PEACE
The surrender of Lee at Appomattox virtually ended the war. The
only considerable Confederate force left in the field was that
under command of Johnston, and it surrendered to Sherman on
April 26, 1865.
"STACK ARMS!"
"_Stack Arms!_" I've gladly heard the cry
When, weary with the dusty tread
Of marching troops, as night drew nigh,
I sank upon my soldier bed,
And calmly slept; the starry dome
Of heaven's blue arch my canopy,
And mingled with my dreams of home
The thoughts of Peace and Liberty.
"_Stack Arms!_" I've heard it when the shout
Exulting ran along our line,
Of foes hurled back in bloody rout,
Captured, dispersed; its tones divine
Then came to mine enraptured ear,
Guerdon of duty nobly done,
And glistened on my cheek the tear
Of grateful joy for victory won.
"_Stack Arms!_" In faltering accents, slow
And sad, it creeps from tongue to tongue,
A broken, murmuring wail of woe,
From manly hearts by anguish wrung.
Like victims of a midnight dream,
We move, we know not how nor why;
For life and hope like phantoms seem,
And it would be relief--to die!
JOSEPH BLYNTH ALSTON.
Jefferson Davis, who had fled from Richmond, was captured on
May 11, 1865, near the Ocmulgee River, in Georgia, and on May
26, when Kirby Smith formally surrendered, the last vestige
of armed resistance to the national government disappeared.
Davis was confined at Fortress Monroe until 1868, the South, of
course, considering him a martyr.
JEFFERSON DAVIS
"Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee, are all with thee."
LONGFELLOW.
Calm martyr of a noble cause,
Upon thy form in vain
The Dungeon shuts its cankered jaws,
And clasps its cankered chain;
For thy free spirit walks abroad,
And every pulse is stirred
With the old deathless glory thrill,
Whene'er thy name is heard.
The same that lit each Grecian eye,
Whene'er it rested on
The wild pass of Thermopylæ--
The plain of Marathon;
And made the Roman's ancient blood
Bound fiercely as he told,
"How well Horatio kept the bridge,
In the brave days of old."
The same that makes the Switzer's heart
With silent rapture swell,
When in each Alpine height he sees
A monument to Tell:
The same that kindles Irish veins
When Emmet's name is told;
What Bruce to Caledonia is,
Kosciusko to the Pole--
Art thou to us!--thy deathless fame,
With Washington entwined,
Forever in each Southern heart
Is hallowed and enshrined;--
And though the tyrant give thy form
To shameful death--'twere vain;
It would but shed a splendor round
The gibbet and the chain.
Only less sacred in our eyes,
Thus blest and purified,
Than the dear cross on which our Lord
Was shamed and crucified,
Would the vile gallows tree become,
And through all ages shine,
Linked with the glory of thy name,
A relic and a shrine!
WALKER MERIWETHER BELL.
It was for the South a sad awakening from the dream which had
been so entrancing and which seemed so certain to come true.
Their land was ravaged, their people were ruined, their best
and bravest dead.
IN THE LAND WHERE WE WERE DREAMING
Fair were our visions! Oh, they were as grand
As ever floated out of faerie land;
Children were we in single faith,
But God-like children, whom nor death
Nor threat nor danger drove from honor's path,
In the land where we were dreaming.
Proud were our men, as pride of birth could render;
As violets, our women pure and tender;
And when they spoke, their voices did thrill
Until at eve the whip-poor-will,
At morn the mocking-bird, were mute and still,
In the land where we were dreaming.
And we had graves that covered more of glory
Than ever tracked tradition's ancient story;
And in our dream we wove the thread
Of principles for which had bled
And suffered long our own immortal dead,
In the land where we were dreaming.
Though in our land we had both bond and free,
Both were content; and so God let them be;
Till envy coveted our land,
And those fair fields our valor won;
But little recked we, for we still slept on,
In the land where we were dreaming.
Our sleep grew troubled and our dreams grew wild--
Red meteors flashed across our heaven's field;
Crimson the moon; between the Twins
Barbed arrows fly, and then begins
Such strife as when disorder's Chaos reigns,
In the land where we were dreaming.
Down from her sun-lit heights smiled Liberty
And waved her cap in sign of Victory--
The world approved, and everywhere,
Except where growled the Russian bear,
The good, the brave, the just gave us their prayer
In the land where we were dreaming.
We fancied that a Government was ours--
We challenged place among the world's great powers;
We talked in sleep of Rank, Commission,
Until so life-like grew our vision
That he who dared to doubt but met derision,
In the land where we were dreaming.
We looked on high; a banner there was seen,
Whose field was blanched and spotless in its sheen--
Chivalry's cross its Union bears,
And veterans swearing by their scars
Vowed they would bear it through a hundred wars,
In the land where we were dreaming.
A hero came amongst us as we slept;
At first he lowly knelt--then rose and wept;
Then gathering up a thousand spears
He swept across the field of Mars;
Then bowed farewell and walked beyond the stars,
In the land where we were dreaming.
We looked again: another figure still
Gave hope, and nerved each individual will--
Full of grandeur, clothed with power,
Self-poised, erect, he ruled the hour
With stern, majestic sway--of strength a tower,
In the land where we were dreaming.
As, while great Jove, in bronze, a warder God,
Gazed eastward from the Forum where he stood,
Rome felt herself secure and free,
So, "Richmond's safe," we said, while we
Beheld a bronzèd hero--God-like Lee,
In the land where we were dreaming.
As wakes the soldier when the alarum calls--
As wakes the mother when the infant falls--
As starts the traveller when around
His sleeping couch the fire-bells sound--
So woke our nation with a single bound,
In the land where we were dreaming.
Woe! woe is me! the startled mother cried--
While we have slept our noble sons have died!
Woe! woe is me! how strange and sad
That all our glorious vision's fled,
And left us nothing real but the dead,
In the land where we were dreaming.
DANIEL B. LUCAS.
ACCEPTATION
I
We do accept thee, heavenly Peace!
Albeit thou comest in a guise
Unlooked for--undesired, our eyes
Welcome through tears the sweet release
From war, and woe, and want,--surcease,
For which we bless thee, blessèd Peace!
II
We lift our foreheads from the dust;
And as we meet thy brow's clear calm,
There falls a freshening sense of balm
Upon our spirits. Fear--distrust--
The hopeless present on us thrust--
We'll meet them as we can, and _must_.
III
War has not wholly wrecked us: still
Strong hands, brave hearts, high souls are ours--
Proud consciousness of quenchless powers--
A Past whose memory makes us thrill--
Futures uncharactered, to fill
With heroisms--if we will.
IV
Then courage, brothers!--Though each breast
Feel oft the rankling thorn, despair,
That failure plants so sharply there--
No pain, no pang shall be confest:
We'll work and watch the brightening west,
And leave to God and Heaven the rest.
MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON.
THE CONQUERED BANNER
Furl that Banner, for 'tis weary;
Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary;
Furl it, fold it--it is best;
For there's not a man to wave it,
And there's not a sword to save it,
And there's not one left to lave it
In the blood which heroes gave it;
And its foes now scorn and brave it;
Furl it, hide it--let it rest!
Take that Banner down! 'tis tattered;
Broken is its staff and shattered,
And the valiant hosts are scattered
Over whom it floated high.
Oh, 'tis hard for us to fold it,
Hard to think there's none to hold it,
Hard that those who once unrolled it
Now must furl it with a sigh!
Furl that Banner--furl it sadly;
Once ten thousands hailed it gladly,
And ten thousands wildly, madly
Swore it should forever wave--
Swore that foeman's sword should never
Hearts like theirs entwined dissever,
And that flag should float forever
O'er their freedom, or their grave!
Furl it! for the hands that grasped it,
And the hearts that fondly clasped it,
Cold and dead are lying low;
And that Banner--it is trailing,
While around it sounds the wailing
Of its people in their woe;
For, though conquered, they adore it--
Love the cold, dead hands that bore it!
Weep for those who fell before it!
Pardon those who trailed and tore it!
But, oh, wildly they deplore it,
Now who furl and fold it so!
Furl that Banner! True, 'tis gory,
Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory,
And 'twill live in song and story
Though its folds are in the dust!
For its fame on brightest pages,
Penned by poets and by sages,
Shall go sounding down the ages--
Furl its folds though now we must!
Furl that Banner, softly, slowly;
Treat it gently--it is holy,
For it droops above the dead;
Touch it not--unfold it never;
Let it droop there, furled forever,--
For its people's hopes are fled.
ABRAM J. RYAN.
At the North, too, Peace was welcome. The North, while
suffering less poignantly than the South, had drunk deeply
of the bitter cup. It had lost over three hundred and fifty
thousand men.
PEACE
Daybreak upon the hills!
Slowly, behind the midnight murk and trail
Of the long storm, light brightens, pure and pale,
And the horizon fills.
Not bearing swift release,--
Not with quick feet of triumph, but with tread
August and solemn, following her dead,
Cometh, at last, our Peace.
Over thick graves grown green,
Over pale bones that graveless lie and bleach,
Over torn human hearts her path doth reach,
And Heaven's dear pity lean.
O angel sweet and grand!
White-footed, from beside the throne of God,
Thou movest, with the palm and olive-rod,
And day bespreads the land!
His Day we waited for!
With faces to the East, we prayed and fought;
And a faint music of the dawning caught,
All through the sounds of War.
Our souls are still with praise!
It is the dawning; there is work to do:
When we have borne the long hours' burden through,
Then we will pæans raise.
God give us, with the time,
His strength for His large purpose to the world!
To bear before Him, in its face unfurled,
His gonfalon sublime!
Ay, we _are_ strong! Both sides
The misty river stretch His army's wings:
Heavenward, with glorious wheel, one flank He flings;
And one front still abides!
Strongest where most bereft!
His great ones He doth call to more command.
For whom He hath prepared it, they shall stand
On the Right Hand and Left!
ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY.
PEACE
O Land, of every land the best--
O Land, whose glory shall increase;
Now in your whitest raiment drest
For the great festival of Peace:
Take from your flag its fold of gloom,
And let it float undimmed above,
Till over all our vales shall bloom
The sacred colors that we love.
On mountain high, in valley low,
Set Freedom's living fires to burn;
Until the midnight sky shall show
A redder pathway than the morn.
Welcome, with shouts of joy and pride,
Your veterans from the war-path's track;
You gave your boys, untrained, untried;
You bring them men and heroes back!
And shed no tear, though think you must
With sorrow of the martyred band;
Not even for him whose hallowed dust
Has made our prairies holy land.
Though by the places where they fell,
The places that are sacred ground,
Death, like a sullen sentinel,
Paces his everlasting round.
Yet when they set their country free
And gave her traitors fitting doom,
They left their last great enemy,
Baffled, beside an empty tomb.
Not there, but risen, redeemed, they go
Where all the paths are sweet with flowers;
They fought to give us Peace and lo!
They gained a better Peace than ours.
PHOEBE CARY.
On May 24, 1865, the united armies of Grant and Sherman,
two hundred thousand strong, were reviewed at Washington by
President Johnson and his cabinet.
A SECOND REVIEW OF THE GRAND ARMY
[May 24, 1865]
I read last night of the Grand Review
In Washington's chiefest avenue,--
Two hundred thousand men in blue,
I think they said was the number,--
Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet,
The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat,
The clatter of hoofs in the stony street,
The cheers of people who came to greet,
And the thousand details that to repeat
Would only my verse encumber,--
Till I fell in a revery, sad and sweet,
And then to a fitful slumber.
When, lo! in a vision I seemed to stand
In the lonely Capitol. On each hand
Far stretched the portico, dim and grand
Its columns ranged, like a martial band
Of sheeted spectres, whom some command
Had called to a last reviewing.
And the streets of the city were white and bare;
No footfall echoed across the square;
But out of the misty midnight air
I heard in the distance a trumpet blare,
And the wandering night-winds seemed to bear
The sound of a far tattooing.
Then I held my breath with fear and dread;
For into the square, with a brazen tread,
There rode a figure whose stately head
O'erlooked the review that morning,
That never bowed from its firm-set seat
When the living column passed its feet,
Yet now rode steadily up the street
To the phantom bugle's warning:
Till it reached the Capitol square, and wheeled,
And there in the moonlight stood revealed
A well-known form that in State and field
Had led our patriot sires:
Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp,
Afar through the river's fog and damp,
That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp,
Nor wasted bivouac fires.
And I saw a phantom army come,
With never a sound of fife or drum,
But keeping time to a throbbing hum
Of wailing and lamentation:
The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill,
Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville,
The men whose wasted figures fill
The patriot graves of the nation.
And there came the nameless dead,--the men
Who perished in fever-swamp and fen,
The slowly-starved of the prison-pen;
And, marching beside the others,
Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight,
With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright:
I thought--perhaps 'twas the pale moonlight--
They looked as white as their brothers!
And so all night marched the Nation's dead,
With never a banner above them spread,
Nor a badge, nor a motto brandishèd;
No mark--save the bare uncovered head
Of the silent bronze Reviewer;
With never an arch save the vaulted sky;
With never a flower save those that lie
On the distant graves--for love could buy
No gift that was purer or truer.
So all night long swept the strange array;
So all night long, till the morning gray,
I watch'd for one who had passed away,
With a reverent awe and wonder,--
Till a blue cap waved in the lengthening line,
And I knew that one who was kin of mine
Had come; and I spake--and lo! that sign
Awakened me from my slumber.
BRET HARTE.
The work of disbandment began at once, and the troops were sent
home as rapidly as possible; they laid by the musket, took up
the spade or hammer, and returned once more to the occupations
of peace.
WHEN JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME
When Johnny comes marching home again,
Hurrah! hurrah!
We'll give him a hearty welcome then,
Hurrah! hurrah!
The men will cheer, the boys will shout,
The ladies, they will all turn out,
And we'll all feel gay,
When Johnny comes marching home.
The old church-bell will peal with joy,
Hurrah! hurrah!
To welcome home our darling boy,
Hurrah! hurrah!
The village lads and lasses say,
With roses they will strew the way;
And we'll all feel gay,
When Johnny comes marching home.
Get ready for the jubilee,
Hurrah! hurrah!
We'll give the hero three times three,
Hurrah! hurrah!
The laurel-wreath is ready now
To place upon his loyal brow,
And we'll all feel gay,
When Johnny comes marching home.
Let love and friendship on that day,
Hurrah! hurrah!
Their choicest treasures then display,
Hurrah! hurrah!
And let each one perform some part,
To fill with joy the warrior's heart;
And we'll all feel gay,
When Johnny comes marching home.
PATRICK SARSFIELD GILMORE.
DRIVING HOME THE COWS
Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass,
He turned them into the river-lane;
One after another he let them pass,
Then fastened the meadow-bars again.
Under the willows, and over the hill,
He patiently followed their sober pace;
The merry whistle for once was still,
And something shadowed the sunny face.
Only a boy! and his father had said
He never could let his youngest go:
Two already were lying dead
Under the feet of the trampling foe.
But after the evening work was done,
And the frogs were loud in the meadow-swamp,
Over his shoulder he slung his gun,
And stealthily followed the foot-path damp,
Across the clover, and through the wheat,
With resolute heart and purpose grim,
Though cold was the dew on his hurrying feet,
And the blind bat's flitting startled him.
Thrice since then had the lanes been white,
And the orchards sweet with apple-bloom;
And now, when the cows came back at night,
The feeble father drove them home.
For news had come to the lonely farm
That three were lying where two had lain;
And the old man's tremulous, palsied arm
Could never lean on a son's again.
The summer day grew cold and late.
He went for the cows when the work was done;
But down the lane, as he opened the gate,
He saw them coming, one by one,--
Brindle, Ebony, Speckle, and Bess,
Shaking their horns in the evening wind;
Cropping the buttercups out of the grass,--
But who was it following close behind?
Loosely swung in the idle air
The empty sleeve of army blue;
And worn and pale, from the crisping hair,
Looked out a face that the father knew.
For Southern prisons will sometimes yawn,
And yield their dead unto life again;
And the day that comes with a cloudy dawn
In golden glory at last may wane.
The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes;
For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb;
And under the silent evening skies,
Together they followed the cattle home.
KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD.
On July 21, 1865, services were held at Cambridge, Mass., in
commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of Harvard
College. Addresses were made by General Meade and General
Devens, and an ode written for the occasion was read by James
Russell Lowell. This ode, perhaps the greatest ever delivered
in America, forms a fitting close to the history of the Civil
War.
ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION
[July 21, 1865]
I
Weak-winged is song,
Nor aims at that clear-ethered height
Whither the brave deed climbs for light:
We seem to do them wrong,
Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse
Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,
Our trivial song to honor those who come
With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,
And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire,
Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire:
Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,
A gracious memory to buoy up and save
From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave
Of the unventurous throng.
II
To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back
Her wisest Scholars, those who understood
The deeper teaching of her mystic tome,
And offered their fresh lives to make it good:
No lore of Greece or Rome,
No science peddling with the names of things,
Or reading stars to find inglorious fates,
Can lift our life with wings
Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits,
And lengthen out our dates
With that clear fame whose memory sings
In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates:
Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all!
Not such the trumpet-call
Of thy diviner mood,
That could thy sons entice
From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest
Of those half-virtues which the world calls best,
Into War's tumult rude;
But rather far that stern device
The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood
In the dim, unventured wood,
The VERITAS that lurks beneath
The letter's unprolific sheath,
Life of whate'er makes life worth living,
Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food,
One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.
III
Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her,
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,
With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.
Many in sad faith sought for her,
Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life's dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her,
Tasting the raptured fleetness
Of her divine completeness:
Their higher instinct knew
Those love her best who to themselves are true,
And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;
They followed her and found her
Where all may hope to find,
Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,
But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her.
Where faith made whole with deed
Breathes its awakening breath
Into the lifeless creed,
They saw her plumed and mailed,
With sweet, stern face unveiled,
And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.
IV
Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides
To make the next age better for the last?
Is earth too poor to give us
Something to live for here that shall outlive us?
Some more substantial boon
Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?
The little that we see
From doubt is never free;
The little that we do
Is but half-nobly true;
With our laborious hiving
What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,
Only secure in every one's conniving,
A long account of nothings paid with loss,
Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,
After our little hour of strut and rave,
With all our pasteboard passions and desires,
Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,
Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.
But stay! no age was e'er degenerate,
Unless men held it at too cheap a rate,
For in our likeness still we shape our fate.
Ah, there is something here
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer,
Something that gives our feeble light
A high immunity from Night,
Something that leaps life's narrow bars
To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven;
A seed of sunshine that can leaven
Our earthy dulness with the beams of stars
And glorify our clay
With light from fountains elder than the Day;
A conscience more divine than we,
A gladness fed with secret tears,
A vexing, forward-reaching sense
Of some more noble permanence;
A light across the sea,
Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,
Still beaconing from the heights of undegenerate years.
V
Whither leads the path
To ampler fates that leads?
Not down through flowery meads,
To reap an aftermath
Of youth's vainglorious weeds,
But up the steep, amid the wrath
And shock of deadly-hostile creeds,
Where the world's best hope and stay
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way,
And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds.
Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,
Ere yet the sharp, decisive word
Light the black lips of cannon, and the sword
Dreams in its easeful sheath;
But some day the live coal behind the thought,
Whether from Baäl's stone obscene,
Or from the shrine serene
Of God's pure altar brought,
Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen
Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,
And, helpless in the fiery passion caught,
Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men:
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,
And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my praise,
And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,
The victim of thy genius, not its mate!"
Life may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to Truth be sealed
As bravely in the closet as the field,
So bountiful is Fate;
But then to stand beside her,
When craven churls deride her,
To front a lie in arms and not to yield,
This shows, methinks, God's plan
And measure of a stalwart man,
Limbed like the old heroic breeds,
Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth,
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,
Fed from within with all the strength he needs.
VI
Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,
Whom late the Nation he had led,
With ashes on her head,
Wept with the passion of an angry grief:
Forgive me, if from present things I turn
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn,
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.
Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote:
For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true
How beautiful to see
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,
Not lured by any cheat of birth,
But by his clear-grained human worth,
And brave old wisdom of sincerity!
They knew that outward grace is dust;
They could not choose but trust
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,
And supple-tempered will
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.
His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars,
Nothing of Europe here,
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,
Ere any names of Serf and Peer
Could Nature's equal scheme deface
And thwart her genial will;
Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.
I praise him not; it were too late;
And some innative weakness there must be
In him who condescends to victory
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait,
Safe in himself as in a fate.
So always firmly he:
He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,
Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.
Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes;
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American.
VII
Long as man's hope insatiate can discern
Or only guess some more inspiring goal
Outside of Self, enduring as the pole,
Along whose course the flying axles burn
Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier brood;
Long as below we cannot find
The meed that stills the inexorable mind;
So long this faith to some ideal Good,
Under whatever mortal names it masks,
Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood
That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks,
Feeling its challenged pulses leap,
While others skulk in subterfuges cheap,
And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks,
Shall win man's praise and woman's love,
Shall be a wisdom that we set above
All other skills and gifts to culture dear,
A virtue round whose forehead we inwreathe
Laurels that with a living passion breathe
When other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear.
What brings us thronging these high rites to pay,
And seal these hours the noblest of our year,
Save that our brothers found this better way?
VIII
We sit here in the Promised Land
That flows with Freedom's honey and milk;
But 'twas they won it, sword in hand,
Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.
We welcome back our bravest and our best;--
Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest,
Who went forth brave and bright as any here!
I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,
But the sad strings complain,
And will not please the ear:
I sweep them for a pæan, but they wane
Again and yet again
Into a dirge, and die away, in pain.
In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,
Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps,
Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:
Fitlier may others greet the living,
For me the past is unforgiving;
I with uncovered head
Salute the sacred dead,
Who went, and who return not.--Say not so!
'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,
But the high faith that failed not by the way;
Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;
No ban of endless night exiles the brave;
And to the saner mind
We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.
Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!
For never shall their aureoled presence lack;
I see them muster in a gleaming row,
With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;
We find in our dull road their shining track;
In every nobler mood
We feel the orient of their spirit glow,
Part of our life's unalterable good,
Of all our saintlier aspiration;
They come transfigured back,
Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,
Beautiful evermore, and with the rays
Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation!
IX
But is there hope to save
Even this ethereal essence from the grave?
What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrong
Save a few clarion names, or golden threads of song?
Before my musing eye
The mighty ones of old sweep by,
Disvoicèd now and insubstantial things,
As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings,
Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust,
And many races, nameless long ago,
To darkness driven by that imperious gust
Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow:
O visionary world, condition strange,
Where naught abiding is but only Change,
Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range!
Shall we to more continuance make pretence?
Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit;
And, bit by bit,
The cunning years steal all from us but woe;
Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow.
But, when we vanish hence,
Shall they lie forceless in the dark below,
Save to make green their little length of sods,
Or deepen pansies for a year or two,
Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods?
Was dying all they had the skill to do?
That were not fruitless: but the Soul resents
Such short-lived service, as if blind events
Ruled without her, or earth could so endure;
She claims a more divine investiture
Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents;
Whate'er she touches doth her nature share;
Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air,
Gives eyes to mountains blind,
Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind,
And her clear trump sings succor everywhere
By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind;
For soul inherits all that soul could dare:
Yea, Manhood hath a wider span
And larger privilege of life than man.
The single deed, the private sacrifice,
So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears,
Is covered up erelong from mortal eyes
With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years;
But that high privilege that makes all men peers,
That leap of heart whereby a people rise
Up to a noble anger's height,
And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more bright,
That swift validity in noble veins,
Of choosing danger and disdaining shame,
Of being set on flame
By the pure fire that flies all contact base,
But wraps its chosen with angelic might,
These are imperishable gains,
Sure as the sun, medicinal as light,
These hold great futures in their lusty reins
And certify to earth a new imperial race.
X
Who now shall sneer?
Who dare again to say we trace
Our lines to a plebeian race?
Roundhead and Cavalier!
Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud;
Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud,
They flit across the ear:
That is best blood that hath most iron in 't.
To edge resolve with, pouring without stint
For what makes manhood dear.
Tell us not of Plantagenets,
Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawl
Down from some victor in a border-brawl!
How poor their outworn coronets,
Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreath
Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath,
Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets
Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears
Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears
With vain resentments and more vain regrets!
XI
Not in anger, not in pride,
Pure from passion's mixture rude
Ever to base earth allied,
But with far-heard gratitude,
Still with heart and voice renewed,
To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,
The strain should close that consecrates our brave.
Lift the heart and lift the head!
Lofty be its mood and grave,
Not without a martial ring,
Not without a prouder tread
And a peal of exultation:
Little right has he to sing
Through whose heart in such an hour
Beats no march of conscious power,
Sweeps no tumult of elation!
'Tis no Man we celebrate,
By his country's victories great,
A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,
But the pith and marrow of a Nation
Drawing force from all her men,
Highest, humblest, weakest, all,
For her time of need, and then
Pulsing it again through them,
Till the basest can no longer cower.
Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall,
Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem.
Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dower!
How could poet ever tower,
If his passions, hopes, and fears,
If his triumphs and his tears,
Kept not measure with his people?
Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves!
Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple!
Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves!
And from every mountain-peak,
Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak,
Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he,
And so leap on in light from sea to sea,
Till the glad news be sent
Across a kindling continent,
Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:
"Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!
She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,
She of the open soul and open door,
With room about her hearth for all mankind!
The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more;
From her bold front the helm she doth unbind,
Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,
And bids her navies, that so lately hurled
Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in,
Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore.
No challenge sends she to the elder world.
That looked askance and hated; a light scorn
Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty knees
She calls her children back, and waits the morn
Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas."
XII
Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!
Thy God, in these distempered days,
Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,
And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!
Bow down in prayer and praise!
No poorest in thy borders but may now
Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised brow.
O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore,
And letting thy set lips,
Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,
What words divine of lover or of poet
Could tell our love and make thee know it,
Among the Nations bright beyond compare?
What were our lives without thee?
What all our lives to save thee?
We reck not what we gave thee;
We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else, and we will dare!
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
PART V
THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION
THE EAGLE'S SONG
The lioness whelped, and the sturdy cub
Was seized by an eagle and carried up,
And homed for a while in an eagle's nest,
And slept for a while on an eagle's breast;
And the eagle taught it the eagle's song:
"To be stanch, and valiant, and free, and strong!"
The lion whelp sprang from the eyrie nest,
From the lofty crag where the queen birds rest;
He fought the King on the spreading plain,
And drove him back o'er the foaming main.
He held the land as a thrifty chief,
And reared his cattle, and reaped his sheaf,
Nor sought the help of a foreign hand,
Yet welcomed all to his own free land!
Two were the sons that the country bore
To the Northern lakes and the Southern shore;
And Chivalry dwelt with the Southern son,
And Industry lived with the Northern one.
Tears for the time when they broke and fought!
Tears was the price of the union wrought!
And the land was red in a sea of blood,
Where brother for brother had swelled the flood!
And now that the two are one again,
Behold on their shield the word "Refrain!"
And the lion cubs twain sing the eagle's song:
"To be stanch, and valiant, and free, and strong!"
For the eagle's beak, and the lion's paw,
And the lion's fangs, and the eagle's claw,
And the eagle's swoop, and the lion's might,
And the lion's leap, and the eagle's sight,
Shall guard the flag with the word "Refrain!"
Now that the two are one again!
RICHARD MANSFIELD.
CHAPTER I
RECONSTRUCTION AND AFTER
The war was over, but three great questions remained to be
settled. How were the people of the South to be regarded? How
was the Union to be reconstructed? What was to be done with the
three millions of negroes who had been given their freedom?
These were the questions which came before the Thirty-Ninth
Congress.
TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS
O people-chosen! are ye not
Likewise the chosen of the Lord,
To do His will and speak His word?
From the loud thunder-storm of war
Not man alone hath called ye forth,
But He, the God of all the earth!
The torch of vengeance in your hands
He quenches; unto Him belongs
The solemn recompense of wrongs.
Enough of blood the land has seen,
And not by cell or gallows-stair
Shall ye the way of God prepare.
Say to the pardon-seekers: Keep
Your manhood, bend no suppliant knees,
Nor palter with unworthy pleas.
Above your voices sounds the wail
Of starving men; we shut in vain
Our eyes to Pillow's ghastly stain.
What words can drown that bitter cry?
What tears wash out the stain of death?
What oaths confirm your broken faith?
From you alone the guaranty
Of union, freedom, peace, we claim;
We urge no conqueror's terms of shame.
Alas! no victor's pride is ours;
We bend above our triumphs won
Like David o'er his rebel son.
Be men, not beggars. Cancel all
By one brave, generous action: trust
Your better instincts, and be just!
Make all men peers before the law,
Take hands from off the negro's throat,
Give black and white an equal vote.
Keep all your forfeit lives and lands,
But give the common law's redress
To labor's utter nakedness.
Revive the old heroic will;
Be in the right as brave and strong
As ye have proved yourselves in wrong.
Defeat shall then be victory,
Your loss the wealth of full amends,
And hate be love, and foes be friends.
Then buried be the dreadful past,
Its common slain be mourned, and let
All memories soften to regret.
Then shall the Union's mother-heart
Her lost and wandering ones recall,
Forgiving and restoring all,--
And Freedom break her marble trance
Above the Capitolian dome,
Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome home!
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
Few men could have been worse fitted for the delicate task
of reconstruction than Andrew Johnson. But even his policy,
narrow as it was, was not narrow enough to suit the radical
Republicans in Congress.
"MR. JOHNSON'S POLICY OF RECONSTRUCTION"
SOME COMMENT FROM THE BOYS IN BLUE
"His policy," do you say?
By heaven, who says so lies in his throat!
'Twas our policy, boys, from our muster-day,
Through skirmish and bivouac, march and fray--
"His policy," do you say?
"His policy"--do but note!
'Tis a pitiful falsehood for you to say.
Did he bid all the stars in our banner float?
Was it he shouted Union from every throat
Through the long war's weary day?
"His policy"--how does it hap?
Has the old word "Union" no meaning, pray?
What meant the "U. S." upon every cap--
Upon every button, belt, and strap?
'Twas our policy all the way.
"His policy?" That may do
For a silly and empty political brag;
But 'twas held by every Boy in Blue
When he lifted his right hand, stanch and true,
And swore to sustain the flag.
We are with him none the less--
He works for the same great end we sought;
We feel for the South in its deep distress,
And to get the old Union restored we press--
'Twas for this we enlisted and fought.
Be it his or whose it may,
'Tis the policy, boys, that we avow;
There were noble hearts in the ranks of gray
As they proved on many a bloody day,
And we would not oppress them now.
"Let us all forgive and forget:"
It was thus Grant spoke to General Lee,
When, with wounds still raw and bayonets wet,
The chiefs of the two great armies met
Beneath the old apple-tree.
CHARLES GRAHAM HALPINE.
The leader of this coterie was Thaddeus Stevens. He declared
the South was in a state of anarchy, demanded that it be placed
under military rule and that suffrage be extended to the
negroes. In February, 1868, he introduced a resolution that
"Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, be impeached
of high crimes and misdemeanors in office," but at the trial
which followed the proceedings were shown to have been actuated
by partisan bitterness and the President was acquitted. The
verdict was a heavy blow to Stevens. He had burned himself out
and died in August.
THADDEUS STEVENS
DIED AUG. 11, 1868
An eye with the piercing eagle's fire,
Not the look of the gentle dove;
Not his the form that men admire,
Nor the face that tender women love.
Working first for his daily bread
With the humblest toilers of the earth;
Never walking with free, proud tread--
Crippled and halting from his birth.
Wearing outside a thorny suit
Of sharp, sarcastic, stinging power;
Sweet at the core as sweetest fruit,
Or inmost heart of fragrant flower.
Fierce and trenchant, the haughty foe
Felt his words like a sword of flame;
But to the humble, poor, and low
Soft as a woman's his accents came.
Not his the closest, tenderest friend--
No children blessed his lonely way;
But down in his heart until the end
The tender dream of his boyhood lay.
His mother's faith he held not fast;
But he loved her living, mourned her dead,
And he kept her memory to the last
As green as the sod above her bed.
He held as sacred in his home
Whatever things she wrought or planned,
And never suffered change to come
To the work of her "industrious hand."
For her who pillowed first his head
He heaped with a wealth of flowers the grave,
While he chose to sleep in an unmarked bed,
By his Master's humblest poor--the slave!
Suppose he swerved from the straightest course--
That the things he should not do he did--
That he hid from the eyes of mortals, close,
Such sins as you and I have hid?
Or suppose him worse than you; what then?
Judge not, lest you be judged for sin!
One said who knew the hearts of men:
Who loveth much shall a pardon win.
The Prince of Glory for sinners bled;
His soul was bought with a royal price;
And his beautified feet on flowers may tread
To-day with his Lord in Paradise.
PHOEBE CARY.
The South's condition meanwhile was pitiful indeed. Negroes,
led by "carpet-baggers" from the North, secured the ascendancy
in state government. Millions of dollars were wasted or stolen,
and it looked for a time as though a great section of the
country was doomed to negro domination.
SOUTH CAROLINA TO THE STATES OF THE NORTH
ESPECIALLY TO THOSE THAT FORMED A PART OF THE ORIGINAL THIRTEEN
I lift these hands with iron fetters banded:
Beneath the scornful sunlight and cold stars
I rear my once imperial forehead branded
By alien shame's immedicable scars;
Like some pale captive, shunned by all the nations,
I crouch unpitied, quivering and apart--
Laden with countless woes and desolations,
The life-blood freezing round a broken heart!
About my feet, splashed red with blood of slaughters,
My children gathering in wild, mournful throngs,
Despairing sons, frail infants, stricken daughters,
Rehearse the awful burden of their wrongs;
Vain is their cry, and worse than vain their pleading:
I turn from stormy breasts, from yearning eyes,
To mark where Freedom's outraged form receding,
Wanes in chill shadow down the midnight skies!
I wooed her once in wild tempestuous places,
The purple vintage of my soul outpoured,
To win and keep her unrestrained embraces,
What time the olive-crown o'ertopped the sword;
Oh! northmen, with your gallant heroes blending,
Mine, in old years, for this sweet goddess died;
But now--ah! shame, all other shame transcending!
_Your_ pitiless hands have torn her from my side.
_What! 'tis a tyrant-party's treacherous action--
Your hand is clean, your conscience clear, ye sigh_;
Ay! but ere now your sires had throttled faction,
Or, pealed o'er half the world their battle-cry;
Its voice outrung from solemn mountain-passes
Swept by wild storm-winds of the Atlantic strand,
To where the swart Sierras' sullen grasses
Droop in low languors of the sunset-land!
Never, since earthly States began their story,
Hath any suffered, bided, borne like me:
At last, recalling all mine ancient glory,
I vowed my fettered Commonwealth to free:
Even at the thought, beside the prostrate column
Of chartered rights, which blasted lay and dim--
Uprose my noblest son with purpose solemn,
While, host on host, his brethren followed _him_:
_Wrong_, grasped by _truth_, arraigned by _law_ (whose sober
Majestic mandates rule o'er change and time)--
Smit by the _ballot_, like some flushed October,
Reeled in the Autumn rankness of his crime;
Struck, tortured, pierced--but not a blow returning.
The steadfast phalanx of my honored braves
Planted their bloodless flag where sunrise burning,
Flashed a new splendor o'er our martyrs' graves!
What then? Oh, sister States! what welcome omen
Of love and concord crossed our brightening blue,
The foes we vanquished, are they not _your_ foemen,
Our laws upheld, your sacred safeguards, too?
Yet scarce had victory crowned our grand endeavor,
And peace crept out from shadowy glooms remote--
Than--as if bared to blast all hope forever,
Your tyrant's sword shone glittering at my throat!
Once more my bursting chains were reunited,
Once more barbarian plaudits wildly rung
O'er the last promise of deliverance blighted,
The prostrate purpose and the palsied tongue:
Ah! faithless sisters, 'neath my swift undoing,
Peers the black presage of your wrath to come;
Above your heads are signal clouds of ruin,
Whose lightnings flash, whose thunders are not dumb!
There towers a judgment-seat beyond our seeing;
There lives a Judge, whom none can bribe or blind;
Before whose dread decree, your spirit fleeing,
May reap the whirlwind, having sown the wind:
I, in that day of justice, fierce and torrid,
When blood--_your_ blood--outpours like poisoned wine,
_Pointing to these chained limbs, this blasted forehead,
May mock your ruin, as ye mocked at mine_!
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.
But the white people of the South rallied at last, asserted
their supremacy, and seized the reins of government. The famous
Ku-Klux Klan was organized and spread terror among the negroes,
by its sure and swift administration of punishment--just and
unjust.
KU-KLUX
We have sent him seeds of the melon's core,
And nailed a warning upon his door;
By the Ku-Klux laws we can do no more.
Down in the hollow, 'mid crib and stack,
The roof of his low-porched house looms black,
Not a line of light at the doorsill's crack.
Yet arm and mount! and mask and ride!
The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!
And for a word too much men oft have died.
The clouds blow heavy towards the moon.
The edge of the storm will reach it soon.
The killdee cries and the lonesome loon.
The clouds shall flush with a wilder glare
Than the lightning makes with his angled flare,
When the Ku-Klux verdict is given there.
In the pause of the thunder rolling low,
A rifle's answer--who shall know
From the wind's fierce hurl and the rain's black blow?
Only the signature written grim
At the end of the message brought to him,--
A hempen rope and a twisted limb.
So arm and mount! and mask and ride!
The hounds can sense though the fox may hide!
And for a word too much men oft have died.
MADISON CAWEIN.
The North kept its hands off and permitted the South to work
out its own destiny--which it did blindly and blunderingly
enough. Yet bravely, too; for it had only ashes to build from.
But from the ashes a new land arose, and a better one.
THE REAR GUARD
The guns are hushed. On every field once flowing
With war's red flood May's breath of peace is shed,
And, spring's young grass and gracious flowers are growing
Above the dead.
Ye gray old men whom we this day are greeting,
Honor to you, honor and love and trust!
Brave to the brave. Your soldier hands are meeting
Across their dust.
Bravely they fought who charged when flags were flying
In cannon's crash, in screech and scream of shell;
Bravely they fell, who lay alone and dying
In battle's hell.
Honor to them! Far graves to-day are flinging
Up through the soil peace-blooms to meet the sun,
And daisied heads to summer winds are singing
Their long "well done."
Our vanguard, they. They went with hot blood flushing
At battle's din, at joy of bugle's call.
They fell with smiles, the flood of young life gushing,
Full brave the fall!
But braver ye who, when the war was ended,
And bugle's call and wave of flag were done,
Could come back home, so long left undefended.
Your cause unwon,
And twist the useless sword to hook of reaping,
Rebuild the homes, set back the empty chair
And brave a land where waste and want were keeping
Guard everywhere.
All this you did, your courage strong upon you,
And out of ashes, wreck, a new land rose,
Through years of war no braver battle won you,
'Gainst fiercer foes.
And now to-day a prospered land is cheering
And lifting up her voice in lusty pride
For you gray men, who fought and wrought, not fearing
Battle's red tide.
Our rear guard, ye whose step is slowing, slowing,
Whose ranks, earth-thinned, are filling otherwhere,
Who wore the gray--the gray, alas! still showing
On bleaching hair.
For forty years you've watched this land grow stronger,
For forty years you've been its bulwark, stay;
Tarry awhile; pause yet a little longer
Upon the way.
And set our feet where there may be no turning,
And set our faces straight on duty's track,
Where there may be for stray, strange goods no yearning
Nor looking back.
And when for you the last tattoo has sounded,
And on death's silent field you've pitched your tent,
When, bowed through tears, the arc of life has rounded
To full content,
We that are left will count it guerdon royal,
Our heritage no years can take away,
That we were born of those, unflinching, loyal,
Who wore the gray.
IRENE FOWLER BROWN.
The bitterness which the great struggle had engendered
gradually gave place to a kindlier feeling. As early as 1867,
the women of Columbus, Miss., decorated alike the graves of
Confederate and Union soldiers, an action which was the first
of many such.
THE BLUE AND THE GRAY
[1867]
By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray.
These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the laurel, the Blue,
Under the willow, the Gray.
From the silence of sorrowful hours
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers
Alike for the friend and the foe:
Under the sod and the dew
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the roses, the Blue,
Under the lilies, the Gray.
So with an equal splendor,
The morning sun-rays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Broidered with gold, the Blue,
Mellowed with gold, the Gray.
So, when the summer calleth,
On forest and field of grain,
With an equal murmur falleth
The cooling drip of the rain:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Wet with the rain, the Blue,
Wet with the rain, the Gray.
Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done,
In the storm of the years that are fading
No braver battle was won:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the blossoms, the Blue,
Under the garlands, the Gray.
No more shall the war-cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Love and tears for the Blue,
Tears and love for the Gray.
FRANCIS MILES FINCH.
When the South was swept by yellow fever a few years later, the
North rushed to its relief in a way which showed how completely
old animosities had been forgotten.
THE STRICKEN SOUTH TO THE NORTH
When ruthful time the South's memorial places--
Her heroes' graves--had wreathed in grass and flowers;
When Peace ethereal, crowned by all her graces,
Returned to make more bright the summer hours;
When doubtful hearts revived, and hopes grew stronger;
When old sore-cankering wounds that pierced and stung,
Throbbed with their first, mad, feverous pain no longer,
While the fair future spake with flattering tongue;
When once, once more she felt her pulses beating
To rhythms of healthful joy and brave desire;
Lo! round her doomed horizon darkly meeting,
A pall of blood-red vapors veined with fire!
Oh! ghastly portent of fast-coming sorrows!
Of doom that blasts the blood and blights the breath,
Robs youth and manhood of all golden morrows--
And life's clear goblet brims with wine of death!--
Oh! swift fulfilment of this portent dreary!
Oh! nightmare rule of ruin, racked by fears,
Heartbroken wail, and solemn _miserere_,
Imperious anguish, and soul-melting tears!
Oh! faith, thrust downward from celestial splendors,
Oh! love grief-bound, with palely-murmurous mouth!
Oh! agonized by life's supreme surrenders--
Behold her now--the scourged and suffering South!
No balm in Gilead? nay, but while her forehead,
Pallid and drooping, lies in foulest dust,
There steals across the desolate spaces torrid,
A voice of manful cheer and heavenly trust,
A hand redeeming breaks the frozen starkness
Of palsied nerve, and dull, despondent brain;
Rolls back the curtain of malignant darkness,
And shows the eternal blue of heaven again--
Revealing there, o'er worlds convulsed and shaken,
That face whose mystic tenderness enticed
To hope new-born earth's lost bereaved, forsaken!
Ah! still beyond the tempest smiles the Christ!
Whose voice? Whose hand? Oh, thanks divinest Master,
Thanks for those grand emotions which impart
Grace to the North to feel the South's disaster,
The South to bow with touched and cordial heart!
Now, now at last the links which war had broken
Are welded fast, at mercy's charmed commands;
Now, now at last the magic words are spoken
Which blend in one two long-divided lands!
O North! you came with warrior strife and clangor;
You left our South one gory burial ground;
But love, more potent than your haughtiest anger,
Subdues the souls which hate could only wound!
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.
On July 29, 1866, the first submarine cable was completed
between Ireland and Newfoundland, the enterprise having been
undertaken and carried through by Cyrus West Field.
HOW CYRUS LAID THE CABLE
[July 29, 1866]
Come, listen all unto my song;
It is no silly fable;
'Tis all about the mighty cord
They call the Atlantic Cable.
Bold Cyrus Field he said, says he,
"I have a pretty notion
That I can run a telegraph
Across the Atlantic Ocean."
Then all the people laughed, and said
They'd like to see him do it;
He might get half-seas over, but
He never could go through it.
To carry out his foolish plan
He never would be able;
He might as well go hang himself
With his Atlantic Cable.
But Cyrus was a valiant man,
A fellow of decision;
And heeded not their mocking words,
Their laughter and derision.
Twice did his bravest efforts fail,
And yet his mind was stable;
He wa'n't the man to break his heart
Because he broke his cable.
"Once more, my gallant boys!" he cried;
"_Three times!_--you know the fable
(I'll make it _thirty_," muttered he,
"But I will lay the cable!").
Once more they tried,--hurrah! hurrah!
What means this great commotion?
The Lord be praised! the cable's laid
Across the Atlantic Ocean!
Loud ring the bells,--for, flashing through
Six hundred leagues of water,
Old Mother England's benison
Salutes her eldest daughter!
O'er all the land the tidings speed,
And soon, in every nation,
They'll hear about the cable with
Profoundest admiration!
Now, long live President and Queen;
And long live gallant Cyrus;
And may his courage, faith, and zeal
With emulation fire us;
And may we honor evermore
The manly, bold, and stable;
And tell our sons, to make them brave,
How Cyrus laid the cable!
JOHN GODFREY SAXE.
THE CABLE HYMN
O lonely bay of Trinity,
O dreary shores, give ear!
Lean down unto the white-lipped sea
The voice of God to hear!
From world to world His couriers fly,
Thought-winged and shod with fire;
The angel of His stormy sky
Rides down the sunken wire.
What saith the herald of the Lord?
"The world's long strife is done;
Close wedded by that mystic cord,
Its continents are one.
"And one in heart, as one in blood,
Shall all her peoples be;
The hands of human brotherhood
Are clasped beneath the sea.
"Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain
And Asian mountains borne,
The vigor of the Northern brain
Shall nerve the world outworn.
"From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
Shall thrill the magic thread;
The new Prometheus steals once more
The fire that wakes the dead."
Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat
From answering beach to beach;
Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,
And melt the chains of each!
Wild terror of the sky above,
Glide tamed and dumb below!
Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove,
Thy errands to and fro.
Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,
Beneath the deep so far,
The bridal robe of earth's accord,
The funeral shroud of war!
For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall
Space mocked and time outrun;
And round the world the thought of all
Is as the thought of one!
The poles unite, the zones agree,
The tongues of striving cease;
As on the Sea of Galilee
The Christ is whispering, Peace!
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
The most notable accomplishment of Johnson's administration was
the purchase from Russia in 1867 of the territory of Alaska.
The price paid was $7,200,000, and the cession was formally
made on June 20.
AN ARCTIC VISION
[June 20, 1867]
Where the short-legged Esquimaux
Waddle in the ice and snow,
And the playful Polar bear
Nips the hunter unaware;
Where by day they track the ermine,
And by night another vermin,--
Segment of the frigid zone,
Where the temperature alone
Warms on St. Elias' cone;
Polar dock, where Nature slips
From the ways her icy ships;
Land of fox and deer and sable,
Shore end of our western cable,--
Let the news that flying goes
Thrill through all your Arctic floes,
And reverberate the boast
From the cliffs off Beechey's coast,
Till the tidings, circling round
Every bay of Norton Sound,
Throw the vocal tide-wave back
To the isles of Kodiac.
Let the stately Polar bears
Waltz around the pole in pairs,
And the walrus, in his glee,
Bare his tusk of ivory;
While the bold sea-unicorn
Calmly takes an extra horn;
All ye Polar skies, reveal your
Very rarest of parhelia;
Trip it, all ye merry dancers,
In the airiest of "Lancers";
Slide, ye solemn glaciers, slide,
One inch farther to the tide,
Nor in rash precipitation
Upset Tyndall's calculation.
Know you not what fate awaits you,
Or to whom the future mates you?
All ye icebergs make salaam,--
You belong to Uncle Sam!
On the spot where Eugene Sue
Led his wretched Wandering Jew,
Stands a form whose features strike
Russ and Esquimaux alike.
He it is whom Skalds of old
In their Runic rhymes foretold;
Lean of flank and lank of jaw,
See the real Northern Thor!
See the awful Yankee leering
Just across the Straits of Behring;
On the drifted snow, too plain,
Sinks his fresh tobacco stain,
Just beside the deep inden-
Tation of his Number 10.
Leaning on his icy hammer
Stands the hero of this drama,
And above the wild-duck's clamor,
In his own peculiar grammar,
With its linguistic disguises,
Lo, the Arctic prologue rises:
"Wall, I reckon 'tain't so bad,
Seein' ez 'twas all they had;
True, the Springs are rather late
And early Falls predominate;
But the ice crop's pretty sure,
And the air is kind o' pure;
'Tain't so very mean a trade,
When the land is all surveyed.
There's a right smart chance for fur-chase
All along this recent purchase,
And, unless the stories fail,
Every fish from cod to whale;
Rocks, too; mebbe quartz; let's see,--
'Twould be strange if there should be,--
Seems I've heerd such stories told;
Eh!--why, bless us,--yes, it's gold!"
While the blows are falling thick
From his California pick,
You may recognize the Thor
Of the vision that I saw,--
Freed from legendary glamour,
See the real magician's hammer.
BRET HARTE.
ALASKA
Ice built, ice bound, and ice bounded,
Such cold seas of silence! such room!
Such snow-light, such sea-light, confounded
With thunders that smite like a doom!
Such grandeur! such glory! such gloom!
Hear that boom! Hear that deep distant boom
Of an avalanche hurled
Down this unfinished world!
Ice seas! and ice summits! ice spaces
In splendor of white, as God's throne!
Ice worlds to the pole! and ice places
Untracked, and unnamed, and unknown!
Hear that boom! Hear the grinding, the groan
Of the ice-gods in pain! Hear the moan
Of yon ice mountain hurled
Down this unfinished world.
JOAQUIN MILLER.
Friday, September 24, 1869, witnessed one of the greatest
panics ever known in the United States, when Jay Gould and a
few associates managed to drive the price of gold up to 162-1/2.
ISRAEL FREYER'S BID FOR GOLD
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1869
Zounds! how the price went flashing through
Wall Street, William, Broad Street, New!
All the specie in all the land
Held in one Ring by a giant hand--
For millions more it was ready to pay,
And throttle the Street on hangman's-day.
Up from the Gold Pit's nether hell,
While the innocent fountain rose and fell,
Loud and higher the bidding rose,
And the bulls, triumphant, faced their foes.
It seemed as if Satan himself were in it:
Lifting it--one per cent a minute--
Through the bellowing broker, there amid,
Who made the terrible, final bid!
High over all, and ever higher,
Was heard the voice of Israel Freyer,--
A doleful knell in the storm-swept mart,--
"Five millions more! and for any part
I'll give One Hundred and Sixty!"
Israel Freyer--the Government Jew--
Good as the best--soaked through and through
With credit gained in the year he sold
Our Treasury's precious hoard of gold;
Now through his thankless mouth rings out
The leaguers' last and cruellest shout!
Pity the shorts? Not they, indeed,
While a single rival's left to bleed!
Down come dealers in silks and hides,
Crowding the Gold Room's rounded sides,
Jostling, trampling each other's feet,
Uttering groans in the outer street;
Watching, with upturned faces pale,
The scurrying index mark its tale;
Hearing the bid of Israel Freyer,--
That ominous voice, would it never tire?
"Five millions more!--for any part
(If it breaks your firm, if it cracks your heart),
I'll give One Hundred and Sixty!"
One Hundred and Sixty! Can't be true!
What will the bears-at-forty do?
How will the merchants pay their dues?
How will the country stand the news?
What'll the banks--but listen! hold!
In screwing upward the price of gold
To that dangerous, last, particular peg,
They have killed their Goose with the Golden Egg!
Just there the metal came pouring out,
All ways at once, like a water-spout,
Or a rushing, gushing, yellow flood,
That drenched the bulls wherever they stood!
Small need to open the Washington main,
Their coffer-dams were burst with the strain!
It came by runners, it came by wire,
To answer the bid of Israel Freyer,
It poured in millions from every side,
And almost strangled him as he cried,--
"I'll give One Hundred and Sixty!"
Like Vulcan after Jupiter's kick,
Or the aphoristical Rocket's stick,
Down, down, down, the premium fell,
Faster than this rude rhyme can tell!
Thirty per cent the index slid,
Yet Freyer still kept making his bid,--
"One Hundred and Sixty for any part!"
--The sudden ruin had crazed _his_ heart,
Shattered his senses, cracked his brain,
And left him crying again and again,--
Still making his bid at the market's top
(Like the Dutchman's leg that never could stop),
"One Hundred and Sixty--Five Millions more!"
Till they dragged him, howling, off the floor.
The very last words that seller and buyer
Heard from the mouth of Israel Freyer--
A cry to remember long as they live--
Were, "I'll take Five Millions more! I'll give--
I'll give One Hundred and Sixty!"
Suppose (to avoid the appearance of evil)
There's such a thing as a Personal Devil,
It would seem that his Highness here got hold,
For once, of a bellowing Bull in Gold!
Whether bull or bear, it wouldn't much matter
Should Israel Freyer keep up his clatter
On earth or under it (as, they say,
He is doomed) till the general Judgment Day,
When the Clerk, as he cites him to answer for 't,
Shall bid him keep silence in that Court!
But it matters most, as it seems to me,
That my countrymen, great and strong and free,
So marvel at fellows who seem to win,
That if even a Clown can only begin
By stealing a railroad, and use its purse
For cornering stocks and gold, or--worse--
For buying a Judge and Legislature,
And sinking still lower poor human nature,
The gaping public, whatever befall,
Will swallow him, tandem, harlots, and all!
While our rich men drivel and stand amazed
At the dust and pother his gang have raised,
And make us remember a nursery tale
Of the four-and-twenty who feared one snail.
What's bred in the bone will breed, you know;
Clowns and their trainers, high and low,
Will cut such capers, long as they dare,
While honest Poverty says its prayer.
But tell me what prayer or fast can save
Some hoary candidate for the grave,
The market's wrinkled Giant Despair,
Muttering, brooding, scheming there,--
Founding a college or building a church
Lest Heaven should leave him in the lurch!
Better come out in the rival way,
Issue your scrip in open day,
And pour your wealth in the grimy fist
Of some gross-mouthed, gambling pugilist;
Leave toil and poverty where they lie,
Pass thinkers, workers, artists, by,
Your pot-house fag from his counters bring
And make him into a Railway King!
Between such Gentiles and such Jews
Little enough one finds to choose:
Either the other will buy and use,
Eat the meat and throw him the bone,
And leave him to stand the brunt alone.
--Let the tempest come, that's gathering near,
And give us a better atmosphere!
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
On October 8 and 9, 1871, Chicago, which had grown to be the
greatest city in the West, was almost entirely destroyed by
fire. An area of three and a half square miles was burned over;
two hundred people were killed and a hundred thousand rendered
homeless.
CHICAGO
[October 8-10, 1871]
Men said at vespers: "All is well!"
In one wild night the city fell;
Fell shrines of prayer and marts of gain
Before the fiery hurricane.
On threescore spires had sunset shone,
Where ghastly sunrise looked on none.
Men clasped each other's hands, and said:
"The City of the West is dead!"
Brave hearts who fought, in slow retreat,
The fiends of fire from street to street,
Turned, powerless, to the blinding glare,
The dumb defiance of despair.
A sudden impulse thrilled each wire
That signalled round that sea of fire;
Swift words of cheer, warm heart-throbs came;
In tears of pity died the flame!
From East, from West, from South and North,
The messages of hope shot forth,
And, underneath the severing wave,
The world, full-handed, reached to save.
Fair seemed the old; but fairer still
The new, the dreary void shall fill
With dearer homes than those o'erthrown,
For love shall lay each corner-stone.
Rise, stricken city! from thee throw
The ashen sackcloth of thy woe;
And build, as to Amphion's strain,
To songs of cheer thy walls again!
How shrivelled in thy hot distress
The primal sin of selfishness!
How instant rose, to take thy part,
The angel in the human heart!
Ah! not in vain the flames that tossed
Above thy dreadful holocaust;
The Christ again has preached through thee
The Gospel of Humanity!
Then lift once more thy towers on high,
And fret with spires the western sky,
To tell that God is yet with us,
And love is still miraculous!
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
CHICAGO
Blackened and bleeding, helpless, panting, prone,
On the charred fragments of her shattered throne
Lies she who stood but yesterday alone.
Queen of the West! by some enchanter taught
To lift the glory of Aladdin's court,
Then lose the spell that all that wonder wrought.
Like her own prairies by some chance seed sown,
Like her own prairies in one brief day grown,
Like her own prairies in one fierce night mown.
She lifts her voice, and in her pleading call
We hear the cry of Macedon to Paul,
The cry for help that makes her kin to all.
But haply with wan fingers may she feel
The silver cup hid in the proffered meal,
The gifts her kinship and our loves reveal.
BRET HARTE.
The whole country rallied to the aid of the stricken city.
An Aid and Relief Society was at once formed, and within a
month had received subscriptions aggregating three and a half
millions.
CHICAGO
Gaunt in the midst of the prairie,
She who was once so fair;
Charred and rent are her garments,
Heavy and dark like cerements;
Silent, but round her the air
Plaintively wails, "Miserere!"
Proud like a beautiful maiden,
Art-like from forehead to feet,
Was she till pressed like a leman
Close to the breast of the demon,
Lusting for one so sweet,
So were her shoulders laden.
Friends she had, rich in her treasures:
Shall the old taunt be true,--
Fallen, they turn their cold faces,
Seeking new wealth-gilded places,
Saying we never knew
Aught of her smiles or her pleasures?
Silent she stands on the prairie,
Wrapped in her fire-scathed sheet:
Around her, thank God, is the Nation,
Weeping for her desolation,
Pouring its gold at her feet,
Answering her "Miserere!"
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.
Only second to the Chicago fire in destructiveness was that
which visited Boston in the following year. It started on
Saturday evening, November 9, 1872, and sixty-five acres were
laid waste before it was controlled.
BOSTON
[November 9, 1872]
O broad-breasted Queen among Nations!
O Mother, so strong in thy youth!
Has the Lord looked upon thee in ire,
And willed thou be chastened by fire,
Without any ruth?
Has the Merciful tired of His mercy,
And turned from thy sinning in wrath,
That the world with raised hand sees and pities
Thy desolate daughters, thy cities,
Despoiled on their path?
One year since thy youngest was stricken:
Thy eldest lies stricken to-day.
Ah! God, was Thy wrath without pity,
To tear the strong heart from our city,
And cast it away?
O Father! forgive us our doubting;
The stain from our weak souls efface;
Thou rebukest, we know, but to chasten,
Thy hand has but fallen to hasten
Return to Thy grace.
Let us rise purified from our ashes
As sinners have risen who grieved;
Let us show that twice-sent desolation
On every true heart in the nation
Has conquest achieved.
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.
The district burned contained the finest business blocks in the
city, and the loss was estimated at $80,000,000. For a time, it
seemed that the famous "Old South" would be destroyed.
THE CHURCH OF THE REVOLUTION
"The Old South stands."
Loud through the still November air
The clang and clash of fire-bells broke;
From street to street, from square to square,
Rolled sheets of flame and clouds of smoke.
The marble structures reeled and fell,
The iron pillars bowed like lead;
But one lone spire rang on its bell
Above the flames. Men passed, and said,
"The Old South stands!"
The gold moon, 'gainst a copper sky,
Hung like a portent in the air,
The midnight came, the wind rose high,
And men stood speechless in despair.
But, as the marble columns broke,
And wider grew the chasm red,--
A seething gulf of flame and smoke,--
The firemen marked the spire and said,
"The Old South stands!"
Beyond the harbor, calm and fair,
The sun came up through bars of gold,
Then faded in a wannish glare,
As flame and smoke still upward rolled.
The princely structures, crowned with art,
Where Commerce laid her treasures bare;
The haunts of trade, the common mart,
All vanished in the withering air,--
"The Old South stands!"
"The Old South must be levelled soon
To check the flames and save the street;
Bring fuse and powder." But at noon
The ancient fane still stood complete.
The mitred flame had lipped the spire,
The smoke its blackness o'er it cast;
Then, hero-like, men fought the fire,
And from each lip the watchword passed,--
"The Old South stands!"
All night the red sea round it rolled,
And o'er it fell the fiery rain:
And, as each hour the old clock told,
Men said, "'Twill never strike again!"
But still the dial-plate at morn
Was crimsoned in the rising light.
Long may it redden with the dawn,
And mark the shading hours of night!
Long may it stand!
Long may it stand! where help was sought
In weak and dark and doubtful days:
Where freedom's lessons first were taught,
And prayers of faith were turned to praise;
Where burned the first Shekinah's flame
In God's new temples of the free;
Long may it stand, in freedom's name,
Like Israel's pillar by the sea!
Long may it stand!
HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH.
The nation rushed to Boston's aid just as it had done to
Chicago's, and the city soon rose from her ashes greater than
ever.
AFTER THE FIRE
While far along the eastern sky
I saw the flags of Havoc fly,
As if his forces would assault
The sovereign of the starry vault
And hurl Him back the burning rain
That seared the cities of the plain,
I read as on a crimson page
The words of Israel's sceptred sage:--
_For riches make them wings, and they
Do as an eagle fly away._
O vision of that sleepless night,
What hue shall paint the mocking light
That burned and stained the orient skies
Where peaceful morning loves to rise,
As if the sun had lost his way
And dawned to make a second day,--
Above how red with fiery glow,
How dark to those it woke below!
On roof and wall, on dome and spire,
Flashed the false jewels of the fire;
Girt with her belt of glittering panes,
And crowned with starry-gleaming vanes,
Our northern queen in glory shone
With new-born splendors not her own,
And stood, transfigured in our eyes,
A victim decked for sacrifice!
The cloud still hovers overhead,
And still the midnight sky is red;
As the lost wanderer strays alone
To seek the place he called his own,
His devious footprints sadly tell
How changed the pathways known so well;
The scene, how new! The tale, how old
Ere yet the ashes have grown cold!
Again I read the words that came
Writ in the rubric of the flame:
Howe'er we trust to mortal things,
Each hath its pair of folded wings;
Though long their terrors rest unspread
Their fatal plumes are never shed;
At last, at last, they stretch in flight,
And blot the day and blast the night!
Hope, only Hope, of all that clings
Around us, never spreads her wings;
Love, though he break his earthly chain,
Still whispers he will come again;
But Faith that soars to seek the sky
Shall teach our half-fledged souls to fly,
And find, beyond the smoke and flame,
The cloudless azure whence they came!
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
On May 16, 1874, the bursting of a reservoir dam at
Williamsburg, Mass., caused a disastrous flood, costing one
hundred and forty lives and the loss of $1,500,000 in property.
The loss of life would have been far greater but for the
heroism of a milkman named Collins Graves, who rode forward in
front of the flood, giving warning.
THE RIDE OF COLLINS GRAVES
[May 16, 1874]
No song of a soldier riding down
To the raging fight from Winchester town;
No song of a time that shook the earth
With the nations' throe at a nation's birth;
But the song of a brave man, free from fear
As Sheridan's self or Paul Revere;
Who risked what they risked, free from strife
And its promise of glorious pay,--his life!
The peaceful valley has waked and stirred,
And the answering echoes of life are heard;
The dew still clings to the trees and grass,
And the early toilers smiling pass,
As they glance aside at the white-walled homes,
Or up the valley, where merrily comes
The brook that sparkles in diamond rills
As the sun comes over the Hampshire hills.
What was it passed like an ominous breath--
Like a shiver of fear, or a touch of death?
What was it? The valley is peaceful still,
And the leaves are afire on top of the hill;
It was not a sound, nor a thing of sense,--
But a pain, like the pang of the short suspense
That thrills the being of those who see
At their feet the gulf of Eternity.
The air of the valley has felt the chill;
The workers pause at the door of the mill;
The housewife, keen to the shivering air,
Arrests her foot on the cottage stair,
Instinctive taught by the mother-love,
And thinks of the sleeping ones above.
Why start the listeners? Why does the course
Of the mill-stream widen? Is it a horse--
"Hark to the sound of the hoofs!" they say--
That gallops so wildly Williamsburg way?
God! what was that, like a human shriek
From the winding valley? Will nobody speak?
Will nobody answer those women who cry
As the awful warnings thunder by?
Whence come they? Listen! and now they hear
The sound of the galloping horse-hoofs near;
They watch the trend of the vale, and see
The rider who thunders so menacingly,
With waving arms and warning scream
To the home-filled banks of the valley stream.
He draws no rein, but he shakes the street
With a shout and the ring of the galloping feet,
And this the cry he flings to the wind,--
"_To the hills for your lives! The flood is behind!_"
He cries and is gone, but they know the worst,--
The breast of the Williamsburg dam has burst!
The basin that nourished their happy homes
Is changed to a demon. It comes! it comes!
A monster in aspect, with shaggy front
Of shattered dwellings to take the brunt
Of the homes they shatter;--white-maned and hoarse,
The merciless Terror fills the course
Of the narrow valley, and rushing raves,
With death on the first of its hissing waves,
Till cottage and street and crowded mill
Are crumbled and crushed.
But onward still,
In front of the roaring flood, is heard
The galloping horse and the warning word.
Thank God! the brave man's life is spared!
From Williamsburg town he nobly dared
To race with the flood, and take the road
In front of the terrible swath it mowed.
For miles it thundered and crashed behind,
But he looked ahead with a steadfast mind:
"_They must be warned!_" was all he said,
As away on his terrible ride he sped.
When heroes are called for, bring the crown
To this Yankee rider; send him down
On the stream of time with the Curtius old;
His deed, as the Roman's, was brave and bold;
And the tale can as noble a thrill awake,
For he offered his life for the people's sake!
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.
CHAPTER II
THE YEAR OF A HUNDRED YEARS
The year 1876 marked the completion of the first century of
independence, and it was decided to celebrate it in a worthy
manner. The city of Philadelphia, where the country had been
born, was fittingly selected as the place for the celebration.
OUR FIRST CENTURY
It cannot be that men who are the seed
Of Washington should miss fame's true applause;
Franklin did plan us; Marshall gave us laws;
And slow the broad scroll grew a people's creed--
Union and Liberty! then at our need,
Time's challenge coming, Lincoln gave it pause,
Upheld the double pillars of the cause,
And dying left them whole--our crowning deed.
Such was the fathering race that made all fast,
Who founded us, and spread from sea to sea
A thousand leagues the zone of liberty,
And built for man this refuge from his past,
Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered; shamed were we,
Failing the stature that such sires forecast!
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY.
The celebration took the form of a great industrial exposition,
at which the arts and industries of the whole world were
represented. The exposition was opened on May 10, 1876, more
than a hundred thousand people being present. Wagner had
composed a march for the occasion and Whittier's "Centennial
Hymn" was sung by a chorus of a thousand voices.
CENTENNIAL HYMN
I
Our fathers' God! from out whose hand
The centuries fall like grains of sand,
We meet to-day, united, free,
And loyal to our land and Thee,
To thank Thee for the era done,
And trust Thee for the opening one.
II
Here, where of old, by Thy design,
The fathers spake that word of Thine
Whose echo is the glad refrain
Of rended bolt and falling chain,
To grace our festal time, from all
The zones of earth our guests we call.
III
Be with us while the New World greets
The Old World thronging all its streets,
Unveiling all the triumphs won
By art or toil beneath the sun;
And unto common good ordain
This rivalship of hand and brain.
IV
Thou, who hast here in concord furled
The war flags of a gathered world,
Beneath our Western skies fulfil
The Orient's mission of good-will,
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
Send back its Argonauts of peace.
V
For art and labor met in truce,
For beauty made the bride of use,
We thank Thee; but, withal, we crave
The austere virtues strong to save,
The honor proof to place or gold,
The manhood never bought nor sold!
VI
Oh make Thou us, through centuries long,
In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of Thy righteous law:
And, cast in some diviner mould,
Let the new cycle shame the old!
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
"The restored South chanted the praises of the Union in the
words of Sidney Lanier, the Georgia poet." The poem was written
as a cantata, the music for which was composed by Dudley Buck.
THE CENTENNIAL MEDITATION OF COLUMBIA[13]
1776-1876
From this hundred-terraced height,
Sight more large with nobler light
Ranges down yon towering years.
Humbler smiles and lordlier tears
Shine and fall, shine and fall,
While old voices rise and call
Yonder where the to-and-fro
Weltering of my Long-Ago
Moves about the moveless base
Far below my resting-place.
Mayflower, Mayflower, slowly hither flying,
Trembling westward o'er yon balking sea,
Hearts within _Farewell dear England_ sighing,
Winds without _But dear in vain_ replying,
Gray-lipp'd waves about thee shouted, crying
"No! It shall not be!"
Jamestown, out of thee--
Plymouth, thee--thee, Albany--
Winter cries, _Ye freeze_: away!
Fever cries, _Ye burn_: away!
Hunger cries, _Ye starve_: away!
Vengeance cries, _Your graves shall stay_!
Then old Shapes and Masks of Things,
Framed like Faiths or clothed like Kings,
Ghosts of Goods once fleshed and fair,
Grown foul Bads in alien air--
War, and his most noisy lords,
Tongued with lithe and poisoned swords--
Error, Terror, Rage, and Crime,
All in a windy night of time
Cried to me from land and sea,
_No! Thou shalt not be!_
Hark!
Huguenots whispering _yea_ in the dark,
Puritans answering _yea_ in the dark!
_Yea_ like an arrow shot true to his mark,
Darts through the tyrannous heart of Denial.
Patience and Labor and solemn-souled Trial,
Foiled, still beginning,
Soiled, but not sinning.
Toil through the stertorous death of the Night,
Toil when wild brother-wars new-dark the Light,
Toil, and forgive, and kiss o'er, and replight.
Now Praise to God's oft-granted grace,
Now Praise to Man's undaunted face,
Despite the land, despite the sea,
I was: I am: and I shall be--
How long, Good Angel, O how long?
Sing me from Heaven a man's own song!
"Long as thine Art shall love true love,
Long as thy Science truth shall know,
Long as thine Eagle harms no Dove,
Long as thy Law by law shall grow,
Long as thy God is God above,
Thy brother every man below,
So long, dear Land of all my love,
Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow!"
O Music, from this height of time my Word unfold:
In thy large signals all men's hearts Man's heart behold:
Mid-heaven unroll thy chords as friendly flags unfurled,
And wave the world's best lover's welcome to the world.
SIDNEY LANIER.
[13] From Poems by Sidney Lanier; copyright, 1884, 1891, by Mary D.
Lanier; published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
President Grant then declared the exposition open. It was a
success from the very start, and great crowds were every day in
attendance.
CENTENNIAL HYMN
1876
Through calm and storm the years have led
Our nation on, from stage to stage--
A century's space--until we tread
The threshold of another age.
We see where o'er our pathway swept
A torrent-stream of blood and fire,
And thank the Guardian Power who kept
Our sacred League of States entire.
Oh, chequered train of years, farewell!
With all thy strifes and hopes and fears!
Yet with us let thy memories dwell,
To warn and teach the coming years.
And thou, the new-beginning age,
Warned by the past, and not in vain,
Write on a fairer, whiter page,
The record of thy happier reign.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
On July 4, 1876, simple but impressive exercises were held in
the public square in the rear of Independence Hall, where, a
century before, a great throng had awaited the promulgation of
the "Declaration."
WELCOME TO THE NATIONS
PHILADELPHIA, JULY 4, 1876
Bright on the banners of lily and rose
Lo! the last sun of our century sets!
Wreathe the black cannon that scowled on our foes,
All but her friendships the nation forgets!
All but her friends and their welcome forgets!
These are around her; but where are her foes?
Lo, while the sun of her century sets,
Peace with her garlands of lily and rose!
Welcome! a shout like the war trumpet's swell
Wakes the wild echoes that slumber around!
Welcome! it quivers from Liberty's bell;
Welcome! the walls of her temple resound!
Hark! the gray walls of her temple resound!
Fade the far voices o'er hillside and dell;
Welcome! still whisper the echoes around;
Welcome! still trembles on Liberty's bell!
Thrones of the continent! isles of the sea!
Yours are the garlands of peace we entwine;
Welcome, once more, to the land of the free,
Shadowed alike by the palm and the pine;
Softly they murmur, the palm and the pine,
"Hushed is our strife, in the land of the free;"
Over your children their branches entwine
Thrones of the continents! isles of the sea!
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
"The National Ode" was read by its author, Bayard Taylor, whose
deep voice and impressive delivery added appreciably to the
majesty of the lines.
THE NATIONAL ODE
INDEPENDENCE SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA, JULY 4, 1876
I-1
Sun of the stately Day,
Let Asia into the shadow drift,
Let Europe bask in thy ripened ray,
And over the severing ocean lift
A brow of broader splendor!
Give light to the eager eyes
Of the Land that waits to behold thee rise;
The gladness of morning lend her,
With the triumph of noon attend her,
And the peace of the vesper skies!
For, lo! she cometh now
With hope on the lip and pride on the brow,
Stronger, and dearer, and fairer,
To smile on the love we bear her,--
To live, as we dreamed her and sought her,
Liberty's latest daughter!
In the clefts of the rocks, in the secret places,
We found her traces;
On the hills, in the crash of woods that fall,
We heard her call;
When the lines of battle broke,
We saw her face in the fiery smoke;
Through toil, and anguish, and desolation,
We followed, and found her
With the grace of a virgin Nation
As a sacred zone around her!
Who shall rejoice
With a righteous voice,
Far-heard through the ages, if not she?
For the menace is dumb that defied her,
The doubt is dead that denied her,
And she stands acknowledged, and strong, and free!
II-1
Ah, hark! the solemn undertone,
On every wind of human story blown.
A large, divinely-moulded Fate
Questions the right and purpose of a State,
And in its plan sublime
Our eras are the dust of Time.
The far-off Yesterday of power
Creeps back with stealthy feet,
Invades the lordship of the hour,
And at our banquet takes the unbidden seat.
From all unchronicled and silent ages
Before the Future first begot the Past,
Till History dared, at last,
To write eternal words on granite pages;
From Egypt's tawny drift, and Assur's mound,
And where, uplifted white and far,
Earth highest yearns to meet a star,
And Man his manhood by the Ganges found,--
Imperial heads, of old millennial sway,
And still by some pale splendor crowned,
Chill as a corpse-light in our full-orbed day,
In ghostly grandeur rise
And say, through stony lips and vacant eyes:
"Thou that assertest freedom, power, and fame,
Declare to us thy claim!"
I-2
On the shores of a Continent cast,
She won the inviolate soil
By loss of heirdom of all the Past,
And faith in the royal right of Toil!
She planted homes on the savage sod:
Into the wilderness lone
She walked with fearless feet,
In her hand the divining-rod,
Till the veins of the mountains beat
With fire of metal and force of stone!
She set the speed of the river-head
To turn the mills of her bread;
She drove her ploughshare deep
Through the prairie's thousand-centuried sleep,
To the South, and West, and North,
She called Pathfinder forth,
Her faithful and sole companion
Where the flushed Sierra, snow-starred,
Her way to the sunset barred,
And the nameless rivers in thunder and foam
Channelled the terrible canyon!
Nor paused, till her uttermost home
Was built, in the smile of a softer sky
And the glory of beauty still to be,
Where the haunted waves of Asia die
On the strand of the world-wide sea!
II-2
The race, in conquering,
Some fierce, Titanic joy of conquest knows;
Whether in veins of serf or king,
Our ancient blood beats restless in repose.
Challenge of Nature unsubdued
Awaits not Man's defiant answer long;
For hardship, even as wrong,
Provokes the level-eyed heroic mood.
This for herself she did; but that which lies,
As over earth the skies,
Blending all forms in one benignant glow,--
Crowned conscience, tender care,
Justice that answers every bondman's prayer,
Freedom where Faith may lead and Thought may dare,
The power of minds that know,
Passion of hearts that feel,
Purchased by blood and woe,
Guarded by fire and steel,--
Hath she secured? What blazon on her shield,
In the clear Century's light
Shines to the world revealed,
Declaring nobler triumph, born of Right?
I-3
Foreseen in the vision of sages,
Foretold when martyrs bled,
She was born of the longing of ages,
By the truth of the noble dead
And the faith of the living fed!
No blood in her lightest veins
Frets at remembered chains,
Nor shame of bondage has bowed her head.
In her form and features still
The unblenching Puritan will,
Cavalier honor, Huguenot grace,
The Quaker truth and sweetness,
And the strength of the danger-girdled race
Of Holland, blend in a proud completeness.
From the homes of all, where her being began,
She took what she gave to Man;
Justice, that knew no station,
Belief, as soul decreed,
Free air for aspiration,
Free force for independent deed!
She takes, but to give again,
As the sea returns the rivers in rain;
And gathers the chosen of her seed
From the hunted of every crown and creed.
Her Germany dwells by a gentler Rhine;
Her Ireland sees the old sunburst shine;
Her France pursues some dream divine;
Her Norway keeps his mountain pine;
Her Italy waits by the western brine;
And, broad-based under all,
Is planted England's oaken-hearted mood,
As rich in fortitude
As e'er went worldward from the island-wall!
Fused in her candid light,
To one strong race all races here unite:
Tongues melt in hers, hereditary foemen
Forget their sword and slogan, kith and clan:
'Twas glory, once, to be a Roman:
She makes it glory, now, to be a man!
II-3
Bow down!
Doff thine æonian crown!
One hour forget
The glory, and recall the debt:
Make expiation,
Of humbler mood,
For the pride of thine exultation
O'er peril conquered and strife subdued.
But half the right is wrested
When victory yields her prize,
And half the marrow tested
When old endurance dies.
In the sight of them that love thee,
Bow to the Greater above thee!
He faileth not to smite
The idle ownership of Right,
Nor spares to sinews fresh from trial,
And virtue schooled in long denial,
The tests that wait for thee
In larger perils of prosperity.
Here, at the Century's awful shrine,
Bow to thy Father's God, and thine!
I-4
Behold! she bendeth now,
Humbling the chaplet of her hundred years.
There is a solemn sweetness on her brow,
And in her eyes are sacred tears.
Can she forget,
In present joy, the burden of her debt,
When for a captive race
She grandly staked, and won,
The total promise of her power begun,
And bared her bosom's grace
To the sharp wound that inly tortures yet?
Can she forget
The million graves her young devotion set,
The hands that clasp above,
From either side, in sad, returning love?
Can she forget,
Here, where the Ruler of to-day,
The Citizen of to-morrow,
And equal thousands to rejoice and pray
Beside these holy walls are met,
Her birth-cry, mixed of keenest bliss and sorrow?
Where, on July's immortal morn
Held forth, the People saw her head
And shouted to the world: "The King is dead,
But, lo! the Heir is born!"
When fire of Youth, and sober trust of Age,
In Farmer, Soldier, Priest, and Sage,
Arose and cast upon her
Baptismal garments,--never robes so fair
Clad prince in Old-World air,--
Their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor!
II-4
Arise! Recrown thy head,
Radiant with blessings of the Dead!
Bear from this hallowed place
The prayer that purifies thy lips,
The light of courage that defies eclipse,
The rose of Man's new morning on thy face!
Let no iconoclast
Invade thy rising Pantheon of the Past,
To make a blank where Adams stood,
To touch the Father's sheathed and sacred blade,
Spoil crowns on Jefferson and Franklin laid,
Or wash from Freedom's feet the stain of Lincoln's blood!
Hearken, as from that haunted Hall
Their voices call:
"We lived and died for thee;
We greatly dared that thou might'st be:
So, from thy children still
We claim denials which at last fulfil,
And freedom yielded to preserve thee free!"
Beside clear-hearted Right
That smiles at Power's uplifted rod,
Plant Duties that requite,
And Order that sustains, upon thy sod,
And stand in stainless might
Above all self, and only less than God!
III-1
Here may thy solemn challenge end,
All-proving Past, and each discordance die
Of doubtful augury,
Or in one choral with the Present blend,
And that half-heard, sweet harmony
Of something nobler that our sons may see!
Though poignant memories burn
Of days that were, and may again return,
When thy fleet foot, O Huntress of the Woods,
The slippery brinks of danger knew,
And dim the eyesight grew
That was so sure in thine old solitudes,--
Yet stays some richer sense
Won from the mixture of thine elements,
To guide the vagrant scheme,
And winnow truth from each conflicting dream!
Yet in thy blood shall live
Some force unspent, some essence primitive,
To seize the highest use of things;
For Fate, to mould thee to her plan,
Denied thee food of kings,
Withheld the udder and the orchard-fruits,
Fed thee with savage roots,
And forced thy harsher milk from barren breasts of man!
III-2
O sacred Woman-Form,
Of the first People's need and passion wrought,--
No thin, pale ghost of Thought,
But fair as Morning and as heart's-blood warm,--
Wearing thy priestly tiar on Judah's hills;
Clear-eyed beneath Athene's helm of gold;
Or from Rome's central seat
Hearing the pulses of the Continents beat
In thunder where her legions rolled;
Compact of high heroic hearts and wills,
Whose being circles all
The selfless aims of men, and all fulfils;
Thyself not free, so long as one is thrall;
Goddess, that as a Nation lives,
And as a Nation dies,
That for her children as a man defies,
And to her children as a mother gives,--
Take our fresh fealty now!
No more a Chieftainess, with wampum-zone
And feather-cinctured brow,--
No more a new Britannia, grown
To spread an equal banner to the breeze,
And lift thy trident o'er the double seas;
But with unborrowed crest,
In thine own native beauty dressed,--
The front of pure command, the unflinching eye, thine own!
III-3
Look up, look forth, and on!
There's light in the dawning sky:
The clouds are parting, the night is gone:
Prepare for the work of the day!
Fallow thy pastures lie,
And far thy shepherds stray,
And the fields of thy vast domain
Are waiting for purer seed
Of knowledge, desire, and deed,
For keener sunshine and mellower rain!
But keep thy garments pure:
Pluck them back, with the old disdain,
From touch of the hands that stain!
So shall thy strength endure.
Transmute into good the gold of Gain,
Compel to beauty thy ruder powers,
Till the bounty of coming hours
Shall plant, on thy fields apart,
With the oak of Toil, the rose of Art!
Be watchful, and keep us so:
Be strong, and fear no foe:
Be just, and the world shall know!
With the same love love us, as we give;
And the day shall never come,
That finds us weak or dumb
To join and smite and cry
In the great task, for thee to die,
And the greater task, for thee to live!
BAYARD TAYLOR.
Richard Henry Lee, grandson of the mover of the Declaration,
came to the front with the original document in his hands, and
read its sonorous sentences. William M. Evarts delivered an
oration and "Our National Banner," words by Dexter Smith, music
by Sir Julius Benedict, was sung.
OUR NATIONAL BANNER
[July 4, 1876]
O'er the high and o'er the lowly
Floats that banner bright and holy
In the rays of Freedom's sun,
In the nation's heart embedded,
O'er our Union newly wedded,
One in all, and all in one.
Let that banner wave forever,
May its lustrous stars fade never,
Till the stars shall pale on high;
While there's right the wrong defeating,
While there's hope in true hearts beating,
Truth and freedom shall not die.
As it floated long before us,
Be it ever floating o'er us,
O'er our land from shore to shore:
There are freemen yet to wave it,
Millions who would die to save it,
Wave it, save it, evermore.
DEXTER SMITH.
The exposition closed November 10, 1876. It had served to draw
all sections of the country more closely together, and to
establish the industrial position of the United States among
the nations of the world.
AFTER THE CENTENNIAL
(A HOPE)
Before our eyes a pageant rolled
Whose banners every land unfurled;
And as it passed, its splendors told
The art and glory of the world.
The nations of the earth have stood
With face to face and hand in hand,
And sworn to common brotherhood
The sundered souls of every land.
And while America is pledged
To light her Pharos towers for all,
While her broad mantle, starred and edged
With truth, o'er high and low shall fall;
And while the electric nerves still belt
The State and Continent in one,--
The discords of the past shall melt
Like ice beneath the summer sun.
O land of hope! thy future years
Are shrouded from our mortal sight;
But thou canst turn the century's fears
To heralds of a cloudless light!
The sacred torch our fathers lit
No wild misrule can ever quench;
Still in our midst wise judges sit,
Whom party passion cannot blench.
From soul to soul, from hand to hand
Thy sons have passed that torch along,
Whose flame by Wisdom's breath is fanned
Whose staff is held by runners strong.
O Spirit of immortal truth,
Thy power alone that circles all
Can feed the fire as in its youth--
Can hold the runners lest they fall!
CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH.
CHAPTER III
THE CONQUEST OF THE PLAINS
The Indians had long since ceased to be a serious menace to the
United States, and the policy of the government for many years
had been to settle them upon various selected tracts of land
west of the Mississippi. But the population of the West was
increasing very rapidly, the completion of the railway to the
Pacific having given it a great impetus.
THE PACIFIC RAILWAY
FINISHED, MAY 10, 1869
"And a Highway shall there be."
'Tis "_Done_"--the wondrous thoroughfare
Type of that Highway all divine!
No ancient wonder can compare
With this, in grandeur of design.
For, 'twas no visionary scheme
To immortalize the builder's name;
No impulse rash, no transient dream
Of some mere worshipper of Fame.
Rare common sense conceived the plan,
For working out a lasting good--
The full development of Man;
The growth of human brotherhood!
And lo! by patient toil and care,
The work with rare success is crowned;
And nations, yet to be, will share
In blessings that shall e'er abound.
Across a continent's expanse,
The lengthening track now runs secure,
O'er which the Iron Horse shall prance,
So long as earth and time endure!
His course extends from East to West--
From where Atlantic billows roar,
To where the quiet waters rest,
Beside the far Pacific shore.
Proud commerce, by Atlantic gales
Tossed to and fro,--her canvas rent--
Will gladly furl her wearied sails,
And glide across a continent.
Through smiling valleys, broad and free,
O'er rivers wide, or mountain-crest,
Her course shall swift and peaceful be,
Till she has reached the farthest West.
And e'en the treasures of the East,
Diverted from their wonted track,--
With safety gained, with speed increased,--
Will follow in her footsteps back.
And thus the Nations, greatly blest,
Will share another triumph, won,
That links yet closer East and West--
The rising and the setting sun!
This glorious day with joy we greet!
May Faith abound, may Love increase,
And may this highway, now complete,
Be the glad harbinger of Peace!
God bless the Work, that it may prove
The source of greater good in store,
When Man shall heed the law of Love,
And Nations shall learn war no more.
C. R. BALLARD.
During the autumn of 1874, gold was discovered in the Black
Hills Sioux reservation and explorers rushed in; a still worse
grievance was the wanton destruction of bison by hunters and
excursionists. Driven to frenzy, at last, tribe after tribe of
savages took up arms, and started on a career of murder and
rapine.
AFTER THE COMANCHES
Saddle! saddle! saddle!
Mount, mount, and away!
Over the dim green prairie,
Straight on the track of day;
Spare not spur for mercy,
Hurry with shout and thong,
Fiery and tough is the mustang,
The prairie is wide and long.
Saddle! saddle! saddle!
Leap from the broken door,
Where the brute Comanche entered,
And the white-foot treads no more!
The hut is burnt to ashes,
There are dead men stark outside,
And only a long torn ringlet
Left of the stolen bride.
Go like the east wind's howling,
Ride with death behind,
Stay not for food or slumber,
Till the thieving wolves ye find!
They came before the wedding,
Swifter than prayer or priest;
The bride-men danced to bullets,
The wild dogs ate the feast.
Look to rifle and powder,
Buckle the knife-belt sure;
Loose the coil of the lasso,
And make the loop secure;
Fold the flask in the poncho,
Fill the pouch with maize,
And ride as if to-morrow
Were the last of living days.
Saddle! saddle! saddle!
Redden spur and thong,
Ride like the mad tornado,
The track is lonely and long,
Spare not horse nor rider,
Fly for the stolen bride!
Bring her home on the crupper,
A scalp on either side.