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Title: Miscellanies
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Editor: Edward W. Emerson
Release date: October 5, 2023 [eBook #71812]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1878
Credits: Emmanuel Ackerman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISCELLANIES ***
MISCELLANIES
BY
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1878, BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON
COPYRIGHT, 1883, 1904, AND 1906, BY EDWARD W. EMERSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PREFACE
The year after Mr. Emerson’s death, Mr. Cabot, in editing his works,
gathered into a volume the occasional writings which had never been
included in previous editions, although six of them had been printed,
either as pamphlets or in periodicals, long before, by the author. These
were the Sermon on The Lord’s Supper, the Historical Address at Concord
in 1835, that at the dedication of the Soldiers’ Monument there in
1867, and that on Emancipation in the British West Indies, the Essay on
War, and the Editors’ Address in the _Massachusetts Quarterly Review_.
“American Civilization” had been a portion of the article of that name
in the _Atlantic_ in 1862. “The Fortune of the Republic” also had been
printed as a pamphlet in 1874. Mr. Cabot said in his prefatory note, “In
none was any change from the original form made by me, except in the
‘Fortune of the Republic,’ which was made up of several lectures, for
the occasion upon which it was read.” This was after Mr. Emerson was no
longer able to arrange his work and his friends had come to his aid.
The speeches at the John Brown, the Walter Scott, and the Free Religious
Association meetings had been printed, probably with Mr. Emerson’s
consent. The other pieces included by Mr. Cabot, namely, the speeches
on Theodore Parker, the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln, at
the Harvard Commemoration, “Woman,” the addresses to Kossuth, and at the
Burns Festival, had not been published.
All that were in Mr. Cabot’s collection will be found here, although the
order has been slightly changed. To these I have added Mr. Emerson’s
letter to President Van Buren in 1838, his speech on the Fugitive Slave
Law in Concord soon after its enactment, that on Shakspeare to the
Saturday Club, and his remarks at the Humboldt Centennial, and at the
dinner to the Chinese Embassy; also the addresses at the consecration
of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and at the opening of the Concord Free Public
Library. The oration before the New England Society of New York in 1870,
printed by them in their recent volume, is not included, as most of the
matter may be found in the Historical Discourse at Concord and in the
essay “Boston,” in _Natural History of Intellect_.
I have given to the chapters mottoes, the most of them drawn from Mr.
Emerson’s writings.
EDWARD W. EMERSON.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE LORD’S SUPPER 1
II. HISTORICAL DISCOURSE AT CONCORD 27
III. LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN BUREN 87
IV. EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES 97
V. WAR 149
VI. THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW—ADDRESS AT CONCORD 177
VII. THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW—LECTURE AT NEW YORK 215
VIII. THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER 245
IX. SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 253
X. JOHN BROWN—SPEECH AT BOSTON 265
XI. JOHN BROWN—SPEECH AT SALEM 275
XII. THEODORE PARKER 283
XIII. AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 295
XIV. THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 313
XV. ABRAHAM LINCOLN 327
XVI. HARVARD COMMEMORATION SPEECH 339
XVII. DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT IN CONCORD 347
XVIII. EDITORS’ ADDRESS 381
XIX. ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH 395
XX. WOMAN 403
XXI. CONSECRATION OF SLEEPY HOLLOW CEMETERY 427
XXII. ROBERT BURNS 437
XXIII. SHAKSPEARE 445
XXIV. HUMBOLDT 455
XXV. WALTER SCOTT 461
XXVI. SPEECH AT BANQUET IN HONOR OF CHINESE EMBASSY 469
XXVII. REMARKS AT ORGANIZATION OF FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 475
XXVIII. SPEECH AT SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF FREE RELIGIOUS
ASSOCIATION 483
XXIX. ADDRESS AT OPENING OF CONCORD FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY 493
XXX. THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 509
NOTES 545
I
THE LORD’S SUPPER
SERMON DELIVERED BEFORE THE SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON, SEPTEMBER 9, 1832
I like a church; I like a cowl,
I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles:
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowlèd churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?
* * * * *
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
THE LORD’S SUPPER
The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness,
and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.—ROMANS xiv. 17.
In the history of the Church no subject has been more fruitful of
controversy than the Lord’s Supper. There never has been any unanimity
in the understanding of its nature, nor any uniformity in the mode of
celebrating it. Without considering the frivolous questions which have
been lately debated as to the posture in which men should partake of
it; whether mixed or unmixed wine should be served; whether leavened
or unleavened bread should be broken;—the questions have been settled
differently in every church, who should be admitted to the feast, and
how often it should be prepared. In the Catholic Church, infants were
at one time permitted and then forbidden to partake; and since the
ninth century the laity receive the bread only, the cup being reserved
to the priesthood. So, as to the time of the solemnity. In the Fourth
Lateran Council, it was decreed that any believer should communicate
at least once in a year,—at Easter. Afterwards it was determined that
this Sacrament should be received three times in the year,—at Easter,
Whitsuntide and Christmas. But more important controversies have arisen
respecting its nature. The famous question of the Real Presence was the
main controversy between the Church of England and the Church of Rome.
The doctrine of the Consubstantiation taught by Luther was denied by
Calvin. In the Church of England, Archbishops Laud and Wake maintained
that the elements were an Eucharist, or sacrifice of Thanksgiving to God;
Cudworth and Warburton, that this was not a sacrifice, but a sacrificial
feast; and Bishop Hoadley, that it was neither a sacrifice nor a feast
after sacrifice, but a simple commemoration. And finally, it is now near
two hundred years since the Society of Quakers denied the authority of
the rite altogether, and gave good reasons for disusing it.
I allude to these facts only to show that, so far from the Supper being a
tradition in which men are fully agreed, there has always been the widest
room for difference of opinion upon this particular. Having recently
given particular attention to this subject, I was led to the conclusion
that Jesus did not intend to establish an institution for perpetual
observance when he ate the Passover with his disciples; and further, to
the opinion that it is not expedient to celebrate it as we do. I shall
now endeavor to state distinctly my reasons for these two opinions.
I. The authority of the rite.
An account of the Last Supper of Christ with his disciples is given by
the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
In St. Matthew’s Gospel (Matt. xxvi. 26-30) are recorded the words of
Jesus in giving bread and wine on that occasion to his disciples, but
no expression occurs intimating that this feast was hereafter to be
commemorated. In St. Mark (Mark xiv. 22-25) the same words are recorded,
and still with no intimation that the occasion was to be remembered.
St. Luke (Luke xxii. 19), after relating the breaking of the bread, has
these words: “This do in remembrance of me.” In St. John, although other
occurrences of the same evening are related, this whole transaction is
passed over without notice.
Now observe the facts. Two of the Evangelists, namely, Matthew and
John, were of the twelve disciples, and were present on that occasion.
Neither of them drops the slightest intimation of any intention on
the part of Jesus to set up anything permanent. John especially, the
beloved disciple, who has recorded with minuteness the conversation and
the transactions of that memorable evening, has quite omitted such a
notice. Neither does it appear to have come to the knowledge of Mark,
who, though not an eye-witness, relates the other facts. This material
fact, that the occasion was to be remembered, is found in Luke alone,
who was not present. There is no reason, however, that we know, for
rejecting the account of Luke. I doubt not, the expression was used by
Jesus. I shall presently consider its meaning. I have only brought these
accounts together, that you may judge whether it is likely that a solemn
institution, to be continued to the end of time by all mankind, as they
should come, nation after nation, within the influence of the Christian
religion, would have been established in this slight manner—in a manner
so slight, that the intention of commemorating it should not appear, from
their narrative, to have caught the ear or dwelt in the mind of the only
two among the twelve who wrote down what happened.
Still we must suppose that the expression, “This do in remembrance of
me,” had come to the ear of Luke from some disciple who was present. What
did it really signify? It is a prophetic and an affectionate expression.
Jesus is a Jew, sitting with his countrymen, celebrating their national
feast. He thinks of his own impending death, and wishes the minds of
his disciples to be prepared for it. “When hereafter,” he says to them,
“you shall keep the Passover, it will have an altered aspect to your
eyes. It is now a historical covenant of God with the Jewish nation.
Hereafter it will remind you of a new covenant sealed with my blood. In
years to come, as long as your people shall come up to Jerusalem to keep
this feast, the connection which has subsisted between us will give a
new meaning in your eyes to the national festival, as the anniversary of
my death.” I see natural feeling and beauty in the use of such language
from Jesus, a friend to his friends; I can readily imagine that he was
willing and desirous, when his disciples met, his memory should hallow
their intercourse; but I cannot bring myself to believe that in the use
of such an expression he looked beyond the living generation, beyond the
abolition of the festival he was celebrating, and the scattering of the
nation, and meant to impose a memorial feast upon the whole world.
Without presuming to fix precisely the purpose in the mind of Jesus, you
will see that many opinions may be entertained of his intention, all
consistent with the opinion that he did not design a perpetual ordinance.
He may have foreseen that his disciples would meet to remember him, and
that with good effect. It may have crossed his mind that this would
be easily continued a hundred or a thousand years,—as men more easily
transmit a form than a virtue,—and yet have been altogether out of his
purpose to fasten it upon men in all times and all countries.
But though the words, “Do this in remembrance of me,” do not occur in
Matthew, Mark or John, and although it should be granted us that, taken
alone, they do not necessarily import so much as is usually thought,
yet many persons are apt to imagine that the very striking and personal
manner in which the eating and drinking is described, indicates a
striking and formal purpose to found a festival. And I admit that this
impression might probably be left upon the mind of one who read only the
passages under consideration in the New Testament. But this impression
is removed by reading any narrative of the mode in which the ancient
or the modern Jews have kept the Passover. It is then perceived that
the leading circumstances in the Gospels are only a faithful account
of that ceremony. Jesus did not celebrate the Passover, and afterwards
the Supper, but the Supper was the Passover. He did with his disciples
exactly what every master of a family in Jerusalem was doing at the same
hour with his household. It appears that the Jews ate the lamb and the
unleavened bread and drank wine after a prescribed manner. It was the
custom for the master of the feast to break the bread and to bless it,
using this formula, which the Talmudists have preserved to us, “Blessed
be Thou, O Lord, our God, who givest us the fruit of the vine,”—and then
to give the cup to all. Among the modern Jews, who in their dispersion
retain the Passover, a hymn is also sung after this ceremony, specifying
the twelve great works done by God for the deliverance of their fathers
out of Egypt.
But still it may be asked, Why did Jesus make expressions so
extraordinary and emphatic as these—“This is my body which is broken
for you. Take; eat. This is my blood which is shed for you. Drink
it”?—I reply they are not extraordinary expressions from him. They were
familiar in his mouth. He always taught by parables and symbols. It was
the national way of teaching, and was largely used by him. Remember the
readiness which he always showed to spiritualize every occurrence. He
stopped and wrote on the sand. He admonished his disciples respecting the
leaven of the Pharisees. He instructed the woman of Samaria respecting
living water. He permitted himself to be anointed, declaring that it
was for his interment. He washed the feet of his disciples. These are
admitted to be symbolical actions and expressions. Here, in like manner,
he calls the bread his body, and bids the disciples eat. He had used
the same expression repeatedly before. The reason why St. John does not
repeat his words on this occasion seems to be that he had reported a
similar discourse of Jesus to the people of Capernaum more at length
already (John vi. 27-60). He there tells the Jews, “Except ye eat the
flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” And
when the Jews on that occasion complained that they did not comprehend
what he meant, he added for their better understanding, and as if for
our understanding, that we might not think his body was to be actually
eaten, that he only meant we should live by his commandment. He closed
his discourse with these explanatory expressions: “The flesh profiteth
nothing; the words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are
life.”
Whilst I am upon this topic, I cannot help remarking that it is not a
little singular that we should have preserved this rite and insisted
upon perpetuating one symbolical act of Christ whilst we have totally
neglected all others,—particularly one other which had at least an equal
claim to our observance. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and told
them that, as he had washed their feet, they ought to wash one another’s
feet; for he had given them an example, that they should do as he had
done to them. I ask any person who believes the Supper to have been
designed by Jesus to be commemorated forever, to go and read the account
of it in the other Gospels, and then compare with it the account of this
transaction in St. John, and tell me if this be not much more explicitly
authorized than the Supper. It only differs in this, that we have found
the Supper used in New England and the washing of the feet not. But if
we had found it an established rite in our churches, on grounds of mere
authority, it would have been impossible to have argued against it. That
rite is used by the Church of Rome, and by the Sandemanians. It has been
very properly dropped by other Christians. Why? For two reasons: (1)
because it was a local custom, and unsuitable in western countries; and
(2) because it was typical, and all understood that humility is the thing
signified. But the Passover was local too, and does not concern us, and
its bread and wine were typical, and do not help us to understand the
redemption which they signified. These views of the original account of
the Lord’s Supper lead me to esteem it an occasion full of solemn and
prophetic interest, but never intended by Jesus to be the foundation of a
perpetual institution.
It appears, however, in Christian history that the disciples had very
early taken advantage of these impressive words of Christ to hold
religious meetings, where they broke bread and drank wine as symbols. I
look upon this fact as very natural in the circumstances of the Church.
The disciples lived together; they threw all their property into a
common stock; they were bound together by the memory of Christ, and
nothing could be more natural than that this eventful evening should be
affectionately remembered by them; that they, Jews like Jesus, should
adopt his expressions and his types, and furthermore, that what was
done with peculiar propriety by them, his personal friends, with less
propriety should come to be extended to their companions also. In this
way religious feasts grew up among the early Christians. They were
readily adopted by the Jewish converts, who were familiar with religious
feasts, and also by the Pagan converts, whose idolatrous worship had
been made up of sacred festivals, and who very readily abused these
to gross riot, as appears from the censures of St. Paul. Many persons
consider this fact, the observance of such a memorial feast by the early
disciples, decisive of the question whether it ought to be observed by
us. There was good reason for his personal friends to remember their
friend and repeat his words. It was only too probable that among the
half-converted Pagans and Jews, any rite, any form, would find favor,
whilst yet unable to comprehend the spiritual character of Christianity.
The circumstance, however, that St. Paul adopts these views, has seemed
to many persons conclusive in favor of the institution. I am of opinion
that it is wholly upon the Epistle to the Corinthians, and not upon the
Gospels, that the ordinance stands. Upon this matter of St. Paul’s view
of the Supper, a few important considerations must be stated.
The end which he has in view, in the eleventh chapter of the first
Epistle, is not to enjoin upon his friends to observe the Supper, but
to censure their abuse of it. We quote the passage nowadays as if it
enjoined attendance upon the Supper; but he wrote it merely to chide
them for drunkenness. To make their enormity plainer, he goes back to
the origin of this religious feast to show what sort of feast that was,
out of which this riot of theirs came, and so relates the transactions
of the Last Supper. “I have received of the Lord,” he says, “that which
I delivered to you.” By this expression it is often thought that a
miraculous communication is implied; but certainly without good reason,
if it is remembered that St. Paul was living in the lifetime of all
the apostles who could give him an account of the transaction; and it
is contrary to all reason to suppose that God should work a miracle to
convey information that could so easily be got by natural means. So that
the import of the expression is that he had received the story of an
eye-witness such as we also possess.
But there is a material circumstance which diminishes our confidence in
the correctness of the Apostle’s view; and that is, the observation that
his mind had not escaped the prevalent error of the primitive Church,
the belief, namely, that the second coming of Christ would shortly occur,
until which time, he tells them, this feast was to be kept. Elsewhere he
tells them that at that time the world would be burnt up with fire, and
a new government established, in which the Saints would sit on thrones;
so slow were the disciples, during the life and after the ascension of
Christ, to receive the idea which we receive, that his second coming was
a spiritual kingdom, the dominion of his religion in the hearts of men,
to be extended gradually over the whole world. In this manner we may see
clearly enough how this ancient ordinance got its footing among the early
Christians, and this single expectation of a speedy reappearance of a
temporal Messiah, which kept its influence even over so spiritual a man
as St. Paul, would naturally tend to preserve the use of the rite when
once established.
We arrive, then, at this conclusion: first, that it does not appear,
from a careful examination of the account of the Last Supper in the
Evangelists, that it was designed by Jesus to be perpetual; secondly,
that it does not appear that the opinion of St. Paul, all things
considered, ought to alter our opinion derived from the Evangelists.
One general remark before quitting this branch of this subject. We ought
to be cautious in taking even the best ascertained opinions and practices
of the primitive Church for our own. If it could be satisfactorily shown
that they esteemed it authorized and to be transmitted forever, that
does not settle the question for us. We know how inveterately they were
attached to their Jewish prejudices, and how often even the influence of
Christ failed to enlarge their views. On every other subject succeeding
times have learned to form a judgment more in accordance with the spirit
of Christianity than was the practice of the early ages.
II. But it is said: “Admit that the rite was not designed to be
perpetual. What harm doth it? Here it stands, generally accepted, under
some form, by the Christian world, the undoubted occasion of much good;
is it not better it should remain?” This is the question of expediency.
I proceed to state a few objections that in my judgment lie against its
use in its present form.
1. If the view which I have taken of the history of the institution be
correct, then the claim of authority should be dropped in administering
it. You say, every time you celebrate the rite, that Jesus enjoined it;
and the whole language you use conveys that impression. But if you read
the New Testament as I do, you do not believe he did.
2. It has seemed to me that the use of this ordinance tends to produce
confusion in our views of the relation of the soul to God. It is the
old objection to the doctrine of the Trinity,—that the true worship
was transferred from God to Christ, or that such confusion was
introduced into the soul that an undivided worship was given nowhere.
Is not that the effect of the Lord’s Supper? I appeal now to the
convictions of communicants, and ask such persons whether they have
not been occasionally conscious of a painful confusion of thought
between the worship due to God and the commemoration due to Christ.
For the service does not stand upon the basis of a voluntary act, but
is imposed by authority. It is an expression of gratitude to Christ,
enjoined by Christ. There is an endeavor to keep Jesus in mind, whilst
yet the prayers are addressed to God. I fear it is the effect of this
ordinance to clothe Jesus with an authority which he never claimed and
which distracts the mind of the worshipper. I know our opinions differ
much respecting the nature and offices of Christ, and the degree of
veneration to which he is entitled. I am so much a Unitarian as this:
that I believe the human mind can admit but one God, and that every
effort to pay religious homage to more than one being goes to take away
all right ideas. I appeal, brethren, to your individual experience. In
the moment when you make the least petition to God, though it be but a
silent wish that he may approve you, or add one moment to your life,—do
you not, in the very act, necessarily exclude all other beings from your
thought? In that act, the soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no
more present to your mind than your brother or your child.[1]
But is not Jesus called in Scripture the Mediator? He is the mediator
in that only sense in which possibly any being can mediate between God
and man,—that is, an instructor of man. He teaches us how to become
like God. And a true disciple of Jesus will receive the light he gives
most thankfully; but the thanks he offers, and which an exalted being
will accept, are not compliments, commemorations, but the use of that
instruction.
3. Passing other objections, I come to this, that the use of the
elements, however suitable to the people and the modes of thought in the
East, where it originated, is foreign and unsuited to affect us. Whatever
long usage and strong association may have done in some individuals to
deaden this repulsion, I apprehend that their use is rather tolerated
than loved by any of us. We are not accustomed to express our thoughts or
emotions by symbolical actions. Most men find the bread and wine no aid
to devotion, and to some it is a painful impediment. To eat bread is one
thing; to love the precepts of Christ and resolve to obey them is quite
another.[2]
The statement of this objection leads me to say that I think this
difficulty, wherever it is felt, to be entitled to the greatest weight.
It is alone a sufficient objection to the ordinance. It is my own
objection. This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me.
That is reason enough why I should abandon it. If I believed it was
enjoined by Jesus on his disciples, and that he even contemplated making
permanent this mode of commemoration, every way agreeable to an Eastern
mind, and yet on trial it was disagreeable to my own feelings, I should
not adopt it. I should choose other ways which, as more effectual upon
me, he would approve more. For I choose that my remembrances of him
should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified
friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign
of respect, as men do those whom they fear. A passage read from his
discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting
which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design
of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.
4. The importance ascribed to this particular ordinance is not consistent
with the spirit of Christianity. The general object and effect of the
ordinance is unexceptionable. It has been, and is, I doubt not, the
occasion of indefinite good; but an importance is given by Christians
to it which never can belong to any form. My friends, the Apostle
well assures us that “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but
righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” I am not so
foolish as to declaim against forms. Forms are as essential as bodies;
but to exalt particular forms, to adhere to one form a moment after it
is outgrown, is unreasonable, and it is alien to the spirit of Christ.
If I understand the distinction of Christianity, the reason why it is
to be preferred over all other systems and is divine is this, that it
is a moral system; that it presents men with truths which are their own
reason, and enjoins practices that are their own justification; that if
miracles may be said to have been its evidence to the first Christians,
they are not its evidence to us, but the doctrines themselves; that
every practice is Christian which praises itself, and every practice
unchristian which condemns itself. I am not engaged to Christianity by
decent forms, or saving ordinances; it is not usage, it is not what I do
not understand, that binds me to it,—let these be the sandy foundations
of falsehoods. What I revere and obey in it is its reality, its boundless
charity, its deep interior life, the rest it gives to mind, the echo
it returns to my thoughts, the perfect accord it makes with my reason
through all its representation of God and His Providence; and the
persuasion and courage that come out thence to lead me upward and onward.
Freedom is the essence of this faith. It has for its object simply to
make men good and wise. Its institutions then should be as flexible as
the wants of men. That form out of which the life and suitableness have
departed should be as worthless in its eyes as the dead leaves that are
falling around us.
And therefore, although for the satisfaction of others I have labored
to show by the history that this rite was not intended to be perpetual;
although I have gone back to weigh the expressions of Paul, I feel that
here is the true point of view. In the midst of considerations as to
what Paul thought, and why he so thought, I cannot help feeling that it
is time misspent to argue to or from his convictions, or those of Luke
and John, respecting any form. I seem to lose the substance in seeking
the shadow. That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for
which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the
thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem
us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the
formation of the soul. The whole world was full of idols and ordinances.
The Jewish was a religion of forms; it was all body, it had no life, and
the Almighty God was pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach
men that they must serve him with the heart; that only that life was
religious which was thoroughly good; that sacrifice was smoke, and forms
were shadows. This man lived and died true to this purpose; and now, with
his blessed word and life before us, Christians must contend that it
is a matter of vital importance,—really a duty, to commemorate him by a
certain form, whether that form be agreeable to their understandings or
not. Is not this to make vain the gift of God? Is not this to turn back
the hand on the dial? Is not this to make men,—to make ourselves,—forget
that not forms, but duties; not names, but righteousness and love are
enjoined; and that in the eye of God there is no other measure of the
value of any one form than the measure of its use?
There remain some practical objections to the ordinance, into which I
shall not now enter. There is one on which I had intended to say a few
words; I mean the unfavorable relation in which it places that numerous
class of persons who abstain from it merely from disinclination to the
rite.
Influenced by these considerations, I have proposed to the brethren of
the Church to drop the use of the elements and the claim of authority in
the administration of this ordinance, and have suggested a mode in which
a meeting for the same purpose might be held, free of objection.
My brethren have considered my views with patience and candor, and
have recommended, unanimously, an adherence to the present form. I have
therefore been compelled to consider whether it becomes me to administer
it. I am clearly of opinion I ought not. This discourse has already been
so far extended that I can only say that the reason of my determination
is shortly this: It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister,
to do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart. Having said this,
I have said all. I have no hostility to this institution; I am only
stating my want of sympathy with it. Neither should I ever have obtruded
this opinion upon other people, had I not been called by my office to
administer it. That is the end of my opposition, that I am not interested
in it. I am content that it stand to the end of the world, if it please
men and please Heaven, and I shall rejoice in all the good it produces.
As it is the prevailing opinion and feeling in our religious community
that it is an indispensable part of the pastoral office to administer
this ordinance, I am about to resign into your hands that office which
you have confided to me. It has many duties for which I am feebly
qualified. It has some which it will always be my delight to discharge
according to my ability, wherever I exist. And whilst the recollection of
its claims oppresses me with a sense of my unworthiness, I am consoled by
the hope that no time and no change can deprive me of the satisfaction of
pursuing and exercising its highest functions.[3]
II
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE
AT CONCORD, ON THE SECOND CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE INCORPORATION OF
THE TOWN, SEPTEMBER 12, 1835
Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Merriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm
Saying, ‘’Tis mine, my children’s and my name’s.’
Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs.
* * * * *
I will have never a noble,
No lineage counted great;
Fishers and choppers and ploughmen
Shall constitute a state.
Lo now! if these poor men
Can govern the land and sea
And make just laws below the sun,
As planets faithful be.
I cause from every creature
His proper good to flow:
As much as he is and doeth,
So much he shall bestow.
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE
FELLOW CITIZENS: The town of Concord begins, this day, the third century
of its history. By a common consent, the people of New England, for a few
years past, as the second centennial anniversary of each of its early
settlements arrived, have seen fit to observe the day. You have thought
it becoming to commemorate the planting of the first inland town. The
sentiment is just, and the practice is wise. Our ears shall not be deaf
to the voice of time. We will review the deeds of our fathers, and pass
that just verdict on them we expect from posterity on our own.
And yet, in the eternity of Nature, how recent our antiquities appear!
The imagination is impatient of a cycle so short. Who can tell how many
thousand years, every day, the clouds have shaded these fields with their
purple awning? The river, by whose banks most of us were born, every
winter, for ages, has spread its crust of ice over the great meadows
which, in ages, it had formed. But the little society of men who now, for
a few years, fish in this river, plough the fields it washes, mow the
grass and reap the corn, shortly shall hurry from its banks as did their
forefathers. “Man’s life,” said the Witan to the Saxon king, “is the
sparrow that enters at a window, flutters round the house, and flies out
at another, and none knoweth whence he came, or whither he goes.”[4] The
more reason that we should give to our being what permanence we can;—that
we should recall the Past, and expect the Future.
Yet the race survives whilst the individual dies. In the country, without
any interference of the law, the agricultural life favors the permanence
of families. Here are still around me the lineal descendants of the first
settlers of this town. Here is Blood, Flint, Willard, Meriam, Wood,
Hosmer, Barrett, Wheeler, Jones, Brown, Buttrick, Brooks, Stow, Hoar,
Heywood, Hunt, Miles,—the names of the inhabitants for the first thirty
years; and the family is in many cases represented, when the name is
not. If the name of Bulkeley is wanting, the honor you have done me this
day, in making me your organ, testifies your persevering kindness to his
blood.[5]
I shall not be expected, on this occasion, to repeat the details of
that oppression which drove our fathers out hither. Yet the town of
Concord was settled by a party of non-conformists, immediately from
Great Britain. The best friend the Massachusetts colony had, though
much against his will, was Archbishop Laud in England. In consequence
of his famous proclamation setting up certain novelties in the rites
of public worship, fifty godly ministers were suspended for contumacy,
in the course of two years and a half. Hindered from speaking, some of
these dared to print the reasons of their dissent, and were punished
with imprisonment or mutilation.[6] This severity brought some of the
best men in England to overcome that natural repugnance to emigration
which holds the serious and moderate of every nation to their own soil.
Among the silenced clergymen was a distinguished minister of Woodhill, in
Bedfordshire, Rev. Peter Bulkeley, descended from a noble family, honored
for his own virtues, his learning and gifts as a preacher, and adding to
his influence the weight of a large estate.[7] Persecution readily knits
friendship between its victims. Mr. Bulkeley, having turned his estate
into money and set his face towards New England, was easily able to
persuade a good number of planters to join him. They arrived in Boston in
1634.[8] Probably there had been a previous correspondence with Governor
Winthrop, and an agreement that they should settle at Musketaquid. With
them joined Mr. Simon Willard, a merchant from Kent in England. They
petitioned the General Court for a grant of a township, and on the 2d
of September, 1635, corresponding in New Style to 12th September, two
hundred years ago this day, leave to begin a plantation at Musketaquid
was given to Peter Bulkeley, Simon Willard, and about twelve families
more.[9] A month later, Rev. John Jones and a large number of settlers
destined for the new town arrived in Boston.[10]
The grant of the General Court was but a preliminary step. The green
meadows of Musketaquid or _Grassy Brook_ were far up in the woods,
not to be reached without a painful and dangerous journey through an
uninterrupted wilderness. They could cross the Massachusetts or Charles
River, by the ferry at Newtown; they could go up the river as far as
Watertown. But the Indian paths leading up and down the country were a
foot broad. They must then plunge into the thicket, and with their axes
cut a road for their teams, with their women and children and their
household stuff, forced to make long circuits too, to avoid hills and
swamps. Edward Johnson of Woburn has described in an affecting narrative
their labors by the way. “Sometimes passing through thickets where their
hands are forced to make way for their bodies’ passage, and their feet
clambering over the crossed trees, which when they missed, they sunk
into an uncertain bottom in water, and wade up to their knees, tumbling
sometimes higher, sometimes lower. At the end of this, they meet a
scorching plain, yet not so plain but that the ragged bushes scratch
their legs foully, even to wearing their stockings to their bare skin in
two or three hours. Some of them, having no leggins, have had the blood
trickle down at every step. And in time of summer, the sun casts such a
reflecting heat from the sweet fern, whose scent is very strong, that
some nearly fainted.”[11] They slept on the rocks, wherever the night
found them. Much time was lost in travelling they knew not whither, when
the sun was hidden by clouds; for “their compass miscarried in crowding
through the bushes,” and the Indian paths, once lost, they did not easily
find.
Johnson, relating undoubtedly what he had himself heard from the
pilgrims, intimates that they consumed many days in exploring the
country, to select the best place for the town. Their first temporary
accommodation was rude enough. “After they have found a place of abode,
they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter, under a
hillside, and casting the soil aloft upon timbers, they make a fire
against the earth, at the highest side. And thus these poor servants
of Christ provide shelter for themselves, their wives and little ones,
keeping off the short showers from their lodgings, but the long rains
penetrate through, to their great disturbance in the night season. Yet in
these poor wigwams they sing psalms, pray and praise their God, till they
can provide them houses, which they could not ordinarily, till the earth,
by the Lord’s blessing, brought forth bread to feed them. This they
attain with sore travail, every one that can lift a hoe to strike into
the earth standing stoutly to his labors, and tearing up the roots and
bushes from the ground, which, the first year, yielded them a lean crop,
till the sod of the earth was rotten, and therefore they were forced to
cut their bread very thin for a long season. But the Lord is pleased to
provide for them great store of fish in the spring-time, and especially,
alewives, about the bigness of a herring.”[12] These served them also
for manure. For flesh, they looked not for any, in those times, unless
they could barter with the Indians for venison and raccoons. “Indian
corn, even the coarsest, made as pleasant meal as rice.”[13] All kinds of
garden fruits grew well, “and let no man,” writes our pious chronicler,
in another place, “make a jest of pumpkins, for with this fruit the
Lord was pleased to feed his people until their corn and cattle were
increased.”[14]
The great cost of cattle, and the sickening of their cattle upon such
wild fodder as was never cut before; the loss of their sheep and swine
by wolves; the sufferings of the people in the great snows and cold
soon following; and the fear of the Pequots; are the other disasters
enumerated by the historian.
The hardships of the journey and of the first encampment are certainly
related by their contemporary with some air of romance, yet they can
scarcely be exaggerated. A march of a number of families with their
stuff, through twenty miles of unknown forest, from a little rising town
that had not much to spare, to an Indian town in the wilderness that had
nothing, must be laborious to all, and for those who were new to the
country and bred in softness, a formidable adventure. But the pilgrims
had the preparation of an armed mind, better than any hardihood of body.
And the rough welcome which the new land gave them was a fit introduction
to the life they must lead in it.
But what was their reception at Musketaquid? This was an old village
of the Massachusetts Indians. Tahattawan, the Sachem, with Waban his
son-in-law, lived near Nashawtuck, now Lee’s Hill.[15] Their tribe,
once numerous, the epidemic had reduced. Here they planted, hunted and
fished. The moose was still trotting in the country, and of his sinews
they made their bowstring. Of the pith elder, that still grows beside
our brooks, they made their arrow. Of the Indian hemp they spun their
nets and lines for summer angling, and, in winter, they sat around holes
in the ice, catching salmon, pickerel, breams and perch, with which our
river abounded.[16] Their physical powers, as our fathers found them,
and before yet the English alcohol had proved more fatal to them than
the English sword, astonished the white men.[17] Their sight was so
excellent, that, standing on the seashore, they often told of the coming
of a ship at sea, sooner by one hour, yea, two hours’ sail, than any
Englishman that stood by, on purpose to look out.[18] Roger Williams
affirms that he has known them run between eighty and a hundred miles in
a summer’s day, and back again within two days. A little pounded parched
corn or no-cake sufficed them on the march. To his bodily perfection, the
wild man added some noble traits of character. He was open as a child to
kindness and justice. Many instances of his humanity were known to the
Englishmen who suffered in the woods from sickness or cold. “When you
came over the morning waters,” said one of the Sachems, “we took you into
our arms. We fed you with our best meat. Never went white man cold and
hungry from Indian wigwam.”
The faithful dealing and brave good will, which, during the life of
the friendly Massasoit, they uniformly experienced at Plymouth and at
Boston, went to their hearts. So that the peace was made, and the ear of
the savage already secured, before the pilgrims arrived at his seat of
Musketaquid, to treat with him for his lands.
It is said that the covenant made with the Indians, by Mr. Bulkeley and
Major Willard, was made under a great oak, formerly standing near the
site of the Middlesex Hotel.[19] Our Records affirm that Squaw Sachem,
Tahattawan, and Nimrod did sell a tract of six miles square to the
English, receiving for the same, some fathoms of Wampumpeag, hatchets,
hoes, knives, cotton cloth and shirts. Wibbacowet, the husband of Squaw
Sachem, received a suit of cloth, a hat, a white linen band, shoes,
stockings and a greatcoat; and, in conclusion, the said Indians declared
themselves satisfied, and told the Englishmen they were welcome. And
after the bargain was concluded, Mr. Simon Willard, pointing to the four
corners of the world, declared that they had bought three miles from that
place, east, west, north and south.[20]
The Puritans, to keep the remembrance of their unity one with another,
and of their peaceful compact with the Indians, named their forest
settlement CONCORD. They proceeded to build, under the shelter of the
hill that extends for a mile along the north side of the Boston road,
their first dwellings. The labors of a new plantation were paid by its
excitements. I seem to see them, with their pious pastor, addressing
themselves to the work of clearing the land. Natives of another
hemisphere, they beheld, with curiosity, all the pleasing features of the
American forest. The landscape before them was fair, if it was strange
and rude. The little flower which at this season stars our woods and
roadsides with its profuse blooms, might attract even eyes as stern as
theirs with its humble beauty. The useful pine lifted its cones into
the frosty air. The maple, which is already making the forest gay with
its orange hues, reddened over those houseless men. The majestic summits
of Wachusett and Monadnoc towering in the horizon, invited the steps of
adventure westward.
As the season grew later, they felt its inconveniences. “Many were forced
to go barefoot and bareleg, and some in time of frost and snow, yet were
they more healthy than now they are.”[21] The land was low but healthy;
and if, in common with all the settlements, they found the air of America
very cold, they might say with Higginson, after his description of the
other elements, that “New England may boast of the element of fire, more
than all the rest; for all Europe is not able to afford to make so great
fires as New England. A poor servant, that is to possess but fifty acres,
may afford to give more wood for fire as good as the world yields, than
many noblemen in England.”[22] Many were their wants, but more their
privileges. The light struggled in through windows of oiled paper,[23]
but they read the word of God by it. They were fain to make use of their
knees for a table, but their limbs were their own. Hard labor and spare
diet they had, and off wooden trenchers, but they had peace and freedom,
and the wailing of the tempest in the woods sounded kindlier in their ear
than the smooth voice of the prelates, at home, in England. “There is
no people,” said their pastor to his little flock of exiles, “but will
strive to excel in something. What can we excel in, if not in holiness?
If we look to number, we are the fewest; if to strength, we are the
weakest; if to wealth and riches, we are the poorest of all the people of
God through the whole world. We cannot excel nor so much as equal other
people in these things; and if we come short in grace and holiness too,
we are the most despicable people under heaven. Strive we, therefore,
herein to excel, and suffer not this crown to be taken away from us.”[24]
The sermon fell into good and tender hearts; the people conspired with
their teacher. Their religion was sweetness and peace amidst toil and
tears. And, as we are informed, “the edge of their appetite was greater
to spiritual duties at their first coming, in time of wants, than
afterwards.”
The original Town Records, for the first thirty years, are lost. We
have records of marriages and deaths, beginning nineteen years after
the settlement; and copies of some of the doings of the town in regard
to territory, of the same date. But the original distribution of the
land, or an account of the principles on which it was divided, are not
preserved. Agreeably to the custom of the times, a large portion was
reserved to the public, and it appears from a petition of some newcomers,
in 1643, that a part had been divided among the first settlers without
price, on the single condition of improving it.[25] Other portions seem
to have been successively divided off and granted to individuals, at the
rate of sixpence or a shilling an acre. But, in the first years, the land
would not pay the necessary public charges, and they seem to have fallen
heavily on the few wealthy planters. Mr. Bulkeley, by his generosity,
spent his estate, and, doubtless in consideration of his charges, the
General Court, in 1639, granted him 300 acres towards Cambridge; and
to Mr. Spencer, probably for the like reason, 300 acres by the Alewife
River. In 1638, 1200 acres were granted to Governor Winthrop, and 1000 to
Thomas Dudley, of the lands adjacent to the town, and Governor Winthrop
selected as a building spot the land near the house of Captain Humphrey
Hunt.[26] The first record now remaining is that of a reservation of
land for the minister, and the appropriation of new lands as commons or
pastures to some poor men. At the same date, in 1654, the town having
divided itself into three districts, called the North, South and East
quarters, ordered, “that the North quarter are to keep and maintain all
their highways and bridges over the great river, in their quarter, and,
in respect of the greatness of their charge thereabout, and in regard of
the ease of the East quarter above the rest, in their highways, they are
to allow the North quarter £3.”[27]
Fellow citizens, this first recorded political act of our fathers,
this tax assessed on its inhabitants by a town, is the most important
event in their civil history, implying, as it does, the exercise of
a sovereign power, and connected with all the immunities and powers
of a corporate town in Massachusetts. The greater speed and success
that distinguish the planting of the human race in this country, over
all other plantations in history, owe themselves mainly to the new
subdivisions of the State into small corporations of land and power. It
is vain to look for the inventor. No man made them. Each of the parts
of that perfect structure grew out of the necessities of an instant
occasion. The germ was formed in England. The charter gave to the freemen
of the Company of Massachusetts Bay the election of the Governor and
Council of Assistants. It moreover gave them the power of prescribing
the manner in which freemen should be elected; and ordered that all
fundamental laws should be enacted by the freemen of the colony. But
the Company removed to New England; more than one hundred freemen were
admitted the first year, and it was found inconvenient to assemble
them all.[28] And when, presently, the design of the colony began to
fulfil itself, by the settlement of new plantations in the vicinity of
Boston, and parties, with grants of land, straggled into the country to
truck with the Indians and to clear the land for their own benefit, the
Governor and freemen in Boston found it neither desirable nor possible
to control the trade and practices of these farmers. What could the body
of freemen, meeting four times a year, at Boston, do for the daily wants
of the planters at Musketaquid? The wolf was to be killed; the Indian
to be watched and resisted; wells to be dug; the forest to be felled;
pastures to be cleared; corn to be raised; roads to be cut; town and
farm lines to be run. These things must be done, govern who might. The
nature of man and his condition in the world, for the first time within
the period of certain history, controlled the formation of the State.
The necessity of the colonists wrote the law. Their wants, their poverty,
their manifest convenience made them bold to ask of the Governor and
of the General Court, immunities, and, to certain purposes, sovereign
powers. The townsmen’s words were heard and weighed, for all knew that
it was a petitioner that could not be slighted; it was the river, or
the winter, or famine, or the Pequots, that spoke through them to the
Governor and Council of Massachusetts Bay. Instructed by necessity, each
little company organized itself after the pattern of the larger town,
by appointing its constable, and other petty half-military officers.
As early as 1633,[29] the office of townsman or _selectman_ appears,
who seems first to have been appointed by the General Court, as here,
at Concord, in 1639. In 1635, the Court say, “whereas particular towns
have many things which concern only themselves, it is Ordered, that the
freemen of every town shall have power to dispose of their own lands,
and woods, and choose their own particular officers.”[30] This pointed
chiefly at the office of constable, but they soon chose their own
selectmen, and very early assessed taxes; a power at first resisted,[31]
but speedily confirmed to them.
Meantime, to this paramount necessity, a milder and more pleasing
influence was joined. I esteem it the happiness of this country that its
settlers, whilst they were exploring their granted and natural rights
and determining the power of the magistrate, were united by personal
affection. Members of a church before whose searching covenant all rank
was abolished, they stood in awe of each other, as religious men. They
bore to John Winthrop, the Governor, a grave but hearty kindness. For
the first time, men examined the powers of the chief whom they loved
and revered. For the first time, the ideal social compact was real. The
bands of love and reverence held fast the little state, whilst they
untied the great cords of authority to examine their soundness and learn
on what wheels they ran. They were to settle the internal constitution
of the towns, and, at the same time, their power in the commonwealth.
The Governor conspires with them in limiting his claims to their
obedience, and values much more their love than his chartered authority.
The disputes between that forbearing man and the deputies are like the
quarrels of girls, so much do they turn upon complaints of unkindness,
and end in such loving reconciliations. It was on doubts concerning
their own power, that, in 1634, a committee repaired to him for counsel,
and he advised, seeing the freemen were grown so numerous, to send
deputies from every town once in a year to revise the laws and to assess
all monies.[32] And the General Court, thus constituted, only needed to
go into separate session from the Council, as they did in 1644,[33] to
become essentially the same assembly they are this day.
By this course of events, Concord and the other plantations found
themselves separate and independent of Boston, with certain rights of
their own, which, what they were, time alone could fully determine;
enjoying, at the same time, a strict and loving fellowship with Boston,
and sure of advice and aid, on every emergency. Their powers were
speedily settled by obvious convenience, and the towns learned to
exercise a sovereignty in the laying of taxes; in the choice of their
deputy to the house of representatives; in the disposal of the town
lands; in the care of public worship, the school and the poor; and, what
seemed of at least equal importance, to exercise the right of expressing
an opinion on every question before the country. In a town-meeting,
the great secret of political science was uncovered, and the problem
solved, how to give every individual his fair weight in the government,
without any disorder from numbers. In a town-meeting, the roots of
society were reached. Here the rich gave counsel, but the poor also; and
moreover, the just and the unjust. He is ill informed who expects, on
running down the Town Records for two hundred years, to find a church
of saints, a metropolis of patriots, enacting wholesome and creditable
laws. The constitution of the towns forbid it. In this open democracy,
every opinion had utterance; every objection, every fact, every acre
of land, every bushel of rye, its entire weight. The moderator was the
passive mouth-piece, and the vote of the town, like the vane on the
turret overhead, free for every wind to turn, and always turned by the
last and strongest breath. In these assemblies, the public weal, the
call of interest, duty, religion, were heard; and every local feeling,
every private grudge, every suggestion of petulance and ignorance, were
not less faithfully produced. Wrath and love came up to town-meeting
in company. By the law of 1641, every man—freeman or not—inhabitant or
not—might introduce any business into a public meeting. Not a complaint
occurs in all the volumes of our Records, of any inhabitant being
hindered from speaking, or suffering from any violence or usurpation
of any class. The negative ballot of a ten-shilling freeholder was
as fatal as that of the honored owner of Blood’s Farms or Willard’s
Purchase. A man felt himself at liberty to exhibit, at town-meeting,
feelings and actions that he would have been ashamed of anywhere but
amongst his neighbors. Individual protests are frequent. Peter Wright
[1705] desired his dissent might be recorded from the town’s grant to
John Shepard.[34] In 1795, several town-meetings are called, upon the
compensation to be made to a few proprietors for land taken in making a
bridle-road; and one of them demanding large damages, many offers were
made him in town-meeting, and refused; “which the town thought very
unreasonable.” The matters there debated are such as to invite very
small considerations. The ill-spelled pages of the Town Records contain
the result. I shall be excused for confessing that I have set a value
upon any symptom of meanness and private pique which I have met with in
these antique books, as proof that justice was done; that if the results
of our history are approved as wise and good, it was yet a free strife;
if the good counsel prevailed, the sneaking counsel did not fail to be
suggested; freedom and virtue, if they triumphed, triumphed in a fair
field. And so be it an everlasting testimony for them, and so much ground
of assurance of man’s capacity for self-government.
It is the consequence of this institution that not a school-house, a
public pew, a bridge, a pound, a mill-dam, hath been set up, or pulled
down, or altered, or bought, or sold, without the whole population of
this town having a voice in the affair. A general contentment is the
result. And the people truly feel that they are lords of the soil. In
every winding road, in every stone fence, in the smokes of the poor-house
chimney, in the clock on the church, they read their own power, and
consider, at leisure, the wisdom and error of their judgments.
The British government has recently presented to the several public
libraries of this country, copies of the splendid edition of the Domesday
Book, and other ancient public records of England. I cannot but think
that it would be a suitable acknowledgment of this national munificence,
if the records of one of our towns,—of this town, for example,—should
be printed, and presented to the governments of Europe; to the English
nation, as a thank-offering, and as a certificate of the progress of
the Saxon race; to the Continental nations as a lesson of humanity and
love. Tell them, the Union has twenty-four States, and Massachusetts is
one. Tell them, Massachusetts has three hundred towns, and Concord is
one; that in Concord are five hundred ratable polls, and every one has an
equal vote.
About ten years after the planting of Concord, efforts began to be made
to civilize the Indians, and “to win them to the knowledge of the true
God.” This indeed, in so many words, is expressed in the charter of the
colony as one of its ends; and this design is named first in the printed
“Considerations,”[35] that inclined Hampden, and determined Winthrop
and his friends, to come hither. The interest of the Puritans in the
natives was heightened by a suspicion at that time prevailing that these
were the lost ten tribes of Israel. The man of the woods might well draw
on himself the compassion of the planters. His erect and perfect form,
though disclosing some irregular virtues, was found joined to a dwindled
soul. Master of all sorts of wood-craft, he seemed a part of the forest
and the lake, and the secret of his amazing skill seemed to be that he
partook of the nature and fierce instincts of the beasts he slew. Those
who dwelled by ponds and rivers had some tincture of civility, but the
hunters of the tribe were found intractable at catechism. Thomas Hooker
anticipated the opinion of Humboldt, and called them “the ruins of
mankind.”
Early efforts were made to instruct them, in which Mr. Bulkeley, Mr.
Flint, and Captain Willard, took an active part. In 1644, Squaw Sachem,
the widow of Nanepashemet, the great Sachem of Concord and Mystic,
with two sachems of Wachusett, made a formal submission to the English
government, and intimated their desire, “as opportunity served, and the
English lived among them, to learn to read God’s word, and know God
aright;” and the General Court acted on their request.[36] John Eliot,
in October, 1646, preached his first sermon in the Indian language at
Noonantum; Waban, Tahattawan, and their sannaps, going thither from
Concord to hear him. There under the rubbish and ruins of barbarous life,
the human heart heard the voice of love, and awoke as from a sleep. The
questions which the Indians put betray their reason and their ignorance.
“Can Jesus Christ understand prayers in the Indian language?” “If a man
be wise, and his sachem weak, must he obey him?” At a meeting which Eliot
gave to the squaws apart, the wife of Wampooas propounded the question,
“Whether do I pray when my husband prays, if I speak nothing as he doth,
yet if I like what he saith?”—“which questions were accounted of by some,
as part of the whitenings of the harvest toward.”[37] Tahattawan, our
Concord sachem, called his Indians together, and bid them not oppose
the courses which the English were taking for their good; for, said he,
all the time you have lived after the Indian fashion, under the power
of the higher sachems, what did they care for you? They took away your
skins, your kettles and your wampum, at their own pleasure, and this was
all they regarded. But you may see the English mind no such things, but
only seek your welfare, and instead of taking away, are ready to give
to you. Tahattawan and his son-in-law Waban, besought Eliot to come and
preach to them at Concord, and here they entered, by his assistance, into
an agreement to twenty-nine rules, all breathing a desire to conform
themselves to English customs.[38] They requested to have a town given
them within the bounds of Concord, near unto the English. When this
question was propounded by Tahattawan, he was asked, why he desired a
town so near, when there was more room for them up in the country? The
sachem replied that he knew if the Indians dwelt far from the English,
they would not so much care to pray, nor could they be so ready to hear
the word of God, but would be, all one, Indians still; but dwelling near
the English, he hoped it might be otherwise with them then. We, who
see in the squalid remnants of the twenty tribes of Massachusetts, the
final failure of this benevolent enterprise, can hardly learn without
emotion the earnestness with which the most sensible individuals of the
copper race held on to the new hope they had conceived, of being elevated
to equality with their civilized brother. It is piteous to see their
self-distrust in their request to remain near the English, and their
unanimous entreaty to Captain Willard, to be their Recorder, being very
solicitous that what they did agree upon might be faithfully kept without
alteration. It was remarkable that the preaching was not wholly new to
them. “Their forefathers,” the Indians told Eliot, “did know God, but
after this, they fell into a deep sleep, and when they did awake, they
quite forgot him.”[39]
At the instance of Eliot, in 1651, their desire was granted by the
General Court, and Nashobah, lying near Nagog Pond, now partly in
Littleton, partly in Acton, became an Indian town, where a Christian
worship was established under an Indian ruler and teacher. Wilson relates
that, at their meetings, “the Indians sung a psalm, made Indian by Eliot,
in one of our ordinary English tunes, melodiously.”[40] Such was, for
half a century, the success of the general enterprise, that, in 1676,
there were five hundred and sixty-seven praying Indians, and in 1689,
twenty-four Indian preachers, and eighteen assemblies.
Meantime, Concord increased in territory and population. The lands were
divided; highways were cut from farm to farm, and from this town to
Boston. A military company had been organized in 1636. The Pequots, the
terror of the farmer, were exterminated in 1637. Captain Underhill, in
1638, declared, that “the new plantations of Dedham and Concord do afford
large accommodation, and will contain abundance of people.”[41] In 1639,
our first selectmen, Mr. Flint, Lieutenant Willard, and Richard Griffin
were appointed. And in 1640, when the colony rate was £1200, Concord
was assessed £50.[42] The country already began to yield more than was
consumed by the inhabitants.[43] The very great immigration from England
made the lands more valuable every year, and supplied a market for the
produce. In 1643, the colony was so numerous that it became expedient to
divide it into four counties, Concord being included in Middlesex.[44] In
1644, the town contained sixty families.
But, in 1640, all immigration ceased, and the country produce and
farm-stock depreciated.[45] Other difficulties accrued. The fish, which
had been the abundant manure of the settlers, was found to injure the
land.[46] The river, at this period, seems to have caused some distress
now by its overflow, now by its drought.[47] A cold and wet summer
blighted the corn; enormous flocks of pigeons beat down and eat up all
sorts of English grain; and the crops suffered much from mice.[48] New
plantations and better land had been opened, far and near; and whilst
many of the colonists at Boston thought to remove, or did remove to
England, the Concord people became uneasy, and looked around for new
seats. In 1643, one seventh or one eighth part of the inhabitants went to
Connecticut with Reverend Mr. Jones, and settled Fairfield. Weakened by
this loss, the people begged to be released from a part of their rates,
to which the General Court consented. Mr. Bulkeley dissuaded his people
from removing, and admonished them to increase their faith with their
griefs. Even this check which befell them acquaints us with the rapidity
of their growth, for the good man, in dealing with his people, taxes them
with luxury. “We pretended to come hither,” he says, “for ordinances; but
now ordinances are light matters with us; we are turned after the prey.
We have among us excess and pride of life; pride in apparel, daintiness
in diet, and that in those who, in times past, would have been satisfied
with bread. _This is the sin of the lowest of the people._”[49] Better
evidence could not be desired of the rapid growth of the settlement.
The check was but momentary. The earth teemed with fruits. The people
on the bay built ships, and found the way to the West Indies, with
pipe-staves, lumber and fish; and the country people speedily learned
to supply themselves with sugar, tea and molasses. The college had been
already gathered in 1638. Now the school-house went up. The General
Court, in 1647, “to the end that learning may not be buried in the
graves of our forefathers, Ordered, that every township, after the Lord
had increased them to the number of fifty house-holders, shall appoint
one to teach all children to write and read; and where any town shall
increase to the number of one hundred families, they shall set up a
Grammar school, the masters thereof being able to instruct youth so
far as they may be fitted for the University.” With these requirements
Concord not only complied, but, in 1653, subscribed a sum for several
years to the support of Harvard College.[50]
But a new and alarming public distress retarded the growth of this, as
of the sister towns, during more than twenty years from 1654 to 1676.
In 1654, the four united New England Colonies agreed to raise 270 foot
and 40 horse, to reduce Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics, and appointed
Major Simon Willard, of this town, to the command.[51] This war seems
to have been pressed by three of the colonies, and reluctantly entered
by Massachusetts. Accordingly, Major Willard did the least he could,
and incurred the censure of the Commissioners, who write to their
“loving friend Major Willard,” “that they leave to his consideration the
inconveniences arising from his non-attendance to his commission.”[52]
This expedition was but the introduction of the war with King Philip.
In 1670, the Wampanoags began to grind their hatchets, and mend their
guns, and insult the English. Philip surrendered seventy guns to the
Commissioners in Taunton Meeting-house,[53] but revenged his humiliation
a few years after, by carrying fire and the tomahawk into the English
villages. From Narragansett to the Connecticut River, the scene of war
was shifted as fast as these red hunters could traverse the forest.
Concord was a military post. The inactivity of Major Willard, in
Ninigret’s war, had lost him no confidence. He marched from Concord to
Brookfield, in season to save the people whose houses had been burned,
and who had taken shelter in a fortified house.[54] But he fought with
disadvantage against an enemy who must be hunted before every battle.
Some flourishing towns were burned. John Monoco, a formidable savage,
boasted that “he had burned Medfield and Lancaster, and would burn
Groton, Concord, Watertown and Boston;” adding, “what me will, me do.” He
did burn Groton, but before he had executed the remainder of his threat
he was hanged, in Boston, in September, 1676.[55]
A still more formidable enemy was removed, in the same year, by the
capture of Canonchet, the faithful ally of Philip, who was soon
afterwards shot at Stonington. He stoutly declared to the Commissioners
that “he would not deliver up a Wampanoag, nor the paring of a
Wampanoag’s nail,” and when he was told that his sentence was death, he
said “he liked it well that he was to die before his heart was soft, or
he had spoken anything unworthy of himself.”[56]
We know beforehand who must conquer in that unequal struggle. The red
man may destroy here and there a straggler, as a wild beast may; he may
fire a farmhouse, or a village; but the association of the white men and
their arts of war give them an overwhelming advantage, and in the first
blast of their trumpet we already hear the flourish of victory. I confess
what chiefly interests me, in the annals of that war, is the grandeur of
spirit exhibited by a few of the Indian chiefs. A nameless Wampanoag who
was put to death by the Mohicans, after cruel tortures, was asked by his
butchers, during the torture, how he liked the war?—he said, “he found it
as sweet as sugar was to Englishmen.”[57]
The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is
in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion.
The virtues of patriotism and of prodigious courage and address were
exhibited on both sides, and, in many instances, by women. The historian
of Concord has preserved an instance of the resolution of one of the
daughters of the town. Two young farmers, Abraham and Isaac Shepherd,
had set their sister Mary, a girl of fifteen years, to watch whilst
they threshed grain in the barn. The Indians stole upon her before she
was aware, and her brothers were slain. She was carried captive into
the Indian country, but, at night, whilst her captors were asleep, she
plucked a saddle from under the head of one of them, took a horse they
had stolen from Lancaster, and having girt the saddle on, she mounted,
swam across the Nashua River, and rode through the forest to her home.[58]
With the tragical end of Philip, the war ended. Beleaguered in his own
country, his corn cut down, his piles of meal and other provision wasted
by the English, it was only a great thaw in January, that, melting the
snow and opening the earth, enabled his poor followers to come at the
ground-nuts, else they had starved. Hunted by Captain Church, he fled
from one swamp to another; his brother, his uncle, his sister, and his
beloved squaw being taken or slain, he was at last shot down by an Indian
deserter, as he fled alone in the dark of the morning, not far from his
own fort.[59]
Concord suffered little from the war. This is to be attributed no doubt,
in part, to the fact that troops were generally quartered here, and that
it was the residence of many noted soldiers. Tradition finds another
cause in the sanctity of its minister. The elder Bulkeley was gone. In
1659,[60] his bones were laid at rest in the forest. But the mantle of
his piety and of the people’s affection fell upon his son Edward,[61] the
fame of whose prayers, it is said, once saved Concord from an attack of
the Indian.[62] A great defence undoubtedly was the village of Praying
Indians, until this settlement fell a victim to the envenomed prejudice
against their countrymen. The worst feature in the history of those
years, is, that no man spake for the Indian. When the Dutch, or the
French, or the English royalist disagreed with the Colony, there was
always found a Dutch, or French, or tory party,—an earnest minority,—to
keep things from extremity. But the Indian seemed to inspire such a
feeling as the wild beast inspires in the people near his den. It is the
misfortune of Concord to have permitted a disgraceful outrage upon the
friendly Indians settled within its limits, in February, 1676, which
ended in their forcible expulsion from the town.[63]
This painful incident is but too just an example of the measure which the
Indians have generally received from the whites. For them the heart of
charity, of humanity, was stone. After Philip’s death, their strength was
irrecoverably broken. They never more disturbed the interior settlements,
and a few vagrant families, that are now pensioners on the bounty of
Massachusetts, are all that is left of the twenty tribes.
“Alas! for them—their day is o’er,
Their fires are out from hill and shore,
No more for them the wild deer bounds,
The plough is on their hunting grounds;
The pale man’s axe rings in their woods,
The pale man’s sail skims o’er their floods,
Their pleasant springs are dry.”[64]
I turn gladly to the progress of our civil history. Before 1666, 15,000
acres had been added by grants of the General Court to the original
territory of the town,[65] so that Concord then included the greater part
of the towns of Bedford, Acton, Lincoln and Carlisle.
In the great growth of the country, Concord participated, as is manifest
from its increasing polls and increased rates. Randolph at this period
writes to the English government, concerning the country towns; “The
farmers are numerous and wealthy, live in good houses; are given to
hospitality; and make good advantage by their corn, cattle, poultry,
butter and cheese.”[66] Edward Bulkeley was the pastor, until his death,
in 1696. His youngest brother, Peter, was deputy from Concord, and was
chosen speaker of the house of deputies in 1676. The following year, he
was sent to England, with Mr. Stoughton, as agent for the Colony; and
on his return, in 1685, was a royal councillor. But I am sorry to find
that the servile Randolph speaks of him with marked respect.[67] It would
seem that his visit to England had made him a courtier. In 1689, Concord
partook of the general indignation of the province against Andros. A
company marched to the capital under Lieutenant Heald, forming a part
of that body concerning which we are informed, “the country people came
armed into Boston, on the afternoon (of Thursday, 18th April) in such
rage and heat, as made us all tremble to think what would follow; for
nothing would satisfy them but that the governor must be bound in chains
or cords, and put in a more secure place, and that they would see done
before they went away; and to satisfy them he was guarded by them to
the fort.”[68] But the Town Records of that day confine themselves to
descriptions of lands, and to conferences with the neighboring towns to
run boundary lines. In 1699, so broad was their territory, I find the
selectmen running the lines with Chelmsford, Cambridge and Watertown.[69]
Some interesting peculiarities in the manners and customs of the time
appear in the town’s books. Proposals of marriage were made by the
parents of the parties, and minutes of such private agreements sometimes
entered on the clerk’s records.[70] The public charity seems to have
been bestowed in a manner now obsolete. The town lends its commons as
pastures, to poor men; and “being informed of the great present want
of Thomas Pellit, gave order to Stephen Hosmer to deliver a town cow,
of a black color, with a white face, unto said Pellit, for his present
supply.”[71]
From the beginning to the middle of the eighteenth century, our records
indicate no interruption of the tranquillity of the inhabitants, either
in church or in civil affairs. After the death of Rev. Mr. Estabrook, in
1711, it was propounded at the town-meeting, “whether one of the three
gentlemen lately improved here in preaching, namely, Mr. John Whiting,
Mr. Holyoke and Mr. Prescott, shall be now chosen in the work of the
ministry? Voted affirmatively.”[72] Mr. Whiting, who was chosen, was, we
are told in his epitaph, “a universal lover of mankind.” The charges of
education and of legislation, at this period, seem to have afflicted the
town; for they vote to petition the General Court to be eased of the law
relating to providing a schoolmaster; happily, the Court refused; and
in 1712, the selectmen agreed with Captain James Minott, “for his son
Timothy to keep the school at the school-house for the town of Concord,
for half a year beginning 2d June; and if any scholar shall come, within
the said time, for larning exceeding his son’s ability, the said Captain
doth agree to instruct them himself in the tongues, till the above said
time be fulfilled; for which service, the town is to pay Captain Minott
ten pounds.”[73] Captain Minott seems to have served our prudent fathers
in the double capacity of teacher and representative. It is an article
in the selectmen’s warrant for the town-meeting, “to see if the town
will lay in for a representative not exceeding four pounds.” Captain
Minott was chosen, and after the General Court was adjourned received of
the town for his services, an allowance of three shillings per day. The
country was not yet so thickly settled but that the inhabitants suffered
from wolves and wild-cats, which infested the woods; since bounties of
twenty shillings are given as late as 1735, to Indians and whites, for
the heads of these animals, after the constable has cut off the ears.[74]
Mr. Whiting was succeeded in the pastoral office by Rev. Daniel Bliss,
in 1738. Soon after his ordination, the town seems to have been divided
by ecclesiastical discords. In 1741, the celebrated Whitfield preached
here, in the open air, to a great congregation.[75] Mr. Bliss heard that
great orator with delight, and by his earnest sympathy with him, in
opinion and practice, gave offence to a part of his people. Party and
mutual councils were called, but no grave charge was made good against
him. I find, in the Church Records, the charges preferred against him,
his answer thereto, and the result of the Council. The charges seem to
have been made by the lovers of order and moderation against Mr. Bliss,
as a favorer of religious excitements. His answer to one of the counts
breathes such true piety that I cannot forbear to quote it. The ninth
allegation is “That in praying for himself, in a church-meeting, in
December last, he said, ‘he was a poor vile worm of the dust, that was
allowed as Mediator between God and this people.’” To this Mr. Bliss
replied, “In the prayer you speak of, Jesus Christ was acknowledged
as the only Mediator between God and man; at which time, I was filled
with wonder, that such a sinful and worthless worm as I am, was allowed
to represent Christ, in any manner, even so far as to be bringing the
petitions and thank-offerings of the people unto God, and God’s will and
truths to the people; and used the word Mediator in some differing light
from that you have given it; but I confess I was soon uneasy that I had
used the word, lest some would put a wrong meaning thereupon.”[76] The
Council admonished Mr. Bliss of some improprieties of expression, but
bore witness to his purity and fidelity in his office. In 1764, Whitfield
preached again at Concord, on Sunday afternoon; Mr. Bliss preached in
the morning, and the Concord people thought their minister gave them the
better sermon of the two. It was also his last.[77]
The planting of the colony was the effect of religious principle. The
Revolution was the fruit of another principle,—the devouring thirst
for justice. From the appearance of the article in the Selectmen’s
warrant, in 1765, “to see if the town will give the Representative any
instructions about any important affair to be transacted by the General
Court, concerning the Stamp Act,”[78] to the peace of 1783, the Town
Records breathe a resolute and warlike spirit, so bold from the first as
hardly to admit of increase.
It would be impossible on this occasion to recite all these patriotic
papers. I must content myself with a few brief extracts. On the 24th
January, 1774, in answer to letters received from the united committees
of correspondence, in the vicinity of Boston, the town say:
“We cannot possibly view with indifference the past and present obstinate
endeavors of the enemies of this, as well as the mother country, to rob
us of those rights, that are the distinguishing glory and felicity of
this land; rights, that we are obliged to no power, under heaven, for
the enjoyment of; as they are the fruit of the heroic enterprises of
the first settlers of these American colonies. And though we cannot but
be alarmed at the great majority, in the British parliament, for the
imposition of unconstitutional taxes on the colonies, yet, it gives life
and strength to every attempt to oppose them, that not only the people
of this, but the neighboring provinces are remarkably united in the
important and interesting opposition, which, as it succeeded before, in
some measure, by the blessing of heaven, so, we cannot but hope it will
be attended with still greater success, in future.
“_Resolved_, That these colonies have been and still are illegally taxed
by the British parliament, as they are not virtually represented therein.
“That the purchasing commodities subject to such illegal taxation is an
explicit, though an impious and sordid resignation of the liberties of
this free and happy people.
“That, as the British parliament have empowered the East India Company to
export their tea into America, for the sole purpose of raising a revenue
from hence; to render the design abortive, we will not, in this town,
either by ourselves, or any from or under us, buy, sell, or use any of
the East India Company’s tea, or any other tea, whilst there is a duty
for raising a revenue thereon in America; neither will we suffer any such
tea to be used in our families.
“That all such persons as shall purchase, sell, or use any such tea,
shall, for the future, be deemed unfriendly to the happy constitution of
this country.
“That, in conjunction with our brethren in America, we will risk our
fortunes, and even our lives, in defence of his majesty, King George
the Third, his person, crown and dignity; and will, also, with the same
resolution, as his freeborn subjects in this country, to the utmost of
our power, defend all our rights inviolate to the latest posterity.
“That, if any person or persons, inhabitants of this province, so long
as there is a duty on tea, shall import any tea from the India House, in
England, or be factors for the East India Company, we will treat them,
in an eminent degree, as enemies to their country, and with contempt and
detestation.
“That we think it our duty, at this critical time of our public
affairs, to return our hearty thanks to the town of Boston, for every
rational measure they have taken for the preservation or recovery of
our invaluable rights and liberties infringed upon; and we hope, should
the state of our public affairs require it, that they will still remain
watchful and persevering; with a steady zeal to espy out everything that
shall have a tendency to subvert our happy constitution.”[79]
On the 27th June, near three hundred persons, upwards of twenty-one
years of age, inhabitants of Concord, entered into a covenant, “solemnly
engaging with each other, in the presence of God, to suspend all
commercial intercourse with Great Britain, until the act for blocking
the harbor of Boston be repealed; and neither to buy nor consume any
merchandise imported from Great Britain, nor to deal with those who
do.”[80]
In August, a County Convention met in this town, to deliberate upon the
alarming state of public affairs, and published an admirable report.[81]
In September, incensed at the new royal law which made the judges
dependent on the crown, the inhabitants assembled on the common, and
forbade the justices to open the court of sessions. This little town then
assumed the sovereignty. It was judge and jury and council and king. On
the 26th of the month, the whole town resolved itself into a committee
of safety, “to suppress all riots, tumults, and disorders in said town,
and to aid all untainted magistrates in the execution of the laws of the
land.” It was then voted, to raise one or more companies of minute-men,
by enlistment, to be paid by the town whenever called out of town; and
to provide arms and ammunition, “that those who are unable to purchase
them themselves, may have the advantage of them, if necessity calls for
it.” In October, the Provincial Congress met in Concord. John Hancock was
President. This body was composed of the foremost patriots, and adopted
those efficient measures whose progress and issue belong to the history
of the nation.[82]
The clergy of New England were, for the most part, zealous promoters of
the Revolution. A deep religious sentiment sanctified the thirst for
liberty. All the military movements in this town were solemnized by
acts of public worship. In January, 1775, a meeting was held for the
enlisting of minute-men. Reverend William Emerson, the chaplain of the
Provincial Congress, preached to the people. Sixty men enlisted and, in
a few days, many more. On 13th March, at a general review of all the
military companies, he preached to a very full assembly, taking for his
text, 2 Chronicles xiii. 12, “And, behold, God himself is with us for
our captain, and his priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm against
you.”[83] It is said that all the services of that day made a deep
impression on the people, even to the singing of the psalm.
A large amount of military stores had been deposited in this town, by
order of the Provincial Committee of Safety. It was to destroy those
stores that the troops who were attacked in this town, on the 19th April,
1775, were sent hither by General Gage.
The story of that day is well known. In these peaceful fields, for the
first time since a hundred years, the drum and alarm-gun were heard, and
the farmers snatched down their rusty firelocks from the kitchen walls,
to make good the resolute words of their town debates. In the field
where the western abutment of the old bridge may still be seen, about
half a mile from this spot, the first organized resistance was made to
the British arms. There the Americans first shed British blood. Eight
hundred British soldiers, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Francis
Smith, had marched from Boston to Concord; at Lexington had fired upon
the brave handful of militia, for which a speedy revenge was reaped by
the same militia in the afternoon. When they entered Concord, they found
the militia and minute-men assembled under the command of Colonel Barrett
and Major Buttrick. This little battalion, though in their hasty council
some were urgent to stand their ground, retreated before the enemy to
the high land on the other bank of the river, to wait for reinforcement.
Colonel Barrett ordered the troops not to fire, unless fired upon. The
British following them across the bridge, posted two companies, amounting
to about one hundred men, to guard the bridge, and secure the return of
the plundering party. Meantime, the men of Acton, Bedford, Lincoln and
Carlisle, all once included in Concord, remembering their parent town
in the hour of danger, arrived and fell into the ranks so fast, that
Major Buttrick found himself superior in number to the enemy’s party at
the bridge. And when the smoke began to rise from the village where the
British were burning cannon-carriages and military stores, the Americans
resolved to force their way into town. The English beginning to pluck up
some of the planks of the bridge, the Americans quickened their pace,
and the British fired one or two shots up the river (our ancient friend
here, Master Blood,[84] saw the water struck by the first ball); then
a single gun, the ball from which wounded Luther Blanchard and Jonas
Brown, and then a volley, by which Captain Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer
of Acton were instantly killed. Major Buttrick leaped from the ground,
and gave the command to fire, which was repeated in a simultaneous cry by
all his men. The Americans fired, and killed two men and wounded eight.
A head-stone and a foot-stone, on this bank of the river, mark the place
where these first victims lie.[85] The British retreated immediately
towards the village, and were joined by two companies of grenadiers,
whom the noise of the firing had hastened to the spot. The militia and
minute-men—every one from that moment being his own commander—ran over
the hills opposite the battle-field, and across the great fields, into
the east quarter of the town, to waylay the enemy, and annoy his retreat.
The British, as soon as they were rejoined by the plundering detachment,
began that disastrous retreat to Boston, which was an omen to both
parties of the event of the war.
In all the anecdotes of that day’s events we may discern the natural
action of the people. It was not an extravagant ebullition of feeling,
but might have been calculated on by any one acquainted with the spirits
and habits of our community. Those poor farmers who came up, that day,
to defend their native soil, acted from the simplest instincts. They did
not know it was a deed of fame they were doing. These men did not babble
of glory. They never dreamed their children would contend who had done
the most. They supposed they had a right to their corn and their cattle,
without paying tribute to any but their own governors. And as they had
no fear of man, they yet did have a fear of God. Captain Charles Miles,
who was wounded in the pursuit of the enemy, told my venerable friend
who sits by me, that “he went to the services of that day, with the same
seriousness and acknowledgment of God, which he carried to church.”[86]
The presence of these aged men who were in arms on that day seems to
bring us nearer to it. The benignant Providence which has prolonged their
lives to this hour gratifies the strong curiosity of the new generation.
The Pilgrims are gone; but we see what manner of persons they were who
stood in the worst perils of the Revolution. We hold by the hand the last
of the invincible men of old, and confirm from living lips the sealed
records of time.
And you, my fathers, whom God and the history of your country have
ennobled, may well bear a chief part in keeping this peaceful birthday of
our town. You are indeed extraordinary heroes. If ever men in arms had a
spotless cause, you had. You have fought a good fight. And having quit
you like men in the battle, you have quit yourselves like men in your
virtuous families; in your cornfields; and in society. We will not hide
your honorable gray hairs under perishing laurel-leaves, but the eye of
affection and veneration follows you. You are set apart—and forever—for
the esteem and gratitude of the human race. To you belongs a better
badge than stars and ribbons. This prospering country is your ornament,
and this expanding nation is multiplying your praise with millions of
tongues.[87]
The agitating events of those days were duly remembered in the church.
On the second day after the affray, divine service was attended, in this
house, by 700 soldiers. William Emerson, the pastor, had a hereditary
claim to the affection of the people, being descended in the fourth
generation from Edward Bulkeley, son of Peter. But he had merits of
his own. The cause of the Colonies was so much in his heart that he
did not cease to make it the subject of his preaching and his prayers,
and is said to have deeply inspired many of his people with his own
enthusiasm. He, at least, saw clearly the pregnant consequences of the
19th April. I have found within a few days, among some family papers,
his almanac of 1775, in a blank leaf of which he has written a narrative
of the fight;[88] and at the close of the month, he writes, “This month
remarkable for the greatest events of the present age.” To promote the
same cause, he asked, and obtained of the town, leave to accept the
commission of chaplain to the Northern army, at Ticonderoga, and died,
after a few months, of the distemper that prevailed in the camp.[89]
In the whole course of the war the town did not depart from this pledge
it had given. Its little population of 1300 souls behaved like a party
to the contest. The number of its troops constantly in service is very
great. Its pecuniary burdens are out of all proportion to its capital.
The economy so rigid, which marked its earlier history, has all vanished.
It spends profusely, affectionately, in the service. “Since,” say the
plaintive records, “General Washington, at Cambridge, is not able to give
but 24s. per cord for wood, for the army; it is Voted, that this town
encourage the inhabitants to supply the army, by paying two dollars per
cord, over and above the General’s price, to such as shall carry wood
thither;”[90] and 210 cords of wood were carried. A similar order is
taken respecting hay. Whilst Boston was occupied by the British troops,
Concord contributed to the relief of the inhabitants, £70, in money;
225 bushels of grain; and a quantity of meat and wood. When, presently,
the poor of Boston were quartered by the Provincial Congress on the
neighboring country, Concord received 82 persons to its hospitality.
In the year 1775, it raised 100 minute-men, and 74 soldiers to serve at
Cambridge. In March, 1776, 145 men were raised by this town to serve at
Dorchester Heights.[91] In June, the General Assembly of Massachusetts
resolved to raise 5000 militia for six months, to reinforce the
Continental army. “The numbers,” say they, “are large, but this Court
has the fullest assurance that their brethren, on this occasion, will
not confer with flesh and blood, but will, without hesitation, and with
the utmost alacrity and despatch, fill up the numbers proportioned to
the several towns.”[92] On that occasion, Concord furnished 67 men,
paying them itself, at an expense of £622. And so on, with every levy,
to the end of the war. For these men it was continually providing shoes,
stockings, shirts, coats, blankets and beef. The taxes, which, before the
war, had not much exceeded £200 per annum, amounted, in the year 1782, to
$9544, in silver.[93]
The great expense of the war was borne with cheerfulness, whilst the war
lasted; but years passed, after the peace, before the debt was paid.
As soon as danger and injury ceased, the people were left at leisure
to consider their poverty and their debts. The Town Records show how
slowly the inhabitants recovered from the strain of excessive exertion.
Their instructions to their representatives are full of loud complaints
of the disgraceful state of public credit, and the excess of public
expenditure. They may be pardoned, under such distress, for the mistakes
of an extreme frugality. They fell into a common error, not yet dismissed
to the moon, that the remedy was, to forbid the great importation of
foreign commodities, and to prescribe by law the prices of articles.
The operation of a new government was dreaded, lest it should prove
expensive, and the country towns thought it would be cheaper if it were
removed from the capital. They were jealous lest the General Court should
pay itself too liberally, and our fathers must be forgiven by their
charitable posterity, if, in 1782, before choosing a representative, it
was “Voted, that the person who should be chosen representative to the
General Court should receive 6s. per day, whilst in actual service, an
account of which time he should bring to the town, and if it should be
that the General Court should resolve, that, their pay should be more
than 6s., then the representative shall be hereby directed to pay the
overplus into the town treasury.”[94] This was securing the prudence of
the public servants.
But whilst the town had its own full share of the public distress, it
was very far from desiring relief at the cost of order and law. In 1786,
when the general sufferings drove the people in parts of Worcester and
Hampshire counties to insurrection, a large party of armed insurgents
arrived in this town, on the 12th September, to hinder the sitting of
the Court of Common Pleas. But they found no countenance here.[95] The
same people who had been active in a County Convention to consider
grievances, condemned the rebellion, and joined the authorities in
putting it down.[96] In 1787, the admirable instructions given by the
town to its representative are a proud monument of the good sense and
good feeling that prevailed. The grievances ceased with the adoption of
the Federal Constitution. The constitution of Massachusetts had been
already accepted. It was put to the town of Concord, in October, 1776,
by the Legislature, whether the existing house of representatives should
enact a constitution for the State? The town answered No.[97] The General
Court, notwithstanding, draughted a constitution, sent it here, and asked
the town whether they would have it for the law of the State? The town
answered No, by a unanimous vote. In 1780, a constitution of the State,
proposed by the Convention chosen for that purpose, was accepted by the
town with the reservation of some articles.[98] And, in 1788, the town,
by its delegate, accepted the new Constitution of the United States, and
this event closed the whole series of important public events in which
this town played a part.
From that time to the present hour, this town has made a slow but
constant progress in population and wealth, and the arts of peace. It
has suffered neither from war, nor pestilence, nor famine, nor flagrant
crime. Its population, in the census of 1830, was 2020 souls. The public
expenses, for the last year, amounted to $4290; for the present year,
to $5040.[99] If the community stints its expense in small matters, it
spends freely on great duties. The town raises, this year, $1800 for its
public schools; besides about $1200 which are paid, by subscription,
for private schools. This year, it expends $800 for its poor; the last
year it expended $900. Two religious societies, of differing creed,
dwell together in good understanding, both promoting, we hope, the
cause of righteousness and love.[100] Concord has always been noted for
its ministers. The living need no praise of mine. Yet it is among the
sources of satisfaction and gratitude, this day, that the aged with whom
is wisdom, our fathers’ counsellor and friend, is spared to counsel and
intercede for the sons.[101]
Such, fellow citizens, is an imperfect sketch of the history of
Concord. I have been greatly indebted, in preparing this sketch, to
the printed but unpublished History of this town, furnished me by the
unhesitating kindness of its author, long a resident in this place. I
hope that History will not long remain unknown. The author has done us
and posterity a kindness, by the zeal and patience of his research,
and has wisely enriched his pages with the resolutions, addresses and
instructions to its agents, which from time to time, at critical periods,
the town has voted.[102] Meantime, I have read with care the Town Records
themselves. They must ever be the fountains of all just information
respecting your character and customs. They are the history of the
town. They exhibit a pleasing picture of a community almost exclusively
agricultural, where no man has much time for words, in his search after
things; of a community of great simplicity of manners, and of a manifest
love of justice. For the most part, the town has deserved the name it
wears. I find our annals marked with a uniform good sense. I find no
ridiculous laws, no eavesdropping legislators, no hanging of witches,
no ghosts, no whipping of Quakers, no unnatural crimes. The tone of the
Records rises with the dignity of the event. These soiled and musty books
are luminous and electric within. The old town clerks did not spell very
correctly, but they contrive to make pretty intelligible the will of a
free and just community. Frugal our fathers were,—very frugal,—though,
for the most part, they deal generously by their minister, and provide
well for the schools and the poor. If, at any time, in common with most
of our towns, they have carried this economy to the verge of a vice,
it is to be remembered that a town is, in many respects, a financial
corporation. They economize, that they may sacrifice. They stint and
higgle on the price of a pew, that they may send 200 soldiers to General
Washington to keep Great Britain at bay. For splendor, there must
somewhere be rigid economy. That the head of the house may go brave,
the members must be plainly clad, and the town must save that the State
may spend. Of late years, the growth of Concord has been slow. Without
navigable waters, without mineral riches, without any considerable mill
privileges, the natural increase of her population is drained by the
constant emigration of the youth. Her sons have settled the region around
us, and far from us. Their wagons have rattled down the remote western
hills. And in every part of this country, and in many foreign parts, they
plough the earth, they traverse the sea, they engage in trade and in all
the professions.[103]
Fellow citizens; let not the solemn shadows of two hundred years,
this day, fall over us in vain. I feel some unwillingness to quit the
remembrance of the past. With all the hope of the new I feel that we
are leaving the old. Every moment carries us farther from the two great
epochs of public principle, the Planting, and the Revolution of the
colony. Fortunate and favored this town has been, in having received
so large an infusion of the spirit of both of those periods. Humble as
is our village in the circle of later and prouder towns that whiten
the land, it has been consecrated by the presence and activity of the
purest men. Why need I remind you of our own Hosmers, Minotts, Cumings,
Barretts, Beattons, the departed benefactors of the town? On the village
green have been the steps of Winthrop and Dudley; of John Eliot, the
Indian apostle, who had a courage that intimidated those savages whom
his love could not melt; of Whitfield, whose silver voice melted his
great congregation into tears; of Hancock, and his compatriots of the
Provincial Congress; of Langdon, and the college over which he presided.
But even more sacred influences than these have mingled here with the
stream of human life. The merit of those who fill a space in the world’s
history, who are borne forward, as it were, by the weight of thousands
whom they lead, sheds a perfume less sweet than do the sacrifices of
private virtue. I have had much opportunity of access to anecdotes of
families, and I believe this town to have been the dwelling-place, in
all times since its planting, of pious and excellent persons, who walked
meekly through the paths of common life, who served God, and loved man,
and never let go the hope of immortality. The benediction of their
prayers and of their principles lingers around us. The acknowledgment
of the Supreme Being exalts the history of this people. It brought the
fathers hither. In a war of principle, it delivered their sons. And so
long as a spark of this faith survives among the children’s children so
long shall the name of Concord be honest and venerable.
III
LETTER
TO MARTIN VAN BUREN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
A PROTEST AGAINST THE REMOVAL OF THE CHEROKEE INDIANS FROM THE STATE OF
GEORGIA
“Say, what is Honour? ’Tis the finest sense
Of justice which the human mind can frame,
Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim,
And guard the way of life from all offence,
Suffered or done.”
WORDSWORTH.
LETTER
TO MARTIN VAN BUREN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
CONCORD, MASS., April 23, 1838.
SIR: The seat you fill places you in a relation of credit and nearness
to every citizen. By right and natural position, every citizen is your
friend. Before any acts contrary to his own judgment or interest have
repelled the affections of any man, each may look with trust and living
anticipation to your government. Each has the highest right to call
your attention to such subjects as are of a public nature, and properly
belong to the chief magistrate; and the good magistrate will feel a joy
in meeting such confidence. In this belief and at the instance of a few
of my friends and neighbors, I crave of your patience a short hearing for
their sentiments and my own: and the circumstance that my name will be
utterly unknown to you will only give the fairer chance to your equitable
construction of what I have to say.
Sir, my communication respects the sinister rumors that fill this part
of the country concerning the Cherokee people. The interest always
felt in the aboriginal population—an interest naturally growing as that
decays—has been heightened in regard to this tribe. Even in our distant
State some good rumor of their worth and civility has arrived. We have
learned with joy their improvement in the social arts. We have read their
newspapers. We have seen some of them in our schools and colleges. In
common with the great body of the American people, we have witnessed with
sympathy the painful labors of these red men to redeem their own race
from the doom of eternal inferiority, and to borrow and domesticate in
the tribe the arts and customs of the Caucasian race. And notwithstanding
the unaccountable apathy with which of late years the Indians have been
sometimes abandoned to their enemies, it is not to be doubted that it
is the good pleasure and the understanding of all humane persons in the
Republic, of the men and the matrons sitting in the thriving independent
families all over the land, that they shall be duly cared for; that they
shall taste justice and love from all to whom we have delegated the
office of dealing with them.
The newspapers now inform us that, in December, 1835, a treaty
contracting for the exchange of all the Cherokee territory was pretended
to be made by an agent on the part of the United States with some
persons appearing on the part of the Cherokees; that the fact afterwards
transpired that these deputies did by no means represent the will of the
nation; and that, out of eighteen thousand souls composing the nation,
fifteen thousand six hundred and sixty-eight have protested against the
so-called treaty. It now appears that the government of the United States
choose to hold the Cherokees to this sham treaty, and are proceeding to
execute the same. Almost the entire Cherokee Nation stand up and say,
“This is not our act. Behold us. Here are we. Do not mistake that handful
of deserters for us;” and the American President and the Cabinet, the
Senate and the House of Representatives, neither hear these men nor see
them, and are contracting to put this active nation into carts and boats,
and to drag them over mountains and rivers to a wilderness at a vast
distance beyond the Mississippi. And a paper purporting to be an army
order fixes a month from this day as the hour for this doleful removal.
In the name of God, sir, we ask you if this be so. Do the newspapers
rightly inform us? Men and women with pale and perplexed faces meet one
another in the streets and churches here, and ask if this be so. We have
inquired if this be a gross misrepresentation from the party opposed to
the government and anxious to blacken it with the people. We have looked
in the newspapers of different parties and find a horrid confirmation
of the tale. We are slow to believe it. We hoped the Indians were
misinformed, and that their remonstrance was premature, and will turn out
to be a needless act of terror.
The piety, the principle that is left in the United States, if only in
its coarsest form, a regard to the speech of men,—forbid us to entertain
it as a fact. Such a dereliction of all faith and virtue, such a denial
of justice, and such deafness to screams for mercy were never heard of
in times of peace and in the dealing of a nation with its own allies and
wards, since the earth was made. Sir, does this government think that the
people of the United States are become savage and mad? From their mind
are the sentiments of love and a good nature wiped clean out? The soul of
man, the justice, the mercy that is the heart’s heart in all men, from
Maine to Georgia, does abhor this business.
In speaking thus the sentiments of my neighbors and my own, perhaps I
overstep the bounds of decorum. But would it not be a higher indecorum
coldly to argue a matter like this? We only state the fact that a crime
is projected that confounds our understandings by its magnitude,—a crime
that really deprives us as well as the Cherokees of a country? for how
could we call the conspiracy that should crush these poor Indians our
government, or the land that was cursed by their parting and dying
imprecations our country, any more? You, sir, will bring down that
renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this
instrument of perfidy; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet
omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world.
You will not do us the injustice of connecting this remonstrance with any
sectional and party feeling. It is in our hearts the simplest commandment
of brotherly love. We will not have this great and solemn claim upon
national and human justice huddled aside under the flimsy plea of its
being a party act. Sir, to us the questions upon which the government
and the people have been agitated during the past year, touching the
prostration of the currency and of trade, seem but motes in comparison.
These hard times, it is true, have brought the discussion home to every
farmhouse and poor man’s house in this town; but it is the chirping
of grasshoppers beside the immortal question whether justice shall be
done by the race of civilized to the race of savage man,—whether all
the attributes of reason, of civility, of justice, and even of mercy,
shall be put off by the American people, and so vast an outrage upon the
Cherokee Nation and upon human nature shall be consummated.
One circumstance lessens the reluctance with which I intrude at this
time on your attention my conviction that the government ought to be
admonished of a new historical fact, which the discussion of this
question has disclosed, namely, that there exists in a great part of
the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the _moral_ character of the
government.
On the broaching of this question, a general expression of despondency,
of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of
fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for
aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it
kill?—We ask triumphantly. Our counsellors and old statesmen here say
that ten years ago they would have staked their lives on the affirmation
that the proposed Indian measures could not be executed; that the
unanimous country would put them down. And now the steps of this crime
follow each other so fast, at such fatally quick time, that the millions
of virtuous citizens, whose agents the government are, have no place to
interpose, and must shut their eyes until the last howl and wailing of
these tormented villages and tribes shall afflict the ear of the world.
I will not hide from you, as an indication of the alarming distrust,
that a letter addressed as mine is, and suggesting to the mind of the
Executive the plain obligations of man, has a burlesque character in the
apprehensions of some of my friends. I, sir, will not beforehand treat
you with the contumely of this distrust. I will at least state to you
this fact, and show you how plain and humane people, whose love would be
honor, regard the policy of the government, and what injurious inferences
they draw as to the minds of the governors. A man with your experience in
affairs must have seen cause to appreciate the futility of opposition to
the moral sentiment. However feeble the sufferer and however great the
oppressor, it is in the nature of things that the blow should recoil upon
the aggressor. For God is in the sentiment, and it cannot be withstood.
The potentate and the people perish before it; but with it, and as its
executor, they are omnipotent.
I write thus, sir, to inform you of the state of mind these Indian
tidings have awakened here, and to pray with one voice more that you,
whose hands are strong with the delegated power of fifteen millions of
men, will avert with that might the terrific injury which threatens the
Cherokee tribe.
With great respect, sir, I am your fellow citizen,
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
IV
ADDRESS
DELIVERED IN CONCORD ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE EMANCIPATION OF THE
NEGROES IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES, AUGUST 1, 1844.
There a captive sat in chains,
Crooning ditties treasured well
From his Afric’s torrid plains.
Sole estate his sire bequeathed,—
Hapless sire to hapless son,—
Was the wailing song he breathed,
And his chain when life was done.
ADDRESS
EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES
FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS: We are met to exchange congratulations on
the anniversary of an event singular in the history of civilization; a
day of reason; of the clear light; of that which makes us better than a
flock of birds and beasts; a day which gave the immense fortification of
a fact, of gross history, to ethical abstractions. It was the settlement,
as far as a great Empire was concerned, of a question on which almost
every leading citizen in it had taken care to record his vote; one which
for many years absorbed the attention of the best and most eminent of
mankind. I might well hesitate, coming from other studies, and without
the smallest claim to be a special laborer in this work of humanity,
to undertake to set this matter before you; which ought rather to be
done by a strict coöperation of many well-advised persons; but I shall
not apologize for my weakness. In this cause, no man’s weakness is any
prejudice: it has a thousand sons; if one man cannot speak, ten others
can; and, whether by the wisdom of its friends, or by the folly of the
adversaries; by speech and by silence; by doing and by omitting to do, it
goes forward. Therefore I will speak,—or, not I, but the might of liberty
in my weakness. The subject is said to have the property of making dull
men eloquent.
It has been in all men’s experience a marked effect of the enterprise in
behalf of the African, to generate an overbearing and defying spirit. The
institution of slavery seems to its opponent to have but one side, and
he feels that none but a stupid or a malignant person can hesitate on
a view of the facts. Under such an impulse, I was about to say, If any
cannot speak, or cannot hear the words of freedom, let him go hence,—I
had almost said, Creep into your grave, the universe has no need of you!
But I have thought better: let him not go. When we consider what remains
to be done for this interest in this country, the dictates of humanity
make us tender of such as are not yet persuaded.[104] The hardest
selfishness is to be borne with. Let us withhold every reproachful, and,
if we can, every indignant remark. In this cause, we must renounce our
temper, and the risings of pride. If there be any man who thinks the
ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration
and completions of his own comfort,—who would not so much as part with
his ice-cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not
hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer
and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing
them. If the Virginian piques himself on the picturesque luxury of his
vassalage, on the heavy Ethiopian manners of his house-servants, their
silent obedience, their hue of bronze, their turbaned heads, and would
not exchange them for the more intelligent but precarious hired service
of whites, I shall not refuse to show him that when their free-papers are
made out, it will still be their interest to remain on his estate, and
that the oldest planters of Jamaica are convinced that it is cheaper to
pay wages than to own the slave.
The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of
truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the
material and the moral nature. From the earliest monuments it appears
that one race was victim and served the other races. In the oldest
temples of Egypt, negro captives are painted on the tombs of kings, in
such attitudes as to show that they are on the point of being executed;
and Herodotus, our oldest historian, relates that the Troglodytes hunted
the Ethiopians in four-horse chariots. From the earliest time, the negro
has been an article of luxury to the commercial nations. So has it been,
down to the day that has just dawned on the world. Language must be
raked, the secrets of slaughter-houses and infamous holes that cannot
front the day, must be ransacked, to tell what negro slavery has been.
These men, our benefactors, as they are producers of corn and wine, of
coffee, of tobacco, of cotton, of sugar, of rum and brandy; gentle and
joyous themselves, and producers of comfort and luxury for the civilized
world,—there seated in the finest climates of the globe, children of
the sun,—I am heart-sick when I read how they came there, and how they
are kept there. Their case was left out of the mind and out of the
heart of their brothers. The prizes of society, the trumpet of fame,
the privileges of learning, of culture, of religion, the decencies and
joys of marriage, honor, obedience, personal authority and a perpetual
melioration into a finer civility,—these were for all, but not for them.
For the negro, was the slave-ship to begin with, in whose filthy hold he
sat in irons, unable to lie down; bad food, and insufficiency of that;
disfranchisement; no property in the rags that covered him; no marriage,
no right in the poor black woman that cherished him in her bosom, no
right to the children of his body; no security from the humors, none from
the crimes, none from the appetites of his master: toil, famine, insult
and flogging; and, when he sank in the furrow, no wind of good fame blew
over him, no priest of salvation visited him with glad tidings: but he
went down to death with dusky dreams of African shadow-catchers and
Obeahs hunting him.[105] Very sad was the negro tradition, that the Great
Spirit, in the beginning offered the black man, whom he loved better than
the buckra, or white, his choice of two boxes, a big and a little one.
The black man was greedy, and chose the largest. “The buckra box was full
up with pen, paper and whip, and the negro box with hoe and bill; and hoe
and bill for negro to this day.”
But the crude element of good in human affairs must work and ripen,
spite of whips and plantation laws and West Indian interest. Conscience
rolled on its pillow, and could not sleep. We sympathize very tenderly
here with the poor aggrieved planter, of whom so many unpleasant things
are said; but if we saw the whip applied to old men, to tender women;
and, undeniably, though I shrink to say so, pregnant women set in the
treadmill for refusing to work; when, not they, but the eternal law
of animal nature refused to work;—if we saw men’s backs flayed with
cowhides, and “hot rum poured on, superinduced with brine or pickle,
rubbed in with a cornhusk, in the scorching heat of the sun;”—if we saw
the runaways hunted with bloodhounds into swamps and hills; and, in
cases of passion, a planter throwing his negro into a copper of boiling
cane-juice,—if we saw these things with eyes, we too should wince. They
are not pleasant sights. The blood is moral: the blood is anti-slavery:
it runs cold in the veins: the stomach rises with disgust, and curses
slavery. Well, so it happened; a good man or woman, a country boy or
girl,—it would so fall out,—once in a while saw these injuries and had
the indiscretion to tell of them. The horrid story ran and flew; the
winds blew it all over the world. They who heard it asked their rich and
great friends if it was true, or only missionary lies. The richest and
greatest, the prime minister of England, the king’s privy council were
obliged to say that it was too true. It became plain to all men, the
more this business was looked into, that the crimes and cruelties of the
slave-traders and slave-owners could not be overstated. The more it was
searched, the more shocking anecdotes came up,—things not to be spoken.
Humane persons who were informed of the reports insisted on proving them.
Granville Sharpe was accidentally made acquainted with the sufferings of
a slave, whom a West Indian planter had brought with him to London and
had beaten with a pistol on his head, so badly that his whole body became
diseased, and the man useless to his master, who left him to go whither
he pleased. The man applied to Mr. William Sharpe, a charitable surgeon,
who attended the diseases of the poor. In process of time, he was healed.
Granville Sharpe found him at his brother’s and procured a place for
him in an apothecary’s shop. The master accidentally met his recovered
slave, and instantly endeavored to get possession of him again. Sharpe
protected the slave. In consulting with the lawyers, they told Sharpe
the laws were against him. Sharpe would not believe it; no prescription
on earth could ever render such iniquities legal. ‘But the decisions are
against you, and Lord Mansfield, now Chief Justice of England, leans
to the decisions.’ Sharpe instantly sat down and gave himself to the
study of English law for more than two years, until he had proved that
the opinions relied on, of Talbot and Yorke, were incompatible with the
former English decisions and with the whole spirit of English law. He
published his book in 1769, and he so filled the heads and hearts of
his advocates that when he brought the case of George Somerset, another
slave, before Lord Mansfield, the slavish decisions were set aside, and
equity affirmed.[106] There is a sparkle of God’s righteousness in Lord
Mansfield’s judgment, which does the heart good. Very unwilling had that
great lawyer been to reverse the late decisions; he suggested twice from
the bench, in the course of the trial, how the question might be got rid
of: but the hint was not taken; the case was adjourned again and again,
and judgment delayed. At last judgment was demanded, and on the 22d June,
1772, Lord Mansfield is reported to have decided in these words:
“Immemorial usage preserves the memory of _positive law_, long after all
traces of the occasion, reason, authority and time of its introduction,
are lost; and in a case so odious as the condition of slaves, must be
taken strictly (tracing the subject to _natural principles_, the claim of
slavery never can be supported). The power claimed by this return never
was in use here. We cannot say the cause set forth by this return is
allowed or approved of by the laws of this kingdom; and therefore the man
must be discharged.”
This decision established the principle that the “air of England is too
pure for any slave to breathe,” but the wrongs in the islands were not
thereby touched. Public attention, however, was drawn that way, and the
methods of the stealing and the transportation from Africa became noised
abroad. The Quakers got the story. In their plain meeting-houses and
prim dwellings this dismal agitation got entrance. They were rich: they
owned, for debt or by inheritance, island property; they were religious,
tender-hearted men and women; and they had to hear the news and digest
it as they could. Six Quakers met in London on the 6th of July,
1783,—William Dillwyn, Samuel Hoar, George Harrison, Thomas Knowles,
John Lloyd, Joseph Woods, “to consider what step they should take for
the relief and liberation of the negro slaves in the West Indies, and
for the discouragement of the slave-trade on the coast of Africa.” They
made friends and raised money for the slave; they interested their
Yearly Meeting; and all English and all American Quakers. John Woolman
of New Jersey, whilst yet an apprentice, was uneasy in his mind when he
was set to write a bill of sale of a negro, for his master. He gave his
testimony against the traffic, in Maryland and Virginia. Thomas Clarkson
was a youth at Cambridge, England, when the subject given out for a Latin
prize dissertation was, “Is it right to make slaves of others against
their will?” He wrote an essay, and won the prize; but he wrote too
well for his own peace; he began to ask himself if these things could
be true; and if they were, he could no longer rest. He left Cambridge;
he fell in with the six Quakers. They engaged him to act for them. He
himself interested Mr. Wilberforce in the matter. The shipmasters in
that trade were the greatest miscreants, and guilty of every barbarity
to their own crews. Clarkson went to Bristol, made himself acquainted
with the interior of the slave-ships and the details of the trade. The
facts confirmed his sentiment, “that Providence had never made that to
be wise which was immoral, and that the slave-trade was as impolitic
as it was unjust;”[107] that it was found peculiarly fatal to those
employed in it. More seamen died in that trade in one year than in the
whole remaining trade of the country in two. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox were
drawn into the generous enterprise. In 1788, the House of Commons voted
Parliamentary inquiry. In 1791, a bill to abolish the trade was brought
in by Wilberforce, and supported by him and by Fox and Burke and Pitt,
with the utmost ability and faithfulness; resisted by the planters and
the whole West Indian interest, and lost. During the next sixteen years,
ten times, year after year, the attempt was renewed by Mr. Wilberforce,
and ten times defeated by the planters. The king, and all the royal
family but one, were against it. These debates are instructive, as they
show on what grounds the trade was assailed and defended. Everything
generous, wise and sprightly is sure to come to the attack. On the other
part are found cold prudence, bare-faced selfishness and silent votes.
But the nation was aroused to enthusiasm. Every horrid fact became known.
In 1791, three hundred thousand persons in Britain pledged themselves to
abstain from all articles of island produce. The planters were obliged
to give way; and in 1807, on the 25th March, the bill passed, and the
slave-trade was abolished.
The assailants of slavery had early agreed to limit their political
action on this subject to the abolition of the trade, but Granville
Sharpe, as a matter of conscience, whilst he acted as chairman of the
London Committee, felt constrained to record his protest against the
limitation, declaring that slavery was as much a crime against the
Divine law as the slave-trade. The trade, under false flags, went on
as before. In 1821, according to official documents presented to the
American government by the Colonization Society, 200,000 slaves were
deported from Africa. Nearly 30,000 were landed in the port of Havana
alone. In consequence of the dangers of the trade growing out of the act
of abolition, ships were built sharp for swiftness, and with a frightful
disregard of the comfort of the victims they were destined to transport.
They carried five, six, even seven hundred stowed in a ship built so
narrow as to be unsafe, being made just broad enough on the beam to
keep the sea. In attempting to make its escape from the pursuit of a
man-of-war, one ship flung five hundred slaves alive into the sea. These
facts went into Parliament. In the islands was an ominous state of cruel
and licentious society; every house had a dungeon attached to it; every
slave was worked by the whip. There is no end to the tragic anecdotes
in the municipal records of the colonies. The boy was set to strip and
flog his own mother to blood, for a small offence. Looking in the face
of his master by the negro was held to be violence by the island courts.
He was worked sixteen hours, and his ration by law, in some islands, was
a pint of flour and one salt herring a day. He suffered insult, stripes,
mutilation at the humor of the master: iron collars were riveted on their
necks with iron prongs ten inches long; capsicum pepper was rubbed in the
eyes of the females; and they were done to death with the most shocking
levity between the master and manager, without fine or inquiry. And when,
at last, some Quakers, Moravians, and Wesleyan and Baptist missionaries,
following in the steps of Carey and Ward in the East Indies, had been
moved to come and cheer the poor victim with the hope of some reparation,
in a future world, of the wrongs he suffered in this, these missionaries
were persecuted by the planters, their lives threatened, their chapels
burned, and the negroes furiously forbidden to go near them. These
outrages rekindled the flame of British indignation. Petitions poured
into Parliament: a million persons signed their names to these; and in
1833, on the 14th May, Lord Stanley, Minister of the Colonies, introduced
into the House of Commons his bill for the Emancipation.
The scheme of the Minister, with such modification as it received in the
legislature, proposed gradual emancipation; that on 1st August, 1834, all
persons now slaves should be entitled to be registered as apprenticed
laborers, and to acquire thereby all the rights and privileges of
freemen, subject to the restriction of laboring under certain conditions.
These conditions were, that the prædials should owe three fourths of
the profits of their labor to their masters for six years, and the
non-prædials for four years.[108] The other fourth of the apprentice’s
time was to be his own, which he might sell to his master, or to other
persons; and at the end of the term of years fixed, he should be free.
With these provisions and conditions, the bill proceeds, in the twelfth
section, in the following terms: “Be it enacted, that all and every
person who, on the first August, 1834, shall be holden in slavery within
any such British colony as aforesaid, shall upon and from and after the
said first August, become and be to all intents and purposes free, and
discharged of and from all manner of slavery, and shall be absolutely
and forever manumitted; and that the children thereafter born to any such
persons, and the offspring of such children, shall, in like manner, be
free, from their birth; and that from and after the first August, 1834,
slavery shall be and is hereby utterly and forever abolished and declared
unlawful throughout the British colonies, plantations, and possessions
abroad.”
The Ministers, having estimated the slave products of the colonies
in annual exports of sugar, rum and coffee, at £1,500,000 per annum,
estimated the total value of the slave property at 30,000,000 pounds
sterling, and proposed to give the planters, as a compensation for so
much of the slaves’ time as the act took from them, 20,000,000 pounds
sterling, to be divided into nineteen shares for the nineteen colonies,
and to be distributed to the owners of slaves by commissioners, whose
appointment and duties were regulated by the Act. After much debate, the
bill passed by large majorities. The apprenticeship system is understood
to have proceeded from Lord Brougham, and was by him urged on his
colleagues, who, it is said, were inclined to the policy of immediate
emancipation.
The colonial legislatures received the act of Parliament with various
degrees of displeasure, and, of course, every provision of the bill was
criticised with severity. The new relation between the master and the
apprentice, it was feared, would be mischievous; for the bill required
the appointment of magistrates who should hear every complaint of the
apprentice and see that justice was done him. It was feared that the
interest of the master and servant would now produce perpetual discord
between them. In the island of Antigua, containing 37,000 people, 30,000
being negroes, these objections had such weight that the legislature
rejected the apprenticeship system, and adopted absolute emancipation. In
the other islands the system of the Ministry was accepted.
The reception of it by the negro population was equal in nobleness to
the deed. The negroes were called together by the missionaries and by
the planters, and the news explained to them. On the night of the 31st
July, they met everywhere at their churches and chapels, and at midnight,
when the clock struck twelve, on their knees, the silent, weeping
assembly became men; they rose and embraced each other; they cried,
they sung, they prayed, they were wild with joy, but there was no riot,
no feasting. I have never read anything in history more touching than
the moderation of the negroes. Some American captains left the shore
and put to sea, anticipating insurrection and general murder. With far
different thoughts, the negroes spent the hour in their huts and chapels.
I will not repeat to you the well-known paragraph, in which Messrs.
Thome and Kimball, the commissioners sent out in the year 1837 by the
American Anti-Slavery Society, describe the occurrences of that night in
the island of Antigua. It has been quoted in every newspaper, and Dr.
Channing has given it additional fame. But I must be indulged in quoting
a few sentences from the pages that follow it, narrating the behavior of
the emancipated people on the next day.[109]
“The first of August came on Friday, and a release was proclaimed
from all work until the next Monday. The day was chiefly spent by
the great mass of the negroes in the churches and chapels. The
clergy and missionaries throughout the island were actively engaged,
seizing the opportunity to enlighten the people on all the duties and
responsibilities of their new relation, and urging them to the attainment
of that higher liberty with which Christ maketh his children free. In
every quarter, we were assured, the day was like a Sabbath. Work had
ceased. The hum of business was still: tranquillity pervaded the towns
and country. The planters informed us that they went to the chapels where
their own people were assembled, greeted them, shook hands with them,
and exchanged the most hearty good wishes. At Grace Hill, there were at
least a thousand persons around the Moravian Chapel who could not get
in. For once the house of God suffered violence, and the violent took
it by force. At Grace Bay, the people, all dressed in white, formed a
procession, and walked arm in arm into the chapel. We were told that the
dress of the negroes on that occasion was uncommonly simple and modest.
There was not the least disposition to gayety. Throughout the island,
there was not a single dance known of, either day or night, nor so much
as a fiddle played.”
On the next Monday morning, with very few exceptions, every negro on
every plantation was in the field at his work. In some places, they
waited to see their master, to know what bargain he would make; but for
the most part, throughout the islands, nothing painful occurred. In June,
1835, the Ministers, Lord Aberdeen and Sir George Grey, declared to the
Parliament that the system worked well; that now for ten months, from 1st
August, 1834, no injury or violence had been offered to any white, and
only one black had been hurt in 800,000 negroes: and, contrary to many
sinister predictions, that the new crop of island produce would not fall
short of that of the last year.
But the habit of oppression was not destroyed by a law and a day of
jubilee. It soon appeared in all the islands that the planters were
disposed to use their old privileges, and overwork the apprentices; to
take from them, under various pretences, their fourth part of their
time; and to exert the same licentious despotism as before. The negroes
complained to the magistrates and to the governor. In the island of
Jamaica, this ill blood continually grew worse. The governors, Lord
Belmore, the Earl of Sligo, and afterwards Sir Lionel Smith (a governor
of their own class, who had been sent out to gratify the planters), threw
themselves on the side of the oppressed, and were at constant quarrel
with the angry and bilious island legislature. Nothing can exceed the ill
humor and sulkiness of the addresses of this assembly.
I may here express a general remark, which the history of slavery
seems to justify, that it is not founded solely on the avarice of the
planter. We sometimes say, the planter does not want slaves, he only
wants the immunities and the luxuries which the slaves yield him; give
him money, give him a machine that will yield him as much money as the
slaves, and he will thankfully let them go. He has no love of slavery,
he wants luxury, and he will pay even this price of crime and danger for
it. But I think experience does not warrant this favorable distinction,
but shows the existence, beside the covetousness, of a bitterer element,
the love of power, the voluptuousness of holding a human being in his
absolute control. We sometimes observe that spoiled children contract
a habit of annoying quite wantonly those who have charge of them, and
seem to measure their own sense of well-being, not by what they do,
but by the degree of reaction they can cause. It is vain to get rid of
them by not minding them: if purring and humming is not noticed, they
squeal and screech; then if you chide and console them, they find the
experiment succeeds, and they begin again. The child will sit in your
arms contented, provided you do nothing. If you take a book and read,
he commences hostile operations. The planter is the spoiled child of
his unnatural habits, and has contracted in his indolent and luxurious
climate the need of excitement by irritating and tormenting his slave.
Sir Lionel Smith defended the poor negro girls, prey to the
licentiousness of the planters; they shall not be whipped with tamarind
rods if they do not comply with their master’s will; he defended the
negro women; they should not be made to dig the cane-holes (which is
the very hardest of the field work); he defended the Baptist preachers
and the stipendiary magistrates, who are the negroes’ friends, from the
power of the planter. The power of the planters, however, to oppress,
was greater than the power of the apprentice and of his guardians to
withstand. Lord Brougham and Mr. Buxton declared that the planter had not
fulfilled his part in the contract, whilst the apprentices had fulfilled
theirs; and demanded that the emancipation should be hastened, and the
apprenticeship abolished. Parliament was compelled to pass additional
laws for the defence and security of the negro, and in ill humor at
these acts, the great island of Jamaica, with a population of half a
million, and 300,000 negroes, early in 1838, resolved to throw up the two
remaining years of apprenticeship, and to emancipate absolutely on the
1st August, 1838. In British Guiana, in Dominica, the same resolution
had been earlier taken with more good will; and the other islands fell
into the measure; so that on the 1st August, 1838, the shackles dropped
from every British slave. The accounts which we have from all parties,
both from the planters (and those too who were originally most opposed
to the measure), and from the new freemen, are of the most satisfactory
kind. The manner in which the new festival was celebrated, brings
tears to the eyes. The First of August, 1838, was observed in Jamaica
as a day of thanksgiving and prayer. Sir Lionel Smith, the governor,
writes to the British Ministry, “It is impossible for me to do justice
to the good order, decorum and gratitude which the whole laboring
population manifested on that happy occasion. Though joy beamed on every
countenance, it was throughout tempered with solemn thankfulness to God,
and the churches and chapels were everywhere filled with these happy
people in humble offering of praise.”
The Queen, in her speech to the Lords and Commons, praised the conduct
of the emancipated population:[110] and in 1840 Sir Charles Metcalfe,
the new governor of Jamaica, in his address to the Assembly expressed
himself to that late exasperated body in these terms: “All those who
are acquainted with the state of the island know that our emancipated
population are as free, as independent in their conduct, as well
conditioned, as much in the enjoyment of abundance, and as strongly
sensible of the blessings of liberty, as any that we know of in any
country. All disqualifications and distinctions of color have ceased;
men of all colors have equal rights in law, and an equal footing in
society, and every man’s position is settled by the same circumstances
which regulate that point in other free countries, where no difference of
color exists. It may be asserted, without fear of denial, that the former
slaves of Jamaica are now as secure in all social rights, as freeborn
Britons.” He further describes the erection of numerous churches, chapels
and schools which the new population required, and adds that more are
still demanded. The legislature, in their reply, echo the governor’s
statement, and say, “The peaceful demeanor of the emancipated population
redounds to their own credit, and affords a proof of their continued
comfort and prosperity.”
I said, this event is signal in the history of civilization. There
are many styles of civilization, and not one only. Ours is full of
barbarities. There are many faculties in man, each of which takes its
turn of activity, and that faculty which is paramount in any period and
exerts itself through the strongest nation, determines the civility of
that age: and each age thinks its own the perfection of reason. Our
culture is very cheap and intelligible. Unroof any house, and you shall
find it. The well-being consists in having a sufficiency of coffee and
toast, with a daily newspaper; a well glazed parlor, with marbles,
mirrors and centre-table; and the excitement of a few parties and a few
rides in a year. Such as one house, such are all. The owner of a New
York manor imitates the mansion and equipage of the London nobleman; the
Boston merchant rivals his brother of New York; and the villages copy
Boston. There have been nations elevated by great sentiments. Such was
the civility of Sparta and the Dorian race, whilst it was defective in
some of the chief elements of ours. That of Athens, again, lay in an
intellect dedicated to beauty. That of Asia Minor in poetry, music and
arts; that of Palestine in piety; that of Rome in military arts and
virtues, exalted by a prodigious magnanimity; that of China and Japan in
the last exaggeration of decorum and etiquette. Our civility, England
determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the
family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people.
It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English
lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of
that profession. And we are shopkeepers, and have acquired the vices
and virtues that belong to trade. We peddle, we truck, we sail, we row,
we ride in cars, we creep in teams, we go in canals,—to market, and for
the sale of goods. The national aim and employment streams into our ways
of thinking, our laws, our habits and our manners. The customer is the
immediate jewel of our souls. Him we flatter, him we feast, compliment,
vote for, and will not contradict. It was, or it seemed the dictate of
trade, to keep the negro down. We had found a race who were less warlike,
and less energetic shopkeepers than we; who had very little skill in
trade. We found it very convenient to keep them at work, since, by the
aid of a little whipping, we could get their work for nothing but their
board and the cost of whips. What if it cost a few unpleasant scenes
on the coast of Africa? That was a great way off; and the scenes could
be endured by some sturdy, unscrupulous fellows, who could go, for high
wages, and bring us the men, and need not trouble our ears with the
disagreeable particulars. If any mention was made of homicide, madness,
adultery, and intolerable tortures, we would let the church-bells ring
louder, the church-organ swell its peal and drown the hideous sound. The
sugar they raised was excellent: nobody tasted blood in it. The coffee
was fragrant; the tobacco was incense; the brandy made nations happy; the
cotton clothed the world. What! all raised by these men, and no wages?
Excellent! What a convenience! They seemed created by Providence to bear
the heat and the whipping, and make these fine articles.
But unhappily, most unhappily, gentlemen, man is born with intellect,
as well as with a love of sugar; and with a sense of justice, as well
as a taste for strong drink. These ripened, as well as those. You could
not educate him, you could not get any poetry, any wisdom, any beauty in
woman, any strong and commanding character in man, but these absurdities
would still come flashing out,—these absurdities of a demand for
justice, a generosity for the weak and oppressed. Unhappily, too, for
the planter, the laws of nature are in harmony with each other: that
which the head and the heart demand is found to be, in the long run,
for what the grossest calculator calls his advantage. The moral sense
is always supported by the permanent interest of the parties. Else, I
know not how, in our world, any good would ever get done.[111] It was
shown to the planters that they, as well as the negroes, were slaves;
that though they paid no wages, they got very poor work; that their
estates were ruining them, under the finest climate; and that they
needed the severest monopoly laws at home to keep them from bankruptcy.
The oppression of the slave recoiled on them. They were full of vices;
their children were lumps of pride, sloth, sensuality and rottenness.
The position of woman was nearly as bad as it could be; and, like other
robbers, they could not sleep in security. Many planters have said, since
the emancipation, that, before that day, they were the greatest slaves
on the estates. Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the
whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mail-bag, a
college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he
thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve
the soil; everything goes to decay. For these reasons the islands proved
bad customers to England. It was very easy for manufacturers less shrewd
than those of Birmingham and Manchester to see that if the state of
things in the islands was altered, if the slaves had wages, the slaves
would be clothed, would build houses, would fill them with tools, with
pottery, with crockery, with hardware; and negro women love fine clothes
as well as white women. In every naked negro of those thousands, they
saw a future customer. Meantime, they saw further that the slave-trade,
by keeping in barbarism the whole coast of eastern Africa, deprives them
of countries and nations of customers, if once freedom and civility and
European manners could get a foothold there. But the trade could not be
abolished whilst this hungry West Indian market, with an appetite like
the grave, cried, ‘More, more, bring me a hundred a day;’ they could not
expect any mitigation in the madness of the poor African war-chiefs.
These considerations opened the eyes of the dullest in Britain. More than
this, the West Indian estate was owned or mortgaged in England, and the
owner and the mortgagee had very plain intimations that the feeling of
English liberty was gaining every hour new mass and velocity, and the
hostility to such as resisted it would be fatal. The House of Commons
would destroy the protection of island produce, and interfere in English
politics in the island legislation: so they hastened to make the best of
their position, and accepted the bill.
These considerations, I doubt not, had their weight; the interest of
trade, the interest of the revenue, and, moreover, the good fame of the
action. It was inevitable that men should feel these motives. But they do
not appear to have had an excessive or unreasonable weight. On reviewing
this history, I think the whole transaction reflects infinite honor on
the people and parliament of England. It was a stately spectacle, to see
the cause of human rights argued with so much patience and generosity
and with such a mass of evidence before that powerful people. It is a
creditable incident in the history that when, in 1789, the first privy
council report of evidence on the trade (a bulky folio embodying all
the facts which the London Committee had been engaged for years in
collecting, and all the examinations before the council) was presented
to the House of Commons, a late day being named for the discussion,
in order to give members time,—Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Pitt, the Prime
Minister, and other gentlemen, took advantage of the postponement to
retire into the country to read the report. For months and years the bill
was debated, with some consciousness of the extent of its relations,
by the first citizens of England, the foremost men of the earth; every
argument was weighed, every particle of evidence was sifted and laid
in the scale; and, at last, the right triumphed, the poor man was
vindicated, and the oppressor was flung out. I know that England has the
advantage of trying the question at a wide distance from the spot where
the nuisance exists; the planters are not, excepting in rare examples,
members of the legislature. The extent of the empire, and the magnitude
and number of other questions crowding into court, keep this one in
balance, and prevent it from obtaining that ascendency, and being urged
with that intemperance which a question of property tends to acquire.
There are causes in the composition of the British legislature, and the
relation of its leaders to the country and to Europe, which exclude much
that is pitiful and injurious in other legislative assemblies. From
these reasons, the question was discussed with a rare independence and
magnanimity. It was not narrowed down to a paltry electioneering trap;
and, I must say, a delight in justice, an honest tenderness for the poor
negro, for man suffering these wrongs, combined with the national pride,
which refused to give the support of English soil or the protection of
the English flag to these disgusting violations of nature.
Forgive me, fellow citizens, if I own to you, that in the last few days
that my attention has been occupied with this history, I have not been
able to read a page of it without the most painful comparisons. Whilst
I have read of England, I have thought of New England. Whilst I have
meditated in my solitary walks on the magnanimity of the English Bench
and Senate, reaching out the benefit of the law to the most helpless
citizen in her world-wide realm, I have found myself oppressed by other
thoughts. As I have walked in the pastures and along the edge of woods,
I could not keep my imagination on those agreeable figures, for other
images that intruded on me. I could not see the great vision of the
patriots and senators who have adopted the slave’s cause:—they turned
their backs on me. No: I see other pictures,—of mean men; I see very
poor, very ill-clothed, very ignorant men, not surrounded by happy
friends,—to be plain,—poor black men of obscure employment as mariners,
cooks or stewards, in ships, yet citizens of this our Commonwealth of
Massachusetts,—freeborn as we,—whom the slave-laws of the States of South
Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana have arrested in the vessels in which
they visited those ports, and shut up in jails so long as the vessel
remained in port, with the stringent addition, that if the shipmaster
fails to pay the costs of this official arrest and the board in jail,
these citizens are to be sold for slaves, to pay that expense. This
man, these men, I see, and no law to save them. Fellow citizens, this
crime will not be hushed up any longer. I have learned that a citizen of
Nantucket, walking in New Orleans, found a freeborn citizen of Nantucket,
a man, too, of great personal worth, and, as it happened, very dear to
him, as having saved his own life, working chained in the streets of that
city, kidnapped by such a process as this. In the sleep of the laws, the
private interference of two excellent citizens of Boston has, I have
ascertained, rescued several natives of this State from these Southern
prisons. Gentlemen, I thought the deck of a Massachusetts ship was as
much the territory of Massachusetts as the floor on which we stand. It
should be as sacred as the temple of God. The poorest fishing-smack that
floats under the shadow of an iceberg in the Northern seas, or hunts
whale in the Southern ocean, should be encompassed by her laws with
comfort and protection, as much as within the arms of Cape Ann or Cape
Cod. And this kidnapping is suffered within our own land and federation,
whilst the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States
ordains in terms, that, “The citizens of each State shall be entitled
to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” If
such a damnable outrage can be committed on the person of a citizen with
impunity, let the Governor break the broad seal of the State; he bears
the sword in vain.[112] The Governor of Massachusetts is a trifler; the
State-House in Boston is a play-house; the General Court is a dishonored
body, if they make laws which they cannot execute. The great-hearted
Puritans have left no posterity. The rich men may walk in State Street,
but they walk without honor; and the farmers may brag their democracy
in the country, but they are disgraced men. If the State has no power
to defend its own people in its own shipping, because it has delegated
that power to the Federal Government, has it no representation in the
Federal Government?[113] Are those men dumb? I am no lawyer, and cannot
indicate the forms applicable to the case, but here is something which
transcends all forms. Let the senators and representatives of the State,
containing a population of a million freemen, go in a body before the
Congress and say that they have a demand to make on them, so imperative
that all functions of government must stop until it is satisfied. If
ordinary legislation cannot reach it, then extraordinary must be applied.
The Congress should instruct the President to send to those ports of
Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans such orders and such force as should
release, forthwith, all such citizens of Massachusetts as were holden
in prison without the allegation of any crime, and should set on foot
the strictest inquisition to discover where such persons, brought into
slavery by these local laws at any time heretofore, may now be. That
first; and then, let order be taken to indemnify all such as have been
incarcerated. As for dangers to the Union, from such demands!—the Union
already is at an end when the first citizen of Massachusetts is thus
outraged. Is it an union and covenant in which the State of Massachusetts
agrees to be imprisoned, and the State of Carolina to imprison?[114]
Gentlemen, I am loath to say harsh things, and perhaps I know too little
of politics for the smallest weight to attach to any censure of mine,—but
I am at a loss how to characterize the tameness and silence of the two
senators and the ten representatives of the State at Washington. To what
purpose have we clothed each of those representatives with the power of
seventy thousand persons, and each senator with near half a million,
if they are to sit dumb at their desks and see their constituents
captured and sold;—perhaps to gentlemen sitting by them in the hall?
There is a scandalous rumor that has been swelling louder of late
years,—perhaps wholly false,—that members are bullied into silence by
Southern gentlemen. It is so easy to omit to speak, or even to be absent
when delicate things are to be handled. I may as well say, what all men
feel, that whilst our very amiable and very innocent representatives
and senators at Washington are accomplished lawyers and merchants, and
very eloquent at dinners and at caucuses, there is a disastrous want
of _men_ from New England. I would gladly make exceptions, and you
will not suffer me to forget one eloquent old man, in whose veins the
blood of Massachusetts rolls, and who singly has defended the freedom
of speech, and the rights of the free, against the usurpation of the
slave-holder.[115] But the reader of Congressional debates, in New
England, is perplexed to see with what admirable sweetness and patience
the majority of the free States are schooled and ridden by the minority
of slave-holders. What if we should send thither representatives who
were a particle less amiable and less innocent? I entreat you, sirs, let
not this stain attach, let not this misery accumulate any longer. If
the managers of our political parties are too prudent and too cold;—if,
most unhappily, the ambitious class of young men and political men have
found out that these neglected victims are poor and without weight; that
they have no graceful hospitalities to offer; no valuable business to
throw into any man’s hands, no strong vote to cast at the elections; and
therefore may with impunity be left in their chains or to the chance of
chains,—then let the citizens in their primary capacity take up their
cause on this very ground, and say to the government of the State, and
of the Union, that government exists to defend the weak and the poor
and the injured party; the rich and the strong can better take care of
themselves. And as an omen and assurance of success, I point you to the
bright example which England set you, on this day, ten years ago.
There are other comparisons and other imperative duties which come
sadly to mind,—but I do not wish to darken the hours of this day by
crimination; I turn gladly to the rightful theme, to the bright aspects
of the occasion.
This event was a moral revolution. The history of it is before you. Here
was no prodigy, no fabulous hero, no Trojan horse, no bloody war, but all
was achieved by plain means of plain men, working not under a leader,
but under a sentiment. Other revolutions have been the insurrection of
the oppressed; this was the repentance of the tyrant. It was the masters
revolting from their mastery. The slave-holder said, ‘I will not hold
slaves.’ The end was noble and the means were pure. Hence the elevation
and pathos of this chapter of history. The lives of the advocates are
pages of greatness, and the connection of the eminent senators with this
question constitutes the immortalizing moments of those men’s lives. The
bare enunciation of the theses at which the lawyers and legislators
arrived, gives a glow to the heart of the reader. Lord Chancellor
Northington is the author of the famous sentence, “As soon as any man
puts his foot on English ground, he becomes free.” “I was a slave,”
said the counsel of Somerset, speaking for his client, “for I was in
America: I am now in a country where the common rights of mankind are
known and regarded.” Granville Sharpe filled the ear of the judges with
the sound principles that had from time to time been affirmed by the
legal authorities: “Derived power cannot be superior to the power from
which it is derived:” “The reasonableness of the law is the soul of the
law:” “It is better to suffer every evil, than to consent to any.” Out
it would come, the God’s truth, out it came, like a bolt from a cloud,
for all the mumbling of the lawyers. One feels very sensibly in all
this history that a great heart and soul are behind there, superior to
any man, and making use of each, in turn, and infinitely attractive to
every person according to the degree of reason in his own mind, so that
this cause has had the power to draw to it every particle of talent and
of worth in England, from the beginning. All the great geniuses of the
British senate, Fox, Pitt, Burke, Grenville, Sheridan, Grey, Canning,
ranged themselves on its side; the poet Cowper wrote for it: Franklin,
Jefferson, Washington, in this country, all recorded their votes. All men
remember the subtlety and the fire of indignation which the “Edinburgh
Review” contributed to the cause; and every liberal mind, poet, preacher,
moralist, statesman, has had the fortune to appear somewhere for this
cause. On the other part, appeared the reign of pounds and shillings,
and all manner of rage and stupidity; a resistance which drew from Mr.
Huddlestone in Parliament the observation, “That a curse attended this
trade even in the mode of defending it. By a certain fatality, none but
the vilest arguments were brought forward, which corrupted the very
persons who used them. Every one of these was built on the narrow ground
of interest, of pecuniary profit, of sordid gain, in opposition to
every motive that had reference to humanity, justice, and religion, or
to that great principle which comprehended them all.” This moral force
perpetually reinforces and dignifies the friends of this cause. It gave
that tenacity to their point which has insured ultimate triumph; and it
gave that superiority in reason, in imagery, in eloquence, which makes
in all countries anti-slavery meetings so attractive to the people, and
has made it a proverb in Massachusetts, that “eloquence is dog-cheap at
the anti-slavery chapel.”
I will say further that we are indebted mainly to this movement and
to the continuers of it, for the popular discussion of every point of
practical ethics, and a reference of every question to the absolute
standard. It is notorious that the political, religious and social
schemes, with which the minds of men are now most occupied, have been
matured, or at least broached, in the free and daring discussions of
these assemblies. Men have become aware, through the emancipation and
kindred events, of the presence of powers which, in their days of
darkness, they had overlooked. Virtuous men will not again rely on
political agents. They have found out the deleterious effect of political
association. Up to this day we have allowed to statesmen a paramount
social standing, and we bow low to them as to the great. We cannot extend
this deference to them any longer. The secret cannot be kept, that the
seats of power are filled by underlings, ignorant, timid and selfish to a
degree to destroy all claim, excepting that on compassion, to the society
of the just and generous. What happened notoriously to an American
ambassador in England, that he found himself compelled to palter and to
disguise the fact that he was a slave-breeder, happens to men of state.
Their vocation is a presumption against them among well-meaning people.
The superstition respecting power and office is going to the ground. The
stream of human affairs flows its own way, and is very little affected
by the activity of legislators. What great masses of men wish done, will
be done; and they do not wish it for a freak, but because it is their
state and natural end. There are now other energies than force, other
than political, which no man in future can allow himself to disregard.
There is direct conversation and influence. A man is to make himself
felt by his proper force. The tendency of things runs steadily to this
point, namely, to put every man on his merits, and to give him so much
power as he naturally exerts,—no more, no less. Of course, the timid and
base persons, all who are conscious of no worth in themselves, and who
owe all their place to the opportunities which the older order of things
allowed them, to deceive and defraud men, shudder at the change, and
would fain silence every honest voice, and lock up every house where
liberty and innovation can be pleaded for. They would raise mobs, for
fear is very cruel. But the strong and healthy yeomen and husbands of the
land, the self-sustaining class of inventive and industrious men, fear
no competition or superiority. Come what will, their faculty cannot be
spared.
The First of August marks the entrance of a new element into modern
politics, namely, the civilization of the negro. A man is added to the
human family. Not the least affecting part of this history of abolition
is the annihilation of the old indecent nonsense about the nature of
the negro. In the case of the ship Zong, in 1781, whose master had
thrown one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the sea, to cheat
the underwriters, the first jury gave a verdict in favor of the master
and owners: they had a right to do what they had done. Lord Mansfield
is reported to have said on the bench, “The matter left to the jury
is,—Was it from necessity? For they had no doubt—though it shocks one
very much—that the case of slaves was the same as if horses had been
thrown overboard. It is a very shocking case.” But a more enlightened
and humane opinion began to prevail. Mr. Clarkson, early in his career,
made a collection of African productions and manufactures, as specimens
of the arts and culture of the negro; comprising cloths and loom,
weapons, polished stones and woods, leather, glass, dyes, ornaments,
soap, pipe-bowls and trinkets. These he showed to Mr. Pitt, who saw and
handled them with extreme interest. “On sight of these,” says Clarkson,
“many sublime thoughts seemed to rush at once into his mind, some of
which he expressed;” and hence appeared to arise a project which was
always dear to him, of the civilization of Africa,—a dream which forever
elevates his fame. In 1791, Mr. Wilberforce announced to the House of
Commons, “We have already gained one victory: we have obtained for these
poor creatures the recognition of their human nature, which for a time
was most shamefully denied them.” It was the sarcasm of Montesquieu, “it
would not do to suppose that negroes were men, lest it should turn out
that whites were not;” for the white has, for ages, done what he could
to keep the negro in that hoggish state. His laws have been furies. It
now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of
rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to
have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is
brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.
If, before, he was taxed with such stupidity, or such defective vision,
that he could not set a table square to the walls of an apartment, he is
now the principal if not the only mechanic in the West Indies; and is,
besides, an architect, a physician, a lawyer, a magistrate, an editor,
and a valued and increasing political power. The recent testimonies of
Sturge, of Thome and Kimball, of Gurney, of Philippo, are very explicit
on this point, the capacity and the success of the colored and the black
population in employments of skill, of profit and of trust; and best of
all is the testimony to their moderation. They receive hints and advances
from the whites that they will be gladly received as subscribers to
the Exchange, as members of this or that committee of trust. They hold
back, and say to each other that “social position is not to be gained by
pushing.”
I have said that this event interests us because it came mainly from
the concession of the whites; I add, that in part it is the earning of
the blacks. They won the pity and respect which they have received, by
their powers and native endowments. I think this a circumstance of the
highest import. Their whole future is in it. Our planet, before the age
of written history, had its races of savages, like the generations of
sour paste, or the animalcules that wiggle and bite in a drop of putrid
water. Who cares for these or for their wars? We do not wish a world of
bugs or of birds; neither afterward of Scythians, Caraibs or Feejees. The
grand style of Nature, her great periods, is all we observe in them. Who
cares for oppressing whites, or oppressed blacks, twenty centuries ago,
more than for bad dreams? Eaters and food are in the harmony of Nature;
and there too is the germ forever protected, unfolding gigantic leaf
after leaf, a newer flower, a richer fruit, in every period, yet its next
product is never to be guessed. It will only save what is worth saving;
and it saves not by compassion, but by power. It appoints no police to
guard the lion but his teeth and claws; no fort or city for the bird but
his wings; no rescue for flies and mites but their spawning numbers,
which no ravages can overcome. It deals with men after the same manner.
If they are rude and foolish, down they must go. When at last in a race
a new principle appears, an idea,—_that_ conserves it; ideas only save
races. If the black man is feeble and not important to the existing
races, not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve,
and be exterminated.[116] But if the black man carries in his bosom an
indispensable element of a new and coming civilization; for the sake of
that element, no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him: he
will survive and play his part. So now, the arrival in the world of such
men as Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders of their race
in Barbadoes and Jamaica, outweighs in good omen all the English and
American humanity. The anti-slavery of the whole world is dust in the
balance before this,—is a poor squeamishness and nervousness: the might
and the right are here: here is the anti-slave: here is man: and if you
have man, black or white is an insignificance. The intellect,—that is
miraculous! Who has it, has the talisman: his skin and bones, though they
were of the color of night, are transparent, and the everlasting stars
shine through, with attractive beams. But a compassion for that which
is not and cannot be useful or lovely, is degrading and futile. All the
songs and newspapers and money subscriptions and vituperation of such as
do not think with us, will avail nothing against a fact. I say to you,
you must save yourself, black or white, man or woman; other help is
none. I esteem the occasion of this jubilee to be the proud discovery
that the black race can contend with the white: that in the great anthem
which we call history, a piece of many parts and vast compass, after
playing a long time a very low and subdued accompaniment, they perceive
the time arrived when they can strike in with effect and take a master’s
part in the music. The civility of the world has reached that pitch that
their more moral genius is becoming indispensable, and the quality of
this race is to be honored for itself. For this, they have been preserved
in sandy deserts, in rice-swamps, in kitchens and shoe-shops, so long:
now let them emerge, clothed and in their own form.
There remains the very elevated consideration which the subject opens,
but which belongs to more abstract views than we are now taking, this,
namely, that the civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race
is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest
philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member,
without a sympathetic injury to all the members. America is not civil,
whilst Africa is barbarous.[117]
These considerations seem to leave no choice for the action of the
intellect and the conscience of the country. There have been moments in
this, as well as in every piece of moral history, when there seemed room
for the infusions of a skeptical philosophy; when it seemed doubtful
whether brute force would not triumph in the eternal struggle. I doubt
not that, sometimes, a despairing negro, when jumping over the ship’s
sides to escape from the white devils who surrounded him, has believed
there was no vindication of right; it is horrible to think of, but it
seemed so. I doubt not that sometimes the negro’s friend, in the face
of scornful and brutal hundreds of traders and drivers, has felt his
heart sink. Especially, it seems to me, some degree of despondency is
pardonable, when he observes the men of conscience and of intellect,
his own natural allies and champions,—those whose attention should be
nailed to the grand objects of this cause, so hotly offended by whatever
incidental petulances or infirmities of indiscreet defenders of the
negro, as to permit themselves to be ranged with the enemies of the human
race; and names which should be the alarums of liberty and the watchwords
of truth, are mixed up with all the rotten rabble of selfishness and
tyranny.[118] I assure myself that this coldness and blindness will
pass away. A single noble wind of sentiment will scatter them forever.
I am sure that the good and wise elders, the ardent and generous youth,
will not permit what is incidental and exceptional to withdraw their
devotion from the essential and permanent characters of the question.
There have been moments, I said, when men might be forgiven who doubted.
Those moments are past. Seen in masses, it cannot be disputed, there
is progress in human society. There is a blessed necessity by which
the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again,
making all crime mean and ugly. The genius of the Saxon race, friendly
to liberty; the enterprise, the very muscular vigor of this nation, are
inconsistent with slavery. The Intellect, with blazing eye, looking
through history from the beginning onward, gazes on this blot and it
disappears. The sentiment of Right, once very low and indistinct, but
ever more articulate, because it is the voice of the universe, pronounces
Freedom. The Power that built this fabric of things affirms it in the
heart; and in the history of the First of August, has made a sign to the
ages, of his will.
V
WAR
The archangel Hope
Looks to the azure cope,
Waits through dark ages for the morn,
Defeated day by day, but unto Victory born.
WAR
It has been a favorite study of modern philosophy to indicate the steps
of human progress, to watch the rising of a thought in one man’s mind,
the communication of it to a few, to a small minority, its expansion and
general reception, until it publishes itself to the world by destroying
the existing laws and institutions, and the generation of new. Looked at
in this general and historical way, many things wear a very different
face from that they show near by, and one at a time,—and, particularly,
war. War, which to sane men at the present day begins to look like an
epidemic insanity, breaking out here and there like the cholera or
influenza, infecting men’s brains instead of their bowels,—when seen
in the remote past, in the infancy of society, appears a part of the
connection of events, and, in its place, necessary.
As far as history has preserved to us the slow unfoldings of any savage
tribe, it is not easy to see how war could be avoided by such wild,
passionate, needy, ungoverned, strong-bodied creatures. For in the
infancy of society, when a thin population and improvidence make the
supply of food and of shelter insufficient and very precarious, and
when hunger, thirst, ague and frozen limbs universally take precedence
of the wants of the mind and the heart, the necessities of the strong
will certainly be satisfied at the cost of the weak, at whatever peril
of future revenge. It is plain, too, that in the first dawnings of the
religious sentiment, _that_ blends itself with their passions and is oil
to the fire. Not only every tribe has war-gods, religious festivals in
victory, but _religious wars_.
The student of history acquiesces the more readily in this copious
bloodshed of the early annals, bloodshed in God’s name too, when he
learns that it is a temporary and preparatory state, and does actively
forward the culture of man. War educates the senses, calls into action
the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such
swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man.
On its own scale, on the virtues it loves, it endures no counterfeit,
but shakes the whole society until every atom falls into the place its
specific gravity assigns it.[119] It presently finds the value of good
sense and of foresight, and Ulysses takes rank next to Achilles. The
leaders, picked men of a courage and vigor tried and augmented in fifty
battles, are emulous to distinguish themselves above each other by new
merits, as clemency, hospitality, splendor of living. The people imitate
the chiefs. The strong tribe, in which war has become an art, attack
and conquer their neighbors, and teach them their arts and virtues.
New territory, augmented numbers and extended interests call out new
virtues and abilities, and the tribe makes long strides. And, finally,
when much progress has been made, all its secrets of wisdom and art are
disseminated by its invasions. Plutarch, in his essay On the Fortune of
Alexander, considers the invasion and conquest of the East by Alexander
as one of the most bright and pleasing pages in history; and it must
be owned he gives sound reason for his opinion. It had the effect of
uniting into one great interest the divided commonwealths of Greece, and
infusing a new and more enlarged public spirit into the councils of their
statesmen. It carried the arts and language and philosophy of the Greeks
into the sluggish and barbarous nations of Persia, Assyria and India. It
introduced the arts of husbandry among tribes of hunters and shepherds.
It weaned the Scythians and Persians from some cruel and licentious
practices to a more civil way of life. It introduced the sacredness of
marriage among them. It built seventy cities, and sowed the Greek customs
and humane laws over Asia, and united hostile nations under one code.
It brought different families of the human race together,—to blows at
first, but afterwards to truce, to trade and to intermarriage. It would
be very easy to show analogous benefits that have resulted from military
movements of later ages.
Considerations of this kind lead us to a true view of the nature and
office of war. We see it is the subject of all history; that it has been
the principal employment of the most conspicuous men; that it is at this
moment the delight of half the world, of almost all young and ignorant
persons; that it is exhibited to us continually in the dumb show of brute
nature, where war between tribes, and between individuals of the same
tribe, perpetually rages. The microscope reveals miniature butchery in
atomies and infinitely small biters that swim and fight in an illuminated
drop of water; and the little globe is but a too faithful miniature of
the large.
What does all this war, beginning from the lowest races and reaching
up to man, signify? Is it not manifest that it covers a great and
beneficent principle, which Nature had deeply at heart? What is that
principle?—It is self-help. Nature implants with life the instinct of
self-help, perpetual struggle to be, to resist opposition, to attain
to freedom, to attain to a mastery and the security of a permanent,
self-defended being; and to each creature these objects are made so dear
that it risks its life continually in the struggle for these ends.
But whilst this principle, necessarily, is inwrought into the fabric of
every creature, yet it is but _one_ instinct; and though a primary one,
or we may say the very first, yet the appearance of the other instincts
immediately modifies and controls this; turns its energies into harmless,
useful and high courses, showing thereby what was its ultimate design;
and, finally, takes out its fangs. The instinct of self-help is very
early unfolded in the coarse and merely brute form of war, only in the
childhood and imbecility of the other instincts, and remains in that form
only until their development. It is the ignorant and childish part of
mankind that is the fighting part. Idle and vacant minds want excitement,
as all boys kill cats. Bull-baiting, cockpits and the boxer’s ring are
the enjoyment of the part of society whose animal nature alone has been
developed. In some parts of this country, where the intellectual and
moral faculties have as yet scarcely any culture, the absorbing topic
of all conversation is whipping; who fought, and which whipped? Of man,
boy or beast, the only trait that much interests the speakers is the
pugnacity.[120] And why? Because the speaker has as yet no other image of
manly activity and virtue, none of endurance, none of perseverance, none
of charity, none of the attainment of truth. Put him into a circle of
cultivated men, where the conversation broaches the great questions that
besiege the human reason, and he would be dumb and unhappy, as an Indian
in church.
To men of a sedate and mature spirit, in whom is any knowledge or
mental activity, the detail of battle becomes insupportably tedious
and revolting. It is like the talk of one of those monomaniacs whom
we sometimes meet in society, who converse on horses; and Fontenelle
expressed a volume of meaning when he said, “I hate war, for it spoils
conversation.”
Nothing is plainer than that the sympathy with war is a juvenile and
temporary state. Not only the moral sentiment, but trade, learning and
whatever makes intercourse, conspire to put it down. Trade, as all
men know, is the antagonist of war. Wherever there is no property,
the people will put on the knapsack for bread; but trade is instantly
endangered and destroyed. And, moreover, trade brings men to look each
other in the face, and gives the parties the knowledge that these enemies
over sea or over the mountain are such men as we; who laugh and grieve,
who love and fear, as we do. And learning and art, and especially
religion weave ties that make war look like fratricide, as it is. And
as all history is the picture of war, as we have said, so it is no less
true that it is the record of the mitigation and decline of war. Early
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Italian cities had grown so
populous and strong that they forced the rural nobility to dismantle
their castles, which were dens of cruelty, and come and reside in the
towns. The popes, to their eternal honor, declared religious jubilees,
during which all hostilities were suspended throughout Christendom, and
man had a breathing space. The increase of civility has abolished the use
of poison and of torture, once supposed as necessary as navies now. And,
finally, the art of war, what with gunpowder and tactics, has made, as
all men know, battles less frequent and less murderous.
By all these means, war has been steadily on the decline; and we read
with astonishment of the beastly fighting of the old times. Only in
Elizabeth’s time, out of the European waters, piracy was all but
universal. The proverb was,—“No peace beyond the line;” and the seaman
shipped on the buccaneer’s bargain, “No prey, no pay.” The celebrated
Cavendish, who was thought in his times a good Christian man, wrote
thus to Lord Hunsdon, on his return from a voyage round the world:
“Sept. 1588. It hath pleased Almighty God to suffer me to circumpass the
whole globe of the world, entering in at the Strait of Magellan, and
returning by the Cape of Buena Esperança; in which voyage, I have either
discovered or brought certain intelligence of all the rich places of the
world, which were ever discovered by any Christian. I navigated along
the coast of Chili, Peru, and New Spain, _where I made great spoils. I
burnt and sunk nineteen sail of ships, small and great. All the villages
and towns that ever I landed at, I burned and spoiled._ And had I not
been discovered upon the coast, I had taken great quantity of treasure.
The matter of most profit to me was a great ship of the king’s, which I
took at California,” etc. And the good Cavendish piously begins this
statement,—“It hath pleased Almighty God.”
Indeed, our American annals have preserved the vestiges of barbarous
warfare down to more recent times. I read in Williams’s History of Maine,
that “Assacombuit, the Sagamore of the Anagunticook tribe, was remarkable
for his turpitude and ferocity above all other known Indians; that,
in 1705, Vaudreuil sent him to France, where he was introduced to the
king. When he appeared at court, he lifted up his hand and said, ‘This
hand has slain a hundred and fifty of your majesty’s enemies within the
territories of New England.’ This so pleased the king that he knighted
him, and ordered a pension of eight livres a day to be paid him during
life.” This valuable person, on his return to America, took to killing
his own neighbors and kindred, with such appetite that his tribe combined
against him, and would have killed him had he not fled his country
forever.
The scandal which we feel in such facts certainly shows that we have got
on a little. All history is the decline of war, though the slow decline.
All that society has yet gained is mitigation: the doctrine of the right
of war still remains.
For ages (for ideas work in ages, and animate vast societies of men) the
human race has gone on under the tyranny—shall I so call it?—of this
first brutish form of their effort to be men; that is, for ages they
have shared so much of the nature of the lower animals, the tiger and
the shark, and the savages of the water-drop. They have nearly exhausted
all the good and all the evil of this form: they have held as fast to
this degradation as their worst enemy could desire; but all things have
an end, and so has this.[121] The eternal germination of the better has
unfolded new powers, new instincts, which were really concealed under
this rough and base rind. The sublime question has startled one and
another happy soul in different quarters of the globe,—Cannot love be,
as well as hate? Would not love answer the same end, or even a better?
Cannot peace be, as well as war?
This thought is no man’s invention, neither St. Pierre’s nor Rousseau’s,
but the rising of the general tide in the human soul,—and rising highest,
and first made visible, in the most simple and pure souls, who have
therefore announced it to us beforehand; but presently we all see it.
It has now become so distinct as to be a social thought: societies can
be formed on it. It is expounded, illustrated, defined, with different
degrees of clearness; and its actualization, or the measures it should
inspire, predicted according to the light of each seer.
The idea itself is the epoch; the fact that it has become so distinct to
any small number of persons as to become a subject of prayer and hope,
of concert and discussion,—_that_ is the commanding fact. This having
come, much more will follow. Revolutions go not backward. The star once
risen, though only one man in the hemisphere has yet seen its upper limb
in the horizon, will mount and mount, until it becomes visible to other
men, to multitudes, and climbs the zenith of all eyes. And so it is not a
great matter how long men refuse to believe the advent of peace: war is
on its last legs; and a universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence
of civilization over barbarism, of liberal governments over feudal forms.
The question for us is only _How soon?_
That the project of peace should appear visionary to great numbers of
sensible men; should appear laughable even, to numbers; should appear
to the grave and good-natured to be embarrassed with extreme practical
difficulties,—is very natural. ‘This is a poor, tedious society of
yours,’ they say: ‘we do not see what good can come of it. Peace! why, we
are all at peace now. But if a foreign nation should wantonly insult or
plunder our commerce, or, worse yet, should land on our shores to rob and
kill, you would not have us sit, and be robbed and killed? You mistake
the times; you overestimate the virtue of men. You forget that the
quiet which now sleeps in cities and in farms, which lets the wagon go
unguarded and the farmhouse unbolted, rests on the perfect understanding
of all men that the musket, the halter and the jail stand behind there,
ready to punish any disturber of it. All admit that this would be the
best policy, if the world were all a church, if all the men were the best
men, if all would agree to accept this rule. But it is absurd for one
nation to attempt it alone.’[122]
In the first place, we answer that we never make much account of
objections which merely respect the actual state of the world at this
moment, but which admit the general expediency and permanent excellence
of the project. What is the best must be the true; and what is true—that
is, what is at bottom fit and agreeable to the constitution of man—must
at last prevail over all obstruction and all opposition. There is no
good now enjoyed by society that was not once as problematical and
visionary as this. It is the tendency of the true interest of man to
become his desire and steadfast aim.
But, further, it is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put
trust in ideas, and not in circumstances. We have all grown up in the
sight of frigates and navy-yards, of armed forts and islands, of arsenals
and militia. The reference to any foreign register will inform us of the
number of thousand or million men that are now under arms in the vast
colonial system of the British Empire, of Russia, Austria and France; and
one is scared to find at what a cost the peace of the globe is kept. This
vast apparatus of artillery, of fleets, of stone bastions and trenches
and embankments; this incessant patrolling of sentinels; this waving of
national flags; this reveille and evening gun; this martial music and
endless playing of marches and singing of military and naval songs seem
to us to constitute an imposing actual, which will not yield in centuries
to the feeble, deprecatory voices of a handful of friends of peace.
Thus always we are daunted by the appearances; not seeing that their
whole value lies at bottom in the state of mind. It is really a thought
that built this portentous war-establishment, and a thought shall
also melt it away.[123] Every nation and every man instantly surround
themselves with a material apparatus which exactly corresponds to their
moral state, or their state of thought. Observe how every truth and
every error, each a _thought_ of some man’s mind, clothes itself with
societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers. Observe
the ideas of the present day,—orthodoxy, skepticism, missions, popular
education, temperance, anti-masonry, anti-slavery; see how each of
these abstractions has embodied itself in an imposing apparatus in
the community; and how timber, brick, lime and stone have flown into
convenient shape, obedient to the master-idea reigning in the minds of
many persons.[124]
You shall hear, some day, of a wild fancy which some man has in his
brain, of the mischief of secret oaths. Come again one or two years
afterwards, and you shall see it has built great houses of solid wood
and brick and mortar. You shall see a hundred presses printing a million
sheets; you shall see men and horses and wheels made to walk, run and
roll for it: this great body of matter thus executing that one man’s wild
thought. This happens daily, yearly about us, with half thoughts, often
with flimsy lies, pieces of policy and speculation. With good nursing
they will last three or four years before they will come to nothing. But
when a truth appears,—as, for instance, a perception in the wit of one
Columbus that there is land in the Western Sea; though he alone of all
men has that thought, and they all jeer,—it will build ships; it will
build fleets; it will carry over half Spain and half England; it will
plant a colony, a state, nations and half a globe full of men.
We surround ourselves always, according to our freedom and ability, with
true images of ourselves in things, whether it be ships or books or
cannons or churches. The standing army, the arsenal, the camp and the
gibbet do not appertain to man. They only serve as an index to show where
man is now; what a bad, ungoverned temper he has; what an ugly neighbor
he is; how his affections halt; how low his hope lies. He who loves the
bristle of bayonets only sees in their glitter what beforehand he feels
in his heart. It is avarice and hatred; it is that quivering lip, that
cold, hating eye, which built magazines and powder-houses.
It follows of course that the least change in the man will change his
circumstances; the least enlargement of his ideas, the least mitigation
of his feelings in respect to other men; if, for example, he could be
inspired with a tender kindness to the souls of men, and should come to
feel that every man was another self with whom he might come to join,
as left hand works with right. Every degree of the ascendency of this
feeling would cause the most striking changes of external things: the
tents would be struck; the men-of-war would rot ashore; the arms rust;
the cannon would become street-posts; the pikes, a fisher’s harpoon; the
marching regiment would be a caravan of emigrants, _peaceful_ pioneers
at the fountains of the Wabash and the Missouri. And so it must and will
be: bayonet and sword must first retreat a little from their ostentatious
prominence; then quite hide themselves, as the sheriff’s halter does now,
inviting the attendance only of relations and friends; and then, lastly,
will be transferred to the museums of the curious, as poisoning and
torturing tools are at this day.
War and peace thus resolve themselves into a mercury of the state of
cultivation. At a certain stage of his progress, the man fights, if
he be of a sound body and mind. At a certain higher stage, he makes
no offensive demonstration, but is alert to repel injury, and of an
unconquerable heart.[125] At a still higher stage, he comes into the
region of holiness; passion has passed away from him; his warlike nature
is all converted into an active medicinal principle; he sacrifices
himself, and accepts with alacrity wearisome tasks of denial and charity;
but, being attacked, he bears it and turns the other cheek, as one
engaged, throughout his being, no longer to the service of an individual
but to the common soul of all men.
Since the peace question has been before the public mind, those
who affirm its right and expediency have naturally been met with
objections more or less weighty. There are cases frequently put by the
curious,—moral problems, like those problems in arithmetic which in long
winter evenings the rustics try the hardness of their heads in ciphering
out. And chiefly it is said,—Either accept this principle for better,
for worse, carry it out to the end, and meet its absurd consequences;
or else, if you pretend to set an arbitrary limit, a “Thus far, no
farther,” then give up the principle, and take that limit which the
common sense of all mankind has set, and which distinguishes offensive
war as criminal, defensive war as just. Otherwise, if you go for no war,
then be consistent, and give up self-defence in the highway, in your own
house. Will you push it thus far? Will you stick to your principle of
non-resistance when your strong-box is broken open, when your wife and
babes are insulted and slaughtered in your sight? If you say yes, you
only invite the robber and assassin; and a few bloody-minded desperadoes
would soon butcher the good.
In reply to this charge of absurdity on the extreme peace doctrine, as
shown in the supposed consequences, I wish to say that such deductions
consider only one half of the fact. They look only at the passive side of
the friend of peace, only at his passivity; they quite omit to consider
his activity. But no man, it may be presumed, ever embraced the cause
of peace and philanthropy for the sole end and satisfaction of being
plundered and slain. A man does not come the length of the spirit of
martyrdom without some active purpose, some equal motive, some flaming
love. If you have a nation of men who have risen to that height of moral
cultivation that they will not declare war or carry arms, for they have
not so much madness left in their brains, you have a nation of lovers,
of benefactors, of true, great and able men. Let me know more of that
nation; I shall not find them defenceless, with idle hands swinging at
their sides. I shall find them men of love, honor and truth; men of an
immense industry; men whose influence is felt to the end of the earth;
men whose very look and voice carry the sentence of honor and shame; and
all forces yield to their energy and persuasion. Whenever we see the
doctrine of peace embraced by a nation, we may be assured it will not be
one that invites injury; but one, on the contrary, which has a friend in
the bottom of the heart of every man, even of the violent and the base;
one against which no weapon can prosper; one which is looked upon as the
asylum of the human race and has the tears and the blessings of mankind.
In the second place, as far as it respects individual action in difficult
and extreme cases, I will say, such cases seldom or never occur to the
good and just man; nor are we careful to say, or even to know, what in
such crises is to be done. A wise man will never impawn his future being
and action, and decide beforehand what he shall do in a given extreme
event. Nature and God will instruct him in that hour.
The question naturally arises, How is this new aspiration of the human
mind to be made visible and real? How is it to pass out of thoughts into
things?
Not, certainly, in the first place, _in the way of routine and mere
forms_,—the universal specific of modern politics; not by organizing
a society, and going through a course of resolutions and public
manifestoes, and being thus formally accredited to the public and to the
civility of the newspapers. We have played this game to tediousness.
In some of our cities they choose noted duellists as presidents and
officers of anti-duelling societies. Men who love that bloated vanity
called public opinion think all is well if they have once got their
bantling through a sufficient course of speeches and cheerings, of one,
two, or three public meetings; as if _they_ could do anything: they vote
and vote, cry hurrah on both sides, no man responsible, no man caring a
pin. The next season, an Indian war, or an aggression on our commerce by
Malays; or the party this man votes with have an appropriation to carry
through Congress: instantly he wags his head the other way, and cries,
Havoc and war!
This is not to be carried by public opinion, but by private opinion, by
private conviction, by private, dear and earnest love. For the only hope
of this cause is in the increased insight, and it is to be accomplished
by the spontaneous teaching, of the cultivated soul, in its secret
experience and meditation,—that it is now time that it should pass out of
the state of beast into the state of man; it is to hear the voice of God,
which bids the devils that have rended and torn him come out of him and
let him now be clothed and walk forth in his right mind.
Nor, in the next place, is the peace principle to be carried into effect
by fear. It can never be defended, it can never be executed, by cowards.
Everything great must be done in the spirit of greatness. The manhood
that has been in war must be transferred to the cause of peace, before
war can lose its charm, and peace be venerable to men.
The attractiveness of war shows one thing through all the throats of
artillery, the thunders of so many sieges, the sack of towns, the
jousts of chivalry, the shock of hosts,—this namely, the conviction of
man universally, that a man should be himself responsible, with goods,
health and life, for his behavior; that he should not ask of the state
protection; should ask nothing of the state; should be himself a kingdom
and a state; fearing no man; quite willing to use the opportunities and
advantages that good government throw in his way, but nothing daunted,
and not really the poorer if government, law and order went by the board;
because in himself reside infinite resources; because he is sure of
himself, and never needs to ask another what in any crisis it behooves
him to do.[126]
What makes to us the attractiveness of the Greek heroes? of the Roman?
What makes the attractiveness of that romantic style of living which
is the material of ten thousand plays and romances, from Shakspeare to
Scott; the feudal baron, the French, the English nobility, the Warwicks,
Plantagenets? It is their absolute self-dependence. I do not wonder at
the dislike some of the friends of peace have expressed at Shakspeare.
The veriest churl and Jacobin cannot resist the influence of the style
and manners of these haughty lords. We are affected, as boys and
barbarians are, by the appearance of a few rich and wilful gentlemen who
take their honor into their own keeping, defy the world, so confident are
they of their courage and strength, and whose appearance is the arrival
of so much life and virtue. In dangerous times they are presently tried,
and therefore their name is a flourish of trumpets. They, at least,
affect us as a reality. They are not shams, but the substance of which
that age and world is made. They are true heroes for their time. They
make what is in their minds the greatest sacrifice. They will, for an
injurious word, peril all their state and wealth, and go to the field.
Take away that principle of responsibleness, and they become pirates and
ruffians.[127]
This self-subsistency is the charm of war; for this self-subsistency is
essential to our idea of man. But another age comes, a truer religion and
ethics open, and a man puts himself under the dominion of principles.
I see him to be the servant of truth, of love and of freedom, and
immovable in the waves of the crowd. The man of principle, that is, the
man who, without any flourish of trumpets, titles of lordship or train
of guards, without any notice of his action abroad, expecting none,
takes in solitude the right step uniformly, on his private choice and
disdaining consequences,—does not yield, in my imagination, to any man.
He is willing to be hanged at his own gate, rather than consent to any
compromise of his freedom or the suppression of his conviction. I regard
no longer those names that so tingled in my ear. This is a baron of a
better nobility and a stouter stomach.
The cause of peace is not the cause of cowardice. If peace is sought to
be defended or preserved for the safety of the luxurious and the timid,
it is a sham, and the peace will be base. War is better, and the peace
will be broken. If peace is to be maintained, it must be by brave men,
who have come up to the same height as the hero, namely, the will to
carry their life in their hand, and stake it at any instant for their
principle, but who have gone one step beyond the hero, and will not
seek another man’s life;—men who have, by their intellectual insight
or else by their moral elevation, attained such a perception of their
own intrinsic worth that they do not think property or their own body a
sufficient good to be saved by such dereliction of principle as treating
a man like a sheep.
If the universal cry for reform of so many inveterate abuses, with which
society rings,—if the desire of a large class of young men for a faith
and hope, intellectual and religious, such as they have not yet found,
be an omen to be trusted; if the disposition to rely more, in study and
in action, on the unexplored riches of the human constitution,—if the
search of the sublime laws of morals and the sources of hope and trust,
in man, and not in books, in the present, and not in the past, proceed;
if the rising generation can be provoked to think it unworthy to nestle
into every abomination of the past, and shall feel the generous darings
of austerity and virtue, then war has a short day, and human blood will
cease to flow.
It is of little consequence in what manner, through what organs, this
purpose of mercy and holiness is effected. The proposition of the
Congress of Nations is undoubtedly that at which the present fabric of
our society and the present course of events do point. But the mind,
once prepared for the reign of principles, will easily find modes of
expressing its will. There is the highest fitness in the place and time
in which this enterprise is begun. Not in an obscure corner, not in a
feudal Europe, not in an antiquated appanage where no onward step can be
taken without rebellion, is this seed of benevolence laid in the furrow,
with tears of hope; but in this broad America of God and man, where the
forest is only now falling, or yet to fall, and the green earth opened
to the inundation of emigrant men from all quarters of oppression and
guilt; here, where not a family, not a few men, but mankind, shall say
what shall be; here, we ask, Shall it be War, or shall it be Peace?
VI
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW
ADDRESS TO CITIZENS OF CONCORD 3 MAY, 1851
The Eternal Rights,
Victors over daily wrongs:
Awful victors, they misguide
Whom they will destroy,
And their coming triumph hide
In our downfall, or our joy:
They reach no term, they never sleep,
In equal strength through space abide;
Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep,
The strong they slay, the swift outstride;
Fate’s grass grows rank in valley clods,
And rankly on the castled steep,—
Speak it firmly, these are gods,
Are all ghosts beside.
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW
FELLOW CITIZENS: I accepted your invitation to speak to you on the great
question of these days, with very little consideration of what I might
have to offer: for there seems to be no option. The last year has forced
us all into politics, and made it a paramount duty to seek what it is
often a duty to shun. We do not breathe well. There is infamy in the air.
I have a new experience. I wake in the morning with a painful sensation,
which I carry about all day, and which, when traced home, is the odious
remembrance of that ignominy which has fallen on Massachusetts, which
robs the landscape of beauty, and takes the sunshine out of every hour.
I have lived all my life in this state, and never had any experience
of personal inconvenience from the laws, until now. They never came
near me to any discomfort before. I find the like sensibility in my
neighbors; and in that class who take no interest in the ordinary
questions of party politics. There are men who are as sure indexes of
the equity of legislation and of the same state of public feeling, as
the barometer is of the weight of the air, and it is a bad sign when
these are discontented, for though they snuff oppression and dishonor
at a distance, it is because they are more impressionable: the whole
population will in a short time be as painfully affected.
Every hour brings us from distant quarters of the Union the expression of
mortification at the late events in Massachusetts, and at the behavior
of Boston. The tameness was indeed shocking. Boston, of whose fame for
spirit and character we have all been so proud; Boston, whose citizens,
intelligent people in England told me they could always distinguish by
their culture among Americans; the Boston of the American Revolution,
which figures so proudly in John Adams’s Diary, which the whole country
has been reading; Boston, spoiled by prosperity, must bow its ancient
honor in the dust, and make us irretrievably ashamed. In Boston, we have
said with such lofty confidence, no fugitive slave can be arrested, and
now, we must transfer our vaunt to the country, and say, with a little
less confidence, no fugitive man can be arrested here; at least we can
brag thus until to-morrow, when the farmers also may be corrupted.
The tameness is indeed complete. The only haste in Boston, after the
rescue of Shadrach,[128] last February, was, who should first put his
name on the list of volunteers in aid of the marshal. I met the smoothest
of Episcopal Clergymen the other day, and allusion being made to Mr.
Webster’s treachery, he blandly replied, “Why, do you know I think
_that_ the great action of his life.” It looked as if in the city and
the suburbs all were involved in one hot haste of terror,—presidents
of colleges, and professors, saints, and brokers, insurers, lawyers,
importers, manufacturers: not an unpleasing sentiment, not a liberal
recollection, not so much as a snatch of an old song for freedom, dares
intrude on their passive obedience.
The panic has paralyzed the journals, with the fewest exceptions, so that
one cannot open a newspaper without being disgusted by new records of
shame. I cannot read longer even the local good news. When I look down
the columns at the titles of paragraphs, “Education in Massachusetts,”
“Board of Trade,” “Art Union,” “Revival of Religion,” what bitter
mockeries! The very convenience of property, the house and land we
occupy, have lost their best value, and a man looks gloomily at his
children, and thinks, “What have I done that you should begin life in
dishonor?” Every liberal study is discredited,—literature and science
appear effeminate, and the hiding of the head. The college, the churches,
the schools, the very shops and factories are discredited; real estate,
every kind of wealth, every branch of industry, every avenue to power,
suffers injury, and the value of life is reduced. Just now a friend came
into my house and said, “If this law shall be repealed I shall be glad
that I have lived; if not I shall be sorry that I was born.” What kind of
law is that which extorts language like this from the heart of a free and
civilized people?
One intellectual benefit we owe to the late disgraces. The crisis had the
illuminating power of a sheet of lightning at midnight. It showed truth.
It ended a good deal of nonsense we had been wont to hear and to repeat,
on the 19th of April, the 17th of June, the 4th of July. It showed the
slightness and unreliableness of our social fabric, it showed what stuff
reputations are made of, what straws we dignify by office and title,
and how competent we are to give counsel and help in a day of trial. It
showed the shallowness of leaders; the divergence of parties from their
alleged grounds; showed that men would not stick to what they had said,
that the resolutions of public bodies, or the pledges never so often
given and put on record of public men, will not bind them. The fact
comes out more plainly that you cannot rely on any man for the defence
of truth, who is not constitutionally or by blood and temperament on
that side. A man of a greedy and unscrupulous selfishness may maintain
morals when they are in fashion: but he will not stick. However close
Mr. Wolf’s nails have been pared, however neatly he has been shaved, and
tailored, and set up on end, and taught to say, “Virtue and Religion,”
he cannot be relied on at a pinch: he will say, morality means pricking
a vein. The popular assumption that all men loved freedom, and believed
in the Christian religion, was found hollow American brag; only persons
who were known and tried benefactors are found standing for freedom:
the sentimentalists went downstream.[129] I question the value of our
civilization, when I see that the public mind had never less hold of the
strongest of all truths. The sense of injustice is blunted,—a sure sign
of the shallowness of our intellect. I cannot accept the railroad and
telegraph in exchange for reason and charity. It is not skill in iron
locomotives that makes so fine civility, as the jealousy of liberty. I
cannot think the most judicious tubing a compensation for metaphysical
debility. What is the use of admirable law-forms, and political forms, if
a hurricane of party feeling and a combination of monied interests can
beat them to the ground? What is the use of courts, if judges only quote
authorities, and no judge exerts original jurisdiction, or recurs to
first principles? What is the use of a Federal Bench, if its opinions are
the political breath of the hour? And what is the use of constitutions,
if all the guaranties provided by the jealousy of ages for the protection
of liberty are made of no effect, when a bad act of Congress finds a
willing commissioner? The levity of the public mind has been shown in the
past year by the most extravagant actions. Who could have believed it,
if foretold that a hundred guns would be fired in Boston on the passage
of the Fugitive Slave Bill? Nothing proves the want of all thought, the
absence of standard in men’s minds, more than the dominion of party. Here
are humane people who have tears for misery, an open purse for want; who
should have been the defenders of the poor man, are found his embittered
enemies, rejoicing in his rendition,—merely from party ties. I thought
none, that was not ready to go on all fours, would back this law. And
yet here are upright men, _compotes mentis_, husbands, fathers, trustees,
friends, open, generous, brave, who can see nothing in this claim for
bare humanity, and the health and honor of their native State, but
canting fanaticism, sedition and “one idea.” Because of this preoccupied
mind, the whole wealth and power of Boston—two hundred thousand souls,
and one hundred and eighty millions of money—are thrown into the scale of
crime: and the poor black boy, whom the fame of Boston had reached in the
recesses of a vile swamp, or in the alleys of Savannah, on arriving here
finds all this force employed to catch him. The famous town of Boston
is his master’s hound. The learning of the universities, the culture
of elegant society, the acumen of lawyers, the majesty of the Bench,
the eloquence of the Christian pulpit, the stoutness of Democracy, the
respectability of the Whig party are all combined to kidnap him.
The crisis is interesting as it shows the self-protecting nature of
the world and of the Divine laws. It is the law of the world,—as much
immorality as there is, so much misery. The greatest prosperity will in
vain resist the greatest calamity. You borrow the succour of the devil
and he must have his fee. He was never known to abate a penny of his
rents. In every nation all the immorality that exists breeds plagues. But
of the corrupt society that exists we have never been able to combine
any pure prosperity There is always something in the very advantages of
a condition which hurts it. Africa has its malformation; England has its
Ireland; Germany its hatred of classes; France its love of gunpowder;
Italy its Pope; and America, the most prosperous country in the Universe,
has the greatest calamity in the Universe, negro slavery.
Let me remind you a little in detail how the natural retribution acts in
reference to the statute which Congress passed a year ago. For these few
months have shown very conspicuously its nature and impracticability. It
is contravened:
1. By the sentiment of duty. An immoral law makes it a man’s duty to
break it, at every hazard. For virtue is the very self of every man. It
is therefore a principle of law that an immoral contract is void, and
that an immoral statute is void. For, as laws do not make right, and are
simply declaratory of a right which already existed, it is not to be
presumed that they can so stultify themselves as to command injustice.
It is remarkable how rare in the history of tyrants is an immoral law.
Some color, some indirection was always used. If you take up the volumes
of the “Universal History,” you will find it difficult searching. The
precedents are few. It is not easy to parallel the wickedness of this
American law. And that is the head and body of this discontent, that the
law is immoral.
Here is a statute which enacts the crime of kidnapping,—a crime on one
footing with arson and murder. A man’s right to liberty is as inalienable
as his right to life.
Pains seem to have been taken to give us in this statute a wrong pure
from any mixture of right. If our resistance to this law is not right,
there is no right. This is not meddling with other people’s affairs:
this is hindering other people from meddling with us. This is not going
crusading into Virginia and Georgia after slaves, who, it is alleged,
are very comfortable where they are:—that amiable argument falls to the
ground: but this is befriending in our own State, on our own farms, a man
who has taken the risk of being shot, or burned alive, or cast into the
sea, or starved to death, or suffocated in a wooden box, to get away from
his driver: and this man who has run the gauntlet of a thousand miles for
his freedom, the statute says, you men of Massachusetts shall hunt, and
catch, and send back again to the dog-hutch he fled from.
It is contrary to the primal sentiment of duty, and therefore all men
that are born are, in proportion to their power of thought and their
moral sensibility, found to be the natural enemies of this law. The
resistance of all moral beings is secured to it. I had thought, I
confess, what must come at last would come at first, a banding of all
men against the authority of this statute. I thought it a point on which
all sane men were agreed, that the law must respect the public morality.
I thought that all men of all conditions had been made sharers of a
certain experience, that in certain rare and retired moments they had
been made to see how man is man, or what makes the essence of rational
beings, namely, that whilst animals have to do with eating the fruits
of the ground, men have to do with rectitude, with benefit, with truth,
with something which _is_, independent of appearances: and that this tie
makes the substantiality of life, this, and not their ploughing, or
sailing, their trade or the breeding of families. I thought that every
time a man goes back to his own thoughts, these angels receive him, talk
with him, and that, in the best hours, he is uplifted in virtue of this
essence, into a peace and into a power which the material world cannot
give: that these moments counterbalance the years of drudgery, and that
this owning of a law, be it called morals, religion, or godhead, or what
you will, constituted the explanation of life, the excuse and indemnity
for the errors and calamities which sadden it. In long years consumed
in trifles, they remember these moments, and are consoled. I thought it
was this fair mystery, whose foundations are hidden in eternity, which
made the basis of human society, and of law; and that to pretend anything
else, as that the acquisition of property was the end of living, was to
confound all distinctions, to make the world a greasy hotel, and, instead
of noble motives and inspirations, and a heaven of companions and angels
around and before us, to leave us in a grimacing menagerie of monkeys
and idiots. All arts, customs, societies, books, and laws, are good as
they foster and concur with this spiritual element: all men are beloved
as they raise us to it; hateful as they deny or resist it. The laws
especially draw their obligation only from their concurrence with it.
I am surprised that lawyers can be so blind as to suffer the principles
of Law to be discredited. A few months ago, in my dismay at hearing that
the Higher Law was reckoned a good joke in the courts, I took pains to
look into a few law-books. I had often heard that the Bible constituted a
part of every technical law library, and that it was a principle in law
that immoral laws are void.
I found, accordingly, that the great jurists, Cicero, Grotius, Coke,
Blackstone, Burlamaqui, Montesquieu, Vattel, Burke, Mackintosh,
Jefferson, do all affirm this. I have no intention to recite these
passages I had marked:—such citation indeed seems to be something
cowardly (for no reasonable person needs a quotation from Blackstone to
convince him that white cannot be legislated to be black), and shall
content myself with reading a single passage. Blackstone admits the
sovereignty “antecedent to any positive precept, of the law of Nature,”
among whose principles are, “that we should live on, should hurt nobody,
and should render unto every one his due,” etc. “_No human laws are of
any validity, if contrary to this._” “Nay, if any human law should allow
or enjoin us to commit a crime” (his instance is murder), “we are bound
to transgress that human law; or else we must offend both the natural
and divine.” Lord Coke held that where an Act of Parliament is against
common right and reason, the common law shall control it, and adjudge it
to be void. Chief Justice Hobart, Chief Justice Holt, and Chief Justice
Mansfield held the same.
Lord Mansfield, in the case of the slave Somerset, wherein the _dicta_ of
Lords Talbot and Hardwicke had been cited, to the effect of carrying back
the slave to the West Indies, said, “I care not for the supposed _dicta_
of judges, however eminent, if they be contrary to all principle.” Even
the _Canon Law_ says (_in malis promissis non expedit servare fidem_),
“Neither allegiance nor oath can bind to obey that which is wrong.”
No engagement (to a sovereign) can oblige or even authorize a man to
violate the laws of Nature. All authors who have any conscience or
modesty agree that a person ought not to obey such commands as are
evidently contrary to the laws of God. Those governors of places who
bravely refused to execute the barbarous orders of Charles IX. for the
famous “Massacre of St. Bartholomew,” have been universally praised; and
the court did not dare to punish them, at least openly. “Sire,” said the
brave Orte, governor of Bayonne, in his letter, “I have communicated
your majesty’s command to your faithful inhabitants and warriors in the
garrison, and I have found there only good citizens, and brave soldiers;
not one hangman: therefore, both they and I must humbly entreat your
majesty to be pleased to employ your arms and lives in things that are
possible, however hazardous they may be, and we will exert ourselves to
the last drop of our blood.”[130]
The practitioners should guard this dogma well, as the palladium of
the profession, as their anchor in the respect of mankind. Against a
principle like this, all the arguments of Mr. Webster are the spray of a
child’s squirt against a granite wall.
2. It is contravened by all the sentiments. How can a law be enforced
that fines pity, and imprisons charity? As long as men have bowels, they
will disobey. You know that the Act of Congress of September 18, 1850, is
a law which every one of you will break on the earliest occasion. There
is not a manly Whig, or a manly Democrat, of whom, if a slave were hidden
in one of our houses from the hounds, we should not ask with confidence
to lend his wagon in aid of his escape, and he would lend it. The man
would be too strong for the partisan.
And here I may say that it is absurd, what I often hear, to accuse the
friends of freedom in the North with being the occasion of the new
stringency of the Southern slave-laws. If you starve or beat the orphan,
in my presence, and I accuse your cruelty, can I help it? In the words
of Electra in the Greek tragedy, “’Tis you that say it, not I. You do
the deeds, and your ungodly deeds find me the words.” Will you blame the
ball for rebounding from the floor, blame the air for rushing in where a
vacuum is made or the boiler for exploding under pressure of steam? These
facts are after laws of the world, and so is it law, that, when justice
is violated, anger begins. The very defence which the God of Nature has
provided for the innocent against cruelty is the sentiment of indignation
and pity in the bosom of the beholder. Mr. Webster tells the President
that “he has been in the North, and he has found no man, whose opinion
is of any weight, who is opposed to the law.” Oh, Mr. President, trust
not the information! The gravid old Universe goes spawning on; the womb
conceives and the breasts give suck to thousands and millions of hairy
babes formed not in the image of your statute, but in the image of the
Universe; too many to be bought off; too many than they can be rich, and
therefore peaceable; and necessitated to express first or last every
feeling of the heart. You can keep no secret, for whatever is true some
of them will unreasonably say. You can commit no crime, for they are
created in their sentiments conscious of and hostile to it; and unless
you can suppress the newspaper, pass a law against book-shops, gag the
English tongue in America, all short of this is futile. This dreadful
English Speech is saturated with songs, proverbs and speeches that flatly
contradict and defy every line of Mr. Mason’s statute. Nay, unless you
can draw a sponge over those seditious Ten Commandments which are the
root of our European and American civilization; and over that eleventh
commandment, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you,” your
labor is vain.
3. It is contravened by the written laws themselves, because the
sentiments, of course, write the statutes. Laws are merely declaratory
of the natural sentiments of mankind, and the language of all permanent
laws will be in contradiction to any immoral enactment. And thus it
happens here: Statute fights against Statute. By the law of Congress
March 2, 1807, it is piracy and murder, punishable with death, to enslave
a man on the coast of Africa. By law of Congress September, 1850, it is
a high crime and misdemeanor, punishable with fine and imprisonment, to
resist the reënslaving a man on the coast of America. Off soundings,
it is piracy and murder to enslave him. On soundings, it is fine and
prison not to reënslave. What kind of legislation is this? What kind of
constitution which covers it? And yet the crime which the second law
ordains is greater than the crime which the first law forbids under
penalty of the gibbet. For it is a greater crime to reënslave a man who
has shown himself fit for freedom, than to enslave him at first, when it
might be pretended to be a mitigation of his lot as a captive in war.
4. It is contravened by the mischiefs it operates. A wicked law cannot
be executed by good men, and must be by bad. Flagitious men must be
employed, and every act of theirs is a stab at the public peace. It
cannot be executed at such a cost, and so it brings a bribe in its hand.
This law comes with infamy in it, and out of it. It offers a bribe in
its own clauses for the consummation of the crime. To serve it, low and
mean people are found by the groping of the government. No government
ever found it hard to pick up tools for base actions. If you cannot find
them in the huts of the poor, you shall find them in the palaces of
the rich. Vanity can buy some, ambition others, and money others. The
first execution of the law, as was inevitable, was a little hesitating;
the second was easier; and the glib officials became, in a few weeks,
quite practised and handy at stealing men. But worse, not the officials
alone are bribed, but the whole community is solicited. The scowl of the
community is attempted to be averted by the mischievous whisper, “Tariff
and Southern market, if you will be quiet: no tariff and loss of Southern
market, if you dare to murmur.” I wonder that our acute people who have
learned that the cheapest police is dear schools, should not find out
that an immoral law costs more than the loss of the custom of a Southern
city.
The humiliating scandal of great men warping right into wrong was
followed up very fast by the cities. New York advertised in Southern
markets that it would go for slavery, and posted the names of merchants
who would not. Boston, alarmed, entered into the same design.
Philadelphia, more fortunate, had no conscience at all, and, in this
auction of the rights of mankind, rescinded all its legislation against
slavery. And the Boston “Advertiser,” and the “Courier,” in these weeks,
urge the same course on the people of Massachusetts. Nothing remains in
this race of roguery but to coax Connecticut or Maine to outbid us all by
adopting slavery into its constitution.
Great is the mischief of a legal crime. Every person who touches this
business is contaminated. There has not been in our lifetime another
moment when public men were personally lowered by their political action.
But here are gentlemen whose believed probity was the confidence and
fortification of multitudes, who, by fear of public opinion, or through
the dangerous ascendency of Southern manners, have been drawn into the
support of this foul business. We poor men in the country who might
once have thought it an honor to shake hands with them, or to dine at
their boards, would now shrink from their touch, nor could they enter
our humblest doors. You have a law which no man can obey, or abet the
obeying, without loss of self-respect and forfeiture of the name of
gentleman. What shall we say of the functionary by whom the recent
rendition was made? If he has rightly defined his powers, and has no
authority to try the case, but only to prove the prisoner’s identity,
and remand him, what office is this for a reputable citizen to hold? No
man of honor can sit on that bench. It is the extension of the planter’s
whipping-post; and its incumbents must rank with a class from which the
turnkey, the hangman and the informer are taken, necessary functionaries,
it may be, in a state, but to whom the dislike and the ban of society
universally attaches.
5. These resistances appear in the history of the statute, in the
retributions which speak so loud in every part of this business, that
I think a tragic poet will know how to make it a lesson for all ages.
Mr. Webster’s measure was, he told us, final. It was a pacification, it
was a suppression, a measure of conciliation and adjustment. These were
his words at different times: “there was to be no parleying more;” it
was “irrepealable.” Does it look final now? His final settlement has
dislocated the foundations. The state-house shakes likes a tent. His
pacification has brought all the honesty in every house, all scrupulous
and good-hearted men, all women, and all children, to accuse the law. It
has brought United States swords into the streets, and chains round the
court-house. “A measure of pacification and union.” What is its effect?
To make one sole subject for conversation and painful thought throughout
the continent, namely, slavery. There is not a man of thought or of
feeling but is concentrating his mind on it. There is not a clerk but
recites its statistics; not a politician but is watching its incalculable
energy in the elections; not a jurist but is hunting up precedents;
not a moralist but is prying into its quality; not an economist but is
computing its profit and loss: Mr. Webster can judge whether this sort of
solar microscope brought to bear on his law is likely to make opposition
less. The only benefit that has accrued from the law is its service to
education. It has been like a university to the entire people. It has
turned every dinner-table into a debating-club, and made every citizen a
student of natural law. When a moral quality comes into politics, when
a right is invaded, the discussion draws on deeper sources: general
principles are laid bare, which cast light on the whole frame of society.
And it is cheering to behold what champions the emergency called to this
poor black boy; what subtlety, what logic, what learning, what exposure
of the mischief of the law; and, above all, with what earnestness and
dignity the advocates of freedom were inspired. It was one of the best
compensations of this calamity.
But the Nemesis works underneath again. It is a power that makes noonday
dark, and draws us on to our undoing; and its dismal way is to pillory
the offender in the moment of his triumph. The hands that put the chain
on the slave are in that moment manacled. Who has seen anything like
that which is now done? The words of John Randolph, wiser than he knew,
have been ringing ominously in all echoes for thirty years, words spoken
in the heat of the Missouri debate. “We do not govern the people of the
North by our black slaves, but by their own white slaves. We know what we
are doing. We have conquered you once, and we can and will conquer you
again. Ay, we will drive you to the wall, and when we have you there once
more, we will keep you there and nail you down like base money.” These
words resounding ever since from California to Oregon, from Cape Florida
to Cape Cod, come down now like the cry of Fate, in the moment when they
are fulfilled. By white slaves, by a white slave, are we beaten.[131]
Who looked for such ghastly fulfilment, or to see what we see? Hills and
Halletts, servile editors by the hundred, we could have spared. But him,
our best and proudest, the first man of the North, in the very moment of
mounting the throne, irresistibly taking the bit in his mouth and the
collar on his neck, and harnessing himself to the chariot of the planters.
The fairest American fame ends in this filthy law. Mr. Webster cannot
choose but regret his law. He must learn that those who make fame accuse
him with one voice; that those who have no points to carry that are not
identical with public morals and generous civilization, that the obscure
and private who have no voice and care for none, so long as things go
well, but who feel the disgrace of the new legislation creeping like
miasma into their homes, and blotting the daylight,—those to whom his
name was once dear and honored, as the manly statesman to whom the
choicest gifts of Nature had been accorded, disown him: that he who
was their pride in the woods and mountains of New England is now their
mortification,—they have torn down his picture from the wall, they have
thrust his speeches into the chimney. No roars of New York mobs can drown
this voice in Mr. Webster’s ear. It will outwhisper all the salvos of
the “Union Committees’” cannon. But I have said too much on this painful
topic. I will not pursue that bitter history.[132]
But passing from the ethical to the political view, I wish to place this
statute, and we must use the introducer and substantial author of the
bill as an illustration of the history. I have as much charity for Mr.
Webster, I think, as any one has. I need not say how much I have enjoyed
his fame. Who has not helped to praise him? Simply he was the one eminent
American of our time, whom we could produce as a finished work of Nature.
We delighted in his form and face, in his voice, in his eloquence, in
his power of labor, in his concentration, in his large understanding, in
his daylight statement, simple force; the facts lay like the strata of
a cloud, or like the layers of the crust of the globe. He saw things as
they were, and he stated them so. He has been by his clear perceptions
and statements in all these years the best head in Congress, and the
champion of the interests of the Northern seaboard: but as the activity
and growth of slavery began to be offensively felt by his constituents,
the senator became less sensitive to these evils. They were not for
him to deal with: he was the commercial representative. He indulged
occasionally in excellent expression of the known feeling of the New
England people: but, when expected and when pledged, he omitted to speak,
and he omitted to throw himself into the movement in those critical
moments when his leadership would have turned the scale. At last, at a
fatal hour, this sluggishness accumulated to downright counteraction,
and, very unexpectedly to the whole Union, on the 7th March, 1850,
in opposition to his education, association, and to all his own most
explicit language for thirty years, he crossed the line, and became the
head of the slavery party in this country.
Mr. Webster perhaps is only following the laws of his blood and
constitution. I suppose his pledges were not quite natural to him. Mr.
Webster is a man who lives by his memory, a man of the past, not a man
of faith or of hope. He obeys his powerful animal nature;—and his finely
developed understanding only works truly and with all its force, when
it stands for animal good; that is, for property. He believes, in so
many words, that government exists for the protection of property. He
looks at the Union as an estate, a large farm, and is excellent in the
completeness of his defence of it so far. He adheres to the letter.
Happily he was born late,—after the independence had been declared, the
Union agreed to, and the constitution settled. What he finds already
written, he will defend. Lucky that so much had got well written when he
came. For he has no faith in the power of self-government; none whatever
in extemporizing a government. Not the smallest municipal provision,
if it were new, would receive his sanction. In Massachusetts, in 1776,
he would, beyond all question, have been a refugee. He praises Adams
and Jefferson, but it is a past Adams and Jefferson that his mind can
entertain.[133] A present Adams and Jefferson he would denounce. So
with the eulogies of liberty in his writings,—they are sentimentalism
and youthful rhetoric. He can celebrate it, but it means as much from
him as from Metternich or Talleyrand. This is all inevitable from his
constitution. All the drops of his blood have eyes that look downward.
It is neither praise nor blame to say that he has no moral perception,
no moral sentiment, but in that region—to use the phrase of the
phrenologists—a hole in the head. The scraps of morality to be gleaned
from his speeches are reflections of the mind of others; he says what
he hears said, but often makes signal blunders in their use. In Mr.
Webster’s imagination the American Union was a huge Prince Rupert’s drop,
which, if so much as the smallest end be shivered off, the whole will
snap into atoms. Now the fact is quite different from this. The people
are loyal, law-loving, law-abiding. They prefer order, and have no taste
for misrule and uproar.
The destiny of this country is great and liberal, and is to be greatly
administered. It is to be administered according to what is, and is to
be, and not according to what is dead and gone. The union of this people
is a real thing, an alliance of men of one flock, one language, one
religion, one system of manners and ideas. I hold it to be a real and not
a statute union. The people cleave to the Union, because they see their
advantage in it, the added power of each.
I suppose the Union can be left to take care of itself. As much real
union as there is, the statutes will be sure to express; as much
disunion as there is, no statute can long conceal. Under the Union I
suppose the fact to be that there are really two nations, the North
and the South. It is not slavery that severs them, it is climate and
temperament. The South does not like the North, slavery or no slavery,
and never did. The North likes the South well enough, for it knows its
own advantages. I am willing to leave them to the facts. If they continue
to have a binding interest, they will be pretty sure to find it out: if
not, they will consult their peace in parting. But one thing appears
certain to me, that, as soon as the constitution ordains an immoral law,
it ordains disunion. The law is suicidal, and cannot be obeyed. The Union
is at an end as soon as an immoral law is enacted. And he who writes a
crime into the statute-book digs under the foundations of the Capitol to
plant there a powder-magazine, and lays a train.
I pass to say a few words to the question, What shall we do?
1. What in our federal capacity is our relation to the nation?
2. And what as citizens of a state?
I am an Unionist as we all are, or nearly all, and I strongly share the
hope of mankind in the power, and therefore, in the duties of the Union;
and I conceive it demonstrated,—the necessity of common sense and justice
entering into the laws. What shall we do? First, abrogate this law; then,
proceed to confine slavery to slave states, and help them effectually
to make an end of it. Or shall we, as we are advised on all hands, lie
by, and wait the progress of the census? But will Slavery lie by? I fear
not. She is very industrious, gives herself no holidays. No proclamations
will put her down. She got Texas and now will have Cuba, and means to
keep her majority. The experience of the past gives us no encouragement
to lie by. Shall we call a new Convention, or will any expert statesman
furnish us a plan for the summary or gradual winding up of slavery, so
far as the Republic is its patron? Where is the South itself? Since it is
agreed by all sane men of all parties (or was yesterday) that slavery is
mischievous, why does the South itself never offer the smallest counsel
of her own? I have never heard in twenty years any project except Mr.
Clay’s. Let us hear any project with candor and respect. Is it impossible
to speak of it with reason and good nature? It is really the project
fit for this country to entertain and accomplish. Everything invites
emancipation. The grandeur of the design, the vast stake we hold; the
national domain, the new importance of Liberia; the manifest interest of
the slave states; the religious effort of the free states; the public
opinion of the world;—all join to demand it.
We shall one day bring the States shoulder to shoulder and the citizens
man to man to exterminate slavery. Why in the name of common sense and
the peace of mankind is not this made the subject of instant negotiation
and settlement? Why not end this dangerous dispute on some ground of fair
compensation on one side, and satisfaction on the other to the conscience
of the free states? It is really the great task fit for this country to
accomplish, to buy that property of the planters, as the British nation
bought the West Indian slaves. I say buy,—never conceding the right of
the planter to own, but that we may acknowledge the calamity of his
position, and bear a countryman’s share in relieving him; and because it
is the only practicable course, and is innocent. Here is a right social
or public function, which one man cannot do, which all men must do. ’Tis
said it will cost two thousand millions of dollars. Was there ever any
contribution that was so enthusiastically paid as this will be? We will
have a chimney-tax. We will give up our coaches, and wine, and watches.
The churches will melt their plate. The father of his country shall
wait, well pleased, a little longer for his monument; Franklin for his,
the Pilgrim Fathers for theirs, and the patient Columbus for his. The
mechanics will give, the needle-women will give; the children will have
cent-societies. Every man in the land will give a week’s work to dig away
this accursed mountain of sorrow once and forever out of the world.[134]
Nothing is impracticable to this nation, which it shall set itself to
do. Were ever men so endowed, so placed, so weaponed? Their power of
territory seconded by a genius equal to every work. By new arts the earth
is subdued, roaded, tunnelled, telegraphed, gas-lighted; vast amounts of
old labor disused; the sinews of man being relieved by sinews of steam.
We are on the brink of more wonders. The sun paints; presently we shall
organize the echo, as now we do the shadow. Chemistry is extorting new
aids. The genius of this people, it is found, can do anything which can
be done by men. These thirty nations are equal to any work, and are
every moment stronger. In twenty-five years they will be fifty millions.
Is it not time to do something besides ditching and draining, and
making the earth mellow and friable? Let them confront this mountain of
poison,—bore, blast, excavate, pulverize, and shovel it once for all,
down into the bottomless Pit. A thousand millions were cheap.
But grant that the heart of financiers, accustomed to practical figures,
shrinks within them at these colossal amounts, and the embarrassments
which complicate the problem; granting that these contingencies are
too many to be spanned by any human geometry, and that these evils are
to be relieved only by the wisdom of God working in ages,—and by what
instrument, whether Liberia, whether flax-cotton, whether the working out
this race by Irish and Germans, none can tell, or by what sources God has
guarded his law; still the question recurs, What must we do? One thing
is plain, we cannot answer for the Union, but we must keep Massachusetts
true. It is of unspeakable importance that she play her honest part.
She must follow no vicious examples. Massachusetts is a little state:
countries have been great by ideas. Europe is little compared with Asia
and Africa; yet Asia and Africa are its ox and its ass. Europe, the least
of all the continents, has almost monopolized for twenty centuries the
genius and power of them all. Greece was the least part of Europe. Attica
a little part of that,—one tenth of the size of Massachusetts. Yet that
district still rules the intellect of men. Judæa was a petty country. Yet
these two, Greece and Judæa, furnish the mind and the heart by which the
rest of the world is sustained; and Massachusetts is little, but, if true
to itself, can be the brain which turns about the behemoth.
I say Massachusetts, but I mean Massachusetts in all the quarters of
her dispersion; Massachusetts, as she is the mother of all the New
England states, and as she sees her progeny scattered over the face of
the land, in the farthest South, and the uttermost West. The immense
power of rectitude is apt to be forgotten in politics. But they who have
brought the great wrong on the country have not forgotten it. They avail
themselves of the known probity and honor of Massachusetts, to endorse
the statute. The ancient maxim still holds that never was any injustice
effected except by the help of justice. The great game of the government
has been to win the sanction of Massachusetts to the crime. Hitherto they
have succeeded only so far as to win Boston to a certain extent. The
behavior of Boston was the reverse of what it should have been: it was
supple and officious, and it put itself into the base attitude of pander
to the crime. It should have placed obstruction at every step. Let the
attitude of the states be firm. Let us respect the Union to all honest
ends. But also respect an older and wider union, the law of Nature and
rectitude. Massachusetts is as strong as the Universe, when it does that.
We will never intermeddle with your slavery,—but you can in no wise be
suffered to bring it to Cape Cod and Berkshire. This law must be made
inoperative. It must be abrogated and wiped out of the statute-book; but
whilst it stands there, it must be disobeyed. We must make a small state
great, by making every man in it true. It was the praise of Athens, “She
could not lead countless armies into the field, but she knew how with
a little band to defeat those who could.” Every Roman reckoned himself
at least a match for a Province. Every Dorian did. Every Englishman in
Australia, in South Africa, in India, or in whatever barbarous country
their forts and factories have been set up,—represents London, represents
the art, power and law of Europe. Every man educated at the Northern
school carries the like advantages into the South. For it is confounding
distinctions to speak of the geographic sections of this country as
of equal civilization. Every nation and every man bows, in spite of
himself, to a higher mental and moral existence; and the sting of the
late disgraces is that this royal position of Massachusetts was foully
lost, that the well-known sentiment of her people was not expressed. Let
us correct this error. In this one fastness let truth be spoken and right
done. Here let there be no confusion in our ideas. Let us not lie, not
steal, nor help to steal, and let us not call stealing by any fine name,
such as “Union” or “Patriotism.” Let us know that not by the public, but
by ourselves, our safety must be bought. That is the secret of Southern
power, that they rest not on meetings, but on private heats and courages.
It is very certain from the perfect guaranties in the constitution, and
the high arguments of the defenders of liberty, which the occasion called
out, that there is sufficient margin in the statute and the law for the
spirit of the Magistrate to show itself, and one, two, three occasions
have just now occurred, and past, in either of which, if one man had felt
the spirit of Coke or Mansfield or Parsons, and read the law with the eye
of freedom, the dishonor of Massachusetts had been prevented, and a limit
set to these encroachments forever.
VII
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW
LECTURE READ IN THE TABERNACLE, NEW YORK CITY MARCH 7, 1854, ON THE
FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF DANIEL WEBSTER’S SPEECH IN FAVOR OF THE BILL
“Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains,—
A fallen angel’s pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone; from those great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!”
Whittier, _Ichabod!_
* * * * *
“We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakspeare was of us, Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley, were with us,—they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,
—He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!”
Browning, _The Lost Leader_.
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW
I do not often speak to public questions;—they are odious and hurtful,
and it seems like meddling or leaving your work. I have my own spirits
in prison;—spirits in deeper prisons, whom no man visits if I do not.
And then I see what havoc it makes with any good mind, a dissipated
philanthropy. The one thing not to be forgiven to intellectual persons
is, not to know their own task, or to take their ideas from others.
From this want of manly rest in their own and rash acceptance of
other people’s watchwords come the imbecility and fatigue of their
conversation. For they cannot affirm these from any original experience,
and of course not with the natural movement and total strength of their
nature and talent, but only from their memory, only from their cramped
position of standing for their teacher. They say what they would have you
believe, but what they do not quite know.[135]
My own habitual view is to the well-being of students or scholars. And
it is only when the public event affects them, that it very seriously
touches me. And what I have to say is to them. For every man speaks
mainly to a class whom he works with and more or less fully represents.
It is to these I am beforehand related and engaged, in this audience
or out of it—to them and not to others. And yet, when I say the class
of scholars or students,—that is a class which comprises in some sort
all mankind, comprises every man in the best hours of his life; and in
these days not only virtually but actually. For who are the readers and
thinkers of 1854? Owing to the silent revolution which the newspaper has
wrought, this class has come in this country to take in all classes.
Look into the morning trains which, from every suburb, carry the
business men into the city to their shops, counting-rooms, work-yards
and warehouses. With them enters the car—the newsboy, that humble priest
of politics, finance, philosophy, and religion. He unfolds his magical
sheets,—twopence a head his bread of knowledge costs—and instantly the
entire rectangular assembly, fresh from their breakfast, are bending as
one man to their second breakfast. There is, no doubt, chaff enough in
what he brings; but there is fact, thought, and wisdom in the crude mass,
from all regions of the world.
I have lived all my life without suffering any known inconvenience from
American Slavery. I never saw it; I never heard the whip;[136] I never
felt the check on my free speech and action, until, the other day, when
Mr. Webster, by his personal influence, brought the Fugitive Slave Law
on the country. I say Mr. Webster, for though the Bill was not his, it
is yet notorious that he was the life and soul of it, that he gave it
all he had: it cost him his life, and under the shadow of his great name
inferior men sheltered themselves, threw their ballots for it and made
the law. I say inferior men. There were all sorts of what are called
brilliant men, accomplished men, men of high station, a President of
the United States, Senators, men of eloquent speech, but men without
self-respect, without character, and it was strange to see that office,
age, fame, talent, even a repute for honesty, all count for nothing.
They had no opinions, they had no memory for what they had been saying
like the Lord’s Prayer all their lifetime: they were only looking to
what their great Captain did: if he jumped, they jumped, if he stood on
his head, they did. In ordinary, the supposed sense of their district
and State is their guide, and that holds them to the part of liberty
and justice. But it is always a little difficult to decipher what this
public sense is; and when a great man comes who knots up into himself the
opinions and wishes of the people, it is so much easier to follow him as
an exponent of this. He too is responsible; they will not be. It will
always suffice to say,—“I followed him.”
I saw plainly that the great show their legitimate power in nothing more
than in their power to misguide us. I saw that a great man, deservedly
admired for his powers and their general right direction, was able,—fault
of the total want of stamina in public men,—when he failed, to break them
all with him, to carry parties with him.
In what I have to say of Mr. Webster I do not confound him with vulgar
politicians before or since. There is always base ambition enough, men
who calculate on the immense ignorance of the masses; that is their
quarry and farm: they use the constituencies at home only for their
shoes. And, of course, they can drive out from the contest any honorable
man. The low can best win the low, and all men like to be made much
of. There are those too who have power and inspiration only to do ill.
Their talent or their faculty deserts them when they undertake anything
right. Mr. Webster had a natural ascendancy of aspect and carriage
which distinguished him over all his contemporaries. His countenance,
his figure, and his manners were all in so grand a style, that he was,
without effort, as superior to his most eminent rivals as they were to
the humblest; so that his arrival in any place was an event which drew
crowds of people, who went to satisfy their eyes, and could not see him
enough. I think they looked at him as the representative of the American
Continent. He was there in his Adamitic capacity, as if he alone of all
men did not disappoint the eye and the ear, but was a fit figure in the
landscape.[137]
I remember his appearance at Bunker’s Hill. There was the Monument, and
here was Webster. He knew well that a little more or less of rhetoric
signified nothing: he was only to say plain and equal things,—grand
things if he had them, and, if he had them not, only to abstain from
saying unfit things,—and the whole occasion was answered by his presence.
It was a place for behavior more than for speech, and Mr. Webster walked
through his part with entire success. His excellent organization, the
perfection of his elocution and all that thereto belongs,—voice, accent,
intonation, attitude, manner,—we shall not soon find again. Then he was
so thoroughly simple and wise in his rhetoric; he saw through his matter,
hugged his fact so close, went to the principle or essential, and never
indulged in a weak flourish, though he knew perfectly well how to make
such exordiums, episodes and perorations as might give perspective to
his harangues without in the least embarrassing his march or confounding
his transitions. In his statement things lay in daylight; we saw them
in order as they were. Though he knew very well how to present his own
personal claims, yet in his argument he was intellectual,—stated his fact
pure of all personality, so that his splendid wrath, when his eyes became
lamps, was the wrath of the fact and the cause he stood for.
His power, like that of all great masters, was not in excellent parts,
but was total. He had a great and everywhere equal propriety. He worked
with that closeness of adhesion to the matter in hand which a joiner or a
chemist uses, and the same quiet and sure feeling of right to his place
that an oak or a mountain have to theirs. After all his talents have been
described, there remains that perfect propriety which animated all the
details of the action or speech with the character of the whole, so that
his beauties of detail are endless. He seemed born for the bar, born for
the senate, and took very naturally a leading part in large private and
in public affairs; for his head distributed things in their right places,
and what he saw so well he compelled other people to see also. Great is
the privilege of eloquence. What gratitude does every man feel to him who
speaks well for the right,—who translates truth into language entirely
plain and clear!
The history of this country has given a disastrous importance to the
defects of this great man’s mind. Whether evil influences and the
corruption of politics, or whether original infirmity, it was the
misfortune of his country that with this large understanding he had not
what is better than intellect, and the source of its health. It is a
law of our nature that great thoughts come from the heart. If his moral
sensibility had been proportioned to the force of his understanding, what
limits could have been set to his genius and beneficent power? But he
wanted that deep source of inspiration. Hence a sterility of thought, the
want of generalization in his speeches, and the curious fact that, with
a general ability which impresses all the world, there is not a single
general remark, not an observation on life and manners, not an aphorism
that can pass into literature from his writings.
Four years ago to-night, on one of those high critical moments in history
when great issues are determined, when the powers of right and wrong
are mustered for conflict, and it lies with one man to give a casting
vote,—Mr. Webster, most unexpectedly, threw his whole weight on the side
of Slavery, and caused by his personal and official authority the passage
of the Fugitive Slave Bill.
It is remarked of the Americans that they value dexterity too much, and
honor too little; that they think they praise a man more by saying that
he is “smart” than by saying that he is right. Whether the defect be
national or not, it is the defect and calamity of Mr. Webster; and it is
so far true of his countrymen, namely, that the appeal is sure to be made
to his physical and mental ability when his character is assailed. His
speeches on the seventh of March, and at Albany, at Buffalo, at Syracuse
and Boston are cited in justification. And Mr. Webster’s literary editor
believes that it was his wish to rest his fame on the speech of the
seventh of March. Now, though I have my own opinions on this seventh of
March discourse and those others, and think them very transparent and
very open to criticism,—yet the secondary merits of a speech, namely, its
logic, its illustrations, its points, etc., are not here in question.
Nobody doubts that Daniel Webster could make a good speech. Nobody doubts
that there were good and plausible things to be said on the part of
the South. But this is not a question of ingenuity, not a question of
syllogisms, but of sides. _How came he there?_[138]
There are always texts and thoughts and arguments. But it is the genius
and temper of the man which decides whether he will stand for right or
for might. Who doubts the power of any fluent debater to defend either of
our political parties, or any client in our courts? There was the same
law in England for Jeffries and Talbot and Yorke to read slavery out of,
and for Lord Mansfield to read freedom. And in this country one sees that
there is always margin enough in the statute for a liberal judge to read
one way and a servile judge another.
But the question which History will ask is broader. In the final hour,
when he was forced by the peremptory necessity of the closing armies
to take a side,—did he take the part of great principles, the side of
humanity and justice, or the side of abuse and oppression and chaos?
Mr. Webster decided for Slavery, and that, when the aspect of the
institution was no longer doubtful, no longer feeble and apologetic and
proposing soon to end itself, but when it was strong, aggressive, and
threatening an illimitable increase. He listened to State reasons and
hopes, and left, with much complacency we are told, the testament of
his speech to the astonished State of Massachusetts, _vera pro gratis_;
a ghastly result of all those years of experience in affairs, this,
that there was nothing better for the foremost American man to tell his
countrymen than that Slavery was now at that strength that they must beat
down their conscience and become kidnappers for it.
This was like the doleful speech falsely ascribed to the patriot
Brutus: “Virtue, I have followed thee through life, and I find thee
but a shadow.”[139] Here was a question of an immoral law; a question
agitated for ages, and settled always in the same way by every great
jurist, that an immoral law cannot be valid. Cicero, Grotius, Coke,
Blackstone, Burlamaqui, Vattel, Burke, Jefferson, do all affirm this, and
I cite them, not that they can give evidence to what is indisputable,
but because, though lawyers and practical statesmen, the habit of their
profession did not hide from them that this truth was the foundation of
States.
Here was the question, Are you for man and for the good of man; or are
you for the hurt and harm of man? It was the question whether man shall
be treated as leather? whether the Negro shall be, as the Indians were in
Spanish America, a piece of money? Whether this system, which is a kind
of mill or factory for converting men into monkeys, shall be upheld and
enlarged? And Mr. Webster and the country went for the application to
these poor men of quadruped law.
People were expecting a totally different course from Mr. Webster. If
any man had in that hour possessed the weight with the country which he
had acquired, he could have brought the whole country to its senses. But
not a moment’s pause was allowed. Angry parties went from bad to worse,
and the decision of Webster was accompanied with everything offensive
to freedom and good morals. There was something like an attempt to
debauch the moral sentiment of the clergy and of the youth. Burke said
he “would pardon something to the spirit of liberty.” But by Mr. Webster
the opposition to the law was sharply called treason, and prosecuted
so. He told the people at Boston “they must conquer their prejudices;”
that “agitation of the subject of Slavery must be suppressed.” He did as
immoral men usually do, made very low bows to the Christian Church, and
went through all the Sunday decorums; but when allusion was made to the
question of duty and the sanctions of morality, he very frankly said, at
Albany, “Some higher law, something existing somewhere between here and
the third heaven,—I do not know where.” And if the reporters say true,
this wretched atheism found some laughter in the company.
I said I had never in my life up to this time suffered from the Slave
Institution. Slavery in Virginia or Carolina was like Slavery in Africa
or the Feejees, for me. There was an old fugitive law, but it had become,
or was fast becoming, a dead letter, and, by the genius and laws of
Massachusetts, inoperative. The new Bill made it operative, required me
to hunt slaves, and it found citizens in Massachusetts willing to act as
judges and captors. Moreover, it discloses the secret of the new times,
that Slavery was no longer mendicant, but was become aggressive and
dangerous.
The way in which the country was dragged to consent to this, and the
disastrous defection (on the miserable cry of Union) of the men of
letters, of the colleges, of educated men, nay, of some preachers of
religion,—was the darkest passage in the history. It showed that our
prosperity had hurt us, and that we could not be shocked by crime. It
showed that the old religion and the sense of the right had faded and
gone out; that while we reckoned ourselves a highly cultivated nation,
our bellies had run away with our brains, and the principles of culture
and progress did not exist.
For I suppose that liberty is an accurate index, in men and nations, of
general progress. The theory of personal liberty must always appeal to
the most refined communities and to the men of the rarest perception and
of delicate moral sense. For there are rights which rest on the finest
sense of justice, and, with every degree of civility, it will be more
truly felt and defined. A barbarous tribe of good stock will, by means
of their best heads, secure substantial liberty. But where there is
any weakness in a race, and it becomes in a degree matter of concession
and protection from their stronger neighbors, the incompatibility and
offensiveness of the wrong will of course be most evident to the most
cultivated. For it is,—is it not?—the essence of courtesy, of politeness,
of religion, of love, to prefer another, to postpone oneself, to protect
another from oneself. That is the distinction of the gentleman, to defend
the weak and redress the injured, as it is of the savage and the brutal
to usurp and use others.
In Massachusetts, as we all know, there has always existed a predominant
conservative spirit. We have more money and value of every kind than
other people, and wish to keep them. The plea on which freedom was
resisted was Union. I went to certain serious men, who had a little more
reason than the rest, and inquired why they took this part? They answered
that they had no confidence in their strength to resist the Democratic
party; that they saw plainly that all was going to the utmost verge of
licence; each was vying with his neighbor to lead the party, by proposing
the worst measure, and they threw themselves on the extreme conservatism,
as a drag on the wheel: that they knew Cuba would be had, and Mexico
would be had, and they stood stiffly on conservatism, and as near to
monarchy as they could, only to moderate the velocity with which the car
was running down the precipice. In short, their theory was despair; the
Whig wisdom was only reprieve, a waiting to be last devoured. They side
with Carolina, or with Arkansas, only to make a show of Whig strength,
wherewith to resist a little longer this general ruin.
I have a respect for conservatism. I know how deeply founded it is in
our nature, and how idle are all attempts to shake ourselves free from
it. We are all conservatives, half Whig, half Democrat, in our essences:
and might as well try to jump out of our skins as to escape from our
Whiggery. There are two forces in Nature, by whose antagonism we exist;
the power of Fate, Fortune, the laws of the world, the order of things,
or however else we choose to phrase it, the material necessities, on the
one hand,—and Will or Duty or Freedom on the other.
May and Must, and the sense of right and duty, on the one hand, and the
material necessities on the other: May and Must. In vulgar politics the
Whig goes for what has been, for the old necessities,—the Musts. The
reformer goes for the Better, for the ideal good, for the Mays. But
each of these parties must of necessity take in, in some measure, the
principles of the other. Each wishes to cover the whole ground; to hold
fast _and_ to advance. Only, one lays the emphasis on keeping, and the
other on advancing. I too think the _musts_ are a safe company to follow,
and even agreeable. But if we are Whigs, let us be Whigs of nature and
science, and so for all the necessities. Let us know that, over and above
all the _musts_ of poverty and appetite, is the instinct of man to rise,
and the instinct to love and help his brother.
Now, Gentlemen, I think we have in this hour instruction again in the
simplest lesson. Events roll, millions of men are engaged, and the result
is the enforcing of some of those first commandments which we heard in
the nursery. We never get beyond our first lesson, for, really, the world
exists, as I understand it, to teach the science of liberty, which begins
with liberty from fear.
The events of this month are teaching one thing plain and clear, the
worthlessness of good tools to bad workmen; that official papers are of
no use; resolutions of public meetings, platforms of conventions, no, nor
laws, nor constitutions, any more. These are all declaratory of the will
of the moment, and are passed with more levity and on grounds far less
honorable than ordinary business transactions of the street.
You relied on the constitution. It has not the word _slave_ in it; and
very good argument has shown that it would not warrant the crimes that
are done under it; that, with provisions so vague for an object not
named, and which could not be availed of to claim a barrel of sugar
or a barrel of corn, the robbing of a man and of all his posterity is
effected. You relied on the Supreme Court. The law was right, excellent
law for the lambs. But what if unhappily the judges were chosen from the
wolves, and give to all the law a wolfish interpretation? You relied
on the Missouri Compromise. That is ridden over. You relied on State
sovereignty in the Free States to protect their citizens. They are driven
with contempt out of the courts and out of the territory of the Slave
States,—if they are so happy as to get out with their lives,[140]—and
now you relied on these dismal guaranties infamously made in 1850;
and, before the body of Webster is yet crumbled, it is found that they
have crumbled. This eternal monument of his fame and of the Union is
rotten in four years. They are no guaranty to the free states. They are
a guaranty to the slave states that, as they have hitherto met with no
repulse, they shall meet with none.
I fear there is no reliance to be put on any kind or form of covenant,
no, not on sacred forms, none on churches, none on bibles. For one would
have said that a Christian would not keep slaves;—but the Christians
keep slaves. Of course they will not dare to read the Bible? Won’t they?
They quote the Bible, quote Paul,[141] quote Christ, to justify slavery.
If slavery is good, then is lying, theft, arson, homicide, each and all
good, and to be maintained by Union societies.
These things show that no forms, neither constitutions, nor laws, nor
covenants, nor churches, nor bibles, are of any use in themselves. The
Devil nestles comfortably into them all. There is no help but in the
head and heart and hamstrings of a man. Covenants are of no use without
honest men to keep them; laws of none but with loyal citizens to obey
them. To interpret Christ it needs Christ in the heart. The teachings
of the Spirit can be apprehended only by the same spirit that gave them
forth. To make good the cause of Freedom, you must draw off from all
foolish trust in others. You must be citadels and warriors yourselves,
declarations of Independence, the charter, the battle and the victory.
Cromwell said, “We can only resist the superior training of the King’s
soldiers, by enlisting godly men.” And no man has a right to hope that
the laws of New York will defend him from the contamination of slaves
another day until he has made up his mind that he will not owe his
protection to the laws of New York, but to his own sense and spirit. Then
he protects New York. He only who is able to stand alone is qualified
for society. And that I understand to be the end for which a soul exists
in this world,—to be himself the counterbalance of all falsehood and
all wrong. “The army of unright is encamped from pole to pole, but the
road of victory is known to the just.” Everything may be taken away; he
may be poor, he may be houseless, yet he will know out of his arms to
make a pillow, and out of his breast a bolster. Why have the minority no
influence? Because they have not a real minority of one.[142]
I conceive that thus to detach a man and make him feel that he is to
owe all to himself, is the way to make him strong and rich; and here
the optimist must find, if anywhere, the benefit of Slavery. We have
many teachers; we are in this world for culture, to be instructed in
realities, in the laws of moral and intelligent nature; and our education
is not conducted by toys and luxuries, but by austere and rugged masters,
by poverty, solitude, passions, War, Slavery; to know that Paradise is
under the shadow of swords;[143] that divine sentiments which are always
soliciting us are breathed into us from on high, and are an offset to
a Universe of suffering and crime; that self-reliance, the height and
perfection of man, is reliance on God.[144] The insight of the religious
sentiment will disclose to him unexpected aids in the nature of things.
The Persian Saadi said, “Beware of hurting the orphan. When the orphan
sets a-crying, the throne of the Almighty is rocked from side to side.”
Whenever a man has come to this mind, that there is no Church for him but
his believing prayer; no Constitution but his dealing well and justly
with his neighbor; no liberty but his invincible will to do right,—then
certain aids and allies will promptly appear: for the constitution of
the Universe is on his side. It is of no use to vote down gravitation of
morals. What is useful will last, whilst that which is hurtful to the
world will sink beneath all the opposing forces which it must exasperate.
The terror which the Marseillaise struck into oppression, it thunders
again to-day,—
“Tout est soldat pour vous combattre.”
Everything turns soldier to fight you down. The end for which man was
made is not crime in any form, and a man cannot steal without incurring
the penalties of the thief, though all the legislatures vote that it
is virtuous, and though there be a general conspiracy among scholars
and official persons to hold him up, and to say, “_Nothing is good but
stealing._” A man who commits a crime defeats the end of his existence.
He was created for benefit, and he exists for harm; and as well-doing
makes power and wisdom, ill-doing takes them away. A man who steals
another man’s labor steals away his own faculties; his integrity,
his humanity is flowing away from him. The habit of oppression cuts
out the moral eyes, and, though the intellect goes on simulating the
moral as before, its sanity is gradually destroyed. It takes away the
presentiments.
I suppose in general this is allowed, that if you have a nice question
of right and wrong, you would not go with it to Louis Napoleon, or to
a political hack, or to a slave-driver. The habit of mind of traders
in power would not be esteemed favorable to delicate moral perception.
American slavery affords no exception to this rule. No excess of good
nature or of tenderness in individuals has been able to give a new
character to the system, to tear down the whipping-house. The plea in the
mouth of a slave-holder that the negro is an inferior race sounds very
oddly in my ear. “The masters of slaves seem generally anxious to prove
that they are not of a race superior in any noble quality to the meanest
of their bondmen.” And indeed when the Southerner points to the anatomy
of the negro, and talks of chimpanzee,—I recall Montesquieu’s remark, “It
will not do to say that negroes are men, lest it should turn out that
whites are not.”
Slavery is disheartening; but Nature is not so helpless but it can
rid itself at last of every wrong.[145] But the spasms of Nature are
centuries and ages, and will tax the faith of short-lived men. Slowly,
slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely. The proverbs of the nations
affirm these delays, but affirm the arrival. They say, “God may consent,
but not forever.” The delay of the Divine Justice—this was the meaning
and soul of the Greek Tragedy; this the soul of their religion. “There
has come, too, one to whom lurking warfare is dear, Retribution, with a
soul full of wiles; a violator of hospitality; guileful without the guilt
of guile; limping, late in her arrival.” They said of the happiness of
the unjust, that “at its close it begets itself an offspring and does
not die childless, and instead of good fortune, there sprouts forth for
posterity ever-ravening calamity:”—
“For evil word shall evil word be said,
For murder-stroke a murder-stroke be paid.
Who smites must smart.”
These delays, you see them now in the temper of the times. The national
spirit in this country is so drowsy, preoccupied with interest, deaf to
principle. The Anglo-Saxon race is proud and strong and selfish. They
believe only in Anglo-Saxons. In 1825 Greece found America deaf, Poland
found America deaf, Italy and Hungary found her deaf. England maintains
trade, not liberty; stands against Greece; against Hungary; against
Schleswig-Holstein; against the French Republic whilst it was a republic.
To faint hearts the times offer no invitation, and torpor exists here
throughout the active classes on the subject of domestic slavery and its
appalling aggressions. Yes, that is the stern edict of Providence, that
liberty shall be no hasty fruit, but that event on event, population on
population, age on age, shall cast itself into the opposite scale, and
not until liberty has slowly accumulated weight enough to countervail
and preponderate against all this, can the sufficient recoil come. All
the great cities, all the refined circles, all the statesmen, Guizot,
Palmerston, Webster, Calhoun, are sure to be found befriending liberty
with their words, and crushing it with their votes. Liberty is never
cheap. It is made difficult, because freedom is the accomplishment and
perfectness of man. He is a finished man;[146] earning and bestowing
good; equal to the world; at home in Nature and dignifying that; the sun
does not see anything nobler, and has nothing to teach him. Therefore
mountains of difficulty must be surmounted, stern trials met, wiles of
seduction, dangers, healed by a quarantine of calamities to measure his
strength before he dare say, I am free.
Whilst the inconsistency of slavery with the principles on which the
world is built guarantees its downfall, I own that the patience it
requires is almost too sublime for mortals, and seems to demand of us
more than mere hoping. And when one sees how fast the rot spreads,—it is
growing serious,—I think we demand of superior men that they be superior
in this,—that the mind and the virtue shall give their verdict in their
day, and accelerate so far the progress of civilization. Possession
is sure to throw its stupid strength for existing power, and appetite
and ambition will go for that. Let the aid of virtue, intelligence and
education be cast where they rightfully belong. They are organically
ours. Let them be loyal to their own. I wish to see the instructed class
here know their own flag, and not fire on their comrades. We should not
forgive the clergy for taking on every issue the immoral side; nor the
Bench, if it put itself on the side of the culprit; nor the Government,
if it sustain the mob against the laws.[147]
It is a potent support and ally to a brave man standing single, or
with a few, for the right, and out-voted and ostracized, to know that
better men in other parts of the country appreciate the service and will
rightly report him to his own and the next age. Without this assurance,
he will sooner sink. He may well say, ‘If my countrymen do not care to
be defended, I too will decline the controversy, from which I only reap
invectives and hatred.’ Yet the lovers of liberty may with reason tax the
coldness and indifferentism of scholars and literary men. They are lovers
of liberty in Greece and Rome and in the English Commonwealth, but they
are lukewarm lovers of the liberty of America in 1854. The universities
are not, as in Hobbes’s time, “the core of rebellion,” no, but the seat
of inertness. They have forgotten their allegiance to the Muse, and grown
worldly and political. I listened, lately, on one of those occasions
when the university chooses one of its distinguished sons returning from
the political arena, believing that senators and statesmen would be glad
to throw off the harness and to dip again in the Castalian pools. But
if audiences forget themselves, statesmen do not. The low bows to all
the crockery gods of the day were duly made:—only in one part of the
discourse the orator allowed to transpire, rather against his will, a
little sober sense.[148] It was this: ‘I am, as you see, a man virtuously
inclined, and only corrupted by my profession of politics. I should
prefer the right side. You, gentlemen of these literary and scientific
schools, and the important class you represent, have the power to make
your verdict clear and prevailing. Had you done so, you would have found
me its glad organ and champion. Abstractly, I should have preferred that
side. But you have not done it. You have not spoken out. You have failed
to arm me. I can only deal with masses as I find them. Abstractions are
not for me. I go then for such parties and opinions as have provided me
with a working apparatus. I give you my word, not without regret, that I
was first for you; and though I am now to deny and condemn you, you see
it is not my will but the party necessity.’ Having made this manifesto
and professed his adoration for liberty in the time of his grandfathers,
he proceeded with his work of denouncing freedom and freemen at the
present day, much in the tone and spirit in which Lord Bacon prosecuted
his benefactor Essex. He denounced every name and aspect under which
liberty and progress dare show themselves in this age and country,
but with a lingering conscience which qualified each sentence with a
recommendation to mercy.
But I put it to every noble and generous spirit, to every poetic,
every heroic, every religious heart, that not so is our learning, our
education, our poetry, our worship to be declared. Liberty is aggressive,
Liberty is the Crusade of all brave and conscientious men, the Epic
Poetry, the new religion, the chivalry of all gentlemen. This is the
oppressed Lady whom true knights on their oath and honor must rescue and
save.
Now at last we are disenchanted and shall have no more false hopes. I
respect the Anti-Slavery Society. It is the Cassandra that has foretold
all that has befallen, fact for fact, years ago; foretold all, and no
man laid it to heart. It seemed, as the Turks say, “Fate makes that a
man should not believe his own eyes.” But the Fugitive Law did much to
unglue the eyes of men, and now the Nebraska Bill leaves us staring. The
Anti-Slavery Society will add many members this year. The Whig Party will
join it; the Democrats will join it. The population of the free states
will join it. I doubt not, at last, the slave states will join it. But
be that sooner or later, and whoever comes or stays away, I hope we have
reached the end of our unbelief, have come to a belief that there is a
divine Providence in the world, which will not save us but through our
own coöperation.
VIII
THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER
SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE CITIZENS IN THE TOWN HALL, IN CONCORD, MAY 26,
1856
His erring foe,
Self-assured that he prevails,
Looks from his victim lying low,
And sees aloft the red right arm
Redress the eternal scales.
THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER
MR. CHAIRMAN: I sympathize heartily with the spirit of the resolutions.
The events of the last few years and months and days have taught us
the lessons of centuries. I do not see how a barbarous community and
a civilized community can constitute one state. I think we must get
rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom. Life has not parity of
value in the free state and in the slave state. In one, it is adorned
with education, with skilful labor, with arts, with long prospective
interests, with sacred family ties, with honor and justice. In the
other, life is a fever; man is an animal, given to pleasure, frivolous,
irritable, spending his days in hunting and practising with deadly
weapons to defend himself against his slaves and against his companions
brought up in the same idle and dangerous way. Such people live for the
moment, they have properly no future, and readily risk on every passion a
life which is of small value to themselves or to others. Many years ago,
when Mr. Webster was challenged in Washington to a duel by one of these
madcaps, his friends came forward with prompt good sense and said such
a thing was not to be thought of; Mr. Webster’s life was the property of
his friends and of the whole country, and was not to be risked on the
turn of a vagabond’s ball. Life and life are incommensurate. The whole
state of South Carolina does not now offer one or any number of persons
who are to be weighed for a moment in the scale with such a person as
the meanest of them all has now struck down. The very conditions of the
game must always be,—the worst life staked against the best. It is the
best whom they desire to kill. It is only when they cannot answer your
reasons, that they wish to knock you down. If, therefore, Massachusetts
could send to the Senate a better man than Mr. Sumner, his death would be
only so much the more quick and certain. Now, as men’s bodily strength,
or skill with knives and guns, is not usually in proportion to their
knowledge and mother-wit, but oftener in the inverse ratio, it will only
do to send foolish persons to Washington, if you wish them to be safe.
The outrage is the more shocking from the singularly pure character of
its victim. Mr. Sumner’s position is exceptional in its honor. He had
not taken his degrees in the caucus and in hack politics. It is notorious
that, in the long time when his election was pending, he refused to
take a single step to secure it. He would not so much as go up to the
state house to shake hands with this or that person whose good will was
reckoned important by his friends. He was elected. It was a homage to
character and talent. In Congress, he did not rush into party position.
He sat long silent and studious. His friends, I remember, were told that
they would find Sumner a man of the world like the rest; ‘’tis quite
impossible to be at Washington and not bend; he will bend as the rest
have done.’ Well, he did not bend. He took his position and kept it. He
meekly bore the cold shoulder from some of his New England colleagues,
the hatred of his enemies, the pity of the indifferent, cheered by the
love and respect of good men with whom he acted; and has stood for the
North, a little in advance of all the North, and therefore without
adequate support. He has never faltered in his maintenance of justice and
freedom. He has gone beyond the large expectation of his friends in his
increasing ability and his manlier tone. I have heard that some of his
political friends tax him with indolence or negligence in refusing to
make electioneering speeches, or otherwise to bear his part in the labor
which party organization requires. I say it to his honor. But more to
his honor are the faults which his enemies lay to his charge. I think,
sir, if Mr. Sumner had any vices, we should be likely to hear of them.
They have fastened their eyes like microscopes for five years on every
act, word, manner and movement, to find a flaw,—and with what result?
His opponents accuse him neither of drunkenness nor debauchery, nor
job, nor speculation, nor rapacity, nor personal aims of any kind. No;
but with what? Why, beyond this charge, which it is impossible was ever
sincerely made, that he broke over the proprieties of debate, I find him
accused of publishing his opinion of the Nebraska conspiracy in a letter
to the people of the United States, with discourtesy. Then, that he is
an abolitionist; as if every sane human being were not an abolitionist,
or a believer that all men should be free. And the third crime he stands
charged with, is, that his speeches were written before they were spoken;
which, of course, must be true in Sumner’s case, as it was true of
Webster, of Adams, of Calhoun, of Burke, of Chatham, of Demosthenes; of
every first-rate speaker that ever lived. It is the high compliment he
pays to the intelligence of the Senate and of the country. When the same
reproach was cast on the first orator of ancient times by some caviller
of his day, he said, “I should be ashamed to come with one unconsidered
word before such an assembly.” Mr. Chairman, when I think of these most
small faults as the worst which party hatred could allege, I think I may
borrow the language which Bishop Burnet applied to Sir Isaac Newton, and
say that Charles Sumner “has the whitest soul I ever knew.”
Well, sir, this noble head, so comely and so wise, must be the target for
a pair of bullies to beat with clubs. The murderer’s brand shall stamp
their foreheads wherever they may wander in the earth. But I wish, sir,
that the high respects of this meeting shall be expressed to Mr. Sumner;
that a copy of the resolutions that have been read may be forwarded to
him. I wish that he may know the shudder of terror which ran through all
this community on the first tidings of this brutal attack. Let him hear
that every man of worth in New England loves his virtues; that every
mother thinks of him as the protector of families; that every friend
of freedom thinks him the friend of freedom. And if our arms at this
distance cannot defend him from assassins, we confide the defence of
a life so precious to all honorable men and true patriots, and to the
Almighty Maker of men.[149]
IX
SPEECH
AT THE KANSAS RELIEF MEETING IN CAMBRIDGE WEDNESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER
10, 1856
And ye shall succor men;
’Tis nobleness to serve;
Help them who cannot help again:
Beware from right to swerve.
SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS
I regret, with all this company, the absence of Mr. Whitman of Kansas,
whose narrative was to constitute the interest of this meeting. Mr.
Whitman is not here; but knowing, as we all do, why he is not, what
duties kept him at home, he is more than present. His vacant chair
speaks for him. For quite other reasons, I had been wiser to have stayed
at home, unskilled as I am to address a political meeting, but it is
impossible for the most recluse to extricate himself from the questions
of the times.
There is this peculiarity about the case of Kansas, that all the right is
on one side. We hear the screams of hunted wives and children answered
by the howl of the butchers. The testimony of the telegraphs from St.
Louis and the border confirm the worst details. The printed letters of
border ruffians avow the facts. When pressed to look at the cause of
the mischief in the Kansas laws, the President falters and declines the
discussion; but his supporters in the Senate, Mr. Cass, Mr. Geyer, Mr.
Hunter, speak out, and declare the intolerable atrocity of the code.
It is a maxim that all party spirit produces the incapacity to receive
natural impressions from facts; and our recent political history has
abundantly borne out the maxim. But these details that have come from
Kansas are so horrible, that the hostile press have but one word in
reply, namely, that it is all exaggeration, ’tis an Abolition lie. Do the
Committee of Investigation say that the outrages have been overstated?
Does their dismal catalogue of private tragedies show it? Do the private
letters? Is it an exaggeration, that Mr. Hopps of Somerville, Mr. Hoyt of
Deerfield, Mr. Jennison of Groton, Mr. Phillips of Berkshire, have been
murdered? That Mr. Robinson of Fitchburg has been imprisoned? Rev. Mr.
Nute of Springfield seized, and up to this time we have no tidings of his
fate?
In these calamities under which they suffer, and the worst which threaten
them, the people of Kansas ask for bread, clothes, arms and men, to save
them alive, and enable them to stand against these enemies of the human
race. They have a right to be helped, for they have helped themselves.
This aid must be sent, and this is not to be doled out as an ordinary
charity; but bestowed up to the magnitude of the want, and, as has been
elsewhere said, “on the scale of a national action.” I think we are to
give largely, lavishly, to these men. And we must prepare to do it.
We must learn to do with less, live in a smaller tenement, sell our
apple-trees, our acres, our pleasant houses. I know people who are making
haste to reduce their expenses and pay their debts, not with a view to
new accumulations, but in preparation to save and earn for the benefit of
the Kansas emigrants.
We must have aid from individuals,—we must also have aid from the state.
I know that the last legislature refused that aid. I know that lawyers
hesitate on technical grounds, and wonder what method of relief the
legislature will apply. But I submit that, in a case like this, where
citizens of Massachusetts, legal voters here, have emigrated to national
territory under the sanction of every law, and are then set on by
highwaymen, driven from their new homes, pillaged, and numbers of them
killed and scalped, and the whole world knows that this is no accidental
brawl, but a systematic war to the knife, and in defiance of all laws and
liberties,—I submit that the governor and legislature should neither
slumber nor sleep till they have found out how to send effectual aid and
comfort to these poor farmers, or else should resign their seats to those
who can. But first let them hang the halls of the state-house with black
crape, and order funeral service to be said for the citizens whom they
were unable to defend.
We stick at the technical difficulties. I think there never was a people
so choked and stultified by forms. We adore the forms of law, instead of
making them vehicles of wisdom and justice. I like the primary assembly.
I own I have little esteem for governments. I esteem them only good in
the moment when they are established. I set the private man first. He
only who is able to stand alone is qualified to be a citizen. Next to the
private man, I value the primary assembly, met to watch the government
and to correct it. That is the theory of the American State, that it
exists to execute the will of the citizens, is always responsible to
them, and is always to be changed when it does not. First, the private
citizen, then the primary assembly, and the government last.
In this country for the last few years the government has been the chief
obstruction to the common weal. Who doubts that Kansas would have been
very well settled, if the United States had let it alone? The government
armed and led the ruffians against the poor farmers. I do not know any
story so gloomy as the politics of this country for the last twenty
years, centralizing ever more manifestly round one spring, and that
a vast crime, and ever more plainly, until it is notorious that all
promotion, power and policy are dictated from one source,—illustrating
the fatal effects of a false position to demoralize legislation and put
the best people always at a disadvantage;—one crime always present,
always to be varnished over, to find fine names for; and we free
statesmen, as accomplices to the guilt, ever in the power of the grand
offender.
Language has lost its meaning in the universal cant. _Representative
Government_ is really misrepresentative; _Union_ is a conspiracy
against the Northern States which the Northern States are to have the
privilege of paying for; the _adding of Cuba and Central America_ to
the slave marts is _enlarging the area of Freedom_. _Manifest Destiny_,
_Democracy_, _Freedom_, fine names for an ugly thing. They call it otto
of rose and lavender,—I call it bilge-water. They call it Chivalry and
Freedom; I call it the stealing all the earnings of a poor man and the
earnings of his little girl and boy, and the earnings of all that shall
come from him, his children’s children forever.
But this is Union, and this is Democracy; and our poor people, led by the
nose by these fine words, dance and sing, ring bells and fire cannon,
with every new link of the chain which is forged for their limbs by the
plotters in the Capitol.
What are the results of law and union? There is no Union. Can any citizen
of Massachusetts travel in honor through Kentucky and Alabama and speak
his mind? Or can any citizen of the Southern country who happens to think
kidnapping a bad thing, say so? Let Mr. Underwood of Virginia answer.
Is it to be supposed that there are no men in Carolina who dissent from
the popular sentiment now reigning there? It must happen, in the variety
of human opinions, that there are dissenters. They are silent as the
grave. Are there no women in that country,—women, who always carry the
conscience of a people? Yet we have not heard one discordant whisper.
In the free states, we give a snivelling support to slavery. The judges
give cowardly interpretations to the law, in direct opposition to the
known foundation of all law, that _every immoral statute is void_. And
here of Kansas, the President says: “Let the complainants go to the
courts;” though he knows that when the poor plundered farmer comes to the
court, he finds the ringleader who has robbed him dismounting from his
own horse, and unbuckling his knife to sit as his judge.
The President told the Kansas Committee that the whole difficulty grew
from “the factious spirit of the Kansas people respecting institutions
which they need not have concerned themselves about.” A very remarkable
speech from a Democratic President to his fellow citizens, that they
are not to concern themselves with institutions which they alone are to
create and determine. The President is a lawyer, and should know the
statutes of the land. But I borrow the language of an eminent man, used
long since, with far less occasion: “If that be law, let the ploughshare
be run under the foundations of the Capitol;”—and if that be Government,
extirpation is the only cure.
I am glad to see that the terror at disunion and anarchy is disappearing.
Massachusetts, in its heroic day, had no government—was an anarchy.
Every man stood on his own feet, was his own governor; and there was no
breach of peace from Cape Cod to Mount Hoosac. California, a few years
ago, by the testimony of all people at that time in the country, had the
best government that ever existed. Pans of gold lay drying outside of
every man’s tent, in perfect security. The land was measured into little
strips of a few feet wide, all side by side. A bit of ground that your
hand could cover was worth one or two hundred dollars, on the edge of
your strip; and there was no dispute. Every man throughout the country
was armed with knife and revolver, and it was known that instant justice
would be administered to each offence, and perfect peace reigned. For the
Saxon man, when he is well awake, is not a pirate but a citizen, all made
of hooks and eyes, and links himself naturally to his brothers, as bees
hook themselves to one another and to their queen in a loyal swarm.
But the hour is coming when the strongest will not be strong enough. A
harder task will the new revolution of the nineteenth century be than was
the revolution of the eighteenth century. I think the American Revolution
bought its glory cheap. If the problem was new, it was simple. If there
were few people, they were united, and the enemy three thousand miles
off. But now, vast property, gigantic interests, family connections, webs
of party, cover the land with a network that immensely multiplies the
dangers of war.[150]
Fellow citizens, in these times full of the fate of the Republic, I
think the towns should hold town meetings, and resolve themselves into
Committees of Safety, go into permanent sessions, adjourning from week to
week, from month to month. I wish we could send the sergeant-at-arms to
stop every American who is about to leave the country. Send home every
one who is abroad, lest they should find no country to return to. Come
home and stay at home, while there is a country to save. When it is lost
it will be time enough then for any who are luckless enough to remain
alive to gather up their clothes and depart to some land where freedom
exists.
X
REMARKS
AT A MEETING FOR THE RELIEF OF THE FAMILY OF JOHN BROWN, AT TREMONT
TEMPLE, BOSTON NOVEMBER 18, 1859
“John Brown in Kansas settled, like a steadfast Yankee farmer,
Brave and godly, with four sons—all stalwart men of might.
There he spoke aloud for Freedom, and the Border strife grew warmer
Till the Rangers fired his dwelling, in his absence, in the night;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Came homeward in the morning to find his house burned down.
Then he grasped his trusty rifle, and boldly fought for Freedom;
Smote from border unto border the fierce invading band:
And he and his brave boys vowed—so might Heaven help and speed ’em—
They would save those grand old prairies from the curse that blights
the land;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Said, ‘Boys, the Lord will aid us!’ and he shoved his ramrod down.”
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN, _John Brown_.
JOHN BROWN
MR. CHAIRMAN, AND FELLOW CITIZENS: I share the sympathy and sorrow which
have brought us together. Gentlemen who have preceded me have well said
that no wall of separation could here exist. This commanding event which
has brought us together, eclipses all others which have occurred for a
long time in our history, and I am very glad to see that this sudden
interest in the hero of Harper’s Ferry has provoked an extreme curiosity
in all parts of the Republic, in regard to the details of his history.
Every anecdote is eagerly sought, and I do not wonder that gentlemen
find traits of relation readily between him and themselves. One finds a
relation in the church, another in the profession, another in the place
of his birth. He was happily a representative of the American Republic.
Captain John Brown is a farmer, the fifth in descent from Peter Brown,
who came to Plymouth in the Mayflower, in 1620. All the six have been
farmers. His grandfather, of Simsbury, in Connecticut, was a captain in
the Revolution. His father, largely interested as a raiser of stock,
became a contractor to supply the army with beef, in the war of 1812,
and our Captain John Brown, then a boy, with his father was present and
witnessed the surrender of General Hull. He cherishes a great respect for
his father, as a man of strong character, and his respect is probably
just. For himself, he is so transparent that all men see him through.
He is a man to make friends wherever on earth courage and integrity are
esteemed, the rarest of heroes, a pure idealist, with no by-ends of his
own. Many of you have seen him, and every one who has heard him speak
has been impressed alike by his simple, artless goodness, joined with
his sublime courage. He joins that perfect Puritan faith which brought
his fifth ancestor to Plymouth Rock with his grandfather’s ardor in
the Revolution. He believes in two articles,—two instruments, shall I
say?—the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence; and he used
this expression in conversation here concerning them, “Better that a
whole generation of men, women and children should pass away by a violent
death than that one word of either should be violated in this country.”
There is a Unionist,—there is a strict constructionist for you. He
believes in the Union of the States, and he conceives that the only
obstruction to the Union is Slavery, and for that reason, as a patriot,
he works for its abolition. The governor of Virginia has pronounced his
eulogy in a manner that discredits the moderation of our timid parties.
His own speeches to the court have interested the nation in him. What
magnanimity, and what innocent pleading, as of childhood! You remember
his words: “If I had interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful,
the intelligent, the so-called great, or any of their friends, parents,
wives or children, it would all have been right. But I believe that to
have interfered as I have done, for the despised poor, was not wrong, but
right.”[151]
It is easy to see what a favorite he will be with history, which plays
such pranks with temporary reputations. Nothing can resist the sympathy
which all elevated minds must feel with Brown, and through them the whole
civilized world; and if he must suffer, he must drag official gentlemen
into an immortality most undesirable, of which they have already some
disagreeable forebodings. Indeed, it is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of
Slavery, when the governor of Virginia is forced to hang a man whom he
declares to be a man of the most integrity, truthfulness and courage he
has ever met. Is that the kind of man the gallows is built for? It were
bold to affirm that there is within that broad commonwealth, at this
moment, another citizen as worthy to live, and as deserving of all public
and private honor, as this poor prisoner.[152]
But we are here to think of relief for the family of John Brown. To my
eyes, that family looks very large and very needy of relief. It comprises
his brave fellow sufferers in the Charlestown Jail; the fugitives still
hunted in the mountains of Virginia and Pennsylvania; the sympathizers
with him in all the states; and, I may say, almost every man who loves
the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence, like him, and who
sees what a tiger’s thirst threatens him in the malignity of public
sentiment in the slave states. It seems to me that a common feeling joins
the people of Massachusetts with him.
I said John Brown was an idealist. He believed in his ideas to that
extent that he existed to put them all into action; he said ‘he did not
believe in moral suasion, he believed in putting the thing through.’ He
saw how deceptive the forms are. We fancy, in Massachusetts, that we are
free; yet it seems the government is quite unreliable. Great wealth,
great population, men of talent in the executive, on the bench,—all the
forms right,—and yet, life and freedom are not safe. Why? Because the
judges rely on the forms, and do not, like John Brown, use their eyes
to see the fact behind the forms. They assume that the United States
can protect its witness or its prisoner. And in Massachusetts that is
true, but the moment he is carried out of the bounds of Massachusetts,
the United States, it is notorious, afford no protection at all; the
government, the judges, are an envenomed party, and give such protection
as they give in Utah to honest citizens, or in Kansas; such protection
as they gave to their own Commodore Paulding, when he was simple
enough to mistake the formal instructions of his government for their
real meaning.[153] The state judges fear collision between their two
allegiances; but there are worse evils than collision; namely, the doing
substantial injustice. A good man will see that the use of a judge is to
secure good government, and where the citizen’s weal is imperilled by
abuse of the federal power, to use that arm which can secure it, viz.,
the local government. Had that been done on certain calamitous occasions,
we should not have seen the honor of Massachusetts trailed in the
dust, stained to all ages, once and again, by the ill-timed formalism
of a venerable bench. If judges cannot find law enough to maintain the
sovereignty of the state, and to protect the life and freedom of every
inhabitant not a criminal, it is idle to compliment them as learned and
venerable. What avails their learning or veneration? At a pinch, they are
no more use than idiots. After the mischance they wring their hands, but
they had better never have been born.[154] A Vermont judge, Hutchinson,
who has the Declaration of Independence in his heart; a Wisconsin
judge, who knows that laws are for the protection of citizens against
kidnappers, is worth a court-house full of lawyers so idolatrous of forms
as to let go the substance. Is any man in Massachusetts so simple as to
believe that when a United States Court in Virginia, now, in its present
reign of terror, sends to Connecticut, or New York, or Massachusetts,
for a witness, it wants him for a witness? No; it wants him for a party;
it wants him for meat to slaughter and eat. And your _habeas corpus_ is,
in any way in which it has been, or, I fear, is likely to be used, a
nuisance, and not a protection; for it takes away his right reliance on
himself, and the natural assistance of his friends and fellow citizens,
by offering him a form which is a piece of paper.
But I am detaining the meeting on matters which others understand better.
I hope, then, that, in administering relief to John Brown’s family, we
shall remember all those whom his fate concerns, all who are in sympathy
with him, and not forget to aid him in the best way, by securing freedom
and independence in Massachusetts.
XI
JOHN BROWN
SPEECH AT SALEM, JANUARY 6, 1860
“A man there came, whence none could tell,
Bearing a touchstone in his hand,
And tested all things in the land
By its unerring spell.
A thousand transformations rose
From fair to foul, from foul to fair:
The golden crown he did not spare,
Nor scorn the beggar’s clothes.
...
Then angrily the people cried,
‘The loss outweighs the profit far;
Our goods suffice us as they are:
We will not have them tried.’
And since they could not so avail
To check his unrelenting quest,
They seized him, saying, ‘Let him test
How real is our jail!’
But though they slew him with the sword,
And in the fire his touchstone burned,
Its doings could not be o’erturned,
Its undoings restored.
And when, to stop all future harm,
They strewed its ashes to the breeze,
They little guessed each grain of these
Conveyed the perfect charm.”
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.
JOHN BROWN
MR. CHAIRMAN: I have been struck with one fact, that the best orators who
have added their praise to his fame,—and I need not go out of this house
to find the purest eloquence in the country,—have one rival who comes off
a little better, and that is JOHN BROWN. Everything that is said of him
leaves people a little dissatisfied; but as soon as they read his own
speeches and letters they are heartily contented,—such is the singleness
of purpose which justifies him to the head and the heart of all. Taught
by this experience, I mean, in the few remarks I have to make, to cling
to his history, or let him speak for himself.
John Brown, the founder of liberty in Kansas, was born in Torrington,
Litchfield County, Connecticut, in 1800. When he was five years old his
father emigrated to Ohio, and the boy was there set to keep sheep and to
look after cattle and dress skins; he went bareheaded and barefooted,
and clothed in buckskin. He said that he loved rough play, could never
have rough play enough; could not see a seedy hat without wishing to pull
it off. But for this it needed that the playmates should be equal; not
one in fine clothes and the other in buckskin; not one his own master,
hale and hearty, and the other watched and whipped. But it chanced that
in Pennsylvania, where he was sent by his father to collect cattle, he
fell in with a boy whom he heartily liked and whom he looked upon as his
superior. This boy was a slave; he saw him beaten with an iron shovel,
and otherwise maltreated; he saw that this boy had nothing better to
look forward to in life, whilst he himself was petted and made much of;
for he was much considered in the family where he then stayed, from the
circumstance that this boy of twelve years had conducted alone a drove of
cattle a hundred miles. But the colored boy had no friend, and no future.
This worked such indignation in him that he swore an oath of resistance
to slavery as long as he lived. And thus his enterprise to go into
Virginia and run off five hundred or a thousand slaves was not a piece of
spite or revenge, a plot of two years or of twenty years, but the keeping
of an oath made to heaven and earth forty-seven years before. Forty-seven
years at least, though I incline to accept his own account of the matter
at Charlestown, which makes the date a little older, when he said, “This
was all settled millions of years before the world was made.”
He grew up a religious and manly person, in severe poverty; a fair
specimen of the best stock of New England; having that force of thought
and that sense of right which are the warp and woof of greatness. Our
farmers were Orthodox Calvinists, mighty in the Scriptures; had learned
that life was a preparation, a “probation,” to use their word, for a
higher world, and was to be spent in loving and serving mankind.[155]
Thus was formed a romantic character absolutely without any vulgar
trait; living to ideal ends, without any mixture of self-indulgence or
compromise, such as lowers the value of benevolent and thoughtful men
we know; abstemious, refusing luxuries, not sourly and reproachfully,
but simply as unfit for his habit; quiet and gentle as a child in the
house. And, as happens usually to men of romantic character, his fortunes
were romantic. Walter Scott would have delighted to draw his picture
and trace his adventurous career. A shepherd and herdsman, he learned
the manners of animals, and knew the secret signals by which animals
communicate.[156] He made his hard bed on the mountains with them; he
learned to drive his flock through thickets all but impassable; he had
all the skill of a shepherd by choice of breed and by wise husbandry to
obtain the best wool, and that for a course of years. And the anecdotes
preserved show a far-seeing skill and conduct which, in spite of adverse
accidents, should secure, one year with another, an honest reward, first
to the farmer, and afterwards to the dealer. If he kept sheep, it was
with a royal mind; and if he traded in wool, he was a merchant prince,
not in the amount of wealth, but in the protection of the interests
confided to him.
I am not a little surprised at the easy effrontery with which political
gentlemen, in and out of Congress, take it upon them to say that there
are not a thousand men in the North who sympathize with John Brown.
It would be far safer and nearer the truth to say that all people, in
proportion to their sensibility and self-respect, sympathize with him.
For it is impossible to see courage, and disinterestedness, and the love
that casts out fear, without sympathy. All women are drawn to him by
their predominance of sentiment. All gentlemen, of course, are on his
side. I do not mean by “gentlemen,” people of scented hair and perfumed
handkerchiefs, but men of gentle blood and generosity, “fulfilled with
all nobleness,” who, like the Cid, give the outcast leper a share of
their bed; like the dying Sidney, pass the cup of cold water to the dying
soldier who needs it more. For what is the oath of gentle blood and
knighthood? What but to protect the weak and lowly against the strong
oppressor?
Nothing is more absurd than to complain of this sympathy, or to complain
of a party of men united in opposition to slavery. As well complain
of gravity, or the ebb of the tide. Who makes the abolitionist? The
slave-holder. The sentiment of mercy is the natural recoil which the laws
of the universe provide to protect mankind from destruction by savage
passions. And our blind statesmen go up and down, with committees of
vigilance and safety, hunting for the origin of this new heresy. They
will need a very vigilant committee indeed to find its birthplace, and a
very strong force to root it out. For the arch-abolitionist, older than
Brown, and older than the Shenandoah Mountains, is Love, whose other name
is Justice, which was before Alfred, before Lycurgus, before slavery, and
will be after it.[157]
XII
THEODORE PARKER
AN ADDRESS AT THE MEMORIAL MEETING AT THE MUSIC HALL, BOSTON, JUNE 15,
1860
“Here comes Parker, the Orson of parsons, a man
Whom the Church undertook to put under her ban.—
...
There’s a background of God to each hard-working feature,
Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced
In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest:
There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than priest,
If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at least;
...
But his periods fall on you, stroke after stroke,
Like the blows of a lumberer felling an oak,
You forget the man wholly, you’re thankful to meet
With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street,
And to hear, you’re not over-particular whence,
Almost Taylor’s profusion, quite Latimer’s sense.”
—LOWELL, _A Fable for Critics_.
THEODORE PARKER
At the death of a good and admirable person we meet to console and
animate each other by the recollection of his virtues.
I have the feeling that every man’s biography is at his own expense. He
furnishes not only the facts but the report. I mean that all biography is
autobiography. It is only what he tells of himself that comes to be known
and believed. In Plutarch’s lives of Alexander and Pericles, you have the
secret whispers of their confidence to their lovers and trusty friends.
For it was each report of this kind that impressed those to whom it was
told in a manner to secure its being told everywhere to the best, to
those who speak with authority to their own times and therefore to ours.
For the political rule is a cosmical rule, that if a man is not strong in
his own district, he is not a good candidate elsewhere.
He whose voice will not be heard here again could well afford to tell his
experiences; they were all honorable to him, and were part of the history
of the civil and religious liberty of his times. Theodore Parker was a
son of the soil, charged with the energy of New England, strong, eager,
inquisitive of knowledge, of a diligence that never tired, upright, of
a haughty independence, yet the gentlest of companions; a man of study,
fit for a man of the world; with decided opinions and plenty of power
to state them; rapidly pushing his studies so far as to leave few men
qualified to sit as his critics.[158] He elected his part of duty, or
accepted nobly that assigned him in his rare constitution. Wonderful
acquisition of knowledge, a rapid wit that heard all, and welcomed all
that came, by seeing its bearing. Such was the largeness of his reception
of facts and his skill to employ them that it looked as if he were some
president of council to whom a score of telegraphs were ever bringing
in reports; and his information would have been excessive, but for the
noble use he made of it ever in the interest of humanity. He had a strong
understanding, a logical method, a love for facts, a rapid eye for their
historic relations, and a skill in stripping them of traditional lustres.
He had a sprightly fancy, and often amused himself with throwing his
meaning into pretty apologues; yet we can hardly ascribe to his mind the
poetic element, though his scholarship had made him a reader and quoter
of verses. A little more feeling of the poetic significance of his
facts would have disqualified him for some of his severer offices to his
generation. The old religions have a charm for most minds which it is a
little uncanny to disturb. ’Tis sometimes a question, shall we not leave
them to decay without rude shocks? I remember that I found some harshness
in his treatment both of Greek and of Hebrew antiquity, and sympathized
with the pain of many good people in his auditory, whilst I acquitted
him, of course, of any wish to be flippant. He came at a time when, to
the irresistible march of opinion, the forms still retained by the most
advanced sects showed loose and lifeless, and he, with something less of
affectionate attachment to the old, or with more vigorous logic, rejected
them. ’Tis objected to him that he scattered too many illusions. Perhaps
more tenderness would have been graceful; but it is vain to charge him
with perverting the opinions of the new generation.
The opinions of men are organic. Simply, those came to him who found
themselves expressed by him. And had they not met this enlightened mind,
in which they beheld their own opinions combined with zeal in every cause
of love and humanity, they would have suspected their opinions and
suppressed them, and so sunk into melancholy or malignity—a feeling of
loneliness and hostility to what was reckoned respectable. ’Tis plain to
me that he has achieved a historic immortality here; that he has so woven
himself in these few years into the history of Boston, that he can never
be left out of your annals. It will not be in the acts of city councils,
nor of obsequious mayors; nor, in the state-house, the proclamations
of governors, with their failing virtue—failing them at critical
moments—that coming generations will study what really befell; but in the
plain lessons of Theodore Parker in this Music Hall, in Faneuil Hall, or
in legislative committee rooms, that the true temper and authentic record
of these days will be read. The next generation will care little for the
chances of elections that govern governors now, it will care little for
fine gentlemen who behaved shabbily; but it will read very intelligently
in his rough story, fortified with exact anecdotes, precise with names
and dates, what part was taken by each actor; who threw himself into the
cause of humanity and came to the rescue of civilization at a hard pinch,
and who blocked its course.
The vice charged against America is the want of sincerity in leading
men. It does not lie at his door. He never kept back the truth for
fear to make an enemy. But, on the other hand, it was complained that
he was bitter and harsh, that his zeal burned with too hot a flame. It
is so difficult, in evil times, to escape this charge! for the faithful
preacher most of all. It was his merit, like Luther, Knox and Latimer,
and John Baptist, to speak tart truth, when that was peremptory and when
there were few to say it. But his sympathy for goodness was not less
energetic. One fault he had, he overestimated his friends,—I may well say
it,—and sometimes vexed them with the importunity of his good opinion,
whilst they knew better the ebb which follows unfounded praise. He was
capable, it must be said, of the most unmeasured eulogies on those he
esteemed, especially if he had any jealousy that they did not stand with
the Boston public as highly as they ought. His commanding merit as a
reformer is this, that he insisted beyond all men in pulpits—I cannot
think of one rival—that the essence of Christianity is its practical
morals; it is there for use, or it is nothing; and if you combine it with
sharp trading, or with ordinary city ambitions to gloze over municipal
corruptions, or private intemperance, or successful fraud, or immoral
politics, or unjust wars, or the cheating of Indians, or the robbery
of frontier nations, or leaving your principles at home to follow on
the high seas or in Europe a supple complaisance to tyrants,—it is a
hypocrisy, and the truth is not in you; and no love of religious music or
of dreams of Swedenborg, or praise of John Wesley, or of Jeremy Taylor,
can save you from the Satan which you are.
His ministry fell on a political crisis also; on the years when Southern
slavery broke over its old banks, made new and vast pretensions, and
wrung from the weakness or treachery of Northern people fatal concessions
in the Fugitive Slave Bill and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
Two days, bitter in the memory of Boston, the days of the rendition of
Sims and of Burns, made the occasion of his most remarkable discourses.
He kept nothing back. In terrible earnest he denounced the public crime,
and meted out to every official, high and low, his due portion.[159]
By the incessant power of his statement, he made and held a party. It
was his great service to freedom. He took away the reproach of silent
consent that would otherwise have lain against the indignant minority,
by uttering in the hour and place wherein these outrages were done, the
stern protest.
But whilst I praise this frank speaker, I have no wish to accuse the
silence of others. There are men of good powers who have so much sympathy
that they must be silent when they are not in sympathy. If you don’t
agree with them, they know they only injure the truth by speaking. Their
faculties will not play them true, and they do not wish to squeak and
gibber, and so they shut their mouths. I can readily forgive this, only
not the other, the false tongue which makes the worse appear the better
cause. There were, of course, multitudes to censure and defame this
truth-speaker. But the brave know the brave. Fops, whether in hotels
or churches, will utter the fop’s opinion, and faintly hope for the
salvation of his soul; but his manly enemies, who despised the fops,
honored him; and it is well known that his great hospitable heart was
the sanctuary to which every soul conscious of an earnest opinion came
for sympathy—alike the brave slave-holder and the brave slave-rescuer.
These met in the house of this honest man—for every sound heart loves a
responsible person, one who does not in generous company say generous
things, and in mean company base things, but says one thing, now
cheerfully, now indignantly, but always because he must, and because he
sees that, whether he speak or refrain from speech, this is said over
him; and history, nature and all souls testify to the same.
Ah, my brave brother! it seems as if, in a frivolous age, our loss were
immense, and your place cannot be supplied. But you will already be
consoled in the transfer of your genius, knowing well that the nature
of the world will affirm to all men, in all times, that which for
twenty-five years you valiantly spoke; that the winds of Italy murmur
the same truth over your grave; the winds of America over these bereaved
streets; that the sea which bore your mourners home affirms it, the stars
in their courses, and the inspirations of youth; whilst the polished and
pleasant traitors to human rights, with perverted learning and disgraced
graces, rot and are forgotten with their double tongue saying all that is
sordid for the corruption of man.
The sudden and singular eminence of Mr. Parker, the importance of his
name and influence, are the verdict of his country to his virtues. We
have few such men to lose; amiable and blameless at home, feared abroad
as the standard-bearer of liberty, taking all the duties he could grasp,
and more, refusing to spare himself, he has gone down in early glory to
his grave, to be a living and enlarging power, wherever learning, wit,
honest valor and independence are honored.[160]
XIII
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION
To the mizzen, the main, and the fore
Up with it once more!—
The old tri-color,
The ribbon of power,
The white, blue and red which the nations adore!
It was down at half-mast
For a grief—that is past!
To the emblem of glory no sorrow can last!
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION
Use, labor of each for all, is the health and virtue of all beings. _Ich
dien_, I serve, is a truly royal motto. And it is the mark of nobleness
to volunteer the lowest service, the greatest spirit only attaining to
humility. Nay, God is God because he is the servant of all. Well, now
here comes this conspiracy of slavery,—they call it an institution, I
call it a destitution,—this stealing of men and setting them to work,
stealing their labor, and the thief sitting idle himself; and for two
or three ages it has lasted, and has yielded a certain quantity of
rice, cotton and sugar. And, standing on this doleful experience, these
people have endeavored to reverse the natural sentiments of mankind,
and to pronounce labor disgraceful, and the well-being of a man to
consist in eating the fruit of other men’s labor. Labor: a man coins
himself into his labor; turns his day, his strength, his thought, his
affection into some product which remains as the visible sign of his
power; and to protect that, to secure that to him, to secure his past
self to his future self, is the object of all government. There is no
interest in any country so imperative as that of labor; it covers all,
and constitutions and governments exist for that,—to protect and insure
it to the laborer. All honest men are daily striving to earn their bread
by their industry. And who is this who tosses his empty head at this
blessing in disguise, the constitution of human nature, and calls labor
vile, and insults the faithful workman at his daily toil? I see for such
madness no hellebore,—for such calamity no solution but servile war and
the Africanization of the country that permits it.
At this moment in America the aspects of political society absorb
attention. In every house, from Canada to the Gulf, the children ask the
serious father,—“What is the news of the war to-day, and when will there
be better times?” The boys have no new clothes, no gifts, no journeys;
the girls must go without new bonnets; boys and girls find their
education, this year, less liberal and complete.[161] All the little
hopes that heretofore made the year pleasant are deferred. The state of
the country fills us with anxiety and stern duties. We have attempted to
hold together two states of civilization: a higher state, where labor and
the tenure of land and the right of suffrage are democratical; and a
lower state, in which the old military tenure of prisoners or slaves, and
of power and land in a few hands, makes an oligarchy: we have attempted
to hold these two states of society under one law. But the rude and early
state of society does not work well with the later, nay, works badly,
and has poisoned politics, public morals and social intercourse in the
Republic, now for many years.
The times put this question, Why cannot the best civilization be extended
over the whole country, since the disorder of the less-civilized portion
menaces the existence of the country? Is this secular progress we have
described, this evolution of man to the highest powers, only to give
him sensibility, and not to bring duties with it? Is he not to make his
knowledge practical? to stand and to withstand? Is not civilization
heroic also? Is it not for action? has it not a will? “There are
periods,” said Niebuhr, “when something much better than happiness and
security of life is attainable.” We live in a new and exceptionable age.
America is another word for Opportunity. Our whole history appears like a
last effort of the Divine Providence in behalf of the human race; and a
literal, slavish following of precedents, as by a justice of the peace,
is not for those who at this hour lead the destinies of this people.
The evil you contend with has taken alarming proportions, and you still
content yourself with parrying the blows it aims, but, as if enchanted,
abstain from striking at the cause.[162]
If the American people hesitate, it is not for want of warning or
advices. The telegraph has been swift enough to announce our disasters.
The journals have not suppressed the extent of the calamity. Neither
was there any want of argument or of experience. If the war brought
any surprise to the North, it was not the fault of sentinels on the
watch-tower, who had furnished full details of the designs, the muster
and the means of the enemy. Neither was anything concealed of the theory
or practice of slavery. To what purpose make more big books of these
statistics? There are already mountains of facts, if any one wants them.
But people do not want them. They bring their opinion into the world.
If they have a comatose tendency in the brain, they are pro-slavery
while they live; if of a nervous sanguineous temperament, they are
abolitionists. Then interests were never persuaded. Can you convince the
shoe interest, or the iron interest, or the cotton interest, by reading
passages from Milton or Montesquieu? You wish to satisfy people that
slavery is bad economy. Why, the Edinburgh Review pounded on that string,
and made out its case, forty years ago. A democratic statesman said to
me, long since, that, if he owned the state of Kentucky, he would manumit
all the slaves, and be a gainer by the transaction. Is this new? No,
everybody knows it. As a general economy it is admitted. But there is
no one owner of the state, but a good many small owners. One man owns
land and slaves; another owns slaves only. Here is a woman who has no
other property,—like a lady in Charleston I knew of, who owned fifteen
sweeps and rode in her carriage. It is clearly a vast inconvenience to
each of these to make any change, and they are fretful and talkative, and
all their friends are; and those less interested are inert, and, from
want of thought, averse to innovation. It is like free trade, certainly
the interest of nations, but by no means the interest of certain towns
and districts, which tariff feeds fat; and the eager interest of the
few overpowers the apathetic general conviction of the many. Banknotes
rob the public, but are such a daily convenience that we silence our
scruples and make believe they are gold. So imposts are the cheap and
right taxation; but, by the dislike of people to pay out a direct tax,
governments are forced to render life costly by making them pay twice as
much, hidden in the price of tea and sugar.
In this national crisis, it is not argument that we want, but that rare
courage which dares commit itself to a principle, believing that Nature
is its ally, and will create the instruments it requires, and more than
make good any petty and injurious profit which it may disturb. There
never was such a combination as this of ours, and the rules to meet it
are not set down in any history. We want men of original perception and
original action, who can open their eyes wider than to a nationality,
namely, to considerations of benefit to the human race, can act in
the interest of civilization. Government must not be a parish clerk,
a justice of the peace. It has, of necessity, in any crisis of the
state, the absolute powers of a dictator. The existing administration
is entitled to the utmost candor. It is to be thanked for its angelic
virtue, compared with any executive experiences with which we have been
familiar. But the times will not allow us to indulge in compliment. I
wish I saw in the people that inspiration which, if government would not
obey the same, would leave the government behind and create on the moment
the means and executors it wanted. Better the war should more dangerously
threaten us,—should threaten fracture in what is still whole, and punish
us with burned capitals and slaughtered regiments, and so exasperate
the people to energy, exasperate our nationality. There are Scriptures
written invisibly on men’s hearts, whose letters do not come out until
they are enraged. They can be read by war-fires, and by eyes in the last
peril.
We cannot but remember that there have been days in American history,
when, if the free states had done their duty, slavery had been blocked
by an immovable barrier, and our recent calamities forever precluded.
The free states yielded, and every compromise was surrender and invited
new demands. Here again is a new occasion which heaven offers to sense
and virtue. It looks as if we held the fate of the fairest possession
of mankind in our hands, to be saved by our firmness or to be lost by
hesitation.
The one power that has legs long enough and strong enough to wade across
the Potomac offers itself at this hour; the one strong enough to bring
all the civility up to the height of that which is best, prays now at
the door of Congress for leave to move. Emancipation is the demand of
civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue. This
is a progressive policy, puts the whole people in healthy, productive,
amiable position, puts every man in the South in just and natural
relations with every man in the North, laborer with laborer.
I shall not attempt to unfold the details of the project of emancipation.
It has been stated with great ability by several of its leading
advocates. I will only advert to some leading points of the argument,
at the risk of repeating the reasons of others. The war is welcome to
the Southerner; a chivalrous sport to him, like hunting, and suits
his semi-civilized condition. On the climbing scale of progress, he
is just up to war, and has never appeared to such advantage as in the
last twelvemonth. It does not suit us. We are advanced some ages on the
war-state,—to trade, art and general cultivation. His laborer works for
him at home, so that he loses no labor by the war. All our soldiers are
laborers; so that the South, with its inferior numbers, is almost on a
footing in effective war-population with the North. Again, as long as
we fight without any affirmative step taken by the government, any word
intimating forfeiture in the rebel states of their old privileges under
the law, they and we fight on the same side, for slavery. Again, if we
conquer the enemy,—what then? We shall still have to keep him under, and
it will cost as much to hold him down as it did to get him down. Then
comes the summer, and the fever will drive the soldiers home; next winter
we must begin at the beginning, and conquer him over again. What use then
to take a fort, or a privateer, or get possession of an inlet, or to
capture a regiment of rebels?
But one weapon we hold which is sure. Congress can, by edict, as a part
of the military defence which it is the duty of Congress to provide,
abolish slavery, and pay for such slaves as we ought to pay for. Then
the slaves near our armies will come to us; those in the interior will
know in a week what their rights are, and will, where opportunity offers,
prepare to take them. Instantly, the armies that now confront you must
run home to protect their estates, and must stay there, and your enemies
will disappear.
There can be no safety until this step is taken. We fancy that the
endless debate, emphasized by the crime and by the cannons of this war,
has brought the free states to some conviction that it can never go well
with us whilst this mischief of slavery remains in our politics, and that
by concert or by might we must put an end to it. But we have too much
experience of the futility of an easy reliance on the momentary good
dispositions of the public. There does exist, perhaps, a popular will
that the Union shall not be broken,—that our trade, and therefore our
laws, must have the whole breadth of the continent, and from Canada to
the Gulf. But since this is the rooted belief and will of the people, so
much the more are they in danger, when impatient of defeats, or impatient
of taxes, to go with a rush for some peace; and what kind of peace
shall at that moment be easiest attained, they will make concessions
for it,—will give up the slaves, and the whole torment of the past
half-century will come back to be endured anew.
Neither do I doubt, if such a composition should take place, that the
Southerners will come back quietly and politely, leaving their haughty
dictation. It will be an era of good feelings. There will be a lull after
so loud a storm; and, no doubt, there will be discreet men from that
section who will earnestly strive to inaugurate more moderate and fair
administration of the government, and the North will for a time have its
full share and more, in place and counsel. But this will not last;—not
for want of sincere good will in sensible Southerners, but because
Slavery will again speak through them its harsh necessity. It cannot live
but by injustice, and it will be unjust and violent to the end of the
world.[163]
The power of Emancipation is this, that it alters the atomic social
constitution of the Southern people. Now, their interest is in keeping
out white labor; then, when they must pay wages, their interest will be
to let it in, to get the best labor, and, if they fear their blacks, to
invite Irish, German and American laborers. Thus, whilst Slavery makes
and keeps disunion, Emancipation removes the whole objection to union.
Emancipation at one stroke elevates the poor-white of the South, and
identifies his interest with that of the Northern laborer.
Now, in the name of all that is simple and generous, why should not this
great right be done? Why should not America be capable of a second stroke
for the well-being of the human race, as eighty or ninety years ago
she was for the first,—of an affirmative step in the interests of human
civility, urged on her, too, not by any romance of sentiment, but by
her own extreme perils? It is very certain that the statesman who shall
break through the cobwebs of doubt, fear and petty cavil that lie in the
way, will be greeted by the unanimous thanks of mankind. Men reconcile
themselves very fast to a bold and good measure when once it is taken,
though they condemned it in advance. A week before the two captive
commissioners were surrendered to England, every one thought it could
not be done: it would divide the North. It was done, and in two days all
agreed it was the right action.[164] And this action, which costs so
little (the parties injured by it being such a handful that they can very
easily be indemnified), rids the world, at one stroke, of this degrading
nuisance, the cause of war and ruin to nations. This measure at once
puts all parties right. This is borrowing, as I said, the omnipotence
of a principle. What is so foolish as the terror lest the blacks should
be made furious by freedom and wages? It is denying these that is the
outrage, and makes the danger from the blacks. But justice satisfies
everybody,—white man, red man, yellow man and black man. All like wages,
and the appetite grows by feeding.
But this measure, to be effectual, must come speedily. The weapon is
slipping out of our hands. “Time,” say the Indian Scriptures, “drinketh
up the essence of every great and noble action which ought to be
performed, and which is delayed in the execution.”[165]
I hope it is not a fatal objection to this policy that it is simple
and beneficent thoroughly, which is the tribute of a moral action. An
unprecedented material prosperity has not tended to make us Stoics or
Christians. But the laws by which the universe is organized reappear
at every point, and will rule it. The end of all political struggle is
to establish morality as the basis of all legislation. It is not free
institutions, it is not a republic, it is not a democracy, that is the
end,—no, but only the means. Morality is the object of government.[166]
We want a state of things in which crime shall not pay. This is the
consolation on which we rest in the darkness of the future and the
afflictions of to-day, that the government of the world is moral, and
does forever destroy what is not. It is the maxim of natural philosophers
that the natural forces wear out in time all obstacles, and take place:
and it is the maxim of history that victory always falls at last where
it ought to fall; or, there is perpetual march and progress to ideas. But
in either case, no link of the chain can drop out. Nature works through
her appointed elements; and ideas must work through the brains and the
arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.
* * * * *
Since the above pages were written, President Lincoln has proposed to
Congress that the government shall coöperate with any state that shall
enact a gradual abolishment of slavery. In the recent series of national
successes, this message is the best. It marks the happiest day in the
political year. The American Executive ranges itself for the first time
on the side of freedom. If Congress has been backward, the President has
advanced. This state-paper is the more interesting that it appears to be
the President’s individual act, done under a strong sense of duty. He
speaks his own thought in his own style. All thanks and honor to the Head
of the State! The message has been received throughout the country with
praise, and, we doubt not, with more pleasure than has been spoken. If
Congress accords with the President, it is not yet too late to begin the
emancipation; but we think it will always be too late to make it gradual.
All experience agrees that it should be immediate.[167] More and better
than the President has spoken shall, perhaps, the effect of this message
be,—but, we are sure, not more or better than he hoped in his heart,
when, thoughtful of all the complexities of his position, he penned these
cautious words.
XIV
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN BOSTON IN SEPTEMBER, 1862
To-day unbind the captive,
So only are ye unbound;
Lift up a people from the dust,
Trump of their rescue, sound!
Pay ransom to the owner
And fill the bag to the brim.
Who is the owner? The slave is owner,
And ever was. Pay him.
O North! give him beauty for rags,
And honor, O South! for his shame;
Nevada! coin thy golden crags
With freedom’s image and name.
Up! and the dusky race
That sat in darkness long,—
Be swift their feet as antelopes,
And as behemoth strong.
Come, East and West and North,
By races, as snow-flakes,
And carry my purpose forth,
Which neither halts nor shakes.
My will fulfilled shall be,
For in daylight or in dark,
My thunderbolt has eyes to see
His way home to the mark.
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
In so many arid forms which states encrust themselves with, once in a
century, if so often, a poetic act and record occur. These are the jets
of thought into affairs, when, roused by danger or inspired by genius,
the political leaders of the day break the else insurmountable routine of
class and local legislation, and take a step forward in the direction of
catholic and universal interests. Every step in the history of political
liberty is a sally of the human mind into the untried Future, and has
the interest of genius, and is fruitful in heroic anecdotes. Liberty
is a slow fruit. It comes, like religion, for short periods, and in
rare conditions, as if awaiting a culture of the race which shall make
it organic and permanent. Such moments of expansion in modern history
were the Confession of Augsburg, the plantation of America, the English
Commonwealth of 1648, the Declaration of American Independence in 1776,
the British emancipation of slaves in the West Indies, the passage of the
Reform Bill, the repeal of the Corn-Laws, the Magnetic Ocean Telegraph,
though yet imperfect, the passage of the Homestead Bill in the last
Congress, and now, eminently, President Lincoln’s Proclamation on the
twenty-second of September. These are acts of great scope, working on
a long future and on permanent interests, and honoring alike those who
initiate and those who receive them. These measures provoke no noisy joy,
but are received into a sympathy so deep as to apprise us that mankind
are greater and better than we know.[168] At such times it appears as
if a new public were created to greet the new event. It is as when an
orator, having ended the compliments and pleasantries with which he
conciliated attention, and having run over the superficial fitness
and commodities of the measure he urges, suddenly, lending himself to
some happy inspiration, announces with vibrating voice the grand human
principles involved;—the bravos and wits who greeted him loudly thus far
are surprised and overawed; a new audience is found in the heart of the
assembly,—an audience hitherto passive and unconcerned, now at last so
searched and kindled that they come forward, every one a representative
of mankind, standing for all nationalities.
The extreme moderation with which the President advanced to his
design,—his long-avowed expectant policy, as if he chose to be strictly
the executive of the best public sentiment of the country, waiting only
till it should be unmistakably pronounced,—so fair a mind that none ever
listened so patiently to such extreme varieties of opinion,—so reticent
that his decision has taken all parties by surprise, whilst yet it is
just the sequel of his prior acts,—the firm tone in which he announces
it, without inflation or surplusage,—all these have bespoken such favor
to the act that, great as the popularity of the President has been, we
are beginning to think that we have underestimated the capacity and
virtue which the Divine Providence has made an instrument of benefit
so vast. He has been permitted to do more for America than any other
American man. He is well entitled to the most indulgent construction.
Forget all that we thought shortcomings, every mistake, every delay. In
the extreme embarrassments of his part, call these endurance, wisdom,
magnanimity; illuminated, as they now are, by this dazzling success.
When we consider the immense opposition that has been neutralized or
converted by the progress of the war (for it is not long since the
President anticipated the resignation of a large number of officers in
the army, and the secession of three states, on the promulgation of this
policy),—when we see how the great stake which foreign nations hold
in our affairs has recently brought every European power as a client
into this court, and it became every day more apparent what gigantic
and what remote interests were to be affected by the decision of the
President,—one can hardly say the deliberation was too long. Against all
timorous counsels he had the courage to seize the moment; and such was
his position, and such the felicity attending the action, that he has
replaced government in the good graces of mankind. “Better is virtue in
the sovereign than plenty in the season,” say the Chinese. ’Tis wonderful
what power is, and how ill it is used, and how its ill use makes life
mean, and the sunshine dark. Life in America had lost much of its
attraction in the later years. The virtues of a good magistrate undo a
world of mischief, and, because Nature works with rectitude, seem vastly
more potent than the acts of bad governors, which are ever tempered by
the good nature in the people, and the incessant resistance which fraud
and violence encounter. The acts of good governors work a geometrical
ratio, as one midsummer day seems to repair the damage of a year of war.
A day which most of us dared not hope to see, an event worth the dreadful
war, worth its costs and uncertainties, seems now to be close before
us. October, November, December will have passed over beating hearts
and plotting brains: then the hour will strike, and all men of African
descent who have faculty enough to find their way to our lines are
assured of the protection of American law.
It is by no means necessary that this measure should be suddenly marked
by any signal results on the negroes or on the rebel masters. The force
of the act is that it commits the country to this justice,—that it
compels the innumerable officers, civil, military, naval, of the Republic
to range themselves on the line of this equity. It draws the fashion to
this side. It is not a measure that admits of being taken back. Done,
it cannot be undone by a new administration. For slavery overpowers the
disgust of the moral sentiment only through immemorial usage. It cannot
be introduced as an improvement of the nineteenth century. This act makes
that the lives of our heroes have not been sacrificed in vain. It makes a
victory of our defeats. Our hurts are healed; the health of the nation
is repaired. With a victory like this, we can stand many disasters. It
does not promise the redemption of the black race; that lies not with
us: but it relieves it of our opposition. The President by this act has
paroled all the slaves in America; they will no more fight against us:
and it relieves our race once for all of its crime and false position.
The first condition of success is secured in putting ourselves right. We
have recovered ourselves from our false position, and planted ourselves
on a law of Nature:—
“If that fail,
The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth’s base built on stubble.”[169]
The government has assured itself of the best constituency in the world:
every spark of intellect, every virtuous feeling, every religious heart,
every man of honor, every poet, every philosopher, the generosity of the
cities, the health of the country, the strong arms of the mechanic, the
endurance of farmers, the passionate conscience of women, the sympathy of
distant nations,—all rally to its support.
Of course, we are assuming the firmness of the policy thus declared. It
must not be a paper proclamation. We confide that Mr. Lincoln is in
earnest, and as he has been slow in making up his mind, has resisted the
importunacy of parties and of events to the latest moment, he will be
as absolute in his adhesion. Not only will he repeat and follow up his
stroke, but the nation will add its irresistible strength. If the ruler
has duties, so has the citizen. In times like these, when the nation is
imperilled, what man can, without shame, receive good news from day to
day without giving good news of himself? What right has any one to read
in the journals tidings of victories, if he has not bought them by his
own valor, treasure, personal sacrifice, or by service as good in his
own department? With this blot removed from our national honor, this
heavy load lifted off the national heart, we shall not fear henceforward
to show our faces among mankind. We shall cease to be hypocrites and
pretenders, but what we have styled our free institutions will be
such.[170]
In the light of this event the public distress begins to be removed.
What if the brokers’ quotations show our stocks discredited, and the
gold dollar costs one hundred and twenty-seven cents? These tables are
fallacious. Every acre in the free states gained substantial value on
the twenty-second of September. The cause of disunion and war has been
reached and begun to be removed. Every man’s house-lot and garden are
relieved of the malaria which the purest winds and strongest sunshine
could not penetrate and purge. The territory of the Union shines to-day
with a lustre which every European emigrant can discern from far; a sign
of inmost security and permanence. Is it feared that taxes will check
immigration? That depends on what the taxes are spent for. If they go to
fill up this yawning Dismal Swamp, which engulfed armies and populations,
and created plague, and neutralized hitherto all the vast capabilities of
this continent,—then this taxation, which makes the land wholesome and
habitable, and will draw all men unto it, is the best investment in which
property-holder ever lodged his earnings.
Whilst we have pointed out the opportuneness of the Proclamation, it
remains to be said that the President had no choice. He might look
wistfully for what variety of courses lay open to him; every line but
one was closed up with fire. This one, too, bristled with danger,
but through it was the sole safety. The measure he has adopted was
imperative. It is wonderful to see the unseasonable senility of what
is called the Peace Party, through all its masks, blinding their eyes
to the main feature of the war, namely, its inevitableness. The war
existed long before the cannonade of Sumter, and could not be postponed.
It might have begun otherwise or elsewhere, but war was in the minds
and bones of the combatants, it was written on the iron leaf, and you
might as easily dodge gravitation. If we had consented to a peaceable
secession of the rebels, the divided sentiment of the border states made
peaceable secession impossible, the insatiable temper of the South made
it impossible, and the slaves on the border, wherever the border might
be, were an incessant fuel to rekindle the fire. Give the Confederacy
New Orleans, Charleston, and Richmond, and they would have demanded
St. Louis and Baltimore. Give them these, and they would have insisted
on Washington. Give them Washington, and they would have assumed the
army and navy, and, through these, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.
It looks as if the battle-field would have been at least as large in
that event as it is now. The war was formidable, but could not be
avoided. The war was and is an immense mischief, but brought with it the
immense benefit of drawing a line and rallying the free states to fix
it impassably,—preventing the whole force of Southern connection and
influence throughout the North from distracting every city with endless
confusion, detaching that force and reducing it to handfuls, and, in the
progress of hostilities, disinfecting us of our habitual proclivity,
through the affection of trade and the traditions of the Democratic
party, to follow Southern leading.[171]
These necessities which have dictated the conduct of the federal
government are overlooked especially by our foreign critics. The popular
statement of the opponents of the war abroad is the impossibility of our
success. “If you could add,” say they, “to your strength the whole army
of England, of France and of Austria, you could not coerce eight millions
of people to come under this government against their will.” This is
an odd thing for an Englishman, a Frenchman or an Austrian to say, who
remembers Europe of the last seventy years,—the condition of Italy, until
1859,—of Poland, since 1793,—of France, of French Algiers,—of British
Ireland, and British India. But granting the truth, rightly read, of the
historical aphorism, that “the people always conquer,” it is to be noted
that, in the Southern States, the tenure of land and the local laws, with
slavery, give the social system not a democratic but an aristocratic
complexion; and those states have shown every year a more hostile and
aggressive temper, until the instinct of self-preservation forced us into
the war. And the aim of the war on our part is indicated by the aim of
the President’s Proclamation, namely, to break up the false combination
of Southern society, to destroy the piratic feature in it which makes it
our enemy only as it is the enemy of the human race, and so allow its
reconstruction on a just and healthful basis. Then new affinities will
act, the old repulsion will cease, and, the cause of war being removed,
Nature and trade may be trusted to establish a lasting peace.
We think we cannot overstate the wisdom and benefit of this act of the
government. The malignant cry of the Secession press within the free
states, and the recent action of the Confederate Congress, are decisive
as to its efficiency and correctness of aim. Not less so is the silent
joy which has greeted it in all generous hearts, and the new hope it has
breathed into the world. It was well to delay the steamers at the wharves
until this edict could be put on board. It will be an insurance to the
ship as it goes plunging through the sea with glad tidings to all people.
Happy are the young, who find the pestilence cleansed out of the earth,
leaving open to them an honest career. Happy the old, who see Nature
purified before they depart. Do not let the dying die: hold them back to
this world, until you have charged their ear and heart with this message
to other spiritual societies, announcing the melioration of our planet:—
“Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And Peace proclaims olives of endless age.”[172]
Meantime that ill-fated, much-injured race which the Proclamation
respects will lose somewhat of the dejection sculptured for ages in their
bronzed countenance, uttered in the wailing of their plaintive music,—a
race naturally benevolent, docile, industrious, and whose very miseries
sprang from their great talent for usefulness, which, in a more moral
age, will not only defend their independence, but will give them a rank
among nations.[173]
XV
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
REMARKS AT THE FUNERAL SERVICES HELD IN CONCORD, APRIL 19, 1865
“Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote:
For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.
How beautiful to see
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,
Not lured by any cheat of birth,
But by his clear-grained human worth,
And brave old wisdom of sincerity!
They knew that outward grace is dust;
They could not choose but trust
In that sure-footed mind’s unfaltering skill,
And supple-tempered will
That bent, like perfect steel, to spring again and thrust.
...
Nothing of Europe here,
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,
Ere any names of Serf and Peer
Could Nature’s equal scheme deface; ...
Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch’s men talked with us face to face.”
LOWELL, _Commemoration Ode_.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
We meet under the gloom of a calamity which darkens down over the minds
of good men in all civil society, as the fearful tidings travel over sea,
over land, from country to country, like the shadow of an uncalculated
eclipse over the planet. Old as history is, and manifold as are its
tragedies, I doubt if any death has caused so much pain to mankind as
this has caused, or will cause, on its announcement; and this, not so
much because nations are by modern arts brought so closely together, as
because of the mysterious hopes and fears which, in the present day, are
connected with the name and institutions of America.
In this country, on Saturday, every one was struck dumb, and saw at first
only deep below deep, as he meditated on the ghastly blow. And perhaps,
at this hour, when the coffin which contains the dust of the President
sets forward on its long march through mourning states, on its way to his
home in Illinois, we might well be silent, and suffer the awful voices of
the time to thunder to us. Yes, but that first despair was brief: the man
was not so to be mourned. He was the most active and hopeful of men; and
his work had not perished: but acclamations of praise for the task he had
accomplished burst out into a song of triumph, which even tears for his
death cannot keep down.
The President stood before us as a man of the people. He was thoroughly
American, had never crossed the sea, had never been spoiled by English
insularity or French dissipation; a quite native, aboriginal man, as an
acorn from the oak; no aping of foreigners, no frivolous accomplishments,
Kentuckian born, working on a farm, a flatboatman, a captain in the Black
Hawk War, a country lawyer, a representative in the rural legislature
of Illinois;—on such modest foundations the broad structure of his fame
was laid. How slowly, and yet by happily prepared steps, he came to his
place. All of us remember—it is only a history of five or six years—the
surprise and the disappointment of the country at his first nomination
by the convention at Chicago. Mr. Seward, then in the culmination of his
good fame, was the favorite of the Eastern States. And when the new and
comparatively unknown name of Lincoln was announced (notwithstanding the
report of the acclamations of that convention), we heard the result
coldly and sadly. It seemed too rash, on a purely local reputation, to
build so grave a trust in such anxious times; and men naturally talked
of the chances in politics as incalculable. But it turned out not to
be chance. The profound good opinion which the people of Illinois and
of the West had conceived of him, and which they had imparted to their
colleagues, that they also might justify themselves to their constituents
at home, was not rash, though they did not begin to know the riches of
his worth.[174]
A plain man of the people, an extraordinary fortune attended him. He
offered no shining qualities at the first encounter; he did not offend
by superiority. He had a face and manner which disarmed suspicion, which
inspired confidence, which confirmed good will. He was a man without
vices. He had a strong sense of duty, which it was very easy for him
to obey. Then, he had what farmers call a long head; was excellent in
working out the sum for himself; in arguing his case and convincing you
fairly and firmly. Then, it turned out that he was a great worker; had
prodigious faculty of performance; worked easily. A good worker is so
rare; everybody has some disabling quality. In a host of young men that
start together and promise so many brilliant leaders for the next age,
each fails on trial; one by bad health, one by conceit, or by love of
pleasure, or lethargy, or an ugly temper,—each has some disqualifying
fault that throws him out of the career. But this man was sound to the
core, cheerful, persistent, all right for labor, and liked nothing so
well.
Then, he had a vast good nature, which made him tolerant and accessible
to all; fair-minded, leaning to the claim of the petitioner; affable, and
not sensible to the affliction which the innumerable visits paid to him
when President would have brought to any one else.[175] And how this good
nature became a noble humanity, in many a tragic case which the events of
the war brought to him, every one will remember; and with what increasing
tenderness he dealt when a whole race was thrown on his compassion. The
poor negro said of him, on an impressive occasion, “Massa Linkum am
eberywhere.”
Then his broad good humor, running easily into jocular talk, in which he
delighted and in which he excelled, was a rich gift to this wise man.
It enabled him to keep his secret; to meet every kind of man and every
rank in society; to take off the edge of the severest decisions; to mask
his own purpose and sound his companion; and to catch with true instinct
the temper of every company he addressed. And, more than all, it is to
a man of severe labor, in anxious and exhausting crises, the natural
restorative, good as sleep, and is the protection of the overdriven brain
against rancor and insanity.
He is the author of a multitude of good sayings, so disguised as
pleasantries that it is certain they had no reputation at first but as
jests; and only later, by the very acceptance and adoption they find in
the mouths of millions, turn out to be the wisdom of the hour. I am sure
if this man had ruled in a period of less facility of printing, he would
have become mythological in a very few years, like Æsop or Pilpay, or one
of the Seven Wise Masters, by his fables and proverbs. But the weight
and penetration of many passages in his letters, messages and speeches,
hidden now by the very closeness of their application to the moment, are
destined hereafter to wide fame. What pregnant definitions; what unerring
common sense; what foresight; and, on great occasion, what lofty, and
more than national, what humane tone! His brief speech at Gettysburg will
not easily be surpassed by words on any recorded occasion. This, and one
other American speech, that of John Brown to the court that tried him,
and a part of Kossuth’s speech at Birmingham, can only be compared with
each other, and with no fourth.
His occupying the chair of state was a triumph of the good sense of
mankind, and of the public conscience. This middle-class country had got
a middle-class president, at last. Yes, in manners and sympathies, but
not in powers, for his powers were superior. This man grew according to
the need. His mind mastered the problem of the day; and as the problem
grew, so did his comprehension of it. Rarely was man so fitted to the
event. In the midst of fears and jealousies, in the Babel of counsels
and parties, this man wrought incessantly with all his might and all
his honesty, laboring to find what the people wanted, and how to obtain
that. It cannot be said there is any exaggeration of his worth. If ever
a man was fairly tested, he was. There was no lack of resistance, nor of
slander, nor of ridicule. The times have allowed no state secrets; the
nation has been in such ferment, such multitudes had to be trusted, that
no secret could be kept. Every door was ajar, and we know all that befell.
Then, what an occasion was the whirlwind of the war. Here was place for
no holiday magistrate, no fair-weather sailor; the new pilot was hurried
to the helm in a tornado. In four years,—four years of battle-days,—his
endurance, his fertility of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried
and never found wanting. There, by his courage, his justice, his even
temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in
the centre of a heroic epoch. He is the true history of the American
people in his time. Step by step he walked before them; slow with their
slowness, quickening his march by theirs, the true representative of
this continent; an entirely public man; father of his country, the pulse
of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their minds
articulated by his tongue.
Adam Smith remarks that the axe, which in Houbraken’s portraits of
British kings and worthies is engraved under those who have suffered
at the block, adds a certain lofty charm to the picture. And who does
not see, even in this tragedy so recent, how fast the terror and ruin
of the massacre are already burning into glory around the victim?
Far happier this fate than to have lived to be wished away; to have
watched the decay of his own faculties; to have seen—perhaps even he—the
proverbial ingratitude of statesmen; to have seen mean men preferred.
Had he not lived long enough to keep the greatest promise that ever man
made to his fellow men,—the practical abolition of slavery? He had seen
Tennessee, Missouri and Maryland emancipate their slaves. He had seen
Savannah, Charleston and Richmond surrendered; had seen the main army of
the rebellion lay down its arms. He had conquered the public opinion of
Canada, England and France.[176] Only Washington can compare with him in
fortune.
And what if it should turn out, in the unfolding of the web, that he
had reached the term; that this heroic deliverer could no longer serve
us; that the rebellion had touched its natural conclusion, and what
remained to be done required new and uncommitted hands,—a new spirit
born out of the ashes of the war; and that Heaven, wishing to show the
world a completed benefactor, shall make him serve his country even more
by his death than by his life? Nations, like kings, are not good by
facility and complaisance. “The kindness of kings consists in justice
and strength.” Easy good nature has been the dangerous foible of the
Republic, and it was necessary that its enemies should outrage it, and
drive us to unwonted firmness, to secure the salvation of this country in
the next ages.
The ancients believed in a serene and beautiful Genius which ruled in the
affairs of nations; which, with a slow but stern justice, carried forward
the fortunes of certain chosen houses, weeding out single offenders or
offending families, and securing at last the firm prosperity of the
favorites of Heaven. It was too narrow a view of the Eternal Nemesis.
There is a serene Providence which rules the fate of nations, which
makes little account of time, little of one generation or race, makes
no account of disasters, conquers alike by what is called defeat or by
what is called victory, thrusts aside enemy and obstruction, crushes
everything immoral as inhuman, and obtains the ultimate triumph of the
best race by the sacrifice of everything which resists the moral laws of
the world.[177] It makes its own instruments, creates the man for the
time, trains him in poverty, inspires his genius, and arms him for his
task. It has given every race its own talent, and ordains that only that
race which combines perfectly with the virtues of all shall endure.[178]
XVI
HARVARD COMMEMORATION SPEECH
JULY 21, 1865
“‘Old classmate, say
Do you remember our Commencement Day?
Were we such boys as these at twenty?’ Nay,
God called them to a nobler task than ours,
And gave them holier thoughts and manlier powers,—
This is the day of fruits and not of flowers!
These ‘boys’ we talk about like ancient sages
Are the same _men_ we read of in old pages—
The bronze recast of dead heroic ages!
We grudge them not, our dearest, bravest, best,—
Let but the quarrel’s issue stand confest:
’Tis Earth’s old slave-God battling for his crown
And Freedom fighting with her visor down.”
HOLMES.
* * * * *
“Many loved Truth, and lavished life’s best oil
Amid the dust of books to find her,
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,
With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.
Many in sad faith sought for her,
Many with crossed hands sighed for her;
But these, our brothers, fought for her,
At life’s dear peril wrought for her,
So loved her that they died for her,
Tasting the raptured fleetness
Of her divine completeness:
Their higher instinct knew
Those love her best who to themselves are true,
And what they dare to dream of, dare to do;
They followed her and found her
Where all may hope to find,
Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,
But beautiful, with danger’s sweetness round her.
Where faith made whole with deed
Breathes its awakening breath
Into the lifeless creed,
They saw her plumed and mailed,
With sweet, stern face unveiled,
And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.”
LOWELL, _Commemoration Ode_.
HARVARD COMMEMORATION SPEECH
MR. CHAIRMAN, AND GENTLEMEN: With whatever opinion we come here, I think
it is not in man to see, without a feeling of pride and pleasure, a tried
soldier, the armed defender of the right. I think that in these last
years all opinions have been affected by the magnificent and stupendous
spectacle which Divine Providence has offered us of the energies that
slept in the children of this country,—that slept and have awakened. I
see thankfully those that are here, but dim eyes in vain explore for some
who are not.
The old Greek Heraclitus said, “War is the Father of all things.” He said
it, no doubt, as science, but we of this day can repeat it as political
and social truth. War passes the power of all chemical solvents, breaking
up the old adhesions, and allowing the atoms of society to take a new
order. It is not the Government, but the War, that has appointed the good
generals, sifted out the pedants, put in the new and vigorous blood. The
War has lifted many other people besides Grant and Sherman into their
true places. Even Divine Providence, we may say, always seems to work
after a certain military necessity. Every nation punishes the General who
is not victorious. It is a rule in games of chance that the cards beat
all the players, and revolutions disconcert and outwit all the insurgents.
The revolutions carry their own points, sometimes to the ruin of those
who set them on foot. The proof that war also is within the highest
right, is a marked benefactor in the hands of the Divine Providence, is
its _morale_. The war gave back integrity to this erring and immoral
nation. It charged with power, peaceful, amiable men, to whose life
war and discord were abhorrent. What an infusion of character went out
from this and other colleges! What an infusion of character down to the
ranks! The experience has been uniform that it is the gentle soul that
makes the firm hero after all. It is easy to recall the mood in which our
young men, snatched from every peaceful pursuit, went to the war. Many of
them had never handled a gun. They said, “It is not in me to resist. I
go because I must. It is a duty which I shall never forgive myself if I
decline. I do not know that I can make a soldier. I may be very clumsy.
Perhaps I shall be timid; but you can rely on me. Only one thing is
certain, I can well die, but I cannot afford to misbehave.”
In fact the infusion of culture and tender humanity from these scholars
and idealists who went to the war in their own despite—God knows they
had no fury for killing their old friends and countrymen—had its signal
and lasting effect. It was found that enthusiasm was a more potent ally
than science and munitions of war without it. “It is a principle of
war,” said Napoleon, “that when you can use the thunderbolt you must
prefer it to the cannon.” Enthusiasm was the thunderbolt. Here in this
little Massachusetts, in smaller Rhode Island, in this little nest of New
England republics it flamed out when the guilty gun was aimed at Sumter.
Mr. Chairman, standing here in Harvard College, the parent of all the
colleges; in Massachusetts, the parent of all the North; when I consider
her influence on the country as a principal planter of the Western
States, and now, by her teachers, preachers, journalists and books, as
well as by traffic and production, the diffuser of religious, literary
and political opinion;—and when I see how irresistible the convictions
of Massachusetts are in these swarming populations,—I think the little
state bigger than I knew. When her blood is up, she has a fist big
enough to knock down an empire. And her blood was roused. Scholars
changed the black coat for the blue. A single company in the Forty-fourth
Massachusetts Regiment contained thirty-five sons of Harvard. You all
know as well as I the story of these dedicated men, who knew well on
what duty they went,—whose fathers and mothers said of each slaughtered
son, “We gave him up when he enlisted.” One mother said, when her son
was offered the command of the first negro regiment, “If he accepts it,
I shall be as proud as if I had heard that he was shot.”[179] These men,
thus tender, thus high-bred, thus peaceable, were always in the front and
always employed. They might say, with their forefathers the old Norse
Vikings, “We sung the mass of lances from morning until evening.” And in
how many cases it chanced, when the hero had fallen, they who came by
night to his funeral, on the morrow returned to the war-path to show his
slayers the way to death!
Ah! young brothers, all honor and gratitude to you,—you, manly defenders,
Liberty’s and Humanity’s bodyguard! We shall not again disparage
America, now that we have seen what men it will bear. We see—we thank you
for it—a new era, worth to mankind all the treasure and all the lives it
has cost; yes, worth to the world the lives of all this generation of
American men, if they had been demanded.[180]
XVII
ADDRESS
AT THE DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT IN CONCORD, APRIL 19, 1867
“They have shown what men may do,
They have proved how men may die,—
Count, who can, the fields they have pressed,
Each face to the solemn sky!”
BROWNELL.
* * * * *
“Think you these felt no charms
In their gray homesteads and embowered farms?
In household faces waiting at the door
Their evening step should lighten up no more?
In fields their boyish feet had known?
In trees their fathers’ hands had set,
And which with them had grown,
Widening each year their leafy coronet?
Felt they no pang of passionate regret
For those unsolid goods that seem so much our own?
These things are dear to every man that lives,
And life prized more for what it lends than gives.
Yea, many a tie, through iteration sweet,
Strove to detain their fatal feet;
And yet the enduring half they chose,
Whose choice decides a man life’s slave or king,
The invisible things of God before the seen and known:
Therefore their memory inspiration blows
With echoes gathering on from zone to zone;
For manhood is the one immortal thing
Beneath Time’s changeful sky,
And, where it lightened once, from age to age,
Men come to learn, in grateful pilgrimage,
That length of days is knowing when to die.”
LOWELL, _Concord Ode_.
ADDRESS
DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT IN CONCORD, APRIL 19, 1867
FELLOW CITIZENS: The day is in Concord doubly our calendar day, as being
the anniversary of the invasion of the town by the British troops in
1775, and of the departure of the company of volunteers for Washington,
in 1861. We are all pretty well aware that the facts which make to us the
interest of this day are in a great degree personal and local here; that
every other town and city has its own heroes and memorial days, and that
we can hardly expect a wide sympathy for the names and anecdotes which
we delight to record. We are glad and proud that we have no monopoly of
merit. We are thankful that other towns and cities are as rich; that the
heroes of old and of recent date, who made and kept America free and
united, were not rare or solitary growths, but sporadic over vast tracts
of the Republic. Yet, as it is a piece of nature and the common sense
that the throbbing chord that holds us to our kindred, our friends and
our town, is not to be denied or resisted,—no matter how frivolous or
unphilosophical its pulses,—we shall cling affectionately to our houses,
our river and pastures, and believe that our visitors will pardon us if
we take the privilege of talking freely about our nearest neighbors as
in a family party;—well assured, meantime, that the virtues we are met
to honor were directed on aims which command the sympathy of every loyal
American citizen, were exerted for the protection of our common country,
and aided its triumph.
The town has thought fit to signify its honor for a few of its sons by
raising an obelisk in the square. It is a simple pile enough,—a few slabs
of granite, dug just below the surface of the soil, and laid upon the
top of it; but as we have learned that the upheaved mountain, from which
these discs or flakes were broken, was once a glowing mass at white heat,
slowly crystallized, then uplifted by the central fires of the globe:
so the roots of the events it appropriately marks are in the heart of
the universe. I shall say of this obelisk, planted here in our quiet
plains, what Richter says of the volcano in the fair landscape of Naples:
“Vesuvius stands in this poem of Nature, and exalts everything, as war
does the age.”
The art of the architect and the sense of the town have made these dumb
stones speak; have, if I may borrow the old language of the church,
converted these elements from a secular to a sacred and spiritual use;
have made them look to the past and the future; have given them a meaning
for the imagination and the heart. The sense of the town, the eloquent
inscriptions the shaft now bears, the memories of these martyrs, the
noble names which yet have gathered only their first fame, whatever good
grows to the country out of the war, the largest results, the future
power and genius of the land, will go on clothing this shaft with daily
beauty and spiritual life. ’Tis certain that a plain stone like this,
standing on such memories, having no reference to utilities, but only to
the grand instincts of the civil and moral man, mixes with surrounding
nature,—by day with the changing seasons, by night the stars roll over
it gladly,—becomes a sentiment, a poet, a prophet, an orator, to every
townsman and passenger, an altar where the noble youth shall in all time
come to make his secret vows.[181]
The old Monument, a short half-mile from this house, stands to signalize
the first Revolution, where the people resisted offensive usurpations,
offensive taxes of the British Parliament, claiming that there should
be no tax without representation. Instructed by events, after the
quarrel began, the Americans took higher ground, and stood for political
independence. But in the necessities of the hour, they overlooked the
moral law, and winked at a practical exception to the Bill of Rights they
had drawn up. They winked at the exception, believing it insignificant.
But the moral law, the nature of things, did not wink at it, but kept
its eye wide open. It turned out that this one violation was a subtle
poison, which in eighty years corrupted the whole overgrown body politic,
and brought the alternative of extirpation of the poison or ruin to the
Republic.[182]
This new Monument is built to mark the arrival of the nation at the new
principle,—say, rather, at its new acknowledgment, for the principle is
as old as Heaven,—that only that state can live, in which injury to the
least member is recognized as damage to the whole.
Reform must begin at home. The aim of the hour was to reconstruct the
South; but first the North had to be reconstructed. Its own theory and
practice of liberty had got sadly out of gear, and must be corrected. It
was done on the instant. A thunderstorm at sea sometimes reverses the
magnets in the ship, and south is north. The storm of war works the like
miracle on men. Every Democrat who went South came back a Republican,
like the governors who, in Buchanan’s time, went to Kansas, and instantly
took the free-state colors. War, says the poet, is
“the arduous strife,
To which the triumph of all good is given.”[183]
Every principle is a war-note. When the rights of man are recited
under any old government, every one of them is a declaration of war.
War civilizes, rearranges the population, distributing by ideas,—the
innovators on one side, the antiquaries on the other. It opens the eyes
wider. Once we were patriots up to the town-bounds, or the state-line.
But when you replace the love of family or clan by a principle, as
freedom, instantly that fire runs over the state-line into New Hampshire,
Vermont, New York and Ohio, into the prairie and beyond, leaps the
mountains, bridges river and lake, burns as hotly in Kansas and
California as in Boston, and no chemist can discriminate between one
soil and the other. It lifts every population to an equal power and merit.
As long as we debate in council, both sides may form their private guess
what the event may be, or which is the strongest. But the moment you cry
“Every man to his tent, O Israel!” the delusions of hope and fear are at
an end;—the strength is now to be tested by the eternal facts. There will
be no doubt more. The world is equal to itself. The secret architecture
of things begins to disclose itself; the fact that all things were made
on a basis of right; that justice is really desired by all intelligent
beings; that opposition to it is against the nature of things; and that,
whatever may happen in this hour or that, the years and the centuries are
always pulling down the wrong and building up the right.
The war made the Divine Providence credible to many who did not
believe the good Heaven quite honest. Every man was an abolitionist by
conviction, but did not believe that his neighbor was. The opinions of
masses of men, which the tactics of primary caucuses and the proverbial
timidity of trade had concealed, the war discovered; and it was
found, contrary to all popular belief, that the country was at heart
abolitionist, and for the Union was ready to die.
As cities of men are the first effects of civilization, and also
instantly causes of more civilization, so armies, which are only
wandering cities, generate a vast heat, and lift the spirit of the
soldiers who compose them to the boiling point. The armies mustered in
the North were as much missionaries to the mind of the country as they
were carriers of material force, and had the vast advantage of carrying
whither they marched a higher civilization. Of course, there are noble
men everywhere, and there are such in the South; and the noble know the
noble, wherever they meet; and we have all heard passages of generous
and exceptional behavior exhibited by individuals there to our officers
and men, during the war. But the common people, rich or poor, were the
narrowest and most conceited of mankind, as arrogant as the negroes
on the Gambia River; and, by the way, it looks as if the editors of
the Southern press were in all times selected from this class. The
invasion of Northern farmers, mechanics, engineers, tradesmen, lawyers
and students did more than forty years of peace had done to educate the
South.[184] “This will be a slow business,” writes our Concord captain
home, “for we have to stop and civilize the people as we go along.”
It is an interesting part of the history, the manner in which this
incongruous militia were made soldiers. That was done again on the Kansas
plan. Our farmers went to Kansas as peaceable, God-fearing men as the
members of our school committee here. But when the Border raids were let
loose on their villages, these people, who turned pale at home if called
to dress a cut finger, on witnessing the butchery done by the Missouri
riders on women and babes, were so beside themselves with rage, that
they became on the instant the bravest soldiers and the most determined
avengers.[185] And the first events of the war of the Rebellion gave the
like training to the new recruits.
All sorts of men went to the war,—the roughs, men who liked harsh play
and violence, men for whom pleasure was not strong enough, but who
wanted pain, and found sphere at last for their superabundant energy;
then the adventurous type of New Englander, with his appetite for
novelty and travel; the village politician, who could now verify his
newspaper knowledge, see the South, and amass what a stock of adventures
to retail hereafter at the fireside, or to the well-known companions
on the Mill-dam; young men, also, of excellent education and polished
manners, delicately brought up; manly farmers, skilful mechanics, young
tradesmen, men hitherto of narrow opportunities of knowing the world, but
well taught in the grammar-schools. But perhaps in every one of these
classes were idealists, men who went from a religious duty. I have a
note of a conversation that occurred in our first company, the morning
before the battle of Bull Run. At a halt in the march, a few of our boys
were sitting on a rail fence talking together whether it was right to
sacrifice themselves. One of them said, ‘he had been thinking a good deal
about it, last night, and he thought one was never too young to die for
a principle.’ One of our later volunteers, on the day when he left home,
in reply to my question, How can you be spared from your farm, now that
your father is so ill? said: “I go because I shall always be sorry if I
did not go when the country called me. I can go as well as another.” One
wrote to his father these words: “You may think it strange that I, who
have always naturally rather shrunk from danger, should wish to enter
the army; but there is a higher Power that tunes the hearts of men,
and enables them to see their duty, and gives them courage to face the
dangers with which those duties are attended.” And the captain writes
home of another of his men, “B⸺ comes from a sense of duty and love of
country, and these are the soldiers you can depend upon.”[186]
None of us can have forgotten how sharp a test to try our peaceful people
with, was the first call for troops. I doubt not many of our soldiers
could repeat the confession of a youth whom I knew in the beginning of
the war, who enlisted in New York, went to the field, and died early.
Before his departure he confided to his sister that he was naturally a
coward, but was determined that no one should ever find it out; that he
had long trained himself by forcing himself, on the suspicion of any near
danger, to go directly up to it, cost him what struggles it might. Yet
it is from this temperament of sensibility that great heroes have been
formed.
Our first company was led by an officer who had grown up in this village
from a boy.[187] The older among us can well remember him at school,
at play and at work, all the way up, the most amiable, sensible,
unpretending of men; fair, blond, the rose lived long in his cheek;
grave, but social, and one of the last men in this town you would have
picked out for the rough dealing of war,—not a trace of fierceness, much
less of recklessness, or of the devouring thirst for excitement; tender
as a woman in his care for a cough or a chilblain in his men; had troches
and arnica in his pocket for them. The army officers were welcome to
their jest on him as too kind for a captain, and, later, as the colonel
who got off his horse when he saw one of his men limp on the march, and
told him to ride. But _he_ knew that his men had found out, first that
he was captain, then that he was colonel, and neither dared nor wished
to disobey him. He was a man without conceit, who never fancied himself
a philosopher or a saint; the most modest and amiable of men, engaged in
common duties, but equal always to the occasion; and the war showed him
still equal, however stern and terrible the occasion grew,—disclosed in
him a strong good sense, great fertility of resource, the helping hand,
and then the moral qualities of a commander,—a patience not to be tired
out, a serious devotion to the cause of the country that never swerved,
a hope that never failed. He was a Puritan in the army, with traits that
remind one of John Brown,—an integrity incorruptible, and an ability
that always rose to the need.
You will remember that these colonels, captains and lieutenants, and the
privates too, are domestic men, just wrenched away from their families
and their business by this rally of all the manhood in the land. They
have notes to pay at home; have farms, shops, factories, affairs of
every kind to think of and write home about. Consider what sacrifice and
havoc in business arrangements this war-blast made. They have to think
carefully of every last resource at home on which their wives or mothers
may fall back; upon the little account in the savings bank, the grass
that can be sold, the old cow, or the heifer. These necessities make the
topics of the ten thousand letters with which the mail-bags came loaded
day by day. These letters play a great part in the war. The writing of
letters made the Sunday in every camp:—meantime they are without the
means of writing. After the first marches there is no letter-paper, there
are no envelopes, no postage-stamps for these were wetted into a solid
mass in the rains and mud. Some of these letters are written on the back
of old bills, some on brown paper, or strips of newspaper; written by
fire-light, making the short night shorter; written on the knee, in the
mud, with pencil, six words at a time; or in the saddle, and have to
stop because the horse will not stand still. But the words are proud and
tender,—“Tell mother I will not disgrace her;” “tell her not to worry
about me, for I know she would not have had me stay at home if she could
as well as not.” The letters of the captain are the dearest treasures
of this town. Always devoted, sometimes anxious, sometimes full of joy
at the deportment of his comrades, they contain the sincere praise of
men whom I now see in this assembly. If Marshal Montluc’s[188] Memoirs
are the Bible of soldiers, as Henry IV. of France said, Colonel Prescott
might furnish the Book of Epistles.
He writes, “You don’t know how one gets attached to a company by living
with them and sleeping with them all the time. I know every man by heart.
I know every man’s weak spot,—who is shaky, and who is true blue.” He
never remits his care of the men, aiming to hold them to their good
habits and to keep them cheerful. For the first point, he keeps up a
constant acquaintance with them; urges their correspondence with their
friends; writes news of them home, urging his own correspondent to
visit their families and keep them informed about the men; encourages
a temperance society which is formed in the camp. “I have not had a
man drunk, or affected by liquor, since we came here.” At one time he
finds his company unfortunate in having fallen between two companies of
quite another class,—“’tis profanity all the time; yet instead of a bad
influence on our men, I think it works the other way,—it disgusts them.”
One day he writes, “I expect to have a time, this forenoon, with the
officer from West Point who drills us. He is very profane, and I will
not stand it. If he does not stop it, I shall march my men right away
when he is drilling them. There is a fine for officers swearing in the
army, and I have too many young men that are not used to such talk. I
told the colonel this morning I should do it, and shall,—don’t care what
the consequence is. This lieutenant seems to think that these men, who
never saw a gun, can drill as well as he, who has been at West Point four
years.” At night he adds: “I told that officer from West Point, this
morning, that he could not swear at my company as he did yesterday; told
him I would not stand it anyway. I told him I had a good many young men
in my company whose mothers asked me to look after them, and I should do
so, and not allow them to hear such language, especially from an officer,
whose duty it was to set them a better example. Told him I did not swear
myself and would not allow him to. He looked at me as much as to say, _Do
you know whom you are talking to?_ and I looked at him as much as to say,
_Yes, I do._ He looked rather ashamed, but went through the drill without
an oath.” So much for the care of their morals. His next point is to keep
them cheerful. ’Tis better than medicine. He has games of baseball, and
pitching quoits, and euchre, whilst part of the military discipline is
sham fights.
The best men heartily second him, and invent excellent means of their
own. When, afterwards, five of these men were prisoners in the Parish
Prison in New Orleans, they set themselves to use the time to the wisest
advantage,—formed a debating-club, wrote a daily or weekly newspaper,
called it “Stars and Stripes.” It advertises, “prayer-meeting at 7
o’clock, in cell No. 8, second floor,” and their own printed record is a
proud and affecting narrative.
Whilst the regiment was encamped at Camp Andrew, near Alexandria, in
June, 1861, marching orders came. Colonel Lawrence sent for eight wagons,
but only three came. On these they loaded all the canvas of the tents,
but took no tent-poles.
“It looked very much like a severe thunderstorm,” writes the captain,
“and I knew the men would all have to sleep out of doors, unless we
carried them. So I took six poles, and went to the colonel, and told him
I had got the poles for two tents, which would cover twenty-four men, and
unless he ordered me not to carry them, I should do so. He said he had no
objection, only thought they would be too much for me. We only had about
twelve men [the rest of the company being, perhaps, on picket or other
duty], and some of them have their heavy knapsacks and guns to carry,
so could not carry any poles. We started and marched two miles without
stopping to rest, not having had anything to eat, and being very hot and
dry.” At this time Captain Prescott was daily threatened with sickness,
and suffered the more from this heat. “I told Lieutenant Bowers, this
morning, that I could afford to be sick from bringing the tent-poles,
for it saved the whole regiment from sleeping outdoors; for they would
not have thought of it, if I had not taken mine. The major had tried to
discourage me;—said, ‘perhaps, if I carried them over, some other company
would get them;’—I told him, perhaps he did not think I was smart.” He
had the satisfaction to see the whole regiment enjoying the protection of
these tents.[189]
In the disastrous battle of Bull Run this company behaved well, and the
regimental officers believed, what is now the general conviction of the
country, that the misfortunes of the day were not so much owing to the
fault of the troops as to the insufficiency of the combinations by the
general officers. It happened, also, that the Fifth Massachusetts was
almost unofficered. The colonel was, early in the day, disabled by a
casualty; the lieutenant-colonel, the major and the adjutant were already
transferred to new regiments, and their places were not yet filled. The
three months of the enlistment expired a few days after the battle.
In the fall of 1861, the old artillery company of this town was
reorganized, and Captain Richard Barrett received a commission in March,
1862, from the state, as its commander. This company, chiefly recruited
here, was later embodied in the Forty-seventh Regiment, Massachusetts
Volunteers, enlisted as nine months’ men, and sent to New Orleans, where
they were employed in guard duty during their term of service. Captain
Humphrey H. Buttrick, lieutenant in this regiment, as he had been already
lieutenant in Captain Prescott’s company in 1861, went out again in
August, 1864, a captain in the Fifty-ninth Massachusetts, and saw hard
service in the Ninth Corps, under General Burnside. The regiment being
formed of veterans, and in fields requiring great activity and exposure,
suffered extraordinary losses; Captain Buttrick and one other officer
being the only officers in it who were neither killed, wounded nor
captured.[190] In August, 1862, on the new requisition for troops, when
it was becoming difficult to meet the draft,—mainly through the personal
example and influence of Mr. Sylvester Lovejoy, twelve men, including
himself, were enlisted for three years, and, being soon after enrolled in
the Fortieth Massachusetts, went to the war; and a very good account has
been heard, not only of the regiment, but of the talents and virtues of
these men.
After the return of the three months’ company to Concord, in 1861,
Captain Prescott raised a new company of volunteers, and Captain Bowers
another. Each of these companies included recruits from this town,
and they formed part of the Thirty-second Regiment of Massachusetts
Volunteers. Enlisting for three years, and remaining to the end of
the war, these troops saw every variety of hard service which the war
offered, and, though suffering at first some disadvantage from change of
commanders, and from severe losses, they grew at last, under the command
of Colonel Prescott, to an excellent reputation, attested by the names of
the thirty battles they were authorized to inscribe on their flag, and by
the important position usually assigned them in the field.
I have found many notes of their rough experience in the march and in
the field. In McClellan’s retreat in the Peninsula, in July, 1862, “it
is all our men can do to draw their feet out of the mud. We marched one
mile through mud, without exaggeration, one foot deep,—a good deal of
the way over my boots, and with short rations; on one day nothing but
liver, blackberries, and pennyroyal tea.”—“At Fredericksburg we lay
eleven hours in one spot without moving, except to rise and fire.” The
next note is, “cracker for a day and a half,—but all right.” Another
day, “had not left the ranks for thirty hours, and the nights were broken
by frequent alarms. How would Concord people,” he asks, “like to pass
the night on the battle-field, and hear the dying cry for help, and not
be able to go to them?” But the regiment did good service at Harrison’s
Landing, and at Antietam, under Colonel Parker; and at Fredericksburg, in
December, Lieutenant-Colonel Prescott loudly expressed his satisfaction
at his comrades, now and then particularizing names: “Bowers, Shepard and
Lauriat are as brave as lions.”[191]
At the battle of Gettysburg, in July, 1863, the brigade of which the
Thirty-second Regiment formed a part, was in line of battle seventy-two
hours, and suffered severely. Colonel Prescott’s regiment went in with
two hundred and ten men, nineteen officers. On the second of July they
had to cross the famous wheat-field, under fire from the rebels in
front and on both flanks. Seventy men were killed or wounded out of
seven companies. Here Francis Buttrick, whose manly beauty all of us
remember,[192] and Sergeant Appleton, an excellent soldier, were fatally
wounded. The Colonel was hit by three bullets. “I feel,” he writes,
“I have much to be thankful for that my life is spared, although I
would willingly die to have the regiment do as well as they have done.
Our colors had several holes made, and were badly torn. One bullet hit
the staff which the bearer had in his hand. The color-bearer is brave
as a lion; he will go anywhere you say, and no questions asked; his
name is Marshall Davis.” The Colonel took evident pleasure in the fact
that he could account for all his men. There were so many killed, so
many wounded,—but no missing. For that word “missing” was apt to mean
skulking. Another incident: “A friend of Lieutenant Barrow complains
that we did not treat his body with respect, inasmuch as we did not send
it home. I think we were very fortunate to save it at all, for in ten
minutes after he was killed the rebels occupied the ground, and we had
to carry him and all our wounded nearly two miles in blankets. There was
no place nearer than Baltimore where we could have got a coffin, and I
suppose it was eighty miles there. We laid him in two double blankets,
and then sent off a long distance and got boards off a barn to make the
best coffin we could, and gave him burial.”
After Gettysburg, Colonel Prescott remarks that our regiment is
highly complimented. When Colonel Gurney, of the Ninth, came to him
the next day to tell him that “folks are just beginning to appreciate
the Thirty-second Regiment: it always was a good regiment, and people
are just beginning to find it out;” Colonel Prescott notes in his
journal,—“Pity they have not found it out before it was all gone. We have
a hundred and seventy-seven guns this morning.”
Let me add an extract from the official report of the brigade commander:
“Word was sent by General Barnes, that, when we retired, we should fall
back under cover of the woods. This order was communicated to Colonel
Prescott, whose regiment was then under the hottest fire. Understanding
it to be a peremptory order to retire then, he replied, ‘I don’t want to
retire; I am not ready to retire; I can hold this place;’ and he made
good his assertion. Being informed that he misunderstood the order,
which was only to inform him how to retire when it became necessary,
he was satisfied, and he and his command held their ground manfully.”
It was said that Colonel Prescott’s reply, when reported, pleased the
Acting-Brigadier-General Sweitzer mightily.
After Gettysburg, the Thirty-second Regiment saw hard service at
Rappahannock Station; and at Baltimore, in Virginia, where they were
drawn up in battle order for ten days successively: crossing the Rapidan,
and suffering from such extreme cold, a few days later, at Mine Run,
that the men were compelled to break rank and run in circles to keep
themselves from being frozen. On the third of December, they went into
winter quarters.
I must not follow the multiplied details that make the hard work of the
next year. But the campaign in the Wilderness surpassed all their worst
experience hitherto of the soldier’s life. On the third of May, they
crossed the Rapidan for the fifth time. On the twelfth, at Laurel Hill,
the regiment had twenty-one killed and seventy-five wounded, including
five officers. “The regiment has been in the front and centre since the
battle begun, eight and a half days ago, and is now building breastworks
on the Fredericksburg road. This has been the hardest fight the world
ever knew. I think the loss of our army will be forty thousand. Every
day, for the last eight days, there has been a terrible battle the whole
length of the line. One day they drove us; but it has been regular
bull-dog fighting.” On the twenty-first, they had been, for seventeen
days and nights, under arms without rest. On the twenty-third, they
crossed the North Anna, and achieved a great success. On the thirtieth,
we learn, “Our regiment has never been in the second line since we
crossed the Rapidan, on the third.” On the night of the thirtieth,—“The
hardest day we ever had. We have been in the first line twenty-six days,
and fighting every day but two; whilst your newspapers talk of the
inactivity of the Army of the Potomac. If those writers could be here
and fight all day, and sleep in the trenches, and be called up several
times in the night by picket-firing, they would not call it inactive.”
June fourth is marked in the diary as “An awful day;—two hundred men lost
to the command;” and not until the fifth of June comes at last a respite
for a short space, during which the men drew shoes and socks, and the
officers were able to send to the wagons and procure a change of clothes,
for the first time in five weeks.
But from these incessant labors there was now to be rest for one
head,—the honored and beloved commander of the regiment. On the sixteenth
of June, they crossed the James River, and marched to within three miles
of Petersburg. Early in the morning of the eighteenth they went to the
front, formed line of battle, and were ordered to take the Norfolk and
Petersburg Railroad from the rebels. In this charge, Colonel George
L. Prescott was mortally wounded. After driving the enemy from the
railroad, crossing it, and climbing the farther bank to continue the
charge, he was struck, in front of his command, by a musket-ball which
entered his breast near the heart. He was carried off the field to the
division hospital, and died on the following morning. On his death-bed,
he received the needless assurances of his general that “he had done more
than all his duty,”—needless to a conscience so faithful and unspotted.
One of his townsmen and comrades, a sergeant in his regiment, writing to
his own family, uses these words: “He was one of the few men who fight
for principle. He did not fight for glory, honor, nor money, but because
he thought it his duty. These are not my feelings only, but of the whole
regiment.”
On the first of January, 1865, the Thirty-second Regiment made itself
comfortable in log huts, a mile south of our rear line of works before
Petersburg. On the fourth of February, sudden orders came to move next
morning at daylight. At Dabney’s Mills, in a sharp fight, they lost
seventy-four in killed, wounded and missing. Here Major Shepard was taken
prisoner. The lines were held until the tenth, with more than usual
suffering from snow and hail and intense cold, added to the annoyance
of the artillery fire. On the first of April, the regiment connected
with Sheridan’s cavalry, near the Five Forks, and took an important part
in that battle which opened Petersburg and Richmond, and forced the
surrender of Lee. On the ninth, they marched in support of the cavalry,
and were advancing in a grand charge, when the white flag of General Lee
appeared. The brigade of which the Thirty-second Regiment formed part was
detailed to receive the formal surrender of the rebel arms. The homeward
march began on the thirteenth, and the regiment was mustered out in the
field, at Washington, on the twenty-eighth of June, and arrived in Boston
on the first of July.
Fellow citizens: The obelisk records only the names of the dead. There is
something partial in this distribution of honor. Those who went through
those dreadful fields and returned not deserve much more than all the
honor we can pay. But those also who went through the same fields, and
returned alive, put just as much at hazard as those who died, and, in
other countries, would wear distinctive badges of honor as long as they
lived. I hope the disuse of such medals or badges in this country only
signifies that everybody knows these men, and carries their deeds in such
lively remembrance that they require no badge or reminder. I am sure I
need not bespeak your gratitude to these fellow citizens and neighbors of
ours. I hope they will be content with the laurels of one war.
But let me, in behalf of this assembly, speak directly to you, our
defenders, and say, that it is easy to see that if danger should ever
threaten the homes which you guard, the knowledge of your presence will
be a wall of fire for their protection. Brave men! you will hardly be
called to see again fields as terrible as those you have already trampled
with your victories.
There are people who can hardly read the names on yonder bronze tablet,
the mist so gathers in their eyes. Three of the names are of sons of
one family.[193] A gloom gathers on this assembly, composed as it is of
kindred men and women, for, in many houses, the dearest and noblest is
gone from their hearth-stone. Yet it is tinged with light from heaven.
A duty so severe has been discharged, and with such immense results of
good, lifting private sacrifice to the sublime, that, though the cannon
volleys have a sound of funeral echoes, they can yet hear through them
the benedictions of their country and mankind.
APPENDIX
In the above Address I have been compelled to suppress more details
of personal interest than I have used. But I do not like to omit the
testimony to the character of the Commander of the Thirty-second
Massachusetts Regiment, given in the following letter by one of his
soldiers:—
NEAR PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA, June 20, 1864.
DEAR FATHER:
With feelings of deep regret, I inform you that Colonel
Prescott, our brave and lamented leader, is no more. He was
shot through the body, near the heart, on the eighteenth day
of June, and died the following morning. On the morning of the
eighteenth, our division was not in line. Reveille was at an
early hour, and before long we were moving to the front. Soon
we passed the ground where the Ninth Corps drove the enemy
from their fortified lines, and came upon and formed our line
in rear of Crawford’s Division. In front of us, and one mile
distant, the Rebels’ lines of works could be seen. Between us
and them, and in a deep gulley, was the Norfolk and Petersburg
Railroad. Soon the order came for us to take the railroad from
the enemy, whose advance then held it. Four regiments of our
brigade were to head the charge; so the 32d Massachusetts, 62d,
91st and 155th Pennsylvania regiments, under command of Colonel
Gregory, moved forward in good order, the enemy keeping up a
steady fire all the time. All went well till we reached the
road. The Rebels left when they saw us advance, and, when we
reached the road, they were running away. But here our troubles
began. The banks, on each side of the road, were about thirty
feet high, and, being stiff clay, were nearly perpendicular.
We got down well enough, because we got started, and were
rolled to the bottom, a confused pile of Yanks. Now to climb
the other side! It was impossible to get up by climbing, for
the side of it was like the side of a house. By dint of getting
on each other’s shoulders and making holes for our feet with
bayonets, a few of us got up; reaching our guns down to the
others, we all finally got over. Meanwhile, a storm of bullets
was rained upon us. Through it all, Colonel Prescott was cool
and collected, encouraging the men to do their best. After
we were almost all across, he moved out in front of the line,
and called the men out to him, saying, “Come on, men; form
our line here.” The color-bearer stepped towards him, when a
bullet struck the Colonel, passed through him, and wounded the
color-bearer, Sergeant Giles of Company G. Calmly the Colonel
turned, and said, “I am wounded; some one help me off.” A
sergeant of Company B, and one of the 21st Pennsylvania, helped
him off. This man told me, last night, all that the Colonel
said, while going off. He was afraid we would be driven back,
and wanted these men to stick by him. He said, “I die for my
country.” He seemed to be conscious that death was near to him,
and said the wound was near his heart; wanted the sergeant of
Company B to write to his family, and tell them all about him.
He will write to Mrs. Prescott, probably; but if they do not
hear from some one an account of his death, I wish you would
show this to Mrs. Prescott. He died in the division hospital,
night before last, and his remains will probably be sent to
Concord. We lament his loss in the regiment very much. He was
like a father to us,—always counselling us to be firm in the
path of duty, and setting the example himself. I think a more
moral man, or one more likely to enter the kingdom of heaven,
cannot be found in the Army of the Potomac. No man ever heard
him swear, or saw him use liquor, since we were in the service.
I wish there was some way for the regiment to pay some tribute
to his memory. But the folks at home must do this for the
present. The Thirty-second Regiment has lost its leader, and
calls on the people of Concord to console the afflicted family
of the brave departed, by showing their esteem for him in some
manner. He was one of the few men who fight for principle,—pure
principle. He did not fight for glory, honor nor money but
because he thought it his duty. These are not my feelings only,
but of the whole regiment. I want you to show this to every
one, so they can see what we thought of the Colonel, and how he
died in front of his regiment. God bless and comfort his poor
family. Perhaps people think soldiers have no feeling, but it
is not so. We feel deep anxiety for the families of all our
dear comrades.
CHARLES BARTLETT,
_Sergeant Company G, 32d Mass. Vols._[194]
XVIII
EDITORS’ ADDRESS
MASSACHUSETTS QUARTERLY REVIEW, DECEMBER, 1847
The old men studied magic in the flowers,
And human fortunes in astronomy,
And an omnipotence in chemistry,
Preferring things to names, for these were men,
Were unitarians of the united world,
And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,
They caught the footsteps of the Same. Our eyes
Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,
And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
And strangers to the plant and to the mine.
The injured elements say, ‘Not in us;’
And night and day, ocean and continent,
Fire, plant and mineral say, ‘Not in us;’
And haughtily return us stare for stare.
For we invade them impiously for gain;
We devastate them unreligiously,
And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.
Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us
Only what to our griping toil is due;
But the sweet affluence of love and song,
The rich results of the divine consents
Of man and earth, of world beloved and loved,
The nectar and ambrosia are withheld.
EDITORS’ ADDRESS
The American people are fast opening their own destiny. The material
basis is of such extent that no folly of man can quite subvert it;
for the territory is a considerable fraction of the planet, and the
population neither loath nor inexpert to use their advantages. Add,
that this energetic race derive an unprecedented material power from
the new arts, from the expansions effected by public schools, cheap
postage and a cheap press, from the telescope, the telegraph, the
railroad, steamship, steam-ferry, steam-mill; from domestic architecture,
chemical agriculture, from ventilation, from ice, ether, caoutchouc, and
innumerable inventions and manufactures.
A scholar who has been reading of the fabulous magnificence of Assyria
and Persia, of Rome and Constantinople, leaves his library and takes
his seat in a railroad-car, where he is importuned by newsboys with
journals still wet from Liverpool and Havre, with telegraphic despatches
not yet fifty minutes old from Buffalo and Cincinnati. At the screams
of the steam-whistle, the train quits city and suburbs, darts away
into the interior, drops every man at his estate as it whirls along,
and shows our traveller what tens of thousands of powerful and weaponed
men, science-armed and society-armed, sit at large in this ample region,
obscure from their numbers and the extent of the domain. He reflects
on the power which each of these plain republicans can employ; how far
these chains of intercourse and travel reach, interlock and ramify; what
levers, what pumps, what exhaustive analyses are applied to Nature for
the benefit of masses of men. Then he exclaims, What a negro-fine royalty
is that of Jamschid and Solomon! What a substantial sovereignty does my
townsman possess! A man who has a hundred dollars to dispose of—a hundred
dollars over his bread—is rich beyond the dreams of the Cæsars.
Keep our eyes as long as we can on this picture, we cannot stave off the
ulterior question,—the famous question of Cineas to Pyrrhus,[195]—the
WHERE TO of all this power and population, these surveys and inventions,
this taxing and tabulating, mill-privilege, roads, and mines. The
aspect this country presents is a certain maniacal activity, an immense
apparatus of cunning machinery which turns out, at last, some Nuremberg
toys. Has it generated, as great interests do, any intellectual power?
Where are the works of the imagination—the surest test of a national
genius? At least as far as the purpose and genius of America is yet
reported in any book, it is a sterility and no genius.
One would say there is nothing colossal in the country but its geography
and its material activities; that the moral and intellectual effects
are not on the same scale with the trade and production. There is no
speech heard but that of auctioneers, newsboys, and the caucus. Where
is the great breath of the New World, the voice of aboriginal nations
opening new eras with hymns of lofty cheer? Our books and fine arts
are imitations; there is a fatal incuriosity and disinclination in our
educated men to new studies and the interrogation of Nature. We have
taste, critical talent, good professors, good commentators, but a lack
of male energy. What more serious calamity can befall a people than
a constitutional dulness and limitation? The moral influence of the
intellect is wanting. We hearken in vain for any profound voice speaking
to the American heart, cheering timid good men, animating the youth,
consoling the defeated, and intelligently announcing duties which
clothe life with joy, and endear the face of land and sea to men.[196]
It is a poor consideration that the country wit is precocious, and,
as we say, practical; that political interests on so broad a scale as
ours are administered by little men with some saucy village talent, by
deft partisans, good cipherers; strict economists, quite empty of all
superstition.
Conceding these unfavorable appearances, it would yet be a poor pedantry
to read the fates of this country from these narrow data. On the
contrary, we are persuaded that moral and material values are always
commensurate. Every material organization exists to a moral end, which
makes the reason of its existence. Here are no books, but who can see the
continent with its inland and surrounding waters, its temperate climates,
its west-wind breathing vigor through all the year, its confluence of
races so favorable to the highest energy, and the infinite glut of their
production, without putting new queries to Destiny as to the purpose for
which this muster of nations and this sudden creation of enormous values
is made?
This is equally the view of science and of patriotism. We hesitate to
employ a word so much abused as _patriotism_, whose true sense is
almost the reverse of its popular sense. We have no sympathy with that
boyish egotism, hoarse with cheering for one side, for one state, for
one town: the right patriotism consists in the delight which springs
from contributing our peculiar and legitimate advantages to the benefit
of humanity. Every foot of soil has its proper quality; the grape on two
sides of the same fence has new flavors; and so every acre on the globe,
every family of men, every point of climate, has its distinguishing
virtues. Certainly then this country does not lie here in the sun
causeless; and though it may not be easy to define its influence, men
feel already its emancipating quality in the careless self-reliance of
the manners, in the freedom of thought, in the direct roads by which
grievances are reached and redressed, and even in the reckless and
sinister politics, not less than in purer expressions. Bad as it is, this
freedom leads onward and upward,—to a Columbia of thought and art, which
is the last and endless end of Columbus’s adventure.
Lovers of our country, but not always approvers of the public counsels,
we should certainly be glad to give good advice in politics. We have
not been able to escape our national and endemic habit, and to be
liberated from interest in the elections and in public affairs. Nor
have we cared to disfranchise ourselves. We are more solicitous than
others to make our politics clear and healthful, as we believe politics
to be nowise accidental or exceptional, but subject to the same laws
with trees, earths and acids. We see that reckless and destructive fury
which characterizes the lower classes of American society, and which is
pampered by hundreds of profligate presses. The young intriguers who
drive in bar-rooms and town-meetings the trade of politics, sagacious
only to seize the victorious side, have put the country into the position
of an overgrown bully, and Massachusetts finds no heart or head to give
weight and efficacy to her contrary judgment. In hours when it seemed
only to need one just word from a man of honor to have vindicated the
rights of millions, and to have given a true direction to the first steps
of a nation, we have seen the best understandings of New England, the
trusted leaders of her counsels, constituting a snivelling and despised
opposition, clapped on the back by comfortable capitalists from all
sections, and persuaded to say, We are too old to stand for what is
called a New England sentiment any longer. Rely on us for commercial
representatives, but for questions of ethics,—who knows what markets may
be opened? We are not well, we are not in our seats, when justice and
humanity are to be spoken for.
We have a bad war, many victories, each of which converts the
country into an immense chanticleer; and a very insincere political
opposition.[197] The country needs to be extricated from its delirium
at once. Public affairs are chained in the same law with private; the
retributions of armed states are not less sure and signal than those
which come to private felons. The facility of majorities is no protection
from the natural sequence of their own acts. Men reason badly, but Nature
and Destiny are logical.[198]
But, whilst we should think our pains well bestowed if we could cure the
infatuation of statesmen, and should be sincerely pleased if we could
give a direction to the Federal politics, we are far from believing
politics the primal interest of men. On the contrary, we hold that the
laws and governors cannot possess a commanding interest for any but
vacant or fanatical people; for the reason that this is simply a formal
and superficial interest; and men of a solid genius are only interested
in substantial things.
The State, like the individual, should rest on an ideal basis. Not only
man but Nature is injured by the imputation that man exists only to be
fattened with bread, but he lives in such connection with Thought and
Fact that his bread is surely involved as one element thereof, but is not
its end and aim. So the insight which commands the laws and conditions
of the true polity precludes forever all interest in the squabbles of
parties. As soon as men have tasted the enjoyment of learning, friendship
and virtue, for which the State exists, the prizes of office appear
polluted, and their followers outcasts.
A journal that would meet the real wants of this time must have a courage
and power sufficient to solve the problems which the great groping
society around us, stupid with perplexity, is dumbly exploring. Let it
now show its astuteness by dodging each difficult question and arguing
diffusely every point on which men are long ago unanimous. Can it front
this matter of Socialism, to which the names of Owen and Fourier have
attached, and dispose of that question? Will it cope with the allied
questions of Government, Nonresistance, and all that belongs under
that category? Will it measure itself with the chapter on Slavery, in
some sort the special enigma of the time, as it has provoked against
it a sort of inspiration and enthusiasm singular in modern history?
There are literary and philosophical reputations to settle. The name of
Swedenborg has in this very time acquired new honors, and the current
year has witnessed the appearance, in their first English translation,
of his manuscripts. Here is an unsettled account in the book of Fame; a
nebula to dim eyes, but which great telescopes may yet resolve into a
magnificent system. Here is the standing problem of Natural Science, and
the merits of her great interpreters to be determined; the encyclopædical
Humboldt, and the intrepid generalizations collected by the author of
the Vestiges of Creation. Here is the balance to be adjusted between
the exact French school of Cuvier, and the genial catholic theorists,
Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, Goethe, Davy and Agassiz. Will it venture into the
thin and difficult air of that school where the secrets of structure are
discussed under the topics of mesmerism and the twilights of demonology?
What will easily seem to many a far higher question than any other is
that which respects the embodying of the Conscience of the period. Is
the age we live in unfriendly to the highest powers; to that blending
of the affections with the poetic faculty which has distinguished the
Religious Ages? We have a better opinion of the economy of Nature than
to fear that those varying phases which humanity presents ever leave out
any of the grand springs of human action. Mankind for the moment seem to
be in search of a religion. The Jewish _cultus_ is declining; the Divine,
or, as some will say, the truly Human, hovers, now seen, now unseen,
before us. This period of peace, this hour when the jangle of contending
churches is hushing or hushed, will seem only the more propitious to
those who believe that man need not fear the want of religion, because
they know his religious constitution,—that he must rest on the moral and
religious sentiments, as the motion of bodies rests on geometry. In the
rapid decay of what was called religion, timid and unthinking people
fancy a decay of the hope of man. But the moral and religious sentiments
meet us everywhere, alike in markets as in churches. A God starts up
behind cotton bales also. The conscience of man is regenerated as is the
atmosphere, so that society cannot be debauched. The health which we call
Virtue is an equipoise which easily redresses itself, and resembles those
rocking stones which a child’s finger can move, and a weight of many
hundred tons cannot overthrow.
With these convictions, a few friends of good letters have thought
fit to associate themselves for the conduct of a new journal. We have
obeyed the custom and convenience of the time in adopting this form of a
Review, as a mould into which all metal most easily runs. But the form
shall not be suffered to be an impediment. The name might convey the
impression of a book of criticism, and that nothing is to be found here
which was not written expressly for the Review; but good readers know
that inspired pages are not written to fill a space, but for inevitable
utterance; and to such our journal is freely and solicitously open, even
though everything else be excluded. We entreat the aid of every lover
of truth and right, and let these principles entreat for us. We rely
on the talents and industry of good men known to us, but much more on
the magnetism of truth, which is multiplying and educating advocates
for itself and friends for us. We rely on the truth for and against
ourselves.
XIX
ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH
AT CONCORD, MAY 11, 1852
God said, I am tired of kings,
I suffer them no more;
Up to my ear the morning brings
The outrage of the poor.
My angel,—his name is Freedom,—
Choose him to be your king;
He shall cut pathways east and west,
And fend you with his wing.
ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH
SIR,—The fatigue of your many public visits, in such unbroken succession
as may compare with the toils of a campaign, forbid us to detain you
long. The people of this town share with their countrymen the admiration
of valor and perseverance; they, like their compatriots, have been hungry
to see the man whose extraordinary eloquence is seconded by the splendor
and the solidity of his actions. But, as it is the privilege of the
people of this town to keep a hallowed mound which has a place in the
story of the country; as Concord is one of the monuments of freedom; we
knew beforehand that you could not go by us; you could not take all your
steps in the pilgrimage of American liberty, until you had seen with your
eyes the ruins of the bridge where a handful of brave farmers opened our
Revolution. Therefore, we sat and waited for you.
And now, Sir, we are heartily glad to see you, at last, in these fields.
We set no more value than you do on cheers and huzzas. But we think
that the graves of our heroes around us throb to-day to a footstep that
sounded like their own:—
“The mighty tread
Brings from the dust the sound of liberty.”[199]
Sir, we have watched with attention your progress through the land, and
the varying feeling with which you have been received, and the unvarying
tone and countenance which you have maintained. We wish to discriminate
in our regard. We wish to reserve our honor for actions of the noblest
strain. We please ourselves that in you we meet one whose temper was long
since tried in the fire, and made equal to all events; a man so truly in
love with the greatest future, that he cannot be diverted to any less.
It is our republican doctrine, too, that the wide variety of opinions is
an advantage. I believe I may say of the people of this country at large,
that their sympathy is more worth, because it stands the test of party.
It is not a blind wave; it is a living soul contending with living souls.
It is, in every expression, antagonized. No opinion will pass but must
stand the tug of war. As you see, the love you win is worth something;
for it has been argued through; its foundation searched; it has proved
sound and whole; it may be avowed; it will last, and it will draw all
opinion to itself.
We have seen, with great pleasure, that there is nothing accidental in
your attitude. We have seen that you are organically in that cause you
plead. The man of Freedom, you are also the man of Fate. You do not
elect, but you are elected by God and your genius to the task. We do not,
therefore, affect to thank you. We only see in you the angel of freedom,
crossing sea and land; crossing parties, nationalities, private interests
and self-esteems; dividing populations where you go, and drawing to your
part only the good. We are afraid that you are growing popular, Sir; you
may be called to the dangers of prosperity. But, hitherto, you have had
in all centuries and in all parties only the men of heart. I do not know
but you will have the million yet. Then, may your strength be equal to
your day. But remember, Sir, that everything great and excellent in the
world is in minorities.[200]
Far be from us, Sir, any tone of patronage; we ought rather to ask yours.
We know the austere condition of liberty—that it must be reconquered over
and over again; yea, day by day; that it is a state of war; that it is
always slipping from those who boast it to those who fight for it: and
you, the foremost soldier of freedom in this age,—it is for us to crave
your judgment; who are we that we should dictate to you? You have won
your own. We only affirm it. This country of workingmen greets in you
a worker. This republic greets in you a republican. We only say, ‘Well
done, good and faithful.’—You have earned your own nobility at home.
We admit you _ad eundem_ (as they say at College). We admit you to the
same degree, without new trial. We suspend all rules before so paramount
a merit. You may well sit a doctor in the college of liberty. You have
achieved your right to interpret our Washington. And I speak the sense
not only of every generous American, but the law of mind, when I say that
it is not those who live idly in the city called after his name, but
those who, all over the world, think and act like him, who can claim to
explain the sentiment of Washington.
Sir, whatever obstruction from selfishness, indifference, or from
property (which always sympathizes with possession) you may encounter,
we congratulate you that you have known how to convert calamities into
powers, exile into a campaign, present defeat into lasting victory. For
this new crusade which you preach to willing and to unwilling ears in
America is a seed of armed men. You have got your story told in every
palace and log hut and prairie camp, throughout this continent. And,
as the shores of Europe and America approach every month, and their
politics will one day mingle, when the crisis arrives it will find us all
instructed beforehand in the rights and wrongs of Hungary, and parties
already to her freedom.
XX
WOMAN
A LECTURE READ BEFORE THE WOMAN’S RIGHTS CONVENTION, BOSTON, SEPTEMBER
20, 1855
The politics are base,
The letters do not cheer,
And ’tis far in the deeps of history,
The voice that speaketh clear.
Yet there in the parlor sits
Some figure in noble guise,—
Our Angel in a stranger’s form;
Or Woman’s pleading eyes.
* * * * *
“Lo, when the Lord made North and South,
And sun and moon ordained he,
Forth bringing each by word of mouth
In order of its dignity,
Did man from the crude clay express
By sequence, and, all else decreed,
He formed the woman; nor might less
Than Sabbath such a work succeed.”
COVENTRY PATMORE.
WOMAN
Among those movements which seem to be, now and then, endemic in the
public mind,—perhaps we should say, sporadic,—rather than the single
inspiration of one mind, is that which has urged on society the benefits
of action having for its object a benefit to the position of Woman. And
none is more seriously interesting to every healthful and thoughtful mind.
In that race which is now predominant over all the other races of men,
it was a cherished belief that women had an oracular nature. They are
more delicate than men,—delicate as iodine to light,—and thus more
impressionable. They are the best index of the coming hour. I share
this belief. I think their words are to be weighed; but it is their
inconsiderate word,—according to the rule, ‘take their first advice, not
the second:’ as Coleridge was wont to apply to a lady for her judgment
in questions of taste, and accept it; but when she added—“I think
so, because—” “Pardon me, madam,” he said, “leave me to find out the
reasons for myself.” In this sense, as more delicate mercuries of the
imponderable and immaterial influences, what they say and think is the
shadow of coming events. Their very dolls are indicative. Among our Norse
ancestors, Frigga was worshipped as the goddess of women. “Weirdes all,”
said the Edda, “Frigga knoweth, though she telleth them never.” That is
to say, all wisdoms Woman knows; though she takes them for granted, and
does not explain them as discoveries, like the understanding of man.
Men remark figure: women always catch the expression. They inspire by a
look, and pass with us not so much by what they say or do, as by their
presence. They learn so fast and convey the result so fast as to outrun
the logic of their slow brother and make his acquisitions poor.[201] ’Tis
their mood and tone that is important. Does their mind misgive them, or
are they firm and cheerful? ’Tis a true report that things are going ill
or well. And any remarkable opinion or movement shared by woman will be
the first sign of revolution.
Plato said, Women are the same as men in faculty, only less in degree.
But the general voice of mankind has agreed that they have their own
strength; that women are strong by sentiment; that the same mental height
which their husbands attain by toil, they attain by sympathy with their
husbands. Man is the will, and Woman the sentiment. In this ship of
humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail: when Woman affects
to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail. When women engage in any
art or trade, it is usually as a resource, not as a primary object. The
life of the affections is primary to them, so that there is usually no
employment or career which they will not with their own applause and that
of society quit for a suitable marriage. And they give entirely to their
affections, set their whole fortune on the die, lose themselves eagerly
in the glory of their husbands and children. Man stands astonished at
a magnanimity he cannot pretend to. Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, one of the
heroines of the English Commonwealth, who wrote the life of her husband,
the Governor of Nottingham, says, “If he esteemed her at a higher rate
than she in herself could have deserved, he was the author of that
virtue he doted on, while she only reflected his own glories upon him.
All that she was, was _him_, while he was hers, and all that she is now,
at best, but his pale shade.” As for Plato’s opinion, it is true that,
up to recent times, in no art or science, nor in painting, poetry or
music, have they produced a masterpiece. Till the new education and
larger opportunities of very modern times, this position, with the fewest
possible exceptions, has always been true. Sappho, to be sure, in the
Olympic Games, gained the crown over Pindar. But, in general, no mastery
in either of the fine arts—which should, one would say, be the arts of
women—has yet been obtained by them, equal to the mastery of men in the
same. The part they play in education, in the care of the young and the
tuition of older children, is their organic office in the world. So much
sympathy as they have makes them inestimable as the mediators between
those who have knowledge and those who want it: besides, their fine
organization, their taste and love of details, makes the knowledge they
give better in their hands.
But there is an art which is better than painting, poetry, music, or
architecture,—better than botany, geology, or any science; namely,
Conversation. Wise, cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of
civilization and the best result which life has to offer us,—a cup for
gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves.
All we have, all we can, all we know, is brought into play, and as the
reproduction, in finer form, of all our havings.
Women are, by this and their social influence, the civilizers of
mankind. What is civilization? I answer, the power of good women. It
was Burns’s remark when he first came to Edinburgh that between the
men of rustic life and the polite world he observed little difference;
that in the former, though unpolished by fashion and unenlightened
by science, he had found much observation and much intelligence; but
a refined and accomplished woman was a being almost new to him, and
of which he had formed a very inadequate idea. “I like women,” said
a clear-headed man of the world; “they are so finished.” They finish
society, manners, language. Form and ceremony are their realm. They
embellish trifles. All these ceremonies that hedge our life around are
not to be despised, and when we have become habituated to them, cannot
be dispensed with. No woman can despise them with impunity. Their genius
delights in ceremonies, in forms, in decorating life with manners, with
properties, order and grace. They are, in their nature, more relative;
the circumstance must always be fit; out of place they lose half their
weight, out of place they are disfranchised. Position, Wren said, is
essential to the perfecting of beauty;—a fine building is lost in a dark
lane; a statue should stand in the air; much more true is it of woman.
We commonly say that easy circumstances seem somehow necessary to the
finish of the female character: but then it is to be remembered that
they create these with all their might. They are always making that
civilization which they require; that state of art, of decoration, that
ornamental life in which they best appear.
The spiritual force of man is as much shown in taste, in his fancy
and imagination,—attaching deep meanings to things and to arbitrary
inventions of no real value,—as in his perception of truth. He is as
much raised above the beast by this creative faculty as by any other.
The horse and ox use no delays; they run to the river when thirsty, to
the corn when hungry, and say no thanks, but fight down whatever opposes
their appetite. But man invents and adorns all he does with delays
and degrees, paints it all over with forms, to please himself better;
he invented majesty and the etiquette of courts and drawing-rooms;
architecture, curtains, dress, all luxuries and adornments, and the
elegance of privacy, to increase the joys of society. He invented
marriage; and surrounded by religion, by comeliness, by all manner of
dignities and renunciations, the union of the sexes.
And how should we better measure the gulf between the best intercourse
of men in old Athens, in London, or in our American capitals,—between
this and the hedgehog existence of diggers of worms, and the eaters of
clay and offal,—than by signalizing just this department of taste or
comeliness? Herein woman is the prime genius and ordainer. There is no
grace that is taught by the dancing-master, no style adopted into the
etiquette of courts, but was first the whim and the mere action of some
brilliant woman, who charmed beholders by this new expression, and made
it remembered and copied. And I think they should magnify their ritual of
manners.[202] Society, conversation, decorum, flowers, dances, colors,
forms, are their homes and attendants. They should be found in fit
surroundings—with fair approaches, with agreeable architecture, and with
all advantages which the means of man collect:
“The far-fetched diamond finds its home
Flashing and smouldering in her hair.
For her the seas their pearls reveal,
Art and strange lands her pomp supply
With purple, chrome and cochineal,
Ochre and lapis lazuli.
The worm its golden woof presents.
Whatever runs, flies, dives or delves
All doff for her their ornaments,
Which suit her better than themselves.”[203]
There is no gift of Nature without some drawback. So, to women, this
exquisite structure could not exist without its own penalty. More
vulnerable, more infirm, more mortal than men, they could not be such
excellent artists in this element of fancy if they did not lend and give
themselves to it. They are poets who believe their own poetry. They emit
from their pores a colored atmosphere, one would say, wave upon wave of
rosy light, in which they walk evermore, and see all objects through this
warm-tinted mist that envelops them.
But the starry crown of woman is in the power of her affection and
sentiment, and the infinite enlargements to which they lead. Beautiful
is the passion of love, painter and adorner of youth and early life: but
who suspects, in its blushes and tremors, what tragedies, heroisms and
immortalities are beyond it? The passion, with all its grace and poetry,
is profane to that which follows it. All these affections are only
introductory to that which is beyond, and to that which is sublime.
We men have no right to say it, but the omnipotence of Eve is in
humility. The instincts of mankind have drawn the Virgin Mother—
“Created beings all in lowliness
Surpassing, as in height above them all.”[204]
This is the Divine Person whom Dante and Milton saw in vision. This is
the victory of Griselda, her supreme humility. And it is when love has
reached this height that all our pretty rhetoric begins to have meaning.
When we see that, it adds to the soul a new soul, it is honey in the
mouth, music in the ear and balsam in the heart.
“Far have I clambered in my mind,
But nought so great as Love I find.
What is thy tent, where dost thou dwell?
‘My mansion is humility,
Heaven’s vastest capability.’
The further it doth downward tend,
The higher up it doth ascend.”[205]
The first thing men think of, when they love, is to exhibit their
usefulness and advantages to the object of their affection. Women make
light of these, asking only love. They wish it to be an exchange of
nobleness.
There is much in their nature, much in their social position which gives
them a certain power of divination. And women know, at first sight, the
characters of those with whom they converse. There is much that tends to
give them a religious height which men do not attain. Their sequestration
from affairs and from the injury to the moral sense which affairs often
inflict, aids this. And in every remarkable religious development in the
world, women have taken a leading part. It is very curious that in the
East, where Woman occupies, nationally, a lower sphere, where the laws
resist the education and emancipation of women,—in the Mohammedan faith,
Woman yet occupies the same leading position, as a prophetess, that she
has among the ancient Greeks, or among the Hebrews, or among the Saxons.
This power, this religious character, is everywhere to be remarked in
them.[206]
The action of society is progressive. In barbarous society the position
of women is always low—in the Eastern nations lower than in the West.
“When a daughter is born,” says the Shiking, the old Sacred Book of
China, “she sleeps on the ground, she is clothed with a wrapper,
she plays with a tile; she is incapable of evil or of good.” And
something like that position, in all low society, is the position of
woman; because, as before remarked, she is herself its civilizer.
With the advancements of society, the position and influence of
woman bring her strength or her faults into light. In modern times,
three or four conspicuous instrumentalities may be marked. After the
deification of Woman in the Catholic Church, in the sixteenth or
seventeenth century,—when her religious nature gave her, of course, new
importance,—the Quakers have the honor of having first established, in
their discipline, the equality in the sexes. It is even more perfect
in the later sect of the Shakers, where no business is broached or
counselled without the intervention of one elder and one elderess.
A second epoch for Woman was in France,—entirely civil; the change
of sentiment from a rude to a polite character, in the age of Louis
XIV.,—commonly dated from the building of the Hôtel de Rambouillet.[207]
I think another important step was made by the doctrine of Swedenborg,
a sublime genius who gave a scientific exposition of the part played
severally by man and woman in the world, and showed the difference of sex
to run through nature and through thought. Of all Christian sects this
is at this moment the most vital and aggressive.
Another step was the effect of the action of the age in the antagonism
to Slavery. It was easy to enlist Woman in this; it was impossible not
to enlist her. But that Cause turned out to be a great scholar. He was a
terrible metaphysician. He was a jurist, a poet, a divine. Was never a
University of Oxford or Göttingen that made such students. It took a man
from the plough and made him acute, eloquent, and wise, to the silencing
of the doctors. There was nothing it did not pry into, no right it did
not explore, no wrong it did not expose. And it has, among its other
effects, given Woman a feeling of public duty and an added self-respect.
One truth leads in another by the hand; one right is an accession of
strength to take more. And the times are marked by the new attitude
of Woman; urging, by argument and by association, her rights of all
kinds,—in short, to one half of the world;—as the right to education, to
avenues of employment, to equal rights of property, to equal rights in
marriage, to the exercise of the professions and of suffrage.
Of course, this conspicuousness had its inconveniences. But it is cheap
wit that has been spent on this subject; from Aristophanes, in whose
comedies I confess my dulness to find good joke, to Rabelais, in whom it
is monstrous exaggeration of temperament, and not borne out by anything
in nature,—down to English Comedy, and, in our day, to Tennyson,[208]
and the American newspapers. In all, the body of the joke is one,
namely, to charge women with temperament; to describe them as victims of
temperament; and is identical with Mahomet’s opinion that women have not
a sufficient moral or intellectual force to control the perturbations
of their physical structure. These were all drawings of morbid anatomy,
and such satire as might be written on the tenants of a hospital or on
an asylum for idiots. Of course it would be easy for women to retaliate
in kind, by painting men from the dogs and gorillas that have worn our
shape. That they have not, is an eulogy on their taste and self-respect.
The good easy world took the joke which it liked. There is always the
want of thought; there is always credulity. There are plenty of people
who believe women to be incapable of anything but to cook, incapable of
interest in affairs. There are plenty of people who believe that the
world is governed by men of dark complexions, that affairs are only
directed by such, and do not see the use of contemplative men, or how
ignoble would be the world that wanted them. And so without the affection
of women.
But for the general charge: no doubt it is well founded. They are victims
of the finer temperament. They have tears, and gayeties, and faintings,
and glooms and devotion to trifles. Nature’s end, of maternity for
twenty years, was of so supreme importance that it was to be secured at
all events, even to the sacrifice of the highest beauty. They are more
personal. Men taunt them that, whatever they do, say, read or write, they
are thinking of themselves and their set. Men are not to the same degree
temperamented, for there are multitudes of men who live to objects quite
out of them, as to politics, to trade, to letters or an art, unhindered
by any influence of constitution.
The answer that lies, silent or spoken, in the minds of well-meaning
persons, to the new claims, is this: that though their mathematical
justice is not to be denied, yet the best women do not wish these things;
they are asked for by people who intellectually seek them, but who have
not the support or sympathy of the truest women; and that, if the laws
and customs were modified in the manner proposed, it would embarrass and
pain gentle and lovely persons with duties which they would find irksome
and distasteful. Very likely. Providence is always surprising us with
new and unlikely instruments. But perhaps it is because these people
have been deprived of education, fine companions, opportunities, such as
they wished,—because they feel the same rudeness and disadvantage which
offends you,—that they have been stung to say, ‘It is too late for us to
be polished and fashioned into beauty, but, at least, we will see that
the whole race of women shall not suffer as we have suffered.’
They have an unquestionable right to their own property. And if a
woman demand votes, offices and political equality with men, as among
the Shakers an Elder and Elderess are of equal power,—and among the
Quakers,—it must not be refused. It is very cheap wit that finds it
so droll that a woman should vote. Educate and refine society to the
highest point,—bring together a cultivated society of both sexes, in a
drawing-room, and consult and decide by voices on a question of taste
or on a question of right, and is there any absurdity or any practical
difficulty in obtaining their authentic opinions? If not, then there
need be none in a hundred companies, if you educate them and accustom
them to judge. And, for the effect of it, I can say, for one, that all
my points would sooner be carried in the State if women voted. On the
questions that are important,—whether the government shall be in one
person, or whether representative, or whether democratic; whether men
shall be holden in bondage, or shall be roasted alive and eaten, as in
Typee, or shall be hunted with bloodhounds, as in this country; whether
men shall be hanged for stealing, or hanged at all; whether the unlimited
sale of cheap liquors shall be allowed;—they would give, I suppose, as
intelligent a vote as the voters of Boston or New York.
We may ask, to be sure,—Why need you vote? If new power is here, of a
character which solves old tough questions, which puts me and all the
rest in the wrong, tries and condemns our religion, customs, laws, and
opens new careers to our young receptive men and women, you can well
leave voting to the old dead people. Those whom you teach, and those whom
you half teach, will fast enough make themselves considered and strong
with their new insight, and votes will follow from all the dull.
The objection to their voting is the same as is urged, in the lobbies of
legislatures, against clergymen who take an active part in politics;—that
if they are good clergymen they are unacquainted with the expediencies of
politics, and if they become good politicians they are worse clergymen.
So of women, that they cannot enter this arena without being contaminated
and unsexed.
Here are two or three objections: first, a want of practical wisdom;
second, a too purely ideal view; and, third, danger of contamination. For
their want of intimate knowledge of affairs, I do not think this ought to
disqualify them from voting at any town-meeting which I ever attended. I
could heartily wish the objection were sound. But if any man will take
the trouble to see how our people vote,—how many gentlemen are willing to
take on themselves the trouble of thinking and determining for you, and,
standing at the door of the polls, give every innocent citizen his ticket
as he comes in, informing him that this is the vote of his party; and how
the innocent citizen, without further demur, goes and drops it in the
ballot-box,—I cannot but think he will agree that most women might vote
as wisely.
For the other point, of their not knowing the world, and aiming at
abstract right without allowance for circumstances,—that is not a
disqualification, but a qualification. Human society is made up of
partialities. Each citizen has an interest and a view of his own, which,
if followed out to the extreme, would leave no room for any other
citizen. One man is timid and another rash; one would change nothing, and
the other is pleased with nothing; one wishes schools, another armies,
one gunboats, another public gardens. Bring all these biases together and
something is done in favor of them all.
Every one is a half vote, but the next elector behind him brings the
other or corresponding half in his hand: a reasonable result is had.
Now there is no lack, I am sure, of the expediency, or of the interests
of trade or of imperative class interests being neglected. There is
no lack of votes representing the physical wants; and if in your city
the uneducated emigrant vote numbers thousands, representing a brutal
ignorance and mere animal wants, it is to be corrected by an educated and
religious vote, representing the wants and desires of honest and refined
persons. If the wants, the passions, the vices, are allowed a full vote
through the hands of a half-brutal intemperate population, I think it but
fair that the virtues, the aspirations should be allowed a full vote, as
an offset, through the purest part of the people.
As for the unsexing and contamination,—that only accuses our existing
politics, shows how barbarous we are,—that our policies are so crooked,
made up of things not to be spoken, to be understood only by wink and
nudge; this man to be coaxed, that man to be bought, and that other to
be duped. It is easy to see that there is contamination enough, but it
rots the men now, and fills the air with stench. Come out of that: it is
like a dance-cellar. The fairest names in this country in literature, in
law, have gone into Congress and come out dishonored. And when I read
the list of men of intellect, of refined pursuits, giants in law, or
eminent scholars, or of social distinction, leading men of wealth and
enterprise in the commercial community, and see what they have voted for
and suffered to be voted for, I think no community was ever so politely
and elegantly betrayed.
I do not think it yet appears that women wish this equal share in public
affairs. But it is they and not we that are to determine it. Let the
laws be purged of every barbarous remainder, every barbarous impediment
to women. Let the public donations for education be equally shared by
them, let them enter a school as freely as a church, let them have and
hold and give their property as men do theirs;—and in a few years it will
easily appear whether they wish a voice in making the laws that are to
govern them. If you do refuse them a vote, you will also refuse to tax
them,—according to our Teutonic principle, No representation, no tax.
All events of history are to be regarded as growths and offshoots of
the expanding mind of the race, and this appearance of new opinions,
their currency and force in many minds, is itself the wonderful fact.
For whatever is popular is important, shows the spontaneous sense of
the hour. The aspiration of this century will be the code of the next.
It holds of high and distant causes, of the same influences that make
the sun and moon. When new opinions appear, they will be entertained
and respected, by every fair mind, according to their reasonableness,
and not according to their convenience, or their fitness to shock our
customs. But let us deal with them greatly; let them make their way
by the upper road, and not by the way of manufacturing public opinion,
which lapses continually into expediency, and makes charlatans. All
that is spontaneous is irresistible, and forever it is individual force
that interests. I need not repeat to you—your own solitude will suggest
it—that a masculine woman is not strong, but a lady is. The loneliest
thought, the purest prayer, is rushing to be the history of a thousand
years.
Let us have the true woman, the adorner, the hospitable, the religious
heart, and no lawyer need be called in to write stipulations, the cunning
clauses of provision, the strong investitures;—for woman moulds the
lawgiver and writes the law. But I ought to say, I think it impossible
to separate the interests and education of the sexes. Improve and refine
the men, and you do the same by the women, whether you will or no. Every
woman being the wife or the daughter of a man,—wife, daughter, sister,
mother, of a man, she can never be very far from his ear, never not of
his counsel, if she has really something to urge that is good in itself
and agreeable to nature. Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom,
freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of
kings. The melioration of manners brought their melioration of course.
It could not be otherwise, and hence the new desire of better laws.
For there are always a certain number of passionately loving fathers,
brothers, husbands and sons who put their might into the endeavor to make
a daughter, a wife, or a mother happy in the way that suits best. Woman
should find in man her guardian. Silently she looks for that, and when
she finds that he is not, as she instantly does, she betakes her to her
own defences, and does the best she can. But when he is her guardian,
fulfilled with all nobleness, knows and accepts his duties as her
brother, all goes well for both.
The new movement is only a tide shared by the spirits of man and woman;
and you may proceed in the faith that whatever the woman’s heart is
prompted to desire, the man’s mind is simultaneously prompted to
accomplish.[209]
XXI
ADDRESS
TO THE INHABITANTS OF CONCORD AT THE CONSECRATION OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
SEPTEMBER 29, 1855
SLEEPY HOLLOW
“No abbey’s gloom, nor dark cathedral stoops,
No winding torches paint the midnight air;
Here the green pines delight, the aspen droops
Along the modest pathways, and those fair
Pale asters of the season spread their plumes
Around this field, fit garden for our tombs.
And shalt thou pause to hear some funeral-bell
Slow stealing o’er the heart in this calm place,
Not with a throb of pain, a feverish knell,
But in its kind and supplicating grace,
It says, Go, pilgrim, on thy march, be more
Friend to the friendless than thou wast before;
Learn from the loved one’s rest serenity;
To-morrow that soft bell for thee shall sound,
And thou repose beneath the whispering tree,
One tribute more to this submissive ground;—
Prison thy soul from malice, bar out pride,
Nor these pale flowers nor this still field deride:
Rather to those ascents of being turn
Where a ne’er-setting sun illumes the year
Eternal, and the incessant watch-fires burn
Of unspent holiness and goodness clear,—
Forget man’s littleness, deserve the best,
God’s mercy in thy thought and life contest.”
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.
ADDRESS
TO THE INHABITANTS OF CONCORD AT THE CONSECRATION OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
SEPTEMBER 29, 1855
CITIZENS AND FRIENDS: The committee to whom was confided the charge of
carrying out the wishes of the town in opening the cemetery, having
proceeded so far as to enclose the ground, and cut the necessary roads,
and having laid off as many lots as are likely to be wanted at present,
have thought it fit to call the inhabitants together, to show you the
ground, now that the new avenues make its advantages appear; and to put
it at your disposition.
They have thought that the taking possession of this field ought to be
marked by a public meeting and religious rites: and they have requested
me to say a few words which the serious and tender occasion inspires.
And this concourse of friendly company assures me that they have rightly
interpreted your wishes. [Here followed, in the address, about three
pages of matter which Mr. Emerson used later in his essay on Immortality,
which may be found in the volume _Letters and Social Aims_, beginning on
page 324, “The credence of men,” etc., and ending on pages 326-27 with
the sentence, “Meantime the true disciples saw, through the letters, the
doctrine of eternity which dissolved the poor corpse and nature also, and
gave grandeur to the passing hour.”]
In these times we see the defects of our old theology; its inferiority
to our habit of thoughts. Men go up and down; Science is popularized;
the irresistible democracy—shall I call it?—of chemistry, of vegetation,
which recomposes for new life every decomposing particle,—the race never
dying, the individual never spared,—have impressed on the mind of the age
the futility of these old arts of preserving. We give our earth to earth.
We will not jealously guard a few atoms under immense marbles, selfishly
and impossibly sequestering it from the vast circulations of Nature, but,
at the same time, fully admitting the divine hope and love which belong
to our nature, wishing to make one spot tender to our children, who shall
come hither in the next century to read the dates of these lives.
Our people accepting this lesson from science, yet touched by the
tenderness which Christianity breathes, have found a mean in the
consecration of gardens. A simultaneous movement has, in a hundred
cities and towns in this country, selected some convenient piece of
undulating ground with pleasant woods and waters; every family chooses
its own clump of trees; and we lay the corpse in these leafy colonnades.
A grove of trees,—what benefit or ornament is so fair and great? they
make the landscape; they keep the earth habitable; their roots run
down, like cattle, to the water-courses; their heads expand to feed the
atmosphere. The life of a tree is a hundred and a thousand years; its
decays ornamental; its repairs self-made: they grow when we sleep, they
grew when we were unborn. Man is a moth among these longevities. He
plants for the next millennium. Shadows haunt them; all that ever lived
about them cling to them. You can almost see behind these pines the
Indian with bow and arrow lurking yet exploring the traces of the old
trail.
Modern taste has shown that there is no ornament, no architecture
alone, so sumptuous as well disposed woods and waters, where art has
been employed only to remove superfluities, and bring out the natural
advantages. In cultivated grounds one sees the picturesque and opulent
effect of the familiar shrubs, barberry, lilac, privet and thorns, when
they are disposed in masses, and in large spaces. What work of man will
compare with the plantation of a park? It dignifies life. It is a seat
for friendship, counsel, taste and religion. I do not wonder that they
are the chosen badge and point of pride of European nobility. But how
much more are they needed by us, anxious, overdriven Americans, to stanch
and appease that fury of temperament which our climate bestows!
This tract fortunately lies adjoining to the Agricultural Society’s
ground, to the New Burial Ground, to the Court House and the Town House,
making together a large block of public ground, permanent property of the
town and county,—all the ornaments of either adding so much value to all.
I suppose all of us will readily admit the value of parks and cultivated
grounds to the pleasure and education of the people, but I have heard
it said here that we would gladly spend for a park for the living, but
not for a cemetery; a garden for the living, a home of thought and
friendship. Certainly the living need it more than the dead; indeed, to
speak precisely, it is given to the dead for the reaction of benefit on
the living. But if the direct regard to the living be thought expedient,
that is also in your power. This ground is happily so divided by Nature
as to admit of this relation between the Past and the Present. In the
valley where we stand will be the Monuments. On the other side of the
ridge, towards the town, a portion of the land is in full view of the
cheer of the village and is out of sight of the Monuments; it admits of
being reserved for secular purposes; for games,—not such as the Greeks
honored the dead with, but for games of education; the distribution
of school prizes; the meeting of teachers; patriotic eloquence, the
utterance of the principles of national liberty to private, social,
literary or religious fraternities. Here we may establish that most
agreeable of all museums, and agreeable to the temper of our times,—an
_Arboretum_,—wherein may be planted, by the taste of every citizen,
one tree, with its name recorded in a book; every tree that is native
to Massachusetts, or will grow in it; so that every child may be shown
growing, side by side, the eleven oaks of Massachusetts; and the twenty
willows; the beech, which we have allowed to die out of the eastern
counties; and here the vast firs of California and Oregon.
This spot for twenty years has borne the name of _Sleepy Hollow_. Its
seclusion from the village in its immediate neighborhood had made it
to all the inhabitants an easy retreat on a Sabbath day, or a summer
twilight, and it was inevitably chosen by them when the design of a new
cemetery was broached, if it did not suggest the design, as the fit place
for their final repose. In all the multitudes of woodlands and hillsides,
which within a few years have been laid out with a similar design, I have
not known one so fitly named. _Sleepy Hollow._ In this quiet valley, as
in the palm of Nature’s hand, we shall sleep well when we have finished
our day. What is the Earth itself but a surface scooped into nooks and
caves of slumber—according to the Eastern fable, a bridge full of holes,
into one or other of which all the passengers sink to silence? Nay, when
I think of the mystery of life, its round of illusions, our ignorance of
its beginning or its end, the speed of the changes of that glittering
dream we call existence,—I think sometimes that the vault of the sky
arching there upward, under which our busy being is whirled, is only a
Sleepy Hollow, with path of Suns, instead of foot-paths; and Milky Ways,
for truck-roads.
The ground has the peaceful character that belongs to this town;—no lofty
crags, no glittering cataracts;—but I hold that every part of Nature is
handsome when not deformed by bad Art. Bleak sea-rocks and sea-downs
and blasted heaths have their own beauty; and though we make much ado in
our praises of Italy or Andes, Nature makes not so much difference. The
morning, the moonlight, the spring day, are magical painters, and can
glorify a meadow or a rock.
But we must look forward also, and make ourselves a thousand years
old; and when these acorns, that are falling at our feet, are oaks
overshadowing our children in a remote century, this mute green bank will
be full of history: the good, the wise and great will have left their
names and virtues on the trees; heroes, poets, beauties, sanctities,
benefactors, will have made the air timeable and articulate.
And hither shall repair, to this modest spot of God’s earth, every sweet
and friendly influence; the beautiful night and beautiful day will come
in turn to sit upon the grass. Our use will not displace the old tenants.
The well-beloved birds will not sing one song the less, the high-holding
woodpecker, the meadow-lark, the oriole, robin, purple finch, bluebird,
thrush and red-eyed warbler, the heron, the bittern will find out the
hospitality and protection from the gun of this asylum, and will seek the
waters of the meadow; and in the grass, and by the pond, the locust, the
cricket and the hyla, shall shrilly play.
We shall bring hither the body of the dead, but how shall we catch the
escaped soul? Here will burn for us, as the oath of God, the sublime
belief. I have heard that death takes us away from ill things, not from
good. I have heard that when we pronounce the name of man, we pronounce
the belief of immortality. All great natures delight in stability; all
great men find eternity affirmed in the promise of their faculties.
Why is the fable of the Wandering Jew agreeable to men, but because
they want more time and land to execute their thoughts in? Life is not
long enough for art, nor long enough for friendship. The evidence from
intellect is as valid as the evidence from love. The being that can share
a thought and feeling so sublime as confidence in truth is no mushroom.
Our dissatisfaction with any other solution is the blazing evidence of
immortality.
XXII
ROBERT BURNS
SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE BURNS CENTENARY, BOSTON
JANUARY 25, 1859
“His was the music to whose tone
The common pulse of man keeps time
In cot or castle’s mirth or moan,
In cold or sunny clime.
Praise to the bard! his words are driven,
Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown,
Where’er, beneath the sky of heaven,
The birds of fame have flown.”
HALLECK.
ROBERT BURNS
MR. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN: I do not know by what untoward accident
it has chanced, and I forbear to inquire, that, in this accomplished
circle, it should fall to me, the worst Scotsman of all, to receive your
commands, and at the latest hour too, to respond to the sentiment just
offered, and which indeed makes the occasion. But I am told there is
no appeal, and I must trust to the inspirations of the theme to make a
fitness which does not otherwise exist. Yet, Sir, I heartily feel the
singular claims of the occasion. At the first announcement, from I know
not whence, that the 25th of January was the hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Robert Burns, a sudden consent warmed the great English race, in
all its kingdoms, colonies and states, all over the world, to keep the
festival. We are here to hold our parliament with love and poesy, as men
were wont to do in the Middle Ages. Those famous parliaments might or
might not have had more stateliness and better singers than we,—though
that is yet to be known,—but they could not have better reason. I can
only explain this singular unanimity in a race which rarely acts
together, but rather after their watch-word, Each for himself,—by the
fact that Robert Burns, the poet of the middle class, represents in the
mind of men to-day that great uprising of the middle class against the
armed and privileged minorities, that uprising which worked politically
in the American and French Revolutions, and which, not in governments so
much as in education and social order, has changed the face of the world.
In order for this destiny, his birth, breeding and fortunes were
low. His organic sentiment was absolute independence, and resting as
it should on a life of labor. No man existed who could look down on
him. They that looked into his eyes saw that they might look down the
sky as easily.[210] His muse and teaching was common sense, joyful,
aggressive, irresistible. Not Latimer, nor Luther struck more telling
blows against false theology than did this brave singer. The Confession
of Augsburg, the Declaration of Independence, the French Rights of Man,
and the Marseillaise, are not more weighty documents in the history of
freedom than the songs of Burns. His satire has lost none of its edge.
His musical arrows yet sing through the air. He is so substantially
a reformer that I find his grand plain sense in close chain with the
greatest masters,—Rabelais, Shakspeare in comedy, Cervantes, Butler,
and Burns. If I should add another name, I find it only in a living
countryman of Burns.[211]
He is an exceptional genius. The people who care nothing for literature
and poetry care for Burns. It was indifferent—they thought who saw
him—whether he wrote verse or not: he could have done anything else as
well. Yet how true a poet is he! And the poet, too, of poor men, of
gray hodden and the guernsey coat and the blouse. He has given voice
to all the experiences of common life; he has endeared the farmhouse
and cottage, patches and poverty, beans and barley; ale, the poor man’s
wine; hardship; the fear of debt; the dear society of weans and wife, of
brothers and sisters, proud of each other, knowing so few and finding
amends for want and obscurity in books and thoughts.[212] What a love of
Nature, and, shall I say it? of middle-class Nature. Not like Goethe, in
the stars, or like Byron, in the ocean, or Moore, in the luxurious East,
but in the homely landscape which the poor see around them,—bleak leagues
of pasture and stubble, ice and sleet and rain and snow-choked brooks;
birds, hares, field-mice, thistles and heather, which he daily knew. How
many “Bonny Doons” and “John Anderson my jo’s” and “Auld lang synes” all
around the earth have his verses been applied to! And his love-songs
still woo and melt the youths and maids; the farm-work, the country
holiday, the fishing-cobble are still his debtors to-day.
And as he was thus the poet of the poor, anxious, cheerful, working
humanity, so had he the language of low life. He grew up in a rural
district, speaking a _patois_ unintelligible to all but natives, and
he has made the Lowland Scotch a Doric dialect of fame. It is the only
example in history of a language made classic by the genius of a single
man. But more than this. He had that secret of genius to draw from the
bottom of society the strength of its speech, and astonish the ears of
the polite with these artless words, better than art, and filtered of all
offence through his beauty. It seemed odious to Luther that the devil
should have all the best tunes; he would bring them into the churches;
and Burns knew how to take from fairs and gypsies, blacksmiths and
drovers, the speech of the market and street, and clothe it with melody.
But I am detaining you too long. The memory of Burns,—I am afraid heaven
and earth have taken too good care of it to leave us anything to say. The
west winds are murmuring it. Open the windows behind you, and hearken for
the incoming tide, what the waves say of it. The doves perching always
on the eaves of the Stone Chapel opposite, may know something about
it. Every name in broad Scotland keeps his fame bright. The memory of
Burns,—every man’s, every boy’s and girl’s head carries snatches of his
songs, and they say them by heart, and, what is strangest of all, never
learned them from a book, but from mouth to mouth. The wind whispers
them, the birds whistle them, the corn, barley, and bulrushes hoarsely
rustle them, nay, the music-boxes at Geneva are framed and toothed to
play them; the hand-organs of the Savoyards in all cities repeat them,
and the chimes of bells ring them in the spires. They are the property
and the solace of mankind.[213]
XXIII
REMARKS
AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE THREE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF
SHAKSPEARE BY THE SATURDAY CLUB AT THE REVERE HOUSE, BOSTON, 1864
England’s genius filled all measure
Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,
Gave to mind its emperor
And life was larger than before;
And centuries brood, nor can attain
The sense and bound of Shakspeare’s brain.
The men who lived with him became
Poets, for the air was fame.
SHAKSPEARE
’Tis not our fault if we have not made this evening’s circle still
richer than it is. We seriously endeavored, besides our brothers and
our seniors, on whom the ordinary lead of literary and social action
falls—and falls because of their ability—to draw out of their retirements
a few rarer lovers of the muse—“seld-seen flamens”—whom this day seemed
to elect and challenge. And it is to us a painful disappointment that
Bryant and Whittier as guests, and our own Hawthorne,—with the best
will to come,—should have found it impossible at last; and again, that
a well-known and honored compatriot, who first in Boston wrote elegant
verse, and on Shakspeare, and whose American devotion through forty or
fifty years to the affairs of a bank, has not been able to bury the fires
of his genius,—Mr. Charles Sprague,—pleads the infirmities of age as an
absolute bar to his presence with us.
We regret also the absence of our members Sumner and Motley.
We can hardly think of an occasion where so little need be said. We are
all content to let Shakspeare speak for himself. His fame is settled
on the foundations of the moral and intellectual world. Wherever there
are men, and in the degree in which they are civil—have power of mind,
sensibility to beauty, music, the secrets of passion, and the liquid
expression of thought, he has risen to his place as the first poet of the
world.
Genius is the consoler of our mortal condition, and Shakspeare taught us
that the little world of the heart is vaster, deeper and richer than the
spaces of astronomy. What shocks of surprise and sympathetic power, this
battery, which he is, imparts to every fine mind that is born! We say to
the young child in the cradle, ‘Happy, and defended against Fate! for
here is Nature, and here is Shakspeare, waiting for you!’
’Tis our metre of culture. He is a cultivated man—who can tell us
something new of Shakspeare. All criticism is only a making of rules out
of his beauties. He is as superior to his countrymen, as to all other
countrymen. He fulfilled the famous prophecy of Socrates, that the poet
most excellent in tragedy would be most excellent in comedy, and more
than fulfilled it by making tragedy also a victorious melody which
healed its own wounds. In short, Shakspeare is the one resource of our
life on which no gloom gathers; the fountain of joy which honors him who
tastes it; day without night; pleasure without repentance; the genius
which, in unpoetic ages, keeps poetry in honor and, in sterile periods,
keeps up the credit of the human mind.
His genius has reacted on himself. Men were so astonished and occupied
by his poems that they have not been able to see his face and condition,
or say, who was his father and his brethren; or what life he led; and at
the short distance of three hundred years he is mythical, like Orpheus
and Homer, and we have already seen the most fantastic theories plausibly
urged, as that Raleigh and Bacon were the authors of the plays.
Yet we pause expectant before the genius of Shakspeare—as if his
biography were not yet written; until the problem of the whole English
race is solved.
I see, among the lovers of this catholic genius, here present, a few,
whose deeper knowledge invites me to hazard an article of my literary
creed; that Shakspeare, by his transcendant reach of thought, so
unites the extremes, that, whilst he has kept the theatre now for three
centuries, and, like a street-bible, furnishes sayings to the market,
courts of law, the senate, and common discourse,—he is yet to all wise
men the companion of the closet. The student finds the solitariest place
not solitary enough to read him; and so searching is his penetration, and
such the charm of his speech, that he still agitates the heart in age as
in youth, and will, until it ceases to beat.
Young men of a contemplative turn carry his sonnets in the pocket. With
that book, the shade of any tree, a room in any inn, becomes a chapel or
oratory in which to sit out their happiest hours. Later they find riper
and manlier lessons in the plays.
And secondly, he is the most robust and potent thinker that ever was. I
find that it was not history, courts and affairs that gave him lessons,
but he that gave grandeur and prestige to them. There never was a writer
who, seeming to draw every hint from outward history, the life of cities
and courts, owed them so little. You shall never find in this world
the barons or kings he depicted. ’Tis fine for Englishmen to say, they
only know history by Shakspeare. The palaces they compass earth and
sea to enter, the magnificence and personages of royal and imperial
abodes, are shabby imitations and caricatures of his,—clumsy pupils of
his instruction. There are no Warwicks, no Talbots, no Bolingbrokes,
no Cardinals, no Harry Fifth, in real Europe, like his. The loyalty
and royalty he drew were all his own. The real Elizabeths, Jameses and
Louises were painted sticks before this magician.
The unaffected joy of the comedy,—he lives in a gale,—contrasted with the
grandeur of the tragedy, where he stoops to no contrivance, no pulpiting,
but flies an eagle at the heart of the problem; where his speech is a
Delphi,—the great Nemesis that he is and utters. What a great heart of
equity is he! How good and sound and inviolable his innocency, that is
never to seek, and never wrong, but speaks the pure sense of humanity
on each occasion. He dwarfs all writers without a solitary exception.
No egotism. The egotism of men is immense. It concealed Shakspeare for
a century. His mind has a superiority such that the universities should
read lectures on him, and conquer the unconquerable if they can.
There are periods fruitful of great men; others, barren; or, as the world
is always equal to itself, periods when the heat is latent,—others when
it is given out.
They are like the great wine years,—the vintage of 1847, is it? or
1835?—which are not only noted in the carte of the table d’hôte, but
which, it is said, are always followed by new vivacity in the politics of
Europe. His birth marked a great wine year when wonderful grapes ripened
in the vintage of God, when Shakspeare and Galileo were born within a
few months of each other, and Cervantes was his exact contemporary, and,
in short space before and after, Montaigne, Bacon, Spenser, Raleigh and
Jonson. Yet Shakspeare, not by any inferiority of theirs, but simply by
his colossal proportions, dwarfs the geniuses of Elizabeth as easily as
the wits of Anne, or the poor slipshod troubadours of King René.
In our ordinary experience of men there are some men so born to live well
that, in whatever company they fall,—high or low,—they fit well, and
lead it! but, being advanced to a higher class, they are just as much in
their element as before, and easily command: and being again preferred to
selecter companions, find no obstacle to ruling these as they did their
earlier mates; I suppose because they have more humanity than talent,
whilst they have quite as much of the last as any of the company. It
would strike you as comic, if I should give my own customary examples of
this elasticity, though striking enough to me. I could name in this very
company—or not going far out of it—very good types, but in order to be
parliamentary, Franklin, Burns and Walter Scott are examples of the rule;
and king of men, by this grace of God also, is Shakspeare.
The Pilgrims came to Plymouth in 1620. The plays of Shakspeare were not
published until three years later. Had they been published earlier, our
forefathers, or the most poetical among them, might have stayed at home
to read them.
XXIV
HUMBOLDT
AN ABSTRACT OF MR. EMERSON’S REMARKS MADE AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE
CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, SEPTEMBER
14, 1869
“If a life prolonged to an advanced period bring with
it several inconveniences to the individual, there is a
compensation in the delight of being able to compare older
states of knowledge with that which now exists, and to see
great advances in knowledge develop themselves under our eyes
in departments which had long slept in inactivity.”
HUMBOLDT, _Letter to Ritter_.
HUMBOLDT
Humboldt was one of those wonders of the world, like Aristotle, like
Julius Cæsar, like the Admirable Crichton, who appear from time to
time, as if to show us the possibilities of the human mind, the force
and the range of the faculties,—a universal man, not only possessed of
great particular talents, but they were symmetrical, his parts were well
put together. As we know, a man’s natural powers are often a sort of
committee that slowly, one at a time, give their attention and action;
but Humboldt’s were all united, one electric chain, so that a university,
a whole French Academy, travelled in his shoes. With great propriety, he
named his sketch of the results of science Cosmos. There is no other such
survey or surveyor. The wonderful Humboldt, with his solid centre and
expanded wings, marches like an army, gathering all things as he goes.
How he reaches from science to science, from law to law, folding away
moons and asteroids and solar systems in the clauses and parentheses of
his encyclopædic paragraphs! There is no book like it; none indicating
such a battalion of powers. You could not put him on any sea or shore
but his instant recollection of every other sea or shore illuminated this.
He was properly a man of the world; you could not lose him; you could
not detain him; you could not disappoint him, for at any point on land
or sea he found the objects of his researches. When he was stopped in
Spain and could not get away, he turned round and interpreted their
mountain system, explaining the past history of the continent of Europe.
He belonged to that wonderful German nation, the foremost scholars in
all history, who surpass all others in industry, space and endurance.
A German reads a literature whilst we are reading a book. One of their
writers warns his countrymen that it is not the Battle of Leipsic,
but the Leipsic Fair Catalogue, which raises them above the French.
I remember Cuvier tells us of fossil elephants; that Germany has
furnished the greatest number;—not because there are more elephants in
Germany,—oh no; but because in that empire there is no canton without
some well-informed person capable of making researches and publishing
interesting results. I know that we have been accustomed to think they
were too good scholars, that because they reflect, they never resolve,
that “in a crisis no plan-maker was to be found in the empire;” but we
have lived to see now, for the second time in the history of Prussia, a
statesman of the first class, with a clear head and an inflexible will.
XXV
WALTER SCOTT
REMARKS AT THE CELEBRATION BY THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF THE
CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH, AUGUST 15, 1871
SCOTT, the delight of generous boys.
As far as Sir Walter Scott aspired to be known for a fine
gentleman, so far our sympathies leave him.... Our concern is
only with the residue, where the man Scott was warmed with a
divine ray that clad with beauty every sheet of water, every
bald hill in the country he looked upon, and so reanimated the
well-nigh obsolete feudal history and illustrated every hidden
corner of a barren and disagreeable territory.
Lecture, “Being and Seeing,” 1838.
WALTER SCOTT
The memory of Sir Walter Scott is dear to this Society, of which he was
for ten years an honorary member. If only as an eminent antiquary who
has shed light on the history of Europe and of the English race, he
had high claims to our regard. But to the rare tribute of a centennial
anniversary of his birthday, which we gladly join with Scotland, and
indeed with Europe, to keep, he is not less entitled—perhaps he alone
among literary men of this century is entitled—by the exceptional debt
which all English-speaking men have gladly owed to his character and
genius. I think no modern writer has inspired his readers with such
affection to his own personality. I can well remember as far back as
when The Lord of the Isles was first republished in Boston, in 1815,—my
own and my school-fellows’ joy in the book.[214] Marmion and The Lay
had gone before, but we were then learning to spell. In the face of the
later novels, we still claim that his poetry is the delight of boys.
But this means that when we reopen these old books we all consent to be
boys again. We tread over our youthful grounds with joy. Critics have
found them to be only rhymed prose. But I believe that many of those
who read them in youth, when, later, they come to dismiss finally their
school-days’ library, will make some fond exception for Scott as for
Byron.
It is easy to see the origin of his poems. His own ear had been charmed
by old ballads crooned by Scottish dames at firesides, and written
down from their lips by antiquaries; and finding them now outgrown and
dishonored by the new culture, he attempted to dignify and adapt them to
the times in which he lived. Just so much thought, so much picturesque
detail in dialogue or description as the old ballad required, so much
suppression of details and leaping to the event, he would keep and use,
but without any ambition to write a high poem after a classic model.
He made no pretension to the lofty style of Spenser, or Milton, or
Wordsworth. Compared with their purified songs, purified of all ephemeral
color or material, his were _vers de société_. But he had the skill
proper to _vers de société_,—skill to fit his verse to his topic, and not
to write solemn pentameters alike on a hero or a spaniel. His good sense
probably elected the ballad to make his audience larger. He apprehended
in advance the immense enlargement of the reading public, which almost
dates from the era of his books,—which his books and Byron’s inaugurated;
and which, though until then unheard of, has become familiar to the
present time.
If the success of his poems, however large, was partial, that of his
novels was complete. The tone of strength in Waverley at once announced
the master, and was more than justified by the superior genius of the
following romances, up to the Bride of Lammermoor, which almost goes back
to Æschylus for a counterpart as a painting of Fate,—leaving on every
reader the impression of the highest and purest tragedy.[215]
His power on the public mind rests on the singular union of two
influences. By nature, by his reading and taste an aristocrat, in a
time and country which easily gave him that bias, he had the virtues
and graces of that class, and by his eminent humanity and his love of
labor escaped its harm. He saw in the English Church the symbol and seal
of all social order; in the historical aristocracy the benefits to the
state which Burke claimed for it; and in his own reading and research
such store of legend and renown as won his imagination to their cause.
Not less his eminent humanity delighted in the sense and virtue and
wit of the common people. In his own household and neighbors he found
characters and pets of humble class, with whom he established the best
relation,—small farmers and tradesmen, shepherds, fishermen, gypsies,
peasant-girls, crones,—and came with these into real ties of mutual help
and good will. From these originals he drew so genially his Jeanie Deans,
his Dinmonts and Edie Ochiltrees, Caleb Balderstones and Fairservices,
Cuddie Headriggs, Dominies, Meg Merrilies, and Jenny Rintherouts, full
of life and reality; making these, too, the pivots on which the plots
of his stories turn; and meantime without one word of brag of this
discernment,—nay, this extreme sympathy reaching down to every beggar
and beggar’s dog, and horse and cow. In the number and variety of his
characters he approaches Shakspeare. Other painters in verse or prose
have thrown into literature a few type-figures; as Cervantes, De Foe,
Richardson, Goldsmith, Sterne and Fielding; but Scott portrayed with
equal strength and success every figure in his crowded company.
His strong good sense saved him from the faults and foibles incident to
poets,—from nervous egotism, sham modesty or jealousy. He played ever a
manly part.[216] With such a fortune and such a genius, we should look to
see what heavy toll the Fates took of him, as of Rousseau or Voltaire, of
Swift or Byron. But no: he had no insanity, or vice, or blemish. He was a
thoroughly upright, wise and great-hearted man, equal to whatever event
or fortune should try him. Disasters only drove him to immense exertion.
What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet
and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities.
Under what rare conjunction of stars was this man born, that, wherever he
lived, he found superior men, passed all his life in the best company,
and still found himself the best of the best! He was apprenticed at
Edinburgh to a Writer to the Signet, and became a Writer to the Signet,
and found himself in his youth and manhood and age in the society of
Mackintosh, Horner, Jeffrey, Playfair, Dugald Stewart, Sydney Smith,
Leslie, Sir William Hamilton, Wilson, Hogg, De Quincey,—to name only some
of his literary neighbors, and, as soon as he died, all this brilliant
circle was broken up.
XXVI
SPEECH
AT BANQUET IN HONOR OF THE CHINESE EMBASSY BOSTON, 1860
Nature creates in the East the uncontrollable yearning to
escape from limitation into the vast and boundless, to use a
freedom of fancy which plays with all works of Nature, great
or minute, galaxy or grain of dust, as toys and words of
the mind; inculcates a beatitude to be found in escape from
all organization and all personality, and makes ecstasy an
institution.
SPEECH
AT THE BANQUET IN HONOR OF THE CHINESE EMBASSY
MR. MAYOR: I suppose we are all of one opinion on this remarkable
occasion of meeting the embassy sent from the oldest Empire in the world
to the youngest Republic. All share the surprise and pleasure when
the venerable Oriental dynasty—hitherto a romantic legend to most of
us—suddenly steps into the fellowship of nations. This auspicious event,
considered in connection with the late innovations in Japan, marks a new
era, and is an irresistible result of the science which has given us the
power of steam and the electric telegraph. It is the more welcome for the
surprise. We had said of China, as the old prophet said of Egypt, “Her
strength is to sit still.” Her people had such elemental conservatism
that by some wonderful force of race and national manners, the wars and
revolutions that occur in her annals have proved but momentary swells
or surges on the pacific ocean of her history, leaving no trace. But in
its immovability this race has claims. China is old, not in time only,
but in wisdom, which is gray hair to a nation,—or, rather, truly seen,
is eternal youth. As we know, China had the magnet centuries before
Europe; and block-printing or stereotype, and lithography, and gunpowder,
and vaccination, and canals; had anticipated Linnæus’s nomenclature
of plants; had codes, journals, clubs, hackney coaches, and, thirty
centuries before New York, had the custom of New Year’s calls of comity
and reconciliation. I need not mention its useful arts,—its pottery
indispensable to the world, the luxury of silks, and its tea, the cordial
of nations. But I must remember that she has respectable remains of
astronomic science, and historic records of forgotten time, that have
supplied important gaps in the ancient history of the western nations.
Then she has philosophers who cannot be spared. Confucius has not yet
gathered all his fame. When Socrates heard that the oracle declared that
he was the wisest of men, he said, it must mean that other men held that
they were wise, but that he knew that he knew nothing. Confucius had
already affirmed this of himself: and what we call the GOLDEN RULE OF
JESUS, Confucius had uttered in the same terms five hundred years before.
His morals, though addressed to a state of society unlike ours, we read
with profit to-day. His rare perception appears in his GOLDEN MEAN, his
doctrine of Reciprocity, his unerring insight,—putting always the blame
of our misfortunes on ourselves; as when to the governor who complained
of thieves, he said, “If you, sir, were not covetous, though you should
reward them for it, they would not steal.” His ideal of greatness
predicts Marcus Antoninus. At the same time, he abstained from paradox,
and met the ingrained prudence of his nation by saying always, “Bend one
cubit to straighten eight.”
China interests us at this moment in a point of politics. I am sure that
gentlemen around me bear in mind the bill which the Hon. Mr. Jenckes of
Rhode Island has twice attempted to carry through Congress, requiring
that candidates for public offices shall first pass examinations on their
literary qualifications for the same. Well, China has preceded us, as
well as England and France, in this essential correction of a reckless
usage; and the like high esteem of education appears in China in social
life, to whose distinctions it is made an indispensable passport.
It is gratifying to know that the advantages of the new intercourse
between the two countries are daily manifest on the Pacific coast. The
immigrants from Asia come in crowds. Their power of continuous labor,
their versatility in adapting themselves to new conditions, their stoical
economy, are unlooked-for virtues. They send back to their friends, in
China, money, new products of art, new tools, machinery, new foods, etc.,
and are thus establishing a commerce without limit. I cannot help adding,
after what I have heard to-night, that I have read in the journals a
statement from an English source, that Sir Frederic Bruce attributed to
Mr. Burlingame the merit of the happy reform in the relations of foreign
governments to China. I am quite sure that I heard from Mr. Burlingame
in New York, in his last visit to America, that the whole merit of it
belonged to Sir Frederic Bruce. It appears that the ambassadors were
emulous in their magnanimity. It is certainly the best guaranty for the
interests of China and of humanity.
XXVII
REMARKS
AT THE MEETING FOR ORGANIZING THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION, BOSTON MAY
30, 1867
In many forms we try
To utter God’s infinity,
But the Boundless hath no form,
And the Universal Friend
Doth as far transcend
An angel as a worm.
The great Idea baffles wit,
Language falters under it,
It leaves the learned in the lurch;
Nor art, nor power, nor toil can find
The measure of the eternal Mind,
Nor hymn nor prayer nor church.
REMARKS
AT THE MEETING FOR ORGANIZING THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION
MR. CHAIRMAN: I hardly felt, in finding this house this morning, that I
had come into the right hall. I came, as I supposed myself summoned, to a
little committee meeting, for some practical end, where I should happily
and humbly learn my lesson; and I supposed myself no longer subject to
your call when I saw this house. I have listened with great pleasure to
the lessons which we have heard. To many, to those last spoken, I have
found so much in accord with my own thought that I have little left to
say. I think that it does great honor to the sensibility of the committee
that they have felt the universal demand in the community for just the
movement they have begun. I say again, in the phrase used by my friend,
that we began many years ago,—yes, and many ages before that. But I think
the necessity very great, and it has prompted an equal magnanimity, that
thus invites all classes, all religious men, whatever their connections,
whatever their specialties, in whatever relation they stand to the
Christian Church, to unite in a movement of benefit to men, under the
sanction of religion. We are all very sensible—it is forced on us every
day—of the feeling that churches are outgrown; that the creeds are
outgrown; that a technical theology no longer suits us. It is not the ill
will of people—no, indeed, but the incapacity for confining themselves
there. The church is not large enough for the man; it cannot inspire
the enthusiasm which is the parent of everything good in history, which
makes the romance of history. For that enthusiasm you must have something
greater than yourselves, and not less.
The child, the young student, finds scope in his mathematics and
chemistry or natural history, because he finds a truth larger than he is;
finds himself continually instructed. But, in churches, every healthy and
thoughtful mind finds itself in something less; it is checked, cribbed,
confined. And the statistics of the American, the English and the German
cities, showing that the mass of the population is leaving off going to
church, indicate the necessity, which should have been foreseen, that
the Church should always be new and extemporized, because it is eternal
and springs from the sentiment of men, or it does not exist.[217] One
wonders sometimes that the churches still retain so many votaries, when
he reads the histories of the Church. There is an element of childish
infatuation in them which does not exalt our respect for man. Read in
Michelet, that in Europe, for twelve or fourteen centuries, God the
Father had no temple and no altar. The Holy Ghost and the Son of Mary
were worshipped, and in the thirteenth century the First Person began to
appear at the side of his Son, in pictures and in sculpture, for worship,
but only through favor of his Son. These mortifying puerilities abound
in religious history. But as soon as every man is apprised of the Divine
Presence within his own mind,—is apprised that the perfect law of duty
corresponds with the laws of chemistry, of vegetation, of astronomy, as
face to face in a glass; that the basis of duty, the order of society,
the power of character, the wealth of culture, the perfection of taste,
all draw their essence from this moral sentiment, then we have a religion
that exalts, that commands all the social and all the private action.
What strikes me in the sudden movement which brings together to-day
so many separated friends,—separated but sympathetic,—and what I
expected to find here, was some practical suggestions by which we were
to reanimate and reorganize for ourselves the true Church, the pure
worship. Pure doctrine always bears fruit in pure benefits. It is only
by good works, it is only on the basis of active duty, that worship
finds expression. What is best in the ancient religions was the sacred
friendships between heroes, the Sacred Bands, and the relations of the
Pythagorean disciples. Our Masonic institutions probably grew from the
like origin. The close association which bound the first disciples of
Jesus is another example; and it were easy to find more. The soul of
our late war, which will always be remembered as dignifying it, was,
first, the desire to abolish slavery in this country, and secondly,
to abolish the mischief of the war itself, by healing and saving the
sick and wounded soldiers,—and this by the sacred bands of the Sanitary
Commission. I wish that the various beneficent institutions which are
springing up, like joyful plants of wholesomeness, all over this country,
should all be remembered as within the sphere of this committee,—almost
all of them are represented here,—and that within this little band that
has gathered here to-day, should grow friendship. The interests that
grow out of a meeting like this should bind us with new strength to the
old eternal duties.
XXVIII
SPEECH
AT THE SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION, AT
TREMONT TEMPLE FRIDAY, MAY 28, 1869
Thou metest him by centuries,
And lo! he passes like the breeze;
Thou seek’st in globe and galaxy,
He hides in pure transparency;
Thou ask’st in fountains and in fires,
He is the essence that inquires.
SPEECH
AT SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION
FRIENDS: I wish I could deserve anything of the kind expression of
my friend, the President, and the kind good will which the audience
signifies, but it is not in my power to-day to meet the natural demands
of the occasion, and, quite against my design and my will, I shall have
to request the attention of the audience to a few written remarks,
instead of the more extensive statement which I had hoped to offer them.
I think we have disputed long enough. I think we might now relinquish
our theological controversies to communities more idle and ignorant than
we. I am glad that a more realistic church is coming to be the tendency
of society, and that we are likely one day to forget our obstinate
polemics in the ambition to excel each other in good works. I have no
wish to proselyte any reluctant mind, nor, I think, have I any curiosity
or impulse to intrude on those whose ways of thinking differ from mine.
But as my friend, your presiding officer, has asked me to take at least
some small part in this day’s conversation, I am ready to give, as often
before, the first simple foundation of my belief, that the Author of
Nature has not left himself without a witness in any sane mind: that the
moral sentiment speaks to every man the law after which the Universe
was made; that we find parity, identity of design, through Nature, and
benefit to be the uniform aim: that there is a force always at work to
make the best better and the worst good.[218] We have had not long since
presented us by Max Müller a valuable paragraph from St. Augustine, not
at all extraordinary in itself, but only as coming from that eminent
Father in the Church, and at that age, in which St. Augustine writes:
“That which is now called the Christian religion existed among the
ancients, and never did not exist from the planting of the human race
until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion which
already existed began to be called Christianity.” I believe that not
only Christianity is as old as the Creation,—not only every sentiment
and precept of Christianity can be paralleled in other religious
writings,—but more, that a man of religious susceptibility, and one at
the same time conversant with many men,—say a much-travelled man,—can
find the same idea in numberless conversations. The religious find
religion wherever they associate. When I find in people narrow religion,
I find also in them narrow reading. Nothing really is so self-publishing,
so divulgatory, as thought. It cannot be confined or hid. It is easily
carried; it takes no room; the knowledge of Europe looks out into Persia
and India, and to the very Kaffirs. Every proverb, every fine text, every
pregnant jest, travels across the line; and you will find it at Cape
Town, or among the Tartars. We are all believers in natural religion;
we all agree that the health and integrity of man is self-respect,
self-subsistency, a regard to natural conscience. All education is to
accustom him to trust himself, discriminate between his higher and lower
thoughts, exert the timid faculties until they are robust, and thus
train him to self-help, until he ceases to be an underling, a tool, and
becomes a benefactor. I think wise men wish their religion to be all of
this kind, teaching the agent to go alone, not to hang on the world as a
pensioner, a permitted person, but an adult, self-searching soul, brave
to assist or resist a world: only humble and docile before the source of
the wisdom he has discovered within him.
As it is, every believer holds a different creed; that is, all the
churches are churches of one member. All our sects have refined the point
of difference between them. The point of difference that still remains
between churches, or between classes, is in the addition to the moral
code, that is, to natural religion, of somewhat positive and historical.
I think that to be, as Mr. Abbot has stated it in his form, the one
difference remaining. I object, of course, to the claim of miraculous
dispensation,—certainly not to the _doctrine_ of Christianity.[219]
This claim impairs, to my mind, the soundness of him who makes it, and
indisposes us to his communion. This comes the wrong way; it comes from
without, not within. This positive, historical, authoritative scheme is
not consistent with our experience or our expectations. It is something
not in Nature: it is contrary to that law of Nature which all wise men
recognize; namely, never to require a larger cause than is necessary
to the effect. George Fox, the Quaker, said that, though he read of
Christ and God, he knew them only from the like spirit in his own soul.
We want all the aids to our moral training. We cannot spare the vision
nor the virtue of the saints; but let it be by pure sympathy, not with
any personal or official claim. If you are childish, and exhibit your
saint as a worker of wonders, a thaumaturgist, I am repelled. That claim
takes his teachings out of logic and out of nature, and permits official
and arbitrary senses to be grafted on the teachings. It is the praise
of our New Testament that its teachings go to the honor and benefit of
humanity,—that no better lesson has been taught or incarnated. Let it
stand, beautiful and wholesome, with whatever is most like it in the
teaching and practice of men; but do not attempt to elevate it out of
humanity, by saying, ‘This was not a man,’ for then you confound it with
the fables of every popular religion, and my distrust of the story makes
me distrust the doctrine as soon as it differs from my own belief.
Whoever thinks a story gains by the prodigious, by adding something
out of nature, robs it more than he adds. It is no longer an example,
a model; no longer a heart-stirring hero, but an exhibition, a wonder,
an anomaly, removed out of the range of influence with thoughtful men.
I submit that in sound frame of mind, we read or remember the religious
sayings and oracles of other men, whether Jew or Indian, or Greek or
Persian, only for friendship, only for joy in the social identity which
they open to us, and that these words would have no weight with us if
we had not the same conviction already. I find something stingy in the
unwilling and disparaging admission of these foreign opinions—opinions
from all parts of the world—by our churchmen, as if only to enhance by
their dimness the superior light of Christianity. Meantime, observe, you
cannot bring me too good a word, too dazzling a hope, too penetrating
an insight from the Jews. I hail every one with delight, as showing the
riches of my brother, my fellow soul, who could thus think and thus
greatly feel. Zealots eagerly fasten their eyes on the differences
between their creed and yours, but the charm of the study is in finding
the agreements, the identities, in all the religions of men.[220]
I am glad to hear each sect complain that they do not now hold the
opinions they are charged with. The earth moves, and the mind opens. I
am glad to believe society contains a class of humble souls who enjoy
the luxury of a religion that does not degrade; who think it the highest
worship to expect of Heaven the most and the best; who do not wonder
that there was a Christ, but that there were not a thousand; who have
conceived an infinite hope for mankind; who believe that the history of
Jesus is the history of every man, written large.[221]
XXIX
ADDRESS
AT THE OPENING OF THE CONCORD FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY
The bishop of Cavaillon, Petrarch’s friend, in a playful
experiment locked up the poet’s library, intending to exclude
him from it for three days, but the poet’s misery caused him
to restore the key on the first evening. “And I verily believe
I should have become insane,” says Petrarch, “if my mind had
longer been deprived of its necessary nourishment.”
ADDRESS
AT THE OPENING OF THE CONCORD FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY
The people of Massachusetts prize the simple political arrangement
of towns, each independent in its local government, electing its own
officers, assessing its taxes, caring for its schools, its charities,
its highways. That town is attractive to its native citizens and to
immigrants which has a healthy site, good land, good roads, good
sidewalks, a good hotel; still more, if it have an adequate town hall,
good churches, good preachers, good schools, and if it avail itself
of the Act of the Legislature authorizing towns to tax themselves for
the establishment of a public library. Happier, if it contain citizens
who cannot wait for the slow growth of the population to make these
advantages adequate to the desires of the people, but make costly gifts
to education, civility and culture, as in the act we are met to witness
and acknowledge to-day.
I think we cannot easily overestimate the benefit conferred. In the
details of this munificence, we may all anticipate a sudden and lasting
prosperity to this ancient town, in the benefit of a noble library, which
adds by the beauty of the building, and its skilful arrangement, a quite
new attraction,—making readers of those who are not readers,—making
scholars of those who only read newspapers or novels until now; and
whilst it secures a new and needed culture to our citizens, offering a
strong attraction to strangers who are seeking a country home to sit down
here. And I am not sure that when Boston learns the good deed of Mr.
Munroe, it will not be a little envious, nor rest until it has annexed
Concord to the city. Our founder has found the many admirable examples
which have lately honored the country, of benefactors who have not waited
to bequeath colleges and hospitals, but have themselves built them,
reminding us of Sir Isaac Newton’s saying, “that they who give nothing
before their death, never in fact give at all.”
I think it is not easy to exaggerate the utility of the beneficence which
takes this form. If you consider what has befallen you when reading
a poem, or a history, or a tragedy, or a novel, even, that deeply
interested you,—how you forgot the time of day, the persons sitting in
the room, and the engagements for the evening, you will easily admit the
wonderful property of books to make all towns equal: that Concord Library
makes Concord as good as Rome, Paris or London, for the hour;—has the
best of each of those cities in itself. Robinson Crusoe, could he have
had a shelf of our books, could almost have done without his man Friday,
or even the arriving ship.
Every faculty casts itself into an art, and memory into the art of
writing, that is, the book. The sedge _Papyrus_, which gave its name to
our word paper, is of more importance to history than cotton, or silver,
or gold. Its first use for writing is between three and four thousand
years old, and though it hardly grows now in Egypt, where I lately looked
for it in vain, I always remember with satisfaction that I saw that
venerable plant in 1833, growing wild at Syracuse, in Sicily, near the
fountain of Arethusa.
The chairman of Mr. Munroe’s trustees has told you how old is the
foundation of our village library, and we think we can trace in our
modest records a correspondent effect of culture amidst our citizens. A
deep religious sentiment is, in all times, an inspirer of the intellect,
and that was not wanting here. The town was settled by a pious company
of non-conformists from England, and the printed books of their pastor
and leader, Rev. Peter Bulkeley, sometime fellow of Saint John’s College
in Cambridge, England, testify the ardent sentiment which they shared.
“There is no people,” said he to his little flock of exiles, “but will
strive to excel in something. What can we excel in if not in holiness?
If we look to number, we are the fewest; if to strength, we are the
weakest; if to wealth and riches, we are the poorest of all the people
of God through the whole world. We cannot excel, nor so much as equal
other people in these things, and if we come short in grace and holiness
too, we are the most despicable people under heaven. Strive we therefore
herein to excel, and suffer not this crown to be taken away from us.”[222]
The religious bias of our founders had its usual effect to secure an
education to read their Bible and hymn-book, and thence the step was easy
for active minds to an acquaintance with history and with poetry. Peter
Bulkeley sent his son John to the first class that graduated at Harvard
College in 1642, and two sons to later classes. Major Simon Willard’s son
Samuel graduated at Harvard in 1659, and was for six years, from 1701 to
1707, vice-president of the college; and his son Joseph was president of
the college from 1781 to 1804; and Concord counted fourteen graduates of
Harvard in its first century, and its representation there increased with
its gross population.[223]
I possess the manuscript journal of a lady, native of this town (and
descended from three of its clergymen), who removed into Maine, where she
possessed a farm and a modest income. She was much addicted to journeying
and not less to reading, and whenever she arrived in a town where was a
good minister who had a library, she would persuade him to receive her
as a boarder, and would stay until she had looked over all his volumes
which were to her taste. On a very cold day, she writes in her diary,
“Life truly resembles a river—ever the same—never the same; and perhaps
a greater variety of internal emotions would be felt by remaining with
books in one place than pursuing the waves which are ever the same. Is
the melancholy bird of night, covered with the dark foliage of the willow
and cypress, less gratified than the gay lark amid the flowers and suns?
I think that you never enjoy so much as in solitude with a book that
meets the feelings,” and in reference to her favorite authors, she adds,
“The delight in others’ superiority is my best gift from God.”[224]
Lemuel Shattuck, by his history of the town, has made all of us grateful
to his memory as a careful student and chronicler; but events so
important have occurred in the forty years since that book was published,
that it now needs a second volume.
Henry Thoreau we all remember as a man of genius, and of marked
character, known to our farmers as the most skilful of surveyors, and
indeed better acquainted with their forests and meadows and trees than
themselves, but more widely known as the writer of some of the best books
which have been written in this country, and which, I am persuaded, have
not yet gathered half their fame. He, too, was an excellent reader.
No man would have rejoiced more than he in the event of this day. In
a private letter to a lady, he writes, “Do you read any noble verses?
For my part, they have been the only things I remembered,—or that which
occasioned them,—when all things else were blurred and defaced.[225]
All things have put on mourning but they: for the elegy itself is some
victorious melody in you, escaping from the wreck. It is a relief to read
some true books wherein all are equally dead, equally alive. I think the
best parts of Shakspeare would only be enhanced by the most thrilling and
affecting events. I have found it so: and all the more, that they are not
intended for consolation.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s residence in the Manse gave new interest to that
house whose windows overlooked the retreat of the British soldiers in
1775, and his careful studies of Concord life and history are known
wherever the English language is spoken.[226]
I know the word literature has in many ears a hollow sound. It is thought
to be the harmless entertainment of a few fanciful persons, and not at
all to be the interest of the multitude. To these objections, which
proceed on the cheap notion that nothing but what grinds corn, roasts
mutton and weaves cotton, is anything worth, I have little to say.
There are utilitarians who prefer that Jesus should have wrought as a
carpenter, and Saint Paul as a tent-maker. But literature is the record
of the best thoughts. Every attainment and discipline which increases a
man’s acquaintance with the invisible world lifts his being. Everything
that gives him a new perception of beauty multiplies his pure enjoyments.
A river of thought is always running out of the invisible world into
the mind of man. Shall not they who received the largest streams spread
abroad the healing waters?
It was the symbolical custom of the ancient Mexican priests, after the
annual extinction of the household fires of their land, to procure in
the temple fire from the sun, and thence distribute it as a sacred gift
to every hearth in the nation. It is a just type of the service rendered
to mankind by wise men. Homer and Plato and Pindar and Shakspeare serve
many more than have heard their names. Thought is the most volatile of
all things. It cannot be contained in any cup, though you shut the lid
never so tight. Once brought into the world, it runs over the vessel
which received it into all minds that love it. The very language we speak
thinks for us by the subtle distinctions which already are marked for us
by its words, and every one of these is the contribution of the wit of
one and another sagacious man in all the centuries of time.
Consider that it is our own state of mind at any time that makes our
estimate of life and the world. If you sprain your foot, you will
presently come to think that Nature has sprained hers. Everything begins
to look so slow and inaccessible. And when you sprain your mind, by
gloomy reflection on your failures and vexations, you come to have a bad
opinion of life. Think how indigent Nature must appear to the blind,
the deaf, and the idiot. Now if you can kindle the imagination by a
new thought, by heroic histories, by uplifting poetry, instantly you
expand,—are cheered, inspired, and become wise, and even prophetic. Music
works this miracle for those who have a good ear; what omniscience has
music! so absolutely impersonal, and yet every sufferer feels his secret
sorrow reached. Yet to a scholar the book is as good or better. There is
no hour of vexation which on a little reflection will not find diversion
and relief in the library. His companions are few: at the moment, he has
none: but, year by year, these silent friends supply their place. Many
times the reading of a book has made the fortune of the man,—has decided
his way of life. It makes friends. ’Tis a tie between men to have been
delighted with the same book. Every one of us is always in search of his
friend, and when unexpectedly he finds a stranger enjoying the rare poet
or thinker who is dear to his own solitude,—it is like finding a brother.
Dr. Johnson hearing that Adam Smith, whom he had once met, relished
rhyme, said, “If I had known that, I should have hugged him.”
We expect a great man to be a good reader, or in proportion to the
spontaneous power should be the assimilating power. There is a wonderful
agreement among eminent men of all varieties of character and condition
in their estimate of books. Julius Cæsar, when shipwrecked, and forced
to swim for life, did not gather his gold, but took his Commentaries
between his teeth and swam for the shore. Even the wild and warlike
Arab Mahomet said, “Men are either learned or learning: the rest are
blockheads.” The great Duke of Marlborough could not encamp without his
Shakspeare. The Duchess d’Abrantes, wife of Marshal Junot, tells us that
Bonaparte, in hastening out of France to join his army in Germany, tossed
his journals and books out of his travelling carriage as fast as he had
read them, and strewed the highway with pamphlets. Napoleon’s reading
could not be large, but his criticism is sometimes admirable, as reported
by Las Casas; and Napoleon was an excellent writer. Montesquieu, one of
the greatest minds that France has produced, writes: “The love of study
is in us almost the only eternal passion. All the others quit us in
proportion as this miserable machine which gives them to us approaches
its ruin. Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against the disgusts
of life, never having had a chagrin which an hour of reading has not put
to flight.” Hear the testimony of Seldon, the oracle of the English House
of Commons in Cromwell’s time. “Patience is the chiefest fruit of study.
A man, that strives to make himself a different thing from other men
by much reading gains this chiefest good, that in all fortunes he hath
something to entertain and comfort himself withal.”
I have found several humble men and women who gave as affectionate, if
not as judicious testimony to their readings. One curious witness was
that of a Shaker who, when showing me the houses of the Brotherhood, and
a very modest bookshelf, said there was Milton’s Paradise Lost, and some
other books in the house, and added “that he knew where they were, but he
took up a sound cross in not reading them.”
In 1618 (8th March) John Kepler came upon the discovery of the law
connecting the mean distances of the planets with the periods of their
revolution about the sun, that the squares of the times vary as the cubes
of the distances. And he writes, “It is now eighteen months since I got
the first glimpse of light,—three months since the dawn,—very few days
since the unveiled sun, most admirable to gaze on, burst out upon me.
Nothing holds me. I will indulge in my sacred fury. I will triumph over
mankind by the honest confession that I have stolen the golden vases of
the Egyptians[227] to build up a tabernacle for my God far away from the
confines of Egypt. If you forgive me, I rejoice; if you are angry, I can
bear it: the die is cast; the book is written; to be read either now or
by posterity. I care not which. It may well wait a century for a reader,
since God has waited six thousand years for an observer like myself.”
In books I have the history or the energy of the past. Angels they are to
us of entertainment, sympathy and provocation. With them many of us spend
the most of our life,—these silent guides,—these tractable prophets,
historians, and singers, whose embalmed life is the highest feat of
art; who now cast their moonlight illumination over solitude, weariness
and fallen fortunes. You say, ’tis a languid pleasure. Yes, but its
tractableness, coming and going like a dog at our bidding, compensates
the quietness, and contrasts with the slowness of fortune and the
inaccessibleness of persons.
You meet with a man of science, a good thinker or good wit,—but you do
not know how to draw out of him that which he knows. But the book is a
sure friend, always ready at your first leisure,—opens to the very page
you desire, and shuts at your first fatigue,—as possibly your professor
might not.
It is a tie between men to have read the same book, and it is a
disadvantage not to have read the book your mates have read, or not to
have read it at the same time, so that it may take the place in your
culture it does in theirs, and you shall understand their allusions to
it, and not give it more or less emphasis than they do. Yet the strong
character does not need this sameness of culture. The imagination knows
its own food in every pasture, and if it has not had the Arabian Nights,
Prince Le Boo, or Homer or Scott, has drawn equal delight and terror from
haunts and passages which you will hear of with envy.
In saying these things for books, I do not for a moment forget that they
are secondary, mere means, and only used in the off-hours, only in the
pause, and, as it were, the sleep, or passive state of the mind. The
intellect reserves all its rights. Instantly, when the mind itself wakes,
all books, all past acts are forgotten, huddled aside as impertinent
in the august presence of the creator. Their costliest benefit is that
they set us free from themselves; for they wake the imagination and the
sentiment,—and in their inspirations we dispense with books. Let me add
then,—read proudly; put the duty of being read invariably on the author.
If he is not read, whose fault is it? I am quite ready to be charmed,—but
I shall not make believe I am charmed.
But there is no end to the praise of books, to the value of the
library. Who shall estimate their influence on our population where
all the millions read and write? It is the joy of nations that man can
communicate all his thoughts, discoveries and virtues to records that may
last for centuries.
But I am pleading a cause which in the event of this day has already won:
and I am happy in the assurance that the whole assembly to whom I speak
entirely sympathize in the feeling of this town in regard to the new
Library, and its honored Founder.
XXX
THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC
“There is a mystery in the soul of state
Which hath an operation more divine
Than breath or pen can give expression to.”
THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC
It is a rule that holds in economy as well as in hydraulics that you must
have a source higher than your tap. The mills, the shops, the theatre and
the caucus, the college and the church, have all found out this secret.
The sailors sail by chronometers that do not lose two or three seconds
in a year, ever since Newton explained to Parliament that the way to
improve navigation was to get good watches, and to offer public premiums
for a better time-keeper than any then in use. The manufacturers rely on
turbines of hydraulic perfection; the carpet-mill, on mordants and dyes
which exhaust the skill of the chemist; the calico print, on designers
of genius who draw the wages of artists, not of artisans. Wedgwood,
the eminent potter, bravely took the sculptor Flaxman to counsel, who
said, “Send to Italy, search the museums for the forms of old Etruscan
vases, urns, water-pots, domestic and sacrificial vessels of all kinds.”
They built great works and called their manufacturing village Etruria.
Flaxman, with his Greek taste, selected and combined the loveliest
forms, which were executed in English clay; sent boxes of these as
gifts to every court of Europe, and formed the taste of the world. It
was a renaissance of the breakfast-table and china-closet. The brave
manufacturers made their fortune. The jewellers imitated the revived
models in silver and gold.
The theatre avails itself of the best talent of poet, of painter, and of
amateur of taste, to make the _ensemble_ of dramatic effect. The marine
insurance office has its mathematical counsellor to settle averages; the
life-assurance, its table of annuities. The wine-merchant has his analyst
and taster, the more exquisite the better. He has also, I fear, his debts
to the chemist as well as to the vineyard.
Our modern wealth stands on a few staples, and the interest nations took
in our war was exasperated by the importance of the cotton trade. And
what is cotton? One plant out of some two hundred thousand known to the
botanist, vastly the larger part of which are reckoned weeds. What is a
weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered,—every one of
the two hundred thousand probably yet to be of utility in the arts. As
Bacchus of the vine, Ceres of the wheat, as Arkwright and Whitney were
the demi-gods of cotton, so prolific Time will yet bring an inventor to
every plant. There is not a property in Nature but a mind is born to
seek and find it. For it is not the plants or the animals, innumerable
as they are, nor the whole magazine of material nature that can give
the sum of power, but the infinite applicability of these things in the
hands of thinking man, every new application being equivalent to a new
material.[228]
Our sleepy civilization, ever since Roger Bacon and Monk Schwartz
invented gunpowder, has built its whole art of war, all fortification by
land and sea, all drill and military education, on that one compound,—all
is an extension of a gun-barrel,—and is very scornful about bows and
arrows, and reckons Greeks and Romans and Middle Ages little better than
Indians and bow-and-arrow times. As if the earth, water, gases, lightning
and caloric had not a million energies, the discovery of any one of
which could change the art of war again, and put an end to war by the
exterminating forces man can apply.
Now, if this is true in all the useful and in the fine arts, that the
direction must be drawn from a superior source or there will be no good
work, does it hold less in our social and civil life?
In our popular politics you may note that each aspirant who rises above
the crowd, however at first making his obedient apprenticeship in party
tactics, if he have sagacity, soon learns that it is by no means by
obeying the vulgar weathercock of his party, the resentments, the fears
and whims of it, that real power is gained, but that he must often face
and resist the party, and abide by his resistance, and put them in
fear; that the only title to their permanent respect, and to a larger
following, is to see for himself what is the real public interest, and
to stand for that;—that is a principle, and all the cheering and hissing
of the crowd must by and by accommodate itself to it. Our times easily
afford you very good examples.
The law of water and all fluids is true of wit. Prince Metternich said,
“Revolutions begin in the best heads and run steadily down to the
populace.” It is a very old observation; not truer because Metternich
said it, and not less true.
There have been revolutions which were not in the interest of feudalism
and barbarism, but in that of society. And these are distinguished not
by the numbers of the combatants nor the numbers of the slain, but by
the motive. No interest now attaches to the wars of York and Lancaster,
to the wars of German, French and Spanish emperors, which were only
dynastic wars, but to those in which a principle was involved. These are
read with passionate interest and never lose their pathos by time. When
the cannon is aimed by ideas, when men with religious convictions are
behind it, when men die for what they live for, and the mainspring that
works daily urges them to hazard all, then the cannon articulates its
explosions with the voice of a man, then the rifle seconds the cannon and
the fowling-piece the rifle, and the women make the cartridges, and all
shoot at one mark; then gods join in the combat; then poets are born, and
the better code of laws at last records the victory.
Now the culmination of these triumphs of humanity—and which did virtually
include the extinction of slavery—is the planting of America.
At every moment some one country more than any other represents the
sentiment and the future of mankind. None will doubt that America
occupies this place in the opinion of nations, as is proved by the fact
of the vast immigration into this country from all the nations of Western
and Central Europe. And when the adventurers have planted themselves and
looked about, they send back all the money they can spare to bring their
friends.
Meantime they find this country just passing through a great crisis in
its history, as necessary as lactation or dentition or puberty to the
human individual. We are in these days settling for ourselves and our
descendants questions which, as they shall be determined in one way or
the other, will make the peace and prosperity or the calamity of the next
ages. The questions of Education, of Society, of Labor, the direction of
talent, of character, the nature and habits of the American, may well
occupy us, and more the question of Religion.
The new conditions of mankind in America are really favorable to
progress, the removal of absurd restrictions and antique inequalities.
The mind is always better the more it is used, and here it is kept
in practice. The humblest is daily challenged to give his opinion on
practical questions, and while civil and social freedom exists, nonsense
even has a favorable effect. Cant is good to provoke common sense....
The trance-mediums, the rebel paradoxes, exasperate the common sense. The
wilder the paradox, the more sure is Punch to put it in the pillory.
The lodging the power in the people, as in republican forms, has the
effect of holding things closer to common sense; for a court or an
aristocracy, which must always be a small minority, can more easily run
into follies than a republic, which has too many observers—each with a
vote in his hand—to allow its head to be turned by any kind of nonsense:
since hunger, thirst, cold, the cries of children and debt are always
holding the masses hard to the essential duties.
One hundred years ago the American people attempted to carry out the bill
of political rights to an almost ideal perfection. They have made great
strides in that direction since. They are now proceeding, instructed by
their success and by their many failures, to carry out, not the bill of
rights, but the bill of human duties.
And look what revolution that attempt involves. Hitherto government has
been that of the single person or of the aristocracy. In this country the
attempt to resist these elements, it is asserted, must throw us into the
government not quite of mobs, but in practice of an inferior class of
professional politicians, who by means of newspapers and caucuses really
thrust their unworthy minority into the place of the old aristocracy on
the one side, and of the good, industrious, well-taught but unambitious
population on the other, win the posts of power and give their direction
to affairs. Hence liberal congresses and legislatures ordain, to the
surprise of the people, equivocal, interested and vicious measures.
The men themselves are suspected and charged with lobbying and being
lobbied. No measure is attempted for itself, but the opinion of the
people is courted in the first place, and the measures are perfunctorily
carried through as secondary. We do not choose our own candidate, no, nor
any other man’s first choice,—but only the available candidate, whom,
perhaps, no man loves. We do not speak what we think, but grope after
the practicable and available. Instead of character, there is a studious
exclusion of character. The people are feared and flattered. They are
not reprimanded. The country is governed in bar-rooms, and in the mind
of bar-rooms. The low can best win the low, and each aspirant for power
vies with his rival which can stoop lowest, and depart widest from
himself.
The partisan on moral, even on religious questions, will choose a proven
rogue who can answer the tests, over an honest, affectionate, noble
gentleman; the partisan ceasing to be a man that he may be a sectarian.
The spirit of our political economy is low and degrading. The precious
metals are not so precious as they are esteemed. Man exists for his own
sake, and not to add a laborer to the state. The spirit of our political
action, for the most part, considers nothing less than the sacredness of
man. Party sacrifices man to the measure.[229]
We have seen the great party of property and education in the country
drivelling and huckstering away, for views of party fear or advantage,
every principle of humanity and the dearest hopes of mankind; the
trustees of power only energetic when mischief could be done, imbecile as
corpses when evil was to be prevented.
Our great men succumb so far to the forms of the day as to peril their
integrity for the sake of adding to the weight of their personal
character the authority of office, or making a real government titular.
Our politics are full of adventurers, who having by education and social
innocence a good repute in the state, break away from the law of honesty
and think they can afford to join the devil’s party. ’Tis odious, these
offenders in high life. You rally to the support of old charities and the
cause of literature, and there, to be sure, are these brazen faces. In
this innocence you are puzzled how to meet them; must shake hands with
them, under protest.[230] We feel toward them as the minister about the
Cape Cod farm,—in the old time when the minister was still invited, in
the spring, to make a prayer for the blessing of a piece of land,—the
good pastor being brought to the spot, stopped short: “No, this land does
not want a prayer, this land wants manure.”
“’Tis virtue which they want, and wanting it,
Honor no garment to their backs can fit.”[231]
Parties keep the old names, but exhibit a surprising fugacity in creeping
out of one snake-skin into another of equal ignominy and lubricity, and
the grasshopper on the turret of Faneuil Hall gives a proper hint of the
men below.
Everything yields. The very glaciers are viscous, or relegate into
conformity, and the stiffest patriots falter and compromise; so that
_will_ cannot be depended on to save us.
How rare are acts of will! We are all living according to custom; we do
as other people do, and shrink from an act of our own. Every such act
makes a man famous, and we can all count the few cases—half a dozen in
our time—when a public man ventured to act as he thought without waiting
for orders or for public opinion. John Quincy Adams was a man of an
audacious independence that always kept the public curiosity alive in
regard to what he might do. None could predict his word, and a whole
congress could not gainsay it when it was spoken. General Jackson was a
man of will, and his phrase on one memorable occasion, “I will take the
responsibility,” is a proverb ever since.[232]
The American marches with a careless swagger to the height of power,
very heedless of his own liberty or of other people’s, in his reckless
confidence that he can have all he wants, risking all the prized charters
of the human race, bought with battles and revolutions and religion,
gambling them all away for a paltry selfish gain.
He sits secure in the possession of his vast domain, rich beyond all
experience in resources, sees its inevitable force unlocking itself in
elemental order day by day, year by year; looks from his coal-fields, his
wheat-bearing prairie, his gold-mines, to his two oceans on either side,
and feels the security that there can be no famine in a country reaching
through so many latitudes, no want that cannot be supplied, no danger
from any excess of importation of art or learning into a country of such
native strength, such immense digestive power.
In proportion to the personal ability of each man, he feels the
invitation and career which the country opens to him. He is easily fed
with wheat and game, with Ohio wine, but his brain is also pampered by
finer draughts, by political power and by the power in the railroad
board, in the mills, or the banks. This elevates his spirits, and
gives, of course, an easy self-reliance that makes him self-willed and
unscrupulous.
I think this levity is a reaction on the people from the extraordinary
advantages and invitations of their condition. When we are most disturbed
by their rash and immoral voting, it is not malignity, but recklessness.
They are careless of politics, because they do not entertain the
possibility of being seriously caught in meshes of legislation. They
feel strong and irresistible. They believe that what they have enacted
they can repeal if they do not like it. But one may run a risk once
too often. They stay away from the polls, saying that one vote can do
no good! Or they take another step, and say ‘One vote can do no harm!’
and vote for something which they do not approve, because their party
or set votes for it. Of course this puts them in the power of any party
having a steady interest to promote which does not conflict manifestly
with the pecuniary interest of the voters. But if they should come to be
interested in themselves and in their career, they would no more stay
away from the election than from their own counting-room or the house of
their friend.
The people are right-minded enough on ethical questions, but they
must pay their debts, and must have the means of living well, and not
pinching. So it is useless to rely on them to go to a meeting, or to
give a vote, if any check from this must-have-the-money side arises.
If a customer looks grave at their newspaper, or damns their member of
Congress, they take another newspaper, and vote for another man. They
must have money, for a certain style of living fast becomes necessary;
they must take wine at the hotel, first, for the look of it, and second,
for the purpose of sending the bottle to two or three gentlemen at the
table; and presently because they have got the taste, and do not feel
that they have dined without it.
The record of the election now and then alarms people by the all but
unanimous choice of a rogue and a brawler. But how was it done? What
lawless mob burst into the polls and threw in these hundreds of ballots
in defiance of the magistrates? This was done by the very men you
know,—the mildest, most sensible, best-natured people. The only account
of this is, that they have been scared or warped into some association in
their mind of the candidate with the interest of their trade or of their
property.
Whilst each cabal urges its candidate, and at last brings, with cheers
and street demonstrations, men whose names are a knell to all hope of
progress, the good and wise are hidden in their active retirements, and
are quite out of question.
“These we must join to wake, for these are of the strain
That justice dare defend, and will the age maintain.”[233]
Yet we know, all over this country, men of integrity, capable of action
and of affairs, with the deepest sympathy in all that concerns the
public, mortified by the national disgrace, and quite capable of any
sacrifice except of their honor.
Faults in the working appear in our system, as in all, but they suggest
their own remedies. After every practical mistake out of which any
disaster grows, the people wake and correct it with energy. And any
disturbances in politics, in civil or foreign wars, sober them, and
instantly show more virtue and conviction in the popular vote. In each
new threat of faction the ballot has been, beyond expectation, right and
decisive.
It is ever an inspiration, God only knows whence; a sudden, undated
perception of eternal right coming into and correcting things that were
wrong; a perception that passes through thousands as readily as through
one.
The gracious lesson taught by science to this country is that the history
of Nature from first to last is incessant advance from less to more, from
rude to finer organization, the globe of matter thus conspiring with
the principle of undying hope in man. Nature works in immense time, and
spends individuals and races prodigally to prepare new individuals and
races. The lower kinds are one after one extinguished; the higher forms
come in.[234] The history of civilization, or the refining of certain
races to wonderful power of performance, is analogous; but the best
civilization yet is only valuable as a ground of hope.
Ours is the country of poor men. Here is practical democracy; here is
the human race poured out over the continent to do itself justice; all
mankind in its shirt-sleeves; not grimacing like poor rich men in cities,
pretending to be rich, but unmistakably taking off its coat to hard work,
when labor is sure to pay.[235] This through all the country. For really,
though you see wealth in the capitals, it is only a sprinkling of rich
men in the cities and at sparse points; the bulk of the population is
poor. In Maine, nearly every man is a lumberer. In Massachusetts, every
twelfth man is a shoemaker, and the rest, millers, farmers, sailors,
fishermen.
Well, the result is, instead of the doleful experience of the European
economist, who tells us, “In almost all countries the condition of the
great body of the people is poor and miserable,” here that same great
body has arrived at a sloven plenty,—ham and corn-cakes, tight roof and
coals enough have been attained; an unbuttoned comfort, not clean, not
thoughtful, far from polished, without dignity in his repose; the man
awkward and restless if he have not something to do, but honest and kind
for the most part, understanding his own rights and stiff to maintain
them, and disposed to give his children a better education than he
received.
The steady improvement of the public schools in the cities and the
country enables the farmer or laborer to secure a precious primary
education. It is rare to find a born American who cannot read and write.
The facility with which clubs are formed by young men for discussion of
social, political and intellectual topics secures the notoriety of the
questions.
Our institutions, of which the town is the unit, are all educational, for
responsibility educates fast. The town-meeting is, after the high-school,
a higher school.[236] The legislature, to which every good farmer goes
once on trial, is a superior academy.
The result appears in the power of invention, the freedom of thinking,
in the readiness for reforms, eagerness for novelty, even for all the
follies of false science; in the antipathy to secret societies, in the
predominance of the democratic party in the politics of the Union, and in
the voice of the public even when irregular and vicious,—the voice of
mobs, the voice of lynch law,—because it is thought to be, on the whole,
the verdict, though badly spoken, of the greatest number.
All this forwardness and self-reliance, cover self-government; proceed
on the belief that as the people have made a government they can make
another; that their union and law are not in their memory, but in their
blood and condition. If they unmake a law, they can easily make a new
one. In Mr. Webster’s imagination the American Union was a huge Prince
Rupert’s drop, which will snap into atoms if so much as the smallest end
be shivered off. Now the fact is quite different from this. The people
are loyal, law-abiding. They prefer order, and have no taste for misrule
and uproar.
America was opened after the feudal mischief was spent, and so the people
made a good start. We began well. No inquisition here, no kings, no
nobles, no dominant church. Here heresy has lost its terrors. We have
eight or ten religions in every large town, and the most that comes of it
is a degree or two on the thermometer of fashion; a pew in a particular
church gives an easier entrance to the subscription ball.
We began with freedom, and are defended from shocks now for a century
by the facility with which through popular assemblies every necessary
measure of reform can instantly be carried. A congress is a standing
insurrection, and escapes the violence of accumulated grievance. As the
globe keeps its identity by perpetual change, so our civil system, by
perpetual appeal to the people and acceptance of its reforms.
The government is acquainted with the opinions of all classes, knows the
leading men in the middle class, knows the leaders of the humblest class.
The President comes near enough to these; if he does not, the caucus
does, the primary ward and town-meeting, and what is important does reach
him.
The men, the women, all over this land shrill their exclamations of
impatience and indignation at what is short-coming or is unbecoming in
the government,—at the want of humanity, of morality,—ever on broad
grounds of general justice, and not on the class-feeling which narrows
the perception of English, French, German people at home.
In this fact, that we are a nation of individuals, that we have a highly
intellectual organization, that we can see and feel moral distinctions,
and that on such an organization sooner or later the moral laws must
tell, to such ears must speak,—in this is our hope. For if the prosperity
of this country has been merely the obedience of man to the guiding of
Nature,—of great rivers and prairies,—yet is there fate above fate, if we
choose to spread this language; or if there is fate in corn and cotton,
so is there fate in thought,—this, namely, that the largest thought and
the widest love are born to victory, and must prevail.
The revolution is the work of no man, but the eternal effervescence of
Nature. It never did not work. And we say that revolutions beat all the
insurgents, be they never so determined and politic; that the great
interests of mankind, being at every moment through ages in favor of
justice and the largest liberty, will always, from time to time, gain on
the adversary and at last win the day. Never country had such a fortune,
as men call fortune, as this, in its geography, its history, and in its
majestic possibilities.
We have much to learn, much to correct,—a great deal of lying vanity.
The spread eagle must fold his foolish wings and be less of a peacock;
must keep his wings to carry the thunderbolt when he is commanded. We
must realize our rhetoric and our rituals. Our national flag is not
affecting, as it should be, because it does not represent the population
of the United States, but some Baltimore or Chicago or Cincinnati or
Philadelphia caucus; not union or justice, but selfishness and cunning.
If we never put on the liberty-cap until we were freemen by love and
self-denial, the liberty-cap would mean something. I wish to see America
not like the old powers of the earth, grasping, exclusive and narrow,
but a benefactor such as no country ever was, hospitable to all nations,
legislating for all nationalities. Nations were made to help each other
as much as families were; and all advancement is by ideas, and not by
brute force or mechanic force.
In this country, with our practical understanding, there is, at present,
a great sensualism, a headlong devotion to trade and to the conquest of
the continent,—to each man as large a share of the same as he can carve
for himself,—an extravagant confidence in our talent and activity, which
becomes, whilst successful, a scornful materialism,—but with the fault,
of course, that it has no depth, no reserved force whereon to fall back
when a reverse comes.
That repose which is the ornament and ripeness of man is not American.
That repose which indicates a faith in the laws of the universe,—a faith
that they will fulfil themselves, and are not to be impeded, transgressed
or accelerated. Our people are too slight and vain. They are easily
elated and easily depressed. See how fast they extend the fleeting
fabric of their trade,—not at all considering the remote reaction and
bankruptcy, but with the same abandonment to the moment and the facts of
the hour as the Esquimau who sells his bed in the morning. Our people act
on the moment, and from external impulse. They all lean on some other,
and this superstitiously, and not from insight of his merit. They follow
a fact; they follow success, and not skill. Therefore, as soon as the
success stops and the admirable man blunders, they quit him; already they
remember that they long ago suspected his judgment, and they transfer
the repute of judgment to the next prosperous person who has not yet
blundered. Of course this levity makes them as easily despond. It seems
as if history gave no account of any society in which despondency came so
readily to heart as we see it and feel it in ours. Young men at thirty
and even earlier lose all spring and vivacity, and if they fail in their
first enterprise throw up the game.
The source of mischief is the extreme difficulty with which men are
roused from the torpor of every day. Blessed is all that agitates the
mass, breaks up this torpor, and begins motion. _Corpora non agunt
nisi soluta_; the chemical rule is true in mind. Contrast, change,
interruption, are necessary to new activity and new combinations.
If a temperate wise man should look over our American society, I think
the first danger that would excite his alarm would be the European
influences on this country. We buy much of Europe that does not make us
better men; and mainly the expensiveness which is ruining that country.
We import trifles, dancers, singers, laces, books of patterns, modes,
gloves and cologne, manuals of Gothic architecture, steam-made ornaments.
America is provincial. It is an immense Halifax. See the secondariness
and aping of foreign and English life, that runs through this country, in
building, in dress, in eating, in books. Every village, every city, has
its architecture, its costume, its hotel, its private house, its church,
from England.
Our politics threaten her. Her manners threaten us. Life is grown and
growing so costly that it threatens to kill us. A man is coming, here
as there, to value himself on what he can buy. Worst of all, his expense
is not his own, but a far-off copy of Osborne House or the Elysée. The
tendency of this is to make all men alike; to extinguish individualism
and choke up all the channels of inspiration from God in man. We lose our
invention and descend into imitation. A man no longer conducts his own
life. It is manufactured for him. The tailor makes your dress; the baker
your bread; the upholsterer, from an imported book of patterns, your
furniture; the Bishop of London your faith.
In the planters of this country, in the seventeenth century, the
conditions of the country, combined with the impatience of arbitrary
power which they brought from England, forced them to a wonderful
personal independence and to a certain heroic planting and trading. Later
this strength appeared in the solitudes of the West, where a man is made
a hero by the varied emergencies of his lonely farm, and neighborhoods
must combine against the Indians, or the horse-thieves, or the river
rowdies, by organizing themselves into committees of vigilance. Thus
the land and sea educate the people, and bring out presence of mind,
self-reliance, and hundred-handed activity. These are the people for
an emergency. They are not to be surprised, and can find a way out of
any peril. This rough and ready force becomes them, and makes them
fit citizens and civilizers. But if we found them clinging to English
traditions, which are graceful enough at home, as the English Church, and
entailed estates, and distrust of popular election, we should feel this
reactionary, and absurdly out of place.
Let the passion for America cast out the passion for Europe. Here
let there be what the earth waits for,—exalted manhood. What this
country longs for is personalities, grand persons, to counteract its
materialities. For it is the rule of the universe that corn shall serve
man, and not man corn.
They who find America insipid—they for whom London and Paris have spoiled
their own homes—can be spared to return to those cities. I not only see a
career at home for more genius than we have, but for more than there is
in the world.
The class of which I speak make themselves merry without duties. They sit
in decorated club-houses in the cities, and burn tobacco and play whist;
in the country they sit idle in stores and bar-rooms, and burn tobacco,
and gossip and sleep. They complain of the flatness of American life;
“America has no illusions, no romance.” They have no perception of its
destiny. They are not Americans.
The felon is the logical extreme of the epicure and coxcomb. Selfish
luxury is the end of both, though in one it is decorated with
refinements, and in the other brutal. But my point now is, that this
spirit is not American.
Our young men lack idealism. A man for success must not be pure idealist,
then he will practically fail; but he must have ideas, must obey ideas,
or he might as well be the horse he rides on. A man does not want to be
sun-dazzled, sun-blind; but every man must have glimmer enough to keep
him from knocking his head against the walls. And it is in the interest
of civilization and good society and friendship, that I dread to hear
of well-born, gifted and amiable men, that they have this indifference,
disposing them to this despair.
Of no use are the men who study to do exactly as was done before, who
can never understand that to-day is a new day. There never was such
a combination as this of ours, and the rules to meet it are not set
down in any history. We want men of original perception and original
action, who can open their eyes wider than to a nationality,—namely, to
considerations of benefit to the human race,—can act in the interest of
civilization; men of elastic, men of moral mind, who can live in the
moment and take a step forward. Columbus was no backward-creeping crab,
nor was Martin Luther, nor John Adams, nor Patrick Henry, nor Thomas
Jefferson; and the Genius or Destiny of America is no log or sluggard,
but a man incessantly advancing, as the shadow on the dial’s face, or the
heavenly body by whose light it is marked.
The flowering of civilization is the finished man, the man of sense, of
grace, of accomplishment, of social power,—the gentleman. What hinders
that he be born here? The new times need a new man, the complemental man,
whom plainly this country must furnish. Freer swing his arms; farther
pierce his eyes; more forward and forthright his whole build and rig than
the Englishman’s, who, we see, is much imprisoned in his backbone.
’Tis certain that our civilization is yet incomplete, it has not
ended nor given sign of ending in a hero. ’Tis a wild democracy; the
riot of mediocrities and dishonesties and fudges. Ours is the age of
the omnibus, of the third person plural, of Tammany Hall. Is it that
Nature has only so much vital force, and must dilute it if it is to be
multiplied into millions? The beautiful is never plentiful. Then Illinois
and Indiana, with their spawning loins, must needs be ordinary.
It is not a question whether we shall be a multitude of people. No, that
has been conspicuously decided already; but whether we shall be the new
nation, the guide and lawgiver of all nations, as having clearly chosen
and firmly held the simplest and best rule of political society.
Now, if the spirit which years ago armed this country against rebellion,
and put forth such gigantic energy in the charity of the Sanitary
Commission, could be waked to the conserving and creating duty of making
the laws just and humane, it were to enroll a great constituency of
religious, self-respecting, brave, tender, faithful obeyers of duty,
lovers of men, filled with loyalty to each other, and with the simple
and sublime purpose of carrying out in private and in public action the
desire and need of mankind.
Here is the post where the patriot should plant himself; here the altar
where virtuous young men, those to whom friendship is the dearest
covenant, should bind each other to loyalty; where genius should kindle
its fires and bring forgotten truth to the eyes of men.
It is not possible to extricate yourself from the questions in which your
age is involved. Let the good citizen perform the duties put on him here
and now. It is not by heads reverted to the dying Demosthenes, or to
Luther, or to Wallace, or to George Fox, or to George Washington, that
you can combat the dangers and dragons that beset the United States at
this time. I believe this cannot be accomplished by dunces or idlers,
but requires docility, sympathy, and religious receiving from higher
principles; for liberty, like religion, is a short and hasty fruit,
and like all power subsists only by new rallyings on the source of
inspiration.
Power can be generous. The very grandeur of the means which offer
themselves to us should suggest grandeur in the direction of our
expenditure. If our mechanic arts are unsurpassed in usefulness, if we
have taught the river to make shoes and nails and carpets, and the bolt
of heaven to write our letters like a Gillot pen, let these wonders work
for honest humanity, for the poor, for justice, genius and the public
good.[237] Let us realize that this country, the last found, is the great
charity of God to the human race.
America should affirm and establish that in no instance shall the guns
go in advance of the present right. We shall not make _coups d’état_
and afterwards explain and pay, but shall proceed like William Penn, or
whatever other Christian or humane person who treats with the Indian or
the foreigner, on principles of honest trade and mutual advantage. We
can see that the Constitution and the law in America must be written
on ethical principles, so that the entire power of the spiritual world
shall hold the citizen loyal, and repel the enemy as by force of nature.
It should be mankind’s bill of rights, or Royal Proclamation of the
Intellect ascending the throne, announcing its good pleasure that now,
once for all, the world shall be governed by common sense and law of
morals.
The end of all political struggle is to establish morality as the basis
of all legislation. ’Tis not free institutions, ’tis not a democracy
that is the end,—no, but only the means. Morality is the object of
government. We want a state of things in which crime will not pay; a
state of things which allows every man the largest liberty compatible
with the liberty of every other man.
Humanity asks that government shall not be ashamed to be tender and
paternal, but that democratic institutions shall be more thoughtful for
the interests of women, for the training of children, and for the welfare
of sick and unable persons, and serious care of criminals, than was ever
any the best government of the Old World.
The genius of the country has marked out our true policy,—opportunity.
Opportunity of civil rights, of education, of personal power, and not
less of wealth; doors wide open. If I could have it,—free trade with all
the world without toll or custom-houses, invitation as we now make to
every nation, to every race and skin, white men, red men, yellow men,
black men; hospitality of fair field and equal laws to all.[238] Let them
compete, and success to the strongest, the wisest and the best. The land
is wide enough, the soil has bread for all.
I hope America will come to have its pride in being a nation of servants,
and not of the served. How can men have any other ambition where the
reason has not suffered a disastrous eclipse? Whilst every man can say I
serve,—to the whole extent of my being I apply my faculty to the service
of mankind in my especial place,—he therein sees and shows a reason for
his being in the world, and is not a moth or incumbrance in it.
The distinction and end of a soundly constituted man is his labor. Use
is inscribed on all his faculties. Use is the end to which he exists. As
the tree exists for its fruit, so a man for his work. A fruitless plant,
an idle animal, does not stand in the universe. They are all toiling,
however secretly or slowly, in the province assigned them, and to a use
in the economy of the world; the higher and more complex organizations to
higher and more catholic service. And man seems to play, by his instincts
and activity, a certain part that even tells on the general face of
the planet, drains swamps, leads rivers into dry countries for their
irrigation, perforates forests and stony mountain chains with roads,
hinders the inroads of the sea on the continent, as if dressing the globe
for happier races.
On the whole, I know that the cosmic results will be the same, whatever
the daily events may be. Happily we are under better guidance than
of statesmen. Pennsylvania coal-mines and New York shipping and free
labor, though not idealists, gravitate in the ideal direction. Nothing
less large than justice can keep them in good temper. Justice satisfies
everybody, and justice alone. No monopoly must be foisted in, no weak
party or nationality sacrificed, no coward compromise conceded to a
strong partner. Every one of these is the seed of vice, war and national
disorganization. It is our part to carry out to the last the ends of
liberty and justice. We shall stand, then, for vast interests; north
and south, east and west will be present to our minds, and our vote
will be as if they voted, and we shall know that our vote secures the
foundations of the state, good will, liberty and security of traffic and
of production, and mutual increase of good will in the great interests.
Our helm is given up to a better guidance than our own; the course of
events is quite too strong for any helmsman, and our little wherry is
taken in tow by the ship of the great Admiral which knows the way, and
has the force to draw men and states and planets to their good.
Such and so potent is this high method by which the Divine Providence
sends the chiefest benefits under the mask of calamities, that I do not
think we shall by any perverse ingenuity prevent the blessing.
In seeing this guidance of events, in seeing this felicity without
example that has rested on the Union thus far, I find new confidence for
the future.
I could heartily wish that our will and endeavor were more active parties
to the work. But I see in all directions the light breaking. Trade and
government will not alone be the favored aims of mankind, but every
useful, every elegant art, every exercise of the imagination, the height
of reason, the noblest affection, the purest religion will find their
home in our institutions, and write our laws for the benefit of men.[239]
NOTES
THE LORD’S SUPPER
Mr. Emerson did not wish to have his sermons published. All that was
worth saving in them, he said, would be found in the Essays. Yet it
seemed best, to Mr. Cabot and to Mr. Emerson’s family, that this one
sermon should be preserved. A record of a turning-point in his life, it
showed at once his thought and his character; for he not only gives the
reasons why he believes the rite not authoritatively enjoined, and hence
recommends its modification or discontinuance, but with serenity and
sweetness renders back his trust into his people’s hands, since he cannot
see his way longer to exercise it as most of them desire.
In the month of June, 1832, Mr. Emerson had proposed to the church,
apparently with hope of their approval, that the Communion be observed
only as a festival of commemoration, without the use of the elements.
The committee to whom the proposal was referred made a report expressing
confidence in him, but declining to advise the change, as the matter was
one which they could not properly be called upon to decide.
The question then came back to the pastor, whether he was willing to
remain in his place and administer the rite in the usual form.
He went alone to the White Mountains, then seldom visited, to consider
the grave question whether he was prepared, rather than to continue the
performance of a part of his priestly office from which his instincts and
beliefs recoiled, to sacrifice a position of advantage for usefulness
to his people to whom he was bound by many ties, and in preparation for
which he had spent long years. He wrote, at Conway, New Hampshire: “Here
among the mountains the pinions of thought should be strong, and one
should see the errors of men from a calmer height of love and wisdom.”
His diary at Ethan Allan Crawford’s contains his doubts and questionings,
which Mr. Cabot has given in his Memoir. Yet there was but one answer for
him, and after a fortnight, he came back clear in his mind to give his
decision, embodied in this sermon, to his people. On the same day that it
was preached, he formally resigned his pastorate. The church was loth to
part with him. It was hoped that some other arrangement might be made.
Mr. Cabot learned that “several meetings were held and the proprietors of
pews were called in, as having ‘an undoubted right to retain Mr. Emerson
as their pastor, without reference to the opposition of the church.’ At
length, after two adjournments and much discussion, it was decided by
thirty votes against twenty-four to accept his resignation. It was voted
at the same time to continue his salary for the present.”
Thus Mr. Emerson and his people parted in all kindness, but, as Mr. Cabot
truly said, their difference of views on this rite “was in truth only the
symptom of a deeper difference which would in any case sooner or later
have made it impossible for him to retain his office; a disagreement
not so much about particular doctrines or observances as about their
sanction, the authority on which all doctrines and observances rest.”
In the farewell letter which Mr. Emerson wrote to the people of his
church, he said:—
“I rejoice to believe that my ceasing to exercise the pastoral office
among you does not make any real change in our spiritual relation to each
other. Whatever is most desirable and excellent therein remains to us.
For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has
given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,—he has come under bonds to
adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached. And so I say to
all you who have been my counsellors and coöperators in our Christian
walk, that I am wont to see in your faces the seals and certificates
of our mutual obligations. If we have conspired from week to week in
the sympathy and expression of devout sentiments; if we have received
together the unspeakable gift of God’s truth; if we have studied together
the sense of any divine word; or striven together in any charity; or
conferred together for the relief or instruction of any brother; if
together we have laid down the dead in a pious hope; or held up the babe
into the baptism of Christianity; above all, if we have shared in any
habitual acknowledgment of the benignant God, whose omnipresence raises
and glorifies the meanest offices and the lowest ability, and opens
heaven in every heart that worships him,—then indeed we are united, we
are mutually debtors to each other of faith and hope, engaged to persist
and confirm each other’s hearts in obedience to the Gospel. We shall not
feel that the nominal changes and little separations of this world can
release us from the strong cordage of this spiritual bond. And I entreat
you to consider how truly blessed will have been our connection if, in
this manner, the memory of it shall serve to bind each one of us more
strictly to the practice of our several duties.”
[1] _Page 18, note 1._ The doctrine of the offices of Jesus, even in
the Unitarianism of Dr. Channing, was never congenial to Mr. Emerson’s
mind. He notes the same with regard to his father, and even to his Aunt
Mary, in spite of her Calvinism. Any interposed personality between the
Creator and the created was repugnant to him. Even in March, 1831, he is
considering in his journal that his hearers will say, “To what purpose
is this attempt to explain away so safe and holy a doctrine as that of
the Holy Spirit? Why unsettle or disturb a faith which presents to many
minds a helpful medium by which they approach the idea of God?” and
he answers, “And this question I will meet. It is because I think the
popular views of this principle are pernicious, because it does put a
medium, because it removes the idea of God from the mind. It leaves some
events, some things, some thoughts, out of the power of Him who causes
every event, every flower, every thought. The tremendous idea, as I may
well call it, of God is screened from the soul.... And least of all can
we believe—Reason will not let us—that the presiding Creator commands all
matter and never descends into the secret chambers of the Soul. There he
is most present. The Soul rules over matter. Matter may pass away like a
mote in the sunbeam, may be absorbed into the immensity of God, as a mist
is absorbed into the heat of the Sun—but the soul is the kingdom of God,
the abode of love, of truth, of virtue.”
[2] _Page 19, note 1._ In the hope of satisfying those of his people who
held to the letter of the Scriptural Law, Mr. Emerson made the foregoing
clear statement with regard to the authority for the rite, from the
professional point of view. It seems quite unlike his usual method, and
there is little doubt that in it appears the influence of his elder
brother, William, whose honest doubts had led him to abandon even earlier
the profession of his fathers. In the introductory note to the chapter on
Goethe, in _Representative Men_, is given an account of his unsuccessful
pilgrimage to Weimar, in hopes that the great mind of Germany could solve
these doubts. There is a letter still preserved, written by William, soon
after his return, to his venerable kinsman at Concord, Dr. Ripley, in
which he explains with great clearness his own reasons for not believing
that the Communion rite was enjoined by Jesus for perpetual observance.
The argument on scriptural grounds there clearly stated is substantially
the same as that which his younger brother makes use of in the beginning
of this sermon. Thus far he has spoken of outward authority; from this
point onward he speaks from within—the way native to him.
[3] _Page 25, note 1._ Mr. Emerson left the struggles of the Past behind,
and did not care to recall them. Thus, writing of Lucretia Mott, whom he
met when giving a course of lectures in Philadelphia, in January, 1843,
he said:—
“Me she taxed with living out of the world, and I was not much flattered
that her interest in me respected my rejection of an ordinance, sometime,
somewhere. Also yesterday—for Philadelphian ideas, like love, do creep
where they cannot go—I was challenged on the subject of the Lord’s
Supper, and with great slowness and pain was forced to recollect the
grounds of my dissent in that particular. You may be sure I was very
tardy with my texts.”
Mr. Emerson’s journal during the period of trial and decision, in the
mountains, shows that he was reading with great interest the life of
George Fox. The simplicity of the Society of Friends, their aversion to
forms and trust in the inward light, always appealed to him.
In his essay on The Preacher he says:—
“The supposed embarrassments to young clergymen exist only to feeble
wills.... That gray deacon, or respectable matron with Calvinistic
antecedents, you can readily see, would not have presented any obstacle
to the march of St. Bernard or of George Fox, of Luther or of Theodore
Parker.” This hints at the help he had found in the Quaker’s history in
his time of need.
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE AT CONCORD
Mr. Emerson’s Discourse was printed soon after its delivery, and with it,
in an Appendix, the following notice of the celebration of the second
centennial anniversary of the incorporation of the town, sent to him by
“a friend who thought it desirable to preserve the remembrance of some
particulars of this historical festival.”
“At a meeting of the town of Concord, in April last, it was
voted to celebrate the Second Centennial Anniversary of the
settlement of the town, on the 12th September following. A
committee of fifteen were chosen to make the arrangements. This
committee appointed Ralph Waldo Emerson, Orator, and Rev. Dr.
Ripley and Rev. Mr. Wilder, Chaplains of the Day. Hon. John
Keyes was chosen President of the Day.
“On the morning of the 12th September, at half past 10 o’clock,
the children of the town, to the number of about 500, moved
in procession to the Common in front of the old church and
court-house and there opened to the right and left, awaiting
the procession of citizens. At 11 o’clock, the Concord Light
Infantry, under Captain Moore, and the Artillery under Captain
Buttrick, escorted the civic procession, under the direction of
Moses Prichard as Chief Marshal, from Shepherd’s hotel through
the lines of children to the Meeting-house. The South gallery
had been reserved for ladies, and the North gallery for the
children; but (it was a good omen) the children overran the
space assigned for their accommodation, and were sprinkled
throughout the house, and ranged on seats along the aisles. The
old Meeting-house, which was propped to sustain the unwonted
weight of the multitude within its walls, was built in 1712,
thus having stood for more than half the period to which our
history goes back. Prayers were offered and the Scriptures read
by the aged minister of the town, Rev. Ezra Ripley, now in the
85th year of his age;—another interesting feature in this scene
of reminiscences. A very pleasant and impressive part of the
services in the church was the singing of the 107th psalm, from
the New England version of the psalms made by Eliot, Mather,
and others, in 1639, and used in the church in this town in the
days of Peter Bulkeley. The psalm was read a line at a time,
after the ancient fashion, from the Deacons’ seat, and so sung
to the tune of St. Martin’s by the whole congregation standing.
“Ten of the surviving veterans who were in arms at the Bridge,
on the 19th April, 1775, honored the festival with their
presence. Their names are Abel Davis, Thaddeus Blood, Tilly
Buttrick, John Hosmer, of _Concord_; Thomas Thorp, Solomon
Smith, John Oliver, Aaron Jones, of _Acton_; David Lane, of
_Bedford_; Amos Baker, of _Lincoln_.
“On leaving the church, the procession again formed, and moved
to a large tent nearly opposite Shepherd’s hotel, under which
dinner was prepared, and the company sat down to the tables, to
the number of four hundred. We were honored with the presence
of distinguished guests, among whom were Lieutenant-Governor
Armstrong, Judge Davis, Alden Bradford (descended from the 2d
governor of Plymouth Colony), Hon. Edward Everett, Hon. Stephen
C. Phillips of Salem, Philip Hone, Esq., of New York, General
Dearborn, and Lieutenant-Colonel R. C. Winthrop (descended from
the 1st governor of Massachusetts). Letters were read from
several gentlemen expressing their regret at being deprived of
the pleasure of being present on the occasion. The character
of the speeches and sentiments at the dinner were manly and
affectionate, in keeping with the whole temper of the day.
“On leaving the dinner-table, the invited guests, with many of
the citizens, repaired to the court-house to pay their respects
to the ladies of Concord, who had there, with their friends,
partaken of an elegant collation, and now politely offered
coffee to the gentlemen. The hall, in which the collation
was spread, had been decorated by fair hands with festoons
of flowers, and wreaths of evergreen, and hung with pictures
of the Fathers of the Town. Crowded as it was with graceful
forms and happy faces, and resounding with the hum of animated
conversation, it was itself a beautiful living picture.
Compared with the poverty and savageness of the scene which the
same spot presented two hundred years ago, it was a brilliant
reverse of the medal; and could scarcely fail, like all the
parts of the holiday, to lead the reflecting mind to thoughts
of that Divine Providence, which, in every generation, has been
our tower of defence and horn of blessing.
“At sunset the company separated and retired to their homes;
and the evening of this day of excitement was as quiet as a
Sabbath throughout the village.”
Within the year, Mr. Emerson had come to make his home for life in
the ancestral town, and had become a householder. Two days after the
festival, he drove to Plymouth in a chaise, and was there married to
Lidian Jackson, and immediately brought his bride to her Concord home.
His aged step-grandfather was the senior chaplain at the Celebration, and
his brother Charles, who was to live with him in the new home, was one of
the marshals.
In preparation for this address Mr. Emerson made diligent examination of
the old town records, and spent a fortnight in Cambridge consulting the
works on early New England in the College Library. I reproduce most of
his references to his authorities exactly, although there are, no doubt,
newer editions of some of the works.
[4] _Page 30, note 1._ This story is from Bede’s _Ecclesiastical History_
(chapter xiii., Bohn’s _Antiquarian Library_). Mr. Emerson used it in
full as the exordium of his essay on Immortality, in _Letters and Social
Aims_.
[5] _Page 30, note 2._ The poem “Hamatreya,” wherein appear the names of
many of these first settlers, might well be read in connection with the
opening passages of this address.
Mr. Emerson’s right of descent to speak as representative of Peter
Bulkeley, who was the spiritual arm of the settlement, as Simon Willard
was its sword-arm, may here be shown: Rev. Joseph Emerson of Mendon (son
of Thomas of Ipswich, the first of the name in this country) married
Elizabeth, daughter of Rev. Edward Bulkeley, who succeeded his father,
the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, as minister of Concord. Edward, the son of
Joseph of Mendon and Elizabeth Bulkeley, was father of Rev. Joseph
Emerson of Malden, who was father of Rev. William Emerson of Concord, who
was father of Rev. William Emerson of Harvard and Boston, the father of
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
[6] _Page 31, note 1._ Neal’s _History of New England_, vol. i., p. 132.
[7] _Page 31, note 2._ Neal, vol. i., p. 321.
[8] _Page 31, note 3._ Shattuck’s _History of Concord_, p. 158.
[9] _Page 32, note 1._ On September 2, 1635, the General Court passed
this order:—
“It is ordered that there shalbe a plantac̃on att Musketequid & that
there shalbe 6 myles of land square to belong to it, & that the
inhabitants thereof shall have three yeares im̃unities from all publ[ic]
charges except traineings; Further, that when any that plant there shall
have occac̃on of carryeing of goods thither, they shall repaire to two
of the nexte magistrates where the teames are, whoe shall have the power
for a yeare to presse draughts, att reasonable rates, to be payed by the
owners of the goods, to transport their goods thither att seasonable
tymes: & the name of the place is changed & here after to be called
Concord.”
[10] _Page 32, note 2._ Shattuck, p. 5.
[11] _Page 33, note 1._ In his lecture on Boston (published in the volume
_Natural History of Intellect_) Mr. Emerson gives an amusing enumeration
of some troubles which seemed so great to the newcomers from the Old
World: he mentions their fear of lions, the accident to John Smith from
“the most poisonous tail of a fish called a sting-ray,” the circumstance
of the overpowering effect of the sweet fern upon the Concord party, and
the intoxicating effect of wild grapes eaten by the Norse explorers, and
adds: “Nature has never again indulged in these exasperations. It seems
to have been the last outrage ever committed by the sting-rays, or by the
sweet fern, or by the fox-grapes. They have been of peaceable behavior
ever since.”
[12] _Page 34, note 1._ Johnson’s _Wonder-Working Providence_, chap.
xxxv. Mr. Emerson abridged and slightly altered some sentences.
[13] _Page 35, note 1._ Mourt, _Beginning of Plymouth_, 1621, p. 60.
[14] _Page 35, note 2._ Johnson, p. 56. Josselyn, in his _New England’s
Rarities Discovered_, speaks with respect of “Squashes, but more truly
squontersquashes; a kind of mellon, or rather gourd; ... some of these
are green; some yellow; some longish like a gourd; others round, like an
apple: all of them pleasant food, boyled and buttered, and seasoned with
spice. But the yellow squash—called an apple-squash (because like an
apple) and about the bigness of a pome-water is the best kind.” Wood, in
his _New England Prospect_, says: “In summer, when their corn is spent,
isquotersquashes is their best bread, a fruit much like a pumpion.”
[15] _Page 36, note 1._ Nashawtuck, a small and shapely hill between
the Musketaquid and the Assabet streams, at their point of union, was a
pleasant and convenient headquarters for a sagamore of a race whose best
roadway for travel and transportation was a deep, quiet stream, the fish
of which they ate, and also used for manure for their cornfields along
the bluffs. Indian graves have been found on this hill.
[16] _Page 36, note 2._ Josselyn’s _Voyages to New England_, 1638.
[17] _Page 36, note 3._ Hutchinson’s _History of Massachusetts_, vol. i.,
chap. 6.
[18] _Page 36, note 4._ Thomas Morton, _New England Canaan_, p. 47.
[19] _Page 37, note 1._ Shattuck, p. 6.
The old Middlesex Hotel, which stood during the greater part of the
nineteenth century on the southwest side of the Common, opposite the
court- and town-houses, had fallen into decay in 1900, and was bought
and taken down by the town as an improvement to the public square to
commemorate the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of Concord
Fight. It is probable that Jethro’s Oak, under which the treaty was made,
stood a little nearer the house of Rev. Peter Bulkeley, the site of
which, about one hundred paces distant on the Lowell road, is now marked
by a stone and bronze tablet.
[20] _Page 38, note 1._ Depositions taken in 1684, and copied in the
first volume of the Town Records.
[21] _Page 39, note 1._ Johnson’s _Wonder-Working Providence_.
[22] _Page 39, note 2._ _New England’s Plantation._
[23] _Page 39, note 3._ E. W.’s Letter in Mourt, 1621.
[24] _Page 40, note 1._ Peter Bulkeley’s _Gospel Covenant_; preached at
Concord in New England. 2d edition, London, 1651, p. 432.
[25] _Page 41, note 1._ See petition in Shattuck’s _History_, p. 14.
[26] _Page 41, note 2._ Shattuck, p. 14. This was the meadow and upland
on the Lowell road, one mile north of Concord, just beyond the river. On
the farm stands the unpainted “lean-to” house, now owned by the daughters
of the late Edmund Hosmer.
[27] _Page 42, note 1._ Concord Town Records.
[28] _Page 43, note 1._ Bancroft, _History of the United States_, vol.
i., p. 389.
[29] _Page 44, note 1._ Savage’s _Winthrop_, vol. i., p. 114.
[30] _Page 44, note 2._ Colony Records, vol. i.
[31] _Page 44, note 3._ See Hutchinson’s _Collection_, p. 287.
[32] _Page 46, note 1._ Winthrop’s _Journal_, vol. i., pp. 128, 129, and
the editor’s note.
[33] _Page 46, note 2._ Winthrop’s _Journal_, vol. ii., p. 160.
[34] _Page 48, note 1._ Town Records.
With the exception of the anecdotes in this and the following sentence,
almost the whole of this account of the theory and practice of the New
England town-meeting was used by Mr. Emerson in his oration, given in
December, 1870, before the New England Society in New York. The greater
part of the matter used in that address is included in the lecture on
Boston, in the volume _Natural History of Intellect_.
The New England Society of New York recently published the Orations
delivered before it previous to 1871, including Mr. Emerson’s, as far as
it could be recovered from the scattered manuscript, and the newspaper
reports of the time.
[35] _Page 50, note 1._ Hutchinson’s _Collection_, p. 27.
[36] _Page 51, note 1._ Shattuck, p. 20. “The Government, 13 Nov., 1644,
ordered the county courts to take care of the Indians residing within
their several shires, to have them civilized, and to take order, from
time to time, to have them instructed in the knowledge of God.”
[37] _Page 52, note 1._ Shepard’s _Clear Sunshine of the Gospel_, London,
1648.
[38] _Page 52, note 2._ These rules are given in Shattuck’s _History_,
pp. 22-24, and were called “Conclusions and orders made and agreed upon
by divers Sachems and other principal men amongst the Indians at Concord
in the end of the eleventh Month (called January) An. 1646.”
The following are interesting specimens of these:—
Rule 2. “That there shall be no more Powwawing amongst the Indians. And
if any shall hereafter powwaw, both he that shall powwaw, and he that
shall procure him to powwaw, shall pay twenty shillings apiece.”
Rule 4. “They desire they may understand the wiles of Satan, and grow out
of love with his suggestions and temtations.”
Rule 5. “That they may fall upon some better course to improve their time
than formerly.”
Rule 15. “They will wear their haire comely, as the English do, and
whosoever shall offend herein shall pay four shillings.”
Rule 23. “They shall not disguise themselves in their mournings as
formerly, nor shall they keep a great noyse by howling.”
Rule 24. “The old ceremony of a maide walking alone and living apart so
many days, [fine] twenty shillings.”
[39] _Page 53, note 1._ Shepard, p. 9.
[40] _Page 54, note 1._ Wilson’s _Letter_, 1651.
[41] _Page 54, note 2._ _News from America_, p. 22.
[42] _Page 54, note 3._ Winthrop, vol. ii., p. 2.
[43] _Page 55, note 1._ Hutchinson, vol. i., p. 90.
[44] _Page 55, note 2._ Hutchinson, vol. i., p. 112.
[45] _Page 55, note 3._ Winthrop, vol. ii., p. 21.
[46] _Page 55, note 4._ Hutchinson, vol. i., p. 94.
[47] _Page 55, note 5._ Bulkeley’s _Gospel Covenant_, p. 209.
[48] _Page 55, note 6._ Winthrop, vol. ii., p. 94.
[49] _Page 56, note 1._ _Gospel Covenant_, p. 301.
[50] _Page 57, note 1._ Shattuck, p. 45.
[51] _Page 57, note 2._ Hutchinson, vol. i., p. 172.
[52] _Page 57, note 3._ See his instructions from the Commissioners,
his narrative, and the Commissioners’ letter to him, in Hutchinson’s
_Collection_, pp. 261-270.
[53] _Page 58, note 1._ Hutchinson’s _History_, vol. i., p. 254.
[54] _Page 58, note 2._ Hubbard’s _Indian Wars_, p. 119, ed. 1801.
Mr. Charles H. Walcott, in his _Concord in the Colonial Period_ (Estes
& Lauriat, Boston, 1884), gives a very interesting account of the
Brookfield fight.
[55] _Page 58, note 3._ Hubbard, p. 201.
[56] _Page 59, note 1._ Hubbard, p. 185.
[57] _Page 59, note 2._ Hubbard, p. 245.
[58] _Page 60, note 1._ Shattuck, p. 55.
[59] _Page 60, note 2._ Hubbard, p. 260.
[60] _Page 61, note 1._ Neal’s _History of New England_, vol. i., p. 321.
[61] _Page 61, note 2._ Mather, _Magnalia Christi_, vol. i., p. 363.
[62] _Page 61, note 3._ “Tradition has handed down the following
anecdote. A consultation among the Indian chiefs took place about this
time on the high lands in Stow, and, as they cast their eyes towards
Sudbury and Concord, a question arose which they should attack first. The
decision was made to attack the former. One of the principal chiefs said:
‘We no prosper if we go to Concord—the Great Spirit love that people—the
evil spirit tell us not to go—they have a great man there—he _great
pray_.’ The Rev. Edward Bulkeley was then minister of the town, and his
name and distinguished character were known even to the red men of the
forest.”—Shattuck’s _History_, p. 59, note.
[63] _Page 61, note 4._ On this occasion the name of Hoar, since honored
in Concord through several generations, came to the front. John Hoar,
the first practitioner of law in Concord, an outspoken man of sturdy
independence, who, for uttering complaints that justice was denied him in
the courts, had been made to give bonds for good behavior and “disabled
to plead any cases but his oune in this jurisdiction,” who had been fined
£10 for saying that “the Blessing which his Master Bulkeley pronounced
in dismissing the publique Assembly was no more than vane babling,” and
was twice fined for non-attendance at public worship, proved to be the
only man in town who was willing to take charge of the Praying Indians of
Nashobah, whom the General Court ordered moved to Concord during Philip’s
War. The magistrates who had persecuted him had to turn to him, and he
made good provision on his own place for the comfort and safe-keeping
of these unfortunates, and their employment, when public opinion was
directed against them with the cruelty of fear. Soon, however, Captain
Mosley, who had been secretly sent for by some citizens, came with
soldiers into the meeting-house, announced to the congregation that he
had heard that “there were some heathen in town committed to one Hoar,
who, he was informed, were a trouble and disquiet to them;” therefore,
if the people desired it, he would remove them to Boston. No one made
objection, so he went to Mr. Hoar’s house, counted the Indians and set a
guard, Hoar vigorously protesting. He came next day; Hoar bravely refused
to give them up, so Mosley removed them by violence and carried the
Indians to Deer Island, where they suffered much during the winter. See
Walcott’s _Concord in the Colonial Period_.
[64] _Page 62, note 1._ Sprague’s _Centennial Ode_.
[65] _Page 62, note 2._ Shattuck, chap. iii. Walcott, chap. iii.
[66] _Page 63, note 1._ Hutchinson’s _Collection_, p. 484.
[67] _Page 63, note 2._ Hutchinson’s _Collection_, pp. 543, 548, 557, 566.
[68] _Page 63, note 3._ Hutchinson’s _History_, vol. i., p. 336.
The month of April has been fateful for Concord, especially its
nineteenth day. On that day the military company under Lieutenant Heald
marched to Boston to take part in the uprising of the freemen of the
colony against Andros. On that same day, in 1775, the minute-men and
militia of Concord, promptly reinforced by the soldiers of her daughter
and sister towns, marched down to the guarded North Bridge and returned
the fire of the Royal troops in the opening battle of the Revolution.
Again on the nineteenth of April, 1861, the “Concord Artillery”
(so-called, although then a company of the Fifth Infantry, M. V. M.) left
the village for the front in the War of the Rebellion; and yet again in
the last days of April, 1898, the same company, then, as now, attached to
the Sixth Regiment, M. V. M., marched from the village green to bear its
part in the Spanish War.
[69] _Page 64, note 1._ Town Records.
[70] _Page 64, note 2._ The following minutes from the Town Records in
1692 may serve as an example:—
“John Craggin, aged about 63 years, and Sarah his wife, aet. about 63
years, do both testify upon oath that about 2 years ago John Shepard,
sen. of Concord, came to our house in Obourne, to treat with us, and give
us a visit, and carried the said Sary Craggin to Concord with him, and
there discoursed us in order to a marriage between his son, John Shepard,
jun. and our daughter, Eliz. Craggin, and, for our incouragement, and
before us, did promise that, upon the consummation of the said marriage,
he, the said John Shepard, sen. would give to his son, John Shepard, jun.
the one half of his dwelling house, and the old barn, and the pasture
before the barn; the old plow-land, and the old horse, when his colt was
fit to ride, and his old oxen, when his steers were fit to work. All this
he promised upon marriage as above said, which marriage was consummated
upon March following, which is two years ago, come next March. Dated Feb.
25, 1692. Taken on oath before me. Wm. Johnson.”
[71] _Page 64, note 3._ Town Records, July, 1698.
[72] _Page 64, note 4._ Records, Nov. 1711.
[73] _Page 65, note 1._ Records, May, 1712.
[74] _Page 66, note 1._ Records, 1735.
[75] _Page 66, note 2._ Whitfield in his journal wrote: “About noon I
reached Concord. Here I preached to some thousands in the open air; and
comfortable preaching it was. The hearers were sweetly melted down....
The minister of the town being, I believe, a true child of God, I chose
to stay all night at his house that we might rejoice together. The
Lord was with us. The Spirit of the Lord came upon me and God gave me
to wrestle with him for my friends, especially those then with me....
Brother B—s, the minister, broke into floods of tears, and we had reason
to cry out it was good for us to be here.”
[76] _Page 67, note 1._ Church Records, July, 1792.
[77] _Page 67, note 2._ The Rev. Daniel Bliss has left the name of
having been an earnest, good man, evidently emotional. His zealous
and impassioned preaching gave offence to some of the cooler and more
conservative clergy, and indeed bred discord in the church of Concord.
The “aggrieved brethren” withdrew, and, for want of a church, held
public worship at a tavern where was the sign of a black horse, hence
were called “the Black Horse Church.” Their complaints preferred against
Mr. Bliss resulted in councils which drew in most of the churches of
Middlesex into their widening vortex. Yet he remained the honored pastor
of the town until his death. His daughter Phebe married the young William
Emerson, his successor; he was therefore Mr. Emerson’s great-grandfather.
[78] _Page 67, note 3._ Town Records.
[79] _Page 70, note 1._ Town Records.
[80] _Page 71, note 1._ Town Records.
[81] _Page 71, note 2._ The spirited protest of this County Convention,
presided over by Hon. James Prescott of Groton, is given in full in
Shattuck’s _History_, pp. 82-87.
[82] _Page 72, note 1._ General Gage, the Governor, having refused to
convene the General Court at Salem, the Provincial Congress of delegates
from the towns of Massachusetts was called by conventions of the various
counties to meet at Concord, October 11, 1774. The delegates assembled
in the meeting-house, and organized, with John Hancock as President, and
Benjamin Lincoln as Secretary. Called together to maintain the rights of
the people, this Congress assumed the government of the province, and by
its measures prepared the way for the Revolution.
[83] _Page 72, note 2._ This eloquent sermon to the volunteers of 1775,
still preserved in MS., is very interesting. The young minister shows
them the dignity of their calling, warns them of the besetting sins of
New England soldiery, explains to them the invasion of their rights and
that they are not rebels, tells them that he believes their fathers
foresaw the evil day and did all in their power to guard the infant state
from encroachments of unconstitutional power, and implores the sons to be
true to their duty to their posterity. He fully admits the utter gloom
of the prospect, humanly considered: would Heaven hold him innocent, he
would counsel submission, but as an honest man and servant of Heaven
he dare not do so, and with great spirit bids his injured countrymen
“Arise! and plead even with the sword, the firelock and the bayonet, the
birthright of Englishmen ... and if God does not help, it will be because
your sins testify against you, otherwise _you may be assured_.”
[84] _Page 74, note 1._ Journal, July, 1835. “It is affecting to see the
old man’s [Thaddeus Blood] memory taxed for facts occurring 60 years
ago at Concord fight. ‘It is hard to bring them up;’ he says, ‘the
truth never will be known.’ The Doctor [Ripley], like a keen hunter,
unrelenting, follows him up and down, barricading him with questions.
Yet cares little for the facts the man can tell, but much for the
confirmation of the printed History. ‘Leave me, leave me to repose.’”
Thaddeus Blood, who was only twenty years old at the time of Concord
fight, later became a schoolmaster, hence was always known as “Master
Blood.” He was one of the Concord company stationed at Hull, in 1776,
which took part in the capture of Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell and
his battalion of the 71st (Frazer) Highlanders as they sailed into
Boston Harbor, not being aware of the evacuation of the town. They
were confined at Concord until their exchange. See _Sir Archibald
Campbell of Inverneill, sometime Prisoner of War in the Jail at Concord,
Massachusetts_. By Charles H. Walcott, Boston, 1898.
[85] _Page 74, note 2._ In his poem in memory of his brother Edward,
written by the riverside near the battle-ground, Mr. Emerson alluded to
Yon stern headstone,
Which more of pride than pity gave
To mark the Briton’s friendless grave.
Yet it is a stately tomb;
The grand return
Of eve and morn,
The year’s fresh bloom,
The silver cloud,
Might grace the dust that is most proud.
[86] _Page 76, note 1._ Captain Miles commanded the Concord company that
joined the Northern Army at Ticonderoga in August, 1776, as part of
Colonel Reed’s regiment.
[87] _Page 77, note 1._ Judge John S. Keyes, who clearly remembers the
incidents of this celebration, seen from a boy’s coign of vantage, the
top of one of the inner doors of the church, tells me that the ten
aged survivors of the battle, who sat in front of the pulpit, bowed in
recognition of this compliment by the orator, and then the audience all
bowed to them. The sanctity of the church forbade in those days cheering
or applause even at a civic festival.
[88] _Page 77, note 2._ The following was Mr. Emerson’s note concerning
his authorities:—
“The importance which the skirmish at Concord Bridge derived from
subsequent events, has, of late years, attracted much notice to
the incidents of the day. There are, as might be expected, some
discrepancies in the different narratives of the fight. In the brief
summary in the text, I have relied mainly on the depositions taken by
order of the Provincial Congress within a few days after the action,
and on the other contemporary evidence. I have consulted the English
narrative in the Massachusetts Historical Collections, and in the trial
of Horne (_Cases adjudged in King’s Bench_; London, 1800, vol. ii., p.
677); the inscription made by order of the legislature of Massachusetts
on the two field-pieces presented to the Concord Artillery; Mr. Phinney’s
_History of the Battle at Lexington_; Dr. Ripley’s _History of Concord
Fight_; Mr. Shattuck’s narrative in his _History_, besides some oral
and some manuscript evidence of eye-witnesses. The following narrative,
written by Rev. William Emerson, a spectator of the action, has never
been published. A part of it has been in my possession for years: a part
of it I discovered, only a few days since, in a trunk of family papers:—
“‘1775, 19 April. This morning, between 1 and 2 o’clock, we
were alarmed by the ringing of the bell, and upon examination
found that the troops, to the number of 800, had stole their
march from Boston, in boats and barges, from the bottom of the
Common over to a point in Cambridge, near to Inman’s Farm,
and were at Lexington Meeting-house, half an hour before
sunrise, where they had fired upon a body of our men, and (as
we afterward heard) had killed several. This intelligence
was brought us at first by Dr. Samuel Prescott, who narrowly
escaped the guard that were sent before on horses, purposely
to prevent all posts and messengers from giving us timely
information. He, by the help of a very fleet horse, crossing
several walls and fences, arrived at Concord at the time above
mentioned; when several posts were immediately despatched,
that returning confirmed the account of the regulars’ arrival
at Lexington, and that they were on their way to Concord.
Upon this, a number of our minute-men belonging to this town,
and Acton, and Lyncoln, with several others that were in
readiness, marched out to meet them; while the alarm company
were preparing to receive them in the town. Captain Minot,
who commanded them, thought it proper to take possession of
the hill above the meeting-house, as the most advantageous
situation. No sooner had our men gained it, than we were met
by the companies that were sent out to meet the troops, who
informed us, that they were just upon us, and that we must
retreat, as their number was more than treble ours. We then
retreated from the hill near the Liberty Pole, and took a new
post back of the town upon an eminence, where we formed into
two battalions, and waited the arrival of the enemy. Scarcely
had we formed, before we saw the British troops at the distance
of a quarter of a mile, glittering in arms, advancing towards
us with the greatest celerity. Some were for making a stand,
notwithstanding the superiority of their number; but others
more prudent thought best to retreat till our strength should
be equal to the enemy’s by recruits from neighboring towns that
were continually coming in to our assistance. Accordingly we
retreated over the bridge, when the troops came into the town,
set fire to several carriages for the artillery, destroyed 60
bbls. flour, rifled several houses, took possession of the
town-house, destroyed 500 lb. of balls, set a guard of 100
men at the North Bridge, and sent up a party to the house of
Colonel Barrett, where they were in expectation of finding a
quantity of warlike stores. But these were happily secured,
just before their arrival, by transportation into the woods
and other by-places. In the mean time, the guard set by the
enemy to secure the pass at the North Bridge were alarmed by
the approach of our people, who had retreated, as mentioned
before, and were now advancing with special orders not to
fire upon the troops unless fired upon. These orders were so
punctually observed that we received the fire of the enemy in
three several and separate discharges of their pieces before
it was returned by our commanding officer; the firing then
soon became general for several minutes, in which skirmish two
were killed on each side, and several of the enemy wounded.
It may here be observed, by the way, that we were the more
cautious to prevent beginning a rupture with the King’s troops,
as we were then uncertain what had happened at Lexington, and
knew [not][A] that they had began the quarrel there by first
firing upon our people, and killing eight men upon the spot.
The three companies of troops soon quitted their post at the
bridge, and retreated in the greatest disorder and confusion to
the main body, who were soon upon the march to meet them. For
half an hour, the enemy, by their marches and counter-marches,
discovered great fickleness and inconstancy of mind, sometimes
advancing, sometimes returning to their former posts; till, at
length they quitted the town, and retreated by the way they
came. In the mean time, a party of our men (150) took the back
way through the Great Fields into the east quarter, and had
placed themselves to advantage, lying in ambush behind walls,
fences and buildings, ready to fire upon the enemy on their
retreat.’”
[89] _Page 78, note 1._ Fifty years after his death the town erected a
cenotaph to the memory of its brave young minister, whose body lies by
the shore of Otter Creek, near Rutland, Vermont. On it they wrote:—
“Enthusiastic, eloquent, affectionate and pious, he loved his family, his
people, his God and his Country, and to this last he yielded the cheerful
sacrifice of his life.”
[90] _Page 78, note 2._ Town Records, Dec. 1775.
[91] _Page 79, note 1._ These facts are recorded by Shattuck in his
_History_.
[92] _Page 79, note 2._ Bradford’s _History of Massachusetts_, vol. ii.,
p. 113.
[93] _Page 79, note 3._ Shattuck.
[94] _Page 80, note 1._ Town Records, May 3, 1782.
[95] _Page 81, note 1._ Town Records, Sept. 9, and Bradford’s _History_,
vol. i., p. 266.
[96] _Page 81, note 2._ The Rev. Grindall Reynolds, late pastor of
the First Church in Concord, wrote an interesting account of Shays’s
Rebellion, and various papers concerning his adopted town which are
included in his _Historical and Other Papers_, published by his daughter
in 1895.
[97] _Page 81, note 3._ Town Records, Oct. 21.
[98] _Page 82, note 1._ Town Records, May 7.
[99] _Page 82, note 2._ Town Records, 1834 and 1835. In 1903-4 the
town, with a population of about 5000, appropriated for public purposes
$65,752, the amount for school purposes being $28,000.
[100] _Page 82, note 3._ The Unitarian and the “Orthodox” (as the
Trinitarian Congregationalist society has always been called in Concord)
churches have for a century been good neighbors, and for many years have
held union meetings on Thanksgiving Day. At the time of Mr. Emerson’s
discourse it is doubtful if Concord contained a single Catholic or
Episcopalian believer. The beginning of the twentieth century finds
a larger body of Catholic worshippers than the four other societies
contain. Yet all live in charity with one another.
[101] _Page 83, note 1._ Mr. Emerson’s honored kinsman, Rev. Ezra Ripley,
who sat in the pulpit that day, was eighty-four years old, and when,
six years later, he died, he had been pastor of the Concord church for
sixty-three years.
[102] _Page 83, note 2._ Lemuel Shattuck, author of the excellent
_History of Concord_, which was published before the end of the year.
[103] _Page 85, note 1._ In Mr. Emerson’s lecturing excursions during the
following thirty-five years, he found with pleasure and pride the sons of
his Concord neighbors important men in the building up the prairie and
river towns, or the making and operating the great highways of emigration
and trade.
LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN BUREN
April 19, 1838, Mr. Emerson made this entry in his Journal:—
“This disaster of the Cherokees, brought to me by a sad friend to blacken
my days and nights! I can do nothing; why shriek? why strike ineffectual
blows? I stir in it for the sad reason that no other mortal will move,
and if I do not, why, it is left undone. The amount of it, to be sure, is
merely a scream; but sometimes a scream is better than a thesis....
“Yesterday wrote the letter to Van Buren,—a letter hated of me, a
deliverance that does not deliver the soul. I write my journal, I read
my lecture with joy; but this stirring in the philanthropic mud gives me
no peace. I will let the republic alone until the republic comes to me.
I fully sympathize, be sure, with the sentiments I write; but I accept
it rather from my friends than dictate it. It is not my impulse to say
it, and therefore my genius deserts me; no muse befriends; no music of
thought or word accompanies.”
Yet his conscience then, and many a time later, brought him to do the
brave, distasteful duty.
ADDRESS ON EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES
The tenth anniversary of the emancipation by Act of Parliament of all
slaves in the insular possessions of Great Britain in the West Indies
was celebrated in Concord, in the year 1844, by citizens of thirteen
Massachusetts towns, and they invited Mr. Emerson to make the Address.
The Rev. Dr. Channing, on whose mind the wrongs of the slave had weighed
ever since he had seen them in Santa Cruz, had spoken on Slavery in
Faneuil Hall in 1837, had written on the subject, and his last public
work had been a speech on the anniversary of the West Indian Emancipation
in 1842, in the village of Lenox. The public conscience was slowly
becoming aroused, especially among the country people, who had not the
mercantile and social relations with the Southerner which hampered the
action of many people in the cities. Yet even in Concord the religious
societies appear to have closed their doors against the philanthropists
who gathered to celebrate this anniversary in 1844, but the energy of
the young Thoreau, always a champion of Freedom, secured the use of the
Court-House, and he himself rang the bell to call the people together.
It is said that Mr. Emerson, while minister of the Second Church in
Boston, had held his pulpit open to speakers on behalf of liberty,
and to his attitude in 1835 Harriet Martineau bears witness in her
Autobiography. After speaking of the temperamental unfitness of these
brother scholars, Charles and Waldo, to become active workers in an
Abolitionist organization, she says: “Yet they did that which made me
feel that I knew them through the very cause in which they did not
implicate themselves. At the time of the hubbub against me in Boston,
Charles Emerson stood alone in a large company and declared that he would
rather see Boston in ashes than that I or anybody should be debarred in
any way from perfectly free speech. His brother Waldo invited me to be
his guest in the midst of my unpopularity, and during my visit told me
his course about this matter of slavery. He did not see that there was
any particular thing for him to do in it then; but when, in coaches or
steamboats or anywhere else, he saw people of color ill treated, or heard
bad doctrine or sentiment propounded, he did what he could, and said what
he thought. Since that date he has spoken more abundantly and boldly,
the more critical the times became; and he is now, and has long been,
identified with the Abolitionists in conviction and sentiment, though it
is out of his way to join himself to their organization.”
Mr. Cabot in his Memoir[B] gives several pages of extracts from Mr.
Emerson’s journal showing his feelings at this time, before the slave
power, aggressive and advancing, left him, as a lover of Freedom, no
choice but to fight for her as he could, by tongue and pen, in seasons of
peril.
This Address was printed in England, as well as in America, the autumn
after its delivery here. In a letter to Carlyle written September 1, Mr.
Emerson says he is sending proof to the London publisher.
“Chapman wrote to me by the last steamer, urging me to send him some
manuscript that had not yet been published in America [hoping for
copyright, and promising half profits].... The request was so timely,
since I was not only printing a book, but also a pamphlet, that I came to
town yesterday and hastened the printers, and have now sent him proofs
of all the Address, and of more than half of the book.” He requests
Carlyle to have an eye to its correct reproduction, to which his friend
faithfully attended.
[104] _Page 100, note 1._ It was characteristic of Mr. Emerson that, as a
corrective to the flush of righteous wrath that man should be capable of
laying hands on another
To coin his labor and sweat,
came his sense of justice, and the power of seeing the planter’s side,
born into such a social and political condition, by breeding and climatic
conditions unable to toil, and with his whole inheritance vested in
slaves. In a speech in New York in 1855, Mr. Emerson urged emancipation
with compensation to the owners, by general sacrifices to this great end
by old and young throughout the North, not as the planters’ due, but as
recognizing their need and losses. Yet with all due consideration for the
planters’ misfortune of condition, he said, on the main question, “It is
impossible to be a gentleman and not be an abolitionist.”
[105] _Page 103, note 1._
Sole estate his sire bequeathed,—
Hapless sire to hapless son,—
Was the wailing song he breathed,
And his chain when life was done.
These lines from “Voluntaries” in the _Poems_, and the stanza which there
follows them, are recalled by this passage.
[106] _Page 106, note 1._ Granville Sharp (1734-1813) was a broad-minded
scholar and determined philanthropist. He left the study of law to go
into the ordnance office, which he left, when the American Revolution
came on, disapproving of the course of the government. In the case of one
of the slaves whom he defended, the Lord Mayor discharged the negro, but
his master would not give him up. The case then went before the Court
of Kings Bench, and the twelve judges decided in 1772 that a man could
not be held in, or transported from, England. In June, 1787, Sharp with
Clarkson and ten others, nine of whom were Quakers, formed a committee
“for effecting the abolition of the slave trade;” Sharp was chairman.
Defeated in Parliament in 1788 and 1789, they were joined by Pitt and Fox
in 1790. In 1793 the Commons passed an act for gradual abolition of the
trade, which was rejected by the Peers. This occurred again in 1795 and
1804. In 1806, the Fox and Grenville Ministry brought forward abolition
of the trade as a government measure. It was carried in 1807. Then the
enemies of slavery began to strive for its gradual abolition throughout
the British dominions, Clarkson, Wilberforce and Buxton being the
principal leaders. The course of events, however, showed that immediate
emancipation would be a better measure. The government brought this
forward in 1823, modified by an apprenticeship system. The bill with this
feature and some compensation to owners was passed in 1833.
[107] _Page 108, note 1._ In the essay on Self-Reliance Mr. Emerson said:
“An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as Monachism, of the
Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism,
of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson.”
[108] _Page 112, note 1._ The “prædials” seem to have been the slaves
born into captivity, as distinguished from imported slaves.
[109] _Page 115, note 1._ _Emancipation in the West Indies: A Six Months’
Tour in Antigua, Barbadoes and Jamaica, in the year 1837._ J. A. Thome
and J. H. Kimball, New York, 1838.
[110] _Page 120, note 1._ This was very soon after the coronation of the
young Queen Victoria, which occurred in the previous year.
[111] _Page 125, note 1._ “All things are moral, and in their boundless
changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Therefore is
nature glorious with form, color and motion; that every globe in the
remotest heaven, every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the
laws of life ... every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules,
shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the
Ten Commandments.”—_Nature, Addresses and Lectures_, p. 40. See also the
last sentence in “Prudence,” _Essays, First Series_.
[112] _Page 131, note 1._ “For he [a ruler] is the minister of God to
thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he
beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger
to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” _Epistle to the Romans_,
xiii. 4.
[113] _Page 132, note 1._ The cause for Mr. Emerson’s indignation was
great and recent. His honored townsman, Samuel Hoar, Esq., sent by
the State of Massachusetts as her commissioner to South Carolina to
investigate the seizures, imprisonments, punishments, and even sale of
colored citizens of Massachusetts who had committed no crime, had been
expelled with threats of violence from the city of Charleston. (See
“Samuel Hoar,” in _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_.)
[114] _Page 133, note 1._
A union then of honest men,
Or union never more again.
“Boston,” _Poems_.
[115] _Page 134, note 1._ John Quincy Adams, who, though disapproving,
as untimely, the legislation urged on Congress by the abolitionists, yet
fought strongly and persistently against the rules framed to check their
importunity, as inconsistent with the right of petition itself.
[116] _Page 144, note 1._ Here comes in the doctrine of the Survival of
the Fittest that appears in the “Ode inscribed to W. H. Channing,” but,
even more than there, tempered by faith in the strength of humanity.
See the “Lecture on the Times,” given in 1841 (_Nature, Addresses
and Lectures_, p. 220), for considerations on slavery more coolly
philosophical than Mr. Emerson’s warm blood often admitted of, during the
strife for liberty in the period between the Mexican and Civil Wars.
[117] _Page 145, note 1._
To-day unbind the captive,
So only are ye unbound;
Lift up a people from the dust,
Trump of their rescue, sound!
“Boston Hymn,” _Poems_.
[118] _Page 146, note 1._ In the early version of the “Boston” poem were
these lines:—
O pity that I pause!
The song disdaining shuns
To name the noble sires, because
Of the unworthy sons.
...
Your town is full of gentle names,
By patriots once were watchwords made;
Those war-cry names are muffled shames
On recreant sons mislaid.
WAR
In the winter and early spring of 1838, the American Peace Society held a
course of lectures in Boston. This lecture was the seventh in the course.
Mr. Alcott wrote in his diary at that time:—
“I heard Emerson’s lecture on _Peace_, as the closing discourse of a
series delivered at the Odeon before the American Peace Society.... After
the lecture I saw Mr. Garrison, who is at this time deeply interested
in the question of Peace, as are many of the meekest and noblest souls
amongst us. He expressed his great pleasure in the stand taken by Mr.
Emerson and his hopes in him as a man of the new age. This great topic
has been brought before the general mind as a direct consequence of the
agitation of the abolition of slavery.”
The lecture was printed in 1849 _Æsthetic Papers_, edited by Miss
Elizabeth P. Peabody.
Although the chronicles of the campaigns and acts of prowess of the
masterly soldiers were always attractive reading to Mr. Emerson,—much
more acts of patriotic devotion in the field,—and he was by no means
committed as a non-resistant, he saw that war had been a part of
evolution, and that its evils might pave the way for good, as flowers
spring up next year on a field of carnage. He knew that evolution
required an almost divine patience, yet his good hope was strengthened
by the signs of the times, and he desired to hasten the great upward step
in civilization.
It is evident from his words and course of action during the outrages
upon the peaceful settlers of Kansas, and when Sumter was fired upon
and Washington threatened, that he recognized that the hour had not yet
come. He subscribed lavishly from his limited means for the furnishing
Sharp’s rifles to the “Free State men.” In the early days of the War of
the Rebellion he visited Charlestown Navy-Yard to see the preparations,
and said, “Ah! sometimes gunpowder smells good.” In the opening of his
address at Tufts College, in July, 1861, he said, “The brute noise of
cannon has a most poetic echo in these days, as instrument of the primal
sentiments of humanity.” Several speeches included in this volume show
that at that crisis his feeling was, as he had said of the forefathers’
“deed of blood” at Concord Bridge,—
Even the serene Reason says
It was well done.
But all this was only a postponement of hope.
[119] _Page 152, note 1._ With regard to schooling a man’s courage for
whatever may befall, Mr. Emerson said: “Our culture therefore must not
omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season that he is born into
the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being
require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned,
self-collected and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take
both reputation and life in his hand, and with perfect urbanity dare the
gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude
of his behavior.”—“Heroism,” _Essays, First Series_.
“A state of war or anarchy, in which law has little force, is so far
valuable that it puts every man on trial.”—“The Conservative,” _Nature,
Addresses and Lectures_.
[120] _Page 156, note 1._ Mr. Emerson used to take pleasure in a story
illustrating this common foible of mankind. A returned Arctic explorer,
in a lecture, said, “In this wilderness among the ice-floes, I had the
fortune to see a terrible conflict between two Polar bears—” “Which
beat?” cried an excited voice from the audience.
[121] _Page 160, note 1._ In his description of the Tower of London in
the journal of 1834, it appears that the suits of armor there set up
affected Mr. Emerson unpleasantly, suggesting half-human destructive
lobsters and crabs. It is, I believe, said that Benvenuto Cellini learned
to make the cunning joints in armor for men from those of these marine
warriors.
In the opening paragraphs of the essay on Inspiration Mr. Emerson
congratulates himself that the doleful experiences of the aboriginal
man were got through with long ago. “They combed his mane, they pared
his nails, cut off his tail, set him on end, sent him to school and
made him pay taxes, before he could begin to write his sad story for
the compassion or the repudiation of his descendants, who are all but
unanimous to disown him. We must take him as we find him,” etc.
[122] _Page 162, note 1._ In _English Traits_, at the end of the chapter
on Stonehenge, Mr. Emerson gave a humorous account of his setting forth
the faith or hope of the non-resistants and idealists in New England, to
the amazed and shocked ears of Carlyle and Arthur Helps.
[123] _Page 164, note 1._ “As the solidest rocks are made up of invisible
gases, as the world is made of thickened light and arrested electricity,
so men know that ideas are the parents of men and things; there was never
anything that did not proceed from a thought.”—“The Scholar,” _Lectures
and Biographical Sketches_.
[124] _Page 164, note 2._ In “The Problem” he says of the Parthenon and
England’s abbeys that
out of Thought’s interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air.
[125] _Page 167, note 1._ Mr. Emerson in his conversation frankly showed
that he was not yet quite prepared to be a non-resistant. He would have
surely followed his own counsel where he says, “Go face the burglar in
your own house,” and he seemed to feel instinctive sympathy with what Mr.
Dexter, the counsel, said in the speech which he used to read me from the
Selfridge trial:—
“And may my arm drop powerless when it fails to defend my honor!”
He exactly stated his own position in a later passage, where he says that
“in a given extreme event Nature and God will instruct him in that hour.”
[126] _Page 172, note 1._ Thoreau lived frankly and fearlessly up to this
standard.
[127] _Page 173, note 1._ This same view is even more attractively set
forth in “Aristocracy” (_Lectures and Biographical Sketches_, pp. 36-40).
Rev. Dr. Cyrus A. Bartol, in an interesting paper on “Emerson’s
Religion,”[C] gives, among other reminiscences, the following: “I asked
him if he approved of war. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘in one born to fight.’”
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, CONCORD, 1851
The opening passages of this speech to his friends and neighbors show
how deeply Mr. Emerson was moved. He could no longer be philosophical,
as in the “Ode” inscribed to his friend William Channing, and in earlier
addresses. The time had come when he might at any moment be summoned to
help the marshal’s men seize and return to bondage the poor fugitive who
had almost reached the safety of England’s protection. Such men were
frequently passing through Concord, concealed and helped by the good
Bigelow, the blacksmith, and his wife, the Thoreaus, Mrs. Brooks, and
even once at a critical moment by her husband, the law-abiding “’Squire”
himself.
Mr. Emerson instantly took his stand, and did not hesitate to run atilt
against the dark giant, once so honored. The question of secession for
conscience’ sake had come up among the Abolitionists. Mr. Emerson had
stood for Union, yet felt that there could be nothing but shame in Union
until the humiliating statute was repealed. Meanwhile he fell back on
the reserve-right of individual revolution as the duty of honest men.
The Free-Soilers soon after renominated Dr. John Gorham Palfrey for a
seat in Congress, and in his campaign Mr. Emerson delivered this speech
in several Middlesex towns. In Cambridge he was interrupted by young
men from the college, Southerners, it was said, but it appears that the
disturbance was quite as much due to “Northern men who were eager to
keep up a show of fidelity to the interest of the South,” as a Southern
student said in a dignified disclaimer. Mr. Cabot in his Memoir gives an
interesting account by Professor James B. Thayer of Mr. Emerson’s calm
ignoring of the rude and hostile demonstration.
Writing to Carlyle, in the end of July, 1857, Mr. Emerson said: “In the
spring, the abomination of our Fugitive Slave Bill drove me to some
writing and speech-making, without hope of effect, but to clear my own
skirts.”
This was the reaction which could not but be felt by him where he had
been forced to descend into the dust and conflict of the arena from the
serene heights. He wrote in his journal next year:—
“Philip Randolph [a valued friend] was surprised to find me speaking
to the politics of anti-slavery in Philadelphia. I suppose because he
thought me a believer in general laws and that it was a kind of distrust
of my own general teachings to appear in active sympathy with these
temporary heats. He is right so far as it is becoming in the scholar to
insist on central soundness rather than on superficial applications. I am
to give a wise and just ballot, though no man else in the republic doth.
I am to demand the absolute right, affirm that, and do that; but not push
Boston into a showy and theatrical attitude, endeavoring to persuade her
she is more virtuous than she is. Thereby I am robbing myself more than
I am enriching the public. After twenty, fifty, a hundred years, it will
be quite easy to discriminate who stood for the right, and who for the
expedient.”
Yet however hard the duty of the hour might be, Mr. Emerson never failed
in his duty as a good citizen to come to the front in dark days.
“In spite of all his gracefulness and reserve and love of the unbroken
tranquillity of serene thought, he was by the right of heredity a
belligerent in the cause of Freedom.”
[128] _Page 181, note 1._ Shadrach was hurried to Concord after his
rescue, and by curious coincidence Edwin Bigelow, the good village
blacksmith who there harbored him and drove him to the New Hampshire
line, was one of the jurors in the trial of another rescue case.
[129] _Page 183, note 1._ Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal, after Mr.
Hoar’s return:—
“The position of Massachusetts seems to me to be better for Mr.
Hoar’s visit to South Carolina in this point, that one illusion is
dispelled. Massachusetts was dishonored before, but she was credulous
in the protection of the Constitution, and either did not believe,
or affected not to believe in that she was dishonored. Now all doubt
on that subject is removed, and every Carolina boy will not fail to
tell every Massachusetts boy whenever they meet how the fact stands.
The Boston merchants would willingly salve the matter over, but they
cannot hereafter receive Southern gentlemen at their tables without a
consciousness of shame.”
[130] _Page 192, note 1._ Apparently from Vattel, book i., ch. i., p. 79.
[131] _Page 201, note 1._
But there was chaff within the flour,
And one was false in ten,
And reckless clerks in lust of power
Forgot the rights of men;
Cruel and blind did file their mind,
And sell the blood of human kind.
Your town is full of gentle names
By patriots once were watchwords made;
Those war-cry names are muffled shames
On recreant sons mislaid.
What slave shall dare a name to wear
Once Freedom’s passport everywhere?
See note to poem “Boston.”
Mr. Charles Francis Adams’s _Life of Richard H. Dana_ gives light on the
phrase used in the first of these verses. The following passage is from
Mr. Dana’s journal during the trial of Anthony Burns, the fugitive:—
“Choate, I had an amusing interview with. I asked him to make one effort
in favor of freedom, and told him that the 1850 delusion was dispelled
and all men were coming round, the Board of Brokers and Board of Aldermen
were talking treason, and that he must come and act. He said he should
be glad to make an effort on our side, but that he had given written
opinions against us in the Sims case on every point, and that he could
not go against them.
“‘You corrupted your mind in 1850.’
“‘Yes. Filed my mind.’
“‘I wish you would file it in court for our benefit.’”
Shakspeare said,—
“For Banquo’s issue have I filed my mind.”
[132] _Page 202, note 1._ Mr. F. B. Sanborn, in his _Life of Thoreau_,
says that Webster gave, as a reason for not visiting Concord in his later
years, that “Many of those whom I so highly esteemed in your beautiful
and quiet village have become a good deal estranged, to my great grief,
by abolitionism, free-soilism, transcendentalism and other notions which
I cannot but regard as so many vagaries of the imagination.”
[133] _Page 204, note 1._
Or who, with accent bolder,
Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer?
I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook!
And in thy valleys, Agiochook!
The jackals of the negro-holder.
...
Virtue palters; Right is hence;
Freedom praised, but hid;
Funeral eloquence
Rattles the coffin-lid.
_Poems_, “Ode,”
inscribed to W. H. Channing.
See also what is said of “the treachery of scholars” in the last pages of
“The Man of Letters,” _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_.
[134] _Page 209, note 1._ This appeal for a general movement in the free
states to free the slaves and to recompense the planters, unhappily
brought up to the institution, for their loss, was so much better in an
anti-slavery address in New York, in 1855, than in the Concord speech
four years earlier, that I have substituted the later version here.
In Mr. Cabot’s Memoir, pp. 558-593, a portion of the New York speech,
including this paragraph, is given.
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, NEW YORK, 1854
Writing to his friend Carlyle on March 11, 1854, Mr. Emerson said:—
“One good word closed your letter in September ... namely, that you
might come westward when Frederic was disposed of. Speed Frederic,
then, for all reasons and for this! America is growing furiously, town
and state; new Kansas, new Nebraska looming up in these days, vicious
politicians seething a wretched destiny for them already at Washington.
The politicians shall be sodden, the States escape, please God! The fight
of slave and freeman drawing nearer, the question is sharply, whether
slavery or whether freedom shall be abolished. Come and see.”
Four days before thus writing, he had given this address, to a fairly
large audience, in the “Tabernacle” in New York City, for, however dark
the horizon looked, the very success of the slave power was working
its ruin. Encouraged by the submission of the North to the passage of
the evil law to pacify them, they had resolved to repeal the Missouri
Compromise, which confined slavery to a certain latitude. It was repealed
within a few days of the time Mr. Emerson made this address. During the
debate, Charles Sumner said to Douglas, “Sir, the bill you are about
to pass is at once the worst and the best on which Congress has ever
acted.... It is the worst bill because it is a present victory for
slavery.... Sir, it is the best bill on which Congress has ever acted,
_for it annuls all past compromises with slavery and makes any future
compromises impossible_. Thus it puts Freedom and Slavery face to face
and bids them grapple. Who can doubt the result?” The rendition to
slavery of Anthony Burns from Boston in May wrought a great change in
public feeling there. Even the commercial element in the North felt the
shame.
Though not a worker in the anti-slavery organization, Mr. Emerson had
always been the outspoken friend of freedom for the negroes. Witness
his tribute in 1837 to Elijah Lovejoy, the martyr in their cause (see
“Heroism,” _Essays, First Series_, p. 262, and note). But the narrow
and uncharitable speech and demeanor of many “philanthropists” led him
to such reproofs as the one quoted by Dr. Bartol, “Let them first be
anthropic,” or that in “Self-Reliance” to the angry bigot: “Go love thy
infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest; have that
grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this
incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off.”
But now the foe was at the very gate. The duty to resist was instant and
commanding. Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal, soon after:—
“Why do we not say, We are abolitionists of the most absolute abolition,
as every man that is a man must be?... We do not try to alter your
laws in Alabama, nor yours in Japan, or in the Feejee Islands; but we
do not admit them, or permit a trace of them here. Nor shall we suffer
you to carry your Thuggism, north, south, east or west into a single
rod of territory which we control. We intend to set and keep a _cordon
sanitaire_ all around the infected district, and by no means suffer the
pestilence to spread.
“It is impossible to be a gentleman, and not be an abolitionist, for a
gentleman is one who is fulfilled with all nobleness, and imparts it; is
the natural defender and raiser of the weak and oppressed.”
With Mr. Emerson’s indignation at Webster’s fall was mingled great
sorrow. From his youth he had admired and revered him. The verses about
him printed in the Appendix to the _Poems_ show the change of feeling. He
used to quote Browning’s “Lost Leader” as applying to him, and admired
Whittier’s fine poem “Ichabod” (“The glory is departed,” I. Samuel, iv.,
21, 22) on his apostasy.
Mr. Emerson’s faithfulness to his sense of duty, leading him, against
his native instincts, into the turmoil of politics, striving to undo
the mischief that a leader once revered had wrought in the minds of
Americans, is shown in the extract from his journal with regard to this
lecture:—
“At New York Tabernacle, on the 7th March, I saw the great audience with
dismay, and told the bragging secretary that I was most thankful to those
that staid at home; every auditor was a new affliction, and if all had
staid away, by rain or preoccupation, I had been best pleased.”
[135] _Page 217, note 1._ In _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_, in the
essay on Aristocracy, and also in that on The Man of Letters, the duty of
loyalty to his thought and his order is urged as a trait of the gentleman
and the scholar, and in the latter essay, the scholar’s duty to stand for
what is generous and free.
[136] _Page 219, note 1._ Mr. Emerson in his early youth did come near
slavery for a short time. His diary at St. Augustine, quoted by Mr. Cabot
in his Memoir, mentions that, while he was attending a meeting of the
Bible Society, a slave-auction was going on outside, but it does not
appear that he actually saw it.
[137] _Page 221, note 1._ Carlyle described Webster as “a magnificent
specimen.... As a Logic-fencer, Advocate, or Parliamentary Hercules,
one would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant
world. The tanned complexion, that amorphous, crag-like face, the dull
black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces
needing only to be blown, the mastiff-mouth, accurately closed:—I have
not traced as much of _silent Berserkir-rage_, that I remember of, in any
other man.”[D]
[138] _Page 225, note 1._ Mr. James S. Gibbons (of the _New York
Tribune_) in a letter written to his son two days after this speech was
delivered, says, referring evidently to this passage:—
“Emerson gave us a fine lecture on Webster. He made him stand before
us in the proportions of a giant; and then with one word crushed him to
powder.”
[139] _Page 226, note 1._ Professor John H. Wright of Harvard University
has kindly furnished me with the passage from Dio Cassius, xlvii. 49,
where it is said of Brutus:—
Καὶ ἀναβοήσας τοῦτο δὴ Ἡράκλειον
ὦ τλῆμον ἀρετή, λόγος ἄρ’ ἦσθ’, ἐγὼ δέ σε
ὡς ἔργον ἤσκουν· σὺ δ’ ἄρ’ ἐδούλευες τύχῃ,—
παρακάλεσέ τινα τῶν συνόντων, ἵν’ αὐτὸν ἀποκτείνῃ,—
which he renders, “He cried out this sentiment of Heracles, ‘O wretched
Virtue, after all, thou art a name, but I cherished thee as a fact.
Fortune’s slave wast thou;’ and called upon one of those with him to slay
him.”
Professor Wright adds that Theodorus Prodromus, a Byzantine poet of the
twelfth century, said, “What Brutus says (O Virtue, etc.) I pronounce to
be ignoble and unworthy of Brutus’s soul.” It seems very doubtful whence
the Greek verses came.
[140] _Page 233, note 1._ Just ten years earlier, Hon. Samuel Hoar, the
Commissioner of Massachusetts, sent to Charleston, South Carolina, in
the interests of our colored citizens there constantly imprisoned and
ill used, had been expelled from that state with a show of force. See
_Lectures and Biographical Sketches_.
[141] _Page 234, note 1._ The sending back of Onesimus by Paul was a
precedent precious in the eyes of pro-slavery preachers, North and South,
in those days, ignoring, however, Paul’s message, “Not now as a servant,
but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much
more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord. If thou count me
therefore a partner, receive him as myself.”[E]
[142] _Page 235, note 1._ The hydrostatic paradox has been before alluded
to as one of Mr. Emerson’s favorite symbols, the balancing of the ocean
by a few drops of water. In many places he dwells on the power of
minorities—a minority of one. In “Character” (_Lectures and Biographical
Sketches_) he says, “There was a time when Christianity existed in one
child.” For the value and duty of minorities, see _Conduct of Life_, pp.
249 ff., _Letters and Social Aims_, pp. 219, 220.
[143] _Page 236, note 1._ This was a saying of Mahomet. What follows,
with regard to the divine sentiments always soliciting us, is thus
rendered in “My Garden:”
Ever the words of the gods resound;
But the porches of man’s ear
Seldom in this low life’s round
Are unsealed, that he may hear.
[144] _Page 236, note 2._ This is the important key to the essay on
Self-Reliance.
[145] _Page 238, note 1._ In the “Sovereignty of Ethics” Mr. Emerson
quotes an Oriental poet describing the Golden Age as saying that God had
made justice so dear to the heart of Nature that, if any injustice lurked
anywhere under the sky, the blue vault would shrivel to a snake-skin, and
cast it out by spasms.
[146] _Page 240, note 1._ There seems to be some break in the
construction here probably due to the imperfect adjustment of
lecture-sheets. It would seem that the passage should read: “Liberty is
never cheap. It is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment
and perfectness of man—the finished man; earning and bestowing good;” etc.
[147] _Page 241, note 1._ See _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_, pp.
246 and 251.
[148] _Page 242, note 1._ The occasion alluded to was Hon. Robert C.
Winthrop’s speech to the alumni of Harvard College on Commencement Day in
1852. What follows is not an abstract, but Mr. Emerson’s rendering of the
spirit of his address.
THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER
One evening in May, Judge Hoar came to Mr. Emerson’s house, evidently
deeply stirred, and told in a few words the startling news that the
great Senator from Massachusetts had been struck down at his desk by a
Representative from South Carolina, and was dangerously hurt. The news
was heard with indignant grief in Concord, and a public meeting was held
four days later in which Mr. Emerson and others gave vent to this feeling.
Among Mr. Emerson’s papers are the fragmentary notes on Sumner, given
below, without indication as to when they were used.
CHARLES SUMNER
Clean, self-poised, great-hearted man, noble in person,
incorruptible in life, the friend of the poor, the champion of
the oppressed.
Of course Congress must draw from every part of the country
swarms of individuals eager only for private interests, who
could not love his stern justice. But if they gave him no
high employment, he made low work high by the dignity of
honesty and truth. But men cannot long do without faculty and
perseverance, and he rose, step by step, to the mastery of all
affairs intrusted to him, and by those lights and upliftings
with which the spirit that makes the Universe rewards labor and
brave truth. He became learned, and adequate to the highest
questions, and the counsellor of every correction of old
errors, and of every noble reform. How nobly he bore himself
in disastrous times. Every reform he led or assisted. In the
shock of the war his patriotism never failed. A man of varied
learning and accomplishments.
He held that every man is to be judged by the horizon of his
mind, and Fame he defined as the shadow of excellence, but that
which follows him, not which he follows after.
Tragic character, like Algernon Sydney, man of conscience and
courage, but without humor. Fear did not exist for him. In
his mind the American idea is no crab, but a man incessantly
advancing, as the shadow of the dial or the heavenly body
that casts it. The American idea is emancipation, to abolish
kingcraft, feudalism, black-letter monopoly, it pulls down the
gallows, explodes priestcraft, opens the doors of the sea to
all emigrants, extemporizes government in new country.
Sumner has been collecting his works. They will be the history
of the Republic for the last twenty-five years, as told by a
brave, perfectly honest and well instructed man, with social
culture and relation to all eminent persons. Diligent and able
workman, with rare ability, without genius, without humor, but
with persevering study, wide reading, excellent memory, high
stand of honor (and pure devotion to his country), disdaining
any bribe, any compliances, and incapable of falsehood. His
singular advantages of person, of manners, and a statesman’s
conversation impress every one favorably. He has the foible of
most public men, the egotism which seems almost unavoidable
at Washington. I sat in his room once at Washington whilst he
wrote a weary procession of letters,—he writing without pause
as fast as if he were copying. He outshines all his mates in
historical conversation, and is so public in his regards that
he cannot be relied on to push an office-seeker, so that he is
no favorite with politicians. But wherever I have met with a
dear lover of the country and its moral interests, he is sure
to be a supporter of Sumner.
It characterizes a man for me that he hates Charles Sumner:
for it shows that he cannot discriminate between a foible
and a vice. Sumner’s moral instinct and character are so
exceptionally pure that he must have perpetual magnetism for
honest men; his ability and working energy such, that every
good friend of the Republic must stand by him. Those who come
near him and are offended by his egotism, or his foible (if
you please) of using classic quotations, or other bad tastes,
easily forgive these whims, if themselves are good, or magnify
them into disgust, if they themselves are incapable of his
virtue.
And when he read one night in Concord a lecture on Lafayette
we felt that of all Americans he was best entitled by his own
character and fortunes to read that eulogy.
Every Pericles must have his Cleon: Sumner had his adversaries,
his wasps and back-biters. We almost wished that he had not
stooped to answer them. But he condescended to give them truth
and patriotism, without asking whether they could appreciate
the instruction or not.
A man of such truth that he can be truly described: he needs
no exaggerated praise. Not a man of extraordinary genius, but
a man of great heart, of a perpetual youth, with the highest
sense of honor, incapable of any fraud, little or large; loving
his friend and loving his country, with perfect steadiness to
his purpose, shunning no labor that his aim required, and his
works justified him by their scope and thoroughness.
He had good masters, who quickly found that they had a good
scholar. He read law with Judge Story, who was at the head
of the Law School at Harvard University, and who speedily
discovered the value of his pupil, and called him to his
assistance in the Law School. He had a great talent for labor,
and spared no time and no research to make himself master of
his subject. His treatment of every question was faithful and
exhaustive, and marked always by the noble sentiment.
[149] _Page 252, note 1._ With this message of comfort to Sumner, struck
down for his defence of Liberty, may be contrasted what is said of
Webster when he abandoned her cause:—
“Those to whom his name was once dear and honored, as the manly statesman
to whom the choicest gifts of Nature had been accorded, disown him: ...
he who was their pride in the woods and mountains of New England is now
their mortification,—they have torn his picture from the wall, they have
thrust his speeches into the chimney,” etc.—“Address on the Fugitive
Slave Law,” at Concord, 1851.
SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS
By an act of Congress, passed in May, 1854, the territories of Kansas and
Nebraska were organized, and in a section of that act it was declared
that the Constitution and all the laws of the United States should be
in force in these territories, except the Missouri Compromise Act of
1820, which was declared inoperative and void. The act thereby repealed
had confined slavery to the region of the Louisiana Purchase south of
latitude 36°, 30´ North. Foreseeing the probable success of this measure
to increase the area of slavery, Emigrant Aid Societies had been formed
in Massachusetts first, and later, in Connecticut, which assisted
Northern emigrants to the settlement of this fertile region. Settlers
from the Northwestern States also poured in, and also from Missouri,
the latter bringing slaves with them. A fierce struggle, lasting for
some years and attended with bloodshed and barbarities, began at once,
hordes of armed men from the border state of Missouri constantly voting
at Kansas elections and intimidating the free state settlers, and even
driving parties of immigrants out of the state. Franklin Pierce was
then President, and threw the influence and power of the administration
on the side of the pro-slavery party in Kansas. Despairing of redress
from Washington, the settlers from the free states appealed in their
distress to their friends at home, and sent Mr. Whitman, Rev. Mr. Nute,
and later, John Brown, to make known to them their wrongs, and ask
moral and material aid, especially arms to defend their rights, and
reinforcements of brave settlers. Meetings were held, not only in the
cities, but in the country towns, and, certainly in the latter, were well
attended by earnest people who gave, a few from their wealth, but many
from their poverty, large sums to help “bleeding Kansas.” In response to
the petitions of the friends of Freedom, who urged the Legislature of
Massachusetts to come to the rescue, a joint committee was appointed by
the General Court to consider the petitions for a state appropriation of
ten thousand dollars to protect the interests of the North and the rights
of her citizens in Kansas, should they be again invaded by Southern
marauders. John Brown addressed this committee in February, 1856. He
made a clear and startling statement of the outrages he had witnessed
and the brave struggles of the settlers, and told of the murder and
imprisonment and maltreatment of his sons, seven of whom were in Kansas
with him during the struggle.[F]
Mr. Emerson always attended the meetings in aid of Kansas in Concord,
gave liberally to the cause, and spoke there and elsewhere when called
upon.
[150] _Page 263, note 1._ George Bancroft, the historian, said of the
conclusion of this speech:—
“Emerson as clearly as any one, perhaps more clearly than any one
at the time, saw the enormous dangers that were gathering over the
Constitution.... It would certainly be difficult, perhaps impossible,
to find any speech made in the same year that is marked with so much
courage and foresight as this of Emerson.... Even after the inauguration
of Lincoln several months passed away before his Secretary of State or
he himself saw the future so clearly as Emerson had foreshadowed it in
1856.”[G]
JOHN BROWN: SPEECH AT BOSTON
Mr. F. B. Sanborn, in his _Familiar Letters of Thoreau_, says that he
introduced John Brown to Thoreau in March, 1857, and Thoreau introduced
him to Emerson. This was at the time when Brown came on to awaken the
people of Massachusetts to the outrages which the settlers and their
families were suffering, and procure aid for them. His clear-cut face,
smooth-shaven and bronzed, his firmly shut mouth and mild but steady
blue eyes, gave him the appearance of the best type of old New England
farmers; indeed he might well have passed for a rustic brother of Squire
Hoar. Mr. Emerson was at once interested in him and the story of the
gallant fight that the Free-State men in Kansas were making, though Brown
was very modest about his own part and leadership. Indeed he claimed only
to be a fellow worker and adviser. I think that soon after this time, on
one of his visits to Concord, he stayed at Mr. Emerson’s house; certainly
he spent the evening there. The last time he came to Concord he was a
changed man; all the pleasant look was gone. His gray hair, longer and
brushed upright, his great gray beard and the sharpening of his features
by exposure and rude experiences gave him a wild, fierce expression. His
speech in the Town Hall was excited, and when he drew a huge sheath-knife
from under his coat and showed it as a symbol of Missouri civilization,
and last drew from his bosom a horse-chain and clanked it in air,
telling that his son had been bound with this and led bareheaded under
a burning sun beside their horses, by United States dragoons, and in
the mania brought on by this inhuman treatment had worn the rusty chain
bright,—the old man recalled the fierce Balfour of Burley in Scott’s
_Old Mortality_. It was a startling sight and sent a thrill through
his hearers. Yet on earlier occasions his speech had been really more
effective, when a quiet farmer of mature years, evidently self-contained,
intelligent, truthful and humane, simply told in New England towns what
was going on in Kansas, the outrages committed upon the settlers, the
violation of their elementary rights under the Constitution,—and all this
connived at by the general government. He opened the eyes of his hearers,
even against their wills, to the alarming pass into which the slave power
had brought the affairs of the country.
But now wrong and outrage, not only on others but terribly suffered in
his own family, had made Brown feel that not he but “Slavery was an
outlaw” against which he “held a commission direct from God Almighty” to
act. A friend quoted him as having said, “The loss of my family and the
troubles in Kansas have shattered my constitution, and I am nothing to
the world but to defend the right, and that, by God’s help, I have done
and will do.”
The people were not ready to follow him in revolutionary measures,
but when on his own responsibility he had precipitated the inevitable
conflict by breaking with a government, then so unrighteous, and offered
his life as a sacrifice for humanity, they could not but do homage to him
as a hero, who was technically a traitor. He had cut the Gordian knot
which they had suffered to be tied tighter.
Of course Mr. Emerson had known nothing of John Brown’s plan for a raid
into the slave states. It was the motive and courage he honored, not the
means. He wrote: “I wish we should have health enough to know virtue when
we see it, and not cry with the fools and the newspapers, ‘Madman!’ when
a hero passes.”
On the first day of November, John Brown had been sentenced to death.
This meeting in Boston, to give aid to his family, was held on the
eighteenth, just two weeks before his execution.
The verses which serve as motto are from Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman’s
poem written at the time, which Mr. Emerson used to read aloud to his
family and friends with much pleasure.
[151] _Page 269, note 1._ “This court acknowledges, I suppose, the
validity of the Law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to
be the Bible, or, at least, the New Testament. That teaches me that all
things ‘whatsoever I would that men should do unto me, I should do even
so to them.’ It teaches me further to ‘remember them which are in bonds
as bound with them.’ I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I
am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I
believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely
admitted that I have done, in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong,
but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life
for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further
with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this
slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust
enactments—I submit: so let it be done.” From the Speech of John Brown to
the Court.
[152] _Page 270, note 1._ Among the sheets of the lecture “Courage” is
one which seems to have been used at that time:—
“Governor Wise and Mr. Mason no doubt have some right to their places.
It is some superiority of working brain that put them there, and the
aristocrats in every society. But when they come to deal with Brown,
they find that he speaks their own speech,—has whatever courage and
directness they have, and a great deal more of the same; so that they
feel themselves timorous little fellows in his hand; he outsees,
outthinks, outacts them, and they are forced to shuffle and stammer in
their turn.
“They painfully feel this, that he is their governor and superior, and
the only alternative is to kneel to him if they are truly noble, or else
(if they wish to keep their places), to put this fact which they know,
out of sight of other people, as fast as they can. Quick, drums and
trumpets strike up! Quick, judges and juries, silence him, by sentence
and execution of sentence, and hide in the ground this alarming fact.
For, if everything comes to its right place, he goes up, and we down.”
[153] _Page 271, note 1._ Commodore Hiram Paulding, in 1857, had broken
up Walker’s filibustering expedition at Nicaragua. The arrest of Walker
on foreign soil the government did not think it wise wholly to approve.
[154] _Page 272, note 1._ The allusion is to the trials of the fugitives
Shadrach, Sims and Burns in Boston. The story of these humiliations is
told in full and in a most interesting manner in the diary of Richard H.
Dana,[H] whose zeal in the cause of these poor men did him great honor.
During the trial of Sims, a chain was put up, as a barrier against the
crowd, around the United States Court-House, and the stooping of the
judges to creep under this chain in order to enter the court-house was
considered symbolic of their abject attitude towards the aggressive slave
power.
JOHN BROWN: SPEECH AT SALEM
The second of December, on which day John Brown was executed at
Charlestown, Virginia, was bright in that State, but in New England was
of a strange sultriness with a wind from the south and a lowering sky.
At noon, the hour appointed for his death, in Concord (as in many New
England towns) the men and women who honored his character and motives
gathered and made solemn observance of a day and event which seemed laden
with omens. There was a prayer, I think offered by the Rev. Edmund Sears
of Wayland,[I] Mr. Emerson read William Allingham’s beautiful poem “The
Touchstone” which is used as the motto to this speech, Thoreau read with
sad bitterness Sir Walter Raleigh’s “The Soule’s Errand.” Hon. John S.
Keyes read some appropriate verses from Aytoun’s “Execution of Montrose”
and Mr. Sanborn a poem which he had written for the occasion.
[155] _Page 279, note 1._ Here, as often in Mr. Emerson’s speech and
writing, is shown his respect for the old religion of New England and its
effect on the thought and character of her people. As Lowell said of them
in his Concord Ode in 1875:—
“And yet the enduring half they chose,
Whose choice decides a man life’s slave or king,
The invisible things of God before the seen and known.”
[156] _Page 279, note 2._ I well remember the evening, in my school-boy
days, when John Brown, in my father’s house, told of his experiences as
a sheep-farmer, and his eye for animals and power over them. He said he
knew at once a strange sheep in his flock of many hundred, and that he
could always make a dog or cat so uncomfortable as to wish to leave the
room, simply by fixing his eyes on it.
[157] _Page 281, note 1._ “Heroism feels and never reasons, and
therefore is always right; and although a different breeding, different
religion and greater intellectual activity would have modified or even
reversed the particular action, yet, for the hero, that thing he does
is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure of philosophers and
divines.”—“Heroism,” _Essays, First Series_.
“I can leave to God the time and means of my death, for I believe now
that the sealing of my testimony before God and man with my blood will do
far more to further the cause to which I have earnestly devoted myself
than anything else I have done in my life.”—Letter of John Brown to a
friend.
THEODORE PARKER
Theodore Parker, worn by his great work in defence of liberal religion
and in every cause of suffering humanity, had succumbed to disease and
died in Florence in May, 1860, not quite fifty years of age. Born in
the neighbor town of Lexington when Emerson was seven years old, they
had been friends probably from the time when the latter, soon after
settling in Concord, preached for the society at East Lexington, from
1836 for two years. Parker was, during this period, studying divinity,
and was settled as pastor of the West Roxbury church in 1837. In that
year he is mentioned by Mr. Alcott as a member of the Transcendental Club
and attending its meetings in Boston. When, in June, 1838, Mr. Emerson
fluttered the conservative and the timid by his Divinity School Address,
the young Parker went home and wrote, “It was the most inspiring strain I
ever listened to.... My soul is roused, and this week I shall write the
long-meditated sermons on the state of the church and the duties of these
times.”
Mr. Parker was one of those who attended the gathering in Boston which
gave birth to the _Dial_, to which he was a strong contributor. Three
years after its death, he, with the help of Mr. James Elliot Cabot and
Mr. Emerson, founded the _Massachusetts Quarterly Review_, vigorous
though short-lived, of which he was the editor. Parker frequently visited
Emerson, and the two, unlike in their method, worked best apart in the
same great causes. Rev. William Gannett says, “What Emerson uttered
without plot or plan, Theodore Parker elaborated to a system. Parker was
the Paul of transcendentalism.”
Mr. Edwin D. Mead, in his chapter on Emerson and Theodore Parker,[J]
gives the following pleasant anecdote:—
“At one of Emerson’s lectures in Boston, when the storm against Parker
was fiercest, a lecture at which a score of the religious and literary
leaders of the city were present, Emerson, as he laid his manuscript
upon the desk and looked over the audience, after his wont, observed
Parker; and immediately he stepped from the platform to the seat near the
front where Parker sat, grasping his hand and standing for a moment’s
conversation with him. It was not ostentation, and it was not patronage:
it was admiring friendship,—and that fortification and stimulus Parker
in those times never failed to feel. It was Emerson who fed his lamp, he
said; and Emerson said that, be the lamp fed as it might, it was Parker
whom the time to come would have to thank for finding the light burning.”
Parker dedicated to Emerson his _Ten Sermons on Religion_. In
acknowledging this tribute, Mr. Emerson thus paid tribute to Parker’s
brave service:—
“We shall all thank the right soldier whom God gave strength to fight for
him the battle of the day.”
When Mr. Parker’s failing forces made it necessary for him to drop his
arduous work and go abroad for rest, Mr. Emerson was frequently called to
take his place in the Music Hall on Sundays. I think that this was the
only pulpit he went into to conduct Sunday services after 1838.
It is told that Parker, sitting, on Sunday morning, on the deck of the
vessel that was bearing him away, never to return, smiled and said:
“Emerson is preaching at Music Hall to-day.”
[158] _Page 286, note 1._ Mr. Emerson wrote in his journal:—
“The Duc de Brancas said, ‘Why need I read the Encyclopédie? Rivarol
visits me.’ I may well say it of Theodore Parker.”
[159] _Page 290, note 1._ Richard H. Dana wrote in his diary, November 3,
1853:—
“It is now ten days since Webster’s death.... Strange that the best
commendation that has appeared yet, the most touching, elevated, meaning
eulogy, with all its censure, should have come from Theodore Parker! Were
I Daniel Webster, I would not have that sermon destroyed for all that had
been said in my favor as yet.”
[160] _Page 293, note 1._ I copy from Mr. Emerson’s journal at the
time of Mr. Parker’s death these sentences which precede some of those
included in this address:—
“Theodore Parker has filled up all his years and days and hours. A son
of the energy of New England; restless, eager, manly, brave, early old,
contumacious, clever. I can well praise him at a spectator’s distance,
for our minds and methods were unlike,—few people more unlike. All the
virtues are solitaires. Each man is related to persons who are not
related to each other, and I saw with pleasure that men whom I could
not approach, were drawn through him to the admiration of that which I
admire.”
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION
On January 31, 1862, Mr. Emerson lectured at the Smithsonian Institution
in Washington on American Civilization. Just after the outbreak of war
in the April preceding, he had given a lecture, in a course in Boston on
Life and Literature, which he called “Civilization at a Pinch,” the title
suggesting how it had been modified by the crisis which had suddenly come
to pass. In the course of the year the flocking of slaves to the Union
camps, and the opening vista of a long and bitter struggle, with slavery
now acknowledged as its root, had brought the question of Emancipation
as a war-measure to the front. Of course Mr. Emerson saw hope in this
situation of affairs, and when he went to Washington with the chance
of being heard by men in power there, he prepared himself to urge the
measure, as well on grounds of policy as of right. So the Boston lecture
was much expanded to deal with the need of the hour. There is no evidence
that President Lincoln heard it; it is probable that he did not; nor is
it true that Mr. Emerson had a long and earnest conversation with him on
the subject next day, both of which assertions have been made in print.
Mr. Emerson made an unusual record in his journal of the incidents of
his stay in Washington, and though he tells of his introduction to Mr.
Lincoln and a short chat with him, evidently there was little opportunity
for serious conversation. The President’s secretaries had, in 1886, no
memory of his having attended the lecture, and the Washington papers do
not mention his presence there. The following notice of the lecture,
however, appeared in one of the local papers: “The audience received
it, as they have the other anti-slavery lectures of the course, with
unbounded enthusiasm. It was in many respects a wonderful lecture, and
those who have often heard Mr. Emerson said that he seemed inspired
through nearly the whole of it, especially the part referring to slavery
and the war.”
A gentleman in Washington, who took the trouble to look up the question
as to whether Mr. Lincoln and other high officials heard it, says that
Mr. Lincoln could hardly have attended lectures then:—
“He was very busy at the time, Stanton the new war secretary having just
come in, and storming like a fury at the business of his department.
The great operations of the war for the time overshadowed all the other
events.... It is worth remarking that Mr. Emerson in this lecture clearly
foreshadowed the policy of Emancipation some six or eight months in
advance of Mr. Lincoln. He saw the logic of events leading up to a crisis
in our affairs, to ‘emancipation as a platform with compensation to the
loyal owners’ (his words as reported in the _Star_). The notice states
that the lecture was very fully attended.”
Very possibly it may be with regard to this address that we have the
interesting account given of the effect of Mr. Emerson’s speaking on a
well-known English author. Dr. Garnett, in his _Life of Emerson_, says:—
“A shrewd judge, Anthony Trollope, was particularly struck with the note
of sincerity in Emerson when he heard him address a large meeting during
the Civil War. Not only was the speaker terse, perspicuous, and practical
to a degree amazing to Mr. Trollope’s preconceived notions, but he
commanded his hearers’ respect by the frankness of his dealing with them.
‘You make much of the American eagle,’ he said, ‘you do well. But beware
of the American peacock.’ When shortly afterwards Mr. Trollope heard the
consummate rhetorician, ⸺ ⸺ he discerned at once that oratory was an end
with him, instead of, as with Emerson, a means. He was neither bold nor
honest, as Emerson had been, and the people knew that while pretending to
lead them he was led by them.”
Mr. Emerson revised the lecture and printed it in the _Atlantic
Monthly_ for April, 1862. It was afterwards separated into the essay
“Civilization,” treating of the general and permanent aspects of the
subject (printed in _Society and Solitude_), and this urgent appeal for
the instant need.
The few lines inspired by the Flag are from one of the verse-books.
[161] _Page 298, note 1._ Mr. Emerson himself was by no means free from
pecuniary anxieties and cares in those days.
Journal, 1862. “Poverty, sickness, a lawsuit, even bad, dark weather,
spoil a great many days of the scholar’s year, hinder him of the frolic
freedom necessary to spontaneous flow of thought.”
[162] _Page 300, note 1._ This was during the days of apparent inaction
when, after the first reverses or minor successes of the raw Northern
armies, the magnitude of the task before them and the energy of their
opponents was realized, and recruiting, fortification, organization was
going on in earnest in preparation for the spring campaign. General Scott
had resigned; General McClellan was doing his admirable work of creating
a fit army, and Secretary Cameron had been succeeded by the energetic and
impatient Stanton. But the government was still very shy of meddling with
slavery for fear of disaffecting the War Democrats and especially the
Border States.
[163] _Page 307, note 1._ A short time before this address was delivered
Mr. Moncure D. Conway (a young Virginian, who, for conscience’ sake, had
left his charge as a Methodist preacher and had abandoned his inheritance
in slaves, losing in so doing the good will of his parents, and become a
Unitarian minister and an abolitionist) had read in Concord an admirable
and eloquent lecture called “The Rejected Stone.” This stone, slighted
by the founders, although they knew it to be a source of danger, had now
“become the head of the corner,” and its continuance in the national
structure threatened its stability. Mr. Emerson had been much struck
with the excellence and cogency of Mr. Conway’s arguments, based on his
knowledge of Southern economics and character, and in this lecture made
free use of them.
[164] _Page 308, note 1._ Mason and Slidell, the emissaries sent by the
Confederacy to excite sympathy in its cause in Europe, had been taken
off an English vessel at the Bermudas by Commodore Wilkes, and were
confined in Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. President Lincoln’s action in
surrendering them at England’s demand had been a surprise to the country,
but was well received.
[165] _Page 309, note 1._ From the Veeshnoo Sarma.
[166] _Page 309, note 2._ See in the address on Theodore Parker the
passage commending him for insisting “that the essence of Christianity is
its practical morals; it is there for use or nothing,” etc.
[167] _Page 311, note 1._ In the agitation concerning the abolition
of slavery in the British colonies, gradual emancipation was at first
planned, as more reasonable and politic, but, in the end, not only the
reformers but the planters came in most cases to see that immediate
emancipation was wiser.
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
On the 22d of September, President Lincoln at last spoke the word so long
earnestly desired by the friends of Freedom and the victims of slavery,
abolishing slavery on the first day of the coming year in those states
which should then be in rebellion against the United States.
At a meeting held in Boston in honor of this auspicious utterance, Mr.
Emerson spoke, with others.
The address was printed in its present form in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for
November, 1862.
[168] _Page 316, note 1._ It may be interesting in this connection to
recall the quiet joy with which Mr. Emerson in his poem “The Adirondacs”
celebrates man’s victory over matter, and its promise to human
brotherhood, when the Atlantic Cable was supposed to be a success in 1858.
[169] _Page 320, note 1._ Milton, “Comus.”
[170] _Page 321, note 1._ It is pleasant to contrast this passage with
the tone of sad humiliation which prevails in the address on the Fugitive
Slave Law given in Concord in 1851.
[171] _Page 324, note 1._ See the insulting recognition of this
disgraceful attitude of the North by John Randolph, quoted by Mr. Emerson
in his speech on the Fugitive Slave Law in Concord in 1851.
[172] _Page 326, note 1._ Shakspeare, Sonnet cvii.
[173] _Page 326, note 2._ The tragedy of the negro is tenderly told in
the poem “Voluntaries,” which was written just after they had gallantly
stood the test of battle in the desperate attack on Fort Wagner.
On the first day of the year 1863, when Emancipation became a fact
throughout the United States, a joyful meeting was held in Boston, and
there Mr. Emerson read his “Boston Hymn.”
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
In the year 1865, the people of Concord gathered on the Nineteenth of
April, as had been their wont for ninety years, but this time not to
celebrate the grasping by the town of its great opportunity for freedom
and fame. The people came together in the old meeting-house to mourn for
their wise and good Chief Magistrate, murdered when he had triumphantly
finished the great work which fell to his lot. Mr. Emerson, with others
of his townsmen, spoke.
[174] _Page 331, note 1._ On the occasion of his visit to Washington
in January, 1862, Mr. Emerson had been taken to the White House by Mr.
Sumner and introduced to the President. Mr. Lincoln’s first remark was,
“Mr. Emerson, I once heard you say in a lecture that a Kentuckian seems
to say by his air and manners, ‘Here am I; if you don’t like me, the
worse for you.’”
The interview with Mr. Lincoln was necessarily short, but he left an
agreeable impression on Mr. Emerson’s mind. The full account of this
visit is printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for July, 1904, and will be
included among the selections from the journals which will be later
published.
[175] _Page 332, note 1._ Mr. Emerson’s poem, “The Visit,” shows how
terrible the devastation of the day of a public man would have seemed to
him.
[176] _Page 336, note 1._ The brave retraction by Thomas Taylor of the
hostile ridicule which _Punch_ had poured on Lincoln in earlier days
contained these verses:—
“Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew,
Between the mourners at his head and feet,
Say, scurrile jester, is there room for _you_?
“Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen;—
To make me own this kind of princes peer,
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.”
The whole poem is included in Mr. Emerson’s collection _Parnassus_.
[177] _Page 337, note 1._ This thought is rendered more fully in the poem
“Spiritual Laws,” and in the lines in “Worship,”—
This is he men miscall Fate,
Threading dark ways, arriving late,
But ever coming in time to crown
The truth, and hurl wrong-doers down.
[178] _Page 338, note 1._ The following letter was written by Mr. Emerson
in November, 1863, to his friend, Mr. George P. Bradford, who, as Mr.
Cabot says, came nearer to being a “crony” than any of the others:—
CONCORD.
DEAR GEORGE,—I hope you do not need to be reminded that we
rely on you at 2 o’clock on Thanksgiving Day. Bring all the
climate and all the memories of Newport with you. Mr. Lincoln
in fixing this day has in some sort bound himself to furnish
good news and victories for it. If not, we must comfort each
other with the good which already is, and with that which must
be.
Yours affectionately,
R. W. EMERSON.
A year later, he wrote to the same friend:—
“I give you joy of the Election. Seldom in history was so much staked on
a popular vote—I suppose never in history.
“One hears everywhere anecdotes of late, very late, remorse overtaking
the hardened sinners and just saving them from final reprobation.”
Journal, 1864-65. “Why talk of President Lincoln’s equality of manners
to the elegant or titled men with whom Everett or others saw him? A
sincerely upright and intelligent man as he was, placed in the chair,
has no need to think of his manners or appearance. His work day by day
educates him rapidly and to the best. He exerts the enormous power of
this continent in every hour, in every conversation, in every act;—thinks
and decides under this pressure, forced to see the vast and various
bearings of the measures he adopts: _he_ cannot palter, he cannot but
carry a grace beyond his own, a dignity, by means of what he drops, e.
g., all pretension and trick, and arrives, of course, at a simplicity,
which is the perfection of manners.”
HARVARD COMMEMORATION SPEECH
It was a proud and sad, and yet a joyful day, when Harvard welcomed back
those of her sons who had survived the war. All who could come were
there, from boys to middle-aged men, from private soldier to general,
some strong and brown, and others worn and sick and maimed, but all on
that day proud and happy. The names of the ninety-three of Harvard’s sons
who had fallen in the war were inscribed on six tablets and placed where
all could see.
In the church, where then the college exercises were held, the venerable
ex-president, Dr. Walker, read the Scriptures, Rev. Phillips Brooks
offered prayer, a hymn by Robert Lowell was sung, and the address was
made by the Rev. George Putnam. In the afternoon the alumni, civic and
military, with their guests, were marshalled by Colonel Henry Lee into
a great pavilion behind Harvard Hall, where they dined. Hon. Charles
G. Loring presided; Governor Andrew, General Meade, General Devens and
other distinguished soldiers spoke, and poems by Dr. Holmes and Mrs.
Julia Ward Howe were read. The president of the day called on Mr. Emerson
as representative of the poets and scholars whose thoughts had been an
inspiration to Harvard’s sons in the field.
[179] _Page 344, note 1._ This was the mother of Robert Gould Shaw, who
lost his life a few months later, leading his dusky soldiers up the
slopes of Fort Wagner. It was in his honor that Mr. Emerson wrote in the
“Voluntaries,”—
Stainless soldier on the walls.
Knowing this,—and knows no more,—
Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore,
Justice after as before,—
And he who battles on her side,
God, though he were ten times slain,
Crowns him victor glorified,
Victor over death and pain.
[180] _Page 345, note 1._
“O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!
...
What words divine of lover or of poet
Could tell our love and make thee know it,
Among the Nations bright beyond compare?
What were our lives without thee?
What all our lives to save thee?
We reck not what we gave thee;
We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else, and we will dare!”
Lowell, “Commemoration Ode.”
ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT IN CONCORD
In 1836, the “Battle Monument” to commemorate “the First organized
Resistance to British Aggression” had been erected “in Gratitude to God
and Love of Freedom” on “the spot where the first of the Enemy fell in
the War which gave Independence to the United States.” Thirty-three years
later, on the Nineteenth day of April, with its threefold patriotic
memories for Concord,[K] the people gathered on the village common to see
their new memorial to valor. The inscription on one of its bronze tablets
declared that
THE TOWN OF CONCORD
BUILDS THIS MONUMENT
IN HONOR OF
THE BRAVE MEN
WHOSE NAMES IT BEARS:
AND RECORDS
WITH GRATEFUL PRIDE
THAT THEY FOUND HERE
A BIRTHPLACE, HOME OR GRAVE.
The inscription on the other tablet is the single sentence,—
THEY DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY
IN THE WAR OF THE REBELLION
with the forty-four names.
Hon. John S. Keyes as President of the Day opened the ceremonies with a
short address. The Rev. Grindall Reynolds made the prayer. An Ode written
by Mr. George B. Bartlett was sung to the tune of _Auld Lang Syne_. Hon.
Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, the Chairman of the Monument Committee, read the
Report, in itself an eloquent and moving speech. This was followed by Mr.
Emerson’s Address. Mr. F. B. Sanborn contributed a Poem, and afterwards
short speeches were made by Senator George S. Boutwell, William Schouler,
the efficient Adjutant-General of the State, and by Colonels Parker and
Marsh respectively of the Thirty-second and Forty-seventh regiments of
Massachusetts Volunteers, in which the Concord companies had served. The
exercises were concluded by the reading of a poem by Mr. Sampson Mason,
an aged citizen of the town.
It was a beautiful spring day. The throng was too large for the town
hall, so, partly sheltered from the afternoon sun by the town elm,
thickening with its brown buds, they gathered around the town-house
steps, which served as platform for the speakers.
[181] _Page 351, note 1._ Compare, in the _Poems_, the lines in “The
Problem” on the adoption by Nature of man’s devotional structures.
[182] _Page 352, note 1._
Great men in the Senate sate,
Sage and hero, side by side,
Building for their sons the State,
Which they shall rule with pride.
They forbore to break the chain
Which bound the dusky tribe,
Checked by the owners’ fierce disdain,
Lured by “Union” as the bribe.
Destiny sat by, and said,
‘Pang for pang your seed shall pay,
Hide in false peace your coward head,
I bring round the harvest day.’
[183] _Page 353, note 1._ Wordsworth’s Sonnet, No. xiv., in “Poems
dedicated to National Independence,” part ii.
[184] _Page 355, note 1._ Mr. Emerson had in mind the astonishing
fertility of resource in difficulties shown by the Eighth Massachusetts
Regiment in the march from Annapolis to Washington, as told by Major
Theodore Winthrop in “New York Seventh Regiment. Our march to Washington”
(_Atlantic Monthly_ June, 1861). See “Resources,” _Letters and Social
Aims_, p. 143.
Judge Hoar in his report on this occasion said, “Two names [on the
tablet] recall the unutterable horrors of Andersonville, and will never
suffer us to forget that our armies conquered barbarism as well as
treason.”
[185] _Page 356, note 1._ Between 1856 and 1859 John Brown and other
Free-State men, Mr. Whitman, Mr. Nute and Preacher Stewart, had told the
sad story of Kansas to the Concord people and received important aid.
[186] _Page 358, note 1._ This was Captain Charles E. Bowers, a
shoemaker, and Mr. Emerson’s next neighbor, much respected by him, whose
forcible speaking at anti-slavery and Kansas aid meetings he often
praised. When the war came, Mr. Bowers, though father of a large family,
and near the age-limit of service, volunteered as a private in the first
company, went again as an officer in the Thirty-second Massachusetts
Regiment, and served with credit in the Army of the Potomac until
discharged for disability.
[187] _Page 358, note 2._ George L. Prescott, a lumber dealer and
farmer, later Colonel of the Thirty-second Regiment, U. S. V. He was of
the same stock as Colonel William Prescott, the hero of Bunker Hill.
Judge Hoar said of him, “An only son, an only brother, a husband and a
father, with no sufficient provision made for his wife and children, he
had everything to make life dear and desirable, and to require others to
hesitate for him, but he did not hesitate himself.”
[188] _Page 361, note 1._ Blaise de Montluc, a Gascon officer of
remarkable valor, skill and fidelity, under Francis I. and several
succeeding kings of France.
[189] _Page 365, note 1._ It was well said by Judge Hoar: “His
instinctive sympathies taught him from the outset, what many higher in
command were so slow and so late to learn, that it is the first duty of
an officer to take care of his men as much as to lead them. His character
developed new and larger proportions, with new duties and larger
responsibilities.”
[190] _Page 366, note 1._ The Buttricks were among the original settlers
of Concord, and the family has given good account of itself for nearly
two hundred and seventy years, and still owns the farm on the hill
whence Major John led the yeomen of Middlesex down to force the passage
of the North Bridge. Seven representatives of that family of sturdy
democrats volunteered at the beginning of the War of the Rebellion. Two
were discharged as physically unfit, but the others served in army or
navy with credit, and two of them lost their lives in the service. Alden
Buttrick had fought the Border Ruffians in Kansas. Humphrey, a mason by
trade, but a mighty hunter, left his wife and little children at the
first call, and was first sergeant of Prescott’s company. Mr. Emerson
omits to state that he was commissioned lieutenant in the Forty-seventh
Regiment the following year. His service, especially as captain in the
Fifty-ninth Regiment, was arduous and highly creditable.
[191] _Page 368, note 1._ Edward O. Shepard, who had been master of the
Concord High School, afterwards a successful lawyer, had an excellent war
record, and rose to be lieutenant-colonel of the Thirty-second Regiment.
George Lauriat left the gold-beater’s shop of Ephraim W. Bull (the
producer of the Concord Grape) to go to the war in Concord’s first
company. Modest and brave, he became an excellent officer and returned
captain and brevet-major of the Thirty-second Regiment.
[192] _Page 368, note 2._ Francis Buttrick, younger brother of Humphrey,
a handsome and attractive youth, had lived at Mr. Emerson’s home to carry
on the farm for him.
[193] _Page 375, note 1._ These three were Asa, John and Samuel Melvin.
Asa died of wounds received before Petersburg; both his brothers of
sickness, Samuel after long suffering in the prison-pen at Andersonville.
They came of an old family of hunter-farmers in Concord. Close by the
wall next the street of the Old Hill Burying Ground is the stone in
memory of one of their race, whose “Martial Genius early engaged him in
his Country’s cause under command of the valiant Captain Lovel in that
hazardous Enterprise where our hero, his Commander, with many brave and
valiant Men bled and died.”
[194] _Page 379, note 1._ The writer of this letter, a quiet, handsome
school-boy the year before the war broke out, lived just across the
brook behind Mr. Emerson’s house. He was an excellent soldier in the
Thirty-second Regiment, and reënlisted as a veteran in 1864.
EDITORS’ ADDRESS, MASSACHUSETTS QUARTERLY REVIEW
Mr. Cabot, in his Memoir, says that just before Mr. Emerson sailed for
Europe in 1847, Theodore Parker, Dr. S. G. Howe and others (Mr. Cabot was
one of these) met to consider whether there could not be “a new quarterly
review which should be more alive than was the _North American_ to the
questions of the day.” Charles Sumner and Thoreau are mentioned as having
been present. Colonel Higginson says that Mr. Parker wished it to be “the
_Dial_ with a beard.” It was decided that the undertaking should be made.
Mr. Parker wished Mr. Emerson to be editor, but he declined. A committee
was chosen—Emerson, Parker and Howe—to draft a manifesto to the public.
Mr. Emerson wrote the paper here printed, but when the first number of
the Review came to him in England, was annoyed at finding his name set
down as one of the editors. I think that the only paper he ever wrote
for it, beyond the “Address to the Public,” was a notice of “Some Oxford
Poetry,”—the recently published poems of John Sterling and Arthur Hugh
Clough.
Theodore Parker was the real editor. During its three years of life the
_Massachusetts Quarterly_—now hard to obtain—was a brave, independent and
patriotic magazine, and, like the _Dial_, gives the advancing thought
of the time in literary and social matters, and also in religion and
politics.
[195] _Page 384, note 1._ Plutarch tells that Cineas, the wise counsellor
of Pyrrhus, king of the Epirots, asked his monarch when he set forth
to conquer Rome what he should do afterwards. Pyrrhus said he could
then become master of Sicily. “And then?” asked Cineas. The king told
of further dreams of conquest of Carthage and Libya. “But when we have
conquered all that, what are we to do then?” “Why then, my friend,” said
Pyrrhus, laughing, “we will take our ease, and drink and be merry.”
Cineas, having brought him thus far, replied, “And what hinders us from
drinking and taking our ease now, when we have already those things in
our hands at which we propose to arrive through seas of blood, through
infinite toils and dangers, innumerable calamities which we must both
cause and suffer?”
[196] _Page 386, note 1._ “To live without duties is
obscene.”—“Aristocracy,” _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_.
[197] _Page 389, note 1._ This was shortly after the annexation
of Texas, and during the successful progress of the Mexican War. The
slave power, although awakening opposition by its insatiable demands, was
still on the increase. Charles Sumner, though a rising statesman, had not
yet entered Congress.
[198] _Page 389, note 2._
For Destiny never swerves,
Nor yields to men the helm.
“The World-Soul,” _Poems_.
ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH
On a beautiful day in May, 1852, Louis Kossuth, the exiled governor of
Hungary, who had come to this country to solicit her to interfere in
European politics on behalf of his oppressed people, visited the towns of
Lexington and Concord, and spoke to a large assemblage in each place.
Kossuth was met at the Lexington line by a cavalcade from Concord, who
escorted him to the village, where he received a cordial welcome. The
town hall was crowded with people. The Hon. John S. Keyes presided, and
Mr. Emerson made the address of welcome.
Kossuth, in his earnest appeal for American help, addressed Mr. Emerson
personally in the following passages, after alluding to Concord’s part in
the struggle for Freedom in 1775:—
“It is strange, indeed, how every incident of the present bears the mark
of a deeper meaning around me. There is meaning in the very fact that it
is you, sir, by whom the representative of Hungary’s ill-fated struggle
is so generously welcomed ... to the shrine of martyrs illumined by
victory. You are wont to dive into the mysteries of truth and disclose
mysteries of right to the eyes of men. Your honored name is Emerson;
and Emerson was the name of a man who, a minister of the gospel, turned
out with his people, on the 19th of April of eternal memory, when the
alarm-bell first was rung.... I take hold of that augury, sir. Religion
and Philosophy, you blessed twins,—upon you I rely with my hopes to
America. Religion, the philosophy of the heart, will make the Americans
generous; and philosophy, the religion of the mind, will make the
Americans wise; and all that I claim is a generous wisdom and a wise
generosity.”
[199] _Page 398, note 1._ I am unable to find the source of these lines.
[200] _Page 399, note 1._ For the power of minorities, see “Progress of
Culture,” _Letters and Social Aims_, pp. 216-219, and “Considerations by
the Way,” _Conduct of Life_, pp. 248, 249.
WOMAN
Perhaps the pleasantest word Mr. Emerson ever spoke about women was what
he said at the end of the war: “Everybody has been wrong in his guess
except good women, who never despair of an ideal right.”
Mr. Emerson’s habitual treatment of women showed his real feeling towards
them. He held them to their ideal selves by his courtesy and honor. When
they called him to come to their aid, he came. Men must not deny them any
right that they desired; though he never felt that the finest women would
care to assume political functions in the same way that men did.
Mr. Cabot gives in his Memoir (p. 455) a letter which Mr. Emerson wrote,
five years before this speech was made, to a lady who asked him to join
in a call for a Woman’s Suffrage Convention. His distaste for the scheme
clearly appears, and though perhaps felt in a less degree as time went
on, never quite disappeared. At the end of the notes on this address is
given the greater part of a short speech which he wrote many years later,
but which he seems never to have delivered. Colonel Thomas Wentworth
Higginson is reported in the _Woman’s Journal_ as having said at the New
England Women’s Club, May 16, 1903, that Mr. Cabot put into his Memoir
what Mr. Emerson said in his early days, when he was opposed to woman’s
suffrage (the letter above alluded to), and “left out all those warm and
cordial sentences that he wrote later in regard to it, culminating in his
assertion that, whatever might be said of it as an abstract question,
all his measures would be carried sooner if women could vote.” This
last assertion, though not in the Memoir, Mr. Cabot printed in its place
in the present address, and the only other address on the subject which
is known to exist, Mr. Cabot did not print probably because Mr. Emerson
never delivered it.
[201] _Page 406, note 1._ This passage from the original is omitted:—
“A woman of genius said, ‘I will forgive you that you do so much, and you
me that I do nothing.’”
[202] _Page 411, note 1._ This sentence originally ended, “And their
convention should be holden in a sculpture-gallery.”
[203] _Page 412, note 1._ From _The Angel in the House_, by Coventry
Patmore.
[204] _Page 413, note 1._ Milton, _Paradise Lost_.
Because of the high triumph of Humility, his favorite virtue, Mr.
Emerson, though commonly impatient of sad stories, had always a love for
the story of Griselda, as told by Chaucer, alluded to below. In spite
of its great length, he would not deny it a place in his collection
_Parnassus_.
[205] _Page 413, note 2._ From “Love and Humility,” by Henry More
(1614-87).
[206] _Page 414, note 1._ These anecdotes followed in the original
speech:—
“‘I use the Lord of the Kaaba; what is the Kaaba to me?’ said Rabia. ‘I
am so near to God that his word, “Whoso nears me by a span, to him come
I a mile,” is true for me.’ A famed Mahometan theologian asked her, ‘How
she had lifted herself to this degree of the love of God?’ She replied,
‘Hereby, that all things which I had found, I have lost in him.’ The
other said, ‘In what way or method hast thou known him?’ She replied, ‘O
Hassan! thou knowest him after a certain art and way, but I without art
and way.’ When once she was sick, three famed theologians came to her,
Hassan Vasri, Malek and Balchi. Hassan said, ‘He is not upright in his
prayer who does not endure the blows of his Lord.’ Balchi said, ‘He is
not upright in his prayer who does not rejoice in the blows of his Lord.’
But Rabia, who in these words detected some trace of egoism, said, ‘He
is not upright in his prayer, who, when he beholds his Lord, forgets not
that he is stricken.’”
[207] _Page 415, note 1._ See “Clubs,” in _Society and Solitude_, p. 243.
[208] _Page 417, note 1._ “The Princess” is the poem alluded to. Mr.
Emerson liked it, but used to say it was sad to hear it end with, _Go
home and mind your mending_.
[209] _Page 426, note 1._ The internal evidence shows that the short
speech given below was written after the war. All that is important is
here given. There were one or two paragraphs that essentially were the
same as those of the 1855 address.
On the manuscript is written, apparently in Mr. Emerson’s hand, in
pencil, “Never read,” and evidently in his hand, the title, thus:—
_Discours Manqué_
WOMAN
I consider that the movement which unites us to-day is no whim, but an
organic impulse,—a right and proper inquiry,—honoring to the age. And
among the good signs of the times, this is of the best.
The distinctions of the mind of Woman we all recognize; their
affectionate, sympathetic, religious, oracular nature; their swifter and
finer perception; their taste, or love of order and beauty, influencing
or creating manners. We commonly say, Man represents Intellect; and
Woman, Love. Man looks for hard truth. Woman, with her affection for
goodness, benefit. Hence they are religious. In all countries and creeds
the temples are filled by women, and they hold men to religious rites
and moral duties. And in all countries the man—no matter how hardened a
reprobate he is—likes well to have his wife a saint. It was no historic
chance, but an instinct, which softened in the Middle Ages the terror
of the superstitious, by gradually lifting their prayers to the Virgin
Mary and so adopting the Mother of God as the efficient Intercessor. And
now, when our religious traditions are so far outgrown as to require
correction and reform, ’tis certain that nothing can be fixed and
accepted which does not commend itself to Woman.
I suppose women feel in relation to men as ’tis said geniuses feel among
energetic workers, that, though overlooked and thrust aside in the press,
they outsee all these noisy masters: and we, in the presence of sensible
women, feel overlooked, judged,—and sentenced.
They are better scholars than we at school, and the reason why they are
not better than we twenty years later may be because men can turn their
reading to account in the professions, and women are excluded from the
professions.
These traits have always characterized women. We are a little vain of our
women, as if we had invented them. I think we exaggerate the effect of
Greek, Roman and even Oriental institutions on the character of woman.
Superior women are rare anywhere, as superior men are. But the anecdotes
of every country give like portraits of womanhood, and every country in
its Roll of Honor has as many women as men. The high sentiment of women
appears in the Hebrew, the Hindoo; in Greek women in Homer, in the
tragedies, and Roman women in the histories. Their distinctive traits,
grace, vivacity, and surer moral sentiment, their self-sacrifice, their
courage and endurance, have in every nation found respect and admiration.
Her gifts make woman the refiner and civilizer of her mate. Civilization
is her work. Man is rude and bearish in colleges, in mines, in ships,
because there is no woman. Let good women go passengers in the ship, and
the manners at once are mended; in schools, in hospitals, in the prairie,
in California, she brings the same reform....
Her activity in putting an end to Slavery; and in serving the hospitals
of the Sanitary Commission in the war, and in the labors of the
Freedman’s Bureau, have opened her eyes to larger rights and duties. She
claims now her full rights of all kinds,—to education, to employment, to
equal laws of property. Well, now in this country we are suffering much
and fearing more from the abuse of the ballot and from fraudulent and
purchased votes. And now, at the moment when committees are investigating
and reporting the election frauds, woman asks for her vote. It is the
remedy at the hour of need. She is to purify and civilize the voting, as
she has the schools, the hospitals and the drawing-rooms. For, to grant
her request, you must remove the polls from the tavern and rum-shop, and
build noble edifices worthy of the State, whose halls shall afford her
every security for deliberate and sovereign action.
’Tis certainly no new thing to see women interest themselves in politics.
In England, in France, in Germany, Italy, we find women of influence and
administrative capacity,—some Duchess of Marlborough, some Madame de
Longueville, Madame Roland,—centres of political power and intrigue....
But we have ourselves seen the great political enterprise of our times,
the abolition of Slavery in America, undertaken by a society whose
executive committee was composed of men and women, and which held
together until this object was attained. And she may well exhibit the
history of that as her voucher that she is entitled to demand power which
she has shown she can use so well.
’Tis idle to refuse them a vote on the ground of incompetency. I wish our
masculine voting were so good that we had any right to doubt their equal
discretion. They could not easily give worse votes, I think, than we do.
CONSECRATION OF SLEEPY HOLLOW CEMETERY
Within a quarter of a mile of Concord Common was a natural amphitheatre,
carpeted in late summer with a purple bloom of wild grass, and girt by a
horseshoe-shaped glacial moraine clothed with noble pines and oaks. It
was part of Deacon Brown’s farm, and reached by a lane, with a few houses
on it, cut through a low part of the ridge of hills which sheltered
the old town. When the Deacon died, the town laid out a new road to
Bedford, cutting off this “Sleepy Hollow” (as the townspeople who enjoyed
strolling there had named it) from the rest of the farm. Mr. John S.
Keyes saw the fitness of the ground for a beautiful cemetery, and induced
the town to buy it for that purpose; and as chairman of the committee,
laid out the land. The people of the village—for Concord had nothing
suburban about it then—gathered there one beautiful September afternoon
to choose their resting-places and consecrate the ground. Mr. Emerson
made the address on the slope just below the place where, beneath a
great pine, the tree he loved best, he had chosen the spot for his own
grave.
Much of his essay on Immortality was originally a part of this discourse,
and therefore that portion is omitted here, its place in the essay being
indicated.
ROBERT BURNS
It is pleasant to be able to let Dr. Holmes, who was present at the Burns
Festival, speak for himself and Lowell and Judge Hoar of Mr. Emerson’s
speech on that day. I have heard the Judge tell the story of his friend’s
success with the same delight.
“On the 25th of January, 1859, Emerson attended the Burns Festival, held
at the Parker House in Boston, on the Centennial Anniversary of the
poet’s birth. He spoke, after the dinner, to the great audience with
such beauty and eloquence that all who listened to him have remembered
it as one of the most delightful addresses they ever heard. Among his
hearers was Mr. Lowell, who says of it that ‘every word seemed to have
just dropped down to him from the clouds.’ Judge Hoar, who was another
of his hearers, says that, though he has heard many of the chief orators
of his time, he never witnessed such an effect of speech upon men. I was
myself present on that occasion, and underwent the same fascination that
these gentlemen and the varied audience before the speaker experienced.
His words had a passion in them not usual in the calm, pure flow most
natural to his uttered thoughts; white-hot iron we are familiar with, but
white-hot silver is what we do not often look upon, and his inspiring
address glowed like silver fresh from the cupel.”
The strange part of all the accounts given by the hearers is that Mr.
Emerson seemed to speak _extempore_, which can hardly have been so.
No account of the Festival, or Mr. Emerson’s part therein, appears in
the journals, except a short page of praise of the felicitous anecdotes
introduced by other after-dinner speakers.
[210] _Page 440, note 1._ Here comes out that respect for labor which
affected all Mr. Emerson’s relations to the humblest people he met. In
the Appendix to the _Poems_ it appears in the verses beginning,—
Said Saadi, When I stood before
Hassan the camel-driver’s door.
[211] _Page 441, note 1._ Thomas Carlyle.
[212] _Page 441, note 2._ Mr. Emerson here recalls his childhood and that
of his brothers, as in the passage in “Domestic Life,” in _Society and
Solitude_, that has been often referred to in these notes.
[213] _Page 443, note 1._ Among some stray lecture-sheets was the
following on the scholar or poet:—
“Given the insight, and he will find as many beauties and heroes and
strokes of genius close by him as Dante or Shakspeare beheld. It was in
a cold moor farm, in a dingy country inn, that Burns found his fancy so
sprightly. You find the times and places mean. Stretch a few threads over
an Æolian harp, and put it in the window and listen to what it says of
the times and of the heart of Nature. You shall not believe the miracle
of Nature is less, the chemical power worn out. Watch the breaking
morning, or the enchantments of the sunset.”
SHAKSPEARE
The following notes on Shakspeare were written by Mr. Emerson for
the celebration in Boston by the Saturday Club of the Three Hundredth
Anniversary of the poet’s birth.
In Mr. Cabot’s _Memoir of Emerson_, vol. ii., page 621, apropos of Mr.
Emerson’s avoidance of impromptu speech on public occasions, is this
statement:—
“I remember his getting up at a dinner of the Saturday Club on the
Shakspeare anniversary in 1864, to which some guests had been invited,
looking about him tranquilly for a minute or two, and then sitting down;
serene and unabashed, but unable to say a word upon a subject so familiar
to his thoughts from boyhood.”
Yet on the manuscript of this address Mr. Emerson noted that it was read
at the Club’s celebration on that occasion, and at the Revere House.
(“Parker’s” was the usual gathering-place of the Club.) The handwriting
of this note shows that Mr. Emerson wrote it in his later years, so it
is very possible that Mr. Cabot was right. Mr. Emerson perhaps forgot to
bring his notes with him to the dinner, and so did not venture to speak.
And the dinner may have been at “Parker’s.”
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT
The Boston Society of Natural History celebrated the One Hundredth
Anniversary of the birth of Humboldt. Dr. Robert C. Waterston presided
at the Music Hall, where Agassiz made the address. In the evening there
was a reception in Horticultural Hall. The occasion was made memorable by
the Society by the founding of a Humboldt and Agassiz scholarship in the
Museum of Comparative Zoölogy in Cambridge.
Poems by Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Howe were read. Professor E. J. Young and
Dr. Charles T. Jackson gave reminiscences of Humboldt; Colonel Higginson,
the Rev. Dr. Hedge and others spoke. Mr. Emerson’s remarks are taken from
an abstract given in the account of the celebration published by the
Society.
WALTER SCOTT
Although Mr. Emerson, in the period between 1838 and 1848 especially,
when considering the higher powers of poetry, spoke slightingly of
Scott,—in the _Dial_ papers as “objective” and “the poet of society, of
patrician and conventional Europe,” or in _English Traits_ as a writer
of “a rhymed travellers’ guide to Scotland,”—he had always honor for
the noble man, and affectionate remembrance for the poems as well as
the novels. In the poem “The Harp,” when enumerating poets, he calls
Scott “the delight of generous boys,” but the _generosus puer_ was his
own delight; the hope of the generation lay in him, and his own best
audience was made up of such. In the essay “Illusions,” he says that the
boy “has no better friend than Scott, Shakspeare, Plutarch and Homer. The
man lives to other objects, but who dare affirm that they are more real?”
In the essay “Aristocracy,” he names among the claims of a superior
class, “Genius, the power to affect the Imagination,” and presently
speaks of “those who think and paint and laugh and weep in their eloquent
closets, and then convert the world into a huge whispering-gallery,
to report the tale to all men and win smiles and tears from many
generations,” and gives Scott and Burns among the high company whom he
instances.
Mr. Emerson’s children can testify how with regard to Scott he always was
ready to become a boy again. As we walked in the woods, he would show us
the cellar-holes of the Irish colony that came to Concord to build the
railroad, and he named these deserted villages Derncleugh and Ellangowan.
The sight recalled Meg Merrilies’ pathetic lament to the laird at the
eviction of the gypsies, which he would then recite. “Alice Brand,” the
“Sair Field o’ Harlaw,” which old Elspeth sings to the children in _The
Antiquary_, and “Helvellyn” were again and again repeated to us with
pleasure on both sides. With special affection in later years when we
walked in Walden woods he would croon the lines from “The Dying Bard,”—
“Dinas Emlinn, lament, for the moment is nigh,
When mute in the woodlands thine echoes shall die.”
Perhaps he had foreboding for his loved woods, beginning to be desecrated
with rude city picnics, and since burned over repeatedly by the fires
from the railroad,—
“When half of their charms with Cadwallon shall die.”
Of this poem he wrote in the journal of 1845:—
“‘Dinas Emlinn’ of Scott, like his ‘Helvellyn,’ shows how near to a poet
he was. All the Birmingham part he had, and what taste and sense! Yet
never rose into the creative region. As a practitioner or professional
poet he is unrivalled in modern times.” Yet he immediately adds, “In
lectures on Poetry almost all Scott would be to be produced.”
[214] _Page 463, note 1._ Mr. Emerson took especial pleasure in the
passage in the _Lord of the Isles_ where the old abbot, rising to
denounce excommunicated Bruce to his foes, is inspired against his will
to bless him and prophesy his triumph as Scotland’s deliverer.
Mr. Emerson, writing in his journal in 1842 of his impatience of
superficial city life, during a visit to New York, alludes to the renewed
comfort he had in the _Lord of the Isles_:
“Life goes headlong. Each of us is always to be found hurrying headlong
in the chase of some fact, hunted by some fear or command behind us.
Suddenly we meet a friend. We pause. Our hurry and _empressement_ look
ridiculous.... When I read the _Lord of the Isles_ last week at Staten
Island, and when I meet my friend, I have the same feeling of shame at
having allowed myself to be a mere huntsman and follower.”
His boyish love for the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ remained through life.
As we walked on Sunday afternoons he recited to his children the stanzas
about “the custom of Branksome Hall,” and the passage where the Ladye of
Branksome defies the spirits of the flood and fell; and the bleak mile of
road between Walden woods and home would often call out from him
“The way was long, the wind was cold,
The Minstrel was infirm and old,” etc.
[215] _Page 465, note 1._ The _Bride of Lammermoor_ was the only dreary
tale that Mr. Emerson could abide, except _Griselda_.
Journal, 1856. “Eugène Sue, Dumas, etc., when they begin a story, do
not know how it will end, but Walter Scott, when he began the _Bride of
Lammermoor_, had no choice; nor Shakspeare, nor Macbeth.”
[216] _Page 467, note 1._ Journal. “We talked of Scott. There is some
greatness in defying posterity and writing for the hour.”
SPEECH AT THE BANQUET IN HONOR OF THE CHINESE EMBASSY
When the Chinese Embassy visited Boston in the summer of 1868 a banquet
was given them at the St. James Hotel, on August 21. The young Emerson,
sounding an early note of independence of the past, had written in 1824:—
I laugh at those who, while they gape and gaze,
The bald antiquity of China praise;—
but later he learned to revere the wisdom of Asia. About the time when
the _Dial_ appeared, many sentences of Chinese wisdom are found in his
journal, and also in the magazine among the “Ethnical Scriptures.”
REMARKS AT THE ORGANIZATION OF THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION
In the spring of 1867, a call for a public meeting was issued by
Octavius B. Frothingham, William J. Potter and Rowland Connor “to
consider the conditions, wants and progress of Free Religion in America.”
The response was so large as to surprise the committee, and Horticultural
Hall was completely filled on May 30. Rev. Octavius B. Frothingham
presided. The committee had invited as speakers the Rev. H. Blanchard
of Brooklyn from the Universalists, Lucretia Mott from the Society of
Friends, Robert Dale Owen from the Spiritualists, the Rev. John Weiss
from the Left Wing of the Unitarians, Oliver Johnson from the Progressive
Friends, Francis E. Abbot, editor of the _Index_; and also David A.
Wasson, Colonel T. W. Higginson and Mr. Emerson. The meeting was very
successful and the Free Religious Association was founded.
Mr. Emerson’s genial and affirmative attitude at this meeting was helpful
and important. He wished the new movement to be neither aggressive
towards the beliefs of others, nor merely a religion of works, purely
beneficently utilitarian. Doubtless there were many young and active
radicals strong for destructive criticism. Mr. Emerson wished to see that
in their zeal to destroy the dry husk of religion they should not bruise
the white flower within. His counsel to young men was, “Omit all negative
propositions. It will save ninety-nine one hundredths of your labor, and
increase the value of your work in the same measure.”
[217] _Page 479, note 1._ In the journal of 1837 he said, “Why rake
up old manuscripts to find therein a man’s soul? You do not look for
conversation in a corpse.” And elsewhere, “In religion the sentiment is
all, the ritual or ceremony indifferent.”
SPEECH AT THE SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION
[218] _Page 486, note 1._ Mrs. Julia Ward Howe writes of Mr. Emerson,—
“He knew from the first the victory of good over evil; and when he told
me, to my childish amazement, that the angel must always be stronger than
the demon, he gave utterance to a thought most familiar to him, though at
the time new to me.”[L]
[219] _Page 488, note 1._ In the essay on Character (_Lectures and
Biographical Sketches_), he says, “The establishment of Christianity
in the world does not rest on any miracle but the miracle of being the
broadest and most humane doctrine.”
“The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false
impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the
falling rain.”—“Address in Divinity College,” _Nature, Addresses and
Lectures_.
[220] _Page 490, note 1._ Mr. Emerson’s doctrine was not to attack
beliefs, but give better: “True genius will not impoverish, but will
liberate.” In a letter to one of his best friends who had joined the
Church of Rome he said, perhaps in 1858: “To old eyes how supremely
unimportant the form under which we celebrate the justice, love and
truth, the attributes of the deity and the soul!”
[221] _Page 491, note 1._ Dr. Holmes, in his tribute to his friend, after
his death, read before the Massachusetts Historical Society, said:—
“What could we do with this unexpected, unprovided for, unclassified,
half unwelcome newcomer, who had been for a while potted, as it were, in
our Unitarian cold greenhouse, but had taken to growing so fast that he
was lifting off its glass roof and letting in the hail-storms? Here was a
protest that outflanked the extreme left of liberalism, yet so calm and
serene that its radicalism had the accents of the gospel of peace. Here
was an iconoclast without a hammer, who took down our idols from their
pedestals so tenderly that it seemed like an act of worship.”
ADDRESS AT THE OPENING OF THE CONCORD FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY
The Town of Concord, in the year 1782, chose a committee of ten leading
citizens to give instructions to its selectmen. The third of the
seventeen articles proposed by them read thus: “That care be taken
of the Books of Marters and other bookes, and that they be kept from
abusive usage, and not lent to persons more than one month at one
time.” This indicates the root of a town library. A constitution of a
Library Company, dated 1784, is extant. In 1806 a Social Library was
incorporated, which was merged in the Town Library in 1851. The books
were kept in a room in the Town House which was open for borrowers on
Saturdays.
William Munroe, son of a Concord tradesman who vied with the Thoreaus in
the manufacture of lead pencils, after leaving the Concord schools went
into business, and later into the manufacture of silk. His intelligence
and force of character secured prosperity. He loved Concord, and, to use
his own words, “desired to testify my regard to my native town by doing
something to promote the education and intelligence, and thus the welfare
and prosperity of its people.” He gave to Concord a lot of land in the
heart of the town and a building for a Free Public Library, which, with
great care and thoroughness, he had built thereon and duly furnished;
and made handsome provision for care of the land and the extension of
the building later. He added a generous gift for books of reference and
standard works. The town thankfully accepted the gift, placed their books
in it, and chose their library committee. On a fine autumn day in 1873,
the library was opened with public ceremonies. Mr. Munroe in a short
and modest speech explained his purpose; Mr. H. F. Smith, on behalf of
the new library committee, reported its action and the gifts which had
poured in; Judge Hoar received the property on behalf of the Board of
Corporation, and Mr. Emerson, but lately returned with improved health
from his journey to the Nile, made the short address. Writing was now
very difficult for him, but the occasion pleased and moved him, and his
notes on books and on Concord, and the remembrance of his friends the
Concord authors but lately gone, served him, and the day passed off well.
[222] _Page 498, note 1._ _The Gospel Covenant_, printed in London in
1646, and quoted by Mr. Emerson in the “Historical Discourse.”
[223] _Page 499, note 1._ Major Simon Willard, a Kentish merchant was
Peter Bulkeley’s strong coadjutor in the founding of Concord. He also is
alluded to in the “Historical Discourse.”
[224] _Page 500, note 1._ These extracts are from the diary of Miss Mary
Moody Emerson.
[225] _Page 500, note 2._ This letter was written not long after the
death of John Thoreau, Henry’s dearly loved brother, and also of little
Waldo Emerson, to whom he became greatly attached while he was a member
of Mr. Emerson’s household.
[226] _Page 501, note 1._ Mr. Emerson here speaks for others. He could
not read Hawthorne because of the gloom of his magic mirror, but the man
interested and attracted him, though even as neighbors they seldom met.
[227] _Page 506, note 1._ Mr. Emerson notes that this is an allusion to
the “Harmonies of Ptolemy.”
THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC
In 1863, during the dark days of the Civil War, before the tide had fully
turned in the field, while disaffection showed itself in the North, and
England and France threatened intervention, Mr. Emerson gave a hopeful
lecture, the basis of the present discourse, on the Fortune of the
Republic. After the war it was adapted to the new and happier conditions.
On the 30th of March, 1878, six years after Mr. Emerson had withdrawn
from literary work, and but four years before his death, he was induced
to read the lecture in the Old South Church, in a course planned by the
committee, to save the venerable building. The church was filled, Mr.
Emerson’s delivery was good, and he seemed to enjoy the occasion. It was
probably his last speech in public, and so fitly closes the volume.
[228] _Page 513, note 1._ This passage occurred in the early lecture:—
“It is the distinction of man to think, and all the few men who, since
the beginning of the world, have done anything for us were men who did
not follow the river, or ship the cotton, or pack the pork, but who
thought for themselves. What the country wants is personalities,—grand
persons,—to counteract its materialities, for it is the rule of the
universe that corn shall serve man, and not man, corn.”
[229] _Page 519, note 1._ Here followed: “What we call ‘Kentucky,’ or
‘Vallandigham,’ or ‘Fernando Wood’ is really the ignorance and nonsense
in us, stolid stupidity which gives the strength to those names.... It is
our own vice which takes form, or gives terror with which these persons
affect us.”
[230] _Page 520, note 1._ This refers to a young Massachusetts scholar,
of promise and beauty, whom Mr. Emerson had been pleased with, as a
fellow voyager. He soon was corrupted by politics. Coming up, at a
reception, to shake hands with Mr. Emerson he was thus greeted: “If
what I hear of your recent action be true, I must shake hands with you
under protest.” Soon after, this aspirant for power attended the dinner
given to Brooks after his cowardly assault on Sumner; but the moment the
Emancipation Proclamation had been approved by the people, he became an
ornamental figurehead at Republican and reform gatherings.
[231] _Page 520, note 2._ From the last scene of _Cynthia’s Revels_, by
Ben Jonson.
[232] _Page 521, note 1._ “The one serious and formidable thing in Nature
is a will.”—“Fate,” _Conduct of Life_, p. 30.
See also “Aristocracy,” in _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_, p. 50.
[233] _Page 524, note 1._ Ben Jonson, _The Golden Age Restored_.
[234] _Page 526, note 1._
She spawneth men as mallows fresh.
“Nature,” II., _Poems_.
See also the “Song of Nature,” in the _Poems_.
[235] _Page 526, note 2._ In the earlier lecture was this passage:—
“The roots of our success are in our poverty, our Calvinism, our
thrifty habitual industry,—in our snow and east wind, and farm-life and
sea-life....
“There is in this country this immense difference from Europe, that,
whereas all their systems of government and society are historical, our
politics are almost ideal. We wish to treat man as man, without regard to
rank, wealth, race, color, or caste,—simply as human souls. We lie near
to Nature, we are pensioners on Nature, draw on inexhaustible resources,
and we interfere the least possible with individual freedom.”
[236] _Page 527, note 1._ In the “Historical Discourse” in this volume,
Mr. Emerson tells of the evolution of the town-meeting of New England
and its working excellence, and of the latter also in “Social Aims” and
“Eloquence,” in _Letters and Social Aims_.
[237] _Page 540, note 1._
For you can teach the lightning speech,
And round the globe your voices reach.
“Boston,” _Poems_.
[238] _Page 541, note 1._
I will divide my goods;
Call in the wretch and slave:
None shall rule but the humble,
And none but Toil shall have.
“Boston Hymn,” _Poems_.
[239] _Page 544, note 1._ The following passages came from the earlier
lecture:—
“I must be permitted to read a quotation from De Tocqueville, whose
censure is more valuable, as it comes from one obviously very partial to
the American character and institutions:—
“‘I know no country in which there is so little true independence of
opinion and freedom of discussion as in America’ (vol. i., p. 259).”
“I am far from thinking it late. I don’t despond at all whilst I hear the
verdicts of European juries against us—Renan says this; Arnold says that.
That does not touch us.
“’Tis doubtful whether London, whether Paris can answer the questions
which now rise in the human mind. But the humanity of all nations is now
in the American Union. Europe, England is historical still. Our politics,
our social frame are almost ideal. We have got suppled into a state of
melioration. When I see the emigrants landing at New York, I say, There
they go—to school.
“In estimating nations, potentiality must be considered as well as power;
not what to-day’s actual performance is, but what promise is in the mind
which a crisis will bring out.”
“The war has established a chronic hope, for a chronic despair. It is
not a question whether we shall be a nation, or only a multitude of
people. No, that has been conspicuously decided already; but whether we
shall be the new nation, guide and lawgiver of all nations, as having
clearly chosen and firmly held the simplest and best rule of political
society.
“Culture, be sure, is in some sort the very enemy of nationality
and makes us citizens of the world; and yet it is essential that it
should have the flavor of the soil in which it grew, and combine this
with universal sympathies. Thus in this country are new traits and
distinctions not known to former history. Colonies of an old country, but
in new and commanding conditions. Colonies of a small and crowded island,
but planted on a continent and therefore working it in small settlements,
where each man must count for ten, and is put to his mettle to come up to
the need....
“Pray leave these English to form their opinions. ’Tis a matter of
absolute insignificance what those opinions are. They will fast enough
run to change and retract them on their knees when they know who you
are....
“I turn with pleasure to the good omen in the distinguished reception
given in London to Mr. Beecher. It was already prepared by the advocacy
of Cobden, Bright and Forster, Mill, Newman, Cairnes and Hughes, and
by the intelligent Americans already sent to England by our Government
to communicate with intelligent men in the English Government and out
of it. But Mr. Beecher owed his welcome to himself. He fought his way
to his reward. It is one of the memorable exhibitions of the force of
eloquence,—his evening at Exeter Hall. The consciousness of power shown
in his broad good sense, in his jocular humor and entire presence of
mind, the surrender of the English audience on recognizing the true
master. He steers the Behemoth, sits astride him, strokes his fur,
tickles his ear, and rides where he will. And I like the well-timed
compliment there paid to our fellow citizen when the stormy audience
reminds him to tell England that Wendell Phillips is the first orator
of the world. One orator had a right to speak of the other,—Byron’s
thunderstorm, where
“‘Jura answers from his misty shroud
Back to the joyous Alps who call to him aloud.’
“The young men in America to-day take little thought of what men in
England are thinking or doing. That is the point which decides the
welfare of a people,—_which way does it look?_ If to any other people, it
is not well with them. If occupied in its own affairs, and thoughts, and
men, with a heat which excludes almost the notice of any other people,—as
the Jews, as the Greeks, as the Persians, as the Romans, the Arabians,
the French, the English, at their best times have done,—they are sublime;
and we know that in this abstraction they are executing excellent work.
Amidst the calamities that war has brought on our Country, this one
benefit has accrued,—that our eyes are withdrawn from England, withdrawn
from France, and look homeward. We have come to feel that
“‘By ourselves our safety must be bought;’
to know the vast resources of the continent; the good will that is in the
people; their conviction of the great moral advantages of freedom, social
equality, education and religious culture, and their determination to
hold these fast, and by these hold fast the Country, and penetrate every
square inch of it with this American civilization....
“Americans—not girded by the iron belt of condition, not taught by
society and institutions to magnify trifles, not victims of technical
logic, but docile to the logic of events; not, like English, worshippers
of fate; with no hereditary upper house, but with legal, popular
assemblies, which constitute a perpetual insurrection, and by making it
perpetual save us from revolutions.”
FOOTNOTES
[A] Mr. Emerson believed the “not” had been accidentally omitted, and it
can hardly be questioned that he was right in his supposition.
[B] Vol. ii., pp. 424-433.
[C] _The Genius and Character of Emerson; Lectures at the Concord School
of Philosophy_, edited by F. B. Sanborn. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.,
1885.
[D] _Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson_, vol. i., pp. 260, 261.
[E] _Epistle of Paul to Philemon_, i. 16, 17.
[F] See the report of this speech in Redpath’s _Life of Captain John
Brown_. Boston: Thayer & Eldridge, 1860.
[G] “Review of Holmes’s Life of Emerson,” _North American Review_,
February, 1885.
[H] _Richard Henry Dana; a Biography._ By Charles Francis Adams.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1890. In chapter viii. of this book is a very
remarkable account of John Brown and his family at their home at North
Elba in 1849, when Mr. Dana and a friend, lost in the Adirondac woods,
chanced to come out upon the Brown clearing and were kindly received and
aided.
[I] While waiting for the services to begin, Mr. Sears wrote some verses.
The following lines, which Mrs. Emerson saw him write, were a prophecy
literally fulfilled within three years by the Union armies singing the
John Brown song:—
“But not a pit six feet by two
Can hold a man like thee;
John Brown shall tramp the shaking earth
From Blue Ridge to the sea.”
[J] In the very interesting work _The Influence of Emerson_, published in
Boston in 1903, by the American Unitarian Association.
[K] See note 3 to page 63 of the “Historical Discourse.”
[L] “Emerson’s Relation to Society,” in _The Genius and Character of
Emerson_, Lectures at the Concord School of Philosophy, edited by F. B.
Sanborn. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1885.
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