f LIBuARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO <* J America in its Relation to the Great Epochs of History / America In Its Relation, to the Great Epochs of History By William Justin Mann Boston Little, Brown, and Company 1902 Copyright, 1902, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. AH rights reserved Published December, 1902 UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON AND SON CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. TT seems as if, once in a while, God sends into the world a human soul so beautiful that it is at once a revelation of Himself and of our own possibilities. To have known such a soul and to have been always sur- rounded by its love I count my dearest blessing. I dedicate this little book to MY MOTHER PREFACE IT is well to have an ideal however im- perfectly it may be wrought out. Having recently come upon the following passage in " The Art Work of the Future " as it appears in Mr. William Ashton Ellis' translation of the Prose Works of Richard Wagner, it seems to me to express the ideal which I have uncon- sciously had in my mind in the grouping of the material for this book. Here is the passage : " The idea ('Begriff') of a thing is the image formed in Thought of its actual substances ; the portrayal of the images of all discernable sub- stances in one joint-image, in which the faculty of Thought presents to itself the picture of the essence of all realities in their connected sequence, is the work of the highest energy of the human soul, the Spirit (* Geist ')." A considerable portion of the contents of this little volume has been given in the form of lectures. The last chapter and a part of the next to the last have not been so given. viii PREFACE These lectures have been somewhat elastic and hardly given twice alike. Their present form is the last in which they happen to have been moulded. But much is left out which might have been included and ought to be included in order to even approach the ideal of giving a joint-image of all discernable substances included in its scope. And yet perhaps the form as it is will serve to express the thought and the purpose. It is my firm conviction that history ought to be read and studied substantially on the lines here laid down, and that it is not so read and is not so studied in our schools. It seems to me that the culture values of history are of first importance and are sadly lost sight of. To catch the great swing and rhythm of the move- ments of history ; to view it as a sacred thing, as the record of the activities of God himself ; to see the development of humanity as an ex- pression of the Deity ; to catch the many-sided- ness and yet the unity of it all ; to feel the great pulse of humanity and especially in its quickening bounds of progress, all this seems to me of the first importance, and to be involved PREFACE ix in anything worthy the name of the study of history. For some of the material here contained I have gone to original sources ; for much of it I am indebted in such various directions that acknowledgment is difficult. From the printed description of the Grail pictures as given on the card at the Boston Public Library to sug- gestions made by Pres. G. Stanley Hall of Clark University after listening to a paper comprising a part of one of the following chapters, 1 have culled material from many sources, and have received help from a great number of books, from various lectures, and from the kindly courtesy and help of a great many librarians. My thanks are especially due to the Boston Evening Transcript for the permission to use the story of " The Real Hiawatha" which has already appeared in its columns. If the reader shall receive any small portion of the pleasure and profit that the author has found in its preparation, the existence of this book will be justified. W. J. M. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Page The Point of View 1-14 CHAPTER I THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD Just before the Dawn of the Renaissance 17 The Legend of the Holy Grail 18, 20 Mediaeval Love 21 St. Francis of Assissi 22 Magna Charta 23 The English language waking into life 24 Art as the great interpreter 25, 26 The higher harmony 27 Giotto and Dante 28 Petrarch, the first humanist 29, 30 The literary impulse at Rome 31 A world awaking from its sleep 32 The poets as the prophets 33 The boy Columbus 34 Columbus at Cordova and at Granada 35 The conquest of Granada 36 Geographical investigation and exploration .... 37 Gunpowder, printing, and the mariner's compass . . 38 The Italy of the Renaissance 39, 40 Florence and the San Marco Gardens of Lorenzo the Magnificent 41-43 xii CONTENTS Page Greece and Israel as Food Leaves of History . . . 44-47 The Forest Impulse and the Real Hiawatha . . . 48-55 The Legend of Card 66-59 The two pictures and their meaning 60 The New Philosophy of History 61, 62 The new scene for the new individual 63 The vision of Columbus a vision for the world . . 64, 66 CHAPTER II HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD History a novel that happened 69 The progress in science 70 Galileo and the first telescope 71, 72 The garden at Woolsthorpe 73 Bacon, Descartes, and John Locke 74 Algernon Sidney and the motto of the Great Seal of Massachusetts 76-79 The Christian Renaissance 80 The Flemish school of painters 81 1588 the " Annus Mirabilis " 82 The drawn sword 83 The English Parliament in 1628 84 England in 1629 85 The strange star 86 The Great Design of Henry of Navarre .... 87-89 Milton's ode " On the Morning of Christ's Nativity " 90, 91 Hugo Grotius 92 The artistic impulse of the English Bible .... 93-96 Bradford's History of the Plymouth Plantation . . 97-105 Rufus Choate on New England history as a series of romances 106 The Romance of Humanity 107 The story of the growth of modern liberty 108 CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER III THE FEDERAL CONVENTION AND THE ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION Page The spirit of the eighteenth century Ill The tree as a political symbol 112, 113 Science in the eighteenth century 114 Diderot and the French Encyclopaedia 115 Schieler, and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason .... 116 Goethe and the modern doctrine of evolution .... 117 German thought and culture of the eighteenth century 118 Hegel's Universal State in its relation to the Federal Convention and the Constitution 119 Immanuel Kant on a Cosmopolitical State and on Perpetual Peace 120 The realization of the individual will through society and the State 121, 122 The State as an expression of the political nature of man 123 The growth of the individual and the American citizen 124 The world as it was when that new individual, the American citizen, found himself called upon to establish a new fabric of government 125 Conditions existing just previous to the meeting of the Federal Convention 126 Propositions for a union of the Colonies 127-129 The Five Nations and the struggle for supremacy on the North American Continent 130, 131 The Lancaster treaty and the advice of Cannassatego 132-135 The character of the people of the Five Nations . . 136-138 A Legend of the Horse-shoe Falls 139, 140 Independence Hall 141 The assembling of the Federal Convention 142 xiv CONTENTS Page The words of Washington 143 The delegates to the Federal Convention .... 144-148 Washington presiding over the deliberations of the Convention 149 The three propositions before the Convention .... 150 The Virginia plan 151 The New Jersey plan 152 Mr. Hamilton's sketch 153 Difficulty concerning the question of representation 164-156 Slavery as an underlying difficulty 157 Difference of opinion as to executive head of govern- ment 158 The words of Franklin at the close of the Convention . 159 Ratification of the Constitution 160, 161 Rejoicings and festivities 162 Hamilton and the ratification of the Constitution . . 163 The sources of the Constitution 164 The Constitution as the realization of the will of the individual citizen 165 CHAPTER IV AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE IN HISTORY 1850 as an epoch mark 169 Daniel Webster's 7th of March speech and his reply to Hayne 170 The flag and the lantern 171 The situation in 1850 Mr. Calhoun's speech . . . 172 Mr. Webster concerning compensating the South for their slaves 173 The circumstances attending the 7th of March speech . 174 Peace Congresses of 1850 and 1851, and words of Victor Hugo and of Carlyle 175 CONTENTS xv Page 1850 and the political reconstruction of Europe . . . 176 Christian Socialism 177 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood 178, 179 Literature in the mid-nineteenth century The Ameri- can Renaissance 180 Scientific accomplishment and brilliant men .... 181 The France of Victor Hugo and the Germany of Richard Wagner 182 The formative influence exercised by America upon the world in the Epoch of Discovery .... 183-186 The mission of America in the time of Settlement . 187-189 History viewed as a procession passing before our view 190, 191 The influence of America in the eighteenth century . 192 The argument of James Otis against writs of assistance 193-196 America moulding the thought of the world . . . 197, 198 America as an object-lesson of the stability of a repub- lican form of government 199 The new era an epoch of Unity 200, 201 Political Integration 202, 203 The flower of an International State 204, 205 Are the terms of evolution all ? 206 Shaping ideas in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- turies 207 Rousseau and the Law of Nature 208 The attitude of the Greek philosophers and the Roman jurists concerning the Law of Nature .... 209, 210 The logic involved in the Law of Nature 211 The appeal to the Law of Nature in France and in America 212 Devolution 213 The poet as the best scientist 214 Interrogating the deeps 215 xvi CONTENTS Page Sadness in the terms of evolution 216 The Universal State 217 The saving unity 218 The inner life of the State 219, 220 CHAPTER V CORRELATIONS The unity and the correlation of it all 223 America as the first-born of the modern nations . . . 224 St. Thomas Aquinas 225 Nicolaus von Cusa 226, 227 The Dutch Declaration of Independence 228 Device for a Seal of the United States 229, 230 The new order of the centuries 231 Man as a co-Creator 232 The people and their Kings 233, 234 Rousseau and Immanuel Kant 235, 236 The nature of man normally aesthetic 237, 238 No unrelated event in the story 239 Horatio Hale and the Iroquois Book of Rites . . . 240, 241 The Dutch and the Iroquois 242 Steps toward a union of the Colonies for defence . 243, 244 Conference at Albany with the Six Nations .... 245 Archibald Kennedy's pamphlet 246 The situation in 1754 247 The youthful messenger Washington 248-250 The Albany Congress of 1754 251-254 Washington at Fort Necessity 255 Franklin's " Short Hints " 256, 257 Reasons for impossibility of agreement between Great Britain and the Colonies 258 The Genesis of our Government 259,260 The world relations of American history 261 CONTENTS xvii Page France and the Five Nations 262 The opportunity for the study of primitive man . . . 263 Physiological Psychology and the New Philosophy of History 264 American history as a fascinating study 265 A plea for a change in the methods of our schools 266-268 The vision of truth and of beauty 269 The wider view . 270 APPENDIX The state of the English language at the time in which Wycliffe wrote 273 What the men of Jerusalem saw in the sky .... 274 The havoc caused by the Thirty Years' War .... 275 Queen Elizabeth and the Great Design of Henry of Navarre 276,277 The political influence exerted by Hegel's philosophy . 278 Voltaire and Diderot compare the French and the English mind 279 Rousseau and the French Revolution 280 Circumstances attending publication of Browning's Essay on Shelley 280,281 The Five Nations and the northern boundary of New York 281 Archibald Kennedy's pamphlet 282-293 Letter of Major Washington to Governor Hamilton, April, 1754 294, 295 The influence of the Iroquois Confederation upon our form of government 296 Religion and customs of the Iroquois 297, 298 Suggestions for Reading or Reference 299 INDEX . 305 INTRODUCTION THE POINT OF VIEW AMERICA IN ITS RELATION TO THE GREAT EPOCHS OF HISTORY INTRODUCTION THE POINT OF VIEW I HOLD him fortunate who is possessed of the historical imagination, who can thus transport himself into the scenes of the past and live for the time being in those epochs which are marked by magnificent bounds in the world's progress. Such a favored mortal may escape from petty cares and discomforts and, in catching the life and color of those glorious eras of the past, not only better under- stand his own era, but live as in an enchanted land and be a sharer in those spiritual impulses and intellectual quickenings which have char- acterized man at his best. It is a splendid 4 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY heritage to enter into. We as Americans are particularly fortunate in the ease with which we can scan our inheritance and in the point of view which, as it seems to me, we can naturally and profitably take. For the great epochs of modern history are identical in point of time with the epochs of our own history as a land and as a people. The four epochs of American History may be denoted by the dates 1492, 1620, 1788, and 1850. The first is the epoch of the Discovery of America, and is also the world-epoch of the Italian Renaissance. The second is the epoch of the Settlement of America and the world- epoch of the Reformation, and its resulting conflicts the epoch of the Christian Renais- sance. The third is the epoch of the Federal Convention and the adoption of our Constitu- tion, and is the world-epoch of Revolution and of Illumination. The fourth is the epoch of Nullification, of Webster's seventh of March speech, of the events leading up to our Civil War, and is the world-epoch of the political reconstruction of Europe and of the general adoption of modern methods of thought. THE POINT OF VIEW 5 Now the reasons for considering these epochs of our national history as world-epochs seem to me to be important ones. The first reason is that such a method of treatment makes clearer the meaning of our own history. We can understand better what the discovery of America really stands for when we catch a picture of what the world was at the time when we see the events and causes that led up to the discovery, and the effect it produced upon the life and thought of the world. The settle- ment of America will have for us a more vital meaning when we watch that great drama of a warring and discordant world, rent with relig- ious strifes ; fields laid waste and houses deso- lated by the grim hand of war, the drawn sword hanging over all, and America furnishing a haven and a home for the struggling and well- nigh exhausted peoples of the Old World. The adoption of our Constitution, the founding of our national fabric of government, will take on its true meaning and significance only as we regard it in relation to the European thought and action of the times. We must study the return to nature, the social theories which 6 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY found in Rousseau so brilliant and startling an exponent, we must watch the French Revolu- tion blazing fiercely in the sky, and contrast it with the calmer deeps of German thought as typified by Immanuel Kant, if we would really understand the impulses that entered into our national being, and the living spirit of the Declaration of Independence and of the Con- stitution of the United States. The epoch of nullification and of the Civil War in America will take on a new interest when we consider it in connection with the con- temporaneous political reconstruction of Eu- rope and with the world-currents of thought which were then in motion. A second reason for considering the epochs of American history as world-epochs is that it brings to us a widening of the mental horizon. We see the great life of humanity in its bounds of progress in art, in science, in philosophy, in religion. History becomes to us, not a mere record of happenings in a particular country at a particular time, but in it we see the deal- ings of God with man ; we watch the human spirit reacting to the impulses that are con- THE POINT OF VIEW 7 tinually pouring in upon it from the Divine ; we see the prophet, the painter, the poet, the man of God, the philosopher, the scientist, the constructive statesman all doing their work and achieving their mission, not for one land alone, but for all lands, for the general uplifting of mankind everywhere. We see impulses starting in one land spread- ing to others, where with different racial ten- dencies the development is various in form but substantially the same in substance, until at length the civilized world responds to that impulse which has become a general one and moves on in the path of progress. With this world-view of history we regard mankind as a unit, as an individual, and watch him in his periods of growth and of retardation. We see him catching the secrets of nature and turning them to his use, searching out the principles of government and applying them to his social needs, hungry for beauty and ever striving for the aesthetic, born for freedom and continually shaking off tyrannies, above all, born for God, and ever restless, ever dissatisfied until he feels himself in harmony with the 8 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Divine plan and is conscious that he is helping to fulfil the Divine purpose. A third reason for our point of view is that it is cosmopolitan instead of provincial; that it brings us into closer touch with the other nations and shows us more clearly our debt to each. In the Italy of the Renaissance we see that awakening of the human mind and spirit from which has come all that we prize most to-day. The progress since then has been steady, and it has all been part of the one great movement ushered in by the genius of the Italian mind and spirit. In the Renaissance, Italy was for the third time the centre, the pivot of the world's life ; and this last time she centred a movement which we like to think is to endure. When we think, then, of the discovery of America from this world-point of view, we must always think of Italy with admi- ration, with love, with gratitude. Holland and England are the nations that with this cosmopolitical gaze especially arrest our attention in the time of the settlement of America. We see brave little Holland hold- ing the torch of liberty firmly in her grasp THE POINT OF VIEW 9 while the eager waves rush gladly to her de- fence in her struggle against tyranny. We see the serene countenance and catch some- thing of the dauntless spirit of the hero of the Dutch Republic. "And when he died the little children cried in the streets " so was it spoken of William the Silent. And then the England of the Christian Re- naissance, of the English Bible, the England whose laws and liberties we have inherited, how must our hearts be filled with a great affection for Holland and England, and how gladly we recognize the debt we owe them, as we think of the early settlements on our shores from this broader, this world-standpoint. France and Germany are the nations we peculiarly associate with the third epoch of our national history, the time of nationality. The quick, eager, impulsive French mind, stop- ping at nothing in the pursuit of its ideals, and the German mind with its depth, its poise, its thoroughness, we see to have been shaping forces in this interesting period of our career as a people. And so we bow in gratitude to France and Germany and feel that their lessons 10 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY have sunk deep into our hearts and into our lives. When we consider the epoch of 1850 we have come to a point where we can take a somewhat more general view, and can see what varied streams of influence have flowed into our national life from the nations of the Old World. Switzerland, with its republics set upon the mountain side ; Ireland, with its warm- hearted and politically acute children; Scot- land, Sweden, Denmark, what country is there of the Old World that has not sent its quota of sons and daughters to help found the new home ? They are in our schools, in our armies, they are our neighbors and friends. The life currents of the nations of the world are flowing through our veins. We have caught something of the spirit of each. To each we owe a certain debt; to each we are bound by that closest of ties, the tie of blood. If we would take a still wider view we may see how the nations of the past have contrib- uted to our heritage. We may think of Greece and Israel as the food-leaves of history, of Rome as the great unifying and law-giving THE POINT OF VIEW 11 force, and we trace the influence of each upon the various epochs of our history. Our point of view, then, is distinctly cosmopolitical, and we hold it to be of no small advantage to as- sociate the epochs of our national life with the nations of the world, and to render to each and to all a loving tribute. It helps to give us a sense of the unity of mankind, of the universal brotherhood of the human race, and it saves us from any undue self-gratulation or over- emphasis upon our own national importance. There is still another reason for considering our national epochs as world-epochs, and it seems to me that to us as individuals it is the most important reason of all. And that reason is because it gives us a central point for our reading and for our thought. Usually our reading scatters fire too much. We have no special purpose in what we read, no definite central points around which to make our groupings, nothing particular to which to pin down this interesting fact or the thought or conclusion to which the fact leads us. By taking these four epochs of our national history and treating them thus as world- 12 epochs, we have a definite, systematic, well- articulated, central frame-work. Everything we read will find its proper place, and we can put it there to stay. If we are read- ing biography, we think of the individual in connection with one of these epochs or in his influence upon one or all of them. We know just where to find him. If we are read- ing the history of art or literature we associate it with these definite epochs, and it gives us a time-sense, and an appreciation of relations. If we are studying philosophy we find a keen pleasure and satisfaction in seeing what system of philosophy is dominant in one of these given epochs and what was its effect upon that epoch. So with science, so with the history of religion. We can see where each phase belongs and its relation to other phases. And then what new vistas are continually opening up before us. Suppose we are reading of Columbus and his voyages. From this wider point of view we think of what the world was at the time, we watch with joy the bound in art, we see new inventions springing up everywhere. We wish THE POINT OF VIEW 13 to know the story of the Moors in Spain. We see new methods of thought replacing the old scholasticism. We catch the impulse of the past and see the Hebrew pages interpreted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The revival of the old philosophy and the bringing to light of the old statues, make us want to know more about the glories of Greece and Rome. We wish to know what the Renaissance really means, what it really stands for. No end to the great avenues opening out before us. And yet here is a central point the Dis- covery of America. Around this we make our groupings. From this we start out on various quests of infinite interest ; to this we return and rest and reflect and draw our con- clusions. And so it may be with all our reading and with all our thoughts. We shall find new in- terests, new relations, but above all, definite, tangible points to tie to, and about which we can form a coherent and helpful body of thought. This, then, is our point of view. It is the considering of the epochs of the history of 14 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY America as world-epochs: because, first, it makes clearer the meaning of our own history ; because, second, it brings to us a widening of the mental horizon ; because, third, it is a cosmo- political instead of a narrow or provincial point of view ; and, fourth, because it gives to us as individuals a central point for our reading and for our thought. I THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD JUST BEFORE THE DAWN YOUTH is always interesting, always delightful. The romance of the New World has for its scene the Renaissance, that time of the new birth, of the youthful bound of the human spirit ; that time in which is to be seen what Mr. Symonds calls " the first transcendent bloom of the adolescence of the modern world." It is usual, speaking in a rough way, to con- sider the period of the Italian Renaissance as extending from about the year 1450 to about the year 1550. But before daylight comes the dawn. The Renaissance did not burst upon the world with a sudden dazzling light, but before it came many signs of the morning. As the singing of birds is one of the earliest signs of the dawn of a summer morning, so 18 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY the Renaissance was ushered in by a world bursting into song; a world possessed with a passion for legend and romance ; a world listening to the poetic tales of chivalry and to the story of the old Celtic and German mythical heroes. Some of us are familiar with the distributing room of the Boston Public Library and have been interested in the com- pletion of the splendid series of designs by Mr. Abbey illustrating the story of "The Quest of the Holy Grail." Here we see the child Galahad, brought up by the holy nuns and visited by the dove with the golden cen- ser and the angel bearing the Grail, which, as the legend runs, was the sacred vessel from which our Lord had eaten at the Last Supper, and in which had been subsequently gathered by Joseph of Arimathea the divine blood of his wounds. We see the young Galahad watching alone in the church until dawn, keep- ing his knightly vigil ; we see him clad in red and made ready for departure on his sacred mission by pure and brave hands. We see him installed in the Seat Perilous which none be- fore him had occupied in safety, and over which THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 19 flashed the legend " This is the seat of Gala- had." Then Galahad starts forth upon his mission and, in the castle of Amfortas, the Grail procession passes before him and he fails to ask the question which would have healed the wounded King and liberated the inhabitants of the castle. And now, starting forth again, he meets the Loathly Damsel, he fights and overcomes the seven knights representing the Seven Deadly Sins, and rescues the imprisoned maidens. He leaves his newly wedded wife and starting forth again on his quest visits once more the Grail Castle and asks the question that heals the wounded Amfortas and allows him to die in peace. And now, in Solomon's ship and guided by the angel bearing the Grail, he sails to the mythical city of Sarras, and there at length falls on his knees in adoration before the sacred Grail, which disappears forever into the heavens. We are delighted with these pictures, gor- geous in their coloring, rich in their decorative effect, and conveying a sentiment at once sacred and inspiring. They transport us to a region 20 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY of romance, to the days of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. As we look at them we catch the flavor of mediaeval times. But withal, says Mr. Nutt, in his Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, "the instinct which led the twelfth and thirteenth centuries thus to place the Arthurian story above all others was a true one. It was charged with the spirit of romance, and they were pre- eminently the ages of the romantic temper." Originally of pagan origin, this Grail legend takes on its Christian form in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; in this period just before the dawn of the Renaissance. There are many versions of the Grail legend and of the Arthu- rian cycle. While a Celtic origin is generally claimed for them, yet, however far back we go, we always find a reference to some prior source, and it is probable that there is some remote origin back of all. 1 The " Historia Britonum," written by Geof- frey of Monmouth somewhere about 1135 to 1150, furnished the material for a group of story 1 See " The Legend of the Holy Grail," by George McLean Harper, Bait., Modern Language Asso. of America, 1893. THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 21 writers who dealt with the prophecies of Merlin and the legendary early kings of Britain. The whole atmosphere of the period breathes with knights and fair ladies, with King Arthur and his companions of the Round Table, with Merlin and his witcheries. There is a strange combi- nation of romance, religion, and voluptuous- ness. It is the time of the troubadours and the minnesingers, the time of the French, Pro- vengal, German, and Sicilian singers. Medi- aeval love is revealed with all its glamour, its unrealness, and its frequent sensuousness and frank materiality. It was not until Dante and his " Vita Nuova " that mediaeval love attained a spiritual expression and was linked with phi- losophy that gentle lady who looked so pity- ingly from her window and whose smiles brought comfort. If the usual expressions of mediaeval love are thus somewhat disappointing, even if having a certain fascination, the same is not true of some phases of the religious life of the period. For the poetic and romantic nature of a St. Francis of Assisi, we have a feeling of unalloyed and tender interest and almost affection. Do 22 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY you suppose he ever preached that sermon to his little sisters the birds, and that they hov- ered about him until he dismissed his feathered congregation, when they took wing with grace- ful and exquisite carollings ? Do you think he brought that big, fierce wolf, whom he called his brother, into better ways and into peaceful relations with the commu- nity? I cannot say, but I do know that he loved all living things, and that they loved him. I do know that all creatures both great and small were his brothers and his sisters, and that the good God above was his Father, and that he had a very beautiful and intimate rela- tion with them all. All the stories, legendary and otherwise, that have clustered about the memory of St. Francis make us love him. And we love, too, Santa Clara, who, inspired by him, devoted herself to the religious life, and became the founder of a sister order to the Franciscans. The passion for self-sacrifice, the choosing of poverty, the glad, joyous life of the spirit and of ministry to the unhappy and the distressed these are revelations of the possibilities of human nature when touched by THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 23 the Divine that, bodied forth in these early years of the thirteenth century, east a certain glory over the times. But the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were not alone the period of mediaeval love, of the weaving of romantic legends, of a some- what mystical, but withal a very real and beau- tiful religious life. There was also a very practical and very necessary political devel- opment. On that June day in 1215 King John met the barons assembled at Runnymede, and then and there in a single day, the great Charter of English liberties was wrested from the unwill- ing King. That first quarter of the thirteenth century, with its flavor of romance, with King Arthur and his Round Table, with St. Francis and an ideally beautiful religious life, also shows us strong men struggling for their liber- ties, and, in the signing of Magna Charta, furnishes a broad foundation for the English liberties maintained in the struggles of the succeeding years. There was a vital connection between the literary life and expression and the struggle for 24 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY liberty of these early thirteenth-century years. " It is," says Mr. Green, " by no mere accident that the English tongue thus wakes again into written life on the eve of the great struggle between the nation and its King. The artificial forms imposed by the conquest were falling away from the people as from its literature, and a new England quickened by the Celtic vivacity of De Map and the Norman daring of Gerald, stood forth to its conflict with John." The first Royal proclamation in English was issued in A. D. 1258. The English language was coming into use by the people and by the court. In the following century we find, in 1362, an order made that all court proceedings should be conducted in English, although the laws and records were still written in Latin or in French. In 1363 the Chancellor's speech in Parliament was given in English. In 1382 was completed Wycliffe's English translation of the Bible. 1 This was the great accomplishment of the fourteenth century, and its results were far- reaching. 1 Appendix, Note I. THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 25 Such was the world when, almost ready to emerge from its darkness, it awaited the dawn. Such was the world when Cimabue, the great founder of modern painting, watched that boy Giotto using for his. canvas the smooth surface of the rocks in the field and saw at a glance that a new genius was born. Such was the world when Dante, the morn- ing star, the herald of the dawn, sang his immortal cantos. Giotto painting the portrait of Dante ! how it brings before our minds art as the great revealer and interpreter ; art, all- inclusive, all-embracing; art which breathes life into the canvas and awakes the slumbering block of marble ; art which expresses itself in song, in story, in poetry, in the cathedral ; art which enkindles the constructive imagina- tion and inspires it to the highest creations in science and philosophy ; art so many-sided, so ever varying, and yet producing always the highest unity. Michael Angelo, when asked which art he preferred, painting or sculpture, replied, " I know but one art." There is but one art. It is the expression of harmony, of beauty, of the aesthetic, of that in 26 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY man which links him with the divine. You will find that every bound in human progress is the result of an impulse from art. Study history as you will and you cannot divorce the aesthetic from any step in the progress of man- kind. Read the story of the world and you will find art always the inspirer, ever the great crea- tive force. It is through art that the world receives the lessons it would otherwise be unwilling to listen to. It was through forms of art that Dante taught ; so it was with Milton, with John Bunyan, and in our own time with Harriet Beecher Stowe. When the time is ripe another will arise and show to the world the vision of peace in such lines of harmony, such form of beauty, that men will catch the lesson and turn away in disgust and horror from the distorted and ugly countenance of war. A true philos- ophy of history must then regard art as the very keystone of the arch of human progress. It must listen to the revelation of beauty, of harmony, in things material and things spirit- ual, and thus be led to a grasp of the higher, the perfect unity. And thinking thus of the THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 27 divine artist moulding man into lines of propor- tion and harmony, we must feel that there is a saving unity somewhere. We can think of John Wycliffe born almost the same year that Dante died and scattering the seeds of civil and religious liberty. We can think of the men of God who so long preserved the sacred manu- scripts in their monasteries, and who in their cells were among the earliest to copy Virgil and Cicero and Horace, and to foster the learn- ing which was to open the secrets of nature as well as to bring back the Bible to us ; of Dante knocking at the friendly gates of a convent that he might leave his priceless cantos in safe and intelligent keeping ; of the weary and well- nigh hopeless Columbus finding at La Rabida the refreshment and assistance elsewhere denied him ; of the first book printed in Italy receiving the impress of the type within the walls of a monastery. And thinking thus we can come to feel that there is a higher harmony and beauty working itself out through all the differ- ing thoughts and expressions of men, and that through it all the world has ever been moulded, is ever being moulded into lines of symmetry 28 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY and unity. The age of the Renaissance was typically an age of art, was ushered in by art, was permeated and saturated with art, and has sent its artistic impulse down to us through the centuries. We look with joy upon these figures of Giotto and Dante emerging from the shadows of the middle ages ! What a free and bold spirit was that of Dante ! The freeing of the human mind and spirit was the great work of the Italian Renaissance ; and yet we can seem to understand something of that harmony which Dante meant when he tells us that " his desire and will were without strain or jar revolved henceforth by that same Love that moves the sun and all the other stars." With Dante and these men of the early Renaissance came a new feeling for nature. Dante caught " the trembling light on the dis- tant sea." He climbed to the tops of moun- tains that he might behold the outstretched panorama. Together with the figures of Giotto and Dante a third form emerges from the shadows. It is a form endued with a restless activity ; THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 29 the countenance shines with a great enthusiasm. It is Petrarch ; he who has been called the restorer of Hellenic literature in Western Europe. It is Petrarch ; he who on his jour- neys turned aside to each monastery that he saw in the distance and made within its walls a careful search for some precious manuscript that might contain a classical masterpiece of the past. It is Petrarch, the first humanist; he who showed to men once more the joyousness and beauty of this human life of ours ; he who lived on such intimate terms of companionship with Horace and Homer that he wrote to them his letters as if indeed they were then in the land of the mortals; he who saw the vision, who recognized the wide mission of the poetic, the sesthetic, who caught the sense of unity, so that he wrote, in that theological age, " One may almost say that theology actually is poetry, poetry concerning God ; " who held to the vision of beauty and knew that it compre- hended all, interpreted all. We find in Petrarch that same feeling for nature which we noted in Dante. Petrarch too, loved to look off from the summit of moun- 30 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY tain peaks. Burkhardt relates of him that he took his younger brother with him in the ascent of one such, and having reached the summit opened a book it was the Confessions of St. Augustine and read to his brother this pas- sage : " And men go forth and admire lofty mountains and broad seas, and roaring torrents, and the ocean, and the course of the stars, and forget their own selves while doing so." Petrarch was possessed of that eager desire for the accumulation of ancient manuscripts and books which has led him to be called the restorer of Hellenic literature in Western Europe. Far and wide he made his quests. " When I was on a journey," he tells us, " if I happened to see an ancient monastery in the distance, I would turn aside to it, for 'who knows,' said I within myself, ' but that here I may find what I desire ? ' ' Petrarch has been called the first humanist. His was the spirit of Italian humanism, that spirit which became dominant in the opening years of the fifteenth century. During one of the intermissions of the Council of Constance, Poggio, the apostolic secretary, starts out upon THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 31 his romantic journey in the search of manu- scripts, in the year 1416. Journeying far and long, regardless of fatigue and of the severities of the weather, he made his famous quest and gathered material of such interest and value that the most active enthusiasm was aroused among the scholars of the time. This control- ling literary impulse reached Rome itself. As early as 1406 we find Pope Innocent VII. endeavoring to re-establish the Roman Univer- sity and declaring his wish to bring back the restoration of long-neglected studies u in order," as he says, " that learning might lead men to the knowledge of the truth and teach them to obey God and the laws." Thomas of Sarzana, who became Pope Nicho- las V., was a typical scholar, and his court became one of classical letters and refinement. By him were gathered about five thousand books which formed the nucleus of the Vatican Library. Not long after him came Pius II., also imbued with the spirit for classical learning, having been the pupil at Florence of Francisco Filelfo. Pope Pius was himself an author of no mean merit, and inspired the literary life 32 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY about him by works of poetry, philosophy, geography and fiction, which he contributed to the era. Here ends the period of manuscript bibliog- raphy in Italy. In 1465, at the Benedictine monastery of Subiaco, was printed the first book on Italian soil. Of course, books had been printed on German soil some years earlier. 1492. We have lingered over this early dawn of the Renaissance, but the sun is rising high in the heavens and the full noontide glory of the Renaissance is at hand. Those piercing shafts of light are soon to dart through the darkness of that sea of night and point men to the await- ing continent which shall soon be revealed in all its beauty and its opportunities. America and the great epochs of history. How inseparably is America associated with this great epoch of the Italian Renaissance. A world awakening from its sleep is to be completed by that other self which the divine hand shall place by its side. It is to be rounded 33 into completeness by the discovery of that missing hemisphere. The narrow, pent-up gaze which could not see beyond the con- fines of the Mediterranean is to extend its horizon, and the mental life of mankind is to be wonderfully quickened by the broader view. The poets had long been the prophets. Petrarch sang of : " The daylight hastening with winged steps Perchance to gladden the expectant eyes Of far-off nations in a world remote." Pulci, another Italian poet, is even more explicit : " Know that this theory is false ; his bark The daring mariner shall urge far o'er The western wave, a smooth and level plain, Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel. Man was in ancient days of grosser mould, And Hercules might blush to learn how far Beyond the limits he had vainly set, The dullest sea-boat soon shall wing her way. " Men shall descry another hemisphere ; Since to one common centre all things tend, So earth by curious mystery divine Well balanced hangs amid the starry spheres. 3 34 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY At our antipodes are cities, states, And thronged empires, ne'er divined of yore. But see, the sun speeds on his western path To glad the nations with expected light." In the Boston Art Museum is a slender, youthful figure wrought in marble, reclining in a graceful attitude at the edge of an old pier and gazing out upon the waters. It is the boy Columbus. There is a rapt intentness in the face, and the look is far away and beyond, as if by divination resting on other waters and other lands yet unknown to men ! And so the boy, it may be, looked dreamily out upon the Mediterranean either from the shore or from one of the lower hilltops of the Ligurian Alps, upon which Genoa the superb is built ; and who shall say what thoughts, what hopes, what aspirations may have been in that young mind ? For the vision of youth is the prophecy of the accomplishment of the man, and to a richly endowed nature, gifted with insight and with intuition of great truths, come these early flashes of light, these almost trance-like lockings into the future. The boy, become a man, is that God-sent THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 35 mariner who in the familiar year 1492 gave to the world America. Let us take this date 1492 and try to picture to ourselves the world of that time. The cradle of the new world was rocked amid scenes at once romantic and interesting. At what a picturesque and fascinating period of Spanish history did Columbus arrive at Cordova in 1485. The pomp and magnificence of war were everywhere. The glistening of armor, the flash of scimitars, the clash of shields, the gathering ranks of Spanish chivalry proudly arrayed, the bustle, the stir, the din, all betokened active and impatient preparation for advance upon the infidels. At such a moment and amid such scenes did Columbus come to the coldly acute and intel- lectual Ferdinand and the more fervent and generous Isabella, with his offer of a new world. Following the Spanish court from place to place Columbus was not only a wit- ness of the magnificent struggles of the Spanish nobility with the haughty and defiant Moors, but was himself a gallant participant in many of these stirring scenes. When at length the 36 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY lofty and splendid city of Granada, the seat of universities and of the highest civilization then known, the last Mohammedan stronghold, ca- pitulated to the followers of the banner of the cross, Columbus was there to witness that ever memorable event. The morning signal-guns have boomed from the fortress of the Alhambra, announcing that the hour of surrender is at hand. With pomp and magnificence the Spanish retinue is ad- vancing from the besieging city of Santa Fe. The banner of the cross and the victorious standards of Ferdinand and Isabella have been planted far up upon the heights. How they glisten in the morning sunlight! The keys of the city have been delivered to the conquerors; and now on his winding moun- tain path, Boabdil the unlucky turns to look for the last time upon the ancient city of Granada. The eight hundred years of Moslem domination have passed. The Spanish nation, strengthened and developed by a long season of conflict and hardship, and aroused by a passion- ate religious fervor almost unequalled in his- tory, has excelled itself in deeds of chivalry THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 37 and valor, and at length has driven the invader from the lofty heights of his last stronghold. These are the splendid pages of Spanish his- tory. But the cold fact remains that by her subsequent treatment of the Moors, by driving out from the country her most skilled artisans, her most productive laborers, Spain prepared the way for her rapid decline. In both Spain and Portugal this was a tune of geographical investigation and exploration. All the cosmographical works of the ancients were now eagerly ransacked and searched. Six Latin editions of Ptolemy were published between 1472 and 1490. Especially in Portu- gal was there a prevailing zeal for the study of geography and navigation, and under the enthusiastic leadership and direction of Prince Henry the work went brilliantly on. The astrolabe is adapted to navigation so that the mariner can estimate his distance from the equator by ascertaining the altitude of the sun. Maps and charts are revised and reconstructed. The compass is brought into general use. And now that we are speaking of the com- 38 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY pass we must note as one of the important features of this world of 1492, the series of great inventions which were then coming to exert their influence upon the life of mankind. Gunpowder, the mariner's compass, and the art of printing were of themselves sufficient to revolutionize the life of mankind and to bring about a new era. Feudalism received its death- blow when those little black grains of powder came into use. Gunpowder was a wonderful leveler. By the aid of the compass the mariner found his way across what had been the track- less seas ; commerce was extended ; America was discovered. The art of printing was introduced at just the right time to extend the knowledge of the classics that were then being rediscovered and to acquaint men with the new thoughts and new inventions of these times. Now each of these three great inven- tions of gunpowder, the mariner's compass, and printing, has its history. They were probably all of them known to the Chinese. Thus the Chinese had their south-pointing carts at a very early date, and knew of the variation of the compass as early as the llth THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 39 century and probably before, according to Mr. Park Benjamin, l the first authentic descrip- tion of a Chinese marine compass being found, however, in a work written in 1297. That Dante knew of the compass we learn by the lines in which he speaks of " A voice That made me seem like needle to the star In turning to its whereabouts." Without going into the niceties of their origin it is sufficient for us to note that for all practical purposes and for the use of the modern world each of these inventions dates from the time of the Renaissance. If this world of 1492, this world stimulated by inventions, shows to us Spain and Portugal as important and interesting factors, yet the full glory of the period centred in Italy. It is the Italy of the Renaissance. It is here that mankind awaking from his sleep looks most joyously about him. He beholds the glories which his hitherto closed eyelids have shut out. Nature appears to him beautiful and fair. 1 See Intellectual Rise in Electricity, by Park Benjamin, p. 189. 40 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY The youth and freshness of the Grecian spirit return to him again. He is inspired by the masterpieces of the past, which he now learns to know and loves to study. He feels the new impulse and bound from within emancipating his mind and freeing his spirit. Dante, poet and seer, precursor and herald of the dawn, speaks to him. He sees Dante with Virgil as his companion in those weird and terrifying journeys through horror and misery until they emerge from the blackness and behold the stars once more shining above them in the heavens. Dante and Virgil become his guides and his companions through the fairer and brighter scenes which are about him. The glories of Greece and Rome for him revive again. He is stimulated and strengthened by the lofty records of what man has done. The story of the heroes of the past enkindles within him a like heroic spirit. It is the Renaissance, the age of art. Italy is now a magic land. It is the time of the Medicis, the wondrous age of Raphael and of Michael Angelo. That divine touch which we call genius is operating upon and springing THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 41 up within the minds of men, and life is enriched and beautified by the sculptor, the painter, and the poet. The rough block of marble under the master's touch pulses into life, and when the cunning chisel has wrought its work forth leaps the majestic creation. The bare and meaningless canvas learns to catch the witchery of the Mona Lisa smile, or is irradiated and glorified by the matchless beauty and tenderness of the Sistine Madonna. And the light of the Renaissance, from its first dawn to its full orbed splendor, fell no- where so lovingly as on Florence. Here Dante sang. Here Ghiberti wrought his gates and Brunelleschi threw his dome over Santa Maria del Fiore. Here Donatello shaped his marble faun. As Athens was Greece, so Florence was Italy. And nowhere in Florence was so en- chanted ground as the San Marco gardens of Lorenzo the Magnificent. We can fancy ourselves walking in these gardens and watching that youth chiselling the masque of a faun. An open copy of Dante's " Divine Comedy " is lying on a bench by his side, as if he had just been glancing at it. 42 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY About him in the garden are some of the wonderful masterpieces of Grecian sculpture which have been dug up from the willing earth, eagerly parting to disclose the treasures it knows it has concealed too long. Groups of artists and scholars are walking about drinking in the inspiration from these splendid creations of the world's first youth, and discussing the newly revived philosophies of Plato and Aris- totle. It is Michael Angelo, now a youth of eighteen, taking his early lessons in art under the special patronage of the great Lorenzo him- self. Others there are of his own age, the veiy flower of the Florentine youth, also pursuing their studies in these wonderful gardens of San Marco. Raphael, now a boy of twelve, is soon to be in Florence, and his genius is to grow into its exquisite proportions among these delightful and stimulating scenes. How much there was to talk about by these eager students in their garden walks. They discuss the con- quest of Granada and smile over the weakness of Boabdil the Unlucky. Perhaps they wish themselves amid those exciting scenes. They hear of the generous act of Isabella in pledging THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 43 her jewels that at length, after all these weary wanderings and years of waiting, Columbus may make his voyages in search of the ex- pected Indies. They talk over the probable outcome of that voyage. Perhaps they look over together one of those six Latin editions of Ptolemy which had been published within the last few years. Or, on a pleasant evening, they may have sat together discussing the great changes that have been wrought by the inven- tions of the recent years : the help the com- pass and the astrolabe will be to Columbus, the wonderful difference in the methods of warfare that gunpowder has brought about; how printing and paper have made the thoughts of their own time and of all ages so accessible to them. If Copernicus, that youth of nineteen in 1492, was with them I am sure he looked up into those starry Italian skies and dreamed his dreams of those majestic and orderly revolu- tions of the celestial orbs and began to think out the great system which he was a few years later to explain to the world. Perhaps they talked of Leonardo da Vinci, in this year 1492 a man of forty, in the full glory 44 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY of his powers. Some of them very likely had met Erasmus, who has now reached the age of twenty-five. None of them has heard of that boy of nine who was born in 1483 that boy Martin Luther. There is a joy in very youth itself. The bounding pulse and high health, the leaping imagination, the dreams undimmed by stern experience ! But to be young in that time of the new youth of the world, to be young in Florence itself, to be young and in those enchanted gardens of Lorenzo the gods might sigh to come down to earth for such a youth. FOOD-LEAVES OF HISTORY. How manifest is the influence of Greece and Israel upon this wonderfu] Italy of the Renais- sance. As each succeeding spring-time is with us again, we may walk out in our gardens and see the earth cracking to make way for the first tiny shoots of green ; and we know that a great principle of life and growth is at work, and we can watch its methods. As we observe the unfolding of the first leaves and study their THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 45 career, we see that these first appearing leaves are not usually the permanent type, but that they are cotyledons or food-leaves which give strength and sustenance to the plant. They die and pass away in giving life to the plant and are succeeded by the type of leaf which is to be the final and prevailing one. Considering, then, Greece and Israel as the food-leaves, the coty- ledons of history, we may trace their nutritive influence upon the epochs of modern history. Greece, inspired by beauty, worshipping beauty, gave to the world not only art, but science and philosophy. She not only revealed beauty, but she opened the understanding and made clear the great principles of moral and political de- velopment. Art was the great inspirer, the great interpreter, that called Greece to her mission and taught her how to teach the world. Thinking now of the influence of these food- leaves of history upon the world, upon the Italy of the Renaissance, we find and can see clearly and vividly how Greece revives again in this epoch of the Renaissance, in this won- derful time of the new birth of the world and of the birth of our own new Western World. 46 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY How art and beauty leap again into life ! How do the sculptor, the painter, and the poet vie with the masterpieces of Grecian art and liter- ature. How are the classic statues of the past exhumed and brought forth from their hiding- places to be the inspiration of Michael Angelo, of Raphael, of the glorious group of artists of the Renaissance. So too, the masterpieces of Greek and Roman literature are brought out from the friendly sheltering-places of the convent and the monas- tery, where they have so long lain hidden in oblivion, and Homer and Virgil again sing their songs as the Western Continent opens up a new hope and a new aspiration for the awakened and eager minds of men. Again do Plato and Aristotle teach the people ; again does science look with a questioning and exploring eye into the mysteries of nature and seek their solution. Copernicus studies the great laws governing the starry heavens ; gunpowder, printing, and paper come into use ; the compass points out the path across the unknown waters. In Flor- ence, Athens springs into life again, and we see the youthful joyousness and beauty of the THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 47 Grecian spirit once more revived. And how clearly may we see the influence of this other initial or food-leaf, Israel, in this epoch of the Renaissance, this epoch of the discovery of America. Strange is it to note how these two leaves, these historical cotyledons, seemingly so unlike, yet have united their life-giving forces in this new plant of civilization taking its definite and coherent shape in this time of the discovery of man by himself, this time of the discovery of a new continent. Israel ! how manifest is its impulse upon this newly awakening world. A brilliant writer has said that " the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is the only translation worthy of certain pages of the Hebrew Bible ; that Michael Angelo is the only artist who could interpret the Jahvist, for he is truly his brother in genius." The art of the Renaissance, of the time of the discovery of America, is not alone a fit interpreter of the wonderful pages of the Hebrew writers, but we find now for the first time the human soul speaking out through the canvas as it first spoke in the consciousness of Israel. The Moses of 48 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Michael Angelo and the Sistine Madonna are crowning illustrations of the fact that the Renaissance caught its inspiration not less from the Hebrew Scriptures and from the cradle at Bethlehem than from Grecian art, philosophy, and letters. THE FOREST IMPULSE AND THE EEAL HIAWATHA. Let us turn to another picture. While Florence and all Italy were bathed in the glories of the Renaissance a wonderful new impulse was stirring in the forests of the as yet undiscovered America. It may seem a start- ling statement to those unacquainted with the facts, but the first confederated government in America was successfully organized while the old world was dreaming only of Asiatic prov- inces that might by a faint possibility be found beyond the waste of waters. Longfellow's beautiful poem has made the name of Hiawatha familiar to us, but perhaps we do not all realize that such a man actually lived, that he was the first .peace hero and prophet of America, and that he founded the Iroquois Confederacy, which, under the name of " The THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 49 Five Nations," played so important a part in our early history. Probably about the middle of the fifteenth century a crafty, fierce, and war- loving chief named Atotahro had sway over the Onondagas, who were in possession of the lake of that name, of Lake Skaneateles, and of the Oswego River. The neighboring tribes were terrorized by his bold and successful onslaughts, and rival chiefs and enemies were removed by his murderous machinations. So great was his reputation for subtlety and arti- fice that he was called " the wizard." His reign was a reign of terror, and no man dared say him nay. No man save one, and he a chief of high degree, called Hiawatha which means " he who seeks the wampum belt." Distinguished for mildness and benev- olence, he was beloved by his tribe and had been spared by even the terrible Atotahro. This gentle, high-minded, and farseeing Hia- watha, whether taught by the quiet ministra- tions of nature about him, by that inner voice that speaks as from the Deity himself, or by both combined, had conceived the plan of a great confederation which should bring about 50 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY a universal peace. It was Hiawatha's thought that, starting with the tribes about him, a fed- eration should be formed to which from time to time other tribes might be joined until finally all should be united in a bond which would make war no longer possible. And so this peace hero of the American forests calls together the chiefs and members of his own Onondaga tribe that he may secure their adhesion to his plan. With an eloquence and wealth of imagery natural to the red man of America, he presents his views and argues in favor of the proposed confedera- tion which he has so much at heart. But the terrible Atotahro strides in upon the gath- ering, and his forbidding presence and known disapproval of the measures under discussion are sufficient to strike terror into the assembly and cause it to dissolve without coming to any result. Again does Hiawatha send out his call, and again does Atotahro's presence overawe, and his influence bring the proceedings to naught. Yet a third time does this undis- mayed and impassioned advocate of peace send out his summons, but at the appointed THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 51 time no one responds. And so to Hiawatha, waiting there alone at the edge of the forest and looking out upon the rippling lake, there came moments of heavy discouragement and sorrow. But the west wind stirring the leaves above him whispers the word " peace," the great trees with their reposeful and ma- jestic quietude, speak to him of peace, and the gently stirring surface of the lake and the quiet sky above have for him only voices of peace. Who shall say but that the voice of the infinite God himself at that moment spake into that lonely mind and heart that sacred word " peace " ? Inspired by his idea, this forest philosopher and untaught master of political science forms his resolve, and passing slowly and thoughtfully into the thickness of the forest he leaves forever his tribe and his people. His idea is more to him than any ties of association. His mission calls him on, and he will go to another tribe, where, perhaps, his plans may find acceptance. And so he journeys to the land of the Mohawks, or Can- iengas, as perhaps they are more properly called. His path led him over mountains, 52 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY across lakes, and down rivers. On the borders of one of these lakes he gathers shells, which he strings and places upon his breast as a token that his mission is one of peace. It is early dawn when he arrives one morning at a Can- ienga town in which lives the noted chief Dekanawidah, whom he wishes to enlist in his cause. Tradition tells us that Hiawatha chose the fallen trunk of a tree as his seat, because it was near to a spring from which the Indians drew their water. Soon from the log house came a woman, perhaps the wife of Dekaniwidah, and sees Hiawatha quietly seated there. She does not speak to him, but returns to the house and tells Dekanawidah of the stranger with the white shells upon his breast. The chief announces that he will wel- come the newcomer as his guest, and summons Hiawatha to his presence. So began the ac- quaintance of these illustrious Indians. Hia- watha unfolds to Dekanawidah his plan, and secures in him a powerful helper. A council of the Canienga nation is called, and after much debate they agree to join in the proposed confederation and to use their efforts to bring THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 53 it into being. Ambassadors are next sent to the neighboring Oneidas to secure their adhe- sion, but they are not ready to decide at once and tell the messengers to " come back in an- other day," this meaning in Indian language in another year. It was a long time for Hiawatha to wait, but the co-operation of the Oneidas was all-essen- tial, and the only way was to be patient and hope for the best. And what a beautiful wait- ing-place was it in this land of the Caniengas. Their canoes dotted the placid surface of Lake George, and we can think of Hiawatha plying his canoe upon this romantic body of water, looking up upon the hills which surround it, and at times luring the pickerel from his fav- orite haunts ; but always thinking of his great plan and working out more fully in his mind the details of that confederation which was to become such a potent factor in the events to be enacted on these Western shores, so soon to be discovered by the inquiring and exploring mind of Europe. The year passed and the Oneidas having expressed their assent to the plan, a treaty was 54 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY ratified by which Hiawatha and the Caniengas received the first new member into the contem- plated federation. Application was now made to Atotahro, the dreaded chief of the Ononda- gas, that he would withdraw his objections and enter into the league, but he again refused as he had previously done, when urged by Hia- watha. West of the Onondagas lay the lands of the Cayugas, and the ambassadors, still un- daunted, turned their steps in that direction and easily secured a third member of the con- federacy, as the Cayugas had long been in conflict with Atotahro and welcomed any com- bination that might enable them to resist his power. The three combined tribes again made overtures to Atotahro, by advice of Hiawatha offering him large voice and influence in the affairs of the new government, and this time the mission was successful. Atotahro, once committed to the plan, entered heartily into it and suggested that the warlike Senecas be brought into the confederation. This was ac- complished, and a convention was called to meet near Onondaga Lake for the purpose of organizing the confederacy and adopting rules THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 55 which practically amounted to a constitution. Hiawatha was the shaping mind of the gather- ing, and a constitution or body of laws was established which is known to this day as " The Great Peace." During all these succeeding years, whenever a chief has died and a new chief is to be in- stalled, there has been a ceremony, as set forth in the Iroquois Book of Rites, beginning with the chant, " We come to greet and thank the Peace," and having at frequent intervals the refrain : " This was the roll of you You that combined in the work, You that completed the work, The great Peace." When Longfellow wrote his beautiful poem he did not know this true story of Hiawatha, and misled by a book which had then re- cently been published, he located Hiawatha far from his real home and wove about his name those exquisite legends in which we all delight. And the myth and legend has its lessons for us. Far away on the Pacific slope of this un- 56 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY discovered continent the red man of the Amer- ican forests was telling to his children a legend which we must note. Hoopa Valley is the home of a tribe of Indians who from their valor and extended dominions have been called the Romans of northern California. A careful study of this tribe has been made by Mr. Stephen Powers under the auspices of our national Ethnological Bureau, and we give the legend in the graceful form in which he has presented it. "THE LEGEND OF GARD. " A great many snows ago, according to the tradition of the ancients, there lived a young HupS, whose name was Gard. Wide as the eagles fly was he known for his love of peace. He loved the paths of honesty, and clean was his heart. His words were not crooked or double. He went everywhere teaching the people the excellent beauty of meekness. He said to them : ' Love peace, and eschew war and the shedding of blood. Put away from you all wrath and unseemly jangling and bitterness THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 57 of speech. Dwell together in the singleness of love. Let all your hearts be as one heart. So shall ye prosper greatly, and the Great One Above shall build you up like a rock on the mountains. The forests shall yield you abun- dance of game and of rich nutty seeds and acorns. The red-fleshed salmon shall never fail in the water. Ye shall rest in your wigwams in great joy, and your children shall run in and out like the young rabbits of the field for number.' " And the fame of Gard went out through all that land. Gray-headed men came many days' journey to sit at his feet. " Now it chanced on a time that the young man Gard was absent from his wigwam many days. His brother was grievously distressed on account of him. At first he said to himself, 'He is teaching the people and tarries.' But when many days came and went, and still Gard was nowhere seen, his heart died within him. He assembled together a great company of braves. He said to them, 'Surely a wild beast has devoured him, for no man would lay hands on one so gentle.' They sallied forth 58 into the forest, sorrowing, to search for Gard. Day after day they beat up and down the moun- tains. They struggled through the tangled chaparral. They shouted in the gloomy canons. Holding their hands to their ears they listened with bated breath. No sound came back to them but the lonely echo of their own voices, buffeted, faint, and broken among the moun- tains. One by one they abandoned the search. They returned to their homes in the valley. But still the brother wandered on, and as he went through the forest he exclaimed, ' O Gard ! O brother ! If you are indeed in the land of spirits, then speak to me at least one word with the voice of the wind, that I may know it for a certainty and therewith be con- tent.' "As he wandered, aimless, at last his com- panions forsook him. He roamed alone in the mountains and his heart was dead. Then it fell out on a day that Gard suddenly appeared to him. He came, as it were, out of the naked hillside or as if by dropping from the sky, so sudden was the apparition. The brother of Gard stood dumb and still before him. He THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 59 gazed upon him as upon one risen from the dead, and his heart was frozen. Gard said: 4 Listen ! I have been in the land of spirits. I have beheld the Great Man above. I have come back to earth to bring a message to the HupS, then I return to the land of souls. The Great Man has sent me to tell the Hupa" that they must dwell in concord with one another and the neighboring tribes. Put away from you all thoughts of vengeance. Wash your hearts clean. Kedden your arrows no more in your brothers' blood. Then the Great Man will make you to increase greatly in the land. You must not only hold back your arms from warring and your hands from blood-guiltiness, but ye must wash your hearts as with water. When ye hunger no more for blood, and thirst no more for your enemy's soul, when hatred and vengeance lurk no more in your hearts, ye shall observe a great dance. Ye shall keep the dance of peace which the Great Man has ap- pointed. When ye observe it, ye shall know by a sign if ye are clean in your hearts. There shall be a sign of smoke ascending. But if in your hearts there is yet a corner full of hatred 60 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY that ye have not washed away, there shall be no sign. If in your secret minds ye still study vengeance, it is only a mockery that ye enact, and there shall be no smoke ascending.' " Having uttered these words, Gard was sud- denly wrapped in a thick cloud of smoke, and the cloud floated up into the land of spirits." We have selected this myth not only on account of its beauty, but because it is a typical representative of many of its kind, which are everywhere to be found among primitive peo- ples. The graceful lines of " The Peace Pipe " have made familiar to us one form of a story which in some guise presents itself wherever we study the thought and expression of aborig- inal men. The Zuni story of the origin of war also shows that in the thought of that people war was not their natural state but was a dread calamity that had befallen them. THE MEANING OF THESE Two PICTURES. Now it seems to me that there are reasons for considering these two pictures together THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 61 this picture of the Florence of the Renaissance and the picture of the forest impulse in the awaiting continent. Both pictures seem to belong properly to our subject The Romance of the New World. Both pictures show a reaction to vital stimuli : in the one case the reaction of the most civilized man of the age ; in the other case the reaction of primitive man dwelling in the forest wilds of an un- discovered land. All life is a response, a re- action, to stimuli. The new philosophy of history will study and take account of the response, the re-action, in the child and in prim- itive man as well as in man in his maturity and in his higher stages of civilization. In fact, child study and the study of primitive man are of first importance, since through them we can more clearly discern the inherent tendencies, the latent potencies, of humanity. It would be a hopeless task to attempt to change the fun- damental nature of man. If he is inherently a creature adapted to war, to disorder, and to discord, then he must run his course. But if his inherent tendencies are towards peace and a harmonious adjustment with his environment, 62 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY then the outlook is more hopeful. This story of the real Hiawatha and the story which we shall later consider of the character and the in- fluence of this forest federation formed by him, seem to point to a more encouraging view in this respect than the one usually entertained. The same is true of the myth and legend of the American aborigines as typified in the legend of Gard. Men differ in their views as to the nature of their heritage. If we believe that, however long or involved has been the orderly process, yet that at some point we have come into kinship with the divine, then it will not surprise us to find these hopeful tendencies inherent in humanity. Men differ in their views as to the nature of the stimuli to which man in his history has reacted. If we believe that God is constantly pouring in impulses upon humanity, and that humanity is adapted to reaction to these impulses, then our philos- ophy of history will be hopeful and we shall watch the progress of the individual and of society, the forward bounds and the retrogres- sions, as part of the great plan for developing the inherently divine nature of humanity. THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 63 In watching the Italy of the Renaissance we can read the fascinating story of civilized man reacting to mighty impulses, inspired, revivi- fied, a new-born creature starting out upon a new career. The choicest spirits, the scholars of the world, flocked to Italy and to Florence, partook of the new impulse, and extended it among all civilized peoples. The new lands were discovered at just the right moment. The forces put in operation by the Italian Renaissance produced great changes and brought about sorrowful conflicts. The development of the individual proceeded more rapidly than the development of society, and, with the existing conditions, the old world in- evitably became the theatre of mighty strug- gles. Men were out of touch with their environment. A new scene was needed for the new individual. The discovery of America was a gradual process. North America had to be sliced off from Asia, to which it had been joined in the confused jumble of the thought of the times. It was a full century after 1492 before any proper appreciation of the new con- tinent began to dawn upon the minds of men. 64 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Then they naturally turned to it, and the early and unsuccessful settlements in Virginia were attempted. When we think of the record of that century, of those theses nailed to the church door at Wittenberg, of Erasmus and the gentler spirits who sought to bring about a peaceful reform, but were unable to avert the conflict, of the snapping of old ties, of the separation of families by the differences of opinion, of the necessity for a readjustment of relation- ships, we come to feel that the discovery of America was the most important and vital achievement of that wonderful and fascinating time of the Italian Renaissance. The vision of Columbus was a vision for the world. " ' Give me white paper ! This which you use is black and rough with smears Of sweat and grime and fraud and blood and tears, Crossed with the story of men's sins and fears, Of battle and of famine all these years When all God's children have forgot their birth, And drudged and fought and died like beasts of earth. Give me white paper ! ' " One storm-trained seaman listened to the word ; What no man saw, he saw ; he heard what no man heard ; THE ROMANCE OF THE NEW WORLD 65 In answer he compelled the sea To eager man to tell The secret she had kept so well, Left blood and guilt and tyranny behind, Sailing still west the hidden shore to find ; For all mankind that unstained scroll unfurled Where God might write anew the story of the world." 1 1 Edward Everett Hale, The Results of Columbus, Discov- ery. Pro. Am. Antiq. Socy., vol. viii. II HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD A WITTY writer has said: " History is a novel that happened ; a novel is history that never happened." Our story has had to do with the glorious time of the Italian Renaissance, that time of the new birth and awakening of the world, the time of the Discovery of America. Now we are to deal with scenes hardly less interesting or dramatic. Let us for the time being escape from our surroundings and in imagination and in spirit live in that epoch of such peculiar and vital interest to us, associated as it is with the settlement of America, and with the first happenings on these New England shores. In the last chapter 1492 was our pivotal date. Let us now take the well known date of 1620 as the central point around which to make 70 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY our groupings, America in its Relation to the Great Epochs of History. Again we have a great world-epoch as well as the second epoch in the history of our own land. It is the epoch signalized by the Reformation and its resulting conflicts. It is in fact a continuation, an out- come, of the Italian Renaissance. It is the Teutonic Renaissance of Germany; it is the Christian Renaissance of England. And in trying to catch the picture of this period let us first note the progress in science. We saw that in 1492 Copernicus was a student of nineteen. About 1507 he began to write down the thoughts which he had systematized. About the year 1530, when he was fifty-seven years old, his work in six books on the Revolu- tion of the Celestial Orbs was finished. Here was a great law of unity established governing the movement of the earth as well as of all the heavenly bodies. Old delusions and fallacies on the subject were to forever pass away. In the period now under our consideration, Kepler and " the starry Galileo with his woes " are confirming and expanding the system of Copernicus. The telescope was first used about HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 71 the year 1609, almost the year of that first permanent settlement at Jamestown. It was in this year 1609 that Galileo, on a visit to Venice, heard of an instrument for producing magnifying effects, and proceeded to construct his first telescope which was a mere toy, mag- nifying an object to only a few times its real size. Toy as it was, when he carried it to Venice it produced the greatest excitement there among the people, and Galileo received for it from the magistrate of the city a life tenure of his professorship and an increase of his salary by four hundred and eighty florins. A short time afterward the maker of another instrument of the same nature was followed by an eager and unmanageable crowd that took possession of the tube and would not return it until they had all satisfied their curiosity by testing its strange power. 1 Having constructed larger and more power- ful instruments and turned them upon the heavenly bodies, Galileo made a series of dis- coveries of the most profound interest. On Jan. 7, 1610, he saw two stars in the field of 1 Brewster's Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton, vol. i. p. 271. 72 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Jupiter, and on the 8th he detected three stars and nearer to each other than before, thus proving that they had a motion of their own. By watching the variation of the positions of these stars and at length discovering a fourth, he was able to make the announcement to the world of the four satellites of Jupiter. Galileo discovered the crescent, moon-like waxing and waning of Venus ; he pointed out the spots on the surface of the sun, and proved its revolution on its axis ; he saw the moon covered with mountains and valleys ; he demon- strated that the Milky Way consisted of a vast multitude of stars. By these and other discov- eries he upheld the theories of Copernicus. In 1609 Kepler published his commentaries on the motions of the planet Mars, giving to the world his first two laws, and in 1619 appeared his work on " The Harmony of the World " based on his observations of that wonderful and perfect harmony which he had seen to be maintained in all the motions of the celestial bodies. Contemporaneous with Galileo and Kepler was Tycho Brahe, making the third in that illustrious triumvirate of HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 73 astronomers. The microscope was invented about 1620. In 1628 Harvey published his memorable work in which his discoveries concerning the circulation of the blood are set forth. Between 1660 and 1680 the struc- ture of plants was analyzed and the science of botany constructed. In August, 1665, Cambridge College was closed on account of the plague, and a youth of twenty-three returns to his home and spends much time in the garden at Woolsthorpe. To the penetrating vision of genius the fall of an apple in that garden indicates a law which his great and comprehensive mind works out into the universal law of gravitation. In 1686 was published Newton's " Principia," of which it has been said that " it will ever be regarded as the brightest page in the records of human reason." " Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night : God said, Let Newton be, and all was light." In philosophy the progress was equally marked. It has been said that from Bacon and Descartes, from this epoch of the seven- 74 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY teenth century, we can date the intellectual regeneration of Europe. Their look was for- ward ; they taught faith in progress ; they saw the grand future of the human race, and pointed men away from antiquity and towards the great possibilities of achievement inherent in the human mind. Descartes taught men to doubt in order that they might have the foun- dation for exact knowledge and reasonable belief. Then there was John Locke and his remarkable " Essay on the Human Understand- ing," as well as his political writings which exercised such an important influence upon succeeding times. In a very interesting lecture given a good many years ago by Robert C. Winthrop before the Mercantile Library Association of Boston he speaks of the fact that Josiah Quincy, Jr., bequeathed to his son as a precious legacy, together with John Locke's works and the works of Lord Bacon, the discourses on Gov- ernment by Algernon Sidney. Now the date of Algernon Sidney's birth is sometimes given as 1617, but more generally believed, as Mr. Winthrop says, to have been 1622; so that HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 75 Algernon Sidney is pretty closely connected with our central date of 1620. He is also closely connected with, and in fact is the author of, the motto of the Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As you walk down Washington Street you see this great Seal of Massachusetts embla- zoned upon the Old State House, which stands at the head of State Street, and as you look up at it the motto " Ense petit placidam sub liber- tate quietem " greets you legibly. ( " By the sword she seeks quiet peace under liberty") Mr. Winthrop tells the story of this motto, and it is also told in the introduction to some of the editions of Sidney's works. It seems that when Algernon Sidney was in Copenhagen, about August, 1660, and visited a public library there, he was requested to place his name and motto in an autograph album which was pre- sented to distinguished strangers for that pur- pose. Sidney, instead of any heraldic motto of any branch of his family, wrote above his name these lines : " Maims hsec, inimica tyrannis, Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem." 76 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY As Mr. Winthrop translates them : " This hand, hostile to tyrants, Seeks by the sword the tranquil peace of freedom." It is also related that Terlon the French ambas- sador, learning what these Latin words meant, drew his sword and cut them out of the book, as some of the accounts have it, or, according to Mr. Winthrop's version, "tore the page indignantly out of the book as an assault upon the despotic government of his own country." Now Mr. Winthrop gives us in his address a most interesting sequel to this story, and we must let him tell it in his own words he says: "But if the motto of Sidney was thus in- solently torn from the album in which it was originally transcribed, I can myself bear witness that it was written by a kindred spirit, in another album, under circumstances which will never be forgotten, and where it will always be sacredly preserved and rjrized. During the session of the House of Representatives of the United States in January, 1842, I was requested by a friend to obtain for him the autograph of my venerable HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 77 colleague, John Quincy Adams. It happened that morning that Mr. Adams, in the vindication of a right which he deemed inviolable, had presented a petition which excited the indignation of some of the Southern members. He had been interrupted rudely, and threatened with personal expulsion, and a summary motion made that his petition should not be received. The yeas and nays were demanded on this, or some other motion, and the clerk proceeded to call the roll. During this proc- ess, which occupies, as you may know, not less than twenty-five or thirty minutes, I approached Mr. Adams and told him my errand, adding also that I would not have troubled him at such a moment, were not the person in whose behalf I applied about to leave Washington by the very next train of cars, which was soon to start. "There is no better time than this," said he; ' ' give me the book." And taking it, the venera- ble Ex-President proceeded with a trembling hand, but an untrembling heart (for if ever there was a man whose courage always mounted with the occasion, and who seemed incapable of any fear except the fear of God, it was John Quincy Adams), he proceeded, I say, to inscribe in this album the following spirited translation of Sidney's motto : 78 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY " This hand to tyrants ever sworn the foe, For freedom only deals the deadly blow ; Then sheathes in calm repose the vengeful blade, For gentle peace in freedom's hallowed shade." Now concerning the " Discourses on Govern- ment, " written by Algernon Sidney, the author of the motto of the Great Seal of Massachusetts, and bequeathed by Josiah Quincy to his son, it remains to be said that they were re- markable productions and worthy to rank, as Mr. Quincy placed them, with Bacon and Locke. Mr. Winthrop says no less of them than this: "Indeed it would be difficult to find anything valuable even in our own Amer- ican Constitution or Bills of Rights which has not been more or less distinctly antici- pated or foreshadowed in these Discourses," and gives the titles of some of the chapters as bearing out this opinion. Here are the titles : ' ' God leaves to man the choice of forms in government and those who constitute one form may abrogate it." "No man comes to command many, unless by consent or by force." HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 79 " The general revolt of a nation cannot be called a rebellion." " Liberty produceth virtue, order, and stability; slavery is accompanied with vice, weakness, and misery." " All just magisterial power is from the people." " Government is not instituted for the good of the governor but of the governed, and power is not an advantage but a burthen." It is interesting to note that Algernon Sid- ney was the great-nephew of Sir Philip Sidney of whom we have the immortal story that, wounded to his death on the battle-field of Zutphen, he pushed back the cup of water from his parched lips and handed it to a com- mon soldier who lay dying on the field, saying as he did so, " Thy necessity is greater than mine." Algernon Sidney was beheaded by Charles, Dec. 7, 1683, five years before the era of free- dom for England ushered in by 1688. Not only was there great progress in science and philosophy in this time of settlement, this time signalized for us by the landing at Ply- mouth in 1620, but the bound in art, using 80 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY "art" in the broad sense of the revelation of beauty, was hardly less remarkable than that in the time of the Italian Renaissance. As art and literature rocked the cradle of the new- born world in the time of discovery, so was the time of the making of homes in the New World smiled upon by the graces of genius and expression. We say Puritan England, and the first impression is of something hard and unlovely in the life of the times ; so unfor- tunate are the associations which have popu- larly grown up about the name Puritanism ; so hard, and terrible too, were the existing condi- tions. But we have only to go to Taine's fas- cinating chapters on the Christian Renaissance in his " History of English Literature," in order to catch the artistic glory and beauty of achieve- ment in these times of stress and conflict. Spenser and his " Faery Queen," Shakespeare and his plays comprehending all things and written for all times, Milton and his " Paradise Lost," John Bunyan and his "Pilgrim's Prog- ress," Bacon and his " Essays " not only full of knowledge and wisdom but classic gems in point of style, Hooker and the splendid rhet- HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 81 oric of his " Ecclesiastical Polity ; " these are some of the names that are associated with the Christian Renaissance, with the time of the settlement of the New World. But literature is not the only form in which art expresses itself so vividly in this period. It is the time of the Flemish school of painters. That artist of captivating personality, so strik- ingly handsome with his glossy brown hair and eyes of a " golden embrownment," with such fascination of manner that he enchanted all with whom he came in contact, so wonder- ful in his genius, is painting the " Holy Fam- ily " and, to obtain release from a threatened lawsuit, gives to the world that immortal conception of " The Descent from the Cross." It is the time of Rubens. It is also the time of Rembrandt and of Van Dyck. It is the time also of the Spanish School of Painters, the time of Velasquez and of Murillo, whose Ma- donnas of the soulful eyes have touched so many hearts and pictured forth to them divinest tenderness and love. But if we wish to catch a realistic picture of those times we must not only note the 6 82 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY progress in science and philosophy and watch the bound in art, but we must turn our eyes to phenomena which like a dark cloud were overhadowing all Europe, a cloud from whose inky blackness shot lurid and threatening gleams. In that marvellous year of 1588, that "Annus Mirabilis," that year of earthquakes and famines, of unheard of tempests, of strange portents and startling phenomena, it was re- ported that as the sun shone at mid-day a drawn sword appeared across its face. Men have in all ages read their own thoughts and fears into the manifestations of nature and par- ticularly into any striking or unusual appear- ance in the celestial panorama, 1 and surely, in this drawn sword which they thought they saw in 1588 they correctly presaged the con- flicts which were to last for well-nigh half a cen- tury. The drawn sword ! We can see it luridly flaming in the skies in that familiar year 1620. We can see its baleful gleam over Germany, where the Thirty Years' War has fairly begun. We can hear the tramp of armies and the din 1 Appendix, Note It. HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 83 of battle, and we avert our faces from the bloody conflicts. We can hear the groans of the wounded and the dying ; we can see the homes laid waste. 1 The drawn sword ! We can see it hanging over Holland. The truce between Spain and the Netherlands is expiring while yet the ter- rors of Harlem, of Maestricht, and of Leyden have not passed from the memories of living men. The drawn sword ! Over France the shadow of St. Bartholomew still hangs darkly. In fancy the people can yet see the frenzied young king firing from the windows of his apartments upon his defenceless subjects on that frightful night of massacre. The sky of France is lower- ing with clouds, and the people wait in fear for the coming storm. The drawn sword ! It hovers threateningly over England. King James has alienated the affections and the confidence of his people. The unhappy Charles I. is soon to ascend the throne. Soon will come that dramatic scene in the memorable parliament of the spring of 1 Appendix, Note III. 84 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY 1628. You remember how Eliot struck his bold note in the Commons and moved not only to present a remonstrance to the king, but de- clared that the favorite Buckingham must be removed. The speaker stops him and declares that in so doing he is under command of the king. Eliot sat down amid the death-like stillness that prevailed in the House. Then the pent-up feelings burst forth and that as- sembly became an extraordinary spectacle of over-wrought and weeping men. Pym spoke, but his eyes were blinded with tears. Sir Edward Coke, that dry old lawyer, as Carlyle calls him, who wrote Coke upon Lyttleton, tried to speak, but was so overcome by his emotions that he was compelled to sit down. These strong men, these heroes of English liberty wept because they saw their land oppressed with every species of unjust taxation and un- lawful imprisonment ; because they beheld the distraction and oppression of their country, and if the time had not yet arrived for the horrors of civil war, they still saw it standing, gaunt and terrible, and near before them. In the parliament of the succeeding year, HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 85 1629, its dissolution is marked by no less excit- ing scenes. The speaker is held down in his chair ; the doors are locked against the king's messenger. Eliot bursts into a vehement de- nunciation and declares that " none have gone about to break parliaments but in the end par- liaments have broken them." The Commons, by a series of resolutions declares against the prevailing abuses and asserts that any one sub- mitting to them is a betrayer of the liberty of England, and an enemy of the same. Such was England in 1629. No other parlia- ment convened in the succeeding eleven years. There were to be no peaceful homes in England for many a weary year. It was during these years, from 1629 to 1640, that the multitudes flocked to these shores that they might find for themselves homes in the New World. Soon England is to be the scene of Crom- well, of civil war, of the execution of the king. The drawn sword! All Europe can read nothing in the skies but its menacing message. Home ties are broken and men rush to other lands to take part in the conflicts that are wag- 86 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY ing. The Dane crosses the river, the Swede the sea. National ties are broken ; Swiss finds himself arrayed against Swiss, and German against German. The drawn sword ! the destroyer of homes ; the blighter of civilization ! So men thought they saw it flaming in the skies in 1588, and so it did in fact hang over the Old World during the years we have been noting. But by the watchful eye looking up to the heavens a hap- pier potent was also to be discerned. In 1604 a new star of great brilliancy sud- denly made its appearance. A short time be- fore there had been a remarkable conjunction of planets ; Saturn and Jupiter were in con- junction and soon Mars was added. This star, at first brighter than Jupiter and even rival- ling Venus, was constantly changing its color in a most wonderful way. It was tawny, then yellow, then purple and red and white by turns. And so it shone until it gradually became small and dull and after a few months finally disappeared. It was a strange star, well calcu- lated to excite wonder and speculation. John Kepler, the great astronomer, that wonderful if HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 87 somewhat erratic genius, made a computation by which he demonstrated that a similar con- junction of planets preceded the appearance of that sacred Star of Bethlehem and declared it to be a reappearance of the star those wise men sought and followed. Was it indeed the Star of Peace shining thus in the heavens just a few years before that early settlement of Virginia, sixteen years before that landing at Plymouth ? Was it an omen that the mission of the new land was to be a mission of peace ? Fanciful, if you will, but if this be so what was there in Europe in those troubled times in keeping with that bright emblem of peace? There is said to be still in existence the origi- nal letter written at about this time by Henry IV. and supposed to have been sent to Queen Elizabeth. It is addressed "To her who merits immortal praise." It speaks of " the most excellent and rare enterprise that ever the human mind conceived a thought rather divine than human." It is believed to refer to the plan for the establishment of a Christian Commonwealth, a Federation of the nations of the earth, which has been called the 88 AMERICA IX RELATION TO HISTORY great design of Henry of Navarre ; a design that, had he lived, might have been carried out and have become the crowning glory of his life. The terms of this letter and other evidence seem to indicate that the acute intellect of the Virgin Queen was the first to apprehend and suggest this great scheme of international polity. 1 However this may have been, certain it is that these two great sovereigns were most zealous in their efforts and hopeful as to the bringing about of this great beneficence for humanity. The plan, in substance, was for the creation of a great republic or international State, having a senate, and representation to be given to the Emperor, the Pope, the kings of France, Spain, England, Denmark, Sweden, Lombardy, and Poland, the States General, the Swiss Cantons, and the Italian commonwealth. It was intended that this international senate should "deliberate on any affairs which might occur, discuss the different interests, pacify the quarrels, clear up and determine all the civil, political, and religious affairs of Europe, whether within itself or with its neighbors." 1 Appendix, Note IV. HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 89 As proposed, the senate would have consisted of about sixty-six representatives, to be re- chosen every three years. It was believed that this plan of government would secure and maintain the peace of the world. The powers in question all were ready to join in the plan, and when that dagger struck into the heart of great King Henry military preparations were far advanced for establishing what might have been the first peace army, the first great armed police force to sustain the law and order of an international State. England, Sweden, and Denmark each agreed to furnish eight thousand foot, fifteen hundred horse, and eight cannons; the princes of Germany, twenty-five thousand foot, ten thousand horse, and forty cannons; the United Provinces, twelve thousand foot, two thousand horse, and ten cannons; Hungary, Germany, and the oilier Evangelics of Germany, the same number; the Pope, ten thousand and five hundred foot, fifteen hundred horse and eight cannons ; the Duke of Savoy eighteen thousand foot, two thousand horse and twelve cannons; the Venetians, twelve thousand 90 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY foot, two thousand horse, and twelve cannons. Such was the great plan for an international State to bring about a world peace which was being formulated when that brilliant Star of Peace shone down upon a world even then striving to shake off the strange spell cast upon it by that drawn sword which had horrified men by its lurid and hateful gleam. The death of Henry put an end to that great plan for peace, and the world still groaned under demonic sway ; but yet the rays from that Star of Peace had left some healing influence. On Christmas day, 1629, a young student at Christ College, Cambridge, composes that per- fect ode " On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," declared by Mr. Hallam to be perhaps the most beautiful in the English language. It is the young Milton whose youthful genius caught its inspiration from the spirit of the Star of Peace. Do you recall the opening lines of The Hymn " ? - " It was the winter wild While the heaven-born child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies ; HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 91 Nature, in awe to Him, Had doffed her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize." And the following stanza : " But He, her fears to cease. Sent down the meek-eyed Peace. She, crowned with olive-green came softly sliding Down through the turning sphere, His ready harbinger, With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing ; And, waving wide her myrtle wand, She strikes a universal peace through sea and land." " A Universal Peace ! " while all Europe was torn with religious conflicts, was reeking with bloody strife ; the Thirty Years' War at its height and the world resounding with the names of Tilly, of Wallenstein, of Gustavus Adolphus " the Lion of the North ; " the truce between Spain and Holland long since ended, and a fierce struggle raging ; England trembling under the arbitrary and personal government of Charles I., with the horrors of civil war just before her ; multitudes flocking to these shores because nowhere else under the fair face of heaven were peace and quiet to be found, at 92 AMERICA. IN RELATION TO HISTORY such a time and amid such scenes did the young Milton, typical Puritan, wondrous poet, see his vision of a universal peace and write his matchless ode in commemoration of the coming of that Judean Messenger of Peace. In 1620, and just about the time of the land- ing at Plymouth Rock, a man was confined in the Castle of Louvestein, where he had been a prisoner and badly used for more than eighteen months. His devoted wife, who was permitted to be with him, was planning for his escape. She noticed that the guards were becoming careless and had ceased to search each week a large trunk which left the castle with books and washing to be taken to a neighboring town. So she persuaded her husband to con- ceal himself in this trunk, having made breath- ing holes in it, and thus he was carried out to that neighboring town of Gorcum to the house of a friend, and from there, disguised as a joiner and with a ruler in his hand, he made his way to Antwerp. His wife meanwhile pretended that her husband was very sick, in order to give him time to escape into a foreign country. HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 93 Finally, thinking her husband safe, she told the guards, laughing at them, that the birds were fled. 1 That man was Hugo Grotius. We should fail to understand the Europe of 1620, and especially the England of this seventeenth century, if we did not take into account the effect produced upon the people by the English Bible. And the impulse produced by the English Bible was artistic as well as religious. The genius of the Hebrew race, if stern and deeply religious in its cast, yet found its embodiment in a literature of exquisite beauty. The world through all the succeeding ages has received its spiritual nourishment from those Hebraic pages because they were not didactic in their f orm,but through myth, through legend, through allegory, through poetry, through symmetry of form and passion of expression, appealed to the sense of proportion, of harmony, of kinship with the beautiful and the divine that is inherent in the human race. Had Isaiah, instead of his lofty strains, expressed, or attempted to ex- 1 See Introduction in Campbell's translation of Hugo Grotius' " War and Peace." 94 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY press his thought in terms of commonplace ; had David, or those who wrote the Psalms, been but indifferent in their versification ; had Solomon, or those who wrote the Proverbs, left the world precepts of wisdom in an uncouth and inartistic form ; if the Hebrew Bible as a whole had not been wrought in forms of beauty, and had it possessed no literary charm how different the result would have been ! When that Divine Boy who was to fulfil the prophecies and expectations of those Hebrew bards and prophets dwelt in that little hill- town called Nazareth, and when later he walked the shores of Galilee, he listened to the voices of the mountains and of the sea ; he drank in the beauty of the wild flowers of Palestine, the beauty of its birds of gorgeous plumage, the beauty of the lines of Hermon, of Tabor, and of Carmel, the beauty of that lake he loved so well, and with a nature intensely sensitive to all impulses of beauty he clothed his teachings in exquisite simplicity and beauty of form of expression. The message of Greece, the message of Israel, the message of Him for whose coming HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 95 all that had gone before was but a preparation, was a message of beauty. The people of England were a people with- out books. The Bible became their one book. It touched their imaginations, it satisfied their vague artistic cravings as well as sounded the depths of their spiritual natures. The exquisite pastorals, the sublime strains of prophecy became the daily food of the English people. The Tyndale Bible made the England of the seventeenth century. Taine had before him an old Tyndale Bible when he wrote in his "History of English Literature": "1 have before me one of these old square folios in black letter, in which the pages, worn by horny fingers, have been- patched together, in which an old engraving figures forth to the poor folk the deeds and menaces of the God of Israel, in which the Preface and Table of Contents point out to simple people the moral which is to be drawn from each tragic history, and the applica- tion which is to be made of each venerable pre- cept. Hence have sprung much of the English language, and half of the English manners; to 96 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY this day the country is biblical; it was these big books which had transformed Shakespeare's England." Carlyle, in his vivid strokes of delineation of the Puritan squire of the time of Crom- well, quotes one as saying, "He wore his Bible doctrine round him, as our squire wears his shot belt." Such was the Europe of 1620. We have seen the progress in science and philosophy, we have watched the bound in art and litera- ture, we have seen the drawn sword hanging over all; and yet in the midst of tramping armies, of devastated fields, of homes laid waste, have noted the longing for peace, the vision of peace that men still cherished. We have seen the influence of the English Bible upon the English people. We have hardly touched upon the persecutions, the hardships caused by religious intolerance and persecution ; but these are familiar to us all. Let us now for a moment turn our attention to that little band of Pilgrims who in that memorable year 1620 came across the waters HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 97 that they might found homes in the New World. In the library at the State House in Boston is to be seen the original manuscript of Brad- ford's " History of the Plymouth Plantation " sometimes popularly called the " Log of the Mayflower." Senator Hoar, in speaking of the efforts made to have this relic, so dear to us all, returned to these shores, says of it: "It then seemed to me, as it now seems to me, the most precious manuscript on earth, unless we could recover one of the four Gospels as it came in the beginning from the pen of the Evangelist." And this most precious manuscript, as, after its many wanderings, it reposes securely in its case in the State House library, lies open at what is one of the most interesting pages of all recorded history. It is that solemn covenant made in the cabin of the "Mayflower." It is the record of the forming of an independent government by a feeble band, few in numbers and scanty in resources, and yet strong in the spirit of freedom dwelling within them and in the faith which had brought them hither. 7 98 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Familiar as this document is, let us read it together once more: " la the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, De- fender of the Faith &c. having undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutu- ally in the presence of God, and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends afore- said ; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod the llth of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland the HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 99 eighteenth and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620." What an interesting document is this Brad- ford manuscript! In it we can read in the very language of the participants in these in- teresting events the story of the motives that influenced them in leaving England, and finally in removing to these favoring shores. " But after these things," Governor Bradford tells us, having related the formation of their independent churches in England, "they could not long continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted and persecuted on every side, so as their former afflictions were but as flea-bitings in comparison with those which now came upon them. For some were taken and clapt up in prison, others had their houses beset and watched night and day, and hardly escaped their hands; and the most were fain to flee and leave their houses and habitations, and the means of their livelihood. . . . Yet seeing themselves thus mo- lested, and that there was no hope of their con- tinuance there, by a joint consent they resolved to go into the Low-Countries, where they heard was freedom of Religion for all men." 100 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY And again Governor Bradford shows us how that drawn sword which we have seen hover- ing so menacingly over all Europe was the final argument that sent those Pilgrims to seek a new home across the waters. Speaking of their sojourn in Holland he says : " They lived here but as men in exile and in a poor condition ; and [referring to the dangers that might beset them in America] as great miseries might possibly beset them in this place [that is, Holland] for the twelve years of truce were now out and there was nothing but beating of drums, and preparing for war, the events whereof are always uncertain. The Spaniard might prove as cruel as the savages of America and the famine and pestilence as sore here as there, and their libertie less to look out remedy. After many other particular things answered and alleged on both sides, it was finally concluded by the major part to put this design in execution, and to prosecute it by the best means they could." I have thought it might be interesting, in trying to complete our picture of the time of settlement and of the year 1620, to read the record of what happened to these Pilgrims on HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 101 the 6th of December, 1620, and to see how they passed that day. Here is the record : " The month of November being spent in these affairs, and much foul weather falling in, the 6th of December they sent out their shallop again with 10 of their principal men, and some sea- men, upon further discovery, intending to circulate that deep bay of Cape Cod. The weather was very cold, and it froze so hard as the spray of the sea lighting on their coats, they were as if they had been glazed ; yet that night betimes they got down into the bottom of the bay, and as they drew near shore they saw some ten or twelve Indians very busy about something. They landed about a league or two from them and had much ado to put ashore anywhere, it lay so full of flats. Being landed, it grew late, and they made them- selves a barricade with logs and boughs as well as they could in the time and set out their sentinel and betook them to rest, and saw the smoke of the fire the savages made that night. When morn- ing was come they divided their company, some to coast along the shore in the boat, and the rest marched through the woods to see the land, if any fit place might be for their dwelling. They came also to the place where they saw the Indians the 102 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY night before and found they had been cutting up a great fish like a grampus, being some 2 inches thick of fat like a hog, some pieces whereof they had left by the way ; and the shallop found two more of these fishes dead on the sands, a thing usual after storms in that place, by reason of the great flats of sand that lie off. So they ranged up and down all the day, but found no people nor any place they liked. When the sun grew low, they hasted out of the woods to meet with their shallop, to whom they made signs to come to them into a creek hard by, the which they did at high water; of which they were very glad, for they had not seen each other all the day, since the morning. So they made them a barricado (as usually they did every night) with logs, stakes and thick pine boughs, the height of a man, leav- ing it open to leeward, partly to shelter them from the cold and wind (making their fire in the middle and lying round about it), partly to defend them from any sudden assaults of the savages, if they should surround them. So being very weary they betook them to rest. But about mid- night they heard a hideous and great cry and their sentinel called ' Arme, arme : ' so they bestirred them and stood to their arms, and shot off a HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 103 cupple of muskets and then the noise ceased. They concluded it was a company of wolves, or such like wild beasts ; for one of the sea men told them he had often heard such a noise in New- foundland. So they rested till about five of the clock in the morning ; for the tide and their pur- pose to go from thence, made them be stirring betimes. So after prayer they prepared for breakfast, and it being day dawning, it was thought best to be carrying things down to the boat. But some said it was not best to carry the arms down, others said they would be the readier, for they had wrapped them up in their coats from the dew. But some 3 or 4 would not carry theirs till they went themselves, yet as it fell out, the water being not high enough, they laid them down on the bank side, and came up to breakfast. But presently, all on the sudden, they heard a great and strange cry, which they knew to be the same voices they heard in the night, though they varied their notes, and one of their company being abroad came running in and cried ' Men, Indeans, Indeans : ' and withall their arrows came flying amongst them. Their men ran with all speed to recover their arms, as by the good providence of God they did. In the mean time of those that 104 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY were there ready, two muskets were discharged at them, and two more stood ready, in the entrance of their rendezvous, but were commanded not to shoot till they could take full aim at them ; and the other two charged again with all speed, for there were only four had arms there and defended the barricade which was first assaulted. The cry of the Indians was dreadful, especially when they saw the men run out the rendezvous towards the shallop, to recover their arms, the Indians wheel- ing about upon them. But some running out with coats of mail on, and cutlasses in their hands, they soon got their arms, and let fly amongst them and quickly stopped their violence. Yet there was a lustie man, and no less valiant, stood behind a tree within half a musket shot, and let his arrows fly at them. He was seen shoot three arrows which were all avoided. He stood 3 shot of a musket, till one taking full aim at him, made the bark or splinters of the tree fly about his ears, after which he gave an extraordinary shriek, and away they went all of them. They left some to keep the shallop, and followed them about a quarter of a mile, and shouted once or twice, and shot off 2 or 3 pieces and so returned. This they did that they might conceive that they were HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 105 not afraid of them or any way discouraged. Thus it pleased God to vanquish their enemies, and give them deliverance ; and by his special providence so to dispose that not any one of them were either hurt or hit, though their arrows came close by them, and on every side of them, and sundry of their coats, which hung up in the barri- cade were shot through and through. Afterward they gave God solemn thanks and praise for their deliverance, and gathered up a bundle of their arrows and sent them into England afterward by the men of the ship, and called that place the first encounter." 1 We cannot attempt at this time to further enter upon the graphic story of the early set- tlement of these shores. It is a story you may read for yourselves. You may read of those delegates in Virginia summoned to the first rep- resentative body brought together in America, and who, having framed their code of laws, went on with the building of their houses and the planting of their corn. You may read of Catholic Maryland with its mild and benefi- 1 Bradford, pp. 101-104. 106 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY cent laws guaranteeing religious freedom and toleration. You may read of Roger Williams, that great apostle of the sanctity of the con- science and of intellectual liberty, and of that journey so graphically depicted by Bancroft, through the snows of winter, in an unknown country, without a guide, no shelter save the cabin of the savage, and for food he says, " The ravens fed me in the wilderness," and so he came to the place he called Providence. You may read of William Penn, that glorious youth, giving up wealth and social position and be- coming one of the despised sect called Quakers that he may devote his life to the sublime prin- ciple of the liberty of conscience. The early happenings on these shores are a series of romances. Mr. Choate, in his address on the "Importance of Illustrating New England History by a Series of Romances," and with his witchery of style, tells us that "it is time that literature and the arts should at least co-operate with history. Themes more inspiring or more instructive were never sung by old or modern bards in hall or bower." HOMES IN THE NEW WORLD 107 But we cannot pursue this theme. We may, however, think of the Romance of Hu- manity as we have seen it developing in these times of the Discovery and the Settlement of America. We have already referred, as one of the best definitions ever given of history, to that which terms it the biography of hu- manity. There is a personal element about biography that catches the attention and fastens the interest. If history is indeed "a novel that happened " then is mankind the hero, and we can think of the unity and con- tinuity of history, of the life of mankind, as akin to the unity and continuity of the life of the individual in his epochs of growth and de- velopment. And nowhere does this element of personality appeal to us more strongly than in the story of that new individual born in the glories of the Renaissance, with the spirit of Dante still hovering grandly over the scene, partaking of that youthful freshness and joy- ousness of the Grecian spirit which again re- turned under the Italian skies, called to manhood by the stern struggles of the Ref- ormation and working out his destiny of Free- 10$ JLMEEICA IX WUO3XB& TO HKTOET dom. botfi. tm tfee OM Wocfid and en precepting Wescem skores. us re333d3ib3?' tEmfe UTS' sjw tracing of fefce Ansezieaiii Mtwifmi staaiy- we are- toaeing- is t&e stxasj c tihe of modern Eberlrtr. Two voiices ar iire;. one ia of che Otte of t&ti moaaaihiiv aauih. i la. bock firam. acce- to iff* t&ca c&fet were UJIT iaosen. m THE FKilWATn CQSTESTIOSr JL5B TUB JLDOFTIOX OF THE Ill THE FEDERAL CONVENTION AND THE ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION IN the previous chapters we have taken 1492 and 1620 as our pivotal dates. Now our groupings will cluster about 1788, the date of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. We will try to catch the meaning and the spirit of the eighteenth century. And what a wonderful century, and what a wonder- ful spirit it was! I am more and more im- pressed with the glory of the epochs that mark the vital periods of our national history. It is a wonderful story, and a story of which we can never tire, since it comprehends all that is most interesting in modern history. And a very practical story withal, since it reveals the meaning of our existence as a free people and teaches us the lessons necessary for our preservation. 112 At the Albany conference, in 1754, one of the River Indians in addressing the representa- tives of the Colonies said : " We view you now as a very large tree which has taken deep root in the ground, whose branches are spread very wide. We stand by the body of this tree, and we look round to see if there be any who endeavor to hurt it, and if it should so happen that any are powerful enough to destroy it, we are really to fall with it." On another occasion Cadiane, a Mohawk chief, with the like imagery so natural to his race, said : " We now plant a tree whose top will reach the sun, and its branches spread far abroad, so that it shall be seen afar off, and we shall shelter our- selves under it, and live in peace without moles- tation." When Hegel, the great philosopher, wished to make plain the meaning of the State he likened it to a tree. The unlettered Indian and the polished philosopher both found in the tree a fit representation or symbol of the THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 113 political life which they were contemplating. The sage and the savage both turned naturally to a biological simile. The instinct of the one and the trained mind of the other agreed in recognizing a principle of life, of growth, in all political association, in any body giving shape to such association. In like manner we may find in the tree a helpful symbol to assist us in understanding the measure of life and growth to which the State had attained in the time of nationality, the time of the Federal Convention and the adoption of the Constitu- tion. For the plant which we have seen as a tender shoot deriving its nourishment from the food or initial leaves, that plant whose growth we have watched through the periods of dis- covery and settlement, has now attained the symmetry and completeness and strength of the tree. Yet is the influence imparted by those first leaves, Greece and Israel, still mani- fest and still controlling in the mature growth of the tree. In science, in art, and in phi- losophy, which we have seen to be distinctly Grecian in their origin, the progress was marked and brilliant in this tune of nationality. Cuvier 8 114 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY constructs a system of comparative anatomy and classifies the animal kingdom. Bichat, fol- lowing a different method, compares the tissues of animals and establishes a system by follow- ing which Agassiz made his brilliant discovery that by the study of the tegumentary mem- brane of fishes the whole animal may be recon- structed, even though all save this membrane has been destroyed, and created the department of fossil icthyology. Watt perfects the steam- engine, and the spinning-jenny is invented. Priestley is conducting his brilliant experiments in chemistry. In this country the first medical school was organized at Philadelphia in 1765. The clergy had quite generally acted as physi- cians in colonial times. There was but little trained medical aid in those early days when " the day star sickened at the desolation of the pestilence." The second medical school was that of the city of New York under the charter of King's College, in 1767. The third was at Harvard in 1782. The fourth at Dartmouth in 1797. In 1748 was published Montesquieu's " Spirit of Laws." Between 1745 and 1765 appeared THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 115 the successive volumes of that great " Encyclo- paedia" to which Diderot devoted the strength of his life. " Prodigious sibyl of the eighteenth century," so Michelet calls him, " the mighty magician Diderot! He breathed out one day a breath; lo, there sprang up a man Rous- seau." l Now perhaps such a vivid statement as this exaggerates the fact. But with the im- pressionable nature of a Rousseau it is easy to see how a Diderot, with his great passion for the work he had set himself to, and with his genius for enlisting others in his undertakings, might have exerted almost a creative influence. Then there were D'Alembert, Voltaire, and a brilliant list of the thinkers of the day ; all contributing to and working for the " Encyclopaedia " which was to open up a discussion on a great variety of subjects and lead men away from petrified forms of thought. In 1776 Adam Smith pub- lished his " Wealth of Nations." A yet more remarkable index of the times were the immortal works of Inimanuel Kant. Schiller and Robert Burns were both born in 1759. While still at school Schiller, in 1773, brought 1 Morley's Diderot, vol. i. p. 110. 116 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY out " The Robbers," a book which created great excitement and was considered revolutionary in its tendency. In 1788 Schiller published the Revolt of the Netherlands, and in 1791 the History of the Thirty Years' War. In December, 1792, Schiller declared con- cerning the execution of Louis XVI., " It is the work of passion and not of that wisdom which alone can lead to real liberty." Indicating what were alone the principles which could form the basis of a political constitution, which should ensure happiness and stability, he pointed to a volume of Kant's " Critique of Pure Reason " and said : " There they are and no- where else. The French Republic will fall as rapidly as it has risen. The Republican Gov- ernment will lapse into anarchy, and sooner or later a man of genius will appear (he may come from any place) who will make himself not only master of France, but perhaps also of a great part of Europe." Schiller devoted much energy to his aesthetic theory. He taught that mankind can only be emancipated by a recognition of the beauti- ful, what he called "the cognition of beauty." THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 117 So, too, Sociology as a distinct science or discipline dates its origin from Schiller and those associated with him. It is the time of Crabbe and Cowper, and Wordsworth is coming upon the scene. Gib- bon is dignifying the art of history. Goethe is constructing enduring monuments of thought and expression. Yes, he is doing more than this ; in his garden and in his walks he learns to know the plants and to discover many of their secrets. He makes a careful study of the leaf, and in 1790 he published his work on the "Metamorphoses of Plants." In this work Goethe demonstrated that all parts of the flower the pistil, the stamen, the corolla are but modified or metamorphosed leaves. So, too, he advanced the theory that the skull is but a modification or variation of the verte- bra. By his studies in botany and compara- tive anatomy he reached the conclusion that all the forms of plant and animal life are modifications of, have been evolved from, fewer and simpler parent types. So Goethe the poet, together with Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Immanuel Kant, Buff on, and others, who 118 AMERICA IN RELATION" TO HISTORY worked with them, founded the modern doc- trine of Evolution, and a new era in thought dates from this time. Goethe and Schiller stand out as central figures in that wonderful time of develop- ment of German thought and culture, that time of the eighteenth century, but grouped about them are other figures hardly less impor- tant. Kant's " Observations on the Sublime " was published in 1764, and the same year ap- peared Winckelmann's "History of Art," that interpreter of the Greeks, that " Revelation of the Hellenic World " as it has been called. In 1766 Lessing gave to the world his " Laocoon " and Herder his "Fragments." Between 1760 and 1780 were born Schel- ling, the two Schlegels, the two Humboldts, Tieck, Rahel, Schleiermacher, Niebuhr, and Savigny. The massive and constructive intellect of Hegel a little later summed up and embodied the work of the great German thinkers of the eighteenth century. 1 1 See German Thought from the Seven Years' War to Goethe's Death, by Karl Hillebrand, pp. 87-88. THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 119 We have selected the tree as a fitting symbol for the State, as representing the idea of the State as an organic growth. The human intellect has never evolved a more magnificent conception than Hegel's Universal State as the Realization of Free- dom. It was a conception resulting from the thought of Goethe and Schiller, of Kant, of Schlegel, of Herder, of that school of German thought of the eighteenth century which we have hastily touched upon. The Federal Convention embodied in our Constitution an expression of the growth to which the State had then attained. In order to understand that Constitution in its wider and completer meanings, we must grasp this idea of the Uni- versal State, and we must think of that Fed- eral Convention, not alone as fashioning a frame of government for themselves and for us, but as putting into tangible shape, into a realized form, that growth in freedom which had not been confined to these shores alone. We must think of our Constitution as a realiza- tion, a carrying out, of the higher and better will of the individual in the will of the whole, the will of the State. 120 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY During our struggle for independence and for nationality, Immanuel Kant had been writ- ing his remarkable series of political tracts, among them being that on a Cosmopolitical State. In 1795 he published his Essay on "Perpetual Peace," written, we can but think, in view of the recent establishment of our form of government. In it he used this language : " For if happy circumstances bring it about that a powerful and enlightened people form themselves into a republic which by its very nature must be disposed in favor of Perpetual Peace this will furnish a centre of federative union for other States to attach themselves to, and thus to secure the conditions of liberty among all States, accord- ing to the idea of the Right of Nations. And such a Union would extend wider and wider in the course of time, by the addition of further connections of this kind." The conception of the Universal State was already attained and the massive intellect of Hegel could only develop it to its grand pro- portions. To catch the meaning of this Uni- versal State we may compare the mind and will of the child with the mind and will of THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 121 the man. The child secures his individual right, his individual liberty, by simple obedi- ence to the will of others. He has no con- scious will to find satisfaction through its fulfilment by the will of others. He has a certain satisfaction and repose, but it is the unthinking satisfaction and repose of the child. With manhood comes the thinking conscious will demanding its satisfaction and the realiza- tion of its freedom. This it can never attain alone. The one man away from his fellows is the veriest bondsman. He can hardly sustain his own existence. He loses the power of speech and almost the power of thought. * He takes to the trees perhaps and becomes nearer a brute than a man. Growth, development, any real sense of satisfaction are impossible. Put him in society, and simply as the one man he is completely fettered. His higher nature, his better will, is struggling for ex- pression, for exercise, and can never find these but in the will of the whole, the will of the State. Thus Aristotle says : " He who by nature and not by mere accident is without a State is either above humanity or below 122 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY it ; he is that tribeless, lawless, hearthless one whom Homer denounces, the outcast who is a lover of war; he may be compared to a bird which flies alone. . . . He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a God ; he is no part of a State." Love of country, the clinging to nationality, is not a mere sentiment ; it is the recognition by the man that only through the State, the organized better will of the whole, can his own individual freedom find its satisfaction and its realization. The Universal State denotes the realization of this higher and better will of the individual through the will of that great uni- versal brotherhood of man of which the vari- ous nations are but embodied expressions. It is higher than all nationalities, it is inclusive of all nationalities. Our own country may thus be seen to be a peculiarly fitting central point to serve for a study of history and of the growth of the State ; for here came those of many nationali- ties, and they came at a time when national ties were broken and when a new expression THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 123 of the tree of the State was vital to their well- being. They had been growing and here con- tinued to grow into a certain relationship which in these United States expressed itself in a more nearly cosmopolitical experiment of government than had heretofore been tried by men. The State springs from the very nature and being of man himself. A philosopher has said: "History does not study material facts and institutions alone; its true object of study is the human soul." Again, history has been defined as the biography of human- ity. It is only by a study of the individual, of man himself, at a given period, that we can hope to understand the political systems he may formulate. The State is an expression of the political nature of man. The individual State or nation embodies the growth to which his nature has attained at a given time and in a given place. The individual and the State are thus seen to be linked together by inseparable bonds. To what growth, then, has that individual attained whom we saw in the time of the Renaissance awakening as from a sleep? He 124 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY has broken loose from the old trammels and superstitions. He is no longer enslaved by the traditions of the past. He is open-eyed, alert, active-minded. He will no longer move in herds or masses, but asserts his individu- ality, his personality. His fight has been a hard one against tyranny in Church and tyranny in State. He grows strong by strug- gling. This individual who by the Declara- tion of Independence became formally an American citizen is indeed no weakling. He has taken part in the conflicts of the Old World. He comes to the New World to en- dure conditions of great stress and hardship. He finds or makes a stealthy savage foe. His territory is distracted by European struggles for its possession, and he is obliged to exert his fullest energy in the battle for his inde- pendence. This American citizen, then, is of rugged mould and he has been reared in the stern school of conflict. If he has cast off old delusions yet he has come into full possession of his just heritage of the past; Greece, Rome, and Israel still speak to him. The fairest flowers of art, science, and philosophy have THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 125 blossomed along the stony path which he has trod. His is no narrow point of view. He is a cosmopolitan by heredity and by training. What kind of a world it was when he found himself called upon to establish a new fabric of government we have endeavored to indicate. Two or three supreme facts may again picture forth the age. Fact first: that strange, that terrible, that overturning yet sky-clearing phe- nomenon, the French Revolution, is at hand. You will remember that Washington was hardly fairly seated in the presidential chair when Lafayette sends him the key of the Bastille. Fact second: the poet Goethe and a group of scientists, among them being Oken, D*. Erasmus Darwin, and Buffon, are founding the modern science of Evolution. Fact third; a man named Immanuel Kant is doing some of the greatest thinking that this world has ever known. An age of revo- lution, an age of evolution above all, an age of clear thinking. An age of great progress ; modern England springs into life; she casts out slavery, she puts an end to tyranny, she 126 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY develops her resources and invents the steam- engine and the spinning-jenny ; apparently half glad of a Yorktown, she soon wins a Waterloo. In Prussia we have Frederick the Great and a government based on reason and right. It is an age producing newspapers, public schools, medical colleges, and hospitals. It is an age of wild upheavals, yet of illumina- tion, of philanthropy, of philosophy. It is easy to make a dramatic picture by setting forth the conditions existing just previ- ous to the meeting of the Federal Convention and then proceeding to tell the story of the making of the Constitution; and such a pict- ure is in a sense a true and just one. Our interstate warfares, our internal discords, our lack of credit at home or abroad, our inability to make or protect treaties with foreign nations, our migratory congress, our thirteen separate sovereignties at constant variance with each other, all the existing conditions were such as to make every patriot solicitous and appre- hensive. And yet, as we have seen, there had been such a growth in the development of the State that we have likened it unto a tree, and THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 127 there had been such a growth in the develop- ment of the individual that we have been able to watch his coming into the proportions of the son of liberty. Perhaps a calmer and juster view of the Constitution would be gained by considering the development going on for so many years in the various colonial and State governments, and in looking at the first steps which were taken toward a union of the colonies, rather than by such a dramatic picture as we have indicated. Propositions for a union of the colonies be- gan to appear at a very early date. One was made in 1637, another in 1639, and others in 1640 and 1642. In 1643 a confederation was formed under the title of "The United Col- onies of New England." It was practically a league of defence, and was rendered necessary by the attacks of the Indians. Nevertheless it excited the jealousy of Great Britain and was claimed by her to be an attempt to estab- lish an independent sovereignty. This New England Confederation may be said to have been the first step towards a union of the col- onies, and you will note that it was taken at 128 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY the time of that great English step towards a fairer and freer government; that it was the time of the England of Hampden and Crom- well, the time of the overthrow of the tyranny of Charles the First. On February 8, 1690, what was then the quiet little town of Schenectady was awakened from its midnight sleep by the war-whoop of Indians, and the unhappy inhabitants aroused themselves only to become the victims of a terrible massacre. This event taught sternly the lesson of the need of a better union of the colonies and resulted in the Congress of 1690. From the time of this Congress of 1690 the logic of events moved steadily on towards a union of the colonies. The need of some form of constitution was recognized and found fre- quent expression. William Penn's plan of 1698 is one of the most notable suggestions in writing of a scheme of government. A series of conventions or congresses were held between 1690 and 1750, at which joint steps were taken for self-defence and treaties were made with the Indians. In 1745 occurred the dramatic episode of the Siege of Louisburg. THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 129 Franklin's famous picture of the snake cut into thirteen pieces, each piece bearing the initial of one of the colonies, and underneath the legend Join or Die, appeared in the " Phila- delphia Gazette " in May, 1754, just before he started for the Albany Congress. The cele- brated Albany plan, while not adopted, shows clearly that Franklin had mastered some of the fundamental principles which were later to be embodied in our Constitution. It is claimed with considerable degree of justice that in Franklin's correspondence with Governor Shir- ley in 1755 he advanced every argument and idea subsequently brought out in the Stamp Act debates. Following the Albany congress of 1754 came the Seven Years' War in which Frederick received his title of the Great, that war which has so often been called the school for the American Revolution, that war in which Washington received his military training. The revolution, independence, and the federation soon followed. The federa- tion was indeed a loose and unsatisfactory bond, and it was evident that a fabric of gov- ernment must be constructed which should 9 130 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY rise to the full dignity and completeness of a nation. We cannot understand the history of the American colonies or the events and the proc- ess of development which ripened them for a federative bond unless we take due account of that great struggle for supremacy on the North American Continent which was being waged between France and England. And here the Five Nations appear as a dramatic and controlling factor in the situation. You will remember the story of the real Hiawatha, and of his founding of this Iroquois federa- tion of the Five Nations. As we consider for a moment the results flowing from that piece of constructive forest statesmanship, the whole story must appeal to our imagination and to our intelligence as of more fascinating interest than almost any story of recorded history. The Five Nations held geographically the key to this continent. In that long battle which France fought to drive the English from their position here, the Five Nations were the one invincible barrier which the French were un- able to overcome. THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 131 But for their friendship, first with the Dutch, and afterward with the English ; but for their prowess in war, the strength of their po- litical organization, and their fidelity to their treaty obligations, North America would have been a Latin country, ruled by the Latin races and the Latin religion. You remember how on that September evening in 1759 Wolfe, wrapped in his cloak, silently drifted in his boat upon the waters of the St. Lawrence, under the cliffs of Quebec, searching for a path to the summit, and was heard to repeat the lines of Gray's "Elegy,"- " The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour The paths of glory lead but to the grave." You remember how on that following morn- ing Montcalm awoke to find the English on the Heights commanding the town. You know that memorable conflict on the Heights of Abraham, how Wolfe, wounded to the death, heard the shout of his soldiers, " They run, they run ! " and, knowing that the victory had been won, expired, saying, " Now God be 132 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY praised, I will die in peace." Quebec had fallen ; New France was practically a thing of the past. But for Hiawatha and the Five Nations that victory could never have been, nor would Anglo-Saxon influences have pre- vailed upon this continent. Nor is this the only debt we owe to Hia- watha and the Five Nations. At Lancaster, Pa., in June, 1744, a treaty was held with the Six Nations (they having become six by the incorporation of the Tuscaroras by con- quest) by the commissioners of Maryland and other provinces. The chief spokesman for the Six Nations was Cannassatego, an illustrious chief who is thus described : " He was a tall, well-made man; had a very full chest and brawny limbs. He had a manly countenance, mixed with a good-natured smile. He was about sixty years of age, very active, strong, and had a surprising liveliness in his speech. " 1 With the grace and dignity which mark the Iroquois as orators, Cannassatego thus addressed the commissioners for the colonies : 1 Wm. Marsh's Journal; Mass. Hist. Coll., 1st Series, vol. vii. p. 179. THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 133 " Brethren, we, the Six Nations, heartily recom- mend union and a good agreement between you, our brethren. Never disagree, but preserve a strict friendship for one another ; and thereby you as well as we will become the stronger. Our wise forefathers established union and amity between the Five Nations. This has made us formidable ; this has given us great weight and authority with our neighboring nations. We are a powerful con- federacy; and if you observe the same methods our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh strength and power. Therefore, whatever befalls you, never fall out with one another." So spoke Cannassatego. At Albany, in August, 1775, another treaty convention was held with the Six Nations by the commissioners of the Twelve United Col- onies then assembled in general Congress at Philadelphia. The great pipe was lighted up and went around, after which one of the com- missioners thus addressed the representatives of the Six Nations: "Brothers: Our business with you, besides re- kindling the ancient council-fires and renewing the covenant, and brightening up every link of the 134 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY chain, is, in the first place, to inform you of the advice that was given about thirty years ago by your wise forefathers, in the great council which they held in Pennsylvania, when Cannassatego spoke to us, the white people, in these very words." The commissioner then recited the speech of Cannassatego as we have already heard it. " Brothers " (the commissioner continued), "these were the words of Cannassatego. Our forefathers rejoiced to hear Cannassatego speak these words. They sunk deep into their hearts. The advice was good ; it was kind. They said to one another, the Six Nations are a wise people. Let us hearken to them and take their counsel and teach our children to follow it. Our old men have done so. They have frequently taken a single arrow and said, ' Children, see how easy it is broken.' Then they have taken and tied twelve arrows to- gether with a strong string or cord, and our strongest men could not break them. ' See/ said they, ' this is what the Six Nations mean. Divided, a single man may destroy yon ; united, you are a match for the whole world.' We thank the great God that we are all united ; that we have a strong THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 135 confederacy ; composed of twelve provinces, New Hampshire, &c. These provinces have lighted a great council- fire at Philadelphia, and have sent sixty-five councillors to speak and act in the name of the whole, and consult for the common good of the people and of you our brethren of the Six Nations, and your allies; and the talk of this great council we shall deliver to you to-morrow." 1 Consider for a moment the circumstances attending this treaty at Albany in August, 1775: the war of the Revolution fairly com- menced; Lexington and Concord the previous April ; the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point in May ; and the battle of Bunker Hill in the preceding June ; the Continental Con- gress in session at Philadelphia ; another expe- dition to Canada just under way ; Carleton, the English general in Canada, arming the In- dians against us. It was at such a moment that our fathers met the Five Nations in treaty at Albany, brightened the links in the ancient chain of friendship, and paid their tribute not only to 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., 3d Series, vol. v. pp. 83, 84. 136 AMERICA IX RELATION TO HISTORY the advice of Cannassatego in favor of union, but to the splendid object lesson which the federation of the Five Nations had been to them through all these years. It is surely worth our while to consider the character both of the form of government and of the people themselves that have exerted such an influence upon our national history. The Five Nations, then, were a league or confederacy constituting a republic and based upon representative government and popular sovereignty. Each of these five nations was an absolute republic by itself. Matters of general concern were transacted in a general meeting of the sachems of each nation held usually at Onondaga. This was their Con- gress or Senate. Every castle in each nation had its own independent government conducted by its own sachems or old men. Thus we have the principle of home rule adopted in the government of what answered to them as their cities. The authority of the rulers was gained by and rested upon the opinion the rest of the nation had of their wisdom and integrity. The rulers and captains served THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 137 without pay and were generally poorer than the rest of the people. Honor and esteem, and not salary, were their reward ; no one at- tained to high position except by merit. As the authority of their great men rested upon the respect and confidence of the people, this authority ceased when these were lost. As a people they were distinguished by love of liberty, fidelity to treaty obligations, great valor in war, and a dauntless and unconquer- able spirit; withal possessing a high sense of superiority and calling themselves by an Indian name which signifies " men surpassing all others." Their great fault was cruelty to their ene- mies, but in this they are not unlike most other primitive peoples. In Colden's very interesting "History of the Five Nations" we find a delineation of the character of this people by one who had opportunity to ob- serve them closely. He says: " The Five Nations are a poor, and generally called barbarous people, bred under the darkest ignorance; and yet a bright and noble genius shines through these black clouds. None of the 138 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY greatest Roman heroes have discovered a greater love to their country, or a greater contempt of death, than these people called Barbarians have done, when Liberty came in competition. Indeed, I think our Indians have outdone the Romans in this particular; some of the greatest of those have, we know, murdered themselves to avoid shame or torments ; but our Indians have refused to die meanly, or with but little pain, when they thought their country's honor would be at stake by it; but have given their bodies willingly to the most cruel torments of their enemies to show, as they said, that the Five Nations consisted of Men, whose courage and resolution could not be shaken. They greatly sully, however, these noble virtues by that cruel passion, Revenge ; this they think is not only lawful but honorable, to exert without mercy upon their country's enemies, and for this only it is that they can deserve the name of Barbarians." These people of the Five Nations, fierce, but brave and noble and with a genius for government, were not without their literary and poetic gifts. The myths and tales of the Iroquois are most interesting reading. Here THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 139 is one taken from the second annual Report of the United States Bureau of Ethnology. It is there called "A Seneca Legend of Hi-Nu and Niagara," but I should call it "A LEGEND OF THE HORSE-SHOE FALLS. "A beautiful Indian maiden was about to be compelled by her family to marry a hideous old Indian. Despair was in her heart. She knew that there was no escape for her. So in despera- tion she leaped into her canoe and pushed it from the shore on the roaring waters of Niagara. She heeded not that she was going to her death, pre- ferring the angry waters to the arms of her detested lover. Now, the God of Clouds and and Rain, the great deity Hi-Nu, who watches over the harvest, dwelt in a cave behind the rush- ing waters. From his home he saw the desperate launching of the maiden's canoe; saw her going to almost certain destruction. He spread out his wings and flew to her rescue, and caught her just as her frail bark was dashing on the rocks below. The grateful Indian girl lived for many weeks in Hi-Nu's cave. He taught her many new things. She learned from him why her people died so often why sickness was always busy among them. 140 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY He told her how a snake lay coiled up under the ground beneath the village, and how he crept out and poisoned the springs, because he lived upon human beings and craved their flesh more and more, so that he could never get enough if they died from natural causes. " Hi-Nu kept the maiden in till he learned that the ugly old suitor was dead. Then he bade her return and tell her tribe what she had learned from the great Hi-Nu. She taught them all he had told her and begged them to break up their settlement and travel nearer to the lake ; and her words pre- vailed. For a while sickness ceased, but it broke out again, for the serpent was far too cunning to be so easily outwitted. He dragged himself slowly but surely after the people, and but for Hi-Nu's influence would have undermined the new settle- ment as he had the former one. Hi-Nu watched him until he neared the creek, then he launched a thunderbolt at him. A terrible noise awoke all the dwellers by the lake, but the snake was only injured, not killed. Hi-Nu was forced to launch another thunderbolt and another and another before finally the prisoner was slain. " The great dead snake was so enormous that when the Indians laid his body out in death, it THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 141 stretched more than twenty arrow flights, and as he floated down the waters of Niagara it was as if a mountain appeared above them. His corpse was too large to pass the rocks, so it became wedged in between them and the waters rose over it mountain high. As the weight of the monster pressed on the rocks they gave way and thus the horse shoe form that remains to this day, was fashioned. But the Indians had no more fever in their settlement." 1 Such was the delicate poetic fancy and genius of the race of Hiawatha. No American can visit Independence Hall in Philadelphia without feelings of the most profound and tender interest. As you enter that sacred room immortalized by the signing of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution of the United States, you see looking down upon you from the walls the faces of those who were participants in these memorable events. There is the desk upon which both of these great documents were signed. There is the chair which Washing- 1 Erminie A. Smith, Myths of the Iroquois. 2d Annual Report of U. S. Bureau of Ethnology. 142 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY ton occupied during the sessions of that Fed- eral Convention, and still dimly visible upon it may be seen that Rising Sun which Benja- min Franklin made forever historic. Here assembled the members of that convention in the month of May, 1787. Monday, May 14, 1787, was the day fixed for the meeting of the Federal Convention. Only a few delegates were then present and the proceedings actu- ally began on Friday, May 25. Mr. Madison tells us that " On the arrival of the Virginia deputies at Philadelphia, it occurred to them that, from the early and prominent part taken by that State in bringing about the convention, some initiative step might be expected from them. The resolu- tions introduced by Governor Randolph were the result of a consultation on the subject, with an understanding that they left all the deputies en- tirely open to the light of discussion, and free to concur in any alterations or modifications which their reflections and judgments might approve. These resolutions, as the Journals show, became the basis on which the proceedings of the conven- tion commenced, and to the developments, varia- THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 143 tions and modifications of which, the plan of govern- ment proposed by the convention may be traced." Mr. Gouverneur Morris was a delegate to that convention. At the city of New York in December, 1799, he delivered an oration upon the death of George Washington. In an account of the proceedings preliminary to the formal opening of the convention he thus describes the scene : 4 ' It is a question, previous to the first meeting, what course shall be pursued. Men of decided temper, who, devoted to the public, overlooked prudential considerations, thought a form of gov- ernment should be framed entirely new. But cautious men, with whom popularity was an ob- ject, deemed it fit to consult and comply with the wishes of the people. Americans ! let the opinion then declared by the greatest and best of men be ever present to your remembrance. He was col- lected within himself; his countenance had more than usual solemnity ; his eye was fixed, and seemed to look into futurity. ' It is (said he) too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sus- tained. If, to please the people, we offer what 144 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.' " These are words which should be handed down to forever govern the proceedings of all American deliberative bodies, and they produced in the members of the convention that high spirit of right and duty which char- acterized their entire proceedings. There were fifty-five delegates to the con- vention; all of considerable capacity and some of remarkable talent and genius. Yet some of the most distinguished names were absent from that roll. Thomas Jefferson was not there; he was representing us in France. John Adams was not there; he was our am- bassador to England. Patrick Henry was not there; he had been alienated by the equanim- ity with which New England had listened to the proposed closing of the Mississippi, and was distrustful of the work of the convention. Samuel Adams was not there; he was never considered a warm friend of the Constitution. Among those present there was Alexander THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 145 Hamilton, that great constructive political genius. Tropical in his birth; with shrewd- ness from his Scotch father and passionate fervor from his French Huguenot mother. Dazzlingly brilliant in his mental qualities. Precocious in his youth. As a boy of thir- teen he writes to a friend: " I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk, or the like, to which my fortune condemns me and would willingly risk my life, though not my char- acter, to exalt my station. 1 am confident, Ned, that my youth excludes me from any hope of imme- diate preferment, nor do I desire it ; but I mean to prepare the way for futurity." Rather stilted, but extraordinary language for a boy of thirteen. He developed his mind by industrious reading and writing. A youth- ful production describing a hurricane he had witnessed in the West Indies excited so much attention and interest that he was sent to this country to pursue his studies. Behold him as a youth of seventeen, a student in King's Col- lege, attending a meeting of patriots in those fields of New York, as they were in that year 1774, but which are now covered by towering 10 146 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY buildings. Impressed by the incompleteness of what had been said, the boy makes his way unheralded to the platform and stands before the people, who view him with amazement. Embarrassed for a moment, he quickly re- covers himself and enters upon a speech clear, convincing, and logical. Grave and earnest men recognize him at once as an intellectual equal, if not a master. In a few months he appears as the author of pamphlets and news- paper articles, voluminous in their extent, filled with arguments on constitutional and political questions, and showing rare ability and grasp of mind. In the Revolution, a lieutenant-colonel under Washington at twenty, a member of Congress at twenty-five, he quickly develops into a statesman and master of finance. As Secretary of the Treasury and creator of our national monetary system, he gave vitality to the public credit and direction to the national life. Joint author with Madison of " The Fed- eralist," his whole life was a succession of splendid intellectual triumphs and patriotic accomplishments. THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 147 Then there was Madison. Born in 1751 he was now thirty-seven years of age. Not a sol- dier like Hamilton, he was by nature fitted rather for council. When twenty-three he was a member of the committee of safety appointed by his county in 1774, and in 1776, as a dele- gate to the Virginia Convention, made his en- trance into public life. For forty years he continued in the active service of the people. As member of Congress, as Secretary of State, and as President ; by his papers in " The Fed- eralist," his journal of the Proceedings of the Federal Convention; by his entire life of illustrious services his memory is fixed with lasting pre-eminence in our national history. Without the personal magnetism or brilliancy of Hamilton, somewhat shy in his manner, and with no oratorical display, he yet by the keen- ness of his mind, the soundness of his judg- ment, by a certain mental poise, and by the perfect integrity of his character, had perhaps more than any other one mind a shaping in- fluence upon our Constitution. Then there was Franklin, shrewd and quaint, venerable in age and appearance, AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY endeared to the people not only by the homely maxims of Poor Richard, but by the distinguished and long-continued services he had rendered to his country. What a wonder- ful versatility of genius he possessed. He was a master alike in Natural Philosophy, in Polit- ical Science, in Diplomacy, in business sagac- ity, and in knowledge of human nature. His name was a household word in Europe as in America. His famous kite and his enticing the lightnings from the clouds made him forever one of the famous figures in the world's history. In his mission to England during the times of trouble with the colonies over the stamp tax and other distasteful legis- lation, his quick wit was more than a match for the English ministers and representatives. As minister to France his duties were delicate and performed with fidelity. In the peace negotia- tions his prestige was of importance. In short, Franklin was one of the most original and use- ful characters this country has ever produced, and was rightly beloved and venerated by the people. Among others of distinguished ability and THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 149 accomplishment were James Wilson of Penn- sylvania, Gouverneur Morris, Dr. Johnson, Roger Sherman, Elbridge Gerry, Mr. Patterson of New Jersey, and some others of equal prominence. Above all, and presiding as was fitting over the deliberations of the convention, was the calm, serene, and unapproachable figure of Washington; wisest in his judgment, calmest in moments of excitement, with an unparalleled influence over men. The doors were locked and it was agreed that the proceedings should be conducted in secrecy lest the news of any difference or mis- understandings that might arise should un- settle the minds of the people. On Friday, May 25, Washington was elected President of the Convention. On Tuesday, May 29, Randolph opened the main business and presented the fifteen resolutions constituting what is known as the Virginia plan and which became the basis for the dis- cussions of the convention. On Wednesday, May 30, the convention having resolved itself into a committee of the whole, Mr. Randolph, 150 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY on suggestion of Mr. Gouverneur Morris, moved that the first of the proposed fifteen resolutions should be postponed in order to take up the three following propositions : 1st. That a union of the States merely federal will not accomplish the objects pro- posed by the articles of confederation, namely, common defence, security of liberty, and general welfare. 2d. That no treaty or treaties among the whole or part of the States, as individual sovereignties, would be sufficient. 3d. That a national government ought to be established, consisting of a supreme legisla- tive, executive, and judiciary. These resolutions went to the root of the whole matter and at once brought up the question whether it was the sense of the com- mittee that a league of States or a strong national government should be the work of the convention. There was considerable dis- cussion on these propositions. Gen. Pinckney expressed the doubt whether under the act of Congress recommending the Constitution any right was given them to consider the THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 151 establishing of a form of government differ- ing in its essence and principles from the Federal Constitution. Elbridge Gerry also doubted as to this. Mr. Gouverneur Morris contended for one supreme power and only one as a necessity in any community. He showed the distinction between a federal and a national supreme government. In the one case a compact resting on the good faith of the parties, in the other a relation which was com- plete and compulsive in its operation. On the question as moved on the third proposition, namely, That a national government ought to be established, consisting of a supreme legisla- tive, executive, and judiciary, it was adopted by a vote of 6 to 1. The second of Mr. Randolph's fifteen reso- lutions was then taken up. This involved the vital question of representation; whether a radical change should be made and a propor- tional representation be substituted for the method of the confederation, which gave an equal vote to each State irrespective of its wealth or the number of its inhabitants. Mr. Madison, Mr. Hamilton, and Mr. Randolph 152 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY held that an equitable ratio of representation should be adopted in place of the equality of representation which prevailed under the con- federation. The deputies from Delaware, it was declared, were by their commission ex- pressly forbidden to assent to any change of the rule of suffrage, and on motion of Mr. Reed of Delaware the question was for the time postponed. On Friday, June 15, Mr. Patterson pre- sented what is known as the New Jersey plan. The New Jersey plan proposed simply a modification of the articles of confederation. It provided for a single legislature, for magis- trates removable by Congress on application by a majority of the executives of the several States, for a single national tribunal, with a narrow jurisdiction, for equality of suffrage instead of proportional representation, and it rested on the State legislatures rather than on the broad foundation of the people at large. On June 18, Mr. Hamilton declared him- self unfriendly to both the plans, namely the Virginia plan, as embodied in the fifteen THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 153 resolutions of Mr. Randolph, and the New Jersey plan. He pointed out particularly the defects in the New Jersey plan and offered himself a sketch which he said was intended to sug- gest the amendments he should probably pro- pose to the plan of Mr. Randolph at a later stage of the proceedings. The leading points of Mr. Hamilton's sketch were that the senate should be elected to serve during good be- havior, that the supreme executive should serve during good behavior, and that he should have a negative on all laws about to be passed, as well as the sole appointment of the heads of the principal departments; that the governor or president of each State should be appointed by the general government, and that he should have a negative upon all laws about to be passed by the State of which he was governor, or president; and finally, that no State should have any land or naval forces, but that the militia of the States should be under the sole and exclusive direction of the United States, and all officers of such militia to be ap- pointed and commissioned by the United States. 154 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Of the three plans thus before the conven- tion, it will be seen that Mr. Hamilton's plan meant extreme centralization, the president being in fact a king; that the New Jersey plan was simply a modification of the articles of confederation and did not create a national government acting directly upon individuals, and that the Virginia plan sought to provide for a strong national government acting di- rectly upon the people as individuals and at the same time preserving the State govern- ments intact. It was this latter plan which became the basis for the action of the conven- tion and was, after considerable amendment, adopted in substance. The chief difficulty that arose was over the question of representation in the national Con- gress. Under the confederation each State had its equal vote and a two-thirds majority was necessary to pass a measure. Under the Vir- ginia plan the number of representatives from each State was to depend either upon its wealth or the number of its inhabitants and simply a majority was decisive. This took away much of the power of the small States, and they were THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 155 quick and at times bitter in their opposition. This question of representation resulted in heated and acrimonious debate and threatened to wreck the proposed work of the convention. It was at this point of the proceedings of the convention that Dr. Franklin, feeling that the discussions were coming to no practical result, and were producing no agreement among the members, made his eloquent little speech sup- porting his motion that in the future their daily sessions should be opened with prayer. " I have lived, sir," said Dr. Franklin, " a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proof I see of this truth that God governs in the affairs of men ; and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it possible that an empire can rise without his aid ? We have been assured, sir, in the Sacred Writings that ' except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it ! ' I firmly believe this ; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this building no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little partial local interests ; our projects will be confounded ; and we ourselves shall become a reproach and by-word 156 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY down to future ages. And what is worse, man- kind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance despair of establishing governments by human wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and con- quest." The next day, June 29, Dr. Johnson made an exceedingly practical suggestion in the fol- lowing words ; he said : "On the whole he thought that as in some respects the States are to be considered in their political capacity, and in others as districts of individual citizens, the two ideas embraced on different sides, instead of being opposed to each other ought to be combined; that in one branch the people ought to be represented, and in the other the States." The debate over this question of representa- tion continued to be vehement, and separate confederacies were spoken of. Mr. Madison finally declared that the different interests of the States came not from differences of size but from the effects of their having or not having slaves. "It did not lie," he said, "between the large and small States. It lay between the Northern and Southern." THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 157 It was at about this point in the proceedings that Dr. Franklin, with his customary homely wit, said: " The diversity of opinion turns on two points. If a proportional representation takes place the small States contend that their liberties will be in danger. If an equality of votes is to be put in its place, the large States say their money will be in danger. When a broad table is to be made and the edges of planks do not fit, the artist takes a little from both and makes a good joint. In like manner, both sides must part with some of their demands, in order that they may join in some ac- commodating proposition." As, however, Mr. Madison had indicated, slavery was really the underlying difficulty in settling this question of representation, and as we read the debates in the convention, we can almost think we are reading the record of anti- slavery times ; so pointed and bitter were the discussions. Finally, by a series of compro- mises, prohibition of slavery was waived, and on the question of representation it was deter- mined that five slaves should count for three votes. 158 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Much difference of opinion prevailed as to the executive head of the government; should it be single or consist of more than one ? Some feared tyranny if so much power was delegated to one individual. Should he be chosen by the State legislatures, by the national legisla- ture, or by the people ? What should be his term of office? Some favored seven years, some during good behavior. It was only after prolonged and arduous debate that the provisions of our constitution in this regard were finally framed. After four hot summer months in Philadelphia of the most exacting labor, the work was at length completed. The differences of opinion had been so great, and the discussions at times had been so heated, that the fate of the convention had often seemed doubtful. Probably not one member of that convention was at the close of the pro- ceedings entirely satisfied with the work that had been done. Two of the New York dele- gates had withdrawn early in the sessions; three, Mr. Randolph and Mr. Mason of Vir- ginia, and Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts, re- fused to sign the completed document. All THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 159 the others, dismissing their individual ob- jections, subscribed their names to the Constitution. Mr. Madison tells us that as the last mem- bers were signing, "Dr. Franklin, looking toward the president's chair at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him that painters had found it difficult in their art to distinguish a rising from a setting sun : ' I have,' said he, 'often and often in the course of the session and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the president's chair without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting ; but now, at length, I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun. ' ' The Federal Convention could frame and submit a proposed Constitution. It remained for the several States to accept or reject it. The result seemed far from certain. The New York delegates who had withdrawn from the convention, Randolph and Mason and El- bridge Gerry, who had refused to sign, used every effort to defeat the Constitution. 160 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee came out in active opposition; Thomas Jefferson was not wholly satisfied because a Bill of Rights was not included, and Samuel Adams was doubtful. The Federalist and Anti- Federalist parties were formed and the proposed Constitution was attacked and defended with much animation. That remarkable contribu- tion to political science, " The Federalist," was produced by the papers of Hamilton and Madi- son with the slight co-operation of Jay. Little Delaware was the first to ratify the Constitu- tion. Then came Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Later, Georgia arid Connecticut. In Massachusetts the contest was hot and the re- sult seemed doubtful. It was proposed that another Federal Convention should be called to consider amendments. That memorable meeting of workingmen with Paul Revere as chairman was held at the Green Dragon Tav- ern in Boston. Washington used his influ- ence at the critical moment, and finally, on February 6, 1788, Massachusetts ratifies abso- lutely. The ten amendments, constituting a Bill of Rights, which she proposed, were subse- THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 161 quently adopted after the new government was under way. Maryland and South Carolina next ratified, making eight States, and only one more was necessary to secure the adoption. Interest centred on Virginia. Here there was a splendid struggle. Patrick Henry and Rich- ard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison and John Tyler, together with Mason and Randolph, who had refused to sign, made a brilliant opposition to the Constitution. But young Harry Lee (Light Horse Harry, as they called him), John Marshall ("that tall and slim young man with the eye of an eagle, and whose face lighted up so brilliantly"), and above all Madison, were leading the forces who were supporting the great document, and on June 28 Virginia ratified the Constitution , New Hampshire having on June 25 already secured the honor of being the decisive ninth. What a day of rejoicings and of festivities was that Fourth of July, 1788! Pageants and processions, odes, fire -works, and cannons were everywhere. In Philadelphia, the judges in their robes, decorated floats with emblematic n 162 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY devices and with artisans busy at their crafts, ten vessels marshalled in the Delaware to typify the States which had ratified, artillery, infantry, and bodies of mounted troops, the scene was a splendid one, and the joy of the people unbounded. When the procession reached its destination James Wilson addressed the people from " The New Roof," that Federal edifice which had been one of the features of the display; close to it was placed the "Good Ship Union." After the dinner came an oration, and among the toasts were these : (9) "May Reason and not the sword here- after decide all national disputes." (10) "The whole family of Mankind." A gentleman present at the procession at Philadelphia observes that "it was very re- markable that every countenance wore an air of dignity as well as of pleasure. Every trades- man's boy in the procession seemed to consider himself as a principal part in the business." If the requisite number of States had been obtained New York was still all-important on account of her commanding commercial and THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 163 military situation. She had from the first been opposed to the Constitution and two of her delegates had, as we have seen, early withdrawn from the convention. Week after week Hamilton argued in the State conven- tion at Poughkeepsie with a brilliancy and matchless dexterity which won over opponents and caused the result to be justly regarded as a magnificent personal triumph. After the ratification, July 27, the scenes in Phila- delphia of the preceding Fourth of July were repeated in the streets of New York; but everywhere was Hamilton's name, and every- where the people rendered to him just tribute and honor. To the careful student of the Federal Con- vention it must be apparent that the sources of our Constitution can be traced to no partic- ular European nation, to no individual politi- cal thinker of ancient or modern times. The debates in that convention draw upon the ex- perience of our colonial and State governments and upon almost every form of government both ancient and modern. No one who reads those debates can detect 164 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY a disposition to any servile following of a given model. While our Constitution em- bodied the best results of political thought and political experience up to that time, in the broader and completer sense the sources of that constitution may be found in the growth of the individual and the growth of the State which we have been watching through the epochs of discovery, settlement, and nation- ality; they may be found in those initial leaves, Greece and Israel, and in the gradual growth of that plant, watered by many streams, made vigorous by the sun of liberty, until it had come to the full proportions and symmetry of the tree. As we fondly hope and believe, the framers of that Constitution were guided to a wisdom greater than had been granted to peoples of the past, and were called to the high task of completing a fabric of government in which men should learn to see a higher and fuller realization of their own freedom than had yet been apparent to the dwellers in other lands. It is this hope and belief that gives us confi- dence in the stability and perpetuity of our THE CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION 165 government and of our institutions. If here the citizen shall see his individual will and freedom most perfectly exercised and carried out by the State, his love for our land, our government and our Constitution shall contin- ually grow and strengthen. For a due and conscious recognition cf this freedom which he enjoys he has only to study the history of the past and the framing and the nature of the government in whose liberties he is here a sharer. IV AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE IN HISTORY IV AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE IN HISTORY WE have taken 1492, 1620, and 1788 as vital dates. We have seen that these dates not only marked the tune of discovery, the time of settlement, and the time of the founding of a new fabric of government for America, but served as central points to mark the great European epochs which coincided in point of time with our great national epochs. Let us take still another date, namely, 1850, which may be said to mark a fourth epoch in our national history, as well as a fourth great epoch in the world's history. This would properly furnish the subject for a separate chapter, and I think we should find this fourth epoch, for which I take 1850 as a central date, to be as important and as interesting as any of the previous epochs we have considered. As 170 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY it is, we will simply glance hastily at this epoch of 1850 before proceeding to consider the in- fluence that America has exerted upon the life and the history of the world. On the 7th of March, 1850, in the United States Senate, Daniel Webster delivered his famous speech for the Constitution and the Union. Twenty years before, on January 26, 1830, Mr. Webster had made that still more remarkable speech in reply to Hayne. The Nullification doctrines, as expounded by the keen and brilliant intellect of John C. Calhoun, had rilled the Northern mind with anxiety and apprehension. The speech of Hayne seemed almost impregnable in its logic and difficult to answer. You remember how friends of Mr. Webster and of the Union, solic- itous and disturbed as to the outcome, called upon Mr. Webster the evening before his reply and found him calm, self-reliant, and self- poised. You remember how in the famous reply Mr. Webster's massive mind, his noble rhetoric, and his irresistible reasoning ground into powder the subtle and specious arguments in favor of nullification. AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 171 He thus informed and sustained the loyal mind of the North. In this was his greatest service to the country and the Constitution he loved so well. His mind more than any other, in this time of peril, grasped the great prin- ciples underlying that Constitution and the framing of our fabric of government, while the simplicity and grandeur of his oratory fixed these principles in the minds of the people. We like to think how when a boy he bought in a village store that cotton pocket-handker- chief upon which was printed the Constitution of the United States. He says concerning this incident: "I remember reading it then and I have known something of it ever since." Do you remember that last sickness of Daniel Webster, how that little boat in which he used to sail lay moored near by the house with an American flag and a lantern at the top of one of the masts, and how Mr. Webster asked that a light be put in that lantern that as he lay in his bed he might see the light shin- ing upon that flag he loved so well? There it remained until he died. The light in that lantern has long gone out, but as long as our 172 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY nation shall last, so long will the light shed by his great mind upon that Constitution shine on undimmed and radiant. In 1850 the situation had become alarming, and secession and a separate confederacy were openly spoken of. Mr. Calhoun, in his speech of the 4th of March, had said : "If you, who represent the stronger portion, cannot agree to settle them [the questions con- cerning slavery then at issue] on the broad prin- ciple of justice and duty, say so ; and let the States we both represent agree to separate and part in peace. If you are unwilling we should part in peace, tell us so, and we shall know what to do, when you reduce the question to submission or resistance." l Mr. Webster felt that the Union and the Constitution were in great peril. It was his desire to treat the question fairly, and if pos- sible to bring about some accommodation which should preserve the nation intact and avert the horrors of a civil war. In the course of his 7th of March speech Mr. Webster said : 1 Curtis' Life of Webster, vol. ii., p. 412. AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 173 "If any gentleman from the South shall pro- pose a scheme, to be carried out by this Govern- ment on a large scale, for the transportation of free colored people to any colony or any place in the world, I should be quite disposed to incur almost any degree of expense to accomplish that object. Nay, sir, following an example set more than twenty years ago by a great man, then a Senator from New York, I would return to Vir- ginia, and through her to the whole South, the money received from the lands and territories ceded by her to this Government, for any such purpose as to remove, in whole or in part, or in any way to diminish or deal beneficially with the free colored population of the Southern States. I have said that I honor Virginia for her cession of this territory. There have been received into the treasury of the United States eighty millions of dollars, the proceeds of the sales of the public lands ceded by her. If the residue should be sold at the same rate, the whole aggregate will exceed two hundred millions of dollars. If Virginia and the South see fit to adopt any proposition to relieve themselves from the free people of color among them, or such as may be made free, they have my full consent that the Government shall pay them any sum of money out of the proceeds 174 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY of that cession which may be adequate to the purpose." l The circumstances surrounding this 7th of March speech are at once dramatic and of vital interest. It was almost the last appearance of Mr. Calhoun in the United States Senate. The long duel between these intellectual gladi- ators here terminated. Henry Clay is about passing off the stage. Mr. Webster himself has only two more years to live. Soon new actors are to appear upon the scene, and Stephen A. Douglass and Abraham Lincoln are to occupy the public attention. Some of the most thoughtful and judicious men of the North, and among them Mark Hopkins and Benjamin D. Silliman, will strive to bring about a more brotherly feeling between the sections of the country and to solve the diffi- culties, as Mr. Webster would have been glad to solve them, by a compensation plan of emancipation. But it was not to be, and the war of the Rebellion is soon at hand. Mr. Webster's 7th of March speech is a central 1 Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster, Boston, 1882, p. 623. AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 175 and vital point in the unhappy differences which terminated so tragically. Let us remem- ber that in this very year, 1850, Victor Hugo, as President of the Peace Congress at Frank- fort-on-the-Main, declared that " A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in public museums, just as an instrument of torture is now, and people will be amazed that such a thing could ever have been." Let us remember that the very next year, on the 18th of July, 1851, Carlyle wrote to the Lon- don Peace Congress : " As men no longer wear swords in the streets, so neither, by and by, will nations." Again were men long- ing for peace while the Drawn Sword once more seemed to be hovering threateningly above them in the sky. Who shall dare to blame Mr. Webster for seeking to avert that portent, for seeking to turn aside that hideous blade, and to bring about a settlement of exist- ing differences under due forms of that Law of which he was a sworn minister and under the benignant reign of Peace ? 1850, then, marks the period of nullifica- tion and of anti-slavery discussion and of the 176 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY civil war that followed. In the epoch of our national history which this year 1850 may be said to have fairly ushered in, we disposed for all time of that slavery question which was, as we have seen, such a disturbing factor, even in the proceedings of the Federal Convention ; we endured the shock of secession and brought the country out to a newer and coinpleter unity. 1850 marks as well a new epoch in European history. It is the epoch of the Political Recon- struction of Modern Europe. 1 We have Cavour and Victor Emmanuel and the unification of Italy; Bismarck and the rise of Prussia. In France the coup d'etat Louis Napoleon, and then the Republic ; Russia is assuming new importance and emancipates her serfs. In England there was a long and peaceful revolu- tion marked by the Electoral Reform of 1867. The House of Commons from an aristocratic legislative body passed to a truly representative and elective body. There were administrative reforms ; poor laws were enacted ; Boards of Health were established. Education for the 1 See Appendix, Note V. AMERICA 'AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 177 masses at length slowly made its way. So late as 1836 education in England was entirely a matter of private enterprise, and the greater percentage of the children attended no school. Free Trade is established. At length came the genuine electoral reform of 1867 and we have the England of Gladstone and a substan- tially representative government. So, too, we have English rule in India, and with Livingston and Stanley, a new era in Africa. Nor must we lose sight of a most interest- ing development that manifested itself in Eng- land about the year 1850. Charles Kingsley and Frederick Denison Maurice were the choice spirits about whom clustered this new movement which they called by the name of Christian Socialism. Labor agitations had at this time assumed formidable proportions in England. There were terrible wrongs that needed righting. The condition of the labor- ing classes was deplorable. Women were yoked with mules to work in the mines. Little children seven and eight years old were forced to work thirteen and fourteen hours a day, and slept by the machines at 12 178 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY which they toiled that they might be ready in the morning for their task. No wonder that there were labor agitations. Kingsley and Maurice felt the wrong and came to the rescue of the people. They were proud to be called Christian Socialists, and glad to endure whatever opprobrium came with the name. By the Factory Act many of these wrongs were removed and a public opinion was created which did away with the worst of the abuses. But not only was this epoch, for which we have taken 1850 as our central date, a great national epoch for us, and an epoch of politi- cal reconstruction in Europe; it was as well an epoch rich in artistic and literary achieve- ment. In 1850 a few pictures appeared in the exhibition of the Royal Academy in London bearing the initials P. R. B. Nobody knew what these letters meant, but when they learned that two or three young men of hardly more than twenty years of age had assumed to originate a new school and to call themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the criticism was quick and cruel. The daily AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 179 press outdid itself in heaping ridicule upon these young men. But Ruskin came to their rescue and took up the cudgels manfully in their defence. With this Pre-Raphaelite move- ment we have a protest against the conven- tional attitude and the posturings for effect, a return to sincerity and veracity in art, which we now feel to have been of great importance and to mark a new era. Ford Maddox Brown, Millais, Dante Gabriel Ros- setti, and Holman Hunt brought to us a fresher and in many respects a truer and a better conception of art. With all the glory of the Italian School of the Renaissance, that school in which the human eye first ap- peared on canvas as the window of the soul, yet we can but feel that in many of these old pictures there is a painful attitudinizing figures consciously posed and with impossible accessories. The Pre-Raphaelite school sought to present upon the canvas figures taken from life itself, with appropriate local coloring, and all the details having the stamp of sincerity and truth. In literature the accomplishment of this 180 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY epoch is almost bewildering in its richness. We have associated the nineteenth century so much with material progress and with great inventions that we sometimes almost lose sight of its record in literary achievement and hardly realize that most of the books we know best and love best date from this period. Keats, Shelley, and Coleridge, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and the two Brownings, Carlyle and Macaulay, Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, and Bulwer, Kingsley and George Eliot, Ruskin and Thomas Moore how we know and love these names and the books they have given us ! Then in our own country there are Emerson and Lowell, Longfellow and Whittier, Bryant and Edgar Allan Poe, Hawthorne and Irving, Prescott and Motley, Parkman and Bancroft all pretty closely associated with 1850. Indeed it requires but little imagination to think of this epoch as the time of an American Renaissance. And the parallel with its Italian predecessor is almost startling when we come to look at it closely. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 caused multitudes of adventurers to flock in that direction, and AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 181 again was there an eager quest for treasures. Great inventions are again springing up on every hand: it is the time of the railroad, of the steamship, of the telegraph. It is, too, a time of scientific accomplishment : Darwin and Huxley and Tyndall and Spencer and Agassiz are searching out the laws of nature and are stimulating and revolutioniz- ing thought. Brilliant men abound in all departments. In the American pulpit of about this period are William Ellery C banning, Horace Bushnell, and Henry Ward Beecher. It is the time of the great American orators, Webster and Clay and Choate and Everett. We have noted the bound in art. We have seen the brilliant accomplishments in literature in England and in America. It is also the France of Victor Hugo. A wonderful France ! Think of the names that cluster about this period: Madame de Stae'l, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Sainte-Beuve ; Alfred de Musset, Alexandre Dumas, Prosper Me'rime'e, The'ophile Gautier, and Honord de Balzac. And then the remarkable accom- plishments in history: the works of Thiers, 182 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Mignet, Coulanges, Jules Michelet, and Alexis de Tocqueville. Then there were Quinet, Cousin, Alexandre Dumas fils, and, especially to be noted, Ernest Renan, and also Hippolyte Taine, whose brilliant work on the " History of English Literature " appeared in 1864. It is the Germany of Richard Wagner. " Tann- hauser" was completed in 1845, and "Lohen- grin " in 1847. How interesting it is to come back to the Grail Legend with which we started, and see it the leading motive in the immortal work of this great genius of the nineteenth century ! It is indeed not only the American Renais- sance, but a World Renaissance, and again does mankind respond to vital impulses with a splendid bound of progress. And now, to come directly to our immediate subject, what has been the influence of Amer- ica, in these four epochs of its history and of the world's history, upon the life and thought of the world ? What has been its moulding and shaping influence upon other peoples? How far has it been a formative force in history? AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 183 We gratefully acknowledge our debt to the nations of the Old World and the many streams of influence that have entered into our history and our life as a people. To Italy, to Spain, and to Portugal, to Holland and to England, to France and to Germany to these and other nations we are indebted for much of our inheritance. Greece and Israel, those food- leaves of history, Rome, that unifying and lawgiving force, have all sent down their in- fluence and contributed to our being. Enter- ing as we have upon the spiritual possessions of the race, our debt to the past is great. But it is our present thought to attempt to esti- mate the contribution which we as a land and a people have made to the life of the world. Taking up, then, the epochs which have passed under our view, let us consider first what formative or shaping force America ex- ercised in its Epoch of Discovery. The first and most obvious influence exerted by the discovery of America would hardly seem a happy one. Excited by the stories of treas- ures to be found in the new land, the Span- iards flocked to the caravals of Columbus and 184 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY started upon independent voyages of their own. It was an eager quest for gold. They shunned the cold and frozen North and pointed the prows of their vessels to the South, where lay the wealth they sought. Picturesque and interesting as are the adventures of the Span- iards in Mexico and Peru, yet the effect upon their character was hardly elevating. Indeed the choicer spirits in the Old World were not attracted by such a quest. The wealth ob- tained by Spain from the mines of South America was of little use to her. Much of it was expended in her effort to crush out liberty in Holland, much of it was tossed back into the Atlantic in her Armada, which went to pieces off the shores of England. Surely in this wealth which America gave to the Old World there is nothing to re- joice at, and no formative or shaping influ- ence for the betterment of mankind. And yet the discovery of America played a great part in the life and thought of that era and exercised a beneficently moulding influ- ence upon its people. We have seen the individual in the time of AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 185 discovery awaking as from a sleep. Florence in all its glories is his. The great bound in art pulses through his being. The inventions then springing up stimulate him and extend his powers. But, after all, the gaze of this awakening individual is pent up and con- tracted in its scope. He cannot see beyond the confines of the Mediterranean. His dream is of a restoration of the Roman Empire. Be- yond his narrow boundaries lies the dark, black sea. He cannot penetrate its distances, he cannot see beyond it. The true artist is he who interprets God to man and God in man to himself. This is the test of the painting, the statue, the poem. Can it enkindle the mind, uplift the spirit, arouse the aspiration, put us in touch with the best in ourselves and lift us to a plane above the petty and the common- place ? Then indeed is it the hand of genius that has wrought the work, and the artist has received the divine commission to reveal God to us. And surely akin to the spirit that wrought the marbles or painted the frescoes of beautiful Florence was that other Italian spirit who saw beyond the waste of waters 186 and remained firm in his faith and resist- less in his purpose until his mission was accomplished. To this awaking and gazing individual of the Renaissance the piercing of the black sea and the finding of the new lands beyond brought a wonderful widening of his mental horizon. This was the formative influence of America in the time of discovery. That dis- covery was, as we have seen, a gradual proc- ess, and as it went on and the new continent took on from time to time more and more a coherent shape, each stage in that process was a new stimulus to the mind of man, each step was an enlargement of his outlook. The world needed America. The poets had long been the prophets and had sung of the lands that were to be. The well-known lines of Seneca's " Medea " may be somewhat freely translated thus: " The time shall come in the revolving years When ocean shall relax his ancient chains. A mighty continent shall rise; a pilot find new worlds, And ancient Thule as the earth's remotest bounds shall cease her claims." AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 187 And now that the new continent had been found, the thought of the world began to turn to it eagerly and expectantly. Passing now to the time of settlement, the time of the making of homes in the New World, that second great national and world- epoch which we have had before us, let us try to estimate the formative force of America dur- ing this period. It was, as we have seen, a warring and dis- cordant world. We noted that it was a time of great literary and artistic accomplishment. In England the time of the Christian Renais- sance, of Shakespeare and of Milton; while of Holland it has been said that " the first smile of the Dutch Republic was art." And yet a Europe of tramping armies and devastated fields. Germany so laid waste that it was more than a century before she regained what had been lost. Everywhere religious, or rather irreligious conflicts. The drawn sword hang- ing over all. The beneficent mission of America during this epoch was in furnishing a refuge, a haven, where men weary of strife and conflict might find a new home remote 188 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY from those Old World influences and bloody deeds, and where men of various nationalities and differing religions might have time to grow and learn to know each other better. There was abundance of room for all. If all these men of such diverse faiths, and in such intolerant times, if the Episcopalian, the Dissenter, the Quaker, the Catholic, and the Baptist, had all been shut up together within narrow bounds, the probable results are not pleasant to contemplate. But here were vast stretches of country where all could find room and a place. The Quaker goes to Penn- sylvania, the Catholic to Maryland, the Epis- copalian to Virginia, the Baptist to Rhode Island. They had no need to fly at each other's throats. Then the climate was propitious. Had these new-comers fallen upon a luxurious and tropical abode, they might have become enervated and depressed. But here the stimu- lating breezes sweeping across the continent and a soil demanding energetic toil sharpened their intellects and called forth their energies. And what a timely haven it was ; not only for AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 189 those who came, but in its effects upon those who remained to fight out the battles in the old home. Those strong men struggling for liberty in the England of those days needed the support which such a possible refuge gave to them. Cromwell said concerning the Great Remonstrance: "Had it not passed I would have sold to-morrow all I possess and left England forever." He is even reported to have engaged passage on one of the ships sail- ing to these shores. Certain it is that John Hampden bought a tract of land on the Nar- ragansett. The strain was too intense. But for the hope that America held out, the snap would have come. Cromwell wrote to a friend in Boston telling him how the work of those here sustained and comforted him and those who were struggling with him. And so the influence of America, distinctly moulding and shaping upon those who came here, played also an important part in sustaining and strength- ening those who fought out that great battle for the liberties of England. It is useless to speculate on what might have happened had the world of the seventeenth century known 190 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY no America. But so far as the human vision can see there could have been no happy issue out of the conditions then existing. America received these struggling sons of liberty and gave them a new field of action, wherein it became possible for them to behold the realiza- tion of their own freedom. Such was the Formative Force of America in the time of Settlement. Let us think for the moment of history as a stately procession passing before our view. We have watched two of the divisions of that procession as they have moved rapidly by us. The first division carried a banner on which was inscribed "The Romance of the New World " the time of the discovery of America. As the second division passed us we saw its banner and could read its motto, " Homes in the New World " the time of settlement. And now a third division of this procession appears in view, and upon its banner with its thirteen stars denoting the time of nationality, the time of the adoption of our Federal Constitution, appears the legend AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 191 "The New Roof," as men then loved to call the Constitution, which was indeed to be a shelter to them and to their children from so many storms. And what a wonderful division of our procession is this third one which figures forth the time of Revolution, the time of En- lightenment. What are those wild scenes of tumult and bloodshed ? It is the French Revo- lution blazing out in our very sight. We see the majestic figure of Washington hardly seated in the presidential chair before Lafay- ette sends him the key of the Bastille. It is the time of Rousseau and of Immanuel Kant and of great progress in political and philo- sophic thought. Chatham, Burke, and Pitt are unfolding the principles of government and bringing about a parliamentary reform. It is the time of the steam engine, of the spin- ning-jenny, of the construction of a system of comparative anatomy and a classification of the animal kingdom. It is the time of Goethe and of Schiller. The modern doctrine of Evolu- tion is taking form and establishing a new era in thought. Sociology is taking its beginnings as a distinct science or discipline. There in 192 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY this third division of our procession we see the foundations brilliantly laid for the scientific thought of this nineteenth century of ours. Now, what was the formative, the shaping in- fluence exerted by America in this wonderful eighteenth century, this epoch of the founding of our nationality ? Let us see. In the last chapter we noted the long struggle between France and England for supremacy on this continent, and the dramatic scenes in 1759 on the Heights of Abraham which marked the close of that struggle. On the 25th of Octo- ber, 1760, George II. died, and the young King George III. assumed the reins of gov- ernment in England. In 1761, in the old Town House in Boston, James Otis makes his historic argument against writs of as- sistance. A mural painting has just been placed in position in the State House at Boston depicting this scene. Lieutenant- Governor Hutchinson, who presided as Chief Justice, and the other four judges associated with him, appear in their long wigs and their robes. James Otis is delivering his argument before them. The glow from one of those old AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 193 open fireplaces suffuses the room and lights up the scarlet robes of the justices, the central figure of Otis, and the countenances of those who have gathered to listen to his speech. I think that by looking at the circumstances at- tending this memorable scene we shall receive some light as to the formative influence exerted by America at this period. Now that there was no longer danger from France on this con- tinent the colonists began to feel more self- reliant and less dependent upon Great Britain. On the other hand, England was distrustful of the colonies, and the young king, George III. was fulfilling his mother's injunction, " George, be a king," by pursuing an arbitrary and ty- rannical policy not only at home, but against the colonies. Acts regulating the trade of the colonies which had been suffered to sleep dur- ing the Seven Years' War were now put into operation and the customs officers began to enforce their demands. The colonies were slow to comply and these writs of assistance were devised to help the officers in collecting their customs. Otis, holding as he did the position of advocate general, was called upon 13 194 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY for his official assistance. His reply was a prompt refusal and a resignation of his office. Another having been found to take his place and the matter being pressed, the merchants of Salem and Boston came to Mr. Otis and asked him to argue their case against these writs. Otis complied with their request and without compensation. "In such a cause," he said, "I despise all fees." In his argument Mr. Otis took the position that the warrants and writs in question were even illegal in England and opposed to its fundamental laws. He said of his case: "I am determined to sacrifice estate, ease, health, applause, and even life itself to the sacred calls of my country. I argue it with the greater pleasure because it is in favor of British liberty, and in opposition to a kind of power of which the exercise cost one King of England his head and another his throne. ' ' Mr. Otis founded his argument not only on the fundamental law of England, but on the natural rights of man which underlay those laws. He boldly proclaimed that every man in a state of nature had certain inalienable AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 195 rights, the gift of his Creator, and implanted in his breast, and that among these were the right to life, to liberty, to property ; that the object of government was the mutual defence and security of these rights; that to suppose men to have surrendered these rights other- wise than by equal rules and general consent was to imagine them idiots or lunatics whose acts were not binding. "In short," in the lan- guage of John Adams who was present and has left us a short synopsis of this speech, " he asserted these rights to be derived only from nature and the Author of nature; that they were inherent, inalienable, and indefeasible by any laws, pacts, contracts, covenants, or stipu- lations which men could devise. These prin- ciples and these rights were wrought into the English Constitution as fundamental laws. And under this head he went back to the old . Saxon laws and to Magna Charta and the fifty confirmations of it in Parliament, and the exe- cutions ordained against the violators of it, and the national vengeance which had been taken on them from time to time, down to the Jameses and Charleses, and to the peti- 196 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY tion of rights and the Bill of Rights, and the revolution. He asserted that the security of these rights of life, liberty, and property had been the object of all these struggles against arbitrary power, temporal and spiritual, civil and political, military and ecclesiastical in any age." Mr. Adams said of this scene and this speech, "Then and there the child Inde- pendence was born ; " and again he writes : "I do say in the most solemn manner that Mr. Otis' oration against writs of assistance breathed into this nation the breath of life. . . . Every man of an immense crowded au- dience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance." This speech seems to me one of the most re- markable in all history. It was not until the following year that was published Rousseau's "Contrat Social," which he commenced with the famous declaration "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." Yet here we find James Otis, in 1761, not only arguing for the fundamental rights of English liberty, but resting these rights upon the law of AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 197 nature and those inherent principles which, as subsequently clothed in the impassioned and brilliant style of Rousseau, excited the minds of the French nation and brought on the Revolution. Each step that followed in the resistance of the colonies and the debates that ensued in the British Parliament upon the stamp tax and kindred legislation was an educational influ- ence not only upon England but upon all Europe. America was not only working out her own liberty but was shaping and moulding the thought of the world. The proceedings of our Federal Convention, the papers in "The Federalist," and the de- bates in the State legislature concerning the adoption of the Constitution were eagerly read and pondered in Europe as well as here, and left their impress upon her mind. The or- ganization of our Federal government under that Constitution and its orderly workings fur- nished an impressive object lesson. In the July Revolution in France in 1830 Lafayette said to Louis Philippe : " You know that I am a republican and consider the Ameri- 198 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY can Constitution the most perfect." "I am of the same opinion," replied the Duke; "no one could have been two years in America and not share that view. But do you think that that constitution could be adopted in France in its present condition with the present state of popular opinion?" "No," said Lafayette; "what France needs is a popular monarchy surrounded by republican, thoroughly repub- lican institutions." "There I quite agree with you," rejoined Louis Philippe. The laboring classes, the young men and the students were then talking of popular sov- ereignty and clamoring for a republic. Had the aged patriot Lafayette spoken the word, a republic it would have been then and there. 1 It came later. America exercised, then, a powerful forma- tive force in history in this epoch of National- ity by asserting the inherent rights of man and by founding a fabric of government based upon the broad foundation of the people. We have touched upon a fourth epoch, which may be called the epoch of Reconstruc- 1 Miiller, Political History of Recent Times, pp. 108-109. ; AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 199 tion, and have taken as our vital date 1850. This, as we have seen, was the epoch of Nulli- fication, of the war of the Rebellion and of reconstruction in this country, and was also marked by the political reconstruction of Europe. America's influence upon the world during this epoch is also important. During the trying times of secession and civil war our institutions stood on trial before the world. Was there an integrity and a co- hesive force in our system of government sufficient to maintain it intact and to carry us safely through such a struggle? Could a nation indeed rest upon the people as its foundation? The republican form of gov- ernment was before the judgment of the world. The issue of that conflict taught the nations of the world another great lesson in representative government. It is not neces- sary to speak here of the inventive genius of America in the nineteenth century, of the telegraph, the telephone, the sewing-machine, of those many contributions which have aided ._the material life of the world. That story is familiar to us all. 200 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY So, very hastily and imperfectly, we have tried to indicate the formative force of America during the four epochs of its history and of the history of the modern world. In the Epoch of Discovery a widening of the mental horizon of mankind. In the Epoch of Settlement the furnish- ing of a peaceful home and room for growth. In the Epoch of Nationality a practical assertion of the inherent rights of mankind and the establishing of a government based upon those rights. In the Epoch of Reconstruction an object lesson of the stability of a republican form of government. It would seem that America and the world have now entered upon a new era a new epoch. The epoch of Reconstruction has closed both for this country and for Europe. The new epoch bears signs of being an epoch of Unification. Unity is to be the keynote of the twentieth century. I think we can see this tendency in many of the departments of thought and life. We have it in science, AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 201 where, for instance, the term "physiological- psychology " indicates the union that has taken place between what were formerly con- sidered distinct departments of knowledge. We see it especially in Sociology, that new science based upon the necessity for a correlation of the results arrived at in the other departments of knowledge. In religion there is a manifest tendency to dispense with the old creeds which have kept men apart, and to unite on a common platform of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. In political life the trend is also in the di- rection of unification. The world is fast grow- ing into a certain unity. China must soon outgrow her childhood or be broken into pieces. The forces of modern life are press- ing hard upon her. India, under the influ- ences at work, is no longer to be entirely abandoned to her dream of blissful uncon- sciousness; Africa is coming under the do- main of civilization; even now the American flag and the American Constitution have found their way to the distant isles of the sea. The 202 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY civilized nations are themselves growing into a certain relationship that must presently find some international embodiment. Adapting the terms of Evolution to political life, we may call this process a process of in- tegration. Integration, that primary, that fundamental principle in all evolutionary phi- losophy, is surely, and it would seem somewhat swiftly, doing its work. We saw how Goethe in his garden walks discovered that the leaf is ever modifying or varying its shape, its color, and its texture, and that all parts of the flower are but modifications or variations of the leaf. Now this principle of variation, of differentiation, is so universal, so far-reaching in its effects, that we lose sight of the fact that after all the underlying and basic prin- ciple of evolution is integration. If the leaves are ever varying and taking on new shapes and colors it is only that they may be reunited into the greater, the completer whole, and thus reveal the beauty of the perfect flower. So it is in political life; there is a constant variation, a differentiation going on, but only that these seemingly heterogeneous parts may AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 203 be reunited into a larger and more perfect whole. For an illustration, recall the story of our colonies. Massachusetts did not understand Roger Williams, but the island gift of Mian- tonomah is at his hand, and we see a variation, a differentiation of the leaf taking place, and the new colony of Rhode Island assuming its definite form and shape. The Quakers were unpopular in New England, and Pennsylvania takes on a new and varying form of the leaf. Catholic Maryland, under the mild and benefi- cent policy of toleration pursued by her, ex- hibits another modification of the leaf. So it was with the other colonies. Each one of these original thirteen colonies represents a special variation or modification of the shape, the color, and the texture of the leaf. Then came the Federal Convention, and we see how these varied, these differentiated colonies, or States, or leaves, re-united in that completer whole ; how by the adoption of the Constitu- tion those varied, those differing leaves be- came that flower of consummate political beauty these United States of America. 204 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY That principle of integration did not stop with the framing of our Constitution. It is, as we have said, a fundamental principle. As the original thirteen States were shaped into certain lines of proportion and harmony and fitted to take their parts in a symmetrical whole, so are the nations of the earth being so moulded and fashioned that in like manner they may become the pistil, the stamen, the corolla of that most wonderful flower, that flower most perfect in shape, most satisfying in its color, most exquisite and life-giving in its fragrance; that flower of an international State, in which' the whole work of the varia- tion of the leaves shall be revealed as a work of the highest art, and in whose unapproach- able beauty the nations of the earth shall learn to see their true aim and destiny. This prin- ciple of integration is so basic, so fundamen- tal, so all -pervading, that we must reckon with it whether we will or no. We may wish that it had been given to us to remain sepa- rated and apart from the difficulties and prob- lems of the Old World. We may think of the security we have enjoyed in the past, and AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 205 tremble as to the future. But the truth remains. The nations of the earth have been drawing closer together and coming into a certain relationship. We, together with the other nations, have been taking on certain varieties of color, form, and texture only that we may be united into that fuller, that com- pleter expression of international political beauty which shall serve to interpret to men their destiny in a common brotherhood. As a nation we may, through our form of government and the structure of our constitu- tion, hope to have a most helpful formative and shaping influence in this great work of integra- tion which is in progress. Our constitution embodied a novel principle theretofore un- known to men, namely, the harmonious ad- justment between the State and Federal governments, each supreme in its sphere, and every citizen brought into direct relations not only with the State but with the Federal gov- ernment. Did our States lose anything of their dignity or authority by establishing a national tribunal a national Supreme Court 206 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY which should have jurisdiction over the indi- viduals of the separate States and over the States themselves in their national relations? Did the individual citizen become less loyal or valuable to his State because brought into direct political relations with another supreme power? May it not well be that this same principle first set forth in our national Consti- tution may be applied to the consideration of international politics and furnish the basis for some international bond of union that shall still the war cries of the nations and render possible the peaceful solution of the great world-problems which are in the near future ? May not this Constitution of ours be indeed the bud which is to later blossom out into that completer, that matchless political flower ? But are the terms of evolution all? Does the principle they express explain all ac- count for all? The evolutionary ideas have exerted a tremendous influence upon the thought of the past fifty years. They are the ideas that dominate the thought of to- day. But they did not dominate the thought of the eighteenth century. The growth of AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 207 human conceptions then in the ascendency centred about a different pivot. The phil- osophic thought of one century becomes dy- namic in the next century. Ideas germinate and bring forth their fruit slowly. Evolution was born for the purposes of the modern world in the eighteenth century. Its influence upon the minds of men was exerted in the nineteenth century and seems likely to reach well into the twentieth. The ideas that shaped the con- duct of men in the eighteenth century were the ideas that found their modern philosophic con- ception and statement in the seventeenth cen- tury. These ideas, stated in the briefest possible form, are the inductive or experi- mental method in approaching nature ushered in by Newton and Bacon, and the views of the natural rights of man and of the basis of sov- ereignty expounded by Locke and Milton. 1 The next year after the famous argument of James Otis against writs of assistance, appeared the still more famous " Contrat Social " of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau did not origi- nate any political ideas; nor did the other 1 See Appendix, Note VI. 208 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY French Encyclopedists. They took their ideas largely from the seventeenth-century thinkers. The extraordinary influence of Rousseau's book was the effect of an emo- tional man with a brilliant passionateness of expression acting upon an emotional people in an emotional age. It was more than this ; it was the effect of the presentation of one of the great root ideas that have moulded human thought and led on human progress, in an age and especially in a country that had forgotten or turned aside from that idea. What place did the law of nature or the inherent rights of man find in the ancien regime ? France was a land of privileged classes, of despotic govern- ment, of the grinding of the face of the average man under the heel of the unscrupulous and powerful few. Rousseau's cry that "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains " fell upon the ears of men whose flesh was hot and blistered and torn under the pressure of the fetters that were upon them. No wonder they responded fiercely and eagerly to the cry ! There is no more fascinating chapter in the history of human ideas than the story of the AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 209 origin and development of this idea of the law of nature and of the natural rights of man. Aristotle taught that from the development of man the State is evolved; that he is a politi- cal animal meant to be self-sufficing; that by the law of nature implanted within him he must organize the State in order to arrive at his normal growth, in order to attain his end and aim. Socrates and the Stoics, as well as Aristotle, often refer to a law of nature which is a part of the very constitution of man him- self and is a moral law revealed by the con- science to men everywhere. It was a familiar idea with the Roman jurists. According to Mr. Bryce, "The idea of the Law of Nature as the source of morality and the true founda- tion of all civil laws, the idea of all mankind as forming one community, of which all are citizens, and in which all are equal in the eyes of nature this idea had come to pervade the minds of thinking men, whether or no they were professed adherents of any school of philosophy." 1 This idea was put to a very practical use by these Roman lawyers. The 1 Bryce, Studies in History and Jurisprudence, p. 578. 14 210 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Roman law was held to apply only to the Roman citizen, and yet there was a great body of people subject to the Roman Empire although not Roman citizens. What law shall be held to apply to these people ? The Roman lawyers, following out the idea of a law of nature, universal to all men and founded on principles of reason and justice recognized by all men, conceived the plan of grouping to- gether such laws as were found to be common to the systems of all these alien peoples. They believed that such a recognition was a sign that such laws did indeed spring from, were a part of, the law of nature. And so they formu- lated what they called the Law of Nations; not a law for nations. International law de- veloped later, though founded on the same basis the law of nature. So, too, equity sprang up, founded on the same idea and in- tended to supplement the inadequacy of posi- tive legal rules or codifications by those fundamental principles of right and justice recognized by all men. It was an appeal to conscience, and courts of equity came to be called courts of conscience. AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 211 But not only was this idea of the law of nature the basis of the development of juris- prudence ; it also furnished a basis for human conceptions of liberty and sovereignty. If man is what Aristotle declared him to be, a politi- cal being whose true end is to be self-sufficing and the organizer of a State, then he is more than a mere creature, he partakes of the nature of the creator he is a co-creator. This is the logic of it and Christianity clinched the argument. The appeal to this logic has been frequent. Mr. Bryce cites Philip the Fair of France, who made this appeal when, proposing to liberate the serfs in A. D. 1311, he says: "Every human creature formed in the image of Our Lord ought by natural law to be free." Milton made this appeal when he wrote : " No man who knows aught can be so stupid as to deny that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resem- blance of God himself, and were by privilege above all creatures, born to command and not to obey." 1 Here, then, was no new and strange doc- 1 The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 1649, 1st ed., p. 8. 212 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY trine promulgated by Rousseau in 1762, this doctrine of the sovereignty of man, of his inalienable right to life, liberty, and property, set forth by James Otis in 1761 with such fervid reiteration that, as Tudor says in his "Life of Otis," "He sported upon this sub- ject." Wolf, that German thinker and pro- fessor of philosophy, expounded the principles of the law of nature in a series of treatises ex- tending from 1740 to 1750. Vattel applied them to international law and international politics in 1758. No, it was not because Rousseau said any- thing startlingly new ; it was because he said old things in such a startling way and at such a startling time. 1 And so this appeal to the law of nature and to the inherent rights of man was made in America and in France. In America it re- sulted in the Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States. In France it resulted, in the first seeming, in the storming of the Bastille, in the Reign of Terror, and in Napoleon. 1 See Appendix, Note VII. AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 213 But only in the first seeming. The condi- tions were so different. In America all things ready and propitious for erecting the stately edifice of Liberty ; in France a huge structure of the wrongs of centuries, a structure that seemed irremovable and yet that must be torn down in agony and tears and blood before the ground should be cleared for that fairer temple of human freedom founded upon the Rights of Man and the Law of Nature. No, the terms of Evolution are not all. Evolution has come to stay in that it denotes the orderly unfolding of the processes of nature. It has nothing to do with origins ; it cannot explain origins. Its terms will not alone suf- fice in a study of the social and political life of man. It is helpful, but it is not all. Indeed there are those who are beginning to feel that the next word will be devolution. We see such a process at work in individual life, in social life, in the history of nations. As " the philoso- pher " says : 1 " For what each thing is when fully developed we call its nature." We meas- 1 Dante always referred to Aristotle as " the philoso- pher." 214 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY ure our heredity by our potencies, our capaci- ties, our aspirations. We will not have the amoeba for our parent. We do not look to the embryonic germ as our sire. We listen to Wordsworth when he sings : " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting and cometh from afar. Not in entire forgetfulness and not in utter naked- ness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God who is our home." At moments we are able to still catch some- thing of the radiance of those glorious clouds. We are not afraid to admit that the poet is often the best scientist. As one of the greatest of modern poets phrases it : " "We turn with stronger needs to the genius of an opposite tendency the subjective poet of modern classification. He, gifted like the objec- tive poet with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to embody the thing he perceives not so much with reference to the many below, as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their absolute truth, AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 215 an ultimate view, ever aspired to, if but partially attained, by the poet's own soul. Not what man sees, but what God sees the Ideas of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand it is toward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements of humanity he has to do, and he digs where he stands, preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of the absolute Mind, according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak." 1 " All successful inquiry," says Professor Shaler, "shows us that the only way to interrogate the deeps is by sending into them well-framed conjectures, hypotheses, which state what the order of events should be in order to satisfy our minds." 2 If all life is an adaption to environment we want to know what our real environment is. We wish to attain the ultimate view. We send out our conjectures into the deeps and again we hear the voice of the singer: 1 Robert Browning in Essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley. See Appendix, Note VIII. 2 Shaler, The Individual, p. 307. 216 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY " Thus is a season of fair weather, though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea That brought us hither ; can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." We claim kinship with those children. There is that in the sound of those mighty rolling waters that makes us conscious of an environ- ment to which we know the laws of our being intend we should be adapted. There is something almost sad in the terms of Evolution. Magnificent as they may seem when applied to the flower of a cosmopolitical State, yet we remember that the flower fades and the leaves fall. That after the flower, comes the fruit, and then the seed again. We know not how many flowers there may be in the garden of the Lord, but as we watch the transitoriness of governments, of visible States, we feel their mortality. The visible State or nation is but the creature of man ; he is its creator ; it is but an incident, a help to his progress. Having fulfilled its purpose it passes away. It is only the invisible State that en- AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 217 dures, the spiritual State, that Universal State which Hegel declares to be none other than the realization by man of his own freedom. This invisible State is none the less real because invisible. You may establish the most elab- orate system of government, your political adjustments may be arranged to a nicety, but unless your fabric contains within it the living spirit of that invisible, that Universal State you have been building a house of cards. Each nation is but an embodiment, an expres- sion, of the growth to which that Universal State has then attained. The nation passes away, the Universal State endures. It is not enough that the Constitution of the United States is well adapted to serve as a model for the federation of the world. It is not enough that we as a nation are so placed as to exercise a powerful influence in a great work of political integration. The only saving unity is a spiritual unity. It is only by an apprehension of the nature of man, of his heri- tage, of his inherent tendencies and potencies, of his complete environment, of the stimuli to which he is adapted to react in other 218 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY words it is only by a study of the Law of Nature in all its full and complete meaning and im- plications, that we shall find the true basis for political liberty and for the higher unity. Men will either drag their gods down to the human, as did Greece and Rome, or humanity must assert its true place as being God-like. There is an irresistible craving for unity. It will be either a destructive or a saving unity. During the proceedings of the Federal Con- vention Mr. James Wilson of Pennsylvania said: " When he considered the amazing extent of country the immense population which is to fill it the influence the government we are to form will have, not only on the present generation of our people and their multiplied posterity, but on the whole globe, he was lost in the magnitude of the object. The project of Henry IV. and his statesmen, was but the picture in miniature of the great portrait to be exhibited." 1 These men of the Constitution had the vision of the cosmopolitical nature of the work they 1 M. P. vol. ii., p. 726. AMERICA AS A FORMATIVE FORCE 219 were doing. But simply viewed as a political structure it was a vision of the corporeal. It is because of the inner life infusing and inform- ing that great political structure of the eigh- teenth century that life pulsing with the conception of the sanctity and worth of the in- dividual, of his inherent sovereignty, of the moral responsibility of nations and rulers it is this inner life within our fabric of govern- ment that is vital, that is dynamic, that will endure. It is because of this inner life of the State, a life in which we participate and of which we are a part, that we look to see our national policies founded on "... right, truth on the absolute scale of God, No pettiness of man's admeasurement." It is because of this that we demand the recog- nition of the same sanctity of the individual everywhere, of his right to life, liberty, and property, of his right to sovereignty, that we have claimed for ourselves. It is because of this inner life that we expect to see the forma- tive influence of the American idea, the universal idea, extended until under some 220 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY federative bond a reign of law shall enduringly prevail, and men learn indeed to be self-suffic- ing. " Till nations shall unconsciously aspire By looking up to thee, and learn that good And glory are not different. Announce law By freedom ; exalt chivalry by peace ; Instruct how clear, calm eyes can over-awe, And how pure hands stretched simply to release A bond-slave will not need a sword to draw To be held dreadful. ..." " Drums and battle-cries Go out in music of the morning-star And soon we shall have thinkers in the place Of fighters. Each found able as a man To strike electric influence through a race Unstayed by city-wall and barbican." V COBEELATIONS V CORRELATIONS WE have gone over a large field and have compressed into small compass what would require volumes to properly amplify. And so it is important that we should see clearly the unity and the correlation of it all. It is one story. It is the story of the new birth of the human spirit. It is the story and the record of accomplishments springing from the revitalization of humanity. Now I should be sorry if any reader who has followed me so far was not impressed with the thought that the grouping of events which we have been considering reveals some- thing more than a mere series of coincidences. It did not just happen that the epochs of our national history tally almost exactly in point of time with the epochs of modern history. 224 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY The relation between the two is vital. The events are interdependent. The story of America and the story of modern history are one story. This could not be said in the same sense of any other country; not of Italy or Spain, of Holland or France, of Germany or England. And why? Because America was the first born of the modern world and entered into its inheritance. Ah, but you say, the modern nations had their rise before America was even discovered; by the end of the fif- teenth century their individualities were well accentuated. How, then, can America be said to be the first born ? And the answer clearly is that the nations of Europe had their birth out of medievalism and its institutions and methods of thought. Feudalism and scholas- ticism entered into their very being. The stamp of the middle ages was upon them all. Its spirit permeated them. Long was the proc- ess and fierce was the struggle before the new ideas could enter in and take possession. But the spirit of the modern world turned away from medievalism ; it sought as its affinity the spirit of that other glorious age of youth, the CORRELATIONS 225 spirit of that Grecian world, and the fruit of that union was America. And it all began in the time of the weaving of the Grail Legend into its modern Christian form ; it began with the teaching of Aristotle in the Moorish universities of Spain and with the Greek texts brought back by the Cru- saders; it began with St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelical doctor, who wrote his "Com- mentaries on the Politics of Aristotle," and his work on "The Kule of Princes," in which the famous dictum that man is by nature a political animal is used as a basis for much of the reasoning. 1 It was continued with Nicolaus von Cusa and his "Science of Ignorance." It was only when Galahad began to feel his ignorance and asked the meaning of that strange procession of the Grail that his touch brought healing. So Socrates taught by first making men feel 1 " St. Thomas's theory of law and justice is the channel through which the doctrines of Aristotle, the Stoics, Cicero, the Roman Imperial Jurists, and St. Augustine, blended into a rounded whole, were transmitted to modern times." Dun- ning, Political Theories, Ancient and Mediaeval, p. 192 ; also see pages 197 and 198 and citations. 15 226 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY their ignorance. "Tell me," asks a pupil, "wherein the knowledge of Socrates differed from that of others?" "Just," he answered, "as the knowledge of a seeing man differs from the knowledge of a blind man about the brightness of the sun. The blind man who has heard much about the brightness of the sun, and that it is so great as to be incom- prehensible, believes that, from what he has heard, he knows something about the sun's brightness, whereof, nevertheless, he is alto- gether ignorant. But the seeing man, if he is asked about the brightness of the sun, how great it is, answers that he is ignorant. And so, in respect of that, he has the science of ignorance. For light being apprehended only by sight, he experiences the brightness of the sun as transcending his sight; whereas the other has neither the science of ignorance nor any experience." 1 Now this Nicolaus von Cusa, born in 1401 and the son of a fisherman, had a remarkable 1 From the Docta Ignorantia or Learned Ignorance of the Cardinal Nicolaus von Cusa, as cited in Maurice, Moral and Metaphysical Philos., vol. ii., p. 58. CORRELATIONS 227 mind and a wide vision. He caught the sense of unity. He lamented that the world was divided by that which should unite it. He saw the diversities of religion prevailing among men as a retarding element and as a menace. What he writes on government reads like Rousseau. "Since all men," he says, "are by nature free, all government, whether in the form of written law or of a ruler's will, springs solely from the consent of the sub- jects. And since all men are by nature equally endowed with power, the superior position of any one can be due only to the choice and consent of the rest." His phil- osophical reflection takes the widest range. He considers that powers in humanity are latent, whether spiritual, temporal, or phys- ical powers, and that they are called into action by the stimulating influence from above. 1 In other words, he looked at man- kind as adapted to divine reactions. And now this same story moves on to the sixteenth cen- tury, and we find the Dutch Declaration of Independence, adopted at The Hague, July 1 Dunning, Polit. Theories, pp. 273, 275. 228 26, 1581, declaring that God did not create the people as slaves to the prince, but rather, the prince for the sake of his subjects, to love them as a father and care for them as a shep- herd. This monument of liberty asserts that when the prince disregards his duty and op- presses the people, then he is no longer a prince, but a tyrant, and the people have the right to oppose his authority and set up another ruler; and as the authority for such action on their part, the appeal is made to "what the law of nature dictates for the defence of libert}', which we ought to transmit to poster- ity even at the hazard of our lives." 1 In England mighty intellects are at work in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. New- ton and Bacon, Locke and Milton mould the new thought into systems which are to domi- nate the succeeding centuries. And then comes the wonderful eighteenth century, and the story culminates in France and in America. It is, we say again, one story, the story of the political genius of Greece caught up by 1 Old South Leaflets, No. 72. CORRELATIONS 229 mankind in the early dawn of the Renaissance, and inspiring and guiding the splendid strug- gle of the modern world toward freedom. But we have watched that other initial leaf, Israel, and we know its part in the story. The Con- tinental Congress knew it well. When the Declaration of Independence had been read before that body on July 4, 1776, it was " Re- solved: That Dr. Franklin, Mr. J. Adams, and Mr. Jefferson be a committee to prepare a device for a seal of the United States of North America." This committee reported August 10 and proposed a seal bearing the national emblems of England, Scotland, Ire- land, France, Germany, and Holland, "point- ing out the countries from which these States have been peopled." And then the report continues as follows : "On the other side of the said Great Seal should be the following Device: Pharaoh sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown oil his head and a sword in his hand passing through the divided Waters of the Red Sea in pursuit of the Israelites : Rays from a pillar of Fire in the Cloud expressive of the divine Presence and Command, beaming on 230 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Moses who stands on the shore and extending his hand over the sea causes it to overwhelm Pharaoh. ' ' Motto : Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." * This seal was not adopted. The committee was discharged and successive committees ap- pointed, until the seal at present in use was decided upon. It may be interesting to note in this connection that the report on the seal as finally adopted provided for a reverse, hav- ing upon it an unfinished pyramid, signifying strength and duration; over the pyramid an eye in a triangle, surrounded with a glory proper; over the eye these words, Annuit CaeptiS) alluding to the many signal inter- positions of Providence in favor of the Ameri- can cause. On the base of the pyramid were the letters MDCCLXXVI; and underneath the following motto, Novus Ordo Seclorum, sig- nifying the beginning of the new American era. 1 The Seal of the United States : How it was developed and adopted. By Gaillard Hunt. Issued by U. S. Dept. of State, Washington, 1892. Also see " The Jew as a Patriot," by Madison C. Peters ; Introductory Essay, by Oscar S. Straus, p. 28. CORRELATIONS 231 Yes, it was the new order of the centuries. With the Declaration of Independence, the Federation, and the Constitution, were put into tangible and working shape those principles of modern liberty whose genesis we have tried to trace. We have taken as the beginning of our story, the beginning of the new order of the centuries, that twelfth and thirteenth cen- tury period just before the dawn. The new order of the centuries fairly began, we think, with the Italian Renaissance and the discovery of America. But in a certain and very prac- tical sense the founding of our fabric of gov- ernment may be considered as ushering in the new era, and what preceded it as lines of prep- aration. For political accomplishment is, after all, basic. All other animals achieve their des- tiny unconsciously and without effort on their part. They find an order, of nature which carries them on to that thing they were in- tended to be. It is not so with man. He can attain his true end and become that which na- ture intended he should be, only by the exercise of creative action on his own part. This dis- tinguishes him from the mere creature. It is 232 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY thus lie is made in the image of his Creator. Even in the material world man is left an im- portant share in creatorship. He must find out the powers of nature adapted to his use and devise and construct instruments to utilize these powers. He must change the character of the soil and the nature of its product by cultivation, and must create implements for harvesting that product; he must learn how to stamp out diseases, to reset the broken bones, to revitalize the exhausted frame. But in the spiritual realm man is left a far greater part. He does not find a political system ready made to his hand and only re- quiring a co-operating skill and care on his part. He must construct the visible State de novo; and so he must construct the visible Church. As a social being he cannot attain his proper development alone; his normal growth is dependent upon the State, and upon a State in which he shall have perfect freedom to grow. This State he must build for him- self. So in the practical, political sense a new order of the centuries may be said to have be- gun with the formation of the government of CORRELATIONS 233 the United States. For the modern world chose America as the propitious spot in which to work out its new hopes and its new aspirations. When we speak of America and of the United States we are speaking of a world- movement and a world-process of develop- ment. In America the people first fairly crowned itself as king. For the people must have kings ; they must worship some divinity. The only question is whether they shall find the real divinity in themselves or whether they shall set up a fictitious divinity and call him monarch. Rome set up its emperors as gods and wor- shipped them. A recent writer says that "the corner-stone of the Empire was the worship of Octavius Csesar as the Son of God, 'Divus Filius,' " and quotes Tacitus as declaring that " the reverence due to the gods was no longer exclusive. Augustus claimed equal worship. Temples were built and statues were erected to him; a mortal man was adored; and priests and pontiffs were appointed to pay him im- pious homage." 1 1 Delmar, The Middle Ages Revisited, p. 1. 234 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY We find this idolatry of royalty, this blind, trusting love of the people for their kings, in eighteenth-century times and especially in France; and the rulers were quite ready to take advantage of it. Michelet says of Louis XIV. : " He took adoration at its word and believed himself a god ; " and of the French people : " I hear this exclamation escape from the bosom of ancient France, a tender ex- pression of intense love, 'O my king! ' " 1 Ah, it is pathetic to see how humanity has kept its gods far off and set them up in inac- cessible mountains, and has imagined a man a divinity and set him up and worshipped him, instead of looking to the God within their own breasts, instead of knowing that they are part of God and one with God; and when One came to teach men the lesson they crucified him! It is absolutely impossible to divorce religion from politics. They spring from the same roots and the same necessities of human nature. But the people of the eighteenth cen- tury found their trust betrayed and that their kings had deceived them. They found their 1 Michelet, French Rev., p. 35. CORRELATIONS 235 kings to be wolves instead of shepherds. Where, then, could they look? Only to the king, to the divinity, within them. And that is why Rousseau and his restatement of the law of nature were caught up with such a pas- sionate enthusiasm by the people. They found that they must govern themselves or be de- voured, and so they hailed as their deliverer the man who bade them look within their own breasts for their king, and held his "Social Contract " as a sacred thing and carried it in their processions. " To educate men into self- government," says Charles Kingsley, "that is the purpose of the government of God; and some of the men of the eighteenth century did learn that lesson." Now Rousseau did not appeal alone to the wronged, the unthinking, or the enthusiastic. He touched the divinest chord in humanity, just as did that brilliant-eyed Scottish peasant in his "A man 's a man, for a' that; " but he touched it in such a master fashion that it ap- pealed to the greatest intellect of the age, one of the greatest intellects of all ages. That shy and retired student, never going beyond 236 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY his native bounds, felt the impulse of human- ity; in his quiet garden walks he caught the spirit of Rousseau and took him as a teacher. "I myself," says Immanuel Kant, "am by in- clination an investigator. I feel an absolute thirst for knowledge and a longing unrest for further information. There was a time when I thought that all this constituted the real worth of mankind, and I despised the rabble who knew nothing. Rousseau has shown me my error. This dazzling advantage vanishes, and I should regard myself as of much less use than the common laborers if I did not believe that this speculation (that of the Socratic critical philosophy) can give a value to everything else to restore the rights of humanity." 1 And again I say it is one story. The law of nature of the Greek philosophers and the Roman lawyers, together with the worth of the individual growing out of his personal relations with Jehovah as revealed to the consciousness of Israel, found in Christianity a solvent and, after centuries of waiting, began in the last 1 As cited in Paulsen's Immanuel Kant, p. 39. CORRELATIONS 237 years of the middle ages to take on the form of modern democracy. From Aristotle and Isaiah to Immanuel Kant, to Washington, to Lincoln the chain is perfect. But our story is not alone a political story. The meaning and the purpose of the life of humanity in this world is the complete devel- opment of all the capacities of mankind. His- tory is the record of that development. The visible State or nation is but a means to secure this development; it is not an end in itself. The nature of man is a unit. The develop- ment of his political capacity is fundamental in securing freedom for his growth. But he has other capacities ; he has a sense of beauty, his nature is normally aesthetic. The world of nature about him is full of beauty, and his creative spirit, reacting to these impressions continually pouring in upon him, seeks to express itself in the painting, the statue, the poem, the literary work so moulded that it takes on the form of art. And so we have looked at the bounds in art in the great epochs we have been considering as a vital part of our 238 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY story. The sense of beauty and the passion for its expression in outward form marks a people well on its way to the unfolding of its real destiny. It was not by chance that the age of Plato and of Aristotle was the age of the Grecian masterpieces of art. Nor was it by chance that America was discovered in the age of Raphael and of Michael Angelo. The human spirit, once aroused to activity, asserts itself in a varied exercise of its inherent ca- pacities. Accomplishment in one department stimulates to achievement in another depart- ment. The philosopher stands before the Sistine Madonna or drinks in the great strains of a Wagner music-drama, and the reactions in his brain call forth the new philosophic thought. A Columbus is inspired by a Dante or a Leonardo. Italy, that land of art, is visited by an Erasmus or a Colet, and the very air is vibrating with impulses that make for quickened intellectual processes. Shakes- peare and Milton and the English Bible are as much a part of American history as Washing- ton or Lincoln. They stimulated and in- spired the minds of the men who came here CORRELATIONS 239 and made America. And so it is with the progress in science. Gunpowder, printing, paper, and the compass may be said to have been created for modern times by Giotto and Dante, for they sprang from the modern mind as stimulated by these great artists; and in their turn these inventions had a very direct influence upon the discovery of America and its subsequent history. In the same sense Galileo and Newton and Harvey and Linnaeus are a part of the story of the settlement of America, for they contributed largely to that mighty march of progress which would not be retarded by the unfavoring conditions in the Old World, but swept across the ocean to find a field where it might move on unhampered and unharassed. Thus it is, I think, that we find no unrelated event in the story we have been trying to tell, but that these differing lines of development are all related to each other and may be fairly correlated with the epochs of American history. We have seen how the forest federation of Hiawatha had a powerful influence not only upon the subsequent history of this country, 240 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY but upon European history; how it decided the dispute as to supremacy upon this con- tinent. Now this story of the Five Nations is one that well deserves careful study and thought. It has sometimes been a question in my mind how far the incidents concerning the formation of this Iroquois federation and how far the personality of Hiawatha himself are to be considered as strictly historical. I have followed Horatio Hale's narration of the facts in this regard as set forth in his "Iroquois Book of Rites," and such investigation as I have been able to give to the subject leads me to think that there is reasonable ground for accepting his account of the matter as based upon historical facts. Mr. Hale was a trained and conscientious observer, his investigations were thorough, and his book is quite convinc- ing. He tells us that his material was " drawn chiefly from notes gathered during many visits to the Reserve of the Six Nations, on the Grand River, in Ontario, supplemented by informa- tion obtained in two visits to the Onondaga Reservation, in the State of New York, near Syracuse," and that his informants were the CORRELATIONS 241 most experienced councillors, and especially the "wampum-keepers," the official annalists of their people. He says concerning Hia- watha: "About the main events of his his- tory, and about his character and purposes there can be no reasonable doubt. We have the wampum belts which he handled, and whose simple hieroglyphics preserve the mem- ory of the public acts in which he took part. We have also in the 'Iroquois Book of Rites ' a still more clear and convincing testimony to the character both of the legislator and of the people for whom his institutions were designed." He further says of the confed- eration that it was not to be a limited one; "it was to be indefinitely expansible. The avowed design of its proposer was to abolish war altogether. He wished the federation to extend until all the tribes of men should be included in it, and peace should everywhere reign. Such is the positive testimony of the Iroquois themselves; and their statement, as will be seen, is supported by historical evi- dence." 1 Even if one was disposed to con- 1 Hale, Iroquois Book of Rites, p. 22. 16 242 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY sider the Iroquois accounts of the origin of their federation as possibly legendary in their character, yet the nature of the federation itself, the character of the people composing it, and the influence it exerted upon mighty events, are established facts. From the time when the " Half Moon " sailed up the Hudson, the relations of the Dutch and the Iroquois were friendly. When the charter for New Netherlands was signed in 1614, and a port and trading-post established just south of the present city of Albany, a very real friendship sprang up between the Dutch traders and the Five Nations. At Lancaster, in 1744, Cannassatego related the story of that friendship with all the imagery so dear to his race and of which he was a master. He told of the arrival of the first Dutch ship bearing its awls and knives and hatchets and guns, and how his people were taught the uses of these tools. He related how well pleased the Indians were with the new-comers, so that they not only tied the ship to the bushes, but, find- ing these too slender, removed the rope and tied it to the trees, and again to a strong rock, CORRELATIONS 243 and finally to a big mountain. These were the terms by which he indicated how strongly they had bound the Dutch settlers to themselves. And then, he said, the English came, and not finding the band strong enough, offered them a silver chain to fasten the ship, and that this chain had lasted ever since. 1 This was a part of the great Albany speech delivered by Can- nassatego, in which, as you remember, he pointed to the Iroquois confederation and urged the colonies to unite. The next year, in February, 1745, we find Governor Thomas of Pennsylvania sending a message to the Assembly and asking their con- currence in the appointment of commissioners to meet their representatives from the other colonies, that steps might be taken to bring about a union for defence and to secure the fidelity of the Five Nations. This message was called forth by letters just received from Governors Clinton and Shirley. On March 27, 1745, Governor Clinton wrote to the Duke of Newcastle and informed him 1 Colden's History of the Five Nations (London, 1874), p. 104. Also see Appendix, Note IX. 244 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY of a letter he had received from the Governor of Massachusetts concerning the garrison of Louisburg. Governor Shirley, in his letter, had set forth the weak condition of that garri- son and the fact that the General Court of Massachusetts, through the committees of its two houses, had reported that in their opinion it was incumbent upon the Governor to under- take its reduction. Governor Shirley had also urged strongly that New York should furnish its quota for this enterprise. Governor Clin- ton now recounts his calling together the Provincial Assembly and their delay in acting in the matter. "They have," he says, "been deliberating above twelve days thereon, and as yet come to no final resolution with re- spect to their quota." Governor Clinton, then speaking of the increase of the French settle- ments "on our backs," as he phrases it, com- plains of their having almost monopolized the Indian trade by means of the lake Cadarqui, "upon which they have two or three vessels, and along which they have built forts and trading-houses." He goes on to recommend the building of a fort in the Seneca country, CORRELATIONS 245 the construction of vessels of superior strength to the French, the raising of a regiment of one thousand men to be sent from England with artillery and munitions of war, and strongly asserts that " if something is not soon done to put a stop to the French encroachments and intrigues among our Indians, this province must certainly become a prey to the enemy." 1 In July, 1748, a conference with the Six Nations was held at Albany, at which were present Governors Clinton and Shirley, and, among others, Cadwallader Golden and Archi- bald Kennedy, both of His Majesty's council for the province of New York. The object of this conference was to remove the uneasiness and disappointment of the Indians, whose hopes of vigorous action against the French and of an attack upon Quebec had been dashed, who had been left to do most of the fighting themselves, and some of whose principal men had been either killed or captured. 2 Now in 1751 there was printed and sold by James Parker at the New Printing Office in 1 N. Y. Colonial Doc. vi. 274. 2 N. Y. Col. Doc. vi. 437. 246 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Beaver Street, New York City, a little pamphlet written by Archibald Kennedy, whose name we have just seen as one of the commissioners at the Albany conference of 1748, and bearing the title : " The Importance of Gaining and Pre- serving the Friendship of the Indians to the British Interest." l In the course of this pam- phlet the author said : " Whenever the Colonies think fit to join, Indian affairs will wear quite another aspect. The very name of such a confederacy will greatly encourage our Indians, and strike terror into the French ; and be a means to prevent their unsupportable encroachments which they daily make with im- punity and insult ; and this is what they have long dreaded." At the close of this pamphlet was printed a letter written by a gentleman to whom the manuscript had been submitted, and in this letter was the following paragraph : "It would be a very strange thing if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such an union, and be able 1 See Appendix, Note X. CORRELATIONS 247 to execute it in such a manner as that it has sub- sisted ages, and appears indissoluble ; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more neces- sary and must be more advantageous, and who cannot be supposed to want an equal understand- ing of their interests." 1 By the year 1754 the situation had become critical. Virginia had already taken decisive steps. Governor Dinwiddie had displayed much zeal and energy in his attempts to resist the encroachments of the French. He had himself arranged for a conference with some of the chiefs of the Five Nations, although this effort on his part resulted in nothing. But his sending of a youthful messenger to the Ohio bearing a demand to the French commandant there to withdraw from his position, amounted to much. This was in 1753, and the messenger was only twenty- one years of age it was the youthful Washington. The same day he re- ceived his commission from Governor Din- 1 For an interesting letter from Cadwallader Colden to Governor Clinton, dated August 8, 1751, see N. Y. Col. Doc. vi. 738. 248 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY widdie, Washington started upon his journey. This was no holiday trip. It was the winter season, much of the route to be travelled was unexplored, and the region abounded in hostile Indians. Arriving at Wills Creek on the 14th of November, he secured Christopher Gist as his guide to cross the Alleghany Mountains, and arrived at Turtle Creek on the Mononga- hela November 22. Washington's first objec- tive point was to see Tanacharissin, the Half-King so called because his authority was only partial, being subject to that of the Five Nations. It was all-important to secure the co-operation of Tanacharissin and the Iroquois braves in that vicinity, and to bring about this result constituted an important part of the orders of the youthful major. The task was not an easy one, as the French comman- dant was using every artifice and distributing his presents and his fire-water freely in his attempts to secure the Iroquois as his allies. Washington's journal, which he kept during this Ohio trip and which was published imme- diately upon his return, is exceedingly interest- ing reading. He writes : CORRELATIONS 249 " Shingiss attended us to the Logstown, where we arrived between sun-setting and dark, the twenty-fifth day after I left Williamsburg. We travelled over some extremely good and bad land to get to this place. As soon as I came into town, I went to Monaca- tocha (as the Half-King was out at his hunting cabin on Little Beaver Creek, about fifteen miles off), and informed him by John Davidson, my Indian interpreter, that I was sent a messenger to the French general, and was ordered to call upon the sachems of the Six Nations to acquaint them with it. I gave him a string of wampum and a twist of tobacco, and desired him to send for the Half-King, which he promised to do by a runner in the morning, and for other sachems. I invited them and the other great men present to my tent, where they stayed about an hour, and returned." 1 Washington's interviews with the Half-King were satisfactory, and, taking him with him, he proceeded to find the French commandant and to deliver to him the message he had brought. Every blandishment was used by the French officers to gain over the Half- 1 Washington's Journal of a Tour to the Ohio in 1753. 250 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY King, and Washington had considerable diffi- culty in getting his Indian companions safely away again from the seductive influences that were brought to bear upon them. The return trip was one of hardship and peril. The snow in the mountains and the ice in the rivers made the journey difficult and hazardous. From the journal of Christopher Gist, the guide, we learn that as they were travelling a treacherous In- dian who was accompanying them separated himself from them and opened fire upon them from his musket. When he had been overcome Christopher Gist wished to kill him, but Wash- ington forbade this and does not even mention the circumstance in his diary. So early were magnanimity, poise, and self-restraint mani- fest as traits in the character of Washington. The message brought from the French commandant was entirely unsatisfactory. The Assembly of Virginia authorized Governor Dinwiddie to raise a regiment of three hun- dred men, and Major Washington was ap- pointed its lieutenant-colonel. On April 27, 1754, Washington sent a letter to Governor Hamilton informing him of the CORRELATIONS 251 capture by the French of a small fort in the " Forks of Mohongialo." l It was evident that a conflict was at hand, and some united action by the colonies was desired as much in Eng- land as it was by the colonies themselves. On the 14th of June, 1754, the king caused a communication to be addressed to the Lords of Trade and Plantations to the effect that it appeared to His Majesty highly expedient that a plan of general concert for mutual and com- mon defence should be entered into by the colonies, and signifying it to be the king's pleasure that such a plan should be prepared and sent to the several governors of the Ameri- can colonies. 2 The Albany congress met June 19, 1754. On June 24 a committee was appointed to prepare and receive plans or schemes for the union of the colonies and to digest them into one general plan. 3 On June 27, three days later, the general speech to be delivered to the Indians was 1 See Appendix, Note XI. 3 Doc. relating to Col. Hist. N. Y., vol. vi., p. 844. 8 Ibid., p. 860. 252 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY agreed upon. It contained the usual expres- sions as to brightening and strengthening the chain of friendship, recommended that all, and especially the brethren of the Onondaga na- tion, should call in their friends and collect themselves together in their national castles. It called attention to the continual encroach- ments of the French, to the considerable ter- ritory the Iroquois had gained through the valor of their fathers, to the fact that the French were endeavoring to possess them- selves of this whole country, and that trade and communication between the English and the Indians would soon be destroyed and the great avenues of communication blocked ; and concluded by saying : "We want to know whether these things appear to you in the same light as they do to us, or whether the French taking possession of the lands in your country and building forts between the Lake Erie and River Ohio be done with your con- sent or approbation." 1 Hendrick, replying July 2 on behalf of the Six Nations, said: "You have asked us the 1 Doc. relating to Col. Hist. N. Y., vol. vi., p. 862. CORRELATIONS 253 reason of our living in this dispersed manner. The reason is your neglecting us for these three years past. (Then taking a stick and throwing it behind his back.) You have thus thrown us behind your back, and disregarded us, whereas the French are a subtle and vigi- lant people, ever using their utmost endeavors to seduce and bring our people over to them." After denying that the French had been act- ing with the consent or approbation of his people, Hendrick continued: " 'T is your fault, brethren, that we are not strengthened by con- quest, for we would have gone and taken Crown Point, but you hindered us; we had concluded to go and take it, but we were told it was too late and that the ice would not bear us ; instead of this you burnt your own forts at Seraghtoga and ran away from it, which was a shame and a scandal to you. Look about your country and see. You have no fortifications about you no, not even to this city. 'T is but one step from Canada hither, and the French may easily come and turn you out of your doors." 1 1 Doc. relating to Col. Hist. N. Y., vol. vi., pp. 869-870. 254 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY But the Ohio encroachments were not all. Massachusetts reported to the Congress that the French had similar designs in New Eng- land ; that they had built forts on the Kenne- bec and the Connecticut, and that detachments of troops from Massachusetts and New Hamp- shire had been sent to both places to dislodge them. On July 4 the plan for a union was further considered, but nothing determined upon, and on the following day Hendrick, for the Six Nations, said: "We put you in mind of our former speech of the defenceless state of your frontiers, particularly of this city (Schenec- tady) and of the country of the Five Nations. You told us yesterday you were consulting about securing both yourself and us. We beg you will resolve upon something speedily. You are not safe from danger one day. The French have their hatchet in their hands both at Ohio and in two places in New England." 1 Now on this same fourth day of July dra- matic events were happening in the Ohio coun- try. The soldiers under Washington, together i Doc. relating to Col. Hist., N. Y., vol. vi., p. 876. CORRELATIONS 255 with their Indian allies, had already engaged in that skirmish with the French where the shots were fired that virtually commenced a war which was to extend over all Europe. Washington marched toward Fort du Quesne to attempt to dislodge the French forces there, but on his way it was reported to him that the enemy were advancing as numerous as the pigeons in the woods. So he retreated to Fort Necessity, but being attacked by over- whelming forces, he was compelled to capitu- late, and on this 4th of July, when the Albany congress was considering the plan for a union, Washington was sadly marching his little band out from their hastily constructed fortifications. So this plan for a union was a vitally impor- tant matter at this juncture. Franklin's mind must have been full of thoughts of the Iro- quois Confederation when, just before leav- ing Philadelphia for Albany, he prepared his " Short Hints Towards a Scheme for Uniting the Northern Colonies." He was going to meet the chiefs of the Five Nations at that conference. He was familiar with the facts 256 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY concerning their federation. He must have considered carefully that speech made by Can- nassatego at Lancaster in 1744, for he was clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly at that time. The Kennedy pamphlet of 1751 and kindred publications were well known to him. He had read Cadwallader Colden's " History of the Five Nations," as his correspondence with that gentleman proves, and he sought his suggestions concerning his plan. 1 Franklin's " Short Hints Towards a Scheme for Uniting the Northern Colonies " provided for a gov- ernor-general to be appointed by the king, and a grand council to be chosen by the colonial assemblies. When this paper was submitted to Mr. Golden he asked whether the grand council was to have a negative on the acts of the governor-general, and observed that it was to be considered that England would, as far as she could, keep her colonies dependent upon her and that this might as well be considered in all schemes to which the king's consent is necessary. 2 Even in these "Short Hints " pre- 1 Sparks, Works of Franklin, vol. iii., p. 30. '* See Appendix, Note XII. CORRELATIONS 257 pared by Franklin, Cadwallader Golden had at once detected a flavor of liberty and of self- government which he felt would not be ac- ceptable to his home government. And his judgment proved to be correct. The plan of government as finally adopted by the Albany Congress was quickly vetoed in England, and fared no better with the colonial assemblies. The king and his advisers saw too much liberty in it; the assemblies did not see enough liberty in it. This, then, was the situation. The French had taken formal possession of the Ohio River and had built forts at Venango, at the junc- tion of the Ohio and Monongahela rivers, and at the mouth of the Cherokee River. Great Britain claimed all the country from the Alle- ghany Mountains to the Ohio and down the same and on both sides of it to the Mississippi, and based her title upon the Iroquois con- quest of those lands. A diplomatic memorial of the king's ministers 1 observes that " the court of Great Britain cannot agree to France having the least title to the River Ohio and 1 Sparks, Works of Franklin, vol. iv., pp. 328-330. 17 258 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY the territory in question." Yet with all the pressing necessity for united action and with the strong feeling on both sides of the water that there ought to be some formal union of the colonies, it was, as we have seen, impos- sible to agree upon a plan. When the king and his ministers prepared their scheme and sent it over here it was not at all acceptable to the colonies. Now why this impossibility of agreement? It was, I think, because of a hopeless differ- ence in conditions and in the point of view. Great Britain had her Constitution and her traditions, and everything must be shaped in accordance with these. The American colonist had come here because he was not altogether satisfied with the traditions and methods of the Old World, whether political or ecclesiastical. His desire was for a freer and more unhampered experiment in govern- ment. Furthermore a change seemed to have come over the spirit of the English govern- ment. Franklin narrates a conversation had with Lord Granville in 1757, in which that minister had insisted that the king was the CORRELATIONS 259 legislator for the colonies, and says concern- ing it : "I recollected that about twenty years before a clause in a bill brought into Parlia- ment by the ministry had proposed to make the king's instructions laws in the colonies; but the clause was thrown out by the Com- mons, for which we adored them as our friends and friends of liberty, till by their conduct towards us in 1765 it seemed that they had refused that point of sovereignty to the king only that they might reserve it for them- selves." 1 So, too, the American colonist had been educated by his experience in co- lonial charters and in the administration of his own affairs. He was breathing that free forest air which had inspired the federation of the Five Nations. We hear a great deal about the genesis of our government and the sources of the Constitution. One writer will have it that our political institutions are almost en- tirely of Dutch descent; another traces them directly from England; while a third insists that the Hebrew commonwealth was alone the model. Benjamin Franklin, whose opin- 1 Bigelow's Life of Franklin, vol. i., p. 367. 260 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY ion upon this subject is perhaps of as much value as that of the writers of to-day, seems not to have shared in any of these judg- ments. During the proceedings of the Federal Convention he said : " We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government and examined the different forms of those republics which, having been formed with seeds of their own dissolution, now no longer exist. And we have viewed modern States all round Europe, but find none of their constitutions suitable to our circum- stances." 1 It is easy to make out a case by a judicious selection and rejection of evidence, but if one wished to insist upon a given model, perhaps it might be quite as fair to point to the Iroquois League. Certainly our con- federation followed pretty closely after that piece of forest statesmanship, and we hardly improved upon what we copied, if we did copy it. 1 Journal of the Federal Convention kept by James Madi- son, reprint from ed. 1840, Chicago, 1893, p. 259. CORRELATIONS 261 Why, it may be asked, this stress upon the Iroquois people and their league and upon the Albany congress of 1754 in a very general dis- cussion of America in its relation to the great epochs of history? Because they not only have a certain inherent interest of their own, but in addition to this, because, as it seems to me, they furnish a typical instance of the world relations of American history and of the possibilities still awaiting a proper study of the philosophy of history. As to the first point, the world relations of American History, the aptness of the example seems apparent. The Seven Years' War not only decided the fate of this continent, but it decided the fate of a large part of the world. By her success in this struggle England be- came the mistress of the seas and was enabled to start in upon that career of colonization which has affected the destinies of a consider- able portion of mankind. The Five Nations played a large part in this struggle. Louis XIV. in his haughty pride could see in this splendid Iroquois race nothing but material for slaves. By his orders some of these brave war- 262 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY riors, whom the French found it impossible to overcome on a fair field of battle, were treach- erously captured and, having been sent to France, were chained to the galleys of that despot who declared himself the State. It is a splendid testimony to the magnanimity and Christian spirit of these unchristian savages that they forgave the missionary who was the unconscious tool in effecting this great wrong, and, knowing that he was innocent of wrong intent, had him conveyed to a place of safety lest some of their young braves might slay him. Yes, these people of the Five Nations had great qualities and they reverenced greatness. No white man is permitted to enter the Indian heaven, but, in the Iroquois tradition, just out- side the portals of that region of bliss is a walled enclosure with spacious grounds and a stately mansion. It is the eternal abode of Washington, prepared for him by the Great Spirit, and there in his uniform and in solitary dignity and felicity he is seen by each faithful Iroquois who enters that happy haven. Louis XIV. by treachery could make galley slaves of a few Iroquois warriors, but the retribution was CORRELATIONS 263 swift and terrible. France lost not only this continent, but she was humbled by her enemies and England became the dominant power of Europe. Now to our second point, viz., that by a study of this Iroquois people we may gain light upon what may be called the new philosophy of history. The new philosophy of history is sociological. It seeks to correlate the results attained in the new disciplines and methods of thought. Biology, psychology, and anthropology are all involved in such an attempt to construct a modern philosophy of history. The study of primitive man consti- tutes a large feature of anthropology, and in these aborigines of America we have a splendid opportunity right at our own doors for such a study. 1 We can watch those inherent tendencies of humanity on which we have already laid stress, and we can study a people which, like " Little Nell," seem " fresh from the hand of God." 2 1 See Appendix, Note XIII. 2 " It is in the natural customs of all peoples, so far as they embrace the normal man, and even of those decried as most 264 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY But for a new philosophy of history we shall find aid in other directions as well as in an- thropology. The new department of physiologi- cal-psychology is fertile with suggestions. A few years since, the doctors were experiment- ing with a hospital patient whose avenues of communication with the outer world were all closed save through one eye which still re- mained sensitive to impressions. There was no hearing, no taste, no feeling. When this one eye was closed, the patient would sink into a deep stupor and was as one dead. In other words, all life is a reaction to stimuli. Now I think this principle applies to society, to history, and it seems to escape some of the dangers incident to biological analogies. Physiological-psychology deals with the mind or spirit as well as with the body, and it studies the relations and interactions of the same. To consider society simply as an organ- ism may be misleading, but to consider it as uncultured, that we first learn the truth of human nature in its full nobility and in its real beauty." " The Art Work of the Future," Eichard Wagner's Prose Works (trans.), vol. i. p. 89. CORRELATIONS 265 an organism infused with a mind or spirit seems to be rational. And is it not true that all life, taking the term in its broadest sense, and including the life of society, of peoples, of nations, is a response, a reaction to stimuli ? May we not in studying history and watching the bounds of the progress of humanity find a scientific and helpful method hi seeking to trace out the many forces, the stimuli, which have evoked the reactions ; and thus regarding the life of humanity may we not see new meanings and implications ? The study of American history is a fascina- tion and a delight. There is a charm, as well as utility in taking possession of the spiritual goods of the race. The unfolding and per- fecting of our natures is not only the end of education, but is a process bringing genuine pleasure. The record of the past, when viewed intelligently and in its broader relations, brings to us much of these immaterial goods; helps forward the development of our capacities. This is true of all real study of history, which, as Mr. Ritchie has well remarked, is something more than the mere study of annals, since 266 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY these are not yet history, but only the material for history. 1 But in the study of American history I think we must all see the charm and the utility to be peculiar, and this is so because America stands at a place where all experiences converge, where all roads meet. 2 The study of American history is the study of modern history. Not an impulse of the modern world that has not entered into the life of America ; not a nation of the modern world that has not contributed to its population. If this comparative view, this world-view, does indeed make the study of American history yield the richest contributions to the equipment of the individual, then every child is entitled to have this view brought before him. It is his right to take possession of these spiritual goods. And so I plead for a change in the methods of our schools in this regard. The objection, of course, is that such a general view will only leave hazy impressions, and that a minute and 1 Darwiu and Hegel, by David G. Ritchie, p. 51. 2 See Ferguson, The Affirmative Intellect, pp. 91, 92. CORRELATIONS 267 critical study of sources is a better method of procedure. Now it seems to me that clear-cut and well-defined presentations can be made in connection with this wider view. Something of the bound in art, something of the glories of the Renaissance can surely be brought before the child who is studying the discovery of America. Some very definite facts with regard to the artists of that period and their works can be presented. So in the study of the settlement of America there can be a clear statement of the literary impulse in this time of the Christian Renaissance and an acquaint- ance can be made with some of the writers of that period and with their works. These are illustrations of the simplest sort to show that there may be nothing vague or mysterious in such a plan of teaching. One thing it doubt- less does require, and that is properly prepared teachers, but, if the system were adopted, the training would follow of necessity, since the teachers would be compelled to fit themselves for the existing conditions, and the normal schools would shape their work accordingly. , Now as to the objection that the study of sources is the only proper method, it seems to me that the one method need not conflict with the other, and that both are proper methods. It is to be remembered, however, that the ordinary child leaves school at an early age, and that very few children will ever obtain any critical knowledge of history. It is possible, however, I believe, to put all the children in our schools in touch with the great impulses that have moulded the race ; it is possible, I think, that they shall all catch the life and the color of those great epochs of modern history which were also the epochs of American his- tory. By such a method the child will come to feel something of the impulse of the great bounds of mankind. Something of the glory of the epoch will remain as an abiding posses- sion. It is giving the individual the benefit of the mighty waves of stimuli which at certain periods have swept over the world. The re- actions cannot fail to be vital and important. In the education, whether of the child or of the adult, there is no excuse for not seek- ing the best. The human soul is too infi- nitely precious to trifle with its education, CORRELATIONS 269 and to give anything less than the best is a crime. "We have not yet," says Mr. Henderson, "conceived of human life as a moral and aesthetic revelation of the universe, nor of education as a practical process of enter- ing into this tremendous possession." 1 The proper object of the reading and the study of history is to bring this revelation clearly before the mind and spirit of the individual. Any local or partial view which leaves out of sight the supreme end of flashing forth the vision of truth and of beauty is inexcusably wrong. It takes away from the study of history its true meaning, its glory and its power. To watch the development of the individual in that time of the Renaissance when, as Burkhardt puts it, all Italy began to swarm with personality ; to study the growth of modern liberty ; to see the process by which mankind has worked out his social destiny and constructed the modern systems of government ; to note the progress in art, science and philosophy ; to behold the upward march ot mankind in these later cen- 1 Henderson, Education and the Larger Life, p. 50. 270 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY turies, all this is of vital importance. In the study of the history of our own land we can by taking the wider view see all these things, catch their inspiration, and learn their lessons. It is for this reason that we urge the study of America in its Relation to the G-reat Epochs of History. APPENDIX APPENDIX NOTE I. "ANOTHER fact which was highly favorable to this great work of the reformer is thus briefly and lumi- nously stated by Mr. Baber: 'Englishmen were now beginning to be more attentive to their own tongue. Before the conquest, the popular language had been invaded by the Normannic. After that event, as the Norman lords increased in power, their tongue became the language of polished society, of the laws, and of the pleadings in the courts of judicature. Latin was used for the services of the church, and the general purpose of literature ; and the Anglo-Saxon re- mained chiefly confined to the commonalty. In the thirteenth century, the popular language began in some degree to recover its rank ; the nobles, and the higher classes of society, did not, as heretofore, disdain to resort to it as a colloquial tongue ; and original works as well as translations from the productions of authors who had written in French, now began to appear in an English dress. But at this period, it must be allowed, our lan- guage was rough and unpolished, and those who wrote in it were authors who possessed few ideas of taste or ele- gance. In proportion, however, as the tyrannical power of the barons declined, and as the paths which led to honor, and distinction became more open to commoners, the 18 274 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY English tongue, in the fourteenth century, became more general, and its improvements were considerable. The accessions it had received, and the changes it had ex- perienced within the last three centuries, were at this period numerous and striking ; for our language, as it was now spoken by the nobles and the learned, was con- siderably enriched by words borrowed from the Roman and French dialects, and much altered in its pronuncia- tion, its form, and its terminations. Among the lower orders of the people, however, upon whom refinement makes but slow advances, English, with respect to its great mass, preserved more of its Saxon origin and phra- seology. Such was the state of the vernacular tongue at the time in which Wicliff wrote. The reformer quickly discerned the advantage which might be derived from this propitious circumstance.' " Knighton Coll. 2644. Memoirs of Wicliff, pp. 36, 37. As cited in Life and Opinions of John de Wycliffe, D.D., by Robert Vaughan (London, 1831) vol. ii., pp. 46, 47. NOTE II. " Thus there was a star resembling a sword which stood over the city, and a comet that continued a whole year." Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book VI., chap. v. Also it is related : "For before sun-setting, chariots, and troops of sol- diers in their armour, were seen running about among the clouds, and surrounding of cities." Ibid. APPENDIX 275 This was the time when that strange Jewish hus- bandman was going about the lanes of the city cry- ing : " "Woe, woe to Jerusalem ! " NOTE III. " The Thirty Years' War, which raged from 1618 to 1648, made a gap in her (Germany's) national develop- ment, such as we find nowhere else in history. It threw ber back full two hundred years, materially and intellec- tually, and extinguished all remembrance of the past. . . " Germany came out of the Thirty Years' War almost expiring. It was as if a deadly illness had wiped out the memory of the nation in its cruel delirium. All the national forces, material as well as intellectual and moral, were destroyed when peace was concluded in 1648. . . . ''And what it (the war) destroyed in this way was not a barbarous country ; it was an old civilization. Hundreds of flourishing cities were reduced to ashes; there were towns of 18,000 inhabitants which counted but 324 at the peace; ground which had been tilled and ploughed for ten centuries had become a wilder- ness ; thousands of villages had disappeared. Trees grew in the abandoned houses. At Wiesbaden the mar- ket had grown into a brushwood full of deer. The whole Palatinate had but 200 freeholders ; Wiirtemberg had but 48,000 inhabitants at the end of the war, instead of the 400,000 which it had mustered at the beginning. We are told that a messenger going from Dresden to Berlin through a once flourishing country, walked thirty miles without finding a house to rest in. The war had de- 276 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY voured, on an average, three quarters of the population, two thirds of the houses, nine tenths of the cattle of all sorts; nearly three quarters of the soil had been turned into heath. Commerce and industry were as utterly destroyed as agriculture ; the mighty Hanseatic League was dissolved; the savings of the nation were entirely spent. I am therefore certainly not far from the truth when I say that Germany was thrown back two hundred years as compared with Holland, France, and England. Even in so prolific a nation a century did not suffice to fill up the gaps in the population, nor could two centuries restore the lost capital. It is a proved fact, indeed, that Germany recovered only towards 1850 the actual amount of capital and the material well-being with which she had entered the great war in 1618. Thus, so far as the num- ber of homesteads, the heads of cattle, the returns of crops can be statistically ascertained, the amount in 1850 was not relatively but absolutely the same as in 1618 ; in some respects even inferior." German Thought from the Seven Years' War to Goethe's Death, by Karl Hillebrand, pp. 40-42. (Henry Holt, 1880.) Hillebrand then goes on in several pages to speak of the social, the moral, the political, the intellectual deterioration resulting frorn the Thirty Years' War. IV. "Yet, if he was not beholden to Elizabeth for his thought of the design, it is, however, certain that this great queen had herself conceived it long before, as a APPENDIX 277 means to revenge Europe for the attempts of its common enemy. The troubles in which all the following years were engaged, the war which succeeded in 1595, and that against Savoy after the peace of Vervins, forced Henry into difficulties which obliged him to lay aside all thoughts of other affairs ; and it was not till after his marriage, and the firm re-establishment of peace, that he renewed his thoughts upon his first design, to execute which appeared then more impossible, or at least more improbable, than ever. He nevertheless communicated it by letters to Elizabeth and this was what inspired them with so strong an inclination to confer together in 1601, when this prin- cess came to Dover, and Henry to Calais." Memoirs of Sully, vol. iv., p. 231. " The present Duke of Sully is possessed of the original of an excellent letter of Henry the Great, supposed to have been written by him to Queen Elizabeth, though this princess is not named, either in the body of the letter, or in the superscription, which is in these words : 'To her who merits immortal praise.' The terms in which Henry herein speaks of a certain political project, which he calls ' The most excellent and rare enterprise that ever the human mind conceived a thought rather divine than human,' the praises which he bestows upon 'this discourse so well connected and demonstrative of what would be necessary for the government of empires and kingdoms,' on those ' conceptions and resolutions from which nothing less may be hoped than most remark- able issues both of honour and glory ' all these passages can relate to none but Elizabeth, nor mean any other than the great design in question, concerning which it 278 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY evidently appears from hence, that the Queen of England had by letters disclosed her thoughts to Henry. The letter from which these extracts are taken is dated from Paris, the llth of July, but without the date of the year." Lettres d' Henri le Grand, note to Memoirs of Sully, vol. iv., p. 230. " She then drew me aside, and conversed with me for a long time on the greater part of the events which had happened since the peace of Vervins (too long to be repeated here), and concluded with asking if her good brother the King's affairs were now in a better state than in 1598, and if he were in a condition to begin, in good earnest, the great design which she had proposed from that time ? " Memoirs of Sully, vol. ii., p. 233. NOTE V. It is to be remembered that the philosophy of Hegel was dominant at this period. A recent writer has said : " Much as Hegel sought to remain at peace with the powers that were, his system was, nevertheless, of a sort which must necessarily break the way to a freer politi- cal development. This was especially shown in the forties, &c." Mliller, Political History of Recent Times, p. 23. APPENDIX 279 NOTE VI. " Voltaire wrote to Mme. Necker, 2d Jany. 1777, ' Everything proves that the English, are bolder and more philosophical than we are.' " Diderot in one of his early works represents England as ' the country of philosophers, systematisers and men of inquiring mind.' Buffon is never weary of expressing his admiration for this sensible and profoundly thoughtful nation, and even goes so far as to say that Fenelon, Vol- taire and Jean-Jacques would not make a furrow one line in depth on a head so massive with thought as that of Bacon, that of Newton, or happily for us that of Montesquieu." Jos. Texte, J. J. Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in Literature, p. 97. NOTE VII. "A modern French writer, Beaulieu, quoted by Lave- leye, has said that the French Revolution in its aspira- tions was ' the unconscious testamentary executor of the prophet Isaiah.' There is among Hebrew prophets and among French revolutionary enthusiasts the same con- fident expectation of a reign of peace and righteousness, the same fierce denunciation of vengeance on the oppres- sors of the poor and the selfish luxury of the rich ; nay, even the same rejection of traditional ceremonial religion in favour of an ethical Deism, and the same excusable patriotic belief that their own nation was the chosen 280 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY people, through whom the redemption of the whole world was to come." Ritchie Studies in P. and S. Ethics, p. 122. " If reformers nowadays do not feel the same hostility to monarchy which their predecessors felt in the early part of the nineteenth century is it not just because the French Revolution and its republican ideal that is, its ideal that every true constitution must be a ' common- wealth ' have done so much to ameliorate the character of monarchy ? " Ibid. p. 123. " No citizen broken to any established rule or system but a child of genius, who had been left outside of the gates at birth ; to be brought up by Nature : spoiled by her lessons to some extent for civilized life : but taught by her, and compelled by her to teach others, many things, beautiful and sorrowful, terrible and sublime, that civil- ized society had forgotten at that time, to its sore grief and peril." Studies in France of Rousseau and Voltaire, by Fred- erika Macdonald, p. 44. NOTE VIII. From " An Essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley " by Robert Browning, page 13. This was written as an Introductory Essay to a volume of letters of Shelley published in 1852. These letters were subsequently discovered to be spurious and withdrawn by the publisher. This APPENDIX 281 essay was subsequently (in 1888) published for the Shelley Society. Its editor, Mr. W. Tyas Harden says in his Introduction : " The circumstances under which the following ' Essay' was first published in 1852 were so far unfortunate as that a speedy limit was put to its circulation by the dis- covery that the letters which it ushered into the world were a literary fraud. But if ever the doing of evil is to be excused because of some resultant good, here is a case which is eminently entitled to such consideration, for we may fairly conclude, and not without a touch of humour if not also without a tremor of anxiety, that if the fraud had not been perpetrated the essay might never have been penned. Equally fortunate was the fact that some few copies escaped the control and the recall of the pub- lisher, which, however, were so few that the book is now one of those opima spolia that collectors covet and dealers delight in." NOTE IX. " In the course of events New York owes its present northern boundary to the valor of the Five Nations. But for them Canada would have embraced the basin of the St. Lawrence." Bancroft, vol. i., p. 590. (D. Appleton & Co. 1883.) This refers to 1688. The French had made an incursion into Seneca territory and had built a fort on the southern side of the mouth of the Niagara. The position was rescued by the valor of the Five Nations. 282 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY NOTE X. The Importance of Gaining and Preserving the Friendship of the Indians to the British Interest Considered (by Archibald Kennedy). New York. Printed and sold by James Parker, at the New Printing Office, in Beaver Street, 1751. " It is agreed, I think, on all Hands, that the gaining and preserving the Friendship of the Indians to the British Interest, is of no small importance to the Trade of Great Britain, as well as to the Peace and Prosperity of these Colonies ; and as I have not heard of any Body that has, as yet, attempted to put this Matter in a proper Light, I shall, with great submission, humbly offer my Senti- ments, in Hopes they may induce some abler Hand to undertake the Task. "When the first ship arrived here from Europe, the Indians, it is said, were so well pleased, that they would have her tied to a Tree, in order the better to secure her ; but as Cables were subject to rot, the}' would have it an Iron Chain, and this to be continued into the Indian Countries, that they might be the better able to Keep their Part of it clear from Rust, as we were to Keep our Part. If the Indians were in Distress or Want, the call was, as it is at this Day, to come and make clean, or renew the Covenant Chain ; and the Christians on their Part, were to do the like ; And accordingly we have assisted them in their Wars and Wants, and they have assisted us in our Wars, and we have their Furs. " This is the original Contract and Treaty of Commerce, APPENDIX 283 with the Five Nations, and thus Things went on tolerably well for some years, till the due Execution of this Treaty was committed to the Care of a Number of Commissioners, mostly Anglo-Dutch Traders in Indian Goods ; who, together with a Tribe of Harpies or Handlers, their Re- lations, and Under-strappers, have so abused, defrauded and deceived those poor, innocent, well-meaning People, that this Treaty has well-nigh executed itself ; so that at present we have very few Indians left that are sincerely in our Interest, or that can be depended upon. The fatal Consequences of this Management were severely felt in many Instances last War, particularly in the Case of Saraghtoga, Schenectady, &c., which could not possibly have happened had our Indians been sincerely our Friends. And what fatal Consequences must attend a continued Neglect of Indian Affairs ; more especially as the French, our natural Enemies and Competitors in every Corner of the World where we have a Concern, are indefatigable in cultivating the Friendship of their own Indians and by all Means and Arts in their Power per fas et nefas, endeavour- ing to reduce those in the British Interest ; is apparent to the meanest Capacity. Murders and Desolation, upon the first Breach, is one certain Consequence; and I wish I could think this was all. " What to me is most surprising, that tho' there is hardly a Colony upon the Continent, but what is a Match for all Canada ; yet, by a proper Management of their Indians, they Keep us all, both in Time of Peace and War, in a constant Dread and Terror. As the British Parliament seems at this Time disposed to take these Colonies under Consideration, it is the Duty, I conceive, of every Member of the Community to throw in such Hints as he conceives 284 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY may be of Use upon this Occasion, and it is to be hop'd there are those amongst us of Capacity, Leisure, and publick Spirit sufficient to model them into a proper Shape, for the Perusal of that august Assembly. An honest Detail of Facts, and a fair View of the Importance of the Subject, is all that I shall endeavour at, at present. It cannot be doubted but that the Government [at Home would assist us effectually, were our Situation and Cir- cumstances but perfectly known to them, and proper Methods proposed ; because it is really their Interest. " I do not mean here to put the Crown and the People of England to any great Expence about us, further than that of one single officer, as Super-intendant of the whole, who may have no Connection either with the Trade or People of the Country ; and some Artillery. The Crown already has expended many and great sums to make us what we are ; and the People of England are already Sufficiently loaded with Taxes ; whereas we hardly know what they mean. The Colonies therefore, jointly, it is to be hop'd, will willingly contribute towards whatever Expence may attend a proper Regulation of our Trade and Frontiers ; if not willingly, let us not dispair but that a British Parliament will oblige them. It is high time we should look to our own Security, & most un- natural to expect, that we should hang forever upon the Breast of our Mother-Country. We are sufficiently able, and must be made, some of us I doubt, at least, willing. Whatever Pretences may be made, it is absolutely true, that the Preservation of the whole Continent depends upon a proper Regulation of the Six Nations ; and the Security of the Frontiers of New-York, both to the Northward and Southward. I therefore, with great Submission, propose, APPENDIX 285 " That a good strong Fort be built at the Wood-Creek, or near it ; it ought to be a regular Fortification ; because it is not impossible to bring great guns against it, from Crown Point, from whence they pour in their Parties upon us, in Time of War. Here let there be a Magazine of all Kinds of warlike Stores, both offensive and defensive, with Snow-Shoes, small Hatchets, &c. This will in a great Measure protect the Country ; and from thence a Descent upon Canada may be very practicable." The author then goes on to make his recommenda- tions for other fortifications, for a good strong Church in each Township with Loop-Holes ; that something special be erected in Onondago County, " where their general Councils are held, and the Archives of the Six Nations are kept ; " that there be proper regulations for trade and commerce ; that a grand yearly fair be established in the Six Nations, &c. " Most certain it is, as I have before observed, that if ever New York, Albany, and Hudson's River, should get into other Hands, every other Colony would soon follow ; and while that is secure, every other colony is secure. . . . " We have been at an infinite Expence from the Begin- ning of Times, in fortifying, and in Presents to the Indians, with very little Assistance from our neighboring Colonies ; a Charge which we are hardly able to bear, & most un- reasonable, as every other Colony upon the Continent, is in some Degree or other, concerned in the preservation of the Friendship of the Indians, & the security of our Fron- tiers. This, however, has been but paliating Matters; 286 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY & doing things by Halves : "Whenever the Colonies think fit to join, Indian Aft'airs will wear quite another Aspect. The very Name of such a Confederacy will greatly en- courage our Indians, and strike Terror into the French ; and be a Means to prevent their unsupportable Incroach- ment, which they daily make with Impunity and Insult ; And this is what they have long dreaded. " A long series of Ill-usage from the Traders, has given the Indians but a very indifferent Opinion of our Morals ; and of late, from the several abortive Expeditions, they begin, I doubt, to suspect our Courage ; than which, Nothing can more affect our Interest with them. They of themselves are honest, such at least as have not been debauched by the Christians; and brave in their Way ; and despise Knaves and Cowards. It will, therefore, require some Address, and not a little Expence to recover our Character. " If all this is to no Purpose, and that they will stand out ; let us not, I say, dispair, but that upon a proper Representation to his Majesty, of the absolute Impossi- bility, for this Colony alone, to be at the Expence of putting and keeping Indian Affairs upon such a Footing as they really ought to be, his Majesty, from his wonted G-oodness, will undoubtedly, not only assist us himself, but oblige the other Colonies to assist us; in Proof of which paternal care, give me leave here to insert some of his Instructions to our late Governor Montgomerie, in 1727, upon this very Point. " Instruction 83. ' Whereas it has been thought requisite, that the general Security of our Plantations upon the Continent of America, be provided for by a Contribution, in Proportion to the respective Abilities of each Plantation: APPENDIX 287 And "whereas the Northern Frontiers of the Province of New- York, being most exposed to an Enemy; do require an extraordinary Charge, for the erecting and maintaining of Forts, necessary for the Defence thereof. And whereas Orders were given by King William the Third, for the advancing 500 Sterling, towards a Fort in the Onondago Country, and of ,2000 Sterling, towards building the Forts at Albany and Schenectady; and likewise by Letters under his Royal Sign Manual directed to the Gov- ernors of diverse of the Plantations, to recommend to the Councils and General Assemblies of said Plantations, that they .'respectively furnish a proportionable Sum towards the Fortifications on the Northern Frontiers of our said Province of New- York, viz : R. Island and Providence Planta- tions .150 Connecticut 450 Pennsylvania 350 Maryland 650 Virginia 900 Making together .2500 " ' And whereas we have thought fit to direct, that you also signify to our Province of Nova Caesaria, or New Jersey that the Sums which we have at present thought fit to be contributed by them, if not already done, in Proportion to what has been directed, to be supplied by our other Plan- tations, as aforesaid, are 250 Sterling for the Division of East-New-Jersey, and 250 Sterling for the Division of West New Jersey : You are, therefore to inform yourself what has been done therein, and what remains further to 288 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY be done, and to send an Account thereof to us, and to our Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, as aforesaid. " 84th. ' And you are also, in our Name, instantly to rec- ommend to our Council, and the General-Assembly of our said Province of New- York, that they exert the utmost of their Power, in providing, without Delay, what further shall be requisite for preparing, erecting, and maintaining of such Forts in all Parts of that Prov- ince, as you and they shall agree upon. " 85th. ' And you are likewise to signify to our said Council, and the said General- Assembly, that for further Encouragement, that besides the Contributions to be made towards the raising and maintaining of Forts and Fortifications on that Frontier, as above mentioned ; it is our Will and Pleasure, in Case the said Frontier be at any time invaded by an Enemy, the neighboring Colonies and Plantations upon the Continent, shall make good in Men, or Money, in lieu thereof, their Quota of Assistance, according to the following Repartitions, viz. Men. Massachusetts Bay 350 New Hampshire 40 Rhode-Island 48 Connecticut 120 New-York 200 East-Jersey 60 West-New-Jersey 60 Pennsylvania 80 Maryland 160 Virginia 240 Making together 1358 APPENDIX 289 " ' Pursuant whereunto you are, as Occasion requires, to call for the same ; and in case of any Invasion upon the neighboring Plantations, you are, upon Application of the respective Governors thereof, to be aiding and assisting to them, in the best Manner you can ; and as the Con- dition of your Government will permit.' " As to this Instruction, his Majesty, I doubt, has not been thoroughly informed: Because, upon an Invasion, con- sidering the Distance and Dilatoriness of Assemblies, the Mischief, in all Probability, would be over before we could have any Assistance : I should, therefore, think it advise- able that those Proportions be immediately detached to the Frontiers, upon the first News of a War ; there to remain, and to be recruited during the War, at the Expence of the said Colonies. I shudder to think what would have been the fate of Albany had not those Troops designed against Canada, been accidentally there ; more especially as the People of Albany, at that Time, were afflicted with an epidemical Distemper, which carried off great Num- bers." The writer goes on to give advice concerning the quotas, concerning the treatment of the Indians, and concerning fortifications, etc., and concludes his little pamphlet or book in this manner: " If these Things, or something of this Kind, perhaps from an abler Hand, be duly considered and executed, ' during the Calm of a Peace, we shall have little to apprehend from an Enemy. What I most apprehend is, the old Proverb, What 's every Body's Business, is no Body's Business. But let those Gentlemen, I mean our 19 290 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY General-Assemblies, with whom we have intrusted the care of our Lives and Liberties, answer, if they can, either to God or Man, a Neglect of their Duty, in a Matter of so much Importance to themselves, their Fellow- Subjects and Posterity. Dulce est pro Patria Mori, is an old Roman Maxim ; and tho' I have not at present any Thoughts of dying for my Country, yet I have a real Satis- faction in imagining, whether in Reality, or not, I cannot say, That I have pointed out some Things, which, if observed, may prevent a good deal of Blood-shed &c., of which I wash my Hands clear, and leave it at the Doors of those whose proper business it is to look out in Time. " The Author of the foregoing Essay, having desired the Printer to communicate the Manuscript to some of the most judicious of his Friends, it produced the follow- ing Letter from one of them : The publishing whereof, we think needs no other Apology, viz : '"PHILADELPHIA, March 20, 1750, 1. " ' DEAR MR. PARKER, I have, as you desire, read the. Manuscript you sent me ; and am of Opinion, with the publick-spirited Author, that securing the Friendship of the Indians is of the greatest Consequence to these Colo- nies ; and that the surest Means of doing it, are, to regulate the Indian Trade, so as to convince them, by Experience, that they may have the best and cheapest Goods, and the fairest Dealing from the English ; and to unite the several Governments, so as to form a Strength that the Indians may depend on for Protection, in Case of a Rupture with the French ; or apprehend great Danger from, if they should break with us. APPENDIX 291 "'This Union of the Colonies, however necessary, I ap- prehend is not to be brought about by the Means that have hitherto been used for that Purpose. A Governor of one Colony, who happens from some Circumstances in his own Government, to see the Necessity of such an Union, writes his Sentiments of the Matter to the other Governors, and desires them to recommend it to their respective Assemblies . They accordingly lay the Letters before these Assemblies, and perhaps recommend the Proposal in general Words. But Governors are often on ill Terms with their Assemblies, and seldom are the Men that have the most Influence among them. And perhaps some Governors, tho' they openly recommend the Scheme, may privately throw cold Water on it, as thinking additional Publick charges will make their People less able, or less will- ing, to give to them. Or perhaps they do not clearly see the Necessity of it, and therefore do not very earnestly press the Consideration of it : And no one being present that has the Affair at Heart, to back it, to answer and remove Objections &c. 'tis easily dropt, and nothing is done. Such an Union is certainly necessary to us all, but more immediately so to your Government. Now, if you were to pick out half a Dozen Men of good Understanding and Address, and furnish them with a reasonable Scheme and proper Instructions, and send them in the Nature of Ambassadors to the other Colonies, where they might apply particularly to all the leading Men, and by proper Management get them to engage in promoting the Scheme; where, by being present, they would have the Opportunity of pressing the Affair both in publick and private, obviating Difficulties as they arise, answering Objections as soon as they are made, before they spread and gather 292 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Strength in the Minds of the People, &c. &c. I imagine such an Union might thereby be made and established : For reasonable sensible Men, can always make a reason- able Scheme appear such to other reasonable Men, if they take Pains, and have Time and Opportunity for it ; unless from some Circumstances their Honesty and good Intentions are suspected. A voluntary Union entered into by the Colonies themselves, I think, would be pref- erable to one impos'd by Parliament ; for it would be perhaps not much more difficult to procure, and more easy to alter and improve as Circumstances should re- quire, and Experience direct. It would be a very strange Thing, if Six Nations of ignorant Savages should be capa- ble of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble ; and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen Eng- lish Colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous; and who cannot be supposed to want an equal Understanding of their Interests. "'Were there a general Council form'd by all the Colonies, and a general Governor appointed by the Crown to preside in that Council, or in some Manner to concur with and confirm their Acts, and take Care of the Execution ; every Thing relating to Indian Affairs and the Defence of the Colonies, might be properly put under their Management. Each Colony should be repre- sented by as many Members as it pays Sums of Hun- dred Pounds into the common Treasury for the common Expence ; which Treasury would be best and most equitably supply'd, by an equal Excise on strong Liquors in all the Colonies, the Produce never to be applied to the private APPENDIX 293 Use of any Colony, but to the general Service. Perhaps if the Council were to meet successively at the Capitals of the Several Colonies, they might thereby become better acquainted with the Circumstances, Interests, Strength or Weakness, &c. of all, and thence be able to judge better of Measures propos'd from time to time; At least it might be more satisfactory to the Colonies, if this were propos'd as a Part of the Scheme ; for a Preference might create Jealousy and Dislike. " ' I believe the Place mention'd is a very suitable one to build a Fort on. In Times of Peace, Parties of the Garri- sons of all Frontier Forts might be allowed to go out on Hunting Expeditions, with or without Indians, and have the Profit to themselves of the Skins they get: By this Means a Number of Wood-Runners would be form'd, well acquainted with the Country, and of great Use in War Time, as Guides of Parties and Scouts, &c. Every Indian is a Hunter ; as their Manner of making War, viz : by Skulking, Surprizing and Killing particular Persons and Families, is just the same as their Manner of Hunt- ing, only changing the Object, Every Indian is adisciplin'd Soldier. Soldiers of this Kind are always wanted in the Colonies in an Indian War; for the European Military Discipline is of little Use in these Woods. ' " NOTE XI. Major Washington to Governor Hamilton. HONOURABLE SIR, It is with the greatest concern I acquaint you, that M r Ward Ensign in Cap tn Trent's corup* was compelled to surrender his small Fort in the 294 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Forks of Mohongialo to the French on the 17. inst : who fell down from Weningo with a Fleet of 360 Battoes and Canoos, with upwards of one Thousan Men, and eighteen pieces of Artilery, which they planted against the Fort, drew up their Men, and sent the inclosed sum- mons to Mr. Ward, who having but an inconsiderable number of Men and no Canon to make a proper defence was obliged to surrender ; they suffered him to draw off his Men, Arms, and working Tools and gave leave that he might retreat to the Inhabitants. I have heard of your Honour's great zeal for his Maj*y' s service, and for all our interests on the present occasion. You will see by the inclosed speech of the Half-Kings, that the Indians expect some Assistance from you, and I am persuaded you will take proper notice of their moving speech, and of their unshaken fidelity. I thought it more adviseable to acquaint your Hon r with it immediately than to wait till you could get in- telligence by way of Williamsburgh, and the Young Men, as the Half-King proposes. I have arrived thus far with a detachment of 150 Men, Coll. Fry with the remainder of the Regiment and artilery is daily expected. In the mean time we advance slowly across the mountains, making the Roads as we March, fit for the carriage of our Gunns ettc. and are designed to proceed as far as the mouth of red stone Creek, which enters Monhongialo, about 37 Miles above the Fort taken by the French, from whence we have a Water carriage down the River ; and there is a Store house built by the Ohio Company, which may serve as a recepticle for our Ammunitions and provisions. APPENDIX 295 Besides these French that came from Weningo, We have credible accounts that another party are coining up Ohio. We also have intelligence that 600 of the Chip- poways and Ottoways, are Marching down Sciodo Creek to join them. I hope your Hon r will excuse the Freedom I have assumed in acquainting you with these advices. It was the warm zeal I owe my Country that influenced me to it and occasioned this Express. I am with all due Respect and regard, your Hon rs most obedient and very humble servant, G WASHINGTON. James Foley, the express, says he left Mr. Washington at the New Store on Potowmack about 130 Miles from Capt" Trent's Fort at the mouth of Mohongialo on Sat- urday 27 th April. Philadelphia 6 th May 1754. A true Copy Examined by Richard Peters, Secretary. Doc. Rel. to Col. His. of N. Y. vi. 840. NOTE XII. " How far the various attempts of the red man to com- bine in federal union for common strength or defence, and especially those in the stable political edifice in New York, were potent in aiding the formation of the Amer- ican Commonwealth, is an interesting question worthy of careful study. That it was not without direct influence upon the minds of those constructive statesmen like Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Monroe, who came so numerously from States nearest the Long House, and 296 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY most familiar with Iroquois politics, cannot be denied. . . . Our government is in a measure copied from that of the forest republicans, whose political edifice and conquests shaped the history and civilization of this continent." Griffis, Sir Wm. Johnson and The Six Nations, pp. 53, 54. " Franklin's plan of union, which was the beginning of our own federal republic, was directly inspired by the wisdom, durability, and inherent strength which he had observed in the Iroquois constitution. Under the articles of Confederation we managed our affairs for a dozen years very much on the Iroquois plan, and it must be confessed were not quite as apt in execution and in admin- istrative wisdom as our barbarian predecessors. " When the colonies became the United States, the Iroquois recognized the similarity of the League to their own, and gave to the new nation the name of ' The Thirteen Fires.' " Morgan, The League of the Iroquois (1901). Anno- tated by Herbert M. Lloyd. Note 38. "The central government was organized and admin- istered upon the same principles which regulated that of each nation in its separate capacity ; the nations sustain- ing nearly the same relation to the League that the American States bear to the Union." L. H. Morgan, The League of the Iroquois (1901), vol. i., p. 58. APPENDIX 297 NOTE XIII. As to the " new religion, as teachings of Hand- some Lake (1735-1815) have been called" and for an interesting account of the religious dances and addresses of gratitude to the Great Spirit, see Donaldson, Six Nations of New York, Census Bulletin (llth Census of theU. S.), page 47. Mr. Donaldson says : " The cardinal difference between the pagan Indians of the Six Nations and the ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome lies in the Indian recognition of one great Spirit to whom all other spirits are subject. They do not wor- ship nature or the works of nature, but the God of nature, and all physical objects which minister to their comfort and happiness are his gifts to his children. It is this ' unknown god ' whom Paul unfolded to the supersti- tious Athenians in the heaven-arched court space of the Areopagus on Mars Hill that the Indians in vague forms of heathen faith seek to worship." Mr. Horatio Hale writes : " The regard for women which is apparent in this hymn (The ' National Anthem ' in the Iroquois ' Book of Rites '), and in other passages of the Book, is deserving of notice. The common notion that women among the Indians were treated as inferior and made ' beasts of burden,' is unfounded so far as the Iroquois are con- cerned, and among all other tribes of which I have any knowledge. With them, as with civilized nations, the 298 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY work of community and the cares of the family are fairly divided. Among the Iroquois the hunting and fishing, the house-building and canoe-making, fell to the men. The women cooked, made the dresses, scratched the ground with their light hoes, planted and gathered the crops, and took care of the children. The household goods be- longed to the woman. Ou her death, her relatives, and not her husband, claimed them. The children were also hers ; they belonged to her clan, and in case of a separa- tion they went with her. She was really the head of the household ; and in this capacity her right, when she chanced to be the oldest matron of a noble family, to select the successor of a deceased chief of that family, was recognized by the highest law of the confederacy." Hale, Iroquois' Book of Rites, p. 65. "The Iroquois, who had seemed little better than demons to the missionaries while they knew them only as enemies to the French or their Huron allies, astonished them, on a nearer acquaintance, by the development of similar traits of natural goodness. 'You will find in them,' declares one of these fair-minded and cultivated observers, ' virtues which might well put to blush the majority of Christians. There is no need of hospitals among them, because there are no beggars among them, and indeed, none who are poor, so long as any of them are rich. Their kindness, humanity, and courtesy not merely make them liberal in giving, but almost lead them to live as though everything they possess were held in common. No one can want food while there is corn any- where in the town.' " Hale, Iroquois Book of Rites, p. 85. SUGGESTIONS FOR READING OR REFERENCE THIS is not intended as a bibliography for the criti- cal student, but rather to suggest books which have a certain inspiration or literary charm, or that may be found useful for reference by the general reader con- cerning matters referred to in the text. In connection with Chapter I.: Harper, George McLean, The Legend of the Holy Grail. (Bait. Modern Language Asso. of America, 1893.) Nutt, Alfred, Studies on the Legend of The Holy Grail. Green, J. R., A Short History of the English People, chapter iii. (The Great Charter). Alger, Abby Langdon, The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi. Vaughan, Robert, Life and opinions of John Wycliffe. Storrs, Richard S., Oration on John Wycliffe and the First English Bible. Dante, Vita Nuova (Charles Eliot Norton's translation). Dante, II Convito (Katherine Hilliard's translation). Vernon Lee, Euphorion. Vernon Lee, Renaissance Fancies and Studies. Irving, Washington, Life of Columbus. Irving, Washington, The Conquest of Granada. Irving, Washington, The Voyages of the Companions of Columbus. 300 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Irving, Washington, The Alhambra. Prescott, W. H., Ferdinand and Isabella. Prescott, W. H., The Conquest of Mexico. Prescott, W. H., The Conquest of Peru. Lea, Henry Charles, The Moriscoes of Spain. Fiske, John, The Discovery of America. Benjamin, Park, The Intellectual Rise in Electricity. Bryce, James, Constantinople. Grimm, Hermann, Life of Michael Angelo (translated by Fanny Elizabeth Bunnett). Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Marble Faun. Oliphant, Mrs., The Makers of Florence. Eliot, George, Romola. Symonds, John Addingtou, Renaissance in Italy. Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance, (translation by S. G. C. Middleraore). Einstein, Lewis, The Italian Renaissance in England. Seebohm, Frederick, The Oxford Reformers of 1498. Jebb, R. C., Erasmus (the Rede lecture). Froude, J. A., Life and Letters of Erasmus. Lilly, W. S., Renaissance Types. White, James, Eighteen Christian Centuries. Acton, Lord, On the Study of History. In connection with Chapter H. : Bancroft, George, History of the United States, vol. i. Choate, Rufus, The Importance of Illustrating New England History by a series of Romances, and The Age of the Pilgrims, the Heroic Period of our History. Fiske, John, The Beginnings of New England. Schiller, Thirty Years' War. Seeley, J. R. Introduction to Political Science. SUGGESTIONS 301 Guizot, History of Civilization. Griffis, W. E., Brave Little Holland. Masson, David, Life and Times of John Milton. Motley, John Lothrop, The Rise of The Dutch Republic. Carlyle, Thomas, Life and Letters of Cromwell. Green, J. R., A Short History of the English People, chapter viiL (Puritan England). Brewster, Sir David, The Life of Sir Isaac Newton. Sidney, Algernon, Discourses on Government. Campbell, A. C., Life of Hugo Grotius, in first vol. of his translation of War and Peace. Sully, Memoirs. Bradford, Gov. William, History of the Plymouth Plantation. Hoar, George F., Address of, in Report of Proceedings incident to the return of the Bradford Manuscript. See The Bradford History, printed under direction of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Taine, H., History of English Literature (chapter on the Christian Renaissance). Campbell, Douglas, The Puritan in England, Holland, and America. Bryce, James, The Holy Roman Empire. Nash, H. S., Genesis of the Social Conscience. In connection with Chapter HI. : Frothingham, Richard, The Rise of the Republic. Fiske, John, The Critical Period of American History. Hill, Mabel, Liberty Documents, A Working Book in Constitutional History. The Federalist. Madison, James, Journal of the Proceedings of the Fed- eral Convention. 302 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Fisher, Sydney George, The Evolution of the Constitu- tion of the United States. Stevens, Charles Ellis, Sources of the Constitution. Straus, Oscar S., Origin of Republican Form of Government. Freeman, E. A., Greater Greece and Greater Britain. Flint, Robert, History of the Philosophy of History. Parkman, Francis, Montcalm and Wolfe. Golden, Cadwallader, History of the Five Nations. Hillebrand, Karl, German Thought from the Seven Years' War to Goethe's Death. Morley, John, Diderot and the Encyclopaedists. Carlyle, Thomas, French Revolution. Michelet, Jules, French Revolution. Aristotle, Politics. Kant, Immanuel, Principles of Politics (translation by W. Hastie). Morris, G. S., Exposition of Kant (Griggs' Philos. Classics). Morris, G. S., Hegel's Philosophy of the State and of History (Griggs' Philos. Classics). In connection with Chapters IV. and V. : Harvey, Peter, Reminiscences of Daniel Webster. Webster, Daniel, Great Speeches and Orations of (Bos- ton, 1882). Curtis, Geo. Ticknor, Life of Daniel Webster. Miiller, Wilhelm A., Political History of Recent Times (Transl. by John P. Peters). Hodges, George, Christian Socialism and the Social Union. Maurice, John Frederick Denison, Christian Socialism. SUGGESTIONS 303 Wood, Esther, Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Bate, Percy H., The English Pre-Raphaelite Painters (with illustrations). Forsyth, Peter T., Religion in Recent Art. Brandes, George, Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature Vol. II., The Romantic School in Ger- many. Kastner, L. E., and Atkins, H. G., A Short History of French Literature. Texte, Joseph, J. J. Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in Literature. Macdonald, Frederika, Studies in France of Rousseau and Voltaire. Raynal (Abbe G. T. F.), Influence of the Intercourse with the New World, etc. in Philos. and Polit. Hist, of the Settlement and Trade in the East and West Indies. Hale, Edward Everett, The Results of Columbus' Dis- covery. (Proc. Am. Antiq. Soc'y, Vol. VIII.) Tudor, William, Life of James Otis. Ritchie, D. G., Darwin and Hegel. Ritchie, D. G., Studies in Political and Social Ethics. Sunmer, Charles, Prophetic Voices concerning America. Tozer, Henry J., Rousseau's Social Contract (with valu- able Introduction). Bryce, James, Studies in History and Jurisprudence. Maine, Henry Sumner, Ancient Law. (Edition with Introduction by Prof. Theodore W. Dwight.) Milton, John, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Shaler, Nathaniel S., The Individual. Drummond, Henry, The Ascent of Man. Herder, Philosophy of History (Tr. by T. Churchill). Dunning, W. A., Political Theories, Ancient and Me- diaeval. 304 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Maurice, Frederick Denison, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, Vol. II. (as to Nicolaus von Cusa). Kingsley, Charles, Lectures on the Ancien Regime be- fore the French Revolution. Paulsen, Friedrich, Life of Immanuel Kant. Hale, Horatio, The Iroquois Book of Rites. Donaldson, Six Nations of New York (Census Bulletin. Eleventh Census of the U. S.). Hall, Charles H., The Dutch and the Iroquois. A paper read before the Long Island Historical Society, Feb. 21, 1882. Beauchamp, W. M., The Iroquois Trail. Griffis, William Elliot, Sir Wm. Johnson and the Six Nations. Morgan, L. H., Ancient Society. Morgan, L. H., League of the Iroquois (1901). Sparks, Jared, Works of Benjamin Franklin. Bigelow, John, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Edited by John Bigelow. Marshall, John, Life of Washington. Ferguson, Charles, The Affirmative Intellect. Henderson, C. H., Education and the Larger Life. INDEX INDEX ADAMS, JOHN, 144, 195-196. Adams, John Quincy, on motto of Seal of Massachusetts, 76-78. Adams, Samuel, 144, 160. Agassiz, 114. Albany, Congress of 1754, 112, 129, 251-259. American Pulpit, of period denoted by date 1850, 181. American Renaissance, 180-182. Angelo, Michael, as a youth of eighteen, 42 ; inspired by the classic statues, 46 ; interpreter of Hebrew Bible, 47. Annus Mirabilis (1588), 82. Anthropology, 263-264. Aristotle, 121, 213, 225, 237, 238. Art, as the great teacher, 25-28 ; bound in at time of Settle- ment, 80-81; Schiller's "cognition of beauty," 116; Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood, 178-179 ; the true artist, 185 ; the sense of beauty in man, 237-238. Aquinas, St. Thomas, 225. BACON, FRANCIS, 73. Bible, the English, Wycliffe translation, 24, 273-274 ; artistic impulse of, 93, 95 ; Tyndale Bible, 95, 96 ; a part of Ameri- can history, 238. Biography, of humanity, 107. Bradford, Gov., his " History of the Plymouth Plantation," 97-105. Brown, Ford Maddox, 179. 308 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Browning, Robert, 214-215, 280. Brunelleschi, 41. Buff on, 117. CALHOUN, JOHN C., 170, 172, 174. Carlyle, 82, 175. Centuries, new order of, 231-233. Choate, Ruf us, on romance of New England history, 106. Christian Socialism, 177-178. Clay, Henry, 174. Colden, Cadwallader, 256-257. Colonies, propositions for union of, 127 ; condition of, under Federation, 126 ; representation under Federation, 154. Columbus, the boy, 34 ; at Cordova and at conquest of Gra- nada, 35-36 ; spirit of, 185-186. Compass, the mariner's, 38, 39. Confederation, of Colonies of New England, 127; of Ameri- can Colonies, conditions under, 126 ; plan of representation under, 154. Copernicus, 70. Cosmopolitical State, 202-204, 216. Cotyledons, historical, 47, 113, 164. Covenant, made in cabin of " Mayflower, " 98. Cowper, 117. Crabbe, 117. Cromwell, Oliver, 83, 93, 189. Cusa, Nicolaus von, 225-227. Cuvier, 113,114. DANTE, his Vita Nuova, 21 ; Giotto painting portrait of, 25 ; his teaching through forms of art, 26 ; his free spirit, 28 ; his feeling for nature, 28 ; as inspirer, 40. Declaration of Independence, 141. Descartes, 74. Devolution, 213-217. INDEX 309 Diderot, 115, 279. Donatello, 41. Douglass, Stephen A., 174. Dutch Declaration of Independence, 227, 228. ELIZABETH, QUEEN, her part in great design of Henry of Navarre, 87-88. Encyclopaedia, French, 115, 208. English Language, coming into use, 24. Erasmus, 44, 64. Evolution, 118, 202-205, 213-219. FEDERAL CONVENTION, 126, 142-159, 203. Federalist, The, 160. First Encounter, the story of from Bradford Manuscript, 99- 105. Five Nations, formation of the federation, 48-55 ; as a factor in struggle between France and England for supremacy on North American continent, 130-132 ; as an object lesson to the colonies, 132-136 ; the nature of their government and their character as a people, 136-138 ; legend of the Horse-shoe Falls, 139-141 ; the story of, 239-257 ; the mean- ing of the story of, 261-265 ; New York owes its present northern boundary to the, 281 ; federation of as a model for our form of government, 295-296; religion and cus- toms of, 297-298. Food-Leaves of History, 44-48, 113, 164, 229-230. Franklin, Benjamin, 129, 147-148, 155, 159, 255-257, 259- 260. Frederick the Great, 126. GALILEO, 70-72. Gard, the legend of, 55-60. Geoffrey of Monmouth, 20. Gerry, Elbridge, 151, 158, 159. 310 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Ghiberti, 41. Gibbon, 117. Goethe, 117-118, 125. Gold, discovery of in California, 180-181. Grail, legend of the Holy Grail, 18-21, 132, 225. Granada, conquest of, 36. Greece, and Israel as Food-Leaves of History, 44-48, 113, 228-230. Gunpowder, 38. HALE, EDWARD EVERETT, Lines on Columbus, 64-65. Hale, Horatio, 240-241. Hamilton, Alexander, 145-146, 152-154, 163. Hamilton's Plan, 152-154. Harvey, 73. Hegel, 112, 119, 120, 217. Henry of Navarre, his great design, 87-90, 276-278. Henry, Patrick, 144, 160, 161. Hiawatha (the real), his forest federation, 48-55, 130, 138, 239-257. Hoar, Geo. F., on Bradford manuscript, 97. Hopkins, Mark, 174. Hugo, Victor, 175. Hunt, Holman, 179. INDEPENDENCE HALL, 141. Individual, the, and the State, 123 ; the American citizen as the new, 124-125 ; the Constitution as carrying out will of the, 164; the awaking and gazing, 184-186. Integration, 202-206. International law, 210-212. Iroquois, formation of their federation, 48-55 ; book of rites, 55; concerning the, 130-138, 139-141,239-257-261-263; and the northern boundary of New York, 281 ; federation of as a model, 295-296 ; religion and customs of, 297-298. Israel, Greece and Israel as Food-Leaves of History, 44-48, 113,229-230. INDEX 311 JEFFERSON, THOMAS, 144, 160. KANT, IMMANUEL, 116, 116,117, 118, 120, 125, 236. Kennedy, Archibald, 246, 282-293. Kepler, John, 70. King, people crowned as, 233-235. Kingsley, Charles, with relation to Christian Socialism, 177- 178; as to educating men into self-government, 235. LAFAYETTE, 125, 197-198. Law of Nature, 209-213, 218, 236-237. Lee (Light Horse Harry), 161 Lee, Kichard Henry, 161. Legend, of the Holy Grail, 18-21 ; of Gard, 56-60; value of myth and legend, 60-62 ; of the Horse-shoe Falls, 139-141. Leonardo da Vinci, 43. Lincoln, Abraham, 174, 237. Literature, in time of Renaissance, 29-32, 46 ; of the Christian Renaissance, 80-81 ; literary impulse of the English Bible, 93-95; of eighteenth century, 115, 118; of the period de- noted by 1850, 180-182. Locke, John, 74. Love, mediaeval, 21. Luther, Martin, 44. MADISON, JAMES, 142, 147,161. Magna Charta, 23. Marshall, John, 161. Maurice, Frederick Denison, with relation to Christian Social- ism, 177-178. Mayflower, Log of the, 97-105. Michelet, 115, 234. Millais, 179. Milton, John, his Ode on the Nativity, 90-91. Montesquieu, 114. 312 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Morris, Gouverneur, 143, 149, 150. Murillo, 81. NEW HAMPSHIRE, 161. New Jersey Plan, 152-154. Newton, Sir Isaac, 73. Niagara, legend of Horse-shoe Falls, 139-141. Nullification, 170-176. OTIS, JAMES, argument of, against Writs of Assistance, 192- 197, 207, 212. PARLIAMENT, scenes in English (1628-29), 84-85. Patterson, William, 152. Peace, The Real Hiawatha and the Legend of Gard, 48-62; star of, 86, 87 ; great design of Henry of Navarre, 87-90 ; Milton's Ode on the Nativity, 90-91 ; Hugo Grotius, 92-93 ; Immanuel Kant's " Perpetual Peace," 120; toasts concern- ing, at dinner on occasion of celebration of ratification of Constitution, 162; Mr. Webster's efforts for, in 1850, 173- 175; Victor Hugo, concerning, 175; Carlyle concerning, 175 ; " Music of the Morning Star," 220. Penn, William, 106, 128. Petrarch, 29-30, 33. Philosophy of History, the new, 61-62, 263-265. Pilgrims, reasons for leaving England, and again for leaving Holland, 99-100. Plymouth Plantation, Bradford's History of, 97-105. Poggio, 30-31. Pope Innocent VII., 31. Pope Nicholas V., 31. Pope Pius II., 31. Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 178, 179. President, debate in Federal Convention concerning choice and term of office of, 158. INDEX 313 Priestley, 114. Printing, first book on Italian soil, 32 ; introduction of, 38. Psychology, physiological, 264-265. Pulci, 33. RANDOLPH, EDMUND, 149, 151, 158, 159, 161. Raphael, as a boy of twelve, 42. Reconstruction, political of Europe, 176-177. Reformation, the, 70. Rembrandt, 81. Renaissance, the, just before the dawn of, 17-24 ; early dawn of, 22-32 ; noon-tide of, 32-44 ; forces put in operation by, 63 ; Teutonic and Christian, 70; the American, 180-182; awakening and gazing individual of, 184-186. Representation in National Congress, 154-157. Revere, Paul, 160. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 179. Rousseau, 115, 207-213, 227, 235-236, 280. Rubens, 81. Ruskin, John, 179. SAN MARCO GARDENS, 41. Schiller, 115-116, 118. Schools, medical, of the eighteenth century, 114; public, in England, 177 ; study of history in, 265-270. Seal, great seal of Massachusetts, 74-78 ; Seal of the United States, 229-230. Seneca, lines of, from the " Medea," 186. Seven Years' War, 129, 247-255, 261. Shaler, Nathaniel S., 215. Sidney, Algernon, 74-79. Silliman, Benjamin D., 174. Slavery, relation of to proceedings of Federal Convention, 157; discussions concerning in Congress, 1850, 172; 1850 as epoch-mark concerning, 175-176. 314 AMERICA IN RELATION TO HISTORY Smith, Adam, 115. Smith, Erminie A., "A Seneca Legend of Hi-Nu and Ni- agara," 139-141. Sociology, 117. Socrates, 226, 236. St. Francis of Assisi, 21. Star, of peace, 86-87 ; resembling sword, 274. Suggestions for reading or reference, 299-304. Sword, the drawn, 82-86, 175. TELESCOPE, 71. Thirty Years' War, the, 82-83, 275-276. Tree, the, as a political symbol, 112-113. Tycho Brahe, 72. UNIFICATION, 200-205. Unity, a saving, 218. Universal State, 120-122, 217. VAN DTCK, 81. Vattel, 212. Velasquez, 81. Virginia Plan, 149-154. Voltaire, 115, 279. WAGNER, RICHARD, see Preface and also note pp. 263-264. Washington, George, Lafayette sends him Key of the Bas- tille, 125 ; relics in Independence Hall, 141 ; words of, at opening Federal Convention, 143 ; as presiding over Fed- eral Convention, 149 ; influence of, at critical moment, 160 ; the chain from Aristotle, 237 ; at beginning of Seven Years' War, 247-255; Iroquois tradition concerning, 262; Letter of Major Washington to Governor Hamilton, 293- 295. INDEX 315 Watt, James, 114. Webster, Daniel, 170-176. Williams, Roger, 106. Wilson, James, 149, 162. Winckelmann, 118. Winthrop, Robert C., on Algernon Sidney, 74-79. Wordsworth, 108, 117, 214, 216. Writs of Assistance, 192-197. Wycliffe, John, 24, 27, 273-274. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 672 727 5