m5 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 D00013fl47E7 
 
SOUTH LEAFLETS 
 
 1886 
 
THE 
 
 OLD SOUTH LEAFLETS. 
 
 FOURTH SERIES, 
 
 1886. 
 ~\^V\ z, NN H-t^ ^oT Independence,. 
 
 
 BOSTON : 
 OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE. 
 

 c c c ' e « ^ » 
 
 c t* *«c «*« 
 
 c r t t » * S *^ 
 
 c c t < « ' c 
 t c c t 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The Old South Leaflets are prepared for free circulation among 
 the attendants upon the Old South Lectures for Young People. The sub- 
 jects of the Leaflets are immediately related to the subjects of the lectures, 
 and they are intended to supplement the lectures and stimulate historical 
 interest and inquiry among the young people. They are made up, for the 
 most part, from original papers of the periods treated in the lectures, in the 
 hope to make the men and the public life of the periods more clear and real. 
 
 The Old South Lectures for Young People were instituted in the sum- 
 mer of 1883, as a means of promoting a more serious and intelligent atten- 
 tion to historical studies, especially studies in American history, among the 
 young people of Boston. The success of the lectures has been so great as 
 to warrant the hope that such courses may be permanently sustained in 
 Boston and established with equal success in other cities of the country. 
 
 The course of lectures for 1883, which was intended to be strictly upon 
 subjects in early Massachusetts History, but was by certain necessities 
 somewhat modified, was as follows: "Governor Bradford and Governor 
 Winthrop," by EDWIN D. Mead. "Plymouth," by Mrs. A. M. Dl\z. 
 "Concord," by Frank B. Sanborn. "The Town Meeting," by Prof. 
 James K. Hosmer. "Franklin, the Boston Boy," by George M. Towle. 
 " How to Study American History," by Prof. G. Stanley Hall. "The 
 Year 1777," by John Fiske. " History in the Boston Streets," by Edward 
 Everett Hale. The Leaflets prepared in connection with these lectures 
 consisted of (i) Cotton Mather's account of Governor Bradford, from the 
 " Magnalia " ; (2) the account of the arrival of the Pilgrims at Cape Cod, 
 from Bradford's Journal ; (3) an extract from Emerson's Concord Address 
 in 1835 ; (4) extracts from Emerson, Samuel Adams, I)e Tocqueville and 
 others, upon the Town Meeting; (5) a portion of Franklin's Autobiography; 
 (6) Carlyle on the Study of History; (7) an extract from Charles Sumner's 
 oration upon Lafayette, etc. ; (8) Emerson's poem, " Boston." 
 
 The lectures for 1884 were devoted to men representative of certain 
 epochs or ideas in the history of Boston, as follows : " Sir Harry Vane, in 
 New England and in Old England," by Edward Everett Hale, Jr. 
 "John Harvard, and the P'ounding of Harvard College," by Edward 
 Channing, Ph.D. " The Mather Family, and the Old Boston Ministers," 
 by Rev. Samuel J. Barrows. " Simon Bradstreet, and the Struggle for 
 the Charter," by Prof. Marshall S. Snow. " Samuel Adams, and the 
 Beginning of the Revolution," by Prof. James K. Hosmer. " Josiah 
 Quincy, the Great Mayor," by Charles W. Slack. " Daniel Webster, 
 the Defender of the Constitution," by Charles C. Coffin. " John A. 
 Andrew, the Great War Governor," by Col. T. W. Higginson. The 
 Leaflets prepared in connection with the second course were as follows : 
 (i) Selections from Forster's essay on Vane, etc.; (2) an extract from Cot- 
 ton Mather's "Sal Gentium"; (3) Increase Mather's "Narrative of the 
 
Miseries of New England"; (4) an original account of "The Revolution in 
 New England" in 16S9; (5) a letter from Samuel Adams to John Adams, 
 on Republican Government ; (6) extracts from Josiah Quincy's Boston 
 Address of 1830; (7) Words of Webster; (8) a portion of Governor Andrew's 
 Address to the Massachusetts Legislature in January, 1861. 
 
 The lectures for 18S5 were upon "The War for the Union," as follows: 
 " Slavery," by William Lloyd Garrison, Jr. "The Fall of Sumter," 
 by Col. T. W. Higginson. "The Monitor and the Merrimac," by 
 Charles C. Coffin. "The Battle of Gettysburg," by Col. Theodore 
 A. Dodge. " Sherman's March to the Sea," by Gen. William Cogsv^ell. 
 "The Sanitary Commission," by Mrs. Mary A. Livermore. "Abraham 
 Lincoln," by Hon. John D. Long. "General Grant," by Charles C. 
 Coffin. The Leaflets accompanying these lectures were as follows : (i) 
 Lowell's "Present Crisis," and Garrison's Salutatory in the Liberator of 
 January I, 1831 ; (2) extract from Henry Ward Beecher's oration at Fort 
 Sumter in 1865 ; {3) contemporary newspaper accounts of the engagement 
 between the Monitor and the Merrimac; (4) extract from Edward Everett's 
 address at the consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, with 
 President Lincoln's address; (5) extract from General Sherman's account 
 of the March to the Sea, in his Memoirs; (6) Lowell's "Commemoration 
 Ode '^ ; (7) extract from Lincoln's First Liaugural Address, the Emanci- 
 pation Proclamation,' and the Second Liaugural Address ; (8) account of 
 the service in memory of General Grant, in Westminster Abbey, with Arch- 
 deacon Farrar's address. 
 
 The course for the summer of 1886 has been upon "The War for 
 Independence," as follows: "Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry," by 
 Edwin D. Mead. "Bunker Hill, and the News in England," by John 
 FiSKE. "The Declaration of Lidependence," by James MacAlister. 
 "The Times that Tried Men's Souls," by Albert B. Hart, Ph.D. 
 "Lafayette, and Help from France," by Prof. Marshall S. Snow. 
 " The Women of the Revolution," by Mrs. Mary A. Livermore. " Wash- 
 ington and his Generals," by George M. Towle. "The Lessons of the 
 Revolution for These Times," by Rev. Brooke Herford. The Leaflets 
 prepared for these lectures, and here bound together, are as follows: (i) 
 Words of Patrick Henry ; (2) Lord Chatham's Speech, urging the removal 
 of the British troops from Boston ; (3) extract from Webster's oration on 
 Adams and Jefferson; (4) Thomas Paine's "Crisis," No. i ; (5) extract from 
 Edward Everett's eulogy on Lafayette ; (6) selections from the Letters of 
 Abigail Adams; (7) Lowell's "Under the Old Elm"; (8) extract from 
 Whipple's essay on " Washington and the Principles of the Revolution." 
 
 The Leaflets for 1883 are now mostly out of print. The series for 1884, 
 1885, and 1886, uniformly bound in flexible cloth covers, may be procured 
 at the Old South Meeting House /io^fewenty-fii^^AiilifMpiMnQkpEiic 
 
 Old South Meeting House, 
 Boston, 1886. 
 
FOURTH SERIES, 1886. No. i. 
 
 <£>\ii ^outft EcaflctjEt. 
 
 Words of Patrick Henry. 
 
 Extract from his speech in the Virginia House of Burgesses at Richmond, 
 March 23, 177s, in support of his resolutions moving the arming of the Vir- 
 ginia militia. 
 
 "Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illu- 
 sions of Hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful 
 truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us 
 into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great 
 and arduous struggle for liberty ? Are we disposed to be of 
 the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, 
 hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal 
 salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it ma}' cost, 
 I am willing to know the whole truth ; to know the worst, and 
 to provide for it. 
 
 " I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that 
 is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the 
 future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to 
 know what there has been in the conduct of the British min- 
 istr}-, for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which 
 gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the 
 House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has 
 been lately received ? Trust it not. Sir ; it will prove a snare 
 to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed by a kiss^ 
 Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition 
 comports with those warlike preparations, which cover our 
 waters and darken our land. xA.re fleets and armies necessary 
 to a work of love and reconciliation ? Have we shown our- 
 selves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called 
 
in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, Sir. 
 These are the implements of war and subjugation ; the last 
 arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, Sir, what 
 means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to 
 submission ? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive 
 for it ? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the 
 world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies ? 
 No, Sir, she has none. They are meant for us ; they can be 
 meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon 
 us those chains, which the British ministry have been so long 
 forging. And what have we to oppose to them ? Shall w^e try 
 argument .'* Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. 
 Have we anything new to offer upon the subject ? Nothing. 
 We have held the subject up in every light of which it is 
 capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to 
 entreaty and humble supplication ? What terms shall we find, 
 which have not been alreaciy exhausted ? Let us not, I beseech 
 you. Sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done every- 
 thing that could be done, to avert the storm which is now 
 coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we 
 have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the 
 throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyran- 
 nical hands of the Ministry and Parliament. Our petitions 
 have been slighted ; our remonstrances have produced addi- 
 tional violence and insult ; our supplications have been 
 disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from 
 the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we 
 indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. TAere /s no 
 longer any roojnfor hope. If we wish to be free ; if we mean to 
 preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we 
 have been so long contending ; if we mean not basely to 
 abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long 
 engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to 
 abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be 
 obtained; we must fight! I repeat it. Sir, we must fight! An 
 appeal to arms, and to the God of hosts, is all that is left us. 
 
"They tell us, Sir, that we are weak ; unable to cope with so 
 formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? 
 Will it be the next week or the next year? Will it be when we 
 are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed 
 in every house ? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and 
 inaction ? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance 
 by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive 
 phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand 
 and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of 
 those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. 
 Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, 
 and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible 
 by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, 
 Sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God, 
 who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise 
 up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, Sir, is not to 
 the strong alone ; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. 
 Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to 
 desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There 
 is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are 
 forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. 
 The war is inevitable ; and let it come ! I repeat it. Sir, let it 
 come ! 
 
 " It is vain. Sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may 
 cry, Peace, peace ; but there is no peace. I'he war is actually 
 begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring 
 to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are 
 alreadv in the field. Whv stand we here idle ? What is it that 
 gentlemen wish ? What would they have ? Is life so dear, or 
 peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and 
 slavery ? Forbid it, Almighty God ! I know not what course 
 others may take ; but, as for me, give me liberty, or give me 
 death!" 
 
Extract from his speccJi in the Virginia Assembly at the close of the 
 Revolution, aih'ocating- the eiicoitragement of immigr'atio)i and the 7velcome 
 of the British refugees. 
 
 "The personal feelings of a politician ought not to be permit- 
 ted to enter these walls. The question is a national one, and, in- 
 deciding it, if we act wisely, nothing will be regarded but the 
 interest of the nation. On the altar of my country's good 1 
 am willing to sacrifice all personal resentments, all private 
 wrongs ; and I flatter myself, that I am not the only man in the 
 House who is capable of making such a sacrifice. We have, 
 Sir, an extensive country, without population ; what can be a 
 more obvious policy than that this country ought to be peopled ? 
 People, Sir, form the strength, and constitute the wealth, of a 
 nation. I want to see our vast forests filled up by some process 
 a little more speedy than the ordinary course of nature. I wish 
 to see these states rapidly ascending to that rank which their 
 natural advantages authorize them to hold among the nations 
 of the earth. 
 
 " Cast your eyes. Sir, over this extensive country ; observe 
 the salubrity of your climate ; the variety and fertility of your 
 soil ; and see that soil intersected in every quarter by bold, 
 navigable streams, flowing to the east and to the west, as if the 
 finger of Heaven were marking out the course of your settle- 
 ments, inviting you to enterprise, and pointing the way to 
 wealth. Sir, you are destined, at some time or other, to become 
 a great agricultural and commercial people ; the only question 
 is, whether you choose to reach this point by slow gradations, 
 and at some distant period; lingering on through a long and 
 sickly minority ; subjected, meanwhile, to the machinations, 
 insults, and oppressions, of enemies, foreign and domestic, with- 
 out sufficient strength to resist and chastise them ; or whether 
 you choose rather to rush at once, as it were, to the full enjoy- 
 
nient of those high destinies, and be able to cope, single-handed, 
 with the proudest oppressor of the old world. If you prefer 
 the latter course, as I trust you do, encourage emigration ; 
 encourage the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants, of 
 the old world, to come and settle in this land of promise ; make 
 it the home of the skilful, the industrious, the fortunate, and 
 happy, as well as the asylum of the distressed ; fill up the 
 measure of your population as speedily as you can, by the 
 means which Heaven hath placed in your power; and I venture 
 to prophesy there are those now living, who will see this favored 
 land amongst the most powerful on earth ; able. Sir, to take 
 care of herself, without resorting to that policy which is always 
 so dangerous, though sometimes unavoidable, of calling in 
 foreign aid. Yes, Sir ; they will see her great in arts and in 
 arms ; her golden harvests waving over fields of immeasurable 
 extent ; her commerce penetrating the most distant seas, and 
 her cannon silencing the vain boasts of those who now proudly 
 affect to rule the waves. 
 
 "But, Sir, you must have men; you cannot get along without 
 them ; those heavy forests of valuable timber, under which your 
 lands are groaning, must be cleared away ; those vast riches 
 which cover the face of your soil, as well as those which lie hid 
 in its bosom, are to be developed and gathered only by the 
 skill and enterprise of men ; your timber, Sir, must be worked 
 up into ships, to transport the productions of the soil from 
 which it has been cleared ; then you must have commercial men 
 and commercial capital to take off your productions, and find 
 the best markets for them abroad. Your great want. Sir, is the 
 want of 7ne7i, and these you must have, and will have speedily, 
 if you are wise. 
 
 " Do you ask how you are to get them ? Open your doors. 
 Sir, and they will come in ; the population of the old w^orld is 
 full to overflowing ; that population is ground, too, by the 
 oppressions of the governments under which they live. Sir, they 
 are already standing on tiptoe upon their native shores, and look- 
 ing to your coasts with a wishful and longing eye ; they see here 
 
a land blessed mth natural and political advantages which are 
 not equalled by those of any other country upon earth ; a land 
 on which a gracious Providence hath emptied the horn of 
 abundance ;a^nd oyer which Peace hath now stretched forth 
 her white wings, and where" content and plenty lie down at 
 every door ! Sir, they see something still more attractive thtin 
 all this; they see a land in which Liberty hath taken up her 
 abode ; that Liberty, whom they had considered as a fabled 
 goddess, existing only in the fancies of poets ; they see her here 
 a real divinity, her altars rising on every hand throughout these 
 happy states, her glories chanted by three millions of tongues, 
 and the whole region smiling under her blessed influence. Sir, 
 let but this our celestial goddess. Liberty, stretch forth her fair 
 hand toward the people of the old world, tell them to come, 
 and bid them welcome, and you will see them pouring in from 
 the north, from the south, from the east, and from the west ; 
 your wildernesses will be cleared and settled, your deserts will 
 smile, your ranks will be filled, and you will soon be in a con- 
 dition to defy tlie powers of any adversary. 
 
 " But gentlemen object to any accession from Great Britain, 
 and particularly to the return of the British refugees. Sir, I 
 feel no objection to the return of those deluded people ; they 
 have, to be sure, mistaken their own interests most wofully, and 
 most wofully have they suffered the punishment due to their 
 offences. But the relations which we bear to them and to their 
 native country are now changed ; their king hath acknowledged 
 our independence ; the quarrel is over ; peace hath returned, 
 and found us a free people. Let us have the magnanimity, Sir, 
 to lay aside our antipathies and prejudices, and consider the 
 subject in a political light. Those are an enterprising, moneyed 
 people ; they will be serviceable in taking oft' the surplus prod- 
 uce of our lands, and supplying us with necessaries during the 
 infant state of our manufactures. Even if they be inimical to 
 us in point of feeling and principle, I can see no objection, in 
 a political view, to making them tributary to our advantage. 
 And as I have no prejudices to prevent my making this use of 
 
"1 
 
 them, so, Sir, I have no fear of any mischief that they can do 
 us. Afraid of theiu ! What, Sir, shall we^ who have laid the 
 proud British lio7i at our feet, now be afraid of his whelps / " 
 
 The principal Life of Samuel Adams is that by \Yilliam V. Wells, in 
 three large volumes. Most of the young people will prefer to read the 
 briefer biography, in one volume, by James K. Hosmer. The principal Life 
 of Patrick Henry is the famous work by William Wirt. There is an excel- 
 lent brief biography of Henry, condensed from Wirt, by Alexander H. 
 Everett, in the eleventh volume of Sparks's Library of American Biography. 
 
 THOMAS TODD, PRINTER, 1 SOMERSET ST., BOSTON. 
 
FOURTH SERIES, iS86. No. 
 
 Lord Chatham's Speech 
 
 ifi the House of Lords, January 20, 177^^ urging the renioz<al of the troops 
 
 from Boston. 
 
 The measures of last year, my lords, which have produced the 
 present alarming state of America, were founded upon misrep- 
 resentation ; they were violent, precipitate, and vindictive. The 
 nation was told that it was only a faction in Boston which 
 opposed all lawful government ; that an unwarrantable injury 
 had been done to private property, for which the justice of 
 parliament was called upon to order reparation ; that the least 
 appearance of firmness would awe the Americans into submis- 
 sion, and upon only passing the Rubicon we should be sine 
 dade victor. 
 
 That the people might choose their representatives under the 
 impression of those misrepresentations, the parliament was 
 precipitately dissolved. Thus the nation was to be rendered 
 instrumental in executing the vengeance of administration on 
 that injured, unhappy, traduced people. 
 
 But now, my lords, we find, that instead of suppressing the 
 opposition of the faction at Boston, these measures have spread 
 it over the whole continent. They have united that whole 
 people by the most indissoluble of all bands — intolerable 
 wrongs. The just retribution is an indiscriminate, unmerciful 
 proscription of the innocent with the guilty, unheard and 
 untried. The bloodless victory is an impotent general with his 
 dishonored army, trusting solely to the pickaxe and the spade 
 for security against the just indignation of an injured and 
 insulted people. 
 
 My lords, I am happy that a relaxation of my infirmities per- 
 
mits me to seize this earliest opportunity of offering m}^ poor 
 advice to save this unhappy country, at this moment tottering to 
 its ruin. 
 
 I wish, my lords, not to lose a day in this urgent, pressing 
 crisis. An hour now lost in allaying ferments in America, may 
 produce years of calamity. For my own part, I will not desert 
 for a moment, the conduct of this weighty business from the 
 first to the last. Unless nailed to my bed bv the extremity of 
 sickness, I will give it unremitted attention. I will knock at 
 the door of this sleeping and confounded ministry, and will 
 rouse them to a sense of their imminent danger. 
 
 When I state the importance of the colonies to this country, 
 and the magnitude of danger hanging over this country, from 
 the present plan of misadministration practiced against them, I 
 desire not to be understood to argue for a reciprocity of in- 
 dulgence between England and America. I contend not for 
 indulgence, but justice to America; and I shall ever contend 
 that the Americans justly owe obedience to us in a limited 
 degree — thev owe obedience to our ordinances of trade and 
 navigation \ but let the line be skillfully drawn between the 
 objects of those ordinances and their private internal property. 
 Let the sacredness of their property remain inviolate. Let it 
 be taxable onlv by their own consent, given in their provincial 
 assemblies, else it will cease to be property. As to the meta- 
 pliysical refinements, attempting to show that the Americans are 
 equally free from obedience and commercial restraints, as from 
 taxation for revenue, as being unrepresented here, I pronounce 
 them futile, frivolous, and groundless. 
 
 When I urge this measure of recalling the troops from 
 Boston, I urge it on this pressing principle, that it is necessarily 
 preparatory to the restoration of your peace, and the establish- 
 ment of your prosperity. It will then appear that you are 
 disposed to treat amicably and equitably; and to consider, 
 revise, and repeal, if it should be found necessary, as I affirm 
 it will, those violent acts and declarations which have dis- 
 seminated confusion throughout your empire. 
 
 Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and 
 
your vain declarations of the omnipotence of parliament, and 
 your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be 
 found equally impotent to convince or to enslave your fellow 
 subjects in America \vho feel that tyranny, whether ambitioned 
 by an individual part of the legislature, or the bodies w^ho 
 compose it, is equally intolerable to British subjects. 
 
 The means of enforcing this thraldom are found to be as 
 ridiculous and weak in practice as they are unjust in prin- 
 ciple. Indeed I cannot but feel the most anxious sensibilitv 
 for the situation of General Gage, and the troops under his 
 command ; thinking him, as I do, a man of humanity and 
 understanding, and entertaining as I ever will the highest 
 respect, the warmest love for the British troops. Their situa- 
 tion is truly unworthy, penned up — pining in inglorious inac- 
 tivity. They are an army of impotence. You may call them 
 an army of safety and of guard; but they are in truth an armv of 
 impotence and contempt : and, to make the folly equal to the 
 disgrace, they are an army of irritation and vexation. 
 
 But I find a report creeping abroad that ministers censure 
 General Gage's inactivity. Let them censure him — it becomes 
 them — it becomes their justice and their honor. I mean not 
 to censure his inactivity. It is a prudent and necessary inac- 
 tion ; but it is a miserable condition where disgrace is prudence, 
 and w^here it is necessary to be contemptible. This tameness, 
 however contemptible, cannot be censured, for the first drop of 
 blood shed in civil and unnatural war might be immedicabile 
 vulnus. 
 
 I therefore urge and conjure your lordships immediately to 
 adopt this conciliating measure. I will pledge myself for its 
 immediately producing conciliatory effects by its being thus 
 well-timed ; but if you delay till your vain hope shall be accom- 
 plished, of triumphantly dictating reconciliation, you delay 
 forever. But admitting that this hope, which in truth is des- 
 perate, should be accomplished, what do you gain by the 
 imposition of your victorious amity ? You will be untrusted and 
 unthanked. Adopt then the grace while you have the oppor- 
 tunity of reconcilement, or at least prepare the way. Allay the 
 
ferment prevailing in America by removing the obnoxious hos- 
 tile cause — obnoxious and unserviceable, for their merit can 
 be only inaction : " Non dimicare et vificere'''' — their victory can 
 never be by exertions. Their force would be most dispropor- 
 tionately exerted against a brave, generous, and united people, 
 with arms in their hands, and courage in their hearts: three 
 millions of people, the genuine descendants of a valiant and 
 pious ancestry, driven to those deserts by the narrow maxims of 
 a superstitious tyranny. And is the spirit of persecution never 
 to be appeased ? Are the brave sons of those brave forefathers 
 to inherit their sufferings, as they have inherited their virtues? 
 Are they to sustain the infliction of the most oppressive and 
 unexampled severity, beyond the accounts of history, or de- 
 scription of poetry: '"'' Rhadamanthiis habet durissima reg?ta, 
 castigatque auditque." So says the wisest poet, and perhaps 
 the wisest statesman ' and politician ; but our ministers say 
 the Americans jnust not be heard. They have been condemned 
 unheard. The indiscriminate hand of vengeance has lumped 
 together innocent and guilty; with all the formalities of hostility 
 has blocked up the town, and reduced to beggary and famine 
 thirty thousand inhabitants. 
 
 I remember some years ago, when the repeal of the Stamp 
 Act was in agitation, conversing in a friendly confidence with a 
 person of undoubted respect and authenticity on that subject ; 
 and he assured me with a certainty which his judgment and 
 opportunity gave him, that these were the prevalent and steady 
 principles of America — that you might destroy their towns, and 
 cut them off from the superfluities, perhaps the conveniences, of 
 life ; but that they were prepared to despise your power, and 
 would not lament their loss whilst they have — what, my lords? 
 — their woods and their liberty. The name of my authority, if I 
 am called upon, will authenticate the opinion irrefragably. 
 
 If illegal violences have been, as it is said, committed in 
 America, prepare the way, open the door of possibility for 
 acknowledgment and satisfaction; but proceed not to such 
 coercion, such proscription ; cease your indiscriminate inflic- 
 tions; amerce not thirty thousand ; oppress not three millions 
 
5 
 
 for the fault of forty or fifty individuals. Such severity of 
 injustice must forever render incurable the wounds you have 
 already given your colonies ; you irritate them to unappeasable 
 rancor. What though you march from town to town, and 
 from province to province ; though you should be able to 
 enforce a temporary and local submission, which I only suppose, 
 not admit, how shall you be able to secure the obedience of the 
 country you leave behind you in your progress, to grasp the 
 dominion of eighteen hundred miles of continent, populous in 
 numbers, possessing valor, liberty, and resistance.? 
 
 This resistance to your arbitrary system of taxation might 
 have been foreseen; it was obvious from the nature of things, 
 and of mankind, and above all from the Whiggish spirit flour- 
 ishing in that country. The spirit which now resists your 
 taxation in America is the same which formerly opposed 
 loans, benevolences, and ship-money in England ; the same spirit 
 which called all England on its legs, and by the bill of rights 
 vindicated the English constitution ; the same spirit which 
 established the great, fundamental, essential maxim of your 
 liberties, that no subject of Enghmd shall be taxed but by his own 
 consent. 
 
 This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in 
 America ; who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and 
 sordid affluence : and who will die in defence of their rights as 
 men, as freemen. What shall oppose this spirit, aided by the 
 congenial flame glowing in the breast of every Whig in England, 
 to the amount, I hope, of double the American numbers ? 
 Ireland they have to a man. In that country, joined as it is 
 with the cause of colonies, and placed at their head, the dis- 
 tinction I contend for is and must be observed. This country 
 superintends and controls their trade and navigation, but they 
 tax themselves. And this distinction between external and 
 internal control is sacred and insurmountable ; it is involved in 
 the abstract nature of things. Property is private, individual, 
 absolute. Trade is an extended and complicated considera- 
 tion ; it reaches as far as ships can sail, or winds can blow; it 
 is a great and various machine. To regulate the numberless 
 
movements of its several parts, and combine them into effect 
 for the good of the whole, requires the superintending wisdom 
 and energy of the supreme power in the empire. But this 
 supreme power has no effect towards internal taxation, for it 
 does not exist in that relation ; there is no such thino- no such 
 idea in this constitution, as a supreme power operating upon 
 property. Let this distinction then remain forever ascertained; 
 taxation is theirs, commercial regulation is ours. As an Ameri- 
 can I would recognize to England her supreme right of regu- 
 lating commerce and navigation ; as an Englishman by birth 
 and principle, I recognize to the Americans their supreme, 
 unalienable right in their property ; a right which they are 
 justified in the defence of to the last extremity. To maintain 
 this principle is the common cause of the Whigs on the other 
 side of the Atlantic, and on this. " 'Tis liberty to liberty 
 engaged," that, they will defend themselves, their families, and 
 their country. In this great cause they are immovably allied ; 
 it is the alliance of God and nature — immutable, eternal — 
 fixed as the firmament of heaven. 
 
 To such united force what force shall be opposed? — What, 
 my lords? — A few regiments in America, and seventeen or 
 eighteen thousand men at home ! The idea is too ridiculous 
 to take up a moment of your lordships' time. Nor can such a 
 national and principled union be resisted by the tricks of office 
 or ministerial manoeuvre. Laying of jDapers on your table, or 
 counting numbers on a division, will not avert or postpone the 
 hour of danger. It must arrive, my lords, unless these fatal 
 acts are done away ; it must arrive in all its horrors, and then 
 these boastful ministers, spite of all their confidence, and all 
 their manoeuvres, shall be forced to hide their heads. They 
 shall be forced to a disgraceful abandonment of their present 
 measures and principles, which they avow but cannot defend ; 
 measures which they presume to attempt, but cannot hope to 
 effectuate. They cannot, my lords, they cannot stir a step; 
 they have not a move left ; they are checkmated. 
 
 But it is not repealing this act of parliament, it is not repeal- 
 ing a piece of parchment, that can restore America to our 
 
bosom. You must repeal her fears and her resentments, and 
 you may then hope for her love and gratitude. But now, in- 
 sulted with an armed force posted at Boston, irritated with a 
 hostile array before her eyes, her concessions, if you could force 
 them, would be suspicious and insecure; they will be i?'ato 
 atiimo ; they will not be the sound, honorable passions of free- 
 men, they will be the dictates of fear, and extortions of force. 
 But it is more than evident that you cannot force them, united 
 as they are, to your unworthy terms of submission — it is 
 impossible. And when I hear General Gage censured for 
 inactivity, I must retort with indignation on those whose intem- 
 perate measures and improvident councils have betrayed him 
 into his present situation. His situation reminds me, my lords, 
 of the answer of a French general in the civil wars of France — 
 Monsieur Conde opposed to Monsieur Turenne. He was asked 
 how it happened that he did not take his adversary prisoner, as 
 he was often very near him: "J'ai peur, replied Cojide^ very 
 honestly, "J'ai peur qu'il ne me prenne ; " — Fm afraid he'll 
 take 77ie. 
 
 When your lordships look at the papers transmitted us from 
 America, when you consider their decency, firmness, and wis- 
 dom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it 
 your own. For myself, I must declare and avow, that in all my 
 reading and observation — and it has been my favorite study — 
 I have read Thucydides and have studied and admired the 
 master states of the world — that for solidity of reasoning, 
 force of sagacity, and . wisdom of conclusion, under such a 
 complication of difficult circumstances, no nation or bod}- of 
 men can stand in preference to the general congress at Phila- 
 delphia. I trust it is obvious to your lordships that all attempts 
 to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over 
 such a mighty, continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. 
 We shall be forced ultimately to retract ; let us retract while we 
 can, not when we must. I say we must necessarily undo these 
 violent, oppressive acts; they must be repealed — you will 
 repeal them ; I pledge myself for it that you will in the end 
 repeal them ; I stake my reputation on it — I will consent to be 
 
8 
 
 taken for an idiot, if they are not finally repealed. Avoid, then, 
 this humiliating, disgraceful necessity. With a dignity becom- 
 ing your exalted situation, make the first advances to concord, 
 to peace, and happiness ; for that is your true dignity, to act 
 with prudence and justice. That you should first concede is 
 obvious from sound and rational policy. Concession comes 
 with better grace and more salutary effect from superior power. 
 It reconciles superiority of power with the feelings of men, and 
 establishes solid confidence on the foundations of affection and 
 gratitude. 
 
 So thought a wise poet and a wise man in political sagacity; 
 the friend of Mec^enas, and the eulogist of Augustus. To him, 
 the adopted son and successor of the first Caesar, to him, the 
 master of the world, he wisely urged this conduct of prudence 
 and dignity ; " Tuque prior^ tu parce : projice tela 7nanuy 
 
 Every motive, therefore, of justice and of policy, of dignity 
 and of prudence, urges you to allay the ferment in America, by 
 a removal of your troops from Boston, by a repeal of your acts 
 of parliament, and by demonstration of amicable dispositions 
 towards your colonies. On the other hand, every danger and 
 every hazard impend to deter you from perseverance in your 
 present ruinous measures. Foreign war hanging over your 
 heads by a slight and brittle thread. France and Spain 
 watching your conduct, and waiting for the maturity of your 
 errors ; with a vigilant eye to America, and the temper of your 
 colonies, more than to their own concerns, be they what they 
 may. 
 
 To conclude, my lords, if the ministers thus persevere in 
 misadvising and misleading the king, I will not say that they 
 can alienate the affections of his subjects from his crown ; but I 
 will affirm that they will make the crown not worth his wearing. 
 I will not say that the king is betrayed ; but I will pronounce 
 that the kingdom is undone. 
 
 Bancroft's History of the United States is very full in its treatment of 
 English opinion upon the Revolution. The student should read Burke's and 
 Chatham's speeches, and in connection with the latter Lord Macaulay's two 
 essays on Chatham. Thackeray's sketch of George the Third, in his " Four 
 Georges," is very interesting. Read John M. Ludlow's little " War of Amer- 
 ican Independence," especially its closing chapter on the true character of the 
 war, the chapters on the Revolution in Lecky's History of England in the 
 Eighteenth Century, and the chapter on " The Independence of America," in 
 Green's History of the English People, to see how fairly Englishmen now 
 discuss the matter ; and read Gladstone's essay, *' Kin beyond Sea," as an 
 epilogue. 
 
FOURTH SERIES, iSS6. No. 3. 
 
 <!?Iti J>outl) Uraflctsf. 
 
 John Adams and the Declaration of 
 Independence. 
 
 From Webster'^s Oration on Adams and yefferson. 
 
 The Congress of the Revolution, fellow-citizens, sat with 
 closed doors, and no report of its debates was ever taken. The 
 discussion, therefore, which accompanied this great measure, 
 has never been preserved, except in memory, and by tradition. 
 But it is, I believe, doing no injustice to others, to say, that the 
 general opinion was, and uniformly has been, that in debate, on 
 the side of independence, John Adams had no equal. The 
 great author of the declaration himself has expressed that 
 opinion uniformly and strongly. "John Adams," said he, in 
 the hearing of him who has now the honor to address you, 
 "John Adams was our Colossus on the floor. Not graceful, 
 not elegant, not always fluent, in his public addresses, he yet 
 came out with a power, both of thought and of expression, 
 which moved us from our seats." 
 
 For the part which he was here to perform, Mr. Adams doubt- 
 less was eminently fitted. He possessed a bold spirit, which 
 disregarded danger, and a sanguine reliance on the goodness of 
 the cause, and the virtues of the people, which led him to ov^er- 
 look all obstacles. His character, too, had been form^ed in 
 troubled times. He had been rocked in the early storms of the 
 controversy, and had acquired a decision and a hardihood, pro- 
 
portioned to the severity of the discipline which he had under- 
 gone. 
 
 He not only loved the American cause devoutly, but had 
 studied and understood it. It was all familiar to him. He had 
 tried his powers, on the questions which it involved, often and 
 in various ways; and had brought to their consideration what- 
 ever of argument or illustration the history of his own country, 
 the history of England, or the stores of ancient or of legal learn- 
 ing could furnish. Every grievance enumerated in the long 
 catalogue of the declaration, had been the subject of his discus- 
 sion, and the object of his remonstrance and reprobation. 
 From 1760, the colonies, the rights of the colonies, the liberties 
 of the colonies, and the wrongs inflicted on the colonies, had 
 eno-a^ed his constant attention : and it has surprised those, who 
 have had the opportunity of observing, with what full remem- 
 brance, and with what prompt recollection, he could refer, in his 
 extreme old age, to every act of Parliament affecting the col- 
 onies, distinguishing and stating their respective titles, sections, 
 and provisions; and to all the colonial memorials, remonstrances, 
 and petitions, with whatever else belonged to the intimate and 
 exact history of the times from that year to 1775. It was in his 
 own judgment, between these years, that the American people 
 came to a full understanding and thorough knowledge of their 
 rights, and to a fixed resolution of maintaining them ; and bear- 
 ing himself an active part in all important transactions, the con- 
 troversy with England being then, in effect, the business of his 
 life, facts, dates, and particulars made an impression which was 
 never effaced. He was prepared, therefore, by education and 
 discipline, as well as by natural talent and natural temperament, 
 for the part which he was now to act. 
 
 In July, 1776, the controversy had passed the stage of argu- 
 ment. An appeal had been made to force, and opposing armies 
 were in the field. Congress, then, was to decide whether the 
 tie which had so long bound us to the parent State, was to be 
 severed at once, and severed forever. All the colonies had sig- 
 nified their resolution to abide by this decision, and the people 
 
looked for it with the most intense anxiety. And surely, fellow- 
 citizens, never, never were men called to a more imjDortant 
 political deliberation. If we contemplate it from the point 
 where they then stood, no question could be more full of inter- 
 est ; if we look at it now, and judge of its importance by its 
 effects, it appears in still greater magnitude. 
 
 Let us, then, bring before us the assembly, which was about 
 to decide a question thus big with the fate of empire. Let us 
 open their doors, and look in upon their deliberations. Let us 
 survey the anxious and care-worn countenances, let us hear the 
 firm-toned voices, of this band of patriots. 
 
 Hancock presides over the solemn sitting; and one of those 
 not yet prepared to pronounce for absolute independence, is on 
 the floor, and is urging his reasons for dissenting from the decla- 
 ration : 
 
 Let us pause ! This step, once taken, cannot be retraced. 
 This resolution, once passed, will cut off all hope of reconcilia- 
 tion. If success attend the arms of England, we shall then be 
 no longer colonies, with charters, and with privileges ; these will 
 all be forfeited by this act ; and we shall be in the condition of 
 other conquered people, at the mercy of the conquerors. For 
 ourselves, we may be ready to run the hazard ; but are we ready 
 to carry the country to that length ? Is success so probable as 
 to justify it? Where is the military, where the naval power, by 
 which we are to resist the whole strength of the arm of England, 
 for she will exert that strensfth to the utmost ? Can we relv on 
 the constancy and perseverance of the people ? or will they not 
 act, as the people of other countries have acted, and wearied 
 with a long war, submit, in the end, to a worse oppression ? 
 While we stand on our old ground, and insist on redress of 
 grievances, we know we are right, and are not answerable for 
 consequences. Nothing, then, can be imputable to us. But if 
 we now change our object, carry our pretensions further, and set 
 up for absolute independence, we shall lose the sympathy of man- 
 kind. We shall no longer be defending what we possess, but 
 struggling for something which we never did possess, and which 
 we have solemnly and uniformly disclaimed all intention of pur- 
 suing, from the very outset of the troubles. Abandoning thus 
 our old ground, of resistance only to arbitrary acts of oppres- 
 
sion, the nations will believe the whole to have been mere pre- 
 tence, and they will look on us, not as injured, but as ambitious, 
 subjects. I shudder, before this responsibility. It will be on 
 us, if, relinquishing the ground we have stood on so long, and 
 stood on so safelv, we now proclaim independence, and carry on 
 the war for^lii^t'obj'bct, whil-^JtlVese cities burn, these pleasant 
 fields whiten and bleach with the bones of their owners, and 
 these streams run blood. It will be upon us, it will be upon us, 
 if, failing to maintain this unseasonable and ill-judged declara- 
 tion, a sterner despotism, maintained by military power, shall be 
 established over our posterity, when we ourselves, given up by 
 an exhausted, a harrassed, a misled people, shall have expiated 
 our rashness and atoned for our presumption on the scaffold. 
 
 It was for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. We 
 know his opinions, and we know his character. He would com- 
 mence with his accustomed directness and earnestness : 
 
 Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand, 
 and my heart, to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the begin- 
 ning we aimed not at independence. But there's a Divinity 
 which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us 
 to arms ; and, blinded to her own interest for our good, she has 
 obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp. 
 We have but to reach forth to it and it is ours. Why then 
 should we defer the declaration ? Is any man so weak as now 
 to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave 
 either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own 
 life, and his own honor ? Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair, 
 is not he, our venerable colleague near you, are you not both 
 already the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment 
 and of vengeance ? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, 
 what are you, what can you be, while the power of England re- 
 mains, but outlaws ? If we postpone independence, do we mean 
 to carry on or to give up the war "i Do we mean to submit to 
 the measures of parliament, Boston port-bill and all? Do we, 
 mean to submit, and consent that we ourselves shall be ground 
 to powder, and our country and its rights trodden down in the 
 dust ? I know we do not mean to submit. We never shall sub- 
 mit. Do we intend to violate that most solemn obligation ever 
 entered into by men, that plighting, before God, of our sacred 
 honor to Washington, when, putting him forth to incur the dan- 
 gers of war, as well as the political hazards of the times, we 
 
5 
 
 promised to adhere to him, in every extremity, with our fortunes 
 and our lives? I know there is not a man here, who would not 
 rather see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an 
 earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that plighted faith 
 fall to the ground. For myself, having twelve months ago, in 
 this place, moved you that George Washington be appointed 
 commander of the forces, raised or to be raised, for defence of 
 American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and 
 my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or waver 
 in the support I give him. The war, then, must go on. We 
 must fight it through. And if the war must go on, why put off 
 longer the Declaration of Independence .'' That measure will 
 strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. The nations will 
 then treat with us, which they never can do while we acknowledge 
 ourselves subjects in arms against our sovereign. Nay I main- 
 tain that England herself will sooner treat for peace with us on 
 the footing of independence than consent, by repealing her acts, 
 to acknowledge that her whole conduct towards us has been a 
 course of injustice and oppression. Her pride will be less 
 w'ounded, by submitting to that course of things which now pre- 
 destinates our independence, than by yielding the points in 
 controversy to her rebellious subjects. The former she would 
 regard as the result of fortune ; the latter she would feel as her 
 own deep disgrace. Why then, why then, sir, do we not as soon 
 as possible change this from a civil to a national war.'* And 
 since we must fight it through, why not put ourselves in a state 
 to enjoy all the benefits of victory, if we gain the victory? 
 
 If we fail it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail. 
 The cause will raise up armies ; the cause will create navies. 
 The people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and 
 will carry themselves, gloriously through this struggle. I care 
 not how fickle other people have been found. I know^ the peo- 
 ple of these colonies, and I know that resistance to British aggres- 
 sion is deep and settled in their hearts and cannot be eradicated. 
 Every colony, indeed, has expressed its willingness to follow if 
 we but take the lead. Sir, the declaration will inspire the peo- 
 ple with increased courage. Instead of a long and bloody war 
 for restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances, for char- 
 tered immunities, held under a British king, set before them the 
 glorious object of entire independence, and it will breathe into 
 them anew the breath of life. Read this declaration at the head 
 of the army ; every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and 
 the solemn vow uttered, to maintain it or to perish on the bed of 
 
honor. Publish it from the pulpit; religion will approve it, and 
 the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand 
 with it or fall with it. Send it to the public halls ; proclaim it 
 there ; let them hear it who heard the first roar of the enemv's 
 cannon ; let them see it who saw their brothers and their sons 
 fall on the field of Bunker Hill and in the streets of Lexington 
 and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support. 
 
 Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, I see 
 clearly, through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may 
 rue it. We may not live to the time when this declaration shall 
 be made good. We may die ; die colonists ; die slaves ; die, it 
 may be, ignominiously and on the scafi^old. Be it so. Be it so. 
 If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require 
 the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the 
 appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But 
 while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a 
 country, and that a free country. 
 
 But whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured, that 
 this declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may 
 cost blood ; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for 
 both. Through the thick gloom of the present I see the bright- 
 ness of the future, as the sun in Heaven. We shall make this a 
 glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our 
 children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, 
 with festivity, with bonfires, and illuminations. On its annual 
 return they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of subjec- 
 tion and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of 
 gratitude, and of joy. Sir, iDefore God, I believe the hour is 
 come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole 
 heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I 
 hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it ; and I 
 leave off as I begun, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for 
 the declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of 
 God it shall be my dying sentiment ; independence 7iow ; and 
 independence ybr^fz'd'r. 
 
 And so that day shall be honored, illustrious prophet and 
 patriot ! so that day shall be honored, and as often as it returns, 
 thy renown shall come along with it, and the glory of thy life, 
 like the day of thy death, shall not fail from the remembrance of 
 men. 
 
 It would be unjust, fellow-citizens, on this occasion, while we 
 
express our veneration for him who is the immediate subject of 
 these remarks, were we to omit a most respectful, affectionate, 
 and grateful mention of those other great men, his colleagues, 
 who stood with him, and with the same spirit, the same devotion, 
 took part in the interesting transaction. Hancock, the pro- 
 scribed Hancock, exiled from his home by a military governor, 
 cut off by proclamation from the mercy of the crown, heaven 
 reserved for him the distinguished honor of putting this great 
 question to the vote, and of writing his own name first, and most 
 conspicuously, on that parchment which spoke defiance to the 
 power of the crown of England. There, too, is the name of 
 that other proscribed patriot, Samuel Adams ; a man who hung- 
 ered and thirsted for the independence of his country; who 
 thought the declaration halted and lingered, being himself not 
 only ready, but eager, for it long before it was proposed ; a man 
 of the deepest sagacity, the clearest foresight, and the profound- 
 est judgment in men. And there is Gerry, himself among the 
 earliest and the foremost of the patriots, found, when the battle 
 of Lexington summoned them to common councils, by the side 
 of Warren ; a man who lived to serve his country at home and 
 abroad, and to die in the second place in the government. 
 There, too, is the inflexible, the upright, the Spartan character, 
 Robert Treat Paine. He, also, lived to serve his country 
 through the struggle, and then withdrew from her councils, only 
 that he might give his labors and his life to his native State in 
 another relation. These names, fellow-citizens, are the treasures 
 of the commonwealth ; and they are treasures which grow 
 brighter by time. 
 
 The last chapter of Bancroft's fourth volume contains a very interesting account of the 
 Declaration of Independence and the leading men in the Congress. There is a volume of 
 biographical sketches of all the Signers of the Declaration, by Benson J. Lossing. There 
 are good separate biographies of John Hancock, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Elbridge 
 Gerry, and Ivobert Treat Paine, the Massachusetts delegates, and of many of the other 
 famous delegates. Tiie Life of Thomas Jefferson, the autlior of the Declaration, and tlie 
 Life of John Adams, its great supporter on the tloor of Congress, both by Jolin T. Morse, 
 Jr., in the "American Statesmen Series," are especially to be commended. Barton's Life 
 of Jefferson is also a very interesting book. 1 here are many interesting magazine articles on 
 tlie history of Philadelphia in the Revolution, of which the young people can learn by con- 
 sulting Poole's Index — under " Philadelphia." 
 
FOURTH SERIES, 1886. ' No. 4- 
 
 The Crisis, no. 
 
 BY THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier 
 and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the ser- 
 vice of his country ; but he that stands it now, deserves the love 
 and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily 
 conquered ; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder 
 the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too 
 cheap, we esteem too lightly ; 'tis dearness only that gives every- 
 thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon 
 its goods ; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an arti- 
 cle as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an 
 army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right 
 {not only to tax), but to " bind us ift all cases whatsoever," 
 and if being bound in that manner^ is not slavery, then is there 
 not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is 
 impious, for so unlimited a power can belong only to God. 
 
 Whether the independence of the continent was declared too 
 soon, or delayed too long, I will not now enter into as an argu- 
 ment ; my own simple opinion is, that had it been eight months 
 earlier, it would have been much better. We did not make a 
 proper use of last winter, neither could we, while we were in a 
 dependent state. However, the fault, if it were one, was all our 
 own ; we have none to blame but ourselves. But no great deal 
 is lost yet ; all that Howe has been doing for this month past, is 
 rather a ravage than a conquest, which the spirit of the Jerseys 
 a year ago would have quickly repulsed, and which time and a 
 little resolution will soon recover. 
 
 I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my 
 secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty 
 will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them 
 unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly 
 sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method 
 
which wisdom could invent. Neither have I so much of the infi- 
 del in me as to suppose that He has relinquished the govern- 
 ment of the world, and given us up to the care of devils ; and 
 as I do not, I cannot see on what grounds the king of Britain 
 can look ujD to heaven for help against us : a common murderer, 
 a highwayman, or a house-breaker, has as good a pretence as he. 
 
 'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run 
 through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to 
 them : Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a 
 French fleet of flat-bottomed boats ; and in the fourteenth cent- 
 ury the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of 
 France, was driven back like men petrified with fear ; and this 
 brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected 
 and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven 
 might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and 
 save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment ! Yet 
 panics, in some cases, have their uses ; they produce as much 
 good as hurt. Their duration is always short ; the mind soon 
 grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. 
 But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of 
 sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, 
 which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, 
 they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary 
 apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out 
 the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the 
 world. Many a disguised tory has lately shown his head, that 
 shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which Howe 
 arrived upon the Delaware. 
 
 As I was with the troops at Fort Lee, and marched with them 
 to the edge of Pennsylvania, I am well acquainted with many 
 circumstances, which those who live at a distance know but little 
 or nothing of. Our situation there was exceedingly cramped, 
 the place being a narrow neck of land between the North River 
 and the Hackensack. Our force was inconsiderable, being not 
 one fourth so great as Howe could bring against us. We had 
 no army at hand to have relieved the garrison, had we shut our- 
 selves up and stood on our defence. Our ammunition, light 
 artillery, and the best part of our stores, had been removed, on 
 the apprehension that Howe would endeavor to penetrate the 
 Jerseys, in which case Fort Lee could be of no use to us ; for it 
 "must occur to every thinking man, whether in the army or not, 
 that these kind of field forts are only for temporary purposes, 
 and last in use no longer than the enemy directs his force 
 against the particular object, which such forts are raised to de- 
 fend. Such was our situation and condition at Fort Lee on the 
 
morning of the 20th of November, when an officer arrived with 
 information that the enemy with two hundred boats had landed 
 about seven miles above : Major General Green, who com- 
 manded the garrison, immediately ordered them under arms, and 
 sent express to General Washington at the town of Hackensack, 
 distant, by way of the ferry, six miles. Our first object was to 
 secure the bridge over the Hackensack, which laid up the river 
 between the enemy and us, about six miles from us, and three 
 from them. General Washington arrived in about three quarters 
 of an hour, and marched at the head of the troops towards the 
 bridge, which place I expected we should have a brush for ; 
 however, they did not choose to dispute it with us, and the great- 
 est part of our troops went over the bridge, the rest over the 
 ferry, except some which passed at a mill on a small creek, be- 
 tween the bridge and the ferry, and made their way through 
 some marshy grounds up to the town of Hackensack, and there 
 passed the river. We brought off as much baggage as the 
 wagons could contain, the rest was lost. The simple object was 
 to bring off the garrison, and march them on till they could be 
 strengthened by the Jersey or Pennsylvania militia, so as to be 
 enabled to make a stand. We stayed four days at Newark, col- 
 lected our out-posts with some of the Jersey militia, and marched 
 out twice to meet the enemy, on being informed that they were 
 advancing, though our numbers were greatly inferior to theirs. 
 Howe, in my little opinion, committed a great error in general- 
 ship in not throwing a body of forces off from Staten Island 
 through Amboy, by which means he might have seized all our 
 stores at Brunswick, and intercepted our march into Pennsylva- 
 nia : but if we believe the power of hell to be limited, we must like- 
 wise believe that their agents are under some providential control. 
 I shall not now attempt to give all the particulars of our re- 
 treat to the Delaware ; suffice it for the present to say, that both 
 officers and men, though greatly harassed and fatigued, fre- 
 quently without rest, covering or provision, the inevitable conse- 
 quences of a long retreat, bore it with a manly and martial spirit. 
 All their wishes centered in one, which was, that the country 
 would turn out and help them to drive the enemy back. Vol- 
 taire has remarked that King William never appeared to full ad- 
 vantage but in difficulties and in action ; the same remark may 
 be made on General Washington, for the character fits him. 
 There is a natural firmness in some minds which cannot be un- 
 locked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet 
 of fortitude ; and I reckon it among those kind of public bless- 
 ings, which we do not immediately see, that God hath blessed 
 
him with uninterrupted health, and given him a mind that can 
 even flourish upon care. 
 
 I shall conclude this paper with some miscellaneous remarks 
 on the state of our affairs ; and shall begin with asking the fol- 
 lowing question. Why is it that the enemy have left the New 
 England provinces, and made these middle ones the seat of war ? 
 The answer is easy: New England is not infested with tories, 
 and we are. I have been tender in raising the cry against these 
 men, and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, 
 but it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly or their 
 baseness. The period is now arrived, in which either they or 
 we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall. And 
 what is a tory ? Good God! what is he? I should not be 
 afraid to go with a hundred whigs against a thousand tories, 
 were they to attempt to get into arms. Every tory is a coward ; 
 for a servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of 
 toryism ; and a man under such influence, though he may be 
 cruel, never can be brave. 
 
 But, before the line of irrecoverable separation be drawn be- 
 tween us, let us reason the matter together : your conduct is an 
 invitation to the enemy, yet not one in a thousand of you has 
 heart enough to join him. Howe is as much deceived by you as 
 the American cause is injured by you. He expects you will all 
 take up arms, and flock to his standard, with muskets on your 
 shoulders. Your opinions are of no use to him, unless you sup- 
 port him personally, for 'tis soldiers, and not tories, that he 
 wants. 
 
 I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel, 
 against the mean principles that are held by the tories : a noted 
 one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with 
 as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I 
 ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought 
 was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, " Well / 
 give vie peace in my day.'' Not a man lives on the continent but 
 fully believes that a separation must some time or other finally 
 take place, and a generous parent should have said, " If there 
 must be trouble, let it be i?i my day, that my child may have peace ; " 
 and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken 
 every man to duty. Not a place upon earth might be so happy 
 as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling 
 world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them. A 
 man can distinguish in himself between temper and principle, 
 and I am as confident, as I am that God governs the world, that 
 America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign domin- 
 ion. Wars, without ceasing, will break out till that period ar- 
 
5 
 
 rives, and the continent must in the end be conqueror ; for 
 though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the 
 coal can never expire. 
 
 America did not, nor does not want force ; but she wanted a 
 proper application of that force. Wisdom is not the purchase of 
 a day, and it is no wonder that we should err at the first setting 
 ofif: From an excess of tenderness, we were unwilling to raise 
 an army, and trusted our cause to the temporary defence of a 
 well-meaning militia. A summer's experience has now taught us 
 better ; yet with those troops, while they were collected, we were 
 able to set bounds to the progress of the enemy, and, thank 
 God ! they are again assembling. I always considered militia 
 as the best troops in the world for a sudden exertion, but they 
 will not do for a long campaign. Howe, it is probable, will 
 make an attempt on this city ; should he fail on this side of the 
 Delaware, he is ruined : if he succeeds, our cause is not ruined. 
 He stakes all on his side against a part on ours; admitting he 
 succeeds, the consequence will be, that armies from both ends of 
 the continent will march to assist their suffering friends in the 
 Middle States ; for he cannot go everywhere, it is impossible. I 
 consider Howe as the greatest enemy the tories have ; he is 
 bringing a war into their country, which, had it not been for him 
 and partly for themselves, they had been clear of. Should he 
 now be expelled, I wish with all the devotion of a Christian, 
 that the names of whig and tory may never more be mentioned ; 
 but should the tories give him encouragement to come, or assist- 
 ance if he come, I as sincerely wish that our next year's arms 
 may expel them from the continent, and the Congress appropri- 
 ate their possessions to the relief of those who have suffered in 
 well-doing. A single successful battle next year will settle the 
 whole. America could carry on a two 3'^ear's war by the confis- 
 cation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy 
 by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather 
 the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object 
 in view but the good of all, have staked their oimi all upon a 
 seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against deter- 
 mined hardness ; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language 
 of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can 
 reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice. 
 
 Quitting this class of men, I turn with the warm ardor of a 
 friend to those who have nobly stood, and are yet determined to 
 stand the matter out: I call not upon a few, but upon all : not 
 on this state or that state, but on every state ; up and help us ; 
 lay your shoulders to the wheel ; better have too much force 
 than too little, when so great an object is at stake. Let it be 
 
told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when noth- 
 ing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the 
 country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and 
 to repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your 
 tens of thousands ; throw not the burden of the day upon 
 Providence, but ''^ show your faith by your woi-ks,'"' that God may 
 bless you. It matters not where you live, or what rank of life 
 you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. The far 
 and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the 
 poor, will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now, 
 is dead : the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who 
 shrinks back at a time when a little mio^ht have saved the whole, 
 and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, 
 that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflec- 
 tion. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink ; but he whose 
 heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will 
 pursue his principles unto death. My own line of reasoning is 
 to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the 
 treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced 
 me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder ; but if a 
 thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and 
 kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to '"'' bind 
 77ie in all cases whatsoever,''^ to his absolute will, am I to suffer it.'* 
 What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a 
 common man ; my countryman or not my countryman ; whether 
 it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them ? If we 
 reason to the root of things we shall find no difference ; neither 
 can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one 
 case and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel, and wel- 
 come, I feel no concern from it ; but I should suffer the misery 
 of devils, were I to prostitute my soul by swearing alle- 
 giance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stub- 
 born, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea 
 in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be 
 shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing 
 with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the slain of 
 America. 
 
 There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and 
 this is one. There are persons too who see not the full extent 
 of the evil which threatens them, they solace themselves with 
 hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the 
 madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused 
 to do justice ; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is 
 only a trick of war ; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as 
 the violence of the wolf ; and we ought to guard equally against 
 
both. Howe's first object is partly by threats and partly by 
 promises, to terrify or seduce the people to deliver up their arms 
 and receive mercy. The ministry recommended the same plan 
 to Gage, and this is what the tories call making their peace, 
 '''' a peace which passeth all undei'standing''^ mdeed ! A peace 
 which would be the immediate forerunner of a worse ruin than 
 any we have yet thought of. Ye men of Pennsylvania, do reason 
 upon these things ! Were the back counties to give up their 
 arms, they would fall an easy prey to the Indians, who are all 
 armed : this perhaps, is what some tories would not be sorry for. 
 Were the home counties to deliver up their arms, they would be 
 exposed to the resentment of the back counties, who would then 
 have it in their power to chastise their defection at pleasure. 
 And were any one state to give up its arms, that state must be 
 garrisoned by all Howe's army of Britons and Hessians to pre- 
 serve it from the anger of the rest. Mutual fear is the principal 
 link in the chain of mutual love, and woe be to that st«.te that 
 breaks the compact. Howe is mercifully inviting you to barbar- 
 ous destruction, and men must be either rogues or fools that will 
 not see it. I dwell not upon the powers of imagination ; I bring 
 reason to your ears ; and in language as' plain as A, B, C, hold 
 up truth to your eyes. 
 
 I thank God that I fear not. I see no real cause for fear. I 
 know our situation well, and can see the way out of it. While 
 our army was collected, Howe dared not risk a battle, and it is 
 no credit to him that he decamped from the White Plains, and 
 waited a mean opportunity to ravage the defenceless Jerseys ; 
 but it is great credit to us, that, with a handful of men, we sus- 
 tained an orderly retreat for near an hundred miles, brought off 
 our ammunition, all our field pieces, the greatest part of our 
 stores, and had four rivers to pass. None can say that our re- 
 treat was precipitate, for we were near three weeks in performing 
 it, that the country might have time to come in. Twice we 
 marched back to meet the enemy, and remained out till dark. 
 The sign of fear was not seen in our camp, and had not some of 
 the cowardly and disaffected inhabitants spread false alarms 
 through the country, the Jerseys had never been ravaged. Once 
 more we are again collected and collecting, our new army at 
 both ends of the continent is recruiting fast, and we shall be able 
 to open the next campaign with sixty thousand men well armed 
 and clothed. This is our situation, and who will may know it. 
 By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious 
 issue ; by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety 
 of evils — a ravaged country — a depopulated city — habitations 
 without safety, and slavery without hope — our homes turned 
 
8 
 
 into barracks and brothels for Hessians. Look on this picture 
 and weep over it ! and if there yet remains one thoughtless 
 wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented. 
 
 Vecembe?' 23^ 1776. 
 
 COMMON SENSE. 
 
 The darkest period of the Revolution — "the times that tried men's 
 souls," as Thomas Paine phrased it in his famous tract — extended from 
 the time of Washington's retreat from Long Island, immediately after the 
 Declaration of Independence, to the alliance with France and the arrival 
 of D'Estaing and the French fleet in the summer of 1778. This period, 
 lighted up by the success at Trenton and the capture of Burgoyne, covers the 
 retreat through the Jerseys and the dark days at Valley Forge. The student 
 can read about it in the fifth volume of* Bancroft's History, new edition, or in 
 Irving's Life of Washington. The chapter on the Finances of the Revolution, 
 in Greene's "Historical View of the American Revolution," tells about the 
 trying money problem and the poverty of the country. Read about Robert 
 Morris, "^the financier of the Revolution," in this connection. 
 
 Thomas Paine, the author of "The Crisis," the famous first number of 
 which is here printed, was an Englishman, born at Thetford in Norfolk in 
 1737. He became warmly interested in the cause of the American Colonies 
 against the King, and on the advice of Benjamin Franklin, whom he met 
 in London, came to America in 1774. One of the great American patriots 
 having once said, " Where liberty is, there is my country," Paine said, 
 " Where liberty is not, there is mine ; " and after our liberty was achieved, 
 he went to France to help in the French Revolution. "The cause of 
 America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind," he said in the 
 preface to his famous pamphlet called " Common Sense," which he wrote soon 
 after his arrival in Philadelphia, and published January i, 1776. This 
 pamphlet, which advocated an independent republic more outspokenly than 
 anything before published, made a profound impression. Its circulation 
 quickly ran to a hundred thousand, larger than that of any paper which had 
 appeared in America until that time; and Washington, Adams, Jefferson, 
 and Franklin felt that it did more than any other appeal to unite the 
 colonies for independence. The first number of "The Crisis " was written 
 in December, 1776, just before the battle of Trenton. A second number 
 appeared after the battle, and other numbers at irregular intervals, until the 
 eighteenth and last on the attainment of peace, April 19, 1783. At the time 
 when the first number was written, Paine was serving under Washington as 
 a common soldier. He wrote the pamphlet by the light of the camp-fires 
 during the retreat through the Jerseys. The last sentence was written on 
 the 23d of December, 1776, and Washington summoned together his dis- 
 mayed and shivering soldiers to hear it read. On the Christmas night 
 after it was read, Washington crossed the Delaware and won the victory 
 at Trenton, the first victory in those dark days. The soldiers rushed into 
 battle with the cry, "These are the times that try men's souls." 
 
FOURTH SERIES, 1886. No. 5. 
 
 Lafayette. 
 
 From the Eulogy by Edward Everett^ delivered in Faneuil Hall^ at the request 
 of the young men of Boston, September 6, 1834.. 
 
 There is, at every great era of the history of the world, a lead- 
 ing principle, which gives direction to the fortunes of nations, 
 and the characters of distinguished men. This principle, in our 
 own time, is that of the action and reaction upon each other, of 
 Europe and America, for the advancement of free institutions 
 and the promotion of rational liberty. Ever since the discovery 
 of America, this principle has been in operation, but naturally 
 and necessarily with vastly increased energy, since the growth 
 of an intelligent population this side of the water. For the 
 formation of a man of truly great character, it is necessary that 
 he should be endowed with qualities to win respect and love ; 
 that he should be placed in circumstances favorable to a power- 
 ful action on society ; and then, that with a pure affection, a 
 strong, disinterested, glowing zeal, a holy ambition of philan- 
 thropy, he should devote himself to the governing principle of 
 the age. Such a combination, humanly speaking, produces the 
 nearest approach to perfection which the sphere of man admits. 
 Of such characters the American Revolution was more than 
 commonly fertile, for it was the very crisis of that action and 
 reaction, which is the vocation of the age. Such a character 
 was Washington ; such was Lafayette. 
 
 You need not, fellow-citizens, that I should repeat to you the 
 incidents of Layafette's late extraordinary triumphal progress 
 through our country. They are fresh in your recollection; and 
 history may be searched in vain for a parallel event. His arrival 
 in the United States seemed like the re-appearance of a friendly 
 genius on the theater of his youthful and beneficent visitations. 
 He came back to us from long absence, from exile and from 
 dungeons, almost like a beloved parent rising from the dead. 
 
His arrival called out the whole population of the country to 
 welcome him, but not in the stiff uniform of a parade, or the 
 court dress of a heartless ceremony. Society, in all its shades 
 and gradations, crowded cordially around him, all penetrated 
 with one spirit — the spirit of admiration and love. The wealth 
 and luxury of the coast, the teeming abundance of the West ; the 
 elegance of the town, the cordiality of the country ; the authori- 
 ties, municipal, national, and state ; the living relics of the Rev- 
 olution, honored in the honors paid to their companion in arms ; 
 the scientific and learned bodies, the children at the schools, the 
 associations of active life and of charity ; the exiles of Spain, 
 France, and Switzerland ; banished kings ; patriots of whom 
 Europe was not worthy; and even the African and Indian — 
 everything in the country that had life and sense took a part in 
 this auspicious drama of real life. 
 
 When we consider that this glorious triumph was co-extensive 
 with the Union, that it swept majestically along, from city to 
 city and from State to State, one unbroken progress of raptur- 
 ous welcome, banishing feuds, appeasing dissensions, hushing all 
 tumults but the acclamations of joy, that it was continued near a 
 twelvemonth, an amius ffiirabilis of rejoicing, auspiciously com- 
 menced, successfully pursued, and happily and gracefully accom- 
 plished, we perceive in it a chapter in human affairs equally 
 singular, delightful, instructive, and without example. 
 
 But let no one think it was a light and unreflecting movement 
 of popular caprice. There was enough in the character and for- 
 tunes of the man to sustain and justify it. In addition to a rare 
 endowment of personal qualities, suiBcient for an ample assign- 
 ment of merit to a dozen great men of the common stamp, it 
 was necessary toward the production of such an effect on the 
 public mind, that numberless high and singular associations 
 should have linked his name with all the great public move- 
 ments of half a century. It was necessary that, in a venerable 
 age, he should have come out of a long succession of labors, 
 trials, and disasters, of which a much smaller portion is com- 
 monly sufficient to break down the health and spirits and send 
 the weary victim, discouraged and heart-sick, to an early retreat. 
 It was necessary that he should, in the outset, taking age and 
 circumstances and success into consideration, have done that 
 for this far distant land which was never done for any country 
 in the world. Having performed an arduous, a dangerous, an 
 honorable, and triumphant part in our Revolution, itself an 
 event of high and transcendent character, it was necessary that, 
 pursuing at home the path of immortal renown on which his 
 feet had laid hold in America, he should have engaged among 
 
the foremost in that stupendous Revolution, in his own country, 
 where he stood sad but unshaken, amidst the madness of an 
 empire, faithful to liberty when all else were faithless, true to 
 her holy cause when the crimes and horrors committed in her 
 name made the brave fear and the good loathe it, innocent and 
 pure in that " open hell, ringing with agony and blasphemy, 
 smoking with suffering and crime." It was necessary to the 
 feeling with which Lafayette was received in this country, that 
 the people should remember how he was received in Prussia 
 and Austria ; how, when barely escaping from the edge of 
 the Jacobin guillotine at Paris, he was generously bolted down 
 into the underground caverns of Magdeburg, and shut up to 
 languish for years with his wife and daughter, in a pestiferous 
 dungeon, by an emperor who had to thank him alone that his 
 father's sister had not been torn limb from limb by \\\^ poissards 
 of Paris. It was necessary to justify the enthusiasm with which 
 Lafayette was welcomed to republican America, that when 
 another catastrophe had placed the Man of Fate on the throne 
 of France, and almost of Europe, Lafayette alone, not in a con- 
 vulsive effort of fanatical hardihood, but in the calm conscious- 
 ness of a weight of character which would bear him out in the 
 step, should, deliberately and in writing, refuse to sanction the 
 power before which the contemporary generation quailed. 
 When again the wheel of empire had turned, and this dreadful 
 colossus was about to be crushed beneath the weight of Europe 
 (mustered against him more in desperation than self-assured 
 power), and in falling had dragged down to earth the honor and 
 the strength of France — it was necessary, when the dust and 
 smoke of the contest had blown off, that the faithful sentinel of 
 liberty should be seen again at his post, ready once more to 
 stake life and reputation in another of those critical junctures, 
 when the stoutest hearts are apt to retire and leave the field to 
 desperate men, the forlorn hope of affairs, whom recklessness or 
 necessity crowds up to the breach. But to refute every imputa- 
 tion of selfishness, of a wish to restore himself to the graces of 
 restored royalty — himself the only individual of continental 
 Europe, within the reach of Napoleon's scepter, who refused to 
 sanction his title — it was necessary that he should be coldly 
 viewed by the re-appearing dynasty, and that he should be seen 
 and heard, not in the cabinet or the antechamber, swarming 
 with men whom Napoleon had spangled with stars, but at the 
 tribune, the calm, the rational, the ever consistent advocate of 
 liberty and order, a representative of the people, in constitu- 
 tional France. It was there I first saw him. I saw the mar- 
 shals of Napoleon gorged with the plunder of Europe, and stained 
 
with its blood, borne on their flashing chariot wheels through 
 the streets of Paris ; I saw the ministers of Napoleon filling the 
 highest posts of trust and honor under Louis XVI II ; and I saw 
 the friend of Washington, glorious in his noble poverty, looking 
 down from the dazzling hight of his consistency and his princi- 
 ples on their paltry ambition and its more paltry rewards. 
 
 But all this, much as it was, was not all that combined to in- 
 sure to Lafayette the respect, the love, the passionate admira- 
 tion of the people, to whom he had consecrated the bloom of 
 his youth, for whom he had lavished his fortune and blood. 
 These were the essentials, but they were not all. In order to 
 give even to the common mind a topic of pleasing and fanciful 
 contrast, where the strongest mind found enough to conmiand 
 respect and astonishment, in order to make up a character, in 
 which even the ingredients of romance were mingled with the 
 loftiest and sternest virtues, it was necessary that the just and 
 authentic titles to respect which we have considered should be 
 united in an individual who derived his descent from the ancient 
 chivalry of France ; that he should have been born within the 
 walls of a feudal castle ; that the patient volunteer who laid his 
 head contentedly on a wreath of snow, beneath the tattered 
 canvas of a tent at Valley Forge, should have come fresh from 
 the gorgeous canopies of Versailles ; that he should abandon all 
 that a false ambition could covet, as well as attain all that a 
 pure ambition could prize ; and thus begin life by trampling 
 under foot that which Chatham accepted, which Burke did not 
 refuse, and for which the mass of eminent men in Europe barter 
 health, comfort, and conscience. 
 
 Such was the man whom the Congress of the United States 
 invited to our shores, to gather in the rich harvest of a people's 
 love. Well might he do it. He had sown it in weakness — should 
 he not reap it in power ? He had come to us, a poor and strug- 
 gling colony, and risked his life and shed his blood in our de- 
 fence — was it not just, that he should come again in his age, to 
 witness the fruits of his labors, to rejoice with the veteran com- 
 panions of his service, and to receive the benediction of the 
 children, as he had received that of the fathers ? 
 
 There have been those who have denied to Lafayette the 
 name of a great man. What is greatness ? Does goodness 
 belong to greatness and make an essential part of it ? If it 
 does, who, I would ask, of all the prominent names in history, 
 has run through such a career, with so little reproach justly or 
 unjustly bestowed t Are military courage and conduct the 
 measure of greatness ? Lafayette was entrusted by Washington 
 with all kinds of service — the laborious and complicated, which 
 
5 
 
 required skill and patience, the perilous that demanded nerve — 
 and we see him keeping up a pursuit, effecting a retreat, out- 
 manoeuvring a wary adversary with a superior force, harmoniz- 
 ing the action of French regular troops and American militia, 
 commanding an assault at the point of the bayonet, and all 
 with entire success and brilliant reputation. Is the readiness 
 to meet vast responsibility a proof of greatness ? The memoirs 
 of Mr. Jefferson show us that there was a moment in 1789 when 
 Lafayette took upon himself, as the head of the military force, 
 the entire responsibility of laying down the basis of the French 
 Revolution. Is the cool and brave administration of gigantic 
 power a mark of greatness ? In all the whirlwind of the Revo- 
 lution, and when, as Commander-in-chief of the National Guard, 
 an organized force of three millions of men, who, for any popu- 
 lar purpose, needed but a word, a look, to put them in motion — 
 and he their idol — we behold him ever calm, collected, disinter- 
 ested ; as free from affectation as selfishness, clothed not less 
 with humility than with power. Is the fortitude required to 
 resist the multitude pressing onward their leader to glorious 
 crime a part of greatness ? Behold him, the fugitive and the 
 victim, when he might have been the chief of the Revolution. 
 Is the solitary and unaided opposition of a good citizen to the 
 pretensions of an absolute ruler, whose power was as boundless 
 as his ambition, an effort of greatness ? Read the letter of La- 
 fayette to Napoleon Bonaparte, refusing to vote for him as con- 
 sul for life. Is the voluntary return, in advancing years, to the 
 direction of affairs, at a moment like that, when in 18 15 the 
 ponderous machinery of the French empire was flying asunder 
 — stunning, rending, crushing thousands on every side — a mark 
 of greatness? Contemplate Lafayette at the tribune, in Paris, 
 when allied Europe was thundering at its gates, and Napoleon 
 yet stood in his desperation and at bay. Are dignity, propriety, 
 cheerfulness, unerring discretion in new and conspicuous stations 
 of extraordinary delicacy, a sign of greatness ? Watch his prog- 
 ress in this country, in 1824 and 1825, hear him say the right 
 word at the right time, in a series of interviews, public and 
 private, crowding on each other every day, for a twelvemonth, 
 throughout the Union, with every description of persons, with- 
 out ever wounding for a moment the self-love of others, or for- 
 getting the dignity of his own position. Lastly, is it any proof 
 of greatness to be able, at the age of seventy-three, to take the 
 lead in a successful and bloodless revolution, to change the 
 dynasty, to organize, exercise, and abdicate a military com- 
 mand of three and a half millions of men ; to take up, to per- 
 form, and lay down the most momentous, delicate, and perilous 
 
duties, without passion, without hurry, without selfishness ? Is 
 it great to disregard the bribes of title, office, money ; to live, to 
 labor, and suffer for great public ends alone ; to adhere to prin- 
 ciple under all circumstances ; to stand before Europe and 
 America conspicuous, for sixty years, in the most responsible 
 stations, the acknowledged admiration of all good men ? 
 
 But I think I understand the proposition that Lafayette was 
 not a great man. It comes from the same school which also 
 denies greatness to Washington, and which accords it to Alex- 
 ander and Cassar, to Napoleon and to his conquerer. When I 
 analyze the greatness of these distinguished men, as contrasted 
 with that of Lafayette and Washington, I find either one idea 
 omitted, which is essential to true greatness, or one included as 
 essential, which belongs only to the lowest conception of great- 
 ness. The moral, disinterested, and purely patriotic qualities 
 are wholly wanting in the greatness of Alexander and Caesar; 
 and on the other hand, it is a certain splendor of success, a 
 brilliancy of result, which, with the majority of mankind, marks 
 them out as the great men of our race. But not only are a high 
 morality and a true patriotism essential to greatness, but they 
 must first be renounced before a ruthless career of selfish con- 
 quest can begin. I profess to be no judge of military combina- 
 tions ; but, with the best reflection I have been able to give the 
 subject, I perceive no reason to doubt that, had Lafayette, like 
 Napoleon, been by principle, capable of hovering on the edges 
 of ultra-revolutionism ; never halting enough to be denounced ; 
 never plunging too far to retreat ; but with a cold and well-bal- 
 anced selfishness sustaining himself at the head of affairs, 
 under each new phase of the Revolution, by the compliances 
 sufficient to satisfy its demands — he might have anticipated the 
 career of Napoleon. At three different periods he had it in 
 his power, without usurpation, to take the government into his 
 own hands. He was invited, urged to do so. Had he done it, 
 and made use of the military means at his command, to main- 
 tain and perpetuate his power, he would then, at the sacrifice of 
 all his just claims to the name of great and good, have reached 
 that which vulgar admiration alone worships — the greatness of 
 high station and brilliant success. 
 
 But it was of the greatness of Lafayette, that he looked down 
 on greatness of the false kind. He learned his lesson in the 
 school of Washington, and took his first practice in victories 
 over himself. Let it be questioned by the venal apologists of 
 time-honored abuses, let it be sneered at by national prejudice 
 and party detraction, let it be denied by the admirers of war and 
 conquest, by the idolaters of success, but let it be gratefully 
 
acknowledged by good men, by Americans, by every man who 
 has sense to distinguish character from events, who has a heart 
 to beat in concert with the pure enthusiasm of virtue. 
 
 But it is more than time, fellow-citizens, that I commit the 
 memory of this great and good man to your unprompted con- 
 templation. On his arrival among you, ten years ago, when 
 your civil fathers, your military, your children, your whole popu- 
 lation poured itself out, as one throng, to salute him, when your 
 cannons proclaimed his advent with joyous salvos, and your 
 acclamations were responded from steeple to steeple, by the 
 voice of festal bells, with what delight did you not listen to his 
 cordial and affectionate words : " I beg of you all, beloved 
 citizens of Boston, to accept the respectful and warm thanks of 
 a heart which has for nearly half a century been devoted to your 
 illustrious city ! " That noble heart, to which, if any object on 
 earth was dear, that object was the country of his early choice, 
 of his adoption, and his more than regal triumph, that noble 
 heart will beat no more for your welfare. Cold and motionless, 
 it is already mingling with the dust. While he lived, you 
 thronged with delight to his presence, you gazed with admira- 
 tion on his placid features and venerable form, not wholly un- 
 shaken by the rude storms of his career; and now that he is 
 departed, you have assembled in this cradle of the liberties for 
 which, with your fathers, he risked his life, to pay the last hon- 
 ors to his memory. You have thrown open these consecrated 
 portals to admit the lengthened train which has come to dis- 
 charge the last public offices of respect to his name. You have 
 hung these venerable arches, for the second time since their 
 erection, with the sable badges of sorrow. You have thus asso- 
 ciated the memory of Lafayette in those distinguished honors, 
 which but a few years since you paid to your Adams and Jeffer- 
 son ; and, could your wishes and mine have prevailed, my lips 
 would this day have been mute, and the same illustrious voice 
 which gave utterance to your filial emotions over their honored 
 graves would have spoken also, for you, over him who shared 
 their earthly labors, enjoyed their friendship, and has now gone 
 to share their last repose and their imperishable remembrance. 
 
 There is not, throughout the world, a friend of liberty, who 
 has not dropped his head when he has heard that Lafayette is 
 no more. Poland, Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland, the South 
 American republics — every country where man is struggling to 
 recover his birthright — has lost a benefactor, a patron, in La- 
 fayette. But you, young men, at whose command I speak, for 
 you a bright and particular lodestar is henceforward fixed in the 
 front of heaven. What young man that reflects on the history 
 
8 
 
 of Lafayette, that sees him in the morning of his days the asso- 
 ciate of sages, the friend of Washington, but will start with new 
 vigor on the path of duty and renown ? 
 
 And what was it, fellow-citizens, which gave to our Lafayette 
 his spotless fame ? The love of liberty. What has consecrated 
 his memory in hearts of good men ? The love of liberty. What 
 nerved his youthful arm with strength, and inspired him in the 
 morning of his days with sagacity and counsel ? The living love 
 of liberty. To what did he sacrifice power, and rank, and coun- 
 try, and freedom itself ? To the horror of licentiousness ; to the 
 sanctity of plighted faith ; to the love of liberty protected by law. 
 Thus the great principle of your revolutionary fathers, of your 
 pilgrim sires, the great principle of the age, was the rule of his 
 life : T/ie love of liberty protected by law. 
 
 You have now assembled within these celebrated walls, to per- 
 form the last duties of respect and love, on the birth-day of your 
 benefactor, beneath that roof which has resounded of old with 
 the master voices of American renown. The spirit of the de- 
 parted is in high communion with the spirit of the place; the 
 temple worthy of the new name which we now behold inscribed 
 on its walls. Listen, Americans, to the lesson which seems 
 borne to us on the very air we breathe, while we perform these 
 dutiful rites ! Ye winds, that wafted the Pilgrims to the land of 
 promise, fan, in their children's hearts, the love of freedom. 
 Blood, which our fathers shed, cry from the ground. Echoing 
 arches of this renowned hall, whisper back the voices of other 
 days. Glorious Washington, break the long silence of that votive 
 canvas. Speak, speak, marble lips, teach us the love of lib- 
 erty PROTECTED BY LAW ! 
 
 There is no satisfactory popular life of Lafayette. His Memoirs and Correspondence, in 
 several volumes, were published by his family, and there are several short biographies, such 
 as they are; but the common student will learn about Lafayette best in the orations by 
 Everett, Sumner, John Quincy Adams, and others. Of the other leading European friends 
 and helpers of America in the Revolution, good accounts are easily accessible Greene's 
 "The German Element in the War of American Independence" contains valuable chapters 
 upon Steuben and De Kalb, as well as upon the Hessians. Rosenthal's "The Influence of 
 the United States on France in the Eighteenth Century" should be read in this general 
 connection. 
 
FOURTH SERIES, 1886. " No. 6. 
 
 Letters of Abigail Adams 
 
 TO HER HUSBAND. 
 
 Braintree, 16 October, 1774. 
 
 My Much Loved Friend, — I dare not express to you, at 
 three hundred miles distance, how ardently I long for your re- 
 turn. I have some very miserly wishes, and cannot consent to 
 your spending one hour in town, till, at least, I have had you 
 twelve. The idea plays about my heart, unnerves my hand, 
 whilst I write ; awakens all the tender sentiments that years 
 have increased and matured, and which, when with me, every 
 day was dispensing to you. The whole collected stock of ten 
 weeks' absence knows not how to brook any longer restraint, 
 but will break forth and flow through my pen. May the like 
 sensations enter thy breast, and (spite of all the weighty cares 
 of state) mingle themselves with those 1 wish to communicate ; 
 for, in giving them utterance, I have felt more sincere pleasure 
 than I have known since the loth of August.' Many have been 
 the anxious hours I have spent since that day ; the threatening 
 aspect of our public affairs, the complicated distress of this 
 province, the arduous and perplexed business in which you are 
 engaged, have all conspired to agitate my bosom with fears and 
 apprehensions to which I have heretofore been a stranger ; and, 
 far from thinking the scene closed, it looks as though the curtain 
 was but just drawn, and only the first scene of the infernal plot 
 disclosed. And whether the end will be tragical. Heaven alone 
 knows. You cannot be, I know, nor do I wish to see you, an 
 inactive spectator; but if the sword be drawn, I bid adieu to all 
 domestic felicity, and look forward to that country where there 
 are neither wars nor rumors of war, in a firm belief that 
 through the mercy of its King we shall both rejoice there to- 
 gether. 
 
 * The date of Mr. Adams's departure. 
 
I greatly fear that the arm of treachery and violence is lifted 
 over us, as a scourge and heavy punishment from Heaven for 
 our numerous offenses, and for the misimprovement of our 
 great advantages. If we expect to inherit the blessings of our 
 fathers, we should return a little more to their primitive simplic- 
 ity of manners, and not sink into inglorious ease. We have too 
 many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond 
 with them. I have spent one Sabbath in town since you left. 
 I saw no difference in respect to ornament, etc. ; but in the 
 country you must look for that virtue, of which you find but 
 small glimmerings in the metropolis. Indeed, they have not the 
 advantages, nor the resolution, to encourage our own manufac- 
 tories, which people in the country have. To the mercantile 
 part, it is considered as throwing away their own bread ; but 
 they must retrench their expenses, and be content with a small 
 share of gain, for they will find but few who will wear their liv- 
 ery. As for me, I will seek wool and flax, and work willingly 
 with my hands ; and indeed there is occasion for all our industry 
 and economy. You mention the removal of our books, etc., 
 from Boston ; I believe they are safe there, and it would incom- 
 mode the gentlemen to remove them, as they would not then 
 have a place to repair to for study. I suppose they would not 
 choose to be at the expense of boarding out. Mr. Williams, I 
 believe, keeps pretty much with his mother. Mr. Hill's father 
 had some thoughts of removing up to Braintree, provided he 
 could be accommodated with a house, which he finds very diffi- 
 cult. 
 
 Mr. Cranch's last determination was to tarry in town unless 
 anything new takes place. His friends in town oppose his re- 
 moval so much that he is determined to stay. The opinion you 
 have entertained of General Gage is, I believe, just. Indeed, 
 he professes to act only upon the defensive. The people in the 
 country begin to be very anxious for the Congress to rise ; they 
 have no idea of the weighty business you have .to transact, and 
 their blood boils with indignation at the hostile preparations 
 they are constant witnesses of. Mr. Quincy's so secret depart- 
 ure is matter of various speculation ; some say he is deputed 
 by Congress, others that he is gone to Holland, and the Tories 
 say he is gone to be hanged. 
 
 I rejoice at the favorable account you give me of your health. 
 May it be continued to you. My health is much better than it 
 was last fall ; some folks say I grow very fat. I venture to 
 write almost anything in this letter, because I know the care of 
 the bearer. He will be most sadly disappointed if you should 
 be broken up before he arrives, as he is very desirous of being 
 
3 
 
 introduced by you to a number of gentlemen of respectable 
 character. I almost envy him, that he should see you before I 
 can. Mr. Thaxter and Mr. Rice present their regards to you. 
 Uncle Quincy, too, sends his love to you. He is very good to 
 call and see me, and so have many other of my friends been. 
 Colonel Warren and lady were here on Monday, and send their 
 love to you. The Colonel promised to write. Mrs. Warren will 
 spend a day or two, on her return, with me. 
 
 Your mother sends her love to you ; and all your family, too 
 numerous to name, desire to be remembered. You will receive 
 letters from two who are as earnest to write to papa as if the 
 welfare of a kingdom depended upon it.^ If you can give any 
 guess, within a month, let me know when you think of return- 
 ino:. Your most affectionate Abigail Adams. 
 
 Sunday, j8 June, lyyj. 
 
 The day — perhaps the decisive day — is come, on whi(fti the 
 fate of America depends. My bursting heart must find vent at 
 my pen. I have just heard that our dear friend, Dr. Warren, is 
 no more, but fell gloriously fighting for his country ; saying, Bet- 
 ter to die honorably in the field, than ignominiously hang upon 
 the gallows. Great is our loss. He has distinguished himself 
 in every engagement, by his courage and fortitude, by animating 
 the soldiers, and leading them on by his own example. A par- 
 ticular account of these dreadful, but I hope glorious days, will 
 be transmitted you, no doubt, in the exactest manner. 
 
 " The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong ; 
 but the God of Israel is He that giveth strength and power unto 
 His people. Trust in Him at all times, ye people, pour out your 
 hearts before Him ; God is a refuge for us." Charlestown is 
 laid in ashes. The battle began upon our intrenchments upon 
 Bunker's Hill, Saturday morning about three o'clock, and has 
 not ceased yet, and it is now three o'clock Sabbath afternoon. 
 
 ^ One of these letters has been preserved. The writer was at this time 
 seven years old. His subsequent career may make it interesting enough to 
 print. It is written in a tolerably good, boy's hand, as follows : 
 
 October 13, 1774. 
 Sir, — I have been trying ever since you went away to learn to write you 
 a letter. I shall make poor work of it ; but, sir, mamma says you will accept 
 my endeavors, and that my duty to you may be expressed in poor writing as 
 well as good. I hope I grow a better boy, and that you will have no occa- 
 sion to be ashamed of me when you return. Mr. Thaxter says I learn my 
 books well. He is a very good master. I read my books to mamma. We 
 all long to see you. I am, sir, your dutiful son, John Quincy Adams. 
 
It is -expected they will come out over the Neck tonight, and 
 a dreadful battle must ensue. Almighty God, cover the heads 
 of our countrymen, and be a shield to our dear friends! How 
 many have fallen, we know not. The constant roar of the can- 
 non is so distressing that we cannot eat, drink, or sleep. May 
 we be supported and sustained in the dreadful conflict. I shall 
 tarry here till it is thought unsafe by my friends, and then I 
 have secured myself a retreat at your brother's, who has kindly 
 offered me part of his house. I cannot compose myself to 
 write any further at present. I will add more as 1 hear further. 
 
 Tuesday Afternoon. 
 
 I have been so much agitated, that I have not been able to 
 write since Sabbath day. When I say that ten thousand reports 
 are passing, vague and uncertain as the wind, I believe I speak 
 the truth. I am not able to give you any authentic account of 
 last Saturday, but you will not be destitute of intelligence. 
 Colonel Palmer has just sent me word that he has an opportu- 
 nity of conveyance. Incorrect as this scrawl will be, it shall go. 
 I ardently pray that you may be supported through the arduous 
 task you have before you. I wish I could contradict the report 
 of the Doctor's death ; but it is a lamentable truth, and the 
 tears of multitudes pay tribute to his memory ; those favorite 
 lines of Collins continually sound in my ears : 
 
 " How sleep the brave," etc. 
 
 I must close, as the Deacon waits. I have not pretended to 
 be particular with regard to what I have heard, because I know 
 you will collect better intelligence. The spirits of the people 
 are very good ; the loss of Charlestown affects them no more 
 than a drop in the bucket. 
 
 I am, most sincerely, yours, Portia. 
 
 Braintree, Sunday, i6 September, lyyS' 
 
 I SET myself down to write with a heart depressed with the 
 melancholy scenes around me. My letter will be only a bill of 
 mortality ; though thanks be to that Being who restraineth the 
 pestilence, that it has not yet proved mortal to any of our fam- 
 ily, though we live in daily expectation that Patty will not con- 
 tinue many hours. I had no idea of the distemper producing 
 such a state as hers till now. Two of the children, John and 
 Charles, I have sent out of the house, finding it difficult to keep 
 them out of the chamber. Nabby continues well. Tommy is 
 
better, but entirely stripped of the hardy, robust countenance, 
 as well as of all the flesh he had, save what remains for to keep 
 his bones together. Jonathan is the only one who remains in 
 the family who has not had a turn of the disorder. Mrs. Ran- 
 dall has lost her daughter. Mrs. Brackett, hers. Mr. Thomas 
 Thayer, his wife. Two persons belonging to Boston have died 
 this week in this parish. I know of eight this week who have 
 been buried in this town. 
 
 In Weymouth it is very sickly, but not mortal. Dr. Tufts 
 tells me he has between sixty and seventy patients now sick with 
 this disorder. Mr. Thaxter has been obliged to go home, as it 
 was not possible forme to accommodate him. Mr. Mason came 
 this week, but if he had been inclined, I could not have taken 
 him now. But the general sickness in the towns determined 
 him to return home for the present. The dread upon the minds 
 of people of catching the distemper is almost as great as if it 
 was the small-pox. I have been disturbed more than ever I was 
 in my life to procure watchers and to get assistance. 
 
 I hear Mr, Tudor has been dangerously sick, but is now upon 
 the recovery. Mr. Wibird is very low indeed, scarcely able 'to 
 walk a step. We have been four Sundays without any meeting. 
 Thus does pestilence travel in the rear of war, to remind us of 
 our entire dependence upon that Being who not only directeth 
 the arrow qy day, but has also at His command that which flieth 
 in darkness. So uncertain and so transitory are all the enjoy- 
 ments of life, that were it not for the tender connections which 
 bind us, would it not be follv to wish for continuance here ? I 
 think I shall never be wedded to the world, and were I to lose 
 about a dozen of my dearest connections, I should have no 
 further relish for life. 
 
 But perhaps I deceive myself and know little, but little, of my 
 own heart. 
 
 "To bear and suffer is our portion here." 
 
 And unto Him who mounts the whirlwind and directs the storm 
 I will cheerfully leave the ordering of my lot, and whether ad- 
 verse or prosperous days should be my future portion, I will 
 trust in His right hand to lead me safely through, and, after a 
 short rotation of events, fix me in a state immutable and happy. 
 
 You will think me melancholy. 'Tis true, I am much affected 
 by the distressed scenes around me, but I have some anxieties 
 in my mind which I do not think it prudent to mention at pres- 
 ent to any one. Perhaps when I hear from you, I may in my 
 next letter tell you. 
 
 In the meantime I wish you would tell me whether the inter- 
 
cepted letters have reached Philadelphia, and what effect they 
 have there. There is a most infamous versification of them, I 
 hear, sent out. I have not been able to get it. 
 
 As to politics, there seems to be a dead calm upon all sides. 
 Some of the Tories have been sending out their children. 
 Colonel Chandler has sent out his, and Mr. Winslow has sent 
 out his daughter. People appear to be gratified with the Re- 
 monstrance, Address, and Petition, and most earnestly long for 
 further intelligence. 
 
 God helps them that help themselves, as King Richard says ; 
 and if we can obtain the Divine aid by our own virtue, fortitude, 
 and perseverance, we may be sure of relief. 
 
 Tomorrow will be three weeks since you left home ; in all 
 which time I have not heard one word from you. Patience is a 
 lesson I have not to learn, so I can wait your own time, but 
 hope it will not be long ere my anxious heart is relieved. 
 
 Adieu ! I need not say how sincerely I am 
 
 Your affectionate Portia. 
 
 8 March, lyyS. 
 
 'Tis a little more than three weeks since the dearest of friends 
 and tenderest of husbands left his solitary partner, and quitted 
 all the fond endearments of domestic felicity for the dangers of 
 the sea, exposed, perhaps, to the attack of a hostile foe, and, 
 O good Heaven ! can I add, to the dark assassin, to the secret 
 murderer, and the bloody emissary of as cruel a tyrant as God, 
 in His righteous judgments, ever suffered to disgrace the throne 
 of Britain. 
 
 I have traveled with you over the wide Atlantic, and could 
 have landed you safe, with humble confidence, at your desired 
 haven, and then have set myself down to enjoy a negative kind 
 of happiness in the painful part which it has pleased Heaven to 
 allot me ; but the intelligence with regard to that great philoso- 
 pher, able statesman, and unshaken friend of his country,^ has 
 planted a dagger in my breast, and I feel, with double edge, the 
 weapon that pierced the bosom of a Franklin. 
 
 " For nought avail the virtues of the heart, 
 Nor towering genius claims its due reward; 
 From Britain's fury, as from death's keen dart, 
 No worth can save us, and no fame can guard." 
 
 The more distinguished the person, the greater the inveteracy 
 
 ^ A rumor was at this time current that Franklin had been assassinated in 
 Paris. 
 
of these foes of human nature. The argument of my friends to 
 alleviate my anxiety, by persuading me that this shocking at- 
 tempt will put you more upon your guard and render your per- 
 son more secure than if it had never taken place, is kind in 
 them, and has some weight ; but my greatest comfort and con- 
 solation arise from the belief of a superintending Providence, 
 to whom I can with confidence commit you, since not a sparrow 
 falls to the ground without His notice. Were it not for this, I 
 should be miserable and overwhelmed by my fears and appre- 
 hensions. 
 
 Freedom of sentiment, the life and soul of friendship, is in a 
 great measure cut off by the danger of miscarriage and the ap- 
 prehension of letters falling into the hands of our enemies. 
 Should this meet with that fate, may they blush for their connec- 
 tion with a nation who have rendered themselves infamous and 
 abhorred by a long list of crimes, which not their high achieve- 
 ments, nor the lustre of former deeds, nor the tender appella- 
 tion of parent, nor the fond connection which once subsisted, 
 can ever blot from our remembrance, nor wipe out those indel- 
 lible stains of their cruelty and baseness. They have engraven 
 them with a pen of iron on a rock forever. 
 
 To my dear son remember me in the most affectionate terms. 
 I would have written to him, but my notice is so short that I 
 have not time. Enjoin it upon him never to disgrace his mother, 
 and to behave worthily of his father. Tender as maternal 
 affection is, it was swallowed up in what I found a stronger, or 
 so intermixed that I felt it not in its full force till after he had 
 left me. I console myself with the hopes of his reaping advan- 
 tages, under the careful eye of a tender parent, which it was not 
 in my power to bestow upon him. 
 
 There has nothing material taken place in the political world 
 since you left us. This letter will go by a vessel for Bilbao, 
 from whence you may perhaps get better opportunities of con- 
 veyance than from any other place. The letter you delivered 
 to the pilot came safe to hand. All the little folks are anxious 
 for the safety of their papa and brother, to whom they desire to 
 be remembered ; to which are added the tenderest sentiments 
 of affection, and the fervent prayers for your happiness and 
 safety, of your Portia. 
 
 Mrs. Ellet's work upon "The Women of the American Revolution" con- 
 tains interesting sketches of the mother and the wife of Washington, of 
 Abigail Adams, Mercy Warren, Esther Reed, Catharine Greene, Lydia 
 Darrah, and many more of the heroic women of the period. A little book 
 which is to be especially commended to the young people is Edward Abbott's 
 
" Revolutionary Times," consisting of bright and simple sketches of the 
 country, its people, and their ways, at the time of the Revolution, and con- 
 taining at the end a good list of books which tell more about these things. 
 Mr. Abbott's chapters on " Domestic Concerns " and " The Men and Women 
 of the Revolution " are of particular interest in the present connection. 
 
 There is nothing which gives a better picture of social and domestic life 
 during the Revolution than the "Familiar Letters of John Adams and his 
 Wife." Abigail Adams was one of the noblest women of America. Her 
 father was the Rev. William Smith of Weymouth ; her mother, Elizabeth 
 Quincy, was a descendant of John Norton and Thomas Shepard, the famous 
 old Puritan ministers. She was married to John Adams in 1764, when she 
 was twenty years old, and when the troubles with England were just begin- 
 ning. Her letters to her husband during the Revolution, a few of which are 
 given in this leaflet, are important not only for their pictures of home life 
 and their information on public affairs, but for their revelations of her own 
 strong and beautiful character. "They are remarkable," says her biogra- 
 pher, "because they display the readiness with which she could devote her- 
 self to the most opposite duties, and the cheerful manner in which she could 
 accommodate herself to the difficulties of the times. She is a farmer culti- 
 vating the land, and discussing the weather and the crops ; a merchant report- 
 ing prices-current and the rates, of exchange, and directing the making up of in- 
 voices ; a politician speculating upon the probabilities of peace or war; and 
 a mother writing the most exalted sentiments to her son. All of these pur- 
 suits she adopts together, some from choice, the rest from the necessity of 
 the case ; and in all she appears equally well." 
 
FOURTH SERIES, 1886. No. 7. 
 
 Under the Old Elm. 
 
 From the poe7)i read at Cambridge on the Hundredth Anniversary of Wash- 
 ington's taking Coni7nand of the American Army^ jd fuly, ^77S- 
 
 BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. ' 
 
 I. 
 
 Words pass as wind, but where great deeds were done 
 
 A power abides transfused from sire to son : 
 
 The boy feels deeper meanings thrill his ear, 
 
 That tingling through his pulse life-long shall run, 
 
 With sure impulsion to keep honor clear. 
 
 When, pointing down, his father whispers, "Here, 
 
 Here, where we stand, stood he, the purely Great, 
 
 Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere. 
 
 Then nameless, now a power and mixed with fate." 
 
 Historic town, thou holdest sacred dust, 
 
 Once known to men as pious, learned, just, 
 
 And one memorial pile that dares to last; 
 
 But Memory greets with reverential kiss 
 
 No spot in all thy circuit sweet as this, 
 
 Touched by that modest glory as it past, 
 
 O'er which yon elm hath piously displayed 
 
 These hundred years its monumental shade. 
 
 2. 
 Of our swift passage through this scenery 
 Of life and death, more durable than we, 
 What landmark so congenial as a tree 
 Repeating its green legend every spring, 
 And, with a yearly ring, 
 Recording the fair seasons as they flee. 
 Type of our brief but still renewed mortality? 
 We fall as leaves : the immortal trunk remains, 
 Builded with costly juice of hearts and brains 
 Gone to the mould now, whither all that be 
 Vanish returnless, yet are procreant still 
 In human lives to come of good or ill, 
 And feed unseen the roots of Destiny. 
 
 II. 
 I. 
 
 Men's monuments, grown old, forget their names 
 
 They should eternize, but the place 
 
 Where shining souls have passed imbibes a grace 
 
 1 Reprinted for the Old South Leaflets by special permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mif- 
 flin & Co. 
 
Beyond mere earth ; some sweetness of their fames 
 
 Leaves in the soil its unextinguished trace, 
 
 Pungent, pathetic, sad with nobler aims. 
 
 That penetrates our lives and heightens them or shames. 
 
 This insubstantial world and fleet 
 
 Seems solid for a moment when we stand 
 
 On dust ennobled by heroic feet 
 
 Once mighty to sustain a tottering land, 
 
 And mighty still such burthen to upbear, 
 
 Nor doomed to tread the path of things that merely were 
 
 Our sense, refined with virtue of the spot, 
 
 Across the mists of Lethe's sleepy stream 
 
 Recalls him, the sole chief without a blot, 
 
 No more a pallid image and a dream, 
 
 But as he dwelt with men decorously supreme. 
 
 2. 
 
 Our grosser minds need this terrestrial hint 
 
 To raise long-buried days from tombs of print : 
 
 " Here stood he," softly we repeat, 
 
 And lo, the statue shrined and still 
 
 In that gray minster-front we call the Past, 
 
 Feels in its frozen veins our pulses thrill, 
 
 Breathes living air and mocks at Death's deceit. 
 
 It warms, it stirs, comes down to us at last, 
 
 Its features human with familiar light, 
 
 A man, beyond the historian's art to kill. 
 
 Or sculptor's to efface with patient chisel-blight. 
 
 3- 
 Sure the dumb earth hath memory, nor for naught 
 Was Fancy given, on whose enchanted loom 
 Present and Past commingle, fruit and bloom 
 Of one fair bough, inseparably wrought 
 Into the seamless tapestry of thought. 
 wSo charmed, with undeluded eye we see 
 In history's fragmentary tale 
 Bright clews of continuity. 
 Learn that high natures over Time prevail, 
 And feels ourselves a link in that entail 
 That binds all ages past with all that are to be. 
 
 IIL 
 
 I. 
 
 Beneath our consecrated elm 
 
 A century ago he stood. 
 
 Famed vaguely for that old fight in the wood 
 
 "Whose red surge sought, but could not overwhelm 
 
 The life foredoomed to wield our rough-hewn helm : — 
 
 From colleges, where now the gown 
 
 To arms had yielded, from the town. 
 
 Our rude self-summoned levies flocked to see 
 
 The new-come chiefs and wonder which was he. 
 
 No need to question long; close-lipped and tall, 
 
 Long trained in murder-brooding forests lone 
 
 To bridle others' clamors and his own. 
 
 Firmly erect, he towered above them all. 
 
 The incarnate discipline that was to free 
 
 With iron curb that armed democracy. 
 
 2. 
 
 A motley rout was that which came to stare, 
 
In raiment tanned by years of sun and storm, 
 
 Of every shape that was not uniform, 
 
 Dotted with regimentals here and there; 
 
 An army all of captains, used to pray 
 
 And stiff in fight, but serious drill's despair. 
 
 Skilled to debate their orders, not obev ; 
 
 Deacons were there, selectmen, men of note. 
 
 In half-tamed hamlets ambushed round with woods, 
 
 Ready to settle Freewill by a vote. 
 
 But largely liberal to its private moods; 
 
 Prompt to assert by manners, voice, or pen. 
 
 Or ruder arms, their rights as Englishmen, 
 
 Nor much fastidious as to how and when ; 
 
 Yet seasoned stiff and fittest to create 
 
 A thought-staid army or a lasting state : 
 
 Haughty they said he was, at first; severe; 
 
 But owned, as all men own, the steady hand 
 
 Upon the bridle, patient to command, 
 
 Prized, as all prize, the justice pure from fear, 
 
 And learned to honor first, then love him, then revere. 
 
 Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint 
 
 And purpose clean as light from every selfish taint. 
 
 3- 
 Musing beneath the legendary tree, 
 The years between furl off: I seem to see 
 The sun-flecks, shaken the stirred foliage through. 
 Dapple with gold his sober buff and blue 
 And weave prophetic aureoles round the head 
 That shines our beacon now nor darkens with the dead. 
 O, man of silent mood, 
 A stranger among strangers then. 
 How art thou since renowned the Great, the Good, 
 Familiar as the day in all the homes of men I 
 The winged years, that winnow praise and blame. 
 Blow many names out : they but fan to flame 
 The self-renewing splendors of thy fame. 
 
 IV. 
 
 How many subtlest influences unite. 
 
 With spiritual touch of joy or pain, 
 
 Invisible as air and soft as light, 
 
 To body forth that image of the brain 
 
 We call our Country, visionary shape, 
 
 Loved more than woman, fuller of fire than wine. 
 
 Whose charm can none define, 
 
 Nor any, though he flee it, can escape ! 
 
 All party-colored threads the weaver Time 
 
 Sets in his web, now trivial, now sublime, 
 
 All memories, all forebodings, hopes and fears, 
 
 Mountain and river, forest, prairie, sea, 
 
 A hill, a rock, a homestead, field, or tree. 
 
 The casual gleanings of unreckoned years. 
 
 Take goddess-shape at last and there is She, 
 
 Old at our birth, new as the springing hours. 
 
 Shrine of our weakness, fortress of our powers, 
 
 Consoler, kindler, peerless mid her peers, 
 
 A force that 'neath our conscious being stirs, 
 
 A life to give ours permanence, when we 
 
Are borne to mingle our poor earth with hers, 
 
 And all this glowing world goes with us on our biers. 
 
 2. 
 
 Nations are long results, by ruder ways 
 
 Gathering the might that warrants length of days ; 
 
 They may be pieced of half-reluctant shares 
 
 Welded by hammer-strokes of broad-brained kings, 
 
 Or from a doughty people grow, the heirs 
 
 Of wise traditions widening cautious rings ; 
 
 At best they are computable things, 
 
 A strength behind us making us feel bold 
 
 In right, or, as may chance, in wrong ; 
 
 Whose force by figures may be summed and told, 
 
 So many soldiers, ships, and dollars strong, 
 
 And we but drops that bear compulsory part 
 
 In the dumb throb of a mechanic heart ; 
 
 But Country is a shape of each man's mind 
 
 Sacred from definition, unconfined 
 
 By the cramped walls where daily drudgeries grind; 
 
 An inward vision, yet an outward birth 
 
 Of sweet familiar heaven and earth ; 
 
 A brooding Presence that stirs motions blind 
 
 Of wings within our embryo being's shell 
 
 That wait but her completer spell 
 
 To make us eagle-natured, fit to dare 
 
 Life's nobler spaces and untarnished air. 
 
 You, who hold dear this self-conceived ideal. 
 Whose faith and works alone can make it real. 
 Bring all your fairest gifts to deck her shrine 
 Who lifts our lives away from Thine and Mine 
 And feeds the lamp of manhood more divine 
 With fragrant oils of quenchless constancy. 
 When all have done their utmost, surely he 
 Hath given the best who gives a character 
 Erect and constant, which nor any shock 
 Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea 
 Of flowing or of ebbing fates, can stir 
 From its deep bases in the living rock 
 Of ancient manhood's sweet security : 
 And this he gave, serenely far from pride 
 As baseness, boon with prosperous stars allied, 
 Part of what nobler seed shall in our loins abide. 
 
 No bond of men as common pride so strong. 
 
 In names time-filtered for the lips of song, 
 
 Still operant, with the primal Forces bound 
 
 Whose currents, on their spiritual round, 
 
 Transfuse our mortal will nor are gainsaid : 
 
 These are their arsenals, these the exhaustless mines 
 
 That give a constant heart in great designs ; 
 
 These are the stuff whereof such dreams are made 
 
 As make heroic men : thus surely he 
 
 Still holds in place the massy blocks he laid 
 
 'Neath our new frame, enforcing soberly 
 
 The self-control that makes and keeps a people free. 
 
V. 
 
 I. 
 
 O, for a drop of that Cornelian ink 
 
 Which gave Agricola dateless length of days, 
 
 To celebrate him fitly, neither swerve 
 
 To phrase unkempt, nor pass discretion's brink, 
 
 With him so statue-like in sad reserve. 
 
 So diffident to claim, so forward to deserve ! 
 
 Nor need I shun due influence of his fame 
 
 W^ho, mortal among mortals, seemed as now 
 
 The equestrian shape with unimpassioned brow, 
 
 That paces silent on through vistas of acclaim. 
 
 What figure more immovably august 
 
 Than that grave strength so patient and so pure, 
 
 Calm in good fortune, when it wavered, sure. 
 
 That mind serene, impenetrably just, 
 
 Modelled on classic lines so simple they endure ? 
 
 That soul so softly radiant and so white 
 
 The track it left seems less of fire than light. 
 
 Cold but to such as love distemperature? 
 
 And if pure light, as some deem, be the force 
 
 That drives rejoicing planets on their course. 
 
 Why for his power benign seek an impurer source? 
 
 His was the true enthusiasm that burns long, 
 
 Domestically bright. 
 
 Fed from itself and shy of human sight. 
 
 The hidden force that makes a lifetime strong. 
 
 And not the short-lived fuel of a song. 
 
 Passionless, say you ? What is passion for 
 
 But to sublime our natures and control 
 
 To front heroic toils with late return. 
 
 Or none, or such, as shames the conqueror? 
 
 That fire was fed with substance of the soul 
 
 And not with holiday stubble, that could burn, 
 
 Unpraised of men who after bonfires run. 
 
 Through seven slow years of unadvancing war. 
 
 Equal when fields were lost or fields were won, 
 
 With breath of popular applause or blame. 
 
 Nor fanned nor damped, unquenchably the same. 
 
 Too inward to be reached by flaws of idle fame. 
 
 Soldier and statesman, rarest unison; 
 
 High-poised example of great duties done 
 
 Simply as breathing, a world's honors worn 
 
 As life's indifferent gifts to all men born ; 
 
 Dumb for himself, unless it were to God, 
 
 But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent, 
 
 Tramping the snow to coral where they trod, 
 
 Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content; 
 
 Modest, yet firm as Nature's self ; unblamed 
 
 Save by the men his nobler temper shamed ; 
 
 Never seduced through show of present good 
 
 By other than unsetting lights to steer 
 
 New-trimmed in Heaven, nor than his steadfast mood 
 
 More steadfast, far from rashness as from fear; 
 
 Rigid, but with himself first, grasping still 
 
In swerveless poise the wave-beat helm of will; 
 
 Not honored then or now because he wooed 
 
 The popular voice, but that he still withstood; 
 
 Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but one 
 
 Who was all this and ours, and all men's, — Washington. 
 
 Minds strong by fits, irregularly great, 
 
 That flash and darken like revolving lights, 
 
 Catch more the vulgar eye unschooled to wait 
 
 On the long curve of patient days and nights 
 
 Rounding a whole life to the circle fair 
 
 Of orbed fulfilment ; and this balanced soul, 
 
 So simple in its grandeur, coldly bare 
 
 Of draperies theatric, standing there 
 
 In perfect symmetry of self-control, 
 
 Seems not so great at first, but greater grows 
 
 Still as we look, and by experience learn 
 
 How grand this quiet is, how nobly stern 
 
 The discipline that wrought through lifelong throes 
 
 That energetic passion of repose. 
 
 A nature too decorous and severe, 
 
 Too self-respectful in its griefs and joys, 
 
 For ardent girls and boys 
 
 Who find no genius in a mind so clear 
 
 That its grave depths seem obvious and near. 
 
 Nor a soul great that made so little noise. 
 
 They feel no force in that calm-cadenced phrase. 
 
 The habitual full-dress of his well-bred mind, 
 
 That seems to pace the minuet's courtly maze 
 
 And tell of ampler leisures, roomier length of days. 
 
 His firm-based brain, to self so little kind 
 
 That no tumultuary blood could blind, 
 
 Formed to control men, not amaze, 
 
 Looms not like those that borrow height of haze : 
 
 It was a world of statelier movement then 
 
 Than this we fret in, he a denizen 
 
 Of that ideal Rome that made a man for men. 
 
 VI. 
 I. 
 
 The longer on this earth we live 
 
 And weigh the various qualities of men, 
 
 Seeing how most are fugitive, 
 
 Or fitful gifts, at best, of now and then. 
 
 Wind-wavered corpse-lights, daughters of the fen. 
 
 The more we feel the high stern-featured beauty 
 
 Of plain devotedness to duty, 
 
 Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal praise, 
 
 But finding amplest recompense 
 
 For life's ungarlanded expense 
 
 In work done squarely and unwasted days. 
 
 For this we honor him, that he could know 
 
 How sweet the service and how free 
 
 Of her, God's eldest daughter here below. 
 
 And choose in meanest raiment which was she. 
 
 2. 
 
 Placid completeness, life without a fall 
 
From faith or highest aims, truth's breachless wall, 
 Surely if any fame can bear the touch, 
 His will say " Here ! " at the last trumpet's call, 
 The unexpressive man whose life expressed so much. 
 
 VII. 
 I. 
 
 Never to see a nation born 
 
 Hath been given to mortal man, 
 
 Unless to those who, on that summer morn. 
 
 Gazed silent when the great Virginian 
 
 Unsheathed the sword whose fatal flash 
 
 Shot union through the incoherent clash 
 
 Of our loose atoms, crystallizing them 
 
 Around a single will's unpliant stem. 
 
 And making purpose of emotion rash. 
 
 Out of that scabbard sprang, as from its womb, 
 
 Nebulous at first but hardening to a star, 
 
 Through mutual share of sunburst and of gloom. 
 
 The common faith that made us what we are. 
 
 2. 
 
 That lifted blade transformed our jangling clans, 
 
 Till then provincial, to Americans, 
 
 And made a unity of wildering plans; 
 
 Here was the doom fixed ; here is marked the date 
 
 When this New World awoke to man's estate. 
 
 Burnt its last ship and ceased to look behind : 
 
 Nor thoughtless was the choice; no love or hate 
 
 Could from its poise move that deliberate mind. 
 
 Weighing between too early and too late 
 
 Those pitfalls of the man refused by Fate: 
 
 His was the impartial vision of the great 
 
 Who see not as they wish, but as they find. 
 
 He saw the dangers of defeat, nor less 
 
 The incomputable perils of success; 
 
 The sacred past thrown by, an empty rind ; 
 
 The future, cloud-land, snare of prophets blind; 
 
 The waste of war, the ignominy of peace ; 
 
 On either hand a sullen rear of woes. 
 
 Whose garnered lightnings none could guess. 
 
 Piling its thunder-heads and muttering " Cease I " 
 
 Yet drew not back his hand, but gravely chose 
 
 The seeming-desperate task whence our new nation rose. 
 
 3- 
 A noble choice and of immortal seed ! 
 Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance 
 Or easy were as in a boy's romance ; 
 The man's whole life preludes the single deed 
 That shall decide if his inheritance 
 Be with the sifted few of matchless breed. 
 Our race's sap and sustenance. 
 
 Or with the unmotived herd that only sleep and feed. 
 Choice seems a thing indifferent ; thus or so. 
 What matters it ? The Fates with mocking face 
 Look on inexorable, nor seem to know 
 Where the lot lurks that gives life's foremost place. 
 Yet Duty's leaden casket holds it still, 
 And but two ways are offered to our will. 
 Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace, 
 The problem still for us and all of human race. 
 
g 
 
 He chose, as men choose, where most danger showed, 
 
 Nor ever faltered 'neath the load 
 
 Of petty cares, that gall great hearts the most. 
 
 But kept right on the strenuous up-hill road. 
 
 Strong to the end, above complaint or boast : 
 
 The popular tempest on his rock-mailed coast 
 
 Wasted its wind-borne spray, 
 
 The noisy marvel of a day ; 
 
 His soul sate still in its unstormed abode. 
 
 Washington's Resignation. 
 
 J/is Address to Congress at Annapolis^ December 2j, lySj. 
 
 The great events on which my resignation depended having at length 
 taken place, I have now the honor of offering my sincere congratulations to 
 congress, and of presenting myself before them, to surrender into their hands 
 the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the 
 service of my country. 
 
 Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, and 
 pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States of becoming a re- 
 spectable nation, I resign with satisfaction the appointment I accepted with 
 diffidence ; a diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task, which, 
 however, was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the 
 support of the supreme power of the union, and the patronage of heaven. 
 
 The successful termination of the war has verified the most sanguine 
 expectations ; and my gratitude for the interposition of Providence, and the 
 assistance I have received from my countrymen, increases with every review 
 of the momentous contest. 
 
 While I repeat my obligations to the army in general, I should do injus- 
 tice to my own feelings not to acknowledge in this place the peculiar services 
 and distinguished merits of the gentlemen who have been attached to my per- 
 son during the war. It was impossible the choice of confidential officers to 
 compose my family should have been more fortunate. Permit me, sir, to 
 recommend in particular those who have continued in the service to the pres- 
 ent moment, as worthy of the favourable notice and patronage of congress. 
 
 I consider it as an indispensible duty to close this last act of my official 
 life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of 
 Almighty God, and those who have the superintendance of them to his holy 
 keeping. 
 
 Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great 
 theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, 
 under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and 
 take my leave of all the employments of public life. 
 
 The completest and most interesting Life of Washington is that by Irving. The 
 admirable Life by Chief-Justice Marshall will always have a special interest as the work 
 of a great man who knew Washington well. Sparks prefixed a biography to his edition 
 of Washington's Writings, and this has been published separately and is one of the best. 
 A good briefer biography is that by Everett ; and the addresses and essays on Washington by 
 Everett, Webster, Winthrop, Whipple, and Theodore Parker are important. The volume 
 of " Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington," by George Washington Parke 
 Custis, Mrs. Washington's grandson and the boy of the Mt. Vernon household, gives vivid 
 and valuable impressions of Washington's private life and character. See also the article by 
 Parton, "The True and Traditional Washington," in the Magazine of American History, 
 1879. Headley's " Washington and his Generals " contains brief biographies of Greene, 
 Gates, Putnam, Wayne, Schuyler, and all of the leading generals of the Revolution, and there 
 exist important separate lives of many of these. The chapters on the Army of the Revolution 
 and the Campaigns of the Revolution, in Greene's " Historical View of the American Revo- 
 lution," throw much light on the military conduct of the war. The younger readers hardly 
 need to be reminded of Coffin's " Boys of '76 ; " and none must forget how often the poets 
 and the story-tellers have devoted themselves to Revolutionary themes. For the fullest 
 information concerning all books relating to the Revolution, the student is referred to 
 Winsor's "Reader's Handbook of the American Revolution." 
 
FOURTH SERIES, i8S6. No. 8. 
 
 Washington and the Principles of the 
 
 Revolution/ 
 
 BY EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. 
 
 The history, so sad and so glorious, which chronicles 
 the stern struggle in which our rights and liberties passed 
 through the awful baptism of fire and blood, is eloquent with the 
 deeds of many patriots, warriors, and statesmen ; but these all 
 fall into relations to one prominent and commanding figure, 
 towering up above the whole group in unapproachable majesty, 
 whose exalted character, warm and bright with every public and 
 private virtue, and vital with the essential spirit of wisdom, has 
 burst all sectional and national bounds, and made the name of 
 Washington the property of all mankind. 
 
 This illustrious man, at once the world's admiration and 
 enigma, we are taught by a fine instinct to venerate, and by a 
 wrong opinion to misjudge. The might of his character has 
 taken strong hold upon the feelings of great masses of men ; 
 but, in translating this universal sentiment into an intelligent 
 form, the intellectual element of his wonderful nature is as much 
 depressed as the moral element is exalted, and consequently we 
 are apt to misunderstand both. Mediocrity has a bad trick of 
 idealizing itself in eulogizing him, and drags him down to its 
 own level while assuming to lift him to the skies. How many 
 times have we been told that he was not a man of genius, but a 
 person of "excellent common sense," of " admirable judgment," 
 of " rare virtues " ! and, by a constant repetition of this odious 
 cant, we have nearly succeeded in divorcing comprehension 
 from his sense, insight from his judgment, force from his virtues, 
 
 ^ -• ' csi ^s^\ ^'"^ - " . 
 
 'Reprint {--' - ''o— ^jv - Hect in " ^hH-^ - - .-^^^^— .t^ 
 
and life from the man. Accordingly, in the panegyric of cold 
 spirits, Washington disappears in a cloud of commonplaces ; in 
 the rodomontade of boiling patriots, he expires in the agonies of 
 rant. Now, the sooner this bundle of mediocre talents and 
 moral qualities, which its contrivers have the audacity to call 
 George Washington, is hissed out of existence, the better it will 
 be for the cause of talent and the cause of morals : contempt of 
 that is the condition of insight. He had no genius, it seems. 
 O no ! genius, we must suppose, is the peculiar and shining 
 attribute of some orator, whose tongue can spout patriotic 
 speeches, or some versifier, whose muse can " Hail Columbia," 
 but not of the man who supported states on his arm, and carried 
 America in his brain. The madcap Charles Townshend, the 
 motion of whose pyrotechnic mind was like the whiz of a hun- 
 dred rockets, is a man of genius ; but George Washington, 
 raised up above the level of even eminent statesmen, and with 
 a nature moving with the still and orderly celerity of a planet 
 round the sun — he dwindles, in comparison, into a kind of 
 angelic dunce ! What is genius ? Is it worth anything ? Is 
 splendid folly the measure of its inspiration ? Is wisdom that 
 which it recedes from, or tends towards ? And by what defini- 
 tion do you award the name to the creator of an epic, and deny 
 it to the creator of a country ? On what principle is it to be 
 lavished on him who sculptures in perishing marble the image 
 of possible excellence, and withheld from him who built up in 
 himself a transcendent character, indestructible as the obliga- 
 tions of Duty, and beautiful as her rewards ? 
 
 Indeed, if by the genius of action you mean will enlightened 
 by intelligence, and intelligence energized by will — if force and 
 insight be its characteristics, and influence its test — and, 
 especially, if great effects suppose a cause proportion ably great, 
 that is, a vital causative mind — then is Washington most 
 assuredly a man of genius, and one whom no other American 
 has equalled in the power of working morally and mentally on 
 other minds. His genius, it is true, was of a peculiar kind, the 
 genius of character, of thought and the objects of thought solidi- 
 fied and concentrated into active faculty. He belongs to that 
 rare class of men — rare as Homers and Miltons, rare as Platos 
 and Newtons — who have impressed their characters upon 
 nations without pampering national vices. Such men have 
 natures broad enough to include all the facts of a people's prac- 
 tical life, and deep enough to discern the spiritual laws which 
 underlie, animate, and govern those facts. Washington, in 
 f'hr^r-i- ,hr>r\ f\yr^f p--'^>^;^^2e''' oj^ c/iarao/''"'.wl ''^ ^"^ thk hest expre>.- 
 
of building up character except through mind. Indeed, charac- 
 ter like his is not built up, stone upon stone, precept upon 
 precept, but grows up, through an actual contact of thought with 
 things — the assimilative mind transmuting the impalpable but 
 potent spirit of public sentiment, and the life of visible facts, 
 and the power of spiritual laws, into individual life and power, 
 so that their mighty energies put on personality, as it were, and 
 act through one centralizing human will. This process may not, 
 if you please, make the great philosopher or the great poet ; but 
 it does make the great ma7i — the man in whom thought and 
 judgment seem identical with volition — the man whose vital 
 expression is not in words, but deeds — the man whose sublime 
 ideas issue necessarily in sublime acts, not in sublime art. It 
 was because Washington's character was thus composed of the 
 inmost substance and power of facts and principles, that men 
 instinctively felt the perfect reality of his comprehensive man- 
 hood. This reality enforced universal respect, married strength 
 to repose, and threw into his face that commanding majesty, 
 which made men of the speculative audacity of Jefferson, and 
 the lucid genius of Hamilton, recognize, with unwonted meek- 
 ness, his awful superiority. 
 
 But, you may say, how does this account for Washington's 
 virtues ? Was his disinterestedness will ? Was his patriotism 
 intelligence ? Was his morality genius ? These questions I 
 should answer with an emphatic yes ; for there are few falser 
 fallacies than that which represents moral conduct as flowing 
 from moral opinions detached from moral character. Why, 
 there is hardly a tyrant, sycophant, demagogue, or liberticide 
 mentioned in histor}^, who had not enough moral opinions to 
 suffice for a new Eden ; and Shakespeare, the sure-seeing poet 
 of human nature, delights to put the most edifying maxims of 
 ethics into the mouths of his greatest villains, of Angelo, of 
 Richard the Third, of the uncle-father of Hamlet. Without 
 doubt Caesar and Napoleon could have discoursed more fluently 
 than Washington on patriotism, as there are a thousand French 
 republicans, of the last hour's coinage, who could prattle more 
 eloquently than he on freedom. But Washington's morality was 
 built up in warring with outward temptations and inward pas- 
 sions, and every grace of his conscience was a trophy of toil and 
 struggle. He had no moral opinions which hard experience 
 and sturdy discipline had not vitalized into moral sentiments, 
 and organized into moral powers ; and these powers, fixed and 
 seated in the inmost heart of his character, were mighty and far- 
 sighted forces, which made his intelligence moral and his moral- 
 ity intelligent, and which no sorcery of the selfish passions could 
 
overcome *or deceive. In the sublime metaphysics of the New 
 Testament, his eye was single, and this made his whole body 
 full of light. It is just here that so many other eminent men of 
 action, who have been tried by strong temptations, have miser- 
 ably failed. Blinded by pride, or whirled on by wrath, they have 
 ceased to discern and regard the inexorable moral laws, obedi- 
 ence to which is the condition of all permanent success ; and, 
 in the labyrinths of fraud and unrealities in which crime entan- 
 gles ambition, the thousand-eyed genius of wilful error is smitten 
 with folly and madness. No human intellect, however vast its 
 compass and delicate its tact, can safely thread those terrible 
 mazes. "Every heaven-stormer," says a quaint German, "finds 
 his hell, as sure as every mountain its valley." Let us not 
 doubt the genius of Washington because it was identical with 
 wisdom, and because its energies worked with, and not against, 
 the spiritual order its " single eye " was gifted to divine. We 
 commonly say that he acted in accordance with moral laws ; but 
 we must recollect that moral laws are intellectual facts, and are 
 known through intellectual processes. We commonly say that 
 he was so conscientious as ever to follow the path of right, and 
 obey the voice of duty. But what is right but an abstract term 
 for rights .'* What is duty but an abstract term for duties ? 
 Rights and duties move not in parallel but converging lines ; 
 and how, in the terror, discord, and madness of a civil war, 
 with rights and duties in confused conflict, can a man seize on 
 the exact point where clashing rights harmonize, and where 
 opposing duties are reconciled, and act vigorously on the con- 
 ception, without having a conscience so informed with intelli- 
 gence that his nature gravitates to the truth as by the very 
 instinct and essence of reason .'* 
 
 The virtues of Washington, therefore, appear moral or mental 
 according as we view them with the eye of conscience or 
 reason. In him loftiness did not exclude breadth, but resulted 
 from it ; justice did not exclude wisdom, but grew out of it ; 
 and, as the wisest as well as justest man in America, he was 
 preeminently distinguished among his contemporaries for mod- 
 eration — a word under which weak politicians conceal their 
 want of courage, and knavish politicians their want of principle, 
 but which in him was vital and comprehensive energy, tem- 
 pering audacity with prudence, self-reliance with modesty, 
 austere principles with merciful charities, inflexible purpose 
 with serene courtesy, and issuing in that persistent and uncon- 
 querable fortitude, in which he excelled all mankind. In scru- 
 tinizing the events of his life to discover the processes by which 
 his character grew gradually up to its amazing height, we are 
 
5 
 
 arrested at the beginning by the character of his mother, a 
 woman temperate like him in the use of words, from her clear 
 perception and vigorous grasp of things. There is a familiar 
 anecdote recorded of her, which enables us to understand the 
 simple sincerity and genuine heroism she early instilled into his 
 strong and aspiring mind. At a time when his glory rang 
 through Europe ; when excitable enthusiasts were crossing the 
 Atlantic for the single jjurpose of seeing him ; when bad poets 
 all over the world were sacking the dictionaries for hyperboles 
 of panegyric ; when the pedants of republicanism were call- 
 ing him the American Cincinnatus and the American Fabius 
 — as if our Washington were honored in playing the adjective 
 to any Roman, however illustrious! — she, in her quiet dignity, 
 simply said to the voluble friends who were striving to flatter 
 her mother's pride into an expression of exulting praise, "that 
 he had been a good son, and she believed he had done his duty 
 as a man." Under the care of a mother, who flooded common 
 words with such a wealth of meaning, the boy was not likely 
 to mistake mediocrity for excellence, but would naturally 
 domesticate in his heart lofty principles of conduct, and act 
 from them as a matter of course, without expecting or obtaining 
 praise. The consequence was, that in early life, and in his first 
 occupation as surveyor, and through the stirring events of the 
 French war, he built up character day by day in a systematic 
 endurance of hardship ; in a constant sacrifice of inclinations to 
 duty ; in taming hot passions into the service of reason ; in 
 assiduously learning from other minds ; in wringing knowledge, 
 which could not be taught him, from the reluctant grasp of a 
 flinty experience ; in completely mastering every subject on 
 which he fastened his intellect, so that whatever he knew he 
 knew perfectly and forever, transmuting it into mind, and send- 
 ing it forth in acts. Intellectual and moral principles, which 
 other men lazily contemplate and talk about, he had learned 
 through a process which gave them the toughness of muscle 
 and bone. A man thus sound at the core and on the surface 
 of his nature ; so full at once of integrity and sagacity ; speak- 
 ing ever from the level of his character, and always ready to 
 substantiate opinions with deeds; — a man without any morbid 
 egotism, or pretension, or extravagance ; simple, modest, digni- 
 fied, incorruptible ; never giving advice which events did not 
 indorse as wise, never lacking fortitude to bear calamities which 
 resulted from his advice being overruled; — such a man could 
 not but exact that recognition of commanding genius which 
 inspires universal confidence. Accordingly, when the contest 
 between the colonies and the mother country was assuming its 
 
inevitable form of civil war, he was found to be our natural 
 leader in virtue of being the ablest man among a crowd of able 
 men. When he appeared among the eloquent orators, the 
 ingenious thinkers, the vehement patriots, of the Revolution, 
 his modesty and temperate professions could not conceal his 
 superiority : he at once, by the very 7iature of great character, 
 was felt to be their leader ; towered up, indeed, over all their 
 heads as naturally as the fountain, sparkling yonder in this July 
 sun, which, in its long, dark, downward journey, forgets not the 
 altitude of its parent lake, and no sooner finds an outlet in our 
 lower lands than it mounts, by an impatient instinct, surely up 
 to the level of its far-off inland source. 
 
 After the first flush and fever of the Revolutionary excite- 
 ment were over, and the haggard fact of civil war was visible in 
 all its horrors, it soon appeared how vitally important was such 
 a character to the success of such a cause. We have already 
 seen that the issue of the contest depended, not on the decision 
 of this or that battle, not on the occupation of this or that city, 
 but on the power of the colonists to wear out the patience, 
 exhaust the resources, and tame the pride of Great Britain. 
 The problem was, how to combine the strength, allay the sus- 
 picions and sustain the patriotism of the people, during a contest 
 peculiarly calculated to distract and weaken their energies. 
 Washington solved this problem by the true geometry of indom- 
 itable personal character. He was the soul of the Revolution, 
 felt at its center, and felt through all its parts, as a uniting, 
 organizing, animating power. Comprehensive as America itself, 
 through him, and through him alone, could the strength of 
 America act. He was security in defeat, cheer in despondency, 
 light in darkness, hope in despair — the one man in whom all 
 could have confidence — the one man whose sun-like integrity 
 and capacity shot rays of light and heat through everything they 
 shone upon. He would not stoop to thwart the machinations 
 of envy ; he would not stoop to contradict the fictions and 
 forgeries of calumny ; and he did not need to do it. Before 
 the effortless might of his character, they stole away, and 
 withered, and died ; and through no instrumentality of his did 
 their abject authors become immortal as the maligners of 
 Washington. 
 
The Duties of Citizens in These Times. 
 
 Fro7n Governor Robinson^ s Speech at Dedham, Septetnber 21, 1886. 
 
 If some foreign potentate should issue a proclamation declaring that on 
 and after October i next, no man in the town of Dedham should have the 
 right to cast his vote or to attend the town meeting, every man would be as 
 valiant and as ready for a sacrifice as the grand old heroes of the past were ; 
 every man would stand at the corner of the streets with his musket, ready 
 to meet the power that sought to put in force that infamous proclamation. 
 And yet there are men in the town of Dedham who slothfully lay down their 
 privileges every year and let them go into the dust, as if they were not worth 
 the sacrifice of the past or the enjoyment of the present. You heard 
 about the grand old men this forenoon — how they sacrificed, how they 
 stood, how they marched, not only in Dedham, but over into Lexington, in 
 order to meet the enemy. Do you read in the annals of Dedham in 1886 
 of all the men shouldering the ballot when the time comes, and marching 
 to that strife } Are there any in the old records who were recorded as 
 having been so busy in the corn-field that they could not come home to 
 attend to the affairs of the town or the church .? Perchance there may be 
 men who go to Boston and find occupation in counting-rooms, possibly 
 lawyers who find clients in court, possibly ministers who have an idea that 
 this whole matter of politics is too foul and vile for them to touch. Possibly 
 there are many people who think that somehow or other the assemblage of 
 the free men of America in our own time, clad in the rights of citizenship 
 by the power that secures us all, that that communion and that concourse 
 are not honorable and good for them. I tell you, such people as these 
 would not have had enough in them to make a decent Puritan out of. 
 That kind of people stayed across the water and never came here, or, 
 if they did, they took the first ship back. Why, Dedham has 1,500 voters 
 on her voting list, 1,500 men who have the right to vote, and I say more, 
 who have the duty to vole, who have not any right to be excused, except 
 for insuperable reasons, and only 761 out of that whole number voted at 
 the last election. Shame on us to come up here today and sit down with 
 unblushing faces and listen to the glory of the past and the greatness of our 
 ancestors, and the sacrifices they made and the stuff that was in them, and 
 we, weak and puny, insignificant out of all comparison. Perhaps this is the 
 way that the Commonwealth should not talk. Perhaps the Governor ought 
 to rise here, and deliver some high-flown oration. But this is the only time, 
 at her 25otb anniversary, that I can possibly have the opportunity to free my 
 mind and my soul. I know how some men say, after they have heard a 
 splendid exaltation of the idea of the Massachusetts town meeting. What 
 a grand theater it is for the operations of a free man. Oh, yes, they say, 
 as they walk along the street and button their coats for fear of contamina- 
 tion — that will do in the times past when they had good town meetings. 
 If there are in these 750 men who stay away from the polls in Dedham any 
 who think affairs ought to be better than they are, any who believe that 
 in the town there are fellow-citizens who do not appreciate to the full their 
 rights and their duties, there is abundant call for them to go in and 
 stimulate, elevate, encourage, and strengthen. You think the citadel of 
 power is in danger. You think that the enemies to good government are 
 storming our strong places at the present time. Well, then, the business 
 for you is to rush into the breach and to stay there until security is assured. 
 
8 
 
 I hear from time to time a good deal said about how this republic of ours 
 and how our State is to go to ruin ; that it is to go down through the path 
 of luxury, may be; that it will go down through some contest between 
 labor and capital ; that it will go down to destruction in one or other of 
 many different ways. But I tell you no such thing. If it go down at all, 
 it will go down over men who have become corpses before there was any 
 struggle at all. If it goes down, it will be because our people will talk of 
 the greatness of the town system, will extol the record of the past, will 
 boast of their Puritan ancestry, and elevate themselves before the world, 
 but will not do one single thing to interrupt their leisure or to go aside 
 from their cares or their pleasures to keep in power the principles that the 
 grand old Puritans established. When I stood before the humble monu- 
 ment on the green at Lexington, when I read in my boyhood days the 
 record of the inscription for the first time, and then again for many times 
 after, and when I saw the old houses in which the old heroes lived, and out 
 of which some of them went for the last time on that eventful morning in 
 1775, when in my boyhood I talked with the men that survived that onset, 
 I received an impulse into my verv nature, that has made me ever constant 
 for the exercise of that power which, under the blessing of God, our grand old 
 patriotic fathers made possible for this generation. 
 
AUG 3 1903