[Speech of Ralph Waldo Emerson at the dinner of Harvard Alumni at
Cambridge, Mass., July 21, 1865, on the occasion of the commemoration
of the patriot heroes of Harvard College in the Civil War.]
MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--With whatever opinions we come
here, I think it is not in man to see, without a feeling of pride and
pleasure, a tried soldier, the armed defender of the right. I think
that, in these last years, all opinions have been affected by the
magnificent and stupendous spectacle, which Divine Providence has
offered us, of the energies that slept in the children of this
country,--that slept and have awakened. I see thankfully those who are
here; but dim eyes in vain explore for some who are not. They shine the
brighter "in the domain of tender memory." The old Greek, Heraclitus,
said: "War is the father of all things." He said it, no doubt, as
science, but we of this day can repeat it as a political and social
truth.
War passes the power of all chemical solvents, breaking up the old
cohesions, and allowing the atoms of society to take a new order. It is
not the Government but the war that has appointed the great generals,
sifted out the pedants, put in the new and vigorous blood. [Great
applause.] The war has lifted many other people, besides Grant and
Sherman, into their true places. Even Divine Providence, we may say,
always seems to work after a certain military necessity. Every nation
punishes the general who is not victorious. It is a rule in games of
chance that "the cards beat all the players," and revolutions disconcert
and outwit all the insurgents. The revolutions carry their own points,
sometimes to the ruin of those who set them on foot. The proof that war
also is within the highest right, is a marked benefactor in the hands of
Divine Providence, is its _morale_. The war gave back integrity to the
erring and immoral nation. It charged with power, peaceful, amiable,
men, to whose whole life war and discord were abhorrent. What an
infusion of character went out from this and the other colleges! What an
infusion of character down to the ranks! The experience has been
uniform, that it is the gentle soul that makes the firm hero, after all.
It is easy to recall the mood in which our young men, snatched from
every peaceful pursuit, went to war. Many of them had never handled a
gun. They said, "It is not in me to resist. I go because I must. It is a
duty which I shall never forgive myself if I decline. I do not know that
I can make a soldier. I may be very clumsy; perhaps I shall be timid;
but you can rely on me. Only one thing is certain, I can well die, but I
cannot afford to misbehave." [Loud applause.]
In fact, the infusion of culture and tender humanity from these scholars
and idealists who went to the war in their own despite,--God knows they
had no fury for killing their old friends and countrymen,--had its
signal and lasting effect. It was found that enthusiasm was a more
potent ally than science and munitions of war without it. "'Tis a
principle of war," said Napoleon--_principe de guerre_--"that when you
can use the thunderbolt, you must prefer it to the cannon." Enthusiasm
was the thunderbolt. Here in this little Massachusetts, in smaller Rhode
Island, in this little nest of New England republics, it flamed out when
that guilty gun was aimed at Sumter.
Mr. Chairman, standing here in Harvard College, the parent of all the
colleges, in Massachusetts, the mother of all the North, when I consider
her influence on the country as a principal planter of the Western
States, and now by her teachers, preachers, journalists and books, as
well as by traffic and production, the diffuser of religious, literary
and political opinion, and when I see how irresistible the convictions
of Massachusetts are on those swarming populations, I think the little
State bigger than I knew; and when her blood is up, she has a fist that
could knock down an empire. And her blood was roused. [Great applause.]
Scholars exchanged the black coat for the blue. A single company in the
44th Massachusetts contained thirty-five sons of Harvard. You all know
as well as I the story of these dedicated men, who knew well on what
duty they went, whose fathers and mothers said of each slaughtered son,
"We gave him up when he enlisted." One mother said, when her son was
offered the command of the first negro regiment, "If he accepts it, I
shall be as proud as if I had heard that he was shot." [Applause.] These
men, thus tender, thus high-bred, thus peaceable, were always in the
front, and always employed. They might say with their forefathers, the
old Norse Vikings, "We sang the mass of lances from morning until
evening;" and in how many cases it chanced, when the hero had fallen,
they who came by night to his funeral on the morrow returned to his
war-path, to show his slayers the way to death!
Ah! young brothers, all honor and gratitude to you! you, manly
defenders, Liberty's and Humanity's home guard. We shall not again
disparage America, now that we have seen what men it will bear. We
see--we thank you for it--a new era, worth to mankind all the treasure
and the lives it has cost; yes, worth to the world the lives of all this
generation of American men, if they had been demanded. [Loud applause.]
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