MR. PRESIDENT,--How brief is life! how long is art! Nathanael Greene
died at the age of forty-four, and now Congress receives his marble
statue, destined to endure until this Capitol crumbles to dust. But art
lends its longevity only to lives extended by deeds. Therefore is the
present an attestation of the fame that has been won.
Beyond his own deserts, Greene was fortunate during life in the praise
of Washington, who wrote of “the singular abilities which that officer
possesses,”[225]--and then again fortunate after death in the praise
of Hamilton, whose remarkable tribute is no ordinary record.[226] He
has been fortunate since in his biographer, whose work promises to be
classical in our literature.[227] And now he is fortunate again in a
statue, which, while taking an honorable place in American art, is the
first to be received in our Pantheon. Such are the honors of patriot
service.
Among the generals of the Revolution Greene was next after Washington.
His campaign at the South showed military genius of no common order. He
saved the South. Had he lived to take part in the National Government,
his character and judgment must have secured for him an eminent post of
service. Unlike his two great associates, Washington and Hamilton, his
life was confined to war; but the capacities he manifested in command
gave assurance that he would have excelled in civil life. His resources
in the field would have been the same in the council chamber.
Of Quaker extraction, Greene was originally a Quaker. The Quaker became
a soldier and commander of armies. Such was the requirement of the
epoch. Should a soldier and commander of armies in our day accept ideas
which enter into the life of the Quaker, the change would only be in
harmony with those principles which must soon prevail, ordaining peace
and good-will among men. Looking at his statue, with military coat and
with sword in hand, I seem to see his early garb beneath. The Quaker
general could never have been other than the friend of peace.
Standing always in that beautiful Hall, the statue will be a perpetual,
though silent orator. The marble will speak; nor is it difficult to
divine the lesson it must teach. He lived for his country, and his
whole country,--nothing less. Born in the North, he died in the South,
which he had made his home. The grateful South honored him as the
North had already done. His life exhibits the beauty and the reward
of patriotism. How can his marble speak except for country in all its
parts and at all points of the compass? It was for the whole country
that he drew his sword of “ice-brook temper.” So also for the whole
country was the sword drawn in these latter days. And yet there was a
difference between the two occasions easy to state.
Our country’s cause for which Greene contended was National
Independence. Our country’s cause recently triumphant in bloodiest
war was Liberty and Equality, the declared heritage of all mankind.
The first war was for separation from the mother country, according
to the terms of the Declaration, “That these United Colonies are and
of right ought to be Free and Independent States,”--the object being
elevated by the great principles announced. The second war was for
the establishment of these great principles, without which republican
government is a name and nothing more. But both were for country. The
larger masses, with the larger scale of military operations, in the
latter may eclipse the earlier; and it is impossible not to see that a
war for Liberty and Equality, making the promises of the Declaration a
reality, and giving to mankind an irresistible example, is loftier in
character than a war for separation. If hereafter Greene finds rivals
near his statue, they will be those who represented our country’s cause
in its later peril and its larger triumph. Just in proportion as ideas
are involved is conflict elevated, especially if those ideas concern
the Equal Rights of All.
Greene died at the South, and nobody knows the place of his burial. He
lies without epitaph or tombstone. To-day a grateful country writes his
epitaph and gives him a monument in the Capitol.