[Speech of General William T. Sherman at the first annual dinner of
the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1880.
The President, Benjamin D. Silliman, on announcing the toast, "The
Army and Navy--Great and imperishable names and deeds have
illustrated their history," said: "In response to this toast, I
have the privilege of calling on the great Captain who commands the
armies of the Republic; of whom it has been said, that he combines
the skill and valor of the soldier, with the wisdom of the
statesman, and whose name will ever live in the history of the
nation. We shall have the great satisfaction of listening to
General Sherman."]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--While in Washington I was
somewhat embarrassed by receiving invitations from two different New
England societies to dine with them on different days in commemoration
of the same event. I hoped, under cover of that mistake, to escape one
or the other, but I find that each claims its day to be the genuine
anniversary of the landing of their Fathers on Plymouth Rock. I must
leave some of you to settle this controversy, for I don't know whether
it was the 21st or 22d; you here in Brooklyn say the 21st; they in New
York say it was the 22d. Laboring under this serious doubt, when I came
on the stand and found my name enrolled among the orators and statesmen
present, and saw that I was booked to make a speech, I appealed to a
learned and most eloquent attorney to represent me on this occasion. I
even tried to bribe him with an office which I could not give; but he
said that he belonged to that army sometimes described as "invincible in
peace, invisible in war." [Laughter.] He would not respond for me.
Therefore I find myself upon the stand at this moment compelled to
respond, after wars have been abolished by the Honorable Secretary of
State, and men are said to have risen to that level where they are never
to do harm to each other again--with the millennium come, in fact, God
grant it may be so? [Applause.]
I doubt it. I heard Henry Clay announce the same doctrine long before
our Civil War. I heard also assertions of the same kind uttered on the
floor of our Senate by learned and good men twenty years ago when we
were on the very threshold of one of the most bloody wars which ever
devastated this or any other land. Therefore I have some doubt whether
mankind has attained that eminence where it can look backward upon wars
and rumors of war, and forward to a state of perpetual peace.
No, my friends, I think man remains the same to-day, as he was in the
beginning. He is not alone a being of reason; he has passions and
feelings which require sometimes to be curbed by force; and all prudent
people ought to be ready and willing to meet strife when it comes. To be
prepared is the best answer to that question. [Applause.]
Now my friends, the toast you have given me to-night to respond to is
somewhat obscure to me. We have heard to-night enumerated the principles
of your society--which are called "New England ideas." They are as
perfect as the catechism. [Applause and laughter.] I have heard them
supplemented by a sort of codicil, to the effect that a large part of
our country--probably one-half--is still disturbed, and that the
Northern man is not welcome there. I know of my own knowledge that
two-thirds of the territory of the United States are not yet settled. I
believe that when our Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock, they
began the war of civilization against barbarism, which is not yet ended
in America. The Nation then, as Mr. Beecher has well said, in the strife
begun by our fathers, aimed to reach a higher manhood--a manhood of
virtue, a manhood of courage, a manhood of faith, a manhood that aspires
to approach the attributes of God Himself.
Whilst granting to every man the highest liberty known on earth, every
Yankee believes that the citizen must be the architect of his own
fortune; must carry the same civilization wherever he goes, building
school-houses and churches for all alike, and wherever the Yankee has
gone thus far he has carried his principles and has enlarged New England
so that it now embraces probably a third or a half of the settled part
of America. That has been a great achievement, but it is not yet
completed. Your work is not all finished.
You who sit here in New York, just as your London cousins did two
hundred and fifty years ago, know not the struggle that is beyond. At
this very moment of time there are Miles Standishes, under the cover of
the snow of the Rocky Mountains, doing just what your forefathers did
two hundred and fifty years ago. They have the same hard struggle before
them that your fathers had. You remember they commenced in New England
by building log cabins and fences and tilling the sterile, stony, soil,
which Mr. Beecher describes, and I believe these have been largely
instrumental in the development of the New England character. Had your
ancestors been cast on the fertile shores of the lower Mississippi, you
might not be the same vigorous men you are to-day. Your fathers had to
toil and labor. That was a good thing for you, and it will be good for
your children if you can only keep them in the same tracks. But here in
New York and in Brooklyn, I do not think you now are exactly like your
forefathers, but I can take you where you will see real live Yankees,
very much the same as your fathers were. In New York with wealth and
station, and everything that makes life pleasant, you are not the same
persons physically, though you profess the same principles, yet as
prudent men, you employ more policemen in New York--a larger proportion
to the inhabitants of your city than the whole army of the United States
bears to the people of the United States. You have no Indians here,
though you have "scalpers." [Applause and laughter.] You have no
"road-agents" here, and yet you keep your police; and so does our
Government keep a police force where there are real Indians and real
road-agents, and you, gentlemen, who sit here at this table to-night who
have contributed of your means whereby railroads have been built across
the continent, know well that this little army, which I represent here
to-night, is at this moment guarding these great roadways against
incursions of desperate men who would stop the cars and interfere with
the mails and travel, which would paralyze the trade and commerce of the
whole civilized world, that now passes safely over the great Pacific
road, leading to San Francisco. Others are building roads north and
south, over which we soldiers pass almost yearly, and there also you
will find the blue-coats to-day, guarding the road, not for their
advantage, or their safety, but for your safety, for the safety of your
capital.
So long as there is such a thing as money, there will be people trying
to get that money; they will struggle for it, and they will die for it
sometimes. We are a good-enough people, a better people it may be than
those of England, or France, though some doubt it. Still we believe
ourselves a higher race of people than have ever been produced by any
concatenation of events before. [Laughter.] We claim to be, and whether
it be due to the ministers of New England, or to the higher type of
manhood, of which Mr. Beecher speaks--which latter doctrine I prefer to
submit to--I don't care which, there is in human nature a spark of
mischief, a spark of danger, which in the aggregate will make force as
necessary for the government of mankind as the Almighty finds the
electric fluid necessary to clear the atmosphere. [Applause.]
You speak in your toast of "honored names"; you are more familiar with
the history of your country than I am, and know that the brightest pages
have been written on the battle-field. Is there a New Englander here who
would wipe "Bunker Hill" from his list for any price in Wall Street? Not
one of you! Yet you can go out into Pennsylvania and find a thousand of
bigger hills which you can buy for ten dollars an acre. It is not
because of its money value, but because Warren died there in defence of
your government which makes it so dear to you. Turn to the West. What
man would part with the fame of Harrison and of Perry? They made the
settlement of the great Northwest by your Yankees possible. They opened
that highway to you, and shall no honor be given to them? Had it not
been for the battles on the Thames by Harrison, and by Perry on Lake
Erie, the settlement of the great West would not have occurred by New
England industry and thrift. Therefore I say that there is an eloquence
of thought in those names as great as ever was heard on the floor of
Congress, or in the courts of New York. [Applause.]
So I might go on, and take New Orleans, for example, where General
Jackson fought a battle with the assistance of pirates, many of them
black men and slaves, who became free by that act. There the black man
first fought for his freedom, and I believe black men must fight for
their freedom if they expect to get it and hold it secure. Every white
soldier in this land will help him fight for his freedom, but he must
first strike for it himself. "Who would be free, themselves must strike
the blow." [Cheers.] That truth is ripening, and will manifest itself in
due time. I have as much faith in it as I have that the manhood, and
faith, and firmness, and courage of New England has contributed so much
to the wealth, the civilization, the fame, and glory of our country.
There is no danger of this country going backward. The Civil War settled
facts that remain recorded and never will be obliterated. Taken in that
connection I say that these battles were fought after many good and wise
men had declared all war to be a barbarism--a thing of the past. The
fields stained with patriotic blood will be revered by our children and
our children's children, long after we, the actors, may be forgotten.
The world will not stop; it is moving on; and the day will come when all
nations will be equal "brothers all," when the Scotchman and the
Englishman will be as the son of America. We want the universal humanity
and manhood that Mr. Beecher has spoken of so eloquently. You Yankees
don't want to monopolize all the virtues; if you do, you won't get them.
[Laughter.]
The Germans have an industry and a type of manhood which we may well
imitate. We find them settling now in South America, and in fact they
are heading you Yankees off in the South American trade. It won't do to
sit down here and brag. You must go forth and settle up new lands for
you and your children, as your fathers did. That is what has been going
on since Plymouth Rock, and will to the end. The end is not yet, but
that it will come and that this highest type of manhood will prevail in
the end I believe as firmly as any man who stands on this floor. It will
be done not by us alone, but by all people uniting, each acting his own
part; the merchant, the lawyer, the mechanic, the farmer, and the
soldier. But I contend that so long as man is man there is a necessity
for organized force, to enable us to reach the highest type of manhood
aimed at by our New England ancestors. [Loud applause.]
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