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CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Town of Sheffield, 
 
 BERKSHIRE CO., MASS. 
 
 June 18th and 19th, 1876. 
 
 BY THE SECRETARIES OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE TOWN. 
 
 
 SHEFFIELD. 
 
 1876. 
 
 7T 
 


 s 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preliminary Statement, ...... 5 
 
 The Proceedings, - . - - - - - 9 
 
 Sermon, by the Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D., - - - 18 
 
 Sermon, by the Rev. Charles M. Hyde, D. D., - - 27 
 
 Historical Address, by Gen. J. G. Barnard, U. S. Army, - 42 
 
 Appendix to Historical Address, .... 6i 
 
 Address upon the Growth and Development of the United 
 
 States op America, by the Hon. Abram H. Dailey, - 69 
 
 Oration, by George A. Hoadley, .... 94 
 
 Remarks of William G. Bates, - - - - - 101 
 
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT. 
 
 17 7 6. 
 
 At a Town Meeting, legally called, held in Sheffield, Berkshire Co., 
 Mass., on the 18th of Jnne, 1776, Capt. William Day being chosen 
 moderator, and Stephen Dewey being town clerk, the report of a 
 committee, consisting of " Col Ashley, Doctor Lemuel Barnard, Colo 
 John Fellows, Col Aron Boot & Capt. Nath el Austin " — which committee 
 was chosen "to draw a Besolve to send to the Bepresentative" — was 
 heard, and 
 
 "It was put to vote — Whether the inhabitants of the S d town of 
 Sheffield, should the Hon ble Continental Congress in their wisdom think 
 prudent and for interest and safety of the American Colonies to declare 
 s d colonies independent of the kingdom of Great Britton, they the 
 inhabitants of s d Sheffield will solemnly engage with their lives and 
 fortunes to support them in their measures. 
 
 "Voted in the affirmative: 
 
 " Two dissent's onlv 
 
 "WM. DAY, Moderator." 
 
 18 7 6. 
 
 At the Annual Town Meeting, held April 3, 1876, attention was called 
 to the vote passed by the town on June 18, 1776, and on motion it was 
 unanimously voted that the Centennial Anniversary of the day be 
 observed in a fitting manner. Bev. Orville Dewey, D. D., Oliver Peck, 
 M. D., J. Leland Miller, M. D., and Bev. Mason Noble, Jr., were 
 chosen a committee to arrange for such a celebration as would properly 
 commemorate the prompt and energetic patriotism of the fathers of the 
 town. 
 
 The committee thus appointed made arrangements which, through the 
 willing cooperation of our citizens, were duly and fully carried out. 
 They at first met with some disappointments. F. A. P. Barnard, 
 S. T. D., LL. D., President of Columbia College, was obliged, because 
 of previous engagements, to decline their invitation to take part in the 
 exercises. From Bev. Edmund S. Janes, D. D., Bishop of the Meth. 
 
Epis. Church, a letter was received which is given below. Hon. Charles 
 Dewey Day (grandson of the moderator of the town meeting, held June 
 18, 1776), of the Queen's Bench of Canada, was forbidden by the state 
 of his health to deliver an address. As the committee did not feel willing 
 to call upon any one to take part who could not be fairly reckoned a 
 child of the town, they congratulated their townsmen that even the 
 inability of such men as are here named to aid us, did not seriously 
 interfere to prevent the proper celebration of the day. Not many towns 
 of the small population of Sheffield have such men among their sons, 
 and far fewer tonus could have found other sons who could so worthily 
 fill the places thus made vacant. Our most hearty thanks are due and 
 are extended to the Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D. ; the Rev. Charles M. 
 Hyde, D. D., of Haverhill; Prof. George F. Root, Doc. of Music, of 
 Chicago j General John G. Barnard, XL S. Army ; the Hon. Abram H. 
 Dailey, of Brooklyn ; and Mr. George A. Hoadley, of Argyle, N. Y., for 
 their presence and their labors in our behalf. In this connection, also, 
 the name of Hon. Ensign H. Kellogg, of Pittsfield, should be mentioned, 
 who, though prevented by his appointment by the United States govern- 
 ment, as Commissioner under the Treaty of Washington, from filling a 
 more prominent place upon the programme of the occasion, was present, 
 and whose unique extemporaneous address was so greatly enjoyed. 
 
 The committee chose Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D., against his protest, 
 president of the day. The chief marshal and the musical director were 
 invited to be present, and to act, also, by the committee. A public 
 meeting was held June 3, of which Mr. Zacheus Candee was moderator, 
 and at which the necessary committees were chosen. The list of officers 
 is as follows : — 
 
 President, Orville Dewey, D. D. 
 
 Secretary and Treasurer, Eev. Mason Noble, Jr. 
 
 Music Director, George F. Root, Doc. Mus. 
 
 Music Committee, Hon. James Bradford, Frank Roys, William L. Abbott, Win. 
 H. Little, George B. Lee. 
 
 Marshal, Graham A. Root. 
 
 Assist. Marshals, S. Hopkins Bushnell, Hopkins T. Candee. 
 
 Ushers, Alfred H. Hoadley, Henry C. Clark, Levi H. Boardman, John Taft, 
 Edward M. Holmes, Frank Smith. 
 
 Literary Committee, Miss Mary E. Dewey, Mrs. Henry H. Smith, Mrs. Mason 
 Noble, Jr., Miss Eliza Sage, Miss Caroline H. Bradford, Miss Jenny M. Burr, Mrs. 
 Benj. F. Phillips. 
 
 COMMITTEE ON FINANCE. 
 Harvey Roys, D wight Boardman, 
 
 Roscoe C. Taft, L. Milton Merrifield, 
 
 Horace R. Bronson, T. G. Worthy, 
 
 Henry H. Hoadley, Charles Fretts, 
 
 Horace Z. Candee, Eugene J. Vosburg. 
 
Henry Dutcher, 
 John D. Burtch, 
 Alvin Callender, 
 Heman Callender, 
 Charles O. Dewey, 
 Cyrus French, 
 
 COMMITTEE ON HOSPITALITY. 
 
 Seth Lee, 
 Ralph Little, 
 George Landon, 
 George Shears, 
 Henry Suydam. 
 
 COMMITTEE ON THE EVENING RECEPTION. 
 Horace D. Train, M. D., Ralston P. Little, 
 
 Charles Brown, Theodore F. Miner, 
 
 Joseph W. Caudee, Charles Munn, 
 
 Frank P. Gleason, Robert L. Taft, 
 
 George Kellogg, M. John Smith. 
 
 COMMITTEE 
 
 Leonard Tuttle, 
 Mrs. Birdsey N. Burtch, 
 Mrs. Frank Curtiss, 
 Mrs. Henry Dutcher, 
 Mrs. Ann P. Hamlin, 
 Mrs. Lewis S. Parsons, 
 Edward D. Andrus, 
 Frank O. Andrus, 
 Myron W. Andrus, 
 George Bartholomew, 
 John M. Benjamin, 
 Charles K. Brown, 
 George R. Cook, 
 
 ON THE GROUNDS. 
 
 Frank Crippen, 
 Albert W. Curtiss, 
 Lawrence Hess, 
 Henry Hudson, 
 Asahel M. Little, 
 John N- Munson, 
 George D. Noble, 
 James Roraback, 
 Charles Spurr, 
 Orrin Taft, 
 Jairus N. Warner, 
 Luther Winch, 
 William Wilcox. 
 
 COMMITTEE 
 Mrs. R. D wight Andrews, 
 Miss Julia Abbott, 
 Mrs. Willis Bartholomew, 
 Mrs. Horace Z. Candee, 
 Mrs. Hopkins T. Candee, 
 Miss Bessie H. Cooper, 
 Miss Emma Clark, 
 Mrs. Frank Chapin, 
 Miss Annie Chappell, 
 Mrs. Wright Crippen, 
 Miss May Canfield, 
 Miss Louise Dewey, 
 Miss Helen Field, 
 Miss Minnie Forbes, 
 Miss Martha French, 
 Mrs. Grove D. Griffith, 
 Miss Martha Hubbell, 
 Mrs. John L. Hugins, 
 Miss Nellie Kellogg, 
 Miss Lucy Kellogg, 
 
 ON FLORAL DECORATION. 
 
 Miss Mary R. Leonard, 
 Mrs. Ralston F. Little, 
 Miss Mary Little, 
 Miss Nellie Little, 
 Miss Gertrude McMurray, 
 Mrs. Frank Noble, 
 Miss Lucia Peck, 
 Miss Kate Peck, 
 Mrs. L. Asher Robinson, 
 Miss Alice Sage, 
 Miss Lizzie Sage, 
 Miss Emma Stevens, 
 Miss Fannie Taft, 
 Mrs. Robt. L. Taft, 
 Miss Electa Tuttle, 
 Miss Lettie Tripp, 
 Miss Miriam Train, 
 Miss Libbie Warner, 
 Miss Ella Wilcox, 
 Miss Lilian Wickwire."' 
 
COMMITTEE ON THE COLLATION. 
 
 Mrs. Lucius Little, Mrs. Joel H. Field, 
 
 Mrs. John Bacon, Mrs. William S. Ferris, 
 
 Mrs. Levi Boar dm an, Mrs. George Gorham, 
 
 Mrs. Edmund Boardman, Mrs. A. Frank Hubbard, 
 
 Mrs. Bella N. Clark, Mrs. George Kirby, 
 
 Mrs. Harve}' Chapin, Mrs. Alonzo R. Hurlburt, 
 
 Mrs. Mary A Cowles, Mrs. Albert Leroy, 
 
 Mrs. Marcellus Chapin, Mrs. Stephen R. Miller, 
 
 Mrs. Adaline H. Cook, Mrs. John Pease, 
 
 Mrs. Henry Coon, Mrs. Harvey Roys, 
 
 Mrs. Albert W. Curtiss, Mrs. Andrew J. Rider, 
 
 Mrs. Orrin Curtiss, Mrs. Stephen B. Sardam, 
 
 Mrs. Zacheus Candee, Miss Olive Saxton, 
 
 Mrs. Orrin Clark, Mrs. Horace D. Train, 
 
 Mrs. Joseph G. Canfield, Mrs. James Van Deusen, 
 
 Mrs. Henry B. Chapin, Mrs. E. J. Vosburg, 
 
 Mrs. Charles O. Dewey, Mrs. Wm. Warner, 
 
 Mrs. James N. Dickson, Mrs. Theodore C. Wickwire. 
 Mrs. Luther Winch, 
 
 How well these committees performed their duties, the perfect success 
 of the celebration in every particular told. It would be invidious to 
 mention the special labors of individuals, but it would be unjust not to 
 allude to the continuous hard work so cheerfully done by the ladies and 
 gentlemen who arranged and distributed the collation at the Hall — the 
 weather having disarranged all their plans — and also to the efficiency 
 and ability shown by Mrs. Eliza Curtiss (whose name is not mentioned 
 above), who assisted in the decoration of the church, and to the willing 
 id rendered by Mr. and Mrs. S. H. Bushnell and Mr. M. J. Smith in 
 the same work. 
 
 The list of committees is here given exactly as it was then made out, 
 except that the names of Harvey Roys and Miss Annie Ohappell are 
 substituted for those of Abner Roys and Mrs. A. M. Little, according to 
 an arrangement made between themselves. Some of these persons were 
 unable or declined to serve, and some were, as always, more abundant in 
 labors than others. But it is not thought best to attempt to revise the 
 lists. No one was given authority to do so, and to correct them properly 
 would be to add to them, until almost a directory of the town was made 
 out. 
 
THE PEOCEEDINGS. 
 
 Sunday, June 18, 1876. 
 
 It was one of those "rare days of June." The congregation gathered 
 early, and soon filled the old church, seats, aisles, galleries, and vesti- 
 bule ; in all its hundred and sixteen years the old building has, probably, 
 never sheltered so many persons in one day. "The appearance of the 
 church in its floral decorations was charming to every beholder. Much 
 credit is due to the floral committee, and to Mrs. Andrews especially, 
 who superintended the work of decoration. Festoons of evergreens en- 
 circled the church, falling gracefully between each cluster of lamps, over 
 which flags were placed, adding much to the beauty of the whole. Be- 
 tween the higher windows handsome wreaths were suspended ; high up 
 and behind the pulpit a fine portrait of Washington was placed, 
 surrounded by flags of the Union, which owes so much to him, the Father 
 of our Country. The pulpit was handsomely decorated with flowers ; on 
 the front hung a wreath, and just below, two stars in red, white and blue 
 flowers; at each side of the desk were the dates, 1776-1876, all made 
 in flowers, and very ingeniously constructed, while on the table below 
 rested a beautiful harp of flowers. Fifty vases of flowers were placed 
 in various parts of the church, and fragrance and beauty were every- 
 where found. The organ was removed from the gallery for this occasion, 
 and placed on the right of the pulpit, the choir facing the congregation, 
 Dr. Geo. F. Root presiding at the organ." 
 
 — Connecticut Western News, for July 23, 1876. 
 
 The service began with a Prayer of Invocation, offered by Rev. Mason 
 Noble, Jr., the pastor of the church. 
 
 The choir then sang the anthem (arranged by Prof. Root), " Let the 
 people praise Thee, God ! let ALL THE PEOPLE praise Thee. 0, 
 let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for Thou shalt judge the people 
 
10 
 
 righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Let the people praise 
 Thee, God ! let ALL THE PEOPLE praise Thee." 
 
 The whole congregation rose, and joined in singing the long metre 
 Doxology, and the hymn written for the occasion by Mrs. Luella 
 Dowd Smith : — 
 
 HYMN. 
 i. 
 
 Where once men spoke with fear and dread, 
 We welcome you with joy to-day; 
 
 The sunshine breaks upon our head, 
 The clouds of war have passed away. 
 
 II. 
 
 That we might reap these brighter days, 
 Our fathers sowed with toil and tears ; 
 
 We speak their name with thankful praise, 
 And bless them for these hundred years. 
 
 III. 
 
 May we but live our lives as well — 
 
 Devoted to the true and free ; 
 Another hundred years shall tell 
 
 How we have prized our liberty. 
 
 IV. 
 
 God bless our land ! fair freedom's land ! 
 
 Protect her from all ways of guile ; 
 Teach her by night to trust Thy hand, 
 
 Teach her by day to seek Thy smile. 
 
 The following letter was read : — 
 
 New York, April 25, 1876. 
 Rev. Mason Noble, Jr., Sec, etc. 
 
 Dear Sir : — Your favor of the 6th inst. came to my residence in 
 my absence. 
 
 I am compelled to decline your courteous invitation to attend the cen- 
 tennial celebration of my native town on the 18th of next June, and take 
 part in the services. The Quadrennial or General Conference of my 
 Church holds its session next month, and my official duties, during and 
 immediately subsequent to its session, will render it very difficult, if not 
 impracticable, to comply with your request. My family is so greatly 
 
11 
 
 afflicted that my leaving them would be of questionable propriety, and 
 mv own health is so poor at this time that I cannot take any public 
 service which I do not feel to be an imperative duty. I regret very 
 deeply my inability to be with you on that patriotic and most interesting 
 occasion. 
 
 I glory in my geographical birthright. I have always been proud 
 of my native town, of my native country, and of my native State. No 
 commonwealth in the grand galaxy of the States has done more for 
 itself, for the Republic, and for mankind, than has Massachusetts. 
 
 If Sheffield is not the best town in the State, it is to me the dearest 
 one. 
 
 I shall be with you in spirit during your celebration, and shall pray 
 that the exercises of the occasion may strengthen the patriotic and relig- 
 ious sentiments of the people. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Edmund S. Janes. 
 
 A passage from the Bible was read by the Rev. Philip Germond, Pastor 
 of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 
 Prayer was offered by the Rev. Charles M. Hyde, D. D. 
 
 The anthem, "Praise waiteth for Thee, God, in Zion," was sung 
 by the choir, and choir and congregation united in the familiar hymn, 
 
 " Praise to Thee, Thou great Creator." 
 
 The sermon (given hereafter in full) was then preached by the Rev. 
 Orville Dewey, D. D. 
 
 Dr. Dewey led the congregation in prayer. 
 
 The choir sang the anthem, " The Lord reigneth, He is clothed in 
 majesty," and the congregation joined with them in the hymn, 
 
 " Come, sound His praise abroad;" 
 
 and the morning service was closed with the Benediction, pronounced by 
 Dr. Dewey. 
 
 The afternoon service was, perhaps, not so densely crowded, but the 
 congregation was hardly perceptibly smaller. 
 
 The service began with the reading of Scripture by the Rev. Mr. Noble. 
 
 The choir sang the anthem, " Let evetything that hath breath praise 
 the Lord," and all united in the hymn, 
 
 " Ye tribes of Adam join." 
 
12 
 
 Prayer was offered by the Rev. Mr. Germond. 
 
 The anthem, " All power is given unto Me," and the hymn, " All hail 
 the power of Jesus' name," were sung'. 
 
 Rev. Charles M. Hyde, D. D., then preached the Sermon (printed in 
 full in this volume), and led in prayer. 
 
 The choir sang the anthem, " The Lord bless thee, and keep thee," 
 and the congregation united with them in singing, 
 
 " Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing," 
 
 and the Benediction was pronounced by Dr. Hyde. 
 
 The evening service was one of praise, prayer and conference, con- 
 ducted by Mr. Noble, according to a programme arranged by himself 
 and Prof. Root. It consisted of congregational, choir, quartette and solo 
 singing, Scripture reading, Scripture reading with responses by the 
 choir and congregation, prayers, and remarks. Prayers were offered by 
 Rev. Norman Kellogg, of Sheffield ; Rev. Stephen Bush, of Waterford, 
 N. Y. ; Mr. Levi Warner, of New York ; and Mr. Robbins Burrell, of 
 Sheffield, Ohio j and brief remarks were made by Mr. Noble, Mr. Warner, 
 Prof. Root, Rev. Dr. Hyde, and Rev. Mr. Bush. The Benediction was 
 pronounced by Rev. S. P. Parker, D. D., Rector of the Episcopal 
 Church, Sheffield. 
 
 Monday, June 19. 
 
 Commenced with copious rain. All the morning the rain was poured 
 upon the thirsty earth. It was greatly needed by the fields, and was 
 thankfully received by our farmers ; but it necessitated a total change 
 in the prearranged order of exercises. Instead of the out-of-door gather- 
 ing for which we had planned, it was necessary to continue all the 
 exercises at the old church, and the procession w r e were obliged to omit. 
 
 Notwithstanding the rain, the church was filled to its utmost capacity 
 before the exercises of the day commenced with music by the Stockbridge 
 Cornet Band. 
 
 Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D., President of the day, presided, and 
 introduced General John G. Barnard, who read the address upon Local 
 History, published herewith. 
 
 The address was followed by singing, by the united choirs of the town, 
 of a song, the words and music of which were written by Prof. Geo. F. 
 Root, in view of this occasion, and which was, at this time, first sung in 
 public. The solo was sung by Prof. G. W. Stevens, of Watertown, New 
 York. It is to be regretted that we cannot give the music here. The 
 words are as follows : — 
 
13 
 
 DAY OF COLUMBIA'S GLOBY! 
 
 CHORUS. — Day of Columbia's glory ! 
 
 Crown of a hundred years ! 
 Now we may tell the story, 
 
 Now, for the whole world hears ! 
 Yes, from the old, mighty nations, 
 
 Ring out, in honor of thee, 
 Welcomes and congratulations, 
 
 Birthday of Liberty ! 
 Ring out in 
 Welcomes and congratulations, 
 
 Birthday of Liberty ! 
 
 SOLO. — Far down through the years of the century gone, 
 
 When the young star of Freedom burned dim and alone, 
 Twas this day, to the heart of the patriot so dear, 
 That revived dying hope, that repressed rising ffiar. 
 
 CHORUS. — Welcomes and congratulations, 
 Birthday of Liberty ! 
 
 SOLO. — The day that renewed the recorded decree, 
 
 " This land we declare Independent and Free," 
 And the long years rolled on, the clouds passed away, 
 And Heaven's light now gilds our Centennial Day ! 
 CHORUS. — Day of Columbia's glory ! 
 
 Crown of a hundred years ! 
 Tell once again thy story ! 
 
 Tell, for the whole world hears ! 
 Hark ! how the glad salutations 
 Ring o'er the land and the sea, 
 Peace and good-will from the nations, 
 Columbia, beloved, to thee ! 
 
 Columbia ! Columbia ! 
 Columbia beloved, to thee ! 
 Hear the glad salutations, 
 Peace and good-will from the nations, 
 Columbia, beloved, to thee ! 
 
 Hon. Abram H. Dailey, of Brooklyn, was then introduced. His 
 address is printed in this volume. 
 
 After music by the band, all those present, not residents of Sheffield, 
 were invited to adjourn to the Town Hall, and partake of a collation. 
 Then occurred our only opportunity to estimate the numbers present, but 
 the estimate is, at best, a rough one. The Hall will seat considerably 
 more than three hundred, and was filled three successive times. Quite a 
 number of residents in the outskirts of the town, however, accompanied 
 their guests to the Hall, and quite a number of visitors from abroad 
 
14 
 
 accompanied their hosts to their homes in the village. The ladies of 
 Sheffield proved themselves fully equal to all demands made upon their 
 hospitality, and from the Hall bushels of untouched provisions were 
 returned to the donors, or given to the poor. To those ladies and gentle- 
 men who cheerfully banished themselves from attendance upon the exer- 
 cises of the day, that they might do the necessary work at the Hall, the 
 thanks of their fellow-citizens are due. m 
 
 After an intermission of an hour and a-half, the audience was again 
 called together at the church, by the music of the band. 
 
 Mr. George A. Hoadley, of Argyle, N. Y., was then introduced, and 
 delivered the oration printed herewith. 
 
 Following the oration, a Centennial song — music by General Barnard — 
 was sung by a quartette, consisting of Misses Addie and Minnie Field, 
 and Messrs. A. R. Hurlburt and Robert Cone. 
 
 The words, composed by an accomplished Sheffield lady (adapted to 
 music previously composed), are as follows, remarking that it was con- 
 templated that the gathering should have been under the " old trees " of 
 the Pine Grove, adjacent to the village : — 
 
 SHEFFIELD CENTENNIAL SONG. 
 
 Summer is here, 
 Breezes blow soft, 
 Birds fly aloft ; 
 Happy are we ! 
 Merry our cheer 
 On this bright day, 
 Singing away 
 Beneath the pine tree. 
 Here we have come, 
 From far and near, 
 This Centennial year ; 
 Happy are we ! 
 Sheffield's our home 
 And at her call 
 We meet friends all, 
 Beneath the pine tree. 
 
 In days of old, 
 
 Strong for the right, 
 Our sires did unite, 
 So made us free. 
 Let us then hold 
 Sacred the gift, 
 And our hearts lift 
 Beneath the pine tree. 
 Here we have come, 
 From far and near, 
 This Centennial year; 
 Happy are we ! 
 Sheffield's our home, 
 And at her call, 
 We meet friends all, 
 Beneath the pine tree. 
 
 « CHORUS. — Sheffield's our home, 
 Ring out the song 
 Cheerful and strong 
 Beneath the pine tree, 
 The old tree, the old tree, 
 The jolly old tree, 
 King out the song around the pine tree. 
 
15 
 
 The account of the further exercises of the day is taken almost verbatim 
 from the Berkshire Courier, of June 21, the editor of which paper was 
 present, and published a report of the celebration from notes taken on 
 the spot. 
 
 Mr. Stevens sang a solo, " Two Hundred Years Ago," which was ap- 
 plauded to the echo, and only by reason of hoarseness was he allowed to 
 be excused from responding to the encore. After more enlivening music 
 by the band, the venerable chairman, Dr. Dewey, said : The assembly is to 
 celebrate a remarkable town meeting, and that this celebration is a cer- 
 tain sort of town meeting itself, and he proposed the participants should 
 exercise the rights and privileges of such meetings to speak if they desire, 
 or not, as they chose. He also recognized the right of the presiding 
 officer of a town meeting to call out such speakers as he may desire to 
 hear from. Many a man would prefer to pay the stamp tax our fore- 
 fathers made so much objection to, than to get up and speak in public. 
 But that nobody should have occasion to say they did not have oppor- 
 tunity, he would call upon nobody — or rather upon everybody — to 
 speak. 
 
 Dr. Peck, who was moderator of the town meeting at the outbreak of 
 the rebellion, in 1861, said, only two men voted against giving money for 
 war purposes. (A singular coincidence, as the record shows that two men 
 voted against the resolution passed June 18, 1776.) Norman T. Leonard, 
 of Westfield, corrected the historical statement, relative to the religious 
 societies of the town. (Mentioning the fact of the early organizations of 
 an Episcopal Society, which soon became extinct.) He recalled a " peace 
 meeting," when peace was declared — in the last war with Great Britain, 
 we believe — when one man, of peaceful proclivities, said : " Peace ! and 
 he who does not want peace, ought to be rammed into yonder cannon, 
 for wadding ! " He thought it was time for peace in our country now. 
 Alluding to a statement in one of the addresses touching the abolition of 
 slavery, Mr. Leonard said : "In the presence of that open Bible, when 
 the Southern men say they did right in holding their servants as slaves, 
 it is not in my heart to differ with them." 
 
 By special request of the chainnan, Dr. Dewey, made at the suggestion 
 of the " Literary Committee," Harry Hillyer Brigham, a lad of about 
 a dozen years, a son of the late Wm. Brigham, and great-grandson of 
 Gen. John Ashley, one of the first settlers of the town of Sheffield, and 
 from whom the village of Ashley Falls took its name, spoke a centennial 
 piece, which was very finely rendered, with clear voice, perfect enuncia- 
 tion, and graceful gestures. 
 
 Ensign H. Kellogg, of Pittsfield, next made a speech that was the spice 
 and seasoning of the entire literary feast. It was full of anecdotes and 
 personal memories of the old-time folks of Sheffield. He said : As a son 
 
16 
 
 of the grand old town, he could not fail to express his enjoyment in the 
 celebration, which, as lie expected, would be characteristic of the generous 
 hospitality of the town. Not many towns in the State have such a record 
 as that expressed by the vote of one hundred years ago, and it was well 
 to rejoice over it. He recalled the old edifice, as it appeared in his boy- 
 hood days, with its high-backed seats, in which he could hardly see the 
 minister, and could not see the girls at all. He always thought that was 
 the reason why they changed the style of seats. How well he remem- 
 bered the girls of those days, but could not name them, for matrimony 
 had played havoc with their names. He used to think that Col. Fred. Root 
 — and a grand old fellow he was — when he used to march into the 
 church, and take his seat as leader of the choir, and take up the pitch- 
 pipe, was the biggest man in the world. Training-day called up a 
 myriad of reminiscences of the sports the boys had at those times. He 
 told of the " stint" the boys must first accomplish, to attend the election 
 parade, and of the beans they planted in a woodchuck's hole to gain time. 
 It was a great thing to see Gen. Whiting ride down from Great 
 Barrington on his spirited horse, as Inspector-General, arrayed in all 
 the glory of buff, and all the blazonry of brass buttons. Darby, the 
 "Guinea nigger," was also recalled; how he used to relate his being brought 
 a slave from Africa. Darby was an.artistic agriculturist. He would plant 
 a field of corn, put beans beside the hills, plant potatoes between the hills, 
 and then sow the whole field to buckwheat. When the corn came up, 
 he used to pull out the largest sprouts to give the little ones a chance to 
 grow. One by one he called up the " characters " of forty-five years ago, 
 and kept the audience in good humor for over an hour with the amusing 
 reminiscences.* 
 
 * In answer _to our request to put in writing the substance of his remarks, Mr. 
 Kellogg makes the following reply. 
 
 While regretting that it should be so, it must be admitted that to " write it out'' as 
 'twas spoken, would be like attempting to catch the effervescence of the champagne 
 goblet, or to fix the hues of the rainbow : — 
 
 Pittsfield, Mass.. Aug. 19th, 1876. 
 My Dear Sir :— 
 
 Since I received your recent letter, I have been looking at the matter of 
 writing out what [ said at the Centennial Celebration. I find it was of so desultory 
 and conversational a character that I cannot give it as 'twas spoken, and the print 
 would lose what little interest the original talk gave. I must, therefore, abandon the 
 attempt. I hope I have not delayed the progress of the pamphlet. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 E. H. Kellogg. 
 Rev. Mason Noble. 
 
17 
 
 Rev. Mr. Bush, of Waterford, N. Y., made a few remarks, as did also 
 Hon. J. Z. G-oodrich, of Stockbridge, and Wm. Root, of Sheffield. Ohio. 
 
 The day proved too short for our exercises, and when, because of the 
 lateness of the hour, the "meeting" was compelled to adjourn, Hon. 
 James Bradford, Wm. G. Bates, Esq., Rev. N. Kellogg, Hon. 0. D. 
 Day, and A. T. Roraback, Esq., of those invited by the committee, had 
 not spoken, and a poem, written for the occasion by Mrs. B. F. Philips, 
 at the invitation of the " Literary Committee," was unread. Many others 
 were present, children or grandchildren of the town, from whom we 
 would have gladly heard, but time was inexorable, and they and we must 
 wait patiently until our next Centennial gathering. 
 
 THE EVENING BECEPTION, 
 
 In the evening the Town Hall was filled with ladies and gentlemen, 
 some of whom were dressed in y e ancient costumes of the land. One 
 especially beautiful dress of solid brocade was sent from England 130 
 years ago, and was the wedding dress of Gen. John Ashley's wife, in 
 1769. It was worn Monday evening by a great-granddaughter of the 
 bride, Mrs. Hamlin, of New York. There was a calash that was worn 
 80 years ago bj^ Sheriff Root's grandmother, and many jewels, and other 
 articles of old times. A musket was exhibited (by Dea. C. D. Sage) that 
 was used at Bunker Hill. The evening reception was a grand success, 
 and lasted into the " wee sma' hours." 
 
18 
 
 SERMON BY THE REV. DR. DEWEY. 
 
 " Kemeraber the days of old." — Deuteronomy, xxxii, 7. 
 
 "We turn aside from our usual religious meditations to-day, to remem- 
 ber the days of old ; days in which we are interested not only as the 
 people of this town, but which appeal to the wider sentiment of patriot- 
 ism and love of country. But let us not think that we leave religion 
 when we do so, least of all our Bible religion. This love of country, 
 this feeling called patriotism, breathes through many a passage of our 
 sacred Scriptures : in the writings of the old Hebrew time, in the recalling 
 of its early records so frequent in the Psalms and Prophets, in the solemn 
 adjuration, "If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her 
 cunning;" in that outburst of tender affection from the heart of Christ, 
 when he said, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered 
 thee, even as a hen gathereth her brood under her wings ! " Of such tender- 
 ness of patriotic feelings. I know no other record. 
 
 And well that it should be so. Our country is the home of our earthly 
 existence ; of all its affections, of all its ties of kindred and friendship, 
 of all its joys and sorrows, of all its prospects and hopes. No soil on 
 earth is like the natal soil, no fields are like those where our childhood 
 has played, and our manhood labored ; no ground as holy as that where 
 we took our birth, and which shall hold our sleeping dust j where our 
 children were born, and shall live after us. 
 
 Thus the fortunes of successive generations are woven together in that 
 bond which we call our country, and nothing, in its future or its past, 
 can be indifferent to us, till we are indifferent to ourselves. If we have 
 a country ; if there is here no such orphan of all nations as he who has 
 no country ; if there have been trials and vicissitudes and struggles in 
 the days of old ; if we have had ancestors wlio bravely met them, and 
 deserve to be remembered, it is meet that we remember them now, and 
 especially on this day. For on this day it was, the 18th of June, one 
 hundred years ago, that our fathers in Sheffield stood up, in town meet- 
 ing assembled, and passed the Resolve, — to state it in terms drawn from 
 the Town Records, — that, " if the Continental Congress, in their wisdom, 
 think prudent and for the interest and safety of the American Colonies, to 
 
19 
 
 declare the said Colonies independent of the kingdom of Great Britain, 
 the inhabitants of this town will solemnly engage, with their lives and 
 fortunes, to support them in their measure." — Voted in the affirmative : it 
 is added, " Two dissenters only." 
 
 This Resolution shows, in a pretty decisive manner, of what stock the 
 people were. It was the Puritan stock. That town-meeting Resolve told 
 of a lineage from men who, in England, a century earlier, stood up for 
 civil liberty, and of those pilgrims from their country who chose that hard 
 lot of exile, rather than submission to arbitrary power. It was from this 
 that they fled who built the first homes in New England — English 
 fugitives from oppression — not only the original pilgrim band that came 
 to Plymouth, but those who followed them, and settled along the eastern 
 coast; and it is their descendants who spread themselves over the 
 valleys of the Connecticut and Housatonic. One of the first settlers of 
 this town, who, with a company of associates, bought from the Indians 
 the tract of land which now is Sheffield and Great Barrington, came by 
 known and direct descent from a family that settled in Dorchester in 
 1633, only thirteen years after the landing in Plymouth. 
 
 No one, therefore, can trace our history, without giving a prominent 
 place to the men of Plymouth and their successors. Let me, then, go 
 back, and say a few words of them, in the first place. 
 
 What an enterprise was theirs ! What an emigration not seen in the 
 world since that, and with what trials and sacrifices was it carried out ! 
 It is good for their children to consider how, and why, and in what 
 spirit they came. They came, not as the followers of Columbus to His- 
 paniola did, to seek for gold ; not to find a home of ease and indulgence 
 on some favored shore. They came to find rest for their souls, a refuge 
 from persecution ; a place for the free exercise of their religion and their 
 conscience. And though they were fleeing from oppression and persecution, 
 it was not in the spirit of anger, but of sorrow. Nothing can be more 
 touching than the language of Francis Higginson, as he stood upon the 
 parting deck, when the shore of his native land was fading from his 
 sight. Lifting his hands, not in cursing, but in love and blessing, he 
 said: "We will not say. as the old sectaries said, Farewell, Rome, fare- 
 well, Babylon; but, Farewell, dear England, and all the friends and 
 brethren there." And they came, moreover, these men, not as mere 
 roaming adventurers, for themselves alone, but for their children, for 
 their posterity. Nothing was more remarkable in them than the spirit 
 of self-sacrifice. The first sermon that was printed in this country 
 (or in England for them — I do not know which), Robert Cushman's 
 Sermon, had this for its text : " Let no man seek his own, but every man 
 another's wealth," or welfare. Ay, that was a text to be delivered to 
 this pilgrim company, one year after their arrival ! delivered amidst 
 
20 
 
 hardships, and sufferings, and sacrifices, that might seem to have gone far 
 enough in that direction already. 
 
 And the whole sermon breathes the sentiment, nay, the language 
 which I often find in their annals, — the noble language which was stereo- 
 typed in their mouths, and not only so, but imprinted upon their hearts, 
 that they were willing, — this was what they said, — that they "were 
 willing to throw away their lives, ay, to sink in the sands of that inhos- 
 pitable coast, if they might be but stepping-stones for them that should 
 come after." It was no common hardihood, at the start, that led a small 
 band of men to launch their frail bark upon a seldom traversed sea, for 
 an unknown shore. That bark was freighted with the fortunes of unborn 
 millions. Other vessels followed in its track and brought the germs 
 of other like-minded communities, which soon lined the coast with rising 
 towns, that in process of time sent forth families and companies which 
 settled New England; and at length, New England settled and per- 
 meated the great West. It has carried with it its intelligence, its religion, 
 its free schools, its churches, and planted them in the valley of the 
 Mississippi. Some dim vision of this may have risen before the mind 
 of those brave and far-seeing exiles, who left their native land to 
 try what a new home and a new world might do for them and their 
 descendants. But how far beyond all human probability at the time 
 has been the fulfilment of their prophetic hope ! Yes, at the time, 
 not the prophecy of John, on the barren shore of Patmos, but with the 
 shining isles of the ^Egean Sea, and the neighborhood of nations all 
 around him, was in circumstances half so full of dread and desolation. 
 Bring up, if you can, the scene of their arrival before you. Look at that 
 small and shattered vessel, not entering a thronged port, not surrounded 
 by friendly sails, but alone ; the only moving object that you can see, 
 amidst the boundlessness of sky and waters. 
 
 What shore is it that she approaches, timidly seeking some inlet where 
 her weary company may land — darkened by primeval forests, clouded by 
 winter storms ? Look at those sea-worn voyagers, as they crowd the 
 frozen deck, vainly stretching their eyes to pierce the secrets of a world 
 to them all mystery ; the sea they had escaped on the one hand, and the 
 wilderness they must encounter on the other. 
 
 The ocean eagle soared 
 
 From his nest, by the white waves' foam, 
 
 And the rocking pines of the forest roared : 
 This was their welcome home. 
 
 Home ! Ay, home call it — though it is there that the burial-place of 
 more than half of that sad company, swept off in a year, still lifts its mourn- 
 ful brow above the waters. Ay, home call it : the home it was of those 
 
21 
 
 great hearts — all the home they had ; but dear to them — dearer than 
 Cashmere or Araby the Blest — because it was the rock-bound shelter and 
 resting-place of freedom. Yes, there lived, as it were, but a winter's day, . 
 the great progenitors of popular education, unshackled religion, and civil 
 liberty, through a long line of ages. 
 
 I have thus eudeavored to carry you back to our ancestors, the first 
 settlers of New England, because their character has the most immediate 
 bearing upon the event which we are assembled to commemorate. An 
 event, I call it, though it was no great battle ; no great action for history 
 to commemorate ; but, occurring among our fathers, it is of such interest 
 to us that we think that we can do nothing less than to mark and note 
 it, and take account of it as we do. 
 
 Our fathers, I say, and who were they ? Not far from us ; they were 
 the grandfathers of some among us. There are family ties between us 
 and them. Blood of our blood beat in their veins. They were men with 
 affections like our ow r n ; with interests, with cares, and anxieties, for one 
 another, for their children, for all their earthly welfare ; such as we feel 
 to-day. And with all this in their minds and hearts, they solemnly 
 resolved, in town-meeting assembled — not waiting to be called upon, 
 they volunteered — the resolve to take up arms for the common cause, when 
 occasion should call for it. 
 
 The significance of that event, it is true, is not confined to us. All over 
 New England the same spirit prevailed ; and in many places, as from 
 here, men were mustered to be sent, and were sent, to join Washington's 
 army, in Cambridge. Yes, the war of the Revolution was already 
 begun ; blood had been shed at Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker 
 Hill ; a British army had occupied Boston. 
 
 All this was before the eyes of the men of Sheffield, when they devoted 
 their lives and fortunes, in solemn pledge, to the common cause. We 
 are apt to see things, and especially events in history, in the abstract ; 
 we hear of things that are done far away from us, in time or place, but, 
 having no personal part in them, they do not come home to us, and we 
 do not know them. Their " lives and fortunes," these men said. It was 
 the language of the day — of a now by-gone day. It passes over our minds, 
 perhaps, as mere language ; and we do not understand what it meant. 
 But it was life, indeed, and life's fortunes, that were staked on that issue. 
 Oh ! that call to arms ! — ever must it strike deep and fearfully into the 
 heart of any community— that call which summons fathers, sons, brothers, 
 friends, lovers, to the bloody fight, there, perhaps, to die for their country. 
 We have ourselves known what that call is, and how it was met. We 
 know how it stirred every drop of patriotic blood to meet it. Bonaparte is 
 reported to have said : "The conscription " — i. e., the summoning and com- 
 pelling a part of the people — one, perhaps, out of every family — to go into 
 
22 
 
 the army, — " the conscription," he said, " is the everlasting root of a 
 nation." I do not know, certainly, what he meant by that. It may have 
 . been a mere military dictum of the great captain ; his way of saying- that 
 no nation can stand and last, unless it constantly arms for war. But I 
 conceive that his thought may have gone deeper. It may have been that 
 this constant call of a nation to arms — this taking of one from every 
 family, to stand ready and prepared to put his life in peril for his country 
 — tested and tried every heart in society, as nothing else could, and thus 
 appealed to that courage, and manliness, and self-consecration, without 
 which a nation can not stand, or grow, or prosper, or live. 
 
 That appeal the fathers of New England were prepared to meet. And 
 what prepared them for it f Remember that no order of the government 
 enrolled them for the conflict; no forced conscription, but their own 
 free resolve. And, again, it was not mere military invasion that they 
 resolved to withstand ; but the invasion of their rights ; the arrogance of 
 power ; unlawful taxation ; the imposition of customs and of laws, without 
 their consenting or being consulted. It was a case of such manifest 
 wrong, that some of the noblest men in England — as Burke and Chatham 
 — took their part, and spoke nobly of the justice of their cause. 
 
 But what, I repeat, prepared them to take the stand they did, for their 
 rights and liberties? What but the spirit that was breathed into them by 
 hereditary descent ? Suppose that they had come of a different stock ; 
 suppose that Spain had colonized the rock-bound coast of New England ; 
 that a company of selfish adventurers had come here, caring and seeking 
 for nothing but gold ; ready to crush down to slavery, misery and death, 
 all that stood in the way of their unholy greed ; caring for no rights but 
 the right to plunder. No picture in history is more mournful than that — 
 the Spanish invasions of Hispaniola, and Mexico, and Peru — the turning 
 all of those fair regions into blood and desolation — the crushing down 
 of the simple and innocent natives, by ten thousands, into slavery — 
 wasting away their lives in the hard toil of mines, or sweeping them 
 away in bloody and rulhless wars, like those of Vasco Nunez, and Cortez, 
 and Pizarro, till scarcely any of them were left to tell the miserable story. 
 
 Suppose, I say, that the first settlers of this country had been like them 
 where, then, had been a people like our fathers, to stand up for the rights 
 of man ? No, not Spanish, but English blood — blood like that of Hamp- 
 den and Cromwell — beat in the hearts of our fathers' sires. From that 
 came the spirit which would not submit to oppression ; which was ready 
 to take up arms against the strongest power in the world, in defence of 
 the right. 
 
 Or suppose that Norsemen, people from the north of Europe, had come 
 here, as they might have come, did come, centuries before ; suppose that, 
 instead of the intelligence and devoted religion which the Mayflower and 
 
23 
 
 its successors wafted to this shore, a wild and ignorant barbarism had been 
 brought here, — where, then, had been the care for education that planted 
 schools here, that, eighteen years after the landing at Plymouth, laid the 
 foundation of Harvard College 1 Where had been the political culture 
 that made laws ; that gathered the people into associated action for the 
 common weal ; that organized our town-meetings — the primary schools of 
 our free government ? " A people, when assembled in a town," says an 
 eminent writer, " is far more formidable than when dispersed over a wide 
 extent of country." Dispersed our people would have been, if they had 
 been descendants of an uncultivated horde from Norway or Greenland. 
 Then no such resolve would have been sent up to the Continental Congress, 
 as that which went forth from Sheffield and other incorporated townships. 
 They were Englishmen, I repeat, who came here, and they had among them 
 a full measure of the culture of their native land. They were ready, 
 and their children were ready, to stand up for their liberty, as their fathers 
 had stood at Marston Moor, Dunbar, and Worcester. 
 
 And war with them was not the end, as it would have been with 
 roaming tribes, but the means ; the means of building up a free state ; of 
 laying the foundations of education, law, and a sound civil polity. And 
 their zeal, firmness, and decision, in the cause for which they took up 
 arms, were such as became the children of the elder fathers of New 
 England. 
 
 What that spirit was in this town, is well evinced by an anecdote 
 which I will take the liberty to relate to you. It was told me by a 
 venerable officer in this church, whom some of you, perhaps, will remem- 
 ber — Deacon Callender. It was what he witnessed when he was a boy, 
 on the 4th of July, now a century ago. A liberty-tree had been set up 
 here, as in many other places. The very night following, it was cut 
 down. The news of this outrage spread through the town, and the next 
 day the whole population came together, in a state of the utmost excite- 
 ment and indignation, to see to this thing, and to find who had done it. 
 At that time, as you well know, there was a class of men in New Eng- 
 land, and in this whole country, who were called Tories, who stood 
 aloof from the great popular movement ; who took the side of England, 
 and counselled submission, rather than resistance, to her mandates. Many 
 of them were persons of property and high social position. One such 
 person was here, who had been for a considerable time a prosperous 
 merchant, and from his known sentiments it took but little time to 
 fasten the charge upon him, nor did he deny it. 
 
 The question then was, what should be done with him, to avenge the 
 insulted honor of the town, and of the liberty to which it was pledged. 
 And this was the decision : that all the people should stand in two rows 
 and that between them the offender should pass, and, taking off his hat to 
 
24 
 
 every individual as he passed, should say, " I ask your pardon." " A.nd^" 
 said my aged informant, " though I was but a little boy of ten years old, 
 Dan Raymond took off his bat, and asked my pardon." And then, having 
 ascertained who was the person that he had procured to cut down the 
 liberty-tree, they dressed him in a coat of tar and feathers, put him upon 
 a bareboned horse, and compelled him to ride through the whole street. 
 and to stop at every house, and ask pardon for what he had done.* 
 
 I have taken the liberty, justified, I hope, by the occasion, to give you 
 this relation, because it shows, better than any terms of general statement 
 could, what was the spirit of the fathers of this town of Sheffield. It is, 
 next to the event which we celebrate to-day, the most remarkable fact in 
 our Sheffield annals. That such a man as the principal offender should 
 have been made to pass through that gauntlet of humiliation, shows that 
 he saw a spirit in the people around him that was not to be trifled with. 
 They could not fine him, nor put him in prison — there was probably no 
 law for either — but that gauntlet they could make ; that singular amend 
 they could exact, with a sort of grim entertainment mixed with their 
 indignation ; and they did it. 
 
 I have thus attempted to tell you something of the story of that elder 
 time and conduct which we have met together to recall, and remember ; 
 of the character, the spirit, and feeling, of the men who, one hundred years 
 ago, stood up here to resist oppression and wrong ; and, with this view, I 
 have gone back to the original settlers of the country, from whom they 
 drew their birth and breeding. 
 
 But why, on the whole, and briefly to sum up the matter, — why should 
 we commemorate that action of the town, which we think it right to sig- 
 nalize with religious services and discourses, and which we propose, more 
 especially in secular fashion, to celebrate to-morrow ? Why shall we 
 meet together and call upon our townsmen, residing in different places, to 
 join us in this Centennial celebration ? 
 
 Because it is fit and becoming thus to remember our fathers — fit 
 toward them, and becoming for us. They who do not remember and 
 revere their ancestors who have done worthy deeds, are not likely to leave 
 • posterity that will be worthy of being remembered. It is, therefore. 
 
 * Dan Raymond — his name was Dan. not Daniel — was for many years a man i I 
 note and high standing in the town. His name first appears on the town records al 
 the date of his marriage to Anne Noble, July 19, 1763. In 1770 he was chosen to a 
 minor town office. In 1772 he was chosen constable. From the record one is com- 
 pelled to conclude that the " Sheffield Tory " met with a change of heart, for, in 1780, 
 lie was chosen assessor, and a member of the "committee to adjust town debts." and 
 •• overseer of the work-house," and chairman of a committee to engage recruits foi 
 the Continental army. Moreover, his third son. horn November 1st. 1783. was named 
 George Washington Raymond. — [M. N, Jr.] 
 
25 
 
 dbt only fit, but it concerns our own character, and the character of our 
 children, that we should do it ; that we should thus take, and leave to 
 our children, an impression which is good for us and for them. It is 
 an advantage in aristocratic countries, that noble families, who have 
 acted a distinguished part, should, in their permanence, carry down the 
 recollection and incitement of high, historic virtues. We have no aristo- 
 cracy. All the more reason is there that we, the whole people, should 
 take care of these treasures of the olden time ; that we should take upon 
 our hearts, and keep alive within them, the memory of our fathers' 
 virtues. 
 
 Not that we have anything extravagant to say of their merits. They 
 were good men and true, who stood in their lot, and did the duty of the 
 hour. And such a duty was it that I do not believe there was one low, 
 mean, base person who said " Ay " to that manly resolve of a century ago. 
 That " Ay," I have no doubt, was stoutly said. I have read an account, 
 from a French traveller, of what he once witnessed in the Spanish Cortes, 
 when a vote was taken, where every member of that body stood up, in 
 peril of his life, and loudly proclaimed his decision. That action the 
 writer commemorates as something very noble. There was no Cortes here, 
 but a simple town-meeting, and I say that its decision was noble. 
 And all the less distinguished it was — all the less parade and show there 
 was about it, all the more reason there is why we should signalize and 
 set it up for due honor. And if the thing then done, was done a century 
 ago ; if nobody now living remembers the men who did it ; if only some 
 of their names are known — and they evenaie passing away like shadows 
 into the dimness of antiquity — let us do what we can to rescue them from 
 oblivion. Let us say to one another, that we have had some good men 
 and true in Sheffield ; good men, ay, and good citizens, who have left us 
 the heritage of their example, — a heritage which it is our part not only 
 to hold in sacred rememb ranee, but to cultivate and to improve ; to carry 
 forward and to make better, every day, from this Centennial year, through 
 the century to come. 
 
 And for this special and final reason, let us do what we are doing iu 
 these anniversary days, that we may take it upon our hearts as a heredi- 
 tary pledge, faithfully, each one of us, to help build up in this land a 
 society and government that shall be worthy to be called a great and 
 example republic. All good men desire to see that — some happier 
 condition of society, at least — a better world, justice, truth, purity, in rulers 
 and people, all good men desire to see. The world is sighing for it. 
 Sages, poets, philosophers, have dreamed of it. We, ourselves, alas ! 
 are lamenting that it is yet so far from being realized here. We are 
 grieving over the violation of public trusts, and our own share in it, as 
 citizens and voters. A tone of sadness mingles with our Centennial 
 
26 
 
 rejoicings. Cannot something better be done? Cannot we begin to do 
 it, and go on doing it, from this day ? I will not exhort you to this, as 
 preacher. Let me speak to you as dreamer, if you call me so — as a 
 dreamer of dreams. Will not the time come for us better to understand 
 what good citizenship is ? 
 
 Yes, good citizenship ; citizenship under a representative government 
 — something far more than it is under arbitrary rule ; far more than it is 
 to keep the peace, to pay taxes, and obey the laws. Is it a baseless 
 dream to hope that the time will come when a new view will be taken 
 of our duties, as citizens of a free state ; when we, the people who made 
 the government, shall feel it as a sacred bond upon us, to make it a good 
 government ; when it shall no longer be a mere boast that we, the people, 
 rale ; no longer a theme for flattering speeches of holiday orators, but a 
 serious and deep conviction, that we must take the charge upon us, and 
 see to it that we set up a righteous administration to rule over us ; that 
 we thoughtfully deposit our votes in those ballot-boxes, which are the 
 fountains of power; that we thoughtfully give our suffrages, not to mere 
 partisan politicians, but to the wisest and best men in our choice ? 
 
 And to go down deeper into our common life. As we stand at the head 
 of a new era, as we look forward through a century to come, may we not 
 hope for constant improvement in every way ; that there will be a rising 
 intelligence ; that there will be a more watchful care over the schools ; 
 that there will be provisions here for reading, and habits of reading and 
 a good culture every way, which shall make happy firesides ; which shall 
 make all gross and fiery stimulants unnecessary ; that there shall be a 
 union of hearts and hands here, to make everybody happier, and, in fine, a 
 raised tone of thought ; a force of public opinion here that shall cany every 
 thing higher and higher 1 Can there not be such a thing as a pure, honest, 
 truth-loving, instructed, and wise community, where men shall dwell to- 
 gether as brethren ; where no man shall take unjust advantage of his 
 neighbor ; where there shall be no false man, no fallen man, no slave of 
 sense and passion ; where virtue and religion shall flourish together, bring- 
 ing the earth time and the eternal time into accordance, into one great and 
 happy life ; where love and purity shall come down from the holy heavens, 
 and breathe through all affections of society ? Blessed society ! society of 
 the beatitudes ! I shall not see it ; but the days, I trust, will come, 
 when happier and better men shall see it — let us pray for that — the 
 blessing, and gladness, and glory of coming generations. 
 
•27 
 
 SERMON BY THE KEY CHARLES M. HYDE., D.D. 
 
 "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long 
 
 UPON THE LAND WHICH THE LORD THY GOD GIVETH THEE." — Exodus XX, 2. 
 
 The Providence of God has called us to His house to-day in fulfilment 
 of a duty enjoined upon us by this word of God, " Honor thy father and 
 thy mother.'' In connection with the public observance of Divine 
 worship, while we " remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy," on this 
 anniversary day we have special occasion to remember and honor also 
 those to whose " house and lineage " we belong. 
 
 We do not meet merely to perpetuate the memory of the event that 
 stands recorded in the annals of this town one hundred years ago to-day. 
 Job might maliciously wish that his " enemy had written a book," to be 
 a perpetual monument of the shamefulness of wrong-doing : we are 
 rightfully proud that for one hundred years the records of the town have 
 preserved the remembrance of an honorable action, and for centuries to 
 come will tell the story of humble devotion to a people's imperilled 
 liberties. Nor do we meet to repeat the names of the men who partici- 
 pated in the discussions and decision of the town-meeting held June 18, 
 1776. That would be to most of us, who have never seen or known the 
 men themselves, only a lesson in pronunciation and enumeration. We do 
 not meet to make proclamation of sacrifices and services, ourselves 
 uninterested, unmoved. The herald's trumpet gives to the reechoing air 
 its noisy blare, but noise is neither fame nor worship. It is only as we 
 reproduce and perpetuate the principles which controlled the action of 
 that day, the spirit which lived and breathed in those fathers of this town 
 that these memorial services will be of any value to us, or any honor to 
 them. Thus shall we show higher regard for them than if we could 
 
 " Engrave their names on every star that shiues, 
 Or write their story on the bright blue sky, 
 To be forever read by every eye." 
 
 I do not propose to enter into any elaborate discussion of the principles 
 which our fathers maintained, nor to give an}' exhaustive analysis of the 
 spirit of independence that pervaded this community a century ago. But, 
 reminding }'ou that Thomas Jefferson was imbued with his ardent patrio- 
 
2S 
 
 tism by hearing Patrick Henry defending the dissenting ministers of 
 Virginia, and that Patrick Henry himself had learned the true principles 
 of human liberty from the preaching of Samuel Davies, may we not hope 
 that some young hearts and minds among us to-day may be interested 
 and profited by a succinct statement of some reasons we have for honoring 
 our patriotic ancestry ? 
 
 I. We honor our fathers, therefore, I remark in the first place, 
 because they were the advocates and representatives of the true principles of 
 constitutional government in Church and State. Not by man, nor of men, 
 but by the direct revelations of Divine Providence did they receive the 
 Gospel of political freedom. In the light that broke forth from God's 
 Word, as they reverently trod the path of Providential duty, they learned 
 not only what a Church of Christ ought to be, but also what are the rights 
 and privileges of every Christian community. Not only did God " sift 
 three nations that He might bring hither the finest of the wheat ; " but 
 He also prepared here the soil for the reception of the seed, and His 
 providences of sunshine and storm were the processes by which it was 
 developed and matured. 
 
 The Massachusetts Bay Company, under whose charter this region was 
 opened to settlement, was originally a trading company, formed for 
 purposes of commercial speculation. This trading company was, with- 
 out any such original purpose, transformed under God's guiding hand 
 into a civic brotherhood, strong in allegiance to right, formidable in its 
 opposition to injustice. The English king apprehending no harm from the 
 measure, those associated under the royal charter quietly transferred 
 from England to this country their chartered privilege of holding annually 
 a "General Court," or assembly of proprietors, for the election of a gov- 
 ernor and assistants, and for the enactment of " laws not repugnant to the 
 laws of England." Thus the colonists were trained from the very first to 
 the exercise of self-government. While the clergy were studying questions 
 of church polity, and settling articles of faith, the laity were investigating 
 theories of government, and studying the principles of constitutional 
 liberty. 
 
 Our fathers despised not the wisdom nor the experience of the past. 
 The leading spirits of the Revolutionary period of our national history were 
 scholarly men. Aristotle and Plato were their teachers in science and 
 philosophy. Cicero and Caesar were their instructors in the patriotism 
 and valor of Rome. Luther and Calvin made them familiar with the 
 elementary principles of the Christian faith, while, for practical applica- 
 tions of truth to the conduct; of life, they could have no better models 
 than such as English history afforded them. John Locke, and not the 
 French doctrinaires, was in New England the accepted authority on 
 questions of government. Our fathers profited by the study of these 
 
29 
 
 writers, quite as much by avoiding their errors as by following their 
 counsels. Treatises were written, and books on these questions of 
 government were read, just as now the facts and theories of physical 
 science furnish the topics for popular discussion and the books for special 
 reading. In the Church, as well as the town-meeting, differences of 
 opinion had arisen. These differences had been settled (so unreason- 
 able and obstinate is human nature even here in New England) after 
 years of jarring controversy. They had been settled, however, not by 
 arbitrary authority, but by accordant recognition of the true principles 
 involved. It is from precedent to precedent, each onward step based on 
 some acknowledged truth, as well as warranted by some substantial 
 advantage to be gained, that the liberties of our English-speaking 
 people have broadened out into what we now find them to be in the 
 institutions and usages of the constitutional monarchy of the mother 
 country, and the constitutional republicanism of the United States. 
 
 The very word Independence was, in its original use, an ecclesiastical 
 term. It was introduced into the English language by writers on 
 Church government. In advocating as part of the Christian system the 
 independence of every local Church, the fathers of our New-England 
 Congregationalism gave a new Avord to the English language, as well as 
 a new idea to the world. Our churches prepared the way for the action 
 of the Continental Congress that, in its session at Philadelphia, one 
 hundred years ago on the fourth of July, declared its reasons for 
 affirming that these colonies "are, and of right ought to be, free and 
 independent States.'' Such brief review of our nation's history as I have 
 given, shows us that Independence Day should properly be regarded as 
 the completion of our period of youthful immaturity, rather than as the 
 beginning of our national existence. We attained our majority at that 
 time, and began on our own responsibility our national life, independent 
 of the mother country. 
 
 One other historical fact, connecting our Congregational Church polity 
 with our national history, relates to the first suggestion of the union of 
 the colonies. Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, of Boston, was invited to attend 
 a council at Rutland. "Lord's day morning, June 8, 1766," he wrote a 
 letter to James Otis. Alluding to the date, he remarks that it was " a 
 good day for good thoughts," and goes on to say : " While thinking of the 
 communion of churches, the great use and importance of the communion 
 of colonies appeared to me in a strong light." Then he urges his cor- 
 respondent to adopt some measures to carry out this idea. This was the 
 first utterance, I believe, of the principle, " Liberty and Union," charac- 
 teristic of our American institutions, State as well as Church. Out of this 
 idea came the Committees of Correspondence, and the various measures 
 taken, to organize some bond of fellowship between the different 
 
30 
 
 townships and the different colonies. Through these committees, intel- 
 ligence in regard to every new grievance, and the proposed measures 
 of resistance, was communicated to every part of the country. 
 
 Our fathers appreciated the importance of fullest opportunity for the 
 freest formation and expression of correct public opinion. This must 
 ever be the true governing power in society. We give expression to it 
 in ways different from our fathers. The daily newspaper is the most, 
 potent agency of our modern civilization in disseminating intelligence and 
 inciting to action. Our Congressmen fear the reporter more than they do 
 the policeman. Our fathers insisted on every citizen taking part in 
 public affairs. They fined for tardiness or for non attendance at the town- 
 meetings. In those meetings for free discussion, they learned to under- 
 stand their rights and privileges as citizens, and acquired moral and in- 
 tellectual strength to maintain them. The institutions of our American 
 society are, as our history shows, no mushroom growth. The press, the 
 platform, the ballot-box are the outgrowth of the principles of constitu- 
 tional liberty that our fathers slowly learned to be true and right. We 
 believe that our American institutions furnish the best means of national 
 development, give the strongest assurance of national stability, because 
 they have their foundation based on principles of eternal truth and 
 immutable morality. 
 
 We do not claim that in their measures and methods our fathers were 
 above all criticism. They made a mistake, for instance, we are free to 
 confess, in insisting upon church-membership as a qualification for citizen- 
 ship. That was only their way, however, of asserting the truth that, of 
 right, knowledge has a controlling influence over ignorance, maturity of 
 judgment over inexperience, integrity of character over vice and immo- 
 rality. They outgrew that puerile notion about church-membership. 
 In later years they abandoned also the notion, that a Church of 
 Christ needs any direct support from the State. No taxation for Church 
 expenses, for the maintenance of " the Standing Order," as our fathers 
 called their church polity, would do for this house of worship, and for the 
 ministry of religion, what your own voluntary contributions have done. 
 Other mistakes our fathers may have made. But because, with the frailty 
 incident to humanity, they sometimes staggered beneath the burden of 
 new responsibilities, shall we mock them for their blunders, instead of 
 honoring them for their fidelity to their convictions ? The spirit that vents 
 itself in profane ribaldry and unseemly jests about Puritan asceticism and 
 Puritan bigotry, is the spirit of the mob that, on the way to Calvary, 
 taunted the Divine Redeemer of men with unmanly weakness, because 
 He fainted beneath the burden of the cross ; and jeered the Almighty 
 Saviour, as His heart broke in mortal agony, with their scornful derision 
 of His claim to be the Saviour from sin. 
 
31 
 
 II. " Honor thy father and thy mother." For their personal worth of 
 character, as well as for the relations which thei/ sustain to us, I remark, 
 in the second place, ought we to be ready now and ever to do double 
 honor to our ancestry. That they were our fathers, is in itself sufficient 
 reason for filial reverence. Far distant be the day when the divine in- 
 stitution of the family shall ever be willingly set aside at the demand of 
 ;i humanitarian philosophy, as frothy as it is shallow. The absolute 
 equality ftf one human being with another is, in fact and reason, an absolute 
 impossibility. Social differences there always will be so long as only 
 •me point can be the centre of a circle. Political inequalities, legislative 
 iniquities, there need not be, so long as in a perfect sphere every point on 
 the whole surface is equally distant from the centre. In declaring it to be 
 a self-evident truth that " all men are created equal/'" the signers of the 
 Declaration of Independence affirmed that the country in which a man 
 was born, or his social surroundings, do not affect his manhood, make him 
 anv the less a man. They did not intend to deny the differing relations • 
 and fitnesses out of which arise our mutual obligations and our reciprocal 
 duties. To set aside these mutual relations, to put children on an equality 
 with parents, to deny all authority of one person over another, in order to 
 do away with the distinction of priority and superiority, offices and services, 
 is as absurd as it would be to level down these mountains that are the 
 glory of this Sheffield landscape. Any endeavor to secure a uniform 
 distribution of powers and privileges in human society, is as impracticable 
 an undertaking as it would be to stop the earth's motion on its axis, that 
 there may be no night with its darkness ; or to stop the earth's motion in 
 its orbit, that there may be no winter with its cold. 
 
 " Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the 
 land," is the Divine command, the first commandment with promise. 
 Rightly interpreted, the text is the statement of a first truth in political 
 science, that the prosperity of a people can be secured only by the obser- 
 vance of God's natural and providential appointments. Our fathers, 
 who bequeathed to us the priceless heritage of constitutional liberty, were 
 men who believed in God. The liberty they loved was liberty that 
 comes from fulfilling God's laws ; not the wild unreason that sets all law 
 at defiance. They rightly sought in the Scriptures the true principles 
 of national prosperity. "We recognize in the text a fundamental principle 
 in the divine constitution of human society. It is not an assurance 
 of individual longevity on condition of filial obedience. We read, as a 
 con-elated Scripture truth, "Train up a child in the way he should go> 
 and when he is old, he will not depart from it." We do not take 
 this as a promise of absolute and universal success in training children to 
 be pious, but as the statement of this general truth, that, if we train our 
 children in accordance with the powers, opportunities, and fitnesses which 
 
32 
 
 God in His providence has appointed for them, not in ways or for ends 
 contrary to these, we may confidently expect them to continue in such a 
 course, nature and grace working harmoniously in the same direction. 
 
 It was one of the many sage remarks of that eminent master of social 
 philosophy, Edmund Burke, that " people who do not look back to their 
 ancestors, will not look forward to their posterity." We look back to 
 the exemplary piety as well as patriotism of our revolutionary ancestry ; 
 a,nd to the continuance of like reverential regard for the will of God do 
 we look for the continuance of our national prosperity. Human history is 
 but the gradual unfolding of the Divine purpose. True philosophy 
 recognizes this, seeks to know God's will more fully, to follow it more 
 perfectly. Much of the modern tendency to put development in place of 
 design in creation, arises from the unuttered sentiment that, if other 
 creatures began their existence without a purpose, then we human beings 
 may thus live. But our fathers were what they were, you and I are what 
 we are, because of our connection with God's purpose. We can see a provi- 
 dential fitness in these Centennial celebrations at this particular juncture 
 of affairs. We are not now, as a people, filled with the pride of success, 
 as Nebuchednezzar was, when he walked in his gardens, unsurpassed by 
 any previous royal magnificence, and exclaimed in his self-sufficiency, "Is 
 not this great Babylon that I have builded ? " We are not now as we 
 were a few years ago, in our selfish greed driving, like Jehu, a mad race 
 down to disaster and disgrace. Rather are we like one recovering from 
 fever brought on by some over-indulgence, tottering as we try to take 
 hold of the work of life anew. The providence of God is teaching us, as 
 Hezekiah was taught, the lesson of our human weakness, and of our 
 need of humble fidelity and purer spiritual-mindedness in the position 
 we occupy. 
 
 We find ourselves to-day suffering under various incidental evils, — evils 
 not attributable wholly to republican institutions, for the whole civilized 
 world seems to be suffering in similar fashion. These evils would seem to 
 be incidental to the present stage of the world's progress, like some of the 
 troubles incident to childhood or puberty. Yet there is need for us to 
 look back, and to ask if we have not departed from the true line of 
 duty. In Christ's time, when society had become corrupt, and divorces 
 were as common and as shameless as they are among us now, He turned 
 back the pages of history as we do to-day, and said, " From the beginning 
 it was not so." Such reflection from previous experiences throws a 
 guiding light on our present condition, and marks the course of future 
 duty. It is well for us, on occasion arising, to recur to those crises-times 
 in human history, when humanity seems to reach a high- water mark of 
 social attainment. Every year in the valley of the Nile, the people scan 
 with eager scrutiny the pillar on which is marked the measured rise of 
 
33 
 
 the spring-time floods. As the waters rise towards the level of former 
 years or recede from it, so do the people anticipate, in accordance with 
 their observation, a year of scarcity or one of plenty. Now that a swelling 
 tide of patriotic memories, — a tide, it is to be hoped, that shall know no 
 refluent wave, — is lifting us up to this point of observation, it is a question 
 of grave import to us: Are we true to the record of our fathers ; or, have 
 we fallen back from their standard of character and duty '? 
 
 It is well for us to revert to the lessons of the past, to revere the 
 memories, as we recount the worth, of the men who achieved for us and for 
 the world such a work as gladdens our hearts and homes to-day. Its re- 
 sults of good reach further and wider with every new period of advancing 
 time. When we think of the material progress made in this last century, 
 as exhibited in the Exposition at Philadelphia, we may say, with humble 
 gratitude, not with proud complacency, in the words of the disciple who 
 spoke to Jesus of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly gifts, 
 '' See what manner of workmanship and what buildings are here ! " We 
 have doubled our population every fifteen years, and doubled our wealth 
 every ten years. The three hundred thousand colonists are now become 
 forty millions of American citizens. How different are our feelings, desires, 
 wants, from these that our fathers experienced one hundred years ago ! 
 Steam and the telegraph, in providing means of rapid transit and instanta- 
 neous diffusion of intelligence, have changed entirely our social system 
 and our social problems. Fifty years ago one-thirtieth of our population 
 dwelt in cities; now, one fifth. 
 
 Around the memorial pillar that commemorates our army's first bap- 
 tism of fire, there gathered, a year ago last June, many forms of a dusky 
 race, once wearing the fetters of bondage, now fellow-citizens with us 
 and fellow-sovereigns by the grace of God in a land of universal 
 freedom. Only within fifteen years have we thrown off the excrescence 
 of negro slavery, which the citizens of Sheffield denounced in a town- 
 meeting called for the purpose, more than one hundred years ago, Feb- 
 ruary 25, 1774.* This summer's sun looks down on neither master nor 
 slave throughout our wide domain. But we have, in the judgment of 
 thoughtful men, exposed ourselves to great peril in extending so freely 
 the right of suffrage. We have given opportunity to demagogism, and 
 provided no sufficient check against its sway. We have made possible 
 the ring, the caucus, the lobby, and have given ourselves over, bound 
 hand and foot, to their domination. 
 
 * On Feb. 25, 1774, a " warrant" calling the annual towu-meeting was issued, 
 containing the following item : — 
 
 ''10'Mo take into consideration the present inhuman practice of enslaving our 
 fellow creatures, the natives of Africa." At the meeting, held Mar. 14, 1774, it was 
 voted to defer action, the subject "being under the consideration of the general court." 
 
 — rM. N.. Jr.! 
 
34 
 
 " Oh ! you and I have heard our fathers say, 
 There was a Brutus once, that would have brook'd 
 Th' eternal devil to keep his state in Rome, 
 As easily as a king." 
 
 Who will be our Brutus to deliver our people from the rule of party, 
 that lias so debauched our political management, corrupted our officials, 
 battened on our national life ? Must our glorious ideals be inevitably de- 
 based in the wear and tear of public life ? Must we accommodate ourselves 
 to the existing state of things, and lower our standard of character and 
 duty to what may seem the exigencies of the hour? Or, are we not ready 
 now for a return to the Puritan idea, that it is righteousness, not wealth, 
 not size, not strength, which alone exalteth a nation? Our fathers valued 
 as highly the incorruptible integrity of Samuel Adams, as they did the 
 liberal opulence of John Hancock. Are republics ungrateful ? Or is it 
 that human nature is more ready to show favor to those who humor its 
 whims, than to those who have done it real service ? Will the time never 
 come when we shall have public officials such as we might have, if we 
 would honor fidelity to trust, rather than fealty to party ? Is it money 
 that commands our suffrages, or partisan feeling that selects our candi- 
 dates ? Do we not believe that 
 
 " High worth is elevated place — 'tis more : 
 It makes the post stand candidate for thee"? 
 
 Our fathers could not anticipate what should be the future of the 
 country of whose institutions they laid the foundation-stones, and it was 
 not the consequences of their actions that determined them to do as they 
 did. There is a sublimity in their heroism, because of what it was in 
 itself, not because of any display they made of themselves, nor because 
 what they did had such influence for good over the destinies of succeeding 
 generations and oth*er nationalities. These men, in their coats of home- 
 spun, transacting church and town business in their rude meeting-houses, 
 were engaged in noble work, far more worthy of perpetuation by historic 
 pen or pencil, than the fine dresses and gilded magnificence of the courts 
 of France and England. Rude in manners, uncouth in expression, they 
 may have been, but they had more of true manliness than all the courtly 
 reprobates of Parisian society have ever shown. It has of late become 
 altogether too common to decry our New-England ancestry as wanting 
 in true generosity of spirit, one-sided in their views of truth, severely 
 ascetic in their ideas of life. The best refutation of such slanders is 
 better knowledge of Puritan sentiments and methods, circumstances and 
 achievements. With the impulse given this Centennial year to historical 
 investigation, we may anticipate a more just and exalted estimate of the 
 genuine worthiness of that generation, now passed away from earth, who 
 incarnated in their lives such ideals of manly nobility and womanly 
 
35 
 
 virtue, as we do well to revere. The largest portion of the Sacred 
 Scriptures is historical, that we may know what constitutes true manhood 
 and womanhood by study of personal experience, rathe/ than by discussion 
 of abstract principles. We know what elements make up the Puritan 
 character, shown in determined adherence to the right, simplicity of pur- 
 pose, reverence for spiritual worth. Ought not these to form our ideal 
 of that manliness which should be desired and endeavored by each of 
 us for himself, by each for all ? I rejoice to believe that, on our fathers' 
 loyalty to the right, we have grafted charity for error and ignorance. 
 If our religious life shows not so much of that godliness that holds itself 
 aloof from all iniquity, it shows more of that humanity which has learned 
 Christ's lesson of the purifying and elevating power of brotherly, self- 
 sacrificing love. We New-England Congregationalists have learned from 
 our Baptist brethren that the largest liberty for the individul conscience 
 is to be demanded, not dreaded. We have learned from our Methodist 
 brethren, not to be ashamed of emotion in religion, and how to bring 
 more of the gladness of heaven into the services of earth by giving fullest, 
 freest expression to warm, joyous, grateful love. And our Episcopal 
 churches, if they do have bishops and a liturgy, do, in their modes of 
 worship, meet real human needs, and fittingly express human desires. 
 
 We ought, indeed, to go beyond our fathers in attainment, yet never 
 away from their principles. For, of the character of our Puritan ancestry, 
 a distinguished jurist has truthfully said : " We have no desire, like the 
 nations of the Old World, to deduce our lineage from superhuman beings, 
 or to clothe the sage and heroic spirits, who laid the foundations of our 
 Republic, with the exaggerations of poetic minds. Like the Pantheon at 
 Rome, simple, erect, severe, sublime, the bright atmosphere of truth 
 only irradiates its bold and noble proportions, encumbered by no meretri- 
 cious ornament, heightened by no illusion of fiction." Our fathers belonged 
 to that order of souls which Milton describes — 
 
 " Who shine along the path of centuries, 
 In full and perfect brightness standing forth, 
 In their own loftiness the beacon-lights 
 By which the world is guided and held up 
 From its forever- downward tendency." 
 
 III. Honor is due our fathers, and this is the last reason I shall assign, 
 because of the sacrifices which tliey made in our behalf. 
 
 The war of Independence was no mere faction fight, — two parties 
 contending for political supremacy on no better grounds than that each 
 claimed such supremacy. Such conflicts the world has too often seen. 
 Such revolutions as a change of dynasties, when the sovereign power has 
 passed from one family to another, history has often recorded. But the 
 change wrought by the American Revolution was the introduction of a 
 
36 
 
 new order of things, a marked epoch in the history of human society. 
 The sovereign people by the grace of God took their proper place as the 
 source and fountain of governmental organization and administration. In 
 poverty and feebleness our fathers began the contest with the English 
 government for the maintenance of their civil and religious liberties. 
 The struggle resulted in originating and securing new and better forms 
 of political administration. Old forms were followed, old usages main- 
 tained, with sturdy Anglo-Saxon conservatism, till providential circutn- 
 stances set them aside as obsolete. 
 
 As one iniquitous measure after another was introduced by the con- 
 stitutional advisers of the English monarch, resistance at first took the 
 form of remonstrance. This town of Sheffield, in common with others, 
 entered, again and again, on its records, most determined protests against 
 the Stamp Act, the Tax on Tea, and the Boston Port Bill. When the 
 English government began its arbitrary and impolitic measures of retalia- 
 tion to destroy the commerce of Boston, Sheffield and other towns in 
 the colon}' - contributed to the support of the poorer people thrown out of 
 employment in that city. With almost entire unanimity of sentiment, 
 the people of Massachusetts were outspoken in their denunciation of the 
 attempt to extort a revenue from the colonies for the support of royal 
 extravagance and aristocratic pretensions. Some there were, who clung 
 to a desperate hope of possible peaceful adjustment of matters in dis- 
 pute. But the appointment of General Gage to be the governor, the 
 seizure of stores at Concord, forced upon the people at last the sad con- 
 viction, that no resource was left but an appeal to the stern arbitrament 
 of war. The battle of Bunker Hill was fought, the siege of Boston 
 begun, and, gradually, public sentiment throughout all the colonies settled 
 upon a declaration of independence as the next step to be taken. 
 
 While other colonies took other methods of giving expression to public 
 sentiment, and North Carolina was the first to pronounce in favor of 
 independence, Massachusetts, with the usual calm, deliberate determina- 
 tion that characterized her action, called for an expression of opinion from 
 the whole people through special town-meetings.* It was in response 
 
 * On Friday, May 10, 177(5, the last day of the session held at Watertown, we find 
 this entry on the Journal of the House of Representatives : — 
 
 "Resolved, as the opinion of this House, thai the inhabitants ot each town in this 
 'Jolony ought to advise the Person or Persons, who. shall be chosen to represent them in 
 the next General Court, whether that if the honorable Congress should for the safety of 
 said Colonies, declare them Independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain, they the 
 said Inhabitants will solemnly engage with their Lives and Fortunes to support the 
 ( 'ongress in the measure. 
 
 "Ordered, that Mr. Cooper get the foregoing Resolve printed in the several News 
 Papers as soon as possible," 
 
 The action taken by the several towns was. in neatly every instance, favorable to a 
 
37 
 
 to this call of the House of Representatives, that, at the town-meeting in 
 Sheffield, June 18, 1776, that action was taken in favor of independence, 
 which we commemorate on this anniversary day. 
 
 That was no meaningless expression of sentiment, when, with such 
 unanimity, our fathers pledged " their lives and fortunes " to their country's 
 cause. Independence, civil and religious: Independence, no official be- 
 tween any man and his God. Independence, no royal prerogative be- 
 tween the people and the power they wished to exercise for God and for 
 humanity in such ways as seemed to them just and expedient : Indepen- 
 dence, and only this, was an object grand enough to call forth the devotion, 
 to enlist the sympathies, and command the cooperation of all the people 
 of all the colonies. It was really for independence, though not at first so 
 designed, that the conflict was begun at Lexington, transferred to Boston, 
 organized for victory at Philadelphia, successfully ended by the Treaty of 
 Versailles. The American colonies could no longer be regarded as the 
 brightest jewel in the crown of England's King. The United States of 
 America were recognized as one of the sisterhood of nations : a nation,, 
 not a province : a nation, not a government. 
 
 "Thy spirit, Independence, let me share, 
 
 Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye. 
 Thy steps I follow with my hosom bare, 
 
 Nor heed the storm which hurls along the sky." 
 
 Enjoying to-day the gladness that brightens this beautiful valley and 
 the peace that seems assured to us by these guardian hills, which lift 
 themselves in such stately grandeur, yet seem also to bend toward us in 
 holy benediction, let us not forget the self-sacrifice displayed for their 
 country's sake, for our sakes, by our worthy sires. The birthday of 
 American Independence was 
 
 "Not in the sunshine and the smile of heaven, 
 But wrapped in whirlwinds and begirt with woes." 
 
 War, on however grand a scale, for however noble an object, is an 
 evil to be endured, not a state of things to be admired and desired. 
 One-fourth of the militia of the town were, in 1775, set apart as minute 
 men, receiving regular training every week. Soldiers had been enlisted and 
 were in service. One in seven of all the male inhabitants over sixteen 
 years of age, was called for. Two additional regiments of soldiers were 
 raised in June, 1776, in Berkshire County. The first regiment was raised 
 from this southern tier of towns. The Colonel was Mark Hopkins, 
 grandfather of the well-known and honored President of Williams 
 
 declaration of independence. John Adams was thus enabled to assure the Continental 
 Congress that the people of Massachusetts would support the measure which he so 
 eloquently advocated, and so persistently urged. 
 
38 
 
 College. Massachusetts furnished one-sixth of all the soldiers in the 
 Continental Army. The spirit of the people was equal to every demand 
 whether for men or money, clothing or beef, horses or military stores. 
 
 As Washington says in his Farewell Address, " While just government 
 protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government 
 its surest support." The ministers of New England were active, all 
 through the war, in kindling the enthusiasm and calling out the energies 
 of the people. They would tell their hearers that they " saw too many 
 men at home, when the country needed them in the ranks of the army :" 
 or, that " God would take care of the people's liberties, if they would take 
 care of the red-coats." One Sunday morning a minister read an account 
 of the sufferings of our soldiers in Canada. That afternoon not a woman 
 was at church. In place of the usual Sabbath stillness was heard the 
 busv hum of spinning wheels. Before many days, the soldiers in Canada 
 were rejoicing over the stockings and other garments those Christian 
 women began that Sabbath afternoon to prepare. 
 
 Sometimes the parson's pulpit and gown were exchanged for the battle- 
 field and the weapons of war. Parson Allen, of Pittsfield, joined the 
 militia of the county, and went with them to Bennington. He arrived 
 about five o'clock in the morning in the midst of a thunderstorm. When 
 reporting himself at headquarters, he told General Stark that the 
 Berkshire boys had been often summoned out, but never allowed to fight. 
 "If the Lord will only give us sunshine," replied Stark, "and I don't 
 give vou fighting enough, I will never call you out again." When the 
 fighting began, Parson Allen could not remain an idle spectator. Taking 
 his brother's musket, he said, " You know, Joe, that I am a better shot 
 than you. You load and I'll fire." When he was asked, in after years, 
 if he knew that he had killed any one in battle, he said that, during the 
 fight, he noticed that from a certain bush every once in a while there 
 was a flash, and then one of our men was sure to drop. " I fired at that 
 bush : I don't know whether I killed any man ; but I put out that flash." 
 That is the kind of ministers we want now — not flashing powder off in a 
 grand pyrotechnical display — but men who have the ability and the 
 pluck, when any error in doctrine or in morals is taking off those who 
 should be serving the Lord, to "put out that flash" and so stop the harm. 
 
 But others are to give you more fully detailed statements of the sacri- 
 fices and sufferings unflinchingly undergone by the patriots of Sheffield in 
 the long-protracted war. Even with the clearest hist< al insight, we 
 can form, however, only a faint imagining of the fearful nature of the 
 struggle for Independence. Ah ! friends, think, for instance, what those 
 soldiers of the Revolution suffered, with such fortitude, during the winter 
 spent at Valley Forge. Their sufferings resembled the horrors which a 
 worse than savage cruelty inflicted on the Union prisoners, shut up in 
 
39 
 
 Southern prison pens. The men were half-clothed, scantily fed, neces- 
 sarily underpaid, yet under a leader, who, if he was not the greatest 
 soldier among patriots, is yet the noblest patriot among soldiers, never 
 swerved from the object to which they had consecrated their lives, the 
 achievement of their country's freedom. We know something of their 
 joy of triumph when we call to mind the rejoicings at the close of the 
 war of secession : or more thrilling even than that, the interchange of 
 friendly greetings at Boston last year between Massachusetts and 
 Carolina. As hand grasped hand in pledges of loyalty to the flag of the 
 Union, as heart beat responsive to heart at the utterance of sentiments of 
 amity and patriotism, it seemed as though then the dark clouds of conflict 
 and disaster had broken away, never to gather again, while the white 
 dove of peace descended in heavenly benediction upon the future mission 
 of the American people. 
 
 "O beautiful, my country ! ours once more. 
 
 What were our lives without thee ? 
 
 What all our lives to save thee ? 
 
 We reck not what we gave thee. 
 
 We will not dare to doubt thee. 
 
 But ask whatever else and we will dare." 
 
 In conclusion, I remark, first, that to belong to a good family is not, 
 indeed, an advantage for which any one can take credit to himself ; but 
 it gives him credit at once, prepossesses others in his favor. To be an 
 American citizen is in these days to have an assurance of welcome all 
 over the world. The brilliant achievements of an honored ancestry re- 
 flect some portion of their glory on their descendants ; or a family's good 
 name may be tarnished by the misconduct of some unworthy member. 
 No services in which we may this day engage will do us any credit, if, by 
 word or deed, we prove ourselves unworthy successors of the ancestry 
 we boast. Living as we do at this Centennial period, we ourselves shall 
 be called into judgment by succeeding generations. We shall be tried 
 by what we are and do, as well as by what our fathers were and did. 
 Theirs was the sowing in storm and hardship : ours is the reaping in 
 sunshine and peace. Theirs was the planting of the vine : are we to 
 debauch ourselves with the intoxicating wine of mere material good ? 
 Or shall we make the fruit of the vine, as our Great Exemplar did, the 
 symbol and pledge of our devotion to the one great work of earth and 
 time, the victory over sin and, so, over death ? We do well to ask our- 
 selves why our fathers deserve from us special honor. We come to-day 
 to build no tombs to prophets whom our fathers slew, and by such memo- 
 rial observances show ourselves shameless as well as guilty, inheriting 
 from a heaven-provoking ancestry a spirit of rebellious ingratitude and 
 stiff-necked disregard of Providential duties. Bather have we come, we 
 
40 
 
 and our children, to this altar of worship, as Hamilcar came with his son 
 Hannibal, to swear eternal hatred, not to any national ancestral foe, but 
 to oppression, corruption, iniquity, in whatever form, or by whatever political 
 party advocated or defended. For this anniversary day is a fitting- 
 occasion, with the solemnities of religion, to inculcate upon the young the 
 duty of loyalty to truth and to righteousness, loyalty to the ideals and to 
 the religion of our fathers. " Let us here highly resolve," in the words 
 of President Lincoln at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg, — 
 words which may well be repeated as every American citizen's sacramental 
 oath, — ''that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, 
 shall never perish from the earth." 
 
 Secondly. The perpetuity of our nation will depend upon our fidelity in 
 maintaining the moral and religious principles of our fathers, as well as 
 the political institutions for which we are indebted to them. Mere 
 material prosperity is not our hope or aim. It was not our fathers' motive 
 in their resistance to the odious taxation imposed by Great Britain. It 
 was the moral principle involved in these measures that roused the country, 
 not the mere payment of threepence a pound additional for their tea. 
 Only moral principles can enlist the deepest sympathies and call out the 
 highest energies of men. Mere material good cannot have the force of a 
 law, a binding rule for us to follow. If a man discovers a gold mine, or 
 eats a good dinner, that is no reason why I should do the same. But, if 
 he is faithful to his trust, incorruptible in his integrity, magnanimous in 
 his sentiments, he sets me an example which calls upon me to exhibit the 
 same moral excellencies. For, honorable conduct in any one is not only 
 an exhibition of what man can do, but an example of what every true 
 man will do. In the words of one [Gov. Gaston] who has admirably 
 voiced the sentiment of the hour: "As we are stepping upon the thresh- 
 old of our second century, let us determine that we will commence it with 
 achievements in the field of civilization and of peace, worthy of a people 
 whose birthright is freedom, whose policy is justice, whose God is the 
 Lord." We forswear our lineage, if we are not faithful, as were our fathers, 
 to the laws of God as well as the rights of man. Giving ourselves to the 
 faithful discharge of our providential duty, though our work may seem to 
 us humble, God will see to it that its results are great. As we look 
 back two hundred and fifty years, we see in the cabin of the May- 
 flower a few humble pious folks, austere and frugal like John the Baptist, 
 but like him, too, commissioned of God to open a new era for humanity. 
 They were great, in duty well-performed ; for, in the kingdom of heaven, 
 greatness is measured by fidelity in doing God's will. No one can read 
 the story of the War of Independence, or the recorded utterances of the 
 men of that time, and not see that religious trust was the mainspring of 
 our fathers' patriotism and valor. In 1776 each town had its Committee 
 
41 
 
 of Safety, on the watch for the nation's foes. In 1876 the Centennial 
 Commissioner comes from every nation to the birthplace of our national 
 liberty, bringing, not "gold, frankincense, myrrh," natural products of 
 sweetness and beauty, but the finest handiwork of human industry, the 
 fairest creations of human ingenuity, in token of " peace and good-will on 
 earth," if not of " glory to God in the highest." He, who was born at 
 Bethlehem and suffered on Calvary, is united in our record of time with 
 our fathers' life and work in the date we give our state papers, " the year 
 of our Lord 1876, and of the Independence of the United States of 
 America, the One Hundreth." In our lives let us unite the holy obedi- 
 ence of the Eternal Son with the true independence, the real freedom, 
 He alone can give. So shall we transmit to our children the heritage 
 we have received from our fathers, neither imperilled by our negligence, 
 nor impaired by our neglect. 
 
42 
 
 HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 
 
 BY GEN. JOHN G. BARNARD. 
 
 On this festival occasion you have called upon me for a sketch of the 
 local history which prompts and makes appropriate this our own peculiar 
 " Centennial" celebration. Although a native, "to the manner born/' I 
 feel myself but slightly qualified for the task. The theme is not the 
 growth, development, and straggles for existence of a nation ; it is of a 
 simple country village, whose "fields" have ever been those of the hus- 
 bandman, freely visited, indeed, by the dews of heaven, but unstained 
 by the red drops of war ; whose harvests wave not 
 
 " O'er roots set deep in battle-graves ; " 
 whose modest halls have never resounded with the eloquence of statesmen, 
 nor been the scenes where the nation's destiny was at stake. 
 
 Not that we are without history ; that there is not, for ourselves at 
 least, much worthy to be recorded. But he who would worthily make 
 that record should be not only one born amongst you, but reared in your 
 midst ; to whom the color of your local life has been imparted ; to whom 
 the history of each family has been associated with his own personal 
 history ; and to whom the local events which must form his theme have 
 become traditional. These are qualifications which he who addresses 
 you, cannot claim to possess. Removed from this his " boyhood's home n 
 almost in childhood, his youth and manhood have been spent in regions 
 far away. His way of life, his pursuits, and his associations, have had 
 little in them to remind him — much to cause forgetfulness — of the home 
 where he was born. He is still, though nominally a citizen, almost a 
 stranger among you. He must claim your indulgence, therefore, and 
 beg you to accept the will to show his sympathy with you for ability to 
 do better. 
 
 For the approaching national anniversary, the great events of our 
 national history form fitting themes. We must content ourselves with 
 others which, though humbler, are not uninstructive. 
 
 "O Hist'ry, thou hast done the world a wrong 
 Immense and mournful ; on the Alpine heights 
 Of human greatness thine enamoured gaze 
 Has lingered, mindless, in that partial mood, 
 Of silent virtue in the vale below ; 
 And robed thy themes of darkness with a veil 
 Of bright attractions, as the thunder wraps 
 Hia ruin oft, in cloude of glorious spell." 
 
43 
 
 We, dwellers of the vale, literally as well as figuratively, must turn our 
 eyes from our historic mountain summits, and fix them upon the " silent 
 virtues " which have never been lacking in our valley home. Our own 
 history, as a community, must be our special theme ; and to those who 
 think of history as taking origin in the obscurity of an indefinite past, the 
 fact that our origin as a town is dated but one half century previous to 
 the event we commemorate, is indeed startling. One hundred and fifty 
 years ago the ground where we now stand was a wilderness. It was not 
 till the Pilgrim Fathers had established themselves (1620 and 1622) in 
 Plymouth, and on the shores of Massachusetts Bay ; nor until " the fame 
 of Connecticut river, a long, fresh, rich river, which had made a little 
 Nilus of it in the expectation of the good people of Massachusetts Bay," 
 had prompted an emigration and a new settlement upon this famous 
 river; not until this settlement (1636) had been more than four-score 
 years extending itself along the beautiful valley of the Connecticut, did 
 the time ripen for an incursion upon the wilderness of Berkshire. 
 
 " On the 30th day of January, 1722, one hundred and seventy-six 
 inhabitants of Hampshire county * petitioned the General Court for two 
 townships of land situated on the Housatonic river, at the southwestern 
 corner of the Massachusetts patent. The petition was granted, and the 
 townships ordered to contain seven miles square each. John Stoddard, 
 Ebenezer Pomeroy, and Henry D wight, of Northampton ; Luke Hitchcock, 
 of Springfield ; John Ashley, of Westfield ; and Samuel Porter, of Hadley, 
 were appointed a committee for dividing the tract, granting lots, admitting 
 settlers, etc. The committee was instructed to reserve lands for the first 
 minister, for the subsequent maintenance of the ordinances of the Gospel, 
 and for the support of schools, and to demand of each man to whom they 
 should make a grant, thirty shillings for every hundred acres, to be 
 expended in extinguishing the Indian claims, paying expenses for laving 
 out the lands, and in building meeting-houses in the townships. This 
 committee met in the following March, at Springfield, and fifty-five 
 settlers received grants, complying with the conditions attached to them. 
 Measures were taken to purchase the land of the Indians, and on the 
 25th of April, 1724, a deed was executed by them, conveying a tract 
 bounded on the south by the divisional line between Massachusetts and 
 Connecticut, west by the colony of New York, eastward to a line four 
 miles from the Housatonic river, and in a general way so to extend, and 
 north ' to the great mountain.' The Indians made certain reservations 
 of planting and other land, and received, in consideration, the sum of 
 <£460 in money, three barrels of cider, and thirty quarts of rum. * * * 
 
 * Hampshire county then included the entire valley of the Connecticut river lying 
 in Massachusetts. 
 
44 
 
 This would seem to be the largest sum ever paid in Western Mas- 
 sachusetts for the extinguishment of an Indian title. The deed thus 
 given embraced the present towns of Sheffield, Egremont, Mount 
 Washington, Great Barrington, Alford, a considerable part of Lee, and the 
 larger part of Stockbridge and West Stockbridge. These two townships 
 were known before the later division into towns, as 'the upper and lower 
 Housatonic townships.' 
 
 " The original settlers of Sheffield numbered about sixty. The first 
 was Obadiah Noble, of Westfield, who spent one winter there entirely 
 alone, or with no other companions than the Indians. Returning to 
 Westfield in the spring, he started in June to resume his residence upon 
 the Housatonic, taking with him his daughter, only sixteen years of age. 
 She went on horseback, taking her bed upon the horse with her, and 
 lodged one night in the wilderness while making the passage. 
 
 " Though the Indian settlement in lower Housatonic was very small, 
 it did not comprise all the natives within the territory granted. The 
 tribe, however, was very much reduced in numbers, and Konkapot, the 
 chief, of whom the land was bought, with eight or ten families, lived in 
 that part of the territory of upper Housatonic, now covered by Stock- 
 bridge. The minority lived on the reservation in the lower township 
 already alluded to, called by them ' Skatehook.' " (Holland's History of 
 Western Massachusetts.) 
 
 Such is the history of the settlement of the town, and of Southern 
 Berkshire, on the Housatonic. We find that, of the two townships 
 authorized by the General Court, in 1722, the lower one was incorporated 
 in January, 1733, with the name of the more famous English town of 
 Sheffield. Doubtless among the early settlers there must have been 
 some for whom the name had suggestions other than those so familiar of 
 penknives and table cutlery. To some of our progenitors it must have 
 had those of a home, or at least have been associated with tender mem- 
 ories of the " fatherland." 
 
 " Within the territory of our new Sheffield, in accordance with the 
 order of the Legislature, there had been reserved a lot for the first settled 
 minister, a lot for the ministry, and a lot for schools. Obadiah Noble 
 was, as we have noted, the first settler ; among those who soon followed 
 him (mostly from Westfield) were the bearers of the following names : 
 Austin, Ashley, Westover, Kellogg, Eggleston, Pell, Callender, Oorben, 
 Huggins, Smith, Ingersoll, Dewey and Root," many of which are still 
 familiar and honored names among us. 
 
 That of John Ashley has already appeared as that of one of the original 
 grantees, or committee-men. Sheffield has had several prominent men of 
 this name. John Ashley, son of the above, an ancestor of the speaker, 
 graduated at Yale in 1730 j settled in Sheffield as a lawyer ; subsequently 
 
45 
 
 a judge, colonel of militia, and magistrate, he died in Sheffield, 1802, 
 aged ninety-three years. General John Ashley, his son, died 1799, aged 
 sixty-four years, appointed by Governor Hancock, Major-General of State 
 Militia, in 1780 ; he, too, was one of the largest land-holders of the town. 
 It was he who commanded the small party which met and defeated the 
 " Shays' rebels," in the first and only actual fight of that rebellion, near 
 the western boundary of Sheffield. Col. William Ashley succeeded to 
 the paternal estates of his father, and sustained the honored name which 
 is now forever perpetuated in the cognomen, " Ashley Falls," by which 
 the region is known where the family resided, and where their estates lay. 
 Last in the male line, he died in Sheffield, 1849, aged seventy-six 
 years. 
 
 The original bounds of Sheffield embraced a large portion of what is 
 now Great Barrington, and portions, also, of Egremont and New Marlboro. 
 At the second town-meeting (the first having been held January 16), 
 January 30, 1733, money was raised to build a meeting-house, forty-five 
 feet long, and thirty-five feet wide (Appendix 1). The house was erected 
 about three-quarters of a mile north of the present edifice and was 
 occupied until 1760, when a new house was built, sixty feet by forty feet. 
 This house is the one in which we are now assembled, having been re- 
 moved, altered, and improved, in 1820, and again in 1856, renovated and 
 embellished. Rev. Jonathan Hubbard was settled as the first pastor, 
 October 22, 1735, and on the same day the first church was organized 
 (Appendix 2). Mr. Hubbard was a native of Sunderland, and a graduate 
 of Yale in 1724. He died July 6, 1765. Rev. John Keep, of Long- 
 meadow, a graduate of Yale in 1769, succeeded him on June 10, 1772, 
 and died while in office, September 3, 1785. Rev. Ephraim Judson was 
 installed in his place in May, 1786. He was a native of Woodbury, 
 Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale in 1763. He died in office, February 
 23, 1813, and was succeeded on the following 13th of October by Rev. 
 James Bradford, a native of Rowley, and a graduate of Dartmouth. Mr. 
 Bradford remained the pastor of the church until May, 1852. Until 
 1825, the town and Congregational Society were one and the same in 
 action, but in that year the societ}' became a separate organization. A 
 Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in 1842. A second Methodist 
 society was organized at Ashley Falls. In 1866 the Rev. Mr. Eccleston, 
 then Rector of St. James's Episcopal Church, Great Barrington, under- 
 took to organize a mission chapel to that church in our village. In this 
 he received aid and encouragement from the late Mr. A. C. Russell, of 
 Great Barrington, to whom is due the credit of being a founder of 
 the Episcopal Church in Sheffield. In 1867 the church was incorpo- 
 rated, and in 1873 admitted into the diocese of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church of Massachusetts. 
 
46 
 
 The specific act on the part of our town, which furnishes the motive 
 for this, our own Sheffield Centennial celebration, is found thus recorded : 
 
 " At a legal town-meeting of the inhabitants of the town of Sheffield, 
 on Tuesday, the 18th day of June, 1776, it was put to vote, whether the 
 inhabitants of the said town of Sheffield, should the Honorable Conti- 
 nental Congress, in their wisdom, think prudent and for the interest 
 and safety of the American Colonies to declare said Colonies inde- 
 pendent of the kingdom of Great Britton, they, the inhabitants of said 
 Sheffield, will solemnly engage, with their lives and fortunes, to support 
 them in their measures. Voted in the affirmative ; two dissenting 
 only." 
 
 The famous "Mecklenburg" (N. C.) Declaration of Independence,, 
 which resolved that " we, the people of Mecklenburg county, do hereby 
 dissolve the political bands which have connected us with the mother 
 country," though so explicit in form, does not appear to have been 
 " designed for publicity, other than such as might be obtained by its- 
 presentation to Congress." In fact a " dissolution of the bands which 
 have connected us with the mother country," by a single county of a few 
 thousand inhabitants, would be preposterous. The Mecklenburg decla- 
 ration has no claim to be regarded as anything more decisive or more 
 patriotic than were the Sheffield resolutions ; the intended and the sole 
 effect of the one and the other being to encourage the General Congress- 
 with assurance of support, should it, in its wisdom, take the decisive step 
 towards which, as all patriots and thoughtful men saw, the march of 
 events plainly tended. I know not whether any other communities- 
 of the thirteen colonies acted likewise ; but we claim that whatever just 
 meed of applause may be conceded to the patriots of Mecklenburg 
 county, North Carolina, should be conceded equally to the patriots of 
 Sheffield, Massachusetts. 
 
 Though necessarily introduced as the especial theme of this paper, this 
 action of the town of Sheffield was by no means an isolated one. Even 
 more remarkable is the action (preamble and resolutions) of January 12,. 
 1773, antecedent by more than two years to the Mecklenburg Dechv 
 ration, and in the first and second resolutions, viz. : — 
 
 " Resolved, that mankind, in a state of nature, are equal, free, and 
 independent of each other, and have a right to the undisturbed enjoy- 
 ment of their lives, their liberty and property. 
 
 "Resolved, that the great end of political society is to secure in a 
 more effectual manner those rights and privileges wherewith God and 
 Nature have made us free " — anticipating the famed enunciation of 
 "truths," held to be "self-evident," of the Declaration of Independence. 
 Too lengthy to be read here, the record is copied in an appendix to thiu 
 paper (Appendix 3). The list of the names of the committee-men who 
 
47 
 
 drafted the preamble and resolutions, will furnish a clue, perhaps, to their 
 remarkable character. 
 
 Theodore Sedgwick, then a lawyer in Sheffield, represented the town 
 several years in the Massachusetts Legislature ; was a member of the 
 Continental Congress, 1785-86 ; member of the State Convention for 
 ratification of the Federal Constitution, 1788 ; member of Congress (at 
 one time Speaker), and a Senator under that Constitution ; subsequently 
 Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts till his death, in 1S13. 
 It was he who, first as a lawyer, then as a judge, settled forever the 
 question of slavery in Massachusetts. Chairman of a committee — as we 
 find him to be not only on this, but on subsequent occasions — of an 
 obscure country town, he was afterwards the intimate associate of Hamil- 
 ton, Jay, Rutledge, and other prominent men of our early history. 
 
 Major John Fellows, an ancestor of the speaker, had served in the 
 French war, and, as brigadier-general, served afterwards in the Revolu- 
 tion, on Long Island, at White Plains, and in the battle of Stillwater. 
 " Col. Ashley " has already been alluded to as " General John Ashley." 
 Stephen Dewey, Dr. Lemuel Barnard, Dr. Silas Kellogg, and others of 
 the names, are those of men of known intellectual capacity. 
 
 By the resolution of June 18, 1776, we, in advance, pledged, virtually, 
 " our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor," to the support of the 
 great act of July 4, 1776. Nor did we fail to fulfil this anticipatory 
 pledge. On June 30, 1777, the first town-meeting was called in the 
 name of the government and people of Massachusetts Bay. " Dr. Lemuel 
 Barnard was chosen moderator ; Theodore Sedgwick, Richard Jacob, and 
 Col. Aaron Root, were chosen a committee to give instructions to the 
 representatives (in the General Court) relative to the money raised for 
 the soldiers that turn out or are drafted to go in an allarm " [sic). It was 
 voted that " each non-commissioned officer and private who shall march 
 by reason of allarm until the — day of October, shall receive two shillings 
 per day while on the march, and one shilling per day while in camp, in 
 addition to the present Continental and Government pay." 
 
 The following minute appears of proceedings at a meeting on January 
 9, 1778, Theodore Sedgwick moderator : — " To William Bacon, Esq., 
 one of the representatives for the towns which are to attend the present 
 sessions of the Great and General Court, this town, impressed with a 
 sence (sk) of the necessity of an immediate ratification of the articles of 
 confederation and perpetual union, published by order of the Honorable 
 the Congress, highly approving the wisdom of these articles, instruct you 
 to use your influence, that the same be approved in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives of this State." 
 
 March 17, 1778, we find the minute of a vote to raise "the sum of 
 five hundred pounds, in money, to get a town stock of powder, lead, and 
 
48 
 
 flints." It was also voted to " supply the souldiers in the Continental 
 service belonging to this town with cloathing during the present year ; 
 also, that the committee chosen to provide for the families of those 
 souldiers gone into the Continental service, be directed to make such 
 provision for their cattle as they think necessary." And again, May 16, 
 1778, " voted that there be allowed the sum of thirty pounds to each 
 Continental souldier that shall be raised in this town, agreeable to the 
 resolve of the General Court of April 20th ;" and December 3, 1778, " voted 
 to raise the sum of five hundred pounds, to provide for the families of 
 this town in the Continental army " {sic). 
 
 November 25, 1779, it was voted, after hearing a report from a com- 
 mittee of which Theodore Sedgwick was chairman, that " two thousand 
 and four hundred pounds is equivalent to one hundred pounds." (This 
 was in reference to fixing, in depreciated currency, the salary of their 
 Pastor, Rev. John Keep.) 
 
 January 16, 1780, it was "voted to choose a committee to hire the cota 
 (sic) of men required by the General Court" * * * "to give those who 
 shall go into the Continental service for six months (in addition to the 
 State's pay), forty shillings per month, in silver, or Continental money 
 equivalent" * * * "To raise three hundred pounds silver money." 
 From these items we infer that Sheffield's "cota" of men that year 
 was 150. 
 
 October 13, 1780, it was "voted to raise the sum of three hundred 
 and fifty pounds, new emission, to purchase beef for the army," etc., etc. 
 * * * " To raise the sum of one hundred and forty pounds, to procure 
 cloathing for the souldiers in the Continental army," etc. 
 
 The records all through the war are filled with such votes. Men 
 were only raised for three or six months, and were clothed by the town — 
 facts illustrative of the difficulties which our generals in the field had to 
 encounter. 
 
 In 1780, the first town-meeting was called " in the name of the people 
 of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bay ; " in the succeeding year, and 
 subsequently, the time-honored word, " Bay," disappears, and the style 
 becomes the " Commonwealth of Massachusetts" (Appendix 4). 
 
 The foregoing brief notes must suffice to show how prompt, through- 
 out the Revolutionary struggle, the town of Sheffield was to meet every 
 patriotic call ; how faithful the pledge — the act which we this day 
 celebrate — was fulfilled, "to support the Continental Congress in a 
 Declaration of Independence" (Appendix 5). 
 
 Passing along these records, we find, as the war draws to a close 
 (practically decided by the surrender at Yorktown, October, 1781, though 
 the Treaty of Peace was not signed till September, 1783), minutes of 
 •quite another character, grave and ominous — as we can now understand 
 
49 
 
 them to have been — as are the atmospheric phenomena which prelude the 
 
 earthquake. On the 1st of April, 1782 ; it was 
 
 " Resolved, that in a Commonwealth to suspend the laws, and to stop the courts of 
 justice, is of most fatal tendency to that County and ought by all means to be discoun- 
 tenanced by every one who wishes to support the liberties and happiness of the 
 people. 
 
 " 2dly, Resolved, that in the oppinion (sic) of the town, the Justice of the Peace ought 
 not to be allowed any fee for attending the Court of General Sessions of the Peace. 
 
 "3dly, Resolved, that the Governor's salary, as by law established, is, in the opinion 
 of this town, excessive. 
 
 " 4thly, Resolved, that in the opinion of this town, it is in the power of the Legislature 
 of the Commonwealth to devise and establish a less expensive and more speedy 
 method of collecting debts, particularly by enlarging the jurisdiction of justices, and 
 enabling them to take acknowledgment of debts without process, and issue execution 
 thereon under such restrictions and provisions as may appear necessary. 
 
 "5thly, Resolved, that the price by law established is excessive, and that no travel 
 nor attendance ought to be taxed on bills of cost more than is actually performed. 
 
 " 6thly, Resolved, that in the opinion of the town, good pork, beef, and wheat, should be 
 a tendure (sic) in satisfaction of executions, in like manner as is provided in case of 
 extending executions on real estate. 
 
 "7thly, Resolved, that Constables ought to be impowered to serve all writs and pro- 
 cesses within their respective towns. " 
 
 The foregoing resolutions were transmitted with the following petition : 
 
 " To the Honorable, the Senate and the House of Representatives of 
 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 
 
 " The petition of the inhabitants of the town of Sheffield, in town-meet- 
 ing assembled, humbly shows, 
 
 " That the town, on mature and thorough deliberation and examination 
 have passed the several votes contained in the annexed copy ; we are 
 sensible that your honours must, as a principle object, regard the defence of 
 this and the other states in union ; we wish not to direct your attention 
 there/ore (from ?) a single moment, but while your patriotic exertions are 
 pointed to a matter of such great importance we hope it may not be 
 thought either impertinent or unreasonable to call the attention of your 
 honours to the Internal Police of the Commonwealth ; we can and do most 
 solemnly assure your honours that we have a just detestation of all 
 practices which have a tendency to unsettle the Government, and intro- 
 duce anarchy and confusion in its stead, as necessarily and directly 
 tending to destroy the liberties of the citizen, and as aiding the most 
 barbarous and bloody enemies of these states ; at the same time, we beg 
 permission to say that we ardently wish the Government as little burden- 
 some and expensive as is consistent with the support and dignity thereof y 
 accordingly, by these views, with the most submissive deference, we pray 
 your Honours to take into your consideration the resolves and votes afore- 
 said, and act therein as to you in your wisdom shall appear just and 
 reasonable, and your petitioners as in duty bound shall ever pray." 
 
50 
 
 Real sufferings, and, to some extent, real grievances, the nature of whioh 
 is clearly indicated in the above-cited resolutions, were thus early 
 "finding voice. 
 
 It will not be my province to dilate upon that peculiar phase of our 
 history which the ensuing years of 1783-4-5-6-7, developed. The 
 " Shays' Rebellion " is the subject of a chapter of Holland's " History of 
 Western Massachusetts," and one of our most prominent townsmen, the 
 Rev. Mason Noble, has recited to you the sad tale, as it relates more espe- 
 cially to Berkshire county and to Sheffield. I must content myself with 
 quoting his eloquent epitome of its causes : — 
 
 " During the war of the Revolution the thirteen States had agreed upon 
 articles of confederation, but they conferred little power on Congress. 
 It could recommend, but could not enforce that which it recommended. 
 It could only advise action, leaving the States to do as they pleased. 
 Bitter jealousy existed between the several States, both with regard to each 
 other, and to the general good. A heavy debt had been incurred by 
 the war. Congress had no money, and could not levy taxes. It advised 
 the States to pay, but some of them were too jealous of Congress to heed 
 its recommendations. Massachusetts, however, true to her honorable record 
 from first to last, assumed her own share of the national obligation of 
 the States which, though not yet a nation, had together undertaken to 
 secure independence of all from the English dominion. 
 
 " At the same time the land was in a terrible condition. Commerce had 
 been utterly destroyed by the war. Trade, manufactures, and agriculture 
 had been neglected. War had been the main business of the country 
 for eight years. Many persons lost their entire fortunes. Villages, towns, 
 and cities had been burned ; ships had been lost ; crops had been destroyed ; 
 money was worth almost nothing, still it was scarce and hard to get. 
 A mighty load of debt rested on the nation, states, towns, and individuals, 
 and, taking the land through, few were ready to do anything for the 
 general relief. A shock was needed to wake the land to energetic life, 
 and that shock came in the shape of what is known in history as ' Shays' 
 Rebellion.' " 
 
 Berkshire, as we know, was the most recently settled county of 
 Massachusetts, and the evils thus depicted bore heavily upon her. Yet, 
 though there were numerous active cooperators in the county, it was around 
 Northampton, Springfield, and Worcester, chiefly, that the rebellious 
 gatherings were found, aimed mainly at preventing the sessions and 
 action of the courts. 
 
 In Sheffield, you are aware, was the "battlefield" of the only actual 
 fight, and, if we except the loss of life accompanying the attempt made by 
 Shays on the arsenal at Springfield, the only scene of bloodshed. The 
 " only instance " (according to Holland) " in which a considerable body 
 
51 
 
 of rebels exhibited the slightest courage ; " a courage, however, which 
 he is malicious enough to attribute to "the quantity of liquor they had 
 stolen and drank during the day." 
 
 The establishment of the constitution of the United States, and the 
 remodelling of our State government, tended to restore confidence and 
 quiet. The return of malcontents to habits of industry, the natural 
 increase of population and the development of our physical resources, 
 gradually obliterated all traces of these disorders. With peace, prosperity 
 resumed its reign ; our State and our county, rapidly increasing in popula- 
 tion and in wealth, have been, conspicuously, the scenes of those busy 
 activities in commerce, agriculture, manufactures, and in engineering 
 works auxiliary thereto, which have been, during the latter half of the 
 century, so characteristic of our country. 
 
 We need not dwell on the episode of our national history, the war of 
 1812, — a war which found little favor in New England, and in which our 
 town seems to have had no further part than in sending its quota of 
 militia to Boston, in 1814. An invasion of the coast was apprehended; 
 but forty days of camp life at Dorchester, a review by the governor on 
 Boston Common, and, on the whole, an "extremely pleasant time" for our 
 militiamen, made up the events of this so-called " Governor Strong's war." 
 
 It is the sentiment of the country that this Centennial of our national 
 existence should be especially a new era of restored fellowship and 
 brotherly feeling with those of our countrymen with whom we were, in its 
 penultimate decade, in so deadly a straggle. Long years myself a 
 resident among those with whom we were subsequently to join battle, the 
 "better half" of my feelings has been with some of those who live south 
 of Mason and Dixon's line, and I am little disposed to recall, on this 
 occasion, events of the war. 
 
 But I cannot omit some notice of the historic relations of my native 
 town to this war. Her records show with how much patriotism and earnest- 
 ness she demeaned herself. 
 
 " 1861, May 4, Oliver Peck, moderator, W. B. Saxton,town clerk (E. E. 
 Callender, Abner Roys, and Henry Burtch, were selectmen throughout 
 the war), voted that the moderator and towm clerk petition the governor, 
 in behalf of the town, to immediately assemble the legislature. On 
 motion of E. F. Ensign, a resolution passed at a legal meeting of the 
 inhabitants of the town of Sheffield, held on the 18th of June, 1776, was 
 read, and ordered to be put on file." This, the resolution we this day 
 commemorate, was thus recalled and recorded anew, — an example of the 
 patriotism of our fathers ; an incentive to our own, in this new crisis of 
 our country's fate. A committee (Graham A. Root, E. F. Ensign, 
 Zacheus Candee, Archibald Taft, and Leonard Tuttle) were chosen, to 
 report a series of resolutions." They reported, 1st, $2,000 to be raised to 
 
52 
 
 equip volunteers from this town ; 2d, each volunteer to be paid $9 per 
 month by the town ; 3d. families of soldiers to receive " comfortable 
 assistance:" 4th, G. A. Root, S. H. Bushnell, L. Tuttle, T. B. Strong and 
 H. D. Train, to be a committee, with full powers to expend the money ', 
 5th, said committee may borrow not exceeding $4,000 on the credit of the 
 town ; 6th, the committee to serve without pay ; 7th, the town-treasurer 
 shall pay all orders of said committee; 8th, the committee were " to pro- 
 ceed immediately to form a militia company." The resolutions were 
 adopted with one dissenting vote. 
 
 1862, July 22, voted a bounty to each volunteer of $125. A commit* 
 tee of fourteen, " to solicit enlistments, and subscriptions of money to be 
 given volunteers." 
 
 August 23, voted a bounty of $100 to each nine months' volunteer. 
 
 November 4, $2,000 for aid to soldiers' families. 1864, April 4, a bounty 
 of $150, and to raise $3,000 for this purpose. December 13, raised 
 $4,000. 
 
 The town carried the spirit, shown in the resolutions adopted at the 
 beginning of the war, through the entire struggle, and, at its close, passed 
 a vote of thanks to the selectmen, who declined a reelection, for their 
 services in procuring recruits. 
 
 Sheffield furnished 269 men for the military service — a surplus of eight 
 over all demands. Four were commissioned officers. The whole amount 
 of money raised for war purposes, during the five years, was $30,033 68, 
 besides the " State aid " to the families of volunteers, which was after- 
 wards reimbursed by the Commonwealth, and which was, in 1861, 
 $80 36: 1S62, $1,867 56; 1863, $4,S59 71 ; 1864, $4,300; 1865, 
 $3,400. Total amount, $14,507 63. Total raised, $44,541 31. 
 
 No town in the State failed to raise its full quota of men, and only two 
 in our county failed to raise more than their quota ; but no town can 
 claim to have been more prompt, energetic, and liberal, than Sheffield. 
 
 I have thus hastily sketched our origin, growth and history ; but how 
 unsatisfactory must necessarily be a mere historical sketch ! How little 
 can we realize who and what they were — out fathers, indeed — who lived, 
 in 1776, where we now live ! The word "father" carries us back to the 
 time when we were children, and when we looked up into parental eyes 
 with a tenderness and reverence with which it is not in us to regard other 
 mortal being. Were those who lived here — and, save through those words 
 and deeds we find record of, so utterly unknown to us — indeed our " fathers 
 after the flesh " ? Does the brief century of years which lays in the dust 
 all who have gone before us, and who have begotten us, thus dissolve all 
 ties ? Are we indeed children of the dead, as w r e are ourselves heirs to 
 death ? To Him, the " God of our fathers," who proclaims Himself not 
 the God of the dead but of the living, we must appeal for answer ! 
 
53 
 
 But, leaving aside these grave questions, how inexpressibly interesting 
 it would be if, as we chance to pass one of the few remaining quaint old- 
 time houses, destitute in front of porch and piazza, sloping back with its 
 long rearward roof from two stories down to one ; or, perchance, one of 
 the double-fronted old brick houses, with the numerals of a long-past year 
 curiously worked into its front walls, we might enter and find there their 
 vanished dwellers as they were ! 
 
 Were they, indeed, those grim old " Puritans," of whom we have heard 
 so much ; and who, though they landed on " Plymouth Rock," and 
 
 " Shook the depths of the forest gloom with hymns of lofty cheer," 
 
 do not, altogether, make us feel as if we should be at ease in their 
 company ? Our narrative shows them to have been real live men — 
 keenly alive to the sense of injustices and oppressions, — self-sacrificing in 
 their efforts to remove them, and actively benevolent in behalf of those 
 who were in need of succor. But, as if we needed a little of our own 
 " human nature," to assure us that they were of our flesh and blood, the 
 story of a " Shays' Rebellion," bad as it is, comes in aptly, if not 
 agreeably. 
 
 Holland tells us, too, that, " in social life, ardent spirits played an 
 important part. Respectable traders dealt out the article to very miserable 
 topers ; respectable men assembled, even on Sunday evenings, in the 
 parlor of the village tavern, to drink flip and smoke their pipes ; respect- 
 able young men went forth in sleighing parties, stopping at every tavern 
 for their flip, and boys drank flip by the hour, in bar-rooms of respectable 
 members of the Church. Then, Sunday night was the night for play 
 among the children, Saturday night being observed as holy time. They 
 pursued their noisy games in the street, or assembled in neighboring 
 houses to play blindman's buff and tell stories." 
 
 That there ivas a long period in our early history during which the 
 evils of the free use of " ardent spirits " had not been adequately 
 recognized, all of us whose memories extend back fifty years, can vouch. 
 The use of ardent spirits was doubtless then, as it is now, quite too 
 common, and Holland is but truthful when he says, " Respectable traders 
 dealt out the article to very miserable topers ;" but I doubt whether there 
 was ever a time when " boys drank flip by the hour," in bar-rooms of 
 respectable innkeepers, whether members of the Church or not. Fifty 
 years ago it was rather unusual to find an innkeeper to be a " member 
 of the Church ; " not because they were not " respectable," but because 
 of the peculiar attributes of church-membership in New England. 
 
 It was in the early years of the century that " temperance societies " 
 first originated. It is, indeed, only within that brief period that men 
 have become fully conscious of the fearful evils which accompany the 
 
54 
 
 use of ardent spirits ; nowhere were the evils earlier recognized than in 
 New England. The earliest "temperance society" originated (1808) in 
 a region bordering on our own (Saratoga County, N. Y.). Five years 
 later (1813 )the Massachusetts Society for the suppression of intemperance 
 was formed. Affiliated societies were rapidly organized throughout the 
 State, and travelling preachers, or lecturers, went forth with the theme on 
 their lips. They are many among us who can remember the first appear- 
 ance of these excellent men, and the telling effect of their appeals ; one 
 of the most common of which was the computation of the number of ships 
 which could be floated in the liquor annually drank. The speaker well 
 recollects that owe "respectable trader" went his way homeward, after 
 such an appeal, vowing to stave the heads of his " wine " casks, and let 
 his tributary rill flow to mother earth, rather than to that imaginary lake 
 which floated the navies of the world, — that too real maelstrom in which 
 were being engulfed the noblest ventures of our life's enterprise, the 
 fairest promise of our New-England homes. The speaker is sorry to 
 add that he has not reason to believe this virtuous resolution was carried 
 into effect ; he has rather reason to fear that it served but to form 
 another tessera of pavement for that place where "good intentions" are 
 said to be trampled under foot (Appendix 6). 
 
 Although that extreme rigidity of Sabbath observance, maintained 
 by penal enactments, of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay did not obtain 
 in the latest Massachusetts settlement, Berkshire, yet those of us whose 
 memories extend back to the mediaeval period of the past century, will 
 recollect the extreme strictness of observance alluded to by Holland. 
 
 The commandment given to the children of Israel was absolute, and it 
 was addressed to a people for whom its absolute observance was practi- 
 cable. Such an observance is simply impracticable among the nations 
 of the earth, as human relations and avocations are noAV constituted ; but 
 the Almighty never commanded an impracticable thing, nor laid an 
 absolute injunction upon man that he, his creature, should define to it 
 exceptions. 
 
 "When will the Sabbath be over?" was, if not on our lips, the yearn- 
 ing thought, as Sunday's sun went down, of many a boyish heart fifty 
 years ago ; not that, with the mercenary Jews, " we may sell wheat ; '■ 
 not that we may resume our work ; but that we boys, released from 
 unnatural restriction, may once more, at least, play. 
 
 On such an occasion as this, personal reminiscences of early days might 
 be deemed appropriate ; but the most far-reaching memory among us 
 extends little beyond the mid-period of the century just ended, and there 
 are not many to whom the " brick school-house " (many years since 
 demolished), with its quaint curb-roof, — nor its successive teachers, are 
 familiar reminiscences. One of these, a venerable lady, for whom there 
 
55 
 
 are yet many to " arise up and call her blessed," is still living, though 
 not among us. Another, a somewhat famous pedagogue, came here in 
 the decline of bis powers, physical and mental, but, nevertheless, many of 
 Sheffield's since-noted men (among whom my friends, Judge Bradford 
 and Mr. Ensign Kellogg, now of Pittsfield) were, as was the speaker, 
 his pupils, deriving profit from his teaching. 
 
 There are, perhaps, a few present who recollect this " meeting-house," 
 as it stood in the middle of the street, and its removal and remodelling 
 (1820) to its preseut site and form. But many here present will recollect 
 the commanding form of the last of our sole Congregational pastors, the 
 Rev. James Bradford, whose flock comprised all the inhabitants (for, until 
 1825, the town and the Congregational society were one and the same), 
 — one of the last of that remarkable race of New-England divines who 
 were so influential in moulding, so potent in maintaining, our peculiar 
 New-England institutions. " Bequiescant in pace" be our invocation ; 
 " Well done, good and faithful servants," be their greeting from the Master 
 whom, according to their light and might, they so faithfully served. 
 
 In one respect, Sheffield is unlike those towns of our State and country 
 which are most typical of the growth of the nation. Quite destitute of 
 water-power — nearly the only portion of the Housatonic valley which is 
 thus destitute — and, until the opening of the Housatonic railroad (1840), 
 almost cut off from communication with the great cities — the social and 
 commercial centres — Sheffield has remained an eddy in the sweeping 
 current of what we call our national progress. We have had but small 
 addition from without to our population. A community of farmers we 
 were ; a community of farmers we remain. Since the opening of rail- 
 road communications, the upper towns of the Housatonic valley have 
 been much resorted to, by inhabitants of New York and Boston, for 
 summer residence and for sites of country seats, while our own town has 
 been passed by, mainly because the broad plain, in the midst of which 
 is our village, presents not, contiguous to the population, those view- 
 commanding sites which are found hard by the more northern towns of 
 the Berkshire valley. With the highest peak of the Taconic range, the 
 Dome, or " High Peak " of our boyhood — improperly called " Mount 
 Everett " on recent maps, in consequence of an unauthorized and uncalled- 
 for innovation of the late Professor Hitchcock — overlooking us on the west ; 
 the picturesque Hoosacs bordering our valley on the east ; the sinuous 
 silvery thread of the Housatonic laid along the intervening breadth of 
 green meadows, the broad expanse of which is broken by numerous 
 beautiful wooded monticles ; with our excursions to the mountains, to 
 " Bash-a-pish," to the " Twin Lakes," to the " Pool," and numerous 
 others, we yield not the palm of scenic beauty to our rivals, and we 
 envy not the encroachments of city life. Without wealth ourselves, we 
 
56 
 
 "have not yearly displayed before us the superfluities nor the pretensions 
 of those who do have it. 
 
 But we must not wholly congratulate ourselves on our isolation. The 
 great cities have not indeed added to us ; alas ! they have taken from us. 
 There was a time — and the speaker recollects it — when such a country 
 existence was an entity ; something complete and self-sufficing. Never 
 a manufacturing place (in the modern sense), there was a time when 
 nearly all our oivn manufactories were here. We made our own clothes, 
 our own carriages, built our own houses, made our own silverware ; and 
 repaired, at least, for ourselves, our clocks and watches. 
 
 These arts, exerted though they were on a humble scale, have nearly 
 all fled. Who in our country towns can make a hat, or a man's gar- 
 ment of any kind, or a horse-shoe, or a harness, when the great manufac- 
 tories, with concentrated " capital " and steam-driven " machinery," make 
 them "in gross" for whole populations? 
 
 With our self-sufficedness and small mechanical avocations has gone, 
 too, in no inconsiderable degree, our intellectual life. Before the great 
 cities and manufacturing centres had absorbed all the energies of the 
 people, each isolated township was a centre of intellectual life to 
 itself. The driving away of energy and intellect to the cities, or to the 
 broader fields of enterprise in the West, is by no means peculiar to 
 Sheffield ; but the effect has been more telling, since, for us, there have 
 been few compensating influences. Massachusetts, more than any other 
 State, perhaps, has devoted herself to the perfecting of education ; yet it 
 may well be doubted whether any of the " high schools " of this region sur- 
 pass such as those of Mr. Curtis, in Stockbridge, or of Levi Gleason, in 
 Lenox and Sheffield, of fifty years ago. 
 
 Before the days of railroads, the great turnpike route from Albany to 
 Hartford lay through Sheffield, midway between those cities. Who is 
 there whose memory reaches to those early years of the century, who 
 does not recollect the daily passage of the stage-coaches ? With us boys 
 it was the great event of the day; the qualities of the various "teams" 
 were warmly discussed ; their " drivers " were among our heroes. Nor 
 was it a matter of less interest to our grown population. Sheffield was 
 the midday stopping-place in summer, the hostelry for night in the winter. 
 
 It is related of the celebrated French author, Chateaubriand, that, 
 when in this country, he travelled by this route through Sheffield, and 
 passed the night at the tavern, still, in somewhat altered form, standing. 
 Before retiring, he took a place by the fireside, and casually entered into 
 conversation with one who appeared to be a villager. Each soon 
 discovered the other to be something more than an ordinary villager or 
 an ordinary traveller. The conversation increased in interest — the legend 
 makes it to have been mathematical ! — became absorbing, and not till the 
 
57 
 
 gray light of dawn stole in upon them, did either feel conscious that an 
 entire night had been passed in this intellectual intercourse. Chateau- 
 briand's interlocutor was Paul Dewey, uncle to our eminent and venerable 
 townsman, Dr. Orville Dewey. I am sorry to say that I cannot verify, 
 from Chateaubriand's published journals, that he ever passed over this 
 Hartford and Albany route (though he did go to Albany) ; but the tale 
 is of the class, u se non e vero e ben trovato : if not true, it is truthlike. 
 
 If, from these purely local views with which I have occupied your 
 attention, we extend our vision over the nation of which we are a diminu- 
 tive member, we should doubtless find, in its successive and noble 
 struggles for national existence, and in the rapid strides of progress by 
 which it has now taken rank among the foremost nations of the earth, 
 great cause for self-congratulation. 
 
 The thirteen original colonies, whose narrow skirt of settlement barely 
 fringed the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts Bay to the Savannah 
 river, and whose population numbered less than four millions, have been 
 the nursing mothers of thirty-eight States, whose territorial expanse 
 reaches, without break of continuity, from the Atlantic to the Pacific ; 
 from the great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Over this immense, area a 
 reticulation of seventy thousand miles of railways has been cast, auxiliary 
 to which our great rivers have been spanned by bridge-structures, the 
 very conception of which was not in the minds of men one hundred years 
 ago ; and even our own Hoosacs have, by cyclopean labor, been pierced 
 to make a way for the " iron horse." The waters of the Atlantic have 
 been united to those of the great lakes, and those again to the Mississippi. 
 Thus have we put a double " girdle" of iron and of water around our 
 by no means little " world," known as the United States of America — 
 nay, a treble one ; and though the last be but a diminutive wire, yet, 
 like the nerve-system of the human body, it is the medium through which 
 flashes intelligence, and which brings all parts of the system into harmoni- ' 
 ous action. 
 
 Regarded as the results of a century's growth of the nation, they are 
 indeed marvellous. But yet, there is " a more excellent way " in which 
 we may not have achieved so marked a progress, or in which, if marked 
 at all, it may be feared our progress has been re-gressive. 
 
 "Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey, 
 Where wealth accumulates and men decay." 
 
 It is by the greatness of our men that the true greatness of our nation 
 must be judged — nay, by which even its material greatness will ulti- 
 mately be determined. An eloquent writer * has well said : " In the 
 perplexities of nations, in their struggles for existence, their impotence 
 
 * Euskin, "Modern Painters.'' 
 
5S 
 
 or even their disorganization, they have higher hopes and nobler pas- 
 sions ; out of suffering conies the serious mind ; out of salvation, the 
 grateful heart ; out of endurance, fortitude ; out of deliverance, faith. 
 But when they have done away with violent and external sources of 
 suffering, worse evils seem to arise out of their rest, — evils that vex less 
 and mortify more ; that suck the blood, though they do not shed it, and 
 ossify the heart, though they do not torture it." 
 
 During the hundred years which have elapsed, our nation has passed 
 through all these ordeals. " Endurance " has developed our " fortitude ; " 
 u suffering," the " serious mind ; " and " salvation," the " grateful heart." 
 Shall the doiug away with violent and external sources of suffering 
 develop, too, with us, those "worse evils" hinted at? Shall external 
 prosperity, with its attendant love of luxury and ease, " suck the blood " 
 of our purer affections, and u ossify " our hearts, that they no longer throb 
 with noble and manly impulses'? 
 
 The century which we inaugurate will be tasked with far other prob- 
 lems than those which tried the past one. And of those purely political, 
 the most important will be that of maintaining good government — which 
 implies the distraining of political corruption. No more difficult problem 
 has fallen upon human beings, as civil communities enlarged themselves 
 from mere tribes to mighty nations, than that of government. We 
 Americans have grown up in — imbibed with our mother's milk, I might 
 say — the belief that republicanism is the most perfect (as, in application 
 to a great nation, it is the latest) phase of human government. A mon- 
 archy, like yonder elm, to be stable and beneficent, must send its roots 
 deep ; must be grappled, in the soil where it stands, by multitudinous 
 tendrils of personal reverence, the growth of a traditionary past. We, 
 as a people, had no traditions, and no great families to members of 
 which the people of these thirteen colonies could concede preeminence. A 
 republic was not only congenial to the predilections and habits of mind of 
 the colonists, but the sole form of government practicable for. them. 
 Indeed it may be said that, everywhere, men are outgrowing their tradi- 
 tions, and the habits of personal reverence, which sustain monarchies ; and 
 that a neiv monarchy can hardly originate again — at least, among highly 
 civilized peoples.* 
 
 The perfecting of the republican form of government is, therefore, the 
 great desideratum, not only for us, but for civilized mankind. No 
 greater work of purely human political wisdom was ever produced, than 
 the " Constitution of the United States." Yet it may safely be affirmed 
 
 * A new organization or distribution, merely, by which a new monarchy is made 
 (e. g. y Belgium) out of older ones, with recourse to existing reigning families, does not 
 come in the category of " new monarchies " alluded to. 
 
59 
 
 that, could the vision of its makers have been extended to the present 
 day, the work would have taken, in some respects, a different form. 
 It is, however, to be borne in mind that, in owe important feature, the Con- 
 stitution has ever been a dead letter. I allude to that which prescribes 
 the manner of electing 1 the President of the United States. It was not 
 intended (and, to me, that is one of the indubitable proofs of the wisdom 
 of its framers) that the chief magistrate should be elected directly by the 
 people. It was for a certain number of ''• electors," appointed by the 
 States (no senator or representative, or person holding any office of trust 
 or profit under the United States, being eligible), " in such a manner as the 
 legislatures thereof may direct,'' to make the choice. Nay, more ; instead 
 of reducing to insignificancy the Vice-Presidency of the United States, 
 the "electors" were to simply vote for " two persons." When these votes 
 shall be counted " in the presence of the Senate," " the person having 
 the greatest number of votes shall be the President ; " the one having 
 nest to the greatest number, " Vice-President. " 
 
 Nor does the " amendment " (whatever may have been in the minds 
 of its framers), which specifies that the electors shall vote specifically for 
 "President" and "Vice-President," affect the fundamental idea. To the 
 electors it was given to choose of their own volition and wisdom, for 
 these United States, the Chief Magistrate. 
 
 I care not to discuss the practicability of this method, remarking only 
 that it leaves no place for the party " conventions " which effect, practi- 
 cally, for each party, a choice beforehand, and that, this idea carried 
 into effect, the demoralizing notions of " spoils " and of " victors " would 
 have been unknown. The inauguration of President would not have been 
 the inauguration of a new quadrennial period of contest. Our "civil 
 service" would not have become, as it now is, a part of the " spoils " of a 
 political " victory." 
 
 We may not be able to restore that which, indeed, we never had : the 
 constitutional method of election. What we may do, and what we should 
 do, is to banish from politics the erroneous notions through which " rota- 
 tion in office " is regarded as excellent and desirable in itself, and which 
 makes " office " the prize of party predominance. We may place our 
 civil N service beyond the reach of this kind of spoliation, and free our 
 country from the quadrennial anarchy of a Presidential election, while 
 removing temptations to abuse of power, by proscribing, absolutely, a 
 " second term." 
 
 We have assembled on this occasion especially for commemoration of 
 our prospective adhesion to a " Declaration of Independence," to be 
 made by the General Congress of the Colonies. In that declaration (as 
 it soon after took form) the " king of Great Britain" was charged, among 
 other things, with " taxing us without our consent," and with having 
 
60 
 
 " refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the 
 public good." 
 
 Now, one hundred years later, we have no "king of Great Britain" to 
 arraign • but, when mooted questions, the settlement of which is vital to 
 the public interest, are shunned by the political parties in power, and 
 bandied to and fro, lest there should be a loss of party prestige, have we 
 no like grievance? Taxes, indeed, cannot be imposed without " our 
 consent," given through legislative bodies chosen by ourselves ; or, at 
 least, by a majority of all who, under a system of universal suffrage, have 
 a right to vote ; but I will leave it to your own conclusions whether this, 
 our palladium from taxation " without our consent," has proved itself such. 
 
 Far as I am from being an optimist, I would not, on such an occasion 
 as this, be a Cassandra. The calamities which Cassandra predicted, befell 
 her people, because her vaticinations were disregarded. If the evils 
 which portend at the close of the first century of our national existence, 
 do not burst upon us in the next, it will be because, now deliberately 
 recognized, they shall effectually be guarded against. And if our coun- 
 try shall continue its unparalleled course of prosperity and greatness, it 
 will be because a free people rises to the dignity of that " perfect 
 freedom," which for man is only found in subjection, — subjection to divine 
 law — subjection to human law ; recognizing that the boasted prerogative 
 of "choosing our own rulers" is an imaginary benefit, unless it shall 
 secure our being wisely ruled. 
 
 My task is finished. May that glorious orb, source of light, emblem 
 of life, which shall soon sink below the mountain-ribbed horizon of our 
 beautiful valley, amid, perhaps, portentous clouds, yet not wholly without 
 "good omen," rise with the morrow's dawn upon another century, a 
 "sun of righteousness with healing in his wings," shedding rays of 
 beneficence upon the homes of a truly " free " people ! 
 
 "Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach 
 to any people." 
 
61 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 TO 
 
 GEN. BARNARD'S HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 
 
 [For the laborious examination of the records of the town of Sheffield, and the 
 transcription therefrom of the portions read in his address, the writer is indebted to 
 the gentleman to whose exertions the undertaking and successful accomplishment of 
 the "Sheffield Centennial Celebration" was in so great a degree due — the Rev. 
 Mason Noble.] 
 
 (1.) It may be that some part of the first church building is yet in exist- 
 ence, and could be identified. I have been able to trace its later history 
 only as follows : — 
 
 Mar. 14, 1764. "Ezra Fellows Ezra Hickock and Richard Jacobs 
 " were Chosen a Committee to dispose of the old meeting house for the 
 "Towns best advantage." They appear to have sold the building to 
 Amos Kellogg, who seems to have been unwilling, or unable, to pay 
 the price demanded, for we find these other items of record : — 
 
 Mar. 12, 1765 — " voted to Reduce AmosKelloggs obligation for the old 
 "meeting house Down to Twenty five pounds." 
 
 Oct. 12, 1768 — " voted to Reduce Amos Kelloggs obligation or the 
 " Judgment obtained against S d Kellogg at the Last Inferior Court of 
 "Common pleas Down to fifteen pounds" — Amos Kellogg died in 1770. 
 Unless destroyed by fire, probably the timbers of the old church still exist 
 in the frame of some dwelling-house or barn. [M. N., Jr.] 
 
 (2.) This date, Oct. 22, 1735, is rather that of the recognition of the 
 church than of its organization. On that day the first pastor was 
 ordained by a council — " present the Rev d Ministers and Messengers,"' 
 viz. : 
 
 " Timothy Cohens of Litchfield, Deac. Nath 1 Belden. 
 
 " Samuel Hopkins of Springfield. 
 
 " Peter Reynolds of Enfield, Capt. Joseph Sexton. 
 
 " Jonathan Edwards of Northampton, Deac. Samuel Alen. 
 
 " William Rand of Sunderland, Deac. Isaac Hubbard." 
 
 This was, doubtless, the occasion of the first visit of Samuel Hopkins 
 and Jonathan Edwards to Berkshire. The above extract is from the 
 " Proprietors' Book." The early records of the church are missing. In 
 
62 
 
 1813 Rev. Mr. Bradford made diligent search for them, and concluded 
 that they were " either lost or never made." — The following items are 
 found upon the town records : — 
 
 Jan. 16, 1733, "Thomas Lee, Anthony Austin and Samuel Dewey 
 " was chosen Tithingmen and Sworn. 
 
 Jan. 30, 1733, " Nath el Austin was Chosen to Go and treat with m r 
 " Pumroy or Hire Some other Gentlemen to Preach to us for a time." 
 
 Mar. 12, 1734, "Joseph Noble Anthony Austin and Thomas Lee ware 
 " Chosen Tything Men and Sworn." (The election of Tything-men took 
 place at every annual meeting until within the memory of many now 
 living.) 
 
 June 7, 1734, " voted to Give m*. Eben e Devotion A Call to the work 
 " of the ministrie In this Town — 
 
 " Mathew Noble Ezekiel Ashley and Philip Calender ware Chosen a 
 "Committee to Treat with m r Devotion In order for Settling In the 
 " work of the Ministrie " — 
 
 Oct. 18, 1734, " voted to allow m r . Ebenezer Devotion fourteen 
 ' ' shillings to be paid to Elisha Noble for Keeping m 1 '. Devotions Horse 
 " While he was Here." (Rev. Ebenezer Devotion, A. M., graduated at 
 Yale College in 1732 ; was afterward, I think, pastor of the church at 
 Windham, Conn. He died in 1771. He was probably the first man 
 to preach the Gospel in what is now Berkshire county.) 
 
 Oct. 18, 1734, the town voted to hire " m r Benjamin" Pumroy " to 
 preach for them six weeks. Dec. 20, they extended him a call. Mar. 
 17, 1735, they renewed the call, but in vain. June 26, 1735, they 
 extended a call to " m r . Jonathan Hubbard/' who accepted. 
 
 [M. N., Jr.] 
 
 (3.) This following is a transcript of the " remarkable " action or resolu- 
 tions alluded to in the text, of January 12th, 1773. 
 
 In the following the record is transcribed, as nearly as possible, "ver- 
 batim et literatim." It will be perceived that the Scribe who made 
 the entry, was unskilled. On the fifth of January, 1773, a Committee " to 
 take into Consideration the Grievences which Americans in general and 
 the Inhabitants of this province in particular labour under," was " Schozen, 
 viz. Theodore Sedgwick, D n Silas Kellogg, Col Ashley, Doc r Lem. 1 
 Barnard, Mr. Aaron Root, Major John Fellows, Mr. Philip Callender, 
 Cap n W m Day, Dea n Eben e Smith, Cap n Nath 1 Austin & Cap n Stephen 
 Dewey." — This Com 1 reported Jan. 12, 1773 — as follows — 
 
 " The Committee of this Town, Appointed to take into consideration the 
 Greviances which Americans in general' and the Inhabitants of this Prov- 
 ince in particular laber under, and to make a Draught of such proceedings 
 as they think are necessary for this Town in these critical circumstances 
 .to enter into, Report as follows, viz : that, 
 
63 
 
 " This Town taking 1 into there serious consideration and deeply lament- 
 ing the unhappy situation to which Americans in general and his 
 Majestys most faithful subjects the Inhabitance of this Provence in 
 perticular are, reduced, owing to the jealous Eye with which America 
 hath been veiwed by several british Administrations, since the Accesicon 
 of his present most Greacious Magesty to the throne and veiwing with the 
 deepest Sorrow the Design of Great Britain (which is but too apparent to 
 •every Virtuous Lover of his Country) gradually to deprive us of invaluble 
 Eights and previlidges, which were transmitted to us by our worthey and 
 independent Ancestors at the most laborious and dangerous Expence 
 Should asteem ourselves greatly wanting in the Duty we owe ourselves, 
 our Country and posterity, Called upon as we are by our Brethren, the 
 respectable Town of Boston, should we neglect with the utmost Firm- 
 ness and freedom to express the Sence we have of our present Dangerous 
 Situation, always professing, as with Truth we do, the most emicolable 
 Regard and Attachment to our most gracious Sovereign and protestant 
 Succession as by Law established, we have with that Deferance and 
 Respect due to the Country on which we are and always hope to be 
 dependent, entered into the following Resolves, viz 
 
 Resolved that Mankind in a state of Nature are equai, free and inde- 
 pendent of each Other, and have a right to the undisturbed Enjoyment of 
 there lives, there Liberty and Property. 
 
 Resolved that the great end of political Society is to secure in a more 
 effectual manner those Rights and previledges wherewith God & Nature 
 have made us free — 
 
 Resolved that it hath a tendency to subvert the good end for which 
 Society was instituted, to have in any part of the legislative Body an 
 Interist seperate from and independent of the Interest of the people in 
 general — 
 
 Resolved that affixing a Stipend to the Office of the Governer of the 
 provence to be paied by money taken from the people without there con- 
 cent creates in him an Intrest Seperate from and independent of the 
 people in general — 
 
 Resolved that the peaceful Enjoyment of any preveliges to the people 
 of this provence in a great measure (under God) depends upon the 
 uprightness of and independency of the Excutive Officers in general, and 
 of the Judges of the Superior Court in peticuler — 
 
 Resolved that if Salleries are affixed to the office of the Judges of the 
 superior Court rendering them independent of the people and dependent 
 on the Crown for there support (which we have too much Reson to think 
 is the Case) it is a precedent that may hereafter, conceeding the Deprav- 
 ety of human Nature, be improved to purposes big with the most Obvious 
 and fatal consequences to the good people of this province — 
 
64 
 
 Resolved that Americans in general (and his Magestes Subjects the 
 Inhabitants of this Provence in perticuler, by there Charter) are intitled 
 to all the Liberties, Priviledges and Immunities of natural born british 
 Subjects — 
 
 Resolved That it is a well-known and undoubted priviledge of the 
 british Constitution that every Subject hath not only a Right to the free 
 and uncontroled injoyment use and Improvement of his estat or property 
 so long as he shall continue in the possession of it, but that he shall not 
 in any maner be deprived there of in the whool or in part untill his 
 conscent geven by himself or his Representative hath been previously for 
 that purpous expresly obtained — 
 
 Resolved that the late acts of the parlement of Great Breton expres- 
 porpos of Rating and regulating the colecting a Revenew in the Colo- 
 nies : are unconstitutional as thereby the Just earning of our labours 
 and Industry without Any Regard to our own concent are by mere power 
 revished from us and un limited power by said acts and commisions put 
 into the hands of Ministeral hirelings are the Deprivation of our inestim- 
 able and constitutional priviledge, a Trial by Jury, the determanation of 
 our property by a single Judge paid by one party by Money illegally 
 taken from the other for that purpos, and the insulting Diference made 
 between british and American Subjects are matters truly greavious and 
 clearly evince a Disposition to Rule us with the Iron Rod of Power — 
 
 Resolved that the interduction of civil Officers unknown in the Charter 
 of this Province with powers which Render Property, Domestic Security 
 and Enjoyment of the Inhabitance altogether Insecure are a very great 
 greavence. 
 
 Resolved that it is the Right of every subject of Great Breton to be tried 
 by his peers of the vicinity, when charged with any crime, that any act 
 of the parliment of Great Breatain for Distroying this priviledge and 
 tearing away Subjects from there Connections, Friends, Business and the 
 possibility of evincing there Innocence, and earring them on bare Sus- 
 picion to the Distance of Thousands of Miles for a trial is an troble 
 Grevance. [This is nearly as it is written. It is evident the person who 
 entered these minutes into the town records, did not understand the pur- 
 port, or else was very careless.] 
 
 Resolved That the Great and general Coart of this Province have it in 
 there power in consequence of Instrutions from the Ministry only, too 
 exempt any Man or Body of Men residing within and Receiving Protec- 
 tion from the Laws of this Province from contrebuting there equal Propor- 
 tion to w r ards the Support of Government within the same nor can any 
 such instrections or orders from the Ministry of Great Breton Justify Such 
 Proceedings [for] should this be the Case it will follow of consequence 
 that the whole Province Tax may Be laid and one or more persons as 
 shall Best suit with the Caprice of the Ministry-- 
 
65 
 
 Resolved that any Determination or adjudication of the King in Coun- 
 sel with Regard to the Limits of Provinces in America, where by Privite 
 Property is or may [be] affected, is a great grevence already very 
 severly felt by Great Numbers, who after purchasing Lands of the Only 
 Persons whome they would sopose had any Right to Convey have on a 
 sudding, by such an adjudication been deprived of there whole Property 
 and from a state of affluance reduced to a state of Beggary 
 
 Resolved That the great and general Coart of this Province can consti- 
 tutionly make any Laws or Regulations, Obligatory upon the inhabbitance 
 there of residing with in the Same — 
 
 Voted That the Town Clark duly Record the prosedings of This Meet- 
 ing, and Make a true and attested Copy There of as soon as may be and 
 forward the same to David Ingersole Jun r Esq r , The Representative of 
 This Town, at the great and general Court at Boston who is hereby Re- 
 quested to consider the above Resolves as the Sence of his Constitu acts 
 [sic] the Town of Sheffield and to the — centituonal Menes [sic] in his 
 Power that the Greaviances complained of may be redressed, and where 
 as the Province of New York, by the most unjustifiable Prosedings 
 have by a late act of there general Assembly extended the Limits of the 
 County of Albany East as far as Conneticut River, and under pertence 
 of having by that act the legual Jurisdiction with in that part of this 
 province, by Said Act included within The County of Albany have exer- 
 cised Actual jurisdiction, and the officers of the County of Albany with- 
 out the least pretence of any Presept from the Orthority On this side the 
 Line, by Colour of a warrant, executed in that County upon suspison that 
 a man had been guilty of a crime in this County, taken him and carried 
 him to Albany for examination in Inditement crimes have been tryed, 
 to have been cometted at Sheffield in the County of Albany, Mr. 
 Engersell is here by requested to use his Utmost Influence that the 
 Alarming consequences from such proceedings dreaded, may be pre- 
 vented & That the Fears of the people may be quieted by a speedy 
 Determanation of that unhappy controversy And where as it hath been 
 reported that the support given by the great and general Court to 
 the Judges of the Superier Court hath been in addaquate to the service 
 performed, M r . Engersoll is here by requested that (if this Report 
 shall appear to be founded in truth) he use his Influence Saleries may 
 augmented, to such a sum as shall be sufficient to support the Dignity 
 of the office 
 
 Theodore Sedgwick p e Ord 
 
 Which being twice Reade distinctly It was put to Vote paragraph 
 by paragraph Whether the town would Accept of Such a Report it pased 
 in the affirmative Nemine Contradicente. — 
 
 (4.) The first " Town Meeting" in Sheffield was held at the house "Mr 
 
66 
 
 obadiah Noble" Jan. 16, 1733. The following is the record of the 
 
 meeting : 
 
 "voted mathew Noble Chosen moderator 
 
 " voted at the Same meeting Hezekiah Noble Chosen Town Clerk and 
 
 " sworn 
 " voted at Same meeting John Smith Philip Calender and Daniel Kellogg 
 
 " was chosen Selectmen 
 " voted at the meeting & Daniel Kellogg was chosen Town Treasurer and 
 
 " Sworn 
 " voted at the Same meeting and Joseph Taylor and Elisha Noble was 
 
 " Chosen Constables and Sworn 
 " voted at the Same meeting Thomas Lee Anthony Austin and Samuel 
 
 " Dewey was Chosen Tithing men and Sworn 
 " voted at the Same meeting Nathaniel Austin and obadiah Noble was 
 
 " Chosen fenceviewers and Sworn 
 " voted at the Same meeting and Jonathan Root was Chosen Sirveyer 
 
 "and Sworn " — 
 
 [The names of Taylor and Root are not now found upon our lists of 
 voters. The other names still continue with us. M. N., Jr.] 
 
 (5) These interesting rolls are furnished by Mr. Thomas Austin, of 
 Erie, Penna. 
 
 " The following is a return of Minute Men in the Third Companv 
 in the First Regiment in the county of Berkshire July 11, 1776. 
 
 (Signed) Abner Callender, 
 ClerK 
 
 SergJ. Nathaniel Callender Jonathan Spalding 
 
 Corp 1 . Solomon Triscot Zehulon Spalding 
 
 Joseph Callender Samuel Warn 
 
 Joseph Church Jacob Warn 
 
 Samuel Triscot, j r . Benajah Orcnt 
 
 David Callender Amos Gill 
 
 Seth Triscot Ebenezer Jones 
 
 Elijah Baccus David Dunham. j r . 
 David Keys 
 
 " Roll of Lieut. Enoch Noble's " Comp. . in Colo. Mark Hopkins Regi- 
 ment of Foot Being the first Regiment in the County of Berkshire. 
 
 Dated 
 Sheffield, June 13, A. D. 1776. 
 
 Lieu' Enoch Noble " Benjamin Cowle, j 1 
 
 " Jeremiah Hickock " Jasper Saxton 
 
 Serg 4 Anthony Austin Clerk Joseph Kingman 
 
 " Anthony Goodepied Corp 1 Joseph Goodrich 
 
67 
 
 Corp!. Amos Eldridge . 
 
 " Ebenezer Kellogg 
 
 " Elisha Smith 
 
 Drummer. Irie Beach 
 
 Fifer. Darius Butler 
 
 Privates. Samuel Bush 
 
 " Ephraim Kellogg 
 " Joseph Cook 
 " David Hickock 
 " Paul Dewey 
 " John Austin 
 " Obadiah Bush 
 " Joseph Seeger 
 " David Walker 
 " Nathanial Westover 
 " Aaron Fairchild 
 " Elijah Austin 
 " Joel Kellogg 
 " Ephraim Case 
 " Augustine Austin 
 " Gideon Kellogg; 
 " Whiting Sheldon 
 " Nathanial Cowle 
 " Benjamin Bramin 
 
 Ezekiel Noble 
 " John Cotten 
 " Joshua Boardman 
 '' Joseph Taylor 
 " Joseph Corben 
 " William Johnson 
 " William McGachy 
 
 Privates. Zachariah Noble 
 
 " Silas Marvin 
 
 " John Fellows 
 
 " Benjamin Bush 
 
 " Benjamin Fuller 
 
 " Nathaniel Downing 
 
 Noah Hubbard 
 
 " Joseph Steele 
 
 " Ebenezer Smith, j r . 
 
 " Elias Hopkins 
 
 " Jonathan Parkes 
 
 " Benjamin Spalding 
 
 ■' Dan Raymond 
 
 " Samuel Kinsman 
 
 " William Bement 
 
 " Aaron Root, y. 
 
 " Tho 9 Hart 
 
 " Silvester Barnard 
 
 " Timothy Hubbard 
 
 " Thomas Halten 
 
 " Samuel Shears 
 
 " John Obryn 
 
 " Mathew Noble 
 
 " Aaron Miller 
 
 '•' Abner Ashley 
 
 " Joseph Churchel 
 
 " Ruben Jackson 
 
 " Aaron Hubbard 
 
 " Roger Noble 
 
 " Jeremiah Fox 
 
 25 Guns, 3 with Bayonets. Every man had Wadding. 
 
 Third Company of Foot in the 
 July 11, J 776. 
 
 Cap 4 . Roswell Downing 
 Lieu'. Elisha Ensign 
 
 " Theophilus Spalding 
 Clerk. Abner Calleuder 
 Serg*. Comfort Callender 
 
 " John Hubbell 
 Joab Austin 
 Corp 1 Sam 1 Joslin 
 
 " Stephen Tuttle 
 
 " William Stephens 
 (Privates) 
 
 " William Day, j r 
 
 David Ferry 
 
 " Moses Eggleston 
 
 " Joshua Lebaron 
 
 First Regiment County of Berkshire- 
 
 (Privates) Job Westover 
 " Zacheus Spalding 
 
 " Shubel Warring 
 
 " James Linzey 
 
 " Samuel Bibbins 
 
 " Noah Westover 
 
 " Johnathan Nicals 
 
 " Samuel Hatch 
 
 William Roach 
 
 Henry Keys 
 " Jeremiah Dunham 
 
 John Westover 
 " Aaron Taylor 
 
 " Zadock Loomis 
 
 il Enos Kellogg 
 
68 
 
 (Privates) David Clark, )< " Nehemiah Kellogg. 
 
 " Moses Westover 
 
 " Peter Noble 23 Guns 
 
 " Solomon Noble 5 Bayonets 
 
 " John Nichols 16 Blankets 
 
 " Asa Kellogg 4| lbs Powder 
 
 " Daniel Taylor 220 Balls 
 
 " Daniel Pattin 30 Flints 
 
 " Philip Callender, j*. 8 Knapsacks 
 
 "' Aron Slate 19 Horns 
 
 " Linze Joslin 8 Priming Wires 
 
 " Jesse Hoocker 6 Brushes 
 
 '■' Elisha Ensign, j r . [M. N., Jr.] 
 
 (6) [Perhaps as notable an example of the general use of ardent spirits, 
 and as early a conception of the dangers of such use, as can be found 
 anywhere, is given in these extracts from the Sheffield town-records. 
 
 May 22, J 735 — " voted to Set the meeting House on a Certain Nole of 
 " Land Easterly of M r William Goodriches Dwelling House which is In 
 ( l the Street or Highway 
 
 " at the same meeting voted to allow three Barrels of Good Beare towards 
 " or for the Raising of the meeting house 
 
 '* at the same meeting voted to allow twenty Gallons of Rumb towards 
 u or for the Raising of the meeting house or for the towns use 
 " at the same meeting voted to allow twenty pounds of Suger to go with 
 u the Rhumb 
 
 " at the same meeting Obadiah Noble and Ensign Ashley ware made 
 u choice of to Dool out Drink to the labourers when it is convenient 
 tl and Likewiss to Sell Drink to Strangers or towns People and also to 
 " Recieve the money likewiss Ensign Ashley to Serve as Pinman 
 11 at the same meeting voted to allow no Drink to the Labourers after 
 lt they are Dismist from Labour , 
 
 " at the Same meeting voted to fine all persons that are Delinquent, viz 
 " Such Persons as are Capable or Servisable In Raising of the meeting 
 " House on the Days Here after mentioned the Sum of ten shillings a 
 "Day for Each Defolt," 
 
 Such were the regulations adopted and preparations made "for the 
 Raising of the meeting House." These men are not to be judged by our 
 standard. There was not the same moral delinquency shown in this action 
 of theirs that is seen in the use of " grab bags," and u guess cakes," and 
 " raffles," so common at the present day, for these things are known to be 
 wrong, and are forbidden by law. 
 
 The other extract is forty-two years later, March 11, 1777. 
 
 " Voted that no Person shall Sell Spirittuous Liquors without liberty 
 from the Selectmen and Committee of Inspection also that they Inspect 
 Licenced houses " M. N., Jr.] 
 
69 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 BY THE HONORABLE A. H. DAILET. 
 
 Kind Friends and Fellow Citizens : — 
 
 This good old town which has called her citizens together and her 
 children home to commemorate the heroic acts of their fathers, is faithful 
 to the traditions of New England hospitality; faithful in its duty to the 
 honored dead ; alive to the value of present blessings, and steadfast to the 
 cause of liberty. 
 
 You who were here born, and here have always lived, can never know 
 the emotions that fill the heart as the wanderer, returning, catches the 
 first glimpse of the grand old mountains on the west, the hills on the 
 east, and the old church spires in the town. The pen cannot write nor 
 the tongue speak all the heart can feel. To come again to this same 
 place where, more than twenty years ago, we were wont to gather, in 
 friendly annual reunion, and to now feel and know that in so short a time 
 I am almost a stranger in my native town, because so many are not who 
 then were living, that children have grown to man and womanhood, 
 saddens the heart, chokes the utterance, and impresses the too often 
 forgotten lesson, that life is as brief as its duties are grave. Of those who 
 go out into the world, to pluuge at once into active and continuous strife 
 in a career laid down at starting, how few reach the goal of their ambi- 
 tion, or the elevated plane the imagination saw when, with resolute step 
 and aspiring hope, the back was turned upon the scenes and endearments 
 of early life, and the face set sternly against the obstacles to success. 
 
 New scenes and new duties, whilst they divert, never can efface from 
 the yearning heart of the New Englander the sacred memories of home, 
 and to him there is no home but the land of his birth. The rest of the 
 world may be his theatre of action — it may enchant and delight him — but 
 he still loves New England, with her mountains and rugged hills, her 
 barren rocks and smiling valleys, her crystal streams and pleasant 
 villages ; her pure air and sapphire skies ; her churches and school-houses ; 
 her intelligence, and freedom-loving people ; and all that combination of 
 quality and association which makes New England peculiar to herself. 
 Were I to be born again, and could I be consulted upon that very 
 important event in a man's life, I would say, let it be as it was before, and 
 my first breath of life be the inspiration of the air of New England. 
 
70 
 
 Kind friends who may be with us to-day from other lands, or parts of 
 our common country, will pardon our pride in New England, and please 
 consider us not as intending' to disparage any other, when we speak of 
 what we deem peculiarly our own. If we have been modest for a 
 hundred years past (and of course we have), we propose to talk to-day, 
 if we keep silent for a hundred years to come. Our pride, if assailed 
 to-day, we stand ready to defend. If the achievements of the past give 
 us no right to pride, as natives of this town, as children of the old Bay 
 State, then had the Roman citizen no right to glory in Rome, when 
 that mighty city was mistress of the world. Let us justify our words, 
 and the deeds we commemorate. 
 
 It has long been conceded that man from a low intelligence and 
 primitive state has advanced, by means of mental culture and physi- 
 cal training, to a much higher scale of being ; and, although he is 
 still man, with thews, sinews, and brains, like unto his ancestors, he now 
 lives amid the hum of industries, and the majestic play of powers and 
 agencies which, even a hundred years ago, were slumbering giants in the 
 productive bosom of the natural world. Man was not made for the 
 world, but from a beginning out of that chaos which we strive in vain to 
 penetrate, revolved this mass which Infinite Wisdom, through unfathom- 
 able ages, fashioned and stored for the noblest and last of created 
 beings — man. with a soul thirsting for knowledge, and grasping for God. 
 The earth is his, with its products garnered by his hand ; its latent forces 
 and powers, which his genius has quickened into activity ; all hi? 
 servants — the industry of brain, nerve and muscle — are imperative require- 
 ments of nature, to meet the constantly increasing demands of his being. 
 Over and above all this, is the consciousness of that awful Presence 
 which the soul feels is its light, its life, wherever it may be — whether 
 upon the restless seas, in the solitude of the wilderness, on the arid 
 desert, or in the jargon of battle, demanding unlimited freedom of access 
 to the throne of the Father. 
 
 All these rights are inalienable to his nature, they are God-given 
 prerogatives; and every law which subverts them, oppressive, and the 
 power which enforces it, is despotic. It is a sad commentary upon 
 our race, that so much of human history is filled with the struggles 
 and persecutions of men, the awful agencies employed to crush out 
 from man a part of his nature, or to conform it by force of physical 
 suffering to the dogmatic notions of others. Millions upon millions 
 of men have died in the Old World, in defence of those rights, and 
 as many more to subvert them. For centuries before Luther and Calvin 
 led the revolt in France, Italy, and Germany, against the bondage 
 of man's religious life, the yokes of oppression had become so irksome, 
 and the priestcraft so shameless in extortions and moral corruption, that 
 
71 
 
 the advent of these reformers was hailed with delight by a class of men 
 whose notions were already in revolt and in consonance with these cham- 
 pions of religions freedom. And for seventy-five years following, amid 
 scenes of terror and suffering, such as we to-day cannot imagine, in 
 those countries, and in England, were men and women who braved the 
 most fiendish tortures in defence of religious freedom, upon racks 
 constructed with devilish ingenuity, to produce the greatest amount of 
 human suffering, the roasting of their bodies at the stake : — all this they 
 endured, and gloried in a triumphant death, proving again to the world 
 that man's religious faith is master over the suffering of the flesh, and 
 cannot be subdued. A large class of these men soon were known as 
 Puritans, and were remarkable for the purity of their lives, the depth 
 and simplicity of their faith, their superior mental powers, and toleration 
 of religious opinions. It was this stock of men which had risen superior 
 to those around them, which had formed and assimilated as the natural 
 outgrowth of ages, that, in the sixteenth century, broke loose from the 
 grasp of the Romish Church in France and Germany, struck the despot- 
 ism of Charles I, in England, under the leadership of Cromwell, and 
 overthrew the house of Stuart. 
 
 This is the ancestral stock of New England. From those men came 
 the Puritans, who peopled these States ; and if the love of freedom and 
 justice, graced with Faith, Hope and Charity, was ever a natural element 
 in the heart, blood, bone and marrow of men, it was in these. Add, 
 then, to this, that iron will which characterized them, so that they knew and 
 would know no master but God, and you have a stock of men, from 
 which we are proud to have descended. We are not unaware of the 
 grave errors of these men. Poor human nature has not yet produced its 
 faultless types. If their zeal was at times like Saul's, when, to serve 
 God, he ignorantly abetted the murder of his chosen disciple, their errors 
 were of short duration ; for, conscientious at heart, asking nothing from 
 others which they did not exact from themselves, they stood in the fear 
 of God, and labored for the welfare of mankind, and cast aside the follies 
 incident to their early life, as a wise and prudent manhood does those 
 of youth. They had long been hampered in action ; the freedom of 
 speech had been repressed, and they had been impoverished by extortions, 
 and, lacking that discretion which experience gives, they, in turn, exacted, 
 for a time, an obedience from others to their requirements, which, to-day, 
 would not be tolerated for an hour. 
 
 This world had never seen before, and probably will never see again, 
 the spectacle of a little ship, crowded to its utmost, with men, women, 
 and children, and all their earthly possessions, turning forever, not only 
 from the scenes and endearments of early life, but from civilization itself : 
 the hazarding the perils of the ocean, the sufferings and privations of 
 
72 
 
 an inclement winter, to make for themselves new homes among barbar- 
 ous tribes of Indians ; in the wilderness of forests, where the white man 
 had never been, and all for the sake of a principle. That Providence 
 which makes the sparrows fall, controlled the winds and the waves. 
 As if to lessen the force of the barbarians on the frontiers, a pestilence 
 had gone before, and literally exterminated tribes of Indians ; and, 
 almost as miraculous as the fall of manna in the wilderness, were the 
 stores of corn found heaped and covered upon the shores, on landing, for 
 the famishing pioneers. 
 
 The founding of a nation cannot be assimilated to any work of human 
 hands. The aggregation of material matter bears slight comparison to 
 the forming nucleus of a nation. The incipient steps here taken, were 
 the precursors of success. As these pioneers commenced and established 
 their government, so would they naturally expect that all who followed 
 them, would become willing citizens to support and defend it. These 
 men were chosen pioneers for this very work, and adapted to the stupen- 
 dous task before them. Whilst I have been, and trust I ever shall be, 
 zealous in the defence of the rights of every man, of whatever race or 
 color, to those natural prerogatives our ancestors demanded for them- 
 selves, yet I am not of those who believe that the races of men are 
 equal in all those qualities which the highest type of manhood shows. 
 Do you ask me, Is it fair to make distinctions like this among our fellow- 
 men ? I answer, No, but the races themselves have made it ; and, so long 
 as they remain distinct and separate, they will continue with the lines 
 plainly and sharply drawn between them. 
 
 True flesh is flesh, and blood is blood, and brain is brain, the world 
 over. So is rock rock, and wood is wood everywhere ; but the trap-rock 
 of the Hudson is not like the granite of Quincy, nor the yellow diamonds 
 of South Africa like the peerless gems from the old mines of the East. 
 Basswood .may do for some domestic purposes, but oak must make the 
 keels of ships, which are to withstand the surging of the ocean, and out- 
 ride the fury of storms. So long as one race or class of people hold 
 themselves aloof from all others, as the Jews have done from the days of 
 Abraham, they will be found to maintain the type and characteristics of 
 their ancestors from the first generation ; and the exhumed works of the 
 sculptor's hand, of three thousand years ago, show the Jew of to-day as 
 identical in feature aud figure with his ancient sire : and all the world 
 knows that the shrewdness of Jacob has not yet departed from Israel. 
 
 Therefore, giving to all, that consideration to which history entitles 
 them, to-day the Anglo-Saxon leads all in the progressive march of 
 nations. And whilst our ancestors became pioneers in the "great cause 
 of human freedom, the circling years are unfolding the majestic working 
 of the great plans of the Master Builder and Creator of all, and these 
 
73 
 
 pure-hearted and fearless men became the founders of a nation, destined 
 at the outset to amaze and startle the world. 
 
 When a river has made its channel from the mountain to the sea, the 
 flow of its water is easy and constant. All the rills and springs unite to 
 make tb.3 brook, the brook to make the river, and the river is lost in the 
 ocean. The bread which feeds the body to-day, makes bone, flesh and 
 blood to-morrow. So likewise, when a government was once established 
 by these colonists, here came flocking, in increasing streams, refugees from 
 nearly every nation in Europe. 
 
 Tf here they could find no haven of rest, then the whole world was to 
 them a desert without an oasis or rock of shelter from the storms of evil 
 passion with which they were pursued. 
 
 Here came Germans, Netherlanders, Irish, Scots, Hnguenots, Swedes 
 and Moravians, losing their several nationalities in the formation of a 
 new one. From 1620 down to the beginning of the 18th century, 
 Massachusetts and Connecticut were mainly peopled from England, but, 
 after that, came more freely the refugees I have named, with very 
 marked resemblance in type and character to the Puritans themselves. 
 True, other settlements were rapidly made on the Atlantic frontier, but 
 those colonists followed in the wake of the great New-England enterprise- 
 Great Britain, from Maine to Florida, claimed by that very questionable 
 right, the right of discovery, the absolute fee to the Atlantic frontier, and 
 every colonist as a British subject. Great Britain, absolute mistress as 
 she was of the seas, clung with tenacious grasp to every foot of land 
 upon which her banner had been planted, and the American Continent 
 had already been partitioned, by imaginary lines, among the great 
 powers of Europe. Whilst the colonists freely joined with England to 
 resist the encroachments of the French, they were jealous of any abridg- 
 ment of those rights which were heirlooms from their fathers, and the 
 birthright of their children. The colonies had that feeling of respect 
 for England which naturally came from the position she occupied as a 
 sovereign power among the nations of the world, as being the Mother 
 which had given them permission to live and take care of themselves, to 
 be obedient to the governors sent out to them, and humble petitioners 
 before the throne. Tf they felt pride in England, it was subdued by the 
 bitter memories of the past ; and, when reproached for lack of filial love, 
 they recounted the long years of sorrow and distress, the smarting of the 
 lash of persecution which had driven their fathers from the maternal roof. 
 
 They knew that the spirit within them, which resented English ex- 
 action, was born of the blood of martyrs. Their dying wails still rang 
 in their ears, and they seemed impressed with the very sense of their 
 presence around them. They remembered the terrible throes of anguish 
 out of which the Protestant religion had come, as they perused the pages 
 
74 
 
 of their Scriptures, blotted by the tears of sainted mothers. They 
 were inspired with eternal vigilance as the safeguard of their liberties, 
 and they became as watchmen upon towers, lest their rights should be 
 subverted. 
 
 Discussion is the agitation which stirs the mud at the bottom of the 
 stream of popular thought, and eventuates in crystal sentiment. Every 
 act of England in regard to colonial matters, was the subject of discussion 
 here, and every aggression upon their rights met the remonstrance of the 
 people. Revolution was the natural sequence of an effort to enforce 
 compliance with obnoxious laws, which plainly portended the destruction 
 of colonial rights, or independence from British power. 
 
 In her conduct towards the colonies, England was true to herself. As 
 a nation, the English are proverbially selfish. It has well been said of 
 the genius of England, it cares little for abstract liberty, but it will defend 
 its liberties to the death. '•' It cares little for the rights of man, but for the 
 rights of English man, it will fight till from its bones the flesh be 
 hacked." 
 
 Edmund Burke, eloquent in defence of colonial rights, and appreciating 
 with a keen sense the power and spirit of our people, whilst expressing 
 scorn at presuming to the right to tax the colonies, significantly added: 
 u So has a man a right to shear a wolf." Let it never be forgotten that 
 the cause of our fathers against England was rooted in their hearts and 
 kindled the fires of war, not because they were unable to comply with her 
 demands, but because obedience was acquiescence in, and acknowledg- 
 ment of, her right to unlimited exaction. 
 
 The emergency to which the Bostonians were found equal in drawing 
 so much English breakfast tea in the cold waters of Massachusetts Bay, 
 was but a faint indication of that terrible determination at the hearts of 
 these men. 
 
 With all the facilities of to-day for the interchange of thought, for the 
 transmission of intelligence, for the transportation of armies and general 
 travel, what would be our condition at this moment were we deprived of 
 these great blessings, and, in this respect, placed as our fathers were in 
 this verv town one hundred years ago 1 A resolution of the citizens of 
 this town to-day can be read in Congress in ten minutes afterwards. Then 
 the most rapid means known would fail t7> lay it before that body at 
 Philadelphia in less than four days. To-day, were Boston menaced by 
 an enemv, to-morrow Berkshire county would parade her militia on Bos- 
 ton Common. A hundred years ago it consumed from ten days to two 
 weeks to summon and receive aid from this town ; and even then the 
 patriot soldier would come to the front wearied and foot-sore. When 
 President Lincoln sounded the alarm and called the nation to arms, 
 in less than forty-eight hours Massachusetts soldiers were in the streets 
 
75 
 
 of Baltimore, returning the rebel fire as they hastened to the imperilled 
 capital. 
 
 Maine, at the commencement of the struggle in 1775, was a province of 
 Massachusetts, with a few settlements on the largest rivers ; dense forests 
 covered the interior, and, to a great extent, the frontier of what is now a 
 prosperous State. Vermont and New Hampshire were scantily settled at 
 various places. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island were com- 
 paratively thickly settled for those days. What is now the centre of the 
 great State of New York, was then a mere hunting-ground of the savage ; 
 Niagara was a British post ; a few fortifications extended along the 
 thickly-wooded regions of Lake Champlain and Lake George ; Albany 
 was a small city, and the City of New York, which now has its million of 
 souls, was bounded by the City Hall Park, and the East and North rivers. 
 New Jersey, destined to be the theatre of several campaigns, and ravaged 
 by friend and foe, was as powerful as any colony of no greater extent of 
 territory. Pennsylvania, rich in mineral as well as in agricultural pro- 
 ductions, was fast developing herself; but, like New York, her rivers moved 
 ceaselessly among forests in the centre and western part of the State, and 
 most of her valleys and hills were yet in their natural wildness. The 
 same was true of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, 
 and, to a great extent, of Maryland and Delaware. An immense seaboard 
 stretching from Maine to Georgia, dotted here and there by new-born 
 cities and growing villages, wa.s unprotected by forts or fortifications ; 
 mighty rivers, the channels of communication with the interior, were 
 bordered with well-cultivated fields, but infant colonies could not be 
 expected to have raised along their banks fortifications to overlook their 
 waters, and oppose the passage of hostile fleets. To fell the forest, subdue 
 the soil, build houses, maintain schools for the education of their children, 
 and defend them against the attacks of the stealthy and merciless savage, 
 had constantly taxed the utmost exertions of the early settlers of these 
 States. 
 
 It is true that, in 1775, Daniel Boone had penetrated to Kentucky, 
 and, before the termination of the Revolution, a few pioneers returned to 
 take part in the final struggle which ended the long contest. A few 
 travellers had explored, but migration had not as yet commenced to the 
 central and most fertile part of our country. This vast region, which now 
 comprises Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and all beyond, was then a wilderness 
 and the home of the savage. 
 
 Three million souls comprised the entire population of these infant 
 colonies, and upon them was cast the burden of a war, which should 
 shape the destiny of the world. 
 
 Lexington, which, a year ago, celebrated with appropriate honors the 
 centennial of the bloody scenes enacted on her historic fields on the 19th 
 
76 
 
 day of April, 1775, suddenly became the theatre of war. Then, for the 
 first time, the reality of battle stunned the senses of the peaceful colonists, 
 as they saw their fathers, sons and brothers falling 1 in death before the 
 fire of British soldiers. A momentary pause followed the rattle of 
 musketry, and then on flying feet from every side came the avenging 
 yeomanry, whose swift and fatal fire brought havoc and destruction on 
 the hostile force, and ended in their complete discomfiture and rout. 
 
 The immediate effect of resort to arms to enforce obedience, was to 
 unite and harmonize the discordant views of the colonists upon ques- 
 tions of policy, and concentrate their action as to the means of defence. 
 Party animosities and personal rancor are often swallowed up and lost 
 sight of, in moments of great impending danger. 
 
 The main question before ttie country was, How shall the issue be 
 met ? Shall it be a war of resistance only, or shall the battle be waged 
 for the sovereignty of the colonies as independent States °? Shall we strike 
 and sever allegiance to the crown, or resist until the crown complies with 
 our demands ? And for a moment, let us calmly look to the chances of 
 success as the field lay before our patriot fathers a hundred years ago, 
 remembering that life is ever teaching the proneness of children born 
 to fortune, to forget the labor and self-denial by which it was amassed, to 
 lightly value and waste in prodigality the heritage from their fathers. 
 
 In all the undertakings of life, the good-will of men accelerates the 
 labor, and gives warrant of success. Remember that 
 
 '' 'Tis a common proof 
 That lowliness is young ambition's ladder, 
 Whereto the climber upwards turns his face; 
 But, when he once attains the upmost, 
 He then unto the ladder turns his back, 
 Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees 
 By which he did ascend." 
 
 Remember that he who commences life at the upmost round, lacks that 
 schooling of which experience is the unrelenting master, and too often 
 ignores the cost of present blessings, and, stumbling, falls a victim to his 
 own folly. To-day, in the vastness of power, we lose sight of the swad- 
 dling-clothes of early life, and forget the cradle in which our liberties 
 were rocked ! In manhood we forget the weakness of youth, and the 
 nurture and care by which its strength has been attained. A few of the 
 dark forebodings of the hour crowd in upon the mind to-day, to kindle 
 for the patriot dead, in more resplendent hues, the halo of glory which 
 encircles their memory. 
 
 But where was the good-will of nations when the colonies struck for 
 national life ? The great powers of the world were hostile to revolution, 
 and the enemies of Democracy. Around the thrones of emperors and 
 kings bristled the bayonets by which they were upheld. The freedom 
 
77 
 
 of men bore that semblance of reality that the fleshless skeleton does to 
 the living- being- in the roundness of health and the glow of life. If 
 sympathy should come, it was most likely to come from those who most 
 needed it themselves. If disaster followed their efforts at last, their cause 
 would sink with no friendly hand outreached to save them from the ocean 
 of destruction. The monarchists were everywhere in the ascendant, and 
 popular will, wherever it had sought expression, had been crushed under 
 the iron heel of despotism. If alliance with foreign powers were made, 
 and aid thus obtained, it would result from hatred to England, rather 
 than from love for them. 
 
 Love and hatred are two strong elements in human character, but are 
 of little account in shaping the policy of nations. 
 
 For centuries, history was replete with the struggles of nations and 
 peoples for freedom, with scarcely an example of triumph, but a painful 
 record of failures. Switzerland, with the natural protection of her 
 impassable barriers, was simply a gem of light in Alpine setting, as cold 
 and unsympathizing as the glaciers in her mountains. In the centre of 
 despotic Europe, she was isolated from commercial relations with the 
 outer world, and could only cheer others by the recorded deeds of her 
 daring leaders. 
 
 Poland, long the field of bitter strife, vexed and harassed by internal 
 feuds, encouraged and fostered by the intrigues of neighboring powers, 
 was in the final throes of death. The bravery of her people, the devotion 
 and skill of her leaders, could not withstand treachery, and the combined 
 efforts of Russia, Prussia and Austria against her life. Her armies were 
 decimated, her generals driven into exile, and lamentation heard through 
 her borders. The spirit of her people, if unconquered, was wasted against 
 the superior force which crushed their power. As a nation, she was 
 dismembered and divided as spoil among her despoilers. The grasp of 
 Russia upon her has never relaxed. Her star, from its once proud 
 eminence in the galaxy of nations in the East, has fallen into utter 
 darkness ; but, as it sunk in night above the smoke of battle, another 
 suddenly ascended the western horizon, resplendent with the rays of 
 hope for the oppressed of all nations, — even now, thank God ! for the 
 poor African. 
 
 Scotland had recently been the scene of two rebellions against the 
 unity of that ancient kingdom with England and Ireland, designed to 
 restore the throne to the line of Stuarts, which had ended with the execu- 
 tion of Mary Queen of Scots by order of Elizabeth of England. 
 
 Each had been quickly suppressed, and Scotland, — the land of the 
 achievements of Sir William Wallace and Robert Bruce ; the home of Sir 
 Walter Scott and Robert Burns, bards of immortal verse and song, — still 
 remains au integral part of the British Empire. 
 
78 
 
 The ancient kingdom of Ireland, which archaeologists claim antedates 
 the Christian era, for many centuries had lost her sovereignty as a 
 nation. With bitter hatred for England, with devotion and love for the 
 Green Island of their birth, the Irish had, again and again, smitten the 
 shackles of their thraldom, and battled for liberty. 
 
 The blood and lives of the noblest sons of Ireland had been sacrificed 
 upon the altar of then- country, but, alas ! her leaders, whom Moloch had 
 spared, were in exile, her green flag in the dust, and her harp on the 
 willows. 
 
 But, against all this, it was urged that Europe was the scene of great 
 political commotions. That the agitations foreboding the shaking of 
 thrones, and the movements of armies, in which Napoleon Bonaparte was 
 destined to become a chief actor, had already commenced ; and that the 
 nations of the East were too busy in watching each' other to divide their 
 attention by taking action here. That England herself had grave inter- 
 ests to guard nearer home, which were paramount to any she had here ; 
 and that the opportune moment had come for decisive action, on their 
 part, by a Declaration of Independence. 
 
 It was urged that the English themselves were not a unit against 
 them ; that the justice of their complaints, that the eloquence of Fox, Pitt, 
 Burke and Lord Camden in behalf of the American cause, had taken a 
 strong hold upon the public mind then, and would weaken the efforts of 
 the crown to subject them by force of arms. 
 
 The course of events proved how false the hope such words inspired. 
 Yet, to the immortal names of the men of England, who then espoused 
 our cause against the storm of scorn from the imperial host, let America 
 to-day and forever do honor. To such men as Fox, Pitt, Burke and 
 Camden, the hearts of our fathers went out with unspeakable gratitude 
 whilst they lived ; and we, their children's children, to-day standing by the 
 urn of their sacred ashes, counting the falling grains from the shock of 
 time, honor them as the champions of our liberties in a hostile court; the 
 defenders of our rights in the British Parliament where we were unrepre- 
 sented, and steadfast friends when the battle raged. 
 
 England may pride herself upon the illustrious names of her statesmen, 
 but around the names of these men is an imperishable lustre, which will 
 never fade from the pages of English history. The work which comes 
 from the heart to elevate mankind and relieve the oppressed, is born of 
 God, and never dies, And these statesmen, although now dead to the 
 dull sense of sight, as ages roll by, will become as speaking oracles to 
 men and nations, more real than Delphic gods to the ancients, in ages 
 past. 
 
 Philadelphia, now holding the central attraction of the world, soon to 
 appropriately celebrate with august honors the Centennial of our National 
 
79 
 
 birth, will be recreant to a duty which we owe, not only to the memory 
 of our English friends iu 1776, but to a duty which, in 1876, we owe 
 to England herself, if upon that occasion she shall fail to wreathe with 
 laurel the unspeaking marble chiselled into the likeness of these illustrious 
 Englishmen. 
 
 Lord Camden upon the floor of Parliament uttered these memorable 
 words in the house of Lords : " My position is this, — I repeat it, I will 
 maintain it to my last hour, — taxation and representation are inseparable. 
 This position is founded in the laws of nature. It is more, it is itself an 
 eternal law of nature. For, whatever is man's own, is absolutely his own ; 
 no man has a right to take it from him without his own consent. Who- 
 mever attempts it, attempts an injury ; whoever does it, commits a robbery," 
 
 The wavering among the colonists were told that victory was seldom 
 due to numerical strength. They had before them the example of 
 Leonidas of Sparta, with his little band turning back the van of the army 
 of Xerxes of 3,000,000 men, as it sought entrance into Greece. They 
 were pointed to the victories of Alexander of Macedon, who, with 40,000 
 disciplined men, defeated and routed 3,000,000 Persians in battle, as show- 
 ing that victory comes from vigilance, discipline, activity and bravery. 
 
 They were pointed to the extent of their country, the fertility of her 
 soil, and the advantages they would have as defenders over an invading 
 army in such a land. 
 
 It then became a serious question whether all the colonies would unite 
 in the common purpose, and stand by each other to the last in the trying 
 ordeal of a long and bitter war. Was the heart of the people deeply set 
 in the cause of liberty, from a controlling sense of duty and love for 
 the cause they had espoused ; or, was the clamor a hasty expression of 
 feeling, likely to subside when maturely considered with the realities of 
 war actually upon them ? 
 
 A Declaration of Independence was one thing, and independence 
 quite another. A Declaration of Independence to the nations of the 
 world would be an idle proclamation, and a disgrace to the men who 
 signed it, unless it was made effective by the unflinching will of the 
 people in concerted and harmonious action. 
 
 These werf grave questions, maturely considered in the Continental 
 Congress then in session, and the legislative halls of the several colonies. 
 There were in those bodies men who deemed allegiance to the British 
 crown paramount to the cause of liberty. The eloquence of the 
 statesmen of 1776 will not be likely to be equalled by any oratory of 
 their sons in 1876. The masterly power of human eloquence in rousing the 
 energies and firing the souls of men to action, if equalled, was never sur- 
 passed before nor since the days of the American Revolution. The time 
 for action had come. The season was auspicious, a nation was to be born, 
 
80 
 and the terrible ordeal of travail through blood and death onlv could bring? 
 
 o -a 
 
 it to life. 
 
 God filled the souls of men with patriotic zeal ; the hopeful assured the 
 
 weak-hearted with courage. The logic of such men as Otis, Henry, Lee, 
 
 and hosts of others, was unanswerable. Their words seemed to glow 
 
 with the spirit of power, and men were controlled at the will of patriot 
 
 statesmen in the good old days of 1776. Then from centre to border, 
 
 from border to centre, in no uncertain tone went the voice of the people. 
 
 It was heard from colony to colony, from city to city, from town to 
 
 hamlet, and from hamlet to town. Virginia heard the angry voice of 
 
 New England above the storm of battle and the smoke of her burnino- 
 
 o a 
 
 villages, and answered back with shouts for liberty. Then came the 
 hardy sons of Sheffield together, laying aside the implements of husbandry 
 to say to Congress that, for the cause of freedom and independence, tbey 
 would on demand yield up, not only all their worldly possessions, but 
 their lives upon the altar of their country. 
 
 The will of the people is the supreme law of any land. It was the 
 will of the people that the colonies should be declared independent States, 
 and these States one people among the nations of the world. 
 
 Their representatives accordingly disclosed it, and unfurled the banner 
 of the nation, and spangled it with the stars of hope. To recite now 
 the history of that long struggle which commenced in 1775, and finally 
 ended in 1782, would be an unnecessary weariness to you who are famil- 
 iar with those memorable events which transpired in the darkest hours 
 of American history, and, now that they are past, make the pages which 
 record them, of the deepest interest to us. The heroism of the people 
 during those years has never been surpassed. War not only lays waste 
 countries, destroys towns and villages, but makes desolated households. 
 
 It is the last resort of nations. When shall it cease forever, and men and 
 nations live in the light of that better day"? What discourse on the ways 
 of man his deeds suggest, to one who feels for human suffering ! Did 
 fiends engraft the parent-stock with evils to entwine and choke a better 
 growth, that man now hates his fellow? Why should the human heart 
 bear parasites to sting and kill the fruit of noble purpose ? When kings 
 make war, their chariots override the slain, and. mangled flesh and human 
 gore mark the way to victory ; ambition feasts her thirsty soul, and 
 avarice, ever gaunt and unsatisfied, gluts and crams her maw with the 
 ill-gotten gains of conquest. O kings of men and conquerors of men ! 
 are these true deeds of glory ? 
 
 " Deeds ! miserable delusion of men's pride ! Deeds ! Cities sacked, 
 fields ravaged, hearths profaned, men butchered ! In your hour of doom, 
 behold the deeds you boast of: from rank showers of blood and the red 
 light of blazing roofs, you build the rainbow of glory, and to shuddering 
 
81 
 
 conscience cry, Lo ! the bridge to Heaven !" And yet war must come, 
 but woe ! woe ! to those who, from sceptred thrones or places of power, 
 for the glory of triumph lead nations into its terrible vortex, where no 
 vital principle or question of right underlies the quarrel. 
 
 But war must rage, men must fight, and sorrow and desolation come, 
 when principles vital to nations are to be sacrificed, unless rescued by 
 this terrible means. And so, through long years of suffering and priva- 
 tions, which to-day we cannot realize, the nation was led by those invinci- 
 ble men at the head of state and armies into the light of peace. 
 
 Upon Washington devolved the task of organizing and disciplining 
 troops unaccustomed to the field, and unschooled in the tactics of armies. 
 With the little means at hand the magnitude of the work done surpasses 
 comprehension. To the women of those days is largely due a meed of 
 praise for the noble part they performed upon the field, in the camp, in 
 hospitals and at home, for the cause of their country. Indeed, without 
 their busy hands at the flying wheel, the singing spindle, and clanking 
 loom, without their care of the sick and wounded, and cheer to their hus- 
 bands, sons, and brothers, the cause of liberty here had died a hundred 
 years ago, and we still would be the vassals of England. 
 
 It requires no strong faith to satisfy me that, were the necessity again 
 upon us, the women of to-day would show themselves worthy daughters 
 of their noble mothers of 1776, and would exchange their brocades and 
 satins for the homespun goods of those days, and proudly learn the indus- 
 tries of their mothers at the loom and wheel. 
 
 True, the days for such work have gone, yet it is of peculiar interest 
 now to learn how such work was done ; and when during the late war we 
 held a fair in Brooklyn, and raised nearly $500,000 for the Sanitary Com- 
 mission, a few of us New Englanders — and, by the way, we have a great 
 many in Brooklyn — opened a New-England kitchen, and we found plenty 
 of ladies who quickly donned the costumes of one hundred years ago, and 
 made the old wheels and spindles sing again, and the flax made yarn from 
 the distaffs as their mothers had taught them: and we thus added $40,000 
 to that most excellent charity. 
 
 Against the defeats at Long Island, Brandywine and before Charleston, 
 were the victories at Saratoga, Princeton, Trenton and York town. 
 
 Alliance with France at last made haste the clay of peace. When 
 peace was finally declared in the early part of 1783, the total population 
 of the States was a little under three millions of people. The total area 
 of our territory was about 800,000 square miles. To-day the population 
 of the nation cannot be less than forty-five millions, and the area of our 
 territory upwards of three millions of square miles. Then our western 
 boundary did not extend beyond the Mississippi, but now the national 
 domain is bounded east and west by the great oceans of the adobe. 
 
82 
 
 What the total value of the real and personal estate of the nation- 
 aggregated at the close of the Revolution, we are not able to state, for no 
 census was then taken. There was one element of wealth, however, which 
 no census could have returned, or human being value. When the 
 confederation of our States had been finally effected, and men saw and 
 knew we were destined to remain one people, with a common flag and 
 common army and navy to carry it, and that flag symbolized the 
 principles enunciated by the Declaration of Independence, and vouch- 
 safed to every human being, who should come under its protection, the 
 enjoyment of all rights in accordance with those principles, the govern- 
 ment itself was a source of wealth beyond the sanguine expectations of 
 the zealots who created it. 
 
 Here was a vast continent which, for some wise purpose, as we now 
 begin to comprehend, had been left unknown to civilized man from 
 creation's dawn to the close of the fifteenth century, embracing within its 
 vast expanse a soil unsurpassed in fertility, with rivers large enough for 
 ships to carry the commerce of the world, with lakes like inland oceans, 
 with mineral wealth exhaustless, with fruits and timbers great in variety, 
 superior in quality and in ample abundance, and with climates unequalled ; 
 and this immense country was now opened to the world, with these 
 inducements to men to come and make this their home. Here could 
 come the refugees and exiles, the oppressed and over- worked from the 
 crowded cities and countries of the East, and not be foreigners, but 
 citizens, and feel that here at last was a home for all men ; where every 
 man could say, I am a citizen, and my rights, no matter how poor or weak 
 I may be, are vouchsafed to me and my children forever. 
 
 That gateway of nations, the Atlantic, for a hundred years has been 
 like a beaten highway, with its living freight of human souls, hastening 
 here, as if to the land of promise. 
 
 "Thrice happy land, where he who flies 
 From the dark ills of other skies, 
 From scorn, and want's unnerving woes, 
 Here shelters him in proud repose." 
 
 Study, now, the history of nations, their growth, power, and extent, and 
 compare them with our own: and how far have we outstripped the 
 fleetest ! The sudden growth of power here was destined to be made 
 effective early in the present century, by another declaration of war with 
 Great Britain, in 1812, and resulted from a series of aggressions by her 
 naval vessels, in blockading our ports, and searching our vessels during 
 the struggle between that power and France. 
 
 Three years more of war, and peace again came with Great Britain, 
 which, although often threatened, has never been broken. 
 
 Although the limits of such an address as this must, of necessity, be 
 
S3 
 
 small, it would lack, and especially upon such an occasion, a great essential 
 to completeness, did it fail to bring before us some statistics which show 
 where the responsibility rests for the long existence of that national dis- 
 honor, human slavery, which has at last been wiped out in blood, and 
 atoned for in national tribulation and sorrow. Far be it from me to 
 delight in opening anew the deep wounds of the past, which, in time, will 
 finally heal. But I am on old Massuchusetts soil again, in my native 
 town, where, a hundred years ago, the citizens made a record which shall 
 be a pride to their posterity for ages yet to come ; and one hundred 
 years hence, when others yet unborn shall gather here, to commemorate 
 their acts, let our, words to-day show that, of this generation of men, 
 not all have been willing fellows in the rank bed of human slavery. 
 
 Slavery is a relic of barbarism, older than civilization ; older than any 
 history, unless the Mosaic, and is maintained upon the principle that 
 might makes right. " Might makes right ! " A more monstrous assertion 
 never found human utterance, and, bad as it is, it is the best justification 
 that ever was given for slavery, which John Wesley characterized as the 
 sum of all villanies. 
 
 The first cargo of slaves had been imported into Virginia before the 
 landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, and slavery was an institu- 
 tion fixed and established hy direct encouragement from England, long 
 before the revolutionary struggle commenced. 
 
 At that time the colonies held in human bondage a half a million of 
 African negroes, which then proved a source of great weakness in 
 that struggle. 
 
 Slavery had its stronghold in the Southern States. None of the thirteen 
 original states are without the disgrace of once having been the home of 
 slaves. Such men as Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams, 
 and James Otis, saw and realized that the abstract principles of right, for 
 which they so ably contended, were more than surface-deep, and that 
 when they came to the question of freedom or slavery, if it turned upon 
 the complexion of men, it was no principle at all, and a question of color 
 only. And Thomas Jefferson, in drafting the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence, in the original, made use of very pointed allusions to our English 
 cousins, who have often found great satisfaction in making invidious 
 comparisons between England and ourselves, with all of our boasted 
 freedom. Cowper said : „ 
 
 " Slaves cannot breathe the air of England. 
 Receive her air, that moment they are free ; 
 They touch our country, and their shackles fall." 
 
 Jefferson said, in his indictment of King George III : " Determined 
 to keep open a market where men shall be bought and sold, he has 
 prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to 
 
84 
 
 prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce ; and that this assemblage 
 of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting 
 those very people to rise in arms among us, and purchase that liberty 
 of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he 
 has obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes committed against the 
 liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit 
 against the life of another." This clause, said Jefferson, was struck out 
 in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who still desired to con- 
 tinue the importation of slaves. 
 
 Thus early we find the leading statesmen of those days charging 
 England with responsibility for the crime of slavery here, but South 
 Carolina showing her cloven foot, and exposing thus early the secret of 
 that bitter hatred which she has ever entertained for Massachusetts. 
 
 In 1790, the census showed slaves to be held as follows : — 
 
 New Hampshire, - 
 
 158 
 
 Maryland, 
 
 103,030 
 
 Vermont, 
 
 17 
 
 Virginia, 
 
 - 293,427 
 
 Rhode Island, 
 
 952 
 
 North Carolina, 
 
 100,572 
 
 Connecticut, 
 
 2,759 
 
 South Carolina, 
 
 - 107,094 
 
 New York, 
 
 21,324 
 
 Georgia, 
 
 29,264 
 
 New Jersey, 
 
 - 11,423 
 
 Kentucky, 
 
 - 11,830 
 
 Pennsylvania, 
 
 3,437 
 
 Tennessee, 
 
 3,417 
 
 Delaware, 
 
 3,887 
 
 Massachusetts, 
 
 None 
 
 Massachusetts wiped out the last vestige of it in 1780, except such as 
 existed when poor fugitives from bondage were taken from the hands of 
 her outraged citizens, by United States authorities, and delivered up to 
 their masters. Pennsylvania had provided for gradual emancipation in 
 17S0, also. It is interesting reading now to occasionally glance at the 
 statistics of Revolutionary days, and see what part New England per- 
 formed in that contest. It is of interest to us to-day, now that we are 
 speaking of results obtained by that war, to know what part these 
 Southern States took in the establishment of that government which 
 they undertook to overthrow and destroy, in 1861. 
 
 In that war, Massachusetts furnished 83,162 men, whilst the entire 
 seven Southern States, including Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia, 
 furnished only 64,876, being less, by 18,186 men, than Massachusetts 
 furnished alone. And do not suppose that this was because Massachusetts 
 was more populous, for they far exceeded her in population. Virginia, 
 North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, had a greater population 
 than all New England then, and New England furnished far more than 
 double the number of men those States furnished, to gain the liberty ol 
 the nation. 
 
 These facts, gathered from what are deemed reliable sources, need no 
 comment. They are too potent to be met. And what makes them 
 monuments of honor to New England is, that, early in the contest, her 
 
85 
 
 soil was found uncomfortable battle-fields for the enemy, and the conflict 
 raged farther south, with better success to the invading forces. 
 
 In saying these things, I seek not to disparage the South, for I honor and 
 love the names of the men she has furnished to the nation and the world. 
 Virginia, the birthplace of so many presidents, may well be proud of the 
 boon she has conferred upon nations and men ; for the truly great and good 
 belong to the whole world, rather than to one nation or age. 
 
 It is fair and just to-day, in reviewing the work of the nation, to show 
 that the merit of men, people, and states, is held in just remembrance by 
 the living. Let me, then, say, that sin, in whatever form it exists, 
 gathers strength as it grows, and that familiarity with vice begets, in 
 man's heart, the mantle with which he covers it from the reproaches 
 of conscience. 
 
 The fallacious reasoning of men, whereby they satisfied themselves that 
 slavery was no crime, and that it was a boon to the heathen, for this 
 slight recompense, to bring them into the light of Christian love, was 
 strong enough to withstand more Christian arguments, when directed to 
 men whose ears and hearts were closed and deaf to all appeal. As we 
 look back now upon the field over which the storm has passed, and 
 observe the slow and steady growth of public sentiment for and against 
 this institution, the means by which it was kept alive and in power, 
 and the final culmination of the question, as to its future growth, in the 
 decisive voice of the people at the ballot-box, we learn impressive lessons 
 of the growth and power of truth, and gather fresh hope of the final 
 destiny of man. 
 
 The very moment immorality has a commercial value, that instant it 
 becomes potential. Men will aid and abet it in secret, and, as it becomes 
 stronger, it assumes an air of respectability, and obtrudes itself among the 
 decencies of men. 
 
 To maintain a balance of power, Texas, Avith all her slaves, was 
 annexed, and became a State in the Union. The war with Mexico, 
 whereby we became possessed of vast territories of incalculable wealth, 
 was really waged more in the interest of slavery than most people sup- 
 posed, and was designed to extend our territory south of a vacillating line 
 which, by compromise, fixed its northern limit. Then came the long and 
 bitter struggle to keep its awful blight from the new territories, and 
 Kansas and Nebraska were opened to competition between the champions 
 of slavery at the South, and the lovers of all mankind at the North. 
 These are now historic matters, and we blush to-day, as we glance back 
 and recall the shameful scenes of murder and rapine which followed the 
 application of the doctrine of squatter sovereignty to our territories. 
 
 Out of that struggle to rescue those territories from the grasp of slavery j 
 to protect Northern pioneers from border ruffians, swarming in from the 
 
86 
 
 South, and particularly from Missouri, came one whose zeal, faith, cour- 
 age, and fate, have inseparably connected him with the history of those 
 days. John Brown was the sixth in lineal descent from Peter Brown, who 
 came over in the Mayflower. He was what the world terms a fanatic. 
 Probably not one person in ten thousand approved of the insane project 
 of instigating insurrection among the slaves of Virginia, with a view to 
 their emancipation by force of arms. He was of that stock of men whose 
 very nature was at war with slavery. He hated sin and crime in any form, 
 and, above all, he abhorred human slavery, as a crime which no law or 
 earthly power could, make right. He stood upon an elevation above 
 the reach of man. He was of those whose blood had marked the way 
 from bondage to freedom, for centuries past, to culminate in liberty for 
 him and his posterity, but in slavery to the negro. His work was not 
 done until the shackles should fall from every slave in the land. As he 
 saw his duty, he sprang to the task, regardless of fate or consequences. 
 
 The blow he struck w r ith a dozen men shook the nation, and threw 
 the entire Southern States in a paroxysm of rage, and the North into 
 astonishment. 
 
 The foolhardy enterprise caused universal derision. It was in violation 
 of reason, as well as law ; and yet, when it was known that John Brown — 
 the John Brown of Puritan stock, the John Brown of the Adirondacks, 
 the old John Brown of Ossawattamie — was the man who was striking at 
 Harper's Ferry, our hearts stood still, for we knew it was the earnest work 
 of a fearless man, in obedience to what he deemed conscious duty. The 
 outraged laws of Virginia ; the infuriated spirit of the Southern people, 
 and the offended guardian angel of slavery, as a benign institution of the 
 negro, alike demanded blood for blood, and old John Brown, with his 
 comrades, died upon the gallows of Virginia. For him death had no ter- 
 rors. He knew that the men who howled for his life would hasten the 
 work of emancipation, by the shedding of his blood ; and from the day of 
 his death until the close of the rebellion, his soul was marching on. The 
 force of such a character as his, will be felt as long as the English lan- 
 guage is spoken, or history records the story of his life. 
 
 Neither selfishness nor ambition stained the purpose of his action. He 
 saw duty above law, above constitutions. He lived — whether it be real or 
 fancied, it was, nevertheless, real to him — in constant communion with a 
 spirit that pervaded his soul, and pointed the way of duty. To him 
 duty was a supreme law, binding upon conscience, and every step up his 
 rugged pathway was a round attained on the ladder of life. John 
 Brown is a figure, standing out in bold relief upon the age in which he 
 lived. Upon the scroll of Time, ambition has written " Fame," in the red 
 ink of human blood, but virtue has traced " Philanthropist," in letters of 
 living light, over the names of men who, from love to their fellows, have 
 
S7 
 
 struggled hard with the dark and stormy tides of man's evil passions ; 
 have given battle to the elements themselves, to bridge the way from the 
 prison-house of bondage to that liberty which God gave the weak, and 
 the strong have wrested from them. 
 
 The spectacle of a country growing with a rapidity unequalled in the 
 annals of nations, whose government was pretended to be founded on the 
 broad principles of equality to mankind ; at a race with the demon of 
 human slavery within its own domain, was shameful in the eyes of 
 despotism itself. Such a contest for ascendency was sure to result in 
 blows. 
 
 The most eloquent and intellectual statesmen, from the days of the 
 Revolution down to the election of Abraham Lincoln, had dallied with the 
 national sin; had compromised the principle of eternal justice to the 
 demands of slavery, and died with ambition unsatisfied, and the record on 
 otherwise stainless lives, blighted and blackened by the polluting contact. 
 Columbia, the figurative goddess of our liberties, encircled her arms, in 
 1776, around a sisterhood of thirteen States. Year by year the family 
 circle was enlarged, and she welcomed to her ample bosom her new-born 
 children, as members of the national household. Some came with 
 tresses bathed in northern lakes. The solitudes of that immense region 
 known as the West and the Northwest, were broken in upon by the 
 transforming wand of civilization, and became States in the Union. 
 Beyond the wide prairies, and the rocky summits of our western hills, even 
 to the waters of the Pacific, as if by magic, the wilderness had been 
 transformed to gardens of luxury; and new-born States, glittering with 
 shekels from exhaustless mines of wealth, had knocked at the open door, 
 'md joined the family circle. These States came with institutions and 
 laws ; with churches and school-houses ; with intelligent and industrious 
 people, akin to those of the New England States. And it is from New 
 England that those noble pioneers went out who settled nearly all of the 
 great free States, and shaped their policy in their infant days, saved them 
 from the stain and curse of slavery, and sealed them to the cause of 
 freedom. 
 
 It was early seen by the men of New England that, comparatively speak- 
 ing, the East must decrease, whilst the West must increase, in popula- 
 tion, wealth, and consequent power. They saw their children plunge into 
 the western wilderness, to make new homes. They knew that proper 
 name of education was likely to be neglected, and that churches and 
 schoolhouses would remain unbuilt in the headlong rush for riches which 
 characterized the age. They knew that steady and vigorous growth, 
 when education kept step with civilization, was scarcely to be expected. 
 
 They saw and knew that the system of our government, by virtue of 
 the elective franchise, was only safe in the hands of intelligent men. 
 
88 
 
 That, when that great portion of our country should become rich and 
 densely populated, and questions of vital importance to the nation and the 
 world were to be passed upon, the unfriendly voice of the West, or an 
 ignorant populace, would drown the voice of New England, and imperil 
 the welfare of the nation. And right nobly have the rich men of the East 
 given of their substance and wealth to the founding of colleges and 
 schools 5 to sustaining and building churches : and this vast work has not 
 been done by the rich alone. No, for a hundred years past, the men, 
 women, and children of the East have gathered in, and sent all over the 
 West, the means to educate the people. " Education ! Education ! Edu- 
 cation ! " has been the unceasing voice of New England ; for she knew 
 that education was not only the chart and compass to the ship of state, 
 but the sheet-anchor of safety, when the storm should come. And oh, 
 how well the work was done ! For, when the demon of slavery struck 
 the union of these States, and sought to cleave asunder the temple of our 
 liberties, it was no uncertain voice which answered the call to arms of the 
 president from these great States of the Union. When the nation had 
 walked through blood for four years, slavery went down and out forever, 
 at the mouth of northern cannon •, at the point of the bayonet, in the 
 hands of Union soldiers. The old ship of state, freighted with great 
 interest of mankind, torn and racked, rested at last in the haven of peace, 
 and then our hearts went up to our God, — the God of the slave, — that 
 our fathers had made her keel of oak, and her ribs of steel ! 
 
 If God, in his providence, ever scourged a people for sin, he did ours. 
 And oh, to-day, as we stand above the dea'd years of the dying century, 
 with faces turned to the unfolding cycle, where are those who thought to 
 save the Union of the American people with the unbroken shackles of 
 five million bondmen ? Until President Lincoln, as a necessity of war, 
 and as an act of justice to the slave, decreed emancipation, the battle 
 was against us ; but when the sword smote the leprous curse of the 
 nation, and the clank of falling chains was heard from Texas to Maryland, 
 the South waned, and the North waxed strong, for justice was satisfied, 
 and the God of our fathers was in the battle. There is peace at home, 
 peace at the South, peace and quiet on the green banks of the Potomac, 
 peace on a hundred battle-fields, peace in the graves of a million men 
 who sleep in death, as the noble sacrifice of the people for a nation's sin. 
 With all its cost of sorrow, toil, suffering, bloodshed, and loss of life and 
 treasure, who would have the work undone which saved the nation to 
 itself, to the world, and to God ? 
 
 We are free at last from national sin ; and, as we gird our loins, and 
 bury the dead past, with its bitterness and errors, we lay our hands to the 
 industries of life, and study the ways of peace, and the good-will of all 
 mankind. 
 
S9 
 
 Now that a hundred years have passed, and we here take breath upon 
 the threshold of another, what is the record of the waning century of 
 our great work, as one among the nations of the world ? We have not 
 done our best, and yet we blush not for tasks we have accomplished. 
 
 We started with advantages which others could not have. We started 
 at the crowning-point of the age in arts and sciences ; with the wisdom of 
 the past for our guidance, and the raw material at hand, to be shaped at 
 will, for future piyposes. 
 
 The growth of men from barbarism to civilization, in the full enjoy- 
 ment of what our fathers possessed at starting, is never accomplished in a 
 single life, unless at infancy the child is transplanted from the forest of 
 ignorance into the garden of civilization and learning. And even then, 
 it is seldom that wild stock will bear the pruning and culture incident to 
 such change, to make it productive of fruit. It has taken six thousand 
 years for man to grow from nakedness and destitution to the superior 
 being we now find him, of science, art, refinement, law, government, 
 comfort, and abundance of intellectual discipline and literary culture. 
 
 This nation is cosmopolitan. No other nation of the world, in this 
 respect, resembles it. The crossing of the higher types of mankind has 
 been found to increase the vigor of its physical and intellectual growth. 
 The result of such commingling of the races and nationalities is not 
 within the ken of human vision. 
 
 A hundred years presage a future in which America shall produce a 
 people superior to any the world has ever seen ! Few drones have come 
 to this busy hive of men. The restless and dissatisfied with the sluggish- 
 ness of the Old World come here, and find the field for mechanical, 
 scientific, and intellectual labor, ample for their wishes. And the result 
 has been that, in the hundred years past, with a population increasing 
 from 300,000 to 4,500,000, against 1,200,000,000 on the rest of the 
 globe, more than half of the really great discoveries in mechanics and 
 arts are credited to the American people. The stupendous architecture 
 of Egypt, the exquisite statuary of Greece, and the unrivalled paintings 
 of Raphael, Michael Angelo, Correggio, and Titian, have not been 
 equalled here. 
 
 The bent of American genius has been more particularly directed to 
 the labor-saving means that mechanism affords ; and yet the fine arts 
 are not neglected, and the future is auspicious with bright promises for 
 American artists. 
 
 The Pyramids of Egypt still frown above the ashes of a people whose 
 history was ancient when Abraham drove his flocks to the green banks of 
 the Nile. No people has equalled the Egyptians in the massiveness, 
 grandeur, or durability of their structures. "They combined sculpture 
 with architecture, and grouped their Colossi and avenues of Sphinxes 
 
90 
 
 into parts of one great design. The}' used historical paintings, fading, by 
 insensible degrees, into hieroglyphics on the one hand, and sculpture on 
 the other, linking the whole together with the highest class of phonetic 
 utterance, and with the most brilliant coloring ; thus harmonizing all 
 these arts into one great whole, unsurpassed by anything the world 
 has ever seen, during the three thousand years which have passed 
 since the brilliant days of the Pharaohs." 
 
 These monuments of art still stand in awful grandeur, the relics of 
 past ages, whilst Isis and Osiris, and the people who worshipped them, 
 have disappeared in the unbreaking night of ages past. 
 
 We live in what may appropriately be called the Iron Age, although it 
 is said to have long since passed. " Iron is reason's right hand; the use 
 of it is the handmaid of art, and the mother of civilization." It is the 
 indispensable instrument in the hands of genius to advance the conditions 
 of mankind, and is perceptibly binding nations into more harmonious 
 relations with each other. 
 
 A nation's civilization is guaged by its attainments in arts and sciences. 
 Its wealth expands as they increase. 
 
 The temple of science had its foundation at creation's dawn. Its base 
 is as broad as the universe, and its dome pierces the realms of infinity. 
 Its intricate chambers are stored with unperishing riches. We are 
 commanded to unlock her hidden mysteries, and bring them to the 
 knowledge of man. We are as yet at the steps of the portal. As man 
 ascends the winding stairway, he is lost in the maze of wonders that open 
 to his senses ; and the trump which sounds the knell of time, will find 
 him far below the pinnacle that completes the structure. 
 
 This is a nation of peace. It is our policy to disband armies, and 
 reduce our navy to the lowest degree consistent with safety. Whilst 
 studying the arts of peace, we have sought diligently for that knowledge 
 which elevates ami blesses our race. 
 
 God has poured wealth upon us in ample abundance and increasing 
 streams. In 1850, the nation's wealth aggregated $7,135,780,228 ; 
 in 1860. $16,150,616,668; and, in 1870, it amounted to the enormous 
 sum of $30,068,518,507. 
 
 The imposing grandeur of this nation, its broad domain, its wealth, 
 intelligence, and population, founded upon the broad principles of demo- 
 cracy, has not been without its effects upon the world at large. Power 
 commands respect, and an intelligence will enforce it. 
 
 As a nation, it is our policy to follow the sagacious advice of Washing- 
 ton, in his farewell address to his countrymen, and to beware of entangling 
 alliances. 
 
 But it is not becoming to a humane people to close their eyes to the 
 wants of others. The American people, as individuals, cannot fairly be 
 
91 
 
 charged with lack of sympathy to any cry of distress. Sympathy is cheap, 
 and should characterize our conduct as a nation. 
 
 Our sympathy, as a nation, should not be hidden from the knowledge of 
 the world, when the weak and oppressed are struggling for their rights 
 against impositions of the strong. A kind face, to one in distress, is like 
 breaking sunlight in the darkness of night. 
 
 Almost within sight of our shores, for years past, the island of Cuba has 
 been the scene of horrible butcheries, perpetrated by brutal commanders 
 upon prisoners taken from the patriots struggling to free that island from 
 the oppressive dominion of Spain. 
 
 The faces of those patriots have long been turned to us ; and it would 
 seem that humanity, if not policy, called for some emphatic expression 
 from this nation, in regard to the course pursued towards the prisoners there 
 taken by the Spanish forces. That influence which comes from our con- 
 scious strength, has everywhere weakened the force of despotism. We 
 are cordially disliked by the great mass of English aristocracy. Much 
 as slavery is distasteful to them, when the blood}' work of carving a 
 Southern Confederacy out of the American Union was being tried, where 
 was the sympathy of that great freedom-loving people, the aristocracy of 
 England ? 
 
 They knew that human slavery was the corner-stone of the proposed 
 nation at the South, and still the controlling voice of England was with 
 them, from the beginning to the end of the contest. 
 
 They permitted cruisers to be built, and go out to ravage our com- 
 merce on the seas, and we fought English cannon and rifles' in the 
 Confederate army. The Geneva award is a complete justification of 
 our arraignment of England, but is a small compensation for the actual 
 injury she inflicted. 
 
 The effort of the late Emperor of France to establish an empire on 
 the ruins of a sister republic, was as fash a folly as to seek to bolster 
 his tottering throne by conquest across the Rhine. We love the French, 
 as our old friends in the hour of need, and we revere the memory of 
 Lafayette, as a champion of our liberties, and a bosom-friend of the 
 Father of his Country. In a hundred years France has been a kingdom, 
 a republic, an empire, a kingdom, a republic, an empire, and now a 
 republic again. We sympathetically and sincerely say for that noble, 
 yet war-ridden nation, "Long live the Republic !' ; 
 
 Russia, our old and honored friend, has been with us at heart in darkest 
 hours. Her emperor has shown to the world that " the pen is mightier 
 than the sword," and his fiat, justice to the enslaved, has liberated 
 every serf in his empire. We have witnessed, with deepest sorrow, the 
 defeat of the Hungarians in their patriotic efforts to regain a national 
 supremacy ; and, although overcome by superior force, the wisdom of 
 
92 
 
 Austria is being shown, in elevating her to more equable relations with 
 that empire. 
 
 The vast achievement of this nation, in connecting the Atlantic with 
 the Pacific Ocean by railway communication, has seemingly changed the 
 great Celestial Empire, in her commercial relations, from the east to the 
 western part of our globe. The barriers which China and Japan, for so 
 many centuries, interposed to intercourse with other nations, have been, in. 
 a great degree, broken down, and 400,000,000 of people can now look 
 beyond the limits of those immense empires. 
 
 The English should be our best and warmest friends. They have 
 with us a common language, and common interests, which should perpetu- 
 ate our amicable relations. Take them all in all, they are the noblest 
 people on earth, and have done more, by reason of their superior intelli- 
 gence, indomitable perseverance, and great enterprise, for the world at 
 large, than any other nation on the globe. Proud as she is, her pride 
 should not do violence to her better judgment, if her offspring shall 
 speedily surpass her in all that ennobles a nation and makes it great. 
 Commerce is the far-reaching arm of nations. It has penetrated the 
 ramifications of distant seas, and, in exploring the habitations of the 
 heathen for merchandise, is making conquests for civilization among the 
 most benighted of mankind. 
 
 From an infant people, of small beginning, on the Atlantic coast, in a 
 century we have strided a continent. The murmurings of primeval 
 forests have been stilled by the woodman's axe, or drowned in the din of 
 unceasing industries. We have not only made the subtile lightning 
 obedient to our will, but the speaking-trump between men and nations. 
 Our commercial arms are commingling our products with those of the 
 nations of the East. They have laid hold upon the wealth of the 
 Celestial Empire in the West, and our broad domain has become as well 
 a great central mart, as a bridgeway to the commercial world. We are 
 youthful, healthy, and strong. 
 
 We are living in the golden age of reason. Never, since the Almighty 
 gave the earth to man, has the dominion of reason so completely subjected 
 matter to his will. What is our destiny, and what shall be the culmina- 
 tion of our growth ? Nations grow old and pass away, and others build 
 upon their ruins ; but this nation should live as long as the earth is 
 the habitation of man. We are one people, with a common language 
 and common interests. We possess a vast domain, dividing the great 
 waters of the earth, ample for a population equal to that of the entire 
 globe. 
 
 The present is ours, the future is God's. Let us build with care upon 
 the foundations our fathers laid ; and let our children, forever, woo wisdom 
 and virtue, as goddesses twined the love of men and nations. 
 
93 
 
 Great nations have culminated in their growth, degenerated from their 
 once proud eminence in culture, science, and art, and naught remains but 
 the awful silence of the solitude above the deep-buried ruins, once the 
 sites of ancient empires, where millions of men had habitations of grandeur. 
 Their commerce decayed ; their arts died ; trade rotted, for men became 
 corrupt, lapsed into effeminacy, and nations passed into oblivion. Shall 
 that same decay which blotted out them, seize upon us, and darkness 
 settle down on all our hills? Shall mighty cities crumble to earth, and 
 ruin and desolation cover our vast domain ? No, my countrymen, let it not 
 be so. Let the fabric of our liberties, growing in increasing grandeur as 
 years glide past, be, next to the love of God, the idol of our hearts. Let 
 j'ustice, equity, liberty, equality, wisdom, frugality and virtue, be the 
 priceless jewels of our people forever, and our star of empire will glow 
 with surpassing splendor in the firmament of nations, when God shall 
 summon nations and men from the labors of earth, at the end of time. 
 
94 
 
 CENTENNIAL ORATION 
 
 BY GEO. A. HOADLET. 
 
 [Delivered at the Celebration in Sheffield, June 19, 1876.] 
 
 " From the dark portals of the Star Chamber, and in the stern acts of 
 uniformity, the Pilgrims received a commission more efficient than any 
 that ever bore the royal seal. Their banishment to Holland was fortu- 
 nate ; the decline of their little company in the strange land was fortunate ; 
 the difficulties which they experienced in obtaining the royal consent to 
 banish themselves to this wilderness, were fortunate ; all the tears and 
 heart-breakings of that ever-memorable parting at Delfthaven, had the 
 happiest influence on the rising destinies of New England. All this puri- 
 fied the ranks of the settlers. These rough touches of fortune brushed off 
 the light, uncertain, selfish spirits. They made it a grave, solemn, self- 
 denying expedition, and required of those who engaged in it, to be so, 
 too. They cast a broad shadow of thought and seriousness over the 
 cause ; and, if this sometimes deepened into melancholy and bitterness, 
 can we find no apology for such a human weakness?" 
 
 From time immemorial, slight causes have been productive of the 
 greatest effects ; but where, in the story of all time, can you point to a 
 beginning apparently so small, that has so materially affected the interests 
 of humanity? 
 
 A floating village, of a hundred and one souls, comes buffeting the 
 waves, and presents itself to the forbidding shores of Massachusetts. 
 Turn the pages of history, and tell me what promise this child of 
 adversity gives of growth to a perfect manhood ? How long will it be 
 before this little company will be cut off by the many savage tribes 
 which surround it ? Was it hunger ? Was it sickness and want ? Was it 
 the dread severity of the cold ? Was it the pitiless storm of winter, beating 
 upon the defenceless heads of women and children ? Was it one, or all of 
 these combined, that conspired to bring this forlorn hope of colonization 
 to its destruction ? And is it possible that all this could not extinguish 
 the spark of liberty that dawned upon free America ? 
 
 Yes, that spark lived, though life itself were gone ; and we, in whose 
 veins flows the blood of the Pilgrims, stand here to-day as living proofs 
 of its existence. 
 
95 
 
 Puritanism has been defined as " Religion struggling for the people," 
 and even its enemies were compelled to say that " its absurdities were 
 the shelter for the noble principles of liberty." Its establishment in our 
 land, thus in its infancy, was but the beginning of these noble principles 
 that have passed from the uncertain attempts of childhood to the unshaken 
 conviction that experience gives to mature life. To establish these prin- 
 ciples, required men of bold bearing and original conceptions. Such 
 men were not wanting among the colonists. Such a man was Miles 
 Standish, their military leader. Being a soldier in his education, and by 
 his preference, he met the Indians in the only way that could be effectual : 
 ready to make peace with them at any time, he did not hesitate to return 
 their attacks with such boldness and vigor, that his name, of all others in 
 the colony, became a terror to them. 
 
 Gov. Bradford was also eminent for his determination and energy ; for, 
 when Canonicus, Sachem of the Narragansetts, sent a bundle of arrows, 
 wrapped in the skin of a rattlesnake, as a token of his defiance, Bradford 
 stuffed the same skin with powder and ball, and returned it. The super- 
 stitious savages were filled with terror at the unknown danger which 
 their vivid imaginations pictured to them, and the dreaded charm passed 
 from hand to hand, until at last it returned to Plymouth. 
 
 Volumes have been written, and many will yet be written, concerning 
 the birth-time of our country, its customs, habits, dress, speech, and, 
 above all, its lasting principles of right, of which these were only the 
 legitimate fruits. 
 
 On all points, except religion and morality, the Puritans held to indi- 
 vidual freedom ; but, having been persecuted for these at home, it is not 
 at all strange that they should compel those who came to them, to the 
 same strictness of observance as themselves. But this strictness brought 
 with it its reward, and this purity of morals completed the picture of 
 colonial happiness. 
 
 A record of the time tells us that one might dwell there, from year to 
 year, and not see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a beggar. The 
 consequence was universal health, one of the chief elements of public 
 happiness, while the average duration of life, compared with that in 
 Europe, was doubled. The strictness of the Puritans was also noted 
 among the other colonies which sprang up on the eastern coast. A story 
 is told of an itinerant preacher, who, while preaching at Portsmouth, 
 remindedathe people that, as they had come thither for the purpose of free 
 worship, they ought to be very religious. " Sir, you are quite mistaken," 
 was the reply ; " you think you are speaking to the people of Massa- 
 chusetts Bay. Our main end is to catch fish." 
 
 Within the first fifteen years, which time included almost all the emi- 
 gration from England, there came over four thousand families. Their 
 
96 
 
 descendants are now not less than five millions. Each family has 
 increased on the average to more than a thousand souls. Besides con- 
 stituting almost the entire population of Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
 Vermont, and Rhode Island, they make up more than one-half the inhabi- 
 tants of New York and Ohio, and have representatives, worthy of them, in 
 every State and Territory of the Union. Poets have loved to sing the 
 praises of chivalry, and historians to eulogize its virtues and benefits 5 
 but Puritanism has been more beneficial to mankind. If it was sectarian, 
 Chivalry was dissolute. The knights were brave from gallantry ; the 
 Puritans, from fear of God. The knights were proud of loyalty ; the 
 Puritans, of liberty. But the golden age of Puritanism has passed away. 
 Time has softened its asperities, hidden its dangers, and added new lustre 
 to its undying virtues. 
 
 If we could have stood on the summit of Mount Everett, one hundred 
 and fifty years ago to-day, our gaze would have rested upon an unbroken 
 wilderness; both hill and valley, mountain and plain, would have pre- 
 sented the picture of a sea of living green, whose silence was unbroken, 
 save by the sharp twang of the bow, as it sent the arrow on its mission 
 of death, or the dismal howling of the wolf, as he vented his hatred to 
 all things living. 
 
 On a beautiful afternoon in June, 1725, a daughter of Obadiah 
 Noble — the first white woman that came into town — reached Sheffield 
 from Westfield, having travelled the distance, forty miles, on horseback. 
 Her father had spent the previous winter here among the Indians, and, 
 on the approach of summer, went to bring his daughter, who was then 
 but sixteen years old. Many years have passed since the soul of this 
 daring woman has been called to solve the mysteries of the Great 
 Unknown, but the spirit which actuated her lives with us to-day ; and 
 .there are many earnest women in the company before me, who would 
 gladly endure all the danger and weariness through which she was 
 called to pass, could they give to freedom a greater birthright, and to 
 womanhood a nobler name. 
 
 I have spoken of the healthfulness of the colonies : let me cite an 
 example of longevity, which is to be found in our own town. Another 
 daughter of Mr. Noble married Ebenezer Smith, but died in a short 
 time, leaving one child. This child Mr. Smith took in a basket, which 
 a squaw wove for him, on horseback, to his father's home, in Westfield. 
 Some time after his return he married Sarah Shaler, who liv^d to the 
 advanced age of one hundred and two years and four months; her 
 daughter, Sarah Marvin, lived to be ninety-two ; her granddaughter, 
 Lydia Trowbridge, died in her ninety-third year, and two of her great 
 granddaughters are with us to-day, having attained the honorable ages 
 of eighty-five and eighty-seven years. This is not an isolated case, but 
 
97 
 
 one of many ; and I need give no names to recall to every one of yon 
 the memory of those pioneers of our town, whose descendants fill an 
 honorable place in our midst, or lead the van in other and newer sections 
 of the land. 
 
 To ask why did the Revolution break out, is like asking, why does a 
 boy become a man ? If the boy lives, can he help it 1 The so-called 
 causes of the Revolution were only developments of that which was in 
 the very nature of things ; and the Declaration of Independence was but 
 the natural sequel to the compact signed in the cabin of the Mayflower. 
 At the beginning of the alienation of the colonies, nothing was further 
 from the minds of the people than separation from the mother-country. 
 Like all monopolists, England feared even so unpretending a rival as 
 America then formed, and sought to retard its development, by suppress- 
 ing manufactures and commerce, at every point. Heavy expenditures 
 having been incurred in the old French and Indian war, it was decided 
 that the colonies should help pay the debt. But the colonists w^ere not 
 represented in parliament, and they held that " taxation, without repre- 
 sentation, is tyranny." These oppressive taxes induced a great deal of 
 smuggling, and the royal collector might frequently be seen searching 
 private houses for smuggled goods. At the General Court, at Boston, 
 James Otis eloquently denounced these acts : " To my dying day," said 
 he "I will oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, 
 all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villany on the 
 other." "Then and there," writes John Adams, "the trumpet of the 
 Revolution was sounded." 
 
 The Stamp Act — which required that all legal documents should be 
 executed on paper bearing an English stamp, of the value of from three 
 pence to six pounds, and that all newspapers and pamphlets should pay 
 a corresponding tax — now went into operation. Soldiers were also sent 
 to enforce the law, and the colonists were ordered to provide for their 
 sustenance. The announcement of these obnoxious laws aroused the 
 land in every direction. The Assembly of Virginia, being in session at 
 the time, Patrick Henry, the youngest member of the House, hastily 
 drew up, on the leaf of an old book, a series of resolutions denying the 
 right of parliament to tax the colonies. These were presented, accom- 
 panied by a speech burning with patriotism, in which he said : " Caesar 
 had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and George III " — here he 
 paused until the cry of treason, which had arisen from several parts of 
 the House, had subsided — " may profit by their example. If this be 
 treason, make the most of it." 
 
 Associations, which took the name of " Sons of Liberty," met under 
 the Liberty-Tree, on Boston Common, to express their indignation. At 
 Portsmouth, a coffin inscribed, " Liberty, aged 145 years," was borne 
 
98 
 
 to an open grave, with solemn tread, attended by muffled drums ; minute 
 guns were fired, the grave was reached, the funeral oration was pro- 
 nounced, the coffin lowered, when suddenly signs of life were said to be 
 discovered. The coffin was raised, a new inscription, " Liberty Re- 
 vived," was put upon it, bells rang, music sounded, and a jubilee ensued. 
 Massachusetts, ever in advance in the works of liberty, issued a call 
 for a convention, to be held in New York. South Carolina endorsed the 
 call ; the convention met in October, and voted a declaration of rights 
 and memorials to the king and parliament. 
 
 This sturdy opposition caused the Stamp Act to be repealed, but par- 
 liament still adhered to the right to tax the colonies. The tax upon 
 tea, which' resulted in the famous "Boston tea-party," was not enough 
 to increase its cost materially, but it upheld the very privilege that the 
 colonists denied ; and England made a great mistake in thinking that 
 what the colonists decried was the tax. 
 
 Boston was considered as the hotbed of the rebellion, and " the king, 
 his ministers, parliament, and all Great Britain, set themselves to subdue 
 this one stubborn little town on the sterile coasts of Massachusetts Bay." 
 
 For this purpose General Gage was sent thither, with two regiments 
 of British soldiers. Their entrance, on a quiet Sunday morning, with 
 flags flying and drums beating, roused all the prejudices of a Sabbath- 
 loving people. Meanwhile, stores were being collected at Concord. 
 General Gage determined to seize them, and left Boston secretly, about 
 eleven o'clock in the evening, with eight hundred regulars, for that 
 purpose. But " eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and the move- 
 ment was hardly begun ere the news was flying far in advance of them, 
 carried by " Paul Revere in his midnight ride : " 
 
 " A hurry of hoofs in the village street, 
 A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark; 
 And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark, 
 
 Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet : 
 That was all ! And yet, through the gloom and the light, 
 The fate of a nation was riding that night; 
 And the spark struck out by the steed in Ids flight. 
 
 Kindled the land into flame with its heat." 
 
 The news of the fight at Lexington reached Sheffield on the 20th, 
 about noon, and the next morning, at sunrise, the regiment of Southern 
 Berkshire, commanded by our townsman, Colonel, afterwards General, 
 John Fellows, was on its way to the scene of action. We have only to 
 turn to the story of Bunker Hill, to learn how these men fought for their 
 liberty and homes. Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Trenton, Princeton ! — 
 all these places are rendered dear to us by the blood spilled there, which 
 sealed for us the bond of security and [peace, in this beautiful valley of 
 the Housatonic. 
 
99 
 
 On the 6th of July, 1774, a convention of several towns of the county 
 was held at Stockbriclge, in which Sheffield was well represented. One 
 has only to read the resolutions of that convention, to feel the deep 
 under-current of patriotism which pervaded the whole country. Then 
 came the town-meeting, that we so much honor this day. 
 
 " At a legal town-meeting of the inhabitants of the town of Sheffield, 
 on Tuesday, June 18th, 1776, it was put to vote whether the inhabit- 
 ants of the S d town of Sheffield, should the Hon ble Continental Congress 
 in their wisdom think prudent, and for the interest and safety of the 
 American colonies to declare S d colonies independent of the Kingdom of 
 G t Britain, they, the inhabitants of S d Sheffield, will solemnly engage 
 with their lives and fortunes to support them in their measures. Voted 
 in the Affirmative. Two dissenting only." 
 
 Well done, old town ! The Revolutionary Fathers did not disgrace 
 the pioneers ; and, had the same question been reserved for our decision, 
 we would not disgrace them. One thing that our forefathers possessed 
 to so great an extent that it nearly amounted to a cardinal virtue, was, 
 grit. That unconquerable spirit of perseverance that rendered those 
 things that would have been unsurmountable barriers to others, only 
 slight obstacles in their pathway. How they toiled ! The mandate, 
 " By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread," was to them no idle 
 threat, but a stern reality. The wilderness was to be won from the 
 domain of the wild beast and the savage, and made a fit dwelling-place 
 for the noblest work of God. Their work was one of years, but the 
 forest soon fell beneath the sturdy stroke of the axe ; and the denizens of 
 the wood, bereft of its protection, eagerly fled at the approach of civiliza- 
 tion. As the work of laying the corner-stones of our nation was one of 
 muscle and brain, so is the work of improving and beautifying the super- 
 structure to be one of brain and muscle. The same elements are required 
 in the work now, as were used then, but they have changed places. The 
 chief labor, then, was manual ; now, it is intellectual. Looking back 
 through the dim vista of years, we can read the story of all time, and it 
 tells us that the most indelible impress is that made by the intellect, and 
 the culture attained in its use. We stand here to-day, and calmly read 
 this story, but time passes on, and gray heads and bowed forms will soon 
 be replaced by those who now are in the prime of life. What work we 
 do, must be done quickly, and, to be lasting, it must be brain- work. 
 
 It is every seeker after refined culture whom Shakespeare leads into 
 that storm-tossed region, the human soul. It was all mankind that 
 Byron thrilled anew with his passionate poetry. It was for all Christian 
 readers that Southey interwove, with the heathen fable, such bright 
 threads of the Christian faith. And it is for every one that the refining 
 influences of ^literary culture form the stepping-stones to higher planes 
 
100 
 
 of happiness in life. Kings and nations have long sought to solve the 
 intricate problem of government. Dynasties have sprung into being, led 
 on by some indomitable will ; have increased their rule at the expense of 
 others, and, in their turn, have been swallowed up by some more powerful 
 demagogue. 
 
 But our government is like our noble old Elm. Look how its roots 
 reach deep into the soil for nourishment ! See its trunk, ribbed and bound 
 together as with iron bands ! The wintry storms of adversity only serve 
 to lay up new stores for its more rapid growth, when the sun of prosperity 
 shines upon it in full vigor. Mark how the thick limbs spread out to 
 bear the branches, twigs, and leaves to the open sunlight and free ah-. 
 In its roots, I see the eternal truths that founded our nation. In its 
 trunk, the Union itself, in which there is lasting strength. In its 
 spreading branches, the several States, and we may call ourselves its 
 foliage. 
 
101 
 
 BRIEF SKETCH OF THE REMARKS OF 
 
 WILLIAM G. BATES, OE WESTFIELD. 
 
 [Intended to have been made at the Sheffield Centennial.] 
 
 It seems to me that none of the speakers have given to the men of 
 Sheffield in June, 1776, the approbation that was their due. In my 
 opinion, they have failed to appreciate, fully, the circumstances in which 
 those persons were situated. Let us briefly recall them. Sheffield was 
 not then the beautiful and flourishing town that it now is, but it was 
 a frontier town, recently incorporated, and was better known as the Lower 
 Housatonic Proprietary, than by its corporate name of Sheffield. Its 
 inhabitants were few in number, living in different parts of the town, and 
 the small settlements in the county were still smaller in their concen- 
 trated force. 
 
 Westfield, its parent town, was its nearest neighbor on the east ; and 
 though a road had been purchased by Colonel Ashley from the Indians, 
 two miles in width, to connect the two towns, yet it was merely a bridle- 
 path for the whole distance. 
 
 It will be recollected, that, though hostilities had been kept up for a 
 year between the colonies and the mother-country, still there had been no 
 general idea of a final separation. The subject had been discussed, as a 
 mooted question, but there were few persons who had determined thai it 
 was a thing to be ! When Patrick Henry made his eloquent speech in the 
 House of Burgesses, he thundered his eloquence into unwilling ears ; and ; 
 but for the enthusiasm and influence of the Adamses, it is probable 
 that the Declaration of July 4th would have been longer delayed. 
 
 It was just prior to this Declaration, that the wish was expressed in 
 Congress to bear the sentiments of the people upon this momentous 
 
102 
 
 question ; and at once, without time to take counsel, with no opportunity 
 to consult with other towns, and feel the pulse of the rest of the common- 
 wealth, the inhabitants of this scattered frontier town met to deliberate 
 upon this great national question. 
 
 The words of the vote indicate the calm deliberation of the people. 
 They were not the rash expressions of a Falstaff and a Captain Bobadil, 
 to be uttered, and taken back on the approach of danger, but the 
 deliberate sentiments of a body of men who weighed what they said, 
 in calmness and coolness, and who submitted to the Representatives in 
 Congress, who knew, better than they could know, the extent and the 
 strength of the popular feeling of the colonies; and they were prepared 
 to abide by the decision to which Congress should come. It was, there- 
 fore, an act of well-considered, deliberate bravery ; and it evidenced the 
 existence of a spirit of heroism in the men of this sparsely-populated 
 frontier town, of which no brighter example is recorded in history. 
 
 I have been requested to speak of the " Ashleys," one of whom, Col- 
 onel John Ashley, was from Westfield, one of the settlers of Sheffield, 
 one of the judges of the court for a long period, and whose son, General 
 John Ashley, was an efficient officer at a critical period succeeding the 
 Revolution, during the Shays' Rebellion.* 
 
 Just before the close of the rebellion, the period of enlistment of his 
 troops expired, and they were preparing to leave the army and return to 
 their homes. 
 
 The General — for he had no means at his command for retaining them 
 — determined to try the effect of his eloquence. Accordingly, he ordered 
 them to parade, and then advanced to address them. He reminded them 
 of the situation of the country : a portion of the inhabitants in arms 
 against a paternal government ; a force of patriotic citizens, with arms 
 in their hands, prepared to crush them, and sustain the government ; 
 the expiration of their enlistment ; the rumor that a portion of them 
 were preparing to disband and return to their homes, now just at the 
 very time when success was within their grasp. But, he continued, if 
 there were any cowards in his command ; any weak and timorous men, 
 who did not dare to stay and face the enemy, they were at liberty to 
 retire ; he did not want any cowards to stay with the brave men who 
 were to stay with him, and win the gratitude of the country. " Accord- 
 ingly," he said, " I am going to see who are the brave men, and who are 
 the cowards among you. I wish you to give me your attention. When 
 I give the word, ' Shoulder arms,' let every brave man bring his 
 musket promptly to his shoulder, and let every coward slink back out 
 of the ranks." He stopped a moment to discover the effect of his 
 
 * The above facts were given ine by some of the venerable inhabitants of Sheffield 
 and Ashley Falls, who are now dead. 
 
103 
 
 eloquence, then drew his sword, and added, with a strong oath : " But, 
 remember, that I'll run the first man through the body that leaves the 
 ranks ! Attention, fellow-soldiers ! Shoulder arms ! " Every man's mus- 
 ket sprung to the shoulder, and not a soldier broke the ranks. Whether 
 the result was owing to the eloquence of the General, or to his signifi- 
 cant action at its conclusion, did not appear, but the soldiers remained 
 with him to squelch the rebellion in the county of Berkshire. 
 
 When General Ashley became assured of the patriotic determination 
 of his troops, he proceeded firmly and vigorously to enforce the power of 
 the government. Pursuing the policy that was enjoined upon him, he 
 resorted to parley, and almost to entreaty, in order to induce his misguided 
 countrymen to return to their allegiance. At last, however, his efforts 
 became unavailing. 
 
 The reluctance which had restrained him from using his power upon 
 them, was attributed to a fear of the consequences; and an attack was 
 made upon his force. He then saw that the time for energetic action had 
 come, and at last he issued that famous order, which has made his name 
 famous : " Pour in your fire, my boys, and may God have mercy on 
 their souls." 
 
 Should any person desire to read a thrilling story of the incidents of 
 these times, he will find them related in one of the Annuals, published 
 some thirty years ago. The tale was written by Miss Catherine 
 Sedgwick. 
 
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Town of Sheffield, 
 
 BERKSHIRE CO., MASS. 
 
 June 18th and 19th, 1876. 
 
 BY THE SECRETARIES OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE TOWN. 
 
 SHEFFIELD 
 
 1876. 
 
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