ADDRESS

Families, races and nations of men appear, act their respective parts,

and then pass away. Political organizations are dissolved by influence

of time. At some periods and in some portions of the world, barbarous

races appropriate to their use the former domain of civilization, while

at other points of time and space nations are rapidly advancing in

wealth and refinement. If savage communities have been exterminated by

superior races of men, so have the arts and civilities of the most

enlightened people been displaced by the rude passions and rugged

manners of barbarism. As in the natural world there is a slow

revolution of thousands of years, by which every part of this globe is

brought within the tropics and beneath the poles, so there appears to

be a great cycle of humanity, whose law is that every portion of the

race shall pass through each condition of social, intellectual and

moral existence.

But whatever may be the fate of families, races and nations, their

influence is in some sense perpetual. The Past is not dead. By a

mysterious cord it is connected with the Present. Could we analyze

our life, we should perhaps find that but few of the emotions we

experience are to be traced to events and circumstance which have

occurred in our own time.

We admire the heroes of Grecian history and even of Grecian fable. We

are inspired by ancient poetry and eloquence, as well as by the bards

and orators of modern times. Painting and sculpture are the equal

admiration of every refined age. The virtue of patriotism has been

illustrated by savage as well as civilized life. Thus every recorded

event of the past has somewhat of value for us. Hence men seek to

connect themselves by blood and language with Europe, or even with

Asia, and delight to trace their family and name into the dark

centuries of the Past. We search for the truth amid the myths and

fables of Grecian and Roman history, and have faith that the ruins of

Ninevah, Memphis and Palmyra shall yet declare the civilities,

learning, and religion of ancient days.

Few nations have had a perfect history. Valuable history can be

derived only from the continued record of the transactions of a people.

Wherever governments have existed in fact before they have existed in

form, or wherever the proceedings of a government have not been matters

of record, there can be no trustworthy history. In these respects

Massachusetts has been fortunate. Her government is older than her

existence as colonies, and from the first a faithful record of her

proceedings has been made. The foundations of New Plymouth and

Massachusetts were laid more than two centuries ago; the circumstances

of this occasion lead us to consider the least defensible portions of

their history; yet the world cannot charge them with suppressing any

fact necessary to a true appreciation of their policy and character.

Whatever they did was in the fear of God and without the fear of man.

Conscious of their own integrity of purpose, they shrunk not from the

judgment of posterity. And though in this hour we may not always

approve their policy, so neither can we comprehend their principles or

appreciate their trials. The human family has ever been subject to one

great law. It is this: Inferior races disappear in the presence of

their superiors, or become dependent upon them. Now, while this law

shall not stand as a defence for our fathers, it is satisfactory to

feel that no policy could have civilized or even saved the Indian

tribes of Massachusetts. The remnants that linger in our midst are

not the representatives of the native nobility of the forest two

centuries ago. Nor did Williams or Eliot, by kindness or religion,

ever command the fierce spirits of Miantonomo, Canonchet and Philip.

Nevertheless, let history exalt these men. Let it speak truly of

their genius, their courage, their patriotism, their devotion to their

race, and, as for Massachusetts, she shall be known and read of all

from the dark day when the colony of Plymouth had not ten efficient

men, to this auspicious moment when within our borders a million of

free and happy people speak the language and glory in the descent of

the Pilgrim Fathers!

The existence of Massachusetts is properly divided into three parts.

First, as a colony from the settlement of Plymouth in 1620, to the loss

of the Massachusetts charter in 1684. Second, as a province from the

charter for the Province of William and Mary in 1691, to the

Declaration of Independence in 1776. Third, as a State from 1780 to

the present time. As a colony, the civil rights of our ancestors were

those of British subjects, but their political and religious privileges

were much greater. As a province their civil rights remained,

religious freedom was extended, while their political privileges were

materially limited.

The occasion, these services, this monument and inscription, connect us

with the colony. We are not here so much reminded of the men who fell,

as of the sacrifices and sufferings of the colonies in 1675 and '76.

The period of King Philip's War was the most trying and perilous in our

history. The Revolution was a struggle for freedom; the contest with

Philip was for existence. Philip contemplated the extermination of the

English in America, while King George only desired their subjugation to

his authority. Nor was the latter ever so near the accomplishment of

his design as was the former in the autumn of 1675.

Massachusetts has seen no other such winter as that which followed.

"Morn came, and went--and came, and brought not day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation."

As late as March, 1676, says Hubbard, "it was full sea with Philip's

affairs." And even on the 26th of April, the Plymouth colony writes

thus to Massachusetts:

"The Lord undertake for us, for we are in a very low condition; and the

spirits of our people begin to run low, also being now averse to going

forth against the enemies. The Lord have us patient to wait God's

time, although our salvation seems still to be far from us."

The war commenced on the 24th day of June, 1675, and ended on the 12th

of August, 1676, by the death of Philip.

The colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven were

united, and Governor Josiah Winslow of Plymouth was appointed

commander-in-chief.

Neither the population nor the available force of the colonies is now

known. Some writers have estimated the population of New England at a

hundred and twenty thousand. This is plainly an exaggeration. From a

few scattered fragments and facts we may conclude that Massachusetts

had a force of about 4,500 men, New Haven and Connecticut about 2,000,

and Plymouth about 1,300; in all about 8,000 men. Of these

Massachusetts had a cavalry force seven hundred strong. Upon this

basis the entire population could not have exceeded 60,000, and some

writers, on the other hand, have estimated it at only forty thousand

souls. But, whatever may have been the number of able-bodied men in

the colonies, the available force for active service must have been

small. A large number of towns were to be garrisoned, and many men

were necessarily employed in the customary duties of life.

Still less is known of the strength of Philip's confederated tribes.

Pestilence and war had depopulated New England previous to the arrival

of the Pilgrims. In 1675 the Pokanokets and Narragansets were the most

powerful, and together mustered three or four thousand warriors.

Philip was sachem of the Pokanokets and Canonchet of the Narragansets.

These tribes constituted Philip's reliable strength, but he had

confederated with him and pledged to the common cause the smaller

chiefs of the Piscataqua and Merrimack, of central Massachusetts and

the valley of the Connecticut. The Narragansets occupied what is now

Rhode Island and the islands adjacent thereto, while Philip as the

chief of the Pokanokets or Wampanoags had his seat at Montaup or Mount

Hope. It was not, however, expedient or possible for him to consecrate

a large force upon any one point. With his forces divided into war

parties as necessity or circumstances dictated, he was able in the

space of thirteen months to attack and partially or entirely destroy a

great number of towns, among which were Brookfield, Lancaster,

Marlboro', Sudbury, Groton, Deerfield, Springfield, Hatfield,

Northfield, Northampton, Chelmsford, Andover, Medfield, Rehoboth,

Plymouth, Scituate, Weymouth, and Middleborough in Massachusetts, and

New Plymouth, Providence and Warwick in Rhode Island. Of these, twelve

or thirteen were entirely destroyed.

Six hundred dwellings were burned, and sixteen hundred persons slain

or carried into captivity. There was not a house standing between

Stonington and Providence. It was as destructive as a war would now be

to Massachusetts which should send twenty thousand able-bodied men to

the grave, and render twenty thousand families houseless, and for the

most part destitute. Had all the events of the Revolution been crowded

into twelve months, the conflict would have been less terrible than was

the war with Philip. His operations menaced and endangered the

existence of the colony. There was a probability that the taunting

threat of John Monoco, the leader of the party which burned Groton,

that he would burn Chelmsford, Concord, Watertown, Cambridge,

Charlestown, Roxbury and Boston, might even be executed. Hardly

anything else remained of the Massachusetts colony on which the power

and vengeance of Philip could fall. Points of the interior, to be

sure, were garrisoned, but for the most part it was an unbroken forest,

or marked only by heaps of smouldering ruins.

And here may we well pause and reflect, that however we or posterity

may judge the Indian policy of our ancestors, the scenes through

which they passed were not calculated to mitigate the horrors of war,

or in the hour of triumph to awaken emotions of pity for the fallen.

As for the Indians, they were destroyed. Their great sachems had

fallen. Anawon, Canonchet, Philip, were no more. Nor had their

fighting men survived them. Their towns, of which they had many, were

burned. And why should the humble wigwam remain when the heroic spirit

of its occupant had departed?

And, worse than all, the women and children had been massacred or sold

into slavery.

----"few remain

To strive, and those must strive in vain."

Peace came; but--sad thought--there was no treaty of peace. It was a

war of extermination. Not often in the history of the world has it

happened thus. The colonists believed that they had been fighting the

battles of God's chosen people. Mather says, "the evident hand of

Heaven appearing on the side of the people, whose hope and help were

alone in the Almighty Lord of Hosts, extinguished those nations of

savages at such a rate, that there can hardly any of them now be found

under any distinction upon the face of the earth."

At some points in New Hampshire and the district of Maine, the fires of

war flickered ere they went forever out. Omitting comparatively

unimportant incursions, the Indian wars of Massachusetts and New

Plymouth were ended. The existence of these hitherto feeble

settlements was rendered certain. Although political and religious

controversies occupied the attention of the settlers, they yet found

means to cultivate the arts of peace. The forest was broken up,

commerce was increased, agriculture flourished, new settlements were

made, confidence was created, men saw before them a future in which

they had hope. As our fathers passed from war to peace they forgot

not their religious duties, and the 29th of June in Massachusetts, and

the 17th of August in Plymouth, were set part as days of public

thanksgiving and praise. Days of sadness, too, they must have been;

days of woe as well as of triumph. The colonies were bereaved in the

loss of brave and valuable men,--families were bereaved in the loss of

homes,--and all were bereaved in the fall or captivity of kindred and

friends. And could our ancestors have seen that this was the first

great step in the red man's solemn march to the grave, a tear of

sympathy would have fallen in behalf of a noble and heroic race.

The war was brief; its operations were rapid. In the space of less

than fourteen months the Indians were exterminated and the whites

reduced to the condition I have faintly portrayed. Yet, until the

19th of December, 1675, when the colonists made a most destructive

attack upon the Indians at what is now South Kingston, the war had

been confined chiefly to the valley of the Connecticut. But from that

moment Philip was like a hungry tiger goaded in confinement, suddenly

let loose upon his prey. The destruction of villages and the deadly

ambuscade of bodies of men followed each other in quick succession. In

the space of sixty days his forces attacked Lancaster, Medfield,

Weymouth, Groton, Warwick, Marlboro', Rehoboth, Providence, Chelmsford,

Andover and Sudbury. At least one half of the death and desolation of

this war was crowded into this short period of time.

There was no security except in garrisons defended by armed men. The

Indian marches exceeded in celerity the movements of well-furnished

cavalry in civilized countries. Their women even aided in the march

and in the camp. Accustomed to hardship and famine, they subsisted in

a manner incredible to our time and race. And with one or two

exceptions, when the colonists came upon the Indians unexpectedly, the

latter were superior in the strategic arts of war, though in open

fight their fire was much less destructive. It must be confessed that

Captain Lathrop at Bloody Brook, and Captain Wadsworth at Sudbury,

were, in a degree, incautious. Hubbard closes his account of the

disaster with these words:

"Thus, as in former attempts of like nature, too much courage and

eagerness in pursuit of the enemy hath added another fatal blow to

this poor country."

For a long period a feeling of insecurity oppressed the settlers. Each

town was furnished with a garrison. The Indian trail was the signal

for alarm, and through long years the events of Philip's war were borne

by tradition and history to itching ears and timid hearts in the

garrison and family circle.

Passing from the principal features of this bloody contest, we feel

that its details are less certain.

In 1676, Sudbury was a frontier town, although settled as early as

1638. Marlboro' was attacked and nearly destroyed the 26th of March,

1676. Captain Sam'l Brocklebank, of Rowley, with a company of Essex

men, was stationed at Marlboro'; but his apprehensions of danger were

so slight that he asked to be relieved from the service. On the 27th

of March, Lieutenant Jacobs, of Captain Brocklebank's company, with

forty soldiers, one half of whom were Sudbury men, attacked a party

of 300 sleeping Indians, and disabled thirty of them without the loss

of a man. The news of the attack upon Marlboro' early furnished by

Captain Brocklebank induced the Council to order Captain Wadsworth of

Milton, with about fifty men, to its relief. At or near Marlboro' he

was informed that Sudbury was the besieged town. It is certain that he

left his young men in the garrison at Marlboro' under the command of

Lieutenant Jacobs, and he was probably joined by Captain Brocklebank

with a part or the whole of his command. It is said that Wadsworth

had marched from Boston that day, yet he moved immediately for the

relief of Sudbury. Presuming that the hill where this monument stands

is that to which Captain Wadsworth was forced by the Indians, their

decoy-outposts must have been a mile or a mile and a half on the way

to Marlboro'.

Captain Wadsworth estimated the number of Indians first discovered at

one hundred. These he pursued about a mile, when he found himself

surrounded by a body of savages four or five hundred strong. Captain

Wadsworth was probably at the bloody fight of the 19th of December, he

was in the Narraganset country about the 1st of January, and he had

marched at the head of forty men to the relief of Lancaster, yet he

appears from the little truth within our reach, to have neglected those

precautions essential to safety in Indian warfare. But is should be

remembered that Captain Wadsworth and Captain Brocklebank were born

about the time of the Pequot War, and could have had no experience in

similar service previous to hostilities with Philip.

The loss of men is not certainly known, nor do writers agree that the

fight took place on the 18th of April.

The inscription upon the monument follows the authority of President

Wadsworth of Harvard College, son of Captain Wadsworth, and for a

portion of his life minister of the first church in Boston. He had

superior facilities for ascertaining the truth and strong motives for

stating it. He puts the loss at twenty-nine officers and men, and

fixes upon the 18th of April as the day of the fight.

His statement is sustained by the evidence I have gathered. Some

writers have put the loss at fifty, and others as high as seventy men,

but these numbers exceed the truth. Wadsworth had fifty men;

Brocklebank may have had as many more. We can account for about

ninety-six. On the 24th of April, Lieutenant Jacobs acknowledges the

receipt of his charge as Captain, in place of Captain Brocklebank, and

informs the Governor and his Council that his company consists of

about forty-six men, a portion of whom were left at Marlboro' by

Captain Wadsworth.

Hubbard says, that of Wadsworth's company, not above twenty escaped,

and Daniel Warren and Joseph Pierce, who buried the dead, say that

fourteen or fifteen of Captain Wadsworth's men were concealed at Mr.

Noist's mill. Taking the statements of Hubbard and Jacobs, we

account for ninety-six officers and men, viz.: forty-seven left at

Marlboro', twenty-nine killed, and twenty escaped.

Some writer has stated that the battle was fought on the 21st, instead

of the 18th of April. It may not be proved that the battle was fought

on the 18th, but it is determined that it was fought previous to the

21st.

On the 21st of April, the Massachusetts Council communicated the fact

in writing to the Plymouth Colony. It is true that Lieutenant Jacobs

does not mention the loss of Wadsworth and Brocklebank in a letter to

the Governor and Council, dated at Marlboro' on the 22nd of April; but

in his letter of the 24th, he refers to the subject as he might have

done, had he received the intelligence when he received his authority

to take the command of the fort and men at Marlboro'. And this was

probably the case. That communication between the two towns was

suspended, is apparent from Jacobs' letter of the 22nd of April, to

which I have referred. The conclusion, I think, is that, under the

circumstances, there is a reasonable amount of evidence in support of

the statement of President Wadsworth.

The loss of Wadsworth and Brocklebank was severely felt by the colony.

Hubbard says, "Wadsworth was a resolute, stout-hearted soldier, and

Brocklebank a choice, spirited man." Mather says, "but the worst part

of the story is, that Captain Wadsworth, one worthy to live in our

history under the name of a good man, coming up after a long, hard,

unwearied march with seventy men unto the relief of distressed Sudbury,

found himself in the woods on the sudden, surrounded with about five

hundred of the enemy, whereupon our men fought like men, and more than

so."

Capt. Samuel Wadsworth was the youngest son of Christopher Wadsworth,

one of the early Plymouth Pilgrims, who settled at Duxbury with Capt.

Miles Standish. Samuel Wadsworth was born in Duxbury about 1630, and

was therefore forty-five or six years of age when he died. He first

appears at Milton, in 1656, where he took up three hundred acres of

land near the center of the town. He was interested in obtaining the

separation of the town from Dorchester and in its incorporation in

1662. In the new town he was the first captain of the militia, one of

the selectmen, a member of the House of Representatives, a trustee of

the church and active in church affairs. That he was highly esteemed

in the town is apparent from these facts as well as from a memorial of

Robert Babcock, one of the selectmen of Milton. He feelingly alludes

to the loss in these words: _"Captain Wadsworth being departed from

us, whose face we shall see here no more."_

Capt. Samuel Brocklebank, of Rowley, was born in England, and was also

about forty-six years of age at the time of his death. In November,

1675, he informed Governor Leverett that he had impressed twelve men

for the war. Of these, seven returned to Rowley. His correspondence

with the Council shows him to have been a man of respectable attainments.

As then the colonies and the town shared a common grief in the loss of

these devoted men, so now it is appropriate that the State and town

should unite in the erection of this unpretending memorial of their

names and virtues.

In April, 1676, Philip's power was at its height. But his successes

had weakened him. His warriors were slain or scattered all over the

country, his provisions and ammunition were exhausted, and Canonchet,

his most valuable ally, had planned his last ambuscade, and rallied

his Narragansets for the last time. The rapidity of Philip's

movements, and the fierceness of his attacks, had deprived his

warriors of the moral power to withstand reverses. His operations for

two months had been those of a desperate man; and when desperation is

followed by misfortune there is no hope of recovery.

The winter campaign of 1675-6 was opened and conducted with great vigor

on the part of the colonies.

The second of December was appointed and set apart as a day of solemn

humiliation for the imploring of God's special grace and favor to

appear for his poor people. Then the treasurer was clothed with

unlimited power to borrow money, and authorized to pledge the public

lands acquired and to be acquired for the payment of the war debt; one

thousand stands of arms and a corresponding quantity of ammunition

were ordered; men were impressed for active service in the field, for

the erection and defence of garrisons, and for the tillage of the soil;

the women and children of the frontier towns were sent towards the

coast; the Indian trading houses were abolished; and even the members

of Harvard College were required to pay their proportion of rates, and

to serve in the army either personally or by substitute.

The Council were instructed to use their "utmost endeavors, with

promise of such rewards as they judge meet, to get the Mohegans and

Pequots" to cut off the Indians of Philip. Governor Winslow was

commander-in-chief, and was instructed by "care, courage, diligence,

policy and favor, to discover, pursue and encounter, and by the help

of God to vanquish and subdue the cruel, barbarous and treacherous

enemy, whether Philip Sachem and his Wampanoags, or the Narraganset

and his undoubted allies, or any other their friends and abettors."

Canonchet, son of Miantonomo and grand nephew of Canonicus, was chief

of the Narragansets. When the colonists first became acquainted with

this tribe, Canonicus was their sachem, but his nephew Miantonomo was

associated with him in the government. This sachem was never a friend

to the English, and he early sent to Plymouth a bundle of arrows bound

in a rattle-snake's skin as a war challenge. Miantonomo was less

hostile, but Canonchet manifested the spirit of his grand uncle.

Immediately after hostilities commenced with Philip the English

demanded of Canonchet the surrender of certain Pokanokets alleged to be

within his dominions. This was his reply: "Deliver the Indians of

Philip! Never. Not a Wampanoag will I ever give up. No. Not the

paring of a Wampanoag's nail."

He was of course charged with being in alliance with Philip. A force

of a thousand men with such Indian allies as could be mustered, was

marched immediately into his country. This was the force engaged on

the 19th of December in the famous Swamp Fight, the most sanguinary

battle of Philip's War. Six hundred warriors were slain, six hundred

wigwams were burned, and an unknown number of women, children and old

men perished in the flames. The English loss exceeded two hundred,

among whom were several brave officers. From this moment the fortunes

of Canonchet were identified with Philip's, and he is supposed to have

commanded in many of the attacks upon the frontier towns. About the

last of March, 1676, he visited the Connecticut River to urge, if not

to superintend the planting of corn. Finding his people destitute of

seed, he returned to obtain a supply, but was arrested at Seekonk and

executed at Stonington. His death was a sad blow to Philip, and the

occasion of a great joy in the colonies. When told that he must die,

he said:

"It is well. I shall die before my heart is soft. I will speak

nothing which Canonchet should be ashamed to speak. It is well."

Thus fell Canonchet, the last great chief of the Narragansets. A man

so noble and chivalric in his spirit that his life and death commanded

the admiration of his worst enemies. They vainly imagined that some

disembodied spirit of Greece or Rome had revisited the earth in the

vast physical and mental proportions of Canonchet.

Forty years before, the friendship of his father, Miantonomo, and the

qualified hostility he assumed towards Sassacus and the Pequots had

saved the infant colonies from destruction. Sassacus, the Pequot

chief, had proposed to Canonicus an alliance against the English, but

in consequence of the advice of Roger Williams, Miantonomo visited

Governor Winthrop at Boston, was received and entertained with great

ceremony, and finally concluded with the colonies a treaty of peace

and alliance. Its main provisions were these:

1st. Peace with Massachusetts and the other English plantations.

2nd. Neither party to make peace with the Pequots without the consent

of the other.

3rd. Neither party to harbor Pequots.

4th. Murderers escaping from either party to be put to death or

delivered up to the other.

5th. Fugitive servants to be returned.

This treaty rendered the cause of the Pequots hopeless, and secured the

safety of the English.

It was in the main observed by the Narragansets. They allowed the

colonial army to pass through their territories, and furnished five

hundred men for the war.

Uncas, the chief of the Mohegans, had also been an ally of the English

against the Pequots. After the destruction of this tribe, the three

parties declared a peace, and the spoils of the war were divided

between the allies. But the Narragansets and Mohegans were naturally

enemies. The latter were of the Pequot race, and Uncas himself, having

married the daughter of Sassacus, was but a revolted subject of that

great chief. It is said that one of Uncas' dependent sachems attacked

Miantonomo, who referred the matter to the English and was told to take

his own course, and invaded the Mohegan country with a thousand

warriors. The fortunes of war were against him and he fell into the

hands of Uncas. The victor now referred the fate of his victim to the

English. They decided that the rules of war permitted, and the safety

of Uncas required, the death of Miantonomo. They were careful,

however, not to permit his execution within their jurisdiction. The

colonies were responsible for the death of this chief. Uncas was

nominally their ally, but really their subject. From first to last

he did their bidding with a spirit so craven and a manner so

treacherous that he was neither trusted nor respected by them. But

the English in their death-warrant voluntarily offered to protect

Uncas from the consequences of Miantonomo's death. This was in 1643,

and thus did the English observe the treaty of peace made seven years

before under circumstances of extraordinary solemnity. Miantonomo died

the victim of rivalry, jealousy and fear, yet with a spirit so heroic

that he scorned to ask the precious boon of life from those whom he had

served rather than wronged. His death was the seed of the war of 1675,

--for how, under these circumstances, could Canonchet, his son and

successor, be other than the enemy of the English, the ready and

efficient ally of Philip.

But aside from particular incidents in the relations of the English to

the Indians there were three ever-operating causes of hostility.

1st. The mutual disposition of the English and the Indians to traffic

with each other. The colonies passed the most stringent laws for the

suppression of this traffic, or to make it a monopoly in their own

hands, and the government at home issued two or more proclamations.

These laws and proclamations had no great practical value, and the

Indians were constantly supplied with spirits, clothing, munitions and

weapons of war, either by the English, French, or Dutch. Thus trade

furnished an occasion for hostility, and the means of gratifying the

spirit of war.

2nd. There was a universal tendency in the people and governments of

the colonies to acquire land.

There was, however, a settled purpose on the part of the company in

England and the governments here to make this spirit conform to the

principles of honor and justice. In the company's letter of

instruction of April 17, 1629, Endicott and his Council were told that

"If any of the savages pretend right of inheritance to all or any part

of the lands granted in our patent, we pray you to endeavor to purchase

their title, that we may avoid the least scruple of intrusion." And in

a second letter of the 28th of May following, the same injunction is

imposed upon the settlers. Attempts were made to pursue the course

pointed out by the company, and a penalty of five pounds per acre was

imposed upon any person who should receive an Indian title without the

consent of the government. Governor Winslow, in 1676, writes thus: "I

think I can clearly say, that before the present trouble broke out, the

English did not possess one foot of land in this colony but what was

fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors."

It is no doubt true that for the most part the lands were purchased,

and, according to the idea of the English, honorably purchased, yet the

natives could not fail to foresee the result of these cessions of

territory. There were English settlements at Bridgewater, Middleboro',

Taunton, Rehoboth, Seekonk, and Swanzey, all within the ancient

jurisdiction of Massasoit. And as a perpetual monitor to Philip of

his limited domains, though in obedience to a different and highly

honorable motive, the people erected a fence quite across the neck of

land on the south of Swanzey, and thus confined the Pokanokets by metes

and bounds.

That Philip was annoyed by applications for land is evident from his

letter, without date, addressed to Governor Prince of Plymouth:

"Philip would intreat that favor of you, and any of the magistrates,

if any English or Indians speak about any land, he pray to give them no

answer at all. This last summer he made that promise with you, that

he would sell no land in seven years' time, for that he would have no

English trouble him before that time. He has not forgot that you

promise him."

The apostle Eliot, in a letter to the Massachusetts government, dated

in 1684, asking that certain fraudulent purchases of the Indians might

be annulled, puts this suggestive inquiry: "Was not a principal cause

of the late war about encroachments on Philip's land at Mount Hope?"

The third disturbing cause was the desire of our ancestors to convert

the Indian chiefs and tribes to Christianity. This was a primary and

chief object of the settlement of the country. Governor Craddock, in

a letter of February, 1629, to Endicott and his Council, says: "You

will demean yourselves justly and courteously toward the Indians,

thereby to draw them to affect our persons, and consequently our

religion." And the Governor of Massachusetts colony by his oath was

required to use his "best endeavor to draw on the natives of New

England to the knowledge of the true God." The company in England also

expressed the hope that the ministers who were sent out would, by

faithful preaching, godly conversation and exemplary lives, in God's

appointed time, reduce the Indians to the obedience of the Gospel of

Christ. And there is no fact in the history of the colonists

inconsistent with an earnest purpose to accomplish so desirable a

result. But the most formidable and warlike of the Indian tribes

resisted the introduction of Christianity, not on account of its

doctrines,--these they never comprehended; but its acceptance was

regarded by them as an acknowledgment of political inferiority. When

Philip protests against the jurisdiction of the English, he thinks to

establish his independence by asserting that he was never a praying

Indian. It naturally happened that those Indians who embraced

Christianity were more or less attached to the English, and soon

assumed the position of dependent inferiors. They were consequently

despised by such fierce spirits as swayed the Narraganset and Pokanoket

tribes. But the English were instant in season and out of season in

securing assent to their doctrines, though they must often have known

that there was neither conviction of the head nor conversion of the

heart. The colonists on some occasions even made a formal assent to

the Christian faith a condition of allegiance.

Although Uncas never received the Christian religion, his friendly

relations with the English gave him an importance and power which were

offensive to the neighboring tribes; and there is reason to suppose

that a desire to humble him was an element of the war.

The attack upon the Pequots, whether necessary or not, must have

produced an unfavorable impression upon the neighboring tribes; but

the death of Miantonomo was the cause of the undying hostility of the

Narragansets, and made Canonchet the ready coadjutor of King Philip,--

and without Canonchet Philip could never have been formidable to the

English.

But passing by all the occasions or causes of war to which I have

referred, we may presume from our knowledge of Philip's character,

that he considered his personal injuries a sufficient ground for

hostilities. Massasoit, his father, had been the firm friend but never

the subject of the English. He was rather their protector, and the

colonists ever maintained towards him the kindest feelings.

His son Alexander succeeded him. A suspicion was early entertained by

the English that he was plotting with the Narragansets. He was

summoned to appear at Plymouth, but he avoided the summons upon some

pretence, which probably had no real foundation. The Governor of

Plymouth with about ten men proceeded to compel his attendance.

Alexander was then upon a hunting excursion with a small party of

warriors. He was found in Middleboro', refreshing himself in a tent

after the fatigues of the chase. His arms, having been left outside,

were seized by the English. Some accounts state that Alexander went

voluntarily towards Plymouth, others say that the Governor told him

that if he did not go he was a dead man. But all accounts agree that

he was soon violently sick, and that the efforts to relieve him were

unavailing. He was allowed to return home and was borne away upon the

shoulders of his faithful warriors. Hubbard says, "Such was the pride

and height of his spirit, that the very surprisal of him so raised his

choler and indignation, that it put him into a fever, which,

notwithstanding all possible means that could be used, seemed mortal."

And so it proved.

Philip witnessed this unjust arrest of his brother, chief of a proud

and free race; he remembered his father's services and fidelity; he saw

his people dispossessed of their hunting grounds, and an unknown

religion zealously pressed upon them. To him there was in the present

only humiliation and disgrace, in the future only ignominy and death.

With this history and these gloomy anticipations of the future, Philip

became the sachem of the Pokanokets. He had never been a favorite

with the English, yet early in life they had named him Philip, and

his brother Wamsutta, Alexander; a singular yet just appreciation of

their high spirit and warlike character. The colonists justly regarded

these young men as dangerous to the public peace, and there was never

a moment of true friendship after the death of Massasoit.

The particular occasion of the war was the murder by Philip's agents of

one Sassamon, an educated Indian, who had been his private secretary.

Having in this confidential station obtained a knowledge of Philip's

plans, he went to the English, by whom he had been educated, and

probably disclosed his master's secrets. Philip secured his death, and

of all who fell in fight or fray, or on the gallows swung, none

deserved death before Sassamon. The comprehensive mind of Philip saw

at once the terrible nature and probable consequences of the war thus

brought upon him. It is said that he wept, and that from that time

forth he never smiled. But he laid new sacrifices upon the altar of

his people's liberty, invoked the spirit of his ancestors, and

exhibited resources and courage worthy of a heroic age.

He stood in a position of great and manifest peril. The English were

superior in numbers, comparatively well equipped, and above all united.

They had garrisoned towns to which they could fly. Philip's own tribe

was comparatively weak, but he easily associated the Narragansets with

him. But this combined force was inadequate to the emergency. He

united many of the tribes of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and

Connecticut, and as far as possible animated them with his own

unconquerable will. You may imagine him standing among the dark men of

the forest and with a rugged yet burning eloquence reciting the history

of their common wrongs, or with prophetic power lifting the veil from

the shadowy, though not to him uncertain, future.

He was continually subject to great personal dangers. A price was set

upon his head, the Christian Indians were allies of the English and

continually employed against him, while above all Uncas and the

Mohegans were his deadly enemies. Hunted by English and Indians,

assailed by famine and treachery, weakened by death and desertion, his

fate was inevitable. When his warriors had fallen in battle, been sold

into slavery or corrupted by bribes, when his old men and women, and

children had perished, when the first of the enemy had laid in ashes

the wigwams and villages of the Pokanokets and their allies, when to

his race there was neither seed-time nor harvest, he came to the home

of his ancestors, and there his troubled spirit, contrasting sadly in

death as in life with the placid scenes of nature around, passed

forever away. He fell by the hand of his own race,--

"Darkly, sternly, and all alone

A spoil--the richest and the last."

Philip's son, a boy nine years of age, was sold into slavery, and the

royal race of Massasoit was extinct.

As all our information of Carthage and the Punic wars has been

transmitted by Roman authors, so our knowledge of Philip and the war of

1675-6, is derived from partial and in some instances prejudiced

sources. Yet it is just to say that our ancestors made no concealment

of the facts, although the comments of Mather and Hubbard are often

strangely barbarous in spirit. And further, we may be certain that our

Pilgrim Fathers were true to the light that was in them; and that their

memory will grow green with years and blossom through the flight of

ages.

If to-day we have seen the bright side of Indian character, contrasted

with the few harsh features of the New England colonists, it is that

this occasion, while it calls forth feelings of gratitude and reverence

for the men and history of the Past may have somewhat of a practical

value in the Present and the Future. The men of the forest have not

disappeared entirely, though

"They waste--they shrink away;

And fast we follow, as they go

Towards the setting day."

And if in the Providence of God the race is soon to be extinct, let not

injustice, oppression, or war, increase their woes or hasten their decay.

XVIII

LOUIS KOSSUTH*

When Louis Kossuth landed in New York, December 5, 1851, he was not an

unknown personage. He and his native land had been made known to the

people of the United States by the Revolution of 1848 and the contest

of 1849 for the independence of Hungary. Until those events occurred,

Hungary was only a marked spot on the map of Europe, and the name of

Kossuth, as a leader in industrial and social progress, had not been

written or spoken on this side of the Atlantic; but in the year 1851

there was no other person of a foreign race and language of whose name

and career as much was known.

There was no exaggeration in Mr. Emerson's words of address to Kossuth:

"You have got your story told in every palace, and log hut, and prairie

camp throughout this continent."

From the first Kossuth recognized a special interest in the

commonwealth of Massachusetts. This interest was due in part to the

history of the State, from which he drew many lessons of instruction

and much confidence that personal liberty and the independence and

sovereignty of states would become universal possessions. Beyond these

considerations the invitation to him from Massachusetts was made

January 8, 1852,--among the first of the States of the Union.

In my annual address to the Legislature, delivered the 15th of January,

I said: "Your action will be regarded as an expression of the sympathy

of Massachusetts for the distinguished exile, and for the cause of

European liberty, which he so truly represents. The common sentiment

of America is on the side of constitutional governments."

The resolutions of the Legislature and the letter of the Governor were

presented to Kossuth at Pittsburg, Pa., January 26, by Hon. Erastus

Hopkins, then a member of the House of Representatives.

Kossuth's first speech in New England was made at New Haven, Thursday,

April 22. From what he there said some inferences may be drawn as to

his religious opinions and the basis on which, to him, the principles

of freedom seemed to rest:

"I know that there is one God in Heaven, the Father of all humanity,

and Heaven is therefore one. I know that there is one sun in the sky,

which gives light to all the world. As there is unity in God, and

unity in the light, so is there unity in the principles of freedom."

Upon his arrival in Boston, April 27, 1852, I met with him on the

steps of the State House, greeting him with the following speech:

"Governor Kossuth: As the voice of the Legislature and people of

Massachusetts, I welcome you to this capitol to-day.

"Your presence brings before us our own past, bitter in its experience,

but glorious in its history. We once had apostles of liberty on

whose heads a price was set, who were hunted by tyranny from their

homes, and threatened with expulsion from civilized life. That day of

oppression and anxiety with us is ended. It introduced a contest for

human rights, whose results on this continent you have seen, in the

extent, character and power of the American republic.

"The people of Massachusetts, inspired by their early history and

animated by the impulses of their hearts, greet you as one who has

nobly served and suffered in the cause of individual freedom and the

rights of states. Nor will their admiration be limited by any

consideration arising from the fate of your country, or the failure of

the patriotic hopes with which it was inspired.

"Liberty can never die. The generations of men appear and pass away,

but the principles and aspirations of their nature are immortal.

"Despotism is of time. It contains within itself the elements and the

necessity of decay and death.

"Fifty years of your eventful life are past; but take courage, sir, in

the belief that, in the providence of God, the moment is near when the

light of freedom shall penetrate the darkness of European despotism.

Then shall your own Hungary welcome you to her fields and mountains, to

her homes and heart; and we will welcome Hungary to the family of

republican, constitutional, sovereign states.

"In the name of the people, I tender to you the hospitalities of a

commonwealth founded by Exiles and Pilgrims."

To this welcome to the capitol of Massachusetts, Kossuth replied as

follows:

"I feel deeply sensible of the immense benefit which a happy and

prosperous people has conferred upon an unfortunate people. Moments

like the present can only be felt, not spoken. I feel a deep emotion,

sir. I am not ashamed of it. Allow me to say that, in taking that

hand, the hand of the people of Massachusetts, and having listened in

your voice to the sentiments and feelings of the people of

Massachusetts, I indeed cannot forbear to believe that humanity has

arrived at a great turning point in its destinies, because such a

sight was never yet seen on earth.

"Conquerors, triumphant and proud of success, confer honors and glory

on a poor exile, having nothing to speak for him but his misfortunes.

"Sir, the spirit of liberty is lasting; liberty cannot die, because it

has become the common sentiment of all humanity. The spirit of liberty

takes itself wings,--you are happy to be the first-born son of that

spirit; but we accept our condition just to be one of its martyrs; and

I look with hope, I look with confidence, into the future, because that

spirit which prepared for the poor exile the present day will be

recorded in the records of history, and will mark the destiny of coming

centuries. I cannot speak further. I am proud to have your hands in

mine.

"And be sure, sir, and let your generous people be sure of it, that,

whatever be our future destiny, we shall never, in our struggles and

misfortunes and adversities, we shall never forget the generous

Governor of Massachusetts, and the generous people of Massachusetts,

and they shall never have reason to regret that we have been honored

in this immense nation. God Almighty bless you, sir, and bless you all!

"I take these honors proudly, because I take them not for myself, but

in the name of my people, in whose name I express my most humble, my

eternal thanks."

Kossuth's visit to New England was confined, I think, to the States of

Massachusetts and Connecticut. He spoke at Hartford, at Springfield,

Northampton, Worcester, Lynn, Salem, Lowell, Fall River, Plymouth,

Lexington and Concord, received everywhere by enormous crowds, and

rousing everywhere an unexampled enthusiasm.

During his stay in Massachusetts he was introduced to audiences by

distinguished men, some of whom had achieved no inconsiderable

reputation as orators, and in most instances they were stimulated and

advanced rather then dwarfed by the presence of one whose powers were

far above the reach of ordinary speakers. Of these it is not invidious

to mention Emerson, Banks, Burlingame, Hopkins and Kellogg.

Of the many who spoke in the presence of Kossuth there was no one whose

words were more acceptable than were those of the venerable Josiah

Quincy. He was then eighty years of age. At the banquet in Faneuil

Hall he made a ten minutes' speech that glowed with the fire of youth.

Its spirit can be exhibited in a quotation of two short sentences:

"Age chills the feelings, and renders the heart cold; but I have still

feeling enough left to say to the hero of the Old World, Welcome to the

liberty of the New! I can say to the hero of Hungarian liberty,

Welcome to the peace and happiness of our western home." At the

commencement of his speech Kossuth said: "Before all, let me express a

word of veneration and thanks to that venerable gentleman" (pointing to

Mr. Quincy). "Sir, I believe when you spoke of age cooling the hearts

of men, you spoke the truth in respect to ordinary men, but you did

yourself injustice. The common excitement and warm blood of youth

pass away; but the heart of the wise man, the older it grows the

warmer it feels." It is difficult to imagine a more graceful impromptu

recognition of words of praise.

Kossuth's speech at Bunker Hill, more than his other speeches in New

England, bears marks of its Oriental origin. Pointing to the monument

he said: "My voice shrinks from the task to mingle with the awful

pathos of that majestic orator. Silent like the grave, and yet

melodious like the song of immortality upon the lips of cherubim, . . .

and thus it speaks: 'The day I commemorate is the rod with which the

hand of the Lord has opened the well of liberty. Its waters will flow;

every new drop of martyr blood will increase the tide; it will overflow

or break through. Bow, and adore, and hope.'" In the course of his

remarks he mentioned Gridley, Pollard, Knowlton and Warren, but he

appears not to have heard of Putnam and Prescott.

At Lexington he said he was inclined to smile at the controversy with

Concord, declaring that it was immaterial whether the fire of the

British was first returned at Lexington or Concord; that its was

immaterial whether those who fell at Lexington were "butchered martyrs,

or victims of a battle-field."

Kossuth was presented to Amariah Preston, aged ninety-four years, and

to Abijah Harrington, aged ninety-one years, veterans of the

Revolutionary war, and to Jonathan Harrington, then ninety-four years

of age, and the only survivor in Lexington of the action of April 19,

1775.

At Concord, Emerson said to the exile: "There is nothing accidental in

your attitude. We have seen that you are organically in that cause you

plead. The man of freedom, you are also the man of fate. You do not

elect, but you are elected by God and your genius to your task. We do

not, therefore, affect to thank you."

In his reply Kossuth appealed to Emerson to give to him and to his

cause the aid of his philosophical analysis, and to impress the

conviction upon the public mind that the Revolution, of which Concord

was the preface, was full of a higher destiny,--of a destiny as broad

as the world, as broad as humanity itself.

In that speech he anticipated Matthew Arnold in the remark, "One thing

I may own, that it is, indeed, true, everything good has yet been in

the minority; still mankind went on, and in going on to that destiny

the Almighty designed, when all good will not be confined to the

minority, but will prevail amongst all mankind." His speech at Concord

was not of his best, and there are indications that his estimate of

Emerson's supremacy as a philosopher and thinker subjected him to a

degree of restraint which he could not overcome.

Only once, as far as I know, did Kossuth speak of himself, except as

the chosen and legitimate representative of down-trodden Hungary, and

that was in his parting speech in Faneuil Hall, May 14, 1852: "Some

take me here for a visionary. Curious, indeed, if that man who, a

poor son of the people, has abolished an aristocracy of a thousand

years old, created a treasury of millions out of nothing, an army

out of nothing, and directed a revolution so as to fix the attention

of the whole world upon Hungary, and has beaten the old, well-provided

power of Austria, and crushed its future by its very fall, and

forsaken, abandoned, alone, sustained a struggle against two empires,

and made himself in his very exile feared by czars and emperors, and

trusted by foreign nations as well as his own,--if that man be a

visionary therefor, so much pride I may be excused, that I would like

to look face to face into the eyes of a practical man on earth."

In closing so much of my review of Kossuth's sojourn in Massachusetts

as relates to the incident of his visit to Boston and the neighboring

cities and towns, I may be permitted to devote a few lines to my

acquaintance with him. To my position as Governor of the State, to the

paragraph in my address to the Legislature, to my letter of invitation,

and to my speech of welcome from the steps of the State House, he gave

much more consideration than was deserved; and on many occasions I

received evidences of his friendship and confidence.

I class Kossuth among the small number of great men, whether he be

classed among orators, philosophers, students of history and

government, or as an advocate of the largest range of individual

freedom that is consistent with the good order of society.

The great orators have appeared and the great orations have been

delivered in revolutionary periods; and this has been illustrated most

strikingly when states have been menaced by the fear of transition from

a constitution of freedom to a government of tyranny. Of the great

orations of this class, the most significant are the orations of

Demosthenes in behalf of the imperiled liberties of Greece, and the

orations of Cicero in defence of his character and of his conduct in

the public service, and in denunciation of the crimes by which the

Republic of Rome was transformed into the Empire of the Caesars. In

modern times attention may be directed to the speech of James Otis on

the Writs of Assistance, to Burke's speech on Conciliation with

America, to Fisher Ames' speech on the Jay Treaty, and to Webster's

speech on Nullification.

In all these speeches, the ancient and modern alike, with the

exception of the speech of Fisher Ames, the inspiring, the controlling

sentiment is the sentiment of patriotism,--the claim to continued

independence and sovereignty in an existing condition, and the claim

to independence and sovereignty on the part of an aspiring people.

Burke was animated by a sense of patriotic duty to Britain and by a

sense of justice to her colonies in America. Fisher Ames'

argumentative speech was an appeal to the sense of justice of the

House of Representatives.

Of the speeches to which reference has been made, it is to be said that

the circumstances in which they had their origin were local, although

they may have embraced the affairs of an empire. In the main, the

considerations advanced were temporary in their relations to the

affairs of mankind. In its very nature patriotism is local, and the

considerations by which the sentiment is stimulated relate usually to

the conditions and events in the country where the sentiment is

evolved. Moreover, a manifestation of the sentiment of patriotism in

one people is accompanied usually with a degree of hostility to some

other community or nation, and in its excesses it often fosters a

disregard for the just rights of others. Nor is the sentiment or

sense of justice usually universal in its application. As it is

manifested in individuals and communities, it too often embodies a

degree of selfishness, from which neither states nor individuals are

exempt.

In like manner the words "freedom" and "liberty," in their application,

have been limited to classes and castes, and to individual communities

and states. The earliest and best expression of the universality of

the idea of liberty belongs to America, but in America even its

practical realization is a recent event. Previous to the nineteenth

century, America was the only land in which it was possible to found a

state freed from the domination of the church, or to establish a church

free from the domination of the state; and in one half of the American

continent this degree of freedom does not exist even now, when we

approach the twentieth century.

Of the great orators of the world, it was Louis Kossuth who first gave

to the word "liberty" the largest possible signification. Burke

approached the idea, but he seemed not to comprehend its universality.

In his oration on Conciliation with America he said: "In Virginia and

the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. When this is the

case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most

proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an

enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing, then, that

freedom as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and

general as the air, may be united with much abject misery, with all the

exterior of servitude, liberty looks among them like something that is

more noble and liberal."

Although Burke speaks of countries where freedom was a common blessing,

it is apparent that the expression was a figure of speech rather than a

statement of existing facts. Kossuth came to the Western World, not as

the exponent merely of the sufferings and wrongs endured by the people

of Hungary, but he announced and advocated boldly the most advanced

theories of individual and national freedom, and of the mutuality of

the obligations resting upon states.

Of the many speeches made by Kossuth in the United States, precedence

may be given to his speech in Faneuil Hall, April 29, 1852. In that

speech he announced in all its fulness his comprehensive idea of

liberty: "Cradle of American Liberty! it is a great name; but there

is something in it which saddens my heart. You should not say

_American liberty._ You should say _Liberty in America._ Liberty

should not be either American or European,--it should be just

_liberty_. God is God. He is neither America's God nor Europe's God;

he is God. So should liberty be. 'American liberty' has much the

sound as if you would say 'American privilege.' And there is the

rub. Look to history, and when your heart saddens at the fact that

liberty never yet was lasting in any corner of the world, and in any

age, you will find the key of it in the gloomy truth that all who were

yet free regarded liberty as their privilege, instead of regarding it

as a principle. The nature of every privilege is exclusiveness, that

of a principle is communicative. Liberty is a principle,--its

community is it security,--exclusiveness is its doom. What is

aristocracy? It is exclusive liberty; it is privilege; and aristocracy

is doomed, because it is contrary to the destiny and welfare of man.

Aristocracy should vanish, not _in_ the nations, but also from

_amongst_ the nations. So long as that is not done, liberty will

nowhere be lasting on earth . . . A privilege never can be lasting.

Liberty restricted to one nation never can be sure. You may say, 'We

are the prophets of God'; but you shall not say, 'God is only _our_

God.' The Jews have said so, and the pride of Jerusalem lies in the

dust."

Through all his speeches the thought of the universality of liberty,

and the doctrine that there is a community in man's destiny, can be

discerned. His later speeches, and especially his speeches made after

his tour through the South, indicate a loss of confidence in the

disposition of the country to give substantial aid to the cause of

Hungary, and thenceforward the loss of hope was apparent in his

conversation and speeches. Indeed, before he left the country, his

thoughts were directed most largely to the care of his mother, wife

and sisters, who, like himself, were exiles and destitute of the means

of subsistence. It is not probable that he anticipated at any time

any other assistance than that which might follow an official

announcement by the national authorities of an opinion adverse to

interference by any state in the affairs of other states. His visit

to Washington satisfied him that no such expression of opinion would

be made by Congress, or by the administration of President Fillmore.

On the thirtieth day of April, 1852, Kossuth closed a speech in

Faneuil Hall, which had occupied two hours and a half in its delivery,

with these words: "I cannot better express my thanks than to pledge my

word, relying, as I have said on another occasion of deep interest,

upon the justice of our cause, the blessing of God, iron wills, stout

arms and good swords, and upon your generous sympathy, to do all in my

power with my people, for my country, and for humanity." Thus, as he

approached the end of his career in America, he abandoned the thought

of securing active interference, or, indeed, of official support in

behalf of Hungary, whatever might have been his hopes when he landed

in the United States.

During the period of Kossuth's visit, from December, 1851, to June,

1852, the attention of the country was directed to the approaching

Presidential election, and in public speeches and in conversations

he attributed his failure to secure the endorsement of Congress and of

legislative assemblies to that circumstance. In his first speech in

Faneuil Hall he said, "Would it had been possible for me to have come

to America either before that contest was engaged, or after it will be

decided! I came, unhappily, in a bad hour." That Kossuth attributed

too much importance to that circumstance, there can be no doubt.

Other, deeper-seated and more adverse causes were at work. The advice

and instructions of Washington as to the danger of entangling foreign

alliances were accepted as authority by many, and as binding traditions

by all. Consequently, there was not, and could not have been, any time

in the century when his appeal would have been answered by an

aggressive step, or even by an official declaration in behalf of his

cause.

Co-operating with this general tendency of public opinion, there

existed a latent sentiment in the slave States and everywhere among

the adherents and defenders of slavery that the mission of Kossuth was

a menace to that peculiar institution. Of this face he was convinced

by his visit to Washington and his brief tour in the slave States. At

Worcester a man in the crowd had shouted, "We worship not the man, but

we worship the principle." The slave-holders were interested in the

man, but they feared his principles; and well they might fear his

principles for he was the avowed enemy of all castes and all artificial

distinctions among men. Hence it was that he was avoided by the

leaders of the Democratic Party, and hence it was that his special

friends and supporters were Abolitionists, Free-soilers and Anti-

slavery Democrats.

This condition of public opinion and of party division was reached as

early as the twenty-ninth day of April, when Kossuth said: "Many a man

has told me that if I had not fallen into the hands of the

Abolitionists and Free-soilers, he would have supported me; and had I

landed somewhere in the South, instead of New York, I would have met

quite different things from that quarter; but being supported by the

Free-soilers, of course I must be opposed by the South." All this was

error. If Kossuth had been spurned by the Abolitionists and Free-

soilers, he would not have been accepted by the South; for there was

not a _quadrennium_ from 1832 to 1860 when that section would have

contributed to the election of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency with

the weight of the Declaration of Independence upon his shoulders, as it

came from his pen, had he been in existence and eligible to the office.

Support of Kossuth, by aggressive action of by official declarations

against Austria and Russia, was an impossibility for the country; and

an open avowal of sympathy with his opinions and principles was an

impossibility for the South or for the Democratic Party.

Henceforward Kossuth's hopes were limited to pecuniary aid for himself

and his family and friends, and to expressions of sympathy for his

downtrodden country by individuals, by voluntary associations, and by

municipalities. All his speeches after his visit to Washington were

laden with one thought, viz., the duty of all free countries to resist

the spread of absolutism. Pre-eminently this duty was upon America.

"Republican America," said he, "and all-overwhelming Russian

absolutism cannot much longer subsist together on earth. Russia

active,--America passive,--there is an immense danger in the fact; it

is like the avalanche in the Alps, which the noise of a bird's wing

may move and thrust down with irresistible force, growing every moment."

He quoted the declaration which the elder Cato made whenever he spoke,

whether in private or in public: "However, my opinion is that Carthage

must be destroyed." Imitating the language and spirit of Cato, Kossuth

said: "However, the law of nations should be maintained, and

absolutism not permitted to become permanent."

That he exaggerated the scope of what is called the law of nations

there can be no doubt. Beyond a few points, such as the recognized

rule in regard to piracy, the law of nations is very indefinite, and

most certainly it has but little relation, if indeed it can be said

justly to have any relation, to what he called "absolutism." Moreover,

it is very doubtful whether any interference by one nation in the

affairs of another nation, in whatever considerate way such

interference might by presented, could produce aught but evil, in

arousing the passions of jealously and hostility. Had England and the

United States tendered any advice even in the affairs of Austria,

Hungary and Russia, such advice would have been rejected by the

nations, and indignities would have been heaped upon the officious

parties. All that part of Kossuth's mission to England and the United

States was hopeless from the beginning, and it seems to be an

impeachment of his wisdom to assume that he ever entertained the

thought that either country could or would make the cause of Hungary

its own, whatever might be the general or official opinion as to the

justice of the contest that Hungary had carried on.

His speeches and his private conversations justify the inference that

he had a hope that in some way the influence of England and the United

States might be exerted effectually in behalf of Hungary, and that

through that influence the activity of Russia might be arrested.

Although he looked to France for aid to the cause of Hungary, he

regarded the _coup d'etat_ of Napoleon as an adverse event,--as a step

and an important step in the direction of "absolutism." On one

occasion he said: "Look how French Napoleonish papers frown

indignantly at the idea that the Congress of the United States dared to

honor my humble self, declaring those honors to be not only offensive

to Austria, but to all the European powers."

Mr. Webster delivered a speech in Boston in the month of November,

1849, when it was apprehended that Russia might assume the task of

demanding of Turkey the surrender of Kossuth and others, and of

executing them for crimes against Austria. On that occasion Mr.

Webster claimed that the Emperor of Russia was "bound by the law of

nations"; and to that declaration Kossuth often referred. The full

text of Mr. Webster's speech leaves upon the mind the impression that

what he then called "the law of nations" was only that general judgment

of the civilized nations before which the Czar of Russia "would stand

as a criminal and malefactor in the view of the public law of the

world." Having this declaration in mind, Kossuth said: "It was a

beautiful word of a distinguished son of Massachusetts (Mr. Webster),

which I like to repeat, that every nation has precisely the same

interest in international law that a private individual has in the laws

of his country." Mr. Webster's speech did not justify the inference

which Kossuth drew from it; but the speech itself was much less

reserved than that which Mr. Webster delivered in 1852, when he held

the office of Secretary of State, and spoke for the administration,

at a banquet given in the city of Washington in Kossuth's honor.

When Kossuth had abandoned the hope, which his intense interest in the

fate of his country had inspired, that the United States might act in

behalf of Hungary, he yet returned again and again to the subject. On

one occasion he said; "I take it for an axiom that there exist

interests common to every nation comprised within the boundaries of

the same civilization. I take it equally for certain that among these

common interest none is of higher importance than the principles of

international law." Nor did he hesitate to say that our indifference

to the spread of "absolutism" would be attended with serious and

grievous consequences: "To look indifferently at these encroachments

is as much as a spontaneous abdication of the position of a power on

earth. And that position abandoned, is independence abandoned." He

declared that neutrality did "not involve the principles of

indifferentism to the violation of the law of nations"; and he

attempted to stimulate the national pride by the declaration that

neutrality was the necessity of weak states, like Belgium and Switzer-

land, whose neutrality was due the rivalry of other powers, and not to

their own will.

These appeals were in vain, although they were made in language most

attractive, and although the sympathies of the people were sincere and

active in behalf of Hungary. His mission was a failure, inasmuch as

neither by argument, by eloquence, nor by sympathy was he able to

secure an official declaration or promise of a purpose in the national

authorities to interfere in the affairs of Continental Europe.

Kossuth's personal wants and the necessities of his family and friends

were met by the sale of Hungarian bonds and by voluntary contributions;

but no substantial aid was given to Hungary in its contest with Austria

and Russia.

In his many speeches Kossuth set forth his views upon national and

international topics with freedom, and often with great wisdom. Said

he on one occasion: "I take political economy for a science not

exactly like mathematics. It is quite a practical thing, depending

upon circumstances; but in certain proceedings a negative principle

exists. In political economy it is not good for the people that a

prohibitory system be adopted. Protection may sometimes be of service

to a nation, but prohibition never." Thus did he qualify the claim

of authors and students, who assert that political economy deserves

rank among the sciences, whether exact or speculative, and thus did he

recognize the protective theory as adapted to the condition of states

while in the transition period in the development of the higher

industries.

It was a favorite thought with Kossuth that England would become

republican, and that the United States and republican England could

lead the world in civilization and in the work and duty of elevating

the masses. His influence in Hungary had been due, in a large measure,

to his active agency in the work of establishing associations for the

advancement of agriculture, public education, commerce, and the

mechanic arts. He deprecated the opposition of the Irish in America

to any and every form of alliance with England, and he did not hesitate

to condemn the demand of O'Connell for the repeal of the union between

England and Ireland. Said he: "If I could contribute one line more

to the future unity in action of the United States and England, I

should more aid the Irish than by all exclamations against one or the

other. With the United States and England in union, the Continent of

Europe would be republican. Then, though England remained monarchist,

Ireland would be more free than it is now."

It is a singular incident in Kossuth's history, in connection with

Irish affairs, that in one of his speeches he foreshadowed Gladstone's

Home Rule policy,--but upon the basis of a legislative assembly for

each of the three principal countries, England, Scotland and Ireland.

Thus did he indicate a public policy for Great Britain that has been

accepted in part by the present government,--a policy that is to be

accepted by the English nation and upon the broad basis laid down by a

foreigner and sojourner, who had had only limited means for observation.

"If I were an Irishman, I would not have raised the standard of repeal,

which offended the people of England, but the standard of municipal

self-government against parliamentary omnipotence; not as an Irish

question, but as a common question to all; and in this movement all

the people of England and Scotland would have joined, and there now

would have been a Parliament in England, in Ireland and Scotland. Such

is the geographical position of Great Britain that its countries

should be, not one, but united, each with its own parliament, but still

one parliament for all."

Although forty years have passed without the fulfillment of Kossuth's

prophetic declaration of a public policy, its realization is not only

possible, but probable. To the American mind, with our experience and

traditions, such a solution of the Irish question seems easy,

practicable, safe. We have States larger than Ireland, States smaller

than Ireland, in which the doctrine of self-government finds a

practical application. Not free from evils, not free from

maladministration; but if our States are judged at half-century

intervals, it will appear that they are moving with regular and certain

steps towards better conditions. There is not one American State in

which the condition of the people in matters of education, in personal

and public morals, in industrial intelligence, in wealth and in the

means of further improvement, has not been advanced, essentially, in

the last fifty years. If all the apprehensions touching the evils and

dangers of self-government in Ireland were well founded, there is an

assurance in our experience that the people themselves would discover

and apply an adequate remedy.

Kossuth was an orator; and every orator is of necessity something of a

prophet. He is more than a historian who deals only with the past,

illustrated with reflections, called philosophical, concerning the

events of the past. With the orator those events are recalled and

reviewed for encouragement or warning. The eye of the orator is

turned to the future. The peroration of Mr. Webster's speech in reply

to Hayne contains a prophetic description of the Civil War as it was

experienced by the succeeding generation. Fisher Ames' bold prediction

as to the disposition of convicts to found and to maintain good

government has been realized in the history of Van Diemen's Land. Said

Ames: "If there could be a resurrection from the foot of the gallows,

if the victims of justice could live again, collect together, and form

a society, they would, however loath, soon find themselves obliged to

make justice--that justice under which they fell--the fundamental law

of their state."

Nor did the spirit of prophecy desert Kossuth, in regard to Louis

Napoleon. In 1852 he said: "The fall of Louis Napoleon, though old

monarchial elements should unite to throw him up, can have no other

issue than a republic,--a republic more faithful to the community of

freedom in Europe than all the former revolutions have been."

He seemed also to foresee the unity of Italy, although he overestimated

the tendency there towards republican institutions. He declared that

Austria studded the peninsula of Italy with bayonets, and that she was

able to send her armies to Italy because Russia guarded her eastern

frontier. His residence in Italy for a third of a century was due to

his admiration for the history of the Italian peoples, and his belief

in the capacity of the Italian races for the business of government.

"The spirit of republican liberty, the warlike genius of ancient Rome,

were never extinguished between the Alps and the Faro." He declared

that every stain upon the honor of Italy was connected with foreign

rule, and that the petty tyrants of Italy had been kept on their

tottering thrones through the intervention of Austria, Germany and

France.

At the end he placed the responsibility for the domination of

absolutism upon the Continent of Europe to the intervention of

Russia and to her recognized supremacy in war. He appreciated the

fact that Russia in coalition with Austria or Germany or France was

more than the equal of the residue of the Continent, whether combined

for offensive or defensive operations.

In the many speeches which Kossuth made in the United States, he

endeavored to impress upon his hearers the conviction that absolutism,

under which Europe was then groaning, would extend to America. This

view made a slight impression only. To the common mind the ocean and

the distance seemed a sufficient protection. In the lifetime of

Kossuth, absolutism, both in church and state, has lost much of power

on the Continent of Europe, while in America it has no abiding place.

Kossuth did not err in his opinion as to the policy of Russia in

European affairs; but that policy never extended to America, even in

thought. Of that policy Kossuth said: "It is already long ago that

Czar Alexander of Russia declared that henceforth governments should

have no particular policy, but only a common one, the policy of safety

to all governments; as if governments were the aim for which nations

exist, and not nations the aim for which governments exist."

Finally, he came to look upon Russia as the master of all Europe, and

he sought to impress upon his hearers in America the opinion that the

time would come when Russia would seek for mastery in the affairs of

this continent. This apprehension on his part was not accepted by

any class of his hearers and followers, and the cession of Alaska must

have quieted the apprehension which had taken possession of Kossuth's

mind.

In passing from so much of Kossuth's career in America as relates to

his public policy and to his views upon public questions, it can be

said that he entertained the broadest ideas of personal liberty and of

the independence and sovereignty of states, coupled with an obligation

binding all states to protect each and every state from the aggressive

action of any other state.

It was his hope that England and the United States would unite, and

by counsel, if not by active intervention, check, and in the end

control, Russia in its manifest purpose to dominate over the Continent

of Europe. This hope has not been realized. In no instance have the

United States and England co-operated for the protection of any other

state, and the influence of Russia on the Continent of Europe was

never greater than it now is. Manifestly, England is the only

obstacle to the domination of Russia over the Bosphorus.

In these forty years, Hungary has gained as a component part of the

Austrian Empire, but, in the ratio of the augmentation of its power,

the tendency to independence and to a republican form of government

has diminished. The demonstrations that followed Kossuth's death

are evidence, however, that his teachings have affected the student

classes in Hungary, and it is possible that those teachings are

destined to work changes in Hungary and Italy in favor of republican

institutions.

Kossuth's teachings were in harmony with the best ideas that have

been accepted in regard to state policy, international relations, and

individual rights; but he was in advance of his own age and in advance

of this age. For Europe he was an unpractical statesman, and in

America he demanded what could not be granted. It does not follow,

however, that his labors were in vain. He aroused the American mind to

a higher sense of the power and dignity of the American nation, and he

set forth the influence that England and the United States might exert

in the affairs of the world whenever they should co-operate in an

international public policy. He maintained the cause of universal

liberty. At West Cambridge Kossuth said: "Liberty was not granted

to your forefathers as a selfish boon; your destiny is not completed

till, by the aid and influence of America, the oppressed nations are

regenerated and made free."

These words were not wholly visionary, and in these forty years since

they were uttered some progress has been made. The empires of Brazil

and France have been transformed into republics, slavery has been

abolished in North and South America, the weak states of Italy have

been united in one government, the German Empire has been created, and

all in the direction of popular liberty and with manifest preparation

for the republican form of government. Nor can it be said justly that

there has been a retrograde movement in any part of the world. These

changes would have come to pass without Kossuth; but it is to his

credit that his teachings were coincident with the trend of events,

and they may have contributed to the accomplished results.

In 1849 Mr. Webster compared Kossuth to Wycliffe, by the quotation of

the lines:

"The Avon to the Severn runs,

The Severn to the sea;

And Wycliffe's dust shall spread abroad,

Wide as the waters be."

It is not easy to form an opinion of Kossuth's place as an orator,

when considered in comparison or in contrast with other orators. He

had but one central theme, the cause of Hungary, and on that theme he

spoke many hundred times, and never with any offensive or tedious

repetitions. In Massachusetts alone he delivered thirty-four speeches

and orations, and it may be said that all of them were carefully

prepared, and most of them were reduced to writing. His topics were

the wrongs inflicted upon Hungary, the sufferings endured by his

country, the dominating and dangerous influence of Russia in the

affairs of Europe, the duty of England and America to resist that

influence, the mission of the government and people of the United

States to labor for the extension of free institutions and the

blessings of liberty to the less favored nations of the world,--all

made attractive by references to general, local and personal histories.

As one test, and a very important test, of the presence of unusual

power, it can be said that no other orator ever made so many acceptable

addresses upon allied topics.

His cause did much for him. For im and for his country there was deep-

seated and universal sympathy. In his case, with unimportant

exceptions, there were no prejudices, or passions, or principles, or

traditions, to be overcome. Our history, whether as exiles, as

revolutionists, or as pioneers in the cause of freedom, contributed

materially to the success of his orations and speeches. All who heard

him were astonished at the knowledge of our history, both local and

general, which he exhibited. When he came to the old Hancock House in

Boston, he mentioned the fact without waiting for information, so

carefully had he studied the features of the city in advance of his

visit. There were three persons in his suite who devoted themselves

to the preparation of his speeches,--Gen. Klapka, Count Pulszky and

Madame Pulszky. Their knowledge of Kossuth's mind was such that they

were able to mark the passages in local histories and biographies

that would be useful to him in his addresses. Those of his speeches

which were prepared were written by these assistants, to whom he

dictated the text. By their aid he was able to prepare his speeches

with a celerity that was incomprehensible to the Western mind.

His first speech in Boston was delivered the twenty-seventh day of

April, 1852, the day that he completed his fiftieth year. When in

private conversation I spoke of the circumstance that it was my

good fortune to welcome him to the State on that anniversary, he said:

"Yes, it is a marked day; but unless my poor country is saved I shall

soon wither away and die."

His voice, whether in public speech or in private conversation,

commanded sympathy by its tones, even when his words were not

comprehended. In his oratory there was exaggeration in statement, a

characteristic that is common to orators, but not more strongly marked

in the speeches of Kossuth than in the speeches of those with whom he

might be compared.

His powers of imagination were not extraordinary, and of word painting

he has not left a single striking example,--not one passage that can be

used for recitation or declamation in the schools. His cause was too

pressing, his manner of life was too serious, for any indulgences in

speech. In every speech he had an object in view; and even when he was

without hope for Hungary in the near future, he yet announced and

advocated doctrines and truths on which he relied for the political

regeneration of Europe. He spoke to propositions,--clearly, concisely,

convincingly.

In one oratorical art Kossuth was a adept; he deprecated all honors to

himself, and with great tact he transferred them to his country and to

the cause that he represented:

"As to me, indeed, it would be curious if the names of the great men

who invented the plough and the alphabet, who changed the corn into

flour and the flour into bread, should be forgotten, and my name

remembered.

"But if in your expectations I should become a screen to divert, for a

single moment, your attention from my country's cause and attract it

to myself, I entreat you, even here, to forget me, and bestow all your

attention and your generous sympathy upon the cause of my downtrodden

fatherland."

Kossuth gave rise to just criticism in that he appealed too often and

too elaborately to the local and national pride of his audiences. This

criticism was applicable to his speeches in England and in America.

In every attempt to fix Kossuth's place in the list of historical

orators,--and in that list he must have a conspicuous place,--certain

considerations cannot be disregarded, viz.:

First, he spoke to England and American in a language that he acquired

when he had already passed the middle period of life. The weight of

this impediment he felt when he said, "Spirit of American eloquence,

frown not at my boldness that I dare abuse Shakespeare's language in

Faneuil Hall."

Second, we are to consider the amount of work performed in a brief

period of time, and the conditions under which it was performed.

Between the twenty-fifth day of April and the fourteenth day of May,

1852, Kossuth delivered thirty speeches in Massachusetts, containing,

on an average, more than two thousand words in each speech, and not a

sentence inappropriate to the occasion. These speeches were prepared

and written in the intervals between the ceremonial proceedings, which

occurred as often as every day.

Third, though his theme had many aspects, and these varying aspects

Kossuth presented with such skill as to command the attention of his

hearers, yet his theme was always the same,--the wrongs of Hungary.

On the twentieth, the twenty-fourth, and the twenty-fifth days of May,

1859, Kossuth delivered speeches in London, Manchester, and Bradford,

England. The Lord Mayor presided at the meeting in London, and the

meetings one and all were designed to aid the Liberal Party in the

then pending general election. Kossuth's visit to England and the

purpose of the visit were due to an arrangement with the Emperor

Napoleon, from which Kossuth was led to expect the liberation of

Hungary from the grasp of Austria as one of the essential purposes of

the war in which France and Austria were engaged. As the result of an

interview with the Emperor on the night of the 5th of May, Kossuth

visited England in aid of the Liberal Party, and in the belief that

the accession of that party to power would secure the neutrality of

that country. Hence the wisdom and the duty of neutrality were the

topics to which Kossuth devoted himself during his short stay in

England. The Liberal Party triumphed, but the triumph was brief, and

the disposition of the new ministry was not tested.

Kossuth's speeches of 1859 at the London Tavern, at a meeting presided

over by the Lord Mayor, and at Manchester and at Bradford, present him

at his best. He had received a pledge from Napoleon that if he could

secure the neutrality of England, and would organize a Hungarian legion

for service in the war with Austria, the liberation of Hungary should

be regarded as a necessary condition of peace. Such, at least, was the

interpretation which Kossuth put upon these words of the Emperor,

spoken at the midnight meeting of May 5, 1859: "We beg you to proceed

forthwith with your scheme; and be convinced that in securing the

neutrality of England you will have removed the greatest obstacle that

stands in the way of the realization of your patriotic hopes."

In a preliminary conversation with Prince Napoleon, held at the

instance of the Emperor, Kossuth had stipulated that the Emperor should

publish a proclamation to the Hungarian nation, announcing his

confederation with the Hungarians as their friend and ally, and for the

purpose of carrying into effect the Declaration of Independence of

1849. The obligations assumed by Kossuth were faithfully performed.

General Klapka organized a legion in Italy of four thousand Hungarians.

The overthrow of the Tory Party in England, which Kossuth had predicted

and promised, was achieved, and thus the neutrality of Great Britain

was secured.

Kossuth's speeches in England were delivered under the influence of the

highest incentives by which an orator and patriot could be moved. With

the utmost confidence in his ability to perform what he had promised,

he had pledged his honor for the neutrality of England. As he then

believed, the fate of Hungary was staked upon the fulfilment of that

pledge. Hence it came to pass that his speeches in England in May,

1859, were on a higher plane than the speeches that he delivered in

the years 1851 and 1852. At the former period he had no hope of

immediate relief for Hungary; in 1859 he imagined that the day of the

deliverance of his country was at hand, and that the neutrality of

England was a prerequisite, or at least a coincident condition.

It is not too much to say that the following extract from his speech in

the London Tavern justifies every claim that has been made in behalf of

Kossuth as a patriot and an orator:

"The history of Italy during the last forty years is nothing but a

record of groans, of evergrowing hatred and discontent, of ever-

recurring commotions, conspiracies, revolts and revolutions, of

scaffolds soaked in the blood of patriots, of the horrors of Spielberg

and Mantua, and of the chafing anger with which the words, 'Out with

the Austrians,' tremble on the lips of every Italian. These forty

years are recorded in history as a standing protest against those

impious treaties. The robbed have all the time loudly protested, by

words, deeds, sufferings, and sacrifice of their lives, against the

compact of the robbers. Yet, forsooth, we are still told that the

treaties of 1815 are inviolable. Why, I have heard it reported that

England rang with a merry peal when the stern inward judge, conscience,

led the hand of Castlereagh to suicide; and shall we, in 1859, be

offered the sight of England plunging into the incalculable calamities

of a great war for no better purpose than to uphold the accursed work

of the Castlereaghs, and from no better motive than to keep the House

of Austria safe?

"Inviolable treaties, indeed. Why, my lord, the forty-four years that

have since passed have riddled those treaties like a sieve. The

Bourbons, whom they restored to the throne of France, have vanished,

and the Bonapartes, whom they proscribed, occupy the place of the

Bourbons on the throne of France. And how many changes have not been

made in the state of Europe, in spite of those 'inviolable treaties'?

Two of these changes--the transformation of Switzerland from a

confederation of states into a confederated state, and the independence

of Belgium--have been accomplished to the profit of liberty. But for

the rest, the distinctive features through which those treaties have

passed is this, that every poor plant of freedom which they had spared

has been uprooted by the unsparing hand of despotism. From the

republic of Cracow, poor remnant of Poland, swallowed by Austria, down

to the freedom of the press guaranteed to Germany, but reduced to such

a condition that, in the native land of Guttenberg, not one square yard

of soil is left to set a free press upon, everything that was not evil

in those inviolable treaties has been trampled down, to the profit of

despotism, of concordats, of Jesuits, and of benighting darkness. And

all these violations of the inviolable treaties were accomplished

without England's once shaking her mighty trident to forbid them. And

shall it be recorded in history that when the question is how to drive

Austria from Italy, when the natural logic of this undertaking might

present my own native country with a chance for that deliverance to

which England bade God-speed with a mighty outcry of sympathy rolling

like thunder from John O'Groat's to Land's End,--that deliverance for

which prayers have ascended, and are ascending still, to the Father of

mankind from millions of British hearts,--shall it be recorded in

history that at such a time, that under such circumstances, England

plunged into the horrors and calamities of war, nay, that she took

upon herself to make this war prolonged and universal, for the mere

purpose of upholding the inviolability of those rotten treaties in

favor of Austria, good for nothing on earth except to spread darkness

and to perpetuate servitude?

"There you have that Austria in Piedmont carrying on war in a manner

that recalls to memory the horrors of the long gone-by ages of

barbarism. You may read in the account furnished to the daily papers,

by their special correspondents, that the rigorously disciplined

soldiers of Austria were allowed to act the part of robbers let loose

upon an unoffending population, to offer violence to unprotected

families, to outrage daughters in the presence of their parents, and

to revel in such other savage crimes as the blood of civilized men

curdles at hearing and the tongue falters in relating. Such she was

always--always. These horrors but faintly reflect what Hungary had

to suffer from her in our late war. And shall it be said that England,

the home of gentlemen, sent her brave sons to shed their blood and to

stain their honor in fighting side by side with such a _soldatesca_ for

those highwayman compacts of 1815 to the profit of that Austria?"

With the treaty of Villafranca, July 11, 1859, Kossuth abandoned all

hope of the independence of Hungary. There can be no doubt that, from

the first, Napoleon intended to abandon Kossuth and his cause when he

had made use of his influence in England and in Italy for his own

purposes. The armistice and the peace with Austria were inaugurated by

Napoleon; and when, at the last moment, Emperor Francis Joseph raised

difficulties upon some points in the treaty, Prince Napoleon, who was

a party to the conference, threatened him with a revolution in Italy

and in Hungary. As to Kossuth, his only solace was in the reflection

that he had stayed the tendency to revolution on the soil of Hungary,

and thus his countrymen had been saved from new calamities.

Thenceforward Kossuth had before him only a life of exile; but he

reserved for his children the right, and he set before them the duty,

of returning to their native land.

I am giving large space to the visit of Kossuth in the belief that the

country is moving away from the doctrines of self-government as a

common right of mankind, as they were taught by him and as they were

accepted generally until we approached the end of the nineteenth

century.

In Faneuil Hall Kossuth made these striking remarks. Addressing

himself to America, he said: "You have prodigiously grown by your

freedom of seventy-five years; but what are seventy-five years to take

for a charter of immortality! No, no, my humble tongue tells the

record of eternal truth. A privilege never can be lasting. Liberty

restricted to one nation never can be sure. You may say 'we are the

prophets of God,' but you shall not say, 'God is only our God.' The

Jews have said so and the pride of Jerusalem lies in the dust! Our

Saviour taught all humanity to say _'Our Father in Heaven,'_ and his

Jerusalem is 'lasting to the end of days.'"

His style was that of a scholar who had mastered the English language

by the aid of books. His idiomatic expressions were few. In one of

his speeches when urging his audience to demand active intervention in

behalf of Hungary he attempted to use the phrase, "You should take time

by the forelock." At the last word he came to a dead pause and

substituted a twist of his own forelock with his right hand. He thus

commanded the hearty cheers of his hearers. It is probable that the

expedient was forced upon Kossuth, but the art of a skilled orator

might have suggested such a device.

Kossuth was small in stature, not more than five feet seven inches in

height, and weighing not more than one hundred and forty pounds. His

eyes and hair were black, his complexion dark, giving the impression

that he did not belong to the Caucasian race. His career was a

meteoric display in political oratory, such as the world does not often

witness. His integrity cannot be questioned, and for more than a third

of a century he submitted to a life of exile rather than accept a home

under a government which he thought was a usurpation. He gave to the

country new ideas, and his name and fame will be traditional for a long

period of time.

When Kossuth was in America he looked upon General Gorgey as a traitor

and he was so regarded by the friends of Hungary generally. In the

year 1885, however, a testimonial was presented to General Gorgey by

about thirty of the survivors of the contest of 1848, in which they

exonerated him from that charge. General Klapka was among the signers,

but the name of Kossuth did not appear upon the memorial.

At the end of the nineteenth century neither Massachusetts nor any

other State could or would accord to an exile for liberty the reception

that was given to Kossuth in 1852.

The expenses of his reception in Massachusetts, and of the

entertainment of his suite were paid by an appropriation from the

public treasury. He was given a public reception by the Governor of

the State, and a like reception was given to him by each House of the

Legislature in suspended session.

He was further honored by a review on Boston Common of a fourth part of

the organized militia of the commonwealth. The assemblages of citizens

were as large in proportion to the population of the State as were ever

gathered upon any other occasion.

Kossuth visited fifteen of the principal cities and towns of the State

and in each of them he delivered one address or more. His theme was

always the same, but his variety of argument and illustration seemed

inexhaustible. At Cambridge he urged the students to so use their

powers as to "promote their country's welfare and the rights of

humanity."

The Legislature adopted a series of resolutions of sympathy and in

condemnation of Austria and Russia. The opening resolution was in

these words: "Resolved, That every nation has the right to adopt such

form of government as may seem to it best calculated to advance those

ends for which all governments are in theory established." Can this

resolution command an endorsement at the beginning of the twentieth

century?

The States of Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont adopted resolutions of

sympathy with Hungary and of arraignment of Austria and Russia.

[* This chapter was published substantially as it appears here in the

_New England Magazine._ Copyright, 1903, by Warren F. Kellogg.]

XIX

THE COALITION AND THE STATE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1853

The controversy over slavery, which wrought a division in the Whig and

Democratic parties as early as the year 1848, led to a reorganization

of parties in 1849, under the names of Whig, Democratic, and Free-soil

parties, respectively. Of these the Whig Party was the largest, but

from 1849 to 1853 it was not able to command a majority vote in the

State, and at that time a majority vote was required in all elections.

There was a substantial agreement between the Democratic and Free-soil

parties upon the leading questions of State politics. Of these

questions a secret ballot law and the division of counties for the

election of senators, and the division of cities for the election of

representatives, were the chief. Under the law then existing the

county of Middlesex, for example, elected six senators, and each year

all were of the same party. Boston was a Whig city, and each year it

chose forty-six members of the House on one ballot, and always of the

Whig Party. What is now the system of elections was demanded by the

Democratic and Free-soil parties. The change was resisted by the

Whig Party. In 1849 I was nominated by the Democratic Party for the

office of Governor, and a resolution was adopted denouncing the

system of slavery. In that year coalitions were formed in counties and

in cities and towns between Democrats and Free-soilers, which

demonstrated the possibility of taking the State out of the hands of

the Whig Party, if the coalitions could be made universal. This was

accomplished in 1850, and in 1851 I became Governor by the vote of the

Legislature, and Mr. Sumner was elected to the United States Senate.

It was the necessity of the situation that the two offices should be

filled, and the necessity was not less mandatory that one of the

places should be filled by a Democrat, and the other by a member of the

Free-soil Party. There were expectations and conjectures, no doubt,

but until the Legislature assembled in 1851 no one knew what the

arrangement would be. I am sure that I had no assurance that either

place would be assigned to me. The leaders of the Free-soil Party were

resolute in demanding the place in the Senate, so that their views on

the subject of slavery might be there set forth, and there were many

Democrats who preferred the control of the State.

The coalition had control of the State for the political years of 1851

and 1852. An act was passed which provided for a secret ballot, and by

another act the question of a Constitutional Convention was submitted

to the voters of the State. In March, 1853, an election was held for

the choice of delegates. A majority of the delegates elected were

members of the Democratic and Free-soil parties.