_Mr. President, Sons and Daughters of Unity, Friends and Fellow
Citizens_:
We celebrate today the birth of a nation and the beginning of a town.
One hundred and twenty-eight years ago today was born the United States
of America. One hundred years ago was held the first town meeting of
Unity. To the hasty thinker, the connection between the events that we
commemorate may seem remote and obscure. But every student of history
knows that the impulse of the men who planned this double commemoration
was sane and true to fact.
The nation and the town! Both are representatives of popular
government. Both are products of a movement whose origin is lost in the
mists of antiquity, but a movement whose genuineness and significance
arrested the attention of Tacitus 2000 years ago as he gazed with
wonder upon the independent communal life of our ancestors ere yet they
had left the forests of Germany.
Of the progress of this movement toward representative government
until it issued in the destruction of feudalism and the dominance of
the people, through their House of Commons, over vested rights and
hereditary privileges, over the long endured self-assertion of lords
temporal and lords spiritual, we are told in the pages of Macaulay,
Hallam and Greene.
But we all know that it has had its splendid and complete culmination
upon this continent. And it began upon these shores with local
self-government. We know, also, that of the two variations of the old
English stock, the country in the south and the town in New England,
the town has proved itself the true exponent and embodiment of the
democratic ideal. Barring some perversions and inequalities due to
the narrowness and bigotry of the times, town government as set up in
Plymouth, Salem, Lynn, Dorchester, Newton and Boston, was the beginning
of that government of the people, by the people and for the people,
“which shall not perish from the earth.”
First the town, then the state, and finally the nation. And the nation
existed in the town as the oak exists in the acorn. As settlement after
settlement was formed and sent off its hardy children to make new
beginnings in the wilderness, it was simply inevitable that the towns
when developed and organized should combine to form the state; and in
spite of local pride and short-sighted views of public policy, it was
equally inevitable that the states should in due time combine to form
the nation.
In the town was the genesis both of state and of nation. It was the
town that first inured men to the atmosphere of self-government, that
produced a body of genuine free men, disciplined them to healthy
self-control, and taught them to subordinate individual aims to the
public welfare. It was the town that awakened and developed public
spirit, patriotic pride, and generous self-denial. It was in the rude
legislation of the town that the talent for leadership was evoked
and developed. The men who had faced and had solved the problems of
building roads, of caring for the poor, of maintaining order, and
of promoting health, intelligence and morality under the conditions
presented in the administration of the town became the men capable of
dealing with the larger and more complicated problems of the state and
the nation. John and Samuel Adams, Hancock, Warren and Otis did not
suddenly present themselves as leaders of the people in the struggle
against British tyranny and in the still sharper struggle that followed
in the building of the nation. They were already picked men, tried
and approved as wise counsellors and able executives in the life and
management of the town.
So in each of the original New England States. So in Maine when the
district of Massachusetts had attained to the dignity of statehood.
The men who came to the front and who proved themselves equal to the
discussion and decision of different questions were the men who had
been trained amid the humbler exigencies of the town. Nine-tenths of
the men whose names appear upon our lengthening list of governors,
congressmen and United States senators were born and bred and prepared
for leadership amid the life and activities of the country town. This
is no less true of the educators, journalists, speakers, writers,
jurists, and thinkers that have moulded public opinion and shaped
the destinies of our country. Most of the early champions of the
anti-slavery cause had breathed the pure air and felt the quickening
life of the country town.
We cannot forget that the first martyr to that cause was born and
reared but a few miles hence in a town adjoining our own. The poets
whose genius has brought lustre to our literature were first aroused
and inspired while living the simple life of the town. Whittier and
Longfellow were country boys; and Lowell tells us that in his youth
and young manhood, Cambridge was only a village. Horace Greeley was
born in a humble town of New Hampshire, prepared for his great career
as journalist in the woods of Vermont, and disciplined for his great
editorial responsibilities of after years by hard apprenticeship in
the service of rural printing offices and country newspapers. So with
Seward. So before Seward with Webster. So with the political giants of
our own State of Maine, with Fessenden, the Hamlins and the Morrills.
These and others like them were the men who formed public opinion, and
by their courage, conviction, earnestness and persistence brought on
the irrepressible conflict that issued in the war for the Union, the
downfall of slavery, and the nationalization of freedom. The men who by
their valor on the battlefield and their wise and courageous leadership
in Congress saved our Union were not during their childhood and youth
clothed in soft raiment or brought up in the enervating atmosphere
of the city. It is not too much to say that we owe to the town and
the moulding, educating and inspiring influences of its healthy and
straightforward methods of government, the preservation of our nation
and its position as the leader in the civilization of the world.
But if the town conditioned the nation, no less did the nation
condition the town. No less is it essential to the very existence
of the town today. The towns found themselves obliged to unite to
form the state; the states to form the United States. The towns had
early learned their inter-dependence; the states more slowly learned
theirs. Today no one of our forty-five states would dream of a separate
independence. Imagine if you can the condition of forty-five or fifty
sovereign and separate nationalities within the territory of the
United States--forty-five to fifty distinct monetary, tariff, postal
and commercial systems, with custom houses and customs officers all
along the boundaries of each, with conflicting charters for our great
industrial organizations, with different currency for each sovereignty,
with endless jealousies, bickerings, strifes, reprisals, contentions,
and conflicts. Compare these nameless and indefinable aggregations of
people with the nation that now presents its solid front to the world.
How long would one of these petty nationalities be proof against the
cupidity of the great powers of Europe?
And what would citizenship mean under such conditions? Today the
humblest American finds safety at home and protection abroad. Whether
within his own municipality, state or nation, whether upon the high
seas, or upon foreign soil, whether among civilized men or barbarians,
his life, his property and his rights find shelter beneath a flag known
and honored throughout the entire world. There is no thinking man in
all our territory today who does not know that all he possesses, all
he enjoys, and all he hopes for depend upon the maintenance of our
national government. Indeed, it is difficult to comprehend how only
forty years ago the dream of a southern confederacy was possible.
It was possibly only to men who for sixty years had been perverting
their moral sense and warping their judgment in the endeavor to find
arguments for an institution that seemed to them so essential to their
material welfare.
We all know that without the protection and support of our noble
government the vast material resources of our country would still be
undeveloped--its quarries comparatively untouched, its mines unexplored
or reserved to the cupidity of foreigners, its great prairies
uncultivated, its commerce undeveloped, its railroads unbuilt, and the
entire structure of our civilization material, intellectual and moral,
still lacking a foundation. We might indeed have in part our territory,
our sea coast, our mountains, forests and rivers. But in the words of
Wooster, “What are lands and seas and skies without society, without
government, without laws? And how can these be preserved and enjoyed in
all their extent and all their excellence but under the protection of
wise institutions and a free government?”
All these advantages of our great Republic are obvious. But there is
one advantage less likely to be appreciated, and that is the effect
of a great and growing free government like ours upon the ideas and
aspirations of its people. It was nearly 2000 years ago that the Great
Teacher uttered the words, “Life is more than meat.” But we have not
yet fully grasped their significance. The breadth and value of any
life, whether that of beast, bird or man, are determined by that life’s
relations. Mere animal life through its whole wide range from polyp
to man is a helpless routine of obedience to blind instincts. In the
true meaning of the word, education is possible only for human beings.
Guided by instinct, the bird can affect certain adjustments to its
environment. But these adjustments are few, sharply limited, and can
scarcely be said to be the product of thought. The sparrow of today
flies, feeds, builds its nest, rears its young, and makes a periodical
migration precisely as the sparrow did these things in the time of our
Saviour. We speak of training the dog, of educating him. But at best
he learns a few tricks, forms a few blind habits, exhibits a wealth
of unreasoning affection, and lives and dies within the definite
boundaries prescribed for a dog. The best educated dog of today has
never advanced in intelligence and attainments beyond the dog that
welcomed Ulysses to his island home and died from excess of sudden
delight.
Man is man and not a mere brute because of the infinite number and
variety of relations that he can sustain and appreciate. In all this
universe of matter and mind with their myriad manifestations, there
is nothing alien to the thought of man. He alone can find “sermons in
stones, books in the running brooks, and good in everything.”
But to the savage, only a few of these relations are actual. To prepare
men to enter into the endless, the illimitable relations for which they
were created, is the work of civilization, of education, and there is
nothing that so civilizes, so educates, as the union of human beings
with their fellows in the pursuit of common interests, the attainment
of common purposes. Would you know how meagre even human life may be,
visit the solitary hermit, the lonely dweller in the forest, or the
prisoner confined in his cell, shut out from communion with his fellow
beings. The grandest service rendered by our country to its citizens is
the broadening of their horizon, the multiplying of their interests,
the exalting of their ambitions, the summoning into exercise of the
dormant powers of heart and mind.
Imagine if you can how “cribb’d, cabin’d and confined” were the
first settlers of Unity. Twenty miles remote at the beginning from
the nearest settlement, most of them a hundred miles away from their
earlier homes; in the heart of a great forest, with no roads, with
scarcely a pathway leading out into a life of larger activities;
without schools, without churches, without books or newspapers, almost
without neighbors; centering of necessity their entire thought upon
their humble homes, with their wives and their children; passing whole
days, nay months, with no companions save their families and their own
thoughts; dependent upon some new immigrant or chance comer for even an
echo from the outside world--how dreary, how distressingly limited must
have been the lives of their souls.
And they were only more isolated than their fellows. All Maine was
largely a wilderness 100 years ago, and even in the most favored
portions of New England the only means of communication was on the
seaboard by slow-moving sloops and schooners, and in the interior
by horseback riding, or at best by the lumbering stage coach. It
was exactly 100 years ago that Lewis and Clark began their famous
expedition across the continent, first making an exploration of the
Missouri. They were 171 days in making 1600 miles, a little more than
nine miles a day. A journey that required nearly six months can now be
made by railroad in less than two days. They were, indeed, in a country
remote from the habitation of men; and yet it was a country not so very
different in its main features and its means of communication from
what was then, for the greater part, the wilderness of Maine.
Now, our fathers and mothers who settled this town were men and women
of vigorous minds, of warm human sympathies, and of the largest
potential interests and activities. They exercised their minds upon
the problems immediately confronting them, and thus attained an
intellectual vigor that made them masters of the situation. As their
number increased, as settlements multiplied, roads were built, schools
established, trade and occupations developed at their doors, their
horizon grew and they attained through these instrumentalities to some
good degree of mental freedom.
When the State was organized in 1820, they found a new field for
political activities and were brought into new and important civic and
social relations. But it is safe to say that the great, enlarging,
fructifying and inspiring influence that quickened their minds, created
their ideals, sharpened their mental and moral vision and put them in
good degree into possession of their inheritance as human beings, was
the developing life of our common country. When in 1782 our ancestors
first set foot upon the shores of yonder pond, they probably brought
with them the knowledge of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in
the fall of the preceding year. But it could not long have reached
them before they began that toilsome journey by boats and rafts up the
Kennebec and Sebasticook into the waters of the lake on whose borders
they settled. Little they knew of the issues of the long conflict. But
doubtless their hearts were lighter and their feet trod more firmly as
they talked with one another of victory and of peace.
How much they knew of the treaty of peace with England in 1782, of
the heated discussion and threatened divisions between that time
and 1789, when the Constitution was adopted, whether they clearly
understood the distinction between the Federalist and the Republican
conception of what the new government should be, whether they awaited
with eager interest the ratification of the new form of government by
one state after another until its adoption was secured, about all this
we know absolutely nothing. But we may reasonably believe that news
of these exciting matters occasionally reached them and drew their
attention from their own toilsome lives to the broader interests of
their country. We may be sure that they rejoiced in the election of
Washington to the Presidency, and that in some way when he declined to
be a candidate for a third time in 1796 they became acquainted with the
spirit and tenor of his immortal farewell letter, with its forecast of
the greatness and glory of the nation at length safely launched, and
with his fatherly warnings against the dangers which his prophetic eyes
saw only too keenly.
However meagre the news that reached them, however little of the
spirit and life of the growing country was communicated directly to
them, yet even that little was broadening the scope of their thoughts,
relieving the drudgery of their toil, and developing in them an
appreciation of their privileges as American citizens. In 1804, when
Unity was incorporated, the country seemed on the verge of war with
Great Britain; and the exciting stories passing from lip to lip, of the
impressment of American seamen, of the destruction of our navigation by
the decrees of France and the blockades of Great Britain, finally of
our own Embargo Act, resulting in the loss of all our commerce and the
paralysis of all our infant industries, must have reached the citizens
of the new town, and have aroused their anxiety and kindled their
indignation. That the War of 1812 was of absorbing interest to them,
is clear from their own contribution of nearly a half dozen men to the
ranks of our soldiery. It is clear, also, from the fact that Andrew
Jackson, the hero of that brilliant after-battle at New Orleans, was
henceforth the popular idol of the State of Maine. From 1815 onward,
the name of Jackson rivalled that of Washington in the place that it
held in the affections of our people. A study of family records with
the first names of children clearly establishes this.
When in 1820 the question of Maine’s admission to the Union as an
independent state was before Congress, the coupling of the fate of our
membership in the Union with that of Missouri and the heated discussion
that followed whether the admission of a free state must be balanced
by that of a slave state, the people first began to follow with an
interest that steadily increased the multiplying problems presented
by the institution of slavery. Probably the long conflict which then
began was the most potent factor in developing a consciousness of the
dignity and meaning of American citizenship. The discussion kept up
for the forty years between the admission of Maine to the Union and
the beginning of the Civil War, considered simply as a means of mental
development and especially of training men to analyze the functions and
aims of our government, probably effected more than any other agency
in awakening true patriotism, in developing the spirit of humanity,
and in giving to legislation a distinctly moral scope and purpose. In
1830 followed the great speech of Webster in reply to Hayne. And soon
its most brilliant passages were upon the lips of every schoolboy in
declamation and debate.
Other great issues, such as internal improvements, the Monroe Doctrine,
tariff system, and the United States bank, were also powerful
educators. The closing of the United States Bank by Jackson, in
particular made an impression upon the people of Maine, and the $2 or
more received by every inhabitant of the State in the distribution of
the surplus still further endeared Old Hickory to the hearts of our
people.
The Presidential elections played an important part in helping the
people to feel the unity of their government and its direct relations
to themselves. Possibly there are persons in this audience who can
remember the wild excitement that prevailed in the Harrison campaign of
1840, when log cabins, cider barrels and raccoons were carried about in
procession and the rallying cry was, “Old Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!”
But it was the slavery question, its various phases, that most
steadily held the attention and summoned to its discussion, in
protest or apology, the whole people. The Mexican War, with its
results, derived its chief interest from its relation to this
question, and the brilliant orators who opposed it furnished another
supply of fervid declamations to the school boys. From 1845 to 1860,
political discussions superseded in large part the ordinary themes
of conversation. They were in vogue not merely at the caucus, the
convention and the election, but at the dinner table, the neighborhood
party, in the corner grocery, and even in the shop and the field.
During this period, references to the Wilmot Proviso, Mason and Dixon’s
Line, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Fugitive Slave Law,
the Dred Scott Decision, Squatter Sovereignty, the conflicts and
troubles of “bleeding Kansas,” the threats of such ultra southerners
as Toombs of Georgia, and citations from Webster’s Seventh of March
speech, together with Theodore Parker’s terrible denunciation of our
foremost stateman gave color and direction to public speech, newspaper
criticism, and ordinary conversation. Although I was but six years old
at the time, I distinctly remember hearing my father read aloud in the
family sitting room one evening Parker’s scathing rebuke to Daniel
Webster and his unmeasured invectives in character. Greeley through his
Tribune gained his greatest power. In half the farm houses in Maine,
the Weekly Tribune was awaited with an eagerness only less intense than
that with which we watched for the news from the Potomac.
It was in this period that the various organizations formed in
opposition to slavery were at length concentrated in the new Republican
party. The campaign of Fremont and Dayton versus Buchanan and
Breckinridge repeated the excitement and enthusiasm of the Harrison
campaign, but there was much more seriousness in discussion and a far
profounder appreciation of the issue involved. How well I can remember
the clear and logical and yet impassioned discussion in which leading
Democrats and Republicans of Unity engaged when on town meeting days
they gathered in an open spot or in some angle of the fence near the
old town house. I received no small part of my education during some
six years of that period in listening to these discussions and in
reading the Tribune.
In ’59, the audacious invasion of Virginia by John Brown startled the
whole country, and in ’60 came the nomination and election of Lincoln.
And with these events came the premonitions and beginning of secession.
Never was the newspaper of more absorbing interest to the people of
the north than in that eventful winter, spring and summer of ’61.
Practically the whole body of northern people were awakening to a great
purpose to crush the rebellion, the determination to save the Union.
How vividly it all comes back, the rapid organization of volunteer
companies and regiments! I seem to hear now the stirring music of
the fife and drum as through our own streets and past our own doors
marched the first company formed in Unity. It was getting to be serious
business and the nation grew in a few months more than in many years
previous. Everybody present past fifty years of age has at least some
memories of the tragic events of the war for the Union.
People of Unity, along with the people of the whole north, attained
during these brief four years to a stature as patriots, to a mental
and moral growth as men and women, to a conception of the purpose and
destiny of our nation of which they had not dreamed themselves capable.
They had learned to subordinate individual interests to great public
ends; and with the people generally they attained a moral elevation
that has not been wholly lost in the nearly forty years that have
passed since these stirring scenes.
The fortunes of our nation since the period of war and reconstruction
have been less fascinating and absorbing, but they have constantly
been contributing to the development of our people, to an appreciation
of the inheritance bequeathed to us by our fathers. The discussions
over the issue of paper money and the resumption of specie payments,
the arguments by our political leaders for and against the protective
tariff, the theories presented respecting the function of gold and
silver in meeting the monetary needs of the people, the sympathy of
our republic with the oppressed Cubans, the Spanish war followed by
the dwindling power of Spain--and the reconstruction of the political
map of our territories, the returning loyalty of the people of the
south, the interminable discussions as to the nature and value of the
fifteenth amendment--and the status of the negro, the rapid development
of the material resources of our country following the construction of
the great railroads to the Pacific, the agitation over the construction
of an inter-oceanic canal, the modifications of our treaties with
England in order to secure this result, and the adoption at last of
a definite plan for the realization of this great ocean highway--all
these movements and events have been upon a scale quite in contrast
with the humble beginnings of our national life, and have furnished
themes rich, varied and stimulating for the further education of our
people.
Within the last fifteen years the rapid consolidation of wealth, the
enormous and still growing power of corporations and trusts, the more
than princely fortunes acquired by individual citizens, the extremes
of poverty and wealth more marked than at any previous period of our
history, and great questions respecting the ownership of the means
of production and the moral rights to the soil have brought to us
questions largely still unsolved and requiring for their solution the
broadest popular intelligence, the most constructive statesmanship, and
the highest order of patriotism to which we can hope to attain. That
with the blessing of God the agitation of these questions will result
in still further strengthening and enriching the popular mind and
developing the spirit of philanthropy and mutual helpfulness, and will
in due time lead to their successful solution, history, experience, the
evident providence of God in the unfolding of our nation hitherto, and
the world’s need of the blessings that we alone seem prepared to give,
afford reasonable ground for inspiring hope.
Citizens of Unity: Amid all this growth in the wealth, power and
influence of your country, you and your predecessors have been no
passive spectators, no selfish and satisfied receivers. Freely indeed
have ye received, but you have also freely given. The example and
influence of this town have on the whole contributed to the welfare
of your State and your country. From the beginning, industry, thrift,
intelligence and morality have in the main been characteristic of our
population. You have been faithful to the inheritance bequeathed to
you by your ancestors. You have shown a commendable energy, wisdom
and skill in developing the resources of the town, you have taken a
noteworthy interest in the education of your children. Through your
fidelity in these and in other respects, the town has always borne a
good name. You have contributed your quota of reputable men to the
various callings and professions. You have done your share in providing
wise and prudent political counsellors, patriotic and efficient
legislators, public-spirited men and women.
One of the most honored and useful governors of our State, afterward
for years a recognized leader in the national Congress, a writer, a
thinker, an economist of international reputation, passed his youth
and early manhood and received his elementary education in this town.
His brother, the leading journalist of our State, and one of the
trenchant and vigorous writers of our time, passed a still longer
period of his life in this community. Still another of your sons
has won distinction in journalism in another State. You have reared
one United States senator, five State senators and two counsellors
to our chief executive. Your sons and daughters are not unknown in
educational work. You have sent out lawyers and physicians who will
become distinguished in their professions, business men who have
reflected credit in the training that you gave them. The great body of
your citizens have been honest and true in all the relations of life.
You have contributed soldiers to all of the wars in which our country
has been engaged. More than 80 of your sons represented you in the war
for the Union.
Unity, like Maine, has been a good place from which to migrate, and
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of your children since our town was
incorporated have become citizens in remote parts of the country. Some
of the most enterprising and energetic of your sons made their way
around Cape Horn to California in 1849. And others subsequently reached
the same destination by means of the isthmus. Within the last twenty
years, large numbers of your most vigorous young men have gone to the
far west; 100 of them, I am told, to the single State of Montana.
As civilization advances and pioneer conditions disappear, families
diminish in size. This is a law co-extensive with the human race.
Instead of families of twelve, fifteen, and even of twenty-one, records
of your early life which I do not exaggerate, the parents of this town
now number their children by twos and threes. The remarkable change
in the great industrial enterprises of our century which has occurred
within the last forty years has still further reduced your population.
The butter factory and the creamery have superseded the home dairy,
and a hundred domestic duties once assigned to women have wholly
disappeared. The development of the vast grain fields of the west has
made it uneconomic for the farmers of Maine to raise wheat and other
cereals. The application of inventive skill to the production of farm
implements now enables one man to perform in planting, hoeing, haying
and harvesting what formerly required three. These and other industrial
changes enable a population scarcely one-half of that once credited to
our town to develop its resources and protect its business interests.
Under circumstances like these, it is not strange that the census of
1900 reported a population of a little less than 900, in contrast
with the 1557 reported forty years earlier. But if the population of
our town has declined, not so its wealth. In 1860 its valuation was
$297,564. In 1900 its valuation was $364,683. Since the warm rays of
the July sun found their way into the first clearing in 1782, never
has it looked down within the boundaries of this town upon families so
prosperous and happy, upon material comforts so general and pronounced,
upon fields so well filled, schoolhouses so tasteful and substantial,
evidence of thrift so significant.
In only one respect does it seem to me that we have occasion for
serious concern. Unity, so far as I can learn, still maintains worthy
moral standards. Her people as a whole are still honest, neighborly and
just. These results, must we not confess, are due in great part to the
sturdy moral character, and, I may add, to the piety, reverence and
practical Christian lives of many of her earlier settlers. We cannot
lose in one generation or in two, the fruitage of the noble lives
that have preceded us. But if Unity is to maintain her reputation for
thrift, intelligence and character, she must look carefully to the
sources of all that is good in modern civilization--to the Bible, to
the church with its doors open every Sunday and its pulpit occupied by
an intelligent and efficient pastor. Unity can prove herself and her
citizens no exception to the great law that “the fear of God is the
beginning of wisdom,” that reverence and the inculcation and practice
of the golden rule are essential alike to manhood and womanhood and to
material prosperity.
Citizens of Unity: As you gaze upon the goodly prospect before you,
wherever you turn your eyes you find evidence of the toils, the
sacrifices, the devotion to home and family, the wise foresight,
the generous public spirit, the care for education, the respect for
character, and the reverence for God that have brought you this choice
inheritance. As you ride with your families in comfortable carriages
along your highways, do you try to recall and imagine the patient
toil, the energy, the inventive skill that constructed these roads,
built these bridges, and made the homes of this town accessible one
to another? As you walk over your fertile fields and your beautiful
pasture lands, as you wander amid the fruitful orchards that bring you
wealth and happiness, do you think of the men and women who first came
to this town? Into these fields, into these homes, they wrought their
very lives. Many of you bear the names which they bore, and retain the
distinctive family features, the peculiar mental traits of your fathers.
We all owe a debt to them that we can never pay, save as in the spirit
with which they wrought we maintain, improve and enrich the heritage
that they have left us, and in turn bequeath it to our children, that
they with energies unimpaired by us, but rather increased, intensified,
and ennobled, may in turn pass on to their descendants a legacy ever
more ample, more precious, more helpful to our country and to mankind.