Tarquins from Rome, emancipated Switzerland and Holland, restored the
Prince to his throne, and brought Charles to the scaffold. And the sword
redeemed the pledge of the Congress of '76 when they plighted to each other
"their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." And yet, what would
the redemption of that pledge have availed towards the establishment of our
present government, if the spirit of American institutions had not been
both the birthright and the birth-blessing of the Colonies? The Indians,
the French, the Spaniards, and even England herself, warred in vain against
a people, born and bred in the household, at the domestic altar of Liberty
herself They had never been slaves, for they were born free. The sword was
a herald to proclaim their freedom, but it neither created nor preserved
it. A century and a half had already beheld them free in infancy, free in
youth, free in early manhood. Theirs was already the spirit of American
institutions; the spirit of Christian freedom of a temperate, regulated
freedom, of a rational civil obedience. For such a people the sword, the
law of violence, did and could do nothing but sever the bonds which bound
her colonial wards to their unnatural guardian. They redeemed their pledge,
sword in hand; but the sword left them as it found them, unchanged in
character, freemen in thought and in deed, instinct with the immortal
spirit of American institutions.
T. S Grimké.
VI.
DUTY OF LITERARY MEN TO THEIR COUNTRY.
We cannot honor our country with too deep a reverence; we cannot love her
with an affection too pure and fervent; we cannot serve her with an energy
of purpose or a faithfulness of zeal too steadfast and ardent. And what is
our country? It is not the East, with her hills and her valleys, with her
countless sails and the rocky ramparts of her shores. It is not the North,
with her thousand villages, and her harvest-home, with her frontiers of the
lake and the ocean. It is not the West, with her forrest-sea and her
inland-isles, with her luxuriant expanses, clothed in the verdant corn,
with her beautiful Ohio and her majestic Missouri. Nor is it yet the South,
opulent in the mimic snow of the cotton, in the rich plantations of the
rustling cane, and in the golden robes of the rice-field. What are these
but the sister families of one greater, better, holier family,--our
country?
I come not here to speak the dialect, or to give the counsels of the
patriot-statesman. But I come, a patriot scholar, to vindicate the rights
and to plead for the interests of American Literature. And be assured, that
we cannot, as patriot-scholars, think too highly of that country, or
sacrifice too much for her. And let us never forget, let us rather remember
with a religious awe,--that the union of these States is indispensable to
our literature, as it is to our national independence and civil
liberties,--to our prosperity, happiness, and improvement.
If, indeed, we desire to behold a literature like that which has sculptured
with so much energy of expression, which has painted so faithfully and
vividly, the crimes, the vices, the follies of ancient and modern
Europe;--if we desire that our land should furnish for the orator and the
novelist, for the painter and the poet, age after age, the wild and
romantic scenery of war; the glittering march of armies, and the revelry of
the camp; the shrieks and blasphemies, and all the horrors of the
battle-field; the desolation of the harvest, and the burning cottage; the
storm, the sack, and the ruin of cities;--if we desire to unchain the
furious passions of jealousy and selfishness, of hatred, revenge, and
ambition, those lions that now sleep harmless in their den;--if we desire
that the lake, the river, the ocean, should blush with the blood of
brothers; that the winds should waft from the land to the sea, from the sea
to the land, the roar and the smoke of battle, that the very mountain-tops
should become altars for the sacrifice of brothers;--if we desire that
these, and such as these,--the elements, to an incredible extent, of the
literature of the Old World,--should be the elements of our literature;
then, but then only, let us hurl from its pedestal the majestic statue of
our Union, and scatter its fragments over all our land.
But, if we covet for our country the noblest, purest, loveliest literature
the world has ever seen,--such a literature as shall honor God, and bless
mankind,--a literature, whose smiles might play upon an angel's face, whose
tears "would not stain an angel's cheek,"--then let us cling to the Union
of these State's with a patriot's love, with a scholar's enthusiasm, with a
Christian's hope.
In her heavenly character, as a holocaust self-sacrificed to God; at the
height of her glory, as the ornament of a free, educated, peaceful
Christian people, American Literature will find that THE INTELLECTUAL
SPIRIT IS HER VERY TREE OF LIFE, AND THE UNION HER GARDEN OF PARADISE.
T. S. Grimké.
VII.
AMERICA'S OBLIGATIONS TO ENGLAND.
The honorable member has asked--"And now will these Americans, children
planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence and protected by our
arms,--will they grudge to attribute their mite?" They planted by your
care! No; your oppressions planted them in America! They fled from your
tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed
themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable;
and, among others, to the cruelties of a savage foe the most subtle, and I
will take upon me to say the most formidable, of any people upon the face
of the earth; and yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty our
American brethren met all the hardships with pleasure, compared with those
they steered in their own country from the hands of those that should have
been their friends.
They nourished by your indulgence! They grew by your neglect of them! As
soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending
persons to rule them, in one department and another, who were, perhaps, the
deputies of deputies to some members of this House, sent to spy out their
liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them;--men whose
behavior, on many occasions, has caused the blood of those sons of liberty
to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice,--some
who, to my knowledge, were glad by going to a foreign country, to escape
being brought to the bar of a court of justice in their own.
They protected by your arms! They have nobly taken up arms in your
defence;--have exerted a valor, amid their constant and laborious industry,
for the defence of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while
its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And,
believe me,--remember I this day told you so,--that same spirit of freedom
which actuated that people at first will accompany them still; but prudence
forbids me to explain myself further.
Heaven knows I do not at this time speak from motives of party heat. What I
deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart. However superior to me, in
general knowledge and experience, the respectable body of this House may
be, yet I claim to know more of America than most of you, having seen that
country and been conversant with its affairs. The people, I believe, are as
truly loyal as any subjects the king has; but they are a people jealous of
their liberties, and who, if those liberties should ever be violated, will
vindicate them to the last drop of their blood.
Isaac Barré.
VIII.
WEBSTER'S PLEA FOR DARTMOUTH COLLEGE.
The Supreme Court of the United States held its session that winter in a
mean apartment of moderate size--the Capitol not having been built after
its destruction in 1814. The audience, when the case came on, was therefore
small, consisting chiefly of legal men, the élite of the profession
throughout the country. Mr. Webster entered upon his argument in the calm
tone of easy and dignified conversation. His matter was so completely at
his command that he scarcely looked at his brief, but went on for more than
four hours with a statement so luminous, and a chain of reasoning so easy
to be understood, and yet approaching so nearly to absolute demonstration,
that he seemed to carry with him every man of his audience without the
slightest effort or weariness on either side. It was hardly eloquence, in
the strict sense of the term; it was pure reason. Now and then, for a
sentence or two, his eye flashed and his voice swelled into a bolder note,
as he uttered some emphatic thought; but he instantly fell back into the
tone of earnest conversation, which ran throughout the great body of his
speech.
The argument ended. Mr. Webster stood for some moments silent before the
court, while every eye was fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing
the chief justice, Marshall, he proceeded thus:--
"This, Sir, is my case! It is the case, not merely of that humble
institution, it is the case of every college in our land. It is more. It is
the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout the country,--of all
those great charities founded by the piety of our ancestors to alleviate
human misery; and scatter blessings along the pathway of life. It is more!
It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has property of
which he may be stripped; for the question is simply this: Shall our State
legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own, to turn it
from its original use, and apply it to such ends or purposes as they, in
their discretion, shall see fit?
"Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your
hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our
country. You may put it out. But if you do so, you must carry through your
work! You must extinguish one after another, all those great lights of
science which, for more than a century, have thrown their radiance over our
land!
"It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet, there are those who
love it----."
Here the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down, broke
forth. His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion; his eyes
were filled with tears, his voice choked, and he seemed struggling to the
utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which might save him from
an unmanly burst of feeling. I will not attempt to give you the few broken
words of tenderness in which he went on to speak of his attachment to the
college. The whole seemed to be mingled throughout with the recollections
of father, mother, brother, and all the trials and privations through which
he had made his way into life. Every one saw that it was wholly
unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, which sought relief in words and
tears.
The court-room during these two or three minutes presented an extraordinary
spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall and gaunt figure, bent
over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his cheek
expanded with emotion, and eyes suffused with tears. Mr. Justice Washington
at his side,--with his small and emaciated frame, and countenance more like
marble than I ever saw on any other human being,--leaning forward with an
eager, troubled look; and the remainder of the court, at the two
extremities, pressing, as it were, toward a single point, while the
audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath the
bench to catch each look and every movement of the speaker's face. If a
painter could give us the scene on canvas,--those forms and countenances,
and Daniel Webster as he then stood in the midst,--it would be one of the
most touching pictures in the history of eloquence. One thing it taught me,
that the pathetic depends not merely on the words uttered, but still more
on the estimate we put upon him who utters them. There was not one among
the strong-minded men of that assembly who could think it unmanly to weep,
when he saw standing before him the man who had made such an argument,
melted into the tenderness of a child.
Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and fixing his keen eye on the
Chief Justice, said in that deep tone with which he sometimes thrilled the
heart of an audience,--
"Sir, I know not how others feel, (glancing at the opponents of the college
before him,) but, for myself when I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like
Caesar in the senate-house, by those who are reiterating stab upon stab, I
would not, for my right hand, have her turn to me, and say Et tu quoque, mi
fili! And thou, too, my son!"
He sat down. There was a deathlike stillness throughout the room for some
moments; every one seemed to be slowly recovering himself and coming
gradually back to his ordinary range of thought and feeling.
C. A. Goodrich.
IX.
THE FOUNDERS OF BOSTON.
On this occasion, it is proper to speak of the founders of Our city, and of
their glory. Now in its true acceptation, the term glory expresses the
splendor which emanates from virtue, in the act of producing general and
permanent good. Right conceptions, then, of the glory of our ancestors, are
to be obtained only by analyzing their virtues. These virtues, indeed, are
not seen charactered in breathing bronze, or in living marble. Our
ancestors have left no Corinthian temples on our hills, no Gothic
cathedrals on our plains, no proud pyramid, no storied obelisk, in our
cities. But mind is there. Sagacious enterprise is there. An active,
vigorous, intelligent, moral population throng our cities, and predominate
in our fields;--men, patient of labor, submissive to law, respectful to
authority, regardful of right, faithful to liberty. These are the monuments
of our ancestors. They stand immutable and immortal, in the social, moral,
and intellectual condition of their descendants. They exist in the spirit
which their precepts instilled, and their example implanted.
It was to this spot, during twelve successive years, that the real body of
those just settlers emigrated. In this place, they either fixed permanently
their abode, or took their departure from it, for the coast or the
interior. Whatever honor devolves on this metropolis, from the events
connected with its first settlement, is not solitary or exclusive; it is
shared with Massachusetts; with New England; in some sense, with the whole
United States. For what part of this wide empire, be it sea or shore, lake
or river, mountain or valley, have the descendants of the first settlers of
New England not traversed; what depth of forest not penetrated? what danger
of nature or man not defied? Where is the cultivated field, in redeeming
which from the wilderness, their vigor has not been displayed? Where, amid
unsubdued nature, by the side of the first log-hut of the settler, does the
school-house stand, and the church-spire rise, unless the sons of New
England are there? Where does improvement advance, under the active energy
of willing hearts and ready hands, prostrating the moss-covered monarch of
the wood, and from their ashes, amid their charred roots, bidding the green
sward and the waving harvest to unspring, and the spirit of the fathers of
New England is not seen, hovering and shedding around the benign influences
of sound, social, moral, and religious institutions, stronger and more
enduring than knotted oak or tempered steel? The swelling tide of their
descendants has spread upon our coasts, ascended our rivers, taken
possession of our plains. Already it encircles our lakes. At this hour, the
rushing noise of the advancing wave startles the wild beast in his lair
among the prairies of the West. Soon it shall be seen climbing the Rocky
Mountains, and, as it dashes over their cliffs, shall be hailed by the
dwellers on the Pacific, as the harbinger of the coming blessings of
safety, liberty, and truth.
Pres. Quincy.
X.
THE AMERICAN SAILOR.
Look to your history--that part of it which the world knows by heart,--and
you will find on its brightest page the glorious achievements of the
American sailor. Whatever his country has done to disgrace him, and break
his spirit, he has never disgraced her;--he has always been ready to serve
her; he always has served her faithfully and effectually. He has often
been weighed in the balance, and never found wanting. The only fault ever
found with him is, that he sometimes fights ahead of his orders. The world
has no match for him, man for man; and he asks no odds, and he cares for no
odds, when the cause of humanity or the glory of his country calls him to
fight.
Who, in the darkest days of our Revolution, carried your flag into the very
chops of the British Channel, bearded the lion in his den, and woke the
echoes of old Albion's hills by the thunders of his cannon, and the shouts
of his triumph? It was the American sailor. And the names of John Paul
Jones, and the Bon Homme Richard, will go down the annals of time forever.
Who struck the first blow that humbled the Barbary flag--which, for a
hundred years, had been the terror of Christendom,--drove it from the
Mediterranean, and put an end to the infamous tribute it had been
accustomed to extort? It was the American sailor, and the name of Decatur
and his gallant companions will be as lasting as monumental brass.
In the year 1812, when your arms on shore were covered by disaster,--when
Winchester had been defeated, when the army of the Northwest had
surrendered, and when the feeling of despondency hung like a cloud over the
land,--who first relit the fires of national glory, and made the welkin
ring with the shouts of victory? It was the American sailor. And the names
of Hull and the Constitution will be remembered as long as we have left
anything worth remembering.
The wand of British invincibility was broken when the flag of the Guerrière
came down. That one event was worth more to the Republic than all the money
which has ever been expended for the navy. Since that day the navy has had
no stain upon its escutcheon, but has been cherished as your pride and
glory. And the American sailor has established a reputation throughout the
world,--in peace and in war, in storm and in battle,--for heroism and
prowess unsurpassed. He shrinks from no danger, he dreads no foe, he yields
to no superior. No shoals are too dangerous, no seas too boisterous, no
climate too rigorous for him. The burning sun of the tropic cannot make him
effeminate, nor can the eternal winter of the polar seas paralyze his
energies.
R. F. Stockton.
XI.
MORALITY, THE FOUNDATION OF NATIONAL GREATNESS.
When we look forward to the probable growth of this country; when we think
of the millions of human beings who are to spread over our present
territory; of the career of improvement and glory open to this new people;
of the impulse which free institutions, if prosperous, may be expected to
give to philosophy, religion, science, literature, and arts; of the vast
field in which the experiment is to be made, of what the unfettered powers
of man may achieve; of the bright page of history which our fathers have
filled, and of the advantages under which their toils and virtues have
placed us for carrying on their work;--when we think of all this, can we
help, for a moment, surrendering ourselves to bright visions of our
country's glory before which all the glories of the past are to fade away?
Is it presumption to say that, if just to ourselves and all nations, we
shall be felt through this whole continent, that we shall spread our
language, institutions, and civilization, through a wider space than any
nation has yet filled with a like beneficent influence? And are we prepared
to barter these hopes, this sublime moral empire, for conquests by force?
Are we prepared to sink to the level of unprincipled nations, to content
ourselves with a vulgar, guilty greatness, to adopt in our youth maxims and
ends which must brand our future with sordidness, aggression, and shame?
This country cannot, without peculiar infamy, run the common race of
national rapacity. Our origin, institutions, and position are peculiar, and
all favor an upright honorable course.
Why cannot we rise to noble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel,
that our work as a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a
noble form of human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember,
that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own
borders; and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us, will make
our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this new world? I am
not prophet enough to read our fate. I believe, indeed, that we are to make
our futurity for ourselves. I believe, that a nation's destiny lies in its
character, in the principles which govern its policy, and bear rule in the
hearts of its citizens. I take my stand on God's moral and eternal law. A
nation, renouncing and defying this, cannot be free, cannot be great.
W. E. Channing.
XII.
INTEMPERANCE.
Among the evils of intemperance, much importance is given to the poverty of
which it is the cause. But this evil, great as it is, is yet light, in
comparison with the essential evil of intemperance. What matters it, that a
man be poor, if he carry into his poverty the spirit, energy, reason, and
virtues of a man? What matters it, that a man must, for a few years, live
on bread and water? How many of the richest are reduced, by disease, to a
worse condition than this? Honest, virtuous, noble-minded poverty, is
comparatively a light evil. The ancient philosopher chose it, as a
condition of virtue. It has been the lot of many a Christian.
The poverty of the intemperate man owes its great misery to its cause. He
who makes himself a beggar, by having made himself a brute, is miserable
indeed. He who has no solace, who has only agonizing recollections and
harrowing remorse, as he looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his
ragged children, has indeed to bear a crushing weight of woe. That he
suffers, is a light thing. That he has brought on himself this suffering by
the voluntary extinction of his reason, that is the terrible thought, the
intolerable curse.
Intemperance is to be pitied and abhorred for its own sake, much more than
for its outward consequences. These owe their chief bitterness to their
criminal source. We speak of the miseries which the drunkard carries to his
family. But take away his own brutality, and how lightened would be these
miseries! We talk of his wife and children in rags. Let the rags continue;
but suppose them to be the effects of an innocent cause. Suppose his wife
and children bound to him by a strong love, which a life of labor for their
support, and of unlearned kindness has awakened; suppose them to know that
his toils for their welfare had broken down his frame; suppose him able to
say, "We are poor in this world's goods, but rich in affection and
religious trust. I am going from you; but I leave you to the Father of the
fatherless, and to the widow's God." Suppose this; and how changed these
rags!--how changed the cold, naked room! The heart's warmth can do much to
withstand the winter's cold;--and there is hope, there is honor, in this
virtuous indigence.
What breaks the heart of the drunkard's wife? It is not that he is poor,
but that he is a drunkard. Instead of that bloated face, now distorted with
passion, now robbed of every gleam of intelligence, if the wife could look
on an affectionate countenance, which had, for years, been the interpreter
of a well-principled mind and faithful heart, what an overwhelming load
would be lifted from her! It is a husband, whose touch is polluting, whose
infirmities are the witness of his guilt, who has blighted all her hopes,
who has proved false to the vow which made her his; it is such a husband
who makes home a hell,--not one whom toil and disease and Providence have
cast on the care of wife and children.
We look too much at the consequences of vice,--too little at the vice
itself. It is vice which is the chief weight of what we call its
consequences,--vice, which is the bitterness in the cup of human woe.
W. E. Channing.
XIII.
INCONSISTENT EXPECTATIONS.
This world may be considered as a great mart of commerce, where fortune
exposes to our view various commodities,--riches, ease, tranquillity, fame,
integrity, knowledge. Everything is marked at a settled price,--our time,
our labor, our ingenuity, is so much ready money, which we are to lay out
to the best advantage. Examine, compare, choose, reject; but stand to your
own judgment, and do not, like children, when you have purchased one thing,
repine that you do not possess another which you did not purchase.