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' ja;,^^-:;.;;^:-;:; Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation Jtp:;^wW.archive.org/details/famousoratorsofwOOmorrrich Tke Warld^g #rcat #rat@rg Aad Tkcir Ecst #rati@ms @ -CONTAINING- The Lives of the Greatest Orators and their Best Orations from Earliest Times to Present Day with an Account of Place and Time of/ Delivery of Each Oration and Explanatory Notes on Obscure Passages. ▲nUM C» Off nCllTIDf atlAT ep®«u m B9«C| By Charles Morris, Author of " Manual of Classical Literature" " Half-Hours with Best American Authors," "History and Triumphs of the Nineteenth Century," Etc., Etc., Etc Profusely Illustrated with Great Historic Scenes and Portraits of Brilliant Orators^ THE JOHN C WINSTON Ca PHILADELPHIA CHICAGO TORONTO <^^ SENERAL O-^r-fl^ Entered according to Act of Congress in tKe year 1902 by W, E. SCULL, in the office of the Lib rarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. All Rights Reserved THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ORATORY AND THE END, AIM AND PURPOSE OF THIS WORK ORATORY is, in its essential elements, the oldest of the arts, for it is one that requires, for its ordinary exercise, no other equipment than fluency of speech and some degree of self-confidence on the part of the speaker. It has, therefore, been practiced for ages past, as well among savage and barbarous tribes as among civilized peoples, in evidence of which may be mentioned the striking examples of native ora- tory attributed to the American Indians. This being the case, it might naturally be conceived that the literature of civiliza- tion would be overflowing with oratorical productions of high merit. Yet such a conclusion would be by no means a safe one. When we come to consider the abundant examples of oratory on record, it is to find the pure gold of eloquence often sadly alloyed. The orations of supreme merit, those which have won a position in the world's best literature, are few in number, and the list of world-famed orators is less extended than in almost any other field of human art. From this fact we can but conclude that the necessary equipment for the higher type of oratory demands far more than mere readiness in speech, grace in gesture, and fluent command of language. Back of these accomplishments must rest superior powers of thought, logical consistency in reason- ing, quickness and brilliancy of conception, control of rhetorical expedients, and much of what is known as personal magnetism. ii THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ORATORY the ability to sway the feehngs of hearers by sympathetic warmth of utterance. To these there must be added, for emi- nent success upon the rostrum, rich and full powers of voice, large training in the effective use of language, graceful and commanding attitudes and gestures, and all those personal qualities which give a living force to spoken words. The orator should have the art of the poet as well as the force of the rea- soner, be capable of clothing his thoughts in a brilliant cloak of words and phrases, of controlling the feelings as well as appealing to the judgment of his hearers, in short, of employ- ing all the expedients of which language is susceptible, all the attraction of which the voice and person are capable, and all the powers of thought with which the intellect is furnished. THE EFFECT OF ORAHORY An oration, to be fully appreciated, must be heard, not read. Much of what gave it force and effect is lost when it is committed to print. The living personality is gone — the flash- ing eye, the vibrating voice, the impetuous gesture, the pas- sionate declamation, the swaying and sweeping energy of elo- quence which at times gives to meaningless words a controlling force. Much is lost, but by no means all. The real flesh and blood of the oration is left — its logic, its truth, its quality as a product of the intellect. When thus read, apart from the per- sonal influence of the orator and with cool and judicial mind, the sophistry, the emptiness, of many showy orations become pitifully evident, while the true merit of the really great effort grows doubly apparent. No longer taken captive by the speaker's manner and the external aids to eloquence, the reader can calmly measure and weigh Lis words and thoughts, with competence to reject the vapid example of speech-making and give its just pre-eminence to the truly great oration. From what is above said it should be evident that the powers of the orator are not alone those of pure reasoning, of logic reduced to its finest elements. No example of oratory THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ORATORY iii should be judged from such a point of view. An orator is essentially a partisan. He takes sides almost necessarily, and is apt to employ any means at his command to give the suprem- acy to his own side of the question at issue. He is the counter- part, not of the judge — who calmly and logically weighs the two sides of the case to be decided and seeks to avoid preference to either — but of the advocate, whose aim it is to convince the jury that his own side is the correct one, and who does this by employing every sophistry, every trick of speech and argument, every device to add to the strength of his client's case and lessen that of his opponent. But ordinarily the orator, partisan though he may be, has a wider audience than a jury, and a higher sense of duty to himself and his hearers than is usually to be found in a jury trial. Though it may be his purpose rather to convince than to prove, and though he may not hesi- tate to help his side of the argument by oratorical devices and skillful deceptions, he must have an earnest belief in the strength and cogency of his own cause or he can scarcely hope to succeed. No man can serve God and Mammon. The great oration must come from the heart and not from the lips. Yet it is not enough for a man to believe in his cause ; his cause as well as his belief must be strong. The speech which does not ring true to a judicious reader is defective either in its cause or its advocate. Sophistry may weigh well on the plat- form, but it becomes hollow and empty in the cabinet, and the merit of no oration can be justly decided upon until it has been put to the test of the reader's mind. While, therefore, the idea is widely entertained that an oration must be heard to be truly appreciated, this conception is far from correct. There are two things to be considered in judging every oration ; the real quality and merit of the thought expressed, and the effect of delivery — the speaker's powers of elocution and the magnetic influence of voice and personality. The latter has often an immense effect, and the hearer fre- quently leaves the presence of the orator convinced against the iv THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ORATORY decision of his own intellect, taken captive by the personal powers of the speaker. To learn what the oration really con- tains, and what force it has as a pure expression of human thought, it must be read and weighed by the mind of the audi- tor when in a cool and critical state. Under such conditions the verdict is often changed and the weakness and emptiness of what may have seemed irrefutable arguments are exposed. For this reason it may be held that no one should decide as to the true merit of an oration until he has read it, and the really great orations can be enjoyed by the reader centuries even after they were delivered. THE PURPOSE OF THIS WORK In the present work an effort has been made to do justice to the orator, as far as possible, from both points of view. While carefully chosen selections from notable speeches have been made, in evidence of the quality of thought and mode of expression of each person dealt with, there has also been an endeavor to give a living impression of his personality. For this purpose a detailed portrait gallery of orators has been presented to the reader, that he may see them " in their habit as they lived " ; the special occasion which gave rise to each oration is cited ; and a sketch is given in the instance of each orator of the qualities and circumstances to which he owes his fame and his characteristics as a man. It is hoped in this way to give a degree of vital personality to each of the several per- sons dealt with, and as fully as possible to put them on the stage before the reader ; enabling the latter, while enjoying the elo- quence of each member of our galaxy of orators, at the same time, in some measure, to behold him in person, to catch him, as it were, in the act of deli^fery. Aside from the endeavor here indicated, it is the purpose of the editor of this work to offer examples of oratory selected from the choicest orations on record in every field ; chosen alike from the stars of the first magnitude in this art and those m THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ORATORY V of lesser yet considerable brilliancy. It need scarcely be-said that oratorical efforts of the finest quality exist in several of the leading fields of human thought, such as those of the parliament- ary chamber, the political rostrum the bar, the pulpit, the lecture platform and the social hall. But many of these lack interest to the general reader. In making selections from the store at com- mand the subject as well as the manner needs to be carefully considered, matters of local or temporary character losing their force and potency as time goes on, however effective they may have seemed when the occasion served. The legal oration, for example, is usually of passing interest, rarely appealing even at the time to more than a few persons, and seldom having a message to deliver to the world. The parliamentary oration, on the contrary, which deals with the great questions of govern- ment, political and national relations and the inherent rights of man, is apt to have a perennial hold upon the human mind, keeping its interest fresh even after centuries have passed. These are the two extremes between which it is necessary to choose. A DISTINCTIVE FEATURE OF THIS BOOK It may further be said that in many cases the orator owes his fame largely to some one supreme effort, some grand dis- play of his powers which throws all others into the shade, and yields us the product of his intellect and force of expression at their highest elevation„ This is, as a rule, a result of the incitement of some stirring contingency, some mighty crisis which can be justly dealt with only by the highest powers of thought and which is apt to arouse the orator to the utmost exercise of his faculties. In our selections we have been guided in a measure by this fact, choosing from the more famous examples of oratory, for the double reason that these present the orator at his best, and usually deal with subjects of permanent interest in themselves — those great occasions or events of history which never grow dull or stale, but retain their freshness through the ages. dq^Nri^^;®- -s^ PART I. AMERICAN ORAXORS BOOK I. REVOLUTIONARY ORATORS OF THE UNITED STATES ■ PAGE ^ Patrick Henry 19 An Appeal to Arms 20 James Otis 23 The Writs of Assistance 24 Joseph Warren 26 The Boston Massacre 27 Samuel Adams 29 The Struggle for Independence 30 Alexander Hamilton 32 The New Constitution 33 The Stability of the Union 36 James Madison 38 The American Federal Union 39 Fisher Ames 43 The Obligation of Treaties 44 Henry Lee 47 The Father of His Country 48 Gouverneur Morris 53 The Free Use of the Mississippi 54 John Marshall 57 The Defence of Nash 58 BOOK II. THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN ORATORY Josiah Quincy 62 The Evils of the Embargo Act 63 John Randolph ' 66 The Tariff and the Constitution 67 vi CONTENTS VU PAGE William Wirt "69- Burr and Blennerhassett 70 Henry Clay 73 The American System 74 The Horrors of Civil War 76 Robert Y. Hayne 79 South Carolina and the Union 80 Daniel Webster 83 The Reply to Hayne . . ' 84 The Secret of Murder 88 John 0. Calhoun 90 South Carolina and the Union 91 John Quincy Adams 94 A Eulogy of Lafayette 95 Edward Everett 98 The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Declaration 99 Rufus Choate 102 A Panegyric of Webster 103 Thomas H. Benton 106 Spanning the Continent . . . . • 107 Thomas Oorwin 109 The Dismemberment of Mexico no John J. Crittenden ....112 The Strong Against the Weak 113 Thomas F. Marshall . 115 The States and the Central Government 116 BOOK III. ORATORS OF THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD Abraham Lincoln 120 John Brown and Republicanism 121 The Gettysburg Address 122 The Second Inaugural 123 Stephen A. Douglas . 125 Slavery in the Territories 126 Thaddeus Stevens 129 Fanaticism and Liberty 130 Jefiferson Davis 132 Relations of North and South 133 Alexander H. Stephens 135 Separate as Billows, but One as the Sea ....... 136 Robert Toombs 138 The Creed of Secession 139 Charles Sumner . . . . 141 The True Grandeur of Nations 142 Wilham H. Seward 145 America's True Greatness 146 viii CONTENTS FAGB Frederick Douglass 148 Free Speech in Boston 149 Henry Winter Davis 151 The Peril of the Republic 152 William M. Evarts 154 A Weak Spot in the American System 155 Schuyler Colfax 157 The Confiscation of Slave Property 158 James A. Garfield 160 The Evil Spirit of Disloyalty 161 James G. Blaine 164 A Eulogy of Garfield 165 BOOK IV. RECENT POLITICAL ORATORS John W. Daniel 168 Dedication of the Washington Monument 169 Benjamin H. Hill 171 A Plea for Union 172 Lucius Q. 0. Lamar 173 Sumner and the South 174 George F. Hoar 176 The Ordinance of 1787 176 John J. Ingalls 179 The Undiscovered Country . 180 Roscoe Oonkling 182 The Nomination of Grant 183 Samuel S. Cox 185 The Sermon on the Mount 186 Carl Schurz 188 Amnesty for the Conquered 189 Benjamin Harrison 191 Inaugural Address 192 William McKinley 194 The Agencies of Modern Prosperity 195 Albert J. Beveridge 199 Eulogy of the Republican Party 200 The Republic Never Retreats ••.... 201 Joseph H. Choate . 203 Farragut at Mobile 204 Our Pilgrim Mothers 205 Henry W. Grady 206 The New South 207 Henry C. Lodge 209 A Party on Live Issues 210 Joseph B. Foraker 212 The United States under McKinley 213 CONTENTS ^^_____ix PAGR Thomas B. Reed 215 Gifts to Liberal Institutions 216 William J. Bryan 218 The Cross of Gold 219 Theodore Roosevelt 221 The Strenuous Life 222 National and Industrial Peace 224 BOOK V. THE ORATORS OF CANADA Joseph Howe 228 Canada and the United States 229 Sir John A. MacDonald 230 The Treaty of Washington ... 231 George Brown 233 The Greatness and Destiny of Canada 234 Nicholas F. Davin 236 The British Colonial Empire 237 Sir Charles Tupper 238 The Protection of the Fisheries 239 Goldwin Smith 241 God in the Universe 242 Sir Wilfrid Laurier 244 Gladstone's Elements of Greatness 245 Riel and the Government . 246 Sir John Thompson 249 The Execution of Riel 250 BOOK VI. FAMOUS PULPIT ORATORS Lyman Beecher 254 The Sacredness of the Sabbath 255 William Ellery Ohanning 256 The Rights of the Individual 257 The Power that Moves the Age 258 Theodore Parker , . . 259 The Greatness and the Weakness of Daniel Webster . . . 260 Henry Ward Beecher 263 lyincoln Dead and a Nation in Grief 264 A Corrupt Public Sentiment . 265 Edwin H. Chapin . 267 Christianity the Great Element of Reform 267 The Triumphs of Labor 268 The Handwriting on the Wall 269 Phillips Brooks 270 The Evil that Men do Lives after Them 271 X CONTENTS PAGE William G. Brownlow 273 The Union and the Constitution 273 Tribulations in Tennessee 274 Robert OoUyer 276 Stopping at Haran 277 Thomas DeWitt Talmage . . . • 279 The Upper Forces in American History 280 Henry Oodman Potter 282 The Heroism of the Unknown 283 Frank W. Gunsaulus 285 The Tapestry of Anglo-Saxon Civilization 286 Dwight L. Moody 289 God is Love . . . , 290 BOOK VII. LEADERS IN THE LECTURE FIELD Joseph Story 294 The Destiny of the Indian 295 Hasty Work is 'Prentice Work 296 Sergeant S. Prentiss 297 The Pilgrims 298 Wendell Phillips . 301 John Brown and Liberty 302 Clear Vision versus Education 304 Ralph Waldo Emerson 305 Man the Reformer 306 George W. Ciirtis ..... 308 Wendell Phillips and his Life Labor 309 Joseph Cook 311 Efficient but not Sufficient . 312 John B. Gough 314 The Temperance Cause 315 Rob-9rt J. IngersoU ^ 317 Blaine the Plumed Knight 318 At his Brother's Grave 319 Henry Armitt Brown 321 Men's Progress and Problems 322 Henry Watterson 323 A Vision of American History 324 The Puritan and the Cavalier 325 Charles Francis Adams 327 The Veterans of Gettysburg 328 Grover Cleveland 330 Manual Training for the Colored Race 331 Booker T. Washington . 332 Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are 333 CONTENTS xi BOOK VIII. NOTABLE WOMEN ORATORS PAGE Elizabeth Cady Stanton 336 A Plea for Equal Rights 337 An Appeal to the Law Makers 338 Susan B. Anthony * .... 339 Woman's Right to the Suffrage 340 Mary A. Livermore 342 The Battle of Life 343 Frances E. Willard 345 Safeguards for Women 346 Belva Ann Lockwood 348 The Political Rights of Women 349 Anna E. Dickinson 352 Why Colored Men should Enlist 353 BOOK IX. SPEAKERS ON FESTIVE OCCASIONS Chauncey M. Depew 356 The New Netherlands 357 Our English Visitors 358 Liberty Enlightening the World 359 Whitelaw Reid 360 The Press — Right or Wrong 361 Edward Everett Hale 362 New England Culture 363 James Russell Lowell 364 The Kinship of England and America . 365 Fitzhugh Lee 367 Harmony under the Old Flag 368 Samuel L. Clemens 370 Unconscious Plagiarism XI i^ Horace Porter . 373 The Humor and Pathos of Lincoln's Life ....'... 374 Joseph Jefferson 376 My Farm in Jersey . 377 Charles Emory Smith 378 The Advantages of the Pilgrim Fathers 379 W. Bourke Oockran 380 The Soldier and The Lawyer .... 381 James Proctor Knott 383 The Mystery of Duluth 384 Wu Ting Fang 387 A Wonderful Nation 388 John Mitchell , 390 An Appeal for the Miners 391 CONTENTS PART II. EUROPEAN ORATORS BOOK I. ORATORS OF GREECE AND ROME PAGE Pericles 395 The Dead who Fell for Athens 396 Lysias 398 The Crimes of Eratosthenes 399 Isocrates 401 Flattery more Powerful than Truth 401 The Principles of Good Government 402 The Basis of a Virtuous Life 403 Demosthenes 404 Philip the Enemy of Athens 405 On the Crown 407 iEschines 410. Against Ctesiphon . ; 411 "^Marcus Porcius Cato .... 413 Woman in Politics 414 ~^=Oaius Gracchus 415 , The People's Rights above Privilege 416 Oaius Julius Caesar 417 The Punishment of Catiline's Associates 418 4' Marcus Tullius Cicero 420 The Treason of Catiline 421 The Cruelty of Verres 423 1 Mark Antony 425 Brutus Denounced 426 BOOK II. PULPIT ORATORS OF MEDIiEVAL EUROPE Saint Augustine , 430 The Lord's Prayer 431 Saint Chrysostom 432 Death a Blessed Dispensation 433 Saint Bernard 434 The Deliverance of the Holy Land 435 Albertus Magnus 436 The Significance of Christ's Crucifixion 437 Martin Luther 438 Defence before the Diet at Worms 439 CONTENTS xiii -~ EAOE John Calvin 441 The Courage of a Christian 442 Jacques Benigne Bossuet 443 The Death of the Prince of Conde 444 Louis Bourdaloue 446 The Passion of Christ 447 Francois Fenelon 449 God Revealed in Nature 450 Jean Baptiste Massillon 452 The Iniquity of Kvil Speaking 453 BOOK III. ENGLISH ORATORS OF THE MIDDLE PERIOD Francis Bacon , 456 The Evils of Dueling . 457 Sir Edward Coke 459 The Charges in Raleigh's Case 460 Sir John Eliot 461 The Perils of the Kingdom 462 John Pym 463 Law the Basis of Liberty 464 Oliver Cromwell 466 The Kingly Title 467 Earl of Chesterfield 468 The Drinking Fund T . . . . 469 BOOK IV. THE GOLDEN AGE OF BRITISH ORATORY Earl of Chatham 472 Remove the Boston Garrison 473 The War in America 474 Edmund Burke 476 The Impeachment of Warren Hastings 477 Marie Antoinette , 480 Charles James Fox txt^-^>txtx$x^>4 481 The Tyranny of the East India Company 482 Liberty is Strength and Order 484 Lord Thomas Erskine 485 The Governing of India 486 Henry Grattan « . . 489 The Rights of Ireland 490 The Epitaph of England 492 John Philpot Curran 493 The Pension System 493 The March of the Mind 494 The Evidence of Mr. O'Brien 495 XIV CONTENTS PAGE Richard Brinsley Sheridan 496 The Arraignment of Warren Hastings 496 William Wilberforce , 500 Abolition of the Slave Trade 501 WiUiam Pitt 502 The Peril from France 503 Robert Emmet 505 A Patriot's Plea 506 BOOK V. ORATORS OF THE VICTORIAN REIGN Greorge Canning 510 In Repose Yet in Readiness 511 Sydney Smith 513 The Opponents of Reform . 514 Taxes the Price of Glory 516 Daniel O'Oonnell 517 The Charms of Kildare 518 Lord Henry Brougham 521 The Industrial Peril of War in America 522 Viscount Palmerston 524 Civil War in Ireland 525 Sir Robert Peel 526 The Importance of Classical Education 527 Lord John Russell ... 529 The " Rotten Boroughs " of England 530 Importance of I^iterary Studies 531 Richard L. Sheil 533 Irish Aliens and English Victories 534 The Horrors of Civil War 535 Thomas Babington Macaulay 536 Superficial Knowledge 537 Richard Oobden 540 The Gentry and the Protective System 541 Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield 543 The Dangers of Democracy 544 William Ewart Gladstone 547 Warfare and Colonization 548 Home Rule for Ireland 55 1 John Bright 553 The Crushing Weight of Militarism 553 Charles S. Parnell 557 Evictions and Emigration 558 Joseph Chamberlain » - 560 The Anomalies of the Suffrage 561 CONTENTS XV BOOK VI. THE PULPIT ORATORS OF GREAT BRITAIN PAGE Hugh Latimer 564 The Sermon of the Plow 565 John Knox 567 God's Power Above that of Things 568 John Wesley 569 Irreligion Among College People 570 Greorge Whitefield 572 A Warning Against Worldly Ways 573 Innocent Diversions 574 John Henry Newman 575 The Evils of Money Getting ... ^76 Henry Edward Manning 578 Rome the Eternal 579 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley 581 The Lesson of Palmerston's Life 582 Charles H. Spurgeon 584 The Authorship of the Bible 585 Joseph Parker , 587 Human Frivolity 588 BOOK VII. ORATORS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Count Honore de Mirabeau 590 V And yet you Deliberate 591 The Privileged and the People 593 Pierre Vergniaud 595 An Appeal to the People 596 The Despotism of the Jacobins 597 Greorge Jacques Danton 598 Let France be Free 599 To Dare; Always to Dare .... 600 Jean Paul Marat 601 A Defense from Impeachment 602 Maximilien Isidore Robespierre 603 A Final Appeal 604 BOOK VIII. NINETEENTH CENTURY ORATORS OF FRANCE Victor Cousin 606 Supremacy of the Art of Poetry 607 Alphonse de Lamartine . . . , 608 What is the French Revolution? 609 Safety only in the Republic 6io xvi CONTENTS PAGB Louis Adolphe Thiers 6ii The Wastefulness of the Imperial Finance 613 Victor Marie Hugo 614 Napoleon the Little 615 Voltaire 617 Leon Gambetta 618 The Regeneration of France 620 BOOK IX. ORATORS OF SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE Louis Kossuth 622 The Haven of the Oppressed 623 Giuseppe Mazzini 625 The Martyrs of Cosenza 626 Count Camillo di Cavour 628 Rome the Capital of Italy 630 Prince Otto von Bismarck 631 Loyalty to Prussia 632 Prussia and the New Constitution 633 Francesco Orispi ' 634 The Relations of the Pope to the State 635 Emilio Castelar 636 Abraham Lincoln 637 American Orators Book I. Revolutionary Orators of the United States Book II. The Golden Age of American Oratory Book III. Orators of the Civil War Period Book IV. Recent Political Orators Book v. Distinguished Orators of Canada Book VI. Famous Pulpit Orators Book VII. Leaders in the Lecture Field Book VIII. Notable Women Orators Book IX. Speakers on Festive Occasions 17 BOOK L Orators of the American Revolution GREAT occasions bring forth great men and lead to great events. What would have been known of Washington but for the struggle for American Independence, of Napoleon but for the French Revolution, of Grant but for the American Civil War? Men like these would, no doubt, have made their mark under any circumstances, but their fame would have been limited by the lack of oppor- tunity for the display of their special powers, and the history of their achievements would not have stirred the world It is the same with oratory as with f other branches of human effort, its great triumphs have been dependent upon great exigencies in human affairs. While orators have been as numerous almost as I autumn leaves, world-famous orations seem as few as the planets of our solar system. The orator who would win fame must have, not only fine powers of / thought and expression, but the impulse of momentous ^events, some vast stir in the tide of history to call forth his genius to the uttermost and to give his words a living force and a permanent vitality. The first such occasion in American history was that exciting era which gave birth to the American Republic. It is the stirring events of this history- making epoch that produced the earliest outburst of American oratory, due to such masters of the art as Henry, Otis, Ames, Hamilton and their contempora- ries, and it is from this epoch, therefore, that our first selections are drawn. 18 PATRICK HENRY (J 736= J 799) THE BEACON-LIGHT OF THE REVOLUTION LET us view a great historical picture. Its scene is the Assembly hall of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, its date the year — — ^ 1765, its occasion the effort of the King and Parliament of Eng- land to tax the American colonies without their consent. The Bur- gesses had met in protest and talked weakly about the Stamp Act, which was stirring up America to its depths, but were on the point of adjourning without taking any action, when a tall and slender man whom few of them knew arose in their midst. It was a new member, a lawyer from Louisa County, Patrick Henry by name. The old and influential members looked with displeasure on the raw newcomer, who ventured to address them on a topic which they had feared to deal with themselves. They were the more annoyed and amazed when he offered a set of resolutions setting forth that the Stamp Act and all acts of Parliament affecting the Colonies were contrary to the Constitution, and therefore null and void, and that the Burgesses and Governor alone had the right to levy taxes upon the people of Virginia. This daring declaration startled the more timid members and a storm of protests arose, but they failed to silence the young orator, who quickly showed himself master of the situation. Never had the old walls of Virginia's legislative hall rung with such mighty words as those by which he supported his resolution, and his address ended with a thunderbolt of defiant eloquence that startled the world. His vibrant voice rang out with "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third" — Loud cries of ^'Treason ! Trea- son ! " from the frightened Burgesses interrupted the speaker. Heed- less of them he completed his sentence, ^'may profit by their example. 19 20 PATRICK HENRY If this be treason, make the most of it." Plis words carried the hall by storm; the resolutions were adopted; and from that day to this Patrick Henry has been hailed as one of the greatest of American orators. Henry was sent as a delegate to the Continental Congress, which he electrified with his noble oratory. During most of the Revolu- tion he was Governor of Virginia and again from 1784 to 1786, poverty forcing him to decline other elections and return to his legal practice. In 1788 he opposed the new Constitution, being a strong advocate of State independence. His speeches in this cause were very eloquent, but the Constitution was adopted. In 1795 President Washington offered him the position of Secretary of State, which he declined. The following year he was again elected Governor of Virginia, which posi- tion he also declined. During the exciting events of 1798 and 1799 he once more entered the political field, made his final public address, and was elected to the Assembly. He died before he could take his seat. AN APPEAL TO ARMS. [As Patrick Henry had hurled the first defiance against Great>Britain in 1765, he was the first to make an open appeal to arms in 1775. This was on March 23d, three weeks before the fight at Lexington precipitated the Revolution. Henry had returned from the Continental Congress and was now a member of the Virginia Con- vention, with Washington for one of his colleagues. Here he offered a resolution that the Colony should be **put into a state of defence," and sustained it by the most brilliant speech to which the Revolution gave rise.] Mr. President : No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights ^^and, there- fore,! hope it -will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen, i^ entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reser^.^*^ This is no "Hme'^for ceremonj^. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. C For my-own part, I consider it as nothing less than a ques- tion of freedom or slavery l^and in proportion to the magnitude of the sub- ject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at the truth, and fulfil the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country, jjshould I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offence, I should consider myself a^ guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven/ which I revere above all earthly kings.) PATRICK HENRY'S GREAT SPEECH The Orator electrifies his audience by boldly declaring that the Colonists would not endure the oppression of the Home Govern- ment and boldly declares for Independence. PATRICK HENRY 21 Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope, wl^e-trt^-apt ta shut our ey^a against a painful truth, and listen.-to the song elthat-sif^n, till she transforms us into beasts. ^Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we dis- posed to be of the number of those, who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salva- tion? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth ; to know the worst, and to provide for it. I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided ; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House ? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received ? Trust it not, sir ; it will prove a snare to your feet. S«#!rrT2ot yourscl-ves4o~be beti^.yed-with'^ k Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike pre- parations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation ? v Have we shown o.urse-lv€«-aou,.tt« willing to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? ;1 HENRY LEEVC4, , '^'■' 49 Washington's glory unfaded shine, and die not, until love of virtue cease on earth, or earth itself sinks into chaos. How, my fellow citizens, shall I single to your grateful hearts his pre-eminent worth ? Where shall I begin in opening to your view a char- acter throughout sublime ? Shall I speak of his warlike achievements, all springing from obedience to his country 'swill — all directed to his country's good? Will you go with me to the banks of the Monongahela, to see your youthful Washington, supporting, in the dismal hour of Indian victory, the ill-fated Braddock, and saving, by his judgment and by his valor, the remains of a defeated army, pressed by the conquering savage foe ; or, when oppressed America, nobly resolving to risk her all in defence of her violated rights, he was elevated by the unanimous voice of Congress to the command of her armies ? Will you follow him to the high grounds of Boston, where, to an undisciplined, courageous, and virtuous yeomanry, his presence gave the stability of system, and infused the invincibility of love of country ; or shall I carry you to the painful scenes of L^ the debate, with lib previous deliberation such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and important a subject. But it is a Object of which my he^t is full, and I have rfot been willing to suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I cannot, even now, pervade myself to relin- quish it, without expressing, once more, my deep conviction that, since it respects nothing less than the union of the States, it is of most vital and essential importance to the public happiness. I profess, sir, in my career, hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country and the^ preservation of our Federal Union. It is to th^ Union we owe our gaiety at home and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, pros- trate commerce and ruined credit. Under its benign influences these great interests immediately awoke as from the dead and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings ; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, soci'al and pefsonaj/happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union to see what might be hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion to see whether (with my short sight/, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below ; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of thi^ government whose thoughts should be 4nainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserv^ed, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts we have hign, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyc^nd t^t I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the 88 DANIEL WEBSTER sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent ; on a land rent with civil feuds or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth ? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first and Union afterwards, — but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in ev^y wind under ^e whol^heavens, tl;ra.t other sentiment, de^r to ev^ry trtfe American heart — Lioerty and Union, now THE SECRET OF MURDER and forever, one and inseparable ! [As an example of Webster's forensic oratory we offer a selection from his cele- brated argument in the trial for murder of John K. Kuapp. In the passage given he soars far above the dry level of legal oratory, and depicts the effect of conscience on the mind of the murderer in sentences of thrilling intensity.] He has done the murder. No eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe ! Ah ! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which pierces through all disguises, and beholds everything as in the splendor of noon ; such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men. True it is, generally speaking, that " murder will out." True it is, that Providence hath so ordained and doth so govern things that those who break the great law of Heaven by shedding man's blood seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, everything, every cir- cumstance, connected with the time and place ; a thousand ears catch every whisper ; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or, rather, it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, DANIEL WEBSTER 89 which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him ; and, like the the spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discre- tion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. / When sus- picions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circum- stances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed ; there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession. [His argument closed with a most impressive appeal to the jury. In these words of weight and wisdom Duty stands before us in the grand proportions of the inexorable figure of Fate in the mythology of ancient Greece.] Gentlemen, your whole concern should be to do your duty, and leave consequences to take care of themselves. You will receive the law from the Court. Your verdict, it is true, may endanger the prisoner's life ; but then, it is to save other lives. If the prisoner's guilt has been shown and proved, beyond all reasonable doubt, you will convict him. If such rea- sonable doubts of guilt still remain, you will acquit him. You are the judges of the whole case. You owe a duty to the public as well as to the prisoner at the bar. You cannot presume to be wiser than the law. Your duty is a plain, straightforward one. Doubtless, we would all judge him in mercy. Towards him, as an individual, the law inculcates no hos- tility ; but towards him, if proved to be a murderer, the law and the oaths you have taken, and public justice, demand that you do your duty. With consciences satisfied with the discharge of duty, no conse- quences can harm you. There is no evil that we cannot either face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning and dwell in the utmost parts of the seas, duty performed, or duty- violated, is still with us, for our happiness, or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their power nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close ; and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet farther onward, we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of duty, to pain us wherever it has been violated, and to console us so far as God may have given us grace to perform it. JOHN C CALHOUN (J 782- J 850) THE STATE RIGHTS' LEADER i |F the parliamentary orators of the American '' golden age " three stand decidedly above their fellows, Webster, Clay and Calhoun, all of them men of genius and orators of remarkable power. " The eloquence of Mr. Calhoun," says Webster, '' was part of his intellectual character. It grew out of the qualities of his mind. It was plain, strong, terse, condensed, concise ; sometimes impassioned — still always severe. Rejecting ornament, not often seeking far for illustration, his power consisted in the plainness of his propositions, in the closeness of his logic, and in the earnestness and energy of his manner.'' Born in the same year as Webster (1782), the one in South Carolina, the other in New Hampshire, these two men became prominent adversaries in Congress on the question of the stability of the Union, each of them devoting his highest powers to this question pro and con. Throughout his later career Calhoun continued a disun- ionist. One of the most ardent advocates for the institution of slavery, it was he who led in the agitation on this subject from 1835 to 1850. SOUTH CAROLINA AND THE UNION [Among the efifects of the South Carolina Nullification Ordinance of 1832 was a bill, commonly called the Force Bill, introduced into Congress in 1833, its purpose being to give the President special powers in the collection of the revenue. This measure called forth Mr. Calhoun's vigorous protest of the 15th and i6th of February, from which the following selections are made. Speaking of the Nullification Ordinance, he says :] It has been objected that the State has acted precipitately. What ! precipitately ! after making a strenuous resistance for twelve years — by discussion here and in the other House of Congress; by essays in all forms; by resolutions, remonstrances, and protests on the part of her legisla- ture ; and, finally, by attempting an appeal to the judicial power of the 90 JOHN C. CALHOUN 91 United States? I say attempting, for they have been prevented from bringing the question fairly before the court, and that by an act of that very majority in Congress who now upbraid them for not making that appeal ; of that majority, who, on a motion of one of the merhbers in the other House, from South Carolina, refused to give to the act of 1828 its true title — that it was a protective and not a revenue act. The State has never, it is true, relied upon that tribunal, the Supreme Court, to vindicate its reserved rights ; yet they have always considered it as an auxiliary means of defence, of which they would gladly have availed themselves to test the constitutionality of protection, had they not been deprived of the means of doing so by the act of the majority. Notwithstanding this long delay of more than ten years, under this continued encroachment of the Government, we now hear it on all sides, by friends and foes, gravely pronounced that the State has acted pre- cipitately — that her conduct has been rash ! That such should be the language of an interested majority, who, by means of this unconstitutional- and oppressive system, are annually extorting millions from the South, to be bestowed upon other sections, is not at all surprising. Whatever impedes the course of avarice and ambition will ever be denounced as rash and precipitate ; and had South Carolina delayed her resistance fifty instead of twelve years, she would have heard from the same quarter the same language ; but it is really surprising that those who are sufi^ering in common with herself, and who have complained equally loud of their grievances ; who have pronounced the very acts which she asserted within her limits to be oppressive, unconstitutional, and ruinous, after so long a struggle — a struggle longer than that which preceded the separation of these States from the mother country — longer than the period of the Trojan war — should now complain of precipitancy ! No, it is not Caro- lina which has acted precipitately ; but her sister States, who have suffered in common with her, have acted tardily. Had they acted as she has done; had they performed their duty with equal energy and promptness ; our situation this day would be very different from what we now find it. Delays are said to be dangerous ; and never was the maxim more true than in the present case The bill violates the Constitution, plainly and palpably, in many of its provisions, by authorizing the President, at his pleasure, to place the different ports of this Union on an unequal footing, contrary to that pro- vision of the Constitution which declares that no preference shall be given to one port over another. It also violates the Constitution by authorizing him, at his discretion, to impose cash duties in one port while credit is allowed in others ; by enabling the President to regulate 92 JOHN C. CALHOUN commerce, a power vested in Congress alone ; and by drawing within the jurisdiction of the United States courts powers never intended to be con- ferred on them. As great as these objections are, they become insignifi- cant in the provisions of a bill which, by a single blow — by treating the States as a mere lawless mass of individuals — prostrates all the barriers of the Constitution. I will pass over the minor considerations, and proceed directly to the great point. This bill proceeds on the ground that the entire sovereignty of this country belongs to the American people, as forming one great community ; and regards the States as mere fractions or counties, and not as integral parts of the Union ; having no more right to resist the encroachments of the government than a county has to resist the authority of a State ; and treating such resistance as the lawless acts of so many individuals, without possessing sovereignty or political rights. It has been said that the bill declares war against South Carolina. No. It decrees a massacre of her citizens ! War has something ennobling about it, and, with all its horrors, brings into action the highest qualities, intel- lectual and moral. It was, perhaps, in the order of Providence that it should be permitted for that very purpose. But this bill declares no war — except, indeed, it be that which savages wage — a war, not against the community, but the citizens of whom that community is composed. But I regard it as worse than savage warfare ; as an attempt to take away life under the color of law, without the trial by jury, or any other safeguard which the Constitution has thrown around the life of the citizen ? It authorizes the President, or even his deputies, when they may suppose the law to be violated, without the intervention of a court or jury, to kill without mercy or discrimination ! It has been said by the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Grundy) to be a measure of peace ! Yes, such peace as the wolf gives to the lamb — the kite to the dove ! Such peace as Russia gives to Poland, or death to its victim ! A peace, by extinguishing the political existence of the State, by awing her into an abandonment of the exercise of every power which constitutes her a sovereign community. It is to South Carolina a ques- tion of self-preservation ; and I proclaim it that, should this bill pass, and an attempt be made to enforce it, it will be resisted, at every hazard — even that of death itself. Death is not the greatest calamity ; there are others still more terrible to the free and brave, and among them may be placed the loss of liberty and honor. There are thousands of her brave sons who, if need be, are prepared cheerfully to lay down their lives in defence of the State and the great principles of constitutional liberty for which she is contending. God forbid that this should become necessary ! I JOHN C. CALHOUN 93 It never can be, unless this government is resolved to bring the question to .extremity, when her gallant sons will stand prepared to perform the last duty — to die nobly In the same spirit we are told that the Union must be preserved, without regard to the means. And how is it proposed to preserve the Union ? By force ? Does any man in his senses believe that this beauti- ful structure — this harmonious aggregate of States, produced by the con- sent of all — can be preserved by force ? Its very introduction will be certain destruction to this Federal Union. No, no ! You cannot keep the States united in their constitutional and federal bonds by force. Force may, indeed, hold the parts together, but such union would be the bond between master and slave — a union of exaction on one side and of unqualified obedience on the other. That obedience which, we are told by the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Wilkins), is the Union! Yes, exaction on the side of the master ; for this very bill is intended to collect what can be no longer called taxes — the voluntary contribution of a free people — but tribute — tribute to be collected under the mouths of the can- non ! Your customhouse is already transferred to a garrison — and that garrison with its batteries turned, not against the enemy of your country, but on subjects (I will not say citizens), on whom you propose to levy contributions. Has reason fled from our borders ? Have we ceased to reflect ? It is madness to suppose that the Union can be preserved by force. I tell you plainly that the bill, should it pass, cannot be enforced. It will prove only a blot upon your statute-book, a reproach to the year, and a disgrace to the American Senate. I repeat, it will not be executed ; it will rouse the dormant spirit of the people, and open their eyes to the approach of despotism. The country has sunk into avarice and political corruption, from which nothing can arouse it but some measure, on the part of the government, of folly and madness, such as that now under consideration. Disguise it as you may, the controversy is one between power and liberty ; and I tell the gentlemen who are opposed to me, that, as strong as may be the love of power on their side, the love of liberty is still stronger on ours. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS (J 767-1 848) THE OLD MAN ELOQUENT mHE Adams family has played a great part in American public life. Through four generations it has given us orators and statesmen of prominence and ability. Political opponents have declared that no member of the family ever showed more than respectable natural talent, but certainly it was talent of the kind that the American people recognized and appreciated, since they raised two members of the family to the highest position in their gift. John Adams, while not ranking with our most capable orators, did so with our leading patriots. His standard of Americanism is fitly expressed in his memorable words of 1774 : ^'Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish with my country, is my unalterable determination." The standing of his son, John Quincy Adams, as an orator, is indicated by the title of " Old Man Eloquent," given him in his later days ; while his grandson and great-grandson, Charles Francis and Charles Francis, Jr., possessed rich gifts in the same field. Omitting selections from the elder Adams, we here deal with his accomplished and able son, who, like him, became President of the United States. His subsequent career differed from that of our other ex-presidents. Instead of withdrawing from political life, he returned to Congress in 1831, and remained a member of the House until his death in 1848. *'In every respect," says Seward, ^^he was a model legislator. He was constantly at his post, and few members surpassed him in strict attention to duty and power of endurance." His most memora- ble service was his continued presentation to Congress of petitions for the abolition of slavery, offered by members of the Anti-slavery party. Efforts to check him in this were in vain. He persistently maintained 94 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 95 and exercised the right of petition. The House adopted a rule that no petition relating to slavery should be read, printed, or debated, but Adams was not thus to be defeated. Pie held his ground with unwavering firmness against the bitterest opposition, presenting the petitions one by one, sometimes to the number of two hundred a day, and insisting that the House should act on each separate petition. He died in harness. On the 21st of February, 1848, he was stricken with paralysis while in his seat at the Capitol. He died on the 23d, with these notable last words : " This is the last of earth. I am content." A EULOGY OF LAFAYETTE [Lafayette, the distinguished French noble who came to the struggling Ameri- can colonies while still in boyhood to fight with them for freedom, who was the friend and confident of Washington, who commanded the National Guard of France in the Revolution of his own country, and who in 1824 was received with the highest honor and enthusiasm in the United States, came to his last day on May 20, 1834. In Con- gress at that date there was none who knew him better or was more fitted to speak for America in his memory than John Quincy Adams. From his oration on this subject, delivered in Congress on December 31, 1834, we give the eloquent peroration.] Pronounce him one of the first men of his age, and you have not yet done him justice. Try him by that test to which he sought in vain to stimulate the vulgar and selfish spirit of Napoleon ; class him among the men who, to compare and seat themselves, must take in the compass of all ages ; turn back your eyes upon the records of time ; summon from the creation of the world to this day the mighty dead of every age and every clime — and where, among the race of merely mortal men, shall one be found who, as the benefactor of his kind, shall claim to take prece- dence of Lafayette ? There have doubtless been in all ages men whose discoveries or inventions, in the world of matter or of mind, have opened new avenues to the dominion of man over the material creation ; have increased his means or his faculties of enjoyment ; have raised him in nearer approximation to that higher and happier condition, the object of his hopes and aspira- tions in his present state of existence. Lafayette discovered no new principle of politics or morals. He invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the laws of nature. Born and educated in the highest order of feudal nobility, under the most absolute monarchy of Europe, in possession of an affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities at the moment of attaining manhood, the principle of republican justice and of social equality took possession of his heart and mind, as if by inspiration from 96 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS above. He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of liberty. He came to another hemisphere to defend her. He became one of the most effective champions of our Independence ; but, that once achieved, he returned to his own country, and thenceforward took no part in the controversies which have divided us. In the events of our Revolution, and in the forms of policy which we have adopted for the establishment and perpetuation of our freedom, I^afayette found the most perfect form of government. He wished to add nothing to it. He would gladly have abstracted nothing from it. Instead of the imaginary Republic of Plato, or the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, he took a practical existing model, in actual operation here, and never attempted or wished more than to apply it faithfully to his own country. It was not given to Moses to enter the promised land ; but he saw it from the summit of Pisgah. It was not given to Lafayette to witness the consummation of his wishes in the establishment of a republic, and the extinction of all hereditary rule in France. His principles were in advance of the age and hemisphere in which he lived. A Bourbon still reigns on the throne of France, and it is not for us to scrutinize the title by which he reigns. The principles of elective and hereditary power, blended in reluctant union in his person, like the red and white roses of York and Lancaster, may postpone to aftertime the last conflict to which they must ultimately come. The life of the patriarch was not long enough for the development of his whole political system. Its final accomplishment is in the womb of time. The anticipation of this event is the more certain, from the consider- ation that all the principles for which Lafayette contended were practical. He never indulged himself in wild and fanciful speculations. The prin- ciple of hereditary power was, in his opinion, the bane of all republican liberty in Europe. Unable to extinguish it in the Revolution of 1830, so far as concerned the chief magistracy of the nation, Lafayette had the satisfaction of seeing it abolished with reference to the peerage. An here- ditary Crown, stript of the support which it may derive from an hereditary peerage, however compatible with Asiatic despotism, is an anomaly in the history of the Christian world and in the theory of free government. There is no argument producible against the existence of an hereditary peerage, but applies with aggravated weight against the transmission, from sire to son, of an hereditary Crown. The prejudices and passions of] the people of France rejected the principle of inherited power, in every sta- tion of public trust, excepting the first and highest of them all ; but there they clung to it, as did the Israelites of old to the savory deities of Egypt. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 97 This is not the time or the place for a disquisition upon the compara- tive merits, as a system of government, of a republic, and a monarchy sur- rounded by republican institutions. Upon this subject there is among us no diversity of opinion ; and if it should take the people of France another half century of internal and external war, of dazzling and delusive glories, of unparalleled triumphs, humiliating reverses, and bitter disappointments, to settle it to their satisfaction, the ultimate result can only bring them to the point where we have stood from the day of the Declaration of Inde- pendence — to the point where Lafayette would have brought them, and to which he looked as a consummation devoutly to be wished. Then, too, and then only, will be the time when the character of Lafayette will be appreciated at its true value throughout the civilized world. When the principle of hereditary dominion shall be relinquished in all the institutions of France ; when government shall no longer be considered as property transmissible from sire to son, but as a trust com- mitted for a limited time, and then to return to the people whence it came ; as a burdensome duty to be discharged, and not as a reward to be abused ; when a claim, any claim, to political power by inheritance shall, in the estimation of the whole French people, be held as it now is by the whole people of the North American Union — then will be the time for contem- plating the character of Lafayette, not merely in the events of his life, but in the full development of his intellectual conceptions, of his fervent aspirations, of the labors and perils and sacrifices of his long and eventful career upon earth ; and thenceforward, till the hour when the trump of the Archangel shall sound to announce that time shall be no more, the name of Lafayette shall stand enrolled upon the annals of our race, high on the list of the pure and disinterested benefactors of mankind. iEDWARD EVERETT (1794-1865) THE RESCUER OF THE HOME OF WASHINGTON mHE title we have given Everett is in remembrance of his strenu- ous efforts to save for the people one of America's most sacred relics, Washington's home at Mount Vernon. Resigning his seat in Congress in 1854 on account of failing health, he began, the moment returning health permitted, one of the most active efforts of his life, the collection of money by writing and lecturing for the pur- chase of this historic estate, that it might be kept for all future time as a place of pilgrimage for patriotic Americans. The sum raised by him, about one hundred thousand dollars, sufficed for this noble pur- pose, and Mount Vernon became the property of the American people. As an orator Everett stands very high among Americans, his lec- tures and speeches being rarely surpassed in value, if we consider at once the information they contain, and the grace and elegance of their style. Edward Everett may be said to have gone to school to Daniel Webster, for he was prepared for college by Ezekiel Webster, who w^as replaced for a week in the school by his brother Daniel. Thus began the acquaintance of these two distinguished orators. Many years afterward, in 1852, the pupil succeeded his temporary teacher as Secretary of State. Everett studied divinity and was for a short time a minister in Boston, leaving the church to become Greek professor at Harvard. He was elected to Congress in 1824 and remained there for ten years, only quitting the House of Representatives to become Governor of Massa- chusetts. In 1841 he was appointed, through the influence of Webster, Minister to Great Britain, a diplomatic post which has never been more creditably and ably filled. In 1845 he was elected President of Harvard University. In 1845, as above said, he was for a brief period EDWARD EVERETT 99 Secretary of State, leaving this position to enter the Senate. This seat he soon resigned, on account of ill health. Conservative by tempera- ment, he favored a conciliatory policy on the part of the North, with the hope of averting the threatened war, and became the nominee for Vice-President of the party of compromise and conciliation, on the ticket headed by John Bell of Tennessee. But when war became inevitable, he used all his energy towards the support of the Gov- ernment. He survived till near the end of the conflict, dying on January 15, 1865. THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DECLARATION [The year 1S26, which completed the fiftieth anniversary ot American Inde- pendence, was one that gave occasion for much stirring oratory, and for general cele- bration in honor of the thrilling days and heroic men of '76. Most famous among the patriotic addresses is that of Daniel Webster, delivered at the laying of the comer- stone of the Banker Hill Monument on June 17th. On July 4th, the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration, Edward Everett delivered at Cambridge, Massachusetts, a notable oration, with the Declaration for its subject. From this long and eloquent address we select some illustrative passages.] Fellow Citizens : It belongs to us, with strong propriety, to cele- brate this day. The town of Cambridge, and the county of Middlesex, are filled with the vestiges of the Revolution ; whithersoever we turn our eyes we behold some memento of its glorious scenes. Within the walls in which we are now assembled, was convened the first provincial congress, afler its adjournment at Concord. The rural magazine at Medford reminds us of one of the earliest acts of British aggression. The march of both divisions of the royal army, on the memorable 19th of April, was through the limits of Cambridge ; in the neighboring towns of I^exington and Concord the first blood of the Revolution was shed ; in West Cam- bridge the royal convoy of provisions was, the same day, gallantly sur- prised by the aged citizens, who staid to protect their homes while their sons pursued the foe. Here the first American army was formed ; from this place, on the 17th of June, was detached the Spartan band that immortalized the heights of Charlestown, and consecrated that day, with blood and fire, to the cause of American liberty. Beneath the venerable elm which still shades the southwestern comer of the common, General Washington first unsheathed his sword at the* head of an American army, and to that seat* was wont every Sunday to repair, to join in the suppli- cations which were made for the welfare of his country. * The first wall pew, to the ris^ht of the pulpit of the diorch in whidh the oration was delivered. 100 EDWARD EVERETT How changed is now the scene ! The foe is gone ! The din and the desolation of war are passed ; Science has long resumed her station in the shades of our venerable university, no longer glittering with arms ; the anxious war-council is no longer in session, to offer a reward for the dis- covery of the best mode of making saltpetre, — an unpromising stage of hostilities when an army of twenty thousand men is in the field in front of the foe ; the tall grass now waves in the trampled sally-port of some of the rural redoubts, that form a part of the simple lines of circumvalla- tion within which a half-armed American militia held the flower of the British army blockaded : the plough has done what the English batteries could not do, — has levelled others of them with the earth ; and the men, the great and good men — their warfare is over, and they have gone quietly down to the dust they redeemed from oppression. [Speaking of the praise due to those who took part in the struggle for inde- pendence, the orator continues :] This meed of praise, substantially accorded at the time by Chatham, in the British Parliament, may well be repeated by us. For most of the vener- ated men to whom it is paid it is but a pious tribute to departed worth. The lyces and the Henries, Otis, Quincy, Warren, and Samuel Adams, the men who spoke those words of thrilling power which raised and ruled the storm of resistance, and rang like a voice of fate across the Atlantic, are beyond the reach of our praise. To most of them it was granted to witness some of the fruits of their labors — such fruit as revolutions do not often bear. Others departed at an untimely hour, or nobly fell in the onset ; too soon for their country, too soon for liberty, too soon for every- thing but their own undying fame. But all are not gone ; some still sur- vive among us ; the favored, enviable men, to hail the jubilee of the inde- pendence they declared. Go back, fellow-citizens, to that day when Jef- ferson and Adams composed the sub-committee who reported the Declaration of Independence. Think of the mingled sensations of that proud but anxious day, compared to the joy ot this. What honor, what crown, what treasure, could the world and all its kingdoms afford, com- pared with the honor and happiness of having been united in that com- mission, and living to see its most wavering hopes turned into glorious reality! -Venerable men ! you have outlived the dark days which fol- lowed your more than heroic deed ; you have outlived your own strenuous contention, who should stand first among the people whose liberty you vindicated. You have lived to bear to each other the respect which the nation bears to you both ; and each has been so happy as to exchange the honorable name of the leader of a party for that more honorable one, the Father of his Country. While this our tribute of respect, on the jubilee EDWARD EVERETT 101 of our independence, is paid to the gray hairs of the venerable survivor in our neighborhood. "*= let it not less heartily be sped to himf whose hand traced the lines of that sacred charter, which, to the end of time, has made this day illustrious. And is an empty profession of respect all that we owe to the man who can show the original draft of the declaratioii of the independence of the United States of America, in his own handwrit- ing ? Ought not a title-deed, like this to become the acquisition of the nation ? Ought it not to be laid up in the archives of the people ? Ought not the price at which it is bought to be the ease and comfort of the old age of him who drew it ? Ought not he who, at the age of thirty, declared the independence of his country, at the age of eighty to be secured by his country in the enjoyment of his own ? J Nor let us forget, on the return of this eventful day, the men who, when the conflict of counsel was over, stood forward in that of arms. Yet let me not, by faintly endeavoring to sketch, do deep injustice to the stor\- of their exploits. The efforts of a life would scarce suffice to padnt out this picture, in all its astonishing incidents, in all its mingled colors of sublimity and woe, of agony and triumph. But the age of commemora- tion is at hand. The voice of our fathers' blood begins to cry to us, firom beneath the soil which it moistened. Time is bringing forward, in th^ proper relief, the men and the deeds of that high-souled day. The genera- tion of contemporary worthies is gone ; the crowd of unsignalized. great and good disappears ; and the leaders in war as well as council are seen, in Fancy's eye, to take their stations on the Mount of Remembrance. They come from the embattled clifis of Abraham ; they start from the heaving sods of Bunker's Hill ; they gather from the blazing lines of Sara- toga and York town, from the blood-dyed waters of the Brandywine, from the dreary snows of Yalley Forge, and all the hard-fought fields of the war. With all their wounds and all their honors, they rise and plead with us for their brethren who survive ; and bid us, if indeed we cherisli the memon,' of those who bled in our cause, to show our gratitude, not by sounding words, but by stretching out the strong arm of the country *s prosperity to help the veteran survivors gently down to their graves. * John Adams. t Thomas Jefferson. t It is a circumstance of striking interest that Adam? and Tefierson, the two men SDcfcen of in this passage, both died on the day ia which the cration w.m> de'.i'.-ered. departing trom life, by oa stage, and inpaits tntafly distiwi, by and actions^ he rose also to be at his deadi die ficst of men. The last of the mighty rivals was dead bc&ve, and he stood Give this a^iect also of his greatness a p a swiwg gjanre. ffis pahlic fife began in Bfiay. 1813, in the Hoose of ScpRseaiatives in C ougms , to which this State had ^ected him. It ended when he died. Ifjoacscsept the interval between his xemoval finoai New TTiM£fihin and his Section in Massadrasetts, it was a public life ^ tinK of war, and smxc and aaone tihe lh"e earth ; so we follow man, faint, weary, staggering with wounds, through the black forest of the past, which he has reddened with his gore. Oh ! let it not be in the future ages as in those which we now contemplate. Let the grandeur of man be discerned in the blessings which he has secured ; in the good he has accomplished ; in the tri- umphs of benevolence and justice ; in the establishment of perpetual peace. t ^"FiS the ocean washes every shore, and clasps with all-embracing arms 'every land, while it bears upon its heaving bosom the products of various climes ; so peace surrounds, protects, and upholds all other blessings. Without it, commerce is vain, the ardor of industry is restrained, happi- ness is blasted, virtue sickens and dies. A^nd peace has its own peculiar victories, in comparison with which Marathb^j and Bannockburn and Bunker Hill, fields held sacred in the his- tory of human freedom, shall lose their lustre. Our own Washinton rises to a truly heavenly stature, — not when we follow him over the ice* of the Delaware to the capture of Trenton ; not when we behold him victorious over Cornwallis at Yorktown, — but when we regard him, in noble defer- ence to justice, refusing the kingly crown which a faithless soldiery prof- fered, and at a later day upholding the peaceful neutrality of the country, while he received unmoved the clamor of the people wickedly crying for war. What glory of battle in England's annals will not fade by the side of that great act of justice, by which her legislature, at a cost of one hundred million dollars, gave freedom to eight hundred thousand slaves ! And when the day shall come (may these eyes be gladdened by its beams !) that shall witness an act of greater justice still, the peaceful emancipation of three millions of our fellow-men, '' guilty of a skin not colored as our own," now held in gloomy bondage, under the Constitution of our country, then shall there be a victory, in comparison with which that of Bunker Hill shall be as a farthing candle held up to the sun. That vic- tory shall need no monument of stone. It shall be written on the grate- ful hearts of uncounted multitudes, that shall proclaim it to the latest gen- eration. It shall be one of the links in the golden chain by which humanity shall connect itself with the throne of God. ^ . f^ As the cedars of Lebanon are higher than the grass of the valley ; as the heavens are higher than the earth ; as man is higher than the beasts of the field ; as the angels are higher than man ; as he that ruleth his spirit is higher than he that taketh a city ; so are the virtues and victories of peace higher than the virtues and victories of war. \ WILLIAM H. SEWARD (t80t-J872) THE WAR-TIME SECRETAEY OF STATE i |N that fatal April day in 1865, when Lincoln fell victim to the bullet of an assassin, William H. Seward, his Secretary of State, then on a bed of sickness, narrowly escaped a similar fate, he being stabbed in several places, and only saved from death by the courage of the old soldier who acted as his nurse. The assassins were shrewd in selecting Seward for one of their intended victims, since in his special field of duty he was almost as important a figure in the government as Lincoln himself. Five years before, when Lin- coln was first nominated for the Presidency, Seward was really the most prominent man in the party — too prominent, as it appeared, to receive the nomination in the face of the enemies he had made. Deeply disappointed as he undoubtedly was, he did not permit his private feeling to conflict with his public duty, but did his utmost to check the schemes of the conspirators in Buchanan's cabinet, and smooth the way for the new President. Chosen as Secretary of State by Lincoln, he doubtless accepted the office with the idea that he would be " the power behind the throne," and exert a controlling influence over the inexperienced Westerner. Disappointed in this again, he fell gracefully into his true vocation, that of a faithful counsellor of the President. In his sphere of duty jio man could have been more efficient and his skillful handling of the Trent affair and the French occuption of Mexico, saved the country from dangerous foreign com- plications at a time when it needed all its energies at home. The war ended, Seward, who remained Secretary of State under Johnson, quickly cleared Mexico of the French invaders. Another great service he did and one for which he was then severely criticised, was the pur- chase of Alaska, whose actual value he was one of the first to perceive. 10 146 146 WILLIAM H. SEWARD While in the Senate he took an advanced position among the opponents to slavery, a position which he firmly held throughout the troublous times that followed, despite all criticism and abuse. During this period his oratory made him a power in the Senate, while the views expressed by him formed a declaration of principles upon which all sections of anti-slavery men could agree. As regards his powers, a marked example of them was shown in 1846, when he defended a negro murderer against whom a bitter popular feeling existed, greatly endangering his popularity by his persistence in this charitable action, though he much enhanced his reputation by his treatment of this case. Mr. Gladstone said to Charles Sumner, " Mr. Seward's argument in the Freeman case is the greatest forensic effort in the English language." He would not even except Erskine in this opinion, which was certainly a highly flattering one, coming from such a source. AMERICANS TRUE GREATNESS [As an example of Seward's oratory we offer the following selection, taken from one of his addresses, which is of much interest as showing his elevated conception of the mission of the United States, and of the perils which threatened the development of this mission. It was by working at the bottom, not at the top, by training the young in the exercise of public virtue, that the great Republic was to be saved and its mission accomplished.] At present we behold only the rising of our sun of empire, — only the fair seeds and beginnings of a great nation. Whether that glowing orb shall attain to a meridian height, or fall suddenly from its glorious sphere ; whether those prolific seeds shall mature into autumnal ripeness, or shall perish, yielding no harvest, depends on God's will and providence. But God's will and providence operate not by casualty or caprice, but by fixed and revealed laws. If we would secure the greatness set before us, we must find the way which those laws indicate, and keep within it. That way is new and all untried. We departed early, we departed at the beginning, from the beaten track of national ambition. Our lot was cast in an age of revolution — a revolution which was to bring all mankim from a state of servitude to the exercise of self government ; from undei the tyranny of physical force to the gentle sway of opinion ; from unde subjection to matter to dominion over nature. It was ours to lead the way, to take up the cross of republicanism an< bear it before the nations, to fight its earliest battles, to enjoy its earliest triumphs, to illustrate its purifying and elevating virtues, and by oi courage and resolut'on, our moderation and our magnanimity, to cheer" WILLIAM H. SEWARD 147 and sustain its future followers through the baptism of blood and the mar- tyrdom of fire. A mission so noble and benevolent demands a generous and self-denying enthusiasm. Our greatness is to be won by beneficence without ambition. We are in danger of losing that holy seal. We are surrounded by temptations. Our dwellings become palaces, and our vil- lages are transformed, as if by magic, into great cities. Fugitives from famine, and oppression, and the sword crowd our shores, and proclaim to us that we alone are free, and great, and happy. Our empire enlarges. The continent and its islands seem ready to fall within our grasp, and more than even fabulous wealth opens under our feet. No public virtue can withstand, none ever encountered, such seductions as these. Our own virtue and moderation must be renewed and fortified, under circum- stances so new and peculiar. Where shall we seek the influence adequate to a task so arduous as this ? Shall we invoke the press and the pulpit ? They only reflect the actual condition of the public morals, and cannot change them. Shall we resort to the executive authority ? The time has passed when it could compose and modify the political elements around it. Shall we go to the Senate? Conspiracies, seditions, and corruptions in all free countries have begun there. Where, then, shall we go to find an agency that can uphold and renovate declining public virtue ? Where should we go but there where all republican virtue begins and must end ; where the Promethean fire is ever to be rekindled until it shall finally expire ; where motives are formed and passions disciplined ? To the domestic fireside and humbler school, where the American citizen is trained. Instruct him there that it will not be enough that he can claim for his country I^acedae- monian heroism , but that more than Spartan valor and more than Roman magnificence is required of her. Go, then, ye laborers in a noble cause ; gather the young Catholic and the young Protestant alike into the nursery of freedom, and teach them there that, although religion has many and different shrines on which may be made the oflering of a *' broken spirit " which God will not despise, yet that their country has appointed only one altar and one sacrifice for all her sons, and that ambition and avarice must be slain on that altar, for it is consecrated to humanity. FREDERICK DOUGLASS (181 74895) THE SLAVE-BORN ORATOR AMONG those who spoke for the rights of man and the freedom of the slave in the period " before the war,'' there is one to "^ whom we must accord peculiar credit ; Frederick Douglass, a member of the race whose cause he advocated, born a slave himself, yet escaping from his bonds, becoming self-educated, and developing a gift for oratory that gave him a high standing in the ranks of the oppo- nents of human slavery. He stood alone, the first and foremost Ameri- can orator of his race, a fact which in itself gave him marked prominence. Yet it was not solely as a prodigy that he won reputa- tion, for he had true power in oratory ; being a man of intellect and feeling, with fine powers of expression and much self-control. His lectures against the slave system, begun about 1841, attracted wide attention, and on his visit to England in 1845 his earnest and fluent eloquence drew large audiences. He edited a newspaper. The North Star, at Rochester, New York, and after 1870 held several positions under the government, the last being that of Minister to Haiti, in 1889-1891. FREE SPEECH IN BOSTON [In 1841, when Douglass delivered at Music Hall, Boston, the speech whose closing portions we give, free-speech in certain directions was a nondescript in that famous centre of intellect and reform. Men were free to speak, if they accorded in , views with the multitude, but addresses in favor of slavery abolition were tabooed, and^ those who indulged in them did so at imminent peril. The anti-slavery doctrine, which was to grow so immensely in the two following decades, was still in its infancy, j and Boston itself was a strong seat of the pro-slavery element. In the following wore Douglass scores it for its lack of liberal sentiment.] Boston is a great city — and Music Hall has a fame almost as exten- sive as that of Boston. Nowhere more than here have the principles ol 14S FREDERICK DOUGLASS 149 human freedom been expounded. But for the circumstances already men- tioned, it would seem almost presumption for me to' say anything here about these principles. And yet, even here, in Boston, the moral atmos- phere is dark and heavy. The principles of human liberty, even if cor- rectly apprehended, find but limited support in this hour of trial. The world moves slowly, and Boston is much like the world. We thought the principle of free speech was an accomplished fact. Here, if nowhere else, we thought the right of the people to assemble and to express their opin- ion was secure. Dr. Channing had defended the right, Mr. Garrison had practically asserted the right, and Theodore Parker had maintained it with steadiness and fidelity to the last. But here we are to-day contending for what we thought was gained years ago. The mortifying and disgraceful fact stares us in the face, that though P'aneuil Hall and Bunker Hill Monument stand, freedom of speech is struck down. No lengthy detail of facts is needed. They are already notorious ; far more so than will be wished ten years hence .... No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opin- ions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers founded in injustice and wrong are sure to tremble if men are allowed to reason of righteousness, temperance, and of a judgment to come in their presence. Slavery can- not tolerate free speech. Five years of its exercise would banish the auction block and break every chain in the South. They will have none of it there, for they have the power. But shall it be so here ? Even here in Boston, and among the friends of freedom, we hear two voices ; one denouncing the mob that broke up our meeting on Monday as a base and cowardly outrage ; and another deprecating and regretting the holding of such a meeting, by such men, at such a time. We are told that the meeting was ill-timed, and the parties to it unwise. Why, what is the matter with us ? Are we going to palliate and excuse a palpable and flagrant outrage on the right of speech, by implying that only a particular description of persons should exercise that right ? Are we, at such a time, when a great principle has been struck down, to quench the moral indignation which the deed excites by casting reflections upon those on whose persons the outrage has been committed ? After all the arguments for liberty to which Boston has listened for more than a quarter of a century, has she yet to learn that the time to assert a right is 150 FREDERICK DOUGLASS the time when the right itself is called in question, and that the men of all others to assert it are the men to whom the right has been denied ? It would be no vindication of the right of speech to prove that certain gentlemen of great distinction, eminent for their learning and ability, are allowed to freely express their opinions on all subjects — including the subject of slavery. Such a vindication would need, itself, to be vindi- cated. It would add insult to injury. Not even an old-fashioned aboli- tion meeting could vindicate that right in Boston just now. There can be no right of speech where any man, however lifted up, or however humble, however young, or however old, is overawed by force, and com- pelled to suppress his honest sentiments. Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money. I have no doubt that Boston will vindicate this right. But in order to do so there must be no concessions to the enemy. When a man is allowed to speak because he is rich and power- ful, it aggravates the crime of denying the right to the poor and humble. The principle must rest upon its own proper basis. And until the right is accorded to the humblest as freely as to the most exalted citizen, the government of Boston is but an empty name, and its freedom is a mockery. A man's right to speak does not depend upon where he was born or upon his color. The simple quality of manhood is the solid basis of the right — and there let it rest forever. HENRY WINTER DAVIS (I8t 74865) A SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE mN 1859, when Henry Winter Davis, a Baltimore Representative in Congress, voted for the Republican candidate for Speaker, he gave high offence to the Maryland legislators, who passed resolutions declaring that he had forfeited the confidence of the peo- ple. Their wrathful action failed to rouse alarm in the breast of its subject. In a speech before the House Davis disdainfully bade them to take their message back to their masters, the people, to whom alone he was responsible. The people justified his trust in them by re-elect- ing him as their servant in Congress. Davis was a man of much eloquence ; of an intellect keen, inven- tive and capable of sustained effort. A Whig in politics, he joined the American Party after the demise of the Whigs, and in 1861 became an ardent Republican, earnestly loyal to the Union. In a speech in February of that year he denounced the supineness of the Buchanan administration. This stand he firmly and zealously main- tained throughout the war, and after its end, in 1865, made an impor- tant and eloquent speech in Chicago in favor of Negro suffrage. He died in December of the same year. THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC [It needed no small courage for a native of a slave State, in which sympathy with the doctrine of secession was at that time strongly declared > to come out in such ardent advocacy of the preservation of the Union as Henry Winter Davis did in his notable speech of February 2, i86i. He had been opposed to forcing the issue between North and South, but no sooner was secession decreed than he took as firm a stand for the supremacy of the National Government as any member from the most extreme anti-slavery district could have done, and criticised the senile weakness of the Buchanan administration in words that must have stung like adders. We give the pith of this vigorous address.] 151 152 HENRY WINTER DAVIS We are at the end of the insane revel of partisan license, which, for thirty years, has in the United States worn the mask of government. We are about to close the masquerade by the dance of death Within two months after a formal, peaceful, regular election of the Chief Magistrate of the United States, in which the whole body of the people of every State competed with zeal for the prize, without any new event intervening, without any new grievances alleged, without any new menaces having been made, we have seen, in the short course of one month, a small portion of the population of six States transcend the bounds at a single leap at once of the State and the National Constitu- tions ; usurp the land ; usurp the extraordinary prerogative of repealing the supreme law of the land ; exclude the great mass of their fellow-citi- zens from the protection of the Constitution ; declare themselves emanci- pated from the obligations which the Constitution pronounces to be supreme over them and over their laws ; arrogate to themselves all the prerogatives of independent power ; rescind the acts of cession of the pub- lic property ; occupy the public offices ; seize the fortresses of the United States confided to the faith of the people among whom they were placed ; embezzle the public arms concentrated there for the defence of the United States ; array thousands of men in arms against the United States ; and actually wage war on the Union by besieging two of their fortresses and firing on a vessel bearing, under the flag of the United States, reinforce- ments and provisions to one of them. The very boundaries of right and wrong seem obliterated when we see a cabinet minister engaged for months in deliberately changing the distri- bution of public arms to places in the hands of those about to resist the public authority, so as to place within their grasp means of waging war against the United States greater than they ever used against a foreign foe ; and another cabinet minister — still holding his commission under the authority of the United States, still a confidential adviser of the President, still bound by his oath to support the Constitution of the United States — himself a commissioner from his own State to another of the United States for the purpose of organizing and extending another part of the same great scheme of rebellion ; and the doom of the Republic seems sealed when the President, surrounded by such ministers, permits, with- out rebuke, the Government to be betrayed, neglects the solemn warning ot the first soldier of the age till almost every fort is a prey to domestic treason, and accepts assurances of peace in his time at the expense of leav- ing the national honor unguarded. His message gives aid and comfort to the enemies of the Union, by avowing his inability to maintain its integ- rity ^ and, paralyzed and stupefied, he stands amid the crash of the falling HENRY WINTER DAVIS 153 Republic, still muttering, *' Not in my time, not in my time; after me the deluge ! " . . . . Mr. Speaker, we are driven to one of two alternatives ; we must recognize what we have been told more than once upon this floor is an accomplished fact — the independence of the rebellious States — or we must refuse to acknowledge it, and accept all the responsibilities that attach to that refusal. Recognize them ! Abandon the Gulf and coast of Mexico; surrender the forts of the United States ; yield the privilege of free com- merce and free intercourse ; strike down the guarantees of the Constitu- tion for our fellow-citizens in all that wide region ; create a thousand miles of interior frontier to be furnished with internal custom-houses, and armed with internal forts, themselves to be a prey to the next caprice of State sovereignty ; organize a vast standing army, ready at a moment's warning to resist aggression ; create upon our southern boundary a perpet- ual foothold for foreign powers, whenever caprice, ambition, or hostility may see fit to invite the despot of France or the aggressive power of England to attack us upon our undefended frontier ; sever that unity of territory which we have spent millions and labored through three genera- tions to create and establish ; pull down the flag of the United States and take a lower station among the nations of the earth ; abandon the high prerogative of leading the march of freedom, the hope of struggling nationalities, the terror of frowning tyrants, the boast of the world, the light of liberty ; to become the sport and prey of despots whose thrones we consolidate by our fall ; to be greeted by Mexico with the salutation: * * Art thou also to become weak as we ? art thou become like unto us ? " This is recognition ! Refuse to recognize ! We must not coerce a State engaged in the peaceful process of firing into a United States vessel to prevent the rein- forcement of a United States fort. We must not coerce States which, with- out any declaration of war, or any act of hostility of any kind, have united, as have Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana, their joint forces to seize a public fortress. We must not coerce a State which has planted cannon upon its shores to prevent the free navigation of the Mississippi. We must not coerce a State which has robbed the United States Treasury. — ^This is peaceful secession ! Mr. Speaker, I do not design to quarrel with gentlemen about words. I do not wish to say one word which will exasperate the already too much inflamed state of the public mind ; but I say that the Constitution of the United States and the laws made in pursuance thereof, must be enforced ; and they who stand across the path of that enforcement must either destroy the power of the United States or it will destroy them. WILLIAM M. EVARTS (J8J8-J90J) MANHATTAN'S MOST FAMOUS ADVOCATE. mN the judicial history of the United States, the most imposing spectacle was that which took place in 1868, when President Johnson was put on trial, impeached for " high crimes and misdemeanors,'' the Senate of the United States sitting as the Court, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding. Prom- inent among those who took part and chief counsel for the President, was William Maxwell Evarts, the most brilliant legal light of the New York bar, and a man of national reputation in the field of forensic eloquence. We need scarcely repeat the well-known fact that the President was acquitted, and that his advocate aided in the result through his legal acumen and deep knowledge of Constitutional law. The services of Evarts were rewarded by his appointment as Attorney- General of the United States, which he filled during the brief remainder of President Johnson's term. He subsequently severed as Secretary of State under President Hayes. A WEAK SPOT IN THE AMERICAN SYSTEM [As a legal orator Mr. Evarts had great ability. An excellent example of his powers in this respect was his able argument for the defendant in the great impeach- ment trial. As evidence, we give an extract from this very fine forensic effort.] There are in the Constitution but three barriers against the will of a majority of Congress within the terms of their authority. One is, that it requires a two-thirds vote to expel a member of either House ; another, that a two-thirds vote is necessary to pass a law over the objections of the President ; and another, that a two-thirds vote of the Senate, sitting as a court for the trial of impeachment, is requisite to a sentence. And now how have these two last protections of the Executive office disappeared from the Constitution in its practical working by the condition of parties that has 154 WILLIAM M. EVARTS 165 given to one the firm possession — by a three-fourths vote, I think, in both Houses — of the control of the action of each body of the Legislature ? Reflect upon this. I do not touch upon the particular circumstance that the non-restoration of the Southern States has left your numbers in both Houses of Congress less than they might under other circumstances be. I do not calculate whether that absence diminishes or increases the dispro- portion that there would be. Possibly their presence. might even aggra- vate the political majority which is thus arrayed and thus overrides practically all the calculations of the presidential protection through the guarantees of the Constitution. For what do the two-thirds provisions mean ? They mean that in a free country, where elections were diffused over a vast area, no Congressman having a constituency of over seventy or eighty thousand people, it was impossible to suppose that there would not be a somewhat equal division of parties, or impossible to suppose that the excitements and zeal of party could carry all the members of it into any extravagance. I do not call them extravagances in any sense of reproach ; I merely speak of them as the extreme measures that parties in politics, and under whatever motives, may be disposed to adopt. Certainly, then, there is ground to pause and consider, before you bring to a determination this great struggle between the co-ordinate branches of the Government, this agitation and this conclusion, in a certain event, of the question whether the co-ordination of the Constitu- tion can be preserved. Attend to these special circumstances, und deter- mine for yourselves whether under these influences it is best to urge a contest which must operate upon the framework of the Constitution and its future, unattended by any exceptions of a peculiar nature that govern the actual situation. Ah, that is the misery of human affairs, that the stress comes and has its consequence when the system is least prepared to receive it. It is the misery that disease — casual, circumstantial — invades the frame when health is depressed and the powers of the constitution to resist it are at the lowest ebb. It is that the gale rises and sweeps the ship to destruction when there is no sea-room for it and when it is upon a lee shore. And if, concurrent with that danger to the good ship, her crew be short, if her helm be unsettled, if disorder begin to prevail, and there come to be a final struggle for the maintenance of mastery against the elements and over the only chances of safety, how wretched is the condition of that people whose fortunes are embarked in that ship of state ! . . . . The strength of every system is in its weakest part. Alas, for that rule! But when the weakest part breaks, the whole is broken. The chain lets slip the ship when the weak link breaks, and the ship founders. 156 WILLIAM M. EVARTS The body fails when the weak function is vitally attacked. And so with every structure, social and political, the weak point is the point of danger ; and the weak point of the Constitution is now before you in the main- tenance of the co-ordination of the departments of the Government, and if one cannot be kept from devouring another, then the experiment of our ancestors will fail. They attempted to interpose justice. If that fails, what can endure ? We have come all at once to the great experiences and trials of a full- grown nation, all ofwhich we thought we should escape. We never dreamed that an instructed and equal people, with freedom in every form, with a Government yielding to the touch of popular will so readily, ever would come to the trials of force against it. We never thought that the remedy to get rid of a despotic ruler, fixed by a Constitution against the will of the peo'ple, would ever bring assassination into our political experience. We never thought that political differences under an elective presidency would bring in array the departments of the Government against one another to anticipate by ten months the operation of the regular election. And yet we take them all, one after another, and we take them because we have grown to the full vigor of manhood, when the strong passions and interests that have destroyed other nations, composed of human nature like ourselves, have overthrown them. But we have met by the powers of the Constitution these great dangers — prophesied when they would arise as likely to be our doom — the distractions of civil strife, the exhaustions of powerful war, the interruption of the regularity of power through the violence of assassination. We could summon from the people a million of men and inexhaustible treasure to help the Constitution in its time of need. Can we summon now resources enough of civil prudence and of restraint of passion to carry us through this trial, so that, whatever result may follow, in whatever form, the people may feel that the Consti- tution has received no wound ? . To this court, the last and best resort for this determination, it is to be left. And oh, if you could only carry your- selves back to the spirit and the purpose and the wisdom and the courage of the framers of the Government, how safe would it be in your hands ! How safe is it now in your hands, for you who have entered into their labors will see to it that the structure of your work comports in durability and excellency with theirs. Act, then, as if, under this serene and majestic presence, your deliber- ations were to be conducted to their close, and the Constitution was to come out from the watchful solicitude of these great guardians of it as if from their own judgment in this High Court of Impeachment. SCHUYLER COLFAX (J 8234 885) GRANT'S HRST VICE-PRESIDENT I A It the head of Washington's life-guards throughout the Revo- I /\ I lutionary War was General William Colfax, the grandfather of the statesman with whom we are now concerned, and who served his country in its councils during its second great war as his soldier grandfather had done in arms during the first. Colfax's early political service was as editor of an able organ of the Whig party, the St. Joseph Valley Register. Born in the city of New York, he removed when young to Indiana, and for many years conducted this party journal at South Bend. He was otherwise active in party services, became a member of Congress in 1854, and continued to serve in the House until he gave up his seat to assume the duties of the Vice- President, in March, 1868. Made Speaker of the House in 1863, he was twice re-elected, his majority each time increasing. After four years' service as Vice-President under President Grant, he retired from political life. Colfax was a Republican statesman of much ability and an able orator. Of an eloquent speech made by him soon after entering Congress, on the Kansas question, five hundred thousand copies are said to have been printed and distributed. THE CONFISCATION OF SLAVE PROPERTY [The Civil War had not proceeded far before the question of depriving the South- erners of the property in human beings which they had made a cause of v/ar became a subject of debate. The time was not ripe yet for emancipation, but General Butler settled the difficulty in his military district by putting them to work as " contrabaml of war," and on April 23, 1862, Colfax made a vigorous speech, in which he strongly advocated their oonfiscation as a means of reducing the power of the opponents of the Union. W^e append a selection from his speech.] The engineers of this rebellion — the Catilines who sat here in the council chambers of the Republic, and who, with the oath on their lips 167 158 SCHUYLER COLFAX and in their hearts to support the Constitution of the United States, plotted treason at night, as has been shown by papers recovered in Florida, particularly the letter of Mr. Yulee, describing the midnight conclaves of these men to their confederates in the Southern States — should be pun- ished by the severest penalties of the law, for they have added to their treason perjury, and are doubly condemned before God and man. Never, in any land, have there been men more guilty and more deserving of the extremest terrors of the law. The murderer takes but a single life, and we call him infamous. But these men wickedly and wilfully plunged a peaceful country into the horrors of a civil war, and inaugurated a regime of assassination and outrage against the Union men in their midst, hang- ing, plundering and imprisoning in a manner that throws into the shade the atrocities of the French Revolution The blood of our soldiers cries out from the ground against them. Has not forbearance ceased longer to be a virtue ? We were told a year ago that leniency would probably induce them to return to their allegiance and to cease this unna- tural war ; and what has been the result ? Let the bloody battle-fields of this conflict answer. When I return home I shall miss many a familiar face that has looked in past years with the beaming eye of friendship upon me. I shall see those who have come home with constitutions broken down by exposure and wounds and disease to linger and to die. I shall see women whom I have met Sabbath after Sabbath leaning on beloved husbands' arms, as they went to the peaceful sanctuary, clothed now in widows' weeds. I shall see orphans destitute, with no one to train their infant steps into paths of usefulness. I shall see the swelling hillock in the graveyard — where, after life's fitful fever, we shall all be gathered — betokening that there, prematurely cut off by a rifle ball aimed at the life of the Republic, a patriot soldier sleeps. I shall see desolate hearthstones and anguish and woe on every side. Those of us here who come from Indiana and Illi- nois know too painfully the sad scenes that will confront us amid the cir- cles of our constituents. Nor need we ask the cause of all this suffering, the necessity for all these sacrifices. They have been entailed on us as part of the fearful cost of saving our country from destruction. But what a mountain of guilt must rest upon those who, by their efforts to destroy the Government and the Union, have rendered these terrible sacrifices necessary. Standing here between the living and the dead, we cannot avoid the grave and fearful responsibility devolving on us. The people will ask us when we return to their midst : ' ' When our brave soldiers went forth to the battlefield to suffer, to bleed, and to die for their country, what did you SCHUYLER COLFAX 159 civilians in the Halls of Congress do to cripple the power of the rebels whom they confronted at the cannon's mouth ? What legislation did you enact to punish those who are responsible, by their perjury and treason, for this suffering, desolation and death ? Did you levy heavy taxes upon us and our property to pay the expenses of a war into which we were unwillingly forced, and allow the men who are the guilty and reckless authors of it to go comparatively free ? Did you leave the slaves of these rebels to plant, and sow and reap, to till their farms, and thus support their masters and the armies of treason, while they, thus strengthened, met us in the field ? Did you require the patriots of the loyal States to give up business, property, home, health, life and all for the country, and yet hesitate about using the law-making power of the Republic to subject traitors to the penalties as to property and possesions which their crimes deserve ? I would feel as if worthy of the severest condemnation for life if I did not mete out to those who are the cause of all this woe and anguish and death, by the side of which all the vast expenses of the war dwindle into insignificance, the sternest penalties of the law, while they still remain in arms in their parricidal endeavor to blot this country from the map of the world. Why do we hesitate ? These men have drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard. They do not hesitate in punishing Union men within their power. They confiscate their property, and have for a year past, without any of the compunctions that trouble us here. They imprison John M. Botts for silently retaining a lingering love for the Union in his desolate home. They hang Union men in east Tennessee for bridge- burning, refusing them even the sympathy of a chaplain to console their dying hours. They persecute Brownlow because, faithful among the faithless, he refused, almost alone, in his outspoken heroism, to bow the knee to the Baal of their worship. Let us follow his counsel by stripping the leaders of this conspiracy of their possessions and outlawing them hereafter from the high places of honor and of trust they have heretofore enjoyed. JAMES A^ GARFIELD ( J 83 14 88 1) THE MARTYR TO CIVIL SERVICE REFORM EOR nearly three months during the summer and early fall of 1881 the people of the United States waited in an agony of sympathetic grief and apprehension, as the life of the head of the nation slowly ebbed away in pain. Patiently the exalted sufferer awaited the end, and with the deepest sorrow the citizens of the coun- try vibrated between hope and despair. On the 2d of July he had been laid low by the bullet of an insensate assassin in Washington. On the 19th of September came the sad day that ended his career, within touch of the fresh sea breezes at Elberon, on the New Jersey coast, where the deep bass of the breaking waves sounded the requiem of his brave soul. It is rare that a great stress in national events passes away with- out its martyr ; and too often it is the greatest and best of the nation that falls as a sacrifice to the Moloch of passion and revenge. So it was in 1865, when Lincoln fell as the last victim to the terrible mental strain of the Civil .War. xA.nd so it was in 1881, when Garfield fell a similar victim to the passions aroused by the struggle for Civil Ser- vice Reform. Taking the Presidential chair in March of that year, his evident purpose of making this reform a ruling policy of his administration, and the controversy which, in consequence, arose betw^een him and the Senators from New York, gave rise to a highly excited feeling among the partisans of the old system, office-giving Congressmen and office-seeking political workers alike. The fatal result of this excitement came on July 2d, when a worthless office- seeker, half-crazed by disappointment, shot the President in the rail road station at Washington, inflicting what proved to be a fat wound. Such is one of the fatalities of revolutionary movements" 160 1 JAMES A. GARFIELD 161 Garfield began life as a poor boy, even working for a time as a driver on the tow-path of a caDal. But by innate energy he made his way through college and to the position of a college professor and State Senator. He served in the war, becoming a major-general. The remainder of his life was passed as a Congressman, in which he won great influence as an orator and statesman, becoming speaker of the House in 1877, Senator in 1880, and President in the same year. THE EVIL SPIRIT OF DISLOYALTY [A man of kindly nature and destitute of malice, Garfield was still strongly emotional, and under sufficient provocation could be aroused to severe denunciation. Such was the case on the 8th of March, 1864, when he rose to reply to a motion of Alexander Long, a Representative from his own State, proposing to negotiate for peace with the Southern Confederacy. We give the more pithy portions of this speech.] Mr. Chairman: I should be obliged to you if you would direct the Sergeant-at-Arms to bring a white flag and plant it in the aisle between myself and my col- league (Alexander Long, of Ohio), who has just addressed you. I recollect on one occasion, when two great armies stood face to face, that under a white flag just planted I approached a company of men dressed in the uniform of the rebel Confederacy, and reached out my hand to one of the number and told him I respected him as a brave man. Though he wore the emblems of disloyalty and treason, still underneath his vestments I beheld a brave and honest soul . I would reproduce that scene here this afternoon. I say, were there such a flag of truce — but God forgive me if I should do it under any other circumstances. .... Now, when hundreds of thousands of brave souls have gone up to God under the shadow of the flag, and when thousands more, maimed and shattered in the contest, are sadly awaiting the deliverance of death ; now, when three years of terrific warfare have raged over us, when our armies have pushed the rebellion back over mountains and rivers, and crowded it back into narrow limits, until a wall of fire girds it ; now, when the uplifted hand of a majestic people is about to let fall the light- ning of its conquering power upon the rebellion ; now, in the quiet of this hall, hatched in the lowest depths of a similar dark treason, there rises a Benedict Arnold and proposes to surrender us all up, body and spirit, the nation and the flag, its genius and its honor, now and forever, to the accursed traitors to our country. And that proposition comes — God for- give and pity my beloved State ! — it comes from a citizen of the honored and loyal Commonwealth of Ohio 11 162 JAMES A. GARFIELD But, sir, I will forget States. We have something greater than States and State pride to talk of here to-day. All personal and State feeling aside, I ask you what is the proposition which the enemy of his country has just made ? What is it ? For the first time in the history of this contest, it is proposed in this hall to give up the struggle, to abandon the war, and let treason run riot through the land ! I will, if I can, .dis- miss feeling from my heart, and try to consider only what bears upon that logic of the speech to which we have just listened. First of all, the gentleman tells us that the right of secession is a con- stitutional right. I do not propose to enter into the argument. I have expressed myself hitherto on State sovereignty and State rights, of which this proposition of his is the legitimate child. But the gentleman takes higher ground, — and in that I agree with him, — namely, that five million or eight million people possess the right of revolution. Grant it ; we agree there. If fifty-nine men can make a revolution successful, they have the right of revolution. If one State wishes to break its connection with the Federal Government, and does it by force, maintaining itself, it is an independent State. If the eleven Southern States are determined and resolved to leave the Union, to secede, to revolutionize, and can maintain that revolution by force, they have the revolutionary right to do so. Grant it. I stand on that platform with the gentleman. And now the question comes : Is it our constitutional duty to let them do it ? That is the question, and in order to reach it I beg to call your attention, not to an argument, but to the condition of ajffairs that would result from such action — the mere statement of which becomes the strongest possible argument. What does this gentleman propose ? Where will he draw the line of division ? If the rebels carry into successful secession what they desire to carry ; if their revolution envelop as many States as they intend it shall envelop ; if they draw the line where Isham G. Harris, the rebel governor of Tennessee, in the rebel camp near our lines, told Mr. Vallandigham they would draw it, — along the line of the Ohio and of the Potomac ; if they make good their statement to him that they will never consent to any other line, then I ask what is this thing that the gentleman proposes to do ? He proposes to leave to the United States a territory reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and one hundred miles wide in the centre! From Wellsville, on the Ohio River, to Cleveland, on the Lakes, is one hundred miles. I ask you, Mr. Chairman, if there be a man here so insane as to propose that the American people will allow their magnificent national proportions to be shorn to so deformed a shape as this ? JAMES A. GARFIELD 163 I tell you, and I confess it here, that while I hope to have something of human courage, I have not enough to contemplate such a result. I am not brave enough to go to the brink of the precipice of successful secession and look down into its damned abyss. If my vision were keen enough to pierce it to the bottom, I would not dare to look. If there be a man here who dares contemplate such a scene, I look upon him either as the bravest of the sons of woman, or as a downright madman. Seces- sion to gain peace ! Secession is the tocsin of eternal war. There can be no end to such a war as will be inaugurated if this thing be done. Suppose the policy of the gentleman were adopted to-day. Let the order go forth ; sound the " recall " on your bugles, and let it ring from Texas to the far Atlantic, and tell the armies to come back. Call the victorious legions to come back over the battlefields of blood, forever now disgraced. Call them back over the territory which they have conquered. Call them back, and let the minions of secession chase them with derision and jeers as they come. And then tell them that that man across the aisle, from the free State of Ohio, gave birth to the monstrous propo- sition ! Mr. Chairman, if such a word should be sent forth through the armies of the Union, the wave of terrible vengeance that would sweep back over this land would never find a parallel in the records of history. Almost in the moment of final victory the ' ' recall ' ' is sounded by a craven person not deserving freedom ! We ought every man to be made a slave, should we sanction such a sentiment. I said a little while ago that I accepted the proposition of the gentle- man that the rebels had the right of revolution ; and the decisive issue between us and the rebellion is, whether they shall revolutionize and destroy, or we shall subdue and preserve. We take the latter ground- We take the common weapons of war to meet them ; and, if these be not sufiicient, I would take any element which will overwhelm and destroy ; I would sacrifice the dearest and best beloved ; I would take all the old sanctions of law and the Constitution, and fling them to the winds, i^ neccessary, rather than let the nations be broken in pieces, and its peopl'^ destroyed with endless ruin. JAMES G. BLAINE (18304893) THE "PLUMED KNIGHT" OF POLITICS i |OBERT G. INGERSOLL'S ringing words, spoken before the Republican National Convention of 1876, wlien he rose to present the name of James G. Blaine as a candidate for the Presidency, have never been surpassed for effectiveness on such an occasion, Blaine had been bitterly assailed by his political foes, and had routed them in a speech of striking vigor. It was to this defense that IngersoU alluded when he electrified the convention with the fol- lowing words : '* Like an armed warrior, like a Plumed Knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen foreheads of the defamers of his country and the maligners of his honor. For the Republican party to desert this gallant leader now is as though an army should desert their general uponihe field of battle.'^ Yet Blaine failed to receive the nomination. A. sunstroke which prostrated him, and of which his enemies took advantage to spread their falsehoods, turned the current of votes away from him. Again in 1880, he was defeated as a candidate. He was triumphantly nomi- nated in 1884, but every one knows of the ludicrous incident which then made Cleveland President, and robbed Blaine of his well-fought- for honors. The result of the election turned upon the vote of the State of Kew York, and there the Rev. Dr. Burchard's fatal allitera- tion of '' Rum, Romanism and Rebellion " turned enough of the Irish Catholic vote from Blaine to give Cleveland the 1000 majority that car- ried him into the Presidential chair. Rarely has so insignificant a| incident had so momentous a result. As an orator Blaine had finely marked ability, and as a statesmai his influence was unsurpassed during his career. Depew says of him, 164 JAMES G. BLAINE 165 " He will stand in our history as the ablest parliamentarian and^most skillful debater of our congressional history. ... No man during his active career has disputed with him his hold upon the popular imagi- nation and his leadership of his party." A EULOGY OF GARHELD In February, 1882, Blaine delivered, in the hall of the House of Representatives, a pathetic eulogy on the martyred Garfield. Never was there a more distinguished audience. It included the President and his Cabinet, both Houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, the foreign Ministers, and great numbers of distinguished men and women. The touching words in which he bore tribute to his dead friend held spell- bound the crowded audience, and as he spoke that sublimely beautiful passage with which the oration closed, the solemn hush which fell upon the great assembly deep- ened the impression felt by every one present, that he had listened to one of the noblest of oratorical efforts.] On the morning of Saturday, July 2d, the President was a contented and happy man — not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, almost boyishly, happy. On his way to the railroad station, to which we drove slowly, in conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of leisure and a keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in the grateful and gratulatory vein. He felt that, after four months of trial, his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in popular favor, and destined to grow stronger ; that grave difficulties confronting him at his inauguration had safely passed ; that troubles lay behind him, and not before him ; that he was soon to meet the wife whom he loved, now recovering from an illness which had but lately disquieted and at times almost unnerved him ; that he was going to his alma mater to renew the most cherished associations of his young manhood , and to exchange greetings with those whose deepening interest had followed every step of his onward progress, from the day that he entered upon his college course until he had obtained the loftiest elevation in the gift of his country- men. Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him ; no slightest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleed- ing, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and the grave. Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of mur- der, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its 166 JAMES G. BLAINE hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death — and he did not quail. Not alone for one short moment, in which stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell ; what brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendship, what bitter rending of sweet household ties ! Behind him a proud, expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears ; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his ; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic ; the fair, young daughter ; the sturdy young sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day and everyday rewarding a father's love and care ; and in his heart, the eager, rejoicing power to meet demands. And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the center of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world . But all the love and all the sympa- thy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took his leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the divine decree. As the end drew near his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from his prison walls, from its oppressive, stifl- ing air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of the heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With a wan, fevered face, tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders ; on its far sails ; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun ; on the red clouds of evening, arching low to the horizon ; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves break- ing on a farther shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning. ^- Recent Political Orators WITH the passing of the Civil War and the period of reconstruction of the Union that followed, there vanished a prolific source of fervent oratory in the United States. Since then, indeed, the country has not been without its events calling for argument and breeding controversy, but these have been of minor importance as compared with the all-controlling* excitement of the slavery conflict and the reconstruction debate. There have been active party controversies, on such perennial subjects of public interest as the tariff, the greenback currency, free silver, the Philippine question, and other topics on which opinion differed ; but none of these have a threat of war or revolution behind them, and the stir of thought or vigor of expression to which they gave rise, was slight compared with that in which the dissolution of the Union was involved. There have been no lack of orators in the recent period, many of them eloquent, some of them full of force and fervor. But it is not easy to make a hot fire without coals, and a vehement burst of oratory on an inconsequential subject is apt to yield more smoke than flame. The speeches upon which we shall draw, therefore, in the present section, are largely of the academic character ; many of them fine efforts, displaying cultured thought and eloquent powers of expression, yet none of them based on such national exigencies as gave inspiration to the words of a Henry or a Webster. JOHN W. DANIEL (1842 ) A VIRGINIA ORATOR AND STATESMAN EORTY years ago a private in Stonewall Jackson's brigade, and to-day an United States Senator, with the reputation of being one of the most eloquent men in the Upper House of Con- gress, we herewith present John Warwick Daniel to our readers. Born at Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1842, and a boy at school when the Civil War began, he lost no time in closing his books and taking his musket, finding ready entrance into Jackson's famous brigade. Be- ginning as a private, he left the army as a major, with several wounds to his credit, and again resorted to his books at the University of Vir- ginia, making the law his study. His powers as an orator and activity as a politician soon led him to the Virginia legislature, in w^hich he sat from 1869 to 1881. He here won a high reputation as an orator and statesman, and was made the Democratic nominee for Governor. Beaten in this contest, he was sent to Congress in 1884, and in 1885 succeeded General Mahone in the United States Senate. In this body he is one of the leaders among the Democratic members. DEDICATION OF THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT [lyoftiest among the architectural erections in the world stands the great monu- ment to the ** Father of his Country," on an elevated situation in the National Capi- tal. Of obelisk shape, and towering 555 feet in the air, it dominates the landscape for miles around. Projected early in the century, its completion and dedication came in 1885. We quote here from the eloquent oration made by Mr. Daniel in the hall of the House of Representatives, February 21, 1885, in honor of the important event, his glowing panegyric of Washington's work and character.] No sum could now be made of Washington's character that did not exhaust language of its tributes and repeat virtue by all her names. No sum could be made of his achievements that did not unfold the history of 168 JOHN W- DANIEL 169 his country and its institutions, the history of his age and its progress .-the history of man and his destiny to be free. But, whether character or achievement be regarded, the riches before us only expose the poverty of praise. So clear was he in his great office that no ideal of the leader or ruler can be formed that does not shrink by the side of the reality. And so has he impressed himself upon the minds of men, that no man can j ustly aspire to be the chief of a great free people who does not adopt his principles and emulate his example. We look with amazement on such eccentric characters as Alexander, Caesar, Cromwell, Frederick, and Napoleon, but when Washington's face rises before us, instinctively man- kind exclaims : ** This is the man for nations to trust and reverence, and for rulers to follow.' ' Drawing his sword from patriotic impulse, without ambition and with- out malice, he wielded it without vindictiveness and sheathed it without reproach. All that humanity could conceive he did to suppress the cruel- ties of war and soothe its sorrows. He never struck a coward's blow. To him age, infancy, and helplessness were ever sacred. He tolerated no extremity unless to curb the excesses of his enemy, and he never poisoned the sting of defeat by the exultation of the conqueror. Peace he welcomed as a heaven-sent herald of friendship ; and no country has given him greater honor than that which he defeated ; for England has been glad to claim him as the scion of her blood, and proud, like our sister American States, to divide with Virginia the honor of pro- ducing him. Fascinated by the perfection of the man, we are loath to break the mirror of admiration into the fragments of analysis. But lo ! as we attempt it, every fragment becomes the miniature of such sublimity and beauty that the destructive hand can only multiply the forms of immortality. Grand and manifold as were its phases, there is yet no difficulty in understanding the character of Washington. He was no Veiled Prophet. He never acted a part. Simple, natural, and unaffected, his life lies before us, a fair and open manuscript. He disdained the arts which wrap power in mystery in order to magnify it. He practiced the profound diplomacy of truthful speech, the consummate tact of direct attention. Looking ever to the All- Wise Disposer of events, he relied on that Providence which helps men by giving them high hearts and hopes to help themselves with the means which their Creator has put at their service. There was no infirmity in his conduct over which charity must fling its veil ; no taint of selfishness from which purity averts her gaze ; no dark recess of intrigue that must be lit up with colored panegyric ; no subterranean passage to be trod in trembling lest there be stirred the ghost of a buried crime. 170 JOHN W. DANIEL A true son of nature was George Washington — of nature in her brightest intelligence and noblest mold ; and the difl5culty, if such there be, in comprehending him, is only that of reviewing from a single stand- point the vast procession of those civil and military achievements which filled nearly half a century of his life, and in realizing the magnitude of those qualities which were requisite to their performance ; the difiiculty of fashioning in our minds a pedestal broad enough to bear the towering figure, whose greatness is diminished by nothing but the perfection of its proportions. If his exterior — in calm, grave and resolute repose — ever impressed the casual observer as austere and cold, it was only because he did not reflect that no great heart like his could have lived unbroken unless bound by iron nerves in an iron frame. The Commander of Armies, the Chief of a People, the Hope of Nations could not wear his heart upon his sleeve ; and yet his sternest will could not conceal its high and warm pulsations. Under the enemy's guns at Boston he did not forget to instruct his agent to administer generously of charity to his needy neighbors at home. The sufferings of women and children, thrown adrift by war, and of his bleeding comrades, pierced his soul. And the moist eye and trem- bling voice with which he bade farewell to his veterans bespoke the under- lying tenderness of his nature, even as the storm- wind makes music in its undertones When Marathon had been fought and Greece kept free, each of the victorious generals voted himself to be first in honor, but all agreed that Miltiades was second. When the most memorable struggle for the rights of human nature of which time holds record was thus happily concluded in the monument of their preservation, whoever else was second unani- mous acclaim declared that Washington was first. Nor in that struggle alone does he stand foremost. In the name of the people of the United States, their President, their Senators, their Representatives, and their Judges do crown to-day with the grandest crown that veneration has ever lifted to the brow of glory, him whom Virginia gave to America, whom America has given to the world and to the ages, and whom mankind with universal suffrage has proclaimed the foremost of the founders of the empire in the first degree of greatness ; whom liberty herself has anointed as the first citizen in the great Republic of Humanity. BENJAMIN HARVEY HILL (18234882) A BRILLIANT LAWYER AND ORATOR TITJHEN', in 1861, the advocates of secession grew active in their If I efforts to drag Georgia out of the Union of the States, chief ' ' among those who stood firm for the old flag, and fought seces- sion boldly in the convention, as at once a wrong and a blunder, was Benjamin Harvey Hill, one of the mosjb brilliant legal advocates in the State. In this he was sustained by Alexander H. Stephens, the sub- sequent vice-president of the Confederacy. Hill followed Stephens in support of the measure after it had been carried, and spent the four years of the war at Richmond, as a member of the Confederate Senate. The war ended, he was among those fully ready to accept the new conditions, and in 1873 entered the United States Senate as a member from the reconstructed State of Georgia. He remained there until his death, well sustaining his reputation for eloquence and statesmanlike ability. A PLEA FOR UNION [As Hill had opposed secession and the disruption of the Union for the preserv- ation of African slavery in the Georgia Convention, he expressed himself to the same eifect in a noble speech made before the United States Senate on May lo, 1879. A more eloquent appeal for the stability of the American Union has never been made. Before this great good, in his opinion, the system of African slavery was not worthy of a moment's consideration. We select the most eloquent portion of this address.] The Southern people did not secede from hostility to the Constitu- tion, nor from any desire to be rid of the system of government under which they had lived. The highest evidence is what is given you in the very act of seces- sion, when they pledged themselves to form a new union upon the model of the old . The very night when I was writing that letter and the sere- nading bands were in the streets, I wrote to my friends : *' We will be able to effect a new Union upon the model of the old," and we did form 171 172 BENJAMIN HARVEY HILL a constitution which varied not one whit in principle from the one under which we had lived. No, sir ; the South seceded because there was a war made upon what she believed to be her constitutional rights by the extreme men of the North. Those extreme men of the North were gaining absolute power in the Federal Government as the machinery by which to destroy Southern property. Then the Northern people said — a large number of the leaders and the Republican party said — that if secession was desired to be accomplished, it should be accomplished in peace. Mr. Greeley said that they wanted no Union pinned together by bayonets. Here is the condition in which the South was placed ; they believed the Northern extremists would use the machinery of the Government to their injury ; the people of the South believed that they would protect their property by forming a new Union in the South precisely upon the basis of the old. They believed they could do it in peace ; and I say here that there were thousands upon thousands, yes, hundreds of thousands of the best men of the South, who believed that the only way to avoid a war was to secede. They believed the Northern conscience wanted to get rid of the responsi- bility for slavery ; they believed they had a right to protect their slave property, and they thought they would accommodate the Northern con- science by leaving the Union and preserving that property. They believed they could do it in peace ; and if they had believed that a war would result, they never would have seceded. Mr. President, I know I have detained the Senate long. I was born a slaveholder. That was a decree of my country's laws, not my own. I never bought a slave save at his own request ; and of that I am not ashamed. I was never unkind to a slave, and all that I ever owned will bear cheerful testimony to that fact. I would never deprive a human being, of any race, or color, or condition, of his right to the equal protec- tion of the laws ; and no colored man who knows me believes I would. Of all forms of cowardice, that is the meanest which would oppress the helpless, or wrong the defenseless ; but I had the courage to face seces- sion in its maddest hour and say I would not give the American Union for African slavery, and that if slavery dared strike the Union, slavery would perish. Slavery did perish, and now in this high council of the greatest of nations, I face the leaders of State destruction and declare that this ark of our political covenant, this constitutional casket of our Con- federate nation, encasing as it does more of human liberty and human security and human hope than any government ever formed by man, I would not break for the whole African race. And cursed, thrice cursed forever, is the man who would ! 1 LUCIUS Q. C LAMAR (18254893) AN ELOQUENT SON OF THE SOUTH A NATIVE of Georgia, and a lawyer of Mississippi, Lucius Lamar represented the latter State in Congress during the "^ exciting period from 1856 to 1860, when vehement eloquence had abundant opportunity for its display. Casting his fortunes with the South, he served during the war as a Confederate officer and a commissioner to Russia. The war ended, for six years he was a pro- fessor in the University of Mississippi, leaving it to enter the United States Congress in 1872. Four years later he was elected to the Sen- ate, remaining there till 1885, when he became Secretary of the Interior under President Cleveland. In 1888 he was made a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. During his term in Con- gress that body had no more eloquent and effective speaker. SUMNER AND THE SOUTH [While maintaining that the South had committed no moral or legal wrong in its attempted secession, Lamar was earnest in his desire to heal the wounds of feel- ing remaining from the war. In his graceful eulogy of Charles Sumner, after the death of the latter in 1874, he dealt with moving eloquence upon the need of burying sectional strife and forming a union in heart as well as in hand. We append this effective appeal.] It was certainly a gracious act on the part of Charles Sumner toward the South, though unhappily it jarred on the sensibilities of the people at the other extreme of the Union, to propose to erase from the banners of the national army the mementoes of the bloody internal struggle which might be regarded as assailing the pride or wounding the sensibilities of the Southern people. The proposal will never be forgotten by that people so long as the name of Charles Sumner lives in the memory of man. But while it touched the heart and elicited her profound gratitude, 173 174 LUCIUS Q. C. LAMAR her people would not have asked of the North such an act of self-renun- ciation. Conscious that they themselves were animated by devotion to constitutional liberty, and that the brightest pages of history are replete with evidences of the depth and sincerity of that devotion, they can but cherish the recollection of the battles fought and the victories won in defence of their hopeless cause ; and respecting, as all true and brave men must respect, the martial spirit with which the men of the North vindicated the integrity of the Union, and their devotion to the principles of human freedom, they do not ask, they do not wish the North to strike the mementoes of heroism and victory from either records or monuments or battle-flags. They would rather that both sections should gather up the glories won by each section, not envious, but proud of each other, and regard them as a common heritage of American valor. L He was an effec- tive speaker both in and out of the Senate Hall. ^ THE NOMINATION OF GRANT [What many look upon as the most effective nomination speech ever made at a party convention was that made by Roscoe Conkling in i88o before the National Republican Convention, when nominating Bx-President Grant for a third term. This 182 ROSCOE CONKLING ' 183 strenuous effort failed, through the ineradicable objection of our people tor-a ^hird tenn President, yet Conkling's address will live among the telling examples of American oratory. We append its most striking portions.] When asked whence comes our candidate, we say, from Appomattox. Obeying instructions I should never dare to disregard ; expressing, also, my own firm conviction ; I rise in behalf of the State of New York to propose a nomination with which the country and the Republican party can grandly win. The election before us will be the Austerlitz of Ameri- can politics. It will decide whether for years to come the country will be *' Republican or Cossack." The need of the hour is a candidate who can carry the doubtful States, North and South ; and, believing that he more surely than any other can carry New York against any opponent, and carry not only the North, but several States of the South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. He alone of living Republicans has carried New York as a presidential candidate. Once he carried it even according to a Democratic count, and twice he carried it by the people's vote, and he is stronger now. The Republican party with its standard in his hand is stronger now than in 1868 or 1872. Never defeated in war or in peace, his name is the most illustrious borne by any living man ; his services attest his greatness, and the country knows them by heart. His fame was born not alone of things written and said, but of the arduous great- ness of things done ; and dangers and emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in vain in the past, for any other on whom the nation leans with such confidence and trust. Standing on the highest eminence of human distinction, and having filled all lands with his renown ; modest, firm, simple, and self-poised ; he has seen not only the titled but the poor and the lowly in the utmost ends of the world rise and uncover before him. He has studied the needs and defects of many systems of government, and he comes back a better American than ever, with a wealth and knowledge and experience added to the hard common sense which so conspicuously distinguished him in all the fierce light that beat upon him throughout the most eventful, trying, and perilous sixteen years of the nation's history. Never having had ' ' a policy to enforce against the will of the peo- ple," he never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the people will never betray or desert him. Vilified and reviled, truthlessly aspersed by num- berless presses, not in other lands, but in his own, the assaults upon him have strengthened and seasoned his hold upon the public heart. The ammunition of calumny has all been exploded ; the powder has all been burned; its force is spent; and General Grant's name will glitter as a bright and imperishable star in the diadem of the Republic when those 184 ROSCOE CONKLING who have tried to tarnish it will have moldered in forgotten graves and their memories and epitaphs have vanished utterly There is no field of human activity, responsibility, or reason in which rational beings object to Grant, because he has been weighed in the balance and not found wanting, and because he has had unequalled experience, making him exceptionally competent and fit. Prom the man who shoes your horse to the lawyer who pleads your case, the officer who manages your railway, the doctor into whose hands you give your life, or the minister who seeks to save your soul, whom now do you reject because you have tried him and by his works have known him ? What makes the presidential office an exception to all things else in the common sense to be applied to selecting its incumbent ? Who dares to put fetters on the free choice and judgment, which is the birthright of the American people ? Can it be said that Grant used official power to perpetuate his plan ? He has no place. No official power has been used for him. Without patron- age or power, without telegraph wires running from his house to the con- vention, without electioneering contrivances, without effort on his part, his name is on his country's lips, and he is struck at by the whole Demo- cratic Party because his nomination will be the death blow to Democratic success. He is struck at by others who find offense and disqualification in the very service he has rendered and the very experience he has gained. Show me a better man. Name one and I am answered ; but do not point, as a disqualification, to the very facts which make this man fit beyond all others. Let not experience disqualify or excellence impeach him. There is no third term in the case, and the pretense will die with the political dog-days which engendered it. Nobody is really worried about a third term except those hopelessly longing for a first term and the dupes they have made. Without bureaus, committees, officials or emis- saries to manufacture sentiment in his favor, without intrigue or effort on his part, Grant is the candidate whose supporters have never threatened to bolt. As they say, he is a Republican who never wavers. He and his friends stood by the creed and the candidates of the Republican Party, holding the right of a majority as the very essence of their faith, and meaning to uphold that faith against the common enemy and the charla- tans and the guerrillas who from time to time deploy between the lines and forage on one side or the other. SAMUEL S- COX (J 824- J 889) AN ORATOR OF PEACE AND GOOD WILL SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX, popularly known as "Sunset Cox/' was a man of duplex mind, being at once instinct with the spirit — ^ of fun and capable of the deepest intensity of utterance and feel- ing. Those from whose lips wit flows easily, in whose thoughts humor shines like winter sunbeams, are apt to find it difficult to win a repu- tation for gravity and earnestness, yet Cox, while he could at will send ripples of laughter through an audience, could, when occasion demanded, be as elevated in tone as any of his fellow-Congressmen. He was able, alike as a speaker and a writer. His Congressional career is depicted in his " Eight Years in Congress,'' and his varied travels in *' The Buckeye Abroad,"'* Search for Winter Sunbeams," and various other works. Through most of these tales of travel a vein of genial humor runs. THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT [Mr. Cox's masterpiece of oratory was giveu in the peroration of a speech deliv- ered before the House on the 3rd of July, 1879. The subject of it is plainly enough indicated in its language. It dealt with the aftermath of the exciting period of Reconstruction, that era of '* test oaths and other reminiscences of our sad and bloody strife," inciters to bitter passions, which the speaker so eloquently contrasts with the spirit of the teachings of Christ.] I hope it may not be presuming to say, Mr. Speaker, that I have been something of a traveler, and have been upon many mountains of our star. I would that my observations had been better utilized for duty. I have been upon the Atlas, whose giant shoulders were fabled to uphold the globe. I have learned from there, that even to Northern Africa the Goths brought their fueros or bills of right, with their arms, from the cold forests of the North to the sunny plains and rugged mountains of that old granary of the Roman world. I have been amid the Alps, where the spirit of Tell 185 186 SAMUEL S. COX . and liberty is always tempered with mercy, and whose mountains are a monument through a thousand of years of Republican generosity. I have been among the Sierras of Spain, where the patriot Riego — whose hymn is the Marseillaise of the Peninsula — was hunted after he had saved constitutional liberty and favored amnesty to all, — the noblest example of patriotism since the days of Brutus. From the seven hills of Rome, down through the corridors of time, comes the story which Cicero relates from Thucydides ; that a brazen monument was erected by the Thebans to celebrate their victory over the I^acedsemonians, but it was regarded as a memento of civil discord, and the trophy was abolished, because it was not fitting that any record ahould remain of the conflict between Greek and Greek. From the same throne of ancient power come the words which command only commem- oration of foreign conquests and not of domestic calamities ; and that Rome, with her imperial grace, believed that it was wisest to erect a bridge of gold, that civil insurgents should pass back to their allegiance. From the Acropolis at Athens, there is the story of the herald at the Olympic games, who announced the clemency of Rome to the conquered, who had long been subjected to the privations and calamities imposed by the conqueror. The historian says that the Greeks, when the herald announced such unexpected deliverance, wept for joy at the grace which had been bestowed. All these are but subordinate lights around the central light, which came from the mountain whence the great sermon was spoken. Its name is unknown ; its locality has no geography. All we know is that it was "se^tjapart." r ' The mountains of our Scriptures are full of inspiration for our / guidance. Their teachings may well be carried into our political ethics. But it was not from Ararat, which lifted its head first above the flood and received the dove with its olive branch ; not from Sinai, which looks proudly upon three nations and almost three countries and overlooks our kind with its great moral code ; not from Horeb, where Jehovah with his fearful hand covered his face that man might not look upon his bright- ness ; not from Tabor, where the great transformation was enacted ; not from Pisgah, where Moses made his farewell to the people he had deliv- ered and led so long ; not from Carmel, where the prayer of Elijah was answered in fire ; not from Lebanon, whose cedars were the beauty of earth ; not from the Mount of Olives, which saw the agony of the Saviour ; not from Calvary, at whose great tragedy nature shuddered and the heavens were covered with gloom ; not from one or all of these secu- lar or sacred mountains that our best teaching for duty comes. It comes SAMUEL S. COX 187 from that nameless mountain, set apart, because from it emanated the great and benignant truths of Him who spake as never man spake, j iiefe- is th e ■ feubl tnrg'tgad'ftag : '* Ye have heard in the aforetime, that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. " But I say unto you, I^ove your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. ** That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven : for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. " The spirit of this teaching has no hospitality for test oaths, and asks no compensation for grace. Along with this teaching and to the same good are the teachings of history, patriotism, chivalry, and even economic selfishness. Yet these teachers are often blind guides to duty. They are but mole-hills compared with the lofty mountain whose spiritual grandeur brings peace, order and civilization ! When these principles obtain in our hearts, then our legislation will conform to them. When they do obtain their hold in these halls, there will arise a brilliant day-star for America. When they do obtain recogni- tion, we may hail a new advent of that Prince of Peace, whose other advent was chanted by the angelic choir ! In conclusion, sir, let me say that, in comparison with this celestial code, by which we should live and die, how little seem all the contests here about armies, appropriations, riders and coercion, which so exaspe- rate and threaten ! Let our legislation be inspired by the lofty thought from that Judean mountain, and God will care for us. In our imperfec- tions here as legislators let us look aloft, and then His greatness will flow around our incompleteness, and round our restlessness, His rest ! " Then, measures which make for forgiveness, tranquillity and love, like the abolition of hateful oaths and other reminders of our sad and bloody strife, will rise in supernal dignity above the party passions of the day ; and that party which vindicates right against might, freedom against force, popular will against Federal power, rest against unrest, and God's goodness and mercy around and above all, in that sign, conquer. To those in our midst who have the spirit of violence, hate, and unforgiveness, and who delight in pains, penalties, test oaths, bayonets and force, and who would not replace these instruments of turbulence with love, gentleness and forgiveness, my only curse upon such is^ that God Almighty, in His abundant and infinite mercy, may forgive them, for " they know not what they do." \ CARL SCHURZ (1829 ) THE ABLE ADVOCATE OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM MORE than half a century has passed since the European Revo- lution of 1848, which spread throughout the continent, and "^ ended with the exile of many of its ablest and most progressive sons. Prominent among those from Germany who sought the land of liberty beyond the seas was Carl Schurz, who came to the United States in 1852, finding a new home in Wisconsin. In this country he has been free to express his progressive sentiments, and has been very active in political labors. His career here began in 1 856, with speeches in German in favor of Fremont. In 1860, having learned English, he canvassed several States for the election of Lincoln, and w^on a high reputation as an orator. He was rewarded by being appointed Min- ister to Spain, and in 1862 he entered the army as brigadier-general, and fought through two years of the w^ar. Removing to St. Louis in 1868, Missouri sent him to the United States Senate, and under Presi- dent Hayes he served in the Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior. As a public speaker Mr. Schurz is plain and direct in style, not given to ornamental language, yet strong and effective. He is an able writer, his "Life of Henry Clay'^ in especial being regarded as a classic of its kind. He has also written a " Life of Abraham Lincoln.'^ AMNESTY FOR THE CONQUERED [The orations of Carl Schurz cover a wide range of time and subjects. Old as he has grown to-day, he preserves his fluency as a speaker. In selecting from his many speeches, however, we go back to that period after the war, when the question of amnesty for the South was before Congress, and give Schurz's eloquent and humane views upon this subject. The contrast which he pictures between the conditions of the two sections is animated and striking, and his plea for mercy to the subjected one of the most forcible that could be made.] 188 CARL SCHURZ 189 Sir, I have to say a few words about an accusation which Eas~been brought against those who speak in favor of universal amnesty. It is the accusation resorted to, in default of more solid argument, that those who advise amnesty, especially universal amnesty, do so because they have fallen in love wiih the rebels. No, sir, it is not merely for the rebels I plead. We are asked, Shall the rebellion go entirely unpunished? No, sir, it shall not. Neither do I think that the rebellion has gone entirely unpunished. I ask you, had the rebels nothing to lose but their lives and their offices ? Look at it. There was a proud and arrogant aristocracy, planting their feet on the necks of the laboring people, and pretending to be the born rulers of this great republic. They looked down, not only upon their slaves, but also upon the people of the North, with the haughty contempt of self asserting superiority. When their pretentions to rule us all were first successfully disputed, they resolved to destroy this republic, and to build up on the corner-stone of slavery an empire of their own, in which they could hold absolute sway. They made the attempt with the most overwhelmingly confident expectation of certain victory. Then came the Civil War, and after four years of struggle their whole power and pride lay shivered to atoms at our feet, their sons dead b}^ tens of thous- ands on the battlefields of this country, their fields and their homes devas- tated, their fortunes destroyed ; and, more than that, the whole social system in which they had their being, with their hopes and pride, utterly wiped out ; slavery forever abolished, and the slaves themselves created a political power before which they had to bow their heads ; and they, broken, ruined, helpless, and hopeless in the dust before those upon whom they had so haughtily looked down as their vassals and inferiors. Sir, can it be said that the : oellion has gone entirely unpunished ? You may jject that the loyal people, too, were subjected to terrible sufferings ; that their sons, too, were slaughtered by tens of thousands ; that the mourning of countless widows and orphans is still darkening our land ; that we are groaning under terrible burdens which the rebellion has loaded upon us ; and that, therefore, part of the punishment has fallen upon the innocent. And it is certainly true. But look at the difference. We issued from this great conflict as conquerors ; upon the graves of our slain we could lay the wreath of vic- tory ; our widows and orphans, while mourning the loss of their dearest, still remember with proud exultation that the blood of their husbands and fathers was not spilled in vain ; that it flowed for the greatest and holiest and at the same time the most victorious of causes ; and when our people labor in the sweat of their brow to pay the debt which the rebellion has loaded upon us, they do it with the proud consciousness that the heavy 190 CARL, SCHUR^ price they have paid is infinitely overbalanced by the value of the results they have gained ; slavery abolished ; the great American Republic puri- fied of her foulest stain ; the American people no longer a people of masters and slaves, but a people of equal citizens ; the most dangerous element of disturbance and disintegration wiped out from among us, this country put upon the course of harmonious development, greater, more beautiful, mightier than ever in its self-conscious power. And thus, whatever losses, whatever sacrifices, whatever sufferings we may have endured, they appear before us in a blaze of glory. But how do the Southern people stand there ? All they have sacri- ficed, all they have lost, all the blood they have spilled, all the desolation of their homes, all the distress that stares them in the face, all the wreck and ruin they see around them — all for nothing, all for a wicked folly, all for a disastrous infatuation ; the very graves of their slain nothing but monuments of a shadowy delusion ; all their former hopes vanished for- ever ; and the very magniloquence which some of their leaders are still indulging in, nothing but a mocking illustration of their utter discom- fiture ! Ah, sir, if ever human efforts broke down in irretrievable disaster, if ever human pride was humiliated to the dust, if ever human hopes were turned into despair, there you behold them. 1 BENJAMIN HARRISON (I830490J) THE EXEMPLAR OF CHRISTIAN STATESMANSHIP I T IT may be supposed that Benjamin Harrison, twenty-third Presi- I I I dent of the United States, attained this high position through the fact that his grandfather, General William Henry Harri- son, was President before him. Doubtless that fact had its influence in suggesting his name as a suitable one for the presidency. But the leading politicians of the United States are seldom carried away by sentiment. They are too hard-headed for that. They seek to select the man that the people want, and had not the younger Harrison made his mark by ability in statesmanship and fine powers of oratory, his hereditary relation to the elder Harrison would have had no influ- ence upon the nominating convention. At any rate, he was elected President over Cleveland in 1888, and that is all with which we are here concerned, except the counter fact that Cleveland was elected over him in 1892. Defeated in a contest for the governorship of his State in 1876, he was elected to the United States Senate in 1880, and there made the brilliant record that carried him to the presidential chair eight years afterward. He was one of the most polished speakers in public life. INAUGURAL ADDRESS [President Harrison was very ready as an orator, a fact which he conclusively proved during the presidential campaign, his versatility in the numerous speeches made by him being quite remarkable. He never repeated himself, and his subjects were as varied as the days. We cannot, however, offer a better example of his ora- torical powers than the address delivered by him on his inauguration as President. It strikingly states the relative duties of the people and their Executive, and points out the only road by which national greatness can be reached.] There is no constitutional or legal requirement that the President shall take the oath of ofl&ce in the presence of the people, but there is so 191 192 BENJAMIN HARRISON manifest an appropriateness in the public induction to office of the chief executive officer of the nation that from the beginning of the Government the people, to whose service the official oath consecrates the officer, have been called to witness the solemn ceremonial. The oath taken in the presence of the people becomes a mutual covenant. The officer covenants to serve the whole body of the people by a faithful execution of the laws, so that they may be the unfailing defense and security of those who respect and observe them, and that neither wealth, station, nor the power of combinations shall be able to evade their just penalties or to wrest them from a beneficent public purpose to serve the ends of cruelty or selfishness. My promise is spoken; yours unspoken, but not the less real and solemn. The people of every State have here their representatives. Surely I do not misinterpret the spirit of the occasion when I assume .that the whole body of the people covenant with me and with each other to-day to support and defend the Constitution and the union of the States, to yield willing obedience to all the laws and each to every other citizen his equal civil and political rights. Entering thus solemnly into covenant with each other, we may reverently invoke and confidently expect the favor and help of Almighty God — that He will give to me wisdom, strength and fidelity, and to our people a spirit of fraternity and a love of righteousness and peace. This occasion derives peculiar interest from the fact that the presi- dential term, which begins this day, is the twenty-sixth under our Con- stitution. The first inauguration of President Washington took place in New York, where Congress was then sitting, on the thirtieth day of April, 1789, having been deferred by reason of delays attending the organization of Congress and the canvass of the electoral vote. Our people have already worthily observed the centennials of the Declaration of Independence, of the Battle of Yorktown, and of the adoption of the Constitution, and will shortly celebrate in New York the institution of the second great department of our constitutional scheme of government. When the centennial of the institution of the judicial department, by the organization of the Supreme Court, shall have been suitably observed, as I trust it will be, our nation will have fully entered its second century. I will not attempt to note the marvelous and, in a great part, happy contrasts between our country as it steps over the threshold into its second century of organized existence under the Constitution and that weak but wisely ordered young nation that looked undauntedly down the first century, when all its years stretched out before it. Our people will not fail at this time to recall the incidents which accompanied the institution of government under the Constitution, or to BENJAMIN HARRISON 193 find inspiration and guidance in the teachings and example of "Washing- ton and his great associates, and hope and courage in the contrast which thirty-eight populous and prosperous States offer to the thirteen States, weak in everything except courage and the love of liberty, that then fringed our Atlantic seaboard Let us exalt patriotism and moderate party contention. L,et those who would die for the flag on the field of battle give a better proof of their patriotism and a higher glory to their country by promoting fraternity and justice. A party success that is achieved by unfair methods or by practices that partake of revolution is hurtful and evanescent, even from a party standpoint. We should hold our differing opinions in mutual respect, and, having submitted them to the arbitrament of the ballot, should accept an adverse judgment with the same respect that we would have demanded of our opponents if the decision had been in our favor. No other people have a government more worthy of respect and love, or a land so magnificent in extent, so pleasant to look upon, and so full of generous suggestion to enterprise and labor. God has placed upon our head a diadem, and has laid at our feet power and wealth beyond defini- tion or calculation. But we must not forget that we take these gifts upon the condition that justice and mercy shall hold the reins of power, and that the upward avenues of hope shall be free to all the people. I do not mistrust the future. Dangers have been in frequent ambush along our path, but we have uncovered and vanquished them all. Pas- sion has swept some of our communities, but only to give us a new demonstration that the great body of our people are stable, patriotic, and law-abiding. No political party can long pursue advantage at the expense of public honor or by rude and indecent methods, without protest and fatal disaffection in its own body. The peaceful agencies of com- merce are more fully revealing the necessary unity of all our communi- ties, and the increasing intercourse of our people is promoting mutual respect. We shall find unalloyed pleasure in the revelation which our next census will make of the swift development of the great resources of some of the States. Each State will bring its generous contribution to the great aggregate of the nation's increase. And when the harvests from the fields, the cattle from the hills, and the ores from the earth shall have been weighed, counted and valued, we will turn from them all to crown with the highest honor the State that has most promoted education, virtue, justice, and patriotism among its people. 13 WILLIAM McKINLEY (18434901) THE ELOQUENT EXPONENT OF THE AMERICAN TARIFF mN 1865 Abraham Lincoln, forty days after his second inaugura- tion as President of the United States, fell the victim of an assassin's bullet. In 1881, James A. Garfield, four months after his first inauguration as President, met with a similar fate. In 1901, William McKinley, six months after his second inauguration, also fell before the fatal bullet of the assassin. It is a singular fact that the United States, the home of liberty, should have suffered in this way more severely than any of the homes of monarchy beyond the seas. In the case of McKinley there was far less incitement to the murder- ous act than in those of Lincoln and Garfield, whose violent deaths were due to the passions excited by war and reform. But McKinley fell in a time of peace and great prosperity, with scarcely a personal enemy in the whole great republic, and when present at a celebration typical of the vast advance of civilization in America. He fell the victim of a horde of insensate assassins, without home or country, and with no creed but that of death to rulers, whether they be the auto- crats of empires or the elected executives of republics. Virtue and benevolence are no safeguards against such hands, and men supreme in honor and goodness have no better security than those superior only in vice and oppression. William McKinley was a native of Ohio, a regiment of which State he entered as a private in the Civil War, rising in rank to the grade of brevet major by the end of the war. Taking afterward an active part in Republican politics, he was elected to Congress, where he became noted as a leading advocate of protective tariff. His efforts led to the high tariff bill of 1890, which is known by his name. He was subsequently Governor of Ohio, and was nominated and elected 194 WILLIAM Mckinley 195 President of the United States in 1896, and again in 1900, the Spanish- American War and the PhiHppine insurrection making his adminis- tration a notably exciting one. The fatal deed which closed his career took place during a visit to the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, N. Y., death coming to him on September 14, 1901, a week after the anarchist's deadly act. THE AGENCIES OF MODERN PROSPERITY [On September 5, 1901, the day before his fatal wound was received, Presi- dent McKinley delivered before an assembled multitude at the Buffalo Exposition an address which attracted attention throughout the nation, alike from the fact that it was his final one, and that it suggested the growing need of a change in the tariff policy which he had for many years upheld. In view of these facts we give here the salient points of this significant and interesting address.] Expositions are the timekeepers of progress . They record the world 's advancement. They stimulate the energy, enterprise and intellect of the people, and quicken human genius. They go into the home. They broaden and brighten the daily life of the people. They open mighty storehouses of information to the student. Every exposition, great or small, has helped to some onward step. Comparison of ideas is always educational, and as such instructs the brain and hand of man. Friendly rivalry follows, which is the spur to industrial improvement, the inspira- tion to useful invention and to high endeavor in all departments of human activity. It exacts a study of the wants, comforts, and even the whims of the people, and recognizes the efficacy of high quality and new prices to win their favor. The quest for trade is an incentive to men of business to devise, invent, improve and economize in the cost of production. Business life, whether among ourselves, or with other people, is ever a sharp struggle for suc- cess. It will be none the less so in the future. Without competition we would be clinging to the clumsy and antiquated processes of farming and manufacture and the methods of business of long ago, and the twen- tieth would be no further advanced than the eighteenth century. But, though commercial competitors we are, commercial enemies we must not be After all, how near one to the other is every part of the world. Modern inventions have brought into close relation widely separated peo- ples and made them better acquainted. Geographic and political divisions will continue to exist, but distances have been effaced. Swift ships and fast trains are becoming cosmopolitan. They invade fields which a few years ago were impenetrable. The world's products are exchanged as 196 WILLIAM McKINLEY never before, and with increasing transportation facilities come increasing knowledge and larger trade. Prices are fixed with mathematical precision by supply and demand. The world's selling prices are regulated by market and crop reports. We travel greater distances in a shorter space of time, and with more ease, than was ever dreamed of by the fathers. Isolation is no longer possible or desirable. The same important news is read, though in different languages, the same day in all Christen- dom. The telegraph keeps us advised of what is occurring everywhere, and the press foreshadows, with more or less accuracy, the plans and pur- poses of 'nations. Market prices of products and of securities are hourly known in every commercial mart, and the investments of the people extend beyond their own national boundaries into the remotest parts of the earth. Vast transactions are conducted and international exchanges are made by the tick of the cable. Every event of interest is immediately bulletined. The quick gathering and transmission of news, like rapid transit, are of recent origin, and are only made possible by the genius of the inventor and the courage of the investor. It took a special messenger of the Gov- ernment, with every facility known at the time for rapid travel, nineteen days to go from the city of Washington to New Orleans, with a message to General Jackson that the war with England had ceased and a treaty of peace had been signed. How different now ! . . . . At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was not a mile of steam railroad on the globe. Now there are enough miles to make its circuit many times. Then there was not a line of electric telegraph ; now we have a vast mileage traversing all lands and all seas. God and man have linked the nations together. No nation can longer be indiffer- ent to any other. And, as we are brought more and more in touch with each other, the less occasion is therefor misunderstanding and the stronger the disposition, when we have differences, to adjust them in the court of arbitration, the noblest form for the settlement of international disputes. My fellow-citizens, trade statistics indicate that this country is in a state of unexampled prosperity. The figures are almost appalling. They show that we are utilizing our fields and forests and mines, and that we are furnishing profitable employment to the millions of workingmen throughout the United States, bringing comfort and happiness to their homes, and making it possible to lay by savings for old age and dis- ability. , That all the people are participating in this great prosperity is seen in every American community, and shown by the enormous and unprece- dented deposits in our savings banks. Our duty is the care and security WILLIAM McKINLEY 197 of these deposits, and their safe investment demands the highest inlegrity and the best business capacity of those in charge of these depositories of the people's earnings. We have a vast and intricate business, built up through years of toil and struggle* in which every part of the country has its stake, which will not permit of either neglect or undue selfishness. No narrow, sordid policy will subserve it. The greatest skill and wisdom on the part of manufacturers and producers will be required to hold and increase it. Our industrial enterprises, which have grown to such great proportions, affect the homes and occupations of the people and the welfare of the country. Our capacity to produce has developed so enormously, and our pro- ducts have so multiplied, that the problem of more markets requires our urgent and immediate attention. Only a broad and enlightened policy will keep what we have. No other policy will get more. In these times of marvelous business energy and gain we ought to be looking to the future, strengthening the weak places in our industrial and commercial systems, that we may be ready for any storm or strain. By sensible trade arrangements which will not interrupt our home production we shall extend the outlet for our increasing surplus. A sys- tem which provides a mutual exchange of commodities is manifestly essential to the continued and healthful growth of our export trade. We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or nothing. If such a thing were possible it would not be best for us , or for those with whom we deal . We should take from our cus- tomers such of their products as we can use without harm to our indus- tries and labor. Reciprocity is the natural outgrowth of our wonderful industrial development under the domestic policy now firmly established. What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell every- where we can and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor. The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofit- able. A policy of good will and friendly trade relations will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times ; measures of retaliation are not. If, perchance, some of our tariffs are no longer needed for revenue or to encourage and protect our indus- tries at home, why should they not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad? Then, too, we have inadequate steamship service. 198 WILLIAM McKINLEY New lines of steamers have already been put into commission between the Pacific Coast ports of the United States and those on the western coasts of Mexico and Central and South America. These should be fol- lowed up with direct steamship lines between the eastern coast of the United States and South American ports. One of the needs of the times is direct commercial lines from our vast fields of production to the fields of consumption that we have but barely- touched. Next in advantage to having the thing to sell is to have the convenience to carry it to the buyer. We must encourage our mer- chant marine. We must have more ships. They must be under the American flag, built and manned and owned by Americans. These will not only be profitable in a commercial sense ; they will be messengers of peace and amity wherever they go. We must build the Isthmian Canal, which will unite the two oceans and give a straight line of water communication with the western coasts of Central and South America and Mexico. The construction of a Pacific cable cannot be longer postponed Who can tell the new thoughts that have been awakened, the ambi- tions fired and the high achievements that will be wrought through this Exposition ? Gentlemen, let us ever remember that our interest is in accord, not conflict, and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war. We hope that all who are represented here may be moved to higher and nobler effort for their own and the world's good, and that out of this city may come, not only greater commerce and trade for us all, but, more essential than these, relations of mutual respect, con- fidence and friendship which will deepen and endure. Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness and peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peo- ples and powers of earth. ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE (J 862 ^^) THE BRILLIANT INDIANA ORATOR HMONG the younger men who have attained the honor of member- ship in the United States Senate may be named Albert Jeremiah Beveridge, whose elevation to a seat in that distinguished body was a suitable reward for his brilliant oratorical powers and statesman- like abilities. Like so many of our leading legislators, Mr. Beveridge was essentially a self-made man. Born on an Ohio farm, he obtained an education by working his way through DePauw University, for which laudable purpose he took up the honorable calling of a book- agent. His adopted profession was that of the law, in which he became an advocate in many important cases in the courts of Indiana. While still a boy, he had shown himself a ready and eloquent speaker in col- lege contests, and he now employed his skill in oratory in the field of Republican politics, winning so high a position in his party as to be elected to the Senate from Indiana for the term beginning March, 1899. In the summer of 1899, Mr. Beveridge visited Eastern Asia, where he made a thorough study of the relations of the Russians and Chinese in Manchuria, his observations leading to a series of illumin- ating letters which throw new light upon the position and purposes of Russia in Asia. EULOGY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY [At the meeting of the National League of Republican Clubs, held at Chicago in October, 1902, Senator Beveridge made a brief but telling speech, than which we can offer no more characteristic example of his style of oratory. Its occasion gave the cue to its character, which is that of an ardent eulogy of the Republican party, of whose principles Mr. Beveridge is an earnest advocate.] Young blood is Republican blood. It is the blood that believes and builds; the blood of faith and hope and deeds. That is why there is np 199 200 ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE political home for Young Americans except in the Republican party. Young Americans are believers in the Republic's future. They do not think that all the great work has been done. Last year the Superintendent of a great railway system that enters Chicago — himself a penniless, friendless boy w^ho started as a freight handler at 50 cents a day, and who is now only 50 years of age — told me that among the 10,000 men under him he was searching for an Assistant Superintendent equal to the work required. Said he: '' The question is not, Shall I take Brown or Jones or Smith? The question is, Where is the man ?" And that is the question which industry and politics and religion and all the world has asked since the dawn of history, and never asked so earnestly as to-day. " Where is the man?" asks modern society. And the Republican party would have you say : * 'I am he by virtue of my good right hand ! I am he by virtue of days of toil and nights of study ! " Dem- ocracy would have you say in answer : **I am not he, and he does not live. You ask too much You ask for equipment ; I offer you complaint. You ask industry ; I offer you words." Greater America and Republicanism ; little America and Democracy. It is no new story. In the history of every expanding race, its advance has been opposed within itself. In England there were and are little Bng- landers who saw ruin in every forward march of the British Empire that circles the world with civilization. In Russia there were little Russians who resisted the instinct of expansion and held in check for half a cen- tury the flight of the Russian eagles. In Germany there were little Ger- mans who fought the consolidation of the German people. Where are all of them now ? History has efiaced their names from the chronicles of time, as nature destroys all trace of resistance to her fecund and produc- tive forces. So shall it be in America, and the children's children of those who now declare that imperialism is our death, and not our life, will refuse to admit that their fathers advocated such a doctrine ; and they will refuse successfully, because the world will have forgotten the names of those who at the beginning of the twentieth century resisted the Republic's world advance. You cannot name the men who fought Jefferson's purchase of Louisi- ana ; they are forgotten. You cannot name the men who declared that the seizure of Texas and California was the Republic's doom ; they are forgotten. You cannot name the men who declaimed against the folly of taking Alaska; they are forgotten. Yet, when Jefferson's works shall have grown dim, his capture for the Republic of the vast territory which is now the Republic's heart will be his immortal monument. When Seward's irrepressible conflict shall have become a curious phrase, his ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 201 acquisition of Alaska will be his justification. When William McKinley's name remains but a beautiful memory, and his internal counsels shall have lost their interest under changing conditions, the empire of the Pacific and the Gulf which his statesmanship gave us will lift larger and larger as one of the few mountain peaks of permanent and world-wide American statesmanship. THE REPUBLIC NEVER RETREATS [We add, from a recent speech of Senator Beveridge, an eloquent tribute of praise to the great American Republic] The Republic nevei: retreats. Why should it retreat ? The Republic is the highest form of civilization, and civilization must advance. The Republic's young men are the most virile and unwasted of the world, and they pant for enterprise worthy of their power. The Republic's prepara- tion has been the self discipline of a century, and that preparedness has found its task. The Republic's opportunity is as noble as itsstength, and that opportunity is here. The Republic's duty is as sacred as its oppor- tunity is real, and Americans never desert their duty. The Republic could not retreat if it would ; whatever its destiny it must proceed. For the American Republic is a part of the movement of a race — the most masterful race of history — and race movements are not to be stayed by the hand of man. They are mighty answers to Divine commands. Their leaders are not only statesmen of peoples — they are prophets of God. The inherent tendencies of a race are its highest law. They precede and survive all statutes, all constitutions. The first ques- tion real statesmanship asks is : What are the abiding characteristics of my people? From that basis all reasoning may be natural and true. From any other basis all reasoning must be artificial and false. The sovereign tendencies of our race are organization and govern- ment. We govern so well that we govern ourselves. We organize by instinct. Under the flag of England our race builds an empire out of the ends of earth. In Australia it is to-day erecting a nation out of fragments. In America it wove out of segregated settlements that complex and won- derful organization, called the American Republic. Everywhere it builds. Everywhere it governs. Everywhere it administers order and law. Every- where it is the spirit of regulated liberty. Everywhere it obeys that voice not to be denied which bids us strive and rest not, makes of us our brother's keeper and appoints us steward under God of the civilization of the world . Organization means growth. Government means administration. When Washington pleaded with the States to organize into a consolidated people, he was the advocate of perpetual growth. When Abraham Lincoln argued for the indivisibility of the Republic he became the prophet of the 202 ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE Greater Republic. And when they did both, they were but the inter- preters of the tendencies of the race What of England ? England's immortal glory is not Agincourt or Waterloo. It is not her merchandise or commerce. It is Australia, New Zealand and Africa reclaimed. It is India redeemed. It is Egypt, mummy of the nations, touched into modern life. England's imperishable renown is in English science throttling the plague in Calcutta. English law administering order in Bombay. English energy planting an indus- trial civilization from Cairo to the Cape, and English discipline creating soldiers, men and finally citizens, perhaps, even out of the fellaheen of the dead land of the Pharaohs. And yet the liberties of Englishmen were never so secure as now. And that which is England's undying fame has also been her infinite profit, so sure is duty golden in the end. And what of America ? With the twentieth century the real task and true life of the Republic begins. And we are prepared. We have learned restraint from a hundred years of self-control. We are instructed by the experience of others. We are advised and inspired by present example. And our work awaits us. The dominant notes in American history have thus far been self-gov- ernment and internal improvement. But these were not ends only, they were means also. They were modes of preparation. The dominant notes in American life henceforth will be not only self-government and internal development, but also administration and world improvement. It is the arduous but splendid mission of our race. It is ours to govern in the name of civilized liberty. It is ours to administer order and law in the name of human progress. It is ours to chasten that we may be kind, it is ours to cleanse that we may save, it is ours to build that free institutions may finally enter and abide. It is ours to bear the torch of Christianity where midnight has reigned a thousand years. It is ours to reinforce that thin red line which constitutes the outposts of civilization all around the world. JOSEPH R CHOATE (1832 — -) THE DISTINGUISHED BEARER OF A FAMOUS NAME JUFUS CHOATE, the greatest of American legal orators, has a close rival for his fame in a second of his name, Joseph H. Choate, like him a native of New England, though New York City has been the scene of his triumphs at the bar. Hailing from Salem, Massachusetts, for many years he played a leading part in im- portant cases in the courts of New York, where his standing as a faith- ful citizen made him one of the Committee of Seventy that broke up the infamous Tweed Ring. His deep learning in Constitutional law raised him, in 1894, to the responsible position of President of the New Y'ork State Constitutional Convention, and in 1899 he was ap- pointed Ambassador to England, a post which he has filled with dis- tinguished ability, and graced by his fine social and oratorical quali- ties. FARRAGUT AT MOBILE [Choate for years past has been called into service in New York, on all occasions where graceful and telling oratory was desired. One of these was the unveiling of the Saint-Gaudens statue of Farragut, May 25, 1S81, when he thus eloquently pictured our naval hero's gallantry at Mobile.] The battle of Mobile Bay has long since become a favorite topic of history and song. Had not Farragut himself set an example for it at New Orleans, this greatest of all his achievements would have been pro- nounced impossible by the military world, and its perfect success brought all mankind to his feet in admiration and homage. As a signal instance of one man's intrepid courage and quick resolve converting disaster and threatened defeat into overwhelming victory, it had no precedent since Nelson at Copenhagen, defying the orders of his superior officer and refusing to obey the signal to retreat, won a triumph that placed his name 9,niong the immortals. 204 JOSEPH H. CHOATE When Nelson's lieutenant on the Elephant pointed out to him the signal to recall by the commander-in-chief, the battered hero of the Nile clapped his spyglass with his only hand to his blind eye and exclaimed : "I really do not see any signal. Keep mine for closer battle flying. That's the way to answer such signals. Nail mine to the mast ! ' ' and so he went on and won the great day. When the Brooklyn hesitated among the fatal torpedoes in the terrible jaws of Fort Morgan, at the sight of the Tecumseh exploding and sinking with the brave Craven and his ill-fated hundred in her path, it was one of those critical moments on which the destinies of battle hang. Napoleon said it was always the quarters of an hour that decided the fate of a battle ; but here a single minute was to win or lose the day, for when the Brooklyn began to back, the whole line of Federal ships were giving signs of confusion ; while they were in the very mouth of hell itself, the batteries of Fort Morgan making the whole of Mobile Point a living flame. It was the supreme moment of Farragut's life. If he faltered all was lost. If he went on in the torpedo -strewn path of the Tecumseh he might be sailing to his death. It seemed as though Nelson himself were in the maintop of the Hartford. ' * What's the trouble ? ' ' was shouted from the flagship to the Brooklyn, ' ' Torpedoes ! ' ' was the reply. " Damn the torpedoes ! " said Farragut. " Four bells. Captain Drayton ; go ahead full speed." And so he led his fleet to victory Van Tromp sailed up and down the British Channel in sight of the coast with a broom at his masthead, in token of his purpose to sweep his hated rival from the seas. The greatest of English admirals, in his last fight, as he was bearing down upon the enemy, hoisted on his flagship a signal which bore these memorable words : " England expects every man to do his duty ' ' — words which have inspired the courage of Englishmen from that day to this ; but it was reserved for Farragut, as he was bearing down upon the death-dealing batteries of the rebels, to hoist nothing less than himself into the rigging of his flagship, as the living signal of duty done, that the world might see that what England had only expected America had fully realized, and that every man, from the rear-admiral down, was faithful The golden days of peace have come at last, as we hope, for many generations. The great armies of the Republic have long since been dis- banded. Our peerless navy, which at the close of the war might have challenged the combined squadrons of the world, has almost ceased to exist. But still we are safe from attack from within and from without. The memory of the heroes is "the cheap defense of the nation, the nurse of manly sentiments and heroic enterprises forever." Our frigates may JOSEPH H. CHOATE 205 rot in the harbor. Our ironclads may rust in their dock. Butrif-ever again the flag is in peril, invincible armies will swarm upon the land, and steel- clad squadrons leap forth upon the sea to maintain it. If we only teach our children patriotism as the first duty and loyalty as the first virtue, America will be safe in the future as in the past .... When the War of the Rebellion came suddenly upon us, we had a few ancient frigates, a few unseaworthy gunboats, but when it ended our proud and triumphant navy counted seven hundred and sixty vessels of war, of which seventy were ironclads. We can always be sure then of fleets and armies enough. But shall we always have a Grant to lead the one and a Farragut to inspire the other ? Will our future soldiers and sailors share, as theirs almost to the last man shared, their devotion, their courage, and their faith? Yes, in this one condition ; that every American child learns from his cradle, as Farragut learned from his, that his first and last duty is to his country, that to live for her is honor, and to die for her is glory. OUR PILGRIM MOTHERS [In an after-dinner speech made by Mr. Choate in 1880, before the New Eng- land Society in New York, he made a happy response to the toast **Our Pilgrim Mothers," of which we give the most effective and humorous passage.] Mr. Chairman, I believe you said I should say something about the Pilgrim mothers. Well, sir, it is rather late in the evening to venture upon that historic subject. But, for one, I pity them. The occupants of the galleries will bear me witness that even these modern Pilgrims — these Pilgrims with all the modern improvements — how hard it is to put up with their weaknesses, their follies, their tyrannies, their oppressions, their desire of dominion and rule. But when you go back to the stern horrors of the Pilgrim rule, when you contemplate the rugged character of the Pilgrim fathers, why you give credence to what a witty woman of Boston said — she had heard enough of the glories and virtues and suffer- ings of the Pilgrim fathers ; for her part she had a world of sympathy for the Pilgrim mothers, because they not only endured all that the Pilgrim fathers had done, but they also had to endure the Pilgrim fathers to boot. HENRY W. GRADY (I85J4889) THE ORATOR OF THE ^^ NEW SOUTH'' EEW recent oratiocs have had so great an effect in the North as those dehvered by Henry W. Grady, Georgia's young orator, at New York, on " The New South," and at Boston, on " The Future of the Negro.'' Here was a voice from the South which the North was glad to hear, new light shed on two of the greatest problems of the country, and a hand held out for all true patriots to grasp. Unfortunately death carried off this able orator before his powers had reached their prime. Born at Athens, Georgia, in 1851, Grady, on reaching manhood, made journalism his profession, and in 1880 became editor of the Atlanta Constitution^ in whose management he soon gained the reputation of being one of the ablest of American editors. Though he died nine years afterward, he lived long enough to win a fame that extended through all sections of the land, and his speeches did much to allay prejudice and draw the North and South into a closer union. THE NEW SOUTH [The address, from the closing part of which we offer a selection, was delivered in 1887, at the annual banquet of the New England Club in New York. The banquets of this club have often been made the occasion for speeches upon topics of national importance, but none of these have attracted more attention than Grady's eloquent presentation of the new conditions in the South.] There was a South of secession and slavery — that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom — that South is living, breathing, growing every hour. I accept the term, '' The New South," as in no sense disparaging to the Old. Dear to me is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my people. There is a New South, not through protest against the Old, but because of new conditions, new adjustments, and, if you please, new 206 HENRY W. GRADY 207 ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address myself. You have just heard an eloquent description of the triumphant armies of the North, and the grand review at Washington. I ask you, gentlemen, to picture, if you can, the foot-sore soldier who, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was taken, testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds. Having fought to Exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades, and, lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey. What does he find ? — let me ask you, who went to your homes eager to find all the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for four years' sacrifice — what does he find, when he reaches the home he left four years before ? He finds his home in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves freed, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away, his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions gone, without money, credit, employment, material, or training ; and, besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence — the establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves. What does he do — this hero in gray with a heart of gold — does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely, God, who had scourged him in his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity ! As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldiers stepped from the trenches into the furrow ; the horses that had charged upon General Sherman's line marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the har- vest in June. From the ashes left us in 1864, we have raised a brave and beautiful city ; and, somehow or other, we have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes and have builded therein not one single ignoble prejudice or memory. It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however humble, in this work. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the uplifting and upbuilding of the prostrate South — misguided, perhaps, but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave, and generous always. On the record of her social, industrial, and political restoration we await with confidence the verdict of the world. The old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, uncon- scious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The 208 HENRY W. GRADY New South presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular movement — a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface but stronger at the core — a hundred farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every palace ; and a diversified industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age. The new South is enamored of her work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair in her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and pros- perity. As she stands full-statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon an expanding horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because in the inscrutable wis- dom of God her honest purpose was crossed and her brave armies were beaten. This is said in no spirit of time-serving and apology. The South has nothing to take back ; nothing for which she has excuses to make. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hills — a plain white shaft. Deep cut into its shining sides is a name dear to me above the names of men, that of a brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in his patriot's death. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory, which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in His almighty hand and that the American Union was saved from the wreck of war. I stand here, Mr. President, to profess no new loyalty. When General Lee, whose heart was the temple of our hopes and whose arm was clothed with our strength, renewed his allegiance to the' government at Appo- mattox, he spoke from a heart too great to be false, and he spoke for every honest man from Maryland to Texas. From that day to this, Hamilcar has nowhere in the South sworn young Hannibal to hatred and vengeance — but everywhere to loyalty and to love. Witness the soldier standing at the base of a Confederate monument above the graves of his comrades, his empty sleeve tossing in the April wind, adjuring the young men about him to serve as honest and loyal citizens the government against which their fathers fought. This message, delivered from that sacred presence, has gone home to the hearts of my fellows ! And, sir, I declare here, if physical courage be always equal to human aspirations, that they would die, sir, if need be, to restore this Republic their fathers fought to dissolve ! 1 / HENRY CABOT LODGE (J850- HISTORIAN, ORATOR AND STATESMAN EOR many years the name of Henry Cabot Lodge has been known to the American public as that of a versatile and able historian, on the subjects of English and American history. Some of his books are, " Land-Law of the Anglo-Saxons," " English Colonies in America," " Studies in History," and " The Spanish-American War." He was also the well known editor, for a number of years, of the *' North American Heview," and the " International Review." He has long been a prominent political orator in Massachusetts, and was elected to Congress in 1887. In 1893 he was elected to the United States Senate, in which he still ably represents Massachusets by oratory and states- manship. Senator Lodge long since made his mark as a learned, graceful and eloquent speaker, and a statesman of exalted character. A PARTY ON LIVE ISSUES [In the Republican National Convention of 1900, Senator Lodge was chosen as permanent chairman, and delivered a powerful and impressive speech, in which he specially dwelt upon the work of the Republican party during the preceding four years of the McKinley administration. We give some illustrative extracts from this address.] We promised to deal with the Cuban question. We have done so. The long agony of the island is over. Cuba is free. But this great work brought with it events and issues which no man had foreseen, for which no party creed had provided a policy. The crisis came, bringing war in its train. The Republican President and the Republican Congress met the new trial in the old spirit. We fought the war with Spain. The result is history known of all men. We have the perspective now of only a short two years, and yet how clear and bright the great facts stand out, like mountain peaks against the sky, while the gathering darkness of a just oblivion is creeping fast over the low grounds where lie forgotten the 14 209 210 HENRY CABOT LODGE trivial and unimportant things, the criticisms and the fault-findings, which seemed so huge when we still lingered among them. Here they are, these great facts : A war of a hundred days, with many victories and no defeats, with no prisoners taken from us and no advance stayed, with a triumphant out- come startling in its completeness and in its world-wide meaning. Was evera war more justly entered upon, more quickly fought, more fully won, more thorough in its results? Cuba is free. Spain has been driven from the Western Hemisphere. Fresh glory has come to our arms and crowned our flag. It was the work of the American people, but the Republican party was their instrument. Have we not the right to say that, here too, even as in the days of Abraham Lincoln, we have fought a good fight, we have kept the faith, we have finished the work ? War, however, is ever like the sword of Alexander. It cuts the knots. It is a great solvent and brings many results not to be foreseen. The world forces unchained in war perform in hours the work of years of quiet. Spain sued for peace. How was that peace to be made ? The answer to this great question had to be given by the President of the United States. We were victorious in Cuba, in Porto Rico, in the Philip- pines. Should we give those islands back to Spain ? Never ! was the President's reply. Would any American wish that he had answered otherwise ? Should we hand them over to some other power ? Never ! was again the answer. Would our pride and self-respect as a nation have submitted to any other reply ? Should we turn the islands, where we had destroyed all existing sovereignty, loose upon the world to be a prey to domestic anarchy and the helpless spoil of some other nation ? Again the inevitable negative. Again the President answered as the nation he repre- sented would have him answer. He boldly took the islands ; took them knowing well the burden and the responsibility ; took them from a deep sfense of duty to ourselves and others, guided by a just foresight as to our future in the East, and with entire faith in the ability of the American people to grapple with the new task. When future conventions point to the deeds by which the Republican party has made history, they will pro- claim with especial pride that under a Republican Administration the war of 1898 was fought, and that the peace with Spain was the work of William McKinley. So much for the past. We are proud of it, but we do not expect to live upon it, for the Republican party is pre-eminently the party of action, and its march is ever forward. We are not so made that we can be content to retreat or to mark time. The traditions of the early days of our party are sacred to us, and are hostages given to the American people that we will HENRY CABOT LODGE 211 not be unworthy of the great leaders who have gone. The deeds~of^yes- terday are in their turn a proof that what we promise we perform, and that the people who put faith in our declarations in 1896 were not deceived, and may place the same trust in us in 1900. But our pathway has never lain among dead issues, nor have we won our victories and made history by delving into political graveyards. We are the party of to-day, with cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows. The living present is ours, the present of prosperity and activity in business, of good wages and quick payments, of labor employed and capital invested, of sunshine in the market place, and the stir of abounding life in the workshop and on the farm. It is with this that we have replaced the depression, the doubts, the dull business, the low wages, the idle labor, the frightened capital, the dark clouds which overhung industry and agriculture in 1896. This is what we would preserve, so far as sound government and wise legisla- tion can do it. This is what we brought to the country four years ago. This is what we offer now. Again we promise that the protective system shall be maintained, and that our great industrial interests shall go on their way unshaken by the dire fear of tariff agitation and of changing duties. Again we declare that we will guard the national credit, uphold a sound currency based on gold, and keep the wages of the workingman and the enterprise of the man of business free frora that most deadly of all evils, a fluctuating standard of value. The deficit which made this great country in a time of profound peace a borrower of money to meet its current expenditures has been replaced by abundant revenues, bringing a surplus, due alike to prosperity and to wise legislation, so ample that we can now safely promise a large reduction of taxation without imperiling our credit or risking a resort to loans It is on these facts that we shall ask for the support of the American people. What we have done is known , and about what we intend to do there is neither secrecy nor deception. What we promise we will perform. Our old policies are here, alive, successful and full of vigor. Our new policies have been begun, and for them we ask support. When the clouds of im- pending civil war hung dark over the country in 1861 , we took up the great task then laid upon us, and never flinched until we had carried it through to victory. Now, at the dawn of a new century, with new policies and new opportunities opening before us in the bright sunshine of prosperity, we again ask the American people to entrust us with their future. We have profound faith in the people. We do not distrust their capacity of meeting the new responsibilities, even as they met the old, and we shall await with confidence, under the leadership of William McKinley, the verdict of November. JOSEPH B. FORAKER (J 846 ) OHIO'S POPULAR ORATOR STATESMAN mHE life of Governor Foraker has been an active and distinguished one. While a mere boy he fought through the Civil War, entering as private in an Ohio regiment, and leaving as brevet captain. Leaving the army still a boy, he entered college, graduating at Cornell in 1869. Adopting the legal profession, in two years' time he raised himself to the position of Judge of the Superior Court at Cincinnati. He became early known as a prominent Republican poli- tician and orator, and ran four times as candidate for Governor of Ohio. He was twice elected, in 1885 and 1887. In 1897 he was sent to Congress as United States Senator for Ohio. In the Republican National Convention of 1900, at Philadelphia, Senator Foraker, as representing Ohio, McKinley's native State, renominated William McKinley for the Presidency, amid a universal burst of applause. THE UNITED STATES UNDER McKINLEY [In nominating President McKinley for a second term, Senator Foraker took occasion to depict the progress of the country during the preceding McKinley admin- istration, his address full of an appreciative eloquence of which we give the follow- ing illustrative example.] From one end of the land to the other in every mind only one and the same man is thought of for the honor which we are now about to confer, and that man is the first choice of every other man who wishes Republican success next November. On this account it is that it is not necessary for me or any one else to speak for him here or elsewhere. He has already spoken for himself, and to all the world. He has a record replete with brilliant achievements, a record that speaks at once both his performances and highest eulogy. It comprehends both peace and war, and constitutes the most striking 212 JOSEPH B. FORAKER 213 illustration possible of triumphant and inspiring fidelity, and success in the discharge of public duty. Four years ago the American people confided to him their highest and most sacred trust. Behold, with what results. He found the industries of the country paralyzed and prostrated ; he quickened them with a new life that has brought to the American people a prosperity unprecedented in all their history. He found the labor of this country everywhere idle ; he has given it everywhere employment. He found it everywhere in des- pair ; he has made it everywhere prosperous and buoyant with hope. He found the mills and shops and factories and mines everywhere closed ; they are now everywhere open. And while we here deliberate, they are sending their surplus products in commercial conquest to the very ends of the earth. Under his wise guidance our financial standard has been firmly planted high above and beyond assault, and the wild cry of sixteen to one, so full of terror and long hair in 1896, has been put to everlasting sleep alongside of the lost cause, and other cherished Democratic heresies in the catacombs of Ameri- can politics. With a diplomacy never excelled and rarely equaled, he has overcome what at times seemed to be insurmountable difficulties, and has not only opened to us the door of China, but he has advanced our interests in every land. Mr. Chairman, we are not surprised by this, for we anticipated it all. When we nominated him at St. Louis four years ago, we knew he was wise, we knew he was brave, we knew he was patient, we knew he would be faithful and devoted, and we knew that the greatest possible triumphs of peace would be his ; but we then little knew that he would be called upon to encounter also the trials of war. That unusual emergency came. It came unexpectedly — as wars generally come. It came in spite of all he could honorably do to avert it. It came to find the country unprepared for it, but it found him equal to all its extraordinary requirements. And it is no exaggeration to say that in all American history there is no chap- ter more brilliant than that which chronicles, with him as our commander- in-chief, our victory on land and sea. In one hundred days we drove Spain from the Western Hemisphere, girded the earth with our acquisitions and filled the world with the splendor of our power. The American name has a new and greater significance now. Our flag has a new glory. It not only symbolizes human liberty and political equality at home, but it means freedom and independence for the long suffering patriots of Cuba, and complete protection, education, enlighten- ment, uplifting and ultimate local self-government, and the enjoyment of all the blessings of liberty to the millions of Porto Rico and the Philippines. 214 JOSEPH B. FORAKER What we have so gloriously done for ourselves we propose most gener- ously to do for them. We have so declared in the platform we have adopted. A fitting place it is for this party to make such a declaration. Here in this magnificent City of Philadelphia, where the evidences so abound of the rich blessings the Republican party has brought to the American people ; here at the birthplace of the nation, where our own Declaration of Independence was adopted and our Constitution formed ; where Washington and Jefi'erson and Hancockand John Adams, and their illustrious associates, wrought their immortal work ; here where center so many historic memories that stir the blood and flush the cheek, and excite the sentiments of human liberty and patriotism, is indeed a most fitting place for the party of I^incoln and Grant and Garfield and Blaine, the party of union and liberty for all men, to formally dedicate themselves to this great duty. We are now in the midst of its discharge. We could not turn back if we would, and would not if we could. We are on trial before the world, and must triumphantly meet our responsibilities, or ignominiously fail in the presence of mankind. These responsibilities speak to this convention here and now, and command us that we choose to be our candidate and the next President — which is one and the same thing — the best fitted man for the discharge of this great duty in all the Republic. On that point there is no difference of opinion. No man in all the nation is so well qualified for this trust as the great leader under whom the work has been so far conducted. He has the head, he has the heart, he has the special knowledge and the special experience that qualify him beyond all others. And, Mr. Chairman, he has also the stainless reputa- tion and character, and has led the blameless life, that endear him to his countrymen and give to him the confidence, the respect, the admiration, the love and the affection of the whole American people. THOMAS B. REED (1 839-1 902) THE FAMOUS ''SPEAKERS' AND DEBATER mN January, 1890, Congress was treated to a decidedly new sensa- tion. It had long been the custom to block important busi- ness by declaring no quorum, opposing members declining to vote and only those who voted being counted as present. It needed a man of strength and decision to combat this time-honored evil, and Thomas Brackett Reed, the Speaker of the House, proved the man for the occasion. On a bill before the House the Democrats refused to vote on roll call, but Speaker Reed solved the difficulty by counting- enough of them as " present but not voting " to constitute a quorum. The uproar was tremendous, the Democratic members hotly protesting and declaring the proceeding unconstitutional, but Reed held coolly to his point, and his revolutionary action was sustained by the Supreme Court and became an established rule of the House. One result was that Reed obtained the title of the ''Czar" of the House. Four years later, when a Democratic House found itself in a similar dilemma, it escaped by adopting Speal^er Reed's rule. Reed, a native of Portland, Maine, early made himself highly popular by his eloquence as a public speaker, and the logic, sarcasm and humor of his speeches. No man was his superior in repartee, and as a debater he was unsurpassed. He served in the House of Rep- resentatives for over twenty years, being elected Speaker in 1889, and again in 1895 and 1897. In 1896 he was the choice of New England for the Presidency, but on the nomination of McKinley he supported him by some of the ablest speeches of the campaign. He resigned from Congress in 1899 to enter upon the practice of the law in New York City. Henry Hall has said of him : " He is in many respects the greatest all-around man in the United States to-day, of saintless record 215 216 THOMAS B. REED and unimpeachable integrity, bold but safe, brilliant but wise, master- ful but heeding counsel, and a fighter without fear." GIFTS TO LIBERAL INSTITUTIONS [As an example of Thomas B. Reed at his best in oratory we cannot do better than to offer a selection from his address in 1898, on the semi-centennial of Girard College, Philadelphia. Reed's method did not usually reach this elevation in senti- ment and breadth of view, being rather controversial than dignified, and we therefore present this as showing the heights of thought and lucidity of expression of which he was capable.] Six hundred and fifty or seventy years ago, England, which, during the following period of nearly seven centuries, has been the richest nation on the face of the globe, began to establish the two universities which, from the banks of the Cam and the Isis, have sent forth great scholars and priests and statesmen, whose fame is the history of their own country, and whose deeds have been part of the history of every land and sea. During all that long period, reaching back two hundred and fifty years, before it was even dreamed that this great hemisphere existed ; before the world knew that it was swinging in the air and rolling about the sun ; kings and cardinals, nobles and great churchmen, the learned and the pious, began bestowing upon those abodes of scholars their gifts of land and money ; and they have continued their benefactions down to our time. What those universities, with all their colleges and halls teeming with scholars for six hundred years, have done for the progress of civiliza- tion and the good of men, this whole evening could not begin to tell. Even your imaginations cannot, at this moment, create the surprising picture. Nevertheless, the institution at which most of you are, or have been, pupils is at the beginning of a career with which those great univer- sities and their great history may struggle in vain for the palm of the greatest usefulness to the race of man. One single fact will make it evi- dent that this possibility is not the creation of imagination or the product of that boastfulness which America will some day feel herself too great to cherish, but a simple and plain possibility which has the sanction of mathematics, as well as of hope. Although more than six centuries of regal, princely, and pious donations have been poured into the purses of those venerable aids to learning, the munificence of one American citizen to-day afibrds au endowment income equal to that of each university, and, when the full century has completed his work, will afibrd an income superior to .the income of both. When Time has done his perfect work, Stephen Girard, mariner and merchant, may be found to have come nearer immortality THOMAS B. REED 217 than the long procession of kings and cardinals, nobles and statesmen, whose power was mighty in their own days, but who are only on their way to oblivion. I am well aware that this college of orphans, wherein the wisdom of the founder requires facts and things to be taught rather than words and signs, can as yet make no claim to that higher learning so essential to the ultimate progress of the world ; but it has its own mission as great and as high, and one which connects itself more nearly with the practical elevation of mankind. Whether the overruling Providence, of which we talk so much and know so little, has each of us in His kindly care and keeping, we shall better know when our minds have the broader scope which immortality will make possible. But, however men may dispute over individual care, His care over the race as a whole fills all the pages of human history. Unity and progress are the watchwords of the Divine guidance, and no matter how harsh has been the treatment by one man of thousands of men, every great event, or series of events, has been for the good of the race. Were this the proper time, I could show that wars — and wars ought to be banished forever from the face of the earth ; that pestilences — and the time is coming when they will be no more ; that persecutions and inquisitions — and liberty of thought is the richest pearl of life ; that all these things — wars,' pestilences, ajid persecutions — were but helps to the unity of mankind. All things,' including our own natures, bind us together for deep and unrelenting purposes. Think what we should be, who are unlearned and brutish, if the wise, the learned, and the good could separate themselves from us ; were free from our superstitions and vague and foolish fears, and stood loftily by themselves, wrapped in their own superior wisdom. Therefore hath it been wisely ordained that no set of creatures of our race shall be beyond the reach of their helping hand, so lofty that they will not fear our reproaches, or so mighty as to be beyond our reach. If the lofty and the learned do not lift us up, we drag them down. But unity is not the only watchword ; there must be progress also. Since, by a law we cannot evade, we are to keep together, and since we are to progress, we must do it together, and nobody must be left behind. This is not a matter of philosophy ; it is a matter of fact. No progress which did not lift all, ever lifted any. If we let the poison of filthy diseases percolate through the hovels of the poor, death knocks at the palace gates. If we leave to the greater horror of ignorance any portion of our race, the consequences of ignorance strike us all, and there is no escape. We must all move, but we must all keep together. It is only when the rearguard comes up that the vanguard can go on. M^ WILLIAM J. BRYAN (I860 —) THE KNIGHT OF FREE SILVER IN the Democratic National Convention at Chicago in 1896, one of the most remarkable events in the history of Conventions ■^ took place. A young reformer, hardly known in the party, not known at all to the country, rose before the delegates, and in a speech of the most stirring eloquence so carried them from their feet that they lost sight of the claims of all the old and seasoned leaders of the party, and chose this orator of thirty-six as their standard- bearer in the coming campaign. Free silver was a prominent plank in their platform, and free silver was the informing spirit of his oration. It was its closing words that took the convention captive and made William Jennings Bryan the inevitable candidate of the party. During the month that followed its delivery this speech was perhaps more widely read and debated than any other ever made in the United States. Who is this new candidate for the greatest place in the gift of the nation? was asked. The answer was that he was a native of Illinois, born in 1860, who graduated at Illinois College in 1881, studied law in Chicago, and had since practiced in Illinois and Nebraska. He was a member of Congress from 1891 to 1895, was a Democratic nominee for the Senate in 1894, and was the author of the " Silver plank" in the Democratic platform. The People's party nominated him on the same basis, but he was decisively defeated in the election, the indication being that free silver was not w^anted by the majority of the people. In the war of 1898, Bryan raised the Third Nebraska Regiment and became its colonel. In 1900 he again received the nomination of the Democratic and People's parties, and was once more pitted against his old antagonist, William McKinley. As before, Bryan '^stumped" the country, 218 WILLIAM J. BRYAN 219 making a large number of effective speeches, in which the principles and practices of the party in power were severely scored. But his labors proved of no avail, he was defeated by a greater number of electoral votes than before, and once more retired to private life. THE CROSS OF GOLD [" Free Silver," we have said, was the Democratic and Populist battle-cry in 1896, The platform read : " We demand the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to i, without waiting for the aid and consent of any other nation." This declaration of financial principles, penned by Bryan, was in direct opposition to the Republican financial plank, which stated: "We are opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement." Such was the issue upon which the campaign was fought. The speech with which Bryan defended his side of the argument was an acknowledged masterpiece. The burning eloquence, earnestness, zeal and magnetic power of the orator were irresistible. When the closing words were spoken the great audience rose as one man, and he was borne from the stage in a burst of the wildest enthusiasm. His plank in the platform was adopted by a large majority, and carried with it his nomination for the Presi- dency.] And now, my friends, let me come to the paramount issue. If they ask us why it is that we say more on the money question than we say upon the tarijGf question, I reply that, if protection has slain its thousands, the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands. If they ask us why we do not embody in our platform all the things that we believe in, we reply that when we have restored the money of the Constitution all other neces- sary reforms will be possible ; but that until this is done there is no other reform that can be accomplished. Here is the line of battle, and we care not upon which issue they force the fight ; we are prepared to meet them on either issue or on both. If they tell us that the gold standard is the standard of civilization, we reply to them that this, the most enlightened of all the nations of the earth, has never declared for a gold standard and that both the great par- ties this year are declaring against it. If the gold standard is the standard of civilization, why, my friends, should we not have it ? If they come to meet us on that issue we can present the history of our nation. More than that ; we can tell them that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance where the common people of any land have ever declared themselves in favor of the gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have declared for a gold standard, but not where the masses have. Mr. Carlisle said, in 1878, that this was a struggle between " the idle holders of idle capital ' ' and ' ' the struggling masses who produce the 220 WILLIAM J. BRYAN wealth and pay the taxes of the country; " and, my friends, the ques- tion we are to decide is : Upon which side will the Democratic party fight ; upon the side of ' ' the idle holders of idle capital ' ' or upon the side of * * the struggling masses ? ' ' That is the question which the party must answer first, and then it must be answered by each individual here- after. The sympathies of the Democratic party, as shown by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses who have ever been the founda- tion of the Democratic party. There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way through every class which rests upon them. You come to us, and tell us, that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard ; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic ; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country. My friends, we declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth ; and upon that issue we expect to carry every State in the Union. I shall not slander the inhabitants of the fair State of Massachusetts, nor the inhabitants of the State of New York, by saying that, when they are confronted with the proposition, they still declare that this nation is not able to attend to its own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but three millions in number, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation ; shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers ? No, my friends, that will never be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have it until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the utter- most. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and of the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them : You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns ; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1858^) FORCEFUL ADVOCATE OF THE STRENUOUS LIFE HUNTER, Rancher, Cabinet Official, Rough Rider, Governor, Vice-President and President — such is the record of Theo- — ^ dore Rooseyelt's life within the past two decades. Nor is this the whole story. He has been a New York legislator, a candidate for Mayor of New York City, a Civil Service Commissioner, and the head of the New York Police Board. This is a remarkable record for any man within so brief a period ; but it is the record of a remarkable man, of an American in whom the principle of '' Americanism " has reached an extraordinary development. Sleepless energy is the Roosevelt characteristic. With him rest fills only the chinks of life ; while there is anything to be done he is up and doing it with a vigor that knows no obstacles. Whether as a hunter on the western plains or in the Mississippi cane-brakes, a soldier in the Santiago cam- paign, a police commissioner in the slums of New York, or President of the United States, his innate characteristic of strenuous activity displays itself, and if there is anything which Theodore Roosevelt cannot do, it is to let anything pass him without his having a hand in it. And with this physical and mental, there goes the moral activity which is needed to make a fully-rounded man. Honesty of purpose and an elevated sense of public duty are leading features in his character. He may make mistakes ; his passion for settling things may lead him into hasty and ill-advised acts ; but that he means well in every movement no one doubts, and his intelligent moral energy is worth an ocean of policy and expediency which have too often marked the careers of many leaders of public opinion in America and other countries. The true spirit of the Western civiliza- tion has one of its fullest exemplars in Theodore Roosevelt. 221 222 THEODORE ROOSEVELT There is much that is remarkable in the recent story of Roosevelt's life. We find him, when the Spanish-American war broke out, resign- ing his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to take part, as leader of the Hough Riders, in the Santiago campaign. The reputation for unflinching courage and daring made there won him the governor- ship of New York. Breaking here through all the harness of ring methods, he was nominated and elected Vice-President to get rid of him, to " shelve'' him in the Senate chamber. Destiny favored him ; President McKinley was slain and he succeeded to the Presidential office. In this elevated position he pledged himself to carry out the policy of the McKinley administration. This he has faithfully sought . to do, but at the same time has developed a decided n^w policy of his own, one in which party interests have no share, the best good of the whole country being seemingly his overruling thought. Of all the Presidents Theodore Roosevelt promises to be the hardest to control by the leaders of his party. Fortunately he is controlled by integrity, earnestness and public virtue in its highest sense. THE STRENUOUS LIFE « [lu addition to his activity as an official, Theodore Roosevelt has developed into an orator of striking readiness and ability. He has no hesitation in expressing himself openly on all the subjects in which the people of the country are interested, and all he says has in it the pith of thought and judgment. His ideal of administra- tion is not of the silent sort. He does not hesitate to take the nation into his confi- dence. As for his principle of action, it is clearly defined in his work on "The Strenuous Life," a book which has aroused the widest interest, alike on account of its source and its subject. In his address at the Appomattox Day celebration of the Hamilton Club, of Chicago, April lo, 1899, he expressed himself to the same effect. We give the more significant portion of these suggestive remarks.] Gentlemen : In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men ^^ who pre-eminently aijd distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character;! wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but \^ the doctrine of the strenuous life ; the life of toil and effort ; of labor and strife ; to preach that highest form of success which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every ^ THEODORE ROOSEVELT 223 self-respecting American demands from himself, airid from his sons, shall be demanded of the American nation as a wholef,/ Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace, is to be the first consideration in your eyes ; to be the ultimate goal after which they should strive ? You men of Chicago have made this city great ; you men of Illinois have done your share, and more than your share, in making America great ; because you neither preach nor practice such a doctrine. You work yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work. If you are rich, and are v^orth your sale, you will teach your sons that, though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness ; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessit^r of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunera- tive work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research — work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort ; the man who never wrongs his neighbor ; who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail ; but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present, merely means that there has beerk stored-up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only^by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind; whether as a writer or a general ; whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure ; he shows that he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period not of preparation but of mere enjoyment, he shows that he is sim- ply a cumberer of the earth's surface ; and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise. A mere life of ease is not in the end a satisfactory life, and above all it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world. As it is with the individual, so it is with the nation. It is a base un- truth to say that happy is the nation that has no history. Thrice happy is the nation that has' a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeaLJ If in 1861 the men who loved the Union had believed that peace was the end of all things and war and strife the worst of all things, and 224 THEODORE ROOSEVELT had acted up to their belief, we would have saved hundreds of thousands / of lives ; we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. More- ; over, besides saving all the blood and treasure we then lavished, we would have prevented the heart-break of many women, the desolation of many homes ; and we would have spared the country those months of gloom and shame when it seemed as if our armies marched only to defeat. We could have avoided all this suffering simply by shrinking from strife. And if we had thus avoided it we would have shown that we were weak- lings and that we were unfit to stand among the great nations of the j earthjf Thank God for the iron in the blood of our fathers, the men who upheld the wisdom of Lincoln and bore sword or rifle in the armies of Grant ! Let us, the children of the men who proved themselves equal to the mighty days; let us, the children of the men who carried the great Civil War to a triumphant conclusion ; praise the God of our fathers that the ignoble counsels of peace were rejected, that the suffering and loss, the blackness of sorrow and despair, were unflinchingly faced and the years of strife endured ; for in the end the slave was freed, the Union restored, and the mighty American Republic placed once more as a helmeted queen among the nations. We of this generation do not have to face a task such as that our fathers fe^ed, but we have our tasks, and woe to us if we fail to perform them U We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest in I what goes on beyond them ; sunk in a scrambling commercialism ; heed- less of the higher life, the life of aspiration, toil and risk ; busying our- selves only with the wants of our bodies for the day ; until suddenly we j should find, beyond a shadow of question, what China has already found, 1 that in this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwar- like and isolated ease is bound in the end to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities ._j If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill. NATIONAL AND INDUSTRIAL PEACE [New York is the greatest port of entry for the United States. The Chamber of Commerce of New York — an association of the merchants who have given that city its commercial prominence — is a body whose influence is felt in the industrial relations of the entire people. On the nth of November, 1902, this association dedicated to its purposes a new and splendid edifice, the ceremony being witnessed by high dignitaries of the nation and representatives of foreign governments. Chief among the partici- pants was the President of the United States, and his remarks on that occasion were so THEODORE ROOSEVELT 225 significant of his attitude towards nations abroad and his people at home, that we~take pleasure in quoting from them. They bear the same characteristics of earnestness and fairness that are found in all his utterances.] This body stands for the triumphs of peace both abroad and at home. We have passed that stage of national development when depreciation of other peoples is felt as a tribute to our own. We watch the growth and prosperity of other nations, not with hatred or jealousy, but with sincere and friendly good will. I think I can say safely that we have shown by our attitude toward Cuba, by our attitude toward China, that as regards weaker powers our desire is that they may be able to stand alone, and that if they will only show themselves willing to deal honestly and fairly with the rest of mankind we on our side will do all we can to help, not to hin- der them. With the great powers of the world we desire no rivalry that is not honorable to both parties. We wish them well. We believe that the trend of the modern spirit is ever stronger toward peace, not^war; toward friendship, not hostility ; as the normal international attitude.] We are glad, indeed, that we are on good terms with all the other peoples of mankind, and no effort on our part shall be spared to secure a continuance lof. these relations. And remember, gentlemen, that we shall be a potent factor for peace largely in proportion to the way in which we make it evi- dent that our attitude is due, not to weakness, not to inability to defend ourselves, but to a genuine repugnance to wrongdoing, a genuine desire for self-respecting friendship with our neighbors. The voice of the weak- ling or the craven counts for nothing when he. clamors for peace ; but the voice of the just man armed is potent. fWe need to keep In a condition of preparedness, especially as regards our navy, not because we want war ; but because we desire to stand with those whose plea for peace is listened __to with respectful attention. Important though it is that we should have peace abroad, it is even more important that we should have peace at home.^jl You, men of the Chamber of Commerce, to whose efforts we owe so much of our industrial well being, can, and I believe surely will, be influential in helping toward that industrial peace which can obtain in society only when in their various relations employer and employed alike show not merely insistence each upon his own rights, but also regard for the rights of others, an d a full acknowledgment of the interests of the third party — the public. Pit is no easy matter to work out a system or rule of conduct, whether with or without the help of the lawgiver, which shall minimize that jarring and clashing of interests in the industrial world which causes so much indi- vidual irritation and suffering at the present day, and which at times threatens baleful consequences to large portions of the body politic. But 16 226 THEODORE ROOSEVELT fnthe importance of the problem cannot be overestimated, and it deserves to ( receive the careful thought of all m,en such as those whom I am address- ing to-night. There should be no yielding to wrong ; but there should most certainly be not only desire to do right, but a willingness each to try to understand the viewpoint of his fellow, with whom, for weal or for woe, his own fortunes are indissolubly bound. No patent remedy can be devised for the solution of these grave pro-, blems in the industrial world, but we may rest assured that they can be solved at all only if we bring to the solution certain old time virtues, and if we strive to keep out of the solution some of the most familiar and most undesirable of the traits to which mankind has owed untold degra- dation and suffering throughout the ages. Arrogance, suspicion, brutal envy of the well to do, brutal indifference toward those who are not well to do, the hard refusal to consider the rights of others, the foolish refusal to consider the limits of beneficent action, the base appeal to the spirit of selfish greed, whether it take the form of plunder of the fortunate or of oppression of the unfortunate — from these and from all kindred vices this nation must be kept free if it is to remain in its present position in the forefront of the peoples of mankind .\ On the other hand, good will come even out of the present evilsr if w e' face them armed with the old homely virtues ; if we show that we are fearless of soul, cool of head and kindly of heart ; if, without betraying the weakness that cringes before wrong-doing, we yet show by deeds and words our knowledge that in such a government as ours each of us must be in very truth his brother's keeper r The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he snail be able and willing to pull his weight — that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand ; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others^ I BOOK V^ The Distinguished Orators of Canada THE finer examples of oratory In the American countries have been confined to those inhab- ited by EngHsh-speaking peoples. No citizen of the Spanish-American republics seems to have won a world-wide reputation in this art. Though many of them may have breathed *' words that burn," their thoughts have not flamed high enough to be visible afar. In our selections, therefore, we are confined to the two commonwealths, the United States and Canada. While the history of the former has been marked by great exigencies that- called forth noble efforts of oratorical art, the same may be said of the latter. The history of the Dominion, indeed, has been wrought out with no such mighty conflicts as that of the slavery question, leading to civil war ; but it has not passed without its conflicts, internal and external ; its strenuous struggles, which were none the less vital from being confined to parliamen- tary halls, were fought out by able statesmen and orators instead of by the heroes of the tented field. Canada has its Union as has the United States, and it has had to withstand provincial feeling and threats of secession. It has had its bitterness of racial jeal- ousy, its insurrectionary outbreaks, its religious heart- burnings, its struggle between British and American tendencies and influences. Fortunately, the voice of the orator, the wise counsel of the statesman, have healed these dissensions without recourse to harsher measures. An author of the Dominion says : ''Can- ada only needs to be known in order to be great," and foremost among those who have helped to make her great are her orators. 227 JOSEPH HOWE (1 804- J 873) THE BRILLIANT ORATOR OF NOVA SCX)TIA EOR many years the maritime province of Nova Scotia was the abiding place of an orator of striking ability and power. Of Joseph Howe it is justly said, ^' None could touch him in eloquence, logic of argument, force of invective, or brilliancy of rhetoric, and it is a question if the Dominion has ever produced his equal in these respects." His powers were most effectively shown in the merciless invective with which he assailed Sir Colin Campbell and Lord Falkland, two Governors of arbitrary methods — fairly driv- ing them from the province. In 1863, after long legislative service, Howe was made Premier of Nova Scotia. In the subsequent Dominion confederation he led a movement of secession on the part of Nova Scotia, whose people claimed that they had been carried 'into the Union by a trick and had been given no opportunity to vote on the act of Union. A compromise, by which Nova Scotia benefited, settled the difficulty, and Howe afterward sat in the Dominion Parliament. In 1873, the year of his death, he was made Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia. CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES [As a favorable example of Howe's oratorical powers — not of the sarcasm and invective in which he excelled — we append the following eloquent extract, in which is clearly shown the essential unity of race and purpose between the Dominion of Canada and the United States.] We are here to determine how best we can draw together, in the bonds of peace, friendship and commercial prosperity, the three great branches of the British family. In the presence of this great theme all petty interests should stand rebuked. We are not dealing with the con- cerns of a city, a province or a state, but with the future of our race in all time to come. 228 JOSEPH JEFFERSON ACTOR AND ORATOR Winkle." from Washington Irving's GreatSto^y. ^^ ^^" JOSEPH HOWE 229 Why should not these three great branches of the family flourish, under different systems of government it may be, but forming one grand whole, proud of a common origin and of their advanced civilization ? The clover lifts its trefoil leaves to the evening dew, yet they draw their nourishment from a single stem. Thus distinct, and yet united, let us live and flourish. Why should we not ? For nearly two thousand years we were one family. Our fathers fought side by side at Hastings, and heard the curfew toll. They fought in the same ranks for the sepulchre of our Saviour. In the earlier and later civil wars, we can wear our white and red roses without a blush, and glory in the principles those conflicts established. Our common ancestors won the great Charter and the Bill of Rights; established free Parliaments, the Habeas Corpus, and Trial by Jury. Our Jurisprudence comes down from Coke and Mansfield to Mar- shall and Story, rich in knowledge and experience which no man can divide. From Chaucer to Shakespeare our literature is a common inheri- tance. Tennyson and Longfellow write in one language, which is enriched by the genius developed on either side of the Atlantic. In the great nav- igators from Cortereal to Hudson, and in all their '^ moving accidents by flood and field," we have a common interest. On this side of the sea we have been largely reinforced both by the Germans and French ; there is strength in both elements. The Germans gave to us the sovereigns who established our freedom, and they give to you industry, intelligence and thrift ; and the French, who have distin- guished themselves in arts and arms for centuries, now strengthen the Provinces which the fortune of war decided they could not control. But it may be said we have been divided by two wars. What then ? The noble St. Lawrence is split in two places — by Goat Island and Anti- costi — ^but it comes down to us from the same springs in the same moun- tain sides ; its waters sweep together past the pictured rocks of Lake Superior, and encircle in their loving embrace the shores of Huron and Michigan. They are divided at Niagara Falls as we were at the Revolu- tionary War, but they come together again on the peaceful bosom of Ontario. Again they are divided on their passage to the sea; but who thinks of divisions when they lift the keels of commerce, or when, drawn up to heaven, they form the rainbow or the cloud? .... I see around the door the flags of the two countries. United as they are there, I would have them draped together, fold within fold, and let * ' Their varying tints unite, And form in Heaven's light, One arch of peace. ' ' SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD (J8J5-I89I) THE *' PERPETUAL PREMIERS' OF THE DOMINION NO other man has played so great a part in Canada as Sir John Alexander Macdonald, in a measure before and notably since -^ the confederation of its provinces. It was the leading pur- pose of his life to found on the vast Canadian domain a mighty and powerful state, by the union of its peoples and provinces, and this union he succeeded in accomplishing. From 1844 to the end of his career he was the most conspicuous figure in the Canadian Assembly and the Dominion Parliament. The united Canada of to-day is very largely the fruit of his labors. The first government for the new Dominion was formed by him in 1867, and from that time until his death, with only a five years' intermission, he retained the premier- ship. Another of the great services which Canada owes to him is the Canadian Pacific Railway, one of the most magnificent engineering enterprises on the continent, which runs through some of the grandest scenery in the \vorld, and which has aided w^onderfully in cementing into one the far-separated members of the Dominion confederacy. THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON [The treaty of Washington, concluded in 1871, was the greatest diplomatic event in Macdonald 's career. By it were settled the questions of the fisheries and various other subjects of acrimonious debate between the Dominion and the United States. In this Macdonald had to fight his way not alone against the Washington diplomats, but also against his British colleagues, and it was with the greatest difficulty he obtained a treaty at all. On his return to Canada he was received as John Jay was in the United States after the treaty of 1794. Men called him a Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold in one, and years passed before he received the credit he had well earned by his judicious and patriotic efforts. His speech before the Canadian Parlia- ment on this subject was the most eloquent ever heard from his lips. We give an extract from the peroration of this able address.] 230 SIR JOHN MACDONALD 231 I shall now move the first reading of this bill, and I shall simply sum up my remarks by sajdng that with respect to the treaty I consider that every portion of it is unobjectionable to the country, unless the articles connected with the fisheries may be considered objectionable. With respect to those articles, I ask this House fully and calmly to consider the circumstances, and I believe, if they fully consider the situation, that they will say it is for the good of Canada that those articles should be ratified. Reject the treaty, and you do not get reciprocity ; reject the treaty, and you leave the fishermen of the Maritime Provinces at the mercy of the Americans ; reject the treaty, and you will leave the mer- chants engaged in that trade off from the American market : reject the treaty, and you will have a large annual expenditure in keeping up a marine police force to protect those fisheries, amounting to about $84,000 per annum ; reject the treaty, and you will have to call upon England to send her fleet and give you both her moral and physical support, although you will not adopt her policy ; reject the treaty, and you will find that the bad feeling which formerly and until lately existed in the United States against England will be transferred to Canada ; that the United States will say, and say justly: "Here, where two great nations like England and the United States have settled all their differences and all their quarrels upon a perpetual basis, these happy results are to be frus- trated and endangered by the Canadian people, because they have not got the value of their fish for ten years." It has been said by the honorable gentleman on my left (Mr. Howe) , in his speech to the Young Men's Christian Association, that England had sacrificed the interests of Canada. If England has sacrificed the interests of Canada, what sacrifice has she not made in the cause of peace ? Has she not, for the sake of peace between these two great nations, ren- dered herself liable, leaving out all indirect claims, to pay millions out of her own treasury ? Has she not made all this sacrifice, which only Eng- lishmen and English statesmen know, for the sake of peace — and for whose sake has she made it ? Has she not made it principally for the sake of Canada ? Let Canada be severed from England, let England not be responsible to us, and for us, and what could the United States do to England ? Let England withdraw herself into her shell, and what can the United States do ? England has got the supremacy of the sea — she is impregnable in every point but one, and that point is Canada ; and if England does call on us to make a financial sacrifice ; does find it for the good of the empire that we, England's first colony, should sacrifice some- thing ; I say that we would be unworthy of our proud position if we were not prepared to do so. 232 SIR JOHN MACDONALD I hope to live to see the day, and if I do not that my son may be spared to see Canada the right arm of England, to see Canada a powerful auxiliary to the empire, — not as now a cause of anxiety and a source of danger. And I think that if we are worthy to hold that position as the right arm of England, we should not object to a sacrifice of this kind when so great an object is attained, and the object is a great and lasting one. It is said that amities between nations cannot be perpetual ; but I say that this treaty, which has gone through so many difl&culties and dan- gers, if it is carried into effect, removes almost all possibility of war. If ever there was an irritating cause of war, it was from the occurrences aris- ing out of the escape of those vessels, and when we see the United States people and Government forget this irritation, forget those occurrences, and submit such a question to arbitration, to the arbitration of a disin- terested tribunal, they have established a principle which can never be forgotten in this world. No future question is ever likely to arise that will cause such irritation as the escape of the Alabama did, and if they could be got to agree to leave such a matter to the peaceful arbitrament of a friendly power, what future cause ot quarrel can, in the imagination of man, occur that will not bear the same pacific solution that is sought for in this ? I believe that this treaty is an epoch in the history of civiliza- tion ; that it will set an example to the wide world that must be followed ; and with the growth of the great Anglo-Saxon family, and with the development of that mighty nation to the south of us, I believe that the principle of arbitration will be advocated and adopted as the sole princi- ple of settlement of differences between the English-speaking peoples, and that it will have a moral influence on the world. GEORGE BROWN (J8t84880) JOURNALIST, STATESMAN AND DIPLOMAT DIKE many of the Canadian leaders, George Brown was born on the island of Great Britain, Edinburgh being his natal home. He became a journalist in New York in 1838, and from there drifted to Canada, where, in 1844, he founded the Toronto Globe. Of this he remained the proprietor until his death, which was due to a wound received from a discharged employee of the paper. Brown's legislative career began in the Parliament of Upper Canada, of which for a short time in 1857 he was the premier. In 1873 he was elected to the Dominion Senate, and in the following year served at Wash- ington as a plenipotentiary from Canada. Politically he was one of the principal leaders of the Reform or Liberal party, whose principles he advocated with voice and pen. THE GREATNESS AND DESTINY OF CANADA [Hopkins's ** Story of the Dominion " in speaking of the conference of the "Fathers of Confederation " at Quebec, in 1864, tells us that " George Brown, the energetic, forceful personality, the honest lover of his country, the bitter antagonist of French or Catholic supremacy in its affairs, was present with a sincere desire to advance the cause of union which, for some years, he had been most earnestly advo- cating." We give the forceful peroration of his speech before the Canadian Parlia- ment on this important subject.] One hundred years have passed away since the conquest of Quebec, but here we sit, the children of the victor and the vanquished, all avow- ing hearty attachment to the British Crown, all earnestly deliberating how we shall best extend the blessings of British institutions ; how a great people may be established on this continent, in close and hearty connec- tion with Great Britain. Where, sir, in the page of history, shall we find a parallel to this ? Will it not stand as an imperishable monument to the generosity of British rule ? And it is not in Canada alone that this scene 233 234 GEORGE BROWN has been witnessed. Four other colonies are at this moment occupied as we are — declaring their hearty love for the parent State, and deliberating with us how they may best discharge the great duty entrusted to their hands, and give their aid in developing the teeming resources of these vast possessions. And well, Mr. Speaker, may the work we have unitedly proposed rouse the ambition and energy of every true man in British America. Look, sir, at the map of the continent of America. Newfoundland, com- manding the mouth of the noble river that almost cuts our continent in twain, is equal in extent to the Kingdom of Portugal. Cross the straits to the mainland, and you touch the hospitable shores of Nova Scotia, a country as large as the Kingdom of Greece. Then mark the sister Prov- ince of New Brunswick — equal to Denmark and Switzerland combined. Pass up the St. Lawrence to Lower Canada — a country as large as France. Pass on to Upper Canada — twenty thousand square miles larger than Great Britain and Ireland put together. Cross over the continent to the shores of the Pacific, and you are in British Columbia, the land of golden promise — equal in ektent to the Austrian Empire. I speak not now of the vast Indian territories that lie between, greater in extent than the whole soil of Russia ; and that will, ere long, I trust, be opened up to civilization, under the auspices of the British American Confederation. Well, sir, the bold scheme in your hands is nothing less than to gather all these countries into one ; to organize them under one government, with the protection of the British flag, and in heartiest sympathy and affection with our fellow-subjects in the land that gave us birth. Our scheme is to establish a government that will seek to turn the tide of emigration into this northern half of the American continent ; that wilL strive to develop its great national resources, and that will endeavor to maintain liberty, and justice, and Christianity throughout the land. What we propose now is but to lay the foundations of the structure, to set in motion the governmental machinery that will, one day, we trust, extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And we take especial credit to ourselves that the system we have devised, while admirably adapted to our present situation, is capable of gradual and efficient expansion in future years to meet all the purposes contemplated by our scheme. But if hon- orable gentlemen will recall to mind that when the United States seceded from the mother country, and for many years afterwards, their population was not nearly equal to ours at the present moment, that their internal improvements did not then approach to what we have already attained, and that their trade and commerce was not a third of what ours has already reached, I think they will see that the fulfilment of our hopes may GEORGE BROWN 235 not be so very remote as at first sight might be imagined. And they-will be strengthened in that conviction, if they remember that what we propose to do IS to be done with the cordial sympathy and assistance of that great Power of which it is our happiness to form a part. And said I not rightly, Mr. Speaker, that such a scheme is well fitted to fire the ambition and rouse the energy of every member of this House ? Does it not lift us above the petty politics of the past, and present to us high purposes and great interests, that may well call forth all the intellectual ability, and all the energy and enterprise to be found among us ? Sir, the future destiny of these great Provinces may be affected, by the decision we are about to give, to an extent which at this moment we may be unable to estimate. But assuredly the welfare, for many years, of four millions of people hangs on our decision. Shall we then rise equal to the occasion ? Shall we approach this discussion without partisan- ship, and free from every personal feeling but the earnest resolution to discharge, conscientiously, the duty which an overruling Providence has placed upon us ? Sir, it may be that some among us may live to see the day when, as the result of this measure, a great and powerful people shall have grown up in these lands ; when the boundless forest all around us shall have given way to smiling fields and thriving towns, and when one united government, under the British flag, shall extend from shore to shore ; but who could desire to see that day, if he could not recall with satisfaction the part he took in this discussion? Mr. Speaker, I have done. Heave the subject to the conscientious judgment of the House, in the confident expectation and belief that the decision it will render will be worthy of the Parliament of Canada. NICHOLAS FLOOD DAVIN (J 8434 90 J) EDITOR, AUTHOR AND ORATOR elCHOLAS F. DAVIN, connected in his later years with the journalism of Assiniboia, owed his birth to Ireland, while his early career, as a lawyer and journalist, was spent in London. During the Franco-German War he served as war correspondent for the Irish Times and the London Standard. Seeking Canada, he was called to the Ontario bar in 1874, and later to that of the Northwest province, being created Queen's Counsel by the Earl of Derby in 1890. In 1893, he established at Regina the Leader, the pioneer newspaper of Assiniboia. His powers as an orator made him promi- nent in political life, and from 1887 to 1890 he represented Assini- boia in the Dominion House of Commons, being noted as one of the most scholarly men in that body. THE BRITISH COLONIAL EMPIRE [In 1897, during the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebration, Mr. Davin repre- sented Canada at the meeting held in Boston, Massachusetts, in honor of that event, and delivered ttere an eloquent address, suited to the occasion. A selection follows.] This is a magnificent festival ; but, contrary to the rule, it is greater relatively than absolutely. Grand as it is, its grandeur is enhanced when we think that at this moment, not merely in London is the Empire's Queen gathering her children around her, but in great cities in all lands ; in a land like this, which no British heart can heartily call foreign — for what is this great Republic but one of the lion's whelps grown to lionhood and for distinction's sake growing a pair of wings, and calling itself a lion of the air ; and, as we know from a hundred battlefields, when we look at your literature and see your extraordinary power and commercial activity, we conclude that, although you may be an eagle in the air, after all there is a great deal of the British lion about you. In great cities and capitals, under the southern cross, under northern auroral lights, in the eye of the 236 I I||:holA5 flood myinI 5IRJ0HNAMACD0NALD SIR WILFRID LAUl DISTINGUISHED CANADIAN ORATORS These are representative orators of the igth and 20th Centuries, V distinguished both for Parliamentary debates and popular dis- cussions of great national questions. SIR JOHN THOMPSON NICHOLAS FLOOD DAVIN 237 lean white bear, in the light of the midnight sun, under torrid skies every- where in the civilized world — nay, in its uncivilized corners also — wherever British energy and pluck, fortitude and indomitable tenacity have carried British commerce and arms — and where have they not? — everywhere in the civilized world the same feast is held ; in city and jungle ; on mountain and plain ; in lonely remote deserts, or in far-off isles and seas. There ts no clime so inhospitable, there is no tract so dangerous, no isle so little, no sea so lone, but over tower and turret and dome, over scud and sand and palm tree, at this hour, the flag bearing the three crosses of the three great nations of the two heroic isles rises with solemn splendor and sublime signi- ficance ; where it is day the winds of heaven reverently caress its immortal folds, and where it is night the stars salute it as a fellow star Macaulay, led away by a love for effect, pictured a traveler from New Zealand sitting on a broken arch of St. Paul's ; and the great Daniel Web- ster in one of his addresses reflected that if England should pass into decay, the great Republic which was her child, born in storm and bitter- ness and fated to greatness, would preserve her memory, her arts, her language, her love of freedom. England's time cannot come unless her Empire's time should come. Where is the nation, or combination of nations, which could meet this world-wide Empire united to fight ? Instead of the New Zealander sketching the ruins of St. Paul's, we should have the Maori swelling the Imperial army. The men living in the two heroic isles show no decay, and as for their colonial children and brethren, our Toronto Highlanders beat the regulars the other day. In earlier hours of danger we sent the looth regiment to the Imperial camp. We guided the Imperial troops up the Nile. Australia sent her sons to fight, and had arranged for her own naval contingent. South Africa has followed suit. What I see is more and fuller life everywhere. It may be that we shall see despotism and tyranny and barbarism, civilized only in the art of war, combined against this Empire with its fifty millions of English-speaking men and millions of loyal subject races. It may be that we may have to face an Armageddon in which the oceans and seas of the round world will be purple with blood and flame, and it may be that this is not beyond the bounds of possibility — it may be we should succumb. If so, we would, to use language which my gallant friend and his marines and bluejackets will understand, we should fall as they fall and die as our fathers died, with the jack still floating nailed to the mast, leaving a name without a parallel and which never could have a parallel. Much more likely we should send tyranny skulking to its hold, cooped up in narrower bounds, and make the three-crossed flag still more the world's flag of ireedom. All the signs are signs of life ; of expanding material, moral and spiritual power. This Empire will go forward, becoming greater in power and a still greater blessing to mankind. SIR CHARLES TUPPER (I82J - A DISTINGUISHED DOMINION STATESMAN AMONG the statesmen of the Dominion of Canada Sir Charles Tupper has long held a foremost place. Born, the son of a — ^ Baptist minister, at Amhurst, Nova Scotia, he studied medi- cine, and for years practiced as a physician. Entering the field of politics in 1855, his powers as an orator and his statesmanlike ability soon gave him high standing, he becoming Premier of his native province in 1864, President of the Privy Council in 1870, and for years afterward holding various ministries in the Macdonald Cabinet. For a number of years he was High Commissioner for Canada in Eng- land, and in April, 1896, he became Conservative Premier of the Dominion. His term of office was a brief one. In the general elec- tion that followed the Liberals won, and Sir Wilfred Laurier succeeded as Premier. ON THE PROTECTION OF THE FISHERIES [As a strenuous and aggressive orator, of excellent powers of logical argument, Sir Charles Tupper won popular favor and has long been much esteemed. The selec- tion here given is from a speech made by him in the House of Commons, Ottawa, May 12, 1887, in the protection of the Fisheries, which was at that time a matter of controversy between Canada and the United States. After introducing the sub- ject, he continued as follows.] I had the honor of being sent on a confidential mission to Washing- ton by the Governor- General previous to assuming my duties in England in 1884, and had a long and interesting conversation with the late Secre- tary Frelinghuysen on that subject. I may say I regard it is a misfortune that the administration of which he was a member was not returned to power, and that his life had not been spared to carry out what I am certain he was prepared to carry out. The result was that a Democratic President was elected in the United States, and a Democratic administration was 238 i SIR CHARLES TUPPER 239 framed ; but that administration had not, as the honoraole gentlemen know, a majority in the Senate ; and although the Government of the United States in good faith carried out the engagement with the Government of Canada, and sent down a proposal to dispose of this matter by an inter- national commission, their proposal was rejected by the Senate. It was for that reason, and not because I wish to express any preference for one party or the other in the United States, that I said I think it was a mis- fortune that the recommendation of the Democratic President and Gov- ernment had to be acted upon by a Republican Senate. That proposal was rejected, and Canada was forced, as you know, ex necessitate ret, to adopt the policy of temperately and judiciously, but firmly, protecting the rights of Canadian fisherman in Canadian waters ; and I am glad to be able to state that during my term of ofl&ce as High Commissioner in London, where I had constant and frequent intercourse with the great statesmen of both of the political parties in that country in relation to this question, — whatever party was in power, or whatever might be representing the Government — I met the firm and unqualified desire, on the part of Her Majesty's Government, to study carefully what were the undoubted rights of Canada and the Empire ; and I speak of the Governments which represented both the great parties in England, when I say I found on their part the steady and uniform desire and determi- nation firmly to maintain Canada in the assertion of her just and legitimate rights. I believe that, anxious as are Her Majesty's Government — and every- body knows how extremely anxious they are to avoid the slightest cause of difference with the United States — the time is far distant when the Gov- ernment of England will shrink in the slightest degree from giving fair and candid consideration to whatever are the just claims of Canada in relation to that question. Under these circumstances I think we had a right to expect from the Congress of the United States a different course to that which they pur- sued. When the President of the United States sent this appeal to Con- gress for an international commission, what did the people interested in the fisheries say ? They said, " We do not want to have anything to do with Canadian waters ; we want no international commission. The fish have all turned south ; they are coming into our waters ; we do not require to go into Canadian waters at all ; we want no commission, no interna- tional arrangement, but simply to keep ourselves to ourselves, and let the Canadians do the same." I think that is very much to be regretted. I think the interests of that great country and the interests of Canada alike require close commercial relations and extended reciprocal relations. I 240 SIR CHARLES TUPPER have no hesitation in saying so. It would be, in my judgment, a great misfortune if anything were to prevent reciprocal trade arrangements with the United States, which would be, as they were when they existed before, alike beneficial to both countries. We know we were satisfied with reci- procity, but we do not conceal from ourselves, because the statistics of our own country prove it beyond question, that, advantageous as was the Reciprocity Treaty from 1854, for twelve years, to the people of Canada, it was infinitely more advantageous to the people of the United States. But as I say, we were met by the proposal to arm the President with the power of declaring non- intercourse. I do not believe he will put that power into force, and I am strengthened in this belief by the letter which the President of the United States addressed to the parties who communicated with him on the subject, and which showed that that gentleman, armed with this tremendous power, fully recognized the enormous interests that had grown up under that peaceful intercourse between Canada and the United States, and that he was fully alive to that momentous responsibility that would rest upon his shoulders if he should put it in operation That is the solitary cloud now upon the horizon, but it is not without its silver lining. Non -intercourse would not be an unmixed evil. I would deeply deplore it. Every member of the House, and every intelli- gent Canadian, would deeply deplore any interruption of the commercial relations which exist between this country and the United States ; but I cannot forget that, if this policy of non-intercourse were adopted, it would lead to the development of the channels of communication between our- selves ; and that the commerce of Canada, which is to-day building up New York, Boston and Portland, would be carried through exclusively Canadian channels to Canadian ports, and would build up Montreal, Que- bec, St. John and Halifax with a rapidity which the people of this coun- try can scarcely understand. So, looking at this question in all its bearings, while I most earnestly hope that no such policy will be adopted ; while I have not the slightest idea that it will ; I say that should it be adopted, great as is the American Republic, enormous as is their population, they will find that Canada feels that she has as great and as valuable a portion of this North American continent under her management and control and to be developed as that lying to the south of us ; and they will find the people of this country an united land of patriots, who, sinking every other consideration, will say they owe it to their country, they owe it to themselves, to show that there will be no faltering in maintaining to the utmost the undoubted and admitted rights that belong to the people of Canada. GOLDWIN SMITH (t823 ) THE DISTINGUISHED LECTURER AND WRITER [OLDWIN SMITH has dwelt and made his mark in three separ- ate soils. Born in England and educated at Oxford, he was made Professor of Modern History at that university in 1858. Coming to the United States in 1864, he was for four years Professor of English History at Cornell University. His life in Canada began in 1871. Here he made his home in Toronto, engaged in editorial work, authorship and lecturing. As a lecturer Smith ranks high among modern speakers, evincing much breadth and depth of thought and felicity in expression. He was in England an advanced Liberal in politics, and a champion of the American Union during the Civil War. In addition to his productions as an orator, his written works are numerous and valuable. GOD IN THE UNIVERSE [Goldwiu Smith is not among those who think that science has probed to the bottom the mystery of things. Ambitious as are its efforts, and far and deep as it has reached, it still stands only on the threshold of the secret of time and space, with the creative Deity looming in impenetrable vastness beyond its ken. Such is the text of the extract we select from his eloquent and suggestive address delivered at Oxford on the Study of History.] What is the sum of physical science ? Compared with the compre- hensible universe and with conceivable time, not to speak of infinity and eternity, it is the observation of a mere point, the experience of an instant. Are we warranted in founding anything upon such data, except that which we are obliged to found on them, the daily rules and processes necessary for the material life of man ? We call the discoveries of science sublime ; and truly. But the sublimity belongs not to that which they reveal, but to that which they suggest. And that which they suggest is, that through this material glory and beauty, of which we see a little and 16 241 242 GOLDWIN SMITH imagine more, there speaks to us a Being whose nature is akin to ours, and who has made our hearts capable of such converse. Astronomy has its practical uses, without which man's intellect would scarcely rouse itself to those speculations ; but its greatest result is a revelation of immensity pervaded by one informing mind ; and this revelation is made by astronomy only in the same sense in which the telescope reveals the stars to the eye of the astronomer. Science finds no law for the thoughts which, with her aid, are ministered to man by the starry skies. Science can explain the hues of sunset, but she cannot tell from what urns of pain and pleasure its pensiveness is poured. These things are felt by all men, felt the more in proportion as the mind is higher. They are a part of human nature ; and why should they not be as sound a basis for philosophy ' as any other part ? But if they are, the solid wall of material law melts away, and through the whole order of the material world pours the influ- ence, the personal influence, of a spirit corresponding to our own. Again, is it true that the fixed or unvarying is the last revelation of science ? These risings in the scale of created beings, this gradual evolu- tion of planetary systems from their centre, do they bespeak mere creative force ? Do they not rather bespeak something which, for want of an ade- quate word, we must call creative efibrt, corresponding to the effort by which man raises himself and his estate ? And where effort can be discov- ered, does not spirit reign again ? A creature whose sphere of vision is a speck, whose experience is a second, sees the pencil of Raphael moving over the canvas of the Trans- figuration. It sees the pencil moving over its own speck, during its own second of existence, in one particular direction, and it concludes that the formula expressing that direction is the secret of the whole. There is truth as well as vigor in the lines of Pope on the discoveries of Newton : ** Superior beings, when of late they saw A mortal man unfold all Nature's law. Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape, And showed a Newton as we show an ape." If they could not show a Newton as we show an ape, or a Newton's discoveries as we show the feats of apish cunning, it was because Newton was not a mere intellectual power, but a moral being, laboring in the ser- vice of his kind, and because his discoveries were the reward, not of sagacity only, but of virtue. We can imagine a mere organ of vision so constructed by Omnipotence as to see at a glance infinitely more than could be discovered by all the Ne\^^tons, but the animal which possessed that organ would not be higher than the moral being. GOLDWIN SMITH 243 Reason, no doubt, is our appointed guide to truth. The limits set to it by each dogmatist, at the point where it comes into conflict with his dogma, are human limits ; the providential limits we can learn only by dutifully exerting it to the utmost. Yet reason must be impartial in the acceptance of data and in the demand of proof. Facts are not the less facts because they are not facts of sense ; materialism is not necessa- rily enlightenment ; it is possible to be at once chimerical and gross. We may venture, without any ingratitude to science as the source of material benefits and the training school of inductive reason, to doubt whether the great secret of the moral world is likely to be discovered in her laboratory, or to be revealed to those minds which have been imbued only with her thoughts, and trained in her processes alone. Some, indeed, among the men of science who have given us sweeping theories of the world, seem to be not only one-sided in their view of the facts, leav- ing out of sight the phenomena of our moral nature, but to want one of the two faculties necessary for sound investigation. They are acute observers, but bad reasoners. And science must not expect to be exempt from the rules of reasoning. We cannot give credit for evidence which does not exist, because if it existed it would be of a scientific kind ; nor can we pass at a bound from slight and precarious premises to a tre- mendous conclusion , because the conclusion would annihilate the spiritual nature and annul the divine origip of man. SIR WILFRID LAURIER (1 84 1 THE GREAT LIBERAL REFORMER mHE Dominion of Canada, as is well known, has a population made up of two distinct races, the French and the British, representing to-day the successive ownership of that great area. Though these are amalgamated to a considerable extent, their original diversity has by no means disappeared, the French stratum of the population retaining its old language and many of its old ideas. In 1896 the Canadian French became more, intimately affiliated with the Government than ever before, when Wilfrid Laurier, a statesman of their race, was appointed to the high dignity of Premier of the Dominion, the first of his people to hold that position. He was invested with the honor of knighthood in the following year. For many years the Conservative party had been predominant in Canada. With Laurier the Liberals came into power, after a long interregnum. They could not have done so under an abler leader than Sir Wilfrid, who is considered by many as the ablest orator Canada has ever known, and is distinguished " not more by the finished grace of his oratory than by the boldness and authority with which he handled the deep- est political problems " in the Dominion House of Commons. He designates himself " A Liberal of the English school, a pupil of Charles James Fox, Daniel O'Connell, and William Ewart Gladstone." GLADSTONE'S ELEMENTS OF GREATNESS [Laurier's political orations are numerous, and many of them evince great abil- ity. We append from these an example of his powers as a political orator, but we give in precedence his eulogy of Gladstone, as one of the most appreciative, strikinjg^ and brilliant estimates of the character of the great English statesman.] The last half century in which we live has produced many able and strong men, who, in different walks of life, have attracted the attention 244 SIR WILFRID LAURIER 245 of the world at large; but of the men who have illustrated this age, it seems to me that in the eyes of posterity four will outlive and outshine all others — Cavour, Lincoln, Bismarck, and Gladstone. If we look sim- ply at the magnitude of the results obtained, compared with the exiguity of the resources at command; if we remember that out of the small king- dom of Sardinia grew United Italy, we must come to the conclusion that Count Cavour was undoubtedly a statesman of marvelous skill and pre- science. Abraham Lincoln, unknown to fame when he was elected to the presidency, exhibited a power for the government of men which has scarcely been surpassed in any age. He saved the American Union, he enfranchised the black race, and for the task he had to perform he was endowed in some respects almost miraculously. No man ever displayed a greater insight into the motives, the complex motives, which shape the public opinion of a free country, and he possessed almost to the degree of an instinct the supreme quality in a statesman of taking the right deci- sion, taking it at the right moment, and expressing it in language of incom- parable felicity. Prince Bismarck was the embodiment of resolute common sense, unflinching determination, relentless strength, moving onward to his end, and crushing everything in his way as unconcernedly as fate itself. Mr. Gladstone undoubtedly excelled every one of these men. He had in his person a combination of varied powers of the human intellect rarely to be found in one single individual. He had the imaginative fancy, the poetic conception of things, in which Count Cavour was defi- cient. He had the aptitude for business, the financial ability, which Lin- coln never exhibited. He had the lofty impulses, the generous inspira- tions, which Prince Bismarck always discarded, even if he did not treat them with scorn. He was at once an orator, a statesman, a poet, and a man of business. As an orator he stands certainly in the very front rank of orators of his country or any country, of his age or any age. I remember when Louis Blanc was in England, in the days of the Second Empire, he used to write to the press of Paris, and in one of his letters to Le Temps he stated that Mr. Gladstone would undoubtedly have been the foremost ora- tor of England if it were not for the existence of Mr. Bright. It may be admitted, and I think it is admitted generally, that on some occasions Mr. Bright reached heights of grandeur and pathos which even Mr. Gladstone did not attain. But Mr. Gladstone had an ability, a vigor, a fluency which no man in his age, or any age, ever rivaled, or even approached. That is not all. To his marvelous mental powers he added no less mar- velous physical gifts. He had the eye of a god ; the voice of a silver bell ; and the very fire of his eye, the very music of his voice, swept the 1 i 246 SIR WILFRID LAURIER hearts of men even before they had been dazzled by the torrents of his eloquence In a character so complex and diversified one may be asked what was the dominant feature, what was the supreme quality, the one characteristic which marked the nature of the man. Was it his incomparable genius for finance ? Was it his splendid oratorical powers ? Was it his marvelous fecundity of mind ? In my estimation it was not any one of those quali- ties. Great as they were, there was one still more marked ; and, if I have to give my own impression, I would say that the one trait which was dominant in his nature, which marked the man more distinctly than any other, was his intense humanity, his paramount sense of right, his abhor- rence of injustice, wrong, and oppression wherever to be found, or in whatever shape they might show themselves. Injustice, wrong, oppres- sion, acted upon him, as it were, mechanically, and aroused every fibre of his bemg, and, from that moment, to the repairing of the injustice, the undoing of the wrong, and the destruction of the oppression, he gave his mind, his heart, his soul, his whole life, with an energy, with an intensity, with a vigor paralleled in no man unless it be the First Napoleon. RIEL AND THE GOVERNMENT [In the Dominion House of Commons in the early months of 1886 an acri- monious debate took place, in which Mr. Laurier and Mr. Blake took the ground that in the execution for treason of I^ouis Kiel, the half breed insurgent, the Government was seriously culpable, having knowingly and deliberately goaded the half-breeds to desperation and revolt. Sir John Thompson and others as vigorously defended the 11 Government in its action. Mr. Laurier's speech on this subject, delivered March 16, || 1886, is looked upon by many as his best effort and the finest oration ever heard in Canadian Parliament. We give its opening and closing passages.] Mr. Speaker : Since no one on the other side of the House has the courage to continue this debate, I will do so myself. The Minister of Public Works stated the Government were ready and anxious to discuss this question ; and is this an evidence of the courage they pretend to pos- sess ? Sir, in all that has been said so far, and that has fallen from the j lips of honorable gentlemen opposite, there is one thing in which we can ' all agree, and one thing only — we can all agree in the tribute which was paid to the volunteers by the Minister of Public Works when he entered into a defence of the Government. The volunteers had a most painful duty to perform, and they performed it in a most creditable manner to j themselves and the country. Under the uniform of a soldier there is gen- erally to be found a warm and merciful heart. Moreover, our soldiers are citizens who have an interest in this country ; but when they are on duty they know nothing but duty. At the same time it can fairly be presumed SIR WILFRID LAURIER 247 that when on duty the heart feels and the mind thinks ; and it may be fairly presumed that those who were on duty in the Northwest last spring thought and felt as a great soldier, a great king, King Henry IV. of France, thought and felt when engaged in battle for many years of his life, in fighting his rebellious subjects. Whenever his sword inflicted a wound he used these words : ♦* The king strikes thee, God heal thee." It may be presumed that perhaps our soldiers, when fighting the rebellion, were almost animated by a similar spirit, and prayed to God that he would heal the wounds that it was their duty to inflict, and that no more blood should be shed than the blood shed by themselves. The Gov- ernment, however, thought otherwise. The Government thought that the blood shed by the soldiers was not sufficient, but that another life must be sacrificed. We heard the Minister of Public Works attempting to defend the conduct of the Government, and stating that its action in this matter was a stern necessity which duty to our Queen and duty to our country made inevitable. Mr. Speaker, I have yet to learn — and I have not learned it from anything that has fallen from the lips of gentlemen opposite — that duty to Queen and country may ever prevent the exercise of that prerogative of mercy which is the noblest prerogative of the Crown. The language of the honorable gentleman was not the first occasion when responsible or irresponsible advisers of the Crown attempted to delude the public, and perhaps themselves as well, into the belief that duty to Queen and country required blood, when mercy was a possible alternative. When Admiral Byng was sentenced to be shot for no other crime than that of being unfortunate in battle, there were men at the time who said to the King that the interests of the country required that the sentence should be carried out ; though the court, which had convicted him, strongly recommended him to mercy. Those evil counsels prevailed, and the sen- tence was carried out ; but the verdict of history, the verdict of posterity — posterity to which honorable gentlemen now appeal — has declared long ago that the carrying out of the sentence against Admiral Byng was a* judicial murder. And I venture to predict, Mr. Speaker, that the verdict of history will be the same in this instance. In every instance in which a Government has carried out the extreme penalty of the law, when mercy was suggested instead, the verdict has been the same. Sir, in the province to which I belong, and especially amongst the race to which I belong, the execution of Louis Riel has been universally condemned as being the sac- rifice of a life, not to inexorable justice, but to bitter passion and revenge. 248 SIR WILFRID LAURIER Indeed the Government have convinced all the people here mentioned, the half-breeds, the Indians, the white settlers, that their arm is long and strong, and that they are powerful to punish. Would to Heaven that they had taken as much pains to convince them all, half-breeds, Indians and white settlers, of their desire and willingness to do them justice, to treat them fairly. Had they taken as much pains to do right, as they have taken to punish wrong, they never would have had any occasion to con- vince those people that the law cannot be violated with impunity, because the law would never have been violated at all. But to-day, not to speak of those who have lost their lives, our prisons are full of men who, despairing ever to get justice by peace, sought to obtain it by war ; who, despairing of ever being treated like freemen, took their lives in their hands, rather than be treated as slaves. They have suffered a great deal, they are suffering still ; yet their sacrifices will not be without reward. Their leader is in the grave ; they are in durance ; but from their prisons they can see that that justice, that liberty which they sought in vain, and for which they fought not in vain, has at last dawned upon their country. Their fate well illustrates the truth of Byron's invocation to liberty, in the introduction to the *' Pris- oner of Chillon " : Eternal Spirit of the chainless mind ! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty thou art ! For there thy habitation is the heart — The heart which love to thee alone can bind ; And when thy sons to fetters are consigned — To fetters and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom. SIR JOHN THOMPSON (18444894) A NOVA SCOTIAN PREMIER AND ORATOR SIR JOHN THOMPSON, a native of Halifax, Nova Scotia, began his political career in 1877, in the legislature of that province. ' Subsequently entering the Dominion Parliament, he became a prominent and active Conservative member of that body. An earnest and able orator, and a statesman of excellent powers, he won a position of leadership in his party, and in 1892 was called upon to form a Cabinet, and accept the post of Prime Minister of Canada. He died two years later, at Windsor, while on a visit to England. § THE EXECUTION OF RIEL Hk [On March 22, 1886, Thompson made a long and able speech before the House ^^K Commons, in response to those of Laurier and Blake on the subject of the execu- ^™lon of Louis Riel, the half-breed leader of insurrection. As a favorable example of his manner we append some passages from this speech.] Let me call the attention of the House to one point with regard to the fairness of the trial which strikes me as absolutely conclusive. That is, that if there had been an unfair ruling in that trial from beginning to end, either on the application to postpone, or on a question of evidence, or on any part of the judge's charge, it would have been laid open by the prisoner's counsel on their appeal to the Court of Queen's Bench in Mani- toba. The prisoner had an advantage which no man has who is tried in the older Provinces. He had a right to appeal to a Bench of judges sit- ting in another Province, far removed from the agitation in his own coun- try, an appeal on every question of the law and fact involved. Every lawyer knows that a prisoner in the Provinces has only these chances of appeal ; he has his chance of a writ of error, to bring up defects shown by the record, and as regards any objections to the evidence or to the rulings of the judge, the judge may himself decide whether he shall have an appeal or not. Louis Riel was not in that position. He 249 250 SIR JOHN THOMPSON had the right to bring before the Bench in Manitoba every question of the law or fact that arose on his trial , and when he took that appeal, he was represented by the best counsel, I suppose, that this Dominion could have given him, and yet not a single exception was taken to the fairness- of the trial, or the rulings of the judge. The prisoner took this addi- tional step, which is a verj^ rare one in connection with the criminal jus- tice in this country ; he applied to Her Majesty to exercise the prerogative by which Her Majesty, by the advice of Her Privy Council, is able toll entertain an appeal in a case connected with the criminal j urisdiction from i| any one of her subjects in the Empire ; and how is it that in the petition I that was prepared to enable the prisoner to take the judgment of that high tribunal which had to make its report to the fountain of justice itself in the British Dominions — how is it that neither the prisoner's counsel nor himself, nor the petition, nor anything said on trial in his favor, urged j a single objection to the fairness of the trial, the rulings of the judge at that trial, or the way in which the judge had directed the jury ? I should suppose, sir, that that was exceedingly significant. We were told, the other night, that the judgment of the Privy Council said nothing about the procedure of the trial, that it was silent on that point. The signifi- cance of that silence is all we want. When a man has a full opportunity to appeal, and takes his appeal, and makes no complaint about the fair- ness of a ruling which would have given him his liberty if he could establish its error, I want to know if we need any more than the silence of the able counsel by whom he was advised and represented, to satisfy us that exceptions were not taken in the highest Court of Appeal in the Em- pire for the simple reason that they did not exist. And yet, sir, because we administered in the case of Louis Riel, the judgment which the law pronounced, the confidence of this House is asked to be withdrawn from the Government. I must read from the Win- nepeg Free Press an extract which was read to the House once or twice before, and which I am, therefore, almost ashamed to repeat, but which I i must repeat, because it applies directly to the point in hand, and comes from a newspaper as hostile to this Government as any newspaper in the Dominion. It was published on the 17th of December, immediately after the execution . Some papers have been accused of inconsistency in advo- cating Riel's execution beforehand, and taking the opposite ground after- wards, but after his execution the Winnipeg Free Press said : " Riel was fairly tried, honestly convicted, laudably condemned, and justly exe- cuted." But, sir, if our confidence in the tribunals themselves be not sufficient, if the fact that the courts of appeal before which the case was taken, ruled SIR JOHN THOMPSON 251 that the trial was fair, and tbat justice had been done, be not sufEclent, I ask honorable gentlemen opposite if, with any sense of candor or fair play, they can ask that this government should be condemned for not changing the sentence on the ground that the trial had been unfair, when there has not been down to this hour a petition or request presented to the Government, either from Louis Riel, from his counsel, from his eccle- siastical superiors, or from any of the advisers or sympathizers he has had throughout this country, for the commutation of the sentence on the ground that the trial was in any sense unfair. And j^et, sir, after the deci- sion of the jury, and the decision of the judge ; after the decision of the Court of Queen's Bench in Manitoba, where, as I have said, he had an extraordinary advantage; and after the disposal of his case before the judiciary committee of the Privy Council ; and without a single utterance from anybody, either himself or any sympathizers, that anything was unfair, this House is asked to carry this resolution on the ground that his trial was unfair, and give what Riel never asked, redress on the ground that he had been unfairly tried. [In regard to the plea of insanity which had been brought forward in Kiel's trial. Sir John, after considering it at some length, concluded as follows :] Upon that subject I might cite at some length, but I refrain from doing so. The celebrated case which was tried in the United States a few years ago, and with relation to which the man who was condemned, if the evidence is to be believed, had a tenfold stronger case on which to base a plea of insanity than Louis Riel. I refer to the case of Guiteau. The treatment which he received at the hands of the law and of the Executive, notwithstanding his strong political and religious delusions, is well known, and met with very slight, if any, condemnation, either in the United States or here. On the 24th of January, 1882, a journal which exercises a great influence in this country, and speaks, or professes to speak, for a political party in this country — the journal which I heard an honorable member declare the other night, penetrated to the utmost recesses of the earth — used this language with regard to the case of Guiteau, and I cite it because it is peculiarly applicable to the case of Riel, although the conductors of the journal do not seem to think so now. Speaking of the comments which an observer might make in Guiteau 's case, they said, and honor- able gentlemen will see as I progress : " If sufficiently credulous to accept the murderer's asseverations as anything more than a piece of arrant hypocrisy, an artifice of his cunning little mind to save his neck from the gallows ; if he could bring himself to credit the wretch with sincerity, he could not resist the inference that the inspiration was from beneath and not from above, and that having done SDt JOHN THOMPSON of tte gaatt advccaoj on eutlu be Ind better be sent as as a doe R;gud Ibrfbe faaas oi hummn jistioe would pennit to of like the IVmnAo GMrwonld in GuitnuBi's sitoation because r, and tieat Kid on a dif fer e nt prin- be a fmdtar in the poiitics of tliis to •^■"^^M^ point in dds btanch of the sub- to Ibc §tA ttat the Indians whom this mar: way cxnd mnidas at Frog Lake, winch qf tigwindloodly farftee ae c ttU onof the supiem e OelawiqEBiKt tbc JmSaas it nM. -eiia?*! in that massacre, not bnt on otlier ground on winch anvlj, that it is abso- bf making a great CEam^ by the inflidioa of sach pun people disfHWHl to dime &om oonmutting it. How id fhe Fkog I«ake inavai re have been punished, if to idbd — and Ae nntssaciewas to them the of ndbcffioB — had csLap ed ? How ooold tiie ptmishment of or any delcncnt effect have been achieved . the " aich tndtnr,"— if tiie " tiidster," as he £d dKm tiieir best seivioe, — was allowed to nntil he c^iose to get lid of bis tem- ', as I haw^e said, to show to to eveiy section of the coontiy, and to ttat the power of the GoTemment in cafy to pnitect, bat to punish. In the of jnslioewifliregjaid tothose tenitodes in partictdar, it of capital pnnishment be called intoplay. ¥< —lii ■ \ Ibil h iiitnTii", Imiix^ i " tin iirrri sitr is Sar-ngoams gum^mma it there, and through the eniorcement of evay laanib of tte law, I ant not ^i g pniWi to be inhumane, or nnmerci- fid, in tbt tmSaasemoA of fkt penalty wfaidi tiie law p rono un ces, bnt in to nMn of tins dass, who time and again have been candidates pcqaUy of tiK law, who have despised mercy wheji it was I would give die Ausmur to ^ipeals for mercy which p roposed to abofiah capital pumshment in France, Vaywdl^letflK BOOK VL The Famous Pulpit Orators of America AMONG the many fidck for oratcmcal ^sphj, none has been nearly so prolific as die pn^Mt, in whidi weekly thousands oC sefmoos aie delivered by men trained to the fullest and most effective powers of expression in this art. In this multitude of cultivated orators it wooki be strange; indeed, if there were not many of superior powers. And their subject, the salvation <^ man, is one that lends itself to fervid and vehenKJit examples of oratory. The pulpit orator who is thoronglily in earnest has a theme not surpassed in its inspiring force by the most revolutit to dis^^ear. In <^erin^ selections from the leading pulpit orators^ therefore; it seems best to take them, as a rule, firom the seen- lar efforts of these ^oquent men. The nHxal force and the trained oratory remain, and with these is associated a living interest in the subject which does not always inhere in that of the printed sermoii. LYMAN BEECHER ( J 775- J 863) ORATOR AND FATHER OF ORATORS AND WRITERS mHE doctrine of heredity in genius finds warrant in the history of the Beecher family, in which the children of a father of distinguished powers in oratory inherited his mental grasp and surpassed him in fame, in oratory and literature. In the first half of the nineteenth century Lyman Beecher was one of the most popular pulpit orators in the land, a zealous and highly successful de- fender in New England of the orthodox faith against the Unitarianism. He was an active and earnest promotor of temperance and other moral issues, and was distinguished for boldness and energy of character. His sermons on temperance had an immense circulation. THE SACREDNESS OF THE SABBATH [As an orator Lyman Beecher was vigorous and at times rose to high exaltation of style. He strongly opposed any weakening of the old bonds of religious observ- ance, as is evinced in the following selection, in which the growing secularization of the Sabbath and other moral delinquencies are eloquently denounced.] The crisis has come. By the people of this generation, by ourselves probably, the amazing question is to be decided, whether the inheritance of our fathers shall be preserved or thrown away ; whether -our Sabbaths shall be a delight or a loathing ; whether the taverns, on that holy day, shall be crowded with drunkards, or the sanctuary of God with humble worshippers ; whether riot and profaneness shall fill our streets, and pov- erty our dwellings, and convicts our jails, and violence our land, or whether industry, and temperance, and righteousness shall be the sta- bility of our times ; whether mild laws shall receive the cheerful submis- sion of freemen , or the iron rod of a tyrant compel the trembling homage of slaves. Be not deceived. Human nature in this state is like human nature everywhere. All actual difference in our favor is adventitious, and the result of our laws, institutions, and habits. It is a moral 254 LYMAN BEECHER ^ 255 influence which, with the blessing of God, has formed a state of society so eminently desirable. The same influence which has formed it is indis- pensable to its preservation. The rocks and hills of New England will remain till the last conflagration. But let the Sabbath be profaned with impunity, the worship of God abandoned, the government and religious instruction of children neglected, and the streams of intemperance be per- mitted to flow, and her glory will depart. The wall of fire will no more surround her, and the munition of rocks will no longer be her defence. If we neglect our duty, and suffer our laws and institutions to go down, we give them up forever. It is easy to relax, easy to retreat, but impossible, when the abomination of desolation has once passed over New England, to rear again the thrown-down altars, and gather again the fragments, and build up the ruins of demolished institutions. Another New England nor we nor our children shall ever see, if this be destroyed. All is lost irretrievably when the landmarks are once removed and the bands which now hold us are once broken. Such institutions, and such a state of society, can be established only by such men as our fathers were, and in such circumstances as they were in. They could not have made a New England in Holland. They made the attempt, but failed. The hand that overturns our laws and altars, is the hand of death unbarring the gate of Pandemonium and letting loose upon our land the crimes and the miseries of hell. If the Most High should stand aloof, and cast not a single ingredient into our cup of trembling, it would seem I to be full of superlative woe. But He will not stand aloof. As we shall have begun an open controversy with Him, He will contend openly with us. And never, since the earth stood, has it been so fearful a thing for nations to fall into the hands of the living God. The day of vengeance is in His heart, the day of judgment has come : the great earthquake which sinks Babylon is shaking the nations, and the waves of the mighty commotion are dashing upon every shore. Is this, then, a time to remove foundations, when the earth itself is shaken ? Is this a time to forfeit the protection of God, when the hearts of men are failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth ? Is this a time to run upon His neck and the thick bosses of His buckler, when the nations are drinking blood, and fainting, and passing away in His wrath ? Is this a time to throw away the shield of faith, when His arrows are drunk with the blood of the slain ? To cut from the anchor of hope, when the clouds are collecting, and the sea and the waves are roaring, and :hunders are uttering their voices, and lightnings blazing in the heavens, .nd the great hail is falling from heaven upon men, and every mountain, , and island is fleeing in dismay from the face of an incensed God ? WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING (J 780- J 842) THE GREAT UNITARIAN ORATOR AND WRITER mN William Ellery Channing, Rhode Island contributed to the American pulpit one of the most brilliant figures that have ever occupied it. To the Unitarian Church he came as a revelation, a leader of unsurpassed eloquence and influence. Not alone as a pulpit orator, did he win distinction, but as a writer as well, his merit in this field being of a very high order. His style, always clear, forcible and elegant, rises at times into strains of the loftiest eloquence. In this direction no American has ever surpassed him. Of his pulpit orations, that on the fall of Napoleon is regarded as the most splendid, while his lectures on Self Culture had a wide circulation. His oratory always charmed his audience, alike for its winning manner and its moral force. THE RIGHTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL [From Channing's works we select two brief examples, as illustrations of his breadth of thought and power of expression ; the first clearly showing the true rela- tions of men to the State ; the second indicating in what respects military genius falls below the highest mental power.] It seems to be thought by some that a man derives all his rights from the nation to which he belongs. They are gifts of the State, and the State may take them away if it will. A man, it is thought, has claims on other men, not as a man, but as an Englishman, an American, or a subject of some other State. He must produce his parchment of citizen- ship before he binds other men to protect him, to respect his free agency, to leave him the use of his powers according to his own will. Local, municipal law is thus made the fountain and measure of rights. The stranger must tell us where he was born, what privileges he enjoyed at home, or no tie links us to one another. 256 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING ^257 In conformity to these views it is thought that when one community declares a man to be a slave, other communities must respect this decree ; that the duties of a foreign nation to an individual are to be determined by a brand set on him on his own shores ; that his relations to the whole race may be affected by the local act of a community, no matter how small or how unjust. This is a terrible doctrine. It strikes a blow at all the rights of human nature. It enables the political body to which we belong, no matter how wicked or weak, to make each of us an outcast from his race. It makes a man nothing in himself. As a man, he has no significance. He is sacred only as far as some State has taken him under his care. Stripped of his nationality, he is at the mercy of all who may incline to lay hold on him. He may be seized, imprisoned, sent to work in galleys or mines, unless some foreign State spreads its shield over him as one of its citizens. The doctrine is as false as it is terrible. Man is not the mere crea- ture of the State. Man is older than nations, and he is to survive nations. ' There is a law of humanity more primitive and divine than the law of the land. He has higher claims than those of a citizen. He has rights which date before all charters of communities ; not conventional, not repealable, but as eternal as the powers and laws of his being. This annihilation of the individual by merging him in the State lies at the foundation of despotism. The nation is too often the grave of the man. This is the more monstrous because the very end of the State, of the organization of the nation, is to secure the individual in all his rights, and especially to secure the rights of the weak. Here is the fundamental idea of political association. In an unorganized society, with no legisla- tion, no tribunal, no empire, rights have no security. Force predomi- nates over rights. This is the grand evil of what is called the state of nature. To repress this, to give right the ascendency of force, this is the grand idea and end of government, of country, of political institutions. I repeat it, for the truth deserves iteration, that all nations are bound to I respect the rights of every human being. This is God's law, as old as the world. No local law can touch it. MILITARY GENIUS— FROM THE ESSAY ON NAPOLEON i The chief work of a general is to apply physical force ; to remove physi- jcal obstructions ; to avail himself of physical aids and advantages ; to act on matter; to overcome rivers, ramparts, mountains, and human muscles; md these are not the highest objects of mind, nor do they demand intelli- gence of the highest order ; and accordingly nothing is more common than 17 258 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING to find men, eminent in this department, who are wanting in the noblest energies of the soul ; in habits of profound and liberal thinking, in imagination and taste, in the capacity of enjoying works of genius, and in large and original views of human nature and society. The office of a great general does not differ widely from that of a great mechanician, whose business it is to frame new combinations of physical forces, to adapt them to new circumstances, and to remove new obstructions. Accordingly great generals, away from the camp, are often no greater men than the mechanician taken from his workshop. In conversation they are often dull. Deep and refined reasonings they cannot comprehend. We know that there are splendid exceptions. Such was Caesar, at once the greatest soldier and the most sagacious statesman of his age, whilst in eloquence and literature, he left behind him almost all, who had devoted themselves exclusively to these pursuits. But such cases are rare. The conqueror of Napoleon, the hero of Waterloo, possesses undoubtedly great military talents; but we do not understand, that his most partial admirers claim for him a place in the highest class of minds. We will not go down for illustration to such men as Nelson, a man great on the deck, but debased by gross vices, and who never pretended to enlargement of intellect. To institute a comparison in point of talent and genius between such men and Milton, Bacon and Shakespeare, is almost an insult to these illustrious names. Who can think of these truly great intelli- gences ; of the range of their minds through heaven and earth ; of their ' deep intuition into the soul ; of their new and glowing combinations of thought ; of the energy with which they grasped, and subjected to their main purpose, the infinite materials of illustration which nature and life afford, — who can think of the form of transcendent beauty and grandeur which they created, or which were rather emanations of their own minds ; of the calm wisdom and fervid imagination which they conjoined ; of the voice of power, in which ^'though dead, they still speak,'* and awaken intellect, sensibility, and genius in both hemispheres, who can think of such men, and not feel the immense inferiority of the most gifted warrior, whose elements of thought are physical forces and physical obstructions, and whose employment is the combination of the lowest class of objects on which a powerful mind can be employed. THEODORE PARKER ( J 8 1 0= J 860) THE FERVENT ORATOR OF EMANCIPATION SIDE by side with Phillips and Garrison in opposition to African slavery should be placed Theodore Parker, to whom the Southern system appeared a tissue of abominations, and who gave all the great powers of his ardent and emotional mind to the advocacy of emancipation of the slaves. A heretic to the prevailing sentiment in this respect, he was equally heretical in his religious views, and aroused much acrimonious criticism by his rationalistic teachings. A native of Lexington, Massachusetts, the place of ori- gin of the Revolutionary War, his whole life was a warfare against .prevailing views and institutions. Entering the Unitarian ministry, he began to preach in 1836. But his studies of German rationalism caused important changes in his theological belief, changes which he made no effort to conceal, and he was soon vigorously opposed by many of his Unitarian brethren. His unusual ability as an orator and thinker, however, brought him an abundant audience, and in 1846 he was regularly installed at the Melodeon, in Boston, where he continued to disseminate what many criticised as plain heresy for the remainder of his life. While performing his duties as a minister, he [Jwas a deep student and for years a highly popular lecturer. But the subject to which he gave the most attention was the iniquity of human slavery, against which for years he fought with all his great [powers of mind, and died on the verge of the success of his opinions. THE GREATNESS AND THE WEAKNESS OF DANIEL WEBSTER [The public life and private character of Webster has never been so set forth, like in its greatness and its weakness, as in the memorable attack made by Parker on le mighty orator after he had passed away. Webster's course of action in regard to ivery the ardent abolitionist could not forgive, and while giving him full credit for 259 260 THEODORE PARKER his wonderful powers of mind and body, he dissected and laid bare the defects of his character and attainments in a remarkably effective manner. It would be difficult to point to a more complete analysis of a human character in a brief space than in the selection here given from Parker's address.] Do men mourn for him, the great man eloquent ? I put on sack- cloth long ago. I mourned for him when he wrote the Creole letter which surprised Ashburton, Briton that he was. I mourned when he spoke the speech of the seventh of March. I mourned when the Fu'gitive Slave Bill passed Congress, and the same cannon that have fired *' minute guns " for him fired also one hundred rounds of joy for the forging of a new fetter for the fugitive's foot. I mourned for him when the kidnap- pers first came to Boston — hated then — now respectable men, the com- panions of princes, enlarging their testimony in the Court. I mourned when my own parishioners fled from the " stripes " of New England to the stars of Old England. I mourned when Ellen Craft fled to my house for shelter and for succor ; and for the first time in all my life, I armed this hand. I mourned when the courthouse was hung in chains ; when Thomas Sims, from his dungeon, sent out his petition for prayers and the churches did not dare to pray. I mourned when I married William and Ellen Craft, and gave them a Bible for their soul, and a sword to keep that soul living and in a living frame. I mourned when the poor outcast in yonder dungeon sent for me to visit him, and' when I took him by the hand that Daniel Webster was chaining in that house. I mourned for Webster when we prayed our prayer and sung our song on L,ong Wharf in the morning's gray. I mourned then ; I shall not cease to mourn. The flags wUl be removed from the streets, the cannon will sound their other notes of joy ; but for me I shall go mourning all my days. I shall refuse to be comforted, and at last I shall lay down my gray hairs with weeping and with sorrow in the grave. Oh, Webster ! Webster ! would God that I had died for thee ! He was a great man, a man of the largest mold, a great body and a great brain ; he seemed made to last a hundred years. Since Socrates, there has seldom been a head so massive, so huge — seldom such a face since the stormy features of Michael Angelo : — '* The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome ' ' — he who sculptured Day and Night into such beautiful forms, — he looked them in his face before he chiseled them into stone. Dupuytren and Cuvier are said to be the only men in our day that have had a brain so vast. Since Charlemagne I think there has not been such a grand figure in all Christendom. A large man, decorous in dress, dignified in deportment THEODORE PARKER 261 he walked as if he felt himself a king. Men from the country, who knew him not, stared at him as he passed through our streets. The coal- heavers and porters of I^ondon looked on him as one of the great forces of the globe ; they recognized a native king. In the Senate of the United States he looked an emperor in that council. Even the majestic Calhoun seemed common compared with him. Clay looked vulgar, and Van Buren but a fox. What a mouth he had ! It was a lion's mouth. Yet there was a sweet grandeur in his smile, and a woman's sweetness when he would. What a brow it was ! What eyes ! like charcoal fire in the bottom of a deep, dark well. His face was rugged with volcanic fires, great passions and great thoughts : ' ' The front of Jove himself ; And eyes like Mars, to threaten and command." Divide the faculties, not bodily, into intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious ; and try him on that scale. His late life shows that he had little religion — somewhat of its lower forms — conventional devoutness, formality of praj^er, " the ordinances of religion " ; but he had not a great man's all-conquering look to God. It is easy to be "devout." The Pharisee was more so than the Publican. It is hard to be moral. * ' Devoutness ' ' took the Priest and the Levite to the temple ; morality the Samaritan to the man fallen among thieves. Men tell us he was religious, and in proof declare that he read the Bible ; thought Job a great epic poem ; quoted Habakkuk from memory, and knew hymns by heart ; and latterly agreed with a New Hampshire divine in all the doctrines of a Christian life. Of the affections he was well provided by nature — though they were little cultivated — very attractable to a few. Those who knew him, loved him tenderly ; and if he hated like a giant, he also loved like a king. Of unimpassioned and unrelated love, there are two chief forms : friendship and philanthropy. Friendship he surely had ; all along the shore men loved him. Men in Boston loved him ; even Washington held loving hearts that worshipped him. Of philanthropy, I cannot claim much for him ; I find it not. Of conscience, it seemed to me he had little ; in his later life exceeding little; his moral sense seemed long besotted ; almost, though not wholly, gone. Hence, though he was often generous, he was not just. P'ree to give as to grasp, he was charitable by instinct, not disinterested on principle. His strength lay not in the religious, nor in the affectional, nor in the moral part of man. His intellect was immense. His power of compre- |hension was vast. He methodized swiftly. But if you look at the forms of intellectual action , you may distribute them into three ^reat modes of 262 THEODORE PARKER force: the understanding, the imagination, and the reason — the under- standing, dealing with details and methods ; the imagination, with beauty, with power to create ; reason, with first principles and universal laws. We must deny to Mr. Webster the great reason. He does not belong to the great men of that department, — the Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Leibnitz, Newton, Descartes, and the other mighties. He seldom grasps a universal law. His measures of expediency for to-day are seldom bot- tomed on universal principles of right which last forever. I cannot assign to him a large imagination. He was not creative of new forms of thought or of beauty ; so he lacks the poetic charm which gladdens the loftiest eloquence. But his understanding was exceedingly great. He acquired readily and retained well ; arranged with ease and skill ; and fluently reproduced. As a scholar he passed for learned in the Senate, where scholars are few ; for a universal man with editors of political and commercial prints. But his learning was narrow in its range, and not very nice in its accuracy. His reach in history and literature was very small for a great man seventy years of age, always associating with able men. To science he seems to have paid scarcely any attention at all. It is a short radius that measures the arc of his historic realm. A few Latin authors whom he loved to quote make up his meagre classic store. He was not a scholar, and it is idle to claim great scholarship for him. As a statesman his lack of what I call the highest reason and imagin- ation continually appears. To the national stock he added no new idea, created out of new thought ; no great maxim, created out of human his- tory and old thought. The great ideas of the time were not born in his' bosom. He organized nothing. There were great ideas of practical value seeking lodgment in the body ; he aided them not. What a sad life was his ! At Portsmouth his house burned down, all uninsured. His wife died, — a loving woman, beautiful and tenderly beloved ! Of several children, all save one have gone before him to the tomb. Sad man ; he lived to build his children's monument ! Do you remember the melancholy spectacle in the street when Major Webster, a victim of the Mexican War, was by his father laid down in yonder tomb, — a daughter, too, but recently laid low ! How poor seemed then the ghastly pageant in the street, — empty and hollow as the muffled drum. For years he has seemed to me like one of the tragic heroes of the Grecian tale, pursued by fate, and latterly — the saddest sight in all this Western World, — widowed of so much he loved, and grasping at what was not only vanity, but the saddest vexation of the heart. I have long mourned for him as no living or departed man. He blasted us with scornful lightning. Him, if I could, I would not blast, but only bless continually and evertnore, HENRY WARD BEECHER (t8I3-I887) PLYMOUTH'S FAMOUS PASTOR AND ORATOR mHE eloquence of the modern pulpit reached its culmination in Henry Ward Beecher, who for forty years made Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, the central point of a great weekly pilgrim- age of the lovers of fine pulpit oratory. In breadth of mind, origin- ality of thought, racy and often humorous expression, underlined with a deep moral and spiritual earnestness, Beecher dwelt unsurpassed. His fame as an orator was not confined to the pulpit. On the lecture platform he was equally great and popular. Impelled by his train- ing, environment, and hatred of all things evil, he entered earnestly into the crusade against slavery, and won the reputation of being one of the greatest, if not distinctively the greatest, orators of the Civil War period. Certainly, no more splendid bursts of oratory than those of Beecher were called forth by the events of this dread conflict. In the cause of temperance he was also noted, and no reform, social or political, was left without his powerful support. LINCOLN DEAD AND A NATION IN GRIEF [Of Beecher's secular orations may especially be named, as among his ablest and most striking efforts, that called forth on the replacing of the flag of on Fort Sumter, and that of two days later (April i6, 1865,) on the death of Lincoln. In the former the note of triumph prevails, in the latter the note of pathos. We append the Lincoln oration as one of the finest examples of elegiac oratory,] In one hour joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam or breath. A sorrow came that swept through the land as huge storms sweep through the forest and field, rolling thunder along the sky, disheveling the flow- ers, daunting every singer in thicket and forest, and pouring blackness and darkness across the land and up the mountains. Did ever so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such boundless feelings ? It was the 263 264 HENRY WARD BEECHER uttermost of joy ; it was the uttermost of sorrow — noon and midnight, without a space between. The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible that at first it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men awakened at midnight by an earthquake and bewildered to find everything that they were accus- tomed to trust wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get straight to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or someone to tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if each would ask the other, * ' Am I awake, or do I dream ?' ' There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged to some one in chief ; this belonged to all. It was each and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as if its first-born were gone. Men were bereaved and walked for days as if a corpse lay unburied in their dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They could speak of nothing but that ; and yet of that they could speak only falteringly. All business was laid aside. Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week ceased to roar. The great Leviathan lay down and was still. Even avarice stood still, and greed was strangely moved to generous sympathy and universal sorrow. Rear to his name monuments, found charitable institutions, and write his name above their lintels ; but no monument will ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow that in a moment swept down lines and parties, and covered up animosities, and in an hour brought a divided people into unity of grief and indivisible fellowship of anguish Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been clothed with new influence. Dead, he speaks to men who now willingly hear what before they refused to listen to. Now his simple and weighty words will be gathered like those of Washington , and your children and your children's children shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and deep wisdom of utterances which in their time passed, in party heat, as idle worlds. Men will receive a new impulse of patriotism for his sake and will guard with zeal the whole country which he loved so well. I swear you, on the altar of his memory, to be more faithful to the country for which he has perished. They will, as they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery against which he warred, and which, in vanquishing him, has made him a martyr and a conqueror. I swear you, by the memory of this martyr, to hate slavery with an unappeasable hatred. They will admire and imitate the firmness of this man, his inflexible conscience for the right, and yet his gentleness, as tender as a woman's, his moderation of spirit, which not all the heat of party could inflame^ nor all the jars f HENRY WARD BEECHER 265 and disturbances of his country shake out of place. I swear you To an emulation of his justice, his moderation and his mercy. You I can comfort ; but how can I speak to that twilight million to whom his name was as the name of an angel of God ? There will be wail- ing in places which no minister shall be able to reach. When, in hovel and in cot, in wood and in wilderness, in the field throughout the South, the dusky children, who looked upon him as that Moses whom God sent before them to lead them out of the land of bondage, learn that he has fallen, who shall comfort them ? O thou Shepherd of Israel, that didst comfort thy people of old, to thy care we commit the helpless, the long- wronged and grieved. And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when alive. The nation rises up at every stage of his coming. Cities and States are his pallbearers, and the cannon beats the hours with solemn progression. Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh. Is Washington dead ? Is Hampden dead ? Is David dead ? Is any man that was ever fit to live dead ? Disenthralled of flesh, and risen in the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be. Pass on, thou that hast overcome. Your sorrows, O people, are his peace. Your bells and bands and muffled drums sound trium- phant in his ear. Wail and weep here ; God made it echo joy and triumph there. Pass on. A CORRUPT PUBLIC SENTIMENT A corrupt public sentiment produces dishonesty. A public sentiment in which dishonesty is not disgraceful ; in which bad men are respectable, are trusted, are honored, are exalted, is a curse to the young. The fever of speculation, the universal derangement of business, the growing laxness of morals are, to an alarming extent, introducing such a state of things. If the shocking stupidity of the public mind to atrocious dishonesties is not aroused ; if good men do not bestir themselves to drag the young from this foul sorcery ; if the relaxed bands of honesty are not tightened, and conscience tutored to a severer morality, our night is at hand — our midnight not far off. Woe to that guilty people who sit down upon broken laws, and wealth saved by injustice ! Woe to a generation fed by the bread of fraud, whose children's inheritance shall be a perpetual memento of their father's unrighteousness ; to whom dishonesty shall be made pleasant by association with the revered memories of father, brother and friend ! But when a whole people, united by a common disregard of justice, conspire to defraud public creditors, and States vie with States in an 266 HENRY WARD BEECHER infamous repudiation of just debts, by open or sinister methods ; and nations exert their sovereignty to protect and dignify the knavery of the commonwealth, then the confusion of domestic affairs has bred a fiend before whose flight honor fades away, and under whose feet the sanctity of truth and the religion of solemn compacts are stamped down and ground into the dirt. Need we ask the cause of growing dishonesty among the young, the increasing untrustworthiness of all agents, when States are seen clothed with the panoply of dishonesty, and nations put on fraud for their garments ? Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defalcations, occurring in such melancholy abundance, have at length ceased to be wonders, and rank with the common accidents of fire and flood. The budget of each week is incomplete without its mob and runaway cashier — its duel and defaulter, and as waves which roll to the shore are lost in those which follow on, so the villainies of each week obliterate the record of the last. Men of notorious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose private habits would disgrace the ditch, are powerful and popular. I have seen a man stained with every sin, except those which required courage ; into whose head I do not think a pure thought has entered for forty years ; in whose heart an honorable feeling would droop from very loneliness ; in evil, he was ripe and rotten ; hoary and depraved in deed, in word, in his present life and in all his past ; evil when by himself, and viler among men ; corrupting to the young ; to domestic fidelity, recreant ; to common honor, a traitor ; to honesty, an outlaw ; to religion, a hypocrite — base in all that is worthy of man and accomplished in whatever is disgraceful, and yet this wretch could go where he would — enter good men's dwellings and purloin their votes. Men would curse him, yet obey him ; hate him, and assist him ; warn their sons against him, and lead them to the polls for him. A public sentiment which produces ignominious knaves cannot breed honest men. We have not yet emerged from a period in which debts were insecure ; the debtor legally protected against the rights of the creditor ; taxes laid, [ not by the requirements of justice, but for political effect, and lowered to \ a dishonest inefficiency, and when thus diminished, not collected ; the ,f citizens resisting their own officers ; officers resigning at the bidding of the fi electors ; the laws of property paralyzed ; bankrupt laws built up, and stay- i; laws unconstitutionally enacted, upon which the courts look with aversion, [j yet fear to deny them lest the wildness of popular opinion should roll back M disdainfully upon the bench to despoil its dignity and prostrate its power, [j General suffering has made us tolerant of general dishonesty, and the gloom [] of our commercial disaster threatens to becon;e the pall gf our morals, ' il EDWIN R CHAPIN (J8J4-J880) A GREAT ADVOCATE OF GREAT THEMES as a popular and eloquent preacher Chapin was unrivaled among the ministers of Unitarianism, and there were few who sur- passed him among those of any denomination in our coun- try. As a public lecturer he was equally popular, being accounted one of the ablest and most attractive of this class. He stood on a par with such famous speakers as Beecher, Phillips and Parker, and made his themes much the same — temperance, abolition, universal peace, and the like. In 1850 he was a member of the Peace Convention at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, and made there a highly effective address. In 1848 he took charge of a church in New York, which grew, by suc- cessive stages, from one of modest size to a great erection, capable of holding the immense congregations that flocked to hear him. He published several volumes of sermons and other works, and in 1872 became editor of the Christian Leader. CHRISTIANITY THE GREAT ELEMENT OF REFORM [From Chapin 's numerous addresses we select some brief passages as illustra- tions of his style and eloquent handling of any subject touched by him. There is an element of picturesqueness in all he says, and his delivery was so effective as to give him great infliience over the minds of his hearers ] The great element of reform is not born of human wisdom, it does not draw its life from human organizations. I find it only in Christianity. " Thy kingdom come ! " There is a sublime and pregnant burden in this prayer. It is the aspiration of every sotil that goes forth in the spirit of reform. For what is the significance of this prayer ? It is a petition that all holy influences would penetrate and subdue and dwell in the heart of man, until he shall think, and speak, and do good from the very neces- sity of his being. So would the institutions of error and wrong crumble 267 268 EDWIN H. CHAPIN and pass away. So would sin die out from the earth ; and the human soul, living in harmony with the divine will, this earth would become like Heaven. It is too late for the reformers to sneer at Christianity ; it is foolishness for them to reject it. In it are enshrined our faith in human progress, our confidence in reform. It is indissolubly connected with all that is hopeful, spiritual, capable, in man. That men have misunder- stood it and perverted it is true. But it is also true that the noblest efforts for human amelioration have come out of it ; have been based upon it. Is it not so ? Come, ye remembered ones, who sleep the sleep of the just ; who took your conduct from the line of Christian philosophy ; come from your tomb, and answer ! Come, Howard, from the gloom of the prison and the taint of the lazar house, and show us what philanthropy can do when imbued with the spirit of Jesus. Come, Eliot, from the thick forest where the red man listens to the Word of Life. Come, Penn, from thy sweet counsel and weaponless victory, and show us what Christian zeal and Christian love can accomplish with the rudest barbarians or the fiercest hearts. Come, Raikes, from thy labors with the ignorant and the poor, and show us with what an eye this faith regards the lowest and least of our race ; and how diligently it labors, — not for the body, not for the rank, but for the plastic soul that is to course the ages of immortality. And ye, who are a great number, — ye nameless ones who have done good in your narrow spheres, content to forego renown on earth and seeking your record in the Record on High, — come and tell us how kindly a spirit, how lofty a purpose, or how strong a courage the religion ye profess can breathe into the poor, the humble, and the weak. Go forth, then, spirit of Christianity, to thy great work of reform ! The past bears witness to thee in the blood of thy martyrs, and the ashes of thy saints and heroes ; the present is hopeful because of thee ; the future shall acknowledge thy omnipotence. THE TRIUMPHS OF LABOR Who can adequately describe the triumphs of labor, urged on by the potent spell of money ? It has extorted the secrets of the universe and trained its forms into myriads of powers of use and beauty. From the bosom of the old creation it has developed anew the creation of industry and art. It has been its task and its glory to overcome obstacles. Moun- tains have been leveled and valleys have been exalted before it. It has broken the rocky soil into fertile glades ; it has crowned the hill tops with verdure, and bound round the very feet of ocean ridges of golden corn. Up from the sunless and hoary deeps, up from the shapeless quarry, it drags its spotless marbles and rears its palaces of pomp. It steals the H EDWm H. CMAPIN 269 stubborn metals from the bowels of the globe, and makes them ductile to its will. It marches steadily on over the swelling flood and through the mountain clefts. It fans its way through the winds of ocean, tramples them in its course, surges and mingles them with flames of fire. Civiliza- tion follows in its path. It achieves grander victories, it weaves more durable trophies, it holds wider sway than the conqueror. His name becomes tainted and his monuments crumble ; but labor converts his red battlefields into gardens and erects monuments significant of better things. It rides in a chariot driven by the wind. It writes with the lightning. It sits crowned as a queen in a thousand cities, and sends up its roar of triumph from a million wheels. It glistens in the fabric of the loom ; it rings and sparkles in the steely hammer ; it glories in the shapes of beauty ; it speaks in words of power ; it makes the sinewy arm strong with liberty, the poor man's heart rich with content, crowns the swarthy and sweat J'- brow with honor, and dignity, and peace. THE HANDWRITING ON T^E WALL Nature is republican. The discoveries of Science are republican. Sir, what are these new forces, steam and electricity, but powers that are leveling all factitious distinctions and forcing the world on to a noble des- tiny ? Have they not already propelled the nineteenth century a thousand years ahead ? What are they but the servitors of the people, and not of a class ? Does not the poor man of to-day ride in a car dragged by forces such as never waited on kings, or drove the wheels of triumphal chariots ? Does he not yoke the lightning, and touch the magnetic nerves of the world ! The steam engine is a democrat. It is the popular heart that throbs in its iron pulses. And the electric telegraph writes upon the walls of despotism, menimeni tekel upharsin I PHILLIPS BROOKS (18354893) BOSTON'S EMINENT BISHOP-ORATOR mN a high rank among America's eminent ecclesiastical orators must be placed Phillips Brooks, who for ten years was one of Philadelphia's favorite speakers, and for nearly a quarter of a century preached the Gospel to highly appreciative audiences in Bos- ton. For the last two years of his life he was the Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts. Brooks had not the wide-spread popularity of Beecher. He lacked the strongly emotional spirit, the raciness, and verbal originality to which the latter owed much of his effect on the public, yet he was one of the most admired pulpit orators of the coun- try during the greater part of his career. He was more polished in style than Beecher, his language of striking simplicity yet always artistic in treatment ; a man of restrained force yet of earnest senti- ment and elevated thought. ^ THE EVIL THAT MEN DO LIVES AFTER THEM *' [Phillips Brooks did not win fame as a great secular orator, as Beecher did. His eminence was won in the pulpit, and confined to the pulpit. We give an exam- ple of his pulpit oratory in which is shown at once his simplicity of style, and the cumulative power by which he made his thoughts effective, and held his audiences in rapt attention.] Tell me you have a sin that you mean to commit this evening that is going to make this night black;' What can keep you from commit- ting that sin ? Suppose you look into its consequences. Suppose the wise man tells you what will be the physical consequences of that sin. You shudder and you shrink, and perhaps you are partially deterred. Suppose you see the glory that might come to you, physical, temporal, spiritual, if you do not commit that sin. The opposite of it shows itself to you — the blessing and the richness in your life. Again there comes a 270 i PHILLIPS BROOKS 271 great power that shall control your lust and wickedness. Suppose there comes to you something even deeper than that, no consequence on con- science at all, but simply an abhorrence for the thing, so that your whole nature shrinks from it as the nature of God shrinks from a sin that is pol- luting, and filthy and corrupt and evil. They are all great powers. Let us thank God for them all. He knows that we are weak enough to need every power that can possibly be brought to bear upon our feeble lives ; but if, along with all of them, there could come this other power, if along with them there could come the certainty that if you refrain from that sin to-night you make the sum of sin that is in the world, and so the sum of future evil that is to spring out of temptation in the world, less, shall there not be a nobler impulse rise up in your heart, and shall you not say : " I will not do it ; I will be honest, I will be sober, I will be pure, at least, to-night ? " I dare to think that there are men here to whom that appeal can come, men who, perhaps, will be all dull and deaf if one speaks to them about their personal salva- tion ; who, if one dares to picture to them, appealing to their better nature, trusting to their nobler soul, and there is in them the power to save other men from sin, and to help the work of God by the control of their own passions and the fulfillment of their own duty, will be stirred to the higher life. Men — very often we do not trust them enough — will answer to the higher appeal that seems to be beyond them when the poor, lower appeal that comes within the region of their selfishness is cast aside, and they will have nothing to do with it. Oh, this marvelous, this awful power that we have over other peo- ple's lives ! Oh, the power of the sin that you have done years and years ago ! It is awful to think of it. I think there is hardly anything more terrible to the human thought than this — the picture of a man who, hav- ing sinned years and years ago in a way that involved other souls in his sin, and then, having repented of his sin and undertaken another life, knows certainly that the power, the consequence of that sin is going on outside of his reach, beyond even his ken and knowledge. He cannot touch it. You wronged a soul ten years ago. You taught a boy how to tell his first mercantile lie ; you degraded the early standards of his youth. What has become of that boy to-day ? You may have repented. He has passed out of your sight. He has gone years and years ago. Somewhere in this great, multitudinous mass of humanity he is sinning and sinning, and reduplicating and extending the sin that you did. You touched the faith of some believing soul years ago with some miserable sneer of yours, with some cynical and skeptical disparagement of God and of the man 272 PHILLIPS BROOKS who is the utterance of God upon the earth. You taught the soul that was enthusiastic to be full of skepticisms and doubts. You wronged a woman years ago, and her life has gone out from your life, you cannot begin to tell where. You have repented of your sin. You have bowed yourself, it may be, in dust and ashes. You have entered upon a new life. You are pure to-day. But where is the skeptical soul ? Where is the ruined woman whom you sent forth into the world out of the shadow of your sin years ago ? You cannot touch that life. You cannot reach it. You do not know where it is. No steps of yours, quickened with all your earnestness, can pursue it. No contrition of yours can draw back its consequences. Remorse cannot force the bullet back into the gun from which it once has gone forth. It makes life awful to the man who has ever sinned, who has ever wronged and hurt another life because of this sin, because no sin was ever done that did not hurt another life. I know the mercy of our God, that while He has put us into each other's power to a fearful extent. He never will let any soul absolutely go to everlasting ruin for another's sin ; and so I dare to see the love of God pursuing that lost soul where you cannot pursue it. But that does not for one moment lift the shadow from your heart, or cease to make you tremble when you think of how your sin has outgrown itself and is running far, far away where you can never follow it. Thank God the other living thing is true as well. Thank God that when a man does a bit of service, however little it may be, of that, too, he can never trace the consequences. Thank God that that which in some better moment, in some nobler inspiration, you did ten years ago, to make your brother's faith a little more strong, to let your shop-boy confirm and not I doubt the confidence in man which he had brought into his business, to establish the purity of a soul instead of staining it and shaking it, thank God, in this quick, electric atmosphere in which we live, that, too, runs forth. I WILLIAM a BROWNLOW (t 805- J 877) THE HGHTING PARSON OF TENNESSEE mENNESSEE can boast of two citizens who were among the most remarkable products of our frontier civilization — David Crockett, the great hunter, and William G. Brownlow, the fighting parson. For energy and aggressiveness Brownlow was unsurpassed among our pioneer population. A Methodist minister in his early life, he became editor of a Knoxville paper, and with pen and voice made himself a power in that sention of the South. Though opposed to the abolition of slavery, the outbreak of war found him an uncompromising adherent ol the old flag, which he kept flying over his house in defiance of all threats to pull it down. He was impris- oned for several months by the secessionists, but his voice could not be hushed, though it was raised in unrestrained energy in favor of the North and the Union. After the war he was for two terms gov- ernor of Tennessee, and later on was elected to the Senate of the United States. THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION [The brief extract here given is taken from a speech of Mr. Brownlow delivered in a debate in Philadelphia with the Rev. Mr. Prynne. No abolitionist of the North could have shown a more ardent love for and belief in the Union than this anti-abo- litionist of the mountains of Tennessee. ] Who can estimate the value of the American Union ? Proud, happy, I thrice-happy America ! The home of the oppressed, the asylum of the eini '! grant ! where the citizen of every clime, and the child of every creed, roam free and untrammelled as the wild winds of heaven ! Baptized at the fount of Liberty in fire and blood, cold must be the heart that thril s not at the name of the American Union ! When the Old World, with "all its pomp, and pride, and circurri- stance, ' ' shall be covered with oblivion, — when thrones shall have crumbled 18 273 274 WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW and dynasties shall have been forgotten, — may this glorious Union, despite the mad schemes of Southern fire-eaters and Northern abolition- ists, stand amid regal ruin and national desolation, towering sublime, like the last mountain in the Deluge — majestic, immutable, and magnificent ! In pursuance of this, let every conservative Northern man, who loves his country and her institutions, shake ofi" the trammels of Northern fanati- cism, and swear upon the altar of his country that he will stand by her Constitution and laws. Let every Southern man shake off the trammels of disunion and nullification, and pledge his life and his sacred honor to stand by the Constitution of his country as it is, the laws as enacted by Congress and interpreted by the Supreme Court. Then we shall see every heart a shield, and a drawn sword in every hand, to preserve the ark of our political safety ! Then we shall see reared a fabric upon our National Constitution which time cannot crumble, persecution shake, fanaticism disturb, nor revolution change, but which shall stand among us like some lofty and stupendous Apennine, while the earth rocks at its feet, and the thunder peals above its head ! iTRIBULATIONS IN TENNESSEE [The following remarks were made by Parson Brownlow at Nashville in 1862 They tell their own story, and give in plain language the fighting Parson's opinion o the secessionists.] \ Gentlemen : Last December I was thrust into an uncomfortable and disagreeable jail, — for what? Treaso7i ! Treason to the bogus Confed eracy ; and the proofs of that treason were articles which appeared in th Knoxville Whig in May last, when the State of Tennessee was a member of the imperishable Union. At the expiration of four weeks I became a victim of the typhoid fever, and was removed to a room in a decent dwell- ing, and a guard of seven men kept me company. I subsequently became so weak that I could not turn over in my bed, and the guard was increased to twelve men, for fear I should suddenly recover and run away to Ken- tucky. But I never had any intention to run ; and if I had I was not able to escape. My purpose was to make them send me out of this infamous government, according to contract, or to hang me, if they thought proper. I was promised passports by their Secretary of War, a little Jew, late of New Orleans ; and upon the faith of that promise, and upon the invita- tion of General Crittenden, then in command at Knoxville, I reported myself and demanded my passports. They gave me passports, but they were from my house to the Knoxville jail, and the escort was a deputy- marshal of Jeff Davis. But I served my time out, and have been landed here at last, through much tribulation. t I WILLIAM G. BROWNLOW 275 When I started on this perilous journey I was sore distressed both in mind and body, being weak from disease and confinement. I expected to meet with insults and indignities at every point from the blackguard portion of the rebel soldiers and citizens, and in this I was not disap- pointed. It was fortunate, indeed, that I was not mobbed. This would have been done but for the vigilance and fidelity of the officers having me in charge. These were Adjutant -General Young and I^ieutenant O'Brien, clever men, high minded and honorable ; and they were of my own selec- tion. They had so long been Union men that I felt assured they had not lost the instincts of gentlemen and patriots, afflicted as they were with the incurable disease of secession. But, gentlemen, some three or four days ago I landed in this city, as you are aware. Five miles distant I encountered the Federal pickets. Then it was that I felt like a new man. My depression ceased, and returning life and health seemed suddenly to invigorate my system and to arouse my physical constitution . I had been looking at soldiers in uniform for twelve months, and to me they appeared as hateful as their Confeder- acy and their infamous flag. But these Federal pickets, who received me kindly and shook me cordially by the hand, looked like angels of light Gentlemen, I am no abolitionist ; I applaud no sectional doctrines. I am a Southern man, and all my relatives and interests are thoroughly identified with the South and Southern institutions. I was born in the Old Dominion ; my parents were born in Virginia, and they and their ancestors were all slaveholders. Let me assure you that the South has suffered no infringement upon her institutions ; the slavery question was actually no pretext for this unholy, unrighteous conflict. Twelve Senators from the Cotton States, who had sworn to preserve inviolate the Constitu- tion framed by our forefathers, plotted treason at night — a fit time for such a crime — and telegraphed to their States despatches advising them to pass ordinances of secession. Yes, gentlemen, twelve Senators swore allegi- ance in the daytime, and unswore it at night. ROBERT COLLYER (J 823 ) THE BLACKSMITH EXPOUNDER OF THE GOSPEL FIFTY years or more ago a country blacksmith, working at his trade in a rural district in Pennsylvania, surprised those who ^"^ knew him by unusual powers of natural eloquence. A man of devout feelings, he exhorted his neighborhood audiences to a Chris- tian life. Some of his hearers, desirous that his eloquence should have a better opportunity, aided him in the study of theology, and he be- came a Methodist preacher while still working at his trade. Robert, Collyer, the person in question, was of English birth, and had learned the blacksmith trade there in his youth. He was not long in America] before the forge was abandoned for the pulpit, in which he proved himself as good a preacher as he had been a blacksmith. He did not long continue a Methodist, however, but adopted Unitarianism, and from 1859 to 1879 was pastor of a Unitarian church in Chicago. Sincej the latter date he has had the pastoral care of a church in New York, Mr. Collyer is an orator of much eloquence and ability, and alike as preacher and lecturer is highly esteemed in his adopted country. STOPPING AT HARAN [The following selection is from a sermon on Genesis ix : 31, 32, in which we learn that old Terah, the father of Abraham, setting out from Edessa to go to Canaan, stopped at Haran, and saw fit to halt and spend the remainder of his life there, instead of pressing on to his goal. From this stopping by the way. Dr. Collyer draws some useful lessons, in an eloquent manner of his own.] And so this man's life touches yours and mine, and opens out toward some truths we may well lay to our hearts, and this is the first : That, if I want to do a great and good thing in this world, of any sort, while the best of my life lies still before me, the sooner I set about it the better. For, while there is always a separate and special worth in a good old age, 276 Samuel M. Clemens ("Mark Twain") is telling a story to ' Thomas B. Reed, Rufus Choate, Captain White and Andrew Carnegie in an after dinner speech. DISTINGUISHED AFTER-DINNER SPEAKERS Robert G Ingersoll, great public lecturer ; Henry W. Watterson, distinguished Kentucky editor; Henry Grady, of the New South ; Fitzhugh Lee, statesman and orator. ROBERT COLLYER 277 this power is very seldom in it I would try to verify ; and it is not your old Philip, but your young Alexander, who conquers the world. I can remember no grand invention, no peerless reform in life or religion, no noble enterprise, no superb stroke of any sort, that was not started from a spark in our youth and early manhood. Once well past that line, and you can dream of Canaan ; but the chances are you will stop at Haran, so this putting off any great and good adventure from your earlier to your later age is like waiting for low water before you launch your ship. If we want to make our dream of a nobler and wider life of any sort come true, we must push on while the fresh strong powers are in us, which are more than half the battle. The whole wealth of real enterprise belongs to our youth and earlier manhood. It is then that we get our chance of rising from a collective mediocrity into some sort of distinct nobility. We may be ever so sincere after this, as far as we can go ; but we shall go only to Haran. Yes, and we may have a splendid vision, as when this man saw Hermon and Sharon and the sea in his mind's eye as he sat in his chair ; and a noble and good intention, as when he started for the mountains, and halted on the plain ; but just this is what will befall us also if we are not true to this holy law of our life. This is my first thought ; and my second must take the form of a plea to those who do strike out to do grand and good things in this world, and do not halt, but march right on, and then nourish a certain contempt for those who still lag behind. The chances are, it is because they begin too late, that they end too soon ; and it is no small matter that they begin at all. For myself, I can only blame them when, with the vision of a nobler life haunting the heart, they tell me that Haran is good enough for any- body, and we need none of us look for anything better. If they know all the while, as this man knew, that the land of promise still lies beyond the line at which they have halted, and will say so frankly, though they may go only the one day's march, I can still bare my head in reverence before such men. I know what it is to leave these Hdessas of our life, and what it costs; how the old homes and altars still have the pull on you, and the shadows of the palm-trees, and the well at which you have drunk so long, and what loving arms twine about you to hold you back from even the one day's march. So, when I hear those blamed who stop short still of where I think they ought to be, I want to say, have you any idea of what it has cost them to go as far as that, and whether it was possible for them to go any farther ? And then , is it not a good thing anyhow to take those who jbelong to them the one day's march and, setting their faces toward the ^reat fair land of promise, leave God to see to it, that this which may be 278 ROBERT COLLYER more than an impulse in the man who has to halt, may grow again to a great inspiration in the son of his spirit and life who goes right on ? And this, I think, is what we may count on in every honest endeavor after a wider and better life. So I like the suggestion that the way the eagle got his wings, and went soaring up towards the sun, grew out of the impulse to soar. That the wings did not precede the desire to fly, but the desire to fly preceded the wings. Something within the creature whisp- ered : '* Get up there into the blue heavens; don't be content to crawl down in the marsh. Out with you ! " And so, somehow, through what would seem to us to be an eternity of trying — so long it was between the first of the kind that felt the impulse, and the one that really did the thing — done it was at last, in despite of the very law of gravitation, as well as by it ; and there he was, as I have seen him, soaring over the blue summits, screaming out his delight, and spreading his pinions twelve feet, they say, from tip to tip. I like the suggestion, because it is so true to the life we also have to live — trying and failing ; setting out for Canaan, and stopping at Haran ; intending great things, and doing little things, many of us, after all. li tell you again, the good intention goes to pave the way to Heaven, if it bej an honest and true intention. There is a pin-feather of the eagle's win^ started somewhere in our starting — a soaring which goes far beyond ourl stopping. We may only get to the edge of the slough, but those who] come after us will soar far up toward the sun. So let me end with a word of cheer. The Moslem says : " God loved Abdallah so well that He would not let him attain to that he most deeply desired." And Coleridge says : " I am like the ostrich : I cannot fly, yet; I have wings that give me the feeling of flight. I am only a bird of the' earth, but still a bird." And Robertson, of ;^righton, saj^s : " Man's true destiny is to be not dissatisfied, but forever unsatisfied." And you may set out even in your youth, therefore, with this high purpose in you I have tried to touch. You will make your way to a good place, to a wider and more gracious life ; do a great day's work ; rise above all mediocrity into a distinct nobility; find some day that, though you have done your best, you have fallen far below your dream, and the Canaan of your heart's desire lies still in the far distance. All great and grand things lie in the heart of our strivings. T. DeWITT TALMAGE (18324902) THE TRUMPET BLAST OF THE PULPIT mRUMPET BLASTS " is the title given to one of the works of selections from Talmage's sermons, and it is one which seems well fitting to their character. In popularity as an extem- poraneous pulpit orator and lecturer Talmage has had few superiors in this country. He was very eloquent in his way; a way marked by an unstinted fluency in words and abundant duplication in the expres- sion of thoughts. His popularity is shown in the wide circulation of his sermons, which for over thirty years were printed weekly in many hundreds of newspapers, so that his preaching reached an immense audience. After holding various Dutch Reformed pastorates, he be- came pastor of a Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn in 1869, and in 1894 transferred his scene of labor to Washington. THE UPPER FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY [From Talmage's very numerous sermons, we select a passage in which he elo- quently points out how the divine energies appear to have wrought for good in Ameri- can history, raising up men and moulding events for the best results in the develop- ment of the United States.] As it cost England many regiments and two millions of dollars a year to keep safely a troublesome captive at St. Helena, so the King of Assyria sent out a whole. army to capture one minister of religion — the God-fear- ing prophet Elisha. During the night the army of the Assyrians sur- tj rounded the village of Dothan, where the prophet was staying, and at early daybreak his man-servant rushed in, exclaiming, " What shall we do ? A whole army has come to destroy you ! We must die ! Alas, we must die ! " But Elisha was not frightened, for he looked up &nd saw that the mountains all around were full of supernatural forces, and he knew that though there might be 50,000 Assyrians against him, there were 100,- 000 angels for him. In answer to the prophet's prayer in behalf of his 279 280 T. DEWITT TALMAGE affrighted man-servant, the young man saw it too ; for '* the Lord opened the eyes of the young man ; and he saw : and, behold, the mountains were full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elish a." . . . . How do I know that this divine equipage is on the side of our insti- tutions ? I know it by the history of the last one hundred and fifteen years. The American Revolution started from the hand of John Hancock in Independence Hall, in 1776. On one side were the colonies, without ships, without ammunition, without guns, without trained warriors, with- out money, without prestige ; on the other side were the mightiest nation of the earth, the largest armies, the grandest navies, and the most distin- guished commanders, with resources almost inexhaustible, and with nearly all nations to back them up in the fight. Nothing against immensity. The cause of the American colonies, which started at zero, dropped still lower through the quarreling of the generals, and through their petty jealousies, and through the violence of the winters, which surpassed all their predecessors in depths of snow and horrors of congealment. Klisha, when surrounded by the whole Assyrian army, did not seem to be worse off than did the thirteen colonies thus encompassed and overshadowed by foreign assault. What decided the contest in our favor? The upper forces, the upper armies. The Green and the White Mountains of New England, the Highlands along the Hudson, the mountains of Virginia, all the Appalachian ranges, were filled with reinforcements which the young man Washington saw by faith ; and his men endured the frozen feet, the gangrened wounds, the exhausting hunger and the long march, because " the Lord opened the eyes of the young man ; and he saw : and, behold, the mountains were full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.'-' Washington himself was a miracle. What Joshua was in sacred his- tory the first American President was in secular history. A thousand other men excelled him in special powers, but he excelled them all in roundness and completeness of character. The world never saw his like, and probably will never see his like again, because there will never be another such exigency. He was sent down by a divine interposition. He was from God direct. I cannot comprehend how any man can read the history of those times without admitting that the contest was decided by the upper forces. mM Again, in 1861, when our Civil War opened, many at the North an^^ at the South pronounced it national suicide. It was not courage against cowardice, it was not wealth against poverty, it was not large States against small States. It was heroism against heroism, the resources of many generations against the resources of many generations, the prayer i T. DEWITT TALMAGE 281 of the North against the prayer of the South, one-half of the nation in armed wrath meeting the other half of the nation in armed indignation. What could come but extermination ? At the opening of the war the commander-in-chief of the United States forces was a man who had served long in battle, but old age had come, with its many infirmities, and he had a right to repose. He could not mount a horse, and he rode to the battlefield in a carriage, asking the driver not to jolt too much. During the most of the four years of the contest the commander on the Southern side was a man in midlife, who had in his veins the blood of many generations of warriors, himself one of the heroes of Cherubusco and Cerro Gordo, Contreras and Chapultepec. As the years rolled on and the scroll of carnage unrolled, there came out from both sides a heroism and a strength and a determination that the world had never seen surpassed. What but extermination could come where Philip Sheridan and Stonewall Jackson led their brigades, and Nathaniel Lyon and Sydney Johnston rode in from the North and South, and Grant and Lee, the two thunderbolts of battle, clashed ? Yet we are still a nation, and we are at peace. Earthly courage did not decide the contest. It was the upper forces that saved our land. They tell us that there was a battle fought above the clouds at Lookout Mountain ; but there was something higher than that — a victory of the Lord of Hosts. Again, the horses and chariots of God came to the rescue of this nation in 1876, at the close of a Presidential election famous for its acri- mony. A darker cloud still threatened to settle down upon this nation. The result of the election was in dispute, and revolution, not between two or three sections, but revolution in every town and village and city of the United States, seemed imminent. It looked as if New York would throttle New York ; and New Orleans would grip New Orleans ; and Boston, Boston ; and Savannah, Savannah ; and Washington, Washington. Some said that Mr. Tilden was elected ; others said that Mr. Hayes was elected ; and how near we came to universal massacre some of us guessed, but God only knew. I ascribe our escape not to the honesty and righteousness of infuriated politicians, but I ascribe it to the upper forces, the army of divine rescue. The chariot of mercy rolled in, and though the wheels were not heard and the flash was not seen, yet through all the mountains of the North and the South, and the East and the West, though the hoofs did not clatter, the cavalry of God galloped by. God is the friend of this nation. In the awful excitement of the massacre of Lincoln, where there was a prospect that greater slaughter would come upon us, God hushed the tempest. In the awful excitement at the time of Garfield's assassina- tion, God put his foot on the neck of the cyclone. HENRY CODMAN POTTER (t835 ) THE ELOQUENT EPISCOPAL BISHOP OF NEW YORK mHE Potter family is highly distinguished in the Episcopal Church in the United States, it having furnished three bishops to that Church within the nineteenth century. These include Alonzo Potter, consecrated Bishop of Pennsylvania in 1845 ; Horatio Potter, his brother, Bishop of New York in 1861 ; and Henry Cod- man Potter, his son, who was consecrated Bishop of New York in 1887. The last named had previously held various rectorships, the most noteworthy being at Grace Church, New York. He is the author of a number of valuable works of literature, and is a pulpit orator of fine powers and high estimation. THE HEROISM OF THE UNKNOWN [As a fitting example of the warmth and effectiveness of Bishop Potter's elo- quence, we give the following extract from an address made by him at the dedication of a monument in commemoration of the men of New York who fell at the battle of Gettysburg. A-fter speaking of ithe seemingly inevitable character of the Civil War, and the great moral problem which it solved, he offered the following tribute to the unknown heroes who gave their lives at Gettysburg in their country's cause.] Thirty 5^ars ago to-day these peaceful scenes were echoing with the roar and din of what a calm and unimpassioned historian, writing of it long years afterward, described as the ' * greatest battle-field of the New World." Thirty years ago to-day the hearts of some thirty millions of people turned to this spot with various but eager emotions, and watched here the crash of two armies which gathered in their vast embrace the flower of a great people. Never, so declared the seasoned soldiers who listened to the roar of the enemy's artillery, had they heard anything that was comparable with it. Now and then it paused, as though the very throats of the mighty guns were tired ; but only for a little. Not for one day, nor for two, but for three, raged the awful conflict, while the Republic gave its best life to 282 i HENRY CODMAN POTTER ^ 283 redeem its honor, and the stain of all previous blundering and faltering was washed away forever with the blood of its patriots and martyrs. How far away it all seems, as we stand here to-day ! How profound the con- trast between those hours and days of bloodshed and the still serenity of Nature as it greets us now ! The graves that cluster around us here, the peaceful resting-places of a nation's heroes, are green and fair ; and, within them, they who fell here, after life's fierce and fitful fever, are sleeping peacefully the sleep of the brave This day, this service, and most of all these our heroic dead, stand — let us here swear never to forget it — for the sanctity of law, for the endur- ing supremacy of just and equitable government, and so for the liberties of a united and law-abiding people. What, now, is that one feature in this occasion which lends to it supreme and most pathetic interest ? Here are tombs and memorials of •heroes whose names are blazoned upon them, and whose kindred and friends have stood round them, have recited their deeds, and have stood in tender homage around those forms which were once to them a living joy. But for us there is no such privilege, no such tender individuality of grief. These are our unknown dead. Out of whatever homes they came we cannot tell. What were their names, their lineage, we are ignorant. One thing only we know. They wore our uniform. And that is enough for us. We need to know no more. From the banks of the Hudson and the St. lyawrence ; from the wilds of the Catskills and the Adirondacks : from the salt shores of Long Island ; from the fresh lakes of Geneva and Onon- daga, and their peers ; from the forge and the farm, the shop and the fac- tory ; from college halls and crowded tenements ; all alike, they came here and fought and fell — and shall never, never be forgotten. Our great unknown defenders ! Ah, my countrymen, here we touch the founda- tions of a people's safety — of a nation's greatness. We are wont to talk much of the world's need of great leaders, and their proverb is often on our lips who said of old, "Woe unto the land whose King is a child." Yes, verily, that is a dreary outlook for any people when among her sons there is none worthy to lead her armies, to guide her councils, to interpret her laws, or to administer them. But that is a still drearier outlook, when in* any nation, however wise her rulers, and noble and heroic her com- manders, there is no greatness in the people equal to a great vision in an emergency, and a great courage with which to seize it. And that, I maintain, was the supreme glory of the heroes whom we commemorate to-day. All the more are they the fitting representatives of you and of me — the people. Never in all history, I venture to afiirm, was there a war 284 HENRY CODMAN POTTER whose aims, whose policy, whose sacrifices were so absolutely determined by the people, in whom lay the strength and the power of the Republic. When some one reproached Lincoln for the seeming hesitancy of his policy, he answered — great seer as well as great soul that he was — " I stand for the people. I am going just as fast and as far as I can feel them behind me." And so, as we come here to-day and plant this column, consecrating it to its enduring dignity and honor as the memorial of our unknown dead, we are doing, as I cannot but think, the fittest possible deed that we can do. These unknown that lie about us here — ah, what are they but the peerless representatives, el^ct forever by the deadly gauge of battle, of those sixty millions of people, as to-day they are, whose rights and liber- ties they achieved ! Unknown to us are their names ; unknown to them were the greatness and glory of their deeds ! And is not this, brothers of New York, the story of the world's best manhood, and of its best achievement ? The work by the great unknown, for the great unknown — the work that, by fidelity in the ranks, courage in the trenches, obedi- ence to the voice of command, patience at the picket line, vigilance at the outpost, is done by that great host that bear no splendid insignia of rank, and figure in no Commander's despatches — this work, with its largest, and incalculable, and unforseen consequences for a whole people — is not this work, which we are here" to-day to commemorate, at once the noblest and most vast ? Who can tell us now the names even of those that sleep about us here ; and who of them would guess, on that eventful day when here they gave their lives for duty and their country, how great and how far-reaching in its effects would be the victory they should win ? And thus we learn, my brothers, where a nation's strength resides. When the German Emperor, after the Franco- Prussian War, was crowne in the Salle des Glaces at Versailles, on the ceiling of the great hall i which that memorable ceremony took place, there were inscribed tb words: "The King Rules by His Own Authority." "Not so," said that grand old man of blood and iron who, most of all, had welded Ger- many into one mighty people — ' ' not so : * The Kings of the earth shall rule under me, saith the Lord.' Trusting in the tried love of the whole people, we leave the country's future in God's hands ! " Ah, my coun- trymen, it was not this man or that man that saved our Republic in its hour of supreme peril. Let us not, indeed, forget her great leaders, great generals, great statesmen, and greatest among them all, her great martyr and President, Lincoln. But there was no one of these then who would not have told us that which we may all see so plainly now, that it was not they who saved the country, but the host of her great unknown. 3. ] CAMPAIGN ORATORY William J. Bryan making a Campaign Speech from the rear end of a train As a political orator, he is distinguished, being well equipped by nature and training for public speaking. FRANK W. GUNSAULUS (1856- CHICAGO'S FAVORITE PULPIT ORATOR AMONG the pulpit orators of the West, Dr. Gunsaulus, whose ministrations for many years past have been confined to the "^ metropolitan city of the lakes, has long held a high place in public estimation. Born at Chesterville, Ohio, and educated for the ministry at the Ohio Wesleyan University, he passed the first four years of his ministerial life as a Methodist preacher. Subsequently entering the Congregational Church, he filled the pastorate of the Eastwood Church at Columbus, Ohio, from 1879 to 1881, preached during the suc- ceeding four years at Newtonville, Massachusetts, and for two years at Baltimore, and became pastor of the Plymouth Congregational Church, of Chicago, in 1887. In 1899, he removed to the Central Church, Chicago. In addition he has been a lecturer at the Yale Theological Seminary, and a professorial lecturer at the University of Chicago. Aside from his pulpit duties, he has been somewhat active as an author, especially in the field of poetry, his poems embracing several volumes of graceful and thoughtful verse. As a pulpit orator, Dr. Gunsaulus -is highly esteemed, and is looked upon as one of the leading lights in the Western ministry. THE TAPESTRY OF ANGLO-SAXON CIVILIZATION [Among the many memorial sermons and addresses delivered after the death of Britain's esteemed Queen, that spoken by Dr. Gunsaulus in the Auditorium at Chicago, February, 1901, is certainly one of the most elevated and appreciative, alike in its estimate of the character of Victoria and its lofty conception of Anglo-Saxon progress during her reign, as compared with that of the age of Elizabeth, England's former great Queen. From this fine address we select the portions in which this view of modern progress is most picturesquely set forth.] Wonderful and rich is that tapestry known as Anglo-Saxon civiliza- Ition. The pattern, all beautiful, was seen in vision by him who relaid the 23s 286 FRANK W. GUNSAULUS foundations of society on the tnith of the Fatherhood of God and the Bro- therhood of Man . Poets and priests have not been alone in catching glimp- ses of its glory from time to time. As they have climbed reverently up the altar steps of Calvary, kings like Charlemagne, Alfred and Gustavus Adolphus, in spite of limitations and the ignorance of their times, have looked now and then upon the external plan of God in the redemption of man by man. So far as they have obeyed the vision, they have been the truly great in history. Separated by ages and of differing temperaments, sure to have formed an irreconcilable company had they ever met on earth, uniting with the uncrowned kings of time, such as Hampden, Lin- coln and Cavour, each of them in the light of this vision has become great. They have come into a growing supremacy over men's hearts, not so much because of might of mental endowment or that wit or wisdom which springs from unique prowess of brain, as because of the fact that each of them, after the manner of his own character, loyally seized upon the purpose of the Infinite One and compelled himself and all things attaching themselves to him, to enter into the achieving of the will of God in human history. Some of these, like Victoria, have the distinction of being less appar- ently illustrious than others, especially in the possession of military and civil genius, in those abilities which manifest themselves in consummate strategy or comprehensive organization. This very fact, however, enables us to see the true foundation and manner of their greatness. If these less magnetic leaders of the race wrote as inspiring pages of history, or if they also trained the forces of an age till they met in orderly battalions around their thrones, it was not because of the greatness of humanity displayed at fortunate moments, but because of the greatness of God revealed in humanity. A little child mounting reverently and obediently upon the vast shoulders of the Infinite God, and living his life there at the high level to which the uplifting God has raised him, is taller far than the mightiest of giants. He gets the sublime point of view, he travels with the gait of the swift, sure and on-marching Jehovah. When he is weak- est, he is strongest. His cry is, '' The Almighty is my defense," " Yea, Lord, Thy gentleness hath made me great." Such was the greatness of Victoria, Queen of England. With her hand on these Scriptures and their like, she answered an Indian prince, who inquired of her the secret of England's greatness: "This," and she gave him a Bible — "this is the secret of England's greatness." She approached her throne at a time when a totally opposite view of what constitutes greatness had well-nigh bewildered Europe, but at length had been torn into tatters in the name of humanity at Waterloo. Its bril- liant incarnation was dying an exile on the English island of St. Helena^ FRANK W. GUNSAULUS 287 When Wellington defeated Napoleon on that memorable day, it was not so much England gaining a victory over France, as the civilization of Europe rising to behold the idea of duty struggling triumphantly against the illusion of glory. ** Not once or twice in our rough island story, The path of duty is the way to glory.** So sings the Englishman to-day. After sixty years of duty doing, the accomplished sovereignty of Victoria has flung its warm light upon the history of our times. No other kind of greatness, save the greatness allied with the on-going process of God's plan, realizing itself in the development and education of man, would have been equal to the demands of our age. No greatness is equal to the demands and oppor- tunities of any time which is not true to the heart of eternity. Taine says that Napoleon was a Caesar thrust upon the eighteenth century. Let us add that Victoria, who had visited in her worship and hope the cross of Jesus once lifted up upon a hill-top in one of Caesar's dependencies, was a Christian possessing that statesman-like vision which shall make Csesarism impossible. Her era was to be an era devoted to the scientific method. It was to be conscious of indubitable facts. Within the efful- gence of every movement of its course there was to be discerned a plain and often too hard reality. The greatness, therefore, which should both reign and rule, was that whose eyes saw not glory, but duty, as the " Stern daughter of the voice of God. " Like her own earliest poet-lau- reate, Wordsworth, who gave to England this happy phrase, the realm over which Victoria was to rule had put aside the fever-haunted dream sympathetic with the French Revolution ; and the best hope of civiliza- tion was ready for a time when public duty should obey the dictates of lofty personal morality, while freedom, *' broadening slowly down, from precedent to precedent," would win new triumphs throughout all the world, along with such achievements of literature and art, and especially trade and commerce, manufacture, invention and discovery, as would dazzle the eye of the student of history What are called the "spacious times of great Elizabeth" were spacious indeed, as compared with those confined and narrow days before England experienced her true renaissance. When Edmund Spenser accompanied Raleigh to London in the winter of 1589, stopping on his way to add to the first three books of " The Fairie Queen," England .was almost a fairy land given over to the fresh romances which filled the Eng- lish imagination. Her heroic sailors came back with tales that expanded the fancy and stimulated the enterprise of an age whose poet was the 288 FRANK W. GUNSAULUS greatest dramatist of all time, whose philosopher championed the method of modern science whose courtiers, like Leicester and Sydney, whose singers, like Ben Johnson and Fletcher, vied with men of equal under- standing and talent to create an era of marvels in literature, discovery and thought, making it as worthy of renown as the era of Pericles in Greece or that of Augustus in Rome. Not less of the wonderful has characterized Victoria's time. The lyrics of the time of Elizabeth and those of the era of Victoria are full of the same smell of the brine and billowy sweep of the waves which the spirit of England has met in storm and shine, as the insularity of the Eng- lishman has given way to the proud realization that the island is not too small to produce political and literary impulses whose dominion girdles the planet. As Italian song gave form to the finer products of Eliza- bethan literature, so Elizabethan verse has communicated its strength and richness to Victorian poetry. But the greatness of Victoria abides in this, that whatever be the origin of the literature and art, of the commerce and politics, or of the astonishing movement in science and invention, hers has been the privilege of beholding and even influencing with a genial sky that newly-discovered sea of thought whose currents are longer and deeper than any observed by an Elizabethan sea-rover, an ocean, indeed, whose waves are subservient to tides mightier than any which crushed the Spanish Armada. There has been something so vast, enchanting, and truly romantic in the swift enlargement of human life as these strange seas of thought upon which modern minds have voyaged, have come into view, that man turns the pages of history in vain to find a parallel. The Drake of Elizabeth's day, sailing over the nameless solitudes of the Pacific, is surpassed by the genius of Charles Darwin finding the new coasts of truth against which all waters roll. Bacon's gives place to the vaster induction of Herbert Spencer. Sir Walter Raleigh's amazing tales of Golcondas and Eldorados, newly disclosed, are far less wonder- ful than the realities, definitely labeled, or daily put to use in the labor- atory of the physicist or engineer of to-day. As truly as the Elizabethan spirit stimulated the vigorous efforts which resulted in the glory of her age, so has the Victorian spirit quickened and inspired the more sub- lime movements whose fruition has given this age its imperishable renown. The very personality of Victoria has been a genial climate in which countless and fair blossoms have come to be. She herself has been the most pervasive and important fact and factor in her own coun- try and time, and thus the importance and splendor of no movement in her day eclipses the brightness of the Queen. * DWIGHT L MOODY (18374899) THE ELOQUENT EVANGELIST BOR many years Dwight L. Moody was immensely popular as an evangelist, preaching to vast crowds both in the United States and Great Britain. In both countries he had remarkable suc- cess, and exerted a powerful influence for good on various classes of the people. The success of his ministrations was very greatly enhanced by the sweet voice and fine native powers of song of Ira D. Sankey, who accompanied him in his wanderings, singing the familiar ** Ninety and Nine " and various other hymns, original and striking in music and words. Mr. Moody was born in Massachusetts, but went to Chicago in 1856, where, while engaged in business, he carried on an active mis- sionary work. He was joined by Mr. Sankey in 1870, and for years afterward he was engaged in evangelical labors. As an orator Mr. Moody depended largely on his power of working on the emotions of li an audience, his sermons manifesting little original thought and being by no means examples of classic English. GOD IS LOVE [From one of Mr. Moody's sermons, with the above title, we select an interest- ing and very well told anecdote, which will serve as a favorable example of his powers.] My text is taken from the ist epistle of John, and it is one of those : texts the world does not believe. If I could make every one in this build- 1 ing believe this text, I would not preach a sermon. If we all believed it, j we would not need a sermon. "God is love." That is one of the texts j the devil would like to blot out of the Bible. For six thousand years he has been going up and down the world trying to make men believe that I God is not love. Love begets love, and hate begets hate. Let me tell 19 289 290 DWIGHt L. MOODY any one of you that I heard a man say this week that you were one of th^ meanest men in town, and you will soon come to the conclusion that the man who said that was the meanest man you ever heard of. Let me tell you that I heard a man say he thought more of you than of any other man in the city, and, though you may not have thought about him before, your love will spring up and you will say, "I think a great deal of that man." Now, men are believing the devil's lies when they don't believe God is love. A few years ago, when we built a church in Chicago, a friend put up over the pulpit in gas-jets the words, * 'God is love. " We thought, if we couldn't preach it into the hearts of the people, we would burn it in. A man happened to see that text up there, and he said to himself: "God is not love ; God does not love me ;" and he came around into the church, not to hear the sermon, but to see the text as it was burning there upon the wall. The arrow reached its mark. He went into the inquiry meet- ing. I inquired what it was impressed him. He said it was not the ser- mon ; it was those words that had burned into his soul. He was weeping, and he wanted to know what he should do to be saved. * ' God is love. ' ' I hope this text will find its way into every heart here. I want to prove it from Scripture. The great trouble with men is, they are all the time trying to measure God by their own rule, and from their own standpoint. A man is apt to j udge others from his own standard. If a man is covetous, he thinks every one else is covetous. If he is a self- ish man, he thinks every one else is selfish. If a man is guilty of adul- tery, he thinks every other man is. If a man is dishonest, he thinks every other man is. Many are trying to bring God down to their own level. They don't know that between human love and divine love there is as much difference as there is between darkness and light. God's love is deep and high ; Paul says it passeth knowledge. We love a man as long as he is worthy of our love, and when he is not we cast him off; but we don't find in the Word of God that God casts off those who are not worthy of His love. If He did, there would be no one in the kingdom of God except Jesus himself. A poor woman came into the inquiry room, and said she had no strength. I said: ''Thank God for that, Christ died for us when we were without strength." Christ died for the ungodly. There was a timei when I preached that God hated the sinner, and that God was after every poor sinner with a double-edged sword. Many a time have I represented that God was after every poor sinner, ready to hew him down. But I have changed my ideas upon this point. I will tell you how. In 1867, when I was preaching in Dublin, in a large hall, at the closer of the service a young man, who did not look over seventeen, though he' DWIGHT L. MOODY 291 was older, came tip to me and said he would like to go back to America with me and preach the gospel. I thought he could not preach it, and I said I was undecided when I could go back. He asked me if I would write to him when I went, and he would come with me. When I went I thought I would not write to him, as I did not know whether I wanted him or not. After I arrived at Chicago I got a letter saying he had just arrived at New York, and he would come and preach. I wrote him a cold letter, asking him to call on me if he came West. A few days after, I got a letter stating he would be in Chicago next Thursday. I didn't know what to do with him. I said to the officers of the church : " There is a man coming from England, and he wants to preach. I am going to be absent on Thursday and Friday. If you will let him preach on those days, I will be back on Saturday, and take him off your hands." They did not care about him preaching, being a stranger ; but at my request they let him preach. On my return on Saturday I was anxious to hear how the people liked him, and I asked my wife how that young Englishman got along. " How did they like him ? " She said, " They liked him very much. He preaches a little different from what you do. He tells people God loves them. I think you will like him." I said he was wrong. I thought I could not like a man who preached contrary to what I was preaching. I went down Saturday night to hear him, but I had made up my mind not to like him because he preached different from me. He took his text, — and I saw everybody had brought their Bibles with them. "Now," he says, ** if you will turn to the third chapter of John and the sixteenth verse, you will find my text." He preached a wonderful sermon from that text. " For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." My wife had told me he had preached the two previous sermons from that text, and I noticed there was a smile over the house when he took the same text. Instead of preaching that God was behind them with a double-edged sword to hew l^ them down, he told them God wanted every sinner to be saved, and He jfi loved them. I could not keep back the tears. I didn't know God ^r. thought so much of me. It was wonderful to hear the way he brought .. i out Scripture. He went from Genesis to Revelation, and preached that in .. all ages God loved the sinner. .^ On Sunday night there was a great crowd came to hear him. He j»;:i took for his text the third chapter of John and sixteenth verse, and he ^ • preached his fourth sermon from that wonderful text, ' ' For God so loved ,^ the world," &c., and he went from Genesis to Revelation to show that it , .. jwas love, love, love that brought Christ from Heaven, that made Him 292 DWIGHT L. MOODY step from the throne to lift up this poor, fallen world. He struck a higher chord that night, and it was glorious. The next night there was an immense crowd, and he said : '* Turn to the third chapter and sixteenth verse of John," and he preached his fifth sermon from that wonderful text. He did not divide his text up into firstly, secondly, and thirdly, but he took the whole text and threw it at them. I thought that sermon was better than ever. I got so full of love that I got up and told my friends how much God loved them. The whole church was on fire before the week was over. Tuesday night came, and there was a greater crowd than ever. The preacher said : ' ' Turn to the third chapter of John and the sixteenth verse and you will find my text," and he preached his sixth sermon from that wonderful text, " God so loved the world," &c. They thought that sermon was better than any of the rest. It seemed as if every heart was on fire, and sinners came pressing into the kingdom of God. On Wednesday night people thought that probably he would change his text now, as he could not talk any longer on love. There was great excitement to see what he was going to say. He stood before us again, and he said : " My friends, I have been trying to get a new text, but I cannot find any as good as the old one, so we will again turn to the third chapter of John and the sixteenth verse." He preached his seventh ser- mon from that wonderful text. I have never forgotten those nights. I have preached a different gospel since, and I have had more power with God and man since then. In closing up that seventh sermon he said : * ' For seven nights I have been trying to tell you how much God loved you, but this poor stammering tongue of mine will not let me. If I could ascend Jacob's ladder and ask Gabriel, who stands in the presence of the Almighty, to tell me how much love God the Father has for this poor lost world, all that Gabriel could say would be ' That God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' " When he got through preaching in Chicago we had to get the largest building there, and then thousands went away because they could not get in. He went to Europe, and returned again. In the meantime our church had been burned, and you people of Philadelphia put us up a temporary building. When he came there he preached in this temporary building, and he said : " Although the old building is burnt up, the old text is not burnt up, and we will preach from that." So he preached from where he had left off" preaching about the love of God. BOOK VIL Leaders in the Lecture Field IT is not alone in the legislative hall or the pulpit that oratory flourishes. It is also to be found in the field of forensic argument, and the lecture field. In the former of these, while rare displays of eloquence are ot times given, their subject is usually one of local and passing interest, which fact renders them unsuitable for popular reading. In the latter, while the topic is usually of an educational character, this is by no means always the case. The lecturer's purpose may not be to teach, but to convince and reform. Of such character are the many addresses on the subjects of temperance, woman's suffrage, Indus- trial oppression, and numerous other topics in which some wrong Is to be righted, some evil to be over- come. At the present day the lecture is a widely-pre- vailing form of the oration. In the absence of stirring causes for legislative eloquence, even the political speech verges towards this form. In a nation that is entirely peaceful and prosperous, with no vital dif- ference of opinion between its citizens, the oration will become more and more of the lecture character, its purpose being to instruct, interest or amuse, rather than to cure the political or social evils of the age. In the past many lecturers of fine powers have appeared, and English and American literature con- tains numerous readable and inspiring examples in this field. We shall here give extracts from some of the more eloquent and famous of these public favorites. 293 JOSEPH STORY (1779=1845) JURIST AND COLLEGE LECTURER mUDGE STORY, appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1811, when thirty-two years of age, had the honor of being the youngest man who had ever held so high a judicial position either in America or England. He continued to hold that office until his death in 1845. He had previously been a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts, and of Congress, and for many years during his judicial term was at the head of the Law School of Harvard University. Throughout his life he pursued an active literary career, beginning as a jurist and devoting himself after 1804 to legal study. His subsequent treatises upon the law were of the most profound character, his writings being more voluminous than those of any other lawyer of great eminence. " For learning, indus- try, and talent,'^ says Chancellor Kent, " he is the most extraordinary jurist of the age." As an orator Judge Story won wide esteem, and his lectures upon the dry themes of the law were delivered with such an enthusiasm, and were so richly embellished with anecdotes and illustrative episodes, that they gained the piquancy of literary lectures. No educator ever had a stronger hold upon his students or a more unbounded influence over their minds, and he w^as great and popular alike in the college hall and on the judicial bench. THE DESTINY OF THE INDIAN [Of Judge Story's oratory, the best known and most picturesque example ]| ^ the often quoted passage npon the melancholy fate of the American Indians. Thii formed part of his discourse, before the Essex Historical Society, upon the first settled ment of Salem, Massachusetts. No nobler specimen could be chosen of his oratorical Style, it being a gem of literary finish and sympathetic eloquence.] 294 \ JOSEPH STORY 295 There is, indeed, in the fate of these unfortunate beings, much to awaken our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment; much, which may be urged to excuse their own atrocities ; much in their characters which betrays us into an involuntary admiration. What can be more melancholy than their history ? By a law of their nature, they seem destined to a slow but sure extinction. Everywhere, at the approach, of the white man, they fade away. We hear the rustling of their footsteps like that of the withered leaves of autumn, and they are gone forever. They pass mournfully by us, and they return no more. Two centuries ago, the smoke of their wigwams and the fires of their councils rose in every valley, from Hudson's Bay to the farthest Florida, from the ocean to the Mississippi and the lakes. The shouts of victory and the war-dance rang through the mountains and the glades. The thick arrows and the deadly tomahawk whistled through the forests ; and the hunter's trace and the dark encampment startled the wild beasts in their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The young listened to the songs of other days./ The mothers played with their infants, and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the future. The aged sat down; but they wept not. They should soon be at rest in fairer regions, where the Great Spirit dwelt, in a home prepared for the brave, beyond the Western skies. Braver men never lived ; truer men never drew the bow. They had courage, and fortitude, and sagacity, and perseverance, beyond most of the human race. They shrank from no dangers, and they feared no hardships. If they had the vices of savage life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their, country, their friends, and their homes. If they forgave not injury, nei- ther did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. Their love, like their hate, stopped not on this side of the grave. But where are they? Where are the villages and warriors and youth ; the sachems and the tribes ; the hunters and their families ? They have perished. (They are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty work. No — nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which hath eaten into their heart- cores, a plague which the touch of the white man communicated, a poison which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region which they may now call their own. Already the last feeble remnants of their race are preparing for their jour- ney beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave their miserable homes — the aged, the helpless, the women and the warriors — ** few and faint, yet fear- less still." The ashes are cold on their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slov^^i 296 JOSEPH STORY unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or despatch; but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears ; they utter no cries ; they heave no groans. There is something in their hearts which passes speech. There is something in their looVs, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both ; which chokes all utterance ; which has no aim or method. It is courage absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them — no, never. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassable gulf. They know and feel that there is for them still one remove farther, not distant nor unseen. It is to the general burial-ground of their race. HASTY WORK IS PRENTICE T^ORK It was a beautiful remark of Sir Joshua Reynolds that "Great works, which are to live and stand the criticism of posterity, are not performed at a heat." ** I remember," says he, *' when I was at Rome, looking at the Fighting Gladiator in company with an eminent sculptor, and I expressed my admiration of the skill with which the whole is composed, and the minute attention of the artist to the change of every muscle in that momentary exertion of strength. He was of opinion that a work so perfect required nearly the whole life of man to perform." What an admonition ! What a melancholy reflection to those who deem the literary fame of the present age the best gift to posterity ! How many of our proudest geniuses have written, and continue to write, with a swiftness which almost rivals the operations of the press ! How many are urged on to the ruin of their immortal hopes by that public favor which receives with acclamation every new offspring of their pen ! If Milton had written thus, we should have found no scholar of our day, no Chris- tian Examiner ^ portraying the glory of his character with the enthusiasm of a kindred spirit. If Pope had written thus, we should have had no fine contests respecting his genius and poetical attainments by our Byrons and Bowleses and Roscoes. If Virgil had written thus, he might have chanted his verses to the courtly Augustus ; but Marcellus and his story would have perished. If Horace had written thus, he might have enchanted gay friends and social parties ; but it would never have been said of his composition : decies repetita placebit. \ SERGEANT S. PRENTISS (J 8084 85 J THE aCERO OF THE SOUTH AMONG the natural orators of America, the men to whom the gift of fluent speech is part of their very being, there have *— ^ been none to surpass Sergeant S. Prentiss, a son of Maine, but for many years a resident of the South. In the words of one of his contemporaries : " His most striking talent was his oratory. We have never known nor read of a man who equalled Prentiss in the faculty of thinking on his legs, or of extemporaneous eloquence. He required no preparation to speak on any subject, and on all he was equally happy. We have heard from him, thrown out in a dinner speech, or at a public meeting, when unexpectedly called on, more brilliant and striking thoughts than many of the most celebrated poets and orators ever elaborated in their closets." Born at Portland, Maine, an opportunity for a lucrative tutor- ship took him from college to Natchez, Mississippi, and it was in this city and in New Orleans that he afterward resided, obtaining in each a very large legal practice. Elected to Congress in 1837, his seat was contested, and he addressed the House in support of his claim in a most admirable burst of oratory. His reputation as an orator had preceded him, and the House was crowded with those who desired to test the quality of his eloquence. Rarely has Congress heard an abler or more telling address. Webster said, on leaving the hall, '' Nobody could equal it.^' Ex-President Fillmore remarked : " I can never for- get that speech. It was certainly the most brilliant that I ever heard." .Prentiss did not remain long in Congress. A parliamentary career \^s not to his taste. But his brief stay there was one of brilliancy anU.success, his few speeches winning him public applause and firmly ^gtablishing his iame as a statesmanlike orator. He continued, how- 297 298 • SERGEANT S. PRENTISS ever, to take part in political movements, and became widely known as a most effective campaign speaker. In 1845 he removed from Vicksburg to New Orleans, in which city he died in 1851. THE PILGRIMS [One of Mr. Prentiss' best known orations is the address delivered before the New England Society of New Orleans, on December 22, 1845. His eulogy of the Pil- grims was a most effective bit of word painting, especially in his contrast of their character and aims with those of the Spanish adventurers of the South.] Two centuries and a quarter ago, a little tempest- tost, weather- beaten bark, barely escaped from the jaws of the wild Atlantic, landed upon the bleakest shore of New England. From her deck disembarked a hundred and one care-worn exiles. To the casual observer no event could seem more insignificant. The contemptuous eye of the world scarcely deigned to notice it. Yet the famous vessel that bore Caesar and his fortunes, carried but an ignoble freight compared with that of the Mayflower . Her little band of Pilgrims brought with them neither wealth nor power, but the principles of civil and religious freedom. They planted them, for the first time, in the Western Continent. They cher- ished, cultivated and developed them to a full and luxuriant maturity ; and then furnished them to their posterity as the only sure and permanent foundations for a free government. Upon those foundations rests the fabric of our great Republic ; upon thDse principles depends the career of human liberty. Little did the miserable pedant and bigot who then wielded the sceptre of Great Britain imagine that from this feeble settle- ment of persecuted and despised Puritans would arise a nation capable of coping with his own mighty empire in arts and arms. . . How proudl}'- can we compare their conduct with that of the adven- turers of other nations who preceded them. How did the Spaniard colo- nize ? Let Mexico, Peru and Hispaniola answer. He followed in the train of the great Discoverer, like a devouring pestilence. His cry was gold ! gold ! ! gold ! ! ! Never in the history of the world had the sacra fames aurz exhibited itself with such fearful intensity. His imagination maddened with visions of sudden and boundless wealth, clad in mail, he leaped upon the New World, an armed robber. In greedy haste he grasped the sparkling sand, then cast it down with curses, when he found the glittering grains were not of gold. Pitiless as the blood-hound by his side, he plunged into the primeval forests, crossed rivers, lakes, and mountains, and penetrated to the very heart of the continent. No region, however rich in soil, delicious in climate, or luxuriant in production, could tempt his $tay. In vain th$ SERGEANT S. PRENTISS 299 soft breeze of the tropics, laden with aromatic fragrance, wooed him to rest ; in vain the smiling valleys, covered with spontaneous fruits and flowers, invited him to peaceful quiet. His search was still for gold : the accursed hunger could not be appeased. The simple natives gazed upon him in superstitious wonder, and worshipped him as a god ; and he proved to them a god, but an infernal one — terrible, cruel and remors- less. With bloody hands he tore the ornaments from their persons, and the shrines from their altars : he tortured them to discover hidden trea- sure, and slev/ them that he might search, even in their wretched throats, for concealed gold. Well might the miserable Indians imagine that a race of evil deities had come among them, more bloody and relentless than those who presided over their own sanguinary rites. Now let us turn to the Pilgrims. They, too, were tempted ; and had they yielded to the temptation how different might have been the destinies of this continent — how different must have been our own ! Previous to their undertaking, the Old World was filled with strange and wonderful accounts of the New. The unbounded wealth drawn by the Spaniards from Mexico and South America, seemed to afford rational support for the wildest assertions. Bach succeeding adventurer, returning from his voyage, added to the Arabian tales a still more extravagant story. At length Sir Walter Raleigh, the most accomplished and distinguished of all those bold voyagers, announced to the world his discovery of the province of Guiana, and its magnificent capital, the far-famed city of El Dorado. We smile now at his account of the " great and golden city," and "the mighty rich and beautiful empire." We can hardly imagine that any one could have believed, for a moment, in their existence. At that day, however, the whole matter was received with the most implicit faith. Sir Walter professed to have explored the country, and thus glowingly describes it from his own observation : *' I never saw a more beautiful country, nor more lively prospects; hills so raised here and there over the valleys — the river winding into divers branches — the plains adjoining, without bush or stubble — all fair green grass — the deer crossing in every path — the birds, towards the even- ing, singing on every tree with a thousand several tunes — the air fresh, with a gentle easterly wind ; and every stone that we stopped to take up promised either gold or silver by its complexion. For health, good air, pleasure, and riches, I am resolved it cannot be equalled by any region either in the East or West." The Pilgrims were urged, in leaving Holland, to seek this charming country, and plant their colony amid its Arcadian bowers. Well might the poor wanderers cast a longing glance towards its happy valleys, which 300 SERGEANT S. PRENTISS seemed to invite to pious contemplation and peaceful labor. Well might the green grass, the pleasant groves, the tame deer, and the singing birds allure them to that smiling land beneath the equinoctial line. But while they doubted not the existence of this wondrous region, they resisted its tempting charms. They had resolved to vindicate, at the same time, their patriotism and their principles — to add dominion to their native land, and to demonstrate to the world the practicabilty of civil and relig- ious liberty. After full discussion and mature deliberation, they deter- mined that their great objects could be best accomplished by a settlement on some portion of the northern continent which would hold out no temptation to cupidity, no inducement to persecution. Putting aside, then, all considerations of wealth and ease, they addressed themselves with high resolution to the accomplishment of their noble purpose. In the language of the historian, "trusting to God and themselves," they embarked upon their perilous enterprise. As I said before, I shall not accompany them on their adventurous voyage. On the 2 2d day of December, 1620, according to our present com- putation, their footsteps pressed the famous rock which has ever since remained sacred to their venerated memory. Poets, painters, and orators have tasked their powers to do justice to this great scene. Indeed, it is full of moral grandeur ; nothing can be more beautiful, more pathetic, or more sublime. Behold the Pilgrims, as they stood on that cold Decem- ber day — stern men, gentle women, and feeble children — all uniting in singing a hymn of cheerful thanksgiving to the good God, who had con- ducted them safely across the mighty deep, and permitted them to land upon that sterile shore. See how their upturned faces glow with a pious confidence, which the sharp winter winds cannot chill, nor the gloomy forest shadows darken : " Not as the conqueror comes, They, the true-hearted came ; Not with the roll of the stirring drum, Nor the trumpet, that sings of fame ; Nor as the flying come. In silence and in fear — "They shook the depths of the desert gloom With their hymns of lofty cheer." Noble and pious band ! your holy confidence was not in vain your "hymns of lofty cheer " find echo still in the hearts of grateful millions. Your descendants, when pressed by adversity, or when address- ing themselves to some high action, turn to the " Landing of the Pilgrims," and find heart for any fate — strength for any enterprise. II WENDELL PHILLIPS (18114884) SLAVERY^S RELENTLESS FOE »