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A DD R E S S
ON TELE
TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
* . W O R C E S T E R , M A. S.S.,
CTOBER 14, 1884.
BY
. . . G E O R. G. E. F. H. O. A. R. .
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*
A.
A D D R E S S a)
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
CITY GOVERNMENT AND CITIZENS,
ON THE
TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
OF
W O R C E S T E R ,
OCTOBER 14, 1884,
BY
[.
GEORGE F. HoAR.
W O R C E S T E R , M. A. S. S. :
PR E S S OF CH A R L E S H A MIL T ON,
NO. 3 11 MAIN STREET,
1885.
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A D D R E S S.
I AM, this evening, but a voice. As we strive to
clasp the two hands which seem to stretch out to us,
on either side, through the mist,-the hand of our
ancestry, and the hand of our posterity,+I can only
imperfectly utter what is in the bosoms of all of you.
The hour is consecrated to simple and common
emotions ; and yet to the emotions which most dignify
and ennoble human life. The imperfect instinct of
affection for parent and offspring, which nature has
given to the brute, is confined to the period of infancy.
In man, it becomes parental love and filial reverence.
It is the tie that binds us together in the household.
It extends beyond the grave, and reaches back to
remote ancestors. It goes out with unspeakable yearn-
ing even to the soil where the ashes of those we have
loved repose. It impels us to seek, with those who are
our kindred, a companionship, even in death. “Where
the heart has laid down what it loved most,” says the
greatest of New England orators, “there it is desirous
of laying itself down. No sculptured marble, no
enduring monument, no honorable inscription, no ever-
burning taper that would drive away the darkness of
the tomb, can soften our sense of the reality of death,
and hallow to our feelings the ground which is to cover -
...* *
4
us, like the consciousness that we shall sleep, dust to
dust, with the objects of our affections.” But human
, lowe rises to its highest dignity, and reaches its pro-
foundest depth of tenderness, when its object is that
political being to which we give the endearing, name of
country, or the town which is our birthplace, or the
city which we fondly call our home. There are men in
this audience whose blood would fly to their cheeks at
the charge that some little town where they were born,
had committed an act of dishonor two hundred years
ago, as if the imputation were upon one of their own
kindred to-day. What tones of triumph and joy stir
the heart like those which celebrate our country’s glory?
What note of sorrow comes down through the ages
like theirs who wept when they remembered Zion?
I cannot, with the limits of this address, give in
detail the history of Worcester for two hundred years.
That has been done, in part, by an eminent scholar,
whose family name has been honorably identified with
this community for more than a century. Our learned
and famous society, whose early labors attracted the
attention and interest of Humboldt, which has thrown
so much light upon the antiquities of the continent, has
not altogether neglected those specially belonging to
the locality of its habitation. A younger association of
investigators, the Society of Antiquity, will leave no
field of local interest unexplored. I content myself
with an estimate of some of the moral forces which
have determined the history of this community, and
with considering, briefly, what ground we can find of
5
f
rational cheerfulness and hope, in contemplating the
future.
After the settlement of a few towns on the coast, in
the first half of the 17th century, the rich interval of
the Connecticut attracted the eyes of the planters of
New England. Midway between the sea and the river,
the margin of our beautiful lake afforded a convenient
stopping-place. This lake was well known to the
Indians by the name Quansigemog—“fishing place for
pickerel,”—Quonosuog was the Indian name for “long-
nose,” or pickerel ; and amaug denoted a fishing-place."
In 1667, the General Court appointed a committee to
“take an exact view,” and report “whether the place
be capable to make a village, and what number of
families they conceive may be there accommodated.”
The next year the committee return that they have
viewed the place, that it contains a tract of very good
chestnut land, and that there may be enough meadow
for a small plantation, or town of about thirty families ;
1 I am permitted to annex the following letter from the eminent antiquary and
scholar, J. Hammond Trumbull, Esq., of Hartford, Conn. His authority is the
highest in the country on all matters relating to the language of the North American
Indians, and is decisive of this question:–
HARTFORD, September 2, 1884.
MY DEAR MR. HOAR :
“Quansigamaug Pond” is so named in Mass. Records, iv. (2),
p. 111; and as “Quansicamug,” same vol., p. 293; “Quansicamong,” p. 307; and
* Quansicamom,” p. 341,–whence by easy transition came the modern form, Quinsig-
amond. President Stiles, who had a good ear for Indian names, wrote this, in his
Itinerary, “Quonsigemog.”
Quºnosu or Quonnosé (plural Qunnosuog) was the Indian name for pickerel—
literally, “long nose:” and -amaug final, denotes a “fishing place.’ Quinnösuog-
amaug is “pickerel fishing-place,” or “where they fish for pickerel.”
I have indicated the composition of this name, in my paper on Algonkin place
names in Coll. Conn. Hist. Society, ii., 18,-though without mention of these early
forms of the name.
Very truly yours,
J. H. TRUMBULL.
6
that, if certain grants which the Court has made to the
church of Malden and others be recalled, and annexed
to it, it may supply about sixty families. They there-
fore conceive it expedient that it be reserved for a
town, and land about eight miles square be laid out in
the best form the place will bear.
The General Court adopted these recommendations.
The committee were authorized to order and manage
the new plantation. The Indian title was extinguished,
and honorably paid for. A fort was erected. As early
as 1673, the work of settlement began with some vigor.
But Philip's war broke out in 1675. Brookfield, Men-
don, Lancaster, and Westborough, were our nearest
neighbors, the three former being our sole barrier
against the Indian wilderness. Lancaster and Brook-
field were utterly destroyed, and Mendon abandoned.
The planters here deserted their possessions and dis-
persed among the larger towns. On the 2d of Decem-
ber, 1675, the Indians destroyed the little village of six
or seven houses, all that then existed of Quinsigamond.
The war ended with the death of Philip, August 12th,
1676. The broken remnant of the Indians submitted
to the power of the colony. The proprietors and the
committee soon renewed their scheme for settlement.
A meeting of proprietors was had in Cambridge, in
1678, a survey made in 1683, and an agreement entered
into April 24, 1684, to regulate the settlement, then
fairly in progress.
The General Court, at a session begun October 15th,
1684, granted the request of the committee, Daniel
7
Gookin, Daniel Henchman, and Thomas Prentice, that
their plantation at Quinsigamond be called Worcester."
This has been commonly supposed to have been in
honor of the city of Worcester in England. We might
well account it an honor to be the namesake of that
beautiful town upon the Severn, the “civitas in
bello et in pace fidelis.” Mr. Whitmore, in his essay
on the names of towns, in the Proceedings of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, for February 11th,
1873, says there is a tradition that the name was given
by the committee to commemorate the battle of Worces-
ter, the “crowning mercy” where Cromwell shattered
the forces of Charles 2d, and as a defiance to the
Stuarts. I do not know the source or the antiquity of
this tradition. But it is not without probability.
There is no reason to think that either of the staunch
old Puritans who composed the committee, had the
slightest connection with the city or shire of Worcester.
Prentice is believed by his descendants to have learned
the art of war under Cromwell. Gookin was its most
important member. He may be called the founder of
1 The limited time allowed for the preparation of this address made it necessarily
extremely imperfect. One defect, of which the author is especially sensible, is the
omission of any mention of Ephraim Curtis. He is entitled to be honored as the first
settler of Worcester, notwithstanding the late discovery that a rude house had been
built here prior to his settlement. It is clear that the owner of the house did not
occupy it. What sort of a house it was, whether it was built for the surveyors,
or for the committee who inspected the place to determine its fitness for habita-
tion, or as a shelter for travellers on their way to the Connecticut, does not
appear. But it is unlikely that any permanent settler would have dwelt there with-
out leaving some trace of himself in the cotemporary record. Curtis represented an
element which has not received full justice from New England history, the brave
and adventurous frontiersman. His exploit in saving the besieged garrison of
Brookfield equals anything Cooper has imagined of the Leatherstocking.
His descendants, a highly respected family, bearing his name, still dwell on the
spot where he settled. He was the ancestor, also, of the famous and eloquent orator,
George William Curtis.
8,
Worcester. He was the major-general of the colony.
He is, to me, with the possible exception of John
Winthrop, the most attractive character in our colonial
history. His great qualities have never yet received
their due from historians. He was the companion and
protector of the regicides Goffe and Whalley, on the
one hand, and an earnest advocate for justice to the
Indians on the other. Goffe and Whalley came over
in the same ship with him in 1660. While the found-
ing of Worcester was in progress, they were dwelling
at Hadley, in a hiding place of which he knew the
secret. Whalley was own cousin of both Cromwell
and Hampden. He had beaten Prince Rupert at
Naseby, and led the horse in the army which compelled
him to the surrender of Bristol. The loyalists of the
English Worcester surrendered that city to him in
1643.
Gookin did not live long enough to take up his
abode here. But his footsteps have been upon our
fields. He watched over Worcester in its cradle, until
his death. I hope his statue may some day grace our
city. He was an old Kentish soldier, and had been the
personal and highly trusted friend of the great Protec-
tor, who,
“Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, iſ:
To peace and truth his glorious way had ploughed,
And on the neck of crowned fortune proud
Had reared God’s trophies, and his work pursued,
While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots imbrued,
And Dunbar field, resound his praises loud,
And Woº'cester’s 70.717'eate 707'eath.”
The year of which we are speaking was the year of
the most serious attempt ever made upon the liberties
9
of Massachusetts. The intelligence of the fraudulent
judgment in the English chancery, vacating her char-
ter, reached Boston on the 10th September. This was
the darkest day in the annals of the Commonwealth.
This decree placed under the feet of the Stuarts again
the liberties which our Fathers had dwelt sixty years in
the wilderness to maintain. For a good while, in expec-
tation of this judgment, the hearts of the people had
been deeply stirred. In January before, Increase
Mather, President of the College, had made a speech in
Boston town-meeting, against a proposition not to con-
tend with his majesty in a course of law, for the defence
of the charter. “What the Lord our God hath given
us,” said he, “shall we not possess it? God forbid, that
we should give away the inheritance of our Fathers.
The loyal citizens of London would not surrender their
charter, lest their posterity should curse them for it.
Shall we do such a thing? I hope there is not one
freeman in Boston that can be guilty of it.” The
people fell into tears, and cried “It is better if we must
die, to die by the hands of others; than by our own.”
I think we are well justified in believing that it was the
memory of the great victory for civil and religious
liberty which God had vouchsafed to the Puritan over
Charles Stuart, and not of the loyalty to the throne
which was the great distinction of the English city,
that the three stout soldiers of the committee desired to
perpetuate.
The settlement was destined to be broken up again.
In 1696, a band of hostile Albany or Western Indians
10
penetrated as far as Worcester. When Queen Anne's
war broke out in 1702, the inhabitants again fled.
Digory Sargent, who refused to abandon his dwelling,
was slain with his wife, and his five children carried
captive to Canada. The town was re-occupied in 1713,
which is the date of its permanent settlement. It was
incorporated as a town, June 14th, 1722. The first
town meeting was held, September 28th, 1722. It held
its place among the towns of the Commonwealth, until
the incorporation of the city, February 29th, 1848.
Such, fellow-citizens, the birth, and such the baptism,
of the heroic child. Let us see of what lineage he
came, what blood was in his veins, who stood about
his cradle, in what gymnasium he was trained, what
great beliefs he inherited, what creed he was taught,
what alliances, what friendships he has made;—that he
has been able to take his place among giants; to be a
leader, and a companion of leaders, in great victories in
war, and greater victories in peace; that his fields and
gardens, to-day, are teeming with fruit, and corn, and
flowers; that the labor of the whole world, two hundred
years ago, could not create, its fancy could scarce con-
ceive, this single day’s product of his factories and
workshops. “The Lord found him in a desert land,
and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about,
he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye ;
he made him ride on the high places of the earth, that
he might eat the increase of the fields.”
The first settlers were of pure English blood. They
had inherited the Norseman's hunger for adventure,
11
which found satisfaction in forest and in sea, and the
Saxon love of local self-government, which resulted in
the institution of the town.
Except Holland and Switzerland, which together
contained, at that time, I suppose, a population scarcely
greater than that of Massachusetts to-day, there was
no spot on earth, except England, whose government
was free, or recognized any popular rights.
In England, the long battle seemed going against
liberty. The great company that had surrounded Crom-
well were dead, or in hiding, or in exile. Puritanism
seemed to have spent itself as a force in England, and
had crossed the sea. But the love of liberty, not a
mere freedom from restraint, but a liberty secured and
guarded by permanent institutions, was the master
passion of the English race. The first half of the
seventeenth century, which was the period of New
England colonization, was the time when the thoughts
of the whole English people had been turned to a
discussion of the principles of government. The intel-
lectual activity, which in the time of Elizabeth, which
preceded, and that of Anne which followed, produced a
literature never equalled but in Athens, found occupa-
tion in dealing with the great questions which lie at the
foundation of states. The men who came here, there-
fore, were ready for the framing of constitutions and
statutes. The simple and perfect mechanism of town
and parish was as natural to them as the building its
nest to a bird.
But the liberty which our Fathers brought with them
12
from England differed in one essential particular from
that which they left behind. In England, that love had
been, in the main, a purely selfish passion. The Eng-
lishman had demanded freedom as a privilege for
himself, or his class. The contest for political or civil
rights had been always a strife of classes. At one
time, it was the crown against the nobles. At another,
it was the nobles against the crown. At another, it
was Becket, the churchman of humble origin and
popular sympathies, against king and noble. It is, I
believe, true that no class in England ever got its right
from the sense of justice of any other. Her freedom,
as it broadened slowly down, has ever been wrung by
violence or threats from the fears of her rulers. With
all her great qualities, she has had a limited and insular
moral law. She has ever been a tyrant and a ruffian in
her dealings with weaker nations. This trait has not
wholly failed to manifest itself in her descendants here.
We have not seemed to be quite able to get the Eng-
lishman out of our blood. Our moral sense sometimes
fails when we come to deal with other races or humbler
classes than our own. But the religion of the Puritan
was one which he believed was a rule for his conduct
in the things which pertained to this life, as well as
that beyond. He brought to the government of the
state the austere sense of religious and moral obliga-
tion. However he may have sometimes failed in the
application of the principle, justice was to him not only
a right of his own, but a duty to others. The condi-
tions of his existence, the necessity of the constant
13
labor of every man in clearing the wilderness, made
class distinctions impossible. The contest between
these two spirits, which we are wont to term the
Cavalier and the Puritan, has played a great part in
our national and local history. It is by no means yet
over. But the Puritan spirit and faith, which founded
Worcester two hundred years ago, have, in the main
controlled the currents of her history.
But let us, in all this, be just to England. We have
this treasure in earthen vessels. Whatever cause of
complaint we have of her, let us not forget, that the
only plant of liberty, that, in modern times, has lived,
and grown, and taken root, has come from her. Cruel
nurse though she was, our Fathers drew from her
bosom the courage with which they resisted her.
Strong mother of a Lion-line,
Be proud of those strong sons of thine,
Who wrenched their rights from thee.
What wonder, if, in noble heat,
Those men thine arms withstood,
Retaught the lesson thou hadst taught,
And in thy spirit with thee fought,
Who sprang from English blood.
Whatever harmonies of law
The growing world assume,
Thy work is thine—The single note,
From that deep chord which Hampden smote,
Will vibrate to the doom.
As I just said, the condition of existence in the
wilderness and the need of constant and strenuous
personal exertion made class distinctions impossible.
The Puritan’s faith, which was based on reverence
for the individual soul, taught a doctrine of equality,
which his situation rendered it easy to accept in prac-
14
tice. This condition also begat another sentiment, or
rather, another principle, which has been preserved in
undiminished vigor to our own day, and which has done
much to give direction to our history. That is the
principle which honors labor. This community has
never respected an idler, whether he were rich or poor.
The capacity to labor was the chief and most valued
possession of our ancestors : and the disposition to labor
took a high rank among the virtues.
From the reverence for the individual soul, and the
doctrine of equality which was its offspring, came,
naturally, the institutions of education, and the laws
regulating the descent and disposition of property.
The doctrine was early announced that the whole prop-
erty of the state is bound to educate ałl the children of
the state; and it is as firmly settled as any constitu-
tional principle whatever. &
Human nature has its course here as elsewhere.
With the increase of wealth and the holding of neces-
sary public office there grew up, before the Revolution,
a sort of gentry, for whom the manners and opinions
of their class in England had some attraction. Copley's
pictures and family tradition shew some tendency to
luxury in dress and manners. But the plain fashions
and simple manners of a frontier agricultural people
prevailed in Worcester as elsewhere. The upper class
was easily entered and easily left.
Next in importance to the provision for universal
education was the policy of the law which constantly
favored the division and subdivision of estates. The
15
slight preference given to the eldest son, the only
remnant of that doctrine of primogeniture which lies at
the foundation of the institutions of England, was soon
abolished. Estates were divided equally among sons
and daughters. All property was made liable for debt.
A simple form of conveyance was devised. Long
trusts and entails were almost unknown ; and as soon
as they began to be known legal methods were devised
to avoid them. &
It was also the good fortune of this community that it
belonged to a commonwealth composed of a people like
itself. It was not, as Ireland to England, tied to an alien
government and an alien race ; so that its own great
qualities had full opportunity for free and fair growth.
Such were the birth and origin of our city. Such
were the influences that surrounded its cradle. Such
was the faith instilled into its childhood. We find
Worcester purchased of the Indians, permanently
settled, its name a monument to a great victory for
civil and religious freedom, peopled by men who féared
God, who loved liberty, who honored labor, who
inherited a passion for adventure, on the one hand,
and the sober, restrained habit of self-government, on
the other, to whom education and justice were the
prime necessities of life, and in whose eyes every
human soul was the equal of every other, before God
and man. Let us next see its growth ;-in what
School, in what gymnasium, it was trained and exer-
cised, till it reached the full measure of a robust and
vigorous manhood. e
16
Of course, the religious and moral influences of which
I have spoken, which surrounded Worcester, at its
foundation, continued in operation. I find, in addition,
four principal influences which determined the character
of this people for the next one hundred and fifty years.
These were :—Its occupation ; The education and
discipline of political duties ; — The century-long
struggle with England ; — Its military history.
For more than a century, the occupation of this
community was chiefly clearing and tilling the soil. I
could state nothing not familiar to my audience, if I
should attempt to describe the farming of the first
century after the settlement, with its rude and clumsy
implements, or contrast it with the cultivation of our
fields to-day with the aid of modern science, machinery,
and docile and improved breeds of cattle and horses; or
with those wonderful western farms, which have made of
the American farmer a merchant, whose competitor is
on the Ganges and the Bosphorus. But no human
occupation more tends to bring out the sterling mental
and moral qualities than that of the farmer in a new
country. There were but 734 persons, of our population
of 58,291, engaged in agriculture in Worcester in 1880.
I shall not, therefore, be suspected of a desire to flatter,
when I affirm, as the result of a large experience, the
superiority of the agricultural class over any other,
taken as a whole, in capacity for the duties of citizen-
ship, whether as voters, jurors, or legislators. In our
climate, the life of the early farmer required the constant
exercise of patience, observation of natural laws, endur-
17
ance, industry. Ownership of the soil brings with it
the habit of command, and of self-respect. The New
England farmer has ever combined a character cautious,
slow, conservative in the ordinary concerns of life, with
an unmatched rapidity of decision and promptness of
action in great emergencies.
The responsibilities of citizenship also, elevated and
ennobled the men on whose shoulders they rested. The
townsmen had to deal with, understand, debate, and
decide the highest questions of State. At least four
times since the first settlement—in the Pequot War,
King Charles’ attempt on the charter, the Revolution,
the Rebellion—has the very life of the State been
depending. The Constitution of the United States was
to be adopted or rejected. Four times within a single
century, the whole principle and framework of the
State Constitution were under discussion. When the
Government got under way, our relations with England,
with France, and later with Mexico, the annexation of
Louisiana and Texas, the wars of 1812 and 1845, the
extension of our dominion over California, the abolition
of slavery, reconstruction, the establishment and pro-
tection of American manufacture, the subtleties of
finance and currency, upon all these, beside the man-
agement of the affairs of the Commonwealth and the
town, the individual freeman must record his vote. To
understand and help settle these questions was itself a
liberal education.
But to contend with forest, with sterile soil, and
inhospitable climate was not enough. A race of boors
2
18
might have done that, and remained a race of boors
still. In common with the people of the rest of the little
Commonwealth the century-long struggle with England
had its great influence on the character of the dwellers
in Worcester. Many of them must have well known in
youth the first settlers of Plymouth and Massachusetts
who came over between 1620 and 1640. As we are
reminded by a great New England scholar, there were
not ten years together, from the landing at Plymouth
to the surrender at Yorktown, “when some great and
sacred right of our Fathers was not assailed or menaced
by the government of England, in one form or another.”
The danger from that mighty power, to the liberty he
or his fathers had come into the wilderness to secure,
was scarcely ever out of the mind of the New England
freeman, as he sat in his dwelling, or ploughed his field,
or took council with his fellows. He was perpetually
meditating on the means of securing it, ready to defend
it in argument, or, if need be, to die for it. Constant
meditation of such a theme gave him dignity and
loftiness of character and bearing, and brought him to
see with absolute clearness the true boundary which
separates liberty and authority in a State. Hence came
to our ancestors that most valuable of great qualities
which make the temper of a great race—constancy. It
is a quality worth to a people more than literature, or
art, or wealth, or peace. They learned to keep before
them a great and noble public object through years,
through generations, through centuries. They never
were turned aside from it by what was personal, or
19
petty, or temporary. May God grant that no effemi-
macy of riches, that no sickly or selfish culture may
destroy it in the hearts of their descendants.
This sketch would be incomplete, without speaking
of one other educating force.
The civic achievements of this people have been
such that we have not been accustomed to speak of them
as a warlike people. Yet the history of Massachusetts
has been, in large degree, a military history. In every
generation, but one, she has gone through a war which
has tried to the utmost her courage, endurance, and
resources. Yet the passion for military glory has
never been characteristic of our people. American
history has ever most delighted to dwell on the civic
virtues of our military heroes. There can be no
greater test, or greater educator, of heroic quality in
a people than the burden of a righteous war, appeal-
ing to moral and patriotic sentiments, carried through
with unflinching constancy to final triumph.
Lord Chatham told the House of Lords in 1777,-
“America has carried you through four wars, and will
now carry you to your death. I venture to tell your
Lordships that the American gentry will make officers
fit to command the troops of all the European powers.”
“It is not in Indian wars,” said Fisher Ames, “that
heroes are celebrated ; but it is there they are formed.”
There were scarcely ten years together, from the first
settlement, till the conquest of Canada in the war which
ended in 1763, when a Worcester farmer was safe
in his dwelling, by reason of the danger from French
20
or Indian. His life was spent under arms. Wor-
cester had her full quota in the four New England
regiments which captured Louisburgh from the vet-
erans of France. From a population of 1400, she sent
more than five hundred men into the campaigns of the
ten years which ended in 1756. She had her full share
of danger and glory in the desperate strife of eighty
years, until, at Quebec, the lilies went down before
the lion, never again, but for a brief period in Louisi-
ana, to float as an emblem of dominion, Over any part
of the continent of North America. Whatever share
others may have taken, the glory of that contest is the
glory of Massachusetts; that victory is a Massachu-
setts victory.
The strife with France over, the struggle for con-
stitutional liberty with England blazed up with in-
creased heat. The peace of 1763 was succeeded by
twelve years of hollow and treacherous truce. The
people of Worcester knew well on what ground they
stood. The great debate was conducted at every fire-
side. Says an illustrious American historian, native
of Worcester, to whom she sends salutation on her
birthday, “one spirit moved through them all. They
debated the great question of resistance, as though God
were hearkening; and they took counsel reverently
with their ministers, and the aged, and the pious, and
the brave, in their villages. The shire of Worcester in
August (1774) set the example of a county congress,
which disclaimed the jurisdiction of the British house
of commons, asserted the exclusive right of the col-
21
onies to originate laws respecting themselves, rested
their duty of allegiance on the charter of the province,
and declared the violation of that charter a dissolution
of their union with Britain.” Gage sent his spies here.
It was rumored in August, 1774, that he meditated
sending part of his army to execute the regulating act,
which forbade town meetings except by the written leave
of the governor. The people of Worcester purchased
and manufactured arms, cast musket-balls, provided
powder, and threatened openly to fall upon any body .
Of soldiers who should attack them.
When the war of the Revolution came it found
Worcester ready. Timothy Bigelow, whom our late
eloquent and beloved fellow-citizen, Judge Thomas—
would he were living, and in this place to-night—de-
scribes as “the village blacksmith, sagacious states-
man, prudent and gallant commander, devoted patriot,
chevalier of nature, whose chivalry was illustrated in
breaking and not in forging the chains of human
bondage” led the best disciplined regiment in the
revolutionary army, a regiment of Worcester men,
bearing a name covered with glory in two wars—
the 15th Massachusetts.
The war of 1812 unfortunately divided the opinion of
the people of Massachusetts as they were inclined to sym-
pathize with England or France in the great struggle
which rent Europe in sunder. The Federalist looked
upon England as the sole defense of mankind against
the ambition of Napoleon. He regarded the power of
France with a dread, which we cannot realize, even
22
when we read the wonderful eloquence of Fisher Ames.
But the final judgment of history must be, that the
war of 1812 was a righteous and a glorious war. We
were compelled to it by the impudent British preten-
sion to search American vessels on the high seas, and
take from them every man whom a midshipman should
suspect, or pretend to suspect, of being a British
subject. We began the war after England had crushed
the navy of every other power that had contended
with her by sea — Holland, Spain, Denmark, France.
“We encountered England ship to ship, with a chiv-
alry, with a perfection of discipline, with a constant
superiority in gunnery, and with a success utterly with-
out example by any other nation in the world.” This
is fully admitted by Maj. Gen. Sir Howard Douglass,
in his “Treatise on Naval Gunnery,” a book of high
authority, published with the approbation of the Lords
Commissioners of the admiralty in England. It is true,
we made peace without a formal relinquishment by
Great Britain of the obnoxious pretension. But it is
also true that it never was heard of again. “The nation
issued from the war’” said John Quincy Adams, “with
all its rights and liberties unimpaired, preserved as
well from the artifices of diplomacy as from the force
of preponderating power upon their element, the seas.”
The Duke of Wellington, when urged by the cabinet,
after the downfall of Napoleon, to take command in
America, replies in a letter to Lord Liverpool of Nov.
9, 1814, which I have not seen cited by American his-
torians, in which he substantially admits the same thing.
23
He says “I do not promise to myself much success
there. If we cannot obtain a naval superiority on the
lakes, I shall go only to sign a peace which might as
well be signed now. You have no right, from the state
of the war, to demand any concession of territory from
Ameriga.” In her contributions, sacrifices, and achieve-
ments, in this war, Massachusetts may well challenge
comparison with any other American state. One of her
töwns, when the war ended, had five hundred men in
Dartmoor prison. An accomplished investigator, Col.
Higginson, has well remarked “As a matter of fact, the
Federalists did their duty in action ; the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts furnished during those three years
more soldiers than any other ; and the New England
states, which opposed the war, sent more men into the
field than the Southern states, which brought on the
contest. Unfortunately the world remembers words
better than actions—litera scripta manet,_and the few
questionable phrases of the Hartford Convention are
now better remembered than the 14,000 men which
Massachusetts raised in 1814, or the two millions of
dollars she paid for bounties.”
But in speaking of the forces which have educated
this people, what shall we say of them, but for whom
this day would have been a day of sorrow and humil-
iation? The population of Worcester in 1860 was a
little less than 25,000. She gave to the war for the
Union the service of more than 3000 men, one in
every eight of her population. “They shared,” says
the brilliant orator whose voice you miss this evening,
24
“in the shifting lot of the army of the Potomac, from
its clouded morning to its brilliant close ; in the march-
ings and fightings of the Shenandoah, till every open
field and copse became familiar ground : in the early
welcome victories of Carolina : in patient trials along
the gulf ; in the hours of turning fortune at New
Orleans, Port Hudson, and Vicksburg ; in the tangled
marches and counter-marches of Tennessee ; in every
part of the country, in every great campaign, not
excepting the Napoleonic excursion of Sherman to the
sea.” There is not a record of dishonor in their story.
For courage, for endurance, for discipline, for intelli-
gence, the soldiers of Worcester, by the official testi-
mony of their great commanders, and concurrent witness
of all authorities, were unsurpassed. We would arro-
gate to our soldiers no superiority over those of other
American communities. Other states, other cities, have
their heroes ; but these are ours. If I give but this
brief allusion to those, whose deeds constitute the
proudest chapter in our history, it is because I know
that the theme has been so fully treated elsewhere,
and because I fondly hope that in coming ages, it
will be the topic of many a centennial. For the great
battle-fields, where Union and Liberty were secured by
the courage of her sons, the whole two hundred years
of Worcester had been but one long drill. Plato
declared that the soldiers of Marathon, and the sailors
of Salamis became the school-masters of Hellas.
Citizen soldiers | Of the whole culture of the past,
consummate flower and crown You shall also be our
t
25
chiefest educators and example for the future. You
have not only saved your country, but you have
determined the character, for ages, of the country you
have saved. To be an American, henceforth, is to be
such as you have been.
Sixty years ago, Worcester was still an agricultural
town. As the county seat, she had become a centre
of trade. Yet in 1820, of a population of 2,900, there
were but 126 persons returned as employed in manufac-
ture. Lincoln, in his history of the town down to 1836,
devotes more space to the matter of mines and mineral
resources, than to manufacture. To-day, upon the
spot which, its planters thought, might supply thirty,
or peradventure, sixty families, seventy thousand people
dwell in freedom and in honor. The sun, as it rises
on their second centennial, sees them owners of a
wealth of more than fifty millions; (a hundred years
ago, the entire valuation of Massachusetts, including
Maine, was eleven millions), paying at least eight
millions each year in wages ; converting a material of
twenty millions into a product of thirty-five millions,
thus creating yearly, a value of fifteen millions; their
workmen very largely owning their homes; their city
the centre of a populous county, the spot on the earth’s
surface where labor receives the largest share of its
product; a city without palaces, and without hovels ;
without an aristocracy, and without a serf; adorned by
famous schools, the creation of private enterprise or
munificence; providing ample means of education at
the public charge for all its children ; its fifty churches
26
dwelling side by side in charity; its name known and
honored, and its influence felt to the farthest borders of
the continent; its simple self-government a model of
honest, frugal, humane, efficient administration.
It remains for me briefly to allude to the influences
which have transformed the pleasant rural town of fifty
years ago into the great and wealthy city. There are
two which in our history have had a close connection
with each other;-the development of our manufacture
by the great inventive genius and manufacturing skill
of our people; and the accession to our population of
our Irish brethren.
Worcester was the county seat. That fact made her
a centre of trade, and caused professional men and
county officers to make their residence here. A popu-
lation full of energy, public spirit and wealth gathered
here. The excellence of the land, equalled by few
towns in the county, contributed to the same result.
These beautiful rolling hills, green and fertile to the
top, were especially attractive for habitation. Our
noble forests abounded in oak, chestnut and pine. The
maple gave to the landscape its autumn splendors.
The elm which, in England, they call “the weed of
Worcester,” lends us, also, its stately ornament.
Worcester was on a principal high road from Boston
to the West. It was natural, therefore, that when the
capitalists of Providence carried out their scheme of
inland navigation in 1828, Worcester should be the
terminus of the Blackstone Canal; and when Boston,
inspired by the wisdom and energy of Nathan Hale,_a
27
name Worcester has double reason to honor, begun, in
1835, the great railroad system which connects her with
the West, Worcester should have been the first point at
which she aimed. The town, though scantily supplied
with water power, got a fair start of its competitors.
Its manufacturing industries were planted, and ready to
grow, under the fostering care of the tariff of 1842.
Other railroads, leading north, south and west, were
soon added and preserved her advantage.
How often, in New England history, is the lesson
repeated, that, from seeming disadvantages, an ener-
getic people reap their greatest benefit. It was our
great good fortune that we had no considerable water
power. If we had had it, there would inevitably have
grown up here great manufactures of textile fabrics,
carried on in great establishments by giant corpora-
tions. Worcester would have been owned largely by
absentees. Instead of a community of skilled and
intelligent mechanics, managing and directing their
own concerns, rendered by the variety of their occupa-
tion, to a great degree, independent of the changes of
business, we should have had a population working for
lower and fluctuating wages, its prosperity rising and
falling with the chances of the times.
The mechanic arts, as Blackstone says of the
sciences, are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in
the neighborhood of each other. Every new workshop
was an attraction to others. The momentum given to
our industries in the beginning by our railroad advan-
tages has never ceased its operation.
28
This neighborhood is the native region of inventive
genius. A delightful story is told by Whitney of a
Worcester County captive in Queen Anne's war, in
1705, who was taken by the Indians to Montreal, and
who saved himself and two companions from torture
and death, and earned their deliverance from captivity,
by building a sawmill on the River Chamblee, there
being no sawmill in all Canada, and no artisan able to
build one;—a story which finds its only parallel in
that of the Athenian captives in the expedition to
Syracuse, who earned their deliverance by reciting
the verses of Euripides.
Within the towns whose ancient borders touched our
own were born the inventors of the cotton gin, of the
carpet loom, of the machine for turning irregular
forms, and of the sewing machine. The first of these
doubled the value of every acre of cotton-producing
land in America. The last has been, doubtless, an
equal benefit to mankind.
Within our own borders were invented or perfected
the wonderful mechanism for the making of wire, the
wrench, the loom, the envelope machine, many imple-
ments of agriculture, including the modern plough,
and many other useful machines of the highest value to
mankind. The detail of these wonderful achievements
will be given to the public by your historical committee.
It would be easy to show that many great states, many
populous nations, have, in centuries of life, produced
far less for the welfare and happiness of mankind than
29
this people in one half-century. What cycle of Cathay
is equal to the fifty years of Worcester?
Our Fathers thought it not unfitting to insert in the
Constitution itself, the injunction upon their descend-
ants, “ especially to cherish the University at Cam-
bridge.” It is not unbecoming this occasion, to urge
upon the people of this city, now and in all coming
time, to foster their Technical School, devoted to that
modern education, which makes science the handmaid
of mechanic art. By this supremacy Worcester must
henceforth live, or bear no life.
I must not pass by another important factor in our
history, whose influence has been already very great,
and must be largely taken into account, in our anticipa-
tion of the future. I mean the immigration, within the
last half-century, of our brethren of foreign birth,
especially of the Irish race. Mr. Webster, at Plymouth,
in 1820, said, with a just pride, that in the villages and
farmhouses of New England, there was still undisturbed
sleep, within unbarred doors. New England, and
America, so far as it has obeyed her teaching, has ever
kept her doors unbarred. The great immigration,
which began about 1830, has enriched Worcester with
its abundant tide. Of our whole population in 1880,
of 58,291 there were of foreign birth 15,624. Of this
number the principal ingredients were contributed as
follows:
Ireland, 9,329 Sweden, 848
British America, 3,220 German Empire, 370
England, 1,207
30
The number of persons having one parent or both of
foreign birth was 32,894.
Allowing for the very large number of the grand-
children of emigrants it seems reasonably certain, that,
of our present population of 70,000, quite thirty thou-
sand are of Irish descent. To many good men this has
been a source of alarm. But to me, much meditating on
this theme, considering it in those large and permanent
relations which belong to an occasion like this, it seems
cause for unmixed gratitude to God, both for what it
has done for us in the past, and for what we may
hope from it in the future. Say nothing now of the
benefit we have been able to confer on them. Leave
out of view the blessing of Justice, Freedom, Employ-
ment, Self-government, Education, to those who have
withdrawn their necks from under the heel of Eng-
land, a boom which a humane and generous people
would strain and peril their own institutions to the
utmost to confer. Think of what this race has done
for us.
Without the foreign immigration to this country the
building of our railroads would have been impracticable,
or must have been delayed for a generation. That, in
its turn, would have postponed the settlement of the
West, would have made the suppression of the rebellion
impossible, and would have prevented the creation of
that western market, and access to that western
agriculture, which, in their turn, have created, supported
and fed the manufacturing communities of the East.
Worcester owes its growth, its wealth, its manufac-
31
turing supremacy, to that railroad system, which these
men crossed the Atlantic to build for us.
The English and the Irish race meet in America as
mutual benefactors. They meet, also, as equals. The
problem of their perfect union is to be wrought out
here, on a new field, where equal justice prevails, where
there is no lord, and no serf.
We dwell, with an honest pride, on the great qualities
of our own ancestors. We hope to transmit them to
our children. In that mighty national life, drawn from
so many sources; of many, one ; of many states, one
nation ; of many races, one people ; of many creeds,
one faith ; the elements the Puritan has contributed,—s-
his courage; his constancy; his belief in God; his
reverence for law ; his love of liberty; his serene and
lofty hope—will be elements of perpetual power.
But see what the Irishman brings, also, as a dowry
to this marriage which the centuries are to weld.
The Irish race is conspicuous among great races for
great traits. No people that possessed them ever
failed to achieve a high rank among nations, on a fair
field. These are: — the capacity to produce great
men under the most adverse conditions; the capacity
for rapid elevation, when conditions are favorable ;
courage; soldierly qualities; the gift of eloquence ;
the power of severe and patient labor ; the passion for
owning land ; strong domestic affection ; chastity ;
deep religious feeling.
The most English of English historians has drawn a
picture of England's rule over Ireland, whose dark and
32
terrible shadows no other hand can deepen.—Six
hundred and fifty years of the most terrible form of
tyranny, that of a race by a race; government by
bayonet, artillery and intrenched camp ; the greatest
English champions of civil and spiritual liberty denying
even toleration to Ireland; whatever is associated with
deliverance and dignity to the Englishman associated
with bondage and ruin to the Irishman ; of the two
greatest English sovereigns,— Cromwell and William,
—the Irish policy of one, extirpation, of the other,
degradation ; the most odious laws aggravated by more
odious administration; priests, revered by millions as
the only authorized expositors of Christian truth, and
the only authorized dispensers of the Christian sacra-
ments, treated as no decent man would treat the vilest
beggar ; — These are Lord Macaulay’s touches. His
authority needs no confirmation.' If it did, it would be
easy to multiply English witnesses, and to show that
this state of things continued, without substantial
improvement, down to the time when the great emigra-
*That there may be no suspicion of exaggeration, the following extract is annexed
from Lord Macaulay’s speech on the state of Ireland, delivered in the House of
Commons, February 19th, 1844. See also the treatise on Land Tenure in Ireland,
in Systems of Land Tenure in various countries, published by the Cobden Club, and
reprinted at the request of Mr. Gladstone.
“Misgovernment,” says Lord Macaulay, “lasting from the reign of Henry the 2d to
the reign of William the 4th '' (that is, for six hundred and fifty years), “ has left an
immense mass of discontent. You govern that island, not by means of the respect
which the people feel for the laws, but by means of bayonets, artillery, and intrenched
camp. The primary cause is, no doubt, the manner in which Ireland became subject
to the English crown. The annexation was effected by conquest, and by conquest of
a peculiar kind. It was a conquest of a race by a race. Of all forms of tyranny, I
believe that the worst is that of a nation over a nation. No enmity that ever existed
between populations separated by seas and mountain ridges approaches in bitterness
the mutual enmity felt by populations locally intermingled, but never morally and
politically amalgamated; and such were the Englishry and the Irishry. The spirit
of liberty in England was closely allied with the spirit of Puritanism, and was
mortally hostile to the Papacy. Such men as Hampden, Vane, Milton, Locke, though,
zealous generally for civil and spiritual freedom, yet held that the Roman Catholic
worship had no claim to toleration. The watchwords, the badges, the names, the
places, the days, which in the mind of an Englishman were associated with deliverance,
33
tion from Ireland was at its height. Yet what eight
million of men on earth produced more great men than
Ireland during the last half of the last century P Swift,
and Goldsmith, and Burke, and Sheridan, each the
foremost name in a great department in English litera-
ture; Wellington, the first soldier of his time, were
Irishmen. It may be said, that they belonged to the
dominant race. But take the men whom Ireland claims
as her own, all on the stage within a period of fifty
years, Emmet,
The noblest Star Of Fame,
That e'er in life's young glory sat
Grattan, whose genius gave Ireland her brief taste of
national life,
That one lucid interval, snatched from the gloom,
And the madness of ages, when, filled with his soul,
A nation o’erleaped the dark bounds of her doom,
And for one sacred instant, touched Liberty’s goal;
prosperity, national dignity, were, in the mind of an Irishman, associated with bond-
age, ruin, and degradation. Twice, during the seventeenth century, the Irish rose up
against the English colony. Twice they were completely put down. The first
rebellion was crushed by Oliver Cromwell; the second by William the Third. The
policy of Cromwell was wise, and strong, and straightforward, and cruel. It was
comprised in one word. That word was eactirpation. The policy of William was
less able, less emergetic, and, though more humane in seeming, perhaps not more
humane in reality. Extirpation was not attempted. The Irish Roman Catholics
were permitted to live, to be fruitful, to replenish the earth; but they were doomed
to be what the Helots were in Sparta, what the Greeks were under the Ottoman.
Every man of the subject caste was strictly excluded from public trust. Take what
path he might in life, he was crossed at every step by some vexatious restriction. It
was only by being obscure and inactive, that he could, on his native soil, be safe. If
he aspired to be powerful and honored, he must begin by being an exile. At home
he was a mere Gibeonite, a hewer of wood and drawer of water. The statute book
of Ireland was filled with enactments which furnish to the Roman Catholics but too
good a ground for recriminating on us, when we talk of the barbarities of Bonner
and Gardner; and the harshness of those odious laws was aggravated by a more
odious administration. For, bad as the legislators were, the magistrates were worse
still. Courts of law and juries existed only for the benefit of the dominant sect.
Those priests who were revered by millions as their natural advisers and guardians,
as the only authorized expositors of Christian truth, as the only authorized dispensers
of the Christian sacraments, were treated by the squires and squireens of the ruling
faction as no good-natured man would treat the vilest beggar. In this manner a
century passed away.”
3
34
Plunkett, greatest of the great orators of the House
of Commons at its greatest period,
TO V'hom with One consent,
All yield the crown in the high argument;
Father Mathew, whose inspired word exorcised the
demon of intemperance from the bosoms of hundreds
of thousands of his countrymen ; O'Connell, before
whom England trembled; Curran, Sheil, Flood, are
but a few of the great names which have adorned the
annals of this down-trodden people.
It is true, they brought with them faults, the result
of their long bondage, and some very grave faults,
peculiar to their race. But is it not also true, that our
experience of thirty years has shown their capacity for
rapid advancement P Self government and freedom
are great educators ; as the history of our western
communities, as well as our own, abundantly proves.
We need not go outside of our own local history for
proof of the courage and soldierly quality of the Irish
race. We need not recount the history of a hundred
foreign battle-fields, where their valor has given victory
to a flag, which to them, was only the emblem of
oppression. We need not revert to our Revolutionary
annals to remember Montgomery ; or trace the lineage
of Andrew Jackson ; or name the name of Sheridan,—
the illustrious soldier at the head of our army to-day.
When the news came of the dishonor to our flag at
Sumter, the prompt enlistment of the Emmet Guards,
the first organization of foreign blood, one of the very
first of any blood, that marched to the war, has been
35
well said to be “a representative fact of the very
highest importance to the permanent character of our
Government.” Who can read, without tears of joy,
and pride, and thanksgiving to Almighty God, that he
has given such men to be his countrymen, the story of
the death of O’Neil, that natural gentleman, who said
when he was dying, “Write to my dear mother, and
tell her I die for my country. I wish I had two lives
to give. Let the Union flag be wrapped about me, and
a fold of it laid under my head,”—of the devoted and
tender McConville, who died at Cold Harbor, with the
name of his mother on his lips, of him who gave both
arms to save the flag of the country he loved, and
whose stout and constant heart has never yet regretted
the sacrifice." *
I will not dwell upon the strength of the domestic
affection of that people whose generosity to the kindred
they left behind them is without parallel,-or upon the
much needed lesson they give to us of reverence for
the sacredness of the marriage tie. I have said enough,
already, of the fruits of their severe and patient
industry. tºº
The French, our brethren and allies, who lend so
much of grace and romance to our early history, and
who contributed so much to our independence ; the
1 Sergeant Thomas Plunkett was present at the delivery of this address. He was
born in Ireland in 1840, and came to this country in 1845. He was Corporal Co. A, ,
21st Massachusetts Volunteers. At the battle of Fredericksburg the regiment was
ordered to charge and passed under a terrific fire from the rebel batteries. The Color-
Sergeant was shot. Sergeant Plunkett raised the colors, bore them to the front,
raised the staff in the air, when both his arms were struck and torn away by a shell.
He bore his calamity for more than twenty years with invincible patience and cheer-
fulness, and died March 10, 1885.
36
Germans, an element more numerous and not less
valuable than any other, taking the country through ;
the Scandinavian, the Spanish, are to contribute their
elements to the mass, which the centuries are to knead.
Certain types will be, for a time, locally predominant.
But it is well said by a thoughtful writer who has
carefully examined the disclosures of the census, that
“Ethnologically, the change will be slight. Supposing
the entire mass to be fused, the Celtic and Teutonic
blood, the Latin and the Norman, would be mingled
in much the same proportions as they were in the veins
of the original English settlers. The American of the
future, supposing present forces to continue, and all
white elements to fuse equally, would be almost as
much an Anglo-Saxon as the American of 1820.”
I have spoken, imperfectly, of our military history.
I have not dwelt at length on the familiar and tempting
topic of the relation between the mechanic arts and the
love of liberty. But I should fail in my duty, if I did
not speak of the chief civic glory of Worcester, her
leadership in the great political movement which
resulted in the freedom of the slave. Worcester had
very early indicated her opinion in this matter. Her
brave soldier of the Revolution, Timothy Bigelow, said,
“while fighting for liberty, he never would be guilty of
selling slaves.” Levi Lincoln, the trusted friend of
Jefferson, the great leader and organizer in New
England in the overthrow of the Federal party and the
establishment of its successor in power, argued, in
1781, in the Worcester Court House, the great case in
* 37
which it was held that slavery could not exist under the
Constitution of Massachusetts. The case was first
tried in the Inferior Court, whose judges were three
Worcester County farmers. The Court and Jury, fully
representing the sentiment of the people, sustained the
argument of Lincoln that “the black child is born as
much a free child as if it were white ;” that “it is a
law of nature that all men are equal and free ;” that
“the law of nature is the law of God, whose gospel is
the perfect law of liberty.” The Superior Court sus-
tained the decision, on appeal. This decision, in the
higher court, was based on a clause in the Bill of
Rights of Massachusetts, in all probability inserted for
that very purpose. Worcester shared the intense
indignation of all Massachusetts at the passage of the
Missouri compromise in 1820. When after the close
of the Mexican war in 1847, the great struggle between
Freedom and Slavery for the possession of the territory
west of the Mississippi began, it found the workshops
of Worcester filled with skilful, intelligent, thoughtful,
liberty-loving mechanics. They were very largely the
sons of the farmers of the county, who had adopted the
Occupation demanded by the new wants of the time.
They had drunk in, with their native air, a love of
constitutional liberty. They held themselves disgraced,
they deemed labor, their own crown and pride, dis-
honored, by the existence of slavery anywhere on
American soil. No orator visited Worcester to plead
that cause, who did not find his audience in advance
of his teaching.
#3
38
I claim for the people of Worcester city and county
a service and leadership in the political revolution
which achieved the freedom of the slave, to which the
contribution of no individual is to be compared.
Charles Allen did a heroic act, when, at Philadelphia,
he predicted the dissolution of his party, then in the
very delirium of anticipated triumph, and came home
to summon the people of his young city to his side.
He was one of the very greatest of men. But he could
scarcely have looked his neighbors in the face, had he
done otherwise. Elsewhere, it was, at best, a party,
that was on the side of freedom. Here, it was a
people. I see that other localities are now making
claim to be the birthplace of the Anti-slavery cause,
which would hardly have acknowledged the paternity
at the time. So,
“Seven mighty cities claimed great Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.”
We will not discuss their title. But as surely as
Faneuil Hall was the cradle of American Independence,
so surely was Worcester the cradle of the later revolu-
tion.
Honor to whom honor is due. Writers of history
have been too apt to ascribe the great results which
have been accomplished in this country, to the influence
of prominent persons, and to overlook the strength,
wisdom and power of a popular sense which those
prominent persons have but obeyed. The orators have
been faithful to their own guild. Eulogists have given
the credit of leading the people to eloquent men who
39
have merely uttered their voice; sometimes, to eloquent
men whom the people have never recognized either as
safe, or as sane, counsellors. Why should we build
our monument to men who have been always in the
wrong, whose counsel, if taken, would have brought
ruin and disaster, and forget the reverence due to a
people always in the right. Eloquence is a sorry
leader if it do not utter the voice of sobriety and
wisdom. The love of Freedom is but a rank and
poisonous weed in that soil where the love of Truth
does not grow. The teachers of our people have ever
been grave and serious men, little removed, either in
thought or purpose, from the people themselves. The
American Revolution was not the result of a passionate
outcry of Patrick Henry, or James Otis. Constitu-
tional liberty is no mushroom, springing up in a night.
It is an Oaken growth, slowly adding ring to ring,
through many a summer's heat and winter's cold. If
Worcester has had few great leaders, it is because her
people have been leaders.
In looking back upon the relation of Worcester to
constitutional liberty, from the time of her planting in
the forest, down to the close of the rebellion, and the
great consummation in the adoption of the three
amendments to the constitution, you can find no time
from the beginning, when, in the light of experience,
you could wish her people had acted otherwise.
In tracing the great forces which have given charac-
ter to our history, I have omitted the most interesting
and important of all, the place occupied by woman in
40
our social life. This noble theme does not peculiarly
belong to a historic sketch of Worcester. She, who
“Stays all the fair young planet in her hands,”
has here contributed her full share to whatever of
glory or honor can be found in our story. The moral
temperament, which determines permanently the history
of any community, is given to it by its women.
Whether it be true, as physiologists tell us, that, as a
rule, the mental and moral qualities of children come
from the mother, and the physical only from the father,
it is at least true that children learn to follow what is
excellent in the examples of their fathers, from the
teachings of their mothers. If our children, in future
generations, are to imitate whatever there has been of
heroism in their ancestors, if they are to love their
country, if they are to be brave, free, generous, gentle,
they must learn the lesson, as their fathers learnt it, at
their mother's knees. No nation, no city, no house-
hold, ever took a lofty place, where the influence of
woman did not inspire it with the heroic temper.
DeTocqueville says : “I do not hesitate to say, that
they give to every nation a moral temperament, which
shows itself in its politics. A hundred times I have
seen weak men show real public virtue, because they
had by their sides women who supported them, not by
advice as to particulars, but by fortifying their feelings
of duty, and directing their ambition. More frequently,
I must confess, I have observed the domestic influence
gradually transforming a man, naturally generous,
noble, and unselfish, into a cowardly, common-place,
41
place-hunting self-seeker, thinking of public business
only as the means of making himself comfortable ;-
and this simply by daily contact with a well-conducted
woman, a faithful wife, an excellent mother, but from
whose mind the grand notion of public duty was
entirely absent.”
This is the Frenchman's experience. But the great
philosopher of New England said better. “What is
civilization ?” says Emerson, “I answer, the power of
good women.” The legislation of the last half-century
has placed woman very nearly in a condition of legal
equality with man, with one large exception. It has
not yet seemed wise to the majority of either sex to
clothe her with the ballot. But in every other way,
from the planting in the forest until this hour, her influ-
ence in our public life has been on the heroic side. She
sent out, comforted, sustained, welcomed home, inspired,
rewarded, the soldiers in the Revolution, and in the
later and greater war. She enlisted earliest, and was
most constant, in the great civic contest with slavery.
On every great occasion, her uncounted vote has been
counted.
And now, as the solemn shadow marks upon the dial
the passage of two hundred years, may we not hope that
the Power that has been with our Fathers will be with
our children P Will he vouchsafe to them that the
virtues, born of adversity, shall survive the prosperity
they have created 2 The old rural life has gone.
Massachusetts is to be, henceforth, in large degree, but
42
a cluster of cities. The contest with wild beast, and
Savage, and winter, and forest, and rocky soil, is over.
He, who encountered and overcame these rude but giant
forces, with no servant but his good right arm, is now
an emperor, on whose bidding countless wondrous
mechanisms, and steam and electricity, and the force,
which winter snows, and spring and autumn rain, gather
up and store, in lake and river, wait as humble and
obsequious vassals. The race, trained for ages in the
venerable maxims of English law and English freedom,
is to share its self-government with races to whom law
has for ages appeared only as tyranny, and liberty been
known only in its excesses. To the healthful inspira-
tion of poverty have succeeded the temptations of wealth.
But there is no old age in our blood. We are still
a people in early youth. We must expect, for many
generations, a continuance of that wonderful growth,
which, for the last half-century, has outrun the wildest
prediction. As Burke said of the colonial populations :
“State the numbers as high as we will, while the dis-
pute continues, the exaggeration ends.” We have our
stimulant climate, in which work and not rest is the
luxury both for muscle and brain. The Worcester
mechanic, in the strife for supremacy, testing every
intellectual power to the utmost, is to be spurred to
exertion in a race in which modern improvement in
transportation makes all mankind his competitors. God
has given here, as nowhere else, inventive skill to the
brain of man. In our children great races are to be
blended, who will contribute the qualities of which great
43
states are builded. They will have learned to deem
Tducation, Freedom, and Justice, the prime necessities
of life. They will be part of the foremost state of a
great and free nation. They will inherit institutions of
self-government, built by great architects on sure founda-
tions. The American spirit, product of German brain,
and Celtic heart, and Norseman's restlessness, and
English constancy, which brought across the sea the
love of liberty and reverence for law, will be theirs,
enlarged, strengthened, invigorated, purified, by centu-
ries of life and growth in congenial air. If God give
to them, as to their Fathers, faith in a personal immor-
tality, and in that word which, when Heaven and Earth
pass away, shall endure, the foundation of their city
shall stand secure.
Iliſiii. 2."
3 9015 O7025 1684
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