p\$L%*Z Hollinger pH8.5 Mill Run F3-1957 ADDRESS DELIVERED BY MORRILL N. PACKARD AT THE MEETING OF THE MARYLAND SOCIETY OF THE SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION ON FEBRUARY 21, 1914. [PUBLISHED BY THE MARYLAND SOCIETY OF THE SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 1914. ^ "MINUTE MEN." cTWr. President and Fellow Members : The Minute Men of our Revolution, in the more restricted sense, were those enlisted and ready for military service at a moments notice. In a broader view, the Minute Men of that Revolution con- sisted of all those patriots enlisted in the cause for which the forefathers contended, whether in the military establishment or in the field of civil endeavor, who were ready on the moment to serve the cause in any emergency in varied capacities. The servjce might be a protest against the enforcement of oppressive laws and the presence of an excessive military force overawing the proper exercise of civil authority in time of peace ; the interchanging of sentiments and data ; a warning of the movements of invading armies, or the intrigues of traitors to the cause ; the establishment of emergency civil government ; the marshalling of fighting Minute Men to meet an emergency ; supplying the financial needs of a pending crisis ; a fearless statement of the rights of men compelling the irresistible impulses of liberty ; a fearless defiance of the oppressor ; the demand for protection and justice ; a recital of wrongs suffered ; the action declaring allegiance forfeited ; the assumption of self-reliance, and the assertion of individual and uniform liberty as of universal right. The idealization of the Minute Men of the Revolution is seen the better in James Otis fighting the writs of assistance ; Samuel Adams demanding that British troops be withdrawn from Boston ; Patluck Henry forcing action against the Stamp Act in the Virginia House of Burgesses ; General Warren at Bunker Hill ; Captain Parker at Lexington ; Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga ; Robert Morris in resourceful financeering ; Thomas Paine in cause analysis and appeal, and Thomas Jefferson in cause epitome that burst the bounds of the times and made immortal precedent. They were men of peace, possessed of rare fighting quali- ties. They were developing a new country and infusing the buoyant spirit of a new idealism into its institutions. They were of keen intellect and had a clear knowledge of that for which they struggled and fought. Their sturdy convictions were coupled with indomitable courage. They sharply dis- tinguished just government from the injustices of government. They knew that justice in government and loyalty in the gov- erned were essential to social order. They were sensitive of their rights and vigilant about them. They were advised of the trend of public concerns, and deemed the general welfare of personal obligation and sacrifice. They possessed the genius for initiative, held a firm grasp on opportunity and forced the direction of pending events by timely action. They were those who kept the vigil of the ages in that twilight hour of humanity's golden opportunity for free institutions and people's government. In the fuller light of the on-coming day when patriots, under the inspiring touch of their genius and examples, were fighting for victory, the right to stand erect in the full stature of civic manhood, they first saw the outlines of colossal achievement for their country and the human race in the making. To their clearness of vision, a true conception of the vital issues, a quickened knowledge of the critical moment for action, a keen sense of the relation of the action to the pending crisis and the final result and the rapidity of decision of those Min- ute Men is due the unstinted honor of igniting and keeping aflame the spirit of patriotic endeavor that yielded the sacrifice, endured the hardships, renewed flagging courage and failing hope and forced the assertion of the right to be a free and inde- pendent people into an accomplished fact. They first gave concrete expression to the distinctive thought, purposes, genius and aspirations of the American people and so vitalized them in their time that they have characterized the national life and guided its course in magnif- icent accomplishments. There were two vitally essential and all controlling things which were objects of their ardent efforts and which challenged to the utmost their sincerity, ingenuity and endurance. They were the wresting of sovereignty from the king, and, when accomplished, of determining where to repose it and make it best serve the rights and liberties of all the people. The clash at arms was for the sovereign right to rule ; and the problem of the victory was how to chain sovereignty enduringly to the service of the whole people. Oh ! fickle sovereignty, alike indispensable to masters, op- pressors, tyrants and to liberty, justice and sustained civiliza- tion. Equally well does it serve the purposes of either. It obeys its master with unwavering fidelity. It forges the chains of slavery to enrich its masters. It steals the toilers' just reward for regal splendor. It sacrifices the bravest for unholy conquest and gain. It sends God's noblest to martyrdom at the caprice of its possessors. It caters to the whims of imbe- cile kings and makes the distress of submissive subjects the jest of the royal court. It subjugates and impoverishes whole classes, races and nations of men to gratify the avarice and ambitions of those who have it. It emancipates the slave. It makes liberty the only justification for war. It balances the scales of economic and social justice. It makes liberty and freedom of conscience cardinal principles in government. It transforms the insignia of imperial government into the em- blems of democracy. It ennobles manhood ; unburdens the people, protects the weak and serving its highest purpose sends the unconquerable impulses of liberty into the abodes of wrong and injustice everywhere. Sovereignty : the indispensable and controlling force in all government and yet in its mandates the subservient slave of the human will that directs it. A curse or a blessing depen- dent upon who directs its operations. The supreme problem of the generations of the ages has been to know its safest repository, the manner of placing it there and the safest methods of holding it under such control and applying it to such uses, as will compel the rendition of the best services in conserving individual and community interests equitably adjusted and secured. In the struggle for sovereignty it was of supreme moment, that the genius who should lead the armies to victory should, in the hour of triumph, prove patriot, remember the cause, the impulses, the purposes and the hopes that inspired the conflict and could in the sincerity of his devotion to the cause of humanity thrust aside the lure of ambition and use his power and influence in impressing conquered sovereignty into ser- ving those noble purposes. The Minute Men discerned such characteristics in one in whom the warrior's spirit held unconquerable sway until the truce of victory and peace was acclaimed and sovereign power was within his grasp, and then with all the force of unsullied attainments and unchallenged prestige giving to him the chance and ability of retaining it himself, turned mentor, guide and statesman and proving himself more illustrious in peace than glorious in war denied the opportunity and ren- dered immortal service in forging the civic chains that shall forever, we hope, hold it in leash to the highest service of his country and to posterity. He was the incomparable Washington. The days of the picturesque martial Minute Men have long since passed away. Their deeds made glorious history and immortal tradition. The fighting spirit which they first trans- lated into true heroism has never faltered in the intervening years and still awaits the challenge of tyranny and oppression. The days of the civic Minute Men have not passed away and will not pass away until liberty is bound in chains, the right of self-government denied, the pleading voice for right and justice silenced ; and the impulses of men for freedom and just government stifled before they find expression. The duration of their services will define the life of the Republic. When sovereignty doffed the crown and sceptre and assumed the garb of democracy their protecting vigilance began. Impelled by the promptings of their restless patriotism, through the decades of national growth, sovereignty has served the mandates of the people's will. And now the Republic, answering the prophecy of the devotees of liberty who saw it only in their visions and the hope of the oppressed of earth who would attain its blessings, stands the embodiment of the strength, vitality and will of a free and mighty people, and challenges and denies, by the glory of its enduring achieve- ments and doctrine, that sovereignty is a matter of family inheritance and its exercise the divine right of kings. When sovereignty had been wrested from the king and assumed by the people it was reduced into units and one unit given to each citizen. It was so ordered that a majority of the units must combine and agree to perform an act of sov- ereignty. That majority holds the destiny of the States and the Republic. The supreme test of our governmental stability will be in maintaining a constant, aggressive, self-reliant and logical majority of citizens qualified for self-government and having ample means and unhindered opportunity for expressing and enforcing the sovereign will. All the evil tendencies in our bodies politic ; the temporary subversion of governmental functions ; the restrictions upon the right of franchise ; the suppression of an open and fair opportunity for voicing the popular will ; diverting the law and public administration to serve private and selfish purposes against the public welfare ; the denial of justice; the inva- sions of rights and encroachments upon equal opportunity have their origin and depend for their success and continuance in the neglect to use or in the improper use of the unit of sov- ereignty possessed by each citizen or in the abuse of the dele- gated use of it by the public servants entrusted with its exer- cise in public administrations. Those citizens who, possessing the qualities necessary for maintaining efficient self-government, fail or refuse to dis- charge their full civic duties, or those who, in exercising those duties are led away from right action through ignorance, pas- sion, prejudice or selfish motives, are solely and directly responsible for the abuses in, and the failure of popular repre- sentative government. They serve equally well the purposes of those politicians who barter and trade for profit and gain in the political concerns of the country and the nefarious pur- 8 poses of those who acting with them secure special favors and privileges from the governments with which to enrich them- selves at the expense of the general welfare ; they together constitute the negative and destructive forces which portend the most menacing dangers to our institutions, and when, if ever, the soul of self-imposed and popular government shall lie humiliated and crushed beneath the ruins of the temples of our liberties, such a calamity will not have been caused by the conquest of enemies from without ; but from the operations of these disintegrating forces from within. And fickle sover- eignty, in that event, would still have been the ever faithful servant of its masters. The test of our scheme of government being in its stability and that stability depending upon the maintenance of a major- ity able and capable of enforcing the enactments of liberty and justice in every action of the government, then to assure that stability there must be enough of citizens to maintain that majority who are well informed in matters of public policy, well grounded in correct conceptions of the true governing principles ; incessantly cautious and of tireless activity. No plans of democratic government, no compacts assuring individual rights and liberty were ever devised by the genius of man that can or will prove effective except by their constant use and assertion by those in whose behalf they were made. The objects of patriotic endeavor must of necessity, then, be first directed to the protection of the right of franchise, the means of exercising that right ; the education and train- ing of those exercising that right ; and the necessity for the fearless and fullest exercise of that right as matters of the most vital importance. The right to qualify as a voting citizen must be limited to fit intelligent and non-criminal manhood only. Intelligence is the one absolutely fundamental and indispensable require- ment, the possession and wide diffusion of which makes a people fit for self-government. A reasonable and fair test of intellectual fitness to enter the roster of voting citizenship is the only logical way of maintaining the necessary standard of intelligent citizenship fitted for self-government. The laws governing elections from the first steps in the processes of expressing the popular will to the oath of office must be sedulously studied, effectively improved and rigidly enforced, or else the will of some political adventurer will be substituted for the will of the people. These processes are the only means the people have in a democracy, other than armed revolution, of exercising and directing sovereign power. Incomplete, defective, manipulated or unenforced laws con- trolling elections afford the opportunity of turning the very implements for expressing the popular will into means for suppressing it with resulting usurpation. They are the only means by which the people can make constitutional govern- ment responsive and effective. Ignorant, unfit and illiterate voting citizens are a menace to democratic government, and that menace increases in geometrical ratio as the number of such citizens approaches a majority of the whole. This danger can best be avoided by a system of free public education, with compulsory attend- ance if necessary and the wide dissemination of knowledge through written and spoken utterances. Effective public schools, an unbridled press and an open rostrum must ever be the active means of disseminating knowledge. There ought to be established a requirement that every person who expects to assume voting citizenship shall be given a non-partisan education in the essential princi- ples of our plan of government, a training in the duties of citizenship and the necessity and importance of exercising wisdom, caution and patriotism in the use of the right of franchise. So vital a part of a citizen's fitness and training ought not longer to be left to chance, neglect or to the vol- untary student of the science of government ; but made an essential part of the curriculum in every public educational institution. The failure of the well-qualified citizen to actively partici- pate in public concerns and to vote at every election possible amounts to civic unrighteousness. Such a failure to perform vital civic duties may not be as culpable as the improper use of those duties in serving vicious purposes, yet the resulting 10 dangers to efficient government therefrom are as eminent. For an American citizen to stand idly by and witness the de- throning of the Goddess of his liberties and neglect to stay the vandal hands is to forget the glory of past heroic self- sacrificing achievements, to weaken the present assurances and defenses of liberty and to wither the hope and blight the promise of future high endeavor in democratic accomplish- ment. A compulsory performance of these duties would be a confession of declining patriotism. A quickened civic consciousness only can compel a constant, intelligent and vigilant use of each citizen's unit of sover- eignty. The patriotism of peace and civic endeavor must be made to always equal the patriotism of war in defense of the common heritage. A citizenship, the constant majority of which is thus quali- fied, empowered and inspirited will hold the States and the Republic true to the highest ideals and to the destiny the forefathers saw in their visions. That citizenship will cor- rectly solve the debatable problems of governmental admin- istration. It will find the best plan of taxation. It will maintain domestic industrial freedom. It will keep the door of equal opportunity wide open. It will enforce a just dis- tribution of earnings, profits and increments among the peo- ple. It will discover the best method of controlling public utilities. It will say how much of personal liberty and prop- erty rights shall be yielded up for the common good. It will conserve human life and the country's resources. It will send messages of peace into the councils of nations illumined by the light of liberty and sound the tocsin of war only in defense of its citizens and the national integrity. My already too-patient listeners you are asking to what purpose my theme. It is to define and distinguish the civic Minute Men of our times and to urge a larger enrollment and better co-operation among them. The civic Minute Men of our day and generation are those in whom exist the quickened conscience of American citizen- ship and whose activities respond to that conscience with un- challenged fidelity. 11 They are those alert citizens of the loyal crew who navigate the ship of state by the chart the people have made, avoiding the breakers of imperialism on the left and anarchy on the right and hold her course true by the timeliness of their patri- otic endeavor. They are distinguished by their absolute faith in the ability of men to institute and direct government for themselves ; a clear conception of the essential principles of responsive representative government ; a sincere realization of the high privileges and serious responsibilities of a governing citizen- ship, and a prompt and aggressive discharge of every civic duty with an unselfish regard for the public good. Our civic Minute Men are well informed upon matters of state. They are leaders in awakening and crystallizing pub- lic opinion in matters of legislation, in governmental policies, in eradicating public abuses and inequalities in the body politic. They do not neglect to qualify as voters because of disgusting political evils, the perfidy of political parties or the duplicity and deceit of politicians. They do not misuse their citizenship by refusing to vote because of fear of being con- taminated in so doing. Fear of business and political ostracism does not bridle their tongues or restrain their ener- gies. The temptations of public office and emoluments do not smother the expression of their honest sentiments. They do not sacrifice the public welfare for personal profit or party gain, nor suffer it to be done by others. They will not yield sound convictions in subserviency to political masters, or for party expediency. Their fealty to country is never subordi- nated to their fealty to party. They do not seek special privileges or immunities from their government nor permit any resulting benefits therefrom to secure their acquiescence in so great an injustice. The honors of public office have no charms for them when to attain them they must chain their official conduct to the ignoble service of private interests or partisan control. They jealously guard the right of manhood suffrage as the burnished armor of their ennobling citizenship and an untrammelled ballot as the trusty weapon of their prowess in the political arena. By the intensity of their efforts 12 they compel honesty, integrity and fitness in the men to be charged with the conduct of public affairs. The vital neces- sity for freedom of conscience makes them the champions of this sacred right and the implacable enemies of those who would restrict or deny a principle so basic and one so conduc- ive to human welfare and happiness. They are the sleepless wardens of self-government ; the signal men of human rights ; the custodians of the restless spirit of free institutions ; the active geniuses of enlightened civic accomplishment. They constitute the force which energizes patriotism and which quickens the public conscience of the country, upon the potency of whose influence and the endurance of whose ser- vices depend the attainment of the highest ideals in the insti- tutions of freemen. The ranks of the civic Minute Men are always and invit- ingly wide open for recruits. The act of enrollment is a sincere resolve to know the duties of citizenship and to promptly, fearlessly and constantly discharge them. The equipment, a correct knowledge of public questions and an abiding love of country. The service, that of embosoming the unit of sovereignty coming down to them sanctified with the blood and treasure and self-sacrifice of the forefathers, the priceless heritage of their heroism ; and while holding it thus inclosed to protect, preserve and garnish it with that care, devotion and reverence so vital a talisman of liberty and justice deserves ; and when the term of service is ended to pass it on to posterity, untarnished with neglect and misuse, and embellished with added achievements in amplifying the rights and liberties of men, in reinforcing and multiplying the institutions wherein liberty abides ; in revising and re- fining the criterions of social and industrial justice and in raising the standards of civilization nearer to the universal acclaim of the brotherhood of man. It is a beautiful act to place the lily and the rose on the resting places of the patriotic dead. It is a graceful tribute to preserve in sculptured art the memory of those whose valorous deeds will move the hearts of men long after the memorials have corroded into dust. 13 It is a loyal service to mark the ways and designate the places along and upon which sublime efforts and sacrifices first and forever consecrated a continent for the accomplish- ments of a people conscience-free and of cast unhindered. It is a labor of enduring worth to perpetuate in script and tradition the names and records of those who have traveled along the rugged paths of patriotic duty and suffering to the fields of honor and glory in reproof of the sentiment that republics are ungrateful and in tracing the transmission and diffusion of their spirit of patriotism through succeeding generations. The continuing service of the tributes of patriotic gratitude is that of impressing upon the exising citizenship of the coun- try the irresistible influence of the nation's illustrious dead, and the serviceable duty of the civic Minute Men of that citizenship is to translate and vitalize the whole volume of that influence into the indomitable purposes, the sturdy re- solves and the effective mandates of that government those patriots created, defended and prospered. The sentient soul of that government is the uttered will of its citizens finding expression through a dominant majority, and its eternal salvation has been, is now and ever will be in the keeping of the civic Minute Men. Morriix N. Packard. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 011 710 514 3 PRESS OF John Cox's Sons, Baltimore, Mo.