide revenues for the
relief of Porto Rico.]

MR. PRESIDENT, — Before we get through with this
question of the power of the United States and what
ought to be its policy there will be ample time, I know,
for me to discuss it, and I will go directly to the bill,
so that I may. shorten my remarks within a proper
time, in view of the fact that the senator from Wash
ington has yielded the floor to me for a few moments.

In dealing with these new possessions my theory is
that we may make them a part of the United States if
we see fit. Now, if we conclude that we do not want
to make them a part of the United States, I believe we
have the same power to hold them, in a different rela
tion, that Great Britain has. I have listened to all the

300 TELLER.

discussion that has gone on here, and I can conceive
of no reason why the sovereignty of the United States
is limited to territory that they must make a part of
the United States. They will be a part of the United
States in one sense undoubtedly if we exercise a pro
tectorate over them. They will be a dependency, and
they will have a different relation to us from what the
other Territories organized as incipient States have.
If we choose, we can provide that the territory of
Puerto Rico — I am speaking now of the geographical
territory — shall be under the control and sovereignty
of the United States, that the people of that island may
make all the laws that we say they may make. We
may give them absolute self-control, or, in my opinion,
we may reserve the right to say to them, " There are
certain things you cannot be allowed to do ; and if you
do certain things, we will intervene and nullify your
action."

Mr. President, from my standpoint, then, there is
no difficulty in dealing with these possessions, and it
becomes simply a question of policy. In this I am
speaking for myself only. I do not represent any po
litical organization, and I am not bound by any caucus
or by any influences of that character. So far as I am
concerned, I do not want to make Puerto Rico nor do
I want to make the Philippines an integral part of the
United States; I do not want to make their people
citizens of the United States, with all the rights that
citizenship of the United States ought to carry
with it.

The relation that I would establish for those people
is absolutely consistent with every tradition of our

TELLER. 301

government and our people from the time we organ
ized the government of the United States up to the
present hour. If I had time, I could show historically
that the fathers of this Republic contemplated that we
should some day have colonies. It may be that it is
not good policy to have colonies. That is another
question. It may be — although I do -not believe it —
that it would be wise for us to get rid of Puerto Rico
and return it to Spain, or to give it to the people of the
island themselves. It may be that it would be wise for
us to turn over the Philippine Islands to the anarchy
and confusion which I believe would follow the with
drawal of the American' troops from those islands at
the present time. But I do not believe it.

I will admit that there will be some difficulties in
dealing -with those people. I foresaw that in the be
ginning, and I see it more clearly now than I did a
year ago, as I believe everybody else does. But, as I
said a long time since in this body, the American people
will deal with this question in a spirit of fairness and
in a spirit of courage. They are not going to be fright
ened by a contemplation of the fact that there are dif
ficulties in front of them. If anybody can show a
better way out of the difficulty than for us to hold
those possessions, I am prepared to consider it. I am
now considering, first, what is the duty that we owe,
not to the Filipinos, not to the Puerto Ricans, but to
the people of the United States? That is the para
mount question. I believe we can deal with those
people without doing any injustice to them or any in
justice to ourselves. But we must have a policy; we
must lay down a rule and follow it. What I complain

302 TELLER.

of in the party in power is that it has not a policy, as
it seems to me, on this question.

I do not know whether we are to have a colonial
system or whether we are to make those people part
and parcel of the United States. One or the other we
must do. I regard the latter as infinitely more dan
gerous than the former. I would a great deal rather
make Puerto Rico a colony than to make her a State;
I would a great deal rather make the Philippine Islands
a colony, a province, a dependency, or whatever you
may choose to call it, than to make those islands into
a State or to make their inhabitants citizens of the
United States, with all the rights and privileges which
follow, and which must ultimately mean, if they be
come citizens of the United States, that they shall
stand before the law on an equality with all other
citizens of the United States. If you make Puerto
Rico a Territory, an incipient State, its people will
have a right some day to expect to become a State of
the Union ; but if you hold them in tutelage and pupil
age for an indefinite period as citizens of the United
States, they will have a right to complain.

Mr. President, Puerto Rico is not a part of the
United States to-day, neither are the Philippine
Islands. In all the acquisitions of territorial property
heretofore, we have had, before we acquired it, some
relations established by treaty, or otherwise, with the
people that we took under our control. When we took
in Louisiana, we stipulated with France that we would
make the people of that Territory citizens of the
United States, entitled to all the rights, privileges, and
immunities of citizens; when we took in Florida, we

TELLER. 303

tlid the same with Spain; when we took in a portion
of Mexico, we did the same with Mexico; and when
we took in Alaska, we did the same with Russia.
When we acquired our new possessions, the commis
sion that went over to Paris very wisely said that their
political status should be as Congress should deter
mine.

In an early day, when Louisiana was taken in as a
part of the United States, it was questioned in the
House of Representatives, and even here, whether by
the treaty-making power alone that could be done.
In my judgment it could, because otherwise there
would be a restriction upon the treaty-making power,
which I think would be inconsistent with sovereignty.
But here we have no question. The people in these
possessions are -not citizens to-day. The Filipinos are
not citizens nor are the Puerto Ricans. The bill now
pending before the Senate makes citizens of the inhab
itants of Puerto Rico of the United States ex industria.
That feature alone, if there were no other in it, would
'Compel me to vote against the bill. I do not want
those people made citizens of the United States. I
want to extend to them all the privileges which are
consistent with their relations to this government, save
that of citizenship. I would extend to those territories
all the privileges, all the blessings which the constitu
tion of the United States is, by some, supposed to have
conferred, but which I say are not conferred, but in
herited, inhering in a free government. I would not
establish a relationship which would enable them to
participate with us in the election of a President and

304 TELLER.

to have their representatives on this floor or in the
other House.

I am told by some senators here that this bill does
make citizens of the people of Puerto Rico, but does
not make Puerto Rico a part and parcel of the United
States. If it is possible by language in a statute to
make Puerto Rico a part of the United States, it is so
made by this bill. In the first place, the people there
are made citizens, their ports are made ports of the
United States, and the writs of their courts run in the
name of the people of the United States; we extend
the internal revenue laws over them, the postal laws,
and almost all other laws over them, except simply the
laws as to the collection of duty on imports. We pro
vide that their products coming into our ports shall
pay duty.

Mr. President, if those people are to be a part and
parcel of the United States, as they will be if this bill
shall be enacted into law as it now stands, and as they
will be if a considerable part of it should be stricken
out, as I hear vague rumors that it may be, they will
have such a relation, in my judgment, to the people of
the United States that some of the provisions of this
act will be absolutely indefensible and cannot be main
tained in any case.

Mr. President, I am not going to waste time in
speaking about the provision which puts a duty upon
goods going into Puerto Rico. I think that was pretty
well exploded here the other day, and I understand
that it is liable to be abandoned. But the other ques
tion presents itself whether we have a right to put a
duty on goods coming from Puerto Rico into the

TELLER. 305

United States. In my judgment that whole question
must be solved by what is their relation to the people
of the United States. If they are a part of the United
States, if their people are citizens of the United States,
you have no right to put a duty upon their goods.
If they are not citizens of the United States, then it
is a question of policy and not a question of justice ;
but what right have the Puerto Ricans to insist now
that they shall have free trade with us if they are not
part and parcel of the United States ?

Mr. President, we are told that there is a great
sugar interest and a great tobacco interest, or some
thing of that kind, demanding that this duty shall be
put on those people. I know nothing about that, and
I do not care to consider it. It is not a question to be
considered in determining this matter as to what influ
ences are back of it. The question is, what is justice ?
If they are citizens, as they will be under this bill, you
have not any right to impose duties upon them, and it
would be an act of gross injustice and one which can
not be legally maintained. If they are not citizens,
you have as much right to put a duty upon them as you
have to put it on English subjects who send their goods
here from London.

A great number of people -now in Puerto Rico who
are clamoring for free trade with us are not citizens
of that country at all, and the large sugar interests
there are held by people who are not connected by any
ties of citizenship with that country. English capi
talists and other foreign capitalists are the owners of
the sugar plantations. If we should accept the news
paper accounts we might suppose that every man in

306 TELLER.

Puerto Rico, poverty-stricken as many of them are,
was engaged in shipping sugar and tobacco into the
United States. There is not two per cent of the people
of Puerto Rico who have any interest in shipping
sugar here, and there is not two per cent of them who
have any interest in shipping tobacco here. That is
done by a few capitalists, and it is those who are in
terested in this subject. If you let them bring their
sugar here at fifteen per cent of the regular tariff which
the Cubans, for instance, must pay, the sugar and to
bacco planters of Puerto Rico will make a great profit ;
and, with a two-years' accumulation of sugar in the
hands of those rich people, they will be the ones who
will be still more enriched and not the poverty-stricken
people of that island. As suggested to me by the sen
ator from Wisconsin [Mr. Spooner], the sugar people
pay labor such wages as Americans would starve upon.

The great question to be considered all the time is,
How can we treat these islands consistently with the
traditions of the American people ? How can we do
justice to them and justice to ourselves at the same
time ? If we give to them practically self-government,
they have no right to ask us for participation in the
affairs of the general government; and anything that
we may do for them, bad as this bill is — and I think
it violates some of our traditions as it is — but, bad as
it is, is it not better than anything that those people
ever heretofore had or anything that they had any
hope of having two years ago ?

If we keep steadily in view the idea that if these
people are capable of self-government, they shall have
it — and I have no doubt of their ability to manage their

TELLER. 307

own internal and domestic affairs practically without
our supervision, although some senators say that is
not the fact — if we yield that to them, we have not
violated any principle of free government and of a
free people ; and all of this repeated newspaper clamor
that we are about to do something extremely bad if
we deny to those people full citizenship, it seems to me,
is without any foundation whatever.

Mr. President, I had intended, as I said before, to
go into very many phases of this case, and to touch
upon even our relations with our Asiatic possessions;
but I shall not do so now. I shall content myself with
saying practically now what I have said — that this bill
seems to me to be incongruous and unsatisfactory from
any standpoint ; I do not care whether it be from that
of making Puerto Rico a part of the United States or
making it a colony.

11— a

308 KNOTT.

Knott, James Proctor, an American politician and
orator, born at Lebanon, KyM August 29, 1830. He began
the study of law at sixteen, and removing to Missouri in
1850, was admitted to the bar there the next year. He
entered the State Legislature in 1858, and was presently
made State Attorney-General, but on his declining to
take the test oath in 1861 he was disbarred. He returned
to Kentucky the year after, and in 1866 was sent to Con
gress from that State. Re-elected in 1868, he made there a
humorous speech on Duluth, which gave him a national rep
utation as a humorist. Knott sat again in Congress, 1875-
83, and was Governor of Kentucky, 1883-87.

SPEECH ON " DULUTH."

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
JANUARY 21,

MR. SPEAKER, — If I could be actuated by any con
ceivable inducement to betray the sacred trust reposed
in me by those to whose generous confidence I am in
debted for the honor of a seat on this floor; if I could
IDC influenced by any possible consideration to become
instrumental in giving away, in violation of their
known wishes, any portion of their interest in the pub
lic domain, for the mere promotion of any railroad
enterprise whatever, I should certainly feel a strong
inclination to give this measure my most earnest and
hearty support ; for I am assured that its success would
materially enhance the pecuniary prosperity of some of
the most valued friends I have on earth ; friends for
whose accommodation I would be willing to mnlze

KNOTT. 309

almost any sacrifice not involving my personal honor
or my fidelity as the trustee of an express trust.

And that act of itself would be sufficient to counter
vail almost any objection I might entertain to the pas
sage of this bill, not inspired by the imperative and
inexorable sense of public duty.

But, independent of the seductive influences of pri
vate friendship, to which I admit I am, perhaps, as sus
ceptible as any of the gentlemen I see around me, the
intrinsic merits of the measure itself are of such an
extraordinary character as to commend it most strong
ly to the favorable consideration of every member of
this House, myself not excepted, notwithstanding my
constituents, in whose behalf alone I am acting here,
would not be benefited by its passage one particle more
than they would be by a project to cultivate an orange
grove on the bleakest summit of Greenland's icy moun
tains.

Now, sir, as to those great trunk lines of railways,
spanning the continent from ocean to ocean, I confess
my mind has never been fully made up. It is true they
may afford some trifling advantages to local traffic,
and they may even in time become the channels of a
more extended commerce. Yet I have never been
thoroughly satisfied either of the necessitv or expe
diency of projects promising such meagre results to
the great body of our people. But with regard to the
transcendent merits of the gigantic enterprise contem
plated in this bill, I have never entertained the shadow
of a doubt.

Years ago, when I first heard that there was some
where in the vast terra incognita, somewhere in the

510 KNOTT.

bleak regions of the great northwest, a stream of water
known to the nomadic inhabitants of the neighborhood
as the river St. Croix, I became satisfied that the con
struction of a railroad from that raging torrent to
some point in the civilized world was essential to the
happiness and prosperity of the American people, if
not absolutely indispensable to the perpetuity of repub
lican institutions on this continent.

I felt, instinctively, that the boundless resources of
that prolific region of sand and pine shrubbery would
never be fully developed without a railroad constructed
and equipped at the expense of the government, and
perhaps not then. I had an abiding presentiment that,
some day or other, the people of this whole country,
irrespective of party affiliations, regardless of sectional
prejudices, and " without distinction of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude," would rise in their
majesty and demand an outlet for the enormous agri
cultural productions of those vast and fertile pine bar
rens, drained in the rainy season by the surging waters
of the turbid St. Croix.

These impressions, derived simply and solely from
the " eternal fitness of things," were not only strength
ened by the interesting and eloquent debate on this
bill, to which I listened with so much pleasure the
other day, but intensified, if possible, as I read over,
this morning, the lively colloquy which took place on
that occasion, as I find it reported in last Friday's
" Globe." I will ask the indulgence of the House
while I read a few short passages, which are sufficient,
in my judgment, to place the merits of the great enter-

KNOTT. 311

prise, contemplated in the measure now under discus
sion, beyond all possible controversy.

The honorable gentleman from Minnesota [Mr.
Wilson] who, I believe, is managing this bill, in speak
ing of the character of the country through which this
railroad is to pass, says this :

" We want to have the timber brought to us as
cheaply as possible. Now, if you tie up the lands in
this way, so that no title can be obtained to them — for
no settler will go' on these lands, for he cannot make a
living — you deprive us of the benefits of that timber.'r

Now, sir, I would not have it by any means inferred
from this that the gentleman from Minnesota would
insinuate that the people out in this section desire this
timber merely for the purpose of fencing up their farms
so that their stock may not wander off and die of
starvation among the bleak hills of St. Croix. I read
it for no such purpose, sir, and make no comment on it
myself. In corroboration of this statement of the gen
tleman from Minnesota, I find this testimony given by
the honorable gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Wash-
burn] . Speaking of these same lands, he says :

" Under the bill, as amended by my friend from
Minnesota, nine tenths of the land is open to actual
settlers at $2.50 per acre; the remaining one tenth is
pine-timbered land, that is not fit for settlement, and
never will be settled upon; but the timber will be cut
off. I admit that it is the most valuable portion of the
grant, for most of the grant is not valuable. It is

312 KNOTT.

quite valueless; and if you put in this amendment of
the gentleman from Indiana you may just as well kill
the bill, for no man, and no company will take the
grant and build the road."

I simply pause here to ask some gentleman better
versed in the science of mathematics than I am, to tell
me if the timbered lands are in fact the most valuable
portion of that section of the country, and they would
be entirely valueless without the timber that is on them,
what the remainder of the land is worth which has no
timber on them at all ?

But, further on, I find a most entertaining and in
structive interchange of views between the gentleman
from Arkansas [Mr. Rogers], the gentleman from
Wisconsin [Mr. Washburn], and the gentleman from
Maine [Mr. Peters], upon the subject of pine lands
generally, which I will tax the patience of the House
to read :

" Mr. Rogers — Will the gentleman allow me to ask
him a question? "

" Mr. Washburn— Certainly."

" Mr. Rogers — Are these pine lands entirely worth
less except for timber ? "

" Mr. Washburn — They are generally worthless for
any other purpose. I am personally familiar with that
subject. These lands are not valuable for purposes of
settlement/'

" Mr. Farnsworth — They will be after the timber is
taken off."

" Mr. Washburn— No, sir."

KNOTT. 313

" Mr. Rogers — I want to know the character of
these pine lands."

" Mr. Washburn — They are generally sandy, barren
lands. My friend from the Green Bay district [Mr.
Sawyer] is himself perfectly familiar with this ques
tion, and he will bear me out in what I say, that these
timber lands are not adapted to settlement."

" Mr. Rogers — The pine lands to which I am accus
tomed are generally very good. What I want to know
is, what is the difference between our pine lands and
your pine lands ? "

" Mr. Washburn — The pine timber of Wisconsin
generally grows upon barren, sandy land. The gentle
man from Maine [Mr. Peters] who is familiar with
pine lands, will, I have no doubt, say that pine timber
grows generally upon the most barren lands."

" Mr. Peters — As a general thing pine lands are not
worth much for cultivation."

And further on I find this pregnant question, the
joint production of the two gentlemen from Wis
consin.

" Mr. Paine — Does my friend from Indiana sup
pose that in any event settlers will occupy and cultivate
these pine lands? "

" Mr. Washburn — Particularly without a railroad.
Yes, sir, particularly without a railroad."

It will be asked after awhile, I am afraid, if settlers
will go anywhere unless the government builds a rail
road for them to go on.

I desire to call attention to only one more statement,

3 14 KNOTT.

which I think sufficient to settle the question. It is one
made by the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Paine],
who says :

" These lands will be abandoned for the present. It
may be that at some remote period there will spring up
in that region a new kind of agriculture, which will
cause a demand for these particular lands; and they
may then come into use and be valuable for agricul
tural purposes. But I know, and I cannot help think
ing, that my friend from Indiana understands that, for
the present, and for many years to come, these pine
lands can have no possible value other than that arising
from the pine timber which stands on them."

Now, sir, after listening to this emphatic and un
equivocal testimony of these intelligent, competent,
and able-bodied witnesses, who that is not as incredu
lous as St. Thomas himself will doubt for a moment
that the Goshen of America is to be found in the sandy
valleys and upon the pine-clad hills of the St. Croix?
Who will have the hardihood to rise in his seat on this
floor and assert that, excepting the pine bushes, the
entire region would not produce vegetation enough in
ten years to fatten a grasshopper? Where is the pa
triot who is willing that his country shall incur the
peril of remaining another day without the amplest
railroad connection with such an inexhaustible mine of
agricultural wealth? Who will answer for the conse
quences of abandoning a great and warlike people, in
the possession of a country like that, to brood over the
indifference and neglect of their government? How:

KNOTT. 315.

long would it be before they would take to studying-
the Declaration of Independence, and hatching out the
damnable heresy of secession? How long before the
grim demon of civil discord would rear again his hor
rid head in our midst, " gnash loud his iron fangs and
shake his crest of bristling bayonets? "

Then, sir, think of the long and painful process of
reconstruction that must follow, with its concomitant
amendments to the constitution, the seventeenth, eight
eenth, and nineteenth articles. The sixteenth, it is of
course understood, is to be appropriated to those blush
ing damsels who are, day after day, beseeching us to-
let them vote, hold office, drink cocktails, ride a-strad-
dle, and do everything else the men do. But, above all,
sir, let me implore you to reflect for a single moment
on the deplorable condition of our country in case of
a foreign war, with all our ports blockaded, all our
cities in a state of siege, the gaunt spectre of famine
brooding like a hungry vulture over our starving land :
our commissary stores all exhausted, and our famish
ing armies withering away in the field, a helpless prey
to the insatiate demon of hunger; our navy rotting
in the docks for want of provisions for our gallant sea
men, and we without any railroad communication
whatever with the prolific pine thickets of the St.
Croix.

Ah, sir, I could very well understand why my amia1-
ble friends from Pennsylvania [Mr. Myers, Mr. Kel-
ley, and Mr. O'Neill] should be so earnest in their
support of this bill the other day; and, if their honor
able colleague, my friend, Mr. Randall, will pardon
the remark, I will say that I consider his criticism of

316 KNOTT.

their action on that occasion as not only unjust, but
ungenerous. I knew they were looking forward with
the far-reaching ken of enlightened statesmanship to
the pitiable condition in which Philadelphia will be
left unless speedily supplied with railroad connection
in some way or other with this garden spot of the
universe.

And besides, sir, this discussion has relieved my
mind of a mystery that has weighed upon it like an in
cubus for years. I could never understand before why
there was so much excitement during the last Congress
over the acquisition of Alta Vela. I could never un
derstand why it was that some of our ablest statesmen
and most disinterested patriots should entertain such
dark forebodings of the untold calamities that were to
befall our beloved country unless we should take im
mediate possession of that desirable island. But I see
now that they were laboring under the mistaken im
pression that the government would need the guano to
manure the public lands on the St. Croix.

Now, sir, I repeat, I have been satisfied for years
that, if there was any portion of the inhabited globe
absolutely in a suffering condition for want of a rail
road it was these teeming pine barrens of the St. Croix.
At what particular point on that noble stream such a
road should be commenced I knew was immaterial, and
it seems so to have been considered by the draughts
man of this bill.

It might be up at the spring or down at the foot-log,
or the water-gate, or the fish-dam, or anywhere along
the bank, no matter where. But, in what direction
should it run, or where it should terminate, were al-

KNOTT. 317

ways to my mind questions of the most painful per
plexity. I could conceive of no place on " God's green
earth " in such straitened circumstances for railroad
facilities as to be likely to desire or willing to accept
such a connection.

I knew that neither Bayfield nor Superior City
would have it, for they both indignantly spurned the
munificence of the government when coupled with such
ignominious conditions, and let this very same land
grant die on their hands years and years ago, rather
than submit to the degradation of a direct communi
cation by railroad with the piney woods of the St.
Croix; and I knew that what the enterprising inhab
itants of those giant young cities would refuse to take,
wrould have few charms for others, whatever their
necessities or cupidity might be.

Hence, as I have said, sir, I was utterly at a loss to
determine where the terminus of this great and indis
pensable road should be, until I accidentally overheard
some gentleman the other day mention the name of
" Duluth."

" Duluth ! ' The word fell upon my ear with a pe
culiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur
of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses;
or the soft, sweet accents of an angel's whisper in the
bright joyous dream of sleeping innocence.

" Duluth ! " 'Twas the name for which my soul had
panted for years, as the hart panteth for the water-
brooks.

But where was " Duluth ? "

Never in all my limited reading, had my vision been
gladdened by seeing the celestial word in print. And

KNOTT.

I felt a profound humiliation in my ignorance that its
dulcet syllables had never before ravished my delighted
ear. I was certain the draughtsman in this bill had
never heard of it, or it would have been designated as
one of the termini of this road. I asked my friends
about it, but they knew nothing of it. I rushed to the
library, and examined all the maps I could find. I
discovered in one of them a delicate hair-like line,
diverging from the Mississippi near a place marked
Prescott, which, I supposed, was intended to represent
the river St. Croix, but could nowhere find " Duluth."

Nevertheless, I was confident it existed somewhere,
and that its discovery would constitute the crowning
glory of the present century, if not of all modern times.
I knew it was bound to exist in the very nature of
things; that the symmetry and perfection of our plan
etary system would be incomplete without it. That the
elements of maternal nature would since have resolved
themselves back into original chaos, if there had been
such a hiatus in creation as would have resulted from
leaving out " Duluth ! "

In fact, sir, I was overwhelmed with the conviction
that " Duluth " not only existed somewhere, but that
wherever it was it was a great and glorious place. I
was convinced that the greatest calamity that ever be
fell the benighted nations of the ancient world was in
their having passed away without a knowledge of the
actual existence of " Duluth ; " that their fabled Atlan
tis, never seen save by the hallowed vision of the in
spired poesy, was in fact but another name for " Du
luth ; " that the golden orchard of the Hesperides was
but a poetical synonym for the beer-gardens in the

KNOTT. 319

)

vicinity of " Duluth." I was certain that Herodotus
had died a miserable death, because in all his travels
and with all his geographical research he had never
heard of " Duluth."

I knew that if the immortal spirit of Homer could
look down from another heaven than that created by
his own celestial genius upon the long lines of Pilgrims
from every nation of the earth, to the gushing foun
tain of poesy, opened by the touch of his magic wand,
if he could be permitted to behold the vast assemblage
of grand and glorious productions of the. lyric art,
called into being by his own inspired strains, he would
weep tears of bitter anguish, that, instead of lavishing
all the stores of his mighty genius upon the fall of
Ilion, it had not been his more blessed lot to crystallize
in deathless song the rising glories of " Duluth."

Yes, sir, had it not been for this map, kindly fur
nished me by the legislature of Minnesota, I might have
gone down to my obscure and humble grave in an
agony of despair, because I could nowhere find " Du
luth.." Had such been my melancholy fate, I have no
doubt that with the last feeble pulsation of my break
ing heart, with the last faint exhalation of my fleeting
breath, I should have whispered, " Where is ' Du
luth' ? "

But, fhanks to the beneficence of that band of minis
tering angels who have their bright abodes in the far-
off capital of Minnesota, just as the agony of my anx
iety was about to culminate in the frenzy of despair,
this blessed map was placed in my hands ; and, as I
unfolded it, a resplendent scene of ineffable glory
opened before me, such as I imagined burst upon the

32O KNOTT.

^enraptured vision of the wandering peri through the
opening gates of Paradise.

There, there, for the first time, my enchanted eye
rested upon the ravishing word, " Duluth ! " This
map, sir, is intended, as it appears from its title, to
illustrate the position of " Duluth " in the United
States; but if the gentlemen will examine it I think
they will concur with me in the opinion that it is far
too modest in its pretensions. It not only illustrates
the position of " Duluth " in the United States, but
exhibits its relations with all created things. It even
goes further than this. It hits the shadowy vale of
futurity, and affords us a view of the golden prospects
of " Duluth," far along the dim vista of ages yet to
come.

If the gentlemen will examine it they will find " Du
luth," not only in the centre of the map but represented
in the centre' of a series of concentric circles one hun
dred miles apart and some of them as much as four
thousand miles in diameter, embracing alike in their
tremendous sweep the fragrant savannas, the sunlit
south, and the eternal solitudes of snow that mantle
the icebound north. How these circles were produced
is perhaps one of those primordial mysteries that the
most skilled paleologist will never be able to explain.
J3ut the fact is, sir, " Duluth " is pre-eminently a cen
tral point, for I am told by gentlemen who have been
so reckless of their own personal safety as to venture
away into those awful regions where " Duluth " is
supposed to be, that it is so exactly in the centre of the
visible universe that the sky comes down at precisely
the same distance all around it.

KNOTT. 321:

I find by reference to this map that " Duluth " is
situated somewhere near the western end of Lake-
Superior, but as there is no dot or other mark indicat
ing its exact location I am unable to say whether it is
actually confined to any particular spot or whether " it
is just lying around there loose."

I really cannot tell whether it is one of those ethereal
creations of intellectual frostwork, more intangible
than the rose-tinted clouds of a summer sunset; one of
those airy exhalations of the speculator's brain whichr
I am told, are very fitting in the form of towns and
cities along those lines of railroad, built with govern
ment subsidies, luring the unwary settler, as the mirage
of the desert lures the famishing traveler on, until it
fades away in the darkening horizon ; or whether it is
real bona fide, substantial city, all " staked off," with
the lots marked with their owners' names, like that
proud commercial metropolis recently discovered on
the desirable shores of San Domingo. But however
that may be I am satisfied " Duluth " is there, or there
abouts, for I see it stated here on the map that it is
exactly thirty-nine hundred and ninety miles from Liv
erpool, though I have no doubt, for the sake of con
venience, it will be moved back ten miles, so as to make
the distance an even four thousand.

Then, sir, there is the climate of " Duluth," unques
tionably the most salubrious and delightful to be found
anywhere on the Lord's earth. Now I have always
been under the impression, as I presume other gentle
men have, that in the region around Lake Superior it
was cold enough for at least nine months of the year
to freeze the smokestack off a locomotive.

322 KNOTT.

But I see it represented on this map that " Duluth "
is situated exactly half way betwen the latitudes of
Paris and Venice, so that gentlemen who have inhaled
the exhilarating air of the one or basked in the golden
sunlight of the other may see at a glance that " Du
luth " must be the place of untold delight, a terrestrial
paradise, fanned by the balmy zephyrs of an eternal
spring, clothes in the gorgeous sheen of ever-blooming
flowers and vocal with the silvery melody of nature's
choicest songsters.

In fact, sir, since I have seen this map I have no
doubt that Byron was vainly endeavoring to convey
some faint conception of the delicious charms of " Du
luth " when his poetic soul gushed forth in the rippling
strains of that beautiful rhapsody —

41 Know ye the land of the cedar and the vine,

Whence the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine ;
Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume,
Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gaul in her bloom ;
Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,
And the voice of the nightingale never is mute ;
Where the tints of the earth and the hues of the sky,
In color though varied, in beauty may vie ? "

As to the commercial resources of " Duluth," sir,
they are simply illimitable and inexhaustible, as is
shown by this map. I see it stated here that there is a
vast scope of territory, embracing an area of over two
millions of square miles, rich in every element of ma
terial wealth and commercial prosperity, all tributary
to " Duluth."

Look at it, sir [pointing to the map]. Here are in
exhaustible mines of gold, immeasurable veins of sil-

KNOTT. 323

ver, impenetrable depths of boundless forest, vast coal
measures, wide-extended plains of richest pasturage —
all, all embraced in this vast territory — which must, in
the very nature of things, empty the untold treasures
of its commerce into the lap of " Duluth."

Look at it, sir [pointing to the map] ; do you not see
from these broad, brown lines drawn around this im
mense territory that the enterprising inhabitants of
" Duluth " intend some day to inclose it all in one vast
corral, so that its commerce will be bound to go there,
whether it would or not? And here, sir [still pointing
to the map], I find within a convenient distance the
Piegan Indians, which, of all the many accessories to
the glory of " Duluth/' I consider by far the most in
estimable. For, sir, I have been told that when the
smallpox breaks out among the women and children of
the famous tribe, as it sometimes does, they afford the
finest subjects in the world for the strategical experi
ments of any enterprising military hero who desires to
improve himself in the noble art of war, especially for
any valiant lieutenant-general whose

" Trenchant blade. Toledo trusty,
For want of fighting has grown rusty,
And eats into itself for lack
Of somebody to hew and hack."

Sir, the great conflict now raging in the Old World
has presented a phenomenon of military science un
precedented in the annals of mankind, a phenomenon
that has reversed all the traditions of the past, as it has
disappointed all the expectations of the present. A
great and warlike people, renowned alike for their

324 KNOTT.

skill and valor, have been swept away before the tri
umphant advance of an inferior foe like autumn stub
ble before a hurricane of fire.

For aught I know the next flash of electric fire that
simmers along the ocean cable may tell us that Paris,
with every fibre quivering with the agony of impotent
despair, writhes beneath the conquering heel of her
loathed invader. Ere another moon shall wax and
wane the brightest star in the galaxy of nations may-
fall from the zenith of her glory never to rise again.
Ere the modest violets of early spring shall ope their
beauteous eyes the genius of civilization may chant
the wailing requiem of the proudest nationality the
world has ever seen, as she scatters her withered and
tear-moistened lilies o'er the bloody tomb of butchered
France.

But, sir, I wish to ask if you honestly and candidly
believe that the Dutch would have overrun the French
in that kind of style if General Sheridan had not gone
over there and told King William and Von Moltke how
he had managed to whip the Piegan Indians ?

And here, sir, recurring to this map, I find in the im
mediate vicinity of the Piegans " vast herds of buf
falo " and " immense fields of rich wheat lands."

[Here the hammer fell. Many cries, " Go on! Go
on!"

The Speaker — Is there any objection to the gentle
man from Kentucky continuing his remarks? The
chair hears none. The gentleman will proceed. Mr.
Knott continued :]

I was remarking, sir, upon these vast " wheat

KNOTT. 325

fields " represented on this map, in the immediate
neighborhood of the buffaloes and Piegans, and was
about to say that the idea of there being these immense
wheat fields in the very heart of a wilderness, hundreds
and hundreds of miles beyond the utmost verge of
civilization, may appear to some gentlemen as rather
incongruous, as rather too great a strain on the " blan
kets " of veracity.

But to my mind there is no difficulty in the matter
whatever. The phenomenon is very easily accounted
for. It is evident, sir, that the Piegans sowed that
wheat there and plowed it in with buffalo bulls. Now,
sir, this fortunate combination of buffaloes and Pie
gans, considering their relative positions to each other
and to " Duluth," as they are arranged on this map,
satisfies me that " Duluth " is destined to be the best
market of the world. Here, you will observe [point
ing to the map], are the buffaloes, directly between the
Piegans and " Duluth ; " and here, right on the road
to " Duluth," are the Creeks. Now, sir when the buf
faloes are sufficiently fat from grazing on those im
mense wheat fields, you see it will be the easiest thing1
in the world for the Piegans to drive them on down,
stay all night with their friends, the Creeks, and go
into " Duluth " in the morning.

T think I see them now, sir, a vast herd of buffaloes,
with their heads down, their eyes glaring, their nostrils
dilated, their tongues out, and their tails curled over
their backs, tearing along toward " Duluth," with
about a thousand Piegans on their grass-bellied ponies
yelling at their heels! On they come! And as they
sweep past the Creeks they join in the chase, and away;

326 KNOTT.

they all go, yelling, bellowing, ripping and tearing
along amid clouds of dust until the last buffalo is safely
penned in the stockyards at " Duluth."

Sir, I might stand here for hours and hours and
expatiate with rapture upon the gorgeous prospects of
" Duluth," as depicted upon this map. But human life
is too short and the time of this House far too valuable
to allow me to linger longer upon this delightful theme.
I think every gentleman upon this floor is as well sat
isfied as I am that " Duluth " is destined to become
the commercial metropolis of the universe, and that
this road should be built at once. I am fully persuaded
that no patriotic representative of the American people,
who has a proper appreciation of the associated glories
of " Duluth " and the St. Croix, will hesitate a mo
ment, that every able-bodied female in the land, be
tween the ages of eighteen and forty-five, who is in
favor of " woman's rights," should be drafted and set
to work upon this great work without delay. Never
theless, sir, it grieves my very soul to be compelled to
say that I cannot vote for the grant of lands provided
for in this bill.

Ah, sir, you can have no conception of the poignancy
of my anguish that I am deprived of that blessed privi
lege ! There are two insuperable obstacles in the way.
In the first place my constituents, for whom I am act
ing here, have no more interest in this road than they
have in the great question of culinary taste now, per
haps, agitating the public mind of Dominica, as to
whether the illustrious commissioners, who recently
left this capital for that free and enlightened republic,
would be better fricasseed, boiled or roasted, and, in

KNOTT. % 327

the second place, these lands, which I am asked to give
away, alas, are not mine to bestow! My relation to
them is simply that of trustee to an express trust ! And
shall I ever betray that trust? Never, sir! Rather
perish " Duluth ! " Perish the paragon of cities !
Rather let the freezing cyclones of the bleak northwest
bury it forever beneath the eddying sands of the raging
St. Croix.

328 VEST.

Vest, George G., an American politician and orator,,
"born at Frankfort, Ky., December 6, 1830. After pursuing
the study of law, he removed to Missouri in 1856, and in 1860
took his seat in the State Legislature. This he soon relin
quished in order to enter the Confederate Army, and subse
quently he sat for two years in the Confederate Congress.
Upon the close of the Civil War he resumed his legal prac
tice, in Sedalia, Mo., and in 1878 he was chosen to the
United States Senate, continuing a member of that body
ever since. He is there known as one of its most vigorous
debaters, having addressed the Senate on nearly all of the
important measures which have come before it for more than
twenty years.

ON INDIAN SCHOOLS.

SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE,
APRIL 7, IQOO.

MR. PRESIDENT, — I shall not take the time of the
Senate in discussing this oft-debated question as to the
contract schools. My opinions have been so emphati
cally and repeatedly expressed that it is hardly necessary
for me now to give information on that subject to any
one who has, taken any interest in the matter.

There are people in this country, unfortunately, who
believe that an Indian child had better die an utter un
believer, an idolater even, than to be educated by the
Society of Jesus or in the Catholic church. I am very
glad to say that I have not the slightest sympathy with
that sort of bigotry and fanaticism. I was raised a
Protestant ; I expect to die one ; I was never in a Catho
lic church in my life, and I have not the slightest sym
pathy with many of its dogmas ; but, above all, I have

VEST. 329

•no respect for this insane fear that the Catholic church
is about to overturn this government. I should be
ashamed to call myself an American if I indulged in
any such ignorant belief.

I look upon this as a man of the world, practical, I
hope, in all things, and especially in legislation, where
my sphere of duty now is. Unfortunately I am not
connected with any religious organization. I have no
such prejudice as would prevent me from doing what
I believed to be my duty. I would give this question
of the education of Indian children the same sort of
consideration that I would if I were building a house
or having any other mechanical or expert business car
ried on. I had infinitely rather see these Indians Cath
olics than to see them blanket Indians on the plains,
ready to go on the warpath against civilization and
Christianity.

I said a few minutes ago that I was a Protestant.
I was reared in the old Scotch Presbyterian church;
my father was an elder in it, and my earliest impres
sions were that the Jesuits had horns and hoofs and
tails, and that there was a faint tinge of sulphur in the
circumambient air whenever one crossed your path.
Some years ago I was assigned by the Senate to duty
upon the committee on Indian affairs, and I was as
signed by the committee, of which Mr. Dawes was
then the very zealous chairman, to examine the Indian
schools in Wyoming and Montana. I did so under
great difficulties and with labor which I could not now
physically perform. I visited every one of them. 1
crossed that great buffalo expanse of country where
you can now see only the wallows and trails of those

33O VEST.

extinct animals, and I went to all these schools. I
wish to say now what I have said before in the Senate,
and it is not the popular side of this question by any
means, that I did not see in all my journey, which
lasted for several weeks, a single school that was doing
any educational work worthy the name of educational
work unless it was under the control of the Jesuits. I
did not see a single government school, especially these
day schools, where there was any work done at all.

Something has been said here about the difference
between enrollment and attendance. I found day schools
with 1,500 Indian children enrolled and not ten in at
tendance, except on meat days, as they called it, when
beeves were killed by the agent and distributed to the
tribe. Then there was a full attendance. I found
schools where there were old, broken-down preachers
and politicians receiving $1,200 a year and a house to
live in for the purpose of conducting these Indian day
schools, and when I cross-examined them, as I did in
every instance, I found that their actual attendance
was about three to five in the hundred of the enroll
ment. I do not care what reports are made, for they
generally come from interested parties. You cannot
educated the children with the day schools.

In 1850 Father De Smet, a self-sacrificing Christian
Jesuit, went, at the solicitation of the Flatheads, to
their reservation in Montana. The Flatheads sent two
runners, young men, to bring the black robes to edu
cate them and teach them the religion of Christ. Both
of these runners were killed by the Blackfeet and never
reached St. Louis. They then sent two more. One of
them was killed, and the other made his way down the

VEST. 331

Missouri River after incredible hardships and reached
St. Louis. Father De Smet and two young associates
went out to the Flathead reservation and established
the mission of St. Mary in the Bitter Root and St.
Ignatius on the Jocko reservation. The Blackfeet
burned the St. Mary mission, killed two of the Jesuits
and thought they had killed the other — Father Ra-
vaille. I saw him when on this committee, lying in his
cell at the St. Mary's mission, paralyzed from the waist
down, but performing surgical operations, for he was
an accomplished surgeon, and doing all that he possibly
could do for humanity and religion. He had been
fifty-two years in that tribe of Indians. Think of it!
Fifty-two years. Not owning the robe on his back,
not even having a name, for he was a number in the
semi-military organization called the Company of
Jesus; and if he received orders at midnight to go to
Africa or Asia he went without question, because it
was his duty to the cause of Christ and for no other
consideration or reason.

Father De Smet established these two missions and
undertook to teach the Indian children as we teach our
children in the common schools by day's attendance.
It was a miserable failure. The Jesuits tried it for
years, supported by contributions from France, not a
dollar from the government, and they had to abandon
the whole system. They found that when the girls and
boys went back to the tepee at night all the work of
the day by the Jesuits was obliterated. They found
that ridicule, the great weapon of the Indian in the
tepee, was used to drive these children away from the
educational institutions established by the Jesuits.

332 VEST.

When the girl went back to the tepee with a dress on
like an American woman and attempted to speak the
English language, and whom the nuns were attempting
to teach how to sew and spin, and wash and cook, she
was ridiculed as having white blood in her veins, and
the result was that she became the worst and most
abandoned of the tribe, because it was necessary in
order to reinstate herself with her own people that she
should prove the most complete apostate from the
teachings of the Jesuits.

After nearly twenty years of this work by the Jesuits
they abandoned it, and they established a different sys
tem, separating the boys and the girls, teaching them
how to work, for that is the problem, not how to read
or spell, nor the laws of arithmetic, but how to work
and to get rid of this insane prejudice taught by the
Indians from the beginning that nobody but a squaw
should work, and that it degrades a man to do any sort
of labor, or in fact to do anything except to hunt and
go to war.

The hardest problem that can be proposed to the
human race is how to make men self-dependent.
There can be no self-respect without self-dependence,
There can be no good government until a people are
elevated up to the high plane of earning their bread in
the sweat of their faces. When you come to educate
negroes and Indians there is but one thing that will
ever lift them out of the degradation in which long
years of servitude and nomadic habits have placed
them, and that is to teach them that the highest and
greatest and most elevating thing in the human race

VEST. 333

is to learn how to work and to make themselves inde
pendent.

I take off my hat, metaphorically, whenever I think
of this negro in Alabama — Booker Washington. He
has solved that problem for his race, and he is the only
man who has ever done it. Fred Douglass was a great
politician, but he never discovered what was necessary
for the negro race in this country. I have just returned
from the south after a sojourn of five weeks upon the
Gulf of Mexico.

The negro problem is the most terrible that ever
confronted a civilized race upon the face of the earth.
You cannot exterminate them; you cannot extradite
them ; you must make them citizens as they are and as
they will continue to be. You must assimilate them.
Exportation is a dream of the philanthropist, demon
strated to be such by the experiment in Liberia. Mr.
Lincoln tried it, and took his contingent fund imme
diately after the war, shipped negroes to a colony in
the West Indies, and those who were left from the
fever after two years came back to the United States,
and every dollar expended was thrown away. Wash
ington, this negro in Alabama, has struck the keynote.
It will take years to carry it out, and he has the preju
dices of his own race and the prejudices of the ignorant
whites against him ; but he deserves the commendation
of all the people, not only of the United States, but those
-of the civilized world.

Mr. President, the Jesuits have elevated the Indian
wherever they have been allowed to do so without
interference of bigotry and fanaticism and the cow
ardice of insectivorous politicians who are afraid of

334 VEST.

the A. P. A. and the votes that can be cast against them
in their district and States. They have made him a
Christian, and above even that have made him a work
man able to support himself and those dependent upon
him. Go to the Flathead reservation, in Montana, and
look from the cars of the Northern Pacific Railroad,
and you will see the result of what Father De Smet and
his associates began and what was carried on success
fully until the A. P. A. and the cowards who are afraid
of it struck down the appropriation. There are now
four hundred Indian children upon that reservation
without one dollar to give them an hour's instruction
of any kind. That is the teaching of many professors
of the religion of Christ in the Protestant churches. I
repudiate it. I would be ashamed of myself if I did
not do it, and if it were the last accent I ever uttered
in public life it would be to denounce that narrow-
minded and unworthy policy based upon religious
bigotry.

This A. P. A. did me the greatest honor in my life
during their last session in this city, two years ago.
They passed a resolution unanimously demanding that
I should be impeached because I said what I am saying
now. Mr. President, the knowledge of the constitu
tion of this country developed by that organization in
demanding the impeachment of a United States senator
for uttering his honest opinion in this chamber puts
them beyond criticism. It would be cowardly and in
human to say one word about ignorance so dense as
that.

Mr. President, as I said, go through this reservation
and look at the work of the Jesuits, and what is seen ?

VEST. 335

You find comfortable dwellings, herds of cattle and
horses, intelligent, self-respecting Indians. I have
been to their houses and found that under the system
adopted by the Jesuits, the new system, as I may call it,
after the failure of that which was attempted for twen
ty years, to which I have alluded, after they had edu
cated these boys and girls and they had intermarried,
the Jesuits would go out and break up a piece of land
and build them a house, and that couple became the
nucleus of civilization in the neighborhood. They had
been educated under the system which prevented them
from going back to the tepee after a day's tuition. The
Jesuits found that in order to accomplish their purpose
of teaching them how to work and to depend upon
themselves it was necessary to keep them in school,
a boarding school, by day and night, and to allow even
the parents to see them only in the presence of the
brothers or the -nuns.

I undertake to say now — and every senator here who
has passed through that reservation will corroborate
my statement — that there is not in this whole country
mi object lesson more striking than that to be seen
from the cars of the Northern Pacific Railroad, the
fact that these Jesuits alone have solved the problem
of rescuing the Indians from the degradation in which
they were found.

Mr. President, these Jesuits are not there, as one of
them told me, for the love of the Indian. Old Father
Ravaille told me, lying upon his back in that narrow
cell, with the crucifix above him, " I am here not for
the love of the Indian, but for the love of Christ,"
without pay except the approval of his own conscience.

336 VEST.

If you send one of our people, a clergyman, a politician
even, to perform this work among the Indians, he looks
back to the fleshpots of Egypt. He has a family, per
chance, that he cannot take with him on the salary he
receives. He is divided between the habits and cus
toms and luxuries of civilized life and the self-sacrific
ing duties that devolve upon him in this work of teach
ing the Indians.

The Jesuit has no family. He has no ambition. He
has no idea except to do his duty as God has given him
to see it; and I am not afraid to say this, because I
speak from personal observation, and no man ever
went among these Indians with more intense prejudice
against the Jesuits than I had when I left the city of
Washington to perform that duty. I made my report
to the secretary of the interior, Senator Teller, now on
this floor, and I said in that report what I say here and
what I would say anywhere and be glad of the oppor
tunity to say it.

Mr. President, every dollar you give these day
schools might as well be thrown into the Potomac
River under a ton of lead. You will make no more
impression upon the Indian children than if you should
take that money and burn it and expect its smoke by
some mystic process to bring them from idolatry and
degradation to Christianity and civilization. If you
can have the same system of boarding schools sup
ported by the government that the Jesuits have adopted
after long years of trial and deprivation, I grant that
there might be something done in the way of elevating
this race.

The old Indians are gone, hopelessly gone, so far as

VEST. 337

civilization and Christianity are concerned. They look
upon all work as a degradation and that a squaw
should bear the burden of life. The young Indian can
be saved. There are 3,000 of them to-day in the Da-
ko-tas — in South Dakota, I believe — who are voters,
exercising intelligently, as far as I know, the right of
suffrage. Go to the Indian Territory, where there are
the Five Civilized Tribes, and you will see what can
be done by intelligent effort, not with day schools, but
with schools based upon the idea of taking the children
and removing them from the injurious influence of the
old Indians and teaching them the arts of civilization
and of peace.

If I have ever done anything in my whole career in
this chamber of which I am sincerely proud it is that
upon one occasion I obtained an appropriation of $10,-
ooo for an industrial school at St. Ignatius, in Mon
tana. A few years afterward, in passing through the
Pacific coast, I stopped over to see that school. They
heard I was coming and met me at the depot with a
brass band, the instruments in the hands of Indian
boys, and they played without discrimination Hail
Columbia and Dixie. They had been taught by a
young French nobleman whom I had met two years
before at the mission, who had squandered the prin
cipal portion of his fortune in reckless dissipation in
the salons of Paris and had suddenly left that sort of
life and joined the company of Jesus and dedicated
himself to the American missions. He was an accom
plished musician, and he taught those boys how to play
tipon the instruments.

I went up to the mission and found there these In-

33$ VEST.

dian boys making hats and caps and boots and shoes
and running a blacksmith shop and carrying on a mill
and herding horses and cattle. The girls and boys,
when they graduated, intermarrying, became heads of
families as reputable and well-behaved and devoted to
Christianity as any we can find in our own States.
They were Catholics. That is a crime with some
people in this country.

Mr. President, are we to be told that a secret polit
ical organization in this country shall dictate to us
what we ought to do for this much-injured race whom
wre have despoiled of their lands and homes and whom
God has put upon us as an inheritance to be cared for?
I accuse no senator here of any other motive than a
desire to do his public duty. I shall do mine, and I
should gladly vote for an amendment to this bill in
finitely stronger than that of the senator from Arkan
sas. I would put this work, imperative upon us, in the
hands of those who could best accomplish it, as I would
give the building of my house to the best mechanic,
who would put up a structure that suited me and met
the ends I desired. If the Catholics can do it better
than anybody else, let them do it. If the Presbyterian,
the Methodist, the Congregationalist, or any other de-
nominajfcion can do it, give the work to them; but to
every man who comes to me and says this is a union
of church and state, I answer him, " Your statement is
false upon the very face of it." Instead of teaching-
the Indian children that they must be Catholics in order
to be good citizens, they are simply taught that work
is ennobling, and with the sense of self-dependence
and not of dependence upon others will come civiliza-

VEST. 339

tion and Christianity. These are my feelings, Mr.
President, and I would be glad if I could put them
upon the statute books.

12—6

340 WATTERSON.

Watterson, Henry, born in Washington City, whilst
his father was serving as a Representative in Congress from
Tennessee, the i6th of February, 1840, and the elder Wat
terson continuing in public life, the succeeding twenty years
were passed in the National Capital. Owing to defective
vision young Watterson was educated mainly by private
tutors, being carefully taught in music, for which he early
showed decided aptitude. An accident to his left hand,
quite disabling its action, diverted him from the piano, with
which he had made excellent progress, first to literary and
afterwards to newspaper work, and the War of 1861-65
found him well forward in his chosen pursuit. With the
breaking out of hostilities between the sections he returned
to Tennessee, entered the Confederate army and served
variously as private soldier, Staff Officer and Chief of
Scouts. During an interval of ten months he edited " The
Rebel," at Chattanooga, a newspaper which, under his man
agement, obtained great popularity and celebrity. After the
War he resumed his journalistic work at Nashville, the
Capital of Tennessee, where he married and whence (in
1868) he was called to Kentucky to succeed the famous
George D. Prentice as editor of the '; Louisville Journal."
Here his career in reality began. Uniting the three Eng
lish dailies of the Southern metropolis, he issued the
"Courier-Journal," which has ever since stood foremost
among American newspapers and without a rival among the
newspapers of the South. Both as a speaker and a writer
Mr. Watterson has occupied a commanding position before
the country for thirty years. He has sat in seven National
conventions, presiding over that of 1876, and serving as
Chairman of the Platform Committee in those of 1880, 1884
and 1888. He was the orator on the occasion of the open
ing of the World's Fair at Chicago in 1892, and has delivered
notable orations on many occasions of public importance.
Mr. Watterson has resolutely declined office, though respond-

WATTERSON. 341

ing to the importunities of his party, and particularly of Mr.
Tilden, its nominee for President, he accepted a seat in
Congress during the stormy period of the disputed Presi
dential succession in 1876-77. He was a member of the
Ways and Means Committee and of the Democratic Steer
ing Committee. Few men of his time have occupied a
larger measure of the public attention in the country at
large, whilst in Kentucky he is often referred to as " the
uncrowned king." Mr. Watterson never speaks that he
does not attract universal attention and although an incisive
partisan, his personal popularity is not limited to any party.
He is an undoubting American, intrepid in his convictions
and constant in his devotion to the higher standards and
nobler ideals of his profession. During the last ten years
he has been often spoken of as an available nominee for the
Presidency by the more liberal and advanced wing of his
party.

NATIONAL PROBLEMS DISCUSSED.

Delivered at the 25th anniversary banquet of the Boston Merchants
Association, December 10, 1901.

IN the event that I am ever a candidate for Presi
dent of the United States, which Heaven forbid, I
shall need the Electoral Vote of Massachusetts — or,
rather let me say, that I never expect to become a
candidate for that office until assured in advance of that
vote — and, this being agreed upon, you will not think
me taking unfair advantage of your hospitality, or
making a self-seeking, electioneering use of it, when
I say that I love Massachusetts. I love Massachusetts
because Massachusetts loves liberty, and I love liberty.

342 WATTERSON.

If I am a crank about anything it is about my right at
all times and under all circumstances to talk out in
meeting. There is but one human being in this world
whom I bow down to and obey, and she is not here
this evening — she is at home — I came for pleasure—
and, therefore, I am going to proceed just as though
I were in reality Julius Caesar!

Boston, I believe, is still in Massachusetts, and the
Bostonese, I am told, possess the conceit of themselves.
It is a handy thing to have about the house, and in
your case happens to be founded on fact. I at least
shall not deny your claim to many good things which
have come to pass since the birth of Benjamin Franklin
and on down to the completion of the Subway and the
new Passenger Stations. And yet back in the neck of
the woods where I abide there are those who think that
Kentucky is " no slouch." A story is told of an old
darky in slave-holding days who declared that his
young master was the greatest man that ever lived.
"Is he greater than Henry Clay?" " Yas, sir."
" Greater than General Jackson ? " " Yas, sir." " Well,
come now, Uncle Ephraim, you won't say that he is
greater than the Almighty ? " Uncle Ephraim was
stumped for a moment. " I won't say dat, sah ; no,
sah, but he bery young yit." Kentucky may
not be all that Massachusetts is; but Kentucky is
" bery young yit ! "

You have here the accretions of nearly three cen
turies of thinking and doing. A single century ago
the hunters of Kentucky were threading their way by
the light of pine-knot and rifle-flash through the track
less canebrake and the perilous forest to plant the flag

. WATTERSON. 343

which you worship and I adore, upon the first stage
of its westward journey around the world. During
that War of Sections which extinguished African
slavery and created a Nation, Massachusetts was
united to a man. Kentucky was so divided that she
sent an equal number of soldiers into both of the
contending armies. Throughout the period succeed
ing the chaos of that great upheaval, whilst Massachu
setts stood off at long range and took a speculative
crack at all creation, Kentucky had to grapple with its
realities ; to bind up the wounds of the body-corporate ;
to recover the equipoise of the body-politic ; to bury
& lost cause and to repair the breaches among the
combatants. We did it. We are still doing what is
left of it for us to do. And, though we lack some
what of the wealth which enables you to wish for a
thing, and to have it, and, perhaps, the training and
methods of order, which have come down to you from
those bloody riots in which you will not deny that your
fathers engaged — at Lexington and Concord and
Bunker Hill — yea, in the streets of this very town —
we are getting there, and let me repeat, Kentucky
is young yet.

Not so young, however, that long before many of
us here present were born she was not old enough to
go partners with Massachusetts to help the manufac
turers fleece the farmers under the pretension that high
protective duties would develop our infant industries
and make everybody rich.

I beg you will not be alarmed. I am not going to
discuss the Tariff. Twenty-five years ago, I ventured
in a modest Democratic platform, and in other simple,

344 WATTERSON.

childlike ways, to advance the theory that " Custom
House taxation," and I might have added all taxation,
" shall be for revenue only ;" in other words that the
Government has no Constitutional right nor power in
equity, to levy a dollar of taxation except for its own
support, and that, when the sum required has been
obtained, the tax shall stop. They called me names.
They said I was a revolutionist. They even went the
length of intimating that I was a Radical, and that, you
know, down our way, is equivalent to telling a man he
is a son-of-a-gun from Boston! Worse than all, I
was heralded and stigmatized as a Free Trader.
Hoary old infant industries, exuding the oleaginous
substance of subsidy out of every pore, climbed upon
their haunches and with tears in their eyes exclaimed,
" What, would you deprive us children not only of our
pap, but take from us the means of aiding the poor
workingman to earn a living?" Being a person of
tender sensibilities there were times when I wanted
to creep off somewhere and weep. Lo! the scene
shifts, and what 'do I see? I see the Republican Party,
which was so aghast at the old-fashioned, allopathic
treatment I prescribed, coming out as a full-fledged
Free Trader on the homeopathic plan ; its hands full
of protocolic pill boxes loaded with Reciprocity cap
sules; each capsule nicely sugared to suit the fancy
of such infants as accept the treatment, each pill-box
bearing the old reliable Protectionist label !

I should be disingenuous if I affected surprise. In
deed, the event fulfils a prophecy of my own. Many
years ago, talking to a company of manufacturers at
Pittsburg, I declared that the day was not far distant

WATTERSON. 34 J

when Pennsylvania would be for Free Trade, whilst a
Protectionist party would be growing in Kentucky;
that with plants perfected, with trade-marks fixed and
patents secure, Pennsylvania, seeking cheaper pro
cesses and wider markets, would say, " away with the
Tariff," whilst the owners of raw-material, the coal
barons and the iron lords of Kentucky, would cry out,
" hold on, we don't want the robbing to stop until
we have got our share of it."

I have lived to see — and I do not deny Protectionism
its share of the credit — my contention being that it
was bound to come and might have been had cheaper —
I have lived to see the American manufacturer able to
meet his foreign rival in every neutral market in
Christendom, sure at least of recovering and con
trolling those markets that geographically belong to
him ; because, from a collar-button to a locomotive, the
finished product of the American manufacturer to-day
beats the world.

And this leads me to ask, if all of us are to turn
Free Traders, where is the revenue needful to support
the Government — economically administered, mind
you, economically administered ! — to come from ? We
are barred direct taxation. Henry George being dead,
and Tom Johnson alone surviving, Massachusetts,
the bell-wether of innovation, will have to wrestle with
the Single Tax Problem even as long as she wrestled
with the problem of Abolition ; and, meanwhile, some
how, the Government must live. Is it possible that I
must cross my own tracks, deny my own teaching and
advocate a tariff with " incidental protection," enough
to supply our poor President, and his advisers, and

346 WATTERSON.

our poor Congress, and other of our impecunious em
ployes in the public sendee with the means of keeping
out of the poor-house? Shall there be another scandal
about another liaison between Massachusetts and Ken
tucky, another league between the Puritan and the
blackleg, another era of bargain, intrigue and corrup
tion as a consequence of our foregathering here to
night? Can it be that it was for this that you would
lure the star-eyed one away from the cold pedestal
whereon, like Niobe, she stands, all tears, to these
gilded halls and festive scenes? I was warned before
I left home, that " those Yankees are mighty cute," and
I am afraid that, when I get back, the wise ones will
shake their heads and wonder what kind of walking
it was between Boston Common and the head-waters
of the Beargrass!

Forgive the levity. But, what a comedy the thing
we call Government, what a humbug the thing we call
Politics ! And yet, after all, how inevitable ! I have
seen some real battles in my time ; but more sham
battles, and I do declare that I much prefer the sham
battles to the real battles. I shall always contend that
politics is not war; that party lines are not lines of
battle. I believe that we shall never approach the
ideal in Government until we have forced public men
to speak the truth and hew to the line in public affairs,
even as in private affairs, the same laws of honor
holding good in both; and, whilst I would no more
exclude sentiment than I would stop the circulation of
blood, many lessons of dear-bought experience admon
ish me that we are as a rule nearest to being in error
when we are most positive and emphatic ; that grievous

WATTERSON. 347

injustice and injury are perpetrated by the misrepre
sentation and abuse which are so freely visited upon
public men for no other cause, or offence, than a dif
ference of opinion; and that intolerance, the devil's
hand-maiden, in our private relations, embraces the
sum of all viciousness in affairs of Church and State.
Among men of sense and judgment, of heart and
conscience, the subjects of real difference must needs
be few and infrequent. Even these may be often ac
commodated without hurt to any interest, all Govern
ment being more or less a bundle of compromises. It
is that we do in the aggregate what no one of us would
dream of doing in severalty; the point turning, per
haps, upon the division of responsibility/ but more
upon the pressure which in excited times the wrong-
headed and stout of will impose upon the more mod
erate, the better tempered and better advised. The
press — particularly the Yellow Press — is doing a noble
work toward the correction of this evil; because
already the people are beginning to believe nothing
they read in the newspapers, and after a while, tiring of
an endless, daily circuit of misinformation, they will be
gin to demand a journalism less interesting and more
trustworthy; and, believe me, whenever they make
this requisition — whenever they discriminate between
the organ of fact and the organ of fancy — there shall
not be wanting editors who will prefer to grow rich
telling the truth than to die poor telling lies. We may
not have reached yet the summit of human perfectibil
ity, where we can hold our own with the merchants of
Boston, but even among the members of my profession
the self-sacrificing spirit lives apace, and the time will

348 WATTERSON.

come when the worst of us will scorn the scoop that
is no longer profitable !

You have been told, and many of you doubtless be
lieve that life is less secure in Kentucky than in China,
or even in Chicago; and, but a little while ago a Ken
tucky mother was represented as thanking the One
Above that her boy was bravely righting in the Phil
ippines instead of having to face the perils of the
deadly roof-tree at home. You have been told that
justice cannot be had in our courts of law. You have
been told that, because we have some surviving preju
dice against bringing the black man and brother into
the bosom of our families, we are his enemies and
would take unfair advantage of his ignorance and
poverty. None of these things are true. They are
the figments of a bigotry that obstinately refuses to
see both sides. There is an equal quantum of human
nature in Kentucky and in Massachusetts. There are
as many church bells in the Bluegrass country as in
the Bay State country, and they send the same sweet
notes to Heaven and sound exactly alike. The one
community, like the other, may be trusted to do its
part by humanity and its duty to the State ; nor can the
one help the other except by generous allowance for
infirmities that under the same conditions are common
to both and by manly sympathy in the cause of liberty
and truth, which was, and is, and ever shall be, the
glory of our whole country and the fulfillment, under
God, of its sublime destiny.

We live in untoward times. We have witnessed
wondrous things. Writh the passing away of the old
problems, new problems confront us. Modern inven-

WATTERSON. 349

tion has smashed the clock and pitched the geography
into the sea. The map of the world, so completely
altered that it really begins to look like the Fourth of
July, lends itself as a telescope to the point of view.
Concentration is becoming the universal demand, the
survival of the fittest the prevailing law. The idiosyn
crasy of the Nineteenth Century was liberty. The
idiosyncrasy of the Twentieth Century is markets. Be
it ours to look to it that we steer between the two
extremes of commercialism and anarchism, for, if we
have not come to the heritage, which God and Nature
and the providence of our fathers stored up for us, to
employ it in good works, we had better not come to
it at all.

Thoughtful Americans, true to the instincts of their
manhood and their racehood, answering the prompt
ings of an ever-watchful patriotism; carrying in their
hearts the principles of that inspired Declaration to
which their country owes its being as one among the
Nations of the Earth; carrying in their minds the
limitations of that matchless Constitution to which
their Government owes its stability and its power;
conscientious, earnest Americans, whether they dwell
in Massachusetts or in Kentucky, cannot look without
concern upon the peculiar dangers that assail us as we
plow through the treacherous waters which, for all our
boasted deep-sea soundings, threaten to engulf our
Ship of State, and, along with it, the old-fashioned les
sons of economy, the simple preachments of freedom
and virtue, in which those fathers thought they laid
the keel and raised the bulwarks of our great Republic.

That which we call Expansion — coveted by some,

350 WATTERSON.

deplored and dreaded by others — is a fact. The
newly acquired territories are with us, and they are
with us to stay ; a century hence the flag will be floating
where it now floats unless some power stronger than
we are ourselves turns up to drive us out. The very
thought of the vista thus opened to us should give us
pause, should chasten and make us humble in the sight
of Heaven, should appall us with the magnitude and
multitude of its responsibilities. If we are to turn the
opportunities they embody only to the account of our
avarice and pride; if we are to see in them only the
advancement of our private fortunes, at the expense of
the public duty and honor ; if we are to tickle away our
consciousness of wrongdoing with insincere platitudes
about Religion and Civilization and to soothe our
conscience whilst we rob and slay the helpless, with
the conceits of a self-deluding National vanity, then
it had been well for us, and for our children, and our
children's children that Dewey had sailed away, though
he had sailed without compass, or rudder or objective
point, into the night of everlasting mystery and
oblivion. But I believe nothing of the kind. I be
lieve we shall prove a contradiction to all the bad ex
amples of history, to all the warning voices of philos
ophy, to all the homely precepts of that conservatism
which, founded in the truest love of country, yet takes
no account of the revolution wrought by modern con
trivance upon the character and movements of man
kind. I believe that the American Union came among
the Nations even as the Christ came among the sons
of men. I believe that Constitutional Freedom ac
cording to the charter of American liberty is to Gov-

WATTERSON. 351

ernment what Christianity is to religion; and, so be
lieving, I would apply the principles and precedents
of that Charter to the administration of the Affairs
of the outlying regions and peoples come to us as a
consequence of the War with Spain, precisely as they
were applied to the territories purchased of France
and acquired of Mexico; not merely guaranteeing to
them the same uniformity of laws which the Constitu
tion ordains in the States of the Union, but rearing
among them kindred institutions, essential not less to
our safety and dignity than to their prosperity and
happiness. Entertaining no doubt that this view will
prevail in the final disposition, my optimism is as un
quenchable as my Republicanism; and both forecast in
my mind's eye centuries of greatness and glory for
us as a Nation and as a people.

We are upon the ascending, not the descending scale
of National and popular development. We are to
re-create out of the racial agglomerations which have
found lodgment here a new species and a better species
of men and women. We are to revitalize the primitive
religion, with its often misleading theologies, into a
new and practical system of life and thought, of Uni
versal Religion, to which the Declaration of Independ
ence, the Constitution of the United States and the Ser
mon on the Mount of Olives shall furnish the inspira
tion and the keynote, to the end that all lands and all
tribes shall teem with the love of man and the glory
of the Lord. We are passing, it may be, through an
era of acquisition and mediocrity, a formative era, but
we have made and are making progress; and, in spite
of the threats of Mammon, the perils that environ the

352 WATTERSON.

excess of luxury and wealth, in spite of the viciousness
and the greed, we shall reach a point at last where
money will be so plentiful, its uses so limited and de
fined, that it will have no longer any power to cor
rupt.

Although this is an Association of Merchants, and-
Boston Merchants at that — professedly committed to
the principle that " business is business " — sometimes
though wrongfully accused of " gainefulle pillage " —
I am sure that there is no one amongst us who does not
feel that the unscrupulous application of money on
every hand has been and still is the darkest cloud upon
our moral horizon, the lion across our highway, stand
ing just at the fork of the roads, one of which leads
up patriotic steeps of fame and glory, the other down
into the abysses of Plutocracy, opening his ferocious
jaws and licking his bloody lips to swallow up all that
is great and noble in the National life.

The Hercules who strangles that lion shall be called
blessed in the land, and this leads me to take note of
the presence with us here to-night of a Hercules, who
is said to know more about that lion than any other
Hercules, living or dead. I mean, of course, the
Chairman of the National Committee of one of the
two great parties contending for the sovereignty of
the people, the distinguished, the eminent Senator, the
honored neighbor and friend who sits near me.
Though not a Kentuckian himself, he has a brother
who came to Kentucky to bear away upon the wings
of love one of our fairest daughters. According to
the law of the vicinage down our way the circumstance
makes us " kind o' kin," as the saying is, and by that

WATTERSON. 353

token, I have a proposition to submit to him. If he
accepts it, I will go bail that my party associates ratify
my act.

He knows and I know how hard it is to raise money
even for the legitimate purposes of a National Cam
paign. Yet many people imagine that more or less it
is merely to give the skillet an extra shake or two.
Those who have least actual familiarity with money
are pronest to thinking of millions as millionaires think
of pennies. Thousands of good people believe that for
everybody except themselves money grows on bushes,
and that all elections are knocked down to the highest
bidder. The bare fact is lowering both to our political
standards and our standards of morality. The mere
statement is in a sense degrading. Nevertheless, it is
undoubtedly true that money is as essential to politi
cal battles as powder and ball to actual battles, and the
proposition I have to submit to my friend, the Senator
from Ohio, is that he and I come to an agreement about
what sum of money the two organizations will require
honestly to tide them through to the next Presidential
election; that we raise this sum on a joint note and
divide the proceeds equally; and that, when the elec
tion is over, the party carrying the country shall pay
the note ! If it be an inducement, I will further agree
that the money to be raised shall be of standard weight
and value, expressed in gold and silver and paper con
vertible into either at the will of the holder!

But, whether this or some other plan be reached to
abridge the use of money in elections, I do not doubt
that we shall in the end weather the breakers of
Plutocracy.

354 WATTERSON.

It is true that, possessed of no great aristocratic
titles, or patents of nobility, money becomes, and will
probably remain, the simplest and readiest of all our
standards of measurement, Yet, even now, it is
grown such a drug in the market, that some far-seeing
men, finding it so plentiful and easy to get, are giving
it away in sacks and baskets. Time will show that
its value is relative, and that after the actual needs of
life, it will buy nothing that wise men will think worth
having at the cost either of their conscience or their
credit. Give me the Right — not in the character of
an abstraction, so often misleading to theorists and
doctrinaires — not as a flash of fancy, so often irradiat
ing the dreams of the visionary 'with its illusory hopes
— but the plain, simple Right in plain and simple
things, obvious to the reasonable and the fair-minded,
arising out of the common-sense and common honesty
of the common people, relating to the actualities of
Government and life, and driving home to the busi
ness and bosoms of men — and I care not for the
golden contents of all the " bar'ls " that were ever
tapped by sordid ambition, or consecrated themselves
as rich libations on the altars of opulent partyism.

The people, as a people, can never be corrupted.
The whole history of a hundred years of Constitutional
Government in America, the moral lesson and the
experience of all our parties, may be told in a single
sentence, that, when any political organism, grown
over-confident by its successes and faithless to its duty,
thinks it has the world in a sling, public opinion just
rears back on its hind legs and kicks it out. In that
faith I rest my hope of the future of the country ; sure

WATTERSON. 3$ 5

that in the long run, wrong cannot prosper, and that
an enlightened public opinion is a certain cure for
every ill.

Gentlemen, Kentucky salutes Massachusetts! Come
and see us! You shall find the latch-string always
hanging outside the door !

BROWN.

Brown, Benjamin Gratz, an American politician
and orator, born at Lexington, Ky,, May 28, 1826; died
in St. Louis, Mo,, December 13, 1885. He was admitted
to the bar in Louisville in his native State, but soon re
moved to St. Louis, and entering the Missouri Legislature
in 1852 remained a member of that body for fourteen years.
He 'was a determined opponent of slavery, and in 1857
delivered a famous anti-slavery speech. He edited the
Missouri Democrat, an extremely radical Republican news
paper, and as the spokesman of the State Free Soil move
ment was defeated as its candidate for Governor in 1857 by
a small majority only. On the opening of the Civil War
he raised a regiment for the Union cause and led a brigade
against the Confederate forces. He sat in the United States
Senate 1863-67, and in 1871 was elected Governor of
Missouri. The following year he was the unsuccessful can
didate for the Vice Presidency, on the ticket with Horace
Greeley, After his defeat on this occasion, he resumed the
Practice of his profession at St. Louis. Brown was a man of
great ability and an eloquent, earnest public speaker. A
Speech delivered by him at St. Louis in September, 1862,
furnishes an adequate example of his powers.

BROWN. 357

ON SLAVERY IN ITS NATIONAL ASPECTS AS
RELATED TO PEACE AND WAR.

FROM ADDRESS DELIVERED AT ST. LOUIS, SEPTEMBER
17, 1862.

THE lover of his country is not apt to be discour
aged as to the eventual triumph of its arms. The
lost battle, the miasmatic campaign, abandoned
lines and blown-up magazines are regarded as inci
dents of war. They are deplored, but not held as
conclusive or even significant of the ending. There
are " signs of the times," however, in our horizon
that have a gloomier look than lost battles. And
darkest and strangest of all the discouragements
that have of late befallen must be considered the
spectacle presented by the government in its deal
ings with this terrible crisis — reposing itself alto
gether upon the mere barbarism of force.

One would think when reading the call for six
hundred thousand men to recruit our armies, and
seeing there no appeal to or recognition of the ideas
that rule this century, not less than this hour, that
as a government ours was intent on suicide — as a
nation we had abandoned our progression. Can it
be that those who have been advanced for their
wisdom and worth to such high places of rulership
do not understand that since this wrorld began, the
victories of mere brute force have been as inconse
quent as the ravages of pestilence and as evanescent

358 BROWN.

as the generations of men. Or can it be that, under
standing, they care only for tiding over the present
contest to bequeath revolt and internecine war as
the inheritance of those who are to come after them.
That would be virtual disintegration — national
death.

If the government undertakes to abandon the
revolution in its very birth-pains — if it intends to
have no reference to the ideas of which it is the
representative — if it contemplates a disregard of
the progressing thought that not only installed it,
but has carried it so far forward since installation —
if it is determined to found its dominion over sub
jugated States, not in the name of a principle that
shall assimilate its conquest and assure their liberties,
but of simple power — then will it place itself by its
own action in the attitude of other and equally
gigantic powers that have attempted the same
work and have failed. It may have its day of seem
ing successes, but even that will entail an age of
complications.

Does not Poland, as fully alive to-day, after ninety
years of forcible suppression, as on that morning of
the first partition, convince us that this thing of the
dominion of power without the assimilation of
nations can only continue upon condition of an ever-
recurring application of those forces that achieved
the first reduction? Does not the uprising and the
cry for a united Italy, after five hundred years of
fitful effort, continuous conflict, and successive dis
integration under the tramp of a multitudinous
soldiery, tell how fixed are social laws, how faithful

BROWN. 359

to freedom are peoples, and how certain the retribu
tion following upon those policies of government
that sacrifice the future to the present, the moral to
the mere material, the consolidating the foundations
of a great commonwealth to the hollow conquest,
the mock settlement, the outward uniformity ? His
tory is full of such illustrations, because history re
peats itself.

But I need not go with you further in citing its
judgments in condemnation of that reliance upon
physical force which deems itself able to dispense
with any appeal to principle. We cannot, if we
would, cast behind us the experience of eighteen
centuries of Christian amelioration, in which man
kind have been learning to rely upon moral and
intellectual forces rather than simple violence in
their dealings with each other as nations. Not that
civilization has surrendered its rights of war, but
that it insists that ideas shall march at the head of
armies. Napoleon III., when he announced that
the French nation alone in Europe made war for an
idea, intended to represent it as leading, not relaps
ing from the civilization of the age. And therein
he both uttered a philosophic truth and penetrated
the secret of success.

Strip the choicest legions of the inspiration the)
derive from a controlling, elevating cause — especially
that cause whose magic watchword cheers to victory
in every land — and in vain will you expect the
heroic in action or the miracle in conquest. It is a
coward thought that God is on the side of the strong
est battalions. The battles that live in memory

BROWN.

—that have seemed to turn the world's equanimity
upside down — have been won by the few fighting
for a principle as against the multitude enrolled in
the name of power. When, therefore, it is conceded
that the mere announcement of a policy of freedom
as the policy of this war would paralyze the hostility
of all the sovereigns of Europe and wed to us the
encouragement of their peoples, why is it that so
little faith obtains among our rulers that it would
equally strengthen the government here amid the
millions of our own land ? Have the populations of
our States fallen so low — become so irresponsive to
the watchwords of liberty — that it is not fit to make
such an appeal to them ? Is there no significance in
the fact that amid the five thousand stanzas that
have vainly attempted to exalt the unities of the
past into a nation's anthem — a song of war kindling
the uncontrollable ardors of the soul — one alone,
proscribed like the " Marseillaise," has been adopted
at the camp fire —

" John Brown's body lies a moldering in the grave,
His soul is marching on."

Six hundred thousand soldiers summoned to the
field, and for what? The nation asks of the Presi
dent, for what? Is it that the government may
wring a submission from the possible exhaustion on
the part of the seceding States, that shall be a post
ponement, not a settlement, of this great crisis, and
that shall be unrelated to the causes that have pro
duced it, or the progression on our part that has put
on the armor of revolution ? If so, the government
will find when perhaps it is too late, that in addition

BROWN. 361

to the rebellion it will have to confront a public
opinion that has no sympathies with reaction, and
that will withdraw, as unitedly as it has hitherto
given, all its trust from those in power. Or is it
that grounding this great struggle upon its true
basis, upholding the national honor whilst battling
for the national thought, our armies are to be mar
shalled under the flag of freedom, and the peace
achieved is to be one that shall assure personal and
political liberty to every dweller in the land? If
that be so, let the fact be proclaimed, not hidden
from the people, and there will need no call from
President, no conscription from Congress, to recruit
the ranks of the soldiers of the republic.

The two great revolutions of modern times which
mark the most signal advance in political freedom,
that of England during the Commonwealth and
that of France in 1789, have this among many other
striking features of similarity — that in each case a
large part of the empire resisting the advent of free
principles, took up arms again the government to
contest the issue. In the Vendee, as in Ireland, it
became necessary to establish 'by force the suprem
acy of the new order. It was antagonism by the
population of whole sections, and in both instances,
courses of conciliation having proved worthless, a
stern and vigorous policy of subjugation was re
quired. That even the success which crowned such
measures was only partial and transient, demanding
a supplemental work of assimilation, is also well
worthy of attention. But in subduing the resistance
now presented, this nation has that to contend with,

362 BROWN.

not less than that to assist it, which was not present
in either of the parallels cited. I allude to slavery,
the strength and the weakness of the South.

Look steadily at the prospect. Nine millions of
people in all — five millions and a half of whites ad
dressing themselves exclusively to warfare, sustained
by three millions and a half of blacks drilled as slaves
to the work of agriculture. Such are the official
statistics of the seceding States.

With the whites the conscription for military
purposes reaches to every man capable of bearing
arms; with the blacks the conscription for labor
recognizes neither weakness, nor age, nor sex. Soli
tary drivers ply the lash over the whole manual
force to transform plantations into granaries. This
allotment necessarily gives to war the largest possi
ble number of soldiers and extracts from labor the
greatest possible production of food. Combined,
protected, undisturbed, the relation so developed
presents a front that may well shake our faith in any
speedy subjugation.

Of these five and a half millions white population,
the ratio over the age of twenty-one which, accord
ing to statistical averages, is one in six, will give a
fraction over 900,000 men, from which deduct as
exempts or incapables twenty per cent., leaving
720,000, and add on the score of minor enlistments
one-half of those between the ages of sixteen and
twenty-one, or 55,000, and there existed 775,000,
as the total possible Confederate force in the outset.
If from this number 100,000 be stricken off as the
aggregate of the killed, disabled, imprisoned and

BROWN. 363

paroled since the outbreak of the war, and 70,000
be added as the probable number of recruits from
Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland, there will result
745,000 as the effective force. From these are to be
taken the men needed for the civil service, for pro
vost and police duties, and for regulating the trans
mission or exchange of productions — certainly not
less than 90,000, and there remains an aggregate of
655,000 as the fruit of thorough conscription.

Perhaps, however, it is right to make from such
rigid possible military array a deduction in favor of
the population which abandoned the seceding States
since the war began and that which, intrinsically
loyal, has evaded enrollment. In default of any
certain information, this may be placed at 55,000
men, thus leaving 600,000 soldiers fit for service and
ready to be concentrated and marched as the skill of
their commanders may determine.

Such is the strength of the array that now contests
and resists the cause of advancing freedom in the
nation. That the strength is not overestimated;
that the conscription has been remorseless, is proven
by every critical battle-field where our armies have
been outnumbered, and is to-day doubly attested
by our beleaguered capital and widely menaced
frontiers. There, then, is the rebellion stripped to
the skin. Look at is squarely. Those 600,000
soldiers stand between us and any future of honor,
liberty or peace. How are they to be disposed of,
defeated., suppressed ?

It is an imposing column of attack, but it has also
its element of weakness and dispersion. Remember

364 BROWN.

that in making such an estimate it has been predicted
upon the fact that the whole available white popu
lation was devoted to the formation of armies. No
part was assigned to the labor of the field or work
shop, to production or manufacture; but all this
vast organization reposes for sustenance — not to
speak of efficiency — on the hard- wrung toil of slaves.

Reflect, furthermore, that this whole foundation
is mined, eruptive, ready to shift the burden now
resting on it so heavily. The three and a half mil
lions of black population engaged in supplying the
very necessaries of life and movement to the Con
federate armies, are all loyal in their hearts to our
cause and require only the electric shock of pro
claimed freedom to disrupt the relation that gives
such erectness and impulsion to our adversaries and
such peril to ourselves. Years of bondage have only
sharpened their sensibilities toward liberty, and the
word spoken that causes such a hope will penetrate
every quarter of the South most speedily and most
surely.

Emancipate the industry that upholds the war
power of the South ; destroy the repose of that sys
tem which has made possible a levy "en masse" of
every white male able to bear arms; recall to the
tillage of the field ; to the care of the plantation ; to
the home supports of the community a correspond
ing number of the five and a half millions whites,
and there will be put another face to this war.

Compel the rebels to do their own work, hand for
hand, planting, harvesting, victualling, transporting
to the full substitution of the three and a half

BROWN. 365

millions blacks, now held for that purpose, and
where now they advance with armies they will fall
back with detachments; where abundance now
reigns in their camps, hunger will hurry them to
other avocations. It needs only that the word be
spoken.

A national declaration of freedom can no more
be hidden from the remotest sections of the slave
States than the uprisen sun in a cloudless sky. The
falsehoods, the doubts, the repulsions that have
heretofore driven them from us, will give place to
the kindling, mesmeric realization of protection and
deliverance. In the very outset their forces, which
nowr march to the attack, will be compelled to fall
back upon the interior to maintain authority and
prevent escapades "en masse" Insurrection will
not so much be apprehended, for where armies are
marshalled and surveillance withdrawn, the slave
is wise enough to know that a plot with a centre — •
an uprising — would be sure to meet with annihila
tion, whilst desertion from the plantations is only
checked by the repressive rules of our own lines.

The right to do these things needs not to be argued ;
.it is of the muniments of freedom, of the resorts of
self-preservation, of the in vesture that charges the
government with the defence of the national life.
And in this hour can be effected that which here
after may not be practicable. Occupancy of the
entire coast, with many lodgments made by our
navy, a penetration of the valley of the lower Miss
issippi, giving access to all its tributary streams, and
the exposed front of Virginia, Tennessee and Arkan-

366 BROWN.

sas, give ample basis for extending such a proclama
tion. Resuming the advance ourselves, with aug
mented forces, we shall find the 600,000 Confederates
compelled to detach one-half their force for garrison
ing the cotton States, whilst of the remaining 300,000
large numbers will necessarily fall out to replace the
industrial support of their families along the border.
State by State, as it is occupied and liberated, will
recall for substitution those spared to offensive war
in reliance upon slave production. The 300,000
will speedily become 100,000, and instead of con
centrating back upon their reserves, massed in
imposing column, as has heretofore been their
policy when temporarily checked, the very condition
of the South will require a wide dispersion of their
forces. Conquest and suppression will thus be ren
dered matters of absolute certainty. The double
result of immensely diminished numbers in the
Confederate armies and of its separation into broken
columns for local surveillance over all threatened
slave territory, is thus seen to flow from emancipa
tion as a war measure.

In the grave contest on which we have entered
for life and for death, no appreciative judgment can
be formed of the absolute necessity of writing free
dom on the flag that leaves out of view the organiza
tion of the labor and the valor for military purposes
of the population thereby liberated. The substitu
tion of freed blacks, whenever they can relieve for
other duties the enlisted soldier, has already so far
commended itself in defiance of slave codes and
equality fears, as to have been adopted in some

BROWN. 367

divisions of our armies. The wisdom that should
have foreseen in such a policy extended as far as
practicable the addition to-day of 50,000 soldiers
to the effective fighting force of the government,
perhaps changing the fate of critical campaigns,
has been unfortunately wanting. And yet the army
regulations, as applied to the muster-rolls of our
forces, will show that nearly twice that number of
disciplined troops could have been relieved of ditch_
ing, teaming, serving or other occupation, and sent
to the front. Moreover, any policy which looks
distinctly to the subjugating and occupying, mili
tarily, until the national authority shall be suffi
ciently respected to work through civil processes,
the States now in rebellion, must embrace within
its scope the employment of acclimated troops for
garrison and other duties during those seasons fatal
to the health of our present levies.

The diseases of a warm climate have already been
far. more destructive to the lives of our soldiers, as
shown by aggregated hospital reports at Washing
ton, than all other battlefields, and hereafter in the
prevalence of those epidemics so common in the Gulf
States, our battalions, if subjected to Southern serv
ice, would melt away disastrously. It is not possi
ble, therefore, to separate *the holding of the rebel
States from the employ of acclimated troops. And
for that purpose .but one resource exists — the liber
ated blacks, whose veins course with the blood of
the tropics. Arm them, drill them, discipline them,
.and of one fact we may be sure — they will not sur
render.

368 B .OWN.

I take it that a race liberated by the operation of
hostilities is entitled by every usage of warfare to be
armed in defence of those who liberated them, and,
furthermore, I take it that a people made free in
accordance with the humanities of this century, is
entitled by every right, human and divine, to be
armed as an assurance of its own recovered freedom.

This step will be at once the guarantee against
future attempt at re-enslavement and the bond that
no further revolt on the part of the States occupied
shall be meditated. Above all else, it will be assur
ance unmistakable that no disgraceful peace, no
dismembered country, no foresworn liberties, will
end this war. What, shall we stand halting before a
sentimentality, blinking at shades of color, tracing
genealogies up to sons of Noah, when our brothers
in arms are being weighed in the scales of life and
death ! Go, ye men of little faith; resign your high
charges, if it be you cannot face a coward clamor in
the throes of a nation's great deliverance.

Go and look yonder upon the pale mother in the
far northland, weary with watching by her lonely
hearth for the bright-faced boy's return. Her hope
had nerved itself to trust his life to the chances of
the battlefield ; but the trundling wheels bear back
to her door a stricken form, in coarse pine box, with
the dear name chalked straggling across, indorsed
"fever." Listen then to the wail of crushing woe
sobbed out by a broken heart, and say to her if you
can, general, statesman or President, that you re
fused the aid that would have saved that double
life of mother and son. Verily, the graves of the

BT OWN. 369

northmen have their equities equally with those of
the rebellion.

There are those, strange to say, who, in addition
to the war now waged by us against five and a half
millions of whites, would add to the task of reduction
thus imposed upon our government the further
work of taking possession of and deporting to other
lands the three millions and a half of blacks. Disre
garding the assistance that might be derived from
the co-operation and enfranchisement of the slave
labor of the seceding States, they would not only
strip the slaves of the present uncertain hope of per
sonal freedom which may be found within our lines,
but, still viewing them as " chattels," to be dealt
with as fancy may dictate, would serve a notice on
the world that the best usage they can hope for from
risking life to render us aid, will be transportation to
climes and countries beyond the reach of their knowl
edge, and that only inspire ignorance with terror.
According to such, the practical solution of the
present crisis consists:

FIRST. In conquering the rebellion by making its
cause a common cause, as against us, by both master
and slave.

SECOND. In holding the conquered territory
and superinducing a state of peace, plenty and
obedience by the deportation of all who are loyal
and of all who labor.

With such the magnitude, not to say impractica
bility, of migrations that would require — even if all
were favoring — transport fleets larger and costlier
than those employed for the war, is not less scouted

37O BROWN.

at as an obstacle, than the resistance to be foreseen
from the unwilling and the depopulation that may
be objected by the interested is treated as a fanati
cism. Without challenging the sincerity of those
who advocate such views, it will be sufficient to say
that I differ from them altogether. I do not believe
the government has "chattel rights" in the slave
emancipated by act of war any more than the re
bellion had; and I do believe that the doctrine of
personal liberty, if it be worth anything — if it be not
a sham and a delusion — if it is to have any applica
tion in this conflict — must be applied to them.

It is not in behalf of the noble and the refined, the
generous and the cultivated, that the evangels of
freedom have been 'heretofore borne by enthused
army in the deliverances history so much loves to
delineate and extoll, but to the down-trodden — to
the ignorant from servitude — to the enfeebled in
spirit from long years of oppression. Why, then,
shall those liberated in this country be bereft of the
rights of domicile and employ? Because they are
black, forsooth !

That answer will scarcely stand scrutiny by the
God who made us all. It would, moreover, justify
slavery as fully as extradition. Deportation, if
forcible, is in principle but a change of masters, and
in practice will never solve the problem of the negro
question as growing out of this war. If voluntary, it
needs not to be discussed in advance of emancipa
tion. The lot of the freed race will be to labor — in
the future as in the past — but to labor for the wage
and not for the lash. That there must be coloniza-

BROWN. 371

tion as a resultant of the complete triumph of the
national arms, and the complete restoration of the
national authority, no one can reasonably doubt.

But it will be a colonization of loyal men into and
not out of the rebel States. The great forces of
immigration, fostered and directed, will work out
the new destiny that awaits the seceded States —
the assimilation that must precede a perfect union.
What it has done for the Lake Shore, for the Pacific
coast, for the Centre and the West, that will it do for
the South also, when no blight of slavery lingers
there to repel its coming or divert its industrial
armies. And if in the development caused by its.
vast agencies, those natural affinities, so much in
sisted on by many, shall lead the African race toward
the tropics, to plant there a new Carthage, it will be
one of these dispensations of Providence that will
meet with support and co-operation, not hindrance
and antagonism from the friends of freedom on this
continent.

The half-way house where halt the timid, the
doubtful, the reactionary in this conflict, hangs out
a sign : ' ' The Union as it was. ' ' Within its inclosure
will be found jostling side by side, the good man who
Is afraid to think, the politician who has a record to
preserve, the spy who needs a cloak to conceal him,
and behind all these the fluctuating camp followers
of the army of freedom. Not that there are no wise
and brave men who phrase their speech by the at
tachments of the past ; but that such have another
and purer significance in their language than the
received meaning on "the Union as it was.'' All

13-6

372 BROWN.

who look at events which have come upon us, see
that ''the Union as it was" contained the seeds of
death — elements of aggression against liberty and
reaction through civil war. Its very life- scenes, as
time progressed, were ever and anon startled by the
bodeful note of coming catastrophe, to be lulled
again into false security by paean songs to its excel
lence — like some old Greek tragedy with its inexor
able fate and its recurring chorus. And tragic
enough, it would seem, has been its outcome to dis
sipate any illusion.

Is it believed that the same causes would not pro
duce the same results to the very ending of time?
Is it wished to repeat the miserable years of truck
ling and subserviency on the , part of the natural
guardians of free institutions to the exaction, arro
gance and dominion of the slave power through
fear of breaking the thin ice of a hollow tranquillity ?
Is it longed to undergo new experiences of Sumner
assaults, Kansas outrages, Pierce administrations,
Buchanan profligacies, knaveries and treasons, with
spirited interludes of negro-catching at the North,
and abolition hanging at the South ? Is it desired
to recall the time when the man of Massachusetts
dared not name his residence to the people of Caro
lina; when free speech was a half-forgotten legend
in the slave States, when the breeding of human
beings to sell into distant bondage was the occupa
tion of many of the elite of the borderland ; and when
demoralization, that came from sacrificing so much
self-respect to mere dread of any crisis or mere hope
of political advancement, had dwarfed our states-

BROWN. 373

men, corrupted our journalism, and made office-
holding disreputable as a vocation ?

For one, I take witness here before you all, that I
want no such Union, and do not want it, because it
contained that which made those things not only
possible, but probable. I trust that I value as much
as another the purities of a Union, the excellencies
of a constitution, the veracities and accomplish
ments of a former generation, but who would be the
blind worshipper of form rather than substance —
of a name, rather than a reality — of a bond that did
not bind, and a federation that has resulted only in
disjunction? There are those I know who regard
"the Union as it was" as a sentiment significant of
material prosperity — unrelated to rights or wrongs,
and as such they worship it, just as they would a
State bank corporation with large dividends, of any
named machine that would enable them to buy cot
ton, sell goods, or trade negroes. But such should
be content to pass their ignoble lives on the accumu
lation of other days, and not dare to dictate to others
a return to such debasing thraldom. ;

Of one thing they may be sure — that the great
Democracy of this nation will insist that the Union
of the future shall be predicated upon a principle
uniting the social, moral and political life of a pro
gressive people — and purged of the poison of the past.
W.ien asked, therefore, as the charlatans of the
hour often do ask, would you not wish the "Union
as it was" restored, even if slavery were to remain
intact and protected — say emphatically, No ! say
No ! for such an admission would be a self-contra-

374 BROWN.

diction — a yielding of all the longings of the spirit
to an empty husk whose only possible outcome we
see to-day in the shape of civil war.

It is, perhaps, the fate of all revolutions involving
social changes, to be officered at the outset by the
inherited reputations, great and small, of the fore
going time, and so far as this fate has fallen on oui
nation, it is less to be wondered at than deplored.
But soon there comes the time for change, when the
Fairfaxes, the Dumouriers, the Arnolds, must give
place to soldiers of the faith. And, hopeful to say,
it has ever happened that conjointly with the public
assumption of the principle of the Revolution, medi
ocrity, routine, half-heartedness have passed from
command, and victory has replaced disaster. So
much is historic. We may take comfort then; for
the uses of adversity are ours.

Pro-slavery generals at the head of our armies are
the result of pro-slavery influence in our national
councils, and the hesitancy of the government to pro
claim officially any distinct policy of freedom has
kept them there. By no possibility, however, can
such, even if the chance victors of to-day, remain
possessed of the future.

I do not underrate the prestige of military suc
cess — but military prestige is as naught before the
inarch of revolution ; and it is only when revolutions
are accomplished, that the reputations of great
captains become great dangers. Pro-slavery gen
erals, therefore, are only dangerous now from the
disasters that accompany their administration.
Their appreciation of the present being at fault,

BROWN. 375

their methods, their reliances, their results will be
inconsequent, and without force. Witness the mis
erable months o"f projected conciliations, of harmless
captures, of violated oath taking, of border State
imbecilities, of Order No. Threes, of paroling guer
rillas, of halting advances and wasted opportunities.
Could these things have been possible to commanders
comprehending either the magnitude, the character
istics or the consequences of the war that slavery
has inaugurated, and that must end in slavery ex
tinction or the abandonment of our development as
a free people ? Or can it b*e possible that the same
series of incompetencies and sham energies ghall be
prolonged indefinitely ? No ! It needs not that I
should insist how surely all such must give way
before the force of a public sentiment which, when
once on the march, speedily refuses to trust any with
responsibility who are not born of the age.

It was just such a common thought of the Long
Parliament that gave a "new model" to their army
and a "self-denying ordinance" to themselves, ex
tirpating insincerity from the former and imposing
stoicism and self-sacrifice on each other. It was a
similar growth of public opinion in France that set
the guillotine at work to keep account of lost battles
with unsympathizing generals. The pregnant ques
tion, then, of this crisis is, how long, my country
men, shall we wait for the "new model" and the
"self-denying ordinance" and the swift punishment
in this day of calamitous command and disgraceful
surrenders.

No one has ever read of a more touching spectacle

376 BROWN.

in the life of nations, than that now presented by
this people. Beyond any parallel it has made sacri
fice of those things dear to its affection — I might
almost say traditionally sacred from violation. All
its rights of person and of property have been placed
unmurmuringly at the disposal of the government,
asking only in return a speedy, vigorous, uncom
promising conduct of the war upon a true principle
to an honorable ending. The habeas corpus has
been suspended, not only in the revolted territory,
but likewise in many of the loyal States. A pass
port system, limiting and embarrassing both travel
and traffic, has been enforced with rigor. The cen
sorship of the press not only controls the transmis
sion of news, but curtails even the expression of
opinion within restrictions heretofore unimaginable.

Arbitrary imprisonment by premiers of the cabi
net, banishments summarily notified, exactions
levied at discretion, fines assessed by military com
missions, trials postponed indefinitely — in short, all
the panoply of the most rigid European absolutism
has been imported into our midst. It is not to com
plain, that these things are recited; for, so far as
necessary, they will be, as they have been, cheerfully
borne with ; but to show how tragic is the attitude
of this nation and yet how brave.

The President of the United States, to-day, holds
a civil and military power more untrammelled than
ever did Cromwell; and, in addition thereto, has
enrolled by the volunteer agencies of the people
themselves, a million of armed men, obedient to his
command. Nay, did I say the President was abso-

BROWN. 377

lute as Cromwell? In truth, I might add that of.
his officials intrusted with administering military
instead of civil law — every deputy provost marshal
seems to be feeling his face to see if he, too, has not
the warts of the Great Protector.

If this were the occasion for stale flatteries of the
constitution and the Union, it might well be asked
just here, where, in that much-lauded parchment
and league is the warrant for these things specifi
cally ? But I carp not at such technicalities. Give
him, rather, more power if necessary — give him any
trust and every appliance, only let it be not without
avail.

And yet with all this sacrifice, with all this effort,
with quick response to every demand for men and'
money, what do we see? A beleaguered capital,,
only saved by abandoning a year of conquest and
long lines of occupation ; the confidence of the whole
nation shaken to its very foundations by accumu
lated disasters and halting policies; and the grave
inquiry, mooted in no whispered voice, by men who
have never known fear in any peril, can this country
survive its rulers ? I do not say the doubt is justi
fied ; but I do say that it exists in many minds that
have been prone heretofore to confidence. We have
seen fifty thousand soldiers, the elite of the nation,
sacrificed, and six hundred millions of treasure, the
coin wealth of the people expended. We have
reached the stage of assignats and conscriptions,
and are now summoning the militia of the loyal
States to repel invasion. And can any one cog
nizant of our actual condition, and not misled by

378 BROWN.

false bulletins, or varnished glories, stand forth and
say with truth and honor, we are any nearer a solu
tion in this hour of the great crisis in which we are
involved than we were a year ago ? I challenge a re
sponse. Or will any delude you long with the belief
that a great victory will accomplish the ending ? I
do not believe it.

In the presence, therefore, of such thick-coming
danger, and having borne itself so continently and
so well, has not this nation now the right to demand
of President and of cabinet, and generals, that there
shall be an end of policies that have only multiplied
disasters and disrupted armies, and a substitution
of civil policies that shall recognize liberty as the
corner-stone of our Republic, and write " Freedom"
on the flag.

In conclusion, let me say that the time has passed
when such a demand could be denounced, even by
the most servile follower of administrations, as a
fanaticism, for the chief of the Republic has himself
recognized his right to do so, if the occasion shall
require, in virtue of being charged with the preserva
tion of the government. He has, furthermore,
become so far impressed with the urgency that mani
fests itself, that he has ordered immediate execution
to be given to the act of the last Congress, prescribing
a measure of confiscation and emancipation.

This day, too, is the anniversary of its enforce
ment, as it is the anniversary of the adoption of the
original constitution of the United States. Let us,
then, in parting, take hope from the cheering coin
cidence. The act of Congress, it is true, is but an

BROWN, 379

initial measure, embarrassed by many clauses, and
may be much limited by hostile interpretation.
Still, it can be made an avatar of liberty to thousands
who shall invoke its protection, and the instrument
of condign punishment to those who have sought
the destruction of all free government. And more
than all else, its rigid enforcement and true interpre
tation will give earnest to the nation of that which
must speedily ensue — direct and immediate emanci
pation by the military arm, as a measure of safety,
«. measure of justice and a measure of peace.

380 BROUN.

Brown, John, a celebrated American abolitionist, born
at Torrington, May 19, 1800; died at Charleston, W. Va.,
Dec. 2, 1859. He emigrated to Ohio in early youth, and in
1855 removed to Kansas and with his large family of sons
took an active and aggressive part in the struggles with the
pro-slavery advocates there. In 1859 he planned an invasion
of Virginia in order to liberate the slaves, and on Oct. 16,
with twenty-two associates, he surprised the small town of
Harper's Ferry, and. captured the arsenal and armory. He
and the survivors of his small force were taken prisoners the
next day by the national troops, and delivered over to the
Virginia authorities. After a trial Brown was hanged on the
second of the following December.

WORDS TO GOVERNOR WISE AT
HARPER'S FERRY.

GOVERNOR, — I have from all appearances not more
than fifteen or twenty years the start of you in the
journey to that eternity of which you kindly warn
me ; and, whether my time here shall be fifteen months
or fifteen days or fifteen hours, I am equally prepared
to go. There is an eternity behind and an eternity
before; and this little speck in the centre, however
long, is but comparatively a minute. The difference
between your tenure and mine is trifling, and I there
fore tell you to be prepared. I am prepared. You all
have a heavy responsibility, and it behooves you to
prepare more than it does me.

BROWN. 381

LAST SPEECH TO THE COURT.

NOVEMBER 2, 1859.

I HAVE,, may it please the Court, a few words tc say.
In the first place, I deny everything but what I have
all along admitted, — the design on my part to free the
slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing
of that matter, as I did last winter, when I went into
Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping
of a gun on either side, moved them through the
country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed
to have done the same thing again on a larger scale.
That was all I intended. I never did intend murder,
or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite
or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.

I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust
that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered
in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has
been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and
candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who
have testified in this case), — had I so interfered in be
half of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-
called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, —
either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children,
or any of that class, — and suffered and sacrificed what
I have in this interference, it would have been all
right ; and every man in this court would have deemed
it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity
of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I
suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament.

382 BROWN.

That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would
that men should do to me I should do even so to
them.' It teaches me, further, to " remember them
that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored
to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too
young to understand that God is any respecter of per
sons. I believe that to have interfered as I have
done — as I have always freely admitted I have done —
in behalf of his despised poor was not wrong, but
right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should
forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of jus
tice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of
my children and with the blood of millions in this
slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked,
cruel, and unjust enactments, — I submit; so let it be
done!

Let me say one word further.

I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have
received on my trial. Considering all the circumstances,
it has been more generous than I expected. But I
feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated from
the first what was my intention and what was not. I
never had any design against the life of any person,
nor any disposition to commit treason, or excite slaves
to rebel, or make any general insurrection. I never
encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged
any idea of that kind.

Let me say also a word in regard to the statements
made by some of those connected with me. I hear it
has been stated by some of them that I have induced
them to join me. But the contrary is true. I do not
say this to injure them, but as regretting their weak-

BROWN. 383

ness. There is not one of them but joined me of his
own accord, and the greater part of them at their own
expense. A number of them I never saw, and never
had a word of conversation with till the day they
came to me ; and that was for the purpose I have stated.
Now I have done.

NEW AND REVISED EDITION

Our
Presidents

AND How WE MAKE THEM
BY COL. A. K. McCLURE

This is a book which every good American
citizen should own. It is not only a delightful
volume of personal reminiscences of a man who
for the past fifty years has been an active figure
in political life but it is an authoritative history
of the Presidential Campaigns, National Conven
tions, etc., of that period. It contains a detailed
account of the ballots cast at the various National
Conventions and much information which will be
invaluable to every student of American history.

Crown, 8vo, Cloth, with Portraits, $200
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