ADDRESS
OEI.IVKRED BEFORE THE
Georgia Historical Society,
ON ITS
NINETEENTH ANNIVERSARY.
FEBRUARY 12, 1858,
I > y J o h ii K . W arcl.
SA V A X N A II :
CKORCE N. N I C Jl O LS, 1'KINTEK.
1857.
CORRESPONDENCE.
Savannah, 13th February, 1858.
Dear Sir:—The undersigned, Committee of the "Georgia His¬
torical Society." take pleasure in communicating to you the following
resolution, unanimously adopted last evening :
11 Resolved, That the thanks of this Society be tendered to the
Hon. John E. Ward, for his chaste and eloquent address delivered
before the Society on its Nineteenth Anniversary, and that he be
requested to furnish a copy for publication. "
W ith sentiments of great respect and esteem,
W e are, yours very truly.
J. K. TEFFT,
GEO. A. GORDON,
WM. NEYLE HABERSHAM,
EDWARD PADELFORD, Jr.,
WM. S. BASJNGER.
Hon. John E. Ward.
Savannah, 13th February, 1858.
Gentlemen ;—In compliance with the request of the '• Georgia
Historical Society," I herewith furnish you with a copy of my address
for publication.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
JOHN E. WARD.
To Messers. I. K. Tefft, Geo. A. Gordon, Win. Neyle Habersham,
Edward Padelford, Jr., Wra, S. Basinger, Committee.
jforcss.
In 1839, our fellow-citizen I. K. Tefft, the distinguished
collector of Autographs, having in his possession many
valuable documents relating to the Colonial and Revolutionary
history of Georgia, realizing the necesity of some institution
in which the records of the State might be preserved, sum¬
moned to his aid a few kindred spirits, and with them formed
the Georgia Historical Society.
To say many words upon the importance to our country
and to the world at large of such an Association, would be
unnecessary—its very name contains its panegyric. History
not only commemorates great actions, it incites to them.
Had Homer never chronicled in his immortal poem the
wisdom of Ulysses, the strength of Ajax and the irresisti¬
ble valor of the son of Thetis, Greece would have had
fewer heroes. A nation without history, is a nation with¬
out life. Long before Guttenburg had moulded types, before
Costar had cut the blocks of wood in which lay yet in
embryo, the world's master,—printing,—before language had
become the easily wielded, instrument of thought that now it
is—man, thirsting for the immortality for which he was
created, sought some means of perpetuating his name, of
giving to that, vitality and power, when he himself should
lie beneath the clods of the valley, as powerless as they.—
This desire speaks on the walls of buried Ninevah and ruined
Egypt. This endowed with creative power the painter's
brush and the sculptor's chisel. This reared the triumphal
arch, decked the temple and woke the echoes with song
whose tones call forth yet a responsive thrill in the world's
loftiest spirits. The old Scandinavian Sea Kings, though
6
they won kingdom and treasure, felt themseves but half re¬
warded for their strife, till the Scald had struck his sounding
harp and given (heir names a place beside the heroes of the
past. In a double sense the Poet was the " maker "—for he
made not the poem only ; he breathed life into the hero
whose deeds that poem commemorated. At length the
Muse of History was born—of soberer brow and more quiet
mien. She does not fire the blood with momentary frenzy,
but her steadier impulse gives courage to I he heart, vigor
to the nerves, and quick sagacity to the mind. She records
the triumphs of successful soldiers who have exchanged
the sword for a. sceptre. lhe military garb for the Im¬
perial purple. The young Oorsicau, gifted by nature with
an indomitable will and a master genius, reads and becomes
a Buonaparte. She tells of the nobler power by which men
have acquired that last great victory—the victory over them¬
selves—by which all selfish impulses have sunk beneath the
loftier aspiration to become a nation's benefactor. A boy,
nurtured in free America, learns the lesson, and comes forth
with the calm, serene wisdom, the lofty sense of duty, the
steady, unwavering courage of a Washington.
And now, to-day, withdrawing for awhile from the crowded
marls of business, forgetting for a brief hour the cares of the
present, let us stand before this Muse of History and from
those tablets on which she has engraved as with a pen of dia¬
mond the memories of the past, let us seek to read the page
that records the life and character of this, our native State—
the youngest of that fair baud of sisters that in 1776 shook
off their allegiance to the British crown. She was not the
last to enter on her new career; nor has she been the
slowest in her progress. Beautiful was her domain even
in the wildness of uncultivated nature, when no foot
but the red man's trod her green Savannas or penetrated
her leafy forests, and no keel, save that of his light canoe,
had divided her sparkling waters; " when beneath the
same sun that now rolls over our heads, the Indian hunter
pursued the panting deer—when gazing on the same moon
7
that now smiles for us, the Indian lover wooed his dusky
mate." On the North and West she lifted herself into lofty
hills, rich with the precious metals, and on the East and South
lay a chain of green islands—emeralds in her queenly coro¬
nal. "Broad rivers swept through her plains their fertilizing
currents, and over her rocky steeps cataracts toamed and
brawled, or, dividing in their course, fell softly in fairy foun¬
tains." Nature is unchanged. The beauty of the river and
the hill remain, and the soft tints of an almost tropical sky-
were then, as now, mirrored in the stream. And so they
waited for the hour and the man—and they came.
For ages—how many, who may say ? a tribe of the great
family of the Muscogees dwelt in, or more properly roamed
over, this beautiful land. The hills never revealed to them
the secret of their treasures, nor did they suspect the abun¬
dance that lay within the bosom of the earth, ready to start
into life to reward the cultivator. More than two centuries
had passed since Columbus had dared the spirits of the deep,
and forced them to surrender to him the mystery they had
guarded so long and so well—the secret of a new world.
More than a century had rolled around since Englishmen
had landed on these Western shores. The settlers of James¬
town had grown into a flourishing State. The handful oi
fugitives from religious persecution which had landed at Ply¬
mouth rock, had become a nation and had sent out South and
West the genius of two new States, Rhode Island and Con¬
necticut. The New Amsterdam of the Dutch on the Hudson,
had changed its name and its government, and become the
New York of the English. Pen 11 had established his peace¬
ful settlement 011 the banks of the Delaware. New Jersey
had become consolidated by the surrender of its rights of
government to the English Crown. Lord Baltimore had
opened an asylum tor Roman Catholics on the Chesapeake.
Descendants of the pious Huguenots of France and of the
loyal cavaliers of England, associated under the cumbrous
constitution prepared for them by Locke—a great metaphy¬
sician but a poor statesman—had extended their settlements
8
as far South as Port Royal, now Beaufort. In some of these
settlements the spirit of enterprise or the love of gain had
prompted their founders. In others, loftier motives—the de¬
sire of civil liberty, or the Heaven sustained determination
to secure " Freedom to worship God "—had been the promp¬
ters. But now a higher lesson than even that of christian
liberty was to be given—the lesson of Christian charity. The
Pilgrim Fathers of New England came thither from the state¬
ly homes of England, not as the flourishes of the rhetorician
and the dream of the poet have represented, to assert the rights
of conscience and the claims of man, as man, to freedom of
faith, they came to assert the right—nay the determina¬
tion of their individual selves—to found a church without a
Bishop, to preach in a black coat and to pray without a book-
They sought not toleration at all, but freedom, na]r dominion,
for themselves. If this be doubted, let the fanatical Quakers,
and the one catholic spirit among them, Roger Williams,
decide the doubt. Even so—all honor to the brave—earnest
men and the meeker but not less heroic women, who pre¬
ferred a winter voyage in a frail bark, a home on a bleak
shore with an icy earth beneath their feet, a stormy sky
above them and a savage foe howling all around them, to
one instant's sacrifice of what seemed to them the claims of
God and of conscience. They had attained " the beginning
of Wisdom " which the Song of Sirach asserts to be " the
Fear of the Lord"—but "the end of the law is Charity,"
and it was in the benign spirit of self-denying, charity, that
civilized man first found a home under these softer skies
We have said that, the hour came and the man. He was
a man of rare endowment, combining the chivalric quali¬
ties of the knight and the gentleman, with the accomplish¬
ments of the scholar, and the benevolence of the christian.
In the exercise of this last trait, he had preceded Howard in
the examination of the jails of England. To judge by the
jurisprudence of England at this period, it would seem that
human life was considered as far less valuable than property.
The fainting mother who seized with frenzied hand the loaf
9
for which she could not pay, to save, not herself, but her
child from the clutch of death, the law condemned to *i felon's
doom. The simple-hearted, unsuspecting gentleman, whom
a dishonest steward, or a speculating attorney had involved
in debts which he could neither understand nor pay, was
immured from the cheerful light of day, compelled to forego
the manly exercises which had given vigor to his frame, and
courage to his heart, and to sit down within the blank
walls of a jail, with 110 companion but the menr ry of jovs
gone forever, and apprehensions nol the less terrible because
they were undefined. Whose heart has not been touched by
the picture which the wonderful genius of Dickens has so
lately exhibited of the terrible influences of such a doom—of
intellect withdrawing, of honor growing dull, and self-respect
dying out, till the shadow of those dark walls, the impress
of that meagre life stamped themselves upon soul and body,
and the man lived a scorn to others, a sad mockery to him¬
self. From such a fate the benevolent Oglethorpe rescued
many a gallant gentleman of England, some of whom, per¬
chance, had been his own personal friends, some, perhaps,
had ventured and lost all in their loyalty to a cause which
Gen. Oglethorpe was well known to favor—the cause of the
exiled Stuarts. It was a glorious thought to bear the prisoner
from a land it. which though liberated, the dark cold shadow
of the prison walls must ever have fallen upon his path, to
the beauty and the freedom, the sunlight and the bloom of
this fair land. Hither they came, the gentleman of England,
whose worst fault was, that, honest himself, he could not sus¬
pect others of dishonesty. The gallant Highlander of Scot¬
land, whose last hope of seeing " the king have, his own
again," had been trodden out beneath the hoofs of Cumber¬
land's cavalry at Culloden—the gay son of Erin, ready alike
for the battle-field or the convivial feast, for the enjoyment of
wealth while he possessed it, or the adventurous pursuit of it
when it had fled from him—true hearts—manly spirits—it
was a good thing to open to them these fair homes. But the
benevolent design of Oglethorpe ceased not here •, his charity
2
10
was world-wide—wherever man bowed beneath an oppres¬
sor, wherever tyranny uttered her commands, or persecution
lighted her fires, it sent forth the invitation, "Come with us,
and we will do thee good." And from the depths of the
German forests, and the vine-clad borders of the Rhine, they
came, in a sublime faith, journeying through hostile lands,
with fearless tranquility, and singing amid the storm and the
sea "their hymns of lofty cheer."
The Indian wigwam was then the only dwelling on these
shores. But what need was there of dwellings in the soft,
balmy air, arid beneath skies which in February seem bright
with a summer's sun ! Would that for one brief hour, we
could resusitate the buried past, and bring its vanished scenes
and characters before you—that we could command the mag¬
ic wand of genius at whose touch the present and the actual
"Should dissolve,
And like an unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not, a rack behind."
and in its place should rise the forest, under whose o'er-
arching boughs should pass before us, now the dusky faces of
the Yamacravvs—now the Salzburger with his simple garb
and earnest countenance, and now the Highlander with his
picturesque tartan, and amongst them all, should move the
gallant, good old English gentlemen—soothing the dissatisfied,
cheering the faint-hearted, helping the weak, and directing
all. He leads forth the Lutherans, assisting with his own
hands to clear the wood through which their course lay to
the spot where they would erect their Ebenezer. He heads
the brave Highlanders as they march against the invading
Spaniards. Touched by the submission, the helplessness and
the ignorance of his savage allies, he conducts them to the
foot of the English throne, endeavoring in their behalf to
awaken the sympathies and secure the aid of all true chris¬
tian hearts. And christians there are who hear his appeal
and answer in a spirit as generous as his own. Wesley, with
his full, warm heart; Whitfield, with his fervid eloquence and
his more fervid charity, have left memories of themselves on
11
these fair shores. To the latter especially we owe the birth of
an institution which neither we nor our posterity will willingly
let die—the Orphan House, within whose walls many of either
sex have found a refuge from ignorance and vice. Years
glide aw^y—the christian soldier returns to his native land,
with a heart still full of wise and kindly schemes lor the
benefit of those whom he regarded as his children. Full of
years, and full of honors, he passes from earth to Heaven.
The little colony ceases to be the pet and plaything of
royal caprice. It had dwindled under protection ; it thrives
through neglect, and grows strong amid difficulties. The
founder of an empire must be thrown out to the storms, and
have the wolf for his nurse. Before the time came for break¬
ing off the chains which had been rivited upon us during
our colonial dependence, the little colony had risen to the
dignity of a State, though more than two-thirds of its terri¬
tory was still the hunting ground of the Indian, or the home
of wild beasts—a State, though its army was but a few hun¬
dreds in number, and its marine consisted of a few peaceful
merchant ships—for
"What constitutes a State?
Not high raised battlements or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate ;
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets ciown'd,
Not bays and broad armed foits,
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ;
Not starred and spangled courts,
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride;
No—men—high-minded men—
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain,
Prevent the long aimed blow,
And crush the tyrant, Avhile they rend the chain.
These constitute a State."
And these Georgia could boast. They might be checked at
every move for a while, for superior power was against them.
They might find the faint-hearted, extinguishing with their
cold coward breath the glow of patriotism which they had kin¬
dled ; but no obstructions, no discouragements, could shake
12
the constancy of their steadfast souls. Others might continue
slaves: but for Mem,they would be free, though to achieve
freedom they must " shuffle off this mortal coil," and escape
from thraldom through the gate of death. Noble men ! their
names live in our hearts. We read with a throb of pride
their assertion of the rights of man to the enjoyment of "life,
liberty, and property," and their temperate, yet firm appeals
to the British government in behalf of their oppressed
brethren of the Northern States. There is scarce a man
wearing the form of man, who. when a tyrant's hand falls
heavily upon himself will not rouse himself to action, and
shake it off or perish in the attempt: but the glory of
these men was, that no touch had yet desecrated
their persons, or endangered their property, when they
avowed iheir intention to make common cause with the
struggling friends of freedom. On the one side was peace,
the quiet enjoyment of wealth, the smooth words and the
ready rewards of the British officials, wielding the whole
organized power of the land ; and as the price of all these
benefits, the simple acknowledgment that they were the gifts
of royal bounty. On the other, a long, deadly and doubtful
struggle, in which "properly, life, and sacred honor," must
be pledged, and looming darkly in the dim distance, rose a
prison and a gallows. But over this sombre scene, penetra¬
ting its darkness with her own pure light, and gilding with
glorious brightness even the instrument of a felon's death,
hovered the Spirit of Liberty. They knew they must win her
by their own action.
" Who would he muwt themselves strike the bluw.v
And their choice was made—a noble choice, and nobly
maintained! The events of that period are familiar to you all.
I need not tell you how the rudderless and unrigged ships
rotted in our harbor, or were burned to the water's edge
with the rice and indigo that freighted them; nor need I re¬
mind you that these determined men had pledged themselves
to fire their houses, rather than they should afford shelter to
an enemy. Well might the President of the Continental
13
Congress declare that in this they had given "an instance of
heroic principle not excelled by any, and equalled but by
few in history." But I am not pronouncing a panagyric—
my part is to breathe life, if 1 may, into the dead past, and
bid you note its acts, and kindle at its glorious example. Did
I say the dead past ? Such a past never dies! The men
of that year, 1775, the men who drew up the Declaration of
the Rights by which, in language temperate, yet firm, they
avouch themselves entitled to all the privileges and immuni¬
ties of Englishmen, who stood prepared to defend that dec¬
laration with their lives, have engraved their names on the
corner-stone of our political edifice in characters that shall
never be effaced. Even now these men—Bulloch and Hab¬
ersham—Jones and Walton—Telfair and Tattnall—Mcintosh
and Elbert—Houston,and Screven, and Baker, and many more
equally brave and noble spirits, are present with us. Their
calm, earnest eyes seem to abjure us to preserve unimpaired the
heritage won with such care and perils. They planted the seed
of that noble tree which this day lifts itself so proudly to the
light and air of Heaven, and shelters us so securely beneath
its spreading branches. Withered be the sacrilegious hand
that would mar its glorions beauty ! It is not without a
deeper meaning than may be recognized at a glance, that we
have said, "they planted the seed" for in their action lay
the germ of all that we have been, are, or may hope to be,
as a people. They stamped their impress, not on their age
only, but, as we hope, on their native land, for all time. Read
their utterances in the public records of the day, and you will
be surprised to perceive how simple, calm, and even concilia¬
tory, they were in manner, how unyielding in principle—
gentle as the whispering wave—stern and unbending as the
granite rock. The "suaviter in modo et fortiter in re"
have never been carried farther. And thus it is with all truly
great actions. It is the shallow brook that brawls and foams
along its course—the deep stream flows silently on ; yet a child
may dam up the first, while the last sweeps from its way with
irresistible power whatever would obstruct its majestic career.
14
Once, in the later history of Georgia, she has stood opposed
to the action of the Government for the time being. The cir¬
cumstances which placed her in that position are too recent
to need recapitulation. You remember how the General
Government fulminated its edicts; how the very ministries of
our religious faith were made to speak the language of our
enemies ; and you remember too with what calmness, yet,
with what immoveable constancy, he who then held ?he helm
of State, steered us through all opposition to the point to
which right and honor marshaled us.
It is in this view that the present acquires its chief impor¬
tance—it is the little seed within which lies folded the great
interests of the future. Self-styled philosophers may mock
at the history which makes the whole destinies of the
race of man depend on the single act of a single pair ; but
observation and experience confirm its truth. In every age
and in every land there are those who may in this sense be
called representative men—men whose characters shall be
reflected in their race and mould their fortunes to the latest
time, or till some other of equal power shall give a counter
direction to the forces of society. We live not then for our¬
selves alone, a conviction that may well stimulate us to high
thought and noble action. Nor are those men who shine as
stars in the firmament of history, by whose light we may
steer our barks over the wide ocean of time, always those
whom nature or fortune has placed in the most prominent
positions, or gifted with the greatest powers. A recent histo¬
rian says: The treaties of Aix la Chapelle had been nego¬
tiated by the ablest statesmen of Europe in the splendid
forms of Monarchical Diplomacy. They believed themselves
the arbiters of mankind, the pacificators ot the world.
" At the very time of the Congress of Aix la Chapelle, the
woods of Virginia sheltered the youthful George Washing¬
ton. A stripling surveyor in the woods, with no companion
but his unlettered associates, and no implements of science
but his compass and chain, he contrasted strangely with the
imperial magnificence of the Congress of Aix la Chapelle.
15
And yet God had selected not Kaunidz. (the Ambassador of
Austria,; nor .Newcastle, (the Minister of England,)—not a
Monarch oi the House of Hapsburg, nor of Hanover, but
the Virginia strippling, to give an impulse to human affairs,
and, as far as events can depend on an individual, had placed
the rigists and the destinies of countless millions in his keep¬
ing."
Let us glance our eyes along the map of the world in the
early part of the sixteenth century. Great names meet us there.
In England, Henry VIII, haughty and arrogant—in France.
Francis I, one of the most chivalric of monarch S—in Spain,
Charles the V, who added to his Imperial dignities the title
by election of Emperor of Germany. These men seemed no
less in quality than in rank. They attracted the eyes and
thoughts of all the living men of their time. They met in
peaceful pageants, and the gorgeous display of the Field of
the Cloth of Gold remains to this day without a rival in our
imagination. They met in war, and played at the game
right royally, staking and losing Kingdoms at a blow.
Among these more prominent figures, there rises upon us
one which seems strangely out of place—the son of a poor
man in an insignificant town in the heart of Germany. The
Kings and the Emperors may be forgotten ; but for the re¬
cords of history they would already have perished
from the world, on which they left little trace; but while
the world endures, while men are thronging towards the
open portals of eternity, and inquiring with the intensest in¬
terest. for the way of life, that German boy will be remem¬
bered. He broke the fetters from the mind of universal man.
The world can never be again what it would have been
without Martin Luther.
And what in both ther-e cases gave influence to the man
and lifted him not above his contemporaries only, but above
the men of all time? There were men as brave as Wash¬
ington in the Revolutionary War, priests as learned as Luther
in the sixteenth century, soldiers and priests more ambi¬
tious of station and influence, more determined to be great
16
than they. In truth, they sought not greatness ; they coveted
neither power, nor renown ; they simply followed the com¬
mands of
"Duty, stfi'ii daughter of the voice of God."
They followed her often reluctantly, feeling the Cross and
not always seeing the Crown. They thought little of them¬
selves and much of their work. Let those who would be
remembered as they are, do like them.
Perhaps it may be said that only at great eras of history is
it vouchsafed to a single man to rise thus above his fellows.
To this I answer, it is the man who makes the era, not the
era, the man. Our ideal ever lies in the present and the
actual—a possibility to be achieved—even as the statue lies
in the yet unchiselled marble, waiting hut the touch of genius
to wake it into life. There are always duties to be performed,
sacrifices for others to be patiently endured, wrongs to be
combatted, rights to be enforced ; and so true greatness may
be won, and our names, receiving the emblazonment of histo¬
ry, may become a world's treasured possession.
What ideal is there that may not be wrought out in our
own time ? We talk of chivalry as of the things of the
past. The glory of chivalry was that it submitted to self-
denial, endured hardship and put life in peril for a noble cause.
Its mailed hand wrung from the gripe of the oppressor his
ill-gotten gain ; it unclasped the fetters of the enslaved ; it
lifted up the down-trodden ; in its strength the feeble found
refuge, and the poor were fed by its bounty. As in his se¬
cluded cloister the monk of the middle ages preserved amid
surrounding darkness a feeble glimmering of intellectual
light, and some sparks of that holier flame from which the
fires of our christian altars were afterwards rekindled, so the
knight errant of those days kept alive in men's hearts the
ideas of truth and honor, of justice and nobleness, which
were in danger of being crushed and trampled out beneath
the feet of the thronging tribes of men in their onward
march.
At length, the wildly confused and warring elements of
17
society subsided into tranquility. Nations and governments
sprang into being where had once been only savage hordes.
A new power arose in the world—the power of the people—
and their will and their force, embodied in the law, took the
place of the Knight's strong arm. In her unsleeping vigilance
we may rest secure. Under her protection Christianity has
come forth from the cloister, teaching man to be merciful,
because,
"All souls that were, were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took,
Found out the Remedy."
Christianity wins from free warm hearts, what Chivalry forced
from unwilling hands. At her appeal, the miser unlocks his
stores, the oppressor lays aside his rod and chain, and man,
bent beneath the load of ceaseless labor, and brutalized by
vice, lifts himself upward toward God, and rejoices in the
light of His countenance. Had Christianity, then, the uni¬
versal sway which poetry has hymned and prophecy assured
to her, we might fold our arms in idle enjoyment and feel
that the determined will, the daring spirit, and the heroic
heart of the knight, were as much things of the past as the
iron mail in which he was accustomed to encase himself.
But such is not our happy experience. The glories of the
Age of Gold have passed away, and that happier era when
the redeemed earlh shall brighten in the rays of the Heaven
to which it is rising, has not yet come. Poets may dream
their dreams, self-complacent philosophers may map out their
Utopias, but practical men—men of action, as well as of
thought, men who live in no dream-land, but in the actual
world, these men know that there is work around us that will
task the most energetic, and the most daring spirit—work, be¬
fore which we might well stand appalled, but that there comes
to us, sounding through the ages, that old battle-cry, " God
for the Right! " The castles in which grim prejudice
has entrenched itself are to be stormed. They are strong,
and multitudes have mustered to their defence; let no
man gird himself for the combat who is not prepared to peril
3
18
property, station, friends, life, and what is dearer still, good
name. The dungeons in which ignorance has shut her cap¬
tives, must be thrown open to the light of day ; but he that
would perform ihe task must descend himself and breathe
their pestiferous air. The plague-smitten victims of vice
must be ministered to ; but the moral surgeons who devote
themselves to their treatment, ere entering the hospitals in
which they lie, must divorce themselves from all that men
call pleasure, and learn to look, with an almost divine charity,
011 what usually inspires only disgust and loathing. Is not
the very spirit of knight-errantry—the spirit which shone
gloriously though all its fantastic forms, in those who
gird themselves for this contest ? May not the man of to¬
day find as noble a field for his powers as did any of those
whose names we have seen blazoned on the tablets of his¬
tory ? Can we not find scope for a charity as self-denying,
as world-wide, as high-hearted, as that of Oglethorpe? If it
be not ours to" lay the corner-stone, as did he, to a new
Slate, we may put the key-stone to the arch, which shall give
stability to all that has been already done. By the silent
inlluence of a noble, self-devoted life, by the fearless utter¬
ance of truth, by manly action in the cause of right, we may
make this, our native State, worthy of its founder, and
of the gifts with which Heaven has so richly endowed it.
One characteristic marks the truly great man of every age:
lie thinks much of his work, and little of himself. Oglethorpe
visits the poor gentleman, for a gentleman he still is, in his
prison. lie sees the heavy eye, which strives in vain to
brighten on his entrance, the languid movement where once
all was brisk cheerfulness, the frame formerly erect with
manly dignity, now bowed and shrunken ; he sees all this;
he does more than see, he feels it, and he asks not how
James Oglethorpe may make his name great, but how he
may bring new life, and health, and hope, to these sad
wnVks. Me has found his work and does it—that's all.
Washington was pre-eminent for this quality of greatness.
Nature had endowed him with military instincts. He has
19
a prospect of obtaining service in the navy of Great Britain.
His first cruise would have been with Admiral Vernon on an
expedition which offered peculiar fascinations lo tlx; adven¬
turous spirit of youth—-but his widowed mother opposed ii,
and his trunk, already borne to the vessel, is recalled—let
the youth who considers it a proof of manhood never in
submit his will to another's, especially if that other he a
woman,hear—and he turns with cheerfulness to his chain and
compass. The fathers of the Revolution,did they, think you,
spend much time in speculating how they might best achieve
honor tor themselves? Did they plan the drama of the Rev¬
olution and, like skilful actors, suit themselves with parts?
No ! they did the work of the day and hour, careful onl\\
whatever it was, that it should be done well. They reared
the fair temple of our independence, unconscious that on its
columns their own names would be inscribed. A "few years
later, there arose in another land revolutionists more dra¬
matic, who constructed after the most approved classic mod¬
els every act and scene of their great play. What came
of that you know—how they mistook license for liberty, and
" Played such fantastic tricks before high Heaven
As made the angels weep."
The works on which Napoleon Bonaparte rested his hopes
of fame—those in which the sentiment of personal aggran¬
dizement and personal glory lived as the animating spirit—
the empires which he overturned,—the sham republics he
constituted—the dynasties he established—over these the
deep sea wave ot Time has swept and they are gone. The
landmarks which he destroyed, have been restored, and had
these things made the sum of his life, with all the brilliancy
of his genius and the dazzling splendor of his military prow¬
ess, he would have left only
The name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
But his true work—that which had been prepared for him
by the world's Great Ruler—was done too and well done
a people drunk with fury were checked and curbed in their
20
mad course—the dethroned Majesty of law was re-estab¬
lished—the financial credit of a great but nearly bankrupt
land was restored—and on the territory of those vanished
Empires and Republics, he has left enduring monuments of
his power and his genius, in an improved police, in canals
which have opened to their produce the markets of distant
countries, and roads which have made over hitherto inacces¬
sible mountains, a highway for Europe.
It is not then by direct efforts to aggrandize themselves—
it is not by waiting for extraordinary occasions of action that
men build up a great name—a name which the muse of his¬
tory shall delight to engrave upon her tablets—which their
fellow men shall receive from her with reverence and hand
down from generation to generation.
Time was indeed when the world's heroes were such as the
boy conqueror of Macedon, weeping for more worlds to con¬
quer and quenching alike his grief and his greatness in mad
debauch, or the selfish destroyer of Roman liberty; but the
world has grown wiser, and has learned to feel more reve¬
rence for a benefactor than for a destroyer of mankind. The
verdict of history is but the expression of the public senti¬
ment of the age in which it is written, and we feel that
Even now the voice is heard
O'er the waters calm and clear;
Even now the wave is stirred,
With an Angel presence near,
And a better "Age of Gold"
Cometh as the Bard foretold.
When no war shall bid men bleed
To o'erthrow a hostile throne,
Or to change a people'i creed
That may differ from their own;
But 'neath Truth's unclouded sun
Right and Power shall aye be one."
On the fair pages of our annals have been recorded many
honorable names—some that well deserve to be associated
withthemenof 1733 and of 1776. Statesmen—they have
filled with honor offices of trust in their own State, or under
21
the Fedora 1 Government. In the Navy of the United States
they have fearlessly braved on every sea "the battle and the
bieeze," and while the stars and stripes which waved above
them reminded them that it was to the whole country they
had pledged service and life, they still lclt that one star in
that brilliant constellation beamed for them with purer and
brighter light than any other—the Georgium Sidns. Soldiers,
they have lought gallantly and died bravely—let the battle¬
fields ol Mexico and the honored dust which sleeps in yon¬
der church yard tell that tale. Rut 1 would this day lay a
chaplet on the graves of men whose conflicts and whose tri¬
umphs were connected not with the battlefield, but with the
forum. Let their names be breathed in tender accents, for
affection still weeps upon their tombs. We cannot speak of
them as we have done of men of the past, for they were our
contemporaries and our fellow-citizens—treading the same
streets, mingling in the same scenes with ourselves—they
were our friends,—we have caught fervor from their kindling
eyes—inspiration from their glowing hps—courage from the
grasp of their hands. We have missed them from our daily
walks, and felt a painful sense of loss as we listened in vain
for the familiar voice, and sought in vain the quick and kind¬
ly glance. You, gentlemen, of the Georgia Historical Socie¬
ty, have peculiar cause for these feelings, for both were active
members of your Association, and one of them, your first
President.
How vividly rises before me the slight but well knit, active
form, the pale face, the thoughtful brow, the earnest eyes
which made up the impressive aspect of Robert M. Charlton,
the acute lawyer, the upright Judge, the scholar, the poet, the
fond and tender father,the true and devoted husband, the chris¬
tian, "vixit morilurus, moritur que victurus in seternum."
It has been the custom to speak of the legal profession as ne¬
cessarily inimical to those qualities which, according to the
great English Satirist, mark the noblest work of God, "an
honest man"! but who ever knew Robert M. Charlton and
would have hesitated to confide in his lightest word as in a
22
contract signed and sealed ; what a fountain of tender svm
pathi.es, of life-giving charity was 11 is heart! Over quick,
natural sensibilities the imaginative temperament of the poet
shed brighter and warmer hues—and what fervor did Ins
poetry lend to his logic, what grace to his oratory ! We
may seem to have said much and yet we have not touched
that which crowned and hallowed his every gift and every
grace: these rare endowments were perfected with the
spirit and reflected visibly to every eye, the light of Heaven.
Say, then, he is dead ! Believe it not: his spirit lives not
in Heaven more surely, than his influence remains a living
power on earth. The profession he adorned is the purer in
his native State—the city to which he belonged is the more
honored, for his life. His memory is one of our treasured
possessions—we will guard it well—
" Green he the turf above thee,
Friend of iny earlier days!
None kne'.v thee but to love thee,
Xone named thee but to praise.''
Beside the warm, living portraiture which we are conscious
our words have but faintly presented, we would place ano¬
ther, more grand, it may be, in its proportions, though less
warm in its coloring, and less illuminated by that tender light
with which the heart halos the pictures it enshrines.
To those who met him in the daily walks of life, John
Macpherson Berrien is recalled, as one who exhibited in a
very remarkable degree, the graceful courtesy of the pol¬
ished gentleman, and the elegant cultivation of the thorough¬
ly furnished scholar. In some respects, he belonged to ano¬
ther age than ours. The busy man of the present day shows
himself what he is ; he moves with hurried step, and has
few words and fewer mere courtesies to spare. No one could
suspect Judge Berrien of being an idle man, yet who ever
knew him betrayed by hurry into the forgetfulness of the
smallest courtesy, whether to his friends in the intercourse of
society, in the senate, or to his antagonists at the bar? It was
there that he showed greatest—there, at the bar, that his genius
23
rose triumphant. Who that ever saw him there, his face ra¬
diant with the glow of conscious power—who that ever heard
those tones which rang on the charmed ear like the notes of
a silver clarion, can forget the impression he made ! Who
that ever listened to his plea but can remember how he
swayed his judgment, fired his heart, and influenced his
whole being at his will ! With him died, as we believe, the
greatest advocate not of Georgia only but of the United
States. Webster's granite mind dealt with great constitution¬
al questions with unequalled power, but as an advocate at the
bar, the exquisite tact, the soul-subduing eloquence of Ber¬
rien surpassed even him. It will be long, ere in this State, or
in this Union, we shall find for him among living men a rival,
or a peer. If Charlton's grave should be decked with the
green turf and shadowed by the over-arching boughs which
poets love, the monument of John Macpherson Berrien
should be of purest marble, polished and wrought with the
most artistic skill. His State's men will never hear his name
without a glow of pride.
Charlton ! Berrien ! Their names have become historic
in their native State. You, gentlemen, will not suffer them
to perish ; especially will it be your pride and pleasure to
cherish that of John McPherson Berrien, your first President.
We have read from the tablets of history the record of
some of those names, preserved from oblivion by their great
and good qualities. We have seen that they lived not for
themselves or for their age alone, but for the world and for
all time. We have endeavored also to show that the oppor¬
tunity for noble action died not with them, that the world
has still work to do which requires strong hands and pure
hearts, and though it crown not the workers with laurels
while they live, history will not fail to write their names upon
her page and commit it to your faithful keeping. It is yours
to preserve green the memory of the honored dead. From
your hands, the living wait their reward—the proud reward
of a name that shall be to children and to children's children
a star guiding them in safety and honor through midnight
24
glooms and over trackless seas. We all expect your verdict;
let it be faithful and impartial.
"Who that surveys this span of earth we press,
This speck of life in Time's great wilderness,
This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas,
The past, the future—two eternities!
Would sully the bright spot, or leave it bare,
When he might build him a proud temple thorp,
A name, that long shall hallow all its space,
And be each purer soul's high resting pkce."