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HISTORY repeats itself, and genius does the same. The light which shines
with electric brilliancy in one portion of a country, though suddenly
extinguished, soon blazes forth with life and hope, in genial air and
under propitious skies.
Eminent in illustration of this truth, is the very great similarity in
the mental structure, the physical temperament and the personal
qualities of Seargent S. Prentiss and Henry W. Grady. The first was born
in bleak and sterile Maine, and yet his great heart was not hemmed in by
the hills around which clung the memories of his Pilgrim fathers. It
took within its spacious chambers, and nurtured in patriotic affection
the new-found friends of his adopted home, in the semi-tropical valleys
of the lower Mississippi. The other was born on Georgia soil, and
Southern traditions, memories and methods of thought seemed but a second
nature with him. It did not prevent his fullness to the brim with that
Promethean flame and “milk of human kindness,” which caused him in
boundless Americanism, to wear a constant smile, born of infinite hope
and faith in the future of a great Republic, stretching from the rugged
coast of Maine to the broad plazas of Texas—from the noble forests of
Oregon to the coral reefs of Florida.
Each of these men combined with deep research and intuitive perception,
an imagination as luxuriant as a tropical garden, and while each put
forth “thoughts that breathed in words that burned,” he was ever careful
in the exercise of his great gifts, that they should always be directed
in the promotion of human happiness, and to stimulate the loftiest human
exertion. When Prentiss or Grady spoke every listener felt the touch of
the master hand as it played upon his heart-strings—felt the tingling of
the blood in his fingers’ ends, and could not fail to enjoy the
delightful silence of universal and spontaneous admiration. The
eloquence of these two men was not of that school which deals in
thundergusts of word-painting, devoid of reason, sense, or consistency.
Their ideas are always comely, well-proportioned, clear in outline and
yet not angular in structure. They spoke for God and humanity—for
liberty—for love—for law. They did not pervert their great gifts from
the purposes that Nature intended. They used their magic power to smooth
and soften the rough, hard places of human life, to promote all ends and
objects catholic, worthy, commendable—to charm and persuade the morose
and unwilling—to denounce like Nathan—to warn like Cassandra—to
encourage like an angel of light. When either of them spoke, he seemed
to realize the sublimest purpose of his mission; and condensed his giant
electric power, as the heat charges the summer cloud with the bolts that
are soon to flash and shiver.
Prentiss died in the same year that Grady was born; and when he first
closed his brilliant career at forty-two years of age, the second was
but a smiling infant six weeks old. Each, cut off before he had reached
the zenith, was
A mighty vessel foundered in the calm,
Its freight half given to the world.
The glorious sun of each “went down while it was yet day.”
Some extracts are here given, from an address delivered by Prentiss
before the New England Society of New Orleans, on December 22, 1845.
These will be followed by some from Grady’s Boston speech. Prentiss at
the time named, was about the same age that Grady was when he died. In
opening Prentiss said: “This is a day dear to the sons of New England,
and ever held by them in sacred remembrance. On this day, from every
quarter of the globe, they gather in spirit around the Rock of Plymouth,
and hang upon the urn of their Pilgrim fathers, the garlands of filial
gratitude and affection. We have assembled for the purpose of
participating in this honorable duty—of performing this pious
pilgrimage. To-day we will visit that memorable spot. We gaze upon the
place where a feeble band of persecuted exiles founded a mighty nation;
and our hearts will exult with proud gratification, as we remember that
on that barren shore our ancestors planted not only empire, but freedom.
“Of the future but little is known; clouds and darkness rest upon it. We
yearn to become acquainted with its hidden secrets—we stretch out our
arms toward its shadowy inhabitants—we invoke our posterity, but they
answer us not. We turn for relief to the past, that mighty reservoir of
men and things. There we are introduced into Nature’s vast laboratory,
and witness her elemental labors. We mark with interest the changes in
continents and oceans, by which she has notched the centuries. With
curious wonder we gaze down the long aisles of the past, upon the
generations that are gone. We behold as in a magic glass, men in form
and feature like ourselves, actuated by the same motives, urged by the
same passions, busily engaged in shaping out both their own destinies
and ours. We approach them, and they refuse not our invocation. We hold
converse with the wise philosophers, the sage legislators, and divine
poets. But most of all among the innumerable multitudes that peopled the
past, we seek our own ancestors, drawn toward them by an irresistible
sympathy. With reverent solicitude we examine into their character and
actions, and as we find them worthy or unworthy, our hearts swell with
pride or our cheeks glow with shame.”
Speaking of the simplicity of the Pilgrim habits, Prentiss goes on: “In
founding their colony they sought neither wealth nor conquest; but only
peace and freedom. From the moment they touched the shore, they labored
with orderly, systematic and persevering industry. They cultivated,
without a murmur, a poor and ungrateful soil, which even now yields but
a stubborn obedience to the dominion of the plow. They brought with them
neither wealth nor power, but the principles of civil and religious
freedom. They cherished, cultivated and developed them to a full and
luxuriant maturity; and furnished them to their posterity as the only
sure and permanent foundations for free government. We are proud of our
native land, and turn with fond affection to its rocky shores. Behold
the thousand temples of the Most High, that nestle in its happy valleys
and crown its swelling hills. See how their glittering spires pierce the
sky—celestial conductors ready to avert the lightning of an angry
heaven!”
Himself the son of a ship-builder, he thus speaks of the enterprise of
the Pilgrims: “They have wrestled with Nature, till they have prevailed
against her, and compelled her reluctantly to reverse her own laws. The
sterile soil has become productive under their sagacious culture, and
the barren rock, astonished, finds itself covered with luxuriant and
unaccustomed verdure. Upon the banks of every river they build temples
of industry, and stop the squanderings of the spendthrift waters. They
bind the Naiades of the brawling stream; they drive the Dryades from
their accustomed haunts, and force them to desert each favorite grove:
for from river, creek, and bay they are busy transforming the crude
forests into staunch and gallant vessels. From every inlet and indenture
along the rocky shore, swim forth these ocean-birds—born in the
wildwood—fledged upon the wave. Behold how they spread their white
pinions to the favoring breeze, and wing their flight to every quarter
of the globe—the carrier pigeons of the world!”
But lastly how brimming with pathos, how pregnant with patriotic ardor,
is the following: “Glorious New England! Thou art still true to thy
ancient fame, and worthy of thy ancestral honors. We thy children have
assembled in this far-distant land to celebrate thy birthday. A thousand
fond associations throng upon us, roused by the spirit of the hour. On
thy pleasant valleys rest, like sweet dews of the morning, the gentle
recollections of our early life; around thy hills and mountains cling
like gathering mists the mighty memories of the Revolution; and far away
on the horizon of the past, gleam like thine own Northern lights, the
awful virtues of our Pilgrim sires. But while we devote this day to the
remembrance of our native land, we forget not that in which our happy
lot is cast. We exult in the reflection that, though we count by
thousands the miles which separate us from our birthplace, still our
country is the same. We have but changed our chamber in the paternal
mansion; in all its rooms we are at home, and all who inhabit it are our
brothers. We are no exiles meeting upon the banks of a foreign river, to
swell its waters with our home-sick tears. Here floats the same banner
which nestled above our boyish heads, except that its mighty folds are
wider, and its glittering stars increased in number.”
The sound of this eloquent tongue was stilled, but the “divine afflatus”
with which it was tuned was transferred to, and continued in another.
Near the birthplace of the noble Prentiss, and surrounded by those who
were proud of his fame, Grady referred to those surroundings and the
objects of his visit, when he said: “Happy am I that this mission has
brought my feet at last to press New England’s historic soil, and my
eyes to the knowledge of her beauty and her thrift. Here within touch of
Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill—where Webster thundered and Longfellow
sang, Emerson thought, and Channing preached—here in the cradle of
American letters, and almost of American liberty, I hasten to make the
obeisance that every American owes New England, when first he stands
uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange apparition! This stern and
unique figure, carved from the ocean and the wilderness, its majesty
kindling and growing amid the storms of winters and of wars,—until at
last the gloom was broken, its beauty disclosed in the sunshine, and the
heroic workers rested at its base,—while startled kings and emperors
gazed and marveled that from the rude touch of this handful, cast on a
bleak and unknown shore, should have come the embodied genius of human
government, and the perfected model of human liberty! God bless the
memory of those immortal workers, and prosper the fortunes of their
living sons, and perpetuate the inspiration of their handiwork.”
Faithful to the memories of his childhood, and to the devotion of his
mature years, visions of his distant home rise to his mental eye, and
with a master’s magic touch he spreads the picture on the glowing
canvas: “Far to the South, Mr. President, separated from this section by
a line once defined in irrepressible difference, once traced in
fratricidal blood, and now, thank God, but a vanishing shadow, lies the
fairest and richest domain of this earth. It is the home of a brave and
hospitable people. There is centered all that can please or prosper
human kind. A perfect climate above a fertile soil, yields to the
husbandman every product of the temperate zone. There, by night, the
cotton whitens beneath the stars, and the wheat locks the sunshine in
its bearded sheaf. In the same field the clover steals the fragrance of
the wind, and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains.”
In speaking of southern citizenship, and the perils of its present
environment, Grady says: “The resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men
of the South, the men whose genius made glorious every page of the first
seventy years of American history—whose courage and fortitude you tested
in five years of the fiercest war—whose energy has made bricks without
straw, and spread splendor amidst the ashes of their war-wasted
homes—these men wear this problem in their hearts and their brains, by
day and by night. They realize, as you cannot, what this problem means,
what they owe to this kindly and dependent race, the measure of their
debt to the world in whose despite they defended and maintained slavery.
And though their feet are hindered in its undergrowth, and their march
encumbered with its burdens, they have lost neither the patience from
which comes clearness, nor the faith from which comes courage. Nor, sir,
when in passionate moments is disclosed to them that vague and awful
shadow, with its lurid abysses and its crimson stains, into which I pray
God they may never go, are they struck with more of apprehension than is
needed to complete their consecration!”
The conclusion of that grand address, so powerful in scope and faultless
in diction, is a forcible reminder of Webster’s great peroration in his
reply to Hayne on Foot’s Resolution. Grady here says: “A mighty duty,
sir, and a mighty inspiration impels every one of us to-night to lose in
patriotic consecration whatever estranges, whatever divides. We, sir,
are Americans, and we fight for human liberty. The uplifting force of
the American idea is under every throne on earth. France, Brazil—these
are our victories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression,
this is our mission. And we shall not fail. God has sown in our soil the
seed of his millennial harvest, and he will not lay the sickle to the
ripening crop until his full and perfect day has come. Our history, sir,
has been a constant and expanding miracle from Plymouth Rock and
Jamestown, all the way, aye, even from the hour when, from the voiceless
and trackless ocean, a new world rose to the sight of the inspired
sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that stupendous day—when
the old world will come to marvel and to learn, amid our gathered
treasures—let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the
spectacle of a Republic compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of
love—loving from the Lakes to the Gulf—the wounds of war healed in every
heart as on every hill, serene and resplendent at the summit of human
achievement and earthly glory, blazing out the path and making clear the
way up which all the nations of the earth must come in God’s appointed
time!”
The love and respect of the Mississippians and Louisianans, and of the
entire Southwest for Prentiss was only equaled by the admiration of the
North for Grady. All honor to their memories, and peace to their patriot
shades! The “clods of the valley will be sweet unto them” until the
resurrection morn.
COLUMBUS, GA., Feb. 5, 1890.
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