n^ > 1 r-;.. ■ ■ . ■.) ' •U' N v^' '^oo^ W'^ . P\v ^ * N ^ ^p- QV- ^ >f <^ ^ -^^ ^- %^r, •- •^^. •'> 0. x-o A .V ^ .„.y>^y->. ' -f^ o.^^'"^/ '■^^' \^^' $ ^^ ^.S ^=ii^^ ^^ ^^ V *v^^ ■■*■ ^^. v-i^ .^ .■$^<^;oO -^ .9^-^ ^-^^ X: ■%^ 'tP (^^ .A\^ N C ^ -O .# c « ^ ^ >P "*%^' ^ o^ . -^ o M ^ .^C) ©• ;:^,- , J^ c w/,. ,,^c^ \\V J^ *bo' "^.^ "■^4 '%. ^ ^V -. '\^. "oo"^ p5''^'>^.. ^♦^<^^. ,-'<^. ;^\xo^' THE FORMS OF PUBLIC ADDRESS EDITED BY GEORGE P. BAKER Assistant-Professor of English in Harvard University NEW YORK HENRY HOLT .AND COMPANY 1904 LIBRARY of CONGRESS Two Copies Received DEC 5J0 1904 Oopyriehi tntry CUSS CL^ XXc, Noi COPY B. 7 Copyright, 190+ BY HENRY HOLT & COMPANY PREFACE. To Mr. R. L. Lyman, Instructor in Harvard University,. I owe invaluable aid in preparing the notes to this book. I wish to thank also Professor A. B. Hart for some details of these notes. To Professor H. B. Huntington, of Brown University, I owe helpful suggestion and comment when we used the material together at Harvard. In preparing copy for the press I have been greatly assisted by Miss Loraine P. Bucklin. Finally, I keenly appreciate the ready courtesy of the publishers and the authors without whose consent the greater part of this book could not have been reprinted. G. P. B. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction ix LETTERS PRIVATE AND OPEN. To J. G. Blaine, Declining to be a Candidate for Nomi- nation TO the Presidency .... W. T. Sherman, 3 To General McClellan, Plan of Campaign Abraham Lincoln, 6 "President Lincoln, The Prayer of Twenty Millions, Horace Greeley, 7 To Horace Greeley, in reply . . . Abraham Lincoln, 14 To General Hooker, Placing him in Command of Army of Potomac Abraham Lincoln, 16 To THE Earl of Chesterfield, Patrons and Patronage, Samuel Johnson, 19 To William Winter, The Burial of Edwin Booth . . T. B. Aldrich, 22 To THE Emperor Napoleon III, Pardon for Victor Hugo, Mrs. E. B. Browning, 23 To M. Felix Faure, President of the Republic, The Dreyfus Case Emile Zola, 25 To C. F. Adams, On English Recognition of the Confed- erate Government W. H. Seward, 41 Memorandum upon the Appeal of Admiral Schley . . Theodore Roosevelt, 50 EDITORIALS. The Rajahs of Sarawak The Spectator, 69 The Commission of Exchange The N'ation, 69 President Roosevelt on Community of Interest . . , The Nation, 71 Train's Troubles . Charles T. Congdon, A^.F. Tribune, 72 Friar Tuck Legislation, W. C. Bryant, A^.F. Evening Post, 74 V vi Contents. PAGE Herreshoff's Achievement The Nation, 76 The Isthmian Canal The Independent, 79 Revelations in South Africa The Speaker, 82 The Proposed Liverpool University , Liverpool Mercury, 87 Concerning the Race Problem, .... Boston Herald, 91 Twelve Little Dirty Questions . Charles T. Congdon, N.Y. Tribune, 95 Northern Independence .... Charles T. Congdon, N.Y. Tribune, 99 John Addington Symonds . . . W. M. Payne, The Dial, 103 Mr. PIorace Greeley, E. L. Godkin, N . Y. Evening Post, 107 The Odium Philologicum, E. L. Godkin, N.Y. Evening Post, 113 The Critic and his Task . . , . W. M. Payne, The Dial, 118 THE EULOGY, Nomination of U. S. Grant .... Roscoe Conkling, 125 The Life and Character of James Abram Garfield . . J. G. Blaine, 130 ToussAiNT L'Ouverture Wendell Phillips, 156 COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES. Heroes of the Civil War .... Charles W. Eliot, 183 The Fourth of July Phillips Brooks, 185 Influence of Universities .... Grover Cleveland, 187 Oration before the Grand Army Posts of Suffolk County John D. Long, 193 DEDICATIONS. Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln, 207 Address at the Opening of the Atlanta Exposition Booker T. Washington, 210 SPEECH OF WELCOME. Speech of Welcome to Prince Henry of Prussia .... Charles W. Eliot, 221 INAUGURALS. First Inaugural Address .... Abraham Lincoln, 227 Vs^ECONP Inaugural Address .... Abraham Lincoln, 238 Contents. vii SPEECHES OF FAREWELL. Speech to i66th Ohio Regiment . . Abraham Lincoln, 245 Last Speech, at Charlestown, West "Va., John Brown, 247 ADDRESSES FOR ACADEMIC OCCASIONS. The Scholar in a Republic . . . Wendell Phillips, 253 The Leadership of Educated Men George William Curtis, 282 ADDRESSES ON SOCIAL QUESTIONS. The Drama in America To-day . . . Norman Hapgood, 303 The Child and the State David D. Field, 310 Address at a Meeting in behalf of the Children's Aid Society Phillips Brooks, 319 LEGISLATIVE ADDRESSES. Egypt and the Soudan Lord Salisbury, 333 ' General Amnesty Carl Schurz, 353 POLITICAL ADDRESSES. On Repeal of the Union .... Daniel O'Connell, 387 Address at the Democratic National Convention . . W. E. Russell, 398 Secession Alexander H. Stephens, 401 To THE Young Men of Italy E. Mazzini, 406 AFTER DINNER SPEECHES. A Five Minute Address Rachel K. Fitz, 417 Address at the Dinner of the Harvard Alumni . . . Booker T. Washington, 420 Our Literature J. R. Lowell, 423 Speech at Harvard Commencement Dinner W. F. Bartlett, 428 The Puritan Principle : Liberty under the Law . , . G. W. Curtis, 430 INTRODUCTION. (AN OPEN LETTER TO TEACHERS.) The very conditions of American life require that our educated youth shall be able to expound with clearness their business, financial, political, or even moral ideas or ideals. In nine cases out of ten, too, they will not merely print what they have to say, but first say it and then, perhaps, print it. Where, as compared with the numerous college courses in debating, oratory, or literary style, are the college courses in such public exposition ? There are some courses, it is true, especially in technical schools, which train their students to expound clearly a plan in engineering or some scientific discovery, but the courses in non-scientific and non- literary exposition are almost confined to debating and so- called oratory. But even in these, study of public discussion is too often not, as it should be, an end in itself, but merely a means to the end — winning a victory in an intercollegiate contest. It is, indeed, inevitable that as long as the present vogue of intercollegiate debating persists, college courses in debate cannot be wholly for training in discussion for the sake of determining the truth about mooted questions, but must conform somewhat to the arbitrary rules of committees which have made of intercollegiate debating a kind of intel- lectual sport. Similarly, interstate committees have laid down rules to govern the contests in oratory. The efficiency of such courses in debating or in oratory, the undergraduate judges — does not the graduate too ? — by the number of suc- cessful contestants it produces. ix X Introduction. Now, there is no denying that intercollegiate debating has been of very great assistance to those of us who are interested in teaching undergraduates to present their ideas orally to the general public with clearness and force, — to those of us who are interested in the forms of public discourse, — for intercol- legiate debating offers just that idea of tussle, wrestle and fight which appeals to a youth's imagination. At first it is, more than an3^thing else, the fight, the spirit of contest, the desire to show one's supremacy over someone else which in- terests. Later, students come to appreciate that to fight with success intellectually is possible only through knowledge of certain principles and the intelligent application of those prin- ciples under varying conditions. Recognition of these ideas sends them to a course in debating enthusiastic for the work ; or, if they have already begun systematic study of debating, when these ideas come to them through some interclass or intercollegiate debate, the recognition quickens them to stren- uous, persistent endeavor. But the widespread interest in intercollegiate debating and proper gratitude for what it has done to stimulate a study of the different forms of public discourse, have led undergrad- uates, graduates, and even teachers, I think, greatly to mis- emphasize its importance. After all, intercollegiate debating does not mean every kind of discussion, nor even every kind of debating ; it signifies a special kind of debating, guided by rules as definite as those of football, and determined in the same way — by conference of the powers. It is becoming more and more a highly developed special form of debate — an intellectual sport. Because of the excitement of the con- test, the prospective delight of a definite victory, the acclaim that greets the victors from undergraduates, graduates, and pictorial newspapers, and, worthiest reason of all, because the intercollegiate debate gives some students who love their alma mater their only opportunity to work publicly to increase Introduction. xi her honors, there seems to be a real danger that intercollegi- ate debating may become in many colleges the only form of public discourse seriously studied. Is not such an interest as this disproportionate, unsound, and unwise ? I have read many compositions submitted in oratorical contests. Only rarely have they even a spark of individual- ity, of freshness, of simple strength. Instead, they are conven- tional, artificial, empty, cheap. Clearly the contestants have studied files of "orations" successful in the past, and as closely as possible, copied them. Begin with platitudes, no matter how remote from the subject ; continue either with sen- tences which, crackling like a fusillade of musketry, might have come from any biographical dictionary, or with sentences of no more originality, but heavy with gew-gaws of speech ; in- dulge in closing fireworks, and there you are ! What can that kind of writing do but harm ? Intelligent audiences may con- siderately put up with this from callow youth, but what if cal- low youth try this kind of speaking on the same people when it wishes to push them, not whither they are willingly and rapidly moving, but whither they do not wish to go ? Then will come a sharp awakening ! Grant that the state repre- sentatives selected for the final contest may have more than I think to say and may say it better, yet the conditions of these contests are not like any the speakers will meet after graduation. Then audiences will listen to them pri- marily for what they have to say on their subjects, not, as here, primarily for the way in which they speak. Grant, too, that debate may be taught without regard for the rules of inter- collegiate debate, yet it is but a sub-division of a sub- division (oral discussion) of a large field for study (public ad- dress^). Surely other teachers must have had my experience, ^ I shall use this term hereafter as meaning not only all work written for delivery, but also all writing at the public not literary or scientific in Eijim, for instance letters to the press or editorials, xii Introduction. that when only a course in debating — or in oratory if you prefer — exists in a college, some of its best students, after a few years outside college walls, write as follows : I find little use now for the special training in formal debate : of course, I do find helpful, as an aid to clear thinking in general, the prin- ciples which I was taught underlie fair-minded discussion. But, after all, I was not given what I most need. I have once or twice had, as member of a committee, to submit a report. It needed to be clearly, simply, and at the same time persua- sively drawn. I found much difficulty in adapting to this work the principles of strict argument. I have met similar difficul- ties with letters and editorials which I have written for news- papers. In both, formal argument was out of the question in my limited space. Mere statement of what seemed to me facts, was dry. How could I have written as I felt I should ? Or another says: I have been called upon repeatedly, as a man interested in the betterment of civic conditions, to speak at din- ners. I find such speaking slow torture, for I am not a wit, and I do not know how to speak seriously yet interestingly. Yet I am unwilling to take refuge in the speech so often heard, — a patchwork of good stories that are trite and new stories that are poor, all, new and old, inappositely introduced, Still a third writes : In my native town I was called upon on an occasion of local importance to make my neighbors un- derstand the significance of the life of a famous fellow- townsman of the past, but I was all at sea as to my task, and do not care to send you my speech. A fourth says : I am a col- lege instructor. One of my classes is large, and I must con- tend against the languor that pervades it after it has come directly to my lecture from its luncheon. Sometimes students at the back of the room find the pictorial morning papers more absorbing than my instruction. There is even leakage, for unfortunately some of the class are nearer the exits than I. Must I "popularize" my lectures ? That is, these graduates Introduction. xiii are meeting difficulties inherent in writing committee reports and concisely effective editorials or communications to the press, in after-dinner speaking, commemorative addresses, and lecturing. Surely, with all the wealth of illustration which the past offers, w^e can give these men some aid, and as surely we should in our college courses. We can keep them from writ- ing the average eulogy — a fulsomely phrased listing of the events of a man's life ; from writing the commemorative ad- dress so often heard — a mere compilation from current his- tories, phrased in language individual only in its tameness. We can help to train them to go back of facts, statistics, and conditions in order to find messages from the past to the present ; to reconcile seeming contradictions in lives of varied activities ; to try to make comprehensible men too often mis- understood. We can show them that even the after-dinner speech should have a central idea and plan, as well as fresh- ness and individuality of presentation. We can, perhaps, prevent them from falling into the too common fallacy of think- ing that to keep large bodies of students attentive the quality of the w^ork must be weakened, or extraneous attractions must be superimposed on good material. In all this a broad field opens out before us, ~a field of large consequence because, as I believe, for one man who applies from day to day the prin- ciples he learns especially for formal debating, five work in one or more of these other forms of public discourse. For these reasons I think that a course in the Forms of Public Address is for the larger number of undergraduates much more important than even the best course in formal debate, or in oratory as it is ordinarily understood. This book repre- sents an effort during the past five years to develop in Har- vard College a course which shall provide the training called for in these criticisms of old students of mine. Moreover, I believe that for a long time we teachers of English composition have over-emphasized phrase as com- xiv ^ Introduction. pared with thought. Probably there is not one of us who, after ten years or more of earnest teaching, has not felt baffled and humiliated at the relative barrenness of the re- sults. It is not easy to be content with " leavening the lump," with mere increase in the accurate use of shall and will and with good sentence structure, nor even with the few skilled writers who are the result of our training. One and all we must have felt that the majority of these youths who study with us the principles of literary style as applied in essay writing or in fiction have nothing to say. With nothing to say they mistake the sign for the content, and become enthu- siastic and often skillful phrase-makers. It is all ludicrously exemplified in the tale of a contestant for oratorical honors engaged in composing his magnum opus. From time to time he rushed into a room near his crying : " Say, I've got a new sentence, and it's a dandy, if only I can manage to work it in ! " Yet, though I have known a youth who had studied the rudiments of rhetoric to write wretchedly when forced, with no taste for literary composition, to narrate and describe, I have rarely found him writing wholly ill on a thesis sub- ject from a course in history, economics or philosophy on which he had thought with pleasure, because it really inter- ested him. There lies the clue : the fact is, much of our teaching in the higher courses in composition has been and always must be fitted to and beneficial to only the few with inborn literary desire or capacity. Between these and the great mass of undergraduates, for all of whom training in the rudiments of rhetoric is necessary, are a large number of youths not likely to be either scientific or literary men, but who in one way or another will probably be often called on to address their fellows. To these should be given at least the principles which will keep them from a pained sense of inadequate results after earnest labor. For purposes of such instruction, I believe there is no bet- Introduction. xv ter definition of style than Cardinal Newman's, " style is a thinking out into language." That puts the emphasis where it belongs, and where the undergraduate usually fails to put it, — on the man behind the wn^xng, and particularly on the content of his mind on the subject he treats. Create in your students an interest in thinking on subjects which come daily in their way, not in this case for purposes of hterary descrip- tion or narration, for essay writing, but that they may realize the chaotic condition of their own minds on current college topics, and grow increasingly unwilling to repeat parrot-like what they have heard others say or to make snap judgments. It is not really true that our students " have nothing to say ; " the trouble is that we have been trying to make of the most alert only literary men when they are intended for men of affairs, and that the rank and file in these days of manifold aids to thinking such as periodicals, compendia of all kinds, and tutors, have grown lazy and know nothing of the plea- sure that lies in swift, accurate thinking. It is just here that study of the forms of address is helpful, for by practice in the public letter, the editorial for a college paper, the after-din- ner speech on some college occasion, you may lead your non- literary student to the discovery, to him startling and delight- ful, that he has only to formulate carefully what is floating in his mind to have something worth saying to his mates. But if it is worth saying, it is worth saying well. That means, however, not merely expressing it so that any literary critic who may read his words will declare it correctly and grace- fully phrased, but what we teachers of composition too often forget, the greater part of persuasion, — the adjustment of the material to the probable moods, opinions, prejudices and principles of its audience. Wake the imagination of your students by training them to write not for themselves only or for the critical instructor, but for definitely described audiences to which they must adapt the presentation of their xvi Introduction. subjects. I have found students who have had not only a Freshman course in EngUsh but even a second year of work wholly unable to carry out satisfactorily the second of the following exercises. Excfelse i. In a letter to some mem- ber of your family, explain your reasons for preferring to room in or out of the college yard, as the case may be with you. This was well done. Exercise 2. Write to some friend of yours, in the summer vacation, urging him to room with you during the coming year. Think over his character- istics before you write and try in your letter so to present your plan as to make it as attractive to him as possible. This was a complete failure : most students merely stated why they like their rooms, hardly one looked at the plan through the eyes of his friend. Yet in that simple effort at persuasion lies the whole secret of persuasive public address. Granted an interest in thinking and in presenting ideas to other people, and you will not have to urge on a student the importance of a rich, varied, and responsive vocabulary or the value of all that courses in purely literary composition can teach him. When thought presses for utterance there needs no other spur to acquirement of the best means of ex- pression. Now, if all this be admitted, the first difficulty is that even students who have been roused to an interest in thinking for themselves and who have had a course in the elements of rhetoric, do not think clearly, strongly, and in orderly fashion. They may be able to write reports investigating subjects which have but one side or to treat topics in which the preponderance of the evidence is heavily one way, but to steer their course steadily, fair-mindedly, weighing accurately the pros and cons, from the superficial, popular under- standing of a college question to its real meaning • — that is utterly beyond their present powers. After some years of experimentation, I am convinced that students learn most Introduction. xvii quickly and lastingly the processes of analysis and structure necessary to good thinking in study of the principles of argumentation as applied in written work. I say " in written work " because that permits the closest and most accurate scrutiny by an instructor, and is free from the ner- vous conditions of speaking. In a semester, or three months, the principles of analysis, structure and evidence can be so drilled into students that the best will have a trained analyt- ical sense and a permanent feeling for structure, and all of the class will have gained something of both. While the' class is acquiring these ideas, it should, for simplicity, write without thought of any other audience than the instructor, that is, it should aim only to convince. The difficult art of persuasion may best be taken up when the fundamental principles just named have been mastered. I believe, too, that at the outset students should be urged to write on sub- jects depending on research rather than on personal experi- ence, for the first provide them with the material which they always insist they lack if set at once to writing on subjects drawn from their own experience. Moreover, the large mass of material easily to be collected on matters of research per- mits a wider training in evidence, and raises more compli- cated questions of structure and analysis. But the moment one is sure that the students understand these fundamental matters they should be pressed into consideration of topics from college or outside life with which they are familiar. Then, too, they are ready for study of the broader principles of persuasion, — first as applied to argument only. It is often helpful to let a student rewrite for a definitely described audience an argument at first composed only to convince the instructor of the truth of the position taken in it. These principles of analysis, structure, evidence, and persuasion grasped, a student is prepared to examine the non-forensic forms of address, those which I have tried to illustrate in xviii Introduction. this book. Personally I have found that the necessary an- alysis, structure, and evidence, can be taught between the first of October and Christmas, and persuasion in its broader aspects in three to four weeks after the second date. That makes it possible to devote the second half-year to study of the forms of address. As these are examined by a student, it must become clear that the principles of analysis and struc- ture first learned by him in written argument lie back of all these forms, that, indeed, good speaking cannot exist with- out, for analysis goes to the heart of the question and struc- ture presents it most compactly and clearly. Just, too, as analysis of an opponent's case gave in argumentation one or more central ideas as special issues, analysis of one of these addresses, even the longest, will develop one or more main ideas about which the whole speech is built up. Even as the student drew briefs for his arguments, he can draw outUnes of these addresses, and the outline will reveal that good structure with an eye to the audience in question had as much to do with the success of the address as of the argument. As to persuasion, — not only the mere excitation for which solely it too commonly stands in the public mind, but also every means by which the speaker has adapted his material to his particular audience, — that is illustrated at every turn in these other forms of address. In brief, the chief differ- ence between the forensic and the non-forensic forms of public address is that structure in the latter is less rigid and persua- sion preponderates over conviction. Surely, as study of these other forms is finished, a student must see that debating is but a highly specialized form of the subdivision, the forensic address, and that consequently it should end, not begin, as it too often does, his training in public discourse. Throughout all this examination of the forms of address the purpose should of course be, not to point out graces of style, bursts of eloquence, vivid narration and description. Introduction. xlx but the conditions which gave rise to the speech, the possible subjects the speaker might have chosen, his probable reasons for selecting his topic, his plan in treating it, and the extent to which his audience affected his presentation. Indeed, the audience addressed must always be carefully considered, for it will probably reveal not only why the speaker presented his subject as he did, but also his reason for selecting his topic, for his plan, and for his direct attempts at persuasion. Granted this work done, let us study graces of style, excitation, fine passages to our hearts' content, but let us not in studying these skim the surface, losing the real significance and con- tribution of the address. Critical study of the specimens in this book under wise guidance should make a student see that his motto in composition should be, not Phrase, not Phrasi?ig 7ny TJiought, but Thought adequately phrased. That is what I wish this book most to emphasize : that the public address which not only produces results at the moment but has permanent value rests primarily on thought ; commanding and holding attention, not for external graces given it by the speaker's manner or phrasing, but because it has something new to say, or, more often, because, though it says nothing absolutely new, it shows the reaction of an individual mind on the material. Given thought, a speech must be very badly delivered not to have some effect ; given only excitation, or only persuasive presentation of trite ideas, or no ideas at all, and only those who follow the speaker in blind enthusiasm for him, or those who are unwilling to believe other ideas than his will be lastingly affected. Ideal public address means, then, significant thought presented with all the clearness that perfect structure can give, all the force that skillful sift- ing of the material can produce, all the persuasiveness that perfect understanding of the relation of the audience to speaker and subject can give, with vivid narration and de- scription, a graceful style, and an attractive personality. XX Introduction. Too often public speakers, moving from the last of these qualities toward the first, stop much short of that first one. Yet to stop short is to stand the pyramid on its apex, for in the busy world of affairs in which most of our students will live they, even more than the orators, will be judged by what they have to contribute, not by the manner in which they contribute. The use of this book must vary much as it makes part of a course based chiefly on the lecture or the recitation method. Whichever method is used, however, the private letter should, I think, be taken as the norm for instruction in the non- argu- mentative forms of public address, for it is aimed directly at one distinct person. It may be shown that even its force depends on the principles of analysis, structure, evidence and persuasion explained first in connection with argumen- tation ; that it has infinite variety, and may lead easily into all the other forms. Of course, the public letter naturally comes next, differing only in being addressed to many peo- ple, whose characteristics are not so easily ascertainable as with the one reader of the private letter. The public let- ter, too, easily runs into the other forms, as for instance with the Memorandum of President Roosevelt on the Schley case, which is also an argument. Supposed editorial com- ment on one of these public letters readily takes a student into the editorial ; and the memorial leader with its biograph- ical detail carries him into the eulogy. Beyond this, I think the order used in examining the forms should rest with the teacher, for all except the private and the public letter and the editorial are not so much distinct forms as differentiations of the address for a special occasion, the audience and the occasion determining the differentiation. As each section of the book is taken up, the chief characteristics of the form il- lustrated should be put before the class : the notes in fine type on the reverse of each half-title are intended as hints Introduction. xxi for the teacher in this treatment of each section, but it has seemed to me wholly unwise to try completely to anticipate his work at this point. Doubtless the lecture is the easiest way of placing such information before a class, but I much doubt if skillful quizzing of its members, summed up in the last fif- teen minutes of the hour, will not impress the ideas more firmly. In brief, make the students discover in their reading as much as you can : keep them not merely listening but thinking. Where an occasional lecture may do much is in amplifying the necessarily brief prefatory matter which pre- cedes each selection. It has seemed to me that each teacher would prefer to decide for himself how much detail as to the life of the speaker he wished his class to have, and whatever he may need is in these days of many biographical diction- aries easily accessible. The class should be required to read the selections carefully, and should be examined on their reading either by a quiz or by written exercises such as those suggested in the Appendix. It should be given an oppor- tunity in or out of the class-room to try its hand at as many of the forms as circumstances will permit. Time has forced me to confine work in the two kinds of letters, the edito- rial, and the after-dinner speech to the class-room, to require a eulogy written outside, and to allow the class for its last long MS. to write at will on any of the forms it has not already tried. I believe in this emphasis on the forms treated in the class-room because in them the principles to be carried out in the other forms may be conveniently illustrated, but espe- cially because these forms seem most real to the under-gradu- ate, most likely to play some part in his immediate experience. Indeed, in all this study of the non-argumentative forms, the student should be induced as far as possible to choose such topics as he may be called on as an under-graduate or in his home conditions to discuss. Above all, the aim is not to train students to write like any of the men whose work is xxii Introduction. illustrated in this book, but to think well on subjects which interest them and which may also have public interest if well presented. The exercises in the Appendix give some hints as to possible subjects.^ The secret of public address to-day is then : Have some- thing to say ; something you wish to say ; something you wish to say so that those who hear you shall understand, and act as you desire. Of course, it would be folly to expect from collegians special addresses of real contributiveness ; that may, however, come later when years have given ample op- portunity to apply the principles which they have learned in such a course. But these collegians can be given right standards ; they can, too, be taught to select from their own experience or wide reading that aspect of a current topic which will most interest the audience they have in mind or which they are best fitted to present to that audience ; to plan the presentation of it well ; and even to make the product reflect in thought or phrase the individual behind it. De- partments of English in our colleges must wake to the fact that m their too frequent neglect of the oral word as con- ^ It may be suggestive to give the order and the nature of the work in the course at Harvard in which the material of this book has been used, though different conditions must necessarily affect both. The class meets three times a week throughout the college year. Besides the class-room work, each stxident draws at least two briefs and writes five manuscripts of 1,000-1,500 words. Two of these are arguments. For the third manuscript the second argument is re-written for a defi- nitely described audience. In the choice of topics for the other two manuscripts and in the treatment of them students are allowed con- siderable freedom, but they are expected to give themselves practice in the eulogy, and the address for a special occasion. Between October and Christmas TJie Principles of Argumentation (Revised edition, 1904, Ginn & Co.) is used with, for illustrative material. Specimens of Argu- mentation (Modern, 1893, H. Holt & Co.). For persuasion, between Christmas and February both these books and The Forms of Address are used, during the second half-year only the last book is needed. Introduction. xxlii trasted with the written they lack foresight for their pupils. In regarding the oral word as if it could concern only that much and underservedly abused subject, Elocution, they for- get that for one man who only writes for the pubHc, dozens will speak to it, and that in these days when newspapers and periodicals repeat for millions what was said originally to tens, the written and the oral word are one and the same thing for most who work in the forms of public address. Should not this hiatus in our college courses in composition be promptly filled ? Geo. p. Baker. Harvard University, Sept. 24, 1904. LETTERS PRIVATE AND OPEN Letters I, II, and III b illustrate clear statement of questions either in themselves involved, or complicated by excited feeling on the part of, at least, one of the correspondents. In Letters IV and V there is not only a similar clearness, but persuasion appears in the pervasive irony. Letter VI tries only to convey an emotional state of the writer: Letters VII, and VIII, on the other hand, use emotion to induce an attitude of mind in the reader. Letter IX shows how excision of a few words or phrases in a long document may completely change its emotional effect. Letter III a shows how slight, often, is the difference between an open letter and an editorial. Letter X illustrates not only clearness of state- ment, in its masterly review of a case complicated by contradictory evidence and personal jealousy, but also the close relationship there may be between the open letter and an argument before a jury. W. T. SHERMAN 1 Declining to be a Candidate for Nomination to the Presidency. [The following letter of Mr. Blaine's explains the cause for General Sherman's letter : — {Conjidential .) Strictly and absolutely so. 5 Washington, D.C, May 25, 1884. My dear General : This letter requires no answer. After reading it carefully, file it away in your most secret drawer, or give it to the flames. At the approaching convention in Chicago, it is more than possible — it is indeed not improbable — that you may be nominated for the 10 presidency. If so you must stand your hand, accept the responsibility, and assume the duties of the place to which you wall surely be chosen, if a candidate. You must not look upon it as the work of the politi- cians. If it comes to you, it will come as the ground-sw^ell of popular demand — and you can no more refuse than you could have refused to 15 obey an order w^hen you were a lieutenant in the army. If it comes to you at all, it will come as a call of patriotism. It would, in such an event, injure your great fame as much to decline it as it would for you to seek it. Your historic record, full as it is, would be rendered still more glorious by such an administration as you would be able to give 20 the country. Do not say a word in advance of the convention, no matter who may ask you. You are with your friends, who will jealously guard your honor. Do not answer this.] St. Louis, May 28, 1884. Hon. J. G. Blaine : 25 My dear Friend: I have received your letter of the 25th; shall construe it as absolutely confidential, not inti- 1 By permission of C. C. Haskell & Co., successors to the Henry Bill Publishing Co., both letters are reprinted from the Biography of James G. Blaine^ by Gail Hamilton. 3 4 Letters. mating even to any member of my family that I have heard from you ; and though you may not expect an answer, I hope you will not construe one as unwarranted. I have had a great many letters from all points of the compass to a similar effect, one or two of which I have answered frankly ; 5 but the great mass are unanswered. I ought not to subject myself to the cheap ridicule of declining what is not offered, but it is only fair to the many really able men who rightfully aspire to the high honor of being President of the United States to let them know that I am not and must not be con- 10 strued as a rival. In every man's life there occurs an epoch when he must choose his own career, and when he may not throw the responsibility, or tamely place his destiny in the hands of friends. Mine occurred in Louisiana when, in 1861, alone in the midst of a people blinded by supposed 15 wrongs, I resolved to stand by the Union as long as a fragment of it survived to which to cling. Since then, through faction, tempest, war, and peace, my career has been all my family and friends could ask. We are now in a good home of our choice, with reasonable provision for old 20 age, surrounded by kind and admiring friends, in a commu- nity where Catholicism is held in respect and veneration, and where my children will naturally grow up in contact with an industrious and frugal people. You have known and appreciated Mrs. Sherman from childhood, have also 25 known each and all the members of my family, and can understand, without an explanation from me, how their thoughts and feelings should and ought to influence my action ; but I will not even throw off on them the respon- sibility. I will not, in any event, entertain or accept a 30 nomination as a candidate for President by the Chicago Republican convention, or any other convention, for reasons personal to myself. I claim that the Civil war, in which I simply did a man's fair share of work, so perfectly accom- plished peace, that military men have an absolute right to 35 rest, and to demand that the men who have been schooled W. T. Sherman. 5 in the arts and practice of peace sliall now do their work equally w^ell. Any senator can step from his chair at the Capitol into the White House, and fulfil the office of Presi- dent with more skill and success than a Grant, Sherman, or 5 Sheridan, who were soldiers by education and nature, who filled well their office when the country was in danger, but were not schooled in the practices by which civil communities are, and should be, governed. I claim that our experience since 1865 demonstrates the truth of this my proposition. 10 Therefore I say that " patriotism " does not demand of me what I construe as a sacrifice of judgment, of inclination, and of self-interest. I have my personal affairs in a state of absolute safety and comfort. I owe no man a cent, have no expensive habits or tastes, envy no man his wealth or power, 15 no complications or indirect liabilities, and would account myself a fool, a madman, an ass, to embark anew, at sixty- five years of age, in a career that may, at any moment, become tempest-tossed by the perfidy, the defalcation, the dishonesty, or neglect of any one of a hundred thousand 20 subordinates utterly unknown to the President of the United States, not to say the eternal worriment by a vast host of impecunious friends and old military subordinates. Even as it is, I am tortured by the charitable appeals of poor dis- tressed pensioners, but as President, these would be multi- 25 plied beyond human endurance. I remember well the ex- perience of Generals Jackson, Harrison, Tyler, Grant, Hayes, and Garfield, all elected because of their military services, and am warned, not encouraged, by their sad experience. No, — count m.e out. The civilians of the U. S. should, 30 and must, buffet with this thankless office, and leave us old soldiers to enjoy the peace we fought for, and think we earned. With profound respect. Your friend, W. T. Sherman. 6 Letters. II. PRESIDENT LINCOLN To General McClellan. [General McClellan had succeeded General Scott on November i, 1861, as Commander-in-Chief (under the President) of all the armies of the United States. On January 31, 1862, the President had issued his " Special War Order No. i," directing a forward movement of the Army of the Potomac. This order conflicted with plans which McClel- 5 Ian had formed, and he remonstrated. Little Masterpieces, Lincoln. B. Perry, p. 109.] Executive Mansion, Washington, February 3, 1862. Major-General McClellan : 10 My dear Sir : You and I have distinct and different plans for a movement of the Army of the Potomac — yours to be down the Chesapeake, up the Rappahannock to Urbana, and across land to the terminus of the railroad on the York River ; mine to move directly to a point on the 1 5 railroad southvi^est of Manassas. If you will give me satisfactory answers to the following questions, I shall gladly yield my plan to yours. First. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expendi- ture of time and money than mine ? 20 Second. Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan than mine ? Third. Wherein is a victory more valuable by your plan than mine ? Fourth. In fact, would it not be less valuable in this, that 25 it would break no great line of the enemy's communications, while mine would ? Fifth. In case of disaster, would not a retreat be more difficult by your plan than mine ? Yours truly, 30 Abraham Lincoln. Major-General McClellan. Horace Greeley. 7 III a. HORACE GREELEY To President Lincoln. (Printed in the editorial columns of the A\ Y. Tribune of August 20, 1862.) [Military reverses had by August, 1862 "sharpened anew the under- lying prejudice and distrust between the two factions of [Lincoln's] supporters — radicals and conservatives, as they began to be called ; or, more properly speaking, those who were anxious to destroy and those 5 who were wilUng to preserve slavery. Each faction loudly charged the other with being the cause of failure and clamored vehemently for a change of policy to conform to their own views. Outside of both was the important faction of those Democrats who either yielded the war only a sullen support or opposed it as openly as they safely might, and 10 who, on the slavery issue, directed their denunciations wholly against the radicals. It may be truly said that at no time were political ques- tions so critical and embarrassing to Mr. Lincoln as during this period. His own decision had been reached ; his own course was clearly and unalterably marked out. [He had discussed with his Cabinet, July 22, 15 the Emancipation Proclamation, but, following a suggestion of Secre- tary Seward, had laid it aside until some military success should offer a more propitious time for issuing it.] But the circumstances surround- ing him did not permit his making [his plans] known, and he was compelled to keep up an appearance of indecision which only brought 20 upon him a greater flood of importunities. During no part of his administration were his acts and words so persistently misconstrued as in this interim by men who gave his words the color and meaning of their own eager desires and expectations. To interpret properly Mr. Lincoln's language it must be constantly 25 borne in mind that its single object was to curb and restrain the im- patience of zealots from either faction. " Abraham Lhicoln, Nicolay & Hay, Century Co., VI., 148.] THE PRAYER OF TWENTY MILLIONS. To Abraham Lincoln, President of the U. States : Dear Sir : I do not intend to tell you — for you must 30 know already — that a great proportion of those who tri- 8 Letters. umphed in your election, and of all who desire the unquali- fied suppression of the Rebellion now desolating our country, are sorely disappointed and deeply pained by the policy you seem to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of Rebels. I write only to set succinctly and unmistakably before you 5 what we require, what we think we have a right to expect, and of what we complain. I. We require of you, as the first servant of the Republic, charged especially and pre-eminently with this duty, that you execute the laws. Most emphatically do we demand that 10 such laws as have been recently enacted, which therefore may fairly be presumed to embody the present will and to be dictated by the prese7it needs of the Republic, and which, after due consideration have received your personal sanc- tion, shall by you be carried into full effect, and that you 15 publicly and decisively instruct your subordinates that such laws exist, that they are binding on all functionaries and citizens, and that they are to be obeyed to the letter. II. We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of your official and imperative duty with 20 regard to the emancipating provisions of the new Confisca- tion Act. Those provisions were designed to fight Slavery with Liberty. They prescribe that men loyal to the Union, and willing to shed their blood in her behalf, shall no longer be held, with the Nation's consent, in bondage to persistent, 25 malignant traitors, who for twenty years have been plotting and for sixteen months have been fighting to divide and destroy our country. Why these traitors should be treated with tenderness by you, to the prejudice of the dearest rights of loyal men, we cannot conceive. 30 III. We think you are unduly influenced by the counsels, the representations, the menaces, of certain fossil politicians hailing from the Border Slave States. Knowing well that the heartily, unconditionally loyal portion of the White citi- zens of those States do not expect nor desire that Slavery 35 shall be upheld to the prejudice of the Union — (for the Horace Greeley* 9 truth of which we appeal not only to every Republican re- siding in those states, but to such eminent loyalists as H. Winter Davis, Parson Brownlow, the Union Central Com- mittee of Baltimore, and to the " Nashville Union " ) — we 5 ask you to consider that Slavery is everywhere the uiciting cause and sustaining base of treason : the most slave-holding sections of Maryland and Delaware being this day, though under the Union flag, in full sympathy with the Rebellion, while the Free-Labor portions of Tennessee and of Texas, 10 though writhing under the bloody heel of Treason, are un- conquerably loyal to the Union. So emphatically is this the case, that a most intelligent Union banker of Baltimore recently avowed his confident belief that a majority of the present Legislature of Maryland, though elected as and still 15 professing to be Unionists, are at heart desirous of the tri- umph of the Jeff. Davis conspiracy; and when asked how they could be won back to loyalty, replied — "Only by the complete Abolition of Slaver}\" It seems to us the most obvious truth, that whatever strengthens or fortifies Slavery 20 in the Border States strengthens also Treason, and drives home the wedge intended to divide the Union. Had you from the first refused to recognize in those States, as here, any other than unconditional loyalty — that which stands for the Union, whatever may become of Slavery — those States 25 would have been, and would be, far more helpful and less troublesome to the defenders of the Union than they have been, or now are. IV. We think timid counsels in such a crisis calculated to prove perilous, and probably disastrous. It is the duty of 30 a Government so wantonly, wickedly assailed by the Rebel- lion as ours has been to oppose force to force in a defiant, dauntless spirit. It cannot afford to temporize with traitors nor with semi-traitors. It must not bribe them to behave themselves, nor make them fair promises in the hope of dis- 35 arming their causeless hostility. Representing a brave and high-spirited people, it can afford to forfeit anything else I o Letters. better than its own self-respect, or their admiring confidence. For our Government even to seek, after war has been made on it, to dispel the affected apprehensions of armed traitors that their cherished privileges may be assailed by it, is to invite insult and encourage hopes of its own downfall. 5 The rush to arms of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, is the true an- swer at once to the Rebel raids of John Morgan, and the traitorous sophistries of Beriah Magoffin. v. We complain that the Union Cause has suffered, and is now suffering immensely, from mistaken-deference to Rebel 10 Slavery. Had you. Sir, in your Inaugural Address,^ un- mistakably given notice that, in case the Rebellion already commenced were persisted in, and your efforts to preserve the Union and enforce the laws should be resisted by armed iorce, you would recognize no loyal person as rightfully held in 15 Slavery by a traitor^ we believe the Rebellion would therein have received a staggering if not fatal blow. At that mo- ment, according to the returns of the most recent elec- tions, the Unionists were a large majority of the voters of the Slave States. But they were composed in good part of 20 the aged, the feeble, the wealthy, the timid, — the young, the reckless, the aspiring, the adventurous, had already been lured by the gamblers and negro-traders, the politicians by trade and the conspirators by instinct, into the toils of Treason. Had you then proclaimed that Rebellion would 25 strike the shackles from the slaves of every traitor, the wealthy and the cautious would have been supplied with a powerful inducement to remain loyal. As it was, every coward in the South soon became a traitor from fear; for Loyalty was perilous, while Treason seemed comparatively 30 safe. Hence the boasted unanimity of the South — a unan- imity based on Rebel terrorism and the fact that immunity and safety were found on that side, danger and probable death on ours. The Rebels from the first have been eager to confiscate, imprison, scourge and kill : we have fought 35 1 See p. 228. Horace Greeley. 1 1 wolves with the devices of sheep. The result is just what might have been expected. Tens of thousands are fighting in the Rebel-ranks to-day whose original bias and natural leanings would have led them into ours. 5 VI. We complain that the Confiscation Act which you approved is habitually disregarded by your Generals, and that no word of rebuke for them from you has yet reached the public ear. Fremont's proclamation and Hunter's Order favoring Emancipation were promptly annulled by you ; lo while Halleck's No. 3, forbidding fugitives from Slavery to Rebels to come within his lines — an order as unmilitary as inhuman, and which received the hearty approbation of every traitor in America, with scores of like tendency, have never provoked even your remonstrance. We complain that the 15 officers of 3^our Armies have habitually repelled rather than invited the approach of slaves who would have gladly taken the risks of escaping from their Rebel masters to our camps, bringing intelligence often of inestimable value to the Union cause. We complain that those who have escaped to 20 us, avowing a willingness to do for us whatever might be re- quired, have been brutally and madly repulsed, and often surrendered to be scourged, maimed and tortured by the ruffian traitors, who pretend to own them. We complain that a large proportion of our regular Army Officers, with 25 many of the Volunteers, evince far more solicitude to uphold Slavery than to put down the Rebellion. And finally, we complain that you, Mr. President, elected as a Republican, knowing well what an abomination Slavery is, and how em- phatically it is the core and essence of this atrocious Re- 30 bellion, seem never to interfere with these atrocities, and never give a direction to your Military subordinates which does not appear to have been conceived in the interest of Slavery rather than of Freedom. VII. Let me call your attention to the recent tragedy in 35 New Orleans, whereof the facts are obtained entirely through Pro-Slavery channels. A considerable body of resolute, able- 1 2 Letters. bodied men, held in slavery by two Rebel sugar-planters in defiance of the Confiscation Act which you have approved, left plantations thirty miles distant and made their way to the great mart of the South-West, which they knew to be in the undisputed possession of the Union forces. They made 5 their way safely and quietly through thirty miles of Rebel territory, expecting to find freedom under the protection of our flag. Whether they had or had not heard of the pas- sage of the Confiscation Act, they reasoned logically that we would not kill them for deserting the service of their life- 10 long oppressors, who had through treason become our im- placable enemies. They came to us for liberty and protec- tion, for which they were willing to render their best service : they met with hostility, captivity, and murder. The bark- ing of the base curs of Slavery in this quarter deceives no 15 one, — not even themselves. They say, indeed, that the negroes had no right to appear in New Orleans armed (with their implements of daily labor in the cane-field) ; but no one doubts that they would gladly have laid these down if assured that they should be free. They were set upon and 20 maimed, captured and killed, because they sought the bene- fit of that Act of Congress which they may not specifically have heard of, but which was none the less the law of the land — which they had a clear right to the benefit of — which it was somebody's duty to publish far and wide, in order 25 that so many as possible should be impelled to desist from serving Rebels and the Rebellion and come over to the side of the Union. They sought their liberty in strict accor- dance with the law of the land — they were butchered or re- enslaved for so doing by the help of Union soldiers enlisted 30 to fight against Slaveholding Treason. It was somebody's fault that they were so murdered — if others shall hereafter suffer in like manner, in default of explicit and pubHc direc- tion to your generals that they are to recognize and obey the Confiscation Act, the world will lay the blame on you. 35 Whether you will choose to hear it through future History and at the bar of God, I will not judge. I can only hope. Horace Greeley. 13 VIII. On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested, determined, inteUigent champion of the Union Cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the Rebellion and at the same time to uphold its incit- r ing cause are preposterous and futile — that the Rebellion if crushed out to-morrow, would be renewed within a year if Slavery were left in full vigor — that Army officers who re- main to this day devoted to Slavery can at best be but half- way loyal to the Union — and that every hour of deference 10 to Slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union. I appeal to the testimony of your Embassadors in Europe. It is freely at your service, not at mine. Ask them to tell you candidly whether the seeming subserviency of your policy to the slaveholding, slavery-upholding interest, is not 1 5 the perplexity, the despair of statesmen of all parties, and be admonished by the general answer! IX. I close as I began with the statement that what an immense majority of the Loyal Millions of your countrymen require of you is a frank, declared, unqualified, ungrudging 20 execution of the laws of the land, more especially of the Con- fiscation Act. That act gives freedom to the slaves of Rebels coming within our lines, or whom those lines may at any time inclose — we ask you to render it due obedience by publicly requiring all your subordinates to recognize and 25 obey it. The Rebels are everywhere using the late anti- negro riots in the North, as they have long used your ofiicers' treatment of negroes in the South, to convince the slaves that they have nothing to hope from a Union success — that we mean in that case to sell them into a bitterer bondage to 30 defray the cost of the war. Let them impress this as a truth on the great mass of their ignorant and credulous bond- men, and the Union will never be restored — never. We cannot conquer Ten Millions of People united in a solid phalanx against us, powerfully aided by Northern sympa- 35 thizers and European allies. We must have scouts, guides, spies, cooks, teamsters, diggers and choppers from the 14 Letters. Blacks of the South, whether we allow them to fight for us or not, or we shall be baffled and repelled. As one of the Mil- lions who would gladly have avoided this struggle at any sacrifice but that of Principle and Honor, but who now feel that the triumph of the Union is indispensable, not only to the existence of our country but to the well-being of man- kind, I entreat you to render a hearty and unequivocal obedi- ence to the law of the land. Yours, Horace Greeley. New York, August 19, 1862. Ill b. PRESIDENT LINCOLN To Horace Greeley. [ " Mr, Lincoln always sought, and generally with success, to turn a dilemma into an advantage ; and shrewdly seizing the opportunity that Mr. Greeley had created, he in turn addressed him the following open letter through the newspapers in reply, by which he not merely warded 1 5 off his present personal accusation, but skilfully laid the foundation in public sentiment for the very radical step he was about to take on the slavery question. . . . When Mr. Lincoln wrote the letter, the defeat of General Pope at the second battle of Bull Run had not yet taken place ; on the contrary, 20 every probability pointed to an easy victory for the Union troops in the battle which was plainly seen to be impending. We may therefore infer that he hoped soon to be able to supplement the above declara- tions by issuing his postponed proclamation, which w^ould give the country knowledge of his final designs respecting the slavery question. 25 But instead of the expected victory came a sad and demoralizing defeat, which prolonged, instead of shortening, the anxiety and uncer- tainty hanging over the intentions of the Administration." The Emancipation Proclamation was not pubHshed till September 23. Abraham Lincoln, Nicolay & Hay, Century Co., VI, 152-154.] President Lincoln. 15 Executive Mansion, Washington, August 22, 1862. Hon. Horace Greeley: Dear Sir : I have just read yours of the 19th, addressed to myself through the New York Tribime. If there be in it 5 any statements or assumptions of fact which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may beheve to be falsely drawn, I do not, now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, 10 I waive it in deference to an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to be right. As to the policy I " seem to be pursuing," as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest 15 way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be " the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save 20 the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it ; and if I could save it by freeing all 25 the slaves, I would do it ; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union ; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the 30 Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. Z"^ I have here stated my purpose according to my view of 1 6 Letters. official duty ; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free. Yours, A. Lincoln. IV. PRESIDENT LINCOLN To General Hooker. [ " That indefinable abstraction which is called the morale of the army 5 had suffered a grievous hurt [by the defeat of General Burnside at Fred- ericksburg] in those days of December, [1862.] Every officer who had leave to come to Washington whispered a woful story of disorganization and discouragement in the ears of his political friends. Even the cheery Sumner, when examined by a Committee of Congress, while stoutly de- 10 fending his chief, admitted ' there was too much croaking in the army.' . . It was impossible to stop for a moment by a group of soldiers talk- ing around a camp fire without hearing enough to show that the com- manding general had lost the confidence of the rank and file of the army. Desertion prevailed to an alarming extent ; the officers, who 15 could not escape their duty in that easy fashion, began to send in their resignations, accompanying them in some instances with insolent expres- sions against the Government for its conduct of the war. This smoth- ered mutiny w^as not confined to the lower ranks. Even among general officers there were to be heard the most dangerous outbursts . of disre- 20 spect and discontent. The most indiscreet and outspoken of all was naturally General Hooker, whose words always readily ' escaped the fence of his teeth.' The commanding general was incompetent; his movements were absurd ; the President and Government at Washington were imbecile ; nothing would go right until they had a dictator and the 25 sooner the better. . . . It could no longer be denied that General Burnside's usefulness as commander of that army was at an end. He felt that his position had become impossible, if the officers in command under him were to remain. On the 23d of January he determined to make a final issue 30 between himself and the incorrigible critics in his command. He pre- pared an order dismissing from the army General Joseph Hooker for •unjust and unnecessary criticisms of the actions of his superior President Lincoln. 17 officers,' as a man ' unfit to hold an important commission during a crisis like the present when so much patience, charity, confidence, considera- tion, and patriotism are due from every soldier in the field ; ' dismissing [three other Generals] and relieving from duty [six other officers]. 5 Armed with this order and with his own letter of resignation, he asked for an audience with the President, and on the 24th placed before him the alternative of accepting one or the other. Mr. Lincoln saw there was no longer any time for adjournment or compromise. A commander who had lost the confidence of his soldiers 10 could not regain it by dismissing a few of his Generals. The experiment of placing General Burnside at the head of the principal army of the Union had failed. The only question was now as to the choice of his successor. There is no doubt that public opinion pointed rather to Hooker than to any one else. He was the most esteemed of all the generals of the 15 Army of the Potomac, at least, and so soon after the ill-success of Pope, the President was not inclined to risk the chances of bringing another general from the West. It is believed that he took no advice in regard to the matter. General Halleck says, ' The removal of General Burn- side and appointment of General Hooker was the sole act of the 2.0 President.' Mr. Lincoln was not unaware of General Hooker's attitude towards Burnside and towards himself. His language had been in the highest degree improper and indiscreet. But, as in the case of McClellan, when he thought his services were of value he employed him and gave him his full support and confidence, after what would have seemed to 25 most people his unpardonable conduct towards Pope and himself, so in this crisis, beheving that Hooker possessed in a great degree the confi- dence of the country and the soldiers, and that he had the capacity and the energy to lead the army to success, he again took the full responsi- bility upon himself, and the next day informed General Burnside of his 30 determination. Burnside replied that he was willing to accept that as the best solution of the problem ; that no one would be happier than himself if General Hooker could lead that army to victory. He then again tendered his resignation, which the President refused to receive, but gave him leave of absence for thirty days, after which he placed him in 35 command of the Department of the Ohio." Condensed from Abraham Lincoln. Nicolay & Hay, Century Co , VI, pp. 21 1-2 19.] Executive Mansion, Washington, January 26, 1863 Major-General Hooker : 40 General : I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appears to' me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you 1 8 Letters. to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, 5 if not an indispensable, quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm ; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army, you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the 10 country and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those 15 generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dicta- torship. The Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit, 20 which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails 25 in it. And now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories. Yours very truly, A. Lincoln. Samuel Johnson. 19 V. SAMUEL JOHNSON To the Earl of Chesterfield. [*' About this time [Dr. Johnson] entered into an agreement with a syndicate of booksellers to compile an English Dictionary for the sum of fifteen hundred and seventy-five pounds, and the undertaking was announced to the public, in 1747, by his 'Plan of a Dictionary of the 5 English Language,' addressed to the Earl of Chesterfield. . . . The ' Plan for a Dictionary ' published 1747, had been dedicated to Lord Chesterfield, who was now anxious that his name should appear as the patron of the Dictionary itself. But Johnson was very indignant at the neglect with which he had been treated, and was not at all con- ic ciliated by two very flattering papers written by Lord Chesterfield in ' The World.' * He had,' said Johnson, ' for many years taken no notice of me, but when my Dictionary was coming out, he fell a-scribbling in ' The World ' about it. Upon which I wrote him a letter, expressed in civil terms, but such as might show him that I did not mind what he said 15 and wrote and that I had done with him.' The letter which he sent on this occasion is, though short, one of the finest productions of his pen. Its manly tone, its rugged pathos, the dignity of its style and the cold severity of the invective can never be surpassed. . . . Lord Chestei-field showed uncommon wisdom in not attempting a 20 reply, but he made some efforts to appease Johnson through the mediation of Sir Thomas Robinson, who had been one of the puppets in the Duke of Newcastle's ministry. It w^as an unlucky choice. Sir Thomas was one of the most notorious bores in London. . . . His interview with Johnson was short and unsuccessful, and the Yorkshire 25 Baronet seems to have narrowly escaped being shown out of the room." Life of Johnson, F. Grant, W. Scott, pp. 53-65.] It is interesting to contrast Lord Brougham's opinion of Johnson's conduct in writing this letter. " The prospectus [for the Dictionary] had been inscribed to Lord Chesterfield, then [1747] Secretai-y of State, 30 and had received, when showed him in manuscript, that able and accomplished person's high approval. It should seem that Johnson had called upon him afterw-ards and been refused admittance, a thing far from inexplicable when the person happened to be a Cabinet Minister in a laborious department. He had probably not courted his 3^ further acquaintance by invitations, but quarrel there was npt any 20 Letters. between the parties ; and when the ' Dictionary ' was on the point of appearing, Lord Chesterfield wrote two witty and highly laudatory papers upon it in the ' World,' strongly but delicately recommending the expected work to all readers and all purchasers. Johnson's pride took fire, and he wrote that letter w^hich is so well known, and has been so 5 much admired for its indignant and sarcastic tone, but which every- thing considered, is to be reckoned among the outrages committed by the irritability of the literary temperament. Nor can anything be more humbling if it be not even ridiculous enough at once to bring the subfime of the epistle down to a very ordinary level, than the imhappy 10 Note w^hich Mr. Boswell's candour and love of accuracy has subjoined, — that Johnson once confessed to Mr. Langton his having received ten pounds from the Earl, but ' as that was so inconsiderable a sum, he thought the mention of it could not properly find a place in a letter of the kind this was ' — referring to the passage which speaks very incor- 15 rectly of his having received from Lord Chesterfield ' not one act of assist- ance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour' [p. 21, 1. 17.] It seems almost as incorrect to say, that he had never received one smile of favour ; for it is certain that he had been admitted to his society and politely treated. He described him [once] as of ' exquisitely 20 elegant manners, with more knowledge than what he expected, and as having conversed with him upon philosophy and literature.' The letter which he wrote appears to have been treated with indifference, if not with contempt, by the Noble Secretary of State ; for he showed it to any- one that asked to see it, and let it lie on his table open that all might 25 read who pleased. The followers of Johnson quote this as a proof of his dissimulation ; possibly he overdid it ; but they should recollect how little anyone was likely to feel severely hurt by such a composition, when he could with truth mention, even if he should not choose to do so, that he had given the writer ten pounds without giving him the least 30 offence." Men of Letters of Time of George III, Works of Lord Brougham, 1855, PP- 327-28.] February 7, 1755. My Lord : I have been lately inforrned by the proprietor of. " The World," that two papers in which my dictionary 35 is recommended to the public, were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honor, which, being very little accustomed to favors from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in w^hat terms to acknowledge. When, upon some slight encouragement I first visited your 40 Samuel Johnson. ^i lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself " Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre " : that I might obtain that regard for which I saw 5 the world contending; but I found my attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I lo could ; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; dur- ing which time I have been pushing on my work through 15 difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. 20 The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks. Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the ground encumbers him with help ? The notice 25 which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind ; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it ; till I am solitary, and can- not impart it ; till I am known and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where 30 no benefit has been received, or be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron, which Provi- dence has enabled me to do for myself. Having carried on my work thus far with so little obliga- tion to any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed 35 though I should conclude, if less be possible, with less ; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which 2 2 Letters. I once boasted myself with so much exultation, my lord, your lordship's most humble, most obedient servant, Sam. Johnson. VI. T. B. ALDRICH To William Winter.^ [Edwin Booth died June 8, 1893. He was buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Mass. E^or years Mr. Aldrich, Mr. Winter, 5 and Edwin Booth had been close friends.] PoNKAPOG, Mass., June 12, 1893. Dear Will : We reached Mount Auburn a few minutes before sunset. Just as Edwin was laid in the grave, among the fragrant pine boughs which lined it, and softened its cru- 10 elty, the sun went down. I never saw anything of such heart-breaking loveliness as this scene. There in the tender afterglow two or three hundred men and women stood silent, with bowed heads. A single bird, in a nest hidden somewhere near by, twittered from time to time. The soft June air, blowing 1 5 across the upland, brought with it the scent of syringa blos- soms from the slope below. Overhead and among the trees the twilight was gathering. " Good-night, sweet Prince ! " I said, under my breath, remembering your quotation. Then I thought of the years and years that had been made rich with 20 his presence, and of the years that w^ere to come, — for us not many, surely, — and if there had not been a crowd of people, I would have buried my face in the greensward and wept, as men may not do, and women may. And thus we left him. - 25 ^ Reprinted by permission of T. B. Aldrich. Mrs. E. B. Browning. 23 Some day, when I come to New York, we must get together in a corner at The Players and talk about him, — his sorrows and his genius, and his gentle soul. Ever affectionately, 5 Tom. VII. MRS. E. B. BROWNING To the Emperor Napoleon III. [ This letter, written after Mrs. Brojming had been deeply stirred by reading the poems in Victor Hugo's " Contemplations," was found, after her death, among her papers. An endorsement stated that it was never sent. Hugo, because of his opposition to the schemes of Louis 10 Napoleon, was put at the head of the listxof proscribed persons when the coup d'etat of 1857 changed the President into Napoleon III. Hugo first fled to Brussels, whence he issued within a year his " Histoire d'une Crime," an account of the coup d'etat, and his " Napoleon le Petit," a scathing arraignment of the Emperor. As a consequence of 15 the sensation caused by the second book, Hugo was obliged to leave Belgium for Jersey. He lived on this island and the neighboring Guernsey till his return to France after the fall of the Empire, in Septem- ber, 1870. He refused to take advantage of two amnesties, in 1859 and 1869, because he denied the right of an usurper to pardon, just as he had 20 denied his right to condemn.] [April, 1857.] Sire, — I am only a woman, and have no claim on your Majesty's attention except that of the weakest on the strong- est. Probably my very name as the wife of an English poet, 25 and as named itself a little among English poets, is unknown to your Majesty. I never approached my own sovereign with a petition, nor am skilled in the way of addressing kings. Yet having, through a studious and thoughtful life, grown used to great men (among \hh dead, at least), I cannot feel 3QAeT^tirely at a loss in speaking to the Emperor Napoleon. 24 Letters. And I beseech you to have patience with me while I sup- plicate you. It is not for myself nor for mine. I have been reading with wet eyes and a swelling heart (as many who love and some who hate your Majesty have lately done) a book called the ' Contemplations ' of a man who 5 has sinned deeply against you in certain of his political writ- ings, and who expiates rash phrases and unjustifiable state- ments in exile in Jersey. I have no personal knowledge of this man ; I never saw his face ; and certainly I do not come now to make his apology. It is, indeed, precisely because 10 he cannot be excused that, I think, he might worthily be for- given. For this man, whatever else he is not, is a great poet of France, and the Emperor, who is the guardian of her other glories, should remember him and not leave him out. Ah, sire, what was written on ' Napoleon le Petit ' does not 15 touch your Majesty ; but what touches you is, that no histo- rian of the age should have to write hereafter, ' While Napo- leon III reigned, Victor Hugo lived in exile.' What touches you is, that when your people count gratefully the men of commerce, arms, and science secured by you to France, no 20 voice shall murmur, ' But where is our poet ? ' What touches you is, that, however statesmen and politicians may justify his exclusion, it may draw no sigh from men of sentiment and impulse, yes, and from women like myself. What touches you is, that when your own beloved young prince 25 shall come to read these poems (and when you wish him a princely nature, you wish, sire, that such things should move him), he may exult to recall that his imperial father was great enough to overcome this great poet with magnanimity. Ah, sire, you are great enough ! You can allow for the 30 peculiarity of the poetical temperament, for the temptation of high gifts, for the fever in which poets are apt to rage and suffer beyond the measure of other men. You can consider that when they hate most causelessly there is a divine love in them somewhere ; and that when they see most falsely 35 they are loyal to some ideal light. Forgive this enemy, this Emile Zola. 25 accuser, this traducer. Disprove him by your generosity. Let no tear of an admirer of his poetry drop upon your pur- ple. Make an exception of him, as God made an exception of him when He gave him genius, and call him back without 5 condition to his country and his daughter's grave. I have written these words without the knowledge of any. Naturally I should have preferred, as a woman, to have ad- dressed them through the mediation of the tender-hearted Empress Eugenie ; but, a wife myself, I felt it would be 10 harder for her Majesty to pardon an offence against the Em- peror Napoleon, than it could be for the Emperor. And I am driven by an irresistible impulse to your Maj- esty's feet to ask this grace. It is a woman's voice, sire, which dares to utter what many yearn for in silence. I have 15 believed in Napoleon III. Passionately loving the democ- racy, I have understood from the beginning that it was to be served throughout Europe in you and by you. I have trusted you for doing greatly. I will trust you, besides, for pardon- ing nobly. You will be Napoleon in this also. 20 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. VIII. EMILE ZOLA To M. Felix Faure, President of the Republic.^ [" On January lo, 1898, some three years after the secret trial and con- viction, by a council of war, of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a staff officer of the French army, of having sold French military secrets to a foreign power, a second council of war convened in Paris for the trial of Marie ^ Reprinted, with explanatory matter, by permission of Benjamin R, Tucker, from The Trial of Emile Zola, N. Y., 1898. 26 Letters. Charles Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, a French infantry officer tempo- rarily relieved from active service on account of poor health, Dreyfus, after his trial, had been stripped of his uniform in a degrading public ceremony and sent for life to Devil's Island, a French penal settlement situated off the coast of French Guiana, where he was still confined under guard. The charge against Esterhazy — proffered by Mathieu Dreyfus, brother of Captain Alfred Dreyfus — was that he was the real author of the bordereau, or itemized memorandum, supposed to have been written by Captain Dreyfus. On the strength of this bordereau Dreyfus had been convicted. The trial was conducted publicly until the most important witness, Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart, of the French Algerian Sharp- shooters, was reached, when the council went into secret session, remaining behind closed doors until the evening of January ii, when the doors were thrown open and General de Luxer, the president of the 15 council, announced a unanimous vote in acquittal of the defendant. Two days later — January 13 — ' L'Aurore,' a daily paper published in Paris under the directorship of Ernest Vaughan and the editorship of Georges Clemenceau, and having as its gerant, or legally responsible editor, J. A. Perrenx, published the following letter from Emile Zola, 20 man of letters, to Felix Faure, president of France."] Monsieur le President: Will you permit me, in my gratitude for the kindly welcome that you once extended to me, to have a care for the glory that belongs to you, and to say that your star, so lucky hitherto, is threatened with the 25 most shameful, the most ineffaceable, of stains ? You have emerged from base calumnies safe and sound ; you have conquered our hearts. You seem radiant in the apotheosis of that patriotic fete which the Russian alliance has been for France, and you are preparing to preside at the 30 solemn triumph of our Universal Exposition, which will crown our great century of labor, truth, and liberty. But what a mud-stain on your name — I was going to say on your reign — is this abominable Dreyfus affair 1 A council of war has just dared to acquit Esterhazy in obedience to orders, a final 35 blow at truth, at all justice. And now it is done ! France has this stain upon her cheek ; it will be written in his- tory that under your presidency it was possible for this social crime to be committed. Emile Zola. 27 Since they have dared, I too will dare. I will tell the truth, for I have promised to tell it, if the courts, once regu- larly appealed to, did not bring it out fully and entirely. It is my duty to speak ; I will not be an accomplice. My 5 nights would be haunted by the spectre of the innocent man who is atoning, in a far-away country, by the most frightful of tortures, for a crime that he did not commit. And to you. Monsieur le President, will I cry this truth, with all the force of an honest man's revolt. Because of 10 your honor I am convinced that you are ignorant of it. And to whom then shall I denounce the malevolent gang of the really guilty, if not to you, the first magistrate of the country ? First, the truth as to the trial and conviction of Dreyfus. 15 A calamitous man has managed it all, has done it all — Colonel du Patay de Clam, then a simple major. He is the entire Dreyfus case ; it will be fully known only when a sin- cere investigation shall have clearly established his acts and his responsibilities. He appears the most excitable, the 20 most intricate of minds, haunted with romantic intrigues, delighting in the methods of the newspaper novel, stolen papers, anonymous letters, meetings in deserted spots, mys- terious women who peddle overwhelming proofs by night. It is he who conceived the idea of dictating the bordereau 25 to Dreyfus ; it is he who dreamed of studying it in a room completely lined with mirrors ; it is he whom Major Forzi- netti represents to us armed with a dark lantern, trying to gain access to the accused when asleep, in order to throw upon his face a sudden flood of light, and thus surprise a 30 confession of his crime in the confusion of his awakening. And I have not told you the whole ; let them search, they will find more. I declare simply that Major du Patay de Clam, entrusted as a judicial officer with the duty of prepar- ing the Dreyfus case, is, in the order of dates and responsi- 35 bilities, the first person guilty of the fearful judicial error that has been committed. 28 Letters. The bordereau already had been for some time in the hands of Colonel Sandherr, director of the bureau of in- formation, who since then has died of general paralysis. " Flights " have taken place ; papers have disappeared, as they continue to disappear even to-day ; and the authorship 5 of the bordereau was an object of inquiry, when little by little an a priori conclusion was arrived at that the officer must be a staff officer and an officer of artillery, — clearly a double error, which shows how superficially this bordereau has been studied, for a systematic examination proves that it could 10 have been written only by an officer of troops. So they searched their own house ; they examined handwritings ; it w^as a sort of family affair, — a traitor to be surprised in the war offices themselves, that he might be expelled therefrom. And, as I do not wish to go over a story already known in 15 part, it is sufficient to say that Major du Patay de Clam enters upon the scene as soon as the first breath of suspicion falls upon Dreyfus. Starting from that moment, it is he who invented Dreyfus ; the case becomes his case ; he under- takes to confound the traitor, and induce him to make a 20 complete confession. There is also, to be sure, the minister of war. General Mercier, whose intelligence seems rather inferior ; there is also the chief of staff, General de Bois- deffre, who seems to have yielded to his passion for the clergy, and the sub-chief of staff, General Gonse, whose con- 25 science has succeeded in accommodating itself to many things. But at bottom there was at first only Major du Patay de Clam, who leads them all, who hypnotizes them, — for he concerns himself also with spiritualism, with occultism, holding converse with spirits. Incredible are the experi- 30 ences to which he submitted the unfortunate Dreyfus, the traps into which he tried to lead him, the mad inquiries, the monstrous fancies, — a complete and torturing madness. Ah 1 this first affair is a nightmare to one who know^s it in its real details. Major du Patay de Clam arrests Dreyfus, 35 puts him in close confinement. He runs to Madame Drey- Emile Zola. 29 fus, terrorizes her, tells her that, if she speaks, her husband is lost. Meantime the unfortunate was tearing his flesh, screaming his innocence. And thus the examination went on, as in a fifteenth-century chronicle, amid mystery, com- 5 plicated with savage expedients, all of it based on a single childish charge, this imbecile bordereau, which was not simply a vulgar treason, but also the most shameless of swindles, for the famous secrets delivered proved, almost all of them, valueless. If I insist, it is because here lies the 10 egg from which later was to be hatched the real crime, the frightful denial of justice, from w^hich France suffers. I should like to show in detail how the judicial error was possible ; how it was born of the machinations of Major du Patay de Clam ; how General Mercier and Generals de 15 Boisdeffre and Gonse were led into it, gradually assuming responsibility for this error, which afterward they believed it their duty to insist upon as sacred truth, truth beyond discussion. At the start there was, on their part, only care- lessness and lack of intelligence. At worst, we see them 20 yielding to the religious passions of their surroundings, and to the prejudices of the esprit de corps. They have let folly do its work. But here is Dreyfus before the council of war. The most absolute secrecy is demanded. Had a traitor opened the 25 frontier to the enemy in order to lead the German emperor to Notre Dame, they would not have taken stricter measures of silence and mystery. The nation is awe-struck; there are whisperings of terrible doings, of those monstrous trea- sons that excite the indignatian of History, and naturally 30 the nation bows. There is no punishment severe enough ; it will applaud even public degradation ; it will wish the guilty man to remain upon his rock of infamy, devoured by remorse. Are they real then, — these unspeakable things, these dangerous things, capable of setting Europe aflame, 35 which they have had to bury carefully behind closed doors ? No, there was nothing behind them save the romantic and 30 Letters. mad fancies of Major du Patay de Clam. All this was done only to conceal the most ridiculous of newspaper novels. And, to assure one's self of it, one need only study atten- tively the indictment read before the council of war. Ah ! the emptiness of this indictment ! That a man 5 could have been condemned on this document is a prodigy of iniquity. I defy honest people to read it without feeling their hearts leap with indignation and crying out their revolt at the thought of the excessive atonement yonder, on Devil's Island. Dreyfus knows several languages — a crime ; no 10 compromising document was found on his premises — a crime ; he sometimes visits his birthplace — a crime ; he is industrious, he is desirous of knowing everything — a crime ; he does not get confused — a crime ; he gets confused — a crime. And the simplicities of this document, the formal 15 empty assertions ! We are told of fourteen counts ; but we find, after all, only one, — that of the bordereau ; and even - as to this we learn that the experts were not in agreement ; that one of them, M. Gobert, was hustled out in military fashion, because he permitted himself to arrive at another 20 than the desired opinion. We are told also of twenty-three officers who came to overwhelm Dreyfus with their testimony. We are still in ignorance of their examination, but it is cer- ■ tain that all of them did not attack him, and it is to be remarked, furthermore, that all of them belonged to the war 25 offices. It is a family trial ; there they are all at home ; and one should keep that in mind : the staff wanted the trial, sat in judgment at it, and has just passed judgment a second time. So there remained only the bordereau, concerning which the experts were not in agreement. It is said that in the 30 council chamber the judges were naturally going to acquit. And, after that, how easy to understand the desperate ob- stinacy with which, in order to justify the conviction, they affirm to-day the existence of a secret overwhelming docu- ment, the document which cannot be shown, that legitimates 35 everything, before which we must bow, an invisible and Emile Zola. 31 unknowable god. I deny the existence of this document ; I deny it with all my might. A ridiculous document, yes, perhaps the document concerning kept women, in which there is mention of a certain D who is becoming too 5 exacting ; some husband, doubtless, who thinks that they pay him too low a price for his wife. But a document of interest to the national defence the production of which would lead to a declaration of war to-morrow I No, no ; it is a lie ; and a lie the more odious and cynical because they lie with 10 impunity, in such a way that no one can convict them of it. They stir up France ; they hide themselves behind their legitimate emotions ; they close mouths by disturbing hearts, by perverting minds. I know no greater civic crime. These then, Monsieur le President, are the facts which 15 explain how it was possible to commit a judicial error ; and the moral proofs, the position of Dreyfus as a man of wealth, the absence of motive, his continual cry of innocence, com- plete the proof that he is a victim of the extraordinary fancies of Major du Patay de Clam, of his clerical surround- 20 ings, of that hunting down of the " dirty Jews " which dis- graces our epoch. And now we come to the Esterhazy case. Three years have passed ; many consciences remain profoundly disturbed, anxiously seek the truth, and finally become convinced of 25 the innocence of Dreyfus. I shall not give the history of M. Scheurer-Kestner's doubts, which later become convictions. But, while he was investigating for himself, serious things were happening to the general staff. Colonel Sandherr was dead, and Lieutenant- 30 Colonel Picquart had succeeded him as chief of the bureau of information. And it is in this capacity that the latter, in the exercise of his functions, came one day into the posses- sion of a letter-telegram addressed to Major Esterhazy by an agent of a foreign power. His plain duty was to open 35 an investigation. It is certain that he never acted except at the command of his superiors. So he submitted his sus- 32 Letters. picions to his hierarchical superiors, first to General Gonse, then to General de Boisdeffre, then to General Billot, who had succeeded General Mercier as minister of war. The famous Picquart documents, of which we have heard so much, were never anything but the Billot documents, — I 5 mean, the documents collected by a subordinate for his chief, the documents which must be still in existence in the war department. The inquiries lasted from May to Septem- ber, 1896, and here it must be squarely affirmed that Gen- eral Gonse was convinced of Esterhazy's guilt, and that 10 General de Boisdeffre and General Billot had no doubt that the famous bordereau • was in Esterhazy's handwriting. Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart's investigation had led to the establishment of this fact. But the emotion thereat was great, for Esterhazy's conviction inevitably involved a revi- 15 sion of the Dreyfus trial ; and this the staff was wished to avoid at any cost. Then there must have been a psychological moment full of anguish. Note that General Billot was in no way compro- mised ; he came freshly to the matter ; he could bring out 20 the truth. He did not dare, in terror, undoubtedly, of public opinion, and certainly fearful also of betraying the entire staff. General de Boisdeffre, General Gonse, to say noth- ing of their subordinates. Then there was but a minute of struggle between his conscience and what he believed to be 25 the military interest. When this minute had passed, it was already too late. He was involved himself ; he was compro- mised. And from that time his responsibility has simply grown ; he has taken upon his shoulders the crime of others, he is as guilty as the others, he is more guilty than they, for 30 it was in his power to do justice and he did nothing. Understand this : for a whole year General Billot, Generals de Boisdeffre and Gonse have known that Dreyfus is inno- cent, and they have kept this dreadful fact to themselves. And these people sleep, and they have wives and children 35 whom they love ! Emile Zola. 33 Colonel Picquart had done his duty as an honest man. He insisted in the presence of his superiors, in the name of justice ; he even begged of them ; he told them how impolitic were their delays, in view of the terrible storm which was ^ gathering, and which would surely burst as soon as the truth should be known. Later that was the language of M. Scheurer-Kestner to General Billot, who adjured him in the name of patriotism to take the matter in hand, and not to allow it to be aggravated until it should become a public disaster. 10 No, the crime had been committed; the staff could no longer confess it. And Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart was sent on a mission ; he was farther and farther removed, even to Tunis, where one day they even wanted to honor his bravery by charging him with a mission which would surely have led to 1 5 his massacre in the quarter where the Marquis de Mores met his death. He was not in disgrace ; Gen. Gonse was in friendly correspondence a\ ith him ; but there are secrets which it is not well to discover. At Paris the truth developed, irresistibly, and we know in 20 what way the expected storm broke out. M. Mathieu Dreyfus denounced Major Esterhazy as the real author of the bordereau, at the moment when M. Scheurer-Kestner was about to lodge a demand for the revision of the trial with the keeper of the seals. And it is here that Major Esterhazy 25 appears. The evidence shows that at first he was dazed, ready for suicide or flight. Then suddenly he determines to brazen it out ; he astonishes Paris by the violence of his attitude. The fact was that aid had come to him ; he had received an anonymous letter warning him of the intrigues of 30 his enemies ; a mysterious woman had even disturbed herself at night to hand him a document stolen from the staff, which would save him. iVnd I cannot help seeing here again the hand of Lieutenant-Colonel du Patay de Clam, recognizing the expedients of his fertile imagination. His work, the 35 guilt of Dreyfus, was in danger, and he was determined to defend it. A revision of the trial, — why, that meant the 34 Letters. ruination of the newspaper novel, so extravagant, so tragic, with its abominable denouement on Devil's Island. That would never do. Thenceforth there was to be a duel between Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart and Lieutenant-Colonel du Patay de Clam, the one with face uncovered, the other 5 masked. Presently we shall meet them both in the presence of civil justice. At bottom it is always the staff defending itself, unwilling to confess its crime, the abomination of which is growing from hour to hour. It has been wonderingly asked who were the protectors of 10 Major Esterhazy. First, in the shadow, Lieutenant-Colonel du Patay de Clam, who devised everything, managed every- thing; his hand betrays itself in the ridiculous methods. Then there is General de Boisdeffre, General Gonse, General Billot himself, who are obliged to acquit the major, since they 15 cannot permit the innocence of Dreyfus to be recognized, lest under the weight of public contempt the war offices should fall. And the fine result of this wonderful situation is that the one honest man in the case, Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart, who alone has done his duty, is to be the victim, the man to 20 be derided and punished. O justice, what frightful despair grips the heart 1 They go so far as to say that he is a forger ; that he manufactured the telegram, to ruin Esterhazy. But, in Heaven's name, why? For what purpose? Show a mo- tive. Is he, too, paid by the Jews? The pretty part of the 25 story is that he himself was an anti-Semite. Yes, we are wit- nesses of this infamous spectacle, — the proclamation of the innocence of men ruined with debts and crimes, while honor itself, a man of stainless life, is stricken down. When society reaches that point it is beginning to rot. 30 There you have, then. Monsieur le President, the Ester- hazy case, — a guilty man who must be declared innocent. We can follow this beautiful business, hour by hour, for the last two months. I abridge, for this is but the resume of a story whose burning pages will some day be written at length. 35 So we have seen General de Pellieux, and then Major Ravary, Emile Zola. 35 carrying on a rascally investigation whence knaves come transfigured and honest people sullied. Then the council of war was convened. How could it have been expected that a council of war 5 would undo what a council of war had done ? I say nothing of the selection which is always possible of judges. Is not the dominating idea of discipline, which is in the very blood of the soldiers, enough to destroy their power to do justice ? Who says discipline says obedience. 10 When the minister of war, the great chief, has publicly estabhshed, amid the applause of the nation's representatives, the absolute authority of the judgment, do you expect a council of war formally to contradict him ? Hierarchically that is impossible. General Billot gave a hint to the judges 15 by his declaration, and they passed judgment as they must face the cannon's mouth, without reasoning. The precon- ceived opinion that they took with them to their bench is evidently this : " Dreyfus has been condemned for the crime of treason by a council of war ; then he is guilty, and we, a 20 council of war, cannot declare him innocent. Now, we know that to recognize Esterhazy's guilt would be to proclaim the innocence of Dreyfus." Nothing could turn them from that course of reasoning. They have rendered an iniquitous verdict which will weigh 25 forever upon our councils of war, which will henceforth tinge with suspicion all their decrees. The first council of war may have been stupid ; the second is clearly criminal. Its excuse, I repeat, is that the supreme head had spoken, declaring the judgment unassailable, sacred, and superior to 30 men, so that inferiors could say naught to the contrary. They talk to us of the honor of the army ; they want us to love it, to respect it. Ah ! certainly, yes, the army which would rise at the first threat, which would defend French soil ; that army is the whole people, and we have for it 35 nothing but tenderness and respect. But it is not a question of that army, whose dignity is our special desire, in our 36 Letters. need of justice. It is the sword that is in question ; the master that they may give us to-morrow. And piously kiss the sword-hilt, the god. No ! I have proved it, elsewhere ; the Dreyfus case was the case of the war offices : a staif officer, accused by his com- 5 rades of the general staff, is convicted by the pressure of the chiefs of the staff. Again I say, he cannot come back innocent, unless all the staff be admitted to be guilty. Consequently the war offices, by all imaginable means, by press campaigns, by communications, by influence, have 10 covered Esterhazy simply to ruin Dreyfus a second time. Ah ! with what a sweep the republican government should clear away this band of Jesuits, as General Billot himself calls them ! Where is the truly strong and wisely patriotic minister who will dare to reshape and renew all ? How 1 5 many of the people I know are trembling with anguish in view of a possible war, knowing in what hands lies the national defence 1 And what a nest of base intrigues, gossip, and waste has this sacred asylum, entrusted with the fate of the country, become ! We are frightened by the 20 terrible light thrown upon it by the Dreyfus case, this human sacrifice of an unfortunate, of a " dirty Jew." Ah ! what a mixture of madness and folly, of crazy fancies, of vile police practices, of inquisitorial and tyrannical customs, the good pleasure of a few persons in gold lace, wdth their boots on 25 the neck of the nation, cramming back into its throat its cry of truth and justice, under the lying and sacrilegious pretext of reasons of state ! And another of their crimes is that they have accepted the support of the unclean press, have suffered themselves 30 to be championed by all the knavery of Paris, so that now we witness knavery's insolent triumph in the downfall of right and simple probity. It is a crime to have accused of troubling France those who wish to see her generous, at the head of the free and just nations, when they themselves are 35 hatching the insolent conspiracy to impose error in the face Emile Zola. 37 of the entire world. It is a crime to mislead opinion, to utilize for a deadly attack this opinion that they have per- verted to the point of delirimii. It is a crime to poison the minds of the lowly and the humble, to exasperate the pas- 5 sions of reaction and intolerance, by seeking shelter behind odious anti-Semitism, of which France, great, liberal France of the rights of man, will die, if she is not cured. It is a crime to exploit patriotism for works of hatred, and, finally, it is a crime to make the sv*rord the modern god, when all 10 human science is at work on the coming temple of truth and justice. How distressing it is then to see this truth, this justice, for which we have so ardently longed, buffeted thus and become more neglected and more obscured. I have a sus- 15 picion of the black despair there must be in the soul of M. Scheurer-Kestner, and I really believe that he will finally feel remorse that he did not, on the day of interpellation in the senate, acting in revolutionary fashion, by thoroughly ventilating the whole matter, topple everything over. He 20 has been the highly honest man, the man of loyal life, and he thought that the truth was sufficient unto itself, especially when it should appear as dazzling as the open day. Of what use to overturn everything, since soon the sun would shine ? And it is for this confident serenity that he is now 25 so cruelly punished. And the same is the case of Lieutenant- Colonel Picquart, who, moved by a feeling of lofty dignity, has been unwilling to publish General Gonse's letters. These scruples do him the more honor because, while he respected discipline, his superiors heaped mud upon him, 30 working up the case against him themselves in the most unexpected and outrageous fashion. Here are two victims, two worthy people, two simple hearts, who have trusted God, while the devil was at work. And in the case of Lieutenant- Colonel Picquart we have seen even this ignoble thing, — a 35 French tribunal, after suffering the reporter in the case publically to arraign a witness and accuse him of every 38 Letters. crime, closing its doors as soon as this witness has been introduced to explain and defend himself. I say that is one crime more, and that this crime will awaken the uni- versal conscience. Decidedly, military tribunals have a singular idea of justice. 5 Such, then, is the simple truth, Monsieur le President, and it is frightful. It will remain a stain upon your presi- dency. I suspect that you are powerless in this matter, — that you are the prisoner of the constitution and your envi- ronment. You have none the less a man's duty, upon which 10 you will reflect, and v^^hich you will fulfil. Not indeed that I despair, the least in the world, of triumph. I repeat with more vehement certainty : truth is marching on, and nothing can stop it. To-day sees the real beginning of the affair, since not until to-day have the positions been clear : on the 15 one hand, the guilty, who do not want the light; on the other, the doers of justice, who will give their lives to get it. I have said elsewhere, and I repeat it here : when truth is buried in the earth, it accumulates there, and assumes so mighty an explosive power that, on the day when it bursts 20 forth, it hurls everything into the air. We shall see if they have not made preparations for the most resounding of disasters, yet to come. But this letter is long, Monsieur le President, and it is time to finish. 25 I accuse Lieutenant-Colonel du Patay de Clam of having been the diabolical workman of judicial error, — uncon- sciously, I am willing to believe, — and of having then de- fended his calamitous work, for three years, by the most absurd and guilty machinations. 30 I accuse General Mercier of having made himself an ac- complice, at least through weakness of mind, in one of the greatest iniquities of the century. I accuse General Billot of having had in his hands certain proofs of the innocence of Dreyfus, and of having stifled 35 them ; of having rendered himself guilty of this crime of Emile Zola. 39 lese-humanite and lese-justice for a political purpose, and to save the compromised staff. I accuse General de Boisdeffre and General Gonse of having made themselves accomplices in the same crime, one 5 undoubtedly through clerical passion, the other perhaps through that esprit de corps which makes of the war offices the Holy Ark, unassailable. I accuse General de Pellieux and Major Ravary of having conducted a rascally inquiry, — I mean a monstrously par- 10 tial inquiry, of which we have, in the report of the latter, an imperishable monument of naive audacity. I accuse the three experts in handwriting, Belhomme, Varinard, and Conard, of having made lying and fraudulent reports, provided medical examination does not prove them 15 diseased in eyes and judgment. I accuse the war offices of having carried on in the press, particularly in " L'Eclair " and in " L'Echo de Paris," an abom- inable campaign, to mislead opinion and cover up their faults. I accuse, finally, the council of war of having violated the 20 law by condemning an accused person on the strength of a secret document, and I accuse the second council of war of having covered up this illegality, in obedience to orders, and in committing, in its turn, the judicial crime of knowingly acquitting a guilty man. 25 In preferring these charges, I am not unaware that I make myself liable under Articles 30 and 31 of the press law of July 29, 188 1, which punishes defamation. And it is wil- fully that I expose myself thereto. As for the people whom I accuse, I do not know them, 30 I have never seen them, I entertain against them no feeling of revenge or hatred. They are to me simple entities, spir- its of social ill-doing. And the act that I perform here is nothing but a revolutionary measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice. 35 I have but one passion, the passion for the Hght, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much, and which 40 Letters. is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me into the assize court, and let the investigation take place in the open day. I await it. Accept, Monsieur le President, the assurance of my pro- 5 found respect. , Emile Zola. [" At the sitting of the French chamber of deputies on the day of the appearance of the foregoing letter, Comte de Mun, a member of the chamber and representing the monarchical party, questioned the govern- 10 ment 'as to the measures which the minister of war intends to take, in consequence of the article published this morning by M. Emile Zola.' After a stormy debate and the suspension of the sitting, M. Meline, the prime minister, reluctantly declared the intention of the government to prosecute the author of the article. 1 5 Accordingly, on January 29, the assize court of the Seine served notice on M. Zola and M. Perrenx to appear before it at the Palais de Justice on the following February 7, and there answer to a charge of having publicly defamed the first council of war of the military govern- ment of Paris, the charge being based on the following passages from 20 the incriminated article : * A council of war has dared to acquit an Esterhazy in obedience to orders, a final blow at all truth, at all justice. And now it is done ! France has this stain upon her cheek ; it will be written in history that under your presidency it was possible for this social crime to be com- 25 mitted.' * They have rendered an iniquitous verdict which will weigh forever upon our councils of war, which will henceforth tinge all their decrees with suspicion. The first council of war may have been lacking in com- prehension ; the second is necessarily criminal.' 30 ' I accuse the second council of war of having covered this illegality, in obedience to orders, in committing in its turn the judicial crime of knowingly acquitting a guilty man.' On January 22, 'L'Aurore' published a second letter from M. Zola, addressed to the minister of war, in which he complained that the 35 government had based its charge of defamation exclusively on those passages of his first letter which related to the trial of Major Esterhazy, carefully refraining from specification of those passages relating to the trial of Captain Dreyfus, lest thereby the truth about the latter should come to light and compel revision of his case." 40 The jury found Zola guilty by a vote of 7 to 5, and the judge con- W. H. Seward. 41 demned him to imprisonment for a year, with a fine of $600. Zola carried his case to the Supreme Court of Appeal on many counts, where the preceding trial was quashed on the ground that the indictment had not been signed by the proper persons. At the second trial, satisfied at length that the truth would in time be known, Zola let the judgment go by default, and quitted France, to which, by French law, he could re- turn at any time within five years and demand a fresh trial.] IX. W. H. SEWARD To C. F. Adams.i [" From the election of Lincoln until three days preceding his in- auguration, a period of nearly four months, embracing the whole drama 10 of public secession and the organization of the Montgomery Confeder- acy, not a word of information, explanation, or protest on these momen- tous proceedings was sent by the Buchanan Cabinet to foreign powers. They were left to draw their inferences exclusively from newspapers, the debates of Congress, and the President's messages till the last day 15 of February, 1861, when Secretary Black, in a diplomatic circular, in- structed our ministers at foreign courts that ' this Government has not reUnquished its constitutional jurisdiction within the territory of ttose [seceded] States and does not desire to do so,' and that a recognition of their independence must be opposed. France and England replied cour- 20 teously that they w^ould not act in haste, but quite emphatically that they could give no further binding promise. Mr. Seward, on assuming the duties of Secretary of State, immedi- ately transmitted a circular, repeating the injunction of his predecessor and stating the confidence of the President in the speedy restoration of 25 the harmony and unity of the Government. Considerable delay oc- curred in settling upon the various foreign appointments. The new minister to France, William L. Dayton, and the new minister to Great Britain, Charles Francis Adams, did not sail for Europe till about the first of May. Before either of them arrived at his post, both governments had 30 violated in spirit their promise to act in no haste. On the day Mr. Adams sailed from Boston, his predecessor, G. M. Dallas, yet in Lon- ^ Reprinted, with the introductory material, by permission of the Century Co. from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln, IV, pp. 267-75. 42 Letters. don, was sent for by Lord John Russell, her Brittanic Majesty's Minister of Foreign Affairs. ' He told me,' wrote Mr. Dallas, ' that the three representatives of the Southern Confederacy were here; that he had not seen them, but was not unwilling to do so, unofficially ; that there existed an understanding between this Government and that of 5 France which would lead both to take the same course as to recognition, whatever that course might be.' The step here foreshadowed was soon taken. Three days later Lord John Russell did receive the three representatives of the Southern Con- federacy ; and while he told them he could not communicate with them 10 ' officially,' his language indicated that when the South could maintain its position England would not be unwilling to hear what terms they had to propose. When Mr. Adams landed in England he found, evi- dently to forestall his arrival, that the Ministry had published the Queen's proclamation of neutrality, raising the Confederate States at once to the 15 position and privilege of a belligerent power ; and France soon followed the example. In taking this precipitate action, both nations probably thought it merely a preliminary step ; the British ministers believed disunion to be complete and irrevocable, and were eager to take advantage of it to 20 secure free trade and cheap cotton; while Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, already harboring far-reaching colonial designs, expected not only to recognize the South, but to assist her at no distant day by an armed intervention. For the present, of course, all such meditations were veiled under the bland phraseology of diplomatic regret at our mis- 25 fortune. . . . When the communication which Lord John Russell made to Mr. Dallas was received at the State Department, the unfriendly act of the English Government, and more especially the half-insulting man- ner of its promulgation, filled Mr. Seward with indignation. In this mood be wrote a dispatch to Mr. Adams, which, if transmitted and 30 delivered in its original form, could hardly have failed to endanger the peaceful relations of the two countries. The general tone and spirit of the paper were admirable ; but portions of it were phrased with an ex- asperating bluntness, and certain directions were lacking in diplomatic prudence. This can be accounted for only by the irritation under which 35 he wrote. It was Mr. Seward's ordinary habit personally to read his despatches to the President before sending them. Mr. Lincoln, detect- ing the defects of the paper, retained it, and after careful scrutiny made such material corrections and alterations with his own hand as took from it all offensive crudeness without in the least lowering its tone, 40 but, on the contrary, greatly increasing its dignity. . . ." When the President returned the manuscript to his hands, Mr. Seward somewhat changed the form of the despatch by prefixing to it W. H. Seward. 43 two short introductory paragraphs in whicli he embodied, in his own phraseology, the President's direction that the paper was to be merely a confidential instruction not to be read or shown to anyone, and that [Mr. Adams] should not in advance say anything inconsistent with its 5 spirit. This also rendered unnecessary the President's direction to omit the last tw^o paragraphs, and accordingly they remained in the des- patch as finally sent." The tw'o paragraphs are supplied from Diplo- matic Correspondence, 1861.] SEWARD'S ORIGINAL DISPATCH, SHOWING MR. LINCOLN'S CORRECTIONS. \All words by Lincoln in inargin or in text are in italics. All 7natter betwee?t brackets was jnarked oz(t.] Department of State, 10 Washington, May 21, 1861. Sir: Mr. Dallas in a brief dispatch of May 2nd, (No. 333) tells us that Lord John Russell recently requested an interview with him on 15 account of the solicitude which His Lordship felt concerning the effect of certain measures represented as likely to be adopted by the President. In that conversation the British Secretary told Mr. Dallas that the three repre- 20 sentatives of the Southern Confederacy were then in London, that Lord John Russell had not yet seen thern, but that he was not unwilling to see them unofficially. He farther informed Mr. Dallas that an understanding exists between the 25 British and French Governments which would lead both to take one and the same course as to recognition. His Lordship then referred to the rumour of a, meditated blockade by us of Southern ports, and a discontinuance of them 30 as ports of entry. Mr. Dallas answered that he knew nothing on those topics and therefore Leave out. 44 Letters. could say nothing. He added that you were expected to arrive in two weeks. Upon this statement Lord John Russell acquiesced in the expediency of waiting for the full knowledge you were expected to bring. 5 Mr. Dallas transmitted to us some newspaper reports of Ministerial explanations made in Parliament. You will base no proceedings on parliamen- tary debates farther than to seek explanations lo when necessary and communicate them to this Department. [We intend to have a clear and simple record of whatever issue may arise be- tween us and Great Britain.] The President [is surprised and grieved] 15 regrets that Mr. Dallas did not protest against the proposed unofficial intercourse between the British Government and the missionaries of the insurgents [as well as against the demand for that such explanations made by the British Government]. 20 explanations It is due, howevcr, to Mr. Dallas to say that ivere den^a^td- Q^r instructions had been given only to you and '' • not to him, and that his loyalty and fidelity, too rare in these times [among our late representa- eave out. ^^y^g abroad are confessed and], are appreciated. 25 Intercourse of any kind with the so-called Commissioners is liable to be construed as a recognition of the authority which appointed them. Such intercourse would be none the less [wrongful] hurtful to us for being called unoffi- 30 cial, and it might be even more injurious, be- cause we should have no means of knowing what points might be resolved by it. Moreover, unofficial intercourse is useless and meaningless, if it is not expected to ripen into official inter- 35 course and direct recognition. It is left Leave out because it does not appear W. H. Seward. 45 doubtful here whether the proposed unofficial intercourse has yet actually begun. Your own [present] antecedent instructions are deemed explicit enough, and it is hoped that you have 5 not misunderstood them. You will in any event desist from all intercourse whatever, un- official as well as official with the British Gov- ernment, so long as it shall continue intercourse of either kind with the domestic enemies of 10 this country, [confining yourself simply to a delivery of a copy of this paper to the Secretary Leave out. of State. After doing this] When intercourse shall have bee7i arrested for this cause you will communicate with this Department and receive 15 farther directions. Lord John Russell has informed us of an understanding between the British and French Governments that they will act together in regard to our affairs. This communication 20 however loses something of its value from the circumstance that the communication was with- held until after knowledge of the fact had been acquired by us from other sources. We know also another fact that has not yet been officially 25 communicated to us ; namely, that other Euro- pean States are apprized by France and England of their agreement and are expected to concur with or follow them in whatever measures they adopt on the subject of recognition. The 30 United States have been impartial and just in all their conduct towards the several nations of Europe. They will not complain however of the combination now announced by the two leading powers, although they think they had a 35 right to expect a more independent if not a more friendly course from each of them. You 46 Letters. will take no notice of that or any other alliance. Whenever the European Governments shall see fit to communicate directly with us we shall be as heretofore frank and explicit in our reply. As to the blockade, you will say that by [the] 5 our own laws [of nature] and the laws of nature and the laws of nations this government has a clear right to suppress insurrection. An exclu- sion of commerce from national ports which have been seized by the insurgents, in the equi- 10 table form of blockade, is the proper means to that end. You will [admit] not insist that our blockade is [not] to be respected if it be not maintained by a competent force — but passing by that question as not now a practical or at 15 least an urgent one you will add that [it] the blockade is now and it will continue to be so maintained, and therefore we expect it to be respected by Great Britain. You will add that we have already revoked the exequatur of a 20 Russian consul who had enlisted in the Military service of the insurgents, and we shall dismiss or demand the recall of every foreign agent. Consular or Diplomatic, who shall either dis- obey the Federal laws or disown the Federal 25 authority. As to the recognition of the so-called Southern Confederacy it is not to be made a subject of technical definition. It is of course \(juasi\ direct recognition to publish an acknowledg- 30 ment of the sovereignty and independence of a new power. It is \^uasi'\ direct recognition to receive its ambassadors, ministers, agents, or commissioners ofiicially. A concession of bellig- erent rights is liable to be construed as a recog- 35 nition of them. No one of these proceedings W. H. Seward. 47 will [be home] J>ass \u7inoticed'\ unquestioned by the United States in this case. Hitherto recognition has been moved only on the assumption that the so-called Confederate 5 States are de facto a self-sustaining power. Now after long forbearance, designed to soothe discontent and avert the need of civil war, the land and naval forces of the United States have been put in motion to repress the insurrection. 10 The true character of the pretended new State is at once revealed. It is seen to be a Power existing in pronunciamento only. It has never won a field. It has obtained no forts that were not virtually betrayed into its hands or seized 15 in breach of trust. It Commands not a single port on the coast nor any highway out from its pretended Capitol by land. Under these cir- cumstances Great Britain is called upon to in- tervene and give it body and independence by 20 resisting our measures of suppression. British recognition would be British intervention to create within our own territory a hostile state by overthrowing this Republic itself. [When this act of intervention is distinctly performed we 25 from that hour shall cease to be friends and become once more, as we have twice before been forced to be, enemies of Great Britain.] As to the treatment of privateers in the in- surgent service, you will say that this is a 30 question exclusively our own. We treat them as pirates. They are our own citizens, or per- sons employed by our citizens, preying on the commerce of our country. If Great Britain shall choose to recognize them as lawful bellig- 35 erents, and give them shelter from our pursuit and punishment, the laws of nations afford an Leave out. 48 Letters. adequate and proper remedy, [and we shall avail ourselves of it. And while you need not to say this in advance^ be sure that you say nothing inconsistent ivith it\ Happily, however. Her Britannic Majesty's 5 Government can avoid all these difficulties. It invited us in 1856 to accede to the declaration of the Congress of Paris, of which body Great Britain was herself a member, abolishing priva- teering everywhere in all cases and forever. 10 You already have our authority to propose to her our accession to that declaration. If she refuse to receive it, it can only be because she is willing to become the patron of privateering when aimed at our devastation. 15 These positions are not elaborately defended now, because to indicate them would imply a possibility of our waiving them. Drop all We are not insensible of the grave importance from this line of this occasion. We see how, upon the result 20 to the end. and ^f ^j^^ ^^^^^^^ -^ ^j^.^j^ ^^ ^^^ engaged, a war in heu of tt , , ^^ . , ^ ^ ^ ' write " This "^^^ ensue between the United States, and one, paper is for two, or even more European nations. War in your own any casc is as exceptionable from the habits as it guidance jg revolting from the sentiments of the American 25 only and not j^^ j^^^ if it come it will be fully seen that \stc\ to be . ^ . ^ read or shown it results from the action of Great Britain, not to anyone"' our own, that Great Britain will have decided to fraternize with our domestic enemy, either with- out waiting to hear from you our remonstrances, 30 and our warnings, or after having heard them. War in defense of national life is not immoral, and war in defense of independence is an inevitable part of the discipline of nations. The dispute will be between the European 35 and the American branches of the British race. W. H. Seward. 49 All who belong to that race will especially deprecate it, as they ought. It may well be believed that men of every race and kindred will deplore it. A war not unlike it between 5 the same parties occurred at the- close of the last century. Europe atoned by forty years of suffering for the error that Great Britain com- mitted in provoking that contest. If that nation shall now repeat the same great error the social 10 convulsions which will follow may not be so long but they will be more general. When they shall have ceased, it will, we think, be seen, whatever may have been the fortunes of other nations, that it is not the United States that will 1 5 have come out of them with its precious Consti- tution altered or its honestly obtained dominion in any degree abridged. Great Britain has but to wait a few months and all her present incon- veniences will cease with our own troubles. 20 If she take a different course she will calculate for herself the ultimate as well as the immediate consequences, and will consider what position she will hold when she shall have forever lost the sympathies and the affections of the only 25 nation on whose sympathies and affections she has a natural claim. In making that calculation she will do well to remember that in the con- troversy she proposes to open we shall be actuated by neither pride, nor passion, nor 30 cupidity, nor ambition ; but we shall stand simply on the principle of self preservation, and that our cause will involve the independence of nations, and the rights of human nature. I am. Sir, respectfully, your obedient servant, 35 W. H. S. Charles Francis Adams, Esq., etc., etc., etc. 50 Letters. The New Introductory Paragraphs. No. lo. Department of State, Washington, May 21, 1861. Sir : This government considers that our relations in Europe have reached a crisis, in which it is necessary for it to take a decided 5 stand, on which not only its immediate measures, but its ultimate and permanent policy can be determined and defined. At the same time it neither means to menace Great Britain nor to wound the susceptibilities of that or any other 10 European nation. That policy is developed in this paper. The paper itself is not to be read or shown to the British secretary of state, nor are any of its positions to be prematurely, unnecessarily, or 15 indiscretely made known. But its spirit will be your guide. You will keep back nothing when the time arrives for its being said with dignity, propriety, and effect, and you will all the while be careful to say nothing that will be incon- 20 gruous or inconsistent with the views which it contains. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Memorandum Upon the Appeal of Admiral Schley. [The conduct of Rear-Admiral Schley during the Santiago campaign gave rise to so much adverse comment that in July, 1901, he asked the Navy Department to take such action as it might deem best fitted to 25 bring the matter of his conduct under discussion by his fellow-officers. Secretary Long convened a court of inquiry, which, in December, reported the following Opinion, Theodore Roosevelt. 51 Opinion. " Commodore Schley, in command of the Flying Squad- ron, should have proceeded with utmost dispatch off Cienfuegos and shoidd have maintained a close blockade of that port. He should have endeavored on May 23, at Cienfuegos, to obtain 5 information regarding the Spanish squadron by communicating with the insurgents at the place designated in the memorandum delivered to him at 8.15 a. m. of that date. He should have proceeded from Cienfuegos to Santiago de Cuba with all dispatch and should have disposed his vessels with a o view of intercepting the enemy in any attempt to pass the Flying Squadron. He should not have delayed the squadron for the Eagle. He should not have made the retrograde turn westward with his squadron, c He should have promptly obeyed the Navy Department's order of May 25. He should have endeavored to capture or destroy the Spanish vessels at anchor near the entrance of Santiago Harbor on May 29 and 30- o He did not do his utmost with the force under his command to capture or destroy the Colon and other vessels of the enemy which he attacked on May 31. By commencing the engagement on July 3 with the port battery and turning the Brooklyn around with port helm Commodore Schley 25 caused her to lose distance and position with the Spanish vessels, especially with the Vizcaya and Colon. The turn of the Brooklyn to starboard was made to avoid getting her into dangerous proximity to the Spanish vessels. The turn was made toward the Texas and caused that vessel to stop and to back her 30 engines to avoid possible collision. Admiral Schley did injustice to Lieut. Commander A. C. Hodgson in publishing only a portion of the correspondence which passed betw^een them. Commodore Schley's conduct in connection with the events of the 35 Santiago campaign prior to June i, 1898, was characterized by vacilla- tion, dilatoriness, and lack of enterprise. His official reports regarding the coal supply and the coaling facilities of the Flying Squadron were inaccurate and misleading. His conduct during the battle of July 3 was self-possessed, and he 40 encouraged, in his own person, his subordinate officers and men to fight courageously." To this Admiral Dewey, the president of the Court, appended his own opinion on the following matters, 52 Letters. " In the opinion of the undersigned the passage from Key West to Cienfuegos was made by the Flying Squadron with all possible dispatch, Commodore Schley having in view^ the importance of arriving off Cien- fuegos with as much coal as possible in the ships' bunkers. The blockade of Cienfuegos was effective. 5 Commodore Schley in permitting the steamer Adtda to enter the port of Cienfuegos expected to obtain information concerning the Spanish Squadron from her when she came out. The passage from Cienfuegos to a point about twenty-two miles south of Santiago was made with as much dispatch as was possible lo while keeping the squadron a unit. The blockade of Santiago w^as effective. Commodore Schley was the senior officer of our squadron off Santiago when the Spanish Squadron attempted to escape on the morning of July 3, 1898. He was in absolute command, and is entitled 15 to the credit due to such commanding officer for the glorious victory which resulted in the total destruction of the Spanish ships." Record of Court of Inquiry W,"!^^. 1829-30. 1902. The Court recommended that in view of the length of time elapsed since the events no further action should be had. Rear-Admiral Schley 20 at once filed exceptions to the findings of the Court ; and Rear-Admiral Sampson traversed the view of Admiral Dewey as to the person in com- mand during the fight. Secretary Long, after reviewing the case in the light of the exceptions, and the traversing of Admiral Sampson, approved the findings of the whole Court, and those of the majority as contrasted 25 with those of Admiral Dewey. He approved also the action of the whole Court in not expressing an opinion as to the person in command and their recommendation that no further action be taken. Rear- Admiral Schley appealed from this decision to the President, and the attorneys of Admiral Sampson addressed the President on the ques- 30 tion of the commanding officer in the battle. The following memoran- dum, or letter, was the President's settlement of the matter.] White House, February i8th, 1902. I have received the appeal of Admiral Schley and the answer thereto from the Navy Department. I have exam- 35 ined both with the utmost care, as well as the preceding appeal to the Secretary of the Navy. I have read through all the testimony taken before the Court and the statements of the counsel for Admirals Sampson and Schley ; have exam- ined all the official reports of every kind in reference to the 40 Santiago naval campaign, copies of the logbooks and signal Theodore Roosevelt. 53 books, and the testimony before the Court of Claims, and have also personally had before me the four surviving cap- tains of the five ships, aside from those of the two admirals, which were actively engaged at Santiago. 5 It appears that the Court of Inquiry was unanimous in its findings of fact and unanimous in its expressions of opinion on most of its findings of fact. No appeal is made to me from the verdict of the Court on these points where it was unanimous. I have, however, gone carefully over the evi- 10 dence on these points also. I am satisfied that on the whole the Court did substantial justice. It should have specifically condemned the failure to enforce an efficient night blockade at Santiago while Admiral Schley was in command. On the other hand, I feel that there is a reasonable doubt whether 15 he did not move his squadron with sufficient expedition from port to port. The Court is a unit in condemning Admiral Schley's action on the point where it seems to me he most gravely erred ; his " retrograde movement " when he aban- doned the blockade, and his disobedience of orders and 20 misstatement of facts in relation thereto. It should be remembered, however, that the majority of these actions which the Court censures occurred five weeks or more before the fight itself ; and it certainly seems that if Admiral Schley's actions were censurable he should not have been left as 25 second in command under Admiral Sampson. His offenses were in effect condoned when he was not called to ac- count for them. Admiral Sampson, after the fight, in an official letter to the Department alluded for the first time to Admiral Schley's " reprehensible conduct " six weeks pre- 30 viously. If Admiral Schley was guilty of reprehensible con- duct of a kind which called for such notice from Admiral Sampson, then Admiral Sampson ought not to have left him as senior officer of the blockading squadron on the 3d of July, when he ( Sampson) steamed away on his proper errand 35 of communication with General Shafter. We can therefore for our present purposes dismiss consid- 54 Letters. eration of so much of the appeal as relates to anything except the battle. As regards this, the point raised in the appeal is between Admiral Sampson and Admiral Schley, as to which was in command, and as to which was entitled to the credit, if either of them was really entitled to any unu- 5 sual and preeminent credit by any special exhibition of genius, skill, and courage. The Court could have consid- ered both of these questions, but as a matter of fact it unan- imously excluded evidence offered upon them, and through its President announced its refusal to hear Admiral Sampson's 10 side at all ; and in view of such exclusion the majority of the Court acted with entire propriety in not expressing any opin- ion on these points. The matter has, however, been raised by the President of the Court. Moreover, it is the point upon which Admiral Schley in his appeal lays most stress, 15 and which he especially asks me to consider. I have there- fore carefully investigated this matter also, and have in- formed myself upon it from the best sources of information at my command. The appeal of Admiral Schley to me is not, as to this, the 20 chief point he raises, really an appeal from the decision of the Court of Inquiry. Five-sixths of the appeal is devoted to this question of command and credit ; that is, to matter which the Court of Inquiry did not consider. It is in effect an appeal from the action of President McKinley three years 25 ago when he sent in the recommendations for promotion for the various officers connected with the Santiago squadron, basing these recommendations upon his estimate of the credit to which the officers were respectively entitled. What I have to decide, therefore, is whether or not President 30 McKinley did injustice in the matter. This necessarily in- volves a comparison of the actions of the different command- ers engaged. The exhaustive official reports of the action leave little to be brought out anew ; but as the question of Admiral Sampson's right to be considered in chief command, 35 which was determined in his favor by President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt. 55 and later by the Court of Claims, has never hitherto been officially raised, I deemed it best to secure statements, of the commanders of the five ships (other than the Brooklyn and New York, the flagships of the two admirals) which 5 were actively engaged in the fight. Admiral Philip is dead. I quote extracts from his magazine article on the fight, written immediately after it occurred ; closing with an extract from his- letter to the Secretary of the Navy of February 27, 1899 : " It was the blockade that made the battle possible. The battle was 10 a direct consequence of the blockade, and upon the method and effect- iveness of the blockade was very largely dependent the issue of the battle. . . . Under the orders of Admiral Sampson the blockade was conducted with a success exempHfied by the result. . . . When the Spanish Admiral at last made his dash to escape, we were ready — 15 ready with our men, with our guns, and with our engines. ... It was only a few minutes after we had seen the leader of the advancing squadron that it became apparent that Cervera's plan was to run his ships in column westward in an effort to escape. . . . Before he had fairly found himself outside the Morro the entire blockading 20 squadron — Indiaita, Oregon, Iowa, Brooklyn, and Texas — was pump- ing shell into him at such a rate as virtually to decide the issue of the battle in the first few moments. All our ships had closed in simultaneously. . . . Then occurred the incident which caused me for a moment more alarm than anything Cervera did that day. . . . Sud- 25 denly a whiff of breeze and a lull in the firing lifted the pall, and there bearing toward us and across our bows, turning on her port helm, with big waves curling over her bows and great clouds of black smoke pouring from her funnels, was the Brooklyn. She looked as big as half a dozen Great Easterns, and seemed so near that it took 30 our breath away. ' Back both engines hard I ' went down the tube to the astonished engineers, and in a twinkling the old ship was racing against herself. The collision which seemed imminent, even if it was not, was averted, and as the big cruiser glided past, all of us on the bridge gave a sigh of relief. Had the Brooklyn struck us then it 35 would probably have been the end of the Texas and her half thousand men. ... At ten minutes to lo (the Spanish ships had appeared at about 9.30) . . . 'CciO. Iowa, Oregon, zx\di TV^faj were pretty well bunched, holding a parallel course westward with the Spaniards. The Indi- ana was also coming up, well inside of all the others of our squad- 40 ron, but a little in the rear, owing to her far eastward position at starting. . . . About a quarter past lo the Teresa, which had been 56 Letters. in difficulties from the moment she left the shelter of the Morro, turned to seek a beaching place. She was on fire, and we knew that she was no longer a quantity to be reckoned with. Five min- utes later our special enemy, the Oquendo, also turned in shore. . . . The Viscaya kept blazing away viciously, but the pounding she got from our four ships, more particularly the Oregon, was too much for her, and in half an hour she too headed for the beach. ... I de- termined to push on with the Texas. ... It gives me pleasure to be able to write that, old ship as she is and not built for speed, the Texas held her own and even gained on the Coloit in that chase. . •. ." ♦'Admiral Sampson was Commander-in-Chief before, during, and after the action." Captain Clark's statement is as follows : " The credit for the blockade which led up to the fight is of course Admiral Sampson's. The position of the ships on the morning of the 15" fight in a semicircle head-on to the harbor, in consequence of which we were able to close in at once, was his. In closing in, that is, in mak- ing the first movements, we were obeying his instructions ; though as a matter of fact we would all have closed in any way, instructions or no instructions. When the Spanish ships came out of the harbor the nav- 20 igator of my ship saw the New York to the eastward, but I received no signal of any kind from the New York during the action, nor was she near enough to signal directly to me until after the Colon sur- rendered. " The engagement may be said to have been divided into three 25 parts : First, the fight proper, while the Spanish squadron was coming out of the harbor and until it was clear of the Diamond Shoals and definitely headed westward ; second, the running fight with the already damaged vessels as they fled westward, until the Teresa, Oquendo, and Viscaya ran ashore ; and, third, the chase of the Colon, dur- 30 ing which there was practically no fighting. During the first stage I did not see the Brooklyn or receive any signals from her. At the close of this stage the Oregon had passed the Iowa and Texas, and when we burst out of the smoke I saw the four Spanish ships going west apparently uninjured, and followed hard after, at the same time 35 observing the Brooklyn a little ahead and offshore. She was broad- side to the Spanish vessels and was receiving the weight of their fire, and was returning it. The Brooklyn and the Oregon there- after occupied substantially these positions as regards each other, being about equidistant from the Spanish ships as we successively 4° overtook them, except when the Oregon attempted to close with the Oquendo. The heaviest fighting was at the harbor mouth and while Theodore Roosevelt. • 57 the enemy was breaking through or passing our line. Not long after the running fight began the Teresa and then the Oquendo turned and went ashore, the Viscaya continuing for some distance farther before she also was beached. Throughout this running fight the 5 Brooklyn and Oregon were both hotly engaged, being ahead of any of our other ships ; and we then constituted the western and what I regard as the then fighting division of our fleet. I considered Com- modore Schley in responsible command during this running fight and chase so far as I was concerned, and acknowledged and repeated a sig- 10 nal he had flying, for close action or something of the kind. As, how- ever, the problem was perfectly simple, namely, to pursue the Spanish ships as I had been doing before I saw the Brooklyn, he did not as a matter of fact exercise any control over any movement or action of the Oregon, nor did I perform any action of any kind whatever in 15 obedience to any order from the Brooklyn, neither as to my course nor as to my speed, nor as to my gun-fire, during the fight or chase. " The Oregon always had fires under all boilers. In spite of the speed shown by the Oregon in this fight she had not been and is not classed as the fastest ship ; but during all her service, in order that no 20 scale should form in them, not one of our boilers was used for con- densing, though the resulting discomfort for all hands was an addi- tional hardship for her commanding ofiicer." The following is Admiral Evans's statement : " The credit for the blockade, for the arrangement of the ships at 25 the opening of the fight, and for the first movements forward into the fight must of course belong to Admiral Sampson, whose orders we were putting into effect. When the fight began Admiral Samp- son's ship, the New York, was in plain sight. I saw her turning to overtake us. Throughout the fight I considered myself as under -70 his command, but I received no orders from him until the Vis- caya was aground. Nor did I receive any orders whatever from the Brooklyn nor should I have heeded them if I had received them, inasmuch as I considered Admiral Sampson to be present and in command. 35 " The heavy fighting was during the time when the Spanish ves- sels were coming out of the harbor and before they had stretched fairly to the westward. When they thus stretched to the westward we all went after them without orders — of course we could do nothing else. Until the Teresa and Oquendo ran ashore the lozva 40 was close behind the Oregon and ahead of the Texas, and all of us were firing steadily at the Spanish ships. The Texas then recov- ered her speed — for she was dead in the water after having backed 58 Letters. to avoid the Brooklyn when the Brooklyn turned — and she went ahead of the Iowa. Both of us continued to fire at the Viscaya until she went ashore. Then I stopped, but the Texas followed the Brooklyri and the Oregon after the Colon. " When the battle began the New York was not much farther to 5 the eastward of me than the Brooklyn was to the westward. After the Viscaya had grounded the New York overtook me and signaled me to return to the mouth of the harbor to prevent any other Spanish ship from coming out and attacking the transports. I received no sig- nals of any kind from th.& Brooklyn. All we had to do was to close in 10 on the Spanish squadron as it came out of the harbor, in obedience to the orders of Admiral Sampson, and then, when the heaviest fighting was over and the Spanish ships were trying to escape to the west, to follow them — and of course there was no signal necessary to tell us to follow a fleeing enemy. 15 " The machinery of the Iowa was not in condition to get the best speed, though every effort had been made to make it so. Her cylinder heads had not been off for more than six months, owing to the service she was performing. Her bottom was very foul, as she had not been docked for a period of seventeen months. The Indiana was un- avoidably in even worse shape. " The New York had left the blockading line flying the signal ' Dis- regard the movements of the Commander-in-Chief,' a signal frequently made, and well understood by the entire fleet. It did not transfer the command. No signal was made for the second in command to assume 25 command of the fleet, which was usually done by the Commander-in- Chief before reaching the limit of signal distance when he proposed for any reason temporarily to relinquish his command to the next ranking J officer." 1 The following is Admiral Taylor's statement : 30 "At the beginning of the fight the New York was about as far to the eastward of me as the Brooklyn was to the westward. The only signal I received from the New York was at the very close of the fight, when she signaled to me to return and guard the mouth of the harbor so that nothing should come out to attack our transports. I 35 received no signal whatever from the Brooklyn, and should not have heeded any if one had been made, as I considered Admiral Sampson present and in command. From her position the Indiaita took full part in the actual fight as the Spanish ships came out of the harbor. When they ran to the westward the Indiana fell behind, but con- 40 tinned firing at them and at the torpedo boats until all but the Colon were sunk or beached. I saw the Brooklyn turn and run out sea- Theodore Roosevelt. 59 ward, seemingly over a mile, about the time the rear one of the Spanish ships turned to the west ; if instead of making this loop the Brooklyn had stood straight in towards the Spaniards, as the other American ships did, it seemed to me that the fight would have been settled then, 5 without need of the long chase." The following is Commander Wainwright's statement : " At the outset of the fight the New York was not much farther away from me in one direction than the Brooklyn was in the other atid was in plain sight. A signal from Admiral Taylor in connection 10 with my moving forward to attack the torpedo boats was the only signal I received. I made one to the New York just before the last torpedo boat sank. The New York at that time was coming up under the fire of the batteries, and herself fired a couple of shots at the torpedo boat. Of course Admiral Sampson was present and in command. I 15 received no signals from the Brooklyn, and would not have noticed her at all had it not been for the fact that when the other vessels closed in she made what has been since called ' the loop,' so that my attention was attracted by not seeing the Texas because she stopped, and by not seeing the Brooklyn because she went to seaward, away from the 20 Spanish vessels. In other words, the left or westward part of our line was refused, and this attracted my attention, because it seemed to me from where I was that this permitted the Spanish vessels to try to escape to westward." The survey of the damages of the four Spanish war ves- 25 sels shows that in addition to several score hits by the 6- pounder and i -pounder guns of the American fleet, they were struck forty-three times by the larger guns of four inches calibre and over. The Colon^ which came out inside the others and did comparatively little fighting, received but three 30 of these hits. The other three ships, which bore the brunt of the action, received forty among them. Of these forty, eleven, according to the report of the board which examined into them, were by 4-inch guns, ten by 5-inch guns, four by either 4 or 5 inch (the board could not determine which), while 35 one was by either a 5 or 6 inch, twelve were by 8-inch, and two by 1 2-inch guns. All of our big ships except the Texas had 8-inch guns. Only the Texas Siud Iowa had 12-inch guns. The Oregon and Indiana had 13-inch guns; and they and 6o Letters. the Texas had 6-inch guns. The only 4-inch guns were on the Iowa\ the only 5-inch guns on the Brookly?i. Therefore on the three Spanish ships which did the bulk of the fighting, out of the forty large-calibre shots that struck them eleven certainly came from the Iowa, ten certainly 5 came from the Brooklyn, four from either the Iowa or the Brooklyn, and two from either the Iowa or the Texas, Of the three which struck the Colon two were 5-inch and must have come from the Brooklyn-, one was either a 5-inch or a 6-inch. It must be remembered that the 10 4 and 5 inch guns were the only quick firers above 6-pound- ers in our fleet, and that they were not only much more rapidly but much more surely handled than were the larger and slower-firing guns. The damage and loss of the Ameri- can vessels were trivial. The only loss suffered was aboard 15 the Brooklyn, where one man was killed and one wounded. In damage, the cost of the repairs shows that the Iowa suffered most and the Oregon least. The American ships engaged possessed a more than twofold material su- periority over the Spanish ships, and the difference in the 20 handling of their guns and their engines was even greater. We have just cause to be proud of the vigilance and instant readiness our ships displayed, and the workmanlike efficiency with which they were handled. The most striking act was that of the Gloucester, a converted yacht, which her com- 25 mander, Wainwright, pushed into the fight through a hail of projectiles, any one of which would have sunk her, in order that he might do his part in destroying the two torpedo boats, each possessing far more than his own offensive power. 30 From the statements of the captains above, from the official reports, and from the testimony before the Court of Inquiry, the fight can be plotted with absolute certainty in its impor- tant outlines, though there is conflict as to minor points. When the four Spanish cruisers came out of the harbor the 35 New York had left her position in the blockading line forty Theodore Roosevelt. 6i or forty-five minutes before. She had hoisted the signal " Disregard the movements of the Commander-in-Chief," but had not hoisted the signal to the second in command to take charge, which, as appears by the signal book, was sometimes 5 but not always used when the command was transferred. As soon as the engagement began the New York turned and steamed back, hoisting a signal to close in, which, how- ever, none of the squadron saw. She was in plain sight, and not very much farther from the easternmost blockading lo ships than the latter were from the Brooklyft, which was the westernmost of the line. As soon as the Spanish ships ap- peared the five big American blockaders started toward them in accordance with the standing orders of Admiral Sampson. After this first move each acted purely on his own initiative. 15 For some minutes the Spanish and American vessels steadily approached one another, and the fighting was at its hottest. Then the already damaged Spanish ships turned to the west- ward, while at the same time the westernmost American vessel, the Brookly?i, which was nearest the Spanish line, 20 turned to the eastward, making a loop or three-quarter circle, at the end of which she again headed westward, farther off from and farther behind the Spanish vessels than before the loop had begun, but still ahead of any of the American vessels, although farther outside. The Texas, the next 25 ship to the Brooklyn, either was or conceived herself to be put in such jeopardy by the Brooklyn's turn toward her that she backed her engines, coming almost or quite to a standstill ; so that both the Oregon and the Iowa, which were originally to the eastward of her, passed her, and 30 it was some time after she again started before she regained her former position relatively to the Spanish vessels. The Spanish vessels had straightened out in column for the west, the Colon going inside of the others and gradually forging ahead of them, without suffering much damage. The two 35 torpedo boats, which had followed them out of the harbor, were now destroyed by the fire of the rearmost of the 62 Letters. American big vessels and of the Gloucester, which headed straight in for them, paying no more heed to their quick-fire guns than to the heavy artillery of the forts, to which she was also exposed. In the running fight which followed, until the Teresa, 5 Ogue?tdo, and Viscaya were destroyed, the Indiaiia grad- ually dropped behind, although she continued to fire until the last of the three vessels went ashore. The Brooklyn was ahead of any of the other American vessels on a course outside theirs ; she was nearly broadside on to the 10 Spaniards. The Oregon, Iowa, and Texas were all close to- gether and actively engaged throughout this running fight. The Brooklyn and Oregon, followed at some distance by the Texas, then continued in chase of the Colon which went nearly thirty miles farther before she also went ashore. Dur- 15 ing this chase of the Colon there was practically no fighting. These are the facts as set forth above in the statements of the captains, and elsewhere in their official reports and testi- mony. They leave no room for doubt on any important point. 20 The question of command is in this case nominal and technical. Admiral Sampson's ship, the New York, was seen at the outset of the fight from all the other ships except the Brooklyn. Four of these five ship captains have testi- fied that they regarded him as present and in command. 25 He signaled " Close in " to the fleet as soon as the first Spanish ship appeared, but his signal was not seen by any American vessel. He was actually under fire from the forts, and himself fired a couple of shots, at the close of the action with the torpedo boats, in addition to signalling the 30 Indiana just at the close of the action. But during the action not a single order from him was received by any of the ships that were actively engaged. Admiral Schley at the outset of the action hoisted the two signals of " Clear ship " and " Close in," which was simply 35 carrying out the standing orders of Admiral Sampson as to Theodore Roosevelt. 63 what should be done if the enemy's ships attempted to break out of the harbor. Until after the close of the first portion of the fight at the mouth of the harbor, and until after he had made his loop and the Spanish ships were fleeing to the 5 westsvard, not another American ship noticed a signal from him. When the western pursuit had begun the Oregoit^ and the Oregon only, noticed and repeated one of his signals of command. The captain of the Oregon then regarded him as in command, but did not in any shape or 10 way execute any movement or any action of any kind what- soever in accordance with any order from him. In short, the question as to which of the two men, Admiral Sampson or Admiral Schley, was at the time in command, is of merely nominal character. Technically Sampson com- 15 manded the fleet, and Schley, as usual, the western division. The actual fact, the important fact, is that after the battle was joined not a helm was shifted, not a gun was fired, not a pound of steam was put on in the engine-room aboard any ship actively engaged, in obedience to the order of either 20 Sampson or Schley, save on their own two vessels. It was a captain's fight. Therefore the credit to which each of the two is entitled rests on matters apart from the claim of nominal command over the squadron ; for so far as the actual fight was con- 25 cerned neither one nor the other in fact exercised any com- mand. Sampson was hardly more than technically in the fight. His real claim for credit rests upon his work as Com- mander-in-Chief ; upon the excellence of the blockade ; upon the preparedness of the squadron ; upon the arrangement of 30 the ships head-on in a semicircle around the harbor ; and the standing orders in accordance with which they instantly moved to the attack of the Spaniards when the latter ap- peared. For all these things the credit is his. Admiral Schley is rightly entitled — as is Captain Cook — 35 to the credit of what the Brooklyn did in the fight. On the whole she did well; but I agree with the unanimous 64 Letters. finding of the three admirals who composed the Court of Inquiry as to the " loop." It seriously marred the Brook- lyn's otherwise excellent record, being in fact the one grave mistake made by any American ship that day. Had the Brooklyn turned to the westward, that is, in the same 5 direction that the Spanish ships were going, instead of in the contrary direction, she would undoubtedly have been in more "dangerous proximity" to them. But it would have been more dangerous for them as well as for her ! This kind of danger must not be too nicely weighed by those 10 whose trade it is to dare greatly for the honor of the flag. Moreover, the danger was certainly not as great as that which, in the selfsame moment, menaced Wainwright's fragile craft as he drove forward against the foe. It was not in my judgment as great as the danger to which the 15 Texas was exposed by the turn as actually made. It certainly caused both the Brooklyn and the Texas mate- rially vo lose position compared to the fleeing Spanish ves- sels. But after the loop had once been taken Admiral Schley handled the Brooklyn manfully and well. She and 20 the Oregon were thenceforth the headmost of the American vessels — though the Iowa certainly, and seemingly the Texas also, did as much in hammering to a standstill the Viscaya, Oquendo, and Teresa ; while the Indiana did all her eastward position and crippled machinery permitted. In the 25 chase of the Colon the Brooklyn and Oregon share the credit between them. Under such circumstances it seems to me that the recom- mendations of President McKinley were eminently proper, and that so far as Admirals Sampson and Schley were con- 30 cerned it would have been unjust for him to have made other recommendations. Personally I feel that in view of Captain Clark's long voyage in the Oregon and the condition in which he brought her to the scene of service, as well as the way in which he actually managed her before and during the 35 fight, it would have been well to have given him the same Theodore Roosevelt. 65 advancement that was given Wainwright. But waiving this, it is evident that Wainwright was entitled to receive more than any of the other commanders ; and that it was just to Admiral Sampson that he should receive a greater advance 5 in numbers than Admiral Schley — there was nothing done in the battle that warranted any unusual reward for either. In short, as regards Admirals Sampson and Schley, I find that President McKinley did substantial justice, and that there would be no warrant for reversing his action. 10 Both Admiral Sampson and Admiral Schley are now on the retired list. In concluding their report the members of the Court of Inquiry, Admirals Dewey, Benham, and Ram- say, unite in stating that they recommend that no further action be had in the matter. With this recommendation I 15 most heartily concur. There is no excuse whatever from either side for any further agitation of this unhappy contro- versy. To keep it alive would merely do damage to the Navy and to the country. EDITORIALS. Nos. la and lb illustrate the brief impersonal summary; No. II, brief comment ; Nos. Ill and IV, the important part which satire and irony may play in editorial writing. Nos. V and VI endeavor, mainly, to make clear the significance of current conditions. Nos. VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, aim to mould and lead public opinion: the first is the parti- san editorial addressed to a prejudiced audience ; the second treats by analysis and rebuttal a topic interesting the readers of the paper; the third summarizes argumentatively a discussion printed in another column; the fourth and fifth influence by a shrewd selection of ideas and eloquent persuasion. Nos. XII and XIII illustrate the biographical editorial ; and Nos. XIV and XV, the editorial on literary or general topics. The first two show that one kind of editorial is but the eulogy in brief ; the other two that the editorial on a literary subject is but another name for the essay. la. EDITORIALS. The Spectator, Sept. j, igo^. Mr. AUeyne Ireland publishes in the Ti?nes of Thursday an account of what has been accomplished by the Brooke family in their sovereignty of Sarawak. It is perhaps a little too purely appreciative ; but the facts are sufficiently remark- 5 able. The two successive Rajahs, Sir James and Sir Charles, have in fifty years terminated the chronic feud between the Malays and the Dyaks ; have established a Supreme Council of Europeans and natives which attracts general confidencfe ; have founded a capital, Kuching, as orderly and pleasant as lo Singapore; have created a regular European Civil Service; and have maintained peace practically unbroken for half a century. Sarawak is in fact one of the best governed of tropical dependencies. The fact, interesting in itself, as prov- ing that Englishmen can exercise absolute power without 15 becoming tyrants, is especially instructive because in Sarawak Sir Charles Brooke is trying the great experiment of building slowly on a basis of native ideas, employing natives freely — they have a majority on the Supreme Council — and carry- ing out the rooted Asiatic idea that every man with a griev- 20 ance has a right of direct appeal to the sovereign. Sir Charles is, of course, growing into years ; but his son, the heir-apparent, is being thoroughly trained as a local Civil servant. lb. The Nation, Sept. 10, 1903. Latest advices from our " Commission of Exchange " are to 25 the effect that the members will return home next week and 69 70 Editorials. make a report. As to their main purpose, which was to bring about a par of exchange between gold and silver-using countries at the ratio of 32 to i, it has notoriously failed. Failure was freely predicted before they sailed. Then, rumor has it, they directed their efforts toward means for coercing 5 or inducing China to adopt a stable national coinage system. This ought not to have been difficult, seeing that China was one of the Powers that prompted us to appoint this very Com- mission. By way of helping China to adopt a stable coinage system it is said that our Commissioners (but not their Mexi- 10 can colleagues) labored for the relief of China from " the in- demnity pressure." We can hardly credit such a report, since that would be an excursion into the field of diplomacy. However that may be, it is evident that no progress was made toward reducing the indemnity. It seems that some pious 15 but divergent opinions were collected as to what China ought to do with her coinage system. England, France, and Russia think that China ought to have a national currency in place of the existing hodge-podge, but that it should be on the sil- ver basis. Russia and France think that the coinage should 20 be on Government account, while England agrees with Mr. Bryan that the coinage should be free ; that is, that the mint should receive all the silver brought to it by private persons, and coin it for them. Our Commissioners urged that it (the Chinese silver coinage) be placed upon the gold basis at the 25 ratio of 32 to I. It is said that Germany, Belgium and Hol- land agreed " in theory " with our Commissioners. Finally, a common understanding was reached that China's popular coinage should be silver (it is now copper), and that it should be raised to the gold parity as soon as practicable. This is 30 a conclusion that is not Hkely to be disputed by anybody except the Chinese. How they will look at it remains to be seen. Editorials. II. The Nation, Sept. lo, 1903. President Roosevelt was both paradoxical and happily- inspired when he chose for the subject of his Labor Day address at Syracuse the community of interest between all Americans. Before the sturdy farmers of Central New York 5 it was easy to dwell upon that intimate bond which from great capitalist to day-laborer links inextricably the fortunes of all citizens of our free state ; that doctrine was familiar to his hearers. But the address was, none the less, a courageous as well as dignified utterance ; it was really delivered to the 10 labor unions, and it took issue manfully with pretty much all the beliefs which they and their holiday stand for. The Pres- ident's counsel to those who preach the war of classes might have been more emphatic ; it is to any careful reader of his speech remarkably clear. Briefly, he upheld the old Ameri- 15 can doctrine of individualism. The Government declines to deal with "butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers" as such ; it recognizes only citizens. The whole speech was an impassioned plea against that spirit of caste which confines the individual's allegiance to the imagined interests of a class, 20 while subordinating to the artificial average prescribed for the class all his higher ambitions as an individual. Said Mr. Roosevelt, pursuing this theme: "We can keep our Govern- ment on a sane and healthy basis, we can make and keep our social system what it should be, only on condition of judging 25 each man, not as a member of a class, but on his worth as a man. " (This apothegm deserves to be repeated whenever generalizations about racial incapacity are produced to jus- tify withholding from individuals the rewards of proved ca- pacity.) 72 Editorials, III. CHARLES T. CONGDON. Train's Troubles. N. Y. Tribune, Oct. 2, 1862. [" In the protracted, arduous struggle which resulted in the over- throw and extinction of American Slavery, many were honorably conspic- uous : some by eloquence ; more by diligence ; others by fearless, absorbing, single-eyed devotion to the great end; but he who most skilfully, effectively, persistently wielded the trenchant blade of Satire 5 was the writer of the following essays [Charles T. Congdon]. Lowell's ' Hosea Bigelow ' and ' Birdofredom Sawin,' were admirable in their way, and did good service to the anti-Slavery cause ; but the essays herewith presented, appearing at intervals throughout the later acts of the great drama, and holding up to scorn and ridicule the current phases 10 of pro-Slavery unreason and absurdity, being widely circulated and eagerly read, exerted a vast, resistless influence on the side of Freedom and Humanity. . . . Never compromising a principle nor truckling to a prej- udice, he turned the laugh on the jesters and set the public to mocking the mockers. ..." Introduction, XXI-XXII, by Horace Greeley, 15 of Tribune Essays, C. T. Congdon, 1869.] One of the most painful delusions of the day is that of Mr. George Francis Train, who imagines that the restora- tion of the American Union depends upon his eloquence. He isn't the first man who has mistaken volubility for argu- 20 ment. A mountebank may prattle in a fair from morn till dewy eve, but it is only to fools that he sells his corn-plasters and cough-drops. He may no doubt be overheard by many wise men, but that does not make his medicines infallible as he would have you believe; nor does. the fact that Mr. Train 25 writes for the newspapers prove that he is a statesman for men who are forever writing to the newspapers are always in danger of bringing up in a mad-house. If Mr. Train could only for a moment comprehend how infinitely silly his productions appear to sensible men, he would we think be 30 mortified into something like reason, and would write no Charles T. Congdon. 73 more letters like this absurd one now before us, which is ad- dressed to Charles Sumner and others, and which begins fiercely : — " Conspirators ! " As a general rule we suspect that a man who writes confirmed slipslop, and is never easy un- 5 less he is gyrating absurdly through all the gymnastics of rhetoric is hardly a safe person to call to the rescue of an empire. It may be prudently assumed that a Senator of the United States is in no need of Mr. George Francis Train's instruction, and is quite above his reprehension — and for 10 that matter, of his comprehension also. Mr. Train's only retort must be : " Well, neither does the Honorable Senator comprehend me!" — and for Mr. Train, the reply would be uncommonly just and sensible. Mr. Train charges the gentleman to whom he addresses 15 this lurid letter with. " a damnable conspiracy against three races of men " — against the Irish, "by placing an inferior race alongside of them in the cornfield," and against the Ne- groes who will all be murdered by their masters, according to Mr. G. F. T., unless the Abolitionists cease their provoca- 20 tions. But one of Mr. Train's vaticinations fortunately knocks the other on the head. If the Negroes are all to be murdered by their desperate masters, may not the fastidious George spare himself all painful apprehensions of anybody being compelled to work alongside the Black in any corn- 25 field or other field in this hemisphere ? Massacred Negroes don't dig, to the best of our knowledge, Mr. Train ! There is a race of men — it is that to which Mr. Train be- longs — who make a living, not by hoeing and digging, but by gabbling about the infinite superiority of being white — 30 by denouncing those who cannot see the exquisite equity of Human Servitude — by lecturing on Politics, as other men lecture on Mesmerism and Table-Tipping — who convert their country's agony into a raree-show and go about enter- taining people with the public misfortunes — who achieve 35 notoriety by rehashing stale platitudes and rejuvenating venerable libels — who were unknown yesterday and will be 74 Editorials. forgotten to-morrow — and to this race Negro Emancipation will prove fatal, for it will ruin their business, which is that of frightening honest folk and manufacturing bugbears. Mr. George Francis Train must not think that we mean to be disrespectful. On the contrary, when we put him in this race, we are paying him the greatest compliment of all he ever received in his life, if we except those which he has paid to himself. We are ranking him with Doctors of Di- vinity and Members of Congress and Ethnologists and Poli- ticians of the most venerable variety, who, when Emancipa- tion has finished them, will hail him as a brother in misfortune and will go hand in hand with him to oblivion ! It may be a satisfaction to the Cabinet to know that Mr. Train, in this very letter, announces his generous intention of standing by it to the end. He professes the most un- bounded affection for Mr. Seward; but if that gentleman be as shrewd as he has the reputation of being, he will hasten to beseech Mr. Train to write him no more letters. It isn't every Administration that can stand Mr. Train's admiration. And so much for George Francis ! IV. W. C. BRYANT. Friar Tuck Legislation. Evening Post, N. Y., Apr. 26, 1844. •« A famous thief was Robin Hood; But Scotland had a thief as good : It was — it was the great Rob Roy." Old Ballad. A speaker, Mr. Thomas Gisborne, at one of the recent 25 meetings of the Anti-Corn League, made a happy allusion to what he called Friar Tuck Legislation. He had in his mind W. C. Bryant. 75 the story which is told in some of the old chronicles of Robin Hood and his merry foresters when they were once assem- bled in congress to deliberate upon the proper distribution of a pretty large amount of spoils. These legislators, per- 5 suaded by the soft and honied words of Friar Tuck, left him to frame a law for the proper adjustment of their claims. When the law was reported by the able committee which had it in charge, it became instantly evident that Friar Tuck him- self w^ould get much the largest share. Public opinion, con- 10 tinues the history, thereupon went against the holy man and a league was formed to resist the iniquity of his decision. Now what did the good friar in this emergency ? Why he met the people boldly and openly, and said : " For whose benefit are laws made I should like to know ? " And 15 then immediately answering his own question, lest some silly objector might give it another turn, he went on : " First for the benefit of those who make them and afterward as it may happen." Nor did the disinterested judge stop there, but he proceeded : " Am I not the law-maker, and shall I not profit 20 by my own law ? " The story runs we believe, that the good man next quietly pocketed his share of the booty, and left his unreasonable companions to make the best of what remained. Friar Tuck represents a class ; he is a type and pattern of a large circle of imitators ; his peculiar method of legislation 25 is not obsolete. There are many persons at this day whose morality seems to be framed according to the same standard. Members of the United States Congress, for instance, who pass tariff laws to put money into their own pockets, are the legitimate descendants of Friar Tuck. 30 It is quite remarkable how many are the points of resem- blance between this legislation of Sherwood Forest and that of the manufacturers at Washington. In the first place, the plunder to be distributed is raised from the people ; in either case without their being formally consulted ; in the one by 35 high duties, in the other by the strong arm. Then the per- sons who take upon themselves to decide how this plunder is 76 Editorials. to be divided, like Friar Tuck, have a deep interest in the result, and generally manage to appropriate to themselves the largest share. They are the owners of manufacturing capital, and they continue to make this capital return an enormous interest. 5 " For what benefit " they gravely ask " are laws made ? " and then answer " First for the benefit of those who make them and afterward as it may happen." Let us impose high duties ; let us fill our pockets ; let us who make the laws take all that we can get — and as to the people, the mass 10 of laborers and consumers, why, that's as it may happen. This is virtually the reasoning of one sort of our just and disinterested legislators. But there is one point in which the resemblance does not hold. Friar Tuck was a bold, straightforward, open-mouthed 1 5 statesman, willing to proclaim his principles, and justify the consequences to which they led. His followers in Congress act upon precisely the same principles, but assign another reason. He avowed that he wished to cram his pocket; they hold up some mock pretence of public good. " Shall I 20 not benefit by my own law ? " he said, and gathered up his gains ; but they gather the gain and leave the reason unsaid, or rather hypocritically resort to some more palatable reason. The advantage of consistency is on the side of Robin Hood's priests. There is a frankness in his philos- 25 ophy which throws the sneaking duplicity of the legislators of the cotton mills quite into the shade. V. Herreshoff^s Achievement. The Nat? 071, Sept. 10, 1903. That this year's races for the America's Cup, now ended, have proved a grievous disappointment to all interested in HerreshofF's Achievement. jj the sport, has been patent for some time. The failure of the third Shamrock has been so great as to make it evident that somebody has blundered, and blundered egregiously. Whether this is due to a miscalculation of the English yacht's 5 sailing length and a consequent failure to get her down to her racing lines, or to a different cause, will probably not be known for some time — not until after the acuteness of the disappointment has somewhat passed away. Only once — in the second contest — did Shajurock come up to the just lo expectation of those who saw and studied her powerful lines and beautiful hull. Then, even with her smaller sail-spread, she pressed Reliance hotly — a performance so at variance with the rest of her exhibitions as not to be wholly explained by the weather conditions. For the rest, it must be believed 15 that Columbia could have won a majority of five contests with her, and that Shamrock II could likewise have led her over the course. Mortifying as this showing is. Sir Thomas Lipton has every reason to be proud of his own bearing and of the sportsman-like manner in which the races were sailed 20 to the bitter end. He has allowed nothing to mar the good feeling of the contest, and has scrupulously refrained from assigning any reasons for his discomfiture, except that he had the poorer boat. Nothing better can be said of him than that he has heightened the excellent impression made 25 upon the American public in the two previous series of races. But this unexpectedly poor showing of Shamrock takes no lustre from the laurels fairly earned by Mr. Nathaniel G. Herreshoff. For ten years past he has devoted himself to 30 the problem of turning out one 90-footer after another which should each be faster than the last. Barring the uncertainty in regard to Constiticf ion's actual powers, he has succeeded so well as to win from Sir Thomas Lipton and the greater part of the English press an extraordinary tribute — the declara- 35 tion that it is useless to compete with him. Limited to a given water-line length, he has year after year managed to 78 Editorials. produce vessels of greater and greater sail-spread and with more and more power in their hulls. It does not detract from the sum of his achievements that, during this decade of triumph, he has profited by the experiments of another. It is altogether questionable whether Reliance would have pos- 5 sessed all her speedy qualities had there been no Independ- ence. But the latter's designer, Mr. B. B. Crowninshield, is willing to admit that, while marvellously fast under certain conditions, she was, all in all, not a success as a racer. Mr. HerreshofiE had the skill to profit by Mr. Crowninshield's in- 10 novations and to avoid his mistakes. He has never sought to deny Mr. Crowninshield's leadership in the direction of the exaggerated above-water hull — of the scow-like body with an immense fin — but he himself has given to the type what is probably its ultimate power and refinement. 15 As far as this class of boat is concerned, Reliance must be considered the climax. In the face of Mr. Herreshoff 's gen- ius it would certainly be hazardous to declare off-hand that he could not successfully carry the racing machine one step further. Fortunately, the new measurement rules of the 20 New York Yacht Club have sounded the death-knell of the type. Should there be another challenge for the Cup from any quarter, Mr. Herreshoff must give his attention to a new problem. That all forms of yachting will profit by this change we firmly believe. For two decades we have been 25 witnessing a scientific digression — a tour de force — by which the cruising yachtsman and the merchant ship-owner have profited but little and have been injured a good deal, so far as they have attempted to imitate the Herreshoff ma- chines. When Mr. Crowninshield built the only seven- 30 master afloat, he returned at once to the clipper bow and the moderate stern overhang — a fact which confutes those who profess to see enormous gains to naval architecture in gen- eral from the cup contests. And hundreds of small, shallow- bodied, fin-keeled and over-sparred imitations of the great 35 machines force their owners into harbors when the breezes The Isthmian Canal. 79 freshen, if they do not actually endanger the lives of their crews. From all this there should be a reversion to the sensible and seaworthy cruising type. Future Cup challengers and 5 defenders will, we hope, be stanch enough to cross the ocean under their normal canvas, as did A77ierica and many of her successors. We trust, too, that Thursday's race marks the end of the great singlestickers, with their costly bronze hulls and fragile rigging. Smaller sloops or racing schooners af- 10 ford as much sport and give the designers as much scope as the vessels that now cost half a million dollars or more to build, fit out, and race during a five months' season. In- deed, the enormous sums spent on this year's racers have caused much uneasiness and much justifiable criticism. 15 Certainly, no one can contend that the benefits resulting to yacht racing or to naval designing are sufficient to counter- . balance such unduly extravagant expenditure. If the new rules and the outcome of this year's contest together mark the end of yacht racing by aid of millionaires' syndicates, 20 the futile efforts of Shamrock III will mark a turning-point of great importance in yachting history. VI. The Isthmian Canal. The Independent., Oct. i, 1903. Colombia has rejected the canal treaty signed by her representative at Washington, and her Congress is languidly considering a bill authorizing President Marroquin to nego- 25 tiate a new treaty upon conditions which the United States will never accept. This is the situation at Bogota, as dis- closed by the latest dispatches from that remote capital. At the time when these words are written the news from Bogota 8o Editorials. shows that at 5 p.m. on the 2 2d, the last day for a ratifica- tion of the Hay-Herran treaty, no action upon the pending bill had been taken. The treaty was dead. If no request for an extension of time was made in the remaining hours of that day, what ought President Roosevelt to do ? He is not c required by the Spooner Act to turn immediately from Panama to Nicaragua and to make a treaty for a canal on the Nicaragua route. This will not be the alternative until he shall have failed to obtain from Colombia the needed rights and territorial control within " a reasonable time " and 10 upon " reasonable terms." He is empowered to decide that more time should be used in striving to reach a satisfactory agreement with Colombia. We hope that he will so decide, and that he will spare no effort to convince the Colombian Government that its own interests as well as those of the 15 entire civilized world require it to accept the liberal terms of the treaty negotiated and ratified at Washington. We fear, however, that this cannot be accomplished unless some plan shall be devised for intimate and friendly confer- ences of the two contracting Powers. So far as we can 20 learn, the causes of the rejection of the treaty at Bogota were as follows : the opposition of a political party or faction to the President now in office, who accepted the agreement; the resentment of certain sensitive and impulsive Spanish- l| American legislators, because it seemed to them that our 25 State Department's friendly warning against any substantial amendment of the treaty was an attempt to restrain their liberty of action ; a conviction that our Government would consent to pay $10,000,000 more, and that $10,000,000 could be extorted from the French company ; a failure of 30 the Colombian politicians to agree among themselves as to a division of the spoils ; Colombian ignorance of our ways and purposes, and the lack of means of easy and frequent com- munication between the two capitals. We have seen no indication that legislators at Bogota were corrupted by 35 persons or corporations desiring to prevent the construction The Isthmian Canal. 8i of a canal. There is no more evidence of such interference than there is in support of Mr. Henry Watterson's remark- able assertion that our Senate was induced to prefer the Panama route by a bribe of half the sum to be paid to the 5 French company — " $20,000,000 for the thieves in France and $20,000,000 for the thieves in America," — or of a suggestion that any Washington legislator's labors in behalf of the Nicaragua route have been stimulated by a desire to share in the sum that might be realized hereafter upon the 10 claims of the Maritime Canal Company. What has taken place at Bogota can be fully explained, we think, by a knowledge of the character and ways of the Spanish- American politician, and by the condition of a country that has been racked for four years by bloody revolution, and 15 whose currency is worth less than one cent on the dollar. The Isthmian canal ought to be made on the Panama route. We desire to construct it there and are ready to begin the work. It is especially for the interest of Colombia that the canal should be in that place. We shall not take 20 possession of the Isthmus by force, nor shall we pretend that the old treaty of 1846 authorizes us to make there a waterway for ships. We shall not incite the people of Panama to revolt. If, however, those people should establish and maintain their independence without any assistance 25 from us, and should offer to us the privileges which Colombia has withheld, we might be able to accept them honorably. The merits of the Panama route, when it is compared with the route in Nicaragua, are so manifest, in our opinion, that all honorable methods should be used in an attempt to take 30 advantage of them. What is needed now is an opportunity for friendly con- sultation and argument. In this matter, Colombia and the United States have seemed to be separated by almost as much space as yawns between two planets. There has been 35 no contact except by means of the two Ministers, and these have not been very efficient agents of communication. When 82 Editorials. there was danger in Havana of a serious misunderstanding of the aims and purposes of the United States, we suggested that the entire Cuban Congress, or a Commission represent- ing it, be brought to Washington for a friendly conference. A Commission was sent from Havana, and much good was 5 accomplished by its visit. Our Government ought to know the views and the sentiment of Colombia with respect to this canal question ; the leaders of Colombian opinion should have a better knowledge of our views and purposes than they now possess. This mutual enlightenment, so much to 10 be desired at this time, when perhaps the lack of it is the only thing that prevents an agreement as to the canal, might be gained by a conference or by the efforts of a joint Com- mission, sitting in some neutral city, or for a time at one capital and then at the other. The President and Congress 15 would find it profitable to consider such a plan for promoting international friendship, dispelling harmful illusions and prej- udices, and smoothing the way for that great undertaking, the benefits of which Colombia is now inclined to reject. The canal is to be an agency for the promotion of the peace 20 and well-being of mankind ; the construction of it should be the result of peaceful and honorable agreement, and not of intrigue, revolution or war. VII. Revelations in South Africa. The Speaker, Sept. 5, 1903. It is easy after the publication of the minutes of the evi- dence taken before the Commission on the War to under- 25 stand why that evidence was taken in private. If this amazing series of revelations had been made public day by day the storm of indignation would have been fatal to the Government. As a story of stupidity, incapacity, and frivo- Revelations in South Africa. 83 lous light-heartedness it will match the wildest histories of the madness which seizes men intent on conquest. The disease consists of seeing only what the victim wants to see. The men who made the Boer war and the men who made 5 the American war did not lack advisers who warned them of the truth, but in both cases they treated such advisers as another good Imperialist treated Michaiah, the son of Imlah. It would be easy to fill volumes with the minor follies of the war, the use of swords that would not cut, the 10 choice of unmounted men, the neglect of maps, and all the other thousand and one incidents that show how little a military career attracts of the intelligence of the country, and how soon a little clamour and excitement disperses what in^ telligence there is in the governing classes. Lord Lans- 15 downe, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Balfour are all intelligent men, but all these intelligent men, when put together, con- stitute a body so unintelligent that its proceedings read like a comic opera. Nobody consults anybody else. The Com- mander-in-Chief learns the m.ost important decisions by 20 accident. Arrangements are m.ade or left to make them- selves in a happy-go-lucky spirit, and all the time these great personages, who knew as little as the Times ^ which thought the first army corps would finish the war, or almost as little as the Daily Mail, which thought the first engagement 25 would settle the Boers, were posing as the sober and circum- spect leaders of the nation, absorbed in the cares and prepa- rations for its struggle. It would probably be a shock to Mr. Balfour, Avho understands by a traitor a man who loves his country well enough to make it hate him, to be told that a 30 statesman who leaves anything to chance, or commits his country to such an adventure without mastering the facts, has forfeited all claims to the name of patriot. We hope that, when Parliament meets, the Liberal Part}^ will see that the sternest judgment is passed on the criminal negligence of 35 Lord Lansdowne, and the criminal levity of Mr. Chamber- lain and Mr. Balfour, 84 Editorials. We do not propose to pursue this pitiful story of incom- petence through all its dismal chapters. It is all summed up in the one quality which was predominant in the nation three years ago, the refusal to see facts that it did not wish to see. The two chief dramatis personcB in South Africa 5 were Sir Alfred Milner and Sir William Butler. Sir Alfred Milner told the nation what it wanted to hear. Sir William Butler told it what it did not want to hear. The result was inevitable. Sir Alfred Milner became a hero, a peer, an autocrat as complete as General Bobrikoff. Sir William 10 Butler was slandered in the Daily Mail, publicly attacked by a Cabinet Minister, recalled from South Africa, and the authorities decided that, though he commanded the Western District, it would not be safe to allow him to command the troops when Queen Victoria paid her visit to Bristol. Sir 15 Alfred Milner, as Mr. Chamberlain told Sir William Butler in a despatch censuring that officer for expressing the opin- ion, as Acting High Commissioner, that the Raid party was not to be trusted, that a policy of provocation would mean war, and that war would-be a far more serious matter than 20 the Government supposed, represented the Government's own policy. Sir William Butler was accordingly ignored or censured whenever he said anything that did not suit exactly the Government's book. If his strategical recommendations had been followed, it is almost everywhere admitted that we 25 should have escaped those big disasters which befell us just as he predicted. But that strategy did not take the fancy of the Government, so they ignored his recommendations and actu- ally discussed with Sir Alfred Milner by telegram on August 3, 1899, the occupation of Laing's Nek without even com- 30 municating with the commanding officer about a movement that would have meant immediate v/ar. The Government had no ears for what Sir William Butler told them, so they decided, as General Buller shows, that "the Orange Free State was to be left out of account." Sir Wilham Butler, 35 whose evidence is so damaging that the Times has decided Revelations in South Africa. 85 it was wiser not to reproduce it, warned the Government, when he was asked to warn them by the Cape Ministry, against the insinuating stories of the Raid party, and said the war would be a very serious matter, a civil war. Lord 5 Milner thought it so light a matter that on August 31, three days after Mr. Schreiner, his Prime Minister, had strongly deprecated war, he telegraphed to Mr. Chamberlain : " The purport of all represe?itatio7is made to me is to urge prompt and decided action." 10 For Lord Milner the party of the Raid was British South Africa, and Sir William Butler was sacrificed to that party just as another soldier, Sir Ralph Abercromby, was sacri- ficed to the ascendency party in Ireland more than a century ago. And who led that party? If we turn to Colonel 15 Kekewich's evidence we learn that Mr. Rhodes — the great Englishman, as Mr. Chamberlain called him, the hero whose public crimes were commemorated at St. Paul's, and ap- plauded in half the pulpits of the country — threatened to surrender Kimberley il the British army refused to regard 20 the protection of his person and his diamonds as its first duty in the war. Sir William Butler is not the man to ex- tract any satisfaction from the calamities of his country or the overthrow of freedom, but he may at least be assured, after his patient contempt for very ignorant slander, that he 25 alone emerges from this disastrous chapter with his credit unimpaired. He dared to tell the truth. The Government, like the nation, had no eyes for the truth ; they only saw what the party of the Raid wished them to see ; they did not see the vast veldt, or the long precarious lines, or the cruel 30 warfare against women, or the relentless and passionate devotion with which simple men defend the freedom of their country. All this gigantic and irreparable blunder, we shall be told, is an old story, and it is too much to expect the nation, after 35 the strain of three years' war and after the Bacchantic ex- citement with which it celebrated at last the long-delayed 86 Editorials. destruction of freedom, to turn its thouglits from Free Trade, Passive Resistance, and all our latest distractions, to the extraordinary spectacle presented by the Commission. The nation, we have no doubt, is sick to death of the subject. But our blunders happened just because the nation would ^ not face the facts, and the facts do not disappear just because delirious excitement has been followed by fatigue. The nation wished to see four years ago what the party of the Raid wished it to see. Is it ready now to see anything more than that party wishes it to see ? If we are to judge lo from the temper in which General Botha's letter was received the other day, the old habit of self-deception has not yet been abandoned. The public wanted to believe that repa- triation had been a great success, that Lord Milner had proved himself a great administrator, and that the outlook 15 was bright and tranquil. It was a great mortification, when everyone wanted to forget South Africa and its wrongs and miseries in a peaceful optimism, to be told by a general who was no tame prisoner, but a fighter who had laid down his arms on certain explicit conditions, that South Africa was 20 very far from contented and Lord Milner's administration very far from satisfactory. General Botha has not had to wait long for his vindication. Last week we reproduced some very remarkable figures from the Rand Daily Mail, showing that more than a million had been spent in 25 administrative expenses of repatriation. The journalist who published those figures has since, we understand, been dis- missed from his editorship in consequence of representations from Lord Milner — the second time in the last few months that a newspaper editor has been dismissed in South Africa 30 for criticising the Milner regime. To anyone who looked at those figures there is nothing at all startling in the picture sent home by Miss Hobhouse, in the letters published by the Daily News and the Manchester Guardian, of the misery and starvation in Boer States. Those letters should be read by 35 everyone who realizes that we are responsible for this fam- The Proposed Liverpool University. 87 ishing and emaciated population, for they record the results of the war and the results of a bureaucratic despotism. These facts are not facts the public wishes to know, or facts it is easy to learn, for the telegraphic agencies are no more 5 trustworthy than they were during the war, and if a British journalist in Johannesburg publishes them he is very quickly disposed of. If Lord Milner wished us to know the facts he would not surround himself with the bureaucratic equip- ment of a Russian governor. One day the nation will be o awakened to the facts, not by letters, not by articles, not by officials like Sir VV^illiam Butler, who tell the disagreeable truth, but by a resounding revolution. VIII. The Proposed Liverpool University. Liverpool Mercury, July i, 1901. The action taken by the Court of Victoria University on Saturday is not a little remarkable. It had been understood 15 that neither from Owens College nor from Leeds would there be any opposition to the desire of Liverpool for a University of its own. This expectation was disappointed, and the proceedings were, though unconsciously, so arranged as to furnish an object lesson of the need of the separate University 20 which the people of this city demand. The wishes and ideals of Liverpool were simply put aside and ignored. Distinguished persons who know nothing of our peculiar circumstances and local requirements advanced their opinions of what was best for us in the matter of the higher education ; 25 and their views, which were quite in consonance with those which have so long and so disastrously prevailed in this country, carried the day. It is probable that such an occurrence is not an isolated incident, but a typical example 88 Editorials. of the treatment with which Liverpool has to be content in the councils of the Victoria Federation 5 and there could scarcely be a more striking proof of the strength of the case for freedom to work out our own intellectual salvation. The discussion certainly produced no better argument on the 5 other side. The reasons which were urged against the Liver- pool proposal were for the most part old objections that have been already heard and refuted. Mr. Bryce, from whom a letter was read, pointed out that, if Liverpool obtained a University, Manchester and Leeds would claim the same 10 dignity, and asked whether this multiplication of degree- giving bodies would not tend " to injure the value of all the degrees of the newer universities and to reduce the level of the university examinations." The Marquis of Ripon sup- plemented this contention with his own belief that "single 15 college universities spread all over the country would not be found to promote the true interests of higher education." It is surprising that Mr. Bryce, who has so extensive a knowl- edge of the German and American Universities, should league himself after this fashion with those who, in their 20 ignorance of what has been done for higher education in Germany and the United States, imagine that we are in dan- ger of creating too many Universities. Mr. Ramsay Muir, who has published an admirable pamphlet which he calls " The Plea for a Liverpool University," shows that, even if 25 we reckon London and Victoria as true Universities, we have in England only one University for every five millions of the population. In Germany, which has twenty-one Universities to our six, the proportion is one University for every two and a half millions of inhabitants. America, which is still more 30 lavishly endowed, provides a University for each half-million of people. It will be seen that we stand in no peril at present of unduly multiplying seats of learning ; and, as Principal Dale reminded the Court, the two difficulties of obtaining the necessary funds and of securing the consent of 35 Parliament will always check the feverish creation of Uni- The Proposed Liverpool University 89 versities which Mr. Bryce and others seemed to apprehend. The supposed risk of the deterioration of degrees can also be disposed of by the experience of Germany and America. In both countries the value of the influence of the Universities 5 upon their intellectual and commercial life stands higher at the present day than it does in England, and this result of their teaching is of far greater importance than the worth of their parchments as recommendations for employment. Mr. Acland based his opposition to the request of Liver- 10 pool upon the grounds that Victoria University has conferred a great benefit upon the north of England, and that its dis- solution would cause grief and disappointment to the people of the three counties concerned, and more especially to those who have won the degrees of the University. This 15 would be a powerful argument if it were possible to show that the good done could be in any measure attributed to the University as distinguished from the three constituent colleges. But such a contention cannot be proved. Apart from the Colleges, the University consists simply of Earl Spencer and 20 a clerk or two. The average citizen of Liverpool, Man- chester, or Leeds has only a vague idea of the meaning of Victoria University, and associates his notions of higher education with the University College of his own town. As for the sorrowing graduates of a deceased university, of whom 25 Mr. Acland and Earl Spencer drew a pathetic picture, we suspect that they will be very glad to exchange their degrees, as they will doubtless be allowed to do, for those of Liverpool or Manchester. On this head Mr. Ramsay Muir's remarks seem to be conclusive. " As a matter of fact, " he writes, 30 " the market value of the Victoria degree is lower than its standard deserves. Why ? Simply because Victoria means nothing to the average man. He has never heard of it, and he is suspicious of it. The training it represents may be good, bad, or indifferent ; he cannot tell. " But, wMe Vic- 35 toria is a mere abstraction with no definite local associations, " everybody in the wide world is aware that Liverpool is a go Editorials. great city, and is likely to assume that its University will be worthy of it. " If a world-university is wanted, as Professor Rucker argued, the University of Liverpool is far more likely to gain that distinction than Victoria. Mr. Acland's fear that the establishment of local universities will have an injurious 5 effect on secondary education appears to be equally without foundation. If University College is to exercise any control over secondary schools the probability is strong that it will receive more deference as an independent University than as a member of a federation, which cannot be sure of having 10 its own way. The advantages which are traced to the fede- rated University are as imaginary as the evils which are to follow its dissolution. Earl Spencer thinks that in some mysterious way the Federation has been the means of pro- moting friendly rivalry among the colleges. But competition 1 5 is hardly practicable when the institutions concerned are compelled to follow much the same curriculum and to pursue the same methods. A profitable rivalry cannot exist until the three colleges are free to go their own way. The Court was, however, sufficiently impressed by these and similar ccn- 20 siderations to decide upon an inquiry into the demand for separation which Liverpool has set up. There can be no objection to a full and careful investigation in a matter of so much moment, but we question whether it was wise to entrust the task to such a committee as was nominated, 25 Even now the German ideal of a University to which Liver- pool seeks to attain is scarcely intelligible to the average Englishman, who cannot be disabused of the notion that the essentials of University excellence are a strong board of examiners and stiff examinations. •'c f Concerning the Race Problem. 91 IX. Concerning the Race Problem. Boston Herald, Sept. 14, 1903. In Other columns this morning we print a third communi- cation from Mr. Norman Walker of New Orleans, and one by the Rev. Dr. Brawley, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Fernandina, Fla., both relating to the race problem in the 5 South. There could hardly be a more notable contrast of motive and spirit than these two communications present. One is a vehement — it would scarcely be unjust to say a malignant — assertion that the negro race is irredeemably degraded and base, — so that it is a crime to regard its mem- 10 bers as human beings having rights to be recognized and protected, intelligence to be fostered and developed, immor- tal souls to be redeemed and saved. The other is the pleading of a Christian pastor for means to aid his effort to be of use to negro boys aspiring to gain the knowledge and 15 character that will make them good citizens of the land of the free and the republic founded on principles of righteous- ness and equality. We might leave these two communications with our read- ers, allowing them to form their own conclusions as to which 20 more truly typifies the charity and justice that is taught in the New Testament, and the ideal of government that is set forth in the Declaration of Independence. We might leave them to determine for themselves which purpose deserves to be approved and aided, that which insists on remitting the 25 colored race in the United States to hopeless barbarism and oppression, or that which would, lift the race out of the bond- age of its ignorance and vices and raise it to the stature of noble manhood. We have no purpose to reply in detail to the argument of 30 Mr. Walker ; but two or three of his gratuitous imputations 92 Editorials. demand attention. There is no " Cambridge plan " to put the negro above the white man ; but in Cambridge, as in Massachusetts generally, there is a willingness to recognize ability and virtue, whatever the color of the skin of the man or woman who exhibits these qualities. Mr. Walker has a 5 habit of referring to men who have no prejudices that lead them to do injustice to colored people, men who do not hate the negro because he is a negro, and who do not fear that they will be unable to compete with him if he has a fair chance in the world, as " negro-lovers." 10 The white citizens of Massachusetts do not love a black man because he is black any more than they hate him because he is black. He has to deserve respect by his character and good behavior before he secures it ; and, in fact, it is rather harder here for a colored man than for 15 a white man, their mental and moral characters being sub- stantially equal, to obtain public confidence. We are not entirely free from the race prejudice that is so strong in the South. Therefore, when a colored person holds an office, especially one that is not political in its character, it may be 20 taken for granted that the person has superior qualifications to perform the duties of the place. Mr. Walker's insinuation that Harvard University dis- criminates in favor of colored students in awarding its honors and prizes is an ungenerous libel. He may be sure that 25 any honor that has ever been given to a Harvard student has been fairly won by merit. Every Harvard man knows it, and will resent the imputation of unfairness on the part of the faculty or the trustees. Some of these honors that have been referred to, that of class orator, for example, were not 30 conferred by the faculty, but were conferred by vote of the students themselves. What is here said of Harvard is true of Yale also, and of every northern college where colored men have been received as students. There has been no partiality. The men in control of these institutions are 35 incapable of the meanness of such conduct. But we recog- Concerning the Race Problem. 93 nize that persons who base their logic on the premise that the negro is incapable of education, and that the attempt to educate him always makes him a vagabond or a criminal, must account for the fact that one of the race obtains honors 5 in an institution like Harvard University on some other ground than the negro's merit, even if they are compelled to impute lack of integrity to a man like President Eliot. A considerable part of Mr. Walker's long letter is devoted to showing that the pagan negroes in their African home are 10 not a virtuous people. We require no citations of authori- ties to convince us of this ; we grant it. We grant, also, that during two hundred and fifty years of slavery in the United States without the motives that freedom, property, education, responsibility, liberty to enter upon and maintain 15 in integrity and security sacred family relations naturally develop, they did not greatly improve. Further, we are not ignorant that in some sections conditions are no better than Mr. Patterson has set forth. The conditions are bad, and they are properly a serious phase of the race problem. All 20 this is admitted, must be admitted by every one who dis- cusses the problem. But what is the remedy ? How is the evil to be cured ? Must the eight millions of the colored race in the Southern States be re-enslaved in order to pro- tect the white race ? This is the logical conclusion of the 25 argument which men like Tillman, Money, Vardaman and Walker make. We commend to Mr. Walker the dictum of President Alderman of Tulane University in his own city : " Ignorance is not a cure for anything." Mr. Walker cites Mr. Patterson as to the fact of immorality ; but he does not 30 cite him on the point of the remedy. We can supply what he has omitted : Apparently the only way to prevent all danger of negro domination in the South is to educate, educate, educate. I am quite well aware of the fact that this statement will be scoffed at by Southern men quite 35 generally. They take the position that the negro is so near a savage he cannot be bettered, and they honestly believe the slightest tinge of edu- 94 Editorials. cation not only destroys the usefiilness of the negro as a laborer, but injures him morally and makes him a menace to the community. Herein the South is manifestly not alive to the situation, it is deficient in its own civilization, it is half a century behind the great prosperous States of the North in its educational methods. ... It is a rare 5 thing when we can find a Southern man or woman who is earnestly engaged in benefiting the colored people from a mental standpoint. They look after his house, try to teach him to be economical, and, in a queer kind of way, supervise his morals, but they will not educate him, and it seems impossible to teach Southern men and women that the 10 education which will convert an ignorant and frequently criminal immi- grant from southeast Europe into a good citizen will, in the course of time, do the same thing for the negro. . . . Teach the negro how to use his hands intelligently, give him a chance to read a daily paper, let him have a letter now and then from his children, and the days of 1 5 assaults, of violence and of lynching will disappear. Oh, but social equality will result, and the result of social equality will be miscegenation, and the degeneration of the proud Caucasian race ! For our part, we have a better opinion of the white people of the South. All the appeals to 20 history which Mr. Walker makes are unreasonable, because the conditions here are so vastly different from the condi- tions in the West Indies or the South American States, which white adventurers and fortune seekers not distin- guished for morality invaded and subjugated. The mixture 25 of races was due not to the equality of conditions, but to the inequality. War, avarice, brutality, licentiousness, united to take advantage of unequal conditions. The educated negroes in the North and in the South are the ones who have most self-respect and most conscience. The first step our mis- 30 sionaries take in foreign fields is to educate those whom they would Christianize. But, without debating this subject further, it is sufficient to say that there will be no miscegenation in the South for which the white race will not have more than an equal share 35 of responsibility and shame. It must be a feeble virtue that is afraid it cannot be true to the race instincts so much vaunted if negroes can read, own property, vote and hold I C. T. Congdon. 95 office. We in the Northern cities which have long had a large negro population know that this alleged peril is a bug- bear of the imagination. It never has been a scandal of any account. The better reason negroes have to respect their 5 own race, the less reason they have to desire social alliance with the other. C. T. CONGDON. Twelve Little Dirty Questions. N. V. Tribune, Oct. ii, 1862. [" The election of Mr. Buchanan seemed definitely to indicate not merely the perpetuity of Human Slavery in this Republic, but the acquiescence of the people of the Free States, or of a majority of them, 10 in the extension of that unhappy institution. Its opponents, if not silenced, were decidedly defeated, and the Democratic Party, after a hundred previous audacities, continued to hold the Government with something of a feeling of invincibility. There remained, it is true, throughout the North and West, an Anti-Slavery sentiment which no 15 misfortunes could overcome ; but a considerable measure of its activity was to be found among those who abstained from political methods ; while two classes of men, the one religious, and the other poHtical, still vehemently insisted that agitation of the Slavery Question was in itself an immorality deserving rebuke, and requiring vigorous suppression. 20 When I began to write for the Tribune, there was hardly a politi- cal virtue, hardly a fundamental social truth, hardly a time-honored maxim of humanity, hardly an elementary principle of justice, which we did not have to fight for as if they had been discoveries. There was the ethnologist proving four millions of men to be monkeys. There was 25 the 'statesman' demonstrating that the Constitution was framed 'expressly to sustain Slavery. There was the clergyman showing Human Bondage to be as necessary as Original Sin. There was the simpering novelist depicting the pastoral pleasures of the plantation, and the patri- archical felicities of the Blacks. There was the lawyer pleading, in 30 certain cases, the Habeas Corpus is good for nothing. And under all there were crowds of prejudiced and unreasoning men of every social 96 Editorials. grade, from the highest to the lowest, who denounced every objector to this condition of affairs as a destructive and a radical, and who thought a flourishing trade with the South worth all the morality ever pro- pounded, from Plutarch to Dr. Paley. It would, doubtless, have been easier — I know it would often have 5 been thought in better taste — to have taken a low and despairing view of public affairs, and sadly to have predicted the second coming of chaos. But, partly perhaps from a constitutional habit, I was led to con- sider serious subjects cheerfully ; although I hardly ever made a jest upon the subject of Slavery without a feeling of self -rebuke." Tribune 10 Essays. Mr. Congdon's Prefatory Notice^ XI-XVII.'] We should very much Hke to know what in the opinion of the Rev. Dr. Hawks constitutes a large and clean question. In the Protestant Episcopal Convention last Monday, Dr. Hawks, arguing that the Church must treat its rebellious 15 children with " lenity, courtesy and affection," used the fol- lowing language : *' We must not lug in all the little dirty questions of the day which will be buried with their agita- tion." One might retort upon Dr. Hawks that the questions which have disturbed the diocese for some years past, have 20 been many of them small, and one of them, at least, exceed- ingly dirty — to say nothing of piquant scandals in the neighboring diocese of Pennsylvania. To the Protestant Episcopal Church is unquestionably due the reverence of some of us and the respect of others ; but 25 Heaven knows there is nothing in its history, nothing in its present position which justifies this sublime scorn of political affairs which Dr. Hawks professes. In England, from the days of Henry VIII to the days of Victoria, the Church has been quite as much a political as a religious body — its 30 Bishops have been courtiers, and sometimes generals — it has been a political institution in Scotland and in Ireland — the reigning monarch has been its legal head — among its clergy have figured the keenest and most unscrupulous politicians, while for the last twenty-five years, though Laud has been in 35 his coffin for more than two centuries, this Church which never meddles with little questions, has been well-nigh sun- C. T. Congdon. 97 dered upon points of architecture, of upholstery, of tailoring, of genuflexions, and of decorations ; while in America we have had petty reproductions of the same differences, with the disgusting spectacle of a Right Reverend Father in 5 God, riding, all booted and spurred, at the head of his rebel regiments. After this, to find Dr. Hawks so delicately squeamish and so doubtful about the authority of the Church in public affairs, m_ust excite commiseration both for his stomach and his understanding. 10 Shall the United States of America be deprived of an im- mense territory acquired at a cost of blood and treasure absolutely incomputable ? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. One. Shall the Constitution of the United ■ States be overthrown 15 by the perjuries of its sworn defenders ? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Two. Shall the Loyal States see the rolls of their citizens deci- mated, the flower of their youth slain in battle, the homes only a little while ago the happiest in the world made deso- 20 late, the honest accumulations of industry scattered, the enterprises of benevolence arrested — and all without hope of indemnity or of security ? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Three. Shall the wildest and wickedest perjury, the most Satanic 25 defiance of the Majesty of Heaven, the clearest and least defensible of crimes flourish and bloom in the establishment of a great empire, and out of the dissolution of society se- cure the prosperous fortunes of the turbulent and the ambi- tious ? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Four. 30 Shall the great experiment of political self-government utterly fail, while we, crouching and crawling through the vicissitudes of anarchy, find refuge at last in blind obedience to the edicts of an autocrat? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Five. 33 Shall a system of labor be perpetuated which, without re- gard to its abstract equity, without consideration of its injus- 98 Editorials. tice to the employed, has so demoralized the employer, that treason, robbery and murder seem to him to be Christian virtues? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Six. Shall a system of labor be perpetuated which so utterly degrades the spiritual nature of the enslaved, as to expose 5 it in its very yearning for sacred culture to a fanaticism analogous to idolatry? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Seven. Shall a system of labor be perpetuated the very essence of which is a denial of the fundamental principle of Christian 10 ethics — that the laborer is worthy of his hire? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Eight. Shall these acts be considered by the Church mere pecca- dilloes, when perpetrated by its Southern slave -holding members, which in its Northern communicants it would at 15 once visit with its censure and even its excommunication ? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Nine. Shall a Church which every Sunday prays the Good Lord to deliver us '' from all sedition, privy conspiracy and re- bellion, " and " to give to all nations unity, peace and con- 20 cord," still hold communion with a Church which is full of sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion against the unity, peace and concord of the land ? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty Question, No. Ten. Shall a Church which every Sunday prays for "the Presi- 25 dent of the United States, and all others in authority" — not merely as fellow-men, but because they are " in author- ity" — shall the Church withhold its censure of those of its members, who in contempt of authority are waging a felonious war against law and order ? This is Dr. Hawks's Little Dirty 30 Question, No. Eleven. Whether, finally, these communicants of the Church in the rebel States who have been so disregardful of its discipline, and so false to its teachings as to avowedly violate all laws Divine and human, are entitled to anything more than 35 Christian pity, are at all entitled in their double tort to Charles T. Congdon. 99 Christian Fellowship, is a Little Dirty Question well worth the consideration of every Christian Patriot ; and is Dr. Hawks's No. Twelve. XI. CHARLES T. CONGDON. Northern Independence. N. Y, Tribune, Sept. 12, 1862. We must conquer this Rebellion or it will conquer us. 5 This is a fact of which we are reminded — and there is need that we should be — by the boasts of fugitive Secessionists in Canada, who, it is reported, " openly declare that the Union shall not be broken, but that if the North is beaten, it shall be subjected to the rule of Jefferson Davis, who will be next Presi- 10 dent of the United States." " There is nothing sacred," said Napoleon, " after a conquest." The theory of this war is plain enough. The Northern people well understand that they are contending for the Constitution and the Laws ; but it may be questioned if more than a small minority of thinkers have per- 1 5 mitted themselves to look — for they cannot do so without shud- dering — into that seething hell of anarchy and confusion and ceaseless apprehension which would be our fate in the event of a Confederate triumph. Large as this continent is, it may be safely assumed that it is not large enough for two 20 distinct nationalities, with natural limits ill-defined, with mili- tary ambition upon one side of the line, and with a tantaliz- ing opulence upon the other, and with reminiscences of success taunting continually a stern, sad memory of defeat ; while a common language, instead of promoting peaceful al- 25 liances, would become merely a more convenient medium of debate and defiance. If we never knew it before, we know Lota loo Editorials. now, that Slavery is aggressive. It is unnecessary to say that it is more so than any other marked and distinctive form of social life would be. It is only necessary to understand that, being of an absolutely peculiar character, and at war with the general moral conclusions of the age, Slavery, as it now 5 exists in the American States, is in that position of desperate and dogged defiance, in which it will dare all things in self- defence. For reasons which we need not recapitulate, a component part of that defense must be its extension. It can no more exist within confined limits than a rat can live under 10 an exhausted receiver. It is clear, therefore, that in the event of a military triumph of the system, the spirit of terri- torial aggrandizement, which has heretofore sought for new man-markets upon the frontier of the Southwest, would begin to exert itself in a Northern direction. Of the inability of 15 the Slave Power to conquer such States as Illinois, Ohio, or Indiana, we might be tolerably certain, so long as a Northern Union should remain ; but the grave and alarming question is, how long, after the establishment of a Southern Confederacy, the Northern Union would continue to exist. Itself a frag- 20 ment, into how many smaller fragments might it not, even within a quarter of a century, be precipitated ? Disunion is of bad example, and might prove contagious ; while the Slave States, united in a bad brotherhood, and by the ties of a common iniquity, might not find it difficult to cope with 25 and to subjugate individual States, themselves exposed to the assaults of each other, and weakened by intestine dis- order. That it is no part of Slaveholding chivalry to spare a State, either because it is weak or inoffensive, let the fate of 30 Mexico attest 1 But inoffensive the Northern States, even with the best intentions, could not possibly be. The recog- nition of the Confederacy, however absolute and complete, would not for a day silence the Anti-Slavery discussions of the North. It is certain that they will never cease until 35 Slavery is abolished. No laws, however rigid, no considera- Charles T. Congdon. loi tions of international comity, would be sufficient to restrain the voices of men who as much believe that Slavery is hor- rible in God's sight as they believe that there is a God at all. This of itself would be sufficient to keep up a per- 5 petual irritation at the South, and to afford a continual pre- text for an aggressive war. But the question of Fugitive Slaves, and of their rendition, would be a crowning difficulty, and one which, it seems to us, would be absolutely incapable of a peaceful solution. If we know anything of the temper lo of the Northern people, we can hardly believe that they will be ready to do that of their free will which they have been so unwilling to do upon compulsion. Treaties might be made, but treaties would be perpetually broken. Laws, founded upon such compacts, might be passed, but who 15 would obey and who would enforce them? Meanwhile, the Government of the North would be constantly involved in difficulties with its own recalcitrant citizens ; and, the ques- tion of Slavery still coloring our politics, the people would be pretty sure to keep out of office " Northern men with 20 Southern principles." War must inevitably follow. Peace, by infinite nursing and coddling, would be only the excep- tion, and War — beggaring, blasting, and weary War — would be the rule. Into the probable history of this people, so agitated and assaulted, it would not be pleasant too closely to 25 inquire. If the Slave States, stimulated only by imaginary injuries, have shown themselves ready to shoot from a con- dition of ill-temper into that of sanguinary hostilities, what will be the popular feeling of the North when it is found that all our treasure has been expended only with the prodigality 30 of the fool ? If the question, then, of the Union was an open one be- fore, it is so no longer. We cannot afford to concede — we cannot afford to be conquered. There is a deadly duel be- tween Freedom and Slavery, and one or the other must fall. 35 The issue is but a matter of time. Freedom in the end must conquer. But over what dreary years of suffering and I02 Editorials. struggle, of paralyzed industry and social commotion, of private agony and of public bankruptcy, must that struggle, if we now temporize, extend ! If there be in this great me- tropolis any man who, in his devotion to the pursuit of gold, thinks that we should give up all, and retire from this con- 5 test, we bid him look well to his money-bags, when the arrogant and hot-headed Confederacy shall have triumphed and commenced its political career. If there be here any man who wearies of the noise and confusion of this conflict, we bid him beware of lending his influence to the adoption of 10 any measure which may merely postpone the final adjust- ment of this quarrel, and leave us, meanwhile, certainly for more than one generation, the sport of political chances. If there be any philanthropist who shrinks, as well he may, from the butchery of battle, we warn him that the longest 15 war, however bloody, is better for humanity than the smooth- est of hollow truces. Do not let us be deceived 1 There is no safety for this republic but in its integrity ; there is no peace for it but in its indivisibility ; there is no economy in ending one war only that we may begin another ; there is 20 no happiness for us, there is none for our children, save in the complete victory of our Government. Five years of war would be better — yes, fifty years of war would be better than a century of imaginary peace and continual collisions. The time to acknowledge the Confederacy, if at all, was 25 when Anderson pulled down the flag of Fort Sumter. That time has gone by forever I W. M. Payne. 103 XII. W. M. PAYNE.i John Addington Symonds. The Dial, Chicago. The death of Mr. Symonds, at Rome, has removed from the field of English letters one of its most graceful and accomplished representatives. He had only reached the age of fifty-two (Shakespeare's age), but his death was not wholly 5 unexpected. Many years ago he was forced to leave Eng- land by pulmonary disease that threatened his life, and to take up a practically permanent residence at Davos, in the Engadine. His life in this mountain home has been de- scribed by himself in a number of charming magazine 10 articles, and by his daughter in a recently published volume. He occasionally ventured upon short excursions from his seat of exile — mostly into Italy for the collection of the material required by his literary work — and itw^as upon one of these excursions that he gave up the long struggle with ill 15 health. His enforced residence in what was, for the literary worker, an almost complete solitude, has left its mark upon the work of his later years. Absence fi-om all libraries but his own has given to much of that work an inadequate char- 20 acter, and left it lacking in the accuracy demanded by mod- ern scholarship. For these defects, considering their excuse, he has been subjected to unfairly harsh criticism. It is really remarkable, under the conditions, that his work should have as high a scientific character as that with which it must be 25 credited, and it surely offers -a case in which the verdict of justice should be tempered by that of mercy. On the other ^ Reprinted, by permission of W. M. Payne from Little Leaders, A. C. McClurg & Co. I04 Editorials. hand, the author's long freedom from the distractions of EngUsh life enabled him to become a prolific worker, and the literary activity of his later years has been very marked. He has produced new volumes in rapid succession, and most of them have been volumes of unquestionable importance. 5 Much of his later work has been shaped by the necessities of his isolated situation, and has taken forms that did not require the resources of great collections of material. His translations from the Italian, and his subtle analyses of the principles of aesthetic criticism, are illustrations of this gen- 10 eral statement, although we must admit that the most impor- tant of his later works, the life of Michelangelo, had to be, and was, based upon an exhaustive study of the contempo- rary documents. As these were to be found in Italy, a country within his reach, he was enabled, even in his years 15 of exile, to produce one work of capital scientific value. Whatever form Mr. Symonds might give to his work, it was, like that of the great Frenchman whose loss we have so lately niourned, essentially critical in spirit, and its author will be remembered among the critics, rather than among 20 the poets, the travellers, or the narrative historians. But his critical method Avas radically unlike that of his French con- temporary, being as subjective as that of Taine was objec- tive. He constantly sought to place himself within the mind of the writer or historical character with whom he was 25 engaged, to see the world with his eyes, and to treat the environment as secondary in time if not in significance. Taine, as we well know, deduced the man and his work from the surrounding conditions ; Symonds took the man and his work as the data of the problem, seeking to understand 30 rather than to account for them. We are not here con- cerned to compare the two methods of work. Both of them are capable of excellent results, and either of them, if carried far enough, involves the other. It is sufficient to say that a writer committed to the one does not, as a rule, realize 35 all the possibilities of the other, and falls short of that syn- W. M. Payne. 105 thesis of the two that will produce the criticism of the future. When Schelling spoke of architecture as frozen music, he sounded the keynote of what we may call the romantic manner in criticism. 'In romantic writing,' as we are told by 5 Professor Sydney Colvin, ' all objects are exhibited as it were through a colored and iridescent atmosphere. Round about every central idea the romantic writer summons up a cloud of accessory and subordinate ideas for the sake of enhancing its effect, if at the risk of confusing its outlines.' 10 To Mr. Symonds as a critic this definition of romanticism closely applies. A student of all the arts, a lover of natural no less than of man-created beauty, he was constantly bring- ing one set of impressions to the aid of another. He de- lighted in illustrating poetry by the phrases of landscape, 15 and painting by the language of music. Those who will have only the clean-cut critical phraseology of Sainte-Beuve and Arnold resent the exuberance of Symonds, and do imperfect justice to its beauty as well as to its power of making a lasting impression. If they admit the latter quality, 20 they will say that the impression is false, that the half-lights of romanticism are misleading, and that each artistic or other embodiment of beauty has its distinct province, forget- ting that all forms of beauty appeal to the same emotional consciousness, and that the law of association is no less 25 valid in the emotional than in the intellectual sphere. Professor Tyrrell, in a satirical sketch of the modern meth- ods of classical study, says : ' To study the works, for instance, of the Greek dramatists is no longer a road to success as a scholar, or as a student. No : you must be ready to liken 30 ^schylus to an Alpine crevasse, Sophocles to a fair avenue of elms, and Euripides to an amber weeping Phaethontid, or a town pump in need of repairing.' This is clearly a refer- ence to such books as Symond's ' Studies of the Greek Poets ' and yet that book has done more to rouse an enthusi- 35 asm for Greek poetry, and foster a desire for its acquaint- ance, than all the unromantic tomes of the grammarians. io6 Editorials. One subject Mr. Symonds made his own, and by his work done upon that subject he will be chiefly remembered. The Italian Renaissance has had historians of more minutely accurate scholarship, and its separate phases have perhaps found occasional treatment subtler and more profound than 5 it was in his power to give them. But the period as a whole, its political and domestic life, its literature and art, received at his hands a treatment that lacks neither grasp nor sympathy, that is distinctly the best and most attractive in English literature. This treatment is chiefly embodied in 10 the series of seven volumes, beginning with ' The Age of the Despots,' and ending with the 'Catholic Reaction' but is also to be sought in the masterly life of Michelangelo, in ' An Introduction to the Study of Dante,' in the verse and prose translations from Italian literature, and in the host of 15 studies and sketches from time to time contributed to the periodicals. Upon the fascinating period with which all this work deals the best part of the author's thought was centred, and modern criticism offers few instances of so close an adaptation of a writer to his theme. Both by 20 temperament and training he was the man for the work, and the way in which, the main body of the work accomplished, he has lingered upon the outskirts of his chosen field of study reveals the extent to which the subject took possession of his mind and sympathies. The author's studies of other 25 literatures than the Italian are chiefly represented by his work on the Greek poets, his essay on Lucretius, his ' Sidney ' and ' Shelley ' in the ' English Men of Letters Series,' his ' Jonson ' in the series of 'English Worthies,' and his thick volume entitled 'Shakespeare's Predecessors 30 in the English Drama,' intended to be the first volume of a complete history of our great dramatic period. His volumes of travel in Italy and Greece are genuine literature, exempli- fying the wealth of his learning, the justness of his percep- tions, and the beauty of his style. His original verse, 35 considerable in amount, falls short of being great poetry, E. L. Godkin. 107 but may be read with keen pleasure, and appeals strongly to the reflective mind. His essays on the principles of aesthetics are burdened with verbiage and not always lucid in enunci- ation, but they are weighty enough amply to repay their 5 readers. When we consider his work as a whole we are impressed with its range, its sanity, and its devotion to the Goethean ideal of the good, true, and beautiful. His death has made a conspicuous vacancy in the rapidly thinning ranks of our older writers, and upon no other shoulders does 10 his particular mantle seem yet to have fallen. XIII. E. L. GODKIN. Mr. Horace Greeley.^ New Yo7-k Evening Post. [ " The ' Evening Post,' under his editorship, was the home of that ab- solute intellectual freedom, intellectual courage, and intellectual honesty without which there can be no great newspaper. Every subject was dis- cussed in the editorial council with a freedom of opinion that was simply 15 unlimited. When the paper spoke, it uttered the combined view of the entire staff as it had been arrived at in the discussion. Sometimes, probably in a great majority of instances, the original view of Mr. Godkin was the one expressed, but often he had abandoned that for a different one brought forward by someone else. He had no pride of opinion, 20 but, on the contrary, hailed with positive delight one that he recognized as superior to his own. He w'ould fight for his own for all it was worth until convinced, and would fight at times with a good deal of human heat ; but when the tussle was ended, even in his own defeat, there was not a trace of bitterness or injured vanity. Nothing was more intoler- 25 able to him than the modern conception of the intellectual side of a newspaper, — the conception that has come in with the advent of com- mercial journalism, — which looks upon the editorial page as the mere ^ Reprinted by permission from Reflections and Comments. Copy- right, 1895, by Charies Scribner's Sons. io8 Editorials. tender of the business side, its writers as so many hands in a factory, rather than as constituting the soul of the paper." — Fe?-sonal Recollec- tions of E. L. Godkin. J. B. Bishop. The Century, Sept., 1902.] There has been something almost tragic about the close of Mr. Greeley's career. After a life of, on the whole, re- 5 markable success and prosperity, he fell finally under the weight of accumulated misfortunes. Nobody who heard him declare that " he accepted the Cincinnati Convention and its consequences," but must be struck by the illustration of what is called "the irony of fate," which nearly everything that oc- 10 curred afterwards affords. His nomination, from whatever point of view we look at it, was undoubtedly a high honor. The manner in which it was received down to the Baltimore Con- vention was very flattering. Whether it was a proper thing to "beat Grant" or not, that so large and so shrewd a body of his 15 countrymen should have thought Mr. Greeley the man to do it was a great compliment. It found him, too, in posses- sion of all the influence which the successful pursuit of his own calling could give a man — the most powerful editor in the Union, surrounded by friends and admirers, feared or 20 courted by nearly everybody in public life, and in the full enjoyment of widespread popular confidence in his integrity. In six short months he was well-nigh undone. He had en- dured a humiliating defeat, which seemed to him to indicate the loss of what was his dearest possession, the affection of 25 the American people ; he had lost the weight in public affairs which he had built up by thirty years of labor ; he saw his property and, as he thought, that of his friends diminished by the attempt to give him a prize which he had in his own estimation fairly earned, and, though last not least, he found 30 his home invaded by death, and one of the strongest of the ties which bind a man to this earth broken. It would not be wonderful if, under these circumstances, the coldest and toughest of men should lie down and die. But Mr. Greeley was neither cold nor tough. He was keenly sensitive both 33 to praise and blame. The applause of even paltry men E. L. Godkin. 109 gladdened him, and their censure stung him. Moreover, he had that intense longing for reputation as a man of action by which men of the closet are so often torn. In spite of all that his writing brought him in reputation, he writhed under 5 the popular belief that he could do nothing but write, and he spent the flower of his years trying to convince the public that it was mistaken about him. It was to this we owed whatever was ostentatious in his devotion to farming, and in his interest in the manufacturing industry of the country. It 10 was to this, too, that he owed his keen and lifelong desire for office, and, in part at least, his activity in getting offices for other people. Office-seekers have become in the United States so ridicu- lous and so contemptible a class, that a man can hardly seek 15 a place in the public service without incurring a certain amount of odium ; and perhaps nothing did more damage to Mr. Greeley's reputation than his anxiety to be put in places of trust or dignity. And yet it is doubtful if many men seek office with more respectable motives than his. For pecu- 20 niary emolument he cared nothing ; but he did pine all his life long for some conspicuous recognition of his capacity for the conduct of affairs, and he never got it. The men who have nominations to bestow never had confidence enough in his judgment or ability to offer him anything which he would 25 have thought worthy of his expectations when there was the least chance of their choice receiving a popular ratification. They disliked him, as politicians are apt to dislike an editor in the political arena, as a man who, in having a newspaper at his back, is sure not to play their game fairly. The con- 30 sequence was that he was constantly irritated by finding how purely professional his influence was, or, in other words, what a mortifying disproportion existed between his editorial and his personal power. The first revelation the public had of the bitterness of his disappointment on this score was 35 caused by the publication of the famous Seward letter, and the surprise it caused was perhaps the highest compliment 1 1 o Editorials. Mr. Greeley ever received. It showed with what success he had prevented his private griefs from affecting his pubHc action, and people are always ready to forgive ambition as an '' infirmity of noble minds," even when they do not feel disposed to reward it. 5 Unfortunately for Mr. Greeley, however, he never could persuade himself that the public was of the same mind as the politicians regarding his personal capacity. He per- sisted to the last in believing himself the victim of their envy, hatred, and malice, and looking with unabated hope 10 to some opportunity of obtaining a verdict on his merits as a man of action, in which his widespread popularity and his long and laborious teachings would fairly tell. The result of the Cincinnati Convention, which his friends and emis- saries from this city went out to prepare, but which perhaps 15 neither he nor they in the beginning ventured to hope for, seemed to promise him at last the crown and consummation of a life's longings, and he received it with almost childlike joy. The election was, therefore, a crushing blow. It was not, perhaps, the failure to get the presidency that was 20 hardest to bear — for this might have been accompanied by such a declaration of his fitness for the presidency as would have sweetened the remainder of his years — it was the con- temptuous greatness of his opponent's majority which was killing. It dissipated the illusion of half a lifetime on the 25 one point on which illusions are dearest — a man's exact place in the estimation of his countrymen. Very few — even of those whose fame rests on the most solid foundation of achievement — ever ask to have this ascertained by a positive test without dread or misgiving, or face the test without a 30 strain which the nerves of old men are often ill fitted to bear. That Mr. Greeley's nerves were unequal to the shock of failure we now know. But it needed no intimate acquaintance with him to see that the card in which he announced, two days after the election, that he would thereafter be a simple 35 editor, would seek office no more, and would confine himself E. L. Godkin. 1 1 1 to the production of a candid and judicial-minded paper, must have been written in bitterness of spirit for which this world had no balm. In addition to the deceptions caused by his editorial influ- 5 ence, Mr. Greeley had others to contend with, more subtle, but not less potent. The position of the editor of a leading daily paper is one which, in our time, is hardly possible for the calmest and most candid man to fill without having his judgment of himself perverted by flattery. Our age is in- lo tensely commercial ; it is not the dry-goods man or the grain merchant only who has goods for sale, but the poet, the orator, the scholar, the philosopher, and the politician. We are all, in a measure, seeking a market for our wares. What we desire, therefore, above all things, is a good advertising 15 medium, or, in other words, a good means of making known to all the world where our store is and what we have to sell. This means the editor of a daily paper can furnish to any- body he pleases. He is consequently the object of unceasing adulation from a crowd of those who shrink from fighting 20 the slow and doubtful battle of life in the open field, and crave the kindly shelter of editorial plaudits, "puffs," and "mentions." He finds this adulation offered freely, and by all classes and conditions, without the least reference to his character or talents or antecedents. What wonder if it 25 turns the heads of unworthy men, and begets in them some of the vices of despots — their unscrupulousness, their cruelty, and their impudence. What wonder, too, if it should have thrown off his balance a man like Mr. Greeley, whose head was not strong, whose education was imperfect, 30 and whose self-confidence had been fortified by a brave and successful struggle v;ith adversity. Of his many private virtues, of his kind-heartedness, his generosity, his sympathy with all forms of suffering and anxiety, we do not need to speak. His career, too, has 35 little in it to point any moral that is not already trite and familiar. The only lesson we can gather from it with any 1 1 2 Editorials. clearness is the uncertainty of this world, and all that it con- tains, and the folly of seeking the presidency. Nobody can hope to follow in his footsteps. He began life as a kind of editor of which he was one of the last specimens, and which will shortly be totally extinct — the editor who fought as the 5 man-at-arms of the party. This kind of work Mr. Greeley did with extraordinary earnestness and vehemence and suc- cess — so much success that a modern newspaper finally grew up around him, in spite of him, almost to his surprise, and often to his embarrassment. The changed condition of 10 journalism, the substitution of the critical for the party views of things, he never wholly accepted, and his frequent personal appearance in his columns, under the signature of " H. G.," hurling defiance at his enemies or exposing their baseness, showed how stifling he found the changed atmosphere. He 15 was fast falling behind his age when he died. New men, and new issues, and new processes, which he either did not understand at all or only understood imperfectly, crowded upon him. If the dazzling prize of the presidency had not been held before his eyes, we should probably have witnessed 20 his gradual but certain retirement into well-won repose. Those who opposed him most earnestly must now regret sincerely that in his last hours he should have known the bitterness of believing, what was really not true, that the labors of his life, which were largely devoted to good causes, 25 had not met the appreciation they merited at the hands of his co.untrymen. It is for his own sake, as well as that of the public, greatly to be regretted that he should not have lived until the smoke of the late conflict had cleared away. E. L. Godkin. 113 XIV. E. L. GODKIN. The Odium Philologicum.^ New York Evening Post. Our readers and those of The Galaxy are familiar with the controversy between Dr. Fitzedward Hall and Mr. Grant White (November, 1873). When one comes to inquire what it was all about, and why Mr. White was led to consider Dr. 5 Hall a -'yahoo of literature," and "a man born without a sense of decency, " one finds himself engaged in an investi- gation of great difficulty, but of considerable interest. The controversy between these two gentlemen by no means brings up the problem for the first time. That verbal criti- 10 cism, such as Mr. White has been producing for some time back, is sure to end, sooner or later, in one or more savage quarrels, is one of the most familiar facts of the literary life of our day. Indeed, so far as our observation has gone, the rule has no exceptions. Whenever we see a gentleman, no 15 matter how great his accomplishments or sweet his temper, announcing that he is about to write articles or deliver lec- tures on " Words and their Uses, " or on the " English of Every-day Life, " or on " Familiar Faults of Conversation, " or " Newspaper English, " or any cognate theme, we feel all 20 but certain that we shall soon see him engaged in an en- counter with another laborer in the same field, in which all dignity will be laid aside, and in which, figuratively speaking, clothes, hair, and features will suffer terribly, and out of which, unless he is very lucky, he will issue with the gravest 25 imputations resting on his character in every relation of life. ^ Reprinted by permission from Reflections and Comments. Copy- right, 1895, by Chas. Scribner's Sons. 114 Editorials. Now why is it that attempts to get one's fellowmen to talk correctly, to frame their sentences in accordance with good usage, and take their words from the best authors, have this tendency to arouse some of the worst passions of our nature, and predispose even eminent philologists — men of dainty 5 language, and soft manners, and lofty aims — to assail each other in the rough vernacular of the fish-market and the forecastle ? A careless observer will be apt to say that it is an ordinary result of disputation ; that when men differ or argue on any subject they are apt to get angry and indulge 10 in "personalities." But this is not true. Lawyers, for instance, live by controversy, and their controversies touch interests of the gravest and most delicate character — such as fortune and reputation ; and yet the spectacle of two lawyers abusing each other in cold blood, in print, is almost 15 unknown. Currency and banking are, at certain seasons, subjects of absorbing interest, and, for the last seventy years, the discussions over them have been numerous and volumrnous almost beyond example, and yet we remember no case in which a bullionist called a paper-money man bad 20 names, or in which a friend of free banking accused a restrictionist of defrauding the poor or defacing tombstones. Politics, too, home and foreign, is a fertile source of differ- ence of opinion ; and yet gross abuse, on paper, of each other, by political disputants, discussing abstract questions 25 having no present relation to power or pay, are very rare indeed. It seems, at first blush, as if an examination of the well- known odium tkeologicum, or the traditional bitterness which has been apt to characterize controversies about points of 30 doctrine, from the Middle Ages down to a period within our own memory, would throw some light on the matter. But a little consideration will show that there are special causes for the rancor of theologians for which word-criticism has no parallel. The odhim tkeologicum was the natural and 35 inevitable result of the general belief that the holding of E. L. Godkin. 1 15 certain opinions was necessary to salvation, and that the formation of opinions could be wholly regulated by the will. This belief, pushed to its extreme limits and embodied in legislation, led to the burning of heretics in nearly all 5 Christian countries. When B's failure to adopt A's conclu- sions was by A regarded as a sign of depravity of nature which would lead to B's damnation, nothing was more nat- ural than that w^hen they came into collision in pamphlets or sermons they should have attributed to each other the worst 10 motives. A man who was deliberately getting himself ready for perdition was not a person to whom anybody ow^ed courtesy or consideration, or whose arguments, being proba- bly supplied by Satan, deserved respectful examination. We accordingly find that as the list of " essential " opinions 15 has become shortened, and as doubts as to men's respon- sibility for their opinions have made their way from the W'orld into the church, theological controversy has lost its acrimony and indeed has almost ceased. No theologian of high standing or character now permits himself to show 20 bad temper in a doctrinal or hermeneutical discussion, and a large and increasing proportion of theologians acknowledge that the road to heaven is so hard for us all that the less quarrelling and jostling there is in it, the better for every- body. 25 Nor does the odium scientificum^ of which we have now happily but occasional manifestations, furnish us with any suggestions. Controversy between scientific men begins to be bitter and frequent, as the field of investigation grows wider and the investigation itself grows deeper. But then 30 this is easily accounted for. All scientific men of the first rank are engaged in original research — that is, in attempts to discover laws and phenomena previously unknown. The workers in all departments are very numerous, and are scat- tered over various countries, and as one discovery, however 35 slight, is very apt to help in some degree in the making of another, scientific men are constantly exposed to having their 1 1 6 Editorials. claims to originality contested, either as regards priority in point of time or as regards completeness. Consequently, they may be said to stand in delicate relations to each other, and are more than usually sensitive about the recognition of their achievements by their brethren — a state of things 5 which, while it cultivates a very nice sense of honor, leads occasionally to encounters in which free-will seems for the moment to get the better of law. The differences of the scientific world, too, are complicated by the theological bear- ing of a good deal of scientific discovery and discussion, and 10 many a scientific man finds himself either compelled to defend himself against theologians, or to aid theologians in bringing an erring brother to reason. The true source of the odium philologicum is, we think, to be found in the fact that a man's speech is apt to be, or to 15 be considered, an indication of the manner in which he has been bred, and of the character of the company he keeps. Criticism of his mode of using words, or his pronunciation, or the manner in which he compounds his sentences, almost inevitably takes the character of an attack on his birth, 20 parentage, education, and social position ; or, in other words, on everything which he feels most sensitive about or holds most dear. If you say that his pronunciation is bad, or that his language is slangy or ill-chosen, you insinuate that when he lived at home with his papa and mamma he was sur- 25 rounded by bad models, or, in plain English, that his parents were vulgar or ignorant people ; when you say that he writes bad grammar, or is guilty of glaring solecisms, or displays want of etymological knowledge, you insinuate that his edu- cation was neglected, or that he has not associated with 30 correct speakers. Usually, too, you do all this in the most provoking way by selecting passages from his writings on which he probably prided himself, and separating them totally from the thought of which he was full when he pro- duced them, and then examining them mechanically, as if 35 they were algebraic signs, which he used without knowing E. L. Godkin. 117 what they meant or where they would bring him out. No- body stands this process very long with equanimity, because nobody can be subjected to it without being presented to the public somewhat in the light of an ignorant, careless, and 5 pretentious donkey. Nor will it do to cite your examples from deceased authors. You cannot do so without assailing some form of expression which an eager, listening enemy is himself in the habit of using, and is waiting for you to take up, and through which he hopes to bring you to shame. 10 No man, moreover, can perform the process without tak- ing on airs which rouse his victim to madness, because he assumes a position not only of grammatical, but, as we have said, of social superiority. He says plainly enough, no matter how pohte or scientific he may try to seem, " I was 15 better born and bred than you, and acquired these correct turns of expression, of which you know nothing, from culti- vated relatives ; " or, "I live in cultivated circles, and am consequently familiar with the best usage, which you, poor fellow! are not. I am therefore able to decide this matter 20 without argument or citations, and your best course is to take my corrections in silence or with thankfulness." It is easy to understand how all interest in orthography, etymol- ogy, syntax, and prosody speedily disappears in a contro- versy of this sort, and how the disputants begin to burn with 25 mutual dislike, and how each longs to inflict pain and anguish on his opponent, and make him, no matter by what means, an object of popular pity and contempt, and make his parts of speech odious and ridiculous. The influence of all good men ought to be directed either to repressing verbal criticism, 30 or restricting indulgence in it to the family circle or to schools and colleges. 1 1 8 Editorials. XV. W. M. PAYNE. The Critic and His Task.^ The Dial, Chicago. ' We read far too many poor things ' said Goethe to Eckermann 'thus losing time and gaining nothing.' In similar vein and at greater length, Schopenhauer gave vent to this characteristic outburst : ' The amount of time and paper — their own and other 5 people's — wasted by the swarm of mediocre poets, and the injurious influence they exercise, are matters deserving of serious consideration. For the public is ever ready to seize upon novelty, and has a natural proneness for the perverse and the dull as most akin to itself. Therefore the works of lo the mediocre poets divert public attention, keeping it away from the true masterpieces and the education they offer ; acting in direct antagonism to the benign influence of genius, they ruin taste more and more, retarding the progress of the age. Such poets should therefore receive the scourge of 15 criticism and satire without indulgence or sympathy, until led, for their own benefit, to apply their talents to reading what is good rather than to writing what is bad. For if the bungling of the incompetent so aroused the wrath of the gentle Apollo that he could flay Marsyas, I do not see upon what the 20 mediocre poet can base his claim to tolerance.' In such comment as we have just quoted there is a vein of bitterness not altogether to the taste of our complacent and easy-going modern age, so zealous in bearing witness to its democratic faith that it grudges recognition of any aristocracy 25 at all, even of one as imprescriptible as that of genius. Live ^ Reprinted by permission of W. M. Payne from Little Leaders. A. C. McClurg& Co. W. M. Payne. 119 and let live, give every man his due and a little more, credit the intention rather than the performance, are some of the formulas in which the modern spirit of comfortable optimism finds expression. When literary production is the subject of 5 criticism there are many motives at work in the interest of leniency or excessive generosity. Leaving entirely out of the question the unabashed puffery, regulated by counting-room conditions, that parades as criticism in so many of our news- papers ; taking into serious account only the critical writing 10 that is, as far as conscious purpose goes, honest in its intent; this work is still often weakened "by influences too insidious in their action to be distinctly felt, yet giving it a tendency which, in view of the larger interests of the reading public, is undoubtedly pernicious. The critic deficient merely in 15 knowledge heeds too closely the warning example of the early critics of Shelley and Keats, of Wordsworth and Tennyson, and casts his anchors to windward, hoping thereby to save his reputation from the scorn in which theirs stand pilloried. The critic whose defects are of the heart rather than of the 20 intellect, who is too amenable to social influences or of too kindly a disposition to give the work under examination the character he knows it to possess, softens the outlines of truth (often quite unconsciously) and produces a distinctly false impression. In either case the public is served to its detri- 25 ment rather than to its profit. The critic's paramount duty is, of course, his duty to the public, and every personal or private influence whatsoever must be resisted by him from the moment that its presence is felt. All this is not easy, and yet it may be done by a writer who 30 has both knowledge and honesty. If a book has little or no value, the fact must be clearly and firmly stated, no matter what the author under discussion may feel. This assignment to its place of a new book need not be done with the tradi- tional brutality of the Quarterly Reviewer, although even that 35 would be better than the insipidity of the twaddle that so often passes for criticism, and that is obviously enough 1 20 Editorials. intended to win the good opinion of the author as well as so to hoodwink the public that its good opinion shall not be for- feited. How few critics there are who, recognizing the worthlessness of books, are yet ready, in Milton's phrase, to ' do sharpest justice on them as malefactors ' ? In fact, the 5 sin of the Quarterly Reviewers was not so much brutality as ignorance. Their attitude was hopelessly provincial, and they sought to conceal their limitations by the vigor of their invective. After all, a new book is bound to show an ade- quate reason for its being ; if no such reason exists, the fact 10 cannot be too soon discerned and stated. A new book is an attempt to divert the attention of readers from those already in their possession ; it is an impertinence unless it bears a sufficient warrant. Books of knowledge must be multiplied with the advance of science, and their warrant is found in 15 new facts and in the more perfect formulation of old ones. What Mr. Ruskin calls ' books of the hour ' are warranted by the special interests of the hour. ' We ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them.' With books of these classes the 20 task of the critic is simple. He must seize upon their elements of novelty or of timeliness, and must determine whether or not they accomplish their purpose. With books that pretend to be additions to literature proper — with poems, plays, and novels — his task is different. 25 He must be alert to detect new notes of song or of passion, but if only feeble echoes reward the search he must make the fact perfectly clear. Of the books of belles-lettres published during a given year, it is certainly safe to say that nine out of ten should never have seen the light, that in at least this 30 fraction of the total number there is neither wit, nor invention, nor grace of style, nor harmony of numbers, in any redeeming measure. And the critic who persuades his readers that acquaintance with these empty books is more desirable than acquaintance 35 with the recognized masterpieces — that it is desirable at all W. M. Payne. 121 in view of the real literature waiting to be read — is careless of his responsibility and false to his trust. There is after all but one standard in literature, and that is the highest. The great writers not only offer us boundless dehght in them- 5 selves, but they provide us with a touchstone for the testing of all spurious metal. In a certain sense, it is the critic's business to make his readers independent of criticism, just as the physician's aim must be to make his patient independent of medicine. And 10 the reader who has formed his taste upon good models does not need the critic's services except for occasional guidance. But the readers who need those services for instruction, in these days of insignificant or worthless books profusely multi- plied, are still many; and the critic who sets up as absolute 15 any merely relative standard of excellence, who describes the work of talent in terms only applicable to the work of genius, who praises the echo of noble literary work without clearly indicating its derivative character, who does not frequently renew his own strength by draughts from the fountain heads 20 of literary inspiration — the work of this critic can be the source of no real helpfulness, and can only expect to share the speedy oblivion awaiting the books that it seems for a moment to magnify into component parts of permanent literature. THE EULOGY. No. I exemplifies the nomination speech ; No. II the chronological eulogy, that is, the address in which the person treated is traced from birth to death; and No. Ill the selective eulogy, in which carefully selected details in the life of the person treated are grouped about one or more central ideas. ROSCOE CONKLING. Nomination of U. S. Grant.^ Delivered at the Republican Presidential Convention at Chicago, June 5, 1880. [The nominees at the Convention were : U. S. Grant, J. G. Blaine, William Windom, John Sherman, G. F. Edmunds, and E. B. Wash- bume. Throughout the thirty-six ballots the Grant forces remained firm, his vote varying only between 303 and 312. After the thirty -fifth 5 ballot, a combination of the followers of Sherman, Blaine, and Edmunds gave Garfield 399 votes on the thirty-sixth ballot. On the first ballot for a candidate for vice-president, Chester A. Arthur was chosen.] '' When asked what State he hails from, Our sole reply shall be, 10 He comes from Appomattox, And its famous apple-tree." In obedience to instructions I should never dare to dis- regard — expressing, also, my own firm convictions — I rise to propose a nomination with which the country and the Re- 15 publican party can grandly win. The election before us is to be the Austerlitz of American politics. It will decide, for many years, whether the country shall be Republican or Cossack. The supreme need of the hour is not a candidate who can carry Michigan. All Republican candidates can 20 do that. The need is not of a candidate who is popular in the Territories, because they have no vote. The need is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States. Not the doubt- ful States of the North alone, but doubtful States of the ^ Reprinted, by permission of Alfred R. Conkling, from Life of Roscoe Conkling, p. 596. 125 126 The Eulogy. South, which we have heard, if I understand it aright, ought to take little or no part here, because the South has nothing to give, but everything to receive. No, gentlemen, the need that presses upon the conscience of this Convention is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States both North and 5 South. And believing that he, more surely than any other man, can carry New York against any opponent, and can carry not only the North, but several States of the South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. Never defeated in peace or in war, his name is the most illustrious borne by living man. 10 His services attest his greatness, and the country — nay, the world — knows them by heart. His fame was earned not alone in things written and said, but by the arduous greatness of things done. And perils and emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in vain 15 in the past, for any other on whom the nation leans with such confidence and trust. Never having had a policy to enforce against the will of the people, he never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the people will never desert nor betray him. Standing on the highest eminence of human 20 distinction, modest, firm, simple and self-poised, h9,ving filled all lands with his renown, he has seen not only the high- born and the titled, but the poor and the lowly, in the utter- most ends of the earth, rise and uncover before him. He has studied the needs and the defects of many systems of 25 government, and he has returned a better American than ever, with a wealth of knowledge and experience added to the hard common-sense which shone so conspicuously in all the fierce light that beat upon him during sixteen years, the most trying, the most portentous, the most perilous in the 30 nation's history. Vilified and reviled, ruthlessly aspersed by unnumbered presses, not in other lands but in his own, assaults upon him have seasoned and strengthened his hold on the public heart. Calumny's ammunition has all been exploded: the 35 powder has all been burned once : its force is spent : and Roscoe Conkling. 127 the name of Grant will glitter a bright and imperishable star in the diadem of the republic when those that have tried to tarnish that name have mouldered in forgotten graves, and when their memories and their epitaphs have vanished 5 utterly. Never elated by success, never depressed by adversity, he has ever, in peace as in war, shown the genius of common sense. The terms he prescribed for Lee's surrender fore- shadowed the wisest prophecies and principles of recon- 10 struction. Victor in the greatest war of modern times, he quickly signalized his aversion to war and his love of peace by an arbitration of internal disputes which standi as the wisest, the most majestic example of its kind in the world's diplomacy. When inflation, at the height of its popularity 15 and frenzy, had swept both Houses of Congress, it was the veto of Grant, which, single and alone, overthrew expansion and cleared the way for specie resumption. To him, im- measurably more than to any other man, is due the fact that every paper dollar is at last as good as gold. 20 With him as our leader we shall have no defensive cam- paign. No ! We shall have nothing to explain away. We shall have no apologies to make. The shafts and the arrows have all been aimed at him, and they lie broken and harm- less at his feet. 25 Life, liberty and property will find a safeguard in him. When he said of the colored men in Florida, ''Wherever I am, they may come also " — when he so said, he meant that, had he the power, the poor dwellers in the cabins of the South should no longer be driven in terror from the homes 30 of their childhood and the graves of their murdered dead. When he refused to see Dennis Kearney in California, he meant that communism, lawlessness, and disorder, although it might stalk high-headed and dictate law to a whole city, would always find a foe in him. He meant that, popular or 35 unpopular, he would hew to the line of right, let the chips fly where they may. 128 The Eulogy. His integrity, his common-sense, his courage, his un- equalled experience, are the qualities offered to his country. The only argument, the only one that the wit of man or the stress of politics has devised is one that would dumbfounder Solomon, because he thought there was nothing new under 5 the sun. Having tried Grant twice and found him faithful, we are told that we must not, even after an interval of years, trust him again. My countrymen ! my countrymen ! what stultification does not such a fallacy involve ! The Ameri- can people exclude Jefferson Davis from public trust. Why? 10 why? because he was the arch-traitor and would-be de- stroyer; and now the same people are asked to ostracize Grant and not to trust him. Why ? why ? I repeat : because he was the arch-preserver of his country, and because, not only in war, but twice as civil magistrate, he gave his high- 15 est, noblest efforts to the republic. Is this an electioneering juggle, or is it hypocrisy's masquerade ? There is no field of human activity, responsibility, or reason, in which rational beings object to an agent because he has been weighed in the balance and not found wanting. There is, I say, no depart- 20 ment of human reason in which sane men reject an agent because he has had experience making him exceptionally competent and fit. From the man who shoes your horse to the lawyer who tries your cause, the officer who manages your railway or your mill, the doctor into whose hands you 25 give your life, or the minister who seeks to save your soul, what man do you reject because by his works you have known him and found him faithful and fit ? What makes the Presidential office an exception to all things else in the common sense to be applied in selecting its incumbent? 30 Who dares — who dares to put fetters on that free choice and judgment which is the birthright of the American peo- ple ? Can it be said that Grant has used official power and place to perpetuate his term ? He has no place, and official power has not been used for him. Without patronage and 35 without emissaries, without committees, without bureaus, Roscoe Conkling. 129 without telegraph wires running from his house to this Con- vention, or running from his house anywhere else, this man is the candidate whose friends have never threatened to bolt unless this Convention did as they said. He is a Republi- 5 can who never wavers. He and his friends stand by the creed and the candidate of the Republican party. They hold the rightful rule of the majority as the very essence of their faith, and they mean to uphold that faith against not only the common enemy, but against the charlatans, jay- 10 hawkers, tramps, and guerillas — the men who deploy between the lines, and forage now on one side and then on the other. This Convention is master of a supreme opportunity. It can name the next President. It can make sure of his election. It can make sure not only of 15 his election, but of his certain and peaceful inauguration. More than all, it can break that power which dominates and mildews the South. It can overthrow an organization whose very existence is a standing protest against progress. The purpose of the Democratic party is spoils. Its very 20 hope of existence is a solid South. Its success is a menace to order and prosperity. I say this Convention can over- throw that power. It can dissolve and emancipate a sohd South. It can speed the nation in a career of grandeur eclipsing all past achievements. 25 Gentlemen, we have only to listen above the din and look beyond the dust of an hour to behold the Republican party advancing with its ensigns resplendent with illustrious achievements, marching to certain and lasting victory with its greatest Marshal at its head. 130 The Eulogy. II. J. G. BLAINE. The Life and Character of James Abram Garfield. A Memorial Address delivered before both houses of Congress, at their request, in the hall of the House of Representatives, February 27, 1882. [The day had been dedicated by Congress for memorial ser\-ices throughout the country to the late President. Mr. Blaine had for years been a close friend of President Garfield, and in his Cabinet was Secretary of State.] Mr. President : — For the second time in this generation 5 the great departments of the Government of the United States are assembled in the Hall of Representatives to do honor to the memory of a murdered President. Lincoln fell at the close of a mighty struggle in which the passions of men had been deeply stirred. The tragical termination of 10 his great life added but another to the lengthened succession of horrors which had marked so many lintels with the blood of the first born. Garfield was slain in a day of peace, when brother had been reconciled to brother, and when anger and hate had been banished from the land. "Who- 15 ever shall hereafter draw the portrait of murder, if he will show it as it has been exhibited where such example was last to have been looked for, let him not give it the grim visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by revenge, the face black with settled hate. Let him draw, rather, a decorous 20 smooth-faced, bloodless demon ; not so much an example of human nature in its depravity and in its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal being, a fiend in the ordinary display and development of his character." From the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth till the 25 uprising against Charles First, about twenty thousand emigrants came from old England to New England. As J. G. Blaine. 131 they came in pursuit of intellectual freedom and ecclesiasti- cal independence rather than for worldly honor and profit, the emigration naturally ceased when the contest for religious liberty began in earnest at home. The man who struck his 5 most effective blow for freedom of conscience by sailing for the colonies in 1620 would have been accounted a deserter to leave after 1640. The opportunit}- had then come on the soil of England for that great contest which established the authorit}^ of Parliament, gave religious freedom to the people, 10 sent Charles to the block, and committed to the hands of Oliver Cromwell the Supreme Executive authorit}^ of Eng- land. The English emigration was never renewed, and from these twent}^ thousand men with a small emigration from Scotland and from France are descended the vast numbers 15 who have New England blood in their veins. In 1685 the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. scattered to other countries four hundred thousand Protestants, who were among the most intelligent and enterprising of French subjects — merchants of capital, 20 skilled manufacturers and handicraftsmen, superior at the time to all others in Europe. A considerable number of these Huguenot French came to America ; a few landed in New England and became honorably prominent in its history. Their names have in large part become anglicised, 25 or have disappeared, but their blood is traceable in many of the most reputable families, and their fame is perpetuated in honorable memorials and useful institutions. From these two sources, the English-Puritan and the French-Huguenot, came the late President — his father, 30 xA.bram Garfield, being descended from the one, and his mother, Eliza Ballou, from the other. It was good stock on both sides — none better, none braver, none truer. There was in it an inheritance of courage, of manhness, of imperishable love of liberty, of 35 undying adherence to principle. Garfield was proud of his blood ; and, with as much satisfaction as if he were a British 132 The Eulogy. nobleman reading his stately ancestral record in Burke's Peerage, he spoke of himself as ninth in descent from those who would not endure the oppression of the Stuarts, and seventh in descent from the brave French Protestants who refused to submit to tyranny even from the Grand 5 Monarque. General Garfield delighted to dwell on these traits, and, during his only visit to England, he busied himself in dis- covering every trace of his forefathers in parish registries and on ancient army rolls. Sitting with a friend in the 10 gallery of the House of Commons, one night after a long day's labor in this field of research, he said, with evident elation, that in every war in which for three centuries patriots of English blood had struck sturdy blows for con- stitutional government and human liberty, his family had 15 been represented. They were at Marston Moor, at Naseby and at Preston ; they were at Bunker Hill, at Saratoga, and at Monmouth, and in his own person had battled for the same great cause in the war which preserved the Union of the States. 20 Losing his father before he was two years old, the early life of Garfield was one of privation, but its poverty has been made indelicately and unjustly prominent. Thousands of readers have imagined him as the ragged, starving child, whose reality too often greets the eye in the squalid sections 25 of our large cities. General Garfield's infancy and youth had none of their destitution, none of their pitiful features appealing to the tender heart and to the open hand of charity. He was a poor boy in the same sense in which Henry Clay was a poor boy ; in which Andrew Jackson was 30 a poor boy; in which Daniel Webster was a poor boy; in the sense in which a large majority of the eminent men of America in all generations have been poor boys. Before a great multitude of men, in a public speech, Mr. Webster bore this testimony : 35 V " It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin, but J. G. Blaine. 133 my elder brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin raised amid the snow drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early that when the smoke rose first from its rude chimney and curled over the frozen hills there was no similar evidence 5 of a white man's habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist. I make to it an annual visit. I carry my children to it to teach them the hardships endured by the generations which have gone before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, 10 the kindred ties, the early affections and the touching narra- tives and incidents which mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode." With the requisite change of scene the same words would aptly portray the early days of Garfield. The poverty of the 15 frontier, where all are engaged in a common struggle, and where a common sympathy and hearty co-operation lighten the burdens of each, is a very different poverty, different in kind, dift'erent in influence and effect from that conscious and humiliating indigence which is every day forced to 20 contrast itself with neighboring wealth, on which it feels a sense of grinding dependence. The poverty of the frontier is indeed no poverty. It is but the beginning of wealth, and has the boundless possibilities of the future always opening before it. No man ever grew up in the agricultural regions 25 of the West, where a house-raising or even a corn-husking, is a matter of common interest and helpfulness, with any other feeling than that of broad-minded, generous independ- ence. This honorable independence marked the youth of Garfield as it marks the youth of millions of the best blood 30 and brain now training for the future citizenship and future government of the republic. Garfield was born heir to land, to the title of freeholder, which has been the patent and passport of self-respect with the Anglo-Saxon race ever since Hengist and Horsa landed on the shores of England. His 35 adventure on the canal — an alternative between that and the deck of a Lake Erie schooner — was a farmer boy's 134 The Eulogy. device for earning money, just as the New England lad begins a possibly great career by sailing before the mast on a coasting vessel or on a merchantman bound to the farther India or to the China seas. No manly man feels anything of shame in looking back 5 to early struggles with adverse circumstances, and no man feels a worthier pride than when he has conquered the obstacles to his progress. But no one of noble mould desires to be looked upon as having occupied a menial position, as having been repressed by a feeling of inferiority, lo or as having suffered the evils of poverty until relief was found at the hand of charity. General Garfield's youth presented no hardships which family love and family energy did not overcome, subjected him to no privations which he did not cheerfully accept, and left no memories save those 15 which were recalled with delight and transmitted with profit and with pride. Garfield's early opportunities for securing an education were extremely limited, and yet were sufficient to develop in him an intense desire to learn. He could read at three 20 years of age, and each winter he had the advantage of the district school. He read all the books to be found within the circle of his acquaintance ; some of them he got by heart. While yet in childhood he was a constant student of the Bible, and became familiar with its literature. The dig- 25 nity and earnestness of his speech in his maturer life gave evidence of this early training. At eighteen years of age he was able to teach school, and thenceforward his ambition was to obtain a college education. To this end he bent all his efforts, working in the harvest field, at the carpenter's bench, 30 and, in the winter season, teaching the common schools of the neighborhood. While thus laboriously occupied he found time to prosecute his studies, and was so successful that at twenty-two years of age he was able to enter the junior class at Williams College, then under the Presidency of the vener- 35 able and honored Mark Hopkins, who, in the fullness of his J. G. Blaine. 135 powers, survives the eminent pupil to whom he was of inesti- mable service. The history of Garfield's life to this period presents no novel features. He had undoubtedly shown perseverance, 5 self-reliance, self-sacrifice and ambition — qualities which, be it said for the honor of our country, are everywhere to be found among the young men of America. But from his graduation at Williams onward, to the hour of his tragical death, Garfield's career was eminent and exceptional. 10 Slowly working through his educational period, receiving his diploma when twenty-four years of age, he seemed at one bound to spring into conspicuous and brilliant success. Within six years he was successively President of a college, State Senator of Ohio, Major-General of the army of the 15 United States and Representative-elect to the National Congress. A combination of honors so varied, so elevated, within a period so brief and to a man so young, is without precedent or parallel in the history of the country. Garfield's army life was begun with no other military 20 knowledge than such as he had hastily gained from books in the few months preceding his march to the field. Step- ping from civil life to the head of a regiment, the first order he received when ready to cross the Ohio was to assume command of a brigade, and to operate as an independent 25 force in Eastern Kentucky. His immediate duty was to check the advance of Humphrey Marshall, who was march- ing down the Big Sandy with the intention of occupying, in connection with other Confederate forces, the entire territory of Kentucky, and of precipitating the State into secession. 30 This was at the close of the year 1861. Seldom, if ever, has a young college professor been thrown into a more embarrassing and discouraging position. He knew just enough of military science, as he expressed it himself, to measure the extent of his ignorance, and with a handful of 35 men he was marching, in rough winter weather, into a strange country, among a hostile population, to confront a largely 136 The Eulogy. superior force under the command of a distinguished gradu- ate of West Point, who had seen active and important service in two preceding wars. The result of the campaign is matter of history. The skill, the endurance, the extraordinary energy shown by 5 Garfield, the courage he imparted to his men, raw and un- tried as himself, the measures he adopted to increase his force and to create in the enemy's mind exaggerated esti- mates of his numbers, bore perfect fruit in the routing of Marshall, the capture of his camp, the dispersion of his 10 force, and the emancipation of an important territory from the control of the rebellion. Coming at the close of a long series of disasters to the Union arms, Garfield's victory had an unusual and extraneous importance, and, in the popular judgment, elevated the young commander to the rank of 15 a military hero. With less than two thousand men in his entire command, with a mobilized force of only eleven hun- dred, without cannon, he had met an army of five thousand and defeated them — driving Marshall's forces successively from two strongholds of their own selection, fortified with 20 abundant artillery. Major-Gen. Buell, commanding the Department of the Ohio, an experienced and able soldier of the Regular Army, published an order of thanks and con- gratulation on the brilliant result of the Big Sandy campaign, which would have turned the head of a less cool and sensible 25 man than Garfield. Buell declared that his services had called into action the highest qualities of a soldier, and President Lincoln supplemented these words of praise by the more substantial reward of a Brigadier-General's commis- sion, to bear date from the day of his decisive victory over 30 Marshall. The subsequent military career of Garfield fully sustained its brilliant beginning. With his new commission he was assigned to the command of a brigade in the Army of the Ohio, and took part in the second and decisive day's fight 35 in the great battle of Shiloh. The remainder of the year J. G. Blaine. 137 1862 was not especially eventful to Garfield, as it was not to the armies with which he was serving. His practical sense was called into exercise in completing the task, assigned him by General Buell, of reconstructing bridges and re-establish- 5 ing lines of railway communication for the Army. His occupation in this useful but not brilliant field was varied by service on courts martial of importance, in which department of duty he won a valuable reputation, attracting the notice and securing the approval of the able and eminent Judge 10 Advocate General of the Army. That of itself was warrant to honorable fame ; for among the great men who in those trying days gave themselves, with entire devotion, to the service of their country, one who brought to that service the ripest learning, the most fervid eloquence, the most varied 15 attainments, who labored with modesty and shunned applause, who in the day of triumph sat reserved and silent and grateful — as Francis Deak in the hour of Hun- gary's deliverance — was Joseph Holt of Kentucky, who in his honorable retirement enjoys the respect and veneration 20 of all who love the Union of the States. Early in 1863 Garfield was assigned to the highly impor- tant and responsible post of chief of staff to General Rose- crans, then at the head of the Army of the Cumberland. Perhaps in a great military campaign no subordinate officer 25 requires sounder judgment and quicker knowledge of men than the chief of staff to the commanding general. An indiscreet man in such a position can sow more discord, breed more jealousy and disseminate more strife than any other officer in the entire organization. When General 30 Garfield assumed his new duties he found various troubles already well developed and seriously affecting the value and efficiency of the Army of the Cumberland. The energy, the impartiality, and the tact with which he sought to allay these dissensions and to discharge the duties of his new and trying 35 position will always remain one of the most striking proofs of his great versatility. His military duties closed on the memo- 138 The Eulogy. rable field of Chickamauga, a field, which however disastrous to the Union arms, gave to him the occasion of winning imperishable laurels. The very rare distinction was ac- corded him of a great promotion for his bravery on a field that was lost. President Lincoln appointed him a Major- 5 General in the army of the United States for gallant and meritorious conduct in the battle of Chickamauga. The Army of the Cumberland was reorganized under the command of General Thomas who promptly offered Gar- field one of its divisions. He was extremely desirous to 10 accept the position, but was embarrassed by the fact that he had, a year before, been elected to Congress, and the time when he must take his seat was drawing near. He preferred to remain in the military service, and had within his own breast the largest confidence of success in the wider field 15 which his new rank opened to him. Balancing the argu- ments on the one side and the other, anxious to determine what was for the best, desirous above all things to do his patriotic duty, he was decisively influenced by the advice of President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton, both of whom 20 assured him that he could, at that time, be of especial value in the House of Representatives. He resigned his commis- sion of Major-General on the 5th day of December, 1863, and took his seat in the House of Representatives on the 7th. He had served two years and four months in the army, and 25 had just completed his thirty-second year. The Thirty-eighth Congress is pre-eminently entitled in history to the designation of the War Congress. It was elected while the war was flagrant, and every member was chosen upon the issues involved in the continuance of the 30 struggle. The Thirty-seventh Congress had, indeed, legis- lated to a large extent on war measures, but it was chosen before any one believed that secession of the States would be actually attempted. The magnitude of the work which fell upon its successor was unprecedented, both in respect 35 to the vast sums of money raised for the support of the J. G. Blaine. 139 Army and Navy, and of the new and extraordinary powers of legislation which it was forced to exercise. Only twenty- four States were represented, and one hundred and eighty- two members were upon its roll. Among, these were many 5 distinguished party leaders on both sides, veterans in the public service, with established reputations for ability, and with that skill which comes only from parliamentary experi- ence. Into this assemblage of men Garfield entered with- out special preparation, and it might almost be said unex- 10 pectedly. The question of taking command of a division of troops under General Thomas, or taking his seat in Con- gress, was kept open till the last moment, so late, indeed, that the resignation of his military commission and his appearance in the House were almost contemporaneous. 15 He wore the uniform of a Major-General of the United States Army on Saturday, and on Monday, in civilian's dress, he answered to the roll-call as a Representative in Congress from the State of Ohio. He was especially fortunate in the constituency which 20 elected him. Descended almost entirely from New England stock, the men of the Ashtabula District were intensely radical on all questions relating to human rights. Well educated, thrifty, thoroughly intelligent in affairs, acutely discerning of character, not quick to bestow confidence, and 25 slow to withdraw it, they were at once the most helpful and most exacting of supporters. Their tenacious trust in men in whom they have once confided is illustrated by the un- paralleled fact that Elisha Whittlesey, Joshua R. Giddings and James A. Garfield represented the district for fifty-four 30 years. There is no test of a man's ability in any department of public life more severe than service in the House of Repre- sentatives ; there is no place where so little deference is paid to reputation previously acquired, or to eminence won out- 35 side ; no place where so little consideration is shown for the feelings or the failures of beginners. What a man gains in 140 The Eulogy. the House he gains by sheer force of his own character, and if he loses and falls back he must expect no mercy and | will receive no sympathy. It is a field in which the survival * of the strongest is the recognized rule, and where no pretence can deceive and no glamour can mislead. The real man is 5 discovered, his worth is impartially weighed, his rank is irreversibly decreed. With possibly a single exception, Garfield was the young- est member in the House when he entered, and was but seven years from his college graduation. But he had not 10 been in his seat sixty days before his ability was recognized and his place conceded. He stepped to the front with the confidence of one who belonged there. The House was crowded with strong men of both parties ; nineteen of them have since been transferred to the Senate, and many of them 15 have served with distinction in the gubernatorial chairs of their respective States, and on foreign missions of great con- sequence ; but among them all none grew so rapidly, none so firmly as Garfield. As is said by Trevelyan of his par- liamentary hero, Garfield succeeded " because all the world 20 in concert could not have kept him in the background, and because, when once in the front, he played his part with a prompt intrepidity and a commanding ease that were but the outward symptoms of the immense reserves of energy, on which it was in his power to draw." Indeed, the apparently 25 reserved force which Garfield possessed was one of his great characteristics. He never did so well but that it seemed he could easily have done better. He never expended so much strength but that he seemed to be holding additional power at call. This is one of the happiest and rarest distinctions 30 of an effective debater, and often counts for as much in persuading an assembly as the eloquent and elaborate argument. The great measure of Garfield's fame was filled by his service in the House of Representatives. His military 35 life, illustrated by honorable performance, and rich in J. G. Blaine. 141 promise, was, as he himself feh, prematurely terminated, and necessarily incomplete. Speculation as to what he might have done in a field, where the great prizes are so few, cannot be profitable. It is sufficient to say that as a q soldier he did his duty bravely ; he did it intelligently ; he won an enviable fame, and he retired from the service with- out blot or breath against him. As a lawyer, though admi- rably equipped for the profession, he can scarcely be said to have entered on its practice. The few efforts he made at 10 the bar were distinguished by the same high order of talent which he exhibited on every field where he was put to the test, and if a man may be accepted as a competent judge of his own capacities and adaptations, the law was the profes- sion to which Garfield should have devoted himself. But 15 fate ordained otherwise, and his reputation in history will rest largely upon his service in the House of Representa- tives. That service was exceptionally long. He was nine times consecutively chosen to the House, an honor enjoyed by not more than six other Representatives of the more than 20 five thousand who have been elected from the organization of the Government to this hour. As a parliamentary orator, as a debater on an issue squarely joined, where the position had been chosen and the ground laid out, Garfield must be assigned a very high 25 rank. More, perhaps, than any man with whom he was associated in public life, he gave careful and systematic study to public questions, and he came to every discussion in which he took part with elaborate and complete prepara- tion. He was a steady and indefatigable worker. Those 30 who imagine that talent or genius can supply the place or achieve the results of labor will find no encouragement in Garfield's life. In preliminary work he was apt, rapid and skillful. He possessed in a high degree the power of readily absorbing ideas and facts, and like Dr. Johnson, had the 35 art of getting from a book all that was of value in it by a reading apparently so quick and cursory that it seemed like 142 The Eulogy. a mere glance at the table of contents. He was a pre-emi- nently fair and candid man in debate, took no petty advan- tage, stooped to no unworthy methods, avoided personal allusions, rarely appealed to prejudice, did not seek to inflame passion. He had a quicker eye for the strong point c of his adversary than for his weak point, and on his own side he so marshaled his weighty arguments as to make his hearers forget any possible lack in the complete strength of his position. He had a habit of stating his opponent's side with such amplitude of fairness and such liberality of con- 10 cession that his followers often complained that he was giv- ing his case away. But never in his prolonged participation in the proceedings of the House did he give his case away, or fail in the judgment of competent and impartial listeners to gain the mastery. 15 These characteristics, which marked Garfield as a great debater, did not, however, make him a great parliamentary leader. A parliamentary leader, as that term is understood wherever free representative government exists, is necessarily and very strictly the organ of his party. An ardent Ameri- 20 can defined the instinctive warmth of patriotism when he offered the toast, " Our country, always right ; but right or wrong, our country." The parliamentary leader who has a body of followers that will do and dare and die for the cause is one who believes his party always right, but right 25 or wrong, is for his party. No more important or exacting duty devolves upon him than the selection of the field and the time for contest. He must know not merely how to strike, but where to strike and when to strike. He often skillfully avoids the strength of his opponent's position and qo scatters confusion in his ranks by attacking an exposed point when really the righteousness of the cause and the strength of logical intrenchment are against him. He con- quers often both against the right and the heavy battalions ; as when young Charles Fox, in the days of his Toryism, 35 carried the House of Commons against justice, against its J. G. Blaine. 143 immemorial rights, against his own convictions, if, indeed, at that period Fox had convictions, and, in the interest of a corrupt administration, in obedience to a tyrannical sover- eign, drove Wilkes from the seat to which the electors of 5 Middlesex had chosen him and installed Luttrell, in defiance not merely of law but of public decency. For an achieve- ment of that kind Garfield was disqualified — disqualified by the texture of his mind, by the honesty of his heart, by his conscience and by every instinct and aspiration of his 10 nature. The three most distinguished parliamentary leaders hitherto developed in this country are Mr. Clay, Mr. Douglas and Mr. Thaddeus Stevens. Each was a man of consummate ability, of great earnestness, of intense personality, differing 15 widely, each from the others, and yet with a single trait in common — the power to command. In the give and take of daily discussion, in the art of controlling and consolidating reluctant and refractory followers ; in the skill to overcome all forms of opposition, and to meet with competency and courage 20 the var}'ing phases of unlooked-for assault or unsuspected defection, it would be difficult to rank with these a fourth name in all our Congressional history. But of these Mr. Clay was the greatest. It would, perhaps, be impossible to find in the parliamentary annals of the world a parallel to Mr. Clay, in 25 1 84 1, when at sixty-four years of age he took the control of the Whig party from the President who had received their suffrages, against the power of Webster in the Cabinet, against the eloquence of Choate in the Senate, against the herculean efforts of Caleb Cushing and Henry A. Wise in 30 the House. In unshared leadership, in the pride and plenti- tude of power, he hurled against John Tyler wdth deepest scorn the mass of that conquering column which had swept over the land in 1840, and drove his administration to seek shelter behind the lines of his political foes. Mr. Douglas 35 achieved a victory scarcely less wonderful, when, in 1854, against the secret desires of a strong administration, against 144 The Eulogy. the wise counsel of the older chiefs, against the conservative instincts and even the moral sense of the country, he forced a reluctant Congress into a repeal of the Missouri compromise. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, in his contests from 1865 to 1868, actually advanced his parliamentary leadership until Congress 5 tied the hands of the President and governed the country by its own will, leaving only perfunctory duties to be discharged by the Executive. With two hundred millions of patronage in his hands at the opening of the contest, aided by the active force of Seward in the Cabinet and the moral power of Chase 10 on the Bench, Andrew Johnson could not command the sup- port of one-third in either House against the parliamentary uprising of which Thaddeus Stevens was the animating spirit and the unquestioned leader. From these three great men Garfield differed radically, dif- 15 fered in the quality of mind, in temperament, in the form and phase of ambition. He could not do what they did, but he could do what they could not, and in the breadth of his Congressional work he left that which will longer exert a potential influence among men, and which, measured by the 20 severe test of posthumous criticism, will secure a more endur- ing and more enviable fame. Those unfamiliar with Garfield's industry, and ignorant of the details of his work, may, in some degree, measure them ■ by the annals of Congress. No one of the generation of pub- 25 lie men to which he belonged has contributed so much that will be valuable for future reference. His speeches are numerous, many of them brilliant, all of them well studied, carefully phrased, and exhaustive of the subject under consideration. Collected from the scattered pages of ninety 30 royal octavo volumes of Congressional record, they would present an invaluable compendium of the political history of the most important era through which the National Govern- ment has ever passed. When the history of this period shall be impartially written, when war legislation, measures of 35 reconstruction, protection of human rights, amendments to J. G. Blaine. 145 the Constitution, maintenance of public credit, steps toward specie resumption, true theories of revenue may be reviewed, unsurrounded by prejudice and disconnected from partisanism, the speeches of Garfield will be estimated at their true value, * 5 and will be found to comprise a vast magazine of fact and argument, of clear analysis and sound conclusion. Indeed, if no other authority were accessible, his speeches in the House of Representatives from December, 1863, to June, 1880, would give a well connected history and complete de- 10 fence of the important legislation of the seventeen eventful years that constitute his parliamentary life. Far beyond that, his speeches would be found to forecast many great measures yet to be completed — measures which he knew were beyond the public opinion of the hour, but which he confidently 15 believed would secure popular approval within the period of his own lifetime, and by the aid of his own efforts. Differing, as Garfield does, from the brilliant parlia- mentary leaders, it is not easy to find his counterpart any- where in the record of American public life. He perhaps 20 more nearly resembles Mr. Seward in his supreme faith in the all-conquering power of a principle. He had the love of learning, and the patient industry of investigation, to which John Quincy Adams owes his prominence and his Presidency. He had some of those ponderous elements of 25 mind which distinguished Mr. Webster, and which, indeed, in all our public life, have left the great Massachusetts Sen- ator without an intellectual peer. In English parhamentary history, as in our own, the leaders in the House of Commons present points of essen- 30 tial difference from Garfield. But some of his methods recall the best features in the strong, independent course of Sir Robert Peel, and striking resemblances are discerni- ble in that most promising of modern conservatives, who died too early for his country and his fame, the Lord George 35 Bentinck. He had all of Burke's love for the Sublime and the Beautiful, with, possibly, something of his superabun- 146 The Eulogy. dance ; and in his faith and his magnanimity, in his power of statement, in his subtle analysis, in his faultless logic, in his love of literature, in his wealth and world of illustration, one is reminded of that great English statesman of to-day, who, confronted with obstacles that would daunt any but the 5 dauntless, reviled by those whom he would relieve as bitterly as by those whose supposed rights he is forced to invade, still labors with serene courage for the amelioration of Ire- land and for the honor of the English name. Garfield's nomination to the Presidency, while not pre- 10 dieted or anticipated, was not a surprise to the country. His prominence in Congress, his solid qualities, his wide reputa- tion, strengthened by his then recent election as Senator from Ohio, kept him in the public eye as a man occupying the very highest rank among those entitled to be called 15 statesmen. It was not mere chance that brought him this high honor. " We must, " says Mr. Emerson, " reckon suc- cess a constitutional trait. If Eric is in robust health and has slept well and is at the top of his condition, and thirty years old at his departure from Greenland, he will steer west 20 and his ships will reach Newfoundland. But take Eric out and put in a stronger and bolder man and the ships will sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles further and reach Labrador and New England. There is no chance in results." 25 As a candidate, Garfield grew steadily in popular favor. He was met with a storm of detraction at the very hour of his nomination, and it continued with increasing volume and momentum until the close of his victorious campaign : " No might nor greatness in mortality ^O Can censure 'scape ; backwounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue." Under it all he was calm and strong, and confident; never lost his self-possession, did no unwise act, spoke no 35 J. G. Blaine. 147 hasty or ill-considered word. Indeed, nothing in his whole life is more remarkable or more creditable than his bearing through those five full months of vituperation — a prolonged agony of trial to a sensitive man, a constant and cruel draft 5 upon the powers of moral endurance. The great mass of these unjust imputations passed unnoticed, and with the general debris of the campaign fell into oblivion. But in a few instances the iron entered his soul and he died with the injury unforgotten if not unforgiven. 10 One aspect of Garfield's candidacy was unprecedented. Never before, in the history of partisan contests in this country, had a successful Presidential candidate spoken freely on passing events and current issues. To attempt anything of the kind seemed novel, rash and even desperate. 15 The older class of voters recalled the unfortunate Alabama letter, in which Mr. Clay was supposed to have signed his political death warrant. They remembered also the hot- tempered effusion by which General Scott lost a large share of his popularity before his nomination, and the unfortunate 20 speeches which rapidly consumed the remainder. The younger voters had seen Mr. Greeley in a series of vigorous and original addresses preparing the pathway for his own defeat. Unmindful of these v/arnings, unheeding the ad- vice of friends, Garfield spoke to large crowds as he jour- 25 neyed to and from New York in August, to a great multitude in that city, to delegations and deputations of every kind that called at Mentor during the summer and autumn. With innumerable critics, watchful and eager to catch a phrase that might be turned into odium or ridicule, or a sentence 30 that might be distorted to his own or his party's injury, Garfield did not trip or halt in any one of his seventy speeches. This seems all the more remarkable when it is remembered that he did not write what he said, and yet spoke with such logical consecutiveness of thought and such 35 admirable precision of phrase as to defy the accident of inisreport and the malignity of misrepresentation, 148 The Eulogy. In the beginning of his Presidential Ufe Garfield's experi- ence did not yield him pleasure or satisfaction. The duties that engross so large a portion of the President's time were distasteful to him, and were unfavorably contrasted with his legislative work. " I have been dealing all these years with 5 ideas, " he impatiently exclaimed one day, " and here I am dealing only with persons. I have been heretofore treating of the fundamental principles of government and here I am considering all day whether A or B shall be appointed to this or that office. " He was earnestly seeking some prac- 10 tical way of correcting the evils arising from the distribution of overgrown and unwieldy patronage — evils always appre- ciated and often discussed by him, but whose magnitude had been more deeply impressed upon his mind since his accession to the Presidency. Had he lived, a comprehensive 15 improvement in the mode of appointment and in the tenure of office would have been proposed by him, and with the aid of Congress no doubt perfected. But, while many of the executive duties were not grateful to him, he was assiduous and conscientious in their dis- 20 charge. From the very outset he exhibited administrative talent of a high order. He grasped the helm of office with the hand of a master. In this respect indeed he con- stantly surprised many who were most intimately associated with him in the Government, and especially those who had 25 feared that he might be lacking in the executive faculty. His disposition of business was orderly and rapid. His power of analysis, and his skill in classification, enabled him to dispatch a vast mass of detail with singular promptness and ease. His Cabinet meetings were admirably conducted. 30 His clear presentation of official subjects, his well-considered suggestion of topics on which discussion was invited, his quick decision when all had been heard, combined to show a thoroughness of mental training as rare as his natural ability and his facile adaptation to a new and enlarged field 35 of labor. J. G. Blaine. 149 With perfect comprehension of all the inheritances of the war, with a cool calculation of the obstacles in his way, impelled always by a generous enthusiasm, Garfield conceived that much might be done by his administration toward re- 5 storing harmony between the different sections of the Union. He was anxious to go South and speak to the people. As early as April he had ineffectually endeavored to arrange for a trip to Nashville, whither he had been cordially invited, and he was again disappointed a few weeks later to find that he 10 could not go to South Carolina to attend the centennial cele- bration of the victory of the Cowpens. But for the autumn he definitely counted on being present at three memorable assemblies in the South — the celebration at Yorktown, the opening of the Cotton Exposition at Atlanta, and the 15 meeting of the Army of the Cumberland at Chattanooga. He was already turning over in his mind his address for each occasion, and the three taken together, he said to a friend, gave him the exact scope and verge which he needed. At Yorktown he would have before him the associations of a hun- 20 dred years that bound the South and the North in the sacred memory of a common danger and a common victory. At Atlanta he would present the material interests and the indus- trial development which appealed to the thrift and independ- ence of every household, and which should unite the two 25 sections by the instinct of self-interest and self-defence. At Chattanooga he would revive memories of the war only to show that after all its disaster and all its suffering, the country was stronger and greater, the Union rendered indis- soluble, and the future, through the agony and blood of one 30 generation, made brighter and better for all. Garfield's ambition for the success of his administration was high. With strong caution and conservatism in his nature, he was in no danger of attempting rash experiments or of resorting to the empiricism of statesmanship. But he 35 believed that renewed and closer attention should be given to questions affecting the material interests and commercial 150 The Eulogy. prospects of fifty millions of people. He believed that our continental relations, extensive and undeveloped as they are, involved responsibility, and could be cultivated into profitable friendship or be abandoned to harmful indifference or lasting enmity. He believed with equal confidence that an essential 5 forerunner to a new era of national progress must be a feeling of contentment in every section of the Union, and a generous belief that the benefits and burdens of Government would be common to all. Himself a conspicuous illustration of what ability and ambition may do under Republican institutions, he 10 loved his country with a passion of patriotic devotion, and every waking thought was given to her advancement. He was an American in all his aspirations, and he looked to the destiny and influence of the United States with the philo- sophical composure of Jefferson and the demonstrative confi- 15 dence of John Adams. The political events which disturbed the President's serenity for many weeks before that fateful day in July form an important chapter in his career, and, in his own judgment, involved questions of principle and of right which are vitally 20 essential to the constitutional administration of the Federal Government. It would be out of place here and now to speak the language of controversy ; but the events referred to, how- ever they may continue to be a source of contention with others, have become, so far as Garfield is concerned, as much a matter 25 of history as his heroism at Chickamauga or his illustrious ser- vice in the House. Detail is not needful, and personal antag- onism shall not be rekindled by any word uttered to-day. The motives of those opposing him are not to be here adversely interpreted nor their course harshly characterized. But of 30 the dead President this is to be said, and said because his own speech is forever silenced and he can be no more heard except through the fidelity and the love of surviving friends: From the beginning to the end of the controversy he so much deplored, the President was never for one moment actuated 35 by any motive of gain to himself or of loss to others. Least J. G. Blaine. 151 of all men did he harbor revenge, rarely did he even show resentment, and malice was not in his nature. He was con- genially employed only in the exchange of good offices and the doing of kindly deeds. ^ There was not an hour, from the beginning of the trouble till the fatal shot entered his body when the President would not gladly, for the sake of restoring harmony, have retraced any step he had taken if such retracing had merely involved consequences personal to himself. The pride of consistency, 10 or any supposed sense of humiliation that might result from surrendering his position, had not a feather's weight with him. No man was ever less subject to such influences from within or from without. But after most anxious deliberation and the coolest survey of all the circumstances, he solemnly 15 believed that the true prerogatives of the Executive were in- volved in the issue which had been raised, and that he would be unfaithful to his supreme obligation if he failed to maintain, in all their vigor, the constitutional rights and dignities of his great office. He believed this in all the convictions of con- 20 science when in sound and vigorous health, and he believed it in his suffering and prostration in the last conscious thought which his wearied mind bestowed on the transitory struggles of life. More than this need not be said. Less than this could 25 not be said. Justice to the dead, the highest obligation that devolves upon the living, demands the declaration that in all the bearings on the subject, actual or possible, the President was content in his mind, justified in his conscience, immov- able in his conclusions. 30 .The religious element in Garfield's character was deep and earnest. In his early youth he espoused the faith of the Disciples, a sect of that great Baptist Communion, which in different ecclesiastical establishments is so numerous and so influential throughout all parts of the United States. But 35 the broadening tendency of his mind and his active spirit of inquiry were early apparent and carried him beyond the dog- 152 The Eulogy. mas of sect and the restraints of association. In selecting a college in which to continue his education he rejected Beth- any, though presided over by Alexander Campbell, the greatest preacher of his church. His reasons were charac- teristic ; first, that Bethany leaned too heavily toward slavery ; 5 and, second, that being himself a Disciple and the son of Disciple parents, he had little acquaintance with people of other beliefs, and he thought it would make him more liberal, quoting his own words, both in his religious and general views, to go into a new circle and be under new influences. 10 The liberal tendency which he anticipated as the result of wider culture was fully realized. He was emancipated from mere sectarian belief, and with eager interest pushed his in- vestigations in the direction of modern progressive thought. He followed with quickening step in the paths of exploration 15 and speculation so fearlessly trodden by Darwin, by Huxley, by Tyndall, and by other living scientists of the radical and advanced type. His own church, binding its disciples by no formulated creed, but accepting the Old and New Testa- ments as the Word of God with unbiased liberality of private 20 interpretation, favored, if it did not stimulate, the spirit of investigation. Its members profess with sincerity, and pro- fess only, to be of one mind and one faith with those who immediately followed the Master, and who were first called Christians at Antioch. 25 But however high Garfield reasoned of " fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," he was never separated from the Church of the Disciples in his affections and in his as- sociations. For him it held the ark of the covenant. To him it was the gate of heaven. The world of religious be- 30 lief is full of solecisms and contradictions. A philosophic observer declares that men by the thousands will die in de- fence of a creed whose doctrines they do not comprehend and whose tenets they habitually violate. It is equally true that men by the thousand will cling to church organizations 35 with instinctive and undying fidelity when their belief in J. G. Blaine. 153 maturer years is radically diiferent from that which inspired them as neophytes. But after this range of speculation and this latitude of doubt, Garfield came back always with freshness and delight 5 to the simpler instincts of religious faith, which, earliest im- planted, longest survive. Not many weeks before his assas- sination, walking on the banks of the Potomac with a friend, and conversing on those topics of personal religion, concern- ing which noble natures have an unconquerable reserve, he 10 said that he found the Lord's Prayer and the simple petitions learned in infancy infinitely restful to him, not merely in their stated repetition, but in their casual and frequent recall as he went about the daily duties of life. Certain texts of Scriptures had a very strong hold on his memory and his 15 heart. He heard, while in Edinburgh some years ago, an eminent Scotch preacher who prefaced his sermon with reading the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, which book had been the subject of careful study with Gar- field during all his religious life. He was greatly impressed 20 by the elocution of the preacher, and declared that it had imparted a new and deeper meaning to the majestic utter- ances of Saint Paul. He referred often in after years to that memorable service, and dwelt wdth exaltation of feehng upon the radiant promise and the assured hope with which 25 the great apostle of the Gentiles was " persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 30 The crowning characteristic of General Garfield's religious opinions, as, indeed, of all his opinions, was his liberality. In all things he had charity. Tolerance was of his nature. He respected in others the qualities which he possessed him- self — sincerity of conviction and frankness of expression. 35 With him the inquiry was not so much what a man believes, but does he believe it ? The lines of his friendship and his 154 The Eulogy. confidence encircled men of every creed, and men of no creed, and to the end of his life, on his ever-lengthening list of friends, were to be found the names of a pious Catholic priest and of an honest-minded and generous-hearted free- thinker. 5 On the morning of Saturday, July 2, the President was a contented and happy man — not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, almost boyishly happy. On his way to the railroad station, to which he drove slowly, in conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of leisure and 10 a keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in the grate- ful and gratulatory vein. He felt that after four months of trial his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in popular favor and destined to grow stronger ; that grave difficulties confronting him at his inauguration had 15 been safely passed ; that trouble lay behind him and not before him ; that he was soon to meet the wife whom he loved, now recovering from an illness which had but lately disquieted and at times almost unnerved him ; that he was going to his Alma Mater to renew the most cherished asso- 20 ciations of his young manhood, and to exchange greetings with those whose deepening interest had followed every step of his upward progress from the day he entered upon his college course until he had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift of his countrymen. 25 Surely if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; no slightest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an in- 30 stant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence, and the grave. Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no 35 cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by J. G. Blaine. 155 the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its vic- tories, into the visible presence of death — and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned 5 and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relin- quishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage, he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, 10 whose lips may tell — what brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what bitter rending of sweet house- hold ties ! Behind him a proud, expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy mother, 1 5 wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears ; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his ; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic ; the fair young daughter ; the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day and every day rewarding 20 a father's love and care ; and in his heart the eager, rejoic- ing power to meet all demand. Before him, desolation and great darkness ! And his soul was not shaken. His coun- trymen were thrilled with instant, profound and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became 25 the centre of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing ten- derness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of 30 the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the Divine decree. As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea re- turned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from 35 its prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the 156 The Eulogy. love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders ; on its far sails, whitening in the morning light ; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward to break and die be- neath the noonday sun ; on the red clouds of evening, arch- ing low to the horizon ; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic 10 meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a further shore, and felt al- ready upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning. I III. WENDELL PHILLIPS. Toussaint POuverture.^ A lecture delivered in New York and Boston in December, 1861. Ladies and Gentlemen: I have been requested to offer 15 you a sketch made some years since, of one of the most re- markable men of the last generation, — the great St. Do- mingo chief, Toussaint I'Ouverture, an unmixed negro, with no drop of white blood in his veins. My sketch is at once a biography and an argument, — a biography, of course very 20 brief, of a negro soldier and statesman, which I offer you as an argument in behalf of the race from which he sprung. I am about to compare and weigh races ; indeed I am engaged to-night in what you will think the absurd effort to convince you that the negro race, instead of being that object of pity 25 * 1 Reprinted by permission of Lee & Shepard from Speeches, Lee- tu7'es and Letters, Wendell Phillips, First Series. % Wendell Phillips. 157 or contempt which we usually consider it, is entitled, judged by the facts of history, to a place close by the side of the Saxon. Now races love to be judged in two ways — by the great men they produce and by the average merit of the e mass of the race. We Saxons are proud of Bacon, Shake- speare, Hampden, Washington, Franklin, the stars we have lent to the galaxy of history ; and then we turn with equal pride to the average merit of Saxon blood, since it streamed from its German home. So, again, there are three tests by 10 which races love to be tried. The first, the basis of all, is courage, — the element which says, here and to-day, " This continent is mine, from the Lakes to the Gulf : let him be- ware who seeks to divide it ! " [Cheers.] And the second is the recognition that force is doubled by purpose ; liberty 15 regulated by law is the secret of Saxon progress. And the third element is persistency, endurance ; first a purpose, then death or success. Of these three elements is made that Saxon pluck which has placed our race in the van of modern civilization. 20 In the hour you lend me to-night, I attempt the Quixotic effort to convince you that the negro blood, instead of stand- ing at the bottom of the list, is entitled, if judged either by its great men or its masses, either by its courage, its purpose, or its endurance, to a place as near ours as any other blood 25 known in history. And, for the purpose of my argument, I take an island, St. Domingo, about the size of South Caro- lina, the third spot in America upon which Columbus placed his foot. Charmed by the magnificence of its scenery and fertility of its soil, he gave it the fondest of all names, His- 30 paniola. Little Spain. His successor, more pious, rebaptized it from St. Dominic, St. Domingo ; and when the blacks, in 1803, drove our white blood from its surface, they drove our names with us, and began the year 1804 under the old name, Hayti, the land of mountains. It was originally tenanted by 35 filibusters, French and Spanish, of the early commercial epochs, the pirates of that day as of ours. The Spanish took 158 The Eulogy. the eastern two-thirds, the French the western third of the island, and they gradually settled into colonies. The French, to whom my story belongs, became the pet colony of the mother land. Guarded by peculiar privileges, enriched by the scions of wealthy houses, aided by the unmatched fertil- 5 ity of the soil, it soon was the richest gem in the Bourbon crown; and at the period to which I call your attention, about the era of our Constitution, 1789, its wealth was almost incredible. The effeminacy of the white race rivalled that of the Sybarite of antiquity, while the splendour of their pri- 10 vate life outshone Versailles, and their luxury found no mate but in the mad prodigality of the Caesars. At this time the island held about thirty thousand Avhites, twenty or thirty thousand mulattoes, and five hundred thousand slaves. The slave trade was active. About twenty -five thousand slaves 15 were imported annually ; and this only sufficed to fill the gap which the murderous culture of sugar annually produced. The mulattoes, as with us, were children of the slaveholders? but, uniike us, the French slaveholder never forgot his child by a bondswoman. He gave him everything but his name, — 20 wealth, rich plantations, gangs of slaves ; sent him to Paris for his education, summoned the best culture of France for the instruction of his daughters, so that in 1790 the mulatto race held one-third of the real estate and one-quarter of the personal estate of the island. But though educated and rich, 25 he bowed under the same yoke as with us. Subjected to special taxes, he could hold no public office, and, if convicted of any crime, was punished with double severity. His son might not sit on the same seat at school with a white boy ; he might not enter a church where a white man was worship- 30 ping ; if he reached a town on horseback, he must dismount and lead his horse by the bridle ; and when he died, even his dust could not rest in the same soil with a white body. Such was the white race and the mulatto, — the thin film of a civilization beneath which surged the dark mass of five 35 hundred thousand slaves. Wendell Phillips. 159 It was over such a population, — the white man melted in sensuality ; the mulatto feeling all the more keenly his degra- dation from the very wealth and culture he enjoyed ; the slave, sullen and indifferent, heeding not the quarrels or the changes 5 of the upper air, — it was over this population that there burst, in 1789, the thunder-storm of the French Revolution. The first words which reached the island were the motto of the Jacobin Club, — "Liberty, Equality." The white man heard them aghast. He had read of the streets of Paris run- 10 ning blood. The slave heard them with indifference ; it was a quarrel in the upper air, between other races, which did not concern him. The mulatto heard them with a welcome which no dread of other classes could quell. Hastily gathered into conventions, they sent to Paris a committee of the whole 15 body, laid at the feet of the National Convention the free gift of six millions of francs, pledged one-fifth of their annual rental toward the payment of the national debt, and only asked in return that this yoke of civil and social contempt should be lifted from their shoulders. 20 You may easily imagine the temper in which Mirabeau and Lafayette welcomed this munificent gift of the free mu- lattoes of the West Indies, and in which the petition for equal civil rights was received by a body which had just resolved that all men were equal. The Convention hastened to ex- 25 press its gratitude, and issued a decree which commences thus : " All freeborn French citizens are equal before the law." Oge was selected — the friend of Lafayette, a lieuten- ant-colonel in the Dutch service, the son of a wealthy mulatto woman, educated in Paris, the comrade of all the leading 30 French Republicans — to carry the decree and the message of French Democracy to the island. He landed. The decree of the National Convention was laid on the table of the Gen- eral Assembly of the island. One old planter seized it, tore it in fragments, and trampled it under his feet, swearing by all 35 the saints in the calendar that the island might sink before they would share their rights with bastards. They took an i6o The Eulogy. old mulatto, worth a million, who had simply asked for his rights under that decree, and hung him. A white lawyer of seventy, who drafted the petition, they hung at his side. They took Oge, broke him on the wheel, ordered him to be drawn and quartered, and one quarter of his body to be i^ hung up in each of the four principal cities of the island ; and then they adjourned. You can conceive better than I can describe the mood in which Mirabeau and Danton received the news that their decree had been torn in pieces and trampled under foot by lo the petty legislature of an island colony and their comrade drawn and quartered by the orders of its Governor. Robes- pierre rushed to the tribune and shouted, " Perish the colonies rather than sacrifice one iota of our principles 1 " The Convention reaffirmed their decree and sent it out a 15 second time to be executed. But it was not then as now, when steam has married the continents. It took months to communicate ; and while this news of the death of Oge and the defiance of the National Convention was going to France, and the answer returning, 20 great events had taken place in the island itself. The Spanish, or the eastern section, perceiving these divisions, invaded the towns of the western, and conquered many of its cities. One-half of the slaveholders were Republicans, in love with the. new constellation which had just gone up in 25 our Northern sky, seeking to be admitted a State in this Republic, plotting for annexation. The other half were Loyalists, anxious, deserted as they supposed themselves by the Bourbons, to make alliance with George III. They sent to Jamaica, and entreated its Governor to assist them in 30 their intrigue. At first, he lent them only a few hundred soldiers. Some time later. General Howe and Admiral Parker were sent with several thousand men, and finally, the English government entering more seriously into the plot. General Maitland landed with four thousand English- 35 men on the north side of the island, and gained many Wendell Phillips. i6i successes. The mulattoes were in the mountains, awaiting events. They distrusted the government, which a few years before they had assisted to put down an insurrection of the whites, and which had forfeited its promise to grant them 5 civil privileges. Deserted by both sections, Blanchelande, the Governor, had left the capital and fled for refuge to a neighboring cit}-. In this state of affairs, the second decree reached the island. The whites forgot their quarrel, sought out Blanche- lo lande, and obliged him to promise that he never would publish the decree. Affrighted, the Governor consented to that course, and they left him. He then began to reflect that in realitj' he was deposed, that the Bourbons had lost the sceptre of the island. He remembered his successful 15 appeal to the mulattoes, five years before, to put dovm an insurrection. Deserted now by the whites and by the mulattoes, only one force was left him in the island, — that was the blacks : they had always remembered with gratitude the coi/s noir, black code, of Louis XIV., the first interference 20 of any power in their behalf. To the blacks Blanchelande appealed. He sent a deputation to the slaves. He was aided by the agents of Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles X., who was seeking to do in St. Domingo what Charles II. did in Virginia, (whence its name of Old Dominion.) r5 instiuite a reaction against the rebellion at home. The two joined forces, and sent first to Toussaint. Nature made him a Mettemich, a diplomatist. He probably wished to avail himself of this offer, foreseeing advantage to his race, but to avail himself of it so cautiously as to provide against failure, 30 risking as httle as possible till the intentions of the other party had been tested, and so managing as to be able to go on or withdraw as the best interest of his race demanded. He had practised well the Greek rule, '' Know thyself," and thoroughly studied his own part. Later in life, when criticis- 35 ing his great mulatto rival, Rigaud, he showed how well he knew himself. " I know Rigaud," he said, *^ he drops the 1 62 The Eulogy. bridle when he gallops, he shows his arm when he strikes. For me, I gallop also, but know where to stop : when I strike I am felt, not seen. Rigaud works only by blood and massacre. I know how to put the people in movement: but when I appear, all must he calm." ^ He said, therefore, to the envoys, " Where are your credentials ? " "We have none." " I will have nothing to do with you." They then sought Franfois and Biassou, two other slaves of strong passions, considerable intellect, and great influence over their fellow-slaves, and said, "Arm, lo assist the government, put down the English on the one hand, and the Spanish on the other;" and on the 21st of August, 1791, fifteen thousand blacks, led by Fran9ois and Biassou, supplied with arms from the arsenal of the govern- ment, appeared in the midst of the colony. It is believed 15 that Toussaint, unwilling himself to head the movement, was still desirous that it should go forward, trusting, as proved the case, that it would result in benefit to his race. He is supposed to have advised Fran9ois in his course, — saving himself for a more momentous hour. 20 This is what Edward Everett calls the Insurrection of St. Domingo. It bore for its motto on one side of its banner, " Long live the King ; " and on the other, " We claim the Old Laws." Singular mottoes for a rebellion ! In fact it was the posse coinitatus ; it was the only French army on the 25 island ; it was the only force that had a right to bear arms ; and what it undertook, it achieved. It put Blanchelande in his seat ; it put the island beneath his rule. When it was done, the blacks said to the Governor they had created, " Now, grant us one day in seven ; give us one day's labor ; 30 we will buy another, and with the two buy a third," — the favorite method of emancipation at that time. Like the Blanchelande of five years before, he refused. He said, " Disarm, disperse ! " and the blacks answered, " The right hand that has saved you, the right hand that has saved the 35 island for the Bourbons, may perchance clutch some of our Wendell Phillips. 163 own rights ; " and they stood still. [Cheering.] This is the first insurrection, if any such there were in San Domingo, — the first determined purpose on the part of the negro, having saved the government, to save himself. 5 Now let me stop a moment to remind you of one thing. I am about to open to you a chapter of bloody history, — no doubt of it. Who set the example ? Who dug up from its grave of a hundred years the hideous punishment of the wheel, and broke Oge, every bone, a living man ? Who 10 flared in the face of indignant and astonished Europe the forgotten barbarity of quartering the yet palpitating body ? Our race. And if the black man learned the lesson but too Avell, it does not lie in our lips to complain. During this whole struggle, the record is, — written, mark you, by the 15 white man, — the whole picture from the pencil of the white race, — that for one life the negro took in battle, in hot and bloody fight, the white race took, in the cool malignity of revenge, three to answer for it. Notice, also, that up to this moment the slave had taken no part in the struggle, except 20 at the bidding of the government ; and even then, not for himself, but only to sustain the laws. At this moment, then, the island stands thus : The Span- iard is on the east, triumphant ; the Englishman is on the northwest, entrenched ; the mulattoes are in the mountains, 25 waiting ; the blacks are in the valleys, victorious ; one-half the French slaveholding element is republican, the other half royalist ; the white race against the mulatto and the black; the black against both; the Frenchman against the English and Spaniard ; the Spaniard against both. It is a 30 war of races and a war of nations. At such a moment Toussaint I'Ouverture appeared. He had been born a slave on a plantation in the north of the island, — an unmixed negro, — his father stolen from Africa. If anything, therefore, that I say of him to-night 35 moves your admiration, remember, the black race claims it all, — we have no part nor lot in it. He was fifty years old 164 The Eulogy. at this time. An old negro had taught him to read. His favorite books were Epictetus, Raynal, Military Memoirs, Plutarch. In the woods he learned some of the qualities of herbs, and was village doctor. On the estate, the highest place he ever reached was that of coachman. At fifty, he 5 joined the army as physician. Before he went, he placed his master and mistress on ship-board, freighted the vessel with a cargo of sugar and coffee, and sent them to Baltimore, and never afterwards did he forget to send them, year by year, ample means of support. And I might add, that of all 10 the leading negro generals, each one saved the man under whose roof he was born, and protected the family. [Cheering.] Let me add another thing. If I stood here to-night to tell the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips of Frenchmen, who find no language rich enough to paint the 15 great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I here to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from your hearts, — you, who think no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the Father of his Country. [Applause.] I am about to tell you the story of a negro who has left 20 hardly one written line. I am to glean it from the reluctant testimony of Britons, Frenchmen, Spaniards, — men who despised him as a negro and a slave, and hated him because he had beaten them in many a battle. All the materials for his biography are from the lips of his enemies. 25 The second story told of him is this. About the time he reached the camp, the army had been subjected to two in- suits. First, their commissioners, summoned to meet the French Committee were ignominiously and insultingly dis- missed ; and when, afterwards, Fran9ois, their general, was 30 summoned to a second conference, and went to it on horseback, accompanied by two officers, a young lieutenant, who had known him as a slave, angered at seeing him in the uniform of an officer raised his riding-whip and struck him over the shoulders. If he had been the 35 savage which the negro is painted to us, he had only to Wendell Phillips. 165 breathe the insult to his t^venty-five tliousand soldiers, and they would have trodden out the Frenchman in blood. But the indignant chief rode back in silence to his tent, and it was twenty-four hours before his troops heard of this insult 5 to their general. Then the word went forth, " Death to every white man ! '" They had fifteen hundred prisoners. Ranged in front of the camp, they were about to be shot. Toussaint, who had a vein of religious fanaticism, like most great leaders, — like Mahommed, like Napoleon, like 10 Cromwell, like John Brown [cheers], — he could preach as well as fight, — mounting a hillock, and getting the ear of the crowd, exclaimed : " Brothers, this blood will not wipe out the insult to our chief ; only the blood in yonder French camp can wipe it out. To shed that is courage ; to shed 15 this is cowardice and cruelty besides ; ' ' — and he saved fifteen hundred lives. [Applause.] I cannot stop to give in detail every one of his efforts. This was in 1793. Leap with me over seven years ; come to 1800 ; what has he achieved ? He has driven the Span- 20 iard back into his own cities, conquered him there, and put the French banner over eveiy Spanish town ; and for the first time, and almost the last, the island obeys one law. He has put the mulatto under his feet. He has attacked Maitland, defeated him in pitched battles, and permitted 25 him to retreat to Jamaica ; and when the French army rose upon Laveaux, their general, and put him into chains, Toussaint defeated them, took Laveaux out of prison, and put him at the head of his own troops. The grateful French in return named him General-in-Chief. Cet ho mine fait 30 r onrerturc partout. said one, — " This man makes an open- ins evervwhere," — hence his soldiers named him L' Ouver- ture, the opening. This was the work of seven years. Let us pause a moment, and find something to measure him by. You 35 remember INIacaulay says, comparing Cromwell with Napo- leon, that Cromwell showed the greater militan,^ genius, if 1 66 The Eulogy. we consider that lie never saw an army till he was forty ; while Napoleon was educated from a boy in the best military schools in Europe. Cromwell manufactured his own army ; Napoleon at the age of twenty-seven was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. They were both sue- 5 cessful ; but, says Macaulay, with such disadvantages, the Englishman showed the greater genius. Whether you allow the inference or not, you will at least grant that it is a fair mode of measurement. Apply it to Toussaint. Cromwell never saw an army till he was forty; this man never saw a 10 soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army — out of what? Englishmen, — the best blood in Europe. Out of the middle class of Englishmen, — the best blood of the island. And with it he conquered what ? Englishmen, — their equals. This man manufactured his 15 army out of what? Out of what you call the despicable race of negroes, debased, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, one hundred thousand of them imported into the island v/ithin four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this mixed, and, as you say, 20 despicable mass, he forged a thunderbolt and hurled it at what ? At the proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him home conquered [cheers] ; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the French, and put them under his feet ; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, and they 25 skulked home to Jamaica. [Applause.] Now if Cromwell was a general, at least this man was a soldier. I know it was a small territory ; it was not as large as the continent ; but it was as large as that Attica, which, with Athens for a capital, has filled the earth with its fame for two thousand 30 years. We measure genius by quality, not by quantity. Further, — Cromwell was only a soldier ; his fame stops there. Not one line in the statute book of Britain can be traced to Cromwell ; not one step in the social life of Eng- land finds its motive power in his brain. The state he 35 founded went down with him to his grave. But this man no Wendell Phillips. 167 sooner put his hand on the helm of State, than the ship steadied with an upright keel, and he began to evince a statesmanship as marvellous as his military genius. History- says that the most statesmanlike act of Napoleon was his 5 proclamation of 1802, at the peace of Amiens, when, believ- ing that the indelible loyalty of a native-born heart is always a sufficient basis on which to found an empire, he said : " Frenchmen come home. I pardon the crimes of the last twelve years ; I blot out its parties ; I found my throne on 10 the hearts of all Frenchmen ; " — and twelve years of un- clouded success showed how wisely he judged. That was in 1802. In 1800 this negro made a proclamation; it runs thus: "Sons of St. Domingo, come home. We never meant to take your houses or your lands. The negro only 15 asked that liberty which God gave him. Your houses wait for you ; your lands are ready ; come and cultivate them ; " and from Madrid and Paris, from Baltimore and New Orleans, the emigrant planters crowded home to enjoy their estates, under the pledged word that was never broken 20 of a victorious slave. [Cheers.] Again, Carlyle has said, " The natural king is one who melts all v\-ills into his own. " At this moment he turned to his armies, — poor, ill-clad and half-starved, — - and said to them: "Go back and work on those estates you have con- 25 quered ; for an empire can be founded only on order and industry, and you can learn these virtues only there." And they went. The French Admiral, who witnessed the scene, said that in a week his army melted back into peasants. It was 1800. The world waited fifty years before, in 30 1846, Robert Peel dared to venture, as a matter of practical statesmanship, the theory of free trade. Adam Smith theo- rized, the French statesmen dreamed, but no man at the head of affairs had ever dared to risk it as a practical measure. Europe waited till 1846 before the most practical 35 intellect in the world, the English, adopted the great economic formula of unfettered trade. But in 1800 this black, with 1 68 The Eulogy. the instinct of statesmanship, said to the committee who were drafting for him a Constitution: "Put at the head of the chapter of commerce that the ports of St. Domingo are open to the trade of the world." [Cheers.] With lofty in- difference to race, superior to all envy or prejudice, Tous- 5 saint had formed this committee of eight white proprie- tors and one mulatto — not a soldier or a negro on the list, although Haytien history proves that, with the exception of Rigaud, the rarest genius has always been shown by pure negroes. 10 Again, it was 1800, at the time when England was poi- soned on every page of her statute-book with religious intolerance, when a man could not enter the House of Com- mons without taking an Episcopal communion, when every state in the Union, except Rhode Island, was full of the 15 intensest religious bigotry. This man was a negro. You say that is a superstitious blood. He was uneducated. You say that makes a man narrow-minded. He was a Catholic. Many say that is but another name for intolerance. And yet — negro, Catholic, slave — he took his place by the side 2o| of Roger Williams, and said to his committee : " Make it the first line of my Constitution that I know no difference be- tween religious beliefs." [Applause.] Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back with me to the commencement of the century, and select what 25 statesman you please. Let him be either American or European ; let him have a brain the result of six generations of culture; let him have the ripest training of university routine; let him add to it the better education of practical life ; crown his temples with the silver of seventy years ; and 30 show me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most san- guine admirer will wreathe a laurel rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this negro, — rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust a state to the blood of its sons, 35 — - anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his sta- Wendell Phillips. 169 tion by the side of Roger Williams before any Englishman or American had won the right ; and yet this is the record which the history of rival states makes up for this inspired black of St. Domingo. [ Cheers.] 5 It was 1 80 1. The Frenchmen who lingered on the island described its prosperity and order as almost incredible. You might trust a child with a bag of gold to go from Samana to Port-au-Prince without risk. Peace was in every house- hold ; the valleys laughed with fertility ; culture climbed the 10 mountains ; the commerce of the world was represented in its harbors. At this time Europe concluded the Peace of Amiens, and Napoleon took his seat on the throne of France. He glanced his eyes across the Atlantic, and, with a single stroke of his pen, reduced Cayenne and Martinique back 15 into chains. He then said to his Council, " What shall I do with St. Domingo? The slaveholders said, "Give it to us." Napoleon turned to the Abbe Gregoire, " What is your opinion ? " "I think those men would change their opinions, if they changed their skins." Colonel Vincent, who had been 20 private secretary to Toussaint, wrote a letter to Napoleon, in which he said: "Sire, leave it alone ; it is the happiest spot in your dominions ; God raised this man to govern ; races melt under his hand. He has saved you this island ; for I know of my own knowledge that, when the Republic 25 could not have lifted one finger to prevent it, George III. offered him any title and any revenue if he would hold the island under the British crown. He refused, and saved it for France." Napoleon turned away from his Council, and is said to have remarked, " I- have sixty thousand idle 30 troops; I must find them something to do." He meant to say, " I am about to seize the crown ; I dare not do it in the faces of sixty thousand republican soldiers : I must give them work at a distance to do." The gossip of Paris gives another reason for his expedition against St. Domingo. It is said 35 that the satirists of Paris had christened Toussaint, the Black Napoleon ; and Napoleon hated his black shadow. Tous- 170 The Eulogy. saint had unfortunately once addressed him a letter, " The first of the blacks to the first of the whites." He did not like the comparison. You would think it too slight a mo- tive. But let me remind you of the present Napoleon, that when the epigrammatists of Paris christened his wasteful and 5 tasteless expense at Versailles, Soulouquerie, from the name of Soulouque, the Black Emperor, he deigned to issue a specific order forbidding the use of the word. The Napo- leon blood is very sensitive. So Napoleon resolved to crush Toussaint from one motive or another, from the prompting 10 B of ambition, or dislike of this resemblance, — which was very close. If either imitated the other, it must have been the white, since the negro preceded him several years. They were very much alike, and they were very French, — French even in vanity, common to both. You remember Bonaparte's 15 vainglorious words to his soldiers at the Pyramids : " Forty centuries look down upon us." In the same mood Toussaint said to the French captain who urged him to go to France in his frigate, " Sir, your ship is not large enough to carry me." Napoleon, you know, could never bear the military 20 uniform. He hated the restraint of his rank; he loved to put on the gray coat of the Little Corporal, and wander in the camp. Toussaint also never could bear a uniform. He wore a plain coat, and often the yellow Madras handkerchief of the slaves. A French lieutenant once called him a mag- 25 got in a yellow handkerchief. Toussaint took him prisoner next day, and sent him home to his mother. Like Napoleon, he could fast many days ; could dictate to three secretaries at once ; could wear out four or five horses. Like Napoleon, no man ever divined his purpose or penetrated his plan. 30 He was only a negro, and so, in him, they called it hypocrisy. In Bonaparte we style it diplomacy. For instance, three attempts made to assassinate him all failed, from not firing at the right spot. If they thought he was in the north in a carriage, he would be in the south on horseback ; if they 35 thought he was in the city in a house, he would be in the I I Wendell Phillips. 171 field in a tent. They once riddled his carriage with bullets ; he was on horseback on the other side. The seven French- men who did it were arrested. They expected to be shot. The next day was some saint's day ; he ordered them to be 5 placed before the high altar, and, when the priest reached the prayer for forgiveness, came down from his high seat, repeated it with him, and permitted them to go unpunished. [Cheers.] He had that wit common to all great commanders, which makes its way in a camp. His soldiers getting dis- 10 heartened, he filled a large vase with powder, and, scattering six grains of rice in it, shook them up, and said : " See, there is the white, there is the black ; what are you afraid of ? " So when people came to him in great numbers for office, as it is reported they do sometimes even in Washing- 15 ton, he learned the first words of a Catholic prayer in Latin, and, repeating it, would say, " Do you understand that ? " "No, sir." " What ! want an office and not know Latin ? Go home and learn it !" Then, again, like Napoleon, — like genius always, — he 20 had confidence in his power to rule men. You remember when Bonaparte returned from Elba, and Louis XVIII. sent an army against him, Bonaparte descended from his carriage, opened his coat, offering his breast to their muskets, and saying, " Frenchmen, it is the Emperor ! " and they ranged 25 themselves behind him, his soldiers, shouting " Vive VEm- pereur f'' That was in 18 15. Twelve years before, Tous- saint, finding that four of his regiments had deserted and gone to Leclerc, drew his sword, flung it on the grass, went across the field to them, and said, " Children, can you point 30 a bayonet at me ? " The blacks fell on their knees, praying his pardon. His bitterest enemies watched him, and none of them charged him with love of money, sensuality or cruel use of power. The only instance in which his sternest critic has charged him with severity is this. During a tumult, a 35 few white proprietors who had returned, trusting his procla- mation, were killed. His nephew. General Moise, was ac- 172 The Eulogy. cused of indecision in quelling the riot. He assembled a court-martial, and, on its verdict, ordered his own nephew to be shot, sternly Roman in thus keeping his promise of pro- tection to the whites. Above the lust of gold, pure in pri- vate life, generous in the use of his power, it was against 5 such a man that Napoleon sent his army, giving to General Leclerc, the husband of his beautiful sister Pauline, thirty thousand of his best troops, with orders to reintroduce slavery. Among these soldiers came all of Toussaint's old mulatto rivals and foes. 10 Holland lent sixty ships. England promised by special message to be neutral ; and you know neutrality means sneering at freedom, and sending arms to tyrants, [Loud and long-continued applause.] England promised neutrality, and the black looked out on the whole civilized world 15 marshalled against him. America, full of slaves, of course was hostile. Only the Yankee sold him poor muskets at a very high price. [Laughter.] Mounting his horse, and riding to the eastern end of the island, Samana, he looked out on a sight such as no native had ever seen before. 20 Sixty ships of the line, crowded by the best soldiers of Europe, rounded the point. They were soldiers who had never yet met an equal, whose tread, like Caesar's, had shaken Europe, — soldiers who had scaled the pyramids, and planted the French banners on the walls of Rome. He 25 looked a moment, counted the flotilla, let the reins fall on the neck of his horse, and turning to Christophe, exclaimed : "All France is come to Hayti; they can only come to make us slaves ; and we are lost ! " He then recognized the only mistake of his life, — his confidence in Bonaparte, which had 30 led him to disband his army. Returning to the hills, he issued the only proclamation which bears his name and breathes vengeance ; " My chil- dren, France comes to make us slaves. God gave us lib- erty ; France has no right to take it away. Burn the cities, 35 destroy the harvests, tear up the roads with cannon, poison ^ Wendell Phillips. 173 the wells, show the white man the hell he comes to make; " and he was obeyed. [xA^pplause.] When the great WilHam of Orange saw Louis XIV. cover Holland w^th troops, he said, " Break down the dykes, give Holland back to ocean ;" 5 and Europe said '-Sublime!" When Alexander saw the armies of France descend upon Russia, he said, "Burn Moscow, starve back the invaders ; " and Europe said " Sublime ! " This black saw all Europe marshaUed to crush him and gave to his people the same heroic example 10 of defiance. It is true the scene grows bloodier as we proceed. But, remember, the white man fitly accompanied his infamous attempt to reduce freenieii to slavery with every bloody and cruel device that bitter and shameless hate could invent, 15 Aristocracy is always cruel. The black man met the attempt, as every such attempt should be met, with war to the hilt. In his first struggle to gain his freedom, he had been generous and merciful, saved lives and pardoned ene- mies, as the people in every age and clime have always 20 done when rising against aristocrats. Now, to save his liberty, the negro exhausted every means, seized every weapon, and turned back the hateful invaders with a vengeance as terrible as their own, though even now he refused to be cruel. 25 Leclerc sent word to Christophe that he was about to land at Cape City. Christophe said, " Toussaint is governor of the island. I will send to him for permission. If without it a French soldier sets foot on shore, I will burn the towm, and fight over its ashes." 30 Leclerc landed. Christophe took two thousand white men, women, and children, and carried them to the mountains in safety, then with his own hands set fire to the splendid palace which French architects had just finished for him, and in iox\?j hours the place was in ashes. The battle was 35 fought in its streets and the French driven back to their boats. [Cheers.] Wherever they went they were met with 174 The Eulogy. fire and sword. Once, resisting an attack, the blacks, Frenchmen born, shouted the Marseilles hymn, and the French soldiers stood still; they could not fight the Mar- seillaise. And it was not till their officers sabred them on that they advanced, and then they were beaten. Beaten in 5 the field, the French then took to lies. They issued procla- mations, saying, " We do not come to make you slaves ; this man Toussaint tells you lies. Join us, and you shall have the rights you claim." They cheated every one of his offi- cers, except Christophe and Dessalines, and his own brother 10 Pierre, and finally these also deserted him, and he was left alone. He then sent word to Leclerc, " I will submit. I could continue the struggle for years, — could prevent a single Frenchman from safely quitting your camp. But I hate bloodshed. I have fought only for the liberty of my 15 race. Guarantee that, I will submit and come in." He took the oath to be a faithful citizen ; and on the same crucifix Leclerc swore that he should be faithfully protected and that the island should be free. As the French general glanced along the line of his splendidly equipped troops, and 20 saw, opposite, Toussaint's ragged, ill-armed followers he said to him, " L'Ouverture, had you continued the war, where could you have got arms ? " ''I would have taken yours," was the Spartan reply. [Cheers.] He went down to his house in peace ; it was summer. Leclerc remembered that 25 the fever months were coming, when his army would be in hospitals, and when one motion of that royal hand would sweep his troops into the sea. He was too dangerous to be left at large. So they summoned him to attend a council ; and here is the only charge made against him, — the only 30 charge. They say he was fool enough to go. Grant it; what was the record? The white man lies shrewdly to cheat the negro. Knight errantry was truth. The foulest insult you can offer a man since the Crusades is, You He. Of Toussaint, Hermona, the Spanish general, who knew him 35 well, said, " He was the purest soul God ever put into a Wendell Phillips. 175 body. Of him history bears witness, " He never broke his word." Maitland was travelling in the depths of the woods to meet Toussaint, when he was met by a messenger, and told that he was betrayed. He went on, and met Toussaint, 5 who showed him two letters, — one from the French general, offering him any rank if he would put Maitland in his power, and the other his reply. It was, " Sir, I have promised the Englishman that he shall go back." [Cheers.] Let it stand, therefore, that the negro, trutliful as a knight of old, 10 was cheated by his lying foe. Which race has reason to be proud of such a record ? But he was not cheated. He was under espionage. Sup- pose he had refused : the government would have doubted him, — would have found some cause to arrest him. He 15 probably reasoned thus : " If I go willingly I shall be treated accordingly ; " and he went. The moment he entered the room, the officers drew their swords and told him he was prisoner; and one young lieutenant who was present says, " He was not at all surprised, but seemed very sad." They 20 put him on shipboard, and weighed anchor for France. As the island faded from his sight, he turned to the captain, and said, " You think you have rooted up the tree of liberty, but I am only a branch ; I have planted the tree so deep that all France can never root it up." [Cheers.] Arrived in Paris, 25 he was flung into jail, and Napoleon sent his secretary, Caf- fareUi, to him, supposing he had buried large treasures. He listened awhile, then replied, " Young man, it is true I have lost treasures, but they are not such as you come to seek." He was then sent to the Castle of St. Joux, to a dungeon 30 twelve feet by twenty, built wholly of stone, with a narrow window, high up on the side, looking out on the snows of Switzerland. In winter, ice covers the floor ; in summer, it is damp and wet. In this living tomb the child of the sunny tropics was left to die. From this dungeon he wrote two 35 letters to Napoleon. One of them ran thus : — " Sire, I am a French citizen, I never broke a law. By the grace of God, 176 The Eulogy. I have saved for you the best island of your reahn. Sire, of your mercy grant me justice." Napoleon never answered the letters. The commandant allowed him five francs a day for food and fuel. Napoleon heard of it, and reduced the sum to three. The luxurious 5 usurper who complained that the English government was stingy because it allowed him only six thousand dollars a month, stooped from his throne to cut down a dollar to a half, and still Toussaint did not die quick enough. This dungeon was a tomb. The story is told that, in Jo- 10 sephine's time, a young French Marquis was placed there, and the girl to whom he was betrothed went to the Empress and prayed for his release. Said Josephine to her, " Have a model of it made, and bring it to me." Josephine placed it near Napoleon. He said, " Take it away — it is horrible ! " 15 She put it on his footstool, and he kicked it from him. She held it to him for the third time, and said, " Sire in this hor- rible dungeon you have put a man to die." " Take him out," said Napoleon, and the girl saved her lover. In this tomb Toussaint was buried, but he did not die fast enough. Fi- 20 nally, the commandant was told to go into Switzerland, to carry the keys of the dungeon with him, and to stay four days ; when he returned, Toussaint was found starved to death. That imperial assassin was taken twelve years after to his prison at St. Helena, planned for a tomb, as he had 25 planned that of Toussaint, and there he whined away his dying hours in pitiful complaints of curtains and titles, of dishes and rides. God grant that when some future Plutarch shall weigh the great men of our epoch, the whites against the blacks, he do not put that whining child at St. Helena 30 into one scale and into the other the negro meeting death like a Roman, without a murmur, in the solitude of his icy dungeon ! From the moment he was betrayed, the negroes began to doubt the French, and rushed to arms. Soon every negro 35 but Maurepas deserted the French. Leclerc summoned Wendell Phillips. 177 Maurepas to his side. He came, loyally bringing with him five hundred soldiers. Leclerc spiked his epaulettes to his shoulders, shot him, and flung him into the sea. He took his five hundred soldiers on shore, shot them on the edge of 5 a pit and tumbled them in. Dessalines from the mountain saw it, and, selecting five hundred French officers from his prisons, hung them on separate trees in sight of Leclerc's camp ; and born, as I was, not far from Bunker Hill, I have yet found no reason to think he did wrong. [Cheers.] They 10 murdered Pierre Toussaint's wife at his own door and after such treatment that it was mercy when they killed her. The maddened husband, who had but a year before saved the lives of twelve hundred white men, carried his next thousand prisoners and sacrificed them on her grave. 15 The French exhausted every form of torture. The negroes were bound and thrown into the sea ; anyone who floated was shot, — others sunk with cannon-balls tied to their feet ; some smothered with sulphur fumes, — others strangled, scourged to death, gibbeted ; sixteen of Toussaint's officers 20 were chained to rocks in desert islands, — others in marshes, and left to be devoured by poisonous reptiles and insects. Rochambeau sent to Cuba for bloodhounds. When they arrived the young girls went down to the wharf, decked the hounds with ribbons and flowers, kissed their necks, and, 25 seated in the amphitheatre, the women clapped their hands to see a negro thrown to these dogs, previously starved to rage. But the negroes besieged this very city so closely that these same girls, in their misery, ate the very hounds they had welcomed. 30 Then flashed forth that defying courage and sublime en- durance which show how alike all races are when tried in the same furnace. The Roman wife, whose husband faltered when Nero ordered him to kill himself, seized the dagger, and, mortally wounding her own body, cried, " Foetus, it is 35 not hard to die." The world records it with proud tears. Just in the same spirit, when a negro colonel was ordered to 178 The Eulogy. 1 execution, and trembled, his wife seized his sword, and, giv- ing herself a death-wound, said, " Husband, death is swe^t when liberty is gone." The war went on. Napoleon sent over thirty thousand more soldiers. But disaster still followed his efforts. What 5 the sword did not devour, the fever ate up. Leclerc died. Pauline carried his body back to France. Napoleon met her at Bordeau, saying, " Sister, I gave you an army, — you bring me back ashes." Rochambeau — the Rochambeau of our history — left in command of eight thousand troops, sent 10 word to Dessalines : " When I take you, I will not shoot you like a soldier, or hang you like a white man, I will whip you to death like a slave." Dessalines chased him from battle- field to battle-field, from fort to fort, and finally shut him up in Samana. Heating cannon balls to destroy his fleet, Des- 15 salines learned that Rochambeau had begged of the British Admiral to cover his troops with the English flag, and the generous negro suffered the boaster to embark undisturbed. Some doubt the courage of the negro. Go to Hayti, and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers 20 France ever had, and ask them what they think of the negro's sword. And if that does not satisfy you, go to France, to the splendid mausoleum of the Counts of Rochambeau, and to the eight thousand graves of Frenchmen who skulked home under the English flag, and ask them. And if that does not 25 satisfy you, come home, and if it had been October, 1859, you might have come by way of quaking Virginia, and asked her what she thought of negro courage. You may also remember this, — that we Saxons were slaves about four hundred years, sold with the land, and our 3c fathers never raised a finger to end that slavery. They waited till Christianity and civilization, till commerce and the discovery of America, melted away their chains. Spar- tacus in Italy led the slaves of Rome against the Empress of the world. She murdered him and crucified them. There 35 never was a slave rebellion successful but once, and that was Wendell Phillips. 179 in St. Domingo. Every race has been, some time or other, in chains. But there never was a race that, weakened and degraded by such chattel slavery, unaided, tore off its own fetters, forged them into swords, and won its liberty on the 5 battle-field, but one, and that was the black race of St. Do- mingo. God grant that the wise vigor of our government may avert that necessity from our land, — may raise into peaceful liberty the four million committed to our care, and show under democratic institutions a statesmanship as far- 10 sighted as that of England, as brave as the negro of Hayti ! So much for the courage of the negro. Now look at his endurance. In 1805 he said to the white men, " This island is ours ; not a white foot shall touch it." Side by side with him stood the South American republics, planted by the best 15 blood of the countrymen of Lope de Vega and Cervantes. They topple over so often that you could no more daguerro- type their crumbling fragments than you could the waves of the ocean. And yet, at their side, the negro has kept his island sacredly to himself. It is said that at first, with rare 20 patriotism, the Haytien government ordered the destruction of all the sugar plantations remaining, and discouraged its culture, deeming that the temptation which lured the French back again to attempt their enslavement. Burn over New York to-night, fill up her canals, sink every ship, destroy her 25 railroads, blot out every remnant of education from her sons, let her be ignorant and penniless, with nothing but her hands to begin the world again, — how much could she do in sixty years ? And Europe, too, would lend you money, but she will not lend Hayti a dollar. Hayti, from the ruins of her colo- 30 nial dependence, is become a civilized state, the seventh nation in the catalogue of commerce with this country, infe- rior in morals and education to none of the West Indian isles. Foreign merchants trust her courts as willingly as they do our own. Thus far, she has foiled the ambition of Spain, 35 the greed of England, and the malicious statesmanship of Calhoun, Toussaint made her what she is. In this work i8o The Eulogy. there was grouped around him a score of men, mostly of pure negro blood, who ably seconded his efforts. They were able in war and skillful in civil affairs, but not, like him, re- markable for that rare mingling of high qualities which alone makes true greatness, and insures a man leadership among 5 those otherwise almost his equals. Toussaint was indispu- tably their chief. Courage, purpose, endurance, — these are the tests. He did plant a state so deep that all the world has not been able to root it up. I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to 10 empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. " No Retaliation " was his great motto and the rule of his life ; and the last words uttered to m his son in France were these : " My boy, you will one day go back to St. Domingo; forget that France murdered your 15 father." I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier and the state he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave-trade in the humblest village of his 20 dominions. You think me a fanatic to-night, for you read history not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of History will put Phocian for the Greek, and Brutus for the Roman, 25 Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Wash- ington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civil- ization, and John Brown the ripe fruit of our noonday [thunders of applause], then, dipping her pen in the sun- I light, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name 30 of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouver- ture. [Long continued applause.] COMMEMORATION OF AN HISTORICAL OCCASION. No. I shows that even the speech which is usually perfunctory, the introduction of a speaker, may itself be made memorable. No. II illustrates a brief grappling, apparently extemporaneous, but very successful, with a difficult persuasive problem, — cf. its introductory material. No. Ill exemplifies the prepared address which seeks to emphasize some of the possible significance of the occasion in question. No, IV is noteworthy, especially, for its descriptive emotional passages. I. CHARLES W. ELIOT. Heroes of the Civil War.^ Sander's Theatre, Harvard University, Memorial Day, May 30, 1896. The personal heroism of the men we commemorate here — of those who survived as well as of those who fell — had two elements which are especially affecting and worthy of remembrance. 5 In the first place, these men went through all the squalor, wretchedness and carnage of war without having any clear vision of their country's future. They did not know that victory was to crown the Union cause ; they did not know that the nation was to come out of the four years' struggle 10 delivered from slavery, united as never before, and confident as never before in its resources and its stability. One of the worst horrors in 1860-61, before the war opened, was the sickening doubt whether we really had any country. Civil war is immeasurably worse than any other war, 15 because it inevitably creates just this terrible doubt about the national future. It was not until 1864-5 that it became plain that the North would ultimately win military success ; and even then all men saw that after military success would come immense civil difficulties. The heroism of the soldiers 20 on both sides, and the pathos of their suffering and sacri- fices, are greatly heightened by their inability to forecast the future. Like all devoted souls they walked by faith, and not by sight. Most of the men whose names are written on these walls died with no shout of victory in their ears, or 5 prospect of ultimate triumph before their glazing eyes. To 1 Reprinted by permission of Charles W. Eliot and of the Century Co. from American Contributions to Civilization, p. 367. 183 184 Commemoration. console them in their mortal agony, in their supreme sacrifice, they had nothing but their own hope and faith. Secondly, the service these men rendered to their country was absolutely disinterested. No professional interest in war influenced them. No pay, or prize money, or prospect 5 of pension had the least attraction for them. They offered their services and lives to their country just for love, and out of determination that, if they could help it, the cause of freedom should take no harm. On the spur of the moment they abandoned promising civil careers, dear homes, and the 10 natural occupations of men who had received a collegiate training, for the savage destructions and butcheries of war. No mercenary motive can be attributed to any of them. This disinterestedness is essential to their heroic quality. The world has long since determined the limits of its occa- 15 sional respect for mercenary soldiers. It admires in such men only the faithful fulfilment of an immoral contract. The friends we commemorate here had in view no outward rewards near or remote. To these heroes of ours, and to all the soldiers of like 20 spirit in the Civil War, we owe debts which can never be paid except in respect, admiration and loving remembrance. We owe to them the demonstration that out of the hideous losses and horrors of war, as out of pestilences, famines, shipwrecks, conflagrations, and the blastings of the tornado, 25 noble souls can pluck glorious fruits of self-sacrifice and moral sublimity. And further, we owe them a great uplift- ing of our country in dignity, strength and security. I Phillips Brooks. 185 II. PHILLIPS BROOKS. The Fourth of July.^ Westminster Abbey ^ July 4, 1880. ["Besides preaching before the Queen at Chester Cathedral, Mr. Brooks preached at Westminster Abbey, dehvering his famous sermon, 'The Candle of the Lord.' As the Sunday fell on the Fourth of July, many felt that the Dean had given a very difficult task to an American 5 in asking him to preach on that day in such a place. The Dean himself felt some anxiety about the result. Lady Francis Baillie, a sister-in- lavp of Dean Stanley, has contributed an interesting incident in connec- tion with the occasion. After the service she slipped out into the deanery by the private door, and reached the drawing-room before any 10 of the guests who were to come in from the Abbey. She found the Dean with tears running down his face, a most extraordinary thing for him; and as soon as she appeared he burst out with expressions of the intensest admiration, saying that he had never been so moved by any sermon that he could remember, and dwelling on the wonderful taste I ^ and feeling displayed in the passage at the end. This is the passage referred to, appended to the sermon in order to commemorate the day." — Life of Phillips Brooks, A. V. G. Allen, II, 268-69.] My Friends : — May I ask you to linger while I say a few words more which shall not be unsuited to what I have 20 been saying, and which shall, for just a moment, recall to you the sacredness which this day — the Fourth of July, the anniversary of American Independence — has in the hearts of us Americans. If I dare — generously permitted as I am to stand this evening in the venerable Abbey, so full of our 25 history as well as yours — to claim that our festival shall have some sacredness for you as well as for us, my claim rests on the simple truth that to all true men the birthday of a nation must be a sacred thing. For in oui*--modern 1 Reprinted by permission of E. P. Dutton & Co. and Rev. A. V. G. Allen, from Life of Phillips Brooks, A. V. G. Allen, p. 268. 1 86 Commemoration. thought the nation is the making-place of men. Not by the traditions of its history, nor by the splendor of its corporate achievements, nor by the abstract excellence of its constitu- tion, but by its fitness to make men, to beget and educate human character, to contribute to the complete humanity, 5 the perfect man that is to be, — by this alone each nation must be judged to-day. The nations are the golden candle- sticks that hold aloft the glory of the Lord. No candlestick can be so rich or venerable that men shall honor it if it holds no candle. " Show us your man," land cries to land. 10 In such days any nation, out of the midst of which God has led another nation as He led ours out of the midst of yours, must surely watch with anxiety and prayer the peculiar development of our common humanity of which that nation is made the home, the special burning of the human candle 15 in that new candlestick ; and if she sees a hope and promise that God means to build in that land some strong and free and characteristic manhood, which shall help the world to its completeness, the mother-land will surely lose the thought and memory of whatever anguish accompanied the birth, for 20 gratitude over the gain which humanity has made, " for joy that a man is born into the world." It is for me to glorify to-night the country which I love with all my heart and soul. I may not ask your praise for anything admirable which the United States has been or 25 done. But on my country's birthday I may do something far more solemn and more worthy of the hour. I may ask for your prayers in her behalf. That on the manifold and wondrous chance which God is giving her ; on her freedom (for she is free, since the old stain of slavery was washed 30 out of her blood) ; on her unconstrained religious life ; on her passion for education and her eager search for truth ; on her zealous care of the poor man's rights and opportunities , on her quiet homes where the future generations of men are growing ; on her manufactories and her commerce ; on her 35 wide gates open to the East and to the West ; on her strange Grover Cleveland. 187 meeting of the races out of which a new race is now being born ; on her vast enterprise and illimitable hopefulness, — ■ on all these materials and machineries of manhood, on all that the life of my country must mean for humanity, I may 5 ask you to pray that the blessing of God, the Father of man, and Christ, the Son of man, may rest forever. Because you are Englishmen and I am an American ; also because here, under this high and hospitable roof of God, we are all more than Englishmen and more than Americans ; 10 because we are all men, children of God waiting for the full coming of our Father's kingdom, I ask you for that prayer. III. GROVER CLEVELAND. Influence of Universities.^ Delivered at the Sesqui-Centennial of the Signing of the Charter of the College of New Jersey (Princeton University), Oct. 22, 1896. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : — As those in different occupations and with different training each see most plainly in the same landscape view those features which 15 are the most nearly related to their several habitual environ- ments ; so, in our contemplation of an event or an occasion, each individual especially observes and appreciates, in the light his mode of thought suppHes, such of its features and incidents as are most in harmony with his mental situation. 20 To-day, while all of us warmly share the general enthu- siasm and felicitation which pervades this assemblage, I am sure its various suggestions and meanings assume a promi- nence in our respective fields of mental vision, dependent upon their relation to our experience and condition. Those 25 charged with the management and direction of the educa- ^ Reprinted by permission of Grover Cleveland. i88 Commemoration. tional advantages of this noble institution most plainly see, with well-earned satisfaction, proofs of its growth and use- fulness and its enhanced opportunities for doing good. The graduate of Princeton sees first the evidence of a greater glory and prestige that have come to his Alma Mater and 5 the added honor thence reflected upon himself, while those still within her student halls see most prominently the promise of an increased dignity which awaits their gradua- tion from Princeton University. But there are others here, not of the family of Princeton, 10 who see, with an interest not to be outdone, the signs of her triumphs on the fields of higher education, and the part she has taken during her long and glorious career in the eleva- tion and betterment of a great people. Among these I take a humble place; and as I yield to the influences of this 15 occasion, I cannot resist the train of thought which especially reminds me of the promise of national safety and the guaran- tee of the permanence of our free institutions which may and ought to radiate from the universities and colleges scattered throughout our land. 20 Obviously a government resting upon the will and uni- versal suffrage of the people has no anchorage except in the people's intelligence. While the advantages of a collegiate education are by no means necessary to good citizenship, yet the college graduate, found everywhere, cannot smother 25 his opportunities to teach his fellow-countrymen and influ- ence them for good, nor hide his talents in a napkin, without recreancy to a trust. In a nation like ours, charged with the care of numerous and widely varied interests, a spirit of conservatism and 30 toleration is absolutely essential. A collegiate training, the study of principles unvexed by distracting and misleading influences, and a correct apprehension of the theories upon which our republic is established, ought to constitute the college graduate a constant monitor, warning against popular 35 rashness and excess. I A Grover Cleveland. 189 The character of our institutions and our national self- interest require that a feeling of sincere brotherhood and a disposition to unite in mutual endeavor should pervade our people. Our scheme of government in its beginning was 5 based upon this sentiment, and its interruption has never failed and can never fail to grievously menace our national health. Who can better caution against passion and bitter- ness than those who know by thought and study their bane- ful consequences and who are themselves within the noble 10 brotherhood of higher education ? There are natural laws and economic truths which com- mand implicit obedience, and which should unalterably fix the bounds of wholesome popular discussion and the limits of political strife. The knowledge gained in our universities 1 5 and colleges would be sadly deficient if its beneficiaries were unable to recognize and point out to their fellow- citizens these truths and natural laws, and to teach the mischievous futility of their non-observance or attempted violation. The activity of our people and their restless desire to 20 gather to themselves especial benefits and advantages lead to the growth of an un confessed tendency to regard their government as the giver of private gifts, and to look upon the agencies for its administration as the distributors of official places and preferment. Those who in universit}^ or college 25 have had an opportunity to study the mission of our institu- tions, and who in the light of history have learned the danger to a people of their neglect of the patriotic care they owe the national life intrusted to their keeping, should be well fitted to constantly admonish their fellow-citizens that the usefulness 30 and beneficence of their plan of government can only be pre- served through willingness to accept in full return the peace, protection, and opportunity which it impartially bestows. Not more surely do the rules of honesty and good faith fix the standard of individual character in a community than do 35 these same rules determine the character and standing of a nation in the world of civilization. Neither the glitter of its 190 Commemoration. power, nor the tinsel of its commercial prosperity, nor the gaudy show of its people's wealth can conceal the cankering rust of national dishonesty, and cover the meanness of na- tional bad faith. A constant stream of thoughtful, educated men should come from our universities and colleges preach- 5 ing national honor and integrity, and teaching that a belief in the necessity of national obedience to the laws of God is not born of superstition. I do not forget the practical necessity of political parties, nor do I deny their desirability. I recognize wholesome dif- 10 ferences of opinion touching legitimate governmental policies, and would by no means control or limit the utmost freedom in their discussion. I have only attempted to suggest the im- portant patriotic service which our institutions of higher edu- cation, and their graduates are fitted to render to our people, 15 in the enforcement of those immutable truths and fundamen- tal principles which are related to our national condition, but should never be dragged into the field of political strife nor impressed into the service of partisan contention. When the excitement of party warfare presses dangerously 20 near our national safeguards, I would have the intelligent conservatism of our universities and colleges warn the con- testants in impressive tones against the perils of a breach im- possible to repair. When popular discontent and passion are stimulated by the 25 arts of designing partisans to a pitch perilously near to class hatred or sectional anger, I would have our universities and colleges sound the alarm in the name of American brother- hood and fraternal dependence. When the attempt is made to delude the people into the 30 belief that their suffrages can change the operation of na- tional laws, I would have our universities and colleges pro- claim that those laws are inexorable and far removed from political control. When selfish interest seeks undue private benefits through 35 governmental aid, and public places are claimed as rewards Grover Cleveland. 191 of party service, I would have our universities and colleges persuade the people to a relinquishment of the demand for party spoils and exhort them to a disinterested and patriotic love of their government for its own sake, and because in its 5 true adjustment and unperverted operation it secures to every citizen his just share of the safety and prosperity it holds in store for all. When a design is apparent to lure the people from their honest thoughts and to blind their eyes to the sad plight of o national dishonor and bad faith, I would have Princeton Uni- versity, panoplied in her patriotic traditions and glorious memories, and joined by all the other universities and col- leges of our land, cry out against the infliction of this treach-. erous and fatal wound. 5 I would have the influence of these institutions on the side of religion and moralit}^ I would have those they send out among the people not ashamed to acknowledge God, and to proclaim His interposition in the affairs of men, enjoining such obedience to His laws as makes manifest the path of :o national perpetuity and prosperity. I hasten to concede the good already accomplished by our educated men in purifying and steadying political sentiment ; but I hope I may be allowed to intimate my belief that their work in these directions would be easier and more useful if 15 it were less spasmodic and occasional. The disposition of our people is such that while they may be inclined to distrust those who only on rare occasions come among them from an exclusiveness savoring of assumed superiority, they readily listen to those who exhibit a real fellowship and a friendly 50 and habitual interest in all that concerns the common wel- fare. Such a condition of intimacy would, I believe, not only improve the general political atmosphere, but would vastly in- crease the influence of our universities and colleges in their efforts to prevent popular delusions or correct them before 35 they reach an acute and dangerous stage. I am certain, therefore, that a more constant and active 192 Commemoration. participation in political affairs on the part of our men of education would be of the greatest possible value to our country. It is exceedingly unfortunate that politics should be regarded in any quarter as an unclean thing, to be avoided 5 by those claiming to be educated or respectable. It would be strange indeed if anything related to the administration of our government or the welfare of our nation should be es- sentially degrading. I believe it is not a superstitious senti- ment that leads to the conviction that God has watched over 10 our national life from its beginning. Who will say that the things worthy of God's regard and fostering care are un- worthy of the touch of the wisest and best of men ? I would have those sent out by our universities and colleges not only the counsellors of their fellow-countrymen, but the 15 tribunes of the people — fully appreciating every condition that presses upon their daily life, sympathetic in every un- toward situation, quick and earnest in every effort to advance their happiness and welfare, and prompt and sturdy in the defence of all their rights. 20 I have but imperfectly expressed the thoughts to which I have not been able to deny utterance on an occasion so full of glad significance and, so pervaded by the atmosphere of patriotic aspiration. Born of these surroundings, the hope cannot be vain that the time is at hand when all our 25 countrymen will more deeply appreciate the blessings of American citizenship, when their disinterested love of their government will be quickened, when fanaticism and passion shall be banished from the field of politics, and when all our people, discarding every difference of condition or oppor- 30 tunity, will be seen under the banner of American brother- hood, marching steadily and unfalteringly on towards the bright heights of our national destiny. John D. Long. 193 IV. JOHN D. LONG. Oration before the Grand Army Posts of Suffolk County.^ Trcmoiit Temple, Boston, May ^o, 1882 I gratefully acknowledge your courtesy, veterans and members of the Suffolk Posts of the Grand Army, in inviting me, a civilian, to speak for you this day. I should shrink from the task, however, did I not know that in this, your 5 purpose is to honor again the Commonwealth of which I am the official representative. By recent enactment she has made the day you celebrate one of her holy days, — a day sacred to the memory of her patriot dead and to the inspiration of pa- triotism in her living. Henceforward she emblazons it upon 10 the calendar of the year with the consecrated days that have come down from the Pilgrim and the Puritan, with Christmas Day and with the birthdays of Washington and American Independence. So she commits herself afresh to the eternal foundations, which the fathers laid, of piety, education, free- 15 dom, justice, law, and love of country. The time will come indeed, and speedily, when none of you shall remain to observe it, and when the last survivor, shouldering his crutch no more, shall lie down to rest with no comrade left to shed a tear or flower upon his grave. But the service you did, the 20 sacrifice you made, the example you taught, more immortal than your crumbling dust, will forever live and illumine the world, as in the heavens, speeding so far from us that the eye sees not the vapor that enshrouds them, the stars shine only in purer and eternal glory. I can understand that, when the 25 war closed, the same disinterested and single loyalty, which compelled the true citizen to arms, made many a soldier shrink from even the appearance of farther display, either by ^ Reprinted by permission of John D. Long and Houghton, Mifflin & Co. from After Dinner and Other Speeches, p. 72. 194 Commemoration. joining your organization or by publicly engaging in the deco- ration of graves. But with the lapse of time, with the inroads on the ranks, with this statutory recognition by the Common- wealth, — a recognition not more apt in desert than in time, — Memorial Day will hereafter gather around it not 5 only the love and tears and pride of the generations of the people, but more and more, in its inner circle of tenderness, the linking memories of every comrade so long as one survives. As the dawn ushers it in, tinged already with the exquisite flush of hastening June, and sweet with the bursting fragrance i o of her roses, the wheels of time will each year roll back, and, lo ! John Andrew is at the State House, inspiring Massachu- setts with the throbbing of his own great heart ; Abraham Lincoln, wise and patient and honest and tender and true, is at the nation's helm; the North is one broad blaze ; the boys 15 in blue are marching to the front ; the fife and drum are on every breeze ; the very air is patriotism ; Phil Sheridan, forty miles away, dashes back to turn defeat to victory ; Farragut, lashed to the masthead, is steaming into Mobile harbor ; Hooker is above the clouds, — ay, now indeed forever above 20 the clouds ; Sherman marches through Georgia to the sea ; Grant has throttled Lee with the grip that never lets go ; Richmond falls ; the armies of the republic pass in that last great review at Washington ; Custer's plume is there, but Kear- ney's saddle is empty; and, now again, our veterans come 25 marching home to receive the welcome of a grateful people, and to stack in Doric Hall the tattered flags which Massa- chusetts forever hence shall wear above her heart. In memory of the dead, in honor of the living, for inspi- ration to our children, we gather to-day to deck the graves of 30 our patriots with flowers, to pledge commonwealth and town and citizen to fresh recognition of the surviving soldier, and to picture yet again the romance, the reality, the glory, the sacrifice of his service. As if it were but yesterday you recall him. He had but turned twenty. The exquisite tint 35B of youthful health was in his cheek. His pure heart shone John D. Long. 195 from frank, out-speaking eyes. His fair hair clustered from beneath his cap. He had pulled a stout oar in the college race, or walked the most graceful athlete on the village green. He had just entered on the vocation of his life. The door- 5 way of his home at this season of the year was brilliant in the dewy morn with the clambering vine and fragrant flower, as in and out he went, the beloved of mother and sisters, and the ideal of a New England youth : — " In face and shoulders like a god he was ; 10 For o'er him had the goddess breathed the charm Of youthful locks, the ruddy glow of youth, A generous gladness in his eyes : such grace As carver's hand to ivory gives, or when Silver or Parian stone in yellow gold 15 Is set. " The unreckoned influences of the great discussion of human rights had insensibly moulded him into a champion of freedom. He had passed no solitary and sleepless night watching the armor which he was to wear when dubbed next 20 day with the accolade of knighthood. But over the student's lamp or at the fire-side's blaze he had passed the nobler initiate of a heart and mind trained to a fine sense of justice and to a resolution equal to the sacrifice of life itself in behalf of right and duty. He knew nothing of the web and 25 woof of politics, but he knew instinctively the needs of his country. His ideal was Philip Sidney, not Napoleon. And when the drum beat, when the first martyr's blood sprinkled the stones of Baltimore, he took his place in the ranks and went forward. You remember his ingenuous and glowing 30 letters to his mother, written as if his pen were dipped in his very heart. How novel seemed to him the routine of service, the life of camp and march ! How eager the wish to meet the enemy and strike his first blow for the good cause ! What pride at the commotion that came and put its chevron 35 on his arm or its strap upon his shoulder ! How graphically he described his sensation in the first battle, the pallor that 196 Commemoration. he felt creeping up his face, the thrilUng along every nerve, and then the utter fearlessness when once the charge began and his blood was up! Later on, how gratefully he wrote of the days in hospital, of the opening of the box from home, of the generous distributing of delicacies that loving ones had 5 sent, and of the never-to-be-forgotten comfort of the gentle nurse whose eyes and hands seemed to bring to his bedside the summer freshness and health of the open windows of his and her New England homestead! No Amazon was she with callous half -breast ; but her whole woman's heart was 10 devoted, as were the hearts of all her sisters at the North, to lightening the hardships and pain of war. Let her praise never fail to mingle in the soldier's tribute, or her abilities be belittled in a land to whose salvation and honor she con- tributed as nobly in her service as he in his. 15 They took him prisoner. He wasted in Libby and grew gaunt and haggard with the horror of his sufferings and with pity for the greater horror of the sufferings of his com- rades who fainted and died at his side. He saw his school- mate panting with the fever of thirst, yet shot like a dog for 20 reaching across the line to drink the stagnant water a dog would have scorned. He tunnelled the earth and escaped. Hungry and weak, in terror of recapture, he followed by night the pathway of the railroad. Upon its timbers, hoar with frost, he tottered in the dark over rivers that flowed deep 25 beneath his treacherous foothold. He slept in thickets and sank in swamps. In long and painful circuits he stole around hamlets where he dared not ask for shelter. He saw the glitter of horsemen who pursued him. He knew the bloodhound was on his track. A faithful negro — good 30 Samaritan — took compassion on him, bound up his wounds, and set him on his way. He reached the line ; and, with his hand grasping at freedom, they caught and took him back to his captivity. He was exchanged at last ; and you remember, when he came home on a short furlough, how manly and war- 35 worn he had grown. But he soon returned to the ranks and John D. Long. 197 to the welcome of his comrades. They loved hun for his manliness, his high bearing, his fine sense of honor. They felt the nobility of conduct and character that breathed out from him. They recall him now alike with tears and pride. 5 In the rifle pits around Petersburg you heard his steady voice and firm command. The bullet of the sharp-shooter picked off the soldier who stood at his side and who fell dying in his arms, one last brief message whispered and faithfully sent home. It was a forlorn hope, — the charge of the brave regi- 10 ment to which he belonged, reduced now by three years' long fighting to a hundred veterans, conscious that somebody had blundered yet grimly obedient to duty. Someone who saw him then fancied that he seemed that day Hke one who forefelt the end. But there was no flinching as he charged. He had 15 just turned to give a cheer when the fatal ball struck him. There was a convulsion of the upward hand. His eyes, plead- ing and loyal, turned their last glance to the flag. His lips parted. He fell dead, and at nightfall lay with his face to the stars. Home they brought him, fairer than Adonis over whom 20 the goddess of beauty wept. They buried him in the village churchyard under the green turf. Year by year his comrades and his kin, nearer than comrades, scatter his grave with flowers. His picture hangs on the homestead walls. Children look up at it and ask to hear his story told. It was 25 twenty years ago ; and the face is so young, so boyish and fair, that you cannot believe he was the hero of twenty battles, a veteran in the wars, a leader of men, brave, cool, command- ing, great. Do you ask who he was ? He was in every reg- iment and every company. He went out from every 30 Massachusetts village. He sleeps in every Massachusetts burying ground. Recall romance, recite the names of heroes of legend and song, but there is none that is his peer. Can you think of him and not count the cost of such a precious life, not thrill with gratitude at such a sacrifice, not ask why 35 such promise, such hope, such worth, should have been cut down? I know not why it is in the providence of God that 198 Commemoration. through blood — not the sacrifice of rams and goats, but the blood of human hearts — the great gains of human freedom have had their impulse, unless it be that in the laws of growth, as in the laws of light, it is the red rays that are strongest and that first shine through and flash the dawn, foretelling the 5 pure white fire of the uprising sun. But this we do know : that, search history through, and you shall find no more heroic record of self-sacrifice, of courage, of the flower of youth giving itself to death for right and country's sake. Massachusetts will never forget the memory of these her martyrs. Their 10 lives are insensibly moulding the character of her children at school or by fireside even while the busy man of years and of affairs may almost seem to have forgotten them. With you she weeps over their turf and crowns them with the laurel wreath. Yes, why was it ? Why do we recall all this ? Because 1 5 the sacrifice is lost in the consummation, death is swallowed up in victory ; because it was not a nipped bud, but the full flower ; not a life cut off, but a life rounded and complete ; because the high ideals, the lofty purposes, the forward- looking ambition to be of service in the world were all 20 fulfilled, not defeated, in these young men. If in our pride of conquest, if in these organizations and festivals our pur- pose were simply to count our excess of victories, to glory in superiority of endurance, strength, and numbers, to echo the gladiator's roar of triumph, to rake from the dying embers 25 flashes of the stinging fires of hate, it were worse than time wasted. It was no fight of men with men. That is but brutality. It was the eternal war of right with wrong, w^hich is divine and wreathes an eternal crown of glory round the brow of the conqueror. Our foes were not worth beating if 30 the purpose were simply to beat them. But it was the chastisement of love that overthrew, not them, but the false gods they worshipped, the false principles they obeyed, and that gave to them and secured^ to us a union for the first time founded on universal freedom and equality. And so 35 it is that as sometimes a brave man perils and loses his life John D. Long. 199 that he may save tliat of a Uttle child or even of a foe, so our heroes died that all their countrymen, North and South, might live the only life worth living, — the life of free men. It would be easy to say that the late war demonstrated that 5 we are a nation of soldiers as well as of citizens, and to paint the laurels which, in case of another, we could win again on sea and land. But I prefer to say that the result is a united country, a solid South, such as it soon will be, only because at last and forever solidly identified with the education, the I o business growth, the glowing enterprise of the North, — its common people taught in common schools, its vast fields open to the stimulating immigration of the globe, its great rivers turning the wheels of peaceful and prosperous industries, — a united country that counts as nothing its ability to fight the 15 world, but as ever}-thing its ability' to lead the world in the arts of peace, secure in the consciousness rather than in the exhibition of power, and cemented not by blood, but by ideas. This is our triumph, — not that we overthrew a brave though ignorant, provincial, misguided foe, stunted by the o barbarism of slavery, but that we have forever established in fact the principle that all men are born free and equal ; have destroyed the doctrine of caste ; have proved the stability and permanence of a government of the people ; have consolidated our heterogeneous population and made ; them all of one birth and kin, so that the names of our fallen dead no longer, like those on the Lexington column, are all patronymics of pure New England stock, but, as you may now read them on the later shafts throughout the commonwealth, represent every nationality, each blending 3. in the one common destiny of the American republic. We have confirmed the policy of honesty in financial adminis- tration, of keeping good the nation's promise, and of giving its people an honest dollar. We have struck the shackles from the feet of the slave and from the soul of his master. 35 We have let loose the energies of a free people, which are turning this great domain into a hive of industry and 200 Commemoration. prosperity, girting it with bands of iron rails, and disem- boweling its mines of gold and silver and more precious ores. Best of all we have emancipated the prodigal States themselves from the swineherd's thralldom, and put rings on their hands and shoes on their feet, allowing them to justly share but never more to domineer. It was General Greene, of our neighbor Rhode Island, who a hundred years ago led South Carolina to victory in the War for Independence. It was General Lincoln, of our own Massachusetts, who received the sword of Cornwallis at Yorktown, in the same i good cause. Since then, South Carolina ahd Virginia, false to that cause, have struck their flags to the men of Rhode Island and Massachusetts who held them to their better duty. They will not repeat that mistake. Within this month, at the centennial celebration of Cowpens, it was Colonel Higginson, a representative of the Massachusetts Executive, who spoke for New England on the same plat- form with General Hampton, whose slaves, less than twenty years ago, the colonel had armed against this their master in the cause of their own liberty. And both struck the J same high note of freedom, of progress, of the new era of a higher destiny. In October next, the soldiers of the North will again encamp at Yorktown. But it will be to celebrate, not the slaughters of the Peninsular campaign, but the hundredth anniversary of the achievement of American:5 Independence. On that day, the President of the Union and the representatives of every State in it will look back over the century and pay tribute to its sacrifices and its triumphs. But with faces on which no shadow will fall, they will turn anon and look forward for centuries to come 30 upon the more glorious fraternal progress of the future, It has been said that it would be better to blot out this da} and with it every recollection of the past it commemorates I believe it is better to keep the day and to forget nothing of the past, if so on both sides we make the past a lesson fo" 35 the future, and out of its very nettle of horror and dange* John D. Long. 201 pluck the flower of safety. The mere man you fought is naught, and it is indeed better to forgive and forget him. But the victory you won over him was the victory of prin- ciple and is eternal. Proud may you be indeed to keep it 5 known that you share and transmit its glory ; that, having as soldiers saved the republic, as citizens you perpetuate it ; that you recall a youth not lost but made immortal. Proud, too, the Commonwealth of such sons ; secure in their hands alike in peace or war; her motto still, THE QUIETUDE OF 10 PEACE WITH LIBERTY BUT ELSE THE SWORD. In that Commonwealth, her very soil rich with ashes of heroes and giants, fitting it is that you should not limit the honors you bestow this day to the graves only of the recent dead, but should extend them to the dead who for two hun- 15 dred and fifty years have been, by force of their indelible impress, the real life, transcending ours, of Massachusetts. And fitting it is that I, echoing their sentiment and yours, the sentiment that never was ungenerous or narrow, should speak no word that is not liberal, no thought that is not 20 national, no hope of future good that is not as broad as our common country, or that does not embrace the happiness of every citizen, whatever his color or birth, whatever his faith or toil, whatever his section or estate. For we commemo- rate to-day not more the heroism of the past than the 25 common weal of the present, — the equality of citizenship, in honor commanding respect, in duty commanding service. As I look, veterans, upon your faces, your thinner ranks, your brows on which time is writing in plainer lines its autograph, true, indeed, I know it is that the number of the 30 survivors is fast diminishing, and that with the close of the century few will remain. But they will all still live in the works that do follow them, — in a civilization better because purified by the searching fire of war from the dross of human slavery and political inequality, and in a country 35 lifted up to a higher plane of justice, mercy and righteous- ness. They will live, too, in history, — in the history of a 202 Commemoration. patriotic people, pictured in pages more graphic than those of Plutarch or Macaulay, in the songs of poets who shall sing a nobler than Virgil's man, and an epic loftier than the Iliad. They will live, too, in these monuments of stone and bronze which we erect not more to their memory than to the 5 incitement and education of coming generations. It might be said that we are now in our monumental age. The towering obelisk at Bunker Hill, the homely pillar on Lex- ington Green, are no longer the only columns that write in granite the record of our glory. At Plymouth, the colossal 10 figure of Faith, looking out over the sea, catching from its horizon the first tints of the morning, and guarding the graves of the Pilgrims, proclaims to the world the story of the Mayflower and its precious freight of civil and religious liberty. Across the bay rises almost to comple- 15 tion the plain but solid shaft that marks the home of Miles Standish, that sturdy type of courage and independence in life and faith which has been multiplied in New England in every phase of its thought and culture. In Boston, before the State House, Webster, defender of the Constitution, and 20 Mann, the promoter of public education. Before its City Hall, Franklin, the most prolific and comprehensive brain in American history, and Quincy, a noble name in Massachu- setts for generation after generation. In its public squares, Winthrop, the Puritan founder, Sam Adams, true leader of 25 the people, and Abraham Lincoln, emancipator of the grate- ful race that kneels enfranchised at his feet. In its Public Garden, the equestrian statue of Father Washington, the figure of Charles Sumner, and the uplifted arm of Everett. And in its avenues, Hamilton, the youthful founder of our 30 national finance, and John Glover, colonel of the Marble- head regiment, whose lusty arms and oars rescued Wash- ington from Long Island. At Mount Auburn, James Otis, that flame of fire. At Lexington, Hancock and Adams. At Concord, the embattled farmer. In Hingham, in marble 35 pure as his own heroic instincts, that war governor, who in John D. Long. 203 the heart of the Massachusetts soldier can never be disasso- ciated from the sympathies and martyrdom of the service which he shared with you even to his life. And now, in Chelsea, the national flag, floating out its bright and rippling 5 cheer from the year's beginning to its end, waves over the Soldiers' Home, which has been secured by your contribu- tions, so that if haply there be one needy veteran whom the magnificent and unparalleled provisions of Massachusetts fails, as all general laws must, in some rare cases, fail to reach, 10 there he may find a shelter that shall not dishonor him. Time and your patience would fail an enumeration of the monuments which, within a few years, have dotted the State, and in whose massive handwriting the century is recording for centuries hence its story of heroism, so plain, so legible, 15 that though a new Babel should arise, and the English tongue be lost, the human heart and eye will still read it at a glance. Scarce a town is there — from Boston, with its magnificent column crowned with the statue of America, at the dedication of which even the conquered Southron came 20 to pay honor, to the humblest stone in rural villages — in which these monuments do not rise summer and winter, in snow and sun, day and night, to tell how universal was the response of Massachusetts to the call of the patriot's duty, whether it rang above the city's din or broke the quiet of the 25 farm. On city square and village green stand the graceful figures of student, clerk, mechanic, farmer, in that endeared and never-to-be-forgotten war uniform of the soldier or the sailor, their stern young faces to the front, still on guard, watching the work they wrought in the flesh, and teaching, 30 in eloquent silence, the lesson of the citizen's duty to the State. How our children will study these ! How they will search and read their names ! How quaint and antique to them will seem their arms and costumes ! How they will gather and store up in their minds the fine, insensibly 35 filtering percolation of the sentiment of valor, of loyalty, of fight for right, of resistance against wrong, just as we in- 204 Commemoration. herited all this from the Revolutionary era, so that, when some crisis shall in the future come to them, as it came to us, they will spring to the rescue, as sprang our youth in the beauty and chivalry of the consciousness of a noble descent. During the late Turco-Russian war, I passed an evening 5 in a modest home in a quiet country town. It was a wild night. The family circle sat by the open fire of a New England sitting-room. They told me of a son of that house, a young man already known in literature and art, who, full of the spirit of adventure, was at that moment, as war 10 correspondent of a great London daily, with the head of the Russian army in Bulgaria. They read me his letters, in which he interwove affectionate inquiries and memories of home with vivid descriptions of battles, of wounds, of Turkish barbarities, of desolated villages, of murdered and 15 mutilated peasants, of long marches through worse than Virginian mud, of wild bivouac in rain and tempest, of stirring incidents of the Russian camp, of the thousand shifting scenes of the theatre of a campaign, till suddenly that quiet room in which we sat was transfigured, and we, 20 snug sheltered from the storm, were apace translated over the sea into the very stir and toss of the war, our sympa- thies, our hopes, our interests, our very selves all there. And so it is with us always. Shut up within ourselves, our minds intent on nothing but the narrow limits of immediate 25 place and time, our hearts and fists closing tighter on our little own, we shrivel like dry leaves. But let the thrill of that common humanity electrify us which links together all men, all time past, present, and to come, and we spring into the upper air. When we do these honors to the deserv- 30 ing dead, when we revive not alone the fact but the ideal of their service, we strike a chord that forever binds us and the world around us with all great heroisms, with all great causes and sacrifices, with the throb of that loftier moral atmosphere which is lost only in the unison of man's immor- 35 tal soul with the soul of God the Father. ^1 DEDICATIONS. Each of these two speeches is the message of a leader : No. II shows the essentiality in facing a complicated problem in persuasion of selecting skilfully a central idea and an apt and striking illustration of it ; No. I proves that even the speech which would have been satisfac- tory had it been merely a perfunctory fulfilling of part of a formal pro- gram may be turned into something which, for its thought and its phrase, will probably last as long as the language in which it was uttered. I. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Gettysburg Address. November ig, i86j. [" Mr. David Wills, of Gettysburg, first suggested the creation of a national cemetery on the battlefield, and under Gov. Curtin's direction and cooperation he purchased the land for Pennsylvania and other States interested, and superintended the improvements. ... On Novem- 5 ber 2 Mr. Wills wrote the President a formal invitation to take part in the dedication." Edward Everett had been chosen to deliver the ora- tion. " Mr. Lincoln had a little more than two weeks in which to prepare the remarks he might intend to make. It was a time when he was ex- 10 tremelybusy, not alone with the important and complicated military af- fairs in the various armies, but also wdth the consideration of his annual message to Congress, which was to meet early in December. There was even great uncertainty whether he could take enough time from his pressing official duties to go to Gettysburg at all. . . . 15 There is no decisive record of when Mr. Lincoln wrote the first sen- tences of his proposed address. He probably followed his usual habit in such matters, using great deliberation in arranging his thoughts and molding his phrases mentally, waiting to reduce them to writing until they had taken satisfactory form. 20 There was much greater necessity for such precaution in this case, because the invitation specified that the address of dedication should only be ' a few appropriate remarks.' Brevity in speech and writing was one of Lincoln's marked characteristics ; but in this instance there existed two other motives calculated to strongly support his natural inclinations. 25 One was that Mr. Everett would be certain to make a long address ; the other, the want of opportunity even to think leisurely about what he might desire to say. All this strongly confirms the correctness of the statement made by the Hon. James Speed, in an interview printed in the ' Louisville Commercial,' in November, 1879, that the President told 30 him that * the day before he left Washington he found time to write about half of his speech.' . . . This portion of the manuscript begins with the line ' four score and 207 2o8 Dedications. seven years ago ' and ends ' It is rather for us the living,' etc. The whole of this first page — nineteen lines — is written in ink in the Presi- dent's strong, clear hand, without blot or erasure ; and the last hne is in the following form, ' It is rather for us the living to stand here,' the last three words being, like the rest, in ink. From the fact that this 5 sentence is incomplete, we may infer that at the time of writing it in Washington the remainder of the sentence was also written in ink on another piece of paper. But when, at Gettysburg on the morning of the ceremonies, Mr. Lincoln finished his manuscript, he used a lead pencil with which he crossed out the last three words of the first page, and 10 wrote above them in pencil ' we here be dedica,' at which point he took up a new half sheet of paper. . . . and on this he wrote, all in pencil, the remainder of the word and of the first draft of the address, compris- ing a total of nine lines and a half. The time occupied in this final writing was probably about an hour, for it is not likely that he left the 1 5 breakfast table before nine o'clock, and the formation of the procession began at ten. ... It was fully noon before Mr. Everett began his ad- dress, after which, for two hours he held the assembled multitude in rapt attention with his eloquent description and argument, his poUshed diction, his carefully studied and practised delivery. 20 When he had concluded, and the band had performed the Usual musical interlude. President Lincoln rose to fill the part assigned him in the program. It was entirely natural for every one to expect that this would consist of a few perfunctory words, the mere formality of official dedication. There is every probability that the assemblage regarded 25 Mr. Everett as the mouthpiece, the organ of expression of the thought and feeling of the hour, and took it for granted that Mr. Lincoln was there as a mere official figurehead, the culminating decoration, so to speak, of the elaborately planned pageant of the day. They were there- fore totally unprepared for what they heard, and could not immediately 30 realize that his words, and not those of the carefully selected orator, were to carry the concentrated thought of the occasion like a trumpet peal to farthest posterity. The newspaper records indicate that when Mr. Lincoln began to speak, he held in his hand the manuscript first draft of his address 35 which he had finished only a short time before. But it is the distinct recollection of the writer, who sat within a few feet of him, that he did not read from the written pages, though that impression was naturally left on many of his auditors. That it was not a mere mechanical read- ing is, however, more definitely confirmed by the circumstance that Mr. 40 Lincoln did not deliver the address in the exact form in which his first draft is written. Condensed from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, J. G. Nicolay, Century Magazine, XLVII, pp. 596-602.] Abraham Lincoln. 209 Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 5 that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper 10 that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world 15 will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task re- 20 maining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ; and that 25 government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 21 o Dedications. II. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON. Address at the Opening of the Atlanta Exposition.^ [" As the day for the opening of the [Atlanta] Exposition drew near the Board of Directors began preparing the programme for the opening exercises. In the discussion from day to day of the various features of this programme, the question came up as to the advisability of putting a member of the Negro race on for one of the opening addresses, since 5 the Negroes had been asked to take such a prominent part in the Expo- sition. It w^as argued further that such recognition would mark the good feeling prevaiUng between the two races. Of course there were those who were opposed to any such recognition of the rights of the Negro, but the Board of Directors, composed of men who represented lo the best and most progressive element in the South, had their way, and voted to invite a black man to speak on the opening day. . . . After the question had been canvassed for several days, the directors voted unanimously to ask me to deliver one of the opening day ad- dresses. . . . What were my feelings when this invitation came to me ? I 1 5 remembered that I had been a slave, that my early years had been spent in the lowest depths of poverty and ignorance, and that I had had little opportunity to prepare me for such a responsibihty as this. It was only a few years before that time any white man in the audience might have claimed me as his slave ; and it was easily possible that some of 20 my former owners might be present to hear me speak. I knew, too, that this was the first time in the entire history of the Negro that a member of my race had been asked to speak from the same platform with white Southern men and women on any important national occa- sion. I was asked now to speak to an audience composed of the wealth 25 and culture of the white South, the representatives of my former mas- ters. I knew, too, that while the greater part of my audience would be composed of Southern people, yet there would be present a large num- ber of Northern whites, as well as a great many men and women of my own race. 30 I was determined to say nothing that I did not feel from the bottom of my heart to be true and right. When the invitation came to me, there was not one word of intimation as to what I should say or as to 1 Reprinted by permission of Booker T. Washington from Up from Slavery. Copyright, 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co, Booker T. Washington. 211 what I should omit. In this I felt that the Board of Directors had paid a tribute to me. They knew that by one sentence I could have blasted, in a large degree, the success of the Exposition. I was also painfully conscious of the fact that, while I must be true to my own race in my 5 utterances, I had it in my power to make such an ill-timed address as would result in preventing any similar invitation being extended to a black man again for several years to come. I was equally determined to be true to the North, as well as to the best element of the white South, in what I had to say. 10 The papers. North and South, had taken up the discussion of my coming speech, and as the time for it drew near this discussion became more and more widespread. Not a few of the Southern white papers were unfriendly to the idea of my speaking. From my own race I received many suggestions as to what I ought to say. I 15 prepared myself as best I could for the address, but as the eighteenth of September drew nearer, the heavier my heart became, and the more I feared that my effort would prove a failure and a disappointment. [After reading the address to Mrs. Washington and the Tuskegee teachers] I felt somewhat relieved, since they seemed to think well of 20 what I had to say, [When] I started for Atlanta, I felt a good deal as I suppose a man feels when he is on his way to the gallows. In passing through the town of Tuskegee I met a white farmer who lived some distance out in the country. In a jesting manner this man said : ' Washington, you 25 have spoken before the Northern white people, the Negroes in the South, and to us country white people in the South ; but in Atlanta, to-morrow, you will have before you the Northern whites, the Southern whites, and the Negroes all together. I am afraid you have got your- self into a tight place '. . . . 30 In the course of the journey from Tuskegee to Atlanta both coloured and white people came to the train to point me out, and discussed with perfect freedom, in my hearing, what was going to take place the next day. Atlanta was literally packed, at the time, with people from all parts 35 of this country, and with representatives of foreign governments, as well as military and civic organizations. The afternoon papers had forecasts of the next day's proceedings in flaring headlines. All this tended to add to my burden. I did not sleep much that night. The next morn- ing, before day, I went carefully over what I intended to say. I also 40 kneeled down and asked God's blessing upon my effort. Right here perhaps I ought to add that I make it a rule never to go before an audience, on any occasion, without asking the blessing of God upon what I want to say. 2 1 2 Dedications. I always make it a rule to make especial preparation for each separate address. No two audiences are exactly alike. It is my aim to reach and talk to the heart of each individual audience, taking it into my con- fidence much as I would a person. When I am speaking to an audi- ence, I care little for how what I am saying is going to sound in 5 the newspapers, or to another audience, or to an individual. At the time, the audience before me absorbs all my sympathy, thought, and energy. . . . The procession was about three hours in reaching the Exposition grounds, and during all of this time the sun was shining down upon us 10 disagreeably hot. When we reached the grounds, the heat, together with my nervous anxiety, made me feel as if I were about ready to collapse, and to feel that my address was not going to be a success. When I entered the audience room, I found it packed with humanity from bottom to top, and there were thousands outside who could 15 not get in. . . . The room was very large, and well suited to public speaking. When I entered, there were vigorous cheers from the coloured portion of the audience, and faint cheers from some of the white people. I had been told, while I had been in Atlanta, that while many white people were going to be present to hear me speak, simply 20 out of curiosity, and that others who would be present would be in full sympathy with me, there was a still larger element of the audience which would consist of those who were going to be present for the pur- pose of hearing me make a fool of myself, or, at least, of hearing me say some foolish thing, so that they could say to the officials who had 25 invited me to speak, ' I told you so ! ' One of the trustees of the Tuskegee Institute, as well as my personal friend, Mr. William H. Baldwin, Jr. happened to be in Atlanta that day. He was so nervous about the kind of reception that I would have, and the effect that my speech would produce, that he could not per- 30 suade himself to go into the building, but walked back and forth in the grounds outside until the opening exercises were over. , . . Governor Bullock introduced me with the words, ' We have with us to-day a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization.' When I arose to speak, there was considerable cheering, especially 35 from the coloured people. As I remember it now, the thing that was uppermost in my mind was the desire to say something that would cement the friendship of the races and bring about hearty cooperation between them. So far as my outward surroundings were concerned, the only thing that I recall distinctly now is that when I got up, I saw thou- 40 sands of eyes looking intently into my face. . . . The first thing that I remember, after I had finished speaking, was that Governor Bullock rushed across the platform and took me by the Booker T. Washington. 213 hand, and that others did the same. I received so many and such hearty congratulations that I found it difficult to get out of the building. I did not appreciate to any degree, however, the impression which my address seemed to have made, until the next morning, when I went into 5 the business part of the city. As soon as I was recognized, I was sur- prised to find myself pointed out and surrounded by a crowd of men who wished to shake hands with me. This was kept up on every street on to which I went, to an extent which embarrassed me so much that I went back to my boarding-place. The next morning I returned to 10 Tuskegee, At every station in Atlanta, and at almost all of the stations at which the train stopped between that city and Tuskegee, I found a crowd of people anxious to shake hands with me. The papers in all parts of the United States published the address in full, and for months afterward there were complimentary editorial ref- i^ erences to it. Mr. Clark Howell, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, telegraphed to a New York paper, among other words, the following, ' I do not exaggerate when I say that Professor Booker T. Washing- ton's address yesterday was one of the most notable speeches, both as to character and as to the warmth of its reception, ever delivered to a 20 Southern Audience. The address was a revelation. The whole speech is a platform upon which blacks and whites can stand with full justice to each other." Condensed from Up from Slavery^ B. T. Washington, Doubleday, Page & Co., pp. 206-26.] Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Direc- 25 TORS AND Citizens. One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. I but convey to 30 you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fit- tingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. 35 It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friend- ship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom. Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will 214 Dedications. " awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Igno- rant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new Ufe we began at the top instead of at the bottom ; that a seat in Congress or the State legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill ; that the political 5 convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden. A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, " Water, water ; we die of thirst ! " The 10 answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, " Cast down your bucket where you are." A second time the signal, " Water, water ; send us water ! " ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, " Cast down your bucket where you are." And a third and fourth signal for w^ater was 15 answered, " Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunc- tion, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in 20 a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of culti- vating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I w^ould say : "Cast down your bucket Avhere you are " — cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are 25 surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this con- nection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, 30 pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are 35 to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in Booker T. Washington. 215 mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dig- nify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life ; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the 5 substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dig- nity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life w^e must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our oppor- 10 tunities. To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperit}^ of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, " Cast down your bucket where 15 you are." Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled 20 your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent represen- tation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as 25 you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be sur- 30 rounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and un- resentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to 35 their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, 21 6 Dedications. ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defence of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things 5 essential to mutual progress. There is no defence or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all. If anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encour- 10 aging, and making him the most useful and intelligent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per cent interest. These efforts will be twice blessed — " blessing him that gives and him that takes." There is no escape through law of man or God from the 15 inevitable : — The laws of changeless justice bind Oppressor with oppressed ; And close as sin and suffering joined We march to fate abreast. 20 Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward, or they will pull against you the load down- ward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the igno- rance and crime of the South, or one-third its intelligence and progress ; we shall contribute one-third to the business and 25 industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a verit- able body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic. Gentlemen of the Exposition, as we present to you our humble effort at an exhibition of our progress, you must not 30 expect overmuch. Starting thirty years ago with owner- ship here and there in a few quilts and pumpkins and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), remember the path that has led from these to the inventions and produc- tion of agricultural implements, buggies, steam-engines, 35 Booker T. Washington. 217 newspapers, books, statuary, carving, paintings, the manage- ment of drug stores and banks, has not been trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. While we take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do 5 not for a moment forget that our part in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has come to our educational life, not only from the Southern States, but especially from Northern philanthropists, who have made their gifts a constant stream of blessing and 10 encouragement. The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant 15 struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. 20 The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house. In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years has given us more hope and encouragement, and drawn us 25 so near to you of the white race, as this opportunity offered by the Exposition ; and here bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the struggles of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge that in your effort to work out the great and intricate 30 problem which God has laid at the doors of the South, you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race ; only let this be constantly in mind, that, while from representations in these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory, letters, and art, much good will 35 come, yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting 2 1 8 Dedications. out of sectional differences and racial animosities and sus- picions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of the law. This, this, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth. SPEECH OF WELCOME. CHARLES W. ELIOT. Speech of Welcome to Prince Henry of Prussia.^ Delivered at a Complimentary Dinner given to the Prince by the City of Boston, March 6, 1902, Mr. Mayor, Your Royal Highness, Governor Crane : The nation's guests — Boston's this evening — have just had some momentary gUmpses of the extemporized American cities, of the prairies and the Alleghenies, of some great 5 rivers and lakes, and of prodigious Niagara ; and so they have perhaps some vision of the large scale of our country, although they have run over not more than one-thirtieth of its area. But now they have come to little Massachusetts, lying on the extreme eastern seacoast — by comparison a 10 minute commonwealth, with a rough climate and a poor soil. It has no grand scenery to exhibit, no stately castles, chur- ches or palaces come down through centuries, such as Europe offers, and for at least two generations it has been quite unable to compete with the fertile fields of the West in 15 producing its own food supplies. What has Massachusetts to show them, or any intelligent European visitors? Only the fruitage — social, industrial and governmental — of the oldest and most prosperous democracy in the world. For two hundred and eighty years this little commonwealth 20 has been developing in freedom, with no class legisla- tion, feudal system, dominant church, or standing army to hinder or restrain it. The period of development has been long enough to show what the issues of democracy are likely to be ; and it must be interesting for cultivated men brought 25 up under another regime to observe that human nature turns ^ Reprinted by permission of Charles W. Eliot. 222 Speech of Welcome. out to be much the same thing under a democratic form of government as under the earlier forms, and that the funda- mental motives and objects of mankind remain almost un- changed amid external conditions somewhat novel. Democracy has not discovered or created a new human 5 nature ; it has only modified a little the familiar article. The domestic affections, and loyalty to tribe, clan, race or nation still rule mankind. The family motive remains supreme. It is an accepted fact that the character of each civilized 10 nation is well exhibited in its universities. Now Harvard University has been largely governed for two hundred and fifty years by a body of seven men called the Corporation. Every member of that Corporation Avhich received your royal high- ness this afternoon at Cambridge is descended from a family 15 stock which has been serviceable in Massachusetts for at least seven generations. More than one hundred years ago Washington was asked to describe all the high officers in the American army of that day who might be thought of for the chief command. He 20 gave his highest praise to Maj.-Gen. Lincoln of Massachusetts, saying of him that he was "sensible, brave and honest." There are Massachusetts Lincolns today to whom these words exactly apply. The democracy preserves and- uses sound old families; 25 it also utilizes strong blood from foreign sources. Thus, in the second governing board of Harvard University — the Overseers — a French Bonaparte, a member of the Roman Catholic church, sits beside a Scotch farmer's son, Presby- terian by birth and education, now become the leader in 30 every sense of the most famous Puritan church in Boston. The democracy also promotes human beings of remarkable natural gifts who appear as sudden outbursts of personal power, without prediction or announcement through family merit. It is the social mobility of a democracy which en- 35 ables it to give immediate place to personal merit, whether Charles W. Eliot. 223 inherited or not, and also silently to drop unserviceable de- scendants of earlier meritorious generations. Democracy, then, is only a further unfolding of multi- tudinous human nature, which is essentially stable. It does 5 not mean the abolition of leadership, or an averaged popula- tion, or a dead-level of society. Like monarchical and aris- tocratic forms of government, it means a potent influence for those who prove capable of exerting it, and a highly-diversi- fied society on many shifting levels, determined in liberty, 10 and perpetually exchanging members up and down. It means sensuous luxury for those who want it, and can afford to pay for it ; and for the wise rich it provides the fine lux- ury of promoting pubhc objects by well-considered giving. Since all the world seems tending toward this somewhat 15 formidable democracy, it is encouraging to see what the re- sult of two hundred and eighty years of democratic experience has been in this peaceful and prosperous Massachusetts. Democracy has proved here to be a safe social order — safe for the property of individuals, safe for the finer arts of 20 living, safe for diffused public happiness and well-being. We remember gratefully in this presence that a strong root of Massachusetts ' liberty and prosperity was the Ger- man Protestantism of four centuries ago, and that another and fresher root of well-being for every manufacturing peo- 25 pie, like the people of Massachusetts, has been German ap- plied science during the past fifty years. We hope as your royal highness goes homeward-bound across the restless At- lantic — type of the rough '^sea of storm-engendering lib- erty" — you may cherish a cheerful remembrance of barren 30 but rich, strenuous but peaceful, free but self-controlled Massachusetts, INAUGURALS. For the significance of the difference in length and method between the two inaugurals, see the prefatory matter to each. I. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. First Inaugural Address. March 4, t86i. [" Mr. Lincoln was simply introduced by Senator Baker, of Oregon, and delivered his inaugural address. His voice had great carrying ca- pacity, and the vast crowd heard with ease a speech of which every sentence was fraught with an importance and scrutinized with an anxi- 5 ety far beyond that of any other speech ever delivered in the United States. . . . The inaugural address was simple, earnest, and direct, un- encumbered by that rhetorical ornamentation which the American people have always admired as the highest form of eloquence. Those Northerners who had expected magniloquent periods and exaggerated ID outbursts of patriotism were disappointed, and as they listened in vain for the scream of the eagle, many grumbled at the absence of what they conceived to h& force. Yet the general feeling was of satisfaction, which grew as the address was more thoroughly studied. Mr. Lincoln showed in his inaugural his accurate appreciation of 1 5 the new situation. Owing all that he had become in the world to a few anti-slavery speeches, elevated to the presidency by votes which really meant little else than hostility to slavery, what was more natural than that he should at this moment revert to this great topic and make the old dispute the main part and real substance of his address ? But this 20 fatal error he avoided. With unerring judgment he dwelt little on that momentous issue which had only just been displaced, and took his stand fairly upon that still more momentous one which had so newly come up. He spoke for the Union ; upon that basis a united North ought to support him; upon that basis the more northern of the slave States 25 might remain loyal. As a matter of fact Union had suddenly become the real issue, but it needed at the hands of the President to be publicly and explicitly announced as such ; his recognition was essential ; he gave it on this earliest opportunity, and the announcement was the first great service of the new Republican ruler. It seems now as though 30 he could hardly have done otherwise or have fallen into the error of allying himself with bygone or false issues. It may be admitted that he could not have passed this new one by ; but the important matter was 227 228 Inaugurals. that of proportion and relation, and in this it was easy to blunder. In truth it was a crisis when blundering was so easy that nearly all the really able men of the North had been doing it badly for three or four months past, and not a few of them were going to continue it for two or three months to come. Therefore, the sound conception of the 5 inaugural deserves to be considered as an indication, one among many, of Lincoln's capacity for seeing with entire distinctness the great main fact, and for recognizing it as such. Other matters, which lay over and around such a fact, side issues, questions of detail, affairs of disguise or deception, never confused or misled him. He knew with unerring accu- 10 racy where the biggest fact lay, and he always anchored fast to it and stayed with it. For many years he had been anchored to anti-slavery ; now, in the face of the nation, he shifted his anchorage to the Union; and each time he held securely." Abraham Lincoln, John T. Morse, Jr., I, 220-228. 15 Fellow-citizens of the United States : In compliance with a custom as old as the government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly, and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President " before he enters on the execu- 20 tion of his office." I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement. Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the 25 Southern States that by the accession of a Republican ad- ministration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and 30 been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that " I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I 35 believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no in- clination to do so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many Abraham Lincoln. 229 similar declarations^ and had never recanted them. And, more than this, they placed in the platform for my accept- ance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read : 5 " Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own do- mestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essen- tial to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend, and we denounce the lawless invasion by 10 armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes." I now reiterate these sentiments; and, in doing so, I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace, 15 and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause — as cheerfully 20 to one section as to another. There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions : 25 "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regu- lation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." 30 It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves ; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution — to this provision as much as to any other. 35 To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause " shall be delivered up," their 230 Inaugurals. oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath ? There is some difference of opinion whether this clause 5 should be enforced by national or by State authority ; but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done. And should any one in any case be content that his oath shall go 10 unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept ? Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane juris- prudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not, in any 15 case, surrendered as a slave ? And might it not be well at the same time to provide by law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that " the citizen of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immu- nities of citizens in the several States " ? 20 I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations, and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules. And while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official 25 and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting to find impunity in having them held to be uncon- stitutional. It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a 30 President under our National Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have, in succession, administered the executive branch of m the government. They have conducted it through many ^\ perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this 35 scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the Abraham Lincoln. 231 brief constitutional term of four years under great and pecu- liar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted. I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the 5 Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Per- petuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express 10 provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever — it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself. Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, 15 can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it ? One party to a contract may violate it — break it, so to speak ; but does it not require all to law- fully rescind it ? Descending from these general principles, we find the 20 proposition that, in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and con- tinued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was 25 further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And, finally, in 1787 one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was " to form a more perfect Union." 30 But if the destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity. It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere 35 motion can lawfully get out of the Union ; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void ; and that acts of 232 Inaugurals. violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, accord- ing to circumstances. I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken ; and to the extent of my 5 ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part ; and I shall perform it so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, 10 shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself. In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; 15 and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts ; but be- yond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be 20 no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States, in any in- terior locality, shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among 25 the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable withal, that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices. 30 The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union. So far as possible, the people every- where shall have that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection. The course here indicated will be followed unless current events and experi- 35 ence shall show a modification or change to be proper, and in Abraham Lincoln. 233 every case and exigency my best discretion will be exercised according to circumstances actually existing, and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of the national troubles and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and affections. 5 That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events, and are glad of any pre- text to do it, I will neither affirm nor deny ; but if there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I not speak ? 10 Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it ? Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no 1 5 real existence ? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from — will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake ? All profess to be content in the Union if all constitutional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right, 20 plainly written in the Constitution, has been denied ? I think not. Happily the human mind is so constituted that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this. Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force 25 of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution — certainly would if such a right were a vital one. But such is not our case. All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured 30 to them by affirmations and negations, guarantees and pro- hibitions, in the Constitution, that controversies never arise concerning them. But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. No foresight 35 can anticipate, nor any document of reasonable length con- tain, express provisions for all possible questions. Shall ^34 Inaugurals. fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by State authority ? The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the Territories ? The Consti- tution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect sla- very in the Territories ? The Constitution does not expressly 5 say. From questions of this class spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government must cease. There is no other 10 alternative ; for continuing the government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority in such case will secede rather than acqui- esce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them ; for a minority of their own will secede from them 1 5 whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minor- ity. For instance, why may not any portion of a new con- federacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are 20 now being educated to the exact temper of doing this. Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new Union, as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed secession ? Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of 25 anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with de- liberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Una- 3° nimity is impossible ; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left. I do not forget the position, assumed by some, that con- 35 stitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court ; Abraham Lincoln. 237 seen — has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institu- tions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from 5 my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied con- stitutional law, I have no objection to its being made ex- press and irrevocable. The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the 10 people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this also if they choose ; but the executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unim- 15 paired by him, to his successor. Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ulti- mate justice of the people ? Is there any better or equal hope in the world ? In our present differences is either party with- out faith of being in the right ? If the Almighty Ruler of 20 Nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that jus- tice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people. By the frame of the government under which we live, this 25 same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief ; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can 30 very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years. My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste 35 to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time ; but no good object can be 238 Inaugurals. frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied, still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it ; while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dis- 5 satisfied hold the right si'de in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, pa- triotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty. 10 In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The govern- ment will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the 1 5 most solemn one to " preserve, protect, and defend it." I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave 20 to every living heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again " touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. II. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Second Inaugural Address. March 4, 186^. [" The ' Second Inaugural ' — a written composition, though read to 25 the citizens from the steps of the Capitol — well illustrates our words. Mr. Lincoln had to tell his countrymen that, after a four years' struggle, the war was practically ended, The four years' agony, the passion of Abraham Lincoln. 239 love which he felt for his country, his joy in her salvation, his sense of tenderness for those who fell, of pity mixed with sternness for the men who had deluged the land with blood — all the thoughts these f eehngs inspired were behind Lincoln pressing for expression. A writer of less 5 power would have been ovei-w^helmed. Lincoln remained master of the emotional and intellectual situation. In three or four hundred words that burn with the heat of their compression, he tells the history of the war and reads its lesson. No nobler thoughts were ever conceived. No man ever found words more adequate to his desire. Here is the 10 whole tale of the nation's shame and misery, of her heroic struggles to free herself therefrom, and of her victory. Had Lincoln written a hun- dred times as much more, he would not have said more fully what he desired to say. Every thought receives its complete expression, and there is no word employed which does not directly and manifestly con- 15 tribute to the development of the central thought." — The Spectator^ London, May 2, i8gi.] " I expect it," [Mr. Lincoln] said, " to wear as well as, perhaps better than, anything I have produced ; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a 20 difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told ; and as whatever of humiliation there is in it falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it." Abraham Lincoln, John T. Morse, Jr., 25 11,314-315. Fellow-Countrymen : At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a state- ment, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed 30 fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The 35 progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself ; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all 40 thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil 240 Inaugurals. war. All dreaded it — all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, de- voted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war — seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by 5 negotiation. Both parties deprecated war ; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive ; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, 10 not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a pecu- liar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insur- 15 gents would rend the Union, even by war ; while the govern- ment claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territo- rial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated 20 that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even be- fore, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astound- ing. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God ; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem 25 strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assist- ance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered — that of neither has been answered fully. 30 The Almighty has His own purposes. " Woe unto the world because of offenses ! for it must needs be that offenses come ; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those of- fenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, 35 but which, having continued through His appointed time. He Abraham Lincoln. 241 now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living 5 God always ascribe to Him ? Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of 10 blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, " The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with firm- 15 ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the na- tion's wounds ; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among 20 ourselves, and with all nations. SPEECHES OF FAREWELL, No. I exemplifies work of the speaker by practice skilled in selection of a central idea and application of it to a permanent interest of his audience, sure in phrase, and able to confine his treatment of his topic within the smallest possible limits. No. II is work of the untrained, perturbed speaker struggling to express his conflicting emotions, which in its simple honest phrasing conveys not only his message but his emotional state. John Brown. 247 II. JOHN BROWN. Last Speech at Charlestown, West Va. November 2^ 18 jg. [John Brown, after his capture during his foray on the armory at Harper's Ferry, in October, 1859, was taken to Charlestown, nearby, for trial. He was charged with conspiring with negroes to produce insurrection, with treason to the Commonwealth, and murder. During 5 the greater part of the trial, Brown lay on a cot -bed, weak, haggard, suffering from his wounds. " When the verdict was read, ' Guilty of treason, and of conspiracy and advising with slaves and others to rebel, and of murder in the first degree ' — Brown said nothing, but as on any previous day turned to adjust his pallet, and then composedly stretched 10 himself upon it. A motion for an arrest of judgment was put in, but counsel on both sides being too much exhausted to go on, Brown was removed unsentenced to prison. . . . When brought into court, the day after his conviction, to receive his sentence. Brown was taken by sur- prise at being called on to say why sentence of death should not be 15 pronounced. He had expected some further delay, and was unprepared at the moment. He rose, however, and in a singularly mild and gentle manner made his famous plea." In a letter to a friend later he said : " In the hurry of the moment I forgot much that I had before intended to say, and did not consider the full bearing of what I then said." Life 20 and Letters of John Brown, F. B. Sanborn, pp. 583-84.] I have, may it please the Court, a few words to say. In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, of a design on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that mat- 25 ter, as I did last winter when I went into Missouri, and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moving them through the country, and finally leaving them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again on a larger scale. That was all I intended to do. I never did in- 30 tend murder or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite the slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection. 248 Speeches of Farewell. I have another objection : and that is that it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly- proved — for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this 5 case — had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the power- ful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I would have in this interference, it would have been 10 all right ; and every man in this Court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. This Court acknowledges, too, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed, which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me 15 that all things whatsoever I would that men should do unto me, I should do even so unto them. It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. 20 I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised ■ poor is no wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary ^ that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my 25 children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say let it be done. Let me say one word fur- ther. I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have re- ceived on my trial. Considering all the circumstances, it 30 has been more generous than I expected. But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated from the first what was my intention, and what was not. I never had any design against the liberty of any person, nor any disposition to excite slaves to rebel or make any general insurrection. I 35 never encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged I II 1 John Brown. 249 any idea of that kind. Let me say also in regard to the statements made by some of those who were connected with me, I fear it has been stated by some of them that I have induced them to join me, but the contrary is true. I do not say this to injure them but as regretting their weakness. Not one but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part at their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with till the day they came to me, and that was for the purpose I have stated. Now, I am done. ADDRESSES FOR ACADEMIC OCCASIONS. The addresses of Phillips and Curtis may well be contrasted as un- usually fine specimens of the higher discussion and controversy which is much more common than rigid debate. In No. I the means should be examined by which a conservative audience was led to delighted acceptance of sentiments from which on second thought it shrank. WENDELL PHILLIPS. The Scholar in a Republic.^ Address at the Centeniiial Anniversary of the Phi Beta Kappa of Harvard College. June JO, 1881. [" Wendell Phillips received an invitation to deliver the Centennial Phi Beta Kappa oration in the summer of 1881. ' When I knew that Wendell Phillips was to give the Phi Beta Kappa oration at Cambridge, I was very curious to know what course he would take. I said, ' He has two opportunities, neither of which he has ever had before. He has always spoken to the people. Now he is invited to address scholars. He has an opportunity to show, that, when he chooses to do it, he can be the peer of Everett or Sumner on their own platform of high culture. He can leave behind personalities, forget for the hour his hatreds and enmities, and meet all his old opponents peacefully, in the still air of delightful studies. This is an opportunity he has never had before, and probably will never have again.' ' But there is another and different opportunity now offered him. Now, for the first and only time, he will have face to face before him the representatives of that Cambridge culture which has had little sym- pathy with his past labors. He can tell them how backward they were in the old Anti-Slavery contest, and how reluctant to take part in any later reforms. If he has been bitter before, he can be ten times as bit- ter now. He can make this the day of judgment for the sins of half a century. This opportunity, also, is unique. It will never come again. Can he resist this temptation, or not ? ' ' It never occurred to me that he would accept and use both oppor- tunities, but he did so. He gave an oration of great power and beauty, full of strong thoughts and happy illustrations, not unworthy of any uni- versity platform or academic scholar. It was nearly, though not wholly, free from personalities ; but it was also one long rebuke for the recreant scholarship of Cambridge. ' " Rev. J. F. Clarke. Quoted pp. 342-343 of G. L. Austin's Life of Wendell Phillips. ^ Reprinted by permission of Lee & Shepard from Speeches, Lecttcres and Letters, Wendell Phillips. Second Series, pp. 331-363. 253 254 Addresses for Academic Occasions. " He had never seemed more at his ease, more colloquial, more thoroughly extemporaneous, than in his address in later life before the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Cambridge ; yet it had all been sent to the Boston daily papers in advance and appeared with scarcely a word's variation, except where he had been compelled to omit some passages 5 for want of time. That was, in some respects, the most remarkable effort of his life ; it was a tardy recognition of him by his own college and his own literary society ; and he held an unwilling audience spell- bound, while bating absolutely nothing of his radicalism. Many a respectable lawyer or divine felt his blood run cold, the next day, when 10 he found that the fascinating orator whom he had applauded to the echo had really made the assassination of an emperor seem as trivial as the doom of a mosquito." Contemporaries, T. W. Higginson, p. 270.] Mr. President and Brothers of the P, B. K. : A hundred years ago our society was planted — ^^a slip from the ^5 older root in Virginia. The parent seed, tradition says, was French, — part of that conspiracy for free speech whose leaders prated democracy in the salons, while they carefully held on to the flesh-pots of society by crouching low to kings and their mistresses, and whose final object of assault was 20 Christianity itself. Voltaire gave the watchword, — " Crush the wretch." '■'■ Ecrasez Vinfame^'' No matter how much or how little truth there may be in the tradition : no matter what was the origin or what was the 25 object of our society, if it had any special one, both are long since forgotten. We stand now simply a representative of free, brave, American scholarship. I emphasize Ainerican scholarship. In one of those glowing, and as yet unequalled pictures 30 which Everett drew for us, here and elsewhere, of Revolu- tionary scenes, I reriiembef his saying, that the independence we then won, if taken in its literaland narrow sense, was of no interest and little value ; but, construed in the fulness of its real meaning, it bound us to a distinctive American char- 35 acter and purpose, to a keen sense of large responsibility, and to a generous self-devotion. It is under the shadow of Wendell Phillips. 255 such unquestioned authority that I used the term "American scholarship. " Our society was, no doubt, to some extent, a protest against the sombre theology of New England, where, a 5 hundred years ago, the atmosphere was black with sermons, and where religious speculation beat uselessly against the narrowest limits. The first generation of Puritans — though Lowell does let Cromwell call them " a small colony of pinched fanatics " — 10 included some men, indeed not a few, worthy to walk close to Roger Williams and Sir Harry Vane, the two men deepest in thought and bravest in speech of all who spoke English in their day, and equal to any in practical statesmanship. Sir Harry Vane — in my judgment the noblest human being who 15 ever walked the streets of yonder city — I do not forget Frank- lin or Sam Adams, Washington or Fayette, Garrison or John Brown. But Vane dwells an arrow's flight above them all, and his touch consecrated the continent to measureless tolera- tion of opinion and entire equality of rights. We are told we 20 can find in Plato " all the intellectual life of Europe for two thousand years: " so you can find in Vane the pure gold of two hundred and fifty years of American civilization, with no particle of its dross. Plato would have welcomed him to the Academy, and Fenelon kneeled with him at the altar. He 25 made Somers and John Marshall possible ; like Carnot, he organized victory ; and Milton pales before him in the stain- lessness of his record. He stands among English statesmen pre-eminently the representative, in practice and in theory, of serene faith in the safety of trusting truth wholly to her own 30 defence. For other men we walk backward, and throw over their memories the mantle of charity and excuse, saying rev- erently, " Remember the temptation and the age." But Vane's ermine has no stain ; no act of his needs explanation or apology ; and in thought he stands abreast of our age, — 35 like pure intellect, belongs to all time. Carlyle said, in years when his words were worth heeding, 256 Addresses for Academic Occasions. *' Young men, close your Byron, and open your Goethe." If my counsel had weight in these halls, I should say, " Young men, close your John Winthrop and Washington, your Jeffer- son and Webster, and open Sir Harry Vane." The genera- tion that knew Vane gave to our Alma Mater for a seal the 5 simple pledge, — Veritas. But the narrowness and poverty of colonial life soon starved out this element. Harvard was re-dedicated Christo et Ecdesice ; and, up to the middle of the last century, free thought in religion meant Charles Chauncy and the Brattle- 10 street Church protest, while free thought hardly existed any- where else. But a single generation changed all this. A hundred years ago there were pulpits that led the popular movement ; while outside of religion and of what called itself literature, industry and a jealous sense of personal free- 15 dom obeyed, in their rapid growth, the law of their natures. English common sense and those municipal institutions born of the common law, and which had saved and sheltered it, grew inevitably too large for the eggshell of English depen- dence, and allowed it to drop off as naturally as the chick 20 does when she is ready. There was no change of law, — nothing that could properly be called revolution, — only noise- less growth, the seed bursting into flower, infancy becoming manhood. It was life, in its omnipotence, rending whatever dead matter confined it. So have I seen the tiny weeds of 25 a luxuriant Italian spring upheave the colossal foundations of the Caesars' palace, and .leave it a mass of ruins. But when the veil was withdrawn, what stood revealed astonished the world. It showed the undreamt power, the serene strength, of simple manhood, free from the burden 30 and restraint of absurd institutions in church and state. The grandeur of this new Western constellation gave cour- age to Europe, resulting in the French Revolution, the great- est, the most unmixed, the most unstained and wholly perfect blessing Europe has had in modern times, unless we may possi- 35 bly except the Reformation, and the invention of Printing. Wendell Phillips. 257 What precise effect that giant wave had when it struck our shore we can only guess. History is, for the most part, an idle amusement, the day-dream of pedants and triflers. The details of events, the actors' motives, and their relation to 5 each other, are buried with them. How impossible to learn the exact truth of what took place yesterday under your next neighbor's roof ! Yet we complacently argue and speculate about matters a thousand miles off, and a thousand years ago, as if we knew them. When I was a student here, my 10 favorite study was history. The world and affairs have shown me that one-half of history is loose conjecture, and much of the rest is the writer's opinion. But most men see facts, not with their eyes, but with their prejudices. Any one familiar with courts will testify how rare it is for an 15 honest man to give a perfectly correct account of a transac- tion. We are tempted to see facts as we think they ought to be, or wish they were. And yet journals are the favorite original sources of history. Tremble, my good friend, if your sixpenny neighbor keeps a journal. "It adds a new terror 20 to death." You shall go down to your children not in your fair lineaments and proportions, but with the smirks, elbows, and angles he sees you with. Journals are excellent to re- cord the depth of the last snow and the date when the May- flower opens ; but when you come to men's motives and 25 characters, journals are the magnets that get near the chro- nometer of history and make all its records worthless. You can count on the fingers of your two hands all the robust minds that ever kept journals. Only milksops and fribbles indulge in that amusement, except now and then a respecta- 30 ble mediocrity. One such journal nightmares New-England annals, emptied into history by respectable middle-aged gen- tlemen, who fancy that narrowness and spleen, like poor wine, mellow into truth when they get to be a century old. But you might as well cite " The Daily Advertiser " of 1850 35 as authority on one of Garrison's actions. And, after all, of what value are these minutiae ? Whether 258 Addresses for Academic Occasions. Luther's zeal was partly kindled by lack of gain from the sale of indulgences, whether Boston rebels were half smugglers and half patriots, what matters it now? Enough that he meant to wrench the gag from Europe's lips, and that they were content to suffer keenly, that we might have an untram- 5 melled career. We can only hope to discover the great currents and massive forces which have shaped our lives : all else is trying to solve a problem of whose elements we know nothing. As the poet historian of the last generation says so plaintively, " History comes like a beggarly gleaner 10 in the field, after Death, the great lord of the domain, has gathered the harvest, and lodged it in his garner, which no man may open." But we may safely infer that French debate and experi- ence broadened and encouraged our fathers. To that we 15 undoubtedly owe, in some degree, the theoretical perfection, ingrafted on English practical sense and old forms, which marks the foundation of our republic. English civil life, up to that time, grew largely out of custom, rested almost wholly on precedent. For our model there was no authority 20 in the record, no precedent on the file ; unless you find it, perhaps, partially, in that Long Parliament bill with which Sir Harry Vane would have outgeneralled Cromwell, if the shameless soldier had not crushed it with his muskets. Standing on Saxon foundations, and inspired, perhaps, in 25 some degree, by Latin example, we have done what no race, no nation, no age, had before dared even to try. We have founded a republic on the unlimited suffrage of the millions. We have actually worked out the problem that man, as God created him, may be trusted with self-govern- 30 ment. We have shown the world that a church without a bishop, and a state without a king, is an actual, real, every- day possibility. Look back over the history of the race : where will you find a chapter that precedes us in that achievement ? Greece had her republics, but they were the 35 republics of a few freemen and subjects and many slaves; Wendell Phillips. 259 and "the battle of Marathon was fought by slaves, un- chained from the doorposts of their masters' houses." Italy had her republics : they were the republics of wealth and skill and family, limited and aristocratic. The Swiss repub- 5 lies were groups of cousins. Holland had her republic, — a republic of guilds and landholders, trusting the helm of state to property and education. And all these, which, at their best, held but a million or two within their narrow limits, have gone down in the ocean of time. 10 A hundred years ago our fathers announced this sublime, and, as it seemed then, foolhardy declaration, that God in- tended all men to be free and equal, — all men, without restriction, without qualification, without limit. A hundred years have rolled away since that venturous declaration; 15 and to-day, with a territory that joins ocean to ocean, with fifty millions of people, with two wars behind her, with the grand achievement of having grappled with the fearful dis- ease that threatened her central life, and broken four millions of fetters, the great republic, stronger than ever, launches 20 into the second century of her existence. The history of the world has no such chapter in its breadth, its depth, its sig- nificance, or its bearing on future history. What Wycliffe did for religion, Jefferson and Sam Adams did for the State, — they trusted it to the people. He gave 25 the masses the Bible, the right to think. Jefferson and Sam Adams gave them the ballot, the right to rule. His intrepid advance contemplated theirs as its natural, inevitable result. Their serene faith completed the gift which the Anglo-Saxon race makes to humanity. We have not only 30 established a new measure of the possibilities of the race : we have laid on strength, wisdom, and skill a new responsi- bility. Grant that each man's relations to God and his neighbor are exclusively his own concern, and that he is entitled to all the aid that will make him the best judge of 35 these relations ; that the people are the source of all power, and their measureless capacity the lever of all progress ; 26o Addresses for Academic Occasions. their sense of right the court of final appeal in civil affairs ; the institutions they create the only ones any power has a right to impose ; that the attempt of one class to prescribe the law, the religion, the morals, or the trade of another is both unjust and harmful, — and the Wycliffe and Jefferson 5 of history mean this if they mean anything, — then, when, in 1867, Parliament doubled the English franchise, Robert Lowe was right in affirming, amid the cheers of the House, " Now the first interest and duty of every EngHshman is to educate the masses — our masters." Then, whoever sees 10 farther than his neighbor is that neighbor's servant to hft him to such higher level. Then, power, ability, influence, char- acter, virtue, are only trusts with which to serve our time. We all agree in the duty of scholars to help those less favored in Hfe, and that this duty of scholars to educate the 15 mass is still more imperative in a republic, since a republic trusts the state wholly to the intelligence and moral sense of the people. The experience of the last forty years shows every man that law has no atom of strength, either in Boston or New Orleans, unless, and only so far as, public opinion 20 indorses it, and that your life, goods, and good name rest on the moral sense, self-respect, and law-abiding mood of the men that walk the streets, and hardly a whit on the provis- ions of the statute-book. Come, any one of you, outside of the ranks of popular men, and you will not fail to find it so. 25 Easy men dream that we live under a government of law. Absurd mistake ! we live under a government of men and newspapers. Your first attempt to stem dominant and keenly- cherished opinions will reveal this to you. But what is education ? Of course it is not book-learning. 30 Book-learning does not make five per cent of that mass of common sense that "runs " the world, transacts its business, secures its progress, trebles its power over nature, works out in the long run a rough average justice, wears away the world's restraints, and lifts off its burdens. The ideal 35 Yankee, who " has more brains in his hand than others have Wendell Phillips, 261 in their skulls," is not a scholar; and two-thirds of the in- ventions that enable France to double the world's sunshine, and make Old and New England the workshops of the world, did not come from colleges or from minds trained in 5 the schools of science, but struggled up, forcing their way against giant obstacles, from the irrepressible instinct of un- trained natural power. Her w^orkshops, not her colleges, made England, for a while, the mistress of the world ; and the hardest job her workman had was to make Oxford will- 10 ing he should work his wonders. So of moral gains. As shrewd an observer as Governor Marcy of New York often said he cared nothing for the whole press of the seaboard, representing wealth and educa- tion (he meant book-learning), if it set itself against the 15 instincts of the people. Lord Brougham, in a remarkable comment on the life of Romilly, enlarges on the fact that the great reformer of the penal law found all the legislative and all the judicial power of England, its colleges and its bar, marshalled against him, and owed his success, as all such 20 reforms do, says his lordship, to public meetings and popular instinct. It would be no exaggeration to say that govern- ment itself began in usurpation, in the feudalism of the soldier and the bigotry of the priest ; that liberty and civil- ization are only fragments of rights wrung from the strong 25 hands of wealth and book-learning. Almost all the great truths relating to society were not the result of scholarly meditation, " hiving up wisdom with each curious year," but have been first heard in the solemn protests of martyred patriotism and the loud cries of crushed and starving labor. 30 When common sense and the common people have stereo- typed a principle into a statute, then book-men come to ex- plain how it was discovered and on what ground it rests. The world makes history, and scholars write it, one half truly, and the other half as their prejudices blur and distort it. 35 New England learned more of the principles of toleration from a lyceum committee doubting the dicta of editors and 262 Addresses for Academic Occasions. bishops when they forbade it to put Theodore Parker on its platform ; more from a debate whether the anti-slavery cause should be so far countenanced as to invite one of its advocates to lecture ; from Sumner and Emerson, George William Curtis, and Edwin Whipple, refusing to speak unless 5 a negro could buy his way into their halls as freely as any other, — New England has learned more from these lessons than she has or could have done from all the treatises on free printing from Milton and Roger Williams, through Locke, down to Stuart Mill. 10 Selden, the profoundest scholar of his day, affirmed, " No man is wiser for his learning ; " and that was only an echo of the Saxon proverb, " No fool is a perfect fool until he learns Latin." Bancroft says of our fathers, that " the wild- est theories of the human reason were reduced to practice 15 by a community so humble that no statesman condescended to notice it, and a legislation without precedent was produced off-hand by the instincts of the people." And Wordsworth testifies, that, while German schools might well blush for their subserviency, — 20 " A few strong instincts and a few plain rules, Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought More for mankind at this unhappy day Than all the pride of intellect and thought." Wycliffe was, no doubt, a learned man. But the learning 25 of his day would have burned him, had it dared, as it did burn his dead body afterwards. Luther and Melanchthon were scholars, but were repudiated by the scholarship of their time, which followed Erasmus, trying " all his life to tread on eggs without breaking them ; " he who proclaimed that 30 " peaceful error was better than tempestuous truth." What would college-graduate Seward weigh, in any scale, against Lincoln bred in affairs ? Hence I do not think the greatest things have been done for the world by its book-men. Education is not the chips 35 of arithmetic and grammar, — nouns, verbs, and the multi- Wendell Phillips. 263 plication table ; neither is it that last year's almanac of dates, or series of lies agreed upon, which we so often mis- take for history. Education is not Greek and Latin and the air-pump. Still, I rate at its full value the training we get 5 in these walls. Though what we actually carry away is little enough, we do get some training of our powers, as the gymnast or the fencer does of his muscles : we go hence also with such general knowledge of what mankind has agreed to consider proved and settled, that we know where 10 to reach for the weapon when we need it. I have often thought the motto prefixed to his college library catalogue by the father of the late Professor Peirce, — Professor Peirce, the largest natural genius, the man of the deepest reach and firmest grasp and widest sympathy, that 15 God has given to Harvard in our day, — whose presence made you the loftiest peak and farthest outpost of more than mere scientific thought, — the magnet who, with his twin Agassiz, made Harvard for forty years the intellectual Mecca of forty States, — his father's catalogue bore for a motto, 20 ^^ Scire ubi aliquid invenias magna pars eruditionis est;'''' and that always seemed to me to gauge very nearly all we acquired at college, except facility in the use of our powers. Our in- fluence in the community does not really spring from supe- rior attainments, but from this thorough training of faculties, 25 and more even, perhaps, from the deference men accord to us. Gibbon says we have two educations, one from teachers, and the other we give ourselves. This last is the real and only education of the masses, — one gotten from life, from 30 affairs, from earning one's bread; necessity, the mother of invention ; responsibility, that teaches prudence, and inspires respect for right. Mark the critic out of office : how reck- less in assertion, how careless of consequences ; and then the caution, forethought, and fair play of the same man charged 35 with administration. See that young, thoughtless wife sud- denly widowed ; how wary and skilful ! what ingenuity in 264 Addresses for Academic Occasions. guarding her child and saving his rights ! Any one who studied Europe forty or fifty years ago could not but have marked the level of talk there, far below that of our masses. It was of crops and rents, markets and marriages, scandal and fun. Watch men here, and how often you listen to the keen- 5 est discussions of right and wrong, this leader's honesty, that party's justice, the fairness of this law, the impolicy of that measure ; — lofty, broad topics, training morals, widen- ing views. Niebuhr said of Italy, sixty years ago, *' No one feels himself a citizen. Not only are the people destitute of 10 hope, but they have not even wishes touching the world's affairs ; and hence all the springs of great and noble thoughts are choked up." In this sense the Fremont campaign of 1856 taught Amer- icans more than a hundred colleges; and John Brown's pul- 15 pit at Harper's Ferry was equal to any ten thousand ordinary chairs. God lifted a million of hearts to his gibbet, as the Roman cross lifted a world to itself in that divine sacrifice of two thousand years ago. As much as statesmanship had taught in our previous eighty years, that one week of intellec- 20 tual watching and weighing and dividing truth taught twenty millions of people. Yet how little, brothers, can we claim for book-men in that uprising and growth of 1856 ! And while the first of American scholars could hardly find, in the rich vocabulary of Saxon scorn, words enough to express, 25 amid the plaudits of his class, his loathing and contempt for John Brown, Europe thrilled to him as proof that our institu- tions had not lost all their native and distinctive life. She had grown tired of our parrot note and cold moonlight reflec- tion of older civilizations. Lansdowne and Brougham could 30 confess to Sumner that they had never read a page of their cotemporary, Daniel Webster; and you spoke to vacant eyes when you named Prescott, fifty years ago, to average Europeans ; while Vienna asked, with careless indifference, " Seward, who is he ? " But long before our ranks marched 35 up State Street to the John Brown song, the banks of the Wendell Phillips. 265 Seine and of the Danube hailed the new life which had given us another and nobler Washington. Lowell foresaw him when forty years ago he sang of, — " Truth forever on the scaffold, 5 Wrong forever on the throne; Yet that scaffold sways the future: And behind the dim unknown Standeth God, within the shadow, Keeping watch above his own." 10 And yet the book-men, as a class, have not yet acknowledged him. It is here that letters betray their lack of distinctive Amer- ican character. Fifty million of men God gives us to mould ; burning questions, keen debate, great interests trying to vin- 15 dicate their right to be, sad wrongs brought to the bar of public judgment, — these are the people's schools. Timid scholarship either shrinks from sharing in these agitations, or denounces them as vulgar and dangerous interference by in- competent hands with matters above them. A chronic dis- 20 trust of the people pervades the book-educated class of the North ; they shrink from that free speech which is God's normal school for educating men, throwing upon them the grave responsibility of deciding great questions, and so lift- ing them to a higher level of intellectual and moral life. 25 Trust the people — the wise and the ignorant, the good and the bad — with the gravest questions, and in the end you educate the race. At the same time you secure, not perfect institutions, not necessarily good ones, but the best institu- tions possible while human nature is the basis and the only 30 material to build with. Men are educated and the state up- lifted by allowing all — every one — to broach all their mis- takes and advocate all their errors. The community that will not protect its most ignorant and unpopular member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or 35 hateful, is only a gang of slaves ! Anacharsis went into the Archon's court of Athens, heard 266 Addresses for Academic Occasions. a case argued by the great men of that city, and saw the vote by five hundred men. Walking in the streets, some one asked him, " What do you think of Atlienian Uberty ? " "I think," said he, " wise men argue cases, and fools decide them." Just what that timid scholar, two thousand years ^ ago, said in the streets of Athens, that which calls itself scholarship here says to-day of popular agitation, — that it lets wise men argue questions and fools decide them. But that Athens where fools decided the gravest questions of poHcy and of right and wrong, where property you had lo gathered wearily to-day might be wrung from you by the caprice of the mob to-morrow, — that very Athens probably secured, for its era, the greatest amount of human happiness and nobleness ; invented art, and sounded for us the depths of philosophy. God lent to it the largest intellects, and it 15 flashes to-day the torch that gilds yet the mountain peaks of the Old World : while Egypt, the hunker conservative of an- tiquity, where nobody dared to differ from the priest or to be wiser than his grandfather ; where men pretended to be alive, though swaddled in the grave-clothes of creed and custom 20 as close as their mummies were in linen, — that Egypt is hid in the tomb it inhabited, and the intellect Athens has trained for us digs to-day those ashes to find out how buried and for- gotten hunkerism lived and acted. I knew a signal instance of this disease of scholar's 25 distrust, and the cure was as remarkable. In boyhood and early life I was honored with the friendship of Lothrop Motley. He grew up in the thin air of Boston provincialism, and pined on such weak diet. I remember sitting with him once in the State House when he was a member of our 30 Legislature. With biting words and a keen crayon he sketched the ludicrous points in the minds and persons of his fellow-members, and, tearing up the pictures, said scorn- fully, " What can become of a country with such fellows as these making its laws ? No safe investments ; your good 35 name lied away any hour, and little worth keeping if it Wendell Phillips. 267 were not." In vain I combated the folly. He went to Europe, — spent four or five years. I met him the day he landed, on his return. As if our laughing talk in the State House had that moment ended, he took my c hand with the sudden exclamation, " You were all right : I was all wrong ! It is a country worth dying for ; better still, worth living and working for, to make it ail it can be I " Europe made him one of the most American of all Ameri- cans. Some five years later, when he sounded that bugle- lo note in his letter to " The London Times," some critics who knew his early mood, but not its change, suspected there might be a taint of ambition in what they thought so sudden a conversion. I could testify that the mood was five years old : years before the slightest shadow of political expecta- 15 tion had dusked the clear mirror of his scholar life. This distrust shows itself in the growing dislike of universal suffrage, and the efforts to destroy it made of late by all our easy classes. The white South hates uni- versal suffrage ; the so-called cultivated North distrusts it. 20 Journal and college, social-science convention and the pulpit, discuss the propriety of restraining it. Timid scholars tell their dread of it. Carlyle, that bundle of sour prejudices, flouts universal suffrage with a blasphemy that almost equals its ignorance. See his v\^ords : " Democracy will prevail 25 when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ." No democracy ever claimed that the vote of ignorance and crime was as good in any sense as that of wisdom and virtue. It only asserts that crime and igno- rance have the same right to vote that virtue has. Only by 30 allowing that right, and so appealing to their sense of justice, and throwing upon them the burden of their full responsibility, can we hope ever to raise crime and igno- rance to the level of self-respect. The right to choose your governor rests on precisely the same foundation as 35 the right to choose your religion ; and no more arrogant or ignorant arraignment of all that is noble in the civil 268, Addresses for Academic Occasions. and religious Europe of the last five hundred years ever came from the triple crown on the Seven Hills than this sneer of the bigot Scotsman. Protestantism holds up its hands in holy horror, and tells us that the Pope scoops out the brains of his churchmen, saying, " I'll think for you: you need only obey." But the danger is, you meet such popes far away from the Seven Hills ; and it is sometimes difficult at first to recognize them, for they do not by any means always wear the triple crown. Evarts and his committee, appointed to inquire why the New- York City government is a failure, were not wise enough or did not dare, to point out the real cause, the tyranny of that tool of the demagogue, the corner grog-shop ; but they advised taking away the ballot from the poor citizen. But this provision would not reach the evil. Cor- 15 ruption does not so much rot the masses : it poisons Congress. Credit-Mobilier and money rings are not housed under thatched roofs : they flaunt at the Capitol. As usual in chemistry, the scum floats uppermost. The railway king disdained canvassing for voters : "It is cheaper," he said, 20 "to buy legislatures." It is not the masses who have most disgraced our political annals. I have seen many mobs between the seaboard and the Mississippi. I never saw or heard of any but well- dressed mobs, assembled and countenanced, if not always 25 led in person, by respectability and what called itself educa- tion. That unrivalled scholar, the first and greatest New England ever lent to Congress, signalled his advent by quoting the original Greek of the New Testament in support of slavery, and offering to shoulder his musket in its defence ; 30 and forty years later the last professor who went to quicken and lift the moral mood of those halls is found advising a plain, blunt, honest witness to forge and lie, that this scholarly reputation might be saved from wreck. Singular ■ comment on Landor's sneer, that there is a spice of the 35 scoundrel in most of our literary men. But no exacting i l! ii I I! I Wendell Phillips. 269 level of property qualification for a vote would have saved those stains. In those cases Judas did not come from the unlearned class. Grown gray over history, Macaulay prophesied twenty 5 years ago that soon in these States the poor, worse than another inroad of Goths and Vandals, would begin a gen- eral plunder of the rich. It is enough to say that our national funds sell as well in Europe as English consols ; and the universal-suffrage Union can borrow money as 10 cheaply as great Britain, ruled, one-half by Tories, and the other half by men not certain that they dare call themselves Whigs. Some men affected to scoff at democracy as no sound basis for national debt, doubting the payment of ours. Europe not only wonders at its rapid payment, but 15 the only taint of fraud that touches even the hem of our garment is the fraud of the capitalist cunningly adding to its burdens, and increasing unfairly the value of his bonds ; not the first hint from the people of repudiating an iota even of its unjust additions. 20 Yet the poor and the unlearned class is the one they pro- pose to punish by disfranchisement. No wonder the humbler class looks on the whole scene with alarm. They see their dearest right in peril. When the easy class conspires to steal, what wonder the humbler 25 class draws together to defend itself ? True, universal suffrage is a terrible power; and, with all the great cities brought into subjection to the dangerous classes by grog, and Congress sitting to register the decrees of capital, both sides may well dread the next move. Experience proves 30 that popular governments are the best protectors of life and property. But suppose they were not, Bancroft allows that "the fears of one class are no measure of the rights of another." Suppose that universal suffrage endangered peace and 35 threatened property. There is something more valuable than wealth, there is something more sacred than peace. 270 Addresses for Academic Occasions. As Humboldt says, '' The finest fruit earth holds up to its Maker is a man." To ripen, lift, and educate a man is the first duty. Trade, law, learning, science, and religion are only the scaffolding wherewith to build a man. Despot- ism looks down into the poor man's cradle, and knows it 5 can crush resistance and curb ill-will. Democracy sees the ballot in that baby-hand ; and selfishness bids her put integ- rity on one side of those baby footsteps and intelligence on the other, lest her own hearth be in peril. Thank God for his method of taking bonds of wealth and culture to share 10 all their blessings with the humblest soul he gives to their keeping ! The American should cherish as serene a faith as his fathers had. Instead of seeking a coward safety by battening down the hatches and putting men back into chains, he should recognize that God places him in this 15 peril that he may work out a noble security by concen- trating all moral forces to lift this weak, rotting, and danger- ous mass into sunlight and health. The fathers touched their highest level when, with stout-hearted and serene faith, they trusted God that it was safe to leave men with all the 20 rights he gave them. Let us be worthy of their blood, and save this sheet-anchor of the race, — universal suffrage, — God's church, God's school, God's method of gently binding I men into commonwealths in order that they may at last melt into brothers. 25 I urge on college-bred men, that, as a class, they fail in republican duty when they allow others to lead in the agita- tion of the great social questions which stir and educate the age. Agitation is an old word with a new meaning. Sir Robert Peel, the first English leader who felt himself its tool, 30 defined it to be " marshalling the conscience of a nation to mould its laws." Its means are reason and argument, — no appeal to arms. Wait patiently for the growth of public opinion. That secured, then every step taken is taken for- ever. An abuse once removed never re-appears in history. 35 The freer a nation becomes, the more utterly democratic in I Wendell Phillips. 271 its form, the more need of this outside agitation. Parties and sects laden with the burden of securing their own success cannot afford to risk new ideas. " Predominant opinions," said Disraeh, " are the opinions of a class that is 5 vanishing." The agitator must stand outside of organiza- tions, with no bread to earn, no candidate to elect, no party to save, no object but truth, — to tear a question open and riddle it with light. In all modern constitutional governments, agitation is the 10 only peaceful method of progress. Wilberforce and Clark- son, Rowland Hill and Romilly, Cobden and John Bright, Garrison and O'Connell, have been the master spirits in this new form of crusade. Rarely in this country have scholarly men joined, as a class, in these great popular schools, in 15 these social movements which make the great interests of society " crash and jostle against each other like frigates in a storm." It is not so much that the people need us, or will feel any lack from our absence. They can do without us. By sov- 20 ereign and superabundant - strength they can crush their way through all obstacles. *' They will march prospering, — not through our presence ; Songs will inspirit them, — not from our lyre ; Deeds will be done — while we boast our quiescence; 2c Still bidding crouch whom the rest bid aspire." The misfortune is, we lose a God-given opportunity cf making the change an unmixed good, or with the slightest possible share of evil, and are recreant beside to a special duty. These " agitations " are the opportunities and the 30 means God offers us to refine the taste, mould the character, lift the purpose, and educate the moral sense of the masses, on whose intelligence and self-respect rests the state. God furnishes these texts. He gathers for us this audience, and only asks of our coward lips to preach the sermons. 35 There have been four or five of these great opportunities, 272 Addresses for Academic Occasions. The crusade against slavery — that grand hypocrisy which poisoned the national life of two generations — was one, — a conflict between two civilizations which threatened to rend the Union. Almost every element among us was stirred to take a part in the battle. Every great issue, civil and moral, e was involved, — toleration of opinion, limits of authority, relation of citizen to law, place of the Bible, priest and lay- man, sphere of woman, question of race, state rights and nationality ; and Channing testified that free speech and free printing owed their preservation to the struggle. But 10 the pulpit flung the Bible at the reformer ; law visited him with its penalties ; society spewed him out of its mouth ; bishops expurgated the pictures of their Common Prayer books ; and editors omitted pages in republishing English history; even Pierpont emasculated his Class-book; Ban- 15 croft remodelled his chapters ; and Everett carried Washing- ton through thirty States, remembering to forget the brave words the wise Virginian had left on record warning his countrymen of this evil. Amid this battle of the giants, scholarship sat dumb for thirty years until imminent deadly 20 peril convulsed it into action, and colleges, in their despair, gave to the army that help they had refused to the market- place and the rostrum. There was here and there an exception. That earth- quake scholar at Concord, whose serene word, like a whisper 25 among the avalanches, topples down superstitions and preju- dices, was at his post, and, with half a score of others, made the exception that proved the rule. Pulpits, just so far as they could not boast of culture, and nestled closest down among the masses, were infinitely braver than the " spires 30 and antique towers " of stately collegiate institutions. Then came reform of penal legislation, — the effort to make law mean justice, and substitute for its barbarism Christianity and civilization. In Massachusetts Rantoul represents Beccaria and Livingston, Mackintosh and ;^( Romilly. I doubt if he ever had one word of encourage- Wendell Phillips. 273 ment from Massachusetts letters ; and, with a single excep- tion, I have never seen, till within a dozen years, one that could be called a scholar active in moving the Legislature to reform its code. 5 " The London Times " proclaimed, twenty years ago, that intemperance produced more idleness, crime, disease, want, and misery than all other causes put together ; and, " The Westminster Review " calls it a " curse that far eclipses every other calamity under which we suffer." Gladstone, 10 speaking as Prime Minister, admitted that " greater calami- ties are inflicted on mankind by intemperance than by the three great historical scourges, — war, pestilence, and famine." De Quincey says, " The most remarkable instance of a combined movement in society which history, perhaps, 15 will be summoned to notice, is that which, in our day, has applied itself to the abatement of intemperance. Two vast movements are hurrying into action by velocities continually accelerated, — the great revolutionary movement irom. political causes concurring with the gx^2X physical movement in loco- 20 motion and social intercourse from the gigantic power of steam. At the opening of such a crisis', had no third move- ment arisen of resistance to intemperate habits^ there would have been ground of despondency as to the melioration of the human race." These are English testimonies, where the 25 state rests more than half on bayonets. Here we are trying to rest the ballot-box on a drunken people. " We can rule a great city," said Sir Robert Peel, " America cannot ; " and he cited the mobs of New York as sufficient proof of his assertion. 30 Thoughtful men see that up to this hour the government of great cities has been with us a failure ; that worse than the dry-rot of legislative corruption, than the rancor of party spirit, than Southern barbarism, than even the tyranny of incorporated wealth, is the giant burden of intemperance, 35 making universal suffrage a failure and a curse in every great city. Scholars who play statesmen, and editors who 274 Addresses for Academic Occasions. 1 masquerade as scholars, can waste much excellent anxiety that clerks shall get no office until they know the exact date of Caesar's assassination, as well as the latitude of Pekin, and the Rule of Three. But while this crusade — the temper- ance movement — has been, for sixty years, gathering its 5 facts and marshalling its arguments, rallying parties, besieg- ing legislatures and putting great States on the witness-stand as evidence of the soundness of its methods, scholars have given it nothing but a sneer. But if universal suffrage ever fails here for a time, — permanently it cannot fail, — it will 10 not be incapable civil service, nor an ambitious soldier, nor Southern vandals, nor venal legislatures, nor the greed of wealth, nor boy statesmen rotten before they are ripe, that will put universal suffrage into eclipse : it will be rum intrenched ■ in great cities and commanding every vantage ground. 15 Social science affirms that woman's place in society marks the level of civilization. From its twilight in Greece, through the Italian worship of the Virgin, the dreams of chivalry, the justice of the civil law, and the equality of French society, we trace her gradual recognition ; while our common law, as 20 Lord Brougham confessed, was, with relation to women, the opprobrium of the age and of Christianity. For forty years, plain men and women, working noiselessly, have washed away that opprobrium ; the statute-books of thirty States have been remodelled, and woman stands to-day almost face 25 to face with her last claim, — the ballot. It has been a weary and thankless, though successful, struggle. But if there be any refuge from that ghastly curse, the vice of great cities, — before which social science stands palsied and dumb, — it is in this more equal recognition of woman. If, 30 in this critical battle for universal suffrage, — our fathers' noblest legacy to us, and the greatest trust God leaves in our hands, — there be any weapon, which, once taken from the armory, will make victory certain, it will be, as it has been in art, literature, and society, summoning woman info the polit- ^$ ical arena, Wendell Phillips. 275 But, at any rate, up to this point, putting suffrage aside, there can be no difference of opinion : ever}^'thing born of Christianity, or allied to Grecian culture or Saxon law, must rejoice in the gain. The literary class, until half a dozen 5 years, has taken note of this great uprising only to fling every obstacle in its way. The first glimpse we get of Saxon blood in history is that line of Tacitus in his " Germany," which reads, " In all grave matters they consult their women." Years hence, when robust Saxon sense has flung away Jewish 10 superstition and Eastern prejudice, and put under its foot fastidious scholarship and squeamish fashion, some second Tacitus, from the valley of the Mississippi, will answer to him of the Seven Hills, " In all grave questions we consult our women." 15 I used to think that then we could say to letters as Henry of Navarre wrote to the Sir Philip Sidney of his realm, Cril- lon, " the bravest of the brave," " We have conquered at Arques, et tu ?iy etais pas, Crinoii'' — " You were not there, my Crillon." But a second thought reminds me that what 20 claims to be literature has been always present in that bat- tle-field, and always in the ranks of the foe. Ireland is another touchstone which reveals to us how ab- surdly we masquerade in democratic trappings while we have gone to seed in tory distrust of the people ; false to 25 every duty, which, as eldest-born of democratic institutions, we owe to the oppressed, and careless of the lesson every such movement may be made in keeping public thought clear, keen, and fresh as to principles which are the essence of our civilization, the groundwork of all education in re- 30 publics. Sydney Smith said. " The moment Ireland is mentioned the English seem to bid adieu to common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots." " As long as the patient will suffer, the cruel will kick. . . . 35 If the Irish go on -withholding and forbearing, and hesitating whether this is the time for discussion or that is the time, 2/6 Addresses for Academic Occasions. they will be laughed at another century as fools, and kicked ^ for another century as slaves." Byron called England's ^ union with Ireland "the union of the shark with his prey."-/^ Bentham's conclusion, from a survey of five hundred years of European history, was, " Only by making the ruling ^ few uneasy can the oppressed many obtain a particle of i relief." Edmund Burke — Burke, the noblest figure in the ParHamentary history of the last hundred years, greater than Cicero in the senate and almost Plato in the academy — •■ _ Burke affirmed, a century ago, "Ireland has learnt at last that lo- justice is to be had from England, only when demanded at y the sword's point." And a century later, only last year ^^ Gladstone himself proclaimed in a public address in Scot-'"^ land, " England never concedes anything to Ireland except j;^ ^ when moved to do so by fear." 15 When we remember these admissions, we ought to clap our hands at every fresh Irish " outrage," as a parrot-press styles it ; aware that it is only a far-off echo of the musket-shots that rattled against the Old State House on the 5th of March, 1770, and of the war-whoop that made the tiny spire 20 of the Old South tremble when Boston rioters emptied the three India tea-ships into the sea, — welcome evidence of living force and rare intelligence in the victim, and a sign that the day of deliverance draws each hour nearer. Cease ringing endless changes of eulog}'' on the men who made 25 North's Boston port-bill a failure while every leading journal sends daily over the water wishes for the success of Glad- stone's copy of the bill for Ireland. If all rightful govern- ment rests on consent, — if, as the French say, you " can do almost anything with a bayonet except sit on it," — be at 30 least consistent, and denounce the man who covers Ireland with regiments to hold up a despotism, which, within twenty months, he has confessed rests wholly upon fear. Then note the scorn and disgust with which we gather up our garments about us and disown the Sam Adams and 35 William Prescott, the George Washington and John Brown, Wendell Phillips. 277 of St. Petersburg, the spiritual descendants, the hving repre- sentatives, of those who make our histor\^ worth anything in the world's annals, — the Nihilists. Nihilism is the righteous and honorable resistance of a 5 people crushed under an iron rule. Nihilism is evidence of life. When "order reigns in Warsaw,'' it is spiritual death. Nihilism is the last weapon of victims choked and manacled beyond all other resistance. It is crushed humanit}^'s only means of making the oppressor tremble. God means that 10 unjust power shall be insecure ; and ever}- move of the giant, prostrate in chains, whether it be to lift a single dagger or stir a cit}-"s revolt, is a lesson in justice. One might well tremble for the future of the race if such a despotism could exist without provoking the bloodiest resistance. I honor 15 Nihilism ; since it redeems human nature from the suspicion of being utterly vile, made up only of heartless oppressors and contented slaves. Every line in our histor)-, every in- terest of civilization, bids us rejoice when the t}Tant grows pale and the slave rebellious. We cannot but pit}^ the suf- 20 fering of any human being. howeA-er richly deserved ; but such pit}' must not confuse our moral sense. Humanity gains. Chatham rejoiced when our fathers rebelled. For ever}' single reason they alleged. Russia counts a hundred, each one ten times bitterer than any Hancock or Adams 25 could give. Sam Johnson's standing toast in Oxford port was, " Success to the first insurrection of slaves in Jamaica," a sentiment Southey echoed. •■ Eschew cant," said that old moralist. But of all the cants that are canted in this canting world, though the cant of piet}^ may be the worst, the cant of ;in Americans bewailing Russian Nihilism is the most disgust- ing, I know what reform needs, and all it needs, in a land where discussion is free, the press untrammelled, and where pubHc halls protect debate. There, as Emerson says, " What the 35 tender and poetic youth dreams to-day, and conjures up with inarticulate speech, is to-morrow the vociferated result of pub- 278 Addresses for Academic Occasions. lie opinion, and the day after is the charter of nations." Lie- ber said, in 1870, " Bismarck proclaims to-day in the Diet the very principles for which we were hunted and exiled fifty years ago." Submit to risk your daily bread, expect social ostracism, count on a mob now and then, " be in earnest, 5 don't equivocate, don't excuse, don't retreat a single inch," and you will finally be heard. No matter how long and weary the waiting, at last, — " Ever the truth comes uppermost, And ever is justice done. 10 For Humanity sweeps onward : Where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas With the silver in his hands ; " Far in front the cross stands ready, 15 And the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday In silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes Into History's golden urn." 20 In such a land he is doubly and trebly guilty, who, except in some most extreme case, disturbs the sober rule of law and order. But such is not Russia. In Russia there is no press, no debate, no explanation of what government does, no remon- 25 strance allowed, no agitation of public issues. Dead silence, like that which reigns at the summit of Mont Blanc, freezes the whole empire, long ago described as " a despotism tem- pered by assassination." Meanwhile, such despotism has unsettled the brains of the ruling family, as unbridled power 30 doubtless made some of the twelve Caesars insane : a madman, sporting with the lives and comfort of a hundred million of men. The young girl whispers in her mother's ear, under a ceiled roof, her pity for a brother knouted and dragged half dead into exile for his opinions. The next week she is 35 stripped naked, and flogged to death in the public square. I Wendell Phillips. 279 No inquiry, no explanation, no trial, no protest, one dead uniform silence, the law of the tyrant. Where is there ground for any hope of peaceful change ? Where the ful- crum upon which you can plant any possible lever ? 5 Macchiavelli's sorry picture of poor human nature would be fulsome flattery if men could keep still under such oppression. No, no ! in such a land dynamite and the dagger are the necessary and proper substitutes for Faneuil Hall and " The Daily Advertiser." Anything that will make the madman ro quake in his bedchamber, and rouse his victims into reckless and desperate resistance. This is the only view an American, the child of 1620 and 1776, can take of Nihilism. Any other unsettles and perplexes the ethics of our civilization. Born within sight of Bunker Hill, in a commonwealth which 15 adopts the motto of Algernon Sidney, sub liberiate quietem ( " accept no peace without liberty " ), — son of Harvard, whose first pledge was " Truth," citizen of a republic based on the claim that no government is rightful unless resting on the consent of the people, aad w^hich assumes to lead in as- 20 serting the rights of humanity, — I at least can say nothing else and nothing less, — no, not if every tile on Cambridge roofs were a devil hooting my words ! 1 shall bow to any rebuke from those who hold Christianity to command entire non-resistance. But criticism from any 25 other quarter is only that nauseous hypocrisy, which, stung by threepenny tea-tax, piles Bunker Hill with granite and statues, prating all the time of patriotism and broadswords, while, like another Pecksniff, it recommends a century of dumb submission and entire non-resistance to the Russians, 30 who, for a hundred years, have seen their sons by thousands dragged to death or exile, no one knows which, in this w^orse than Venetian mystery of police, and their maidens flogged to death in the market-place, and who share the same fate if they presume to ask the reason why. 35 "It is unfortunate, " says Jefferson, " that the efforts of mankind to secure the freedom of which they have been de- 28o Addresses for Academic Occasions. prived should be accompanied with violence and even with crime. But while we weep over the means, we must pray for the end." Pray fearlessly for such ends : there is no risk 1 ** Men are all tories by nature," says Arnold, " when toler- ably well off : only monstrous injustice and atrocious cruelty 5 can rouse them." Some talk of the rashness of the unedu- cated classes. Alas ! ignorance is far oftener obstinate than rash. Against one French Revolution — that scarecrow of the ages — weigh Asia, " carved in stone," and a thousand years of Europe, with her half-dozen nations meted out and 10 trodden down to be the dull and contented footstools of priests and kings. The customs of a thousand years ago are the sheet-anchor of the passing generation, so deeply buried, so fixed, that the most violent efforts of the maddest fanatic can drag it but a hand's-breadth. 1 5 Before the war Americans were like the crowd in that ter- rible hall of Eblis which Beckford painted for us, — each man with his hand pressed on the incurable sore in his bosom, and pledged not to speak of it : compared with other lands, we were intellectually and morally a nation of cowards. 20 When I first entered the Roman States, a custom-house of- ficial seized all. my French books. In vain I held up to him a treatise by Fenelon, and explained that it was by a Catholic ■ archbishop of Cambray. Gruffly he answered, " It makes no difference : it is French.'''' As I surrendered the volume 25 to his remorseless grasp, I could not but honor the nation which had made its revolutionary purpose so definite that des- potism feared its very language. I only wished that injustice and despotism everywhere might one day have as good cause to hate and to fear everything American. 30 At last that disgraceful seal of slave complicity is broken. Let us inaugurate a new departure, recognize that we are afloat on the current of Niagara, — eternal vigilance the condition of our safety, — that we are irrevocably pledged to the world not to go back to bolts and bars, — could not if 35 we would, and would not if we could. Never again be ours I Wendell Phillips. 281 the fastidious scholarship that shrinks from rude contact with the masses. Very pleasant it is to sit high up in the world's theatre and criticise the ungraceful struggles of the gladi- ators, shrug one's shoulders at the actors' harsh cries, and 5 let every one know that but for "this villainous salt- petre you would yourself have been a soldier." But Bacon says, " In the theatre of man's life, God and his angels only should be lookers-on." " Sin is not taken out of man as Eve was out of Adam, by putting him to sleep." " Very beauti- 10 ful," says Richter, " is the eagle when he floats with out- stretched wings aloft in the clear blue ; but sublime when he plunges down through the tempest to his eyry on the cliff, where his unfledged young ones dwell and are starving." Accept proudly the analysis of Fisher Ames : " A monarchy 1 5 is a man-of-war, stanch, iron-ribbed, and resistless when under full sail ; yet a single hidden rock sends her to the bottom. Our republic is a raft, hard to steer, and your feet always wet ; but nothing can sink her." If the Alps, piled in cold and silence, be the emblem of despotism, we joyfully take the 20 ever-restless ocean for ours, — only pure because never still. Journalism must have more self-respect. Now it praises good and bad men so indiscriminately that a good word from nine-tenths of our journals is worthless. In burying our Aaron Burrs, both political parties — in order to get the 25 credit of magnanimity — exhaust the vocabulary of eulogy so thoroughly that there is nothing left with which to distinguish our John Jays. The love of a good name in life and a fair reputation to survive us — that strong bond to well-doing — is lost where every career, however stained, is covered with the 30 same fulsome flattery, and where what men say in the streets is the exact opposite of what they say to each other. De mor- tuis nil nisi bonum most men translate, " Speak only good of the dead." I prefer to construe it, " Of the dead say nothing unless you can tell something good." And if the sin and 35 the recreancy have been marked and far-reaching in their evil, even the charity of silence is not permissible. 282 Addresses for Academic Occasions. To be as good as our fathers we must be better. They silenced their fears and subdued their prejudices, inaugu- rating free speech and equality with no precedent on the file. Europe shouted "Madmen ! " and gave us forty years for the shipwreck. With serene faith they persevered. Let 5 us rise to their level. Crush appetite and prohibit tempta- tion if it rots great cities. Intrench labor in sufficient bul- warks against that wealth, which, without the tenfold strength of modern incorporation, wrecked the Grecian and Roman States ; and, with a sterner effort still, summon women into 10 civil life as re-enforcement to our laboring ranks in the effort ■ to make our civilization a success. | Sit not, like the figure on our silver coin, looking ever backward. " New occasions teach new duties ; 15 Time makes ancient good uncouth ; They must upward still, and onward, Who would keep abreast of Truth. Lo ! before us gleam her camp-fires I We ourselves must Pilgrims be, 20 Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly Through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal With the Past's blood-rusted key." II. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. The Leadership of Educated Men.^ Delivered before the Alumni of Browni University, Providence, June 20^ 1882. [This oration is, in a way, a reply to the Phi Beta Kappa address of Wendell Phillips. " The subject with which it deals, the place of the educated man in public affairs, was a particularly congenial one to Mr. ^ Reprinted, by permission, from the Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis : Copyright, 1893, hy Messrs. Harper and Brothers. George William Curtis. 283 Curtis, as it has been to other men who have thought deeply over the problems of our democracy. In 1856, in an address which Mr. Curtis delivered before the literary societies of Wesleyan University, his first platform oration of any note, he chose for his topic ' The Duty of the 5 American Scholar to PoUtics and the Times.' A year later, in 1857, when he spoke to the graduating class of Union College on ' Patriot- ism ' he took as his theme this question : ' How can you, as educated young Americans, best serve the great cause of human development to which all nationalities are subservient ? ' Again, twenty years after this, 10 in another address before the students of Union College, he had for his subject 'The PubHc Duty of Educated Men.'" American Oratory, R. C. Ringwalt, p. 256. H. Holt & Co.] There is a modern English picture which the genius of Hawthorne might have inspired. The painter calls it, 15 "How they met themselves." A man and a woman, hag- gard and weary, wandering lost in a somber wood, suddenly meet the shadowy figures of a youth and a maid. Some mysterious fascination fixes the gaze and stills the hearts of the wanderers, and their amazement deepens into awe as 20 they gradually recognize themselves as once they were ; the soft bloom of youth upon their rounded cheeks, the dewy light of hope in their trusting eyes, exulting confidence in their springing step, themselves blithe and radiant with the glory of the dawn. To-day, and here, we meet ourselves. 25 Not to these familiar scenes alone — yonder college-green with its reverend traditions ; the halcyon cove of the See- konk, upon which the memory of Roger Williams broods like a bird of calm ; the historic bay, beating forever with the muffled oars of Barton and of Abraham Whipple ; here, 30 the humming city of the living ; there, the peaceful city of the dead ; — not to these only or chiefly do we return, but to ourselves as we once were. It is not the smiling freshmen X)f the year, it is your own beardless and unwrinkled faces, that are looking from the windows of University Hall and of 35 Hope College. Under the trees upon the hill it is yourselves whom you see walking, full of hopes and dreams, glowing with conscious power, and "nourishing a youth sublime"; 284 Addresses for Academic Occasions. and in this familiar temple, which surely has never echoed with eloquence so fervid and inspiring as that of your com- mencement orations, it is not yonder youths in the galleries who, as they fondly believe, are whispering to yonder maids ; it is your younger selves who, in the days that are no more, 5 are murmuring to the fairest mothers and grandmothers of those maids. Happy the worn and weary man and woman in the picture could they have felt their older eyes still glistening with that earlier light, and their hearts yet beating with undiminished 10 sympathy and aspiration. Happy we, brethren, whatever may have been achieved, whatever left undone, if, returning to the home of our earlier years, we bring with us the illimit- able hope, the unchilled resolution, the inextinguishable faith of youth. 15 It was as scholars that you were here ; it is to the feeling and life of scholars that you return. I mean the scholar not as a specialist or deeply proficient student, not like Darwin, a conqueror greater than Alexander, who extended the em- pire of human knowledge ; nor like Emerson, whose serene 20 wisdom, a planet in the cloudless heaven, lighted the path of his age to larger spiritual liberty ; nor like Longfellow, sweet singer of our national spring-time, whose scholarship decorated his pure and limpid song as flowers are mirrored in a placid stream — not as scholars like these, but as edu- 25 cated men, to whom the dignity and honor and renown of the educated class are precious, however remote from study your lives may have been, you return to the annual festival of letters. ''Neither years nor books," says Emerson, speak- ing of his own college days, " have yet availed to extirpate a 30 prejudice then rooted in me that a scholar is the favorite of heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men." But every educated man is aware of a profound popular distrust of the courage and sagacity of the educated class. 35 Franklin and Lincoln are good enough for us, exclaims this George William Curtis. 285 jealous skepticism ; as if Franklin and Lincoln did not labo- riously repair by vigorous study the want 'of early opportu- nity. The scholar appealing to experience is proudly told to close his books, for what has America to do with expe- 5 rience ? as if books were not the ever-burning lamps of ac- cumulated wisdom. When Voltaire was insulted by the London mob, he turned at his door and complimented them upon the nobleness of their national character, their glorious constitution, and their love of liberty. The London mob 10 did not feel the sarcasm. But when I hear that America may scorn experience because she is a law to herself, I re- member that a few years ago a foreign observer came to the city of Washington, and said: "I did not fully comprehend your greatness until I saw your Congress. Then I felt that 15 if you could stand that you could stand anything, and I understood the saying that God takes care of children, drunken men, and the TJnited States." The scholar is denounced as a coward. Humanity falls among thieves, we are told, and the college Levite, the edu- 20 cated Pharisee, pass by on the other side. Slavery under- mines the Republic, but the clergy in America are the educated class, and the Church makes itself the bulwark of slavery. Strong drink slays its tens of thousands, but the educated class leaves the gospel of temperance to be preached 25 by the ignorant and the enthusiast, as the English Establish- ment left the preaching of regeneration to Methodist itiner- ants in fields and barns. Vast questions cast their shadows upon the future : the just relations of capital and labor ; the distribution of land ; the towering power of corporate 30 wealth ; reform in administrative methods ; but the educated class, says the critic, instead of advancing to deal with them promptly, wisely, and courageously, and settling them as morning dissipates the night, without a shock, leaves them to be kindled to fury by demagogues, lifts a panic cry of 35 communism, and sinks paralyzed with terror. It is the old accusation. Erasmus was the great pioneer of modern 286 Addresses for Academic Occasions. scholarship. But in the fierce contest of the Reformation Luther denounced him as a time-server and a coward. With the same feeUng, Theodore Parker, the spiritual child of Luther, asked of Goethe, '' Tell me, what did he ever do for the cause of man ? " and when nothing remained for his 5 country but the dread alternative of sbvery or civil vv'ar, Parker exclaimed sadly of the class to which he belonged, " If our educated men had done their duty, we should not now be in the ghastly condition w^e bewail." Gentlemen, we belong to the accused class. Its honor 10 and dignity are very precious to us. Is this humiliating ar- raignment true ? Does the educated class of America espe- cially deserve this condemnation of political recreancy and moral cowardice ? Faithless scholars, laggard colleges, big- goted pulpits, there maybe; signal instances you may find 15 of feebleness and pusillanimity. This has been always true. Leigh Hunt said, *' I thought that my Horace and Demos- thenes gave me a right to sit at table with any man, and I think so still." But when DeQuincey met Dr. Parr, who knew Horace and Demosthenes better than any man of his time, 20 he described him as a lisping scandal-monger, retailing 1 gossip fit only for washerwomen to hear. During the earth- i quake of the great civil war in England, Sir Thomas Browne | sat tranquilly in scholarly seclusion, polishing the conceits of the ''Urn Burial," and modulating the long-drawn music 25 of the " Religio Medici." Looking at Browne and Parr, at Erasmus and Goethe, is it strange that scholars are impa- tiently derided as useless pedants or literary voluptuaries, and that the whole educated class is denounced as feeble and impracticable ? 30 But remember what Coleridge said to Washington Alston, "Never judge a work of art by its defects." The proper comment to make upon recreant scholars is that of Brum- mell's valet upon the tumbled cambric in his hands, '^ These are our failures." Luther, impatient of the milder spirit of 35 Erasmus and Colet and Sir Thomas More, might well have 1 I George William Curtis. 287 called them our failures, because he was of their class, and while they counseled moderation, his fiery and impetuous soul sought to seize triple-crowned error and drag it from its throne. But Luther was no less a scholar, and stands 5 equally with them for the scholarly class and the heroism of educated men. Even Erasmus said of him with friendly wit, " He has hit the Pope on the crown and the monks on the belly." If the cowled scholars of the Church rejected him, and universities under their control renounced and con- 10 demned him, yet Luther is justified in saying, as he sweeps his hand across them and speaks for himself and for the scholars who stood with him, " These are not our represen- tatives ; these are our failures." So on our side of the sea the educated body of Puritan 15 Massachusetts Bay, the clergy and the magistrates, drove Roger Williams from their borders — Roger Williams, also a scholar and a clergyman, and, with John Milton, the bright consummate flower of Puritanism. But shall not he stand for the scholar rather than Cotton Mather, torturing terrified 20 old women to death as witches ! I appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober — from the scholarship that silenced Mrs. Hutchinson and hung Mary Dyer and pressed Giles Corey to death, to the scholarship that argued with George Fox and founded a political commonwealth upon soul liberty. A year 25 ago I sat with my brethren of the Phi Beta Kappa at Cam- bridge, and seemed to catch echoes of Edmund Burke's resounding impeachment of Warren Hastings in the spark- ling denunciation of the timidity of American scholarship. Under the spell of Burke's burning words Hastings half 30 believed himself to be the villain he heard described. But the scholarly audience of the scholarly orator of the Phi Beta Kappa, with an exquisite sense of relief, felt every count of his stinging indictment recoil upon himself. He was the glowing refutation of his own argument. Gentleman, scholar, 35 orator — his is the courage that never quailed; his the white plume of Navarre that flashed meteor-like in the front of 288 Addresses for Academic Occasions. battle ; his the Amphion music of an eloquence that leveled the more than Theban walls of American slavery. At once judge, culprit, and accuser, in the noble record of his own life he and his class are triumphantly acquitted. Must we count such illustrations as exceptions ? But how 5 can we do so when we see that the Reformaticfn, the mental and moral new birth of Christendom, was the work of the educated class ? Follow the movement of liberty in detail, and still the story is the same. The great political contest in England, inspired by the Reformation, was directed by ic University men. John Pym in the Commons, John Hamp- den in the field, John Milton in the Cabinet — three Johns, and all of them well-beloved disciples of liberty — with the grim Oliver himself, purging England of royal despotism, and avenging the slaughtered saints on Alpine mountains 15 cold, were all of them children of Oxford and Cambridge. In the next century, like a dawn lurid but bright, the French Revolution broke upon the world. But the only hope of a wise direction of the elemental forces that upheaved France vanished when the educated leadership lost control, and 20 Marat became the genius and the type of the Revolution. Ireland also bears witness. As it^ apostle and tutelary saint was a scholar, so its long despair of justice has found its voice and its hand among educated Irishmen. Swift and Molyneux, and Flood and Grattan and O'Connell, Duffy, and 25 the young enthusiasts around Thomas Davis who sang of an Erin that never was and dreamed of an Ireland that cannot I be, were men of the colleges and the schools, whose long persistence of tongue and pen fostered the life of their coun- try and gained for her all that she has won. For modern 30 Italy, let Silvio Pellico and Foresti and Maroncelli answer. It was Italian education which Austria sought to smother, and it was not less Cavour than Garibaldi who gave consti- tutional liberty to Italy. When Germany sank at Jena un- der the heel of Napoleon, and Stein — whom Napoleon 35 hated, but could not appall — asked if national life survived, George William Curtis. .289 the answer rang from the universities, and from them mod- ern Germany came forth. With prophetic impulse Theodore Koerner called his poems " The Lyre and the Sword," for, like the love which changed the sea-nymph into the harp, 5 the fervent patriotism of the educated youth of Germany turned the poet's lyre into the soldier's victorious sword. In the splendor of our American day let us remember and honor our brethren, first in every council, dead upon every field of freedom from the Volga to the Rhine, from John 10 o' Groat's to the Adriatic, who have steadily drawn Europe from out the night of despotism, and have vindicated for the educated class the leadership of modern civilization. Here in America, where as yet there are no ruins save those of ancient wrongs, undoubtedly New England has 1 5 inspired and molded our national life. But if New England has led the Union, what has led New England ? Her schol- arly class. Her educated men. And our Roger Williams gave the key-note. " He has broached and divulged new and dangerous opinions against the authority of magis- 20 trates," said Massachusetts as she banished him. A century later his dangerous opinions had captured Massachusetts. Young Sam Adams, taking his Master's degree at Cam- bridge, argued that it was lawful to resist the supreme magistrate if the State could not otherwise be preserved. 25 He was a college stripling. But seven years afterward, in 1750, the chief pulpit orator in New England, Jonathan Mayhew, preached in Boston the famous sermon which Thornton called the morning gun of the Revolution, apply- ing to the political situation the principles of Roger Wil- 30 liams. The New England pulpit echoed and re-echoed that morning gun, arousing the country, and twenty-five years later its warning broke into the rattle of musketry at Lexing- ton and Concord and the glorious thunder of Bunker Hill. It was a son of Harvard, James Otis, who proposed the 35 assembly of an American congress without asking the king's leave. It was a son of Yale, John Morin Scott, who declared 290 Addresses for Academic Occasions. that if taxation without representation were to be enforced, the colonies ought to separate from England. It was a group of New York scholars, John Jay and Scott and the Livingstones, which spoke for the colony in response to the Boston Port Bill and proposed the Continental Congress. 5 It was a New England scholar in that Congress, whom Rufus Choate declared to be the distinctive and comprehen- sive orator of the Revolution, John Adams, who, urging every argument, touching every stop of passion, pride, ten- derness, interest, conscience, and lofty indignation, swept up 10 his country as into a chariot of fire and soared to inde- pendence. I do not forget that Virginian tongue of flame, Patrick Henry, nor that patriotism of the field and fireside which recruited the Sons of Liberty. The inspiring statue of the 15^ Minute Man at Concord — and a nobler memorial figure does not stand upon our soil — commemorates the spirit that left the plough standing in the furrow, that drew Nathaniel Greene from his anvil and Esek Hopkins from his farm ; the spirit that long before had sent the poor parish- 20 ioners of Scrooby to Holland, and filled the victorious ranks of the Commonwealth at Naseby and at Marston Moor. But in America as in England they were educated men who were in the pulpit, on the platform, and through the press, con- ducted the mighty preUminary argument of the Revolution, 25 defended the ancient traditions of English liberty against reactionary England, aroused the colonists to maintain the cause of human nature, and led them from the Gaspee and Bunker Hill across the plains of Saratoga, the snows of Valley Forge, the sands of Monmouth, the hills of Carolina, 30 I until at Yorktown once more the king surrendered to the people, and educated America had saved constitutional liberty. In the next brief and critical period, when through the travail of a half-anarchical confederation the independent 35 States, always instinctively tending to union, rose into a I George William Curtis. 291 rural constitutional republic, the good genius of America was still the educated mind of the country. Of the fifty-five members of the Convention, which Bancroft, changing the poet's line, calls " the goodliest fellowship of law-givers 5 whereof this world holds record,'' thirty -three were college graduates, and the eight leaders of the great debate were all college men. The Convention adjourned, and while from out the strong hand of George Clinton, Hamilton, the son of Columbia, drew New York into the Union, that placid 10 son of Princeton, James Madison, withstanding the fiery energy of Patrick Henry, placed Virginia by her side. Then Columbia and Princeton uniting in Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, interpreted the Constitution in that greatest of commentaries, which, as the dome crowns the Capitol, com- 15 pleted the majestic argument which long before the sons of Harvard had begun. Take away the scholarly class from the discussion that opened the Revolution, fro'm the delibera- tions that guided it, from the debates of the Constitutional Convention that ended it — would the advance of America 20 have been more triumphant ? Would the guarantees of individual liberty, of national union, of a common prosper- ity, have been more surely established ? The critics laughed at the pictured grapes as unnatural. But the painter was satisfied when the birds came and pecked at them. Daily 25 the educated class is denounced as impracticable and vision- ary. But the Constitution of the United States is the work of American scholars. Doubtless the leaders expressed a sentiment which was shared by the men and women around them. But it was 30 they who had formed and fostered that sentiment. They were not the puppets of the crowd, light weathercocks which merely showed the shifting gusts of popular feeling. They did not follow what they could not resist, and make their voices the tardy echo of a thought they did not share. They 35 were not daint}^ and feeble hermits because they were edu- cated men. They were equal citizens with the rest; men of 292 Addresses for Academic Occasions. strong convictions and persuasive speech, who showed their brethren what they ought to think and do. That is the secret of leadership. It is not servility to the mob, it is not giving vehement voice to popular frenzy, that makes a leader. That makes a demagogue ; Cleon, not Pericles ; Catiline, not 5 Cicero. Leadership is the power of kindling a sympathy and trust which all will eagerly follow. It is the genius that molds the lips of the stony Memnon to such sensitive life that the first sunbeam of opportunity strikes them into music. In a great crisis it is thinking so as to make others think, 10 feeling so as to make others feel, which tips the orator's tongue with fire that lights as well as burns. So when Lord Chatham stood at the head of England organizing her victo- ries by land and sea, and told in Parliament their splendid story, his glowing form was Britain's self, and the roar of 15 British guns and the proud acclamation of British hearts all around the globe flashed and thundered in his eloquence. " This is a glorious morning," said the scholar Samuel Adams, with a price set on his head, as he heard the guns at Lexington. "Decus et decorum est," said the young scholar 20 Joseph Warren gayly, as he passed to his death on Bunker Hill. They spoke for the lofty enthusiasm of patriotism which they had kindled. It was not a mob, an ignorant mul- titude swayed by a mysterious impulse ; it was a body of educated men, wise and heroic because they were educated, 25 who lifted this country to independence and laid deep and strong the foundations of the Republic. Is this less true of the maintenance and development of the government ? Thirty years ago, walking on the Cliff at Newport with Mr. Bancroft, I asked him to what point he 30 proposed to continue his history. He answered : " If I were an artist painting a picture of this ocean, my work would stop at the horizon. I can see no further. My history will end with the adoption of the Constitution. All beyond that is experiment." This was long ago. But the Republic is an 35 experiment no longer. It has been strained to the utmost George William Curtis. 293 along the very vital fiber of its frame, and it has emerged from the ordeal recreated. Happy venerable historian, who has survived both to witness the triumph of the experiment, and to complete his stately story to the very point which he con- 5 templated thirty years ago ! He has reached what was then the horizon, and may a gracious Providence permit him yet to depict the new and further and radiant prospect which he and all his countrymen behold ! In achieving this great result has educated America been 10 sluggish or skeptical or cowardly? The Constitution was but ten years old when the author of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, speaking with great authority and for a great party, announced that the Constitution was a compact of which every State must judge for itself both the fact of violation 15 and the mode of redress. Jefferson sowed dragon's teeth in the fresh soil of the young Union. He died, but the armed men appeared. The whole course of our politics for nearly a century was essentially revolutionary. Beneath all specific measures and party policies lay the supreme question of the 20 nature of the government which Jefferson had raised. Is the Union a league or a nation ? Are we built upon the solid earth or unstably encamped, like Sinbad's company, upon the back of a sea-monster which may dive at any moment ? Un- til this doubt was settled there could be no peace. Yet the 25 question lay in our politics only like the far black cloud along the horizon, flashing and muttering scarce heard thun- ders until the slavery agitation began. That was a debate which devoured every other, until the slave-power, foiled in the hope of continental empire, pleaded Jefferson's theory of 30 the Constitution as an argument for national dissolution. This was the third great crisis of the country, and in the tre- mendous contention, as in the war that followed, was the American scholar recreant and dumb ? I do not ask, for it is not necessary, whether in the ranks 35 of the powerful host that resisted agitation there were not scholars and educated men. I do not ask whether the edu- 294 Addresses for Academic Occasions. cated or any other class alone maintained the fight, nor whether there were not unquailing leaders who were not educated men, nor whether all were first, or all approved the same methods, or all were equally wise or equally zealous. Of course, I make no exclusive claim. I do not now speak of men like Garri- 5 son, whose name is that of a great patriot and a great human benefactor, and whose sturdy leadership was that of an old Hebrew prophet. But was the great battle fought and won while we and our guild stood passive and hostile by ? The slavery agitation began with the moral appeal, and as 10 in the dawn of the Revolution educated America spoke in the bugle note of James Otis, so in the moral onset of the antislavery agitation rings out the clear voice of a son of Otis' college, himself the Otis of the later contest, Wendell Phillips. By his side, in the stormy dawn of the movement, 15 stands a grandson of Quincy of the Revolution, and among the earliest antislavery leaders is more than a proportionate part of liberally educated men. In Congress the command- ing voice for freedom was that of the most learned, experi- enced, and courageous of American statesmen, the voice of 20J a scholar and an old college professor, John Quincy Adams. Whittier's burning words scattered the sacred fire, Longfellow and Lowell mingled their songs with his, and Emerson gave to the cause the loftiest scholarly heart in the Union. And while Parker's and Beecher's pulpits echoed Jonathan May- 25 hew's morning gun and fired words like cannon-balls, in the highest pulpit of America, foremost among the champions of liberty stood the slight and radiant figure of the scholarly son of Rhode Island, upon whom more than upon any of her children the mantle of Roger Williams had worthily fallen, 30 William Ellery Channing. When the national debate was angriest, it was the scholar I of the Senate of the United States who held highest in his * ' undaunted hands the flag of humanit}^ and his country. While others bowed and bent and broke around him, the 35 form of Charles Sumner towered erect. Commerce and George William Curtis. 295 trade, the mob of the clubs and of the street, hissed and sneered at him as a pedantic dreamer and fanatic. No kind of insult and defiance was spared. But the unbending scholar revealed to the haughty foe an antagonist as proud 5 and resolute as itself. He supplied what the hour de- manded, a sublime faith in liberty, the uncompromising spirit which interpreted the Constitution and the statutes for freedom and not for slavery. The fiery agitation became bloody battle. Still he strode on before. " I am only six 10 weeks behind you," said Abraham Lincoln, the Western frontiersman, to the New England scholar; and along the path that the scholar blazed in the wild wilderness of civil war, the path of emancipation, and the constitutional equality of all citizens, his country followed fast to union, peace, and 15 prosperity. The public service of this scholar was not less than that of any of his predecessors or any of his contem- poraries. Criticise him as you wall, mark every shadow you can find, " Though round his base the rolling clouds are spread, 20 Eternal sunshine settles on his head," It would indeed be a sorrowful confession for this day and this assembly, to own that experience proves the air of the college to be suffocating to generous thought and heroic action. Here it would be especially unjust, for what son of 25 this college does not proudly remember that when, in the Revolution, Rhode Island was the seat of war, the college boys left the recitation-room for the field, and the college became a soldiers' barrack and hospital ? And what son of any college in the land, what educated American, does 30 not recall with grateful pride that legion of college youth in our own day — "Integer vitae scelerisque purus " — w^ho were not cowards or sybarites because they w^ere scholars, but whose consecration to the cause of country and man vindicated the words of John Milton, "A complete and 35 generous education is that which fits a man to perform 296 Addresses for Academic Occasions. justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war " ? That is the praise of the American scholar. The glory of this day and of this Commencement season is that the pioneers, the courageous and independent leaders in public affairs, the great apostles 5 of religious and civil liberty, have been, in large part, educated men, sustained by the sympathy of the educated class. But this is not true of the past alone. As educated America was the constructive power, so it is still the true 10 _ conservative force of the Republic. It is decried as priggish i and theoretical. But so Richard Henry Lee condemned the Constitution as the work of visionaries. They are always called visionaries who hold that morality is stronger than a majority. Goldwin Smith says that Cobden felt that 15 at heart England was a gentleman and not a bully. So thinks the educated American of his own country. He has faith enough in the people to appeal to them against them- selves, for he knows that the cardinal condition of popular government is the ability of the people to see and correct 20 their own errors. In a Republic, as the majority must control action, the majority tends constantly to usurp control of opinion. Its decree is accepted as the standard of right and wrong. To differ is grotesque and eccentric. To pro- test is preposterous. To defy is incendiary and revolution- 25 ary. But just here interposes educated intelligence, and asserts the worth of self-reliance and the power of the individual. Gathering the wisdom of ages as into a sheaf of sunbeams, it shows that progress springs from the minor- ity, and that if it will but stand fast time will give it victory. 30 It is the educated voice of the country which teaches patience in politics and strengthens the conscience of the individual citizen by showing that servility to a majority is as degrading as servility to a Sultan or a Grand Lama. Emer- son said that of all his friends he honored none more than a 35 quiet old Quaker lady who, if she said yea and the whole ji George William Curtis. 297 world said nay, still said yea. One of the pleasantest stories of Garfield is that of his speech to his constituents in which he quaintly vindicated his own independence. " I would do P anything to win your regard," he said, "but there is one 5 man whose good opinion I must have above all, and without whose approval I can do nothing. That is the man wdth m whom I get up every morning and go to bed every night, K whose thoughts are my thoughts, whose prayers are my ■ prayers; I cannot buy your confidence at the cost of his 10 respect." Never was the scholarly Garfield so truly a man, so patriotically an American, and his constituents were prouder than ever of their representative who complimented them by asserting his own manhood. It is the same voice which exposes the sophists who 15 mislead the mob and pitilessly scourges the demagogues who flatter it. "All men know more than any man," haughtily shout the larger and lesser Talleyrands. That is a French epigram, replies the scholar, but not a general truth. A crowd is not wiser than the wisest man in it. 20 For the purposes of the voyage the crew does not know more than the master of the ship. The Boston town-meeting was not more sagacious than Sam Adams. " Vox populi vox Dei," screams the foaming rhetoric of the stump ; the voice of the people is the voice of God. The voice of the 25 people in London, says history, declared against street- lamps and denounced inoculation as wanton wickedness. The voice of the people in Paris demanded the head of Charlotte Corday. The voice of the people in Jerusalem cried, " Away with Him ! crucify Him ! crucify Him ! " 30 " God is on the side of the strongest battalions," sneers the party swindler who buys a majority with money or place. On the contrary, answers the cool critic, reading history and interpreting its lessons, God was with Leonidas, and not with Xerxes. He was with the exile John Robinson at 35 Leyden, not with Laud and the hierarchy at Westminster. Despite Napoleon even battles are not sums in arithmetic. 298 Addresses for Academic Occasions. Strange that a general, half of whose success was due to a sentiment, the glory of France, which welded his army into a thunderbolt, and still burns for us in the fervid song of Beranger, should have supposed that it is numbers and not conviction and enthusiasm which win the final victory. The 5 career of no man in our time illustrates this truth more signally than Garibaldi's. He was the symbol of the senti- ment which the wise Cavour molded into a nation, and he will be always canonized more universally than any other Italian patriot, because no other represents so purely and 10 simply to the national imagination the Italian ideal of patri- otic devotion. His enthusiam of conviction made no calcu- lation of defeat, because while he could be baffled he could not be beaten. It was a stream flowing from a mountain height, which might be delayed or diverted, but knew in- 15 stinctively that it must reach the sea. " Italia fard da se^ Garibaldi was that faith incarnate, and the prophecy is fulfilled. Italy, more proud than stricken, bears his bust to the Capitol, and there the eloquent marble will say, while Rome endures, that one man with God, with country, with 20 duty and conscience, is at last the majority. But still further, it is educated citizenship which, while defining the rightful limitation of the power of the majority, is most loyal to its legitimate authority, and foremost always in rescuing it from the treachery of political peddlers and 25 parasites. The rural statesmen who founded the Republic saw in vision a homogeneous and intelligent community, the peace and prosperity and intelligence of the State reflected in the virtue and wisdom of the government. But is this our actual America or a glimpse of Arcadia ? Is this the 3° United States or Plato's Republic or Harrington's Oceana or Sir Thomas More's Utopia ? What are the political maxims of the hour ? In Rome, do as the Romans do. Fight fire with fire. Beat the devil with his own weapons. Take men as they are, and don't affect superior goodness. Beware of 35 the politics of the moon and of Sunday-school statesmanship. George William Curtis. 299 This is our current political wisdom and the results are fami- liar. " This is a nasty State," cries the eager partisan, " and I hope we have done nasty work enough to carry it." "The conduct of the opposition," says another, "was infa- 5 mous. They resorted to every kind of base and contemptible means, and, thank God, we have beaten them at their own game." The majority is overthrown by the political machin- ery intended to secure its will. The machinery is oiled by corruption and grinds the honest majority to powder. And 10 it is educated citizenship, the wisdom and energy of men who are classed as prigs, pedants, and impracticables, which is first and most efficient in breaking the machinery and re- leasing the majority. It was this which rescued New York from Tweed, and which everywhere challenges and de- 15 molishes a Tweed tyranny by whatever name it may be known. Every year at the college Commencement the American scholar is exhorted to do his duty. But every newspaper proves that he is doing it. For he is the most practical 20 politican who shows his fellow-citizens, as the wise old sailor told his shipmates, that " God has somehow so fixed the world that a man can afford to do about right." Take from the country at this moment the educated power, which is contemned as romantic and sentimental, and you would 25 take from the army its general, from the ship its compass, from national action its moral mainspring. It is not the demagogue and the shouting rabble ; it is the people heeding the word of the thinker and the lesson of experience, which secures the welfare of the American republic and enlarges 30 human liberty. If American scholarship is not in place, it is in power. If it does not carry the election to-day, it de- termines the policy of to-morrow. Calm, patient, confident, heroic, in our busy and material life it perpetually vindicates the truth that the things which are unseen are eternal. So 35 in the cloudless midsummer sky serenely shines the moon, while the tumultuous ocean rolls and murmurs beneath, the 300 Addresses for Academic Occasions. type of illimitable and unbridled power ; but, resistlessly marshaled by celestial laws, all the wild waters, heaving from pole to pole, rise and recede, obedient to the mild queen of heaven. Brethren of Brown, we have come hither as our fathers 5 came, as our children will come, to renew our observation of that celestial law ; and here, upon the old altar of fervid faith and boundless anticipation, let us pledge ourselves once more that, as the courage and energy of educated men fired the morning gun and led the contest of the Revolution, 10 founded and framed the Union and, purifying it as with fire, have maintained the national life to this hour, so, day by day, we will do our part to lift America above the slough of mercenary politics and the cunning snares of trade, steadily forward toward the shining heights which the hopes of its 15 nativity foretold. ADDRESSES ON SOCIAL QUESTIONS. No. I is a swift, clear analysis and exposition of a subject not well understood by the general public; noteworthy, also, because its appeal is almost entirely to the intellect, not to the prejudices, emotions, or special interests of the audience. No. II, " The Child and the State " is included, though it was never intended for delivery as an address, for contrasting in persuasive method with the address of Phillips Brooks, No. III. Mr. Field appealed mainly to the two selfish motives, love of money and self-defence; Phillips Brooks to religious and ethical sentiment. I. NORMAN HAPGOOD. The Drama in America To-day.^ Delivered before the Cincinnati Conference of Art and Literature, November lo, igo2. No art is looked upon, in England and America, from more diverse points of view than the acted drama. The number of persons who take it as a serious interest is small, far smaller than in Germany, Austria or France. Nobody 5 of much education now regards the theatre as wicked, but large numbers deem it wasteful and frivolous, unworthy of the same attention that is bestowed upon literature, music and painting. There is another class, not so prominent intellectually, but of far larger numbers, which still thinks lo the theatre actually immoral. The existence of this class is not always suspected by Americans of a more modern spirit, but its importance is well-known to the theatrical manager. If a play can be manufactured which has the ordinary theat- rical appeal, the qualities which lie under most dramatic suc- 15 cess, and yet something in it which will induce these con- servative masses to imagine that it is a moral lesson, they go in swarms, and a public is created estimated at about four times the size of the ordinary theatre-going public, and num- berless times the size of that tiny public which cares to use 20 its mind or which has at all the appreciation of art. Hence the enormous success of plays like The Christian and Ben Hur. People think they are almost in church, while they actually enjoy pure melodrama, melodrama with spectacle in Ben Hur, melodrama in The Christian which adroitly uses 25 the general love of impropriety. " One touch of indecency ^ Reprinted by permission of Norman Hapgood, 304 Addresses on Social Questions. makes the whole world kin," and when a literary trickster, like Hall Caine, can serve that dish, garnished with imita- tion virtue, the box-office will hardly hold the money. Now the theatre has nothing to gain from those who look upon the playhouse in itself as immoral. No art has any- 5 thing to gain from them. The Puritans set the drama back for centuries in England. If the stage is to be improved in our language it must be through the people who love art more than preaching, but who know that most of the plays presented to us lack every element of genuine art. The 10 stage in America will be a worthy and a stimulating influence, a part of national enlightenment, when it appeals to those who love good books, good statues, good music, and not before. There is little use in discussing the purely moral aspects of the drama. Intellectual standards are the ones 15 to apply. The highest drama of the day is in Germany, yet the leading dramatists of that country often produce plays which in this country would be deemed improper. Why ? Simply because the audiences which see them here are less cultivated than those which see them in Germany. Some of 20 Sudermann's ablest plays, of the highest real morality, such as Sodom's Ende or Johannisfeuer, would be entirely con- demned here, on account of their intellectual frankness. The latest one, Es Lebe das Leben, which Mrs. Patrick Campbell is playing in an admirable literary translation by 25 the celebrated novelist, Edith Wharton, has had a better fate, partly because, although its real meaning is startling enough, this significance can be overlooked. Nevertheless, there were critics in New York who had nightmares be- cause the heroine strayed from the designated path. These 30 critics are even troubled by Magda. Now, at their best, tragedy has always pictured the consequences of sin, and comedy has always ridiculed the absurdities of vice. The very men who are afraid of Hauptmann and Sudermann speak glibly of the merits of Shakespeare, Racine, and 35 Moliere ; of Tartuffe, Phedre, and Measure for Measure, Norman Hapgood. 305 What spasms they would have if such themes were handled to-day. It all depends upon the treatment, the depth, the sanity. Morality is more safely based upon intelligence than on 5 prudery. The superficial, sentimental appeal does small good to any one. Go to a melodrama in which the heroine, passing through impossible adventures and impossible rhet- oric, keeps her robe unsoiled. Who responds most emotion- ally to such appeals ? Who but the ladies of a type the I o direct antithesis of the heroine whose virtue they applaud ? In the theatre you do not elevate people by preaching to them. You may do so by educating them. It is exactly similar to our school and college systems. Church and school are separate. We believe in general education in 15 this country. We believe that the way to elevate the whole character and life of the people is to feed and stimulate their intelligences. We do not read them sermons or teach them ethics in school. We train and store their minds. Intelligence then, and art, are what the stage most needs, 20 superior minds writing plays, a public which enforces high standards. How does the actual situation correspond ? In Cincinnati what do you have that adds to the education of your children or the intellectual pleasure of the cultivated ? Some things 25 may be encouraging as happy straws, as faint signs of the future, but obviously they mean no constant exhibition of important works of literature, of new thought or old tradition, constituting part of the intellectual life of the intelligent, as the dramxa does in Paris, Berlin and Vienna, where the young 30 receive much of their training in the theatre and the old much of their satisfaction. Is the situation different in New York? The great metro- politan successes in recent years have been largely musical burlesque, which frequently contains pretty girls and much 35 cheerful idiocy, which is better than bad plays, but hardly takes the place of good ones. The most original development 306 Addresses on Social Questions. of the theatre in America is in the Hne of pure distrac- tion, and the best illustration of it is Weber and Fields. The theatre legitimately offers all grades of entertainment. It is not a misfortune that Weber and Fields are popular ; they deserve to be. The misfortune is that other grades are 5 completely ignored. It is as if in music we had good comic songs and no symphonies or grand opera ; as if in painting we had good newspaper cartoons and no landscape or por- traits ; as if in books we had an excellent collection of jokes, and no history, biography or literature. 10 The weary business man goes to a comic opera or to Weber and Fields, and is happy. Let him go there. It is the place for him. He would of necessity be bored at a play which asked his tired mind for thought. It is the penalty he pays for being tired; for giving all his mental 15 activity to earning money. It is the favorite place also of the fashionable rich, next to their boxes at the opera. They dine late and ask of the theatre but an afterpiece to dinner which shall rescue them from the ennui of conversation. In their class, however, recruits for the higher drama are to be 20 sought, for the first requisite of artistic enjoyment is some amount of leisure, superfluous energy instead of fatigue. Every year finds more of the rich who welcome the superior drama, even if it forces them to dine at seven. The progress is slow, but progress exists. 25 Now, what else is there in New York to-day ? On leaving the city I put a newspaper in my pocket, and read the an- nouncements. Being no longer a dramatic critic I had not seen all the " offerings," but I had seen enough. A few days before a friend had asked me what was worth seeing. 30 ''Do you know German?" I asked. He did. "Well," I said, " go to the Irving Place Theatre any time. Now and then you will see a bad play, now and then a careless per- formance, but on the whole you will find there the only real dramatic atmosphere in America, the only substance and 35 manner that make you feel as if you were in presence of the Norman Hapgood. 307 best ; that make you feel as you do when you read Shake- speare or hear Beethoven, rather than as you do when you read comic papers, the Fireside Co7np anion or the almanac." But let us be fair. On this New York list of plays most 5 were comic opera, musical comedy, farce, variety, but on it also was Everyman, one of the noblest revivals of our day. To be sure it was imported, but the fact that Mr. Charles Frohman, w^ho, I imagine, hardly knows a morality play from a Methodist revival, cared to import it merely because he 10 wished the praise of enlightened people, such as he had heard given to it in London, indicates an advance. The present race of managers can never do much that is inter- esting. They are too untutored and too mercantile, but even they will do better, and their endeavors will find a public 15 with more exacting demands. To be sure, nobody in New York went to see Everyman. It has been less of a success than in London. I met a man just after he had been to see it. " There were nineteen people in the house," he said. " Du Barry is crowded. That show^s New York and the real 20 level of our civilization. Boston w^ould do better, Chicago w^ould do better. New York," he went on, "is an almost hopeless city. It is Sodom. It is Babylon." Everyman, however, did better as people learned that the city con- tained something really beautiful, and in its two remaining 25 w^eeks I trust it may do better still. For the mediocre condition of the American drama the Theatrical Syndicate has been widely blamed. Much blame it certainly deserves, but not always of the kind that is applied to it. The mere love of cheap melodrama, French 30 farce, and musical comedy w^hich characterizes these man- agers, their ignorance, bad taste and mechanical conception of acting is not the w^orst side of their influence. Common- place amusement will always be demanded. It exists in Germany, it exists where the drama is high, but it exists side 35 by side with better things. The most evil aspect of the Syndicate is its pow^r, its controlling influence. It is so 308 Addresses on Social Questions. nearly a monopoly that producing outside of it is an under- taking so hazardous that few will venture. This is an age of combinations. Even in business they are in many ways a menace. In art they would be fatal. In the drama nothing would do more good than the disin- 5 tegration of this Trust and the variety that would result. Leaving each star and manager free to follow his own nature would inevitably work toward more effort to meet the tastes of the educated minority. Therefore the new organ- ization headed by Mrs. Fiske, Mr. Hackett and Miss Cros- 10 man, designed to loosen the hold of the Trust is worthy of all encouragement. At this point it may perhaps be excusable to clear away a misunderstanding. When I decided, a short time ago, to abandon dramatic criticism, I was struck by the manner in 15 which the press and my personal friends agreed in attribu- ting the change to the hopelessness of the present theatrical situation. "To be sure," said one, " why waste your time on such idiocy?" "What," said another, "is the sense in writing reasonably about plays that have no reason in 20 them ? " And so on, from every side. I totally disagree with that point of view. The time when much good can be done by protest is exactly now, when the situation is so obviously, so ridiculously inappropriate to a country so much alive to educational and intellectual opportunities as ours. 25 I abandoned the theatre because I had other work which required all my attention, but this seems to me a time when any writer of conviction can do much good in the field of dramatic criticism. Our country is most genuinely interested in education. 30 An observant Englishman remarked to me recently that no matter what topic he began, with a cultivated American, the conversation speedily shifted to some problems of education. "Well," said I, "why not? It is the most important group of questions confronting us to-day." Materially, our civili- 35 zation is a success. In matters of trade and money compe- Norman Hapgood. 309 tition we are victors. In the race for wealth we have proved our strength. But we have other tests still to meet. You remember the famous question of Sidney Smith, " In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book, 5 or goes to an American play, or sees an American picture or statue?" He spoke those words in 1820. It is less true now, but still true, that in the ideal world we are scarcely competitors. Mr. Carnegie offers his contribution toward the solution, with his myriad libraries. Mr. Morgan shows 10 his sense of responsibility in large purchases of works of art. President Eliot sets the whole country talking about the effect of our lower grade schooling on conduct. Presi- dent Wilson makes an equal stir about the same time, and President Butler goes Harvard one year better in favoring 15 the cutting down of the traditional discipline of education for the newer and more practical theories. In industrial education we are surpassed only by Germany. In the South we are face to face with terrifying problems of race. Politi- cally we are struggling to lift our people beyond standards 20 which are satisfied by Tammany Hall. Thus everywhere, in every form, thought about American conditions leads to thought about education. The theatre, in its modest way, deserves to be considered with this same scope, as an influence on general thought, on 25 public feeling, on the whole standard of education. Schiller believed that no one of the other arts had so wide an influ- ence. Clergymen everywhere are beginning to make state- ments even more radical. In our country, therefore, where education, in all its branches, is taken so seriously, is it not 30 an anomaly that this popular art should be excepted ? The theatre should have a function beside the museum, the opera house, and the library. A superior drama is one of the ornaments, perhaps even one of the requisites, of a complete civilization. A people is not properly enlightened until its 35 amusements are part of its enlightenment. It has not won the ideal elements until its art, its idealized thought, is part 310 Addresses on Social Questions. of its enjoyment. American civilization, with all its economic vigor and political health, will not be complete until we stop to create and to enjoy the ideal. In that progress toward light and beauty, one thread wdll be w^hat has been until lately the most popular branch of literature — the drama. One individual, one generation, can do but a little ; yet it is worth remembering that in demanding a more worthy repre- sentation of literature upon the stage, where all classes enjoy it, we are doing our part, not for the theatre alone, but for the general artistic temper of the nation. II. DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. The Child and the State.^ " The Homeless Boy " is the title of a wood-cut circulated by the Children's Aid Society. It is a sad picture. The little waif sits on a stone step, with his head bent over and resting on his hands, stretched across bare knees, his flow- ing hair covering his face, and his tattered clothes and bare 15 feet betokening utter wretchedness. Turning the leaf, we are informed that twenty dollars will enable the society to give the boy a home. Can this picture be real and the statement true ? The picture is too real, and that the statement is made in good 20 faith and for reasons sufficient, we have the guaranty of the society's good name and the known fidelity of its excellent secretary, Mr. Brace. How many of such homeless children are there in the city of New York ? We are told that there are at least twelve 25 thousand under twelve years of age ; seven thousand of them ^ Reprinted from The Works of David Dudley Field by permission of Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. David Dudley Field. 311 having no shelter, not knowing at morning where they can sleep at night, and the rest having only shelters revolting to behold. Less than $250,000 then would give them all decent and comfortable homes. Every night that these 5 twelve thousand children are wandering in the streets or lurking about rum-shops and dance-houses, or huddled in dens that are as foul in air as they are foul in occupants, that sum many times over is spent in superfluous luxury. Rich parlors and wide halls are filled nightly with pleasure- 10 seekers, where the air is sweetened with the perfume of flowers, music wafted with the perfume, and the light is like *' a new morn risen on mid noon." The voice of mirth in the ball-room drowns the wail of the children beyond, and when the night pales into morning, the dancers go home 15 rejoicing and the children go about the streets. Surely there must be something wrong with our civilization, our Christian civilization, so long as these strange contrasts are permitted to last. It is not for the lack of sympathy or Christian charity. 20 New York is charitable and generous beyond most cities, and I think I might have said beyond any city of Christen- dom, which is as much as to say beyond any city of the earth. Private charity is great and association for public charity is greater. On every hand are asylums, retreats, dis- 25 pensaries ; more than a hundred institutions organized for the relief of poverty and suffering ; associations for mutual help established in all trades and nearly all professions ; and over four hundred churches have their societies and com- mittees in aid of needy members. How, then, is it that we 30 behold this dreadful apparition of helpless and innocent suffering, these homeless children, who, by no fault of their own, are in want of food, clothing and shelter, and are lurk- ing in corners or scattered in the streets. It is because there is not a wider knowledge of the extent of the evil and a closer 35 study of the means to counteract it. Let us enter into some details. 312 Addresses on Social Questions. In one of the tenement houses of the city, and their number is legion, there is a room, nineteen feet long, fifteen feet broad and eleven high, where live a man and his wife and eight children. They sleep, dress, wash, cook and eat in this one room. These ten persons have altogether thirty- 5 one hundred and thirty-five cubic feet of air, while the law requires at least six thousand feet — nearly twice as much as they get. From tenement houses like this there flows out daily a stream of children, ragged and dirty, to pick up rags, cigar stumps, and other refuse of the streets, or to pilfer or 10 beg, as best they can. This is not the place to describe the horrors of the tenement house, nor to discuss the duty or failure of duty on the part of the state in respect of its con- struction and occupation. I ask attention only to the condi- tion of the children, and for illustration take the case of a 15 boy, five years old, who is found, in a chill November day, barefooted, scantily clothed, searching among the rag heaps in the street. He is a well-formed child, his face is fair, and as he turns his bright eyes upon you when you ask him where he lives, you see that he has quick intelligence. Alto- 20 gether he is such a child as a father should look upon with pride and a true mother would press to her bosom. Yet the parents are miserably poor, the father half the time out of work, and the mother wan with the care of her family. * This is not all. Father and mother both drink to excess, 25 and each is intoxicated as often at least as Saturday night comes round. Has the state any duties toward this little boy, and if so I what are they ? | All will agree that it has some duty, at least that of pro- 30 \ tection from personal violence. May it go further, and 4 rescue the child from its loathsome occupation, its contami- nating surroundings and its faithless parents ? I think that it may, and having the right, that it is charged with the duty of rescuing the child. This is a large subject, larger indeed 35 than can be fully treated in this paper, but some of the j David Dudley Field. 313 reasons for my opinion shall be stated. At the outset, let me say that I am not a believer in the paternal theory of government. The great ends for which men are associated in political communities are mutual protection, and the con- 5 struction of those public works, of which roads and bridges are examples, for which individuals are not competent. The state should interfere as little as possible with the economy of the family and the liberty of the individual to pursue his own happiness in his own Avay. And as a general rule par- 10 ents are the best guardians of their children. The family is the prim.aeval institution of the race. The love of the parent is the strongest of motives for the care of the child. But when parental love fails, and the offspring is either aban- doned or educated in vice, the state may rightfully intervene. 15 Its right is derived from its duty to protect itself and to pro- tect all its people. I am not deducing the right of interference from an unpulse of the heart, though that be the foundation on which our hospitals and almshouses are built, but I place it 20 upon the inherent and all-pervading right of protection and self-defense. Charity is an individual privilege ; the impulse is an individual gift from Heaven. The state is not founded for charity, but for protection. The dictate of humanity is without doubt to take a child from an unfaithful parent and 25 give it the training most likely to lead to an honest and industrious life. This is to transfer the child from an un- clean home to one that is clean, from indecency to decency, from foul air to pure, from unhealthy food to that which is healthy, from evil v/ays to good. Who can doubt that the 30 greatest good which can be done to a child neglected by its parent or taught beggary or crime, is to take it from the wicked parent, and give it into the care of one who will teach it, not only the rudiments of learning, but honest labor. In what other way can we better follow the example of the 35 Divine Master than by caring for these little ones, who are unable to take care of themselves ? 314 Addresses on Social Questions. Protection, however, is the foundation of the right I am asserting. We must of course have a care that interference for protection be not carried beyond its rightful Umits. If any general rule could be laid down for marking these limits it would perhaps be this, that the state should not invade 5 one man's rights in order to protect another's. What the individual can do for himself the state should not undertake. But in the case supposed, the faithless parent has forfeited his right to his child, and the only point to be considered is the relation of the child to the state. This relation involves 10 considerations of economy and of safety, each of which may be considered by itself. The question of economy has political and social aspects. The prevention of crime and the punishment of the criminal impose upon the state some of its heaviest burdens. The 15 cost of the police, of the courts and the prisons, makes one of the longest items in the roll of public expenditure. In the year ending September 30, 1885, the maintenance of the three state prisons cost about $400,000. Besides these pris- ons, there are penitentiaries at New York, Brooklyn, Albany, 20 Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, and there is a county prison in each county. What all these cost there are no readily accessible statistics to tell. The yearly cost of the police in the city of New York is about $3,700,000, and that of the criminal courts $300,000. The cost, defrayed from 25 the city treasury, of prisons, reformatories, asylums, and other charitable institutions is over $3,000,000. The ex- pense of prisons alone is wdth difficulty separated from the rest. These are approximate figures. It is hard to find out how much the people of this state, in all their municipalities 30 and political divisions, pay for police, courts and prisons. We know that the amount is appalling. Much of this, how much cannot be told, might be saved by fulfilling the scrip- tural injunction : " Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." 35 The question of safety is more vital still. Every one of David Dudley Field. 315 these boys may be a voter ten or twenty years hence. His vote will then be as potent as yours or mine. In countries where the sovereign is a prince it has ever been thought prudent to bestow special care upon the training of an heir 5 to the throne. Here the people are sovereign, and the little boy, now wandering about the streets, neglected or led astray, is in one sense joint heir to a throne. Every dictate of prudence points to his being fitted to fulfill the duties of his station. Who can say that if duly cared for he may not I o grow to the stature of a leader of the people ranking with the foremost men of his time, a benefactor of the race, a teacher of great truths, a helper of the helpless, a brave soldier in the *' sacramental host of God's elect." If, on the other hand, he is left to himself in the swift current of want and vice, 15 floating in the scum of sewers and the company of thieves, he will prove a scourge to the state, and may bring up in a prison, or perchance on the scaffold. For this reason, and the one preceding, it should seem to be the duty of the community to look after children whose 20 parents abandon them or lead them into evil ways, or are incapable of taking care of them. We have already in many instances acted upon a like theory. The compulsory education acts, the corporations formed to prevent cruelty to children, and the unincorpo- 25 rated societies organized for their relief, are so many agen- cies established upon this principle. Take, for example, the eighth section of the elementary education act of 1874, as amended in 1876: which provides that the board of educa- tion in each city and incorporated village, and the trustees 30 of the school districts and union school in each town, by the vote of a majority at a meeting called for the purpose, shall make all needful regulations concerning habitual truants and children between the ages of eight and fourteen, who may be found wandering about the streets or public places during 35 school hours, having no lawful occupation or business, and growing up in ignorance ; the regulations to be such as in 3i6 Addresses on Social Questions. the judgment of the Board will be conducive to the welfare of the children, and to the good order of the city or town, and to be approved by a judge of the Supreme Court. Suit- able places are to be provided for the discipline, instruction and confinement, when necessary, of the children, and the 5 aid of the police of cities, or incorporated villages, and con- stables of towns, may be required to enforce the regulations. The Penal Code makes it a crime to desert a child " with intent wholly to abandon it" (Sec. 287), or to omit without lawful excuse to perform a duty imposed by law to " furnish 10 food, clothing, shelter or medical attendance " (Sec. 288), or willfully to permit a child's " life to be endangered, or its health to be injured, or its morals to become depraved " (Sec. 289), or " the child to be placed in such a situation or to engage in such an occupation " as that any of these things 15 may happen. Another section (291) provides that a child under sixteen who is found '' gathering or picking rags, cigar stumps, bones or refuse from markets," or without a home, or improperly exposed or neglected, or in a state of want or suffering or destitute of means of support, being an orphan 20 or being in certain immoral company, " must be arrested and brought before a proper court or magistrate as a vagrant, disorderly or destitute child." The Code of Criminal Pro- cedure (Sec. 887) declares, as vagrant, any child between five and fourteen, " having sufficient bodily health and 25 mental capacity to attend the public schools, found wander- ing in the streets or lanes of any city or incorporated village, a truant without any lawful occupation;" and it provides in the next section (888), that when a complaint is made against any such vagrant, the magistrate must cause the 30 child and its parent to be brought before him, and may order the parent to take care of the child, and if he does not, " the magistrate shall, by warrant, commit the child to such place as shall be provided for his reception." If no such place has been provided, the child must be committed 35 to the almshouse of the county, and a child so committed David Dudley Field. 317 may be bound out as an apprentice. A child found beg- ging (Sec. 893) must be committed to the poorhouse, and there kept at useful labor until duly discharged or bound out. 5 These are very sweeping provisions, but they are said to fail of the effect intended, by reason of defects in the machinery for working them. Indeed, the theory upon which they are framed is in some respects erroneous. A child under twelve should never be treated as a criminal 10 except after conviction for crime, in the few cases in which a child between seven and twelve may be convicted. To treat him as a criminal leaves a stigma, which after years do not efface. A friend who visited lately one of the reforma- tory schools in Boston described an inspection of the in- 15 mates, noting in particular the bearing of a little boy, three years old, who went through the exercises with the greatest spirit, intelligence, and glee. Should this little child be classed with criminals, brought into contact with them, or be exposed ever to be told that he had been so classed ? 20 Our laws now use in regard to such a child the expressions " arrest," " prefer complaint," " bring before a magistrate for hearing," and the like. When the word " arrest " is used in respect of legal process it is darkened with the shadow of criminality. Why not say " take," or better still 25 " rescue." A child under seven years of age is, and one between seven and twelve is presumed to be, incapable of committing crime. A policeman finding such a child home- less should be required to bring him before an officer specially charged with the duty of examining such cases, not 30 a police justice. The state would thus appear to take the child under its protection as one of its wards or children. Such should be the treatment of every child under twelve years of age, whatever might be the circumstances ; and the same officer should be the one to decide in the first instance 35 whether a child between seven and twelve should be sent to a criminal magistrate. 3i8 Addresses on Social Questions. When a child not charged with crime is brought before such an officer and is shown to be abused or abandoned, what should be done with him and with the parent ? The latter should be required to support the child, so far as the law can make him responsible. The like is required of 5 persons classed as disorderly by Section 901 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and under the education acts is also required of parents who fail to send their children to school. How to reach the parent is a question for the criminal law, with which we are not dealing at present. But for the child, 10 what should be done with him ? Most certainly he should be placed in a healthy and sufficient home and taught the _, rudiments of knowledge and honest ways. Here the state ■ should seek the aid of private charity, acting through incor- porated institutions, because the state can in this way best 15 control the institutions, and look after the treatment and wel- fare of the children. These agencies are sufficient for the present and may be sufficient always. Show the people the way in which they can best help the outcast, and their benevolence will supply the motive. 20 If these views are sound, they lead logically to the follow- ing conclusions : I. That there should be a public guardian of homeless children under twelve years of age, whose duty it should be to find out the condition and treatment of those brought 25 before him, and when he sees that they require it, to place them in some institution incorporated for the care of such children, to be kept there or sent by them to homes here or in other states. In the category of homeless children may be included not only orphans without homes, but all children 30 under twelve years of age who are abandoned by their parents or so neglected or abused as to require that they should be taken in charge. II. That every police officer should be required and every citizen should be permitted to bring a homeless child 35 before this guardian. f Phillips Brooks. 319 III. That a child under seven years of age should never under any circumstances be treated as a criminal, and a child between seven and twelve should not be so treated until he has been examined by the guardian and by him 5 sent to the criminal magistrate. No child under twelve should ever be left in the society of criminals under any cir- cumstances whatever. This paper has already reached the limit intended. It has not gone into particulars : on the contrary, it has been 10 carefully confined to certain general propositions. Their development and execution are matters of detail. The aim of the article is attained, if it has helped to impress upon the reader this lesson, partly social and partly political: Take care of the children and the men and women will take 15 care of themselves. III. PHILLIPS BROOKS. Address at a Meeting in Behalf of the Children's Aid Society/ Philadelphia^ Pa., January ^o, i8g2. Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen : To anyone who has had the privilege for many happy years, although it were many years ago, of watching the spontaneous and delightful generosity of the citizens of Philadelphia, it is indeed a great 20 delight to come back and recognize that which he knew well enough to be the fact, that in the years that have come between that great, rich stream of benevolence and ever- thoughtful generosity has been widening and deepening. It is just exactly as when one comes back, having made a ^ Reprinted, by permission of E. P. Button & Co., from Essays and Addresses^ Phillips Brooks. 320 Addresses on Social Questions. journey across lots, and finds again a great stream by whose side he has journeyed before, in whose company he has rejoiced, and sees how it has grown richer and deeper in the courses in which he has been separated from it. You told us, sir, at the beginning of this meeting, of the 5 two purposes of such a meeting as this. One of them is the gathering up of the report of what has been accomplished by such a society as this, and the distinct recognition, by those who have not had the opportunity of knowing much about it before, of what the methods of its working are. The first 10 purpose of such a meeting is information. I cannot help thinking we have been richly supplied with information here this evening. We have seen what this society does ; that its work is a simple work. It is an effort everywhere to rein- state into the system of our human life that little atom which 15 has been in any way separated from it. Nothing lives except in the system to which it belongs. Nothing lives except it is natural. Nothing is natural absolutely by itself. Nothing is natural except it be taken into the system of nature in which it naturally inheres and follows the movement of the whole 20 about it. And so the whole meaning of our society is that any little atom of our humanity which has been cast out of the rich and ever-swelling system of our human life shall be just as far and just as quickly as possible reinstated where it belongs. Everything we have heard from the good doctor, who let us 25 look into the deep and awful secrets which belong to the life of this society, from its managers, from its treasurer, every- thing we have heard shows us that perpetual effort of good women and true men to reinstate into its true place the atom of our human life which has been separated from the con- 30 dition and position in which it belongs. The second object of such a meeting as this was to stir enthu- siasm, so you told us. In other words, it is to see the rich- ness and the beauty and the glory of that which we are doing. We lose ourselves in the midst of multitudinous details. We 35 lose ourselves in those things which are absolutely essential, f Phillips Brooks, 321 and those things without which Hfe in a society such as this cannot possibly exist, but which, when we have buried ourselves in the midst of them, too often obscure the very rich meaning which belongs to the whole. We want to feel the 5 glory of such a work as this which this society is doing. It seems to me also that we want to do that which I always feel impelled to do when I have the privilege of saying a word or two at the close of a meeting such as this. I want to give the thanks of this community, and the thanks of all that this com- 10 munity represents, for it is impossible in the rich communica- tion of life in which we live with one another to separate ourselves into communities and think anything can be done in Philadelphia for which Massachusetts and Illinois and Georgia are not the richer. We want to recognize the thank- 1 5 fulness which every part of our country owes to those willing to step forward in this work. Truly it is very little you and I can do, to come here on a pleasant evening for an hour or two and praise and rejoice in the work that has been done, and make our contributions to the continuance of that work, 20 when we think what it is they are doing who have summoned us here. They have gone forward. They have taken the brunt of the labor. They have given anxious care, they have given perpetual devotion to this work to which we now say Godspeed, and to which in the proper time I am sure you 25 will not refuse your abundant assistance. It almost seems to me like the old days in Philadelphia which come back to me from the time I walked her streets, when we sat here at home and felt beating the pulse of war at the front, when we rejoiced for every little thing we could 30 do to make the soldiers at the front know our hearts were with them, to let them understand it was not in any supine indifference, not in any sense that the great work which they were doing belonged to them and not to us, that we dared to take that place which many of us look back upon now almost 35 with shame. At least we rejoiced then for everything we could do to cheer their souls and strengthen their arms. So let it be 322 Addresses on Social Questions. with those who stand forward here and voluntarily with noble consecration undertake this labor which belongs to the con- duct of a great work like this. Let them not lack the per- petual Godspeed and the continual assistance and support of those who simply watch and bless what they are doing. 5 It is impossible for us to see the limits of a work like this. As one studies the lessons of such things as have been said to us to-night, how his thought opens into the future ! The richness of these days in which we live is that it is impossible for us not to anticipate the future. I think there have been lo certain ages in the world's history in which there has been almost no anticipation of things to come, when it seemed almost as if men lived in the days in which they were espe- cially situated and did not look forward, did not feel that the present is inseparably bound to the future, and that it was 15 impossible to live in the present worthily unless they antici- pated the future. There have been times in the world's history in which it seemed almost that was the case, but it has absolutely ceased now. In the end of the nineteenth century surely we do look forward into the twentieth century. 20 Peering into the vast distance, let us try to anticipate the days that are going to be. It seems to me one of the great things in the minds of people to-day in the anticipation of the future is the great, rich, solemn fear which anticipates the great future with anxiety because it sees the larger forces 25 which are going to work there. It is impossible for us to look into a child's face to-day and 1 1 not think of the fifty years in which that child is to live, if its life shall be spared to fulfil the normal length of human life upon earth, of the great forces that are coming into existence, 30 the great powers that are taking possession of this earth both in its physical and moral and spiritual life, the great powers that are shaking the old systems, so that we see that what- ever is to come upon the world, the old systems have had their day and are ceasing to be, and something new is to come. 35 There is electricity in the air that those of the future are to Phillips Brooks. 323 breathe, dynamite in the soil over which they are to tread, deeper forces stirring all that soil, changing the most absolute conclusions of human life, everything that seems most settled being disorganized, questions that seemed forever closed 5 being opened. It is impossible that men shall look forward without fear. The man simply declares himself an animal, the man simply declares himself incapable of thoughtful anticipation, who does not look forward into the days that immediately are to be and the days that lie further off, and 10 feel a great, deep anxiety. It is not a cruel thing, it is not a base thing, it is not a thing for which a man dare to be ashamed for a moment, that something that really proves him a man makes him anticipate with great joy that which he at 15 the same time anticipates with great anxiety. This world so wonderful in which we live, it is impossible for any man to think of it with nobleness — it is impossible for any man to think of it with loftiness and not at the same time to think of it both with fea^ and hope. We rejoice in the 20 great forces that are ever taking possession of it. We rejoice that the years to come are going to be greater than the years that have been, and yet we know that in them there is much that threatens danger. The man who lives in this world with- out a sense of danger lives but an animal and a brutal life. 25 The man who lives in this world without a sense of danger lives also without a sense of opportunity, for in every world of God that we have ever known the two are absolutely bound together, and it is impossible to separate them from each other. Now, one of the things which impresses itself, 30 it seems to me, is that this perpetual sense which we see in every thoughtful face and recognize in every thoughtful mind, that sense of danger in the days to be, has also a strange beauty. The recurrence of evils permanent and eternal pro- . motes the strongest human life. Men do not know what the ^35 effect of these new elements will be, and therefore they are being thrown back again, as they never perhaps have been, I 324 Addresses on Social Questions. certainly not for many generations before, upon the simplest and most primal forces of human life, certain that in them, however impossible it may be for any man, however wise he is, to anticipate their application, in them must lie the real safety of human life in the dangers in which it is going 5 to be launched forth on that new century whose brink we have almost reached. We come back to those great, ever- lasting, primitive, primal things which must be the salvation of the world in the future as in the past. This world of ours may have this great characteristic, that j o it is at once most complicated in its conception of life and at the same time it grows more and more to put great stress and value upon the everlasting, primal, simplest things of human life. It seems to me all this comes directly into application with that which we are thinking about to-night. The world 1 5 is to be full of complications which we cannot read. What is to keep the world safe in the midst of all these dangers ? The great, everlasting, primal things underlying history. In new regions of danger, amid forces of greater comprehensive- ness than ever before, it is human character. It is the simple 20 nature of man, known in his divineness as the child of God. It is the relation in which man stands in intimate affection and in perpetual and mutual dependence upon his fellow-man. It is the state largely organized and simplified with the great idea of democracy or government of the people. It is the 25 constitution of human society as man stands most intimately and at the same time most simply related to his fellow-man. It is the family made more noble and divine in order that it may be the saving element of the great complications of the future even more than it has been in any of the ages of the 30 past. And in connection with all this it is childhood with its power estimated, its dignity maintained, its critical impor- tance made manifest. With the care for every human crea- ture recognized as the duty of every other human creature, he can touch any human creature that needs care with his 35 help. Phillips Brooks. 325 This seems to me to be the secret of the whole matter that is behind the fear for the future, that great proven faith which I do beheve is at the bottom of the heart of man to-day more than in any age that has ever passed, the great proven faith in the simple, primal forces of humanity and society, the government of the family and of God. They are going to be the preservation of the future as they have been the preservation of the past. Because the bad child in the next ten years is going to be capable of doing more 10 evil than the bad child has been able to do in any past years, therefore it is that men go back again and fasten themselves upon those great things to which they have some- times been indifferent ; therefore it is that they are appealed to by the absolute simplicity of a society like this. What is [5 it that it is trying to do ? Simply to take the child and make him a child again. Simply to bring him back to those days of bright, sunny innocence, of the freshness of human life, to bring him back again so that he may fulfil the first period of human life and carry forth into it the indestructible power 20 with which the subsequent periods of his human life are to be laid. Let us obey the great inspiration of our time. Let us be afraid for the future. Let us recognize that man is going in upon a more critical period of his existence than he has ever lived in before. Let us rejoice in such assurances, 25 but let us only dare to rejoice in so far as we give what strength it is possible for us to inspire in these great preser- vative forces which ever have been and ever must be the sal- vation of the world. The power of a generation, just think what it is! We 30 sometimes personify generations and centuries. The eight- eenth, the seventeenth, the sixteenth centuries, to the stu- dent of history, stand forth distinct and clear. We can see exactly what they are. We can look into their faces. We can hear the tread with which they move along the stages of 35 history. So it is with every generation. It has its personal life. It has its personality. What this society is trying to 326 Addresses on Social Questions. do, in other words — for that is the real value of such a meeting and of such an organization as this — that power or disposition of human nature which this society moves in a small way, in a little degree, is the solemn responsibility of generation for generation. Looking at it in a large way, I think that is what this society is doing, and the world that this society represents. It is doing for the next generation precisely what the father and the mother do for the child whose life they have brought into this world, and whom they are to leave here in this world after they have passed away. The father and mother build the home, gather the true enjoy- ments of human life, and provide for the education of the child, smooth just as many of the first footsteps as it is possible to make plain, and only dismiss him from their care when the time comes that they must pass away to higher worlds, and must leave him here to fight the battles and meet the experiences of life. Generation does that for generation just as the father or mother does it for the child. This which we are doing is simply the manifest expression of that sense of responsibility and privilege which belongs to a gen- 20 eration as it sends forth the next generation into life. The work is going on through all our homes. Everywhere where children are being educated by the sweet, natural influences 1 of fatherhood and motherhood the next generation is being t fitted for its work. He who trains a little child in the house- 25 hold is doing something more than simply making an heir for his property and a perpetuator of his fame. He is build- ing also part of that great human life that is to come after this special little bit of human life in which we have been living. Here are fragments, waifs and strays cast aside. 30 We will bring them also and incorporate them into the power of that generation which is to come after ourselves. Poor is the life of any man, poor is the generation of mankind that says, " We care not what comes after we are gone." It is a beautiful provision of Him who made not merely individual but 35 corporate and continuous human life, that man may care for \ Phillips Brooks. 327 that which is to come after him, that the father and mother may care for their child, that the generation may care for the generation that is to be ; and so when you pick the child out of the gutter, and when you lead down the little child from 5 the court-room where he has been condemned for a crime whose name and nature he can hardly understand, you are helping to build that future w^iose reflex power is adding the richest and loftiest power to the present life which w^e are living now. 10 It seems to me he that acts for childhood is in a large sense acting for humanity, he is acting with such bright hope. I believe in every good institution. I believe in the institutions where old men are gathered at the end of their lives that the last lapping of the wave upon the beach may 15 be calm in the twilight, however the tumult of the storm may have been raging out at sea. It is all beautiful, the soften- ing of the ends of life, and it is not destitute of hope to him who believes that every life that fails most here opens into some new opportunity beyond the stars. But surely there is 20 a supreme presence of hopefulness when we are able to take him in whom the years of the future lie yet unopened, him who has not yet manifested the thing that is in him, when we are able to take him and stock his life with strength from our life, to free it from hindrances, and say, " Go forth, and 25 be the thing God made you to be." It is a rich sense of the mystery of human being, simple and distinct in itself, that seems to me to be a wonder that grows on us the longer we live, and makes this world so beautiful that we dread with every anticipation the time when we shall be called to go 30 away from it. We talk about the mystery of the great men who have manifested the splendid powers of our human life in their supremest exhibition. We talk about Martin Luther and William Shakespeare. We say how mysterious they are. Well, the mystery is not in their greatness. The mys- 35 tery is in their commonness. The mystery is in their hu- manity. The poorest little waif upon your streets, the poorest 328 Addresses on Social Questions. little ruffian that steals at the cart-tail, there is a mystery about him which, when you look at him, baffles philosophers and laughs philosophy to scorn. Ask this little creature on the street what it was he was doing yesterday. He says he remembers yesterday he went to West Philadelphia or he 5 went to Camden. Do you take in the infinite mystery there is about that ? What is it for that little creature to remem- ber ? Where has been stowed away that experience of yes- terday which now he brings up and hands as if it were a billet out of his pocket to show to me ? Mystery that with 10 all thinking and dreaming, with all singing and prophesying, men are no nearer to to-day than they were when the first men were puzzled by the everlasting mystery of human life. Now, to touch that mystery in its childhood, to touch that mystery before it is poured into the specific 15 and different ways of life which it is going to manifest by and by, to take, not the doctor nor the merchant, not the young student nor the young criminal, but him in whom there is simply the absolute humanity, him in whom there is human life undivided and unnamed, simple 20 human life. He who helps a child helps humanity with a distinctness, with an immediateness, which no other help given to human creatures in any other stage of their human life can possibl}'^ 1 give again. He who puts his blessed influence into a river 25 blesses the land to which that river is to flow ; but he who puts his influence into the fountain where the river comes out puts his influence everywhere. No land it may not reach. No ocean it may not make sweeter. No bark it may not bear. No wheel it may not turn. Sometimes we get at 30 things best by their contraries. Learn, my friends, the rich beauty of helping a child by the awfulness of hurting a child. The thing men have always shuddered at most, the thing men have seemed to recognize as marking the deepest and most essential meanness of human nature, is hurting a child ; 35 hurting a child even in his physical frame, so that he weeps, i II i Phillips Brooks. 329 shrieks, and cries ; hurting him still more in soul and in mind. The thing that made the Divine Master indignant as He stood there in Jerusalem was that He dreamed of seeing before Him a man who had harmed some of 5 these little ones, and He said of any such ruffian, '* It were better for him that he never had been born." If it is such an awful thing to hurt a child's life, to aid a child's life is beautiful. I sometimes think how it would be if multitude were taken 10 away and we saw in its simplicity that which often loses itself in the large variety in which it is manifested to us. Sup- pose there were but one needy child in all the world. Sup- pose every child from China to Peru were wrapped in the soft care and tender luxury which belong to children in their 15 parent's arms. Suppose every babe were cooing itself to rest in its mother's embrace, and every little boy were look- ing up into the face of a father's sympathy for the first mani- festation of a truth that was to make him strong. Then sup- pose that somewhere, anywhere upon our earth, there came 20 one cry of a poor, wronged, needy child. Can you not be sure that all humanity would lift itself up and never be satis- fied until that child was aided ? Is it less pathetic, is it less appealing, because they are here by the million instead of one or two ? If one of those little creatures that the doctor 25 read to us about had stood alone in all the generations of humanity, how infinitely pathetic it would have been ! How you all would have stood up and said, " Where is that child ? Where is that child ? Life shall not be life to us until we have relieved it, until those poor limbs have been straight- 30 ened and those arms made strong, until those bleared eyes have been taught to see, and that voice has sung some of the first beginnings of the song of life." Well, there are hun- dreds and thousands and millions of them. They look up to you from the gutter as you walk the street. They look into 35 the face of the good, kind judge as he sits upon his bench. They come stretching out their poor sick arms to the doctors 330 Addresses on Social Questions. in the hospitals, and you can help them. You can help them. Help them just as you would if there were only one of them, by giving your sympathy, your blessing, your loud praise, and your large contributions to the Children's Aid Society. 5 LEGISLATIVE. The two speeches afford a sharp contrast, for No. I is the relent- less attack of a party leader upon his opponent; No. II is the broad- minded appeal of a statesman in behalf of those who have been his op- ponents in peace and his enemies in war. Lord Sahsbury's speech is famous for its scathing sarcasm. Mr. Schurz's speech is noteworthy for its steady, skilful meeting, direct and indirect, of the two ideas most in the minds of those opposing him — that he is urging generosity vrhere punishment is due, and that the generosity urged impUes censure of the negro. I. LORD SALISBURY. Egypt and the Soudan. House of Lords, February 26, 1885. [" It was in the year 1880 that the movements of a Mahommedan dervish, named Mahomed Ahmed, first began to attract the attention of the Egyptian officials. He had quarrelled with and repudiated the authority of the head of his religious order, because he tolerated such 5 frivolous practices as dancing and singing. Many earnest and energetic Mahommedans flocked to him, and among these was the present Khalifa Abdullah. To his instigation was probably due not merely the assumption of [the title Mahdi] by Mahommed Ahmed, but the addi- tion of a worldly policy to what was to have been a strictly religious 10 propaganda. By New Year's Day, 1884, the power of the Mahdi was triumphantly established over the whole extent of the Soudan, from the Equator to Souakim, with the exception of Khartoum, the middle course of the Nile from that place to Dongola, [and] some out- lying garrisons. The principal Egyptian force remaining was the body 15 of four thousand so-called troops, left behind at Khartoum, under Colonel de Coetlogon, by Hicks Pasha, when he set out on his unfortu- nate expedition, [destroyed at Shekan, November 4, 1883]. The motives which induced Mr. Gladstone's government to send General Gordon to the Soudan in January, 1884, were the selfish desire to appease 20 public opinion, and to shirk in the easiest possible manner a great respon- sibility. They had no policy at all, [yet] hope was indulged that, under his exceptional reputation, the evacuation of the Soudan might not only be successfully carried out, but that his success might induce the public and the world to accept that abnegation of policy as the acme '25 of wisdom. They had evidently persuaded themselves that their policy was Gordon's policy ; and before he was in Khartoum a week he not merely points out that the evacuation policy is not his but theirs, and that although he thinks its execution is still possible, the true poHcy is, 'if Egypt is to be quiet, that the Mahdi must be smashed up.' The 30 hopes that had been based on Gordon's supposed complaisance in the post of representative on the Nile of the Government policy were thus dispelled, and it became evident that Gordon, instead of being a tool, was resolved to be m.aster, so far as the mode of carrying out the 333 334 Legislative. evacuation policy with full regard for the dictates of honour was to be decided. Nor was this all, or the worst of the revelations made to the Government in the first few weeks after his arrival at Khartoum. While expressing his willingness and intention to discharge the chief part of his task, viz. the withdrawal of the garrisons, which was ail the 5 Government cared about, he also descanted on the moral duty and the inevitable necessity of setting up a provisional government that should avert anarchy and impose some barrier to the Mahdi's progress. All this was trying to those who only wished to be rid of the whole matter, but Gordon did not spare their feelings, and phrase by phrase he re- 10 vealed what his own policy would be and what his inner wishes really were. . . . Gordon made several specific demands in the first six weeks of his stay at Khartoum, [he entered it February 18, 1884] — that is, in the short period before communication was cut off. To these requests not one favorable answer was given. . . . When it was revealed that he 15 had strong views and clear plans, not at all in harmony with those who sent him, it was thought, by the Ministers who had not the courage to recall him, very inconsiderate and insubordinate of him to remain at his post and to refuse all the hints given him, that he ought to resign unless he would execute a sative qui pent sort of retreat to the frontier. 20 Very harsh things have been said of Mr. Gladstone and his Cabinet on this point, but considering their views and declarations, it is not so very surprising that Gordon's boldness and originality alarmed and dis- pleased them. Their radical fault in these early stages of the question was not that they were indifferent to Gordon's demands, but that they 25 had absolutely no policy. They could not even come to the decision, as Gordon wrote, ' to abandon altogether and not care what happens.' [The troops of the Mahdi besieged Khartoum from March, 1884, to January 25, 1885, when it fell.] The result of the early representations of the Duke of Devonshire, and the definite suggestion of Lord Wolseley, 30 was that the Government gave in when the public anxiety became so great at the continued silence of Khartoum, and acquiesced in the dispatch of an expedition to relieve General Gordon. The sum of ten millions was devoted to the work of rescuing Gordon by the very persons who had rejected his demands for the hundredth part of that 35 total," but so slow was the progress of the expedition that it arrived just too late. Condensed from pp. 98-157 of Life of Gordon., D. C. Boulger. T. F. Unwin, London. "On February 19, 1885 about a fortnight after the news of the fall of Khartoum and the death of our betrayed hero, Gordon, had reached 40 this country, Parliament assembled. In the course of the next fort- night a motion of censure on the Government was proposed by Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords, and carried by 169 against 68 votes; I Lord Salisbury. 335 but another motion to the same effect, introduced in the House of Commons by Sir Stafford Northcote, was defeated by a majority of 14." The Marquis of Salisbury, Y{..Vi.'Yx2SSi. pp. 196-199. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., London]. 5 The Marquess of Salisbury, in rising to move — " That this House, having taken into consideration the statements that have been made on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, is of opinion that — (i.) The deplorable failure of the Soudan expedition to attain its object has been due to the undecided 10 counsels of the Government and to the culpable delay attending the commencement of operations ; (2.) that the policy of abandoning the whole of the Soudan after the con- clusion of military operations will be dangerous to Egypt md inconsistent with the interests of the Empire," said : 15 My Lords, the Motion which I have the honour to lay before Your Lordships to-night has a double aspect ; it passes judgment upon the past and it expresses an opinion with respect to the policy of the future. Some persons receive with considerable impatience the idea that at the 2c present crisis of our country's destiny we should examine into the past, and spend our time in judging of that which can- not be recalled ; but I think that such objections are unreas- onable. In one of the gravest crises through which our country has ever passed we depend upon the wisdom and de- 25 cision of those who guide our councils ; and we can only judge whether that dependence is rightly placed by examining their conduct in the past, to see whether what they have done justifies us in continuing our confidence in the difficul- ties which are yet to come. Now, whatever may be said of 30 Her Majesty's Government, I think those who examine it care- fully will find that it follow^s a certain rule and system, and is in that sense, if in no other, consistent. Their conduct at the beginning of this Egyptian affair has been analogous to their conduct at the end. Throughout there has been an 35 unwillingness to come until the last moment to any requisite decision — there has been an absolute terror of fixing upon 33^ Legislative. any settled course ; and the result has been that when the time came when external pressure forced upon them a deci- sion as to some definite course the moment for satisfactory action had already passed, and the measures taken were adopted in haste, with little preparedness, and were ill-fitted 5 for the emergency with which they had to cope. The con- duct of Her Majesty's Government has been an alternatior of periods of slumber and periods of rush ; and the rush, however vehement, has always been too unprepared and too unintelligent to repair the damage which the period o: 10 slumber has effected. I do not wish to hark back into this Eg}''ptian Question . but it is necessar}^ to point out the uniformity^ of character in the conduct of, the Government. The first commencement of our troubles was the height to which Arabi's rebellion was 1 5 allowed to go. The Government knew very well the danger of Arabi while he was yet a small man, and had little in- fluence. They were perfectly aware of the mischiefs he was brewing, and they not only declined to act themselves, but, if they are not greatly belied, they prevented the local author- 20 ities from acting — they prevented Arabi being removed, as he should have been removed, from the confines of Egypt. If that had been done, all the evil that followed would have been averted ; but while his enterprize was going on they reposed in absolute security, and they took no effective 21 measures till the pressure of public opinion forced upon them the movement which culminated in the bombardment of Alexandria. That was a very fair illustration of the vice which has characterized their policy, that when they did move the movement was made suddenly, with no prepara- 30 tion. and with no foresight of what was to follow. The Fleet was moved in, and as a matter of course, Arabi resisted, and the Fleet, as was inevitable, suddenly replied ; and then it was found that there were no forces to land and back up the action that was taken. The result of that improvidence was 35 not only that the Khedive's Throne was shaken, and the Lord Salisbury. 337 fidelity of his Army was utterly destroyed, but that the town and fortifications of Alexandria, through the vengeance of Arabi, were grievously injured, and that tremendous debt for the injury done to Alexandria was incurred, which still re- 5 mained a weight upon the Egyptian finances, and a hindrance to all negotiations for the settlement of foreign claims. That was the first act, the first specimen of that period of slumber followed by a sudden and unprepared rush. Then came the question of the Soudan, which was no new question. Before 10 the battle of Tel-el-Kebir the Mahdi was already in arms. It was a matter as to which anybody who undertook to deal with the destinies of Egypt should have arrived at a decision as to the plan on which the Government of Egypt should act. But no decision was arrived at — the thing was allowed to 15 drift; and Her Majesty's Government, plunged into absolute torpor, seemed to have but one care — that they should escape from nominal responsibility, ignoring the real responsibilities which would inevitably be attached to their actions. The despatches, one after another, during that period only repeat 20 the old burden — " Her Majesty's Government has no re- sponsibility as to what takes place in the Soudan." The result was that the unhappy Hicks was sent into the Soudan, wretchedly equipped, with an army altogether beneath the number that he ought to have had, composed of men, more- 25 over, who had been turned out of the Egyptian Army as worthless. The inevitable result followed — a result which Her Majesty's Government had no cause to be surprised at, for they were warned of it by their own confidential agents. Yet they absolutely declined to interfere, and hoped, by dis- 30 claiming responsibility, to escape from the inevitable conse- quences of their own neglect. The anticipated disaster came. Hicks and his army were totally destroyed, and not a man escaped to tell the tale ; and then it was that Her Majesty's Government awoke from the period of slumber, 3^ and the period of rush began. They adopted two measures, both of them as inadequate 338 Legislative. and inapplicable to the circumstances as it was possible to conceive, and both of them big with future trouble. In the first place, they announced suddenly to the world and to Egypt, that Egypt must abandon the Soudan. It was impos- sible to conceive a more stupendous political blunder than that. 5 It was a proclamation to all our enemies that they could enjoy impunity ; and it was a proclamation to all our friends that they would be handed over without mercy to those who desired to overwhelm them. But the announcement was made, and from that moment the fate of the garrisons whom 10 they had left scattered over the Soudan was sealed. The fate of the garrison of Khartoum was brought home to them forcibly, and they might have taken seasonable measures for its relief — they might have sent troops upon which they could rely to defend its garrison, and adopted some definite 15 and effective plan of relief. Instead of that, they took advantage of the chivalrous devotion of one of the noblest ■ spirits which this age has seen; and, making use of his self- devotion, they sent him forward on an impossible and hope- less task to accomphsh by mere words and promises what 20 they had not the courage to do by force of arms. From that commencement — the abandonment of the Soudan and the mission of General Gordon — all our subsequent troubles have arisen. But that was not all. Among the garrisons of the Soudan were those of Sinkat and Tokar, which, so long 25 back as November, 1883, were severely pressed by the Mahdi's lieutenants, and their danger was announced to Her Majesty's Government as extreme. For three months they ■ took no notice of that danger; they allowed the matter to be left to General Baker and a body of Egyptians, whose worth- 30 lessness was announced in every page of the Correspondence * laid before them. Of course. General Baker, with such a force, was inevitably defeated ; but it was not until Parlia- ment met — I think it was not until a Vote Censure was announced — that Her Majesty's Government determined to 35 make an effort to do that which they ought to have done, Lord Salisbury. 339 and which, if they had not been asleep, they would have done three months before, to make an effort to relieve the garrisons of Sinkat and Tokar. When the resolution was come to, when at last the necessity dawned upon their minds, 5 they plunged into the matter with their usual improvidence and w^ant of plan. They sent men to Suakin, apparently with no idea of what they were to do when they got there. Before they started Sinkat had fallen, and before they could undertake any active operations the garrison of Tokar, giv- 10 ing up in despair, had surrendered. Then the planlessness, the aimlessness, of the Government Avas revealed ; they landed their Forces, and, lest they should expose themselves to derision for taking them away without doing anything, they slaughter six thousand Arabs, and go away absolutely with- 15 out any result for the blood of their friends or the blood of their enemies that they had shed. They go away guilty of all this bloodshed, leaving behind them absolutely no result, except the enmities and the blood feuds they had created, because they had plunged into the enterprize without any 20 definite view, and without any fixed plan to guide themselves. These three cases — the case of the bombardment of Alex- andria, the case of the abandonment of the Soudan, and the case of the mission of General Graham's Force — they are all on the same plan, and all show you that remarkable char- 25 acteristic of torpor during the time when action was needed, and hasty, impulsive, ill-considered action, when the moment for action had passed by. Their further conduct was modelled on their conduct of the past. So far was it modelled, that we were able to put 30 it to the test which establishes a scientific law. The proof of a scientific laAv is that you can prophesy from previous occurrences what will happen in the future. That is exactly what took place in the present instance. We had had these three instances of the mode of working of Her Majesty's 35 Government before us, and we knew the laws that guided their action. As astronomers, observing the motions of a 340 Legislative. comet, can discover by observation the future path by which that comet is to travel, so we could prophecy what would happen in the case of General Gordon. My Right hon. Friend (Sir Stafford Northcote) prophesied it in the House of Com- mons, and was met by a burst of fury from the Prime Minister 5 such as that Assembly has seldom seen. He was told that Egypt was of much less importance than, I think, Sutherland or Caithness, and that everything that was wrong was the re- sult of deficits imputed to him in the finances some ten years ago ; and he was generally denounced because he would inter- lo fere with the beneficent legislation of the Government on the subject of capable citizens and so forth by introducing the subject of Egypt as many as seventeen times. Well, that did not prevent my Right hon. Friend's prophecies from being correct, and I venture to repeat them in this House. I do 15 not like to quote my own words — it is egotistical — but as a proof of what I may call the accuracy of the scientific law by which the motion of the Government is determined, I should like to quote what I said on the 4th of April, when discussing the prospect of the relief of General Gordon. The Govern- 20 ment were proclaiming that he was perfectly safe, and that an Expedition to relieve him was an utterly unnecessary operation, while it was very unreasonable for us to raise the question before Parliament. What I said was this — " Are these circumstances encouraging to us when we are asked to 25 trust that, on the inspiration of the moment, when the danger comes Her Majesty's Government will find some means of relieving General Gordon ? I fear that the history of the past will be repeated in the future ; that, just again, when it is too late, the critical resolution will be taken ; some terrible 3° news will come that the position of Gordon is absolutely a forlorn and helpless one ; and then, under the pressure of public wrath and Parliamentary censure, some desperate resolution of sending an Expedition will be formed too late A to achieve the object that it is desired to gain." (3 Hansard, 35 ■ [286], 16 1 6.) I quote these words to show that by that time Lord Salisbury. 341 we had ascertained the laws of motion and the orbits of those eccentric comets who sit on the Treasury Bench. Now the terrible responsibility and blame rests upon the Government, because they were warned in March and April of the danger 5 to General Gordon ; because they received every intimation which men could reasonably look for that his danger would be extreme ; and because they delayed from March and April right down to the 15 th of August before they took a single measure to relieve him. 10 What were they doing all that time ? It is very difficult to conceive. Some people have said — I think it is an unreasonable supposition — that the cause of the tardiness of Her Majesty's Government was the accession to the Cabi- net of the noble Earl the Secretary of State for the Colonies 15 (the Earl of Derby). I have quoted some of the earlier misdeeds of Her Majesty's Government, partly for the pur- pose of defending the noble Earl from the charge — they were almost as bad before he joined them. What happened during those eventful months ? I suppose some day the 20 memoirs will tell our grandchildren : but we shall never know. Some people think there were divisions in the Cabi- net, and that, after division on division, a decision was put off lest the Cabinet should be broken up. I am rather inclined to think that it was due to the peculiar position of 25 the Prime Minister. He came in as the apostle of the Mid- Lothian campaign, loaded with all the doctrines and all the follies of that pilgrimage. We have seen on each occasion, after one of these mishaps, when he has been forced by events and by the common sense of the nation to take some 30 more active steps — we have seen his extreme supporters falling foul of him, and reproaching him with having deserted their opinions and disappointed the ardent hopes which they had formed of him as the apostle of absolute negation in foreign affairs. I think he always felt the danger of that 35 reproach. He always felt the debt that he had incurred to those supporters. He always felt a dread lest they should 342 Legislative. break away ; and he put off again and again to the last practical moment any action which might bring him into open conflict with the doctrines by which his present emi- nence was gained. At all events, this is clear — that throughout those six 5 months the Government knew perfectly well the danger in which General Gordon was placed. It has been said that General Gordon did not ask for troops. I am surprised at that defence. One of the characteristics of General Gordon was the extreme abnegation of his nature. It was not 10 to be expected that he should send home a telegram to say — " I am in great danger, therefore send me troops " — he would probably have cut off his right hand before he would have written a telegram of that sort. But he sent || home telegrams through Mr. Power, telegrams saying that 15 the people of Khartoum were in great danger ; that the Mahdi would succeed unless military succour was sent for- ward ; urging at one time the sending forward of Sir Evelyn Wood and his Egyptians, and atanother the landing of Indians at Suakin and the establishment of the Berber route, and 20 distinctly telling the Government — and this is the main point — that unless they would consent to his views the supremacy of the Mahdi was assured. This is what he said no later than February 29th, almost when first he saw the nature of the problem with which he had been sent to deal — 25 " Should you wish to intervene, send two hundred British troops to Wady Haifa . . . and then open up Suakin-Berber route with Indian Moslem troops. ... If you decide against this, you may probably have to decide between Zebehr and Mahdi." [Egypt, No. 12 (1884) p. 131.] It was impossible that he 30 could have spoken more clearly. But Mr. Power, who was with him, who was one of the three Englishmen in the town, who was the Consular Agent, whom he trusted so much that he sent him down with Stewart upon that last ill-fated jour- ney, and whose decoration and reward he recommended to 35 the British Government — he could speak plainly ; he was Lord Salisbury. 343 not the General in command, and there was no appeal to his chivalry in the matter. Power said on the 23d of March — "We are daily expecting British troops — we cannot bring our- selves to believe that we are to be abandoned by the Govern- 5 ment. Our existence depends upon England." Well, now, my Lords, is it conceivable that after two months, in May, the Prime T^Iinister should have said that they were waiting to have reasonable proof that Gordon was in danger ? By that time Khartoum was surrounded ; the Governor of Berber 10 had announced that his case was hopeless, which was surely proved by the massacre which took place in June ; and yet in May Mr. Gladstone was still waiting for "reasonable proof " that the men who were surrounded, who had announced that they had only five months' food, were in danger. Apparently 1 5 he did not get that reasonable proo'f till the month of August. I may note, in passing, that I think the interpretation which the Government has placed upon the language of their trusted officers has more than once been exceedingly ungen- erous. They told us that they did not think it necessary to 20 send an Expedition to relieve Sinkat and Tokar because they could quote some language of hope from the despatches of General Baker ; and in the same way they could quote the same language of hope from the despatches of General Gordon. But a General sent forward on a dangerous mission 25 does not like to go whining for assistance unless he is abso- lutely pressed by the extremest peril. All those great quali- ties which go to make men heroes and soldiers are incompat- ible with such a course, lead them to underrate danger, and to shrink as from a great disgrace from any unnecessary 30 appeal for exertion for their protection. It was the business of the Government not to interpret Gordon's telegrams as if they had been statutory declarations ; but to judge for them- selves of the circumstances of the case, and to see that those who were surrounded, who were only three Englishmen 35 among such a vast body of Mahommedans, and who were already cut off from all communications with the civilized 344 Legislative. world by the o ccupation of every important town upon the river, were really in danger, and that, if they meant to answer their responsibilities, they were bound to relieve them. I cannot tell what blindness fell over the eyes of some Members of Her Majesty's Government. On reading 5 over these debates, I find that the Marquess of Hartington, on the 13th of May, actually gave utterance to these expres- sions — "I say that it would be indelible disgrace " — indelible disgrace — " if we should neglect any means at the disposal of this country to save General Gordon." (3 Hansard, [288] 10 224.) And after that announcement by the Minister chiefly responsible, the Secretary of State for War, three months elapsed before any step was taken for doing that which he admitted that the Government were bound to do under the penalty of indelible disgrace. 15 It has been said that General Gordon was destroyed by treachery, and that that treachery would have happened at any time when the British Army came near Khartoum. What does that extraordinary theory mean ? It means that the Mahdi had agreed with Farag Pasha that it would be 20 much more comfortable to go on besieging, and that they should go on besieging until Lord Wolseley's Force came and made it dangerous to continue doing it any longer, and that then the previously arranged surrender of the place should take place. Have those who put forth this extraor- 25 dinary theory not heard or read of the hard straits to which the Mahdi and his followers were for a long time reduced — how they were suffering from fever, from cholera, from small-pox, from the difficulty of feeding themselves, how there were constant threats that the Mahdi's men would 30 desert this cause, and how very hard it was for him to main- tain his position ? Depend upon it that if the Mahdi could have shortened that period of trial by one hour he would have done so. But supposing this theory to be true — sup- posing the danger was so extreme — and that the moment 35 General Gordon was in Khartoum treachery was certain Lord Salisbury. 345 sooner or later to do its work, and that its execution was only delayed until the necessary emergency arrived — what does that prove ? Does it not show that the sending of General Gordon to Khartoum was an act of extreme folly ? 5 I do not know of any instance of such a man being sent to maintain a position like Khartoum without a certain number of British troops going with him. If British troops had been there, such treachery would have been impossible. The sending of General Gordon by himself, to rely alone on 10 the fidelity of Egyptian troops, for whose allegiance he had no kind of security, was an act of the extremest rashness ; and if the Government can succeed in proving — as I do not think they can — that this treachery was inevitable, they only pile up additional reasons for condemning the 15 expedient by which they sought to cover their previous action. I must confess that it is very difficult to separate this question from the personal matter which it involves. It is very difficult to argue it on purely abstract grounds, without turning for a moment to the character of the man 20 who was thus engaged, and the terrible risk which he ran. When we consider all that he underwent, all that he sacri- ficed in order to serve the Government in a moment of extreme exigency, there is something infinitely pathetic in reflecting on what must have been his feelings as day after 25 day, week after week, and month after month passed by, and he spared no exertion, no personal sacrifice, to perform the duties placed upon him, as he lengthened out the siege by inconceivable prodigies of skill, ingenuity, and resource, and as, in spite of it all — in spite of the deep devotion to his 30 country which had prompted him to this great risk and under- taking — the conviction gradually dawned upon him that this country had abandoned him. It is terrible to think what he must have suffered when, at last, as a desperate measure to save those whom he loved, he parted with the only two 35 Englishmen with whom, during these long months, he had had any converse, and sent Colonel Stewart and Mr. Power down 346 Legislative. the river to escape from the fate which had become inevitable to himself. It is very painful to think of the reproaches upon his country, and his country's Government, which must have passed through the mind of that devoted man through succes- sive weeks and months of unmerited peril and neglect. No 5 wonder he should have at last written that tragic letter, which has only appeared yesterday before the world — the letter he wrote on the 14th of December — " All is up ; I expect a catastrophe in ten days' time. It would not have been so if our people had kept me better informed as to their inten- 10 tions." The Government had no intentions to keep him informed of. They were merely acting from hand to mouth to avert a Parliamentary Censure or a political crisis. They had no plan, no intentions to carry out. If he could have known their intentions, that great hero would have been 15 saved to the English Army, and a great disgrace would not have been enrolled on the history of the English race. My Lords, by the light of this sad history, what are our prospects for the future ? Was there ever a time when clear- ness of plan and definiteness of policy were more required 20 than they are now ? I am not going to say that the policy of the Government is bad. I should be paying them an extravagant compliment if I said that. They have no policy at all. As my Right hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Gibson) epigrammatically described their policy the other night, they 25 are going to Khartoum to please the Whigs, and they are going to abandon it to please the Radicals. I dare say that that is as true as any other description of their policy that can be given. But at such a crisis of our country's fate, in both Houses of Parliament, in the Press, in society — everywhere 30 — you hear people asking " What is their policy ? " You get no answer. You get no answer from themselves. Here and there you get a faint echo of a policy, something vague and ill-defined, like the distant sound, to which you can attach no definite meaning. You sometimes seem to see for a moment 35 the phantom of a policy ; but if you try to grasp it, it es- Lord Salisbury. 347 capes you. We used to think that the policy of the Government was the evacuation of the Soudan as soon as the mihtary operations were over. A very bad pol- icy! But even that does not seem now to be their 5 policy. We do not know whether they are going to evacuate the Soudan or not. They do not know who are going to hold the Soudan ; they leave themselves open as to that; it may be the Italians, the Turks, or the Chinese. Only one point they put their foot down on, and 10 that is that Egypt shall not hold the Soudan. I confess I thought that when they swept all the rest away they might sweep that away also ; for there is the portion of the Soudan which the Earl of Dufferin thought should remain under Egypt, and which must always follow the destinies in some 15 sense of " the Egyptian Government." Then we were told that they were to " smash the Mahdi ; " but now we are to make use of the Mahdi. To smash the Mahdi is not the best way of inducing him to take a favourable view of your operations. If you smash the Mahdi, you may do it so thor- 20 oughly that he will not be of any use in the future ; and it is possible he may retain a certain resentment for the process of being smashed. It is possible either that the Mahdi, in fulfilment of his claims to the religious position he occupies, will have to decline to any dealing with the infidels ; or that 25 if you crush him so entirely by force of arms that he may consent to treat with you, he will have lost all position in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen, and you will not find his influ- ence of any assistance in the solution of the terrible problem which you have in the Soudan. They have no policy, in 30 the same way, as to the railway. It is a very important measure making a railway. It is very difficult work. It is unprecedented in history to project a railway into an en- emy's country, and follow it up by conquering the country. Whether that is possible or not, the construction of the rail- 35 way did seem to imply some policy. If the Government are going to make a railway, and then leave it for the first comer 34^ Legislative. to take and do with it what he hked, that is an extremity of generosity which can only belong to a Government which lives from hand to mouth. It appears to me that, on this matter of our Egyptian policy, though I do not say that you can lay down the precise steps by which the end is to be ob- 5 tained, still it is a time when we ought to conceive to ourselves what the end of our policy is to be — that we should clearly define it and follow it out with consistency and persistency. Now, let us examine broadly what are the interests of lo England in this matter. With Mediterranean politics, as such, we have no great reason to concern ourselves. France may be mistress in Algeria and Tunis ; Morocco may go its own way ; and it is said that Italy has views in Tripoli ; but Egypt stands in a peculiar position. It 1 5 is the road to India. The condition of Egypt can never be indifferent to us ; and, more than that, after all the sacri- fices that we have made, after all the efforts that this country has put forth, after the position that we have taken up in the eyes of the world, we have a right, and it is our duty to 20 insist upon it, that our influence shall be predominant in Egypt. I do not care by what technical arrangements this result is obtained. Technical arrangements must neces- sarily conform, among other things, to the International Law and the Treaty conditions of the world; but the substance 25 of the thing must be this — with all due regard — I do not wish for a moment to disturb the rights of the Suzerain, — but with due regard for those rights, the interests of England in Egypt must be supreme. Now, the influence of England in Egypt is threatened from two sides. It is threatened on the 30 North diplomatically by the position which the Powers are taking up with respect to Egypt. I do not think it was necessary that the Powers should have taken up that position. I believe that, with decent steering, it might have been avoided ; but it has not been avoided, 35 and we undoubtedly have to face, at all events, the inchoate Lord Salisbury. 349 claims which will demand the utmost jealousy and vigilance of Parliament. I do not know what are precisely the ar- rangements which the Government are said to have ar- rived at with respect to the Guarantee. I greatly fear that 5 it may include the idea of a Multiple Control, and to the idea of a Multiple Control I believe that this country will be per- sistently and resolutely hostile. But, diplomatically, we have to guard Eg}^pt from the superior influences of any Power but our own from the North. From the South at the present 10 moment we have a danger of another kind. We have the forces of fanatical barbarism let loose upon the South of Egypt. Owing to the blunders that have been committed, those dangers have reached a ter.rible height. They un- doubtedly will require a very strenuous eifort on the part of 15 this country to conquer. But unless we intend to give over Egypt to barbarism and anarchy, unless we intend to sacri- fice all the advantages for civilization that we have won there, and all the value of the services which that country may render to British interests as its path to the East, we 20 must contrive to check this inroad of barbarian fanaticism which is impersonated in the actions and character of the Mahdi. Now, General Gordon never said a truer thing than when he said that we could not do so by simply drawing a military line, and that we might as well draw a military line 25 to keep back fever. If the insurgent Mahommedans reach the North of Egypt, it will not be so much by their military force as by the moral power of their example that they will threaten the existing state of things in Egypt and the inter- ests of all the European Powers, and, most of all, of our own. 30 We have, therefore, to check — it is absolutely necessary that we should check — this advance of the Mahdi's power. Her Majesty's Government, in those glimpses of policy which they occasionally afford us, have alluded — I cannot say they have done more — to the possibility of setting up a 35 good Government in the Soudan. I quite agree that a good Government is essential to us in the Soudan. That is the 350 Legislative. only dyke that we can really erect to keep out this inundation of barbarian and fanatical force. I entirely concur with them if that is their view, which I cannot certainly deter- mine. I entirely concur with them that it is the duty of this country to see a good Government erected in that country, 5 a Government upon which we can rely, and which shall have power to stem the forces which the Mahdi has set in motion. But they speak of a Government as if it was a Christmas present that you can give a country and then go away. England, it seems, possesses a great many good Governments 10 in store to give away ; she can always give one to a nation when it requires it ; or rather, like the ostrich's egg, they can leave it in the sand to hatch itself. But a good Govern- ment, like any other organized being, must pass through the stages of infancy to maturity. There must be a long stage 15 of infancy during which this Government is unable to defend itself ; and if it is to exist for any useful purposes, it requires, during that period, protection and security, which it can only derive from the action of an external Power. It is that pro- tection and security that England must give. She must not 20 desert her task in the Soudan until there is that Government which can protect Egypt, in which her interests are vital. I do not say whether it should be done by the Nile or from Suakin. I think I see a noble Lord, one of the greatest ornaments of this House, who has conducted an Expedition, 25 not over two hundred and fifty miles from Suakin to Berber, but over four hundred miles, and that with success, over the same burning country, and his opinion, as given last year, is that the Suakin and Berber route is the route by which the Soudan should be held. In that opinion I do not say that I 30 concur — that would be impertinent ; but it is an opinion to which I can humbly subscribe. Whether it is to be done by a railway or not is another matter ; but I fully believe that by using the Suakin and Berber route, we may maintain a hold over that portion of the Soudan which may enable us to 35 perform that which is our primary duty — namely, to repress Lord Salisbury. 351 these forces of barbarism and fanaticism, to protect Egypt from further incursion, to nourish the civilization which they protected and secured, and which would find such abundant root in that fertile country ; and, above all, to quench, and 5 check, and ultimately to destroy, the Slave Trade, which has been the curse of Africa. All those advantages can be readily obtained if England will lay down a determined pol- icy, and will adhere to it. But consistency of policy is abso- lutely necessary. You cannot envelop your policy in obscur- 10 ity, trusting to chance and taking this or that side, according as Parliamentary exigencies require. You cannot do that without fatally damaging the prestige of your power and the chance of your success. We have to assure our friends that we shall stand by them ; we have to assure our enemies that 15 we are permanently to be feared ; and it is only on the con- ditions on which our enemies dread us and our friends trust us that we can be successful in dealing with our enemies. My Lords, we must not conceal from ourselves that the blunders of the last three years have placed us in presence 20 of terrible problems and difficulties, which will require all our manhood to overcome. We have great sacrifices, too, to make. I earnestly trust that this railway, of which I hear so much, may be made. It will be an enormous benefit to Africa. But do not conceal from yourselves that the task is 25 one of no slight magnitude. To throw forward a railway into a country which is not in our possession has never been done before. When you have thrown it forward you will have to guard it against a population who know the country thoroughly, who are very difficult to reach, and who are 30 singularly hostile to any Christian or civilized effort. If you carry this railway forward, you will not only have to smash the Mahdi, but you will have to smash Osman Digna as well, and to smash him so completely that he will not only not be able to resist at the moment, but that he shall be unable to 35 turn back and take up the railway when it is made. All those things involve great sacrifices. They involve the ex- 352 Legislative. penditure not only of much money, but more of that English blood of which the noblest has already been poured forth. They involve the creation of blood feuds that you will have great difficulty in dealing with, and we are not so strong as we were. At first all nations sympathized with us ; now 5 they look upon us coldly, and even with hostility. Those who were our friends became indifferent ; those who were indifferent have become our adversaries ; and if our misfor- tunes and disasters go on much longer, we shall have Europe interfering, and saying that they cannot trust us — 10 we are too weak — that our prestige is too broken to justify us in undertaking the task. My Lords, those are great dangers we have to face. They can only be faced by a consistent policy, which can only be conducted by a Ministry that is capable of unity of counsel 15 and decision of purpose. I have shown you that from this Ministry you can expect no such results. They will only produce after their kind ; they will only do what they have already done. You cannot look for unity of counsel from an Administration which is hopelessly divided ; you cannot ex- 20 pect a resolute policy from those whose purpose is hope- lessly halting. It is for this reason, my Lords, that I ask you to record your opinion that in a Ministry, in whom the first quality of all — the quality of decision of purpose — is wanting ; from such a Ministry you can hope no good in this 25 crisis of your country's fate. If you continue to trust them ; if you continue for any Party reason — if Parliament contin- ues — to abandon to their care the affairs which they have hitherto so hopelessly mismanaged, you must expect to go on 1 j from bad to worse ; you must expect to lose the little prestige 30 which you retain ; you must expect to find in other portions of the world the results of the lower consideration which you occupy in the eyes of mankind. You must expect to be drawn on, year by year, step by step, under the cover of 1 1 plausible excuses, under the cover of high philanthropic 35 sentiments — you must expect to be drawn on to irreparable Carl Schurz. 353 disasters and disgrace, which it will be impossible to efface. Moved to resolve, " That this House, having taken into con- sideration the statements that have been made on behalf of Her Majest}''s Government, is of opinion that — 1. The deplorable failure of the Soudan expedition to attain its object has been due to the undecided councils of the Government and to the culpable delay attending the commencement of operations ; 2. That the policy of abandoning the whole of the Sou- dan after the conclusion of militaiy operations will be dangerous to Eg}-pt and inconsistent with the interests of the Empire. " H. CARL SCHURZ. General Amnesty.^ United States Senate, Jamiary jo^ l8'/2. [" The following speech was delivered on a bill for removing the political disabilities imposed by the third section of the Fourteenth 15 Amendment to the Constitution. Tliis section provided that no person should be a senator, representative, or presidential elector, or hold any civil or military office under the United States or any State, who, as a Federal or State officer, had sworn to support the Constitution and had afterward engaged in the Rebellion ; but provision was made that the 20 disability could be removed by a two-thirds vote of each House. The bill before Congress at this time did not, however, aim to secure gen- eral amnesty, for three classes of persons were excepted from the relief : members who withdrew from Congress and aided the Rebellion ; officers, over twenty-one years of age, who left the Army and Navy and aided 25 the Rebellion ; and members of State conventions who voted for ordi- nances of secession. The bill, faiUng to receive the necessary two- thirds vote, was defeated. " Modern A?nerican Oratory, R. C. Ringwalt, p. 93, H. Holt & Co.] .- Reprinted, with the permission of Mr. Schurz. from the Congressional Globe. 354 Legislative. Mr. President : When this debate commenced before the hoUdays, I refrained from taking part in it, and from ex- pressing my opinions on some of the provisions of the bill now before us ; hoping as I did that the measure could be passed without difficulty, and that a great many of those who now 5 labor under political disabilities would be immediately relieved. This expectation was disappointed. An amendment to the bill was adopted. It will have to go back to the House of Representatives now unless by some parliamentary means we get rid of the amendment, and there being no inducement left lo to waive what criticism we might feel inclined to bring for- ward, we may consider the whole question open. I beg leave to say that I am in favor of general, or, as this word is considered more expressive, universal amnesty, be- lieving, as I do, that the reasons which make it desirable that 1 5 there should be amnesty granted at all, make it also desirable that the amnesty should be universal. The senator from South Carolina [ Mr. Sawyer ] has already given notice that he will move to strike out the exceptions from the operation of this act of relief for which the bill provides. If he had not 20 declared his intention to that effect, I would do so. In any event, whenever he offers his amendment I shall most heartily support it. In the course of this debate we have listened to some senators, as they conjured up before our eyes once more all 25 the horrors of the Rebellion, the wickedness of its conception, how terrible its incidents were, and how harrowing its con- sequences. Sir, I admit it all ; I will not combat the correct- ness of the picture ; and yet if I differ with the gentlemen who drew it, it is because, had the conception of the Rebellion 30 been still more wicked, had its incidents been still more ter- rible, its consequences still more harrowing, I could not per- mit myself to forget that in dealing with the question now before us we have to deal not alone with the past, but with the present and future interests of this republic. 35 What do we want to accomplish as good citizens and Carl Schurz. 355 patriots ? Do we mean only to inflict upon the late rebels pain, degradation, mortification, annoyance, for its own sake; to torture their feelings without any ulterior purpose? Cer- tainly such a purpose could not by any possibility animate 5 high-minded men. I presume, therefore, that those who still favor the continuance of some of the disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment do so because the}^ have some higher object of public usefulness in view, an object of public usefulness suflicient to justify, in their minds at least, the 10 denial of rights to others which we ourselves enjoy. What can those objects of public usefulness be ? Let me assume that, if we differ as to the means to be employed, we are agreed as to the supreme end and aim to be reached. That end and aim of our endeavors can be no other than to 1 5 secure to all the States the blessings of good and free govern- ment and the highest degree of prosperity and well-being they can attain, and to revive in all citizens of this republic that love for the Union and its institutions, and that inspiring consciousness of a common nationality, which, after all, must 20 bind all Americans together. What are the best means for the attainment of that end ? This, sir, as I conceive it, is the only legitimate question we have to decide. Certainly all will agree that this end is far from having been attained so far. Look at the Southern 25 States as they stand before us to-day. Some are in a con- dition bordering upon anarchy, not only on account of the social disorders which are occurring there, or the inefficiency of their local governments in securing the enforcement of the laws ; but you will find in many of them fearful corruption 30 pervading the whole, political organization ; a combination of rascality and ignorance wielding official power ; their finances deranged by profligate practices ; their credit ruined ; bank- ruptcy staring them in the face ; their industries staggering under a fearful load of taxation ; their property-holders and 35 capitalists paralyzed by a feeling of insecurity and distrust almost amounting to despair. Sir, let us not try to disguise 356 Legislative. these facts, for the world knows them to be so, and knows it but too well. What are the causes that have contributed to bring about this distressing condition ? I admit that great civil wars, re- sulting in such vast social transformations as the sudden 5 abolition of slavery, are calculated to produce similar results ; but it might be presumed that a recuperative power such as this country possesses might, during the time which has elapsed since the close of the War, at least have very mate- rially alleviated many of the consequences of that revulsion, 10 had a wise policy been followed. Was the policy we followed wise ? Was it calculated to promote the great purposes we are endeavoring to serve ? Let us see. At the close of the War we had to establish and secure free labor and the rights of the emancipated class. 15 To that end we had to disarm those who could have pre- vented this, and we had to give the power of self-protection to those who needed it. For this reason temporary restrictions were imposed upon the late rebels, and we gave the right of suffrage to the colored people. Until the latter were enabled 20 to protect themselves, political disabilities even more extensive than those which now exist rested upon the plea of eminent political necessity. I would be the last man to conceal that I thought so then, and I think there was very good reason for it. 25 But, sir, when the enfranchisement of the colored people was secured; when they had obtained the political means to protect themselves, then another problem began to loom up. It was not only to find new guarantees for the rights of the colored people, but it was to secure good and honest govern- 30 ment to all. Let us not underestimate the importance of that problem, for in a great measure it includes the solution of the other. Certainly nothing could have been more calcu- lated to remove the prevailing discontent concerning the changes that had taken place, and to reconcile men's minds 35 to the new order of things, than the tangible proof that the Carl Schurz. 357 new order of things was practically working well ; that it could produce a wise and economical administration of pub- lic affairs, and that it would promote general prosperity, thus healing the wounds of the past and opening to all the pros- 5 pect of a future of material well-being and contentment. And, on the other hand, nothing could have been more cal- culated to impede a general, hearty, and honest acceptance of the new order of things by the late rebel population than just those failures of public administration which involve the 10 people in material embarrassments and so seriously disturb their comfort. In fact, good, honest, and successful govern- ment in the Southern States would in its moral effects, in the long run, have exerted a far more beneficial influence than all your penal legislation, while your penal legislation will 15 fail in its desired effects if we fail in establishing in the Southern States an honest and successful administration of the public business. Now, what happened in the South? It is a well-known fact that the more intelligent classes of Southern society almost 20 uniformly identified themselves with the Rebellion ; and by our system of political disabilities just those classes were ex- cluded from the management of political affairs. That they could not be trusted with the business of introducing into living practice the results of the War, to establish true free 25 labor, and to protect the rights of the emancipated slaves, is true ; I willingly admit it. But when those results and rights were constitutionally secured there were other things to be done. Just at that period when the Southern States lay prostrated and exhausted at our feet, when the destructive 30 besom of war had swept over them and left nothing but des- olation and ruin in its track, when their material interests were to be built up again with care and foresight — just then the public business demanded, more than ordinarily, the co- operation of all the intelligence and all the political experi- 35 ence that could be mustered in the Southern States. But just then a large portion of that intelligence and experience 358 Legislative. was excluded from the management of public affairs by political disabilities, and the controlling power in those States rested in a great measure in the hands of those who had but recently been slaves and just emerged from that con- dition, and in the hands of others who had sometimes hon- 5 estly, sometimes by crooked means and for sinister purposes, found a way to their confidence. This was the state of things as it then existed. Nothing could be further from my intention than to cast a slur upon the character of the colored people of ■ the South. In fact, 10 their conduct immediately after that great event which struck the shackles of slavery from their limbs was above praise. Lool^ into the history of the world, and you will find that almost every similar act of emancipation — the abolition of serfdom, for instance — was uniformly accompanied by the 15 atrocious outbreaks of a revengeful spirit; by the slaughter of nobles and their families, illumined by the glare of their burning castles. Not so here. While all the horrors of San Domingo had been predicted as certain to follow upon eman- cipation, scarcely a single act of revenge for injuries suffered 20 or for misery endured has darkened the record of the eman- cipated bondmen of America. And thus their example stands unrivaled in history, and they, as well as the whole American people, may well be proud of it. Certainly, the Southern people should never cease to remember and appreciate it. 25 But while the colored people of the South earned our ad- miration and gratitude, I ask you in all candor could they be reasonably expected, when, just after having emerged from a condition of slavery, they were invested with political rights and privileges, to step into the political arena as men 30 armed with the intelligence and experience necessary for the management of public affairs and for the solution of prob- lems made doubly intricate by the disasters which had des- olated the Southern country ? Could they reasonably be expected to manage the business of public administration, 35 involving to so great an extent the financial interests and the Carl Schurz, 359 material well-being of the people, and surrounded by diffi- culties of such fearful perplexity, with the wisdom and skill required by the exigencies of the situation ? That as a class they were ignorant and inexperienced and lacked a just con- 5 ception of public interests, was certainly not their fault; for those who have studied the history of the world know but too well that slavery and oppression are very bad political schools. But the stubborn fact remains that they were ig- norant and inexperienced ; that the public business was an 10 unknown world to them, and that in spite of the best inten- tions they were easily misled, not infrequently by the most reckless rascality which had found a way to their confidence. Thus their political rights and privileges were undoubtedly well calculated, and even necessary, to protect their rights 15 as free laborers and citizens; but they were not well calcu- lated to secure a successful administration of other public interests. I do not blame the colored people for it, still less do I say that for this reason their political rights and privileges should 20 have been denied them. Nay, sir, I deemed it necessary then, and I now reaffirm that opinion, that they should pos- sess those rights and privileges for the permanent establish- ment of the logical and legitimate results of the War and the protection of their new position in society. But, while never 25 losing sight of this necessity, I do say that the inevitable consequence of the admission of so large an uneducated and inexperienced class to political power, as to the probable mismanagement of the material interests of the social body, should at least have been mitigated by a counterbalancing 30 policy. When ignorance and inexperience were admitted to so large an influence upon public affairs, intelligence ought no longer to so large an extent to have been excluded. In other words, when universal suffrage was granted to secure the equal rights of all, universal amnesty ought to have been 35 granted to make all the resources of political intelligence and experience available for the promotion of the welfare of all. 360 Legislative. But what did we do ? To the uneducated and inex- perienced classes — uneducated and inexperienced, I repeat, entirely without their fault — we opened the road to power ; and, at the same time, we condemned a large proportion of the intelligence of those States, of the property-holding, the 5 industrial, the professional, the tax-paying interest, to a worse than passive attitude. We made it, as it were, easy for rascals who had gone South in quest of profitable ad- venture to gain the control of masses so easily misled, by permitting them to appear as the exponents and repre- 10 sentatives of the national power and of our policy ; and at the same time we branded a large number of men of intelli- gence, and many of them of personal integrity, whose material interests were so largely involved in honest govern- ment, and many of whom would have co-operated in manag- 15 ing the public business with care and foresight — we branded them, I say, as outcasts ; telling them that they ought not to be suffered to exercise any influence upon the management of the public business, and it would be unwarrantable pre- sumption in them to attempt it. 20 I ask you, sir, could such things fail to contribute to the results we to-day read in the political corruption and de- moralization, and in the financial ruin of some of the Southern States ? These results are now before us. The mistaken policy may have been pardonable when these 25 consequences were still a matter of conjecture and specula- tion ; but what excuse have we now for continuing it when those results are clear before our eyes, beyond the reach of contradiction ? These considerations would seem to apply more particu- 30 larly to those Southern States where the colored element constitutes a very large proportion of the voting body. There is another which applies to all. When the Rebellion stood in arms against us, we fought and overcame force by force. That was right. When the 35 results of the War were first to be established and fixed, we Carl Schurz. 361 met the resistance they encountered with that power which the fortune of war and the revolutionary character of the situation had placed at our disposal. The feelings and prejudices which then stood in our way had under such 5 circumstances but little, if any, claim to our consideration. But when the problem presented itself of securing the per- manency, the peaceable development, and the successful working of the new institutions we had introduced into our political organism, we had as wise men to take into careful 10 calculation the moral forces we had to deal with ; for let us not indulge in any delusion about this : what is to be per- manent in a republic like this must be supported by public opinion ; it must rest at least. upon the willing acquiescence of a large and firm majority of the people. 15 The introduction of the colored people, the late slaves, into the body-politic as voters, pointedly affronted the tra- ditional prejudices prevailing among the Southern whites. What should we care about those prejudices ? In war, nothing. After the close of the War, in the settlement of 20 peace, not enough to deter us from doing what was right and necessary ; and yet, still enough to take them into account when considering the manner in which right and necessity were to be served. Statesmen will care about popular prejudices as physicians will care about the diseased con- 25 dition of their patients, which they want to ameliorate. Would it not have been wise for us, looking at those prejudices as a morbid condition of the Southern mind, to mitigate, to assuage, to disarm them by prudent measures, and thus to weaken their evil influence ? We desired the 30 Southern whites to accept in good faith universal suffrage, to recognize the political rights of the colored man, and to pro- tect him in their exercise. Was not that our sincere desire .? But if it was, would it not have been wise to remove as much as possible the obstacles that stA)d in the way of 35 that consummation ? But what did we do ? When we raised the colored people to the rights of active citizenship 362 Legislative. and opened to them all the privileges of eligibility, we excluded from those privileges a large and influential class of whites ; in other words, we lifted the late slave, unedu- cated and inexperienced as he was, — I repeat, without his fault, — not merely to the level of the late master class, but c even above it. We asked certain white men to recognize the colored man in a political status not only as high but even higher than their own. We might say that under the circumstances we had a perfect right to do that, and I will not dispute it ; but I ask you most earnestly, sir, ic was it wise to do it ? If you desired the white man to accept and recognize the political equality of the black, was it wise to imbitter and exasperate his spirit with the stinging stigma of his own inferiority ? Was it wise to withhold from him privileges in the enjoyment of which he 15 was to protect the late slave ? This was not assuaging, disarming prejudice ; this was rather inciting, it was exasper- ating it. American statesmen will understand and appre- ciate human nature as it has developed itself under the influence of free institutions. We know that if we want any 20 class of people to overcome their prejudices in respecting the political rights and privileges of any other class, the very first thing we have to do is to accord the same rights and privileges to them. No American was ever inclined to recognize in others public rights and privileges 25 from which he himself was excluded ; and for aught I know, in this very feeling, although it may take an objectionable form, we find one of the safeguards of popular liberty. You tell me that the late rebels had deserved all this in the way of punishment. Granting that, I beg leave 30 to suggest that this is not the question. The question is : What were the means best calculated to overcome the difficulties standing in the way of a willing and uni- versal recognition of the new rights and privileges of the emancipated class ? What were the means to overcome 35 the hostile influences impeding the development of the Carl Schurz. 363 harmony of society in its new order? I am far from asserting that, had no disabiUties existed, universal suffrage would have been received by the Southern whites with universal favor. No, sir, most probably it would not ; but I 5 do assert that the existence of disabilities, which put so large and influential a class of whites in point of political privileges below the colored people, could not fail to inflame those prejudices which stood in the way of a general and honest acceptance of the new order of things ; they increased 10 instead of diminishing the dangers and difficulties surround- ing the emancipated class ; and nobody felt that more keenly than the colored people of the South themselves. To their honor be it said, following a just instinct, they were among the very first, not only in the South but all over the 15 country, in entreating Congress to remove those odious dis- criminations which put in jeopardy their own rights by making them greater than those of others. From the colored people themselves, it seems, we have in this respect received a lesson in statesmanship. 20 Well, then, what policy does common sense suggest to us now ? If we sincerely desire to give to the Southern States good and honest government, material prosperity, and measurable contentment, as far at least as we can contribute to that end ; if we really desire to weaken and disarm those 25 prejudices and resentments which still disturb the harmony of society, will it not be wise, will it not be necessary, will it not be our duty to show that we are in no sense the allies and abettors of those who use their political power to plunder their fellow-citizens, and that we do not mean to keep one 30 class of people in unnecessary degradation by withholding from them rights and privileges which all others enjoy ? Seeing the mischief which the system of disabilities is accomplishing, is it not time that there should be at least an end of it ; or is there any good it can possibly do to make 35 up for the harm it has already wrought and is still working ? Look at it. Do these disabilities serve in any way to 364 Legislative. protect anybody in his rights or in his hberty or in his property or in his hfe ? Does the fact that some men are excluded from office, in any sense or measure, make others more secure in their Uves or in their property or in their rights ? Can anybody tell me how ? Or do they, per- 5 haps, prevent even those who are excluded from official position from doing mischief if they are mischievously in- clined ? Does the exclusion from office, does any feature of your system of political disabilities, take the revolver or the bowie-knife or the scourge from the hands of anyone who 10 wishes to use it ? Does it destroy the influence of the more intelligent upon society, if they mean to use that influence for mischievous purposes ? We hear the Ku Klux outrages spoken of as a reason why political disabilities should not be removed. Did not 15 these very same Ku Klux outrages happen while disabilities were in existence ? Is it not clear, then, that the existence of political disabilities did not prevent them ? No, sir, if political disabilities have any practical effect it is, while not in any degree diminishing the power of the evil-disposed for 20 mischief, to incite and sharpen their mischievous inclination by increasing their discontent with the condition they live in. It must be clear to every impartial observer that were ever so many of those who are now disqualified put in office, they never could do with their official power as much mischief as 25 the mere fact of the existence of the system of political dis- abilities, with its inevitable consequences is doing to-day. The scandals of misgovernment in the South which we com- plain of I admit were not the first and original cause of the Ku Klux outrages. But every candid observer will also 30 have to admit that they did serve to keep the Ku Klux spirit alive. Without such incitement it might gradually by this time, to a great extent at least, have spent itself. And now if the scandals of misgovernment were, partly at least, owing to the exclusion of so large a portion of the intelligence and 35 experience of the South from the active management of affairs, Carl Schurz. 365 must it not be clear that a measure which will tend to remedy this evil may also tend to reduce the causes which still dis- turb the peace and harmony of society ? We accuse the Southern whites of having missed their 5 chance of gaining the confidence of the emancipated class when, by a fairly demonstrated purpose of recognizing and protecting them in their rights, they might have acquired upon them a salutary influence. That accusation is by no means unjust ; but must we not admit, also, that by exclud- 10 ing them from their political rights and privileges we put the damper of most serious discouragement upon the good inten- tions which might have grown up among them ? Let us place ourselves in their situation, and then I ask you how many of us would, under the same circumstances, have risen 15 above the ordinary impulses of human nature to exert a salutary influence in defiance of our own prejudices, being so pointedly told every day that it was not the business of those laboring under political disabilities to meddle with public affairs at all ? And thus, in whatever direction you 20 may turn your eyes, you look in vain for any practical good your political disabilities might possibly accomplish. You find nothing, absolutely nothing, in their practical effects but the aggravation of evils already existing, and the prevention of a salutary development. 25 Is it not the part of wise men, sir, to acknowledge the failure of a policy like this in order to remedy it, especially since every candid mind must recognize that, by continuing the mistake, absolutely no practical good can be subserved ? But I am told that the system of disabilities must be main- 30 tained for certain moral effect. The senator from Indiana [Mr. Morton] took great pains to inform us that it is abso- lutely necessary to exclude somebody from office in order to demonstrate our disapprobation of the crime of rebellion. Methinks that the American people have signified their dis- approbation of the crime of rebellion in a far more pointed manner. They sent against the rebellion a million armed 366 Legislative. men. We fought and conquered the armies of the rebels ; we carried desolation into their land ; we swept out of exis- tence that system of slavery which was the soul of their offense and was to be the corner-stone of their new empire. If that was not signifying our disapprobation of the crime of 5 rebellion, then I humbly submit that your system of political disabilities, only excluding some persons from office, will scarcely do it. I remember, also, to have heard the argument that under all circumstances the law must be vindicated. What law in 10 this case ? If any law is meant, it must be the law imposing the penalty of death upon the crime of treason. Well, if at the close of the War we had assumed the stern and bloody virtue of the ancient Roman, and had proclaimed that he who raises his hand against this republic must surely die, 15 then we might have claimed for ourselves at least the merit of logical consistency. We might have thought that by erecting a row of gallows stretching from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, and by making a terrible example of all those who had proved faithless to their allegiance, we would strike 20 terror into the hearts of this and coming generations, to make them tremble at the mere thought of treasonable un- dertakings. That we might have done. Why did we not ? Because the American people instinctively recoiled from the idea ; because every wise man remembered that where insur- 25 rections are punished and avenged with the bloodiest hands, there insurrections do most frequently occur ; witness France and Spain and the southern part of this hemisphere ; that there is a fascination for bloody reckonings which allures instead of repelling — a fascination like that of the serpent's 3° eye, which irresistibly draws on its victim. The American people recoiled from it, because they felt and knew that the civilization of the nineteenth century has for such evils a better medicine than blood. Thus, sir, the penalty of treason, as provided for by law, 35 remahied a dead letter on the statute book, and we instinc- Carl Schurz. 367 tively adopted a generous policy, and we added fresh luster to the glory of the American name by doing so. And now you would speak of vindicating the law against treason, which demands death, by merely excluding a number of 5 persons from eligibility to office ! Do you not see that, as a vindication of the law against treason, as an act of punish- ment, the system of disabilities sinks down to the level of a ridiculous mockery ? If you want your system of disabilities to appear at all in a respectable light, then, in the name of 10 common sense, do not call it a punishment for treason. Standing there, as it does, stripped of all the justification it once derived from political necessity, it would appear only as the evidence of an impotent desire to be severe without the courage to cany it out. But, having once adopted the 15 policy of generosit}^ the only question for us is how to make that policy most fruitful. The answer is : We shall make the policy of generosity most fruitful by making it most complete. The senator from Connecticut [Mr. Buckingham], whom 20 I am so unfortunate as not to see in his seat to-day, when he opened the debate, endeavored to fortify his theory by an illustration borrowed from the Old Testament, and I am willing to take that illustration off his hands. He asked, if Absalom had lived after his treason, and had been excluded 25 from his father's table, would he have had a just reason to complain of an unjust deprivation of rights ? It seems to me that story of Absalom contains a most excellent lesson, which the Senate of the United States ought to read cor- rectly. For the killing of his brother, Absalom had lived in 30 banishment, from which the king, his father, permitted hira to return ; but the wayward son was but half pardoned, for he was not permitted to see his father's face. And it was for that reason, and then, that he went among the people to seduce them into a rebellion against his royal father's author- 35 ity. Had he survived that rebellion, King David, as a pru- dent statesman, would either have killed his son Absalom or 368 Legislative. he would have admitted him to his table, in order to make him a good son again by unstinted fatherly love. But he would certainly not have permitted his son Absalom to run at large, capable of doing mischief, and at the same time by small measures of degradation inciting him to do it. And 5 that is just the policy we have followed. We have per- mitted the late rebels to run at large, capable of doing mis- chief, and then by small measures of degradation, utterly useless for any good purpose, we incited them to do it. Looking at your political disabilities with an impartial eye, 10 you will find that, as a measure of punishment, they did not go far enough ; as a measure of policy they went much too far. We were far too generous to subjugate the hearts of our late enemies by terror; and we mixed our generosity with just enough of bitterness to prevent it from bearing its 15 full fruit. I repeat, we can make the policy of generosity most fruitful only by making it most complete. What objec- tion, then, can stand against this consideration of public good ? You tell me that many of the late rebels do not deserve a 20 full restoration of their rights. That may be so ; I do not deny it ; but yet, sir, if many of them do not deserve it, is it not a far more important consideration how much the wel- fare of the country will be promoted by it ? I am told that many of the late rebels, if we volunteer a 25 pardon to them, would not appreciate it. I do not deny this ; it may be so, for the race of fools, unfortunately, is not all dead yet ; but if they do not appreciate it, shall we have no reason to appreciate the great good which by this measure of generosity will be conferred upon the whole land ? 30 Some senator, referring to a defaulting paymaster who experienced the whole rigor of the law, asked us, '' When a poor defaulter is punished, shall a rebel go free ? Is em- bezzlement a greater crime than treason ? " No, sir, it is not ; but again I repeat that is not the question. The ques- 3^ tion is whether a general amnesty to rebels is not far more Carl Schurz. 369 urgently demanded by the public interest than a general par- don for thieves. Whatever may be said of the greatness and the heinous character of the crime of rebellion, a single glance at the history of the world and at the practice of 5 other nations will convince you that in all civilized coun- tries the measure of punishment to be visited on those guilty of that crime is almost uniformly treated as a question of great policy and almost never as a question of strict justice. And why is this ? Why is it that a thief, although pardoned, 10 will never again be regarded as an untainted member of soci- ety, while a pardoned rebel may still rise to the highest honors of the state, and sometimes even gain the sincere and general esteem and confidence of his countrymen ? Because a broad line of distinction is drawn between a violation of law in 15 which political opinion is the controlling element (however erroneous, nay, however revolting that opinion may be, and however disastrous the consequences of the act) and those infamous crimes of which moral depravity is the principal ingredient; and because even the most disastrous political 20 conflicts may be composed for the common good by a con- ciliatory process, while the infamous crime always calls for a strictly penal correction. You may call this just or not, but such is the public opinion of the civilized world, and you find it in every civilized country. 25 Look at the nations around us. In the Parliament of Ger- many how many men are there sitting who were once what you would call fugitives from justice, exiles on account of their revolutionary acts, now admitted to the great council of the nation in the fullness of their rights and privileges — and 30 mark you, without having been asked to abjure the opinions they formerly held, for at the present moment most of them still belong to the Liberal opposition. Look at Austria, where Count Andrassy, a man who, in 1849, was condemned to the gallows as a rebel, at this moment stands at the head 35 of the imperial ministry ; and those who know the history of that country are fully aware that the policy of which that 370 Legislative. amnesty was a part, which opened to Count Andrassy the road to power, has attached Hungary more closely than ever to the Austrian Crown, from which a narrow-minded policy of severity would have driven her. Now, sir, ought not we to profit by the wisdom of such 5 examples ? It may be said that other Governments were far more rigorous in their first repressive measures, and that they put off the grant of a general amnesty much longer after suppressing an insurrection than we are required to do. So they did ; but is not this the great republic of the New World 10 which marches in the very vanguard of modern civilization, and which, when an example of wisdom is set by other nations, should not only rise to its level, but far above it ? It seems now to be generally admitted that the time has come for a more comprehensive removal of political disabili- 15 ties than has so far been granted. If that sentiment be sin- cere, if you really do desire to accomplish the greatest possible good by this measure that can be done, I would ask you what practical advantage do you expect to derive from the exclusions for which this bill provides ? Look at them, 20 one after another. First, all those are excluded who, when the Rebellion broke out, were members of Congress, and left their seats in these halls to join it. Why are these men to be excluded as a class ? Because this class contains a number of prominent 25 individuals, who, in the Rebellion, became particularly con- spicuous and obnoxious, and among them we find those whom we might designate as the original conspirators. But these are few, and they might have been mentioned by name. Most of those, however, who left their seats in Congress to make 30 common cause with the rebels were in no way more responsi- ble for the Rebellion than other prominent men in the South who do not fall under this exception. If we accept at all the argument that it will be well for the cause of good govern- ment and the material welfare of the South to re-admit to the 35 management of public affairs all the intelligence and politi- Carl Schurz. 371 cal experience in those States, why, then, exclude as a class men who, having been members of Congress, may be pre- sumed to possess a higher degree of that intelligence and experience than the rest ? If you want that article at all for 5 good purposes, I ask you, do you not want as large a supply of that article as you can obtain ? Leaving aside the original conspirators, is there any reason in the world why those members of Congress should be singled out from the numerous class of intelligent and prom- 10 inent men who were or had been in office and had taken the same oath which is administered in these halls ? Look at it. You do not propose to continue the disqualification of men who served this country as foreign ministers, who left their important posts, betrayed the interests of this country in for- 15 eign lands to come back and join the Rebellion ; you do not propose to exclude from the benefit of this act those who sat upon the bench and doffed the judicial ermine to take part in the Rebellion ; and if such men are not to be disfran- chised, why disfranchise the common run of the congress- 20 men, whose guilt is certainly not greater, if it be as great ? Can you tell me ? Is it wise even to incur the suspicion of making an exception merely for the sake of excluding some- body, when no possible good can be accomplished by it, and when you can thus only increase the number of men incited 25 to discontent and mischief by small and unnecessary degra- dations ? And now as to the original conspirators, what has become of them ? Some of them are dead ; and as to those who are still living, I ask you, sir, are they not dead also ? Look at 30 Jefferson Davis himself. What if you exclude even him — and certainly our feelings would naturally impel us to do so ; but let our reason speak — what if you exclude even him ? Would you not give him an importance which otherwise he never would possess, by making people believe that you are 35 even occupying your minds enough with him to make him an exception to an act of generous wisdom ? Truly to refrain 372 Legislative. from making an act of amnesty general on account of the original conspirators, candidly speaking, I would not con- sider worth while. I would not leave them the pitiable dis- tinction of not being pardoned. Your very generosity will be to them the source of the bitterest disappointment. As long as they are excluded, they may still find some satisfac- tion in the delusion of being considered men of dangerous importance. Their very disabilities they look upon to-day as a recognition of their power. They may still make themselves and others believe that, were the Southern people only left lo free in their choice, they would eagerly raise them again to the highest honors. But you relieve them of their exclusion, and they will at once become conscious of their nothingness, a nothingness most glaringly conspicuous then, for you will have drawn away 15 the veil that has concealed it. I suspect that gentlemen on the Democratic side of the House, whom they would consider their political friends, would be filled with dismay at the mere thought of their reappearance among them. If there is anything that could prevent them from voting for univer- 20 sal amnesty, it might be the fear, if they entertained it at all, of seeing Jefferson Davis once more a senator of the United States. But more than that: you relieve that class of persons, those old misleaders, of their exclusion, and they will soon 25 discover that the people whom they once plunged into disas- ter and ruin have in the meantime grown, if not as wise as they ought to be, certainly too wise to put their destinies in the hands of the same men again. I hope, therefore, you will not strip this measure of the merit of being a general 30 amnesty to spare the original plotters this most salutary ex- perience. So much for the first exception. Now to the second. It excludes from the benefit of this act all those who were offi- cers of the Army or of the Navy and then joined the Rebel- 35 lion. Why exclude that class of persons ? I have heard the I Carl Schurz. 373 reason very frequently stated upon the floor of the Senate ; it is because those men have been educated at the pubhc expense, and their turning against the Government was there- fore an act of pecuUar faithlessness and black ingratitude. 5 That might appear a very strong argument at first sight. But I ask you was it not one of the very first acts of this administration to appoint one of the most prominent and con- spicuous of that class to a very lucrative and respectable pub- lic office ? I mean General Longstreet. He had obtained 10 his military education at the expense of the American people. He was one of the wards, one of the pets of the American Republic, and then he turned against it as a rebel. What- ever of faithlessness, whatever of black ingratitude there is in such conduct, it was in his ; and yet, in spite of all this, the 1 5 President nominated him for an office, and your consent, sen- ators, made him a public dignitary. Why did you break the rule in his case ? I will not say that you did it because he had become a Republican, for I am far from attributing any mere partisan motive to your action. No ; you did it because 20 his conduct after the close of hostilities had been that of a well-disposed and law-abiding citizen. Thus, then, the rule which you, senators, have established for your own conduct is simply this : you will, in the case of officers of the Army or the Navy, waive the charge of peculiar faithlessness and 25 ingratitude if the persons in question after the War had become law-abiding and well-disposed citizens. Well, is it not a fact universally recognized, and I believe entirely uncon- tradicted, that of all classes of men connected with the Rebel- lion there is not one whose conduct since the close of the War 30 has been so unexceptionable, and in a great many instances so beneficial in its influence upon Southern society, as the officers of the Army and the Navy, especially those who before the War had been members of our regular establishments ? Why, then, except them from this act of amnesty ? If you 35 take subsequent good conduct into account at all, these men are the very last who as a class ought to be excluded. And 374 Legislative. would it not be well to encourage them in well-doing by a sign on your part that they are not to be looked upon as out- casts whose influence is not desired, even when they are inclined to use it for the promotion of the common welfare ? The third class excluded consists of those who were mem- bers of State conventions, and in those State conventions voted for ordinances of secession. If we may judge from the words which fell from the lips of the senator from Indiana, they were the objects of his particular displeasure. Why this ? Here we have a large number of men of local standing who in some cases may have been leaders on a small scale, but most of whom were drawn into the whirl of the revolution- ary movement just like the rest of the Southern population. If you accept the proposition that it will be well and wise to per- mit the intelligence of the country to participate in the man- agement of the public business, the exclusion of just these people will appear especially inappropriate, because their local influence might be made peculiarly beneficial ; and if you exclude these persons, whose number is considerable, you tell just that class of people whose co-operation might be made most valuable that their co-operation is not wanted, for the reason that, according to the meaning and intent of your system of disabilities, public affairs are no business of theirs. You object that they are more guilty than the rest. Suppose they are — and in many cases I am sure they are only 25 apparently so — but if they were not guilty of any wrong, they would need no amnesty. Amnesty is made for those who bear a certain degree of guilt. Or would you indulge here in the solemn farce of giving pardon only to those who are presumably innocent ? You grant your amnesty that it 30 may bear good fruit ; and if you do it for that purpose, then do not diminish the good fruit it may bear by leaving un- planted the most promising soil upon which it may grow. ^ A few words now about the second section of the bill | before you, which imposes upon those who desire to have 35 the benefit of amnesty the duty of taking an oath to support I I Carl Schurz. 375 the Constitution before some public officer, that oath to be registered, the Hst to be laid before Congress and to be pre- served in the office of the Secretary of State. Sir, I ask you, can you or any one tell me what practical good is to be 5 accomplished by a provision like this ? You may say that the taking of another oath will do nobody any harm. Prob- ably not ; but can you tell me, in the name of common sense, what harm in this case the taking of that oath will prevent ? Or have we read the history of the world in vain, that we lo should not know yet how little political oaths are worth to improve the morality of a people or to secure the stability of a government ? And what do you mean to accomplish by making up and preserving your lists of pardoned persons ? Can they be of any possible advantage to the country in any 15 way ? Why, then, load down an act like this with such use- less circumstance, while, as an act of grace and wisdom, it certainly ought to be as straightforward and simple as possible ? Let me now in a few words once more sum up the whole 20 meaning of the question which we are now engaged in discussing. No candid man can deny that our system of political disabilities is in no way calculated to protect the rights or the property or the life or the liberty of any living man, or in any way practically to prevent the evil- 25 disposed from doing mischief. Why do you think of granting any amnesty at all ? Is it not to produce on the popular mind in the South a conciliatory effect, to quicken the germs of good intentions, to encourage those who can exert a beneficial in- fluence, to remove the pretexts of ill-feeling and animosity, 30 and to aid in securing to the Southern States the blessings of , good and honest government ? If that is not your design, what can it be ? But if it be this, if you really do desire to produce such moral effects, then I entreat you also to consider what moral 35 means you have to employ in order to bring forth those moral effects you contemplate. If an act of generous states- 37^ Legislative. manship, or of statesman-like generosity, is to bear full fruit, it should give not as little as possible, but it should give as much as possible. You must not do things by halves if you want to produce whole results. You must not expose yourself to the suspicion of a narrow-minded 5 desire to pinch off the size of your gift wherever there is a chance for it, as if you were afraid you could by any possi- bility give too much, when giving more would benefit the country more, and when giving less would detract from the beneficent effect of that which you do give. 10 Let me tell you it is the experience of all civilized nations the world over, when an amnesty is to be granted at all, the completest amnesty is always the best. Any limitation you may impose, however plausible it may seem at first sight, will be calculated to take away much of the virtue of that which is 15 granted. I entreat you, then, in the name of the accumulated experience of history , let there be an end of these bitter and use- less and disturbing questions ; let the books be finally closed, ^ and when the subject is forever dismissed from our discus- t sions and our minds, we shall feel as much relieved as those 20 who are relieved of their political disabilities. Sir, I have to say a few words about an accusation which has been brought against those who speak in favor of uni- versal amnesty. It is the accusation resorted to, in default of more solid argument, that those who advise amnesty, espe- 25 cially universal amnesty, do so because they have fallen in love with the rebels. No, sir, it is not merely for the rebels I plead. We are asked. Shall the Rebellion go entirely un- punished ? No, sir, it shall not. Neither do I think that the Rebellion has gone entirely unpunished. I ask you, had the 30 rebels nothing to lose but their lives and their offices ? Look at it There was a proud and arrogant aristocracy, planting their feet on the necks of the laboring people, and pretend- ing to be the born rulers of this great republic. They looked down, not only upon their slaves, but also upon the people 35 of the North, with the haughty contempt of self-asserting Carl Schurz. 377 superiority. When their pretensions to rule us all were first successfully disputed, they resolved to destroy this republic, and to build up on the corner-stone of slavery an empire of their own in which they could hold absolute sway. They 5 made the attempt with the most overweeningly confident ex- pectation of certain victory. Then came the Civil War, and after four years of struggle their whole power and pride lay shivered to atoms at our feet, their sons dead by tens of thousands on the battle-fields of this country, their fields and 10 their homes devasted, their fortunes destroyed ; and more than that, the whole social system in which they had their being, with all their hopes and pride, utterly wiped out ; sla- very forever abolished, and the slaves themselves created a political power before which they had to bow their heads, and j 15 they, broken, ruined, helpless, and hopeless in the dust be- fore those upon whom they had so haughtily looked down as their vassals and inferiors. Sir, can it be said that the Rebel- lion has gone entirely unpunished? , You may object that the loyal people, too, were subjected ( 20 to terrible sufferings ; that their sons, too, were slaughtered by tens of thousands ; that the mourning of countless widows and orphans is still darkening our land ; that we are groan- ing under terrible burdens which the Rebellion has loaded j upon us, and that therefore part of the punishment has fallen ' 25 upon the innocent. And it is certainly true. But look at the difference. We issued from this great 1 conflict as conquerors ; upon the graves of our slain we could lay the wreath of victory; our widows and orphans, I while mourning the loss of their dearest, still remember with I 30 proud exultation that the blood of their husbands and fathers was not spilled in vain ; that it flowed for the greatest and holiest and at the same time the most victorious of causes ; and ' when our people labor in the sweat of their brow to pay the debt which the Rebellion has loaded upon us, they do it with 35 the proud consciousness that the heavy price they have paid is infinitely overbalanced by the value of the results they 378 Legislative. have gained : slavery abolished ; the great American Re- public purified of her foulest stain ; the American people no longer a people of masters and slaves, but a people of equal citizens ; the most dangerous element of disturbance and disintegration wiped out from among us ; this country put upon the course of harmonious development, greater, more beautiful, mightier than ever in its self-conscious power. And thus, whatever losses, w^hatever sacrifices, whatever suf- ferings we may have endured, they appear before us in a blaze of glory. r But how do the Southern people stand there ? All they have sacrificed, all they have lost, all the blood they have spilled, all the desolation of their homes, all the distress that stares them in the face, all the wreck and ruin they see \ around them — all for nothing, all for a wicked folly, all for i a disastrous infatuation; the very graves of their slain nothing but monuments of a shado^vy delusion ; all their ; former hopes vanished forever; and the very magniloquence \ which some of their leaders are still indulging in, nothing but a mocking illustration of their utter discomfiture ! Ah, 20 sir, if ever human efforts broke down in irretrievable disas- ter, if ever human pride was humiliated to the dust, if ever | human hopes were turned into despair, there you behold them. You may say that they deserved it all. Yes, but surely, 25 sir, you cannot say that the Rebellion has gone entirely un- punished. Nor will the senator from Indiana, with all his declamation (and I am sorry not now to see him before me), make any sane man believe that had no political disabilities ever been imposed, the history of the RebelHon, as long as 30 the memory of men retains the recollection of the great story, will ever encourage a future generation to rebel again, or that if even this great example of disaster should fail to ex- tinguish the spirit of rebellion, his little scare-crow of exclu- sion from office will be more than a thing to be laughed at 35 by little boys. ill Carl Schurz. 379 And yet, sir, it is certainly true that after the close of the War we treated the rebels with a generosity never excelled in the history of the world. And thus, in advising a general amnesty it is not merely for the rebels I plead. But I plead -^ 5 for the good of the country, which in its best interests will be benefited by amnesty just as much as the rebels are bene- fited themselves, if not more. Nay, sir, I plead also for the colored people of the South, whose path will be smoothed by a measure calculated to as- ^ 10 suage some of the prejudices and to disarm some of the bitternesses which still confront them ; and I am sure that nothing better could happen to them, nothing could be more apt to make the growth of good feeling between them and the former master-class easier, than the destruction of a sys- 1 5 tern which, by giving them a political superiority, endangers their peaceable enjoyment of equal rights. And I may say to my honorable friend from Massachu- setts [Mr. Sumner], who knows well how highly I esteem hhn, and whom I sincerely honor for his solicitude concerning :o the welfare of the lowly, that my desire to see their wrongs righted is no less sincere and no less unhampered by any traditional prejudice than his ; although I will confess that as to the constitutional means to that end we may sometimes seriously differ ; but I cannot refrain from expressing my ■-^•:25 regret that this measure should be loaded with anything that 1 1 is not strictly germane to it, knowing as we both do that the amendment he has proposed cannot secure the necessary two-thirds vote in at least one of the Houses of Congress, and that therefore it will be calculated to involve this meas- 3'^|J3o ure also in the danger of common failure. I repeat, it is not merely for the rebels I plead; it is for the whole American people, for there is not a citizen in the land whose true inter- ests, rightly understood, are not largely concerned in every measure aft'ecting the peace and welfare of any State of this ^Ti35 Union. Believe me, senators, the statesmanship which this period 380 Legislative. of our history demands is not exhausted by high-sounding declamation about the greatness of the crime of rebellion, and fearful predictions as to what is going to happen unless the rebels are punished with sufficient severity. We have heard so much of this from some gentlemen, and so little $ else, that the inquiry naturally suggests itself whether this is the whole compass, the be-all and the end-all of their politi- cal wisdom and their political virtue ; whether it is really their opinion that the people of the South may be plundered with impunity by rascals in power, that the substance of 10 those States may be wasted, that their credit may be ruined, that their prosperity may be blighted, that their future may be blasted, that the poison of bad feeling may still be kept working where we might do something to assuage its effects ; that the people may lose more and more their faith in the 1 5 efficiency of self-government and of republican institutions ; that all this may happen, and we look on complacently, if we can only continue to keep a thorn in the side of our late enemies, and to demonstrate again and again, as the senator from Indiana has it, our disapprobation of the crime of 20 rebellion ? Sir, such appeals as these, which we have heard so fre- quently, may be well apt to tickle the ear of an unthinking multitude. But unless I am grievously in error, the people of the United States are a multitude not unthinking. The 25 American people are fast becoming aware that, great as the crime of rebellion is, there are other villainies beside it ; that much as it may deserve punishment there are other evils flagrant enough to demand energetic correction ; that the remedy for such evils does, after all, not consist in the 30 maintenance of political disabilities, and that it would be well to look behind those vociferous demonstrations of ex- clusive and austere patriotism to see what abuses and faults of policy they are to cover, and what rotten sores they are to disguise. The American people are fast beginning to per- 35 ceive that good and honest government in the South, as well Carl Schurz. 381 as throughout the whole countn-, restormg a measurable de- gree of confidence and contentment, Avill do infinitely more to revive true loyalt}^ and a healthy national spirit, than keeping alive the resentments of the past by a useless 5 degradation of certain classes of persons ; and that we shall fail to do our dut}* unless we use ever)' means to con- tribute our share to that end. And those, I apprehend, expose themselves to grievous disappointment who still think that, by dinning again and again in the ears of the 10 people the old battle-cries of the Civil War, they can befog the popular mind as to the true requirements of the times, and overawe and terrorize the public sentiment of the country. Sir, I am coming to a close. One word more. We have 15 heard protests here against amnesty as a measure intended to make us forget the past and to obscure and confuse our mioral appreciation of the great events of our history. No, sir ; neither would I have the past forgotten, with its great experiences and teachings. Let the memory of the grand 20 uprising for the integrity of the republic ; let those heroic deeds and sacrifices before which the power of slavery crumbled into dust, be forever held in proud and sacred remembrance by the American people. Let it never be forgotten, as I am sure it never can be forgotten, that the 25 American Union, supported by her faithful children, can never be undermined by any conspiracy ever so daring, nor overthjro^\'n by any array of enemies ever so formidable. Let the great achievements of our struggle for national existence be forever a source of lofty inspiration to our children and 30 children's children. But surely, sir, I think no generous resolution on our part will mar the lustre of those memories, nor will it obliterate from the Southern mind the overwhelming experience that he who raises his hand against the majest}^ of this republic 35 is doomed to disastrous humiliation and ruin. I would not have it forgotten ; and, indeed, that experience is so indel- 382 Legislative. ibly written upon the Southern country that nothing can wipe it out. I But, sir, as the people of the North and of the South must hve together as one people, and as they must be bound to- gether by the bonds of a common national feeling, I ask you, 5 will it not be well for us so to act that the history of our great civil conflict, which cannot be forgotten, can never be remembered by Southern men without finding in its closing chapter this irresistible assurance : that we, their conquerors, meant to be, and were after all, not their enemies, but their 10 friends? When the Southern people con over the distress- ing catalogue of the misfortunes they have brought upon themselves, will it not be well, will it not be " devoutly to be wished " for our common future, if at the end of that cata- logue they find an act which will force every fair-minded 15 man in the South to say of the Northern people, " When we were at war they inflicted upon us the severities of war; but when the contest had closed and they found us prostrate before them, grievously suffering, surrounded by the most perplexing difficulties and on the brink of new disasters, 20 they promptly swept all the resentments of the past out of their way and stretched out their hands to us with the very fullest measure of generosity — anxious, eager to lift us up from our prostration ? " Sir, will not this do something to dispel those mists 25 of error and prejudice which are still clouding the Southern mind ? I ask again, will it not be well to add to the sad memories of the past which forever will live in their minds, this cheering experience, so apt to prepare them for the harmony of a better and common future ? 30 No, sir ; I would not have the past forgotten, but I would have its history completed and crowned by an act most worthy of a great, noble, and wise people. By all the means which we have in our hands, I would make even those who have sinned against this republic see in its flag, 35 not the symbol of their lasting degradation, but of rights Carl Schurz. 383 equal to all ; I would make them feel in their hearts that in its good and evil fortunes their rights and interests are bound up just as ours are, and that therefore its peace, its welfare, its honor, and its greatness may and ought to be as 5 dear to them as they are to us. I do not, indeed, indulge in the delusion that this act alone will remedy all the evils which we now deplore. No, it will not ; but it will be a powerful appeal to the very best instincts and impulses of human nature ; it will, like a warm 10 ray of sunshine in springtime, quicken and call to light the germs of good intention wherever they exist ; it will give new courage, confidence, and inspiration to the well-dis- posed ; it will weaken the power of the mischievous, by stripping off their pretexts and exposing in their nakedness 15 the wicked designs they still may cherish ; it will light anew the beneficent glow of fraternal feeling and of national spirit ; for, sir, your good sense as well as your heart must tell you that, when this is truly a people of citizens equal in their political rights, it will then be easier to make it also a 20 people of brothers. POLITICAL ADDRESSES. No. I is the personal talk of a leader to his followers, — here a vast throng. No. IV is also the address of a leader to his people, but on an unusually high plane, on which patriotism becomes one with religion. Nos. II and III are protests — the first made as a duty to oneself, with no hope of changing the set of public feeling-; the second made in the hope that a clear, probative, persuasive statement of the reasons why the proposed course of action is unwarranted and unwise may con- vince the public. I. DANIEL O'CONNELL. On Repeal of the Union. Hill of Tara, August i^tk, 184.^. [Repeal of the Act of Union of 1800 which established the legis- lative union of England and Ireland from January i, 1801 " was spreading like fire before the wind. In order to fan it into a general conflagration, O'Connell announced his intention of holding a public meeting in each 5 county in Ireland in turn. The first was held at Trim, in county Meath, on 19th March. The spectacle of thirty thousand persons meeting in orderly array to protest against the Union, and to petition for its repeal, produced a profound effect on the public mind in Ireland and England. On 21st May there was another monster meeting at ID Cork, at which it was calculated that not less than five hundred thou- sand persons were present. The meeting was the Association's answer to Peel's threat to uphold the Union even at the risk of civU war. The day following the Cork meeting, the Lord Lieutenant, Earl de Grey, removed O'Connell and Lord French from the magistracy of their 15 respective counties. As a protest against this high-handed and uncon- stitutional proceeding, prominent Whigs retired from the Commission of the Peace, with the result of swelling the ranks of Repeal with valu- able recruits. On 29th May, the Irish Chief Secretary, Lord Eliot, introduced an Arms Bill, or, as it might with more propriety have been 20 called, a Bill for disarming the Cathohc peasantry of Ireland, into the House of Commons. Its object was prospective and preventive, rather than retrospective and retaliatory. So far as the condition of the coun- try was concerned, it was absolutely uncalled for. The palpable injus- tice of it aroused the indignation of the opposition, and so strenuous 25 was the resistance offered to it that August was drawing to a close before it received the royal assent. Encouraged by this unexpected diversion in his favour, O'Connell pushed on the agitation with all his might. Monster meeting succeeded monster meeting in rapid succes- sion, culminating in the ever memorable one at Tara, on 1 5th August. 30 Tuesday, the 1 5th of August, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in the Roman Catholic calendar, broke warm and bright. The enthusiasm of the people was unbounded : for had not the Libera- 387 ., 388 Political Addresses. tor promised that that year should witness the Repeal of the Union, and the restoration of their native Parliament ? For days before the Hill had presented tokens of unwonted activity. In the very centre of the topmost level of it joiners had been at work erecting a mighty platform for the speakers. By consent of the bishop 5 of the diocese, numerous altars had been raised for the celebration of the Mass. Repealers from distant counties — from far-off Clare, from Longford and Galway, bringing their provisions with them — had been bivouacking on it, some of them for nights together, under the open sky. Standing on the top of the Hill, it was a solemn and impressive sight 10 that met the eye that August morning. For miles around the country was black with human beings wending their way to the place of meet- ing. Close on a million persons, it was calculated, had come together ; but calculation was out of the question. As far as the eye could reach, nothing could be seen but compact masses of people moving towards 15 the central point. Not less impressive than the number of them was their orderly demeanour, the perfect confidence reposed by each in the integrity of his neighbour, the absence of rowdyism of every description, the gentle courtesy displayed towards the women and children, of whom there were thousands present. The deep devotion with which, 20 bare headed and on bended knees, they listened to the ministrations of their religion ; the savour of incense wafted through the air from a hundred censers ; the silence broken only by the silver tinkle of the sacring-bell and the low hum of the priests' voices, added solemriess to the scene, and gave to the demonstration the appearance of a reli- 25 gious service. It was high noon before O'Connell's carriage reached the outskirts of the meeting. A burst of music from the assembled temperance bands announced his arrival, and from the whole multitude there went up one tremendous shout of welcome. It was the crowning day of O'Connell's 30 life. Victories he had won before — victories in the Senate House, and in the Law Courts ; but before such a demonstration as this all former achievements seemed to dwindle to nothing, and he might well have been forgiven for thinking that they had that day reached a turning- point in their national history: that after long years of suffering and 35 oppression, Ireland was once more to become a nation. And the means by which the victory had been attained were as important as — ten times more important than — the victory itself. All his life long he had been teaching his countrymen that constitutional victories must be won by constitutional means ; that for them no political change whatsoever was 40 worth the shedding of a single drop of human blood; and his country- men seemed to have learned the lesson. If they had, the future was full of hope for them and for their children's children." — Daniel O^ Connelly R. Dunlop, pp. 344-50. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1900]. Daniel O'Connell. 389 Fellow-Irishmen : It would be the extreme of affecta- tion in me to suggest that I have not some claim to be the leader of this majestic meeting. It would be worse than affectation ; it would be drivelling folly, if I were not to feel 5 the awful responsibility to my country and my Creator which the part I have taken in this mighty movement im- poses on me. Yes ; I feel the tremendous nature of that responsibility. Ireland is roused from one end to the other. Her multitudinous population has but one expression and 10 one wish, and that is for the extinction of the Union and the restoration of her nationality. (A cry of"' No compromise 1 ") Who talks of compromise ? I have come here, not for the purpose of making a schoolboy's attempt at declamatory elo- quence, not to exaggerate the historical importance of the 15 spot on which we now stand, or to endeavour to revive in your recollection any of those poetic imaginings respecting it which have been as familiar as household words. But this it is impossible to conceal or deny, that Tara is surrounded by historical reminiscences which give it an importance 20 worthy of being considered by everyone who approaches it for political purposes, and an elevation in the public mind which no other part of Ireland possesses. We are standing upon Tara of the Kings ; the spot where the monarchs of Ireland were elected, and where the chieftains of Ireland 25 bound themselves, by the Ynost solemn pledges of honour, to protect their native land against the Dane and every stranger. This was emphatically the spot from which emanated every social power and legal authority by which the force of the entire country was concentrated for the purposes of national 30 defence. On this spot I have a most important duty to perform. I here protest, in the name of my country and in the name of my God, against the unfounded and unjust Union. My prop- osition to Ireland is that the Union is not binding on her 35 people. It is void in conscience and in principle, and as a matter of constitutional law I attest these facts. Yes, I 390 Political Addresses. attest by everything that is sacred, without being profane, the truth of my assertions. There is no real union between the two countries, and my proposition is that there was no authority given to anyone to pass the Act of Union. Neither the EngHsh nor the Irish Legislature was competent to pass 5 that Act, and I arraign it on these grounds. One authority alone could make that Act binding, and that was the voice of the people of Ireland. The Irish Parliament was elected to make laws and not to make legislatures ; and, therefore, it had no right to assume the authority to pass the Act of 10 Union. The Irish Parliament was elected by the Irish peo- ple as their trustees ; the people were their masters, and the members were their servants, and had no right to transfer the property to any other power on earth. If the Irish Par- liament had transferred its power of legislation to the French 15 Chamber, would any man assert that the Act was valid? Would any man be mad enough to assert it ; would any man be insane enough to assert it, and would the insanity of the assertion be mitigated by sending any number of members to the French Chamber? Everybody must admit that it 20 would not. What care I for France? — and I care as little for England as for France, for both countries are foreign to me. The very highest authority in England has proclaimed us to be aliens in blood, in religion, and in language. {Groa7is.) Do not groan him for having proved himself 25 honest on one occasion by declaring my opinion. But to show the invalidity of the Union I could quote the authority of Locke on " Parliament." I will, however, only detain you by quoting the declaration of Lord Plunket in the Irish Parliament, who told them that they had no authority to 30 transfer the legislation of the country to other hands. As well, said he, might a maniac imagine that the blow by which he destroys his Avretched body annihilates his im- mortal soul, as you to imagine that you can annihilate the soul of Ireland — her constitutional rights. 35 I need not detain you by quoting authorities to show the Daniel O'Connell. 391 invalidity of the Union. I am here the representative of the Irish nation, and in the name of that moral, temperate, vir- tuous, and religious people, I proclaim the Union a nullity. Saurin, who had been the representative of the Tory party 5 for twenty years, distinctly declared that the Act of Union was invalid. He said that the Irish House of Commons had no right, had no power, to pass the Union, and that the people of Ireland would be justified, the first opportunity that presented itself, in effecting its repeal. So they are. 10 The authorities of the country were charged with the enact- ment, the alteration, or the administration of its laws. These were their powers ; but they had no authority to alter or overthrow the Constitution. I therefore proclaim the nullity of the Union. In the face of Europe I proclaim its nullity. 15 In the face of France, especially, and of Spain, I proclaim its nullity ; and I proclaim its nullity in the face of the liber- ated States of America. I go farther, and proclaim its nul- lity on the grounds of the iniquitous means by which it was carried. It was effected by the most flagrant fraud. A 20 rebellion was provoked by the Government of the day, in order that they might have a pretext for crushing the liber- ties of Ireland. There w^as this addition to the fraud, that at the time of the Union Ireland had no legal protection. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and the lives and 25 liberties of the people were at the mercy of courts-martial. You remember the shrieks of those who suffered under martial law. One day from Trim the troops were marched out and made desolate the country around them. No man was safe during the entire time the Union was under discus- 30 sion. The next fraud was that the Irish people were not allowed to meet to remonstrate against it. Two county meetings, convened by the High Sheriffs of these counties, pursuant to requisitions presented to them, were dispersed at the point of the bayonet. In King's County the High 35 Sheriff called the people together in the Court-house, and Colonel Connor of the North Cork Militia, supported by II 392 Political Addresses. artillery and a troop of horse, entered the Court-house at the head of two hundred of his regiment and turned out the Sher- iff, Magistrates, Grand Jurors, and freeholders assembled to petition against the enactment of the Union. (A voice. — "We'll engage they won't do it now ! ") In Tipper ary a sim- 5 ilar scene took place. A meeting convened by the High Sheriff was dispersed at the point of the bayonet. Thus public sentiment was stifled ; and if there was a compact, as is alleged, it is void on account of the fraud and force by which it was carried. But the voice of Ireland, though 10 forcibly suppressed at public meetings, was not altogether dumb. Petitions were presented against the Union to which were attached no less than 770,000 signatures. And there were not 3,000 signatures for the Union, notwithstanding all the Government could do. 15' My next impeachment against the Union is the gross cor- ruption with which it was carried. No less than ;^i, 275,000 was spent upon the rotten boroughs, and ;^2,ooo,ooo was ■ given in direct bribery. There was not one office that was V t not made instrumental to the carrying of the measure. Six 20 to seven judges were raised to the Bench for the votes they gave in its support ; and no less than twelve bishops were elevated to the Episcopal Bench for having taken the side of the Union ; for corruption then spared nothing to effect its purpose — corruption was never carried so far ; and if this 25 is to be binding on the Irish nation, there is no use in hon- esty at all. Yet in spite of all the means employed, the ene- mies of Ireland did not succeed at once. There was a majority of eleven against the Union the first time. But before the proposition was brought forward a second time, 30 members who could not be influenced to vote for the measure were bribed to vacate their seats, to which a number of English and Scotch officers, brought over for the purpose, were elected, and by their votes the Union was carried. In the name of the great Irish nation I proclaim it a nullity. At 35 the time of the Union the national debt of Ireland was only Daniel O'Connell, 393 ;f2o, 000,000. The debt of England was ;!^44o,ooo,ooo. England took upon herself one-half the Irish debt, but she placed upon Ireland one-half of the ;^44o,ooo,ooo. England since that period has doubled her debt, and admitting a pro- 5 portionate increase as against Ireland, the Irish debt would not now be more than ;^4o,ooo,ooo; and you may believe me when I say it in the name of the great Irish people, that we will never pay one shilling more. In fact, we owe but ;^3o,ooo, as is clearly demonstrated in a book lately pub- 10 lished by a near and dear relative of mine, Mr. John O'Con- nell, the member for Kilkenny. I am proud that a son of mine will be able, when the Repeal is carried, to meet any of England's financiers, and to prove to them the gross injus- tice inflicted upon Ireland. 15 My next impeachment of the Union is its destructive and deleterious effect upon the industry and prosperity of the country. The county of Meath was once studded with noble residences. What is it now ? Even on the spot where what is called the great Duke of Wellington was born, in- 20 stead of a splendid castle or noble residence, the briar and the bramble attest the treachery that produced them. You remember the once prosperous linen-weavers of Meath. There is scarcely a penny paid to them now. In short, the Union struck down the manufactures of Ireland. The Com- 25 missioners of the Poor Law prove that 120,000 persons in Ireland are in a state of destitution during the greater part of each year. How is it that in one of the most fertile countries in the world this should occur ? The Irish never broke any of their bargains nor their treaties, and England 30 never kept one that was made on her part. There is now a union of the legislatures, but I deny that there is a union of the nations, and I again proclaim the Act a nullity. England has given to her people a municipal reform extensive and satisfactory, while to Ireland she gives a municipal reform 35 crippled and worthless. But the Union is more a nullity on ecclesiastical grounds ; for why should the great majority of 394 Political Addresses. the people of Ireland pay for the support of a religion which they do not believe to be true ? The Union was carried by the most abominable corruption and bribery, by financial robbery on an extensive scale, which makes it the more heinous and oppressive ; and the result is that Ireland is 5 saddled with an unjust debt, her commerce is taken from her, her trade is destroyed, and a large number of her people thus reduced to misery and distress. Yes, the people of Ireland are cruelly oppressed, and are we tamely to stand by and allow our dearest interests to be 10 trampled upon ? Are we not to ask for redress ? Yes, we will ask for that which alone will give us redress — a Parliament of our own. And you will have it too, if you are quiet and orderly, and join with me in my present struggle. {Loud cheers?) Your cheers will be conveyed to England. Yes, the 15 majority of this mighty multitude will be taken there. Old Wellington began by threatening us, and talked of civil war, but he says nothing about it now. He is getting inlet holes made in stone barracks. Now, only think of an old general doing such a thing ! As if, were there anything going on, the 20 people would attack stone walls ! I have heard that a great deal of brandy and biscuits have been sent to the barracks, and I sincerely hope the poor soldiers will get some of them. ■ Your honest brothers, the soldiers, who have been sent to Ireland, are as orderly and as brave men as any in Ireland. 25 I am sure that not one of you has a single complaint to make against them. If any of you have, say so. {Loud cries of " No, no ! " ) They are the bravest men in the world, and therefore I do not disparage them at all when I state this fact, that if they are sent to make war against the people, I y^ ! have enough women to beat them. There is no mockery or delusion in what I say. At the last fight for Ireland, when we were betrayed by a reliance on English honour, which we would never again confide in — for I would as soon confide in the honour of a certain black gentleman who has got two 35 horns and hoofs — but, as I was saying, at the last battle Daniel O'Connell. 395 for Ireland, when, after two days' hard fighting, the Irish were driven back by the fresh troops brought up by the EngUsh to the bridge of Limerick, at that point when the Irish soldiers retired fainting it was that the women of Lim- 5 erick threw themselves in the way, and drove the enemy back fifteen, twenty, or thirty paces. Several of the poor women were killed in the struggle, and their shrieks of agony being heard by their countrymen, they again rallied and de- termined to die in their defence, and, doubly valiant in the 10 defence of the women, they together routed the Saxons. Yes, I repeat, I have enough women to beat all the army of Ireland. It is idle for any minister or statesman to suppose for a moment that he can put down such a struggle as this for liberty. The only thing I fear is the conduct of some 15 ruffians who are called Ribbonmen, I know there are such blackguards, for I have traced them from Manchester. They are most dangerous characters, and it will be the duty of every Repealer, whether he knows or by any means can dis- cover one of them, immediately to hand him over to justice 20 and the law. The Ribbonmen only by their proceedings ' can injure the great and religious cause in which I am now engaged, and in which I have the people of Ireland at my back. This is a holy festival in the Catholic Church — the day 125 upon which the Mother of our Saviour ascended to meet her Son, and reign with Him for ever. On such a day I will not tell a falsehood. I hope I am under her protection \ v/hile addressing you, and I hope that Ireland will receive the benefit of her prayers. Our Church has prayed against :3o Espartero and his priest-terrorising, church-plundering marau- ders, and he has since fallen from power — nobody knows how, for he makes no effort to retain it. He seems to have been bewildered by the Divine curse, for without one rational effort the tyrant of Spain has faded before the J5 prayers of Christianity. I hope that there is a blessing in I this day, and, fully aware of its solemnity, I assure you that 396 Political Addresses. I am afraid of nothing but Ribbonism, which alone can disturb the present movement. I have proclaimed from this spot that the Act of Union is a nullity, but in seeking for Repeal I do not want you to disobey the law. I have only to refer to the words of the Tories' friend, Saurin, to prove 5 that the Union is illegal. I advise you to obey the law until you have the word of your beloved Queen to tell you that you shall have a Parliament of your own. {Cheers, and loud cries of '^ So we will ! ") The Queen — God bless her ! — will yet tell you that you shall have a legislature of your 10 own — three cheers for the Queen I (^Immense cheering^ On the 2d of January last I called this the Repeal year, and I was laughed at for doing so. Are they laughing now ? No ; it is now my turn to laugh ; and I will now say that in twelve months more we will have our Parliament again on College Green. The Queen has the undoubted preroga- tive at any time to order her Ministers to issue writs, which, being signed by the Lord Chancellor, the Irish Parliament would at once be convened without the necessity of applying to the English Legislature to repeal what they appear to 20 consider a valid Act of Union. And if dirty Sugden would not sign the writ, an Irish Chancellor would soon be found who would do so. And if we have our Parliament again in Dublin, is there, I would ask, a coward amongst you who would not rather die than allow it to be taken away by an 25 Act of Union ? (^Loud cries of " No one would ever submit to it ! " ''We'd rather die ! " etc.) To the last man ? {Cries of^^ To the last man ! ") Let every man who would not allow the Act of Union to pass hold up his hand. {An imme7ise forest of hands was shown?) When the Irish Parlia- 30 ment is again assembled, I will defy any power on earth to take it from us again. Are you all ready to obey me in the course of conduct which I have pointed out to you .? {Cries ^"Yes, yesl") When I dismiss you to-day, will you not disperse and go peaceably to your homes — (" Yes, yes, we Zl will ! ") — every man, woman, and child ? — in the same Daniel O'Connell. 397 tranquil manner as you have assembled ? (" Yes, yes 1 ") But if I want you again to-morrow, will you not come to Tara Hill ? (" Yes, yes ! ") Remember, I will lead you into no peril. If danger should arise, it will be in consequence of 5 some persons attacking us, for we are determined not to attack any person ; and if danger does exist, you will not find me in the rear rank. When we get our Parliament, all our grievances will be put an end to; our trade will be restored, the landlord will be placed on a firm footing, and 10 the tenants who are now so sadly oppressed will be placed in their proper position. "Law, Peace, and Order" is the motto of the Repeal banner, and I trust you will all rally round it. {Cries ^ " We are all Repealers!") I have to inform you that all the magistrates who have recently been 15 deprived of the Commission of the Peace have been ap- pointed by the Repeal Association to settle any disputes which may arise amxongst the Repealers in their respective localities. On next Monday persons will be appointed to settle disputes without expense, and I call on every man who 20 is the friend of Ireland to have his disputes settled by arbi- trators without expense, and to avoid going to the Petty Sessions. I believe I am now in a position to announce to you that in twelve months more we will not be without having an 25 Hurrah ! for the Parliament on College Green. {Immense cheering^ Your shouts are almost enough to call to life those who rest in the grave. I can almost fancy the spirits of the mighty dead hovering over you, and the ancient kings and chiefs of Ireland, from the clouds, listening to the 30 shouts sent up from Tara for Irish liberty. Oh ! Ireland is a lovely land, blessed with the bounteous gifts of Nature, and where is the coward who would not die for her ? {Cries of " Not one ! ") Your cheers will penetrate to the extremity of civilisation. Our movement is the admiration of the 35 world, for no other country can show so much force with so much propriety of conduct. No other country can show a 398 Political Addresses. people assembled for the highest national purposes that can actuate man ; can show hundreds of thousands able in strength to carry any battle that ever was fought, and yet separating with the tranquillity of schoolboys. You have stood by me long — stand by me a little longer, and Ireland will be again a nation. II. W. E. RUSSELL. Address at the Democratic National Convention. Chicago, July g, i8g6. ['* Governor Russell was extremely fortunate in the time of his politi- cal activity. [He was mayor of Cambridge, Mass., 1885-1888, unsuccess- ful candidate for governor of Massachusetts, 1888-89, ^^"^ governor, 10 1890-92.] The Democratic party had had a revival, and a revival un- der its best form. Under the leadership of Cleveland it promised the country an administration the object of which should be, not the advan- tage of partisans, or of certain classes, but of the Nation. Russell was believed to be a man of the same stamp as Cleveland, whose personal friend he became. ... 15 In the spring of 1896 Mr. Russell declined to be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention at Chicago, and refused to be thought of as a candidate for the Presidency. Later he decided to attend the Convention, hoping to be able to exert some influence. It was probably the most painful experience of his life. He had been a Democrat from 20 his childhood up. His father held an honorable place in the party as well as in civic life, and from him young Russell learned the lesson of party loyalty, and doubtless learned to honor the party in him. He was a partisan, but he loved his party as no mere partisan could do. He saw it assuming the position in which the best hopes of the country 25 could be placed upon it. His patriotism and his partisanship became one. He went to Chicago to find his dearest hopes disappointed. The politicians who had unwillingly followed the lead of Cleveland till they secured power, turned against him in Congress, and thwarted his most cherished plans. Now, in the Convention at Chicago, they were wild 30 with joy because they could cast him off forever, Russell found the W. E. Russell. 399 party that had been his hope and his pride stooping to alliance with the most extravagant elements of American politics, and for the sake of suc- cess adopting the most perilous financial heresy — [ free coinage of silver]. He strove vainly, [in the discussion of the report of the committee 5 to draft a platform] to check the disastrous plunge of his party into disgrace and ultimate failure. . . . The Convention listened but swept on in its mad career. He wrote to his wife : — 'I had no idea how hard and distasteful this task would be. I have but one comfort in it, I know that I have done my lo duty with fidelity.' " Memoir of W. E. Russell, C. C. Everett, Publica- tions of Colonial Society of Massachusetts, V, pp. 89-92.] Mr. Chairman and Members of this Convention: I have but one word to say. The time is short for debate upon the merits of this issue. I am conscious, painfully con- 15 scious, that the mind of this Convention is not and has not been open to argument and reason. ( Applause and cries of ''That's right!") I know that the will of its great majority, which sees fit to override precedent, to trample down rights, to attack the 20 sovereignty of States, is to be rigidly enforced. I know that an appeal will fall upon deaf ears. There is but one thing left to us, and that the voice of protest, and that voice I raise, not in bitterness, not questioning the sincerity, the honesty, of any Democrat ; that voice I utter with a feeling of 25 sorrow, and, mark me, my friends, the country, our country, if not this Convention, will listen to our protest. ( Applause and cheers.) I speak for one of the smallest States of this Union, not great in territory or population, not prominent in her material resources, but glorious in her history, great in 30 her character, in her loyalty to truth, in her devotion to prin- ciple and duty and the sacrifices she has wilHngly made for independence, liberty and her country. ( Great applause and cheering.) That State has taught us, her children, to place principle above expediency, courage above time, and patriot- 35 ism above party, — ( Applause). And in the cause of justice and of right, not to flinch, no matter how great the majority or how overbearing may be its demands. 400 Political Addresses. I speak, and I have a right to speak, for the Democracy of my Commonwealth. (Applause.) I have seen it for a generation in darkness and defeat, following steadfastly the old principles of an abiding faith. I felt it when it was re- jected and proscribed. It mattered not to us. We knew 5 that its principles would triumph, and we lived to see the day when we planted the banner of Democracy for three suc- cessive years victorious in that stronghold of Republicanism and protection. ( Applause.) These victories were for the great principles of a national 10 party. They were her protest against sectionalism, and against fraternal government,, which, either by force or by favor, should seek to dominate a dependent people. This was then the democracy of South Carolina and of Illinois, and bound us together from ocean to ocean. (Applause.) 15 We did not think that we should live to see the time when these great Democratic principles which have triumphed over Republicanism should be forgotten in a Convention and we should be invited under new and radical leadership to a new and radical policy ; that we should be asked to give up 20 vital principles for which we have labored and suffered ; re- pudiate Democratic platforms and administrations, and at the demands of a section urging expediency, be asked to adopt a policy which many of us believe invites peril to our coun- m try and disaster to our party. ( Applause.) 25 In the debates of this Convention I have heard one false note from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I answer it, not in anger, but in sorrow, and I appeal to you, my asso- ciates of the Massachusetts delegation, do I not speak the true sentiment of my State (cries of *' Yes" in the Massa- 30 chusetts delegation), and answer for our party, when I declare that they and we utter our earnest, emphatic and unflinching protest against this Democratic platform ? I have heard from the lips of some of the old leaders of our party, at whose feet we younger men have loved to learn its principles, that the new decline was the bright dawn of a better day. I would to Alexander H. Stephens. 401 God that I could believe it ! I have heard that Democracy- was being tied to a star, not the lone star, my Texan friends, that we gladly would welcome, but to the falling star, which flashes for an instant and then goes out in the darkness of 5 the night, ( Applause.) No, my friends, we see not the dawn, but the darkness of defeat and disaster. Oh, that from this great majority, with its power, there might come the only word of concession and conciliation ! Oh, that from you there might be held out the 10 olive branch of peace, under which all Democrats united could rally to a great victory! Mr. Chairman, I have finished my work of protest. Let me, following the example of the Senator from South Caro- lina, utter the word of prophecy. When this storm has sub- 15 sided, when the dark clouds of passion, of prejudice, have rolled away, and there comes after the turmoil of this Con- vention the sober second thought of Democrats and of our people, then the protests we of the minority here make will be hailed as the ark of the covenant faith when all Demo- 20 crats united may go to fight for the old principles and carry them to triumphant victory. III. ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. Secession. Delivered at the Georgia State Convention. Jajtiiary^ 1861. [" The convention assembled on the i6th of January. The number of members was two hundred and ninety-five. On the i8th, a resolution was passed, by a vote of one hundred and sixty-five ayes to one hundred 25 and thirty noes, declaring it to be the right and the duty of the State to withdraw from the Union. On the same day they appointed a com- mittee to draft an Ordinance of Secession. It was reported almost 402 Political Addresses. immediately and in a single paragraph declared the repeal and abrogation of all laws which bound the Commonwealth to the Union, and that the State of Georgia was ' in full possession and exercise of all those rights of sovereignity which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.' The debate on the ordinance elicited many w^arm expressions 5 of Union sentiments and it was on this occasion that Alexander H. Stephens made the [following] speech. Robert Toombs and his party were, [however,] strong enough to give to the ordinance, when it came up for a final vote, two hundred and eight ballots against eighty-nine. Civil War in America, B. J. Lossing, Vol. I, p. 178.] 10 Mr. President; This step of secession, once taken, can never be recalled ; and all the baleful and withering con- sequences that must follow, will rest on the convention for all coming time. When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by the demon of war, which this act of yours 15 will inevitably invite and call forth ; when our green fields of waving harvest shall be trodden down by the murderous soldiery and fiery car of war sweeping over our land ; our temples of justice laid in ashes ; all the horrors and desolation of war upon us ; who but this Convention will be held re- 20 sponsible for it ? And who but him who shall have given his vote for this unwise and ill-timed measure, as I honestly think and believe, shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and probably cursed and ex- ecrated by posterity for all coming time, for the wide and 25 desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now propose to perpetrate ? Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you can give, that will even satisfy yourselves in calmer moments — what reason you can give to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will bring upon 30 us. What reasons can you give to the nations of the earth to justify it ? They will be the calm and deliberate judges in the case ; and what cause or one overt act can you name or point, on which to rest the plea of justification ? What right has the North assailed ? What interest of the South has been 35 invaded ? What justice has been denied ? And what claim founded in justice and right has been withheld ? Can either Alexander H. Stephens. 403 of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong, deliber- ately and purposely done by the government of Washington, of which the South has a right to complain ? I challenge the answer. While, on the other hand, let me show the facts 5 (and believe me, gentlemen, I am not here the advocate of the North ; but I am here the friend, the firm friend, and lover of the South, and her institutions, and for this reason I speak thus plainly and faithfully for yours, mine, and every other man's interest, the words of truth and soberness), of which I TO wish you to judge, and I will only state facts which are clear and undeniable, and which now stand as records authentic in the history of our country. When we of the South demanded the slave-trade, or the importation of Africans for the culti- vation of our lands, did they not yield the right for twenty 15 years ? When we asked a three-fifths representation in Con- gress for our slaves, was it not granted ? When we asked and demanded the return of any fugitive from justice, or the re- covery of those persons owing labor or allegiance, was it not incorporated in the Constitution, and again ratified and 20 strengthened by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850? But do you reply that in many instances they have violated this com- pact, and have not been faithful to their engagements ? As individual and local communities, they may have done so ; but not by the sanction of government ; for that has always 25 been true to Southern interests. Again, gentlemen, look at another act ; when we have asked that more territory should be added, that we might spread the institution of slavery, have they not yielded to our demands in giving us Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, out of which four States have been 30 carved, and ample territory for four more to be added in due time, if you, by this unwise and impolitic act, do not destroy this hope, and, perhaps, by it lose all, and have your last slave wrenched from you by stern military rule, as South America and Mexico were ; or by the vindictive decree of a 35 universal emancipation which may reasonably be expected to follow. 404 Political Addresses. But, again, gentlemen, what have we to gain by this pro- posed change of our relation to the general government? We have always had the control of it, and can yet, if we re- main in it, and are as united as we have been. We have had a majority of the Presidents chosen from the South, as well ^ as the control and management of most of those chosen from the North. We have had sixty years of Southern Presidents to their twenty-four, thus controlling the executive depart- ment. So of the judges of the Supreme Court, we have had eighteen from the South and but eleven from the North; 10 although nearly four-fifths of the judicial business has arisen in the free states, yet a majority of the Court has always been from the South. This we have required so as to guard against any interpretation of the Constitution unfavorable to us. In like manner we have been equally watchful to guard 15 our interests in the legislative branch of government. In choos- ing the presiding presidents (pro tem.) of the Senate, we have had twenty-four to their eleven. Speakers of the House we have had twenty-three, and they twelve. While the majority of the representatives, from their greater population, have 20 always been from the North, yet we have so generally se- cured the Speaker,, because he, to a great extent, shapes and controls the legislation of the country. Nor have we had less control in every other department of the general government. Attorney-generals we have had fourteen, while 25 the North have had but five. Foreign ministers we have had eighty-six and they but fifty-four. While three-fourths of the business which demands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from the free states, from their greater commercial interest, yet we have had the principal embassies, so as to secure the 30 world-markets for our cotton, tobacco, and sugar on the best possible terms. We have had a vast majority of the higher offices of both army and navy, while a larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn from the North. Equally so of clerks, auditors, and comptrollers filling the executive 35 department ; the records show, for the last fifty years, that of Alexander H. Stephens. 405 the three thousand thus employed, we have had more than two-thirds of the same, while we have but one-third of the white population of the Republic. Again, look at another item, and one, be assured, in which r we have a great and vital interest ; it is that of revenue, or means of supporting government. From official documents, we learn that a fraction over three-fourths of the revenue col- lected for the support of the government has uniformly been raised from the North. 10 Pause now while you can, gentlemen, and contemplate carefully and candidly these important items. Look at an- other necessary branch of government, and learn from stern statistical facts how matters stand in that department. I mean the mail and post-office privileges that we now enjoy 15 under the general government as it has been for years past. The expense for the transportation of the mail in the free States was, by the report of the postmaster-general for the year i860, a little over $13,000,000, while the income was $19,000,000. But in the slave-states the transportation of 20 the mail was $14,716,000, while the revenue from the same was $8,001,026, leaving a deficit of $6,704,974, to be sup- pUed by the North, for our accommodation, and without it, we must have been entirely cut off from this most essential branch of government. 25 Leaving out of view, for the present, the countless mil- lions of dollars you must expend in a war with the North ; with tens of thousands of your sons and brothers slain in battle, and offered up as sacrifices upon the altar of your ambition — and for what, we ask again ? Is it for the over- 30 throw of the American government, established by our com- mon ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and founded on the broad principles of right, justice and humanity ? And as such, I must declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been repeated by the 35 greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots, in this and other lands, that it is the best and freest government — the 4o6 Political Addresses. most equal in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and the most aspiring in its principles, to elevate the race of men, that the sun of heaven ever shone upon. Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as this, under which we have lived for 5 more than three-quarters of a century — in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety, while the elements of peril are around us, with peace and tranquillity accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed — is the height of madness, folly, and 10 wickedness, to which I neither lend my sanction nor my vote. IV. E. MAZZINI. To the Young Men of Italy. Delivered at Milan, July 25, 1848, at the request of the National Asso- ciation, on the occasion of a solemn commemoration of the anniversary of the death of the brothers Bandiera and their fellow- martyrs. [" Giuseppe Mazzini, lawyer, patriot, and revolutionist, was born at Genoa in 1805. In 1830 he was arrested by the authorities of Pied- mont for conspiring against the government, but after an imprisonment 1 5 of six months was released for want of sufficient evidence to procure a conviction. He thereupon left Italy and resided successively in Mar- seilles, Paris, and London, whence he conducted agitations for the lib- eration of Italy. He founded about 1832 the secret revolutionary society of * Young Italy,' whose object was the unification of Italy 20 under a republican government. He returned to Italy at the outbreak of the revolutionary movements of 1848, and in 1849 became a member of the triumvirate in the short-lived republic at Rome, being again driven into exile on the restoration of the papal government (1849). ^^ played a subordinate part in the movement which resulted in the unifica- 25 tion of Italy under Victor Emmanuel in 1861, and, unwilling to take the oath of allegiance to a monarchy, remained abroad. He died in 1872." Century Dictionary. E. Mazzini. 407 Attilio and Emilio Bandiera, born at Venice in 1811 and 181 9, were officers in the Austrian navy. They were, however, ardent patriots, and shared the longing of the party of ' Young Italy ' to see Italy united, and free of foreign yoke, especially that of Austria. They made numer- 5 ous converts among the Italian crews in the fleet, and entered into cor- respondence with Mazzini. They planned to take possession of a frigate in order to make a descent on Sicily, but, denounced to the Austrians, they were obliged to flee. Meeting again in Corfu, they learned of the vain attempts of the Calabrians to rise, and resolved to hasten to 10 them in order to reanimate the insurrection. The chiefs of the revolu- tionary committees and even Mazzini dissuaded in vain. Like patriots of antiquity, the brothers deemed it necessary that they should be a great sacrifice in order that the masses should be roused from their tor- por. On June twelfth, 1844, they set out in a barge with seventeen 15 companions. On the sixteenth they landed near Crotone, knelt on the Italian soil, and kissing it, cried : ' You gave us life, and we will give it you.' Led by a Calabrian, they threw themselves into the woods, and on the eighteenth arrived in the neighborhood of San Giovanni in Fiore. Betrayed by one of their number, a Corsican spy, they were un- 20 successfully attacked by seventeen of the urban guard. On the nine- teenth, when attacked by a battalion of chasseurs and a number of the militia, they were overcome after heroic resistance. All were condemned to death, though only nine were executed. On the twenty- fifth, the brothers, with seven companions, passed through weeping 25 crowds in the streets of Cosenza, singing : ' He who dies for his coun- try, has lived well.' When the band arrived at the place of punishment, they embraced, exhorted the weeping soldiery, themselves gave the order to fire, and fell crying ; ' Long live Italy 1 ' The sacrifice of the brothers and their friends made a profound impression throughout 30 Europe, and from the moment of their death the direction of the national movement changed from the powerless initiative of secret societies to that of a roused public opinion. La . Grande Encyclo- pedie.l When I was commissioned by you, young men, to proffer 35 in this temple a few words sacred to the memory of the brothers Bandiera and their fellow-martyrs at Cosenza, I thought that some of those who heard me might exclaim with noble indignation : " Wherefore lament over the dead ? The martyrs of liberty are only worthily honored by winning 40 the battle they have begun ; Cosenza, the land where they fell, is enslaved ; Venice, the city of their birth, is begirt by 4o8 Political Addresses. foreign foes. Let us emancipate them, and until that moment let no words pass our lips save words of war." But another thought arose : " Why have we not conquered ? Why is it that, while we are fighting for independence in the north of Italy, liberty is perishing in the south ? Why is it that a war, which should have sprung to the Alps with the bound of a lion, has dragged itself along for four months, with the slow uncertain motion of the scorpion surrounded by a circle of fire ? How has the rapid and powerful intu- ition of a people newly arisen to life been converted into the lo weary, helpless effort of the sick man turning from side to side ? Ah 1 had we all arisen in the sanctity of the idea for which our martyrs died ; had the holy standard of their faith preceded our youth to battle; had we reached that unity of life which was in them so powerful, and made of our 1 1 every action a thought, and of our every thought an action ; had we devoutly gathered up their last words in our hearts, M and learned from them that liberty and independence are V one ; that God and the people, the fatherland and humanity, are the two inseparable terms of the device of every people 20 striving to become a nation ; that Italy can have no true life till she be one, holy in the equality and love of all her chil- dren, great in the worship of eternal truth, and consecrated to a lofty mission, a moral priesthood among the peoples of Europe — we should now have had, not war, but victory; 25 Cosenza would not be compelled to venerate the memory of her martyrs in secret, nor Venice be restrained from honoring them with a monument; and we, gathered here together, might gladly invoke their sacred names, without uncertainty as to our future destiny, or a cloud of sadness on our brows, 30 and say to those precursor souls : " Rejoice ! for your spirit is incarnate in your brethren, and they are worthy of you." The idea which they worshipped, young men, does not as yet shine forth in its full purity and integrity upon your ban- 35 ner. The sublime program which they, dying, bequeathed E. Mazzini. 409 to the rising Italian generation, is yours ; but mutilated, broken up into fragments by the false doctrines, which, else- where overthrown, have taken refuge amongst us. I look around, and I see the struggles of desperate populations, an 5 alternation of generous rage and of unworthy repose ; of shouts for freedom and of formulae of servitude, throughout all parts of our peninsula ; but the soul of the country, where is it ? What unity is there in this unequal and manifold movement — where is the word that should dominate the 10 hundred diverse and opposing counsels which mislead or seduce the multitude ? I hear phrases usurping the national omnipotence — "the Italy of the north — the league of the states — federative compacts between princes," — but Italy, where is it ? Where is the common country, the country 15 which the Bandiera hailed as thrice initiatrix of a new era of European civilization ? Intoxicated with our first victories, improvident for the future, we forgot the idea revealed by God to those who suffered ; and God has punished our forgetfulness by defer- 20 ring our triumph. The Italian movement, my countrymen, is, by decree of Providence, that of Europe. We arise to give a pledge of moral progress to the European world. But neither political fictions, nor dynastic aggrandizements, nor theories of expediency, can transform or renovate the life of 25 the peoples. Humanity lives and moves through faith ; great principles are the guiding stars that lead Europe towards the future. Let us turn to the graves of our martyrs, and ask inspiration of those who died for us all, and we shall find the secret of victory in the adoration of a faith. 30 The angel of martyrdom and the angel of victory are brothers ; but the one looks up to heaven, and the other looks down to earth ; and it is when, from epoch to epoch, their glances meet between earth and heaven, that creation is embellished with a new life, and a people arises from the 35 cradle or the tomb, evangelist or prophet. I will sum up for you in a few words this faith of our I 410 Political Addresses. martyrs ; their external life is known to you all ; it is now a matter of history, and I need not recall it to you. The faith of the brothers Bandiera, which was and is our own, was based upon a few simple uncontrovertible truths, which few, indeed, venture to declare false, but which are nevertheless forgotten or betrayed by most : — God and the people. God at the summit of the social edifice ; the people, the universality of our brethren, at the base. God, the Father and Educator ; the people, the progressive interpreter of His law. 10 No true society can exist without a common belief and a ^ common aim. Religion declares the belief and the aim. ■ Politics regulate society in the practical realization of that belief, and prepare the means of attaining that aim. Religion represents the principle, politics the application. There is 15 but one sun in heaven for all the earth. It is alike the law of the human being and of collective humanity. We are placed here below, not for the capricious exercise of our own individual faculties, — our faculties and liberty are the means, not the end, — not to work out our own happiness upon earth ; 20 happiness can only be reached elsewhere, and there God works for us ; but to consecrate our existence to the discov- ery of a portion of the Divine law ; to practice it as far as our individual circumstances and powers allow, and to diffuse the knowledge and love of it among our brethren. 25 We are here below to labor fraternally to build up the unity of the human family, so that the day may come when it shall represent a single sheepfold with a single shepherd, — the spirit of God, the Law. To aid our search after truth, God has given to us tradition 30 and the voice of our own conscience. Wherever they are opposed, is error. To attain harmony and consistence between the conscience of the individual and the conscience of humanity, no sacrifice is too great. The family, the city, the fatherland, and humanity, are but different spheres in 35 which to exercise our activity and our power of sacrifice E. Mazzini. 4 1 1 towards this great aim. God watches from above the inevit- able progress of humanity, and from time to time he raises up the great in genius, in love, in thought, or in action, as priests of his truth, and guides to the multitudes on their way. 5 These principles, — indicated in their letters, in their proclamations, and in their conversation, — with a profound sense of the mission intrusted by God to the individual and to humanity, were to Attilio and Emilio Bandiera and their fellow-martyrs the guide and comfort of a weary life ; and, 10 when men and circumstances had alike betrayed them, these principles sustained them in death, in religious serenity and calm certainty of the realization of their immortal hopes for the future of Italy. The immense energy of their souls arose from the intense love which informed their faith. And could 15 they now arise from the grave and speak to you, they would, believe me, address you, though with a power very different from that which is given to me, in counsel not unlike this which I now offer to you. Love I love is the flight of the soul towards God ; towards 20 the great, the sublime, and the beautiful, which are the shadow of God upon earth. Love your family, the partner of your life, those around you ready to share your joys and sor- rows ; love the dead who were dear to you and to whom you were dear. But let your love be the love taught you by 25 Dante and by us — the love of souls that aspire together; do not grovel on the earth in search of a felicity which it is not the destiny of the creature to reach here below ; do not yield to a delusion which inevitably would degrade you into egotism. To love is to give and take a promise for the future. '30 God has given us love, that the weary soul may give and receive support upon the way of life. It is a flower springing up on the path of duty ; but it cannot change its course. Purify, strengthen, and improve yourselves by loving. Act always — even at the price of increasing her earthly trials — 35 so that the sister soul united to your own may never need, here or elsewhere, to blush through you or for you. The 412 Political Addresses. time will come when, from the height of a new life, embrac- ing the whole past and comprehending its secret, you will smile together at the sorrows you have endured, the trials you have overcome. Love your country. Your country is the land where your parents sleep, where is spoken that language in which the chosen of your heart, blushing, whispered the first word of love ; it is the home that God has given you, that by striving to perfect yourselves therein, you may prepare to ascend to Him. It is your name, your glory, your sign among the people. Give to it your thought, your counsels, your blood. Raise it up, great and beautiful as it was foretold by our great men, and see that you leave it uncontaminated by any trace of falsehood or of servitude; unprofaned by dismemberment. Let it be one, as the thought of God. You are twenty-five millions of men, endowed with active, splendid faculties ; pos- sessing a tradition of glory the envy of the nations of Europe. An immense future is before you ; you lift your eyes to the loveliest heaven, and around you smiles the loveliest land in Europe ; you are encircled by the Alps and the sea, bound- 20 aries traced out by the finger of God for a people of giants — you are bound to be such or nothing. Let not a man of that twenty-five millions remain excluded from the fraternal bond destined to join you together ; let not a glance be raised to that heaven which is not the glance of a free man. Let 25 Rome be the ark of your redemption, the temple of your nation. Has she not twice been the temple of the destinies of Europe ? In Rome two extinct worlds, the Pagan and the Papal, are superposed like the double jewels of a diadem ; draw from these a third world greater than the two. From 30 Rome, the holy city, the city of love {amor), the purest and wisest among you, elected by the vote and fortified by the inspiration of a whole people, shall dictate the pact that shall make us one, and represent us in the future alliance of the peoples. Until then you will either have no country or have 35 1 her contaminated or profaned. E. Mazzini. 413 Love humanity. You can only ascertain your own mission from the aim set by God before humanity at large. God has given you your country as cradle, and humanity as mother ; you cannot rightly love your brethren of the cradle if you love ; not the common mother. Beyond the Alps, beyond the sea, are other peoples now fighting or preparing to fight the holy fight of independence, of nationality, of liberty ; other peoples striving by different routes to reach the same goal — improve- ment, association, and the foundation of an authority which I shall put an end to moral anarchy and re-link earth to heaven ; an authority which mankind may love and obey without remorse or shame. Unite with them ; they will unite with you. Do not invoke their aid where your single arm will suffice to conquer ; but say to them that the hour will shortly , sound for a terrible struggle between right and blind force, and that in that hour you will ever be found with those who have raised the same banner as yourselves. And love, young men, love and venerate the ideal. The ideal is the word of God. High above every country, high I above humanity, is the country of the spirit, the city of the soul, in which all are brethren who believe in the inviola- bility of thought and in the dignity of our immortal soul ; and the baptism of this fraternity is martyrdom. From that high sphere spring the principles which alone can redeem the ; peoples. Arise for the sake of these, and not from the im- patience of suffering or dread of evil. Anger, pride, ambi- tion, and the desire of material prosperity are arms common alike to the peoples and their oppressors, and even should you conquer with these to-day, you would fall again to- J30 morrow; but principles belong to the peoples alone, and their oppressors can find no arms to oppose them. Adore enthusiasm, the dreams of the virgin soul, and the visions of early youth, for they are a perfume of paradise which the soul retains in issuing from the hands of its Creator. Re- 35 spect above all things your conscience ; have upon your lips the truth implanted by God in your hearts, and, while 414 Political Addresses. laboring in harmony, even with those who differ from you, in all that tends to the emancipation of our soil, yet ever bear your own banner erect and boldly promulgate your own faith. Such words, young men, would the martyrs of Cosenza have spoken, had they been living amongst you ; and here, where it may be that, invoked by our love, their holy spirits hover near us, I call upon you to gather them up in your hearts and to make of them a treasure amid the storms that yet threaten you ; storms which, with the name of our martyrs on your lips and their faith in your hearts, you will overcome. lo God be with you, and bless Italy ! AFTER DINNER SPEECHES. All four speeches illustrate the chief desideratum in after-dinner speaking, — brevity. They show, too, that brevity does not preclude so mingling grave and gay that an audience is led to think of funda- mental questions in education ; does not preclude strong emotional effect, phrasing for the first time ideas which become the beliefs of the next generation, or even facing a grave political crisis so skilfully that the speech in large part prepares the solution of it. I. RACHEL K. FITZ. A Five Minute Address. At a Luncheon of the Class of '94, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, June 28^ igoo. I HAVE been asked to discuss " Radcliffe as a Matrimonial Training School." Now, as you doubtless know, matrimony is the one subject of which every college girl is popularly supposed to be shy, because either she wants to get married 5 and is afraid that she won't, or she doesn't want to get mar- ried and is afraid that she will ! To lessen the fears of the girl who is afraid that she won't, we are urged to compile elaborate statistics to prove the college woman distinctly marriageable, but in the meantime she looks at the meagre 10 list of married names in our college catalogue and her fears are strengthened. The girl who is afraid that she will, looks at the same list and her fears are not diminished. She thinks of all the might-have-beens which weren't because the college girl wouldn't ! And they tell her that Radcliffe is a 15 matrimonial training school. But for us the question is. Is Radcliffe a successful train- ing school ? Does she not only make a woman distinctly eligible to this highest of all positions, but does she enable her to fill it, honestly, ideally to fill it ? 20 I wish, I cannot tell you how earnestly, that I could say yes unqualifiedly, because to me this, and not co-education or Ph.D.'s, or woman's exact intellectual relation to man, is the vital issue in college economics. In the five minutes at my disposal I cannot hope to tell you why this is for me, and I 417 41 8 After Dinner Speeches. believe should be for all, the vital issue ; I cannot hope to persuade you (if, indeed, you need persuasion) that married life is woman's ideal life. We who are married are like the philosophers who said that those in the dark might think that they were in the light, whereas those in the light knew 5 that they were. If, then, you will grant me that married life is woman's truth, we may ask, In how far does Radcliffe prepare her for the revelation ; in how far does it fail to prepare her ? It prepares her in one way, grandly, in that it makes her 10 the intellectual equal of man. She can think with him, work with him, aspire with him ; his thoughts are her thoughts, though spiced and enriched by her own individuality. In- tellectually their married life is a union with all the rare intuition of sympathy, the consummate helpfulness and 15 strength which the word union rightly stands for. Do you remember how Socrates longed to die because then he could know the thoughts of the men he admired, could talk with them face to face, soul to soul ? It is that sort of knowledge of the thoughts of the man whom she supremely admires that 20 Radcliffe fits its daughter for. It enables a wife to enter into the kingdom of her husband's mind and, by entering in, to possess and to enlarge it. In Socrates' heaven this would be enough, but for us it is only much. We are alive and life is practical. Does Rad- 25 cliffe fit us for the practical side of married life ? Look over her list of courses and you will have the answer. There are Latin and Greek, Logic and Metaphysic, Anglo-Saxon and Gothic, Trigonometry and Analytic Geometry, and many others of a similar nature. They are all very good — but 30 practical ? A married woman has the care of a household, and, as a supreme trust, of children ; and what is her prepara- tion ? You try to think of a possible relation between what she has learned and what she is now called upon to do, and at last you answer that as a result of her course of study she 35 has a well trained mind, a well formed character. And, J Rachel K. Fitz. 419 therefore, you would assume that she is prepared to manage a household though she knows nothing of the processes of nutrition, of the chemistry of food, of sanitation ? To care for children, though she is as ignorant as her babe of physi- 5 ology and of hygiene ? The assumption is logically prepos- terous. Its general acceptance passes unchallenged because, forsooth, we are mothers by Divine Right ; because the vividness of what our child is in strength, endurance and character obscures the image of what he might have been ; 10 because finally our sins of omission and commission have such large results that shrinking we place the burden upon a remote heredity. Some would make excuse for college women upon the ground that they fail no more critically than other women. 15 We know that we demand the ideal of our college, and it is with that demand only that she herself will be satisfied. Until Radcliffe refuses to sanction the heresy that the home work of a woman is so trivial that under the guidance of ignorant tradition it may be learned by the doing, and 20 accepts as a vital part of her mission the task of dignifying through science its daily routine ; until, acting upon her acknowledgment that strength of character and of mind are products of the method not of the subject matter of study, she teaches us with the rest that which our life work demands 25 that we know ; until, in short, she prepares us for the practi- cal revelation of our married life, she has done but half her duty toward us. She has made us to run swiftly with the one foot, she has left us lame with the other. But this is not all ; she has made us think that we run 30 swiftly with both feet ; she has made us even satisfied. And later when the needs come and we fail to meet them, we are only too apt to be dissatisfied with the needs and not with our failure. And then we make the dissatisfied wives and mothers who bring disrepute upon the college life for women 35 in the eyes of the world, who deny before our younger sisters the truth of a woman's life. 420 After Dinner Speeches. Shall we then turn and lay the blame upon our college ? The college is what we make it. Its ideals are our demands. If we demand only that it copy the man's college, teaching us what is good for him, nothing more, then we must not complain if the practical side of our woman's life is a failure, or at best successful only through a dearly bought experi- ence, as hard and as costly for those we love as for our- selves. Is it not then for us, as graduates of Radcliife, as wives and mothers, as women, to demand that Radcliffe shall be something more than a man's college, that she shall study the needs and purposes of those entrusted to her, ever remembering that man's work never is and never can be woman's work ? II. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON. Address at the Dinner of the Harvard Alumni.^ Cambridge, Mass., June 24, i8g6. [Harvard University conferred the degree of A. M. on Mr, Washing- 15 ton at its Commencement, June 24, 1896. At the dinner of the Alumni, which takes place shortly after the completion of the exercises in Sanders Theatre, it is customary to call upon the recipients of the honorary degree to speak.] Mr. President and Gentlemen : It would in some 20 measure relieve my embarrassment if I could, even in a slight degree, feel myself worthy of the great honor which you do me to-day. Why you have called me from the Black ^ Reprinted, by permission, from Up from Slavery, Booker T. Wash- ington. Copyright 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co. Booker T. Washington. 421 Belt of the South, from among my humble people, to share in the honors of this occasion, is not for me to explain ; and yet it may not be inappropriate for me to suggest that it seems to me that one of the most vital questions that touches 5 our American life, is how to bring the strong, wealthy and learned into helpful touch with the poorest, most ignorant, and humble, and at the same time, make the one appreciate the vitalizing, strengthening influence of the other. How shall we make the mansions on yon Beacon Street feel and 10 see the need of the spirits in the lowliest cabin in Alabama cotton fields or Louisiana sugar bottoms ? This problem Harvard University is solving, not by bringing itself down, but by bringing the masses up. If through me, an humble representative, seven millions 15 of my people in the South might be permitted to send a message to Harvard — Harvard that offered up on death's altar young Shaw, and Russell, and Lowell and scores of others, that we might have a free and united country, that message would be, " Tell them that the sacrifice was not in 20 vain. Tell them that by the way of the shop, the field, the skilled hand, habits of thrift and economy, by way of indus- trial school and college, we are coming. We are crawling up, working up, yea, bursting up. Often through oppres- sion, unjust discrimination and prejudice, but through them 25 all we are coming up, and with proper habits, intelligence and property, there is no power on earth that can perma- nently stay our progress." If my life in the past has meant anything in the lifting up of my people and the bringing about of better relations be- 30 tween your race and mine, I assure you from this day it will mean doubly more. In the economy of God, there is but one standard by which an individual can succeed — there is but one for a race. This country demands that every race measure itself by the American standard. By it a race must 35 rise or fall, succeed or fail, and in the last analysis mere sentiment counts for little. During the next half century 422 After Dinner Speeches. and more, my race must continue passing through the severe American crucible. We are to be tested in our patience, our forbearance, our perseverance, our power to endure wrong, to withstand temptations, to economize, to ac- quire and use skill ; our ability to compete, to succeed in 5 commerce, to disregard the superficial for the real, the ap- pearance for the substance, to be great and yet small, learned and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all. This, this is the passport to all that is best in the life of our Republic, and the Negro must possess it, or be debarred. 10 While we are thus being tested, I beg of you to remember that wherever our life touches yours, we help or hinder. Wherever your life touches ours, you make us stronger or weaker. No member of your race in any part of our coun- try can harm the meanest member of mine, without the 15 proudest and bluest blood in Massachusetts being degraded. When Mississippi commits crime. New England commits crime, and in so much, lowers the standard of your civiliza- tion. There is no escape — man drags man down, or man lifts man up. 20 In working out our destiny, while the main burden and center of activity must be with us, we shall need, in a large measure in the years that are to come, as we have in the past, the help, the encouragement, the guidance that the strong can give the weak. Thus helped, we of both races in 25 the South, soon shall throw off the shackles of racial and sectional prejudice and rise as Harvard University has risen and as we all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness and selfishness, into that atmosphere, that pure sunshine, where it will be our highest ambition to serve 30 MAN, our brother, regardless of race or previous condition. J. R. Lowell. 423 III. J. R. LOWELL. Our Literature.^ Response to a toast at the banquet in New York, April 30, 1889, given in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of Washington's inauguration. A needful frugality, benignant alike to both the partici- pants in human utterance, has limited the allowance of each speaker this evening to ten minutes. Cut in thicker slices, our little loaf of time would not suffice for all. This seems 5 a meagre ration, but if we give to our life the Psalmist's measure of seventy years, and bear in mind the population of the globe, a little ciphering will show that no single man and brother is entitled even to so large a share of our atten- tion as this. Moreover, how few are the men in any gen- 10 eration who could not deliver the message with which their good or evil genius has charged them in less than the sixth part of an hour. On an occasion like this, a speaker lies more than usually open to the temptation of seeking the acceptable rather than 15 the judicial word. And yet it is inevitable that public anniversaries, like those of private persons, should suggest self-criticism as well as self-satisfaction. I shall not listen for such suggestions, though I may not altogether conceal that I am conscious of them. I am to speak for literature, 20 and of our own as forming now a recognized part of it. This is not the place for critical balancing of what we have done or left undone in this field. An exaggerated estimate, and that indiscriminateness of praise which implies a fear to speak the truth, would be unworthy of myself or of you. ^ Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. from LowelVs Frose Works, VI, p. 222. 424 After Dinner Speeches. I might indeed read over a list of names now, alas, carven on headstones, since it would be invidious to speak of the living. But the list would be short, and I could call few of the names great as the impartial years measure greatness. I shall prefer to assume that American literature was not 5 worth speaking for at all if it were not quite able to speak m for itself, as all others are expected to do. J I think this a commemoration in which it is peculiarly fitting that literature should take part. For we are celebra- ting to-day our true birthday as a nation, the day when our 10 consciousness of wider interests and larger possibilities began. All that went before was birth-throes. The day also recalls us to a sense of something to which we are too indifferent. I mean that historic continuity, which, as a factor in moulding national individuality, is not only power- 15 ful in itself, but cumulative in its operation. In one of these literature finds the soil, and in the other the climate, it needs. Without the stimulus of a national consciousness, no literature could have come into being; under the con- ditions in which we then were, none that was not parasitic 20 and dependent. Without the continuity which slowly incor- porates that consciousness in the general life and thought, no literature could have acquired strength to detach itself and begin a life of its own. And here another thought suggested by the day comes to my mind. Since that pre- 25 cious and persuasive quality, style, may be exemplified as truly in a life as in a work of art, may not the character of the great man whose memory decorates this and all our days, in its dignity, its strength, its calm of passion restrained, its inviolable reserves, furnish a lesson which our literature 30 may study to great advantage ? And not our literature alone. Scarcely had we become a nation when the only part of the Old World whose language we understood began to ask in various tones of despondency where was our litera- 35 ture. We could not improvise Virgils, or Miltons, though J. R. Lowell. 425 we made an obliging effort to do it. Failing in this, we thought the question partly unfair and wholly disagreeable. And indeed it had never been put to several nations far older than we, and to which a vates sacer had been longer 5 wanting. But, perhaps it was not altogether so ill-natured as it seemed, for, after all, a nation without a literature is imper- fectly represented in the parliament of mankind. It implied, therefore, in our case the obligation of an illustrious blood. With a language in compass and variety inferior to none 10 that has ever been the instrument of human thought or passion or sentiment, we had inherited also the forms and precedents of a literature altogether worthy of it. But these forms and precedents we were to adapt suddenly to novel conditions, themselves still in solution, tentative, formless, 15 atom groping after atom, rather through blind instinct than with conscious purpose. Why wonder if our task proved as long as it was difficult ? And it was all the more difficult that we were tempted to free ourselves from the form as well as from the spirit. And we had other notable hindrances. 20 Our reading class was small, scattered thinly along the sea- board, and its wants were fully supplied from abroad, either by importation or piracy. Communication was tedious and costly. Our men of letters, or rather our men with a natural impulsion to a life of letters, were few and isolated, and I 25 cannot recollect that isolation has produced anything in literature better than monkish chronicles, except a Latin hymn or two, and one precious book, the treasure of bruised spirits. Criticism there was none, and what assumed its function was half provincial self-conceit, half patriotic re- 30 solve to find swans in birds of quite another species. Above all, we had no capital toward which all the streams of moral and intellectual energy might converge to fill a reservoir on which all could draw. There were many careers open to ambition, all of them more tempting and 35 more gainful than the making of books. Our people were of necessity largely intent on material ends, and our acces- 426 After Dinner Speeches. sions from Europe tended to increase this predisposition. Considering all these things, it is a wonder that in these hundred years we should have produced any literature at all ; a still greater wonder that we have produced so much of which we may be honestly proud. Its English descent is 3 and must always be manifest, but it is ever more and more informed with a new spirit, more and more trustful in the guidance of its own thought. But if we would have it become all that we would have it be, we must beware of judging it by a comparison with its own unripe self alone. 10 We must not cuddle it into weakness or wilfulness by over- indulgence. It would be more profitable to think that we have as yet no literature in the highest sense than to insist that what we have should be judged by other admitted stand- ards, merely because it is ours. In these art matches we 15 must not only expect but rejoice to be pitted against the doughtiest wrestlers, and the lightest-footed runners of all countries and of all times. Literature has been put somewhat low on the list of toasts, doubtless in deference to necessity of arrangement, but per- 20 haps the place assigned to it here may be taken as roughly indicating that which it occupies in the general estimation. And yet I venture to claim for it an influence whether for good or evil, more durable and more widely operative than that exerted by any other form in which human genius has 25 found expression. As the special distinction of man is speech, it should seem that there can be no higher achieve- ment of civilized men, no proof more conclusive that they are civilized men, than the power of moulding words into such fair and noble forms as shall people the human mind 30 forever with images that refine, console and inspire. It is no vain superstition that has made the name of Homer sacred to all who love a bewitchingly simple and yet ideal pic- ture of our human life in its doing and its suffering. And there are books which have kept alive and transmitted the 35 spark of soul that has resuscitated nations. It is an old J. R. Lowell. 427 wives' tale that Virgil was a great magician, yet in that tale survives a witness of the influence which made him, through Dante, a main factor in the revival of Italy after the one had been eighteen and the other five centuries in their 5 graves. I am not insensible to the wonder and exhilaration of a material growth without example in rapidity and expansion, but I am also not insensible to the grave perils latent in any civilization which allows its chief energies and interests to be 10 wholly absorbed in the pursuit of a mundane prosperity. " Rejoice O young man, in thy youth ; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth : but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." I admire our energy, our enterprise, our inventiveness, our 15 multiplicity of resource, no man more ; but it is by less visibly remunerative virtues, I persist in thinking, that nations chiefly live and feel the higher meaning of their lives. Prosperous we may be in other ways, contented with more specious suc- cesses, but that nation is a mere horde supplying figures to the 20 census which does not acknowledge a truer prosperity and a richer contentment in the things of the mind. Railways and telegraphs reckoned by the thousand miles are excellent things in their way, but I doubt whether it be of their poles and sleepers that the rounds are made of that ladder by which 25 men or nations scale the cliffs whose inspiring obstacle inter- poses itself bet^veen them and the fulfilment of their highest purpose and function. The literature of a people should be the record of its joys and sorrows, its aspirations and its short-comings, its wisdom 30 and its folly, the confidant of its soul. We cannot say that as yet our own suffices us, but I believe that he who stands, a hundred years hence, where I am standing now, conscious that he speaks to the most powerful and prosperous com- munity ever devised or developed by man, will speak of our 35 literature with the assurance of one who beholds what we hope for and aspire after, become a reality and a possession forever. 428 After Dinner Speeches. IV. W. F. BARTLETT. Speech at Harvard Commencement Dinner.^ June 24, 18^4. [" On the 23rd of June the dedication of Memorial Hall, the great building erected to commemorate the services in the war of the Sons of Harvard College, took place at Cambridge. The next day was Com- mencement Day, and the commencement dinner was served, for the first time, in Memorial Hall. General Bartlett was the chief marshall 5 of the day. ... A mid-summer's day at Cambridge is apt to be hot, and this day was not an exception. By the time the dignitaries have made their speeches, the guests are getting weary and uncomfortable, and the thought of the fresher air without grows more and more tempt- ing. It is not a favorable moment for the debut of an orator. And 10 yet when Bartlett arose, and the first words uttered by his deep and manly voice were heard, and the audience became aware that they came from the shattered soldier whose tall and slender form and wasted face they had seen at the head of the procession as he painfully marshalled it that day, a great silence fell upon the multitude, and he continued and 1 5 finished his speech in the midst of silence, except when it was broken, as it was more than once, by spontaneous bursts of cheering. When he took his seat, enthusiastic cheering followed, and all felt that an event had taken place. It is within bounds to say that it is many years since any speech made in New England has produced so great an 20 effect."] Mr. President, — The first meeting of the Alumni around the table in this hall, which we yesterday dedicated to the memory of our brothers, is one of no common interest to us ; and I think I speak for all their comrades in arms 25 when I say that the thoughtfulness which assigns to us the honorable duties of this day is recognized and appreciated. The day is not without sadness as we read the beloved names on those marble tablets, and yet not without gladness as we ^ Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. frpm Memoir of W. F. Bartlett, F. W. Palfrey, 1878. W. F. Bartlett. 429 reflect that whatever change of fortune may come to us as the years roll on, their fame is secure — immutable — im- mortal. We shall grow old and wear out, but they will al- ways keep for us their glorious, spotless youth. I was glad 5 to hear from the lips of your distinguished orator yesterday such testimony to the absence of natural bitterness among the mass of the people of the South ; that it was due in great part to the energetic cultivation of hot-brained leaders for selfish ends. I think that the natural instinct of the people 10 everywhere is toward peace and good will, and were it never thwarted by party intrigue, we should be much nearer to a perfect union, such as these men fought for, than we are to- day. The occasional fire-brands thrown in the path of recon- ciliation are from the hands of those who, while the battle 15 lasted, sought " bomb-proof " positions in the rear, and they no more represent the fighting men of the South than the plundering politicians who have spoiled them represent the true hearts at the North. I firmly believe that when the gallant men of Lee's army surrendered at Appomattox 20 (touched by the delicate generosity of Grant, who, obeying the dictates of his own honest heart, showed no less magna- nimity than political sagacity), they followed the example of their heroic chief, and, with their arms, laid down forever their disloyalty to the Union. Take care, then, lest you 25 repel, by injustice, or suspicion, or even by indifference, the returning love of men who now speak with pride of that flag as " our flag." It was to make this a happy, reunited country, where every man should be in reality free and equal before the law, that our comrades fought, our brothers fell. 30 They died not that New England might prosper or that the West might thrive. They died not to defend the northern capitol or preserve those marble halls where the polished statesmen of the period conduct their dignified debates I They died for their country — for the South no less than for 35 the North. And the southern youth, in the days to come, will see this, and as he stands in these hallowed halls and 430 After Dinner Speeches. reads those names, realizing the grandeur and power of a country which, thanks to them, is still his, will exclaim, " These men fought for my salvation as well as for their own. They died to preserve not merely the unity of a nation, but the destinies of a continent." V. G. W. CURTIS. The Puritan Principle : Liberty under the Law.^ A Speech made at the Dinner of the New England Society of the City of New York, December 22, 1876. [ " The following account, by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, of the circumstances attending the delivery of the speech, and of the effect produced by it, appeared in the Boston Commonwealth^ Sept. 10, 1892. ' I have said a hundred times, and am glad here to put on record my opinion, that at a great moment in our history George William Cur- 10 tis spoke the word which was most needed to save the nation from ter- rible calamity. It was at the annual dinner of the Forefathers' Society of the city of New York, at Delmonico's Hotel, in 1876. That society embodies some of the very best of the leaders of business and of social life in New York, and it is the pride of . its managers to assemble on 1 5 Forefathers' Day the very best of the leaders, who are not of New England blood, who represent the highest and most important interests in that city. On the anniversary of 1876 I had the honor and pleasure of representing at their dinner party Boston and the New Englander-s who had not emigrated. It was at the moment when the Hayes- 20 Tilden difficulty was at its very worst. Intelligent men and even de- cent newspapers spoke freely of the possibility of civil war. The dead- lock seemed absolute, and even men perfectly loyal to the principles of American government turned pale as they looked forward to the issue. In the distinguished company of perhaps three hundred representative 25 men, at Delmonico's, about half believed to the bottom of their hearts ^ Reprinted by permission from Essays and Addresses. G. W. Cur- tis, Vol. I, p. 243. Copyright, 1894, Harper ^ Brothers, ] I G. W. Curtis. 431 that Mr. Tilden was chosen President. • The other half believed with equal certainty that Mr. Hayes was chosen. I myself had no more doubt then than I have now that Mr. Hayes was fairly chosen. I sat by a mayor of New York, a man of bigh character and level head, who 5 told me that he had postponed his journey to Cuba that he might be present at Mr. Tilden's inauguration. He was as sure of that inaugura- tion as he was that he lived. ' Before such an audience ^Ir. Cuitis rose to speak. Instantly — as always — he held them in rapt attention. It would have been per- 10 fectly easy for a timid man or even a person of historic taste, to avoid the great subject of the ho\ir. Mr. Curtis might have talked well about Brewster and Carver, Leyden and DeKthaven, and have left Washing- ton and the AYhite House alone. But he was not a timid man. He was much more than a man of delicate taste, well-trained and elegant. 15 And therefore he plunged right into the terrible subject. Terrible is the only word. He passed from point to point of its intricacies, of which he did not underrate the difficulty. He then used the pri\-ileo-e of the occasion, citing the common-sense of the conscientious statesmen of our race ; and he came out with his expression of his certain confi- 20 dence that the good sense of the sons of such an ancestry would devise a tribunal impartial enough and augiist enough to determine the ques- tion to the unanimous assent of the nation. • He said this so clearly and certainly that he carried with him every man in the assembly. Almost on the moment every man was on his 25 feet, cheering the sentiment. I know that the Mayor of New York and I, who had but ju5t before been absolutely at cross-purposes in our talk, were standing side by side, each with one foot in his chair and the other foot on the table, cheering and waving our handkerchiefs. So was every other man of the twenty guests at the table. 30 ' Those three hundred men of mark in New York went home that night, and went to their business the next day, to say that a court of arbitration must be established to settle that controversy. In that mo- ment of Mr. Curtis's triumph, as I believe, it was settled. This is certain : that from that moment, as ever)' careful reader may find to-day, 35 the whole tone of the press of all parties in the city of New York ex- pressed the belief which he expressed then, and which that assembly of leaders approved by their cheers. And from that moment to this mo- ment there has been no more talk of civil war.' " Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New Eng- 40 LAND Society : It was Isaac Walton, in his Angler, who said that Dr. Botelier was accustomed to remark " that doubtless God might have made a better berry than the strawberry, but 432 After Dinner Speeches. doubtless he never did." And I suppose I speak the secret feeling of this festive company when I say that doubtless there might have been a better place to be born in than New England, but doubtless no such place exists. \_Applause and laughter.'] And if any sceptic should reply that our very pres- 5 ence here would seem to indicate that doubtless, also, New England is as good a place to leave as to stay in \_laughter\, I should reply to him that, on the contrary, our presence is but an added glory of our mother. It is an illustration of the devout missionary spirit, of the willingness in which she 10 has trained us to share with others the blessings that we have received, and to circle the continent, to girdle the globe, with the strength of New England character and the purity of New England principles. \_Applause.'] Even the Knickerbockers, Mr. President — in whose stately and 15 splendid city we are at this moment assembled, and assem- bled of right because it is our home — even they would doubtless concede that much of the state and splendor of this city is due to the enterprise, the industry, and the gen- ius of those whom their first historian describes as "lose! 20 Yankees." [Laughter.'] Sir, they grace our feast with their presence ; they will enliven it, I am sure, with their eloquence arid wit. Our tables are rich with the flowers grown in their soil ; but there is one flower that we do not see, one flower whose perfume fills a continent, which has blossomed for 25 more than two centuries and a half with ever-increasing and deepening beauty — a flower which blooms at this moment, on this wintry night, in never-fading freshness in a million of true hearts, from the snow-clad Katahdin to the warm Golden Gate of the South Sea, and over its waters to the isles of the 30 East and the land of Prester John — the flower of flowers, the Pilgrim's Mayflower. [Applause.] Well, sir, holding that flower in my hand at this moment, I say that the day we celebrate commemorates the intro- duction upon this continent of the master principle of its 35 civilization. I do not forget that we are a nation of many G. W. Curtis. 433 nationalities. I do not forget that there are gentlemen at this board who wear the flower of other nations close upon their hearts. I remember the forget-me-nots of Germany, and I know that the race which keeps " watch upon the 5 Rhine " keeps watch also upon the Mississippi and the Lakes. I recall — how could I forget ? — the delicate shamrock ; for "There came to this beach a poor exile of Erin," and on this beach, with his native modesty " He still sings his bold anthem of Erin-go-Bragh." lo [Applause. '] I remember surely, sir, the lily — too often the tiger-lily — of France [ laughter and applause ] and the thistle of Scotland ; I recall the daisy and the rose of England ; and, sir, in Switzerland, high upon the Alps, on the very edge of the glacier, the highest flower that grows in Europe, 1 5 is the rare edelweiss. It is in Europe ; we are in America. And here in America, higher than shamrock or thistle, higher than rose, lily, or daisy, higher than the highest, blooms the perennial Mayflower. \Applause^ For, sir and gentlemen, it is the English-speaking race that has I 2o moulded the destiny of this continent ; and the Puritan in- fluence is the strongest influence that has acted upon it. \Applause!\ I I am surely not here to assert that the men who have rep- I resented that influence have always been men whose spirit 1 25 was blended of sweetness and light. I confess truly their hardness, their prejudice, their narrowness. All this I know: Charles Stuart could bow more blandly, could dance more gracefully than John Milton; and the Cavalier king looks out from the canvas of Vandyck with a more romantic beauty 30 of flowing love-locks than hung upon the brows of Edward Winslow, the only Pilgrim Father whose portrait comes down to us. \_Applause?^ But, sir, we estimate the cause beyond the man. Not even is the gracious spirit of Christianity it- self measured by its confessors. If we would see the actual 35 force, the creative power of the Pilgrim principle, we are not 434 After . Dinner Speeches. to look at the company who came over in the cabin of the Mayflower ; we are to look upon the forty millions who fill this continent from sea to sea. [ Applause^ The Mayflower, sir, brought seed and not a harvest. In a century and a half the religious restrictions of the Puritans had grown into 5 absolute religious liberty, and in two centuries it had burst beyond the limits of New England, and John Carver of the Mayflower had ripened into Abraham Lincoln of the Illinois prairie. [ Great and prolonged applause?^ Why, gentlemen, if you would see the most conclusive proof of the power of 10 this principle, you have but to observe that the local dis- tinctive title of New Englanders has now become that of every man in the country. Every man who hears me, from whatever State in the Union, is, to Europe, a Yankee, and to-day the United States are but the "universal Yankee 15 nation." \_Applause7\ Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan principle ? Do you ask me whether it is as good for to-day as for yesterday ; whether it is good for every national emergency ; whether it is good for the situation of this hour ? I think we need neither 20 doubt nor fear. The Puritan principle in its essence is simply individual freedom. From that spring religious liberty and political equality. The free State, the free Church, the free School — these are the triple armor of American nationality, of American security. \Applause^ But the Pilgrims, while 25 they have stood above all men for their idea of liberty, have always asserted liberty under law and never separated it from law. John Robinson, in the letter that he wrote the Pilgrims when they sailed, said these words, that well, sir, might be written in gold around the cornice of that 30 future banqueting-hall to which you have alluded, " You know that the image of the Lord's dignity and authority which the magistry beareth is honorable in how mean person soever. " \Applause^ This is the Puritan principle. Those men stood for liberty under the law. They had 35 tossed long upon a wintry sea; their minds were full of G. W. Curtis. 435 images derived from their voyage ; they knew that the will of the people alone is but a gale smiting a rudderless and sail- less ship, and hurling it, a mass of wreck, upon the rocks. But the will of the people, subject to law, is the same gale 5 filling the trim canvas of a ship that minds the helm, bearing it over yawning and awful abysses of ocean safely to port. \Loud applause P^ Now, gentlemen, in this country the Puritan principle in its development has advanced to this point, that it provides lo us a lawful remedy for every emergency that may arise. \Cheers7\ I stand here as a son of New England. In every fibre of my being am I a child of the Pilgrims. \Applause^ The most knightly of all the gentlemen at Elizabeth's court said to the young poet, when he would write an immortal song 15 " Look into thy heart and write. " And I, sir and brothers, if, looking into my own heart at this moment, I might dare to think that what I find written there is written also upon the heart of my mother, clad in her snows at home, her voice in this hour would be a message spoken from the land of the 20 Pilgrims to the capital of this nation — a message like that which Patrick Henry sent from Virginia to Massachusetts when he heard of Concord and Lexington : "I am not a Vir- ginian, I am an American." \^Great applause?^ And so, gentlemen, at this hour we are not Republicans, we are not 25 Democrats, we are Americans. \Treme7idoiis applause?^ The voice of New England, I believe, going to the capital, would be this, that neither is the Republican Senate to insist upon its exclusive partisan way, nor is the Democratic House to insist upon its exclusive partisan way, but Senate and 30 House, representing the American people and the American people only, in the light of the Constitution and by the authority of the law, are to provide a way over which a President, be he Republican or be he Democrat, shall pass unchallenged to his chair. [ Vociferous applause^ the company \ 35 rising to their /eet.] Ah, gentlemen [renewed app/ause] — think not, Mr. President, that I am forgetting the occasion 436 After Dinner Speeches. or its amenities. [Cries of ^'- No, no,'^ and " Go on.^^] I am remembering the Puritans; I am remembering Plymouth Rock and the virtues that made it illustrious. [A voice — '■'■ Justice. '"'\ But we, gentlemen, are to imitate those virtues, as our toast says, only by being greater than the men who stood upon that rock. {Applause?^ As this gay and luxurious banquet to their scant and severe fare, so must our virtues, to be worthy of them, be greater and richer than theirs. And as we are three centuries older, so should we be three centuries wiser than they. [Applause^ Sons of the Pilgrims, 10 you are not to level forests, you are not to war with savage men and savage beasts, you are not to tame a continent nor even found a State. Our task is nobler, diviner. Our task, sir, is to reconcile a nation. It is to curb the fury of party spirit. It is to introduce a loftier and manlier tone every- 15 where into our political life. It is to educate every boy and every girl, and then leave them perfectly free to go from any school-house to any church. \Cries of *' Good,'''' a?id cheers. "] Above all, sir, it is to protect absolutely the equal rights of the poorest and the richest, of the most ignorant and the 20 most intelligent citizen, and it is to stand forth, brethren, as a triple wall of brass around our native land, against the mad blows of violence or the fatal dry-rot of fraud. [Loud applause.'] And at this moment, sir, the grave and august shades of the forefathers whom we invoke bend over us in 25 benediction as they call us to this sublime task. This, brothers and friends, this is to imitate the virtues of our fore- fathers ; this is to make our day as glorious as theirs. [Great applause J followed by three cheers for the distinguished speaker^ APPENDIX, SUGGESTED DISCUSSIONS AND EXERCISES.^ In all cases an hour of discussion of the written exercises with the class is supposed to precede returning them. PERSUASION. A. ARISING FROM SKILLFUL CHOICE OF SUBJECT OR MES- SAGE. 1. Analyze and discuss with the class Booker T. Washington's Address at the Atlanta Exposi- tion, p. 2IO. Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech, p. 207. G. W. Curtis 's The Puritan Principle, p. 430. 2. Describe an audience, non-collegiate but known to your students, in its relation to college life. Take, if possible, an audience of workingmen to whom a college education seems the business of the comparatively rich or for youths of excep- tional intellectual ability. Ask the class to select which, phase of college life it would present to such an audience. The audience frequenting Civic Clubs or Workingmen's Clubs in the Slums affords a good example. 3. Discuss some of the subjects submitted with the class. ^ For exercises and discussions to illustrate argument, see Principles of Argumentation, Ginn & Co., revised edition, 1904. 437 43^ Appendix. B. ARISING FROM SKILLFUL ADAPTATION TO THE PAR- TICULAR AUDIENCE. 1. Analyze and discuss with the class Phillips Brooks's Fourth of July Address^ p. 185. Mrs. Browning's Letter to Napoleon III., p. 23. 2. Let each student write a letter urging a friend to room with him in college, or to join his fraternity. Before he writes the letter, see that he carefully describes the interests, the peculiarities, and the prejudices of his friend, so that in the letter he can be on his guard against them or use them to increase the force of his presentation of his plan. 3. In order to illustrate the different treatment of the same subject caused by different persuasive approaches to it, contrast for the class D. D. Field's The Child and the State, p. 310. Phillips Brooks's Address in beJialf of the Children's Aid Society, p. 319. 4. Let the students select some college or local cause which needs aid, and work out two different presentations of it for two entirely different audiences. 5. The persuasive value that mere arrangement of the address may have is best illustrated by careful analysis of Lord Mansfield's Speech in behalf of Allan Evans. Speci- mens of Argumentatio7i (Modern), p. 22, Henry Holt & Co. 6. Give the class a college subject not popular, such as the abolition of admission fees for intercollegiate sports, asking them to present this favorably to their classmates, in order to see the value of mere ordering of the ideas in persuasion. 7. To illustrate warding off a pervasive difficulty, a recur- rent objection, analyze Carl Schurz' Ge?ieral Amnesty. Throughout this he faced over and over the objections that the details of what he proposed were unjust to the negro and too lenient toward the South. If the class has had practice in recurrent rebuttal (See Frificiples of Argume?ttation), prac- Appendix. 439 tice for the class following this discussion is unnecessary. If not, some question in regard to a plan for prescribed studies, to which the recurrent objection will be that it destroys indi- vidual liberty may be formulated. 8. For the value of style in persuasion, discuss T. B. Aldrich's letter to William Winter, p. 22. S. Johnson's letter to Lord Chesterfield, p. 19. G. W. Curtis 's The Leadership of Educated Men, p. 282. W. H. Seward's letter to C. F. Adams, p. 41. In this emphasize the persuasive significance of President Lincoln's changes and omissions. Similar material to the last will be found, in Professor J. H. Gardiner's The Forms of Prose Literature, pp. 316-58, in which J. H. Choate's An Lnco77ie Tax a Direct Tax is so marked as to separate what is persuasive from what is not. C. ARISING FROM THE SPEAKER. Discuss John Brown's Farewell, p. 247. Wendell Phillips's The Scholar i7i a Republic, p. 253. Daniel O'Connell's On Repeal of the Unio7i, p. 387. Booker T. Washington's Speech at the Di7i7ier of the Har- vard Ahcmni, p. 420. D. EXCITATION. Discuss page 154, " Great in life," etc., to the end. Page 194, "As if it were but yesterday," etc., to " crowns them with the laurel wreath," p. 198. Page 377, "But look at the difference" to "You may say," p. 378. Page 436, " Sons of the Pilgrims " to end. 440 Appendix. PRIVATE LETTERS AND PUBLIC. 1. The Impersonal Statement. Discuss W. T. Sherman's letter to J. G. Blaine, p. 3. Abraham Lincoln's letters to General McClellan and to Horace Greeley, pp. 6, 14. 2. Let the class write a reply to a circular from the Faculty asking for individual statements on some college matter affect- ing both Faculty and students, such as unsatisfactory condi- tions in the refectories, the dormitories, etc. The point is to gain from the class a definite statement. 3. Persuasive Letters. Discuss Abraham Lincoln to General Hooker, p. 16. Samuel Johnson to Lord Chesterfield, p. 19. T. B. Aldrich to William Winter, p. 22. Mrs. Browning to Napoleon III, p. 23. Emile Zola to President Faure, p. 25. 4. Arrange a second exercise similar to B. 2. 5. Discuss the way in which the public letter leads into other forms. Use Horace Greeley's letter to Lincoln, p. 7. President Roosevelt's Memorandum on the Schley Case, p. 50. THE EDITORIAL. 1. The editorial which merely summarizes or summarizes and briefly comments. Discuss Editorial from The Spectator^ p. 69. Editorial from The Nation^ p. 69, 71. Editorial from The Nation^ P- 7^. Editorial from The New York Tribune, p. 95. 2. Ask the class to attend some public lecture and to write in class a summarizing editorial of it which also comments briefly on what seems to the writer most important in the lecture. I Appendix. 441 3. Editorial which uses irony or invective. Traill's Troubles, P- 72. Friar Tuck Legislation, p. 74. 4. Leaders. Discuss Revelations in South Africa, p. 82. Partizan. The Proposed Liverpool University, p. 87. Concerning the Race Problem, p. 95. Northern Independe?ice, p. 99. 5. Read to the class conflicting opinions as to some cur- rent or college matter. Let them think over their notes and at the next meeting write an editorial on this material in- tended to lead college opinion. 6. Let the class try in an editorial of 500-1,000 words for which it must supply all the material to mould undergraduate opinion. 7. The Biographical Editorial. Discuss the following, comparing them with the ordinary obituary notice of the newspapers. Johfi Addington Symonds, p. 103. Horace Greeley, p. 107. 8. Read to the class the ordinary obituary notice of some person of note ; give them references, and require them to write in the class-room at the next meeting a biographical editorial. 9. The relation of the literary editorial to the essay. Discuss 27ie Odium Theologicum, p. 113. The Critic and Llis Task, p. 118. THE EULOGY. I. Discuss for the eulogy which reviews a man's whole life chronologically J. G. Blaine's Eulogy on President Garfield, p. 130. 44^ Appendix. 2. For the eulogy which selects certain aspects of a career for emphasis, discuss Wendell Phillip's Toussaint L"" Ouverture, p. 156. Roscoe Conkling's General Gra?tt, p. 125. 3. Let the class, after selecting under supervision sub- jects for a eulogy (these should not be men often treated already), outline carefully their plan. Let them, for instance, answer the following questions : — I. In what place delivered? 2. To an audience of what size, in what kind of room ? 3. Is your audience a society or a group of individuals meeting only because of their interest in your subject ? 4. Why have you been asked to speak? 5. Is there any persuasive advantage or difficulty in the relation of the audience to your subject, or to you ? , 6. What is your plan for developing the address? 7. Do| you mean throughout or at certain places to relate the work closely to opinions, moods, and feelings of the audience ? 8. How do you mean to begin, and to end ? 4. Let the writers of the best two or four eulogies read them to the class. Discuss these with the class in the last fifteen minutes of the two to four hours given to this exercise. AFTER DINNER SPEECHES. 1. Discuss all the specimens in the section on After Din- ner Speeches. 2. Let each student write in class a response of five minutes as a representative at a banquet of another college. He may speak for athletic, literary, or fraternity interests. The aim should be : something to say, selected with refer- ence to his audience and presented with it in mind. 3. Let the class write a similar brief speech, but this time complicated by the fact that a tactless preceding speaker, not recognizing that a representative of the college is present, I Appendix. 443 has slurred the institution as to its athletic methods or for some other reason. Shall the speaker ignore this ? If not, why ? How far shall he answer directly, how far indirectly ? Will his speech merely reply to the tactless person ? THE OTHER FORMS. The brief speech for conditions other than after dinner, may be studied in C. W. Eliot's Heroes of the Civil War, p. 173. Phillips Brooks's The Fourth of July, p. 185. Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, p. 207. C. W. Eliot's Welcome to Priiice Henry, p. 221. Abraham Lincoln's Speech to 166th Ohia Regiment, p. 245- John Brown's Last Speech, p. 247. W. E. Russell's Address at the Democratic National Con- ventio?i, p. 398. and exercises similar to those suggested for the after-dinner speech arranged, but probably the forms illustrated by these selections will be best essayed at first when more space is allowed and the writing is done out of the class-room. When the students have gained some understanding of the forms in question, practice in very condensed examples of them will probably bring better results than would be pos- sible when not only a new form but great condensation are required together. As far as time permits, all specimens of the forms for which special exercises have not been provided should be studied by the class, and used by the teacher as illustrations for his lectures on these forms. In the class-room analytical exercises intended to emphasize ideas already set forth in the lectures on these forms should be set the class. The following may serve as suggestions for other exercises : — 444 Appendix. 1. What are the main ideas of I. and II. under " Com- memorative Addresses ? " Is the difference in treat- ment the result of the choice of topic, the audience, or the personality of the speaker ? 2. Contrast the purpose, plan, and treatment of III. under " Commemorative Addresses " with I. under "Political Addresses." 3. Under " Addresses for Academic Occasions " : (A) Outhne the plan of both Phillips's and Curtis's speeches. If you were replying to Phillips's speech, could you select justifiably only a part as requiring an answer ? To what extent does Curtis answer ? How far did the conditions under which Curtis spoke determine the treatment given his reply ? In what ways does the discussion differ from a debate ? (B) What was the persuasive problem of each ? How and where does he meet it ? What part does excitation play in each as contrasted with persuasion arising from choice of subject, presentation of mate- rial, and the personality of the speaker ? 4. Compare and contrast III. under " Commemorative Addresses " and I. under " Addresses on Social Questions." Bear in mind the purpose for which they were delivered, the persuasive problem, and the relation of the speaker to his subject and his audience. 5. Under '* Legislative Addresses " compare and con- trast problem, plan, treatment, and phrase in Lord Salisbury's and Carl Schurz' speeches. 6. Under " Political Addresses " analyze the difference in treatment caused by the different purposes for. which II. and III. are given. 7. Analyze and contrast the details of the persuasion in IV. under " Political Addresses " and 11. under " Addresses on Social Questions." Appendix. 445 8. Analyze I. and II. under " Speeches of Farewell," to show clearly what it is which reveals the personality behind the speech. Probably the course may best close with three or four lectures on the importance of a large, varied, and respon- sive vocabulary ; on the part imagination plays in style ; and on the relation of the spoken to the written word. -X\ NOTES, NOTES.' 4. 14. in Louisiana. In i860 Sherman was appointed Superin- tendent of the State mihtary academy at Alexandria. When the State seceded, he promptly resigned and went to St. Louis. 6. Letter to General McClellan. For the conditions preceding this letter, see Abraham Lincoln, Nicolay & Hay, V, ch. 9. 9. 3. H. Winter Davis. Henry Winter Davis was, in 1862, a ris- ing young W^hig politician of Maryland, the political opponent of Mont- gomery Blair of Lincoln's first cabinet. 9. 3. Parson Brownlow. William G. Brownlow was for ten years from 1826 an itinerant Methodist preacher. He entered politics in 1828, Though an advocate of slavery, he opposed secession, taking the ground that Southern institutions were safer in the Union than out of it. After various vicissitudes, he was sent within the Northern lines in March, 1862. He then made a tour of the Northern cities, speaking to immense audiences. — See Amer. CyclopcBdia of Biography, I. 415. 10. 7. John Morgan. His raids into Kentucky as commander of a cavalry force under General Bragg made it necessary to garrison every important town of the State. 10. 8. Beriah Magoffin. Pro-Southern Governor of Kentucky. In reply to Lincoln's call of April, 1861, for seventy-five thousand men, he said that Kentucky " would furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States." 11. 8. Fremont's proclamation. Hunter's Order. J. C. Fremont, as commander of the Department of the West, proclaimed martial law in Missouri, Aug. 30, 1861, and declared the slaves free. David Hunter, as commander of the Department of the South, issued. May 9, 1862, a similar proclamation for Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. 20. 35. The World. A weekly periodical which lived from 1753 to 1757. It satirized the vices and follies of fashionable society. Edward Moore, author of The Gamester and Fables for the Female Sex, was its editor. 21. 3. " Le vainquer," etc. Conqueror of the World's conqueror. 21. 20,21. The shepherd — rocks. — Fclogties,^,, ^t,- 1 The editor acknowledges his constant indebtedness for biographical data to the Century Dictionary . 449 450 Notes. 22. i8. " Good-night, sweet Prince ! " — Hamlet, V, 2, 370. 26. 27. base calumnies. Probably in connection with the bank- ruptcy of M. Faure's father-in-law. 26. 31. Universal Exposition. In 1900. 27. 26. Major Forzinetti. Governor of the Cherche-Midi prison, in which Dreyfus was confined. In November, 1897, he made public a statement that from his observation of Dreyfus he believed him inno- cent and much injured, Forzinetti was dismissed, for this statement, from the governorship, and subjected to grave imputations as to his character and motives. 31. 26. Scheurer-Kestner. Life member and vice-president of the French Senate. In October, 1897, he publicly declared that he had proofs of the innocence of Dreyfus, and that he meant to effect his rehabilitation. 31. 30. Picquart. Chief of the Bureau of Secret Intelligence of the French army from 1 894-1 897. 33. 15. Marquis de Mores (Antoine Manca de Vallombrosa, 1858- 96). He organized an expedition from Tripoli with the purpose of gaining for France the friendship of the Tuaregs and the Mohamme- dan races of Africa. He hoped through such an alliance to circumvent the expansion in Africa of British influence, and to make continued British occupation of Egypt impossible. Near Ghadames his Tuareg escort, tempted by the rich booty of the caravan, murdered him and some of his companions who took his part. — Annual Ency. (Appleton), 1896. 33. 20. Mathieu Dreyfus. The devoted brother of Alfred Dreyfus. 34. 36. General de Pellieux ; Major Ravary. The first, one of the heads of the general staff, was in charge of the investigations into the accusations of Mathieu Dreyfus against Esterhazy. Major Ravary assisted him. 37. 7. of the rights of man. See the motto on the seal of France, " Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," Liberty, Equality, Brother- hood. 46. 20. exequatur. " A written recognition of a person in the char- acter of consul or consular agent issued by the country to which he is accredited, and authorizing him to exercise his powers." — Century Diet. 48. 8. Congress of Paris. At the end of the Crimean War, Rus- sia on the one side, and Great Britain, France, Turkey, and Sardinia on the other, signed the Treaty of Paris. After it had been concluded, the powers, in April, 1856, signed a declaration of principles. The first article of the four was : " Privateering is and remains abolished." 51. I. Flying Squadron. Under Commodore W. S. Schley, it consisted of the following vessels: armored cruisers, Olympia, Balti- Notes. 451 ino7'e^ Raleigh, Boston ; battle-ships Massachusetts and Texas j protected cruisers, Minneapolis and Cohimbia. 51. 12. Eagle. When the Flying Squadron went from Cienfuegos to Santiago, it slowed down for the Eagle, which was delayed by easterly wind and sea. 51. 15. Navy Department's order. Of May 25, 1898, bidding Commodore Schley go to Santiago to see if the Spanish fleet was there, 51. 31. A. C. Hodgson (Lieut. Commander Albon, C). Navi- gator of the Brooklyn in the Santiago fight. He became involved in a controversy with Admiral Schley as to the famous " loop." 52. 6, steamer Adula. A vessel flying the British flag which was allowed to enter the harbor in the hope that she would bring out infor- mation as to the Spanish fleet. She did not return while Commodore Schley lay off the harbor. 56. I. the Morro. The fort commanding the entrance to Santiago Harbor. 59. 6. Commander Wainwright. Of the Gloucester. 69. 3. Sarawak is on the northeast coast of Borneo. It has an area of fifty thousand square miles. In 1842 it was granted to Sir James Brooke, with the title of " rajah " by the Sultan of Brunei. In 1868 his nephew. Sir Charles Brooke, succeeded him. Population of native races, with some Chinese, about three hundred thousand. Capi- tal, Kuching. In 1888 the State was placed under the protection of Great Britain. — Univ. Cyclopcedia. 69. 24. Commission of Exchange. In January, 1903, the Mexi- can ambassador and the Chinese charge d'affaires ad i7iteriin addressed letters to Secretary Hay, asking the cooperation of the U.S. Govern- ment in such measures as will tend to restore and maintain a fixed re- lationship between the moneys of the gold standard countries and the silver-using countries. Congress voted to enable the President to cooperate, and he appointed a commission of Exchange. 72. C. T. Congdon. (1821-1891.) Member of the staff of the N.Y. Tribune, 1857-82. 72. 19. George Francis Train, (i 829-1 904.) Promoter, lecturer, political speaker, famous for his eccentricities. Although at one time rich, he died at the Mills Hotel in New York City. George Francis Train bitterly opposed the abolition movement, which in Massachusetts was headed by Charles Sum.ner, Governor Andrew and others. His attacks upon them in public speeches and letters were virulent. 74. W. C. Bryant. (1794-1878.) As editor or proprietor he was connected with the N. V. Evening Post from 1826 till his death. 74. 26. Anti-Corn League. This League was formed in 1839 to further the repeal of the British corn laws. The laws provided a 452 Notes. " sliding scale" of duty upon grain imported into the United Kingdom, increasing or diminishing the tariff as the price of grain fluctuated. The headquarters of the Anti-Corn League were at Manchester. John Bright and Cobden were among its leaders. 77. 15. Columbia. The defending yacht of 1899 and 1901. 78. 20. new measurement rules. " To extreme beam, wherever found, and greatest beam at load water Una, and divide by eight ; lay off line parallel to and this distance from line of hull on deck and take extreme length of hull measure on this line ; to this add length of load water line on vertical projection of this line to water-line plane, and divide the sum of three lengths so obtained by two. Multiply the length of a yacht, obtained as provided for, by the square root of the sail area, divided by five times the cube root of the displacement. This gives the rating measurement." — Americati Almanac, Year Book, etc., 1903, p. 659. 79. 6. America. On Aug. 22, i85i,the America raced the Eng- lish yacht Aurora around the Isle of Wight, winning the cup which in fifty years has not gone back to England. 80. 2. Hay-Herran. The treaty which Colombia finally refused to ratify was drawn up by Secretary-of- State Hay, and Dr. Herran repre- senting Colombia. 80. 6. Spooner Act. An act was passed by Congress June 28, 1902, authorizing the President of the United States to negotiate with Colombia for a canal right of way across the Isthmus, It further authorized him, in case advances to Colombia failed, to negotiate with the governments of Nicaragua and Costa Rica for canal rights through their territories. 81. 2. Henry Watterson. Editor of the Louisville, Ky., Courier- Journal. 81. 21. treaty of 1846. In 1846 the Government of the United States entered into a treaty with the Republic of New Granada, then sovereign over the Isthmus of Panama, by which treaty it was provided that " The Government of New Granada guarantees to the Government of the United States that the right of way or transit across the Isthmus of Panama, upon any modes of communication that now exist, or that may hereafter be constructed, shall be open and free to the government and the citizens of the United States. . . . The United States guar- antee positively and efficaciously to New Granada the perfect neutrality of the before-mentioned isthmus, with the view that the free transit from the one to the other sea may not be interrupted or embarrassed in any future time while this treaty exists. . . . The United States also guarantee the rights of sovereignty and property which New Granada has and possesses over the said territory." i^ Notes. 453 82. 26. Commission on the War. In September, 1902, King Ed- ward issued a warrant for a commission to " inquire into the military preparations for the War in South Africa, and into the supply of men, ammunition, equipment, and transport by sea and land in connection with the campaign, and into the military operations up to Praetoria." 83. 5. American War. The Spanish- American War, 83. 7. Michaiah (ben Imlah). A prophet who was consulted by Jehoshaphat in regard to the projected battle against the Syrians at Ramoth-Gilead, and for his unfavorable answer imprisoned. — i Kings, 22 ; 2 Chron., 18. 83. 14, 15. Lord Lansdowne. Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitz- maurice. Secretary for War, 1895-1900; Foreign Secretary, 1900. Mr. Balfour. First Lord of Treasury and Leader of House of Commons since 1895 ; Prime Minister since July, 1902. 84. 6, Milner (Sir Alfred, Baron, 1901), High Commissioner of South Africa, 1897. Butler (Sir William Francis), Lieutenant-General, British army, who held the Cape command during the Transvaal cam- paign, 1 899- 1 90 1. 84. 10. Bobrikoff. The Russian Governor-General of Finland, recently assassinated because of his tyrannical measures in the " Russi- fication " of Finland. He had been given dictatorial power by the Czar. 84. 18. Raid Party. Those interested in the movement to seize Johannesberg — Dec. 29-Jan. 3, 1895 — under Dr. Leander S. Jame- son. They were sent to England and imprisoned for from five to fif- teen months. 84. 30. Laing's Nek. A pass in the Drakenberg, South Africa, where the Boers defeated the British, Jan. 28, 1881. 84. 34-35. Orange Free State . . . left out of account. Because of its supposed loyalty. 85. 12. Sir Ralph Abercromby. (1734-1801.) Distinguished mili- tary commander. He was in the unfortunate Dutch campaigns, 1793-5 and 1799, under the Duke of York. Had he commanded, the results would probably have been very different. 85. 15. Colonel Kekewich (Colonel Robert George). Defender of Kimberley for 126 days, — Oct. 15, 1899-Feb, 16, 1900. 85. 29. veldt. A large tract of land with little or no timber. 86. 2. Passive Resistance. Quiet refusal to pay school rates be- cause of their alleged injustice to Dissenters. The Government is allowed to distrain furniture for the amount due ; then friends often buy it at the auction, and restore it at once. 86. II. General Botha's letter. Commandant-in-chief of Boer forces after death of Joubert. He published a letter in the London +54 Notes. Times complaining of conditions in the Transvaal since peace was signed. 86. -i-},. Miss Hobhouse (Emily). An English woman who visited South Africa during the war in the Transvaal. She published many letters opposing the war, depicting vividly the suffering of Boer women and children. 87. 13. Victoria University. A federation of colleges founded and incorporated in 1880, which grew out of Owens College, Manchester, England. It comprised, till 1903, besides Owens College, University College, Liverpool, and Yorkshire College, Leeds. 88. 14. Marquis of Ripon, President of Yorkshire College. 88. 23. Ramsay Muir. English scholar and writer. 88. 34. Principal Dale. Alfred William Winterslow. Since 1900 Principal and Professor of Classical Literature, University College, Liverpool. 89. 9. Mr. Acland (Reginald). Recorder of Shrewsbury since 1 901. Some time Regius Professor of Mathematics at Oxford Univer- sity. 89. 19. Earl Spencer. Chancellor of Victoria University. 93. 18. Mr. Patterson (Malcolm Rice). Congressman, loth Dis- trict, Tennessee. 93. 25. Tillman, Money, Vardaman. The first has been senator from South Carolina since 1895; the second was senator from Missis- sippi, 1875-85 and 1893-97; the third is the recently elected governor of Mississippi. All are Democrats. 95. 30. Habeas Corpus ... is good for nothing. The right of a prisoner to insist that he be brought before a judge, and that the charges be explained. The right to trial by jury. 96. 4. Plutarch to Dr. Paley. The writer is thinking of Plu- tarch'' s Morals and Dr. Paley's Principles of Moral attd Political Phil- osophy (1785). 96. 35. Laud. William Laud, 1 573-1645. Archbishop of Canter- bury. One of the foremost supporters of Charles I. Impeached by the Commons in 1640, he was executed in March, 1645. 103. I. death of Mr. Symonds. He died April 19, 1893. 105. 3. Schelling (Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 1775-1854). German philosopher. 105. 6. Professor Sydney Colvin. Fonnerly Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Cambridge University. Since 1885, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. 105. 27. Professor Tyrrell. Senior Tutor and Public Wrangler. Dubhn University. Editor of the Bacchce and Troades of Euripides Note§. 455 105. 32. Phasthontid. The Phasthontids were the HeHdes, sis- ters of Phaeton, changed into poplars, and continuing to weep for their brother, the tears hardening into amber. 107. E. L. Godkin. (1831-1902.) Established 7:^^ iVa//^/? in 1865 ; in 1882 merged it with the New York Evening Post, editing both thereafter. 108. 4-5. close . . . Greeley's career. Horace Greeley died Nov. 29, 1872. 108. 8. Cincinnati Convention. Certain RepubHcans, estranged from Grant because they thought themselves ignored or because they genuinely disapproved of his first administration, organized as Liberal Republicans. Holding a convention at Cincinnati, they nominated Horace Greeley for the Presidency. Later the Democrats accepted this nomination, at Baltimore. 108. 24. humiliating defeat. Grant, with the largest popular vote ever given a presidential candidate, carried 31 States, Greeley, 6. Grant had 268 electoral votes, Greeley, 68, 113. 1-8. Our readers . . . considerable interest. In the Galaxy for October and November, 1873, Richard Grant White, author of Words and Their Uses, severely criticised a recent book by Dr. Fitzed- ward Hall, Recent Exei?iplifications of False Etymology. The temper of the criticism is shown by the following description in it of Dr. Hall's book as made up of " equal parts of bluster and blunder dissolved in bile, with a copious sediment of insoluble quotation." 118. W. M. Payne. Associate editor of the Dial since 1892. Educator ; literary editor, chiefly of modern literature. 118. 2. Eckermann (Johann Peter, 1792-1852). German author; literary executor of Goethe ; known chiefly for his Conversations with Goethe. 118. 21. Marsyas. See ylfif^^, Ovid. VI, 382. 400. 119. 34. Quarterly Reviewer. The early reviewers of the Quar- terly were exceedingly severe in their criticism. Their harshness is almost proverbial. 125. 2. Windom, Washburne. WilHam Windom (1827-1891) was senator from Minnesota, 1870-81. He was a candidate for the presi- dential nomination in 1880 and 1884, and Secretary of the Treasury under President Garfield, resigning when Vice-President Arthur suc- ceeded President Garfield. Elihu B. Washburne (1816-1887), as rep- resentative from Illinois, 1853-67, bore the sobriquet, "Watch Dog of the Treasury," so closely did he guard the expenditure of national funds. He was a very efficient Minister to France during the Franco- German War. 456 Notes. 125. lo, II. Appomattox . . . apple-tree. It was once com- mon belief that Generals Grant and Lee met under an apple-tree to consider the terms for the surrender of Lee's army. Lee was sitting under an apple-tree when General Babcock delivered to him Grant's first message, but the surrender was discussed within doors. 125. i6. Austerlitz. Here, in Austria-Hungary, Dec. 2, 1805, Napoleon overthrew the Russo-Austrian army. The battle was followed by the Peace of Presburg. The part the Russians played in the battle suggested to Senator Conkling his use of the word " Cossack," two lines beyond this. 126. 23-24. uttermost ends of the earth . . . uncover before him. General Grant went around the world between May, 1877, and October, 1879. 127. 1 2. arbitration of internal disputes. Is internal a misprint for international? During Grant's administration existing or threatened complications with Great Britain, Spain, and South American nations, were settled by arbitration. 127. 31. Dennis Kearney. An Irish drayman, who organized, in 1877, a " Workingmen's Trade and Labor Union" in San Francisco. He devoted himself to agitation, meeting his followers weekly at meet- ings called, from the place, Sandlot. He urged his adherents to arm, talked of hanging capitalists, and uttered alarming threats. The com- munity became so disturbed that the national guard was called out, and a man-of-war sent to protect the naval docks. The legislature passed an act authorizing the arrest of incendiary speakers. Kearney's organization became a powerful factor in State politics. A journey to the Eastern States so relaxed his hold on his followers that his prestige failed, and the movement came to naught. — Cyclo. Ainer. Biog., IV, III. 129. 3. threatened to bolt. On May 6, 1880, an Anti-Third Term Convention met in St. Louis, and among other votes, agreed that in case of Grant's nomination a committee of one hundred, then appointed, should meet in New York City, and should act in such a way as to carry out the purpose and spirit of the Convention. 129. 9. jayhawkers. Strictly a member of one of the bands who during the early part of the Civil War carried on an irregular warfare in eastern Kansas. — Cent. Diet. 130. 19. Moloch. A form of Baal, the sun-god, to whom human sacrifices were made. He had a bull's head, and long arms to receive the victims, who were lifted to an opening in the breast of brass, and rolled into the furnace blazing inside. — Cent. Diet. 131. 16. revocation of edict of Nantes. This forbade, in Octo- ber, 1685, the free exercise of the Protestant religion. As a result, about Notes. 457 300,000, including artisans, men of letters and science, emigrated. By the edict, in April, 1598, certain nobles and citizens of certain towns had been allowed freedom of worship. 132-. 16, 17. Marston Moor, Naseby, Preston. At the first, July 2, 1644, the Parliamentary forces defeated the Royalists. The defeat of the latter at Naseby, June 14, 1645, ^^^ ^^^^ decisive action of the Civil War. At Preston the Scotch Royalists were beaten Aug. 17- 19, 1648. 133. 34. Hengist and Horsa. These brothers, Jute chiefs, landed at Ebbsfleet about 449, and founded the kingdom of Kent. 135. 13. President of a college. Garfield was, in 1856, teacher of Latin and Greek at Hiram College, Ohio (Church of the Disciples), and the next year, at the age of twenty-six, was chosen president of the college. 137. 17. Francis Deak. (1803-76.) Hungarian politician who did more than any one else to establish, in 1866, the dual system of monarchy for Austro-Hungary, — an indissoluble federation of tw^o equal states under one sovereign. 138. 20. Secretary Stanton. Stanton was Secretary of War from Januaiy, 1862, to May, 1868. 140. 19-20. Trevelyan, . . . parliamentary hero. Sir George Otta Trevelyan published in 1 880 an Early History of C. J. Fox. 143. 4. Wilkes, John. (1727-97.) George III hated this politi- cian, publicist, and political agitator because in his paper, the North Briton^ he had, in 1762-3, criticised the King and attacked the Dutch ministry. 143. 25, 26. control . . . from the President. Clay had put through a bill incorporating a new Bank of the United States, but President Tyler vetoed it. Another bill was framed to meet the sup- posed objections of the President to the first, but this also he vetoed. Clay denounced Tyler instantly for what he called his faithlessness to Whig principles, — a bank as opposed to the sub-treasury system, — and rallied the Whig party under his leadership in opposition to the President. — Cyclo. A77ier. Biog., I, 640^ 143. 35. victory . . . 1854. The passing, in 1854, of the Kansas Nebraska bill permitting local option on slavery for the people of the Territories, abrogated the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which pro- vided that, with the exception of Missouri, there should be no slavery north of 36' 30° in any part of the territory ceded by France. 144. 10. Seward (W. H., 1801-1872). Secretary of State, 1861- 69. Chase (Salmon P., 1808-1873). Chief-justice of the Supreme Court, 1864-73. 145. 34. Lord George Bentinck (William George Frederick Cav- 458 Notes. endish, 1 802-1 848). Leader of protectionist opposition to Sir Robert Peel, in 1846-47. 146. 18. Eric. Leif Ericson, 147. 27. Mentor. President Garfield's Ohio home. 149. II. Cowpens. In northwestern South CaroHna. Here, Jan. 17, 1 78 1, the Americans defeated the British, 150. 17-22. The political . . . Federal Government. Differences arose between President Garfield and Senators Conkling and Piatt of New York as to the right to make nominations to offices within the State. Garfield was willing to give the New York senators more than their share of offices, but they should not be allowed to interfere with or control the presidential right of nomination. On March 23, 1881, he sent in the name of Wm. H. Robertson, a leader of the faction opposed to Conkling, as collector of the port of New York. Senator Conkling protested, and resisted the confirmation of this apppointment. The Senate agreed to let contested nominations lie over, practically till the following December. The President then withdrew all the nomina- tions pleasing to Senator Conkling. He and Senator Piatt, recogniz- ing defeat, resigned May 16, 1881. On May 18 the appointment of Robertson was confirmed. Senator Conkling failed of re-election the following autumn. Cyclo. Amer. Biog., II., 603. 152. 2. Bethany. This college, sixteen miles northeast of Wheeling, West Virginia, was established in 1841 by Alexander Campbell. 154. 8. railroad station. President Garfield was passing through the waiting-room of the Baltimore & Potomac depot, at nine o'clock, leaning on the arm of Mr. Blaine, when Guiteau fired. The first ball passed through his- coat-sleeve ; the second entered by the back, frac- tured a rib, and lodged deep in the body. The avowed object of Guiteau was to promote Vice-president Arthur, who represented the Grant- Conkling faction, but really he was a disappointed office-seeker. — Cyclo. Amer. Biog., 603-04. 155. 32. craving for the sea. From July 2 to Sept. 6, President Garfield lay ill at the White House. On the second date, as he was clearly losing ground, he was moved to Elberon, N. J. On Sept. 15, signs of blood poisoning appeared. He died Sept. 20. 167. 8. Frenchmen come home. In 1802 Napoleon granted am- nesty to all emigrants except those who had taken important rank in the armies hostile to France. They returned in great numbers. 169. 14, 15. Cayenne . . . chains. Napoleon restored slavery in Martinique and Cayenne in 1802. 170. 6. Soulouquerie (Faustin EHe Soulouque, 1785-1867). Haitian slave, general, and politician ; he proclaimed himself emperor Notes. 459 as Faustin I, Aug. 26, 1849. Deposed in 1858, he lived in exile till shortly before his death. 175. 29. Castle of St. Joux. On an isolated mountain five kilo- metres southeast of Pontarlier, on the way from Neuchatel to Lausanne. 178. 27. quaking Virginia. See p. 247. 180. 25. Phocian. (b.c. 402-317.) Athenian statesman and gen- eral. Ordinarily not ranked as high as Phillips placed him. He had, however, something of the stoical calm of Toussaint ; and his final message to his son, when he was about to suffer death from his towns- men on an unjust accusation, resembles that of Toussaint to his son. 185. 5. Dean. A. P. Stanley. 187. Sesqui-centennial. At the one hundred and fiftieth anni- versary of the signing of the charter of the College of New Jersey, the corporate title was changed to Piinceton University. 193. 6. the official representative. Mr. Long was governor of Massachusetts, 1880-82. 194. 12. John Andrew. Governor of Massachusetts, 1861-66; one of the most active of the war governors. 194. 27. Doric Hall. The name of the hall in the old State House where war flags and other souvenirs were kept. 196. ID. callous half-breast. Myth says these female w^arriors, dwelling in the Caucasus Mountains, removed the right breast that it might not interfere with the use of the bow and javelin. 196. 16. Libby. So called because it was before the war the to- bacco warehouse of a Mr. Libby. It has been moved from Richmond to Chicago, and is now the Libby Prison Museum. 200. 16. Colonel Higginson (Thomas Wentworth). Minister, author, colonel of first colored regiment in the Civil War. 200. 18. General Hampton (Wade). Able Confederate cavalry commander. U. S. Senator, 1879-91. 201. 9, 10. The . . . Sword. The state seal of Massachusetts bears the motto : Ense petit placidani sub libertate qtcietem. 202. 3. Virgil's man. According to the scholars of the Middle Ages, Virgil drew in the ALneid the portrait of the perfect man. 202. II. figure of Faith. On the monument to the Pilgrim Fathers. 202. 36. that war governor. John A. Andrew. 210. I. Atlanta Exposition. The speech was delivered Sept. 18, 1895. 222. 13. Corporation. This consists of the President, five Fellows, and the Treasurer of the College. It is a self-perpetuating body, but all elections must be made in a joint meeting with the Board of Over- seers. — Harvard Catalogue^ 1903-4, 299. 460 Notes. 222. 28. Overseers. Since 1865 the Overseers have been chosen on Commencement Day by a vote of all holders of degrees from Har- vard College, except members of the Corporation and officers of gov- ernment and instruction. No Bachelor of Arts may vote till five years after graduation. — Idefn, 308-10. 228. 25. Apprehension. Before Lincoln's inauguration the press was full of threats of secession, revolution, plots to seize Washington, to prevent the count of electoral votes and the inauguration of the President. As a consequence of rumors of attempted assassination, he suddenly gave up his public progress eastward, and went secretly through Baltimore to Washington. Delegates of the States in insur- rection were occupied at Montgomery, Ala., organizing a government openly pledged to rebellion. For an interesting account of the changes made in the inaugural while it was ijt preparation^ see "^"1^. 319-23, III, Nicolay & Hay. For com- parative text, see idem, pp. 327-44. 245, 19. bloody campaigns. Grant was on his offensive cam- paign against the Army of Northern Virginia under Lee. The battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania belong to this campaign. Over 39,000 men were lost in thirty days. Sherman was making his March to the Sea. 254. 15. Society was planted. The P. B. K. was founded at William and Mary College, Virginia, in 1776. 255. II. Harry Vane. (1612-62.) English Puritan statesman and patriot. Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony 1636-37 ; failed of re-election because he sided with Anne Hutchinson, who was ban- ished from Massachusetts in 1637 for her religious ideas; during Com- monwealth was with Parliamentary forces, but spoke his mind freely as champion of pure parliamentary government ; in 1656 was imprisoned four months for attacking in print Cromwell's Protectorate; in 1660, at the Restoration, exempted from Act of Oblivion and executed as a traitor. 255. 25. Somers (John, Baron Somers, 1652-17 16). Statesman and jurist. Addison {Freeholder, May 4, 17 16) declared him not more conspicuous as a patriot and a statesman than as a person of universal knowledge and learning. Carnot (Lazare Nicholas Marguerite, 1753- 1823), French politician and military leader. His activity, spirit, and power of organization contributed largely to the success of the French Revolution. 256. 10. Charles Chauncy. Minister of the First Church of Bos- ton. He combated the proposed establishment of the Episcopacy in the Colonies. Notes. 461 258. 22. Long Parliament. Sir Harry Vane, the younger (1612- 1662) leader of the Long Parliament, and opposed to Cromwell, brought forward a bill in 1650 to provide for future elections to Parliament. He wished to reform the franchise on a property basis, to disfranchise cer- tain boroughs, and to give increased representation to the large towns. Cromwell desired supremacy of representation for the army. Cromwell forcibly dissolved Parliament, May 20, 1650. 260. 7. Robert Lowe. (Viscount of Sherbrooke, 181 1—92.) Liberal English politician, who on the question of extending the franchise in 1866 voted with the Conservatives. 261. II. Governor Marcy. (William Learned, 1786-1857.) Gov- ernor of New York, 1833-38; Secretary of State, 1853-57. 261. 16. Romilly. (Sir Samuel, 1757-1818.) At the age of fifty he began to devote himself to the repeal of the penal laws. His plans were not realized in his lifetime. 262. I. Theodore Parker. (1810-60.) Beginning as a Unitarian minister, he becam_e the leader of an independent naturalistic society in Boston. He was prominent in the cause of anti-slavery, and was a lecturer and author. 262. 5. Edwin Whipple. (Edwin Perry, b. Gloucester, Mass., 1819; d. Boston, 1886.) Critic, essayist, lecturer, abolitionist. 262. 8. treatises on free printing. Phillips was thinking of the Areopagitica of Milton, Williams's tract of 1646, The Bloody Tenets Locke's essay against renewing the press licensing act of Charles I, and iNIill on Liberty. 262. II. Selden. (John, 1584-1654.) English jurist, antiquary, and author. Best known for his Table-Talk, pub. 1689. 262. 14. Bancroft. (George, b. Worcester, Mass., 1800; d. Wash- ington, 1 891.) His History of the U J cited States, 10 vols., was in course of publication from 1834-74. He was Minister to Great Britain, 1846- 49; to Berlin, 1867-74. 262. 25. Wycliffe. (John, circa 1324-84). This English religious reformer, called " The Morning Star of the Reformation," in his last days wrote fearlessly against papal claims. He made the first complete translation of the Bible into English. 262. 27-29. Luther, Melancthon, Erasmus. Luther (Martin, 14S3- 1586). His tran.slation of the Bible permanently established the literary language of Germany. " Melancthon (Philipp, 1497-1560). German religious reformer. Collaborator with Luther. Erasmus (Desiderius, 1465-1536). Dutch scholar and satirist. He aimed to reform, without dismembering, the Roman Catholic Church. 263. 12. Professor Pierce (Benjamin, 1809-1880). University Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, 1833-42, Perkins 462 Notes. Professor of Astronomy and Mathematics, Harvard University, 1842-80. 263. 18, Agassiz (Jean Louis Rodolphe, 1807-73), Swiss-American naturalist, geologist and ichthyologist. Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University, from 1848 till his death. 263. 20. Scire . . . est. " To knov^r where you may find anything is the chief part of knowledge." 264. 9. Niebuhr. (Barthold Georg, 1 776-1 831.) Danish-German historian, philologist and critic. Lecturer at the Universities of Berlin and Bonn. Prussian ambassador at Rome, 1816-23. His History of Ro7ne, 3 vols., 181 1—32, revolutionized study of his subject. 264. 24. Fremont campaign of 1856. (John Charles Fremont, 1813-90.) Fremont was nominated for President by the Republican Party and the National American Party in 1856. The educative character of his campaign is indicated by his motto, " Free soil, free speech, freedom, and Fremont." 264. 24. first of American scholars. Edward Everett. 264. 30. Lansdowne and Brougham. Henry Petty Fitzmaurice, third Marquis of Lansdowne (i 780-1 863). He held high political offices during the first half of the last century. Henry Peter Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868). Statesman, orator, jurist, scientist. Lord Chancellor, 1830-34. 264. ■^■}). Prescott (William H., b. Salem, 1796; d Boston, 1859). In spite of being almost blind he wrote a number of histories, especially The Conquest of Mexico^ 1843, ^"""^ "^^^^ Conquest of Peru, 1847. 267. 10. letter to The London Times, John Lothrop Motley was living in London when the Civil War broke out. He felt the ignorance and prejudice of England so strongly that he wrote (1861) two long letters to the Lottdon Times, in which he attempted to make clear to Englishmen and to Europe the nature and conditions of our complex system of government. These letters did an inestimable service to his country. The more influential letter he called Tke Causes of the Ameri- can Civil War. See Life of Motley, O. W. Holmes. 268. 2. triple crown on the Seven Hills. The Pope's tiara or crown. The seven hills of Rome. 268. 10. Evarts and his committee (William Maxwell, 1818-1901). Lawyer, Senator from Nev/ York, 1885-91, Secretary of State under President Hayes. He was chairman of " The Committee of the Bar Association" during the campaign against the Tweed Ring in New York City in 1870-71. 268. 17. Credit-Mobilier. This banking corporation, chartered in 1863, reorganized in 1867 with increased capital, and undertook the con- struction of the Union Pacific Railroad, built largely with G^overnn[ient Notes. 463 aid. In 1872 there was scandal because' it became known that some senators and representatives secretly possessed stock in the organization. 268. 27, That unrivalled scholar. Edward Everett. See Life of Garrison, by his sons, I., 64. 269. 8, consols. British 3% consolidated annuities. A large num- ber of public securities, chiefly annuities, were consolidated in 1751 by Act of Parliament; hence the abbreviated title " consols." 269. 11-12. dare call themselves Whigs. Whigs are members of the Liberal Party in Great Britain. During the popularity of Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Gladstone, in opposition, was rather hesitatingly sup- ported by men of his own party. 270. I. Humboldt (Alexander von, 1 769-1 859). German scientist and explorer. His greatest scientific work, J^osmos, appeared in 1845-58. 271. 10. Wilberforce (William, 17 59-1 833). English bishop and statesman, who, with Pitt and Clarkson, agitated the Slavery question. In 1792 he carried the House of Commons measure for the gradual abolition of Slavery, thrown out iii the House of Lords. Clarkson (Thomas, 1 760-1 846). English abolitionist, pamphleteer, and agitator. me wrote 2i Histoiy of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Rowland Hill ( 1 795-1 879). Author of the Penny postal system. He published in 1837 a pamphlet entitled. Post Office Reform. Its Importance aizd Practicability. Romilly. See note on 261, 16, p. 451. Cobden (Richard, 1804-65). Advocate of Free Trade and of peace. Chief supporter of Anti-Corn League. John Bright (1811-1889) Liberal leader and orator. Agitator in Anti-Corn Law League. 272. 15. Pierpont . . . class-book (John, 1 785-1 866). Unitarian clergyman, poet, advocate of temperance, anti-slavery ideas, and other reforms. He published The American First Class-Book, or, Exercises in Reading and Recitation. His ideas on temperance and slavery involved him in a long controversy with some of his congregation. 272. 16. Everett . . . States. In behalf of the purchase of Mt. Vernon, Edward Everett gave his oration on Washington 122 times between March 19, 1856, and January, 1859, with a result of ^58,000 for the fund. 272. 24. earthquake scholar. R. W. Emerson. 272. 34-35. Rantoul (Robert, b. Beverly, Mass., 1805; d. Washing- ton, 1852). Senator from Massachusetts, 1 85 1. Opponent of slavery. Beccaria (Cesare Bonesano, 1 738-1 794). ItaHan economist and pro- fessor in Milan. One of the earliest opponents of the death penalty. Livingston (Edward, 1 764-1 836). American statesman and jurist. Senator from N.Y., 1829-31. Secretary of State, 1831-33. Prepared Code of Criminal Law and Procedure, Mackintosh (Sir James, 1765-' 464 Notes. 1832). Scotch statesman, who after the death of Romilly labored to amend the criminal law. 275. 31. Sydney Smith (i 771-1845). English clergyman. Founder and first editor of the Edinburgh Review. Brilliant critic, author and wit. Vigorous advocate of Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. 276. 4. Bentham's (Jeremy, 1748-1832). English lawyer and phil- osopher. In later life devoted himself to literary and historical pursuits. Author of Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. 276. 28. the Bill for Ireland. In 1881 Gladstone carried through Parliament the Irish Land Act, which for the first time secured to the tenant remuneration for his own industry. 278. I. Lieber (Francis, 1800-1872). In 1819 and 1824 he was imprisoned by the Prussian authorities for his political sentiments, the chief evidence against him being several songs of liberty which he had written. He removed to the United States in 1827. Professor of Political Economy in Columbia University, 1857-72. 279. 5. Macchiavelli's sorry picture (Niccolo, 1 469-1 527). Italian statesman and diplomat. In his later life he devoted himself to writing novels and dramas treating of political subjects. His Prince, in which he considers the characteristics of a ruler, is his most famous book. " He was color-blind to morality. Few men even of his own epoch held such cynical, disagreeable and vulgar views of humanity." 279. 14. commonwealth which adopts the motto. See note on 201, 9~io, p. 449. 280. 4. Arnold (Matthew, 1 822-1 888). The English critic and poet. Professor of Poetry at Oxford, 1857. 280. 17. Beckford (William, 1 760-1844). English writer. His Vathek, 1784, contains the description of a" Hall of Eblis." 281. 10. Richter (Jean Paul Friedrich, 1 763-1825). German writer, known especially for his Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces. 281. 14. Fisher Ames (b. Dedham, Mass., 1758; d. 1808). Orator and statesman. Member of Congress, 1 789-1 797. 281. 27. John Jays (i 745-1829). Jurist and statesman. Member of Congress, 1 774-1 779. Minister to Spain, 1780-82. Special minister to Great Britain, 1784-85. He conducted negotiations for Jay's Treaty, which finally settled many differences between the United States and Great Britain. 283 26. Seekonk. A river which meets Narragansett Bay about a mile from Brown University. 283. 29. of Barton and of Whipple. Lieut.-Col. William Barton, of the R.I. militia, with forty men in five whale-boats, pulled through the British fleet at Newport without being discovered, and captured the Notes. 465 English general, Prescott. Congress bestowed on Barton a sword of honor and a grant of land in Vermont. Abraham Whipple, in 1778, placed in command of frigate Providence, bore government dispatches to France, running the British blockade in Narragansett Bay. He re- ceived the written thanks of Washington for the exploit. 283. 30. city of the dead. Swan Point Cemetery, beside the Seekonk River. 286. 19. Dr. Parr (Samuel, 1746-1825). English clergyman noted for his classical learning. Famed also for his conversational powers. 286. 31. Washington Alston (i 779-1843). Distinguished Ameri- can artist and author. Lived in London many years. Noted for his conversational powers. 286. 36. Coletand Sir Thomas More. John Colet (1466-1519). English theologian and classical scholar. Intimate friend of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. One of the chier promoters of the new learning and indirectly of the Reformation. Founder of St. Paul's School. Sir Thomas More (147 8-1 535). English statesman and scholar. He originally studied for the Church, but after 1503 devoted himself to politics. He was Privy Councillor to Henry VIII, Speaker of the House of Commons, and, in 1529, succeeded Wolsey as Chancellor. He defended the Papacy against Luther. He was executed on the charge of treason because he opposed an act of Parliament vesting the succession to the crown in the issue of Anne Boleyn. Author of the Utopia. 287. 3. triple-crowned error. See note on 268, 2, p. 452. 287. 21. Mrs. Hutchinson (Ann Marbury, 1 590-1643). A religious enthusiast, leader of an Antinomian faction (extreme Calvinists who insisted that the sins of the elect are so transferred to Christ that they cease to be the transgressions of the actual sinners). Banished from Massachusetts in 1637. Mary Dyer (d. 1660). A Quaker fanatic twice banished from Mass. Colony on pain of death. As she persisted in returning, she was hanged on Boston Common in 1660. Giles Corey (d. 1692). A resident of Salem in whose presence children fell into con- vulsions. He was accused of witchcraft and pressed to death in 1672. George Fox (1624-1691). English founder of the Society of Friends. 288. 15. slaughtered saints on Alpine mountains. In 1655 the Duke of Savoy deteimined to compel his reformed subjects in the valley of Piedmont to embrace Popery or to quit their country. Those who escaped the ensuing massacre fled to the mountains, whence they sent to Cromwell for relief. See Milton's sonnet. On the late Massacre in Piedmont : — "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold," etc. 466 Notes. 288. 25-26. Molyneux (William, 1656-98). Irish scholar and phil- osopher. Intimate friend of John Locke. Flood (Henry, 1732-1791). Irish orator and politician. Entered Irish parliament in 1759 and English parliament later. Rival of Grattan. Grattan (Henry, 1746- 1820). Irish orator and statesman. Entered Irish parliament in 1775, English parliament in 1806. Champion of Irish liberty and Catholic Emancipation. Duffy. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, b. 1816. Irish jour- nalist and politician. Prime minister, 1871-1872. In Parliament, 1852- 1856. enthusiasts around Thomas Davis. Thomas Osborne Davis (1814-1845). Irish poet and politician. He joined, in 1839, the Re- peal Association, within which he founded the party of " Young Ire- land," in opposition to O'Connell's leadeiship. 288. 31. Pellico (Silvio, 1 788-1854). Italian poet and prose writer. Arrested in 1820 as Carbonarist,that is, a member of a Neapolitan secret society which aimed to free Italy from foreign domination. Imprisoned for two years at Milan. His Imie Prigioni is famous. Foresti (Felice, 1 793-1 858). Italian patriot. Imprisoned for conspiracy from 1819 to 1835, when he was exiled to America. Became Professor of Italian in Columbia University. Maroncelli (Piero, 1 795-1846). Italian poet and patriot, confined for twenty years in the Fortress of Spielburg for writing in 1819 a patriotic hymn. 288. 22)- Cavour (Camillo Benso, Count di, 1810-1861). Italian statesman. Prime Minister, 1852. Famous for achieving the unifica- tion of the Italian states under Victor Emmanuel in 1861. 288. 35. Stein (Baron Heindrich Friedrich Karl, 175 7-1 831). Prussian statesman. As chief minister of Prussia, in 1807 he carried out vast systems of reform. In 1808 he was proscribed by Napoleon and exiled. 289. 3. Koerner (Karl Theodor, 1791-1813). Celebrated German poet w^ho at twenty-two fell in the war against Napoleon. Under the title, The Lyre and Sword, he published some of the most spirited lyrics in the German language. 289. 10. John o'Groat's (House). A locality in County Cathness, Scotland, near the northeast extremity of the island of Great Britain. 289. 28. Thornton (Matthew, 1714-1804). Patriot, signer from New Hampshire of the Declaration of Independence. 290. 3-4. John Jay. See note on 281, 27, p. 464. Scott (John Morin, 1 730-1 798). Member of N.Y. General Committee and of Pro- vincial Congress, 1775. Livingstones. Robert R. (1746-1813). Mem- ber of Continental Congress, U.S. Minister to France who, in 1803, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase. Philip (17 16-1778), Signer from New York of Declaration of Independence. William (i 723-1790). Brother of Philip. Member of Constitutional Convention, 1787, Notes. 467 290. 19. Nathaniel Greene (1742-1786). Revolutionary general who distinguished himself at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, etc. Succeeded Gates in command of Southern Army, 1780. Esek Hopkins ([718-1802). Appointed commander-in-chief of American navy, 1775. 290. 21. Scrooby. The parish in England, near Nottinghamshire, from which the Independents and Separatists departed for Holland. 291. 8. George Clinton. Governor of New York, 1 777-1 795. Vice-President, 1805-181 2. 292. 5. Cleon, not Pericles. Cleon died B.C. 422. He was an Athenian demagogue who became leader of the democratic party after the death of Pericles. He opposed peace with Sparta and conclusion of the Peloponnesian War. Pericles (495-429 b.c). Leader of demo- cratic party at Athens. After 444, principal minister; he secured the military and naval development of the state. Greatly encouraged arts and literature. 292. 8. stony Memnon. Memnon was a hero of the Trojan War, slain by Achilles. The Greeks gave his iiame to one of the Colossi of Amenophis III, at Thebes. This is the vocal Memnon, so called be- cause the stone, when reached by the rays of the rising sun, gave forth a sound resembling that of a breaking chord. 292. 20. Decus et decorum est pro patria mori. " It is fitting and beautiful to die for one's country." 294. 12. bugle-note of James Otis (1725-1783). Patriot and orator. Prominent member of the Mass. House of Representatives. Especially famous for the speech referred to, delivered in Boston against the " Writs of Assistance." 296. 12. Richard Henry Lee (i 732-1 794). Member of Virginia House of Burgesses and of Continental Congress. Introduced the res- olutions for independence, June 7, 1776. U.S. Senator, 1789-1791. 296. 15. Goldwin Smith. Born 1823. English historian. Pro- fessor of Constitutional History, Cornell University, 1 868-1 871. Pub- lished Short History of England, 1869 ; History of United States, 1893. Now living in Toronto. 297. 34-35. John Robinson (i 575-1625). Suspended by his bishop for Puritanism, he became pastor of the English Separatists' Church in Leyden, Holland. Laud and the hierarchy. See on Laud, note on 96, 35' P- 444- 298. 16. Italia fara da se. " Italy will win by her owm strength." 299. 13. rescued New York from Tweed. William Marcy Tweed (1823-1878), famous in New York politics from 1852-1872. He organ- ized the "Tweed Ring" in 1870, w^hich appi-opriated vast sums of money. He was arrested in 1871 on suit brought by Charles O'Connor, a public-spirited lawyer, and was prosecuted till he fled the country in 468 Notes. 1875. H^ was ultimately brought back, and died in Ludlow Street jail. 304. 22-25. Sodom's Ende, Johannisfeuer, Es Lebe das Leben. The End of Sodom, The Fires of St. fohn, The fay of Living. Miss O'Neill plays the second tragedy; Mrs. Wharton has translated the third. 305. 31. Magda. The English title for Sudermann's play, //^/w^//. It has been played in this country by Miss O'Neill, Mrs. Fiske, Mme. Modjeska, and Mme. Duse. 306. 2. Weber and Field's. A New York theatre named from its owners, whose burlesques of current theatrical successes made them famous. The partnership has been dissolved. 306. 32. Irving Place Theatre. The German theatre in New York City under the management of Herr Conreid. 310. 23. Mr. Brace (Charles Loring, 1 826-1 890). He devoted himself to the redemption of the criminal and pauper classes of New York City, becoming in 1853 the chief founder of the " Children's Aid Society." 319. 18. privilege for many happy years. Phillips Brooks was rector of the Church of the Advent, Phila., in 1859-1861, and of the Church of the Holy Trinity in the same city, 1861-1870. 333. Lord Salisbury. He was, in February, 1885, leader of the Opposition. On June 9th the Gladstone government resigned, partly because of public dissatisfaction with the lack of plan here criticised, and Lord Salisbury became Prime Minister. 333. 7. Khalifa Abdullah. Khalifa means spiritual and temporal head of the Mohammedans, Prince of the Faithful. Abdullah succeeded the Mahdi in 1885. Killed Nov. 24, 1889, in battle of Om Debrisat, after dispersal of army remaining to him after his defeat by Lord Kitchener at Omdurman in September, 1888. 333, 16. Hicks Pasha. Pasha, title of Ottoman princes, Turkish generals, admirals and high officials. William Hicks (i 831- 1883) was, in 1883, appointed to command of the Egyptian army in the Soudan In September, with a force of 10,000 men, he was betrayed into an ambush and after three days of fighting he fell in a last desperate charge of his mounted staff when nearly all his army had been massacred. 334. 30. Duke of Devonshire. Secretary of State for War, 1882- 1885. Lord Wolseley. Commander-in-chief of the Expeditionary Force to Egypt, 1882, and of the Gordon Rehef Expedition, 1884. 336. 15. Arabi. Ahamed Arabi, born of fellah parents, spent his early youth as a laborer. He served for twelve years in the Egyptian army, rising from private to the rank of colonel. He took advantage of Egyptian discontent at foreign influence and organized a rebellion Notes. ^ 469 with the cry " Egypt for the Egyptians." He became, in 1882, Minister of War under Khedive Tewfik, and, as autocrat, set aside Anglo-French financial control. The English bombarded Alexandria July 11 and 12. Arabi withdrew, and at Tel-el-Kebir, September, 1882, was defeated and captured. His sentence of death was commuted to life exile in Ceylon, but in 1900 he was pardoned. His revolt brought about the permanent establishment of British control of Egypt. 338. 30. General Baker. Valentine Baker (1825-1887), known as Baker Pasha. Soldier and traveller. Summoned to Egypt in 1882 by the Khedive, he was made commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army. After the death of Hicks Pasha in 1883, he was ordered to Suakin. He was defeated near Tokar by a body of Osman Digna's troops in 1 884. 339. 23. General Graham (1831-1 899). With Sir Garnet Wolseley as brigadier-general. 341. 25. apostle of the Mid-Lothian campaign. Gladstone was elected from Mid-Lothian in 1880. He came in on opposition to the pro-Ottoman attitude of Lord Beaconsfield in the Russo-Turkish War. 342, 18. Sir Evelyn Wood. He served in the Soudan Expedition and in the campaign of 1885. 342. 29. Zebehr. An Egyptian governor in the Soudan, imprisoned by the British, 1884- 1887. 347. 13. Earl of Dufferin. The Earl was ambassador to Turkey, 1879-1881. While ambassador he went to Egypt, after the rebellion of Arabi, to restore order. 348. 27. rights of the Suzerain. In 1841 Mehemet Ali was recog- nized under a guarantee of the powers of Europe as Vali, and the sov- ereign power was made hereditary. From 1879 two controllers-general, one French, one English, had the right to investigate all departments of public service and an advisory voice in the councils of the Cabinet. 348. 31, position which the Powers are taking up. This refers to the attitude of the Powers, Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Russia, in raising the question of freedom of the Suez Canal in time of war and pointing out that Lord Granville, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had expressed an opinion favorable to an agreement on that subject to be adopted and enforced by consent of the Powers of Europe. 351, 32. Osman Digna. (1836- ) Said to have been born at Suakin, also at Rouen. Father a Scotchman. In slave-trade, as was his step-father. Follower of the Mahdi, Captured in January, 1900, and sent as prisoner to Rosetta. 357. 30. besom. A broom-shaped bunch of twigs. 358. 18, Horrors of San Domingo. See p. 173, 364, 14. Ku Klux outrages. The Ku Klux clans were southern whites organized for intimidation and terrorism of the negroes in the re- 470 . Notes. constructed states, 1866-71. Their object was to prevent the exercise of poHtical rights by the negroes. Their means were whipping, mu- tilation and sometimes murder. — Digest of U. S. History. 367. 24. Absalom . , . treason. II Kings, 13-18. 369. 33. Andrassy ... in 1849. Gyula (Julius) Andrassy (1823- 1890), Hungarian statesman. Took part in Hungarian insurrection in 1848; remained in exile till 1857 ; reentered Hungarian Diet in 1861 ; was Premier, 1867-71, and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria-Hungary, 1871-1879. 373. 9. General Longstreet. (James, 1 821-1903). He served in the Confederate army as brigadier-general and major-general, and was included in the surrender at Appomattox. After the War he became a Republican. He was made Surveyor of Customs at New Orleans, under President Grant, and later Supervisor of Internal Revenue. 379. 27. amendment . . . proposed. The purpose of this amend- ment, in several sections, was to secure equal civil rights for the colored race. Ringwalt's American Oratory. 387. Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847.) Lawyer, patriot. He brought about Catholic emancipation in 1829, As a public speaker he was almost unsurpassed in his day. He devoted himself to repeal of the union of Ireland and England. 389. 18. Tara. Famous in early Irish history as the residence of kings. Every third year, at the beginning of November, a sort of parlia- ment met here, at which all the nobles and principal scholars of Erin instituted new laws, renewed or extended old ones, and examined, cor- rected, and compared national annals and the history of the country. 390. 23. highest authority. Sir Robert Peel, Prime Minister. 391. 14. In the face of Europe . . . America. "In the presence of I proclaim." He names France because of her recent efforts for parliamentary government, and Spain for her overthrow of Espartero, seep. 395,1. 29. 395. 1 5. Ribbonmen. The Ribbon Society was a secret Irish organ- ization, very powerful in 1835-55. It was a defensive or retaliatory league organized for self-protection by small farmers, laborers, shopkeepers, artisans and others. It was vigorously denounced by the Catholic clergy. 395. 30. Espartero. (i 792-1 879.) Spanish general and states- man. His practical dictatorship, 1841-43, was marked by energy and ability. In 1843 a combination of parties naturally inimical to each other, and the Regent and her devotees, overthrew his government, driving him into exile. 396. 21. dirty Sugden. (Eward Bartenshaw. First Baron of St. Leonards.) Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 1834-35 and 1843-46. He Notes. 471 ■was one of the most persistent and shrewd of the opponents of the Reform Bill. 399. 19. override precedent . . . sovereignty of states. By long- established custom Democratic conventions have accepted unanimously as temporary otificers the nominees of the National Committee. In this instance the gold-standard majority of the Committee presented the name of ex-Governor Hill, of N.Y. The Silver minority offered the name of Senator Daniel of Va., who was chosen by a vote of 556— 349. This vote showed that the Silverites lacked 48 votes of the two-thirds majority necessary for choice of platform and presidential candidate. At the evening session, July 8, the Bryan delegation from Nebraska, excluded by the National Committee, was admitted, and the seats of four Gold delegates from Michigan were given to contestants, a sufficient number, by the unit rule, to throw the whole vote of the state into the Silver column. 400. 26. one false note. Geo. Fred Williams, delegate at large, favored W. J. Bryan and the platform of the Convention. 401. 13. Senator from South Carolina. Senator Tillman. 407. 9. Calabrians. The people of the southwest peninsular of Italy. 421. 17. Shaw and Russell and Lowell. Robert Gould Shaw (1837-63). Harvard, i860. Colonel of the first negro regiment, 54th Mass. Killed at Fort Wagner, May 11, 1863. Cabot Jackson Russell (1844-63). Harvard, 1865. Left college, Jan., 1862. Captain in the 54th Mass Volunteers. Killed at Fort Wagner, May 11, 1863. Charles Russell Lowell (1835-64). Harvard, 1854. Colonel commanding a brigade under Sheriden. Killed at Cedar Creek, Va., Oct. 19, 1864. 423. 5. Psalmist's measure. FsalmsXxc, 10. 427. II. Rejoice, etc. Ecdesiastes, id, (). , 428. W. F, Bartlett. (1840-1876.) He graduated at Harvard in 1 86 1, was a brevet major-general in the Civil War, and was conspic- uous for his gallantry in action. 428. 29. those marble tablets. On marble slabs set into the walls of the transept of Memorial Hall are the names of Harvard graduates in the Union army who died in the Civil War. 429. 5. distinguished orator yesterday. C. F. Adams, at the ded- icatory exercises of the new ^lemorial Hall. 430. 20. Hayes-Tilden dif&culty. The electoral vote of several states was in dispute. An Electoral Commission decided all the con- tested cases in favor of R. B. Hayes, but his final vote was only 185 to 1 84 for S. T. Tilden. 431. 12. Brewster and Carver, Leyden and Delfthaven. Brewster (William, 1 560-1644). One of the founders of Plymouth Colony. 47^ Notes. Carver (John, 1 575-1621). First governor of Plymouth, 1620-21, Leyden. Residence of Pilgrim fathers, 1609-20. Delfthaven (Delf- shaven). Seaport in Holland where the Pilgrims embarked for South- ampton. 432. 31. land of Prester John. A fabulous Christian monarch be- lieved, in the 12th century, to have made extensive conquests from the Mussulmans, and to have established a powerful empire somewhere in Asia, beyond Persia and Armenia. 434. 28. John Robinson. See note on 297, 34, p. 467. 435. 13. most knightly . . . gentleman. See Sir Philip Sydney's Astrophel and Stella, Sonnet r : — " Foole, said my Muse to tne, looke in thy heart, and write." 638 .^^^. .s^ % -r .V :^^'^ . ^^ ^^.- -> _ ^.p.# -^^^^: '^-'^ ^' - ^^^' ' *• ^$ *^. 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