... As witness this long newspaper clipping without caption inserted in
somebody’s scrap-book.
‘Note that badge Major Gentian wears upon occasion. It is a military
badge. It is the badge of the national brotherhood of veterans in whose
Chapters the grade of the field is ignored, and the general salutes the
private--comrade! Is Major Gentian’s badge this badge?’ touching a
bronze button on his lapel. ‘Is it the badge of the Grand Army of the
Republic? No, men and brethren, it is another sort of badge. A badge
which by the original constitution of the order it symbolises was
restricted to the officers of the Army of the Revolution, to them, and
in primogeniture to their descendants. I remember long ago in my youth
the eldest son of a revolutionary officer, and as such an inheritor of
the Cincinnati badge, saying, over the Madeira, to his own son, then a
stripling, “My boy, if ever there is a recognised order of nobility in
this land, it will be formed of the sons of the officers of the
Revolution.” What a frank letting-out was that--thanks to the old
Madeira--of the spirit animating the Cincinnati in the second
generation, even as in the first. And to the Cincinnati Major Gentian
belongs; and he prides himself upon it; and his pride here makes him
throw back his shoulders, old man though he be--yea, and lends an inch
to his stature.
‘Now, gratefully and very fervently do we hold in reverence the memory
of the heroes of Seventy-six. Yet who but they founded this order? Did
John Hancock withstand King George’s tea-tax in the spirit of John
Hampden resisting King Charles’s impost of ship-money? Yes, so; but only
so. Unto John Hancock the rich merchant, no more than to John Hampden
the rich country gentleman of a prior generation, had any practical
purpose revealed the gospel of man’s unconditioned equality. Urge not
against this aught in the Declaration of Independence. For when the
passage “All men are born free and equal,” when that passage was being
written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?
‘Too evident is it that in throwing off the British plush, the men of
Seventy-six did not shed the colonial skin. In divers respects, social
and political, they remained loyal to British tradition, though
justified rebels to the British crown. Assuredly no, in the
characterising significance of the word as now current, they can hardly
be considered _Americans_. It is we, their posterity, that are
Americans--we, the people, the sovereign American people, who from
English and European colonists have in process of time, and under the
special guidance of God, developed into _Americans_. And in view of all
this, does not Major Gentian’s Society, the Society of the Cincinnati,
lag among us as much out of place as would the old Spanish Order of the
Knights of the Holy Ghost.
‘I said just now that Major Gentian is vastly proud of his insignia, and
I will do him the justice of admitting that this is not altogether
because it is an aristocratic one, but in part because of its historic
significance. But ours is a practical age. Not altogether sentimentally
do we determine the relative greatness of events present and past. Into
such determinations, the elements of number, man, yea, and the no less
weighty element of cost, enter in. Well, then, there is Bunker Hill. A
famous good fight. Yes, indeed. But how much of a muster-roll? How much
of a pay-roll? Why, in Virginia we fought battles where a hundred
thousand and more would be engaged. While east, west, and south, our
files under arms fell not short of a million. And our war-debt, arising
in no small part from generous bounties and the regular army pay-roll,
soared aloft into two or three thousand millions. Then there is the
pension-roll. That, too, is on a scale commensurate with the colossal
magnitude of the Great Republic. Why is the blue ribbon of Major
Gentian’s badge bordered with white? Major Gentian will reply, very
likely, “That is in compliment to our revolutionary ally.” Indeed? But
is not white the heraldic colour of the Bourbons, one of whom still
preposterously advances his claim to the throne of liberated France?
What a fling, then, is this white border at the tricolour of our sister
the French Republic! Yes, and what a left-handed slur coming home to
ourselves. Men and brethren, for aught I know, an enlightened young
Englishman in superannuated old England may be at liberty to speak up
for democracy; but in energetic young America, much as we respect old
age, shall a hoary-headed old American be tolerated as an advocate of
monarchy, or, what is equivalent to that, parading under the Stars and
Stripes the craven _white_ of the monarchical Bourbons, the beggars? And
is such a man--I put it to your conscience--the sort of man to take
place with the law-makers of a people, the chosen people, the
advance-guard of progress, a friendly people, the Levite of the nations,
to whose custody Jehovah has entrusted the sacred ark of human freedom?
(Cries of “No, No,” and riotous applause.)
‘Thou laughest at this, Major, and, after laughing, pooh-poohest it:
“Bless you, I divine who it was said all that. But how? Why, much as a
blind musician infers who the unseen fiddler is by the twang of his
fiddle. It was Colonel Bunkum--Colonel Josiah Bunkum. And, of course, he
must have declaimed it at some political meeting--yes, I think I
remember reading some report of it--during the canvas, when my insistent
friends ran me for the legislature. Incidentally, I became acquainted
with Colonel Bunkum in Virginia, now more than five-and-twenty years
ago. A sunburnt whiskerando he was, whiskers bristling like a thorn
hedge; valiant, indeed, but of a contorted sort of valour, quite at odds
with the magnanimities and martial amenities. Ay, brave enough, you
understand, but no Chevalier Bayard. Less mature, too, in mind than in
muscle. Rash in opinion, very rash, headlong. Not a man of broad
judicial temper, sir, nor replete with the sapient humour and wise
patriarchal quality of our good old Father Abraham. You shall judge,
sir. Quoting Scripture, ‘My people perish through ignorance,’ and
applying it to the South, and chafing under McClellan’s Fabian tactics,
he was forthwith marching from the Potomac to the Gulf with a
wagon-train of Webster’s Spelling-Books, backed by another train of
heavy artillery. Shot and shell and spelling-books were to be
distributed broadcast and gratis, a sort of Mahommed, sir, of the
Malthusian sort. Strange, how the coolest valour may go along with a hot
brain-pan. Well, well, robust as ever, the colonel is now a
distinguished officer in the Grand Army; and finding that I, a
brother-veteran, refrain from joining it, and knowing naught of those
scruples, patriotic scruples, sir, which sway me; and, unfortunately,
without the intuition that might divine them, why, being more of a hero
than a philosopher, it puzzles him, it irritates him--he can’t help it,
it’s all natural enough--and so, dear me, for something tangible to bite
at very conscientiously, doubtless he snaps at my poor little ribbon
here. The good God enlighten and redeem him!”
‘That is charity, Major, Christian charity with a vengeance. But some of
us ere now have thought that by such charitable construings (or, are
they indolently stoical ones?) of words or actions not charitable, thy
failing to take the trouble to resent them, however absurd they may be,
and vindicate thyself, thou hast--and more than once or twice--been
something of a loser.’
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