fl^' L/ 286 W22 E 367 P ^:q) t»ti$t# DELIVERED BEFORE THE ASSOCIATION Oldest Inhabitants DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. |n Washington, on the Fourth of jIuly, 1867, The Hon. Peter G. Washington, Ont of ils Vice-Presidents. WASHINGTON : JOHN T. BURCH, STATIONER. 1867. '3 mtm%, DELIVERED BEFORE THE ASSOCIATION Oldest Inhabitants DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Washington, on the j^ourth of |JuLy, 186' The Hon. Peter G. Washington, > ■ " «^' '- One uf its Vice-Pi^siJeriti. ct Washington: JOHN T. BURCH, STATlONliR. 1867. -/ then abounded, and displayed itself, throughout the war, in the individual sacrifices it yielded to the common cause. The habits of the country were almost entirely rural. A rich and virgin soil repaid the labors of agriculture. Men were content with the quiet enjoyments, and to perform the retired offices, of life — the education of their children, the practice of hospitality, and other neighborly duties and amenities — without an aspiration beyond. G-eneral Washington, in his retirement at Mount Vernon, after the close of the French war, who was by nature and sentiment an agriculturist, was a specimen of the country gentleman of his day. He relin- quished the habits of life which were congenial to his tastes, and yielded himself, at the call of his country, to years of exile, toil, and risk, with no other motive than to serve and defend it. The Declaration of Independence, which has just been read so impressively by our friend Dr. Blake, is a summary of political wisdom, as it was an act of devoted patriotism. It enumerates, as you have seen, the wrongs which im- pelled tlie colonies to that measure, pronounces their connection with the crown of Great Britian "severed," and assumes that "as free and independent States they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all such other acts and things which independent States nuiy of right do." If it shall be found upon examination that the American people, possessing as they do, a territory which is fraught with every sort of industrial capability, have wisely and beneficially exercised the enumerated powers thus assumed for the nascent State, and have, under the unenumerated, done all those things which were necessary for the general welfare, the progress of civilization, and the happiness and elevation of man ; in other words, have fully acted out the correlative obligations of these assumptions, then there will appear proportional ground for the just pride we feel in our country, our race, and our institutions. Of this broad land, framed in the prodigality of nature, with the loftiest mountains^ the largest rivers^ the richest valleys, a climate so healthful, and a soil and sub-soil so various and productive, what shall be said ? That it presents to its favored owners every bounty of sea and land, the soil and the mine. Is there any one thing which is necessary to the subsistence or comfort of man, that it does not offer to his industry and enterprise? Ask the coasts of the oceans and sea that lave it, the Atlantic, the Gulf and the Pacific, and they reply, we are your barriers against the tyrannies, the misery, of Europe. Dotted with islets and indented with bays of every size and form, we furnish harbors for your shipping, and nurseries for its seamen. Our native denizens garnish the tables of rich and poor, and our annual visitants spread themselves up your rivers, as the quails fell amidst the tents of the Israelites. Ask the rivers and they reply, we run from North to South, cutting more than twenty degrees of latitude, and pass, in counter-exchange^ your sub- arctic and sub-tropical products. Ask the lakes — Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario — that vast chain of inland seas, falling consecutively the one into another, not to omit Champlain and George, and they reply, before you had roads or Avagons, when the mountains were brought forth, we were here — destined to your earliest uses. Our aboriginal canoe has grown to the tall craft or the capacious steamer. On our bosoms unfettered commerce unfolds its native beauties, growing with your growth and strengthen- ing with your strength, and exchanging the diverse climactic products, and mingling in intercourse, harmony and love the sons of America, of either side. Ask the soil and it points to king cotton, to its I'ice, sugar, tobacco, wheat, and to the cattle on a thousand prairies, which browsing on their rich grasses, inters})ersed with the medicinal rosin weed, reflect the rays of the sun from their glossy sides. Ask the mines and they reply, behold " a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass." Out of which you may also dig gold and silver, copper and lead. Yes, and diamonds — the black diamond — of abundance inexhaustible — of price "richer than rubies." In these are laid up for your use, the heats of ages of suns. It is the Promethean fire of national vitality. Dig these and be prosperous — be power- 6 fill, and ill projioition as wo make you powerful, lie peaceful. Abuse not the power we give to op])rcss less ftivored i)Coples. Heap not our coals upon tlieir heads, even for real or imagi- nary wrongs, but use them, rather, to light up on your hill- tops, beacons of liberty and fraternity to which the oppressed of the nations may resort. The war commenced in mere resistance, became aggressive for independence. Two other foreign wars have followed. The war of the Eevolution lasted from 1775 to 1783. The second war with Great Britain from 1812 to 1815, and the war with Mexico from 1846 to 1848. There need be but a bare allusion, without detail, to our (juasi war with Eevolutionary France in 1798, a mere war of reprisals, resulting in a few captures at sea ; and to the war with Tripoli in 1802, impinging, as it did, on the regen- cies of Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco, which stopped the depre- dations of those powers on our commerce, and rescued our citizens held by them in bondage. These wars were fought by our navy, yet in its infancy. In both, the promise of its germ in the revolution was maintained with a prestige of discipline, skill and daring, which has grown Avith its adoles- cence and established the eminence of its manhood. Keturniug to the three principal wars mentioned, who can look on the first, even at this late day, without a shudder at the inequality of the forces opposed? On the one hand, a nation of nearly twenty millions of people, of strong govern- ment, formidable on land, the mistress on the seas, rich in commerce and manufactures, abounding in all the elements of war, and practised in it. In fine, Avhose conquests had then covered the w^orld? On the other, a people of about three millions, scattered thinly along a coast of more than a thousand miles, from Maine to Georgia, unused to war, poor, without manufactures, but little commerce, and subsisting chiefly by husbandry. These people had been held, perhaps designedly, under a number of distinct colonial govern- ments. The colonies differed from one another in character, climate and habits. Under the regal government, they had their mutual jealousies. These jealousies continued after they threw that government oii', and they were unwilling to adopt, perhaps from a memory of its oppressions, any other, or at least any that should possess equal authority, in its stead. These jealousies, whether of the colonies or indi- viduals, can hardly be much censured^ as they had their source in an intense love of liberty ; but it is certain that they bore throughout the war, the bitter fruits of weak and divided counsels, and lead to questions of command and of concert of action in the field. It was not until the war had lasted five years, that articles of confederation were agreed to between the colonies, now States, and neither under these articles did congress possess, any more than it had assumed to exercise before, the authority to bind the States, far less the people of the States. Its only authority seems to have been to apportion amongst the several States the troops and supplies required, and to call upon them from time to time for their respective quotas— ^requisitions which it had no power to enforce, and which were complied with, with vary- ing delays and deficiencies, accordingly as the respective States were more or less exposed, and perhaps as they were more or less zealously aftected towards the war. We had advanced somewhat in political wisdom in 1789, and have advanced further since, and can now clearly see that the essence of government was not in the Congress of that day. The astonishment is how affairs could have been carried on under the polity adopted, with, the consequent conviction that the impotency of government, or rather the utter absence of any real government over the whole, was the greatest impediment to the successful prosecution of the war. Perhaps the nearest approach to government was the author- ity of the commander-in-chief, so far as he deemed it right for him to exercise it, but this authority had little other sanction than his weight of character, his known devotion to the cause, and the force and frequency of his arguments and expostulations addressed to congress and to the governors of the States, and of his ap])eals to the people, for cooperation and support. There was no conscription to compel ; there was no high bounty in money or land to allure. " Sa reputa- tion lui Jit une armee," Paucity in nuiiibeiP, poverty in supplies, Providence in mercy made this a defensive wai-. Upon this Fabian princi- ple were fought the battles of Long Island, White Plains, Brandywine, and others. It is not necessary nor pleasant to describe them, for blood and carnage are not agreeable retrospects to sexagenarians, and besides it is not necessary to claim for our troops, chiefly militia, in that war, superior bravery to their enemy, nor to deny what is probably true, tliat all peoples are brave in a right cause, properly directed, supplied and drilled. But the preliminaries of battles and their results are inductive of the genius and tone of peoples. In the antecedents and sequels of these of ours, we se com- plairent to find genius in the lead, endurance in the led, and that humanity in both which could see, even in an enemy when fallen, the universal brotherhood of man, the common work of God^ the common purchase of Christ. It was WASHiNGTOiS!.'s distinction in the lead, to maintain for eight years an inferior army in front of a superior, to attack it from time to time, often with success, but never to the risk of the entire destruction of his little force. We admire his generalship in withdrawing his defeated army without loss, from Long Island, and afterwards from New York, and his boldness in confronting the enemy on the Bronx and giving him battle at AVhite Plains ; but the heart beats — all our sympathies are awakened by the perils of his retreat across the Jerseys, anxiously expecting that English Lee, who never intended to join him^ taking strong positions and yielding his ground, ste^j by step. He escapes across the Delaware, his army reduced to 3,000 men. We breathe ! Wasiiingtox has interposed a broad river between his little force and his powerful foe ; but what is there left? The cause seems lost ! There is a God of battles, who does not always give victory to the strong. Washington, in a few days recrosses the Delaware, captures Trenton and returns with a thousand prisoners. Crosses again and cap- tures Princeton. Confidence is restored ; the holy cause is saved. To recapitulate further instances of Washington's generalship would be but to reiterate the eulogies of history, the suffrages of all military adepts. 9 The haidiliood of tlio troops was a tit accoMipaniiiiciit U> tlic genius of tlieir conunander — campaigning in winter, ill clad and ill fed, marching in the snow without shoes, and tracking it with their blood ! Did ever men " stand between their loved homes and war's desolation," and endure, and as uncomplainingly, so much? Whence came this Decian-like devotion in common men — in militia? Their bodies were hardened by virtuous agricultural toil. They were resolved to be free, and they were Americans. " lis avaient, en nais- scmt, cet air du nouveau monde, sijeune, si vivace, si petillant." On tbe score of humanity, the contrast between the parties was quite as great as in any other of their respective pecu- liarities and conditions. The arming of the savage against our frontier, the massacre of Wyoming, the burning of defenceless villages, the butchery of Baylor's men, the bru- talities of the Hessians, the murder of Hayne, the horrors of the Jersey Prison Ship and Sugar House, were provocations for doing our part towards brutalizing the war^ which it was hard to resist. General Washington, indeed, remon- strated sharply with the British on many of these enormities, and threatened retaliation, but he was opposed to this terri- ble and doubtful remedy, except under the direst necessity, and deeply felt the monstrosity of taking the life of one man, althouo;h an enemy, for a crime committed by another. It was under the influence of these sentiments that he caused Asgill, justly held in confinement under the lex talioms to be released ; and the young, handsome, and gallant captain, instead of being hung, was restored to the arms of his doting mother — and probably some others. But these atrocities are long since gone by, and with them their exasperations, and their unmerciful or mistaken authors, who unhappily thought no measures too harsh which might bring rebels to submission, and who, moreover, fought for nationalexistence if they shared the opinion, as they doubtless did, of Lord GtEORGe Gordon, who told George the III he looked upon the independence of America and the destruction of the British monarchy, as synonimous. Yorktown closed the war. The gratitude justly tlue to 10 France, for her aid in its capture, has ever been ]>art and parcel of the American character. Its crowning ghiry, doubtless, was Washington's surrender of his sword to con- gress, and his retirement to the walks of private life. In any account of the Revolutionary war this illustrious man must needs stand in the foreground. In closing this, two remarks are due to him. First, his immoveable calmness under unprovoked hostility — unfounded detraction. The intrigues, the cabals, the spargere voces in mdgum amhi- guas in Congress, of Lee, Gates, Conway, even of some of his trusted friends, never diverted him from his patriotic toil, nor ruffled his manly brow. Second, his clairvoyance — his wonderful industry and success in gaining information which enabled him to penetrate the designs of the enemy throughout the war, Avhilst masking his own, and thus to play with that enemy successfully^ that' great national game of chess, upon which empires depended, capturing his two knights at Saratoga and Yorktown with many pawns, and linally check-mating his king. The war of 1812 has been called our second war of inde- pendence. It was so, in a certain sense, for it was indispensable to the maintenance of it. Although that war redressed the wrongs which had led to it, it left no security that they would not some day be repeated, and hence it is evident that our real independence as a nation was not unequivo- cally established and acknowledged for years after it. This war was forced upon us by a series of wrongs, which no people assuming to be independent could endure. For years after the treaty of 1783, by which Great Britain acknowledged our independence^ she had refused, in violation of its provi- sions, to deliver up the military posts she held on our frontier — she refused to interchange a diplomatic mission, and scorned, as it was said, to make a commercial treaty with us. Upon the breaking out of her war with revolutionary France, she liegan to impress our seamen, forcibly divert our trade in provisions, and in the sequel, by orders in council, to capture and seize our ships with whatsoever laden. In this war, we had one material advantage over the form- 11 er. We had a <^ovcriiiucnt invested with constitutional power to call on the States and people, and thus able to com- bine the strength of the whole nation (which it did with but few exceptions) in its prosecution. Our population had increased to about eight millions. Our commerce, although limited, had been gainful. Agri- culture had extended and some manufactures had sprung up. On the other hand, our revolutionary debt was yet un- paid. There was but little capital in the country. Relying upon our insular position relatively to Europe and its distance, we had neglected to fortify our coasts. We had no ships above frigates, and an army only about in proportion. Canning sneered, in the House of Commons, at the military pretentious of a nation that had but half a dozen regiments for an army, and about as many frigates, with bits of striped bunting flying at their masts^ for a navy. Both which state- ments were nearly true. But Canning did not reflect that with a free and self-reliant people,, the sense of wrong is ever an over-match for nice calculations of strength. He did not know that our country boys take their squirrel guns along with their primers to school, becoming marksmen on the way — abecedarians there. The proficients in the two arc America's marked men, some of whom made their marks in this war. Having been cultivating tlie arts of peace for so many years, our reliance for the conduct of this war was upon the veterans of the former. Fatal delusion ! They had stood still and rusted, whilst the age had every way advanced. The reverses in 1812 and some in 1813 requited the national error. The next year, 1814, showed in the hard fought fields of Bridgewater, Lundy's Lane, and others — that republican vim had then got into its right place. This, our city, whose peace, order and prosperity, it is one of the proud objects of this association to promote, was entered by the enemy on the eve of the 24th of August of that year. I see many around me who witnessed tliat sad event. No wonder the wounded pride — the mortification of the nation at the loss of its capital, has sought relief in the 12 imliscriininatc censure of all who tried to defend it, but i'ailed. Our gallant member, Col. Jno. S. Williams, who held a staff appointment in our army ; all of us who were present — men and hoys — know that the loss of Bladensburg was not the fault of the soldiery. He knows with what reluctance and in what perfect order, Peter, Stull, Davidson and others, left the field ; how they gnashed their teeth when they found the head of the column, instead of halting at, had passed througli the toll-gate, and how they chafed almost to mutiny, when it passed down by the capitol and thus gave it up. He knows that then and there, on that hill, whilst the army was thus moving down, a committee was organized to demand of the President the dismissal of the Secretary of War, to whom all attributed the disaster, and that the President did it. We remember the sorrow of that night, when the sky was lighted up all around by the blaze of our burning buildings, and of many a night after it. But joy came on that morning when the general gladness witnessed that New Orleans was safe, and the veterans of Wellington driven back by the heroic Jackson and his militia ignominously to their ships! It were superfluous to recount to you our many triumphs at sea — the capture of the Guerriere by Hull, of the Macedo- nian by Decatur, and others, including entire fleets on Erie and Champlainby Perry and Macdonough ; but what tongue will not re-utter, what eye will not moisten again, in reading the words of poor Lawrence — "Don't give up the ship," with which he breathed out his patriotic, his unselfish soul ! And you, peerless Blakely, with your little ship of 18 guns, when, where, and how was your martyred fate? The na- tional renown has reaped your legacy of the capture of two ships of greater size than your own, and records your drawn battle, at night, with a frigate twice your size. Was it the eftect of her fire? Was it the jealousy of Neptune of so bold a champion for his highest honors? Did a mast fall — a })lank give way? What dark cause was it, that envelopes your loss in such painful, such sublime mystery ? This war taught us the lesson, " in peace prepare for war." When that with Mexico began, we had fortified our coasts 13 and had increased somewhat both our army and navy. West Point had stocked the former with military talent ; our revolutionary and other debts had been paid. The country had increased in population and gjrown rich. But Mexico was not an enemy to be despised. Santa Anna, the emperor of eight millions of people, possessed talent, activity, and address, and knew well how to draw out and combine tlie military resources of his country, as well as how to inflame the prejudices, national and religious, of its people, against los Americanos del Norte. He opened the ball by attacking our army on the Texan side of the Rio Grande, which he well knew we were resolved to defend. Taylor defeated him at Palo Alto and Resacade la Palraa^ and driving him across that river, paused on its banks for preparation to follow in pursuit. Two lines of advance were organized — one from Taylor's position on the Rio G-rande — the other, when Vera Cruz and its tutelary castle of San Juan de Ulloa should fall from that point. Taylor advanced and took Monterey and won Buena Vista. Scott beat the enemy at Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Roy, stormed the giddy heights of Chepultepec (Virginia and Pennsylvania hand to hand — Selden and Biddle first to mount the works,) and took them, and with them, what they had protected — (Quitman, by the gareta Belen — Worth, by the gareta San Antonia) — the Capital of Mexico — the halls of the Montezumas ! Unhappy Mexico ! how little have you profited by the light of republican civilization so near you— by the examples it has set you, both when we were weak and when we were strong, of moderation and humanity ! Your foremost man has put to death, in cold blood, one hundred and forty prison- ers, and whilst their bodies were yet warm, filled his house with revelry, dancing, and music ! Would that the agonies of these poor victims, of their widows, their mothers, and orphans, could, like Banquo's ghost, have been personified in that unhallowed assembly, and with one general cry of ■shame, liave drowned the music of its indecent orgies ! When the cruel Abdallah had dethroned the last of the Om- miade Califs, and placed on the throne of Damascus the first 14 of the Abassides, he made proclamation that he would pardon the sons of the late calif who should surrender themselves. When all had appeared except one, to the number of some fifty, he caused them to be surrounded by his soldiers and butchered, their bodies placed in a row, and covered with planks and cloths, and upon that horrible table served a sumptuous feast to his officers. The closeness of the parallel will carry Escobedo and Abdallah, together, down to posterity — perhaps lower ! ! I It is very agreeable to us of Anglo-Saxon blood and here- ditary distrust of standing armies — that our victorious Mexi- can army was composed in so large a degree of civilians — knowing nothing of war — but who, at the "stamp of the foot" of their country, sprang to its aid from the plough, the loom, the anvil. We claim the distinction amongst all the nations of the earth, that in peace every one is peaceful, in war every one a soldier. Give us an army sufficient to defend the frontier, and keep alive "the disciplines of the wars;" let West Point continue to furnish our Steubens and Vaubans ; let the squirrel gun and the primer supply our citizen soldiery, and we have the elements of success in every just cause. Diplomacy records our statesmanship, moderation and jus- tice. It is painful to speak of our first commercial treaty with Great Brtiain, negotiated by Mr. Jay, in 1794. By this treaty we were prohibited from sending our cotton or tobacco in our own ships to Europe. We were permitted to trade to the West Indies in vessels only of less than seventy tons. The treaty did not restrain England from searching our ships and impressing our seamen. The motives of England in forcing this shameful treaty on our infant government, and of General Washington in lending the sanction of his great name to its ratification by the Senate, are historic mysteries, of which the light of the blessed suns which have since risen over us, furnish the full solution. England had still re-sub- jugation, or at least commercial domination and monopoly on the brain. General Wasiiington knew by painful expe- rience the horrors of war, its uncertainties, its destruction 15 of property and waste of capital, the widows, the agonized hearts it left, and we may conclude, that although with some foreign aid he got well through the former struggle, he doubted whether the infant Hercules he was nursing had yet acquired the brawn to wield his club, single handed, effectively against his old enemy. Always for his country — never for himself — he shouldered the odium of this disgraceful treaty, and posterity has. in its just judgment, recognized the wisdom and patriotism of his conduct. The outrages of England continued, even to an attack upon an American frigate, the Chesapeake, and the forcible seizure, from under her guns and the stars and stripes, of three, perhaps four, native American seamen I We had to fight — of course we had! When we did, England bethought herself, and con- cluding to let go our property, but not our seamen, proposed to repeal her orders in council with a view to peace. Mr. Madison insisted on renunciation of impressment, which England declined. When I remind you that upon this single and naked issue between christian and enlightened nations, was shed so much blood in the latter part of this war, you can hardly credit the responses of your memories, the testimony of your ears. Mr. Sparks, who spoke of these things some twenty years afterwards, thought the (Questions of neutral rights and im- pressment would never be settled as long as England remained the mistress of the seas : which means, that as long as Eng- land remained a giant, and we a dwarf, she claimed the right to kidnap our citizens, whenever she had occasion for them ! And thus we see hoAv ingeniously nations, as well as individuals, can accommodate their ethics to their practice or their necessities. The questions so in reserve after the war of 1812, according to Mr. Sparks, were most probably settled by our achievements in Mexico, or if they were not, they certainly were by Admiral Foote, who demonstrated at Fort Henry the superiority of iron-clad to merely wooden ships. An English patriotic ballad runs : •'