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The original of this book is in 
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150 American Antiquarian Society. [Oct., 
 
 GEOEGE F. HOAE. 
 
 BY EDWARD E. HALE. 
 
 The President of the Society has asked me to prepare a 
 paper for our records, on what 1 will call the literary life 
 of Senator Hoar. By this the President and I both mean, 
 some notice, however brief, of his literary and historical 
 interests. Of these he never lost sight even in the darkest 
 gloom of the great political questions of half a century. 
 He says himself in a sentence which is pathetic, ' 'Down to 
 the time when I was admitted to the bar, and, indeed for 
 a year later, my dream and highest ambition were to spend 
 my life as what is called an office lawyer, making deeds, 
 and giving advice in small transactions. I supposed I was 
 absolutely without capacity for pubhc speaking." 
 
 So little does a man know himself. So little does a young 
 man forecast his own future. I can remember those days. 
 And I know how sincere this staternent of his is. He really 
 thought that he could not speak extemporaneously, and 
 yet I lived to hear him make some of the most quick retorts 
 which were ever listened to in either house of Congress. 
 
 He .'^ays, "I expected never to be married; perhaps to 
 earn twelve or fifteen hundred dollars a year, which would 
 enable me to have a room of my own in some quiet house 
 and to collect rare books which could be had without much 
 cost." 
 
 It was at that early jjeriod that I first knew him and 
 from that early period till he died, I may say that we were 
 near friends. I have a certain right, therefore, to speak 
 of the underlying tastes and principles which asserted 
 
1905.] Memorial of Mr. Hoar. 151 
 
 themselves in the fifty-five yer^rs of life which followed on 
 his entrance at the bar. I remember hearing someone 
 laugh at the advice which he gives to young men who 
 would prepare for public life. Some one had asked what 
 was the best training for a public speaker, and quite un- 
 consciously Mr. Hoar rephed that if a young man wanted 
 to be a public speaker he would do well to read the Greek 
 orators in the original language. There is something a 
 httle droll in the thought of such advice as given to what 
 the public calls a "rail sphtter" or a "l^obbin boy." But 
 he said it perfectly unconsciously. I suppose he was think- 
 ing of his own young life and he knev/ very well that what 
 Mr. Adams calls the Greek fetish is a fetish very easily 
 concihated. I remember him the first winter he was in 
 Worcester, as preferring to read Plato in the original to 
 going into the pleasant evening society of the town, so that 
 it was with some little difficulty that we youngsters made 
 him take his part in social entertainments. Almost to the 
 day of his death he maintained such early studies, which 
 were, indeed, no longer studies. 
 
 By the kindness of Mr. Rockwood Hoar, I have here his 
 unpublished translation of Thucydides. When of late years 
 you called upon him of a sudden at his own home, you 
 were as apt as not to find him standing at his desk and 
 advancing that translation by a few lines, or revising it. 
 Indeed, he reverenced the masters in whatever line of lit- 
 erature or life. You never met him but he surprised you 
 by some apt quotation, pei'haps from somebody you had 
 never heard of, and it seems to me fair to say that the 
 wide range of such reading is to be remembered at once 
 as cause and effect in that sunny cheerfulness, confidence, 
 and courage which everyone has noted who has attempted 
 to give any analysis or discussion of his character. 
 
 As I have spoken of the translation of Thucydides, I 
 ought to say that I do not believe he had any thought of 
 publishing it. He did not mean to throw discredit in any 
 

 152 American Antiquarian Society. [Oct., 
 
 \xa\ upon the translations which existed. But rather, he 
 meant, if I may use the phrase, to bind himself to the de- 
 termination that lie would once more read Thucydides 
 and would read him carefully. I do not know, — I wish \ 
 
 someone would tell us, who first called Thucydides's history,,^-^ 
 "the hand book of statesmen." Within intelhgible hmits, 
 I think, perhaps, Mr. Hoar would have accepted that 
 phrase. In making one more version into English of the 
 great historian, however, he was working to please himself, 
 without any care or thought as to whether his work was 
 or was not a better literary work than Jowett's or Dale's, 
 or any other translator. I like to say this because there 
 was not in him the least of that eagerness to have every- 
 thing pubhshed which is one of the superficial absurdities 
 of our time. 
 
 With such tastes and habits he was glad to accept the 
 invitations which he received right and left to address the 
 Uterary societies of the colleges. A collection of such ad- 
 dresses, many of them elaborate in their detail, would in 
 itself make a yery interesting volume of the history of the 
 higher education. I have an address at Amherst on the 
 "Place of the College Graduate in American Life," with 
 the date of 1879. In an address before the Law Class of 
 the Howard University he spoke on ' 'The Opportunity of 
 the Colored Leader." At the anniversary of the Yale Law 
 School he spoke on the "Function of the American Lawyer 
 in the FouncUng of States." 
 
 His addresses at Plymouth on Forefather's Day, his 
 Eulogy on Garfield, delivered in this city, his address on 
 the Two Hundredth Anniversary of Worcester, his address 
 at the dedication of the Public Library in Lincoln, Massa- 
 chusetts, his address on Robert Burns, his address on Emer- 
 son, are to be spoken of as studies of permanent value. 
 When in 1888 the state of Ohio celebrated its own centen- 
 nial, Mr. Hoar was very properly requested by the author- 
 ities in Ohio to deliver the oration as representing the State 
 
) 
 
 1905.] Memorial of Mr. Hoar. 
 
 of Massachusetts, whose colony under Manassih Cutler 
 founded the City of Marietta. I had the pleasure of hear- 
 ing that address. To this moment it is a great historical 
 monument of a great occasion. 
 
 I ha^'e asked the Society to print as a matter of public 
 convenience the titles of the 193 speeches and addresses 
 which are contained in the sixteen volumes in his own 
 hbrary, a list which has been furnished us by the kindness 
 of his son. 
 
 Of his papers read before this /ociety, the memory is 
 fresh in the ininds of all of us. He loved the ^^ociety and 
 never forgot its work or its interests ; and the broad national 
 views which his life in Washington enabled him to take of 
 the whole country gave him an opportunity to serve us in 
 a thousand ways which were not open to other men. 
 
 Every such word of his in education or in history, is 
 an original study and he is sure to go to the foundations. 
 One of the representatives of Massachusetts in speaking of 
 him before the House of Representatives cites the modest 
 phrase of Mr. WebsterS, who says that the only genius 
 he was aware of was a genius for hard work, and he applies 
 that phrase to Mr. Hoar. It is a happy statement and it 
 ought to be added that Mr. Hoar's literary work always 
 seems to be spontaneous, or to be amusement or play. In 
 general, the same remark would apply to it all which I 
 have made of his Thucydides. In truth, he loved what we 
 call study, and though no man was more social or welcomed 
 a visitor more cordially, yet from one end of the year to 
 another he would have been happy if he were alone with 
 his books. 
 
 We remember here how often he gave dignity, and even 
 solemnity, to our proceedings by his careful references to 
 the work of the English divines. Our friend, Dr. Merri- 
 man, at our last meeting reminded us in the careful study 
 which he made of Jeremy Taylor, of one of Mr. Hoar's 
 suggestions. There is a very pathetic anecdote of a sacred 
 
154 American Antiquarian Society. [Oct., 
 
 pilgrimage which he and Mrs. Hoar made to the parsonage 
 of the poet Herbert. And if I liave a right to say it, I 
 will say, that no man among us had a more careful knowl- 
 edge of the Puritan leaders in the seventeenth century, or 
 of the really devout scholars in the Church of England in 
 the next century. In the very last interview I had with 
 him, he recalled some ^'erses of Dr. Watt's which are omitted 
 in most of our hymn books. This might have happened 
 ^nth a superficial reader, but when with his own care he 
 repeated the words, you could not but remember that from 
 Milton to Montgomery he was familiar with all the sacred 
 poets of EngUsh hterature. 
 
 One instance out of a hundred will serve to illustrate 
 the course of his life. In the year 1882, with his life in 
 Washington full of the pubhc duties of a hundred acquaint- 
 ances which pressed upon a leading member of Congress, 
 his attention was arrested by Mr. Dwight's report of Stev- 
 en^ index on the Franklin Papers. I happen to speak of 
 this detail because I was in Washington at the moment 
 when that report was brought before the Library Commit- 
 tee. Mr. Hoar acquainted himself with every detail of the 
 curious history of those papers and explained them before 
 thcyJoint Library Committee of which he was a member. 
 He compelled the attention of leading members to the 
 subject, he followed it from day to day, — I might say, from 
 hour to hour; and eventually secured the grant which was 
 necessary for the purchase of the papers, which now make 
 a possession so valuable to the Library of Congress. I have 
 a thousand times had occasion to use those papers and I 
 never do so without thinking of the man who could stop 
 in what are called larger interests to see that such a detail 
 was attended to. 
 
 No one visits the ancient l^niversity of William and Mary 
 at Williamsburg without observing the reverence and affec- 
 tion with which the gentlemen there speak of his friendship 
 to their college. In the Civil War the Peninsula of Vir- 
 
1905.] Memorial of Mr. Hoar. 155 
 
 ginia, as John Smith calls it, was almost of course the scene 
 of the most critical military operation. Rightly or wrongly, 
 I do not pretend to know, the army of the North destroyed 
 the principal building of the University. It was natural that 
 after the return of peace, the friends of Wilham and Mary 
 College should think that they had a rightful claim on the 
 government different from that of most of the sufferers by 
 the rough hand of war. Who should present that claim 
 before the country? The Philistines of whatever type 
 would not have thought that this young anti-slavery mem- 
 ber from Massachuseets, whose pubHc hfe had begun and 
 continued because he hated the institution of slavery, whose 
 own father and sister had been turned out of Charleston by 
 the authorities by a genteel mob in that city, that he should 
 have been the person to be the champion of Wilham and 
 ^lary College, and should compel, so to speak, the govern- 
 ment to restore to it the property which it had destroyed. 
 But Mr. Hoar undertook that special service in face of the 
 difficulties which seemed insoluble. Separate claims for 
 separate losses in a struggle for four years were looked 
 upon rightly with dissatisfaction, not to say intolerance. 
 All the same he meant that this claim should be listened to 
 
 ^ and if I may use our vernacular, he " put it through." 
 
 It was jttst- because it was just, — it must be acceded to- 
 
 When in this city, we heard the distinguished senator 
 
 from Virginia, Mr. Daniels( pronounce his admirable eulogy 
 
 J upon his long-time comrade in the Senate, we had a good 
 opportunity to see how great is the worth of manhood in 
 public Hfe. A great leader of men said to me in 1904 in 
 the Senate Chamber, that I should find very little politics 
 in the Senate. He meant that man with man, the Sena- 
 tors of the country are linked together by ties much closer 
 and more dear than those which are made by the mere 
 mechanics of superficial poUtics. 
 
 When Mr. Hoar graduated at Cambridge his Commence- 
 ment part was a review of Daniel Boon's life. The subject 
 
 A- 
 
156 American Antiquarian Society. [Oct.> 
 
 itself showed the direction which his thought and study 
 had already given to his life. And as one reviews the 
 extraordinary range of his pub^c writings, accurate as they 
 are and profound at once, one understands the interest 
 which the whole country took in him. Our associate, Mr. 
 Paine, has made a collection of nearly five thousand memo- 
 rial pubhcations which have expressed the sorrow of a 
 nation for his death and its gratitude for his life. I am 
 not sure, but I beheve, that if we had asked him which 
 enterprise of his long hfe gave him the most pleasure in 
 recollection,— I do not mean for its intrinsic importance, 
 but for the dramatic associations of the whole event,— he 
 would have said it was the recovery of Bradford's manu- 
 script by the state of Massachusetts from its hiding place 
 in London. ^^Tien he was talking with the Bishop of Lon- 
 don about this precious document, the Bishop said that 
 he had never understood what was the value which 
 belonged to it. 
 
 "Why," said Mr. Hoar, "if there were in existence in 
 England a history of King Alfred's reign for thirty years, 
 written by his own hand, it would not be more precious 
 in the eyes of EngHshmen than this manuscript is to us." 
 After this appeal, which quite surprised Dr. Temple, the 
 endless difficulties of Engfish law and custom were all 
 overcome successively; and on an august occasion, the 26th 
 of May, 1897, the General Court of Massachusetts received 
 the precious volume at the hands of Mr. Bayard, the first 
 American Ambassador in London, on his return from his 
 his duty there. Governor Walcott received the book to 
 become henceforth the property of the Commonwealth, and 
 Mr. Hoar made one of his most interesting addresses as he 
 followed along its history. The Commonwealth thus owes to 
 him this most precious memorial of its birth, and, as I say, 
 I think he would have said, that no act of his had given 
 him more pleasure than the effort which was crowned that 
 day. Indeed, the history and principles of the founders of 
 
1905.] Memorial of Mr. Hoar. 157 
 
 New England and of their successors were woven in with 
 all his life, nor have we ever had a scholar who devoted 
 to them such unremitting interest or who had more reason 
 to be proud of his personal connection with the fathers. 
 
 In reviewing Mr. Hoar's life, as a friend of education, 
 of literature, and of history, or in general of scholarship, 
 it is interesting to remember that the first President of 
 Harvard College, whom the college herself had educated,- 
 was his ancestoTj^ Leonard- Hoar r- He ha4.had the advan- 
 tage of/JCnghsh and American trainin'^^th^and was loved 
 and honored in the old country which still seemed home 
 to half the colonists. The general Court, in their grant to 
 the College, was accustomed every year to make the grant 
 on condition that Dr. Hoar be the man chosen for the 
 vacant President's place. "A scholar and a Christian, a 
 man of talent and of great moral worth." 
 
 I have been told that in his physical aspect Senator Hoar 
 reminded men of the pictures and busts of his distinguished 
 grandfather^, Roger Sherman. He had respect, amounting 
 to veneration as well as love, for Sherman, and in one very 
 instructive paper he showed with great pride from the 
 journals of the Constitutional Convention what was the 
 masterly honor of Sherman in leading the way in each of 
 its most critical decisions. 
 
 The Senator was by no means a Dry-as-Dust annalist. 
 He comprehended thoroughly the principles and determina- 
 tions of the fathers; and in all his study xxch-h all his work, 
 he showed his determination that those principles should 
 be carried out without fear or hesitation. He studied the 
 history of the past with no idolatry of ancient method or 
 monument, but always looked forward to the future with a 
 determination that the eternal principles of the reign of 
 God should be central in the government of the years 
 which are before us. 
 
 I am fortunate in being able to read to you a sonnet 
 which his friend. Dr. Rawnsley, sent me after he received, 
 
 a 
 
\ I \ 
 
 
158 American Antiquarian Society. [Oct., 
 
 in his happy home at Keswick, the tidings of Mr. Hoar's 
 death. I remember that the Senr,tor when he introduced me 
 to Dr. Rawnsley called him the first living poet in England. 
 At this October meeting of ours in Worcester, for a gen- 
 eration at least, the members of the society will remember 
 the cordial welcome which the Council and every member 
 always received at his happy home. One recalls with grat- 
 itude that great principle of history which in early life 
 he announced so well himself. "At bottom the reason 
 men form governments, and the object for which govern- 
 ment is to be sustained is that men may live in happy 
 homes." Whoever speaks or writes of the charm, itself 
 indescribable, in this well-balanced life, remembers the 
 cordial and complete sympathy of his wife, and that affec- 
 tionate, and even ingenious cooperation of her Hfe with 
 his which showed itself whether in the detail of daily 
 ministry or in constant inspiration; — sympathy and coop- 
 eration such as women only are able to conceive. 
 
 SENATOR HOAR 
 
 IN MEMORJAM 
 
 You of the spirit fresh with May-flower dew, 
 
 A Pilgrim Father faithful to the end, 
 
 Stout-hearted foe and truest-hearted friend. 
 Who never trimmed your sail to winds that blew 
 With breath of popular favour, but foreknew 
 
 Storm followed sun, and knowing, did depend 
 
 On One behind all storm high aid to lend. 
 And from Heaven's fount alone your wisdom drew/ 
 Farewell! in these illiterate later days 
 
 We ill can spare the good gray head that wore 
 
 The honour of a nation, Fare thee well. 
 When justice weary of men's warlike ways 
 
 And Freedom gains Love's height, they there shall spell 
 
 Your name in golden letters, Senator Hoar. 
 
 H. D. RAWNSLEY. 
 
.5 
 
1905.] Speeches and Addresses of George F. Hoar. 159 
 
 SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES OF GEORGE F. HOAR. 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 1. Legislative Power Under the Constitution. Report of the Special 
 
 Committee, March, 1857. 
 
 2. Petition to aniftx part of the Towns of Bolton and Berlin to Hud- 
 
 son. Argument for Remonstrants, 1867. 
 
 3. Free Public Library, Worcester. Seventh and Eighth Annual 
 
 Reports. 
 
 4. Claims of the Free Institute of Industrial Science upon the Com- 
 
 monwealth. Argument before Committee on Education of the 
 Legislature of Mass., February, 1869. 
 
 5. Woman's Right and the Public Welfare. Remarks before a 
 
 Special Committee of the Legislature, 1869 
 
 6. Virginia, admission of. Speech in the H. of R, June, 1870. 
 
 7. National Economy. Speech in H. of R, February, 1870. 
 
 8. Mission to Rome. Remarks in H. of R, May, 1870. 
 
 9. Universal Education a National Concern and a National Necessity, 
 
 Speech in H of R. June, l870. 
 
 10. General Howard, - Charges against. Report of the Committee on 
 
 Education and Labor, H of R, July, 1870, 
 
 11. National Education. Speech in H of R, February, 1871. 
 
 12. General Howard and the Freedmen's Bureau. Remarks in H of 
 
 R, February, 1871. 
 
 13. Powers of the American Constitution for the Protection of Civil 
 
 Liberty. Speech in H. of R, March, 1871. "- 
 
 14. Universal Education the only Safeguard of State Rights. Speech 
 
 in H. of R, January, 1872. 
 15 John Cessna vs. Benj. F. Meyers. Report of Committee on Elec- 
 tions, H of R, February, 1872. 
 
 16. College of William and Mary. Speech in H of R, February, 1872. 
 
 17. Grant and Wilson Club, Organization of. Address in Worcester, 
 
 August, 1872. 
 
 18. Bowen vs. De Large, fieport of Committee on Elections, H of R, 
 
 January 1873. 
 
 19. Woman Suffrage Essential to the True Republic. Address at 
 
 Boston, May, 1873. 
 
 20. Union Pacific Railroad Company, Affairs of. Report of Select 
 
 Committee, H of R, February, 187S. 
 
 21. Interstate Commerce. Speech in H of R. March, 1874. 
 
 22. College of William and Mary. Report of Committee on Education 
 
 and Labor, H of R, March, 1876. 
 
 23. Jurisdiction in Impeachment. Argument before U. S. Senate, May, 
 
 1876. 
 
 24. Political Condition of the South. Speech in H of R, August, 1876. 
 
160 American AntAquarian Society. [Oct,, 
 
 25. Presentation of the Statues of John Winthrop and Samuel Adams- 
 
 Speech in H of R, December, 1876. 
 
 26. Counting the Electoral Votes. Speech in H of R, January, 1877. 
 
 VOLUME II. 
 
 1. Charles Sumner. Article in North American Review, Jan.-Feb., 
 
 1878. 
 
 2. Conduct of Business in Congress. Article in North American 
 
 Review, February, 1879 
 
 3. Condition of the South. Report of the Special Committee in H 
 
 of R. 
 
 4. State Republican Convention, Mr. Hoar, President. Speech, 
 
 September, 1877. 
 
 5. Republican State Convention, Worcester, 1879. Speech 
 
 6. Suffrage under National Protection. Speech in Senate, February, 
 
 1879. 
 
 7. Threatened Usurpation. Speech in Senate, March 25, 1879. 
 
 8. Geneva Award. Speech in Senate, March, 1880. 
 
 9. Senate Bound by its own Judgments. Speech in Senate, May, 
 
 1880. 
 
 10. The Place of the College Graduate in American Life. Address- 
 
 before the Social Union at Amherst Coflege, July, 1879. 
 
 11. Constitutional Amendment, Female Suffrage. Report of Senate 
 
 Committee on Privileges and Elections, February, 1879. 
 
 12. Asbury Dickins, Report Jrom Committee on Claims, November, 
 
 1877. 
 70. Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Republican Party. September, 
 1879. 
 
 VOLUME III. 
 
 1. Samuel Hoar, Memoir of. 
 
 2. James A. Garfield. Eulogy by G. F. H. 
 
 3. President Garfield's New England Ancestry. 
 
 4. James A. Garfield Memorial Obseryances. 
 
 5. The Appointing Power. Article in North American Review. 
 
 7. The Function of the American Lawyer in the Founding of States.- 
 
 An Address before the Graduating Class of Yale College, 1881. 
 
 8. The Lincoln Library, Dedication of. 1884 
 
 9. Our Candidates and Cause. Remarks in Tremont Temple, July 15; 
 
 1884. 
 
 VOLUME IV. 
 
 1. Geneva Award. Speeches April and March 1880. 
 
 2. A National Bankrupt Law. Speeches in June and December, 1882.' 
 
 3. Alexander H. Bullock, Memoir of. 
 
 4. Relation of National Government to Domestic Commerce. 
 
 5. Alleged Election Outrages in Mjss. Report c^ Committee on 
 
 Privileges and Elections, May, 1884. 
 38. Benjamin Franklin, Purchase of Papers of. May, 1882, Committee 
 on Library. 
 
 59. River and Harbor Bill, Analysis of. August 12, 1882. 
 
 60. Chinese Immigration. Speech, March, 1882, in the U. S, Senate. 
 
1905.] Speeches and Addresses of George F. Hoar. 161 
 
 VOLUME V. 
 
 1 Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Naming of Worcester. Octo- 
 ber, 1884. 
 
 2. Obligations of New England to the County of Kent. Paper read 
 
 before the Antiquarian Society, 1885. 
 
 3. Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of Concord. September 
 
 12, 1885. 
 
 4. Samuel Head vs. Amoskeag Mfg. Co. and Argument in same. Briefs 
 
 for Defendant, October, 1884. 
 
 5. Relation of National Government to Domestic Commerce. Speech 
 
 in the Senate, July 1, 1884. 
 
 6. Annual or Biennial Elections, Which ? Speech at Massachusetts 
 
 Club, 1886. 
 
 7. Prof. Wiley Lane, Obituary Addresses at Funeral of. March 3, 
 
 1885. 
 
 8. The Senate and the President. Speech in the Senate, June 30, 
 
 1886. 
 
 9. Interstate Commerce. Speech in the Senate, January 14, 1887. 
 Atlantic and Pacific Ship-Railrway. Speech in the Senate, Feb* 
 
 ruary, 1887. 
 
 VOLUME VII. 
 
 1. John G. Whittier. Remarks before Essex Club, November 12' 
 
 1887. 
 
 2. Gov. Washburn. Address, November 1887. 
 
 3. The Founding of the Northwest. Oration at Marietta, O., April, 
 
 1888. 
 
 4. Fisheries Treaty. Speech in Senate, July, 1888. 
 .5. Harrison's Welcome to Harvard. Speech in Tremont Tempje, 
 
 November 2, 1888. 
 6. Report of the Proceedings of the Harvard Republican Meeting, 
 
 Tremont Temple, November 2, 1888. " 
 7- The Constitutional Remedy. Speech, 1888. 
 
 8. Jubilee Banquet of Home Market Club. Speech, November 15, 
 
 1888. 
 
 9. Completion of the National Monument to the Pilgrims. Speech 
 
 .at Plymouth, August 1, 1889. 
 
 10. Are the Republicans in to Stay? Article in North American 
 
 Review of 1889. 
 
 11. Speech at Ratification Meeting, Music Hall, October 15, 1889. 
 
 VOLUME VIII. 
 
 1. Shall the Senate Keep Faith with the People? Speech, August 
 
 1890. 
 
 2. Senate Resolution Relating to a Limitation' of Debate. August, 
 
 1890. 
 
 3. Amendment to the Resolution of Mr. Quay. August 19, 1890. 
 
 5. Montana Election Cases. Report of Facts and Speeches on same, 
 
 1890. 
 
 6. Order Reported from Senate Committfee on' Privileges and Elec-' 
 
 tions to Omit from the Congressional Record certain words in 
 
 the Report of Senator Call's Remarks, February 20, 1890 ( , 
 
 ^ 
 
 V .,^. 
 
162 American Antiquarian Society. [Oct., 
 
 VOLUME IX. 
 
 2. Charles Devens, Henry M. Dexter and Edward I. Thomas. Before 
 
 Antiquarian Society, April 29, 1891. 
 
 3. Government in Canada and the United States Compared. Anti- 
 
 quarian Society, April 29, 1891. 
 
 •1. Home Market Club Meeting, November, 1891. Speech of Mr. Hoar. 
 
 5. Railroad Problems. New York Independent, 1891. 
 
 6. Speech at Cambridge, October 7, 1891. 
 
 7. Speech at Great Barrington, October, 1891. 
 
 8. The Fate of the Election Bill. Magazine Article 
 
 9. Reasons for Republican Control. Magazine Article 
 
 10. If Crime Rule our Elections, the Republic Cannot Live. Speech, 
 
 December, 1890. 
 
 11. Constitutional Limit of the Taxing Power. -Speech, January, 
 
 1893. 
 
 12. Election of Senators by Direct Vote of the People. Speech, 1893. 
 
 21. Speech at Vice-President Morton's Testimonial, 1891. Old Age 
 
 and Immortality. 
 
 22. One Hundredth Anniversary of the Worcester Fire Society, Janu- 
 
 January 4, 1892. 
 
 VOLUME X. 
 
 1. Charles Sumner. Magazine Article. 
 
 The Right and Expediency of Woman Suffrage. Article in Cen- 
 tury Magazine. 
 
 2. Address of Mr. Hoar, President, etc.. Fifteenth Meeting of the 
 
 National Conference of Unitarian and other Churches. Saratoga, 
 September, 1894. 
 
 3. Platform Adopted by the Republican State Convention of Massa- 
 
 chusetts, 1894. 
 
 4. Daniel Webster. Speech in the Senate on the Receiving -of the 
 
 Statues of Webster and Stark, December, 1894. 
 .5. Gold and Silver. Speech, August, 1893. 
 
 6. Sectional Attack on Northern Industries. Speech, May, 8 1894. 
 
 7. A New England Town. Speech, June, 1894. 
 
 8. Executive Usurpation. Speech, December 6 and 11, 1893. 
 
 9. CoUoquj with Mr. Villas. Speech in Senate, December 6, 1893; 
 
 10. Executive Usurpation. Speech, December 20, 1893. 
 
 11. Dinner Commemorative of Charles Sumner and Complimentary to 
 
 Edward L. Pierce, December 29, 1894. 
 
 12. Address to Law Class, Howard University, 1894. 
 
 13. Speech at the Dedication of the Haston Free Public Library, No. 
 
 Brookfield, September 20, 1894. 
 
 VOtUME Xl 
 
 1. Address at the Opening Exercises of Clark University, October 2, 
 
 1889. 
 
 2. The Further Mission of the Party. Article in the Republican Party. 
 
 3. Oration at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the New England Historic 
 
 Genealogical Society, April 19, 1895. .; i 
 
 4. Improvement of Boston Harbor. Address at Fifteenth Annual' 
 
 Banquet of Boston Merchants* Association, November 15, 1895; 
 
1905.] Speeches and Addresses of George F. Hoar. 163 
 
 5. Popular Discontent with Representative Government. Inaugural 
 
 Address before the American Historical Association, DeoembeJ 
 27, 1895. 
 
 6. Oration at the Two Hundred and Seventy-fifth Anniversary of 
 
 the Landing of the Pilgrims, December 21, 1895. 
 
 7 . Protection t o Wool , Bi-metallism and the Republican Party. Speech 
 
 in the Senate, February 26, 1896. 
 S. Orderly and Decorous Conduct of Foreign Relations. Speech, 
 
 March 11, 1896. 
 9. The Senate. An Article published in the Youth's Companion, 
 
 November, 1890, and reprinted by the Senate. 
 
 VOLUME XII. 
 
 1. The Charge of Packing the Court, etc.. Refuted. Letter to Boston 
 
 Herald, Jfovember. 1896. 
 
 2. The Life of Roger Sherman, Book-notices of. 
 
 3. McKay v. Kean. Argument for Petitioner, October, 1895. 
 
 4. Has. the Senate Degenerated? Article in the Forum, April, 1897. 
 
 5. Statesmanship in England and in the United States. The Forum, 
 
 August, 1897. 
 
 6. General William Cogswell, Life and Character of. Senate, Febru- 
 
 ary 8, 1897. 
 
 7. Oregon Case. Report of Committee on Privileges and Elections, 
 
 June 25, 1897. 
 
 VOLUME XIII. 
 
 1. William Whitney Rice. A Biographical Sketch. 
 
 2. Francis Amasa Walker, Proceedings of a Meeting heldin Com- 
 
 memoration of. 
 
 3. American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings of the. October 21, 
 
 1897. 
 
 4. Bradford Manuscript, Return of the. 
 
 5. Ashley B. Wright. Memorial Addresses in the Senate by Messrs; 
 
 Hoar, Morgan, Hawley and Lodge. 
 
 7. Sound Money for the People, The United States a Government 
 
 Providing, January 26, 1898>. 
 
 8. War — Justice and Humanity. Not Revenge, The Only Justficatiori 
 
 for. In the Senate, Afjril 14, 1898. 
 
 9. Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, April 27, 1898. 
 
 VOLUME XIV. 
 
 1. Hawaii. In the Senate, July 5, 1898. 
 
 2. Dangers of Colonial Expansioij. In New York Independent, July 
 » 7, 1898. 
 
 3. Relation of the American Bar to the State. Address Delivered 
 
 at the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Virginia State Bar Associa- 
 tion, July, 1898. 
 
 4. Same, in Virginia Law Register, August, 1898. 
 
 5. Quality of our Honor. Speech at Opening of Clark University 
 
 Summer School, July 13, 1898, and Open Letters to Prof. Norton. 
 
 6. Rufus Putnam, Founder and Father of Ohio. Address at Rutland, 
 
 September 17, 1898. 
 
164 American Antiquarian Society. [Oct., 
 
 7. Bradford Manuscript, Account of Part Taken by American Anti- 
 quarian Society in Return of, to America. 
 
 VOLUME XV. 
 
 I. Four National Conventions — Some Political Reminiscences^ 
 
 Daniel Webster. Scribner's Magazine. 
 
 3. Life of Sumner by Edward L. Pierce — Wilmot Proviso — John Davis. 
 
 Remarks before American Antiquarian Society in Proceedings, 
 Octobsr, 1893. 
 6 Latin and Greek in our Colleges. New York Independent, March 
 
 16, 1899. 
 
 7. Speech at Banquet of the New England Society of Charleston, S. C, 
 
 December 22, 1898. 
 
 8. Kettle Brook Water Ca.ses. Argument in, January 2, 1899. 
 
 9. Philippine Islands. No Constitutional Power to Conquer Foreign 
 
 Nations, etc.. In Senate, January 9, 1899. 
 
 10. Philippine Is'onds, Letter from Hon. George F. Hoar regarding, to 
 
 Hon. Gsor^e S. Boutwell and others, March 29, 1899. 
 
 11. Justin lilorrill. Memorial Address in the Senate. 
 
 12. Isham G. Harris. ?'Iemorial Address in the Senate. 
 
 13. Our Duty to the Philippines. New York Independent, November 
 
 9, 1899. 
 
 VOLUME XVI. 
 
 The Philippines. Speech in reply to Senator Beveridge in the 
 
 Senate, Jan. 9, 1900. 
 Our Duty to the Philippines. Letter by Senator Hoar, January 
 
 11, 1900. 
 Shall we Retain the Philippines. In Collier's Weekly, February 
 
 3, 1900. 
 
 4. The Philippines. Speech in the Senate, April 17,, 1900. 
 
 5. The Conquest of the Philippines. Extracts from Speech of April 
 
 17, 1900. 
 
 6. The Lust of Empire. Speech April 17, 1900. Published by Tucker 
 
 Publishing Co. 
 8, Vacancies in the Senate. Right of Executive to Appoint in all 
 
 Cases during Rece.ss of Legislature. In the Senate, March 2, 1900. 
 9 Harvard College Fifty-sight Years Ago. In Scribner's Magazine, 
 
 July, 1900. 
 
 10. Alumni Dinner, Speech at. Harvard Graduates' Magazine, Sept- 
 
 ember, 1900. 
 
 II. Party Government in the United States. International Monthly, 
 
 October, 1900. 
 13. President McKinley or Pre.sident Bryan. North American Review, 
 
 October. 1900. 
 
 Bradford Manuscript. Speech, 1897. 
 
 Cushman K. Davis. Address in Senate, 1897. 
 
 Fifteenth Massachusetts Regiment, Excursion of the — and its 
 
 Friends to the Battlefields of Gettysburg, Antietam, Ball's Bluff 
 
 and the City of Was'iington, D. C, Sept, 14-20, 1900. Addresses 
 
 by Hon. George F. Hoar at Gettysburg and Antietam, 
 Harvard Alumni Dinner. Hon. George F. Hoar, '45, President of the 
 
 Association of the Alumni. Also Address at the op'ening of the 
 
 Harvard Union. 1901 
 
1905.] Speeches and Addresses of George F. Hoar. 165 
 
 Thomas H. Benton and Francis P. Blair, Proceedings in Congress upon 
 the acceptance of the statues of. Address, 1900. 
 
 John Sherman. Article in New York Independent, November 1, 1900. 
 
 Centennial Celebration of the Establishment of the Seat of Government 
 at the City of Washington. Closing Address by Hon. George F. 
 Hoar, in the Hall of the House of Representatives ,December 12, 
 1900. 
 
 Address delivered before the Senate and House of Representatives and 
 invited guests, on February 21, 1901, in response to an invitation 
 of the General Court. 
 
 Robert Burns. An address delivered in Tremont Temple by Hon. 
 George F. Hoar on March 28, 1901, before the Burns Memorial 
 Associs^tion of Boston. Also reprinted in Scotland. 
 
 Oratory. Article in Scribner's Magazine, June, 1901. 
 
 Soine Famous Orators I have Heard. Article in Scribner's Magazine, 
 July, 1901. 
 
 First Parish in Concord, Dedication of the Restored Meeting House of 
 the. Address, Thursday, October 3d, 1901. 
 
 Webster Centennial of Dartmouth College, The Proceedings of the. 
 Speech, 1901. 
 
 Charles Allen. Address delivered before the Annual Meeting of the 
 American Antiquarian Society, October 30, 1901. 
 
 Jonas G. Clark, Founder of Clark University, Some Considerations 
 Relating to the Will of. Hon. George F. Hoar, February 14, 1902. 
 
 Bi-Centennial of the Frst Parish in Framingham, Services at the. Ad- 
 dress, October 13, 1901. 
 
 Election of Senators by Direct Vote of the People. Speech, Tuesday, 
 March 11, 1902. 
 
 An Attempt to Subjugate a People Striving for Freedom, Not the Amer- 
 ican Soldier, Responsible for Cruelties in the Philippine Islands. 
 Speech in the Senate, May 22, 1902. 
 
 The Connecticut Compromise. Address before the American Antiqua- 
 rian Society, October 21, 1902. 
 
 Banquet of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 
 Speech, December 22, 1902,. 
 
 A Regulation of Trusts and Corporations Engaged in Interstate Com-' 
 merce. Speech in the Senate, January 16, 1903. 
 
 Birthday of Washington, Exercises in Commemoration of the. Address 
 at the Union League Club, Chicago, February 23, 1903. Also 
 speech at the post prandial exercises in the evening. 
 
 Inauguration of President Carroll D. Wright, Clark University, Worces- 
 ter, Mass. Address, October 9, 1902. 
 
 Emerson Centenary. Address at the Memorial Exercises in the Meeting 
 House of the First Parish in Concord, Mass., on Monday after-' 
 noon, May the 25th, 1903. 
 
 Answer to Carl Schurz's Brooklyn Address of August 5, 1884. 
 
 Jeremiah Evarts Greene. Address be/ore American Antiquarian So- 
 ciety, February, 1903. / 
 
 First Parish in Concord, Dedication of the Restored Meeting House of 
 the. Thursday, October 3, 1901. Address! 
 
 Krig.- jeneral Rufus Putnam. Article in Wisdomi, October, 1902. 
 
 Pfeabody Education Fund. Proceedings of the Trustees at their Forty- 
 first Meeting in New York, October 1, 1902. Report of Hon. 
 George F. Hoar for the Committee on the h^al aspect of the 
 Nashville Property. 
 
 Horace Gray, Memoir. Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Massa- 
 chusetts Historical Society, Second Series, Volume XVIII, pages 
 155-187. 
 
166 American AnU'quan'an Society. [Oct., 
 
 Panama Canal. Speech in the United States Senate, Monday, February 
 22, 1904. 
 
 The First Schoolhouse in Worcester and John Adams, Schoolmaster. 
 Address at the imveiling of the tablet upon the site of the school- 
 house. May 23, 1903; 
 
 John Bellows. Memorial Sketch in Proceedings of the American Anti- 
 quarian Society, October 21, 1903. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson. Address delivered at the Banquet of the Thomas 
 Jefferson Memorial Association, Hotel Barton, Washington, D. 
 C, April 13, 1903. 
 
 American Citizenship. Address delivered at the Forty-third Annual 
 Conamencement of the State University of Iowa, June 17, 1903. 
 
 Horace Gray, In Memoriam. Saturday, December 13, 1902. 
 
 — Character of Washington. His last public utterance, June 17, 
 
 1904. 
 
 Senator Hoar delivered an extended address upon Rufus Putnam 
 at Sutton, Putnam's birthplace, in the early summer, in May or early 
 June, repeating substantially his earlier Putnam address. A little 
 lat^r, before the Court, he delivered a eulogy upon his friend Col. 
 E. B. Stoddard. Neither of these addresses were printed. 
 
?rht i|0lace of tftr ColUflc (BrVaiiuatf (tt aiwerftau %HU. 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED. BEFORE THE 
 
 lojjial l(iuon ni jlmiprsl folbg^, 
 
 By GEORGE F. HOAR. 
 
 , WORCESTER: 
 
 Printed by TyleH & Seaor/sve. 
 " a -' 1879- 
 
JEiu Jllarr of the ®olUcc ©vaiuatc fn ^mcrfcait a(f p. 
 
 AN 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 locml l(nian h1 J^ml^^rsl Sclbget 
 
 JULY 2, 1879. 
 
 By GEORGE F. HOAR. 
 
 WORCESTER: 
 
 Printed by Tyler & Seagrave. 
 
 1879. 
 
 H 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 I AM afraid that in accepting your invitation I 
 have consulted my own pleasure rather than yours. 
 I do not think you can know how unspeakably grate- 
 ful to a man jaded with the care and work of public 
 life, are expressions of good will that come to him 
 from a company of scholars. You can hardly con- 
 cei\'e how delightful the opportunity to change the 
 scene by a visit to a famous college on the days of 
 its high festival. It is like being a guest in some 
 stately baronial hall, rich with association and tradi- 
 tion, from which have issued forth, and shall again, 
 in each generation, brave knights, wise statesmen, 
 illustrious scholars ; whose walls are hung with por- 
 traits of famous wits to whom it has been native or 
 hospitable ; its cabinets rich with the contributions 
 of science ; its libraries stored with rare manuscripts 
 and priceless editions; with its stories of royal visits, 
 and its chambers where illustrious children were 
 born, or illustrious guests have slept. 
 
 It is touching and pleasant to see how the men 
 who have won the great honors and prizes of the 
 most civilized nations, have valued the good-will of 
 
their colleges. Canning, in one of his most famous 
 speeches near the end of his brilliant career, claim- 
 ed the sympathy of the House of Commons on ac- 
 count of the sacrifice he had made to his conscien- 
 tious conviction in favor of Catholic emancipation. 
 Said he : — 
 
 " From the earliest dawn of my public life — aye, from the first 
 vision of youthful ambition — that ambition has been directed to one 
 object above all others. Before that object all others vanished into 
 comparative insignificance; it vvas desirable to me beyond all the 
 blandishments of power, beyond all the rewards and favors of the 
 crown. That object was to represent the university in which I was 
 educated. I had a fair chance of accomplishing this object when the 
 Catholic question crossed my way. I was warned — fairly and kind- 
 ly warned — that my adoption of that cause would blast my prospect. 
 I adhered to the Catholic cause and blasted all my long-cherished 
 hopes and expectations. Never to this hour have I stated, either in 
 public or private, the extent of this irretrievable sacrifice ; but I have 
 felt it not the less deeply. It is past and I shall speak of it no 
 more." 
 
 There are men from whom the great intellect, the 
 public service, the marvellous eloquence of Webster, 
 cannot extort forgiveness for the political errors of 
 his later life. But it is hard to find a lover of a New 
 England college who does not surrender at discre- 
 tion when he reads the two stories, — the one related 
 by Mr. Webster in his autobiography, of the occa- 
 sion when his father first intimated his intention of 
 sending him to college : " I remember that I was 
 quite overcome and my head grew dizzy. The thing 
 appeared to me so high, and the expense and sacri- 
 fice it was to cost my father so great, I could only 
 press his hand and shed tears ;" — the other, of that 
 
scene in the room of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, where, as he concluded the argument 
 that made safe the endowment of every college in 
 America, the few broken words of tenderness for 
 his Alma Mater, bursting from the heart of the strong 
 man, melted bench and bar and audience to tears. 
 
 Visiting Oxford eleven years ago, I made the ac- 
 quaintance of Mr. Cox, the accomplished librarian 
 of the Bodleian. He had found, a few days before, in 
 some crypt, where it had lain for two hundred years, 
 a letter written by Lord Clarendon just after he had 
 landed at Calais, a hopeless exile, on his last flight 
 from the country to which he was never again to 
 return. I have procured a copy, which you may 
 like to hear. The great orator, statesman, histo- 
 rian, law3'er, judge, — counselor, companion and an- 
 cestor of monarchs, — flying for his life, in his old 
 age, into a foreign land, from the court, of which, for 
 a generation, he had been the ornament and head, 
 soon as his feet touch a place of safety, thinks of 
 his university. See the noble heart through the 
 simple and stately rhetoric : — 
 
 " Good Mr. Vice-Chancellor : — 
 
 Having found it necessary to transport myselfe out of England, 
 and not knowing when it will please God that I shall returne againe, 
 it becomes m» to take care that the university may not be without 
 the service of a person better able to be of use to them than I am 
 like to be, and I doe therefore hereby surrender the office of Chan- 
 cellor into the hands of the said university, to the end that they may 
 make choyce of some other person better qualified to assist and 
 protect them, than I am. I am sure he can never be more affec- 
 tionate to it. I desire you as the last suite I am likely to make to 
 you, to believe that I doe not fly my country for guilt, and how pas- 
 
sionately soever I am pursued, that I have not done anything to 
 make the university ashamed of me, or to repent the good opmion 
 they had once of me, and though I must have no further mention in 
 your publique devotions, (which I have always exceedingly valued,) 
 I hope I shall be always remembered in your private prayers, as 
 Good Mr. Vice-chancellor. 
 
 Your affectionate servant. 
 
 Clarendon. 
 Calais, this 7-17 Dec, 1667. 
 
 As compared with the universities of the old 
 world, or even with some of our own, Amherst is 
 but a young college. But she already is in the fore- 
 most rank. She has made her ample contribution 
 to science, to literature, to professional and public 
 life. Into whatever paths your feet may go, you 
 can cherish no manlier sentiment than to love 
 
 " This glorious lady with the eyes of light. 
 And laurels clustering round her lofty brow ;" 
 
 — like Canning, to deem her approbation the high- 
 est honor and prize of life ; — like Webster, to bring 
 your best powers, if need be, to her service and de- 
 fence ; — like Clarendon, in misfortune and sorrow, 
 to find comfort in the thought that you have done 
 nothing to make her ashamed of you. 
 
 It is certainly a hopeful sign, or rather an emphat- 
 ic proof of the great regard in whicl:^ a college 
 training is held, that we celebrate with so much in- 
 terest the days on which classes of young scholars 
 take their place in the life of the country. Every 
 new state, as it comes into the great family, hastens 
 to establish its university. Men who have enjoyed, 
 men who have been denied these advantages in 
 
their own youth, vie with each other in liberal ben- 
 efaction. The voluntary gifts made by private citi- 
 zens to universities and colleges, estimating only 
 those large enough to be mentioned in the newspa- 
 pers, and only those which came in that way to the 
 notice of the bureau of education, amounted in 
 1872 to more than $S.ooo.ooo, and in 1873, the last 
 year before the great depression of business, to 
 Si 1.226.977. rhe number of young men who re- 
 ceive the degrees of our colleges, not including the 
 professional schools, is a little more than thirty 
 six hundred annually. 
 
 I am therefore brought naturally and almost inev- 
 itably to this topic — The place of the College 
 Graduate in American Life. 
 
 I might well hesitate, coming from other studies, 
 to deal with a subject which has been the theme of 
 so many abler speakers, and which must have filled 
 so large a space in the instructions of this place. 
 What I have to say is simple and fragmentary. But 
 upon a matter so vital, every suggestion may have 
 its value. It will be something, even to make com- 
 monplaces more commonplace ; something, out of 
 the experience of life, to add the testimony of a man 
 of the world to the axioms, the truisms, which you 
 have heard from the college pulpit or the professor's 
 chair. 
 
 The longer I live, and the more carefully I study 
 the influences which affect the political action or 
 determine the history of this people, the more I am 
 impressed with the need of the constant reiteration 
 
of a few very old and very simple truths. Every 
 child that is born needs to learn for himself to walk, 
 and to talk, and to understand the meaning of com- 
 mon words. Every new citizen, whether he grow 
 into this freedom from infancy, or come from abroad, 
 or come out of slavery, is to learn for himself the 
 simple duties of citizenship. The teacher of the 
 people, and the teacher of the teachers of the peo- 
 ple, have first and chiefest of all to teach these plain 
 lessons. 
 
 All our constitutions are based upon the theory 
 that the people are to be educated. The influence 
 of the college graduate in the republic may there- 
 fore be said to be after all, differing in degree only, 
 so far as this theory is carried out, — the influence 
 of the citizen in the republic. But he ought at 
 least to be the best educated man in the republic. 
 His active life begins with attainments which come 
 to others, if they come at all, painfully and late. 
 Even when others tread the same paths, it is expect- 
 of him — 
 
 I understand the training of the college graduate 
 to differ from that of other citizens in this : In the 
 common school, and the technical or professional 
 school, the principal purpose is to acquire knowledge 
 —something that the pupil is to know and use ;— 
 moral and intellectual training is but an incident. 
 The college makes discipline its principal end, and 
 the mere acquisition of knowledge is secondary. A 
 trained intellect, a cultivated taste, a quickened and 
 
elevated sense of honor and moral and religious 
 responsibility — these are the results at which it aims. 
 1 do not mean to be understood that the capacity 
 for discerning truth can be developed, without, in 
 the process, acquiring useful truths, or that the taste 
 for what is beautiful in literature, or art, or conduct, 
 is likely to be highly cultivated without gaining the 
 valuable gift of creating or describing such things, 
 which is the function of the orator, or the artist, or 
 the poet. But it is strength, and not weapons, that 
 the college chiefly undertakes to supply. The head 
 of our neighboring university, whose wide range of 
 elective studies has been viewed with some appre- 
 hension, still recognizes and admits this truth when 
 he well says : " The worthy fruit of academic cul- 
 ture is an open mind, trained to careful thinking, 
 instructed in the methods of philosophic investiga- 
 tion, acquainted in a general way with the accumu- 
 lated thoughts of past generations, and penetrated 
 with humility." But all this is matter of defini- 
 tion, more or less exact. We know what a college 
 is, and what a college graduate should be. The 
 possessor of a college degree is entitled everywhere 
 to write after his name — generosus — gentleman. He 
 is, as a rule, to belong to a learned profession. He 
 expects to win his bread, and to make his way in 
 life by some occupation which is to be the work of 
 his brain, and not by manual labor. 
 
 For a thousand years the country gentleman has 
 been the backbone of England. In every neighbor- 
 hood, the lord of the manor has dwelt in his ances- 
 
lO 
 
 ti-al hall, and under his stately trees, which have 
 descended in his name from eldest son to eldest 
 son. As in all cases of inherited dignities, what 
 are the personal qualities of the individual depends 
 upon accident. Sometimes he has been brought up 
 as the companion of grooms and gamekeepers. 
 Sometimes he has been the best scholar at the great 
 school or the university. Sometimes he is a Squire 
 Western, half ruffian and half boor ; sometimes mod- 
 est, wise, brave, affectionate, like John Hampden or 
 John Winthrop. But neither he nor his neighbors 
 forget that he is a member of a proud and powerful 
 aristocracy. He is never without the sense that, — 
 
 " In his halls is hung 
 Armory of the invincible knights of old," 
 
 or without the desire that his descendants shall 
 maintain his place when he is gone, and that the 
 England, the invincible England, of which he and 
 his fathers have been the type, shall endure. The 
 author of " The Great Governing Families of Eng- 
 land " says : — 
 
 " Seymours or Percies, Russells or Herberts, expect to be great 
 next century as now, plan for the next century as well as this, reck- 
 on immediate advantage light when compared with the great objects, 
 the permanent grandeur and power which they desire England to 
 hold, because with the greatness of England, their own is indissolu- 
 bly bound up. It is the element of resistance, the breeze in the 
 brick, the hair in the mortar, the fibre in the wood, the bone in the 
 body, which they contribute to our social fabric, the quality of per- 
 manence which they add to our institutions " 
 
 He has had in old times many a struggle with king 
 and clergy, and in late years his conservative opin- 
 
1 1 
 
 ions have two or three times had to yield to the 
 manufacturing and trading classes. But the power 
 comes back to his hands. The strifes of English 
 politics are still but contests for his favor. He has 
 for a thousand years held his own in England, and 
 under his lead, with the qualities and temper he has 
 impressed on her, England has held her own, and a 
 great deal that is not her own, in the deadliest fields 
 of battle. Napoleon said on the night after Water- 
 loo, "C't! a toujours fini de meme depuis Cre^y." " It 
 has always turned out the same way since Cressy." 
 
 . Now, my young friend, compare the place to 
 which the English gentleman comes but by the ac- 
 cident of birth, with that which you may take, sim- 
 ply at the price of deserving it, in our mighty nation- 
 al life. You may win this place which the English 
 gentleman inherits. Your manor shall be large in 
 exact proportion to your own personal size. You 
 do not need inherited acres, dependent tenantry, or 
 a people bred for fifty generations to the worship of 
 rank. These would be to you nothing but weights. 
 Instead of these things the college enables you to 
 begin life with the qualities which I have described. 
 You have a scholar's capacity for the discernment of 
 truth from falsehood, a scholar's power to make this 
 clear to other men, a scholar's refined taste manifest- 
 ing itself in conduct and character which so attracts 
 and wins your neighbors to you that they are inclin- 
 ed to accept what you esteem and love, because you 
 esteem and love it. Above all, every man within 
 your influence knows you for a man of absolute in- 
 
12 
 
 tegrity. It was well said by an early American 
 author, now too much neglected, that: — 
 
 " There is no virtue without a characteristic beauty. To do what 
 is right argues superior taste as well as meals ; and those whose 
 practice is evil, feel an inferiority of intellectual power and enjoy- 
 ment, even where they take no concern for a principle. Doing well 
 has something more in it than the mere fulfilling ot a duty. It is a 
 cause of a just sense of elevation of character ; it clears and strength- 
 ens the spirits ; it gives higher reaches ot thought. The world is 
 sensible of these truths, let it act as it may. It is not because of his 
 integrity alone that it relies on an honest man ; but it has more con- 
 fidence in his judgment and wise conduct, in the long run, than in 
 the schemes of those of greater intellect, who go at large without 
 any landmarks of principle. So that virtue seems of a double nature, 
 and to stand oftentimes in the place of what we call talent." 
 
 The safest property in this country is the knowl- 
 edge of a profession. It is said that of those per- 
 sons who engage in trade, nearly ninety-five per 
 cent fail in the course of their lives. Stocks and 
 bonds shrink in value and become worthless. Lands 
 and houses may be weighed down by the bur- 
 den of taxes. The fire may consume, or the thief 
 break in and steal, the most carefully guarded wealth. 
 But the capacity for a learned profession, once be- 
 stowed in that burglar-proof, fire-proof, portable safe, 
 your brain, is secure against every chance which 
 does not destroy life or health. John Quincy Adams 
 advises his son not to engage in political life until 
 he has a secured independence. What indepen- 
 dence so secure as the mastery of one of the profes- 
 sions which must ever be a necessity to civilized 
 man. Wherever men live together in society, how- 
 ever rude, however refined, the need of humanity 
 
will demand the clerg-yman, the advocate, and the 
 physician. 
 
 I am not undertaking to set forth the dignity of 
 either profession, what are the qualifications for it, 
 or the kind of education it demands. I am only 
 pointing out the natural influence its members may 
 exert ever the intellect and conscience of the peo- 
 ple. The man whose function is to expound the 
 law of duty, the hope of immortality, the relation 
 of human beings to their Creator; the man whose 
 function is to interpret human law and human jus- 
 tice in their authority over property and liberty and 
 life ; the man who knows and applies the science of 
 which the human body is the domain, and the preser- 
 vation of life and health the end ; — these men would 
 seem to command the approaches to the ear and 
 favor of the people. This power is wholly moral. 
 The submission to it is wholly voluntary. It is 
 honorable alike to him who wields it and to him 
 who obeys it. It consists only in the capacity to 
 influence other men by appeals to reason and con- 
 science, and by the force of an upright example. 
 
 Behold then our college graduate thus equipped, 
 with trained intellectual powers, cultivated taste, 
 character commanding the respect of men ; in the 
 words of Burke, " Educated in science, in erudition, 
 in taste, in honor, in generosity, in humanity, in ev- 
 ery liberal sentiment and every liberal accomplish- 
 ment," — his profession an endowment of compe- 
 tence and independence ; stimulated by great tradi- 
 tions; great opportunities, and great hopes ; plant- 
 
14 
 
 ed at the approaches which command the favor of 
 the people. What shall this man do for the State ? 
 Surely he cannot mean to disdain the leadership 
 which is ready to his hand. Surely he will not con- 
 te.it himself with getting a living, or aim only at the 
 gratification of ambitions which are personal and 
 selfish. He will be conspicuous for a generous 
 public spirit. He is an ever-burning lamp. His 
 biography will be written in the institutions of the 
 community that surrounds him. Here a library 
 will owe its foundation to his efforts. There gene- 
 rations of children will reap the benefit of his labors 
 for a school. Some political tempest of passion and 
 folly has passed over the land. Some human Luci- 
 fer — or rather some bringer of darkness and not 
 light — has banded together all that is evil in the 
 state in the service of an unhallowed ambition. 
 There is a spot which the scourge does not seem 
 to have visited. It is the town where this man 
 lives, — or the neighborhood where men have looked 
 to him as a guide : — 
 
 " His strength is as the strength of ten. 
 Because his heart is pure." 
 
 There are few things more noticeable about this 
 vast machine of ours which we call our country 
 than its sensitiveness to the individual touch. How 
 many men can you reckon whose education has 
 been exactly your education, whose opportunity was 
 exactly your opportunity, who have begun as you 
 begin, whose brave and devoted lives have affected 
 sensibly and permanently the well being of the 
 whole country. 
 
15 
 
 " The true marshaling of the degrees of sovereign 
 honor," says Lord Bacon, " are these. In the first 
 place are conditores impcriorum, founders of states 
 and commonwealths, such as were Romulus, Cyrus, 
 Cassar, Ottoman, Ismael." It is, and will be for 
 generations to come, the peculiar good fortune of 
 this country, that while it has so many of the advan- 
 tages of an old civilization, this process of founding 
 new communities is perpetually going on. They 
 are springing into life without number, even in the 
 oldest states. The successful manufacturer builds 
 his new village. The inventor of a new mechanism, 
 of a platform scale, or a machine for wicker work, 
 creates a town. At the bidding of the genius of 
 manufacture, cities grow like the palace of Aladdin. 
 Each of these has its own separate life,- I had almost 
 said, its own separate immortality. I do not wish 
 to seem to exaggerate, but I can scarcely overstate 
 either the extent or the permanence of the influence 
 on one of these plastic and impressible societies of 
 a single honest and manly life. What is going on 
 in our own neighborhood takes place on a gigantic 
 and imperial scale in the vast spaces of the West. 
 The region drained by the Mississippi and its navi- 
 gable affluents, extending to New Mexico on the 
 southwest and Colorado on the west, and so on to 
 the northwest where Lewis and Clark's pass in Ida- 
 ho opens a gateway in the Rocky mountains, a dis- 
 tance of thirteen hundred miles from northeast to 
 southwest, and more than sixteen hundred from 
 southeast to northwest, making nearly two million 
 
i6 
 
 square miles of territory, and nine thousand miles 
 of navigable waters, is occupied by states still m 
 their infancy, or by vacant spaces which still wait 
 the habitation of man. Passing the Rocky moun- 
 tains, you enter the region scarcely inhabited, scarce- 
 ly explored, consisting of western Idaho and Wash- 
 ington territories, extending six hundred miles from 
 east to west, and three hundred from north to south, 
 — one hundred and eighty thousand square miles. 
 This territory lies on the future pathway of com- 
 merce from Europe and the Atlantic to China and 
 Japan. Southward of this is the region now divid- 
 ed by Arizona, Utah, southern Idaho and the young 
 states of California, Oregon, Nevada and Colorado, 
 making more than seven hundred thousand square 
 miles, rich with mineral wealth, and capable of feed- 
 ing and clothing the entire population of Europe. 
 The present crop of wheat x-aised in this country 
 may be multiplied fifty fold. Not more than three 
 per cent of our cotton land has ever been under 
 cultivation. We have within our limits, a greater 
 stock of coal than all other countries combined. 
 " We have," says Dr. Elder, " a sea-coast so deeply 
 indented, and a lake and river system dissecting the 
 mass so thoroughly, that a domain only one-sixth 
 less than the area of the fifty-nine or sixty em- 
 pires, states, and republics of Europe, and of equal 
 extent with the Roman empire at its largest, is cut 
 for the purpose of internal and external commerce, 
 into twenty islands of the size of Great Britain." 
 This territory, so adapted in situation, in climate, 
 
17 
 
 and in resources, for the abode of the great, pow- 
 ful, and free people for which it waits, is not with- 
 out its appropriate ornaments. Rivers that are 
 lakes, lakes that are seas, cataracts like Niagara, or 
 Trenton, or the great falls of the Yellowstone, or the 
 cascades which lend a more than Alpine beauty to 
 the mountains to which they give their name, vast 
 mountain ranges which lift their imperial foreheads 
 to the sun, (Prof. Eliot states that in one chain near 
 the Yellowstone, he counts more than a hundred 
 peaks that are above eleven thousand feet in hight, 
 and eight or ten that will reach twelve or thirteen 
 thousand), forests that began their mighty growth 
 ages before the cedars of Lebanon were in the seed, 
 ravines like Yosemite, — all these God revealed 
 when he 
 
 " Uncovered the land 
 That he hid of old time in the West, 
 As the sculptor uncovers the statue. 
 When he has wrought his best." , 
 
 If Lord Bacon award his foremost place in the de- 
 grees of sovereign honor to such founders as were 
 Romulus, Cyrus, Caesar, Ottoman, Ismael — if he who 
 brings a new state into life, even as an asylum for a 
 clan of banditti, or a restless nomadic tribe, or builds 
 an empire on the ruins of his country's liberties, shall 
 have any honorable rank — what place shall be his 
 who helps to lay in Christian liberty and law, the 
 foundations of an American state ? His work, we 
 fondly hope, will be permanent as it is honorable. 
 
 What a promise of perpetual life in this marvelous 
 organism of state and nation. Every new state 
 
brings to the entire national life of which it is a 
 part, the fresh and healthful blood of youth. Eng- 
 lishmen like to compare England to an oak, which 
 strikes its roots deep into the ground, and spreads 
 its branches far into the air, and stands for century 
 after century as a shelter for those who gather be- 
 neath its shade. But the oak has but a single life, 
 limited by the inexorable law of growth and of de- 
 cay. A single lightning stroke may shatter its 
 trunk, or a single hurricane tear up its roots. But 
 America may find her type in that wonderful Asiatic 
 tree whose boughs as they extend from the parent 
 trunk, bend over till they touch the earth and strike 
 new root, getting fresher sap and lustier life for the 
 original tree with each added stem, till a whole 
 forest with a thousand trunks grows up, blended in 
 a single but complex organism : — 
 
 " Branching so broad and long, that in the ground 
 The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow 
 About the mother tree, a pillared shade 
 High over arched, and echoing waifs between," 
 
 So every new state, first planted from the great 
 parent national trunk, strikes down into the soil. 
 The tree our fathers set covered at first but a little 
 space by th'e sea-side. It has planted its banyan 
 branches in the ground, it has spread along lake 
 and gulf, over mountain and river, and prairie and 
 plain, till its hardy growth shelters the frozen regions 
 of the far northwest, and its boughs hang over the 
 Pacific, and in good time it will send its roots be- 
 neath the waves, and receive under its vast canopy 
 the islands of the sea. 
 
19 
 
 To the leadership which I claim as the function 
 of the college graduate, the holding of public office 
 is by no means essential. More and more, with the 
 diffusion of education and with new communication 
 by steam and telegraph, increases the controlling 
 force of that public opinion of which act of Con- 
 gress and even judicial decision are but the records. 
 Every morning, New York, Boston, Maine, Oregon, 
 San Francisco, Charleston read the same history on 
 which, every evening, they exchange judgments. 
 This mighty weather bureau of press and telegraph 
 gathers up the signs and portents of the time, from 
 which statute and veto can, with great certainty, be 
 predicted. High public office may oftentimes, 
 though not so often as is commonly supposed, be 
 acquired and retained by unworthy men, and by un- 
 worthy means ; but a permanent leadership of pub- 
 lic opinion — a life- seat in that exalted assembly 
 which, without visible session, ever legislates, and 
 without army or navy, marshal or posse, ever exe- 
 cutes its decree — can only be maintained by that 
 combination of sound judgment, unselfish integrity, 
 and absolute sincerity and strength, which make 
 up what we call character. 
 
 Let no man think that I am advocating what is 
 called by way of reproach, a principle of aristocracy. 
 When I maintain that that man is fitted to be the 
 leader of the people who seeks only and simply 
 their good ; whose leadership is conferred by their 
 free consent ; whose only instrumentality to gain or 
 to hold power is an appeal to their reason and con- 
 
20 
 
 science ; who gains their ear by the passport of his 
 own spotless life ; and who is fitted for their service 
 by the highest training of the intellectual and moral 
 faculties which they have been able to contrive and 
 to provide, I consider that I am paying to the peo- 
 ple themselves the highest possible tribute of rever- 
 ence and honor. I am but asserting in another 
 form the doctrine of the great Italian philosopher, 
 •' that doctrine of liberty, consolatory and full of 
 joy, — how much wiser and more constant are the 
 people than the prince." 
 
 The spirit of the scholar is a democratic spirit. 
 The throne of our men of letters, of Bryant and 
 Longfellow, and Whittier and Lowell, is in the pop- 
 ular heart. The welcome given to Agassiz in Amer- 
 ica was a popular welcome. The ranks of our 
 graduates and professional men are supplied from 
 the same sources which supply the other occupa- 
 tions of the community. They come from the same 
 household. Some accident determined the course 
 of one toward the college, and another toward the 
 shop, or farm, or factory. Your education, after all, 
 is but an advantage in starting, which it will require 
 constant exertion to maintain. The men who make 
 up the bulk of the population of our northern 
 states, who sit on juries, who hold town offices, who 
 carry on farms, who perform skilled labor in shops, 
 who practice the great variety of occupation by 
 which men get a secure and comfortable livelihood, 
 have, as a rule, by no means neglected their own 
 early opportunity in the common school or failed to 
 
2 1 
 
 profit by press and lecture-room in later life. The}' 
 desire what is honest and wise. They understand 
 their own interest and that of the state, and in 
 spite of the rude and dangerous forces which are 
 at work in our society, will maintain our national 
 life in freedom and in honor. Whoso seeks to 
 persuade them to follow his lead addresses a tribu- 
 nal well qualified to sit in judgment on his claim, 
 and well knowing how to supply themselves with 
 leadership, if he should prove unfit. 
 
 Let me occupy a few moments in pointing out 
 some of the conditions on which this leadership 
 can be exercised. We have the right to expect that 
 the man whom the public have given the training 
 of the scholar, shall bring to the formation of opin- 
 ions on questions which concern the public, a schol- 
 ar's thoroughness of investigation. In urging the 
 need of the scholar in politics, we do not mean that 
 a man should leave the study of Latin and Greek, in 
 which he is a scholar, to express his opinions on 
 politics, in which he is no scholar. We have a right 
 to expect of him that he will' not express crude 
 and shallow judgments as to contemporary men and 
 events, of which he would be ashamed if they relat- 
 ed to events of two thousand years ago. He must 
 strive especially to study and understand the char- 
 acter of the people to which he belongs. John 
 Hancock declared, at the inauguration of President 
 Willard of Harvard, that that college " was, in some 
 sense, the parent and nurse of the late happy revo- 
 lution in this commonwealth." If this were true in 
 
22 
 
 any sense, it was because her graduates of that day 
 were profound students of this science. John Ad- 
 ams said of his illustrious kinsman, the greatest 
 popular leader that ever lived in New England, 
 " He has the most thorough understanding of the 
 principles of liberty and her resources in the temper 
 and character of the people." 
 
 He must avoid an ignorant and unreasoning fastid- 
 iousness in his judgment of other men with whom 
 he is called to act. Let him set up for himself the 
 highest possible standard of duty and conduct. 
 Let him insist that no unrighteousness or injustice 
 stain any action for which his country or his party 
 or himself is responsible. But let him remember in 
 judging of the character and motives of his associ- 
 ates, that the republic in which a majority must 
 govern, is not likely soon to be governed by a ma- 
 jority of men without faults. There are few say- 
 ings or doings recorded of George III. which de- 
 serve honorable remembrance. But his saying to 
 Lord Sidmouth, " Give me the man who judges one 
 human being with severity and every other with in- 
 dulgence," deserves to be written in letters of gold. 
 In saying this I am not uttering an empty moral 
 commonplace. I am warning you against a rock 
 on which the public usefulness of many an accom- 
 plished citizen has been wrecked. In looking back 
 over the political history of this commonwealth 
 since I came to manhood, I recall a goodly number 
 of men, some who are dead, some who are living, 
 eloquent orators, learned lawyers, fitted by character 
 
23 
 
 and by opinion to be leaders of the people, whose 
 names will be absent from the honorable roll of those 
 who fought in the great civil battle for the freedom 
 of a race. They could not stand by the side of 
 Garrison because of his bitter invectives, or of 
 Wilson because of his political management, or of 
 Sumner because of some fault of taste or temper, 
 and so they gathered up the skirts of their gar- 
 ments about them, and the people watched and 
 waited for their counsel in vain. Mr. Choate wrote 
 in 1855 to his friend at Caraccas : — " Your estate is 
 gracious that keeps you out of our politics. Any- 
 thing more low, obscene, feculent, the manifold 
 oceanic heavings of history have not cast up. We 
 shall come to the worship of onions, cats, and things 
 vermiculate." And this within six years of the he- 
 roic days of i 86 1 . 
 
 I spoke in the outset of the education at college 
 as an education not merely of the intellect, but of 
 the moral and religious nature. The leadership to 
 which you must aspire is one to which such an ed- 
 ucation calls and fits you. The destiny of these 
 plastic political societies is to be determined, not 
 by their laws, but by the sentiments, principles, and 
 opinions of the men of whom they consist. Every 
 nation has behind its constitution, behind its form 
 of government, some sentiment or opinion upon 
 which it rests. Sir Andrew Mitchell, the famous 
 English diplomatist, relates that Frederic the Great, 
 at a review of sixty thousand men in Pomerania, 
 asked the old Prince D'Anhalt, what in the scene 
 
24 
 
 before them he admired the- most. " Sire," he re- 
 pUed, " I admire the fine appearance of the men." 
 Frederick replied, " what most excites my astonish- 
 ment is, that you and 1, my dear cousin, should be 
 in the midst of such an army as this in perfect safe- 
 ty. Here are sixty thousand men, who are all irre- 
 concilable enemies to both you and myself; not 
 one among them that is not a man of more strength 
 and better armed than either of us, yet they all 
 tremble at our presence." Behind the whole strength 
 of the monarchy, behind the supporting aristocracy, 
 and the bulwark of army and nobility, was a power 
 mighty enough to snap all these like straws, but 
 kept in check by the vague but all pervading sense 
 of the divine right of the king. The little semi- 
 madman, semi-prophet, kept Europe in a fever of 
 fear and rage, made half the families in his dominion 
 desolate and poor, compelled every young man in 
 Prussia to sacrifice to the king's ambition, the love 
 of life, of comfort, and of home, and died at last 
 seventy-five years old, in his bed. The French peo- 
 ple endured for centuries even worse burdens. It 
 was not till the educated men of France had eradi- 
 cated from the popular mind with their religious 
 belief the worship of the divinity that doth hedge 
 a king, that the French revolution became possible. 
 It is the peculiarity of this country, that the princi- 
 ples or sentiments upon which it rests, have been 
 asserted in the most solemn and authoritative form 
 in the act which gave it life. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence declared our 
 national unity. It was one nation and not thirteen, 
 
25 
 
 — " one people to whom it became necessary to dis- 
 solve the political bonds which had connected them 
 with another, and to assume their separate and equal 
 station among the powers of the earth." It was as 
 representatives of the United States of America, 
 that the Congress declared the separation from 
 England^^-^No American state except Texas ever 
 had ^national life. It was as United States that 
 they were declared free and independent by an in- 
 strument, in which no one of the individual states is 
 even named. The same instrument which declared 
 the national existence and unity of this people, as- 
 serted as a limitation upon the powers of sover- 
 eignty, that government has no authority to do 
 anything against right. The British argument was 
 stated by Dr. Johnson, its ablest advocate, in his 
 celebrated tract " Taxation, no Tyranny." He 
 says : — 
 
 " All government is ultimately and essentially absolute, but subor- 
 dinate societies may have more immunities, or individuals greater lib- 
 erty, as the operations of government are differently conducted. An 
 English individual, may by the supreme authority be deprived of 
 liberty, for reasons of which that authority is the only judge. In 
 sovereignty there are no gradations. There may be limited royalty, 
 there may be limited consulships, but there can be no limited gov- 
 ernment. There must in every society be some power or other 
 from which there is no appeal, which admits no restrictions, which 
 pervades the whole mass of the community, regulates and adjusts all 
 subordination, enacts laws or repeals them, erects or annuls judica- 
 tures, extends or contracts privileges, exempt itself from question or 
 control, and bounded only by physical necessity." 
 
 This pamphlet of Dr. Johnson, published in 1775, 
 is entitled " An Answer to the Resolution and Ad- 
 
26 
 
 dress of the American Congress." With this doc- 
 trine of the British government, the American 
 Congress joined issue by the declaration that the 
 powers which governments derive from the consent 
 of the governed are just powers; and by the claim 
 of their newly constituted governments to do only 
 those " acts and things which independent states 
 may of right do." They further declare that it is 
 the right of the people, in instituting a new govern- 
 ment, not only to "organize its powers in such 
 form," but " to lay its foundation in such principles 
 as to them shall seem most likely to effect their 
 safety and happiness." The declaration is prefaced 
 by a summary of these principles, not as in the 
 English charters and bill of rights, grants from the 
 government to the people, but as lying at the foun- 
 dation of governments, and as of higher and prior 
 authority to government itself. In the constitutions 
 framed for the states in which that largest and most ■ 
 important portion of sovereignty required for local 
 self-government is deposited, the same doctrine with 
 greater particularity and fullness of detail is assert- 
 ed. The constitution of Virginia adopted one day 
 before the Declaration of Independence was report- 
 ed, is preceded by what is entitled in the instrument, 
 " A declaration of rights made by the representa- 
 tives of the good people of Virginia ; which rights 
 do pertain to them and their posterity as the basis 
 (ind foundation of government T In that declara- 
 tion the people of Virginia say, " that no free gov- 
 ernment, or the blessings of liberty can be preserv- 
 
27 
 
 ed to any people, but by frequent recurrence to fun- 
 dimental principles." This sentiment was copied 
 by John Adams into the constitution of Massachu- 
 setts of 1 780. 
 
 I have not time and it would be foreign to the 
 purpose of this discourse to enter upon a vindica- 
 tion of the logical correctness of the proposition 
 laid down in the opening of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence, and in the bills of rights embraced in 
 our early constitutions. The criticism was made by 
 Mazzini, and I think repeated by Bismark, that they 
 were assertions of rights and not of duties. But 
 these critics consider the form rather than the sub- 
 stance. Though in form a statement of rights, the 
 Declaration of Independence has always been ap- 
 pealed to as a statement of duties. The appeals 
 which have been made to it in our political history, 
 have been to remind the citizens of their duties to 
 other men, and not what they should claim for 
 themselves. These declarations were the expressions 
 of the profoundest convictions of the most religious 
 people on earth at the most religious period of 
 their history. By them they meant to lay the foun- 
 dations of their government in the moral law. They 
 were no empty declamation. They rang them and 
 sounded them, and tried them and tested them, and 
 made them links in the great chain on which they 
 hung their nation, like the chain fastened by Jove 
 to the highest summit of Olympus by which heaven 
 and earth might hang secure. 
 
 I have recited this history to remind you that as 
 sons of a New England college, you are the lineal 
 
28 
 
 successors of the men who wrought out this service 
 to mankind. The great thinkers of the revolution- 
 ary age, with few exceptions, were either college 
 graduates, or received the instructions of the college 
 at second-hand from clergymen at whose knees they 
 were trained. John Adams writes to Samuel Ad- 
 ams in 1 790, " Your Boston town meetings and our 
 Harvard college have set the universe in motion." 
 I have already cited John Hancock to the same 
 effect. Yale, and William and Mary, and Prince- 
 ton, may justly make a like claim. The discussions 
 of theology and of the principles of religious liber- 
 ty and duty, fitted the people for the kindred discus- 
 sion of political principles. Mr. Ticknor says that 
 one of the most practically wise statesmen then alive, 
 often told him that we never should have had our 
 Revolution, if all the people had not been for a cen- 
 tury in the habit of discussing the Westminster As- 
 sembly's catechism. If the training of the college fit- 
 ted your predecessors to be the leaders and guides of 
 the people in founding their nation on fundamental 
 principles of right and duty, surely the colleges of 
 our day are degenerate if they do not fit their grad- 
 uates to take a lead in that frequent recurrence to 
 those principles which our fathers enjoin upon us 
 as the indispensable condition on which the life of 
 the nation can endure. Never more than to-day 
 was this constant recurrence necessary. 
 
 The habit is growing in many influential quarters 
 of deriding what are called sentimental politics. 
 The men who decry sentiment in politics, that is. 
 
29 
 
 the application of the moral law to public conduct, 
 are commonly quite as sentimental as anybod)-. It 
 is only a question of the kind of sentiment to which 
 they think proper to appeal. The men who sneer 
 at the sentiment of justice, with its simple corollary 
 of equal right, at the sentiments of honor, good faith, 
 disinterestedness, as practical forces in the conduct 
 of government, are quite ready to make and to re- 
 spond to appeals to the sentiments of hatred, of re- 
 venge, of envy, of covetousness, or of personal 
 ambition. 
 
 The difficult problems in our national politics at 
 this hour, will nearly all of them be solved if the 
 people will adhere to rules of conduct imposed as 
 restraints in the early constitutions. The sublimity 
 of the principle of self-government does not consist 
 wholly or chiefly in the idea that self is the person 
 who governs, but quite as much in the doctrine that 
 self is the person who is governed. How our race 
 troubles would disappear if the dominant Saxon 
 would but obey, in his treatment of the weaker 
 races, the authority of the fundamental laws on 
 which his own institutions rest ! The problem of 
 to-day is not how to convert the heathen from hea- 
 thenism, it is how to convert the Christian from 
 heathenism ; not to teach the physician to heal the 
 patient, but to heal himself. The Indian problem 
 is not chiefly how to teach the Indian to be less 
 savage in his treatment of the Saxon, but the Sax- 
 on to be less savage in his treatment of the Indian. 
 The Chinese problem is not how to keep Chinese 
 
3° 
 
 laborers out of California, but how to keep Chinese 
 policies out of Congress. The negro question will 
 be settled when the education of the white man is 
 complete. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence, beginning with 
 its assertion of the natural freedom and equality 
 which pertain to all men as a birth-right, and its de- 
 nial of the title of any government to exist in con- 
 flict with these rights, ends with the statement that 
 the nation which it then called into life was to do, 
 in. its separate and equal station among the nations 
 of the earth, only those things which such states 
 may of right d^o. The Massachusetts bill of rights, 
 beginning with the same assertion of freedom and 
 equality, terminates its comprehensive summary of 
 the maxims of administration essential to the pres- 
 ervation of popular liberty by setting forth " the 
 end that it may be a government of laws and not 
 of men." 
 
 Upon these principles as corner-stones our fathers 
 builded their state. What function more exalted 
 for the educated men of the country than to keep 
 alive in the hearts of the people reverence for these 
 great and simple principles of liberty and duty — to 
 defend them with all the powers of reason and ar- 
 gument, to adorn them with all the resources of 
 eloquence and scholarship, to make the people fa- 
 miliar with their history, and with the miracles of 
 peace, of prosperity, of comfort, and happiness they 
 have already wrought for mankind. 
 
 The noblest and most fortunate nations, the no- 
 noblest and happiest men, are those of simple be- 
 
liefs. Wordsworth, the profoundest of English 
 political philosophers, as he is, since Milton, the 
 wisest and greatest of English poets, tells us, speak- 
 ing of the Swiss republic : — 
 
 " A few strong instincts and a few plain rules. 
 Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought 
 More for mankind in many a trying hour. 
 Than all the pride of intellect and thought." 
 
 These few strong instincts and these few plain 
 rules — virtui a c fides Helvetiorum — have kept Switz- 
 erland safe for five hundred years in her mountain 
 fastnesses. The few plain rules our fathers framed 
 will be enough for us. Let not their authority be 
 undermined by the indifference or the evil example 
 of our educated men. If they think, like Cicero's 
 patrician, that whatever happen to the republic, 
 their fish-ponds will be safe ; or fancy that in defi- 
 ance of the prohibition of the sixth article of the 
 bill of rights, they can obtain advantages or partic- 
 ular and exclusive privileges distinct from those of 
 the community, or contrive unlawful paths to wealth 
 without adherence to those principles of justice, 
 moderation, industry, and frugality which the eight- 
 eenth article enjoins, they will discover their mis- 
 take and meet their terrible retribution when the 
 workingman strives to relieve the hardship of his 
 lot by imitating their example. Kearney's constitu- 
 tion never could have found favor with the farmers 
 of California, to whom its adoption was due, but for 
 the previous management of railroad and banking 
 corporations, for which educated New England cap- 
 italists are not without large responsibility. 
 
32 
 
 This is the empire to which you are invited. 
 This is the leadership to which you may aspire. To 
 this the teachings of this place fit and summon you. 
 To this the honorable example of your predecessors 
 incites you. Non potest stare rcspublica freta Vetera- 
 nis, sine magna subsidio juveniutis. No greater op- 
 portunity surely was ever vouchsafed to man. It is 
 a task which may well stimulate you by its difificul- 
 ties and invite you by its rewards. The last thirty 
 years have brought new elements into our body pol- 
 itic. Our fathers builded their state with that Eng- 
 lish race whom the wisdom of a thousand years had 
 ripened. It is for your generation to make the re- 
 straints of constitutional liberty acceptible to races 
 to whom law has for ages appeared only as tyranny, 
 and liberty been known only in her excesses. Your 
 fathers dealt with men made docile to the teachings 
 of political duty by their simple religious creed. 
 You have to deal with a generation whose audacious 
 skepticism questions the foundations of all faith, 
 and whose positive philosophy declares the belief in 
 God himself "' a dissolving dream of the past." But 
 the few strong instincts to which you need to appeal 
 are planted in the heart of universal humanity, and 
 the few plain rules you need to apply are enough 
 for every exigency of the state. 
 
 Devoted to this patriotic service, you will recon- 
 cile and blend the Grecian idea of the state as a 
 being compared with which all individual existence 
 is valueless and subordinate, and the Christian idea 
 of the state as but an instrument for the welfare of 
 
33 
 
 an immortal and spiritual life. One of the greatest, 
 perhaps the greatest, of the living scientific men of 
 England, in his address at Belfast, as he ended his 
 masterly survey of the domain of science, sought 
 to inspire his auditors by affirming that the topics 
 which he had scarcely touched would be handled by 
 the loftiest intellects when speaker and auditors, 
 " like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted 
 away into the infinite azure of the past." Rather 
 let me speak in the spirit of the teachings of this 
 place. Your lives, so devoted to patriotism and 
 duty, will bear fruit in that mighty national existence, 
 compared with which the longest human life is but 
 as the pulsation of an artery. More than this : they 
 will return to you their satisfactions and rewards 
 even when that national existence is over, if the 
 power which dismisses a star on its pathway through 
 the skies, promising that in a thousand years it shall 
 return again, true to its hour, and keeps his word, 
 keepeth the promise he hath made to the conscious 
 soul of man, 
 
 " and that, which lived 
 True life, live on." 
 
THE FUNCTION OF/^HE AMERft)AN LAWYER IN THE 
 FOUNDING OF STATES: 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 Delivered before the Graduating Classes- 
 
 AT THE 
 
 FIFTY-SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 * • OF THK 
 
 YALE LAW SCHOOL 
 
 ON 
 
 June SStti, ISSl, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Hon. GEORGE F. HOAR, LL.D. 
 
 NEW HAVEN- 
 TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYIOR, PRINTKRS. ^ 
 
 .i'mj V 
 
THE FUNCTION OF THE AMERICAN LAWYER IN THE 
 FOUNDING OF STATES: 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 « 
 
 Delivered before the Graduating Classes 
 
 AT THE 
 
 FIFTY-SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 YALE LAW SCHOOL 
 
 ON 
 
 J" Tine astli, ISSl, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Hon. GEORGE F. HOAR, LL.D. 
 
 NEW HAVEN 
 
 TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYIOR, PRINTERS. 
 
 1881. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The Yale Law School was organized, as a separate Department of Yale Col- 
 lege, in 1824. but its system of instruction and adiniuistration has been essentially 
 changed during the last twelve years. 
 
 The course of study has been extended to four years ; the first two years being 
 devoted to the regular undergraduate course for the degree of LL.B., and the last 
 two — tlie graduate course — being optional, and open to graduates of any law 
 school on conditions indicated in the Annual Circular. 
 
 The Faculty consists of the President of the University and six Professors, 
 as follows: 
 
 Noah Porter, D.D., LL.D., President. 
 
 Feancis Watlaxd, LL.D., Dean, and Professor of Mercantile Law and Ekidence. 
 
 WiLLiAii C. Robinson, LL.D., Professor, of Elementary Law, Criminal Law, and 
 
 Real Property. 
 Simeon E. Baujwin, if. A., Professor of Constitutional Law, Contracts, and Wills. 
 Johnson T. Platt, M. A., Professor of Equity Jurisprudent, and Torts. 
 WrLLiAii K. TowNSEND, D.CL., ProfessoT of Pleading. 
 Theodore S. Woolsey, LL.B, Professor of International Law. 
 
 There are also the following Special Lecturers and Instructors : 
 
 IN THE UNDBRaEADTTATB COURSE. 
 
 Leonard Bacon, D.D., LL.D., Ecclesiastical Law'. 
 Origen S. Setmodr, LL.D., Judicial Procedwe and Practice. 
 Maek Bailey, M.A., Forensic Elocution. 
 Frederic H. Bbtts, M.A., Patent Law. 
 
 IN the graduate course. 
 Prop. Albert S. Wheeler, M.A., Homan Law. 
 Prof. William H. Brewer, M.A., Relations of Physical Geography to Political 
 
 History. 
 Prop. Arthur if. Wheeleb, B.A., English Constitutional History. 
 Prop. William G-. Sumner. B.A., Political amd Social Science. 
 Prop. Henry W. Parnam, M.A., R.P.D., Political Economy. 
 
 To those pursuing successfully the studies of the third year, the degree of M.L. 
 is given, and to those who complete the entire graduate course with honor, the 
 degree of D.C.L. 
 
 The graduate course was first instituted in 187R. It has been attended by 
 graduates of five law schools : those of Chicago, Columbia, University of Mary- 
 land, University of the City of New York, and Yale. The cvn-riculum for the 
 first year is particularly designed to suppleirfent that of the undergraduate course 
 by affording further instruction in the branches there pursued ; that of the second 
 year is designed to meet the wants of those who aim at acquiring a thorough 
 acquaintance with jurisprudence and its affiliated studies, as a means of complel- 
 
ing their education, without couflning themselves to such topics as are of the 
 first necessity to the practicing lawyer. 
 
 The arrangement of the course is as follows: 
 
 First Tear (third of the whole course). 
 Admiralty Law, and Patents, Prof. Robinson. 
 Practice in the U. S. Courts, Railroad Law, and American Constitutional 
 
 History, Prof. Bald win. 
 lIusiciPAL Corporations, and Practice in States having a Code op Civil 
 
 .Procedure, Prof. Platt. 
 Political History and Science, Prof. Sumner. 
 ' Unglish Constitutional History, Prof. A. M. Wheeler, (optional). 
 Internatio_nal Law, Prof. Woolsey. 
 Political Economy, Prof. Parnam. 
 
 Second Tear (fourth of the whole course). 
 Parliamentary Law, History of the Law op Real Property, and Canon 
 
 Law, Prof. Robinson. 
 Comparative Jurisprudence, and Conflict op Laws, Prof. Baldwin. 
 General Jurisprudence, Prof. Platt. 
 Roman Law, Prof. A. S. Wheeler. 
 
 Relations of Physical Geography to Political History, Prof. Brewer. 
 Political and Social Science, Prof. Sumner. 
 
 Among the principal text-books used are Parsons on Shipping and Admiralty, 
 Curtis on Patents, Desty's Federal Procedure, Pierce on American Railroad Law, 
 Austin, on Jurisprudence, Dillon on Municipal Corporations, Pomeroy's Remedies 
 and Remedial Rights, the Commentaries of Gains, Institutes of Justinian, selected 
 titles of the Pandects, the Code Nwpoleon, Cushing's Parliamentary Law, and 
 Wharton on Private International Law. 
 
 The number of the daily exercises in the undergraduate course has also been 
 greatly increased since 1815, and several new studies introduced. Among the 
 latter are those of Private Corporations, Estates of Deceased Persons, Code Plead- 
 ing, and the Elements of General Jurisprudence. 
 
 The library of the School contains all the American, English, Irish, and Cana- 
 dian reports, with a large collection of statutes, digests, treatises, and works of 
 reference, constituting with a single exception the best library of any American 
 Law School. The reading room connected with the library also contains the 
 principal English and American Law Periodicals and Newspapers. 
 
 The apartments occupied by the school are under the same roof with the court- 
 rooms of Xew Haven County, in which are held the Courts of Common Pleas, the 
 Superior Court, both civil and criminal, and the Supreme Court of Errors. As 
 one or more of these courts is in daily session during the entire academical year, 
 the opportunity afforded to the students for observing practice is unrivalled and 
 constitutes a most important advantage of this School. 
 
 An alumni-record will be published in 1882, giving the present addresses of all 
 the alumui of this department, with a brief description of their subsequent careers. 
 All graduates of the School are therefore requested to communicate at once to 
 the Dean, or to the librarian, Dr. J. A. Robinson, New Haven, their addresses 
 as well as the other particulars above requested. 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 HON. GEORGE F. HOAR, LL.D. 
 
 I do not construe the invitation with which you have hon- 
 ored me as indicating your expectation that I should, even for 
 an hour, usurp the functions of any of the eminent scholars to 
 whom the youth of this University look for guidance in their 
 professional studies. But it is fitting, as each class of young 
 men passes the portals of the Law School to inscribe their 
 names on our rolls, that some elder should welcome them to 
 the great brotherhood of the profession, to their share in its 
 historic glories, to its opportunities for labor, for intellectual 
 and moral growth, for honorable public service. Non potest 
 stare respublica freta veteranis, sine magno subsidio jwoen- 
 tutis. 
 
 It is a proof of the growth in America of that love of sound 
 learning which is the ornament of the State, and that love of 
 country which is its strength, that we celebrate every year, 
 more and more, these commencement seasons in which classes 
 of young scholars come to take their place in the life of the 
 Eepublic, and the topic of the day is, almost always, how they 
 can best perform that duty of citizenship to which their edii- 
 cation pledges them. Almost every address, on these occa- 
 sions, deals with the graduate's relation to the State. I wish 
 to invite your attention to a few disconnected and quite frag- 
 
mentary tlioughts upon a theme which recalls one of the chief 
 titles of our profession to public gratitude, and to which the 
 conditions of American life give a present practical interest. 
 My subject is — The function of the American lawyer in the 
 founding of States. 
 
 If we seem to anybody engaged in any other avocation to 
 claim too much, either of dignity, or of capacity for public 
 service, for the profession which we love, let him remember 
 that we do it for no selfish or ignoble purpose. We would 
 excite in the young lawyer a just pride in his calling, solely as 
 an incentive to usefulness to the State. If any other class of 
 men think we occupy their ground, let them show their title, 
 and we will not stand in their way. The high places of ser- 
 vice are not crowded. We will leave ample room and verge 
 enough for all the good their capacity can accomplish, or their 
 hearts can desire. No lawyer who, in these later centuries, 
 has filled conspicuojis public station in America, or England, 
 or France, has inherited it from ancestors, or has bought it 
 with money, or has been jjromoted to it without having his 
 quality tried, in the face of day and before the people, in 
 strenuous contests in an arena where the wrestlers need all 
 their strength, and where the mental and moral muscle is 
 thoroughly tested. 
 
 There is nothing in history so attractive and romantic as the 
 founding of a State. There is nothing so pregnant with great 
 results as the founding of a Eepublic. The scholarly imagina- 
 tion of Bacon delighted in the myths which surround the 
 infancy of the classic commonwealths. He was cotemporary 
 with Ealeigh, and Winthrop, and Carver. He says : " Planta- 
 tions are ainongst ancient, primitive, and heroical works ;" and 
 in his degrees of sovereign honor, he awards the chief places 
 thus : 
 
 "The true marshalling of the degrees of sovereign honor are these: In the 
 first place are Conditores— founders of States. In the second place are Legisla- 
 tores— lawgivers, which are some^mes called second-founders, or PerpeUi Prin- 
 cipes, because they govern by their ordinances after they are gone." 
 
 Below the Conditores, and below the givers of perpetual 
 laws who are the second founders, he ranks in order the 
 Liberatores, to whom States owe their freedom from foreign 
 
or domestic tyrants, and the Propagatores and Propngnatort's 
 Imperii, such as in honorahle wars enlarge their territories, or 
 make noble defense against invaders. Last of the hve he 
 places the Patres patriae, — the good administrators, "which 
 reign justly and make the times good wherein they live." 
 
 The founders of a political community, especially the 
 founders of a republic, are not they who select the site which 
 it occiipies, or who lead the men who compose it in the begin- 
 ning from their old habitation. A nation, a State, even a city 
 or town A'ery soon becomes in our conception a moral being. 
 Its friends and its children love it. Its enemies hate it. It is 
 the object of respect and gi'atitude. It preserves its identit}' 
 through generations. I suppose there are men in this audience 
 whose blood would fly to their cheeks at the charge that some 
 little town on the New England coast or in the forest had 
 committed an act of dishonor two hundi-ed years ago, as if the 
 imputation were upon one of their own kindred to-day. 
 Especially do we hold that the great and unfailing laws of 
 moral retribution apply to it. The Greek orator, Isocrates, in 
 his oration T^epi iip7jy^(;, says : — 
 
 av^p fih> ya^ aa^iSf/c nai TiOVTfpoq rvxov av fddaste TeXevTTJffag irptv dovvai. 6iKT]V 
 Tov TJiiapTr/fihiiW ■ aide ■nukcK; Sid tf/v adavaaiav vno/ievovai aal TOf ■Kapii TW/ 
 avdpuTTuv Kal rdq ruv Oecjv Ttficjpiag. 
 
 " An impious and evil man may get ofi if he chance to die before he has paid 
 the penalty for his crimes ; but the immortality of a State leaves it no escape 
 from the vengeance of men or of the Gods." 
 
 And SO our wisest of modern poets — 
 
 What is a State ? The wise beholii in her 
 
 A creature bom of time, that keeps her eye 
 
 Fixed on the_ statutes of Eternity, 
 
 To which her judgments reverently defer. ' 
 
 Speaking through Law's dispassionate voice the State 
 
 Endues her conscience with external life 
 
 And being, to preclude or quell the strife 
 
 Of individual will. 
 
 It is interesting to see how early the distinguishing charac- 
 ters of communities develop themselves and how long they 
 endure. This is true, to a wonderful degree, of our American 
 States. Mr. Bancroft says, speaking of the middle of the 
 eighteenth century : — " The Colonies had, each of them, a 
 
direction of its own, and a character of its own." These dis- 
 tinctions are still clearly manifest, in spite of the thousand 
 influences that mingle our social and political life, not only 
 between States that have been slave and free, between old 
 States and new, commercial and manufacturing and agricul- 
 tural, but between States that lie side by side, of common 
 origin, similar pursuits, and similar laws. Rhode Island, held 
 in the hollow of the hand of Massachusetts ; Connecticut, so 
 placed that one would think it would become a province of 
 New York ; Delaware, whose chief city is but twenty-five miles 
 from Philadelphia, yet preserve their distinctive characteristics 
 as if they were States of the continent of Europe whose people 
 speak different languages. 
 
 There is a time, commonly a very early time in the growth 
 of a Commonwealth, just as there is a period in the youth of 
 a man, when it takes on the qualities which determine its des- 
 tiny. With this, climate and soil, and race and religion, and 
 inherited qualities, and inherited laws and institutions have, of 
 course, much to do, just as the analogous influences have much 
 to do with the character of the child. It is, of course, impossible 
 ■ to trace all these influences, or to award to each its due share of 
 the result. But there are two or three observations that are 
 quite obvious and familiar. The history of a people depends 
 upon its character. A national existence is nothing but an ex- 
 ponent of a national mind. A few of those half unconscious 
 beliefs which we call instincts, a few fundamental rules of con- 
 duct, a few sentiments concerning the true idea of the State 
 and the relation and duty to it of the citizen, determine its 
 course along the paths of greatness and wealth and glory, or 
 of weakness and poverty and disgrace. 
 
 The American continent held forth for uncounted ages the 
 same opportunities to the Indian, who has not even saved his 
 own annals from oblivion, that it does to you. The shores of the 
 same Mediterranean sea are inhabited to-day by the same races 
 or by races not inferior to those who held them in the days of 
 Alexander, or Pericles, or Hannibal, or Scipio, or Constantine. 
 
 Climate and soil have much to do with character, but they 
 do not create it. Race has much to do with it, but it does not 
 create it. 
 
9 
 
 When this character is once formed it becomes hard to 
 change. Successive generations, while they are influenced by 
 external causes, b}' new accessions of population, by the growth 
 of wealth and luxury, are influenced also, and still more strong- 
 ly, by what they inherit from their ancestors, by the lessons of 
 their own history, by the. principles of public conduct on which 
 their fundamental laws are based. 
 
 In so far as a State is self-governing, the men who early in 
 its history determine the fundamental principles on which it 
 governs itself are its true founders. 
 
 Dr. Lieber, one of the wisest and most thoughtful of modern 
 writers on the philosophy of history, says — " Ai-nold "Winkel- 
 ried's carcass, mangled and trodden down, became the corner- 
 stone of the Helvetic Republic." Dr. Lieber was right. It 
 was not a mere heroic example of courage and self-sacrifice, 
 such as can be found by scores in Grecian or Koman story. 
 The time and the occasion and the historic event have made 
 Arnold Winkelried to the young Swiss for five hundred years 
 the type and example of his race. To be a Swiss is, to his aspi- 
 ration, and according to his ideal, and to the measure of his 
 opportunity, to be a Winkelried. It was the virtus ac fides 
 Hekietiorum that gathered into its breast at Sempach the sheaf 
 of fatal Austrian spears. 
 
 So in the civil conduct of States. The sentiments and opin- 
 ions that are established by their early generations, whether they 
 be those sentiments and opinions that are behind constitutions 
 and statutes, like the doctrine of the divine right of kings that 
 played so important a part in mediaeval history, or whether they 
 are affirmed in conjunction with some great historic action like 
 our Declaration of Independence, or are embodied in written un- 
 changeable fundamental laws, like Magna Charta or the Bills of 
 Rights in our early constitutions, are the most potent forces in 
 determining their history. Mr. Stubbs declares that the whole of 
 the Constitutional history of England is little more than a com- 
 mentary on Magna Charta. It was the first great public act of 
 the English nation after it had recognized its own identity. 
 Of course, these things are not the creation of individuals. 
 They are a growth, as the live oak that makes the ship's knees 
 and the cedar of Maine and Georgia pine that make her ribs 
 
10 
 
 have slowly added ring to ring for many a summer and winter. 
 But tlie shipwright that chooses them and puts them in place 
 is none th^ less the builder of the ship. In many a scholar's 
 study, and many a statesman's brain, and many a yeoman's 
 sturdy sense, both in old England and New, was wrought out 
 the idea of the rights of men and the objects of government 
 which are expressed in the brief opening sentences of the Dec- 
 laration of Independence. But none the less is the placing them 
 as the corner-stone in the foundation of our Hepublic, making 
 them, as Hamilton declared, " the fundamental constitution of 
 every State," the one foremost action of human history. 
 
 First in rank, then, among our American conditores, let us 
 place the men who have affirmed the principles that lie at the 
 foundation of our political life at such a time and under such 
 circumstances that they have become the governing laws that 
 the State and the people obey in their public conduct. 
 
 Next in rank to these, should be placed the framers of the 
 mechanism of our Constitutions and the early statutes like the 
 judiciary act and the acts establishing the systems of finance 
 and currency and regulating the descent and distribution of 
 estates. These correspond to Lord Bacon's " second founders." 
 
 Third, should come the early expounders of the Constitu- 
 tion upon whom its practical working and accepted meaning 
 so largely depend. 
 
 Let us see what is the place of our profession in each of these 
 classes. 
 
 We must admit that for the first two or three generations 
 after the settlement of the country, we had no great lawyers. 
 Mr. Webster in his Plymouth oration, names the principal men 
 who were living in Massachusetts or liad recently died at the 
 close of her first century. The list might well create a smile 
 at its poverty. Except that of Leverett, it contains no name 
 that deserves the remembrance of posterity. It contains the 
 name of no lawyer. Dr. Palfrey says of Connecticut, speak- 
 ing of the close of the eighteenth century : — 
 
 " Of professional lawyers tliere is perhaps no trace to be found in the public 
 records of these times, except so far as they should fall under the censure of the 
 statute which, along with rioters, scolds, keepers and frequenters of houses of 
 ill-fame, night-walkers and drunkards, and such like evil doers, provides that 
 
11 
 
 ' common barrators, which freciueiiUy move, stir up, and maintain suits of law in 
 courts or quarrels and parts in tlie country' sliall give security lor their good be- 
 havior, or by any Assistant be sent to the common gaol." 
 
 Neither of the judges appointed to the Superior Court in 
 Massachusetts under the charter of William and Mary, was a 
 lawyer. The first Chief Justice who had a prt.fessional train- 
 ing was Paul Dudley, appointed in 1745. Winthrop and Bell- 
 ingham were l)red to the bar, but were not eminent as lawyers. 
 It was our great good fortune that our ancestors did not bring 
 with them that professional attachment to English law which 
 men who had practiced it at home would have entertained. A 
 century's experience of the needs of their new States preceded 
 the growth of a body of men learned in the law. Lord Bacon's 
 objection to the civil law that it was not framed for the coun- 
 tries who were governed by it, would have been doubly appli- 
 cable to the laws of England, if they had been introduced here 
 in all their detail at once. 
 
 The settlers of New England came to establish a religious 
 Commonwealth. They brought with them the love of civil 
 freedom, an attachment to so much of the English law as pro- 
 tected the rights of the subject, as was founded in the principles 
 and constituted the securities of English liberty, and a strong 
 repugnance to so much of it, of feudal and ecclesiastical origin, 
 as established the authority of lords spiritual and temj)oral. 
 The profound wisdom and foresight of John Winthrop are 
 never more conspicuously displayed than in the reason he gives 
 in his journal, for the repeated evasions by the magistrates of 
 Massachusetts of the popular demand for a code of laws. 
 
 "9th. mo., 1639. The people had long desired ^ a body of laws, and thought 
 their condition very unsafe while so much power rested in the discretion of the 
 magistrates. Divers attempts have been made at former courts, and the matter 
 referred to some of the magistrates and som<? of the elders ; but still it came to no 
 effect, for, being committed to the care of many, whatsoever was done by some 
 was still disliked ot neglected by others. And at last it was referred to Mr. Cot- 
 ton and Mr. Nathaniel Ward, ic, and each of them framed a model, which were 
 presented to this General Court, and by them committed to the Governor and 
 Deputy, and some others, to consider of and so prepare it foi' the Court in the 
 third month next. Two great reasons there were which caused most of the mag- 
 istrates and some of the elders not to be very forward in this matter. One was 
 want of sufficient experience of the nature and disposition of the people, consid- 
 ered with the condition of the country and other circumstances which made, them 
 
12 
 
 conceive that such laws would be fittest for us which should arise pro re naia upon 
 oooasiona, &c.; and so the laws of England and other States grew, and therefore 
 the fundamental laws of England are called customs, consuetudines. 
 
 2d. For that it would professedly transgress the limits of our charter, which 
 provide we shall make no laws repugnant to the laws of England, and that we 
 were assured we must do. But to raise up laws by practice and custom had been 
 no transgression, as in our church discipline, and in matters of marriage, to make 
 a law that marriages shall not be solemnized by ministers is repugnant to the laws 
 of England ; but to bring it to a custom by practice for the magistrates to perform 
 it is no law made repugnant, &o." 
 
 For a hundred and twenty years after the landing at Plym- 
 outh, such controversies as the church and neighborhood could 
 not compose, were decided by tribunals unlearned in the law. 
 But in the half-century which followed, the young giants out- 
 grew a Qondition for which such justice as might be dispensed 
 by a bench of Justices of the Peace, with the advice of the 
 ministers in grave cases, would suflBce. The French wars 
 taught them to respect themselves, and mankind to respect 
 them as a military power. Commerce, extending wherever 
 winds blow and waters roll, miist be governed only by laws 
 whose authority is as extensive as itself. Populous towns can- 
 not grow up and real estate become valuable, without the ne- 
 cessity for a complex system of law and a body of able and 
 learned lawyers. The time was at hand when the question 
 how much of natural liberty or of English liberty their fathers 
 had iSrought with. them must be discussed and settled. A gen- 
 eration of lawyers sprang iip in all the colonies adequate to lead 
 and guide this people to the fulfillment of its sublime destiny. 
 If you will bring to mind the list of the men belonging to the 
 legal profession in this country who were on the stage between 
 1740 and 1Y90, you will, I tliink, agree that it cannot be 
 matched by any other country in any other period of history. 
 
 Burke says in his speech of March, 1775 : 
 
 " In no country, perhaps, in the world is the law so general a study. The 
 profession itself is numerous and powerful, and ia most provinces it takes the 
 lead. The greater number of the Deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers." 
 
 In one respect there is a remarkable family likeness in all 
 these men. In reading their lives and works you are stnick 
 with the fact how little there is in them of the mere advocate. 
 The serious, searching, conscientious examination and delibera-i; 
 
13 
 
 tiou, not of the counsel seeking to win a caiise, but of the 
 buildei' trying the strength of the foundation on which his 
 massive structure shoiild stand for all time, marks all their 
 utterances. They were the intellectual children, not of Saun- 
 ders, or even of Coke, but uf Somers and Locke. They M^ere 
 the pupils of a race of clergymen, who had taught them to 
 refer all hiiman laws and forms of government to their origin 
 in the statutes of Him " by whom kings reign, and princes 
 decree justice." 
 
 From the close of the last French war, the task of the patriot 
 leaders was to arouse the American people to assert their 
 rights, and to convince the people and ruling powers of Great 
 Britain of the justice of their cause. To the mighty debate 
 between liberty and prerogative, the legal profession contri- 
 buted its full share, on both sides. Most conspicuous among 
 the great State papers of that period, are the address to the 
 people of Great Britain in 1774, qf which a lawyer, John Jay, 
 was the author, and the answer of the Massachusetts Assembly 
 in 1773, to the address of Gov. Hutchinson, asserting the 
 power of Parliament to legislate for the colonies, the claim to 
 which is divided between John Adams and his illustrious kins- 
 man of the same name. 
 
 But when the argument was over, and the time had come 
 for a new nation, the hand of a lawyer laid its corner-stone on 
 the doctrine of eternal justice, and its simple corollary the 
 ecptality of natural rights, inscribed on it the affirmation that 
 the failure to secure these was just cause for its overthrow, 
 and defined and limited its power as extending only to such 
 things as free and independent. States may of right do. 
 Another lawyer was, by the acknowledgment of the author of 
 the Declaration, its colossus on the floor of Congress. " John 
 Adams," said Mr. Jefferson, in the hearing of Mr. Webster, 
 " came out with a power of thought and of expression which 
 moved us from our seats." The people supported the decision 
 of Congress ; but it was the decision of Congress which deter- 
 mined the question. Of the fifty-two signers of the Declara- 
 tion twenty-four were of the legal profession. 
 
 I know that iu a country, situated as was this before the 
 Revolution, whose people, with few exceptions, must earn 
 
14 
 
 their own livelihood, questions which concern legal rights and 
 the just limitation of legal powers, were likely to be best dis- 
 cussed by a profession who were obliged, from the nature of 
 their employment, to be familiar with such subjects. There 
 was no considerable class of persons, as in England, who had 
 inherited estates which enabled them to devote themselves to 
 political life as an occupation. The conservatism of wealth 
 led the majority of such persons to take the side of the crown. 
 But the more exclusively the burden rested on them, the 
 greater the honor due the profession which sustained it so well. 
 
 Coming to the framing and adoption of the Constitution of 
 the United States, the greatness and power of the lawyers of 
 that age are still more conspicuously manifest. The Declarar 
 tion was in obedience to the irresistible march of events. It 
 affirmed, with matchless clearness and precision, principles 
 which were founded in the nature of things, and which the 
 public understanding had already accepted as self-evident. 
 But the constitution exhibits the highest creative and construc- 
 tive power of statesmanship, and its adoption was the result of 
 the most skillful leadership. 
 
 Thirty out of iifty-iive of the members of the convention 
 that framed the Constitution had been practicing lawyers. 
 The minority of laymen contributed little to the formation of 
 the instrument. The great authority of Washington, the 
 president, helped much to secure the adoption of the Constitu- 
 tion by his countrymen. But he took no substantial part in 
 the debates. The wisdom and calmness of the aged Franklin 
 more than once composed strifes which threatened to break up 
 the assembly. But we shall all agree that it is fortunate that 
 his propositions for a single house, for a President and Sena- 
 tors without salary, for an executive council, for a power in the 
 President to suspend the laws, and that votes on money bills 
 should be cast by States in proportion to their contribution, 
 were not inserted in the instrument. Gerry and Mason refused 
 their assent to the whole plan. Let us by no means underrate 
 the value of the silent members in that great deliberative 
 assembly. But it is none the less true that the constructive 
 genius which matured the perfected constitution from the 
 schemes which were originally proposed was that of the lawyer& 
 of the body. 
 
15 
 
 Theirs, too, was in largest lueasure the power of convincing 
 the nnderstanding of the people, and the skilled and difficult 
 leadership which secured its acceptance. If it would be arro- 
 gant to say that the Federalist, the work of three American 
 lawyers, equals any treatise on (Tovernment that ever preceded 
 it, we may at least say that those who are most familiar with 
 what preceded it, admire it most. 
 
 It is probably true that the failure to ratify the Constitution 
 by either Xew York, Virginia, Massachusetts or Connecticut 
 would have been fatal to the whole plan and to the perma- 
 nence of the Union in any form. It is also probably true that 
 a majority of the Convention in each of those States when it 
 came together was opposed to the scheme. In New York the 
 adverse majority was two to one. Yet Jay and Hamilton and 
 Livingston overcame this majority led by George Clinton, then 
 governor, and Yates and Melancthon Smith. In Virginia the 
 fiery eloquence of Patrick Henry, the great authority of 
 Mason, the shrewd dexterity of Monroe, could not keep 
 together the ranks of her opposition against Marshall and Mad- 
 ison and Wythe. The objections of Connecticut vanished 
 before the reasons of three lawyers, Ellsworth, Sherman and 
 Johnson, to two of whom, with one other, according to Cal- 
 houn, the preservation of the just powers of the States in our 
 Constitutional system had been haainly owing. 
 
 In Massachusetts, while Samuel Adams and John Hancock 
 gave a hesitating assent the burden of the debate was borne by 
 Fisher Ames, Theophilus Parsons and Eufus King. 
 
 I have not time to state in detail the service of the men of 
 our profession in the formation of the early State constitutions, 
 especially the Bills of Rights, those wonderful bulwarks of 
 right and liberty, surer, according to Mr. Webster, than the 
 constitutions themselves. Many things they contain are 
 not original. Many sentences in the Bills of Rights of Vir- 
 ginia and that of Massachusetts can be found in some writer 
 like Sydney or Locke or in some early English statute. But 
 alike in what they selected from the maxims of earlier times, 
 and in what they added that was new, how marvelous was their 
 practical wisdom. These few simple rules have been, in a 
 large degree, the safety of life and property and liberty. They 
 
16 
 
 have stood the test of time. The experience of a hundred 
 years has suggested little to add to them, and nothing to tak( 
 away. 
 
 ■ In the list of the founders of the Eepublic there are twc 
 names each of which is entitled to a special place of hono] 
 which it shares with no other. One is Oliver Ellsworth, the 
 great senator of the first Administration, whose genius con- 
 ceived the simple and admirable mechanism of our national 
 judicial system, as it had already conceived the constitutional 
 mechanism by which the forces of State and nation should for- 
 ever play in harmony. 
 
 " By him was built from the foundation the double height, 
 the high fortress of the wall about the temple. "When he put 
 on the robe of honor, when he went up to the holy altar, he 
 made the garment of holiness honorable." The other is John 
 Marshall, without whose constitutional judgments the new sys- 
 tem could not have worked. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States is a document of a 
 few pages. It would be an instructive historical study to take 
 the great constitutional judgments of John Marshall in cases 
 where the decisions of State courts were reversed, and where 
 arguments able and hard to answer were made for the losing 
 party, and consider what would have been the course of our 
 history had the decision been otherwise. Reverse Gibbons -w. 
 Ogden, and commerce would become subject to the varying 
 laws and manifold exactions of thirty-eight States. Keverse 
 Dartmouth College v. Woodward, and every institution of 
 learning and charity becomes subject to popular caprice. 
 Eeverse McCuUoch v. Maryland, and the policies which saved 
 the Union become unlawful ; the rebellion would have suc- 
 ceeded or been subdued only by revolution. 
 
 In Lord Bacon's degrees of honor he ranks next to the 
 founders the propugnatores who defend the State in honora- 
 ble wars. If I am right in claiming the builders of the Consti- 
 tution as the civil founders of the Republic, I might, if it were 
 within the compass of my discourse, claim, as the propugnor 
 tores reipuUiom, the champions who have defended law and 
 liberty in the fields of civil contest when in danger. The Bar 
 of a single town, then far less than the present size of New 
 
17 
 
 Haven, has contributed to the defense of public law and con- 
 stitutional liberty in the hours of their extremest peril James 
 Otis' argument against writs of assistance, Fisher Ames' speech 
 on the British Treaty, and Webster's reply to Hayne. There 
 is a living son of Tale whose rarest good fortune among advo- 
 cates it has been to argue and to win the three greatest single 
 causes ever brought into judgment — the impeachment of ' a 
 President of the United States, — the trial before a judicial 
 tribunal of the title to the office of the Presidency,— and the 
 suit where the most powerful monarchy on earth was adjudged 
 delinquent for breach of her duties as a neutral under the law 
 of nations. 
 
 I have but recited a few historic commbnplaces. So much 
 the more that they are commonplaces do they vindicate the 
 title of our profession to the honor of having performed 
 worthily a function greater than that of the advocate, greater 
 than that of the judge, more difficult than that of the jurist. 
 I would do no injustice to any others — least of all to that king 
 of men, Samuel Adams, who abandoned his brief study of the 
 law as a profession for his only permanent calling, the service 
 of his coimtry, and to whose commanding genius the greatest 
 of his cotemporaries bear willing and abundant homage. I 
 know that the people, greater than any leaders, were never 
 greater than in that generation. But we have the right to 
 affirm for our profession that when in the providence of God 
 the opportunity came to lay, in Christian liberty and law, the 
 foundations of the American Republic, they were equal to the 
 opportunity. They performed that "ancient, primitive and 
 heroical work " in a manner to the conception of which the 
 genius of Bacon was inadequate. 
 
 There is before the American lawyer of to-day and of the 
 near future a kindred duty quite as difficult and quite as stim- 
 ulant as that which his great predecessors so worthily per- 
 formed. "Within the lifetime of some of you it is probable 
 that twenty new States will be added to the Union from terri- 
 tory much of which is now scarcely inhabited, much of which 
 is now scarcely explored. Even in the oldest States the process 
 of founding new communities is perpetually going on. They 
 are springing into existence without number. The successful 
 
is 
 
 manufacturer builds his new village. The inventor of a ne 
 mechanism, of a platform scale, or a machine for wicker-wor 
 creates a town. At the bidding of the genius of manufactu: 
 cities grow like the palace of Aladdin. Each of these lias i 
 own separate life, I had almost said its own separate inimo 
 tality. Compared with the great period which we proudl 
 hope for our nation's life, the oldest American community 
 in early youth. There are few things more noticeable aboi 
 this vast machine of ours which we call our country than r 
 sensitiveness to the individual touch. I do not wish to exa| 
 gerate, but I can scarcely overstate the extent or the permi 
 nence of the influence on one of these plastic and impressibl 
 societies of a single ■ honest and manly life. The lawyer, estal 
 lished in such a community, even if he do not win the gre£ 
 prizes of life, if he be upright and faithful, may do much t 
 mould its character for many generations. He is an ever-bun 
 ing lamp. In the course of my professional life I have ofte 
 thought I could trace, in the rural towns with which I liav 
 been familiar, the influence on their population of able clergj 
 men and lawyers who have lived there generations ago. 
 
 But it is not on this that I wish to dwell. I wish to speal 
 of the empire whose foundations we are to lay and by whicl 
 we are ourselves to be governed. The Atlantic republic ha 
 taken its place among great and free nations. With all th' 
 blots on its history we may say of its founders that theywel 
 understood what may be briefly stated in the words of th* 
 greatest orator of antiquity, and the greatest political philoso 
 pher of modern times — words which Sir James Mackintosh, ii 
 the close of his noble discourse, declares " state the substance 
 the object and the result of all morality, and politics, and law' 
 — " IIoo verissi7num, sine summa justitia rem puhlicam ger 
 nulla modo posse :" " Justice is itself the great standing pol 
 icy of civil society, and any eminent departure' from it, unde 
 any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no polic] 
 at all." What sublime meaning there is in this simple sen 
 tence when uttered of a self-governing State, those who bes 
 love to dwell on the blots on our history and to talk of the fail 
 ure of universal suffrage may be led to consider, by recalling 
 Gibbon's judgment that tlic reigns of the two Antonines 
 
19 
 
 together lasting but forty-eight years, are possiltly the only 
 period of history, down to his day, in which the happiness of a 
 great people was the sole object of government. Tliis has 
 been the magnet that has drawn immigration hither. The 
 human stream, hemmed in by banks invisible, but impassable, 
 does not turn toward Mexico, which can feed and clothe a 
 world, or Soiith America, which can feed and clothe a hundred 
 worlds, but seeks only tliat belt of States where it finds this law 
 in operation. 
 
 The Atlantic republic has taken its place. What shall be 
 the republic of which this is but the porch whose other gate- 
 way is to be on the Pacific '( The conditions of its national 
 life, so far as depends on written constitutional forms, have 
 been settled by the wisdom of our Fathers. Abundant and 
 admirable models render easy the task of framing local govern- 
 ments for new States. But written constitutions and Bills of 
 Eights are worse than valueless if they operate only as 
 restraints upon good men. Whether free States shall be per- 
 manent and great depends upon the question whether within 
 their borders justice and law shall be the standing rule. 
 Whether justice and law shall be the standing rule of a free 
 State depends upon the reverence in which they are held by 
 the great body of the people. Whether they are held in rev- 
 erence by the great body of the people depends upon the 
 method of their administration. The method of their admin- 
 istration must depend upon that profession from whose ranks 
 must be taken the judges who not only declare the law for all 
 private controversies, but keep every other department of gov- 
 ernment within its propei limits; — that profession without 
 whose powerful aid the judge would be inadequate to his 
 function, and without whose jealous watchfulness the judge 
 himself would become a tyrant. 
 
 The founders of the republic of the future have their own 
 diflSculties, some of them far greater than any with which otir 
 Fathers had to deal. The simple religious faith which led them 
 across the sea, bringing in its train the dutiful spirit of Law and 
 the dutiful spirit of Liberty, made them docile to the teachings 
 of political duty. The new generations are penetrated by that 
 audacious skepticism which questions the foundations of all 
 
20 
 
 faith and a positive philosophy which declares the belief in 
 God himself " a dissolving dream of the past." Our fathers 
 builded their State with that English race which the wisdom- 
 of a thousand years had ripened. It is for your generation to 
 make the restraints of constitutional liberty acceptable to jeal- 
 ous races, struggling with each other for mastery, to whom law 
 has, for ages, appeared only as a tyrant, and liberty been known 
 only in her excesses. The impenetrable forest and the almost 
 impassable sea for a long time shielded the early settlers of 
 our eastern coast from the intrusions of any who were not im- 
 pelled by a faith, a constancy and a poverty equal to their own. 
 The neighborhood of old States exposes the infant community 
 to-day to two great perils — the influx of criminals, and the 
 power of great corporations. The growth of the old States 
 was slow. Its rugged and unproductive soil subjected its inhabi- 
 tants to the healthful discipline of toil and poverty. These 
 new States have that under their soil which tempts every man 
 to become a gambler. 
 
 To all these things you have to oppose sentiments, ideas, 
 rules for self-government, patriotism, law, duty. But of these 
 intangible and impalpable things you can build walls against 
 which the waves of evil should beat themselves in vain. 
 
 "Hellgates are powerless phantoms where these build." 
 
 What forces are at the command of our young knight. The 
 giant corporation crosses States, crosses continents, with its 
 ways. Its capital exceeds the valuation of great cities. It has 
 its army of able servants. It can put its linger on this or that 
 spot of the earth's surface, upon this or that populous town or 
 village and say to it, " you shall grow or you shall dwindle, 
 wealth, manufactures, trade shall visit or abandon this spot ^t 
 our will." Let it but lay an unlawful finger upon the poorest 
 widow's shed, and the nearest lawyer can call to her aid a power 
 which will not cease until, if need were, the whole force of the 
 government is exerted, until the army has spent its last mar 
 and the navy fired its last gun. 
 
 Some of you are to assume the function of advocate, coun- 
 sellor, magistrate, citizen, in old and settled communities. Sucli 
 a life, worthily led, will be full of honor and dignity. But a 
 
21 
 
 higher and more beuelieent service will be his, who will carry 
 the teachings of this place into the wilderness, and with them 
 lay the foundations of a new State. 'This task demands a con- 
 secration as to a priesthood. Be but recognized by the people 
 as the simple, sincere servant of the Law, uttering her voice 
 and speaking with her authority upon the great things that con- 
 cern the State, and a free and educated people will not be 
 backward to obey your call. 
 
 The profession that will aspire to this honor and this service 
 must pay its price. The lawyer must be known by the people 
 as the ofloicer of Jiistice, helping the Court to judge the fact 
 and the law, helping the people to keep the paths of Justice 
 and Liberty, and not as " the Swiss, who sells the strength of 
 his arm and the sharpness of his spear to the highest bidder." 
 The accused must be defended, and not prejudged. The Court 
 must be aided in judgment by a collection of the arguments on 
 each side by trained officers selected by each party for himself, 
 who act for each solely in that service. But the moral sense 
 of mankind has rejected Lord Brougham's extravagant and 
 immoral statement of the duty of the advocate." Especially 
 when great public interests are at stake before legislative 
 bodies, or depend on the people's decision, and wealth and 
 power appeal to the lawyer to aid in accomplishing what is 
 wrong, let it be understood that every honest member of the 
 profession has an original and perpetual retainer on the other 
 side. 
 
 If you will walk these high paths you must abandon the 
 pursuit of wealth as a principal or considerable object of life. 
 Of course, the lawyer must have his quiddam honorarium. 
 He must have his ample library. He must provide for his 
 wife and children a comfortable home, lay up something for 
 old age, and start his children in life with a good education, 
 and the stimulant of his own good example. That is pretty 
 much all. I hope to see our profession everywhere return to 
 its ancient and healthy abhorrence of contingent fees, and 
 everything that savors of speculation in justice. "When you 
 are once known to the people, not as masters of the law, but 
 as traders and traffickers seeking your own gain, the virtue has 
 gone out of you. Who would strike from the rolls of our 
 
22 
 
 illustrious brotherhood the men whom*! have mentioned, who 
 lived and died poor, and left to their children names far better 
 than riches, and insert all the millionaires whom mankind have 
 forgotten ; or even the great part of the list of Chancellors 
 and Chief Justices whose lives Lord Campbell has written ? 
 Would you not rather inherit or leave behind names wortliy to 
 be remembered as among the founders of the jurisprudence of 
 an American State, than a fortune, or a park, or a fish-pond, or 
 a palace, or a picture gallery, or a stud of race-horses ? It has 
 been well said, that it is the saddest of all epitaphs, " the rich 
 man also died, and was buried." To other aspiration has Yale 
 trained her children. " Ad rempublioam formcmdum, et ad 
 stabiliend^as vires, et sanandum fpjpulum, omnis ejus purgehat 
 institutioP " To fashioning the Kepublic, to establishing it in 
 strength, and to making a sane people, tendeth every instruc- 
 tion of hers." 
 
AV_. 5^ I §^{ 
 
 JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 
 
 EULOaT 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR 
 
EULOGY. 
 
EULOGY 
 
 Upon tub Life, Chauactbr and Pqulic Sbuvices of 
 
 JAMES ABEAM GAEFIELD, 
 
 Late Prusident of the United States, 
 
 BELIVEBBD BY 
 
 HON. GEOllGE F. HOAR, 
 
 INVITATION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF WORCESTER, MASS. 
 
 IN MECHANICS HALL, 
 ON FEIDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 30, 1881. 
 
 PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL. 
 
 PRESS OE CHARLES HAMILTON, 
 
 No. 311 Main Street. 
 
 1882. 
 
 li 
 
CITY OF WORCESTER. 
 
 In City Council, Sept. 2(5, 1881. 
 
 Ordered, That the Mayor be requested to invite the Hon. 
 George F. Hoar to deliver a eulogy on the life and services 
 of James Abkam Garfield, before the City Council, at such 
 time as may suit his convenience. 
 
 In accordance with the above order an invitation was extended 
 to Mr. Hoar, and the same was accepted by him. A committee 
 of the City Council, consisting of His Honor Mayor Kelley, and 
 Aldermen !Marsh, Reed and Goddard; President Shattuck, of 
 the Common Council, and Councilmen Lancaster, McMahon, 
 Booth and Dearborn was appointed to make all necessary 
 arrangements for a meeting at Mechanics Hall, on Friday 
 evening, December 30, to listen to the eulogy. 
 
 The following orders were passed, December 31 : — 
 
 CITY OF WORCESTER. 
 
 In City Council, Dec. 31, 1881. 
 
 Ordered, That the thanks of the City Council be and they are 
 hereby tendered to the Hon. George F. Hoar, for his able 
 eulogy on the life and services of James Abram Garfield, 
 delivered before this body, December 30. And it is further 
 
 Ordered, That Mr. Hoar be requested to furnish a copy for 
 publication. 
 
EULOGY. 
 
 Mr. Mayor, Gentlemen of the City Council, 
 
 and Fellow- Citizens : 
 
 I SHOULD indulge myself in a strange delusion if I 
 hoped to say anything of President Garfield which is 
 not already well known to his countrymen, or to add 
 further honor to a name to which the judgment of the 
 world, with marvellous unanimity, has already assigned 
 its place. The public sorrow and love have found 
 utterance, if not adequate, yet such as speech, and 
 silence, and funeral rite, and stately procession, and 
 prayers, and tears, could give. On the twenty-sixth 
 day of September, the day of the funeral, a common 
 feeling stirred mankind as never before in history. 
 That mysterious law, by which, in a great audience, 
 every emotion is multiplied in each heart by sympathy 
 with every other, laid its spell on universal humanity. 
 At the touch which makes the whole world kin, all 
 barriers of rank, or party, or state, or nation, disap- 
 peared. His own Ohio, the State of his birth and of his 
 burial, New England, from whose loins came the sturdy 
 race from which he descended, whose college gave him 
 his education, can claim no pre-eminence in sorrow. 
 From farthest south comes the voice of mourning for 
 
 the soldier of the Union. Over fisherman's hut and 
 2 
 
8 
 
 frontiersman's cabin is spread a gloom because the 
 White House is desolate. The son of the poor widow 
 is dead, and palace and castle are in tears. As the 
 humble Campbellite disciple is borne to his long home, 
 the music of the requiem fills cathedral arches and the 
 domes of ancient synagogues. On the coffin of the canal 
 boy a queen lays her wreath. As the bier is lifted, 
 word comes beneath the sea that the nations of the 
 earth are rising and bowing their heads. From many 
 climes, in many languages, they join in the solemn 
 service. This is no blind and stidden emotion, gather- 
 ing and breaking like a wave. It is the mourning of 
 mankind for a great character, already perfectly known 
 and familiar. If there be any persons who fear that 
 religious faith is dying, that science has shaken the hold 
 of the moral law upon the minds of men, let them take 
 comfort in asking themselves if any base or ignoble 
 passion could have so moved mankind. Modern science 
 has called into life these mighty servants, Press and 
 Telegraph, who have created a nerve which joins 
 together all human hearts and pulses simultaneously 
 over the globe. To what conqueror, to what tyrant, to 
 what selfish ambition, to what mere intellectual great- 
 ness would it not have refused response ? The power 
 in the universe that makes for evil, and the power in 
 the universe that makes for righteousness, measure 
 their forces. A poor, weak fiend shoots ofi' his little 
 bolt, a single human life is stricken down, and a throb 
 of divine love thrills a planet. 
 
 Every American State has its own story of the brave 
 
9 
 
 and adventurous spirits who were its early settlers ; the 
 men who build commonwealths, the men of whom 
 commonwealths are builded. The history of the settle- 
 ment of Massachusetts, of Central IS^ew York, and of 
 Ohio, is the history of the Garfield race. They were, 
 to borrow a felicitous phrase, "hungry for the horizon."* 
 They were natural frontiersmen. Of the seven genera- 
 tions born in America, including the president, not one 
 was born in other than a frontiersman's dwelling. Two 
 of them, father and son, came over with Winthrop in 
 1630. Each of the six generations who dwelt in 
 Massachusetts has left an honorable record, still pre- 
 served. Five in succession bore an honorable military 
 title. Some were fighters in the Indian wars. " It is 
 not in Indian wars," Fisher Ames well says, " that 
 heroes are celebrated, but it is there they are formed." 
 At the breaking out of the revolution the male represen- 
 tatives of the family were two young brothers. One, 
 whose name descended to the president, was in arms at 
 Concord Bridge, at sunrise, on the 19th of April. The 
 other, the president's great-grandfather, dwelling thirty 
 miles off, was on his way to the scene of action before 
 noon. When the constitution rejected by Massachusetts 
 in 1778 was proposed, the same ancestor, with his fellow 
 citizens of the little town of Westminster, voted unani- 
 mously for the rejection, and put on record their 
 reasons. " It is our opinion that no constitution what- 
 ever ought to be established till previously thereto a bill 
 of rights be set forth, and the constitution be framed 
 
 ♦Senator Ingalls. 
 
10 
 
 therefrom, so that the lowest capacity may be able to 
 determine his natural rights, and judge of the equitable- 
 ness of the constitution thereby." 
 
 "And as to the constitution itself, the following 
 appears to us exceptionable, viz., the fifth article," 
 (excepting negroes, mulattoes and Indians from the 
 right to vote) " which deprives a portion of the human 
 race of their natural rights on account of their color, 
 which, in our opinion, no power on earth has a just 
 right to do. It therefore ought to be expunged the 
 constitution." 
 
 'No religious intolerance descended in the Garfield 
 race. But the creed of this Westminster catechism 
 they seem never to have forgotten. 
 
 When the war was over, the same ancestor took his 
 young family and penetrated the forest again. He 
 established his home in Otsego county, in central New 
 York, at the period and amid the scenes made familiar 
 by Cooper, in his delightful tale, The Pioneers. Again 
 the generations move westward, in the march of civiliza- 
 tion keeping ever in the van, until in 1831 James Gar- 
 field was born, in a humble Ohio cabin, where he was 
 left fatherless in his infancy. In a new settlement the 
 wealth of the family is in the right arm of the father. 
 To say that the father, who had himself been left an 
 orphan when he was an infant, left his son fatherless in 
 infancy, is to say that the family was reduced to ex- 
 tremest poverty. 
 
 I have not given this narrative as the story of a mean 
 or ignoble lineage. Such men, whether of Puritan, or 
 
11 
 
 Huguenot, or Cavalier stock, have ever been the 
 strength and the security of American States. From 
 such homes came Webster, and Clay, and Lincoln, and 
 Jackson. It is no race of boors that has struck its axes 
 into the forests of this continent. These men knew 
 how to build themselves log houses in the wilderness. 
 They were more skilful still to build constitutions and 
 statutes. Slow, cautious, conservative, sluggish, un- 
 ready, in ordinary life, their brains move quick and sure 
 as their rifles flash, when great controversies that de- 
 termine the fate of States are to be decided, when great 
 interests that brook no delay are at stake, and great 
 battles that admit no indecision are to be fought. The 
 trained and disciplined soldiers of England could not 
 anticipate these alert farmers. On the morning of the 
 revolution they were up before the sun. When Wash- 
 ington was to be defended, in 1861, the scholar, or the 
 lawyer, or the man of the city, dropped his book, left 
 his court-house or his counting-room, and found his 
 company of yeomen waiting for him. They are ever 
 greatest in adversity. I would not undervalue the ma- 
 terial of which other republics have been built. The 
 polished marbles of Greece and Italy have their own 
 grace. But art or nature contain no more exquisite 
 beauty than the color which this split and unhewn 
 granite takes from the tempest it withstands. There 
 was never a race of men on earth more capable of seeing 
 clearly, of grasping, and of holding fast, the great 
 truths and great principles which are permanent, sure, 
 and safe for the government for the conduct of life, 
 
12 
 
 alike in private and public concerns. If there be, or 
 ever shall be, in this country, a demos, fickle, light- 
 minded, easily moved, blind, prejudiced, incapable of 
 permanent adherence to what is great or what is true, 
 whether it come from the effeminacy of wealth, or the 
 skepticism of a sickly and selfish culture, or the poverty 
 and ignorance of great cities, it will find itself power- 
 less in this iron grasp. - 
 
 Blending with the Saxon stock, young Garfield in- 
 herited on the mother's side the qualities of the Hugue- 
 nots, those gentler but not less brave or less constant 
 Puritans, who, for conscience sake, left their beloved 
 and beautiful France, whose memory will be kept green 
 so long as Maine cherishes Bowdoin College, or Massa- 
 chusetts Faneuil Hall, or New York the antique virtue 
 of John Jay, or South Carolina her revolutionary history 
 — who gave a lustre and a beauty to every place and 
 thing they touched. 
 
 The child of such a race, left fatherless in the wilder- 
 ness, yet destined to such a glory, was committed by 
 Providence to three great teachers, without either of 
 whom he would not have become fitted for his distin- 
 guished career. These teachers were a wise Christian 
 mother, poverty, and the venerable college president, 
 who lived to watch his pupil through the whole of his 
 varied life, to witness his inauguration amid such high 
 hopes, and to lament his death. 
 
 To no nobler matron did ever Roman hero trace his 
 origin. Few of the traditions of his Puritan ancestry 
 could have come down to the young orphan. It is said 
 
13 
 
 there were two things with which his mother was specially 
 familiar — the Bible, and the rude ballads of the war of 
 1812. The child learned the Bible at his mother's knee, 
 and the love of country from his cradle-hymns. 
 
 I cannot, within the limits assigned to me, recount 
 every circumstance of special preparation which fitted 
 the young giant for the great and various parts he was 
 to play in the drama of our republican life. It would be 
 but to repeat a story whose pathos and romance are all 
 known by heart to his countrymen; the childhood in the 
 cabin; the struggle with want, almost with famine; the 
 brother proudly bringing his first dollar to buy shoes for 
 the little bare feet; the labor in the forest; the growth 
 of the strong frame and the massive brain; the reading 
 of the first novel; the boy's longing for the sea; the 
 canal boat; the carpenter's shop; the first school; the 
 eager thirst for knowledge; the learning that an obstacle 
 means only a thing to be overcome; the founding of the 
 college at Hiram; the companionship in study of the 
 gifted lady whose eulogy he pronounced; the Campbell- 
 ite preaching; the ever wise guidance of the mother; 
 the marriage to the bright and beautiful schoolmate; we 
 know them better even than we know the youth of Wash- 
 ington and of Webster. 
 
 General Garfield said in 1878 that he had not long ago 
 conversed with an English gentleman, who told him that 
 in twenty-five years of careful study of the agricultural 
 class in England, he had never known one who was born 
 and reared in the ranks of farm laborers that rose above 
 his class and became a well-to-do citizen. The story of 
 
14 
 
 a childhood passed in poverty, of intellect and moral 
 nature trained in strenuous contests with adversity, is not 
 unfamiliar to those who have read the lives of the men 
 who have been successful in this country in any of the 
 walks of life. It is one of the most beneficent results of 
 American institutions that we have ceased to speak of 
 poverty and hardship, and the necessity for hard and 
 humble toil, as disadvantages to a spirit endowed by na- 
 ture with the capacity for generous ambitions. In a 
 society where labor is honorable, and where every place 
 in social or public life is open to merit, early poverty is 
 no more a disadvantage than a gymnasium to an athlete, 
 or drill and discipline to a soldier. 
 
 General Garfield was never ashamed of his origin. He 
 
 " did not change, but kept in lofty place 
 
 The wisdom which adversity had bred." 
 
 The humblest friend of his boyhood was ever welcome 
 to him when he sat in the highest seats, where Honor 
 was sitting by his side. The poorest laborer was ever 
 sure of the sympathy of one who had known all the bit- 
 terness of want and the sweetness of bread earned by 
 the sweat of the brow. He was ever the simple, plain, 
 modest gentleman. When he met a common soldier it 
 was not the general or the military hero that met him, 
 but the comrade. When he met a scholar it was not the 
 learned man, or the college president, but the learner. 
 
 It was fitting that he who found open the road through 
 every gradation of public honor, from the log cabin to 
 the Presidency, simply at the price of deserving it, should 
 have answered in the same speech the sophistries of com- 
 
15 
 
 munism and the sinister forebodings of Lord Macaulay. 
 " Here," he said, " society is not fixed in horizontal lay- 
 ers, like the crust of the earth, but, as a great New Eng- 
 land man said, years ago, it is rather like the ocean, 
 broad, deep, grand, open, and so free in all it parts that 
 every drop that mingles with the yellow sand at the bot- 
 tom, may rise through all the waters, till it gleams in the 
 sunshine on the crest of the highest wave. So it is here 
 in our free society, permeated with the light of Ameri- 
 can freedom. There is no American boy, however poor, 
 however humble, orphan though he may be, that, if he 
 have a clear head, a true heart, a strong arm, he may not 
 rise through all the grades of society, and become the 
 crown, the glory, the pillar of the state. Here there is 
 no need for the old world war between capital and labor. 
 Here is no need of the explosion of social order pre- 
 dicted by Macaulay." 
 
 When seeking a place of education in the East, young 
 Garfield wrote to several Ifew England colleges. The 
 youth's heart was touched and his choice decided by the 
 tone of welcome in the reply of Dr. Hopkins, the presi- 
 dent of WiUiams. It was fortunate that his vigorous 
 youth found itself under the influence of a very great 
 but very simple and sincere character. The secret of 
 Dr. Hopkins' power over his pupils \a.j, first, in his own 
 example, profound scholarship, great practical wisdom, 
 perfect openness and sincerity, strong religious faith and 
 humility; second, in a careful study of the disposition of 
 each individual youth ; ^/wVcZ, justice, absolute, yet accom- 
 panied by sympathy and respect, seldom severity, never 
 
16 
 
 scorn, in dealing with the errors of boyhood. No harsh 
 and inflexible law, cold and pitiless as a winter's sea, 
 dealt alike with the sluggish and the generous nature. 
 No storm of merciless ridicule greeted the shy, awkward, 
 ungainly backwoodsman. And, beyond all. Dr. Hopkins 
 taught his pupils that lesson in which some of our col- 
 leges so sadly fail — reverence for the republican hfe of 
 which they were to form a part, and for the great history 
 of whose glory they were inheritors. 
 
 It was my fortune, on an evening last spring, to see 
 the illustrious pupil, I suppose for the last time on earth, 
 take leave of the aged teacher whose head the frosts of 
 nearly four score winters had touched so lightly, and to 
 hear him say at parting, " I have felt your presence at 
 the beginning of my administration like a benediction." 
 
 The President delighted in his college. He kept un- 
 broken the friendships he formed within her walls. He 
 declared that the place and its associations were to him 
 a fountain of perpetual youth. He never forgot his debt 
 to her. "When he was stricken down he was on his 
 way, all a boy again, to lay his untarnished laurels at 
 her feet. 
 
 It would have been hard to find in this country a man 
 so well equipped by nature, by experience and by 
 training, as was Garfield when he entered the Ohio sen- 
 ate in 1860, at the age of twenty-eight. He was in his 
 own person the representative of the plainest life of the 
 backwoods and the best culture of the oldest eastern 
 community. He had been used in his youth to various 
 forms of manual labor. The years which he devoted to 
 
17 
 
 Ms profession of teacher and of college president, were 
 years of great industry, in which he disciplined his 
 powers of public speaking and original investigation. 
 Dr. Hopkins said of him: "There was a large general 
 capacity applicable to any subject, and sound sense. 
 "What he did was done with facility, but by honest and 
 avowed work. There was no pretense of genius, or 
 alternation of spasmodic effort and of rest, but a satis- 
 factory accomplishment in all directions of what was 
 undertaken." His sound brain and athletic frame could 
 bear great labor without fatigue. He had a thoroughly 
 healthy and robust intellect, capable of being directed 
 upon any of the pursuits of life, or any of the affairs of 
 state in any department of the public service. We 
 have no other example in our public life of such mar- 
 vellous completeness of intellectual development. He 
 exhibited enough of his varied mental capacity to make 
 it sure that he could have attained greatness as a meta- 
 physician, or a mathematician, in any of the exact 
 sciences, as a linguist, as an executive officer, as he did 
 in fact attain it as a military commander, as an orator, as 
 a debater, and a parliamentary and popular leader. 
 
 The gigantic scale on which the operations of our late 
 war were conducted has dwarfed somewhat the achieve- 
 ments of individual actors. If in the history of either of 
 the other wars in which our people have engaged, whether 
 before or after the declaration of independence, such a 
 chapter should be found as the narrative of Garfield's 
 Kentucky campaign, it would alone have made the name 
 of its leader immortal. It is said that General Rose- 
 
18 
 
 crans received the young schoolmaster with some 
 prejudice. "When he came to my headquarters," he 
 says, "I must confess that I had a prejudice against 
 him, as I understood he was a preacher who had gone 
 into politics, and a man of that cast I was naturally op- 
 posed to." In his official report Rosecrans says: 
 
 " I especially mention Brigadier-General Garfield, ever 
 active, prudent and sagacious. I feel much indebted to 
 him for both counsel and assistance in the administration 
 of this army. He possesses the energy and the instinct 
 of a great commander." 
 
 We must leave to soldiers and to military historians 
 to assign their relative historic importance to the move- 
 ments of the war. But we may safely trust the popular 
 judgment which pronounces Garfield's ride at Chicka- 
 mauga one of its most conspicuous instances of personal 
 heroism, and the Kentucky campaign a most brilliant 
 example of fertility of resource, combined audacity and 
 prudence, sound military judgment, and success against 
 great odds. We may safely trust, too, the judgment of 
 the accomplished historian,* who pronounces his report 
 in favor of the advance that ended with the battle of 
 Chickamauga, "the ablest military document submitted 
 by a chief of staff to his superior during the war." 
 We may accept, also, the award of Lincoln, who 
 made him major-general for his brilliant service at 
 Chickamauga, and the confidence of Thomas, who 
 offered him the command of an army corps. 
 
 Great as was his capacity for military service, the 
 judgment of Abraham Lincoln did not err, when it sum- 
 
 *Mr. Whitelaw Keid. 
 
19 
 
 moned him to the field of labor where his greatest 
 laurels were won. It is the fashion, in some quarters, 
 to lament the decay of statesmanship, and to make com- 
 parisons, by no means complimentary, between persons 
 now entrusted with the conduct of public affairs and 
 their predecessors. We may at least find consolation in 
 the knowledge that when any of our companions die 
 they do not fail to receive full justice from the hearts- of 
 the people. 
 
 Suppose any of the statesmen who preceded the war, 
 or some intelligent and not unfriendly foreign observer 
 — some De Tocqueville or Macaulay — to look forward 
 with Garfield to the duties which confronted him when 
 he entered Congress in 1863. With what despair, in the 
 light of all past experience, would he have contem- 
 plated the future. How insignificant the difficulties 
 which beset the men of the preceding seventy years 
 compared with those which have crowded the seventeen 
 which were to follow. How marvelous the success the 
 American people have achieved in dealing with these 
 difficulties compared with that which attended the 
 statesmanship of the times of Webster and Clay and 
 Calhoun, giants as they were. The greatness of these 
 men is not likely to be undervalued anywhere ; least of 
 all in Massachusetts. They contributed each in his own 
 way those masterly discussions of the great principles 
 by which the constitution must be interpreted, and the 
 economic laws on which material prosperity depends, 
 which will abide as perpetual forces so long as the re- 
 public shall endure. Mr. Webster, especially, aided in 
 
20 
 
 establishing in the jurisprudence of the country the 
 great judgments, which, on the one hand, asserted for 
 the national government its most necessary and benefi- 
 cent powers, and, on the other hand, have protected 
 property and liberty from invasion. He uttered in the 
 senate the immortal argument which convinced the 
 American people of the unity of the republic and the 
 supremacy and indestructibility of the national authority. 
 It has been well said that the cannon of the nation were 
 shotted with the reply to Hayne. But the only impor- 
 tant and permanent measure with which the name of 
 "Webster is connected is the Ashburton treaty — an 
 achievement of diplomacy of little consequence in com- 
 parison with those which obtained from the great powers 
 of Europe the relinquishment of the doctrine of per- 
 petual allegiance, or with the Alabama treaty of 1871. 
 Mr. Clay's life was identified with two great policies — 
 the protection of American industry, and the compro- 
 mise between slavery and freedom in their strife for 
 control of the territories. When he died the free trade 
 tariff" of 1844 was the law of the land, and within two 
 years the Missouri compromise was repealed. Mr. Cal- 
 houn has left behind him the ;memory of a stainless life, 
 great intellectual power and a lost cause. 
 
 To each generation is committed its peculiar task. 
 To these men it was given to wake the infant republic 
 to a sense of its own great destiny, and to teach it the 
 laws of its being, by which it must live or bear no life. 
 To the men of our time the abstract theories, which 
 were only debated in other days," have come as practical 
 
21 
 
 realities, demanding prompt and final decision on ques- 
 tions where error is fatal. 
 
 From the time of Jay's treaty no such problem has 
 presented itself to American diplomacy as that which 
 the war left as its legacy. The strongest power on 
 earth, accustomed, in dealing with other nations, to take 
 counsel only of her pride and her strength, had inflicted 
 on us vast injury, of which the honor of this country 
 seemed pledged to insist on reparation, which England 
 conceived hers equally pledged to deny. But in 
 domestic affairs, the difficulties were even greater. For 
 six of the sixteen years that followed the death of Lin- 
 coln the president was not in political accord with either 
 house of congress. For four others the house was of 
 different politics from president and senate. During 
 the whole time the dominant party had to encounter a 
 zealous and able opposition, and to submit its measures 
 to a people having apparently the strongest inducements 
 to go wrong. The rights of capital were to be deter- 
 mined by the votes of labor; debtors to fix the value of 
 their payments to their creditors; a people under no 
 constraint but their own sense of duty to determine 
 whether they would continue to bear the weight of a 
 vast debt; the policy of dealing with the conquered to 
 be decided at the close of a long war by the votes of the 
 conquerors, among whom every other family was in 
 mourning for its dead; finance and currency with their 
 subtleties, surpassing the subtleties of metaphysics, to 
 be made clear to the apprehension of plain men ; busi- 
 ness to be recalled from the dizzy and dangerous 
 
22 
 
 heights of speculation to moderate gains and safe laws ; 
 great public ways connecting distant oceans to be 
 built; commerce to be diverted into unaccustomed chan- 
 nels; the mouth of the Mississippi to be opened; a 
 great banking system to be devised and put in operation 
 such as was never known before, alike comprehensive 
 and safe, through whose veins and arteries credit, the 
 life blood of trade, should ebb and flow in the remotest 
 extremities of the land; four millions of people to be 
 raised from slavery to citizenship; millions more to be 
 welcomed from foreign lands; a disputed presidential 
 succession to be settled, after an election contest in 
 which the country seemed turned into two hostile camps, 
 by a tribunal for which the founders of the government 
 had made no provision; all this to be accomplished 
 under the restraints of a written constitution. 
 
 When this list has been enumerated, the eulogy of 
 Garfield, the statesman, has been spoken. There is 
 scarcely one of these questions, certainly not more than 
 one or two, which he did not anticipate, carefully and 
 thoroughly study for himself before it arose, and to 
 which he did not contribute an original argument, un- 
 surpassed in persuasive force. Undoubtedly there were 
 others who had more to do with marshaling the political 
 forces of the House. But ahnost from the time he en- 
 tered it, he was the leader of its best thought. He was 
 ever serious, grave, addressing himself only to the reason 
 and conscience of his auditors. 
 
 He lived in a State whose people were evenly divided 
 in politics, and on whose decision, as it swayed alter- 
 
23 
 
 nately from side to side, the fate of the country often 
 seemed to depend. You will search his speeches in vain 
 for an appeal to a base motive or an evil passion. Many 
 men who are called great political leaders, are really 
 nothing but great political followers. They study the 
 currents of a public sentiment which other men form. 
 They use as instruments opinions which they never 
 espoused till they became popular. General Garfield 
 always consulted with great care the temper of the House 
 in the conduct of measures which were under his charge. 
 But he was remarkably independent in forming his 
 judgments, and inflexible in adhering to them on all great 
 essential questions. His great friend and commander, 
 General Thomas, whose stubborn courage saved the day 
 in the great battle for the possession of Tennessee, was 
 well called " the rock of Chickamauga." In the greater 
 battle in 1876, for the nation's honor, Garfield well de- 
 served to be called the "rock of Ohio." Everything he 
 did and said manifested the serious, reverent love of 
 excellence. He had occasion often to seek to win to his 
 opinion masses of men composed largely of illiterate 
 persons. No man ever heard from his lips a sneer at 
 scholarship. At the same time, he never made the 
 scholar's mistake of undervaluing the greatness of the 
 history of his own country, or the quality of his own 
 people. 
 
 The limits of this discourse do not permit me to enter 
 into the detail of the variety and extent of his service 
 in debate, in legislation, and in discussions before the 
 people. I could detain you until midnight were I to re- 
 
24 
 
 count from my own memory the great labors of the 
 twelve years that it was my privilege to share with him 
 in the public service, for four of which I sat almost by 
 his side. Everybody who had a new thought brought 
 it to him for hospitable welcome. Did Science or Schol- 
 arship need anything of the government, Garfield was 
 the man to whom they came. While charged with the 
 duty of supervising the details of present legislation, he 
 was always foreseeing and preparing for the future. In 
 the closing years of the war, while chairman of the com- 
 mittee of military affairs, he was studying finance. 
 Later he had prepared himself to deal with the defects 
 in the civil service. I do not think the legislation of the 
 next twenty years will more than reach the ground 
 which he had already occupied in his advanced thought. 
 General Garfield gave evidence of vast powers of 
 oratory on some very memorable occasions. But he 
 made almost no use of them as a means of persuading 
 the people to conclusions where great public interests 
 were at stake. Sincerity, directness, full and perfect 
 understanding of his subject, clear logic, manly dignity, 
 simple and apt illustration, marked all his discourse. 
 But on a few great occasions, such as that in 'New York, 
 when the people were moved almost to frenzy by the 
 assassination of Lincoln, or in the storm which moved 
 the great human ocean at the convention at Chicago, he 
 showed that he could touch with a master's hand the 
 chords of a mighty instrument: 
 
 such as raised 
 To height of noblest temper heroes old, 
 Arming to battle, and instead of rage 
 
25 
 
 Deliberate valor breathed, firm and unmoved 
 Witli dread of death to flight or foul retreat ; 
 Nor wanting povrer to mitigate and suage 
 With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chase 
 Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain 
 From mortal or immortal minds. 
 
 When General Garfield took the oath of office as 
 President, he seemed to those who knew him best, 
 though in his fiftieth year, still in the prime of a splen- 
 did and vigorous youth. He was still growing. We 
 hoped for him eight years of brilliant administration, 
 and then, in some form or place of service, an old age 
 hke that of Adams, whom, in variety of equipment, 
 alone of our presidents he resembled. What was best 
 and purest and loftiest in the aspiration of America 
 seemed at last to have laid its hand on the helm. Under 
 its beneficent rule we hoped, as our country entered on 
 its new career of peace and prosperity, a nobler liberty, 
 a better friendship, a purer justice, a more lasting broth- 
 erhood. 
 
 But he was called to a sublimer destiny. He had 
 ascended along and up the heights of service, of success, 
 of greatness, of glory; ever raised by the people to 
 higher ranks for gallant and meritorious conduct on each 
 field, until by their suffrages he stood foremost among 
 men of the foremost among nations. But in the days 
 of his sickness and death he became the perpetual wit- 
 ness and example how much greater than the achieve- 
 ments of legislative halls, or the deeds of the field of 
 battle, are the household vii'tues and simple family afiec- 
 tions which all men have within their reach; how much 
 
26 
 
 greater than the lessons of the college, or the camp, or 
 the congress, are the lessons learned at mothers' knees. 
 The honors paid to Garfield are the protest of a better 
 age and a better generation against the vulgar heroisms 
 of the past. Go through their mausoleums and under 
 their triumphal arches and see how the names inscribed 
 there shrink and shrivel compared with that of this 
 Christian soldier, whose chiefest virtues, after all, are of 
 the fireside, and the family circle, and of the dying bed. 
 Here the hero of America becomes the hero of humanity. 
 We are justified then in saying of this man that he has 
 been tried and tested in every mode by which the quality 
 of a human heart and the capacity of a human intellect 
 can be disclosed; by adversity, by prosperity, by pov- 
 erty, by wealth, by leadership in deliberative assemblies, 
 and in the perilous edge of battle, by the height of 
 power and of fame. The assay was to be completed by 
 the final test — by the certain and visible approach of 
 death. As he comes out into the sunlight, more and 
 more clearly does his country behold a greatness and 
 symmetry which she is to see in their true and full pro- 
 portions only when he lies in the repose of death. 
 
 As sometimes in a dead man's face, 
 To those that watch it more and more, 
 A likeness, hardly seen before. 
 Comes out, to some one of his race ; 
 
 So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, 
 I see thee what thoii art, and know 
 Thy likeness to the wise below, 
 Thy kindred with the great of old. 
 
 Let us not boast at the funeral of our dead. Such a 
 
27 
 
 temper would be doubly odious in the presence of such 
 expressions of hearty sympathy from governments of 
 every form. But we should be unfaithful to ourselves 
 if in asking for this man a place in the world's gallery 
 of illustrious names we did not declare that we offer him 
 as an example of the products of Freedom. With 
 steady and even step he walked from the log cabin and 
 the canal path to the school, to the college, to the battle- 
 field, to the halls of legislation, to the White House, to 
 the chamber of death. The ear in which the voices of 
 his countrymen, hailing him at the pinnacle of human 
 glory, had scarcely died out, heard the voice of the dread 
 archangel, and his countenance did not change. Is not 
 that country worth dying for whose peasantry are of 
 such a strain? Is not the constitution worth standing 
 by under whose forms Freedom calls such men to her 
 high places? Is not the Union worth saving which 
 gives aU of us the property of countrymen in such a 
 fame? 
 
Ciy-^t""'^^ 
 
 M EMOI R 
 
 ^y^> 
 
 5 
 
 OF 
 
 SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 OF CONCORD 
 
 BY HIS SON 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR 
 
 Reprinted from VoLUJvte III. of the Memorial Biographies of the 
 New England Historic Genealogical Society 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON 
 
 ^Enttonsita f tees 
 
 1882 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 OF 
 
 SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 OF CONCORD 
 
 BY HIS SON 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR 
 
 Reprinted from Volume III. of the Memorial Biographies of the 
 New England Historic Genealogical Society 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON 
 
 JKnttostta |lress 
 
 1882 
 
SAMUEL HOAE 
 
 Samuel Hoar, the oldest son of Samuel and Susanna 
 (Peirce) Hoar, was born in Lincoln, Massachusetts, May 
 18, 1778. His pedigree, in all the lines of ascent, will be 
 found in Bond's History of Watertown, traced, with few 
 exceptions, from the ancestors who came over from Eng- 
 land between 1635 and 1650. All his American ancestors 
 dwelt in Concord, Lincoln, Lexington, Waltham, or Water- 
 town, within a circle of six miles' radius. 
 
 He was seventh in descent from Charles Hoare, of 
 Gloucester, England, who died in 1636. Charles Hoare, 
 Jr., was Sheriff of Gloucester in 1634. He and other 
 persons of his name are frequently mentioned in the 
 municipal records. He was a man of large wealth, and 
 died in 1638. Joanna (Hinksman*), the widow of Charles 
 Hoare, Jr., came to this country with his five youngest 
 children, probably in 1640 ; certainly between the end of 
 1638 and the autumn of 1641. 
 
 Thomas, the eldest son of Charles Hoare, Jr., remained 
 in England. The second son, John, settled in Scituate, 
 afterward in Concord, and was the ancestor of the subject 
 of this memoir. His daughter Elizabeth married Jona- 
 than, son of John Prescott, of Lancaster. The third son, 
 
 * This name is spelled in early records Henchman or Hinksman indiffer- 
 ently. Charles Hoare, Jr. mentions his wife's brother, Thomas Hinksman, in his 
 will, dated September 25, 1638, and proved at Doctors' Commons, December 21, 
 1638. Whether this is the same person as Thomas Hencliman of Chelmsford is 
 not certain. 
 
6 SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 Daniel, returned to England, and engaged extensively in 
 trade with the Colony. The youngest son, Leonard, was 
 graduated at Harvard College in 1650, and was the first 
 President of the College who was a graduate. 
 
 Of the two daughters, Joanna married Colonel Ed- 
 mund Quincy. Margery married a Matthew in England, 
 and after coming to this country married the Eev. Henry 
 Flint, of Braintree. Joanna Hoare, widow of Charles, 
 died in Braintree, December 23, 1661. She was the an- 
 cestress of Governor Roger S. Baldwin, of Connecticut; 
 of William M. Evarts, Secretary of State ; of John Quincy 
 Adams ; of Josiah Quincy, the Eevolutionary patriot, and 
 of President Quincy ; and of General Terry, the hero of 
 Fort Fisher. 
 
 Samuel Hoar married Sarah, daughter of Roger Sher- 
 man, of Connecticut, October 13, 1812. She died August 
 30, 1866. Their children were : — 
 
 Elizabeth, bora July 14, 1S14, died April 7, 1878. 
 
 Ebenezer Eockwood, born Febmary 21, 1816. 
 
 Sarah Sherman, born November 9, 1817. 
 
 Samuel Johnson, bom Febrnarj' 4, 1820, died January 18, 1821. 
 
 Edward Sherman, bom December 22, 1823. 
 
 George Frisbie, bom August 29, 1826. 
 
 The father of Samuel Hoar, both grandfathers, and 
 one uncle by blood and one by marriage, were at Con- 
 cord Bridge on the 19th of April, 1775, in the Lincoln 
 company. The father, Hon. Samuel Hoar, of Lincoln, 
 was a lieutenant in the Eevolutionary war, took part in 
 the battle of Saratoga, was many years a magistrate of 
 Middlesex County, representative from Lincoln in the 
 Legislature, State Senator, and member of the Consti- 
 tutional Convention -in 1820. 
 
 Samuel was brought up on his father's farm, fitted for 
 college by the Rev. Charles Stearns, D. D., of Lincoln 
 (H. C. 1773,) and graduated at Harvard in 1802. His 
 class was famous for the number of distinguished men it 
 
SAMUEL HOAE 
 
 contained, and for the strong attachment of its members 
 to each other. Two of his three sons were named for 
 classmates. After graduating he spent two years as pri- 
 vate tutor in the family of Colonel Tayloe, of Mount Airy, 
 Virginia. He studied law under the Hon. Artemas Ward, 
 in Charlestown, and was admitted to the bar in Septem- 
 ber, 1805. 
 
 He was offered the Professorship of Mathematics by 
 Harvard College in 1806. The writer cannot learn that 
 he had then, or ever, any considerable mathematical at- 
 tainments. Mr. Emerson says, " It was rather his reputa- 
 tion for severe method in his intellect, than any special 
 .direction in his studies," that caused this offer. But he 
 had already won some considerable successes in his pro- 
 fession, and the offer, though attractive, was declined. 
 
 Mr. Hoar rose rapidly to the position of leader of the 
 Middlesex bar, which he held until his retirement from 
 practice. His name is found as of counsel in three quar- 
 ters of the cases reported in Middlesex for many years, 
 and in many in other counties. Mr. Justice Ames says : 
 "Among my earliest recollections of the administration 
 of justice in the county of Middlesex was the fact that 
 Mr. Hoar appeared to be in every case, so that ap- 
 parently the only obstacle to his having a complete 
 monopoly of the business lay in the impossibility of 
 being on both sides at once." 
 
 For thirty years his life was devoted to his profession. 
 He had a simple, clear, and vigorous style, which con- 
 veyed his meaning with almost mathematical precision. 
 The chief characteristic of his intellect, as of his moral 
 nature, was directness. He addressed and confined him- 
 self to the business in hand, doing nothing for display 
 or ornament. "So eminently practical and useful, and 
 so much to the point did he always aim to make 
 himself, that one would not speak of Mr. Hoar as espe- 
 cially learned, or sagacious, or eloquent, save when the 
 
« SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 precise condition of his cause needed the exercise of 
 sagacity, of persuasive speech, or the support of learn- 
 ing. He threw away no exertion by misplaced efforts, 
 but what his cause demanded he was usually able to fur- 
 nish, and few men could judge so well as he by what 
 means his object would be best accomplished. No man was 
 more safe than he as an adviser ; none more fully prepared 
 to meet the varying exigencies of the forum ; no one, 
 whatever his gifts of speech, more favorably impressed or 
 convincingly addressed a jury. His style as a speaker was 
 calm, dignified, simple, direct, and unimpassioned, but he 
 spoke as one who was first convinced, before he attempted 
 to convince his tribunal. While he never went below the 
 proper dignity of time, place, and occasion, at the same 
 time he would never fail to receive from all the juries 
 and bystanders at a Middlesex nisi prius term the general 
 award that he was the most sincere and sensible man that 
 ever argued cases at that bar. Nor was this all. To the 
 measure also of a greatness even to the surprise of his 
 friends could he raise his efforts as an advocate, when 
 the occasion called for a full exhibition of his clear and 
 strong logical faculty, or excited those genuine emotions 
 from which spring the fountains of eloquence." * 
 
 He understood thoroughly the temper and opinions of 
 the farmers who made up the bulk of the juries in his day, 
 and thoroughly possessed their confidence. His influence 
 with them was almost unbounded. A story was current 
 fifty years ago which appeared in the National Intelli- 
 gencer, that, in a criminal trial where he conducted the 
 defence, the jury came into court and reported that they 
 were unable to agree. The presiding judge asked whether 
 their difficulty was with the law or the evidence. The 
 foreman replied that it was not in either, but in the plea ; 
 that the law and the evidence seemed to show that the 
 man was guilty, but that Squire Hoar had said in his plea 
 
 * John A. Andrew, in Boston Daily Atlas, November 10. 1856. 
 
SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 that he believed his client was innocent, and as Squire 
 Hoar always told the truth, most of the jury did not see 
 how they were to get over it. 
 
 The trials of the widest celebrity in which he was con- 
 cerned were the impeachment of Judge Prescott, in which 
 he was associated with Mr. Webster for the defendant ; 
 the defence of George Crowninshield, on the indictment 
 for the murder of Captain Joseph White, in Salem, in 
 1830; and two trials of Sanborn vs. Tufts's Executors, 
 in which he was opposed by Choate, Jeremiah Mason, 
 and Webster, and which resulted in a disagreement of 
 the jury and a compromise. He was extensively con- 
 sulted by clergymen of all denominations and by parishes 
 on matters involving parochial law, and was perhaps re- 
 garded as the highest authority in Massachusetts upon 
 the law pertaining to mills and water-power. 
 
 His law Kbrary was never a large one, though excellent 
 in quality, and adequate to the usual requirements of his 
 profession. But though not especially learned, in the 
 sense of the knowledge and memory of a large number of 
 adjudged cases, his mind was thoroughly stored with legal 
 principles, and he had in a remarkable degree the power, 
 characteristic of the greatest legal minds, of starting from 
 a simple and fundamental proposition of law or morals, 
 and showing how a sound and just result could be reached 
 through the most comphcated array of facts, by keeping 
 it steadily in view, and disregarding all irrelevant consid- 
 erations. It was this quality of his mind, with the sin- 
 cerity, directness, and strong good sense which marked 
 his character, which insured him the attention of every 
 tribunal that he addressed, and gave him a rightful place 
 among the leaders of his profession. Always serious, 
 dignified, and simple, there was nothing about him of 
 affectation or pretence. 
 
 Between 1810 and 1820, Mr. Hoar was much interested 
 in the attempt to enforce the laws against unnecessary 
 
10 
 
 SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 travelling on Sunday, and astonished some of his less 
 puritanical neighbors by the vigor and efficiency of his 
 efforts in that direction. 
 
 It is said that an old farmer in one of the northern 
 towns of Middlesex County was looking in melancholy 
 mood at the devastation in his woodland, made by the 
 great -September gale of 1815, when he suddenly ex- 
 claimed, "I wish this tornado had come last Sunday." 
 " Why so ? " was asked. " Because I should have liked to 
 see, as it came along up through Concord, whether Sam 
 Hoar would have tried to stop it." 
 
 After his retirement from professional employment, Mr. 
 Hoar devoted much of his time to reading, choosing 
 chiefly books relating to American history, of the Colonial 
 and Revolutionary periods. In his early life he had little 
 opportunity to become acquainted with works of fiction, 
 the tendency of which he believed to be so injurious that 
 he did not permit them to be read by his family. For many 
 years his library was without a single novel. But about 
 the year 1827 he happened to be blocked up by a snow- 
 storm in a country tavern, and found the only book acces- 
 sible to be the first volume of Hedgauntlet, which he read 
 with so much delight that, on his return home, he immedi- 
 ately sent to the village library for the second volume, 
 and soon after subscribed for a complete edition of the 
 Waverley Novels, then in course of publication, and read 
 them with as much avidity and satisfaction as the most 
 devoted admirer of Scott could have demanded. It was 
 obviously a new revelation. 
 
 Until he took his seat in Congress in 1835, Mr. Hoar 
 rarely held office. He was a Federalist, and afterward a 
 Whig. He was a member of the State Senate in 1826, 
 1832, and 1833, and represented Concord in the Conven- 
 tion for Revising the Constitution, in 1820. When he 
 first rose to speak in that body, John Adams said, " That 
 young man reminds me of my old friend, Roger Sher- 
 
SAMUEL HOAE H 
 
 man." He took a leading part in the debates of the 
 Convention. 
 
 He was elected in 1834 to succeed Edward Everett as the 
 Representative from the Middlesex District in the Twenty- 
 fourth Congress. He served but one term, being defeated 
 by a Democrat at the next election. He made, during 
 that term, a very powerful but temperate argument in 
 support of the constitutional power to abolish slavery in 
 the District of Columbia. He also earnestly opposed the 
 acknowledgment of the independence of Texas. 
 
 Soon after his service in Congress Mr. Hoar withdrew 
 from the practice of law and devoted himself " to the ser- 
 vice of the temperance and other philanthropic societies, 
 the Sunday schools, the cause of education, and specially 
 of the University, and to such political activities as a 
 strong sense of duty and the love of order and freedom 
 urged him to forward." He was a member of the Harris- 
 burg Convention, which nominated General Harrison for 
 the Presidency in 1839. He became a corresponding 
 member of the New England Historic Genealogical So- 
 ciety, January 23, 1847. 
 
 South Carolina, deeming the presence of free persons 
 of color among her slaves dangerous to the institution of 
 slavery, passed laws prohibiting such persons from com- 
 ing or being brought into th^ State. These laws were 
 pronounced unconstitutional by Attorney-General Wirt. 
 Judge Johnson, hunself a native and citizen of South 
 Carolina, declared that they trampled on the Constitution, 
 and implied a direct attack on the sovereignty of the 
 United States. They were, however, re-enacted with more 
 comprehensive provisions and more stringent penalties. 
 The act of December 19, 1835, provided that any free 
 negro, or person of color, coming voluntarily into the 
 State, should be warned to depart, and failing so to de- 
 part, or returning after such warning, should be publicly 
 sold as a slave. Colored persons brought in as steward, 
 
12 
 
 SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 cook, or in other employment on board a vessel, were to 
 be instantly seized and put in jail on the^ arrival of the 
 ship, and kept imprisoned till her departure. Failing to 
 depart when the ship left, or returning again, they were 
 to be likewise sold. A bond to pay the jail fees was 
 required of the captain. In default of payment of these 
 fees, under the operation of these laws, the negro was 
 sold. 
 
 Louisiana passed similar laws. Under these statutes 
 manv Massachusetts seamen had been taken from vessels, 
 cast into jail, and in some instances sold into slavery. 
 After several ineffectual remonstrances, the Legislature of 
 Massachusetts, in March, 1843, passed resolves authorizing 
 the Governor to employ agents in the ports of Charleston 
 and New Orleans, — 
 
 " For the purpose of collecting and transmitting accurate 
 information respecting the number and names of citizens of 
 Massachusetts, who have heretofore been, or may be during the 
 period of his engagement, imprisoned without the allegation of 
 any crime. The said agent shall also be enabled to bring and 
 prosecute, with the aid of counsel, one or more suits in behalf of 
 any citizens that may be so imprisoned, at the expense of Mas- 
 sachusetts, for the purpose of having the legality of such im- 
 prisonment tried and determined upon in the Supreme Court of 
 the United States." 
 
 The Governor requested several gentlemen of profes- 
 sional distinction dwelling in these ports to undertake the 
 agency. They declined. It was apparent that public 
 opinion would not permit any citizen of South Carolina or 
 Louisiana to perform the duty. Thereupon Massachusetts, 
 March 16, 1844, passed an additional resolve, authorizing 
 the Governor to employ an agent for the port of Charles- 
 ton, and an agent for the port of New Orleans, whose 
 duty it should be to reside in those ports for a term not 
 exceeding one year, for the purposes specified in the re- 
 solves of 1843. After a new attempt to obtain agents 
 
SAMUEL HOAR 13 
 
 living in those cities, Governor Briggs appointed Mr. 
 Hoar, on the 11th of October, 1844. 
 
 The trust was accepted \yithout any anticipation of per- 
 sonal danger. Mr. Hoar went to Charleston accompanied 
 by his eldest daughter, EHzabeth, arriving about six 
 o'clock on the morning of Thursday, November 28th. In 
 the forenoon of that day he addressed a letter to Gover- 
 nor Hammond, at Columbia, containing an extract of so 
 much of the resolve of Massachusetts as defined his 
 authority, and stating his appointment, and his arrival for 
 the purpose of executing his agency. 
 
 The prosecution of Mr. Hoar's mission was delayed till 
 the following Monday by the absence of the Mayor. By 
 that time South Carolina was in a state of intense excite- 
 ment. Saturday, November 30th, Governor Hammond 
 communicated Mr. Hoar's letter to the Legislature by 
 special message, which was referred to the Committee on 
 Federal Relations, and raised great commotion. Monday 
 evening the Sheriff of Charleston called, accompanied by 
 the acting Mayor and one of the Aldermen, and examined 
 Mr. Hoar's commission, and the resolve on which it was 
 founded. He then said : " It is considered a great insult 
 on South Carolina by Massachusetts to send an agent here 
 on such business. This city is highly incensed. You are 
 in great danger, and you had better leave the city as soon 
 as possible." He then produced a letter from the Attor- 
 ney-General of the State, in which the writer urged the 
 avoidance of a resort to lynching, saying it would disgrace 
 the city. The Sheriff added, that he should endeavor at 
 the hazard of his life to defend Mr. Hoar, but doubted 
 whether he could do it, and urged him as the only means 
 of safety to leave the city as soon as possible. Mr. Hoar 
 answered " that he had been sent there on lawful busi- 
 ness, and could not leave the city until he had at least at- 
 tempted to perform that business." 
 
 During the three following days, the Sheriff and man}^ 
 
14 SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 of the leading citizens of Charleston called on Mr. Hoar 
 at different times, urging his departure, and representing 
 the impossibility of restraining the citizens from personal 
 violence if he stayed. He repeated his refusal, saying in 
 one instance that " he would rather his broken skull 
 should be carried home to Massachusetts than to return 
 there alive having run away from his duty." 
 
 On Monday afternoon, Dr. Whittredge, a man of pure 
 and high character, the head of the medical profession of 
 Charleston, who had served in the army nearly the whole 
 of the last war with England, came to the hotel in great 
 agitation and distress. He said that " he felt imutterable 
 mortification in making the communication which he felt 
 bound to make ; that a state of things existed which he 
 had not thought possible in Charleston ; that he had been 
 round in different parts of the city, and had just then 
 come from the City Council ; that the danger was not only 
 great, but imminent ; that the people were assembled and 
 assembling in groups ; that nothing seemed wanting but 
 for some one to»say, 'Now is your time,' to bring on the 
 attack." He offered to procure a carriage, in which he 
 thought it still probable that Mr. Hoar might make his 
 escape, and proceed to a plantation owned by the Doc- 
 tor, about twenty miles from the city, and stay in safety 
 until he could fix on further measures. 
 
 Mr. Hoar replied that, if he should then leave the city, 
 he could not afterward return to it ; that he should not 
 know where to go from Dr. Whittredge's house, for he 
 should be ashamed to return to Massachusetts if he should 
 run away from duty, and whatever happened he must 
 abide the result. 
 
 He expected the attack during the following night, but 
 the leaders of public opinion in Charleston exerted them- 
 selves to quiet the mob, and gave assurances that Mr. 
 Hoar should be removed from the city. 
 
 About noon on Thursday, Mr. Rose, president of one of 
 
SAMUEL HOAR 15 
 
 the Charleston banks, with two members of the bar, called, 
 stating that thej had come to see if they could induce 
 Mr. Hoar to leave the city. They argued that the state 
 of things made it his duty to go. He replied, stating the 
 lawful nature of his business, and the necessity he was 
 under of attempting to perform it. They then indicated 
 to him their determined purpose to remove him, and 
 informed him that at two o'clock a number of gentlemen 
 would call to conduct or escort him to the boat. He 
 answered that fighting on his part would be foolish, that 
 he was too old to run, and that' they would find him 
 there to be disposed of as they thought proper. 
 
 The boat was prevented by an accident from arriving at 
 the usual hour, and Mr. Hoar remained unmolested till the 
 next day. In the evening the Sheriff informed him that 
 the city had become quiet, and that he should leave it the 
 next morning. Meantime the keeper of the hotel pre- 
 sented to the city government a petition that they would 
 remove Mr. Hoar from his house to preserve it from im- 
 pending danger. Mr. Hoar was informed of this on 
 Friday about noon. Just afterward he was summoned 
 into the hall, where he found Mr. Rose and his associates, 
 with some seventy other persons, and an assembly about 
 the door, on the piazza, and in the street. There were 
 also a number of carriages. Mr. Rose announced the pur- 
 pose for which he had come. Mr. Hoar stated to him 
 that if he left the city it was because he must, not because 
 he would. Some of the other gentlemen then addressed 
 him, saying he had done all he could, and that it was 
 impossible for him to remain. There was then but one 
 alternative, to walk to a carriage or to be placed in it by 
 an overwhelming force. Mr. Hoar could perceive no ser- 
 vice to anybody in the latter alternative, and then for 
 the first time said he would go. One of the men present 
 pointed out the carriage he was to enter, and he was 
 driven to the boat without further molestation. 
 
16 
 
 SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 The day before, the Legislature at Columbia passed the 
 following resolutions : — 
 
 " Resolved, That the right to exclude from their territories 
 seditious persons, or others whose presence may be dangerous 
 to their peace, is essential to every independent state. 
 
 '■'■ Resolved, That free negroes and persons of color are not 
 citizens of the United States within the meaning of the Con- 
 stitution, which confers upon the citizens of one State the 
 privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. 
 
 " Resolved, That the emissary sent by the State of Massachu- 
 setts to the State of South Carolina, with the avowed purpose of 
 interfering with her institutions and disturbing her peace, is to 
 be regarded in the character he has assumed, and to be treated 
 accordingly. 
 
 " Resolved, That his Excellency the Governor be requested to 
 expel from our territory tlie said agent, after due notice to de- 
 part ; and that the Legislature will sustain the executive author- 
 ity in any measures it maj' adopt for the purpose aforesaid." 
 
 Just after Mr. Hoar's departure, on the same afternoon, 
 an agent appointed by the Governor of South Carolina to 
 carry into effect the last resolution arrived in Charleston 
 to execute his mission. 
 
 It is often stated that Mr. Hoar was driven from 
 Charleston by a mob. This is in one sense true, but not 
 true in the ordinary sense. Mr. Hoar remained in Charles- 
 ton until all danger to himself from unlawful violence was 
 over. The assembly of leading gentlemen threatened no 
 other force than was necessary to place him on a steam- 
 boat and keep him there until the boat departed. This 
 assembly, whether acting on their ow;n authority or under 
 the resolve of the Legislature of South Carolina directing 
 the removal of the agent of the State of Massachusetts 
 from the State, passed the day before, but not received in 
 Charleston until a few hours after Mr. Hoar's departure, 
 was in every legal sense a mob. The right to bring a 
 suit in the courts of the United States, and to remain in 
 South Carolina for that purpose, was a right under the 
 
SAMUEL nOAU 17 
 
 Constitution and laws of the United States, and a combi- 
 nation of persons interfering with it by violence, whether 
 with or without pretended authority from a State legisla- 
 ture, constituted a mob. The alternative finally offered 
 was not between flight and death, or personal insult and 
 violence, for between those he had already resolutely 
 made his election, but between stepping into a carriage 
 ■ and being put into it with no other force than was needed 
 for that purpose. 
 
 Mr. Hoar reported the circumstances of this attempt to 
 execute his mission to the Massachusetts delegation at 
 Washington, and to the Governor. 
 
 Governor Briggs in a special message to the Legislature 
 says, " The conduct of Mr. Hoar under the circumstances 
 seems to me to have been marked by that prudence, firm- 
 ness, and wisdom which have distinguished his character 
 through his life." John Quincy Adams says in his diary, 
 " I approved the whole of his conduct." 
 
 At the organization of the State government in the 
 beginning of the following January, Mr. Hoar was chosen 
 by the Legislature a member of the Executive Council, in 
 which office he served two years. 
 
 Soon after Mr. Hoar's return from South Carolina, the 
 annexation of Texas was consummated. This was followed 
 by the war with Mexico, the acquisition of New Mexico 
 and California by the treaty of peace, and the struggle 
 between the slave power and its opponents for the con- 
 trol of the institutions of the new territories. ' These 
 events divided the. Whig party of the North. Some 
 were for maintaining their political association with the 
 Southern Whigs, without insisting on the prohibition of 
 slavery in the territories by law. Others determined to 
 make this prohibition paramount to all other political 
 doctrines, and to support no candidate who did not agree 
 with them on this vital question. This difference came 
 to an open rupture in 1848. 
 
18 SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 Mr. Hoar deemed the nomination of General Taylor a 
 final abandonment by the Whig party of its opposition to 
 the spread of slavery. From that time he exerted himself 
 to bring about a union of men of all parties upon tliis 
 ground. As soon as Taylor was nominated a call was is- 
 sued, written by his son, E. R. Hoar, summoning all per- 
 sons opposed to the nomination of Cass and Taylor to meet 
 in Convention at Worcester, June 28th, 1848. A large 
 assemblage, among whom were Charles Allen, Charles 
 Sumner, Charles F. Adams, Stephen C. Phillips, John A. 
 Andrew, and E. R. Hoar, responded to the call. Samuel 
 Hoar presided. A national convention afterward met at 
 Buffalo, and nominated candidates for President and Vice- 
 President. Mr. Hoar supported these nominations, and 
 his name was at the head of the electoral ticket of the 
 Free Soil party. 
 
 He, however, agreed generally with the Whigs in mat- 
 ters of State policy, and disapproved the coalition of 1851 
 and 1852. 
 
 Mr. Hoar represented Concord in the Legislature of 
 1850. He was chosen by a union of all parties in the 
 town, to resist an attempt to remove the courts. The 
 resistance was successful. He had, during the winter, the 
 opportunity to render a very important service to Har- 
 vard College. There was a vigorous and dangerous 
 attempt to abolish the existing Corporation, and transfer 
 the property and control of the College to a board of fif- 
 teen persons, to be chosen by the Legislature by joint 
 ballot, one third to go out of office, every second year. 
 This measure was recommended in an elaborate report by 
 Mr. Boutwell, an influential member of the House, chosen 
 Governor at the next election, and advocated by Henry 
 Wilson, afterward Senator and Vice-President, and by 
 other gentlemen of great influence. All the members of 
 the corporation were Unitarians, a sect containing a very 
 small proportion of the people of the State, and Whigs in 
 
SAMUEL HOAR IQ 
 
 politics. The project to take the College from their con- 
 trol was very popular in many quarters. The House 
 listened willingly to the able arguments with which the 
 measure was introduced, and before Mr. Hoar spoke its 
 opmion was unmistakably for the bill. He argued that 
 the measure was in conflict with the Constitution of the 
 United States, and defended the College with great ear- 
 nestness from the charge that it had "failed to answer the 
 just expectations of the public." The Boston Daily Atlas 
 edited by General Schouler, then a member of the House' 
 said the next day of this speech : "The argument of Mr 
 Hoar was of transcendent excellence, and had a most 
 overpowering effect upon the Plouse. We regret that no 
 report was made of it. It is a pity that so much learnino-, 
 argument, and eloquence should be lost." ° 
 
 This speech caused a revolution in the opinion of the 
 body, and the measure was referred to the next General 
 Court. The next year Mr. Hoar was employed by the 
 Corporation as its counsel to appear before the Legislature 
 in opposition to the measure ; but the scheme was aban- 
 doned. A bill passed, to which no opposition was made, 
 for the election of Overseers by the Legislature. This 
 remained in force till 1866, when the present plan of 
 electing Overseers by the alumni was adopted. 
 
 One of the measures of the coalition was the call of a 
 convention to revise the Constitution of the Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 The Legislature of 1851 submitted to the people the 
 question of calling such a convention, and the project was 
 rejected by a large majority. The proposal was renewed 
 m the Legislature of 1852. Li that year the coalition 
 had a very small majority in the House. They were 
 enabled to carry the act only by the assurance made in 
 the report of the special committee on the subject, that it 
 was not proposed to interfere with the tenure of the 
 judicial office. This Convention was held in 1853, and 
 
20 SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 proposed very important changes, including the limitation 
 to ten years of the term of office of the judges of the 
 Supreme Court, a provision for electing Judges of Prohate 
 by the people for terms of three years, making juries 
 judges of the law in criminal cases, and the increase of 
 existing inequalities in representation. Mr. Hoar dis- 
 approved of the changes, and earnestly opposed the new 
 Constitution ; in this respect agreeing with Governor Mor- 
 ton, John G. Palfrey, Charles Francis Adams, and other 
 eminent members of the Free Soil party. The influence 
 of these gentlemen contributed largely to the defeat of 
 the scheme. 
 
 But Mr. Hoar's earnest desire was for a union of all 
 parties in the North in opposition to the further encroach- 
 ment of the slave power. In accomplishing this end, his 
 age, the regard in which he was held by all classes of 
 people, his known disinterestedness and independence, 
 fitted him to exert a large influence. The Free Soil move- 
 ment had led to the formation of a party in Massachusetts, 
 small in numbers, but zealous, active, in earnest, contain- 
 ing many able leaders, eloquent orators, and vigorous 
 writers. They had sent Charles Allen to the lower 
 house of Congress, and Sumner and Rantoul to the Sen- 
 ate. But they had apparently made little impression on 
 the national strength of either of the old parties. 
 
 In 1854, the passage of the measure known as the 
 Kansas-Nebraska bill afforded a new opportunity. A 
 meeting of citizens of Concord appointed a committee, 
 of which Mr. Hoar was Chairman, and A. G. Fay, Secre- 
 tary, who called a meeting of prominent persons from 
 different parts of the State to meet at the American House, 
 in Boston, to take measures for forming a new party and 
 calling a State Convention. This convention was held at 
 Worcester, on the 7th of September, and formed a party 
 under the name of Republican, and nominated candidates 
 for State officers. Its meeting has been claimed to be the 
 
SAMUEL HOAE 21 
 
 foundation of the Eepublican party of Massachusetts, and 
 its twenty-fifth anniversary was celebrated accordingly in 
 1879 ; hut it effected little more than to change the name 
 of the Free Soil party. Few Whigs or Democrats united 
 in the movement. A secret organization called Americans, 
 or Know-Nothings, swept the Commonwealth like a wave, 
 electing all the State officers, and, with scarcely an excep- 
 tion, the entire Legislature. 
 
 The candidate for Governor nominated by the Repub- 
 licans at Worcester himself joined the Know-Nothings, 
 and labored to defeat his own election. 
 
 The next year the attempt was more successful. On 
 the 10th of August, 1855, a meeting without distinction 
 of party was held at Chapman Hall, in Boston, which was 
 addressed by Mr. Hoar, George Bliss, Franklin Dexter, 
 William Brighara, Lyman Beecher, Richard H. Dana, Jr., 
 -Charles F.Adams, Henry Wilson, Stephen C. Phillips, and 
 others. On the 30th of the same month, a meeting of 
 conference committees was held, representing the Ameri- 
 can part}^, the Know-Somethings, an antislavery organ- 
 ization which had held a national convention at Cleveland 
 in June, and the Chapman Hall Convention. This con- 
 ference appointed a committee of twenty-six to call a 
 State Convention, at the head of which they placed Mr. 
 Hoar. This State Convention was held at Worcester, 
 nominated Julius Rockwell for Governor, and the organi- 
 zation which it created has constituted the Republican 
 party of Massachusetts to the present day. 
 
 The part taken in calling this Convention, and in pro- 
 moting the union which gave it birth, was Mr. Hoar's last 
 important political service. His failing health prevented 
 his taking an active share in the Presidential campaign of 
 1856. 
 
 He preserved his vigor of body until he entered his 
 seventy-seventh year, taking walks of five or six miles 
 without fatigue. About that time he took a severe cold 
 
22 SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 at a neighbor's funeral. An illness followed which seri- 
 ously impaired his strength. He died, November 2, 1856, 
 two days before the Presidential Election. 
 
 He was six feet three inches in height, erect, with fine 
 gray hair, blue eyes, of graceful and dignified deportment, 
 and of great courtesy, especially to women and children. 
 "His head," says Mr. Emerson^ "with singular grace in 
 its lines, had a resemblance to the bust of Dante. He 
 retained to the last the erectness of his tall but slender 
 form, and not less the full strength of his mind. Such 
 was, in old age, the beauty of his person and carriage, as 
 if his mind radiated, and made the same impression of 
 probity on all beholders." 
 
 He held a few simple beliefs with undoubting faith. He 
 submitted himself to the rule of life which followed from 
 these, and rigorously exacted obedience to it from all for 
 whom he was responsible. He accepted the exposition of 
 Christian doctrine given by Dr. Channing. The Massa- 
 chusetts Constitution of 1780 seemed to him a nearly 
 perfect system of government. He earnestly resisted, in 
 the Convention of 1820, the abolition of the property 
 qualification for voters, and of the obligation of all citi- 
 zens to be taxed for the support of religious worship. 
 He took early and deep interest in the temperance reform, 
 and gave much time, labor, and money to promote it. 
 " The strength and beauty of the man," says Mr. Emer- 
 son, "lay in the natural goodness and justice of his mind, 
 which in manhood and in old age, after dealing all his life 
 with weighty private and public interests, left an infantile 
 innocence of which we have no second or third example, — 
 the strength of a chief united to the modesty of a child. 
 He returned from courts and Congresses to sit down with 
 unaltered humility, in the church, or in the town-h-ouse, 
 on the plain wooden bench, where honor came and sat 
 down beside him. He was a man in whom so rare a spirit 
 of justice visibly dwelt, that, if one had met him in a cabin 
 
SAMUEL HOAR 23 
 
 or in a court, he must still seem a public man answering 
 as sovereign state to sovereign state; and might easily 
 suggest Milton's picture of John Bradshaw, — ' that he 
 was a consul from whom the fasces did not depart with 
 the year, but in private seemed ever sitting in judgment 
 on kino's.' " 
 
 The following are the principal biographical accounts 
 of Mr. Hoar : — 
 
 A Funeral Sermon preached in the First Church in Concord, 
 November 9, 1856, by Rev. Barzillai Frost. 
 
 Article in Putnam's Monthly- for December, 1856, bj^ Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson. 
 
 Article in the Monthlj- Religious Magazine for Januarj', 1857, by 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 Article in the Christian Examiner for January, 1857, by George E. 
 EUis, D. D. 
 
 Article in the Monthly Law Reporter for December, 1856, by 
 Emory Washburn. 
 
 Memoir prepared agreeably to a Resolution of the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society, by William Minot, Boston, 1862. 
 
 Article in the Boston Daily Atlas, November 10, 1856, by John 
 A. Andrew. 
 
 Article in Detroit Daily Advertiser, by Rufus Hosmer, Maj'or of 
 Detroit. 
 
 Numerous societies and public bodies passed resolutions 
 of respect to his memory. Among these may be specially 
 mentiohed those of the Middlesex Bar, accompanied with 
 remarks by the Honorable Seth Ames and Mr. Justice 
 Merrick ; and of the Massachusetts Historical Society, with 
 remarks by the Honorable Robert C. Winthrop, Honora- 
 ble James Savage, and the Honorable Daniel A. White. 
 
 It is believed that the life thus imperfectly recorded 
 was useful in its generation. To have been among the 
 foremost advocates and jurists of the very able bar of Mas- 
 sachusetts, a leader in the temperance reform, one of the 
 founders of the great party that abolished slavery, con- 
 tributing largely to preserve the judiciary as established 
 by the founders of the Constitution, a successful defender 
 
24 SAMUEL HOAR 
 
 of the College in its season of extreme peril, are certainly 
 titles to honorable remembrance. But if natural affection 
 has not wholly blinded the judgment of the writer, Mr. 
 Hoar's chief service to his generation was in the deep 
 impression made on all persons who came within the 
 influence of his lofty and spotless character. It is curious 
 to observe from what a variety of persons came the trib- 
 utes to his excellence. Many men in different parts of 
 the country, who spent their youth in Concord, have 
 borne emphatic witness to the debt they owed to his be- 
 neficent influence. 
 
 A few years before his death, a little boy, son of a 
 widow Avho was almost the poorest and humblest person 
 in town, was drowned in Concord River. '•' The evening 
 before the accident," says Mr. Frost, in the sermon 
 preached the Sunday after Mr. Hoar's death, "as he sat 
 in his humble home, as if touched by some angel influence 
 to prepare him for heaven, he spoke tenderly to his poor 
 widowed mother of her kindness, of what he meant to do 
 for her when he was a man, of his noble plans of life, and 
 then he turned to speak affectionately and reverently of 
 Mr. Hoar, as if instinctively conscious of the source from 
 whence he derived his holy thoughts. This illustrates the 
 kind of influence he exerted." 
 
 President Walker closes his annual report of December 
 
 31, 1856, as follows : " The undersigned cannot conclude 
 
 his report without allusion to the recent lamented death 
 
 of the Honorable Samuel Hoar, a distinguished and justly 
 
 influential member of this board, — venerable alike for 
 
 his age and his virtues, — a devoted friend to the College, 
 
 which he has been able to serve in a thousand ways by 
 
 the wisdom of his counsels and the weight of his char- 
 es 
 
 acter." 
 
 In the early days of the Free Soil party, Franklin 
 Dexter, the most fastidious of men, said, " If they will 
 put up Samuel Hoar for Governor, I will vote with them."' 
 
SAMUEL HOAR 25 
 
 Mr. A. Bronson Alcott said, the same year, " If they will 
 nominate Samuel Hoar for Governor, I do not know but 
 I will recognize the state so far as to vote for him." He 
 is pleasantly remembered by the elders among the farm- 
 ers of Middlesex and of the neighboring counties, who 
 counted him as one of themselves, and who have many 
 stories to tell of him. 
 
 Governor Emory Washburn and Governor Andrew 
 each commemorated him in an extended and affectionate 
 biographical sketch. George Allen said of him, " Samuel 
 Hoar, a citizen of Massachusetts, as much respected as any 
 among us for his virtues, his talents, and his services, — a 
 personification of the highest intellectual and moral traits 
 of the New England character." Starr King said of him 
 that "he lived all the beatitudes daily." John G. Palfrey 
 says, " He was a man of admirable probity, sobriety, ex- 
 perience, wisdom." Charles Sumner said, " Samuel Hoar, a 
 name we all delight to praise." Mr. Winthrop has more 
 than once, with great eloquence and earnestness, paid a 
 like tribute. Dr. Lyman Beecher, the giant champion of 
 the old orthodoxy, heard at Andover, Saturday evening, 
 of the dangerous illness of Mr. Hoar. The old man of 
 eighty-one started for Concord before sunrise Sunday 
 morning. He arrived about an hour too late to find the 
 object of his visit alive. He stood in the chamber, gazing 
 earnestly on the face of his old friend, and exclaimed, " He 
 has passed safe over. I have n't a doubt of it. He was 
 an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile." 
 
 But the best memorial of Samuel Hoar will be found in 
 the two sketches by Ralph Waldo Emerson, noble and 
 faithful as faces of Vandyke. One of them ends with this 
 verse : — 
 
 " With beams December planets dart, 
 
 His cold eye truth and conduct scanned ; 
 July was in his sunny heart, 
 October in his liberal hand." 
 
ORATION 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR, 
 
 OF MASSACHUSETTS, 
 
 APRIL 7, 1888, 
 
 'AT 
 
 THE CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENNIAL 
 
 OP THE 
 
 FOUNDING OF THE NORTHWEST, 
 
 AT 
 
 MARIETTA, OHIO. 
 
 [SIXTH EDITION]. 
 
 WORCESTER, MASS. 
 
 PRINTED BY CHARLES HAMILTON, 
 
 311 MAIN STREET. 
 
 1895. 
 
ORATION 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 GEORGE E. HOAR, 
 
 OF MASSACHUSETTS, 
 
 APRIL 7, 1888, 
 
 AT 
 
 THE CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENNIAL 
 
 OF THE 
 
 FOUNDING OF THE NORTHWEST, 
 
 AT 
 
 MARIETTA, OHIO. 
 
 [SIXTH EDITION]. 
 
 WOKCESTEU, MASS. 
 PRINTED BY CHAKLES HAMILTON, 
 311 MAIN STREET. 
 
 1895. 
 
ORATION. 
 
 There aw doubtless many persons in this audience 
 who have gathered here as to their Father's house. 
 They salute their Mother on her birthday with the 
 prayer and the confident ho^oe that the life which now 
 completes its first century may be immortal as liberty. 
 K we were here only to do honor to Marietta — to cele- 
 brate the planting of this famous town, coeval with the 
 Republic, seated by the beautiful river, her annals 
 crowded with memories of illustrious soldiers and 
 statesmen — this assemblage would be well justified and 
 accounted for. 
 
 But there is far more than this in the occasion. The 
 states which compose what was once the Northwest 
 Territory may properly look upon this as their birthday 
 rather than that on which they were admitted into the 
 Union. The company who came to Marietta with 
 Rufus Putnam April 7, 1788, came to found, not one 
 state, but five, whose institutions they demanded should 
 be settled, before they started by an irrevocable com- 
 pact. These five children, born of a great parentage 
 and in a great time, are, 'as we count the life of nations, 
 still in earliest youth. Yet they already contain within 
 themselves all the resources of a great empire. Here is 
 the stimulant climate of the temperate zone, where 
 brain and body are at their best. Here will be a popu- 
 lation of more than fifteen millions at the next census. 
 Here is an area al)out equal to that of the Austrian 
 Empire, and larger than that of any other country 
 
in Europe except Kussia. Here is a wealth more 
 than three times that of any country on this continent 
 except the Eepubhc of which they are a part — a wealth 
 a thousand times that of Massachusetts, including 
 Maine, a hundred years ago ; one-third larger than that 
 of Spain ; equal to that of Holland and Belgium and 
 Denmark combined; equal now, I suppose, to that of 
 Italy ; already half as great as that of the vast Empire 
 of Russia, with its population of more than a hundred 
 millions, whose possessions cover a sixth part of the 
 habitable globe. Below the earth are exhaustless stores 
 of iron, and coal, and salt, and copper. Above, field, 
 and farm, and forest can easily feed and clothe and 
 shelter the entire population of Europe, with all her 
 empires, kingdoms, and republics. 
 
 The yearly product and manufacture of these five 
 states is estimated by the best authorities at from 
 twelve to fifteen hundred millions of dollars. Everything 
 needed for a perfect workshop in all the mechanic and 
 manufacturing arts has nature fashioned and gathered 
 here, within easy reach, as nowhere else on earth. These 
 states had, in 1886, forty-one thousand eight hundred 
 and ninety -three miles of railway; equal, within two 
 hundred miles, to that of Great Britain and France 
 combined ; nearly three times that of Austria or Russia, 
 and about twice that of Germany; while mighty rivers 
 ■ and mightier lakes already bear along their borders a 
 commerce rivalling that of the ports of the Old World, 
 to fair cities and prosperous towns, each one of which has 
 its own wonderful and fascinating story. And above all 
 this, and better than all this, man, the noblest growth 
 this soil supplies, descended of a great race, from which 
 he has inherited the love of liberty, the sense of duty, 
 the instinct of honor, is here to relate and celebrate his 
 
5 
 
 century of stainless history. "Whatever of these things 
 nature has not given is to be traced directly to the 
 institutions of civil and religioufe liberty the wisdom of 
 your fathers estabhshed; above all, to the great Ordi- 
 nance. As the great jurist and statesman of Ohio said 
 more than fifty years ago: " The spirit of the Ordinance 
 of 1787 pervades them all." Here was the first human 
 government under which absolute civil and religious 
 liberty has always pi-evailed. Here no witch was ever 
 hanged or burned. No heretic was ever molested. 
 Here no slave was ever born or dwelt. When older 
 states or nations, where the chains of human bondage 
 have been broken, shall utter the proud boast, " With a 
 great sum obtained I this freedom," each sister of this 
 imperial group — Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wis- 
 consin — may lift her queenly head with the yet prouder 
 answer "But I was free-born." 
 
 They were destined, also, to determine the character 
 and decide the fate of the great Republic of which they 
 are a part, and, through that, of constitutional liberty 
 on earth. In saying this I speak with careful consider- 
 ation of the meaning of the words. I wish, above all 
 things, on this occasion, to avoid extravagance. I hope 
 that what is said here may bear the examination of 
 students of history in this most skeptical and critical 
 age, and may be recalled on this spot, without a blush, 
 by those who shall come after us, for many a future 
 centennial. 
 
 There is no better instance than this of the effect of 
 well-ordered hberty on the fortune of a people. Nature 
 is no respecter of persons in her bounty. The buried 
 race who built yonder mound dwelt here for ages, 
 under the same sky, on the bank of the same river, 
 with the same climate and soil. We know not who 
 
6 
 
 they were. Their institutions and government, their 
 arts and annals, have perished in a deeper obhvion than 
 that which covers the builders of the Pyramids — which 
 moved Sir Thomas Browne to his sublimest utterance: 
 " History sinketh beneath her cloud. The traveller, 
 as he paceth amazedly through these deserts, asketh 
 of her, Who builded them ? and she mumbleth some- 
 thing, but what it is he heareth not." The Indian- 
 and the Frenchman dwelt here, but could not hold 
 their place. The growth of city and town and country, 
 the wealth of the soil and the mine, the commerce of 
 lake and river, the happiness and virtue of the fireside, 
 the culture of the college, the three million children at 
 school, the statute book on whose page there is no 
 shame, are due to the great and wise men who gave 
 you, as your ♦birthday gift, universal liberty, universal 
 suffrage, equal rights, and inviolable faith. 
 
 There is no obscurity in the date or in the trans- 
 action. History pours upon the event its blazing 
 sunlight. We see it, in all its relations, more clearly 
 than it was seen by those who took part in it; more 
 clearly than we behold the events of our own time. No 
 passion disturbs our judgment, leading us either to ex- 
 aggerate or depreciate. There is room for no feeling in 
 our bosoms to-day but an honorable pride in our ances- 
 try and an honorable love of our country. " It is a tale 
 brief and familiar to all; for the examples by which you 
 may still be hapjjy are to be found, not abroad, men of 
 Athens, but at home." 
 
 History furnishes countless examples in every age of 
 heroic achievement and of great enterprise in war and 
 peace, wisely conducted to successful issue. But the 
 events which men remember and celebrate, which 
 become the household words and stirring memories of 
 
nations, the sacred Olympiads by which time is meas- 
 ured, and from which eras take their date, are those 
 which mark the great advances of Liberty on to new 
 ground which she has held. Such, by unanimous 
 consent of the race to which we belong, are the 
 enactment of Magna Charta, the compact on board the 
 Mayflower, the Declaration of Independence, the 
 adoption of the Constitution of the United States, and 
 later, in our own day, the Proclamation of Emancipa- 
 tion. I believe the event which you celebrate is not 
 behind either of these, whether in good fortune as to 
 time, in the character of the actors, in the wisdom 
 which guided them, or in the far-reaching beneficence 
 of the result. 
 
 I am speaking'to men who know their own history. 
 I can but repeat — we gather on such occasions but to 
 repeat — familiar stories — 
 
 " Our lips must tell them to our sons, 
 And they again to theirs." 
 
 You know 'better than I do the miracle of history 
 which brought the founders of the IS^orthwest to this 
 spot at the precise time when alone they could bring 
 with them the institutions which moulded its destiny. 
 A few years earlier or a few years later and the great 
 Ordinance would have been impossible. 
 
 Look for a moment at the forty-eight men who came 
 here a hundred years ago to found the first American 
 civil government, whose jurisdiction did not touch tide- 
 water. See what manner of men they were; in what 
 school they had been trained; what traditions they 
 had inherited. I think you must agree that of all the 
 men who ever lived on earth fit to perform that 
 "ancient, primitive, and heroical work," the founding 
 of a State, they were the fittest. Puritanism, as a dis- 
 
8 
 
 tinct, vital, and laredominant power, endured less than a 
 century in England. It appears early in the reign of 
 Elizabeth, who came to the throne in 1558, and departs 
 at the restoration of Charles II. in 1660. But in that 
 brief time it was the preserver, and may almost be 
 called the creator, of Enghsh freedom. The Puritans 
 created the modern English House of Commons. That 
 House, when they took their seats in it, was the feeble 
 and timid instrument of despotism. When they left it, 
 it was what it has ever since been, the strongest, freest, 
 most venerable legislative body the world had ever 
 seen. When they took their seats in it, it was little 
 more than the register of the King's command. When 
 they left it, it was the main depository of the national 
 dignity and the national will. King, and minister, and 
 prelate, who stood in their way they brought to the 
 bar and the block. In that brief but crowded cen- 
 tury they had made the name of Englishman the 
 highest title of honor upon earth. A great historian 
 has said " the dread of their invincible army was on all 
 the inhabitants of the Island." He might have added, 
 the dread of their invincible leader was on all the 
 inhabitants of Europe. 
 
 Puritanism had not spent itself as a force in England 
 when it crossed the sea with Bradford and Winthrop. 
 What a genius for creating the institutions of liberty 
 and laying deep the foundations of order was in that 
 handful of men who almost at the same instant framed the 
 first written constitution that ever existed and devised 
 the ISTew England town, that unmatched mechanism of 
 local self-government, which has survived every dynasty 
 in Europe and existed for two centuries and a half 
 almost without a change. 
 
 The forty-one men who landed from the Mayflower 
 
9 
 
 at Plymouth and the forty-eight men who came down 
 the Ohio in the Mayftowei- to Marietta were of the 
 same race and the same faith. It was one hundred and 
 sixty-eight years from the planting of the Pm-itan 
 Commonwealth to the founding of the great North- 
 west, destined so soon to become, and, as it seems, for- 
 ever to remain, the seat and centre of empire on this 
 continent. But in the meantime that faith had been 
 broadened, and softened, and liberalized. The training 
 of the race in that mighty gymnasium had changed the 
 spirit of English Puritanism into the spirit of American 
 111 erty. 
 
 To Americans there is no more delightful and 
 instructive study than to trace the hand of a divine 
 Providence in that age-long development of the 
 capacity to take their full and leading part in the 
 achievement of independence, in building the states, in 
 laying the foundation of empire in the little English 
 sect, contending at first only for bare toleration. See 
 how the Power which planted the coal, whose subtle 
 chemistry gets ready the iron for the use of the new 
 race, which dismisses the star on its pathway through 
 the skies, promising that in a thousand years it shall 
 return again true to its hour, and keeps his word, gets 
 his children ready that they shall not fail in the 
 appointed time for the fulfillment of his high design. 
 
 First. The history of the men who founded Ohio 
 and of their ancestors since they landed at Plymouth 
 and Salem was essentially a military history. It was a 
 training which developed, more than any other, the 
 best quality of the individual soldier, whether for com- 
 mand or for service. There never was West Point 
 education like that of this military school. Lord 
 Chatham declared to the House of Lords in 1777 : 
 
10 
 
 "America has carried you through four wars, aud 
 will now carry you to your death. I venture to tell 
 your Lordships that the American gentry will make 
 officers fit to command the troops of all the European 
 powers." 
 
 To many of them it was a life under arms, Every 
 boy was a sharpshooter. The Indian wars, where, as 
 Fisher Ames said, heroes are not celebrated, bvit are 
 formed; the great struggle with France, from whose 
 glory and victory your fathers were never absent, of 
 which a continent was the prize; the great wars of 
 William and Mary and Queen Anne; Fort Edwai-d; 
 William Henry; Crown Point; Martinique; the Havana; 
 twice-captured Louisburg, which they took the second 
 time with its own cannon; Quebec, where they heard 
 the shout of triumph which filled the dying ear of 
 Wolfe, and where at last the lilies went down before 
 the lion, never again, but for a brief period in Louisiana, 
 to float as an emblem of dominion over any part of the 
 American continent, — these were the school-rooms of 
 their discipline. Wliatever share others may have 
 taken, the glory of that contest is yoin- fathers' g ory; 
 that victory is your fathers' victory. Then came twelve 
 years of hollow and treacherous truce, and then — the 
 Revolution. 
 
 Second. It was not to the school of war alone that 
 God put these, his master-builders of States. For a 
 centmy and a half every man played his part where the 
 most important functions were those managed most 
 directly by the people under a system which, in all 
 domestic afftiirs^ was self-government in everything but 
 name. They introduced all the great social changes 
 which prepared the way for the Republic and made it 
 inevitable. As has already been said, they adopted 
 
11 
 
 the first written social compact and devised the town 
 system. They also ^ibolished primogeniture, which act, 
 Mr. Webster declared, "fixed the future frame and 
 form of their government." DeTocqueville says: 
 "The law of descent was the last step to equality. 
 When the legislator has regulated the law of inherit- 
 ance he may rest from his labor. The machine once 
 put in motion will go on for ages and advance, as if 
 self- guided, towards a given point." They established 
 universal education. They incorporated into their state 
 the ancient customs of Kent, by virtue of which every 
 child was born free and the power asserted to devise 
 estates free from all feudal burdens. They also abol- 
 ished entails. 
 
 Third. During this whole time the resources of a 
 skilful statesmanship were taxed to the utmost to 
 maintain their free institutions against the power of 
 England, where every dynasty in turn — Stuart, Crom- 
 well, Hanover — looked jealously upon the infant 
 Commonwealths. The Massachusetts charter conferred 
 upon the colony the power only of making laws not 
 repugnant to the laws of England, and reserved a veto 
 to the crown. The Puritan magistrates shrewdly 
 resisted the desire of their people for a code and con- 
 trived that these great changes should, as far as might 
 be, be introduced as customs, so as not to be submitted 
 to the authorities in England. The Massachusetts 
 Body of Liberties was sent about from town to town 
 in manuscript, and was never printed until 1843. 
 There was never a time when the mighty power of 
 England was not a menace to our ancestors, from the 
 first settlement throughout the whole of that long strife 
 which did not really come to an end imtil Jay's treaty 
 and Anthony Wayne's victory on the Maumee in 1794. 
 
12 
 
 Fourth. They had a rehgious behef which held that 
 the law of God was the supreme practical rule in the 
 conduct of states. However narrow and bigoted at 
 times in its application, we find throughout their history 
 a conscientious and reverent endeavor to govern their 
 Commonwealth by this rtile. Thus the theological 
 discussions in which they delighted, the constant con- 
 sideration of the relation of man to his Creator and to the 
 supreme law of duty became blended with that of their 
 natural rights and their rights under the charter and 
 the British constitution and of the true boundary 
 which separates liberty and authority in the State. So, 
 when the time for independence came, they had decided 
 the Revolution in their great debate before a gun was 
 fired. It is said the cannon of the Union armies in the 
 late war were shotted with the reply to Hayne. The 
 ammunition of the Continental soldiery in the earlier 
 war for freedom came from the discussion of the pulpit 
 and the farmer's fireside. 
 
 Fifth. There would have been at best but a provin- 
 cial and narrow character had New England alone fur- 
 nished the theatre on which the scene was to be acted. 
 The great drama of the Revolution brought her people 
 under an influence to which they owe more than they 
 have always acknowledged. I mean that of their allies 
 and compatriots of the other colonies, who were their 
 associates in that mighty struggle, especially that of 
 Yirginia. John J&.y and Alexander Hamilton, Benja- 
 min Franklin and Gouvei-neur Morris, John Dickinson 
 and Luther Martin were new and powerful teachers to 
 the little communities, who, with every faculty of intel- 
 lect and heart, were studying the fundamental princi- 
 ples of political science under Otis and the Adamses. 
 But there now rose upon their sky the great ViVginia 
 
13 
 
 constellation. If "Virginia were held to the Union by 
 no other tie, she is forever bound to it by that tie ever 
 strongest to a generons spirit, the benefits she has con- 
 ferred upon it. We shall see how her example of self- 
 denial made possible the event we celebrate, and how 
 the wisdom of her statesmen gave the event its char- 
 acter of far-reaching and perpetual beneficence. The 
 teachers of Xew England now brought their pupils 
 from the school where they had so well learned the 
 principles of natural right and civil liberty to the great 
 university where they were to take their degree in the 
 building of states and framing constitutions imder 
 Washington and Jefferson, and Patrick Henry and 
 Madison, and the Lees and Marshall. Within twelve 
 years before the settlement at Marietta eleven of the 
 thirteen states formed their constitutions. The con- 
 vention that framed the Constitution of the United 
 States was in session when the Ordinance of 1787 was 
 passed. 
 
 Sixth. This is by no means all. There is something 
 more than the love of liberty — something more than 
 the habit of successful resistance to oppression and the 
 courage and power to assert the rights of mankind — 
 needed to fit men to construct great states on sure 
 foundations. The generation which was on the stage 
 when the I^orthwest was planted had received another 
 lesson. They had been taught the necessity of strength- 
 ening their political institutions, so that they should 
 afford due security for property and social order and 
 enable government to exert promptly the power needed 
 for its own protection, without which it cannot long 
 endure. Shays's insurrection in Massachusetts in 17S7 
 was inspired mainly by the desire to prevent the 
 enforcement of debts by the courts. To it was doiibt- 
 
14 
 
 less due the clause in the Ordinance of 1787 — inserted 
 also in the Constitution — forbidding the passage of any 
 law impairing the obligation of contracts. The dis- 
 respect with which the Continental Congress is some- 
 times spoken of is most unjust. Its want of vigor 
 was due to the limitation put upon its powers by the 
 states, and to no want of wisdom or energy in its mem- 
 bers. That body will ever hold a great place in history 
 — if it had done nothing else — which declared Inde- 
 pendence, which called Washington to the chief com- 
 mand, which begun its labors with the great state 
 papers which Chatham declared surpassed the master- 
 pieces of antiquity, and ended them with the Ordinance . 
 of 1787. But the states, jealous of all authority but 
 their own, refused to confer on Congress the essential 
 power of taxation and the means to enforce its own 
 resolves. The effect of this short-sighted jealousy, in 
 increasing and prolonging the burden of the war and in 
 lowering the national character with foreign nations 
 after it was over, the people had learned, to their great 
 cost. From all this experience there had come to the 
 men who were on the stage in this country in 1787 an 
 aptness for the construction of constitutions and great 
 permanent statutes such as the world never saw before 
 or since. Their supremacy in this respect is as unchal- 
 lenged as that of the great authors of the reign of 
 Elizabeth in the drama. 
 
 Governor Stoughton said in 1668 that " God sifted a 
 whole nation that he might send choice grain over into 
 this wilderness." The quality of the grain continued to 
 improve under his care. Never did the great husband- 
 man choose his seed more carefully than when he planted 
 Ohio. I do not beheve the same number of persons 
 fitted for the highest duties and responsibilities of war 
 
15 
 
 and peace could ever have been formed in a community 
 of the same size as were among the men who founded 
 Marietta in the spring of 1788, or who joined them 
 within twelve months thereafter. "Many of our asso- 
 ciates," said Tarnum, on the first 4th of July, " are dis- 
 tinguished for wealth, education and virtue; and others, 
 for the most part, are reputable, industrious, well- 
 informed planters, farmers, tradesmen, and mechanics." 
 " Xo colony in America," said Washington, " was ever 
 settled under such favorable auspices as that which has 
 just commenced at the Muskingum. Information, 
 property, and strength will be its characteristics. I 
 know many of the settlers personally, and there never 
 Avere men better calculated to promote the welfare of 
 such a community." " The best men in Connecticut 
 and Massachusetts," writes Carrington to James Monroe, 
 " a desci-iption of men who will fix the character and 
 politics throughout the whole territory, and which will 
 probably endure to the latest period of time." "I knew 
 them all," cried Lafayette, when the list of nearly fifty 
 military ofiicers, who were among the pioneers, was 
 read to him in Marietta, in 1825, the tender memories 
 of forty years thronging his aged bosom — " I knew 
 them all. I saw them at Brandy wine, Yorktown, and 
 Rhode Island. They were the bravest of the brave." 
 Washington and Yarnum, as well as Carrington and 
 Lafayette, dwell chiefly, as was Washington's fashion, 
 upon the personal quality of the men and not upon 
 their public oflEices oi- titles. Indeed, to be named 
 with such commendation, upon p9rsonal knowledge, by 
 the cautious and conscientious Washington, was to a 
 veteran soldier better than being knighted on the field 
 of battle. They were the very best specimens of the 
 New England character that could l)e found. They 
 
16 
 
 were among the most steadfast, constant, liberty-loving 
 men that ever lived. Self-government had become to 
 them a prime necessity of life; but it was that self- 
 government, the subhmest thing in the universe except 
 its creator, by which a human will governs itself in 
 obedience to a law higher than its own desire. They 
 were men of a very sincere and simple religious faith. 
 The belief in a personal immortality, that hope's 
 perpetual breath, without which no gift of noblest 
 origin ever cometh to man or nation, was to them a 
 living reality. The scene which Burns describes in the 
 Cotter's Saturday Mght, from which he says "Old 
 Scotia's grandeur springs," was of nightly occurrence 
 in the cabins of these soldiers and Indian-fighters. 
 
 The little company contained many military officers 
 of high rank, men who had performed important 
 exploits in war, friends and associates of Washington 
 and Lafayette, and statesmen who had been leaders of 
 the people in the days before the Revolution. If tliat 
 assembly had been called, in the Providence of God, 
 to assert the rights of Englishmen, as did the barons of 
 Magna Charta; or to make an original social compact, 
 as did the men on board the Mayflower; or to found 
 towns and create a body of liberties and customs, as 
 did the men of from 1620 to 1650; or to state the case 
 between the fundamental rights of human nature and 
 King George, as did the men of th^ Declaration in 
 1776 ; or to conduct and lead and plan a great defensive 
 war, or to fashion a constitution for State or nation, 
 they would have been equal to the task. 
 
 There are many names that rise to the lips to-day. 
 The settlers are not here. But their children are here. 
 The men who knew them, or who have heard their 
 story from the lips of fathers and mothers who knew 
 
17 
 
 them, are here. Your hearts are full of their memories. 
 The stately figures of illustrious warriors and states- 
 men, the forms of sweet and comely matrons, living 
 and real, as if you had seen them yesterday, rise before 
 you now. Yarnum, than whom a courtlier figure never 
 entered the presence of a Queen — soldier, statesman, 
 scholar, orator — whom Thomas Paine, no mean judge, 
 who hffd heard the greatest English orators in the 
 greatest days of Bnghsh eloquence, declared the most 
 eloquent man he had ever heard speak; Whipple, 
 gallant seaman as ever trod a deck — a man whom 
 Farragiit or JS'elson would have loved as a brother; first 
 of the glorious procession of American naval heroes; 
 first to fire an American gun at the flag of England on 
 the sea; first to unfurl the flag of his own country on 
 the Thames; first pioneer of the river commerce of the 
 Ohio to the Gulf; Meigs, hero of Sagg Harbor, of the 
 march to Quebec, of the storming of Stony Point — the 
 Chiiistian gentleman and soldier, whom the Cherokees 
 named the White Path in token of the unfailing kind- 
 nesg and inflexible faith which had conveyed to their 
 darkened minds some not inadequate conception of the 
 spirit of Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life; 
 Parsons, soldier, scholar, judge; one of the strongest 
 arms on which Washington leaned ; who first suggested 
 the Continental Congress; fron^ the story of whose life 
 could almost be written the history of the Northern 
 war; the chivalric and ingenious Devol, said by his 
 biographer to be " the most perfect figure of a man 
 to be seen amongst a thousand; " the noble presence of 
 Sproat; the sons of Israel Putnam and Manasseh 
 Cutler; Fearing, and Greene, and Goodale, and the 
 Gilraans; Tupper, leader in church and state — the 
 veteran of a hundred exploits, who seems, in the 
 
18 
 
 qualities of intellect and heart, like a twin brother of 
 Knfus Putnam; the brave and patriotic, but unfortunate 
 St. Clair, first Governor of the Northwest, president of 
 the Continental Congress — the mighty shades of these 
 heroes and their companions pass before our eyes, 
 beneath the primeval forest, as the shades of the 
 Homeric heroes before Ulysses in the land of asphodel. 
 But no fable mingles with their story. No mythical 
 legend of encounter with monster or 'dragon or heathen 
 god exaggerates their heroism. There is no tale of 
 she-wolf nurse, whose milk blended with the blood of 
 their leader. The foe» whose war-whoop woke the 
 sleep of the cradle on the banks of the Muskingum 
 needed no epic poet to add to his terrors. The she- 
 wolf that mingled in your fathers' life was a very real 
 animal. These men are in the full light of history. 
 We can measure them, their strength and their weak- 
 ness, with the precision of mathematics. They are the 
 high-water mark of the American character thus -far. 
 Let their descendants give themselves up to the spirit 
 of this great patriotic occasion and to the contemplation 
 of their virtues, to form a reservoir of heroic thought 
 and pxn-pose to be ready when occasion comes. 
 
 It is said the founders were deceived and did not 
 select the best place for their settlement. But it seemed 
 a pai-adise to men from ISTew England. Drowne, in the 
 first anniversary oration, on the 7th of April, the 
 day which the founders resolved should be " forever 
 observed as a day of public festival in the territory of 
 the Ohio Company," declared that "then this virgin soil 
 received you first, alluring from your native homes by 
 charms substantial and inestimable; 
 
 " A Avilclcrncss of sweets; for Nature here 
 Wantoned as In her prime, and played at will 
 Her virgin fancies, pouring forth more sweet, 
 
19 
 
 Wild above rule or art ; the gentle gales 
 Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense 
 Native perfumes, and vfhisper whence they stole 
 Those balmy spoils." 
 
 The exuberant eloquence of Tarnum also failed him. 
 He, too, could find nothing less than Milton's picture of 
 Eden to express his transports. 
 
 As I have read the story of these brave men — of 
 some of them for the first time — in the sober pages of 
 Hildreth, the historian of the Pioneers, I could not 
 help applying to Ohio the proud boast of Pericles 
 concerning Athens : " Athens alone among her contem- 
 poraries is superior to the report of her. Of how few 
 Hellenes can it be said, as of them, that their deeds, 
 when weighed in the balance, have been found equal to 
 their fame.'' 
 
 But what can be said which shall be adequate to 
 the worth of him who was the originatoi', inspirer, 
 leader and guide of the Ohio settlement from the 
 time when he first conceived it in the closing days 
 of the Revolution until Ohio took her place in the 
 Union as a free state, in the summer of 1803? Every 
 one of that honorable company would have felt it as a 
 personal wrong had he been told that the foremost 
 honors of this occasion would not be given to Rufus 
 Putnam. Lossing calls him "the Father of Ohio." 
 Burnett says " he was regarded as their principal chief 
 and leader." He was chosen the superintendent at the 
 meeting of the Ohio Company, in Boston, ISTovember 
 21st, 1787, " to be obeyed and respected accordingly." 
 The agents of the company voted in 1789 that the 7th 
 of April, the day on which, as they say, " Gen. Putnam 
 commenced the settlement in this country, be forever 
 observed as a day of public festival." Harris dedicates 
 the documents collected in his appendix to Rufus 
 
20 
 
 Putnam, " the founder and father of the State." He 
 was a man after Washington's own pattern and after 
 Washington's own heart ; of the blood and near kindred 
 of Israel Pntnam, the man who " dared to lead where 
 any man dared to follow." Like so many of the ablest 
 men of his time, he was his own teacher. His passion 
 for knowledge, especially mathematics and engineering, 
 overcame the obstacle of early poverty. He was a 
 veteran of the old French war, where his adventures 
 sound like one of Cooper's romances. He was made 
 Lieutenant-Colonel of a Worcester County regiment at 
 the outbreak of the Revolution and joined the camp at 
 Cambridge just after the battle of Lexington. His 
 genius as an engineer was soon disclosed. He was, as 
 Washington expressly and repeatedly certified, the 
 ablest engineer officer of the war, whether American or 
 Frenchman. He was soon called by a council of 
 generals and field officers to direct the construction of a 
 large part of the works on which the position of the 
 army besieging Boston depended. He told Washing- 
 ton he had never read a word on that branch of science. 
 But the chieftain would take no deniel. He performed 
 his task to the entire satisfaction of his commanderi, and 
 was soon ordered to superintend the defenses of Provi- 
 dence and Newport. 
 
 One evening in the winter of 1776 Putnam was 
 invited to dine at headquarters. Washington detained 
 him after the company had departed to consult him 
 about an attack on Boston. The general preferred an 
 entrenchment on Dorchester Heights, which would 
 compel Howe to attack him and risk another Bunker 
 Hill engagement with a different result, to marching his 
 own troops over the ice to storm the towu. But the 
 ground was frozen to a great depth and resisted the 
 
21 
 
 pick-axe like solid rock. Putnam was ordered to 
 consider the matter, and if he could find any way to 
 execute Washington's plan to report at once. He him- 
 self best tells the story of the accident — we may almost 
 say the miracle — by which the deliverance of Massachu- 
 setts from the foreign invader, a veteran British army 
 eleven thousand strong, was wrought by the instrumen- 
 tality of the millw^right's apprentice: 
 
 " I left headquai'ters in company with another gentle- 
 man, and on the way came by that of General Heath. 
 I had no thought of calling till T came against his door, 
 when I said, ' Let us call on General Heath,' to which 
 the gentleman agreed. I had no other motive than to 
 pay my respects to the general. When there, I cast my 
 eye on a book which lay on the table lettered on the back 
 'Muller's Field Engineer.' Immediately I i-equested 
 the general to lend it to me. He denied me. I 
 repeated my request. He again refused, saying he 
 never lent his books. I then told him that he must 
 recollect that he was one who, at Roxbury, in a man- 
 ner compelled me to undertake a business on which, at 
 the time, I confessed I had never read a word, and that 
 he must let me have the book. After a few more 
 excuses on his part and pressing on mine I obtained the 
 loan of it." 
 
 In looking at the table of contents his eye was 
 caught by the word " chandelier," a new word to him. 
 He read carefully the description and soon fiad his plan 
 ready. The chandeliers were made of stout timbers, 
 ten feet long, into which were framed posts five feet 
 high and five feet apart, placed on the ground in parallel 
 lines and the open spaces filled in with bundles of 
 fascines, strongly picketed together, thus forming a 
 movable parapet of wood instead of earth, as heretofore 
 done. The men were immediately set to work in the 
 
22 
 
 adjacent apple orchard and woodlands cutting and 
 bundling up the fascines and carrying them with the 
 chandeliers onto the ground selected for the work. 
 This was done in a single night. 
 
 When the sun went down on Boston on the 4th of 
 March Washington was at Cambridge, and Dorchester 
 Heights as nature or the husbandman had left them in 
 the autumn. When Sir William Howe rubbed his eyes 
 on the morning of the 5th he saw through the heavy 
 mist the entrenchments, on which, he said, the rebels 
 had done more work in a night than his whole army 
 would hare done in a month. He wrote to Lord 
 Dartmouth. that it must have been the employment of 
 at least twelve thousand men. His own eifective force, 
 including seamen, was but about eleven thousand. 
 Washington had but fourteen thousand fit for duty. 
 " Some of our ofiicers," said the Annual Register — I 
 suppose Edmund Burke was the writer — " acknowl- 
 edged that the expedition with which these works were 
 thrown up, with their sudden and unexpected appear- 
 ance, recalled to their minds the wonderful stories of 
 enchantment and invisible agency which are so frequent 
 in the Eastern romances." Howe was a man of spirit. 
 He took the prompt resolution to attempt to dislodge the 
 Americans the next night before their works were made 
 impregnable. Earl Percy, who had learned something 
 of Yankee Quality at Bunker Hill and Lexington, was 
 to command the assault. But the Power that dispersed 
 the Armada baffled all the plans of the British general. 
 There came " a dreadful storm at night," which made it 
 impossible to cross the bay until the American works 
 were perfected. 
 
 We take no leaf from the pure chaplet of Washing- 
 ton's fame when we say that the success of the first 
 
23 
 
 great military operation of the Revolution was due to 
 Rufus Putnam. The Americans, under Israel Putnam, 
 mai'ched into Boston, drums beating and colors flying. 
 The veteran British army, aided by a strong nayal 
 force, soldier and sailor, Englishman and Tory, sick 
 and well, bag and baggage, got out of Boston before 
 the strategy of Washington, the engineering of Put- 
 nam, and the courage of the despised and untried 
 yeomen, from whose leaders they withheld the usual 
 titles of military respect. " It resembled," said Burke, 
 " more the emigration of a nation than the breaking 
 up of a camp." 
 
 But it is no part of our task to-day to narrate the 
 military service of General Putnam, although that 
 includes the fortification of West Point, an important 
 part in the capture of Burgoyne, and an able plan, 
 made at the request of Washington, for putting the 
 army on a peace establishment and for a chain of 
 fortified military posts along the entire frontier. We 
 have to do only with the entrenchments constructed 
 under the command of this great engineer ibr the 
 constitutional fortress of American liberty. 
 
 Putnam removed his family to Rutland, Worcester 
 county, Massachusetts, early in 1780. His house is yet 
 standing, about ten miles from the birthplace of the 
 grandfather of President Garfield. He returned him- 
 self to Rutland when the war was over. He had the 
 noble public spirit of his day, to which no duty seemed 
 teifling or obscure. For five years he tilled his farm 
 and accepted and performed the pubhc ofiices to which 
 his neighbors called him. He was representative to 
 the General Court, selectman, constable, tax collector, 
 and committee to lay out school lots for the town; 
 State surveyor, commissioner to treat with the Penob- 
 
24 
 
 scot Indians, and volunteer in putting down Shays's 
 rebellion. He was one of the founders and first 
 trustees of Leicester Academy and, with his family of 
 eight children, gave from his modest means a hundred 
 pounds toward its endowment. 
 
 But he had larger plans in mind. The town constable 
 of Rutland was planning an empire. His chief coun- 
 sellor in his design was his old leader and friend, 
 George Washington. Washington had been interested 
 in the settlement of the Northwest, and in connecting 
 it with the Atlantic by land and water routes, 
 almost from boyhood. His brothers, Lawrence and. 
 Augustine, were membei-s of the first Ohio Company 
 in 1748. He was himself a large landowner on the 
 Ohio and the Kanawha. 
 
 Before the army broke up a petition of two hundred 
 and eighty-eight officers, of which Putnam was the 
 chief promoter, was sent by him to Washington, to be 
 forwarded to Congress, for a grant of lands north and 
 northwest of the river Ohio to the veterans of the 
 army in redemption of the pledges of Congress; and, 
 further, for sales to such officers and soldiers as might 
 choose to become purchasers on a system which would 
 effectually prevent the monopoly of large tracts. A 
 year later Putnam renews his urgent application to 
 Washington for aid in his project, to which he says 
 he has given much time since , he left the army. He 
 asks the General to recommend to him some member of 
 Congress with whom he can directly correspond, as he 
 does not like even to hint these things to the delegates 
 from Massachusetts, though worthy men. She is 
 forming plans to sell her eastern lands. Washington 
 answers that he has exerted every power with Congress 
 that he is master of, and had dwelt upon Putnam's 
 
25 
 
 argument for a speedy decision, but Congress adjourned 
 without action. 
 
 In 1785 Congress appointed General Putnam one of 
 the surveyors of northwestern lands. He says, in his 
 letter accepting the office, that " a wish to promote 
 emigiation from among my friends into that country 
 and not the wages stipulated is my principal motive." 
 He was compelled by his engagements with Massachu- 
 setts to devolve the duty upon General Tupper as a 
 substitute. Tupper could not get below Pittsburg in 
 the season of 1785. He came back to Massachusetts in 
 the winter with such knowledge of the country as he 
 had gaiued, and reported to Putnam at Rutland on the 
 9th of January, 1786. The two veterans sat up 
 together all night. At daybreak they had completed a 
 call for a convention to form a company. It was to all 
 officers and soldiers of the late war and all other good 
 citizens residing in Massachusetts who might wish to 
 become purchasers of lands in the Ohio country. It 
 w^as to extend afterward to the inhabitants of other 
 states " as might be agreed on." The convention was 
 held at the Bunch of Grapes in Boston, March 1, 1786; 
 chose a committee, of which Putnam was chairman, to 
 draft a plan for their organization, and so the Ohio 
 Company was begun. The year was spent in obtaining 
 the names of the associates. They were men of 
 property and character, carefully selected, who meant 
 to become actual residents in the new country. They 
 were men to whom the education, religion, freedom, 
 private and public faith which they incorporated in the 
 fundamental compact of Ohio were the primal necessa- 
 ries of life. In 1787 the directors appointed Putnam 
 superintendent of all their affairs. In the winter every- 
 thing was ready. Putnam went out from his simple 
 
26 
 
 house in Kutland to dwell no more in his native Massa- 
 chusetts. It is a plain wooden dwelling, perhaps a 
 little better than the average of the farmers' houses of 
 New England of that day. Yet about which of 
 Europe's palaces do holier memories cling? Honor, 
 and Fame, and Freedom, and Empire, and the Fate of 
 America went with him as he crossed the threshold. 
 The rest of his life is, in large part, the history of 
 Marietta and of Ohio ; for more than thirty years " The 
 impress of his character," says his biographer, "is 
 strongly marked on the population of Marietta on their 
 buildings, institutions, and manners." 
 
 The wise and brave men who settled Marietta would 
 have left an enduring mark, under whatever circum- 
 stances, on any community to which they had belonged. 
 But their colony was founded at the precise and only 
 time when they could have secured the constitution which 
 has given the Northwest its character and enabled it, at 
 last, to establish in the whole country the principles of 
 freedom which inspired alike the company of the first 
 and second Mayflower. The glory of the Northwest is 
 the Ordinance of 1787. What share of that glory 
 belongs to the men who founded the Northwest? 
 Were your fathers the architects and designers, as well 
 as the builders, of their State? Was the constitutional 
 liberty which they enjoyed themselves and left to their 
 children their own conception and aspiration or was it 
 conferred by the Continental Congress? 
 
 " A gift of that which is not to be given, 
 By all the blended powers of earth and Heaven." 
 
 What was it that applied the spur to the halting 
 Congress whose inaction the whole power of Washing- 
 ton had failed to overcome? The researches of 
 historical scholars have, within a few years, opened to 
 
US for the first time this most mtci-csting chapter of 
 American history. 
 
 The firmness and foresight of Maryland forbade her 
 delegates to ratify the articles of confederation until 
 the claims of individual States to the lands north and 
 west of the Ohio river were abandoned for the common 
 benefit. New York set the example. The cession of 
 Yirginia was the most marked instance of a large and 
 generous self-denial. It not only gave to the United 
 States a resource for a large payment on the public 
 debt and a large provision for veteran soldiers, but gave 
 the country its first strictly common and national 
 interest and the first subject for the exercise of an 
 authority wholly national. 
 
 The necessity was felt for an early provision for a 
 survey and sale of the territory and for the government 
 of the political bodies to be established there. These 
 two subjects were, in the main, kept distinct. Various 
 plans were reported from time to time. Nine commit- 
 tees were appointed on the frame of government and 
 three on the schemes for survey and sale. Thirteen 
 different reports were made at different times; but from 
 September 6, 1780, when the resolution passed asking 
 the states to cede their lands, until July G, 1787, when 
 Manasseh Cutler, the envoy of the Ohio Company, came 
 to the door, every plan adopted and every plan proposed, 
 except a motion of Kufus King, which he himself aban- 
 doned, we now see would have been fraught with 
 mischief if it had become and continued law. 
 
 March 1, 1784, the day Virginia's deed of cession was 
 delivered, Jefferson rei)orted from a committee of which 
 he was chairman an ordinance which divided the terri- 
 tory into ten States, each to be admitted into the Union 
 when its population equaled that of the smallest existing 
 
28 . 
 
 state. He thought, as he declared to Monroe, that if 
 great states were estabhshed beyond the mountains they 
 would separate themselves from the confederacy and 
 become its enemies. His ordinance, when reported, 
 contained a provision excluding slavery after 1800. 
 This was stricken out by the Congress. It is manifest, 
 from subsequent events that, under it, the territory would 
 have been occupied by settlers from the South, with their 
 slaves. It would have been impossible to exclude the 
 institution of slavery if it had once got footing. With 
 or without his proviso, the scheme of Mr. Jefferson 
 would have resulted in dividing the territory into ten 
 small slave-holding states. They would have come into 
 the Union with their twenty votes in the Senate. Their 
 weight would have inclined the scale irresistibly. The 
 American Union would have been a great slave-holding 
 empire. This proposal, so amended, became law April 
 23, 1784, and continued in force until repealed by the 
 Ordinance of 1787. It contained no republican security 
 except a provision that the government of the states 
 should be republican. 
 
 March 16, 1785, Rufus King, at the suggestion of 
 Timothy Pickering, offered a resolve that there should 
 be no slavery in any of the states described in the resolve 
 of 1781. This was sent to a committee of which he was 
 chairman. He reported it back, so amended as to con- 
 form to Jefferson's plan for postponing the prohibition 
 of slavery until after 1800, and with a clause providing 
 for the surrender of fugitive slaves ; but it was never 
 acted on. 
 
 May 7, 1784, Jefferson reported an ordinance for 
 ascertaining the mode of locating and disposing of the 
 public lands. This was recommitted, amended, and 
 finally adopted. Congress rejected the pi'oposition to 
 
29 
 
 reserve lands for religious purposes, but retained a pro- 
 vision for schools. It contained also a clause that the 
 lands should pass in descent and dower, according to 
 the custom of gavelkind, until the temporary govern- 
 ment was established. 
 
 In 1786 a new committee was raised to report a new 
 plan for the government of the territory. This commit- 
 tee made a report which provided that no state should 
 be admitted from the Western territory until it had a 
 population equal to one-thirteenth of the population of 
 the original states at the pi-eceding census. This would 
 have kept ont Ohio till 1820, Indiana till 1850, Illinois 
 till 1860, Michigan till 1880, and Wisconsin till after 
 1890. The seventh Congress expired while this report 
 was pending. It was revived in the eighth. The clause 
 which wonld have so long postponed the admission of 
 the states was probably stricken out, though this is not 
 quite certain. But there was little of value in the whole 
 scheme. It contained no barrier against slavery. 
 
 This was the state of things when Manasseh Cutler 
 came into the chamber on the morning of July 6, 1787, 
 bearing with him the fate of the ISTorthwest. He had 
 left Boston on the evening of Jixne 25, where on that 
 day he records in his diary — 
 
 "I conversed with General Putnam, and settled the 
 principles on which I am to contract with Congress for 
 lands on account of the Ohio Company." 
 
 He was probably the fittest man on the Continent, 
 except Franklin, for a mission of delicate diplomacy. 
 It was said just now that Putnam was a man after 
 Washington's pattern and after Washington's own heart. 
 Cutler was a man after Franklin's pattern and after 
 Franklin's own heart. He was the most learned natural- 
 ist in America, as .Franklin was the greatest master in 
 
30 
 
 physical science. He was a man of consummate pru- 
 dence in speech and conduct; of courtly manners; a 
 favorite in the drawing-room and in the camp, with a 
 wide circle of friends and correspondents among the 
 most famous men of his time. During his brief service 
 in Congress he made a speech on the judicial system, in 
 1803, which shows his profound mastery of constitu- 
 tional principles. 
 
 It now fell to his lot to conduct a negotiation second 
 only in importance in the history of his country to that 
 which Franklin conducted with France in 1778. Never 
 was ambassador crowned with success more rapid or 
 more complete. 
 
 On the 9th of July the pending ordinance was com- 
 mitted to a new committee — 
 
 Edward Carrington, of Virginia; 
 Kathan Dane, of Massachusetts; 
 Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia; 
 John Kean, of SoiTth Carolina; 
 Melancthon Smith, of New York. 
 They sent a copy of the ordinance which had come 
 over from the last Congress to Dr. Cutler, that he might 
 make remarks and prepare amendments. He returned 
 the ordinance, with his remarks and amendments, on 
 the 10th. The ordinance was newly modeled and all 
 Cutler's amendments inserted, except one relating to 
 taxation, " and that," he says, " was better qualified." 
 It was reported to Congress on the 11th. The clause 
 prohibiting slavery, which had not been included because 
 Mr. Dane " had no idea the states would agree to it," 
 was, on his motion, inserted as an amendment, and on 
 the 13th the greatest and most important legislative act 
 in American history passed unanimously, save a single 
 vote. But one day intervened between the day of the 
 
31 
 
 appointment of the committee and that of their report. 
 Cutler returned the copy of the old ordinance with his 
 proposed amendments on one day. The next, the com- 
 mittee reported the finished plan. But two days more 
 elapsed before its final passage. 
 
 The measure providing for the terms of the sale to 
 the Ohio Company was passed on the 27th of the same 
 July. Cutler was master of the situation during the 
 whole negotiation. "When some of his conditions were 
 rejected he '" paid his respects to all the Members of 
 Congress in the city, and informed them of his intention 
 to depart that day, and, if his terms were not acceded 
 to, to turn his attention to some other part of the coun- 
 try." They urged him " to tarry till the next day and 
 they would put by all other business to complete the 
 contract." He records in his diary that Congress 
 " came to the terms stated in our letter without the least 
 variation." 
 
 From this narrative I think it must be clear that the 
 plan which Rufus Putnam and Manasseh Cutler settled 
 in Boston was the substance of the Ordinance of 1787. 
 I do not mean to imply that the detail or the lattguage 
 of the great statiite was theirs. But I cannot doubt 
 that they demanded a constitution, with its unassailable 
 guaranties for civil liberty, such as Massachusetts had 
 enjoyed since 1780 and such as Virginia had enjoyed 
 since 1776, instead of the meagre provision for a govern- 
 ment to be changed at the will of Congress or of 
 temporary popular majorities, which was all Congress 
 had hitherto proposed, and this constitution secured by 
 an irrevocable compact, and that this demand was an 
 inflexible condition of their dealing with Congress at 
 all. Cutler, with consummate wisdom, addressed himself, 
 on his arrival, to the representatives of Virginia. Jeffer- 
 
32 
 
 son had gone to France in July, 1784, but the weight of 
 his great influence remained. King was in Philadelphia, 
 where the Constitutional Convention was sitting. It 
 was Carrington, of Virginia, who brought Cutler onto 
 the floor. Richard Henry Lee had voted against King's 
 motion to commit his anti-slavery proviso, but the first 
 mover of the Declaration of Independence needed little 
 converting to cause him to favor anything that made for ' 
 freedom. William Grayson, of Virginia, early and late, 
 earnestly supported the prohibition of slavery, and, 
 when broken in health, he attended the Virginia Legis- 
 lature in 1 788 to secure her consent to the departure 
 from the condition of her deed of cession, which the 
 Ordinance of 1787 eflfected. Some of the amendments 
 upon the copy of the ordinance now preserved are in 
 his handwriting. To Nathan Dane belongs the immortal 
 honor of having been the draftsman of the statute and 
 moving the anti-slavery amendment. His monument 
 has been erected, in imperishable granite, by the greatest 
 of American architects among the massive columns of 
 the great argument in reply to Hayne. But the legis- 
 lative leadership was Virginia's. Prom her came the 
 great weight of Washington, in whose heart the scheme 
 of Rufus Putnam for the colonization of the West 
 occupied a place second only to that of the Union itself. 
 Hers was the great influence of Jefferson, burning with 
 the desire that his country in her first great act of 
 national legislation should make the doctrines of the 
 Declaration of Independence a reality. From her came 
 Carrington, chairman of the committee; Lee, its fore- 
 most member, and Grayson, then in the chair of the 
 Congress, who, Mr. Bancroft says, "gave, more than 
 any other man in Congress, efiicient attention to the 
 territorial question, and whose record against slavery is 
 
33 
 
 clearer than that of any other Southern man who was 
 present in 1787." 
 
 And let us remember with gratitude, on this anniver- 
 sary, that when, in 1824, the plan to call a convention 
 in Illinois to sanction the establishment of slavery there 
 was defeated by a majority of sixteen hundred votes, it 
 Avas to Governor Edward Coles, a son of Virginia, the 
 old friend of Jefferson and Madison, that the result was 
 largely due ; and when, in 1803, the convention of the 
 Indiana Teri'itory petitioned Congress for the repeal of 
 the sixth clause of the Ordinance of 1787, it was a Vir- 
 ginian voice, through the lips of John Eandolph, whose 
 name and blood are so honorably rej)resented here 
 to-day, that denied the request. 
 
 The Ohio Company might well dictate its own terms, 
 even in dealing with the far-sighted statesmen of 1787. 
 The purchase and settlement of this large body of the 
 public lands removed from their minds several subjects 
 of deepest anxiety. It afforded a provision for the vet- 
 erans of the war. It extinguished a considerable portion 
 of the public debt. It largely increased the value of the 
 rest of the public domain. It placed the shield of a 
 settlement of veteran soldiers between the frontiers of 
 'New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia and the most 
 dangerous and powerful Indian tribes on the continent. 
 It secured to American occupation a territory on which 
 England, France, and Spain were still gazing with eager 
 and longing eyes — in which England, in violation of 
 treaty obligation, still held on ..to her military posts, 
 hoi)ing that the feeble band of our Union would break 
 in pieces. It removed a fear, never absent from the 
 minds of the public men of that day, that the western 
 settlers would form a new confederacy and seek an alli- 
 ance with the power that held the outlet of the Missis- 
 
34 
 
 sippi. Tilt' strength of this last apprehension is shown 
 in the confidential correspondence of Washington. He 
 twice refers to it in his farewell address — once where he 
 warns the West against "an ajiostate and unnatural 
 connection with any foreign power," and again, where 
 he urges them " henceforth to be deaf to those advisers, 
 if such there are, who would sever them from their 
 brethren and connect them with aliens." 
 
 Congress had nowhere else to look for these vital 
 advantages if the scheme of Putnam and his associates 
 failed. They, on the other hand, would buy all the land 
 they wanted of New York or Massachusetts on their 
 own terms. It is no wonder, then, that the Congress 
 which in seven years had got no further than the Jeffer- 
 son statute of 1784, and which had struck out of it the 
 anti-slavery proviso, came in four days to the adoption 
 of the Ordinance of 1787 with but one dissenting vote. 
 
 It will not be expected that I should undertake, within 
 the limits of this discourse, to dwell in detail upon the 
 provisions of the Ordinance of 1787 and the benefit they 
 have conferred upon thq region over which they have 
 extended. Known throughout this country wherever 
 American history is known, wherever men value consti- 
 tutional liberty, they are familiar as household words to 
 the men who are assembled here. They are, in some 
 important respects, distinguished above all the other 
 great enactments which lie at the foundation of human 
 societies. If there be anything for which Daniel 
 Webster is distinguished among'great orators, it is the 
 discretion and moderation of his speech. He never 
 sought to create an impression or give an emphasis by 
 overstatement. It was well said of him by another 
 native of New England, whose fame as a great public 
 teacher equals his own : " His weight was like the falling 
 
35 
 
 of a planet; his discretion, the return of its, due and 
 perfect cnrve." Mr. "Webster declared, in a well-known 
 passage: ''We are accustomed to praise the lawgivers 
 of antiquity; we help to perpetuate the fame of Solon 
 and Lycurgns, bnt I doubt whether one single law of 
 any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects 
 of more distinct, marked, and lasting charactei' than the 
 Ordinance of 1787." 
 
 The founders of the Northwest and the framers of the 
 Ordinance meant to put its great securities beyond 
 the reach of any fickleness or change in popular senti- 
 ment unless by a revolution which should upheave the 
 foundations of social order itself. They made the six 
 articles "• Ai-ticles of compact between the original states 
 and the people and states in the said Territory, to forever 
 remain unalterable unless by common consent." They 
 were to have the force which the philosophers of that 
 day attributed to the original social compact, to which 
 they ascnbed the origin of all human society. Three 
 parties, the original states, the new states, and the peo- 
 ple, made the compact. This cgmpact was to attend 
 these communities forever, unalterable save by the con- 
 sent of all three, under whatever new constitutional 
 arrangements they might come. There is the highest 
 contemporary authority for the opinion that these articles 
 would never be affected by ordinary constitutional 
 changes in the states. "It fixed forever," said Mr. 
 Webster, "■ the charactei- of the population in the vast 
 regions northwest of the Ohio by .excluding from them 
 involuntary servitude. It impressed on the soil itself, 
 while it was yet a wildei-ness, an incapacity to sustain 
 any other than freemen. It laid the interdict against 
 personal servitude in original compact, not only deeper 
 than all local law, but deeper, also, than all local consti- 
 
36 
 
 tutions.". These great and perpetual blessings your 
 fathers found awaiting them when they took possession 
 of their new homes, beneficent as the sky, or the chmate, 
 or the soil, or the river, to endure so long as the sky shall 
 send down its inflnence or the Ohio continue to flow. 
 
 While a portion of the second article reaffirms the 
 great securities Avhich are of English origin, and are 
 found in Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, the 
 larger part are originally and exclusively American. 
 The student of constitutional law will find there all he 
 will need for an ample and comi^lete understanding of 
 the difference between the genius of the limited mon- 
 archism of England and the genius of American Liberty. 
 
 For the first time in history the Ordinance of 1787 
 extended that domain from which all human government 
 is absolutely excluded by forbidding any law interfering 
 with the obligation of good faith between man and man. 
 This provision, adopted afterward in substance in the 
 Constitution of the United States, and thereby made 
 binding as a restrahit upon every state, is the security 
 upon which rests at last all commerce, all trade, all 
 safety in the dealing of men with each other. To-day 
 its impregnable shield is over the dealing of sixty 
 millions of people with each other and with mankind. 
 
 I have described very imperfectly the education, 
 extending over two centuries, which fitted your fathers 
 for the great drama to be enacted here. ' Equally won- 
 derful is the series of events which kept the soil of the 
 Ohio territory untouched until they were ready to 
 occupy it. France, in 1775, rejected an offer made her 
 by England that England would give up all her claim 
 west of a line from the mouth of French Creek twenty 
 leagues up that stream toward Lake Erie and from the 
 same point direct to the last mountains of Virginia 
 
37 
 
 which should descend toward the ocean. France was 
 to retain Canada and her settlements on the Illinois and 
 Wabash. If this oiFer had been accepted, the French, 
 who always so skilfully managed the Indians, would 
 have filled the territory with their colonies, and, under 
 whatever sovereignty it had ultimately come, would 
 have impressed their character and institutions on it 
 forever. King George, too, in 1763, at the close of the 
 French war, forbade his governors in America "to 
 grant any warrants of survey or patents for any lands 
 beyond the heads or sources of any of the rivers which 
 fall into the Atlantic ocean from the west or northwest." 
 This shut out the people of Virginia, with their slaves, 
 from all the territory that now forms Ohio. 
 
 Again, the controversies between the states as to title 
 prevented its settlement during the Revolution. The 
 fear of Indian hostilities prevented its settlement during 
 the period Mr. Jefferson's ordinance of 1784 was in 
 force. The votes of the Southern States defeated Mr. 
 Jefferson's proviso, tinder which slavery would surely 
 have gained a footing, and so left the way open for the 
 total exclusion of slavery three years later. 
 
 We are not here to celebrate an accident. What 
 occurred here was premeditated, designed, foreseen. If 
 there be in the universe a power which ordains the 
 course of history, we cannot fail to see in the settle- 
 ment of Ohio an occasion when the human will was 
 working in harmony with its own. The events move 
 onward to a dramatic completeness. Rufus Putnam 
 lived to see the little colony, for whose protection against 
 the savage he had built what he described as the 
 strongest foi-tification in the United States, grow to 
 nearly a million of people and become one of the most 
 powerful states in the confederacy. The men who came 
 
38 
 
 here had earned the right to the enjoyment of hberty 
 and peace, and they enjoyed the hberty and peace they 
 had earned. The men who had helped win the war of 
 the Revolution did not leave the churches and schools 
 of New England to tread over again the thorny path 
 from barbarism to civilization, or from despotism to 
 self-government. When the appointed hour had come, 
 and 
 
 " God uncovered the land 
 That he hid of old time in the west, 
 As the sculptor uncovers the statue 
 When he has wrought his best," 
 
 then, and not till then, the man also was at hand. 
 
 It is one of the most fortunate circumstances of our 
 history that the vote in the Continental Congress was 
 substantially unanimous. Without the accompaniment 
 of the Ordinance the Constitution of the United States 
 itself would have lost half its value. It was fitting that 
 the whole country should share in the honor of that act 
 which, in a later generation, was to determine the fate 
 of the whole country. 
 
 We would not forget to-day the brave men and noble 
 women who represented Connecticut and Rhode Island 
 and New Hampshire in the band of pioneers. Among 
 them were Parsons, and Meigs, and Yarnum, and 
 Greene, and Devol, and True, and Barker, and the 
 Gilmans. Connecticut made a little later her own 
 special and important contribution to the settlement of 
 Ohio. But Virginia and Massachusetts have the right 
 to claim and to receive a pecviliar share of the honor 
 which belongs to this occasion. They may well clasp 
 each other's hands anew as they survey the glory of 
 their work. These two states — the two oldest of the 
 sisterhood — the stat^ which framed the first written 
 constitution, and the state whose founders framed the 
 
89 
 
 compact on the Mayflower; the state which produced 
 Washington, and the state which summoned him to his 
 high command; the state whose son drafted the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, and the state which furnished its 
 leading advocate on the floor; the mother of John 
 Marshall and the mother of the President who appointed 
 him; the state which gave the general, and the state 
 which furnished the largest number of soldiers to the 
 Revolution; the state which gave the territory of the 
 northwest, and the state which gave its first settlers — 
 may well delight to remember that they share between 
 them the honor of the authorship of the Ordinance of 
 1787. When the reunited country shall erect its monu- 
 ment at Marietta let it bear on one side the names of 
 the founders of Ohio, on the other the names of Jeffer- 
 son, and Richard Henry Lee, and Carrington, and 
 Grayson, side by side with those of Nathan Dane, and 
 Rufus King, and Manasseh Cutler, beneath the supreme 
 name of Washington. Representatives of Virginia and 
 Massachusetts, themselves in some sense representatives 
 of the two sections of the country which so lately stood 
 against each other in arms, they will bear witness that 
 the estrangements of four years have not obliterated the 
 common and tender memories of two centuries. 
 
 This, also, is one of the great events in the world's 
 history which marks an advance of Liberty on to new 
 groiTnd which she has held. We would not undervalue 
 military achievements. Such a paradox, ridiculous any- 
 where, would be doubly unbecoming here. We stand 
 by the graves of great soldiers of the war of Indepen- 
 dence. This is the centennial of the State within whose 
 borders were born Grant, and Sherman, and Sheridan, 
 and Garfield. The men of the Revolution fought that 
 the principles of the Ordinance of 1787 might become 
 
40 
 
 living realities. The great captains of the later war 
 fought that the compact might be kept and forever 
 remain unalterable. The five states of the N'orthwest 
 sent nearly a million soldiers into the war for the Union, 
 every one of them ready to die to maintain inviolate the 
 fourth article, which declares : " The said territory and 
 the states which may be formed therein shall forever 
 remain a part of this confederacy of the United States 
 of America, subject to the articles of confederation and 
 to such alterations therein as shall be constitutionally 
 made, and to all the acts and ordinances of the United 
 States in Congress assembled comformable thereto." 
 These purposes inspired them when they drew their 
 swords. They laid down their swords when these pur- 
 poses were accomplished. 
 
 It is this that makes the birthday of Ohio another 
 birthday of the nation itself. Forever honored be 
 Marietta as another Plymouth. The Ordinance belongs 
 with the Declaration of Independence and the Consti- 
 tution. It is one of the three title deeds of American 
 constitutional liberty. As the American youth for 
 uncounted centuries shall visit the capital of his 
 country — strongest, richest, freest, happiest of the 
 nations of the earth — from the stormy coast of I^ew 
 England, from the luxui-iant regions of the Gulf, from 
 the lakes, from the prairie and the plain, from the Golden 
 Gate, from far Alaska — he will admire the evidences of 
 its grandeur and the monuments of its historic glory. 
 He will find there rich libraries and vast museums, and 
 great cabinets which show the product of that match- 
 less inventive genius of America, which has multiplied 
 a thousand-fold the wealth and comfort of human life. 
 He will see the simple and modest portal through which 
 the great line of the Kepublic's chief luagistrates have 
 
41 
 
 passed at the call of their country to assume an honor 
 siu'passing that of emperors and kings, and through 
 which they have returned, in obedience to her laws, to 
 take their place again as equals in the ranks of their 
 fellow-citizens. He will stand by the matchless obelisk 
 which, loftiest of human structures, is itself but the 
 imperfect type of the loftiest of human characters. He 
 will gaze upon the marble splendors of the Capitol, in 
 whose chambers are enacted the statutes under which 
 the people of a continent dwell together in peace, and 
 the judgments are rendered which keep the forces of 
 states and nation alike within their appointed bounds. 
 He ^\'i]\ look upon the records of great wars and the 
 statues of great commanders. But, if he know his 
 country's history, and consider wisely the sources of 
 her glory, there is nothing in all these which will so stir 
 his heart as two fading and time-soiled papers, whose 
 characters were traced by the hand of the fathers a 
 hundred years ago. They are the original records of 
 the acts which devoted this nation forever to equality, 
 to education, to religion, and to liberty. One is the 
 Declai-ation of Independence, the other the Ordinance 
 of 1787. 
 
WILL 
 
 CHARLKS HOARK 
 
 GLOUCESTER, ENGLAND. 
 
 WITH NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR. 
 
 V 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 DAVID CLAPP & SON, PRINTERS, 
 IIS High Street. 
 
 1891. 
 
Reprinted from N. England Historical and Genealoqical Register for Oct., 1891. 
 
 WILL OF CHARLES HOARE OF GLOUCESTER, 1638. 
 Prerogative Court op Canteebdry. Doctors Commons. 
 
 In the name of God Almightie Creator of all thinges and in Jesus Christ 
 his deare and only son my most bountifull loveing Saviour and in the 
 blessed spiritt my comforter Amen I Charles Hoare of the Cittie of Glou- 
 cester being weake in body but perfect in memory blessed be my good god 
 therefore, Doe hereby declare that my last will and testament as followeth 
 ffirst I bequeath my soule into the handes of God that created it and my 
 deare Saviour that see dearlie ransom'd it with full confidence thorough his 
 merrittes that after the end of this life it shall rest w"" him everlastingly. 
 And my bodie to the earthe from whence it came w'* full assurance that 
 at the last daie when my Saviour shall appeare in glory it shalbe by his 
 power raised upp to the resurrection of the iust, And for the estate 
 it hath pleased god to lend unto me of the thinges of this world I thus dis- 
 pose ffirst that with as much convenient speede as may well be all my rentes 
 and debtes sett downe under my hand and all other if any be and can ap- 
 peare to be due shalbe paid. Item I give to my brother Thomas Hoare 
 twentie poundes, to my sister Elinor Bailies fortie shillinges, to my brother 
 William Hincksman and Walter Hiucksman and Edward Hincksman and 
 my sister ifounes twentye shillinges a peece in gould, alsoe I give to my 
 brother Thomas Hincksman five poundes and to my servant John Sponar 
 at presberie five markes and to his wife five nobles and to Thomas Prichard 
 my servant fortie shillinges and to Thomas Ade my servant tenn shillinges. 
 Alsoe I give to Mr. Thomas Veil and to Alderman Hill and Mr. Leonard 
 To[u]ne my brother lawes and my brother for my sake and to good Mr. 
 Workman our faithfull watchman forty shillings. Alsoe I give unto my 
 welbeloved wife Joane Hoare y' some of three hundred and fiftie poundes 
 and to my sonne John Hoare twoe hundred poundes and to my sonne Daniell 
 Hoare one hundred and fiftie poundes and to my daughter Joane Hoare a 
 hundred poundes and to my son Leonard Hoare one hundred poundes and 
 my will is that ray wife shall have the furniture of houshold that I have 
 in all places at her disposing during her life and after to come indiferentlie 
 amongst my children except the goodes at Thoi'nebery w"" was deliuered 
 me by the sherifEe by vertue of an elegit, all w"*" I give unto my daughter 
 Margerie Mathewe presentlie after my decease. Alsoe I give unto my 
 sonn Thomas Hoare twentie poundes. Alsoe I give to the said Margery 
 my daughter and her sonne Charles Mathewe twoe hundred poundes and 
 my will is that soe longe as this twoe hundred poundes remaines in the 
 stocke which I shall leave (which shalbe till my executors and overseers 
 shall allowe thereof for her good to lett him have it, there shalbe unto her 
 
and her sonne sixteene poundes a yeare quarterly paid and my will and de- 
 sire is that the stocke I shall leave unto my wife and the foure first named 
 children with the twoe hundred poundes given my daughter shalbe used 
 knd imployed uppon the three bargaines I have taken at Encombe, Pres- 
 bery and Slimsbridg and my wife and the foure children to have their main- 
 tenance out of it, and my will ii that my sonne Leonard shalbe carefullie 
 kept at Schoole and when hee is iitt for itt to be carefullie placed at Oxford, 
 and if y° Lord shall see iitt, to make him a Minister unto his people and 
 that all y= charge thereof shalbe discharged out of tlie proffitt which it 
 shall please god to send out of the stocke and that all the rest of my estate un- 
 bequeathed all debtes and expence being discharged shalbe equallie deuided 
 betweene my wife and my twoe sonnes Daniell and John, and Joane, and the 
 profittes of the said stocke to accrewe unto them alsoe untill my executors 
 and my overseers shall agree for their good to lett any of them haue their 
 poroons for their pr ferment. Only this excepted that my sonne Leonard 
 shall have accrue and dewe unto him out of this estate six poundes a yeare 
 to bee paid unto him by the foresaid hundred poundes when my executors 
 and overseers shall allowe of it to be for his preferment and if anie of my 
 children shall die before they come to make use of their porcons and my 
 will is that porcons soe falling out shalbe equallie devided amongst 
 my five children nowe with me and my sonne Thomas aforesaid and if it 
 shall soe happen that the stocke bequeathed be not fonnde fitt to be im- 
 ployed as 1 have directed but I trust y' Lord will soe blesse that happie 
 trade of life unto them that some of them will never give over but if soe 
 should be then my will is that my executors pay in y' porcSns unto them 
 if they bee att age or els to paie it in or good securitie to my overseers and 
 my will is that as I have agreed with M'. Thomas Veil and p'mised there 
 shall alwaies be really upon the groundes att Encome which I have taken 
 of him for Eight yeares eight hundred of the best ewes to stand for his 
 securitie untill all rentes and dewes whatsoever shalbe really paid unto him, 
 and nowe deare saviour spreade thy armes of mercie over me purge away my 
 synnes though they are many and greate and my faith weake lett thy power 
 be scene in my weaknes and thy strength in my manifould infirmities keepe 
 me from that evill one and Receive me to thy mercy to whom with god the 
 father and the holie spiritt be all glorie and power and thankes giveinge 
 both nowe and for evermore Amen : this 25th day of Sept. 1638. By me Cha: 
 Hoare : ffurther I give unto my sonne John Hoare fortie poundes more w"'' 
 shall accrewe unto him when all the other are satisfied out of the estate. 
 Admon granted 21 Dec. 1638— to Joane Hoare the relict 
 
 Charles Hoare, of the City of Gloucester, England, died in 1638. His will, 
 now for the first time printed, is dated Sept. 25, 1638. Administration was 
 granted at Doctors Commons to Joane Hoare the relict, Dec. 21, 1638. 
 
 Charles Hoare was sheriff of the City of Gloucester in 1634. Gloucester is a 
 couuty of itself, by grant of Edward Third. In the first year of the reign of 
 Eichard Third the civil government of Gloucester was altered, and by charter of 
 the same King it was ordained that, instead of Bailiffs, a Mayor with two Sherifl's 
 and other officers should be annually elected by the twelve Aldermen and 
 ' ' twelve other of the most legal and discreet Burgesses." (Posbrooke's ' ' Glou- 
 cester," p. 414.) Charles Hoare was alderman of the City from 1632 to 1638, 
 and perhaps earlier. In the Calendar of State Papers for 1636-7 is a petition 
 
signed by him that sundry expenses incurred in collecting ship-money may be 
 allowed ont of the funds in the hands of the sheriffs, and the remainder paid 
 over " to the now Mayor and Sherifife." 
 
 " Good Mr. Workman, our faithful watchman," mentioned in the will, is John 
 Workman, a native of Gloucestei'shire, whose persecution by Archbishop Laud 
 was, according to Laud himself, insisted upon more tlian any other charge at 
 the trial of that prelate. Workman, for certain expressions against the use of 
 images or pictures in churches, and certain expressions against "mixed 
 dancing," was brought before the high commission at Lambeth, suspended from 
 the office and function of the ministry, excommunicated, required to make resti- 
 tution, condemned in costs of suit, and cast into prison. Mr. Workman after- 
 ward tanght a school to provide for his numerous family. Laud heard of this, 
 and prohibited him from teaching children. Workman then began to practise 
 physic, but soon after died in great poverty. The Corporation of Gloucester in 
 1633 granted him an annuity of £20. For this the Mayor, the Town Clerk, and 
 several of the Aldermen were brought before the Council, and prosecuted in the 
 High Commission Court. Mr. Hoare was doubtless one of the offending Alder- 
 men. (Brook's "I^iritans," 2: 434.) 
 
 Charles Hoare was the son of Charles Hoare who died in Gloucester in 1636. 
 His son Thomas was baptized in the Church of St. Mary de Crypt, 15 June, 1612. 
 The old vault bearing the name " Hoare" is still to be seen under that ctiurch. 
 Little more is known with certainty of his pedigree. On the gravestone of 
 Ms daughter Margaret, and her husband, Kev. Henry Flynt, in the burying- 
 ground at Quincy, it is said that they were both descended from ancient and 
 good families in England. In the Harleian MS. in the British Museum, No. 
 1543 to 54, is the visitation of the County of Gloucester, by Robert Cooke 
 Clarenciens; King at Arms, enlarged with the visitation of the same county in 
 1623. It contains on one page the arms of Hore of Gloucestershire, but there 
 is no pedigree. The arms are an eagle displayed with two heads within a 
 bordure engrailed. They seem to be the same with those borne by many families 
 of the name in several shires of England and Ireland, with those carved on the 
 gravestone of Daniel Hoar, who died in Concord in 1773, aged 93, who was the 
 great grandson of Charles Hoare of Gloucester, and with those borne on the 
 "tumbler" bequeathed by Usher, the husband of President Hoar's widow, to 
 Bridget, the President's daughter. These arms are also found on a marble tab- 
 let in the church at Frampton upon Severn, about seven miles from Gloucester, 
 quartered with the arms of Clifford and Windscombe, and also were formerly on 
 a window of stained glass in Pretherne Lodge, a mansion built by James Clifford, 
 with a design to entertain Queen Elizabeth at Fretherne, about nine miles south- 
 west from Gloucester. The name Is found frequently in Gloucestershire during 
 a period extending back nearly to the Conquest. The heiress of Hoar of Glouces- 
 tershire married Henry de Clifford of Frampton, temp. Hen. 4. John Le Hore 
 witnesses an ancient deed now in existence of a tenement in Wotton, Gloucester- 
 shire, 19 Ed. 2d. 
 
 The will of Richard Hoare, of the parish of St.. John the Baptist in the City 
 of Gloucester, gentleman, dated Aug. 4, 1618, bequeathes eighteen different 
 houses in the city or county. He was sheriff in 1614. This Richard also by in- 
 denture established a trust, still In exisience, by which 53 s. annually are paid to 
 the poor. 
 
 All the chUdren named in the will of Charles Hoare came to this country with 
 their mother, Joanna, in 1639 or '40, except Thomas. He was probably the 
 eldest. It is very likely that he was the son of another wife, and had been es- 
 tablished in business, or was to inherit lands as the eldest son. He is not in- 
 cluded in the " five children now with me" mentioned in the father's will, nor 
 is he alluded to in the will of his brother Leonard. The name of Thomas Hoar 
 appears among the early settlers in old Norfolk, Massachusetts, and also in 
 Gloucestershire. But the identity of either of these persons with the son of 
 Charles is not established. 
 
 Joanna, the widow, died in Braintree, Sunday. Dec. 20, 1661. She is buried 
 in the old Quincy burial-ground with her son Leonard and his wife and daughter, 
 near the graves of her daughters Mrs. Flynt and Mrs. Quincy. She is the ances- 
 tress of many persons who have been eminent in the history of the country. 
 
6 
 
 Daniel returned to England, where he engaged extensively in trade with the 
 colonies. Oct. 2, 1650, he was licensed by the Council of State " to export to 
 New England 300 birding fowling pieces and muskets upon good security that 
 they will not be used to the prejudice of the Commonwealth. " He was in Boston 
 in 1653, where he executes a power of attorney to John Hull and John Hoare, 
 and describes himself as of Boston, New England. His son John, then a child, 
 was in New England in 1676, under the care of his uncle Leonard and his aunt. 
 
 John settled in Scituate and afterward in Concord. He rescued Mrs. Eowland- 
 son from captivity in 1676, protested vigorously against the evil treatment of 
 the Indians in his day, and had very uncomfortable relations with the authorities. 
 Margery appears from her father's will to have been the widow of a person 
 named Matthewe, and to have had a son named Charles Matthewe. There was 
 a family of that name near Erampton upon Severn and near the hundred of 
 Slymbridge, where Charles Hoare appears to have held lands. She married the 
 Kev. Henry Flynt of Braintree, and died March 10, 1687. Her epitaph states : 
 " She was a gentlewoman of piety, prudence, and peculiarly accomplished for 
 instructing young gentlewomen.'' She is pleasantly commemorated by her 
 descendant, President John Quincy Adams, in his discourse at Braintree, Aug. 
 24, 1839. 
 
 Joanna became the wife of Col. Edmund Quincy. Leonard was the first grad- 
 uate of Harvard College to become its president. He took the degree of Doctor 
 of Medicine in England, was settled as a clergyman in "Wanstead in Essex, and 
 was ejected for non-conformity about 1662. It is understood that Sir Matthew 
 Hale, who was of Gloucestershire origin, strongly befriended Dr. Hoar. He 
 delivered two sermons on the occasion of the death of Lady Anne, wife of Sir 
 Henry Mildmay, of Wanstead. She was the daughter of Sir Leonard Holiday, 
 Knight and Alderman, of London, and died March 12, 1656. There were at 
 least nine considerable branches of the Mildmay family in Essex about the time 
 of the colonization of New England. One of these was nearly related to the 
 Winthrops. Agnes Winthrop, widow of Adam, the first John Winthrop's grand- 
 father, married Wm. Mildmay, Esq., of Springfield Barnes, and her eldest 
 daughter, Alice "Winthrop, subsequently married Thomas Mildmay, the son of 
 her mother's second husband. Mr. Henry Mildmay (first cousin of Governor 
 "Winthrop) held the manor of Little Badow, where Hooker taught a school, with 
 John Eliot for his usher. This Sir Henry married a daughter of Brampton 
 Gurdon, of Assington, near Groton in Suffolk, an old friend and neighbor of the 
 "Winthrops. 
 
 Sir Henry Mildmay, of "Wanstead, was the son of Sir Humphrey of Danbury, 
 and second cousin to Sir Henry of Graces. He was patron of the living in 
 "Wanstead. After the Restoration Sir Henry's estates were forfeited to the 
 Crown. He was one of the King's judges, and his manor at "Wanstead was 
 given by Charles II. to his brother, the Duke of York. 
 
 Leonard Hoar's wife, Bridget, was the daughter of John Lisle, the regicide, 
 who was murdered at Lausanne by Royalists. Her mother. Lady Alice Lisle, 
 became the victim of Jeffrey's "bloody assize. " She was beheaded in the court- 
 yard at Wmchester in 1685. She was convicted of misprision of treason for 
 givmg food and shelter to two fugitives from Monmouth's army, although she 
 protested her mnocenco, and it was a plain violation of law to convict her with- 
 out first convictmg the persons whom she was charged with having aided. Her 
 attainder was reversed on the petition of Mrs. Bridget Hoar and her sister 
 iryphena Grove, by act of Parliament in the reign of "William and Mary. Bridget 
 Hoar had two daughters. One, Tryphena, who died in infancy, is buried at 
 Braintree in the same grave with her parents and her grandmother Joanna. The 
 otlier married the Rev. Thos. Cotton of London, whose descendants wereUving 
 m England at the close of the last century, and probably are living there now. 
 
 7ss^.^ 'l^^ ''/'''®° ^/r^'^- '^"^"'■'^ i° °°e °f ^is Gleanings. (See Register, 
 1885, p. 63.) Leonard Hoar's wife Bridget was married again, to Hezelviah 
 ^^„f„''' 1 • ''^J?™'''?^,^'*^ ^"^ unhappy one. Mrs. Usher left him, and went to 
 Jinglancl m 168/, and did not return until after his death in 1697. 
 fvipnrt^n^K SS'^^^eems to have been a very able man. In the letter to Ms 
 iWZt w ^^-P • ^^^^\i^''' ^'■®* P^''^°" *o suggest the modern technical edu- 
 
 cation. He was a friend of Master Samuel Hartlib, to whom Milton addressed his 
 
celebrated tractate. None of the writers on New England history seem to have 
 understood fully the cause of Dr. Hoar's failure in the presidency of Harvard 
 College, which seems to have broken his heart, although it did not destroy the 
 interest of his family in the college, of which his grandson, the Rev. Mr. Cotton, 
 was afterward a generous benefactor. Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull thinks that Dr. 
 Hoar's difflculties were due to the fact that soon alter his arrival he connected 
 himself with the new Third Church in Boston, then recently gathered by sece- 
 ders from the First, who were Synodists or advocates of the half-way covenant, 
 thereby bringing himself into marked opposition to the Governor, a consider- 
 able number of the magistrates, all the conservative clergy, and the more in- 
 fluential members of the Corporation of Harvard ; and this at a time when (says 
 Cotton Mather) " the whole people of God throughout the Colony were too 
 much distinguished into such as favored the Old Church and such as favored 
 the New Church. (Magn. 5 : 83.) 
 
 The names of the numerous descendants in this country of Charles and Joanna 
 Hoar, through their son John and their daughters Margery Flint and Joanna 
 Qnincy, can be learned from pedigrees and records easily accessible. Besides 
 those bearing the name of Hoar, are the Prescotts, Evartses, Baldwins, Gen. 
 Terry, the hero of Fort Fisher, the Quincys and Adamses. 
 
 Among the other persons named in the will of Charles Hoar are his wife's 
 brothers, William, Walter, Edward and Thomas Hincksman. This name is 
 written in the records of that period indififerently Hincksman or Henchman. 
 There was a Walter Hincksman who, about that time, was rector of the old 
 church at Matlock in Derbyshire, the place from which Kev. Henry Flynt and 
 his brother Thomas Flynt of Concord came. Thomas Hincksman is in all proba- 
 bility Major Thomas Henchman of Concord, afterward of Chelmsford, well 
 known in the Indian wars. Edmund Hincksman, with Edmund Quincy and 
 Robert Hull, witnessed the power of attorney of Daniel Hoar above referred to. 
 Thomas Hoar, the brother of Charles, is probably the Thomas Hoar who took 
 the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Oxford, and who petitions the East India 
 Company for employment as a preacher in 1620. Thomas Veil is a person very 
 weU known in the public affairs of Gloucestershire about that period. He seems 
 to have been on the side of the Commonwealth in the early part of the 
 Civil War. But he was one of the deputation to welcome Charles II. on his 
 restoration. 
 
OLD AGE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 DBUVERBD BEFORE THB 
 
 WORCESTER, FIRE SOCIETY, 
 
 WORCESTER, MASS., U. S. A. 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR. 
 
OLD AGE AND IMMORTALITY. 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 WORCESTER FIRE SOCIETY, 
 
 CEN"TE N'N'IA.I., 
 
 Jan. 21st, 1893, 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR. 
 
 WSovce&ttv, PasiS. 
 
 PRESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON, 
 
 311 Main Street. 
 1893. 
 
Note. The Worcester Fire Society was originally estab- 
 lished for the protection of the town of Worcester against fire. 
 It has long since become a social and literary club. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 The Society will commit to competent hands the task of 
 continuing to the present day the lives of its members, 
 from the time where they were left by Governor Lincoln, 
 Colonel Davis, Judge Thomas, and our living associates who 
 have succeeded them. It is a curious fact that such personal 
 memorials have a value beyond all literature, except the 
 very best. We would gladly give everything that our 
 Puritan forefathers left in print for a few more details of 
 their lives. I am not sure that we would not be content to 
 go without one of Shakespeare's best plays could, we but 
 know a littlo more of the man who wrote them. So, be 
 assured, I deem myself performing much the humbler 
 part of the duties of this occasion, when I turn aside from 
 the tempting theme of the history of our Society and ask 
 your attentioB to a brief essay on Old Age. 
 
 I hope 1 do not seem to be thrusting on this youthful 
 company a theme with which I alone am just at present 
 concerned, and which they can by no possibility care for 
 for a long time to come. We always contemplate these 
 things more comfortably from a distance. Charles Lamb 
 thinks Milton's " Hymn to Morning" was written at mid- 
 night. " I would indite something concerning the solar 
 system," he exclaims : " Betty, bring the candles." 
 
 It will not be expected that much can be said on this 
 topic which has not been said or thought many times 
 
before, or that any one man's treatment of the theme can 
 be other than partial and fragmentary. I suppose that, 
 seen from the highest point, old age is wholly a matter of 
 temperament and not at all of length of days. 
 
 Spring still makes spring in the mind, 
 
 When sixty years are told. 
 Love wakes anew the throbbing heart. 
 
 And we are never old. 
 
 We all know persons to whom the quality we commonly 
 ascribe to old age seems to be congenital, who are well 
 described in Lowell's line : — 
 
 From the womb he marched gravely, a little old man. 
 
 We have known men who were born mouldy, to whom 
 a hundred springs would bring no sweetness, and a hun- 
 dred summers no juice. So we have all known men whose 
 life for fourscore years and ten was a perpetual morning, 
 whose thoughts were of to-morrow, and who were as ready 
 at ninety as at thirty to lead any hope, which, so long as it 
 were a hope with freedom or justice in it, never could be 
 forlorn. 
 
 John Quincy Adams breasting the stormy waves of the 
 House of Representatives at eighty-three, Josiah Quincy's 
 attack on the Know-Nothings at eighty-five ; you remember 
 his fiery utterance — "The doom of the Republic is sealed 
 when the bats take the lead of the eagles," are familiar 
 examples. 
 
 When old Josiah Quincy broke his hip on the ice at 
 ninety-two. Dr. Ellis called to see him one day at his house 
 in Park Street, Boston. He sent Miss Quincy out for a 
 walk, and sat with the patient alone for an hour. It was 
 the darkest time of the war. But the President was so full 
 
of cheerful and hopeful talk that the visitor ended his call 
 and got down stairs before he remembered to ask Mr. 
 Quincy how he did. He went back to the chamber and 
 said, "I forgot to ask how your leg is." " Damn the leg," 
 said the old fellow, giving it an angry slap, " I want to 
 see this business settled." 
 
 English history will contain few finer chapters than 
 Gladstone's campaign of this last year. It was the power 
 of a great personal presence. With the burden of his eighty- 
 three years on his shoulders he had against him a hostile 
 government, a hostile House of Lords, a hostile press, a 
 hostile aristocracy, hostile universities, and, it is rumored, 
 a hostile Queen. How he brushed them all aside ! " I am 
 not going to discuss detail with you. I represent the youth 
 and hope of England, and her advancement along ideal 
 paths. The solution of these questions of the future 
 belongs of right to us who are of the future,, and not to you 
 who are of the past." 
 
 But these are instances of a vigorous youth prolqnged to 
 fourscore, as Bryant's " Thanatopsis " and Pitt's sublime 
 battle with a hostile House of Commons are instances of 
 ripeness of intellect in early youth. Indeed, Gladstone, and 
 Pitt, and John Quincy Adams seem at no time in their lives 
 to have had so little of the boy in them as at twenty-one. 
 
 Physical pain and sickness, moral cowardice, the tem- 
 perament that doubts, the temperament that sneers, are the 
 enemies of all times of life alike. But most persons, when 
 they speak or think of old age, speak or think of the dis- 
 eases which are incident to it, and not, as in the case of 
 youth or manhood, of its natural and healthful conditions. 
 Let us consider it as a part of life, belonging to it as 
 
6 
 
 autumn does to the year, with its own occupations, hopes, 
 memories, duties and enjoyments. 
 
 There are certain occupations and public functions which 
 are conceded in all free States to be specially adapted to 
 ao-e. They are those which are supposed to contain no 
 element of strife in them, where the magistrate is expected 
 to pass upon the case or the proposed measure after the 
 controversy has been heard and is over. These functions 
 are exercised in jurisprudence by the judges of courts of 
 Hnal jurisdiction, and in legislation by the Gerousia — the 
 Spartan body of old men, the Patricians or Patres, the 
 Seigneurs or Senators, — the seniors, — and in the Church the 
 Presbytery or Elders. The framers of the constitution of 
 the United States, when they established their permanent 
 legislative chamber, whose assent should be necessary to all 
 laws and treaties and to all important executive appoint- 
 ments, and which should be a court for the trial of all 
 impeachments, undoubtedly had this in mind. They did 
 not by express provision secure a body of old men for the 
 Senate Chamber, although, by requiring the Senator to beat 
 least thirty years of age, they excluded youth. The States 
 in their practice have observed the principle far more strict- 
 ly than is required by the letter of the constitution. The 
 average age of the members of the Senate has usually ex- 
 ceeded sixty years. It is now, in spite of the recent acces- 
 sion of so many newly settled States, only slightly under 
 fifty-nine. 
 
 The hope that the Senate Chamber would be a temple, 
 into which the heats of party strife would not enter, has 
 proved to be but a dream. It was, indeed, in the early 
 days of the Senate, deemed a breach of decorum to allude 
 
to party distinctions in debate there, as it now would be in 
 the Supreme Court. But that day has long gone by. The 
 later and final appeal to the great tribunal of the people 
 renders it impossible that questions which excite the people 
 should be discussed anywhere without zeal and heat. 
 
 It will be said that the opportunity for such employment 
 is exceptional, and that it cannot be very much considered 
 in forming our plans for our evening occupation. But I 
 am speaking to a society composed, in theory, and very 
 largely, in fact, of the thirty foremost citizens of a great 
 and powerful city. You have had, and you will hereafter 
 have, your large and honorable representation in the high 
 places of national and State authority. Akin to those I 
 have named, and on the same level of dignity and useful- 
 ness, is the great and noble opportunity open to all of us by 
 our municipal citizenship. It is our good fortune that our 
 lives are cast in a city which combines the rapid growth, 
 the pliancy, the flexibility, the ambition, the hope, the 
 young life of a new community, with the culture, the 
 solidity, the deep roots, the great traditions, the stimulant 
 history of an old one. I can conceive of nothing more 
 delightful and satisfactory than to live in a city like 
 Worcester — to see it grow, to help it grow, to build up and 
 manage its libraries, schools, churches, banks, insurance 
 companies, hospitals, its university. 
 
 Hob tibi erunt artes, fortunate senex. These are tasks 
 in which the vigor and enterprise of youth demand the 
 alliance of the counsel, responsibility, trustworthiness, 
 matured experience of age. If the artist who fashions a 
 great statue, or who paints a great picture, leave behind 
 him an enviable fame and a fragrant memory, surely 
 
8 
 
 the men who have helped fashion and adorn a great city, 
 who have laid its foundations and builded its walls, who 
 have given it its character and guided the . currents of its 
 history, who have made Boston Boston and Worcester 
 Worcester, have a far better title to grateful remembrance. 
 
 The bed-rock of all our institutions — political, moneyed, 
 or charitable — is personal character. The late Waldo 
 Lincoln added an appreciable per cent, to the value of 
 the invested property of Worcester through the security 
 furnished by his steadfast integrity, his prudence, his 
 willingness to undertake even the most laborious drudgeries 
 of public service. 
 
 One of the incidents most commonly attributed to 
 old age is the substitution of retrospect for hope, or 
 the habit of living in the past rather than in the 
 present or the future. I do not think this is as true as is 
 generally believed, certainly not of sound and unselfish 
 natures. So far as my observation goes, men with whom 
 there is nothing the matter but the natural and healthy 
 advance of life are as full of patriotic expectation for their 
 country, have the windows of their souls quite as wide open 
 to the morning, see quite as much 
 
 Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, 
 at seventy as at twenty-five. This is specially true of 
 women, who Hve in the lives of children and grandchildren, 
 and in whom the ingenuous boy or youth finds a sympathy 
 in all his dreams and aspirations which he never gets from 
 his mates. 
 
 But, undoubtedly, we old men must submit, not only to 
 economize our forces, but to give up the hopes and dreams 
 which have seemed solid realities, or, at least, soberest ex- 
 
9 
 
 pectations, in the days of youth and middle life. Ah, me ! 
 when shall I commit Homer to memory? When shall I 
 read Virgil and Horace and Cicero again ? When shall I 
 spend a year in Athens? When shall I learn Italian, and 
 know as friends the shining four, whose laurelled heads shed 
 their awful halo over the darkness of the middle ages? 
 When shall I write the story of the stirring drama of the 
 last forty years, the denouement of whose mighty plot has 
 been the freedom of a race ; the achievement of the intel- 
 lectual and of the manufacturing independence of America ; 
 the transformation of a second-rate nation of number two 
 Englishmen into a mighty empire — things which I have 
 seen and part of which I have been? When shall I walk 
 down the hundred delightful paths, shaded by noble forests 
 and watered by pleasant streams, and strewn with amaranth 
 and asphodel, into which I have been gazing all these sixty 
 years as I plodded along the sandy and dusty high road ot 
 life? Alas ! The gates are shutting, one by one, only to 
 be opened again in that other world where Charles Lamb 
 was to leave off tobacco — the desire to do which, implanted 
 in his breast by a beneficent Creator, but never to be 
 realized in this life, was to his mind the chief and sufficient 
 argument for immortality. 
 
 On the other hand, we must confess that if our years 
 were to be a thousand instead of threescore and ten, not 
 threescore and ten men out of a thousand would ever make 
 these dreams realities. I suspect Methuselah's life was as 
 dull and prosy as the days were long. The leisure of a 
 healthy age permits us, in Emerson's phrase, in fault of 
 novel germs, to mature the unfallen fruit, and to use the 
 creations or accumulations we have not found use for in the 
 
10 
 
 business of life. How many of our best poets and wisest 
 thinkers have laid up in their storehouses in midsummer an 
 ample stock of wine and fruit which needed only to be 
 ripened a little in a genial autumn sun. 
 
 But the greater penalty of growing old is the loss ofvthe 
 friends of youth. Dying, to a brave man, certainly to a 
 brave old man, is in the death of others, not in his own. 
 It is this which alike gives age its terror, and is the chief 
 reconciler and consoler as the end of life comes on. When 
 the voices that were its music are silent it is well that the 
 ear grow numb. When the faces which were their delight 
 have vanished it is well that the eyes grow dim. In some 
 rare examples of old men, too, this is largely compensated 
 by that which, except health of body and mind, is the best 
 gift of God to man, a large capacity for friendship, which 
 takes in and welcomes the new generations as they come. 
 
 There are persons of milk-and-water natures who greet 
 everybody with a certain indiscriminate friendliness. There 
 are persons who hide under a slight and superficial good- 
 will for all mankind the want of any strong and hearty 
 affection for anybody but themselves. I am not speaking 
 of them. I am speaking of old men, the number of whose 
 friends is large, solely because of the largeness of the heart 
 into which they are received ; the number of whose new 
 friends is large, solely because of the freshness and sweet- 
 ness of the great souls which love them. Such a man 
 was the late General Sherman. To be admitted to his 
 friendship was like being invested with the Order of the 
 Garter, or being knighted on the field of battle. His circle 
 of friends in all parts of the country seemed to widen and 
 enlarge as he grew old. Yet there was never a man more 
 
11 
 
 fastidious in the choice of his intimates, or whose ideal of 
 manhood was loftier. There was never a man who spoke 
 out more freely the thought that was in his mind, or who 
 was more prompt to utter his impatience or his hearty 
 scorn, on fit occasion. 
 
 The dream and aspiration of the old man is for quiet and 
 leisure and rest. Yet he never escapes the divine law, 
 whose easy yoke rests upon all humanity, that the chief 
 delights of life are those which come from faithful hard 
 work, in which too often he is driven with shrinking and 
 repugnance ; 
 
 And he (as all men may find cause 
 
 When life is at a weary pause, 
 
 And they have panted up the hill 
 
 Of duty with reluctant will) , 
 
 Is thankful, even though tired and faint, 
 
 For the rich bounties of constraint. 
 
 If we may trust the representations of art or those which 
 biography or tradition have handed down to us, our ances- 
 tors, when they were old men, avoided a mistake to which 
 old men nowadays are too prone. Instead of growing 
 negligent in person or behavior as they grew old, they 
 covered what was uncomely or distasteful in the decline of 
 life with an increased care and even an increased splendor 
 in dress, and with a more punctilious stateliness in behav- 
 ior — the comitate condita gravitas which Cicero attributes 
 to Fabius. The gentleman of the old school was bred in 
 the best school for old gentlemen. There was little 
 familiarity or handshaking. They stood apart like the 
 stars, each keeping his own atmosphere to himself. The 
 old men of Holbein and Kneller, and the Dutch and Italian 
 masters, and even of our own Copley, are dressed with a 
 
12 
 
 richness of apparel which comports with the ceremony 
 which they observed and exacted in intercourse with their 
 juniors arid with each other. 
 
 Each generation as it passes from the stage gets from its 
 successor much more of criticism than of sympathy. The 
 heir is seldom on good terms with the king. 
 
 Crabbed age and youth 
 Cannot live together. 
 
 Visiting Westminster Abbey last summer, Archdeacon 
 Farrar pointed out to us the remarkable fact that there is 
 no tomb or monument over the dust of an English Sover- 
 eisn, either there or at Windsor, since Queen Elizabeth. 
 The throne has been in the same family, as, indeed, it has 
 been from the time of Alfred. But no English monarch 
 has loved his predecessor well enough to build him a tomb. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, it is due to this trait in human nature 
 that life on this planet is even tolerable. It is best that the 
 leaders of the successive generations, the great monarchs of 
 thought, do not love each other too well. What tameness 
 and sameness, what a hideous agelong nightmare of must 
 and mould, would the world have gone through but for this 
 revolt of each age against the ways of its predecessor. Let 
 us thank God with our brilliant preacher that Abraham, 
 Isaac and Jacob are dead — that all the Abrahams, Isaacs, 
 and Jacobs are dead — and that so much of their works has 
 followed them. I am, of course, not speaking of the 
 tenderness of the family aflPections in private life. But I 
 am speaking of the power of one age to impress its 
 manners, opinions, customs upon another and to compress 
 its successor into its own mould. It is the hardest thing 
 for an old man to find out that all his lecturing and reason- 
 
13 
 
 ing, all his lamentation and indignation, will not bring this 
 to pass. If the youth find your example to his taste he 
 will sometimes follow it. But he will not alter his course 
 for your preaching. 
 
 We should, I think, expect beforehand that the thoughts 
 of a healthy old man would be busy with the question — 
 what is to come next? that, as he approaches the inevita- 
 ble goal, he would be taking thought of the future, and at 
 least be speculating what manner of mansion he is to occupy 
 when his present dwelling gets out of repair and uninhabit- 
 able and the landlord gives him notice to quit. 
 
 But so far as my observation goes it is the young men 
 who deal most courageously with the great doctrine of 
 immortality. I doubt if there be any great and original 
 contribution to the thought of mankind on this great topic 
 of all topics which has come from a man past seventy. 
 Such men are either silent, thinking, with Carlyle, that 
 they do not care to strike their heads against walls ; or, 
 perhaps, disliking to be suspected of canting or hypocrisy ; 
 or they content themselves with some simple reaffirmation 
 of the creed of their early days. Most men do not care to 
 uncover this domain of the soul to the curious and prying 
 eyes of the multitude. I have, myself, little respect for 
 this fastidiousness. We were not born, and we are not to 
 die, or to be born again, in confidence. Our age, which is 
 bending all its energies to penetrate the future in this 
 world, from the prophet of the weather bureau to the great 
 metropolitan newspaper which so exhausts itself in antici- 
 pating what is to happen to-morrow that it becomes in- 
 capable of a truthful narration of what took place yesterday, 
 sometimes seems to be giving up the great question of a 
 
14 ■ 
 
 future life in despair. But this surely is an unmanly 
 attitude. If we even concede to skepticism or agnosticism 
 that our human philosophy gets no help from the other 
 side, that " the secret of heaven is well kept, that no 
 imprudent, no sociable angel has dropped an early syllable 
 to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals," still 
 let us, at least, say with Simmias in the Phosdo : 
 
 "For I dare say that you, Socrates, feel, as I do, how 
 very hard or almost impossible is the attainment of any 
 certainty about questions such as these in the present life ; 
 and yet I should deem him a coward who did not prove 
 what is said about them to the uttermost, or whose heart 
 failed him before he had examined them on every side. 
 For he should persevere until he has attained one of two 
 things — either he should discover or learn the truth about 
 them, or, if this is impossible, I would have him take the 
 best and most irrefragable of human notions, and let this 
 be the raft upon which he sails through life, not without 
 risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some word of God which 
 will more surely and safely carry him." — Simmias in 
 Phoedo, 85. 
 
 James Martineau, whom Tyndall, who has more than 
 once broken a lance with him, declares the foi'emost philo- 
 sophic thinker since St. Paul, well points out, if there is to 
 be a disappointment in this matter, who it is that will be 
 disappointed. It is the lofty and heroic souls who have 
 lived and died on the heights of unselfish virtue. It is the 
 pure intelligences that have dealt with the things that be of 
 the spirit. It is not the narrow intelligence, or the base 
 aspiration. It is Plato and Socrates and Paul, not Cleon 
 or Thersites or Nero that are cheated. The disappointment 
 is of great souls and not of little ones, and of the soul in its 
 highest and not in its lowest mood. 
 
 I hold these truths to be clear. The universe is planned 
 
15 
 
 upou a scheme which cannot be supposed to leave out the 
 immortality of man. The Creator of the universe has made 
 this promise to the soul. Man, the universe, and the power 
 that underlies the universe, are alike degraded and become 
 hateful and despicable if there be no immortality. If any- 
 thing be conceded as having existence beyond blind and 
 brutal force, anything into which design enters, the con- 
 cession involves, to my mind, the immortality of the human 
 soul, or it involves conditions degrading alike to the 
 universe and to its author. 
 
 Who can believe that the eternal fires of the sun were 
 kindled, that the dawn and the sunset are painted, that the 
 law which keeps the fixed stars in their places, which dis- 
 misses the comet on its pathway through the skies, promis- 
 ing that in a thousand ^ears it shall return again, true to 
 its hour, and keeps its word, that the moral law, which- 
 shall endure when these things pass away, were ordained 
 and established only to ornament and keep in order a 
 dwelling whose use, after all, is to be in the end nothing 
 but the receptacle of a compost heap of the carcasses of an 
 extinct humanity ? 
 
 Is there in all history a more savage story than that of 
 the Highland chieftain who shut up his rebellious nephew 
 in a dungeon, fed him on salt meats till he had provoked 
 an insatiate desire for water, and then let down to him a 
 covered cup, from which the victim having eagerly snatched 
 the cover and found it empty, was then left to die the most 
 .dreadful of all deaths^ — death from thirst ? But is that a 
 whit more cruel than to plant in us this longing after 
 immortality, "the thirst that in the soul doth rise," de- 
 manding "a drink divine," and then to put to our lips 
 
16 
 
 in mockery an empty cup? Is the tigress in her lair 
 capable of" a greater affection for her offspring than the 
 ATithor of the universe for His? Is man capable of a deeper 
 love, a larger liounty, a more scrupulous faith, than his 
 Creator ? 
 
 This belief has its foundation in the instinct of universal 
 humanity. The latest and most authentic report tells us 
 that there is no savage tribe so low in the scale of being as 
 to be without it. It appears in the oldest literature. It is, 
 directly or indirectly, the inspirer of all patriotism, the 
 stimulant to all heroism, the fountain of all love, and the 
 comfort in all sorrow. Every gift of noblest origin is 
 breathed upon by this hope's perpetual breath. There is 
 no reason why He who has created it should not satisfy it. 
 There is room enough in these millions upon millions of 
 Spinning discs ; there is room enough in spiritual geometry, 
 in the compass of an egg stell for the promise to be kept 
 to all the generations of mankind. 
 
 Old age, as Mr. Webster said of the bed of death, brings 
 every man to his individuality. It is well that this faith 
 in which the age of all human nature finds its solace, rests 
 on the instincts which are common to all humanity. Meta- 
 physicians may question the trustworthiness of the human 
 faculties when they report upon it, as they question the 
 trustworthiness of their report of the existence of the 
 matter or the existence of God. But the faith abides. It 
 does not depend on philosophic speculation for its support. 
 There is no danger that philosophic speculation can over- 
 throw it. 
 
 But, as I have said, these thoughts, which seem to belong 
 logically and naturally to the time of old age, are not 
 
17 
 
 those which, in our experience, we find filling an old man*s 
 breast. The great and healthy souls of all ages, of all 
 nations, of all religions, seem, as they grow old, to abandon 
 subtle reasoning about the matter, to lay less and less 
 stress upon miraculous attestation, and to agree in resting 
 upon the simple faith that the power which has constructed 
 this fabric of things is conscious and is beneficent, whether 
 that faith find utterance in the brave challenge of Paul : — 
 
 For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, 
 nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to 
 come, nor heighth, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be 
 able to separate us from the love of God ; 
 
 Or in the sweet evening song of Whittier : — 
 
 And so beside the silent sea 
 
 I wait the muffled oar. 
 No harm from Him can come to me 
 
 On ocean or on shore. 
 
 I know not where His islands lift 
 
 Their fronded palms in air, 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 
 Beyond His love and care ; 
 
 Or in the lofty dying note of the great light of the early 
 church, St. Ambrose : 
 
 " Non ita vixi ut me vixisse pudeat,7iec mori timeo, 
 quia bonum habemus domihum" ; — 
 
 Or, in those sentences in which Plato sums up for his 
 generation and for all generations, the richest lesson of all 
 thought and the result of all experience : 
 
 "The world is the fairest of creations and he is the best 
 of causes. 
 
 " No man can be a true worshipper of the gods who does 
 not know that the soul is immortal. 
 
 "So far as the principle of immortality dwells in us, to 
 that we ipust hearken." 
 
The Opportunity of the Colored Leader. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 TO THE 
 
 (AW Class of Howard Uniyrrsity, 
 
 1894, 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. GEORGE F. HOAR, LL. D., 
 
 U. S. SENATE. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 HOWARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1894. 
 
The Opportunity of the Colored Leader. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 TO THE 
 
 I^AW Cuss OF Howard University, 
 
 1894. 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. GEORGE F. HOAR, LL. D., 
 
 U. S: SENATE. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 HOWARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1894. 
 
The Opportunity of the Colored Leader. 
 
 The I,aw School of Howard University does well in celebrating 
 at this commencement season the accession of another band of 
 chosen youth to the honorable company of lawyers. It is fitting 
 that some elder should welcome them to the great brotherhood of 
 the profession, to a share in its historic glories, its opportunities for 
 labor, for intellectual and moral growth, for a noble public service. 
 
 I think few thoughtful observers will deny that the training of the 
 American lawyer is, on the .whole, the best training which our Re- 
 public affords for American public life. There has been no period 
 in our history when the American people have needed, in the most 
 difficult circumstances, the best capacity for discussion, for adminis- 
 tration, or for leadership, that it has not turned instinctively to its 
 trained lawyers, save only when the question was to be settled by the 
 arbitrament of arms. Every President of the United States, with 
 the exception of Washington, Taylor and Grant, was educated for the 
 bar. 
 
 The great State papers of the period before the Revolution, in 
 which the mighty debate with Great Britain was conducted, are the 
 work of lawyers, of John Jay, John Adams and his illustrious kinsman, 
 of Dickinson, of Henry, of Lee and of Hamilton. The Declaration of 
 Independence, in which the corner s'tone of this nation was laid up- 
 on the doctrine of eternal justice, and its simple corollary, the equal- 
 ity of natural rights, was drawn by the hand of a lawyer. Another 
 lawyer was, by the acknowledgment of the author of the Declaration, 
 its "Colossus on the floor of Congress." "John Adams," said Mr. 
 Jefferson in the hearing of Mr. Webster, " came out with a power of 
 thought and expression which moved us from our seats. ' ' The people 
 supported the decision of Congress; bu^t it was the decision of Con- 
 gress which ■determined the question. Of the fifty-two signers of 
 the Declaration, twenty-four were of the legal profession. 
 
 Thirty out of fifty -five of the men who framed the Constitution 
 had been practising lawyers. The minority of laymen in the Con- 
 
vention contributed little to the formation of the instrument. The 
 great authority of Washington helped much to secure the adoption 
 of the Constitution by his countrymen ; but he took no substantial 
 part in the debates. The wisdom and calmness of the aged Franklin 
 more than once composed the strifes which threatened to break up 
 the assembly ; but everybody now agrees that it is fortunate that the 
 propositions which Dr. Franklin made in that Convention were not 
 inserted in the instrument. 
 
 The statesmanship of America has more than once been called to 
 deal with financial problems on whose solution the fate of the nation 
 itself was hanging, more difficult than were ever encountered by the 
 ministers of any monarch. Yet in every such crisis we have turned 
 (and the event has justified it), not to trained bankers or financiers, 
 but to trained lawyers — to Hamilton, to Chase, to Fessenden, to 
 John Sherman. 
 
 I would not undervalue the service of "men of other callings in the 
 great philanthropic movements — of Channing, or of Garrison, or 
 of Whittier. But even in the anti slavery movement this leadership 
 must be shared with Sumner and Quincy and Charles Allen and 
 Andrew. Our political leaders of all parties and of all generations 
 have, with very few exceptions, been taken from the legal profes- 
 sion. 
 
 So, when I address a company of colored youth who have dedi- 
 cated themselves to the law, I assume that I am addressing men 
 who aspire to the service of leadership in the great public questions 
 which specially concern the destiny of the colored race in this 
 country, and I wish to take the short time which is limited to me in 
 addressing to them a few words of counsel and of encouragement. 
 
 If I seem to anybody engaged in any other vocation to claim too 
 much, either of dignity or capacity for public service, for the pro- 
 fession which I love, let him remember that I do it for no selfish or 
 ignoble purpose. I would excitfein the young lawyer a just pride 
 in his calHng, solely as an incentive to usefulness to the State. If 
 any other class of men think we occupy their ground, let them show 
 their title, and we will not stand in their way. The high places of 
 service are not crowded. We will leave ample room and verge 
 enough for all the good their capacity can accomplish, or their hearts 
 can desire. No lawyer who, in these later centuries, has filled con- 
 spicuous^ pubhc station in America, or England, or France, has inher- 
 ited it from ancestors, or has bought it with money, or has been pro- 
 
moted to it without having his quality tried, in the face of day and be- 
 fore the people, in strenuous contests in an arena Kvhere the wrestlers 
 need all their strength, and where the mental and moral muscle is 
 thoroughly tested. 
 
 ■ I take it for granted that I am speaking to Americans, to patriots, 
 to young men whose hopes are bound up in America, who mean to 
 live and to die in America and whose patriotic aspiration is solely for 
 her. The colored youth is bound to his country by a tie as dear and 
 sacred as any other. However she may have treated his ancestors 
 in the past, she has been the first among nations to recognize his 
 complete manhood and complete title to equality in every civil rela- 
 tion. And if he owe/ much to her, she also owes much to him. So 
 far in our history there is no record, among your eight millions, of 
 a black man who has been false, even in thought, to the flag of his 
 country. 
 
 It happened to me, a few years ago, presiding over an assembly 
 of Massachusetts Republicans, to express the opinion that the rem- 
 edy for the evil which the colored mau'vsufiers must be, very largely, 
 with the colored man himself, that it was time for him to come out 
 from among the wards and take his place among the guardians. I 
 added, that there is an opportunity for him, in this country, at this 
 hour, greater than was ever offered to human being in the world 
 before. 
 
 A somewhat zealous critic, of whom I would speak with all kind- 
 ness, challenged this statement. He thought that in the most 
 charitable view it manifested great lack of wisdom, and that it was 
 quite doubtful whether the speaker was any better than he should 
 be in the matter of , common honesty! He pointed out, with entire 
 truth, that it is quite hard for a colored man to get profitable em- 
 ployment in the learned professions, or the higher callings of life; 
 thaf he by no means gets a just share of the offices; and that he , 
 himself knew of a colored man in a post office somewhere who had 
 failed to get a well-deserved promotion. 
 
 This fault-finder had, it seems to me, failed to learn the first 
 great lesson of American life. He had not discovered that, in this 
 Republic, to all generous natures, the words "obstacle" and "op- 
 portunity" mean exactly the same thing. My purpose to-night is 
 to impress this truth upon the colored youth whom my words may 
 reach. He has got enough of the American spirit in him, and has 
 breathed the air of freedom long enough, to have learned this lesson 
 
from his own history and from all history. To him henceforth there 
 is to be more stimulus in a summons to battle than in an appointment 
 to a clerkship. He will prefer to take for his model Matthew the 
 chosen apostle, rather than Matthew sitting at the receipt of customs-. 
 The opportunities of life to him will be found, if not in the condi- 
 tions which have created Frederick Douglass and Cristophe and 
 Toussaint Iv'Ouverture, at least in the fact that he and his kindred 
 have just come out of slavery, that the prejudices of ages are still 
 hanging over them, that their place in our social life, and their 
 equality in our political life are yet to be won. 
 
 I ask you to consider with me what the colored youth who shall ■ 
 aspire to be the leader and benefactor of his ra£e can find of stimu- 
 lant, of challenge, of hope, and of duty in the conditions which sur- 
 round him and the race to which he belongs. What forces has he 
 to lead ? What fortresses has he to attack ? What lesson shall he 
 teach ? Who are his enemies ? What are his dangers ? Whence 
 are to come his victories and his triumphs ? 
 
 In the first. place, there are of his people about eight millions in 
 this country who are to be united together and united to him by 
 the bond of a common hope, a common destiny in the future, and a 
 community of wrong and suffering in the past. No wise and patri- 
 otic man would desire to keep alive race distinctions in this country 
 for purposes of political action. But it seems impossible that the 
 tie of race should not be felt, especially by you who are distinguish- 
 ed from your countrymen of different color in so many ways. The 
 American of Rnglish blood is proud of his lineage, and turns to the 
 literature and history of the mother country for a thousand inspira- 
 tions. For more than fifty years the Irish stream has been flowing 
 this way, yet the Irishmen hang together and tfieir passionate love 
 for Ireland has not been abated. The Scandinavian and the German 
 never forget the fatherland. The ancestors of the Canadian!^ of 
 Quebec left France more than two centuries ago. He has been a 
 docile subject of Great Britain for 130 years, yet Sir George Cartier 
 said, when the Franco-German war ended : "If any one would know 
 today how far we are Frenchmen, I answer : "Go into the towns, go 
 into the country, accost the humblest among us and relate to him 
 the events of that gigantic struggle which has fixed the attention of 
 the world; announce to him that France is conquered; then place your 
 hand upon hi^ breast, and tell me what can make his heart beat, if 
 it is not love for his country." 
 
This eight million people have so far as constitutional provisions 
 can secure them, all the rights of American citizens. What the Con 
 stitution declares, every legislatifr^ of the Nation and of the state; 
 every Executive officer of the Nation and of the State takes an 
 oath to defend and support. You have, 'therefore, on your 
 side every moral and religious sanction, as well as every constitu- 
 tional sanction that can bind the conscience of the men who make 
 laws or the men who are to enforce them. The forces which are ar- 
 rayed against you are temporary. These forces are permanent and 
 win abide. 
 
 Do not think that in what I have said I am advocating race dis- 
 tinctions or race issues in politics. I shall welcome the day wlien 
 every American citizen, of whatever race, will choose his side with- 
 out a thought of his own color or of the country of his origin. But 
 so long as men are denied the most precious rights of citizenship 
 solely because of their race, by politicians who eagerly seek the 
 alliance of ignorance or vice wherever else it is to be found, a man 
 of that race would be base indeed if he failed to defend himself and 
 to defend those who have his blood by everj' peaceful instrumental- 
 ity, which the law places in his hands; especially by the instrument- 
 ality of the ballot, which is alike the most peaceful and the most 
 powerfiil of all. 
 
 Your colored leader, then, has eight million friends to stand 'by 
 him if he reckon those of his own race only, a number twice and 
 a half as large as that of the people who wrested their freedom 
 from Great Britain, and framed the constitution. The future great 
 public teacher of the colored race will have a people ot eight million 
 from which to draw his audience. When Garrison began his crusade 
 he could perhaps gather an audience of fifty men and women in a 
 lecture hall. When we founded the Free Soil party in 1848, we 
 thought we did pretty well when we got 291,000 votes in the whole 
 country, with two million and a half against us. Yet here you 
 have fourteen hundred thousand votes, counting your own vote alone. 
 Of these some few maj' be bought by money or office; some few may 
 be frightened; some few may be flattered or deceived. The color- 
 ed man is no better than his white brother in this respect. But the 
 mass of the colored voters will be sure to think that the establish- 
 ment of their right to vote is the most important issue in politics un- 
 til thai right shall be secured. 
 
 The progress of the colored people has in some respects been 
 
much slower then we had hoped. I suppose it is true that there 
 are regions in the South where their material condition has not 
 greatly improved. On the othenband there are regions where they 
 are becoming land-owners, are educating their children well, and 
 are administering local government in a manner that commands the 
 respect and admiration of their white neighbors. During the de- 
 bate on the Election Bill, two years ago, two Southern Democratic 
 Senators bore the highest testimony to the capacity of this race. 
 They gave away their own case when they did it. Mr. Bate of Ten- 
 nessee declared that the cotton 'Crop, estimated by different reports, 
 the last year at from 7,500,000 to 8,000,000 bales, giving this coun- 
 try what is equal to a cash deposit abroad of 300 million dollars, 
 was raised chiefly by negro labor. Judge Bate declared further that 
 he lived in a city of seventy five to eighty thousand inhabitants, 
 where the Republican party, mostly colored, has been predominant. 
 " There is," he says, "no trouble. They have a modified Austra- 
 lian ballot law. The saloons are closed election day, and the police 
 on guard. It is like Sunday. Men go to the polls as quietly as 
 to church, notwithstanding there is a Republican majority, and 
 five out of six of that majority are colored. The reason is, that the 
 whites do not disturb the negroes, who vote as they please." 
 
 Gen. Walthall, of Mississippi, described county after county in his 
 state, wealthy and prosperous, where the negroes are largely in the 
 majority, and where nearly all the ofl&ces are held by colored men. 
 If the famous city of Nashville, if many counties of Mississippi, un- 
 der the government of this race, but twenty five years out of slavery, 
 are wealthy and prosperous, models of order and peace, according to 
 these high authorities, does it not speak pretty well for the fitness of 
 the colored men for citizenship? It is said that these men have the ex- 
 ample, influence, and support of the whites, and that is true. They 
 will always have the example, influence and support of the whites. 
 The whites in their turn will have the example, influence, and sup- 
 port of the colored men . Each race will make its own contribution to 
 the national character. Each will get its own profit from association 
 with the other. 
 
 You have then a race whose labor has restored the prosperity of a 
 vast region devastated by war, the product of whose industry has 
 buttressed the financial credit of the country, and whose rule has fur- 
 nished conspicuous examples of wealthy and prosperous communities, 
 models of order and peace. The progress of the colored people has 
 
been, as I just said, in some respects, much slower than one had 
 hoped. But the experience of thirty years of freedom is enough 
 to demonstrate to every impartial observer the fitness of this race to 
 take its place as an equal in the Republic, and to perform its full share 
 of all political and social duties. It has produced skillful physicians, 
 able lawyers, eloquent orators, excellent professors, wise, honest, 
 and trustworthy public servants. During my service in the House 
 of Representatives there were an average of eight colored members 
 from the South who would compare favorably with any equal num- 
 ber of white men, chosen on any of principle selection in the highest 
 capacity for legislation or debate. The colored youth, in propor- 
 tion to their number, carry off more than their full share of honors at 
 the Commencement season. These are not miracles, prodigies, or 
 accidents. These examples simply show what the ordinary colored 
 youth may accomplish with industry, under the stimulant of an hon- 
 orable ambition, under favorable circumstances. The capacity of 
 these men is a fair measure, in my opinion, of the capacity of the 
 race. 
 
 I am not here to flatter or to exaggerate. I know very well that 
 what I have said is by no means universally true, or true on a large 
 scale, but the examples I have cited are of such a character as to 
 show you that you can make it true on a large scale. You may say 
 that these cases are as yet but exceptions. But they prove the rule; 
 and you can make them the rule. 
 
 I,et me advise you above all things to speak to your countrymen 
 the language not of discourgement but of hope. Above all things 
 speak the language of a loftlV and strenuous patriotism. Never for- 
 get that you are American by a title as absolute as that of any other, 
 through the blood in his veins has come down to him from the men 
 of Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. Love your country and your 
 country will love you. Serve your country and your country will 
 serve you. Do not overlook the disadvantages under which the 
 colored people in this country labor. It is to be the duty and the 
 aspiration of your life to overcome them and to remove them. But 
 do not forget that in whatever respect you are badly off, you are 
 better off, not only than your own ancestors in any other generation, 
 but than the people of nearly all the nations of the earth. The 
 Emperor of Russia rules over a sixth part of mankind. Is there 
 any colored man in "Washington who would like to change places 
 with the serf of Russia? Would you be willing to exchange your 
 
hope, or 3-our liberty, for the condition of the 400 milUon people 
 of China, or the dwellers in the Southern Archipelagos? 
 
 Do not give yourselves too much trouble about what is called 
 social ostracism. That exists everywhere, in monarchies, in aristo- 
 cracies and republics. It will exist always. It is natural to almost 
 every son of Adam, and I suppose more natural to every daughter 
 of Adam, to dehght in feeling a little above somebody else. The 
 shilling holds up its head and brags over the sixpence; and the 
 counterfeit shilling especially asserts itself. A man must have a 
 soft spot in him somewhere who cares too much about that. It has 
 always been used as an instrument by people who can find no better 
 to their hands. The Tories tried it on the Whigs in the time of 
 the Revolution. The Hunkers in Boston tried it with Charles Sum- 
 ner and John Andrew. I suspect our colored friends will, in due 
 time, learn to follow the fashion which their white brethren and 
 .sisters set them. You will get along with it. If the whole 60 mil- 
 lion white people shut you out of their parlors, tl;iere are 8 million 
 colored people who will, bye and bye, have parlors quite as good, 
 who will be glad to let you in. If in any part of the country you are 
 not welcome in the white man's car, so conduct yourselves that the 
 company in the colored man's car shall be better. Do not concern 
 yourselves with these trifles. If you are placed by the side of the 
 Caucasian race and are to breed and nourish the great qualities from 
 which cometh a noble manhood, you must not concern yourselves 
 "With snch things as these. The martyrs who fought great fights for 
 righteousness in other days, and freed races or nations from bondage, 
 who were the leaders and deliverers of the oppressed, who kept the 
 faith, and received the crown, did not trouble themselves about social 
 •distinctions. Daniel was thrown into a lion's den. Shadrach, Me- 
 shach, and Abed-nego were cast into the fiery furnace. St Peter 
 was crucified with his head downward. The early Christians hid in 
 catacombs, and died on beds of living coals, or starved in their sub- 
 terranean caverns. The first Protestants were burned at the stake at 
 Smithfield and Oxford and Gloucester. The Pilgrim Fathers came 
 to New England with their households, to land on a bleak, desolate 
 coast in midwinter. Half of them died before the spring. And yet 
 not one of the original company went back. Sumner encountered 
 for years a storm of hate and rage from his own countrymen— hot 
 and severe as a blast from hell. His mail, night and morning, was 
 crowded with letters full of reviling and scorn, threats of violence and 
 
assassination. He was stricken down in the Senate Chamber. In 
 his desire to recover, to speak one word more for Freedom, to 
 speak one more word for you, he submitted himself to the moxa: 
 torture which his surgeon declared terrible as ever was inflicted on 
 man o^ beast. Twelve times the pitiless fire was kindled upon his 
 spine — the ver\- source and origin of agony — and he did not flinch. 
 These things have been done and borne in the past times that you 
 might sit, gathered peaceably in this hall tonight in freedom and in 
 honor, and that the crown of Christian liberty, and of American 
 Citizenship, might rest upon your temples. And is it for you to 
 murmur or flinch because j'ou find a little difficulty in getting em- 
 ployment, or because the race prejudices, and the hatreds of a 
 thousand years have not melted away from your path in a day ? 
 
 I suppose the greatest and most powerful nations have been those 
 which have been made up by blending the qualities of many races. 
 I am not now speaking of physical intermixture. I allude to the 
 contribution to that composite unity which we call national character; 
 of the mental and moral qualities of separate races and peoples. This 
 process is proceeding on a larger scale than ever before in this 
 country at this moment. The negro will make his important con- 
 tribution to it. He well bring traits which his white brethren lack. 
 
 Has it ever occtured to you that the great qualities which made 
 Abraham Lincoln, are precisely the qualities in which the negro is 
 great — patience, humor, affection, incapacity for permanent resent- 
 ment, circumspection, endurance ? 
 
 These traits will perhaps be more enduring and powerful if they 
 are made by a race tempered and hardened in the fires and on the 
 anvil of persecution. It is but a few centuries since the Jew was 
 the outcast of Europe. He was everywhere despised, hated, perse 
 cuted, and trampled upon. He was driven from city to city, from 
 country to country. Saxon and Latin, Christian and Moslem, Span- 
 iard and Moor harried him with contempt and hate from one place 
 of torture to another. If the Jew ventured from his hiding place he 
 was stoned. His wealth made him the prey of the rapacity of the 
 noble, and his poverty and weakness the victim of the rabble. Yet 
 how has this Oriental conquered Christendom by the sublimity of his 
 patience? The great poet of New England, who sits by every Ameri- 
 can fireside a beloved and perpetual guest, in that masterpiece of 
 his art, the Jewish Cemetery at Newport, has described the degrada- 
 tion and the triumph of these persecuted children of God. 
 
How came they here ? What burst of Christian hate, 
 
 . What persecution, merciless and blind, 
 Drove o'er the sea — that desert desolate — 
 These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind ? 
 
 They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure, 
 Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire; 
 
 Taught in the school of patience to endure 
 The life of anguish and the death of fire. 
 
 Anathema maranatha ! was the cry 
 That rang from to^n to town, from street to street; 
 
 At every gate the accursed Mordecai 
 Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet. 
 
 Pride and humiliation hand in hand 
 
 Walked with them through the world where'er they went; 
 Trampled and beaten were they as the sand. 
 
 And yet unshaken as the continent. 
 
 " Forty years ago," says Lord Beaconsfield, that great Jew who 
 held England in the hollow of his hand, and who played on her aris- 
 tocracy as on an organ, who made himself the master of an alien na- 
 tion, its ruler, its oracle, and through it, and despite of it, for a time 
 the master of Europe — 
 
 "Forty years ago — not a longer period than the children of Israel 
 wandered in the desert — the two most dishonored races in Europe 
 were the Afric and the Hebrew. The world has probably by this dis- 
 covered that it is impossible to destroy the Jews. The attempt to 
 extirpate them has been made under the most favorable auspices 
 and on the largest scale; the most considerable means that man 
 could command have been pertinaciously applied to this object for 
 the longest period of recorded time. Egyptian Pharaohs, Assyrian 
 kings, Roman emperors, Scandinavian crusaders, Gothic princes, 
 and holy inquisitors, have alike devoted their energies to the fulfill- 
 ment of this common purpose. Expatriation, exile, captivity, confis- 
 cation, torture on the most ingenious, and massacre on the most ex- 
 tensive scale, a curious system of degrading customs and debasing 
 laws which would have broken the heart of any other people, have 
 been tried, and in vain." 
 
 Ivord Beaconsfield admits that the Jews contribute more than their 
 proportion to the aggregate of the vile; that the lowest class of Jews 
 are obdurate, malignant, odious, and revolting. And yet this race 
 
13 
 
 of dogs, as it has often been termed in scorn, furnishes Europe today- 
 its masters in finance, and orator}', and 'statesmanship, and art and 
 music. Rachel, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Disrael45?.othschild, Heine, 
 Benjamin, are but samples. of intellectual power of the race which 
 to-day controls the finance and press of Europe. 
 
 You of the colored race have yet some formidable obstacles to 
 encounter, as you lift yourselves to the plane of entire equality with 
 your white brethren in the republic. Some of these obstacles are in 
 your enemies. Some, quite as formidable, are in yourselves. It is 
 true, unquestionably, that there still exists in this country a consider- 
 able race prejudice. I believe, however, it is dying out. It is much 
 exaggerated by designing men for political purposes. I have no 
 sympathy or respect for the assumption which is still found in many 
 utterances upon this question, especially at the South, that race ha- 
 tred is the dominant passion of the human soul; that it is stronger 
 than love of country; stronger than the principle of equality; stron- 
 ger than Christianity; stronger than justice. The appeal is made 
 to-day, not so much, in my judgment, for the sake of race supremacy 
 as for the sake of party supremacy. Out of that appeal came the 
 black codes of the period that followed the war. From that came 
 the Mississippi plan of 1875. From that has come the thousands of 
 election crimes, and overthrow of the rule of the majority in many 
 states, and at times in one house of Congress. From that has come 
 the Mississippi constitution of 1890. 
 
 I believe it to be the first duty of every colored man, as I believe 
 it to be the first duty of every white man, to resist this doctrine un- 
 til it is overthrown. If it be not overthrown it will end in the over- 
 throw of the Cohs^itution, and of constitutional liberty itself. These 
 two races can li^^ together as equals, neither as a race commanding, 
 neither as a race obeying. They can live together, obeying noth- 
 ing but the law framed by lawmakers whom every citizen shall have 
 an equal share in choosing.' I do not agree with those persons who 
 claim that toward your race there should exist or does exist an un- 
 quenchable race hatred, stronger than love of country ; stronger 
 than justice ; stronger than material interest. It is a feeling which 
 exists toward no other race which is admitted to citzenship in this 
 country. It does not exist elsewhere toward the negro. It does 
 not exist in him anywhere toward the white. You will not suspect 
 me for a moment of underestimating the duty of securing to you every 
 political and civil right in practice as they are secured in theory by 
 
14 
 
 the Constitution. I do not think I can cast ray own vote in freedom 
 and in honor in M^sachusetts until my fellow-citizen, of whatever 
 color or race, can cist his vote in freedom and in honor all over the 
 country. Until that is done the Constitution is not a reality. Until 
 that demand for justice is listened to, we have no right to boast of 
 our constitutional government , to celebrate our national birthday, 
 or to join in the music pf our national anthem. 
 
 "Its knocking rises in the music's wrong, 
 
 And mingles with the song. 
 Glory and honor are set by till it 
 
 An answer get." 
 
 But Still this obstacle is to be overcome chiefly by other than polit- 
 ical instrumentalities. The colored man will best remove all political 
 obstacles to his advancement by confluering the enemies within his 
 own bosom, and by dealing severely and sternly with himself. I am 
 happy to know that the faults and the vices born of slavery he is 
 fast overcoming under the influences of freedom. No people and 
 no class of people will long fail to treat with respect and to admit 
 to every right of citizenship men who are thoroughly worthy of re- 
 spect It is by his personal worth alone that the colored man is 
 to prevail in this contest. 
 
 The colored leader of the future who will raise his people to their 
 proper station in the state must be something more than a politician; 
 something more even than a statesman. While he must contribute 
 his full share in counsel and in action to the government of his 
 country, it will be demanded of him that he shall bear a heavier 
 burden even than this. He must be an example and instructor in 
 the simple, sober, austere virtues which enabld||the Puritan to 
 found his Commonwealth, and have enabled the Swiss to keep his 
 little republic sate among the thrones of Europe for eight hundred 
 years. I know the sunny, genial, music -loving, pleasure-loving, 
 peace-loving nature of the African. But he must learn to follow 
 the rugged paths that those who have gone before him have walked, 
 if he is to stand on the same lofty heights and to breathe the same 
 pure air. He should cultivate the passion for the acquisition of pro- 
 perty. He should learn in this age of easy gain and profligate expen- 
 ditures the old-fashioned virtue of saving and frugality. [He should 
 imitate the Irishman in the eagerness with which he seizes upon 
 land and the tenacity with which he holds it fast when he has got it. 
 He should cultivate that large public spirit for which the American 
 
IS 
 
 people are distinguished among the nations of the earth. Let him 
 cease to be a beggar or soHcitor of ahns, and be ambitious to be a 
 creator and benefactor. L,et him be an example of temperance and 
 shun the snare which has destroyed so many of his white fellow- 
 citizens. Let him cultivate the supreme virtue of veracity. Above 
 all let him know that the elevation of his race can come only and 
 will come surely through the elevation of its women. 
 
 The great New England philosopher said many years ago 
 "What is civilization ?" I answer, "The power of good women." 
 There may be rare exceptions, but the colored people will as a race 
 never learn to follow what is excellent in the example of other races; 
 they never will acquire the mental and moral quality which will en- 
 able them to hold their place in the stern strife of American life 
 unless that learning and acquisition come to them as they have come 
 to others before them, at their mother's knees. If they are to im- 
 itate in future generations whatever there has been of heroism in 
 the past; if they are to love their country; if they are to be brave, 
 free, generous, gentle, the lesson must come to them from their 
 mothers. No nation, no city, no household, no man ever took an 
 elevated place, where the influence of woman was not the inspira- 
 tion of the heroic temper. . Learn reverence for the purity and the 
 chastity of woman. When you have acquired these virtues, you 
 will have not only the constitution and the law, but you will have 
 all the manhood and the womanhood of your country on your side. 
 No race possessed of these qualities can long be the subject of 
 oppression or injustice. 
 
 Mr. Brackett, author of an excellent paper published at Johns 
 Hopkins, well says, "The position the colored people are to take 
 among a larger people of a more favored race must come, not by 
 virtue of any laws, but by their own virtue." They must, let me 
 r"p"itiiijTjn1f rf — rr""^ defend their own rights as citizens by every 
 political instrumentaHty which the Constitution has placed in their 
 power, and this, not alone because it is their own rights that are in 
 question, but because, as good citizens of the Republic, they are bound 
 to defend every right of citizenship that is in peril. But the political 
 , conduct of the colored man is of far less importance at the present 
 time than that personal conduct by which he is to manifest his person- 
 al worth among his neighbors and associates. No race, no class of 
 citizens, can permanently be treated with disrespect, or kept from the 
 position, either in politics or society, to which they are fairly entitled. 
 
i6 
 
 wlio are well educated, intelligent, honest, chaste, sober, public- 
 spirited, and who can acquire and retain property. The owner of 
 land, the owner of capital, the tax-payer will, in the nature of things, 
 belong to the governing class in every free country; and to be all this 
 is within the power of every colored man who is industrious, houest, 
 well educated and frugal. To all this, the political question, great 
 and important as I deem it, is still secondary and subordinate. 
 
 Until the nature of raa-ti shall undergo a complete change, political 
 power and political influence will be the objects of human ambition. 
 It would be idle to advise or to expect that the colored man in this 
 country shall be an exception to this rule. No man can be indiffer- 
 ent to the testimony of the respect of his fellowmen which is implied 
 in their confidence when they intrust him with public ofSce. It is a 
 natural, honest and generous ambition. Whatever moralists, phil- 
 osophers or men of letters may say about it, mankind have been, are 
 and ever will be substantially agreed that the administration of a free 
 state by the free choice of the people is the highest and most digni- 
 fied of human occupations. But public oflBce is only honorable when 
 the citizen's election or appointment to it, is because of his person- 
 al worth and fitness. Not only is the Republic injured but the 
 holder of office is disgraced when his election, or appointment, is 
 made upon any other principle. While therefore I hope the color- 
 ed people will, in full proportion to their number, attain to public 
 station in this country, while I would not discourage such an aspira- 
 tion in you or in any young men, I am always sorry to see any per- 
 son urged for an appointment, or an election, merely because of his 
 color. Let the negro get office, if he can by being the fittest per- 
 son to fill it. Let him scorn to accept it, let him scorn the men of 
 his own race who would seek it, or would accept it, on any other 
 terms. Personal worth, personal character, personal fitness, hones- 
 ty, integrity, wisdom, sobriety, industry and capacily^*T?t these 
 henceforth be the only passports by which the colored man shall 
 seek admission into our temple of honor. When he has gained 
 these, there will be room enough for him. He will gain his en- 
 trance, and he will not find himself crowded. 
 
 The lesson I have sought to impress upon you to-night is that the 
 solution of what is called the negro qriestion in this country is to be 
 found in the strength, purity, courage, and loftiness of the individual 
 soul. Constitutions, statutes, judgments of courts, verdicts of juries 
 civil administration, the decent and just behavior of the white race 
 
17 
 
 are, and will be, much. But they are all infinitely of less con- 
 sequence than the character of the colored people themselves. The 
 place you are to take and keep in this Republic is to be determined 
 by what you are . In saying this I have summoned you to night to 
 no light or easy accomplishment; "He that ruleth his own spirit is 
 better than he that taketh a city, ' ' and he has commonly achieved 
 a far more difficult task. 
 
 Have faith in the Republic of which you are henceforth an in- 
 separable part. Have faith in the Republic which, in the brief 
 century of her history, has shed her light upon the oppres.sed of all 
 lands, and has brought you also out of bondage into freedom; out of 
 barbarism into civilization; out of darkness into light. Possessing 
 this faith, take also counsel of the great Apostle upon whom the 
 church was builded; "Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; 
 and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to 
 temperance patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness 
 brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity. For if ye 
 do these things ye shall never fall." 
 
THE HARMONY OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR, 
 
 DELIVEEED ON TAKING THE CHAIR AT THE CONFERENCfi 
 OF UNITARIAN AND OTHER CHRISTIAN CHURCHES 
 
 AT 
 
 SARATOGA, SEPT. 25, 1894, 
 
 WOECESTBE, MASS. 
 
 PRINTED BY CHARLES HAMILTON, 
 
 311 MAIN STREET. 
 
 1895. 
 
THE HAEMONY OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR, 
 
 DELIVEKED ON TAKING THE CHAIR AT THE CONFERENCE 
 OF UNITARIAN AND OTHER CHRISTIAN CHURCHES 
 
 AT 
 
 SARATOGA, SEPT. 25, 1894. 
 
 WORCESTER, MASS. 
 
 r HINTED BY CHARLES HAMILTON, 
 
 311 MAIN STREET. 
 
 1895. 
 
 H 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 It is in no temper of narrowness or exclusion that we have gathered 
 from all parts of the country and from across the sea, in obedience to 
 a summons addressed to us by the honored and beloved name of Uni- 
 tarians. We claim no separate property in the peace of God which 
 passeth understanding, or in the love of God which abideth forever. 
 Above all, we claim no separate property in the rule of faith and prac- 
 tice delivered upon the Judsean mountain, or in the memory of that 
 divine life which was its perfect example. We should as soon claim 
 property in the sunlight or in the morning. These gifts, coming to us 
 from that infinite Father of whom all mankind are children, are them- 
 selves the offspring of a love from which none of his children can ever 
 be shut out. They are " too high born to be propertied." 
 
 But of the instrumentalities by which God builds his government on 
 earth, and by which he effects the moral training of mankind, among 
 the chiefest is that of organization. The child, in his earliest games, 
 is taught to take a side, in which he sinks his personality. In that 
 way he forgets to say " mine," and learns to say " ours." He finds 
 the highest stimulant to exertion, even in the play of childhood, in 
 seeking, of his own free will, an interest other than his own, and in 
 obeying, of his own free will, a law higher than his own desire. So 
 awakes in him what has been well called " the celestial sense," which is 
 the sense of duty." 
 
 A little later, and he learns to love the town where he was born. 
 He transfers to it something of the affection whict belongs to his 
 parents. He delights in its citizenship . He takes an individual pride 
 in its history. I suppose there are men and women in this company — 
 at any rate, I know one — whose blood would fiy to their cheeks at the 
 charge that some little town in New England had done an act of 
 dishonor a hundred years ago, as if the imputation were upon one of 
 their own kindred to-day. 
 
 Then there wakes in the soul that highest and purest of human 
 affections, — love of country. This emotion, stronger than institu- 
 tions, stronger than constitutions, is the master passion of the loftiest 
 
natures. At its bidding young men and old men give their lives, 
 mothers their sons, wives their husbands, and maidens their lovers. 
 The man who is without it, or who thinks himself above it, is a poor 
 and useless creature. Whatever dreamers may affirm, whenever it is 
 lacking, the man is weakened and spoiled, and becomes worthless to 
 his own country and to mankind. It is like the law of gravitation to 
 the universe. It is above, around, and beneath everything we value 
 most. It has been our safety from the beginning. It has overcome 
 for us the greatest rebellion since Satan marshalled against the 
 Almighty the third part of heaven's hosts. It will overcome for us 
 the spirit of anarchy, which, it may be, is yet to be more dangerous 
 still. I believe that wherever these sentiments are found strongest in 
 the narrower relations they will be found strongest also in those that 
 are larger. Wherever the national spirit is most vigorous, there the 
 State and local forces will exist in fullest life. The sentiment of 
 patriotism will be found strongest in happy homes, where family love 
 abounds. The man who loves his household and his kindred and his 
 town and his State best will love his country best. 
 
 I have uttered these commonplaces — and the more they seem to you 
 to be commouplaces, the better they are for my purpose — that I may 
 impress upon you the importance of the chief object which has brought 
 us together, — the inspiring of new streagth, activity, and zeal into the 
 great work of the Unitarian denomination, and the importance of that 
 organization, as to which, I fear, there is far too much indifference, — 
 the Christian parish. This does not contemplate in the least any 
 antagonism to other religious bodies, but rather increased harmony, 
 good will, co-operation. Family life is not a quarrel with the next 
 household. Town life is not a feud with the next town. State life is 
 not a wrangle with a neighboring State. National life and love and 
 pride do not mean war with the rest of mankind. The contrary of all 
 this is true. Peace, good will, brotherly kindness, charity with all 
 men, the exchange of all good and kind offices, are but the natural 
 offspring of our love of these objects which God has created, that by 
 them the sentiment of love may be inspired and have its vio-oious 
 growth. So the warmer our love for our own organization and the 
 more earnest our devotion to our own work, the friendlier our relation 
 to other religious bodies, and the dearer our fellowship in the Church 
 universal . 
 
 We may well take lessons from other Christian denominations. If 
 we do not imitate them and emulate them, we shall fall behind them 
 The country owes an incalculable debt to the brave pioneers whom the 
 
Methodist Church has sent into the wilderness in advance of the 
 settlers. It owes an incalculable debt to our brethren who fancy they 
 still believe in the five points of Calvinism, whose instinct for the 
 building of republican States in Christian liberty and law is as sure as 
 that of the bee in building her cell or the eagle his nest. We may well 
 contemplate with admiration our brethren who utter their worship with 
 the solemn voice and stately ceremonial of the English Church, in this 
 day of the revival of her spiritual life, who have learned so well to 
 create and bring to the aid of religion all the inspirations of music, of 
 architecture, and of art. Can we not work together in our freedom as 
 they do in their discipline? Have we not the inspiration of the lives 
 of saints and the thoughts of sages and the songs of poets, as well as 
 they? Are not the Scriptures and the prophets and the apostles and 
 the martyrs ours, as they are theirs? Have we not a history and 
 traditions and memories which may excite us to a common activity in 
 Christian work? Is there not hung in our halls also, armory of the 
 invincible knights of old? 
 
 It is not yet a century since the name " Unitarian" was first borne 
 by an American church. The word is not found in the first edition of 
 Johnson's Dictionary. We have never been strong in mere numbers. 
 Yet how are the men and women, to whom, whether in honor or in 
 reproach, it has been applied, mingled with the best life in a thousand 
 communities ! What poets, what prophets, what inspired orators, 
 what sages, what counsellors, what grave and reverend men, in chair 
 of State, in legislative chambers, on judges' bench, in college halls, 
 what fathers and mothers and daughters in Israel, what martyrs and 
 reformers, what benefactors, what soldiers who gave their young lives 
 for their country, or came home from battle victors, living and laurel- 
 crowned ! As their figures rise to your imagination in many a city and 
 town and hamlet, — 
 
 " The passing of their beautiful feet 
 Gladdens the pavement of the street." 
 
 We do not esteem the parish as we ought. We go from one to 
 another too easily, according to our caprice or convenience, or as we 
 like or dislike a particular clergyman. We need the disposition of 
 John A. Andrew, who told Dr. Clarke's church in its earlier days that, 
 "whoever was a come-outer, he was a stay-inner." 
 
 The responsibility 'for accomplishing the ends that a parish is made 
 for rests upon the parish even more than upon the minister, and rests 
 upon every member of the parish to the reasonable extent of his 
 
power. The oflace and function of the minister is to teach, stimu- 
 late, and impel the parish to do and be what it is made for, and the 
 members of the parish to do and be what they were made for ; and 
 then it is the business of the parish and of the members of the parish 
 to do it. Our function as parishioners is not to put burdens upon the 
 back of the minister, but rather to take them off. 
 
 The parish has many advantages which ought to place it among the 
 very highest and best of organizations to stimulate a generous activity 
 for public ends, and also to inspire a genuine affection and zeal. It is 
 that one of our republican institutions which cuts down through all 
 social distinctions, and harmonizes all political differences, and sum- 
 mons men and women to work together, and to know, esteem, and 
 help each other, from every calling and position in life. It ought to 
 be a leveller, but to a level upon a high table-land. It ought to be, 
 and it largely is, the most republican institution in our republic, the 
 most democratic institution in our democracy. 
 
 What power, what sanctity in this venerable organism, when, as in 
 our fathers' time, it is blessed by a clergyman whose relation to his 
 people is that of a marriage, to abide until death do them part, every 
 ambition of youth, every flower and blossom of the spring-time, the 
 full strength and vigor of life's summer, the ripened fruitage of 
 autumn, all consecrated to the service of a single community ! What 
 influence like that of the aged clergyman, the pastor that Chaucer and 
 Goldsmith drew, who for generations has been closest to the household, 
 has been its most intimate, constant, and beloved guest on every 
 occasion of joy or sorrow, whose benediction has brought new gladness 
 to the betrothal, whose voice has given its sacredness and its lawful- 
 ness to the marriage tie, and has lightened the darkness of the chamber 
 of death by its promise of the resurrection? When we visit foreign 
 countries and our feet touch the soil from which our ancestors came, 
 our heart's first desire is to find the parish church where they 
 worshipped, and beneath which or by which they sleep. There is 
 nothing on the face of the earth — no glory of lake or forest or moun- 
 tain or river — which speaks to the heart like these parish churches, 
 with their associations of centuries. As we stand in the churchyard 
 and gaze over the fields and hedges and byways of the surrounding 
 manor, it seems as if the vei-y souls of our forefathers had passed into 
 the peace of the landscape. When the little tower or spire first lifted 
 its head, 'perhaps in Saxon or Norman day, the very stones must have 
 moved lovingly to their places, — 
 
 " The conscious stones to beauty grew." 
 
I strolled one Sunday afternoon two years ago into the little parish 
 church of Chester le Street, seven miles from Durham, in England. 
 Against the walls were the tombs of some of the neighboring families, 
 with their effigies of crusaders and of men who had helped to wring 
 Magna Charta from King John. In the porch there was a notice 
 board, like those which are familiar to us ; and among various notices 
 of meetings of ladies's societies and other charities was this one : — 
 
 "The one thousand and ninth anniversary of its foundation will be 
 celebrated in this church next Tuesday evening. There will be an 
 address by the rector, and music by the united choirs from the three 
 neighboring parishes." Nothing very remarkable. It was the one 
 thousand and ninth anniversary, — that was all. Next year, and it 
 would be the one thousand and tenth. 
 
 We have a few parishes in America with whose early traditions are 
 blended the memories of souls as knightly and devoted as ever wore 
 the red cross of the crusader upon their breasts. Our fathers eared 
 little for the attraction of art, which the Anglican Church, both in its 
 Catholic and its Protestant days, has so well understood. As Emerson 
 said, " The light struggled in through windows of oiled paper, but 
 they read the word of God by it." 
 
 But this New England parish, as it was established at Plymouth and 
 Boston and Salem and Concord, is now one of the oldest institutions 
 among men. The map of Europe has changed and changed, and 
 changed again. As I have said elsewhere, four dynasties have sat in 
 succession on the throne of Great Britain. England has united with 
 herself Ireland and Scotland, conquered Canada, subdued two hundred 
 and fifty million Asiatics ; France has been twice a republic, and twice 
 a monarchy, and now is a republic for the third time ; Belgium and 
 Holland have been joined and severed ; the star of Poland has disap- 
 peared from the sky ; Italy has thrown off the iron heel of her tyrants 
 from her neck ; Germany has built up her mighty empire from sixty 
 petty States; and during all this time this mechanism, which sprung 
 up of itself in the forest, abides. Under it the people have chosen 
 their religious teachers without control; and the worship of pure 
 hearts, uttered by free lips, has risen from their simple altars to the 
 imperishable heavens. 
 
 But while we support and stand by this great organization of our 
 denomination, and while we demand of our brethren and sisters their 
 most zealous and devoted service in the work of the Unitarian parish, 
 let us remember that these are instrumentalities for teaching and pro- 
 moting chiefly the things in which we agree with devout men and 
 
8 
 
 women of the faith everywhere, and not those things in which we differ 
 from them. The Sermon on the Mount, the two sublime command- 
 ments upon which hang all the law and prophets, the entire precept 
 and example of Jesus Christ, constitute to our minds the chief portion 
 and essence of Unitariaiiism', as they constitute, I believe, to the 
 Methodist, to the Calvinist, to the Episcopalian, the chief and essential 
 part of Methodism or of Calvinism or of Episcopacy. We have a 
 statement of faith, a liturgy, a priesthood, and a scheme of salvation. 
 And, if we maintain that either of these is not assented to in principle 
 and substance by the great body of worshippers of other denomina- . 
 tions, we are so far making the very serious admission that it is not 
 supported by what, to many thoughtful minds, is the strongest single 
 argument for immortality itself ; namely, that it has its support in the 
 consent of all devout souls, and in the instinct of universal humanity. 
 We have a liturgy, a priesthood, a scheme of salvation, and a hope of 
 immortality. Our liturgy is the liturgy in which the desire of humanity 
 for worship has in all ages found expression. 
 
 ' The essential of the liturgy is the worship in the congregation of 
 the unseen and eternal Ruler of the universe with prayer and song. 
 All else is form and accident and convenience. We not only have 
 these in common, with rare exceptions, with the whole Christian world, 
 but they are older than Christianity itself. They are older than 
 history. They are older than the day when Agamemnon, king of 
 men, prayed to Jove with the Greek captains, 
 
 " With hands and voice advanced to heaven," 
 
 or when Abraham called on God between Bethel and Hai. 
 
 That mysterious law by which, in a human assembly, every emotion 
 is multiplied in each heart by sympathy with every other, has led man- 
 kind to seek society in its cry to an unseen power for help, or its voice 
 of thanksgiving or praise, from the beginning of time. And let us 
 thank God that, with whatever else pertaining to religion the evil 
 passions of men may have mingled, when the heart's worship has 
 found musical utterance there has been no jangle or discord. When 
 the Muses sang at the court of Jove and Apollo touched the strings, 
 when the harp of Jubal resounded, when Miriam raised her song of 
 praise, when David touched the sacred lyre, 
 
 " When Zion's daughters poured their lays, 
 With priests' and warriors' voice between," 
 
 when the disciples sang the first Christian hymn at the last supper 
 when the soft voice of music broke upon the darkness of the cata- 
 
9 
 
 combs, when its lofty tone filled the domes of ancient synagogues or 
 sounded in cathedral arches, when the Covenanters' strain arose from 
 the mossy hillside, when the Pilgrim sang on the deck of the " May- 
 flower " or broke the silence of the eternal forest with the anthem of 
 the free, — it has been one song, one harmony, unbroken from the 
 beginning, and shall continue one song, one harmony, unbroken until 
 time shall be no more. 
 
 We also believe in a priesthood. We do not propose to submit 
 ourselves to a confessional. We do not attribute any magic virtue to 
 the laying on of hands. Nor do we believe that divine retributions 
 can be averted by any exorcism from shaven lips, or that the traces of 
 an evil life in the soul can be washed out by the sprinkling of a few 
 drops of water, however pure, or by baptism in any blood, however 
 innocent, in the hour of death. But none the less do we need an arm 
 on which to lean, a voice to utter our own needs, an interpreter to us 
 and to our children of the counsel of God in spiritual things. The 
 time comes to all of us, to the strongest, to the most Solitary, when 
 the heart needs this consolation. Very tender histories can our pews 
 tell of the comfort that has come to them from the pulpit. If anything 
 on earth can aptly be called a consecration, the devotion of a pure and 
 holy life to this oflSce is consecration.. 
 
 I beg leave to add, for myself, that I hold that metaphysical, phil- 
 osophical, or controversial discussions have no place, or very small 
 place indeed, among the duties of the minister. 
 
 To re-enforce the sense of duty ; to strengthen the will ; to kindle 
 the flame of religious affection ; to turn the thoughts to whatever is 
 pure, honest, lovely, and of good report ; to make Sunday last through 
 the week ; to bring consolation in sorrow ; to organize charity ; to stimu- 
 late Christian activity; to summon youth to holy living and brave 
 dying; to drive the clouds of spiritual darkness from the way of men 
 and from the wayside ; to bring the kingdom of God into this world ; 
 to bring life as well as immortality to light, — these are the functions 
 of the Christian priesthood. 
 
 When you teach your baby to use his fingers, you do not begin with 
 a lecture on the origin and insertion of the flexor and extensor muscles. 
 The training of the athlete is not begun by removing all metaphysic 
 doubt as to the possibility of motion. No profession, no liberal art, 
 no sort of human activity, waits until the question is settled whether 
 consciousness or reason be a trustworthy instrument for acquiring 
 knowledge. We do not wait when the feast is spread, and we are 
 seated at the table, even for a lecture on the chemistry of food, or to 
 
10 
 
 ■know exactly the particular function of the coats of the stomach. 
 The stomach would prefer on such occasions to take off its coat, and 
 go to work. So, to the leading of devoted, pure, and useful lives, in 
 which it is the function of the clergy to be our instructor and guide, a 
 comprehension or a study of the metaphysical and psychological ques- 
 tions which lie at the foundations of faith is not in the least essential. 
 I do not think it is the function of the Christian minister to deal with 
 these questions. There have been a few exceptions, illustrious excep- 
 tions,^Jonathan Edwards in early times, perhaps James Walker, and 
 unquestionably James Martineau in recent times. But, as an almost 
 universal rule, the man who is fitted for such discussions, or who has a 
 taste for them, is unfitted by his mental constitution and by his taste 
 for the office of a Christian minister. 
 
 " The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed." 
 
 Do not understand me for a momenfas implying that the champions 
 of Christianity or the champions of Unitarian Christianity have any- 
 thing to fear from any foeman in this or any other field of intellectual 
 combat. Tyndall, who had more than once broken a lance with him, 
 on hearing somebody say that James Martineau was the foremost 
 philosophical thinker of the day, answered, "He is the foremost 
 philosophical thinker since Saint Paul." 
 
 But none the less for these exceptions I beg leave to say for myself 
 to this assemblage of clergyman what, I believe, is the general opinion 
 of the laity of our denomination and of all denominations, — that, in 
 general, these metaphysical discussions in the pulpit, to use the pithy 
 phrase of Solomon, which our Puritan ancestors so delighted to quote, 
 " are but the crackling of thorns under a pot." 
 
 We want, when we go to church, not to hear a continuance of that 
 discussion of 
 
 " Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
 Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," 
 
 in which Milton leaves his fallen angels engaged in hell, and in which, 
 if they are engaged still, it but serves them right. What we want to 
 hear is counsel and inspiration in the ways of practical righteousness 
 for our boys and girls and for ourselves. We want, when the tempta- 
 tion comes to us in the week-day, to have the lofty counsel which we 
 heard on Sunday ringing in our ears. We want to hear, not of the 
 things in which we differ from other Christians, but of the thino-s in 
 which we agree with other Christians. We want to go to the sermon in 
 
11 
 
 the same temper with which we open the hymn-book. "We want the 
 end of the sermon and the prayer and the last note of the hymn to be 
 in accord. 
 
 Unitarianism does not consist of a statement of things in which we 
 don't believe. Such a statement never saved a soul, and rarely makes 
 a convert. Unitarianism is not made up of negations, doubts, denials, 
 hesitations, uncertainties. It is positive faith and practical works. 
 It does not consist, to any considerable extent, in the things in which 
 we differ from other Christians, but is made up almost entirely of the 
 things in which we agree with them. Although the great body of 
 Christian believers do not call themselves by our name, the great body 
 of Christian believers believe what we believe, think what we think, 
 love what we love, and seek what we seek. In the main, the things in 
 which they differ from us are the non-essential, temporary, changeable, 
 doubtful and speculative. In general, the less that is said about them, 
 the better. The more that is said about them, the slower they will be 
 to disappear. The things in which we and they agree are permanent, 
 vital, certain, unchangeable. 
 
 There are some errors that demand for their overthrow that we 
 bring our whole forces against them, that we unlimber our heavy 
 artillery, that we besiege them as we would a fortress. 
 
 These are errors of conduct or of morals. There are other errors 
 that these processes seem to strengthen and perpetuate. The way to 
 get rid of them is simply to think and talk of something else. 
 
 We have also a scheme of salvation. We believe that the sinner is 
 to be saved by the influence of divine truth and by the salvation of 
 the soul, not from the consequences of sin, but from sin. We believe 
 that salvation is character, and not escape. I hold that this Unitarian 
 doctrine, when not uttered in theological phrases, or as a challenge to 
 controversial discussion, is, in general, the belief of intelligent Chris- 
 tendom to-day. It is to be noted that, wherever in all our religious 
 literature, sacred or profane, we find the most terrible assertion of 
 the S,wful doctrine of a material punishment, — in Isaiah, in Dante, in 
 Jonathan Edwards, — the condition of the redeemed soul, is a condition 
 of purity. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as 
 snow." The degrees of the Paradiso are degrees not so much of 
 celestial joy as of celestial purity. 
 
 "The life of the new man," says Jonathan Edwards, "is a life of 
 sincere and honest endeavor to be universally and increasingly holy." 
 And this is one reason why he longs to be in heaven, that he may be 
 perfectly holy. Love is a holy fire within him ; and, like any other 
 
12 
 
 flame which is in a degree pent up, it will and does struggle for liberty ; 
 and this its struggling is a struggle for holiness." 
 
 I do not look for the coming of the time when what are called sects 
 or denominations will disappear. Still less is the time to be expected 
 or to be desired when the emulation which comes from separate organ- 
 ization will cease to be one of the most powerful forces in Christian 
 activity. In the Lime of the apostles they began to say, "I am of 
 Paul" and "I am of Apollos"; and, with a change of name, they- 
 have been saying it ever since. The seven churches to whom the 
 angel of Patmos sent his messages had acquired within the time of a 
 life which began as early as the life of the Saviour himself a separate, 
 individual, human character and quality, each as distinct from that of 
 the other as that of Hamlet is from that of Othello. These distinc- 
 tions, these organizations, these rivalries and emulations, these strifes, 
 are to continue until the end of time. From them, as from all things 
 human, will come much evil, but mingled with and, as I believe, in the 
 end to be subdued and overcome by a far larger good. But we are 
 here to assert our property as brethren and as Christians in whatever 
 any of them has that is excellent in its history, in its achievements, in 
 its literature, or in its examples of brave and holy men or women. 
 Although a dw^eller in Massachusetts, I claim property as an American 
 and a countryman in Starr King of California, as I do in George 
 Washington of Virginia. If I were a Presbyterian, I would claim a 
 like property, as a Christian, in Starr King, the Unitarian, as in 
 George Washington, the Episcopalian. No Athanasian creed can shut 
 out my soul from the soul of George Herbert. No church polities can 
 make my senses numb to the fragrance of that wreath of lilies, "The 
 Christian Year" of John Keble. When Archbishop Ireland, then 
 bishop of Minnesota, announced that, of the liquor-sellers in his 
 diocese, less than five per cent, were of the Catholic faith, I wished to 
 pay my profound homage to the man who had brought this to pass. I 
 felt that his Christianity and that of my revered and beloved master. 
 Dr. Edward Everett Hale, were, in essentials, very much the same. 
 When somebody told Abraham Lincoln, during the war, that General 
 Grant drank whiskey, he said he should like to send a barrel of the 
 same kind to each of the other generals. I should like to send a 
 barrel of Archbishop Ireland's theology to the other bishops. When 
 the same man uttered in Washington, two or three years ago, his 
 brave rebuke to the men who despoil our Southern fellow-citizens of 
 the glory of their American citizenship, I felt I should like to send 
 some of our Protestant clergy to his Sunday-school. If the dear 
 
13 
 
 theologians have said anything unkind of us, let us hope they will 
 think better of it when we meet them hereafter, where they will know 
 even as also they are known. As Beatrice said to Dante of Saint 
 Gregory, — 
 
 " Wherefore, as soon as he unclosed his eyes 
 Within this lieaven, lie at himself did smile." 
 
 The Christian Church, like almost everything else in this world, I 
 believe, has been often compared to a ship. But I think, perhaps, we 
 might compare it more aptly to a fleet, made up of ships of different 
 build and speed, but bound on the same voyage, having the same 
 sailing orders, and obeying alike the signals of the same admiral. 
 Each saUor loves his own, and thinks her the finest craft afloat. Not 
 a man in any one of them recognizes the least authority in the officers 
 of another. There is much rivalry and emulation. In a storm you 
 can hear from one to another the voices of the captains and the shout- 
 ing. If there be danger of collision, you get occasionally a stern 
 order to keep off, perhaps accompanied with some theological language 
 used in a very untheologieal way. But every man is ready to obey the 
 admiral's signal, whether it be Nelson or Farragut. In time of danger 
 each is ready to go to the rescue of the other. In time of calm they 
 interchange a thousand good offices. When the weather is good and 
 the sea is quiet, they like to visit each other. You can sometimes 
 hear, of a Sunday, from ship to ship, the chaplain's prayer or the 
 chant of a solemn service, or, of a week-day, the sailors singing at 
 the windlass. Each ship has its own songs. From one rise the sweet 
 strains of Wesley, from another the pious refrain of Doddridge or the 
 lofty organ- tone of Watts. From our own ship goes up the watch- 
 man's voice of good cheer, as he answers what of the night, or the 
 heart-stirring chorus, — 
 
 " Nearer, my God, to thee, 
 Nearer to thee ! " 
 
 From the oldest and largest of them all come the accents of foreign 
 tongues and of dead languages and of ages long gone by. 
 
 There is another craft whose beautiful lines and graceful curves are 
 the admiration of the whole fleet. Her officers are not always over- 
 eager to invite us to their company ; but yet let us say, with Andrew 
 Marvell, 
 
 " Still sing they in the English boat 
 A holy and a cheerful note." 
 
 We share, also, with Christians everywhere, the supreme certainty 
 
14 
 
 that the Power which has established this fabric of things is conscious 
 and is beneficent. Upon this foundation, in all ages, has rested the 
 hope from which cometh to man and nations every gift of noblest 
 origin, — the hope of immortality. In virtue of this faith we claim 
 our place in the ranks of those who, by whatever name they call 
 themsel\;es, are striving to bring in the kingdom of God, and that his 
 will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. 
 
QRAT^ION 
 
 DELIVERED .*Ti 
 
 PI^Y MOUTH, 
 
 DECEMBER 21, 1895, 
 
 THE CELEBRATION OF THE TWO HUNDRED AND 
 SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY ■ 
 
 OF -THE 
 
 XANPING OF THE PILGRIMS, 
 
 GEORGE R HOAR. 
 
 Press op Rueu£ II. CiUtBY, 
 Washihgton, D. C, 
 
 1895. 
 
ORATION 
 
 DELIVERED AT 
 
 PLYMOUTH, 
 
 DECEMBER 21, 1895, 
 
 THE CELEBRATION OF THE TWO HUNDRED AND 
 SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 IvANDING OK T"HE PILGRIMS, 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR. 
 
 Press of Rufus H. Darby, 
 Washington, D. C, 
 
 1895- 
 
 '1 
 
ORATION. 
 
 Surely that people is happy to whom 
 the noblest story in liistory has come 
 clown through father and mother by 
 the unbroken traditions of their own 
 firesides. If there be one thing more 
 than another for which we have to thank 
 God on this anniversary, it is that the 
 tale we have to tell is a familiar house- 
 hold story. The thoughts which are ap- 
 propriate to the day are commonplaces. 
 Every generation since the Pilurim 
 landed here has held his memory dear. 
 The light of later days, that has dispelled 
 the intellectual darkness of his time, 
 gives new luster and added nobility to his 
 simple and reverend figure. 
 
 So far as honor can be paid by the ut- 
 terance of the lips, or by the tender afifec- 
 lion of the heart, his descendants have 
 never failed in what is due to the Pilgrim. 
 The faults of other founders of States 
 have not been forgotten. They have been 
 kept alive in human memory, not only 
 by the jealous criticism of men of other 
 biood, but by the severe judgment of his- 
 tory. The founder of Rome, the Normau 
 Conqueror of England, the Spaniard in 
 the South, the Cavalier of Jamestown, 
 the settler of the far West — even the Pur- 
 itan of Massachusetts — is knowu in his- 
 tory quite as much by his faults, or by 
 his crimes, as by his virtues. Puritan 
 and Cavalier, Royalist and Roundhead 
 may be terms of honor or terms of re- 
 proach. But the word Pilgrim is every- 
 where a word of tenderest association. 
 There is no blot on the memory of the 
 Pilgrim of Plymouth. No word of re- 
 proach is uttered when he is mentioned. 
 The fame of the passenger of the May- 
 flower is as pure and fragrant as its little 
 namesake, sweetest of the flowers of 
 spring. He is the stateliest figure in all 
 history. . He p&sses before us like some 
 boly shade seen in the Paradise in the 
 vision of Dante. 
 
 Certainly you have not failed in dun 
 honor to the Pilgrim's memory. You 
 have given him, in every generation, of 
 your best. No incense, no pageant, no 
 annual procession,' no statue — though 
 Phidias were the sculptor — no temple — 
 though the dome were rounded by the 
 liand of Angelo — can equal as a votive 
 ofierine the imcerishable oration of 
 
 Webster. It is the one best offering 
 which could be laid on the Pilgrim's 
 shrine. That majestic eloquence, if not 
 equaled, has been worthily followed by the 
 consummate grace of Everett, the more 
 than oriental imagination of Choate, the 
 stately dignity of Winthrop. Here, too, 
 has stood Sumner — Sumner of the white 
 soul — to lay his wreath on the Pilgrims' 
 altar in right of a martyr spirit, lofty and 
 undaunted as their own. You may well 
 believe that if a competition with these 
 masters were expected to day, I might — as 
 might any living man — shrink from the 
 comparison. But it is not from human, 
 it is not from living lips that you are ex- 
 pecting the lesson of this occasion. You 
 are here to listen to the voices of the 
 dead ; to meditate anew the eternal truths 
 on wliich your fathers founded the State. 
 This imperial people, if it is to bear rule 
 over a continent, must listen to the voice 
 of which David spake with dying lips — 
 " The Rock spake to me." 
 
 You are here to hearken to the voice of 
 the rock. 
 
 The most precious earthly reward of a 
 well-spent life is the gratitude and love 
 of children. Surely the Pilgrim ha.i had 
 that. But he looked to no Ciirthly re 
 ward, however precious. 
 
 " They knew they were Pilgrims, and 
 looked not much on those things, but 
 lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dear- 
 est country, and so quieted their spirits." 
 
 How few of them there were. There 
 were but forty eight men who landed 
 upon the rock. But forty-one names 
 are signed to the compact. Of the twenty 
 men who survived the first winter, there 
 are, according to Dr. Palfrey's vcstimate, 
 not more than eleven — one less than the 
 number of the Apostles — who are favor- 
 ably known. The I'est are either known 
 unfavorably or only by name. Surely 
 the parable of, the mustard seed, than 
 which, as Edward Everett said, "the 
 burning pen of inspiration, ranging 
 Heaven and Earth for a similitude, can 
 tin I nothing more appropriate or expres- 
 bive to which to liken the Kingdom of 
 God," is repeated again. " Whereunto 
 shall we liken it, or with what compajri- 
 son shall we compare If? 
 
"It is like a grata of mustard seed, 
 ■which, when it is sown in the earth, is 
 less than all the seeds that he in the earth. 
 
 " But when it is sown it groweth up, 
 and hecometh greater than all herbs, and 
 shooteth out great branches; so ttat the 
 fowls of the air may lodge under the 
 shadow of it." 
 
 Though the heavens be rolled up as a 
 scroll, this story is worthy to be written 
 upon the scroll. Though the elements 
 ?hall melt with fervent heat, this pure 
 and hply flame shall shine brightly over 
 the new heavens and the new earth. It 
 is no story of what other countries have 
 deemed great. There is no royal escutch- 
 eon, no noble coat armor, no knightly 
 shield. But they bore the whole armor 
 of God, their loins girt about with truth, 
 having the breastplate of righteousness; 
 their feet shod with the preparation of 
 the gospel of peace; taking the shield of 
 faith and the helmet of salvation, and the 
 sword of the spirit, which is the word of 
 aod. 
 
 Let no man fancy that because they 
 were few ia cumber, these men were in- 
 significant. You know the history of 
 heroism better than tliat. It is Leonidas 
 with his three hundred, and not Xerxes 
 with his ships by thousands, and men in 
 nations, that has given the inspiration to 
 mankind for two thousand years. There 
 fell of the English side, at Agincourt, but 
 twenty- nine persons — 
 
 Edward, the duke of York, the ear' of Suffolk, 
 Sir Kichard Ketley, Davy Gam, esquire ; 
 Sooe else of qiune ; and of all ojther men, 
 But five arid twenty. 
 
 But somehow Davy Gam, esquire, has 
 hovered over the English lines on a liun- 
 dred fields of victory, from Cressy to 
 Quebec, from Quebec to Waterloo. '" Cest 
 Ibujours le meme chose," said Napoleon 
 when he yielded himself prisoner. That 
 spirit came ashore at Plymouth. It cross- 
 ed the ocean to abide. It takes no ac- 
 count of numbers and needs no numbers 
 ■for its victories. 
 
 6 God, Thy arm was here, 
 
 And not to us, but to Thy aim alone, 
 
 Ascribe we all. Take it, G od, 
 
 For it is only Thine. 
 
 Miles Standish, whom an accomplished 
 descendant well calls the Greatheart of 
 the Pilgrims, with his little army of four- 
 teen men, inspired with this spirit, was a 
 power mightier than all the hosts of Xer- 
 xes. They fought for a stake more pre- 
 cious than that of Marathon or Waterloo, 
 as Christian freedom is of higher value 
 than Grecian civilization, or than the em- 
 pire of Europe. The court was of a dig- 
 nity tl(at no Areopagus could equal. The 
 littl(5 Senate consisted of but nine men. 
 But it was making laws twdec the first 
 
 written Republican constitution, which 
 held in itself the fate of all others. 
 
 I wish to speak of the men who landed 
 on Plymouth Rock on the day whose an- 
 niversary we celebrate ;— of what they 
 were, what they brought with them, of 
 the republic they founded, what they left 
 to their posterity that now remains, and 
 what is hereafter to abide. Other contri- 
 butions, whether for good or evil, to that 
 composite life and character which we 
 call America, will not lack due consider- 
 ation elsewhere. Some of them were 
 made in the very beginning, at James- 
 town, at Salem, at New York, at Balti- 
 more, under the spreading elm at Phila- 
 delphia. Others are of later time. Some- 
 of them have come in our own time, from 
 Ireland, from England, from Germany, 
 from Canada, and from that Northern 
 hive whose swarm first brought the honey 
 of freedom to the island of our ancestors. 
 They have not lacked, and will never 
 lack, due honor. But it is to this one 
 alone that this day belongs. The topic 
 may perhaps seem narrow and local. It 
 may be said of the Pilgrim quality what 
 your admirable chronicler, Mr. Russell, 
 says of the Mayflower: " A pleasing fic- 
 tion obtains with some good people here- 
 abouts, viz., That this little flower is pe- 
 culiar to this section of the country." 
 But to me, looking forward as best I can 
 into the future and seeing how they have 
 already leavened this nation of ours, the 
 subject seems sometimes as large and 
 broad as if I were to undertake to speak 
 of the consequences of the creation of 
 Adam and Eve. 
 
 The commonwealths which were united 
 in 1692 and became the province of Massa- 
 chusetts Bay are still blended in the popu- 
 lar conception. Their founders are sup- 
 posed to have the same general charac- 
 teristics, and are known to the rest of the 
 world by the common title of New Eng- 
 land Puritans. I suppose this belief pre- 
 vails even in New England, except as to 
 a small circle of scholars and the de- 
 scendants of the Pilgrims who still dwell 
 in the Old Colony, and who have studied 
 personally the history of their ancestors. 
 Many of our historians have treated the 
 two with little distinclion, except that the 
 suffering of the Pilgrim, the dangeroas 
 and romantic voyage of the Mayflower, 
 the story of the landing in December and 
 the hardship of the first winter have 
 made, of course, a series of pictures of 
 their own. Even Mr. Webster^ after 
 narrating as could have been done by no 
 other chronicler who ever lived, these 
 picturesque incidents, proceeds in his 
 oration of 1830 to discuss the principles 
 vvhich lay at tlie foundation of the Puffe 
 
tan State, and which were, in the main, 
 common to both communities. 
 
 Yet the dwellers of Plymouth know 
 well the diflference between the Pilgrim 
 that landed here and the Puritan that 
 settled in Salem and Boston. Thi! differ- 
 ence was as great as would have been if 
 the members of the established church 
 had been driven into exile, and one colo 
 ny founded by Jeremy Taylor, or George 
 Herbert, and one founded by Bancroft or 
 Laud. If the anti-slavery men of our 
 later day had shaken the dust off their 
 feet against the Constitution and the 
 Union, and gone to some unoccupied 
 island in some remote and barbarous 
 archipelago, the difference would scarce- 
 ly have been greater between a colony 
 founded by Waldo Emerson, or Samuel 
 May, and one founded by Garrison or 
 Parker Pillsbury, or Stephen Poster, than 
 that between the men of Plymouth and 
 the men of Salem. Both were English- 
 men. Both were, as they understood it, 
 Calvinists. Both desired freedom. They 
 had the tie of a common feeling, of a 
 common persecution, of a common faith, 
 and of a common hope. I wish I could 
 add, descendant as I am of the Massachu- 
 chusetts Puritans in every line of descent 
 that I can trace since the time when the 
 name was first heard, the tie of a common 
 and equal charity. 
 
 The compact on board the Mayflower 
 was the beginning of a State. Auolher 
 State was begun at Salem by the company 
 who came over with Eudicott. There 
 were marked resemblances in the quality 
 of these two communities, as would be 
 expected from the similarity of their ori 
 gin. There were likewise marked differ- 
 ences, as would be expected from tlie in 
 dividual character of the men who most 
 largely influenced them. There were 
 doubtless men in the Puritan state pene- 
 trated by the Pilgrim's spirit. John Win- 
 throp himself, the foremost single figure 
 iu the Massachusetts colony, would have 
 been in all respects a loving companion 
 to Bradford, and a loving disciple to Rob- 
 inson. But it must, I think, be admitted 
 that while Bradford was an example and 
 representative of the prevalent spirit of 
 Plymouth— a spirit that finds its expres- 
 sion in the teaching of Robinson — Win- 
 throp was a restraint and a repression of 
 the intolerance of the Massachu-'ctts col- 
 ony. 
 
 Nathaniel Ward, of Ipswich, author of 
 the Body of Liberties, which, though it 
 was never printed till within the memory 
 of some of us, served, practically, as 
 Constitution and Bill of Rights to Massa 
 chusetts until 1684^ if not until 1780, 
 says in the Simple Cobbler of Aga- 
 
 wam: "It Is said men ought to have 
 liberty of conscience, aiad that it is perse- 
 cution to debar them from it. I ca:n 
 rather stand amazed than reply to this. 
 It is an astonishment to think that the 
 brains of men should be p^trboiled in 
 such impious ignorance. No practical 
 sin is so sinful as some error of judg- 
 ment; no man so accursed with indelible 
 infamy and dedolent impeniteney as au- 
 thors of heresies." 
 
 Now compare this with the farewell 
 counsel of John Robinson, reported by 
 Wlnslow: "We are, ere long, to part 
 asunder, and the Lord knoweth whether 
 ever he should live to see our face again. 
 But whether the Lord had appointed it 
 or not, he charged us before God and His 
 blessed angels, to follow him no further 
 than he followed Christ ; and if God 
 should reveal anything to us by any otheir 
 instrument of His, to be as ready to re 
 ceive it as we were to receive any truth 
 by his ministry; for he was very confi- 
 dent the Lord had more truth and liglit 
 yet to break forth out of His Holy Word." 
 
 This is the Pilgrim's declaration and, 
 if we do not read the world's history' 
 amiss, the world's declaration of religiotis 
 independence. Let it stand forever by 
 the side of the Immortal opening sen- 
 tences of the Declaration at Philadel- 
 phia. They are twin stars, ever shining 
 in the great constellation of the Northern 
 sky, pointing to that eternal Polar star of 
 truth which hath no fellow in the firma- 
 ment. 
 
 There were beautiful and pure souls in 
 the Puritan State, for whose trahslatloii 
 into the blessed society of the immortals 
 there seemed nothing of a gross mor- 
 tality to be pruned away. Winthrop is 
 still our foremost example of a Christian 
 ruler, till the coming of. Wasbingtoti. 
 The second John Winthrop was a worthy 
 son of such a father. The claim of his 
 accomplished descendant that no purer 
 or nobler or lovelier character can' be 
 found in the history of Connecticut, 
 whether among Governors or among 
 governed, than that of the younger Win- 
 throp, may safely be enlarged to include 
 any State that ever existed. The Win- 
 throps were Christian gentlemen, fit for 
 the companionship of Bradford and 
 Brewster, and there can be no higher 
 praise. There were, as you know, evil 
 men in the company of Pilgrims. But 
 still, the character of the Pilgrifn finds 
 its perfect portraiture in Bradford's ex- 
 quisite phrase—" God's free people " ; 
 while the -yvord Puritan calls up to the 
 imagination a sljerner, harsher, earthlier 
 image. Blackstone said, " I came ,frgfin 
 England to escape the Lord Blshop'a ; 
 
and I cannot join with you because I 
 would not be under the Lord Brethren." 
 The Puritan brought with him to Salem 
 much of the spirit which had driven him 
 from England. His experience had been 
 an experience of persecutions. What 
 Milton calls the " f ufy of the Bishops" 
 was still raging. Severity applied to 
 men of English blood begets severity and 
 defiance. 
 
 " What wonder if in noble heat, 
 Those men tbiiie arms withstood, 
 Betaught the iesson thou hadst taught. 
 And in thy spirit with thee fought, 
 Who were of English blood." 
 
 There was a yearning for Christian 
 unity both by Puritan and Pilgrim. The 
 leaders of both Colonies were English 
 gentlemen. They were attached by many 
 tender ties to the Church of England 
 The farewell letter to the Massachusetts 
 Company, which Mr. Winthrop thinks 
 was written, by his ancestor, is a cry of 
 the heart. The love for that dear Mother, 
 the Church of England, "from whence 
 we rise, ever acknowledging that such 
 hope and part as we have obtained in the 
 common salvation, we have received in 
 her bosom and sucked it from her breasts," 
 was stirring in the bosom of John Robin- 
 son also. Doubtless if the persecution 
 had ceased, the division would have 
 ceased. Edward Winslow says: "The 
 foundation of our New England planta 
 tions was not Schisrae, division or separa 
 tion, but upon love, peace and holinesse 
 yea, such love and mutual care ot the 
 church of Ley den, for the spreading of 
 the Gospel, ttie welfare pf each other, 
 and their prosperities to succeeding gene- 
 rations, as is seldom found on earth." 
 : The Puritan had a capacity for an hon- 
 est, hearty hatred, of which I find no 
 trace in Pilgrim literature. Indeed a 
 personal devil must have been a great 
 comfort to our Massachusetts ancestors, 
 as furnishing an object which they could 
 hate with all their might, without viola- 
 tion of Christian principles. 
 
 The experience of the Pilgrim at Ley- 
 den had been an experitnce of peace. 
 There was much in Holland to shock the 
 strictness of our Fathers. They viewed, 
 undoubtedly with great disfavor, the 
 thought that they or their children should 
 be blended with either the political or the 
 religious life of Holland. But they were 
 received at Leyden with an abundant 
 welcome and hospitality. Among the 
 most valuable lessons which trained them 
 for the founding of their State, are the 
 lessons learned under Holland. The 
 softening and liberalizing influence of 
 those eleven years on Robinson himself 
 ' is clearly to be discerned. 
 
 Massachusetts united Church and State 
 in the beginning, admitting none but 
 freemen to be Church members, Church 
 and State were always separate in Ply- 
 mouth. There was never any "soul 
 liberty " advocated or vindicated by 
 Roger Williams that did not exist at Ply- 
 mouth. Certainly, he did not leave Ply- 
 mouth on compulsion. " That great and 
 pious soul, Mr. Winslow," he says, 
 "melted and kindly visited me, and put 
 a purse of gold into the hands of my 
 wife for our supply." 
 
 There is no danger that we shall ever 
 forget what the children of the Puritans 
 have to say in reply. They had to pre- 
 serve their State from danger within and 
 without, from foe spiritual and from foe 
 temporal. The little company, with the 
 Atlantic on one hand, their only wall of 
 defence against the hatred of King and 
 Prelate, and the forest, home of the sav- 
 age and the wild beast on the other ; it 
 was like a forlorn hope, it was like a for- 
 lorn hope of an army on a night march, 
 to which even an uncautious whisper 
 might be ruin. We do not forget, too, 
 that the Puritan's intolerance and super 
 stition were, with the single exception 
 of his brother at Plymouth, the intoler- 
 ance and superstition of all mankind ; 
 and that, with the single exception of his 
 brother at Plymouth, he was the first of 
 all mankind to cast them off. Puritan- 
 ism is a character, a force, and not a 
 creed. Let others, if they like, trace 
 their lineage to Norman Pirate or to Bob- 
 ber Baron. The children of the Puritan 
 are not ashamed of him. The Puritan 
 as a distinct, vital and predominant 
 power, lived less than a century in 
 England. He appeared early in the 
 reign of Elizabeth, who came to the 
 throne in 1558, and departed at the restora- 
 tion of Charles II, in 1660. But in that 
 brief time he was the preserver, aye, he 
 was the creator of English freedom. By 
 the confession of the historians who most 
 dislike him, it is due to him that there is 
 an English Constitution. He created the 
 modern House of Commons. That House, 
 when he took his seat in it, was the feeble 
 and timid instrument of despotism. 
 \yhen he left it, it was what it has ever 
 since been, the strongest, freest, most 
 venerable legislative body the world had 
 ever seen. When he took his seat in it, 
 it wai little more than the register of the 
 King's command. When he left it, it 
 was the main depository of the national 
 dignity and the national will. King and 
 Minister and Prelate, who stood in his 
 way, he brought to the bar and to the 
 block. In that brief but crowded century 
 he made the name of Englishman the 
 
highest title of honor upon the earth. A 
 great historian has said, "The dread of 
 his invincible army was on all the inhabi- 
 tants of the Island." He placed the name 
 of John Milton hi_^h on the illustrious 
 roll of the great poets of the world, and 
 the name of Oliver Cromwell highest on 
 the roll of English sovereigns. The his- 
 torian might have added that the dread 
 of this invincible leader was on all the 
 inhabitants of Europe. Puritanism 
 crossed thesea with Winthrop. It planted 
 Massachusetts and Connecticut. Itf ouglit 
 the war of the rebellion. The spirit of 
 English Puritanism was transformed into: 
 the spirit of American liberty. The 
 saviour of the English Conslilution was 
 the creator!of the Constitutions of America, 
 and, in a later day, was their saviour 
 also. It put down the rebellion. It 
 abolished slavery. It kept the National 
 faith. In spite of the other elements — 
 Scandinavian, Gei-man, Italian. Celt, that 
 are blending with our national life, under 
 our free hospitality, it was never, in my 
 judgment, more powerful than at this 
 hour. 
 
 The children of the Puritan are willing 
 to accept any challenge to a discussion of 
 his character and his title to the respect 
 of mankind, from any antagonist, east 
 or west, north or south, at home or 
 abroad, from prelate or from conventicle, 
 from churchman or from infidel, from 
 foreigner or from degenerate offspring. 
 There are some modern revilers of the 
 Massachusetts Puritans, whohave sprung 
 from Puritan-loins. I should like (o ask 
 them what they make of the single fact 
 of the founding of Harvard College. 
 But one of the highest titles of Plymouth 
 to honor is the fact, that, as the two com- 
 munities became blended, the spirit of the 
 Puritan was subdued and softened by the 
 spirit of the Pilgrim. 
 
 I am not unmindful that there is one 
 high authority for an opinion which, if 
 accepted, would deprive John Robinson of 
 hisliighest glory and would even rob the 
 event we celebrate of much of its splen 
 dor. Dr. Dexter, the historian, the 
 champion, the lover of New England 
 Congregationalism, thinks that John 
 Robinson was speaking of Church govern- 
 ment only, and did not mean to say tliat 
 there was to be expected from the word of 
 God any further light on the essentials of 
 Christian doctrine or of saving faith. 
 
 Every student of the great things of 
 American history, every son, every lover 
 of the Pilgrim, must cherish the memory 
 of Henry M. ' Dexter. The occasion 
 should not pass without a word of honor 
 for his naiile What we know of the life 
 of the Fathers at Leyden , and wh at wo 
 
 know of their origin in England, is due 
 to him, I am not sure but more than to all 
 other investigators put together. It ip 
 not surprising that this born champion 
 and combatant should have refused to 
 concede, even to the authority of John 
 Boblnspn, that the faith to which he was 
 born and bred did not contain, as ex- 
 pressed in its venerable formulae, the 
 whole counsel of God. The learned 
 doctor says: " I conceive it to be quite 
 ira possible for any candid person to read 
 carefully Robinson's defence of the doc- 
 trine propounded by the Synod at Dort, 
 without reaching the conclusion that the 
 Leyden Pastor was in entire agreement 
 with the Synod , not merely in the articles 
 of faith which it has formulated, but in 
 that animus of inf al libility and inexposure 
 to essential future modification, in which 
 it held them." I have read the volume 
 carefully and with so much of candor as 
 God has vouchsafed to me. While, un- 
 doubtedly, it affirms and most vigorously 
 defends that Oalvinistic faith which the 
 writer, and the men of his congregation, 
 held, and which the Fathers brought 
 with them to Plymouth, the faith which 
 has wrought for so man}' ages such 
 wonders for humanity, a faith which has 
 been held dear by so many martyrs of 
 liberty, and so many of the great builders, 
 in the old times, and in the new, who 
 ha,ve builded States in Christian liberty 
 and law, the faith of the founders of Re - 
 publics in Switzerland, in Holland, in 
 England, in New England, yet I can find 
 in that great argument no animus of in- 
 fallibility, and no claim that the light 
 which is to break forth from the word 
 hereafter may not illuminate them also, 
 and that it will not penetrate the great 
 temple of Christian doctrine instead of 
 being stayed in the porches and ap- 
 proaches. The preface to the defence of 
 the Synod at Dort itself to my apprehen- 
 sion, states as clearly, if not as eloquently 
 or tersely, the doctrine of the farewell 
 address. Speaking of the substance of 
 faith and the very essence of salvation, 
 he rebukes his antagonists for thinking 
 that they have seen the whole of God's 
 truth. "It is true we ought not," he 
 says, "to look on our things alone, as if 
 we alone had knowledge, and conscience, 
 and zeal, and souls to save: 'but every 
 man also on the things of others,' though 
 in some things differing from them, as 
 having these things, as well as we: and 
 therewith considering, that many eyes 
 see more than one, and that specially 
 having, as so many spectacles, the advan- 
 tages of knowledge of tongues, and arts, 
 with daily travail In the scripture, w'hich 
 in us are wanting. And thus serving 
 
§ 
 
 Qofl, in E^ll modesty of mind, and being 
 sincere jn fbetrulii , in, love, we shail bei 
 mu«h Qtter, both to heXp^ qtbers^ and to 
 be- Ixelped iff tbem ii» the tbinss agree- 
 ahte thereunto." 
 
 ;tn tfeese words John Robinson sounds 
 the ^ keynote of bis diatihctlTeL^: theolo- 
 gical, treatise, which he put to press in 
 I6^4„.four years alter the , departure of 
 thei.SUgrirns and, only a year before hisi 
 des.th., Hft -vffls spe!^k^n,g not of Church 
 goTOrnmeht or tiiual .or form, or cere- 
 monial, but of predestini^tion, of elec- 
 tio]», of the law of conscience, of the fall 
 of Adam and. Gpd s forejknowled^e and 
 truthfulness, of original sin, of bapti^m^ of 
 the covenant ^ith Abraham and of a new 
 and better covens.nt, of the five points of 
 Ct^lvimsQi, of the declaration of the 
 Sj;i)Qd, a djeplaration made by men who 
 di^^reil es^ientialiy, in ritual and church 
 goyernroent, from him and from > each 
 o^er. And it is of these that be de- 
 ciHriBS that, we are not to look, not to 
 think on our things, alone, as if we alone 
 had, knowledge, but every man also of 
 th&, things of others, as having eyes to 
 see a,s well ** ^6» and< advantages of 
 knowledge of tongues and arts, with 
 daily travail in the scripture, " which in 
 us arc wanting," and calls upon his people 
 "tp serve God in all modesty of mind, 
 and so to he fitter r bpth to help others 
 and to be helped by them." 
 
 Dr. Dexter well says, "We have too 
 much judged the Furltahs, and too much 
 allowed the wo'rldtp judge them, in the 
 light of our generatipji instead of the 
 light of their owiijilorgetting and help- 
 ing others to fotg^t;OMit.«f what ai horror 
 of thick darkness they were scarcely 
 more tban commencing tp emerge." It 
 is the glory of John.Boblhson that he was 
 conscious of the darkness of his time, for, 
 "aaith he," as Winslow reports, "it is 
 not possible, the .Christian world can come 
 sp lately out of such thjok. anti-Christian 
 darkness, ancj that full perfection of 
 knowledge should break' forth at once." 
 
 The. sublime utterance of John Robin- 
 son wpuld, become not only tame but petty 
 and ludicrous and ridiculous, if we. were 
 to add to itany phraseology which wojild 
 limit its meaning, in accordance with l)r. 
 Dexter's suggestion. , 
 
 John, Robinson would have dreaded 
 notbing more th^n to have led any weak 
 brother, astray. .If he could but have 
 seen in that prophetic vision into which 
 his, soul was lifted and wrapt in the 
 mingled agony and joy of th? day of 
 p^ting ftt Delft Haven, how countless 
 gene.ra)iii^na.dwellJ6g in and ruling, a con- 
 tint^nt largpii than, ^ujiope, would :hea,Tken 
 to the loftymuaie of 'that,ultera.n.c"e,, how 
 
 they would rejoice in it as itgelf tbp au- 
 roral light of. the hew davthatw^to 
 break forth frPni the word" of 0103', he 
 would, if Dr. Dexter be fight, hav^Jiijis.- 
 tened to add: i ~ ■■' 
 
 "Mistake me not, my brelhrftn dearly 
 belovad. This relateth Pnly to theif^sJSiQi 
 of vestment's; to the posture of tiiebciay 
 in prayer; to the authority of elders, jjiicl 
 the virtue conveyed by the iaipSsitiSii '4? 
 hands. The horror of thick ' daiknessl 
 through which- thfe world hath^aasfei)', 
 and is, yet passing, still giveihliglit 
 enough for everything b,e'side.-; In all ^ 
 sential things, the whole counsel of Gpel, 
 though unknown to Abraha'tn and i% 
 Fathers, to Moses and the Prophets, to 
 all mankind before the- Saviour's coining, 
 and to the vast majoritf^ of mahkihd'eirfi' 
 ^nce, is fully known to. me and to' tk'e 
 Synod at Dort. No modesty- of riiln'd 
 leadeth me to think I can be heipedby 
 others, or that the advantages of knowl- 
 edge of tpngues and artS,^ with daily 
 travail in the scripture, which in us 'a^e 
 wanting, availeth aught in these tliiiig^," 
 
 It is ho rash conjecture that th'e\^i'^ 
 spirit whose pure companionship oui'' ex- 
 cellent Dexter would have sought in the 
 realih where he has gone, Was the spirit 
 of John Robinson. ' He would have alrcafly 
 learned hl^ hiistake before thMr meelit^. 
 As Beatrice said to Dante of Saint Greg- 
 ory— .. 
 
 "Wherefore, as soon as he unclosed htseyes. 
 Within this heaven, he at himseU didsmller 
 
 Dr. Thomas Fuller, whose wit has pre- 
 ventfed h'is getting the credit diie tb^B 
 profound wisdott, was born in 1808, \*ith- 
 in a mile of Robert Browne and hbt fir 
 from the'cradle of the Pilgriihs at ScfPoby 
 anfl Austerfield. He was a clBar-eyed 
 and not unsympathetic dbsBtier. Hjb 
 says of the Pilgritos in his CttareW His- 
 tory: 
 
 " They laid down two grand ground- 
 works on which their following fabric is 
 to be erected : ' 
 
 " First. Qnly to take what was held 
 forth in God's word, leaving nothing tp 
 Church practice or human prudence, as 
 but the iron legs and clay toea^ th«it 
 statue whose whole hand and bodjrou^ht 
 to be pure gold; 
 
 " Second. Because one day teacheth 
 another, they will not be tied on Tup?d»y 
 morning to maintain their tenets P^ Mm- 
 day night, if a new discovery intervene. 
 
 Holland, as the researches of; receat 
 writers have, shown, exercised a large in- 
 fluence on civil an4 religious libertyin 
 England. The traces of this inauence 
 .^P^.^*^ '-S ^^^- Puritan.' commpnWeoUE 
 All the Protestant. Reformers in. Eih^ 
 
who rejttcted Episcopal auiUoriiy cousii- 
 tuted oD« bratherhooA, and ht>d a large 
 influence on each otl|er. All of them re- 
 garded .Holland as their champion: aqd 
 defender. But the Pilgrims of Plymouth 
 bore to Holland, a relation bo^ne by ho 
 otti^r. She had been for 18 years th^ir 
 sanctuary, their home, their, school, their 
 university. 
 
 Governor Bradford says, " They re- 
 solved to goe into the low countries where 
 there was freedom of reUgion for all 
 men." The Pilgrim brought from Sol 
 land an experience of freedom,: civil and 
 religious, then unknown elsewhere on the 
 face of the earth. Schiller said, " ijvery 
 injury inflicted by atyrantgavcaiightof 
 citizenship in Holland." 
 
 The church of th;e Pilgrim had its di- 
 rect connection with Christ. Tl^ere was 
 no human link between. If He were not 
 its rock, it had no foundation; If He were 
 not its Father, it had no paternity. If He 
 were not its support, it had no strength. 
 If He were not its root, it was not planted 
 in the soil. The church plsu^ted at $croO' 
 by and Austerfield, rooted at Leyden, 
 transplanted to Plymouth, was a band of 
 Christiana independent of any earthly 
 power, as direct an emanation from the; 
 spirit of Christ as the church first formed' 
 at Antioch. There were t>ut two places^ 
 on earth at that day where such a church' 
 could abide., One was Holland and the 
 other the unbroken wilderness of Amer- 
 ica! Robinson's definition of a. church is 
 this: "A company con^stiug though pf 
 but two or three, sa parated from th e world 
 whether unchristian or anti christian, 
 gathered^ unto the name of Christ by a 
 covenant made to work in all ways of God 
 known to them, is a church, and so hath 
 the whole power oif Christ." 
 
 I do not know that there is any discus 
 sion of the principles of civil liberty in 
 Pilgrim literature.. They make no com- 
 plaint of merely political oppression. 
 Their enemy was the hieraicby. Their 
 tyrant was the law which enforced con- 
 formity. But they were ready for self- 
 government. During the first tweslve 
 yeara they esercised all those functions 
 of government which are now performed 
 in towns, counties and commonwealths. 
 
 The Pilgrim had seen in Holland the 
 best example ever seen in his time or be- 
 fore pf municipal Bepublican govern- 
 ment. The contpact sigqed- on board the 
 Mayflower was tb^ necessary and natural 
 result of what be had learned in the Low 
 Cwnteies. 
 
 So far as I know there is no allusion to 
 political freedom frqu^ tJl^tlip^'PT tliepen 
 otajijtof .^e.foi^nder^pl Plyjmouth,, The 
 comnact betrins with a declaration that 
 
 tUuy " are the loyal sul^jecls of our dreaid 
 Sovereign , Loi-d King James, by the Grace 
 of God, of Gtreat Britain anq France and 
 Ireland — King, defejader of the faith," 
 etc., and that they have uhdertakea their 
 voyage for the glory of God and the ad- 
 vancement of the Christian faith, and 
 honor of th»ir King and country. An^ 
 yet tiie present necessity led them to make 
 wh^t ha,s been called the original social 
 comp^t, in the form of as pure a Bepub- 
 lie as was ever known on earth before or 
 since. Indeed the t^octrine on which the 
 Revolution was fought afterward, of ab- 
 solute independence of the British Par- 
 liament, is clearly implied from their 
 .original constitution. In i)e Ra88iei:e's 
 exceedingly spiirited letter describing 
 Plymouthi' in the 7tb year after the 
 landing, is' the whole- statement of the 
 cqntentiou of our Revolutionary fathers 
 in one pregnant sentence,, " Whei'pby 
 they have their freedom without ren- 
 dering an account to anyone,, only if 
 :the King should chppse to send, a Gov- 
 ernor-General they would be obliged to 
 acknowledge hinj as Sovereign Chief." 
 On the other hand, the Puritans of MafS- 
 acbusetts were impelled to their emigra- 
 tion largely by ,th,e thirst for political 
 freedom. They dreaded schism. Yet 
 they were speedily.; compelled to sever the 
 tie with the established Church, that 
 Mother to whom Winthrop ,and Higgin- 
 son had uttered the.ir despairing and lov- 
 ing cry, When religioius libeity set her 
 foot on the rock at Plymouth, her insep- 
 arable sister, political freedom) came with 
 her. And when political liberty landed 
 at Salem, there; could be no long separa- 
 tion. The other sisterinstantly followed- 
 
 The Puritan, it is true, was a religious 
 enthusiast. But it is also true that his 
 history belongs to the political and not to 
 the religious history of the race. His 
 work was the defenc,i?,of civil liberty, the 
 framing of constitutions ftnd statutes, re- 
 sistance to tyrants, diplomacy, conquest, 
 the stern conflict and, the. stern triumph 
 of battle. The founders of Massachu- 
 setts, and the men witti whom they took 
 counsel and agreed, were busy, sagacious, 
 influential, and, active politicians, intent 
 on political reforms in England and on 
 carrying out their principles in both 
 countries 
 
 The influence of the Pilgrim is a spirit- 
 ual influence. His soul thirsted for God, 
 foT the living God. Civil liberty came to 
 him as an ipcident. 
 
 Mr. Webster says that although many 
 of them were Ilepubl.icans.in principle, 
 we have.no eyidence that our New Eng- 
 land ancestors would have enjigrated 
 merely from their dislike of the political 
 
10 
 
 system of Europe. "They fled nol so 
 much from English Goveinmont as from 
 the hierarchy and the laws which en- 
 forced conformity to its establishment." 
 He adds that toleration was a virtue be- 
 yond the concepiion of Queen Elizabeth, 
 and beyond her age and that of her suc- 
 cessor. Both these statements are doubt 
 less true. But the Pilgrim Fathers brought 
 with them tlie desire for absolute civil 
 and religious liberty for themselves, and 
 they brought with them an absolute pur 
 pose to conform to the will of God as de- 
 clared in the scriptures and as interpreted 
 by the individual conscience. Especially 
 they brought with them the Golden Rule. 
 The logical consequence of these two 
 principles, taken together, must be inevi- 
 tably the establishment of a perfect civil 
 and religious liberty. 
 
 The Pilgrim had none of the Puritan's 
 harshness, intolerance or religious big- 
 otry. He was like him in the absolute 
 submission of his own will to the will of 
 the Creator, both in personal conduct and 
 the conduct of the State, In deeming tbis 
 world as of little account but in its rela- 
 tion to another. 
 
 The Pilgrim had the Puritan's faith in 
 a personal immortality and in a living 
 God. Like the Puritan, he demanded 
 absolute obedience to the voice of con- 
 science in the soul. 
 
 He was like the Puritan in believing in 
 a future life where just men were to enjoy 
 immortality with those whom they had 
 loved here; 
 
 He was like the Puritan in that he was 
 comforted and supported by that belief 
 in every sorrow and suffering which he 
 encountered ; 
 
 He was like the Puritan also in believ- 
 ing in the coming of God's Kingdom in 
 this world, and that the State he had 
 builded was to abide and to grow, a com- 
 munity dwelling together in the practice 
 of virtue, in the worship of God, in the 
 pursuit of truth. 
 
 There was no church membership, as in 
 Massachusetts, required in Plymouth for 
 political franchise. They had no thought 
 of Republicanism till the compact. But 
 they learned to think of Republican gov- 
 ernment, without being startled, from 
 their brethren who had been at Geneva, 
 and chiefly from their own sojourn in 
 Hollnnd 
 
 Tlie Pilgrims had seen in Holland the 
 oldest and best system of common schools 
 in Europe. Indeed their answer to the 
 charges sent from London in 1632 gives 
 ample evidence that from the very begin- 
 ning they deemed universal education a 
 necessary of life. 
 
 They had seen in Holland the constant 
 
 reading of the Bible in all households. 
 There had been twenty -four editions of 
 the New Testament and fifteen of the 
 Bible printed in the vernacular before 
 they left Leyden. 
 
 "They had lived under the shadow of 
 the foremost unversity in Europe, which 
 had set them ah example of a large liber- 
 ality, to which Oxford was a stranger till 
 nearly 350 years afterward. 
 
 They had seen a people living under a 
 written constitution, expounded by an 
 independent judiciary. 
 
 They had seen, and Brewster had 
 wielded, the strength of that irresistible 
 engine, a free press. 
 
 They had seen the practical working 
 of that equal division of inheritance , 
 among all the children, of which Mr. 
 Webster said here, "Republican govern- 
 ment must inevitably be the result." 
 
 They had learned in Holland the im- 
 portance and convenience of a public 
 registration of deeds. 
 
 They had seen the security to individ- 
 ual freedom of a written ballot. 
 
 All these things America owes to the 
 Pilgrim of Plymouth, and the Pilgrim of 
 Plymouth owes them to Holland. 
 
 There landed on P.ymouth Rock on 
 the 31st day of December, 1631; 
 
 a State, free-born and fuH grown, es- 
 erclsing all local, municipal and national 
 functions tlirough the voice of the whole 
 people, in simple democratic majesty; 
 
 ready, as its bounds grew and its indi- 
 vidual communities' multiplied, for the 
 mechanism of a perfect representative 
 government; ' 
 
 an Independent Church, having^ a di- 
 rect connection with Christ, as did (he 
 Church in the beginning, without human 
 link or mediation; 
 
 a people mild both in goyernmout 
 and private conduct, tolerant, peaceful, 
 affectionate, lovers of home, of kindred 
 and friends, apt for social delights, fond 
 of sound learning and the refinements of 
 domestic life, without' the greed of gain 
 or the lust of conquest; 
 
 but possessing a rare public spirit, 
 and the high courage and aptness for 
 command and for success which belong 
 to the English race; 
 
 made up of gentlemen and gentle- 
 women to whom refinement, education, 
 learning, and a noble behavior were ne- 
 cessities of their nature; 
 
 accustomed to toil, privation and hard- 
 ship; ■ . 
 
 observing the operation of a written 
 ballot, 
 
 and of a public registration of deeds, 
 
 and an eqiial distribution of inherit' 
 ance among the children. 
 
11 
 
 This Utile Suite had existed lor Ti 
 years. It enacted the mildest code of 
 laws on the face of the earth. There 
 were but eight capital ofEences in 
 Plymouth. There were thirty one iu 
 England at the end of the reigti of Eliza 
 bett. Sir James Mackintosh held in his 
 hand a list of two hundred and twenly- 
 three when he addressed the House of 
 Commons at the beginning" of the pres- 
 ent century. They established trial by 
 jury. They treated the Indians with jus- 
 tice and good faith, setting fin example 
 which Vattel, the foremost writer on the 
 law of nations, commends to mankind. 
 Their good sense kept them free from the 
 witchcraft delusions. They were not un- 
 prepared for a spirited self-defence, as wit- 
 ness Miles Standish's answer to the chal- 
 lenge of the Narraganselt, and his stern 
 summary justice at Weymouth. They 
 held no foot of land not fairly obtained 
 by honest purchase. No witch was ever 
 hung there. In their earlier days their 
 tolerance was an example to Roger Wil- 
 liams himself. He has left on record his 
 gratitude for the generous friendship of 
 Winslow. Gov. Bradford's courtesy en- 
 tertained the Catholic Priest, who was 
 his guest, with a fish dinner on Friday. 
 If, like Roger Williams himself, they 
 failed somewhat, as in the case of the 
 Quakers, in the practical application of 
 a principle for which the world was not 
 ready, their practice and their principles 
 soon came to be in accord. When we re- 
 member that our Baptist friends wanted 
 the term " damnable heretics" to include 
 Unitarians and to have them banished, 
 that within a year from the beginning 
 of the Revolution New York shut out 
 Catholic Priests from her limits under 
 the penalty of death, and that in Mary- 
 land it was a capital crime to be a 
 Unitarian as late as 1770, you will 
 hardly care te devote much space to this 
 blemish on the Fathers of Plymouth. 
 And when at last, in 1693, Plymouth was 
 blended with Massachusetts, the days of 
 bigoti-y and intolerance and superstition, 
 as a controlling force in Massachusetts, 
 were over. 
 
 The past is not secure unless it be fol- 
 lowed by a worthy future. The Pilgrim 
 will fail unless his posterity be fit to 
 keep his fame. Has the experience of 
 two hundred and seventy-five years 
 strengthened or weakened the influence 
 of the Pilgrim's character, or the power 
 in human history of the fnith, the prin- 
 ciples, atid the institutions which he 
 brought with him when he landed upon 
 the rock? Do they vindicate their 
 authority in personal conduct, and the 
 conduct of the States 1 Are they stronger 
 
 or weaker now than then? How far Lave 
 we kept the faith of the Fathers? Are 
 we to transmit it unimpaired to our chil 
 dren ? What have we of rational hope 
 that our children will transmit it in turn 
 unimpaired to their heirs? It is well, 1 
 think, that at no infrequent periods this 
 account should be taken. 
 
 Are the devout religious faith, obedi 
 ence to the voice of consciencein the soul 
 as a guide to the individual and the State, 
 civil liberty, civil government, liberty in 
 religion, the quality of the English race, 
 and the free iiistitutions brought by the 
 Fathers from England and Holland and 
 established here, blended and in harmony 
 in the character of a great people, living- 
 and strong to-day as they were in the first 
 generation? Do we leave them unim 
 paired to our children ? Are they to 
 abide ? 
 
 One thing we must not fail to observe. 
 It is quite clear that when we consider 
 theelementslh ave imper I ectly descri bed , 
 which gave the Pilgrim Slate its dis- 
 tinctive character, that no one of them 
 could be spared , if that distinctive charac 
 ter is to be maintained. Probably a<i 
 bright examples of each could be found 
 elsewhere. It is the fact that these shin - 
 ing qualities were united and blended 
 in the Pilgrim that gives him his dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 The Pilgrim was possessed by an in- 
 tense religious faith, and for it he was 
 ready to encounter suffering and death. 
 But there are plenty of examples in his- 
 tory of a religious faith as intense, to 
 which its votaries have been ready to 
 make as absolute a surrender of self, 
 which the Pilgrim would have accounted 
 as a gross superstition. Gerald, the assas- 
 sin of William the Silent, was as sure he 
 was doing the will of God as was his 
 victim. He met his death and the terri- 
 ble torture which preceded it with a 
 courage as undaunted as that of any hero 
 in history: He fortified himself for his 
 crime by reading the Bible, by fasting- 
 and prayer, and then, full of religious 
 exaltation, dreaming of angels and of 
 Paradise, he departed for Delft, and com 
 pleted his duty as a good Catholic and 
 faithful subject. When his judges ques- 
 tioned him, when they condemned him 
 to have his hand enclosed in a tube, 
 seared with a red hot iron, to have his 
 arms and legs and thighs torn to pieces 
 with burning pincers, his heart to be 
 torn out and thrown intb his face, his 
 head to be dissevered from his trunk and 
 placed on a pike, his body to be cut into 
 four pieces, and every piece to be hung 
 on a gibbet over one of the principal 
 gates of the city, he showed' no sign of 
 
Id 
 
 terror, np sorrow, or surprise. Fixing 
 his daunlless eye on; his jurtges, he 
 repeate;4 with steady voice his customary 
 words, " JScee liomp! " 
 
 The Moslem, the Indian, the Hindoo 
 meet torture and death with a courage as 
 dauntle£js as that of the Pilgrim 
 
 The subjection of the Individual will 
 to the law of duty, whethei'in pergonal 
 coijdi^ct or the conduct; of states, is as 
 manifest in the Spartan as in the Puritan, 
 and has had many examples since the 
 day; when the epitaph, of the 300 was 
 inscribed at Thermopylae : 
 
 Stranger ! tell it to Laced^rnqn, 
 
 That we lie here in obedience to her laws. 
 
 The love of freedom, appears, and has 
 burned brightly in the bosoms of men of 
 all races and of all ages. We have no 
 rigiit to make a claim for, the Pilgrim 
 whicli we cannot allow to the Athenian 
 or the Swiss, or the Swede, or the 
 ScQtsman. - 
 
 The institutions which the Pilgrim 
 brought from Holland, he left in Holland. 
 
 The, institutions he brought from 
 England, he Ipft in England. 
 
 The English aptness for command and 
 habit of success, indomitable courage, 
 unconquerable perseverance belonged'to 
 this race befoire the movement for reli- 
 gious freedom,: and exist in the English 
 race to-day wherever it is found. 
 
 The English language and literature 
 are ,posses(9ious shared by the whole 
 English-speakjng race. Yet the Dutch 
 or Ihe Swedish or the Scotch character- 
 istics differ, widely from those of the 
 men who settled Plymouth. To ask, 
 therefore, whether the Pilgrim character 
 is to abide, is to ask whether the great 
 qualities we have ascribed to the Pilgrim 
 are to remain blended, united, living, 
 though perhaps softened, in the lapse of 
 years. 
 
 I suppose we must admit it to be true 
 that with men of thoughtful, instructed, 
 conscientious natures, the authority of 
 the statemen,t of religious faith that satis- 
 fied the Pilgrim, has, been shaken in 
 lecent times chiefly by two causes : 
 
 Isl. The researches of modern science 
 have occasioned disbelief in the scripture 
 narrptive of the creation, and in the 
 miraculous suspensipp of natural la^s 
 which the scripture records, and on which 
 the claim of Christianity was largelv 
 rested in their day. 
 
 2d. The modern knowledge of the phy- 
 sical frame of man seems to establish the 
 existence of physical causes for what our 
 lathers were wont to consider purely 
 spiritual manifestatjipps, and so to make 
 It seem mpre likely that the soul depends 
 tor Its own existence and capacity for 
 
 action upon the continued existence of 
 the body- 
 
 The religious faith of > mankind, de- 
 clared in different periods, always makes 
 use of the framework, the setting! the im- 
 agery, thie illustration, which is furnished 
 by the accepted, scientific knowledge, of 
 the time whep it is uttei-edt Certainly to 
 this the teaching of our Bible, both in the 
 Old Testament andin.the New, is no ex^ 
 ceptioij. These beliefs,, taught from very 
 imperfect scientific: information, seem to 
 be inseparably and inexti-icably blended 
 with the moral and religious truths which 
 they have been u'ed to illustrate, and to 
 render conceivable. At. every forward 
 step of science,' 9S she makes some new 
 revelation to her students, she iseems to 
 overthrow the religjoaof which she has 
 been the handmaid. So, every: great dis- 
 coverer in science, from Galileo to Dar- 
 win, fi'om the discovery of gravimtiQa 
 and the .slow geologic prpcessesrof the 
 planting of the coal and the formation of 
 he rocks to the discovery of the evolu 
 tion and kindred of all animate nature, 
 appears to the teacher of the accepted re- 
 ligion of the time as a skeptiic if not as an 
 infidel. No astonishment could exceed 
 that of John Robinson if he could hear 
 the scientific illustrations, by whicli the 
 most conservative and orthodox of his 
 Calvinlst successors undertake to make 
 iPlain the counsel of God to a congrega- 
 tion of most obedient and docile disciples 
 to-day, So every period of scientific pro- 
 gress _seems tp a superficial observer to be 
 a period pf religious and spiritual retro- 
 gression. 
 
 Does the faith that supported the Pil- 
 grims, the faith in a personal immortality, 
 in ». conscious and benevolent Creator of 
 the world who watches its affairs with a 
 personal intelligence, and directs them 
 with a loving purpose, as a father guldetU 
 h,is children, abide unimpaired as an in 
 fluence in the government of' States and 
 of personal conduct to-day ? This is the 
 theme of all themes, the question of all 
 questions. It cannot be passed by on any 
 solemn public occasion which is devoted 
 to the memory of the PilgrimSi I think, 
 speaking for myself, that when the new 
 law which science has shown to us be- 
 comes clear, not only to the genius which 
 has first perceived it, but to the common 
 apprehension of mankind, the eternal 
 verities of a conscious and benevolent 
 Creator,'and a personal, human immoi- 
 tality reappear clearev and , stronger. 
 Even the skepticism of modern thought 
 will at least agree to this, that the faith 
 in righteousness, the willingness of man 
 kind to obey a law higher than their own 
 desire, grows stronger from age to age. 
 
It was never stronger than today. The 
 belief in what has been called the power 
 in this world that makes for righteous ■ 
 ness Is sti'onger than ever, even in the 
 minds of men who reject a miraculous or 
 a religious sanction of its commands. 
 The faith in miracles may have abated. 
 The miracle may have been consigned to 
 a place among the lower and grosser ar 
 guments which enforce obedience to the 
 divine behest of duty. It is at best but 
 milk for babes. But the faith drawn from 
 the history of the constant law which pre- 
 vails in the ordinaiy government of the 
 universe has more than taken its place. 
 
 The scientific inquirer makes his in- 
 quiry from a love of truth; and the lover 
 of truth will never be other than an obeyer 
 of duty. 
 
 Science traces the inperceptible stops 
 by which inorganic matter reaches life, 
 sensation, consciousness, will, conscience. 
 She tells us, if we understand her, that in 
 uncounted, perhaps unimaginable ages 
 the atoms of dead dust have stirred and 
 quickened into vegetable life. The vege- 
 table has become conscious of an animal 
 nature. The animal. acquires human in- 
 telligence. But the voice of duty was full 
 and clea r in the morning of creation. The 
 voice which Adam disobeyed, to which 
 Abel and Abram listened, to which the 
 Prophets and Pilgrims gave their lives 
 was heard in fullest strength when the 
 human intelligence first became conscious 
 of itself. Ever it overcomes and masters 
 all the forces which science discovers or 
 comprehends. 
 
 droping science lays bare the cells and 
 brings under its microscope the minute 
 powder in whose gray globules are held 
 in store all thoughts and memories. But 
 the will, lord of thought, summoning 
 memory from its cell with sovereign 
 power, still dwells in its cloud, mysteri- 
 ous, unapproachable, inaccessible. 
 
 Science from age to age tells us more 
 and more of the physical instrument by 
 which the mind — the will — enforces its 
 commands. It lays bare the mechanism, 
 the secret spring by which the physical 
 fiame is set in motion. But it has added 
 nothing to our knowledge of the mind 
 itself, of the spiritual being which is con- 
 scious of itself, which in its sublime free- 
 dom chooses for itself the law which will 
 ob^, and even when it pays its homage 
 to its Creator, or to His mandate of duty, 
 pays only a free and voluntary homage. 
 
 If any man doubt that the faith in jus- 
 tice and righteousness, and their power 
 as a practical force in the government of 
 the world is iocreasing from age to age, 
 whatever may be the sanction, let him 
 read the Uvea of the men who for the past 
 
 n; 
 
 generation have been chosen by Great 
 Britain for the government of her 2S0 
 million subjects in the East. An almost 
 unlimited jiower, gained without scruple 
 used for generations as a provision for 
 the children of her upper classes, has be- 
 come steadily and surely an exalnpVe of 
 moderation, hiimanity and justice. There 
 can be found few finer examples of the 
 character of the great race from which ■v^'e 
 are so proud to be descended, than Lord 
 Lawrence, or Lord Mayo, or Sir James 
 Stephen. 
 
 "The Sahibs do not understand or like 
 us," said the Indian scholar to Mr. Mobier 
 Williams. " But they try to be just and 
 do not fear the face of man." 
 
 The belief in miracles may have dimin- 
 ished in strength. But religious faith is 
 only a sanction of the moral law. The 
 belief in a prevalence of that law as a 
 controlling force in the world has not 
 abated. It abides. The sanction of God's 
 law by miracles has given place to a sanc- 
 tion by His constant and eternal provi- 
 dence. 
 
 There is doubtless to-day great impa- 
 tience of ecclesiastical authority, of creeds 
 — the devices by which men seek to nar- 
 row and limit the infinite truth of God, 
 or to thrust their weak and fallible power 
 between the soul and its Creator. But 
 the faith that there came to this world, 
 nineteen hundred years ago, a majestic 
 Being, divinely coQimissibfied, annouiic- 
 ing a perfect rule, and Himself a perfect 
 example, for human coiiduct, was never 
 so powerful as at this moment. 
 
 Is the principle of self-goVerntnent in 
 civil liberty as strong to-day with as as 
 with the Fathers at Plymouth? John 
 Cotton wrote to Lord Say in 1636: 
 
 " Democracy I do not conceive that 
 ever God did ordain as ii fit government, 
 either in Church or commonwealth. If 
 the people be Governors, Who shall be 
 governed?" 
 
 John Cotton's question is the great 
 question of all history and of all destiny, 
 'fhe American answer to it is that if the 
 jjeople be the governors, the people shall 
 be the governed. The human Will volun- 
 tarily and in freedom subjecting itself to 
 a law higher than its own desire, is the 
 sublimest thing in the universe, except 
 its Creator. We have 45 sovereign States 
 united in an imperial Republic, each one 
 of which has written in its constitution 
 that those things *hich are forbidden \}y 
 the moi-al law and the law of justice shall 
 not be enacted in the govBrninent of the 
 State by any human authority or accom- 
 plished by any hnniaa desire. They have 
 created a mecTiauistim perfect as the lot of 
 humanity Will adttiit foi' sfetiuting thSfe re- 
 
14 
 
 straint. Every generation has had and 
 will -have its own temptations, and has 
 committed and will commit its own 
 offences. But you will all agree with me 
 that, not only the love of liherty hut the 
 strength of those constitutional restraints 
 on the present desires of an impatient 
 people grows stronger from generation to 
 generation and from age to age. I think 
 our generation understands better than it 
 was ever understood before that there is 
 something far more than the love of free- 
 dom, something far higher than freedom 
 itself, essential to a great State or to a 
 great soul. Freedom is but the removal 
 of obstacles. Freedom may be for the 
 savage as for the Christian, for the hyena 
 as for the dove. When the fetter hsxs 
 been stricken from the limbs, when the 
 caged or cliained eagle soars into the 
 sky, the time has come for labor, for 
 discipline, for obedience, The freest 
 people must submit to the severest and 
 most strenuous sense of obligation, if it 
 would lift itself to its own ideals. It 
 must listen to a voice of higher author- 
 ity than its own. The voice of the 
 people is not the voice of God. That 
 sentiment is alike false and impious. 
 
 The principles of the American con- 
 stitutions pervade the entire continent. 
 As the child who goes out, poor and ob- 
 scure from his birthplace to seek his 
 fortune, comes back again successful and 
 honored and strong to enrich the par- 
 ental dwelling, so the principles of civil 
 liberty in constitutional restraints which 
 have possessed the American continent 
 from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn, have 
 crossed the Atlantic again to possess the 
 countries of their origin. England is 
 almost a Republic in everything but 
 name. France, after two failures, has 
 become a permanent member of the 
 family of free states, while in Southern 
 and Oriental seas where the adventurous 
 ships of our fathers, long after the 
 American Constitution was framed, found 
 nothing but barbarism and savagery, the 
 great Australasian commonwealths are 
 rising in splendor and in glory to take, 
 at no distant day, a place perha ps fore- 
 most in the family of self-governing na- 
 tions. There is to-day no monarchy on 
 American soil, unless we except the 
 loose hanging power still retained by her 
 Majesty Queen "Victoria over the British 
 possessions on the north. 
 
 If there be one thing more than another 
 which is the settled purpose of intelligent 
 and educated men and women who are, 
 are to be, and ought to be the governing 
 forces in all Christian nations, it is that 
 the relation of man to his Creator shall 
 be a questjop fpr the individual soul, and 
 
 shall not be used as an instrument by any 
 human power or authority. Our Fathers 
 dreaded the power of theCatholic Church. 
 But I think we are quite apt to forget 
 that the "fury of the Bishops" from 
 which John Milton says they fled, was 
 the fury of Protestant Bishops. Reli- 
 gious intolerance was the error and crime 
 of past ages, universal but with few excep- 
 tions, and belonged to all churches alike. 
 The witchcraft delusion prevailed in 
 Protestant England and in Puritan Mass- 
 achusetts, as well as among the Catholic 
 nations of the continent. It was a Prot- 
 estant monarch by whose orders the body 
 of Oliver Cromwell was disinterred from 
 its resting-place in Westminster Abbey, 
 and the head — nobler and more august 
 than any in the long line of English 
 sovereigns since the day of Alfred — was 
 exposed to public indignity on Temple 
 Bar. Today Catholic France is as toler- 
 ant as Protestant Massachusetts. Cath- 
 olic Italy has thrown off the temporal 
 power of the Papacy. There has been no 
 nobler tribute in recent years to the mem- 
 ory of the Pilgrim, and to civil and re- 
 ligious freedom than that uttered in Ply- 
 mouth ten years ago by a Catholic poet, I 
 know of no more eloquent and stirring 
 statement anywhere of a lofty American 
 patriotism than tliat by Father Conaty, 
 an Irish Catholic priest in my own city 
 of Worcester, when the portrait of our 
 Irish hero, Sergeant Plunkett, was hung 
 on the walls of Mechanics' Hall. 
 
 In Massachusetts alone at - least 56 per 
 cent of her people are of foreign parent- 
 age Probably 30 per cent of her people 
 are of the Catholic faith. They came 
 here, most ofthem, driven by an extreme 
 poverty from homes where for centuries 
 they had been the victims of an almost 
 intolerable oppression. They have grave 
 faults, which it is not part of a true 
 friendship or a true respect to attempt to 
 hide or to gloss over. But I hold it one 
 of the most remarkable and one of the 
 most encouraging facts in our history 
 that this great stream which has poured 
 into our Slate within the memory of liv- 
 ing men who are not yet old has changed 
 so little the character of Massachusetts 
 and has had, on the whole, so favorable 
 an influence upon her history and causes 
 so little reasonable apprehension for the 
 luture. Massachusetts has educated the 
 foreigner. She is making an American 
 of him. She is surely, and not very 
 slowly, when we consider the great peri- 
 ods that constitute the life of a State, im- 
 pressing upon him what is best of the 
 Pilgrim and the Puritan quality and the 
 Pilgrim and the Puritan conception of a 
 State. I look with aji unciuestjoning hopp 
 
upon the future of Massachusetts. Noth- 
 ing can stay her in her great career, un- 
 less evil and low amhition shall stir up 
 strife where there should be peace, hatred 
 where there should he sympathy, and the 
 conflict of religious sect and creed where 
 there should be nothing but common 
 Christian faith and common Christian 
 love. 
 
 There is a story of an Irish traveler 
 who touched his hat to the statue of 
 Jupiter inBome. He said in explanation 
 that he was afraid the old fellow might 
 come into power again. The old Giants 
 Pope and Pagan had become harmless in 
 their caverns so long ago as the time 
 when Bunyan's Pilgrim passed by on his 
 way to the holy city. They are no more 
 dangerous now. Timorous and Mistrust, 
 Mr. Ready-to-halt and Mr. Feeble-mind 
 may turn pale and their knees may trem- 
 ble with dread of these ancient spectres. 
 They may hide themselves in caverns of 
 their own to take counsel for mutual pro- 
 tection. They cannot frighten the Amer- 
 ican people. Still less will the sons of 
 the Pilgrims be disturbed. We do not 
 meet tyranny or bigotry or despotism or 
 priestcraft with weapons like theirs. We 
 have learned other lessons from the Pil- 
 grim Fathers. Leave liberty to encounter 
 despotism. Leave freedom to deal with 
 slavery. Leave tolerance to meet intol- 
 erance. Set the eagle to deal with the 
 bat. Let in upon the marsh and upon the 
 swamp the pure air and the fresh breeze. 
 Open the windows into the cold dungeon 
 and dark cellar and let in the sun's light 
 and the sun's warmth. 
 
 The Pilgrims were Englishmen. Their 
 children are, in the essentials of national 
 character. Englishmen still. We have a 
 great admixture of other races. But it is 
 anadmixture chiefly from those North- 
 ern races of which England herself was 
 composed. In spite of past conflicts and 
 present rivalry England is the nation 
 closest to us in affection and sympathy. 
 The English language is ours. English 
 literature is perhaps more familiar to the 
 bulk of our people than to Englishmen 
 themselves. The English Bible is still 
 our standard of speech, our inspiration, 
 our rule of faith and practice. We 
 look to English authority in the admin- 
 istration of our system of law and equity. 
 English; aptness for command, habit of 
 success^ indomitable courage, unconquer- 
 able perseverance have been, are, and ai'e 
 to remain the American quality. The men 
 of- other blood who come here acquire 
 and are. penetrated with the English, or 
 perhaps -without boasting or van ty we 
 may say,. the American spirit. The great 
 bullf of our people are of English blood. 
 
 But by the spirit, which has its own ped- 
 igree, its own ancestry, its own law 
 of descent and of inheritance, we are 
 English even more than by any tie of 
 physical kinship. It is of thi^ pedigree 
 of the spirit, governed by forces of which 
 science has as yet given us no account that , 
 we are taking account to-day. It is by 
 virtue of its laws that John Winthrop 
 counts George Washington among his 
 posterity. James Otis transmits his 
 quality to Charles Sumner. Emerson 
 may well be reckoned the spiritual child 
 of Bradford; Channing the spiritual 
 child of John Robinson; and Miles Stand- 
 iah the progenitor of Grant. The great- 
 hearted Hebrew prophet has many a de- 
 scendant among the great-hearted Puri- 
 tans. In this genealogy the men of 
 Thermopyrae are no aliens to the men of 
 Bunker Hill. When the boy who went 
 out from a New England dwelling to meet 
 death at Gettysburg or Antietam with no 
 motive but the love of country and the 
 sense of duty, shall meet, where he is 
 gone, the men who fought the livelong 
 day with Wellington or obeyed Nelson's 
 immortal signal, he shall 
 
 "Claim kindred there, and have the claim 
 allowed." 
 
 What I said just now was written more 
 than ten days ago. Let it stand. Let it 
 stand. It is well that these two great na- 
 tions should know something of each other 
 that they don't get from their metropolitan 
 press whether in London or in New York. 
 Each of them should know that if it enter 
 into a quarrel with the other it is to be a 
 contest with that people on the face of 
 the earth which is most like to itself. The 
 quarrel will be maintained on both sides 
 until Anglo-Saxon, until English, until 
 American endurance is exhausted. For 
 that reason, if for no other, such a conflict 
 should never begin. 
 
 This whole thing is very simple. We 
 cannot permit any weak power on this 
 continent to be despoiled of its territory, 
 or to be crowded out of its rights, by 
 any strong power anywhere. England 
 would not permit us to do that to Belgium 
 or to Denmark. Oh the other hand, we 
 have no title to interfere with the estab- 
 lished boundaries of English territory, 
 whether we like them or do not like them. 
 All between those two limits is subject 
 for discussion and for arbitration; sub- 
 ject for that international arbitration 
 which a delegation of English members, 
 of ParliaraentcametoBostona few years 
 ago to impress upon us, saying that in . 
 their desire for its establishment they rep; 
 resented the opinions of a large rriajority 
 of the English" House of Commons. 
 
 The settlement of pending differences 
 
16 
 
 upon these principles will be compelled 
 by the business men and the religiousSen- 
 timent of these two riatiohs, I'tifluences 
 always iri'esistible when they are united 
 and when they are brought to be^r lipon 
 large matters of naliohftl and interna- 
 tional import. 
 
 Buty6ji have ijot gathered here for phil- 
 osophical, orpolitical, oj; historical difeqai- 
 sitjon^ This day is. for the expression of 
 filial love. The thoughts wh^ch are never 
 stri^ngers to the bospnis of tlie sons and 
 daughters of the Pilgrims are to be stim- 
 ulated and intensified under the operation 
 of that mysten'ous law by which in a 
 large assembly, or when a whole people 
 uiiite in a common observance, the emo- 
 tion in each individual heart is increased 
 and multiplied by the emotion cif every 
 other. This is a larger Thanksgiving 
 Day. To-day tlie children of the Pilgrims, 
 wherever On the continent or on the face 
 of the earth they dwell, are thinking of 
 thpir Fathers. They are thinkiiig of the 
 holy men, Of the sweet and comely ma- 
 trdns, of the brave youths and beautiful 
 maidens to whom this coast and these 
 forest glades were familiar in the infancy 
 of Plymouth. Their hearts are full of the 
 lofty tragedy and lofty triumph, We 
 think of the deatli of CarVer, of Dorbtuy 
 Bradford, of the sweet Rose Standish, as 
 if tliey had happened in our own house- 
 holds; as if our Mothers had told us the 
 story of sotoe other children who had 
 died under our PatheT's roof before we 
 could remember. It is as real as if it. hail 
 happened yesterday. It shall be as real 
 as if it happened yesterday until tiine 
 shall be ho more. What presence looks 
 oyer the Bay to day more living thq,!! the 
 warrior figure of Miles StandiSh? What 
 household memory is dearer to us than' 
 that of John Carver, of whom it hasbeen 
 so well said: "The column of smoke 
 from the volley fired at his grave was his 
 only inonument." 
 
 There is no tragedy In all fiction, not 
 the death of Hector, not the sorrow of 
 CEdipUs, not the guilt of Macbeth, not 
 the wounded heart of Lear, like this true 
 and simple Story. The Atlantic between 
 these men and women and their hemes 
 ia beautiful England; the horrors of the 
 stormy passage, the landing in December, 
 tlie terrible suffering of the first winter, 
 but six or seven men able to tend the sick 
 or bury the dead,. when the spring carUe 
 seven times as many graves as dwellings, 
 strdbg men staggerlhg at their work at 
 nborida^ by reasoft of fainting for want 
 of food, the challenge of the savage, tlie 
 howling of the wild beast, and, yet there 
 is nothing in it of sorro^, nothing in it 
 except lofty triUtnph. The Pilgrims had 
 
 no regrets. There is no gloom in their tm- 
 nals. The tragedies Of hiStrtry, af,t^r all, 
 are its richest bl^ssirigs and most pPeeiQjis 
 memories. We mourn for those whom 
 the fate of war has bereaVed Of tjieii" kiii. 
 dred, or whose life has been made a b(i>. 
 den by the loss of health or limb. Tit 
 would tie mother have her soti' batft 
 again at tl^e price of having tlje braye 
 deed undone? Would the Widbw clajp 
 iier husband's form a^ain, if she Cojfld 
 buy hiin back at the price qf striking- Ms 
 name from tlie list of heroes ? Does the 
 Crippled and wounded yeteran wish he 
 had stayed at hothe, if in that way Ji6 
 could get back his health or his limb? 
 
 Bradford's hislOi'y is a Brave and cheer- 
 ful story^ Thinii, too, of this stoiy of 
 the founding of a great natioh witlj no 
 fable in it. I'he Pilgrirhs were followed 
 by a generation incapable of boiistiog, 
 aud quite otherwise occhpiedi One iiun- 
 dred add' fifty ye^rs passed before any- 
 body^ celebrated any tMng ttey iji^d done. 
 There is the loving trlbttte of friendsiiip. 
 Biit the praise was for Cfod. ^ 
 
 There iS surely, as I ssiid in the begin* 
 ning, no statelier or loftier presence in 
 human history than the Pilg^iils of 
 Plymouth. What biBlougs to laiiigh 
 behavior, to a simple, severe but delicate 
 taste in dress, in arcliitecture, in house- 
 furpl^iirig, in the decoratioti and adorn- 
 ment of daily life, they discerned with 
 unerring taste. The satire of Hudibras, 
 the caricature of Hogaiifc, the scofa of 
 the courtier, the p?id,e of the rufi9iag 
 gallant, have exhausted themselves )» 
 ridicule the figure of the Pathers of Ngw 
 England, and their cohteraporaries Who 
 iat in council with Cromwell or marfilied 
 to victory under his banner, i^ut these 
 scoffers have had their day. The dreSd 
 of the cavalier has now been remitted to 
 the butler or the foOttnan. Tlie fashion- 
 able lovelocks ornament the head of the 
 eddler or the buffoon. But the dress 
 of the PuritaU is now the^ dtess ot all 
 gentlemen in Europe. The architects oi 
 our dwellings are studying the secret Of 
 his siiUple and noble architecture. The 
 Serious dignity of demeanor whfeh 
 mai'ked the intercourse of BradfoM'and 
 Brewster is a pattern for the iinitStio* 
 of any Ambassador, thoUgh he repr^eilt 
 seventy million freenieii at whatBV^f 
 court, or before whatever Sov4rei|a he 
 may stand. Can you find any wliefeS Met 
 ^yPf, °.', a rioMe an'd accoiaWi^e'd 
 gentleman thaU William Bradfoid! 
 You lUay search Europe for bis peer.' 
 Into what stately eioquende he rises whitf 
 be speak.s of tlje Bigher things of' the 
 spirit; arid thegravocoBrem8ofthaCo» 
 moDwealth. What an accoinpiisSe^ 
 
11' 
 
 scholar he was. Look at hia haudwrit- 
 ing, a matter by which you can ofttiiues 
 discei-n the gentleman as you can in the 
 step, or tone of the voice, or carriage of 
 the person, or glance of the eye. When 
 Bradford, and Brewster, and Carver, and 
 Kobinson, and Miles Standish, and Rich- 
 ard Warren, and Edward Winslow, and 
 Samuel Fuller were taking counsel to- 
 gether in Leyden, they could have set a 
 pattern of stately dignity to any society 
 on earth. Brewster had a library of two 
 hundred and seventy five volumes. His 
 principal estate consisied of sixty four 
 volumes in the learned languages. What 
 nobJe and lofty and exquisite sentences 
 are fouml in the writings of Robinson. 
 The passage in one of his letters to the 
 little exiled flock from whom he was 
 separated, — "In a battle it is not looked 
 for but that divers should die," is in the 
 highest strain of Paul. ' ' God forbid that 
 I should need to exhort you to peace, 
 which is the bond of perfection, and by 
 which all good is tied together, and with- 
 out which it is scattered. Have peace 
 unto God first, by faith in His promise, 
 good conscience kept in all things, and 
 oft renewed by repentance ; and so one 
 with another for His sake who is, though 
 three, one ; and for Clirist's sake, who is 
 one, and as you are called by one spirit to 
 one hope." Is not this the very spirit of 
 John the Beloved Disciple 1 Is not this 
 the very spirit of Grace, Mercy and 
 Peace ? I do not find the battle and the 
 march and the gaudium certaminis any- 
 where in our Pilgrim. His longing was 
 ever for peace. 
 
 Leyden street in Plymouth, with its 
 cluster of seven humble dwellings, wit- 
 nessed a high behavior to which there 
 could not be found a parallel in any court 
 in Europe. There was no employment 
 so homely or menial that it could debase 
 the simple dignity of these men, a dignity 
 horn of daily spiritual communion with 
 heavenly contemplations, of constant 
 meditating on the things which concern 
 eternal life, and the things which con- 
 cern the foundation of empire. It was 
 like an encampment of h company of 
 crusaders on their journey to tbe Holy 
 City, where every companion was a 
 prince or a noble. DeRassiere describes 
 the little procession as it marched to wor- 
 ship God on Sunday morning summoned 
 by the beat of the drum. Was there ever a 
 statelier ceremonial at an emperor's coro- 
 nation ? There can be no better touch- 
 stone of the genuineness and sincerity of 
 a lofty religious faith than its creation of 
 a lofty behavior, such as comports with 
 daily meditation and conversation on 
 celestial and eternal interests. 
 
 This is the one story to which for us, 
 or for our children, nothiog in human 
 annals may be cited for parallel or com- 
 parison, save the story of Bethlehem. 
 There is none other told in Heaven ui- 
 among men like the story of the Pilgrim. 
 Upon this rock is founded our house. 
 Let the rains de-cend, and the floods 
 come, and the winds blow and beat upon 
 that house, it shall not fall. The saying 
 of our Prophet — our Daniel — is fulfilled. 
 The sons of the Pilgrim have crossed the 
 Mississippi and possess the shores of the 
 Pacific. The tree our Fathers set cover- 
 ed at first a little space by the seaside. It 
 has planted its banyan branches in the 
 ground. It has spread along the lakes. 
 It has girdled the Gulf. It has spanned 
 the Mississippi. It has covered the 
 prairie and the plain. The sweep of its 
 lofty arches rises over the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, and the Cascades, and the Nevadas. 
 Its hardy growth shelters the frozen 
 region of the far Northwest. Its boughs 
 hang over the Pacific. And in good time 
 — in good time — it will send its roots be- 
 neath the waves and receive under its 
 vast canopy the islands of the sea. 
 
 "Branching so broad and long, that in tbe 
 ground 
 
 Tbe bended twigs take root, and daughters 
 grow 
 
 About tbe mother tree, a pillared sbade 
 
 High overarched, and echoing walks be- 
 tween." 
 
 Wherever the son of the Pilgrim goes, 
 he will carry with him what the Pil- 
 grim brought from Leyden — the love 
 of liberty, reverence for law, trust in 
 God — a living God — belief in a per- 
 sonal immortality, the voice of con- 
 science in the soul, a heart open to the 
 new truth which ever breaketh from 
 the bosom of the Word. His inherited 
 instinct for the building of States will 
 be as sure as that of the bee for building 
 her cell or the eagle his nest. 
 
 The gentle spirit of Bradford, the stern 
 courage of Standish, the lofty faith of 
 Brewster, mellowed and broadened as the 
 centuries come and go, shall be his. It 
 may be that the Power that was with his 
 Fathers will not doom him to the severe 
 discipline and the stern trial that was 
 theirs. We may hope for him the bless- 
 ings of existence to which Webster sum- 
 moned him — of "life in pleasant lands, in 
 verdant fields, and under healthful skies. 
 He may hope for the enjoyment of the 
 great inheritance we transmit to him, the 
 blessings of good government and re- 
 ligious liberty, the treasures of science, 
 the delights of learning, the transcendent 
 sweets of domestic life," shared with 
 kindred and parents and children. But 
 he must enjoy and hold these things as 
 
18 
 
 I'eady to part with them at the summons 
 of Him who bestowed them. They are 
 never to be bought or to be hold at the 
 sacrifice of freedom, of truth, or of duty. 
 
 Whatever temptation come to him, let 
 the memory of the men who landed here 
 rise in his soul, to be his shield and 
 safety. 
 
 Whenever in coming centuries men 
 govern themselves ia freedom, let him 
 still be found foremost, taking the honest 
 and the brave part. 
 
 If cowardice dissuade him from the 
 peril and saciifice, without which noth- 
 ing can be gained in the great crises of 
 National life, let him answer: I am of the 
 blood of them who crossed the ocean in 
 the Mayflower and encountered the wil- 
 derness and the savage in the winter of 
 1620. 
 
 If luxury and ease come with their se- 
 ductive whisper, he will reply: I am de- 
 scended from the little company of whom 
 more than half died before spring, and of 
 whom none went back to England. 
 
 Bigotry and superstition will in vain 
 utter their hoarse and discordant counsel 
 to him who is of God's free people. 
 
 Let him never forget his ancestry. 
 
 In tals balls is h\mg 
 
 Armory of the Invincible Knights of old. 
 In everything he Is sprungr 
 
 Of earth's ffrst blood, hatb titles manifold. 
 
 If the hearts of other men fail them. 
 
 he will still turn for inspiration to the 
 rock where Alden landed, to the walls 
 whi-re Brewster preached, to the hill 
 where Bradford lies buried. 
 
 Let this day foreverraore be devoted to 
 filial afEection. Let it be given to the ut- 
 terance of children's love. The beauti- 
 ful shadows of the Pilgrim Father and 
 the Pilgrim Mother hover over us now. 
 In that spiritual presence it cannot be that 
 our hearts shall be cold or that our 
 thoughts should be unworthy of our 
 high lineage. Let every return of the 
 Pilgrim anniversary witness a new con- 
 secration of his children to the Pil- 
 grim's cause in the Pilgrim'* spirit. 
 If it shall be our fortune to enjoy 
 the blessings of civilization, of order, of 
 refinement, of happy homes, of wealth, 
 of letters, of art, of the transcendent 
 sweets of domestic life, of safety, of good 
 fame, of honor, let us enjoy them, faith- 
 ful to the God who has given them and 
 to the ancestors whom he vouchsafed to 
 make His instruments to win them. Not 
 unto us; not unto us, but unto Him and 
 to them be the praise. But if we are 
 called on in His Providence to give up all 
 these, let us remember that it is not for 
 these things that human life on this earth 
 is given. Let us still remember the Pil- 
 grim's life, and the Pilgrim's lesson. 
 Above all. Liberty 1 Above all, Faith I 
 Above all. Duty 1 
 
hr/- ir?^ 
 
 THE 
 
 CHAEGE OF PACKING THE COURT 
 
 AGAINST 
 
 PRESIDENT GRANT 
 
 Aim 
 
 ATTORNEY GENERAL HOAR 
 REFUTED. 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAE. 
 
THE 
 
 CHAEGE AGAINST PRESIDENT GRANT 
 
 AND 
 
 ATTORNEY GENERAL HOAR 
 
 PACKING THE SUPEEME COURT OF THE UNITED 
 
 STATES, TO SECURE THE REVERSAL OF THE 
 
 LEGAL TENDER DECISION, BY THE 
 
 APPOINTMENT OF JUDGES 
 
 BRADLEY AND 
 
 STRONG, 
 
 REFUTED. 
 
 LETTER TO THE BOSTON HERiiLD. 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR. 
 
 WORCESTER, MASS.: 
 
 PRESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON, 
 
 311 Main Stbekt. 
 
 1896. 
 
LETTER. 
 
 To The Boston Herald: 
 
 About a fortnight before the election, when on my 
 way to a dinner of the Norfolk Club, I read in a morn- 
 ing paper that Mr. Fairchild, formerly Secretary of the 
 Treasury, had repeated in a speech before the Reform 
 Club the statement, often contradicted, that the Supreme 
 Court of the United States had been packed to reverse 
 the decision in Hepburn vs. Griswold, in which the 
 Court held the Legal Tender Act unconstitutional. At 
 the dinner, a few hours later, I criticised this statement 
 as being as vile a slander as ever was uttered upon the 
 stump. A few days later, relying upon the misinforma- 
 tion received from some correspondent, you stated that 
 I owed an apology to Mr. Fairchild. I do not suppose 
 that Mr. Fairchild was aware of the falsehood of the 
 charge that he endorsed. He only made the too com- 
 mon mistake of adopting, without investigation, an 
 error which had become current in regard to a fact in 
 political history. I do not suppose that you meant to 
 misstate the matter, still less to do a wrong to me or to 
 my brother. You probably desired, as is the habit of 
 political newspapei's, to stand by a gentleman with 
 whose opinions you are in general accord. 
 
 So I have no controversy into which any element of 
 anger should enter, either with you or Secretary Fair- 
 child. On the contrary, I expect that both of you, 
 when you look carefully at the facts, will be glad to 
 acknowledge that you have shared in a prevalent mis- 
 take, and will do justice to the memory of my brother. 
 
You certainly need not trouble yourself about an 
 apology to Secretary Fairchild. If this thing were true, 
 I should almost feel like hiding my dishonored and 
 degraded name from the gaze and memory of man. 
 Judge Hoar was Attorney General in the Cabinet of 
 President Grant when these nominations were made. 
 Justices Strong and Bradley were selected by him after 
 the most careful and anxious inquiry and were named 
 by the President upon his recommendation. While 
 President Grant did not, of course, surrender to any- 
 body the prerogatives or duties of his great office, there 
 is no doubt that his confidence in the judgment of Mr. 
 Hoar had a great deal to do with his appointment of 
 these gentlemen, as it had with the selection of the 
 judges of the new Circuit Court, which the influence of 
 Judge Hoar rescued from senatorial patronage, much 
 to the satisfaction of the profession and to the advantage 
 of the public. Judge Hoar to the day of his death 
 regarded the choice of these two judges with special 
 satisfaction as among the most important, fortunate, and 
 honorable public services of his life. 
 
 I suppose that there have been persons in public life 
 to whom the selecting judges of a great court, in order 
 that they might decide questions a particular way, might 
 not seem an unpardonable offence. We have had Presi- 
 dents who came from communities where the judicial 
 office was not held in the very highest esteem, and whose 
 prior life, perhaps, may not have led them to consider 
 the grave danger of tampering with the judiciary. But 
 no such excuse as that can be pleaded in the case of 
 Judge Hoar. He was a Massachusetts lawyer, and for 
 a great part of his mature life a Massachusetts judge. 
 He knew well the character of such a proceeding and 
 would have loathed it from the very inmost depths of 
 
his soul. lie denied it afterward when the transaction 
 was recent, and again and again in later years. So if 
 this thing was done, he did it with a full knowledge of 
 the character of what he did, and lied about it after- 
 ward. When you say that you make no attack on 
 him, and that General Grant and not he was President 
 and made these appointments, you do not in the least 
 shield his memory. The judgment of history holds 
 Strafford and Laud to a responsibility quite as great as 
 that which belongs to King Charles. 
 
 I think that you will agree with me that to vindicate 
 the honor of a Massachusetts statesman, of whom, so far 
 as I am aware, you have always spoken in your paper in 
 terms of the highest respect; that to vindicate the honor 
 of what we Americans are accustomed to consider the 
 greatest and most august tribunal that ever sat in judg- 
 ment; that to vindicate the honor of President Grant, 
 who, whatever may have been his faults, his country- 
 men, without distinction of party, now agree to have 
 been a great soldier and a great President, is worth the 
 considerable space which I ask for it in the columns of 
 your paper. 
 
 IN'ow, what are the facts? On the 7th day of Febru- 
 ary, 1870, the Supreme Court of the United States met 
 at 12 o'clock. The Senate met at the same hour. 
 After the disposition of some other business. Chief 
 Justice Chase announced the decision of the Court in 
 Hepburn vs. Griswold. The Court held, in substance, 
 that it was not within the constitutional power of Con- 
 gress to make the United States Treasury notes legal 
 tender for debts, past or future. The Chief Justice in 
 his opinion said, in substance, that this power was not 
 expressly granted to Congress by the Constitution, and 
 was not implied as being necessary to the execution of 
 
other expressly granted powers, including the power to 
 declare and carry on war. The Judge who gave this 
 decision was himself the author of the law which he 
 declared unconstitutional, and had recommended its pas- 
 sage, and had procured the votes of reluctant Senators 
 and Representatives by personal interviews in which he 
 had urged the passage of the measure on the ground 
 that it was impossible to carry on the war without it, 
 and that the Government could neither pay its soldiers 
 nor fulfil its contracts for the supplies and material of 
 war, if it were restricted to gold and silver alone. 
 Among the persons with whom Mr. Secretary Chase 
 had these personal interviews is my late colleague, Mr. 
 Dawes, then a leader in the House of Representatives, 
 and several other living persons whom I might name, 
 as well as a good many who are deceased. I mention 
 this not for the sake of implying any censure upon that 
 great statesman and patriot, Chief Justice Chase, for 
 declaring in his place upon the Bench the law as it then 
 seemed to him, after the exigencies of the war had 
 passed. Indeed, he deserves the greater honor, if, in 
 interpreting the Constitution in his place upon the 
 Bench, he disregarded the consideration that his own 
 reputation might be aff'ected by the charge of incon- 
 sistency or by the condenmation which his decision 
 would imply of his own previous conduct. I only men- 
 tion the fact to show that it was very unlikely that any- 
 body should have expected beforehand that he alone 
 among the leading Republican statesmen of the war 
 period, should have come to such a conclusion. 
 
 This decision was announced, as I have stated, on 
 Monday, February 7, 1870. I suppose that opinions 
 were read in other cases, that motions were heard, as 
 was then usual on Monday morning, and that probably 
 
this opinion was not read before two or three o'clock. 
 Indeed, tlie reading of the Chief Justice's opinion, and 
 those of the minority', must liave taken an hour or two. 
 On the same day, February 7, 1870, the nominations of 
 Justices Strong and Bradley were sent to the Senate. 
 The fact that they were sent there was announced in 
 the Washington Evening Star of February 7th, and in 
 the Boston and ]S^ew York evening papers that day. I 
 have now in my hand copies of the nominations which I 
 have obtained from the files of the Senate. They read 
 as follows: 
 
 "• To the Senate of the United States: 
 
 " I nominate Joseph P. Bradley of Kew Jersey to be 
 Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States. " U. S. Gka^t. 
 
 •• Executive Mansion, Feb. 7, 1870." 
 
 This is a precise copy of the nomination of the Hon. 
 William Strong, except the name and state. The Senate 
 journal does not show the receipt of any particular nomi- 
 nation Tnitil the Senate goes into executive session, 
 which may not be for some days. But the nominations 
 are made public at once, and these were made public all 
 over the country on the afternoon of Feb. 7th. I have 
 also in my hand a copy of what was printed in the Wash- 
 ington Evening Star of February 7th. At the head of 
 the first column, first page, under the heading, "Nomi- 
 nations," is the announcement that the President sent to 
 the Senate that afternoon the nomination of Joseph P. 
 Bradley to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States, vice E. R. Hoar, rejected; and 
 William Strong to be Associate Justice of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, vice Edwin M. Stanton, 
 deceased. 
 
8 
 
 In the New TorJc Tribune of Tuesday, February 8th, 
 is the Washington letter of February 7th : " The Presi- 
 dent sent to the Senate to-day the names of Bradley and 
 Strong." In the Boston Evening Transcript of Febru- 
 ary 7th is the statement: "The President has just nomi- 
 nated to the Senate Judge Strong of Pennsylvania and 
 Joseph P. Bradley of New Jersey as Associate Justices 
 of the Supreme Court." But, more than all, the Boston 
 Herald published on the morning of February 8th, has, 
 likewise, an announcement of these nominations made 
 the day before. The evening edition of the Herald for 
 February 7th is not in our library. I presume you will 
 find the same thing there, though that is unimportant. 
 
 The Senate journal, as I have said, does not show the 
 receipt of any particular Executive nomination until it is 
 opened and laid before the body in Executive session, 
 which may not take place for days or weeks, although 
 ordinarily there is one every few days. But the Con- 
 gressional Qlobe of that morning shows that the Senate 
 merely transacted its routine morning business, and then 
 took up resolutions in honor of a deceased member, and 
 adjourned. It further shows that during the routine 
 morning business, and before the introduction of bills 
 and resolutions, the President's secretary came in with 
 sundry legislative messages. It is the only time he 
 came in that day. So, undoubtedly, the Executive mes- 
 sages nominating the judges were delivered at the same 
 time with the legislative messages, and were upon the 
 table of the Senate a few minutes after 12 o'clock. 
 
 I have dwelt upon these details to show the absolute 
 accuracy of my statement and that of my brother, which 
 I shall quote hereafter, that these nominations were 
 made before the decision. But the question whether 
 the Chief Justice announced his opinion or the nomina- 
 
9 
 
 tions got to the Senate first by a few minutes is of the 
 most trifling character, because the President's signa- 
 ture to the nominations must have been made before the 
 session of the Senate that morning, and the Cabinet 
 meeting at which they were discussed was held Tuesday 
 of the previous week, and, as will appear very soon, the 
 nomination of Judge Strong, at least, had been dis- 
 cussed and agreed upon long before. 
 
 The decision of the Supreme Court in Hepburn vs. 
 Griswold was made and entered when the judges had 
 finished reading their opinions on Monday, Feb. 7, 1870, 
 after the nominations of Justices Strong and Bradley 
 had been laid upon the table of the Senate. It was some 
 hours after they had been signed by the President. It 
 was some days after they had been agreed on in Cabinet 
 meeting. It was weeks after the probable appointment 
 of Judge Strong, as I shall show presently, had been 
 announced in the newspapers. That was the first and 
 only decision of the Supreme Court in Hepburn vs. 
 Griswold. I shall speak presently of what took place 
 November 27th, 1869. What I am speaking of now is ' 
 the decision of the Supreme Court. 
 
 The practice of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States is, I suppose, well understood in Massachusetts. 
 It has lately been described by Mr. Justice Harlan in a 
 public address in Cincinnati. I have taken pains also 
 to get from a very high authority indeed a statement to 
 the same effect. The course is precisely the same as 
 that pursued by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, 
 except that while the decisions of the Supreme Court of 
 the United States are announced, according to the old 
 practice, orally from the bench, the decisions of our 
 Court are now made by a rescript filed in the clerk's office, 
 and accompanied by a brief written statement of the 
 
10 
 
 Court's reasons. The course of proceeding in the 
 Supreme Court of the United States is this": After the 
 hearing of arguments the Judges meet in consultation. 
 Each of the Judges states his opinion as fully as he may 
 desire. After every Judge has been heard, and the 
 matter has been discussed as far as any member of the 
 Court thinks fit, the Judges vote upon the case. The 
 Chief Justice then directs what Judge shall deliver the 
 opinion of the Court. If any Judge dissent, he is at lib- 
 erty to prepare a minority opinion giving his reasons 
 and the reasons of the other Judges who may agree 
 with him. No record is made of this proceeding, and it 
 is kept absolutely secret within the breasts of the judges 
 until the public announcement of the opinion in the way 
 I have stated. At some future meeting of the Judges, 
 when the opinion of the Court has been prepared, it is 
 read over to the Judges. It is discussed, changed or 
 modified in consequence of any suggestion that may be 
 made. In veiy recent years it has been the custom of 
 the Judge preparing the opinion to send copies to his 
 brethren. It sometimes happens that an investigation 
 by the Judge who has the responsibility of preparing 
 the opinion changes his mind and suggests to him some 
 new point of view, which he reports to his fellows, and 
 which changes their minds also. I have had this happen 
 twice in my own practice in Massachusetts. One case 
 was Taft vs. Uxbridge, where the Court first came to a 
 conclusion in my favor, which was afterward reversed; 
 and one was the case of Wolcott vs. Winchester, where 
 the Court first came to a conclusion against me, but 
 afterward decided in my favor. But no record whatever 
 is made of anything except the mere memoranda of the 
 Judges to aid their own memory until the pubhc 
 announcement. IsTow to call this proceeding a decision 
 
11 
 
 of the Court is, in my opinion, a misuse of language. It 
 is in the highest degree secret and confidential. Any 
 Judge who should betray the confidence of the Court in 
 this matter would be absolutely disgraced, would forfeit 
 the respect of his fellows; and when we consider the 
 eflfect upon properties and business affairs of many of 
 these decisions of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States, I suppose it is not too much to say that he would 
 deserve impeachment. I inquired of two Justices of the 
 Supreme Court of Massachusetts, both of whom had 
 been reporters, whether they had ever known of this 
 secret getting out from the Supreme Court of Massa- 
 chusetts since the beginning of the government ; and 
 they both repHed that they had never known or heard of 
 such a case. In the case of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States I have never known or heard of such a 
 case, with one or two exceptions, although I have been 
 tolerably familiar with that Court and pretty intimately 
 acquainted with every member of it for nearly twenty- 
 eight years. There was a case some time ago where a 
 decision which considerably affected the price of stocks 
 in some way leaked out. Whether it came from some 
 imprudent remark of one of the Judges, or from some 
 page or attendant about the Court room who came 
 across some paper which had been carelessly left 
 exposed, nobody knows. But it excited great feeling 
 on the part of the members of the Bench. Before the 
 Dred Scott decision President Buchanan expressed in 
 his message the hope that the question of the power of 
 Congress over slavery might be removed from political 
 discussion by the determination of the Supreme Court. 
 It was conjectured, but never proved, and I think never 
 believed by the large majority of the profession or the 
 country, that he might have had some understanding in 
 
12 
 
 the matter with Chief Justice Taney. I do not believe 
 it myself. The knowledge that the question was before 
 the Court and the general opinions upon public ques- 
 tions of its members were quite sufficient for President 
 Buchanan's hope, without attributing anything wrong 
 to any member of the Bench. 
 
 I ought frankly to concede that to this ascertainment 
 in conference of the opinions of the members of the 
 Court, the term "decision" is not infrequently applied, 
 although there is nothing final in its character. But the 
 word to be used is of no consequence if only the substance 
 of the transaction be clearly understood. There is no 
 finality about it. It is merely what the judges call a 
 "semble." The Judges hold their minds open to recon- 
 sider, modify, or reverse their opinions if new light be 
 shed upon the case by the researches of the Judge who 
 prepares the opinion, or by further reflection or further 
 discussion when the opinion is read in fiTll. And they 
 keep these opinions an absolute secret. 
 
 A second meeting of the judges was held in regai'd 
 to Hepburn vs. Griswold on the 29th day of January, 
 1870. The opinion in that case was not read and 
 agreed to in conference until that day. (See the opin- 
 ion of Chief Justice Chase in The Legal Tender Cases, 
 12 Wallace, 572.) 
 
 The dates with which we have to deal are these : 
 
 The opinion of the judges ascertained in conference 
 27th N"ovember, 1869. 
 
 The opinion read and agreed to in conference Janu- 
 ary 29, 1870. 
 
 The opinion of the Court announced, and the decision 
 entered upon the docket, February 7, 1870. 
 
 The statute increasing the number of judges passed 
 April, 1869, to take effect December, 1869. 
 
13 
 
 The nominations of Judges Strong and Bradley, sent 
 to the Senate February 7, 1870. 
 
 Stanton nominated, December 20, 1869. 
 
 Stanton died December 24, 1869. 
 
 Judge Giier's resignation to take effect February 1, 
 1870. 
 
 Judge Hoar nominated December 15, 1869. 
 
 Judge Hoar rejected February 3, 1870. 
 
 It appears from the above statement that when the 
 decision was entered and the opinion was pubhcly 
 announced, there were but four judges upon the Bench 
 who agreed to that decision, out of a Court which when 
 full consisted of nine. This consideration has not the 
 slightest effect upon the validity of the decision. 
 Whether it should have any weight as to the propriety 
 of a rehearing is a fair question. 
 
 I have no doubt the Court discussed, in consultation, 
 the case of Hepburn vs. Griswold, IsTovember 27, 1869, 
 and the opinion of a majority was then ascertained. 
 We will consider presently the question whether that 
 opinion leaked out. But first let us take the history of 
 these appointments. When President Johnson came 
 into power, the Supreme Court consisted of ten members. 
 By the statute of July 23, 1866, it was enacted that 
 there should be no new appointments until by death or 
 resignations the Court should be reduced to seven mem- 
 bers, and seven thereafter should be the number of 
 Justices. This statute has been generally supposed to 
 have been passed to take from President Johnson the 
 power of appointing any new Judges in place of some of 
 the members of the Court who were growing old, and 
 whose places, in the course of nature, would shortly be 
 vacant. When President Grant came in, the number of 
 the Court had become reduced to eight members. The 
 
14 
 
 docket had become ei-owded with business, and suitors 
 had to wait years for a hearing. Accordingly, at the 
 short spring session in 1869, an act was passed increas- 
 ing the number of justices to nine, and authoinzing the 
 President to nominate an additional judge to the session 
 of the Senate, which would take place the following De- 
 cember. The President nominated to that vacancy Mr. 
 Hoar, then Attorney General. This nomination was 
 made December 14, 1869. I have never heard that any- 
 body supposed or intimated that that nomination was 
 made for the purpose of packing the Court, although as 
 you will observe, it was made three weeks after the first 
 conference of the Supreme Court in regard to Hepburn 
 vs. Griswold, and the conclusion then arrived at, by 
 whatever name you choose to call it. There were two 
 members of the Cabinet from Massachusetts. There 
 was none from the great State of Pennsylvania, and there 
 was none from the South. I suppose I should not have 
 to go beyond the columns of the Boston Herald, or be- 
 yond the abundant testimonials of eminent lawyers to 
 support the statement that Judge Hoar's character and 
 legal ability were such as to render no other explanation 
 of his selection iiecessary. 
 
 President Grant had determined upon this appoint- 
 ment months before. September 23, 1869, the Presi- 
 dent called upon Jndge Hoar at his room, stayed two 
 hours, and informed him that there was no lawyer from 
 the Southern States he felt wiUing to appoint to the 
 Court, and asked him to accept the ofiice. I have now 
 before me my brother's letter to me of that date, in 
 which he states these facts, and asks my advice as to 
 his acceptance. 
 
 Mr. Justice Grier, early in December, 1869, sent in 
 his resignation to take effect on the 1st of the following 
 
15 
 
 February. I have not the date when Judge Grier sent 
 in his resignation. But the nomination of Mr. Stanton, 
 his successor, of which I have the record with me, was 
 made by the President Dec. 20, 1869. I have never 
 heard that anybody ever dreamed that the selection of 
 Stanton was made for the purpose of packing the 
 Court. A petition asking his appointment had been 
 sent to the President, signed, if I am not mistaken, by 
 every Kepubhcan member of the Senate. He had been 
 a great lawyer. He had been Attorney General of the 
 United States. He was the great War Secretary. 
 With the exceptions of Grant and Seward and Sumner 
 and Chase, he was undoubtedly the most conspicuous 
 figure in American public life. He was a Pennsyl- 
 vanian, and belonged to the Circuit to which the Presi- 
 dent would naturally look for a successor to Mr. Justice 
 Grier. Stanton died after accepting the otSce and 
 before taking his seat, on the 24th day of December, 
 1869. Mr. Hoar was rejected by the Senate on the 
 third day of February, 1870, four days before the 
 decision of Hepburn vs. Griswold. 
 
 When Judge Hoar was nominated, it became neces- 
 sary for the President to look out for another Attorney 
 General. WilUam Strong of Pennsylvania was offered 
 the place. He came to Washington to see about it. I 
 myself saw him there and was introduced to him. 
 I knew at the time that it was expected that he would 
 be my brother's successor, although I cannot say from 
 memory that I heard him say that he expected to take 
 the place. So when Stanton died, and Judge Hoar was 
 rejected and remained in the old office, it seemed almost 
 inevitable that Judge Sti'ong, if he were fit for the 
 place, should be offered one of the vacant Judgeships. 
 He was from Grier's circuit, and from Pennsylvania, 
 
16 
 
 the State in that circuit to whose able Bar the President 
 had looked for an Attorney General. He was admirably 
 qualified for the place. He had been a great judge in 
 his own State. He was not only the head of the 
 Bar in that circuit, certainly the leading Kepublican 
 lawyer, and he held a place in the reverence and 
 affection of the people who knew him as a man of 
 singular purity and integrity, which I had almost said 
 was equalled by that of John Jay alone. I think I 
 am not over bold when I affirm that the bitterest par- 
 tisan in this country, of whatever political opinion or 
 from whatever part of the country he may come, will 
 not question in the light of his long service upon the 
 Bench, that the nomination of William Strong needs no 
 explanation other than the statement of the conspicuous 
 merit and quality of the man. This nomination would 
 have been practically inevitable, if the legal tender 
 decision, or the legal tender law, had never been 
 heard of. 
 
 Stanton died December 24, 1869. But it was quite 
 natural that the President should not nominate his 
 successor until the question of Judge Hoar's confirma- 
 tion or rejection was settled. If Judge Hoar had been 
 confirmed, the original plan of having Mr. Strong 
 Attorney General might have been carried out, although 
 he would probably have been appointed to Judge Grier's 
 place. I have no special means of forming an opinion 
 on that question. But the President awaited the final 
 action of the Senate, which undoubtedly had been 
 expected for some time before the final vote, and then 
 sent in the two names together. 
 
 I do not think it necessary to vindicate the selection 
 of Mr. Justice Bradley any more than that of Judge 
 Strong. I have heard eminent lawyers compare him 
 
17 
 
 with Chief Justice Marshall, in the vigor and grasp of 
 his intellect, and attribvite to him a variety of accom- 
 plishment which would not be attributed to Marshall. 
 But such utterances, Avhen we experience a great public 
 loss like that of Judge Bradley, are apt to be extrava- 
 gant. It is only necessary to say what I am sure every 
 living lawyer who is interested in such things will agree 
 to, that there is no greater or purer judicial fame than 
 that of Judge Bradley among the Judges who were upon 
 the Court when he took his place upon it, or who have 
 been upon the Court from that day to this. ^ 
 
 Two things ought, however, to be said: It was by 
 Judge Bradley's advice that the great railroad, for 
 which he was counsel, determined, when the legal tender 
 laws were in force, that honor and duty required them 
 to pay their debts in gold. 
 
 It is also true that it is due to Mr. Justice Bradley 
 that the decision of the most important constitutional 
 question since the war, a decision far more important, in 
 my judgment, than that of the legal tender question, 
 was made adversely to the contention of the Republican 
 party and to the general opinion of the people of the 
 ;N"orth. He gave the opinion of the majority when the 
 Court held that according to the true construction of 
 the fifteenth amendment of the Constitution of the 
 United States, Congress can not interfere when the 
 right of citizens to vote is denied or abridged on 
 account of race, color or previous condition of servi- 
 tude, unless that denial be by the authority of the State 
 itself, and that the failure of any State to protect such 
 rights, or the banding together of private men, though 
 they may be a majority of the peojole of the State, to 
 deprive negroes of their rights, does not warrant the 
 interposition of Congress. The result is that the whole 
 
18 
 
 reconstruction policy of the Republican party, so far as 
 it depended on the exercise of national authority to pro- 
 tect colored citizens in the rights of suffrage, has been 
 overthrown. I did not myself think, and do not now 
 think, that Mr. Justice Bradley was right. But he is 
 the last person to whom Democratic speakers or 
 Democratic newspapers should impute partisanship in 
 his great office. 
 
 !Now having stated the facts, let us come directly to 
 this foul charge. It can only be sustained by proving 
 three things: 
 
 (1.) That the confidence of the Court had been 
 betrayed, and the views of the Judges upon the consti- 
 tutionality of the legal tender law which they had 
 expressed to each other in their conference, November 
 27th, had leaked out; 
 
 (2.) That these views had become known to Presi- 
 dent Grant and to the Attorney General or the Cabinet; 
 
 (3.) That in consequence of such knowledge they 
 had done something they would not have done but for 
 that. 
 
 I^ow I affirm, first, that there is not one particle of 
 proof, nothing upon which a Judge would let a case go 
 to a jury, nothing upon which any man would act in the 
 smallest transaction of life, in favor of either of these 
 propositions, all three of which must be estabhshed to 
 make out the case. 
 
 And, second, that all three of them are refuted and 
 overthrown, and that the contrary of each is established 
 by most ample and abundapt evidence. 
 
 First. Did what took place in the confidence of the 
 Court, November 27, 1869, leak out? 
 
 You will agree with me that that would have been a 
 gross breach of confidence on the part of one of the 
 
19 
 
 Judges, which makes it highly improbable, and would 
 require the amplest evidence to sustain it. 
 
 A careful examination of the newspapers of the time 
 shows that no such information had reached any of the 
 intelligent newspaper correspondents, or the managers 
 of the press of the country. 
 
 You say that your correspondent got some informa- 
 tion from the records of the Court. But there was 
 nothing on the records of the Court about the matter 
 until February 7, 1870, when the decision was entered. 
 So you confess that your first knowledge of the matter, 
 aided by your always intelligent correspondent, did not 
 come until the 7th of February. But I have had the 
 files of the principal newspapers carefully examined. 
 You will remember that this was a great question and 
 likely to be of absorbing interest to everybody. Gold 
 was at that time selling at 125. If the decision in 
 Hepburn vs. Griswold had stood it would have added 
 25 per cent, to the weight of every public and private 
 debt in this country, except such public or private debts 
 as were to be paid in gold, whatever had been the decis- 
 ion of the Court. So you may well imagine that news- 
 paper correspondents and business agencies were on the 
 alert about that time. When the decision was actually, 
 announced, although I think under the circumstances, 
 which I shall speak of presently, it was not expected to 
 stand, it caused a flurry in securities which were shortly 
 to become due. The following was in the financial 
 article of the Boston Evening Transcript, dated, New 
 York, February 8, 1870: 
 
 " The decision of the Supreme Court, yesterday, has 
 occasioned considerable discussion on Wall Street. It 
 had some effect on railway mortgages. The Chicago 
 
20 
 
 and Eock Island First Mortgage Bonds, due in a short 
 time, rose to 106 bid, against 100 yesterday." 
 
 The Boston papers of the time take no notice of the 
 meeting of the Judges held November 27. There are 
 wild speculations, all erroneous, as to the latter action 
 of the Court before February 7th, when the decision 
 was announced. There is nothing about it in the 
 Advertiser or the Transcript, if my friend has made the 
 search complete. The Boston Traveler has a special 
 dispatch January 31 st : 
 
 "A rumor was very current about the Capitol this 
 afternoon and created a good deal of excitement that 
 the Supreme Court had rendered a decision against the 
 constitutionality of the legal tender act ; but there was 
 no foundation whatever for the story." 
 
 This, you observe, was on Monday, the week before 
 the decision was rendered, and was on the day when 
 the Court enters decisions, and refers to a rumor as to 
 the decision rendered by the Court that day, and not to 
 any private conclusion. 
 
 There is no mention or speculation in the Boston 
 Herald about the decision of the Court until February 
 8th. On that day is this article in the Herald: 
 
 "The Express' latest financial says, the Supreme 
 Court decision on the legal tender question was the 
 great subject of discussion in financial circles, this after- 
 noon. The decision as understood in Wall Street is 
 that the Legal Tender Act was justified by the war and 
 that Congress has no power to issue any more legal 
 tender notes, and that all contracts made before 1862 
 are to be paid in coin. In this shape, the decision is 
 certainly a very important one, but its influence on value 
 was remarkably slight. The price of gold advanced in 
 
21 
 
 the morning on private telegrams from Washington to 
 the effect that the decision wonld be in favor of all con- 
 tracts made before 1862 being payable in coin, but when 
 the other part of the decision wan known this afternoon, 
 the price of gold declined, from the fact that Congress, 
 under the decision, cannot issue any more legal tenders." 
 
 ISTow on the 10th day of February, three days after, 
 is the following editorial in the Boston Herald: 
 
 " The decision of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States on the Legal Tender Act reads like a warning to 
 all men within the reign of depreciated paper money to 
 prepare for the day of wrath. This decision avoids the 
 question of the constitutionality of the act, as it hinges 
 upon the point that it could not be made retroactive, to 
 affect the value of contracts before it was passed; but it 
 discusses the constitutional power of Congress in the 
 premises in a spirit which indicates that the decision of 
 the main question is only held back to enable the busi- 
 ness interests of the country to be adjusted on a solid 
 basis. But the people need not be alarmed. Green- 
 backs will be taken as money for some time yet, until we 
 can afford to get along without them, or they will have 
 appreciated to the gold standard." 
 
 In the Boston Post, February 7, 1870, is the following: 
 
 " Letter of February 6th. Rumor has it to-night that 
 Hon. J. F. Wilson of Iowa, late Member of Congress, 
 will receive the nomination for the Supreme Court ; but, 
 although General Grant places a high estimate upon 
 Mr. Wilson, he will not probably select him for the posi- 
 tion, because Mr. Wilson does not reside in the south- 
 ern nor the third or Pennsylvania circuit, where the 
 vacancies exist, and it is conceded that the new Judges 
 must come from those circuits. There does not appear 
 
22 
 
 to be any doubt that Judge Strong will be nominated 
 for the vacancy made by Judge Grier's resignation, and 
 the behef is general that Mr. Durant of Louisiana will 
 be nominated for the vacancy occasioned by the death of 
 
 Justice Stanton." 
 
 The following also appears in the Boston Post: 
 
 " February 1. Special dispatch of Janury 31, 1870. 
 It is understood that the President will send to the 
 Senate to-morrow the nomination of a successor to 
 Justice Grier. All agree that Judge Strong of Penn- 
 sylvania will receive the nomination." 
 
 " February 7, 1870. Letter of February 5th. (Asso- 
 ciated Press.) The President will as soon as he shall 
 receive official notice of the rejection of Judge Hoar, 
 nominate to the Senate two gentlemen to supply the 
 vacancies on the Supreme Court Bench, one of whom is 
 Judge Strong of Pennsylvania. The President has not 
 fully determined upon the other. The President 
 informed a friend yesterday that Judge Hoar would 
 remain in the Cabinet." 
 
 In the Boston Journal there is a letter January 31, 
 1870, which is as follows : 
 
 " It is understood that the President will to-morrow 
 appoint Judge Strong as the successor of Judge Grier. 
 The retiring Judge endeavored, it is said, to have the 
 Court agree to a decision which he had drafted, that all 
 contracts and agreements made prior to the passage of 
 the Legal Tender Act were payable in gold, but some 
 of the Judges were doubtful." 
 
 There is a dispatch to the Boston Journal, February 
 2d, as follows; 
 
23 
 
 " The forthcoming decision of the Supreme Com-t on 
 the cases in which gold was claimed instead of green- 
 backs on contracts made before the passage of the Legal 
 Tender Act of 1862, but not settled until afterwards, 
 will carefully avoid the question of the constitutionahty 
 of the act itself. The decision will simply be that all 
 contracts made previous to the passage of the act, no 
 matter when they were payable, call for payment in 
 gold." 
 
 I think you will agree with me that no rumor of any 
 conclusion of the Court made JSTovember 27th had 
 reached Boston, or any correspondent of the Boston 
 Herald. 
 
 My friend who made the search for me finds nothing 
 in the leading I^ew York papers of the time except this 
 letter in the N'ew York Tribune, February 1st: 
 
 " From information which seems iinquestionable it is 
 learned that on Saturday a consultation was held by all 
 the members of the Supreme Court, including Justice 
 Grier, etc., etc. A decision of the Court was expected 
 to-day, was not delivered. There is ground for 
 believing that the decision will not go into the question 
 of the constitutionality of the law, but will decide that 
 all contracts made previous to the passage of the act 
 contemplated payment in gold, and the Court will so 
 decide. It is believed the opinion will be delivered next 
 Monday." 
 
 It is a curious fact that gold steadily declined from 
 the 27th of November, 1869, when it sold at 125i, 
 highest, and 1231, lowest, down to February 8, 1870, 
 when it sold at 121, highest, and 120f, lowest. The 
 Tribune of February 9th has this statement: 
 
24 
 
 " The Supreme Court seems to have put the bulls in 
 possession of the market, as almost everything in the 
 shape of bonds and stock has an upward tendency. The 
 bears appear to be the strongest in the gold room, as 
 that is heavy." 
 
 Two inferences seem plain from this narrative : 
 
 (1.) That nobody connected with the press or with 
 financial matters knew anything about the secrets of the 
 Supreme Court, and that the few statements about the 
 matter in the press between IS'ovember 27th and 
 February 7th were the wildest conjectures. The only 
 conjectures that appear are that the Court had not dealt 
 with the question of the constitutionality of the act, and 
 that the only thing they did was to hold contracts dated 
 before 1862 payable in gold; and 
 
 (2.) That there was a strong expectation that the 
 decision would not stand. Although gold was selling 
 at 120 in greenbacks, the price of gold did not rise any 
 farther, and the only effect on the market was to make a 
 large increase in the values of securities which were 
 payable within a short time. 
 
 Second. Did any knowledge of the conclusion of the 
 Court, jSTovember 27th, reach President Grant or the 
 Attorney General, or the Cabinet ? N^ow you will ob- 
 serve that there is not the slightest affirmative evidence 
 that any of them had any such knowledge whatevei", 
 and without such knowledge the whole charge breaks 
 down. But we are not left in this matter to the absence 
 of evidence. We have the absolute denial of the gentle- 
 men concerned. 1 have seen a letter of Mr. Fish, which 
 I have not been able to find, but which is in existence 
 somewhere, in which, if I can trust my recollection, he 
 denies for himself, and on the authority of President 
 
25 
 
 Grant, for him, any such knowledge and any such pur- 
 pose in these appointments. But Mr. Fish's son and 
 son-in-law have both been out of the country, and his 
 papers locked up in a vault, so I could not have a search 
 made among them. But I have in my hand a letter from 
 Mr. Fish to Judge Hoar, containing a message from 
 President Grant to the eifect that he made the nomina- 
 tions before the decision was announced, and that the 
 records at the Executive Mansion show it. This fact is 
 stated by President Grant to Judge Hoar to be used in 
 his reply to Butler. Of course, if he had known the 
 Court's opinion when he made the nomination, such a 
 statement would have been a wretched subterfuge. 
 
 I have received this letter from Governor Cox. He 
 was then Secretary of the Interior in Grant's Cabinet. 
 He dwelt in the same house with Attorney General 
 Hoar during the summer until the meeting of Congress 
 on the first of December, 1869, and was the Judge's 
 intimate personal friend. He would certainly have 
 known of this matter, if it had been known, both as a 
 member of the Cabinet and from his familiarity with 
 Judge Hoar. This is the letter: 
 
 " Cincinnati, 6 November, 1896. 
 
 *'■ My Dear Senator Hoar: In reply to yours of 3d inst., I 
 would say that I have always regarded the charge that the Supreme 
 Court was ' packed ' to reverse the Legal Tender Decision in 
 Hepburn vs. Griswold, as one of the most curious instances of draw- 
 ing an unwarranted conclusion from a mere coincidence. When I 
 originally heard the assertions made, I carefully reflected, to see 
 whether I could recall any fact which sustained it. I could not. 
 Every incident pertaining to the appointment of Judges to fill the 
 vacancies was, so far as my recollection could reach, exactly what 
 high-minded men would wish — exactly what all who knew Judge 
 Hoar would expect from an Attorney General having his high ideals 
 of public duty. 
 
26 
 
 "I can recall some discussion of the character and qualities of 
 Judges Strong and Bradley among members of the Cabinet, but not 
 a single word of reference to their opinions on the Legal Tender 
 question, or to any case pending, or likely to be pending, in the 
 Supreme Court. Nothing could be plainer than that the Attorney 
 General was earnestly determined to recommend only such men as 
 combined the qualities of able lawyers with those of perfectly pure, 
 single-minded and upright citizens. When the nominations were 
 made we felt that just such men had been selected. 
 
 "I am the more sure that I should have been quick to notice any- 
 thing inconsistent with the good purpose I have described, because, as 
 a matter of fact, my personal convictions then were, and still are, 
 that the opinion of Chief Justice Chase in Hepburn vs. Griswold, as 
 well as in the subsequent Legal Tender Cases, so called, was the better 
 one in law, and a sounder one in statesmanship, as well as the 
 solider barrier against all forms of fictitious or ' flat ' money. 
 
 " One of j'our brother's strongest claims to public reverence as a 
 departed worthy, in my judgment, is the unflinching adherence to 
 the highest possible rule of action in sifting and selecting judicial 
 nominations as Attorney General, and this was most noticeable, as 
 it should be, when the positions to be filled were the highest. 
 
 "Faithfully yours, 
 
 "J. D. Cox." 
 
 Governor Oox resigned his place in the Cabinet not 
 long after this transaction, stating in a public letter his 
 reasons for resigning, that he had not been duly sup- 
 ported by the President in his attempts to protect the 
 rights of the United States against fraud. It is absolutely 
 incredible, and I do not believe any man in the country 
 will suggest that Governor Cox would have forgotten 
 such a transaction, or that he would have screened it 
 from public condemnation. 
 
 I also have a letter from Governor Boutwell, formerly 
 Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
 GOVERNOR BOUTWELL'S LETTER. 
 
 "Groton, November 5, 1896. 
 "■My Dear Sir: My answer to your letter of the third of this 
 month must be by negative statements rather than by affirmative 
 
27 
 
 assertions. The charge to which you call my attentioti is this : 
 That, in the year 1870, the Supreme Court was packed by President 
 Grant for the purpose of reversing the Legal Tender Decision in the 
 case of Hepburn vs. Griswold ; and that when the names of Messrs. 
 Strong and Bradley were sent to the Senate, February 7, 1870, the 
 nature of the decision in the above named case, although it had not 
 been announced from the Bench, was known to the President and 
 Cabinet. 
 
 "I was a member of General Grant's Cabinet at the time men- 
 tioned, and I was present at one or more Cabinet meetings when the 
 subject was considered, and when opinions were expressed as to the 
 fitness of Messrs. Strong and Bradley for the vacant places upon the 
 Bench of the Supreme Court. The Legal Tender Controversy was 
 not spoken of, nor in any manner referred to by the President or by 
 any member of the Cabinet. Indeed, the conversation was limited. 
 Strong and Bradley were then, without controversy, at the head of the 
 profession in the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and 
 Delaware. At that time there was a Justice on the Bench from New 
 England, one from New York, and one from the Pacific coast, and 
 four from the central States of the West. At that time the South 
 was not considered. 
 
 " Since the controversy was opened the statement has been made 
 that Judge Strong had recognized the constitutionality of the Legal 
 Tender Law in his place as Judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsyl- 
 vania. I cannot say whether that fact was known to the President, 
 or to any member of the Cabinet, but there was no reference to the 
 opinion of either Strong or Bradley. 
 
 ' ' Very truly, 
 
 " George S. Bodtwell. 
 
 " To the Hon. George F. Hoar, Worcester, Mass." 
 
 But the denial with which I am most specially con- 
 cerned just now is that of the Attorney General him- 
 self. This charge is almost the only one ever made 
 against him, in a public life full of earnest conflicts, 
 which he ever cared much to refute. When he was 
 a candidate for Congress against General Butler, in 
 1876, he was attacked vigorously by Butler and Wen- 
 dell Phillips, the most accomphtehed and unscrupulous 
 
28 
 
 masters of invective who ever lived on this continent. 
 He treated all their charges with great unconcern. He 
 declared in a public meeting that he should not trouble 
 himself to answer any other charge of Butler's, except 
 this one of packing the Supreme Court, which con- 
 cerned the honor of President Grant as well as his 
 own. I qiiote his exact language from the Boston 
 Herald of Thursday, November 2, 1876 : 
 
 HOAK'S ANSWER. 
 
 JiUTLEB'S CHAKGE THAT HE PACKED THE SUPREME 
 OOUKT REFUTED. 
 
 " There is one thing in his (General Butler's) letter, 
 however, being upon a public matter, an assault upon 
 the Republican administration, upon the President of 
 the United States much more than upon myself, which I 
 think it proper for me to answer as a matter of public 
 discussion. 
 
 "I am sorry to be obliged to say, in connection with it, 
 that when I state what it is and what the facts are, and 
 tell you on what evidence they I'est, I must ask you to 
 consider whether you believe that General Butler could 
 not have known the facts. What account he would 
 give, or explanation, I can't say. I will state to you 
 the accusation which he says is the worst and gravest 
 he has to make. It is that I advised the President to 
 pack the Supreme Court of the United States with two 
 additional Judges in order to secure the reversal of the 
 first decision on the Legal Tender Act, which held that 
 that act was unconstitutional. Well, now, the simple 
 answer to that is that the nominations of these two 
 Judges, Judge Strong and Judge Bradley, were sent 
 
29 
 
 by the President to the Senate before that Legal decis- 
 ion was announced, when neither the President nor 
 myself knew what it was going to be. The Judges of 
 the Supreme Court kept their own opinions, and, until 
 they were read, nobody knew what they were. Well, 
 now, as to the fact that these new Judges were in favor 
 of the constitutionality of that Legal Tender Act. 
 About every State Court that had passed upon it — the 
 Supreme Court of Massachusetts, of New York, and so 
 you may go through the States — or a large number had 
 sustained its constitutionality. The only State Supreme 
 Court that had decided the other way was the Supreme 
 Court of the half rebel State of Kentucky. The Chan- 
 cellor of that Court, the ablest judge upon it, gave a 
 dissenting opinion from his associates, and agreed with 
 the rest of t4ie country. Now how could President 
 Grant have appointed a judge to that Court who was 
 not a believer in the Legal Tender Act? He would 
 have had to rake over the country with a fine tooth 
 comb to find a man who was not in favor of it. But to 
 say that the appointment was made, and that I advised 
 it in order to reverse that decision, is to say what the 
 data show conclusively to be 
 
 Utterly Untrue. 
 
 " General Butler says in his letter to me that ' On 
 Monday, the 7th of February, 1870, the Judges read their 
 opinions and rendered their judgment on the Legal 
 Tender Act. On Tuesday, the 8th, being Cabinet Day, 
 you advised the President to make nominations of two 
 judges to reverse that decision.' On Monday, the 7th 
 day of February, 1870, when the Senate met, these 
 nominations were sent in. In the Washington Chroni- 
 cle and Washington Repitblican of Tuesday morning, in 
 
30 
 
 an account of the business transacted in the Senate the 
 day before, mention was made of these nominations, 
 accompanied by editorial comments and biographical 
 sketches of the gentlemen nominated. General Butler 
 says it appears by the record of the Senate that on 
 Tuesday I advised the President to do this. Well, of 
 course, that literally is obviously untrue, for the record 
 of the Senate does not show anything about anybody's 
 advice. But what he means to say is that it appears by 
 the record of the Senate that these nominations were 
 sent in on Tuesday. 'Now, the Senate has two sessions, 
 an executive session in which nominations are consid- 
 ered, and a legislative session. The business is not 
 entered on the Executive Journal till the Senate goes 
 into executive session, and these nominations, which had 
 been sent to the Senate on Monday, were not entered 
 on the Executive Journal till Tuesday. But I have 
 other proof. I hold in my hand a letter which I have, 
 this morning, received in which the President of the 
 United States, General Grant, authorizes the statement 
 which I will read: 
 
 "'The records of the Executive Office show the date 
 of the President's messages nominating Judges Strong 
 and Bradley to have been February 7, 1870.' This 
 same charge against President Grant was made in the 
 campaign of 1872. Some newspaper started it on that 
 side. I happened to see it in the Mw York JSfation, 
 copied, and I sent a letter to the Nation at that time, 
 exposing the slander and showing that the nominations 
 were made before the decision was rendered, and the 
 editor of the paper withdrew it and said it was a com- 
 plete answer. 
 
 "Again, in the last Congress of which General Butler 
 and myself were members, a Democratic member from 
 
31 
 
 Wisconsin, Mr. Eldridge, while making a speech attack- 
 ing the administration, alluded to the charge, and I 
 replied to it, and stated that the nominations were made 
 before the charges were brought, and he subsided." 
 
 You will observe that this story has grown since 
 General Butler's time. His charge, which you will find 
 set forth in his letter, published in the Herald at the 
 time, was that on the next cabinet meeting day after the 
 decision was reached on the 7th of February, President 
 Grant was advised to pack the Court. That form of 
 calumny has been dropped. It broke down before the 
 recorded facts. It is only later that the suggestion is 
 made that the confidential conference of November 27th 
 may have been betrayed by one of the Judges. 
 
 ISTow the Herald was an earnest supporter of Judge 
 Hoar in that campaign. You say of him, among other 
 things, in your editorial, October 12, 1876 : 
 
 " We have always been free to criticise Judge Hoar, 
 but we have never had occasion to question his thorough 
 integrity or to doubt the sincerity of his contempt for 
 the arts by which political quacks like Butler succeed. 
 * * * We were told in Washington two or three years 
 ago, when Judge Hoar was there, that no other man in 
 the House commanded so much respect as he on any 
 question of fact, and his reputation is an accurate picture 
 of his character. * * * He has made a record in the 
 service of his country, on which he can afford to rest his 
 case. He has always been sound, clean, and above all 
 suspicion. * * * He has great abihty, but his strongest 
 point is a character that commands the respect of all 
 men who know him. There is an absolute certainty 
 that he will be true to his convictions, that he will make 
 no concessions to what he believes to be wrong to get 
 
32 
 
 office or public favor, and that he will do all that one 
 man can do to raise our politics to a higher plane of 
 integrity and purity." 
 
 ISTow it is the man of whom you said this whose repu- 
 tation is in question. It is for defending him that you 
 ask me to apologize to Mr. Fairchild, when less than 
 two years after his death I deny with some indignation 
 that he committed an act of infamy and sought to cover 
 it by a lie. 
 
 But Judge Hoar did not wait for six years after the 
 transaction before he made this denial. 
 
 In April, 1872, the New YorTc Nation made the charge 
 not in a statement, but put it in the form of a question to 
 Harper's Weekly, then, I believe, edited by Mr. Curtis: 
 
 "Why," asks the Nation, March 7, 1872, "did he 
 (Grant) select new judges for the Supreme Court with 
 special reference to their opinion on a question already 
 sub judice, or in other words, pack the Court to pro- 
 cure a judgment on a question of property favorable to 
 his own views of political expediency?" 
 
 The Nation, April 11, frankly and honorably answers 
 its own question, saying: 
 
 "We shall ourselves make a contribution to his 
 defence." The Nation then quotes Judge Hoar's 
 ■ answer, and says : 
 
 "We consider this a good and sufficient answer to 
 one of our questions, though it does not change our 
 opinion on the propriety or expediency of bringing up 
 the Legal Tender cases for a fresh decision." 
 
 Of that I will say something before I get through. 
 
 Judge Hoar then addressed a letter to the Nation 
 which will be found in its issue of April 15, 1872, in 
 which he says: 
 
33 
 
 "Mr. Stanton was selected and confirmed to fill this 
 vacancy, but he died on the 24th of December, 1869. 
 Judge Strong, a man of the highest professional and 
 personal character, who had recently left the Supreme 
 Court of Pennsylvania, with a brilliant judicial reputa- 
 tion, was soon selected in Mr. Stanton's place, and his 
 nomination was only withheld because the Senate had 
 not acted upon the other nomination before them. 
 Judge Strong had, it is true, given an able opinion sus- 
 taining the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Act; 
 but the constitutionality of that Act had been upheld 
 by the highest Court of every State in the Union which 
 had passed upon it, except Kentucky; and it would 
 hardly be expected that the President's range of choice 
 should be excluded from the highest Courts of all the 
 loyal States. 
 
 "The Senate disposed of the nomination previously 
 before them on the 3d of February, 1870, which was 
 Thursday. On Monday, February 10th (this is a mis- 
 print in the Nation for February 7th), the nominations 
 of Judge Strong and Mr. Bradley were sent in. They 
 had been determined on the preceding week, and actually 
 prepared for transmission either on Saturday or early on 
 Monday morning. The decision of the Supreme Court 
 on the Legal Tender Act in Hepburn vs. Griswold was 
 announced on the same day. I do not believe that the 
 President had any knowledge of what the decision was 
 to be. Some of the newspaper correspondents were 
 asserting in the press up to that very morning that it 
 was to be a decision the other way. I do know, how- 
 ever, that Mr. Bradley was selected on the ground of 
 professional fitness for the position, as an eminent, sound 
 and able lawyer. I knew he was a Eepublican, and 
 supposed, though I did not know, that he thought the 
 
35 
 
 weeks before. That of Mr. Justice Bradley was recom- 
 mended, as I understand, by the whole Bench and Bar 
 of New Jersey without distinction of party. * * * That 
 Mr. Justice Strong, whose nomination had been for 
 some weeks talked of, and understood to be ag^reed on, 
 was of the opinion that the Legal Tender Act was con- 
 stitutional, is undoubtedly true. He had, as Judge of 
 the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, given an opinion — 
 one of the ablest, if not the ablest, delivered by any State 
 Judge — in favor of the Constitutionality of that Act. 
 But was that a reason why he should have been 
 excluded from the nomination, or why it could be said 
 that he was picked out for a particular purpose and not 
 on account of his eminent professional record, the purity 
 of his character, and his marked fitness for the ofiice 
 which he now adorns? If such a rule had been adopted 
 I can only say that the Judges of every State Court in 
 the Union that had passed on the question, with the 
 exception of the State of Kentucky (and in that State 
 the Chancellor, the ablest of the highest Judges there, 
 gave a dissenting opinion), would all have been 
 excluded, because every State Court before which the 
 question had arisen (with the single exception I have 
 indicated), had sustained the constitutionality of the 
 Legal Tender Act. If such a rule had been followed 
 the President must have gone around groping to find 
 somebody adverse to the general sentiment of his party 
 and the general sentiment of his country to take a posi- 
 tion on the Supreme Bench. 
 
 " I say to this House and to the country that the 
 selection of those two gentlemen was made on charac- 
 ter, on professional eminence, on fitness for the office; 
 and, whether the slander was originated by one man or 
 another, it is a slander upon them to attribute their 
 
36 
 
 appointments to their subserviency upon a particular 
 question or for a particular interest. Their appointment 
 was sent to the Senate before the decision on the Legal 
 Tender Act was announced." 
 
 Now I ask you again whether you think Judge Hoar 
 lied about this matter. I have just quoted one or two of 
 the tributes which were paid to him after his death. I 
 wish to quote two or three more. Let no person sus- 
 pect me of the folly of thinking that it is necessary to 
 furnish certificates of my brother's character to the 
 people or the generation that knew him. I trust I have 
 better sense and better taste. But this calumny will 
 thrust up its dirty head fifty or one hundred years 
 hence if there are men to be found then as there are now 
 to rake up and write the discarded slanders of past gen- 
 erations and call it history. I wish to collect and pre- 
 serve in this letter the material for its complete refuta- 
 tion whenever it may reappear. I wish to quote two or 
 three tributes to his character which came from his politi- 
 cal opponents, and from lawyers who would be pretty 
 likely to have known the truth of this matter. 
 
 Do you think of any other occasion in his life when 
 any man suspected that he ever did or said or thought 
 anything he was not willing to avow ? 
 
 The Boston Herald said of him on the third of 
 ]N"ovember, 1895: 
 
 " On the basis of a character of granite strength, of a 
 rugged honesty as well as a genuine depth of piety, was 
 reared a range of rare qualities in the way of shrewd 
 Yankee perception, of illuminating wit and of a start- 
 ling originahty of common sense that made him a 
 marked man everywhere." 
 
37 
 
 Mr. Darwin B. Ware pays a loving tribute in verse, 
 beginning with these words: 
 
 " On conscience, as on rock New Eoglaad's hills, 
 His life was built." 
 
 Chief Justice Field, who was Assistant Attorney 
 General at the time this crime was committed, if it was 
 committed, says: 
 
 " He has left behind him an example of disinterested- 
 ness, sincerity, courage, nobleness of purpose and strenu- 
 ous endeavor to mate the world better worth livins: in, 
 which is easy to praise, but not easy to imitate." 
 
 The Chief Justice says on another occasion : 
 
 " He was about the best specimen we had of a witty, 
 wise, courageous, public-spirited. God-fearing ISTew 
 England lawyer." 
 
 Hon. Jacob D. Cox, whose letter I have given, says: 
 
 " For hearty love of right and for sturdy and unflinch- 
 ing support of it; * * * for purity of heart and sincere 
 reverence for all that is divinely taught — he was a 
 man for his country to be proud of and for his friends 
 to model their own lives upon." 
 
 Charles Francis Adams says: 
 
 ■' He was essentially a Puritan. Honest himself, and 
 intuitively sensitive to dishonesty in others." 
 
 Attorney General Knowlton says : 
 
 " The elements of character which have given Massa- 
 chusetts her position in history were to be found in a 
 marked degree in him." 
 
 Mr. Josejih B. Warner said: 
 
 " The man was moved by two master passions — one 
 a stern and solemn sense of duty, inflexible and irresisti- 
 
38 
 
 ble, applied most severely to himself ; the other a warm 
 and tingling sympathy with human nature in all its 
 moods, gay or sad. * * * In two worlds he has always 
 lived, at home alike on the cool heights of righteousness 
 and judgment, and on the warm and sunny level of 
 human joys and sorrows." 
 
 James Russell Lowell, a little earlier, said of him : 
 
 "You cannot set too high a value on the character of 
 Judge Hoar. I have known Mr. Hoar for more than 
 thirty years, intimately for more than twenty, and it is 
 the solidity of the man, his courage and his integrity 
 that I value most highly." 
 
 Frank P. Goulding speaks of the political and moral 
 greatness of the man, and says a powerful moral force 
 has passed away. 
 
 Edmund H. Bennett says: 
 
 " Whatsoever things are true, 
 Whatsoever things are honest, 
 Whatsoever things are just, 
 Whatsoever things are pure, 
 Whatsoever things are of good report — 
 
 These were hisj all these were his, preeminently his, 
 and no man taketh them from him." 
 
 William G. Russell, who knew him through and 
 through in an intimate friendship, says : 
 
 "He stands for all that is best in N"ew England 
 character." 
 
 Mr. Causten Browne, an eminent Democratic lawyer, 
 declared in the resolutions which he moved for the Bar, 
 that he had "proved himself an able, learned, brave 
 and upright, strong man — strong in perception and 
 
39 
 
 understanding, strong in character, strong in conviction 
 and resolution, strong in an unclouded sense of duty." 
 If I accumulate these things needlessly, it must be 
 remembered that I am defending the reputation of my 
 brother, a reputation dear to me as my own, against the 
 one charge ever made against him for which he cared, 
 or which excited his indignation. 
 
 Third. What earthly evidence is there that the 
 President or the Attorney General did not do exactly 
 what they would have done if the Legal Tender decision 
 had never been heard of? 
 
 The highest courts of 'New York, California, Indiana, 
 Iowa, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and the District of 
 Columbia had upheld the constitutionality of the Act. 
 There had never been a final decision in the country the 
 other way, except that of the Coui*t of the half-rebel 
 State of Kentucky, and there the very able Chancellor 
 was in favor of sustaining the Act. In Massachusetts 
 the decision had been concurred in by three Chief 
 Justices. Although Chief Justice Bigelow did not sit, 
 owing to a technical and infinitesimal disqualification 
 of being a stockholder in the company which was 
 defendant in the case, yet I presume there is no doubt 
 that he concurred with his brethren. The Act passed 
 a llepnblican Congress eight years before, and had 
 been approved by President Lincoln and every member 
 of his Cabinet. It had had the general approbation of 
 the Repubhcan party throughout the country. Were 
 all the Republicans who supported the Act, were all 
 the Judges of all these States, or the entire Republican 
 Bar of the Pennsylvania circuit, were men like Bradley 
 and Strong, to be excluded from consideration as candi- 
 dates for this great office by President Grant because 
 
40 
 
 they believed in the constitutionality of a great measure 
 to which their party was committed ? If the President 
 had appointed two Judges who had turned out to be of 
 another way of thinking, would he not have been justly 
 liable to the charge of packing the Court to over- 
 throw the Act and sustain the previous decision? lie 
 would have had to rake the country as with a fine tooth 
 comb to have found such men anywhere in the North 
 who would have been otherwise eligible to the office. 
 I have myself heard of but two respectable Republican 
 lawyers who agreed to the decision in Hepburn vs. 
 Griswold. One is Judge Cox, one of the best of men, 
 a man who would adorn any situation for which he 
 might be selected. But he belonged to the Ohio circuit 
 which already had two judges upon the Bench of the 
 Supreme Court, Chief Justice Chase and Judge Swayne. 
 The other was my beloved personal friend and instructor, 
 Judge Thomas of Massachusetts. But I am sure that 
 he would not in 1870, or for many years before, have 
 permitted anybody to call him a Repubhcan. I think I 
 may safely ihallenge any man to name a Republican 
 lawyer in the country of whom anybody now will say 
 there was any propriety in appointing him to the 
 Supreme Court of the United States at that time, who 
 would not have supported the constitutionality of the 
 Legal Tender law. Why, every Judge who Avas 
 appointed to that Court for the next 25 years, every 
 one, was opposed to the decision in Hepburn vs. Gris- 
 wold. Have all subsequent Presidents of the United 
 States been engaged in this packing business? The 
 Boston Herald, I beheve, though I have not looked to 
 see, earnestly commended the selection of Judge Gray 
 when he was appointed by President Arthur. Does 
 anybody think that every Republican President of the 
 
41 
 
 United States from Grant down to Harrison should have 
 laid aside all other considerations and devoted himself 
 to finding judges who were opposed to the conclusions 
 of the Court in this matter? They mvist have gone into 
 the Democratic party to do it. I am not myself opposed 
 to the appointment of Democratic Judges on suitable 
 occasions. I very earnestly approved the selection by 
 President Harrison of that admirable Democrat, Mr. 
 Justice Jackson, for the Supreme Bench. Yet, if I 
 mistake not, that appointment is the only instance in 
 our history of a President who has gone out of his own 
 party for a Supreme Court Judge. But I should hardly 
 expect that any President would go outside of his own 
 party for a Supreme Judge in order to get a man who 
 could be depended upon to overthrow one of the great 
 measures to which his party was committed. My dear 
 man, if everything else be conceded, if it be supposed, 
 if it be granted, that what took place in conference 
 Xov. 27 was a decision, that it leaked out, that Presi- 
 dent Grant and the Attorney General knew it, that 
 they knew the opinions of both Bradley and Strong, you 
 have not advanced one step toward proving this charge. 
 The President did exactly what he would have done, 
 what he must have done, unless he had gone into the 
 Democratic party for Judges for the sole purpose of 
 packing the Court the other way. 
 
 It is said in a biographical sketch of Mr. Justice 
 Bradley (page Ixxi., 1st vol.. Indexed Digest to United 
 States Supreme Court Reports, published by the Law- 
 yers' Co-operative Pubhshing Co.), that when Mr. 
 Justice Grier sent in his resignation, in December, 
 1869, he accompanied it with an earnest letter to the 
 President urging the appointment of Mr. Justice Bradley 
 as his successor. Was Mr. Justice Grier, the eminent 
 
42 
 
 Democratic Judge who concurred in the decision of 
 Hepburn vs. Griswold, and without whose vote there 
 could have been no majority in its favor, engaged in 
 this infamous scheme for packing the Court? 
 
 I ought perhaps to say something of one other matter. 
 The question whether there ought to, have been under 
 the circumstances an apphcation to the Court to reopen 
 the question determined in Hepburn vs. Griswold is one 
 in regard to which there may be fair difPei'ence of 
 opinion. After that decision was made known, Judge 
 Hoar proposed to bring forward another case then on 
 the docket which involved the same question . and have 
 it heard again. It was claimed by counsel on the other 
 side that that case had been continued with the agree- 
 ment that its decision should abide that of Hepburn vs. 
 Griswold. I believe a highly respectable counsel who 
 was in the case made affidavit that that was his under- 
 standing. But there was no pretence that, that agree- 
 ment had been made with Mr. Hoar. Mr. Evarts and 
 all persons in the Attorney General's, office at the time 
 the agreement was alleged to have been made denied 
 that they so understood it. But the parties to the suit 
 who had the right to control that case abandoned it, and 
 nothing came of that application. Another case to which 
 there was no pretence the agreement appHed was after- 
 ward argued by Attorney General Akerman, Mr. Hoar 
 having gone out of office, and the decision of Hepburn 
 vs. Griswold overruled. But Judge Hoar doiibtless 
 thought, as he says in his letter to the JVew York 
 Nation, that the application was one proper to, be made. 
 In this I entirely agreed with him at the time, and agree 
 with him now. The decision of Hepburn vs. Gris- 
 wold when gold was above twenty per cent, premium 
 added twenty per cent, to the burden of all public and 
 
43 
 
 private debts in the country. If the decision was to 
 be overruled later, when the matter came up in the 
 course of business, it was surely better that the country 
 should know at once what was to be the permanent law, 
 and not go for a year or two under Hepburn vs. 
 Griswold, and then have another decision reversing that 
 and throwing business again into confusion. The wisdom 
 of the course pursued is evident from the fact that 
 Hepburn tv*. Griswold caused no panic and very little 
 fluctuation in the market except in regard to securities 
 which were payable within a very short time. Whether 
 Mr. Hoar was right or wrong in this opinion, he acted 
 upon it, and never desired for a moment to evade the 
 just responsibility. 
 
 The reasons for granting a rehearing cannot be 
 better stated than by Mr. Justice Strong in his opinion, 
 12 Wallace, 529: 
 
 " It would be difficult to over-estimate the conse- 
 quences which must follow our decision. They will 
 affect the entire business of the country and take hold 
 of the possible continued existence of the government. 
 If it be held by this Court that Congress has no consti- 
 tutional power, under any circumstances, or in any 
 emergency, to make treasury notes a legal tender for 
 the payment of all debts (a power confessedly possessed 
 by every independent sovereignty other than the United 
 States), the Government is without those means of self- 
 preservation which, all miist admit, may, in certain con- 
 tingencies, become indispensable, even if they were not 
 when the acts of Congress now called in question were 
 enacted. It is also clear that if we hold the acts invalid as 
 applicable to debts incurred or transactions which have 
 taken place since their enactment, our decision must 
 cause, throughout the country, great business derange- 
 
44 
 
 ment, widespread distress, and the rankest injustice. 
 The debts which have been contracted since February 
 25, 1862, constitute, doubtless, by far the greatest por- 
 tion of the existing indebtedness of the country. They 
 have been contracted in view of the Acts of Congress 
 declaring notes a legal tender, and in reliance upon that 
 declaration. Men have bought and sold, borrowed and 
 lent, and assumed every variety of obligations, contem- 
 plating that payment might be made with such notes. 
 Indeed, Legal Tender Treasury notes have become the 
 universal measure of values. If now, by our decision, it 
 be established that these debts and obligations can be 
 discharged only by gold coin ; if, contrary to the expec- 
 tation of all parties to these contracts, X/egal Tender 
 notes are rendered unavailable, the government has 
 become an instrument of the grossest injustice; all 
 debtors are loaded with an obligation it was never con- 
 templated they should assume; a large percentage is 
 added to every debt, and such must become the demand 
 for gold to satisfy contracts, that ruinous sacrifices, gen- 
 eral distress and bankruptcy may be expected. These 
 consequences are too obvious to admit of question." 
 
 I hope and beUeve that after reviewing this whole 
 case you will agree with the New York JSTation, and will 
 do justice to the memory of a man who was as constant, 
 staunch and thorough-going an advocate of honest 
 money and a steady standard of value, and of paying 
 all government debts in gold, as ever lived. Judge 
 Hoar always took great satisfaction in remembering that 
 while he was in Gen. Grant's Cabinet, and afterward 
 during a friendship and confidence which was unbroken 
 till Gen. Grant's death, he never failed to improve every 
 occasion to urge upon him the importance of maintain- 
 ing the specie standard and the financial honor of the 
 
45 
 
 Government. He believed and I believe that these 
 counsels were of great effect and that the country owes 
 to them a great deal more than it will ever know in the 
 maintenance of its financial integrity. 
 
 I am, faithfully yours, 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR. 
 
- THE 
 
 Virginia State Bar Association 
 
 ANNUAL aDEVRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. GEIORGE F. HOAR, 
 
 of Massachusetts. 
 
 \ 
 
 RELATION OF THE AMERICAN BAR TO THE STATE." 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE 
 
 TENTH ANNUAL MEETING 
 
 liELD AT 
 
 BOTEL CHAMBERL. J, FORT:: MONROE. VIRGINIA, 
 July 5TH, 6th and 7th, 1898. 
 
 RICHMOND : 
 
 THE WILLI .MS PRINTING CO., PRINTERS, 
 
 1898. 
 
e^ 
 
 3?/r 
 
 t^C'C--Y' 
 
 / 
 
 J 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. GEORGE F. HOAR, 
 
 of riassachusetts. 
 
 RELATION OF THE AMERICAN BAR TO THE STATE. 
 
 Oentlemen of the Virginia State Bar Association: 
 
 I am not Tain enough, to take this invitation from the famous 
 Bar of your famous Commonwealth as a mere personal compli- 
 ment. I like better to think of it as a token of the willingness 
 of Virginia to renew the old relations of esteem and honor which 
 bound your people to those of Massachusetts when the two were ' 
 the leaders in the struggle for independence, when John Adams 
 and Sam Adams sat in council with Jefferson and Henry and 
 Lee; when the voice of Massachusetts summoned Washington 
 to the head of the armies and Marshall to the judgment seat; 
 when Morgan's riflemen marched from Winchester to Cam- 
 bridge in twenty-one days to help drive the invader from the 
 Bay State, and when these two great States were seldom divided 
 in opinion — never in affection. 
 
 These two States, so like in their difference, so friendly even 
 in their encounters, so fast bound even when they seem most 
 asunder, are, as I think, destined by God for leadership some- 
 where. I thank Him — we can all thank Him — that He permits 
 us to believe that that leadership is hereafter to be exercised on 
 a scale worthy of their origin and worthy of the training He has 
 given them. Nothing smaller than a continent will hold the 
 people who follow where they lead. When the Massachusetts 
 boy reads the history of Virginia, it will be with the property 
 of a countryman in her fame. When the Virginian hears the 
 
2 VIRGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 anthem of Niagara, he will know the music as his own. When 
 he comes to Boston, the mighty spirits that haunt Eaneuil Hall 
 will hear, well pleased, a footstep which sounds like that of the 
 companions and comrades, with which, in danger and in triumph, 
 they were so familiar of old. 
 
 As is natural for communities of high spirit, independent in 
 thought, of varying employment and interest, they have had 
 their differences. But if you take a broad survey of human 
 history, it will be hard for you to find two peoples more alike. 
 They are the two oldest American States. It was but four years 
 from the landing at Jamestown to the landing at Plymouth. 
 Each has been, in its own way, a leader. Each has been the 
 mother of great States. Each is without a rival in history, ex- 
 cept the other, in the genius for framing constitutions and the 
 great statutes which, like constitutions, lie at the foundation 
 of all government. When Virginia framed the first written 
 Constitution, tinless we except the compact on board the May- 
 flower, ever known among men, her leaders studied the history 
 and delighted to consult the statesmen of Massachusetts. "Would 
 to God," writes Patrick Henry to John Adams from Williams- 
 burg, where the Constitutional Convention of Virginia was sit^ 
 ting, "would to God you and your Sam Adams were here. We 
 should think we had attained perfection if we had your ap- 
 proval." When a Virginian pen drafted the Declaration of 
 Independence Massachusetts furnished its great advocate on the 
 floor. When Virginia produced Washington Massachusetts 
 called him to the head of the army. When Virginia gave Mar- 
 shall to jurisprudence it was John Adams, of Massachusetts, who 
 summoned him to his exalted seat. The men who have moulded 
 the history of each sprung from the same great race from which 
 they inherited the sense of duty and the instinct of honor. 
 Both have always delighted in the discussion of the profoundest 
 principles in government, in theology, and in morals. Eich as 
 have been their annals in names illustrious in civil life, the his- 
 tory of each has been largely a military history. 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 6 
 
 There is no more touching story of the munificence and bounty 
 of one people to another than that of Virginia to Massachusetts 
 when the port of Boston was shut up by act of Parliament and 
 by a hostile English fleet. I dare say generous Virginia has 
 disdained to remember the transaction. Massachusetts never 
 will forget it. 
 
 Little had happened which bore hardly upon Virginia. You 
 were an agriciiltural people. The great grievance of ISTew 
 England after all was not taxation, but the suppression of her 
 maniifacture. There was no personal suffering here. It was 
 only the love of liberty that inspired the generous people of the 
 Old Dominion to stand by Massachusetts. 
 
 The statute of 14 George III., known as the Boston Port 
 Bill, entitled, '"An Act to Discontinue in Such Manner and for 
 Such Time as are Therein Mentioned, the Landing and Dis- 
 charging, the Lading or Shipping of Goods, "Wares, Merchan- 
 dise at the Town and "Within the Harbor of Boston, in the Pro- 
 "^ince of Massachusetts Bay," was enacted by the British Par- 
 liament in March, 1774. It was meant to punish the people of 
 Boston for their unlawful resistance to the tea tax and to compel 
 the province to submission. "If you pass this act with tolerable 
 imanimity," said Lord Mansfield, "Boston will submit, and all 
 will end in victory Avithout carnage." The act took effect at 12 
 o'clock on the 1st of June, 1774. Boston depended almost 
 wholly on her commerce. In a few weeks business was para- 
 lyzed, and the whole town was suffering. But George III. and 
 his councillors had A'irginia as well as Massachusetts to reckon 
 with. Her generous people rose as one man. Not only letters 
 of sympathy came pouring in to the selectmen of Boston, but 
 there came substantial contributions of money and food, which, 
 considering the poverty of the time and the difficulty of commu- 
 nication and transport, are almost without a parallel in history. 
 The House of Burgesses appointed a day of fasting and prayer, 
 and ordered "that the members do attend in their places to pro- 
 
4 VIRGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 ceed with the Speaker and the Mace to church for the purposes 
 aforesaid." But they did not leave Boston to fast. Meetings 
 were held all over the Old Dominion. In Fairfax county George 
 Washington was chairman and headed the subscription with 
 £50. The convention over which he presided recommended sub- 
 scriptions in every county in Virginia. Mason ordered his chil- 
 dren to keep the day strictly and to attend church clad in mourn- 
 ing. In "Westmoreland county John Augustine Washington 
 was chairman. He enclosed in his letter a bill of lading for 
 1,092 bushels of grain. The generous flame spread among the 
 backwoodsmen. Not only from tidewater, but from over the 
 mountains, where the roads were little better than Indian trails, 
 the farmers denied themselves to make their generous gifts. 
 Their wagons thronged all the roads, as they brought their gifts 
 of com and grain to tidewater. Among the, committees by 
 which they were forwarded are the renowned Virginian names — 
 some of them renowned in every generation — Upshaw and Bev- 
 erley and Ritchie and Lee and Randolph and Watkins and Carey 
 and Archer. But for this relief^ in which Virginia was the 
 leader and example to the other colonies, Boston, as Sam Adams 
 declared, must have been starved and have submitted to de- 
 grading conditions. 
 
 The Norfolk committee say in their letter: "It is with pleasure 
 we can inform you of the cheerful accession of the trading in- 
 terest of this colony to the Association of the Continental Con- 
 gress. We wish you perseverance, moderation, firmness, and 
 success in this grand contest, which we view as our own in every 
 respect." 
 
 Virginia and Massachusetts have moved across this continent 
 in parallel lines. Each has learned much from the other. What 
 each has learned and what each has originated have been taught 
 to many new Commonwealths as to docile pupils. I will not un- 
 dertake to discuss to which, in this lofty and generous rivalry, 
 should be awarded the pre-eminence. Indeed, it would be hard 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. O 
 
 to settle that question unless we coiild settle the question, im- 
 possible of solution, wliich owes most to the other. But I am 
 frank to confess that, whatever natural partiality may lead her 
 sons to claim for Massachusetts, the world will be very slow to 
 admit that among the men who have been founders of States in 
 Christian liberty and law, there will be found anywhere the 
 equals to the four names of Jefferson, Marshall, Madison, and 
 Henry, to say nothing of the supreme name of Washington. 
 As the old monk said of King Arthur: "The old world knows 
 not his peer; nor will the future show us his equal; he alone 
 towers over other kings, better than the past ones and greater 
 than those that are to be." 
 
 'So man, when he utters his admiration for the excellence of 
 woman, brings his own mother into the comparison. It would 
 be singularly unbecoming for any son of Massachusetts to be 
 speaking or thinking of the rank which belongs to her in history 
 on an occasion like this. But saving, therefore, my allegiance 
 to her, I aiErm without hesitation that the history of no other 
 civilized community on earth of like numbers, since Athens, 
 for a like period, can be compared with that of Virginia from 
 1765 or 1770 down to 1825. What her gallant soldier, Henry 
 Lee, said of her most illustrious son may well be said of her: 
 First'in war, first in peace. What a constellation then rose upon 
 the sky ! The list of her great names of that wonderful period is 
 like a catalogue of the fixed stars. For all time the American 
 youth who would learn the principles of liberty protected by 
 law; who would learn how to frame constitutions and statutes; 
 who would seek models of the character of the patriot, of the 
 statesman, of the gentleman, of the soldier, may seek instruction 
 from her — ^may study her history as in a great university. 
 
 One thing is remarkable in the history of Virginia. It is 
 true, I think, of no other American State. Notwithstanding the 
 splendid constellation of burning and blazing names which she 
 gave to the country in the period of the Revolution and of 
 framing and inaugurating the Constitution, if by some miracle 
 
6 VIRGINIA STATE BAK ASSOCIATION. 
 
 they had been gathered together in one room, we will say in the 
 year ITTO, or in 1780, and had perished in one calamity, Vir- 
 ginia conld have supplied their places and have maintained 
 almost entirely the same pre-eminence. I do not know that she 
 could have furnished a second Marshall or a second Washington. 
 But the substance of what she accomplished for America and for 
 mankind in those great days she would have accomplished still. 
 She was like a country made up of rolling hills, where, if those 
 which bound the horizon were levelled, other ranges would still 
 appear beyond and beyond. 
 
 The mouth of the James river is the gateway through which 
 civilization and freedom entered this continent. The Spaniard 
 and the Frenchman, and perhaps the Norseman, had been in 
 America before. But when Jamestown was planted the Enghsh- 
 man came. It is no matter what was his political creed, or his 
 religious creed — whether Cavalier or Eoimdhead, Puritan or 
 Churchman, the emigrant was an Englishman, and every 
 Englishman then and since held the faith that liberty was his 
 of right, and when liberty is put on the groimd of right it im- 
 plies the assertion that government must be founded on right, 
 and that liberty belongs to other men also; and that implies gov- 
 ernment by law. Nullum jus sine officio. Nullum officium 
 sine jure. 
 
 Other races have furnished great law-givers, great writers 
 on jurisprudence, and a few great judges. But the sense of the 
 obligation of law as that upon which depends individual right, 
 the feehng that life, liberty, property are not pri-\dleges but 
 rights whose security to the individual depends upon his own 
 respect for them as of right belonging to other men also, a sense 
 pervading all classes in the State, is peculiar to the Englishman 
 and the American alone. It is this which is the security of our 
 mighty mother and of her mighty daughter against the decay 
 which has attended alike the empires and the republics of the 
 
ANNUAL ADDRBSS. 7 
 
 pa,3t, It is for this that England will be remembered if she shall 
 perish. 
 
 Whatever harmonies of law 
 
 The growing world assume, 
 Thy work is thine; the single note 
 Of that deep chord which Hampton smote 
 
 Shall vibrate to the doom. 
 
 The people of Virginia have ever been renowned for two quali- 
 ties- — marks of a great and noble nature — hospitality and cour- 
 age. Ifow, this virtue of hospitality and this virtue of courage 
 as practised by men of generous nature mean something more 
 than a pro'^ision for physical wants or than a readiness for physi- 
 cal encounter with an antagonist. The true hospitality to a 
 man is a hospitality to his thotight; and the highest courage is 
 a readiness for an encounter of thoughts. So, in selecting a topic 
 for to-day's discourse, although I hope to find myself in general 
 and substantial accord with the gentlemen who do me the high 
 honor to listen to me, yet I shall not take the smallest pains to 
 seek matters concerning which you and I may be supposed to 
 agree, or to avoid those concerning which you and I may be 
 supposed to differ. I have not the least doiibt that the noble 
 hospitality of the Virginia Bar will permit me to utter anything 
 which is in my mind without fear, and I have less doubt still 
 that yoxi are ready to furnish champions able to maintain your 
 side of a debate against any antagonist on whatever field. 
 
 I wish to devote the time which your kindness accords me to a 
 few thoughts, com.monplace enough, I am afraid, but perhaps 
 all the better for that reason, upon the topic, not new, yet never 
 old — the relation of the American Bar as an order or brother- 
 hood to the State. 
 
 Certainly the prcifession of the law is an order and brother- 
 hood. To its ranks belong the great judges; the great advocates; 
 the great writers on jurisprudence; the great law-givers of all 
 nations and of all ages. When we read of a great service to 
 liberty, to order, to jurisprudence by any one of its members 
 
8 VIRGINIA STATE BAK ASSOCIATION. 
 
 we feel a personal pride, and take a personal share in the glory 
 of the achievement. It is a feeKng like that which inspired the 
 members of the great religious orders, the Dominicans, the 
 Franciscans, the Templars, the Knights of St. John, or the 
 Society of Jesus, who have borne the Grospel and the Cross 
 through fire and sword, through famine and pestilence, in pov- 
 erty and in pain, over seas and across continents. It is a feeling 
 like that of the soldier for his regiment or his army. It is we — 
 we use the regal plural — ^it is we who vindicated the right to 
 print the truth, with good motives and for justifiable ends, 
 through the lips of Erskine. It is we who marked out the eternal 
 jimits which divide jiistice from injustice, speaking through the 
 arthority of Justinian. It is we who, in the very throes of a 
 revolution, secured justice for the British soldiers who had 
 obeyed orders, through John Adams and Josiah Quincy. It is 
 we who withstood King James with Coke, and Louis XIY. with 
 D'Aguesseau. It is we who enabled the Constitution of the 
 United States to work as the efficient mechanism of a great and 
 free government, through the judgments of Marshall. It is we 
 whose voices have been raised with a power greater than that of 
 ■cannon or b&yonet wherever liberty was in peril, or wherever 
 law needed vindication. It is we who with ISTuma wooed the 
 uymph Egeria in her cavern and brought down justice from 
 Heaven to dwell on earth with men. 
 
 One of the ablest of our American lawyers, whose brilliant 
 and glowing eloquence diverted the attention of his country- 
 men from his prof oimd wisdom and philosophy, pointed out more 
 than fifty years ago the fehcity of the position of the lawyer in 
 a free State, as being the preserver alike of freedom and of 
 order. 
 
 "It may be said, I think, with some truth, of the profession 
 o± the Bar, that m all political systems and in all times it has 
 seemed topossess a twofold nature; that it has seemed to be fired 
 by the spirit of liberty, and yet to hold fast the sentiments of 
 order and reverence, and the duty of subordination; that it has 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 9 
 
 resisted despotism and yet taught obedience; that it has recog- 
 nized and vindicated the rights of man, and yet has reckoned it 
 always among the most sacred and most precious of those rights 
 to be shielded and led by the divine nattire and immortal reason 
 of law; that it appreciates social progression and contributes to 
 it, and ranks in the classes and with the agents of progression, 
 yet evermore counsels and courts permanence and conservatism 
 and rest ; that it loves light better than darkness, and yet like the 
 eccentric or wise man in the old historian, has a habit of looking 
 away as the night wanes to the western sky, to detect there the 
 first streal?s of returning dawn." — Ghoate, Vol. I., p. 417. 
 
 The profession of law in this broad and enlarged meaning 
 of the term is no trade or calling. It is a department of gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 Wherever governments have been free, and precisely in so 
 far as they have been free — ^in Greece, in Rome, in England, 
 and on the Continent, this has ever been the function of our pro- 
 fession. It was never more its function than in our own 
 country and in our own time. The great debate of liberty which 
 preceded the Eevolution was conducted in a large measure by 
 lawyers. Of the fifty-two signers of the Declaration, twenty- 
 four were of the legal profession. The Constitutions of the old 
 thirteen States, the Constitution of the United States, were 
 largely, almost wholly, the work of American lawyers. Of the 
 fifty-five members of the Philadelphia Convention, thirty had 
 been practising lawyers. The arguments of gTeat lawyers — of 
 Hamilton, of Jay, of Madison — commended the Constitution to 
 the approval of the people. Of the twenty-four Presidents of 
 the United States, twenty, and of the twenty-four Vice-Presi- 
 dents, eighteen, have been members of our profession. To-day 
 the President and Vice-President, the Speaker of the House, five 
 of the eight members of the Cabinet, and three hundred and two 
 out of the four hundred and forty-six members of the two houses 
 of Congress were bred to the Bar. And if it be true that Wash- 
 ington and Taylor and Grant came to the Executive chair with- 
 
XO VIRGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 out a legal training, it is also true that the great counsellors on 
 whom they leaned were of the legal profession. 
 
 It is a very remarkable fact that our four great ministers 
 of finance, Alexander Hamilton, Salmon P. Chase, Eobert J. 
 Walker, and John Sherman were lawyers. Indeed, if we were 
 to go through the list of our most capable men in public life who 
 have dealt most successfully with the problems of finance, 
 whether in the Treasury, in Congress, as directors of the mint, 
 as Comptrollers of the Currency, we should find that a larger 
 proportion of them has come from the Bar than from banking 
 or mercantile business. I- am not speaking of the class of lawyers 
 who are termed jurists. Lord Chief Justice Coleridge once 
 told me that a jurist was a man who knew a little about the laws 
 of every country but his own. I am speaking of men trained to 
 the duties of the Bar, to the trial of cases, and the guiding of 
 clients by wise coimsel. The reason is not far to seek. The legal 
 training teaches a man to deal with the complicated transactions 
 of life and to find out where the turning-point lies; what it is 
 that has brought success or has brought failure ; to dismiss what 
 is irrelevant, and to cling to what is essential. How often the 
 able lawyer or advocate encounters an array of experts, men of 
 science, physicians, merchants, manufacturers, shipmasters, 
 directors of great railroads, and by his skilful and merciless cross- 
 examination satisfies the jury and satisfies the men themselves 
 that they are all wrong and where they have been wrong in con- 
 cerns to which they have themselves devoted the study of their 
 lives. The man who can extract the truth, the essence, the pivotal 
 fact, the governing law from the various transactions of life 
 when they are brought to the crucible of the- coiirt-house has 
 acquired a faculty which enables him to do the same thing in 
 the great emergencies and transactions of State. The great 
 War Secretary, Edwin M. Stanton, was a great lawyer. The 
 great War President, Abraham Lincoln, was a great lawyer. 
 The great Secretary of the Treasury and financier of the war. 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 11 
 
 Sahnon P. Chase, was a great lawyer. The great diploraatist 
 and Secretary of State, William H. Seward, was a great lawyer. 
 
 Undoubtedly, a study of the annals of the Confederacy would 
 show a like result. I suppose there is no American — certainly 
 no American lawyer — ^who did not feel a thrill of pride when 
 the famous Southern statesman, Jiidah P. Benjamin, after the 
 war made his way over every barrier and easily took his place 
 as the leader and head of the Bar of Great Britain. 
 
 As I said, thirty out of fifty-five of the members of the conven- 
 tion that framed the Constitution had been practising lawyers. 
 The minority of laymen contributed little to the formation of 
 the instrument. The great authority of Washington, the Presi- 
 dent, helped much to secure the adoption of the Constitution by 
 his coimtrymen. But he took no substantial part in the debates. 
 The wisdom and calmness of the aged Franklin more than once 
 helped to compose the strifes which threatened to break up the 
 assembly. But we shall all agree that it is fortunate that his 
 propositions for a single House, for a President and senators 
 without salary, for an executive council, for a power in the 
 President to suspend the laws, and that votes on money bills 
 shoidd be cast by States in proportion to their contribution were 
 not inserted in the instrument. Let its by no means underrate 
 the value of the silent members in that great deliberative assem- 
 bly. But it is none the less true that the constructive genius 
 which matured the perfected Constitution from the schemes 
 which were originally proposed was that of the lawyers of the 
 body. 
 
 Theirs, too, was in largest measure the power of convincing 
 the understanding of the people, and the skilled and difiicult 
 leadership which secured its acceptance. If it would be arrogant 
 to say that the Federalist, the work of three American lawyers, 
 equals any treatise on government that ever preceded it, we may 
 at least say that those who are most familiar with what preceded 
 it admire it most. The failure to ratify the Constitution in 
 
12 VIRGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 either New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, or Connectictit would 
 have been fatal to the whole plan and to the permanence of the 
 Union in any form. A majority of the convention in each of 
 those States, when it came together, was opposed to the scheme. 
 Yet Jay and Hamilton and Livingston in ISTew York; Ellsworth, 
 Sherman, and Johnson in Connecticut; Eisher, Ames, Parsons, 
 and Eng in Massachusetts overcame this hostile majority, and 
 in Virginia the fiery eloquence of Patrick Henry, the great 
 authority of Mason, the shrewd dexterity of Monroe could not 
 hold together the ranks of the opposition against Marshall and 
 Madison and Wythe. 
 
 Of. our thirty-three Secretaries of State, all but one— -Edward 
 Everett — have been lawyers, imless we except Mr. Blaine, who 
 studied for a short time in a law office. 
 
 Of our forty Secretaries of the Treasury, all but three have 
 been lawyers. Of course, all the Attorneys-General and all the 
 Judiciary have been lawyers. Occasionally some political party 
 tries to change this practice, but they break down like Lord 
 Coke's "Lack-Learning Parliament," of which he says "there 
 never was a good law passed thereat," and like the "Ejiow- 
 ISTothing" J^egislature in Massachusetts, of which the same ob- 
 servation might be made. The people, of whatever party, will, 
 as a general rule, go where they think they can get the best 
 service. They know that he can best frame laws, can best dis- 
 cuss laws, can best administer laws, can best expound laws who 
 has studied law. 
 
 Our profession is not the road to wealth. There have been 
 instances, in these modern days of great speculations and of 
 rapid gains, of members of the Bar, half lawyer, half speculator, 
 who have acquired vast fortunes. But in the main it is still 
 true— God grant it may be ever true— that the American lawyer 
 IS not of the class of men who serve their country for hire. He 
 is like Agassiz. He has no time to make money. He is thinking 
 of his imperilled client. He is thinking of the great principle 
 he IS struggling to establish in jurisprudence. He is thinldng of 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 13 
 
 an honorable success in a generous controversy. He is thinking 
 of country. He is thinking of dvity. He is to be ranked with 
 the clergyman, with the teacher, and with the man of letters, 
 with the man of science, with the judge and the statesman and 
 the soldier, who expects to get nothing from life but a com- 
 fortable support for himself and his household. His sufficient 
 reward for serving his country is the having served her, or for 
 saving his country, if that fortune should be his, the having 
 saved her. 
 
 The young lawj'er must choose between this career and this 
 reward and the legacy to his children, and the fishpond and the 
 deer park and the picture gallery and the kennel of hounds and 
 the stud of race-horses. I believe the generous youth of Vir- 
 ginia will not hesitate. 
 
 But still the American lawyer has his own ample reward and 
 his own abundant satisfaction. It is from our profession that 
 judges, law-makers, and largely the great teachers of public 
 morals always have come. The lawyer is the chief defence, se- 
 curity, and preserver of free institutions and of public liberty. 
 These never have been, and I believe never will be, in this 
 country chosen from men of wealth. The young lawyer in 
 making his plans of life must elect between these two careers. 
 Daniel Webster gives it as the result of twenty-five years' obser- 
 vation that it is the condensed history of most good lawyers that 
 they lived well, worked hard, and died poor. I thank God that 
 still, all over this country, we may write over the portals of the 
 Temple of Justice the motto which James Otis took for his 
 defence of the House of Eepresentatives of Massachusetts: 
 
 Let such, such only, tread this sacred floor, 
 Who dare to love their country and be poor. 
 
 "What, then, is the duty of the American lawyer, if he is to 
 keep and hold this place of power and of usefulness in the Ee- 
 public? if he is to be not a money-getter or tradesman, or a 
 specialist, or even a useful and humble private citizen, but is 
 
14 VIRGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 -to be alike the conservator of order, the expounder of justice, 
 and the champion and bulwark of liberty? The duty of the 
 la;wyer is: 
 
 First. To have a constant, intelligent, and instructed knowl- 
 edge of public affairs. If his calling be an office and not a trade, 
 he is bound to fit himself for the whole duty of his office. The 
 lawyer who says that for himself he takes no interest in politics 
 and devotes himself wholly to his profession is but half a lawyer. 
 He is but half an American. This does not imply that he shall 
 hold political office, or be a candidate for political office. If our 
 conception of his function be a true one, he holds office already. 
 But he should, within the sphere of his influence, be an authority 
 upon all the great and vital questions which concern the interests 
 of the people. This authority will not be diminished by the fact 
 that it is wielded by a man without the ordinary personal ambi- 
 tions of life. It is a function for which all his generous studies 
 will have fitted him: I sometimes think that in our sensitive hfe 
 the power of an absolute disinterestedness is greater than that 
 of any official position, however exalted, in the State or in the 
 nation. Cicero's description of the old age of the upright lawyer, 
 to whom his fellow-citizens resort as to an oracle after he has 
 retired from the active duties of the State, may be applied, in 
 large measure, to the great lawyer during his whole lif e : 
 
 Quid est enim prmclarius quam honoribus et rei publicse mu- 
 neribus perfimctum senem posse suo jure dicere id quod apud 
 Ennium dicat Hie Pythius Apollo : se esse eum, imde sibi sinon 
 populi et reges at omnes sui cives consilium expetant. 
 
 Suarum rerum incerti-guos ego ope mea ex 
 Incertis certos compotesque consili dimitto 
 Ut ne res temere tractent turbidas. 
 Est enim sine dubio domus jurisconsulti totius oraculum civitatis. 
 
 Second. If the American lawyer is to hold his place as in the 
 past, he should study his whole science, including constitutional 
 law and the science of government, and not be a speciaHst. I 
 know the great temptation to a man who wishes to get rich 
 
ANNUAL ABDRESS. 15 
 
 rapidly and live easily to devote Mmself to some specially lucra- 
 tive department of the profession, to become the servant of some 
 great railroad or manufacturing company, or to get a speculative 
 interest in some patent and let everything else go. But if he do 
 this, he must forever shut himself out not only from high judicial 
 office, but from the high places of advocacy. 
 
 As Lord Bacon took all knowledge to be his province, so at 
 least the American lawyer must take the entire law of the coun- 
 try to be his. In that way, and in that way only, the old sarcasm 
 that the law sharpens but does not broaden the intellect will be 
 refuted and the lawyer -will maintain the place he has so far 
 held as the leader and guide of his countrymen in the ways of 
 constitutional liberty. 
 
 Third. The duty of the American lawyer is to persuade the 
 American people to submit all its grievances to the arbitrament 
 of law; if the law be right, to enforce it; if the law be wrong, to 
 change it. I believe that in spite of the mob spirit in some great 
 capitals, in spite of the perpetual strife between wealth and 
 poverty, bet^veen labor and capital, the influence of the profes- 
 sion of the law directed to this end will be sufiicient to accom- 
 plish it. The American people will reason out their differences 
 and not flght them out. These difficulties will be settled in the 
 court-house, not in the street; by judges and juries, and not by 
 nrobs; by arguments, and not by bayonets. The influence of the 
 profession in this way may be immense. Every disappointed 
 Htigant is in close relation with an equally disappointed advocate, 
 and will listen to and accept his counsel. This will sometimes, 
 1 know, be a hard saying. But it is worthy of all acceptation. 
 It is hard to submit to injustice. It is easy to persuade men who 
 suffer under social inequalities that a decision against them is 
 against law, or that the judgment has been procured by corrupt 
 means or by improper influence. It is hard to wait patiently 
 for a remedy. It is easy to persuade men to overthrow the great 
 safeguards on which life, liberty, and property depend under 
 the influence of disappointment or the sense of wrong. But 
 
16 VIRGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 surely it is better to await a slow redress from peaceful instru- 
 mentalities than to substitute the methods of reyolution or of 
 mobs for legal and constitutional processes. The habit of respect 
 for judicial tribunals and of deference for their decisions, if cul- 
 tivated by our profession, will prevail among the people. Under 
 our system the judges are often compeUed to decide great politi- 
 cal questions concerning which great political parties differ. 
 I always lament when in times of political excitement the court 
 is brought into the discussion. I always specially lament when 
 advocates or judges permit themselves to speak in the court-house 
 of the effect of this or the other decision upon popular feeling, 
 or the danger that a certain decision may excite popular disap- 
 probation. Such an utterance from the lips of an advocate is 
 lamentable; from the lips of a judge it is unpardonable. There 
 are few finer sayings in modern times than that of the late Lord 
 Justice Bowen, who died too early for his own fame, when he 
 said in his speech at Balliol, in 1887 : 
 
 "These are not days in which any English Judge will fail to 
 assert his right to rise in the proud consciousness that justice 
 is administered in the realms of Her Majesty, the Queen, imma- 
 culate, unspotted, and unsuspected. There is no human being 
 whose smile or frown; there is no government, Tory or Liberal, 
 whose favor or disfavor can start the pulse of an English Judge 
 upon the Bench, or move by one hair's breadth the even equi- 
 poise of the scales of Justice." 
 
 Experience has shown that the errors of -judicial decisions 
 require no revolution or disorder or violence for their remedy. 
 The experience of England and of this country alike demon- 
 strates that there is nothing over which a sound and healthful 
 public sentiment makes a peaceful way more surely than over a 
 judicial decision which is unjust or wrong or in restraint of 
 liberty or in favor of rank against the people or the rich against 
 the poor. The court soon finds a way out of it. It gets limited 
 and trimmed. Its corners get cut. The vigor and vitality are 
 construed out of it. It is founded upon the sand. That settled. 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 17 
 
 permanent, deliberate public opinion, sometimes taking genera- 
 tions, sometimes taking centuries to grow and ripen, prevails in 
 the end alike over the edict of the monarch, the decree of the 
 infallible Church, the judgment of the court, and the anger of 
 the mob. 
 
 It will, I suppose, always be impossible to find a court whose 
 judg-ments on the great constitutional questions which divide po- 
 litical parties will not be affected by a political bias. Although I 
 think we have come more nearly to it than is commonly believed, 
 I believe we can approach it more nearly still hereafter. If I am 
 right in thinking that the ideal lawyer will take a large interest 
 in public affairs, if our judges are to be selected from our best 
 lawyers, then, of course, the honest and able jxidge will take 
 his seat with opinions formed already upon the great constitu- 
 tional questions of his time. But I believe, in general, he will 
 be able to reconsider those opinions and to deal with new prob- 
 lems as they arise in a spirit of absolute impartiality. He will 
 be better able, certainly, to reach this high standard of judicial 
 conduct if he know that it is expected of him; that he will have 
 credit for it, and that he may count on the support of the pro- 
 fession, as well of those who differ with Mm as of those who agree 
 with him, in upholding the authority of his judgment. 
 
 I disbelieve and hate the doctrine that justice and righteous- 
 ness and honor and impartiality and the constraint of public duty 
 cannot be attained, or that, at any rate, they are for monarchies 
 and not for republics; that France may have D'Aguesseau and 
 England may have Hale and Somers, but that the country that 
 produced "Washington can produce no impartial and just judge 
 to match them. Incredulus odi. 
 
 There was, I suppose, no nation — certainly there were few 
 nations — existing when the Supreme Court of the United States 
 was inaugurated equal in power to the great organizations which 
 now appear year after year at its Bar to await and accept with 
 submission its decree. Not only the Eepublic herself as repre- 
 sented by her executive and legislative forces, and great States, 
 
18 VIRGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 larger in population, far more powerful in the resources of 
 modern wealth than the nations living when the Republic was 
 born, but great corporate beings, spanning continents and oceans 
 with their traffic, representing millions of wealth, and employing 
 vast numbers of servants, appear at this Bar as suitors or defend- 
 ants. These imperial powers are to be encountered by imperial 
 restraints, l^o other force than that of law will be able to curb 
 them. 'No law can restrain them or secure the rights of the 
 people against them that is not expounded by a court in whom 
 the public have implicit confidence. This confidence it is the 
 duty of the American Bar to maintain and to inculcate. 
 
 The court can never be the instrument of tyranny or injustice. 
 That, if it occur, will right itself. The legislative power, obe- 
 dient to the will of a free people, will check and correct such 
 tendencies. So long as the court maintains the confidence of a 
 free people, even while it resists the transitory passions of the 
 hour, so long the people's rights will be secure. When the judge 
 ceases to be independent, justice will cease to be supreme. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone said, in a well-known paper: "The American 
 Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever 
 struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. It 
 has had a century of trial under the pressure of exigencies 
 caused by an expansion unexampled in point of rapidity and 
 range; and its exemption from formal change, though not entire, 
 has certainly approved the sagacity of the constructors and the 
 stubborn strength of the fabric." 
 
 This has doubtless become the opinion in substance of the 
 most thoughtful students of political science the world over. 
 The two elements to which the Constitution of our country owes 
 this distinction are the Senate and the Supreme Court. This 
 great tribunal which keeps the forces of State and nation aUke, 
 within their appointed bounds must depend for its authority 
 upon the respect and confidence of the people. That respect 
 and confidence of the people must in my judgment depend upon 
 the influence of the legal profession. A court which has their 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 19 
 
 support will endure. A court which fails of their support will 
 perish. It is well, therefore, surely that the members of the 
 legal profession carefully consider whether the great power of 
 holding the acts of the popular will as expressed in legislation 
 invalid as repugnant to the Constitution of the United States 
 has been thus far exercised wisely, conscientiously, and for the 
 public good; whether these great judgments have been in favor 
 of justice and liberty and not in restraint of them. Let us take 
 a brief review of the exercise of this power from the beginning. 
 
 Certainly, the power of the Supreme Court to declare void acts 
 of the Xational Legislature which it should deem in conflict 
 with the Constitution, a power of which Jefferson was so jealous, 
 cannot anywhere be claimed ever to have been an undue or a 
 dangerous restraint on the power of self-government. Still less, 
 it seems to me, ought Virginia, with the known opinions of the 
 majority of her people, to feel aggrieved with the instances in 
 which that power has been exercised. I doubt whether many 
 Virginia lawyers will be found who, with the single exception 
 of the case of the income-tax, will not agree that in every inr 
 stance the Supreme Court of the United States has been right. 
 There have been but fifteen cases in a hundred and ten years in 
 which the court has held acts of Congress unconstitutional. For 
 the first eighty years there was but one which determined ques- 
 tions likely to excite serious political confiict. That was the 
 Dred Scott Case. 
 
 For the first seventy-five years there was but one case in 
 which an act of Congress was held invalid as being repugnant 
 to the Constitution. That was Marhury and Madison, where 
 the court held the thirteenth section of the Judiciary Act inop- 
 erative so far as it attempts to grant to the Supreme Court power 
 to issue writs of mandamus in cases where the Constitution con- 
 fers no original jurisdiction on the court. 
 
 The majority of the court in the famous Dred Scott Case, 
 however, denied the power, which had been exercised by Con- 
 gress before that time, of prohibiting slavery in the territory 
 
20 VIRGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 nortli of the Missouri Compromise line. But tlie determination 
 of that point was not necessary to the decision, which was that 
 the court below had no jurisdiction. 
 
 Since the war there have been fifteen cases in which acts of 
 Congress have been held repugnant to the Constitution. 
 
 Collector v. Day, decided at the December term, 1870, 11 
 "Wall., 113, holds that it is not competent for Congress to impose 
 a tax upon the salary of a judicial officer of a State. This de- 
 cision only limits by construction the general phraseology of an 
 act of Congress, holding that it cannot apply to the salary of a 
 State officer, and should therefore hardly be included among 
 those decisions which hold acts of Congress unconstitutional. 
 
 United States v. DeWitt, 9 Wall., 41, holds an act of Con- 
 gress declaring it a misdemeanor to mix for sale naphtha and 
 illuminating oil unconstitutional, as being a police regulation 
 relating exclusively to internal trade of the State. 
 
 Gordon v. United States, 2 Wall., 561, which holds uncon- 
 stitutional the statute of March 3, 1863, so far as it authorizes 
 an appeal to the Supreme Court from the Court of Claims in 
 cases where that court acts wholly as an auditor or assessor re- 
 porting its decisions to Congress. 
 
 Callan v. Wilson, 127 U. S., 540, which limits the general 
 language of the statute defi'ning the jurisdiction of the Police 
 Court of the District of Coltimbia. 
 
 United States v. Fox, 95 U. S., 670, which holds a provision 
 unconstitutional which declares that every person respecting 
 whom proceedings in bankruptcy are instituted who within three 
 months before their commencement obtains goods upon false 
 pretences, shall be punished by imprisonment, on the ground 
 that an act not an offence when committed cannot become such 
 by a subsequent independent act with which it has no connection. 
 
 Urdted States v. Steffens, 10 Otto, 82, which holds the statute 
 of 1876 concerning trade-marks unconstitutional, as not limited 
 to trade-marks used in international or interstate commerce. 
 
 Boyd V. United States, 116 TJ. S., 616, which holds the statute 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 21 
 
 of June 22, 1874, ■unconstitutional so far as it authorizes a court 
 of tlie United States to require tlie defendant in revenue cases to 
 produce his private books. 
 
 United Staies v. Bailroad, IT Wall., 332, holding a statute 
 taxing bonds of municipal corporations unconstitutional. 
 
 jSTone of them deals with questions about which different po- 
 litical parties or different sections of the country are likely to 
 be in conflict. Part of them only deal with questions of great 
 general interest, and in all of them the decision of the court, I 
 suppose, has met ^nth universal acquiescence. These cases are 
 eight in number. 
 
 There remain six cases dealing with the legislation of the 
 disturbed period which followed the war — to-wit: 
 
 United States v. Harris, 106 U. S., 629, where section 5519 
 of the Revised Statutes is declared unconstitutional on the 
 ground that Congress has no power to pass a law punishing 
 citizens of the States for conspiring to deprive other citizens of 
 the equal protection of the laws of such States. 
 
 United States v. Eeese, 2 Otto, 214, which holds sections 3 
 and 4 of the act of May 31, 18Y0, beyond the limit of the 
 Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution and unauthorized, 
 as not confined in their operation to unlawful discrimination on 
 account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 
 
 The Civil Eights Cases, 109 U. S., 3, which hold the first and 
 second sections of the Civil Eights Acts unconstitutional. 
 
 Ex parte Garland, 4 "Wall., 105, which holds a law unconsti- 
 tutional which provided that no person should be admitted to 
 the Ear of the Supreme Court without fii-st taking an oath that 
 he had never borne arms against the United States, as being 
 ex post facto, and partaking of the nature of a bill of attainder. 
 
 Justices V. Mwray, 9 Wall., 274, which holds the statute of 
 March 3, 18G3, providing for a retrial in the Federal Court of 
 facts tried by a jury in the State court unconstitutional. 
 
 United States v. Klein, 13 Wall., 128, which holds the statute 
 of Jiily 12, 1870, null and void, providing that the acceptance 
 
22 VIRGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 of a pardon shall be exclusive evidence of tlie acts purporting 
 to be pardoned, as invading the powers of the judicial and ex- 
 ecutive departments of the government. 
 
 These decisions, six in number, are all in which the court 
 have held unconstitutional acts of Congress in pursuance of the 
 policy of the dominant party in regard to what is called "recon- 
 struction." 
 
 This sum_mary comprehends every case from the foundation 
 of the government in ^vliich the national legislative power has 
 been held in check by tlie Supreme Court, with a single excep- 
 tion, which I shall speak of presently. The disturbed period 
 which followed the breaking out of the war required the legis- 
 lative aiithority of the country to follow paths hitherto untrod. 
 Three amendments were added to the Constitution, all bom of 
 the necessities and of the excitements which attended an armed 
 conflict and the enfranchisement which was its result. It was 
 to be expected that in dealing with exigencies which the genera- 
 tion that framed the Constitution never anticipated, there might 
 be wide differences of opinion among the most learned jurists 
 as to the extent to which its power should be found to be flexible 
 and adapted to new conditions. 
 
 In each of these cases, it is to be noted, the court held uncon- 
 stitutional the legislation of the political party to which a 
 majority of its members belonged — the party to which that ma- 
 jority had owed its appointment. In that way the political 
 policy desired by a majority of the people lately victorious in 
 a great civil conflict was frustrated and baifled. The seK-gov- 
 ernment of States lately engaged in an armed conflict with the 
 government of the United States was preserved. 
 
 In United States v. Harris, 106 U. S., 629, there was but one 
 Democratic judge — Field^and but one Southern judge^ 
 Woods. Every one of the judges was appointed by a Eepubli- 
 can President. 
 
 In United States v. Ueese, 2 Otto, 214, there was no Southetn 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 23 
 
 judge, and hut two Democratic judges— Field and Clifford. All 
 but Clifford were appointed by a Eepublican President. 
 
 In ex parte Garland, 4 Wall., 105, tbere were four Democratic 
 jiidges — Xelson, Grier, Clifford, and Field. 
 
 In the Civil Eights Cases, 109 U. S., 3, tbere was one Demo- 
 cratic judge — Field — and one Southern judge — "Woods. All 
 the Court were appointed by a Republican President. 
 
 In Justices v. JIurray, 9 Wall., 274, there were four Demo- 
 cratic judges and no Southern judge. All but two were ap- 
 pointed by Eepublican Presidents. 
 
 In United States v. Klein, 13 Wall., 128, there were four 
 Democratic judges and no Southern judge. All but two were 
 appointed by Eepiiblican Presidents. 
 
 I have not time to deal with the cases in which the Supreme 
 Court of the United States has held the laws of the States to be 
 in conflict with the iN'ational Constitution. They are more than 
 a hundred in ntmiber. In general, they may be reduced to three 
 classes. 
 
 First. Cases in which the State has undertaken to invade the 
 national domain of legislation, or of taxation. 
 
 Second. Cases where the State legislation has invaded the safe- 
 guards established by the amendments to the Constitiition, 
 which are in the nature of a bill of rights, or securities for per- . 
 sonal liberty. 
 
 Third. Cases where the State legislation violates the pro- 
 visions of section 10 of the first article of the Constitution, which 
 enacts that no State shall pass any ex post facto law, or law 
 impairing the obligation of contracts. 
 
 I think I may affirm, ^,\ithout danger of challenge or contra- 
 diction, that these decisions have, in general, the approbation of 
 the legal profession, and that the people are satisfied with them. 
 
 I think, therefore, that I may confidently appeal to my au- 
 dience to agree with me in saying that the great powers given 
 by the Constitution of the United States to the Supreme Court 
 have been in favor of liberty and of popular self-government, 
 
24 VIRGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 and Bot in restraint of either; that the great principles and 
 rules of public policy to which Virginia has held from the begin- 
 ning have found, on the whole, their strength, their safety, their 
 support, in the court to which she has contributed so many 
 shining lights, and which has found so much guidance, illumina- 
 tion, and instruction in every generation from her famous and 
 most illustrious Bar. Are you, on the whole, glad that in the 
 himdred years which followed the adoption of the Constitution, 
 that in the thirty years which followed the last war, you were 
 not left to the unchecked and unrestrained legislative control of 
 a numerical majority? 
 
 I siippose there is but one of these decisions which is not in 
 accord with your opinion, which is the opinion of Virginia. So 
 when I declare that the power of our gTcat tribunal to keep 
 the legislative power within its appointed bounds is a power in 
 aid of liberty protected by law, has been wisely exercised from 
 the beginning, and that in every case from the beginning the 
 Court have been right, have done what the framers of the Con- 
 stitution wauld have done, what the people who accepted the 
 Constitution would have done, what the great Virginians of 
 the great day would have done, what Virginia herself then 
 and always would have done — ^lam sure,Ibelieve,of your unani- 
 mous assent, save so far as it is to be qualified by your opinion 
 in regard to a single case. Do not impute to me the presumption 
 •or the folly of reopening the argument upon the Income-Tax 
 Cases on an occasion like this. I freely concede the great weight 
 'of the argument upon the other side, which has convinced so 
 large a minority of the Court and so many of the great minds of 
 the profession of all parties, JSTorth and South. Indeed, though 
 not myself agreeing with it, I regard the argument of Mr. 
 Attorney-General Olney in support of the validity of an income 
 tax as one of the most masterly in the history of jurisprudence. 
 Your own eminent senior Senator, whose fame as a lawyer is the 
 pride and the honor of the Bar of the whole country is, as you 
 and I well know, of that way of thinking. 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 25 
 
 But there are two or three considerations which may, perhaps, 
 lead you to deem the decision in the Income-Tax Cases less 
 surely a public calamity than is sometimes supposed. 
 
 Let us admit that the decision of the majority of the Court 
 in the Income-Tax Cases was all wrong. Are there not still 
 some considerations which, perhaps, may lead us to deem it not 
 only less surely a public calamity than is sometimes supposed, 
 but also to think that the conclusion of the majority is one 
 which great jurists, looking with a single eye for the law with- 
 out fear or favor, mthout the desire to please or the dread to dis- 
 please anybody, familiar with the history of the formation of 
 the Constitution, familiar with the public opinion which ac- 
 cepted it, paying reasonable regard also, so far as is fitting, to 
 considerations of public convenience, which might well be sup- 
 posed to have been in the minds of the framers of the Constitu- 
 tion, might honestly and reasonably, even if mistaken, be sup- 
 posed to arrive? First, I should like to ask the conscientious 
 American lawyer, before condemning that great tribunal which 
 otherwise he will concede to be the chief civic ornament and 
 glory of his country, to read the contemporaneous history and to 
 ask himself if he believes that any single State would have 
 adopted the ISTational Constitution if it had been believed that 
 the central power would ever be permitted to invade this do- 
 main for the purposes of taxation? Is there any fair ground 
 for finding it as an historical fact that the framers of the Con- 
 stitution said to the States, in this clause which we all agree 
 might have been and should have been more clearly expressed: 
 "Give us duties on imports; give us the proceeds of the sales of 
 public lands; give us excises, and you may keep taxes for State 
 purposes. Or, if there shall be a great national exigency such 
 as war, where the government needs something more, then, ac- 
 cording to our great doctrine of liberty, taxation, and represen- 
 tation shall go together. The vote that spends and the purpose 
 that pays shall be in the same proportion." Dr. Franklin, as 
 you know, had just proposed that in all appropriations and dispo- 
 
26 VIRGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 sitions of money to be drawn out of the general treasury, and in 
 all laws for supplying that treasury the delegates of the several 
 States "shall have suffrage in proportion to the sums which their 
 respective States do acttially contribute to the treasury." May 
 it not fairly be considered that everybody, or nearly everybody, 
 agrees that a tax upon land is a direct tax, and that a tax upon 
 the income of land cannot be levied by a power that cannot tax 
 the land itself? And that, therefore, great injustice and in- 
 equality and disproportion of burden must exist under a system 
 where the income of the great landholder, the Astor or the Sears, 
 is to be exempted and the earning of the professional man or 
 the mechanic is to pay? May we not also profitably reflect that 
 it is likely to be found highly oppressive and inexpedient that the 
 two authorities shall be found taxing -the same thing at the same 
 time, and that if the taxing power of the United States keep off 
 that field and domain it is left open to the several States who can 
 make siich aiTangements as they think fit, so that the wealth of 
 the country will be compelled to pay its just and equal share 
 of the public burdens. More and more as the States grow in 
 wealth their objects and necessities for taxation will increase. I 
 suppose that the aggregate of State, county, and local taxation 
 in this country must considerably exceed that of the General 
 Government. The total tax in my own State for State, county, 
 city, and town purposes considerably exceeds thirty million 
 dollars, of which ninety-one per cent, is levied for municipal 
 purposes. Then it may, perhaps, give us some little comfort 
 when we reflect how odious an income tax has always been 
 found. Disraeli has declared that the English income tax was 
 a most odious burden which fell with greatest weight on what 
 he called the lower middle class. It was the first of our war 
 taxes to be abandoned by an almost universal consent. So long 
 as human nature remains unchanged, so long an income tax will 
 give rise to evasion, subterfuge, and perjury. You have tried 
 it in Virginia, perhaps with better fortune than they have else- 
 where. There are but four American States of whom your 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 27 
 
 State and mine are two that are willing to tolerate it. And the 
 burden and inconvenience of such a tax must infinitely increase 
 when it is exacted by a central power which cannot deal intel- 
 ligently with local conditions or make suitable exemptions, and 
 where the final power of deciding all questions is to be exercised 
 hundreds of thousands of miles away. But, as I said, I am not 
 here to debate the constitutionality of the income tax. I am 
 only to insist that whether our great tribunal have erred in one 
 particular they have, in general, been in accord with the best 
 opinion of the country, and with the best opinion of Virginia. 
 
 The court i? the shield of the minority and the shield of the 
 citizen; the maintenance of its aiithority is in the last resort 
 to prevent us from becoming instead of a constitutional govern- 
 ment the government of a pure and unchecked majority, to go 
 surely and speedily the way of the empires and the republics of 
 the past. 
 
 This is the moral of all human tales, 
 
 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, 
 First freedom and then glory— when that fails 
 Wealth, vice, corruption, barbarism at last, 
 And history, of all its volumes vast, 
 Hath but one page. 
 
 Certainly we must agree that the Stipreme Court of the 
 United States has scrupulously kept itself aloof from political 
 controversy and kept off the domain which belongs to the po- 
 litical power of the country. It would have been intolerable 
 had it been otherwise. An unchecked tyranny practised by 
 courts under the pretense of administering justice would fee 
 a form of oppression hard to be borne anywhere, impossible to 
 be borne by the genius and the spirit of our free people. There 
 have been a few persons — such persons are not now, I think, very 
 numerous — who agree with the opinion which Mr. Jefferson 
 expressed under the excitement of his controversy with Chief- 
 J^istice Marshall, that it never was intended that the Supreme 
 Court of the United States should have authority to declare void 
 the attempted exercise of legislative power on the ground that it 
 
28 VIRGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 was in conflict with the Constitution. But I suppose with few and 
 rare exceptions all thoughtful students and patriotic Americans 
 are glad that the Constitution has been so interpreted, and are 
 glad also that the necessity for this judicial interposition has 
 been so frequent and that the Court has been so sparing and 
 scrupulous in the exercise of this great power. If we look at 
 this judicial power not as it bears upon immediate and temporary 
 and fleeting conditions, but as it affects the steady, permanent, 
 and slow growth of the country, we shall find that the effect of 
 the declaration by the Court that an attempted exercise of the 
 legislative or executive power is a violation of our written Con- 
 stitution is only to require pause, reconsideration, slowness of 
 procedure in accomplishing what the popular will shall desire. 
 The permanent, settled will, the sober second thought of a great 
 people will make its way in the end either by changing the Con- 
 stitution or by changing the construction. 
 
 Fourth. The lawyer should study the law with the constant 
 purpose to do what he can to amend and perfect it. Every 
 State and Territory, and nearly everywhere every county should 
 have its Bar Association, whose function should be not only to 
 maintain good fellowship, to preserve the highest standard of 
 professional honor, learning, and capacity, but also to make its 
 power felt in the amendment of jurisprudence and in keeping 
 the law constantly abreast of the growing needs and the intel- 
 ligent public sentiment of the country. But in this matter the 
 ten volumes of the Eeports of the State Bar Association of 
 Virginia furnish abundant evidence that you require no advice 
 and need no spur. 
 
 '.Tod forbid that anything should so change the temper of the 
 American people as to destroy that healthy and eager discontent, 
 aHve to existing evil, constantly yearning for an ideal perfec- 
 tion always to be approached if never to be attained. This is 
 the secret of greatness and of glory. But we need to be taught 
 the lesson of which the American lawyer is the best possible 
 teacher-that everything which is permanent is of slow growth. 
 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 29 
 
 The mnsliToomj ■vvloich grows in a night, perishes in a day, while 
 the oak slowly adds ring to ring through its centuries of life. 
 I hope that our people mil be taught this lesson by the Ameri- 
 can Bar, especially in dealing with their Constitution. We may 
 make changes of mere mechanism like that which grew out of 
 the contested election between Jefferson and Burr; we may 
 make new securities for individual right like those which fol- 
 lowed immediately after the adoption of the Constitution, and 
 those which followed the war. But let us hold fast to the sub- 
 stance of this wonderful structure the like of which the world 
 never yet saw, and the eqnsl of which it is not likely to see 
 again until the experience not of a year, not of a presidential 
 term, not of a single generation, but at least of a century, has 
 demonstrated that it has failed. 
 
 In submitting what I have had to say to the considerate judg- 
 ment of the Bar of Virginia, I have spoken freely and plainly 
 as is due to jny own self-respect and as becoming one speaking 
 to such an audience. I have spoken in behalf of a tribunal 
 whose constitutional judgments upon the greatest questions with 
 which it has ever had to deal have overthrown, baffled, and 
 brought to naught the policy in regard to the great matter 
 of reconstruction of the party to which I myself belong, and 
 the school of politics in which I have been trained and which, 
 I suppose, was also that of a majority of the American people. 
 I submit. I believe that the example of such submission is 
 better and promises more for the continued life of the Repub- 
 lic than any party success, or than the prevalence of any 
 special policy. The life and the glory of this country are to 
 depend not on armies or navies, not on wealth, not on vic- 
 tory, not on empire, not on commerce, not on numbers, but 
 upon the sentiments which govern the individual citizen — above 
 all, on the sentiment which it is the function of our profession 
 to inculcate — that of obedience to law. The one most sublime 
 thing in the universe, except its Creator, is that of a great and 
 free people governing itself by a law higher than its own desire. 
 
30 VIKGINIA STATE BAR ASSOCIATION. 
 
 In that sublime pathway it was the function of Virginia to be 
 the leader in the early days. That leadership may still be hers. 
 Whatever may be the influences that determine the future of a 
 great State the strongest of all is its own history. The Virginian 
 youth, bred to the contemplation of her mighty past and to 
 form himself upon the great models she has furnished in every 
 generation, can secure for himself and for her a power over 
 the future of the Eepublic to which her own past alone can 
 furnish a parallel. What Virginia helped win for us; what 
 Virginia helped build for us, let Virginia defend for us, let 
 Virginia preserve for us. And the leader of three millions shall 
 be the leader of a hundred millions. 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 DEUVBRBD BEFORE THE 
 
 Senate and House of Representatives 
 
 AND INVITED GUESTS 
 
 On February 12, 1901 
 
 Hon. 0£orge Frisbie Hoar 
 
 IN RESPONSE TO AN INVITATION OF THE 
 
 General Court 
 
 BOSTON 
 1901 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 Senate and House of Representatives 
 
 AND INVITED GUESTS 
 
 On February 12, 1901 
 
 Hon. George Frisbie Hoar 
 
 IN RESPONSE TO AN INVITATION OF THE 
 
 General Court 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 1901 
 
Boston : 
 
 WBIGHT & FOTTEK PEIHTING CO., 18 POST OFFICE SQUARE. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Mr. President, Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen : — 
 
 Your invitation comes to me alike as a high honor and 
 a command not to be disobeyed. I seem, as I speak to 
 this assembly, to be speaking to the Commonwealth her- 
 self, here in her stately palace, in gracious bodily pres- 
 ence. To a son of Massachusetts there can be no earthly 
 honor greater than that she can confer, and no mandate 
 save that of the country alone which can speak with so 
 great authority. It may seem, at the first thought, to 
 have something of disrespect in it, what, after aU, is the 
 highest token of respect, that I have not for a moment 
 stopped to consider whether what I have to say shall 
 please or displease. The faithful servant does his master 
 most honor when he gives fearless even if unwelcome 
 counsel. The gracious master honors that servant above 
 all others to whose good will and affection he permits 
 the freest and the plainest speech. 
 
 This day has a double significance. It is the birthday 
 of our great martyr-President. It is near the beginning 
 of your first session in the new century. This house, I 
 suppose, is the oldest legislative body on earth represent- 
 ing a free people, save only the House of Commons and 
 perhaps the Virginia House of Burgesses. "Whether we 
 are to dwell whoUy on the life and teachings of Abraham 
 Lincoln, and to see how near we have followed or how 
 far we have drifted away from the path he marked out 
 
4 
 
 for us, or whether we are to take the census of what 
 has been gained for humanity in one of the periods by 
 which history is reckoned, our thoughts are not unlikely 
 to turn into the same channels. Freedom, self-govern- 
 ment, justice, the welfare of humanity, were the great 
 things for which Lincoln lived and for which Lincoln died. 
 Freedom, self-government, justice, the welfare of human- 
 ity are still the tests by which we mark the progress of 
 the nation and the race. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that we might improve 
 somewhat our method of celebrating the birthdays of 
 our heroes and statesmen who have departed. Instead 
 of inviting some living orator, let us, as near as may be, 
 invite the man himself to the celebration. If the people 
 are considering some question involving the public wel- 
 fare or the fate of the republic, or what, if not the same 
 thing, are higher and dearer yet, the honor and the con- 
 science of the republic, let some faithful searcher gather 
 everything the man we would honor has left us on that 
 subject in the way of example or of precept. If the 
 question be whether we shall enter on a career of foreign 
 dominion, let us celebrate Washington's birthday by re- 
 calling what he said on that subject. If the question be 
 what constitutes lawful reason for war ; or what is the 
 duty of good citizenship when the country is in a war in 
 which it is wrong ; or what are the rights which belong 
 everywhere to that being which we call a people ; or 
 what is the line of distinction between power and right, 
 when a strong nation has to deal with a weak one ; or 
 whether it be lawful for one people to subdue another 
 to its will; what consent of the governed, if any, be 
 
necessary to the exercise of just powers of government ; 
 whether there can be taxation rightfully without repre- 
 sentation; whether men may be held lawfully in a 
 State as subjects and not citizens, — would it not be 
 well, on Abraham Lincoln's birthday, to gather every- 
 thing he said on those subjects, and what he did when 
 charged with public responsibilities? "Would it not be 
 well, on Webster's birthday, to call him up to bear his 
 testimony as in visible presence ; or, on Jefferson's birth- 
 day, to hear what he had to say about it ; or, on Sumner's 
 birthday, to listen again to the counsel of that dauntless 
 and righteous spirit? In that way the silent lips of the 
 mighty dead will seem ever speaking their high com- 
 mands to their countrymen. In that way every gen- 
 eration will still Live, and Webster and Sumner and Sam 
 Adams and John Adams may still always be present on 
 this spot with which they were so familiar in life, still 
 sitting, stUl deliberating, stUl debating. 
 
 But I have preferred, if I may so far presume on your 
 generous indulgence, to devote this hour to a few thoughts 
 appropriate to the beginning of the new century. 
 
 I will not, in the time I have a right to occupy to-day, 
 undertake to deal with matters which are sure to be 
 thoroughly discussed elsewhere. I have not time, and 
 it would not be worth while, if I had, to compare the 
 condition of the country or of the Commonwealth in 
 power, in population, in wealth, in invention and in 
 material resources, or in general intelligence, with that 
 of 1701 or 1801. You will find all that in the census 
 and the statistical tables of boards of trade and cham- 
 bers of cominerce. If you wish, in these days, to stir 
 
6 
 
 the blood and to start the tear of pride in an American 
 citizen, the best thing with which to do it is a column 
 of figures from the census. I wish to speak only of 
 some of the things which affect the moral condition 
 and character of the people. I like better to consider 
 what we have gained in the two centuries, and es- 
 pecially in the one century which has just gone by, in 
 the things which make the true welfare and determine 
 the destiny of the Commonwealth. It must be but a 
 glance. I can speak only of a few things out of 
 many. Civil and religious freedom; the comfort and 
 dignity of the common life of the people ; fair distribution 
 of wealth ; opportunity to get the necessaries and com- 
 forts of life and to achieve success in honorable employ- 
 ment ; purity of legislation ; the power of conscience and 
 justice over the action of the people ; security of life and 
 property against crime ; the prevalence of public spirit 
 over party spirit ; the dignity of manhood and woman- 
 hood, not only as respected in ourselves, but as respected 
 and guarded in our treatment of other races than our 
 own, — these are the chief things, or certainly among 
 the chief things, which are to decide whether Massachu- 
 setts shall abide and keep her honorable place in the 
 estimation of mankind. I wish to say a few words only 
 about each of these things, hastily, and without much 
 attempt at order. 
 
 The keynote of the constitutional history of Massachu- 
 setts, from the landing of the Puritans to this hour has 
 been a people's government by its sober second thought. 
 Her people have always insisted that the thoughts of a 
 great nation ought to come slowly and its action ought to 
 
be deliberate. So, while spasms of popular feeling have 
 swept over the State, it is gratifying to record that they 
 have borne little fruit of mischief. It is noticeable that 
 almost every one of these cases has been an instance 
 where the people have, for the time being, broken away 
 from party ties, and that they have been brought back 
 to sobriety and wisdom by party instruinentality. To 
 every people into whose government anything of free- 
 dom enters, government by party is a necessity. In 
 proportion as governments are free, the necessity of 
 party government becomes greater. In proportion as 
 party government has prevailed in any nation or in any 
 generation, in that proportion the nation or generation 
 has achieved most for righteousness, justice and liberty, 
 has made most rapid progress and has been most pros- 
 perously and wisely administered. Responsible party 
 government is a highly conservative force in a republic. 
 It demands leadership. But it demands also consulta- 
 tion, deliberation and following leadership. So the dim- 
 inution of the strength of party obligation is by no means 
 an unmixed good. 
 
 But the sense of party obligation which puts party 
 spirit above public spirit and gives bitterness not only 
 to the discussion of public affairs but to private and 
 social intercourse, which assails personal motive and 
 would destroy personal character, is doubtless one of 
 the greatest of public evils. I rejoice to believe that 
 within the last century it has largely diminished and 
 seems almost wholly disappearing from Massachusetts. 
 This has perhaps brought with it some loss of stead- 
 fastness and constancy. But, on the whole, it is a 
 
8 
 
 great gain. No man who can read the literature or 
 history of the time before the revolution, of the time 
 just after the revolution, or knows the past or present 
 condition of other free countries, will doubt, I think, 
 that the spirit of what is called partisanship, in the bad 
 meaning of the word, is less in this Commonwealth than 
 in any other spot on the earth's surface, and is less 
 in this Commonwealth to-day than it was ever before. 
 If you would search for political bitterness, for hatred, 
 malice and uncharitableness, for attributing to men 
 base motives wherever base motives are possible or 
 even conceivable, you may perhaps find them still. 
 But you win not find them in the organs of either of 
 the great parties of MassachT:isetts, or in the represent- 
 atives of those great parties who sit in these seats side 
 by side, striving with a generous emulation to do what 
 is for the good of the Commonwealth they love. 
 
 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, if there 
 did not exist what may be called party spirit, it was be- 
 cause the rigid intolerance of the time did not admit of 
 party itself. There had been a few great controversies 
 in the seventy years since the settlement ; but they had 
 been solely, I suppose, of a religious character. Party, 
 in its new and modern sense, came into being with the 
 great controversy with the crown, which ended in revo- 
 lution and independence. 
 
 In 1801 Mr. Jefferson was elected to the presidency 
 after a long and bitter contest in the House. The Fed- 
 eralists favored Aaron Burr. It seemed not so much a 
 party victory as a new revolution. Levi Lincoln the 
 younger, in an oration warmly praised by Jefferson him- 
 
9 
 
 self, proposed that thereafter the 4th of March should 
 take the place of the 4th of July to be celebrated as the 
 birthday of American freedom. The Kepublicans and 
 Democrats who sit side by side in these seats in an affec- 
 tionate brotherhood can hardly believe the bitterness of 
 the party spirit of the time. It pervaded the pulpit, the 
 press and the coUege. It divided the social life of village 
 communities into hostile camps. The elder Levi Lincoln, 
 who had organized and led the great political revolution 
 in New England, then Mr. Jefferson's Attorney-General, 
 teUs him in the spring of 1801 that things are getting a 
 little better, and that even the ministers pray with more 
 discretion. The clergymen were Federalists, almost aU 
 of them. The Democrat seemed in their eyes a sinner 
 almost past praying for, except that sometimes the invo- 
 cation would go up from the desk, ' ' Oh, Lord, wilt Thou 
 send down Thy blessing upon the President of these 
 United States, and wilt Thou give him that wisdom which 
 he so much needs." 
 
 The coUege shared and reflected the same feeling. At 
 Dartmouth, in 1803, the poet of the Phi Beta Kappa 
 Society denounced the new administration with the fe- 
 rocity and with some little trace of the vigor of Juvenal. 
 He represents the awful shade of "Washington, ^hen dead 
 but four years, rising from his tomb on the banks of the 
 Potomac, and casting angrily in the faces of his unworthy 
 and degraded countrymen the honors with which they 
 had once crowned him : — 
 
 His warm cheek glowed, and flashed his angry eye ; 
 Then from his brow the laurel wreath unbound, 
 And threw the withering honors on the ground. 
 
10 
 
 Here is the portraiture of Thomas Jefferson, then 
 President : — 
 
 Cimmerian goblins brooded o'er the hour 
 When here a wild projector rose to power ; 
 Delusive schemes distend whose plodding brain, 
 Whose philosophic robe debaucheries stain. 
 He, weak in rule, unskilled in moral lore. 
 In practice infidel, in spirit poor ; 
 Despised in person and debased in mind, 
 At once the curse and pity of mankind ; 
 Pleased with his simple garb and atheist lore. 
 Reviles the God his countrymen adore. 
 Refined in insult, there we see him shed 
 Theatric sorrow o'er the mighty dead. 
 Oh, then, then Heaven's indignant thunders slept; 
 The shade was wounded and the virtues wept. 
 
 Here is the poet's picture of Albert Gallatin, that most 
 accomplished scholar and patriot, then Secretary of the 
 Treasury : — 
 
 Columbians, see disgraced and drooping stand 
 Your eagle, half unfledged, by party's hand. 
 Columbians, see a foreign child of vice, 
 Vile leech of state, whose virtue's avarice. 
 Sedition-nursed and taught in faction's school, 
 With front of triple brass your treasury rule. 
 Columbians, see the foes of virtue rise. 
 By slander mounted and upheld by lies. 
 Columbians, see your veterans basely spurned, 
 Your heroes slighted and your chiefs unmourned. 
 See, nor, while merit from your pride is driven. 
 Expect the favor of offended Heaven. 
 
 This poem was published by a committee of which 
 Ezekiel Webster, the brother of Daniel, himself afterward 
 one of the most celebrated men in New Hampshire, was 
 
11 
 
 ■chairman. Through the committee, the Society of the 
 Phi Beta Kappa returned to the author their cordial 
 thanks for his ' ' ingenious and sentimental poem, and re- 
 quest a copy for publication. ' ' 
 
 This was Dartmouth. I am afraid Harvard was worse. 
 Fisher Ames, our great orator, who ought still to be 
 studied by our youth as a model, who was offered the 
 presidency of Harvard just about the time the letter was 
 written, says : ' ' Our country is too big for union, too 
 sordid for patriotism, too democratic for liberty. What 
 is to become of it, he who made it best knows. Its vice 
 will govern it by practising upon its folly. This is or- 
 dained for democracies. . . . Botany Bay will be a 
 bettering-house for our public men. Our morals, for- 
 ever sunning, and fly-blown like fresh meat hung up in 
 the election market, vsdll taint the air like pestilence. 
 Liberty vdll choke in such an atmosphere, fouler than 
 the vapor of death in a mine." 
 
 There were towns — I think it was a little worse in New 
 Hampshire than in Massachusetts — where the whole 
 Democratic party would combine to prevent a Federalist 
 moving into town, and the whole Federal party would 
 combine to keep out a Democrat, or to get him out if he 
 came in. In choosing a doctor or a lawyer, or in dealing 
 with a storekeeper, the Federahst patronized the Feder- 
 alist and the Democrat the Democrat. 
 
 I think we have much improved in these matters. I 
 do not wish to discourage the- efforts of some of my Inde- 
 pendent friends. They will doubtless improve by prac- 
 tice, if they continue of the same way of thinking long 
 • enough. But as yet their descriptions of President 
 
12 
 
 McKinley are far behind in ability and somewhat behind 
 in bitterness the Democratic descriptions of Washington, 
 or the Federalist descriptions of Jefferson. 
 
 Our ancestors two centuries ago encountered and some- 
 times yielded to the temptations which belonged to a time 
 which had not yet thrown off the superstitions of the 
 dark ages. They had been themselves the victims of re- 
 ligious intolerance and political oppression ; and men who 
 have been the victims of political and religious oppression 
 are apt, when they get the power, to exercise such oppres- 
 sion in their turn. We have gained much in the matter 
 of religious freedom since the time of the witchcraft per- 
 secution, little more than two centuries ago. We have 
 gained much during the century just closed. Within 
 my recollection, Abner Kneeland was put on his trial in 
 Boston for blasphemy for a temperate argument against 
 the prevalent Christian faith. The ruins of the Ursuline 
 Convent were still standing on yonder hiU in Charlestown 
 when I was a student at Harvard. Down, I think, to 
 1850 or thereabouts, the Legislature refused a charter to 
 the Catholic College of the Holy Cross at Worcester. 
 This charter was not actually granted until 1865. I 
 yield to no man in reverence for the mighty Puritan who 
 builded this State and laid deep below the frost its solid 
 foundations in religion and liberty. I reverence also 
 the great generation that followed the war of the revolu- 
 tion, and sent your predecessors to this spot to gain for 
 Massachusetts the title of the "model Commonwealth." 
 Their blood runs in my veins. I am their offspring in 
 every line of descent. Whatever the State has been, has 
 become or shall be, is largely their work. But I believe 
 
13 
 
 that the spirit of religious freedom is purer in our time 
 than it was in theirs. I am not quite ready to maintain 
 that the Mathers were better religious teachers than 
 Edward Everett Hale or PhiUips Brooks, — aye, or than 
 Thomas Conaty. 
 
 Perhaps the most distinctive single characteristic of 
 our time is the great, rapid and easy accumulation of 
 wealth in individual hands. It is in some respects a pub- 
 lic benefit; it is in some respects a public danger. In 
 general, these vast estates go, in one or two generations 
 at the farthest, back into the general mass of property, 
 or are set apart for public purposes. As a rule, the rich 
 men of this country have been stirred by a generous 
 ambition to use a large part of their wealth for public 
 objects. The voluntary gifts for education alone large 
 enough to be separately noted in the press for the last 
 quarter of a century amount to nearly $300,000,000, 
 besides gifts to libraries. If they leave no children, it all 
 goes that way. If they leave children, our laws, which 
 forbid tying up property by will or deed for a longer 
 period than a life in being at the death of the testator or 
 grantor and twenty-one years thereafter, insure the rapid 
 division of the great fortune ; and the heirs in many cases 
 have a genius for scattering property equal to that of the 
 genius that acquired it. So the people who get, in the 
 way of employment, the benefit of the energy that builds 
 up great business enterprises, get, sooner or later, also 
 the fortune acquired by the man who originated them. 
 
 But I agree that the effect of these vast fortunes is 
 bad in the substitution of luxury and extravagance in 
 place of the plain living that characterized our frugal 
 
14 
 
 republican fathers. A greater danger still, which I think: 
 we shall find means to deal with, is the corrupt use of 
 money to carry elections or to get high office or influence^ 
 Legislatures. Of this we have had some most disgraceful 
 recent examples. These things cannot always be proved 
 clearly enough to defeat their object, even if the men who 
 have done them not only do not deny them but boast of 
 them. One remedy must be found in an aroused and 
 indignant public opinion. The millionnaire who would 
 corrupt a great State to get a great office must be made 
 to feel that his success will bring with it neither joy 
 nor honor. Let public contempt and scorn blast him. 
 Let him be avoided as one with a leprosy. We shall not,, 
 probably, revive the ignominious punishments of the past,, 
 but, if they are ever revived, let him be their first victim. 
 The whipping-post, the branding on the forehead, the- 
 cropping of the ears, the scourging at the cart's tail, are 
 light punishments for the rich man who would debauch 
 a State, whether it be an old State with an honorable 
 history, or a young and pure State in the beginning of its 
 history. If we cannot apply them literally and physi- 
 cally, let the aroused public sentiment of his countrymen 
 pillory and brand and scourge the infamous offender. 
 Leave him to his infamy. Let him be an outcast from the 
 companionship of freemen. 
 
 Give him a cloak to hide him in, 
 
 And leave him alone with his shame and sin. 
 
 We will not be cast down. This thing is partial, local,, 
 temporary. The great mass of the American people is 
 honest, patriotic and incorruptible. Every generation 
 
15 
 
 has had its own faults and temptations and wrong-doings ; 
 every generation will have its own faults and temptations 
 and wrong-doings unto the end of time. "We have to 
 encounter an evil which comes from a great wealth and a 
 great prosperity. England went through the same trial 
 long ago. I am not speaking of the time of Sir Kobert 
 "Walpole, the great prime minister, who said that every 
 man had his price, but of a later time. Disraeli said in 
 the House of Commons that long after the time of Wal- 
 pole, after the close of the American war, a member of the 
 government used to stand at the entrance of the House of 
 Commons at the end of the session and give every mem- 
 ber who had faithfuUy supported the government a five- 
 hundred-pound note. England has put an end to corrup- 
 tion and bribery. We can do everything that England 
 can, and we can do a great many things that England 
 cannot. 
 
 It has been weU said by Mr. Webster, who knew the 
 If ew England character and comprehended New England 
 institutions more profoundly than any other man who 
 ever lived, that ' ' there is hardly a greater blessing con- 
 ferred on man than his natural wants. " If he had wanted 
 no more than the beasts, who can say how much more 
 than they he would have attained? In considering the 
 comfort and dignity of common life by which the social 
 conditions of a State are determined, it is no cause of re- 
 gret, but of congratulation and thankfulness rather, that 
 our wants to-day far transcend those of our simple and 
 frugal ancestors. Plain living and high thinking are 
 doubtless the best conditions for human life, but, if the 
 living be too plain, the thinking will not be high. The 
 
16 
 
 soul and the body will not often hunger or thirst at 
 the same time. Mean and base surroundings, without 
 the refinement of taste, are apt to degrade alike the intel- 
 lectual and the moral nature. So I count the improved 
 style of living, the widening of the circle of what are called 
 the necessaries of Ufe, the adornment of the mechanic's 
 home and the improvement in the farmer's dwelling, 
 which have taken place in both these two centuries we 
 are reviewing, as an unmixed blessing. It has not only 
 stimulated manufacture, it has not only been the parent 
 of inventive genius, it has not only increased national 
 wealth, but it has elevated national character. 
 
 Was there ever such an example on earth as Massachu- 
 setts of the peaceful incorporation into a State of men of 
 foreign origin and alien blood, — a people considerably 
 larger in number than those of the original stock? Yet 
 the essential qualities of character remain unchanged, or 
 only changed for the better. Massachusetts has been the 
 author of great benefactions to mankind. Her example 
 has gone, as her children have gone, from one end of this 
 continent to the other. Foreign nations have profited 
 by her lessons. English freedom, as it has slowly broad- 
 ened down from precedent to precedent, has owed much 
 of its growth to precedents set to England by America 
 and set to America by Massachusetts. But among her 
 greatest benefactions has been her benefaction to the 
 strangers she has welcomed within her gates and seated 
 as brethren, or rather as children, at her hospitable board. 
 And yet, whatever benefit she has conferred upon them,— 
 upon the Swede, upon the Irishman, upon the Enghshman, 
 
17 
 
 upon the Italian, — they have repaid over and over again 
 to her. 
 
 Let us not discourage the healthy discontent of labor, 
 still less the impatience of poverty with its lot. It is from 
 these that great improvements in social conditions are 
 born. This discontent, when it flows in healthy channels, 
 begets invention, begets energy, begets improvement in 
 legislation, and keeps the State from stagnation and cor- 
 ruption. But, still, the plain man who lives in his simple 
 dwelling, who looks with envy upon the luxury in which 
 his neighbor dwells, may well reflect what wealth belongs 
 to him by virtue of his citizenship, which no prince or 
 nobleman or nabob ever enjoyed in former generations. 
 He is the joint owner of beautiful parks and galleries and 
 libraries. Schools and colleges are open to his children 
 at a cost almost nominal. He is transported from town 
 to town, over country roads, through fertile fields, through 
 populous towns and cities. He can enjoy the mountains 
 of beautiful Berkshire, which no Arcadia ever rivalled, 
 or the glorious sea coast scenes of Essex, where the eternal 
 sea beats on the eternal rocks, in chariots drawn by swift 
 and invisible coursers, which the wealth of no Astor or 
 Lawrence could have bought a generation ago. His are 
 the transcendent sweets of domestic Life in the security 
 and the glory of our Massachusetts citizenship, and above 
 aU, the right, as his eyes gaze on the American flag, to 
 say, " That is the emblem of my country and the symbol 
 of my power. ' ' 
 
 If Providence afflict him or his household with insanity 
 or blindness or deafness or idiocy, what a contrast has this 
 
18 
 
 single century witnessed in the dealing of the State with 
 these unfortunate beings. Within living memory the 
 insane man was chained in some wretched out-house, like 
 a wild beast, or, if less dangerous, walked the streets, the 
 mockery of brutal and senseless sport. The ray of intel- 
 lectual light seldom penetrated the darkened mind of the 
 child who was born blind or deaf. To-day the deaf and 
 dumb learn articulate speech, and often mingle with their 
 fellow beings without their infirmity being detected. A 
 deaf, dumb and blind girl has just won high honors at 
 Eadcliffe. The insane is clothed and his humanity re- 
 spected, even if not in his right mind, and the gentle 
 ministrations of Christian charity awaken the darkened 
 soul of the idiot. The State performs these Christian 
 offices for the poorest as for the wealthiest of her children. 
 A hundred years ago slavery had been abolished in 
 Massachusetts but twenty years. The slave trade, which 
 had disgraced Boston in the middle of the century before, 
 still lingered in the New England seaports. In 1820 Mr. 
 "Webster exclaimed at Plymouth : " It is not fit that the 
 land of the Pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I 
 hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke of the 
 furnaces where manacles and fetters are stiU forged for 
 human limbs. I see the visages of those who by stealth 
 and at midnight labor in this work of hell, foul and dark, 
 as may become the artificers of such instruments of mis- 
 ery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease 
 to be of ISTew England ; let it be purified, or let it be set 
 aside from the Christian world ; let it be put out of the 
 circle of human sympathies and human regards, and let 
 civilized man henceforth have no communion with it. " 
 
19 
 
 There are doubtless some dark colors in our picture. 
 We cannot look without deepest concern upon the terrible 
 increase of crime, — an increase which seems to be more 
 rapid as the years go by. "We attributed this until lately 
 to the coming into our community of men of foreign 
 birth, who had not been educated like us or bred to the 
 self-restraint of freedom, and to the growth of great 
 cities. But we can avail ourselves of no such refuge now. 
 In 1820 Mr. Webster at Plymouth dwelt with pride upon 
 the fact that all New England slept at night in safety 
 with unlocked doors. Fifty years ago it was a maxim 
 accepted everywhere that the crime of murder was im- 
 possible of concealment ; that, if other means failed, the 
 murderer himself could not bear the weight of his guilty 
 "secret ; that, as the same great authority said, ' ' There is 
 no escape from confession but suicide, and suicide is 
 confession." But to-day crimes against human life and 
 against female chastity are committed with impunity by 
 men of the purest Puritan blood in rural communities, 
 and they go undetected and unpunished. When a murder 
 was committed in Dedham, near a hundred years ago, 
 the great orator and statesman, Fisher Ames, said, " Let 
 no man sleep in Dedham this night. " If a murder should 
 be committed, I will not say in Dedham, but in Worces- 
 ter, to-morrow, the neighbors on the next street would 
 scarcely hear or scarcely heed the news. The spirit of 
 gambling which prevails everywhere, not only among the 
 practised gamblers on the stock exchange, but through 
 brokers is carried on by widows with their little fortunes, 
 tempts the trustee and the treasurer and the bank officer 
 with his humble salary, so that embezzlement, in many 
 
20 
 
 cases followed by no disgrace or public censure, is grow- 
 ing and increasing fearfully throughout Massachusetts. 
 
 ■There is a great unsolved problem which still lowers 
 over us like a dark cloud. It has till lately been a do- 
 mestic question only. But it is now threatening us with 
 new dangers in the far East. "We have, on the whole, 
 met with admirable success in dealing with men of the 
 white race of foreign birth and of other religious faith 
 than that of the Puritans. Fifty-two per cent, of the 
 people of Massachusetts are of foreign birth, or the chil- 
 dren of men of foreign birth. They have had and have, 
 as the rest of us have had, their grave faults. But they 
 have borne a noble and useful part in the history of Mas- 
 sachusetts in peace and war. They have advanced since 
 they came herein every quality of good citizenship and 
 with marvellous rapidity. They have been among our 
 best and bravest soldiers, they have built our railroads, 
 their men have taken their share in our public affairs, 
 and their women have been and are valued and useful 
 inmates of our households. They have set us an example 
 of patriotism and of conjugal affection. 
 
 But we can tell no such story of our dealing with the 
 Indian or the Negro or the Oriental. Undoubtedly much 
 has been gained. The Negro has come out of slavery. 
 So far as constitutional enactments go, he has all the 
 rights of citizenship. In Massachusetts, I am proud to 
 say, he takes his place as an equal and sometimes as a 
 superior in our universities and colleges and public schools. 
 But stiU, if you look the country over, the condition of 
 the American Negro is a shame to the American white 
 man. Most of the Indian wars of the last century, bloody 
 
21 
 
 and cruel as they have been, have been the fault of the 
 whites. "We are at this moment dealing with the people 
 of an alien race in the far East as we would never for a 
 moment, under precisely the same conditions, deal with 
 men of Anglo-Saxon blood. If reconstruction has been 
 in any degree a failure, if our Indian administration has 
 been brutal or corrupt, if thousands upon thousands of 
 human lives have been needlessly sacrificed in the Philip- 
 pine Islands, the fault has been almost wholly with the 
 American white man. 
 
 I believe the solution of this diflBculty is to be found in 
 the Golden Rule and in the great Declaration, which is 
 but the application of the Golden Kule to the conduct of 
 States. If the white man will take these for his guides 
 when he deals with the Negro and the Indian, if America 
 wiU take these for her rule of action in dealing vrith weak 
 foreign nations, the difficulties that beset us will dis- 
 appear. If we do not, as sure as God liveth, however 
 the weaker races may suffer, the penalty will fall upon us. 
 I have an abiding confidence that these clouds which 
 hover over us will disappear. I am no prophet, nor son 
 of a prophet, except as all our fathers were prophets. 
 But I think I know the temper of the American people, 
 and I know that I know the temper of the people of Mas- 
 sachusetts. I have an abiding and absolute conviction 
 that, vrith knowledge of the truth and the letting in the 
 light, persistence in a wrong to any people or race is 
 wholly impossible to our Just and generous countrymen. 
 The light wiU come to us, if we will but open our eyes to 
 it. If we do not, it will be in our power to keep it out. 
 I sat, in my boyhood, at the feet of a wise old teacher. 
 
22 
 
 who said that ' ' A people is like a man ; and, if a man set 
 himself to believe a lie, God punishes him with complete 
 success." I look upon the future of Massachusetts and 
 of the country without fear. The new days and the new 
 century are to be better than the old. This beginning 
 of another age, this headland that our Ship of State is 
 passing, on its stormy voyage, freighted with the destiny 
 of liberty and humanity, is a Cape of Good Hope. Our 
 fathers did not penetrate a position their sons cannot 
 hold. The people that gained the great heights of the 
 great Declaration will not abandon them. Humanity 
 that has risen from out the beast shall not "go back 
 into the beast again." 
 
CHARLES ALLEN ' 
 
 OF WORCESTER 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR. 
 
 Kkpbimted fkom Pbocegdinos of the Americak Antiquarian Society, 
 October Meeting, 1901. 
 
 'mmt$Ut, Pajssf., ^. ^. % 
 
 PRESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON, 
 
 311 MAIN STREET. 
 
 1902. 
 
 >1 
 
CHARLES ALLEN OF WORCESTER. 
 
 If I need any justification for my choice of a subject, 
 or for repeating things which will be very familiar to the 
 elders in my audience, you will permit me to relate an 
 anecdote. A few years ago an inhabitant of Worcester 
 County, very well known and influential in the public life 
 of this Commonwealth, told me that an aged townsman of 
 his had said that the ablest man he ever knew was a fonner 
 resident of Worcester, of whose character and influence 
 he spoke with very great enthusiasm. But my informant 
 said he could not remember the name. I said, " Was it 
 Charles Allen ? " " Yes," was the reply, " I think that 
 was the name." 
 
 Our. associate, Mr. Rhodes, in his admirable History, 
 mentions Judge Allen in but a single sentence, and that 
 one expressing an emphatic disapproval of one of the 
 impoi"tant acts of his public life. 
 
 To those of us whose memory goes back to the great 
 days of the anti-slavery struggle it seems as surprising to 
 find a man who had never heard of Charles Allen as to find 
 a man who had never heard of his illustrious kinsman 
 Sam Adams. Yet, I suppose that thirty or forty years 
 after the close of a great political career or a great his- 
 toric period is generally the time when mankind at large 
 know least about it. Memory has begun to fade. Con- 
 temporaries are dead or grown old. History is not yet 
 written. The documents and records which are the mate- 
 rial for accurate history have not yet come to light. 
 
 The life of Charles AUen was in a stormy time. It 
 became his duty to engage in bitter conflicts. After his 
 
lamented death it did not seem desirable to those who had 
 the best right to determine the question that those fires 
 should be rekindled. But the story of Judge Allen's 
 great service to liberty and of the battle in which he was 
 one of the greatest leaders can be told now without causing 
 pain to any one. The men who were conspicuous on both 
 sides have gone, with very few exceptions. The people 
 have paid to them their tribute of love and honor. They 
 know that men who differed widely were faithful to the 
 cause of righteousness as they believed it, and to the 
 interest of the country as they understood it. I have 
 often said that Charles Allen seemed to me, as a mere intel- 
 lectual force, the ablest man I have known in my day, not 
 even excepting Daniel Webster. He had a slender physi- 
 cal frame and a weak voice. He was not capable of severe 
 or continued labor. He had little personal ambition. It 
 was only under the stimulant of a great cause that he put 
 forth his best powers ; and when the pressure of that 
 stimulant ceased, his activity seemed to cease also. 
 
 Charles AUen was born in the town of Worcester, Aug. 
 9th, 1797, just seventy-two years before the day of his 
 burial. He was of the best Puritan stock. His father, 
 Joseph Allen, was a distinguished and public-spirited 
 citizen, clerk of the courts, and a member of Congress in 
 1810 and 1811. Judge Allen's great-grandfather was 
 Samuel Adams, the father of the illustrious patriot, who 
 manifested in a high degree the intellectual and moral 
 traits for which his descendants were so conspicuous. The 
 Independent Advertiser of March 14, 1748, contains the 
 following notice of the elder Samuel Adams : — " Last 
 Week died, and was decently interr'd the Eemains of, 
 8amuel Adams, Esq. ; a Gentleman who sustained many 
 public. Offices among us, and for some Years past repre- 
 sented this town in the General Assembly — He was one 
 who well understood and rightly pursued the Civil and 
 Religious Interests of this People — A true N^ew England 
 
man — An honest Patriot — Help, Lord, for such wise 
 and godly men cease, and such faithful members fail from 
 among the Sons of New England." The only son of the 
 famous Samuel Adams died before his father. Joseph 
 AUen, who was often a member of the Legislature, 
 found a home in the household of his illustrious kins- 
 man, to whom he was as a son, and for many years 
 shared his inmost confidence as it was given to no other 
 person whatever. The traditions of Sam Adams were 
 familiar to the family of Joseph Allen. His mental 
 and moral traits ; his opinions ; his inflexible princi- 
 ples ; his ardent and unquenchable love of liberty ; his 
 style and mode of speech ; his features as they are repre- 
 sented in Copley's masterpiece in Faneuil Hall, — were 
 reproduced in large degree in the sons of Joseph Allen.' 
 Charles Alien entered Yale College in 1811, but was never 
 graduated. He studied law in the office of Samuel M. 
 Burnside. His preparation was a most diligent and faith- 
 ful study of common law principles in a very few standard 
 authorities, especially Blackstone, in whose style, clear 
 definitions and orderly arrangement he very much delighted, 
 and much of which he could repeat almost verbatim. He 
 was not given to an extensive study of cases. Indeed, in 
 his preparation for arguments at the bar, after a thorough 
 examination of a very few leading cases, he did not care 
 for a study of decisions of the courts, but preferred to 
 mature his arguments in his own mind during his solitary 
 walks into the country, or as he paced backward and for- 
 ward in his office. But I was told by his brother George 
 that when he was examined for admission to the Bar the 
 examiners were so delighted by the extent of his learning 
 and his prompt and clear solution of the legal problems by 
 which they tested him that they prolonged the examination 
 a good while for their own gratification. 
 
 1 There is a lady living now, the widow of our late Librarian, Mr. Haven, who is 
 of the race of Charles Allen, and at times when her face is lighted up hy some 
 emotion, you would think Sam Adams was standing before yon. 
 
6 
 
 Mr. Allen's literary training was of a like character. 
 He made himself very familiar with English classic poetry. 
 He read the entire fifty volumes of the old edition of 
 the British Poets. With a few of these he made himself 
 so familiar that he could repeat their best passages. Beyond 
 this he never cared much to extend his reading, except 
 that he made himself familiar with the great historians 
 who have written the annals of constitutional liberty. He 
 had a great fondness for the history of New England. 
 He knew all about the growth of its religious opinions 
 and of the simple Congregational form of church govern- 
 ment which is both the cause and the result of so much 
 that is best in the character of our people. With these 
 exceptions, he was not what would be called a scholar. 
 He cared nothing for the trifles either of history or litera- 
 ture. His preparation for the duties of his profession and 
 of life was by profound original thought. He was ad- 
 mitted to the Bar at the age of twenty-one, and began his 
 professional life in New Braintree. In 1824 he returned 
 to Worcester, which was his home for the rest of his life. 
 
 From this time until the movement for the annexation of 
 Texas in 1844-5, the career of Charles Allen was that of a 
 leader at the very able Bar of a large county ; of an emi- 
 nent judge ; of a man influential in the public life of the 
 community where he lived, and of the Commonwealth. 
 With a single exception, to be mentioned presently, he 
 had taken no part in national affairs. His name was little 
 known beyond the borders of Massachusetts except to such 
 members of his profession as had heard of him from their 
 brethren here. He soon became known as a powerful 
 advocate whose opinions on questions of law were quite 
 sure to be those finally adopted by the court; whom 
 it was almost impossible to dislodge from any position he 
 deliberately occupied ; and from whom no antagonist could 
 wrest a verdict of a Worcester County jury in a cause 
 in whose justice he himself believed. There is but one 
 
story preserved by the traditions of the Bar of his making 
 any serious mistake. It is said that, getting an execution 
 for a client for a large debt, which was to be satisfied by a 
 levy on land of a debtor who was deeply insolvent, where 
 he had the first attachment, under his direction a por- 
 tion of a large tract of land in which the debtor had an 
 undivided interest was set off by metes and bounds, a 
 proceeding which is, as is well known to all good lawyers 
 now, utterly void. The young man discovered his mis- 
 take just after it was too late to correct it. He was much 
 distressed and came to "Worcester to consult old Major 
 Newton, one of the wisest and safest of our elder lawyers. 
 The Major advised Mi-. Allen to say nothing about the 
 mistake, but at once to bring a writ of entry against the 
 owner of the title in the hope that the mistake might not 
 be discovered, and that he might get a judgment or a dis- 
 claimer. This was done, and the flaw in the title of the 
 Judge's client was never discovered until he had made it 
 perfect. 
 
 He never could get interested in a case in which he did 
 not believe. He had no fondness for exercising his in- 
 genuity in the defence of a cause which did not seem to 
 him just. But when his sympathies were aroused by what 
 he deemed an attempt to practise an injustice upon his 
 client, he was, I believe, as formidable an antagonist as 
 ever tried a case in a Massachusetts court-house. His 
 cross-examination was terrible. It dragged a lying witness 
 out of all concealments or subterfuges and seemed to lay 
 bare the very depths of his soul. His style was a model 
 of nervous, compact, vigorous English, rising sometimes 
 to a very lofty eloquence. He had a gift of sarcasm which 
 he indulged sometimes when it would have been better to 
 restrain it, and inflicted an undeserved sting upon amiable 
 and sensitive men. His ordinary manner in the trial of 
 a cause was quiet. He remained silent while the evidence 
 was going in, except in the most important parts of the 
 
8 
 
 case, and even a very able lawyer might try a case against 
 him which did not excite special interest on the part of 
 Mr. Allen, without discovering his great power. 
 
 His quality as an advocate is well described by a most 
 competent and accomplished observer, the late Dwight 
 Foster, as follows : — " He never called any man his intel- 
 lectual master. Though the ordinary methods of legal 
 investigation were distasteful to him, yet he was fond of 
 communing with his own mind in silent and profound 
 thought. His preparation in the use of books was usually 
 slight, but he never failed to give abundant reflection to 
 every important matter intrusted to his professional care. 
 
 "Accordingly, he entered upon the trial of a case thor- 
 oughly prepared and equipped in his own peculiar way. 
 His mental processes were exceedingly rapid and his intui- 
 tive judgment wonderfully correct. He was the wisest 
 counsellor I ever called to my aid. 
 
 " In the crisis of a trial he never faltered or quailed. If 
 his manner grew a little more quiet, his face a little paler, 
 and a dangerous light was emitted from his eyes, his ad- 
 versary had better beware, for he was sure to prove himself 
 a tremendous antagonist. His cross-examinations were 
 sometimes terrific. When roused he would pour forth a 
 torrent of sarcasm and invective that like a lava flood 
 scorched and burned everything over which it flowed. He 
 could be eloquent upon worthy occasions. He had no 
 cheap rhetoric for ordinary use. His legal discussions 
 usually began with conceded elementary principles, on 
 which as a foundation he would erect a superstructure of 
 close and cogent argumentation. It was his custom to 
 show what the law ought to be and in the nature of the 
 case must be, paying comparatively little attention to what 
 it had been on some former occasion decided to be." 
 
 When I came to the Bar in 1849, the young lawyers used 
 to beguile the time at their meetings with anecdotes of the 
 sharp retorts, the readiness in diflScult places in a trial, and 
 
the wonderful skill in cross-examination of Charles Allen. 
 Most of them are forgotten now. Judge Allen repre- 
 sented Worcester in the Massachusetts House of Kepre- 
 sentatives in 1829, 1833, 1834 and 1840. He was 
 a member of the State Senate in 1835, 1836 and 1837. 
 When in the House of Representatives he was one of the 
 most influential persons in procuring the state aid for the 
 Western Railroad, a measure to which the commercial and 
 manufacturing prosperity of Massachusetts, and especially 
 of the City of Worcester, have been so largely due. 
 
 Judge Allen was upon the committee to count the vote 
 for Governor after the election of 1839. The Legislature 
 contained a majority of Whigs, as of course did the com- 
 mittee who counted the votes for Governor and Lieutenant- 
 Governor. The count resulted, according to the first 
 enumeration by the committee, and according to their 
 report, in showing that no person had a majority, the 
 result of which would have been that the election would 
 have been made by the Legislature, and Mr. Everett, the 
 Whis candidate, would have been chosen. But it came to 
 the knowledge of Judge Allen that an error had been 
 made, the correction of which would show that Gov. 
 Morton was chosen by a majority of one vote. The 
 Judge, himself a Whig, announced this discovery to the 
 House. The mistake was corrected and Gov. Morton 
 declared elected. 
 
 Mr. Allen was appointed judge of the old Court of 
 Common Pleas in 1842. This court consisted in his time 
 of John M. Williams, Chief Justice, Charles H. Warren, 
 Charles AUen and Solomon Strong. Probably no state in 
 the Union at that time possessed a Supreme Court of 
 greater ability than this, the second court in rank in Massa- 
 chusetts, Chief Justice Williams was a model of the 
 judicial character ; Warren was not only a very learned 
 and sound lawyer, but distinguished for his brilliant wit 
 and eminent social quality. When the Democratic party 
 
10 
 
 came into power in 1843 it sought to gain popular favor 
 by a reduction of the salaries of the Supreme Judicial 
 Court, a measure clearly opposed to the letter of the Con- 
 stitution, and by a reduction of the salaries of the Court of 
 Common Pleas, a measure equally opposed to its spirit and 
 to all sound policy. On the return of the Whigs to power 
 the next year, the salary of the Supreme Court was re- 
 stored to its former scale, and the sum which had been 
 unconstitutionally withheld during the year, paid. But 
 the Whig party, desiring to get some favor from men of 
 frugal mind, omitted to restore the salaries of the judges 
 of the Court of Common Pleas to the old standard. There- 
 upon, in 1844, the members of that court, including Judge 
 Allen, resigned, much to the public regret. During Mr. 
 Allen's term of office the celebrated Wyman trial, in which 
 Mr. Webster, Mr. Choate and Franklin Dexter were em- 
 ployed for the defence, was tried three times. One of the 
 trials was before Judge Allen. At this trial occurred the 
 celebrated conflict between Judge Allen and Mr. Webster. 
 The story is variously related, even by persons who were 
 present on the occasion. The commonly accepted version, 
 and one which is doubtless in substance correct, is that Mi'. 
 Webster was quite uneasy under the powerful and lumi- 
 nous charge of the Judge, and rose once or twice to call 
 the Judge's attention to what he supposed to be a mistake 
 of fact or law. After one or two interruptions of this 
 sort, Mr. Webster rising again, the Judge said, "Mr. 
 Webster, I cannot suffer myself to be interrupted now." 
 To which Mr. Webster replied, "I cannot suffer my 
 client's case to be misrepresented." To which the Judge 
 replied, " Sit down, sir." The charge proceeded without 
 further interruption, and the jury were sent to their room. 
 Mr. Allen then turned to Mr. Webster and said, "Mr. 
 Webster" — Whereupon Mr. Webster rose with all the 
 grace and courtesy of manner of which, when he chose, 
 he was master, and said, " Will your honor pardon me a 
 
11 
 
 moment,"' and proceeded to make a handsome apology and 
 expression of regret for the occurrence. The occurrence 
 was deemed by the profession greatly to the credit of both 
 these eminent persons. Mr. Allen returned to the prac- 
 tice of the law, and continued to support himself by his 
 profession, except so far as he was interrupted by his 
 public and political occupations, until he was appointed 
 Chief Justice of the Superior Court of the County of 
 Suffolk by Gov. Banks, in 1858, and soon after, in the 
 following year, was appointed Chief Justice of the Supe- 
 rior Court of the Commonwealth. He had been, in the 
 interval, offered a place upon the bench of the Supreme 
 Court, which he had declined. On the retirement of Chief 
 Justice Shaw, in 1860, he was offered by Governor Banks 
 the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of 
 Massachusetts. This he was compelled to decline by 
 reason of his slender health and his incapacity for ;the con- 
 tinuous and severe labor which the duties of the judges of 
 that court require. This fact is stated by Gov. Banks in 
 his farewell address. 
 
 Judge AUen said to the late Judge Foster : — "At my 
 age and in my state of health it is not to be thought of. 
 It might have been different once, yet few know how 
 much physical weakness I have had to contend with 
 through life, and how much has been attributed to indo- 
 lence in me which was caused by the necessity of nursing 
 my health." 
 
 Mr. Allen held the office of Chief Justice of the Supe- 
 rior Court until the infirmities of old age came upon him. 
 But there were a few terms of the court where, in summing 
 up to the jury the evidence upon the facts, he repeated 
 himself in a manner that showed the impairment of his 
 faculties ; but even then his statement of the legal princi- 
 ples applicable to the case showed his accustomed clearness, 
 vigor and soundness of judgment. 
 
 While he was Judge of the Court of Common Pleas he 
 
12 
 
 presided at several trials of great importance. In the 
 Wyman trial already referred to, his charge won the com- 
 mendation of the able members of the Bar who listened to 
 it, including Mr. Webster himself, for its great ability. 
 The charge of the Judge was universally conceded to be 
 not a whit behind the argument of Webster in grasp and 
 completeness. He also presided in a cause which was tried 
 at Dedham, growing out of the Dorr Rebellion, in which 
 Ruf us Choate and Mr. Whipple of Rhode Island were the 
 principal counsel. Some very intricate questions arose in 
 the case, and the Judge's rulings were watched ivith great 
 care. When one of them was made, the venerable Judge 
 Putnam, who was present as a spectator, shook his head in 
 dissent ; but at the recess went to the Judge and told him 
 he was right. Chief Justice Spencer of New York, who 
 read the report of the trial, wrote to the Judge an approv- 
 ing and complimentary letter. 
 
 During Judge Allen's service as Chief Justice of the 
 Superior Court, a fugitive slave who had made his escape 
 from a New Orleans vessel, was pursued by the master of 
 the vessel and seized just as he was landing, and taken 
 back to slavery. The indignation of the people was 
 deeply stirred. The captain of the vessel was arrested 
 subsequently and brought to trial before Judge Allen. A 
 question, then not very well settled, arose as to whether 
 the act was committed within the jurisdiction of the Com- 
 monwealth. The people heard with great satisfaction that 
 the kidnapper was to be brought to trial before a court 
 presided over by the great abolitionist. But the Judge 
 held the scales with absolute impartiality. He taught the 
 whole people of the country that even a slave-catcher 
 could not fail in his reliance on the justice of Massachu- 
 setts ; and that her indignation against what she deemed 
 the worst of outrages, the kidnapping of a human being, 
 could not swerve her from her obedience to law. The 
 man was acquitted, by reason of the ruling of the Couit 
 
13 
 
 that the offence was not committed within the body of the 
 county. 
 
 Judge Allen's influence over men seemed, like that of 
 Alexander Hamilton, to be greater in proportion to the 
 ability of the man with whom he dealt. Great as was his 
 power over juries and over popular assemblies, it was 
 greater over judges and coui-ts. He was an admirable 
 negotiator. The extent of his service in the negotiation 
 of the Ashburton Ti-eaty of 1842 will never be fully 
 known. It rests only on tradition and on the weighty 
 evidence of Mr. Webster. There was probably never a 
 subject in regard to which the national feeling of the 
 American people was more deeply excited than the contro- 
 versy with Great Britain concerning our northeastern 
 boundary. In 1842 the feeling engendered by the War 
 of the Kevolution and the War of 1812 had not srown 
 cold. Great Britain was regarded as our natural and hered- 
 itary foe. The tone of her press, the utterances of her 
 public men and the criticism of her literary journals tended 
 to stimulate and exasperate this feeling. The lessons of 
 two wars had not taught her to treat us with respect. 
 The contempt which, the Spanish proverb says, pierces the 
 shell of the tortoise, she poured out abundantly upon 
 nerves always unduly sensitive to the opinion of other 
 nations. The territory which was in dispute belonged 
 wholly to Massachusetts until the separation of Maine in 
 1820, and consisted very largely of unsettled lands which 
 had been divided between Massachusetts and Maine, and 
 were still largely owned by the former state, subject to 
 the local jurisdiction of Maine. Every effort to settle 
 this controversy, which had been the subject of negotia- 
 tion almost ever since the peace of 1783, had but increased 
 the difliculties with which it was beset, by exhausting the 
 expedients both of diplomacy and arbitration. Mr. 
 Webster undertook the settlement of this question, with 
 others which had caused great irritation in the two coun- 
 
14 
 
 tries, and probably regarded its solution as, with scarcely 
 an exception, the most important public service of his life. 
 The difficulty of the negotiation was increased by the fact 
 that any treaty which should be made would require the 
 assent of a two-thirds majority of the Senate. So that 
 the political opponents of the administration must be wil- 
 ling, for patriotic reasons, to abandon the temptation of 
 assailing it with the charge of having unduly surrendered 
 the rights of this country to its ancient and hated rival, if 
 the treaty contained anything of concession or compro- 
 mise. It was quite clear that no treaty could pass the 
 Senate without the consent of Maine and Massachusetts. 
 The former state was politically opposed to Mr. Webster. 
 His first step was to invite the co-operation of the two 
 states immediately concerned, to request them to appoint 
 agents to take part in the negotiation and to assure them 
 "that no line of boundary should be agreed to without 
 their consent, and without their consent, also, to all the 
 conditions and stipulations oi the treaty respecting the 
 boundary." To this the two states agreed. But they' 
 further stipulated that their consent should only be given 
 in case the agents of both states were unanimous. Maine 
 appointed as commissioners Edward Kavanagh, Edward 
 Kent, William P. Preble and John Otis. Massachusetts 
 appointed Abbott Lawrence, John Mills and Charles Allen. 
 It is well known that to Judge Allen's influence was 
 very largely due the success of the treaty. He went care- 
 fully over the matter with Gen. Scott. He gave the most 
 thorough study to the whole question, especially to the 
 matter of the military strength of the frontier as it would 
 be left by the compromise line which was adopted. He 
 became satisfied that whatever might be the title of Massa- 
 chusetts to the lands held by Great Britain under the 
 treaty, or whatever the right of the United States to hold 
 them as against Great Britain, that the country and the 
 state obtained far more than an equivalent, and that it was 
 
15 
 
 especially for the interest of Massachusetts as a great 
 commercial state that this irritating question should be 
 forever put at rest and that our peaceful intercourse with 
 Great Britain should be uninterrupted. It was well un- 
 derstood at the time that to Judge Allen's great influence 
 was largely due the unanimous action of his associates, 
 the commissioners of the two states. Mr. Webster him- 
 self bore the strongest testimony to this fact. Besides 
 other instances of it, he met Judge Allen's brother, the 
 Eev. George Allen, a short time after the treaty had been 
 ratified, and spoke of his great obligation to his brother, 
 and added, with great emphasis, " Your brother is a great 
 arranger of men." 
 
 The portion of Mr. Allen's public life upon which his 
 title to the gratitude of his countrymen chiefly rests began 
 with the movement for the annexation of Texas, during 
 the presidency of John Tyler. The avowed and the direct 
 object of this annexation was to prevent the abolition of 
 slavery in the vast territory of Texas itself, which would 
 else become free. The ultimate object was to give the 
 control of the government to the South ; to make slave 
 states of the territory between the Mississippi and the 
 Pacific, to impress indelibly upon the United States the 
 character which Macaulay attributed to her in 1845 : — 
 " That nation is the champion and upholder of slavery. 
 They seek to extend slavery with more energy than was 
 ever exerted by any other nation to diffuse civilization." 
 
 Up to this time Mr. Allen had been content with the 
 duties which came to him as a leading member of his 
 profession and a leading citizen of this important 
 community. He was fond of social and family life. 
 His profession, in which he was easily the leader in 
 Worcester County, gave him an income suflScient to 
 support his family and indulge his frugal tastes. The 
 highest places on the bench of his state were open to him. 
 But the kinsman of Sam Adams could not be indifferent 
 
16 
 
 to the momentous issues which were at stake in the coming 
 conflict with the slave power. Mr. Allen issued a call for 
 a convention in Worcester County in the autumn of 1844. 
 This was followed by the state convention called under the 
 advice of Mr. Webster, held at Faneuil Hall, on the 29th 
 day of January, 1845. 
 
 The annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico are 
 wonderful examples among those so numerous in our his- 
 tory where the God who is on the side of Freedom has 
 graciously turned the evil purposes of men to the accom- 
 plishment of his wiU. During the period which followed 
 the administration of Andrew Jackson the statesmen of 
 the South became alarmed for the power which that section 
 had wielded in the government, with the brief exception 
 of the administration of John Adams and that of his son, 
 from the beginning. It had been an unequal contest 
 between the great skill as politicians of the Southerners 
 and the strength and progress which free institutions had 
 brought to the North. Mr. Calhoun and his associates 
 proposed to turn the scale in favor of the South by the 
 addition of Texas. Some of them doubtless contemplated 
 even at that day the disruption of the Union and a slavehold- 
 ing empire whose northern boundary should be Mason and 
 Dixon's line, which should extend from the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific, should include Cuba and a large portion, if not the 
 whole, of the territory of Mexico. Mr. Van Buren, who had 
 never failed before in subserviency to the slave power, 
 refused to become a party to the plan. John Tyler, who 
 had been placed upon the ticket with General Harrison 
 to conciliate the friends of Mr. Clay in Virginia, was 
 thoroughly devoted to this scheme for strengthening and 
 extending slavery. 
 
 Texas declared her independence during the presidency 
 of Andrew Jackson. In the last Congress of President 
 Jackson's administration an appropriation was made and 
 authority given to enable him to establish diplomatic rela- 
 
17 
 
 fcions with Texas when, in his judgment, the proper time 
 had come. This measure was supported by representa- 
 tives of both parties and both sections^ including Mr. 
 Webster. President Jackson, with what to many people 
 seemed undue haste, instantly acted upon the authority 
 and recognized the independence of Texas. This recog- 
 nition was followed by an overture from Texas for 
 admission to the Union during the administration of Mr. 
 Van Buren. Mr. Van Buren rejected the overture, in 
 which he was supported by Mr. Benton and other leading 
 Southern Democrats. But Van Buren forever forfeited 
 the confidence of the mass of the slaveholders thereby. 
 Mr. Webster, in his great speech at Niblo's Garden, early 
 in the year 1837, took very strong ground against the 
 admission of Texas, claiming that the admission of a 
 foreign state to oui- Union was not within the constitu- 
 tional power of the government ; and, further, that while 
 he proposed to sustain to their fuUest extent the existing 
 constitutional provisions which favored slavery, he would 
 not submit to extending them beyond the original territory 
 of the Union and thereby disturbing the relations of the 
 different parts of the country to each other. The opposi- 
 tion of the Democratic president and the great Whig 
 statesman seemed for a time to put an end to the project. 
 Texas withdrew her offer and seemed to be intent on 
 establishing herself as a separate nation. The question 
 was scarcely heard of in the great campaign of 1840. 
 But the death of General Harrison brought John Tyler 
 into the chair and gave the slave power its opportunity. 
 When President Tyler abandoned the fiscal policy of his 
 party the members of his cabinet resigned, except Mr. 
 Webster, who remained until the Ashburton Treaty with 
 Great Britain was completed. But, while his friendly 
 relations with President Tyler were unbroken, Mr. Web- 
 ster was made to feel in many ways that his presence at 
 the council table was unwelcome. He accordingly resigned 
 2 
 
18 
 
 his seat in the cabinet and was succeeded, first by Mr. 
 Grimke, then by Mr. Upshur, who, soon after ^ gave 
 place to Mr. Calhoun. The project of Texas annexation 
 was thereafter vigorously pressed to its consummation. 
 Mr. Calhoun negotiated the treaty with Texas, providing 
 for its coming as a state into the Union, which Avas 
 rejected by the Senate, for want of the two-thirds vote 
 required by the Constitution. The issue was presented to 
 the people of the United States in the presidential cam- 
 paign of 1844, and was decided by the election of James 
 K. Polk. Mr. Clay, although opposed to the annexation of 
 Texas under the circumstances then existing, tried to con- 
 ciliate the slaveholders by a statement that, under some cir- 
 cumstances, he should have personally no objection to the 
 measure. He failed to gain any Southern friends of 
 Texas, and lost the confidence of many anti-slavery men 
 at the North, whose vote, given to James G. Birney, cost 
 Mr. Clay the State of New York, and with it the election. 
 
 At the short session of 1844-5, at the close of President 
 Tyler's administration, and after the election of Mr. Polk, 
 a joint resolution was adopted, giving the consent of Con- 
 gress to the erection of a new state from the territory of 
 Texas, on certain conditions therein set forth, in order that 
 the same might be admitted into the Union ; and to the 
 admission of such state whenever the time and conditions 
 of such admission and of the cession to the United States 
 of the remaining territory of Texas should be agreed 
 upon by the two governments. 
 
 Texas complied with the conditions in the interval, and 
 Congress passed a joint resolution in December, 1845, 
 declaring the conditions complied with and formally ad- 
 mitting Texas as a state. After the passage of the first 
 resolution above-named a division grew up in the Whio- 
 party between those persons who desired to resist the 
 admission of Texas to the end, and who claimed that this 
 action of Congress could and ought to be repealed ; and 
 
19 
 
 those who, either because they considered further agitation 
 useless, or because they thought that the business interests 
 of the North required the subject to be dropped, or because 
 the gratification of their personal ambitions seemed to them 
 dependent upon Southern favor, were for treating the 
 question as settled. This latter class contained some of 
 the best and wisest of the Whig statesmen of Massachu- 
 setts, who dreaded and deprecated the formation upon this 
 issue of a sectional party, and who thought the best means 
 of resisting the further aggression of slavery was to retain 
 their political association with the Whigs of the South. 
 Conspicuous among these were Mr. Winthrop, Mr. Edward 
 Everett, Governor Lincoln and Mr. Abbott Lawrence, to 
 neither of whom will any man, whatever may have been 
 the judgment of contemporary passion, now impute any 
 lack of patriotism or want of sincerity in his resistance to 
 the annexation of Texas. The two divisions of the Whig 
 party in Massachusetts were called by names suggested by 
 Mr. E. R. Hoar in a speech in the ' Massachusetts Senate : 
 " Conscience Whigs " and "Cotton Whigs." Judge Allen 
 threw himself into the contest with all his might, and was, 
 from that time until he took his seat upon the bench in 
 1858, deemed by a large portion of the men who were of 
 his way of thinking their wisest, bravest and ablest leader. 
 Mr. Webster was, for a time, expected to unite with the 
 Conscience Whigs. He had either originally suggested, 
 or at any rate earnestly united in the call for a convention 
 of the people of Massachusetts, to be held in Faneuil Hall 
 on the 29th of January, 1845, to express her unconquera- 
 ble repugnance to the admission of Texas. He seemed to 
 be inspired with a purpose to resist to the end, with all 
 his might, the annexation of Texas, which he regarded as 
 a violation of the Constitution and as designed to secure 
 the perpetual supremacy of the slaveholding interest in 
 this country. He undertook to prepare for the convention 
 an address to the people of Massachusetts. He met 
 
20 
 
 Charles Allen and Stephen C. Phillips at his office, I think, 
 on Sunday, the 26th day of January. I have heard Judge 
 Allen himself relate the story, but I will not be absolutely 
 certain as to the day. He walked backward and forward 
 in his office dictating to them the portion of the pamphlet 
 containing the constitutional argument which tenninates at 
 paragraph second on the tenth page. " It affirms to you," 
 to quote Mr. Webster's own language, " that there is no 
 constitutional power in any branch of the government, or 
 in all the branches of the government, to annex a foreign 
 state to this Union." It will require no external testimony 
 to convince any man who reads them that these pages are 
 the work of Mr. Webster. Judge Allen and Mr. Phillips 
 alternately used the pen, while Mr. Webster dictated. 
 When this branch of the argument was completed Mr. 
 Webster looked at his watch, said it was time to go to 
 dinner, and made an appointment for them to continue 
 their work at the same place at a fixed hour the next day. 
 The next day Mr. Webster did not appear and nothing 
 was heard of him. Mr. Allen and Mr. Phillips waited 
 until late in the afternoon when they were informed, to 
 their dismay, that Mr. Webster had taken a train for New 
 York, — the train then left Boston at half -past five in the 
 afternoon, connecting with the Norwich boat. Judge 
 AUen was compelled to finish the address himself, to have 
 it ready for the convention on Wednesday. The part 
 composed by him begins at the place above indicated on 
 page ten, and constitutes the rest of the pamphlet. It is 
 praise enough, but not too much, to say of the work of 
 Judge AUen that it is entirely worthy of its companionship, 
 and that a casual reader, not informed of the history of 
 the production, would not be likely to discover that the 
 address was not the work of a single hand. 
 
 It is said that on that Monday a large pecuniary contri- 
 bution for Mr. Webster was raised among the business 
 men of Boston. Judge Allen believed that the indication 
 
21 
 
 of the strength of the sentiment among this class of per- 
 sons of unwillingness that there should be further agitation 
 of the Texas question and further disturbance of harmoni- 
 ous relations between the North and the South caused this 
 sudden change of purpose in the mind of Mr. Webster. 
 
 I do not for a moment mean to imply that Mr. Webster 
 could be corrupted by money. I am satisfied, from a most 
 careful and conscientious study, extending over many 
 years, of his great career, that he was actuated by the 
 loftiest patriotism in the action in his last years which, in 
 common with so many of his countrymen, I disapproved 
 at the time and disapprove now. 
 
 I do not know what caused his sudden change of pur- 
 pose in those two days. But I conjecture that there came 
 to his knowledge in the interval the fact that so many of his 
 life-long friends and supporters among the business men of 
 Boston were against further resistance to the annexation 
 of Texas, and he concluded that resistance was hopeless 
 and that it was not worth while to butt his head against a 
 wall, by mere ineffective and barren remonstrance. 
 
 It would have been vastly better if Mr. Webster had 
 absolutely refused such pecuniary contributions while he 
 was in public life. His callousness upon that subject, as 
 was his indifference to debt, and his profuseness of per- 
 sonal expenditure, was a blot on his otherwise illustrious 
 character. But we may say this and at the same time 
 acquit him of the supreme and unpardonable infamy of 
 corruption. Mr. Webster's fame is among the great 
 treasures of the Kepublic. Let him be judged by his 
 whole career, and not alone by what may seem his errors 
 of judgment in one supreme, anxious and dangerous time. 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that Mr. Webster, by his failure 
 to attend the Anti-Texas Convention on the following 
 Wednesday, or to express any further his sympathy with 
 the sentiment which was so deeply felt by the anti-slavery 
 people of Massachusetts, did much to weaken his hold on 
 
22 
 
 their affection and confidence. When, at the Free Soil 
 Convention at Worcester, in 1848, one of the resolutions 
 called upon Daniel Webster, in the name of Massachusetts, 
 to take the action in behalf of freedom in the territories 
 " to which his great heart and mind should lead him," it was 
 received by numerous shouts of " No, no," and its passage 
 was secured with gfeat difficulty. Mr. Allen's cordial 
 relations with Mr. Webster were never renewed. 
 
 From the time of the consummation of the annexation 
 of Texas it was apparent to all thoughtful men that it was 
 the purpose of the slave power to occupy all that remained 
 of the territory of the United States, together with what 
 might be wrested from Mexico, and to wrest the Island of 
 Cuba from Spain, and to bring all this territory into the 
 Union of the States when the time should come. To 
 apprise the people of the North of this purpose, to resist 
 it and to defeat it, became thenceforth the paramount 
 object of the political life of Charles Allen and of the 
 men who sympathized with him. The Whig party of the 
 North professed to be opposed to the extension of slaverj'. 
 It was committed to that policy by the resolutions of its 
 conventions, both state and local, in nearly all the Northern 
 States. But many of its leaders were dependent on 
 Southern favor for the gratification of their ambition in 
 the future. Large numbers of Whigs, especially those 
 engaged in manufactures and in mercantile pursuits, con- 
 sidered that the prosperity of the North in its business 
 depended on maintaining undisturbed relations with the 
 South. In addition to all this, there were large portions 
 of the North, including southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 
 large portions of Pennsylvania and of New Jersey, where 
 the Negro was held in little higher estimation than at the 
 South, and where he was believed, to quote a phrase which 
 afterward became a proverb, "to have no rights which the 
 white man was bound to respect." The party spirit, too 
 led zealous Whig politicians to be unwilling to insist upon 
 
23 
 
 a doctrine which must necessarily split the party in twain 
 at Mason and Dixon's line. There were others who were 
 conscientious in their disapprobation of slavery and who 
 were unwilling that it should be extended, but who thought 
 that Northern opposition only served to inflame Southern 
 aggression, which, if the discussion of the question should 
 be dismissed from politics for a time, would die out of 
 itself. And to this number were added all the conserva- 
 tive, timid, quiet and amiable persons who disliked nothing 
 so much as strife or agitation. Mr. Allen, however, 
 found a good many associates and friends, many of whom 
 afterward became distinguished in politics oj* letters. 
 Each of them was a man who was competent to be the 
 leader of a great cause. 
 
 The division in the Whig party, which began after the 
 annexation of Texas, was widened by the differences 
 growing out of the war with Mexico. This was disap- 
 proved by the Whigs of Massachusetts with scarcely an 
 exception. But there was a very great difference in the 
 degree and manner of their disapproval. Many of them 
 were exceedingly unwilling to take a position in regard to 
 that war, which was popular throughout the country, which 
 would bring upon them the fate which attended the posi- 
 tion of the Federalists of 1812. 
 
 The measure providing supplies for the army in Mexico 
 which had passed Congress had the preamble : "Whereas war 
 exists by the act of Mexico." Against this preamble four- 
 teen Whigs voted. But others, including Mr. Winthrop of 
 Massachusetts, voted for the preamble, in order not to be 
 put in the attitude of objecting to the supplies. For this 
 they were bitterly denounced, and the division between 
 them and the Conscience Whigs was intensified. Dr. 
 Palfrey, the Whig representative in Congress from the 
 Middlesex District, refused, in the next Congi'ess, to vote 
 for Mr. Winthrop, the Whig candidate for Speaker ; and a 
 band of Conscience Whigs voted against Mr. Winthrop 
 
24 
 
 when he was chosen Kepresentative from the Boston 
 District. They first nominated Charles Sumner as Mr. 
 Winthrop's opponent. Mr. Sumner declined, and Dr. 
 Samuel G. Howe was nominated in his place. Some of 
 the Whigs, including Mr. "Webster and Senator Eoger S. 
 Baldwin of Connecticut, resisted the treaty at the close of 
 the Mexican War, foreseeing that the strife between Free- 
 dom and Slavery for the territory which it acquired from 
 Mexico would lead to disruption of the Whig party and 
 to a sectional strife throughout the country. 
 
 The question whether a great public evil should be cor- 
 rected by the old English and American process of action 
 by political parties, or by an action which should be not 
 only independent of party obligations, but of the primal 
 obligation of citizenship to obey the will of the country 
 as expressed by its majority, until that majority could be 
 persuaded to change, presented itself to the men who acted 
 under the lead of Charles Allen and Charles Sumner. 
 They rejected Mi-. Garrison's solution of that question and 
 accepted Mr. Allen's. The result is full of instruction. 
 
 Mr. Garrison and his followers declared the Constitution 
 a " covenant with death and a league with hell," and the 
 country an instrument of oppression, and refused to have 
 any connection with either. Mr. Allen and Mr. Sumner, 
 on the other hand, said : " We will use the powers of the 
 Constitution to correct the mistakes of the Constitution. 
 We will appeal to the people who made the Constitution, 
 and to the Country which is behind the Constitution. 
 Notwithstanding the present attitude of the majority, we 
 will place the Country and the Constitution on the side of 
 Freedom." What was the result? Garrison and Phillips 
 attacked the Republican party as severely and as bitterly 
 as they had attacked the slaveholders. In thirty years 
 of agitation they had made no progress whatever. They 
 began in 1830. The period from 1830 to 1850 witnessed 
 a series of victories for slavery. In 1858 Wendell 
 
25 
 
 Phillips describes England, whose conduct in 1834 in 
 abolishing slavery in the West Indies had inspired him 
 with so much enthusiasm, as having a pro-slavery govern- 
 ment, and as ready to reestablish the slave trade. He 
 declai"es that we are about to admit Kansas as a slave 
 State, to seize Cuba and what remains of Mexico ; that the 
 slave-master may travel through the North with his slave 
 without setting him free. He denounces the judges and 
 the churches alike as given over to the domination of 
 slavery. He says that, when he dies, he hopes some one 
 will give him a piece of marble large enough to write on 
 it — "Infidel" at the top and "Traitor" at the bottom. 
 
 Now, what was done by the politician? Some of us 
 met at Worcester, Massachusetts, on the 28th of June, 
 1848, to found a new party, devoted to arresting the 
 future encroachments of the slave power, and to secure 
 the freedom of the vast territory between the Mississippi 
 and the Pacific. At Buffalo, in the same year, that party 
 nominated its candidate for President. In that year it 
 did not command a single vote in the electoral colleges and 
 chose but three members of Congress. But it increased 
 rapidly in numbers and political power. In eight years it 
 carried a majority of the free states. In twelve years it 
 elected its President and had a majority in both Houses of 
 Congress. In sixteen years it had abolished slavery and 
 had put down the Kebellion ; and in twenty years it had 
 adopted the three great amendments to the Constitution 
 which made every slave a freeman, every freeman a citizen, 
 and every citizen a voter. 
 
 The life of John Quincy Adams was drawing to a close. 
 No man questioned the sincerity of Mr. Adams's hatred of 
 the slave power. He hated slavery for its own sake, and 
 there was no man more certain to return the hatred which 
 the slave power felt toward him. But he earnestly desired 
 the extension of our territory to the Pacific, and was quite 
 willing to take the risks of conflict between freedom and 
 
26 
 
 slavery for its possession. With the exception of Mr. 
 Adams, the anti-slavery men among the Whig leaders were 
 opposed to the acquisition of territory from Mexico. And 
 some others, who were ready for any compromise, depre- 
 cated the new acquisition as one to be fruitful of a strife 
 which would endanger the national existence itself. But 
 all opposition was without avail. The treaty of Guada- 
 loupe Hidalgo was agreed upon by the representatives of the 
 two governments and ratified by the Senate of the United 
 States. Under it we acquired a vast territory of nearly 
 50,000 square miles. From this time the division in the 
 Whig party became irreconcilable. The Conscience Whigs 
 attended the conventions of their party, secured the adop- 
 tion of resolutions, both in those conventions and by the 
 Legislature, committing the party to legislation to prevent 
 the extension of slavery into the territories, and found 
 organs among the Whig press. The party was not broken 
 until the nomination of Gen. Taylor in 1848. Though very 
 much dissatisfied with Mr. Webster, probably the bulk of 
 those who left the Whig party would have supported 
 him if he had been the Whig candidate for the presidency. 
 But the choice of Gen. Taylor, a Southerner and a large 
 slaveholder, whose fame rested wholly on his achievements 
 in a war undertaken for the extension of slavery, without 
 any pledge or assurance of his own opposition to it, and, 
 after letters written by him assured the South that it could 
 depend upon him, made further support of the Whig 
 party impossible to these men. The convention was called 
 at Worcester on the 28th of June, 1848, where, for the 
 first time, was inaugurated a party for the sole object of 
 resisting the extension of slavery. The Liberty party, 
 which had cast a few votes in the presidential election of 
 1840, and which, in 1844, had turned the scale in New 
 York, and so in the nation, against Mr. Clay, was willing 
 to support the candidates of other parties who were per* 
 sonally unexceptionable to them in this respect. But the 
 
27 
 
 Fi'ee Soil party, of which the present Kepublican party is 
 but the continuation under a change of name, determined 
 that no person could receive its support for any national 
 office who, himself, continued his association with either 
 of the old political organizations. 
 
 Charles AUen was chosen a delegate from the Worcester 
 District to the Whig National Convention which met at 
 Philadelphia, June 7th, 1848. It became manifest, as the 
 time for holding that convention approached, that it was 
 the plan of a large portion of the Whig party to make no 
 declaration of a purpose to oppose the extension of slavery 
 into the territories, and to nominate a candidate who 
 should be uncommitted upon that subject, and who might 
 be represented to the South as holding one opinion and to 
 the North as holding another. While Mr. Webster's 
 course had not been whoUy satisfactory to the opponents 
 of the extension of slavery, and while he had seemed to 
 lack zeal in resisting the final consummation of the annexa- 
 tion of Texas, yet his opposition to the extension of slavery 
 had been many times earnestly and emphatically expressed. 
 He would, doubtless, have received the united support of 
 the Whig party at the North if he had been nominated. 
 The Southern Whigs found their candidate in Zachary 
 Taylor. His simple, manly and picturesque character 
 had gained a strong hold on the popular heart. There 
 were many Whigs, even in Massachusetts, who were 
 uneasy under the somewhat dictatorial and imperious 
 manner of Mr. Webster, and who did not expect to find 
 much opportunity for the gratification of their own ambi- 
 tions under an administration where he should control. 
 Above all, it was supposed that the popular enthusiasm for 
 a successful soldier would be as powerful in the case of 
 Taylor as it had been in the case of Andrew Jackson. 
 Mr. Webster, whatever may have been the respect in 
 which he was held by the great mass of the people, seems 
 never to have been popular with the class of men who are 
 
28 
 
 found in nominating conventions. The result was that 
 Gen. Taylor received the nomination of the convention on 
 the fourth ballot by a majority of more than sixty. A 
 resolution was then introduced declaring that Congress 
 had the power, and that it was its duty, to prevent the 
 introduction and existence of slavery in any territory then 
 possessed, or which might thereafter be acquired. This 
 resolution was laid on the table amid a storm of derision. 
 It was, however, hoped to conciliate Massachusetts by the 
 nomination of Abbott Lawrence, who had been an earnest 
 supporter of Gen. Taylor, and was understood to be on 
 unfriendly terms with Mr. Webster, for the Vice-Presi- 
 dency. A gentleman then rose, of slender figure and 
 voice, who was unknown to the great majority of the 
 convention, and who, till that time, had taken little part 
 in its proceedings. It was Charles Allen of Massachusetts. 
 He declared that the discipline of the South had again 
 prevailed ; that the terms of union between the Whigs of 
 the North and the Whigs of the South were the perpetual 
 surrender by the former of the high places and powers of 
 the Government to their Southern Confederates. "To 
 these terms the Free States will no longer submit. The 
 Whig party is here and this day dissolved. You have put 
 one ounce too much on the strong back of Northern 
 endurance. You have even presumed that the State which 
 led in the first revolution for liberty will now desert that 
 cause for the miserable boon of the Vice-Presidency. Sir, 
 Massachusetts spurns the bribe." Mr. Allen's speech was 
 received with a storm of indignation and derision. The 
 Whig party, which had just nominated a successful general 
 and which looked forward to an assured victory in the 
 coming campaign, never appeared, to an unthinking 
 observer, so conscious of its strength and so certain of a 
 long lease of power as at that moment. It was about to 
 elect its candidate for the Presidency at the slight price of 
 silence on the great question of human liberty. Mr. 
 
29 
 
 Allen's utterance seemed, to most men, like the raving of 
 a fanatic. But in the next presidential election the Whig 
 party, this gi-eat historic party, found itself able to com- 
 mand a majority in but four states. Four years from the 
 time of Ml-. AUen's utterance, Daniel Webster, as he lay 
 dying at Marshfield, said to the friend who was making 
 his will, " The Whig candidate will obtain but one or two 
 states ; and it is well ; as a national party the Whigs are 
 ended." 
 
 Mr. Allen came back to Massachusetts to appeal to the 
 people of Worcester, and to lay in this city the foundation 
 of the great party which came into power in 1861, and 
 whose thirty years of power constitute the most brilliant 
 and important period in all legislative history. The num- 
 ber of voters to whom he could appeal for support with 
 confidence was not very large in the beginning. But 
 there were men in all parts of the Commonwealth with 
 whom he had been in the habit of taking counsel since the 
 division in the Whig party had grown up, and who came 
 promptly to his side. The Free Soil party of Massachu- 
 setts cast, in the presidential election of 1848, about 
 thirty-seven thousand votes. But it included among its 
 supporters almost every man in the Commonwealth old 
 enough to take part in politics who has since acquired any 
 considerable national reputation. Charles Sumner, who 
 had become known to the public as an orator and scholar 
 by three or four brilliant orations, was just at the thresh- 
 old of his great career. Charles Francis Adams, who 
 had served with distinction in each branch of the State 
 Legislature, brought to the cause his inflexible courage, 
 his calm judgment, and the inspiration of his historic 
 name. John A. Andrew, then a young lawyer in Boston, 
 afterward to become illustrious as the greatest war gov- 
 ernor in the Union, devoted to the cause an eloquence 
 stimulant and inspiring as a sermon of Paul. John G. 
 Palfrey, then a Whig member of Congress from the 
 
30 
 
 Middlesex District, discussed the gi-eat issue in speeches 
 singularly adapted to reach the understanding and gratify 
 the taste of the people of Massachusetts, and in a series 
 of essays whose vigor and compactness Junius might have 
 envied, and with a moral power which Junius could never 
 have reached. Anson Burlingame, afterward minister to 
 China and envoy from China to the civilized nations of the 
 world, then in early youth, inspired his hearers with his 
 lofty trumpet-call. Samuel G. Howe, famous in both 
 hemispheres by his knightly service in the cause of Greek 
 independence, famous also by his philanthropic work in 
 behalf of the insane and the blind, brought his great 
 influence to the new party. Henry Wilson, a mechanic, 
 whose early training had been that of the shoemaker's shop, 
 but who understood the path by which to reach the con- 
 science and understanding of the workingmen of Massa- 
 chusetts better than any other man, had been also a 
 delegate to the convention at Philadelphia, and had united 
 with Judge Allen in denunciation of its surrender of 
 liberty. Stephen C. Phillips, a highly respected merchant 
 of Salem, and formerly a Whig representative from the 
 Essex District, gave the weight of his influence in the 
 same direction. Samuel Hoar, who had been driven 
 from South Carolina when he attempted to argue the 
 case for the imprisoned colored seamen of Massachusetts 
 before the courts of the United States, one of the most 
 distinguished lawyers of the Massachusetts Bar, whom 
 Chief-Justice Shaw declared, at a gathering of the Essex 
 Bar, the most powerful advocate before juries in Massa- 
 chusetts, came from his retirement in his old age to give 
 his service in the same cause. He headed the call for the 
 first Free Soil convention, held at Worcester on the 28th 
 of June, which was prepared by his son, E. E. Hoar, 
 afterward Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts 
 and Attorney-General of the United States, and member 
 of the Joint High Commission which framed the Treaty 
 
31 
 
 of Washington. Richard H. Dana, master of an exquisite 
 English style, an advocate who used to encounter Rufus 
 Choate on equal terms, threw himself into the cause with 
 all the ardor of his soul. On the Connecticut River, 
 George Ashmun, the most powerful of the Whig cham- 
 pions in Western Massachusetts, found more than his 
 match in Erastus Hopldns. 
 
 William Claflin, afterward Speaker, Lieutenant-Gov- 
 ernor and Governor in Massachusetts, member of the 
 National House of Representatives, and chairman of the 
 Republican National Committee, was then in early youth. 
 But he had already gained a competent fortune by his 
 business sagacity. He brought to the cause his sound 
 judgment, his warm and affectionate heart and his liberal 
 hand. He was then, as he has ever since been, identified 
 with every good and generous cause. His staunch friend- 
 ship was then, as it has ever since been, the delight and 
 comfort of the champions of Freedom in strife and 
 obloquy. 
 
 Each of these men would have been amply fitted in all 
 respects for the leader of a great party in state or nation. 
 Each of them could have defended any cause in which he 
 was a believer, by whatever champion assailed. They had 
 also their allies and associates among the representatives of 
 the press. Among these were Joseph T. Buckingham of 
 the Boston Courier, then the head of the editorial frater- 
 nity in Massachusetts ; John Milton Earle, the veteran 
 editor of the Worcester Spy; William S. Robinson, after- 
 ward so widely known as " Warrington," whose wit and 
 keen logic will cause his name to be long preserved among 
 the classics of American literature. 
 
 Besides these more conspicuous leaders, there was to be 
 found in almost every town and village in Massachusetts 
 some man eminent among his neighbors for purity of life, 
 for philanthropy and for large intelligence, who was ready 
 to join the new party. The glowing hopes and dreams 
 
32 
 
 and aspirations of youth were inspirited by the muse of 
 
 Whittier and Longfellow and Lowell and Bryant. The 
 
 cause of free labor appealed to the strongest sympathies 
 
 of the mechanics of Essex and the skilled laborers of 
 
 Worcester : — 
 
 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive ; 
 But to be young was Heaven. 
 
 A meeting was called to hear Judge Allen's report at the 
 City Hall in Worcester. There was doubt as to his recep- 
 tion, and it was predicted that he could not gain an 
 audience. Some difficulty was experienced in finding any 
 man of prominence to preside ; but this office was under- 
 taken by Albert Tolman, one of the most respected 
 mechanics of the city. The hall was thronged long before 
 Judge Allen came upon the platform. Many persons were 
 unable to get admission. From the beginning to the end 
 Judge Allen had the sympathy of the vast audience. The 
 Judge declared that he had been charged by his constitu- 
 ents to vote for a person as candidate for President who 
 should be in favor of preserving the territories of the 
 United States from the stain of slavery. That the con- 
 vention which sent him to Philadelphia well knew his 
 sentiments, and. would have sent some other man as their 
 delegate if they intended to put forth principles upon 
 which they did not mean to stand and abide. He sketched 
 the history of slavery in the country ; the manner in 
 which it had extended and grown strong. He showed 
 that the Whigs of the North were pledged against its 
 further extension. He showed that Gen. Taylor had 
 declared that if he were elected to the presidential office 
 he must go untrammelled by party pledges of any character, 
 and must not be brought forward as the candidate of any 
 party, or considered as the exponent of any party doc- 
 trines. Gen. Taylor, therefore, refusing to be the can- 
 didate of a party or the exponent of its doctrines, had no 
 claim upon his allegiance or that of his auditors as Whigs. 
 
33 
 
 He showed further that Gen. Taylor's Southern neighbors, 
 who knew him best, avowed that he sympathized with 
 them on the subject of the Wihnot Proviso and what they 
 called Southern rights. He uttered his bold challenge to 
 the leading Whigs in Worcester County, — Gov. Lincoln 
 and Gov. Davis. As the assembly was about to disperse, 
 the Rev. George Allen, a brother of the Judge, who had 
 come in late from a religious meeting, made his way to 
 the platform and moved the following resolution, which was 
 passed amid great enthusiasm. It was adopted by nearly 
 every Free Soil meeting held that year in Massachusetts 
 and rang through the country : — " Eesolved, that Massa- 
 chusetts wears no chains, and spurns all bribes. That she 
 goes now and wiU ever go for Free Soil and Free Men, 
 for Free Lips and a Free Press, for a Free Land and a 
 Free World." That meeting was the inaugui'ation of a 
 political party which made opposition to the further 
 extension of slavery its cardinal principle. The old 
 Liberty party differed from the Free" Soil party in that its 
 members were willing to support men belonging to other 
 political organizations if they had confidence in the sin- 
 cerity of the devotion of the individual candidate to their 
 principles. But the Free Soil party announced, and in no 
 other way could any party expect permanent success in 
 state or nation, that alliance with any other political 
 organization, or the support of any other political candi- 
 dates than their own, was sufficient reason for rejecting 
 any candidate for office, however personally acceptable. 
 The transformation of the Free Soil party into the Repub- 
 lican, which took place six years later, was but a change 
 of name. 
 
 Mr. Allen devoted himseK from that time forward to 
 the close of the campaign to the task of convincing the 
 people of Worcester County. It was no slight burden he 
 had undertaken. Worcester County had contended with 
 Genesee County, N. Y., Lancaster County, Pa., and 
 3 
 
34 
 
 Ashtabula County, Ohio, for the glory of being the banner 
 Whig county in the United States. She was interested in 
 the success of Whig principles. Her manufactures were 
 rising into importance. Factories were building on every 
 stream. Her only city was devoted to manufactures in 
 great variety. Her people were proud of the policies 
 which had given to Massachusetts the name of the model 
 commonwealth. . With the exception of Mr. Webster, 
 her venerated citizens, John Davis and Levi Lincoln, were 
 the most eminent Whigs in Massachusetts. 
 
 Gov. Davis had a large national fame and was under- 
 stood to have favored the selection of Gen. Taylor. At 
 the same time, his course hitherto had commended him to 
 the anti-slavery sentiment of the Commonwealth. Levi 
 Lincoln, who held the oflSce of Governor of Massachusetts 
 longer than any other person before or since, was a man 
 of matchless executive energy, of high social position, of 
 wide family connection, and of unsullied character. He 
 had been chosen Governor of Massachusetts by the consent 
 of both political parties. He had inherited from his 
 father the political opinions and the intimate personal 
 friendship of Jefferson. Yet he had always had the full 
 confidence of the Federal and Whig leaders. When Mr. 
 Webster was first chosen to the United States Senate he 
 declined to be considered as a candidate until he had been 
 first informed, on Mr. Lincoln's own authority, that he 
 would not accept the place ; an acceptance which had been 
 urged upon him by Mr. Mills, the retiring senator, and 
 by the leaders of the dominant party in Massachusetts all 
 over the Commonwealth, with scarcely an exception. 
 These two men threw themselves into the support of 
 Taylor, inspired not only by the conviction that Gen. 
 Taylor's election would be for the benefit of the whole 
 country, but also because they saw that their own politi- 
 cal dominion and influence were involved in the same 
 issue. 
 
3.5 
 
 These men had supporters both on the hustings and in 
 the press, from a conflict with whom any common man 
 might well shrink. The National ^gis was then under 
 the charge of Alexander H. Bullock, afterward Governor 
 of the Commonwealth, and one of the most brilliant 
 orators of his day. He was aided by the keen and caustic 
 pen of Edward W. Lincoln, and by John C. B. Davis, 
 afterward an eminent lawyer and Minister to Germany. 
 Benjamin F. Thomas, who succeeded Judge Allen as the 
 leader of the Worcester bar, the darling of the younger 
 men of his generation, — a man of whom it has been said, 
 as before him was said of Charles James Fox, that his 
 intellect was all feeling and his feeling all intellect, — who 
 had been an original supporter of Gen. Taylor, advocated 
 his election with his fervid and persuasive eloquence. 
 Emory Washburn, perhaps the best-beloved citizen of 
 Worcester County, was on the same side. The quarrel 
 was not like that of an ordinary party contest. It 
 extended into the social life of the. state and county. 
 There was hardly a family moving in what was called 
 good society that was not upon the Whig side. Charles 
 Hudson, the popular and esteemed representative from 
 the Worcester District, the highest authority in his time 
 upon the finances of the country, and especially upon the 
 protective tariff, after some hesitation, had given his 
 support to the nomination of Gen. Taylor. 
 
 Yet Charles Allen, from the beginning, held his own 
 against all odds. He was nominated for Congress very 
 much affainst his own will, and because no other man 
 could be found in the district on his side of sufficient 
 prominence to be made a candidate. The Free Soil party 
 swept the county by a large majority, carrying the City of 
 Worcester and every one of the fifty-two towns, with four 
 exceptions. The Judge was triumphantly elected to Con- 
 gress. From that time Worcester County never wavered 
 or faltered in the support of freedom, till the three great 
 
36 
 
 amendments were formally established in the Constitution 
 of the United States itself. 
 
 Judge Allen served in the Congress of the United States 
 for two terms, when his constituents reluctantly yielded 
 to his desire to withdraw from that service. His health 
 was always delicate. The climate of Washington was 
 extremely unfavorable to him. During his term of 
 service he had many slight illnesses. He also was 
 brought to the point of death by a lung fever. The phy- 
 sicians had no hope that he would live but a few hours, 
 and requested Mr. Giddings, who was his intimate friend, 
 to say to him that if he had any disposition to make of 
 his worldly affairs it should be done without delay, as he 
 had but a very short time to live. The Judge understood 
 his own case better than the doctors. As Giddings leaned 
 over the sick-bed and made the solemn and appalling 
 communication, the patient replied, using all his strength, 
 in a just audible whisper, "We will see about that." To 
 the mortification, ii not the disappointment, of the doc- 
 tors, he recovered. 
 
 The question has been discussed a good deal of late, to 
 what men the rescue of our vast Western territory from 
 slavery and the overthrow of slavery itself are most 
 largely due. The admirers of Mr. Garrison and the sur- 
 vivors of the little band who were distinguished by the 
 name of Abolitionists, of whom he was the acknowledged 
 leader, claim for him and ior those who thought with him 
 the chief merit in this mighty revolution. I would not, 
 if I could, take a single laurel from the honored brow of 
 William Lloyd Garrison. I stated deliberately my opinion 
 of him when, in presenting for the Commonwealth of 
 Massachusetts the statues of John Winthrop and Samuel 
 Adams to the United States, for the memorial chamber in 
 the Capitol, I spoke of the great men among whom her 
 choice was made in selecting the two foremost names 
 
37 
 
 among her national benefactors. I then used this lan- 
 guage :— 
 
 " Of the great lovers of their race, whose pure fame is gained 
 by unselfish devotion of their lives to lessening suffering or 
 reforming vice, Massachusetts has furnished conspicuous exam- 
 ples. Among these great benefactors who have now gone to 
 their reward it is hard to determine the palm of excellence. 
 
 "To the labors of Horace Mann is due the excellence of the 
 common schools in America, without which liberty must perish, 
 despite of constitution or statute. 
 
 "If an archangel should come down from Heaven among 
 men, I cannot conceive that he could give utterance to a loftier 
 virtue or clothe his message in more fitting phrase than are found 
 in the pure eloquence in which Channing arraigned slavery, that 
 giant crime of all ages, before the bar of public opinion, and 
 held up the selfish ambition of Napoleon to the condemnation of 
 mankind. ' Never before,' says the eulogist of Channing, 'in 
 the name of humanity and freedom, was grand offender arraigned 
 by such a voice. The sentence of degradation which Channing 
 has passed, confirmed by coming generations, will darken the 
 fame of the warrior more than any defeat of his armies, or 
 compelled abdication of his power.' 
 
 " Dr. Howe, whose youthful service in the War for the Inde- 
 pendence of Greece, recalling the stories of knight-errantry, has 
 endeared his name to two hemispheres, is yet better known by 
 what he has done for those unfortunate classes of our fellowmen 
 whom God has deprived of intellect or of sense. He gave eyes 
 to the fingers of the blind ; he taught the deaf and dumb articu- 
 late speech ; waked the slumbering intellect in the darkened soul 
 of the idiot; brought comfort, quiet, hope, courage, to the 
 wretched cell of the insane. 
 
 "To each of these the people of Massachusetts have, in their 
 own way, paid their tribute of honor and reverence. The statue 
 of Horace Mann stands by the portal of the State House. The 
 muse of Whittier and Holmes, the lips of our most distinguished 
 living orators, the genius of his gifted wife, have united in a 
 worthy memorial of Howe. The stately eloquence of Sumner, 
 in his great oration at Cambridge, has built a monument to 
 Channing more enduring than marble or granite ; but Chauning's 
 
38 
 
 published writings, eagerly read wherever the English language 
 prevailed, are better than any monument. 
 
 "Yet I believe Channing and Howe and Mann, were they 
 living today, would themselves yield precedence to the constant 
 and courageous heroism of him who said, ' I am in earnest ; I 
 will not equivocate ; I will not retreat a single inch ; and I will 
 be heard' ; whose fame — 
 
 ' Over his living head, like heaven, is bent 
 An early and eternal monument.' " 
 
 Of this estimate I have nothing to retract. But I can- 
 not consent to honor Mr. Garrison at the expense of what 
 is due to others. Mr. Garrison devoted his life to the 
 cause of human freedom. In that cause he encountered 
 hatred, obloquy and peril. He espoused the cause of the 
 poor and downtrodden when it seemed almost hopeless to 
 other men, inspired by a sublime and undoubting confi- 
 dence in righteousness and the justice of God. He was 
 a, man of absolute integrity and veracity. His appeals 
 did much to create and strengthen the hatred of slavery in 
 the American people, to whom he was as a conscience, 
 bringing everything to the standard of rectitude as it 
 appeared to his eyes. But as we now look back upon his 
 work we can see that he impaired his own usefulness by 
 one supreme error in judgment. His only plan for the 
 overthrow of slavery was the destruction of his country 
 itself. If his counsel had been followed there would have 
 been today at the South a great slaveholding empire, 
 spreading over all the territory between the Mississippi 
 and the Pacific, embracing Cuba and, perhaps, Mexico ; 
 while the North would have been a feeble and distracted 
 country ; or, perhaps, divided into many separate states, 
 weak and contemptible among the nations of the earth. 
 We cannot, therefore, while we assign to Garrison the 
 highest place which belongs to a pure purpose and to an 
 unselfish devotion, give to him, who as a counsellor and 
 leader was always wrong in the method of accomplishing 
 
39 
 
 his end, a meed of praise which we are to deny such 
 leaders as Charles Allen and Charles Sumner, who, as we 
 look back upon their lives, we now see to have been 
 always right. Mr. Garrison was misled by a strict inter- 
 pretation of the Constitution. He forgot that there was a 
 country behind the Constitution which could amend it, 
 which could overthrow it, which could construe it in favor 
 of liberty, and the preservation of whose life was, if not 
 the only, yet the best hope of liberty in this world. No 
 lover of his race, no friend of the freedom of the black, 
 can now look back upon the counsel of Charles AUen or 
 the men who acted with him and wish that in any respect 
 it had been otherwise. 
 
 The causes which have been mentioned prevented Mr. 
 Allen from taking a very active part on the floor of the 
 House during his two terms of service in Washington. 
 But he was regarded by the few anti-slavery men there as 
 their wisest and ablest counsellor. Mr. Julian of Indiana, 
 who was himself one of the most earnest anti-slavery 
 men in the public service, and who sei-ved with Mr. Allen 
 during his whole time, has written his recollection of Mr. 
 Allen's congressional career as follows : — 
 
 Centreville, Indiana, 
 
 Sept. 10th, 1870. 
 Hon. Geo. F. Hoar: 
 
 My Dear Sir, — 
 
 Failing health and other hindrances have 
 prevented an earlier response to your request, made some months 
 ago, to give you my impressions of the late Judge Allen of your 
 state. My first knowledge of him dates back as far as the 
 summer of 1848, when I read his speech to his constituents, on 
 his return from the Philadelphia Whig Convention which nomi- 
 nated Gen. Taylor for the Presidency in June of that year. 
 This speech, which was copied into several "Western newspapers, 
 was a telling one, and exercised a marked influence, especially 
 upon those members of the Free Soil organization who enlisted 
 from the ranks of the Whigs. I first met Judge Allen in 
 
40 
 
 December, 1849, as a fellow-member of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives in the memorable Congress which then assembled, 
 and as a fellow-member also of the little party of less than a 
 dozen men who disowned all allegiance to both the Whig and 
 Democratic parties. Boarding at the same place with Judge 
 Allen and a few other congenial friends during nearly the whole 
 of the two sessions of this Congress, which together lasted over 
 thirteen months, I had, of course, the amplest means of knowing 
 him intimately. In his ordinary intercourse with others, and as 
 a member of the House also, he was so quiet and undemonstra- 
 tive that few comprehended his rare intellectual gifts, or the 
 singular charm of his manner as he revealed himself to his 
 intimate friends. I may add, too, that even at this compara- 
 tively early day in his career he labored under the serious 
 disadvantage of feeble health. The slave power also, then in 
 the full sweep of its despotism, took good care, of course, to 
 keep such men in the background. Even Thaddeus Stevens, 
 who in later years became so famous as a debater and party 
 leader, and had offended the black oligarchy so much less than 
 Judge Allen, was not able in this Congress to write down any 
 clear prophecy of the career which awaited him when perfectly 
 unshackled by the power which then held him in check. The 
 men who resisted the organization of the House in the interest 
 of slavery for weeks in succession, and thus offended both slave- 
 holders and doughfaces, could expect no coveted place on the 
 committees and no political favors in any quarter. Judge Allen, 
 however, whenever his health would permit, was at ' his post of 
 duty, ever watchful of the proceedings of Congress, and. con- 
 scientiously resolved to act well his pg,rt as a servant of the 
 people. On a few occasions, of which his encounter with Mr. 
 Ashmun is an example, his reserved power was strikingly 
 brought out, and the House listened to him with admiration and 
 breathless interest. Judge Allen was passionately fond of 
 English literature. On entering his room I always found on his 
 table "Half Hours with the Best Authors" or some favorite 
 volume of poetry; and I used to listen to his readings with 
 delight. He was master of the rare art of good reading, know- 
 ing exactly how to give to the hearer the full force and compass 
 of his author's meaning. He was uncommonly familiar with 
 theological and religious literature, and his conversation on these 
 
41 
 
 topics was full of instruction. In his occasional discussions of 
 political issues with those who differed from him, it was impos- 
 sible to escape the real point in dispute. He never failed to 
 bring his opponent promptly back to it, and pin him there if he 
 sought to escape; and when he detected in him any form of 
 sophistry or dishonesty was sure to make him disagreeably 
 sensible of it. There was a vein of sarcasm about him which 
 I have never seen excelled. It was keen and terrible ; but he 
 uniformly reserved it for fit occasions and for subjects that 
 deserved it. His love of justice and truth was supreme, but his 
 heart was as sunny and kind as that of a child. 
 
 The political and social ostracism of the little party of radicals 
 with whom he was associated in Washington was keenly felt, and 
 led to weekly social meetings at the residence of Dr. Bailey, of 
 the National Era, where we frequently met leading anti-slavery 
 people from various sections. These were most delightful occa- 
 sions, showing the delightful social tendencies of the members, 
 and indicating the struggle it must have cost them to break away 
 from cherished associations and stand alone in defence of hated 
 .political doctrines. If left to his natural inclinations, I think 
 Judge Allen would never have filled a public oflJce ; and I am 
 quite sure he would have shunned the hard and ungracious strife 
 of party politics. He was, in the very best sense, a patriot; 
 and, therefore, while singularly fitted to enjoy the sweet quiet of 
 home, and to charm in the social circle and around the fireside, 
 he listened only to the voice of duty when summoned to the 
 public service. 
 
 I infer from his frequent conversations about Mr. Webster, 
 that his personal and political relations with him had been the 
 kindliest. Up to the last moment, I think, he clung to the hope 
 that Webster would not go over to the South ; and it was a real 
 grief to him when he found himself finally disappointed. On 
 the memorable 7th of March, Judge Allen was not able to be in 
 the House. I happened that day to be in the Senate and heard 
 the whole of the recreant speech which recorded Mr. Webster's 
 apostasy from his New England faith. On returning from the 
 session, I related to Judge Allen what had happened, giving him 
 the chief points of the speech and attempting to describe the 
 effort, almost amounting to an agony, which it seemed to cost Mr. 
 Webster to deliver it, I shall never forget the inexpressible 
 
42 
 
 sadness of Judge Allen's face as I gave him these particulars. 
 The fatal step had now been taken and thenceforward he must, 
 of course, regard Webster as the enemy of his country, because 
 the enemy of liberty. The pang caused by this event, affecting 
 as it must his social relations with Mr. Webster, was patiently 
 endured, in the desire to stand all the more firmly by the cause of 
 freedom, now dearer than ever because more than ever imperilled 
 by the faithlessness of its friends. 
 
 Of the controversy which followed between Judge Allen and 
 Mr. Webster it is, perhaps, needless to speak. I believed at the 
 time, as I still do, that Judge Allen was right in the charges 
 made by him against Mr. Webster, in March, 1851 ; and I was 
 willing, therefore, to offer in the House a preamble and resolu- 
 tions calling for an investigation. The House, then in the 
 complete control of men who had surrendered the country to the 
 keeping of the slave power, very naturally voted down the pro- 
 posed inquiry. It was never officially made ; but Judge AUep's 
 good name suffered no detriment in the judgment of his country- 
 men by reason of his charges. On the contrary, I think it safe 
 to say that the general verdict has been in his favor. Time has 
 awarded justice to both parties, and this is all that the friends of 
 Judge Allen could ask. Should the friends of Mr. Webster, 
 however, see fit at any time to drag this controversy again before 
 the public, and insist upon a rehearing, I doubt not that facts in 
 abundance can be produced in justification of the investigation 
 which was proposed. 
 
 As to Judge Allen's course, in connection with the other Free 
 Soil members of the House, in resisting its organization under 
 Mr. Winthrop, time has fully vindicated him and his co-laborers. 
 They were ready at all times to vote for Thaddeus Stevens, as for 
 any other Whig for Speaker who could be trusted ; but they knew 
 Mr. Winthrop to be false to freedom, and, therefore, they did right 
 in resolutely refusing to vote for him. Many good men then 
 thought they were mistaken ; but the subsequent action of Mr. 
 Winthrop himself has removed all doubts as to the wisdom of 
 their course. Nor does Judge Allen's conduct need any vindica- 
 tion in separating himself from the Whig party, in 184'8, and 
 joining the anti-slavery revolt of that year. That movement 
 did not carry the electoral vote of a single state ; but its moral 
 effect saved Oregon from slavery, made California a free state, 
 
43 
 
 secured cheap postage to the people, and launched the policy of 
 free homes on the public domain which finally prevailed in 1862. 
 Nor can history fail to record that the Free Soil movement was 
 the prophecy and parent of the larger one which rallied under 
 Fremont in 1856, under Lincoln in 1860, and which finally saved 
 the nation from destruction by the armed rebels whom it had 
 vanquished at the ballot-box. The leaders in this grand uprising 
 of 1848 are, therefore, not unworthy of their country's honor and 
 praise ; and of all these leaders, whether in New England or out 
 of it, I rank Charles Allen second to none in ability, courage, 
 singleness of purpose, and the power to inspire and wisely guide 
 his fellow-men. In the grasp and poise of his mind I believe 
 no man in New England, save Webster, was his superior, in the 
 judgment of those who knew him best ; while the purity of his 
 life and the loftiness of his patriotism are unquestioned and 
 unquestionable. Such are my views and impressions, drawn 
 from a brief but intimate acquaintance, which closed nearly 
 twenty years ago ; and it affords me a real pleasure to record 
 them in compliance with your wishes. 
 
 I am, very truly yours, 
 
 Geo. W. Julian. 
 After the defeat of Gen. Scott, it was proposed by the 
 leaders of the Free Soil party in Washington, at a meeting 
 held at the house of Dr. Bailey, editor of the JSTational 
 lEra, to abandon their distinctive organization, and either 
 unite again with the Whigs or abandon political effort 
 altogether. Ephraim seemed given over to his idols. 
 The Democratic party was triumphant everywhere. Their 
 Whig competitors had declared their acquiescence in the 
 compromise measures of 1850. Slavery was intrenched 
 in House, Senate, the Presidency, the Supreme Court, in 
 trade, commerce, at the Bar, and in the highest social 
 circles of all the great cities. It seemed to many men 
 that its enemies were but beating their heads against walls. 
 Such was the feeling of the little band of discouraged 
 champions who gathered at Dr. Bailey's the winter after 
 the election of Franklin Pierce to discuss their future 
 prospects. Mr. Allen, however, was not one of the dis- 
 
44 
 
 couraged. He maintained that it would be impossible for 
 the slave power to remain stationary ; that some new 
 encroachment would occur before long which would excite 
 the North and inspire new confidence in the opponents of 
 slavery. It is said that he advocated these views in a 
 speech of great power, and succeeded in impressing the 
 meeting with his own good cheer. His prophecy was 
 verified early in the following administration, by Mr. 
 Douglas's proposition to repeal the Missouri Compromise, 
 followed soon after by the struggle between the settlers 
 from the free and slave states for the possession of Kansas, 
 and .by the Dred Scott decision. 
 
 During Mr. Allen's term of service the Compromise 
 measures of 1850 were discussed and enacted. Mr. Allen 
 came home from Washington in the autumn of that year, 
 and addressed his constituents in two speeches of marvel- 
 lous power. In 1848 he had prayed " That God might 
 keep Daniel Webster from the toils of the slave power, 
 and that we might be spared from the sight of that strong 
 man grinding in the prison-house of the Philistines." 
 After Mr. Webster's 7th of March speech, Mr. Allen's 
 last hope of support from Mr. Webster was abandoned. 
 He denounced his old leader and friend in language which 
 justice to him and to those who thought with him requires 
 us to preserve, as showing the temper of the times and 
 the boldness with which the most powerful character was 
 assailed by Judge Allen in the defence of what he believed 
 the cause of righteousness and constitutional liberty : — 
 
 " Mr. Webster, I know, says that the opinion of no man 
 who denies the constitutionality of this measure [the 
 Fugitive Slave Law] is of any worth. In the usual arro- 
 gant style in which he sees fit of late to address the public, 
 he declares that the opinion, which has been expressed by 
 intelligent men, by lawyers and jurists, and by able minds 
 in every department of life, that the law is against the 
 spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution, is not worthy 
 of consideration. He assumes to dictate to the people the 
 
45 
 
 true construction of the Constitution, in a matter deeply 
 affecting them ; and he declares that the hundreds and 
 thousands of voices, akeady raised in all parts of the 
 country to denounce this measure for its unconstitu- 
 tionality, are to be disregarded or treated with contempt. 
 
 " My friends, I know weU the great intelligence of that 
 distinguished man, Daniel Webster. I know very well 
 the power of his mighty intellect, how it stands out in 
 monstrous disproportion to every other attribute of the 
 man. I bow in silent wonder before the mysterious 
 dispensation of Providence which saw fit to confer so 
 much intellectual power where there was so little moral 
 strength. My friends, Mr. Webster never will vindicate 
 the principles of the Free Soil party. Never ! Never ! 
 The Free Soil party has no pensions to bestow upon him. 
 Freedom has no chain of gold to bind the giant to her 
 service. She seeks for no such service. But she asks the 
 aid and assistance of honest minds and earnest hearts, — of 
 men who cannot be bought by gold, and who will not be 
 beguiled of their rights by gold-bought sophistry. My 
 friends, what is knowledge, what is wisdom, without 
 goodness as a guide in the affairs of life ? And what but 
 a demon would the greatest intellect which the Deity ever 
 created be if it stood independent of goodness ? The world 
 has had examples of men in all ages who were gifted with 
 great powers of intellect, and who yet would fall before 
 temptations which the feeblest of mankind often resist. 
 The instances, as you know, have not been few, but 
 many, — so many that, I trust, the people have long since 
 learned to disregard the dictation of mere intellect where 
 there are no qualities of the heart also upon which they 
 can rely. 
 
 " I call to mind at this moment one of the most distin- 
 guished men the world ever knew. It will be no disparage- 
 ment to say that he possessed an intellect superior even to 
 that of Mr. Webster himself. Certainly his attainments 
 in every department of knowledge were far superior. And 
 yet he sank before temptations which the weakest resist, 
 and was dismissed from the highest place of state in 
 disgrace and with contempt. That man, characterized as 
 ' the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind,' stands on the 
 page of history as a warning to the world that intelligence 
 
46 
 
 and virtue are not inseparably combined, and that 3'ou 
 must see to it that the brilliant intellect to which you turn 
 for guidance and direction, is itself controlled and directed 
 by unwavering principle. My friends, I have a right thus 
 to speak of Mr. Webster, and it is my duty to speak thus 
 of him. It is the duty of every man, even of the feeblest, 
 to exert what little strength he has to prevent the fountains 
 of public sentiment from being poisoned by the statesman 
 who has turned all the energy of his great mind in a 
 direction hostile to the public interest. I have a right 
 thus to speak of him from what we know and what we 
 believe of the inducements and motives which gave a new 
 direction to his whole political action. When we find him 
 turning his back upon principles which he had advocated 
 in the most solemn manner again and again, not in his 
 youth merely, but in the maturity of his great mind, which 
 he had early vindicated, which he had at all periods 
 sustained ; when we find him changing his position, array- 
 ing himself on the side of oppression, and seeking to 
 delude the whole public into the same false position, we 
 have a right to say that the man is not to be trusted as a 
 guide to the people. Kather trust the feeblest intellect 
 that sheds its glimmering though feeble light over the path 
 of duty." 
 
 This arraignment of Mr. Webster cannot be omitted 
 without omitting an important part of the political history 
 of the time, and especially an important act in the career 
 of Charles Allen. As we look back today, nearly forty 
 ye^rs, upon these great events and these great actors, we 
 can discover reasons for modifying the severe judgment 
 which the lovers of liberty of his day rendered of the 
 motives and conduct of Daniel Webster. We can see 
 that he might well have been sincere in his belief that it 
 would not be in the power of the South to fasten itself 
 upon the unoccupied territory of the West, even without 
 any national prohibition. Certainly California and Kansas, 
 under most unfavorable circumstances, were rescued from 
 the blight of slavery without any exertion of national 
 authority. We can also see that the fear of a dissolution 
 
47 
 
 of the Union, which so impressed the mind of Mr. Web- 
 ster, was not the idle fancy which his opponents at that 
 day were accustomed to believe it. "We can see, too, that 
 if the struggle had come between the North and the South 
 in 1850, before the extension of our railroad system, before 
 the great increase of wealth, and especially the increase 
 of manufacturing power which came to the North in the 
 ten years' interval, and before steam-power had come into 
 use on vessels of war, that a war undertaken for the coer- 
 cion or conquest of the South might have had a very 
 different ending from that of the struggle which broke 
 out in 1861. We can also well believe that if Daniel 
 Webster's life had been spared he would have been found, 
 as his follower and friend, Edward Everett, was found, 
 among the most zealous defenders of his country, and that 
 all his sympathies would have been given to the Union in 
 a war in which, as it has been well said, every cannon on 
 that side was shotted with his great reply to Hayne. 
 
 The men who condemned Daniel Webster, and the men 
 who came to his side, had alike drunk deeply of the 
 inspiration of his own teaching. He had taught the youth 
 of New England, at PljTnouth and at Bunker Hill, to 
 reverence beyond all other human objects of esteem the 
 men who had abandoned their country and the men who 
 had taken up arms against their government that civil 
 liberty might not perish. He had pledged them on the 
 rock where their ancestors landed to co-operate with the 
 laws of men and the justice of heaven to extirpate and 
 destroy the slave trade. How came he to be advocating a 
 Fugitive Slave Law, and helping to extend the area of 
 slavery from the Mississippi to the Pacific? On the other 
 hand, it was he that first taught America her own great- 
 ness ; that had evoked the national spirit in the bosoms of 
 his countrymen, and taught them that their best hope lay 
 in the supremacy of the Constitution and the Union. 
 Should they not listen when he warned them that the 
 
48 
 
 Union was in danger, and demanded of them obedience to 
 the plain behest of the Constitution as the price of its 
 safety? One side appealed to the love of liberty; the 
 other to the love of country. One side appealed to the 
 voice of conscience in the soul ; the other invoked the 
 decisions of Congress and the supremacy of national law. 
 The judgment which the Free Soilers of 1850 formed 
 of Daniel Webster and the judgment which his country- 
 men, even those who differed from him, have fonned, after 
 the passion and excitement of his time have died, are both 
 expressed in a manner which no other man can equal, by 
 John G. Whittier, that master of every chord in the hearts 
 of his countrymen, in two matchless poems. In each of 
 them he spake truly the sentiment of anti-slavery New 
 England. " Ichabod " was its first voice of disappointment 
 and sorrow : — 
 
 " So fallen! so lost! the light withdraTvii 
 Which once he wore ! 
 The glory from his gray hairs gone 
 Forevermore. 
 
 Revile him not — the Tempter hath 
 
 A snare for all ; 
 And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, 
 
 Befit his fall ! 
 
 O, dumb be passion's stormy rage, 
 
 When he who might 
 Have lighted up and led his age, 
 
 Falls back in night. 
 
 Scorn ! would the angels laugh, to mark 
 
 A bright soul driven, 
 Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, 
 
 From Hope and Heaven ! 
 
 Let not the land once proud of him 
 
 Insult him now, 
 Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, 
 
 Dishonored brow. 
 
49 
 
 But let its humbled sons, instead, 
 
 From sea to lake, 
 A long lament, as for the dead. 
 
 In sadness make. 
 
 Of all we loved and honored, naught 
 
 Save power remains, — 
 A fallen angel's pride of thought, 
 
 Still strong in chains. 
 
 All else is gone, from those great eyes 
 
 The soul has fled : 
 When Faith is lost, when Honor dies. 
 
 The man is dead I 
 
 Then, pay the reverence of old days 
 
 To his dead fame ; 
 Walk backward, with averted gaze. 
 
 And hide the shame !" 
 
 The " Lost Occasion " expressed its riper and its 
 gentler judgment: — 
 
 " Too soon for us, too soon for thee. 
 Beside thy lonely Northern sea, 
 Where long and low the marsh-lands spread. 
 Laid wearily down thy august head. 
 
 Thou shouldst have lived to feel below 
 • Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow, — 
 
 The late-sprung mine that underlaid 
 Thy sad concessions vainly made. 
 
 Thou shouldst have seen from Sumter's wall 
 The star-flag of the Union fall, 
 And armed Kebellion pressing on 
 The broken lines of Washington ! 
 
 No stronger voice than thine had then 
 Called out the utmost might of men. 
 To make the Union's charter free 
 And strengthen law by liberty. 
 
 How had that stern arbitrament 
 To thy gray age youth's vigor lent. 
 Shaming ambition's paltry prize 
 Before thy disillusioned eyes ; 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 Breaking the spell about thee wound 
 Like the green -withes that Samson bound ; 
 Redeeming, in one effort grand, 
 Thyself and thy Imperilled land ! 
 
 Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee, 
 O sleeper by the Northern sea, 
 The gates of opportunity ! 
 God fills the gaps of human need, 
 Each crisis brings its word and deed. 
 
 Wise men and strong we did not lack ; 
 But still, with memory turning back. 
 In the dark hours we thought of thee. 
 And thy lone grave beside the sea." 
 
 But we must describe Charles Allen, and teU the story 
 of his life as it was. We must do justice to the heroic 
 courage which never quailed or flinched before the most 
 powerful antagonist that either Massachusetts or America 
 ever produced. 
 
 Judge Allen lived to see the triumph of the great cause 
 which he had espoused in its infancy and weakness. He 
 lived to see slavery abolished by the Thirteenth Amend- 
 ment to the Constitution. He lived to enjoy the respect 
 of the people of the Commonwealth, without distinction of 
 party or opinion. The dauntless advocate of libertj^, the 
 wise, learned and inflexible judge and stainless citizen, 
 received the only reward for which he cared, — the affection 
 and honor of good men everywhere. His private life had 
 been simple and frugal. He could say with John Milton, 
 " I am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment by 
 deformity of conduct, or the maxims of a freeman by the 
 actions of a slave ; but, by the grace of God, I have kept 
 my life unsullied." 
 
 During his second term in Congress, a proposal was 
 made to entrust the negotiation of a government loan for 
 paying the expenses of the Mexican War, and the sum to 
 be paid to Mexico as an equivalent for her cession of terri- 
 tory, to the Department of State, of which Mr. Webster 
 
51 
 
 was then the head. Judge Allen earnestly resisted this 
 proposition. He claimed that the well-known fact that 
 Mr. Webster was enabled to defray his large household 
 expenditure while he held office by contributions from 
 business men, largely brokers and bankers, unfitted him 
 for the discharge of the delicate duty of negotiating a loan 
 with them ; a transaction from which they might well 
 expect to derive a considerable profit. But he found no 
 support on either side of the House. 
 
 Mr. AUen left Congress, contrary to the earnest desires 
 of his constituents, at the end of his second tenn, on the 
 third of March, 1853. But he maintained his leadership 
 in the politics of Worcester County, and his large in- 
 fluence in the state, until he went upon the bench in 
 1858. He was a member of tlie Convention to revise 
 the Constitution in 1853, where he exerted a powerful 
 influence. The new constitution proposed by that con- 
 vention was rejected by the people ; but the volumes 
 containing its debates are full of interest. Some of 
 Mr. Allen's speeches wiU be found there reported. In 
 1854 the Know Nothing party, as it was called, whose 
 fundamental principle was the desire to exclude men of 
 foreign birth from the right to vote in this country, came 
 into power. It elected, in the autumn of 1854, the entire 
 State Government of Massachusetts, including every 
 member of the Senate, and every member of the House 
 but two representatives from the town of Northampton, 
 and the entire delegation in Congress. Many of Mr. 
 Allen's most prominent associates, including Henry Wilson, 
 yielded to the torrent, and either joined the new party, 
 which held its meetings in secret, or counselled against 
 any active resistance. But the whole movement was 
 repugnant to Charles Allen. He set his face steadfastly 
 against it from the first to the last. He addressed a little 
 company of followers, who gathered on the front seats in 
 the old City Hall, in a speech which I well remember. In 
 
52 
 
 the course of his speech he denounced the Know Nothing 
 movement, to whose principles and methods he was 
 earnestly opposed. He said, " Perhaps I am speaking too 
 boldly, but I learned to speak boldly a long time ago. I 
 will speak my sentiments in the face of any organization ; 
 or, if it does not show its face, though its secret mines are 
 beneath my feet, and unseen hands ready to apply the 
 match, I will declare those sentiments that a freeman is 
 bound to utter." The speech was filled with the powerful 
 and profound reasoning and the caustic wit which were 
 alike characteristic of Mr. Allen. The candidate of the 
 Republican party for Governor had himself joined the 
 Know Nothings, and was advocating the election of their 
 candidate and his own defeat. Mr. Allen's only allusion 
 to him was in a single sentence. He said to his audience, 
 "Fellow citizens, there is much in this campaign from 
 which you may take courage ; you have a very respectable 
 candidate for Lieutenant-Governor." He lived to take a 
 leading part, in the fall of 1857, in the movement for the 
 nomination of Gov. Banks, which led to the overthrow of 
 Know Nothing power in Massachusetts, and to the perma- 
 nent establishment of the rule of the Eepublican party. 
 
 The Know Nothing party carried to an unjustifiable 
 extreme its opposition to citizens of foreign birth. Its 
 political methods, especially the secrecy of its proceedings, 
 are not to be defended. As old Josiah Quincy well said 
 in a vigorous pamphlet, "The doom of the Republic is 
 sealed when the bats take the lead of the eagles." But 
 many persons who joined it cared little for its principles. 
 They did not mean to continue long in its ranks ; still less 
 to continue long in its practice of secrecy. But they 
 thought it an excellent weapon for the destruction of the 
 old parties, who stood in the way of the progress of free 
 principles. They thought if the old ground were cleared 
 and le^'elled, with whatever plough, they might get fresher 
 and better crops in future. Henry Wilson joined the 
 
53 
 
 part}' one year and abandoned it the next. He was the 
 candidate of the Kepublican party for Governor in 1854, 
 and did his best as a Know Nothing to defeat his own 
 election. Within twelve months Mr. Wilson had been 
 elected to the Senate of the United States and the Repub- 
 lican party had been organized. It came within a few 
 thousand votes of electing its Governor in the autumn of 
 1855. Most of the members of the Know Nothing party 
 returned to the Democratic party or joined the Republican 
 party in the presidential election of 1856. The autumn 
 of 1857 witnessed its final overthrow in Massachusetts. 
 It soon afterward disappeared. Mr. Wilson declared later 
 in life that his connection with that party was the fact in 
 his career which he most regretted, and that he would give 
 ten years of his life if he could wipe it out. 
 
 Mr. Allen took an active part in the formation of the 
 Republican party in 1854, which, however, got little 
 assistance from anybody but members of the old Free Soil 
 party, and was, in fact, but that party under another 
 name. In 1855 the attempt was renewed with greater 
 success, and with Mr. Allen's hearty concurrence. But in 
 that he found plenty of associates, and the course of events 
 soon brought a large majority of the people of the state 
 into that organization. 
 
 Mr. Allen presided at the great meeting in Worcester in 
 aid of the Free State settlers in Kansas, in the year 1856, 
 where he made a speech of great power, and where the 
 citizens of Worcester raised upward of ten thousand 
 dollars by voluntary contribution before leaving the hall. 
 He also presided at the great meeting in the City Hall to 
 express the public indignation at the assault on Charles 
 Sumner in 1856. But the work of convincing the con- 
 science and understanding of the people of Massachusetts 
 and of organizing its political forces had been thoroughly 
 done. Mr. Allen's last important service was in the great 
 
54 
 
 influence which he exerted in bringing about the nomina- 
 tion of Gov. Banks, in the autumn of 1857. 
 
 He understood well and knew how to apply in practical 
 life two of the most important texts of scripture, — the 
 verse, " We have this treasure in earthen vessels," and the 
 parable of the tares. I admit that both these are texts 
 dangerous of application by men of weak intelligence or 
 of weak moral sense. But to know when and how to 
 apply them is to know the secret of the difference between 
 a statesman and a fanatic. It is the secret of the difference 
 between success and failure. He knew well that when a 
 great cause is at stake, in the very crisis of battle, it is no 
 time to be criticising and carping at the faults or foibles 
 of the leader, so the battle be well ordered and the heart 
 of the leader be true. He understood, also, that often- 
 times in the life of all nations the tares cannot be uprooted 
 without destruction to the wheat, and that both must grow 
 together until the harvest. But he never flinched or 
 faltered or held back from striking his mortal blow at the 
 enemy who sowed them. 
 
 The relation of Charles Allen to the political revolution 
 in Massachusetts was like that of his kinsman, Sam 
 Adams, to the Revolution of 1775. He performed, with 
 signal ability and to the entire satisfaction of his associates 
 and of the people, every public duty which fell upon him. 
 But, besides and beyond this, he was a leader of leaders, — 
 a counsellor of counsellors. He had the gift of intellectual 
 ascendency over other minds, which, like that of Hamilton 
 and of Sam Adams, seemed to be more complete the abler 
 and more powerful the intellect on which his influence 
 was exerted. There were men in the days which preceded 
 the American Revolution more famous than Sam Adams. 
 To a superficial observation their words and actions seemed 
 to exert a greater influence on their contemporaries or on 
 posterity. Hancock and John Adams and James Otis in 
 Massachusetts, Patrick Henry and Jefferson and the other 
 
55 
 
 great Virginians, produced more striking effects by single 
 speeches or state papers than any which are recorded of 
 Sam Adams. But he furnished, even to them, counsel, 
 courage, decision, stimulant in great and difficult emer- 
 gencies. He was ever at the helm, or it was his word 
 that the helmsman obeyed. Ample proof of this statement 
 will be found in the writings of the greatest of his contem- 
 poi-aries. 
 
 The same thing is true of Charles Allen, in his relation 
 to the great political revolution which saved from slavery 
 the territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific and, 
 in the end, abolished slavery throughout the country. 
 Sumner and Palfrey and Charles Francis Adams sat at the 
 feet of Charles Allen and looked up to him as to an oracle 
 and guide. His unerring judgment never failed, his 
 courage never flinched. There cannot be found in his 
 history the record of a single mistake. 
 
 Another thing is specially to be remarked of the career 
 of Charles AUen ; that is, the wisdom with which he 
 selected the occasion when it was worth while to do battle. 
 He is not found criticising his associates or his opponents 
 for small personal faults. He never wasted his strength. 
 He knew how to distinguish what is essential from what is 
 non-essential. He never dealt his blows at antagonists who 
 were sure to destroy themselves if let alone, and never 
 gave battle when the result of the conflict was likely to be 
 unimportant or without influence upon the final result of 
 the war. He never destroyed the wheat with the tares. 
 He devoted himself to the great question, not to the small 
 question. He attacked the great antagonist and disre- 
 garded the mean antagonist. He struck his blow at the 
 Whig party in the height and flush of its triumph. He 
 attacked Daniel Webster in the fulness of his strength 
 and influence. He struck at the heart and his blow was 
 mortal. Other men, more conspicuous in the public eye, 
 have received a larger share of credit for their service in 
 
SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. GEORGE R HOAR, 
 
 OF HASSACHUSETTS, 
 
 DECEMBER 22, 1902, 
 
 AT THE BANQUET OF THE 
 
 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY, 
 
 OF PENNSYLVANIA, 
 
 AT PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 WASHINGTON D. C: 
 
 THE SAXTON PRINTING CO. 
 
 1903 
 
SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. GEORGE F. HOAR, 
 
 OF HASSACHUSETTS, 
 
 DECEMBER 22, 1902, 
 
 AT THE BANQUET OF THE 
 
 NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY, 
 
 OF PENNSYLVANIA, 
 
 AT PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 WASHINGTON D. C: 
 
 THE SAXTON PRINTING CO. 
 
 1903 
 
DECEMBER 22, 1902. 
 
 That would be a cold heart indeed, that were not stirred to its 
 depths by j'our kindly greeting. It has all the more value be- 
 cause I know that it comes wholly from your kindness, and not 
 from any deserving of mine. 
 
 It is certainly a great delight, as it is a great honor and privi- 
 lege, to unite with the dwellers in your famous and beautiful city, 
 when they celebrate the Pilgrims. How it may be with other 
 children I cannot tell. But the children of the Pilgrims love 
 their memory all the better, the more they are separated from 
 them by the space olhtime. 
 
 I suppose the men and women who are gathered about these 
 tables are here by right of a personal kindred with the Pilgrims 
 who came over with Bradford and Carver/ and Brewster; or the 
 Puritans who came over with Endicott or Winthrop. But Mas- 
 sachusetts can claim a property in Pennsylvania, and Boston can 
 claim a property in Philadelphia by the great inheritance of char- 
 acter. If our community had made no other contribution to 
 yours than Franklin and Horace Binney it would be enough 
 reason for inviting New England men to a place in any great 
 festival here. 
 
 But New England, the birth-place of American liberty, as has 
 been said already, has also its peculiar relation to the birth-place 
 of Independence. It was here, from 1774 to 1787, and again 
 from 1789 to 1801, when Independence was won, when the Con- 
 stitution was framed, when the great administrations of Washing- 
 ton and John Adams inaugurated the Constitution, that the men 
 
of New England did their great work. Here Hancock signed 
 his name in letters visible across the broad Atlantic. Here John 
 Adams — the Colossus of debate — vindicated the Declaration 
 against the hesitation of its opponents by his invincible argument. 
 Here Sam Adams — king of men — controlled the greatest intel- 
 lects of his time by his wise, broad and prevailing counsel. Here 
 Ellsworth led the SenateandJ^rara^ ^^liJ^^ii^Z-^^' ^^^^ 
 John Adams took the chair as VicePresident of the/Senate. 
 Here, later, he was clothed with the Presidential office/^ Here he 
 commissioned Marshal. Here he incurred the resentment of his 
 own party by sending the envoys which saved the infant Republic 
 from war with France. Here the matchless argument and elo- 
 quence of Fisher Ames saved the good faith and honor of the 
 Republic. 
 
 After the sufferings of the voyage, and after the first terrible 
 winter, when of the hundred and one there were but seven at one 
 time able to care for the sick and dying, and more than half the 
 company died, yet not one went back to England in the ship in 
 the spring, the life of our fathers and mothers was not, in general, 
 one of physical hardship. Indeed, our luxuries were their com- 
 mon food. Wild geese, and wild turkeys, and wild ducks, veni- 
 son, and Cotuit oysters (our brethren of Connecticut, who were 
 then stricter in their theology than we were in Massachusetts, pre- 
 ferred "Bluepoints"), and harbor clams, and lobsters and salmon 
 and shad, and brook trout, and every variety of fish, all the fowls of 
 air, and all the fish of the stream and the pond and the sea, and 
 berries and Indian corn were abundant on their tables. They 
 were in constant danger of the wild beast and the savage until 
 the end of King Philip's war in August, 1 676. Every mother 
 in New England must have suffered the agony of daily and 
 nightly terror for herself and her children. There were, it is 
 said, ten thousand warriors organized by King Philip, who could 
 issue out in little bands at any point from the forest to attack set- 
 tlements extending over a large part of Connecticut, and Rhode 
 Island, and Massachusetts, from the mouth of the Penobscot to 
 New Haven, containing, all told, only about eighty thousand 
 people. King Philip was an able and adroit savage. His plan 
 
for the extermination of the white man was cunningly conceived. 
 It was baffled only by the heroic and adventurous courage and 
 skill of men, themselves disciplined by life in the forest, led by 
 men trained in the great military school of which Cromwell was 
 master. 
 
 The chief sorro-w^ and suffering of the Pilgrim came from the 
 fact that he was an exile. I do not believe that any man or 
 woman who stayed at home in England, loved her with a more 
 intense affection than these men who had left her for conscience's 
 sake. Her beautiful fields, her hills and valleys, her rivers, 
 with their very names so full of music, her stately homes, were 
 dear to these men. They had been born and bred to a gentle 
 life. There were more college-bred men in Massachusetts, and 
 in Plymouth, by far, than could be found in any territory of like 
 extent and population in England. The suffering that they 
 encountered, that their children might live free, was suffering of 
 the spirit and not of the body. 
 
 It once occurred to me that we could not be sure that it is an 
 undiluted honor to be invited to speak in eulogy of our Pilgrim 
 fathers and mothers on an occasion like this. Have you ever 
 reflected, Mr. President, that the chief eulogists of the Pilgrim, since 
 we began to celebrate this anniversary, have been, almost without 
 exception, the men who had the least of the Pilgrim or the 
 Puritan element in them, men who would not have been exiles, 
 or reformers, or Pilgrims, under any provocation whatever. 
 
 Webster and Choate, and Everett and Winthrop have paid 
 tribute to the Pilgrims better than any one else. They were 
 great and useful men in their time. But they were all absolutely 
 devoted to maintaining the existing order of things. But would 
 not the Pilgrim have been a failure if that were not true ? The 
 social order which was the result of the suffering the Pilgrim 
 endured was a social order fit to be maintained. 
 
 We best honor the Pilgrim when we reverently preserve and 
 cherish the State which was the work of his hands. " Mere 
 martyrdom," as was well said by a bright woman, "is generally a 
 fault, and always a failure. Martyrdom is bearing witness. It is 
 a testimony given under the highest sanction known to humanity, 
 
when the man beareth witness with blood, or life, or with what 
 is dearer than heart's blood or life. ' But if the witness be not be- 
 lieved in his own time, or by later generations — of which his 
 blood is the seed— then the martyr, though his courage be as 
 lofty as ever bore the rack, or his soul be as pure as that of an 
 archangel, is a failure and his memory will perish from among 
 men. The exile has suffered in vain if the State he has founded 
 in the wilderness is fit only to produce other exiles. 
 
 The glory of the Pilgrim is that his testimony has been be- 
 lieved and has prevailed. The cause in which he gave it has 
 been won. The verdict has been agreed upon and rendered. 
 Posterity has established it by its mighty and irrevocable judg- 
 ment. 
 
 The Martyrs of Despotism in all ages have been as brave and 
 dauntless as the Martyrs of Liberty. Gerald, the assasin of Wil- 
 liam the Silent, was as sure that he was doing the will of God as 
 was his victim. He met his death and the terrible torture which 
 preceded it with a courage as undaunted as any hero in history. 
 He fortified himself for his crime by reading the Bible, and by 
 fasting and prayer, and then, full of religious exaltation, dream- 
 ing of angels and of Paradise, he departed for Delf Completing 
 his duty as a good Catholic and faithful subject, he was con- 
 demned to have his hand enclosed in a tube, seared with a red-hot 
 iron, and to be torn to pieces with burning pinchers. He showed 
 no sign of terror, no sorrow or surprise. Fixing his dauntless 
 eye on his judges, he repeated with steady face his customary 
 words, " Ecce homo." 
 
 The Moslem, the Indian, the Hindoo, meet torture and death 
 with a courage as dauntless as that of the Pilgrim. But the 
 Pilgrim died in the cause of civil and religious liberty, and he 
 won his cause. He encountered exile and death that he might 
 found a State in the government of which every man should have 
 his equal share, and a Church where no human authority might 
 interpose between the soul and its Maker. The State he founded 
 is here, three centuries afterward. It possesses a continent. It 
 gives law to a hemisphere. Within the domain of that State the 
 soul is free. The principles of the Pilgi'im pervade the conti- 
 
iient, and are pervading the planet. As the child who goes out, 
 poor and obscure, from his birth-place to seek his fortune, comes 
 back again successful, and honored, and enriched, to the parental 
 dwelling, so the principles of civil liberty under constitutional 
 restraint, which have possessed the American continent from 
 Hudson Bay to Cape Horn, have crossed the Atlantic again to 
 possess the countries of their origin. England is almost a Re- 
 public in everything but name. France, after two failures, has 
 become a permanent member of the family of Free States. In 
 Southern and Oriental Seas, where the adventurous ships of our 
 fathers, long after the American Constitution had been framed, 
 found nothing but barbarism and brutalit>-, the gi^eat Australasian 
 Commonwealths are rising in splendor and glory, to take, at no 
 distant time, a foremost place in the faniih- of self-governing na- 
 tions. Japan — that miracle of the East — declared, when she 
 celebrated, last year, her redemption from age-long barbarism, that 
 she owes everything she is to us, 
 
 I do not think that the Pilgrim history will ever be repeated. 
 It will not be easy to find the Pilgrim. And in the next place it 
 will not be eas\- no\\', with the telegraph, and the telephone, and 
 steam, and electricity, to find the wilderness. And if we can find 
 one, we want it all for the anarchist. 
 
 This is the one stor>' to which, for us, or for our children, noth- 
 ing in human annals may be cited for parallel or comparison, save 
 the story of Bethlehem. There is none other told under Heaven, 
 or among men, like the stor\- of tlie Pilgrim. Upon this rock is 
 founded our house. Let the rains descend, and the floods come, 
 and the winds blow and beat upon that house, it shall not fall. 
 The saying of our prophet — our Daniel — is fulfilled. The sons 
 of the Pilgrims have crossed the Mississippi and possess the 
 shores of the Pacific. The tree our fathers set covered at first 
 but a 'little space by the seaside. It has planted its banyan 
 branches in the ground. It has spread along the Lakes. It has 
 girdled the Gulf It has spanned the Mississippi. It has covered 
 the prairie and the plain. The sweep of its lofty arches rises over 
 the Rock^• Mountains, and the Cascades, and the Nevadas. Its 
 hardy growth shelters the frozen region of the far Northwest 
 
8 
 
 Its boughs hang over the Pacific. So far — so far, it has carried 
 its blessing with it. Self-government, civil and religious freedom, 
 the Compact of the Majrflower, the Declaration of Independence, 
 the American State, the American Home, the American Consti- 
 tution — these have gone with it, and in good time — in good 
 time — it will send its roots beneath the waves, and receive under 
 its canopy the islands of the sea. 
 
 " Branching so broad and long, that in the ground 
 The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow 
 About the mother tree, a pillared shade 
 High over-arched, and echoing walks between." 
 
 These shall go with it also — self-government, civil and religious 
 freedom, the Compact of the Mayflower, the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, the American State, the American Home, the American 
 Constitution — these shall go with it as its shadow. 
 
 American freedom, American self-government, the American 
 home, the American Constitution — these shall follow the Amer- 
 ican flag till they cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. 
 Wherever the son of the Pilgrim goes he will carry with him 
 what the Pilgrim brought from Leyden, the love of liberty, rev- 
 erence for law, trust in God — a living God — belief in a personal 
 immortality, the voice of conscience in the soul, a heart open to 
 the new truth which ever breaketh from the bosom of the Word. 
 His inherited instinct for the building of States will be as sure 
 as that of the bee for building her cell or the eagle his nest. 
 
 I am no blind worshipper of the Past.- I do not believe that 
 Renown and Grace are dead. I am no pessimist or alarmist. I 
 am certainly no misanthropist. While there are many men who 
 have served their country better in their generation than I have 
 in mine, I yield to no man in love for the Republic, or in pride 
 in my country, and in my countrymen who are making to-day 
 her honorable history. We may err in our day. Our fathers 
 erred in theirs. Yet our generation is better than those who went 
 before it. The coming generations will be better than we are. 
 The Republic where every man has his share in the government 
 is better than the monarchy, or the oligarchy, or the aristocracy. 
 Our Republic is better than any other Republic. To-day is better 
 
9 
 
 than yesterday, and to-morrow will be better than to-day. But while 
 each generation has its own virtues, each generation has its own 
 dangers, and its own mistakes, and its own shortcomings. 
 
 The difference between the generations of any country with a 
 history is commonly not one of principle, but of emphasis. The 
 doctrine of 1 776, when we won our independence, planted our 
 country on the eternal principles of equality of individuals and of 
 nations in political rights, and declared that no man and no people 
 had the right to judge of the fitness of any other for self-govern- 
 ment. In 1 787 the Constitution was builded on the doctrine that 
 there were domains within which the Government had no right 
 to enter, and that there powers which the people would not com- 
 mit to any authority, State or National. The doctrine of 1861 
 and the }ears which followed, declared the natural right of ever}' 
 man to his own freedom, whatever might be his race or color ; 
 and the natural right of every man to make his dwelling wherever 
 on the face of the earth he might think fit. These truths will, 
 perhaps, be accepted to-day as generally as they were accepted 
 then. But if accepted at all they are accepted by the intellect 
 only, and not by the heart. They are not much talked about, 
 except to ridicule them, to refine about them, or to find some 
 plausible reason why they should not be applied. 
 
 The orator of to-day puts his emphasis on Glory, on Empire, 
 on Power, on Wealth. We live under, and love, and we will 
 shed our heart's blood for the same flag which floated over our 
 fathers, and for which they were ready to die. But it sometimes 
 seems that the flag has a different meaning, whether it float over 
 the Capitol, or the ship-of-war, or the regiment on the march, or 
 the public assembly. We no longer speak of it, except coldl)- 
 and formally, as the symbol of Liberty ; but only as the symbol 
 of power, or of a false, cheap, tinsel glory. 
 
 I think the popular reverence for Washington, and L,incoln, 
 and for Sumner, and for Webster is not abated. But few political 
 speakers quote to-day the great sentences which made them so 
 famous, or the great principles to which they devoted their lives. 
 Justice Harlan, a noble Kentuckian and brave soldier, as well 
 as a great Judge, said in a speech to the Loyal Legion, that "the 
 
10 
 
 heart of the North had grown cold toward the millions of bonds- 
 men whose chains it had broken." I heard an eminent Repub- 
 lican Senator say, not long ago, that he was sorry that we had 
 ever abolished slavery. 
 
 But all these things are temporary, and superficial, and cuta- 
 neous. The great heart of the American people beats to-day, as 
 ever, for Justice and Liberty. There are times of profound peace 
 and unbroken prosperity, when it seems to the unreflecting view 
 as if everything that was noble had gone from the character of 
 the American people. But it is a grievous mistake. Mr. Choate, 
 as you remember, wrote to a friend out of the country, in 1855 : 
 " Your estate 'is gracious, that keeps you out of our politics. Any- 
 thing more low, obscene, feculent, the manifold oceanic heavings 
 of history have not cast up. We shall come to the worship of 
 onions, cats, and things vermiculate." Yet six years later the 
 lofty summons came, and the heroic youth of 1861 answered the 
 call. The American people have never cared permanently, and, 
 in their hearts, for military glorj'^; and have never, in their 
 hearts, been greedy for mere empire. 
 
 The War of 1812 brought great glory to the Nation. It was 
 crowded with Naval victories. It won for as the freedom of the 
 seas. But there is no statesman who had anything to do with 
 the War of 1812 that is remembered now for the share he had in 
 it. That war left us but one name which may fairly be called 
 illustrious in our military history — the name of Andrew Jackson. 
 And the glory of New Orleans has been, I think, eclipsed by the 
 glory of putting down Nullification. 
 
 The War with Mexico won for us a great addition to our Em- 
 pire, and the dominion of the Pacific. Yet the two Generals who 
 won fame in that war, while both did their full duty as soldiers, 
 both were opposed in opinion to the war. The statesmen of that 
 day, who brought on the war with Mexico, are almost wholly for- 
 gotten now, while Webster and Sumner, and Clay and Benton 
 and Corwin hold their places in the affection of the people and 
 shine with an undiminished luster. When Theodore Roosevelt 
 chose his hero for the imitation of the youth of America he 
 passed by Polk and Pierce, and Buchanan and Gushing, and the 
 
11 
 
 other statesmen who brought on the Mexican War. He took 
 Benton for his example, who gave up power and office and popu- 
 larity to protest against it. 
 
 I have sometimes wondered if William Bradford and Brewster, 
 and John Robinson and Carver, and Winthrop ever celebrate the 
 landing of the Pilgrims in the world where they are now dwell- 
 ing. If they do, I wonder who will be invited to the banquet ! 
 Who of later generations will be thought worthy to sit by their 
 side and share the ambrosia of their recollections, and the nectar 
 of their converse? It will be an exclusive society. It will be 
 the very aristocracy of martyrdom. Washington will be there, of 
 course, and Sam Adams and L,aurens, and Nathan Hale and Lin- 
 coln, and Sumner. With all their faults, they will be glad to 
 see Corwin and old Tom Benton, and Garrison. Toussaint 
 L'Ouverture, who died in a French dungeon for the liberty of his 
 race, will be there. They invite colored men to dinner in that 
 world. Lafayette, who endured the Austrian dungeon for the 
 liberty of the world, will be of the company. Napoleon could 
 not get in, even in company with the dogs, to lick up the crumbs 
 that fall from the table. The deep, sweet voice of Kossuth, the 
 Hungarian exile, orator of two worlds, will be heard there. 
 
 I will not undertake to say who of men now living would be 
 counted worthy of that illustrious company. Of living men it 
 would be presumptuous to speak. But perhaps some of those 
 who, in the death struggle of the little Republic in South Africa, 
 did the best fighting that this world has seen since Thermopylae, 
 will be there. Mabini, the author of the State papers which 
 compare with those of our fathers — which won the admiration of 
 Lord Chatham — and of whom I hope our Republic is not afraid, 
 that we keep him in exile at Guam, will be welcome, to discuss 
 with John Winthrop the true boundary between liberty and 
 authority in the State. 
 
 But this hour is consecrated to patriotic memories, and to filial 
 love. We are a company of brethren celebrating our Mother's 
 birthday. Let us not dwell on the faults or mistakes of each 
 other. Our Pilgrim and Puritan fathers and mothers were men 
 and women. They had the faults of men and women. But they 
 
12 
 
 are to us the noblest men and women that ever lived. Our coun- 
 trymen to-day are men and women. They have the faults of 
 men and women. Yet our country is to us the best and the 
 noblest country the earth ever saw, at its best and noblest day. 
 Let us rather remember how we took Cuba by the hand and de- 
 livered her from her age-long bondage ; how we led hesitating 
 and halting Europe to the relief of her imprisoned Ambassadors 
 in China ; how we are at this moment holding our mighty shield 
 over beleaguered Venezula, while Theodore Roosevelt says to 
 imperial England and haughty Germany: "Thus far shall you 
 come, and no farther, and here shall your proud fleets be stayed." 
 Surely that tree is for the healing of the nations, beneath whose 
 shadow sixteen Republics are dwelling in safety and peace. 
 
 The teaching of this Pilgrim celebration for us is, that our 
 country can be great and noble only as she listens to the Pilgrim 
 voice and learns the Pilgrim lesson: "Righteousness exalteth a 
 Nation. He that saveth his life shall lose it." Let us have Lib- 
 erty, if we have to go into exile to get it. Let us have Justice, 
 though we must dwell in the wilderness to enjoy it Let us obey 
 God's voice, if we must meet death in his service." Or rather, 
 "Where Liberty is, there can be no exile. Where Justice is, 
 there can be no wilderness. Where God is, there can be no death." 
 
WASHINGTON 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 UNION LEAGUE OLIJB 
 
 OF CHICAGO 
 
 BT 
 
 GfiORGE R HOAR, 
 
 FEBRUARY 23, 1903. 
 
 PBEB8 07 aiBSON BB08., 
 
 ISth akd Fbhita. Avit. 
 
 1903. 
 
WASHINGTON 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BEFOEE THE 
 
 UNION LEAGUE CLUB 
 
 OF CHICAGO 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR, 
 
 FEBRUAEY 23, 1903. 
 
 'Wnsifinsttsn, S. ffl. 
 
 PRESS OF GIBSON BBOS. 
 13th ahd Pbnna. Avk. 
 
 1903. 
 
 H 
 ^ 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 There is no man living anywhere, with whatever honors his 
 life may have been crowned, to whom it would not be an 
 added honor to be invited to address this brilliant company 
 in this famous city on this historic anniversary. 
 
 Chicago is conspicuous among the great cities of the world 
 for many things. In two things she stands unrivalled. 
 
 Great as she is to-day, wonderful as has been her past, 
 yet she is, beyond all other communities, the city of the 
 future. She may well look forward with an assured and 
 sober confidence to the time when the scepter, which passed 
 away from Rome, shall pass away from London also, and 
 shall be within her grasp. 
 
 Chicago is foremost among v^erican cities, foremost, so far 
 as I know, among the cities of the world, in the great virtue 
 of public spirit. If we can judge by the report of her, the 
 citizen of Chicago seems to feel, to a degree not found else- 
 where, that her honor is his honor, that her prosperity is 
 his prosperity, and that aU he is and has is at her service. 
 It is of this temper that civic greatness is born. 
 
 Yet to a people having the right that you have to be 
 proud of their present, and looking forward as you do with 
 a confident courage and hope to^ a great hereafter, there is a 
 peculiar and special danger. That is the danger of Pro- 
 vincialism, the danger of that spirit which is impatient of 
 the authority of the past, and of the contemporary opinion 
 of mankind. Self-satisfaction, disregard of tradition and 
 precedent and authority, pride in being a law to themselves, 
 these are the besetting sins of successful and self-made 
 
men who have achieved fortune and greatness rapidly. 
 They are hkely to be the besetting sins also of cities and of 
 States and Nations that have achieved greatness and suc- 
 cess, as you have, mth a Avonderful rapidity. 
 
 There is no Provincialism like the Provincialism which 
 confines a man to his own time. There is no intel- 
 lectual dullness like the intellectual dullness which comes 
 from the contentment of an absolute self-satisfaction. 
 There is no man and no community so certain of failure as 
 the man or the community to which the past can speak no 
 lesson. But, on the other hand, reverence for the past, a 
 mind open to the lessons taught by other countries and other 
 places, which are in some sort to all of us as a posterity, 
 make even an Insular and Provincial nature Continental 
 and Imperial. 
 
 So, gentlemen, it is a sign of profoundest wisdom, it is an 
 admirable augury of happiest omen to Chicago, that this 
 influential Society selects the birthday of George Washington 
 for special commemoration, and means to keep his hnea- 
 ments and character before her people, especially before her 
 youth. 
 
 It is well that such a community still makes the birth- 
 day of Washington its great anniversary. Washington, 
 too, did his work well in his own time. He was not without 
 proper respect for ancestry, and proper care for posterity. 
 But he did not dwell too much on either. He was thinking 
 always of the duty which was present and at hand. As 
 Emerson said of him: "He was up to the top of his boots in 
 his own meadow." 
 
 I have sometimes thought that we might improve some- 
 what our method of celebrating the birthdays of our heroes 
 and statesmen. Instead of inviting some liAdng orator, 
 let us, as near as may be, invite the man himself to the cele- 
 bration. If the people are considering some question in- 
 
volving the public ^yelfare, or the fate of the republic, or 
 what, if not the same thing, are higher and dearer yet, the 
 honor and the conscience of the Republic, let some faithful 
 searcher gather ever3i;hing the man we would honor has 
 left us on that subject in the way of example or of precept. 
 If the question be whether we shall enter upon a career of 
 foreign dominion, let us celebrate Washington's birthday 
 by recalling what he said on that subject. If the 
 question be what constitutes lawful reason for war; or 
 what is the duty of good citizenship when the country is 
 in a war in which it is ■wrong ; or what are the rights which 
 belong everywhere to that being which we call a people; or 
 what is the line of distinction between power and right, 
 when a strong nation has to deal with a weak one; or whether 
 it be lawful for one people to subdue another to its will; 
 what consent of the governed, if any, be necessary to the 
 exercise of just powers of government; whether there can 
 be taxation rightfully without representation; whether men 
 may be lawfully held in a State as subjects and not citizens — 
 would it not be well, on Abraham Lincoln's birthday, to 
 gather everj^thing he said on those subjects, and what he 
 did when charged with public responsibilities? Would it 
 not be well on Webster's birthday, to caU him up to bear his 
 testimony as in visible presence; or, on Jefferson's birth- 
 day, to hear what he had to say about it; or, on Sumner's 
 birthday, to listen again to the counsel of that dauntless 
 and righteous spirit? In that way the silent lips of the 
 mighty dead will seem ever speaking their high commands 
 to their countrymen. In that way every generation will 
 still Uve, and Washington and Webster and Lincoln may 
 still always be present on the spots with which they were 
 familiar in life, still sitting, still deliberating, still debating. 
 But I will not run that risk to-day. Washington's own 
 words, far better than my own, would be undoubtedly his 
 
most fitting memorial. But I might be thought to convey 
 by indirection a condemnation of some thing or somebody 
 which might be thought out of place in a celebration from 
 which current politics are supposed to be banished. 
 
 There is one unerring test of true greatness, whether in 
 literature, or in science, or thought, or action, or character. 
 That is, that it seems to be cotemporaneous with, all the 
 generations. The Hebrew Scriptures, the essays of Bacon, 
 the plays of Shakespeare, Homer, and Virgil, and Dante, the 
 character and glory of Alfred and Lincoln and Franklin, 
 Plato, and Socrates, and Cicero, and the Declaration of 
 Independence, speak to us to-day freshly, and without 
 loss of effect by reason of remoteness of time. They would 
 have made a like impression in the time of the Hebrew or 
 the Greek, or the Roman Commonwealth. They will speak 
 with like effect hereafter in all coming time to any gen- 
 eration that hath ears to hear. 
 
 That is conspicuously true of Washington. If you were 
 to read of him in Plutarch there would be no sense that he 
 was out of place. He would still be the most perfect of 
 Plutarch's men. If you were to read of him on the page 
 that tells the story of Alfred or the Bruce, or St. Louis 
 of France, or the greatest and best of the men of the Hebrew 
 Commonwealth, there would be no feeling that he did not 
 belong to his age, but only that there was a better and 
 purer and greater Alfred or Bruce or St. Louis or Hebrew 
 Monarch. So I believe there never will be a period in all 
 coming time when a character like that of Washington will 
 excite a sense of incongruity, or of antiquity, but only the 
 natural feeling that a character of supreme excellence has 
 been bestowed by God upon man. 
 
 It is the great good fortune of the people of America, 
 especially of the youth of America, that we have for our 
 National hero a character whom they can take as a model 
 
of behavior in every condition, every transaction, every 
 occupation in life. I cannot think of any question of 
 morality, of courtesy, or noble and elevated behavior, of 
 expediency in the conduct of doubtful and difficult affairs, 
 which a young man or an old man could not safely answer 
 by asking himself and telling himself what George Wash- 
 ington would have done in a like case. I do not know of 
 any other nation on earth that possesses or has possessed 
 such a model. 
 
 I need not dwell upon the vast advantage of such an ex- 
 ample over a mere lifeless code of general rules for the con- 
 duct of life. Indeed it is not necessary to remind you here 
 and in this presence that the Author of our religion has 
 directed that mankind be taught Christian principles and 
 Christian character by a great Exemplar. The power of 
 the great religious orders in the great churches, a power 
 which is among the wonders of history, is due largely to the 
 example of the saints who founded them, or for whom they 
 are named. 
 
 Now in claiming for George Washington that he was an 
 example of all excellence which the American youth may 
 with safety take as his model of character and conduct for 
 every condition and every transaction in life, do not let 
 me be suspected of falling into our National habit of ex- 
 aggeration. I wish to cite a few tributes from, if not hos- 
 tile, at least impartial sources of the highest authority. 
 
 There is no time to-day to cite much of the overwhelming 
 and conciurent testimony of great Englishmen, statesmen, 
 and writers of history, and of great authorities on the Con- 
 tinent, to the primacy of George Washington among man- 
 kind. The only name likely to be thought of anywhere 
 for parallel or comparison is that in whose glory we also 
 have an inherited title to share — that of Alfred. 
 
 We need have no misgivings about Washington. By 
 
8 
 
 this time, more than a century from his death, his life at 
 home and in pubhc is well known. The case is all in. 
 
 "Whatever record leap to light, he never shall be shamed." 
 
 The youth of America need not depend on American 
 authority for an estimate of this supreme and faultless 
 character. The great historians of other countries are 
 not behind ours in their tributes to his greatness. Earl 
 Russell said of him : 
 
 "Without the genius of Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bona- 
 parte, he has a far purer fame, as his ambition was of a 
 higher and holier nature. In modern history no man had 
 done such great things without the soil of selfishness or the 
 stain of a groveling ambition. Caesar, Cromwell, Napo- 
 leon, attained a higher elevation, but the love of dominion 
 was the spur that drove them on. John Hampden, Wil- 
 liam Russell, Algernon Sydney, may have had motives 
 as pure, and an ambition as unstained; but they fell. To 
 George Washington nearly alone in modern times has it 
 been given to accomplish a wonderful revolution, and yet 
 to remain to all future times the theme of a people's grati- 
 tude, and an example of virtuous and beneficent power." 
 
 Lord Erskine, the greatest of English advocates, in- 
 scribed one of his works to Washington, declaring, "You 
 are the only being for whom I have an awful reverence." 
 Charles James Fox said of him in the House of Commons, 
 "The illustrious man before whom all borrowed great- 
 ness sinks into insignificance." Lord Brougham, at the 
 close of his public life, repeated the estimate he had given 
 near the beginning of it: "Until time shall be no more, 
 will a test of the progress which our race has made in wis- 
 dom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the 
 immortal name of Washington." And again, at another 
 time. Lord Brougham says, "Washington was the greatest 
 man of our own or any age." 
 
At another time Fox says of him : " A character of vir- 
 tues so happily tempered by one another, and so wholly un- 
 alloyed with any vices as that of Washington is hardly to 
 be fovmd on the pages of history." 
 
 Mr. Green, the author of the history of the English 
 people, says of him: 
 
 " No nobler figure ever stood in the forefront of a nation's 
 life. Washington was grave and courteous in address; 
 his manners were simple and unpretending; his silence and 
 the serene calmness of his temper spoke of a perfect self- 
 masterj'. But there was little in his outer bearing to reveal 
 the grandeur of soul which lifts his figure with all the simple 
 majesty of an ancient statue out of the smaller passions and 
 meaner impulses of the world around him. It was only 
 as the weary fight went on that the colonists discovered, 
 however slowly and imperfectly, the greatness of their 
 leader, his clear judgment, his heroic endurance, his silence 
 under difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger or 
 defeat, the patience with which he waited, the quickness 
 and hardness with which he struck, the lofty and serene 
 sense of duty that never swerved from its task through 
 resentment or jealousy, that never through war or peace 
 felt the touch of a meaner ambition, that knew no aim save 
 that of guarding the freedom of his fellow countrymen, and 
 no personal longing save that of returning to his own fire- 
 side when their freedom was secured. It was almost un- 
 consciously that men learned to cling to Washington with 
 a trust and faith such as few other men have won, and to 
 regard him with a reverence which still hushes us in pres- 
 ence of his memory." 
 
 No other man uttered the best thought of Scotland as 
 it was uttered by Robert Burns. When somebody in his 
 presence proposed the health of Pitt, I think then Prime 
 Minister, Burns said, " I give the health of a better man, 
 George Washington." This was not very long after Burns 
 
10 
 
 had given, during the American War, the toast, " May our 
 success in the present war be equal to the justice of our 
 cause." , 
 
 Count Herzburg, for thirty years Frederick the Great's 
 famous minister of foreign affairs said, that "Washington 
 surpassed men in his great virtues and qualities, even the 
 most celebrated of antiquity. 
 
 Lord Byron's tribute is well known: 
 
 Where may the wearied eye repose 
 
 When gazing on the great, 
 Where neither guilty glory glows 
 
 Nor despicable state? 
 Yes, One, the first, the last, the best. 
 The Cincinnatus of the West 
 
 Whom Envy dared not hate, 
 Bequeathed the name of Washington, 
 To make men blush there was but one. 
 
 "No one who has not been in England can have a just 
 idea of the admiration expressed among all parties for 
 General Washington. It is a common observation that 
 he is not only the most illustrious, but the most meri- 
 torious character that has yet appeared." 
 Rufus King to General Hamilton, 1797. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone said that Washington was the purest 
 figure in history. He declares: 
 
 "If, among all the pedestals supplied by history for 
 pubUc characters of extraordinary nobility and purity, 
 I saw one higher than all the rest, and if I were required, 
 at a moment's notice, to name the fittest occupant for it, 
 I think my choice, at any time during the last forty- 
 five years, would have lighted, and it would now light, 
 upon Washington." 
 
 Talleyrand said of him: 
 
 "His fame is bej-ond comparison with that of others." 
 
11 
 
 Even China has placed in his monument a stone which 
 declares: "Can any man of ancient or modern times fail 
 to pronounce "Washington peerless?" 
 
 I will add one other tribute of exquisite beauty, from an 
 American source. It is from the most fastidious of critics, 
 Eisher Ames: 
 
 "Consider for a moment, what a reputation it was; 
 such as no man ever before possessed by so clear a title, 
 and in so high a degree. His fame seemed in its purity 
 to exceed even its brightness. Ofhce took honor from his 
 acceptance, but conferred none. Ambition stood awed 
 and darkened by his shadow. For where, through the 
 wide earth, was the man so vain as to dispute precedence 
 with him; or what were the honors that could make the 
 possessor Washington's superior? Refined and complex 
 as the ideas of virtue are, even the gross could discern in 
 his hfe the infinite superiority of her rewards. Mankind 
 perceived some change in their ideas of greatness; the 
 splendor of power, and even of the name of conqueror, 
 had grown dim in their eyes. They did not know that 
 Washington could augment his fame; but they knew and 
 felt that the world's wealth, and its empire, too, would 
 be a bribe far beneath his acceptance." 
 Works of Fisher Ames, Vol. 2, p. 78. 
 
 Probably no American pubhc man of Washington's 
 time — certainly none who deserved the name of states- 
 man — differed so entirely in character, mental traits, and 
 political opinion from Washington as Thomas Jefferson. 
 Jefferson left the Cabinet of his great chief of his own ac- 
 cord to become the leader of the party opposed to his 
 pohcies — a party which took possession of the government 
 four years after Washington's retirement and a little more 
 than one year after Washington's death. But Jefferson, 
 late in his own life, when it was suggested to him that the 
 
12 
 
 fame of Washington might lessen with the lapse of years, 
 looked up to the sky and answered: "Washington's fame 
 will go on increasing until the brightest constellation in 
 yonder heavens is called by his name." 
 
 So we have the right to say of him as the old Monk 
 said of King Arthur: 
 
 "The Old World knows not his peer, nor will the future 
 show us his equal ; he alone towers over other kings, better 
 than the past ones, and greater than those that are to be." 
 
 If you wish to make a study of this great man you will 
 do well not to confine yourselves to any one biography. 
 When you have read carefully the best lives of Washington 
 you will have become famihar not only with the greatest 
 human character in history, but with a historic epoch of 
 large and enduring influence upon the destinies of mankind. 
 Several historians of great distinction and of great variety 
 of intellectual quality, but all of the first rank, have made the 
 life of Washington their theme. You will do well to study 
 them all, perhaps to study them all at the same time. 
 When you deal with a great event, political or mihtary, it 
 may be well to have the narrative of it as told by each of 
 these authors in the mind at the same time. 
 
 The first of these in the order of time, as in intellectual 
 rank, is the life of Washington by John Marshall, the great 
 Chief Justice of the United States. Marshall was a grave 
 and serious-minded man, indifferent to the graces of style, 
 or to the art by which an author entertains "his readers 
 and relieves the tediousness of a narrative without depart- 
 ing from sobriety and propriety. His account of Washing- 
 ton's early Hfe and the military transactions of the Revolu- 
 tionary war are lacking in spirit and picturesqueness, 
 although absolutely trustworthy, as the character of the 
 narrator would make us sure. Marshall's account of the 
 political history of the country from the close of the Revolu- 
 tion to Washington's death in 1799, is that of a very great 
 
13 
 
 statesman and Constitutional lawyer who himself had a 
 large share in the transactions of which he has to tell. No 
 other man who ever lived was so capable of understanding 
 the great principles settled in that day, on which the en- 
 during foundations of the Republic are builded. He en- 
 joyed Washington's fullest confidence. He belonged to 
 Washington's own State. He was a leader in the legisla- 
 ture of Virginia, where the struggles were almost as impor- 
 tant as those in either House of Congress. He was one of 
 the leaders in the Virginia Convention that adopted the 
 Constitution, a convention on whose decision the fate of 
 the Constitution largely depended. Washington offered 
 him a seat in his Cabinet, which he declined. He offered 
 him the place of Envoy to France, which he declined. He 
 was afterward a member of Congress, Secretary of State 
 and, as you know, Chief Justice of the United States for 
 thirty-four years. It is hardly too much to say that but for 
 his great judgments the Constitution of the United States 
 could not successfully have worked in practice as a mecha- 
 nism of government. But as is commonly the case with 
 biographies written so near the lifetime of the subject, the 
 author had not access to a great deal of the material which 
 afterward came to light, necessary for a perfect execution 
 of his task. 
 
 Jared Sparks, the editor of Washington's writings in 
 twelve volumes, and also the author of a life, is perhaps 
 unequaled among our historic investigators in the unerring 
 accuracy of historic judgment. He lacks grace of style, 
 enthusiasm, spirit and imagination. But he was the most 
 conscientious and industrious of investigators. He had 
 access not only to Washington's own papers but to the 
 family papers of a great many of his contemporaries. He 
 rummaged the National archives and those of most if 
 not all of the old thirteen States, and he knew well what 
 was important and what was unimportant. He sticks to 
 
14 
 
 his fact like a mathematician. What he says is true is 
 true, and you need not trouble yourself to inquire further. 
 
 Washington Irving brought to his task industry, in- 
 tegrity, the charm of that matchless style which makes 
 him still accounted, so far as that is concerned, the fore- 
 most of American prose writers, or in that respect at least 
 to share that lofty place with Hawthorne alone. Mr. 
 Irving liked to delight and entertain as weU as to instruct 
 his readers. In his pages Washington steps down from 
 his pedestal, and while there is nothing found which tar- 
 nishes that pure fame, the hero leaves the rank of demigods 
 and mingles with mortal men. 
 
 Edward Everett also has written a brief life, prepared 
 originally for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and expanded 
 into a small volume. You can read it in two or three 
 hours. It will repay perusal as a good summing up of 
 the great career of the Father of his Country, although 
 there is nothing in it to enhance the fame either of the 
 subject or the author. It is a pity that Lord Macaulay, 
 on whose recommendation Mr. Everett was asked to 
 write that Memoir, could not have undertaken it himself. 
 But if I cannot speak with enthusiasm of Mr. Everett's 
 life of Washington, I can hardly find language to express 
 myself, in commending to you, and to the youth of the 
 present generation, Mr. Everett's masterly oration upon 
 the same theme. It is, so far as I know, and, so far as I 
 can judge', foremost among the masterpieces of eulogistic 
 oratory in any tongue or in any generation. It was un- 
 dertaken by Mr. Everett for the purpose of purchasing 
 and preserving Mt. Vernon. It was delivered and repeated 
 in the chief cities and large towns of the country and, 
 with the proceeds of a few other lectures and essays by Mr. 
 Everett on kindred subjects, yielded about ninety thou- 
 sand dollars of the fund of one hundred thousand required 
 to redeem Mt. Vernon. Mr. Everett sketches the intel- 
 
15 
 
 lectual and physical character of Washington, from his 
 splendid youth, a model of manly strength and beauty, 
 perfect in the qualities and accomplishments of the gentle- 
 man and the soldier, but wise and thoughtful beyond his 
 years, inspiring at the outset of his career that love and 
 confidence which are usually earned only by a long life of 
 service, through all the acts of that mighty drama of which 
 he was the foremost character, the observed of all eyes, 
 the beloved of all true American hearts, shaping and wielding 
 the destinies of his country in her great birthtime, down 
 to his death at Mount Vernon, in his own home, the wife of 
 his youth by his side, amid the benedictions and the 
 sorrow of his countrymen. The story is depicted by the 
 marvelous genius of the great artist on a canvas that shall 
 endure as long as the fame of Washington himself. I 
 should like to repeat to you some of the great passages from 
 that great oration, especially the contrast between Mt. Ver- 
 non, the simple dwelling place of America's illustrious hero 
 and Father, the home of George Washington and Martha, 
 his beloved, loving and faithful wife, and the splendor of 
 Blenheim House, the monumental pile where the gratitude of 
 England poured itself out in unrestrained lavishness upon 
 her great warrior and victor; and the beautiful close where 
 the orator conceives the fame of Washington passing from 
 the narrow strip of territory fringing the Atlantic shore, 
 which was all his country occupied when he died, from the 
 southern plains to the western lakes, beyond the Ohio, be- 
 yond the Mississippi, along with the stupendous trail of im- 
 migration from east to west, which, bursting into States as it 
 moved wesLward, was then already threading the western 
 prairies, swarming through the portals of the Rocky 
 Mountains and winding down their slopes to the Pacific, 
 and then in the prophetic imagination of the orator, trav- 
 eling with the Silver Queen of heaven through sixty de- 
 grees of longitude, and not parting company with her till 
 
16 
 
 she walks in her brightness through the golden gate of 
 California, and passes serenely on to hold midnight court 
 with her Australian stars. 
 
 Mr. Everett adds that there and only there, in barbarous 
 archipelagoes, as yet untrodden by civilized man, the 
 name of Washington is unknown, and there, too, when 
 they swarm with enlightened millions, new honors shall 
 be paid with ours to his memory. 
 
 But the rich silver tones of the trumpet voice of the 
 unequaled orator, speaking as Pericles might be conceived 
 to have spoken to an Athenian audience in the great day 
 of Grecian eloquence, still linger in my memory and forbid 
 the sacrilegious attempt. 
 
 But, after all, among the e'aborate biographies of 
 Washington the best portraiture of him in literature is 
 the life of him by my colleague, Henry Cabot Lodge. It 
 may be trusted thoroughly as to its facts and its judg- 
 mtens. A flood of light has been poured in upon the sub- 
 ject by the material which has been micovered since the 
 time of Marshall and Sparks and Irving. The memoir is 
 full enough to tell the story of the great and important 
 transactions of Washington's life, and still compact 
 enough to retain its hold on the interest and attention of 
 the reader from the beginning to the end. Mr. Lodge has 
 a statesman's capacity to deal with and to judge of the con- 
 cerns of State, the enthusiasm of an orator, the hterary 
 skill of a trained and practiced writer, and the industry 
 of a thorough historic investigator. If you have time but 
 for one of these biographies, I commend to you that of 
 Mr. Lodge as, on the whole, the best, although he has to 
 contend with such great competitors as Marshall and 
 Sparks and Irving. 
 
 You should also make yourselves familiar, not only for a 
 description of Washington, but as a masterpiece of splendid 
 oratory, with the almost forgotten oration of Fisher Ames 
 
17 
 
 delivered before the Massachusetts Legislature just after 
 Washington's death. It is a tribute of exquisite beauty, 
 from an American source. Mr. Ames was the most fastid- 
 ious of judges and of critics. But he knew Washington, 
 in whose first administration he was, although a young 
 man and in feeble health, a great Federalist leader. His 
 speech on Jay's Treaty ranks with that of John Marshall 
 on the case of Jonathan Robbins, and Webster's reply to 
 Hayne, as one of the three greatest speeches ever delivered 
 in either House of the American Congress. It is said that 
 that speech and the speech of Chief Justice Marshall, which 
 I just mentioned, are the only speeches ever made in the 
 American Congress that converted a hostile majority on a 
 great political question on which the House was divided 
 by party lines. Mr. Ames's thought is profound and 
 wise as that of Burke, his style full of life and spirit, im- 
 pressive and sententious like that of the Proverbs of Solo- 
 mon. Image crowds upon image in the inexhaustible 
 fertility of his mind, keeping the mind of the hearer and 
 the reader constantly stimulated with expectation and 
 curiosity, and creating constant surprise and delight. 
 
 I think I ought also to commend to your attention two 
 very remarkable addresses by the late Robert C. Winthrop. 
 He delivered the oration at the laying of the corner-stone of 
 the Washington Monument, July 4, 1848, and again an 
 oration in commemoration of its completion February 
 22, 1885, thirty-seven years thereafter. It is a curious 
 coincidence that he associated his name forever with the 
 beginning and the finishing of that monument, as Mr. 
 Webster is associated by two wonderful orations with the 
 foundation and the completion of the monument at Bunker 
 Hill. Mr. Winthrop's addresses are in all respects worthy 
 of comparison with those of Webster. These four orations 
 will stand together at the very head of that department of 
 oratory. 
 
18 
 
 When you have read these Uves and read also Washing- 
 ton's own great addresses — his farewell to the Governors 
 of the States when he laid down his commission in 1783; 
 his Farewell Address when he laid down the Presidency in 
 1797— you will have seen Washington as he was. You 
 will see him as if you had gazed upon a photograph of his 
 very soul. You will know by heart the greatest man in 
 all history ; one of the very few and the greatest of the very 
 few great men who have lived wholly for their country and 
 not at all for themselves, and who, as a great orator says, 
 appear in human annals "like five or six lighthouses on as 
 many thousand miles of coast." 
 
 It was said by Richard Steele of a beautiful and accom- 
 plished Englishwoman, Lady Elizabeth Hastings, that to 
 love her was a liberal education. If you have studied and 
 taken into your hearts and souls the character of Washing- 
 ton as depicted by these great authorities, you have a 
 liberal education in the essentials of American citizenship. 
 You have laid the foundation in character for anything that 
 can be demanded of you by your country in war or in peace, 
 for soldier, statesman, citizen. 
 
 Now in commending to you the sources by which you 
 can possess yourself of a just conception of the great char- 
 acter of the Father of our Country from an original investi- 
 gation, I have left little space to say anything about him 
 from myself. But surely it is better so. What can I say 
 which is worth saying upon such a theme? Washington 
 died one hundred and four years ago next December, 
 From that day to this his Ufe and his praise have been the 
 theme of oratory and poetry the country through, on 
 every recurring anniversary of his birthday which, like 
 the birthday of the country itself, is one of our two great 
 national holidays. 
 
 The designer of the noble shaft which towers above the 
 city which bears his name has with rare felicity designed 
 
19 
 
 that emblem of the simple and majestic character of Wash- 
 ington. There is no ornament or sculpture or delicate carv- 
 ing to attract or fascinate the eye. Simplicity, grandeur, 
 just proportion, strength, endurance are its characteristics, 
 as they were his characteristics. It must ever take a high 
 rank among great and majestic public works. In a clear 
 morning, when the sky is full of light or some delicate 
 cloud moves over its summit, far above the streets and 
 towers and spires of the city, its shining point suggests the 
 lines of the Englishman, Doctor Aiken, written while Wash- 
 ington was yet Uving : 
 
 Point of that pyramid, whose solid base 
 Rests firmly founded in a Nation's trust, 
 Which, while the gorgeous palace sinks in dust, 
 Shall stand sublime, and fill its ample space. 
 
 Think how poor were Washington's resources! During 
 a large part of the time when he was besieging the British 
 army in Boston, he had scarcely powder enough to fire 
 a salute. His few cannon had been dragged by oxen 
 across New England from Ticonderoga. He had no money 
 to pay his soldiers ; no drill-ofhcers to teach his raw recruits 
 military disciphne; no mihtary text-books for his engi- 
 neers. His life was almost a solitude amid the jealousies 
 and strifes which existed in that day, in quite as large 
 degree as now, among his generals and officers, and (what 
 has happily passed by now), among the troops of the dif- 
 ferent colonies. The inexhaustible pecuniary resources 
 of England promised an inexhaustible supply of troops, 
 native or mercenar3^ His great antagonists had the sup- 
 port of a powerful navy. I would not undervalue the 
 navy of the revolution, whose great service to the cause 
 of independence has been so much overlooked. Indeed, 
 it is doubtful whether without it the war for liberty could 
 have been brought t^ a successful close. But its chief 
 service was in destroying English commerce and not as an 
 
20 
 
 aid to our military operations. So in the time of framing 
 the Constitution and in administering the government for 
 the first eight years, Washington had nowhere to look 
 either for example or for instruction. All the paths he 
 trod had to be broken out by himself and his great com- 
 panions and associates. We who find our path broken, 
 macadamized, leveled, blazed by the sure and safe precedents 
 of one hundred and twenty-five years can hardly under- 
 stand the difficulties which beset Washington. And yet, 
 in his whole life, from the time when, but a youth of 
 twenty-four, he gave his wise but vain counsel to General 
 Braddock, and brought home all the laurels of that most 
 disastrous expedition, to the time when, full of years and 
 honors, he left to his countr3anen his Farewell Address — 
 that almost inspired political Bible, the adherence to 
 which ever has brought and ever will bring to us safety, 
 prosperity, and glory, the departure from which is the 
 path to danger, ruin and shame — he never made a mis- 
 take and never gave unwise counsel to his countrymen. 
 
 There are some characters, unhappily few, of whom we 
 never think as struggling with or conquering temptation. 
 Sin did not beset them. I suppose this was never yet 
 literally and perfectly true of any man or woman. Yet it 
 was as nearly true of George Washington as of any man 
 or woman. Integrity, unselfish and unambitious service, 
 industry that sought no repose while it remained to be 
 done, unhesitating self-sacrifice, purity not only unsullied 
 but untempted, were all his. The temptation to evil never 
 seems to have beset that lofty nature, nor besieged that 
 impregnable fortress. The Devil is an ass. But he never 
 was such an ass as to waste his time tempting ,George 
 Washington. 
 
 Washington's style, in general, is somewhat artificial, 
 with a httle tendency on ordinary occasions to the some- 
 what inflated, latinized diction of which Doctor Johnson 
 
21 
 
 had set the fashion in his time. But he rises often, when 
 he forgots.the language and is intent on the thought, into 
 a noble and vigorous speech. Some of the best examples 
 of good English are to be found in the untutored speech 
 and writing of boys. Washington compiled or copied or 
 composed, in earlj' youth, a series of rules of behavior in 
 compam- and conversation which ends with a maxim cer- 
 tainly not to be improved upon either in style or sub- 
 stance: "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little 
 spark of celestial fire — conscience." 
 
 Mr. Winthrop, with that curiosa felicitas both of thought 
 and phrase, for which he is unsurpassed among the orators 
 of the generation which has just left the stage, said in his 
 last great public address, speaking to the youth of the 
 country: "Keep ever in your mind and before your mind's 
 eye the loftiest standard of character. Strive to approxi- 
 mate that lofty standard, and measure your integrity and 
 your patriotism by your nearness to it or your departure 
 from it. The prime meridian of universal longitude on 
 sea or land may be at Greenwich or at Paris or where you 
 will. The prime meridian of pure, disinterested, patri- 
 otic, exalted hirnian character, will be marked forever by 
 yonder Washington obelisk." 
 
 Washington's virtues were the corner-stone virtues. 
 They were the virtues which lie at the foundation of all 
 civil society as well as of noble individual character. It is 
 not these which commonly excite the imagination or strike 
 the fancy. It is not these which delight audiences in the 
 portrayal. Poets celebrate the beauty of the morning, 
 the Assyrian sunrise and the Paphian sunset, the fragrance 
 of the rose, the verdure of the grass, the softness of the 
 gale. They do not write odes to gravitation or to mathe- 
 matics, or to order, or to the great laws which preserve 
 health. So we do not find that veracity, judgment, pru- 
 dence, disinterestedness, justice, sobriety, stir the blood 
 
22 
 
 and quicken the pulse when we talk of them. But they are 
 the virtues to which human life owes its safety and human 
 society its civilization. 
 
 I would say it in all reverence (surely we have a right 
 to say it), if it be true that God has made man in his own 
 image, and if it be true that divinity has come to the earth 
 to be an example to humanity, then it is not impious for 
 us to claim that humanity has sometimes attained some- 
 thing of the divine image in which it was created, and has 
 been able to copy the divine Example to imitate which it 
 is invited. The virtues of Washington are the virtues which 
 we ascribe in our humble, imperfect and faraway concep- 
 tion to divinity. 
 
 Think of his absolute veracity! He conducted with 
 his own hand a vast correspondence, enough to tax to its 
 uttermost the strength of mind and brain and body of an 
 athlete even if he had had to bear no other burden of 
 public care. His published correspondence fills many large 
 volumes, and there is a great deal, I suppose, still unpub- 
 lished. But there is not a trace of duplicity, of conceal- 
 ment, of saying one thing to one man and another to 
 another, of assurances of respect or goodwill that do not 
 come from the heart, such as, I am sorry to say, disfigure 
 the correspondence of some of his famous and honored 
 cotemporaries. The little fable invented by Weems, his 
 enthusiastic biographer, has become the standing jest of 
 many a generation of irreverent boys. But nobody ever 
 doubted or ever will doubt that George Washington could 
 not tell a lie, could not act a lie, could not think a lie; that 
 a lie could not live in his presence, or that all falsehood 
 and dissimulation would slink abashed and confounded 
 from the gaze of those pure eyes and from that perfect 
 witness. 
 
 "I do not remember," said Washington in 1786, "that 
 in the course of my life I ever forfeited my word, or broke 
 a promise made to anv one." 
 
23 
 
 " I never say anything of a man that I have the smallest 
 scruple of saying to him." 
 
 This virtue of absolute veracity deserves to rank highest 
 among those which our humanity can attain. Men of all 
 civilized nations pay an unconscious tribute to it when 
 they resent the imputation of falsehood as even a greater 
 affront than the charge of cowardice. Indeed falsehood is 
 the very essence of cowardice. The man who lies, lies, 
 usually, because he is afraid to tell the truth, because he does 
 not dare to stand by his action or his thought. The great 
 nations of history, the great characters of history, are those 
 who are most famed for the supreme virtue of truth. The 
 only heroes of the nation from whom we derive our own 
 lineage, who deserve to be named in the same day with 
 Washington are the Englishman King Alfred, and the 
 Irishman, the Duke of Wellington. King Alfred was 
 called "the truth teller." WelUngton was called the 
 truth lover. 
 
 Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named. 
 Truth-lover was our English Duke. 
 
 He had a weighing and balancing mind. His intellect 
 was like a pair of accurately adjusted scales. He did not 
 often, especially in civil affairs, originate the policies upon 
 which he acted. But he listened carefully and patiently 
 to every counsel from which he could get instruction, and 
 then brought it in the end to the sure test of his own un- 
 erring judgment. He weighed the advice of his great 
 counsellors, the claims of contending parties, and of Jeffer- 
 son and Hamilton and Adams and Pickering, in a balance as 
 infallible as the golden scales which the Eternal hung forth 
 in Heaven. 
 
 - "Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign" 
 
 in which, according to Milton, the arch-rebel read and 
 knew his fate. 
 
24 
 
 There are young men before me who I am sure aspii e to 
 take hereafter an honorable part in the service of the 
 country. You have not received the priceless advantage 
 and blessing of American citizenship as beggars or mendi- 
 cants who receive a benefit which they never return. 
 What your country has given you you mean to return 
 again to her. You mean, in the simple language of the 
 oath taken by the humblest official, "to defend her against 
 all enemies, foreign or domestic. " The foreign enem)- is not 
 likely to put your manhood to any severe proof, or it will 
 be a proof of your physical courage alone. The enemy 
 that will demand your moral courage for the encounter is 
 the domestic enemy. He will appear under many names, 
 in various guise. But the unerring test by which you 
 will detect him will be by comparing his principles, pur- 
 poses and character with those of George Washington. 
 If any man tell you that the counsels of George Washing- 
 ton have grown musty and rusty; that they are not 
 for large nations, but only for little ones; that, as a great 
 newspaper said the other day, a man who is now in the 
 company of George Washington is in bad company, be- 
 cause his policies and counsels are bad for the America 
 of the present day — mark and distrust that man as the 
 domestic enemy of your country. He may be sincere; he 
 may be misguided; he may be carried away by a spasm of 
 popular excitement; he may be obeying the behest of 
 party. But, none the less, indeed all the more for that, 
 is he the dangerous enemy of the peace and prosperity 
 of the United States. 
 
 Mr. Everett's great oration, of which I spoke just now, 
 was delivered in the few years preceding 1860, when the 
 angry threatenings of civil war and disunion were heard 
 all round our national horizon. Mr. Everett called upon 
 his countrymen, as it seemed for a time, in vain, to forget, 
 to turn a deaf ear to these unpatriotic counsels, to this 
 
25 
 
 mad cry of treason and disunion, and return once more 
 to the patriotic counsel of Washington. It seemed, for a 
 time, as if the appeal were unheeded. But the spasm of 
 popular madness and rage passed by, and Washington 
 resumed his place again as our supreme counsellor and 
 leader. He became once more the example and idol of 
 every American soldier and statesman, and the Farewell 
 Address became once again the political Bible of every 
 American. Doubt not that this shall happen again and 
 again. Other temptations will come to us, and party spirit, 
 like Satan sitting at the ear of Eve, will speak again its 
 baleful counsel in the ear of the people. Popular excite- 
 ment wiU be kindled by the lust of empire and passion 
 for conquest. The eyes of the people may be dazzled 
 for a time by a false and tinsel military glory. But while 
 the portrait of Washington hangs in every village; while 
 his statues adorn our chief cities; while his monument is 
 found in every State ; while his life is on the shelf of every 
 home; while the detail of his great career is studied in 
 every university; while his image is in the heart of every 
 youth, the people will come back again to the wise, sober 
 and just counsel in following which lies the path to a 
 true glory and a true safety. The American people will 
 never long go astray so long as to every great question of 
 national policy or national duty they know what Wash- 
 ington would have said, and know what Washington did 
 say. 
 
 If any man would test, as with a touch-stone, any 
 party or political war-cry of to-day, let him think before 
 he grow too enthusiastic if he can imagine George Washing- 
 ton uttering it. If he can, he is safe enough to utter it 
 himself. If he cannot, he had better try to find another. 
 
 Who ever thinks of George Washington as stopping to 
 consider popularity or public sentiment or political or per- 
 sonal advantage to himself by pleasing the people when he 
 
26 
 
 had to determine a question of duty? He was as unmoved 
 by the breeze of popular opinion as the summit of the 
 mountain that bears his name. It is for that reason that 
 the reverence in which his countrjonen hold him is as en- 
 during and as unshaken as the mountain summit. 
 
 I am no blind worshipper of the Past. I do not believe 
 that Renown and Grace are dead. I am no pessimist or 
 alarmist. I am certainly no misanthropist. While there 
 are many men who have served their country better in 
 their generation than I have in mine, I yield to no man in 
 love for the Republic, or in pride in my country, and in my 
 countrymen who are making to-day her honorable history. 
 We may err in our day. Our fathers erred in theirs. Yet 
 our generation is better than those who went before it. 
 The coming generations will be better than we are. The 
 Republic where every man has his share in the Govern- 
 ment is better than the Monarchy, or the Oligarchy, or 
 the Aristocracy. Our Republic is better than any other 
 Republic. To-day is better than yesterday, and to-morrow 
 will be better than to-day. But while each generation 
 has its own virtues, each generation has its own dangers, 
 and its own mistakes, and its own shortcomings. 
 
 The difference between the generations of any country 
 with a history is commonly not one of principle, but of 
 emphasis. The doctrine of 1776, when we won our inde- 
 pendence, planted our country on the eternal principles of 
 equality of individuals and of nations in political rights, 
 and declared that no man and no people had the right to 
 judge of the fitness of any other for self-government. In 
 1787 the Constitution was builded on the doctrine that there 
 were domains within which the Government had no right to 
 enter, and that there were powers which the people would 
 not commit to any authority. State or National. The 
 doctrine of 1861 and the years which followed, declared 
 the natural right of every man to his own freedom, what- 
 
27 
 
 ever might be his race or color; and the natural right of 
 every man to make his dwelling wherever on the face of 
 the earth he might thinlc fit. These truths will, perhaps, 
 be accepted to-day as generally as they were accepted 
 then. But if accepted at all they are accepted by the 
 intellect only, and not by the heart. They are not much 
 talked about, except to ridicule them, to refine about 
 them, or to find some plausible reason why they should 
 not be applied. 
 
 The orator of to-day puts his emphasis on Glory, on 
 Empire, on Power, on Wealth. We live under, and love, 
 and we still shed our heart's blood for the same flag 
 which floated over our fathers, and for which they were 
 ready to die. But it sometimes seems that the flag has a 
 different meaning, whether it float over the Capitol or 
 the ship of war, or the regiment on the march, or the public 
 assembly. We no longer speak of it, except coldly and 
 formally, as the symbol of Liberty; but only as the sjmibol 
 of power, or of a false, cheap, tinsel glory. 
 
 I think the popular reverence for Washington, and Lin- 
 coln, and for Sumner, and for Webster, is not abated. But 
 yet few political speakers quote to-day the great sentences 
 which made them so famous, or the great principles to 
 which they devoted their lives.. 
 
 While, as I said, I have a profound respect for the opinion 
 of my countrjonen, it is not for that opinion formed in ex- 
 citement or in haste or under pressure of political necessity. 
 It is for the opinion formed, as Washington formed his, 
 soberly, quietly, calmly, through sober, second thought. 
 
 There is scarcely a shabby or sorry story of any 
 country, certainly in the history of free nations, which is not 
 a story of a popular delusion in which for a time nearly the 
 whole community shared. The martyrdom of Socrates, 
 the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the persecution which 
 drove the Pilgrims to Leyden, the witchcraft delusion, the 
 
28 
 
 Compromise measures, the brief rise and spread of Know- 
 Nothingism, all represent completely the desire of the peo- 
 ple for the time being. 
 
 There have been many such delusions in the history of the 
 American people. But, so far, the American people have 
 outgrown them, have repented of them, and have atoned 
 for them. Indeed we can hardly lament that they have 
 happened, when we think that if they had not happened 
 the sublime repentance and atonement also would not 
 have happened. We may lament the long and gloomy and 
 terrible years of Slavery and of Rebellion; and yet without 
 Slavery and Rebellion we should have never known the 
 heroism of the American people, or the quality of our 
 splendid youth of 1861. We cannot explain why it is that 
 an omnipotent and benignant Providence has suffered 
 evil to exist in the universe He has created. But at least 
 this is true. Without evil there could have been no virtue ; 
 without the possibility of sin, there could have been no 
 possibility of righteousness; without the Athenian mob, 
 there could have been no Socrates; without George III 
 and Lord North, there could have been no Washington; 
 without Slavery and Rebellion, there could have been no 
 Lincoln. 
 
 Another lesson the Republic may learn from Wash- 
 ington is its sensitiveness to the individual touch. I do 
 not think that it would be true if I were to say that the 
 moral power of a single will and a single character is as 
 strong in a popular Government as in a Monarchy or a 
 Despotism. But I am sometimes tempted to say so when 
 I think of the many instances where the whole current of 
 our history has been turned by one man. 
 
 I should like, if I had time, to give a great many ex- 
 amples, easily to be found, where the fate of a nation, and 
 many more where the fate of a generation has depended 
 upon the will and the purpose and the character of a sin- 
 
29 
 
 gle individual. Many of Washington's contemporaries 
 believed that but for the confidence felt in him the con- 
 flict with England could not have been maintained. Mr. 
 Jefferson, I think it was, said later: "We can all hang to- 
 gether, so long as we have 5'^ou to hang to." It does not 
 seem likely that the great political revolution which over- 
 threw the Federal party after its twelve years of power, 
 could have been accomplished but for the individual skill 
 of Jefferson. I suppose most lawyers agree that but for 
 the interpretation of the Constitution, supported by the 
 great Judge Marshall, and carried into effect by his au- 
 thority, the mechanism of our Constitution would haA'^e 
 failed. The spot where I am now speaking would, in 
 my opinion, as I think can be clearly established, have 
 been at this moment part of a great slave-holding Empire 
 but for the far-reaching sagacity and untiring energy of 
 Rufus Putnam, the founder and father of Ohio, who put 
 a new life into the dead Ordinance which consecrated this 
 region to reUgion, education, and Liberty, and himself led 
 the first colony down the Ohio to Marietta. There have 
 been in our own day great measures pregnant with his- 
 tory, and with the fate of parties, won or lost by a single 
 vote. 
 
 Washington is by no means the only conspicuous ex- 
 ample in history, God be thanked, of a man whose public 
 conduct was determined absolutely by the sense of duty. 
 But he is the most conspicuous and lofty example. He is 
 the best example of absolute conscientiousness accom- 
 panied by unerring wisdom in a place of power, where his 
 action determined the fate of a nation, and was successful 
 in achieving the most fortunate results. 
 
 The fate of the nation depends in the last resort on in- 
 dividual character. Everything in human government, 
 like everything in individual conduct, depends, in the 
 end, upon the sense of duty. Whatever safeguards may 
 
30 
 
 be established, however compUcated or well adjusted the 
 mechanism, you come to a place somewhere where safety 
 depends upon somebody having the wiU to do right when 
 it is in his power and may be his interest to do wrong. 
 When the people were considering the adoption of the 
 Constitution of the United States, one of our wisest states- 
 men said that the real and only security for a Republic is 
 when the rulers have the same interest as the people. If 
 they have not, constitutional restraints will break down 
 somewhere, except for the sense of duty of the rulers. 
 
 All elections depend upon this principle. You may 
 multiply election officers and returning boards, j^ou may 
 provide for an appeal to courts of first resort or last 
 resort. But in the end you must come somewhere to a 
 point where the sense of public duty is stronger than party 
 spirit, or your election is but a sort of fighting, or, if not 
 that, a sort of cheating. The same thing is true of the 
 individual voter, or of the legislator who is to elect the 
 Senator, or the governor who is to appoint the judge, or 
 the executive officer, or the judge who is to interpret the 
 Constitution or the statute and decide the cause, or. the 
 juror who is to find the fact. On these men depend the 
 safety and the permanence of the RepubUc. On these 
 men depend life, liberty, and property. And yet each 
 of them has to make that choice. Each has to decide 
 whether he will be influenced by ambition or by party 
 spirit or the desire for popular favor or the fear of popular 
 disfavor or the love of money, on the one side, or by the 
 sense of duty on the other. 
 
 So, in the last resort, the destiny of the Republic, like 
 the destiny of the individual (and, in the case of an in- 
 dividual, character and destiny are the same thing), de- 
 pends upon individual will. Will the individual will 
 choose what is right and not what is wrong? Now this 
 choice is largely affected by what we call strength of will ; 
 
31 
 
 by that habit of the soul which enables man to adhere'to 
 its deliberate purposes and principles, formed when reason 
 is unaffected by passion or by desire, against the pressure 
 and excitement of an immediate demand; that character 
 of will which, as Wordsworth says in his "Happy Warrior" — 
 
 "in the heat of conflict keeps the law 
 In calmness made, and sees what it foresaw." 
 
 The great single purpose of moral education, must be to 
 induce the will to adhere to its general, permanent and 
 deliberately conceived purpose, in spite of the motives 
 which appeal to it with special strength at the time of the 
 choice or action. In other words, to give a strength to 
 resolution which will overcome the strength of temptation. 
 
 Of coiirse, the first and perhaps the greatest thing to be 
 accomplished is to get habit upon the side of virtue. 
 "Happy is the man whose habits are his friends." To 
 Washington no duty, however obscure, was unimportant, 
 and no deviation from duty, however trifling, was pos- 
 sible. 
 
 I said just now, quoting from a great orator, that a few 
 great men who have Hved wholly for their country and 
 not at all for themselves, and who alone can be thought of 
 for comparison with Washington, appear in human annals 
 like five or six lighthouses on as many thousand miles of 
 coast. Even to complete that list men must go to Roman 
 or Grecian story, where you cannot verify the record. How 
 much of their glory Plutarch's characters owe to Plutarch, 
 no critic can tell you to-day. 
 
 All the great men of antiquity, who in the boldest imagi- 
 nation might be compared with Washington, failed in accom- 
 plishing their desire for their country. Epaminondas died 
 in battle. Socrates died by public sentence. Aristides 
 was ostracized and banished. Cato died a suicide and an 
 exile. The destruction of the Republic he served speedily 
 followed the death of each. 
 
32 
 
 In later times Wellington was the instrument of saving 
 Europe from the ambition of Napoleon. He was a high 
 example of sincerity and strength and unselfishness in 
 peace. But he had at his command the resources of a 
 great Empire, and the indomitable English military spirit, 
 indomitable from the beginning of her history save by the 
 power which Washington organized and led. No man can 
 doubt that with Wellington's resources Washington could 
 have accomplished Wellington's results. No one can say 
 that with Washington's rrsources Wellington could have 
 accomplished the results of Washington. 
 
 But his achievement in war is the least of Washington's 
 title to glory. Through his influence a great Republic was 
 constructed and inaugurated on principles unknown until 
 his time to history. He laid the foundation of our Empire 
 not on military strength, but on Liberty and Law. The 
 Constitution framed by the Convention over which he 
 presided, which would not have been adopted but for his 
 influence, and which he inaugurated, was a new and un- 
 tried experiment, without either example or model in 
 human history. Wellington, on the other hand, was a 
 defender of the existing order of things. Many an abuse 
 and injustice was prolonged through his influence. 
 
 No American, I think no lover of virtue anywhere, 
 would seek to diminish or to darken the glory of Alfred, 
 that "King to Justice dear" — 
 
 ' ' Mirror of Princes, indigent renown 
 Might search the "starry ether for a crown 
 Equal to his deserts." 
 
 The glory of Alfred is ours also. The laws he gave have 
 come down to us. We are of the blood and lineage of the 
 country where for more than a thousand years the descend- 
 ants of the great Saxon have occupied the throne. We have 
 certainly no desire to cultivate that temper which, when- 
 
33 
 
 ever goodness or greatness anywhere be mentioned, is eager 
 always to declare that something or somebody else is better. 
 But the mtnesses whom we have cited, who declared Wash- 
 ington's primacy among mankind, are English witnesses 
 of the highest title to be believed. Not one of them has 
 given his judgment without considering the name of King 
 Alfred. 
 
 We may concede to King Alfred perhaps an integrity 
 and an unselfish devotion to his country unsurpassed even 
 by that of Washington himself. But it is to be remembered 
 that the difficult task of rallying the people of England 
 to the expulsion of a band of piratic invaders, was far less 
 than of sustaining a civilized warfare for eight years against 
 the fleets and armies and inexhaustible treasure of Great 
 Britain. When Alfred won his throne he gained a kingly 
 power. He had a kingly power at his command. He 
 had not, as Washington had, to reconcile hostile factions, 
 to bring into accord jealous and rival States, to inaugurate 
 a Government, the like of which was to that time un- 
 known to the experience of mankind. We can not only 
 beheve, we can be sure that in Alfred's place Washington 
 would have ccompHshed everything that Alfred did. No 
 man can be sure that in Washington's place Alfred would 
 have been able to accomplish what Washington did. 
 
 One figure remains, and one alone, who in the opinion of 
 mankind may share with Washington his lofty pinnacle. 
 His is an American name also ; a name among the priceless 
 treasures of the great State within whose borders we come 
 together. 
 
 Never were two men more unlike in every lineament 
 that made up their mental and physical portraiture than 
 George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. They seemed 
 to come to the same high place from opposite quarters and 
 by diverse paths. Washington, with his quiet and grave 
 manner, with his seriousness, his earnestness, with the 
 
34 
 
 stately beauty and dignity of his person and behavior, 
 has been claimed by Englishmen as an admirable example 
 of an EngHshman. The awkward and ungainly Lincoln, 
 with his wit and his jesting and his homely proverbs, his 
 stories as pithy and to the point as the fables of iEsop, his 
 shrewd management of men, his tenderness, his knowledge 
 of human nature in every variety and condition, was, if 
 ever man was, a typical American. Washington was a 
 born Aristocrat, who had learned by the experience of life 
 the justice and the beauty of Democracy. Lincoln was 
 the child of the people, who had learned by the experience 
 of hfe the value of order and strong Government. 
 
 "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 momward still, 
 Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
 Could Nature's equal scheme deface 
 And Thwart her genial will ; 
 
 He knew to abide his time, 
 
 And can his fame abide 
 
 Still patient in his simple faith subUme,' 
 
 TiU the wise years decide. ' ' 
 
 Washington had little poetry or imagination in him. 
 He accepted and lived by the simplest maxims of morals 
 and duty. He did not seem to care for the great things 
 in literature or poetry. You do not find him quoting 
 the noble sentences of the Declaration, although he did 
 so much to make it real. Lincoln was an idealist. He 
 was penetrated to the very depth of his soul with those 
 eternal idealities. They moved and stirred him like a 
 note of lofty music. But yet to his mind they were as 
 real and practical and undoubted as the multiplication 
 
35 
 
 table, or the Ten Commandments. No Republic could live 
 long, or deserve to live long, that was not founded on 
 them. He declared on that fateful journey to Washington, 
 on his way to be inaugurated, that he was willing to be 
 assassmated, if need be, for the doctrine that all govern- 
 ments derive their just powers from the consent of the 
 governed, and that no man, and no people, had the right 
 to judge of the fitness for self-government of any other. 
 And he was assassinated for it. 
 
 Each of these men embodied what was best in his 
 countrymen in his generation. Each was the first citizen 
 among a people who were like him. Each wrought in ac- 
 cord vrith his time. Washington more than any other 
 man was the creator of a nation, of which Lincoln, more 
 than any other man, was the Saviour. It will be for a 
 later generation, not for us who remember Lincoln, to 
 assign the precedence to either. Of one thing we may be 
 sm^e, knowing the modesty so characteristic of both, that 
 each, were he consulted, would yield the palm to the other. 
 
 Washington was a good neighbor and friend, hospitable 
 and charitable. He loved his Mother and his Wife, and 
 his kindred. He had companions and counsellors and 
 correspondents. And yet, and yet, in spite of it all, he 
 seems to me with his austere sense of duty and his free- 
 dom from all disturbing influences and attractions, to 
 have dwelt in a solitude — 
 
 "Like as a ship, that through the ocean wide, 
 By conduct of some star doth make her way." 
 
 But after all, Washington has but one lesson for us; 
 one lesson for the country; one lesson for each of his coun- 
 trymen. It is the old lesson, older than history,' old as 
 Creation. That is that Justice, Veracity, Unselfishness, 
 Character, lie at the foundation of all National and all 
 Individual Greatness. Justice and Freedom are the Par- 
 
36 
 
 ents of Fate. To the larger and surer vision there is no 
 such thing as Fortune. Where these are we have no need 
 to concern ourselves with what the day may bring forth. 
 The product of the eternities will be secure. The cosmic 
 results will be the same, whatever the daily event may be. 
 It is to this that the story of George Washington is a per- 
 petual witness to his countrymen. It will be their fault 
 if they do not make their country its perpetual witness 
 to mankind. 
 
AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 United States Senator 
 
 GEORGE F. HOAR 
 
 Thomas Jefferson 
 MemorIal Association 
 
 Washington, D. C, 
 
OFFICERS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE THOMAS JEFFERSON MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 Admiral George Dewey, President. 
 
 Jesse B. Wilson, W. S. McKean, 
 
 Treasurer. Secretary. 
 
 BOARD OF GOVERNORS: 
 
 Andrew A. Lipscomb, Chairman, Virginia. 
 Judge Morris B. Beardsley, Connecticut. 
 Hon. R. R. Kenney, Delaware. 
 Ex-Govemor A. D. Candler, Georgia. 
 Hon. Edwin Warfield, Maryland. 
 Hon. Patrick A. Collins, Massachusetts. 
 Hon. Horace S. Cummings, New Hampshire. 
 Hon. Philip P. Baker, New Jersey. 
 Hon. JosEPHus Daniels, North Carolina. 
 Hon. Edward M. Shepard, New York. 
 Hon. Charles Emory Smith, Pennsylvania. 
 Hon. D. L. D. Granger, Rhode Island. 
 Hon. F. W. Wagener, South Carolina. 
 Ralph Walsh, District of Columbia. 
 Hon. Mark A. Smith, Arizona. 
 
 VICE-PRESIDENTS : 
 
 Hon. HiLLERY A. Herbert, Alabama. 
 
 Governor Jefferson Davis, Arkansas. 
 
 U. S. Senator George C. Perkins, California. 
 
 U. S. Senator T. Macdonald Patterson, Colorado. 
 
 Judge Lynde Harrison, Connecticut. 
 
 John S. Rossell, Delaware. 
 
 Joseph Jefferson, Florida. 
 
 Clark Howell, Georgia. 
 
Jefferson Memorial Association 
 
 U. S. Senator Fred T. Dubois, Idaho. 
 
 Hon. Adlai E. Stevenson, Illinois. 
 
 U. S. Senator Charles W. Fairbanks, Indiana. 
 
 Governor Albert B. Cummins, Iowa. 
 
 U. S. Senator J. C. S. Blackburn, Kentucky. 
 
 U. S. Senator Joseph R. Burton, Kansas. 
 
 Governor W. W. Heard, Louisiana. 
 
 Hon. S. "W. Gould, Maine. 
 
 Admiral Winfield Scott Schley, Maryland. 
 
 U. S. Senator George F. Hoar, Massachusetts. 
 
 Hon. Don M. Dickinson, Michigan. 
 
 U. S. Senator Knute Nelson, Minnesota. 
 
 U. S. Senator H. D. Money, Mississippi. 
 
 Hon. Champ Clark, Missouri. 
 
 U. S. Senator Paris Gibson, Montana. 
 
 Hon. William J. Bryan, Nebraska. 
 
 Hon. Francis G. Newlands, Nevada. 
 
 Ex-U. S. Senator William E. Chandler, New Hampshire. 
 
 Dr. WooDRow Wilson, New Jersey. 
 
 Hon. Jefferson M. Levy, New York. 
 
 Governor Charles B. Aycock, North Carolina. 
 
 U. S. Senator P. J. McCumber, North Dakota. 
 
 U. S. Senator Joseph B. Foraker, Ohio. 
 
 Ex-Governor T. T. Geer, Oregon. 
 
 Ex-Governor Robert E. Pattison, Pennsylvania. 
 
 Ex-Governor Charles Dean Kimball, Rhode Island. 
 
 Hon. A. C. Lattimer, South Carolina. 
 
 U. S. Senator Robert J. Gamble, South Dakota. 
 
 U. S. Senator E. W. Carmack, Tennessee. 
 
 U. S. Senator Charles A. Culberson, Texas. 
 
 Governor Heber M. Wells, Utah. 
 
 U. S. Senator W. P. Dillingham, Vermont. 
 
 U. S. Senator John W. Daniel, Virginia. 
 
 Governor Henry McBride, Washington. 
 
 Ex-U. S. Senator Charles J. Faulkner, West Virginia. 
 
 Hon. David S. Rose, Wisconsin. 
 
 Ex-Governor J. E. Osborne, Wyoming, 
 
 General John W. Wilson, District of Coltimbia. 
 
 Governor Miguel A. Otero, New Mexico. 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
 
 ' THE AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 An Address delivered on April 13, 1903, by United 
 
 States Senator George F. Hoar, at Hotel Barton, 
 
 Washington, D. C, at the banquet given under 
 
 the auspices of The Thomas Jefferson 
 
 Memorial Association to celebrate 
 
 Jefferson's Birthday. 
 
 If we want a sure proof of Thomas Jefferson's 
 greatness it will be found in the fact that men of 
 every variety of political opinion, however far Patron 
 asunder, find confirmation of their doctrine in him. Saint of 
 Every party in this country to-day reckons Jefferson every 
 as its patron saint. In my youth the political Abo- party, 
 litionists made appeals to Jefferson the btu-den of 
 their song. In the late discussion, which rent the 
 country, about the Philippine Islands, one side 
 quoted what Mr. Jefferson said in the Declaration 
 of Independence, and the other what they thought 
 he did, in the acqtiisition of Louisiana. I do not 
 know of any other American of whom this is true. 
 
Thomas Jefferson 
 
 unless it be that the different schools of theology 
 and ethics seem inclined to do the same thing just 
 now as to Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 I can think of no other man in history, like Jeffer- 
 son, leader as he was of two Revolutions and founder 
 Foontain of a political party ; one of which accomplished the 
 source of independence of his country from a foreign yoke, 
 political the other overthrew by peaceful means the party at 
 doctrine, home which had been founded by Washington, and 
 his great companions and cotmselors, of whom such 
 a thing as this can be said. Every political sect finds 
 its political doctrine in Jefferson, almost as every 
 religious sect finds its doctrine in the Saviour of man- 
 kind. 
 
 The friend of State rights calls attention to the fact 
 Claimed that Jefferson spoke of the Government of the United 
 by advo- States as the "agency at Washington." The Aboli- 
 cates of tionists quote the great Declaration and his famous 
 State utterance against slavery: " I tremble for my coun- 
 Rights, try, when I reflect that God is just." The supporter 
 Aboli- of a protective tariff claims him as the highest pro- 
 tionists, tectionist in our history, appealing to his desire that 
 Free there might be a "wall around our country which 
 Traders should keep out all foreign manufactures." The free 
 and Pro- trader maintains that the spirit of everything he said 
 tection- and everything he did teaches the doctrine of un- 
 ists. limited freedom in all human conduct, except so far 
 as may be needful for the restraint of actual crime. 
 
 The mighty figure of Thomas Jefferson comes 
 down in history with the Declaration of Independ- 
 
Thomas Jefferson 
 
 ence in one hand, and the title deed of Louisiana in 
 the other. He acquired for his country a territory of 
 1 , 1 7 1 ,93 1 square miles, now fifteen States, to be here- 
 after the seat and centre of erapire certainly of this 
 continent, and, as we confidently believe, of the world. 
 Yet I believe, in the estimate of mankind, that 
 achievement is insignificant compared with the other. 
 
 The author of the Declaration of Independence 
 stands in hviman history as the foremost man who Jefferson 
 ever lived, whose influence has led men to govern the fore- 
 themselves in the conduct of States by spiritual laws, most man 
 That was Jefferson's mission — to teach spiritual who ever 
 laws. Observe that I say spiritual laws, not spiritual lived, 
 truths merely, not formulae to be assented to, but 
 rtiles of hfe to be governed by and acted upon. 
 
 It was due to Jefferson that our fathers laid deep 
 the foxmdation of the State in the moral law. They , / 
 first set to mankind the great example, and exhibited 
 the mighty spectacle — ^the sublimest spectacle in the ^ ^ . 
 tmiverse — of a great and free people voluntarily . ,, 
 governing itself by a law higher than its own desire. 
 
 The doctrine of the Declaration was by no means 
 new or original. Much of it is to be found in the Doctrine 
 prose writings of Milton. More than a hundred of the 
 years before Milton said: "No man who knows Declara- 
 aught, can be so stupid as to deny that all men were lion of 
 naturally bom free; bom to command and not to Indepen- 
 obey. They agreed by common league to bind each dence. 
 other from mutual injury and jointly to defend them- 
 selves against any that gave disturbance or opposi- 
 
Thomas Jefferson 
 
 tion to such agreement. Hence came cities, towns 
 and commonwealths. This authority and power 
 being originally and naturally in every one of them, 
 and unitedly in them all, they communicated and 
 derived to one or more than one. The first was called 
 a king; the others magistrates. Not to be their 
 Lords and Masters, but to be their deputies and 
 commissioners. It follows that since the king or 
 magistrate holds his authority of the people, for their 
 good in the first place, and not his own, then may the 
 people as oft as they shall judge it for the best either 
 choose him or reject him, retain him or depose him, 
 though no tyrant, merely by the liberty and right of 
 free-bom men to be governed as seems to them best. 
 
 " That governors are not lightly to be changed is 
 true with respect to the people's prudence, not to be 
 the king's right. 
 
 " Nature teaches us to bear with oppression so long 
 as there is a necessity for so doing. 
 
 " What the people may lawfully do against a tyrant 
 no man of clear judgment need go further to be guided 
 than by the very principles of nature in man." 
 
 Jefferson's Declaration ended by the declaration 
 that, as our British brethren had been deaf to the 
 voice of justice and consanguinity, we must acquiesce 
 in the necessity that denounces our separation, and 
 hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in 
 ly war; in peace, friends. 
 
 Milton thus ends his lofty affirmation : 
 
 " He therefore that keeps peace with me near or 
 
Thomas Jefferson 
 
 remote, of whatever nation, is to me as far as all civil 
 and htiman offices an Englishman and a neighbor, 
 but if an Englishman forgetting all laws, human, civil 
 and religious, ofEend against life and liberty, to him 
 offended and to the law in his behalf, he is not better 
 than a Turk, a Saracen, a heathen." 
 
 If we are to trust abtmdant tradition, indeed if we 
 are to take Jefferson's evidence, found in the cor- 
 respondence where he poured out his heart to his 
 intimate friends, he was by no means free from the 
 faults common to his time — common to humanity 
 in all time. He was no hypocrite. He made no 
 pretense to be a saint. He liked political power and 
 popularity. He had a natural and honorable aspira- 
 tion for the affection and good will of his country- 
 raen. He probably would not have said of himself 
 as Washington did, that he never said of a man what 
 he would not say to him. But more than any other 
 statesman down to his time — more than any other 
 statesman I can think of — save Lincoln alone — ^he 
 had a steadfast and abiding faith in justice, righteous- 
 ness and liberty as the prevailing and abiding forces 
 in the conduct of States, and that justice and right- Jefferson's 
 eousness were sure to prevail where any people bear doctrine 
 rule in perfect liberty. He accepted this doctrine laid the 
 with an tmhesitating confidence. He never failed foundation 
 to proclaim it on all occasions. For it he was ready of the 
 to encounter unpopularity, poverty, if need be, im- Republic. 
 prisonment and exile. Upon it, as on a cornerstone, 
 he laid the foundation of the Republic. 
 
Thomas Jefferson 
 
 His sweet 
 and kindly 
 courtesy. 
 
 Author of 
 the 
 
 Declara- 
 tion of 
 Indepen- 
 dence, of 
 the Statute 
 of Virginia 
 for relig- 
 ious free- 
 dom, and 
 father of 
 the Uni- 
 versity of 
 Virginia. 
 
 He was sometimes charged with dissimulation in the 
 conduct of ordinary politics. I think it will be found, 
 on thorough investigation, that that notion took 
 its rise from the sweet and kindly courtesy, and the 
 affectionate nature which liked to be on good terms 
 with every human being. But however that might 
 be, he never failed to utter his opinion where freedom 
 and justice were concerned whoever might be hurt 
 or whoever might be angered. In the midst of slave- 
 holding Virginia he was wont to speak of the cause of 
 the abolition of slavery as ' ' the sacred side "and to say 
 that he looked to the young for its accomplishment. 
 
 So far as appears, he took little pride in anything 
 else that he accomplished in his long life, great as 
 were his other services to his country. He was Secre- 
 tary of State. He was Governor of Virginia. He was 
 Minister to France. He was Vice-President. He 
 was President. He acquired Louisiana. Yet, when 
 he gave direction for his own epitaph, he cared to 
 have none of these things remembered. The simple 
 inscription on his tomb at Monticello sums up in 
 his language as. no other orator can, the character 
 and career of Thomas Jefferson. 
 
 " Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the 
 Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute 
 of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the 
 University of Virginia." 
 
 Political freedom, religious freedom, and the edu- 
 cation that makes these possible and safe were the 
 ends for which he strove, the montiments by which 
 
Thomas Jefferson 
 
 he desired to be remembered. Neither power, nor 
 honor, nor office, nor popularity, nor fame entered 
 into the raighty heart or stirred that mighty soul. 
 
 I remember in my youth that a brilliant writer 
 undertook with some success to caricature Daniel 
 Webster, although it was a rather audacious 
 attempt. He represents Mr. Webster as saying: 
 " The common opinion in the eastern hemisphere is 
 so and so-^I differ from this eastern hemisphere." 
 That was not so unreasonable a thing for Daniel 
 Webster to say. But if Thomas Jefferson had said it 
 it would occur to no man that it was either extrava- 
 gant or prestmiptuous. Thomas Jefferson was one 
 of those men who can differ from hemispheres, from 
 generations, from administrations and from cen- 
 turies with the perfect assurance that on any ques- 
 tion of liberty and righteousness, if the opinion of 
 Thomas Jefferson stand on one side and the opinion 
 of mankind on the other, the world will, in the end, 
 come arotmd to his way of thinking. 
 
 The American people, favored beyond any other 
 in many things, is favored especially in its great Great 
 anniversaries. There is no other nation that cele- events in 
 brates such things as we do. There is no other nation the history 
 that has such things to celebrate. The landing of the of the 
 Pilgrims; the Fourth of July; the Nineteenth of country 
 April; the Birthday of Washington; the Birthday and of 
 of Lincoln; the Birthday of Jefferson, and, I hope tiniversal 
 hereafter, the founding of the Northwest and the liberty. 
 Louisiana Treaty — these are not only great events 
 
Thomas Jefferson 
 
 in the history of our own people, but they are great 
 events in the history of Hberty. I have named 
 eight. Six of them are already established holidays, 
 either by law, or in a habit of the people powerful 
 as law. Three of those — one of them perhaps the 
 foremost and most generally observed of all — ^belong 
 not only to the history of the country and of universal 
 liberty, but to the life of Thomas Jefferson. 
 
 e^ 
 
•^ 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 AN ADDRESS BY 
 
 Senator George Frisbie Hoar 
 
 Being his last public utterance, dblivbred 
 
 Juke 17th, 1904, at the English High 
 
 School Hall, in Worcestbk, 
 
 Together with Other Speeches, 
 
 AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE EXERCISES 
 UPON THE OCCASION OF THE PRESENTATION OF COPIES OF THE StUART 
 
 Portrait of Washington to the Public Schools 
 OF Worcester by the 
 
 Society of the Sons op the Revolution 
 
 in the \ 
 COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 Transcribed from the records of the Historian of the Society 
 
GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR 
 Born August 29, 1826. Died September 30, 1904. 
 
The Character of Washington. 
 
 AN ADDRESS BY 
 
 Senator George Frisbie Hoar, 
 
 BEING HIS LAST PUBLIC UTTERANCE, 
 
 WITH OTHER SPEECHES, 
 
 DELIVERED JUNE 17tH, 1904. PUBLISHED FROM THE STENOGRAPHIC 
 NOTES OF MISS M. LOUISE JACKSON. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY, 
 
 1904. 
 
 H , J 
 
Copyright, 1904, by E. H. "W. Dwight. 
 
The City of Worcester, having accepted from the Society of the 
 Sons of the Revolution in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 
 the gift of a number of engraved copies of the Stuart portrait 
 of Washington, to be placed in all the principal public school 
 buildings of the city, at the suggestion of the School Committee 
 exercises were held, and the presentation took place, on the after- 
 noon of Friday, Jtme 17th, 3904, at the English High School 
 Hall. 
 
 Senator George Frisbie Hoar, a member of the Society, was 
 present, and, although by reason of the condition of his health, 
 not originally assigned to speak, made a brief address in response 
 to the request of the chairman which proved to be one of his 
 most interesting, eloquent and delightful, — and which, alas ! was 
 the last public utterance of that eminent man. 
 
 The historian of the Society being charged with the duty of 
 recording such events, had arranged for a stenographic report 
 of the entire proceedings which the Society now publishes as a 
 memorial to its distinguished member. Senator Hoar spoke upon 
 the character of Washington, a subject which he was abundantly 
 qualified to discuss, without the impediment of a manuscript, or 
 the least indication of any abatement of his extraordinary powers. 
 His apt wit, discriminating analysis, just characterization, fund of 
 anecdote and grace of diction were never more in evidence. The 
 brief speeches which had preceded served but as a setting to 
 his, — a sparkling gem of oratory, worthy of any place or any 
 treasury. As he said in closing, the occasion was one of the most 
 beautiful and successful he had ever known. 
 
 At the conclusion, how few of his auditors realized that his 
 last public utterance had been made ; that the eloquent lips would 
 all too soon be silent ; but what more fitting subject could have 
 been chosen for the last words of any American orator than his 
 theme, "The Character of Washington." 
 
 EBEN FRANCIS THOMPSON. 
 
 Worcester, Mass., October 18, 1904. 
 
Exercises on the Occasion of the Presen- 
 tation OF Copies of the Stuart 
 Portrait of George 
 Washington. 
 
 As a result of the acceptance by the City of Worcester 
 of the offer of the Society of the Sons of the Revolution to 
 present framed copies of the Stuart portrait of Washington 
 for all the principal public school buildings of Worcester, 
 Committees of Arrangements and Reception were appointed 
 as follows : 
 
 On the part of the School Committee : 
 
 Charles R. Johnson, Esq., Chairman, 
 Rev. Vincent E. Tomlinson, Dr. Louis P. de Grandpre, 
 William H. Cook, Esq., Dr. Francis A. Underwood, 
 
 Homer P. Lewis, Esq., Joseph Beals, Esq. 
 
 On the part of the Sons of the Revolution : 
 
 Hon. Stephen Salisbury, Chairman, 
 Samuel S. Green, Esq., Hon. William T. Forbes, 
 
 Eben F. Thompson, Esq., J. Russel Marble, Esq., 
 
 George B. Inches, Esq., Hon. Daniel Kent, 
 
 Gen. Fred W. Wellington, John H. Coes, Esq., 
 
 Frank A. Leland, Esq. 
 
 On June 17th, at 2.30 p. m., the following gentlemen 
 met in the office of his Honor the Mayor, Walter H. 
 Blodget, as a reception committee : 
 
 5 
 
His Honor the Mayor, Walter H. Blodget, 
 
 Charles R. Johnson, Esq., Chairman of School Committee, 
 
 Rev. Vincent E. Tomlinson, 
 
 William H. Cook, Esq., and 
 
 Dr. Louis P. de Grandpre, of the School Committee, 
 
 Hon. Stephen Salisbury, 
 
 Hon. William T. Forbes, 
 
 J. Russel Marble, Esq., 
 
 Hon. Daniel Kent, 
 
 Eben F. Thompson, Esq., 
 
 John H. Coes, Esq., 
 
 Gen. Fred W. Wellington, 
 
 Frank A. Leland, Esq., 
 
 Homer P. Lewis, Esq., Superintendent of Worcester Public 
 
 Schools, 
 Joseph Beals, Esq., Secretary of the School Committee. 
 
 The Committee took carriages and repaired to the sta- 
 tion, and upon the arrival of the train received Richard 
 Henry Winslow Dwight, President of the Society of the 
 Sons of the Revolution in the Commonwealth of Massa- 
 chusetts, Walter Oilman Page, Registrar of the General 
 Society, Rev. Edward Hunting Rudd, Chaplain of the 
 State Society, and Harry Young, Esq., of the Board of 
 Managers. 
 
 The Committee and gnests drove to the English High 
 School Hall, where they were joined by United States 
 Senator, the Hon. George Frisbie Hoar, a life member of 
 the Society, the Hon. Henry A. Marsh, and the Rev. John 
 J. Putnam, a member of the Society and himself the son of 
 a Revolutionary soldier. All of the above named gentle- 
 men occupied seats upon the platform. 
 
 The exercises, beginning at 3.30 p. m., were in accord- 
 ance with the following programme, and the addresses 
 were as follows : 
 
Programme. 
 
 "Grand American Fantasia," Bendix. 
 
 High School Orchestra. 
 
 INTRODUCTION by the Presiding Officer, 
 
 Charles R. Johnson, Chairman of the School Committee. 
 
 ADDRESS OF WELCOME by His Honor, 
 
 Walter H. Blodget, Mayor. 
 
 RESPONSE in behalf of the Sons of the Revolution, 
 
 Richard Henry Winslow Dwight, President. 
 
 CORNET SOLO, "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp," . Rollinson. 
 
 Edward S. McGrath. 
 
 PRESENTATION OF PORTRAITS, 
 
 Eben Francis Thompson. 
 
 RESPONSES IN ACCEPTANCE, 
 
 Rev. Vincent E. Tomlinson, 
 SuPT. Homer P. Lewis, 
 
 Dr. Louis P. de Grandpre. 
 
 THE ART OF STUART, 
 
 Walter Oilman Page, Registrar of the General Society. 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON, 
 
 Address by Senator George Frisbie Hoar. 
 
 "The American Patrol," Meacham. 
 
 High School Orchestra. 
 
Mr. Johnson: 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: — We are met on this historic 
 day, the one hundred and twenty-ninth anniversary of 
 Bunker Hill, to publicly receive and properly acknowledge 
 the valuable gift to the City of Worcester from the Society 
 of the Sons of the Revolution. This beautiful gift is an 
 engraving in commemoration of him who was called, 
 " First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his 
 countrymen ; " of whom it was said by his distinguished 
 Virginian eulogist, " He sleeps beneath the shade of the 
 everlasting laurel, which stretches its mighty branches 
 athwart the lapse of ages ; " but of whom it may be said, 
 as did Tacitus of Agricola, — In the affections of his peo- 
 ple he lives and will live forever. 
 
 The of&cial representatives of the Society of the Sons 
 of the Revolution are here present, — and to them and to 
 all a welcome will now be extended by his Honor the 
 Mayor. 
 
 I have the pleasure of introducing to you Walter H. 
 Blodget, Mayor of Worcester. 
 
 Mayor Blodget : 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Honored Guests, Sons of the Revolution, 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, — ^for I see there 
 are quite a good many boys and girls here to-day, and I 
 only wish that there were more here. In behalf of the 
 City of Worcester I extend to you a most cordial and 
 hearty welcome to our city. We are glad to have you 
 come here ; and we are glad to welcome you coming, as 
 you do, on such a noble errand. 
 
 The work which this organization is doing at present is 
 certainly a work which is very commendable. Not only do 
 
 8 
 
we, as men and women, at tlie present time appreciate, 
 and benefit from these gifts, but our children and our 
 children's children will be better off for the gifts which this 
 Society is making to our city, and to other cities and towns 
 throughout the State. 
 
 We are certainly very glad to have these representative 
 men come here, and I know that we all appreciate the gift 
 which they are about to present to us, and we shall cer- 
 tainly be very thankful to them for it, and in behalf of 
 the city I welcome you here. 
 
 Mr. Johnson: It now gives me pleasure to introduce 
 to you the President of the Society of the Sons of the Rev- 
 olution, Richard Henry Winslow Dwight, whose ancestors 
 in many lines were engaged in our colonial struggles and 
 through the Revolutionary war: — President Dwight, of 
 the Society of the Sons of the Revolution. 
 
 Mr. Dwight: 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, and Pupils of the 
 Worcester Public Schools: — It is a pleasant duty this after- 
 noon, which the Society of the Sons of the Revolution is 
 permitted to perform. 
 
 Our Society was organized not for the purpose of self- 
 glorification but for patriotic work, because our members 
 and ofiEcers appreciate that patriotic work has many rami- 
 fications, and that our responsibilities to the state and 
 nation, lying along the lines for which our Society was 
 organized, are of abundant proportions. 
 
 The ancestors of many of those who are to-day among 
 our foremost citizens came over in the "Mayflower." 
 Many others are descended from those who arrived more 
 
recently. It is also true that those who are likely to carry 
 the burden of our Government in the years to come, are 
 to-day flocking to our shores in the steerage of the " Sax- 
 onia" or the " Kaiser Wilhelm." 
 
 I recently attended patriotic exercises at the Paul Re- 
 vere School in Boston, and I presume that conditions there 
 are not unlike those in Worcester, where your great indus- 
 tries employ so much labor. In that school district there 
 are 2,700 pupils, 75% foreign born, 95% children of Russian 
 and Italian parents. Some few years ago in this same 
 section of the city of Boston, the same percentage would 
 have been of German and Irish parentage. Can we not 
 believe that the descendants of our Russian and Italian 
 population are to make splendid citizens, provided the 
 teachers are suitably encouraged through our school com- 
 mittees and patriotic societies? 
 
 On the walls of the Paul Revere Kindergarten are pict- 
 ures of several American patriots, and when, during our 
 visit, the teacher pointed to a picture and asked these 
 children of foreign parents who it was, every hand in the 
 Kindergarten went up, so anxious were the youngsters, 
 now full-fledged Americans, to show that they knew. 
 When the teacher asked a small Hebrew boy, he said, 
 " General Prescott." The next child who caught the 
 teacher's eye was a small Italian girl, who answered the 
 teacher's question as to what General Prescott had once 
 said : " Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes." 
 
 So the exercises proceeded showing that these small tots 
 were being started aright. I came away tremendously 
 impressed with the good results of the patriotic work done 
 in that school, and feeling optimistic as to our country's 
 future. 
 
 10 
 
The largest undertaking now in progress in Boston, 
 when completed, will have over the door the name of a 
 young man who came to this country penniless. 
 
 A Boston pastor, as favorably known for his distin- 
 guished ability as for the historical church over which he 
 presides, landed in this country with six cents in his 
 pocket ; to-day he is one of Harvard's overseers. 
 
 The gentleman who will follow me will express to you 
 the pleasure it gives our Society to join you here to-day, 
 and I leave it for him to fittingly refer to the portrait of 
 our first President, George Washington. 
 
 Mr. Johnson : The next speaker is well known to the 
 citizens of Worcester, a former member of the City Gov- 
 ernment and of the General Court, and one who has done 
 more, I think, than any other one person to bring about 
 the matter which we celebrate here to-day — ^the presentation 
 of these portraits. By his untiring zeal, unflagging indus- 
 try and uniform good humor, he has brought about the 
 gifts which we are to receive on this occasion. 
 
 He is of distinguished ancestry, through many lines. 
 His great-great-grandfather, about this time one hundred 
 and twenty-nine years ago, was very busily engaged on the 
 field of Bunker Hill, — that was Sergeant Timothy Thomp- 
 son, and I have now the honor of introducing to you his 
 descendant, lawyer, scholar, and author, Eben Francis 
 Thompson. 
 
 Mr. Thompson: 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Mr. Mayor, Fellow Citizens, Ladies and 
 Gentlemen : — He would be bold indeed who would not be 
 embarrassed by so eloquent an introduction. 
 
The Society of the Sons of the Revolution is to-day your 
 guest. Although we come bearing gifts, we feel sure that 
 our coming occasions no undue apprehension. We have 
 deferred, Mr. Chairman, to your suggestion that our simple 
 gift should be fittingly accompanied by simple exercises ; 
 that these portraits which are to speak from the walls of 
 Worcester schoolhouses in the years to come should be 
 presented in a manner in some degree worthy of their 
 subject. 
 
 The Sons of the Revolution enrolls in its membership 
 those descended from participants in our great Revolution- 
 ary struggle, but its membership, we trust, is not a badge 
 of heredity alone. We are engaged in a friendly and gen- 
 erous rivalry with kindred and sister societies in the work 
 of preserving the memorials of the historic past. And I 
 would like to emphasize at this time the fact that we derive 
 largely, our local inspiration at least, from the work of the 
 women's societies. 
 
 We come to-day as in the days of old, when transfers 
 were made and a part delivered in token of the transfer of 
 the whole, and make livery of seizin of this portrait for all 
 that are to adorn the walls of Worcester's schoolhouses. 
 
 In this splendid presence, when I consider that on this 
 very platform sits one whom four score years have not 
 bowed, and whose eye glows as with the fires of '76, — the 
 son of a Revolutionary soldier, — I am reminded how close 
 is our connection with the historic past. And when I con- 
 sider that here, too, is a great publicist, a pilot whose chart 
 has ever been the chart of Jefferson, and whose compass 
 pointing to the pole star of Liberty was ever the compass 
 of Washington, — by ofi&cial denotement and universal ac- 
 claim the first citizen of Massachusetts, and one of the few 
 
 12 
 
of the world's great orators (Applause), I am counselled 
 that I must be brief even if I may not preserve a golden 
 silence. 
 
 The character of Washington was too large, too well 
 rounded for ready characterization. It cannot adequately 
 be considered in the time allotted to me. He was disci- 
 plined in a school of adversity. His life was filled with 
 peril and adventure. His early service in the years pre- 
 ceding the French and Indian War was amid constant 
 danger in the lonely forest from the attacks of the treach- 
 erous red man. In the disastrous campaign of Braddock 
 he underwent the experience which was to steel his forti- 
 tude for the trial of the Revolutionary conflict which was 
 to follow. We see him amid the reverses and suffering at 
 Valley Forge and through the long night before the dawn 
 of Yorktown. 
 
 That gracious presence was not unknown to Worcester, 
 for on July ist, 1775, he came to this city on his way to 
 Cambridge to take command of the American Armies, — 
 and also in 1789, when he was met by Worcester citizens 
 at the Leicester hills, on his journey to Cambridge, and 
 rode through our streets, past the spot under the shadow 
 of this very hill where, thirteen years before, the Declara- 
 tion of Independence was first read in New Bngland. 
 
 The city of Worcester is famous as having a greater 
 variety of production than any other city of its size in 
 the world. Its maniifactures range from those so small 
 that their inspection involves the use of a microscope to 
 those of such gigantic proportions that they tax modem 
 transportation facilities. The sound of her looms is 
 heard in every land wherever the rising or the setting 
 sun gilds Christian spire or barbaric minaret, and her 
 
 13 
 
wire, like the famous belt of Puck, girdles the globe. 
 With such manifestations of industrial progress shall 
 she not still continue to stand for high ideals of civic 
 righteousness? 
 
 These portraits will speak not only to the children of 
 those who have come across the sea, but to us, that we may- 
 renew our high ideals. 
 
 Accept, then, Mr. Chairman, our simple gift in the spirit 
 in which it is offered, in the hope that it may contribute 
 its small part to the patriotic education of the youth of 
 to-day who are to become the citizens of to-morrow. 
 
 Mr. Johnson : Rev. Vincent E. Tomlinson, one of the 
 most distinguished members of the committee, as he is 
 one of the most eloquent clergymen of the city, will now 
 respond on behalf of the school committee. 
 
 Mr. Tomlinson : 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Sons of the Revolution : — With a sense 
 of deep gratitude and unalloyed appreciation we receive 
 your noble gift. We recognize that it is as gracious as it 
 is generous. There may be those in our goodly city who 
 have wondered what was the aim of your body, but surely 
 they cannot doubt how high it is and how noble, after this 
 act of yours, — this patriotic and generous act ; for by it 
 you have said to the people of this city, and to the people 
 of this Commonwealth — for this is not an exceptional act 
 on your part, but characteristic of what you are doing con- 
 tinually — that your great aim is to perpetuate this nation 
 of ours ; that you wish to see that this land which has 
 been bequeathed to us by our fathers, — this good land, — 
 is handed down to those who shall come after us, to be the 
 
same hoine of peace and prosperity that we have found it ; 
 and you have taken a means, it seems to me, most wise to 
 do your part to preserve our nation. Knowing that the 
 influence which is brought to bear upon the youth of the 
 land is the strongest, — that in the formative period of life, 
 impressions can be made that are lasting, — you have 
 chosen this beautiful means of presenting our city over 
 two score of these Gilbert Stuart portraits of the Father 
 of his Country ; and I would have you, invited guests and 
 friends, look beyond this room where we are gathered to 
 see the large influence of this gift of yours. 
 
 The reception of this gift to-day is representative. Mem- 
 bers of the School Board, members of the City Govern- 
 ment, members of all the schools, are present here, and in 
 this representative way we receive very gratefully your 
 gift. But we would have you look beyond this room. We 
 would have you see the fifty school buildings, or more, 
 in our city, whose walls will be graced with copies of this 
 portrait which is before us. And we are glad to say to 
 you that in each building where the portrait of President 
 Washington is hung, appropriate exercises will be held ; 
 and I think I can speak, in fact, I do speak for the School 
 Board when I say that we invite your co-operation in this 
 further work that lies with us, — that of suitably presenting 
 these portraits to the schools of the city. We invite your 
 help in this work that lies before us. With the opening 
 of the school work in the fall, these gifts will be presented 
 to the various schools and appropriate exercises will be 
 held ; and you are to remember, too, that not only those 
 who are of school age now, and who will be influenced by 
 the words that shall be spoken in the presentation of these 
 gifts are to be benefited by your act, but you are to look 
 
 15 
 
further still and see the children of the coming generation, 
 children yet unborn, who, gathering in our schools, will 
 look upon that benign face and receive an inspiration of 
 patriotism and love of country. For it seems to me that 
 if we are to preserve our nation we must cherish those 
 high ideals which have marked our fathers. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Bmerson spoke these noble words, " What 
 greater calamity can fall upon a nation than loss of rever- 
 ence? Then all things go to decay. The eye of youth is 
 not lighted by the hope of other worlds, and age is without 
 honor. Society lives in trifles, and when men die we do 
 not mention them." 
 
 That our youth may be inspired with reverence, that 
 they may have before them a high ideal of what it is to be 
 an American citizen, you hang these portraits upon the 
 walls of our schoolrooms. Blessing will attend and follow 
 this act of yours. Many and many a life,' I make bold to 
 say, will be a better life because of what you have done for 
 our city; and this city of ours, whose record is not a small 
 one in patriotic deeds, responds most gratefully to this act 
 of yours, and in behalf of the people of this city we extend 
 to you our heartiest thanks. 
 
 Mr. Johnson : The gentleman who will follow is triply 
 honored, having had three grandfathers who were in the 
 Revolution. I have the honor at this time to introduce to 
 you the beloved superintendent of Worcester's schools, 
 Homer P. Ivcwis. 
 
 Mr. Lewis: 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : — I am afraid that in the 
 interests of history I shall have to correct the impression 
 
 i6 
 
which you may have received from my introduction. I only 
 had two grandfathers, — ^three great-grandfathers in the 
 revolutionary army. (Laughter.) 
 
 It falls to me to speak briefly in behalf of the schools of 
 Worcester, and to express our heartiest thanks to you. Sons 
 of the Revolution, for these splendid gifts. They will not 
 only adorn the walls of our schools. They will, — as has 
 been said by one of the speakers, — speak from those walls, 
 and they will speak of patriotism and of public virtue. 
 They will, I hope, remind our children that such societies 
 as yours exist to keep alive the memories, the best memo- 
 ries, of our history. They can convey no better lesson ; 
 and they will convey that lesson, I am sure, of duty to 
 country, and of the consideration for the rights of all that 
 may be derived from a study of Washington's life. 
 
 " Custom cannot stale the infinite variety" of profit that 
 may come from the study of Washington. 
 
 Mr. Johnson : One of the important factors in the suc- 
 cess of the Revolutionary War. was the French Alliance. 
 I suppose it is doubtful whether the effort of our fathers 
 would have succeeded had it not been for the intervention 
 of the Court of France ; and of all those who came in the 
 company of soldiers from France none was more favored 
 with the acquaintance, the friendship of Washington, than 
 was Lafayette. He was the leader on his side in that 
 great contest. Of his coming our own Emerson has sung: 
 
 " Oh, bounteous seas that never fail, 
 
 Oh, day remembered yet ; 
 Oh, happy port that spied the sail 
 
 That wafted Lafayette. 
 
 " Pole-star of Light, in Europe's night, 
 That never wandered from the right." 
 
 17 
 
We have with us a member of the School Committee, 
 descended from that distinguished race, and it now gives 
 me pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Louis P. de Grandpre, 
 who will speak to you, as I think they say in the com- 
 mencement programmes, in lingua Gallica. 
 
 Dr. de Grandpre: 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen : — 
 I deeply appreciate the invitation of Mr. Chairman to speak 
 a few words in French. It is a great favor to me, although 
 it may not be so great a favor to you; but I am sure that 
 a great many of those who are here this afternoon under- 
 stand French, namely, our esteemed citizens, Mr. Salis- 
 bury, Judge Forbes, whom I have had occasion to meet at 
 L' Alliance Frangais, and Mr. Thompson, whom you have 
 just heard. 
 
 I have an idea that Mr. Chairman, in inviting me to 
 speak in French, did so in the interests of peace and har- 
 mony, and I will tell you why, — ^because he knows that 
 whenever I speak in Bnglish I have to take issue with 
 Webster or Worcester on the question of pronunciation. 
 Nevertheless, I am very hopeful. ' 
 
 I wish to offer my most sincere thanks for his courtesy 
 and for his homage to France and the French language. 
 I don't know that the French language needs to have any 
 excuses offered in its behalf for being spoken on an occa- 
 sion such as this, when I consider that General Lafayette, 
 at the different battles of the Revolutionary War, and 
 especially at the battle of Yorktown, used to command his 
 men in French. 
 
 A young French officer desiring to enlist in the Ameri- 
 can Army during the War of the Revolution was asked 
 
 i8 
 
by General Washington the usual questions, — "Age?" 
 "Twenty-nine," said the young officer. "Nationality?" 
 " French." " Religion? " Then the young officer smilingly 
 replied, — " General, if you ask me of what faith, of what 
 creed I am, I answer that I am of the Catholic faith ; but 
 if you ask me of what religion I am, I answer that I am, 
 and so are my men, of the American religion." 
 
 This answer, Ladies and Gentlemen, might apply to all 
 those who inhabit this land of Liberty. Whatever may 
 be our language, whatever may be our creed, our faith, — 
 every one and all are of the same spirit, the same religion, 
 the American religion. 
 
 Mesdames et Messieurs : — On me prie de rappeler, en 
 quelques mots, la part prise par la France dans la conquite 
 de I'Independance Am6ricaine. Malgr6 mon incompetence, 
 j'accepte avec plaisir. C'est un hommage qu'on veut rendre 
 a la France et la langue frauQaise, parce que c'est en fran- 
 gais qu'on m'invite a parler. 
 
 De toutes les langues etrangeres parlies en ce pays, la 
 langue frangaise est la plus aim6e et la plus recherch^e. 
 
 Si on admire la langue frangaise, ses beaut^s, ses rich- 
 esses, sa clart6 et ses harmonies, c'est qu'on admire plus 
 encore le peuple de genie qui a ecrit dans cette langue les 
 plus grands chefs d'oeuvre de la pens^e humaine ; les plus 
 grands comme les plus nombreux. 
 
 Au — dessus des droits a I'admiration que donnent a la 
 France sa prodigieuse activite intellectuelle et son g6nie, 
 se placent, pour le peuple am6ricain, les droits qu'elle s'est 
 acquis a sa reconnaissance. 
 
 La France a 6t6 bonne, elle a et6 g^n^reuse, elle a 6t6 
 chevaleresque a l'6gard des Etats Unis. 
 
 Que vient-on nous parler de raisons d'Etat, de motifs 
 
 19 
 
d'int^r^t? M^me la France officielle, repr6sent6e par Roch- 
 ambeau, a 6t6 g6ti6retise. 
 
 La guerre ani6ricaine lui a coute la somme ^norme, a 
 l'6poque, de un milliard deux cent millions de francs, soit 
 un peu plus de deux cent millions de dollars. Cette somme, 
 il lui fallut I'emprunter. Les int6r^ts on6reux de cette 
 nouvelle charge produisirent un d6ficit considerable qui fut 
 la cause principale de la convocation des Ktats G6n6raux. 
 Et la convocation des Etats G6n6raux, on le sait, amena la 
 cbiite la royaut6. Ea monarcbie frangaise, en donnant 
 naissance a la republique am^ricaine, avait hate le moment 
 de sa mort. 
 
 Et la France chevaleresque repr6sentee par Lafayette, 
 obeissait elle a des considerations d'interet? 
 
 "Mon coeur est enrole, je suis gagn6 a la cause am6ri- 
 caine," repondait Lafayette a Franklin lequel, tout en re- 
 merciant Lafayette de ses off res de services, se croyait, tenu 
 de lui representer la condition d6sesp6r6e oii se trouvait 
 l'arm6e am^ricaine. 
 
 "Votre cause est d6sesp6r€e, dites-vous, c'est pr^cise- 
 mentlemoment deluivenir en aide." . . . "Maisvous 
 partez sans le consentement du roi. Vous vous exposez 
 a la confiscation de vos biens. Puis nous n'avons pas 
 seulement de vaisseaux a mettre a votre disposition." 
 
 "Qu' a cela ne tienne, j'en fr^terai moi-m^me, a mes 
 propres frais." ..." Mais nous n'avons pas d'argent 
 pour la solde de vos soldats." ..." Qu'importe, je 
 les paierai moi-meme. J'afEecte a cette fin la somme de 
 deux cent cinquante mille francs." 
 
 Qu'on me montre dans I'histoire un plus bel exemple 
 de gen6rosit6. La vaillante ep6e de la France, dans I'es- 
 
 20 
 
pace de trois quarts de siecle, a aid6 a briser les liens de 
 deux peuples : Du peuple am^ricain a Yorktown, et du 
 peuple italien k Solferino. 
 
 Combattre, comme Wasbington, pour l'ind6pendatice 
 de son pays est admirable, mais plus admirable encore 
 est de combattre, comme lyafayette, pour la seule id6e 
 de Justice! 
 
 En 1783, se signait a Versailles un trait6, le document 
 bistorique le plus important des temps modernes, — le trait6, 
 qui, en reconnaissant I'Independance des Etats-Unis, en 
 faisant naitre a la liberte le peuple americain, devait de- 
 placer le centre de gravite du monde. Ce traite fut sign6 
 par le France, par I'Angleterre et par les Etats-Unis. La 
 jeune republique avait d61egu6, pour signer en son nom, 
 trois repr6sentants, puis le president du congres devait 
 contre signer. 
 
 Concitoyens franco americains, ne nous est-il pas permis 
 d'6prouver un sentiment de fiert6 en retrouvant an bas de 
 ce traite de Versailles que j'appellerai I'acte de naissance 
 de la Republique Americaine, en retrouvant, dis-je, sur 
 quatre signatures, trois noms frangais, tous trois petit-fils 
 de Frangais venus de France a la suite de la revocation de 
 l'6dit de Nantes : Jobn Jay, Henry Laurens et Edias 
 Boudinot, le quatrieme est celui de I'immortel Benjamin 
 Franklin. 
 
 Le souvenir de la France m6rite de vivre etemellement 
 dans le coeur des Americains. 
 
 On se rappellera toujours qu' a I'^poque la plus sombre 
 de la revolution, lorsque les soldats de Washington, ^cras^s 
 sous le poids des privations, des mis^res et de la faim 
 voyaient s'evanouir tout espoir de succes, desesp6raient de 
 jamais voir se lever a leur horizon I'astre bienfaisant de la 
 
 21 
 
Iibert6, — on se rappellera toujours qu'alors la France, 
 comme un g6nie consolateur, apparut sur la scene et mit 
 son 6p6e et son or au service de notre cause, sauvant ainsi 
 de la destruction I'arbre naissant de la liberty sur ce con- 
 tinent. Qa. et6 le malbeur de la France quelquefois mais 
 ce sera sa gloire toujours d'avoir distribu6 ses sympatbies 
 son coeur, son sang partout 6u il y a eu des grandes causes 
 a d6fendre. 
 
 Mr. Johnson: Tbe gentleman wbo is to follow is 
 descended from Captain James Page, of tbe 4tb Massa- 
 cbusetts Regiment in tbe Revolutionary Army. He is 
 descended by four lines of descent from Revolutionary 
 families. He is an artist of reputation, — known tbrougb- 
 out tbe country, and I bave great pleasure in introducing 
 to you Walter Oilman Page, Registrar of tbe General 
 Society of tbe Sons of tbe Revolution. 
 
 Mr. Page: 
 
 Mr. Cbairman, Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen, Pupils 
 of tbe Worcester Scbools : — It gives me great pleasure to 
 be present tbis afternoon to represent our National Society 
 and to speak a brief word for Gilbert Stuart, one of tbe 
 greatest of portrait painters, and certainly tbe greatest por- 
 trait painter bom on tbis soil. 
 
 As Americans, we sball ever be proud of our Washing- 
 ton ; we sball ever be grateful. We sball, also, tbougb in 
 a lesser degree, be grateful for tbe man wbo, tbrougb bis 
 genius, perpetuated tbe features of our first President, not 
 only for us, but for generations yet to come. 
 
 Tbere are altogether thirty known portraits of Wash- 
 ington, covering a period of twenty-six years. As early 
 
 22 
 
as May 15, 1785, Washington wrote as follows: "I am so 
 inured to the touches of the painter's pencil that I am now 
 altogether at their beck, and sit like Patience on a monu- 
 ment whilst they are delineating the lines of my face. It 
 is a proof of what habit and custom can effect. At first, I 
 was as impatient at the request and at the results of the 
 operation as could well be imagined. The next time, I 
 consented very reluctantly. Now, no dray moves more 
 readily to the thills than I do to the painter's chair.'' 
 
 Gilbert Stuart was bom in Narragansett, Rhode Island, 
 in 1755, and died in Boston in 1828. He had the usual 
 difficulties of the embryo artist up to the time he was fif- 
 teen years of age. About the year 1770, he became ac- 
 quainted with a certain Cosmo Alexander, who came over 
 to this country from London to spend a few months here, 
 and on his return he took Stuart with him. Shortly after 
 his return, Mr. Alexander died, and Stuart was obliged to 
 return to America, as he was not sufficiently advanced in 
 his profession to make his own way. He was fortunate 
 enough upon his return to obtain some commissions and 
 had fair success ; so much so that we find him once more, 
 in three years, sailing for England, — ^leaving Boston about 
 ten days before the Battle of Bunker Hill. He entered 
 the studio of Benjamin West, at that time President of the 
 Royal Academy, and also an American, as you know, — 
 and from this date he began to reap fame and fortune, soon 
 taking a place nearly equal to the best artists of his day ; 
 and there is no doubt that if he had remained in England 
 he would have attained the highest rank among the artists 
 of that country. 
 
 Shortly after the close of the War of the Revolution, 
 Stuart returned to America, and in this connection I should 
 
 23 
 
like to quote from what another American artist, Wash- 
 ington Allston, wrote, shortly after Stuart's death: " But 
 admired and patronized as he was, he chose to return to 
 his native country. He was impelled to this step, as he 
 often declared, by the desire to give to America a faithful 
 portrait of Washington, and thus, in some measure, to 
 associate his own with the name of the Father of his Coun- 
 try." We see that his ambition was justified in the sub- 
 lime head which he has left to us. 
 
 Gilbert Stuart was not only one of the first painters of 
 his time, but must have been admitted by all who had the 
 opportunity of knowing him to have been, whatever his 
 art, an extraordinary man, — one who would have found 
 distinction in any profession or walk of life. His mind 
 was of a strong and original cast ; his perceptions as clear 
 as they were just, and in the power of illustration he has 
 rarely been equalled. On almost every subject, more es- 
 pecially on such as were connected with his art, his con- 
 versation was marked by wisdom and knowledge, — while 
 the uncommon precision and elegance of his language 
 seemed even to receive an additional grace from his man- 
 ner, which was that of the well-bred gentleman. Narra- 
 tions and anecdotes with which his knowledge of men of 
 the world had stored his memory, and which he often gave 
 with great beauty and dramatic eflfect, were not infrequently 
 employed by Mr. Stuart in a way and with an address 
 peculiar to himself. From this store it was his custom to 
 draw largely while occupied with his sitters, apparently 
 for their amusement, but really for the purpose of calling 
 to the surface some trace of the natural character. But 
 these glimpses of character, mixed as they are in all re- 
 spects with so much that belongs to every age and zone, 
 
 24 
 
would be of little use to the ordinary observer, — for the 
 faculty of distinguishing between the responsive and per- 
 manent — in other words, between the conventional expres- 
 sion which lies very close to the special indication of the 
 individual mind is indeed no common one ; and by no one 
 with whom we are acquainted was this faculty possessed 
 in so marked a degree. 
 
 It was this which enabled him to animate his canvas, 
 not with the appearance of mere general life, but with that 
 peculiar life which separates the humblest individual from 
 his kind. Were other evidence wanting, this evidence 
 alone would establish his position as a man of genius, in 
 that it is the privilege of genius, alas, to measure happi- 
 ness the highest and the lowest. In his art there has no 
 one ever surpassed him in embodying, if we may so speak, 
 these transient apparitions of the soul. In a word, Gilbert 
 Stuart was, in its widest sense, a philosopher in his art. 
 He really understood its principles, as his works bear wit- 
 ness, — whether as to lines and colors or lights and shad- 
 ows, — showing that sense of perception of the whole which 
 stamps the man of genius. He never allowed the miscel- 
 laneous troubles of his life to tinge his work with the 
 least shadow of jealousy, and where praise was due he 
 gave it freely, and with a generosity that showed he had a 
 pleasure in praising. To the younger artists he was uni- 
 formly kind and indulgent, and most liberal of his advice, 
 which no one ever properly asked but that he received it 
 in a manner no less courteous than impressive. 
 
 He first met his illustrious subject at an evening recep- 
 tion, and accustomed as Stuart was to eminent men, he 
 often said that no living man ever inspired such a feeling 
 of reverence ; and it was not until he had had several inter- 
 
 25 
 
views that he was able to feel that he could give the requi- 
 site concentration of mind to his work. 
 
 At this time he received a very flattering commission 
 from the city of Halifax to paint the portrait of the Duke 
 of Kent, father of Queen Victoria, and a ship of war was 
 placed at his disposal to convey him to Halifax, but he 
 declined this honor. 
 
 Stuart painted his portrait of Washington in Philadel- 
 phia in a house which is still standing on the corner of 
 Fifth and Chestnut streets. The original portrait from 
 which this reproduction is taken is not finished. So far 
 as the face is concerned, it is. The reproduction does not 
 show as much as the original canvas. The reason for this 
 portrait not having been finished was that Stuart, after he 
 had completed the head, found that making replicas, or 
 copies, was a great source of income to him. Washington 
 willingly consented to accept a copy in place of this por- 
 trait. Stuart also had a strong desire to retain the original 
 that he might leave it to his family upon his death. After 
 Stuart's death, the original portrait was sold by his widow 
 to a number of gentlemen, who, in turn, presented it to 
 the Boston Athenaeum, — hence it has attained the desig- 
 nation of the Athenaeum portrait of Washington. 
 
 In concluding, no better word has been said for this 
 portrait than what has been said by Washington Allston, 
 that "A nobler personification of wisdom and goodness, 
 reposing in the majesty of a serene countenance, is not to 
 be found on canvas." 
 
 Mr. Johnson: — There is one part not on the pro- 
 gramme which I think you are all waiting for and would 
 be glad to hear. Mr. Thompson has most eloquently 
 
 26 
 
alluded to a son of the Revolution here present. We have 
 ■with us an eminent son of the Revolution, — a descendant 
 of two signers of the Declaration of Independence, — our 
 own distinguished fellow townsman. Senator Hoar, de- 
 scendant of Samuel Adams and of Roger Sherman; we 
 all desire to hear him, I am sure. 
 
 Mr. Hoar: 
 
 Mr. President, I am very much obliged to you for your 
 kind introduction, but I am not entitled to claim any share 
 in the light of Samuel Adams. (Laughter.) 
 
 I did what almost everybody who is stationed here to- 
 day did in the time of the Revolutionary War. I put in 
 all the grandfathers I had (Applause), and one of them to 
 whom your Chairman has alluded signed the Declaration 
 of Independence and was on the committee that brought 
 it in ; and the other was at Concord Bridge before sunrise 
 on the nineteenth of April, with his father and his father- 
 in-law and two brothers-in-law under his command in the 
 company of which he was lieutenant. And my mother 
 had three brothers who were majors or captains in the 
 Revolutionary War. One of them commanded a Connec- 
 ticut regiment at the storming of Stony Point. So the tra- 
 ditions of my household are satisfactory, and I think I am 
 a member of the Sons of the Revolution by a fair heredi- 
 tary title, — but I ought to say in all fairness that nearly 
 every Massachusetts man, every New England man of 
 Revolutionary descent, can tell about as good a story. If 
 I go down to Middlesex and begin to brag about my ances- 
 tors, there is always some gentleman sitting on the right 
 hand or the left who trumps my trick every time. But I 
 
 27 
 
have one title, perhaps, which I may mention on this occa- 
 sion which will be hard to match, and that is that my 
 mother sat in George Washington's lap when she was a 
 little girl ; and if there are any of you who have a kins- 
 woman who sat on a more costly or precious throne than 
 that, you may be delighted to show your title. 
 
 The General, on his journey in 1789, was a guest at my 
 grandfather's house in New Haven, and, as I said, my 
 mother, who was a little girl six years old, sat in his 
 lap, and remembered until she was eighty-three, when she 
 died, the whole circumstance and detail of the occasion as 
 if it had been the day before. Perhaps one story connected 
 with that visit may be worth telling. My mother had a 
 little sister who was eleven years old, and who of course 
 was dressed in her best for the occasion, and when the 
 General went out, my grandfather stood talking in the 
 front entry with him, and this little girl opened the door. 
 General Washington was very fond of children and like 
 all good and sensible men he liked little girls much the 
 better (Laughter), and he put his hand on her head and 
 said, " My little lady, I wish you a better office." She 
 dropped a courtesy and answered as quick as lightning, 
 " Yes sir, to let you in." 
 
 Now, as has well been said by the speakers who have pre- 
 ceded me, these pictures of General Washington are to 
 speak to you boys and girls for many a year to come. 
 What is it that they are to say? The living speaker says 
 what he thinks of to say ; but these pictured lips will say 
 to you a good deal that they will reflect through you. It 
 will depend upon you what lesson you get from looking 
 at the picture of George Washington. But there is one 
 thing you want to be sure, all of you, to think of and to 
 
 28 
 
know : George Washington by the common consent of all 
 mankind was the greatest and best man who ever lived on 
 this earth who was a ruler of the people. Englishmen 
 and Germans and Frenchmen all agree with his own coun- 
 trymen in that estimate of him. As the old monk said of 
 King Alfred, " He is among the rulers of mankind better 
 than any of the past ones and greater than any that are 
 to come." The old world knew not his peer, and the new 
 world will never give us his equal. And yet there is not 
 a single thing about George Washington that is uncom- 
 mon, except his absolute goodness. He was not a man of 
 genius. He was not a poet or an enthusiast or an orator 
 or an inventor. He was a good general, but he was not a 
 Napoleon nor a Julius Caesar nor a Hannibal. It was 
 simple, every-day, common-place, corner-stone virtue; the 
 virtues that make the happiness and the safety of every 
 house : the virtues that you like to think of in your father 
 and mother and sister and brother, — the commonest virtues 
 of common human nature, that made George Washington ; 
 prudence and patience and veracity. He not only could 
 not tell a lie, but he could not think a lie or act a lie or con- 
 ceal a lie. He said, himself, in his old age that he never 
 had broken his word to anybody in his life, and it was true. 
 He was patient under the little and the great troubles of 
 life. He was faithful, and that is what made George 
 Washington. As one of the speakers told you, he schooled 
 himself to submit to what I think is perhaps the most try- 
 ing ordeal that most men have to submit to in public life, 
 — that is, having his portrait painted. Why, Walter Scott, 
 who used to have his portrait painted so frequently, says 
 in his diary, that he schooled himself to stand it pretty well, 
 but that his dog Camp, who was a favorite and a very in- 
 
 29 
 
telli^ent dog, when lie saw an artist coming up the avenue 
 with an easel,— the dog used to be painted with Sir Walter, 
 —would put his tail between his legs and scud off and not 
 come back for a fortnight (Laughter). Now that is 
 what has made George Washington the hero not only of 
 America but of mankind, because he is the most perfect 
 example known to humanity of what every man, woman 
 and child can be. 
 
 You ask people what they think made up the character 
 of George Washington, and every man and woman will 
 answer the character that he or she has been in the habit 
 of finding most agreeable to encounter in his or her life. 
 I heard of a very worthy old lady in rather straitened cir- 
 cumstances some years ago, and somebody living in a 
 country town asked her what sort of person she thought 
 General Washington was. " Well," said she, " I suppose 
 he was a person who would have been willing to lend a 
 neighbor anything he had that she wanted to borrow." 
 (Laughter.) 
 
 Professor Gallaudet, a good friend of mine in Washing- 
 ton, the head of a great college there for the deaf and 
 dumb, told me a touching story which illustrates what I 
 have been showing. He had a little boy among his pupils, 
 — a little fellow born deaf and dumb, five or six years old. 
 He was very bright and precocious and the Professor was 
 very fond of him, and he was very fond of Dr. Gallaudet, 
 and they used to like to talk together; one day they were 
 talking, and he asked the little boy if he knew the story 
 of General Washington and the hatchet, and the little fel- 
 low said he did, — telling it ofif with his fingers. " Well," 
 said my friend when he told it to me, " so the little chap 
 began to tell the story, and when he got to the right place 
 
 30 
 
in the story he said, 'and he took the hatchet in his left 
 hand and he said to his father' — the Professor interrupted 
 him, — " What did he take the hatchet in his left hand for ? " 
 "Why, he wanted his right to tell him with!" The 
 poor little fellow thought, of course, that General Wash- 
 ington was deaf and dumb. I might, I suppose, spend a 
 week in talking over General Washington, but I will not 
 any further impair the exquisite success of this occasion. 
 It is one of the most beautiful and successful occasions I 
 ever knew, — and the occasion owes its beauty and its suc- 
 cess to this, — that there have been eight speakers, every 
 one of them within the time assigned, and every one of 
 them making such a speech that all the audience wished 
 it were longer ; and when our excellent friend, our French 
 physician, finished his, I think we all of us wanted to say, 
 "Oui, Monsieur, tres bon, encore." 
 
 At the conclusion of the exercises, carriages were taken 
 for the Worcester Club where the officers of the Society 
 and the Special Committees were entertained as guests by 
 a few members of the Society of Sons of the Revolution. 
 
 31 
 
The Commonwealth Press 
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