THE BUNKER HILL ORATION.
The oration at Plymouth first revealed the power of Mr. Webster. There
are some men who exhaust themselves in one speech, one poem, or one
story, and never attain again the high level which they have once
reached.
It was not so with Daniel Webster. He had a fund of reserved power
which great occasions never drew upon in vain. It might be that in an
ordinary case in court, where his feelings were not aroused, and no
fitting demand made upon his great abilities, he would disappoint the
expectations of those who supposed that he must always be eloquent. I
heard a gentleman say once, “Oh, I heard Mr. Webster speak once, and
his speech was commonplace enough.”
“On what occasion?”
“In court.”
“What was the case?”
“Oh, I don’t remember—some mercantile case.”
It would certainly be unreasonable to expect any man to invest dry
commercial details with eloquence. Certainly a lawyer always ambitious
in his rhetoric would hardly commend himself to a sound, sensible
client.
But Mr. Webster always rose to the level of a great occasion. His
occasional speeches were always carefully prepared and finished, and
there is not one of them but will live. I now have to call special
attention to the address delivered at the laying of the corner-stone
of Bunker Hill Monument, at Charlestown, June 17, 1825. It was an
occasion from which he could not help drawing inspiration. His father,
now dead, whom he had loved and revered as few sons love and revere
their parents, had been a participant, not indeed in the battle which
the granite shaft was to commemorate, but in the struggle which the
colonists waged for liberty. It may well be imagined that Mr. Webster
gazed with no common emotion at the veterans who were present to hear
their patriotism celebrated. Though the passages addressed to them—in
part at least—are familiar to many of my readers, I will nevertheless
quote them here. Apart from their subject they will never be forgotten
by Americans.
“Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation.
Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives that you might behold
this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very
hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder in
the strife of your country. Behold how altered! The same heavens are
indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all
else how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see now
no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown.
The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge;
the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault;
the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand
bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror
there may be in war and death—all these you have witnessed, but you
witness them no more.
“All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs,
which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in
distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the
issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of
its whole happy population come out to welcome and greet you with
an universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position
appropriately lying at the foot of this mound, and seeming fondly to
cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country’s
own means of distinction and defense. All is peace, and God has granted
you this sight of your country’s happiness ere you slumber forever in
the grave; he has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of
your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen,
to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the
name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you!
“But, alas! you are not all here! Time and the sword have thinned your
ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge! our eyes
seek for you in vain amid this broken band. You are gathered to your
fathers, and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance and
your own bright example. But let us not too much grieve that you have
met the common fate of men. You lived at least long enough to know that
your work had been nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to
see your country’s independence established, and to sheathe your swords
from war. On the light of liberty you saw arise the light of peace, like
‘another morn,
Risen on mid-noon;’
and the sky on which you closed your eyes was cloudless.”
After a tribute to General Warren ‘the first great martyr in this great
cause,’ Mr. Webster proceeds:
“Veterans, you are the remnants of many a well-fought field. You bring
with you marks of honor from Trenton and Monmouth, from Yorktown,
Camden,. Bennington and Saratoga. Veterans of half a century, when
in your youthful days you put everything at hazard in your country’s
cause, good as that cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your
fondest hopes did not stretch onward to an hour like this. At a period
to which you could not reasonably have expected to arrive, at a moment
of national prosperity such as you could never have foreseen, you are
now met here to enjoy the fellowship of old soldiers, and to receive
the overflowings of an universal gratitude.
“But your agitated countenances and your heaving breasts inform me that
even this is not an unmixed joy. I perceive that a tumult of contending
feelings rushes upon you. The images of the dead, as well as the
persons of the living, throng to your embraces. The scene overwhelms
you, and I turn from it. May the Father of all mercies smile upon your
declining years and bless them! And when you shall here have exchanged
your embraces, when you shall once more have pressed the hands which
have been so often extended to give succor in adversity, or grasped in
the exultation of victory, then look abroad into this lovely land which
your young valor defended, and mark the happiness with which it is
filled; yea, look abroad into the whole earth, and see what a name you
have contributed to give your country, and what a praise you have added
to freedom, and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam
upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind!”
Not only were there war-scarred veterans present to listen entranced to
the glowing periods of the inspired orator, but there was an eminent
friend of America, a son of France, General Lafayette, who sat in a
conspicuous seat and attracted the notice of all. To him the orator
addressed himself in a manner no less impressive.
“Fortunate, fortunate man! with what measure of devotion will you not
thank God for the circumstances of your extraordinary life! You are
connected with both hemispheres, and with two generations. Heaven saw
fit to ordain that the electric spark of liberty should be conducted,
through you, from the New World to the Old; and we, who are now here to
perform this duty of patriotism, have all of us long ago received it
in charge from our fathers to cherish your name and your virtues. You
will account it an instance of your good fortune, sir, that you crossed
the seas to visit us at a time which enables you to be present at this
solemnity. You now behold the field, the renown of which reached you in
the heart of France, and caused a thrill in your ardent bosom; you see
the lines of the little redoubt thrown up by the incredible diligence
of Prescott, defended to the last extremity by his lion-hearted valor,
and within which the corner-stone of our monument has now taken its
position. You see where Warren fell, and where Parker, Gardner,
McCleary, Moore and other early patriots fell with him. Those who
survived that day, and whose lives have been prolonged to the present
hour, are now around you. Some of them you have known in the trying
scenes of the war. Behold! They now stretch forth their feeble arms to
embrace you. Behold! They raise their trembling voices to invoke the
blessing of God on you and yours forever.”
I should like to increase my quotations, but space will not permit. I
have quoted enough to give my young readers an idea of this masterly
address. When next they visit the hill where the monument stands
complete, let them try to picture to themselves how it looked on
that occasion when, from the platform where he stood Mr. Webster,
with his clarion voice, facing the thousands who were seated before
him on the rising hillside, and the other thousands who stood at the
summit, spoke these eloquent words. Let them imagine the veteran
soldiers, and the white-haired and venerable Lafayette, and they can
better understand the effect which this address made on the eager and
entranced listeners. They will not wonder at the tears which gathered
in the eyes of the old soldiers as they bowed their heads to conceal
their emotions. Surely there was no other man in America who could so
admirably have improved the occasion.