Produced by Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
FOUR
AMERICAN LEADERS
BY
CHARLES W. ELIOT
BOSTON
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION
1906
Copyright, 1906
American Unitarian Association
_Note_
The four essays in this volume were written for celebrations or
commemorations in which several persons took part. Each of them is,
therefore, only a partial presentation of the life and character of its
subject. The delineation in every case is not comprehensive and
proportionate, but rather portrays the man in some of his aspects and
qualities.
_Contents_
I. Franklin 1
An address delivered before the meeting
of the American Philosophical Society to
commemorate the two hundredth anniversary
of the birth of Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia,
April 20, 1906.
II. Washington 31
An address given before the Union League
Club of Chicago at the exercises in commemoration
of the birth of Washington, February
23, 1903.
III. Channing 57
An address made at the unveiling of the
Channing statue on the occasion of the one
hundredth anniversary of the birth of William
Ellery Channing, Boston, June 1, 1903.
IV. Emerson 73
An address delivered on the commemoration
of the centenary of the birth of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Boston, May 24, 1903.
_Four American Leaders_
FRANKLIN
The facts about Franklin as a printer are simple and plain, but
impressive. His father, respecting the boy's strong disinclination to
become a tallow-chandler, selected the printer's trade for him, after
giving him opportunities to see members of several different trades at
their work, and considering the boy's own tastes and aptitudes. It was
at twelve years of age that Franklin signed indentures as an apprentice
to his older brother James, who was already an established printer. By
the time he was seventeen years old he had mastered the trade in all its
branches so completely that he could venture, with hardly any money in
his pocket, first into New York and then into Philadelphia without a
friend or acquaintance in either place, and yet succeed promptly in
earning his living. He knew all departments of the business. He was a
pressman as well as a compositor. He understood both newspaper and book
work. There were at that time no such sharp subdivisions of labor and no
such elaborate machinery as exist in the trade to-day; and Franklin
could do with his own eyes and hands, long before he was of age,
everything which the printer's art was then equal to. When the faithless
Governor Keith caused Franklin to land in London without any resources
whatever except his skill at his trade, the youth was fully capable of
supporting himself in the great city as a printer. Franklin had been
induced by the governor to go to England, where he was to buy a complete
outfit for a good printing office to be set up in Philadelphia. He had
already presented the governor with an inventory of the materials needed
in a small printing office, and was competent to make a critical
selection of all these materials; yet when he arrived in London on this
errand he was only eighteen years old. Thrown completely on his own
resources in the great city, he immediately got work at a famous
printing house in Bartholomew Close, but soon moved to a still larger
printing house, in which he remained during the rest of his stay in
London. Here he worked as a pressman at first, but was soon transferred
to the composing room, evidently excelling his comrades in both branches
of the art. The customary drink money was demanded of him, first by the
pressmen with whom he was associated, and afterwards by the compositors.
Franklin undertook to resist the second demand; and it is interesting
to learn that after a resistance of three weeks he was forced to yield
to the demands of the men by just such measures as are now used against
any scab in a unionized printing office. He says in his autobiography:
"I had so many little pieces of private mischief done me by mixing my
sorts, transposing my pages, breaking my matter, and so forth, if I were
ever so little out of the room ... that, notwithstanding the master's
protection, I found myself obliged to comply and pay the money,
convinced of the folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live
with continually." He was stronger than any of his mates, kept his head
clearer because he did not fuddle it with beer, and availed himself of
the liberty which then existed of working as fast and as much as he
chose. On this point he says: "My constant attendance (I never making a
St. Monday) recommended me to the master; and my uncommon quickness at
composing occasioned my being put upon all work of dispatch, which was
generally better paid. So I went on now very agreeably."
On his return to Philadelphia Franklin obtained for a few months another
occupation than that of printer; but this employment failing through the
death of his employer, Franklin returned to printing, becoming the
manager of a small printing office, in which he was the only skilled
workman and was expected to teach several green hands. At that time he
was only twenty-one years of age. This printing office often wanted
sorts, and there was no type-foundry in America. Franklin succeeded in
contriving a mould, struck the matrices in lead, and thus supplied the
deficiencies of the office. The autobiography says: "I also engraved
several things on occasion; I made the ink; I was warehouse man and
everything, and in short quite a factotum." Nevertheless, he was
dismissed before long by his incompetent employer, who, however, was
glad to re-engage him a few days later on obtaining a job to print some
paper money for New Jersey. Thereupon Franklin contrived a copperplate
press for this job--the first that had been seen in the country--and cut
the ornaments for the bills. Meantime Franklin, with one of the
apprentices, had ordered a press and types from London, that they two
might set up an independent office. Shortly after the New Jersey job was
finished, these materials arrived in Philadelphia, and Franklin
immediately opened his own printing office. His partner "was, however,
no compositor, a poor pressman, and seldom sober." The office prospered,
and in July, 1730, when Franklin was twenty-four years old, the
partnership was dissolved, and Franklin was at the head of a
well-established and profitable printing business. This business was the
foundation of Franklin's fortune; and better foundation no man could
desire. His industry was extraordinary. Contrary to the current opinion,
Dr. Baird of St. Andrews testified that the new printing office would
succeed, "for the industry of that Franklin," he said, "is superior to
anything I ever saw of the kind; I see him still at work when I go home
from the club, and he is at work again before the neighbors are out of
bed." No trade rules or customs limited or levied toll on his
productiveness. He speedily became by far the most successful printer
in all the colonies, and in twenty years was able to retire from active
business with a competency.
One would, however, get a wrong impression of Franklin's career as a
printer, if he failed to observe that from his boyhood Franklin
constantly used his connection with a printing office to facilitate his
remarkable work as an author, editor, and publisher. Even while he was
an apprentice to his brother James he succeeded in getting issued from
his brother's press ballads and newspaper articles of which he was the
anonymous author. When he had a press of his own he used it for
publishing a newspaper, an almanac, and numerous essays composed or
compiled by himself. His genius as a writer supported his skill and
industry as a printer.
The second part of the double subject assigned to me is Franklin as
philosopher. The philosophy he taught and illustrated related to four
perennial subjects of human interest--education, natural science,
politics, and morals. I propose to deal in that order with these four
topics.
Franklin's philosophy of education was elaborated as he grew up, and was
applied to himself throughout his life. In the first place, he had no
regular education of the usual sort. He studied and read with an
extraordinary diligence from his earliest years; but he studied only the
subjects which attracted him, or which he himself believed would be good
for him, and throughout life he pursued only those inquiries for
pursuing which he found within himself an adequate motive. The most
important element in his training was reading, for which he had a
precocious desire which was imperative, and proved to be lasting. His
opportunities to get books were scanty; but he seized on all such
opportunities, and fortunately he early came upon the "Pilgrim's
Progress," the Spectator, Plutarch, Xenophon's "Memorabilia," and Locke
"On the Human Understanding." Practice of English composition was the
next agency in Franklin's education; and his method--quite of his own
invention--was certainly an admirable one. He would make brief notes of
the thoughts contained in a good piece of writing, and lay these notes
aside for several days; then, without looking at the book, he would
endeavor to express these thoughts in his own words as fully as they had
been expressed in the original paper. Lastly, he would compare his
product with the original, thus discovering his shortcomings and errors.
To improve his vocabulary he turned specimens of prose into verse, and
later, when he had forgotten the original, turned the verse back again
into prose. This exercise enlarged his vocabulary and his acquaintance
with synonyms and their different shades of meaning, and showed him how
he could twist phrases and sentences about. His times for such exercises
and for reading were at night after work, before work in the morning,
and on Sundays. This severe training he imposed on himself; and he was
well advanced in it before he was sixteen years of age. His memory and
his imagination must both have served him well; for he not only acquired
a style fit for narrative, exposition, or argument, but also learned to
use the fable, parable, paraphrase, proverb, and dialogue. The third
element in his education was writing for publication; he began very
early, while he was still a young boy, to put all he had learned to use
in writing for the press. When he was but nineteen years old he wrote
and published in London "A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity,
Pleasure and Pain." In after years he was not proud of this pamphlet;
but it was, nevertheless, a remarkable production for a youth of
nineteen. So soon as he was able to establish a newspaper in
Philadelphia he wrote for it with great spirit, and in a style at once
accurate, concise, and attractive, making immediate application of his
reading and of the conversation of intelligent acquaintances on both
sides of the ocean. His fourth principle of education was that it should
continue through life, and should make use of the social instincts. To
that end he thought that friends and acquaintances might fitly band
together in a systematic endeavor after mutual improvement. The Junto
was created as a school of philosophy, morality, and politics; and this
purpose it actually served for many years. Some of the questions read at
every meeting of the Junto, with a pause after each one, would be
curiously opportune in such a society at the present day. For example,
No. 5, "Have you lately heard how any present rich man, here or
elsewhere, got his estate?" And No. 6, "Do you know of a fellow-citizen
... who has lately committed an error proper for us to be warned against
and avoid?" When a new member was initiated he was asked, among other
questions, the following: "Do you think any person ought to be harmed in
his body, name, or goods, for mere speculative opinions or his external
way of worship?" and again, "Do you love truth for truth's sake, and
will you endeavor impartially to find it, receive it yourself, and
communicate it to others?" The Junto helped to educate Franklin, and he
helped greatly to train all its members.
The nature of Franklin's own education accounts for many of his opinions
on the general subject. Thus, he believed, contrary to the judgment of
his time, that Latin and Greek were not essential subjects in a liberal
education, and that mathematics, in which he never excelled, did not
deserve the place it held. He believed that any one who had acquired a
command of good English could learn any other modern language that he
really needed when he needed it; and this faith he illustrated in his
own person, for he learned French, when he needed it, sufficiently well
to enable him to exercise great influence for many years at the French
court. As the fruit of his education he exhibited a clear, pungent,
persuasive English style, both in writing and in conversation--a style
which gave him great and lasting influence among men. It is easy to say
that such a training as Franklin's is suitable only for genius. Be that
as it may, Franklin's philosophy of education certainly tells in favor
of liberty for the individual in his choice of studies, and teaches that
a desire for good reading and a capacity to write well are two very
important fruits of any liberal culture. It was all at the service of
his successor Jefferson, the founder of the University of Virginia.
Franklin's studies in natural philosophy are characterized by remarkable
directness, patience, and inventiveness, absolute candor in seeking the
truth, and a powerful scientific imagination. What has been usually
considered his first discovery was the now familiar fact that northeast
storms on the Atlantic coast begin to leeward. The Pennsylvania
fireplace he invented was an ingenious application to the warming and
ventilating of an apartment of the laws that regulate the movement of
hot air. At the age of forty-one he became interested in the subject of
electricity, and with the aid of many friends and acquaintances pursued
the subject for four years, with no thought about personal credit for
inventing either theories or processes, but simply with delight in
experimentation and in efforts to explain the phenomena he observed. His
kite experiment to prove lightning to be an electrical phenomenon very
possibly did not really draw lightning from the cloud; but it supplied
evidence of electrical energy in the atmosphere which went far to prove
that lightning was an electrical discharge. The sagacity of Franklin's
scientific inquiries is well illustrated by his notes on colds and their
causes. He maintains that influenzas usually classed as colds do not
arise, as a rule, from either cold or dampness. He points out that
savages and sailors, who are often wet, do not catch cold, and that the
disease called a cold is not taken by swimming. He maintains that people
who live in the forest, in open barns, or with open windows, do not
catch cold, and that the disease called a cold is generally caused by
impure air, lack of exercise, or overeating. He comes to the conclusion
that influenzas and colds are contagious--a doctrine which, a century
and a half later, was proved, through the advance of bacteriological
science, to be sound. The following sentence exhibits remarkable
insight, considering the state of medical art at that time: "I have long
been satisfied from observation, that besides the general colds now
termed influenzas (which may possibly spread by contagion, as well as by
a particular quality of the air), people often catch cold from one
another when shut up together in close rooms and coaches, and when
sitting near and conversing so as to breathe in each other's
transpiration; the disorder being in a certain state." In the light of
present knowledge what a cautious and exact statement is that!
There being no learned society in all America at the time, Franklin's
scientific experiments were almost all recorded in letters written to
interested friends; and he was never in any haste to write these
letters. He never took a patent on any of his inventions, and made no
effort either to get a profit from them, or to establish any sort of
intellectual proprietorship in his experiments and speculations. One of
his English correspondents, Mr. Collinson, published in 1751 a number of
Franklin's letters to him in a pamphlet called "New Experiments and
Observations in Electricity made at Philadelphia in America." This
pamphlet was translated into several European languages, and established
over the continent--particularly in France--Franklin's reputation as a
natural philosopher. A great variety of phenomena engaged his attention,
such as phosphorescence in sea water, the cause of the saltness of the
sea, the form and the temperatures of the Gulf Stream, the effect of oil
in stilling waves, and the cause of smoky chimneys. Franklin also
reflected and wrote on many topics which are now classified under the
head of political economy,--such as paper currency, national wealth,
free trade, the slave trade, the effects of luxury and idleness, and the
misery and destruction caused by war. Not even his caustic wit could
adequately convey in words his contempt and abhorrence for war as a mode
of settling questions arising between nations. He condensed his opinions
on that subject into the epigram: "There never was a good war or a bad
peace."
Franklin's political philosophy may all be summed up in seven
words--"first freedom, then public happiness and comfort." The spirit of
liberty was born in him. He resented his brother's blows when he was an
apprentice, and escaped from them. As a mere boy he refused to attend
church on Sundays in accordance with the custom of his family and his
town, and devoted his Sundays to reading and study. In practising his
trade he claimed and diligently sought complete freedom. In public and
private business alike he tried to induce people to take any action
desired of them by presenting to them a motive they could understand and
feel--a motive which acted on their own wills and excited their hopes.
This is the only method possible under a régime of liberty. A perfect
illustration of his practice in this respect is found in his successful
provision of one hundred and fifty four-horse wagons for Braddock's
force, when it was detained on its march from Annapolis to western
Pennsylvania by the lack of wagons. The military method would have been
to seize horses, wagons, and drivers wherever found. Franklin persuaded
Braddock, instead of using force, to allow him (Franklin) to offer a
good hire for horses, wagons, and drivers, and proper compensation for
the equipment in case of loss. By this appeal to the frontier farmers of
Pennsylvania he secured in two weeks all the transportation required. To
defend public order Franklin was perfectly ready to use public force,
as, for instance, when he raised and commanded a regiment of militia to
defend the northwestern frontier from the Indians after Braddock's
defeat, and again, when it became necessary to defend Philadelphia from
a large body of frontiersmen who had lynched a considerable number of
friendly Indians, and were bent on revolutionizing the Quaker
government. But his abhorrence of all war was based on the facts, first,
that during war the law must be silent, and, secondly, that military
discipline, which is essential for effective fighting, annihilates
individual liberty. "Those," he said, "who would give up essential
liberty for the sake of a little temporary safety deserve neither
liberty nor safety." The foundation of his firm resistance on behalf of
the colonies to the English Parliament was his impregnable conviction
that the love of liberty was the ruling passion of the people of the
colonies. In 1766 he said of the American people: "Every act of
oppression will sour their tempers, lessen greatly, if not annihilate,
the profits of your commerce with them, and hasten their final revolt;
for the seeds of liberty are universally found there, and nothing can
eradicate them." Because they loved liberty, they would not be taxed
without representation; they would not have soldiers quartered on them,
or their governors made independent of the people in regard to their
salaries; or their ports closed, or their commerce regulated by
Parliament. It is interesting to observe how Franklin's experiments and
speculations in natural science often had a favorable influence on
freedom of thought. His studies in economics had a strong tendency in
that direction. His views about religious toleration were founded on his
intense faith in civil liberty; and even his demonstration that
lightning was an electrical phenomenon brought deliverance for mankind
from an ancient terror. It removed from the domain of the supernatural a
manifestation of formidable power that had been supposed to be a weapon
of the arbitrary gods; and since it increased man's power over nature,
it increased his freedom.
This faith in freedom was fully developed in Franklin long before the
American Revolution and the French Revolution made the fundamental
principles of liberty familiar to civilized mankind. His views
concerning civil liberty were even more remarkable for his time than his
views concerning religious liberty; but they were not developed in a
passionate nature inspired by an enthusiastic idealism. He was the very
embodiment of common sense, moderation, and sober honesty. His standard
of human society is perfectly expressed in the description of New
England which he wrote in 1772: "I thought often of the happiness in New
England, where every man is a freeholder, has a vote in public affairs,
lives in a tidy, warm house, has plenty of good food and fuel, with
whole clothes from head to foot, the manufacture perhaps of his own
family. Long may they continue in this situation!" Such was Franklin's
conception of a free and happy people. Such was his political
philosophy.
The moral philosophy of Franklin consisted almost exclusively in the
inculcation of certain very practical and unimaginative virtues, such as
temperance, frugality, industry, moderation, cleanliness, and
tranquillity. Sincerity and justice, and resolution--that indispensable
fly-wheel of virtuous habit--are found in his table of virtues; but all
his moral precepts seem to be based on observation and experience of
life, and to express his convictions concerning what is profitable,
prudent, and on the whole satisfactory in the life that now is. His
philosophy is a guide of life, because it searches out virtues, and so
provides the means of expelling vices. It may reasonably determine
conduct. It did determine Franklin's conduct to a remarkable degree, and
has had a prodigious influence for good on his countrymen and on
civilized mankind. Nevertheless, it omits all consideration of the
prime motive power, which must impel to right conduct, as fire supplies
the power which actuates the engine. That motive power is pure,
unselfish love--love to God and love to man. "Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart ... and thy neighbor as thyself."
Franklin never seems to have perceived that the supreme tests of
civilization are the tender and honorable treatment of women as equals,
and the sanctity of home life. There was one primary virtue on his list
which he did not always practise. His failures in this respect
diminished his influence for good among his contemporaries, and must
always qualify the admiration with which mankind will regard him as a
moral philosopher and an exhorter to a good life. His sagacity,
intellectual force, versatility, originality, firmness, fortunate
period of service, and longevity combined to make him a great leader of
his people. In American public affairs the generation of wise leaders
next to his own felt for him high admiration and respect; and the strong
republic, whose birth and youthful growth he witnessed, will carry down
his fame as political philosopher, patriot, and apostle of liberty
through long generations.
WASHINGTON
The virtues of Washington were of two kinds, the splendid and the
homely; I adopt, for my part in this celebration, some consideration of
Washington as a man of homely virtues, giving our far-removed generation
a homely example.
The first contrast to which I invite your attention is the contrast
between the early age at which Washington began to profit by the
discipline of real life and the late age at which our educated young men
exchange study under masters, and seclusion in institutions of learning,
for personal adventure and responsibility out in the world. Washington
was a public surveyor at sixteen years of age. He could not spell well;
but he could make a correct survey, keep a good journal, and endure the
hardships to which a surveyor in the Virginia wilderness was inevitably
exposed. Our expectation of good service and hard work from boys of
sixteen, not to speak of young men of twenty-six, is very low. I have
heard it maintained in a learned college faculty that young men who were
on the average nineteen years of age, were not fit to begin the study of
economics or philosophy, even under the guidance of skilful teachers,
and that no young man could nowadays begin the practice of a profession
to advantage before he was twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. Now,
Washington was at twenty-one the Governor of Virginia's messenger to the
French forts beyond the Alleghanies. He was already an accomplished
woodman, an astute negotiator with savages and the French, and the
cautious yet daring leader of a company of raw, insubordinate
frontiersmen, who were to advance 500 miles into a wilderness with
nothing but an Indian trail to follow. In 1755, at twenty-three years of
age, twenty years before the Revolutionary War broke out, he was a
skilful and experienced fighter, and a colonel in the Virginia service.
What a contrast to our college under-graduates of to-day, who at
twenty-two years of age are still getting their bodily vigor through
sports and not through real work, and who seldom seem to realize that,
just as soon as they have acquired the use of the intellectual tools and
stock with which a livelihood is to be earned in business or in the
professions, the training of active life is immeasurably better than the
training of the schools! Yet Washington never showed at any age the
least spark of genius; he was only "sober, sensible, honest, and
brave," as he said of Major-General Lincoln in 1791.
By inheritance and by marriage Washington became, while he was still
young, one of the richest men in the country; but what a contrast
between his sort of riches and our sorts! He was a planter and
sportsman--a country gentleman. All his home days were spent in looking
after his farms; in breeding various kinds of domestic animals; in
fishing for profit; in attending to the diseases and accidents which
befall livestock, including slaves; in erecting buildings, and repairing
them; in caring for or improving his mills, barns, farm implements, and
tools. He always lived very close to nature, and from his boyhood
studied the weather, the markets, his crops and woods, and the various
qualities of his lands. He was an economical husbandman, attending to
all the details of the management of his large estates. He was
constantly on horseback, often riding fifteen miles on his daily rounds.
At sixty-seven years of age he caught the cold which killed him by
getting wet on horseback, riding as usual about his farms.
Compare this sort of life, physical and mental, with the life of the
ordinary rich American of to-day, who has made his money in stocks and
bonds, or as a banker, broker, or trader, or in the management of great
transportation or industrial concerns. This modern rich man, in all
probability, has nothing whatever to do with nature or with country
life. He is soft and tender in body; lives in the city; takes no
vigorous exercise, and has very little personal contact with the
elemental forces of either nature or mankind. He is not like Washington
an out-of-door man. Washington was a combination of land-owner,
magistrate, and soldier,--the best combination for a leader of men which
the feudal system produced. Our modern rich man is apt to possess no one
of these functions, any one of which, well discharged, has in times past
commanded the habitual respect of mankind. It is a grave misfortune for
our country, and especially for our rich men, that the modern forms of
property,--namely, stocks and bonds, mortgages, and city buildings--do
not carry with them any inevitable responsibilities to the state, or
involve their owner in personal risks and charges as a leader or
commander of the people. The most enviable rich man to-day is the
intelligent industrial or commercial adventurer or promoter, in the good
sense of those terms. He takes risks and assumes burdens on a large
scale, and has a chance to develop will, mind, and character, just as
Queen Elizabeth's adventurers did all over the then known world.
Again, Washington, as I have already indicated, was an economical
person, careful about little expenditures as well as great, averse to
borrowing money, and utterly impatient of waste. If a slave were
hopelessly ill, he did not call a doctor, because it would be a useless
expenditure. He insisted that the sewing woman, Carolina, who had only
made five shirts in a week, not being sick, should make nine. He entered
in his account "thread and needle, one penny," and used said thread and
needle himself. All this closeness and contempt for shiftlessness and
prodigality were perfectly consistent with a large and hospitable way of
living; for during many years of his life he kept open house at Mt.
Vernon. This frugal and prudent man knew exactly what it meant to
devote his "life and fortune to the cause we are engaged in, if
needful," as he wrote in 1774. This was not an exaggerated or emotional
phrase. It was moderate, but it meant business. He risked his whole
fortune. What he lost through his service in the Revolutionary War is
clearly stated in a letter written from Mt. Vernon in 1784: "I made no
money from my estate during the nine years I was absent from it, and
brought none home with me. Those who owed me, for the most part, took
advantage of the depreciation, and paid me off with sixpence in the
pound. Those to whom I was indebted, I have yet to pay, without other
means, if they will wait, than selling part of my estate, or distressing
those who were too honest to take advantage of the tender laws to quit
scores with me." Should we not all be glad if to-day a hundred or two
multi-millionaires could give such an account as that of their losses
incurred in the public service, even if they had not, like Washington,
risked their lives as well? In our times we have come to think that a
rich man should not be frugal or economical, but rather wasteful or
extravagant. We have even been asked to believe that a cheap coat makes
a cheap man. If there were a fixed relation between a man's character
and the price of his clothes, what improvement we should have seen in
the national character since 1893! At Harvard University, twelve hundred
students take three meals a day in the great dining-room of Memorial
Hall, and manage the business themselves through an elected President
and Board of Directors. These officers proscribe stews, apparently
because it is a form in which cheap meat may be offered them,
neglecting the more important fact that the stew is the most nutritious
and digestible form in which meats can be eaten. Mr. Edward Atkinson,
the economist, invented an oven in which various kinds of foods may be
cheaply and well prepared with a minimum of attention to the process.
The workingmen, among whom he attempted to introduce it, took no
interest in it whatever, because it was recommended to them as a cheap
way of preparing inexpensive though excellent foods. This modern temper
affords a most striking contrast to the practices and sentiments of
Washington, sentiments and practices which underlay his whole public
life as well as his private life.
If he were alive to-day, would he not be bewildered by much of our talk
about the rights of men and animals? Washington's mind dwelt very
little on rights and very much on duties. For him, patriotism was a
duty; good citizenship was a duty; and for the masses of mankind it was
a duty to clear away the forest, till the ground, and plant fruit trees,
just as he prescribed to the hoped-for tenants on his Ohio and Kanawha
lands. For men and women in general he thought it a duty to increase and
multiply, and to make the wilderness glad with rustling crops, lowing
herds, and children's voices. When he retired from the Presidency, he
expressed the hope that he might "make and sell a little flour
annually." For the first soldier and first statesman of his country,
surely this was a modest anticipation of continued usefulness. We think
more about our rights than our duties. He thought more about his duties
than his rights. Posterity has given him first place because of the way
in which he conceived and performed his duties; it will judge the
leaders of the present generation by the same standard, whatever their
theories about human rights.
Having said thus much about contrasts, let me now turn to some
interesting resemblances between Washington's times and our own. We may
notice in the first place the permanency of the fighting quality in the
English-American stock. Washington was all his life a fighter. The
entire American people is to-day a fighting people, prone to resort to
force and prompt to take arms, the different sections of the population
differing chiefly in regard to the nature and amount of the provocation
which will move them to violence and combat. To this day nothing moves
the admiration of the people so quickly as composure, ingenuity, and
success in fighting; so that even in political contests all the terms
and similes are drawn from war, and among American sports the most
popular have in them a large element of combat. Washington was roused
and stimulated by the dangers of the battlefield, and utterly despised
cowards, or even men who ran away in battle from a momentary terror
which they did not habitually manifest. His early experience taught him,
however, that the Indian way of fighting in woods or on broken ground
was the most effective way; and he did not hesitate to adopt and
advocate that despised mode of fighting, which has now, one hundred and
fifty years later, become the only possible mode. The Indian in battle
took instantly to cover, if he could find it. In our Civil War both
sides learned to throw up breastworks wherever they expected an
engagement to take place; and the English in South Africa have
demonstrated that the only possible way to fight with the present long
range quick-firing guns, is the way in which the "treacherous devils,"
as Washington called the Indians, fought General Braddock, that is, with
stratagem, surprise, and ambuscade; with hiding and crawling behind
screens and obstacles; with the least possible appearance in open view,
with nothing that can glitter on either arms or clothes, and with no
visible distinction between officers and men. War is now a genuinely
Indian performance, just as Washington saw one hundred and fifty years
ago that it ought to be.
The silent Washington's antipathy to the press finds an exact parallel
in our own day. He called the writers of the press "infamous
scribblers." President Cleveland called them "ghouls." But it must be
confessed that the newspapers of Washington's time surpassed those of
the present day in violence of language, and in lack of prophetic
insight and just appreciation of men and events. When Washington retired
from the Presidency the _Aurora_ said, "If ever a Nation was debauched
by a man, the American Nation has been debauched by Washington."
Some of the weaknesses or errors of the Congresses of Washington's time
have been repeated in our own day, and seem as natural to us as they
doubtless seemed to the men of 1776 and 1796. Thus, the Continental
Congress incurred all the evils of a depreciated currency with the same
blindness which afflicted the Congress of the Southern Confederacy and
the Union Congress during the Civil War, or the Democrat-Populist party
of still more recent times. The refusal of the Congress of 1777 to carry
out the agreement made with the Hessian prisoners at Saratoga reminds
one of the refusal of Congress, in spite of the public exhortations of
our present Executive, and his cabinet, to carry out the understanding
with Cuba in regard to the commercial relations of the island with the
United States. In both cases the honor of the country was tarnished.
The intensity of party spirit in Washington's time closely resembles
that of our own day, but was certainly fiercer than it is now, the
reason being that the questions at issue were absolutely fundamental.
When the question was whether the Constitution of the United States was
a sure defence for freedom or a trap to ensnare an unsuspecting people,
intensity of feeling on both sides was well-nigh inevitable. During
Washington's two administrations a considerable number of the most
eminent American publicists feared that dangerous autocratic powers had
been conferred on the President by the Constitution. Washington held
that there was no ground for these fears, and acted as if the
supposition was absurd. When the question was whether we should love and
adhere to revolutionary France, or rather become partisans of Great
Britain--the power from which we had just won independence--it is no
wonder that political passions burnt fiercely. On this question
Washington stood between the opposing parties, and often commended
himself to neither. In spite of the tremendous partisan heat of the
times, Washington, through both his administrations, made appointments
to public office from both parties indifferently. He appointed some
well-known Tories and many Democrats. He insisted only on fitness as
regards character, ability, and experience, and preferred persons, of
whatever party, who had already proved their capacity in business or the
professions, or in legislative or administrative offices. It is a
striking fact that Washington is the only one of the Presidents of the
United States who has, as a rule, acted on these principles. His example
was not followed by his early successors, or by any of the more recent
occupants of the Presidency. His successors, elected by a party, have
not seen their way to make appointments without regard to party
connections. The Civil Service Reform agitation of the last twenty-five
years is nothing but an effort to return, in regard to the humbler
national offices, to the practice of President Washington.
In spite of these resemblances between Washington's time and our own,
the profound contrasts make the resemblances seem unimportant. In the
first years of the Government of the United States there was widespread
and genuine apprehension lest the executive should develop too much
power, and lest the centralization of the Government should become
overwhelming. Nothing can be farther from our political thoughts to-day
than this dread of the power of the national executive. On the contrary,
we are constantly finding that it is feeble where we wish it were
strong, impotent where we wish it omnipotent. The Senate of the United
States has deprived the President of much of the power intended for his
office, and has then found it, on the whole, convenient and desirable to
allow itself to be held up by any one of its members who possesses the
bodily strength and the assurance to talk or read aloud by the week.
Other forces have developed within the Republic quite outside of the
Government, which seem to us to override and almost defy the closely
limited governmental forces. Quite lately we have seen two of these new
forces--one a combination of capitalists, the other a combination of
laborers--put the President of the United States into a position of a
mediator between two parties whom he could not control, and with whom he
must intercede. This is part of the tremendous nineteenth century
democratic revolution, and of the newly acquired facilities for
combination and association for the promotion of common interests. We
no longer dread abuse of the power of state or church; we do dread abuse
of the powers of compact bodies of men, highly organized and consenting
to be despotically ruled, for the advancement of their selfish
interests.
Washington was a stern disciplinarian in war; if he could not shoot
deserters he wanted them "stoutly whipped." He thought that army
officers should be of a different class from their men, and should never
put themselves on an equality with their men; he went himself to
suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, and always believed that firm
government was essential to freedom. He never could have imagined for a
moment the toleration of disorder and violence which is now exhibited
everywhere in our country when a serious strike occurs. He was the chief
actor through the long struggles, military and civil, which attended
the birth of this nation, and took the gravest responsibilities which
could then fall to the lot of soldiers or statesmen; but he never
encountered, and indeed never imagined, the anxieties and dangers which
now beset the Republic of which he was the founder. We face new
difficulties. Shall we face them with Washington's courage, wisdom, and
success?
Finally, I ask your attention to the striking contrast between the
wealth of Washington and the poverty of Abraham Lincoln, the only one of
the succeeding Presidents who won anything like the place in the popular
heart that Washington has always occupied. Washington, while still
young, was one of the richest men in the country; Lincoln, while young,
was one of the poorest; both rendered supreme service to their country
and to freedom; between these two extremes men of many degrees as
regards property holding have occupied the Presidency, the majority of
them being men of moderate means. The lesson to be drawn from these
facts seems to be that the Republic can be greatly served by rich and
poor alike, but has oftenest been served creditably by men who were
neither rich nor poor. In the midst of the present conflicts between
employers and employed, between the classes that are already well to do
and the classes who believe it to be the fault of the existing order
that they too are not well to do, and in plain sight of the fact that
democratic freedom permits the creation and perpetuation of greater
differences as regards possessions than the world has ever known before,
it is comforting to remember that true patriots and wise men are bred
in all the social levels of a free commonwealth, and that the Republic
may find in any condition of life safe leaders and just rulers.
CHANNING
We commemorate to-day a great preacher. It is the fashion to say that
preaching is a thing of the past, other influences having taken its
place. But Boston knows better; for she had two great preachers in the
nineteenth century, and is sure that an immense and enduring force was
theirs, and through them, hers. Channing and Brooks! Men very unlike in
body and mind, but preachers of like tendency and influence from their
common love of freedom and faith in mankind. This city has learned by
rich experience that preaching becomes the most productive of all human
works the moment the adequate preacher appears--a noble man with a
noble message. Such was Channing.
His public work was preceded and accompanied by a great personal
achievement. All his life he grew in spirit, becoming always freer,
broader, and more sympathetic. In forty years he worked his way out of
moderate Calvinism without the Trinity into such doctrines as
these:--"The idea of God ... is the idea of our own spiritual natures
purified and enlarged to infinity." "The sense of duty is the greatest
gift of God. The idea of right is the primary and highest revelation of
God to the human mind; and all outward revelations are founded on and
addressed to it." There is "but one object of cherished and enduring
love in heaven or on earth, and that is moral goodness." "I do and I
must reverence human nature.... I honor it for its struggles against
oppression, for its growth and progress under the weight of so many
chains and prejudices, for its achievements in science and art, and
still more for its examples of heroic and saintly virtue. These are
marks of a divine origin and pledges of a celestial inheritance."
"Perfection is man's proper and natural goal." What an immense distance
between these doctrines of Channing's maturity and the Calvinism of his
youth! He was a meditative, reflecting man, who read much, but took
selected thoughts of others into the very substance and fibre of his
being, and made them his own. The foundation of his professional power
and public influence was this great personal achievement, this attuning
of his own soul to noblest harmonies.
Thousands of ministers and spiritually-minded laymen of many
denominations have travelled since Channing's death the road he laid
out, and so have been delivered from the inhuman doctrines of the fall
of man, the wrath of God, vicarious atonement, everlasting hell for the
majority, and the rescue of a predestined few. They should all join in
giving heartfelt praise and thanks to Channing, who thought out clearly,
and preached with fervid reiteration, the doctrines which have delivered
them from a painful bondage.
Another remarkable quality of Channing's teachings is their
universality. Men of learning and spirituality in all the civilized
nations have welcomed his words, and found in them teachings of enduring
and expansive influence. Many Biblical scholars, in the technical sense,
have arrived eighty years later at Channing's conclusions about the
essential features of Christianity, although Channing was no scholar in
the modern sense; while they go far beyond him in treating the Bible as
a collection of purely human writings and in rejecting the so-called
supernatural quality of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. Indeed,
many Biblical scholars belonging to-day to evangelical sects have
arrived not only at Channing's position, but also at Emerson's.
Just how much Channing's published works have had to do with this quiet
but fateful revolution no man can tell. The most eminent to-day of
American Presbyterian divines preached an excellent sermon in the
Harvard College Chapel one Sunday evening not many years ago, and asked
me, as we walked away together, how I liked it. I replied: "Very much;
it was all straight out of Channing." "That is strange," he said, "for
I have never read Channing." It is great testimony to the pervasive
quality of a prophet's teachings when they become within fifty years a
component of the intellectual atmosphere of the new times. At a dinner
of Harvard graduates I once complained that, although I heard in the
College Chapel a great variety of preachers connected with many
different denominations, the preaching was, after all, rather
monotonous, because they all preached Channing. Phillips Brooks spoke
after me and said: "The President is right in thinking our present
preaching monotonous, and the reason he gives for this monotony is
correct; we all do preach Channing."