enchained with garlands, fractious at the shouts that ran along the
line, increasing from the clapping of children clothed in white,
standing on the steps of the Capitol, to the tumultuous vociferation of
hundreds of thousands of enraptured multitudes, crying "Huzza! Huzza!"
Gleaming muskets, thundering parks of artillery, rumbling pontoon
wagons, ambulances from whose wheels seemed to sound out the groans of
the crushed and the dying that they had carried. These men came from
balmy Minnesota, those from Illinois prairies. These were often hummed
to sleep by the pines of Oregon, those were New England lumbermen.
Those came out of the coal-shafts of Pennsylvania. Side by side in one
great cause, consecrated through fire and storm and darkness, brothers
in peril, on their way home from Chancellorsville and Kenesaw Mountain
and Fredericksburg, in lines that seemed infinite they passed on.
We gazed and wept and wondered, lifting up our heads to see if the end
had come, but no! Looking from one end of that long avenue to the
other, we saw them yet in solid column, battery front, host beyond
host, wheel to wheel, charger to charger, nostril to nostril, coming as
it were from under the Capitol. Forward! Forward! Their bayonets,
caught in the sun, glimmered and flashed and blazed, till they seemed
like one long river of silver, ever and anon changed into a river of
fire. No end of the procession, no rest for the eyes. We turned our
heads from the scene, unable longer to look. We felt disposed to stop
our ears, but still we heard it, marching, marching; tramp, tramp,
tramp. But hush,--uncover every head! Here they pass, the remnant of
ten men of a full regiment. Silence! Widowhood and orphanage look on
and wring their hands. But wheel into line, all ye people! North,
South, East, West--all decades, all centuries, all millenniums!
Forward, the whole line! Huzza! Huzza!
A RETURN IN DEFEAT
From "The New South," with the permission of Henry W. Grady, Junior
BY HENRY W. GRADY
Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master hand, the picture of your
returning armies. He has told you how, in the pomp and circumstance of
war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread,
reading their glory in a nation's eyes! Will you bear with me while I
tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late
war? An army that marched home in defeat and not in victory--in pathos
and not in splendor, but in glory that equaled yours, and to hearts as
loving as ever welcomed heroes home. Let me picture to you the footsore
Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the
parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and
faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865.
Think of him, as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want
and wounds, having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings
the hands of his comrades in silence, and, lifting his tear-stained and
pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia
hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful
journey. What does he find?--let me ask you who went to your homes
eager to find, in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for
four years' sacrifice--what does he find when, having followed the
battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half
so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and
beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves
free, his stock killed, his barn empty, his trade destroyed, his money
worthless; his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away;
his people without law or legal status; his comrades slain, and the
burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very
traditions gone; without money, credit, employment, material training;
and besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met
human intelligence--the establishing of a status for the vast body of
his liberated slaves.
What does he do--this hero in gray, with a heart of gold? Does he sit
down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had
stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin
was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The
soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had
charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and the fields that ran
red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June;
women reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their
husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a
garment, gave their hands to work. There was little bitterness in all
this. Cheerfulness and frankness prevailed. I want to say to General
Sherman--who is considered an able man in our parts, though some people
think he is kind of careless about fire--that from the ashes he left us
in 1864 we have raised a brave and beautiful city; that somehow or
other we have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our
homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory.
But in all this what have we accomplished? What is the sum of our work?
We have found that in the general summary the free negro counts more
than he did as a slave. We have planted the schoolhouse on the hilltop
and made it free to white and black. We have sowed towns and cities in
the place of theories, and put business above politics.
Above all, we know that we have achieved in these "piping times of
peace" a fuller independence for the South than that which our fathers
sought to win in the forum by their eloquence, or compel on the field
by their swords.
EXPRESSION BY ACTION
IN OUR FOREFATHERS' DAY
From a speech before the New England Society of New York, December,
1886
BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE
I must not introduce a new habit into these New England dinners, and
confine myself to the one theme. For eighty-one years your speakers
have been accustomed to make the toast announced the point from which
they start, but to which they never return. So I shall not stick to my
text, but only be particular to have all I say my own, and not make the
mistake of a minister whose sermon was a patchwork from a variety of
authors, to whom he gave no credit. There was an intoxicated wag in the
audience who had read about everything, and he announced the authors as
the minister went on. The clergyman gave an extract without any credit
to the author, and the man in the audience cried out: "That's Jeremy
Taylor." The speaker went on and gave an extract from another author
without credit for it, and the man in the audience said: "That is John
Wesley." The minister gave an extract from another without credit for
it, and the man in the audience said: "That is George Whitefield." When
the minister lost his patience and cried out, "Shut up, you old fool!"
the man in the audience replied: "That is your own."
Well, what about this Forefathers' Day? In Brooklyn they say the
Landing of the Pilgrims was December the 21st; in New York you say it
was December the 22d. You are both right. Not through the specious and
artful reasoning you have sometimes indulged in, but by a little
historical incident that seems to have escaped your attention. You see,
the Forefathers landed in the morning of December the 21st, but about
noon that day a pack of hungry wolves swept down the bleak American
beach looking for a New England dinner and a band of savages out for a
tomahawk picnic hove in sight, and the Pilgrim Fathers thought it best
for safety and warmth to go on board the Mayflower and pass the night.
And during the night there came up a strong wind blowing off shore that
swept the Mayflower from its moorings clear out to sea, and there was a
prospect that our Forefathers, having escaped oppression in foreign
lands, would yet go down under an oceanic tempest. But the next day
they fortunately got control of their ship and steered her in, and the
second time the Forefathers stepped ashore.
Brooklyn celebrated the first landing; New York the second landing. So
I say Hail! Hail! to both celebrations, for one day, anyhow, could not
do justice to such a subject; and I only wish I could have kissed the
blarney stone of America, which is Plymouth Rock, so that I might have
done justice to this subject. Ah, gentlemen, that Mayflower was the ark
that floated the deluge of oppression, and Plymouth Rock was the Ararat
on which it landed.
But let me say that these Forefathers were of no more importance than
the Foremothers. As I understand it, there were eight of them--that is,
four fathers and four mothers--from whom all these illustrious New
Englanders descended.
Now I was not born in New England, but though not born in New England,
in my boyhood I had a New England schoolmaster, whom I shall never
forget. He taught us our A, B, C's. "What is that?" "I don't know,
sir." "That's A" (with a slap). "What is that?" "I don't know, sir."
(With a slap)--"That is B." I tell you, a boy that learned his letters
in that way never forgot them; and if the boy was particularly dull,
then this New England schoolmaster would take him over his knee, and
then the boy got his information from both directions.
But all these things aside, no one sitting at these tables has higher
admiration for the Pilgrim Fathers than I have--the men who believed
in two great doctrines, which are the foundation of every religion that
is worth anything: namely, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
Man--these men of backbone and endowed with that great and magnificent
attribute of stick-to-it-iveness.
CASSIUS AGAINST CĘSAR
From "Julius Cęsar"
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus,
As well as I do know your outward favor.
Well, honor is the subject of my story.--
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but, for my single self,
I had as lief not be as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
I was born free as Cęsar; so were you:
We both have fed as well; and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he:
For once, upon a raw and gusty day,
The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,
Cęsar said to me, "Dar'st thou, Cassius, now
Leap in with me into this angry flood,
And swim to yonder point?" Upon the word,
Accoutred as I was, I plunged in,
And bade him follow: so, indeed, he did.
The torrent roar'd, and we did buffet it
With lusty sinews, throwing it aside
And stemming it with hearts of controversy;
But ere we could arrive the point propos'd,
Cęsar cried, "Help me, Cassius, or I sink!"
I, as Aeneas, our great ancestor,
Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder
The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber
Did I the tired Cęsar. And this man
Is now become a god; and Cassius is
A wretched creature, and must bend his body,
If Cęsar carelessly but nod on him.
He had a fever when he was in Spain,
And, when the fit was on him, I did mark
How he did shake: 'tis true, this god did shake:
His coward lips did from their color fly;
And that same eye, whose bend doth awe the world,
Did lose his luster: I did hear him groan:
Ay, and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans
Mark him, and write his speeches in their books,
Alas, it cried, "Give me some drink, Titinius,"
As a sick girl. Ye gods, it doth amaze me
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone.
II
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates;
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Cęsar: what should be in that "Cęsar"?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Cęsar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Cęsar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was fam'd with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talked of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
O, you and I have heard our fathers say,
There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.
THE SPIRIT OF THE SOUTH
From "The New South," with the permission of Henry W. Grady Junior
BY HENRY W. GRADY
The New South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the
breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her
face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and
prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the
people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the
expanding horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because
in the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed and her
brave armies were beaten.
This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South has
nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle
between the States was war and not rebellion, revolution and not
conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should
be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own
convictions if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South
has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument
that crowns its central hills--a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its
shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men, that of a
brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all
the glories of New England--from Plymouth Rock all the way--would I
exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of
that shaft I shall send my children's children to reverence him who
ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the
shadow of that memory, which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I
say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life
was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am
glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in his Almighty
hand, and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil--the
American Union saved from the wreck of war.
This message, Mr. President, comes to you from consecrated ground.
Every foot of the soil about the city in which I live is sacred as a
battle ground of the Republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed
to you by the blood of your brothers, sacred soil to all of us, rich
with memories that make us purer and stronger and better, speaking an
eloquent witness in its white peace and prosperity to the indissoluble
union of American States and the imperishable brotherhood of the
American people.
Now what answer has New England to this message? Will she permit the
prejudices of war to remain in the hearts of the conquerors, when it
has died in the hearts of the conquered? Will she transmit this
prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts, which never
felt the generous ardor of conflict, it may perpetuate itself? Will she
withhold, save in strained courtesy, the hand which straight from his
soldier's heart Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? Will she make the
vision of a restored and happy people, which gathered above the couch
of your dying captain, [Footnote: General Ulysses S. Grant.] filling
his heart with grace, touching his lips with praise and glorifying his
path to the grave; will she make this vision on which the last sigh of
his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and a delusion? If
she does, the South, never abject in asking for comradeship, must
accept with dignity a refusal; but if she does not, if she accepts in
frankness and sincerity this message of good will and friendship, then
will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this very society forty
years ago amid tremendous applause, be verified in its fullest and
final sense, when he said: "Standing hand to hand and clasping hands,
we should remain united as we have been for sixty years, citizens of
the same country, members of the same government, united, all united
now and united forever. There have been difficulties, contentions, and
controversies, but I tell you that in my judgment,--
"'Those opposed eyes,
Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in th' intestine shock,
Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,
March all one way.'"
SOMETHING RANKLING HERE
From the reply to Hayne, in the United States Senate, January, 1830.
Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Publishers of "The Great Speeches
and Orations of Daniel Webster"
BY DANIEL WEBSTER
The gentleman, sir, in declining to postpone the debate, told the
Senate, with the emphasis of his hand upon his heart, that there was
something rankling _here_ which he wished to relieve. It would
not, Mr. President, be safe for the honorable member to appeal to those
around him upon the question whether he did in fact make use of that
word. But he may have been unconscious of it. At any rate, it is enough
that he disclaims it. But still, with or without the use of that
particular word, he had yet something _here_, he said, of which he
wished to rid himself by an immediate reply. In this respect, sir, I
have a great advantage over the honorable gentleman. There is nothing
_here_, sir, which gives me the slightest uneasiness; neither
fear, nor anger, nor that which is sometimes more troublesome than
either, the consciousness of having been in the wrong. There is
nothing, either originating _here_, or now received _here_ by
the gentleman's shot. Nothing originating here, for I had not the
slightest feeling of unkindness towards the honorable member. Some
passages, it is true, had occurred since our acquaintance in this body,
which I could have wished might have been otherwise; but I had used
philosophy and forgotten them. I paid the honorable member the
attention of listening with respect to his first speech; and when he
sat down, though surprised, and I must even say astonished, at some of
his opinions, nothing was farther from my intention than to commence
any personal warfare. Through the whole of the few remarks I made in
answer, I avoided, studiously and carefully, everything which I thought
possible to be construed into disrespect. And, sir, while there is thus
nothing originating _here_ which I wished at any time or now wish
to discharge, I must repeat also, that nothing has been received
_here_ which _rankles_, or in any way gives me annoyance. I
will not accuse the honorable member of violating the rules of
civilized war; I will not say that he poisoned his arrows. But whether
his shafts were or were not dipped in that which would have caused
rankling if they had reached their destination, there was not, as it
happened, quite strength enough in the bow to bring them to their mark.
If he wishes now to gather up those shafts, he must look for them
elsewhere; they will not be found fixed and quivering in the object at
which they were aimed.
But the gentleman inquires why _he_ was made the object of such a
reply. Why was _he_ singled out? If an attack has been made on the
East, he, he assures us, did not begin it; it was made by the gentleman
from Missouri. Sir, I answered the gentleman's speech because I
happened to hear it; and because, also, I chose to give an answer to
that speech, which, if unanswered, I thought most likely to produce
injurious impressions. I did not stop to inquire who was the original
drawer of the bill. I found a responsible indorser before me, and it
was my purpose to hold him liable, and to bring him to his just
responsibility, without delay.
FAITH IN THE PEOPLE
BY JOHN BRIGHT
Our opponents have charged us with being the promoters of a dangerous
excitement. They have the effrontery to say that I am the friend of
public disorder. I am one of the people. Surely, if there be one thing
in a free country more clear than another, it is, that any one of the
people may speak openly to the people. If I speak to the people of
their rights, and indicate to them the way to secure them,--if I speak
of their danger to the monopolists of power,--am I not a wise
counsellor, both to the people and to their rulers?
Suppose I stood at the foot of Vesuvius, or Aetna, and, seeing a hamlet
or a homestead planted on its slope, I said to the dwellers in that
hamlet, or in that homestead, "You see that vapor which ascends from
the summit of the mountain. That vapor may become a dense, black smoke,
that will obscure the sky. You see the trickling of lava from the
crevices in the side of the mountain. That trickling of lava may become
a river of fire. You hear that muttering in the bowels of the mountain.
That muttering may become a bellowing thunder, the voice of violent
convulsion, that may shake half a continent. You know that at your feet
is the grave of great cities, for which there is no resurrection, as
histories tell us that dynasties and aristocracies have passed away,
and their names have been known no more forever."
If I say this to the dwellers upon the slope of the mountain, and if
there comes hereafter a catastrophe which makes the world to shudder,
am I responsible for that catastrophe? I did not build the mountain, or
fill it with explosive materials. I merely warned the men that were in
danger. So, now, it is not I that am stimulating men to the violent
pursuit of their acknowledged constitutional rights.
The class which has hitherto ruled in this country has failed
miserably. It revels in power and wealth, whilst at its feet, a
terrible peril for its future, lies the multitude which it has
neglected. If a class has failed, let us try the nation.
That is our faith, that is our purpose, that is our cry. Let us try the
nation. This it is which has called together these countless numbers of
the people to demand a change; and from these gatherings, sublime in
their vastness and their resolution, I think I see, as it were, above
the hilltops of time, the glimmerings of the dawn of a better and a
nobler day for the country and the people that I love so well.
THE FRENCH AGAINST HAYTI
From a lecture, "Toussaint L'Ouverture," with the permission of
Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, Boston, publishers
BY WENDELL PHILLIPS
You remember when Bonaparte returned from Elba, and Louis XVIII sent an
army against him, Bonaparte descended from his carriage, opened his
coat, offering his breast to their muskets, and saying, "Frenchmen, it
is the Emperor!" and they ranged themselves behind him, his soldiers
shouting, "Vive l'Empereur!" That was in 1815. Twelve years before,
Toussaint, finding that four of his regiments had deserted and gone to
Leclerc, drew his sword, flung it on the grass, went across the field
to them, folded his arms, and said, "Children, can you point a bayonet
at me?" The blacks fell on their knees, praying his pardon. It was
against such a man that Napoleon sent his army, giving to General
Leclerc, the husband of his beautiful sister Pauline, thirty thousand
of his best troops, with orders to reintroduce slavery. Among these
soldiers came all of Toussaint's old mulatto rivals and foes.
Holland lent sixty ships. England promised by special message to be
neutral; and you know neutrality means sneering at freedom, and sending
arms to tyrants. England promised neutrality, and the black looked out
on the whole civilized world marshaled against him. America, full of
slaves, of course was hostile. Only the Yankee sold him poor muskets at
a very high price. Mounting his horse, and riding to the eastern end of
the island, Samana, he looked out on a sight such as no native had ever
seen before. Sixty ships of the line, crowded by the best soldiers of
Europe, rounded the point. They were soldiers who had never yet met an
equal, whose tread, like Cęsar's, had shaken Europe,--soldiers who had
scaled the Pyramids, and planted the French banners on the Walls of
Rome. He looked a moment, counted the flotilla, let the reins fall on
the neck of his horse, and turning to Christophe, exclaimed: "All
France is come to Hayti; they can only come to make us slaves; and we
are lost!" He then recognized the only mistake of his life,--his
confidence in Bonaparte, which had led him to disband his army.