EM 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/bunkerhillmonumeOOwint 
 
lunkr Hill Ponumtnt ^ssotiatinn. 
 
 MR. WINTHROFS ADDRESS 
 
 AT 
 
 THE ANNUAL MEETING, 
 
 i8 June, 1883. 
 
Fifty Copies, privately printed from the '"''Proceedings^' 
 
 --'^''\ 
 V^"^ 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, — 
 
 Sixty years have now been completed since tliis 
 Association was incorporated. Our Charter bears date 
 June 7, 1823. Forty-eight years had then ah^eady 
 elapsed since the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought ; 
 and we thus meet to-day in commemoration of the one 
 hundred and eighth anniversary of that ever memora- 
 ble conflict. 
 
 Our meeting, however, is primarily, if not altogether, 
 a business meeting, for the election of officers, and for 
 hearing the annual reports of our treasurer and our 
 directors. You will not, therefore, I am sure, expect 
 from me anything in the nature of a formal address. 
 
 Yet I might seem wanting to such an occasion, if not 
 to you and to myself, were I not to follow the uniform 
 example of those who have preceded me in this chair, 
 and to offer you, in a few off-hand remarks, my cordial 
 greeting on the return of so hallowed an anniversary, 
 and my warm congratulations on the continued pros- 
 perity and success of the objects for which this Associa- 
 tion was organized. 
 
 It was, indeed, originally proposed, and was even 
 made the subject of a solemn resolution at our Annual 
 Meeting in 1824, that there should be " an Address 
 
4 ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WIN'THROP. 
 
 annnally delivered before the Association on the 17th 
 of June, to commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill." 
 But it is plain that this resolution did not contemplate 
 your President as the perpetual orator of the day, since 
 it expressly provided also, that " a citizen should be 
 chosen at each Annual Meeting to make such address 
 at the next Annual Meeting." 
 
 I am not aware that this old, original Resolution has 
 ever been regularly rescinded, but we all know that it 
 has been allowed to lapse into disuse by common 
 consent ; and we have all been more than content with 
 occasional addresses, in particular years, and in view 
 of special circumstances, — such as the completion of 
 the Monument ; the seventy-fifth, and, more especially, 
 the one-hundredth anniversary of the battle ; the un- 
 veiling of the marble statue of General Joseph Warren, 
 and, more recently, of the admirable bronze statue of 
 Colonel William Prescott. 
 
 At all events, Gentlemen, no citizen was chosen at 
 the last Annual Meeting to deliver an Address at this 
 meeting ; and no rightful expectations can thus be dis- 
 appointed if we confine ourselves mainly, this morning, 
 to the quiet transaction of the business which may 
 come before us. Other exceptional occasions will pre- 
 sent themselves from time to time, in future years as 
 they have done in years past, when we or our succes- 
 sors will be seen eagerly assembling again on yonder 
 famous heights, and when eloquent voices will be 
 heard telling again the never-tiring story of the first 
 great battle of the American Revolution. Another 
 quarter of a century from its date will soon have 
 elapsed. Another half-century anniversary will not 
 
ADDEESS OF HON. EGBERT C. WINTHEOP. 
 
 be slow in rolling on. And far later still, but not less 
 surely, a grand Second Centennial of Bunker Hill will 
 stir the blood of millions yet unborn, and be celebrated 
 not here only, but throughout the length and breadth 
 of what we hope and trust and believe will still, by 
 the blessing of God, be a free, prosperous, united, and 
 glorious country. What orator will be adequate to 
 that occasion ! What lips, what language, will be com- 
 mensurate to the theme which that day will present to 
 the contemplation of the world, if we and those who 
 come after us shall only be true to ourselves, to our 
 country, and to our God, — seeing and pursuing those 
 things Avhich belong unto our peace, before they are 
 hidden from our eyes ! 
 
 Meantime, other well-deserved statues will be found 
 leaping from the quarries or the foundries, at the magic 
 touch of accomplished artists like Story and Greenough 
 and Ball, to take their places at the side of Warren or 
 of Prescott; and a substantial and spacious Gnmite 
 Lodge for the safe-keeping and exhibition of the relics 
 of the Battle, and of the memorials of those by whom it 
 was fought, and of those by whom it has been worthily 
 illustrated, — in which, perhaps, these Annual Meetings 
 may thereafter be held, — will be seen, it is hoped, 
 at no distant day, offering itself for dedication. That 
 is the first necessity of our condition. It would be a 
 noble work for some public benefactor to provide for, 
 and make his own, in default of our inadequate re- 
 sources. But contributions for such a purpose can 
 hardly fail to be forthcoming whenever called for, and 
 I cannot but hope that another Annual Meeting will 
 not occur without plans and estimates having been 
 
6 ADDRESS OF HON. IlOBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 obtained, and the serious consideration of the work at 
 least fjxirly entered upon. In these and other similar 
 occurrences, ample, if not annual, opportimities will be 
 found for keeping alive the memory of the 17th of 
 June, 1775, should that memory ever again seem to be 
 in danger, as it did sixty years ago, of losing its right- 
 ful hold on the American heart. 
 
 But it never again will be in any such danger. The 
 events and associations of that day have been already 
 embalmed in as noble and as imperishable eloquence as 
 our own country or any other country on earth has ever 
 produced. They have certainly inspired more than one 
 oration, never surpassed in the whole compass of English 
 literature. History and biography, too, have dealt with 
 them elaborately and brilliantly. And yonder massive 
 and stately Monument, which was the original design 
 and work of this Association, and is still and ever its 
 most sacred trust, — albeit unadorned by anything of 
 advanced art, and perhaps all the more on that account, 
 — will stand proof against oblivion and against the 
 elements, braving the Avinds and storms and even time 
 itself, and telling the tale of Prescott and Warren and 
 Putnam and their gallant comrades, century after cen- 
 tury, for a thousand years. Thither the Tribes will go 
 up in all time to come. Troops and throngs of our chil- 
 dren and our children's children, through countless 
 generations, will be seen gathering on that conse- 
 crated Hill, on some of those special occasions as they 
 succeed each other in the near or in the distant future, 
 gazing with delight, as they advance, at that lifelike 
 statue of the heroic Commander of the day, — who 
 seems to have returned and retaken the redoubt, as he 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. EOBERT C. WINTHROP. 7 
 
 said he could, — and recalling, as they go on and 
 stand face to flxce with that colossal shaft, those 
 thrilling words of Webster : " The powerful speaker 
 stands motionless before us. Its future auditories will 
 be the successive generations of men, as they rise up 
 before it and gather around it. Its speech will be of 
 patriotism and courage ; of civil and religious liberty ; 
 of free government ; of the moral improvement and 
 elevation of mankind ; and of the immortal memory of 
 those who, with heroic devotion, have sacrificed their 
 lives for their country ! " 
 
 The battle of Bunker Hill, for itself and on its own 
 account, will need no more orations, no other orator. 
 Its commemorations and celebrations will always serve 
 to make a welcome holiday ; and they may always be 
 relied upon, in any hour of peril, to rouse the slumber- 
 ing patriotism of the people, and to rekindle the watch- 
 fires of liberty. But its own remembrance w^ill rest 
 safely forever on the massive Obelisk which this Asso- 
 ciation has erected, and on the matchless utterances to 
 which that Obelisk has more than once given the 
 occasion and the inspiration. 
 
 Let me not fail to add. Gentlemen, that, for the 
 present year, there is a peculiar fitness in our omitting 
 any special celebration of this or of any other battle. 
 We have just gone through with tbe hundredth anni- 
 versaries of tlie battles of the Revolution, from Bunker 
 Hill to York town. We have exhausted the whole 
 series. There are no more centennials of war to be 
 celebrated. The grander Centennial of Peace has at 
 length arrived, and is now in order. The struggle for 
 American Independence, begun here in Massachusetts 
 
b ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 in 1775, came to a triumphant end just a hundred 
 years ago; and the year 1783 stands out on the calen- 
 dar of American history, illuminated from month to 
 month, and almost from day to day, from its opening 
 to its close, with all that can awaken the gratitude and 
 rejoice the hearts of Christian patriots. 
 
 On the 20th of January of that year the preliminary 
 Treaty of Peace and Independence, which had been 
 signed provisionally on the previous 30th of November, 
 took full effect. On the 13th of February the King's 
 Speech, announcing that treaty to the Parliament of 
 Great Britain, arrived in America, and filled every 
 bosom with joy. Early in March the official copy of 
 that Preliminary Treaty was welcomed by Congress. 
 Meantime our Army at Newburgh, which had grown 
 somewhat impatient and restless under long and man- 
 ifold deprivations and hardships, gave occasion to that 
 memorable scene, on the 15th of March, when Wash- 
 ington recalled them to a sense of patriotic submission 
 and duty by as impressive and touching an appeal as 
 ever fell from human lips. On the 11th of April Con- 
 gress ordered a cessation of liostilities, which Washing- 
 ton proclaimed to the Army on the 19th, a day, as he 
 said in that proclamation, — referring to Lexington and 
 Concord, — which completed the eighth year of the war. 
 Then followed, early in June, the noble circular letter 
 of Washington to the governors of all the States, — a 
 legacy hardly second in interest, ability, and importance 
 to his Farewell Address to the Nation, on withdrawing 
 from the Presidency, thirteen years afterwards. The 
 order of the Cincinnati now springs into existence, at 
 the headquarters of the brave old Baron Steuben, — 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 9 
 
 known since as the Verplanck Manor, near Fishkill, — 
 to be the subject of suspicion, controversy, and even 
 calumny for a few years, but to outlive them all, and 
 to remain to this day as an honorable historical memorial 
 of the gallant officers who led the Army of Independ- 
 ence. During all this time the Definitive Treaty of 
 Peace and Independence is making steady progress 
 in Paris, and on the 3d day of September, at the British 
 Minister's apartments in the Hotel de York, that im- 
 mortal treaty is finally signed by John Adams, Ben- 
 jamin Franklin, John Jay, and the Minister of Great 
 Britain, David Hartley. Accordingly, on the 18th of 
 October, Congress issues a Proclamation for the Army 
 of the Revolution to be disbanded on the od of Novem- 
 ber ; and on the 2d, the day before, Washington pro- 
 mulgates his farewell orders to the soldiers with whom 
 he has so long been associated. On the 25th of 
 November the British Army evacuates New York. In 
 that once more open city, on the 4th of December, at 
 Fraunce's Tavern, Washington takes that affectionate 
 and affecting leave of his brothers in arms, and they all 
 of him. And then, at last, on the 23d of December, is 
 witnessed, at Annapolis, the sublime closing scene of 
 the American Revolution, — to which history presents 
 no parallel, — when our consummate and incomparable 
 Patriot and Hero resigns his commission as Commander- 
 in-Chief of our Armies, and gives back the sword which 
 had achieved our Independence to the Congress from 
 which he had received it in 1775. 
 
 Such is the succession of events which throw a halo 
 of glory around that blessed year of our Lord of which 
 this year, 1883, is the Centennial, encircling and gild- 
 ing it, almost from its dawn to the very last week of its 
 
10 ADDEESS OF HON. EOBERT C. WINTHEOP. 
 
 close, with a radiance all its own, without a tinge of 
 the crimson stains of carnage or conflict ! 
 
 Such a year will fitly find its Centennial Commem- 
 oration in the national observances which have been 
 arranged, I believe, for the 3d of September at New- 
 burgh, the final headquarters of the American Army ; 
 and, not less fitly, in the grand Exposition to be opened 
 on the same day in our own city, where the Revolution 
 began. We may well postpone Bunker Hill, and all 
 other battles, to other years, and lend all our aid and 
 support and sympathy to this Boston Exposition, which 
 not a few of our own number have united in organiz- 
 ing, under the auspices of the Massachusetts Charitable 
 Mechanic Association, and to which tiie leading nations 
 of the world are at this moment preparing to contribute 
 the choicest products of their art and industry. 
 
 Let me hasten now to pass from these general re- 
 marks to matters of more direct and practical interest. 
 
 It became my duty and privilege, while I was in 
 Europe last summer, to communicate officially to the 
 Marquis de Rochambeau and to M. Edmond de Lafa- 
 yette the notice of their election, at your last Annual 
 Meeting, as honorary members of this Association. I 
 hold in my hands their several letters of acknowledg- 
 ment and acceptance. 
 
 The Marquis de Rochambeau writes, from his old 
 ancestral Chateau de Rochambeau, near A^endome, 
 where, before my return home, I had the pleasure of 
 passing some delightful days with him and his family, 
 and of seeing the fine portrait of the gallant commander 
 of our French allies at Yorktown, and many other most 
 interesting memorials and relics of his brilliant military 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 11 
 
 career. The letter is dcated August 9, 1882, and in it 
 he says : " I was greatly flattered by the distinction 
 conferred upon me by the Bunker Hill Monument 
 Association in naming me one of its honorary members. 
 I shall always remember our visit to this famous Monu- 
 ment in your beautiful city of Boston, and the sympa- 
 thetic welcome which you gave us there. 
 
 " The laurels which the Americans gathered in 1775 
 were the most precious for your fathers, as the pledges 
 of hope which God sent them from HeaVen. At a later 
 day the Sovereign Dispenser of Victory appeared mani- 
 festly in their behalf, and the Sun of Liberty began to 
 break away from the clouds, and to shine upon the 
 States of the Union." 
 
 The letter of M. Edmond de Lafayette, bearing the 
 same date but written from his residence in Paris, is as 
 follows : — 
 
 Mr. President : Will you excuse me for having so long 
 delayed to answer you ? But I have been engrossed by 
 my political duties and by the sessions of the Senate. I am 
 deeply touched by the news you have announced. I cannot 
 but be honored and flattered to be named an Honorary 
 Member of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, — to 
 succeed my brother Oscar, — and to see the name of Lafayette 
 figuring still among so many well-known names which I have 
 learned to love and respect, and which recall the glorious 
 epoch of the first struggles for Independence in your 
 country. 
 
 It is with lively emotion that I accept the Diploma 
 which you kindly offer me. I pray you to receive the 
 expression of my thanks, and to communicate to your 
 colleagues my sentiments of profound gratitude. 
 
 Accept the assurance of my distinguished consideration. 
 
 Edmond de Lafayette, 
 
 Senator of the Haute Loire. 
 
 MonS. ROBKKT C. WiNTHKOl'. 
 
12 ADDKESS OF HON. ROBEET C. WINTHROP. 
 
 Acceptances were also received from Major-General 
 Winfield Scott Hancock of the United States Army, and 
 from General Joseph Hawley, United States Senator of 
 Connecticut, which will be duly preserved on our files. 
 
 Our last Annual Report, as you will all remember, 
 included an account of the reception of all the French 
 guests at Bunker Hill on the 2d of November, 1881, on 
 their return from the great centennial celebration at 
 Yorktown. I took pleasure in transmitting a copy of 
 this report to each one of the guests, with the litho- 
 graphic fac-similes of their autograph signatures on 
 our visitors' book, and I received from them all the 
 most cordial expressions of acknowledgment. Not a 
 few of them called on me personally in Paris, and were 
 full of grateful recollections of Yorktown and Bunker 
 Hill. 
 
 And now. Gentlemen, we are called on to remember, 
 at this anniversary meeting, those of our Directors who 
 have died during the past year. Indeed, we could not 
 forget them if we would. Though happily there are 
 but two names lost to our livino; roll since it was last 
 made up, yet those two, I need hardly remind you, are 
 the names of men who had not only rendered devoted 
 services to our Association, but who had in everj^ way 
 entitled themselves to our warm regard and respect. 
 
 The Hon. Otis Norcross died on the 5th of Septem- 
 ber, in the seventy-first year of his age. He had been 
 one of our Directors for fifteen years, during six of 
 which he was a member of the Standing Committee. No 
 one of the Board v/as more attentive, more vigilant, or 
 more practically useful. He brought to our service the 
 
ADDEESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 13 
 
 sterling qualities which marked his whole character and 
 career. He was a man of great intelligence, of remark- 
 able firmness, and of the highest integrity, never weary 
 in well-doing, and one whose counsel and co-opera- 
 tion, in all the concerns not only of this Association but 
 of the community in which he lived, were as highly val- 
 ued as they were cheerfully and generously afforded. I 
 knew him intimately in the days of the Civil War, when 
 I was engaged, as chairman of the Overseers of the Poor, 
 in the reorganization of that Board, of which he was the 
 Treasurer ; and I can thus bear personal testimony to 
 his wisdom, his diligence, and his unswerving fidelity. 
 But this was only one of the relations which he sustained 
 for so many years to the charitable Institutions of our 
 city. He was indeed more or less prominently associa- 
 ted with almost all of them. Meantime, as Chairman of 
 the Board of Aldermen, as Mayor of Boston for at least 
 one year, and as a member of the Executive Council of 
 the State, his name was honorably associated with 
 important political offices and affairs, and it will not 
 soon be forgotten as that of an honest man, a valuable 
 citizen, and a good and faithful public servant. 
 
 Of the Hon. George Washington Warren, who 
 died in this city on the 13th day of May last, in the 
 seventieth year of his age, the records of our Associa- 
 tion will preserve a distinguished memory, as long as 
 the Association itself shall continue to exist. Its Secre- 
 tary for eight years, from 1839 to 1847, — its President 
 for twenty-eight years, from 1847 to 1875, — his ser- 
 vices in various capacities, and as one of our Directors 
 from 1836, cover a period of forty-seven years. His An- 
 
14 ADDRESS OF HON^. EGBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 nnal Addresses, as President, which have always been 
 included in the printed proceedings of the Association, 
 contain the details of all the important or interesting 
 occurrences connected with the Monument from year to 
 year, together with appropriate notices of our deceased 
 officers and members, and with many more general 
 historical references to the conflict which the Monu- 
 ment commemorates. But he had evidently contem- 
 plated, during the whole period, the more substantial 
 effort with which his name will be always identified, and 
 in 1877 he produced and published an elaborate History 
 of the Association and of its work, as the crowning labor 
 of his long and zealous services in its behalf. 
 
 Born, as he tells us in the preface to that stately 
 volume, at the foot of Bunker Hill, where he resided 
 for a large part of his life, and having received from his 
 father, as a boy of only eleven years old, one of the 
 engraved diplomas of membership of that day, — "in 
 a gilt frame," as he is careful to mention, — he seems 
 to have imbibed at once a passionate enthusiasm for 
 everything relating to the Battle, to the Monument, 
 and to all their associations and surroundings, and 
 to have gathered and treasured up with unwearied 
 assiduity whatever might possibly contribute to their 
 illustration. Little or nothing of importance, certainly, 
 in regard to the men who projected and built the 
 Monument, or who have been in any way connected 
 with this Association during the half-century which it 
 covers, can have been omitted from so comprehensive a 
 volume. It is itself a monument of sina:ular diliirence 
 and devotion. 
 
 A graduate of Harvard University in 1830, a member 
 
ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTIIROP. 15 
 
 of our State Legislature, a Mayor of the City of Charles- 
 town before its annexation to Boston, a faithful Judge ot 
 the Municipal Court to the end of his life, associated 
 prominently of late with the old First Church of Boston, 
 and always a public-spirited and patriotic citizen of his 
 Commonwealth and Country, in peace and in war, — 
 Judge Warren has left an enduring record in many 
 conspicuous spheres of official service, as well as in the 
 annals of this Association. 
 
 I leave it to you, Gentlemen, to originate any action 
 in regard to these bereavements which may be custo- 
 mary or ajDpropriate, and I turn for a moment, before 
 concluding these somewhat desultory remarks, from the 
 dead to the living. I alluded, at the outset, to the fact 
 that sixty years have now passed away since this Asso- 
 ciation was incorporated. Of the original Board of 
 Directors in 1823, not one is now living. I doubt if 
 there are manv oriiJ-inal members of the Association left, 
 though there are some of us here present, who, as boys 
 or as young men, witnessed the laying of the corner- 
 stone of the Monument in 1825, and heard parts, if 
 not the whole, of Webster's immortal oration. But I 
 cannot forget that first, in the order of seniority, on our 
 roll of living Directors, and at the head of our Vice- 
 Presidents, stands the name of a venerable printer, book- 
 seller, and publisher, of our city, the imprint of whose 
 firm — Crocker & Brewster — has been the guaranty 
 of a good book for more years than I can count, who 
 has been always held, and is still held, in the highest 
 regard and respect by our whole community, and who, 
 having been elected a Director in 1833, has this day. 
 
16 ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 in the eighty-seventh year of his age, completed a half- 
 century of faithful service. I call upon 3^011 all to rise 
 and nnite with me in offering our thanks and congratu- 
 lations to our valued associate and excellent fellow- 
 citizen and friend, Uriel Crocker, and in expressing 
 the earnest hope that he may long be spared in health 
 and strength, not only to this Association, but to the 
 community in which he has been so conspicuous an 
 example of that industry, integrity, public spirit, and 
 patriotism which have characterized and distinguished 
 the mechanics of Boston from the days of their illus- 
 trious leader, Paul Revere. 
 
 And now, Gentlemen, having finished these sincere 
 though imperfect tributes to the living and the dead, it 
 only remains for me to call upon my friend, the Hon. 
 Frederic W. Lincoln, another of our Vice-Presidents, 
 who has most kindly and efficiently conducted the 
 affairs of the Standing Committee for several years 
 past, to make report of their proceedings and doings 
 since our last Annual Meeting. 
 
,h^^Ri 
 
 'fiRy 
 
 Opr 
 
 r^'^G/?/ 
 
 'fss 
 
 011 
 
 800 
 
 965 y/^ 
 
 #r'