E 
 
 .G.')S62. 
 
 PUBLICATIONS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 
 
 BULLETIN No. 6 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HISTORY 
 IN A DEMOCRACY 
 

/ c 
 
CLIO, MUSE OF HISTORY 
 Mo.NTMENT UNVEILEn AT GUILFORD BATTLE GROrXD, NEAR 
 
 Greensboro, N. C, July 3, 19o9. 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HISTORY 
 
 IN A DEMOCRACY / 
 
 BY 
 
 Cr ALPHONSO SMITH 
 
 Professor of the English Language 
 University of North Carolina 
 
 Ah Address delivered at the unveiling of a monument to the Muse 
 
 of History on the Guilford Battle Ground, near 
 
 Greensboro, N. C, July 3. 1909 
 
 Raleigh, N. C. 
 
 Edwards & Broughton Printing Company 
 
 1909 
 
 ' ^ ^ - ^ f M r-^in 
 

 ^^A 
 
 THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 
 
 J. Bkyan Grimes, Chairman. 
 W. J. Peele, D. H. Hill, 
 
 Thomas W. Blount, M. C. S. ISToble. 
 
 R. D. W. Connor, Seci-etafy, Raleigh, N. C. 
 
 n. OF 0. 
 
 »llfi 141909 
 
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HISTORY IN A DEMOCRACY 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 There is a day famous in the creed and practice of Chris- 
 tendom known as All Saints' Day. On this day honor and 
 reverence are paid without distinction to all the saints and 
 martyrs who have gone before. At other times individual 
 saints and individual martyrs have their individual days ; 
 but on this great democratic day all saints and all martyrs, 
 wherever their loyal dust may lie, receive their merited 
 guerdon of praise and gratitude. It is a homage as honor- 
 able to those that render it as to those that receive it, for it 
 is a homage paid not so much to saints themselves as to the 
 universal spirit of saintliness, not so much to martyrs as to 
 the inner meaning of martyrdom. All Saints' Day has its 
 secular counterpart in the day and in the occasion that have 
 brought us together. The Fourth of July is for us and our 
 posterity All Heroes' Day. And the monument which we 
 have met to dedicate is a monument not to this hero or to 
 that hero, but to the spirit of heroism which made them what 
 they were. It symbolizes no detached date or occurrence in 
 history. It is itself the august spirit of history. 
 
 There is to my mind something peculiarly beautiful and 
 suggestive in the thought that this Greek figure is henceforth 
 to keep watch and ward over this historic field. Beneath the 
 shadow of this figure Socrates talked and Plato dreamed and 
 Aristotle reasoned. Into those eyes Sappho looked as she 
 sang herself into the heart-history of the world. Around the 
 base of this figure, in Athenian portico or in Attic grove, 
 Greek boys and girls gathered to hear again the story of Helen 
 and Paris and Ulysses. From its pedestal outward Pericles 
 spread the splendor of a democracy which has served as bea- 
 con light for all democracies. The far-off Queen of Sweden 
 cherishes as an unpurchasable heritage one of these Greek 
 
figures which the mutations of history have transferred from 
 Athens to Stockholm. 
 
 This historic figure, ladies and gentlemen, could not have 
 plaved the part that it has played in human thought and in 
 national progress unless it symbolized some universal truth. 
 The other eight muses have had their day, but this figure 
 lives on, Eeceding nations catch glimpses of it and are 
 stirred to renewed effort. Youthful nations interpret it in 
 terms of practical patriotism and of constructive idealism. 
 It beckons to poets and philosophers, to statesmen and his- 
 torians, giving a wider horizon to their thought and a finer 
 unity to their concepts. Every discovery of an historical 
 truth, every refutation of an historical error, every contribu- 
 tion by word or deed to a nation's story is a leaf added to the 
 laurel chaplet around the brow of the Muse of History. Jef- 
 ferson saw this figure when he wrote the Declaration of In- 
 dependence. It was shield and buckler to the great Wash- 
 ington. It was with Cornelius Harnett when he defied the 
 power of Tryon. It stood at Charlotte and at Halifax. It 
 was by the side of William R. Davie when he laid the foun- 
 dations of the University of North Carolina. And I pray 
 God that when the things of sense grew dim to the fading 
 eyes of the patriots who fell here, this immortal figure may 
 have passed before their vision as a herald of the time when 
 their memory should be pedestaled in triumph and their 
 example become a nation's heritage. 
 
 To the Greek mind statviary was not only a thing of beauty 
 and a joy forever: it was the outward and visible sign of an 
 inward and abiding truth. A study of this statue will show 
 that thei'e are two underlying conceptions which have served 
 to vitalize and perpetuate it through all the centuries. 
 
 The first great truth that the Greek artist wrought into the 
 l)ose and grouping of this figure is the vital relationship that 
 should ever exist between the present and the past. When- 
 ever a Greek looked upon this figure he observed that the 
 single scroll in the uplifted hand had been taken from the 
 
sheaf of scrolls in. the casket behind. The single scroll, the 
 scroll that the Muse of History is reading, represents present 
 time ; the scrolls in the casket represent past time. The 
 present, therefore, is included in the past, for it is the 
 product of the past ; and out of the treasures of the past a 
 progressive nation must seek the meaning and conduct of the 
 present. 
 
 It was this unbroken continuity of history, this duty of 
 the present to recogiiize its filial obligation to the past, that 
 drew from Tennyson one of his most characteristic messages : 
 
 "Love thou thy land, with love far-brought 
 From out the storied past, and used 
 Within the jjresent, but transfused 
 Through future time by power of thought." 
 
 In his great essay on The Meaning of History Frederic 
 Harrison defines the past as "that power which to understand 
 is strength, which to repudiate is weakness." The motto of 
 our efficient State Historical Commission will henceforth find 
 an eloquent advocate on this field: 
 
 "The roots of the present lie deep in the past, and nothing 
 in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the 
 present came to be what it is." 
 
 A democracy, fellow-citizens, can not afford to be ungrate- 
 ful. Built as it is on loyal service and patriotic sacrifice, 
 the day of its forgetting will be the day of its undermining. 
 Other nations trace their origin back through a long series of 
 successful and unsuccessful wars. We find our national 
 genesis in a single war ; and the measure of our greatness and 
 stability will be the measure of our gratitude to the men who 
 made Yorktown possible. 
 
 I wish also to enter my protest here against the lifeless 
 .and mechanical way in which our Eevolutionary history is 
 so frequently taught. The purely scientific method of cause 
 and effect has its rightfid place in colleges and universities, 
 but whenever the Kevolutionary War is interpreted to youth- 
 ful minds in terms merely of great industrial or social or 
 
political nioN'einents and not in terms also of personal heroism 
 and individnal initiative, the actors in the strnggle seem 
 mere puppets. They are hut the playthings of irresistible 
 external forces. There is no charm or personal a])peal in 
 the story thus told. There is information, it may be, but 
 no inspiration. No great literature of stimulant song and 
 story will ever spring from our Revolutionary history unless 
 that history is taught in terms of individual heroism on the 
 one side and individual gratitude on the other. 
 
 There are those, however, who say — or who used to say — 
 that the lesson of relatechiess to the past and of consequent in- 
 debtedness can not appropriately be taught by the Battle of 
 Guilford Court House. It is not my purpose to go into his- 
 torical details, but the iSTorth Carolinian who accurately in- 
 forms himself of what took place here on March 15, 1781, 
 and who does not thrill with ]>ride and gratitude is unworthy 
 of his citizenship. One hundred and twenty-eight years ago 
 there was a rail fence yonder and in front of it an open field. 
 On this side of the fence lay the North Carolina militia 
 under Eaton and Butler. Across the open field, advancing 
 from west to east, charged the flower of the English army. 
 There are elements of pathos as well as of glory in the scene. 
 These f oepien spoke the same language ; they knew by heart 
 the same prayers ; their institutions were the same ; Shake- 
 speare and the English Bible were the common heritage of 
 both; and both were equally proud of their Anglo-Saxon 
 blood and of what it had accomplished. But these ISTorth 
 Carolina militiamen had never seen an English soldier be- 
 fore, nor had they been present at a battle. They had shot 
 rabbits, squirrels, and an occasional fox, but no larger game. 
 If they succeed gloriously there will be no promotion, for 
 they are not professional soldiers. If they fall, the only note 
 taken of it will be the widowed cry of some desolate woman 
 as she fronts the future alone. 
 
 If the North Carolina militia, with thoughts like these 
 stirring at their hearts, can hold their ground and reserve 
 
their fire till the English army, disciplined on a hundred 
 battlefields, has come within easy shooting range, if they can 
 stand the ordeal of merely waiting and then pull their trig- 
 gers with steady aim, — they will have done the bravest deed 
 that either army on that eventful field can boast. Let his- 
 tory answer. Captain Dugald Stewart, of Scotland, who 
 led his men across the open field, says :^ , . 
 
 , ''In the advance we received a very deadly fire from the 
 Irish line [he means the Scotch-Irish N"orth Carolinians] of 
 the Ajnerican Army. One half of the Highlanders dropped 
 on that spot." Brown, in his History of the Highland Clans, 
 says : "The Americans [the untrained jSTorth Carolina mili- 
 tia], covered by the fence in their front, reserved their fire 
 until the British were within thirty or forty paces, at which 
 distance they opened a most destructive fire, which annihi- 
 lated nearly one third of Colonel Webster's Brigade."^ 
 
 The following letter was written by an American soldier 
 shortly after the battle and published in the New Jersey 
 State Gazette of April 11, 1781: 
 
 "The enemy were so beaten that we should have disputed 
 the victory could we have saved our artillery, but the Gen- 
 eral thought that it was a necessary sacrifice. The spirits of 
 the soldiers would have been afiected if the cannon had been 
 sent off the field, and in this woody country cannon can not 
 always be sent off at a critical moment. 
 
 "The General, by his abilities aud good conduct and by his 
 activity and bravery in the field, has gained the confidence 
 and respect of the army and the country to an amazing de- 
 gree. You would, from the countenances of our men, believe 
 they had been decidedly victorious. They are in the highest 
 spirits, and appear most ardently to wish to engage the euemy 
 again. The enemy are much embarrassed by their wounded. 
 When we consi(^er the nakedness of our troops and of course 
 
 1 See Caruthers's Life of Caldwell, p. 237. 
 
 - Both of these citations may be found in A Memorial Volume of the 
 Guilford Battle Ground Company, prepared by Judge David Schenck 
 and published in 1893 by Reece & Elam, Greensboro, N. C. 
 
their waut of discipline, their nimibers, and the loose, irregu- 
 lar manner in which we came into the field, I think we have 
 done wonders. I rejoice at our success, and were our exer- 
 tions and sacrifices published to the world as some command- 
 ing officers would have published them, we should have re- 
 ceived more applause than our modesty claims."^ 
 
 These letters from actual participants in the battle tell 
 their own story. They do more. Thej make it plain that 
 for a quarter of a century the most unselfish form of prac- 
 tical j)atriotisra exhibited in ISTorth Carolina has been ex- 
 hibited by the Guilford JBattle Ground Company. With but 
 one meager appropriation from the National Government, 
 with an inadequate appropriation from the State Govern- 
 ment, they have exhumed the bodies of our heroic dead, they 
 have redeemed their memories, they have made the name of 
 Guilford Court House known and honored where it was un- 
 known before, and they have brought to the historic past of 
 ^STorth Carolina a new meaning and an added renown. 
 Surely there is no place in this State where a monument, 
 whose design is to invest the past with new significance and 
 the lu'esent with a larger sense of responsibility, could be so 
 fitly dedicated as on this spot and by this company. 
 
 There is a clause in the letter last cited that suggests the 
 second teaching of this monument. The writer says: 
 
 "Were our exertions and sacrifices published to the world 
 as some commanding officers would have published them, we 
 should have received more aj^jjlause than our modesty 
 claims." 
 
 In other words, there had come to the writer of this letter 
 a dim realization of the fact that the writing of history is 
 part of the making of history, that the deed of an individual 
 or of an army or of a nation is comparatively incomplete and 
 ineffective unless ])crpetuated in writing. This great truth 
 the Greeks were also the first to apply in a national way. 
 
 3 1 am indebted for this letter to my friend, Mr. B. C. Gregory, 
 Superintendent of the Public Schools of Chelsea, Mass. 
 
History, as represented by Greek genius in the design of this 
 statue, is a recorded history, a history written down on leg- 
 ible and accessible scrolls, to be read of all men. The writ- 
 ten scrolls in the casket and the written scroll in the hand 
 are evidence that to the Greek consciousness Clio was the 
 tutelary deity not of history enacted but of history recorded. 
 Other deities presided over the events that went to the mak- 
 ing of a nation's history. To the Muse of History was as- 
 signed the honor of garnering in written form the example 
 of the past for the emulation or avoidance of the present. 
 ISTo such conception could have originated among a people 
 who had not themselves attained a rare degree of civilization, 
 who had not themselves realized their grateful indebtedness 
 to the past, or who did not feel at the same time a sense of 
 trusteeship for the future. 
 
 The lines written by the President of the Guilford Battle 
 Ground Company* express with accuracy and beauty the sec- 
 ond teaching of this monument : 
 
 "As sinking silently to night, 
 Noon fades insensibly, 
 So truth's fair phase assumes the haze 
 And hush of history. 
 
 But lesser lights relieve the dark 
 
 Dumb dreariness of night, 
 And o'er the past historians east 
 
 At least a stellar light." 
 
 It is this great truth that we dedicate afresh to-day. The 
 darkness that has rested upon this field shall be dispelled 
 and the starlight of history shall irradiate it with imperish- 
 able splendor. If I were to call the roll of the nations fore- 
 most in history and ask how their historic past escaped the 
 thralldom of the tyrannous years and why it lives on in un- 
 diminished youth and beauty, the Muse of History would an- 
 swer that these nations have themselves realized the dutv of 
 
 4 Major Joseph M. Morehead, to whom alone belongs the credit for 
 this monument and who for seventeen years has labored unselfishly and 
 unceasingly to establish the truth of North Carolina history. 
 
10 
 
 preserving tlieir past for the guidance and eurichment of 
 their future. By history and biograph}', by song and story, 
 by epitaph and mohn'ment, they have .made of their past an 
 eveir living present. 
 
 The glory of Greece lives forever in the Iliad and Odyssey 
 and is inscribed on a thousand marble memorials. Ronie 
 immortalized her past in the ^"Eneid. England's greatest 
 historian was Shakespeare, and Westminster Abbey is to- 
 day her most eloquent spokesman. United Germany points 
 to her Siegesallee. Scotland found her world-interpreter in 
 the stories and poems of Walter Scott. 
 
 America has made a beginning, but only a beginning. No 
 writer has yet realized the possibilities of world-appeal that 
 lie in our Revolutionary War as Shakespeare realized the 
 possibilities in the far less significant Wars of the Roses, or 
 Scott in the border skirmishes between Lowlander and High- 
 lander, or Schiller in the tragedy of the Thirty Years War, 
 or Victor Hugo in the single battle of Waterloo. One great 
 Revolutionary novel or drama in which the contributions of 
 both the South an^ the North — of South Carolina, iSTorth 
 Carolina, and Yirginia as well as Massachusetts, New York, 
 and Pennsylvania^should be portrayed Avith equal insight 
 and with compelling power, would bind this nation together 
 in the indissoluble bonds of a commcm sympathy and a com- 
 mon historic pride. Such a work will never be written, nor 
 would it be acclaimed if written, until each State recognizes 
 the value of its own historic material. No writer can be 
 just to a State until that State is just to itself. 
 
 National unity and stability must be built upon a founda- 
 tion of common sympathies, sacrifices, and triumphs. Every 
 battlefield of the Revolution, where American valor was 
 tested and not found wanting, will yet become a link in the 
 golden chain of national brotherhood. The men who fought 
 here and the men who have since wrought here are nation- 
 builders. Slowly but surely the truth of history is widen- 
 ing its domain, and a heroic past is returning to make a 
 
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 heroic and united present. This Battlefield, already a Mecca 
 of patriotism, will yet become in the expanding life of this 
 commonwealth a stepping-stone to a larger national con- 
 sciousness and a chapter in the epic of a nation's birth. I 
 dedicate this monument, therefore, to the spirit of a just 
 and impartial history. In gratitude and love I dedicate it 
 to the splendor of the past and to the ever-widening service 
 of the future. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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