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ORATION 
 
 DELIVERED IN FANEUIL HALL BEFORE THE 
 
 City Council and Citizens 
 of Boston 
 
 ON THE 
 
 ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOURTH 
 ANNIVERSARY OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 WEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 1900 
 
 BY 
 
 STEPHEN O'MEARA 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL 
 1900 
 
US sj C2 X £5 
 
€ x i jj a ( | s h k> 
 
 In Board of Aldermen, July 24, 1900. 
 Ordered, That the Superintendent of Printing, under 
 the direction of the Committee on Printing, be authorized 
 to have printed and bound in cloth two thousand copies 
 of a volume containing the exercises at Faneuil Hall on 
 July Fourth ; the expense of the same to be charged to 
 the appropriation for Printing Department. 
 
 Passed. Sent down for concurrence. July 26 came up 
 concurred. 
 
 Approved by the Mayor, July 30, 1900. 
 
 A true copy. 
 
 Attest : 
 
 John T. Priest, 
 
 AssL^City Clerk. 
 
PROGRESS THROUGH CONFLICT. 
 
 Mr. Mayor and Citizens of Boston: 
 
 The men whom Boston has honored as I am hon- 
 ored to-day have come to us in line unbroken for a 
 hundred and thirty years. The living may not here 
 be named, but counted with the orators of the dead 
 generations are Joseph Warren, John Hancock, John 
 Quincy Adams, Charles Sumner, Edward Everett, 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Robert C. Winthrop. 
 
 If to take up this civic duty were to claim a 
 place by the side of such as these, I had not been 
 here to-day. But the great names which light the 
 roll are the few among the many. Boston has borne 
 famous sons, whose gathered honors repay her teach- 
 ing, whose filial service rewards her nurture ; but to 
 their brethren of humbler life, less gifted than they, 
 or less ambitious, fall those daily tasks and simple 
 duties which, done in love and loyalty, give strength 
 to the city that is our common mother and security 
 to all her days. In the roll of citizens who have 
 answered for Boston on Independence Day the names 
 of the great, of those destined to outlive their times, 
 stand wide apart. But thick between are other 
 
6 Okation. 
 
 names, to us, perhaps, unknown. They are names of 
 men who made no history, who led no patriot ris- 
 ings ; but the records of town and city testify that 
 in their lives they were loyal and useful, charged 
 with many burdens of citizenship, and honored at 
 last with this, their one distinction. Counting my- 
 self with the least of these, their equal only in the 
 love and obedience which are fit offering from the 
 humblest . among us to the city that shelters him, I 
 do her bidding to-day, gladly and gratefully. 
 
 I shall speak of a public peril which is subtle, 
 elusive and almost new. It comes from that strange 
 and perverse spirit which leads men so to paint 
 the past that against the pure-white background of 
 their false ideals the present looms black and its 
 shadows fall upon the future. It is that spirit 
 which finds naught but decay in our laws and insti- 
 tutions, selfishness in public men, degeneracy in the 
 people. It suspects the honor and decries the merit 
 of elected leaders ; contempt is the reward it gives 
 for their finished work, derision is the aid it offers 
 when, through doubt and discouragement, groping 
 as men must grope, yet pushing on, they save the 
 country from new dangers or guide it to greater 
 ends. 
 
 You know that spirit well, morbid at birth, blind 
 in growth, baneful in action, for its influence is 
 strong among us. It seizes often the earnest and 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 7 
 
 well-schooled youth who knows no history deeper 
 than his text-books teach. Pictured to his eyes in 
 those shallow and varnished pages he sees a past 
 that never was ; a past radiant to him with the 
 purity and wise patriotism of its citizens; rich in 
 leaders without spot of selfish desire or stain of 
 sordid act; fortunate in a public rule exempt from 
 private ambition and free from party strife ; a past 
 blessed with a statesmanship quick to conceive the 
 loftiest schemes of government, deft in shaping them 
 to useful form, prompt to embed them in the Con- 
 stitution, the laws and the life of a grateful and 
 unanimous people. 
 
 Grown to manhood, he learns from the rough 
 teaching of the newspaper and the stump that these 
 are times in which voters are sluggish, leaders not 
 all profound ; that there is strife between parties, 
 clamor among men, greed in office, sloth in action, 
 bewilderment in counsel. They are truths that he 
 learns, though magnified, mayhap, by their nearness, 
 or distorted at times through malice; the same sad 
 truths that history has told of all generations, but, 
 to that past of his young fancy, truths strange and 
 abhorrent. Moved by the ardor, the impatience, per- 
 haps by the arrogance of youth, with slender knowl- 
 edge of American history and ignorant of common 
 affairs, with ideals to which the world has never 
 risen and never can rise on this side of the Judg- 
 ment Day, he becomes, for a time at least, the 
 
8 Okation. 
 
 harshest critic, the gloomiest prophet of our period 
 and our people. His revolt against things that are 
 is eager and most strenuous when stirred by the 
 touch of public affairs; but should he turn to other 
 interests, to art or literature, commerce or journal- 
 ism, the professions or the trades, he finds that 
 there again and everywhere and always reality shocks 
 idealism. Deeper reading, mental growth, and espe- 
 cially the moderation and tolerance taught by broader 
 experience, lead all but a few of the young men whose 
 first feelings I have tried to describe to that highest 
 citizenship of all, which is stirring as well as critical, 
 acute as well as honorable, hopeful as well as prudent. 
 A few, unfortunately, join themselves year by year to 
 that body of men who mistake tireless fault-finding for 
 worthy criticism, discontent for an active conscience, 
 incredulity for wisdom. They are educated as books 
 educate ; they are respected in their private lives, 
 and often held in honor ; they are seldom dishonest, 
 seldom selfish, seldom malicious, and they control 
 at all times many open roads to the masses of plain 
 people who read and listen. They have intellect, 
 honor and patriotism ; but while exalting the virtues 
 of the past they lack the courage of the present, 
 the hopefulness of the future, the faith in their 
 country, blind, perhaps, but splendid, which have 
 given always to men of little learning the broader 
 view and the stronger grasp of the truth and the 
 genius of republican government. 
 
Foukth of July, 1900. 9 
 
 The men who stand apart to criticise and con- 
 demn, who would lift the people to a better public 
 life by telling them that the public life they have 
 is wholly bad, who would encourage them to push 
 toward perfection by pointing to the ground they 
 had lost in a hundred years — such men are using 
 an influence made powerful by their position and 
 their opportunities to deaden and dishearten the aspi- 
 rations of the people for better things. 
 
 If a pastor preached always that religion and 
 virtue had left us, that the children of pious fathers 
 were infidels and libertines, that sin had become the 
 accepted rule and sanctity the startling exception, 
 that men and women who professed good lives were 
 hypocrites, and that the future held out no hope — 
 the people of his church and the children of his 
 Sunday-school would find in his preaching an ex- 
 cuse for their own vices, not an inspiration to virtu- 
 ous living. If a teacher should tell his boys that 
 though he wished them to be studious, obedient and 
 truthful, yet schools and school life had fallen so 
 low that indolence, defiance and falsehood were the 
 qualities they were expected to display, his graduates 
 might well be idlers, outlaws and liars. If a mer- 
 chant should teach his clerks that the traditions of 
 honorable trade had been lost, that successful busi- 
 ness in these times meant trickery, fraud and for- 
 gery, that, guilty or innocent, all would be suspected 
 alike, his admonitions to an honest career would 
 
10 Oration. 
 
 be little likely to hold his young men to commercial 
 rectitude. 
 
 Likewise that critic of public affairs who exalts 
 the virtues of past generations and magnifies the 
 faults of our own, who tells us that political life is 
 a cesspool, political honor a myth, that plunder is 
 the motive and first law of parties, and that all 
 grows worse, not better — such critic will send men 
 to the high duty of citizenship with degraded notions 
 of what that duty means, and with ready excuse 
 for political sins to which they themselves may be 
 tempted. His lament is the license of the corrupt 
 politician, and his denunciation of public life and 
 public men sustains the political boss in his own 
 sinister view of both. The earnest young man who 
 listens to such a critic hears the same false and dan- 
 gerous doctrine of general depravity that is preached 
 by the bribe-giver and the ballot-stuffer to his will- 
 ing but timid recruits. 
 
 But the critic is wrong and the boss is wrong. 
 The belief which they teach in this amazing part- 
 nership, which seems to them to justify alike the 
 fears of the critic and the cynicism of the boss, is a 
 viciously false belief. The present can bear, without 
 shame or apprehension, a scrutiny which covers as 
 well the past of any period, the past even of the 
 founders of the republic. 
 
 Our country is either better or worse than it was. 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 11 
 
 Its people are more enlightened and its Govern- 
 ment is sounder and more effective, or the century 
 has brought loss, not gain. We have carried to 
 success the experiment of freedom and equality 
 based upon broad suffrage, or that experiment has 
 failed in our hands. There is no compromise. It 
 must be one way or the other. A despotism may 
 live for centuries with conditions always worse, but 
 without improvement in every generation a free 
 republic must die. Here, then, is the vital quality 
 of that issue between the past and the present 
 which is thrust upon us by moaning critics and 
 implacable malcontents. 
 
 I believe that our hard, inherited task has been 
 well done ; that the conditions in the present which 
 justify hostile criticism are better than the like 
 conditions which the fathers created or endured ; 
 that constantly our eyes grow clearer and our acts 
 draw closer to that perfection of public and popular 
 life which even yet, alas, is but a dream of the 
 unknown future. History proves our gain, proves it 
 fairly and abundantly ; but I confess that if the 
 proof had seemed to lie against us, if history had 
 seemed to show that the power, the patriotism, the 
 dignity, the integrity of people and of Government 
 had fallen in our hands, I should not have dared 
 even then to yield the cause, for such a judgment, 
 if true, would carry with it a prophecy unerring of 
 the downfall of the republic in this generation, or 
 the next, or the next. 
 
12 Oration. 
 
 Progress through conflict is the supreme and 
 unbroken law of our national growth. In a hundred 
 and twenty-five years no great event has shaped 
 itself in quiet unanimity; no statesman or public 
 leader has done the country's work untouched by 
 criticism, unhurt by slander; no party has been free 
 from the discord of factions, from unfair attack by 
 enemies, from defeat and destruction at last when 
 its time had come. Because we have missed the 
 meaning and perhaps the existence itself of this law 
 of progress through conflict, because we have failed 
 to see that in all periods of our history its power 
 has prevailed, the scenes in that single act of polit- 
 ical life which chances to pass before our own eyes 
 disturb, disgust and sometimes dishearten us. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence, read here to-day, 
 illustrates in its history the law of progress through 
 conflict. We speak of it as immortal ; our children 
 regard it almost as sacred in its origin ; but though 
 its naked principles will live while the world stands, 
 it was not a divine revelation, it was not given on 
 Mt. Sinai, it was not written on tables of stone. A 
 Virginia lawyer of thirty-three, Thomas Jefferson, 
 wrote the first draft. He changed and corrected ; a 
 committee of delegates of which he was Chairman 
 changed and corrected, and then it was handed in to 
 the Continental Congress. There it was discussed 
 for days, its language criticised, its rhetoric jeered 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 13 
 
 at, its assertions questioned, all in the presence of 
 its abashed and silent author, who was even accused 
 in later years by some of his associates of having 
 stolen his ideas from others and dressed them in 
 phrases not his own. 
 
 How great must have been the change of purpose, 
 how sharp the conflict through which the colonies 
 reached this Declaration of the Fourth of July, 1776 ! 
 We know that John Adams and his Massachusetts 
 colleagues, on their way to the first Continental Con- 
 gress, held less than two years before, had been 
 warned by Sons of Liberty from Philadelphia that 
 they were " suspected of having independence in 
 view ; " but if they should utter the word they would 
 be "undone," for independence was as "unpopular 
 in Pennsylvania and in all the Middle and Southern 
 States as the Stamp Act itself." The sole aim was 
 to remain under English rule, but with better con- 
 ditions of government. Even after independence had 
 been won, John Adams said : " There was not a 
 moment during the "Revolution when I would not 
 have given everything I possessed for a restoration 
 to the state of things before the contest began, pro- 
 vided we could have had a sufficient security for its 
 continuance." 
 
 What was the feeling of the delegates themselves, 
 the men who put their signatures to the immortal 
 Declaration? John Adams when asked if every 
 member of Congress, on the 4th of July, 1776, did, 
 in fact, cordially approve of it, replied: 
 
14 Oration. 
 
 " Majorities were constantly against it. For many 
 days the majority depended on Mr. Hewes of North 
 Carolina. While a member one day was reading 
 documents to prove that public opinion was in favor 
 of the measure, Mr. Hewes suddenly started upright, 
 and, lifting up both hands to heaven, as if in a 
 trance, cried out: 'It is done, and I will abide by 
 it.' I would give more for a perfect painting of the 
 terror and horror upon the faces of the old majority 
 at that moment than for the best piece of Raphael." 
 
 We hear now, and like to hear, only of the brave 
 enthusiasm with which the Declaration was received. 
 We must read if we wish to know something of the 
 "terror and horror" of the people in the colonies 
 whose feelings were expressed by what John Adams 
 calls "the old majority." We must read if we wish 
 to know that towns and villages and families were 
 divided betwen King and Congress. What was the 
 strength of the silent and sullen or openly hostile 
 minority? Again on the word of John Adams, we 
 have it that in the colonies at large not more than 
 two-thirds were against the Crown, and some of the 
 colonies were perhaps equally divided. We know that 
 of those so hostile to the new republic, or so danger- 
 ously committed to the English cause that they were 
 forced to leave their homes, 12,000 sailed from New 
 York alone, just previous to the evacuation, for 
 Nova Scotia and the Bahamas, following thus the 
 thousands of others who had left for all parts of the 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 15 
 
 English-speaking world in the course of the seven 
 years' war. 
 
 The Loyalists, moreover, were not content merely 
 to suffer and protest. The able-bodied among them 
 joined the British forces, and were the bitterest and 
 crudest enemies whom the patriot armies and people 
 encountered. Lorenzo Sabine, grandson of a soldier 
 killed under Washington at Trenton, and of another 
 soldier who fought under Stark at Bennington, says, 
 in his " Loyalists of the American Revolution," a 
 work published in Boston forty years ago : 
 
 " It may not be possible to ascertain the number 
 of the Loyalists who took up arms, but, from the 
 best evidence which I have been able to obtain, I 
 consider there were twenty-five thousand, at the 
 lowest computation ; and, unless their killed and 
 wounded in the different battles and affrays in 
 which they were engaged were unusually large, I 
 have put their aggregate force far too low." 
 
 Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania, a member of the 
 Congress in 1774 and 1775, who afterwards joined 
 the British and served with them, declared that the 
 Loyalists of the Middle Colonies were ready to enter 
 the military service of the Crown in large numbers, 
 and that 5,000 actually appeared in arms for the 
 defence of the city of New York. In an address of 
 the Loyalists who were in London in 1782 the dec- 
 laration is made that "there are many more men in 
 
16 Oration. 
 
 His Majesty's provincial regiments than there are in 
 the Continental service." 
 
 What of the very birthplace of revolution, Massa- 
 chusetts and Boston ? " The last contest in the town 
 of Boston, in 1775, between Whig and Tory, was 
 decided," says John Adams, "by five to two." On 
 the very day of the battle of Lexington a corps of 
 Loyalists was formed in Boston, when the services of two 
 hundred merchants and tradesmen were offered to 
 General Gage and accepted. Their commander was 
 Timothy Ruggles, who had presided at the first Con- 
 gress of the colonies, ten years before ; and in the 
 months which followed, while Washington and the 
 patriot army were carrying on the siege, other similar 
 organizations of Boston Loyalists were formed within 
 the town. 
 
 In March, 1776, when Gage's ships sailed out of 
 the harbor they carried away twelve hundred Loyal- 
 ists who preferred exile to life under the Revolution, 
 and in every ancient graveyard of New Brunswick 
 and Nova Scotia you may read on the tombstones 
 the records of their names and their New England 
 birth. Sabine estimates that two thousand adherents 
 of the King left Massachusetts alone, and it is also 
 stated on the same authority that of the three hundred 
 and ten who were banished formally by the State, sixty 
 were Harvard graduates. We may judge from the 
 lists of names and occupations, names standing in 
 most cases for heads of families, that the wealth, the 
 
Fourth op July, 1900. 17 
 
 education and the aristocracy of Massachusetts were 
 with the King. "Of members of the Council, Com- 
 missioners, officers of the customs, and other officials, 
 there were one hundred and two; of clergymen, 
 eighteen ; of inhabitants of country towns, one hun- 
 dred and five; of merchants and other persons who 
 resided in Boston, two hundred and thirteen ; of 
 farmers, mechanics and traders, three hundred and 
 eighty-two." The lists cover almost every family 
 name now noted in Boston, and show that the Loy- 
 alists included kindred of the very men who, in 
 Massachusetts, made the Revolution possible. Sabine 
 says that the original population of New Brunswick 
 was composed almost entirely of Loyalists, and that 
 the Judges of the Supreme Court of the colony 
 first appointed were all graduates of Harvard Col- 
 lege. 
 
 The progress of public sentiment to the Declara- 
 tion of Independence and the progress of the Revo- 
 lution to success were always through conflict. But 
 the conflict was not alone with the British forces 
 and the American Loyalists. There were subtler and 
 more dangerous foes than either in the patriot 
 armies and the patriot Government themselves. I 
 touch the subject reluctantly, but in fair fulfilment 
 of the task which to you may seem ungracious, but 
 to me is made necessary by the assaults on the real 
 present, in the name of an idealized past. 
 
18 Oration. 
 
 Our armies in the last two wars have been con- 
 demned by critics for faults which, doubtless, they 
 had; but the mistake of the critics and the false 
 belief into which they have led the people is in the 
 thought that even one new fault has been discovered, 
 that there is one among them that does not belong 
 to weak humanity, that has not blotted the record 
 of every army that ever existed, that did not 
 show itself boldly among the soldiers of the Revolu- 
 tion. We know what the patriot armies, as armies, 
 did and suffered ; we know what we owe to 
 them, and what all civilization owes; but it is 
 unjust to the soldiers of our own times, with their 
 faults as well as their virtues clear to us, that our 
 judgment of the soldiers of the earlier days should 
 rest upon romantic sentiments aroused by bronzes, 
 statues, paintings and poetry. 
 
 Of some of the officers, General Knox wrote to 
 Elbridge Gerry that there were men in commission 
 "who wished to have their power perpetuated at the 
 expense of the liberties of the people," and who " had 
 been rewarded with rank without having the least 
 pretensions to it, except cabal and intrigue." 
 
 Washington, in a letter to a Governor of a State, 
 affirmed that the officers who had been sent to him 
 therefrom were "generally of the lowest class of the 
 people;" that they "led their soldiers to plunder the 
 inhabitants and into every kind of mischief." To 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 19 
 
 his brother, John Augustine Washington, he declared 
 that the different States were nominating such 
 officers as were "not fit to be shoe-blacks." "Many 
 of the surgeons," said Washington, " are very great 
 rascals, countenancing the men to sham complaints 
 to exempt them from duty, and often receiving 
 bribes to certify indispositions^ with a view to pro- 
 cure discharges or furloughs." 
 
 We have heard in our own times something of 
 accusation against speculators and army contractors. 
 They were not strangers to Washington, who wrote 
 expressing his satisfaction that an effort was to be 
 made to bring u those murderers of our cause, the 
 monopolizers, forestallers and engrossers, to condign 
 punishment. It is much to be regretted that each 
 State long ere this has not hunted them down as 
 pests to society and the greatest enemies we have 
 to the happiness of America." 
 
 Speaking more broadly in another letter, Washing- 
 ton said : " From what I have seen, heard and in 
 part know, I should in one word say that idleness, 
 dissipation and extravagance seem to have laid fast 
 hold of most; that speculation, peculation and an 
 insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the 
 better of every other consideration and almost every 
 order of men, and that party disputes and personal 
 quarrels are the great order of the day." 
 
 In strong confirmation of Washington's view is 
 
20 Oration. 
 
 this paragraph from a letter written to Jefferson, 
 February 15, 1780, by Patrick Henry: 
 
 " But tell me, do you remember any instance 
 where tyranny was destroyed and freedom estab- 
 lished on its ruins among a people possessing so 
 small a share of virtue and public spirit ? I recol- 
 lect none, and this, more than the British arms, 
 makes me fearful of final success without a reform." 
 
 Conflict marked every step in the progress of the 
 new Constitution of 1787 ; and conflict has marked 
 and will still mark every step toward its complete 
 and unquestioned acceptance. Its success in the 
 beginning was the supreme political triumph of 
 Washington's life, for political it was, strange though 
 the word may seem to us when applied to that 
 instrument which to our eyes is the very charter 
 and foundation of the Republic. Our wonder proves 
 in itself that events in history, however great, 
 appear with the passage of time in new and chang- 
 ing lights. At its birth and for years the Constitu- 
 tion was the football of parties and factions, and 
 the word "political," used even in its meanest sense, 
 would apply as fitly to those contests as to the 
 smaller and less heroic controversies in which we our- 
 selves engage. 
 
 When Washington began the movement for a new 
 Constitution the States were drawing daily farther 
 apart, each anxious only for its own small interests, 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 21 
 
 each watching its neighbors with distrust and hold- 
 ing the General Government in suspicion and con- 
 tempt. After many rebuffs, the men who saw the 
 startling need of a new Constitution found them- 
 selves at last in the convention at Philadelphia, 
 under the Presidency of George Washington. The 
 State of Rhode Island sent no delegates, and ten of 
 those appointed by other States never appeared. 
 The disputes and the jealousies were countless, and 
 often in the four months of its sittings the conven- 
 tion seemed to have reached a fruitless end. When 
 the instrument was ready for the signatures of dele- 
 gates, the signers numbered but thirty-nine. Sixteen 
 others, including Elbriclge Gerry and Caleb Strong 
 of Massachusetts, though in attendance, refused to 
 sign. Three of these sat defiantly in the hall of 
 the convention, and we are told that the reasons 
 they gave for their hostility were that Gerry feared 
 a civil war, Randolph of Virginia was convinced that 
 the consent of nine States never could be obtained, 
 and Mason of Virginia was sure that they were 
 about to set up a monarchy or a tyranny, he did 
 not know which. The delegations of but three 
 States gave their signatures unanimously. 
 
 From such a convention, and in the face of bitter 
 hostility in Congress, the new Constitution was sent 
 to the States for their approval. Everywhere the 
 contest was close and hard. Chief Justice Marshall, 
 who was strongly favorable himself, says that " so 
 
22 Okation. 
 
 small in many instances was the majority for the 
 Constitution as to afford strong ground for the 
 opinion that, had the influence of character been 
 removed, the intrinsic merits of the instrument 
 would not have secured its adoption. Indeed, it is 
 scarcely to be doubted that in some of the States 
 a majority of the people were in opposition." Many 
 regarded the new Constitution with fear, and many 
 others with contempt. Even Alexander Hamilton, 
 who had been its chief supporter in the convention 
 and almost its father, whose efforts in his own 
 State were all that saved it from rejection there, 
 wrote of it as late as 1802, "I am still trying to 
 prop the frail and worthless fabric." 
 
 New Hampshire ratified by a majority of only nine, 
 New York by a majority of only three, and Rhode 
 Island and North Carolina not until after Washing- 
 ton's Government had been months in operation. In 
 Virginia the fight against the Constitution was led 
 by Patrick Henry with vigor, and some said without 
 scruple. Among his conspicuous supporters in oppo- 
 sition for a time or to the end were the Governor 
 then in office, the three men besides himself who 
 had been Governors since the separation, the fathers 
 of two future Presidents, John Tyler and Benjamin 
 Harrison, and James Munroe, who was himself to 
 be President. Patrick Henry was accused openly of 
 desiring the dismemberment of the Union, on the 
 ground that for commercial purposes three confed- 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 23 
 
 eracies would be better than one ; and after the 
 convention had ratified the Constitution by a 
 majority of but ten, he found it necessary to say : 
 "I mean not to breathe the spirit nor utter the 
 language of secession." 
 
 Massachusetts, after a struggle, in which John 
 Hancock and Sam Adams were at first in opposition, 
 ratified by a majority of but nineteen in a total vote 
 of three hundred and fifty-five. 
 
 The men who made the Constitution wrought for 
 themselves and for their time. History does not 
 show that in their concern for posterity they were 
 more generous in their day than we are in ours, 
 that their spirit of self-sacrifice was broader, their 
 view of the future more candid or more penetrat- 
 ing. They enacted according to their needs, they 
 bargained or surrendered to serve their own interests, 
 to soften their own jealousies, to allay their own 
 fears. If a prophet had risen in their convention 
 and foretold the strife of generations which was to 
 follow their vague compromises on State rights, 
 their tender nursing of slavery, the compromises, I 
 believe, would still have been made, slavery would 
 still have passed unhurt, and the twenty-one years 
 allowed by the Constitution for the further importa- 
 tition of slaves would not have been shortened by a 
 month. To posterity such acts bequeathed a century 
 of conflict not yet ended ; and through seventy years 
 
24 Oration. 
 
 of turmoil, hatred and bloodshed, posterity wrought 
 patiently and suffered cruelly that it might at last 
 write into the Constitution as it came from the 
 hands of Washington and Franklin, Hamilton and 
 Madison, the words which seem to us of this gener- 
 ation, to declare no more than Humanity's first law, 
 the words of the Thirteenth Amendment that 
 "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, . . . 
 shall exist within the United States." 
 
 In the processions with which the people glorified 
 the birth of the new Government the figure of a 
 ship under full sail was used to typify the Constitu- 
 tion. The symbol was apt and picturesque, but we 
 know now what was hidden from those who then 
 rejoiced, that their ship, the "Constitution," was sent 
 to sea by its builders with the fever of mutiny smoul- 
 dering among its crew, and the fire of slavery burn- 
 ing in its hold. 
 
 Was it right to launch the ship with all its 
 faults? Was it wise to start the voyage with all its 
 unseen perils? I answer, yes, a hundred times. The 
 men who must have first a perfect plan, a construc- 
 tion faultless and complete, never launch a ship ; a 
 crew that should refuse to sail while the winds and 
 currents of the voyage were unrevealed — until the 
 final port across the troubled seas rose clear before 
 their sight, would rot with their ship in the mud 
 of its anchorage. Of such as these were not the 
 men who built and launched and sent to sea the 
 ship they called the " Constitution." They meant to 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 25 
 
 join the tottering States in a union strong as the 
 States themselves would allow, they meant to found 
 a republic upon freedom, equality and the exercise 
 of intelligent self-government. Those were the great 
 ends at which they aimed, and to reach those ends 
 they turned aside from every obstacle. They made 
 the bargains and the compromises which constructive 
 statesmen of every age have made and must ever 
 make, and obstructive critics of every age have hin- 
 dered and denounced. Suffering and death have 
 fallen upon the generations that have followed, but 
 far better that than the loss at its birth of that 
 nation which is now the exemplar, the shield and 
 the promise of freedom for the whole world. 
 
 Posterity has gained beyond measure by the wis- 
 dom of the builders and the strength and stability 
 of their work, and though posterity has paid its 
 debt a thousand-fold in its sufferings and its grati- 
 tude, the fount of that gratitude will still flow on. 
 
 Corruption and political rancor are charged upon the 
 politics and the public men of these times. But no 
 new kind of evil vexes us, and, regardless even of the 
 growth of temptation and opportunity, the present 
 need shrink from no comparison with the past. Prof. 
 John Bach McMaster of the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania, whose " History of the People of the United 
 States" is a marvel of patient research and intelligent 
 analysis, gives his summary of that contention in these 
 words : 
 
26 Okation. 
 
 " Whoever reads the magazines and newspapers, 
 whoever listens to the oratory of the pulpit and the 
 after-dinner speeches of political reformers, is well 
 aware of the existence of a widespread belief that 
 politicians and legislators and public men are more 
 corrupt to-day than they were in the time of our 
 ancestors, three generations ago, and that the cause 
 of our political debasement is a free and unrestricted 
 ballot. This, most happily, is a pure delusion. A 
 very little study of long-forgotten politics will suffice 
 to show that, hi filibustering and gerrymandering, 
 in stealing Governorships and Legislatures, in using 
 force at the polls, in colonizing and in distributing 
 patronage to whom patronage is due, in all the 
 frauds and tricks that go to make up the worst 
 form of practical politics the men who founded our 
 State and National Governments were always our 
 equals and often our masters. Yet they lived in 
 times when universal suffrage did not exist, and 
 when the franchise was everywhere guarded by 
 property and religious qualifications of the strictest 
 kind." 
 
 Quoting from other historians, and touching only 
 the very edge of the case, we find illustrations innu- 
 merable of Professor McMaster's general statement. 
 Mr. John T. Morse, in his life of Jefferson, writes 
 thus of the famous Congress of 1776, which adopted 
 the Declaration of Independence : 
 
 "It is a truth not to be concealed that there were 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 27 
 
 cabals, bickerings, heart-burnings, perhaps actual 
 enmities, among the members of that famous body, 
 which, grandly as it looms up, and rightly, too, was 
 after all composed of jarring human ingredients." 
 
 The Massachusetts convention called to act upon 
 the Constitution of 1787 was sitting when the "Bos- 
 ton Gazette," with striking typographical display, de- 
 clared that money had been brought into the State 
 to bribe members who opposed the Constitution. 
 The term " Gerrymander " came into use in Massa- 
 chusetts in 1812 ; but there is good evidence that 
 the act of political meanness which ever since it has 
 described was invented twenty-five years earlier, 
 when Patrick Henry arranged that the districts in 
 Virginia should be laid out in such a way as to se- 
 cure the defeat of Madison as Representative in the 
 First Congress, because of Madison's support of the 
 Constitution. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, while 
 yet decent in their rivalry, made a bargain at a 
 dinner-table for an exchange of a few votes in Con- 
 gress which each needed in order to carry through a 
 favorite scheme. The results of that bargain were 
 that the General Government assumed the debts of 
 the separate States, as Hamilton wished, and the 
 National Capital was established where it stands 
 to-day, instead of farther North, as Hamilton's own 
 party desired. Later, when accused of having made 
 the bargain, Jefferson offered the pitiful excuse that 
 he had been "hoodwinked" by Hamilton. 
 
28 Oration. 
 
 Toward the close of John Adams's administration, 
 when his party had been defeated in New York, 
 Hamilton proposed that before the time for the as- 
 sembling of the new and hostile Legislature the old 
 Legislature should be called together and a law 
 passed providing that Presidential Electors should be 
 chosen by districts, thus dividing the electoral vote 
 of the State. This scheme of theft from his politi- 
 cal opponents and from the people of the State, 
 which since has borne bad and abundant fruit, was 
 urged unsuccessfully by Hamilton upon John Jay, 
 the Governor, with arguments which descended even 
 to the plea that they ought not to be " over-scrupu- 
 lous." 
 
 The "Gerrymander," "log-rolling," and the theft 
 under legal color of the electoral votes of a State, all 
 definite and conspicuous forms of disreputable politics, 
 have, therefore, distinguished parentage among the 
 public men who served a century ago. 
 
 The testimony of Jefferson relating to Congress, 
 given while he was Washington's Secretary of State, 
 was influenced, doubtless, by factional rivalries of the 
 time, yet it cannot be passed as trivial. In May, 
 1792, he wrote to Washington that the finances had 
 been managed not only extravagantly, but so as to 
 create " a corrupt squadron, deciding the voice of 
 the Legislature," and manifesting " a disposition to 
 get rid of the limitations imposed by the Constitu- 
 tion ; " "that the ultimate object of all this is to 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 29 
 
 prepare the way for a change from the present 
 republican form of government to that of a mon- 
 archy." He was positive that "the corruption of 
 the Legislature " would prove " the instrument for 
 producing in future a King, Lords and Commons, or 
 whatever else those who direct it may choose. 
 Jefferson wrote to Lafayette in June, 1792 : " Too 
 many of these stock-jobbers and king-jobbers have 
 come into our Legislature, or, rather, too many of 
 our Legislature have become stock-jobbers and king- 
 jobbers." 
 
 What were the personal relations of the men high 
 in office in the early years of the Government 
 under the Constitution ? What was the feeling 
 between party and party, and what were the methods 
 of partisan warfare ? The first twelve years of the 
 Government, under Washington, Adams and Jeffer- 
 son, were filled with personal and political bitterness 
 and abuse never since equalled, which would be 
 considered by us disgraceful to the men and the 
 parties, destructive of public morals, and urgently 
 dangerous to the very life of the republic. The 
 population was hardly four millions ; but one town 
 on the Continent had fifty thousand inhabitants ; no 
 one had dreamed of the vast instrumentalities by 
 which political controversies are created and car- 
 ried on now and in our present population of eighty 
 millions. And yet a century ago neither leaders 
 
30 Oration. 
 
 nor people, jealous, grasping and vindictive, could be 
 kept from flying at one another's throats. The few 
 particular examples which I shall give, separated 
 from the extraordinary mass which history furnishes, 
 apply exclusively to the men of that period whose 
 names are as familiar to us as they were to the 
 people of their times. 
 
 Franklin's death, in 1790, saved him from these 
 quarrels, but not from earlier and later denunciation. 
 John Adams, because of their troubles when both 
 were representing their country at Paris, charged 
 deliberately, and in writing, that Franklin had con- 
 spired to crush his associate, becoming thereby guilty, 
 to use Adams's language, of a " vulgar and low 
 intrigue" and a "base trick." He denied that he 
 himself had ever interfered with Franklin's affairs in 
 Paris, but sometimes had failed to consult him 
 because of Franklin's "extreme indolence and dissi- 
 pation." 
 
 Jefferson says of his experience under Washing- 
 ton : " Hamilton and I were pitted against each 
 other every day in the cabinet, like two fighting- 
 cocks." The public and private controversies of these 
 men covered many years, and though Hamilton's 
 acts and words were as harsh as those of his 
 rival, it will be enough to quote from a letter 
 written by Jefferson in 1792, in which he speaks of 
 charges made by Hamilton as "the slanders of a 
 man whose history, from the moment at which 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 31 
 
 history can stoop to notice him, is a tissue of 
 machination against the liberty of the country which 
 has not only received and given him bread, but- 
 heaped its honors on his head." Jefferson wrote, in 
 1818, with a hatred which long outlived the death 
 of the man whom he assailed, that "Hamilton was 
 not only a monarchist, but for a monarchy bottomed 
 on corruption." Yet Hamilton to-day has a public 
 statue in Boston, and his services, apart from his 
 faults, justify the honor. 
 
 Jefferson, then Secretary of State, wrote to Wash- 
 ington, in 1791, concerning John Adams, the Vice- 
 President : " Even since his apostacy to hereditary 
 monarchy and nobility, though we differ, we differ 
 as friends should do." But the friendly aspect of 
 their differences soon changed, for they quarrelled 
 bitterly up to and through the election which 
 defeated Adams for a second term as President, 
 and put Jefferson in his place. On the night of 
 March 3, 1801, the last of the administration of 
 Adams, he spent his time in making appointments 
 that should forestall his successor, and at midnight 
 drove out of Washington, that he might not be 
 forced to meet Jefferson the next day. 
 
 Find in the last thirty years a single word of per- 
 sonal contempt or bitterness hurled by one candidate 
 for President at another. There is none such, and if 
 it had been uttered the guilty man would have fallen 
 low in the esteem even of his own party. Contrast 
 
32 Oration. 
 
 this condition with the practices of a century ago, 
 when candidates railed at one another publicly, and 
 with every burst of abuse their supporters urged them 
 to new excesses. Surely both leaders and followers 
 and the public journals have advanced in a hundred 
 years in the decencies of civilization and the cour- 
 tesies of public life. 
 
 Adams believed that Hamilton had tried in a treach- 
 erous way to prevent his election as President, though 
 both were of the same party. The quarrel which fol- 
 lowed and was carried through the four years of 
 Adams's administration is described as the bitterest 
 feud in American political history. And let us not 
 forget that Hamilton, the first Secretary of the 
 Treasury, was killed by Aaron Burr, the fourth Vice- 
 President of the United States, in a duel brought on 
 so craftily, for political reasons, that the killing was 
 almost deliberate murder. 
 
 Let us turn to a single instance, among many, of 
 the political rancor which darkened the whole country. 
 Sam Adams is known by name to every child of ten 
 in Boston. His statue rises in a crowded public square 
 a hundred yards from Faneuil Hall, and to the passing 
 thousands it stands as a tribute from this generation to 
 a glorified leader and builder of the past. We know 
 Sam Adams;, good and bad, better than his compatriots 
 knew him, and we treat him with a generosity greater 
 than theirs. At the end of forty years of public life, 
 not free from faults, yet rich in patriotic service, a life 
 
Foukth of July, 1900. 33 
 
 which closed in disappointment and perhaps in poverty, 
 " there was embarrassment," the historian tells ns, 
 "through political enmity, in procuring a suitable 
 escort for his funeral." Think of it ! In a Boston 
 which should have had all the charity and all the 
 neighborliness of a country town, political hatred was 
 shown publicly and vehemently toward a dead man, a 
 man long removed from active politics, and that man 
 Sam Adams. 
 
 To sum up in a sentence, we may turn to a 
 passage written in 1797 by Jefferson, in which he 
 deplores the " present passions," the inability of 
 political opponents to " separate the business of the 
 State from society," so that "men who had been 
 intimate all their lives cross the street to avoid 
 meeting, and turn their heads another way lest they 
 should be obliged to touch their hats." 
 
 Secession is identified so closely with the South 
 and slavery that we forget that secession, though 
 the extremest form of State rights, was but one of 
 a hundred ways by which the States attempted to 
 assert their superiority to the Constitution and the 
 General Government. 
 
 It is worth wmile to recall the fact that the first 
 contest between the nation and a State was settled 
 not in Richmond or Mobile or Charleston, but in 
 Boston, and hardly more than a stone's throw from 
 Faneuil Hall. Washington, soon after his first 
 
34 Oration. 
 
 election, visited Boston officially. John Hancock was 
 Governor, and John Hancock held high the State's 
 dignity and his own. He expected the President of 
 the United States to recognize the official superiority 
 of the Governor of Massachusetts at home, and 
 intimated that a call from Washington would 
 be agreeable. Washington sent his regrets and 
 remained at his lodgings, ready on his part to 
 receive the Governor. According to historians, Han- 
 cock would have been willing that the President 
 of the United States should leave Boston without 
 a meeting, but not when the President happened 
 to be George Washington. He wrote, therefore, 
 that, though in much bodily distress, he would do 
 himself the honor of calling upon the President. 
 Washington sent an icy answer begging that the Gov- 
 ernor should not risk his health, but Hancock insisted, 
 and, wrapped in blankets, was carried dramatically to 
 his first meeting with an upstart President whose 
 official superiority he had been forced to acknowledge. 
 
 A summary of the early struggles between the na- 
 tion and the States is given by Professor McMaster 
 in these words : 
 
 " Thus was it that in the short space of twenty 
 years thirteen of the four-and-twenty States then in 
 the Union asserted the doctrine of State sovereignty 
 in one form or another. They charged Congress 
 with usurpation of powers ; they proposed amend- 
 ments to the Constitution ; they defied the President ; 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 35 
 
 denied the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court; de- 
 clared laws unconstitutional ; threatened resistance if 
 others were enacted ; asserted the doctrine of nullifi- 
 cation, and in their Legislatures talked openly of 
 secession." 
 
 Progress through conflict was the experience for a 
 hundred years of the men who sought to establish 
 the power of the general Government, to interpret 
 and enforce the Constitution, and to nurse into life 
 and vigor that spirit of nationality without which 
 the republic would have been as a body without a 
 soul. Progress through conflict was the rule also in 
 every purchase or annexation of the territories which 
 have added four-fold to the area of the original col- 
 onies. When Jefferson made the Louisiana purchase, 
 on which afterwards, twelve States were founded and 
 asked Congress to pass a bill providing for the pay- 
 ment of the purchase money, Josiah Quincy, then a 
 member, declared that the passage of the bill would 
 be the death blow of the Constitution, and added : 
 
 " It is my deliberate opinion that if this bill 
 passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually dis- 
 solved ; that the States which compose it are free 
 from their moral obligations, and that as it will be 
 the right of all, so it will be the duty of some to 
 prepare definitely for a separation — amicably if they 
 can, violently if they must." 
 
 Like opposition was made to the purchase of 
 
36 Oration. 
 
 Florida. The annexation of Texas was fought bit- 
 terly as a part of the slavery contest, and the 
 country now covered by California, two neighboring 
 States and a Territory came to us as a result of the 
 war with Mexico. The Oregon contest was active 
 for twenty-five years, first in Congress, which refused 
 repeatedly and with contempt to give aid to those 
 heroic Americans who had gone to the coast of the 
 far Pacific and were striving to hold it for their 
 own country. Serious men of the period, who had 
 declared before that the Mississippi river was the 
 natural and God-given western boundary of the 
 United States, now stretched their belief and their 
 conscience to include the Missouri; but at that 
 point were immovable. The territory between the 
 Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, which now sup- 
 ports eight States, with a population of perhaps six 
 millions, was regarded as a desert, worthless for any 
 purpose, except that, to quote the opinion of one of 
 the explorers of the time, it might " prove of infi- 
 nite importance to the United States, inasmuch as it 
 is calculated to serve as a barrier to prevent too 
 great expansion of our population westward." The 
 Congressional humorists of the period spent their 
 time, on the other hand, in showing that if the 
 Oregon country should become a territory, its dele- 
 gate to Congress would be unable to travel to 
 Washington and back again in a year, and would 
 be prevented therefore from attending to Congressional 
 duties. 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 37 
 
 As late in the century as 1845 Charles Sumner 
 expressed one current view of this and like subjects 
 in these words : " By an act of unjust legislation, 
 extending our power over Texas, peace with Mexico 
 is endangered, while, by petulant assertion of a dis- 
 puted claim to a remote territory beyond the Rocky 
 Mountains, ancient fires of hostile strife are kindled 
 anew on the hearth of our mother country." "The 
 remote territory beyond the Rocky Mountains" of 
 which Sumner spoke was saved a few months after- 
 wards by that "petulant assertion" which he abhorred, 
 coupled with one of those compromises which he 
 despised ; and to-day we owe to that settlement 
 largely the States of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, 
 with nearly three hundred thousand square miles and 
 a population much more than a million. 
 
 I care nothing for that force, influence or fetich 
 sometimes called Destiny. I care everything for the 
 will of God; and if ever or anywhere Divine pur- 
 pose can be traced through the temporal affairs of a 
 nation I believe it to be shown in the times, the 
 effects and even the methods of our country's ex- 
 pansion. We bought, bartered, seized or frankly con- 
 quered — taking always territory which only we could 
 raise to its potential value, which was not a benefit 
 but a burden to its actual or professed owners, which 
 became in our hands a refuge and a field of profit 
 for all the peoples of the earth. Can we believe 
 
38 Oration. 
 
 that if the republic of Texas had failed to win its 
 freedom, that if Mexico had kept, also, those vast 
 possessions on the Pacific sold afterwards to us 
 through the pressure brought by defeat — can we 
 believe that, with such territorial burdens, Mexico 
 could have developed the unity, the discipline and 
 the self-governing power which have made her to- 
 day a worthy and prosperous neighbor of our own 
 republic ? Can we believe that, with Spain on our 
 southern border, with France holding still the line of 
 the MississijDpi and hemming us in on the west from 
 Canada to the Gulf of Mexico — can we believe that 
 they and we could have counted on a single month 
 of peace while they and their governments remained 
 on the Continent? 
 
 Our wars with England and Mexico roused bitter 
 contention at home as well as armed conflict with 
 foreign enemies, and in both wars Massachusetts led 
 the opposition. In 1812 it was because the com- 
 merce of her merchants was impeded, and because 
 the political party then not popular here was in 
 leadership in the country. Despite the patriotism of 
 particular men, and despite heroic memories of naval 
 battles in which her sons engaged, the record made 
 by Massachusetts as a State in that war, now called 
 the second war for independence, was pitiable indeed. 
 The General Court, in session when news of the 
 declaration of war reached Boston, passed a vote of 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 39 
 
 disapproval, four hundred and six to two hundred and 
 forty. The Governor refused to honor the requisition 
 of the United States for troops, and would do no more 
 than issue a proclamation ordering the militia to be 
 in readiness. Again, he declared in a message that 
 not Great Britain but our own Government was the 
 offender. After a sea fight with the heroic Lawrence 
 in command, when the people were celebrating every- 
 where, the Legislature of Massachusetts passed a 
 resolution that " It did not become a religious 
 people to express any approbation of military or 
 naval exploits not immediately defensive." So the 
 dismal years went by, years filled with public 
 utterances and private doings which have exposed 
 Massachusetts and, indeed, New England, ever since 
 to charges of treason in act as well as in thought. 
 " The New England merchants," says Mr. John 
 T. Morse, "with their well-filled coffers and their 
 abundant marine, were so disaffected that they be- 
 gan to talk of secession. The Hartford Convention, 
 which hardly restrained itself from crossing the 
 danger line of treason, is one of the reminiscences 
 of that period." That movement began in Massa- 
 chusetts, which sent as its distinguished delegates 
 George Cabot, who was President of the convention; 
 Nathan Dane, founder of a law professorship at 
 Cambridge; Harrison Gray Otis, William Prescott, 
 son of Colonel Prescott of Bunker Hill and father 
 of the historian; Timothy Bigelow, and Stephen 
 
40 Oration. 
 
 Longfellow, father of the poet. Those who took 
 part in the convention had so little subsequent 
 pride in their work that its character is not made 
 clear; and, whatever its purposes may have been, 
 the proposals of peace brought them to an end. 
 The "Boston Centinel," a newspaper in sympathy with 
 the ruling party here, spoke of Massachusetts, Rhode 
 Island and Connecticut as the first three pillars "in 
 a new Federal edifice." In our second war for inde- 
 pendence, therefore, as in the first, it was a progress 
 through conflict, even among the American people. 
 
 The Massachusetts opposition to the war with 
 Mexico took higher ground. The movement for the 
 abolition of slavery had grown strong, and the 
 threatened war was regarded as an attempt by the 
 slavery party to add great territories to the south- 
 ward, to balance the growth of free States in the 
 West. There was, besides, a strong humanitarian 
 feeling against war as war. It was on these two 
 grounds that Charles Sumner made his famous ora- 
 tion, delivered in this Boston series, fifty-five years 
 ago to-day. He declared that there could be no 
 peace that was not honorable, no war that was not 
 dishonorable ; that no just man would sacrifice a 
 single human life to bring under our rule both 
 Texas and Oregon ; that our army and navy men- 
 aced peace, and should be given up ; that the forti- 
 fications in our harbors invited attack, and ought to 
 
Foukth of July, 1900. 41 
 
 be dismantled. He denounced the militia with es- 
 pecial contempt, as this passage will show : 
 
 " I am well aware that efforts to reduce the 
 militia are encountered by some of the dearest 
 prejudices of the common mind — not only by the 
 war spirit, but by that other, which first animates 
 childhood, and at a later day ' children of a larger 
 growth,' inviting to finery of dress and parade — 
 the same which fantastically bedecks the dusky 
 feather-cinctured chief of the soft regions warmed 
 by the tropical sun — which inserts a ring in the 
 nose of the North American Indian — which slits 
 the ears of the Australian savage and tattoos the 
 New Zealand cannibal." 
 
 The Charles Sumner of that day was thirty-five 
 years old, of the highest character and the broadest 
 culture, an enthusiast in the crusade against slavery, 
 a hater of compromise and prevarication, a brave, 
 arrogant, refined, scholarly novice in the practical 
 affairs of life and of government. But later it was 
 the Charles Sumner turned fifty, half a generation 
 of harsh conflict behind him, eyes opened now to 
 the gulf between the actual and the ideal, that was 
 the Sumner who missed by an hour standing witness 
 of the bloody march through Baltimore of a regiment 
 of that same Massachusetts militia which once he 
 had scorched with his contempt, but rushing now in 
 that glitter and finery once so despised, to defend the 
 
42 Okation. 
 
 national capital and save the Union. It was the 
 new Sumner who grew in the conflict to the fullest 
 measure of American statesmanship; who urged and 
 witnessed the growth of the navy to five hundred 
 ships, the enrolment in the army of two millions of 
 men, the crowded use of every fortress which once 
 he would have destroyed. It was the Sumner jealous 
 of the rights of the republic, fierce in defense of her 
 life, who hurled against that " mother country " of 
 his youth the fiercest and most threatening words 
 which crossed the ocean in those gloomy days when 
 the hard pressed republic knew not whence new foes 
 might spring. It was the Sumner, at last, sorrowful 
 but convinced, who wrote to Richard Cobden in Sep- 
 tember, 1863 : " The war must be fought out. This 
 is sad enough to me ! It costs me a pang to give 
 up early visions, and to see my country filled with 
 armies, while the military spirit prevails everywhere. " 
 
 Abuse of jraolic men is not new in our day, and 
 yet a notion that the practice is but lately born, 
 and needed, therefore, to meet a new condition is a 
 main cause of that false belief that the present has 
 fallen from the standard of the past. If our public 
 men were the first so punished, it would be fair to 
 believe that they were the first who had offended. 
 But every statesman of the past, every official, even, 
 whose name deserves a place in history, was a 
 victim in his time of such abuse, and the keenest 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 43 
 
 suffering fell to the highest and the best. No public 
 servant of ours is assaulted and slandered as Wash- 
 ington and Lincoln were assaulted and slandered by 
 the people among whom they lived; yet Washington 
 and Lincoln, poorly as our people know them as 
 they really were, stand, and will stand always and 
 rightfully, as the great and unassailable figures in 
 American history. * 
 
 The Washington of the class room and the schools 
 is a graven image, a figure of marble set upon a 
 pedestal, without passions, emotions or nerves. He 
 is a moral automaton, an intellectual mechanism. 
 Such a man, if such had ever lived, might well have 
 grown from the priggish hero of that false and 
 foolish cherry-tree story, which has done more among 
 our boys than the Father of Lies himself to make 
 obedience odious and truth telling ridiculous. The 
 real Washington was a man of flesh and blood and 
 fiery temper. He had body and heart as well as 
 brain and conscience. Doubtless, as he abhorred a liar 
 or a coward he despised a drunkard or a debauchee. 
 But he lived as the country gentlemen of the 
 place and period lived — temperate himself, but not 
 abstemious, thrifty but generous, dignified but friendly, 
 kind to man and beast, but a fox hunter, and all 
 his life an owner of slaves. His virtues were not 
 the virtues of pale blood ; he walked the narrow path 
 of self control by grace neither of dulness nor of 
 freedom from temptation. It was a man of red blood 
 
44 Oeation. 
 
 and fiery impulse who met the retreating Lee at 
 Monmouth with scorching words and an aspect which 
 Lafayette described as terrible. It was a man of 
 heart and sentiment who leaped from his horse, in 
 his Northern camp, and, with tears in his eyes, 
 shook the hand of every soldier of the company of 
 riflemen in fringed hunting shirts whose Captain re- 
 ported himself to the Commander-in-Chief as from 
 the old home, " on the right bank of the Potomac." 
 It was a man of delicate sensibility whom Jefferson 
 knew when he wrote that Washington, as President, 
 "is extremely affected by the attacks made and kept 
 up on him in the public papers ; I think he feels 
 these things more than any other person I ever 
 met with." 
 
 The children who know only the Washington of the 
 schools, the men and women who know only the 
 Washington of purest patriotism and inestimable ser- 
 vices to his country, will receive less credulously the 
 criticisms, and will judge less harshly the statesmen 
 of our time, if they know that every day of Wash- 
 ington's eight years as president was made heavy 
 with personal slander and political abuse. He was 
 assailed, say the historians, " with such a coarse and 
 brutal atrocity as recalls the worst days of Grubb 
 Street;" and again they speak of him as "writhing 
 under villainous calumnies." He was accused of 
 seeking to set himself up as king ; he was denounced 
 as a tyrant and a " land jobber ; " and, says Jeffer- 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 45 
 
 son : " In the agony of his heart he declared that 
 he would rather be in his grave than in his present 
 situation." 
 
 We know the Washington of the Farewell Address, 
 but we know not that public which read and 
 approved in the closing days of his service such para- 
 graphs as these from noted political publications of 
 the time : 
 
 " The cloud with which the George of America 
 has covered himself has been large enough to hide 
 his own want of merit and that of others whom he 
 has placed in office. But when it drops, all will be 
 exposed together. A country which has fought 
 above seven years to expel a king cannot be per- 
 suaded to receive one by surprise." 
 
 And again : 
 
 "If ever there was a period of rejoicing this is 
 the moment — every heart in unison with the free- 
 dom and happiness of the people ought to beat high 
 with exultation that the name of Washington from 
 this day ceases to give a currency to a political in- 
 iquity, and to legalize corruption." 
 
 Lincoln, dead but thirty-five years, is wrapped 
 already in clouds of sentimental fancies. He saved 
 the Republic as truly as Washington founded it ; he 
 ranks with Washington in patriotism, statesmanship 
 and public services ; he was the victim, as Washing- 
 ton was, of untiring malice, slander and false criti- 
 cism. But Lincoln besides was a politician in every 
 
46 Oration. 
 
 sense, from the day of his first vote in the back- 
 woods of Illinois to the hour of his death as Presi- 
 dent in the national capital. He grasped the large 
 affairs of politics, as Washington did, but he fingered 
 as well the smallest and pettiest — caucuses, con- 
 ventions, post offices, " sjooils." Lincoln was not of 
 quick growth. In the eyes of the people he is 
 first the backwoods boy reading in a cabin by the 
 light of a pine-knot ; then suddenly the statesman and 
 victor in the great debate with Douglas. The people 
 know little of the thirty years between, years in 
 which Lincoln learned and practised every political 
 art, and schooled himself in the tact, the knowledge 
 of human frailties and the mastery of men's meaner 
 motives, without which his fateful administration 
 would have closed in disgrace to himself and disaster 
 to his country. 
 
 I know the theory which dreamers in politics hold 
 and fondle, that always and in many places, hidden 
 from the sight of the people, but awaiting their call, 
 live elderly gentlemen of dignity and scholarship, 
 proudly ignorant of political affairs and uncorrupted 
 by their touch, advocates of public policies and 
 methods alike unimpeachable and unworkable, who 
 might emerge at a word of encouragement, and rise 
 in a day to the highest achievements of statesman- 
 ship. If such men exist, the American people never 
 yet have found them, and I fear they must be 
 classed with physicians of surpassing skill, who 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 47 
 
 never studied medicine, with eminent but uncalled 
 jurists, neglected ornaments of the Supreme Court 
 Bench, who never practised law. Statesmanship is 
 politics clarified and magnified, and men must learn 
 to walk in politics before they can run in statesman- 
 ship. I recall no exception, unless perhaps in the 
 dazzling entrance upon public careers of certain ma- 
 ture and fortunate senators of the United States, 
 but little loved, however, in Massachusetts. 
 
 The statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln the Presi- 
 dent was built upon the politics of " Abe " Lincoln 
 of the backwoods caucus and the country hustings. 
 It was the training and experience of his whole life, 
 not a sudden emergence from obscurity into great- 
 ness, that made it possible for Lincoln to succeed 
 where Washington himself, stately, obstinate, rigid, 
 I firmly believe would have failed. Men under 
 middle age who do not read history, older men who 
 have forgotten, and all our children, carry in their 
 minds a picture of Lincoln fighting the battle for 
 union backed by the united North, sustained by the 
 unshaken confidence of his party, and wrapped in a 
 cloud of patriotism, reverence and hero worship. 
 Alas and alas, if they but knew the whole truth ! I 
 cannot tell it here, but I can say that no President 
 before or since has suffered as he suffered, through 
 personal slander and public lampooning, from the 
 slurs and accusations of the many factions of the 
 time, from the self-will and vanity, the coldness, the 
 
48 Oration. 
 
 treachery, the open hostility of men of his own party 
 and even of his own Cabinet. 
 
 In that horrible battle summer of 1864, when 
 often for days at a time the fighting armies lost 
 men at the rate of a regiment an hour, when 
 treason and despair were growing in the North, and 
 peace at any sacrifice was the cry of tens of thou- 
 sands of loyal but timid men, when the end of Lin- 
 coln's Government, as we see now so clearly, meant 
 the destruction of the Union, then it was that 
 Lincoln was plotted against in his own party by 
 the pure-minded and the patriotic as well as the 
 selfish and the disloyal. His own Secretary of the 
 Treasury left the Cabinet to contest the renomina- 
 tion of his chief; a " Union" Convention put Gen- 
 eral Fremont in the field as a hostile candidate ; and 
 from few sources except from the plain people 
 themselves, God bless them, came a word of hope 
 or affection. That was a time of which he himself 
 afterward wrote : " When as yet we had no adver- 
 sary and seemed to have no friends." 
 
 The strangest passage in the history of larger 
 American politics came in August, 1864, two months 
 after the renomination of Lincoln. It was a 
 movement by some of the leaders of his own party 
 to force or to persuade him to withdraw. Among 
 those who were openly active were Senator Wade, 
 Henry Winter Davis, Horace Greeley of the "New 
 York Tribune," William Cullen Bryant, the editors 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 49 
 
 of the "New York Independent," "Cincinnati Ga- 
 zette," and other party newspapers, and, won- 
 derful to us of Massachusetts to-day, John A. 
 Andrew. Thaddeus Stevens, the party leader in 
 Congress, was in sympathy with the attempt, 
 though not active, and so was Sumner, who 
 explained to Cobden thus : " You understand that 
 there is a strong feeling among those who have 
 seen Mr. Lincoln in the way of business that he 
 lacks practical talent for his important place. It 
 is thought that there should be more readiness, 
 and also more capacity for government." The 
 movement failed through the fatal blunder of 
 the opposition platform, and because Atlanta was 
 captured by Sherman and Mobile by Farragut. 
 
 A little later William Cullen Bryant, then editor of 
 the "New York Evening Post," wrote to John M. Forbes 
 of Boston : " I am so utterly disgusted with Lin- 
 coln's behavior that I cannot muster respectful terms 
 in which to write to him." We believe now that the 
 man who blacked Bryant's boots, or washed his win- 
 dows or held his horse the day he wrote those words, 
 knew Lincoln better and saw more clearly, through 
 faith and courage and loyalty, than his master with 
 jaundiced eyes and a twisted intelligence. Mr. Forbes 
 himself, a great Boston merchant who had offered 
 more and done more for the Union than perhaps any 
 other private citizen of the United States, wrote often 
 of Lincoln in language of distrust and even contempt. 
 
50 Oration. 
 
 A letter written in March, 1865, to John A. Andrew, 
 addresses Andrew as " a man leading the war as you 
 have done, fairly leading the nation, when old Abe 
 has lagged and drifted along with the current you 
 have made." Posterity has raised these men each to 
 his fit and honorable place, but not in harmony with 
 Mr. Forbes's judgment. 
 
 Grant is a third heroic figure that will stand forever 
 in American history with Washington and Lincoln. 
 He suffered, as they suffered, from malicious enemies, 
 and from men who loved justice, yet saw in him his 
 faults alone. Let it be understood clearly that the 
 paragraph which follows is taken from a speech upon 
 Grant towards the close of his first term as President, 
 delivered in the United States Senate by Charles 
 Sumner, both being at the time members of the same 
 party : 
 
 "Not only are Constitution and law disregarded, 
 but the Presidential office itself is treated as little 
 more than a plaything and a perquisite. 
 Here the details are ample, showing how from the 
 beginning this august trust has dropped to be a per- 
 sonal indulgence where palace cars, fast horses and 
 seaside loiterings figure more than duties ; how per- 
 sonal aims and objects have been more prominent 
 than the public interest; how the Presidential office 
 has been used to advance his own family on a scale 
 of nepotism dwarfing everything of the kind in our 
 history, and hardly equalled in the corrupt govern 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 51 
 
 ments where this abuse has most prevailed ; how in 
 the same spirit office has been conferred upon those 
 from whom he had received gifts or benefits, thus 
 making the country repay his personal obligations ; 
 how personal devotion to himself, rather than public 
 or party service, has been made the standard of 
 favor ; how the vast appointing power conferred by 
 the Constitution for the general welfare has been em- 
 ployed at his will to promote his schemes, to reward 
 his friends, to punish his opponents, and to advance 
 his election to a second term ; how all these as- 
 sumptions have matured in a personal government, 
 semi-military in character, and breathing the military 
 spirit." 
 
 Sumner, lover of peace, rests in the rural Mount 
 Auburn, whither thousands of men at his death, 
 silent and grateful, no music, no banners, no martial 
 display, followed his coffin on foot. Grant's noble 
 tomb, kingly in splendor, stands high on the bank 
 of the Hudson, the roofs of the city, soon to be 
 greatest, already rising about it. Soldiers young and 
 untried, veterans whose marching is now almost 
 over, turn to that height when they train for the 
 battles to come, or flutter the flags of the victories 
 past. In the river below the guns of the home- 
 coming warships are heard, and the vessels of trade 
 salute for the people. The lover of peace may 
 plan and prepare and arouse, but at last, with a 
 country endangered, a race to be lifted, a people 
 
52 Oration. 
 
 set free, a nation's stern work to be done, the 
 soldier and sailor, the gun and the ship, must take 
 up and finish the task. We know our country's 
 civic strength, her moral force, her love of peace ; 
 we see her rise and grow and prosper; but let her 
 lack full courage for defence, the power ready 
 ever to repel or punish, and surely must she then 
 become the fat and feeble huckster of the nations, 
 the easy prey of robber bands that ride and raid 
 the highways of the world. Our country needed 
 Grant, she needed Sumner; from each she drew full 
 measure of a loyal son's allegiance; and in their 
 graves and in the graves of all who serve her well 
 she buries deep with full forgiveness the faults 
 and foibles of their human lives. 
 
 I have trespassed to-day upon strange and historic 
 ground, though not a writer, not a student, only an 
 untrained reader of our country's history. My work 
 may well be crude and clumsy, and yet, I trust, 
 will lead aright. I have invented nothing, perverted 
 nothing, discovered nothing. Old facts have been 
 turned perhaps to new and needed uses, but the 
 facts themselves are in the simplest alphabet of 
 American history. I have named no living leader, 
 argued no political question, thrust at no party, sug- 
 gested no policy, for I believe that our strong defence 
 against the critic without fairness, the prophet without 
 hope, is the clear-eyed American, whatever his party, 
 
Fourth of July, 1900. 53 
 
 who knows our past, the bad with the good, the vices 
 and the failures ranged with the virtues and the vic- 
 tories ; who knows that, stumble though we may, in new 
 and rugged paths, the Fathers stumbled, too, in paths 
 unknown to them ; who makes no apology for the 
 weak, asks no indulgence for the wicked; who would 
 strengthen the critic of fairness and knowledge whose 
 words to the people are compass and warning ; who has 
 gratitude for the founders of the republic, admira- 
 tion for their work, respect for their laws and 
 traditions ; whose reverence is not for the seal of a 
 century past, but for justice immortal and wisdom 
 abreast with mankind. 
 
 The past we judge by its rounded work, the 
 present we see in its feverish action. The critic 
 stands on the finished bridge that spans the river, 
 stirred by its beauty, confident in its strength, grate- 
 ful to its builders. Below him on the bank a new 
 and greater work is rising. He sees the groveling 
 dredge, the clamorous pump, the oozing mud, the 
 black and spouting water; he watches where grimy 
 men climb to and fro, where the caisson rocks, where 
 timbers crack and mighty stones lie waiting. He 
 thrills with the chaos and warms to the staggering 
 men, for he knows that every inch of that reeking 
 bottom is measured, every plunge of the dredge, 
 every throb of the pump is counted ; he knows that 
 in quarry or mill each stone was cut, each timber 
 hewn to fit its lodgement in the running stream; 
 
54 Okation. 
 
 and he knows that somewhere calm-eyed engineers 
 are studying plans which picture the work to the 
 last hammer stroke and the minutest atom. The 
 government of a nation is beyond the reach of 
 such precision, but the critic who trusts so much to 
 science in the midst of chaos should yield some- 
 thing to the men who struggle in his sight with the 
 burdens of the people. 
 
 With a dim past and a vivid present, a past 
 wrapped in the vestments of tender tradition, crowned 
 with our gratitude, purified by charity, sanctified by 
 death, and a present, naked, accused, defiled, striving 
 before us to carry its burdens and conquer its tasks 
 — between such a past and such a present just judg- 
 ment can be given only in the knowledge and the 
 light of that law which has ruled from the begin- 
 ning and must rule to the end, the law of progress 
 through conflict, everywhere through conflict, always 
 through conflict. 
 
 I believe that the patriotism of the fathers is 
 matched in the patriotism of the sons. I believe 
 that our country, its government, its people and its pub- 
 lic servants are wiser and stronger than ever before. 
 I believe that the feeble union of States which the 
 fathers created, halting, doubting, fearing, through 
 contest and compromise, but gloriously after all — 
 that the country which has grown four-fold in size, 
 twenty-fold in population and a hundred-fold in 
 
Foueth of July, 1900. 55 
 
 wealth is guided more prudently, is guarded more 
 effectively, and can see before it a brighter assurance 
 for the future than the little republic which began 
 its doubtful career toward the close of the last 
 century. 
 
 I know that this is not the mood and these are 
 not the words that are looked for in Faneuil Hall 
 on Independence Day. I know that the easy fash- 
 ion is to glorify the fathers and chide the sons. 
 But I believe that no men in history can better 
 bear the truth than the men whose deeds we here 
 commemorate ; I believe that the present has a 
 better right to justice than the past to glorification, 
 and when the issue comes, as come it has, between 
 the dead past, with its finished work a thousand- 
 fold rewarded, and the living present, laboring under 
 heavy burdens and wounded by slander, I stand 
 with the present and its unborn child, the fateful 
 future. 
 
A LIST 
 
 BOSTON MUNICIPAL ORATORS. 
 
 By C. W. ERNST. 
 
BOSTON ORATORS 
 
 Appointed by the Municipal Authorities. 
 
 For the Anniversary of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770. 
 
 Note. — The Eifth-of-March orations were published in handsome quarto editions, 
 now very scarce ; also collected in book form in 1780, and again in 1807. The oration 
 of 1776 was delivered in Watertown. 
 
 1771. — Lovell, James. 
 
 1772. — Warren, Joseph. 2 
 
 1773. — Church, Benjamin^ 
 
 1774. — Hancock, John. 3,2 
 
 1775. — Warren, Joseph. 
 
 1776. — Thacher, Peter. 
 1777. — Hichborn, Benjamin. 
 
 1778. — Austin, Jonathan Williams. 
 
 1779. — Tudor, William. 
 1780. — Mason, Jonathan, Jun. 
 1781. — Dawes, Thomas, Jun. 
 
 1782. — Minot, George Richards. 
 
 1783. —Welsh, Thomas. 
 
 For the Anniversary of National Independence, July 4, 1776. 
 
 Note.— A collected edition, or a full collection, of these orations has not been 
 made. For the names of the orators, as officially printed on the title pages of the 
 orations, see the Municipal Register of 1890. 
 
 1783. — Warren, John. 1 
 1784. — Hichborn, Benjamin. 
 1785. — Gardner, John. 
 
 a Reprinted In Newport, R.I., 1774, 8vo., 19 pp. 
 
 b A third edition was published in 1773. 
 
 1 Reprinted in Warren's Life. The orations of 1783 to 1786 were published in large 
 quarto ; the oration of 1787 appeared in octavo ; the oration of 1788 was printed in small 
 quarto ; all succeeding orations appeared in octavo, with the exceptions stated under 
 1863 and 1876. 
 
60 Appendix. 
 
 1786. — Austin, Jonathan Loring. 
 
 1787. — Dawes, Thomas, Jun. 
 1788. — Otis, Harrison Gray. 
 
 1789. — Stillman, Samuel. 
 
 1790. — 'Gray, Edward. 
 
 1791. — Crafts, Thomas, Jun. 
 1792. — Blake, Joseph, Jun. 2 
 1793. — Adams, John Quincy. 2 
 1794. — Phillips, John. 
 1795. — Blake, George. 
 
 1796. — Lathrop, John, Jun. 
 
 1797. — Callender, John. 
 
 1798. — Quincy, Josiah. 2 ' 3 
 
 1799. — Lowell, John, Jun. 2 
 1800. — Hall, Joseph. 
 
 1801. — Paine, Charles. 
 
 1802. — Emerson, William. 
 
 1803. — Sullivan, William. 
 1804. — Danforth, Thomas. 2 
 
 1805. — Dutton, Warren. 
 
 1806. — Channing, Francis Dana. 4 
 
 1807. — Thacher, Peter. 2 ' 5 
 
 1808. — Ritchie, Andrew, Jun. 2 
 
 1809. — Tudor, William, Jun. 2 
 1810. — Townsend, Alexander. 
 
 1811. — Savage, James. 2 
 
 1812. — Pollard, Benjamin. 4 
 
 1813. — Livermore, Edward St. Loe. 
 
 3 Passed to a second edition. 
 
 3 Delivered another oration in 1826. Quincy' s oration of 1798 was reprinted, also, 
 in Philadelphia. 
 
 4 Not printed. 
 
 e On February 26, 1811, Peter Thacher's name was changed to Peter Oxenbridge 
 Thacher. (List of Persons whose Names have been Changed in Massachusetts, 1780- 
 1892, p. 21.) 
 
Appendix. 61 
 
 1814. — Whitwell , Benjamin . 
 1815. — Shaw, Lemuel. 
 
 1816. — Sullivan, George. 2 
 
 1817. — » Channing, Edward Tyrrel. 
 
 1818. — Gray, Francis Calley. 
 1819. — Dexter, Franklin. 
 1820. — Lyman, Theodore, Jun. 
 1821. — Loring, Charles Greely. 2 
 
 1822. — Gray, John Chipmam. 
 
 1823. — Curtis, Charles Peliiam. 2 
 
 1824. — Bassett, Francis. 
 
 1825. — Sprague, Charles. 6 
 
 1826. — Quincy, Josiah. 7 
 
 1827. — Mason, William Powell. 
 
 1828. — Sumner, Bradford. 
 
 1829. — Austin, James Trecothick. 
 
 1830. — Everett, Alexander Hill. 
 
 1831. — Palfrey, John Gorham. 
 
 1832. — Quincy, Josiah, Jun. 
 
 1833. — Prescott, Edward Goldsborough. 
 1834. — Fay, Richard Sullivan. 
 
 1835. — Hillard, George Stillman. 
 
 1836. — Kinsman, Henry Willis. 
 
 1837. — Chapman, Jonathan. 
 
 1838. — Winslow, Hubbard. "The Means of the Per- 
 petuity and Prosperity of our Republic." 
 
 1839. — Austin, Ivers James. 
 
 1840. — Power, Thomas. 
 
 1841. — Curtis, George Ticknor. 8 " The True Uses of 
 American Revolutionary History." 8 
 
 1842. — Mann, Horace. 9 
 
 c Six editions up to 1831. Reprinted also in his Life and Letters. 
 
 7 Reprinted in Ins Municipal History of Boston. See 1798. 
 
 8 Delivered another oration in 18C2. 
 
 9 There are five or more editions ; only one by the City. 
 
62 Appendix. 
 
 1843. — Adams, Charles Francis. 
 
 1844. — Chandler, Peleg Whitman. "The Morals of 
 
 Freedom." 
 1845. — Sumner, Charles. 10 "The True Grandeur of 
 
 Nations." 
 1846. — Webster, Fletcher. 
 1847. — Cary, Thomas Greaves. 
 1848. — Giles, Joel. "Practical Liberty." 
 1849. — Greenough, William Whitwell. "The Con- 
 quering Republic." 
 1850. — Whipple, Edwin Percy. 11 "Washington and 
 
 the Principles of the Revolution." 
 1851. — Russell, Charles Theodore. 
 1852. — King, Thomas Starr. 1 ' 2 "The Organization of 
 
 Liberty on the Western Continent." 12 
 1853. — Bigelow, Timothy. 18 
 1854. — Stone, Andrew Leete. 2 "The Struggles of 
 
 American History." 
 1855. — Miner, Alonzo Ames. 
 1856. — Parker, Edward Griffin. "The Lesson of 
 
 '76 to the Men of '56." 
 1857. — Alger, William Rounseville. 14 " The Genius 
 
 and Posture of America." 
 1858. — Holmes, John Somers. 2 
 
 1859. — Sumner, George. 15 
 
 1860. — Everett , Edward . 
 
 1861. — Parsons, Theophilus. 
 
 1862. — Curtis, George Ticknor. 8 
 1863. — Holmes, Oliver Wendell. 10 
 1864. — Russell, Thomas. 
 
 10 Passed through three editions in Boston and one in London, and was answered 
 in a pamphlet, Remarks upon an Oration delivered by Charles Sumner .... July 
 4th, 1845. By a Citizen of Boston. See Memoir and Letters of diaries Sumner, by 
 Edward L. Pierce, vol. ii. 337-384. 
 
 11 There is a second edition. (Boston : Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1850. 49 pp. T2°.) 
 i 2 First published by the City in 1892. 
 
 13 This and a number of the succeeding orations, up to 1861, contain the speeches, 
 toasts, etc., of the City dinner usually given in Faneuil Hall on the Fourth of July. 
 
Appendix. 63 
 
 1865. — Manning, Jacob Merrill. "Peace under 
 Liberty." 2 
 
 1866. — Lothrop, Samuel Kirkland. 
 
 1867. — Hepworth, George Hughes. 
 
 1868.— Eliot, Samuel. " The Functions of a City." 
 1869. — Morton, Ellis Wesley. 
 1870. — Everett, William. 
 
 1871. — Sakgent, Horace Binney. 
 
 1872. — Adams, Charles Francis, Jun. 
 
 1873. — Ware, John Fothergill Waterhouse. 
 1874. — Frothingham, Richard. 
 
 1875. — Clarke, James Freeman. " Worth of Republi- 
 can Institutions." 
 
 1876. — Winthrop, Robert Charles. 17 
 
 1877. — Warren, William Wirt. 
 
 1878. — Healy, Joseph. 
 
 1879. — Lodge, Henry Cabot. 
 
 1880. — Smith, Robert Dickson. 18 
 
 1881. — Warren, George Washington. "Our Repub- 
 
 lic — Liberty and Equality Founded on Law." 
 1882. — Long, John Davis. 
 
 1883. — Carpenter, Henry Bernard. "American 
 
 Character and Influence." 
 
 1884. — Shepard, Harvey Newton. 
 1885. — Gargan, Thomas John. 
 
 14 Probably four editions were printed in 1S57. (Boston: Office Boston Daily Bee. 
 60 pp.) Not until November 22, 1864, was Mr. Alger asked by the City to furnish a 
 copy for publication. He granted the request, and the first official edition (J. E. Far- 
 well & Co., 1864, 53 pp.) was then issued. It lacks the interesting preface and appendix 
 of the early editions. 
 
 is There is another edition. (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1859, 69 pp.) A third 
 (Boston : Rockwell & Churchill, 1882, 46 pp.) omits the dinner at Faneuil Hall, the 
 correspondence and events of the celebration. 
 
 lc There is a preliminary edition of twelve copies. (J. E. Farwell & Co., 1863. (7), 
 71 pp.) It is " the first draft of the author's address, turned into larger, legible type, 
 for the sole purpose of rendering easier its public delivery." It was done by " the 
 liberality of the City Authorities," and is, typographically, the handsomest of these 
 orations. This resulted in the large-paper 75-page edition, printed from the same 
 type as the 71-page edition, but modified by the author. It is printed " by order of the 
 Common Council." The regular edition is in 60 pp., octavo size. 
 
64 Appendix. 
 
 1886. — Williams, George Frederick. 
 1887. — Fitzgerald, John Edward. 
 1888. — Dillaway, William Edward Lovell. 
 1889. — Swift, John Lindsay. 19 "The American Citi- 
 zen." 
 1890. — Pillsburt, Albert Enoch. " Public Spirit. " 
 
 1891. — Quinct, Josiah. 20 "The Coming Peace." 
 
 1892. — Murphy, John Eobert. 
 
 1893. — Putnam, Henry Ware. "The Mission of Our 
 
 People." 
 
 1894. — O'Neil, Joseph Henry. 
 
 1895. — Berle, Adolph Augustus. "The Constitution 
 and the Citizen." 
 
 1896. — Fitzgerald, John Francis. 
 
 1897. — Hale, Edward Everett. "The Contribution of 
 Boston to American Independence." 
 
 1898. — O'Callaghan, Rev. Denis. 
 
 1899. — Matthews, Nathan, Jr. "Be Not Afraid of 
 Greatness." 
 
 1900. — O'Meara, Stephen. "Progress Through Con- 
 flict." 
 
 17 There is a large paper edition of fifty copies printed from this type, and also an 
 edition from the press of John Wilson & Son, 1876. 55 pp. 8°. 
 
 18 On Samuel Adams, a statue of whom, by Miss Anne Whitney, had just beer 
 completed for the City. A photograph of the statue is added. 
 
 19 Contains a bibliography of Boston Fourth of July orations, from 17S3 to 1889, 
 inclusive, compiled by Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public Library. 
 
 20 Reprinted by the American Peace Society. 
 
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