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ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE SOCIETIES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA,
JUNE 25, 1889.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: In thanking you for this
cordial—this Virginia—welcome, let me say that it satisfies my heart to
be with you to-day. This is my alma mater. Kind, in the tolerant
patience with which she winnowed the chaff of idle days and idler nights
that she might find for me the grain of knowledge and of truth, and in
the charity with which she sealed in sorrow rather than in anger my
brief but stormy career within these walls. Kinder yet, that her old
heart has turned lovingly after the lapse of twenty years to her
scapegrace son in a distant State, and recalling him with this honorable
commission, has summoned him to her old place at her knees. Here at her
feet, with the glory of her presence breaking all about me, let me
testify that the years have but deepened my reverence and my love, and
my heart has owned the magical tenderness of the emotions first kindled
amid these sacred scenes. That which was unworthy has faded—that which
was good has abided. Faded the memory of the tempestuous dyke and the
riotous kalathump—dimmed the memory of that society, now happily
extinct, but then famous as “The Nippers from Peru”—forgotten even the
glad exultation of those days when the neighboring mountaineer in the
pride of his breezy heights brought down the bandaged bear to give
battle to the urban dog. Forgotten all these follies, and let us hope
forgiven. But, enduring in heart and in brain, the exhaustless splendor
of those golden days—the deep and pure inspiration of these academic
shades—the kindly admonition and wisdom of the masters—the generous
ardor of our mimic contests—and that loving comradeship that laughed at
separation and has lived beyond the grave. Enduring and hallowed,
blessed be God, the strange and wild ambitions that startled my boyish
heart as amid these dim corridors, oh! my mother, the stirring of unseen
wings in thy mighty past caught my careless ear, and the dazzling ideals
of thy future were revealed to my wondering sight.
Gentlemen of the literary societies—I have no studied oration for you
to-day. A life busy beyond its capacities has given scanty time for
preparation. But from a loving heart I shall speak to you this morning
in comradely sympathy of that which concerns us nearly.
Will you allow me to say that the anxiety that always possesses me when
I address my young countrymen is to-day quickened to the point of
consecration. For the first time in man’s responsibility I speak in
Virginia to Virginia. Beyond its ancient glories that made it matchless
among States, its later martyrdom has made it the Mecca of my people. It
was on these hills that our fathers gave new and deeper meaning to
heroism, and advanced the world in honor! It is in these valleys that
our dead lie sleeping. Out there is Appomattox, where on every ragged
gray cap the Lord God Almighty laid the sword of His imperishable
knighthood. Beyond is Petersburg, where he whose name I bear, and who
was prince to me among men, dropped his stainless sword and yielded up
his stainless life. Dear to me, sir, are the people among whom my father
died—sacred to me, sir, the soil that drank his precious blood. From a
heart stirred by these emotions and sobered by these memories, let me
speak to you to-day, my countrymen—and God give me wisdom to speak
aright and the words wherewithal to challenge and hold your attention.
We are standing in the daybreak of the second century of this Republic.
The fixed stars are fading from the sky, and we grope in uncertain
light. Strange shapes have come with the night. Established ways are
lost—new roads perplex, and widening fields stretch beyond the sight.
The unrest of dawn impels us to and fro—but Doubt stalks amid the
confusion, and even on the beaten paths the shifting crowds are halted,
and from the shadows the sentries cry: “Who comes there?” In the
obscurity of the morning tremendous forces are at work. Nothing is
steadfast or approved. The miracles of the present belie the simple
truths of the past. The church is besieged from without and betrayed
from within. Behind the courts smoulders the rioter’s torch and looms
the gibbet of the anarchists. Government is the contention of partisans
and the prey of spoilsmen. Trade is restless in the grasp of monopoly,
and commerce shackled with limitation. The cities are swollen and the
fields are stripped. Splendor streams from the castle, and squalor
crouches in the home. The universal brotherhood is dissolving, and the
people are huddling into classes. The hiss of the Nihilist disturbs the
covert, and the roar of the mob murmurs along the highway. Amid it all
beats the great American heart undismayed, and standing fast by the
challenge of his conscience, the citizen of the Republic, tranquil and
resolute, notes the drifting of the spectral currents, and calmly awaits
the full disclosures of the day.
Who shall be the heralds of this coming day? Who shall thread the way of
honor and safety through these besetting problems? Who shall rally the
people to the defense of their liberties and stir them until they shall
cry aloud to be led against the enemies of the Republic? You, my
countrymen, you! The university is the training camp of the future. The
scholar the champion of the coming years. Napoleon over-ran Europe with
drum-tap and bivouac—the next Napoleon shall form his battalions at the
tap of the schoolhouse bell and his captains shall come with cap and
gown. Waterloo was won at Oxford—Sedan at Berlin. So Germany plants her
colleges in the shadow of the French forts, and the professor smiles
amid his students as he notes the sentinel stalking against the sky. The
farmer has learned that brains mix better with his soil than the waste
of seabirds, and the professor walks by his side as he spreads the
showers in the verdure of his field, and locks the sunshine in the glory
of his harvest. A button is pressed by a child’s finger and the work of
a million men is done. The hand is nothing—the brain everything.
Physical prowess has had its day and the age of reason has come. The
lion-hearted Richard challenging Saladin to single combat is absurd, for
even Gog and Magog shall wage the Armageddon from their closets and look
not upon the blood that runs to the bridle-bit. Science is everything!
She butchers a hog in Chicago, draws Boston within three hours of New
York, renews the famished soil, routs her viewless bondsmen from the
electric center of the earth, and then turns to watch the new Icarus as
mounting in his flight to the sun he darkens the burnished ceiling of
the sky with the shadow of his wing.
Learning is supreme and you are its prophets. Here the Olympic games of
the Republic—and you its chosen athletes. It is yours then to grapple
with these problems, to confront and master these dangers. Yours to
decide whether the tremendous forces of this Republic shall be kept in
balance, or whether unbalanced they shall bring chaos; whether
60,000,000 men are capable of self-government, or whether liberty shall
be lost to them who would give their lives to maintain it. Your
responsibility is appalling. You stand in the pass behind which the
world’s liberties are guarded. This government carries the hopes of the
human race. Blot out the beacon that lights the portals of this Republic
and the world is adrift again. But save the Republic; establish the
light of its beacon over the troubled waters, and one by one the nations
of the earth shall drop anchor and be at rest in the harbor of universal
liberty. Let one who loves this Republic as he loves his life, and whose
heart is thrilled with the majesty of its mission, speak to you now of
the dangers that threaten its peace and prosperity, and the means by
which they may be honorably averted.
The unmistakable danger that threatens free government in America, is
the increasing tendency to concentrate in the Federal government powers
and privileges that should be left with the States, and to create powers
that neither the State nor Federal government should have. Let it be
understood at once that in discussing this question I seek to revive no
dead issue. We know precisely what was put to the issue of the sword,
and what was settled thereby. The right of a State to leave this Union
was denied and the denial made good forever. But the sovereignty of the
States in the Union was never involved, and the Republic that survived
the storm was, in the words of the Supreme Court, “an indissoluble Union
of indestructible States.” Let us stand on this decree and turn our
faces to the future!
It is not strange that there should be a tendency to centralization in
our government. This disposition was the legacy of the war. Steam and
electricity have emphasized it by bringing the people closer together.
The splendor of a central government dazzles the unthinking—its opulence
tempts the poor and the avaricious—its strength assures the rich and the
timid—its patronage incites the spoilsmen and its powers inflame the
partisan.
And so we have paternalism run mad. The merchant asks the government to
control the arteries of trade—the manufacturer asks that his product be
protected—the rich asks for an army, and the unfortunate for help—this
man for schools and that for subsidy. The partisan proclaims, amid the
clamor, that the source of largess must be the seat of power, and
demands that the ballot-boxes of the States be hedged by Federal
bayonets. The centrifugal force of our system is weakened, the
centripetal force is increased, and the revolving spheres are veering
inward from their orbits. There are strong men who rejoice in this
unbalancing and deliberately contend that the center is the true
repository of power and source of privilege—men who, were they charged
with the solar system, would shred the planets into the sun, and,
exulting in the sudden splendor, little reck that they had kindled the
conflagration that presages universal nights! Thus the States are
dwarfed and the nation magnified—and to govern a people, who can best
govern themselves, the central authority is made stronger and more
splendid!
Concurrent with this political drift is another movement, less formal
perhaps, but not less dangerous—the consolidation of capital. I hesitate
to discuss this phase of the subject, for of all men I despise most
cordially the demagogue who panders to the prejudice of the poor by
abuse of the rich. But no man can note the encroachment in this country
of what may be called “the money power” on the rights of the individual,
without feeling that the time is approaching when the issue between
plutocracy and the people will be forced to trial. The world has not
seen, nor has the mind of man conceived of such miraculous
wealth-gathering as are every-day tales to us. Aladdin’s lamp is dimmed,
and Monte Cristo becomes commonplace when compared to our magicians of
finance and trade. The seeds of a luxury that even now surpasses that of
Rome or Corinth, and has only yet put forth its first flowers, are sown
in this simple republic. What shall the full fruitage be? I do not
denounce the newly rich. For most part their money came under forms of
law. The irresponsibilities of sudden wealth is in many cases steadied
by that resolute good sense which seems to be an American heritage, and
under-run by careless prodigality or by constant charity. Our great
wealth has brought us profit and splendor. But the status itself is a
menace. A home that costs $3,000,000 and a breakfast that cost $5000 are
disquieting facts to the millions who live in a hut and dine on a crust.
The fact that a man ten years from poverty has an income of
$20,000,000—and his two associates nearly as much—from the control and
arbitrary pricing of an article of universal use, falls strangely on the
ears of those who hear it, as they sit empty-handed, while children cry
for bread. The tendency deepens the dangers suggested by the status.
What is to be the end of this swift piling up of wealth? Twenty years
ago but few cities had their millionaires. To-day almost every town has
its dozen. Twenty men can be named who can each buy a sovereign State at
its tax-book value. The youngest nation, America, is vastly the richest,
and in twenty years, in spite of war, has nearly trebled her wealth.
Millions are made on the turn of a trade, and the toppling mass grows
and grows, while in its shadow starvation and despair stalk among the
people, and swarm with increasing legions against the citadels of human
life.
But the abuse of this amazing power of consolidated wealth is its
bitterest result and its pressing danger. When the agent of a dozen men,
who have captured and control an article of prime necessity, meets the
representatives of a million farmers from whom they have forced
$3,000,000 the year before, with no more moral right than is behind the
highwayman who halts the traveler at his pistol’s point, and insolently
gives them the measure of this year’s rapacity, and tells them—men who
live in the sweat of their brows, and stand between God and Nature—that
they must submit to the infamy because they are helpless, then the first
fruits of this system are gathered and have turned to ashes on the lips.
When a dozen men get together in the morning and fix the price of a
dozen articles of common use—with no standard but their arbitrary will,
and no limit but their greed or daring—and then notify the sovereign
people of this free Republic how much, in the mercy of their masters,
they shall pay for the necessaries of life—then the point of intolerable
shame has been reached.
We have read of the robber barons of the Rhine who from their castles
sent a shot across the bow of every passing craft, and descending as
hawks from the crags, tore and robbed and plundered the voyagers until
their greed was glutted, or the strength of their victims spent. Shall
this shame of Europe against which the world revolted, shall it be
repeated in this free country? And yet, when a syndicate or a trust can
arbitrarily add twenty-five per cent. to the cost of a single article of
common use, and safely gather forced tribute from the people, until from
its surplus it could buy every castle on the Rhine, or requite every
baron’s debauchery from its kitchen account—where is the difference—save
that the castle is changed to a broker’s office, and the picturesque
river to the teeming streets and the broad fields of this government “of
the people, by the people, and for the people”? I do not overstate the
case. Economists have held that wheat, grown everywhere, could never be
cornered by capital. And yet one man in Chicago tied the wheat crop in
his handkerchief, and held it until a sewing-woman in my city, working
for ninety cents a week, had to pay him twenty cents tax on the sack of
flour she bore home in her famished hands. Three men held the cotton
crop until the English spindles were stopped and the lights went out in
3,000,000 English homes. Last summer one man cornered pork until he had
levied a tax of $3 per barrel on every consumer, and pocketed a profit
of millions. The Czar of Russia would not have dared to do these things.
And yet they are no secrets in this free government of ours! They are
known of all men, and, my countrymen, no argument can follow them, and
no plea excuse them, when they fall on the men who toiling, yet
suffer—who hunger at their work—and who cannot find food for their wives
with which to feed the infants that hang famishing at their breasts. Mr.
Jefferson foresaw this danger and he sought to avert it. When Virginia
ceded the vast Northwest to the government—before the Constitution was
written—Mr. Jefferson in the second clause of the articles of cession
prohibited forever the right of primogeniture. Virginia then nobly said,
and Georgia in the cession of her territory repeated: “In granting this
domain to the government and dedicating it to freedom, we prescribe that
there shall be no classes in the family—no child set up at the expense
of the others, no feudal estates established—but what a man hath shall
be divided equally among his children.”
We see this feudal tendency, swept away by Mr. Jefferson, revived by the
conditions of our time, aided by the government with its grant of
enormous powers and its amazing class legislation. It has given the
corporation more power than Mr. Jefferson stripped from the individual,
and has set up a creature without soul or conscience or limit of human
life to establish an oligarchy, unrelieved by human charity and
unsteadied by human responsibility. The syndicate, the trust, the
corporation—these are the eldest sons of the Republic for whom the
feudal right of primogeniture is revived, and who inherit its estate to
the impoverishment of their brothers. Let it be noted that the alliance
between those who would centralize the government and the consolidated
money power is not only close but essential. The one is the necessity of
the other. Establish the money power and there is universal clamor for
strong government. The weak will demand it for protection against the
people restless under oppression—the patriotic for protection against
the plutocracy that scourges and robs—the corrupt hoping to buy of one
central body distant from local influences what they could not buy from
the legislatures of the States sitting at their homes—the oligarchs will
demand it—as the privileged few have always demanded it—for the
protection of their privileges and the perpetuity of their bounty. Thus,
hand in hand, will walk—as they have always walked—the federalist and
the capitalist, the centralist and the monopolist—the strong government
protecting the money power, and the money power the political standing
army of the government. Hand in hand, compact and organized, one
creating the necessity, the other meeting it; consolidated wealth and
centralizing government; stripping the many of their rights and
aggrandizing the few; distrusting the people but in touch with the
plutocrats; striking down local self-government and dwarfing the
citizens—and at last confronting the people in the market, in the
courts, at the ballot box—everywhere—with the infamous challenge: “What
are you going to do about it?” And so the government protects and the
barons oppress, and the people suffer and grow strong. And when the
battle for liberty is joined—the centralist and the plutocrat,
entrenched behind the deepening powers of the government, and the
countless ramparts of money bags, oppose to the vague but earnest onset
of the people the power of the trained phalanx and the conscienceless
strength of the mercenary.
Against this tendency who shall protest? Those who believe that a
central government means a strong government, and a strong government
means repression—those who believe that this vast Republic, with its
diverse interests and its local needs, can better be governed by liberty
and enlightenment diffused among the people than by powers and
privileges congested at the center—those who believe that the States
should do nothing that the people can do themselves and the government
nothing that the States and the people can do—those who believe that the
wealth of the central government is a crime rather than a virtue, and
that every dollar not needed for its economical administration should be
left with the people of the States—those who believe that the
hearthstone of the home is the true altar of liberty and the enlightened
conscience of the citizen the best guarantee of government! Those of you
who note the farmer sending his sons to the city that they may escape
the unequal burdens under which he has labored, thus diminishing the
rural population whose leisure, integrity and deliberation have
corrected the passion and impulse and corruption of the cities—who note
that while the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer, we are
lessening that great middle class that, ever since it met the returning
crusaders in England with the demand that the hut of the humble should
be as sacred as the castle of the great, has been the bulwark and glory
of every English-speaking community—who know that this Republic, which
we shall live to see with 150,000,000 people, stretching from ocean to
ocean, and almost from the arctic to the torrid zone, cannot be governed
by any laws that a central despotism could devise or controlled by any
armies it could marshal—you who know these things protest with all the
earnestness of your souls against the policy and the methods that make
them possible.
What is the remedy? To exalt the hearthstone—to strengthen the home—to
build up the individual—to magnify and defend the principle of local
self-government. Not in deprecation of the Federal government, but to
its glory—not to weaken the Republic, but to strengthen it—not to check
the rich blood that flows to its heart, but to send it full and
wholesome from healthy members rather than from withered and diseased
extremities.
The man who kindles the fire on the hearthstone of an honest and
righteous home burns the best incense to liberty. He does not love
mankind less who loves his neighbor most. George Eliot has said:
“A human life should be well rooted in some spot of a native
land where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of
the earth, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, a spot
where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with
affection, and spread, not by sentimental effort and reflection,
but as a sweet habit of the blest.”
The germ of the best patriotism is in the love that a man has for the
home he inhabits, for the soil he tills, for the trees that gives him
shade, and the hills that stand in his pathway. I teach my son to love
Georgia—to love the soil that he stands on—the body of my old mother—the
mountains that are her springing breasts, the broad acres that hold her
substance, the dimpling valleys in which her beauty rests, the forests
that sing her songs of lullaby and of praise, and the brooks that run
with her rippling laughter. The love of home—deep rooted and
abiding—that blurs the eyes of the dying soldier with the vision of an
old homestead amid green fields and clustering trees—that follows the
busy man through the clamoring world, persistent though put aside, and
at last draws his tired feet from the highway and leads him through
shady lanes and well-remembered paths until, amid the scenes of his
boyhood, he gathers up the broken threads of his life and owns the soil
his conqueror—this—this lodged in the heart of the citizen is the saving
principle of our government. We note the barracks of our standing army
with its rolling drum and its fluttering flag as points of strength and
protection. But the citizen standing in the doorway of his
home—contented on his threshold—his family gathered about his
hearthstone—while the evening of a well-spent day closes in scenes and
sounds that are dearest—he shall save the Republic when the drum tap is
futile and the barracks are exhausted.
This love shall not be pent up or provincial. The home should be
consecrated to humanity, and from its roof-tree should fly the flag of
the Republic. Every simple fruit gathered there—every sacrifice endured,
and every victory won, should bring better joy and inspiration in the
knowledge that it will deepen the glory of our Republic and widen the
harvest of humanity! Be not like the peasant of France who hates the
Paris he cannot comprehend—but emulate the example of your fathers in
the South, who, holding to the sovereignty of the States, yet gave to
the Republic its chief glory of statesmanship, and under Jackson at New
Orleans, and Taylor and Scott in Mexico, saved it twice from the storm
of war. Inherit without fear or shame the principle of local
self-government by which your fathers stood! For though entangled with
an institution foreign to this soil, which, thank God, not planted by
their hands, is now swept away, and with a theory bravely defended but
now happily adjusted—that principle holds the imperishable truth that
shall yet save this Republic. The integrity of the State, its rights and
its powers—these, maintained with firmness, but in loyalty—these shall
yet, by lodging the option of local affairs in each locality, meet the
needs of this vast and complex government, and check the headlong rush
to that despotism that reason could not defend, nor the armies of the
Czar maintain, among a free and enlightened people. This issue is
squarely made! It is centralized government and the money power on the
one hand—against the integrity of the States and rights of the people on
the other. At all hazard, stand with the people and the threatened
States. The choice may not be easily made. Wise men may hesitate and
patriotic men divide. The culture, the strength, the mightiness of the
rich and strong government—these will tempt and dazzle. But be not
misled. Beneath this splendor is the canker of a disturbed and oppressed
people. It was from the golden age of Augustus that the Roman empire
staggered to its fall. The integrity of the States and the rights of the
people! Stand there—there is safety—there is the broad and enduring
brotherhood—there, less of glory, but more of honor! Put patriotism
above partisanship—and wherever the principle that protects the States
against the centralists, and the people against the plutocrats, may
lead, follow without fear or faltering—for there the way of duty and of
wisdom lies!
Exalt the citizen. As the State is the unit of government he is the unit
of the State. Teach him that his home is his castle, and his sovereignty
rests beneath his hat. Make himself self-respecting, self-reliant and
responsible. Let him lean on the State for nothing that his own arm can
do, and on the government for nothing that his State can do. Let him
cultivate independence to the point of sacrifice, and learn that humble
things with unbartered liberty are better than splendors bought with its
price. Let him neither surrender his individuality to government, nor
merge it with the mob. Let him stand upright and fearless—a freeman born
of freemen—sturdy in his own strength—dowering his family in the sweat
of his brow—loving to his State—loyal to his Republic—earnest in his
allegiance wherever it rests, but building his altar in the midst of his
household gods and shrining in his own heart the uttermost temple of its
liberty.
Go out, determined to magnify the community in which your lot is cast.
Cultivate its small economies. Stand by its young industries. Commercial
dependence is a chain that galls every day. A factory built at home, a
book published, a shoe or a book made, these are steps in that diffusion
of thought and interest that is needed. Teach your neighbors to withdraw
from the vassalage of distant capitalists, and pay, under any sacrifice,
the mortgage on the home or the land. By simple and prudent lives stay
within your own resources, and establish the freedom of your community.
Make every village and cross-roads as far as may be sovereign to its own
wants. Learn that thriving country-sides with room for limbs,
conscience, and liberty are better than great cities with congested
wealth and population. Preserve the straight and simple homogeneity of
our people. Welcome emigrants, but see that they come as friends and
neighbors, to mingle their blood with ours, to build their houses in our
fields, and to plant their Christian faith on our hills, and honoring
our constitution and reverencing our God, to confirm the simple beliefs
in which we have been reared, and which we should transmit unsullied to
our children. Stand by these old-fashioned beliefs. Science hath
revealed no better faith than that you learned at your mother’s knee—nor
has knowledge made a wiser and a better book than the worn old Bible
that, thumbed by hands long since still, and blurred with the tears of
eyes long since closed, held the simple annals of your family and the
heart and conscience of your homes.
Honor and emulate the virtues and the faith of your forefathers—who,
learned, were never wise above a knowledge of God and His gospel—who,
great, were never exalted above an humble trust in God and His mercy!
Let me sum up what I have sought to say in this hurried address. Your
Republic—on the glory of which depends all that men hold dear—is menaced
with great dangers. Against these dangers defend her, as you would
defend the most precious concerns of your own life. Against the dangers
of centralizing all political powers, put the approved and imperishable
principle of local self-government. Between the rich and the poor now
drifting into separate camps, build up the great middle class that,
neither drunk with wealth, nor embittered by poverty, shall lift up the
suffering and control the strong. To the jangling of races and creeds
that threaten the courts of men and the temples of God, oppose the home
and the citizen—a homogeneous and honest people—and the simple faith
that sustained your fathers and mothers in their stainless lives and led
them serene and smiling into the valley of the shadow.
Let it be understood in my parting words to you that I am no pessimist
as to this Republic. I always bet on sunshine in America. I know that my
country has reached the point of perilous greatness, and that strange
forces not to be measured or comprehended are hurrying her to heights
that dazzle and blind all mortal eyes—but I know that beyond the
uttermost glory is enthroned the Lord God Almighty, and that when the
hour of her trial has come He will lift up His everlasting gates and
bend down above her in mercy and in love. For with her He has surely
lodged the ark of His covenant with the sons of men. Emerson wisely
said, “Our whole history looks like the last effort by Divine Providence
in behalf of the human race.” And the Republic will endure. Centralism
will be checked, and liberty saved—plutocracy overthrown and equality
restored. The struggle for human rights never goes backward among
English-speaking peoples. Our brothers across the sea have fought from
despotism to liberty, and in the wisdom of local self-government have
planted colonies around the world. This very day Mr. Gladstone, the
wisest man that has lived since your Jefferson died—with the light of
another world beating in his face until he seems to have caught the
wisdom of the Infinite and towers half human and half divine from his
eminence—this man, turning away from the traditions of his life, begs
his countrymen to strip the crown of its last usurped authority, and
lodge it with the people, where it belongs. The trend of the times is
with us. The world moves steadily from gloom to brightness. And bending
down humbly as Elisha did, and praying that my eyes shall be made to
see, I catch the vision of this Republic—its mighty forces in balance,
and its unspeakable glory falling on all its children—chief among the
federation of English-speaking people—plenty streaming from its borders,
and light from its mountain tops—working out its mission under God’s
approving eye, until the dark continents are opened—and the highways of
earth established, and the shadows lifted—and the jargon of the nations
stilled and the perplexities of Babel straightened—and under one
language, one liberty, and one God, all the nations of the world
hearkening to the American drum-beat and girding up their loins, shall
march amid the breaking of the millennial dawn into the paths of
righteousness and of peace!
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