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The Annual Reception of the NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY IN
THE CITY OF BROOKLYN was held in the Art Building, 174
Montague Street, on Thursday evening, February 4, 1886, and
was attended in large numbers by the members and their
families, who listened with great interest to the following
address by the HON. W. P. SHEFFIELD, of Newport, Rhode
Island, upon
“THE SOADNERSNANNIS. SAILS) RS OF NEW
ENGLAND.8/)^ſ,
The President, Mr. Winslow, introduced Mr. Sheffield, who
spoke as follows:
Mr. President, Gentlemen of the AVew Bng/and Society :
We of New England lineage delight to dwell upon the hal-
lowed memories of Our New England ancestors; to recall
their high resolves, their trials, their conflicts and their unpro-
pitious surroundings; to contemplate their principles of
action, their perfect faith in Divine Providence, their rigid de-
votions, their fortitude, their foibles, their shortcomings and
their patience in suffering. Then by an easy transition of
thought, we are made to realize our gratitude for the territory
they opened to civilization, the institutions they founded, the
, self-denial they practiced, and are brought to the consideration
. . º. of how much of the growth and prosperity of this, the most
a , , , powerful country on earth is due, and for how much of their
happiness the happiest people of our time are indebted for
what they are, and for what they have, to what has come down
to them from the Pilgrims and Puritans of New England.
For a brief hour let us contemplate the courage and endur-
ance of the founders and of the descendants of the founders of
New England, as illustrated in its history. This is a hackneyed
theme; but where other hands have reaped and gathered the
*
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2
harvest, may we not perform the humbler office of gleaning the
field P
A blending of light and shadow is necessary to the perfec-
tion of every work of art representing anything in nature; and
as we recall the courage and consider the endurance of our
New England fathers, let us not forget while we survey them
and their surroundings and exult in their achievements that
they were not wholly exempted from the infirmities insep-
arable from human existence.
For centuries before the landing of the Pilgrims at
Plymouth a conflict had been carried on in England between
the rulers and the ruled to liberate the creeds and consciences
of men from the determinations and restraints of law, and to
absolve their persons and estates from the control of despots.
During this long period the struggle for freedom was not at all
times under intelligent direction ; indeed, it may be well
doubted if the ultimate logical result of the conflict was clearly
comprehended, but this was rather left to be developed as the
controversy progressed. The efforts to throw off the restraints
imposed upon men by the tyrannies practiced by governments
in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries were arduous, some-
times made by good men actuated by high purposes, and some-
times the cause was advanced by bad men instigated by bad
motives, but the advance of the race towards the goal sought
for, was always opposed by tyrants and bigots. From the re-
sults of this great and continued struggle, it is apparent that
there is ever working in human Society an unseen force, a
subtle influence unappreciated, which is nevertheless operative
in elevating men in Society, advancing them in civilization and
assisting them in working out the great problems of human
life. This influence directs wars, crimes, accidents and great
oppressions, to contribute to results the opposite of those to
which they appear to naturally tend. The apprehension of
the fires of Smithfield and the terrors of the Tower of London
drove the Puritans out of England and across the sea. The
threat of a brutal king that he would make the Puritans con-
form, or he would hurry them out of the land, or he would do
something worse, he would hang them, was uttered with ter-
rible earnestness of purpose, and the Puritans understood its
import.
3
When arraigned before Governor Haines, of Massachusetts,
for heresy, that Puritan of Puritans, Roger Williams, announced
his religious beliefs, and adds, substantially, these are the things
which I believe; for them you may kill me, but they will live,
because they are God's truths, and God is stronger than all his
adversaries. If the awfully sublime philosophy wrapped up in
this sententious sentence, that God is the author of right and
will vindicate it against all of its adversaries, had burst into the
besotted mind of James I., the vision would have shaken it as
with an earthquake shock and overwhelmed it. In the Order
of things it appears to be necessary to shock the human under-
standing by some great crisis in human affairs to arouse men
to the performance of the greatest actions. Civilization is but
a continual confirmation of the great fact that He who rules
the universe “makes the wrath of man to praise Him.”
Henry VIII. waged an unjust quarrel with the Pope, and
in his resentment absolved his subjects from their allegiance to
the Holy See, Henry then arrogated to himself the duties of
the pontifical office in his kingdom and thereunder assumed
the spiritual control of his subjects.
After Henry came the short uneventful reign of Edward VI.
Then came Mary, eldest daughter of Henry, to the throne,
who, maddened by the wrongs her mother had received at the
hands of her brutal father, restored the authority of the Pope
throughout her kingdom. The record of the reign of Mary is
written in the blood of her subjects. She died in 1588.
Elizabeth succeeded Mary. The fact that induced Mary to
be a Catholic made Elizabeth espouse the cause of the Protest-
ants. She at once proclaimed uniformity of worship, and de-
clared herself to be the head of the church. She became pope
within her kingdom. Soon after a law was enacted making
revolt from the church treason to the State.
The tact and knowledge of men and affairs which had char-
acterized the administration of Elizabeth were wanting in the
succeeding reigns of James I. and Charles I., and dissenters
then multiplied with rapidity, and the officers of the law ex-
erted themselves with energy to have prosecutions and punish-
ments keep pace with the progress of dissent.
James reduced the Puritans to a choice between the sur-
render of their faith, exile and death.
4
Groups of these unfortunate persons gathered from time
to time in the towns, villages, in the by places, and in the
hamlets of England, to take counsel together upon the choice
of the alternatives before them. Men and women, allied to
their native land by ties of kindred and birth, and by the tra-
ditions of its history, gathered at these consultations. The
election must be made : Could they yield their convictions of
duty P The weak among them faltered, but there were there
lofty spirits who believed that duty to God could not be trea-
Son to the king. No Tudor or Stuart could hold their souls in
bondage, for they owed their highest allegiance to the King of
Kings. The dangers of the sea, an inhospitable climate, the
terrors of the savages and of a wilderness could not be put into
the balance to be weighed against the frowns of an angry
God, or to atone for violated duty. Here is the sublimity of
exalted courage. The valor of Lannes at Lodi, or of Augerearo
at Arcole, acting in the white heat of battle, sink into insig-
nificance when compared with the high resolves and lofty
courage of the Pilgrim and Puritan founders of New England.
Their exodus was the genesis of America. When these people
left England they left behind the English Church and the
British empire. Their aim and aspirations were to establish
a new church and a new State. They had not yet advanced to
the partition wall that was to be reared between the two, but
were content to found their State on the church, and to make
it an instrument in giving effect to the will of the church ;
they dethroned both pope and potentate and vested their
powers in the church. They at first stopped at the half-way
house in their advance toward religious liberty, but it was a
wonderful stride to accomplish half the journey from Arch-
bishop Laud to Roger Williams. From the standpoint thus
attained other and more adventurous spirits than the govern-
ing Puritans took a new start, and boldly struck for the sever-
ance of church and State, and for the kindred idea that gov-
ernments are instituted solely for the benefit of the governed,
and that officers are agencies selected for the benefit of the
people.
It is said that the early settlers of New England persecuted
the Baptists and Quakers, and hung witches; and this is true.
But in this they acted up to the light they had received, to
5
the understanding which their intellectual growth had attained;
and, like Saul in his journey to Damascus, in doing these
things they really believed that they were doing God service,
and the world, save a little spot indicated on the map of New
England so obscurely that it would easily escape casual obser-
vation, was overshadowed by the darkness in which they were
enveloped; but the clouds soon gave way, and the sun-light of
Soul liberty broke in upon them, and has since then been pro-
gressing in its march over the world.
The Puritans had placed themselves where three thousand
miles of Ocean, with its perils and penalties separated them
from the prelatical hierarchy of England, and more than that,
from the Roman pontiff. They acknowledged spiritual alle-
giance only to the sovereign of the universe. The Rev. John
Robinson had admonished the Pilgrims on parting with them
at Leyden “that God had new truths to reveal from his Scrip-
tures,” and added, in sorrow, that “the Lutherans could not
be drawn to go beyond Luther, or the Calvinists to go beyond
where Calvin had left them ; these,” said he, “were precious
shining lights in their times, yet God had not revealed his
whole will to them, and were they alive they would be as
ready to embrace further light, as they had been to embrace
the light which they had received.” This admonition abided
with the men who had received it, and slowly made its way,
and is even now exerting its influence in the theology of New
England.
The institutions which they left behind them were based
upon the divine right of kings; to this dogma the founders of
New England opposed at first the divine right of the people in
church estate. Emerged from a sea of corruption and tyranny,
the accumulation of centuries, about the British government,
the Puritans sought to establish in the wilds of America, insti-
tutions founded on the principles of the most exalted virtue.
That they fell below their aim none will deny. They sought
to environ their civil state with the sanctity and goodness of
the church to attain their purpose. They were unwilling to
leave dominion over the minds of men to Him who alone has
perfect cognizance of human thought, and in their criminal
code they laid too much stress upon offences such as heresy,
profanity and Sabbath-breaking, against which they denounced
6
penalties apparently designed to represent the Divine wrath,
rather than a just appreciation of a violation of the laws of
sinful men.
When these people first landed on the shores of New Eng-
land they found themselves hedged about with difficulties on
every side—the forest peopled with wild beasts and savage
men, was before them ; the ocean on whose troubled bosom
they had been borne hither was behind them ; inclement skies
were over them—yet they were to provide for themselves and
for those dependent upon them, food, clothing, habitation
and civil society. In the presence of these circumstances, dark-
ness and gloom well nigh sunk them to despair, but when the
future of the country whose foundation they had come hither
to lay, was opened to their vision, a new inspiration animated
them with a high and holy zeal and carried them up to the
highest plane of human action, and they nobly embraced the
work of founding a State which had been committed to them.
A provision for the necessities of life, the establishing of
churches, schools and colleges, with the making of provisions
for protection from and the conversion of the savages, were
subjects of their extreme solicitude. Theirs was no everyday
routine life, for each day brought with it new duties, new cares
and new responsibilities.
In the beginning they encountered the problem which has
ever hung upon and perplexed our frontier life—the conflict
between civilized and savage existence, a conflict the evils of
which in given instances might possibly have been mitigated,
but have not, and in the present condition of human society
cannot be wholly avoided. The Indian has retired or been
driven back before the pioneer in his westward march, until
these unhappy children of the forest are already crossing the
Rocky Mountains to meet their kindred who are on their way
eastward, crossing the Sierras before the coming tide of civili-
zation setting in from the shores of the Pacific, perhaps to find
a common grave for their race between these great mountain
ranges.
For two centuries and a half the Indian race has been in
contact with the borders of civilization, yet this race has made
little progress in the arts of civilized life; the lion and the lynx
have not yet been domesticated ; the eagle will not rear its
7
young in confinement; and while I would forego no reasonable
effort to ameliorate the condition of the Indian, I can indulge
no very strong confidence in the ultimate result of such effort
unless he is taken from his tribal relations when young and is
not again allowed to return to them.
The pioneers of New England early encountered savage
hostilities. The conspiracy of the Massachusetts Indians for
the destruction of the whites, the murder of Oldham at Block
Island, and of Stone and Norton at Connecticut, disclosed the
intentions of the savages towards the whites. Miles Standish
and his followers broke the Massachusetts conspiracy at Wey-
mouth, John Endicott and Captain Underhill made a demon-
Stration upon Block Island, and Colonel John Mason, on a high
ridge, in the east part of Groton, attacked the Pequots, and
made the early morning lurid with the fire which consumed
this enemy and their dwellings, and dissipated a warlike
tribe of savages. In the war with the United Provinces, in
I653, Rhode Island alone, of the New England colonies, went
to the assistance of the English settlers on the east end of Long
Island, against the Dutch and Indians; with twenty men, the
prisoners in the colony, and four privateers, they captured an
Indian fort and conquered a peace.
In 1675, Philip's war broke out, and the colonists of New
England were then subjected to their severest trials. The mur-
ders, the marches, the ambushes, the burnings, the cruelties and
terrors of that time, indicate the endurance, the courage and
power of the men who won the victory in that conflict. Philip
was cunning, energetic, persistent, but cowardly and brutal.
Canonchet who joined Philip in the war, was brave, and though
a Savage, had much nobility of soul; when captured he wished
to die before his heart got soft, and before he had done any-
thing unworthy of himself.
Our blood grows cold with terror as we contemplate the
battle of December 19th, 1675. Three thousand Indians were
within a fort containing five hundred wigwams on an island in
the great swamp in South Kingston, Rhode Island. This
was sixteen miles from any considerable white settlement.
The colonies had 1,500 men in arms in the neighbor-
hood. It was intensely cold, and the air was filled with Snow
with which the ground was deeply covered. The Indians were
8
aware of the approach of the whites. The conflict was opened
and persisted in with great courage and energy; finally, the fort
was set on fire, Indians attempting to escape were killed,
and those who remained were burned up. After night had set
in, the army started through a pathless forest in the blinding
snow to seek shelter and food at Smith's trading house. Many
of the wounded had to be carried, or to be assisted, by freezing
men. The horrors of the battle and of that night's march baf-
fle description, but in that conflict the power of the Narragan-
setts was broken, and the last hope of Philip for gathering
another formidable army east of the Hudson, and west of
Maine, perished.
In 1689, New Englanders, under Sir William Phipps, on the
breaking out of King William's war, conquered Acadia, now
called Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, from the French, but
this territory was restored to France by the treaty of Ryswick
in 1697. In 17 Io, during Queen Ann's war, Arcadia was again
conquered by New England troops, and was finally ceded to
England by the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713.
France now made considerable settlements on the northern
frontier of New England, and had made advances on the north-
western border. Before the war between England and Spain,
in 1739, which was the prelude of the war of the Austrian Succes-
sion, France had cultivated the most friendly relations with the
Indian tribes of Canada and New York, through the agency of
Jesuit priests. These priests were extreme fanatics, partaking
of the worst spirit of the times in which they lived. They
believed in the divine right of kings, such as acknowledged the
pontifical authority of the pope, and that any service they
could render the king, without regard to its moral quality,
was a service to God. Acting in the full realization of this faith,
they instigated the Indians and the Acadian inhabitants of
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, to loiter on the borders of
the New England settlements, and ambush and slaughter
the dwellers there, as they were at work in their fields, or
alone in their homes, to burn their dwellings, kill their cattle
and take families into captivity. With these tragedies our school
books used to be filled, and our minds when we read them
recoiled with horror from their recital, save the terrible retri-
bution inflicted by that New England mother who with her
9
nurse and infant were taken into captivity, the infant while
on her journey was snatched from her arms and dashed
against a tree. I read, I confess, with some exultation,
that part of the story of her captivity in which is told how in
the midnight she with her faithful nurse and a Worcester boy
arose from their couches and killed and scalped ten of the
twelve Indians sleeping about her, and then took the Indian
weapons, and she and her companions with the Indian scalps
in a bark canoe floated down the Merrimac and safely arrived
at her home.
Early in the war with Spain the colonies were called upon
to supply troops for an expedition against Cuba, and seamen
to join Admiral Vernon before Carthagena. Of these troops
not one in ten returned. The yellow fever was a more potent
enemy to them than the armies of France and Spain. Before the
breaking out of this war New England had been extensively
engaged in carrying on a commerce with the West Indies and
with the Spanish Main. Their captains were familiar with
every island, shoal and trading port in that portion of the
French and Spanish dominions. The British government
authorized the colonies to commission private armed vessels
to cruise against the common enemies. New England, under
this authority, sent out many of these cruisers, some of which
returned deeply freighted with spoils taken from their enemies.
Bishop Kip, in his book on Early Spanish Missions, repeats a
description of a single adventure of one of these privateers on
the Spanish Main, who laid waste fifteen hundred miles of
territory, as reported by a parish priest to his bishop. To the
description thus given of the adventure of the Prince Charles of
Lorraine, of which Simeon Potter was commander, I may add
that the adventure was the subject of an international corres-
pondence, and the British government ordered Judge Stren-
gerfield, an Admiralty Judge, to investigate the conduct of
Captain Potter. The Judge took much testimony, and
reported that all he could find in the affair was, that Captain
Potter, considering the means in his power, had done more
for his Majesty's service than any other of his Majesty's sub-
jects.
New England engaged heartily in this war. The French
on their frontier lines was their objective point ; and some of
IO
the New England people were stimulated further to exertion
by the fact that Sir Charles Wager, then the First Lord of the
Admiralty under Walpole's administration, had been reared
amongst them.
The spirit of New England was too high and moved with
too great rapidity for her people to be satisfied with the routine
movements of the home government. The Fortress of Louis-
burg, on the Island of Cape Breton, was a standing menace to
every fisherman who attempted to enter the St. Lawrence,
Massachusetts taking the lead. New England resolved upon
the capture of that fortress. A formidable expedition was
fitted out, and the fortress was captured ; but to the very
great regret of the New England colonies, it was receded to
France in the treaty of 1748.
After this treaty there was no peace with the French in
America. France claimed all the territory west of a line
drawn from the marshes of Nova Scotia to Crown Point, then
down Lake Champlain, and along the ridge of the Alleghanies
to the Spanish possessions bordering on the Gulf of Mexico,
and extending southward to the Rio-del Norte.
At this time the Dutch in New York were not enthusiastic
in supporting the claims of the British government. The
Quakers of Pennsylvania had to stand by their testimonies, New
Jersey was behind Pennsylvania and New York, and deemed
herself too secure from attack to hazard the result of a war,
and the legislature of Virginia would not vote men or money
to resist the claims of France unless their royal governor would
forego the charge of a pistole for every grant of land he signed.
The governor deemed this demand upon him to be an at-
tempt to degrade his office, and he would not accede to it.
Yet Virginia sent out an expedition under George Washing-
ton to make demand upon the French commander to remove
their forts and force from the border, but Washington was de-
feated, and a second force was sent out under Braddock, which
was defeated also, and the commander was slain. This was
the beginning of the seven years war, and this beginning set
Europe on fire.
Large forces were annually recruited during this war in
New England for the defence of the northern frontier, but
with little result, except when Lyman the Yale professor and
I I
Winslow the Marshfield farmer were accidentally in command,
beyond inflicting very great sufferings upon the recruits until a
change was affected in the British ministry. Johnston and
Louden were each incompetent to command, but upon the
change of the ministry, when Pitt was placed at the head of
affairs, and Amherst and Wolf were sent to take command of
the armies in America, the character of the conflict was changed.
This war came to its crisis on the plains of Abraham, September
I3th, I 759, when the power of France on the northern and north-
western frontier of the American colonies was buried forever
in the grave of Montcalm.
The private armed vessels from the ports of New England
were out with added force, and did gallant service during the
seven years war.
The Puritans did not regard the war as being only a war of
races, but their energies were quickened by the belief that it
possessed something of the character of a conflict between the
followers of Calvin and the followers of Loyola.
England received from the wrecks of empire occasioned by
this war for its salvage service, the French possessions in the
north and west of the British American colonies.
The conquest of this territory not only released their hold
upon the British colonies, but had a like effect upon the hold of
the colonies upon the British government, for the colonies were
no longer available to the government in carrying on a war
against France; and the aid of the government was no longer
necessary to protect the colonies against the French and their
allies. So that the only power at this period of colonial exist-
ence that was seeking to oppress the colonies was “the home
government.” In the Spanish-French war, and in the seven
years war the colonies had been inspired with a military spirit
and had acquired a good degree of military experience and
discipline. General Charles Lee, under date of October 29,
1774, says “Virginia, Rhode Island and Carolina are forming
(military) corps. Massachusetts has long had a sufficient num-
ber instructed to become instructors to the rest. Even this
Quaker Province (Pennsylvania) is following the example. I
was present at a review of some of their companies at Provi-
dence, in Rhode Island, and really never saw anything more
perfect.”
I 2
It is difficult to ascertain precisely where and when the
revolution commenced. The first clause of the opening chap-
ter of Stedman's history of this war refers to the forcible tak-
ing of forty pieces of cannon of different sizes belonging to the
Crown from the fort in the harbor of Newport. This act was
done under the authority of the colonial legislature, and Sted-
man adds that they did not hesitate to own that it was done
to prevent the cannon from falling into the hands of the
King's troops, and that they (the colonists) meant to use them
against any power that should offer to molest them. "
Arthur Brown, a native of New England, who went abroad
before the revolution, and never returned to his native country,
author of Brown's Civil and Admiralty Law and other works,
the associate of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Hume
and Garrick, writing upon the subject of the commencement
of the Revolution, says: “The discontents of America are
usually dated from the Stamp Act, in 1765, but they really
originated in 1763, immediately after the peace (1762) from the
interdiction of their trade with the Spanish Main.” ” * *
He adds, “I myself saw one American fort fire upon the
Squirril, a King's ship, in 1764, in the harbor of New Port.”
The truth is, that the war was evolved as a necessary result
from the character of the colonists and of the British govern-
ment, and in the relations they sustained at the time to each
other.
Massachusetts, as early as 1641, denied the power of the
British Parliament to legislate for that colony. The other
New England colonies, as did Massachusetts, based their exclu-
sive right to legislate for themselves upon provisions of their
respective charters.
Pervading the entire colonial systems of government in
these colonies, from the beginning, was a desire for independ-
ence,—independence of that country which had driven the
Puritans into exile.
The presence of any officer of the crown, in any of these
colonies was regarded as a menace to their chartered rights.
Chalmers says of Rhode Island and Connecticut that “they
were pure democracies—the former exercised without restraint
every power deliberative and executive. In 17O4, Montpesson,
Chief Justice of New York, wrote to Lord Nottingham that
I 3
when he was at Rhode Island “they did in all things as if they
were out of the dominion of the crown.” Chalmers says fur-
ther, “Connecticut being inhabited by a people of the same
principles, though of different religion, they acted the same
political part as those of Rhode Island ; ” quoting a dispatch
of Lord Cornbury to the board of trade, he adds of these two
colonies that “they hate everybody that owns any subjection
to the Queen.”
The Crown and Parliament of England claimed the right
by their acts to bind the colonies in all cases whatsover. The
colonies denied the right of the Crown and Parliament under
their colonial charters to bind them in any case whatever, and
here the parties were at issue. When the revolution came it
was the coming in forcible contact of the system of govern-
ment of the old world and of the new—the meeting face to
face of the civilization of Europe and America in a contest of
arms for the mastery. Coming generations beckoned the Whigs
on in the conflict for the abolition of old methods and the
inauguration of the new, to dethrone the king and exalt the
people.
Clouds of strife had long been gathering, at times they had
opened in fitful bursts, but the storm of war did not set in
while its evils could be postponed.
The conflict came, and at Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill,
Bennington, Saratoga, Rhode Island, in the Middle States, at
Yorktown, and every battle of the revolution north of York-
town, the New Englanders demonstrated their valor and made
offerings of their blood a sacrifice upon the altar of their
country.
According to the report of General Knox, Secretary of
War, to Congress in 1790, there were enlisted into the armies
of the revolution 231,796 men. Of these there were enlisted
from New England I 18,350, from the Middle States 54, I 16, and
from the Southern States 59,330 ; thus it appears there were
enlisted from the four New England colonies or states, 4,904
more men than from the remaining nine colonies or states. In
addition to this, the public and private armed vessels of the
Union drew their crews largely from New England. The
Smallest in territory of the New England States issued at least
two hundred commissions to private armed vessels. The
I4.
character of the men engaged on board of these vessels and
the services they rendered the country I have considered else-
where; here it is only necessary to say that no braver men
ever trod a plank or encountered an enemy than the New
England privateersmen engaged in the American revolution.
The French war made the revolution and American Inde-
pendence possible. When we consider the part taken by New
Englanders in these wars, we are impressed with the obligations
of the people of the American Union to the descendants of the
Puritans for the results of those wars; for, had it not been for
New England men, the revolution might not have been, and
it is among the possibilities that the people of the United
States might even now have been inhabitants of British Prov-
inces.
The founders of New England were impoverished by their
exile. But poverty is not an unmixed evil. It is a strict dis-
ciplinarian. It chastens the spirit, and restrains a disposition
to form habits of dissipation and extravagance. It incites to
industry, and inspires the aspiring youth with energy and
enforces economy. Wealth relieves its possessor from the
necessity to toil, and affords the means of creating tastes for
and indulging in habits of excess and idleness.
The Puritans aimed to put within the reach of their chil-
dren the means of educating themselves up to the extent of
their capacity for usefulness, and made a reasonable pressure
upon them to ensure the attainment of this end.
Self-reliance was, however, the great lesson of early New
England life. Without this, our fathers believed and taught
but little advance could be made onward or upward in the
scale of human existence. If a man depends upon others
or upon his surroundings for elevation or advancement in life
he will generally be disappointed, for individual effort, contin-
ued and well directed exertion, work out results for men and
in men which neither wealth nor friends can obtain for them.
I love to dwell in thought upon the heroic self reliance
under God of our forefathers as they boldly threw themselves
upon the ocean and went out in search of and to establish homes
churches, schools and States in an unexplored land. To reflect
how almost single-handed they entered the forest and there
braved the savage hordes they encountered, and of their reli-
I 5
ance upon the elements about them for food, clothing, habita-
tion, and the means of future prosperity, I feel exalted as I
walk the streets they laid out, and visit the scenes consecrated
to history by their deeds.
If one is asked for the names of descendants of the Puri-
tans who have become illustrious in their vocations, he is em-
barrassed by the wealth of material out of which to reply, and
can only with difficulty from the many, select a few from
some of the leading pursuits of life. Among her scientists,
may be found the names Franklin, Silliman and Pierce; of her
artists, Copley, Stuart and Powers; of her statesmen, John
Adams, Roger Sherman and Daniel Webster; of her jurist-
consults, Henry Wheaton, Joseph Story and President Wool-
sey; of her judges, Curtis, Shaw and Parker; of her orators,
James Otis, Rufus Choate and Wendell Phillips; of her men
of letters, Edward Everett, Nathaniel Hawthorn and James
Russell Lowell ; of her poets, Bryant, Longfellow and Whit-
tier ; of her historians, Bancroft, Prescott and Motley ; of her
philosophers, Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson and
William Ellery Channing ; of her generals, Greene, Knox and
Putnam ; of her naval commanders, Hull, Perry and Porter; of
her discoverers and inventors, Morse, Whitney, and Morton ;
of her philanthropists, Peabody, Slater and Rich.
On a lower plane, but far above the common masses of
men, have been the sons of toil who, from youth to manhood
and from manhood to age have pursued their daily labor, sub-
duing fields to culture, building towns and cities, accumulat-
ing intelligence, establishing happy homes, and providing an
easier lot in life for those who may come after them. These
men, without complaint, with wonderful fidelity in the daily
round of duty, have exhibited a courage and endurance worthy
of all admiration. It is from the children of these men that
you obtain recruits to carry on the great enterprises of life, and
in times of public danger as well as in posts of private duty,
here is an unfailing source for a supply of men who are ever
ready to answer the call of their country to the field of honor
for its defence.
The wheels of Providence do not run backwards, nor do
they run by chance. “There is a divinity which shapes our
ends,” a subtle influence which pervades all human conduct, and
I6
works results superior to it. Our actions do not always tend to
the end for which they are designed. The annexation of Texas
was intended by its promoters to broaden the domain of human
slavery. This act brought on the Mexican war. The treaty
of Guadaloupe Hidalgo supervened, and by this treaty New
Mexico, Arizona and California were annexed to the United
States. There was a secret wrapped up in the bosom of Cali-
fornia destined to defeat the designs of the promoters of these
great enterprises. The secret came out. Gold was discovered
there. New Englanders and the descendants of New Eng-
landers made haste to the New Eldorado. This new territory
arose at once to Statehood, and the spirit and inspiration of
New England which animated its people made it a free state.
Kansas, in the same interest, by violence, fraud and crime was
sought to be brought into the union with the cloud of human
bondage overhanging it; but the descendants of the Puritans
went there and forbid it. A good action never dies; it passes
into the sum of human conduct, and there does something
towards leavening its mass. Slavery, maddened by its disap-
pointments in reference to California and Kansas, struck the
union. The blow recoiled upon the hand that gave it, and
annihilated slavery. The price in blood and treasure paid by
the nation for universal liberty, in which the sons of New
England nobly spent their part, I will not enumerate, for the
ashes have gathered over the coals of that struggle, and I will
not disturb the slumbering embers.
Men of New England claim that justice should be the aim
and end of organized society, and that the hopes of the Puri-
tans cannot be fully realized until civilization is carried forward,
where party shall be lost in country and creeds be merged in
Christianity. Human slavery has been blotted out of our so-
cial system, and the time has come when the spoils of office
shall be no longer an incentive to political action ; when pro-
fessional politicians should be dismissed from employment ;
when the equality of right in all men in spirit and in deed, be-
fore the law, shall be acknowledged, and every man shall rec-
ognize that by his allegiance to the state he is burdened with
the duty of working for the public welfare, and, to this end let
us stretch out our arms to their utmost tension to bridge any
17
chasms which may have been opened in the past between men
who sincerely love our common country.
Mind is ever active in proportion to its motive for action.
The New Englander has ever been engaged in a contest with
the forces of nature. The necessity for supporting physical
existence constitutes the most powerful motive for exertion.
Even the religion of the Puritans was an incentive to action;
for by that he saw clearly that he had a heaven to gain and a
hades to avoid. The virtues are taught in a Spartan school:
coarse fare and a severe discipline are necessary to their high-
est development. An unyielding soil and an inhospitable
climate were to be overcome by the Puritans. The savage,
liable to ambush him at his toil, made him cautious, and his
encounters with the savage nerved him for the conflicts of life,
and strengthened him to overcome the obstacles which ob-
structed his progress. The example of the Puritans when
their mother country cast them off, in their helplessness to
shift for themselves, as being unfit for her nurture, inspired
their descendants to resistance, when they exhibited strength
and power, and that same mother manifested a disposition to
swathe their limbs by limiting the scope of their toil and en-
terprise and by forcing contributions from them to be expen-
ded in the gratification of parental ambition, and by keeping
them in a state of perpetual pupilage. To a resistance born of
the cause of the exile of their fathers, and nurtured by the
continued wrongs they had received at the hands of the mother
country, quickened by the moral necessity for freedom upon
them, with the fear of God and nothing else before them, they
entered that unequal contest. -
The life of New England during every period of its history
has been a life of conflict, and the results of those conflicts are
recorded with their triumphs on the cultivated hill sides, the
fertilized valleys, the happy homes, the busy workshops and
cunning implements of toil, school houses, churches, colleges,
and the varied means of ameliorating the conditions of the un-
fortunate everywhere scattered over this section of the country.
Then New England with a prodigal hand has sent forth her
sons to build up states and empires of states like unto herself,
Her enterprise and her capital have largely assisted in binding
together the continent with hooks of steel, the Golden Gate
I 8
and Massachusetts Bay, and in other great public enterprises.
The foremost men in science, in art and in enterprise every-
where over the land receive inspiration from the spirit and cul-
ture of New England.
Could our Pilgrim or Puritan fathers be rehabilitated on
earth and be vouchsafed a vision of the land consecrated
to liberty and humanity by their toil and suffering, and behold
the progeny that has succeeded to the inheritance they left, a
rapturous vision would be opened to them. The country they
found a wilderness, in which they opened but here and there
a field for culture and left it, is now changed. The savage no
longer haunts the forest or lies in ambush to waylay the white
man. The waterfalls have been arrested in their progress
and pressed into the service of civilization ; and hamlets and
villages of happy homes, with schoolhouses and churches, have
been gathered about them. The forests have been hewn
down; cultivated farms and comfortable farm houses have been
located where they stood. Here and there a large city has
grown up, and the population has been wonderfully multiplied,
but the products of the earth and of human industry and all
that goes to subserve the wants of man have increased beyond
the growth of the population.
We pause on the narrow isthmus of time, which separates
the past from the future, to note our appreciation of the bless-
ings that have come down to us from our New England ances-
tors; to hail the teeming millions who will fill our places in
the coming time, and to lay aside for them the admonition
that they cherish the memory and imitate the virtues and
avoid the shortcomings of our forefathers; that they be
ready to receive new truths evolved from nature or revelation,
and that they will seek to advance the human race in all of
the arts which go to civilize mankind in the future, and pur-
Sue a course onward and upward, nearer and nearer to the
millennial paradise from which our first parents fell.

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