[Speech of John S. Wise at the eleventh annual dinner of the New
England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 20, 1890. The
President, Willard Bartlett, occupied the chair. He called upon Mr.
Wise to speak to the toast, "Captain John Smith, the Ruler of
Virginia, and Admiral of New England," saying: "It was not without
a purpose that your committee arranged the order of speaking this
evening. I am sure that the gentlemen who have already addressed
you will take it in good part, if I say we knew that, by putting
one name at the end of the programme, we should be sure to hold the
audience here till the doxology. Now a speaker who bears the name
of the first ruler of Virginia I ever knew anything about, will
address you upon Virginia's still earlier ruler, Captain John
Smith."]
MR. CHAIRMAN:--It is one of the peculiarities of Americans,
that they attempt to solve the unsolvable problem of successfully mixing
gastronomy and oratory. In chemistry there are things known as
incompatibles, which it is impossible to blend and at the same time
preserve their original characteristics. It is impossible to have as
good a dinner as we have had served to-night, and preserve the
intellectual faculties of your guests so that they may be seen at their
best. I am not unmindful that in the menu the courses grew shorter until
they culminated in the pungent and brief episode of cheese, and so I
take it that as to the oratory here on tap, you desire it to become
gradually more brief and more pungent.
Now, the task of condensing into a five-minute speech two hundred and
seventy years of the history of America, is something that has been
assigned to me, and I propose to address myself to it without further
delay. [Laughter]
John Smith was at one time President of Virginia, and afterward Admiral
of New England, and ever since then, until lately, New England and
Virginia have been trying to pull loose from each other, so as not to be
under the same ruler. [Laughter and applause.] John Smith was a godsend
to the American settlers, because he was a plain man in a company of
titled nonentities, and after they had tried and failed in every effort
to make or perpetuate an American colony, plain John Smith, a democrat,
without a title, took the helm and made it a success. [Laughter.]
Then and there, and ever since, we laid aside the
Reginald-Trebizond-Percys of nobility, and stuck to the plain John
Smiths, honest citizens, of capacity and character. By his example we
learned that "Kind hearts are more than coronets," and simple men of
worth are infinitely better than titled vagabonds of Norman blood.
[Applause.] It is almost three centuries since a tiny vessel, not larger
than a modern fishing-smack, turned her head to the sunset across an
unknown sea, for the land of conjecture. The ship's company, composed of
passengers from England, that wonderful nest of human wanderers, that
splendid source of the best civilization of the world, cast anchor by
chance in a noble bay for which they had not sailed, and settled a
colony; not with any particularly high or noble object, but really in
pursuit of gold, and searching for a South Sea which they never found.
The voyage had been projected without any other object than the
accumulation of wealth, which wealth was to be carried back to the old
country and enjoyed in that England which they loved, and to which their
eyes ever turned backward with affection, reverence, and the hope of
return. This band of younger sons and penniless nobility, attempted to
make a settlement under the charter known as the London charter of
Virginia; and while we find to-day men sneering at John Smith, the fact
remains that he alone was enabled by his strong personality, by his
sterling, individual worth, to resist the savages, to make the lazy
work, to furnish food for the weak and sickly, to re-inspire those who
had lost hope, and to firmly establish a settlement in Virginia. His
reward was what? Sedition in his own camp, ingratitude among his own
followers, misrepresentation to his patrons, disappointment, disease,
and poverty to himself; a return to England and posthumous fame. But his
bulldog fangs, the fangs of that English blood which once sunk in the
throat of a savage land remain forever, were placed upon America, to
mark it as another conquest and another triumph of Anglo-Saxon
colonization. Three years of peace and quiet in England were not to his
taste. His mother's spirit craved new adventures, and he sought them in
sea voyages to the north. Although his task was a much less difficult
one, and not quite so prominent as the task he had accomplished in
Virginia, he prepared the way for the settlement at Plymouth Rock. To
his title of President of Virginia was added the title of Admiral of New
England, because this John Smith, without a pedigree, except such as was
blazoned on his shield by his slaughter of three Turks, turned his
attention from the land to the sea, sailed the colder waters of the
north, located the colonies of New England, named your own Boston, and
the result of his voyages and reports were the Plymouth charter and
settlement. So it is that we have a common founder of the settlements of
this country. Of all the gallants who embarked in the first adventure,
all disappeared save John Smith, who bore the plainest and commonest
name that human imagination can devise. He became the patron saint of
American civilization, as much yours as ours, and as much ours as yours.
[Laughter and applause.]
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: We had one founder; we came from one
master-mind; one great spirit was the source of both our settlements;
and this initial fact in our histories has seemed to inspire the
American people through all the centuries with the sentiment that our
union should be eternal in spite of all disturbing circumstances.
[Applause.] When I said, in a light way, that old Virginia and
Massachusetts had sought to rend themselves asunder, it was scarcely
true. They have too much that is glorious in common to be aught but
loving sisters. The men who are before me will not forget that the
settlers of the London colony of Virginia, and settlers of the Plymouth
colony of Massachusetts, have been at the front of every great movement
which has agitated this nation from its birth. When it came to the
question of whether we should dissolve the political ties that bound us
to the British King, Massachusetts Bay and the colony of Virginia were
the first to form their Committees of Safety, exchange their messages
of mutual support, and strengthen the weak among their sister colonies.
[Applause.] When it came to the time that tried men's souls in the
Revolution, it was the men of Virginia and the men of Massachusetts Bay
that furnished the largest quotas of revolutionary soldiers who achieved
the independence of the American colonies.
When it came to the formation of a federal union, Virginia, with her
Washington, gave the first President, and Massachusetts, with her Adams,
stepped proudly to the front with the first Vice-President and second
President. [Applause.] In later years, when differences came--which
differences need not be discussed--every man here knows what part
Virginia and Massachusetts bore. It was a part which, however much we
may differ with each other, bespoke the origin of the two colonies, and
told that true manhood was there to do and die for what it believed was
right. When that struggle was ended, the first to clasp hands in mutual
friendship and affection were Virginia and Massachusetts. If we were to
blot from the history or geography of the Nation the deeds or territory
of the ancient dominions of John Smith, President of Virginia and
Admiral of New England, a beggarly record of area would be left, in
spite of the glorious records of other sections in recent years.
The history of America is to me not only of deep and absorbing interest
in its every detail, but it is a romance; it is a fascinating detail of
wonderful development, the like of which cannot be found in the annals
of civilization from the remotest time. We may go back to the time when
the curtain rises on the most ancient civilization of the East, and
there is nothing to compare with it. We may take up not only the real,
but the romantic history of modern European progress, and there is
nothing like American history for myself. Taking up the story of the
Quaker invasion of Massachusetts as early as 1659, I find Lydia Wardell,
daughter of Isaac Perkins, a freeman of the colony, whipped in Boston,
because she had ceased to be a Puritan and had become a Quakeress.
Turning then to the history of Virginia in 1663, I find Colonel Edmund
Scarburgh riding at the head of the King's troops into the boundaries of
Maryland, placing the broad arrows of the King on the houses of the
Quakers, and punishing them soundly for non-conformity. Upon the
question of who was right and who was wrong in these old feuds, there
are doubtless men who, even to this day, have deep prejudices. Fancy how
conflicting are the sentiments of a man in 1890, as to their merits,
when he reflects, as I do, that Lydia Wardell was his grandmother, and
Colonel Scarburgh his grandfather. [Applause and laughter.]
How absurd seems any comparison between the Puritan and Cavalier
settlers of America. There they are, with all their faults, and all
their virtues. Others may desire to contrast them. I do not. I stand
ready to do battle against anybody who abuses either. Their conjoint
blood has produced a Nation, the like of which no man living before our
day had ever fancied. Nearly three centuries of intermingling and
intermarrying, has made the traditions and the hopes of either the
heritage and aspiration of us all. Common sufferings, common triumphs,
common pride, make the whole glorious history the property of every
American citizen, and it is provincial folly to glorify either faction
at the expense of the other.
We stand to-night on the pinnacle of the third Century of American
development. Look back to the very beginning. There stands the grizzled
figure of John Smith, the Pioneer--President of Virginia, and Admiral of
New England. Still united, we look about us and behold a nation blessed
with peace and plenty, crowned with honor, and with boundless
opportunity of future aggrandizement. The seed planted by John Smith
still grows. The voice of John Smith still lives. That voice has been
swelled into the mighty chorus of 60,000,000 Americans singing the song
of United States. We look forward to a future whose possibilities
stagger all conjecture, to a common ruler of John Smith's ancient
dominions; to a common destiny, such as he mapped out for us. And with
devout and heartfelt gratitude to him, a reunited land proclaims, "Whom
God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." [Great applause.]
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