[Speech of Rev. John R. Paxton, D.D., at the seventy-seventh annual
dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December
22, 1882. Josiah M. Fiske, the President, occupied the chair. Dr.
Paxton responded for "The Clergy."]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--There is no help for it, alas!
now. The Pilgrim or Puritan doth bestride the broad continent like
another Colossus and we Dutch, English, Scotch, Scotch-Irish, and Irish
walk about under his huge legs [laughter]; "we must bend our bodies when
he doth carelessly nod to us." For the Puritan is the pious Joseph of
the land, and to his sheaf all our sheaves must make obeisance. As he
pipes unto us so we dance. He takes the chief seat at every national
feast and compels us highway-and-hedge people, us unfortunate Dutch and
Scotch-Irish, to come in and shout his triumphs and praise at his own
self-glorification meetings. [Laughter and applause.] Of course we all
know it's a clear case of the tail wagging the dog. But it is too late
now to go back to the order of nature or the truth of history. The
Puritan, like another Old Man of the Sea, is astride our shoulders and
won't come down, protest, pray, roll, wriggle as Sindbad may. Why, the
Puritan has imposed his Thanksgiving Day and pumpkin-pie upon South
Carolina, even. [Applause.] He got mad at the old Whig party, on account
of his higher law and abolitionism, and put it to death. When the
Puritan first came to these shores, he made the way to heaven so narrow
that only a tight-rope performer could walk it. [Laughter.] Now, what
with his Concord philosophies, transcendentalisms, and every heresy, he
has made it so wide that you could drive all Barnum's elephants abreast
upon it and through the strait gate. He compels us to send our sons to
his colleges for his nasal note. He is communicating his dyspepsia to
the whole country by means of codfish-balls and baked beans. He has
encouraged the revolt of women, does our thinking, writes our books,
insists on his standard of culture, defines our God, and, as the
crowning glory of his audacity, has imposed his own sectional, fit, and
distinguishing name upon us all, and swells with gratified pride to hear
all the nations of the earth speak of all Americans as Yankees.
[Laughter and applause.]
I would enter a protest, but what use? We simply grace his triumph, and
no images may be hung at this feast but the trophies of the Puritan. For
all that, I mean to say a brief word for my Scotch-Irish race in
America. Mr. President, General Horace Porter, on my left, and I, did
not come over in the Half Moon or the Mayflower. We stayed on in County
Donegal, Ireland, in the loins of our forefathers, content with poteen
and potatoes, stayed on until the Pilgrims had put down the Indians, the
Baptists, and the witches; until the Dutch had got all the furs this
side Lake Erie. [Laughter and applause.] By the way, what hands and feet
those early Knickerbockers had! In trading with the Indians it was fixed
that a Dutchman's hand weighed one pound and his foot two pounds in the
scales. But what puzzled the Indian was that no matter how big his pack
of furs, the Dutchman's foot was its exact weight at the opposite end of
the scale. Enormous feet the first Van--or De--or Stuy--had. [Continued
laughter.]
But in course of time, after the Pilgrims had come for freedom, the
Dutch for furs, Penn for a frock--a Quaker cut and color--we came, we
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, for what? Perhaps the king oppressed the
presbytery, or potatoes failed, or the tax on whiskey was doubled.
Anyway we came to stay: some of us in New England, some in the valleys
of Virginia, some in the mountains of North Carolina, others in New
York; but the greater part pushed out into Pennsylvania--as far away as
they could get from the Puritans and the Dutch--settled the great
Cumberland Valley; then, crossing the Alleghany Mountains, staked out
their farms on the banks of the Monongahela River, set up their stills,
built their meeting-houses, organized the presbytery--and, gentlemen,
the reputation of our Monongahela rye is unsurpassed to this day [long
applause], and our unqualified orthodoxy even now turns the stomach of a
modern Puritan and constrains Colonel Ingersoll[1] not to pray, alas!
but to swear. [Loud laughter.]
Mr. President, I hope General Porter will join me in claiming some
recognition for the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from these sons of the
Puritans. For do you not know that your own man Bancroft says that the
first public voice in America for dissolving all connection with Great
Britain came not from the Puritans of New England, the Dutch of New
York, nor the planters of Virginia, but from the Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians? [Applause.] Therefore, Mr. President, be kind enough to
accept from us the greeting of the Scotch-Irish of Pennsylvania, our
native State--that prolific mother of pig-iron and coal, whose favorite
and greatest sons are still Albert Gallatin, of Switzerland, and
Benjamin Franklin, of Massachusetts. [Laughter and applause.]
The first son of a Forefather I ever fell in with was a nine-months
Connecticut man at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the spring of '62. Now,
I was a guileless and generous lad of nineteen--all Pennsylvanians are
guileless and generous, for our mountains are so rich in coal, our
valleys so fat with soil, that our living is easy and therefore our wits
are dull, and we are still voting for Jackson. [Great laughter.] The
reason the Yankees are smart is because they have to wrest a precarious
subsistence from a reluctant soil. "What shall I do to make my son get
forward in the world?" asked an English lord of a bishop. "I know of
only one way," replied the bishop; "give him poverty and parts." Well,
that's the reason the sons of the Pilgrims have all got on in the world.
They all started with poverty, and had to exercise their wits on nutmegs
or notions or something to thrive. [Laughter.] Yes, they had "parts."
Why, they have taken New York from the Dutch; they are half of Wall
Street, and only a Jew, or a long-headed Sage, or that surprising and
surpassing genius in finance, Jay,[2] can wrestle with them on equal
terms. Ah! these Yankees have "parts"--lean bodies, sterile soil, but
such brains that they grew a Webster. [Applause.] Well, this Connecticut
man invited me to his quarters. When I got back to my regiment I had a
shabby overcoat instead of my new one, I had a frying-pan worth twenty
cents, that cost me five dollars, and a recipe for baked beans for which
I had parted with my gold pen and pencil. [Continued laughter.] I was a
sadder and a wiser man that night for that encounter with the
Connecticut Pilgrim.
But my allotted time is running away, and, preacher-like, I couldn't
begin without an introduction. I am afraid in this case the porch will
be bigger than the house. But now to my toast, "The Clergy." Surely, Mr.
President and gentlemen, you sons of the Pilgrims appreciate the debt
you owe the Puritan divines. What made your section great, dominant,
glorious in the history of our common country? To what class of your
citizens--more than to any other, I think--do you owe the proud memories
of your past, and your strength, achievements, and culture in the
present? Who had the first chance on your destiny, your character, your
development? Why, the Puritan preacher, of course; the man who in every
parish inculcated the fear of God in your fathers' souls, obedience to
law, civil and divine, the dignity of man, the worth of the soul and
right conduct in life. [Applause.] Believe me, gentlemen, the Puritan
clergy did a great work for New England. Our whole country feels yet the
impulse and movement given it by those stern preachers of righteousness,
who had Abrahamic eyes under their foreheads and the stuff of Elijah in
their souls. [Applause.] I know it's the fashion now to poke fun at the
Puritans, to use the "Blue Laws" as a weapon against them, to sneer at
them as hard, narrow, and intolerant. Yes, alas! we do not breathe
through their lungs any more. The wheel has gone round, and we have come
back to the very things the Puritans fled from in hatred and in horror.
We pride ourselves these days on our "sweetness and light," on our
culture and manners. The soul of the age is hospitable and entertains,
like an inn, "God or the devil on equal terms," as George Eliot says.
Alas! the Puritan chart has failed us in the sea through which we are
passing; the old stars have ceased to shine; too many of us know neither
our course nor destination; "authority is mute;" the "Thus saith the
Lord" of the Puritan is not enough now for our guidance. For the age is
in all things not one of reason or of faith, but of speculation not only
in the business of the world, but in all moral and spiritual questions
as well. Well, we shall see what we shall see. But for one, I admire
with all my soul a man who knows just what he was put into this world
for, what his chief end in it is, what he believes, must do and must be,
and in the ways thereof is willing to inflict or to suffer death.
[Applause.] The Puritan divine was such a man. He sowed your rocky
coasts and sterile hills with conscience and God. You are living on the
virtue that came out of the hem of his garment; he is our bulwark still
in this land against superstition on the one hand and infidelity on the
other. [Applause.] Grand man he was, the old Puritan; once arrived he
was always arrived; while other men hesitated he acted; while others
debated he declared; fearing God, he was lifted above every other fear;
and though he has passed away for a time--only for a time, remember: the
wheel is still turning, we can't stand on air--he will come back again,
but in the meantime he is still a "preacher of righteousness" to our
souls as effective in death as in life. [Applause.]
In your presence I greet with my warmest admiration, I salute with my
profound reverence, the old Puritan divines of New England who had a
scorn for all base uses of life, who were true to duty as they saw it,
who had convictions for which they would kill or die, who formed their
characters and guided their lives by the law of righteousness in human
conduct. To these men under God we largely owe our liberties and our
laws in this land. I take off my hat to his ghost, and salute him as
greater than he who has taken a city, for the Puritan divine conquered
himself. He was an Isaac, not an Ishmael; he was a Jacob, not an Esau; a
God-born man who knew what his soul did wear. Great man he was, hard,
stern, and intolerant. Yes, but what would you have, gentlemen? The
Puritan was not a pretty head carved on a cherry-stone, but a Colossus
cut from the rock, huge, grim, but awe-inspiring, fortifying to the soul
if not warming to the heart. [Applause.]
Well, would he know you to-night, I wonder, his own sons, if he came in
upon you now, in circumstances so different and with manners and
customs so changed? Would he gaze at you with sad, sad eyes, and weep
over you as the degenerate sons of noble sires? [Laughter.] No, no; you
are worthy, I think. The sons will keep what the fathers won. After all,
you are still one with the Puritan in all essential things. [Applause.]
You clasp hands with him in devotion to the same principle, in obedience
to the same God. True, the man between doublet and skin plays many
parts; fashions come and go, never long the same, but "clothe me as you
will I am Sancho Panza still." So you are Puritans still. Back of your
Unitarianism, back of your Episcopalianism, back of your
Transcendentalism, back of all your isms, conceits, vagaries--and there
is no end to them--back of them all there beats in you the Puritan
heart. Blood will tell. Scratch a child of sweetness and light on Beacon
Hill to-day and you will find a Puritan. [Laughter.] Scratch your
Emerson, your Bellows, your Lowell, your Longfellow, your Wendell
Phillips, your Phillips Brooks, and you find the Puritan. [Applause.] In
intellectual conclusions vastly different, in heart, at bottom, you're
all one in love of liberty, in fear of God, contempt for shams, and
scorn of all things base and mean. [Applause.]
So, ye ghosts of old Puritan divines, ye cannot look down on your sons
to-night with sad and reproachful eyes. For the sons have not wasted
what the fathers gained, nor failed in any critical emergency, nor yet
forsaken the God ye feared so well, though they have modified your
creed. Gentlemen, I cannot think that the blood has run out. Exchange
your evening dress for the belted tunic and cloak; take off the silk hat
and put on the wide brim and the steeple crown, and lo! I see the
Puritan. And twenty years ago I heard him speak and saw him act. "If any
man hauls down the American flag, shoot him on the spot." Why, Warren in
old Boston did not act more promptly or do a finer thing. Well, what
moved in your splendid Dix when he gave that order? The spirit of the
old Puritan. And I saw the sons of the sires act. Who reddened the
streets of Baltimore with the first Union blood?--Massachusetts. [Loud
applause.] Who to-day are the first to rally to the side of a good
cause, on trial in the community? Who are Still first in colleges and
letters in this land? Who, east or west, advocate justice, redress
wrongs, maintain equal rights, support churches, love liberty, and
thrive where others starve? Why, these ubiquitous sons of the Puritans,
of course, who dine me to-night. Gentlemen, I salute you. "If I were not
Miltiades I would be Themistocles;" if I were not a Scotch-Irishman I
would be a Puritan. [Continued applause.]