:.t;';';tt':iK;<;iii|;: Class ___ Book__ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. THOUGHTS FOR THE OCCASION SERIES 1— Patriotic and Secular A Repository of Historical Data and Facts, helpful in observing the Fifteen Patriotic and Holiday Ot ca- sions, towii: Arbor Day, Fourih of J ulv, Flag Rais- ing, Dec -ration Day, Washington's, Lincoln's and Grant's Birthdays, Labor Day, etc. 578 pages. $1-75 2— Anniversary and Religious Occasions in Historical Outlines, AnecHntes and Incidents, Suggestive Thoughts for Timely Occat.ions, to wit: Christmas, Children's Day, Lenten Season, Easter, Thanksgiviner, New Year's, Young People's Service, etc. =,16 pp. Edited by F. 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Best thoughts from eminent Divines. An aid for Pastors. Intro- duction bv loiiN Hall, D.D. Cloth, 500 pages, $1.75 7— The Bow in the Cloud; or, Words of Com tort for the Sorrowing. Over 200 contributors, in Poetry and Prose. Introduction by Wm. M. Taylor, D.D. 452 pages. $i-7S 8 -Revivals How to Secure Them As Taught and Exemplified by the Most Successful Clergymen. A helpful volume to all c mmissioned to " Go and Preach." Edited by Rev. W, P. Doe. 443 pages, $i-75 £. B. TREAT & CO., Publishers, New York Monument to Faith. Plymouth, Mass. MAKERS OF THE American Republic A SERIES OF PATRIOTIC LECTURES BY DAVID GREGG, D.D. I'resiili-iito/ Western Tlieological Seti/iiiaiy, Alhxluiiy, l\,., Formerly Pastor of the I.afciycttc Areiiue Prcibytcriaii CIninh, Brooklyn, X. Y. HON. W. W. GOODRICH, and DR. SIDNEY H. CARNEVJR., Presiding Justice Supreme Court, Secretary 0/ the Xcn' York ///>/o/-;ai/ State o/Xetf York. Society. NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION NHW YORK E. B. TREAT & COMPANY 241-243 West 23d Street ^905 1 1 & LIBRARY of congress] Two Copies rteceived JAN 4 1905 COPY ciiiry t^oS- XXc. Noi Copyright, 1896, by E. B. Treat. Copyright, 190^, by E. B. Treat & Company. PUBLISHER'S NOTE. This series of popular lectures is full of histori- cal data and pioneer incidents of colonial times, vividly portraying pen-pictures of the Virginia colonists, the Pilgrims, the Hollanders, the Puri- tans, the Quakers, the Scotch, and the Huguenots, with chapters on the influence of the discoveries of Christopher Columbus, and the work of George Washington as a factor in American history, and the effect of the growth of the Christian church in the formation and development of the nation. The book embodies the results of a large his- torical research. It sets forth in a vivid and at- tractive light the races, the personalities, the prin- ciples, and the occasions entitled to credit in the construction of the American Republic. It is highly suggestive of American history yet to be written. The book pleads for the broadest and purest type of Americanism, and is outspoken and fearless in advocating the highest interests of our nation. The American citizen will find in it enlighten- ment and stimulus for his patriotism. 5 6 PUBLISHER'S NOTE. Our youth, as they shall be taught in the uni- versities, public schools, and the various societies of young people, will find it a veritable thesaurus in their preparation to write or speak upon " American citizenship." The preacher will find abundant and helpful material for his pulpit ministrations, and learn how an occasional patriotic service can be made attrac- tive to the people, as well as a power for God and country. The statesman will here find facts and data for the equipment of argument and illustration, giving strength to and lighting up his patriotic, historical and political addresses. All of these historic lectures have been delivered with great acceptance to audiences of thousands, and on this account carry with them a telling in- dorsement of their life and power. This fact should weigh with those who wish to possess ef- fective patriotic literature. It is the teachings of such patriotic recitals that assure us of a future for our Republic. Their legitimate product will be intelligent Americans, on fire with a holy enthusi- asm to make ultimate America the realization of the brightest visions of the great men who lived and died for the Republic. This edition includes important additional papers, that more fully completes the original plan of the volume. CONTENTS. PAGE I. The Old Dominion; or, The Virginia Colo- nists 17 II. The Pilgrim Forefathers S3 75 IV, The Hollanders in the New Netherlands. 103 III. The Puritan Founi-ers. V. The Scotch. ^33 VI. The Huguenots 169 VII. The Quakers; or, Ideal Civilization 209 VIII. The American Foremothers 249 IX. The Oldtime Minister 277 X. The Bench and Bar 305 XL Some Medical Men of the Revolution 345 XII. Columbus: the Results of His Life 369 XIII. George Washington : a Factor in American History 399 XIV. The Church and the Republic 431 XV. The Honor Due to Our Patriotic Dead 461 XVI. The Black Forefathers 497 I. THE OLD DOMINION; OR, THE VIRGINIA COLONISTS. 17 I. THE OLD DOMINION; OR, THE VIRGINIA COLONISTS.* A GREAT Statesman of olden times, in speaking to his countrymen, gave them this advice : " Take ye tJiercfore good Jieed unto yourselves; " i.e., " Go to school to self." The advice is good counsel for the American Republic. We are to learn from ourselves ; we are to study our own history. This is not a narrow study nor an uninteresting study nor an unprofitable study. Our Republic has made history rapidly, and it has made it on lines altogether different from the other nations of the world. As a nation our Republic has sprung to the head of nations, and has led them toward a newer civilization and a more abundant liberty. We have a large history, for we have grown phenomenally. No nation on the earth can match us for growth; we have grown like the wheat in * Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brook- lyn, at a Forefathers'-day service. 21 22 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. our harvest-fields. Humboldt informs us that a follower of Cortez sowed the first wheat in Amer- ica. He found just three kernels in his supply of rice. They got into the rice accidentally. These three kernels he carefully planted. The dividends of this planting in 1895 were millions on millions of bushels. In the month of May, 1607, when the first American colony of Englishmen was planted at Jamestown, Va., there were only one hundred and two souls; now we number sixty-five millions. What is crowded into the history between then and now? The overrule of God ; the noble strug- gles and sacrifices of our civil fathers ; the planting of everlasting principles and the growth of the same into magnificent institutions ; the play of the forces and events which has made us what we are as a body politic — these things are crowded into our history, and to know them is to know where our strength lies and where our duty lies and where the source of our national perpetuity lies. Do we understand our own institutions? We cannot serve our country intelligently and effec- tively if we do not. Our national greatness will inevitably go down before a wide-spread national ignorance of these. As the great white dome of our federal capitol at Washington rests upon a circle of giant pillars, even so our national great- ness rests upon the vast circle of our civil institu- tions. These are the pillars of our Republic, and we should so know them as to be able intelligently THE OLD DOMINION. 23 to guard them. I believe that there is something to be learned from each individual fact pertaining to us as a nation. For example, we are territori- ally one — solidly one. Our dominion is not frac- tional. With the exception of Alaska, it lies in one undivided body, animated practically by one blood, using one national language, and living under one law enacted at one center. And yet for all this practically the sun never sets on our territory. On the short summer night the light of the sunset does not cease to gleam on the shin- ing spears of the seal-fishermen of Alton off Alaska before the sunshine commences to flash on the glinting axes of the woodmen in the forests of Maine. We differ from England in this : we are territorially one. The British empire is scat- tered about the world in no less than forty-one different parcels. Now I believe that the fact that we are one territorially teaches us that we should be and should ever remain one in government, and that every attempt to sever our national union should be treated as treason. The very configu- ration of our national territory declares, " The Union one and inseparable, now and forever." My fellow-men, I beHeve that we need just such exercises as those to which this historical service calls us. We need something to incite us to the study of the history of our country. Our national history is a page from God's own book, and is full of divine lessons. We need to know what our 24 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. nation incarnates ; we need to know what our in- stitutions cost ; we need to know how the builders of our nation suffered and worked. Our institu- tions cost time and blood and brain. Our Re- public incarnates scholarship and patriotism and reformations and revolutions, and the wise provi- dences of that God who is the eternal Master Builder of states. Are these things so, then we have something in our Republic to prize, some- thing to be proud of, something to be loyal to, something to perpetuate, something to pray for, and something for which we should send to God our whole-hearted and enthusiastic Te Deum. I am here to-night to tell you one of the stories which pertains to the evolution of our nation. There are other stories pertaining to this evolu- tion, such. as the story of the Pilgrims, the story of the Puritans, the story of the Hollanders, the story of the Scotch and their descendants, and the story of the Huguenots. To-night our story is to be the story of " Old Dominion, the Colony of Virginia." This colony was the oldest of all the colonies. It was the first colony of the English on the new continent. It was unique; it was different from all the others ; it was the last colony from which republicanism had a right to expect anything ; but it turned out to be the colony that was fore- most in the inauguration of the Republic. With- out its lead and cooperation our Republic would THE OLD DOMINION. 25 never have had an existence. Viiginia and Mas- sachusetts, standing shoulder to shoulder, did the planning and the leading and the fighting which ushered in the American Revolution. They pushed the Revolution through to a successful conclusion, and afterward they gathered and or- ganized the results of the Revolution so as to make them permanent. I have said that the Virginia Colony was the last colony from which republicanism had a right to expect any aid. I base this remark upon the popular and ancient name which that colony bore — "Old Dominion." Do you know why it was called " Old Domin- ion " ? The answer is interesting. It received this name from the stand which it took and the part which it played during the days of the Eng- lish Revolution and during the period of the Eng- lish Commonwealth, inaugurated by Oliver Crom- well. As Virginia was largely Cavalier in those days, it was full of Royalists. It was intensely aristocratic. It was for the king and against the Parliament. When Cromwell beheaded Charles I., thousands of Cavalier Royalists poured into the colony of Virginia. The colony took action through its officials, civil and church, upon the execution of Charles I. It called his execution murder, and it denominated the Parliamentarians regicides. It was enacted that all in the colony who justified the king's death should be considered 26 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. traitors, and treated as though they had handled the knife and had actually beheaded the king. Sir William Berkeley, a fiery Cavalier, was the governor of the colony at the time, and he led in this legislation. The sympathies of the colony went out to Charles II., the son of the executed king, and he was declared the legal successor of his father. Under the direction of Berkeley, Colonel Richard Lee, a rich planter and a Cavalier, went to visit Charles II. in his exile in France and to offer him Virginia as a kingdom. Lee besought him to cross the Atlantic and to set up his rule in the colony as king. This was the first dominion which Charles II. had offered him. It was his oldest dominion. Charles never forgot this. When he was crowned in England, on the day of his coronation he robed himself in Virginia silk to show his gratitude to Virginia. This lifted Virginia in the estimation of the British empire. When coins were minted under the reign of Charles II. they had stamped on them that the kingdom hence- forth consisted of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Virginia. One of these coins may be seen to-day in the Massachusetts Historical Society's collec- tion. This was considered a great honor for the little colony to rank it with such great countries as England and Scotland ; and so the colony was ever after spoken of as " Old Dominion." Charles had dominion here when he had dominion nowhere else. THE OLD DOMINION. 27 What hope for a republic, we ask, can come from a colony such as this? Yet the Revolution- ary leaders of Virginia, who formed an illustrious group and who gave America its illustrious and Revolutionary sayings, — the sayings that awoke the slumbering spirit of liberty far and near, — were men nearly all of whom were descendants of these bitter Royalists and Cromwell-hating Cavaliers. It was a descendant of this very Rich- ard Lee who went to France to bring Charles II. to Virginia to rule as king, viz., Richard Henry Lee, who originated the Committee of Correspon- dence which brought the thirteen colonies together to strike unitedly for freedom, and who was the author of the " Address to the Colonies," and who, in the Continental Congress, moved Amer- ica's Declaration of Independence in these words, which he ofTered as a motion : "Resolved, That these united colonies are and ought to be free and independent States, and that all political connec- tion between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved." This mo- tion, made by Richard Henry Lee, a Virginian, was seconded by John Adams, a leader from Mas- sachusetts, and having been debated for three full days, it was finally passed. Thus Richard Henry Lee was a leader and a great man in the new times of Virginia, just as his ancestor, Richard Lee, was a leader and a pushing man in the old times of Virginia. 28 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. The first point which I wish to make is this : Old Dominion served America and told in its higher and present making by the things which she fought out of existence and eternally buried and by the progress which she made upon her own self. She struck down and buried the ideals and the principles and the prejudices and the proposals of Richard Lee of the time of the Cromwellian Commonwealth, and she made way for and adopted the advanced ideals and the republican princi- ples of Richard Henry Lee of the Revolutionary era. The history of the Virginia Colony has not as yet been fully and worthily written. No Ameri- can history has been adequately written except the history of New England. New England, whose ideal has been education, has through its oldest and best-equipped universities produced the scholars of America and has given the country its national poets, and these have rewarded her by writing her history and putting it into verse and song. There is no discount on the history of New England ; I am not derogating it ; I am only say- ing that she is fortunate in having the pioneer his- torians of America. The other colonies will some day have their historians, and then we shall have a new era in American history- writing. Virginia's day is coming; her history is full of remarkable scenes ; they only need to be well told or cast into the form of romance or allowed to flow from the THE OLD DOMINION. 29 pen of the poet in jeweled words. Give them a Longfellow and a Lowell and a Holmes and a Hawthorne to take them from their homely and traditional form and recast them and put into them the charm of wit and fancy and give them beauty of expression, and they will go thrilling through this nation with a power that will kindle anew the old spirit of liberty and bring into exis- tence a strong, fresh love of country. The colony of Virginia antedated the colony of Plymouth Rock some thirteen years. It sailed from London in three vessels on December 19, 1606. The names of the three vessels were the Discovery, the Good Speed, and the Susan Content. All London was moved at the sight of these three little ships sailing down the Thames. Prayers were offered in the churches for their welfare, and their praises were sung by the poets. Here are two verses from a glowing lyric of Drayton: " You brave, heroic minds, Worthy your country's name, That honor still pursue ; Whilst loitering hinds Lurk here at home with shame. Go and subdue. " And cheerfully at sea Success you still entice To get the pearls and gold. And ours to hold Virginia, Earth's only paradise." 30 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. The voyagers reached a spot on the James River where they landed May 13, 1607. They called the spot Jamestown, after the then reigning king, James I. There were just one hundred and two in this noted company. In the sailing- lists we find them classed as " gentlemen, carpenters, laborers, gold-refiners, jewelers, and one per- fumer." Unfortunately more than one half the company were " gentlemen " ; and the term " gen- tlemen " signified persons unused to manual labor. " Gentlemen, jewelers, gold- refiners, and one per- fumer " were not the stuff to fight the great Ameri- can wilderness. Why did they come to Virginia? Some had it warmly at heart to convert the In- dians to Christianity ; some looked to the extension of the British empire ; but the great majority ex- pected easily to pick up pearls and gold. They expected to dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, and ship gold. These Jamestown people had a hard time of it. In the first place, their leaders were worthless and indolent ; and in the second place, the majority of them who came for gold were sadly disappointed and paralyzed with despair. Besides this they had chosen a swamp for a building-place, and they soon lost their health. The first years at James- town were years filled with mutiny, internal strife, treason, epidemic, exposure, fever, starvation, massacre, disastrous fire, famine, and death. There was only one masterful man among them. THE OLD DOMINION. 31 and that was Captain John Smith, whose presence and effort kept the colony from absolute extinc- tion. This man was only three years, all told, in America; but he made for himself an undying name. He returned to England. The experience of Jamestown was more terrible than the experience of Plymouth, and came nearer being a failure. Was there a reason for this ? Yes. Were not the two colonies precisely alike ? No ; they both came from England, that is true ; but the Jamestown Colony lacked this, viz., the presence and the patience and the pacifying influence and the elevating power of a heroic Christian womanhood. The Pilgrims of the Mayflozver brought their wives and children with them ; they had the home in their colony. Woman makes the home, and the home makes the church and the state. If Plymouth Rock had been minus the home, the future of New England would have been changed. The men who came over in the Discovery, the Good Speed, and the Susan Content left the women and the children in England. There was not a single woman in the whole colony ; and that is the reason they acted as savages and quarreled and were decimated. What could we expect from a hundred and two old bachelors — a com- munity of bachelors? It is as much as society can do to get along with one here and there in the community. A colony of bachelors never carried any cause on earth to a successful conclusion, and 32 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. never will. God pronounced a bachelor in the midst of the glories of Paradise as unequipped for life. As it was, this colony of bachelors was saved by the hand of a woman. Just here comes in the beautiful story of Poca- hontas, who saved the life of Captain John Smith. Her father. King Powhatan, doomed him to death, but she gave him back to the colony that he might save it. Has Plymouth Rock the story of Priscilla Alden? Jamestown has the story of the Indian princess Pocahontas. She was beauty in bronze. Clad in doeskin trimmed with feathers, and with her feet sandaled with beaded moccasins and as beautiful as Trilby's, she came to the col- ony and went, an angel of God and a vision of love. Again and again, with her Indian maidens, she brought corn to the whites when they were starving; and again and again she warned the colony and saved it from massacre. Pocahontas became a Christian, and was publicly baptized by the Rev. Mr. Whitaker, the " apostle of Virginia." She married John Rolfe, with whom she went to England, where she was received by the royal court and greatly honored. Just as she was about to embark for home she fell ill and died, and was buried in the parish church of Gravesend, Eng- land. She left one son, who married a worthy Englishwoman and who became great in the col- ony. Like the Alden family in Massachusetts, the Pocahontas family in Virginia formed a sort of THE OLD DOMINION. 33 American aristocracy. John Randolph, the fa- mous orator of Virginia, was one of her descen- dants. Of her Captain John Smith wrote to Queen Anne : " Her services to Virginia were as great as those to myself, for she was the instrument under God of preserving the whole colony from destruc- tion." I relate the story of Pocahontas at this point, for it comes in here legitimately. I am now speaking of the power of woman in relation to the history of Virginia. She was the first woman in the colony, and her presence meant the very life of the colony. But she was not the only woman that exercised a power in Virginia. There were certain widows there whose names have become famous in history. It is marvelous how the widows gracefully figure in this history. In the battle of love the very greatest men of Virginia were finally captivated and captured by widows. I never heard or read anything like it. Jefferson, who wrote the American Declaration, was com- pelled to make another declaration — a declaration of the surrender of his personal independence, — and that by a dashing widow with a fortune. Madi- son, the father of the American Constitution, met Widow Todd, and she immediately set him at work writing another constitution besides the Constitu- tion for the nation, viz., a constitution for home rule. George Washington captured Cornwallis ; but when he came face to face with Widow Custis, 34 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, she captured him. This last incident has led one of our pulpiteers to exclaim in a powerful sermon on woman: "Great is the power of woman! George Washington governed America, but Mar- tha governed George." There is a moral here, and it is for hard-hearted bachelors; it is this: beware of Virginia widows ; like Ruth of old, they glean everything that is in the field. But my point is this : the Virginia Colony never succeeded until woman, with her tact and love and holy life, came upon the scene. Twelve years after the three ships, carrying only men, had landed at Jamestown, another ship landed there carrying only women. In the year 1619 those in England who were interested in the colony, rec- ognizing its deficiency, induced one hundred of the handsomest daughters of the land to sail for Jamestown with the express purpose of entering wedlock and setting up homes in the colony. The scheme worked well, and in twenty-four hours after these beautiful daughters landed the parson of the colony had made a snug little fortune. The letters written home by these new-made brides brought another vessel over from England with sixty additional fair maids. After the establishment of homes in the colony the colony took on a new life. Dissensions ceased, adventure gave way to solid, persistent work, the plantations gave large harvests, and the white angel of health hovered over the whole community. THE OLD DOMINION. 35 There are two questions which I imagine thoughtful men ask me just here, and I will en- deavor briefly to answer them. The first is this : How did the colony of Vir- ginia differ in its life and government from the colonies of New England? That question is a useful question. We learn by contrasting things; there is a contrast right here, and a marked contrast. .In the New Eng- land colonies the people lived in towns, and this determined their government. The township is still the unit of government in New England. In Virginia the county was the unit of government. There were no towns of any account in Virginia. Up to the Revolutionary War even its capital was only a small village. In New England each township had its own meeting, and there all were equal and had an equal voice. This Professor John Fiske claims was the germ of our Republic. He traces American liberties and American equal- ity and American popular institutions to the town- meeting. Virginia did not have town-meetings, for it had no towns; so Virginia did not contribute to the American nationality popular institutions, as New England did. All of our popular institu- tions came from New England ; but Virginia gave the American nationality men and measures in- stead of popular institutions. This will appear as we proceed. That is the contribution of Virginia to America — men and measures. Men to man in- 36 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. stitutions and lead, and measures for institutions to work out into a glorious consummation. If Virginia had no towns, what had it in their place ? It had large plantations. Those of you who carry- in your minds the map of Virginia will remember how it is blessed with rivers. Four large, beauti- ful, navigable rivers flow parallel — the James River, the York River, the Rappahannock River, and the Potomac. The great Virginia plantations fronted on these large rivers, and this allowed the ships of England to come to the plantations for the produce. As trade was direct with England, Virginia did not feel the need of towns. This also kept Vir- ginia bound to England as Massachusetts and Connecticut were not. As the plantations were large, three or four were enough to make a county. As the county was the unit of government, the civil power was kept in the hands of the few who owned the plantations. In New England the people ruled ; in Virginia the few ruled. The few were responsible ; the few had to do all the think- ing ; the few had to do all governmental work and rule. While this concentrated, it developed also ; that is, it developed the few and made them parlia- mentarians, diplomats, and skilled statesmen, able to plan and to draft and to lead. This was what the Virginian patriots did in the Revolutionary and pre- Revolutionary times, and this was what America needed. It was a Virginian who went into Massachusetts and took command, and he did THE OLD DOMINION. 2,1 that because In Massachusetts, with all its popular education and all its popular politics, there was not a man that could do what George Washington did. It was a Massachusetts man, Mr. Adams, who made the motion in Congress that put George Washington at the head of the New England army. Government by the few is not what we would choose to-day, but government by the few in Old Dominion made the men who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States and who led the continental army to the victory which gave us the American nation. ]\Icn and measures, that was the contri- bution of Old Dominion to the Republic. The second question which you ask is : How did Virginia differ from New England in education and religion ? We are still learning by contrast. The idol of New England was education ; it had its free public schools everywhere. Virginia did not take to edu- cation ; it did not wish schools for its black slaves nor for its white servants. General education had very little place in this colony before the Revolu- tion ; you could count its free schools on your fingers. The few who were educated went to its one college, William and Mary, or they crossed the ocean and attended the universities of England. As for religion, the church of New England was the Independent Church ; the church of Virginia was the Church of Eneland. There was no free 38 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. discussion in the Church of England Hke the free discussion in the Independent Church ; but there were in it the truth of the Bible and holy doctrine and inspiring prayers ; there were in it that which brought God into life and that which created a conscience toward God and man. We must not forget that the Church of England carried in it the Puritans, and nurtured them until they blossomed and fruited. It also carried in it the Wesleys, until they blossomed and fruited. John Wesley and Charles Wesley both labored in the Church of England in the colony of Georgia. For Ameri- cans it was a good church to leave in order to be- come Puritans and Methodists. Let us do justice here. The Virginia Colony brought that church with it. The Rev. Mr. Hunt was one of the one hundred and two who landed at Jamestown. The first structure put up was the canvas church. The services were regularly kept up ; everybody was required to attend church or pay a fine of so many pounds of tobacco. Tobacco was the currency of that day. Ministers were paid their salaries in tobacco ; whether they would or no they were compelled to be religious tobacco- nists. The markets were quoted in pounds of to- bacco. My point is this : there were here and there in the Church of England as devout men and women as were found in the Puritan church. The individual got spiritual good from it ; but the church as administered was administered in the THE OLD DOMINION. 39 interest of the English throne, and was therefore a hindrance to the march of American freedom. It was a state church ; and it is logic that a state church must take its creed and its conduct from the state that owns it and pays its expenses. This is the history of the Church of England in Vir- ginia during the Revolutionary times; it was for England and not for America. Madison says, " If the Church of England had been the estabHshed church in all of the colonies, the American Repub- lic would have been an impossibility." In these early days it was exclusive. It bitterly persecuted. All who came into the colony were required to support it and swear allegiance to it. The Bap- tists were driven out of the colony, and so were the Presbyterians and so were the Congregation- alists. Fines were imposed by its dictation, and so were tortures and imprisonments. It prescribed such things as ducking and boring the tongue with an awl. I do not think so much of that; for in those days such things were in the air. This in- tolerance actually was progress, if you put it side by side with the religious hate which scattered the ashes of Wycliffe on the Severn and which dis- interred the body of Cromwell and insulted the dust of the hero who made England great. Did the Episcopalians persecute the Puritans in Vir- ginia? The Puritans persecuted the Episcopa- lians in Massachusetts. There is nothing wrong with religion on this account ; no, the wrong is in 40 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. the application and administration of religion. The Episcopal Church of America in the process of time freed itself from a wrong administration and divorced itself from the state. It gave a wel- come to republican principles ; it ceased being English and became American. When it did that it was raised from the dead and became a power for liberty. There is a long distance from the church of the Rev. Mr. Hunt of Jamestown to the church of the Rev. Phillips Brooks of Boston ; and the distance is every step of it progress. That pro- gress carried in it our national development from a monarchy to a republic. Virginia had one other thing which differentiated it from the colonies of New England, and that \A'as the system of slavery. Within twelve months of the time the Mayfloiver landed at Plymouth Rock, a Dutch man-of-war entered the James River and landed there an ill-fated cargo of twenty negro slaves. That was a crime, which ended in our Civil War. Those two ships were two rival forces ; they carried in them principles which were in deadly antagonism. The Ci\-il \\'ar was simply the climax of the long battle between the two ships and their different thoughts and different principles and different civilizations. You know the result. It accorded with the overrule of a just and righteous God in the affairs of men. The Mayfloivcr won and the slave-ship went down. That also was progress for Virginia. THE OLD DOMINIOAK 41 I should like to speak here, if time permitted, of the great rebellion which took place in Virginia led by Nathaniel Bacon, but I cannot. That re- bellion took place in 1676, just one hundred years before the Revolution, and embodied in it to all intents and purposes the very same principles as the Revolution. Had it succeeded our indepen- dence would have come a century earlier. Thus in that far-off day Virginia was training her sons to keep step with the coming continental army, and was also sighting her guns to bear upon tyranny. I have said that Virginia's contribution to America was men and measures. I must hasten to speak of some of these. And here I must ex- ercise selection ; I must center our thoughts around the Revolution. The first man with whom I begin is Patrick Henry. He was the leader of leaders. Speaking figuratively, he was the man who fired the first Revolutionary gun. He was the first to be called a traitor; he was the orator of the Revolution; he learned the principles of liberty from his Presby- terian ancestors, and taught them to the men of the Church of England. He gradually grew to- ward that famous saying of his which became the watchword of the Revolution, and which regiments carried on their banners and flags, and men in the ranks carried in letters that burned on their uni- forms, viz., " Give me liberty or give me death." The framing of these words was impromptu, but 42 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. the spirit back of them and in them, which gave them their power, was the growth of a Hfetime. He had made his famous speech against the clergy of the Church of England and won the case before the jury. He had made his famous speech against the infamous Stamp Act and had seen its repeal. Now he was ready for the famous saying itself. His speech in which he uttered the famous saying was made in the old St. John's Church, which still stands on Virginia soil. Feeling that the time for decision had come, this " man of the people," as he was called, arose and took the floor and ad- dressed the convention. This was the close of his address : " Virginians, there is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged; their clinking maj^ be heard on the plains of Bos- ton. The war is inevitable, and let it come. The war has actually begun ; the next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. What is it that gentlemen wish ? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God. I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death." As Patrick Henry uttered these words with both arms raised and his eyes on fire, it is said that a great thrill ran through the whole assembly. The people were ready to start from their seats and shout, " To ARMS!" THE OLD DOMINION. 43 The next man to be mentioned is Thomas Jeffer- son, the " apostle of democracy." He first got his repubHcan inspiration from Patrick Henry. He was a young student at William and Mary College when Patrick Henry made his great speech against the Stamp Act. Patrick Henry put fire into his voice, Jefferson put fire into his pen. One sentence, which he wrote months before the War of the Revolution, began thus : " There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do; but, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament proposes ; and in this I think I speak the senti- ments of America." It was Jefferson who said: " America was conquered and her settlements made and firmly established at the expense of in- dividuals, and not by the British crown; therefore the British Parliament have no right to exercise authority over us." That was clear and irrefu- table reasoning. Jefferson sums up his own life for the cause of freedom in these words in his diary : " I sometimes ask myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all. I have been the instrument of doing the following" things: procuring the disestablishment of the state church, putting an end to the entail system, which tended to aristocracy, securing the prohibition of the fresh importation of slaves, and drafting the Declaration of Independence." Fifty years a^ter 44 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. signing the Declaration of Independence he died, on the 4th of July. John Adams died the same day. Next comes the greatest man of all, George Washington, the " father of our country." He was the Virginian of the Virginians, just as he was the American of the Americans. He carried the Revolution in himself and the Republic in himself and the great American future in himself. He was in everything, from alpha to omega, and everything was in him. From the battle of Dor- chester Heights, when he took Boston from the British, to the battle of Yorktown, where he ended the Revolutionary War by the capture of Corn- wallis, he was in everything. Thus the Revolu- tionary War, which began in Massachusetts, ended in Virginia, and ended right near the spot where Patrick Henry uttered his famous words. And it was a Virginian, too, who fired the first cannon in the last battle, General Nelson. General Nelson was a citizen of Yorktown. When Cornwallis entered the town he made General Nelson's man- sion his headquarters. When the time came for the battle of Yorktown to begin, the gunners hesi- tated to fire on the home of one of their own men ; so Nelson himself stepped forward and aimed a cannon at his own mansion, and touched the fuse and sent a thunderbolt of war crashing through his old homestead. That act was magic ; it fired the wliole army with a fighting patriotism. THE OLD DOMINION. - 45 When the Revolutionary War was ended and the treaty of peace signed, all was not over. America was not yet a republic. The critical time had only been reached. What was done afterward was as great as what had been done before. The victo- ries of peace were yet to be won. There were still dangers, great dangers. The colonies were in danger of falling apart and of entering into battle with one another. The war debt made trouble. There was financial distress. The Articles of Confederation which bound the new States to- gether were too indefinite and too feeble. There was a lack of power to raise taxes. Everything was chaos. In resolving things to order the Vir- ginians took the lead. Madison the Virginian, trained, according to Bancroft, under the Presby- terian Witherspoon, president of Princeton College, was the father of the Constitution which gave, the nation unity and power, and Washington was the president of the famous Constitutional Convention. It was this convention that gathered up the results of the Revolutionary War and built them into our great Republic. To sum up, this is what Virginia did for the American Republic by way of men and measures. She gave the country such men as these : Patrick Henry, the orator of the Revolution ; Thomas Jefferson, the pen of the Revolution ; Daniel Mor- gan, the thunderbolt of the Revolution ; John Marshall, the chief justice of the Revolution ; and 46 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. George Washington, who carried the Revolution to success. She gave the country such measures as these: the resolutions of 1765, denouncing the Stamp Act as a violation of American rights ; the origination in 1773 of the Committees of Corre- spondence, which united the colonies in the defense of their rights; the call in 1774 for a general Colonial Congress, which inaugurated resistance against British tyranny ; the instructions to the Virginian delegates to propose to Congress the American Declaration of Independence, which Jefferson wrote and which Washington made a reality. After this she gave to the country the Constitution of which Madison was the father and under which George Washington was the first President. A Virginian raised the first public voice against the tyranny of the mother-land; a Virginian first moved our national independence in the Continen- tal Congress ; a Virginian wrote the Declaration of Independence ; a Virginian was commander-in- chief of the continental army all through the Revo- lutionary War; a Virginian brought that war to a successful close ; a Virginian was the father of the American Constitution; a Virginian was the president of the Constitutional Convention ; a Vir- ginian was the first President of the United States ; a Virginian first shaped our foreign policy ; a Vir- ginian first saw beyond the colonial irtto the na- tional future of our country, and first discerned in THE OLD DOMINION. 47 the opening and new times that future which is now our manifest destiny. It is easy for me to draw this address to a con- clusion and to point its moral. The conclusion of my address is this : If we are to be true sons of our renoivned fathers, we must do as they did ; we must give our country GRAND MEN AND GRAND MEA- SURES. We have seen to-night the type of men that make a magnificent nation. They are apocalyptic men ; men who see in the future sublime visions for their country ; men of large prevision ; men who are not colonial nor local, but national ; men of sacrifice; men of*persistence ; men of progress; men who are not afraid to improve on their ances- tors ; men of eloquence ; men of powerful pens ; men of executive ability ; men like George Wash- ington, who had not only the genius of intellect and the genius of war and the genius of states- manship, but who had also and preeminently the genius of character; men who are genuine through and through ; true men and God-fearing men. " God give us men ! A time like this demands Clean minds, pure hearts, true faith, and ready hands. Men who possess opinions and a will ; Men whom desire for office does not kill ; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy ; Men who have honor ; men who will not lie ; Tall men ; sun-crowned men ; men who live above the fog In public duty and in private thinking ; Men who can stand before a demagogue And denounce hii treacheroui flatte'rita without winking. 48 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. For while base tricksters, with their worn-out creeds, Their large professions, and their little deeds. Wrangle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps, Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps." If we give ourselves to our country in the form of such men, we will be certain to give our coun- try the grand and needed measures which its des- tiny demands ; for grand men always carry in themselves grand measures. We are still in our formative period. The clothes of the boy will not answer for the clothes of the man. Growth brings new probjems. We need measures that will han- dle vast numbers and that will give to the indi- vidual his rights, while at the same time conserv- ing the rights of the many ; we need measures that will deal with minorities and majorities, and be fair to both; we need measures that will absorb our foreign elements and conform them into a right and lofty political type ; we need measures that will secure to the country an honest mone- tary system and that will not fail to put a hundred cents into every dollar. We talk of the old colo- nial and Revolutionary times as times that were big. Times are always big to earnest men ; our times are big to us if we are earnest ; they are crowded with problems that can only be solved by men like Washington and Jefferson. There is the money problem, and the labor problem, and the tariff problem, and the emigration problem, and the education problem, and the problem of our THE OLD dominion: 49 foreign policy. Then there is the great problem of our relation to broad humanity. The oppressed in all the nations of the globe are looking toward America for light, for ruling principles, for certain guidance, and for a helping, uplifting hand. We have a mission to all the nations of the earth as well as a mission to our citizens at home. Our experience gives us that mission ; our progress gives us that mission ; our holy ambition to reach the highest civilization gives us that mission. It is our mission to lead humanity on all continents, and it is our mission to lead just because civilly we are ahead of humanity. To take a concrete case : there is the suffering Armenian race trampled ruthlessly into annihila- tion by the merciless heel of the God-forsaken Turk. Oh, what shrieks of anguish pierce the air of the Orient this very hour! What unnamable atrocities are inflicted upon pure-minded Christian women and innocent little children ! what profane and unholy mutilation of noble men — men made in the image of the one hving and true God! Behold how virtue is mocked ! Great God ! how can these human monsters go into Thine ineffable presence besotted, blood-stained, dehumanized, and crime-covered? How can they face Thy judgment-throne to receive their final damnation i Has the American Republic no interest in all this ? has it no duty? has it no mission? One thing I know, and that is this : silence is not its duty. It 50 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. has a voice in this world, and it is its mission to make its voice heard. Let the Senate speak ; let the House speak ; let the navy speak ; and in God's name and in humanity's name command that rapine and self-inflicted famine and cold-blooded murder shall cease at once and cease forever. Oh, for a Patrick Henry to propose a measure for the present emergency, or a Jefl"erson or a Washing- ton! Oh, for a Marshall and a Lee and a Mason to call together a committee of conference from all the civilized nations of the world to set up per- manently an international court of justice to try just such cases as this ; to see that all men in power — men who are responsible to no one but themselves and their lusts — shall be held respon- sible to justice somewhere. No man on God's earth should be allowed to Hve a life irresponsible to justice. Why should there be courts of justice all over the world for subjects, and not courts of justice for rulers? So long as this is the case the system for the administration of justice among men is far from complete. With such an inter- national court of justice in existence, the sultan of Turkey could this very hour be indicted for mur- der in the first degree, and tried ; and if found guilty could be decently executed. We have to-day in our possession as- a nation the key of the old French Bastille, which in former days dealt out horrible death to innocent men and tender women, just as the sultan of Turkey is THE OLD DOMINION. 51 doing to-day. When the Bastille was leveled to the ground Lafayette sent the key to George Washington. It hangs on the walls of Mount Vernon, where our Washington peacefully sleeps. I have held that key in these two hands, and have praised God that the days of the Bastille were over forever. Oh, for a measure, a wise measure, a strong measure, a righteous measure, an irresistible mea- sure, an American measure, a measure with the ringing voice of Patrick Henry in it, a measure with the legislative lore of a Marshall in it, a mea- sure with the sure victory of George Washington in it, which will hang the gory crown of the sultan of Turkey on the walls of Mount Vernon by yon- der key of the fallen Bastille! Measures — these are what our Republic needs ; measures which will grow and protect and bring to perfection a fine Americanism. There is nothing grander than a fine Americanism, A fine Ameri- canism is the equation of the highest civilization, of the broadest humanity, of the purest and sim- plest religion, of the largest liberty, of the grand- est personal and political principles, of the richest and most progressive Christian life, and of a mag- nificent manhood and a holy womanhood. II. THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 53 II. THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS.* Our chief duty in life is to look ahead. The golden age is in the future. It is among the attain- ments which as yet are unreached, but. which are within sight of faith. The standing command of God through Paul to humanity is, " Forgetting the things which are behind, press forward toward those things which are before, and seize the prize of your high calling." Yet we have a duty which we owe the past : to search the past, appreciate it, exalt its virtues, praise its conquests, garner its fruitage, incorporate its wealth of thought and ex- perience, and transmit its good to posterity, and in this way give it an earthly immortality. A right use of the past is a moral uplift. It is a necessary equipment for the tasks of the present and a prep- aration for pushing on into the future. I have often been impressed by the large place which God has given history in the great Book of the world. In the Bible historical book follows * Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brook- lyn, at a Forefathers'-day service. 57 58 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. historical book. The Old Testament opens with no less than eighteen books of history. They are interspersed with codes of law, it is true, but their chief characteristic is history. Then comes a book of sacred songs, but of the songs in this book many of them are historical from beginning to end. After the Book of Psalms comes the Book of Prov- erbs. Then a poetical book or two. Then sixteen books of prophecy. But what is prophecy but the forecast of history? It is history in the form of vision. The New Testament opens with five books of history, "the four gospels and the Book of the Acts : the history of Jesus Christ, and the history of His apostles. Then follow a few epistles, and the volume closes with the Apocalypse. But what is the Apocalypse? Simply the history of the future. In the Bible history is piled on history. The Bible is God's voice crying to man. Study history ! And God's voice should be heard. God is in history. Truth is in history. The expose of error is in his- tory. The exhibition of the possibilities and the potentialities of man is in history. The exhibit of the rewards of faith and of virtue and of courage is in history. Appropriate to this Forefathers' service, we should not fail to notice how God puts in the forefront of the experience of the nation of Israel the most striking pages of human history, and how attrac- tively He writes up these pages of history. The nation makes many grand pages of history in after THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 59 time — pages which bear the names of David and Solomon and Elijah and Isaiah and Daniel; but none of these surpass the pages which open the national volume of the Hebrews : the stories of Abraham and of Isaac ; the courtship of Jacob ; the romance of Joseph's exaltation, a literal transcript of real life ; the biography of Moses ; the plagues of Egypt; the miracle of the Red Sea; the fall of Jericho. ■ I tell you that in all of these we have romance piled upon romance, and power added to power. There is the exhibit of God here ; there is the wonderful fulfilment of promise ; there is mar- velous growth from unlikely seed ; and there is the magnificent triumph of right over wrong. Back to this history of the opening of their race the Hebrews constantly reverted. Fathers repeated its stirring things to their children. The prophets and leaders of the nation used it to reclaim the people and to incite to faith and enterprise ; the poets ran it into sweet verse, and minstrels sang it to the stroke of the harp. Abraham and Moses and Jacob and Joseph never ceased to be powers and leaders in the land. When I read the early history of the Hebrews I instinctively say, Blessed is that nation that has grand men for its ancestors, whose first page of history teems with interest, and whose opening chapters are filled with God, and with human hero- ism, the product of union with God. Such a history will send a holy and inspiring thrill through the 60 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. body politic age after, age. Such ancestors will stand as eternal sentinels, guarding the hberties of the nation and the principles of the nation and the faith of the nation. Such men will rebuke and command the nation and forever lead the nation. In its possession of noble ancestry the Ameri- can Republic is like the commonwealth of Israel. Israel had Abraham, who left his native land to found a nation for God's holy purposes. America has the Pilgrim fathers, who left their native land for precisely the same purpose. They took posses- sion of this continent for us, and they left us as a heritage a history which embodies the very princi- ples that have worked themselves out into this vast Republic, with its boasted institutions. They left us a free church and a free state and a system of free schools. They left us this golden principle, incarnated in working form: All men are equal before the law. Our nation in its greatness to-day is nothing more than the oak which has sprung from the acorn which tliey planted. And what we see is only a prophecy of what shall be. There are prayers of the Pilgrims still before the throne of God awaiting an answer; and God feels their strong pulsations beating in harmony with His purposes for America, and God keeps them con- stantly in sight, that they may be ultimately real- ized when the right day comes. When that day comes the)!' shall be tr^^nslated from divine decrees THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 61 into human realities. The Pilgrim fathers are not through with America, and America is not through with the Pilgrim fathers. God grant that we may never part from them. God grant that our nation may never have any future into which Plymouth Rock cannot be built unhewn. I wish at this time merely to recount in a plain way the story of the Pilgrim fathers, and then to draw some lessons. The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock Decem- ber 21, 1620. Their story is more than a quarter of a millennium old. In telling their story let us begin away back. Let us begin with Henry VIII, of England. Henry VHI. threw off his allegiance to the Roman pontiff, and constituted himself pon- tiff, the head of the church in his own land. His motives were bad, but his step was overruled by the Lord, and made the starting-point of a great good to England and the world. He gave a stag- gering blow to a great system of iniquity. Bloody Mary took the English church back into allegiance to Rome, but, after Mary, Elizabeth broke again the yoke of Rome, and made the Church of Eng- land free. She brought with her a reformation, but it was a reformation which needed to be re- formed. She was a religious tyrant. She made herself supreme in her church, and passed laws that all should conform to her church. She established censorship over human thought, and lorded it over the human conscience. All who differed either in 62 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. worship or in doctrine she subjected to severe per- secution. By sheer brute force she determined to create reHgious uniformity. Just here the Pilgrims come in. They could not conform, and they would not conform. Their in- ability existed in their will. Their principles con- flicted with both the doctrines and the practices of the established church. What were these principles ? These: (i) Christ Jesus alone is the head of the church, and it is a usurpation for any man or woman to claim to be head, or dictate to the church, or to prescribe its creed and worship. (2) The Bible is the sole rule of faith and practice. All the appoint- ments in the church must have a divine warrant be- fore they can be tolerated or be allowed. It is not enough to say, There is nothing in the Word of God against such and such an ordinance in the church ; every ordinance must be able to show, as a warrant, a ".Thus saith the Lord." (3) The church is an independent organization, ruled by the peo- ple, under God. This principle was directly con- trary to the constitution of the established church. In it a few bishops were the governing power. But out of the equality of all before the Lord, and the right of all to a voice in the church, grew the great principles of the rights of conscience and of individual liberty, the foundation-stones of our American institutions. BeHeving thus, the Pilgrims withdrew from the fellowship of the established church. They organ- THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 63 ized churches of their own, where they preached the truth as they understood it. The result of this was persecution by the reigning powers in the church and by the civil government of England. At least three martyrs were executed for their principles. • Henry Barrows, John Greenwood, and John Penry were put to death in 1593. The mur- der of these men led to the embarkment of many individuals, and even of whole congregations, to Holland, where religious liberty was offered to all men. The story narrows itself just here. One congre- gation claims our attention from this point on. This church was formed in 1606 in Scrooby, Not- tinghamshire, England. It was organized by mutual covenant in what was called the Scrooby Manor, a house with royal associations. The Scrooby Manor was the cradle of Pilgrim liberty. The church organized in this house was the May- flower church, and it carried in it the future of America. To this church Richard Clifton at first preached ; but he gave way to a young minister who came to them, the famous John Robinson, a graduate of Cambridge, In that church were men destined to be famous in the Plymouth Colony, America. Here was William Brewster, the elder, and the leader of finance. Here were his children. Patience and Fear and Love and Wrestling, Here was William Bradford, the future historian of the church and governor of Plymouth Colony. This 64 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. church in Scrooby Manor escaped persecution longer than the other churches, but at length its time came, and this drove it from England to Hol- land. In Holland it went first to Amsterdam, and thence to Leyden, where it remained some eleven or twelve years. Now for the most important step, the embarka- tion for America. Why did this little church deter- mine to quit Holland ? This question brings again into view the principles of the Pilgrims and the swaying motives of their lives. They had several reasons : (i) They found that they had no room for growth, no place or opportunity to develop them- selves to their satisfaction, and give visibility and practicability to their principles. The original stock of emigrants was growin j old, and they were afraid that their whole enterprise would fade out of sight. (2) They were anxious about their children. To use their own words, " they were in danger of be- coming degenerated and corrupted;" for the Sab- bath was not reverenced at Leyden as they would wish. (3) Their greatest reason was this : they had a burning desire to spread the gospel in remote parts of the world. Actuated by these principles, they sailed from Delfthaven in the ship Speedzvell, and, reaching England after various vicissitudes, sailed for America in the Mayflower from the port of Plym- outh. There were one hundred and two souls on board, and among them were John Carver, THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 65 the first governor, and Miles Standish, the soldier, small of stature, but large of heart. Other events were taking place at the time they sailed. In England, Cromwell had just come of age and was moving unconsciously on to a career of influence which was destined to rock England and leave its stamp upon the whole world. John Milton was then but a boy, but drinking in the love of liberty which made him a liberty-loving man. Francis Bacon was a man of sixty. Shakespeare was working out his great dramas. On the Conti- nent the Thirty Years' War was just breaking out, which was destined to embroil all Europe. Such was the time when the Pilgrims sailed. Who can tell the tedium and the wear of that rough passage? Sixty-four long days passed be- fore (November 9, 1620) they sighted land. The land which they saw was Cape Cod. This was not what they intended to strike ; they had hoped to strike a spot near the mouth of the Hudson River, After excursions and wanderings and perplexities, thQ Pilgrims landed finally on the famous rock which they called Plymouth in honor of the port from which they had sailed in England. But be- fore landing they drew up and signed the famous Mayflower compact, and elected John Carver gov- ernor. The covenant carries in it the declaration of the Pilgrims' faith. It gives us an insight into their deepest purposes. It has the right ring in it, and 66 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. shows a clear perception of the nature and obliga- tions of civil government. Thus it opens : " In the name of God, amen. We whose names are under- written, having undertaken for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith, do sol- emnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civic body politic." God should have the first place in civil government, and He has in the compact of the Mayfloiver. The suflfering of this little company of exiles upon the bleak and rocky shore of the Atlantic beggars description. Sickness and hunger and cold and perils from savages were among the things which wasted them. Still they held on ; and when the AIayflozvcrX.\xxxi^^ its prowEnglandward once more, not a man went back. Half of the colony died dur- ing the first year ; still the rest kept up their faith and looked for a golden future. They had to wait long for a harvest, but they accepted their scanty food, and always felt that they had reason for thankfulness to God. The historian tells us that Brewster, the ruling elder, lived for many months together without bread, and frequently on fish alone. With nothing but oysters and clams be- fore him, he, with his family, would give thanks to God that they were permitted to enjoy the abundance of the sea and the treasures hid in the sands. But the harvests came by and by, and a better future opened. Then began the building of THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 67 the clrurch and the building of the school-house and the building of homes. Then began a life which opened and broadened until Plymouth Col- ony found incorparation in the confederation of the colonies, and the confederation of the colonies transformed itself into the Republic. You will notice that in telling this story I have kept upon a single line of history: the line of the Pilgrims. There is another line of history, viz. : the line of the Puritans. On that line I purposely have not run. This suggests the question. What is the differ- ence between the Pilgrims and the Puritans? From what I have presented you see that the Pilgrims were separatists. They left the Church of England ; they separated themselves from it entirely. They had their own churches. They were exiles for religion. The Puritans, on the contrary, who thought very much as the Pilgrims did, still continued in connection with the Church of England. They said, " We will work inside of the church and purify it." The Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. The Puritans came later, and settled on Massachusetts Bay and elsewhere. The Pilgrims did not persecute. The Puritans did. It was the Puritans who burned the witches and exe- cuted the Quakers and quarreled with the Baptists. In England they even helped in the persecution of the Pilgrims, the separatists. The established church often used them as spies among the Pil- 68 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. grims. The Pilgrims were broader minded. They befriended Roger Williams when the Puri- tans drove him out. Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony even visited Roger Williams in Providence, R. I., and gave him help. In Holland the Pilgrims had come into contact with religious liberty, and had imbibed the spirit of that liberty. They had grown into broad toleration. For Hol- land was the refuge not only of exiles from Eng- land, but also from France and from Scotland. The Pilgrims met with these refugees of other fajths, and learned to love them. It was this education in Holland that made them the true liberals when the federation which issued in our Republic was first formed. It was the Pilgrim spirit that domi- nated this federation and sent down to us that which is distinctively American. Having the story of the Pilgrims thus before us, the question meets us. What is our duty in reference to the Pilgrims? There is only one answer, and that is this : We should reproduce them and perpetuate their principles and their ideal institutions. To do this two things are ne- cessary. I. If we would reproduce the Pilgrims and per- petuate their ideal institutions, we must have the Pilgrims* loyalty to the Bible. Where did they get their principles? From the Word of God. It was^he truth that made them free men, and God's Word is truth. It was in the Bible that THE PILGRIM FOREFATHERS. 69 they found their ideal church. It was in the Bible that they got their manner of life. It was in the Bible that they got all their principles. It was to- the Bible that they went for those deadly parallel- isms which they brought against everything that was false. They looked on the Bible as an all-sufficient book, and they were right. There is no sphere in life in which it does not give ample instruction. What about Miles Standish and his courtship? Some one asks, " Does it teach anything on that line?" Yes. I verily believe that Miles Stand- ish, when he sent the young and eloquent John Alden to court and woo the maiden Priscilla for him, thought he was thoroughly bibhcal, and he was biblical in a measure. He had a Bible pre- cedent. Do you not remember how Isaac got his wife ? Abraham felt that the young Isaac was too bashful to do his own courting, so he sent the old and trusted household servant, Eliezer, to do his wooing for him. No doubt that is where Miles Standish got his idea. But why did he fail? Because he did not follow the Bible closely enough. He did not notice that when Abraham chose a representative to do the courting for his son he chose a very, very old man, and not a handsome young man. Had young John Alden been chosen to do Isaac's courting, I am morally certain that Isaac would have lost Rebecca just as Miles lost Priscilla. There is a moral in the 70 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Story of Miles Standish, and that is, if you want some things well done you must do them yourself. It was in the Bible that they got their ideas of civil government and civil liberty, and this I es- pecially wish to emphasize. As Milton says, "The Bible doth more clearly teach the sohd rules of civil government than all the eloquence of Greece or Rome." There is no book like this Book to inspire Hb- erty. It has inspired all the liberty that has found incarnation in our national life. It struck Plym- outh Rock, and immediately that rock became our American Horeb to send forth a perpetual stream of blessing. It was the Bible that inspired the heroes -of '76. We all admire the utterance of Patrick Henry, which electrified the colonies, made the Revolutionary War a certainty, and helped in the inauguration of the American Re- public. His words thrill through the nation unto this day: "Give me liberty or give me death." But that sentiment was not original with Patrick Henry. It was a Bible sentiment. Solomon uttered it in substance. Two millenniums before Patrick Henry's day, looking upon the oppressed in the world, and walking among the downtrod- den of humanity, and realizing their terrible deg- radation, he said, " I praise the dead who are already dead, and who have escaped human woe, more than ye living, who are thus miserably alive," i.e., " Give me liberty or give me death." Bible- THE PtLGRtM FOREFATHERS. 71 loving men have always been liberty-loving men. The Lollards in England, the adherents of Luther in Germany, the followers of Knox in Scotland, the Huguenots of France, the friends of Zwingli in Switzerland, Cromwell and his Ironsides, the Waldenses and the Albigenses of the Alps — all these were lovers of the Bible, and all these were heroes in liberty's cause. The Pilgrims breathed into the American atmosphere the principles of liberty, and these have gloriously marched through our history ever since : first into the Declaration of Independence, then into our national Constitu- tion, and then and finally into the Emancipation Proclamation, the crowning glory of the nation. Only as we are true to the Book of the Pilgrims can we carry on the Pilgrims' cause. The Queen of England, when asked once what was the secret of England's greatness, pointed to the open Bible. That which made England has made America. This certainly is the truth which those who de- signed the monument to the Pilgrim forefathers meant to teach posterity. On the brow of the hill overlooking the bay where the Mayflower was moored, and where the waters continue to beat in volleying thunders or in musical laughter upon its sand, they have reared a colossal statue of national significance. On the four corners of the pedestal repose four figures representing law, morality, freedom, and education. There these should rest by right. But above 72 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. these stands erect the gigantic figure of Faith. Thirty-six feet she rises from the foot, which rests upon a slate from Plymouth Rock. With, one hand she grasps an open Bible, and with the other in graceful gesture she points the nation up to God. The only book she opens to the eyes of the nation is the Bible. And so it should be. The Holy Word holds the only true light which has led our advances into any national virtue. 2. My final thought is this: If we would repro- duce and perpetuate the principles and ideal in- stitutions of the Pilgrim fathers, we must possess the Pilgrims' character and the Pilgrims' manhood. Manhood and character! These are the things above all things which the world admires, and these are powers. The Pilgrims were men — men moral in fiber, granite in nature. They were man- hood's noblest types. Manhood ! Nobility of life ! Nobility of thought! Manhood — manhood fash- ioned into a character w^hich is luminous and har- monious and self-adjusted and perpetual! What is there on earth beyond this? There is some- thing grand in it. There is something more than grand in it; God is in it; Christ is in it. A Christian manhood is a radiant thing; it is full of majesty and sanctity ; we never think of it but we desire it. From the Pilgrim fathers I learn this lesson: for the furtherance of the cause of God we must have manhood ; we must have men as well as principles ; we must have character as well THE riLGRIM FOREFATHERS. 73 as creed. There are multitudes of grand princi- ples and grand creeds in the world, but they meet with httle or no success; and the reason is that they are not married to men. They are crippled and thrown into disrepute by the weak personality of their professed advocates. You cannot make heavenly and holy principles effective apart from effective men. Even the Bible itself needs men behind it in order to produce reformations and inaugurate revolutions. It is not the Bible alone that reforms and revolutionizes ; it is the Bible plus Zwingli ; the Bible plus Luther ; the Bible plus John Knox ; the Bible plus John Calvin ; the Bible plus Augustine ; the Bible plus the Pilgrims. Men are to principles what the cannon is to the cannon-ball. Men with no larger caliber than a toy pistol cannot hurl against the fortress of the foe principles which are the size of cannon-balls. For the victory of the truth we want men — men with a large caHber of faith and a large caliber of liberality and a large caliber of hope and a large caliber of enthusiasm. One of England's greatest statesmen was asked by a friend if he thought a certain measure would pass through the Parliament. His quick reply was, " It will not." His friend began to dispute his decision, and to forecast, and to reason with him as to the righteousness of the cause. The statesman replied, " I acknowledge that the cause possesses all that you claim for it, and I believe 74 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. that it ought to succeed; but nevertheless it will not, and the reason is that it has not the right kind of men as its advocates ; they have not the char- acter and the consistency that hold and sway the respect and judgment of their fellow-men." My fellow-men, essential as principles are, principles are not everything. Principles and creeds of the very • best type are lying all around us utterly powerless, and they are powerless because they are divorced from the right kind of personality and the right kind of character. We owe the Bible, we owe the church, we owe our nation, we owe the cause of liberty, we owe the Pilgrim fathers a personality full of love, and full of sincerity, and full of stead- fastness and constancy, and iull of self-subjuga- tion, and full of the spirit of self-sacrifice, and full of faith and holy ambition. Let us band together for the payment of our debt. III. THE PURITANS. 75 III. THE PURITANS.* The American Republic is a great way on in human history. Plymouth Rock is a milestone that speaks of centuries of imperfection and ex- periment left far behind, and that tells of the near- ness of the world's greatest liberty. This is but saying that the American Republic is the latest result of the world's progress. It is the flower of which all the rest of time is the bud. This is the way all historians present the American Republic. They do not present it as an isolated thing, but as a related thing. And this only is true history ; this only is the way to exhibit the play of principle and the operation of cause and effect in the world of human life. Only by such a presentation can we draw helpful conclusions and construct advanced plans for the future. Do you knowhowMotleyspeaks of the American Republic? He says: "The American democracy • Delivered in "Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brook- lyn, on the Sabbath evening prior to Forefathers' day. 79 80 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. is the result of all that was great in bygone times. All led up to it. It embodies all. Mount Sinai is in it, Greece is in it, Egypt is in it, Rome is in it, England is in it; all the arts are in it, and all the reformations, and all the discoveries." Beginning at the beginning of time, he thus sums up the march of events which ends in the American Re- public : " Speech, the alphabet, Mount Sinai, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Nazareth, the feudal system, the Magna Charta, gunpowder, the printing-press, the mariners' compass, America." The method of Motley is the method of John Fiske. He follows this method in writing his book, "The Beginnings of New England." He traces the history of nation-making from the be- ginning of time down to the making of our nation. Three methods have been followed. There was first the Oriental method of nation-making, viz., conquest without incorporation. You see this method in power away back in the past, and in the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates. This was the method of Babylonia and Assyria and Egypt. The second method was the Roman method, viz., conquest with incorporation, but without representation. The third method is the English method, viz., conquest with incorporation and representation. This method has been worked out into its highest form upon our American soil. This is the method which we are commissioned THE PURITANS. 81 Still to improve and to bring to an ideal perfec- tion. This much we have gained by our present trend of thought, viz, : we must know America's past in order fully to know and appreciate America's pres- ent; this is the only way to see the real, full, great America of to-day. Thus it is with every nation. Thus it is with England. What is England ? The present millions living there to-day ? The present government ruling there to-day ? No. These are not England in its entirety. No. Let any nation in Europe clash with England in war, and it will find that it strikes against the whole past of England. Eng- land buried in Westminster Abbey will rise and live again, and fight again, and nerve the arm and give courage to the heart of men to-day. That nation will have to fight old Cromwell with his Ironsides, and old Nelson with his fleet, and old Wellington with the army that won Waterloo. Past England lives in present England. Past America forms part of present America, and lives in present America. To use a concrete illustration, although Webster's body had been in its grave for almost a generation before the inauguration of our Civil War, yet Webster's spirit was in that war from Bull Run to Appomattox. Webster was the first American to teach America her own greatness and the power of the federal government; and Web-. 82 MAKERS OF TFE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Star's arguments were behind every bayonet, and were carried home by every cannon-shot, in the war for the American Union. If what I have said concerning the relation be- tween the past and the present be true, two things follow as a duty which posterity should perform : first, posterity must study history; and second, posterity must honor the past with suitable me- morials. Does any one say, " I have no taste for history ; it is only the stale story of every day's doings"? Believe me, history may be made a delight as well as a benefit. The way history is written in this last decade of the nineteenth cen- tury makes it a delight. The golden threads of romance are so woven into the sober russet of every day's doings that if you hold it up in the true light it will glow and glitter as brilliantly as though the hand of an enchanter had wrought it out of golden tissue, and constructed it into a robe for holiday attire. Does any one say, " I do not see any value in memorials " ? Believe me, you do not inherit this faith from your civil fathers. What means the Bunker Hill monument? What means the Washington obelisk in the capital of the United States ? What means the Fourth of July, the great monumental day of the nation ? What means Fore- fathers' day, which comes to us every year? Dan- iel Webster closed his oration at the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument with these words : THE PURITANS. 83 " That motionless shaft will be the most powerful of speakers. Its speech will be of civil and reli- gious liberty. It will speak of patriotism and of courage. It will speak of the moral improvement and elevation of mankind. Decrepit age leaning against its base, and ingenuous youth gathering around it, will speak to one another of the glorious events with which it is connected, and will ex- claim, 'Thank God, I am an American!'" The words of Webster have been verified. He whose love of country is not kindled by standing upon Bunker Hill is not worthy of his country and pos- sesses but the minimum of patriotism. His only due is expatriation. We have not made ourselves nationally ; we have been made. We are an evolution, and grati- tude is our becoming attitude. We did not dig up the first precious gold ; we did not first unlock the secrets of philosophy ; we were not the first to give tone to the moral sense ; we did not first think the Republic into being. I can hear the drum- beat of the American Revolution as far back as the seventeenth century. We were not the first to think of the welfare of the masses or to assert the rights of the individual. We are not half so wise as we take ourselves to be. Back of our new machinery, and our new processes of industry, and our better homes, and our improved furniture, and our finer clothes, and our easier methods of locp- 84 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. motion, and our increased facilities of exchange of thought, are the old slow-crawling, worm-moving ages. We have received our inheritance as a be- queathment from the fathers, and it is our duty to make acknowledgment of our indebtedness and celebrate the reign of God in their lives. This we can do by observing a memorial day in honor of their fidelity. A memorial day is a holy page from the book of God's providence, and on that page there glows the very same truth that glows upon the page of the Holy Bible. The study of the lives of the makers of our nation is not necessarily a secular study ; it may be and it should be a religious study. Our fathers came here and built here largely, if not solely, in the interest of religion. This was so with the Huguenots, and the Hollanders, and the Episcopalians of Virginia, and the Quakers of Penn- sylvania, and the Covenanters of the Carolinas, and the Pilgrims and Puritans of Massachusetts. This we will find as we study the separate history of these makers of America. Besides all this, we believe that the American Republic is the creation of God, and has a grand commission from Him to work out among the nations of the world. Now, the study of the Republic as a creation of God is a religious exercise. One thing is before us this evening as we cele- brate Forefathers' day, and that is the play of the THE PURITANS. 85 Puritan influence in the making of the American Republic. On the evening of last Forefathers' day we studied together the history of the Pilgrim; now we are to study together the history of the Puri- tan. Then there is a difference between the Pil- grims and the Puritans? Certainly. If we were living in Boston and failed to make a distinction we should never be forgiven. Let us here and now set before our mind the distinction between them. Henry VIII., King of England, threw off his allegiance to the Roman pontiff and constituted himself head of the church in his own land. His motives were bad, but God overruled the step which he took and made it a starting-point of great good to England and to all the world. The reason he broke with the pontiff was, the pontiff refused to divorce him from the queen, his lawful wife. Separated from papacy it was not possible for England to remain Catholic. The consequence was the establishment of the Church of England. But when the English church was established it was found that all in this church were not of one mind. There were advanced thinkers who wanted more liberty and who hated oppression in a prel- ate just as much as they hated oppression in a pope. Where did these dissatisfied men come from ? Where did they get their advanced ideas ? so .^/.lA'EKS OF THE AMERICAN KEELBLIC. The answer of that question is a history in itseh". They were tlie spiritual descendants of \V}cHlTe and of the Lollards. Wycliffe and the Lollards got their ideas and principles from the Holy Scrip- tures. WyclitYe translated the Bible for the peo- ple, and thus set the cause of liberty in England in motion. Henry VHL lived in the time of Martin Luther, and wrote against him. He did not want England to become Protestant, but he could not help it. The accumulated power of WyclitTe's Bible was irresistible and gave rise to the Puritans whom the king found in his church. From this you see that there were forerunners of the Puritans long before the time of Luther. There were scat- tered voices all through Europe, like the early- awakening birds of the morning preluding the full choir of the noontide day. There was a growing cry rolling across Europe, and that cry. which rang from Wycliffe to Savonarola, from John Huss and Jerome of Prague to Zwingli and Erasmus— that cry, which swept from the Alpine glaciers to the fiords of Norway, and which broke from the lips of Luther like a peal of thunder — that cry was a cry demanding reform. I cannot here detail the conduct of the Church of England. It became oppressive. The church would not listen to those who asked for reform. On the con- trary, it subjected them to cruel persecution. But persecution has never put down any cause of God; TJ/E I'UrUTANS. 87 it has always strengthened it and has always drawn sympathy to it. This proved true here. In pro- portion as prelacy grew Puritanism grew. The claim of the prelates ran higher and higher through Parker, Whitgift, and Bancroft, until it culminated in Laud ; but the resistance of the Puritans became stouter and stouter through Hooper, Cartwright, and Bradshaw, until it culminated in the West- minster divines. After Henry VHI. came Edward VI., and after him Bloody Mary. Queen Mary took the Church of England back into allegiance to Rome, Under her persecutions many of the Puritans fled to Switzerland — a land where the people were as free as the singing waterfalls, the land of William Tell and of the reformer Zwingli, the land where Cal- vin made his home and taught his sy.stem. Here they met with Calvin and drank Calvinism from the fountain. Every Alpine canton was a repub- lican community. So here these exiles of God drank in the .spirit of liberty. Mary was followed by her sister Elizabeth, Eng- land's famous queen, and in her reign the Puritans who had fled to Switzerland returned. She again broke the yoke of Rome ; she established the Church of England by law. In her efforts to make the Church of England all in all, .she declared that all her subjects should think alike, and worship alike, and conform to the ritual of the English 88 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. church. She determined by sheer brute force to create reHgious uniformity. The thing was an ab- surdity. Until God unmakes us, and then makes us over again, religious uniformity will remain an eternal impossibility. Just here the Pilgrims come in. They rebelled out and out against the policy of Queen Elizabeth, and separated themselves from the Church of Eng- land, and formed churches of their own. Of course they were persecuted. This led to the emigration of a company of them to Holland, from whence, in the course of time, they sailed to America, landing on the famous Plymouth Rock December 21, 1620, and forming the famous Plymouth Colony. The Pilgrims were separatists. The Puritans were not. They were only nonconformists, and as non- conformists they remained in the Church of England in hopes that in due time they might reform that church and mold it to their ideal. The Puritans were still in England while the Pilgrims were in America building up their new colony. They re- mained there until the year 1628. This was dur- ing the reign of Charles I. The usurpations of this king made them restless, and, hearing of the success of the colony of Pilgrims in America, they determined to emigrate. In very many cases they were led by their ministers, and the plans for emi- gration were often formed by these. It was during this year that Salem was settled by John Endicott -J THE PURITANS. 89 and his company. Now began what is known in American history as " the Puritan exodus." This lasted for eleven years, from 1629 to 1640, i.e., during the time that Charles I. arbitrarily governed England without a Parliament; 1640 was the year in which the Long Parliament began which ushered in the wonderful times of Cromwell. Cromwell's time gave the Puritans of England something to do in their own land, and hence emigration ceased. Their mission then was to rally around Cromwell and Pym and Hampden and Milton, and assert the rights of the people against the tyranny of the crown. It was during the period of the exodus that John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachu- setts, came to America. It was then that Bos- ton and Cambridge and Watertown and Roxbury and Dorchester were settled. All were separate communities. It was during this period that Roger Williams settled in Rhode Island, and that Davenport came with his company from England and settled in New Haven, and that Thomas Hooker, wanting more liberty, migrated from the Charles River with a hundred of his congregation, and went to Hartford. It was in Hartford, Conn., under Hooker's inspiration, that the first American con- stitution which issued in a distinct government was framed. Thomas Hooker deserves more than any other man to be called an American father. The 90 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAX REPUBLIC. government of the United States of to-day is in lineal descent more nearly related to that consti- tution of Connecticut than to the constitution of any of the other thirteen colonies. It was during this period that Harvard College was founded, and also Yale, and that the free public schools were planted. Away back here began also the oppres- sive enactments of England with respect to trade. As England's laws oppressing the people of the colonies could not execute themselves, away back here began the spirit of rebellion against England which culminated in the American Declaration of Independence. When the Puritan exodus ceased there were in New England twenty-six thousand Puritans. The Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock were the small minor- ity ; but that mattered little, for now in America all the Puritans equally with the Pilgrims were separatists. They all adopted the independent form of church government ; they were all here for the advancement of religion ; they were all striving to work the Bible out in every-day life. The Pilgrims largely believed in the separation of church and state ; the Puritans believed in a the- ocracy which made both church and state identical. Hence the condition of suffrage with the Puritans was church-membership. Thus it was at first, but by and by suffrage was enlarged so as to take in those who were baptized, though not church-mem- THE PURITANS. 91 bers. This was called the "half-way covenant." Finally all religious tests were abolished. For one hundred and fifty years after the Puri- tan exodus, i.e., from 1640 to 1790, New England received very few by means of immigration. Its increase came from its own families ; it enjoyed a remarkable seclusion. There were only three ex- ceptions to this. In 1652, after his victory at Dun- bar and Worcester, Cromwell sent two hundred and seventy Scotch prisoners to Boston as a pun- ishment. They grandly bore the punishment ; they rather liked it, I imagine, for their descendants are there to this day. In 1685, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, one hundred and fifty fam- ilies of the Huguenots came to Massachusetts ; their names are perpetuated in Bowdoin College and Faneuil Hall. In 1719 several Presbyterian families from the north of Ireland settled in New Hampshire ; their descendants are still in that State. Londonderry, N. H., marks their settlement. These were the three exceptions, and they were very small. When the hour of the Revolution struck, there was no county in old England itself that had a purer English blood than New England. The homogeneity of population accounts for the one- ness of belief and action in New England in the matter of the American Revolution, The people of New England were one people, and they struck like a trip-hammer when they struck. It was this 92 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. unity and homogeneity which made them the power they were in the formation of the American Repubhc, and which helped New England to stamp itself upon the whole country for the country's good. It was only after the American Revolution that New-Englanders began to move into the western part of our land and there form new States ; but this they did so effectively that there is a Portland to-day on the Pacific as well as a Portland on the Atlantic. They now number one fourth of the entire population of our sixty millions, and are a beneficial force in every State in the Union. While the Puritans were diligent in building up New England, let no one suppose that they were indifferent to what was going forward in the mother- land ; they were one with the progressives there. It has been said that the English Revolution vir- tually began in Boston, where Sir Edmund An- dros, King James's representative, was arrested and put in prison. New England was the first to hail the enthronement of William, Prince of Orange. During the Cromwellian conflict Crom- well's strongest friends were in New England. The pen of New England, fertilized by freedom, became marvelously prolific. Cromwell, Hampden, Sidney, Milton, Owen, were scholars of teachers mostly on this side of the Atlantic. Professor Masson, of Edinburgh University, in his biography THE PURITANS. 93 of Milton names seventeen New England men whom he describes as potent in England during the days of the Commonwealth. Numbers went back to England in person to join Cromwell's Ironsides. Twelve of the first twenty graduates of Harvard prior to 1646 were among the New-Englanders who were with Cromwell on the fields of Marston Moor and Naseby. New England served the liberal-minded of old England by opening to them sheltering arms in the hour of their peril. We have a striking instance on this line in the welcome given to two of the men who sat as judges and pronounced the sentence of death on King Charles I. Their names were Edward Whalley and William Goffe. Charles II., determined to destroy his father's murderers, as he called them, ordered their arrest and transportation to England ; but the New-Englanders protected them, and baffled the king's detectives, and saved them from the fury of Charles. This romantic story is told of Goffe, showing his appreciation of the protection given him. At Hadley the savages, during King Philip's War, made an attack upon the villagers. The inhabitants were at church keep- ing a fast when the yells of the Indians resounded. Seizing their guns, the men rushed out to meet the foe, but seeing the village green swarming with th^ horrid savages, for a moment their courage gave;, way and a panic was imminent. All at once a 94 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. stranger of reverent mien and stately form, and with white flowing beard falling on his bosom, ap- peared among them and took command with an air of authority which none could gainsay. He bade them charge on the screeching rabble, and after a sharp, short skirmish the tawny foe was put to flight. When the pursuers came together again after the rout their deliverer was not to be found. In their wonder, as they knew not whence he came or whither he went, many were heard to say that an angel had been sent from heaven for their de- liverance. It was the fugitive, William Goff"e, a major-general of Cromwell's army, who from his hiding-place had seen the savages stealing down the hillside, and who came forth for one more vic- tory ere death came to take him from his wilder- ness retreat. The Puritans harbored this political refugee, and this refugee saved the lives of the Puritans. In giving this brief history of the Puritans in the favorable form in which I give it, I am not ignorant of the antipathy which prevails in a large area against the Puritans. The term " puritanical " is a term that carries in it to-day a slur and a sneer ; but I am one who believes that the slur and the sneer are a slander. The Puritans have left too grand a work behind them to be written down ; the great Republic is still too much Puritan in its make-up to allow gross slanders to live, THE PURITANS. 95 True history is more and more taking the place of caricature in dealing with these fathers. It is sometimes said, " The Puritans stand for all that is austere and intolerant and somber and crooked and ungainly and unattractive and bitter and dog- matic and sour." It is said also that the Puritan protesting against the pope is himself in his peaked hat a worse pope than the Italian who wears the triple crown. He is called a fanatic, but let no one be frightened by that word ; fanaticism is simply a mighty grip upon a mighty idea. It was the fanaticism of Columbus that discovered America; it was the fanaticism of Luther that gave the world the Reformation. You cannot sneer the Puritan down. Macaulay says: " No one sneered at the Puritan who had met him in the halls of debate, or crossed swords with him on the battle-fields." The Puritans are often laughed at as those who delighted to sing psalms through their noses. This is a fling at Cromwell's Ironsides. Well, Crom- well's Ironsides used to go to battle singing psalms through their noses, but they sang through their noses to some purpose. If other battalions can sing through their noses with a like effect, I ad- vise their singing. There never was a troop of men on earth whose footfalls carried such courage and power as Cromwell's Ironsides. The story of their battles is the romance of history ; it has a power to thrill which even the heroism of the nine- 96 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN" REPUBLIC. teenth century cannot exceed. The sparks flew from their swords like the flashes from a surcharged cloud; their ringing saber-strokes still echo in his- tory. The Puritan's lack of the esthetic has been criti- cized. In this he has been called narrow, and he was narrow. He was not in full communion with God here. God delights in the esthetic ; His mind teems with beauty ; and wherever in creation He has an opportunity He scatters beauty broadcast. " He lines the tiny seashell with lines of beauty, and tints the scales of the fish, and tones the hidden fibers of the trees, and flashes beauty on breast and crest of flying birds, and causes it to break in the tumbling avalanche into myriads of feathery crystals, and builds the skies into a splendor which neither words nor colors can paint." But the Puri- tan's lack here can be explained ; there was a cause. Beauty itself, painting, music, sculpture, all the fine arts, belonged in the Puritans' day to the oppressors of the Puritans. Those things had been so long a time in Egypt that to the Puritans they were Egyptian ; they were redolent of oppression ; so the Puritans simply put them in quarantine until the plague was out of their garments, and then they would be allowed to come back again. They are coming back. But what have we to say concerning their treat- ment of the witches and of Roger Williams? We THE PURITANS. 97 have this to say : that even in the harsh measures, as they dealt with these, they ivere the progressives of their age, and were the most merciful people of that century. With regard to the witches, you can count all that were burned upon your fingers, while through- out the nations of Europe they were burned by the thousands and tens of thousands. With regard to Roger Williams, he is able to take care of him- self. There is altogether too much made of his affair. He was not hurt much, if hurt at all. I have only this to say of Roger Williams : if he came intoour day with his broad, open-communion views, he would have as tough a time among his own chil- dren, the close-communion Baptists, as he ever had among the Puritans. It is a picture — it is nothing short of a lively scene — to think of Roger Williams in the Baptist Church of America to-day. His battle-ax would make splinters of every human barrier which barricades the Lord's table as found in that sect. In our criticism we forget to put the Puritans back in the seventeenth century. This only is jus- tice. They must be judged by the day in which they lived. They were progressive men in that day, and if they were living they would be pro- gressive men in our day, John Endicott and John Winthrop and Cotton Mather, were they living to-day, would be civil-service reformers, 98 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Prohibitionists, and full-fledged women's rights men. We have reached an age when there is light enough to see the Puritan in his true character, as a royal man of God and a noble leader of men. If the word " mugwump " had not been tossed about in these latter days until it has become defaced and soiled, I would say he was a magnificent " mug- wump." The word " mugwump " belongs to him. It is found in John Eliot's translation of the Bible for the Indians. It means a great chief. Eliot uses it in setting forth Joshua, Gideon, and Joab. These Bible heroes were "mugwumps"; this is where modern politicians get the word. Let us look at the characteristics of the Puritan! He was a man of God ; this was his starting-point. God was with him in everything he did ; this was his constant consciousness. Listen to an extract from one of the Puritan New England writers in confirmation of this : " Strike the Lord's cymbals! blow the silver trumpet! set the battle in array! For the Lord is with us. He is not an idle spec- tator, but an actor in all action to bring down His and our enemies. He orders every shaft that flies, and leads each bullet to its resting-place, to the wound it makes." This consciousness of God's presence made the Puritan self-sufficient in God, and gave him his persistency and courage. He was a man of one book, and that book was THE PURITANS. 99 the Bible. The Century Company have not made a mistake in their design of the statue of the Puri- tan. They represent him as a rugged man with flowing cloak and peaked hat, and with a large copy of the Bible under his arm. In reading his Bible he delighted in the Apocalypse with its wild and stirring grandeur, but he was especially a stu- dent of the Old Testament. Moses constructing a nation and giving laws was his favorite ; and he often opened the Book of Joshua to listen to Joshua as he whets his sword on the tables of stone, and cuts his way through the nations of the Canaanites. The Puritan was theOld Testament hero reproduced. He was a man of principles. " Righteousness " was the great word in his life, and the great white throne was to him the most real of all realities. That built ethics into his nature and made him swift to render obedience to the voice of con- science. He was a lover of knowledge, and this led him to found schools and build colleges. So long as the Puritans' enthusiasm for education lives, just so long will Harvard and Yale be multiplied in our Repubhc. He was a man of religion, and because of that he has sent down to us the spirit which has built the churches that bless the land. The Old South Church of Boston comes direct from his hand. He was a man of large hopes, so he inaugurated large enterprises. He was a dar- ing optimist; his creed was, "Every good thing Lcf' 100 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. that is possible shall some day become real." That is a grand creed for any age. He believed that obedience to conscience, as the voice of God, should be the rule of conduct for the state as well as for the individual man ; hence he sought to make the state a theocracy. The motto of Daniel O'Connell was his motto, viz. : " Nothing is politically right that is morally wrong." He was a growing, progressive man; hence the outcome of his religious life was this: coexistence, toleration, forbearance, mutual respect among the different churches of Christ, the one Lord and Master. Take him for all in all, and I choose the Puritan. He is my choice after a thor- ough sifting of the age in which he lived. I choose him a hundred times over in preference to the Cavalier, who was his rival and his despiser. Chiv- alry refined manners ; Puritanism created manli- ness and fortified the soul in virtue. Chivalry feared dishonor; Puritanism feared to do evil. Chivalry adorned life; Puritanism enriched life with conscience and duty and God. Chivalry taught a man to die for a lady's glove, a stolen kiss, a fancied slight ; Puritanism taught a man to die for human rights, for justice, for freedom, for truth. I choose the man who represents Puritan- ism, and him my whole being honors and blesses. His character is the one character and his power is the one power I wish to perpetuate in the life and in the progress of my nation. How can I THE PURITANS. 101 best perpetuate his character and his power? By- giving myself up to the cultivation of his spirit, and by taking a front rank in my age as he took a front rank in his age ; by making a man out of myself and giving a God-filled manhood to my country. It is as Humboldt says: " Government, religion, property, books, are nothing but the scaf- folding to build man. Earth holds up to her Maker no fruit like the finished man." The citizen gives to his country no gift like the gift of a Christian manhood. I must give my country an ideal re- incarnated Puritan. If I give my country that, then with that I shall give it God, the one living and true God ; the Bible, His law for nations ; an enlightened and living conscience, i.e., the power and willingness to respond to God's law; institu- tions instinct with righteousness and truth. These things will make the Republic great; they will make its institutions perpetual, and they will make its army invincible. There are no regiments like Cromwell's Ironsides, where bayonets can think and pray, and where the highest spiritual qualities have been drilled into the ranks. Men of ideas, of holy passions, of genius, of enthusiasm, of faith in God, of righteousness, of spiritual personalities, of high ideals, these are the strength and the defense of any nation. Such are the men our Republic is searching for among her citizens; the Republic wants nineteenth-century Puritans — Pu- ritans refined and idealized. IV. THE HOLLANDERS. 103 IV. THE HOLLANDERS.* Paul, the chief of the apostles, upon an impor- tant occasion, in depicting the glories of the Hebrew- nation, climaxed his description with these words : " Whose are the fathers ^ He felt just as we feel when we give ourselves to the celebration of Fore- fathers' day. He pointed to Abraham, the father of the faithful, who pioneered for the coming gen- erations and found them a territory ; and to Solo- mon, the wise, who filled the territory with cities and wonderfully increased the wealth of the land ; and to Moses, the lawgiver, who gave the nation a magnificent code ; and to Elijah, the reformer, who brought the nation back into true allegiance to God; and to David, the poet, who put soul- stirring patriotism into the national songs ; and to Isaiah, the prophet, who saw thrilling visions for the kingdom and who proclaimed the coming of * Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, at a Forefathers'-day service. 107 108 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. the golden age. He pointed to these and said, ** Ours are the fathers'* He catalogued " the fathers " as among the chief blessings of the na- tion. He said in effect, " Men, grand men, men of enterprise, men of holy optimism, men of faith, men in oneness with God — these are God's best gifts to a nation, and these in their grandeur and goodness are worthy to be catalogued with Mount Sinai and with Calvary, for they carry in their per- sonalities and in their feelings and in their princi- ples and in their characters all — all that is con- tained in the law and the gospel, and all that Sinai and Calvary stand for." Fellow-Americans, we have come together to- night to say the one to the other, " Ours are the fathers," and to recall together the words and the conflicts and the cardinal doctrines of the men who made America what we find it. We have our his- tory ; we have American men and women ; we have our authors, our poets, our historians, our scholars, our generals, our publicists, our philosophers, our divines, our journalists, our jurists, our scientists, and all of these have personalities crowned with a world-wide fame. The question is. Whence came we? As a nation we are young in years. Whence this tremendous growth and this great national power? What is the story of the evolution of this great Republic? I answer, the story of the fathers is the story of the evolution of our commonwealth. THE HOLLANDERS. 109 I answer, the greatness of the fathers is the ex- planation of our rapid growth and the secret of our pohtical power. You cannot explain this age and leave out of sight the earlier age; you must bring forward the things that synchronize and the things that precede our age. Take the fifty years prior to the settlement of those American colonies which were the most mighty and the most perma- nent — the Jamestown Colony, the colony of New York Bay, Plymouth Colony, the Massachusetts Bay Colony ; take the fifty years prior to the day the first English ship, the Good Speed, sailed up the Potomac, prior to the day the Half-moon stopped at Manhattan Island and explored the Hudson, prior to the day the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock, and then add the fifty years after, the years of the first struggles of the new and daring colo- nies, which take us to the close of Cromwell's Com- monwealth, and to the hour when Peter Stuy vesant surrendered New Amsterdam to the forces of New England, and you can explain the American Re- public. The growth upon this continent was rapid, because there was back of it the growth of the old continent. The American colonies sprang up in the midst of one of the most marvelous centuries of all time. It was the century which carried in it both the Elizabethan period and the Cromwellian period. It carried in it the golden age of the famous Dutch 110 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. republic, the United States of the Netherlands. No century has ever seen more than this century which I have bounded saw. It saw the close of Titian's life, and of Michelangelo's. It saw the completion of the dome of St. Peter's. Tintoretto was in it, with the audacity of his genius and the lightning of his pencil. It saw the youth of Leib- nitz and of Newton. It saw the entire life of Descartes, and the middle manhood of Spinoza. It watched Grotius from his birth to his burial in the Holland city of Delft. In it the telescope came and recreated the very heavens for man. In it the microscope was perfected and revealed to man God's perfect work in the realm of the in- finitely small. It taught that the speck of dust is with God an organized mountain. The thermom- eter, and the barometer, and the air-pump, and the circulation of blood, and the nature and use of electricity were among its discoveries. In it the Dutch and the English East India Companies were established. It saw the magnificent reign of Elizabeth, the great English Rebellion, the be- heading of Charles I., the Huguenot struggle in France, the revolt of the Netherlands, and their final establishment of the Protestant republic. In it the Bible received a new life and a wider mission. It had just been translated into English in time to gild with its light of Hebrew glory and Christian faith the rude life of our savage shores. Its liber- THE HOLLANDERS. Ill ating truths broke forth over the nations Hke light from the heights celestial. Men learned afresh the vast promises of God waiting to be realized, and these promises filled them with irrepressible ambi- tions. They learned the dignity of the individual man, and began to think for self and to assert their personal rights. This self-assertiveness and this holy ambition, which came from God, and this ex- pectation of something better in the future, this, this, THIS, explains the bound onward and the new enterprise which resulted in the American Repub- lic. Crowded into this century were Bacon and Shakespeare in England, Cervantes in Spain, Wil- liam of Orange in the Netherlands, and Galileo in Italy. (Galileo was condemned just five years be- fore Harvard College was founded.) Into this century must be crowded the names of Richard Hooker and Walter Raleigh and Kepler and Ru- bens and Vandyke and Claude Lorrain and Pascal and Milton and Cromwell. It was a century in which the world received, as it were, a new God to serve and obey and to fellowship with ; a new view of the powers of nature, with a new hold thereof; a new faith in man, his worth and his power; and a new world to be the stage on which to act out new visions and new hopes. It was a century energized by new emergent opinions, new forces, new movements, new achievements, new ideas, new opportunities. 112 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Looking at this century, in the midst of which the American colonies were planted on this new continent, the evolution of the American Republic with its prescient greatness and its opening future is no wonder. It exists as a matter of course. There were, under God, a hundred social and moral forces all crying, " Let there be an Ameri- can Republic," and there was an American Re- public. We have a vast genealogy ; our roots run back centuries ; our annals are interlinked with the noblest of time. We are the result of a hundred wonderful historical developments wrought out in almost a hundred lands of the Old World. Our Republic is like a fine picture skilfully woven into a costly piece of tapestry composed of many beau- tiful threads, each single thread of which is a mar- velous work in itself and sufficient for a profitable individual study. In the addresses of this Forefathers'-day course, we are taking up and examining the threads of this tapestry, one at a time. The one thread before us to-night is the rich yellow and golden thread of old Holland. In our last address we listened to the Jubilate as it sounded out from the chimes of Westminster; in this address we are to listen to the Jubilate as it sounds out from the chimes of Antwerp. There is no discount on the chimes of Antwerp ; they are not one whit behind the chimes of Westminster. It is something in- THE HOLLANDERS. 113 spiring to hear an anthem rung into the air by the bells in the tower of the Antwerp cathedral. A shower of bell-notes falls from the vast spire. There are all kinds of notes ; there are the deep notes of the great bells, which make the anthem roll through the atmosphere with the intonations of thun- der; then there is the ringing of the little bells, pealing forth the same notes in a higher key. These notes are fine and small and sweet, small as a bird's warble. They fill the air with crisp tin- klings, which are as distinct as the sonorous notes of the great bells. All have their individuality, and all help in making the anthem one which en- raptures and enchains. I take the chimes of Ant- werp to be a symbol of that glorious Dutch re- public which gave the world the anthem of liberty during the days when our American fathers pre- pared for and built our civil institutions. The doc- trines of liberty were proclaimed in the legislative halls and battle-fields of Holland by the deep- toned, rich voices of statesmen and soldiers ; and at the same time the same doctrines of liberty were proclaimed by the higher-keyed, musical voices of Holland's boys and girls, when, in the free public schools of the land, they sang the patriotic songs of the republic. In taking up the story of our Dutch progeni- tors, I notice in the very start that there are new claims being made to-day on behalf of the Dutch. 114 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. American 'history is being rewritten ; new research is being made to find the origin of our civil insti- tutions. This is as it should be. History must be written and rewritten a score of times before we can reach the truth. We need the iconoclast and the scientific critic. We need the redactor. History is often written under prejudice, or under repression, or for a partizan purpose. There is such a thing as Anglomania. Now, Anglomania, if it had the opportunity, would warp all American history so as to secure the constant laudation of the English over the just claims of all other na- tions. I would not trust the man who turns up his trousers and carries an umbrella in New York on a clear day, for the sole reason that the Atlantic cable reports it is raining in London, to write American history, no matter what brain power he might have. You know how historians have been treated in the past. Louis XIV. withdrew a pen- sion from an historian of his day, because he made some adverse remark about taxation. Richelieu charged a certain French chronicler with treason and treated him as a traitor, because he told some distasteful truth about a king who had been dead for centuries. Certainly history written during such times needs to be rewritten. It is the God- given mission of the modern iconoclast to knock all such history into shivers. Besides this, how often are hindrances put in the way of the histo- THE HOLLANDERS. 115 rian, and that by those from whom we would least expect hindrances ! Let me give you an example pertaining to our English friends who have so loudly claimed to be the direct and indirect authors of our American civilization. In 1841 John Ro- meyn Broadhead was sent to Europe by the State of New York to procure copies of documents relat- ing to our colonial history from the public offices of England, France, and Holland. He was well received and assisted in France and Holland ; but how in England ? Lord Palmerston replied to his application that " if he would designate the partic- ular paper he wished to see, it would be officially examined, and if no objection were found he could have a copy of it at the customary rates." Thus obstacles were put in his way for a year. It was only when a new ministry came into power that he was able to secure access to documents known to be stored away, but not sufficiently known to be numbered. The fees charged were exorbitant. In the interest of history and the science of his- tory, free access to all public documents should have been allowed him. Now, remember, Mr. Broadhead was not a private individual ; he was the representative of the Empire State of Amer- ica. Davies, the historian of Holland, went to the same source for historic light, but he was abso- lutely denied in his own land any access to histor- ical documents. He was compelled to issue his 116 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. work in a limited form. These are instances in history-making relating to that nation which, for the most part, has furnished the men who have written American history — the men who have left out of American history almost in toto the influence of the Dutch in and on our national life. Honest and thinking men are rising up and are putting an in- terrogation-point against all such history ; and do you wonder? I hold that the iconoclast has a work just here in American history written under English influence and by English descendants. Our history should be rewritten, because we are constantly reaching and bringing to light new his- torical material. Let me give you a striking case. At the time I was born it was not even known where the New England Pilgrims originally came from. The writings of Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony, had been carried to Eng- land in I 776 by the British, and we were all in the dark. These writings have been recovered in my day, and hence our present knowledge. At least two things have worked against tiie Dutch in America and have kept them from their historic due. The first is this: the caricature of the Dutch by Washington Irving. The magic pen of Washington Irving, that prince and father of American literature, made the Dutch the victims of a caricature which captivated the fancy of the world. The history of the fictitious Diedrich THE HOLLANDERS. 117 Knickerbocker is but a humorous romance. It is worse ; it is a bold travesty, and that according to Irving's own admission. It is a gross caricature. It lauds only Dutch courage for drink and Dutch valor in the use of the pipe. The only halo which it weaves for the brow of our Dutch fathers is the halo woven out of the cloudy wreath of tobacco smoke. Besotted with beer, nicotinized with tobacco, ill- natured, clownish, fit objects of ridicule — such are the Dutch fathers of the humorous Diedrich Knickerbocker ; and yet, many persons know only this travesty. This travesty has stood in the way of true and real history. The second thing which has worked against the Dutch in American history is this : the precedence which has been given to the Puritanism and hero- ism of New England. The English and their Yankee descendants have monopolized all that is good in American history. Their appropriation has been wholesale. The English have a genius for appropriation and assimilation. They have put their hands on the ends of the earth — Canada, Aus- traha, East India ; they have grasped all of these. In 1664 they appropriated New Amsterdam, and took it from the Dutch, and called it New York. This taking from others is an old trait of theirs. Go back as far as the Elizabethan period ; a recent writer shows that even back there, in the sphere of literature, they took from others and exhibited 118 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. marvelous assimilative faculties. Shakespeare bor- rowed from every quarter not alone single scenes, but whole plots and plays. Hooker, in his " Ec- clesiastical Polity," follows out the train of thought worked out by Buchanan, the Scotchman. Milton, at a later date, takes from the Dutch poet, Vondel, the scheme for his " Paradise Lost " and " Samson Agonistes," with many of his happiest expressions. In no case is any acknowledgment made to the foreign authors thus devoured and used. Modern investigation alone has brought out the fact of these English appropriations. We all know the Yankee's proclivities for tall talk and self-appropriation and self-help. He ex- cels even his English father. The well-known dialogue between the old Englander and the New- Englander sets this forth. It is Yankee through and through. The New-Englander had just told of a wonderful swimming feat which he once per- formed ; he swam twenty miles at a stretch. The old Englander laughed at that feat as a mere trifle, and then told his story. His story was this : When he left Liverpool on the steamship, he looked be- hind and saw a man in the water swimming after the ship with the evident intention of following the ship across the ocean. Certain enough ; on the second day out, there was the man swimming leisurely along. He was there on the third day, and the fourth, and the fifth, and on the tenth THE HOLLANDERS. 119 day he came up Boston harbor even with the ship. Nothing abashed, the New-Englander asked the old Englander if he would take his oath to that, and when he had taken the oath, he thanked him, and with the old-time spirit of English appropria- tion he said, " Stranger, I am a'mighty glad to have such a-credible witness as you to that swim- ming feat, for that fellow you saw and have told us about was me." An illustration in point of what I am setting forth is seen in the claims of the English historian, Edward A. Freeman. In his lectures on " The English People in their Three Homes " — in their home in old England, i.e., on the European conti- nent, the Netherlands, from which the English originally came ; in their home in middle England, i.e., the British Isles; and in their new home, i.e.. New England of America — he deliberately argues that New England is simply the fruitage of old England and middle England. Here are some sentences from these lectures as he delivered them to American audiences : " Wherever the English folk dwell there is England." " Your Constitution is really our constitution put into a formal written shape and then modified." " Your President is beyond all doubt the English king modified." George Washington George III. modified! God forbid! It seems to me that Mr. Freeman has a tremendous eye for seeing resemblances. He sim- 120 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. ply burlesques the word "modified," which he so often uses. Let him try American modification in England and see what a revolution it will create. Away goes the House of Lords. Away goes the distinction between the child born in the palace and the child born in the hovel. Away goes the unwritten constitution. Away goes the prime minister. Away goes the titled nobility. Away goes the throne. The American Republic is in no sense the English monarchy. The American Revolution did something far other than " modify." It cut us forever and completely loose from the old, and gave us institutions which were entirely new and grandly un-English. The time has come in the writing of American history when we must give credit to others besides the English, and when we must, for the sake of fairness and for the sake of historic fact, break up the English historical monopoly. It is time to say that there were Dutch Puritans. American history has been too largely written from the English standpoint. Let us divide honors all around and give all of our forefathers their share. This will change the order of things and will in many cases compel us to revise our judgments, but if this be fair it is also right and needed. The praise of the Pilgrims and Puritans has crystallized into public opinion. Poets and novelists have woven into their story brilliant fictions, and these captivate ; THE HOLLANDERS. 121 they have almost the authority of history. The EngHsh Pilgrims and Puritans have had the good fortune to have the highest genius and eloquence and philosophic acumen, and have devoted them- selves to the exaltation of their mission and their deeds and their creations. The English Pilgrims and Puritans have absorbed public attention; they have gotten into the public schools of the nation, and thus into the hearts and brains of the Ameri- can boys and girls. The time has come when in fairness the Dutch Puritans must get there too. I do not mean to rob our English forefathers, but I do mean to be fair to our Dutch forefathers. I have already spoken the praises of the Pilgrim and the Puritan, and I will not withdraw what I have spoken ; but this is a Dutch night and the praises of the Dutch must be spoken. I will not go back on the New England farmer's shot fired at Concord and Lexington, which echoed around the world. It was a grand shot, and thus I characterize it when I walk over these battle-fields. I will not go back on that shot, but this I must claim and this I do claim, viz. : that shot was the heroism of the old Dutch republic reproducing itself in the new civil life of American freemen. How did the Hollanders help in the building up of America and American institutions? That is the question to-night. I have time to present only two points. 122 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. I. By hewing and shaping and filling and in- spiring the EnglisJi Pilgrims and Puritans, who are boasted factors in American life. England was not the first to lead Europe. It was the Dutch republic that first led Europe ; it first taught what true liberty was. The entire war of Holland with Spain was a Puritan war. Three quarters of a century this war raged. In this war Holland permitted thousands of English soldiers to fight. English soldiers came into her army monarchists, and left it republicans, and went home to spread republican ideas. For two centuries and a quarter the territory which the hardy Hollanders took from the Haarlem Lake and the Zuyder Zee stood first in civilization. It commanded the mar- kets of the world, and the oceans of the world, and the commerce of the world, and the manufactures of the world, and the gold of the world ; it was the great intellectual and institutional storehouse of the world. These are undisputed historical facts. But our object now is to look especially at what Holland did for England, and especially that part of England which sent us the Pilgrims and the Puritans. It was the first to give the English- speaking people the Bible in their own tongue. The first complete English Bible in print was the work of Miles Coverdale, who was employed to make the translation by Jacob van Meteren, of Antwerp. The translation was from the Dutch THE HOLLANDERS. 12S and Latin, and was printed in Antwerp and sent across the channel by Van Meteren, to use his own words, " for the advancement of the religion of Christ in England." There was no country so saturated with Bible ideas as was Holland, and this fact accounts for the political energy of the Dutch. Under the persecution of Philip II. and the Duke of Alva one hundred thousand Holland- ers crossed the channel and made their home in the eastern and southern counties of England. What a power this must have been in England! These one hundred thousand came from a land of pubHc schools and universities. Each man brought his Bible, which he could read for himself and for his neighbor. They were not paupers seeking alms ; they were industrious, self-supporting men, scholars, bankers, manufacturers, merchants; all of them were freemen, refugees for freedom's sake and for conscience' sake. They were men, grand men and brave men, men constructed out of the very prodigality of nature ; they were massive in intel- lect and in soul. Never in all the history of the world was there such another missionary movement on such a magnificent scale. They taught England commerce, education, agriculture, banking, the trades, morals, republican politics, and, above all, the true religion. Their daily life was a sermon on Christian virtue and temperance and chastity. It was out of these counties into which the Dutch 3 24 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. came that the University of Cambridge arose, that educational center of broad thought and Puritanism which gave America the first scholars and leaders of New England. Under the labors of these scholars of Holland the university was almost re- born. It was out of these counties that the English Commonwealth sprang, and that Cromwell sprang, and that Cromwell's army was mustered. Above all, it was out of these counties, impressed by Dutch ideas and principles and filled with Dutch blood by intermarriage, that the great English exodus to America came, the Puritan exodus which made New England what it has been. This is one of the ways Holland has been a builder of America. I need not tell you that it was from these counties that John Robinson and his congregation of Scrooby went to Holland. These were the American Pilgrims. These Pilgrims dwelt in Hol- land for twelve years, and became citizens of the United States of the Netherlands, and sent their children to the public schools of the republic, and used the secret ballot, and learned the doctrine of the rights of the individual man, and then came, filled with Hollandic and republican ideas, straight from the shores of Holland to Plymouth Rock. It was Holland with its republicanism that hewed and shaped and gave us those granite blocks which were swung into and solidified into the foundations of our nation, viz., the English Pilgrims and the THE HOLLANDERS. 125 English Puritans. Said I not the truth when I said that the farmer's shot at Lexington and Con- cord was the heroic spirit of the Dutch repubHc finding a resurrection in the new civic hfe of New England heroes? 2. The Hollanders helped in the building of the American Republic by the colony of the New Nether- lands which they established Jipon our shores, and by the influence which it exerted in sister colonies. What influence did Holland exert in other colonies, do you ask? There was the colony of Pennsylvania. It exerted a tremendous influence in the Republic. William Penn, the founder of that colony, was the son of a Dutch mother as well as of an English father. He preached in Holland and brought hundreds of his converts to his colony. He drafted the Pennsylvania code according to the laws of his mother's republic. There was the colony of Connecticut. Hollanders exerted a tremendous influence there. The Con- necticut Colony has been rightly called the minia- ture American Republic. Our fathers patterned the national institutions more after Connecticut than after any other existent colony. But who modeled Connecticut? Thomas Hooker, an Eng- lish refugee, direct from Holland. There was Rhode Island. Holland exerted a tremendous influence in Rhode Island. Roger 126 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Williams was a Welshman full of Hollandic ideas. He was the man who taught Milton, the poet, the Dutch language. He was a Baptist. Now the English Baptists were the converts of the Holland Mennonites or Anabaptists, who believed in the separation of church and state ; this was the re- publican principle upon which Roger Williams built Rhode Island. But the work of Holland in America was more direct than anything we have yet noticed. She built up what is now the Empire State of the Union, the State of New York. She founded it by her own sons and daughters; she molded it; she gave it the very institutions which have continued to this day. On Manhattan Island she built the first free church and the first free school of America. She gave New York half a century of the Dutch republic simon-pure. Manhattan Island was as much a part of the Dutch republic as was Holland itself. Manhattan Island was hers not by con- quest, as Plymouth Rock with its surrounding region was the Pilgrims' ; it was hers by an out- and-out purchase. Holland purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians for the sum of twenty-four dollars. A sharp Dutch bargain, you say? No; it was all that it was worth. Put that money at interest and let it compound, and the money will be equal to the market value of Manhattan Island to-day. I have seen the figures. Money and real THE HOLLANDERS. 127 estate must run close together, else we would have financial confusion. Two things the Dutch Colony which once reigned where we worship to-night preserved in their in- tegrity. These were freedom of worship, i.e., re- ligious toleration, and the political principle that where there is taxation there must be representa- tion, i.e., the consent of the governed. These two principles Peter Stuyvesant, the governor, once undertook to ignore. The people in the first in- stance appealed to the home republic, and the governor was rebuked and this proclamation was issued: "All men own their own consciences." The people in the second instance drew up a pub- lic and representative remonstrance, in which they declared that government should be administered according to the law of God, should respect indi- vidual rights, and should receive its power from the consent of the governed. This was in 1653. This was the first declaration of independence ever issued on the American continent. It was Bunker Hill, New York, one hundred and twenty- two years in ad- vance of Bunker Hill, Boston. Thus our debt to Holland opens before us. Our Constitution is written, not unwritten, as in Eng- land ; this we got from Holland. We have the system of the public record of deeds and mort- gages; this we got from Holland. We have the free-school system ; this we got from Holland. 128 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. We have the doctrine that government gets its authority from the consent of the governed ; this we got from Holland. The separation of church and state is an American idea; this we got from Holland. Our motto is, " United we stand, divided we fall;" this we got from Holland; that was a motto fo the Dutch republic — " Unity makes might." We have among us the freedom of the press; this we got from Holland. We have the secret written ballot; this we got from Holland. We have reform in the laws concerning the rights of married women ; this we got from Holland. Above all, we have the principle that " all men are created equal"; this we got from Holland. We shall not read history rightly if we only look at Holland of to-day and judge Holland by the present ; the past was different from the present. The changes of two hundred and fifty years are ■such that it is necessary for us to use language that seems extravagant if we would do the republic of Holland justice. Our civil fathers knew it. It was a dominant power in the day of the three historic ships, the Good Speed, the Half-moon, and the May- flower. It existed all through our colonial history, and it was a power our fathers felt when they wrote •our Declaration of Independence and when they framed our national Constitution. It was the training-school of our nation's founders. The Dutch republic is now dead ; it was crushed THE HOLLANDERS. 129 by Napoleon, who tramped the earth with the iron heel of a cruel despot ; but before it died it safely handed the torch of liberty to the new Republic across the sea. The United States of America are in principle and in national life the United States of Holland amplified, refined, perpetuated. In closing my address to-night, I call upon you to stand by the civil institutions bequeathed to us by our civil fathers. Let me particularize just one — one which has been a mighty blessing to the Republic. I refer to our public school ; and I refer to it because to-day it is made the subject of special hostile attack. There are men in America who are striving to smite it into the dust. They are seeking to undermine it and to crowd it out by un-American substitutes. My fellow-men, the public school in itself is a little germinant American Republic keeping up true democratic equality. It is the nation's institution,' and not the institution of a church with a bias on the side of self, teaching sectarianism and planting the seed of dissension and future schism in the very cradle. It is the nation's institution, and not the institution of a class segregating our boys and girls according to the amount of money in the pocket-books of their fathers, and begetting a class feeling in our commu- nities. The American Republic owns the boys and girls born under its flag, and its public school is its one institution to fit them for citizenship. It fuses 130 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. all classes and creeds, and makes the child in his ideas and feelings and sympathies and purposes, and in every fiber of his being, an American. Here the children are taught to sing the songs of the Republic, and are taught what our institutions cost, and are indoctrinated in the principles of Americanism. It is the great unifier of the difTer- ent nationalities pouring in upon our shores. It is our defense against all hierarchies, civil and ec- clesiastical, and against all deadly isms imported from foreign shores. It puts the American flag into the hands of our children, to be carried by them all through life. The man who strikes down this distinctively American institution, which has occu- pied the soil ever since the Hollanders planted it in New Amsterdam, should be treated as we treat the man who fires on the stars and stripes. I call upon you to-night to honor the civil fathers of America. Hold on to their intense trust in God and to their reverent spirit toward God. Honor God's church as they honored it. Kneel at the prayer altar which they erected to God. Read God's Word as they read it. Let Turner's paint- ing, " The Old Dutch Grandmother Reading her Bible," be translated into life in every American home. Make the lives of the children the glory of the fathers. Keep America intact as God's loom for the interweaving of all people into a re- public of God. Renew the Declaration of Indq- THE HOLLANDERS. 131 pendence. Amend the Constitution; make it true to God ; refill it with the spirit of the fathers ; fit it to the times ; make it proclaim the present truth. Keep America true to herself, and thus keep her true to the world. The world needs America, the latest beautiful civil flower of the past. A noted traveler who has circled the world says : " At the bottom of the wail of every struggling people you find American aspirations. In Switzer- land I heard the news of the death of Garfield, and all the Alps seemed quivering in sympathy with our national bereavement. In Ceylon I heard of the death of Longfellow, and all the tropical forests seemed trembling in pain at our grief. In the Inland Sea of Japan I heard of the death of Emer- son, and all the sacred groves seemed uttering their sympathy with our loss. Wherever on earth I stood, I put my ear upon the heart of nations, and I have listened not to what the people are ready to say in public in the face of tyranny, but to what the people are saying at their firesides and in their secret thoughts; and this is what I have always heard: the echo of the prayer of our martyred Lincoln, that ' the government of the people, for the people, by the people, may not perish from the earth.' " The world to-day needs America, as America once needed Holland. V. THE SCOTCH. 133 V. THE SCOTCH.* The commemoration of the deeds of our civil fathers is a perpetual duty. There come to us exhilaration and inspiration and vitality of holy purpose from living with the heroes of God who have glorified the past by their loyalty to the right. Macaulay says, " No people who fail to take pride in the deeds of their ancestors will ever do any- thing in which their posterity can take pride." Especially is this true when their ancestors have stood in the front ranks of human progress and, Hke our ancestors, have fought and won the battles of the ages. Honoring ancestors should prove a large trade in the American commonwealth, and that because we are rich in ancestors. We can truthfully claim kinship to every line of human nobility that has done anything grand by way of sacrifice in the uplift of the world in these last centuries. The * Delivered in Baltimore, Md., before the Presbyterian Union of that city. 137 138 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. best of a score of the leading races of the earth focalize right here. And this is to our national advantage. A great people is stronger and more fertile from the variety of its component parts and from the friendly play of the electric currents which have their origin in the diversity that is held in friendship. I look upon our country as God's great loom for the interweaving of the peoples of the earth. The noble men and noble women from the different races of the Old World are the threads of silk and of silver and of gold, and the fabric woven is the American Republic, beautiful with its holy free- dom, its constitutional rights, and its magnificent and elevating institutions, both civil and religious. The fabric of our national civilization, which is dis- tinctively American, is complex, and the credit for its beauty and strength and value should be as manifold as its contributing constituents are mul- tifold. There should be honest recognition and praise given all around. Let the Pilgrim be praised where the Pilgrim should be praised ; let the Puri- tan be praised where the Puritan should be praised ; let the Hollander be praised where the Hollander should be praised ; and let the Scotch and their descendants be praised where the Scotch and their descendants should be praised. Let the highest type of manhood built into the construction of our civic personality be admired, no matter from what THE SCOTCH. 139 race it has come. The only restriction I would lay down is this : choose only the best manhood to honor, because the type of manhood which you honor is the type of manhood which you will inevitably seek to perpetuate. Admire only the best and choicest threads in the fabric. Up to this point in our national history we have not been im- partial in our admiration of our ancestors. New England has created a monopoly here. The large- talking Yankee, true to his pedigree, has talked himself into a largeness out of all proportion with the facts. Hitherto he has written the history of the country, and he has so put himself into history that there has been little room there for others. He has not done justice to the Hollander ; he has not done justice to the Huguenot ; he has not done justice to the Scot. All of these were first- class believers in human liberty and not one whit behind either Pilgrim or Puritan in the sacrifices which they made for our Republic. The eyes of the public are being opened, and the result is there is an honest and a popular demand that American history be rewritten from alpha to omega, and that the uncredited heroes be enthroned in the midst of their lawful rewards, and that every omitted chapter be inserted in full. My fellow-men, American history has yet to be written. The Yankee has yet to hold fellowship on the historic page with the men of other races from whom he 140 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REP^UBLIC. received his best ideas and who led him up to the alpine heights of republicanism in the colonial days. He must yet lift his hat with respect to both the Dutchman and the Scotchman. It is our duty to reach a full and an impartial view of our American nationality. To-night we are to speak of the Scotch and their descendants as makers of America. They were the first on American soil openly to advocate American independence. We wish to do for them what the famous poet and novehst, Sir Walter Scott, has done for the physical beauties of the landscape of Scotia, viz., make them known. Scott has not added one particle of beauty to a single sprig of heather; he has not put a single additional touch of color upon a single bluebell ; he has not created one added glint of light on his beloved lakes ; he has not changed a particle of the country concerning which he so beautifully wrote. He has simply looked at Mid-Lothian, Lomond, and the Trosachs with his own eyes, has seen for him- self the beauty and grandeur of nature's handiwork in Scotia, and has told in prose and poetry just what he has seen. What Scott has done for the physical country we must do for the noble actions of the Scotch, viz., take them in and tell them out. Where shall I begin ? With John Knox. And why begin with John Knox ? Because the Scotch- THE SCOTCH. 141 Americans are the sons of his faith, just as, spirit- ually, Knox himself is the son of John Calvin. The political truth which the Scotch-Americans held and for which they fought in revolutionary times and in prerevolutionary times was not a mushroom growth of a single night; it was the oak of cen- turies. It was the result of the unwavering fidelity which for two full centuries held sacred the political tenets of John Knox, the apostle of liberty, who said to the haughty queen, " If princes exceed their bounds they may be resisted by force." In that magnificent sentiment, uttered with a magnifi- cent fearlessness, I hear the far-oflf drum-beat of the American Revolution. Froude, the greatest of modern English historians, declares of this bold utterance of John Knox, " It is the creed of re- publics in its first hard form." This utterance of John Knox became ingrained in the very being of all true Scotchmen, and they believed it and as- serted it and lived it. In our own age a son of Scottish faith has said, " Government of the peo- ple, by the people, for the people, shall never perish from the earth." This saying, received with uni- versal applause, has been lifted into a classic by the American people of the nineteenth century. But what is this saying? Only the utterance of John Knox grown large. I have referred to John Knox as a spiritual son of John Calvin. He went straight from Calvin's 142 .UAA'EKS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. home in Geneva to Scotland when, at the call of his countrymen, he entered Scotland to inaugurate the glorious reformation which he carried to suc- cess. His theology was Calvinistic, and so has been the theology of his descendants. This gives me an opportunity to speak a passing word for Cal- vinism. I do not ask you to-day to read Calvin's " Institutes " or to study Calvin's commentaries, but I do ask you to read Calvin as he has written himself into history and then take the measure of Calvin. In history John Calvin wrote Swiss Prot- estantism, and French Huguenotism, and English Puritanism, and Scotch sturdiness of faith, and New England Pilgrimism. He put into human life a sense of reverence, and of liberty founded on rev- erence, and these will last in the world long after his "Institutes" and commentaries have become worm-eaten and have crumbled into dust. Now the point I wish to emphasize is this: Calvin has blessed America through John Knox. Listen to the voice of the great historians here. Buckle says, " Wherever it has gone in France, Switzer- land, Britain, America, the Calvinistic faith has shown itself the unfailing friend of constitutional liberty." D'Aubigne says, " Calvin was the founder of the greatest of republics : the oppressed who went to America were the sons of his faith." Mot- ley says, " Holland, England, America, owe their liberties to the Calvinists." Bancroft says, " He THE SCOTCH. 143 that will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American independence. . . . The light of his genius shattered the mask of darkness which super- stition had held for centuries before the brow of religion." These are the voices of the authorities in history, and we can see how facts accord with their testimony to Calvinism. Calvinism exalts as its cardinal doctrine the absolute sovereignty of God. Let a man believe with all his heart the ab- solute sovereignty of God, let him believe that his first and last allegiance is to God as sovereign, and he will know no such thing as fear of the face of man, king or potentate or peasant. He will feel that in every battle for truth and liberty " one man with God is a majority," and that victory is sure. That was the fate of John Knox when he came from the presence of John Calvin and worked out the reformation of Scotland. He began his work with the cry, " O God, give me Scotland or I die ! " and God gave him Scotland and he lives. What was the reformation which he wrought? It con- sisted in this : He exterminated from Scotland the Roman Catholic hierarchy, that representative of monarchy, that natural enemy of republicanism, and he exterminated it root and branch. In its place he gave Scotland Presbyterianism pure and simple. He was the founder of the famous Scotch kirk. Lecky, the historian, says, "The Scotch 144 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. kirk was by its constitution essentially republican. It was in this respect the very antipodes of the Anglican church and of the Galilean branch of the Catholic Church, both of which did all they could to consecrate despotism and strengthen its au- thority." Carlyle says, " A man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him." Knox gave Scotch- men their religion. He taught them to learn from the Bible their rights as Christians and as citi- zens. He taught them that in the New Testa- ment there is no sacerdotal class save that which includes all of the people : " Ye are a royal priest- hood!" He taught them from the Bible the principle of representation and the right of choice. That certainly is Americanism as we have it to-day. He put the Bible into the hands of the people and taught the right of private interpretation. He in- troduced schools for the people and gave them education. He established a system of schools. Thus he laid the foundation of future Scotland and built up the institutions which were destined to mold the character of the men about to cross the ocean and become the makers of America. This one thing is to be kept prominently in mind : John Knox worked largely for the church, and through the church, and by the church. All of his institu- tions centered in the kirk. In short, John Knox made and built up the church, and the church made and built up the people. Carlyle says, THE SCOTCH. 145 " Knox gave Scotland a resurrection from the dead. Scotch literature and thought and industry, — James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns (he who wrote ' A man's a man for a' that ') — I find the Reformation acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons. Without the Refor- mation they would not have been." But Carlyle was a Scotchman. A man who was not a Scotch- man says, " In proportion to their small numbers they are the most distinguished little people since the days of the Athenians, and the most educated people of the modern races. All the industrial arts are at home in Glasgow, and all the fine arts in Edinburgh, and as for literature, it is everywhere." The natural sequence of John Knox in Scotland is just what we see on the page of Scottish history : (i) The Solemn League and Covenant, literally signed with the blood of the best sons of Scotland, the Covenanters. The Covenanters were most potent in their influence during the period of the colonization of New England and when the insti- tutions of the colonies were taking shape. (2) The Sanquhar Declaration, signed by Richard Cameron and Donald Cargill, and the great revolution. (3) The notable movement which resulted, in our own day, in the Free Church of Scotland, which has given us the names of Chalmers and Candlish and Guthrie. All of these historic movements show the features of John Knox, in that they exalt 146 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. and declare the equality of man, liberty in religion, the value of the open Bible, the need of a sancti- fied Sabbath, the power of a pure church, and the rights of free speech, free press, free schools. The question before us now is. How did these men whom Knox made reach America? How did they come to cast in their lot with those who be- came the makers of America? At this point the history of the Scotch-Americans resembles some- what the history of the New England Pilgrims. The two histories are parallel. The New England Pilgrims came to America by way of Holland ; the Scotch-Americans came to America by way of the province of Ulster, Ireland. Only a small portion of the Scotch in the colonial times came to the col- onies directly from Scotland. Just here comes in the story of Ulster. In the early days of prelatic James I. the rebellion of two of the great nobles of the province in the north of Ireland furnished the king an excuse to confiscate their vast domains. To hold these domains and to populate them with men who could hold their own successfully against the rest of Catholic Ireland, James determined to found a colony of picked sub- jects. He offered special inducements to the Scotch to make Ulster their home. The inducements were such and the charter promised so favorable that large numbers responded. Of these James took his pick. This colony received its charter April THE SCOTCH. 147 i6, 1605. The Scotch in their new home of Ulster were joined by many of God's noblemen, who were one with them in religious thinking and in a holy life, who came from the English Puritans and from the French Huguenots. This mixture modified and improved in some regard the Puritan Scotch stock. To-day this people are known by the name of Scotch- Irish. The name is a misnomer. It would lead us to believe that the Scotch of the colony of Ulster intermarried with the Irish, and that this people, therefore, is a people of mixed blood. But this is not the case. The name Scotch- Irish, which has its origin in purely geographical reasons, is ethnologically incorrect. The Ulster people to this day are Scotch through and through and out and out. There is no intermarriage ; there is no union of the Scotch and the Irish races. The name Scotch-Irish is not used in the Emerald Isle, and in the interest of historical correctness I argue that it should not be used anywhere. In the Emerald Isle, by Irish and Scotch alike, these people are called Ulstermen, and that is their name. I do not need to tell you what a country these colonists of 1605 made out of Ulster and the sur- rounding territory. They took with them all that John Knox gave them, and the result was prosper- ity on all lines. But the colonists were not allowed to pursue the even tenor of their way. They were 148 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. oppressed, just as the American colonists were, by prelatic. Episcopalian England. First, England, by the passage of oppressive measures, took from Ulster its woolen trade. This was like a stroke of paralysis. It caused the first great exodus of the Scotch colonists to America. A second and a larger exodus was caused by the scandalous ad- vancement of the rents of the farms and by a tax- ation on the improvements caused by the industry of the people. The first outrage made an attack on commerce and manufacture ; the second outrage was an attack on the agriculture of the colony. For fifty long years, from 1720 to 1770, the people, abused and then ejected from their farms and homesteads, which they and their fathers had made what they were, poured in streams of twelve thou- sand a year into America. So great was the inpour that when we come to the times of the American Revolution the Scotch formed almost, if not altogether, one third of the entire population of the American colonies. And where did they go in America? They formed no colonies of their own. Where did they go? Some of them went to New England and settled in Boston and in Worcester, and some threaded their way up into Maine and New Hampshire and Vermont. Twenty thousand settled along the Atlantic coast from the Charles River up to the THE SCOTCH. 149 Kennebec. Froude holds that in Boston it was they who gave the name to Bunker Hill. There are Scotch Covenanter churches to-day in Maine and Vermont and Massachusetts, and there are Presbyterian churches in New Hampshire. In 1754 the Presbyterian congregation of Londonderry, N. H., numbered over seven hundred communi- cants. Although comparatively but a few of the vast Scotch exodus settled in New England, yet those who did have made their record and have told on American life. They took with them into New England the things John Knox gave them : the kirk, and the school, and the civil creed of equal rights, and the sanctified Sabbath, and the inherent dignity of man. It was from the New England Scotch that George Washington got Henry Knox, a member of his cabinet, and the first Secretary of War in the American Republic. When the Revolution broke out it was the Scotch who fought the battle of Ben- nington. General Stark and his " Green Mountain boys" were Scotch. The Scotch of Maine gave to the country Matthew Thornton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. In latter days the New England Scotch gave to journalism Hor- ace Greeley, the father of modern journalism, and to science Professor Asa Gray, one of Harvard's leading professors. But the greater part of the enormous Scotch 150 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. exodus poured into the Middle and the Southern colonies. They literally took possession of Penn- sylvania. Philadelphia, with its Independence Hall, was their city, just as Boston, with its Faneuil Hall, was the city of the Puritans. They hold Philadelphia to this day. It was to Pennsylvania the Rev, Fran- cis Makemie came, the first Presbyterian minister in America of whose history we have any knowledge. He was the man who was imprisoned in New York for preaching in his independent way, and he was the man who formed the first American presbytery. We find the Scotch also in New Jersey. A large company of them came to New Jersey, we are told, under the prompting of William Penn. As New Jersey was one of the leading battle-fields of the Revolution, the Scotch, who had become very strong there, were among Washington's chief sup- porters. New Jersey gave to the army the Rev. James Caldwell, the chaplain of the First Brigade, whose history is given in full in the " Life and Letters of Elias Boudinot." He was more than chaplain ; he was at one time also the assistant commissary-general. Washington esteemed his service as invaluable. He was well-nigh ubiquitous. The British burned down his manse and murdered his wife before the eyes of his children, and they tried also to burn the children in the flames of the manse. His children were saved only by a hair- breadth escape. Lafayette took one of his mother- THE SCOTCH. 151 less boys and adopted him and gave him the love and opportunity of his princely home. George Washington subscribed twenty-five guineas out of his own private funds for the support of the other children. Mr. Caldwell fell by the hand of an assassin. On one occasion it is told of him that, seeing one of the companies slacking their fire for want of wadding, he rushed into the Presbyterian church near by, and gathering an armful of Watts's hymn-books he distributed them along the line, with the order, " Now put Watts into them, boys." With a cheer the soldiers rammed the charges home and gave the British Watts with a will. It was the New Jersey Scotch who founded the fa- mous Presbyterian university, Princeton College, the college that can outkick anything on the con- tinent, and that up to date. Having located at first on the western and southern borders of the old colonies, the Scotch naturally pressed their way west and south. While they founded no colonies, they did in the course of time found new States. They poured their thousands down into the Carolinas, North and South. They made the States of Kentucky and Tennessee and Alabama. They poured also into Virginia until they out-influenced there the haughty Cavalier. They took possession of the Mississippi valley and brought it into the Republic. Ohio, too, felt their influence. They became so 152 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. strong in our own Empire State of New York that even our first governor, Governor Clinton, the man who has given his name to the principal avenue of Brooklyn, was a scion of that race. I imagine some son of the Scot saying, just here, " How I wish my ancestors had massed themselves together as did the Puritans, and had formed a colony of their own ! Then they could have struck with a trip-hammer on the anvil of time the ele- ments making this nation. They could have made a name for themselves in American history like that of Massachusetts." This wish is a mistake. No matter about the name in history. The name is coming, for the facts of early days, which are being resurrected and glorified by modern histor- ical research, will build up the Scotch name and set it in a noonday splendor before the universe. The Scotch elements were too strong and too good to be massed ; they were of the kind fitted to be scattered as a leavening influence through the land and among the diverse peoples of the land. Thus scattered as they were, they worked more mightily for American liberty than they could have worked if they had been solidified into a single colony. Here allow me to illustrate and give concrete cases. Being Presbyterian in faith, they formed a general synod, which met once a year. Through this syn- od they worked powerfully for American liberty. They were the sons of John Knox, and, like Knox, THE SCOTCH. 153 they used the church in the cause of freedom. In the General Synod there were delegates from all the colonies, and they formed a union of thought and purpose and plan. Thus the Scotch demon- strated to America that what was possible in re- ligious affairs was possible in civil affairs, viz., a union of all parts of the land, and a union by rep- resentation — a federal union. The Scotch General Synod was a model of the coming Colonial Congress. It made it possible. It suggested it. For fifty years this synod was the most powerful and compact religious organization in the country. The men in the synod, like the Scotch from Ulster, were men of the very highest type. The ministers were men educated at Glas- gow and Edinburgh and Dublin and Harvard universities. They discussed all questions that pertained to the interest of the country, and sent their delegates home to all the colonies to spread their advanced principles concerning their rights and duties. See the results of this. Four years before the battle of Lexington the Presbyterians of North Carolina resisted the oppression of the British crown as unjust. The governor of the colony treated them as outlaws, and sent an army against them and shot them down, and took captive and hung thirty of them. This was the first blood of the Revolution. It is known in history as the War 154 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. of the Regulators. Bancroft says of it, " The blood of the first rebels against British oppression was first shed among the settlers on the branches of the Cape Fear River." This was May i6, 1771. See the results of this. One year before the Philadelphia Declaration of Independence the Pres- byterians of Mecklenburg, N. C, met together and publicly issued their declaration of independence from the rule of Britain. Here is one sentence from that declaration: "We hereby absolve our- selves from all allegiance to the British crown ; we hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people." The men who issued this Mecklenburg declaration were the men on the walls of whose homes hung the National Covenant of Scotland, which many of their ancestors had signed. Thus you see that the famous and historic covenant of Greyfriars Churchyard formed the rugged and solemn background of American liberties. " It can be said, without fear of challenge, that Scotch blood flows through every principle in the Decla- ration of Independence, which forms the founda- tion of American freedom." Bancroft says, in writing of the Mecklenburg declaration, which antedated the Philadelphia Declaration one whole year, " The first public voice for dissolving all connection with Great Brit- ain came not from the Puritans of New England, nor from the Dutch of New York, nor from the THE SCOTCH. 155 planters of Virginia, but from the Scotch Presby- terians." Wallace Bruce, a man with a double Scotch name and a double Scotch nature, our honored consul to Scotland, puts Bancroft's eulogy into verse, and in these fitting words honors the event of Mecklenburg: " Manhattan and Plymouth and Jamestown Can boast of their heritage true, But Mecklenburg's fame is immortal When we number the stars in the blue ; The Scotch-Irish Puritan Fathers First drafted the words of the free, And the speech of Virginia's Henry Is the crown of our liberty's plea." In 1775 the General Presbyterian Synod^ meet- ing in Philadelphia side by side with the Colonial Congress, issued a pastoral letter calling on the people to defend their rights against British usur- pation. This letter was a mighty power with the people and with Congress. You see here the power of the Presbyterian Church and how aggressive it was. It was ready in advance for July 4, 1776, and so were all its people scattered through all the colonies. When that day came it was Thomas Jefferson, a scion of the Scotch race, according to the record of the Scotch-Irish Congress, who was the author of the Declaration of Independence. Professor McCloskie, of Princeton, says the Decla- 156 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. ration of Independence, as we have it now, is in the handwriting of the son of Scotland ; it was first printed by another Scotchman, and a third Scotch- man, Captain Nixon, was the first to read it pub- Hcly to the people. It is in place just at this point to speak of two men whose names will always be connected with the American Declaration of Independence and with the great Revolution. The first is the name of the man who first sounded the tocsin of war in that great sentence of his, " Give me liberty or give me death," and made the tocsin reverber- ate from mountain to mountain and from lake to lake until the thirteen colonies heard the echo and resolved to be freemen or die. I refer to Pat- rick Henry, of Virginia, whose mother was a Pres- byterian. Of him Webster, speaking to Jefferson, says, " He was far before us all in maintaining the spirit of the Revolution." The second is the name of that Presbyterian minister whose voice it was that brought the Con- gress finally and irrevocably to sign the great in- strument, the Declaration. I refer to the venerable Dr. Witherspoon, President of Princeton College, who was at the time a member of the Continental Congress. We are told that the Congress was hesitating. The country was looking on. Three million hearts were violently throbbing in intense anxiety, waiting for the old bell on Independence THE SCOTCH. 157 Hall to ring. " It was an hour that marked the grandest epoch in human history." What a scene was there ! On the table in the presence of that able body of statesmen lay the charter of human freedom in clear-cut utterances, flinging defiance in the face of oppression. It was an hour in which strong men trembled. There was a painful silence. In the midst of that silence Dr. Witherspoon, a lineal descendant of John Knox, rose and uttered these thrilling words : " To hesitate at this moment is to consent to our own slavery. That notable instrument upon your table, which insures immor- tality to its author, should be subscribed this very morning by every pen in this house. He that will not respond to its accent and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions is unworthy the name of freeman. Whatever I have of property, of rep- utation, is staked on the issue of this contest, and although these gray hairs must soon descend into the sepulcher, I would infinitely rather that they descend hither by the hand of the executioner than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country." That was the voice of John Knox in Independence Hall. And that voice prevailed. The Declaration was signed, the liberty bell of Inde- pendence Hall rang out, and the foundation of the American government was securely laid. Fourteen of the sons of Scotland signed this Declaration. From the signing of the Declaration of Inde- 158 MAKERS OF THE AMERICA lY REPUBLIC. pendence American history grandly enlarges, and the sons of the Scotch race are seen in nearly every high place. Their generals led in the great battles of the Revolution : General Wayne at Stony Point, and General Campbell at Kings Mountain, and General Montgomery at Quebec. When the great American Constitution was framed their wisdom prevailed there. Madison is claimed by more than one member of the late Scotch-Irish Congress as a scion of this race. He is known as the father of the American Constitution. Lincoln also, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation, is claimed, and his lineage is traced back to the Scotch who settled in Kentucky. Seven gover- nors out of the thirteen original States were Scotch. Then come their Presidents of the United States, Jefferson, Jackson, Monroe, James Knox Polk, Madison, Taylor, Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Arthur, Harrison, and Cleveland. My friends, as I give the history of this magnifi- cent Scotch race in its relation to American life, I am heartily glad that I have the good fortune to have the Scotch for my theme to-night, and not the Pilgrims, and not the Puritans, and not the Hollanders ; for when the Scotch have claimed the first battle for our liberty ; and the first blood shed ; and the first declaration of independence publicly issued ; and the privilege of naming Bunker Hill ; and Davy Crockett, the most picturesque of THE SCOTCH. 159 American characters, the wizard of the woods ; and Patrick Henry, the resistless orator of the Revolution; and the peerless Poe, the illustrious poet; and Commodore Perry, the illustrious naval officer; and Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence ; and Witherspoon, whose voice charmed America into accepting it • and Madison, the father of the American Constitution, which Gladstone pronounces the greatest instrument ever penned in a given time; and Abraham Lincoln, with his Emancipation Proclamation, America's greatest glory ; and Ulysses S. Grant, the man who carried the Civil War to its grand and proper close ; and Robert Fulton, the father of steamboat navi- gation, which has so wonderfully enlarged com- merce; and the phenomenal Morse, who with his telegraph has linked all parts of the world in in- stantaneous touch, and helped on the brotherhood of man ; and McCormick, the inventor of the American reaper, which has multiplied indefinitely the forces of American agriculture ; and Andrew Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812; and Win- field Scott, the hero of the Mexican War — when the Scotch have claimed all these great men and all these noble things, what is left for the other makers of America to claim and exult over? I wish to speak a brief word relative to some of the striking and racial characteristics of the Scotch — characteristics which have made them what they are. ICO M.IA'EA'S OF THE AMERICAN' REPUBLIC. I do not know that I can do better than simply name these traits and ilkistrate each by relating a pertinent anecdote. I notice first that the Scotch are : 1. Pi'ecmincntly trutJifiil. They are truthful even to the point of blunt- ness. When I was a boy this story was told of Dr. Blank, a Scotch clergyman of Pittsburg, and it illustrates my point. The doctor had just a touch of vanity in his nature, and when a certain college gave him a D.D. his vanity was not in the least crushed. Indeed, it led him at once to plan a trip home, that his friends in the old country might feast their eyes on a doctor of divinity. Once in Scotland, he called upon his old pastor, who knew John's fondness for John. But he got no flattery from the old pastor. He was too truthful to flatter. He greeted the new-comer: " Well, well, John, I hear they have made you a doctor of divinity?" The new D.D. replied, "Yes, they persisted in giving me the title, although I was the last man in the world to deserve it." The old man, detecting the vanity in the tones of the voice, replied in his blunt way, "Yes, yes; that's just what I thought myself, John, when I heard it." 2. The Scotch are men of principle, and largely given to protest. A Scotchman is a natural nonconformist. He loves to protest against things and institutions and THE SCOTCH. 161 customs. He must protest or die, but die is the very last thing that a Scotchman does on earth. That he may find an opportunity to protest he is always in search of some principle to take hold of and advocate ; he finds a principle in everything. He will split hairs and then imagine that the points which he has made are every one of them princi- ples, and he will die for them before he will give them up. He can even, if need be, convert pre- judices into principles and thus transfigure them. Let me illustrate how the Scotchman reads prin- ciple into everything and in everything acts on principle. Probably you have heard of the old saying that "a Scotchman never shuts the door after him." That was true in olden times. He knows that a door will shut ; he knows what the latch is for ; he knows what good breeding is ; he knows that other people shut the door after them. He is not acting from ignorance ; he leaves the door open on prin- ciple. He has argued the whole question out to his own satisfaction, and logically he feels that he could not conscientiously shut the door. If you wish you may shut it ; he will not criticize you ; that is a matter for your own conscience ; but he cannot. Raillery cannot compel him, neither can force. He has argued the question out. He has canvassed the arguments in favor of shutting and the arguments in favor of leaving the door open, 162 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. and he has balanced the two, and the balance is on the side of not shutting, and that makes it a principle with him. In favor of shutting the door there is : 1, A cold wind may blow into the room. But this is not probable, for those within would shut the door and protect themselves. 2. By shutting the door you will keep people on the outside from hearing the conversation car- ried on within. But people should not talk about things or say things they would not want others to hear or repeat. These are the only arguments he can think of for shutting the door. There are more arguments in favor of leaving it open: 1. If the door slam in shutting it would be ex- ceeding unpleasant, and would suggest the idea that you were in a passion. 2. If it did not slam it might make a creaking noise. 3. Suppose that it makes no noise at all, the impression is conveyed that you are going away not to return, while you have no such intention. You must not give false impressions. 4. There are chances that when you come back you will make a noise in opening the door, which is an interruption to the conversation. That is bad manners. 5. By not shutting the door you give the parties .HE SCOTCH. 103 remaining behind the option of shutting it or not, according as it may please their own fancy. This disposition to please is an amiable disposition and should be cultivated. These are some of the reasons which determined the Scotchman of old not to shut the door, and he found a principle in every one of them. This looks like a burlesque, but, after ail, it is infinitely better to be a man of principle than to be a man of no principle. A man who will put principle into a little thing like " not shutting the door," when he comes to deal with the eternal verities, when he comes to stand face to face with gigantic wrong and with political tyranny and with unholy op- pression, is there for all he is worth ; the whole man is there ; and when a whole Scotchman is there, out into the open air is flung a Mecklenburg declaration of independence, and up in the highest court of the nation you have a Patrick Henry ut- tering an oration so full of conviction that it ushers in the American Revolution. 3. The Scotchman has as a trait the element of persistence. Upon his drumhead he never beats a retreat. It is Hberty or death. This story illustrates how a Scotchman will hold on and follow what he consid- ers to be his one line of duty. It is told of a clergy- man in the days when Knox was battling against the Roman hierarchy. His congrega.tion brought 164 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. a charge against him before the presbytery that he never could preach a sermon without breaking a lance with the pope — i.e., his sermons were all the same thing: pope in the exordium, pope in the body of the sermon, and pope in the peroration or conclusion. Thus it was fifty-two Sabbaths of the year. His preaching grew monotonous and the people grew weary. The presbytery said, "We will try him : we will give him a text to preach from, and we shall hear his sermon, and we shall see if your charge be true — that it is popery and pope no matter what text he takes." They gave him for a text these three proper names : "Adam, Seth, Enos." When the presbytery met there was a great congregation there, and the minister felt that they needed sound doctrine and timely warn- ing. He saw a great opportunity. Solemnly he took his place in the pulpit and announced his text, " Adam, Seth, Enos," and this was his first sentence : " My dear brethren, these men lived in a day when there was no pope nor popery, and consequently they had not to contend against the following evils," and he enumerated in full and without waste of time all the evils of Romanism. You smile at that man, but I tell you that we need just such a son of John Knox at this very moment in America. The Roman hierarchy is in our midst insidiously at work trying to weaken and to defeat the object of one of our noblest Ameri- THE SCOTCH. 165 can institutions, the free public schools, manned, conducted, and supported by the state. It is these schools of ours, supported and conducted by the state, that unify the children of all classes and of all nationalities, and that take out of the cradle and out of childhood all sectarian prejudices and reli- gious hatred and strife, and make all from the very start of life American through and through. This means a solid, intelligent American future. Rome has stepped upon the scene and has made a public demand that our public-school funds shall be di- vided ; that is, that part of the taxes raised from the people shall be given to the Roman Church to be used for sectarian purposes. The Roman Church is pitted against the American state, and the issue is fairly on. We need a stalwart son of John Knox who knows the hierarchy through and through to tell Rome through Mr. Satolli that the American people mean to educate their own citizens, and that they are going to keep the schools of the Republic just as their fathers founded them. Sons of John Knox, tell that to Rome not only fifty- two Sab- baths every year, but tell that to Rome every day the whole year round. I have been speaking to you of your duty of protest against the machinations of a corrupt church ; let me now in closing say one word to you concerning your duty to the pure evangelical Christian church. My word grows out of this 166 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. history of the freemen of Scotland as it touches American national life. John Knox, who gave Scotland its national power and character, was in loyal relation with the true church of Jesus Christ. Through the church of pure doctrine and equal representation, the church which honored the Sab- bath and the open Bible and the rights of the in- dividual man, he worked his great work ; that is, through the church in which every one had the liberty of private judgment he molded public sen- timent, and by the fearless and free discussion of the truth in this church he freed man's mind from superstition and welded his countrymen together to act as one man against the usurpations of op- pression, civil and ecclesiastical. He has taught us that a pure, holy, untrammeled, independent church is a mighty safeguard of the liberties and rights of a people; that it means the suppression of all hurtful evil and vice and tyranny. It is the enlightener of the nation and its educator in the holy principles and moralities which perpetuate national liberty and life. In the light of his teach- ings let us learn our duty of loyalty just here. There is no way in which we can so bless our country as by giving it a pure, free-thoughted, Bible-loving church of Jesus Christ. Such a church is a power which will make citizens of brain and character and holy devotion to the rights of man- kind. Such a church will be a power on any THE SCOTCH. 167 question when it asserts itself on the right side. It can send its protest through the land like a thunderbolt. It can lead. Church of John Knox rooted to-day in American soil, I greet you as such a power, and assure you that you have still a patriotic mission in this Republic which you have helped to build. You are equipped to-day for work as you have never before been equipped ; en- ter that work with hope and consecration. Guard the liberties which you have purchased with your blood. Guard the institutions which incarnate the best thought and life of the American fathers. You remember what Angelo said to one of his pupils, Donatello, who asked him to come and look at his figure of St. George on the outside of a church at Florence. " The great sculptor looked at it with admiration and surprise. Every limb was perfect, every outline complete, the face lighted with almost human intelligence, the brow uplifted, and the foot forward as if it would step into life. As Donatello waited for Angelo's deci- sion the great sculptor looked at the statue, slowly lifted his hand, and said, 'Now march.'" That was the grandest possible encomium he could give to the figure of St. George in marble. That is God's word to the church of John Knox in America to-day : "I have given thee opportunity ; I have given thee royal men ; I have given thee freedom of thought ; I have given thee knowledge ; 168 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. I have given thee numbers ; I have given thee My day and My Book ; I have given thee the inspiring promises. Now inarch. Battle for Me ; honor Me ; keep My day holy ; keep My truth uncorrupted ; and, above all, guard and serve My nation, which I have refined by the fires of conflict and revolu- tion. Lead America to higher and better things. Make it the refuge of the oppressed. Make it the land of Beulah — a land married unto the Lord." VI. THE HUGUENOTS. 169 VI. THE HUGUENOTS.* The chief object of a service such as this is to enlighten and broaden and deepen American pa- triotism, to secure a proper valuation of our Re- pubHc with its popular institutions, and to exhibit the overrule and supremacy of God in human history. There is no better wsLy of doing this than by setting forth and analyzing the forces which worked in the founding and upbuilding of our commonwealth. The hand of God was at work for long centuries, shaping events and raising up men and evolving great principles and incarnating the truth of civil and religious Hberty, that in the fullness of time there might be the rise and estab- lishment of the American Republic in the New World. If there had been no God in history there would * Delivered before the Presbyterian Ministerial Association, New York City. 173 174 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. have been no American Republic. God made the Pilgrims and guided the Mayflozver and founded the Plymouth Rock Colony. God made the Ptiri- tans and gave being to the Massachusetts Bay settlement. God made the Hollanders and planted the New Netherlands at the mouth of the Hudson and laid the foundations of New Amsterdam. God made the Scotch, and the Scotch made the church of John Knox, and the church of John Knox made the province of Ulster, and the province of Ulster gave America one third of its colonial population which struck for independence. God made the Huguenots, who brought to America their Bible and their love of liberty and their heroic conscience, which could sacrifice every earthly good before it could prove false to God's cause and the Hugue- nots' own best self. All these were makers of America, but you cannot think of them divorced from God, because they were not divorced from God. These men were the national fathers of the Republic, and they were all God-made men. They sought God's guidance in their private life, their social life, their business life, their church life, their civil life. God went before them, and the invisible camps of God were all around their camps when they pushed their campaign for principle. Napo- leon said, " God is always on the side of the hea- viest battaHons ;" but American history shows that that is not true. If that were always true our civil THE HUGUENOTS. 175 fathers would have gone down before the guns of Britain. When the dock of time struck 1776 the hour had come when God wanted the American Repub- lic as a part of his world-plan. He did not bring it into existence as the ultimatum of civil progress, but only as the instrumentality for introducing greater things all around the globe. America under God exists for national progress, but America exists also for more than that : it exists for cosmopolitan progress. God is using it as His object-lesson to teach mankind the value of freedom of thought, the potentiality of popular education, and the absurdity of kingcraft and priestcraft. He is using it to create a rising tide of republicanism which shall roll in glory over every nation of the earth. The influence of the American Republic is at work to-day in Spain with the Castelars, and in Italy with the Cavours, and in England with the Gladstones. It turned the empire of Brazil into a republic with- out the shedding of a drop of blood. De Tocque- ville predicted that " the growth of great cities would ruin America unless these cities were kept in order by a standing army." New York answers De Tocqueville. She sends him this message : " All the standing army which the greatest republican city of America needs is the people, armed with a free ballot and led by a courageous preacher of righteousness." Lord Beaconsfield was accus- 176 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. tomed to lift up his jeweled finger and point across the Atlantic and affirm, " No American city of any commanding size is well governed under uni- versal suffrage, or ever will be." Brooklyn at the present hour is an answer to the scorn of Bea- consfield's jeweled finger. Lord Macaulay wrote, " As for America, I appeal to the twentieth cen- tury. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your Republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman empire was in the fifth century, with this difference : that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged Rome came from without her borders, while your Huns and Vandals will be engendered within your own country and by your own insti- tutions." The answer to Lord Macaulay is the American Republic on the eve of the twentieth century still holding its own, and stronger than ever, and on a perpetual lookout for all such Huns and Vandals. A Forefathers' service such as this gives us an opportunity of pointing to the glad fact that our nation is reversing the black prophecies of pessimists and realizing the predictions of the optimists of the ages. More than this, such a ser- vice enables us to place before our thought that which is the bed-rock upon which rest the corner- stone and the upholding pillars of our Republic ; to find out also what the corner-stone is and what THE HUGUENOTS. 177 the pillars are. It gives us an opportunity to find out where the nineteenth century came from, and to discover the foes of republicanism, that we may be able to recognize them whenever they reappear in our midst. It brings to light the battles which had to be fought before we could be, and also the victories which were essential to our existence. The principles and the men that made us in the beginning are alone the type of principles and the type of men that can perpetuate us and keep us in triumph. As we canvass these to-night let us re- solve to lock hands with them forever. A service such as this exalts before us the value of the existence of patriotic orders in our broad land. Patriotic orders are always in order in a land where there is such a constant influx of new and foreign elements. They are of value to edu- cate and to protect and to feed the patriotic spirit. If they exist in advance of foes they will prevent the rise of foes, and that is a grand work. If they exist alongside of designing foes they will check- mate them and save our reigning principles and institutions. Look out for the man who talks against patriotic orders; he is either seeking a cheap reputation for broad-mindedness or he is cloaking some deadly treason. What has genuine patriotism to fear from patriotic orders? The question is its own answer. Instead of putting your interrogation-point opposite patriotic orders, 178 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. put your interrogation-point opposite the man who questions the right of such orders to exist. To-night, speaking as a Christian minister, I am required to look at American history from a reli- gious standpoint ; to mark the play and power of large-thoughted religion in the conception and construction of our national life. In the making of America the element of re- ligion was by far the largest element at work, and no one could give American history in its com- pleteness, from rostrum or platform or professor's chair or pulpit, and leave out the play and power of religion. What religion was it that had such a large play and power in our early history? I answer in a single word : Protestantism. TJie Pil- grims were Protestants, and so were the Puritans, and so were the Quakers, and so were the Scotch, who brought with them the church of John Knox, and so were the men of the Jamestown Colony, Virginia, and so were the Huguenots. When you have mentioned these, who are left as makers of America? The American Republic is the exponent of Protestantism, the fullest and most all-around ex- ponent on the globe. Americanism and Protes- tantism are synonyms. Do you object to this statement because by implication it bears hard on Romanism? Do you demand that Romanism shall be named in some way with Americanism, the on- THE HUGUENOTS. 179 marching and triumphing political ism of the age? Very well, I will name it and put my thought in another form. Americanism is Romanism Cal- vinized, Lutherized, Zwingliized. Americanism is Rome minus the pope, minus the papal ablegate, minus the cardinal, minus Mariolatry, minus the dogma of infallibility, minus the parochial school, minus the mass, minus the sword of persecution, minus the hierarchy, minus the union of church and state with the church supreme, minus the censorship of the intellect, minus the priesthood. Pare these excrescences off Romanism and I am a Romanist. Pare these excrescences off Romanism and your remainder will be something like Protes- tantism. Pare these excrescences off Romanism and you will unfetter the consciences of men, take away the censorship of the intellect, and inaugu- rate freedom of thought and speech and choice and religious action. You will insure a free press, a free platform, a free school, a free church, and a free state. The clear verdict of history is this: Romanism as a system, without these modifica- tions, can make no claim to be one of the makers of America. Only a stray Romanist here and there, Romanists who were better than the system, who acted without ex cathedra authority, lent a helping hand. They represented themselves and not the system. The system was at work on the other side of the Atlantic and represented itself. This 180 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. the story of the Huguenots fully shows. It was the persecutions of Romanism that drove the Hugue- nots and the Dutch Puritans and kindred peoples from their native lands to this New World in search of liberty. I will give right here a specimen from Hugue- not history indicative of the spirit and conduct of Romanism back in the early ages when this con- tinent was being peopled. Back in the year 1562 Admiral Coligni, a commanding Huguenot of France, seeing troublous times ahead for the peo- ple of his faith, thought to establish a refuge for them in the New World. For this purpose he sent a colony of Huguenots out to Florida. This angered Philip H. of Spain, who was the right hand of the pope of Rome. He could not bear the thought that the religion of John Calvin should have a single foothold on the American continent. He sent over Pedro Melendez to destroy them. This man, fired by Jesuit priests, gathered an army of twenty-five hundred, crossed the sea, and landed at St. Augustine, Fla. He issued this message on landing: " The Frenchman who is a Catholic I will spare, but every heretic shall die." Then began the work of death, and the Huguenot colony was wiped out of existence. The men, the defenseless women, the little children, the sick, were all cruelly massacred. That was a scene enacted on the soil that is part of the American Republic to-day. THE HUGUENOTS. 181 Was Pedro Melendez one of the makers of our Republic? One thing is certain, and that is, Romanism in America is not represented by tJie Huguenots, nor by the Pilgrims, nor by the Hollanders, nor by the Scotch. Its largest representation is found in the Irish. The Irish stand as the exponents of Rome. Now the Irish emigration is a late importation. The people of this race were not here early enough to be added to the list of the makers of the Re- public. They have been here only long enough to be makers of modern New York — New York prior to November 6, 1894, New York which is now on the dissecting table of the Lexow Inves- tigation Committee. I have the statistics to show that the Irish emigration to America belongs largely to the last half of this present century. Now I am not finding fault with this race for its tardiness in coming here, nor for its lateness in discovering that there is no Romanized state in all Europe equal to our Republic, though Rome has had centuries upon centuries to make such a state, and has had kings at its command. With all my heart I forgive the Irish for their lateness in com- ing, and for their comfort I would assure them that the Hollanders and Pilgrims and Puritans and the followers of John Knox filled their places admira- bly back yonder in the formative period of our national life. But I am not going to strike a single 182 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. narrow note in this service to-night, so I say — I am American enough to say even to this people : If you want the freedom of our land ; if you want to enjoy our citizenship ; if you want to educate your children in our free public schools; if you want to help build up our institutions and defend our Declaration of Independence and Constitu- tion; if you want to take our oath of naturaliza- tion, which cuts off every man who takes it from all allegiance, direct or implied, to every other civil power whatsoever, and which makes the Ameri- can Republic exclusively supreme ; if you want to become Americanized through and through, in and out, head and heart ; and if you want to be an American henceforth in all your life — school life, home life, business life, social life, church life, civil life — then come. If you come in this spirit and for these purposes, then, in the name of the great American commonwealth, welcome. But re- member this : the battles fought and won in the Old World declare that any other type of coming will be utterly vain and futile. The things of medieval times have taken their departure from this earth forever. The eagle is out of its shell. Our chariot of nationality is drawn by the noble steeds of individual liberty and popular education. You may ride with us if you wish, but you cannot drive. Uncle Sam does that. But now for the special history of the evening, THE HUGUENOTS. 183 viz., " The Story of the Huguenots." The Htigne- nots are two centuries older than the American RepubHc. Their cause began with the French Reformation, which antedated by several years the Reformation in Germany under Luther and the Reformation in Switzerland under Zwingli. Like these reformations, it began by the unchaining of the Bible and the putting of the Word of God into the hands of the people. Their cause arose under the reign of Francis I. of France, and continued through the reigns of Henry H., Francis H., Charles IX., Henry HI. and IV., and Louis XIII., XIV., XV. and XVI. Louis XVI. was on the throne of France when the American Revolution began. The French people are just a people in which a great reformation might be expected to succeed, and D'Aubigne asserts that their reformation was of indigenous origin. They are a people of ag- gressive spirit, susceptible to great suggestions, and quick in the apprehension of ideas. They are full of vivacity and of brightness and of irresistible impulse and enthusiasm. The Reformation began with Professor Lefevre, who taught his pupil, William Farel, the doctrine of justification by faith and a love for the Bible. These two were timid until they were joined by John Calvin and Theo- dore Beza, when the cause received a great im- petus. Calvin was the great French reformer, and Beza was the man who uttered that immortal say- 184 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. ing to the king, " Sire, it is in truth the lot of the church of God, in whose name I speak, to endure blows and not to strike them ; but also, may it please you to remember that it is an anvil that has worn out many hammers." The Huguenots were Calvinist in faith and had Calvin himself as their teacher. They were a people of the open Book. Their church polity was Presbyterian. They were great lovers of the Psalms, and upon all oc- casions sang the version translated and put into meter by Clement Merot. The Psalms were the Marseillaises to which they marched in all their battles. I do not need to say that their religious faith and their church polity were such as to awaken in the Huguenots the spirit of liberty and plant in their souls the germs of republicanism. That is the legitimate product of Calvinism, which exalts God and conscience as supreme ; and the legitimate outgrowth of Presbyterianism, which is representative in its genius and which gives every man the liberty of choosing those who shall repre- sent him and of holding them to account. It was an old-time saying — as old as tJie Huguenots them- selves — "The Huguowts are all republicans." The hierarchy of Rome saw this, and so did the kings of France, who were under the control of Rome. Hence the bitter and bloody persecutions which were inaugura<^ed against tJie Huguenots and which continued for two hundred years. THE HUGUENOTS. 185 My fellow-men, Calvinism carries in it republics, just as the acorn carries in it fleets of sailing ships. All that Calvinism needs is just what the acorn needs, viz., soil to grow in. Give the acorn growth and the ships will come. Give Calvinism growth and the republics will come. Give Calvinism Geneva and you will have a republic; give it America and you will have a republic ; yes, give it even France itself and give it time and you will have a republic. Away back in the seventeenth century the Hugue- nots converted the city of La Rochelle into a re- public which for years lived in the hearts of Ro- man Catholic, monarchical France. Although in the course of time La Rochelle was leveled to the ground, France never forgot it. It left more or less of a longing for another republic larger and more endurable. That longing we have seen realized in our own day ; it is realized in the present republic of France. M. Grevy, the first president of the new republic, in 1879, in publicly giving its history, turned to the surviving Huguenots and used these words: "The Huguenot church is the mother of modern democracy." That was a tribute to Cal- vinism, M. Gre'vy might have enlarged ; he might have particularized ; he might have pointed to the new system of public education which is the cor- ner-stone of the French republic, and have given the Huguenots credit for that, for the public schools of France were instituted largely through the in- 186 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. fluence and labors of the Huguenot statesman, Guizot. I cannot relate here in detail the persecutions to which the Huguenots were subjected during the two hundred years prior to the American Republic. If I entered into details I should have to give you ten thousand touching stories of woe, in which tender women and timid, tiny children, equally with brave-hearted men, rose to the dignity of moral heroes. My fellow-men, there are centuries of suffering and struggle back of our liberties. They cost whole generations of self-denial and patience and forti- tude and sore experience. A people cannot rise from serfage to best sovereignty in a day ; the training of generations cannot be fire-cast at will. The persecutions of the fathers whom we honor to-night began by a prohibition of the assembly of their General Synod, which was nothing less than the congress of a religious republic where the think- ing men of the Huguenots were trained to free thought and equal rights and the principles of rep- resentation and the exercise of religious freedom. When these things are put into a man's religion they will soon find their way out into a man's pol- itics. Civil liberty and religious liberty are insep- arable. Hence the French Jesuits raised the cry, " Crush these things out of the religion of tJie Hu- guenots! Crush out the Huguenots themselves!" THE HUGUENOTS. 187 No Huguenot synod was allowed to assemble for two hundred years. Before they could meet Na- poleon III. had to fall and the present French re- public had to be established. To-day that synod does meet, and it legislates for one million Hugue- nots. The persecutions which followed the hostile cry of the Jesuits culminated in three marked historical events : the massacre of St. Bartholomew in the reign of Charles IX., 1572 ; the siege and demoli- tion of the republic of La Rochelle under Cardinal Richelieu in the reign of Louis XIII., 1628; and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in the reign of Louis XIV., 1685. I can speak now only of the first and last of these. The massacre of St. Bartholomew was ordered by Charles IX., who was the tool of others. It was radical, cowardly, and cunning. It meant the extermination of the Huguenot cause, root and branch. It equaled the atrocities of Nero and Caligula. It was the slaughter of the unsuspect- ing and unarmed. The streets of Paris ran blood. Seventy thousand of the purest characters of the land were butchered in cold blood. Protestants everywhere were horrified. John Knox delivered this philippic to the French ambassador to Britain : " Go tell your master that God's vengeance will never depart from him nor from his house. His name shall remain an execration to posterity, and 188 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. no heir of his shall enjoy the kingdom in peace." That sounds like a message from one of the old Hebrew prophets. But it was literally fulfilled. Charles died heirless and in an agony of remorse and despair, with the thought of the massacre tor- menting him and setting his soul on fire with the fire of hell. This festival of blood was looked upon as a grand triumph by the head of the papacy. He issued a medal to celebrate it, and had all the bells of Rome ring a Jubilate. Was that the true spirit of Rome? If so, then I ask, has Rome changed? If so, in what respect? In nature or simply in manner ? In purpose or merely in policy ? Has it repudiated its old self? Where? When? How? History is terribly against it, and we have a right to demand the unquestionable evidence of a change. When that massacre was celebrated Rome had crowns at her feet. Now, to-day, there is not a single sovereign in her councils. The nations have changed; has Rome changed? The revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. came later, and as a piece of diabolism it equaled the massacre. It was preceded by such acts as these : a decree that a Protestant boy of fourteen and a girl of twelve might lawfully re- nounce the faith of their parents ; finally the age of conversion was fixed at seven. A child that could be coaxed to say Ave Maria was instantly claimed as a Catholic, and taken from its home and THE HUGUENOTS. 189 placed in the schools in the hands of the priests to be brought up as such. That was a direct strike at the family. That was the parochial school grown ripe. Preaching was forbidden ; the singing of psalms was forbidden. Catholics owing Protes- tants were given three years' extension. Protes- tant seamstresses were forbidden to work for themselves, and thus left to the mercy of Catholic employers. Decrees were issued which took away the trades and the professions and the means of a livelihood from all Protestants. Then came the thunderbolt of revocation, which left no hope for a single Huguenot in all France. The churches were closed and leveled to the ground. The pastors were given just fifteen days to clear the country. Then followed the Inquisition, the breaking of hu- man bodies on the wheel, imprisonment, servitude in the galleys, nameless and shameless indignities, banishment, and death by the thousands. I hear you cry, " Tell us no more of this; is there no di- vine Providence?" Yes, there is a divine Provi- dence. Divine Providence is seen in this : this inhumanity was the seed that grew the French Revolution, which shed the blood of the Church of Rome in the domain of France as though it had been so much water. Catholic France paid for all this in the horrors of the French Revolution. She sowed the wind, she reaped the whirlwind. The romance of Providence is seen on other lines. 190 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. which turned these very events against Rome ana made them issue in the upbuilding of Protestan- tism, which they were intended to destroy. Hugue- not fugitives by the thousands flocked to Protestant Holland and Protestant Prussia and Protestant England, and built up these Protestant powers, transferring to them the industries and trades and professions which hitherto had made France great. Follow these refugees in England, for example; you will find their descendants in the very fore- most families of that great nation. Some of them married into the nobility. There is Huguenot blood coursing even in the veins of Victoria, the Queen of England. As her offspring married into the royal family of Germany, there is Huguenot blood in the emperor of that great kingdom. If you will follow little Brandenburg of Prussia, which opened its gates to the Huguenot exiles, and if you will mark what the exiles did for it, and then what part it played in bringing into existence the present German empire, the great Protestant force of the European continent, you will find a very romance of Providence, and will see how France, by issuing the decree of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, was casting the guns that did such dread execution in her humiliation during the late Franco-Prussian War. But I must get closer to the American Republic. This cruel treatment of the Huguenots in their na- THE HUGUENOTS. 191 live land has a direct relation to it. These ante- cedent events in the lands across the seas were nothing less than the penning of the first words of the American Declaration of Independence. They were the far-off drum-beat of the American Rev- olution. They were the making and the drilHng of the coming American soldiers, patriots, and statesmen. Out of these crucial fires came the sires, and from the sires came the sons who were the men of Lexington and of Yorktown. Do you inquire of me how the Huguenots served the American Republic and helped in its upbuild- ing ? I answer, they did this in a twofold way : First, they served A uierica abroad and by antici- pation. Second, they served America on American soil. In speaking of the service which the Hugjiejwts rendered to the American Republic abroad and by anticipation I shall confine myself to one line, viz., the line of service which they rendered through and by means of England. The American Re- public came directly and largely from England. Because England was Protestant we are Protestant. If our liberties came from Protestantism, then the power that worked to make England Protestant served us. The refugee Huguenots were that power. They served us abroad by serving Eng- land. They helped to make Protestant England, which made America Protestant. 192 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Let me give you two incidents illustrative of the way the Huguenots served England. The first incident is the conflict between James II. and William, Prince of Orange — William III. If James succeeds, England will be Catholic ; if William succeeds, England will be Protestant. The fate of Protestantism is trembling in the balance. The little army that invades England under Wil- liam III. wins the day, and that little army has as its backbone the Huguenot refugees. Michelet, the great historian, says, " Amid the chilling delays on the part of the British people the army of Wil- Ham remained firm, and it was the Calvinistic ele- ment in it, the Calvinistic Huguenots, that made it firm." There stood men who had lost their all on earth, who had no hearth but the ground. They were overshadowed now by the flag of Orange, which was the symbol of their principles, and they would have died over and over again rather than give way to James. Around that httle army rallied the Protestant force of Britain, and the royal power slipped from the grip of Romanism. James fled to France. But the struggle was not over. Louis XIV. of France, who issued the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, received James. He was morti- fied to think that his own refugees were the soul of this defeat. He determined to retrieve it. He fitted up an army and put James at the head of it. This army invaded Britain. It landed in the north THE HUGUENOTS. 193 of Ireland. There another battle was fought, the battle of the Boyne, and James was again and finally defeated. Who won that battle, the famous battle of the Boyne, which carried in it so much of the future and gave to Protestantism the pos- session of the British throne? A Huguenot. It was the Huguenot Schronberg who commanded the Protestant forces that day, and although he fell in the battle, he left the kingdom in the hands of William HI. Thus it pleased the God of battles to use the persecuted and dispersed and down- trodden French refiigees to turn the helm of the mightiest matters of destiny and to share in the glory of His providence over nations and over the march of truth. England is now ready to bring its Protestantism withits republican principlesovertotheNew World. This it does. And it here has another battle with Romanism. It has to meet the same foe that it met by the river Boyne, viz., the foe who persecuted the Huguenots. Rome determined to have this New World, and so through Spain it took posses- sion of South America, and through France it took possession of North America. As far back as the landing of the Pilgrim fathers at Plymouth Rock Cardinal Richelieu founded New France in North America. He made this law : " Everybody settling in New France must be a Catholic." None of the hated Huguenots were to be allowed to enter. This 194 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. was done to checkmate Protestant England. The EngHsh and French met at Quebec and fought out the question, To whom shall America belong? In the great battle of Quebec Montcalm led the French, General Wolfe led the English. Montcalm fought for the old regime, Wolfe for the House of Commons ; Montcalm fought for allegiance to king and priest, Wolfe for the habeas corpus and free inquiry ; Montcalm fought for the past, Wolfe for the future ; Montcalm fought for Louis XV., Wolfe for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Although both men were killed in that battle, Montcalm lost and Wolfe won. With the triumph of Wolfe commenced the history of the United States. France should have won that battle ; she should have held America for Rome. She had the ad- vantage. She had Quebec as her Gibraltar and she had a chain of forts from Quebec through the heart of the country down through the Mississippi valley to the very city of New Orleans. She had also allies in many tribes of Indians whom she converted to Catholicism. She might have won that battle, and she would have won that battle, if — and the Huguenots were in that " if " — if she had only used the forces against England which she used in persecuting and driving out the Hugue- nots from the home land. One historian says that the persecution of the Huguenots in France called THE HUGUENOTS. inri from America, the important center of conflict, the forces that would inevitably have torn from the American Protestants the fair heritage they now have. My fellow-men, we gained our heritage at no less a price than the martyrdom of the Hiigne- iiots. They served America by occupying and keeping away the forces of France which would have crushed America. I am ready now to speak of the service which the Huguenots rendered the American Republic on American soil. The difficulty in tracing the Huguenots in direct American history comes from this : Often they changed their names into the language of the coun- tries to which they fled, and ever after were known by their translated names ; and often they married and intermarried with the peoples of these coun- tries. An example or two of the way they changed their names will show what I mean. M, Le Blanc, if he fled into Holland, changed his name into the Dutch and became known as Mr. Dewitt; or if he went into England he changed his name into Mr. White. M. LetelHer became Mr. Tailor. M. Le Roy became Mr. King. Coming over from Holland with Dutch names, and from England with English names, it is hard to distinguish the Huguenots from the Dutch or from the English. The interblending of races is always destructive of genealogy. In all of the 196 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. makers of America which I hav-e discussed up to this point in this course of Forefathers' addresses there have been veins of Huguenot blood. Since I wrote the Scotch Forefathers' address I have come across the annals of the province of Ulster, and have found that two or three thousand Hugue- not refugees cast in their lot with the Scotch of Ulster and became part and parcel of that people, and thus came to America in the exodus from Ulster. We know that there were Huguenots in the exodus of Hollanders who founded the New Netherlands. Peter Minuit, the first governor of that colony where New York now stands, was probably one of them, as his name shows. The first child born in the New Netherlands was a Huguenot child. Peter Stuyvesant, who ruled old New York, was married to a Huguenot. Take the colony which has always been supposed to be the purest of all — that is, the purest from an English standpoint — the Plymouth Colony, which came over in the Mayfloiver. There was Hugue- not blood in that! The most beautiful woman who sailed in the Mayflower was a Huguenot — she who turned the head of Miles Standish and won the heart of John Alden, and who to-day, as she walks the pages of Longfellow, captivates every man in America. She is our model for wife and mother. She is the ideal of our young men for their sister, and their ideal also for some other THE HUGUENOTS. 197 body's sister. I mean Priscilla Mullens. She was the daughter of the Huguenot, William Molines, a passenger on ih&AIayJiowcr, whose name was corrupted by the clumsy lips of the Nottingham- shire and Yorkshire yeomen from Molines into plain, homely Mullens. We always supposed that the beautiful Priscilla was an English Puritan maiden, and yet she has been a puzzle to us as an Enghsh Puritan girl. I never saw an English Puritan girl quite as chipper, nor one who played her cards as Priscilla played hers. English Puritan girls as a rule are sedate, and fairly stifif and cold with propriety when being courted. They always wait until they are asked out and out before they say "Yes." They do not even give themselves away by a single blush. A fellow-townsman, Horace Graves, in a bright and interesting article in the De- cember number of the " New England Magazine," 1894, is our teacher here. I quote from his article, not verbatim, but from memory : " It has always been a source of wonder to us men that an English Puritan girl could have had the ready wit to give John Alden ' the tip ' that released him from his ambiguous wooing and herself from the domination of Miles Standish, the widower, the fierce little captain who had killed and buried one good woman already. How blind we have been to the Gallic coquetry of Priscilla, which belonged to her national blood — -a coquetry which could hold on to 198 J/AA'£AS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. old Miles until she had secured young John ! I tell you, young men and old men who so much admire Priscilla, she was a worthy progenitor of the American girl, who knows how to take care of herself." While tJie Huguenots came to our land through intermarriage with other people, and with changed names and incognito, they came not in that way only ; they came as Huguenots, with their own names and with their national blood unmixed. It was the pure Huguenots who founded such colonies as the colony of Oxford, Mass., the place where the city of Worcester now stands ; and the colony of New Rochelle, off Long Island Sound ; and the colony of New Paltz, Ulster County, N. Y., be- tween theCatskillsand theShawangunk Mountains. Charles II. sent a colony to South Carolina, where afterward there came sixteen thousand Huguenots. William III. sent a colony to Virginia, which settled near the James River. Thousands of the Hugue- nots came to the city of New York. Long Island was first settled by them. Bedloe's Island, which holds the Bartholdi statue, the gift of the French Republic to the American Republic, was owned by and named after one of the Huguenots. They did not care to perpetuate their nationality here, and being of a social nature, they allowed themselves to be absorbed into the population of the Republic. But they made their mark, and made it indehbly. THE HUGUENOTS. 199 For, as John Fiske says, " In determining the character of a community one hundred selected men and women are more potent than a thousand men and women taken at random." Nowhere is their influence brought out better than in an article by Henry Cabot Lodge entitled "The Distribution of Ability in America." This article is modeled after an article which appeared in the "Nineteenth Century," called "The Dis- tribution of Ability in England." Henry Cabot Lodge gets the facts upon which he bases his tab- ulation from Appleton's " Encyclopedia of Biog- raphy," a six-volume work. In this article you can see at a glance the men who fought the battles of the country, governed the country, produced the literature and art and science of the country, built up its industries, gave it its inventions, and made its history. He groups them by States and then he groups them by races. The race rate runs in this order, and it grades the races : the English, the Scotch-Irish, the German, the Huguenots, the Scotch pure and simple, and the Dutch. Lodge says, " I believe that, in proportion to their num- bers, the Hugiienots produced and gave to the American Republic more men of ability than any other race." He contrasts them with the Germans, whom they outstrip in the production of fine American personalities, and he explains the reason of the difference. The Germans settled in com- 200 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. munities and separated themselves from the outside world, TJie Huguenots at once merged themselves into the body of the people and became thoroughly- Americanized. From all this he draws this whole- some moral : " The people who succeed in our Re- public are the people who become most grandly and quickly and thoroughly American." This should be so! Make it so! Keep it so! When we come to the great Revolutionary struggle tJie Huguenots grandly hold their own and do their part. Faneuil Hall played a part in the American Revolution. It was called "the cradle of liberty." Its four walls have heard the advo- cacy of every great cause pertaining to the up- building of America. Faneuil Hall was the gift of a Huguenot and bears his name. I called it the proudest day of my life when I first spoke in Faneuil Hall with Phillips Brooks and the governor of Massachusetts, and from that platform looked at the pictured faces of Faneuil and Webster and Adams and Hancock and Phillips and a score of others like them. The thought that my voice was echoing where their voices once echoed, and that I pleaded a cause which they would have pleaded had they been here, almost overpowered me with rev- erence. I said to myself, " This is honor enough for a lifetime." I wish I had time to tell you the story of the gift of that hall and relate the grand patriotic uses to which it has been put. There is THE HUGUENOTS. 201 no quainter story in our annals, and no story that has greater national thrill. Just as the holy temple stood in Jerusalem, a witness for God, a monitor to the conscience of man, a talking embodiment of all that was grand in the Hebrew's past, so Faneuil Hall stands in our Republic, great with the greatness of the grand men who have conse- crated its platform, and strong with the strength of the magnificent and triumphant causes which have been advocated within its walls, and living with the intense life which comes from the moral and intellectual and spiritual electricity which has been stored up in every brick and timber of its historic structure. Faneuil Hall stands in Boston, the old city of the American Revolution, a con- stant rebuke to all that is low and degrading in national life, and a constant inspiration to every brilliant conception in the American mind that makes for patriotism. Among the forces that worked in creating our Republic was the Colonial Congress. It issued the Declaration of Independence, and it educated the people into the acceptance of that Declaration of this Congress. William Pitt in Parliament said, " I have read Thucydides and have studied and admired the master states of the world, but I must declare that for solidity, force, sagacity, and wis- dom of conclusion under difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men stands in advance of the 202 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. General Congress of Philadelphia. All attempts to impose despotism upon such men will be vain. We shall be forced ultimately to retract. Let us retract while we can, not when we must." Of this body, thus eulogized by the foremost statesman of Europe, a Huguenot was the first president. Out of its seven presidents no less than three were Hugue- nots — Henry Laurens, John Jay, and EliasBoudinot. Henry Laurens was born in Charleston, S. C. He was an American patriot from conviction. When solicited by his friends not to take part in the American conflict he replied, " I am deter- mined to stand or fall with my country." Besides being president of Congress he was chosen min- ister to Holland to represent the colonies. On his way to Holland he was captured by the British and imprisoned in the Tower of London. While there he was offered his freedom if he would give up the American cause. To this he replied, with the old heroism, " I will never thus tarnish my name with infamy, nor disgrace my family." He was one of the four Americans who drew up and signed the treaty of peace in Paris which secured for the thirteen colonies their independence and placed them among the nations of the world. The distinguished four who secured this treaty were Franklin, Adams, Jay, and Laurens; and Jay and Laurens, the peers of Franklin and Adams, were Huguenots. THE HUGUENOTS. 203 No name in American history has greater prom- inence and honor than the name of John Jay, the first chief justice of the nation, and president of the Continental Congress, and president of the Amer- ican Bible Society, and president of the earliest society for the emancipation of the slaves, and signer of the treaty of peace which brought the Revolutionary War to a successful finale. To the names of Laurens and Jay and Boudinot must be added those of Gabriel Mannigault, who advanced large loans to the colonial government and kept it from bankruptcy, and Francis Marion, who was a noted general in the Revolutionary army. Both of these were Huguenots. We must add also the name of Alexander Hamilton, who was a Huguenot on his mother's side. Of Hamil- ton John Fiske writes, " Of all the young men of that day, save, perhaps, William Pitt, the most pre- cocious was Alexander Hamilton. So great was his genius for organization that in many essential respects the American government is moving to- day along the lines which he was the first to mark out. In the financial department he has been equaled by no other American statesman save Albert Gallatin." But who was Albert Gallatin, the peer of Hamilton? He was another Hugue- not, and the Secretary of the Treasury during Washington's administration. I could make this address an address of nothing 204 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. but noted Huguenot names, so many are the emi- nent Huguenots in our American life. Theirs are names such as these : the Bowdoins, who gave us Bowdoin College ; the Gallaudet, who pioneered in the education of the deaf and dumb; Christo- pher Robert, the New York merchant who built the college bearing his name at Constantinople ; the Bayards, the Marquands, the Higginses, the Vas- sars, the Durands, the Bethunes, the Vincents, the Ballous, the De Lanceys, the Edwardses ; the mar- tyred President Garfield ; and hundreds of other names with an equal luster. But I am speaking now of Revolutionary times and must confine myself to these. In the great cause of the American Revolution the Huguenot patriots were in it from alpha to omicron and from omicron to omega. They played a conspicuous part both at the beginning of it and at the middle of it and at the close of it. At the very beginning of the American Revolution it was Paul Revere, the son of a Huguenot refugee, who took that famous ride from Boston to Concord and waked up the farmers and townspeople, and warned them that the British were coming to seize the stores which they had gathered and locked away in view of possible war emergencies. The British came, the battle of Lexington, the first battle of the Revolutionary War, was fought, and the American farmers won. That midnight cry of Paul Revere, THE HUGUENOTS. 205 tJie Huguenot, awoke the American people to a conflict the result of which was the birth of this great Republic. At the middle of the Revolution it was a force of Huguenots, with the Scotch from North Caro- lina, under Colonel William Campbell from Virginia, which won the strategic battle of Kings Mountain, the turning event of the Revolutionary contest in the South. At the very close of the American Revolution it was the son of a Huguenot who drew up the stipulations for the surrender of Yorktown. York- town was the grand end. This Huguenot was John Laurens, the son of the first president of the Colonial Congress. As an officer in the American army he took one of the strong redoubts of York- town, while Rochambeau took a second and Alex- ander Hamilton took a third. With these redoubts taken there was nothing for the British general, Cornwallis, to do but to surrender. To young Laurens, a bright lawyer, Washington assigned the task of drawing up the articles of surrender, and these Cornwallis signed and was made a prisoner of war. The romance in this surrender was this : At the time young Laurens was drawing up these articles his father, Henry Laurens, was still a prisoner of war in the Tower of London. Young Laurens was making Cornwallis a prisoner, and by this he was not only serving his country, but he 206 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. was serving in a most signal way his imprisoned father. For when the time came to exchange the prisoners of war Cornwallis was exchanged for Henry Laurens, and Henry Laurens, bidding fare- well to the Tower of London, went direct to Paris, that there, with Franklin and Adams and Jay, he might sign tlie treaty of peace and thus make the American Republic a fact for all time. Such were the Huguenots: a people with an open Bible ; who fostered popular education ; who fought absolutism in all forms, civil and ecclesiastical, wherever found ; who loved a large-thoughted, republican church; and who were willing to pay a great price for a great thing; who paid their all for liberty. They were a great people because they companionated with a great God. Well may we pray the prayer taught us concerning them by that sweet daughter of the Huguenots, Mrs. Sigour- ney : " On all who bear Their name or lineage may their mantle rest : That firmness for the truth, that calm content With simple pleasures, that unswerving trust in Trial, adversity, and death, which cast Such healthful leaven 'mid the elements That peopled the New World." As we leave the study of this evening we do so with this conviction : that it is men who make the nation. They constitute its wealth ; they carry in them its strength ; they determine its future. Men THE HUGUENOTS. 207 — men of ideas, men of faith, men of hope, men of pure loves and of pure lives, men of sacrifice, men of conscience, men who love their country, men who walk day by day with their hand in God's — these are they who have made us strong as a Republic and who keep us strong. It is men who make the nation. " Ouida," in one of her stories, entitled " A Dog of Flanders " — a story which for beauty and pathos and pureness is excelled nowhere — puts this thought in a fine way. She illustrates the thought by showing how Rubens made Antwerp, with its sweet-toned, ringing bells. She writes : " The greatness of the mighty master rests upon Ant- werp, and wherever one turns in its narrow streets his glory lies therein and transfigures every mean thing. This city, which is the tomb of Rubens, still lives to us through him and him alone. With- out Rubens what were Antwerp? A muddy, dusky, bustling mart which no man would ever care to look upon save the traders who do busi- ness upon its wharfs. With Rubens, to the whole world of man it is a sacred name, a sacred soil — a Bethlehem where a god of art saw light, a Gol- gotha where a god of art lies dead." Having said this, she turns to the world and says, " O nations ! closely should you treasure your great men, for by them alone will the future know of you." What America needs above all things to-day is 208 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. this : a new consecration to that manhood and that womanhood which in the beginning made this Repubhc, It needs and it should earnestly seek the reproduction of the civil fathers. It should seek for sons and daughters who will write their names with the pen of holy deeds side by side with the names of the Virgmians and the Pilgrims and the Puritans and the Hollanders and the descen- dants of John Knox and the Huguenots. VII. THE QUAKERS; OR, IDEAL CIVILIZATION. VII. THE QUAKERS; OR, IDEAL CIVILIZATION. We are apt to think of the Quakers as a people of peculiarities; they are before our mind as men and women of broad-brimmed hats and poke-bon- nets, drab coats and gray dresses — a curious people of slow movements; a demure people, who are the victims of their own virtues. They are a peculiar people, but behind every Quaker peculiarity there is a consistent reason. The Quakers are more than an embodiment of oddities ; they are an embodi- ment of great principles and an incarnation of a grand life. Both their principles and life have en- tered into the bone and sinew of our Republic, and both are still necessary for the realization of ulti- mate America. The reproduction of their spirit and purpose by American citizens will make real, by and by, our " manifest destiny." We wish to look at this destiny as it exists in germ form in the souls of our Quaker ancestors. There is nothing more interesting or inspiring or 214 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. profitable than the experience of those great souls who have helped to lead the nations up the heights of civilization and into the advances of civic life ; who have led the human race nearer to God and into genuine and abiding liberty. The Quakers had such souls. Such souls looked out of the clear and striking faces of George Fox and William Penn, Elizabeth Fry and Lucretia Mott. Around the lives of such heroes and heroines the history of the world has turned as on an axis. They have helped to direct the main currents of human thought in the right direction. You call them single souls, but they have multiplied themselves into myriad souls ; they have become a people. There is no getting away from the true man and the true woman, from the single soul, if you would get at the origin and history of great movements. The tendency of scientific study in our time has perhaps led us to undervalue the influence of great souls. History has been believed to advance according to definite laws over which neither human genius nor human freedom has exerted any appreciable influence. Mr. Buckle explains national character as the re- sult of circumstances, and he claims that history and biography are wholly different in their sphere; yet the fact remains "C^sX persons are the ruling cen- ters in history. Take such personalities as Augus- tine and Luther and Fox and Penn out of history and the course of history ceases to be intelligible. Be- THE QUAKERS. 215 cause this is so, we emphasize in this course of study tlie names of the great men who stand chief among the races and peoples who form the constituents of our RepubHc, and we exalt their principles, which form the bone and sinew of American manhood. We are digging up the past for the instruction and encouragement of the present. In this we are acting according to the spirit of the times. This is an age when there is a craze for digging up the past and making it a study and a story. After eighteen hundred years Pompeii has been exca- vated ; the skeleton of its soldier in his rusty corse- let, dug from its ashes after well-nigh two thou- sand years of silent guard-keeping, is made an in- spiration and an example to courage and fidelity. Long, centuries «of oblivion have rested over Egypt and Troy and Assyria and the famous city of Agamemnon ; but now Professor Sayce and Mari- ette Bey read the stones of the Egyptian dynasties found in the walls of the uncovered temples; Layard and George Smith bring us tablets from the libraries of Nineveh ; and Dr. Schliemann gives us the gold bracelet of Hecuba and the necklace of Clytemnestra. We are doing in history what these men are doing in archaeology : we are making the past speak. We have dug up the Virginians and the Pilgrims and the Puritans and the Hollan- ders and the Scotch and the Huguenots, and now we propose to dig up the Quakers. 216 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. The Quakers, when seen at their best, stand in American history for ideal civihzation ; and this civiHzation is their contribution to the American Republic. As historic characters the Quakers are a marked and influential people in the midst of the most marked and influential types of mankind. They have put their stamp indelibly on national and international life. If we enter into the courts of justice we can see that they have been there : the substitution of affirmation in place of the oath is their work. The jails of humanity show the re- sults of their reform : it was they who changed our prisons from sties to sanatoriums. The dream of that beautiful prison angel, Elizabeth Fry, is being worked out into reality in criminal law, and the remedial element in punishment is being pushed to the forefront in the administration of justice. They have put their mark even on the pages of our Holy Bible and have made it a book of greater power. They have taken some oi its grandest prophecies and statements and commands and beatitudes, and by believing them, living them, translating them into reigning forces in the home and in the church and in the state, they have so made these their own that in reading the Book we instinctively associate their names with these Scriptures. You readily recall the Scriptures to which I refer: " And He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide concerning many peoples : THE QUAKERS. 217 and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks : nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more " (Isa. ii. 4). Whenever we read that we say, " That is the Quaker's prophecy," and it is. " Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath : for it is written, Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink : for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good " (Rom. xii. 19-21). When we read that we say, " That is the Quaker's gospel," and it is. " Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost " (2 Pet. i. 21). When we read that we say, "That is the Quaker's rule of speaking when dealing with truth," and it is. " Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." When we read that we say, " That is the Quaker's beati- tude," and it is. " That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." When we read that we say, " That is the Quaker's text of texts ; that is the Bible's statement of their great cardinal fact and doctrine, which they call the inner light,'' and it is. By the incarnation of these grand parts of the divine Book, the Quakers have made the Bible a new and a fresh power in human life. The Quakers arose in an age of dogmas and 218 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. creeds and persecutions and reforms and religious revolutions and quarreling ecclesiastics. They took their place among the ranks of reformers and were the most advanced of all. Their reforms were the most sweeping of all. They were the liberals and radicals of that age ; they were the re- formers of the reformed ; they undertook to reform Calvin and Luther and Knox. The Episcopalians and Puritans and Presbyterians protested against the Romanists, but the Quakers protested against the Episcopalians and Puritans and Presbyterians. In the language of Milton, to them "presbyter was only old priest writ large." The Quakers were the Episcopalians and Puritans and Presbyterians of the seventeenth century, sweetened and modified and made over with a new and a large admixture of love. They denied all ecclesiastical authority and threw aside all the prevailing ecclesiastical rites ; they went to God directly for their instructions, and worshiped before God in stillness and silence without prescribed forms. As the complement of a state ivitJioiit a king, they ofifered mankind a chnreh luitJiout a bishop. Their aim was to humanize Christianity and substitute a gospel of hope for a gospel of despair. Sweeping aside creeds and councils and rituals and synods, they held that God and the individual man, living in loving fellowship, were sufficient. They simplified things in a wholesale way and struck for an all- THE QUAKERS. 219 round liberty. This was Americanism before its day ; this was Americanism out- Americanized. They were a people of great moral purpose. Their ideals were their inspiration, and the realiza- tion of these ideals was their goal. They got their strength from ideals and convictions and visions of which the senses take no cognizance. James Free- man Clarke calls them the " English mystics." If they were mystics they were exceedingly practical mystics. They were one of the most independent people among all the races. They differed from all the sects around them in that they renounced the use of all force in the propagation of their prin- ciples. They inculcated and practised religious toleration. They have the honor of being one of the few divisions of Christendom against which the charges of cruelty and selfishness and love of power cannot be brought. Their gun was a protest, their bullet a principle, and their powder the inner light. They served the church and state by what they were. Their method of pushing their faith was to be what they believed and then assert themselves. They exalted the passive virtues. This was the method of Jesus Christ. All which Jesus ever did in this world was to assert Himself and suffer. When violence was used against them their prin- ciple of action was, Never retaliate. Their method of growth was by patience and perseverance and quiet suffering, and their method was effective. 220 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. For example, they carried their rehgion into the Massachusetts Colony and planted it right in the midst of the hard-headed Puritans. The Puritans persecuted them, whipped them, robbed them, hung them, but they kept right on asserting themselves and suffering until by their patience they wore out the cruelty of the Puritans and brought the Puritan scourge and scaffold into public disgrace. The public, won over to them by their beautiful spirit, rose and demanded the ces- sation of persecution. Thus they purchased and established for us by their sufferings the religious toleration which now exists in our Republic. They served America by patiently suffering. Their martyrdom was like the martyrdom of the church of the catacombs, of which history tells us in thrill- ing words. The church of the catacombs was the king^dom of God in sackcloth, working underground, along channels and galleries of rock, to overthrow and replace the armed empires above. The Qua- kers were content to be in the minority on every great question until by self-assertion and honest argument and right living they could win men enough to their side to make them the majority. In the first days their ways and principles spelled anarchy, but by the slow education of centuries, and by the beneficial changes which they wrought, they now spell yighteousness, peace, love. You see, I am giving the bright and beautiful THE QUAKERS. 221 side of the Quaker story : I am telling what they contributed by way of strength and glory ; I am speaking of them as tJie cJiildreji of the light, shin- ing with the celestial beauty of a Christ-like spirit. In telling the story of the Quakers, there is only one starting-point : we must start with George Fox. He is to Quakerism what Christ is to Christianity, its incarnation. In him we find the traits and principles and hopes and methods and life of Qua- kers at their best. He represents the heroic age of the Quakers. He gave Quakerism as a life and started it out on its thrilling career to march through England and Holland and America. This has been the order and growth of Quakerism : George Fox gave the world a Quaker life. Robert Barclay took the doctrines and principles and pur- poses out of which that Quaker life was constructed and built these into a terse, clear, logical Quaker system. It was necessary to build such a theologi- cal system for the purpose of defense under attack and misrepresentation, and as a fair treatment of the public. This formulated Quaker system Ed- ward Burroughs took and carried out to the world and expounded and preached, and by the conver- sions which he made built it up into a Quaker so- ciety. Then came William Penn and took the life of Fox, and the system of Barclay, and the con- verts of Burroughs, and built all into a Quaker commonwealth, which gave Quakers the civil em- 222 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. bodiment of their cherished ideals, and which gave America the powerful colony of Pennsylvania, a bulwark in the defense of freedom. After this came John Greenleaf Whittier, who took the common- wealth and the converts and the system and the life, and beautified all. With chiseled words and sculp- tured cadences he built Quakerism into a cathedral- like poem of liberty, full of reverence for God, and of appreciation of man, and of praise for the truth. George Fox, who was the spiritual father of the Quakers, was born in 1624. This makes him a child of the seventeenth century. Did he rise to power in that century? Was he so endowed and did he so assert himself as to make for himself an immor- tal name among immortal men? If so, he was a man among men. That was a wonderful century and brought forth wonderful products. It was a century when every weakling was relegated to ob- scurity ; for George Fox to make his mark in that century is all the evidence requi'ed to prove him a great man. This was the century of great reli- gious wars ; this was the century of great books and measures and men. If you except the Bible, the most democratic books ever published were pub- lished in this century. Cervantes published " Don Quixote," which set all the world laughing at sham aristocracies and mock heroisms ; that book helped to turn away the human mind from the worship of the false and artificial. Shakespeare's dramas were THE QUAKERS. 22.1 published then ; his works tended toward human equality ; they made kings and queens only men and women like their subjects. Bacon's works were published then ; these taught men to feel it not only their right, but their duty, to look with eyes undimmed by a church creed at all things which the Lord had created. Bacon's works made it possible for Newton to open the heavens, Watt the air, Lyell the earth, and Darwin animal life. "The Pilgrim's Progress" was published in that century ; so was " Paradise Lost," so was Baxter's •' Saint's Rest," and so was the Authorized Version of the Bible, which gave the Book to the common people. The Book is the ever-enduring Magna Charta of civil and religious liberty. This was the century of the Westminster divines, with their Catechism and Confession of Faith. This was the century of Cromwell's guns. Can George Fox rise in this century ? Can he in this century found a sect which shall live and prevail and modify soci- ety, and add freedom to freedom, and inaugurate reforms which, when carried out, will realize the ideal civilization ? Can he lead in the strike for independence in an age when the whole trend of things is toward independence? He does. We get the story of the life of George Fox from his own journal. His whole life is here, from the cradle to the grave ; not only are his outward acts here, his motives are here, his soul, his inner life. 224 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. From boyhood he was distinguished for great purity of thought and act, and for modesty and sweetness of disposition. He was large of body and large of soul. He was first awakened to life in earnest by the shams and inconsistencies of pro- fessed church-members. What he saw in them raised questions like these in his mind : If these are the legitimate product of religion, have men got the true religion? Do they understand the way to God? Have they the true rule of life? Are the churches what they ought to be? Is civiliza- tion the true representative of the mind of Christ? He sought the leaders of the churches and asked them for light, but from them he found no light. Then he separated himself from men and gave him- self to the study of the Bible until he became filled and saturated with its teachings. After this he gave himself up to solitary contemplation and deep thought and silent waiting for the voice of God. Here he found light, for the voice of God spoke to him, and he became God- filled and God-guided — one of God's prophets. God will fill any man and guide any man if he will only do what George Fox did. God will re-give by the voice of His Spirit the truths of the Bible to any man who is saturated with the Bible as George Fox was, and who will prayerfully and patiently and silently wait for that voice. He has done this for men in every branch of the Christian church. THE QUAKERS. 225 Thomas Carlyle helps us to estimate George Fox aright; he corrects Macaulay's estimate of him. Spurgeon says Macaulay was so warped by preju- dice that his measurement of George Fox was alto- gether inaccurate. Carlyle's words are : " The most remarkable incident in modern history is not the Diet of Worms, still less the battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other battle, but George Fox making himself a suit of leather. This man, the first of the Quakers, was one of those in whom the divine idea is pleased to manifest itself and, across all the hills of ignorance, shine in awful and unspeakable beauty. He is a highly accredited prophet of God." Two incidents in the life of George Fox let us into a large knowledge of the man ; they are an epitome of the man ; they interpret the man. The first incident took place in a church at Nottingham on a Sabbath morning in 1649. The services were conducted according to the directory of the West- minster Assembly ; the minister was a Presbyterian. Suddenly a young man stepped forth into the aisle in view of all, and unexpectedly a strong voice rang out like a battle-cry. In an instant the blood leaped to every brain ; every sleeper awoke, and a thousand eager faces strained forward toward the youth. He was a tall, gaunt man with piercing eyes and long hair and a face emaciated with fast- ing; but the glow of his countenance lighted up as 226 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. he flatly contradicted the preacher. His words were : " No ; it is not the Scriptures ; it is the Holy Spirit." The preacher's text was, "We have also a more sure word of prophecy ; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts." He had just told the people that the more sure word of prophecy mentioned in the text was the Bible. George Fox believed that the more sure word was the word which the Spirit directly speaks to the individual waiting heart ; so he contradicted the preacher: "No; it is not the Scriptures ; it is the Holy Spirit, who gave the Scriptures, who leads into all truth. The Jews had the Scriptures, and yet they resisted the Holy Spirit and rejected Christ. They undertook to try the apostles by the Scriptures, but they erred in judg- ment, because they tried them without the Spirit. When the apostles tried cases, they issued their de- cisions in this form : ' It seems to the Holy Ghost and to us to order thus and so.' No ; it is not the Scriptures ; it is the Holy Spirit." For this protest George Fox was arrested and imprisoned. The second incident took place in the city of Lich- field, in the center of England. " On a winter day in 165 I a tall, strongly built young man, singularly handsome, of grave and dignified appearance, was seen approaching the city of Lichfield. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and a long coat of leather. THE QUAKERS. 227 When the tall spires of the great cathedral caught his eye, he stopped, dismissed the few companions who were with him, and stood for a moment alone, silently praying. Then he moved forward again, but slowly as if deliberating, until he reached a group of shepherds keeping watch over their flocks. By the side of the shepherds he paused once more. His actions were peculiar, but on his face was an expression which awed the shepherds so that they durst not ask him any questions. Taking off his shoes, he gave them to the shepherds and resumed his march toward the city. Having entered it, he walked barefoot through the main street and mar- ket-place, crymg in a strong, sweet voice, ' Woe to the bloody city ! Woe to the bloody city ! ' That man was George Fox." He knew he was risking his liberty and perhaps his life by that act, but he knew also that he was obeying his conscience and his God. He was speaking to a wicked public by the language of signs. The language of signs is ever a living language and ever a telling language. You may criticize the man for this act and you may call it a violation of good taste, but this one thing remains to be said : Lichfield zvas a success. It developed George Fox ; it gave him a recogni- tion in the world and set an example for his fol- lowers which made them effective witnesses. You might as well criticize the Hebrew prophets for putting truth in dramatic form. 228 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Take these two incidents out of the early life of George Fox and you unmake the man. You do more than that ; you take from his early followers that aggressive spirit which made them propagan- dists and which inspired them to fearlessness in making their public protest against tyrants and tyrannies. The Quakers were not a negative people, they were a positive people. Without the discipline of these two incidents, George Fox would never have faced Oliver Cromwell, before whom all England trembled, and have talked to him as he did. Cromwell felt his power; after the interview he said, " Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win either with gifts, honors, office, or places ; but all others I can win." With- out his example, Quaker missionaries would not have gone to Rome as they did, to face the Roman pontiff" and charge home upon him his errors ; nor would they have gone to Constantinople to face the sultan and tell him that God would judge him for his barbarous inhumanities. Without his ex- ample, Edward Burroughs would not have written to Charles II., declaring to him the words of the Lord with a boldness which would have done credit to Elijah before Ahab. We are now face to face with the question, What were the doctrines for which George Fox witnessed in his intrepid way, and which he gave to his followers, and which made them a factor in THE QUAKERS. 229 civilization? We place the doctrine of the ituier light first ; all others flow from this. The doctrine of the universal inner light is this: Jesus Christ lighteth every man that cometh into the world. This Spirit of Christ in every man is sufficient to guide him. This Spirit of Christ in every man is not to be confounded with conscience ; the dis- tinction is clear between the human faculties and the divine Spirit. Conscience is an original fac- ulty of human nature; the Spirit of Christ is an added faculty. Instead of being identical with conscience, His purpose is to enlighten conscience. William Penn says, " God in Christ has placed a principle in every man to inform him of his duty and to enable him to do it." The way the inner light is perceived and increased is by waiting in silence for it before God and by meditation. The more it is honored and rightly used the more and brighter it shines. The inner light tells on the whole man ; it illumines and quickens the mental and spiritual faculties, and it beautifies and trans- figures the form and face. It makes the face calm and clear and crystalline, a ver}- transparency for a lighted soul. You can see what this doctrine carries in it. If God speaks to the soul, then the voice of God frees the soul from all bondage to the false opinions and prejudices and faiths of rfien. That is liberty indeed. If God speaks directly to every man, then every man has a distinct Individ- 230 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. uality and Is an independent personality. It is out of the consciousness of this fact that democracy is born. Tliis consciousness, when nurtured and grown, makes an American citizen of the highest type; it breaks every human shackle, it quickens and deepens the sense of personal responsibility, for it brings God into every life and makes Him the sole authority. My fellow-men, give my country a people whose supreme desire and object in life are to reach the mind of God in all things, and you give it a people in whose hands the interests of the Republic will be perfectly safe : " For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." The experience which George Fox had with the clergy of his day gave origin to the mode of wor- ship which he left his followers. In the midst of his religious perplexities he sought light from the clergy, but found none. The clergy were useless to him, so he protested against hireling ministers and dispensed with their services. In his journal he says, " Being at Oxford and Cambridge does not make a man fit to be a minister of Jesus Christ." George Fox protected his people against two things — ministers and choirs. He substituted the inner light for the clergy, and he put his foot upon the choir and buried it out of sight. He arranged for fhe assembling of his followers on the Sabbath to wait for the Spirit and His message. If the Spirit gave np message, thexfi was nothing said, and the THE QUAKERS. 231 time of the assembly was spent in golden silence. Both Charles Lamb and John G. Whittier speak the praise of these silent Sabbath services. Charles Lamb writes of the power of the stillness of the meeting : " I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who came with the avowed intention of disturbing the quiet, from the very spirit of the place receive in a moment a new heart, and presently sit down in peace among the Friends to let God talk to his heart." Whittier writes: " And so I find it well to come For deeper rest to this still room, For here the habit of the soul Feels less tlie outer world's control. The strength of mutual purpose pleads More earnestly our common needs ; And from the silence multiplied By these still forms on either side, The world that time and sense have known Falls off and leaves us God alone." George Fox had a profound sense of the length and breadth of the love which God had for man- kind, and this made him the philanthropist he was. " All men are members of the family of the All- father and are brothers." In his journal he says, " I saw the infinite love of God." God's love to man inspired his love to man. To him brother- hood meant the opportunity of doing good to all men ; hence he inaugurated help for the helpless, and led in prison reforms and charities, and in the 232 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. organization of societies for the emancipation of all human brothers in slavery ; hence he inaugurated movements looking to the abolition of the horrid and ungodly practice of brother man shooting down brother man ; hence he protested against imprisonment for debt and against the infliction of capital punishment for minor crimes. From the brotherhood of man he evolved, under the teach- ing of the Spirit, the doctrine of human equality. He made woman the equal of man, and to estab- lish her equality gave her her full half of the meeting-house. He argued, if men are equal, why should some be greeted with idolatrous titles, and receive obeisance from others, and be addressed in flattering pronouns? With him every brother man stood for just one, and that one was no better than his neighbor; hence he refused to doff his hat to any man, or address any man as " your Rever- ence," "your Holiness," "your Grace," "your Honor; " hence he called men by their Christian name, treating all alike. William Penn, following his example, addressed even King Charles H.- as " Friend Charles." There was democracy in that. Hence he introduced the use of the pronouns " thee " and " thou " into conversation as a protest against caste. William Penn has built up a gram- matical argument for the use of these pronouns. "Thee" and " thou" are singular pronouns ; "you" is the plural pronoun. Why should any single man THE QUAKERS. 233 be addressed as though he were plural — as though he were a regiment in one? A plural pronoun used in the place of a singular pronoun is a species of flattery for the purpose of magnifying a man or a woman. Recognizing that man is the brother of man, George Fox labored to promote honesty and truthfulness between man and man. This led him to secure a fixity of price for goods in all the trades, a custom which is now established. This led to simplicity of speech in conversation. He argued for the abolition of the oath, for the reason that he would have every word uttered by man as true as an oath. That honesty and truthfulness might be made easy, he argued for an all-round simplicity of life, and protested against extravagance and waste and vanity and idle luxury and the sense- less change of fashion. Such was George Fox and such were the doctrines and practices which he con- tributed to civilization. The man himself was one grand declaration of independence, and he was that fully one hundred years before Thomas Jefferson penned, the American Declaration of Indepen- dence. He issued declaration of independence after declaration of independence, all more radical than Jefferson's. His plainness of dress was a declaration of independence from the despotism of fashion and from the extravagance of the privi- leged classes. His employment of the singular pronouns and of the Christian names of men was 234 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. a declaration of independence from the spirit of caste. Fixity of price in traffic was a declaration of independence from the cupidity of the grasping trader. Arbitration as a method of settlement of all international disputes was a declaration of in- dependence from the monstrous iniquity of war. The doctrine of the itmer light was a declaration of independence from the dogmatism of sects and traditions, and from man-made and self-elected authorities. George Fox was a magnificent free- man, and he introduced into the world of thought and life that genius of liberty which was calculated to make every other man a freeman like himself. How did these legacies which George Fox con- tributed to America reach America ? He brought them himself. The man himself trod the very ground we to-day tread. He traveled through the American colonies for the express purpose of as- serting himself and his gospel of liberty. After he had worked out his mission here he went back to England to find a grave, and there he died, saying, " I am clear, I am clears And was he not clear? What man ever left the world having done his duty more fearlessly, or having declared more com- pletely all the counsel of God as he understood it, or having given the world grander ideals for the coming civilization? But the principles of George Fox came to Amer- ica not only in the person of George Fox himself; THE QUAKERS. 235 they came also in the person of his many followers, who settled in all the colonies, but notably in Mas- sachusetts and Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. In most of the colonies they had patiently to work their way into recognition. This was espe- cially so in Massachusetts. The first thing which met the Quakers there was persecution, and that from the holy Puritans. This is one of the stains which rest on the memory of the Puritans. It is vain to try to excuse it, for it cannot be excused ; it can only be admitted and apologized for. In former years I offered my service to the Puritans and made a special plea in their defense, but I now beg leave to withdraw from the case. I once uttered and published the following words: " But what have we to say concerning the Puritans' treat- ment of Quakers ? We have this to say : that even in the harsh measures, as they dealt with these, they were the progressives of their age, and were the most merciful people of that century. The Quakers in that day were not the ideal people who walk the pages of our novels to-day, and with whom we instinctively fall in love. They were not Friend Ohvia and Hannah Mettelane and Roger Pryor, the Quaker characters and heroes of Mrs. Amelia Barr's charming book. No ; they were loud-voiced people, disturbers of the peace, denunciatory in their language, rudely behaved. Two of the women, Lydia Wardwell and Deborah 236 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Wilson, walked the streets of Boston unclad, and tried to pass off that conduct as witnessing for God. The Puritans knew better than that, and put them behind the bars of the prison out of sight. Thomas Newhouse rushed into the Old South Church with two glass bottles in his hand, which he wildly dashed together and in pieces before the affrighted congregation, crying, ' Thus will "the Lord break you all in pieces.' When the governor of the colony walked the street the Quakers used to turn and hoot at him to show their contempt for govern- ment. The Puritans would not have persecuted Quakers of the type of to-day ; they would not have persecuted our poet, John G. Whittier. The Quakers have improved beyond the need of perse- cution. Mary Dyer was hung upon Boston Com- mon in front of my old church, but Mrs. Dyer was hung because she wanted to be. She wanted to hang ; it was her way of giving her testimony, and she refused to take no for an answer. They sent her out of the city scot-free, but she came back and acted worse than ever in order to compel the Puri- tans to hang her. Her hanging was a piece of pure gallantry upon the part of the Puritan gentlemen. There were four thousand Quakers imprisoned in England at one time, but only a handful were im- prisoned in New England." I have just been reading " The Pioneer Quakers " and "The Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts," two THE QUAKERS. 237 valuable books published by my friend, Richard P. Hallowell, of Boston, and I have found that the Puritans did persecute men just as pure and as sweet as John G. Whittier. They persecuted Nicholas Up- shal. And they did publicly expose the sacred per- sons of women as right-minded as Friend Olivia and Hannah Mettelane, and without mercy cut their flesh to the bone with the cruel lash. The Puritans, who desecrated temples and destroyed the finest works of art, are not the people to condemn others for rude- ness, are not the people to bore the tongues of Qua- kers with red-hot irons, and cut off their ears, and brand their flesh, and strip them naked and pub- licly scourge them, for the crime of rudeness. Mr. Hallowell shows that where the Quakers went to an extreme in giving emphasis to their protest, a reason for their extreme can be found in the effects of the cruel treatment which they ante- cedently received. In some cases the cruelties inflicted had unbalanced them mentally. The Quakers used no force ; theirs was the strength of the martyr nature. On behalf of the Quakers I instance the letters which they wrote in their pris- ons, and the words which they spoke on the gallows, and the prayers which they offered for forgiveness of their murderers. I put these in the deadly paral- lel column with the Puritans' cruel laws and brand- ing-irons and knotted whips and public gallows, and then leave the decision of the case to posterity. 238 MAKERS OP THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. There Is this to be said for the Puritans : a popu- lar reaction set in against persecution, and by this means Puritanism rectified itself. The reaction came from such outspoken men as the Puritan sea- captain whose story John G. Whittier forcefully re- lates in a poem pertaining to the dark colonial days. Cassandra Southwick, a Quaker maiden of Salem, being unable to pay a fine of ten pounds imposed upon her because she would not attend a Puritan church, was sentenced to be taken to the island of Barbadoes and sold into bondage. When the sheriff asked the captain of the ship to transport the prisoner, and put money in his pocket by act- ing as agent in the sale, the old sailor growled back his answer Hke the roar of the sea : " Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins of Spanish gold, From keel-piece to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold. By the living God who made me, I would rather in your bay Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear tliis child away." It was ringing voices like that which put an inter- dict upon Puritan whips and irons and gallows. The Quaker power in America reached its height in the coming of William Penn and in the establish- ment and life of the colony of Pennsylvania. William Penn was second only to George Fox as a Quaker influence. He came to America in the ship called Welcome, in 1682. The JVe/co me added another ship to the grand historic ships which THE QUAKERS. 239 proudly rode the sea of American life. One could write American history if he but told the story of the famous ships which brought the famous men of the past to our continent. What a fleet that was which sailed the American seas! The Santa Maria, the Good Speed, the Half -moon, the May- floiver, the Swallow, which brought the first Qua- kers, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, and the Wel- come, which brought William Penn. The territory of Pennsylvania was given to William Penn by Charles II. in lieu of money owed his father by the crown. The land was his to do with as he wished, and he devoted it to working into life a Quaker commonwealth. There was no man better fitted to establish such a com- monwealth than William Penn. He had paid a large price for the privilege of being a Quaker, and this made him a man to be trusted. He sac- rificed the friendship of his home ; his father said of him, " William has become a Quaker or some such melancholy thing." He had ability; he was educated at Oxford. He was democratic in spirit ; his definition of a free government shows this. " Any government," he said, " is free where the people are a party to the laws enacted." He was a kindred spirit to John Bright, the Quaker states- man of Great Britain, who for a whole generation was a leading spirit in the great movements of his country, and who was always on the right side. 240 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. John Bright got his principles from William Penn. An analysis of his public life will show the Quaker principle of civil life to be this : political power is rightly exercised only when it is possessed by the consent of the governed, and is used for the wel- fare of the community according to the permissions of the moral law. This principle guided William Penn when he organized his colony. He gave it a constitution and laws full of the genius of human- ity and full of equal justice. He allowed all reforms to be pushed within its territory. There was not one good Quaker thing which did not flourish in it. Here the Indians were treated as brothers and here they acted brotherly in return. The colony was a temperance colony ; it was an anti-war colony ; it was a colony noted for its religious toleration. For over one hundred years the Quakers controlled it. Its homes were full of sweetness and strength. The colony was one of the greatest powers in the Ameri- can Revolution, and furnished such leaders as Logan and MifiBin and Dickinson, all of them Quakers. Benjamin West, the great painter, was born here in a Quaker home ; he was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Great Britain. The liberty of thought granted by this colony bore its products and brought the colony honor. It enabled it to grow into what it is to-day, the second State in the Union. The colony gave the country the city of Phila- delphia, the one city of the Republic which rivals THE QUAKERS. 241 Boston in old colonial landmarks, just as in olden time it rivaled Boston in that leadership which in- augurated the American Revolution. It gave the country Independence Hall; it was the home of the Continental Congress. Here was framed and debated and publicly signed the Declaration of Independence itself, which made the American Revolution an historic fact. All this took place not on Puritan soil, but on Quaker soil, and all this took place where it did because there was more freedom of thought in Philadelphia than there was in Boston. One thing we cannot fail to notice in this his- torical study, and that is the general acceptance by our Republic of the principles and practices of the Quakers as these relate to civil life. The ac- ceptance of each of their humane measures is a vic- tory for humanity as well as for their testimony. They have reaped triumphs all the way from the abolition of capital punishment for minor offenses to the abolition of African slavery. One victory more remains for them to win, and that is the abolition of war and the substitution in its place of international arbitration. That victory is already more than half won, for men everywhere in Chris- tendom are beginning to argue on the right side. Their triumph will some day be complete, be- cause their aim is right. It is the ultimatum of Christianity. It has on its side also the verdict 242 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. of history. The progress of civilization does not ride in a powder-cart. Take England as an ex- ample : has its progress been the career of the powder-cart? Let Hugh Price Hughes, an Eng- lishman, answer the question. He writes : " The most splendid portion of Great Britain, which is now known as the United States of America, was that great Christian commonwealth, to which the future of the world belongs, founded or built up by the army ? Every one knows that, on the con- trary, it was founded by the God-fearing Puritan fathers, who crossed the broad Atlantic not to erect an empire upon bloodshed, but to secure liberty of conscience, which the soldiery of the odious Stuart kings refused them at home. Our soldiers had nothing whatever to do with this the most splendid colony, except to deprive us of it. If it had not been for the despotic temper of the military party of England the American colonists would not have revolted .and the United States would have been an integral part of the British empire to-day. The army of Britain will never be able to compensate us for the loss of America." That is precisely to our point ; that is history ; that is invincible logic. But tills is not all that is to be said relative to England. The best part of Canada is not the part which was conquered in war, which was taken by the army from France ; that part is the least THE QUAKERS. 243 Anglicized of all Canada and it is the most un- stable part of the Canadian structure; it is the disturbing, perilous element. Nor is this all. Eng- land does not owe her colonies in South Africa to her army ; they were won by the enterprise and energy of travelers and traders and missionaries. She does not owe her colonies in the Fiji Islands to her army and navy. Veteran missionaries de- serve the credit there. They took neither gun- powder nor brandy with them ; they took Bibles and the implements of industry ; they took swords and spears beaten into plowshares and pruning- hooks. The only place where British militarism was powerful was in India; but who can tell the hundreds of thousands of British lives and the hun- dreds of millions of British treasure that India has cost England? To-day the army plays a subor- dinate part in India. English tenure would cease to-morrow if it rested only or mainly on the sword. It rests on the justice of English rule and on the influence of the missionaries of the cross of Christ, the Prince of Peace. The teaching which we find in English history adverse to the claims of war we find true in American history. The most of Americans, I verily believe, imagine that it was the Revolution- ary War which made us a republic. Our most pro- found dangers only began when the Revolutionary War ceased. There was imminent danger lest the 244 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. colonies should throw themselves against one an- other in the shock of war, and devour one another. It was the statesmanship of Franklin and Washing- ton and Jefferson and the Adamses which made us a republic and which saved the colonies from them- selves. Let any one read John Fiske's " Critical Period of American History " and he will be as- sured of the truth of this. What was the critical period of America's history ? Fiske sa5'S it was the period which immediately followed the American Revolution. It was the triumphs won in the time of peace which made us most and made us per- manently. What we find true in England and in America we find true also in Italy. We all admire Garibaldi and praise him for what he did for Italy ; but what is the story of Garibaldi? Garibaldi himself did not emancipate Italy with the sword ; he was not the sole emancipator of Italy. His volunteers would have been speedily crushed by the Austrian army had not Mazzini, the Italian patriot and co- worker, changed the thoughts and hearts of the people by his powerful appeals and red-hot logic. Besides this. Garibaldi's greatest victory was won without the shedding of a single drop of blood. I refer to his victory at Naples. He entered Naples unarmed and in an open carriage. When the artillerymen of the cruel despot were commanded to blow Garibaldi into the air, the great Italian rose THE QUAKERS. 245 silently and opened his red shirt to receive the deadly volley into his heart. The effect of that act was electric and irresistible. The artillerymen flung down their fuses and shouted, " Long live Garibaldi!" "Long live Italy!" That was the way Garibaldi's greatest victory was won and that was the way Naples was made free. In the study of history I have come to the con- clusion voiced by Emilio Castelar, the most elo- quent and noble man of all Spain, the man who would give Spain to-day a republic worthy of the name if his country would only let him and if the military despotism were not in the way. Castelar says : " National freedom can be permanently won only by pacific means. Soldiers are as unfit to build the temple of freedom as the warrior David was to build the temple of God. Those who de- pend upon the sword shall perish by the sword." In America we are far on toward the acceptance of arbitration as a substitute for war, and the great thinkers of the world are with us. Arbitration to- day has its laurels. The settlement of the Alabama claims — that is a laurel ; the treaty between the United States and France, with its arbitration clause — that is a laurel ; a like treaty with Switzer- land — that is a laurel ; the present hopeful negotia- tion with Great Britain for a treaty of the same import — that too is a laurel ; the International Arbitration Conference, which met in our land 246 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. this very year — that is a laurel. This conference issued a magnificent address to the world last June, demanding law for war in the settlement of all difficulties between nations. The clock of time is getting ready to strike the hour which the poet laureate foretells, when "The war-drums will throb no longer, and the battle-flags be furled, In the parliament of man, the federation of the world." The part which the Quakers have taken in build- ing the American Republic makes clear this two- fold way in which patriots can effectively serve their country : I . By uttering an emphatic protest against all destructive evils. History can ask no grander illustration of the power of protest than Quaker life on American soil. Why is it that there is no African slavery to-day within our borders? It is because the Quakers as early as 1688 issued ihoir p7-o test against African slavery, and kept it issued until the nation was educated up to the Emancipation Proclamation. But mark this: they invested their all in their protest. They meant it, and they made the Ameri- can people feel that they meant it. Their protest was strong with the moral strength of a splendid personality and a consistent life; its power was moral. THE QUAKERS. 247 2. By keeping before one's country uplifting and inspiring ideas. We call guns, swords, powder, forts, ironclads, and armies national powers ; the Quakers have taught us that there are powers beyond these. The powers beyond these are right thoughts, high ideals, holy visions, righteous principles, burning aspirations. These make a strong manhood and a pure womanhood, and such manhood and woman- hood make a strong and pure state. The men and women who have these thoughts, ideals, visions, principles, aspirations, go straight to God for them ; they are exponents of God. The ideal civilization exists only in the plan of God. This is the message of the Quaker fathers to the patriotic sons of America: If you would render your country the highest service and lead it for- ward to the millennial age, be an intellect to your country, think for it ; be a conscience to your country, make moral decisions for it ; and think and decide within the lines of God's holy law. If you would render your country the highest service, be the Lord's prophet to your country ; dream dreams for it and see visions for it. It was Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, men of thought and of vision, who were the promoters and conservators of the national strength of Greece; and it was Samuel and Elijah and Isaiah, the prophets of the Lord, who were the chariots of Israel and the horse- 248 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. men thereof. Be to the American Republic what these men were to the kingdoms of which they were citizens. Hold up ideals before the people as they did, and then, like them, you will attain a civilization embodying your ideals; then you can look up into the face of your God and address Him in the words which the sweet Quaker poet of America left with his fellow-citizens as an ideal and a vision : " Suffice it now. In time to be Shall holier altars rise to Thee ; Thy church one. broad humanity. " White flowers of love its walls shall climb, Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime ; Its days shall all be holy time. " A sweeter song shall then be heard — The music of the world's accord Confessing Christ, the inward Word! " That song shall swell from shore to shore, One hope, one faith, one love restore, The seamless robe that Jesus wore." VIII. OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 249- VIII. OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS* In celebrating Forefathers' Day, it is not really the day that we honor, but a progress ; a progress which the day registers. We celebrate the genesis and the evolution of a great Republic. The ob- ject of such a service as this is not the study of a certain 2 1st day of December, but a study of great men, and a study of great women who are always back of great men. We meet in this service to bring forward principles, causes, characters, destinies, about which it will do us good to talk. Bacon says, " Histories make men wise " ; we are in search of histories. Webster says, " There is a moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors which elevates the character and refines the heart," we are in search of that moral and philosophical respect. We have the heritage of a grand national ancestry in which grand men and women share, share and share, alike. We have met to brighten the memories of this ancestry. We are in search of knowledge which makes for patriotism, and which raises the estimate of the price paid for our * Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brook- lyn,- at a Forefathers' Day Service. 253 254 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. country. It has been said that there are millions in our world who have been rendered physical and moral paupers by the sins of their ancestors,- and doomed to be hewers of wood and drawers of water ; the despotic governments which their an- cestors established and supported have stunted them, and have made them thin-blooded and low- browed ; all back head and no forehead ; we have met to-night to thank God that this is not so with the United States. It was sifted seed that was planted in this land of ours, and it is in conse- quence of this that we behold the grand harvest which belongs to us to-day. We have now our own poets, historians, inventors, publicists, jour- nalists, statesmen, jurists, scientists, ministers, and our grand women ; and these are quoted the world over. We wish to impress upon ourselves that the glory of the fathers is their children ; and we wish to so school ourselves in that which consti- tutes the grandeur of nations, that the father's legacy shall run no risk of dishonor by being com- mitted to our hands. Our aim is to be true de- scendants of the haloed heads of American history ; and with this aim before us, we come to-night, to put ourselves under the spell of their heroic story. We recognize that the age of luxury has some- thing to learn from the age of homespun. That age has principles to give which are everlasting, and an example to set before us, which if followed will produce a loyalty to God and self, that will OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 255 add to the lustre of our Republic. We wish to be, not only the lineal descendants of " The Makers of America," we wish to be also their logical and spiritual descendants. It is as Wendell Phillips has said: "Thee and thou, a broad- rimmed hat, and a plain coat are not George Fox in our century. You will recognize George Fox in him who rises from the lap of artificial life, flings away its softness, and startles you by the sight of a grand man." We may not have the pedigree of the body, but we can, and we ought to have the pedigree of the mind, the character, and the moral personality of our civic fathers. This higher pedigree is reached by keeping the forefathers in constant and reverential remem- brance, and by constantly cultivating a sense of our responsibility to them. We have a trust to keep, and they have given it to us. We have their name to guard. Now the thought of this cannot but be a stimulus to us as we seek to live our lives. Who can doubt, for example, that the younger Pitt was sustained in his masterly course by the name and fame of his illustrious father ? Or who can doubt that John Quincy Adams was inspired in doing his duty in life by the memory of his father's and mother's families? He writes in his diary, " The moment I knew that I bore the name of Quincy, given me by my mother, I felt a call to act up to the demands of that name." Thus the Puritan mother did a grand work often 256 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. by the very names which she gave her boys. By perpetuating family names, she built up an aristo- cracy of historical association which was whole- some and inspirational ; and which resulted in self-respect, and in loyalty to what was expected from one's family. Names are like old ancestral homesteads, they are eloquent memorials ; they are educators in patriotism and in religion. Take the Winthrops, who have come down to us through eight generations, and you have an illus- tration in point. But we have a special object before us to-night ; an object different from that which we sought on previous forefather services, and we must not lose sight of it. Our object is this : to emphasize the fact that there were foremothers as well as fore- fathers. These did a grand work ; these made magnificent sacrifices; these contributed sublime enthusiasms; these exercised a victorious faith; these saw glorious visions; and these endured appalling sufferings, all of which entered into the conception, and the making, and the nurturing, and the developing of the American Common- wealth. I wish to set these foremothers before the public for honor and for imitation, and as an appeal to the American women of our day. I wish through them to reach our women, and stimu- late them in their duties as patriots. I wish also, by setting them forth for admiration, to correct the mistaken estimate which American men have of O UR AMERICA N FORE MO THERS. 257 the value of the worth and work of women in com- parison with their own. Their work is different from man's, but it is just as necessary, and as im- portant, and as efificient. Mrs. Oliphant, that large-minded woman, in her essay on " The Grievances of Women," takes the ground that all the differences about the legal rights of women are of minor importance alongside of the universal underestimation of the work which women actually do. Since the world began, they have never got credit for doing the share of the world's work which has fallen to them and which they have faithfully performed. If that grievance be correct, it is a burning shame ; and it is quite time that there should be a change, and that men should become honest in the book-keeping of the home, the church, and the state. Woman came into the world at the start be- cause man was a failure without her, and she stays in the world because his completeness requires her to join him in all his works and callings. I boldly assert that it was woman who made the American colonies a success, and I fearlessly appeal to his- tory for the proof of what I assert. Take the two leading colonies and place them side by side : the Jamestown colony and the Plymouth colony ! The Plymouth colony was a success from the beginning ; the Jamestown colony came within one point of being an out-and-out failure. " Was there a reason for this difference between these 17 258 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. two colonies ? " Yes. "Were not the two colo- nies precisely alike ? " No. " They both came from England ! " That is true, but the Jamestown colony lacked this, viz., the presence, and the patience, and the love, and the endurance, and the elevating power of a heroic Christian womanhood. The Pilgrims of the Mayjlozver brought their wives and children with them. They had the home in their colony. Woman makes the home, and the home makes the church and state. If Plymouth Rock had been minus the home, the future of New England would have been changed. The men of the Jamestown colony who came over to Virginia left their women in England. There was not a single woman in the whole colony ; and this is the reason that they quarreled and were decimated. ' What could you expect from one hundred and two old bachelors, a com- munity of bachelors? It is as much as society can do to get along with one here and another there in the community. A colony of bachelors never carried any cause on earth to a successful conclusion, and never will. Benjamin Franklin calls an old bachelor " the odd half of a pair of scissors." Nothing is more worthless than the odd half of a pair of scissors. But you say " the Vir- ginian colony still exists and that it is part of the United States just as much as the Plymouth col- ony is. It contributed mightily to the formation of our great Republic. It gave us Patrick Henry, OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 269 the orator of the American Revolution. It gave us Thomas Jefferson, the penman of the Declara- tion of Independence. It gave us George Wash- ington, the Father of our Country. It gave us James Madison, who wrote our Nation's Constitu- tion." All true. But do you know why the James- town colony continued to exist and was able to give these men to the nation ? Woman was the reason. First, young Pocahontas, the beautiful daughter of the Indian chief, kept the colony from starvation, according to the testimony of Capt. John Smith, whose life she saved ; she afterward married into the colony and became the ancestress of the noted Randolph family of Virginia ; and second, twelve years after the colony came to Virginia, England sent over one hundred of the handsomest young women of the land to join the colony ; and these became the wives of the James- town men, and saved and made the colony, and gave it its future. It was when the colony re- ceived the home that it took on a new life. This is one point scored for the mothers and wives of the forefathers, and it is pure, straightforward, undeniable history. This point is the contribution of the Jamestown colony, the oldest of all the American colonies. But the Plymouth colony is not one whit be- hind that of Jamestown in setting forth the in- fluence of woman. Look at the passenger list of the Mayflower and read the names of those holy 2G0 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. women written there by the side of the Pilgrim Fathers. Was that perilous trip easier for the women than it was for the men? I look upon the names of those nineteen wives and seven daughters on the Mayflozver passenger list as carrying in them a grandeur, and as standing for as great a heroism, as the names of the heroic men affixed to the Declaration of Independence. Not a single man died for affixing his name to the Declaration of Independence; but many a woman died because she put her name upon the passenger list of the Mayflower. Both meant battles with hardships, and both meant battles for liberty. Concerning the Mayfloiver women, this beautiful tradition has come down to us, showing how much women were in the life of the early days: " The first foot that pressed the snow-clad surface of Plymouth Rock, December 2i, 1620, was the foot of the fair maiden, Mary Chillion ; and the last survivor of the Mayflower Pilgrim company was Mary Allerton, who lived to see the planting of twelve out of the Thirteen colonies which formed the nucleus of the United States." The early history of our country divides itself into two principal parts : the Pre-Revolutionary period, and the Revolutionary period. For the sake of convenience and also as a help to our memory, let us follow this division in speaking of the foremothers of the Republic. The Pre-Revolutionary woman of America was OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 261 not the fashionable woman of 1901 ; wasp-waist; a creature of fads ; the physician's star patient ; beauty clad in a tailor-made costume ; the butter- fly of the palatial mansion. She was of another type. She was clad in homespun, and was her own tailor. Like Deborah and Mahitabel Nash she was a picturesque personality shod with snow- shoes and clad in bear-skins. Like Priscilla Mullens plying her spinning-wheel, she carried in her romance enough to give Longfellow his most exquisite poem on courtship. Her home was the log-cabin of the wilderness around which the bitter winds whistled, the hungry wolves howled, and the war-painted Indians gave their soul-pierc- ing whoop. She was a creature of solid quantity, a woman of weight. She was a woman who could and who did make a home. She was a woman of a family ; a mother of strong boys and blooming girls. She was a woman of all-around industry. Let me set her before you by a concrete case. I select Mrs. Sarah Knight as an average type of the Pre-Revolutionary woman. I select her be- cause she kept a diary which has been preserved and which gives us her autobiography. She was the daughter of Captain Kemble, of Boston, who obtained some notoriety by sitting in the public stocks of Boston for two full hours for the crime of " unseemly behavior." His unseemly be- havior was this : he was seen kissing his wife on the Sabbath upon the doorstep of his home just as 262 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. he returned from a voyage of three years. From the diary of this woman we find that she was proficient in all the fireside and home industries of that day, and was good at soap-making, candle- making, sugar-making, cloth-making, butter- making, bread-making, clothes-making, and broom- making. Besides being a good housewife she was a good business woman, and made business trips from Boston to New York and back again on horseback. She also ran a tavern, taught school, owned and superintended a grist and flour mill, and speculated a little in Indian lands. Many are the thrilling tales told of the women of the Indian era of our country. On one occasion Miss Elizabeth Zane, of Fort Henry, ran the gauntlet of the Indian's fire, in order to secure a keg of powder, and by her nerve and heroism saved the whole settlement from massacre. On another occasion Mrs. Hendree, of Royalton, Vt., rescued fifteen captured children from the Indians at the risk of her life. Perhaps the greatest deed of daring, which has come down to us, was that of Hannah Duston, of Concord, N. H. She was a veritable Spartan. She despatched a whole Indian camp with a tomahawk and in this way secured her liberty, for she was a prisoner. Her story is told by Bancroft as one of the most daring feats in all Indian lore, and the city of Concord has erected a public monument to her name. As a rule, however, the life of woman, in those far- OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 263 away Indian days, was not so much a life of thrilling adventures as it was one of loneliness, and exile, and continuous and wearing work and hard- ship from cold and hunger. Power to endure ! That was victory and success in those days. That was the demand in yonder age, and that demand the Pilgrim Mothers grandly met. Gail Hamilton in speaking of their endurance writes : " I am sick and tired of hearing the Pilgrim Fathers lauded to the skies, and feted and sainted, let us have no more of it. The era of the Pilgrim Mothers is due, and has come. Sing their praises; for they out-distance the Pilgrim Fathers a hundred times over. They not only endured the hardships and anxieties of that rough period, the cold and the hunger of Colonial life, the dangers which per- petually looked them in the face from the wrath of the savages ; but better than that, and harder than that, they endured the gruff old Puritan Fathers themselves, and put up with them, and made headway toward our glorious day in spite of them. To endure the Pilgrim Fathers themselves is heroism enough for women of any age." Some of the forefathers, like Roger Williams, were conscientiously contentious. Now when it is a man's religion to wear a long face, and look sour by way of protest, and hitch and fuss around generally as though things were all out of joint, and elbow everybody into giving him his place and his rights, that man's disagreeableness is dis- 264 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. agreeably disagreeable. This scores another point for the mothers and wives of the forefathers ; they proved themselves able to endure the forefathers. But we must pass on to the women of the Revolutionary period. In this period history is fuller. The stories of women are better known ; and there are more of them. More grand women step out of hidden diaries, and private letters, and household traditions and become women of his- tory. But there are a great host yet, who have not stepped out. The heroic women of this period who became the mothers of the Republic were the daughters of the fourth generation from the mothers of the colonies. They were such women as Moll Pitcher, of Monmouth, who loaded and fired cannon, and who took Paul-Revere rides in the service of her country ; and Hannah Win- throp who was black with dust and smoke of Lexington, and Anne Elliot whom the British styled the " Beautiful Rebel " ; and Margaret Corbin who took her husband's place at the artillery in the battle at Fort Washington, and whom Congress afterward mentioned in its min- utes with honor, and whom it pensioned ; and Deborah Samson who fought for three years in the Continental Army, and was praised by Wash- ington and honorably discharged because she was wounded. But these were exceptional cases and I do not stop to give their history in detail. I am dealing now with women who served their OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 265 country in a more womanly way, and through the ordinary channels. And here there step upon the stage, women like the mother of Benjamin Franklin, and Mary Washington who sleeps upon the banks of the Potomac honored by a monument reared to her memory by a grateful Republic. Two noted women of that time especially fill the eye of an admiring posterity. These are Mrs. Mercy Warren, sister of Jas. Otis, who gave her husband to fall in the battle for freedom ; and Mrs. Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams and mother of John Ouincy Adams. If you follow the life of Mrs. Warren through, you will have the whole history of the American Revolution. She was born in the times when the colonies were staunch in their adherence to the English Crown, and she lived through all the stages of alienation and revolt, until the battle of Yorktown and the surrender of Cornwallis made the new Republic an assured and a glorious cer- tainty. From the very start, she had an abiding faith that the Republic would live; but she knew that it could live only at the sacrifice of her husband, who was dearer to her than life ; this sacrifice she made. This intellectual woman was in intimate correspondence with Samuel and John Adams and with Jefferson. General Knox wrote Or^her, " I shall be happy to receive your counsels from time to time " ; and whenever she omitted 266 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. to write John Adams, that great man wrote asking her the reason why. She was the first to suggest the doctrine of " Inherent Rights " which was at once accepted by our distinguished patriots as belonging to all mankind, and she was the first person to advise separation from the mother country as the only solution of the political prob- lem of the hour. She did this when the hearts of strong men quaked with fear. This was before the first drum-beat of the great democratic march had as yet sounded. It was she who made the Adamses the fearless advocates of this policy. Her letters to them are the documentary proofs of this. It was she who wrote the history of the American Revolution in the form of three large volumes. Rochefoucauld in his " Tour in the United States " says : " Seldom has a woman in any age acquired such ascendency by mere force of a powerful intellect, and her influence continued through life." Mrs. Abigail Adams was scarcely one whit be- hind Mrs. Warren in intellect and scholarship, or in heroism, or in the use of the pen. The two were intimate friends and acted and reacted upon each other. They advocated the same principles and pushed the same causes. As Mrs. Adams' husband was in public life, it fell to her lot to manage the home and the farm. There was no money in the public service of one's country dur- ing those days. So well did she manage home OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 267 and farm that when Mr. Adams finished his second term as President of the United States, he and his wife had a comfortable estate to which to retire and upon which to spend their old age in comfort. Without this they would have been in sore and straightened circumstances. But she was more than a home-maker, she was a nation-maker. Her fine scholarship has left its mark upon many of the State papers which issued from her husband's hand. Her whole soul was in the cause of liberty, and she led in that cause. Before the Bell of Liberty on Independence Hall, Philadelphia, rang out upon the air of the New World the an- nouncement of American freedom, Abigail Adams issued her declaration of independence. In a letter written to her husband, who was a member of the Continental Congress sitting in Philadel- phia, she wrote one Sabbath day : " This intelli- gence (referring to the new aggressions of the British on American rights). This intelligence will make a plain path for you, though a danger- ous one. I could not join to-day in the petitions of our worthy pastor for a reconciliation between our no longer parent state, but tyrant state, and these colonies. Let us separate. They are un- worthy to be our brethren. Let us renounce them. And instead of supplications as formerly, for their prosperity and happiness, let us beseech Almighty God to blast their counsels, and bring to naught all their devices." 2G8 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Here was a Declaration of Independence seven months in advance of that which the Liberty- Bell rang out July 4, 1776, and it was signed by a patriot woman. This is still another point scored for the mothers, and wives, and daughters of the fore- fathers. This point, viz. : Mercy Warren and Abigail Adams led in teaching the doctrine of *' inherent rights," and in advocating separation from a tyrannical throne, and in issuing America's Declaration of Independence. But Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Adams were not alone in their enlistment in the Cause of Freedom. They had hosts of followers, and co-workers. The women of their day rallied around them as leaders. And these organized them for service. The men organized and called themselves " The Sons of Liberty," the women organized and called themselves " The Daughters of the Rev- olution." They pledged themselves not to buy nor drink tea which was arbitrarily taxed and imported without American consent. This was an organized protest against the principle of tax- ation without representation, and it created and put back of the American Revolution an effective public sentiment. But there was a work done by American women prior to all that I have as yet mentioned ; prior to these protesting organizations of the Daughters of the Revolution, and prior to the OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 269 patriotic letters written by Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Adams ; a work which made the Revolution both a possibility and a triumph : I mean the work of the American mothers in the American homes. These mothers, by being true to God and to their own conscience, trained those sons who sat in the Continental Congress and decreed liberty, and who fought in the Continental Army the battle fought for liberty. Those who fell in these battles were all mother's sons ; and mother's gifts to freedom. The Puritan mother was the pioneer of education. Where the church bell had never been heard to ring by the children, the Puritan mother every Sabbath gathered her boys and girls around her, and read to them from God's Book, and taught them the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Here by the fireside she taught them trust in God, and the duty and privilege of prayer to God. Here she sang with them the old psalms of the ages ; here she drilled them in the wonderful story of the Hebrew's strike for freedom ; and filled them with admira- tion for the grandeur of that God-led and God- guarded nation. Here she kept them in fellow- ship with the warriors and Psalmists and Pro- phets of God, who walk the pages of the Bible, and inspired and purified their lives with the beauties and sublimities of the Gospel and the Apocalypse. This was where woman's great work was done in Pre-Revolutionary and Revo- 270 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. lutionary times. In the home she made the Sons of Liberty, and filled them with a sense of righteousness, and gave them the God of battles to lead them. The clarion voice of power which in 1776 woke the nation to its triumph was but the echo of the old Hebrew war-psalms which she sung with them, and the acting out in them and through them of Moses and Joshua and David and Elijah and Isaiah, the men of the Book whom she taught them to love and emulate. You may search all time through, but you will find no mother to excel the Puritan mother. She was better than the Puritan father. The stern Puritan father I imagine sought to break the will of the child, and thus control it ; that was his method of home-education, but the Puritan mother sought to control the will of the child, not by the rule of another person's will, but by the rule of the other faculties of the child. You may search all time through but you will find no wife to excel the Puritan wife. Hers was a h*fe of home-making, home-keeping, home-loving, and home-influencing. The Puritans had quaint ideals for their wives, and often their ministers from the pulpit preached upon these ideals, and urged them home upon the public. Here is a specimen excerpt from one of these divines. His sermon was upon the text " He that findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favor of the Lord." In drawing a picture of a good wife he OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 271 gives the following piece of wisdom: "A good wife should be like three things, which three things she should not be like. She should be like a snail, to keep within her house ; but she should not be like a snail to carry all she has upon her back. She should be like an echo, to answer when she is called ; but she should not be like an echo, always to have the last word. She should be like a town-clock, always keeping time with regularity ; but she should not be like a town- clock, speaking so loud as to be heard over all the town." The Puritan wife took as her ideal that superb thirty-first chapter of Proverbs and she lived by it. This is the reason she so ex- celled. Do you ask me what the Puritan fore- mother stood for ? I answer : she stood for strong convictions of apprehended truth ; she stood for an intense sense of the authority of righteous- ness ; she stood for incarnate conscience of the purest type ; she stood for a profound assurance of God's over-rule ; she stood for clear vision of things celestial; she stood for a magnificent optimism ; she stood for faith in the ultimate triumph of the right; she stood for a full in- spirational womanhood. She was the equation of all these. In shaping my sermon to a conclusion, I wish to make an appeal to all American women and call upon them to emulate the mothers and wives of the forefathers, who, conjointly with these 272 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. forefathers, were makers of America. Remember that liberty is not a release from duty ; liberty is a burden ; liberty is an added responsibility. Women of America, it is yours to carry on the work which the foremothers began. America needs re-making, each generation ; and this fact assigns you your task. That you may meet your task and serve your country I call upon you to- night, in the first place : I. To realize the power which there is in a grand womanhood, and then in your own person to give such a womanhood to the American Republic. This is what the foremothers did. Where did they reach their knowledge of the power of womanhood? You ask the question that you may put yourselves under their tuition and reach their wisdom. I have said that they were lovers and daily students of the Bible, and I have inti- mated that they were especially fond of the closing book of the Bible, the Apocalypse. This is true. The Apocalypse captured them by its rhythmic cadences, its jeweled words, its pictorial scenes, its dramatic life, its thrilling songs, its heavenly glories, and its talking symbols. In its talking symbols they got their idea of the power of womanhood. The Apocalypse introduces two striking types of woman, and by these two types, shows that woman is full of power for good or for evil. There is the woman upon a scarlet colored beast full of the names of blasphemy, the OUR AMERICAN FOREMOTHERS. 273 seductive leader of evil in the world ; and there is the woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars ; a magnificent creature, the leader of the good in the world, and the mother of light. This is the woman who conquers in the name of God, and afterward appears as the Bride, the Lamb's wife, in raiment pure and white. Do you not feel the fascination of that ? Our foremothers felt it and they aimed at being "women clothed with the sun." Certainly no finer nor truer tribute was ever paid to the power of woman, than that found in this writing of John, which sets forth the final expression of sanctified society under the imagery of the Bride, the Lamb's wife. Let any woman live as the Bride of Christ and she will be a grand woman, and a national power. That is better than being one of the Four-Hundred, which is the ambition of so many women. It would take the whole Four-Hundred combined to equal such a woman. She is more than the Four-Hundred in one. She is the Four-Hundred intellectualized, practicalized, moralized, religionized, and spirit- ualized. Such a woman can rule the twentieth century and make watchwords for the twentieth century. Such a woman can make her nation the leading nation of the world. Women of America, that you may meet your task and serve your country, I call upon you in the second place : i8 274 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 2. To build up and maintain for your country holy and loyal homes — elect families. There is a guardianship of woman, and to that the Republic tacitly commits the homes of our land. The foremothers accepted this trust and well they guarded it. Families constituted the strength of our nation in the beginning. The Adams family, the Hancock family, the Otis family, the Quincy family, the Washington family, the Jefferson family, the Budinot family : — a Republic of such families won in the battle for liberty be- cause it could not help but win. America needs families, and the women of America can give it what it needs. You can make the home ; you can put and keep God there, the Bible there, the Sabbath there, the social and the commercial and the political conscience there. You are by popular acclaim the presiding genius of the household. You can make the home just what you want it, that is if you put your heart and soul and will and con- science and religion into your home life ; that is if you put yourself there for all you are worth. American women make the home and you make the nation. Be like Pliny's wife, Avho was such a power in Pliny's home, and through Pliny such a power in the Roman State ; she made and ruled her home by loving the best. Pliny says of her, " She loved that which was immortal in me." Love that which is immortal in husband and children and work that up to perfection, and OUR AMERICAN FORE MOTHERS. 275 crown that as the ruler in the home. Send that crowned out into society and out into the state. I have one exhortation more. Meet your task and serve your country : 3. By cherishing and perpetuating the memory of the haloed head of the past. In other words, like Miriam of old, who served the Hebrew com- monwealth, " Strike the Cymbals." Praise what is good and make that popular praise patriotism ; praise virtue ; praise every victory for liberty ; praise right-doing ; praise the forefathers ; praise the foremothers; praise Him Who is King of kings and Lord of lords ; lead the nation in re- ligion and in the love and service of the One liv- ing and true God. " Strike the Cymbals " as a rec- ognition of the glory of the nation's past. "Strike the Cymbals " as a greeting to the coming glory of the nation's future. " A Glory shines before me Of what mankind shall be. Pure, generous, brave, and free. A dream of man and woman, Diviner, but still human ; Solving the riddle old, Shaping the ' Age of Gold.' Ring, bells of unreared steeples, The joy of unborn peoples 1 Sound, trumpets far-off blown, Your triumph is our own." — Whittibr. Her chUdren shall rise up, and call her blessed, Prov. xxxi. 28. I IX. THE OLD TIME MINISTER; OR, THE PULPIT IN THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 277 IX. THE OLDTIME MINISTER; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF THE PULPIT IN THE MAK- ING OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC* We have met to-night to talk together about the American RepubHc ; to give God praise for its existence ; and to study those things which have made it, and which alone can perpetuate it, and develop into complete fulness its lofty ideals. In the American RepubHc we have before us a great fact. There is no greater fact on the globe. It is positively magnificent. It is magnificent in its rich and varied territory. It is magnificent in its national principles. It is magnificent in its holy freedom. It is magnificent in its republican institutions. It is magnificent in its swift and phenomenal growth. And it is magnificent in the world-wide, and uplifting influence which it is exerting in the midst of mankind. As we deal with it, we cannot help saying — " Here is a superb momnnent to somebody. IV/iose inonwnent is it ? Here ts a grand result : What was t/ie grand * Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brook- lyn, at a Forefathers' Day Service. 281 282 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. cause? Hozv is the American Republic to he ac- counted for ? What was the great factor in its building ? " The American Republic is a composite. It is. Different lands contributed to its constituency. They did. The best of the best races was built into it : the Huguenots of France are in it : so are the heroes of the Dutch Republic : so are the Puritans of England : and so are the sons of John Knox of Scotland. Yes, they are. But this does not explain the American Republic. Back of these facts comes in the leading question, What was it that brought these men here ? What was it that swayed their lives? What was it that fused them together as one man ? WJiat was it that gave them their common cause — the holy cause of freedom ? That is the question : and it is fundamental. Answer that question and you lead us at once and directly to the topic of this Service, and you explain the American Republic. // was religion. The Oldtime Minister was the leader of religion. To use the words of our text he was " a leader who led. " " For that the leaders took the lead in Israel, praise ye the Lord.** There are two queries with which we must deal right here, and that before we get into the heart of our subject, these are: First, What was the religion tv/uch zvas espoused and pushed by our forefathers, ajid out of which sprang the A merican Republic ? THE OLD TIME MINISTER. 283 Second, What tvas their idea of a Minister as a leader of this religion ? Our forefathers were controlled by religion. They have left no uncertainty here. They have spoken for themselves. The Rev. John Higginson, son of Rev. Francis Higginson, the first minister of Salem, Mass., says, " If any man amongst us marks religion as 12, and the world as \i, let such an one know he hath neither the spirit of a true New England man, nor yet of a sincere Christian.'" The Republic which they gave us was cradled in a church ; for the Mayfiozvcr was nothing other than the church of Scrooby Manor. They have spoken for themselves. While on the Mayfiozvcr they drew up their articles of government and solemnly signed them on the day before they landed. This is the May- fiozt'cr compact, it reads : — " In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, having undertaken for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith a voyage, — solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another, — combine ourselves into a body politic for our better ordering and jurisdic- tion : and furthermore in pursuance of the ends aforesaid, and by virtue thereof, to enact and found just and equal laws — unto which we prom- ise all due submission and obedience." This is the famous Mayflower Covenant, and it teaches 284 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. that our forefathers were brought to this land by their religion, and for their religion : and that by and for their religion they set up a Civil Govern- ment. Now you know what their religion was. // was the religion of the Mayflower. It zvas Puri- tanism. It was Protestantism. I wish it to be distinctly understood that the American Re- public is the direct product and the noble ex- ponent of Protestantism. That is history. Con- fucianism could not have produced it. Moham- medanism could not have produced it. Romanism could not have produced it. These religious isms have had centuries in which to work ; but where have they produced the equivalent of tlie American Republic? China is not the equivalent : Turkey is not the equivalent : Spain is not the equivalent. Take Romanism for example. It is the best of all these Isms which I have mentioned. It could never produce the American Republic. It is a hierarchy, and it exists for that hierarchy. A hierarchy is the very antipode of Republicanism. A hierarchy governs the people and not the people the hierarchy. But Republicanism means government of the people, for the people, and by the people. I have been to the Headquarters of the Roman Hierarchy, the center of that great Church, the City of Rome, and I have seen just what the Hierarchy means for the people. Here the Roman Hierarchy has had its greatest opportu- nity. Here that great Church has worked un- THE OLD TIME MINISTER. 285 checked and unlimited for centuries. Here is St. Peter's ; and here also is the Vatican, into which all the wealth of Christendom has been poured. Now what does a man see right on this Holy Spot? Something which it would be impossible to see if the Hierarchy existed for the people rather than for itself. He sees a teeming population steeped in, and kept in, gross ignorance : crowded together in abject poverty ; helpless : full of superstition : unkempt : incapable : ragged : half-fed : almost beyond the power of a social awakening. The sight fills an American freeman with a sense of horror. This is the population he sees, and it crowds up to the very gates of St. Peter's and the Vatican. You cannot reach St. Peter's and the Vatican without passing through it. Ro- manism could never produce the American Re- public. Never. It has had plenty of chances : but it has never improved a single chance. I am talk- ing history : for Romanism is a thing of history. It had a grand chance in England. England for a thousand years was under the Roman Hierarchy. That was a Millennium. A Millennium of what? A Millennium of superstition, stagnation, death. It was not the age of the reign of the people. It was not the age of the reign of liberty. It was not the era of the American Republic. That was England from the Sixth to the Sixteenth centu- ry ; — Papal England. Compare that England with England from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth 286 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. century : — the England of Protestantism : the England of the Elizabethan and the Victorian periods : the England of Shakespeare, and Bacon, and Milton, and Cromwell, and Tennyson, and Gladstone. This last England is as near the American Republic as England has ever been : but this is the England of Protestantism. When I look at the steady decadence which has come to the nations which for centuries have been under the dominance and the making of the Roman Hierarchy, I say to myself as an American citi- zen, " When a nation is dying it has a right to im- peach its Church'' I have answered the first of our introductory questions : WJiat was the religion luJiich our Civil forefathers espoused, and pushed, and out of zuhicJi sprang the American Republic? It was Protestantism. I am ready now for our second introductory question : JVhat was their idea of a minister as a leader of this religion. Their idea here corresponded with the root idea of Puritanism which in a single phrase is — Individual freedom coupled with individual re- sponsibility. Individual freedom coupled with individual responsibility, that is the basal fact of Puritanism ; and from this fact springs the free church, and the free state, and the free school : the three institutions which are the glory of our Republic. According to this fundamental and root idea of Puritanism, viz. ; Individual Free- THE OLD TIME MINISTER. ^?iri dom, coupled with Individual Responsibility, our forefathers maintained that it was every man's right to form his own religious opinions first-hand and directly from the Bible, and that in the matter of worship it was every man's right to go himself directly to God. Hence their idea of a gospel minister was not that of a priest: they repudiated the sacerdotal idea i7t toto. They were their own priests. They went to God them- selves in the first person, and not by proxy in the second person of a priest. They simply used the minister as a friend, and as a teacher and as a helper. He had no authority save the authority which they gave him. Save the authority which comes from the truth and from a fine personaHty and from the right. They believed in him and used him as one calculated and able to make them all the more effective as their own priest, and to give them more power to handle the Scriptures for themselves: and to make them more intel- ligent and self-sufficient in religion and in life. They believed in the equal rights of all believers before God. A leader : — a teacher : — that was the Puritan idea of a minister of the gospel : and that was what the Oldtime Minister was during the Colonial Era. The people had not the time requisite to devote to the proper study of the Book of God, so they chose ministers to do what the commonalty had not the time to do, and to give them the results 288 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. of their labors. It was their place to search out the truth for the people, live the truth before the people, make it attractive, vitalize it, exalt it : and thus secure its acceptance by the people, and thus make it a power in the community. They held that the people need education in religion, just as they need education along all other lines. And so they created their ministers that they might be educators in religion. In all this they were right. The people do need teachers in religion just as they need teachers in other things. For example, the musical element in human nature, in order for per- fection, demands a musical instructor. Your child with a musical taste sits at the instrument : the instrument is grand, and will respond to the touch of its keys, and set the air quivering with the de- lights of sweet sounds. The entrancing harmonies of Beethoven are before it on the open page. As these leaped from the soul of that great genius, and floated into the atmosphere and thrilled through human hearts, they were caught and cap- tured for after generations, and put into these notations on the musical page. Let these notes be given in the right way to the instrument, and the grand music of the grand genius of the past will live again, and thrill again. But how can your child reach that culture which will lift it to the plane of this music ? How can it reach the ability to resurrect Beethoven's creations? It must be brought under the power and spell of THE OLD TIME MINISTER. 289 some living spirit, some competent teacher, some one who has every note of the composition im- printed on his soul : some one who has so entered into the spirit of Beethoven that he himself is a Beethoven. As the musical world needs leaders, so does the religious world. Men have before them the Book of God, as the child has before it the musical page. This Book has in it the thoughts of God imprisoned in human words, and these are waiting to be set free and started afresh into hu- man life, and translated anew into faith and love and self-sacrifice. These are to be reproduced by the grandest of all instruments, the immortal soul. If men are to give God's thoughts to the world in the form of a Psalm of Life, they must have the help of living teachers who live with the Book, who open their whole being to the incoming of the thoughts of God, and who have translated the substance of the Book into a rich experience. This was the way our forefathers reasoned, and in accordance with their reasoning they provided for themselves able, scholarly, spiritual men of God, and made them their leaders and instructors in divine things. These men kept religion alive among them, and made it the controlling power in their lives. These men evolved from the Divine Book the principles of civil and religious liberty and so enforced them, and so pushed them to the front, that the people accepted them and built them into the grand institutions which they have handed down to us their posterity. 19 290 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. We are now face to face with our subject, " The Oldtime Minister and the way in zvhich he helped in the making of the American Republic .'' In treating iny subject allow me to present four points in numerical order. In the first place : I. The Oldtime Minister helped to build up the American Republic by building up himself and thus giving to his country a fine personality and a fine life. He was a choice man in a choice community of men. He was a man of God. He was a typ- ical Puritan. Do you ask me what a typical Puritan is ? I answer you in the words of the French historian of literature, Taine, who thus describes the Puritan for his countrymen: " The Puritan was a man who lived constantly asking this question : ' Am I a just man ? If God who is perfect Justice should judge me at this moment, how should I appear? ' " That is a typical Puri- tan. A Puritan first of all lived his life with ref- erence to God: and above everything sought to be God-approved. He was a man on God's side in everything. This especially was the constant ideal which the Oldtime Minister entertained for himself. To realize this he fasted and prayed and examined himself, and repented, and studied the Bible, and applied truth to his own heart and life, and rededicated himself over and over to the work of the Lord. He was a scholar. For the most part he was a graduate of the universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, THE OLD TIME MINIS TEH. 291 Cambridge, or else of Harvard, or Yale, or Prince- ton. He could not have reasoned as Edwards did, or write books as Cotton Mather did, or preach as Whitefield did, if he had not been a scholar. I heard a gentleman in New York say that he had in his possession a copy of the Sept- uagint, i.e. the Alexandrian translation of the Old Testament in the Greek language, a symbol of culture, on the fly-leaf of which were the auto- graphs of no less than four of the noted ministers of the Colonial day. Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, Nathaniel Mather, Mather Byles, four generations. It had passed from one to the other and had been used by all. They all read it, for they all were scholars. The Oldtime Minister was a man of conviction and of courage. There was no half-faith with him. There was no compromise with him. There was no courting the favor of man with him. He fearlessly arrayed men before their own con- sciences ; he was the Judgment bar of God in the community. He preached the Word and held to the integrity of the Book from lid to lid. He was a hard worker. Joshua Moody wrote 4000 sermons in his lifetime, and sermons then were no trifles. They were not twenty-minute affairs, with a leaning toward the side of mercy. They were two hours, and two-hours-and-a-half affairs. If you had said to those men " Twenty minutes to raise the dead in," they would have 292 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. replied " It cannot be done in that time. " And it cannot. The man who cannot stand more than a twenty-minute sermon is not yet alive spiritually. He has still to be raised from the dead. They had trouble at times to hold their congre- gation. Sure. But they managed to hold them. They resorted to expedients. One minister preaching a two-hour-and-a-half sermon said in the beginning, " I will preach the first part of my sermon to sinners, and the second part to saints." The result was they all sat it through. To leave before the sermon was ended was publicly to brand oneself as a sinner. John Cotton, the first minister of Boston, besides preaching in his own parish two two-hour- sermons on the Sabbath, and a two hour mid-week lecture, and occasional sermons elsewhere, marked out for himself this programme of work for every week which called for two hours for meditation and prayer each day: Monday for his family, Tues- day for his enemies, Wednesday for the churches, Thursday for other Societies, Friday for persons afflicted, and Saturday for his own soul. Now all this type of life meant what ? You know what. It meant fidelity, and conscience, and achievement, and growth, and manhood, and in- fluence. And when the time for the American Republic came, it meant intelligence, and moral, fibre, and courage, and conviction, and sacrifice, and patriotism, and a man in the ranks who would THE OLD TIME MINIS TEH, 393 never wet his powder. You cannot put down such men when they are in the right, for they are men who refuse to fail. They are men with God on their side. In the second place: 2. The Oldtime Minister helped to build up the American Republic by building up his home, and thus giving to his country sons and daughters who were elements of strength. Being the man I have described him to be, a grand personality in himself with noble purposes, it followed as a matter of course that he was able to marry well. ' This he usually did. This meant a home/^r excellence. The first homes of the land were open to him. It was considered by many a noble woman to be no small honor to preside in the parsonage. His marriage alliance introduced him into the best society of the age, and allowed him to touch head-centers of influence in the Colony, and associate with greatness outside of the pulpit, and thus to make his personality and religion effective from end to end in the com- munity. It gave him a solid backing, and noble and powerful allies. Besides this, it brought the best blood and the best brain of the time to his posterity. I have been astonished in the study of American history to see the power that has emanated from the minister's home : a power which has swayed the nation in great causes, given it leaders, and built it up in world-wide fame. 29i MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Take one minister's family as an illustration ! The family of Francis Higginson, the first minister of Salem, Mass. To begin with, there was his son and successor, John Higginson, a man of power in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, I have already quoted one of his noted sayings to-night. But he was only the beginning. There is a long after-line of noble men in the succession ; men whose names our Republic has written on its roll of honor. These descendants of Francis Higgin- son have served the Republic in scores of ways. They are such men as these: Gov. Andrews, the great war governor of Massachusetts ; William Ellery Channing, the younger ; Stephen Higgin- son Tyng, the elder and the junior; Robert Treat Paine, the philanthropist ; Wm. T. Sherman, the great American general ; Senator John Sherman; Senator George F. Hoar; Senator Henry Cabot Lodge ; and others. There have been other sons of ministers who have been noted in American life. John Hancock, who presided over the deliberations of the Conti- nental Congress at Philadelphia, was the son of a minister. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, was the son of a minister. Field, who laid the Atlantic cable, was the son of a minister. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the son of a minister. Oliver Wen- dell Holmes was the son of a minister. James Russell Lowell was the son of a minister. Edward Everett, the polished orator, was the son of a minis- THE OLD TIME MINISTER. 295 ter. Bancroft, Motley, Parkman, Higginson, Steadman, Bronson Alcott, Wendell Phillips, all boasted that clerical blood ran through their veins. These were all endowed with fine forces as a birth- right, and these were all American powers. The Republic stands better in the eye of the world because of them, and is strong in fact because they built their lives into it. But I must not forget the daughters of the Oldtime Minister. I have spoken thus far only of his sons. His daughters have been a national power, and have risen to places of influence. Abigail Smith, the daughter of Rev. Dr. Smith of the First Church, Weymouth, became Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams. She was the most brilliant letter-writer of Colonial days, and to her letters the country owes much of its knowl- edge of early history. She rose until she reached the White House, and presided there with great power. She was not only the wife of one of the greatest presidents of the United States, she was also the mother of one of the greatest of our presidents. Grace Fletcher, a daughter of a New Hampshire minister, was the wife of Daniel Webster. The beautiful daughter of Rev. Dr. Appleton married President Pierce. Then last, but not least, there was a daughter of the Manse whose pen wrote one of the most powerful books of the world, " Uncle Tom's Cabin." That book helped to make the American Republic free. In 296 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. view of these facts I am here to-night to say, " Clerical blood is the very best of American blood." There is none better. In the third place : 3. The Oldtime Minister helped to build the American Republic by inangnrating and building onr great system of education. I can do little more than mention this point, for I wish to press on to the point which is beyond this. He himself was an education, and associa- tion with him meant scholarship. Patrick Henry said that he got his impulse and idea of eloquence from Rev. Samuel Davies, who afterwards became President of Princeton. Davies lived in Henry. He made his pulpit educational. His single ser- mons were whole books. No theological chair to- day gives a fuller system of theology than he gave from the sacred desk. He was a man of books and he made his library a public good. He founded libraries. He took pupils into his own home, and started them on the way to their professions. All the professions were indebted to him. He founded our academies and our universities. Harvard and Yale and Dartmouth would never have had a being nor a career but for him. He was before them, and back of them, and in them. He was back also of our free schools, and often was part and parcel of them. Did education make our Republic, it was the Oldtime Minister that made education. He led on this line. THE OLDTIME MINISTER. 297 In the fourth place : 4. The Oldtune Minister helped to build the American RepJiblic by doing his full share in the advocacy of the cause of liberty ivhich issued in the Revolution that made the existence of the Republic an assured fact. I know that you expect me to make this point, and that because of your knowledge of general history. For this fact stands out in prominence in the history of Christendom, viz : that back of every great cause which has carried in it the liberties of mankind the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ has as a rule been the power beJiindthe throne. Daniel Webster asks in his great speech in the Girard case, " Where have the life-giving waters of civilization sprung, save in the track of the Chris- tian ministry." The clergy have led in all the great movements of the centuries: Chrysostom in Greece: Augustine in Africa: Savonarola in Italy: Luther in Germany: Zwingle in Switzer- land : John Calvin in France : John Knox in Scotland and John Wesley in England. Take the pulpit out of the world and you will leave a poor wreck as a remainder. History has repeated itself in the story of our nation. For the clergy stood in the front ranks as civil and religious leaders in the early days. They did so because everything then centered around the church. Franchise was restricted to church-members. The town meeting was held in 298 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. the house of worship and often in connection with the mid-week lecture or the church election ser- mons were demanded, and were the order of the day. This made politics the legitimate domain of the clerg-yman. Politics were part of his re- ligion. All this placed him, whether he would or no, in the front ranks in civil matters. Hence we find him preaching on all matters pertaining to the state and counselling with the governing bodies. It was often said of Rev. John Cotton, the first minister of Boston, " that what he uttered in the pulpit on Sabbath was issued by the court during the week." The minister even led and founded Colonies. Rev. John Davenport, whose descendants we have in this church, led and founded the Colony of New Haven, and was a power in creating and fostering Yale University. Roger Williams led and founded the Colony of Rhode Island. He was the^ first statesman to utter and to establish that advanced American principle of the separation of Church and State. In the matter of conscience the State has no rights : the rights there belong solely to the individual. In matters of conscience man is responsible only to his God. This prin- ciple is the very essence of religion. Rev. Thomas Hooker led and founded the Colony of Connec- ticut. It was he who gave utterance to another advanced American principle, viz., this principle : — THE OLDTIME MINISTER. 299 " The foundation of aiitJiority is laid in the free consent of the governed^ Of course he did not in this ignore God as the source of all authority : he was speaking only of the administration of what God has ordained. He was speaking from the human side of affairs, and he was right. Carrying out this principle of his, he framed and ordained the Constitution of Connecticut. John Fiske says, " This was the first written constitution known to history that created a government, and it marked the begin- ning of American democracy. Of this democracy Thomas Hooker deserves more than any man to be called " the father." My fellow-men, this was grand service. It was foundation work, and it ex- liibits the leadership of the clergy when leader- ship was sorely needed. Not only did theOld time Minister, in the early days, found and organize Colonies, he also stood guard over these Colonies where founded and saw that their rights were not infringed. Here is an instance : When Sir Edward Andros was sent over as governor of Massachusetts by James IT., and undertook to impose and collect a tax with- out the consent of the Colony, Rev. John Wise of Ipswich conducted a public meeting of protest and the town passed resolutions to resist. True, he was imprisoned for his course, but the tax was not collected. That was the American Re- volution in advance of its day. When the Revo- 300 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. lution came, it was the church bell of the Meet- ing-house of Lexington, rung by the direction of a minister, that sounded the first alarm and sum- moned the farmers of New England, who fired " tJiat shot ivJiicJi tvas Jieard around the zvorld^ I have been speaking to-night largely, I might say solely, of the Oldtime Minister of New Eng- land. I must take a moment here to speak at least of one Oldtime Minister of another section of our countrj^, and of another faith than that which prevailed in New England. I must speak of a grand old Presbyterian minister, the presi- dent of our famous Presbyterian university, the University of Princeton. I refer to that Scotch son of John Knox, his lineal descendant, the ven- erable Dr. Witherspoon, a member of the Con- tinental Congress. The hour had come for the signing ofthe Declaration of Independence. But the Congress hesitated. Had Dr. Witherspoon not been there, it is a question what would have become of the unsigned Declaration. The Con- gress was hesitating. The country was looking on. Three million hearts were violently throb- bing in intense anxiety, waiting for the old bell on Independence Hall to ring. " It was an hour that marked the grandest epoch in human history. What a scene was there! On the table in the presence of that able body of statesmen lay the charter of human freedom in clear-cut utterances, flinging defiance in the face of opposition. It THE OLD TIME MINISTER. 301 was an hour in which strong men trembled. There was a painful silence. In the midst of this silence Dr. Witherspoon rose and uttered these thrilling words : — "To hesitate at this moment is to consent to our own slavery. That notable instrument upon your table, which insures immortality to its au- thor, should be subscribed this very morning by every pen in this house. He that will not respond to its accent and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions is unworthy the name of freeman. Whatever I have of property, of repu- tation, is staked on the issue of this contest, and although these gray hairs must soon descend into the sepulchre, I would rather that they descend thither by the hand of the executioner, than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country." That was the voice of JoJin Knox in Independence Hall : and it told. That ministerial voice pre- vailed. The Declaration of Independence was at once signed : and then the old liberty bell on Independence Hall rang out, and the foundation of the American Republic was forever and se- curely laid. In closing allow me to say I want you to admire the Oldtime Minister and do him justice. Honor him, for he deserves honor. We have been ac- customed to look upon him for the most part as an old fogy. He was not an old fogy. He was a progressive. We have been accustomed to look 302 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. upon him as a bigot. He was not a bigot. He was the radical of his century. He was the lib- eral of his times. He dreamed dreams, and he saw visions, and every one of them was an ad- vance. Measure him by the Duke of Alva, and Phillip II., and Charles V., if you would see him in his true light. Compared with these men he was a liberal of the liberals. He was a step- ping-stone to where we are now. He was the seed, we are the harvest. His chief faith as he handled his Bible was that expressed by John Robinson at the Embarkation of the Pilgrims when he said : " There is more light yet to break forth from God's Word'' He lived ever waiting for that light. I say of him what Carlyle said of Cromwell : " The memory of Oliver Cromwell has a good many centuries in it," even so " The memory of the Oldtime Minister has a good many centuries in it." My fellow-men, do you want to honor the Old time Minister? Then do this: — Honor the one great Book by which he lived, the Holy Word of God, tJie Bible. The Bible made the American Republic : and only the Bible can perpetuate it. On the brow of the hill overlooking the bay where the Mayflotver was moored, and where the waters continue to beat in volleying thunders, or in musical laughter, upon its sand, they have erected a colossal statue of national significance. On the four corners of the pedestal repose four THE OLD TIME MINISTER. 303 figures representing Lazi\ ISIorality, Freedom, and Education. These should rest there by right. But above these stands erect the gigantic figure of Faith. Thirty and six feet she rises from the foot — which rests upon a slate from Plymouth Rock. With one hand she grasps an open Bible, and with the other in graceful gesture she points the nation up to God. The only book she opens to the eyes of the world is the Bible. And so it should be. The Bible holds the only true light by which we have been led in all our advances of liberty in the past : and the Bible holds the only true light by which we can make progress in the cause of liberty in the future. " God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle-line : Beneath whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine : Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget : lest we forget. If drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues which have not Thee in awe, Such boasting as the Gentiles use : Or lesser Breeds without the law. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget : lest we forget 1 " X. THE BENCH AND BAR. BY HON. W. W. GOODRICH Presiding Justice, Supreme Court, State of New York. 305 THE BENCH AND BAR.* By Hon. W. W. Goodrich, Presiding Justice, Supreme Court, State of New York. In discussing my subject I propose to refer briefly to the history of nations in order to indicate the influence which fundamental law necessarily has upon the permanence of nations. I shall argue that, to ensure permanence, a nation must be founded upon justice to the individual, liberty to every citizen and obedience to the law of God ; and I shall indicate the part which Bench and Bar have taken in the formation and development of our national institutions. Centuries measure the lives of nations, as years measure the lives of men, and we must search the centuries to ascertain the conditions which have contributed to the downfall of nations no longer existent. It may be said of these ancient nations, and it is sufficient for my purpose to say, that they perished from the face of the earth because they failed to recognize the one true God, to obey his law and to establish justice and liberty for the in- dividual citizen. * An address delivered Forefathers' day, celebrating the 2Soth anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims. 310 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. The Bible, most venerable of historical books, purports to speak of human history for only forty centuries before Christ, yet the recent discovery by Professor Hilprecht, of tablets with cunieform characters, in the library of an ancient temple in Asia Minor, made six thousand years before Christ, demonstrates that long before that time there had been a flourishing civilization which had founded great States, had built great palaces and temples and cities now covered by the sands of the desert. Of the rise and fall of these States we have no record. History discloses the fact that nations always have a period of growth, a period of war and con- quest, a period of luxury and effeminacy and a period of decadence. These periods have followed in unvarying sequence with all the ancient nations of the world. Neither good laws nor religion alone have been sufficient for permanence. Ancient empires had the former but did not endure. The Jewish Nation, which began its real national life 1491 B. C, when Moses led it from Egypt into Palestine, was founded on morality and religion. It had a pure theocracy and a priesthood to administer its laws but the per- sonal majesty of the citizen was of small impor- tance in the a:dministration of affairs. This nation gave to the world the greatest codes of law ever promulgated, the law of Moses and the law of Christ, but it fell and was scattered to the ends of THE BENCH AND BAR. 311 the earth, because it broke the law of Moses and re- jected the law of Christ ; yet, scattered as its people have been, they retain their national characteristics, because they have maintained the law and tradition of their ancestors through the centuries which have followed their expulsion from Jerusalem. While I may not claim that Moses was a lawyer by profession, I have often thought that he was one, in all but the name. Possibly he was not a lawyer, because, so far as the record shows, there was no court to admit him to practice. Perhaps it was such a case as we find in that brief but famous chapter in the history of Ireland, entitled " On Snakes in Ireland," where immediately after the caption it was said : " There are no snakes in Ire- land." Certainly he had the qualifications and the knowledge of law which go to make, and which would have made him, a great lawyer. The deca- logue announced through him has been the basis of all subsequent law. It will not serve my purpose to trace the history of ancient Babylon, Assyria and Egypt. With all their power and genius, wealth and luxury, their inhabitants were idolators. They had little regard for justice, while the liberty of the individual was a thing unknown. They, too, ceased to exist, and the monuments of their civilization are buried in the sands of the desert. Greece, which prospered from iioo B. C. till it was conquered by the Romans in the second cen- 312 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. tury of the Christian era, and Rome, which flour- ished from 700 B. C. till the fifth century, A. D., when it was overcome by the Vandals, were poly- theistic nations. Their governments were aristoc- racies, in which the freedom and rights of the com- mon people had no place. Yet it may be said of both Greece and Rome that the laws which their great lawgivers promulgated have exercised an imperishable influence upon civilization. I need re- fer only to Solon of Athens, Pheidon of Corinth, Charendas of Katena, as examples of lawmakers in Greece, and to Justinian and Cicero of Rome. These nations fell into ruin, but the laws which they created still survive, and from them in large measure Europe derived her civilization. This brief reference to the dominant empires of the ancient world is sufficient to show that nations exist only so long as they enact just laws and obey them ; that they hasten to their fall when law, the freedom of the individual and his right to part and parcel in the government are disregarded. After the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, Europe sank into the superstition and supineness of the Dark Ages, from which it slowly emerged with the Reformation and the discovery of print- ing. As these spread intelligence and a truer relig- ion, the modern nations of Europe began their real march of progress. With them came better laws, and more liberty to the common people, al- though they came as the slow growth of centuries. THE BENCH AND BAR. 313 In English History especially is this manifest. The liberty of the nation began when the barons wrested Magna Charta from King John, in 12 15. That was in fact an establishment of law. From that time onward, the nation struggled through civil and religious strifes, but always improving her laws, more nearly to conform to the eternal prin- ciples of liberty, justice and equity, until she erected a system of jurisprudence never before equalled, and only dreamed of by Socrates and Plato. Obedi- ence to God's law and the right of each citizen to personal liberty and participation in governmental affairs became the basic principle of government. Upon her system of just laws her greatness will endure so long as it is followed and preserved. The seed of the Reformation found congenial and fertile soil in England. It produced a just re- gard for the rights of the common people, the equality of all men before the law, liberty of con- science, and the right of each man to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. But this end was not attained without agony and blood. The Pilgrim found to his sorrow that in large degree he was trammeled and persecuted by the Established Church. He fled to Holland, and finally, in the MayUower, to the desolate shores of New England, but he brought with him Magna Charta, the Declaration of Rights and the undying love of personal liberty. During the thirty years following the Pilgrim 314 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. and Puritan exodus, which ended with the execu- tion of Charles I., more than twenty-five thousand colonists fled to New England, but with the cessa- tion of religious persecution in England upon the establishment of the Protectorate, emigration prac- tically ceased. Meanwhile, the Jamestown Colony, begun in 1607, was also building its temple of liberty. Other colonies were laying their foundations along the At- lantic coast. In all these structures, the corner stone was civil and religious liberty and obedience to the law of God. By a slow and tedious process of evolution there was gradually developed in all the colonies an abiding belief in human freedom, and the power of asserting and maintaining na- tional independence. All nations before our own had been governed by monarchs or aristocracies, because the idea of the personal liberty of the indi- vidual had not been their dominant principle. It was only when this idea had taken deep root in the minds of our forefathers, that free America came into being, with power at once to maintain itself and its ideas. Then, for the first time in human history, a nation was born, founded on civil and religious liberty and equal rights to all men before the law. Other peoples, spurred by our example and success, have grown into this faith, but the thought was conceived and matured in America. Let us see now what part the Bench and Bar THE BENCH AND BAR. 315 have taken, and what influence they have exercised in the formation of the American Republic. Our history is manifestly divisible into four periods — the Colonial period ending with the close of the Revolution, the Constitutional period end- ing" with the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the Formative period ending with the Civil War, and the National period, now in progress. THE COLONIAL PERIOD. As to the early part of the Colonial period, I must frankly admit that our Pilgrim fathers barely tolerated lawyers, regarding them as a necessary evil to be carefully circumscribed. Perhaps they had the prejudice which exists in the uneducated mind of to-day, well illustrated in the remark of an Irishman who saw a tombstone with the in- scription, "Here lies the body of John Robinson, a lawyer and an honest man," and reflectively ob- served : "A lawyer and an honest man. I wonder what the two of them is doing in the one grave." Perhaps they remembered the 'objurgation, "Wo unto you lawyers !" which had been sounding down the centuries of the Christian era. Yet, there were among the early colonists at least three who had been educated for the bar, Winthrop, Bellingham and Humphrey, and possibly two others, Bradstreet and Pelham, all influential in the moulding of Colo- nial affairs. 316 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. In the latter part of the Colonial period, how- ever, we find that the New England lawyers were arousing and guiding public sentiment toward the independence of the colonies. Among them were John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Thomas Gushing, Joseph Hawley, Josiah Quincy and James Otis. In Virginia there were Thomas Jefiferson, James Madi- son, Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry. Otis, in 1761, and Henry, in 1763, in legal arguments on writs of encroachments, laid open the design of England to subjugate the colonies and make them forever dependent. There is little doubt that the work of these great lawyers influenced and con- firmed the colonies in their determination to free themselves from England and her injustice. In 1774, Massachusetts issued a call to the other colonies for the first Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia in September. It formed what has been termed the Revolutionary Government, which endured until superseded by the Confederated Government, in 1781. More than one-half of the delegates to this con- gress were lawyers, prominent among whom were John Adams and Thomas Gushing, of Massachu- setts, Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, James Duane (first mayor of New York City), John Jay and Henry Wisner (the only New York delegate voting for the Dec- laration of Independence) of New York, Samuel Chase of Maryland, Patrick Henry and Randolph THE BENCH AND BAR. 317 Peyton of Virginia, Richard Caswell of North Carolina and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina. John Adams drew the famous Fourth Article of the Declaration of Rights, passed by this Congress, and commencing : 'The foundation of English liberty and of all free governments, is the right to participate in their legislative council, and as the English Colonists are not represented, and from the local and other circumstances, cannot be properly represented in the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in the several provincial legislatures." This was the precursor of the Declaration of Independence. The second Continental Congress, which assem- bled at Philadelphia, in May, 1775, authorized the raising of a continental army and appointed Wash- ington commander-in-chief. Most of the delegates to the first Congress were returned to this, and more than two-thirds of the delegates of the second Congress were lawyers. Among the new mem- bers appear the following lawyers: Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire, Robert Livingston of New York, who with the assistance of Monroe after- ward negotiated the purchase of Louisiana ; Thomas Johnson of Maryland, Thomas Jefferson and George Wythe of Virginia, and Archibald Bullock of Geor- gia. The only minister in this Congress was the Reverend John J. Zubly, a prominent Presbyterian and delegate from Georgia. It must be saddening 318 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. to my clerical friends to know that he was disloyal to the American cause and was denounced as a traitor on the floor of Congress by Judge Chase of Maryland, w'ho called him a Judas. This Congress, on July 4, 1776, gave to the world the Declaration of Independence. It was a new and startling statement of the right of the people to self-government, and came upon the world like a thunderbolt from clear skies. The principle had been foreshadowed by Diderot, Voltaire, Montes- quieu and Rousseau, in France, and in the establish- ment of the Protectorate of Cromwell in England; but its crystallization in a written instrument as the basic principle of government was novel and sur- prising. In France it was followed, whether as a necessary consequence or not I do not undertake to determine, by the Revolution of 1789; and in Eng- land, by the extension of the suffrage and practically by a republic governed by Parliament. Of the fifty- five signers of that immortal document, thirty-two were lawyers, of whom twenty-two were, or after- ward became, judges. Prominent among them were Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, Richard Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams and Robert Treat Paine of Massachusetts, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut. I might say, in passing, that there was but one clergyman, John Witherspoon of New Jersey. Of the committee of five, to draft the Declaration, three were lawyers, THE BENCH AND BAR. 31 9 John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Roger Sher- man. It is hardly possible for us in these quiet times of peace and prosperity to conceive the danger attend- ing so positive an act of rebellion against the parent government as that would have been if the Revolu- tion had not succeeded. Every signer put his life, liberty and fortune in the balance, where failure meant ruin and death. Yet more than two-thirds of those brave and patriotic men were lawyers. Of such men the poet sings: ■• "Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause brings fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just: Then it is the brave man chooses, while the crown stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified; And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied." The history of the Revolutionary War is not es- sential to my theme. There were lawyers in com- mand and in private service. Among the former was Alexander Hamilton, probably the most influen- tial of the great lawyers of the Constitutional period. He was on the staff of Washington ; and when after his presidency Washington was ap- pointed lieutenant-general, he consented to accept the position only on the condition that Hamilton should be appointed major-general, ne^ct to him- 320 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. self, chief in command of the army. He was one of the founders of the Manumission Society of the last century, the chief object of which was the aboli- tion of slavery. He was a promoter and one of the most active members of the Constitutional Con- vention. Constructive statesmanship seemed to be the master passion of his life. His voice and in- fluence more than those of any other man induced the convention to introduce into the Constitution its federal strength. He helped to build on broad lines the authority of the Constitution. He was the chief contributor to The Federalist, which has al- ways been standard authority on the plan of the con- stitution. He became secretary of the treasury in the cabinet of Washington and largely shaped by heroic measures the financial affairs of the country throughout the troublesome times which existed during Washington's term of office. So efficient was his work that Webster said of him : "He smote the rock of the national resources and abun- dant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of public credit and it sprung upon its feet." It has been claimed that he wrote Wash- ington's farewell address. His early death in 1804. at the age of forty-seven, in a duel with Aaron Burr, ended a brilliant career and plunged the whole nation into mourning. It now becomes necessary to remember the con- dition in which the struggling but triumphant con- federation found itself at the end of the war. The THE BENCH AND BAR. 321 colonies deemed themselves, and in fact were, sover- eign and independent of each other. Each had ideas and tendencies peculiarly its own. I need only to suggest Massachusetts with its Pilgrim and Puri- tan settlement, Maryland with its Catholic settle- ment, Virginia with its Cavalier settlement and South Carolina with its Huguenot settlement, in order to recall the difficulties of the situation. While in a loose and feeble way they had united in the War of the Revolution, the colonies were still a band of independent States, bound together by no other ties than those of self protection and common interests; and while for a decade there was a shadowy bond of union between them, they were always drawing farther apart, each jealous of its own sovereignty and primacy and of the rank and prominence of all the others, and all alike absolutely opposed to any- thing like federal power and control. There was a congress which legislated, but it had no power to enforce its own edicts. The national finances, al- ways the nerve of national life, were in such dis- order that the government had credit neither at home nor abroad, and it was almost impossible to raise funds for its current business. The paper cur- rency was valueless. Industry was paralyzed. Riot and crime stalked hand in hand through the land. The Colonial period ended in national disorder, gloom and despondency. 322 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. THE CONSTITUTIONAL PERIOD. Such was the condition of affairs when the Con- stitutional period commenced. While not of long duration, it was of vast importance in the forma- tion of the republic, and the most important epoch of our history, for in it a new nation was created on an absolutely new foundation. Rufus Choate once said: "I dwell on that time, from 1780 to 1789, be- cause that was an age of civil greatness. Then first we grew to be one. In that time our nation was born. That which went before made us indepen- dent. Our better liberty, our law, our order, our Union, our credit, our commerce, our rank among nations, our page in the great history, we owe to this. Independence was the work of the higher passions. The Constitution was the slow product of wisdom." Steps were taken in 1786 toward the calling of a convention for the framing of a Constitution. Months elapsed before it could be convened, and even then, some of the colonies refused full partic- ipation. In May, 1787, after repeated failures, the convention met at Independence Hall, in Philadel- phia, to adopt a Constitution for the United States. Washington, who was chosen its president, said in his opening address : 'Tt is too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how THE BENCH AND BAR. 323 can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can re- pair. The event is in the hand of God." The proceedings of the Convention, which lasted five months, were in secret for the stated reason that while there might be difterences of opinion on many subjects it was desirable that the complete work should be submitted in its entirety to the peo- ple; and it was not until the death of ex-President Madison, the last survivor of the members, that his journal of the proceedings was published. The membership and influence of lawyers in that fateful Convention were of vast importance. Of the fifty-five members thirty-five were lawyers, of whom nineteen then were, or afterward became, judges. Prominent among these lawyers was Alexander Hamilton, the friend and right arm of Washington, and subsequently his secretary of the treasury. I need only to mention the names of Roger Sherman, Oliver Ellsworth, Jonathan Dayton, Gouverneur Morris, Rufus King, James Madison. Charles C. Pinckney and Edmund Randolph. On September 17, 1787, after a long and heated session and many differences of opinion, the con- vention adopted the Constitution and submitted it to the States for ratification. It was to take effect when ratified by nine States, and the ninth ratified it on March 4, 1789, when the United States of America" became a sovereign power. The establishment of the United States as a nation 324 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. was unique in the history of the world. Other na- tions have grown from barbarism to civihzation by process of national evolution. But our nation may be said to have been born in a day. True, it felt the influence of European civilization, but it was set apart in a new continent. True, it was established by emigrants from many nations, but the touch of the Western hemisphere seems to have created new thoughts, new ideas, new action. In later years, when our form of government had proved a success, similar federations occurred in Europe, as in Ger- many after the French War, and in Italy after it was aroused by Garibaldi. It may be said that both these nations learned a lesson from our example and exemplified the adage, "Imitation is the sincerest flattery." To recall briefly the peculiarity of our Constitu- tion, let me remind you that it provides for an ex- ecutive, a legislature and a judicial branch, each su- preme in its own domain. In its own province the Supreme Court is independent, and in its exposition of the Constitution is final and supreme. The inde- pendence of the judiciary is one of the essential features of the Constitution and has had vast in- fluence in the development of our national integrity and permanence. Montesquieu said : "There is no liberty if the judiciary power be not separated from the legis- lative and executive powers." Burke declared : "Whatever is supreme in a State THE BENCH AND BAR. 395 ought to have as much as possible its judicial power so constituted as not only to depend upon, but in some sort to balance it. It ought to give security to his justice, against its power." Mr. Gladstone said that "as the British Consti- tution is the most subtle organism which has pro- ceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." John Fiske calls it : "The Iliad, the Parthenon or the fifth symphony of Beethoven * '* * two complete and well-rounded systems of law, the State law and the Federal law, each with its legislative, its executive and its judiciary, moving one within the other, noiselessly and without friction. It was one of the longest reaches of constructive states- manship ever known in the world." THE FORMATIVE PERIOD. This brings us to the formative period of our country, which commenced with the adoption of the Constitution and ended with the Civil War. Here the influence of Bench and Bar has been para- mount. This period witnessed the real building of the nation on the foundation of the Constitution. At first the Constitution was an experiment. True, by its terms it bound the States together in one nation, but its meaning was not clearly defined or 32G MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. understood. There still were discordant elements. On the one side, it was claimed that the sovereignty of the States was unimpaired ; that the nation w^as a mere compact or league of States from which any one of them might withdraw at its own volition. On the other hand, it was contended that the Con- stitution created a new sovereignty, supreme in all that had been committed to it by the express lan- guage of the Constitution, and that no State could withdraw the power over itself which by its ratifica- tion had been conferred upon the nation. It is easy nozv, to see that our very existence as a nation, or the breaking of the Union into weak and warring States depended upon the decision of this momen- tous question. These subjects gave rise to constant irritation during the first half of the nineteenth cen- tury. We are all familiar with the struggle over the at- tempted extension of slavery into the Territories, and the great debate between Douglas and Lin- coln, in which Lincoln asserted that irrespective of constitutional authority, or of public policy, the higher question of human right and wrong was in- volved in the slavery controversy, and on this great moral question obtained a majority of the popular vote which ought to have secured his election to the Senate. He was defeated only through the appor- tionment of legislative districts. This remarkable contest made the declaration, "No extension of hu- man slavery," the principal plank of the Republican THE BENCH AND BAR. 327 platform in i860, upon which Lincohi was elected President. The right of a State to secede from the Union occupied the attention of Congress and the public for many years. The question culminated in and was effectively decided by the Civil War. Prominent among the men who argued for the integrity of the Union and against nullification and the right of a State to secede was Daniel Webster, the greatest of all constitutional lawyers and de- baters, and pre-eminently the apostle of national- ity. His orations became the theme of the fireside and the hustings, of the press and the pulpit, and created public sentiment for nationality. They were declaimed by the school boy, who early in life drew from them an inspiration of patriotism which made his maturer years of service to his country. His argument was not for the creation of a nation but was the exposition as an existent fact of a nation created by and based upon the Constitution. In that position he never faltered. Who can forget the thrilling words which closed his reply to Hayne, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and in- separable !" which became the watchwords of the nation? Webster in Congress and in public debates was what, as we shall presently see. Chief Justice Marshall was in the Supreme Court, the exponent of nationality. The work of the formative period has been largely manifested in the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States and of the other Federal courts, 328 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. as well as in those of the courts of the several States. Between the Federal and the State courts there has been singularly little difference of opinion. They have alike interpreted the Constitution in such a way that the march of the nation has been a con- tinual triumph at home and abroad. The Supreme Court of the United States, in the last analysis, is the keystone of our national edifice. It is in the government what the balance wheel is in machinery. It was neither an imitation of nor an evolution from any tribunal previously existing. It was an absolute invention of the convention. For the first time in national history a court was created whose function it was to pass upon all other branches of the government, the Constitutions of the States and even the Federal Constitution itself. This court has been called "the crowning marvel of the wonders wrought by the statesmanship of America, embodying the loftiest ideas of moral and legal power." "Its judges are the high priests of justice. * * * ]\^o institution of human con- trivance presents so many features calculated to in- spire awe and vejieration." "It is a tribunal of which the ancient world could present no model, and the modern world boast no parallel, whose de- crees, woven like threads of gold into the priceless and imperishable fabric of our constitutional juris- prudence, would bind in the bonds of love, liberty and law the members of a great republic." Mr. Fiske says: THE BENCH AND BAR. 329 "But for this system of United States courts ex- tended throughout the States and supreme within its own sphere, the Federal Constitution could never have been put into practical, working order. In an- other respect the Federal judiciary was the most re- markable and original of all the creations of that wonderful convention. It was charged with the duty of interpreting, in accordance with the general principles of common law, the Federal Constitution itself. This is the most noble as it is the most dis- tinctive feature in the government of the United States. It constitutes a difference between the American and British systems more fundamental than the separation of the executive from the legis- lative department. In Great Britain the unwritten constitution is administered by the omnipotent House of Commons; whatever statute is enacted by Parliament must stand until some future Parlia- ment may see fit to repeal it. But an act passed by both houses of Congress, and signed by the Presi- dent, may still be set aside as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in its judg- ments upon individual cases brought before it. It was thus that the practical working of our Federal Constitution during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century was swayed to so great an ex- tent by the profound and luminous decisions of Chief Justice Marshall, that he must be assigned a foremost place among the founders of our Federal Union. This intrusting to the judiciary the whole 330 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. interpretation of the fundamental instrument of government is the most peculiarly American fea- ture of the work done by the convention, and to the stability of such a federation as ours, covering, as it does, the greater part of a huge continent, it was absolutely indispensable." The dominance of the Supreme Court in national affairs justifies allusion to some of its distinguished members. The chief justices have been John Jay, John Rutledge, Oliver Ellsworth, John Marshall, Roger B. Taney, Salmon P. Chase, Morrison R. Waite and Melville W. Fuller. John Jay, the first chief justice, was a member of the Congress of 1774, and, though almost the youngest member, he was selected to draft the famous "Address to the People of Great Britain." He was a member of the Congresses of 1775 and 1776, but was not a signer of the Declaration of Independence, because he was absent on other ofllicial duties. At the close of the Revolutionary War he was one of the com- missioners for negotiating the treaty of peace with Great Britain which bears his name. He became chief justice in 1789, and was governor of the State of New York from 1795 to 1801. It was of him that Webster said: "When the judicial ermine fell on his shoulders it touched nothing less spotless than itself." John Marshall, the fourth chief justice, was the most eminent and influential of all. Shortly after the battle of Lexington, when nineteen years of THE BENCH AND BAR. 331 age, he joined a military company which elected him lieutenant and afterward captam. The men wore the famous words of Patrick Henry, "Liberty or death," embroidered on their uniforms. ' With the company he took part in the famous battles of Germantown, Brandywine and Monmouth, and en- dured the terrible hardships of Valley Forge. It is said that once when travelling on military duty, he applied for lodgings at a hotel and that the future chief justice was refused accommodation on account of his poverty and rags. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates for many years and a member of the Council of State. In 1788, he was a member of the Virginia Convention which ratified the Federal Constitution, and was one of the fore- most advocates of its adoption, taking high rank as a debater. After its adoption he was its earnest friend. In 1798, he was one of the envoys to nego- tiate a treaty with France. Washington offered him the place of attorney general in his cabinet, but Marshall declined. President Adams offered him a seat in the United States Supreme Court, but this honor also he refused. He was a member of Con- gress in 1799. In 1800 Adams appointed him secretary of war, but before entering that office he was made secretary of state, and in 1801 he was appointed chief justice. He wrote a life of Wash- ington and a history of the American Colonies. Marshall was chief justice for thirty- four years and did more than any other man to establish the 332 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. foundations and limits of our government, then in its infancy. He had no precedents to which he could refer, as all the ground was new; yet he evolve'd as from his inner consciousness the breadth and scope of constitutional authority and its limi- tation. His first famous decision declared that the Supreme Court had the right and power to pro- nounce an act of Congress null and void if, in its opinion, such an act was in violation of the Constitu- tion. Until then there was a popular delusion that there was no limit to legislative power ; that the two houses of Congress, as the representatives of the people, could declare the people's will on any subject to any degree, and were responsible only to the members of the commonwealth ; but Judge Marshall denied this prerogative, and held that the Supreme Court was greater than Congress, and under the Constitution the highest final authority of the gov- ernment. Professor Bryce says of Marshall : "The Constitu- tion seemed not so much to rise under his hands to its full stature, as to be gradually unveiled by him till it stood revealed in the harmonious perfec- tion of the form which its framers had designed. That admirable flexibility and capacity for growth which characterize it beyond all other rigid or su- preme constitutions, is largely due to him." Warren Olney said : "Instead of the Constitution being a rope of sand, as most men at first believed, or an infringement on the liberties of the people, as THE BENCH AND BAR. . 3:J3 represented by the States, as many thought, Mar- shall showed, by lucid reasoning and by the author- ity of this great judicial tribunal, that the Constitu- tion was a ligament binding us together as a common whole, but yet preserving to the States in- dividual freedom in all local and personal affairs. Changing the simile, we may say in the language of President Garfield : "Marshall found the Constitu- tion paper, and he made it power; he found it a skeleton and clothed it with flesh and blood." It would serve no useful purpose to state particu- lar points of Judge Marshall's opinions. It is enough to say as their authoritative result, that he found a band of loosely connected States and that he left a strong nation. The centenary of his appoint- ment as chief justice is to be observed in 1901, when a grateful nation will honor his memory. Turning now to the executive branch of our government, we find that of the twenty-four presi- dents, nineteen have been lawyers, the laymen be- ing Washington, Wm. H. Harrison, Taylor, John- son and Grant. The first lawyer president was John Adams, who had largely affected pre-revolutionary public sentiment in Massachusetts upon the question of our independence. He was a member of the second Continental Congress and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was a member of the same Congress and drafted and signed the Declaration. He was also one of the commissioners to negotiate the treaty 334: MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. with Great Britain. He was the father of true modern Democracy. Madison, who before he became the executive was secretary of state under Jefferson, was a mem- ber of the Constitutional Convention. He took so important a share in that body that he was famiharly known as the father of the Constitution. Monroe will always be remembered as the author of the doctrine that bears his name, almost the first assertive act of our government upon questions other than those of domestic policy. John Quincy Adams was a member of the Consti- tutional Convention. Jackson gave up the profession to become a sol- dier and the hero of the battle of New Orleans. I have not time to do more than mention the names of the other lawyer presidents whose lives are within the memory of many of my audience, Van Buren, Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, Pierce, Bu- chanan, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harri- son and McKinley. Greatest of all since Washington, was Abraham Lincoln, whose name we speak with tender and reverent affection, whom the world will always re- member as the indomitable leader of our nation in its great struggle for union and liberty, himself the consummate flower of liberty, the liberator of millions of slaves, the man from whose head fell the victor's chaplet to be replaced by the martyr's crown. THE BENCH AND BAR. 335 "The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame. New birth of our new soil, the first American." Was there ever such a galaxy of apostles of free- dom as rny legal brethren, with, thank God, but one exception, who from Washington to McKinley have occupied the presidential chair? How vast their in- fluence in the formation of the Republic ! May it not be said that to their labors and influence more than to those of any other class or profession the Nation owes its creation and continuance? The cabinets of the presidents necessarily have large influence in the guidance of national affairs. That of Washington was composed of four mem- bers, three of whom were lawyers, among them Jefferson and Hamilton. From time to time the cabinet has been increased so that at the present time it consists of eight members. With the ex- ception of Jefferson's cabinet, in which only two of the five members were lawyers, the majority of every cabinet has been composed of lawyers; and in the cabinets of Monroe, John Quincy Adams. Jackson, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, Bu chanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Arthur, and Cleveland at times every member was a lawyer. Among the great cabinet officers have been Jeffer son, Hamilton, Marshall, Monroe, Adams, Calhoun Clay, Webster, Taney, Seward, Evarts, Chase and Stanton, without the mention of whose names our history would be incomplete. In recent years three 336 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. lawyer secretaries of the navy, Whitney, Tracy and Long, conceived and constructed the White Squad- ron, which has carried our flag in triumph to Southern seas, added new territory to our dominion and renewed the luster of our navy's ancient renown. THE NATIONAL PERIOD. The National period, upon which we entered at the close of the Civil War, has been fruitful in re- sults which no one could have anticipated as likely to occur during the nineteenth century. In this period the great questions of reconstruction and of equal rights without regard to race, color or pre- vious condition of servitude have been firmly es- tablished by amendments to the Constitution. Our population has grown from thirty millions to seventy-six millions. We have fought the altruistic fight for our Cuban neighbor in her struggle for independence of Spanish tyranny, and are now pro- tecting her in establishing her new government. W'e have taken our proper rank among the nations of the earth, who must hereafter reckon with us upon all international questions affecting the prog- ress of humanity. In all the great work of this important period my legal brethren have continued to be in evidence. As presidents, cabinet officers, legislators, governors, judges and lawyers, in court and camp, in conven- tion and congress, they have been moulding public THE BENCH AND BAR. 337 opinion. They have become soldiers and have aided in the acquisition and defense of new territory and have been selected as governors and commissioners to arrange for the government of our new provinces. In every public position the profession has been fully represented. Indeed, the people seem to think that it is not possible to conduct public affairs with- out their assistance. This result is largely owing to the fact that bench and bar have always been watchful of the characters of their members. When judges have been unjustly attacked the bar has risen for their defense; when judges have become cor- rupt the bar has instituted proceedings against them. Yet only three United States judges have been im- peached. In this State, there has been only one suc- cessful impeachment of a Supreme Court judge, that of Barnard in 1874. Proceedings were commenced at about the same time against Judge Cardozo, who resigned office to avoid conviction. These proceed- ings were instituted by lawyers, notwithstanding the great danger of revengeful action upon them- selves and their clients, involved in an unsuccessful prosecution. No careful student of history can fail to be im- pressed by the influence which the legal profession has exerted upon civilization and progress in all nations and in all ages, and especially in our own country during the closing century. Nor is this fact a cause of wonder. The State is founded upon law. The lawyer from study and 338 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. experience knows, or ought to know, what laws are best adapted to changing conditions, for as condi- tions change, the laws necessarily change with them. In our democratic land he naturally gravitates to public affairs. Like the minister, he is an oracle of village life, and in cities he is accustomed to deal with civic questions. He has always been what the liberal training of his profession makes him, a champion of freedom and a leader of human thought and progress. The world has made vast advance in all matters of legislation and law, justice and liberty during the present century, and the lawyer has always been in the forefront of the struggle. Since the birth of the Republic, every national Congress has been very largely composed of law- yers. I need only to refer as a living example to the present Congress, consisting of four hundred and forty-seven members, of whom three hundred and twelve are lawyers, while, so far as I have been able to ascertain, there is only one clergyman in the Senate and one in the House of Representatives, and each of these has increased his knowledge by the study or the practice of law. There have been also many great lawyers and judges who have not been prominently connected with political affairs, whose influence has been pre- eminent in the formation of our institutions upon permanent foundations. Among these the world recognizes the names of Story, Kent, Wheaton, Rufus Choate, O'Connor and Parsons. THE BENCH AND BAR. 339 It seems germain to my subject to speak of one of the greatest dangers to the continuance of our modern civihzation, against which the pu'bHcist must guard. I refer to the troubles which arise out of labor agitations. Working men have begun to feel their power in political affairs as never before. They have become a new power with which all govern- ments must reckon. The masses are seething with unrest and yearning for part and parcel in govern- ment. They are groping in the discontent of social- ism and anarchy, not knowing fully their own de- sires and intent, though determined to make their influence felt for the betterment of their condition. I stood once at the summit of Vesuvius. Italy lay peacefully at its foot. The sun was shining with unclouded brilliancy upon the most beautiful bay and landscape in the world. Creeping cautiously through the masses of cinders to the edge of the cra- ter, I looked down upon that sea of molten horror, tossing in fiery waves hundreds of feet below. The smoke rose in sulphurous, fetid, horrid fumes. Suddenly, as if gripped by some mighty convulsion, the volcano belched high into air great masses of burning cinder; we fled in peril of our lives. Here, I thought, is the physical picture of society as it ex- ists in these latest years. Smooth upon the surface as the smiling Bay of Naples and the sunny plains of Italy, there are elements of unbridled passions, of communism and anarchy, which need only a torch to kindle another 'bloodv revolution like that of 340 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. France in 1789, the Lord Gordon riots of 1780, the negro riots in New York in 1863, or the assassina- tion of president, czar and king within our own memory. But after all, the danger is more fancied than real, for the American workingman is essentially a law-abiding citizen and respects the law, and by the very fact of his participation in its creation feels himself to be a member of the body politic. He will be taught by education and convinced by experi- ence that his individual welfare is consistent with and dependent upon the general good. As we stand to-night in the closing hours of the closing year of the closing century that has seen such vast and progressive development, we ask our- selves whether our civilization and national insti- tutions will be permanent. It needs no prophetic vision to foresee our im- mediate future. For two centuries our feeble colo- nies barely fringed the Atlantic shore, their very ex- istence hanging in the balance. Then, under the inspiration of freedom, at the beginning of the nine- teenth century, the new nation began its magnif- icent march of settlement, westward over the blue ridges of the Alleghanies, westward over the val- ley of the Mississippi, westward over prairie and desert, still westward over the Rocky Mountains and the Sierras, until, like the swelling tide that fills the shore, it has covered the continent from sea to sea with the resistless flow of population, making THE BENCH AND BAR. 341 complete the chain of civiHzation which shall bind in one common brotherhood all the nations of the world. It is an impressive thought that after many centuries civilization, which began in Asia and swept westward over Europe and the Atlantic, has now crossed the Western hemisphere, and from the shores of California and Oregon looks across the Pacific to Asia, where it had its birth. It is this march which Lord Rosebery predicts will eventually result in the sublime transference of po- litical power and the seat of empire from the East- ern to the Western hemisphere. Every nation has been born in struggle and nursed in blood and battle. This great nation was born in the civil and religious struggles of Europe. It was baptized in the blood of our patriot ancestors, shed to secure our freedom; it was cleansed of the foul stain of human slavery in that other torrent of blood which for four sorrowful years flowed from wounds fraternally inflicted. It was sanctified by the war for Cuban independence, when the armed hand of the nation was stretched out to protect a brave and patient people perishing under the cruel tyranny of Spain. And we may reverently say that God approved that decision and gave our country expanding territory and her proper rank among the nations of the earth. I am reminded of the words of Lowell : 342 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to de- cide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight. Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right. And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light." The present standing of America is secure. But what of the remote future? Will the fate of an- cient nations be our own ? In the coming centuries shall we sink into insignificance, or into an oblivion which will leave nothing but a memory of our pass- ing grandeur? Will the generations of a new and later civilization look upon the ruins of our capitols and cathedrals, covered with the dust of ages, as we look upon the temples and palaces of Babylon and Nineveh, or the columns and arches of the Roman Forum, or the Parthenon, beautiful in its decay, crowning the Acropolis? In cheerful opti- mism I answer, No. On the contrary, I believe that we are building a great spiritual university and temple of freedom, a university in which mankind will learn the funda- mental principles of justice and of civil and religious liberty; a temple of such catholicity that all men will gather in its broad aisles and bow before its altars to learn obedience to the law of the one liv- ing and true Gk)d; that both university and temple will be so majestic in proportions, so massive in THE BENCH AND BAR. 343 construction that when our material structures shall have crumbled into dust they and their principles will endure ; that the time is coming when there will be neither kingdom nor aristocracy, but govern- ments founded only upon the consent of the gov- erned, and based on civil and religious liberty and the law of God, and finally, that our nation will resist time and survive decay, so long and only so long as a pure and independent Bench and a fear- less and patriotic Bar remain to defend our liberties ; so long as the nation sacredly cherishes the great principles of freedom and equal rights to all its citizens ; so long as it fears God and obeys his com- mands; so long as it establishes and maintains just and righteous laws, and so long as it deals justly with other nations and regards all men as brothers, children of one Father, even the Lord God Almighty. XI. SOME MEDICAL MEN IN THE REVOLUTION. 345 XI. SOME MEDICAL MEN IN THE REVOLUTION* BY DR. SIDNEY H. CARNEY, JR. Secretary of the New York Historical Society. To few among us to-day is time permitted in which to tread the many avenues of learning. It is an era of Specialization. Where the physician of a century-and-a-half ago browsed over the " Adventures of Count Albert- us," " All for Love, or the World Well Lost," " Clare on Fluids," *' Cheselden's Anatomy," " Devil on Crutches in England," " Martius' Philosophy," " Witches and Wizards," " Salmon's Geography," and kindred standard literature of that period, we find to-day that the Specialist de- votes his entire energy to one sub-division of the great whole, — and considers himself fortunate in- deed if he may glance at one daily paper! * An address delivered before the Society of the Sons of the Revolution of the State of New York, at Delmonico's, April 19, I901. From the Year Book of the Society. By permission. 349 350 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Formerly, there was not that liberality of thought and action in connection with scientific research with which we are so familiar. It was only twenty-five years before the out- break of the War of the Revolution, that two of New York's great men, Drs. Middleton and Bard, made what is said to have been the first injection of the blood-vessels of the human body in this country. To-day, the latest research in Physiology, Chemistry, Surgery, Psychology and Bacteriology and the other departments of learning, finds its way into the homes of millions, through the modern newspaper, which often, in a single Sun- day edition, contains more scientific information than was to be acquired in the entire library of the Revolutionary practitioner. Dr. Jones, of this city, who was, as you may re- call, physician to Washington and Franklin, said that, " among the requirements essential for a surgeon, he ought to have firm, steady hands; be able to use both alike; a strong, clear sight, and above all, a mind calm and intrepid, yet humane and compassionate, avoiding every appearance of terror and cruelty to his patients amidst the most severe operations." Dr Jones did not mention any details of the tragic battle-fields ; the noise and confusion ; the air heavy with dust and the fumes of exploded powder ; nor of the personal danger to those of SOME MEDICAL MEN IN THE REVOLUTION. 35I the medical staff who, although non-combatants, were always shining marks for their foes — seven being killed at one operating-table, one after another, while doing all in their skill to mitigate the ghastly results of so-called civilization. No, — it was taken for granted that " While Speculative Philosophers were disputing about the origin of Evil and foundation of Morals, and furious bigots were contending for different modes of faith, — that the practical good man would en- deavor to employ himself in alleviating those evils which he found incident to human nature," — and thus would give their lives readily, gladly, for their fellow-men and their native land. Imbued with such high ideals, we can readily understand how Drs. Jones, Samuel Bard and their colleagues were chiefly instrumental in start- ing, in 1771, the New York Hospital. It should not be forgotten that in 1688 a hos- pital existed here in New Amsterdam, established through the labors of Drs. Hendricksen, Varre- vangerand Kierstede, of which institution Hilletje Wilburch was matron. But as a rule, those ill with contagious diseases had to rely on the tender care of nurses, noble women, who gave up their lives to this work. One of these women, during twenty-one years, devoted herself to the care of smallpox cases, and finally had to petition the Assembly, in 1745, for remuneration. In the year prior to the outbreak of the War, 352 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, the Physicians in Ordinary at the New York Hospital, the cellar of wliich, by-the-vvay, was reserved for insane patients, — were Drs. Peter Middleton, John Jones, Samuel Bard and Malachi Treat. Dr. Malachi Treat was Professor of Medicine in King's College, our present Columbia, in 1775, and he was also surgeon of a company of militia called the German Fusiliers. To him the New York Provincial Council turned when, in 1776, advice was needed as to the selection of a site for a suitable Soldiers' Hospital. The following year Dr. Treat was appointed Physician General of the hospitals for the Northern Department, and in 1780, upon the reorganization of the Hospital Department, he was made Chief Hospital Pliysi- cian. He died in 1795, having contracted yellow fever while serving as health officer of this port. The company of militia with wliich Dr. Treat was identified, was but one of the several in the First New York Battalion, under Colonel John I>esher, some of the company names being " The Prussian Blues," " Swego Rangers," " Hearts* Oak," " Grenadiers," " Light Infantry," "Sports- men," etc., etc. While King's College Avas disorganized by the presence of the English troops, there were no de- grees conferred and, in their place, certificates were given to those qualified in medical learning, similar to the following : SOME MEDICAL MEN IN" THE REVOLUTION. 353 "New York, Aug. 5, 1776. These are to certify that I have carefully ex- amined Mr. Henry White, both in Physick and Surgery, and have the pleasure to inform all whom it may concern that he is well acquainted with the Principles and Practice of both, and qualified for discharging his duty in either. Malachi Treat." That patriotic enthusiasm fired the souls of practically all the profession, need hardly be questioned. From the first news of the proposed march on Concord, obtained by Dr. Joseph Warren, and which he delivered to Dr. Samuel Prescott, Dawes and Revere, for them to ride and alarm those un- prepared for the British, — on through the years of struggle, — the medical profession enjoyed a most distinguished part, in the field and in the Halls of Congress. Nine physicians are mentioned as participating in the battle, whose anniversary we celebrate this evening, while in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, 1 774-1 775, were some twenty-five physi- cians, conspicuous among whom were Dr. Joseph Warren, who is said to have been the most active man on the Lexington field, " Animating every- where by his presence and example, his country- men to avenge their wrongs on that memorable occasion." 23 354 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. " Dr. Warren was chosen by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, June 14th, 1775, the Second Major-General of their own forces, just two days prior to the election of Washington by the General Congress as Commander-in-Chief." " Dr. Warren went from Cambridge as a volun- teer, in throwing up intrenchments by a detach- ment of 1,000 men, under Colonel Prescott, on Bunker's Hill, where, on the 17th of June, he met his death. The historian Ramsey said of him : " To the purest patriotism and most undaunted bravery, he added the virtues of domestic life, the eloquence of an accomplished orator, the wisdom of an able statesman * * * * Like Hampden he lived, like Hampden he died, universally beloved and universally regretted. His many virtues were celebrated in an eloquent eulogium written by Dr. Rush, in language equal to the illustrious subject." And yet Dr. Warren was but one among thirty other physicians who participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill, among whom was Dr. John Brooks, later Governor of the State for whose existence he fought. Each one of them risked his all, and, be it said to the everlasting glory of American ideas of chivalrous warfare, the American physi- cian and surgeon has always given the same skilled attention to the adversary as to his fellow-in-arms. On this memorable occasion, England's wounded received prompt, tender and skilled attention by SOME MEDICAL MEN IN THE REVOLUTION. 355 Dr. Minot and Dr. John Cummings, the latter having had great experience in the French and Indian War, and during which he was, for a time, a prisoner of the Indians. One month after the battle of Bunker Hill, six- teen physicians appeared before a Board of Ex- aminers, the first of its kind in America, to pass an examination for admission in the Regular Army as surgeons. They were examined in anatomy, ph3^siology, surgery and medicine. Six of them being found unqualified, were privately rejected. Possibly these rejections were the first cause of the subsequent dissatisfaction expressed towards some medical officers at the head of the Medical Corps, which Corps, as a whole, was practically united during the entire war. Jealousy of the in- dividual man, not of the Corps, was not unknown in those days, as in our own time — indeed, mur- murs and grumblings as to food supplied, both in quantity and quality, existed then, as in our recent Spanish annoyance. But, on the whole, America had become, as stated in a letter from Quebec, " the Nursery of Heroes," while in a letter from Montreal, date of Dec. 16, 1775, is this apprecia- tion of our soldiers' valor : "■ Our brother soldiers before Quebec have thrown up batteries of ice and snow which ex- perience has proved to be sufficient. Who but Yankoos would have dreamed of such a contrivance, and who but enthusiasts for Liberty would carry on a siege at such a season of the year ! " 356 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Even a Loyalist physician wrote to a min- isterial officer a few weeks after the Battle of June 17 : " Eighteen thousand men, brave and determined, with Washington and Lee at their head, are no contemptible enemy. For the sake of the mis- erable Convulsed Empire, solicit Peace, repeal the Act, or Britain is undone ! " With the transference of the seat of war to the southward, came the order for Dr. Morgan to move the Military Hospital to New York, which he immediately accomplished, reporting to the Com- mander-in-Chief in person, on April 22, 1776. The population of the city being thus largely augmented by the various military organizations, there arose need for increased and suitable mili- tary hospitals. The Committee of Safety had tried to anticipate this necessity, when, on April 6, they notified the Treasurer of King's College that that building be prepared for the reception of sick soldiers. The college was prepared, but lost much valu- able material as a result, including books given by the Earl of Butte, as well as copies of every book from Oxford University press, which had been presented by that University. Thirty years later, some six hundred books were discovered in a room in St. Paul's Chapel on Broadway, but the major part of the material was lost. Several private residences were taken for hos- SOME MEDICAL MEiV IN THE REVOLUTION. 357 pitals, among others, those of Messrs. Apthorpe and Oliver Delancy ; Robert Bayard's, at Bloom- ingdale, and WilHam Bayard's, at Greenwich. Subsequently the British used the Brick Church, then on Beekman Street, for a hospital, converting the First Presbyterian Church, * on Wall Street, into barracks for the soldiers. Dr. Jones gave valuable suggestions as to the arrangement of the hospitals. He knew from personal observation the Hotel Dieu, in Paris, which received over 20,000 patients each year, one- fifth of whom died in the hospital. He remem- bered its triple rows of beds, each bed containing four to six patients, and that when he went the morning rounds, he had seen the dead lying in the beds with the living. He believed that the architects held radically different views from physicians as to room and air space, and we note with satisfaction the step taken here in New York to have what was then consid- ered a most commodious and well-ventilated hos- pital. The wards were to be 36 feet in length, 24 feet wide and 18 feet in height, each ward to con- tain only 8 beds. We can barely form an estimate as to the value of these hospital arrangements, inasmuch as our troops were unable to hold New York, and, in * Rev. Joseph Treat, Pastor, who with other clergymen fled to New Jersey during the occupancy of New York by the 'S>n'C\%)a..— Editor. 358 MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. consequence, after the British entered the city, the wounded Ameticans, together with the British and Hessian prisoners, were sent to Albany, where a hospital accommodating 500 men was located. Dr. Solomon Drowne, of Providence, R. I., had become a member of the Medical Staff of the General Hospital, located in King's College, which he considered " a very elegant building, and its situation pleasant and salubrious." The doctor, however, objected to the excessive cost of clothes, a pair of drab trousers having the enormous price of twelve dollars ! Possibly it would have been more economical for him had he done, as did the Commander-in-Chief, General Washington, who, in a letter dated at Newburgh, Nov. 5, 1782, wrote to John Mitchell ; "Dear Sir: — By Doctr. Craik I send you four half JOES — £6 — 9^- — 3