into a flame in my boyish heart. The monument covers the bones of my
own kinsfolk; it was their blood which reddened the long, green grass
at Lexington. It was my own name which stands chiseled on that stone;
the tall Captain who marshaled his fellow farmers and mechanics into
stern array, and spoke such brave and dangerous words as opened the war
of American Independence,--the last to leave the field,--was my
father's father. I learned to read out of his Bible, and with a musket
he that day captured from the foe, I learned also another religious
lesson, that "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." I keep them
both "Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind," to use them both
"In the Sacred Cause of God and my Country."
THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE
Reprinted with the permission of Henry W. Grady, Jr.
BY HENRY W. GRADY
I went to Washington the other day, and I stood on the Capitol Hill; my
heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of my country's
Capitol, and the mist gathered in my eyes as I thought of its
tremendous significance, and the armies and the treasury, and the
judges and the President, and the Congress and the courts, and all that
was gathered there. And I felt that the sun in all its course could not
look down on a better sight than that majestic home of a republic that
had taught the world its best lessons of liberty. And I felt that if
honor and wisdom and justice abided therein, the world would at last
owe that great house in which the ark of the covenant of my country is
lodged, its final uplifting and its regeneration.
Two days afterward, I went to visit a friend in the country, a modest
man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple, unpretentious
house, set about with big trees, encircled in meadow and field rich
with the promise of harvest.
Inside was quiet, cleanliness, thrift, and comfort. Outside, there
stood my friend, the master, a simple, upright man, with no mortgage on
his roof, no lien on his growing crops, master of his own land and
master of himself. There was his old father, an aged, trembling man,
but happy in the heart and home of his son.
They started to their home, and as they reached the door the old mother
came with the sunset falling fair on her face, and lighting up her
deep, patient eyes, while her lips, trembling with the rich music of
her heart, bade her husband and son welcome to their home. Beyond was
the housewife, busy with her household cares, clean of heart and
conscience, the buckler and helpmeet of her husband. Down the lane came
the children, trooping home after the cows, seeking as truant birds do
the quiet of their home nest.
And I saw the night come down on that house, falling gently as the
wings of the unseen dove. And the old man--while a startled bird called
from the forest, and the trees were shrill with the cricket's cry, and
the stars were swarming in the sky--got the family around him, and,
taking the old Bible from the table, called them to their knees, the
little baby hiding in the folds of its mother's dress, while he closed
the record of that simple day by calling down God's benediction on that
family and on that home. And while I gazed, the vision of that marble
Capitol faded. Forgotten were its treasures and its majesty, and I
said, "Oh, surely here in the homes of the people are lodged at last
the strength and the responsibility of this government, the hope and
the promise of this republic."
GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT
BY CANON G. W. FARRAR
When Abraham Lincoln sat, book in hand, day after day, under the tree,
moving round it as the shadow crossed, absorbed in mastering his task;
when James Garfield rang the bell at Hiram Institute on the very stroke
of the hour and swept the schoolroom as faithfully as he mastered his
Greek lesson; when Ulysses Grant, sent with his team to meet some men
who came to load his cart with logs, and, finding no men, loaded the
cart with his own boy's strength, they showed in the conscientious
performance of duty the qualities which were to raise them to become
kings of men. When John Adams was told that his son, John Quincy Adams,
had been elected President of the United States, he said, "He has
always been laborious, child and man, from infancy."
But the youth was not destined to die in the deep valley of obscurity
and toil, in which it is the lot--and perhaps the happy lot--of most of
us to spend our little lives. The hour came; the man was needed. In
1861 there broke out that most terrible war of modern days. Grant
received a commission as Colonel of Volunteers, and in four years the
struggling toiler had been raised to the chief command of a vaster army
than has ever been handled by any mortal man. Who could have imagined
that four years would make that enormous difference? But it is often
so. The great men needed for some tremendous crisis have stepped often,
as it were, out of a door in the wall which no man had noticed; and,
unannounced, unheralded, without prestige, have made their way silently
and single-handed to the front. And there was no luck in it. It was a
work of inflexible faithfulness, of indomitable resolution, of
sleepless energy, and iron purpose and tenacity. In the campaigns at
Fort Donelson; in the desperate battle at Shiloh; in the siege of
Corinth; in battle after battle, in seige after seige; whatever Grant
had to do, he did it with his might. Other generals might fail--he
would not fail. He showed what a man could do whose will was strong. He
undertook, as General Sherman said of him, what no one else would have
ventured and his very soldiers began to reflect something of his
indomitable determination.
His sayings revealed the man. "I have nothing to do with opinions," he
said at the outset," and shall only deal with armed rebellion." "In
riding over the field," he said at Shiloh, "I saw that either side was
ready to give way, if the other showed a bold front. I took the
opportunity, and ordered an advance along the whole line." "No terms,"
he wrote to General Buckner at Fort Donelson (and it is pleasant to
know that General Buckner stood as a warm friend beside his dying bed);
"no terms other than unconditional surrender can be accepted." "My
headquarters," he wrote from Vicksburg, "will be on the field." With a
military genius which embraced the vastest plans while attending to the
smallest details, he defeated, one after another, every great general
of the Confederates except Stonewall Jackson. The Southerners felt that
he held them as in the grasp of a vise; that this man could neither be
arrested nor avoided. For all this he has been severely blamed. He
ought not to be blamed. He has been called a butcher, which is grossly
unjust. He loved peace; he hated bloodshed; his heart was generous and
kind. His orders were to save lives, to save treasure, but at all costs
to save his country--and he did save his country.
After the surrender at Appomattox Court House, the war was over. He had
put his hand to the plow and had looked not back. He had made blow
after blow, each following where the last had struck; he had wielded
like a hammer the gigantic forces at his disposal, and had smitten
opposition into the dust. It was a mighty work, and he had done it
well. Surely history has shown that for the future destinies of a
mighty nation it was a necessary and blessed work!
AMERICAN COURAGE
From the copyrighted print in "A Modern Reader and Speaker," by George
Riddle, with the permission of Duffield and Company, New York,
publishers.
BY SHERMAN HOAR
I fear we undervalue the devotion to country which comes from a
contemplation of what has been done and suffered in her name. I feel
that we teach those who are to make or mar the future of this nation
too much of what has been done elsewhere, and too little of what has
been done here. Courage is the characteristic of no one land or time.
The world's history is full of it and the lessons it teaches. American
courage, however, is of this nation; it is ours, and if the finest
national spirit is worth the creating; if patriotism is still a quality
to be engendered in our youth; if love of country is still to be a
strong power for good, those acts of devotion and of heroic personal
sacrifice with which our history is filled, are worthy of earnest
study, of continued contemplation, and of perpetual consideration.
"Let him who will, sing deeds done well across the sea,
Here, lovely Land, men bravely live and die for Thee."
The particular example I desire to speak about is of that splendid
quality of courage which dares everything not for self or country, but
for an enemy. It is of that kind which is called into existence not by
dreams of glory, or by love of land, but by the highest human desire;
the desire to mitigate suffering in those who are against us.
In the afternoon of the day after the battle of Fredericksburg, General
Kershaw of the Confederate army was sitting in his quarters when
suddenly a young South Carolinian named Kirkland entered, and, after
the usual salutations, said: "General, I can't stand this." The
general, thinking the statement a little abrupt, asked what it was he
could not stand, and Kirkland replied: "Those poor fellows out yonder
have been crying for water all day, and I have come to you to ask if I
may go and give them some." The "poor fellows" were Union soldiers who
lay wounded between the Union and Confederate lines. To go to them,
Kirkland must go beyond the protection of the breastworks and expose
himself to a fire from the Union sharpshooters, who, so far during that
day, had made the raising above the Confederate works of so much as a
head an act of extreme danger. General Kershaw at first refused to
allow Kirkland to go on his errand, but at last, as the lad persisted
in his request, declined to forbid him, leaving the responsibility for
action with the boy himself. Kirkland, in perfect delight, rushed from
the general's quarters to the front, where he gathered all the canteens
he could carry, filled them with water, and going over the breastworks,
started to give relief to his wounded enemies. No sooner was he in the
open field than our sharpshooters, supposing he was going to plunder
their comrades, began to fire at him. For some minutes he went about
doing good under circumstances of most imminent personal danger. Soon,
however, those to whom he was taking the water recognized the character
of his undertaking. All over the field men sat up and called to him,
and those too hurt to raise themselves, held up their hands and
beckoned to him. Soon our sharpshooters, who luckily had not hit him,
saw that he was indeed an Angel of Mercy, and stopped their fire, and
two armies looked with admiration at the young man's pluck and loving-
kindness. With a beautiful tenderness, Kirkland went about his work,
giving of the water to all, and here and there placing a knapsack
pillow under some poor wounded fellow's head, or putting in a more
comfortable position some shattered leg or arm. Then he went back to
his own lines and the fighting went on. Tell me of a more exalted
example of personal courage and self-denial than that of that
Confederate soldier, or one which more clearly deserves the name of
Christian fortitude. In that terrible War of the Rebellion, Kirkland
gave up his life for a mistaken cause in the battle of Chickamauga, but
I cannot help thanking God that, in our reunited country, we are joint
heirs with the men from the South in the glory and inspiration that
come from such heroic deeds as his.
THE MINUTEMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
Reprinted, with permission, from "The Orations and Addresses of George
William Curtis," Vol. III. Copyright, 1894, by Harper and Brothers.
BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
The Minuteman of the Revolution! And who was he? He was the old, the
middle-aged, and the young. He was the husband and the father, who left
his plow in the furrow and his hammer on the bench, and marched to die
or be free. He was the son and lover, the plain, shy youth of the
singing school and the village choir, whose heart beat to arms for his
country, and who felt, though he could not say with the old English
cavalier:--
"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more."
He was the man who was willing to pour out his life's blood for a
principle. Intrenched in his own honesty, the king's gold could not buy
him; enthroned in the love of his fellow citizens, the king's writ
could not take him; and when, on the morning of Lexington, the king's
troops marched to seize him, his sublime faith saw, beyond the clouds
of the moment, the rising sun of the America we behold, and, careless
of himself, mindful only of his country, he exultingly exclaimed, "Oh,
what a glorious morning!" And then, amid the flashing hills, the
ringing woods, the flaming roads, he smote with terror the haughty
British column, and sent it shrinking, bleeding, wavering, and reeling
through the streets of the village, panic-stricken and broken.
Him we gratefully recall to-day; him we commit in his immortal youth to
the reverence of our children. And here amid these peaceful fields,--
here in the heart of Middlesex County, of Lexington and Concord and
Bunker Hill, stand fast, Son of Liberty, as the minuteman stood at the
old North Bridge. But should we or our descendants, false to justice or
humanity, betray in any way their cause, spring into life as a hundred
years ago, take one more step, descend, and lead us, as God led you in
saving America, to save the hopes of man.
No hostile fleet for many a year has vexed the waters of our coast; nor
is any army but our own likely to tread our soil. Not such are our
enemies to-day. They do not come, proudly stepping to the drumbeat,
their bayonets flashing in the morning sun. But wherever party spirit
shall strain the ancient guarantees of freedom; or bigotry and
ignorance shall lay their fatal hands on education; or the arrogance of
caste shall strike at equal rights; or corruption shall poison the very
springs of national life,--there, Minuteman of Liberty, are your
Lexington Green and Concord Bridge. And as you love your country and
your kind, and would have your children rise up and call you blessed,
spare not the enemy. Over the hills, out of the earth, down from the
clouds, pour in resistless might. Fire from every rock and tree, from
door and window, from hearthstone and chamber. Hang upon his flank from
morn to sunset, and so, through a land blazing with indignation, hurl
the hordes of ignorance and corruption and injustice back--back in
utter defeat and ruin.
PAUL REVERE'S RIDE
Reprinted with permission from "The Orations and Addresses of George
William Curtis," Vol. III. Copyright 1894, by Harper and Brothers.
BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
On Tuesday, April 18, 1775, Gage, the royal governor, who had decided
to send a force to Concord to destroy the stores, picketed the roads
from Boston into Middlesex, to prevent any report of the intended march
from spreading into the country. But the very air was electric. In the
tension of the popular mind, every sound and sight was significant. In
the afternoon, one of the governor's grooms strolled into a stable
where John Ballard was cleaning a horse. John Ballard was a son of
liberty; and when the groom idly remarked in nervous English "about
what would occur to-morrow," John's heart leaped and his hand shook,
and, asking the groom to finish cleaning the horse, he ran to a friend,
who carried the news straight to Paul Revere.
Gage thought that his secret had been kept, but Lord
Percy, who had heard the people say on the Common that
the troops would miss their aim, undeceived him. Gage
instantly ordered that no one should leave the town. But
Dr. Warren was before him, and, as the troops crossed the
river, Paul Revere was rowing over the river farther down
to Charlestown, having agreed with his friend, Robert
Newman, to show lanterns from the belfry of the Old North
Church,--
"One, if by land, and two, if by sea,"
as a signal of the march of the British.
It was a brilliant April night. The winter had been unusually mild and
the spring very forward. The hills were already green; the early grain
waved in the fields, and the air was sweet with blossoming orchards.
Under the cloudless moon the soldiers silently marched, and Paul Revere
swiftly rode, galloping through Medford and West Cambridge, rousing
every house as he went, spurring for Lexington and Hancock and Adams,
and evading the British patrols, who had been sent out to stop the
news.
Stop the news! Already the village church bells were beginning to ring
the alarm, as the pulpits beneath them had been ringing for many a
year. In the awakening houses lights flashed from window to window.
Drums beat faintly far away and on every side. Signal guns flashed and
echoed. The watchdogs barked; the cocks crew.
Stop the news! Stop the sunrise! The murmuring night trembled with the
summons so earnestly expected, so dreaded, so desired. And as, long
ago, the voice rang out at midnight along the Syrian shore, wailing
that great Pan was dead, but in the same moment the choiring angels
whispered, "Glory to God in the highest, for Christ is born," so, if
the stern alarm of that April night seemed to many a wistful and loyal
heart to portend the passing glory of British dominion and the tragical
chance of war, it whispered to them with prophetic inspiration, "Good
will to men; America is born!"
There is a tradition that long before the troops reached Lexington an
unknown horseman thundered at the door of Captain Joseph Robbins in
Acton, waking every man and woman and babe in the cradle, shouting that
the regulars were marching to Concord and that the rendezvous was the
old North Bridge. Captain Robbins' son, a boy of ten years, heard the
summons in the garret where he lay, and in a few minutes was on his
father's old mare, a young Paul Revere, galloping along the road to
rouse Captain Isaac Davis, who commanded the minutemen of Acton. The
company assembled at his shop, formed, and marched a little way, when
he halted them and returned for a moment to his house. He said to his
wife, "Take good care of the children," kissed her, turned to his men,
gave the order to march, and saw his home no more. Such was the history
of that night in how many homes!
The hearts of those men and women of Middlesex might break, but they
could not waver. They had counted the cost. They knew what and whom
they served; and, as the midnight summons came, they started up and
answered, "Here am I!"
THE ARTS OF THE ANCIENTS
From "Speeches and Lectures," with the permission of Lothrop, Lee and
Shepard, Boston, publishers.
BY WENDELL PHILLIPS
We have a pitying estimate, a tender compassion, for the narrowness,
ignorance, and darkness of the bygone ages. We seem to ourselves not
only to monopolize, but to have begun, the era of light. In other
words, we are all running over with a fourth-day-of-July spirit of
self-content. I am often reminded of the German whom the English poet
Coleridge met at Frankfort. He always took off his hat with profound
respect when he ventured to speak of himself. It seems to me, the
American people might be painted in the chronic attitude of taking off
its hat to itself.
Considering their employment of the mechanical forces, and their
movement of large masses from the earth, we know that the Egyptians had
the five, seven, or three mechanical powers; but we cannot account for
the multiplication and increase necessary to perform the wonders they
accomplished.
There is a book telling how Domenico Fontana of the sixteenth century
set up the Egyptian obelisk at Rome on end, in the Papacy of Sixtus V.
Wonderful! Yet the Egyptians quarried that stone, and carried it a
hundred and fifty miles, and the Romans brought it seven hundred and
fifty miles, and never said a word about it.
Take canals. The Suez canal absorbs half its receipts in cleaning out
the sand which fills it continually, and it is not yet known whether it
is a pecuniary success. The ancients built a canal at right angles to
ours; because they knew it would not fill up if built in that
direction, and they knew such a one as ours would. There were
magnificent canals in the land of the Jews, with perfectly arranged
gates and sluices. We have only just begun to understand ventilation
properly for our houses; yet late experiments at the Pyramids in Egypt
show that those Egyptian tombs were ventilated in the most perfect and
scientific manner.
Again, cement is modern, for the ancients dressed and joined their
stones so closely, that, in buildings thousands of years old the thin
blade of a penknife cannot be forced between them. The railroad dates
back to Egypt. Arago has claimed that they had a knowledge of steam. A
painting has been discovered of a ship full of machinery, and a could
only be accounted for by supposing the motive power to have been steam.
Bramah acknowledges that he took the idea of his celebrated lock from
an ancient Egyptian pattern. De Tocqueville says that there was no
social question that was not discussed to rags in Egypt.
"Well," say you, "Franklin invented the lightning rod." I have no doubt
he did; but years before his invention, and before muskets were
invented, the old soldiers on guard on the towers used Franklin's
invention to keep guard with; and if a spark passed between them and
the spearhead, they ran and bore the warning of the state and condition
of affairs. After that you will admit that Benjamin Franklin was not
the only one that knew of the presence of electricity, and the
advantages derived from its use. Solomon's Temple you will find was
situated on an exposed point of the hill: the temple was so lofty that
it was often in peril, and was guarded by a system exactly like that of
Benjamin Franklin.
Well, I may tell you a little of ancient manufactures. The Duchess of
Burgundy took a necklace from the neck of a mummy, and wore it to a
ball given at the Tuileries; and everybody said they thought it was the
newest thing there. A Hindoo princess came into court; and her father,
seeing her, said, "Go home, you are not decently covered,--go home;"
and she said, "Father, I have seven suits on;" but the suits were of
muslin so thin that the king could see through them, A Roman poet says,
"the girl was in the poetic dress of the country." I fancy the French
would be rather astonished at this. Four hundred and fifty years ago
the first spinning machine was introduced into Europe. I have evidence
to show that it made its first appearance two thousand years before.
Why have I groped among these ashes? I have told you these facts to
show you that we have not invented everything--that we do not
monopolize the encyclopedia. The past had knowledge. But it was the
knowledge of the classes, not of the masses. "The beauty that was
Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" were exclusive, the possession
of the few. The science of Egypt was amazing; but it meant privilege--
the privilege of the king and the priest. It separated royalty and
priesthood from the people, and was the engine of oppression. When
Cambyses came down from Persia and thundered across Egypt, treading out
royalty and priesthood, he trampled out at the same time civilization
itself.
The distinctive glory of the nineteenth century is that it distributes
knowledge; that it recognizes the divine will, which is that every man
has a right to know whatever may be serviceable to himself or to his
fellows; that it makes the church, the schoolhouse, and the town hall,
its symbols, and humanity its care. This democratic spirit will animate
our arts with immortality, if God means that they shall last.
A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY
An extract from "A Man Without a Country"
BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE