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BURGOYNE'S SURRENDER: 
 ONE HUNDREDTH See OF THE EVENT, 
 OCTOBER 17, 1877, 
 
 bese wen unR VED ER, N.Y. 
 
 By GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 BAKER & GODWIN, PRINTERS, 
 No. 25 Park Row, 
 
 1897. 
 
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ORATION. 
 
 WITHIN the territory of New York, bread, fertile and 
 fair, from Montauk to Niagara, from the Adirondacks to 
 the bay, there is no more memorable spot than that on 
 which we stand. Elsewhere, indeed, the great outlines of 
 the landscape are more imposing, and on this autumnal 
 day the parting benediction of the year rests with the same 
 glory on other hills and other waters of the imperial State. 
 Far above, these gentle heights rise into towering mount- 
 ains ; far below, this placid stream broadens and deepens 
 around the metropolis of the continent into a spacious 
 highway for the commerce of the world. Other valleys 
 with teeming intervale and fruitful upland, rich with ro- 
 mantic tradition and patriotic story, filled like this with 
 happy homes and humming workshops, wind through the 
 vast commonwealth, ample channels of its various life ; 
 and town and city, village and hamlet, church and school, 
 everywhere illustrate and promote the prosperous repose 
 of a community great, intelligent and free. But this spot 
 alone within our borders is consecrated as the scene of one 
 of the decisive events that affect the course of history. 
 There are deeds on which the welfare of the world seems 
 to be staked ; conflicts in which liberty is lost or won; vic- 
 tories by which the standard of human progress is full high 
 advanced. Between sunrise and sunset, on some chance 
 field the deed is done, but from that day it is a field en- 
 chanted. Imagination invests it with 
 
 “The light that never was on sea or land.” 
 
 The grateful heart of mankind repeats its name ; Heroism 
 feeds upon its story ; Patriotism kindles with its perennial 
 fire. Such is the field on which we stand. It is not ours. 
 It does not belong to New York; norto America. It is an 
 
4 
 
 indefeasible estate of the world, like the field of Arbela, of 
 Tours, of Hastings, of Waterloo ; and the same lofty charm 
 that draws the pilgrim to the plain of Marathon resistlessly 
 leads him to the field of Saratoga. 
 
 The drama of the revolution opened in New England, 
 culminated in New York, and closed in Virginia. It was a 
 happy fortune that the three colonies which represented 
 the various territorial sections of the settled continent 
 were each in turn the chief seat of war. The common sac- 
 rifice, the common struggle, the common triumph, tended 
 to weld them locally, politically and morally together. 
 Doubtless there were conflicts of provincial pride and jeal- 
 ousy and suspicion. The Virginia officers smiled loftily at 
 the raw Yankee militia; the Green Mountain boys dis- 
 trusted the polished discipline of New York ; and the New 
 York Schuyler thought those boys brave but dangerously 
 independent. In every great crisis of the war, however, 
 there was a common impulse and devotion, and the welfare 
 of the continent obliterated provincial lines. It is by the 
 few heaven-piercing peaks, not by the confused mass of 
 upland, that we measure the height of the Andes, of the 
 Alps, of the Himalaya. It is by Joseph Warren not by 
 Benjamin Church, by John Jay not by Sir John Johnson, 
 by George Washington not by Benedict Arnold, that we 
 test the quality of the revolutionary character. The voice 
 of Patrick Henry from the mountains answered that of 
 James Otis by the sea. Paul Revere’s lantern shone 
 through the valley of the Hudson, and flashed along the 
 cliffs of the Blue Ridge. The scattering volley of Lexing- 
 ton Green swelled to the triumphant thunder of Saratoga, 
 and the reverberation of Burgoyne’s falling arms in New 
 York shook those of Cornwallis in Virginia from his hands. 
 Doubts, jealousies, prejudices, were merged in one common 
 devotion. The union of the colonies to secure liberty, 
 foretold the union of the States to maintain it, and where- 
 ever we stand on revolutionary fields, or inhale the sweet- 
 ness of revolutionary memories, we tread the ground and 
 breathe the air of invincible national union. 
 
5 
 
 Our especial interest and pride, to-day, are in the 
 most important event of the revolution upon the soil 
 of New York. Concord and Lexington, Bunker Hill 
 and Bennington, the Brandywine and Germantown, 
 have had their fitting centennial commemorations, 
 and already at Kingston and Oriskany, New York has 
 taken up the wondrous tale of her civil and military 
 achievements. In proud continuation of her story we 
 stand here. Sons of sires who bled with Sterling on the 
 Long Island shore; who fought with Herkimer in the 
 deadly Oneida defile ; who defended the Highland forts 
 with George Clinton; who, with Robert Livingston and 
 Gouverneur Morris, were driven from town to town by 
 stress of war, yet framed a civil constitution, all untouched 
 by the asperity of the conflict and a noble model for all 
 free States ; sons of sires who, leaving the plough and the 
 bench, gathered on this historic war-path—the key of the 
 then civilized continent ; the western battle ground of Eu- 
 rope ; the trail by which Frontenac’s Indians prowled to_ 
 Schenectady, and crept to the Connecticut and beyond ; 
 the way by which Sir William Johnson and his army passed 
 in the old French war, and humbled Dieskau at Lake 
 George ; the road along which Abercrombie and his bright 
 array marched to disaster in the summer morning, and 
 Amherst marshaled his men to co-operate with Wolf in 
 the humbling of Quebec; sons of sires who, mustering 
 here on ground still trembling with the tread of armies, 
 where the air forever echoes with the savage warwhoop, or 
 murmurs with the pathetic musie of the march and the 
 camp— 
 
 * Why, soldiers, why 
 Should we be melancholy, boys ? 
 Whose business ’tis to die! ”’ 
 
 even here withstood the deadly British blow and envelop- 
 ing the haughty Burgoyne, compelled not only him to yield 
 his sword, but England to surrender an empire ; sons of 
 such sires, who should not proudly recall such deeds of 
 theirs and gratefully revere their memory, would be for- 
 ever scorned as faituless depositaries of the great English 
 
6 
 
 and American tradition, and the great human benediction, 
 of patient, orderly, self-restrained liberty. 
 
 When King George heard of the battle of Bunker Hill, 
 he consoled himself with the thought that New York was 
 still unswervingly loyal; and it was the hope and the faith 
 of his ministry that the rebellion might at last be baffled 
 in that great colony. It was a region of vast extent, but 
 thinly peopled, for the population was but little more than 
 one hundred and sixty thousand. It had been settled by men 
 of various races, who, upon the sea shore, and through the 
 remote valleys, and in the primeval wilderness, cherished the 
 freedom that they brought and transmitted to their child- 
 ren. But the colony lacked that homogeneity of population 
 which produces general sympathy of conviction and con- 
 -eert of action ; which gives a community one soul, one heart, 
 one hand, interprets every man’s thought to his neighbor, 
 and explains so much of the great deeds of the Grecian 
 commonwealths, of Switzerland, and of Old and New En- 
 gland. In New York, also, were the hereditary manors— 
 vast domains of a few families, private principalities, with 
 feudal relations and traditions—and the spirit of a splendid 
 proprietary life was essentially hostile to doctrines of pop- 
 ular right and power. In the magnificent territory of the 
 Mohawk and its tributaries, Sir William Johnson, amid his 
 family and dependents, lived in baronial state among the 
 Indians, with whom he was allied by inarriage, and to 
 whom he was the vicar of their royal father over the sea. 
 The Johnsons were virtually supreme in the country of the 
 Mohawk, and as they were intensely loyal, the region west 
 of Albany became a dark and bloody ground of civil strife. 
 In the city of New York, and in the neighboring counties 
 of Westchester upon the river and sound, of Richmond 
 upon the bay, and Queens and Suffolk on the sea, the fear 
 that sprang from conscious exposure to the naval power of 
 Great Britain, the timidity of commercial trade, the nat- 
 ural loyalty of numerous officers of the crown, all combined 
 to foster antipathy to any disturbance of that establish- 
 ed authority which secured order and peace. 
 
7 
 
 But deeper and stronger than all other causes was the 
 tender reluctance of Englishmen in America to believe 
 that reconciliation with the mother country was impossi- 
 ble. Even after the great day on Bunker Hill, when, in 
 full sight of his country and of all future America, Joseph 
 Warren, the well-beloved disciple of American liberty, fell, 
 Congress, while justifying war, recoiled from declaring 
 independence. Doubtless the voice of John Adams, of 
 Massachusetts, counseling immediate and entire sepa- 
 ration, spoke truly for the unanimous and fervent patriot- 
 ism of New England; but doubtless, also, the voice of 
 John Jay, of New York, who knew the mingled sentiment 
 of the great province whose position in the struggle must 
 be decisive, in advising one more appeal to the king, 
 was a voice of patriotism as pure, and of courage as un- 
 quailing. 7 
 
 The appeal was made, and made in vain. ‘The year that 
 opened with Concord and Lexington, ended with the gloomy 
 tragedy of the Canada campaign. On the last day of the 
 year, in a tempest of sleet and snow, the combined forces of 
 New England and New York made a desperate, futile onset ; 
 and the expedition from which Washington and the country 
 had anticipated results so inspiring was dashed in pieces 
 against the walls of Quebec. The country mourned, but 
 New York had a peculiar sorrow. Leaving his tranquil 
 and beautiful home upon this river, one of her noblest 
 soldiers—brave, honorable, gentle—the son in law of Liv- 
 ingston, the friend of Schuyler, after a brief career of 
 glory, died the death of a hero. ‘‘ You shall not blush for 
 your Montgomery,” he said to his bride, as he left her. 
 For fifty years a widow, his bride saw him no more. But 
 while this stately river flows through the mountains to the 
 sea, its waves will still proudly murmur the name, and 
 recall the romantic and heroic story of Richard Mont- 
 gomery. 
 
 The year 1776 was not less gloomy for the American 
 cause. Late in November Washington was hurriedly re- 
 treating across New Jersey, pursued by Cornwallis, his army 
 crumbling with every step, the State paralyzed with terror, 
 
8 
 
 Congress flying affrighted from Philadelphia to Baltimore, 
 and the apparent sole remaining hope of American Inde- 
 pendence, the rigor of winter, snow, and impassable roads. 
 Ah, no! It was not in winter but in summer that that 
 hope lay, not in the relentless frost of the elements, but 
 in the heavenly fire of hearts beating high with patri- 
 otic resolve, and turning the snow flakes of that terrible 
 retreat into immortal roses of victory and joy. While 
 Howe and his officers, in the warm luxury and wild de- 
 bauchery of the city they had captured, believed the war 
 ended, gaily sang and madly caroused, Washington, in 
 the dreary Christmas evening, turned on the ice of the 
 Delaware, and struck the Hessians fatally at Trenton ; then 
 in the cold January sunrise, defeating the British at Prinece- 
 ton, his army filed with bleeding feet into the highlands 
 of New Jersey, and, half starved and seantily clothed, 
 encamped upon the frozen hills of Morristown. ‘The 
 Americans have done much,” said despairingly one of 
 their truest friends in England, Edmund Burke, ‘but it 
 is now evident that they cannot look standing armies in 
 the face.”” That, however, was to be determined by the 
 campaign of 1777. | 
 
 For that campaign England was already preparing. 
 Seven years before, General Carleton, who still commanded 
 in Canada, had proposed to hold the water line between 
 the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the bay of New York, to pre- 
 vent a separation of the colonies. It was now proposed to 
 hold it to compel a separation. The ocean mouths of the 
 great waterway were both in complete possession of the 
 crown. It was a historic war path. Here had raged the 
 prolonged conflict between France and England for the 
 control of the continent, and in fierce war upon the waters 
 of New York, no less than on the plains of Abraham, the 
 power of France in America finally fell. Here, also, where 
 it had humbled its proud rival, the strong hand of England 
 grasping for unjust dominion was to be triumphantly 
 shaken off. This region was still a wilderness. Seventy. 
 years before, the first legal land title in it was granted. 
 In 1745, thirty years before the Revolution, it was the 
 
9 
 
 extreme English outpost. In 1777, the settlers were 
 few, and they feared the bear and the catamount less than 
 the Tory and the Indian. They still built block houses for 
 retreat and defense like the first New England settlers a 
 hundred and fifty years before. Nowhere during the Revo- 
 lution were the horrors of civil war so constant and so 
 dire as here. The Tories seized and harassed, shot and 
 hung the Whigs, stole their stock and store, burned their 
 barns and ruined their crops, and the Whigs remorselessly 
 retaliated. The stealthy Indian struck, shrieked and 
 vanished. The wolf and the wild cat lurked in the thicket. 
 Man and beast were equally cruel. Terror overhung the 
 fated region, and as the great invasion approached, the 
 universal flight and devastation recalled the grim desola- 
 tion in Germany during the thirty years’ war. 
 
 Of that invasion, and of the campaign of 1777, the central 
 figure is John Burgoyne. No name among the British 
 generals of the Revolution is more familiar, yet he was 
 neither a great soldier nor a great man. He was willing 
 to bribe his old comrade in arms, Charles Lee, to betray 
 the American cause, and he threatened to loose savages 
 upon the Americans for defending it. Burgoyne was an 
 admirable type of the English fashionable gentleman of 
 his day. The grandson of a baronet, a Westminster boy, 
 and trained to arms, he eloped with a daughter of the 
 great Whig house of Derby, left the army and lived gaily 
 on the continent. Restored to a military career by polit- 
 ical influence, he served as a captain in France, and return- 
 ing to England was elected to Parliament. He went a 
 brigadier to Portugal, and led a brilliant charge at Valentia 
 d’ Alcantara, was complimented by the great Count Lippe, 
 and flattered by the British prime minister. For his gal- 
 lantry the king of Spain gave him a diamond ring, and 
 with that blazing on his finger he returned once more to 
 England, flushed with brief glory. There for some years he 
 was a man of pleasure. He wrote slight verses and little 
 plays that are forgotten. Reynolds painted his portrait in 
 London, as Ramsay had painted it in Rome. Horace Wal- 
 pole sneered at him for his plays, but Lord Chatham praised 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 him tor his military notes. Tall and handsome, graceful 
 and winning in manner, allied to a noble house, a favorite 
 at court and on parade, he was a gay companion at the 
 table, the club and the theatre. The king admired his dra- 
 goons, and conferred upon him profitable honors, which 
 secured to him a refined and luxurious life. In Parlia- 
 ment, when the American war began, Burgoyne took the 
 high British ground, but with the urbanity of a soldier, 
 and he gladly obeyed the summons to service in America, 
 and sailed with Howe and Clinton on the great day 
 that the British troops marched to Concord. He saw 
 the battle of Bunker Hill, and praised the American cour- 
 age and military ability, but was very sure that trained 
 troops would always overcome militia. The one American 
 whom he extolled was Samuel Adams. He thought that 
 he combined the ability of Ceesar with the astuteness of 
 Cromwell; that he led Franklin and all the other leaders, 
 and that if his counsels continued to control the continent, 
 America must be subdued or relinquished. 
 
 Burgoyne saw little actual service in this country until 
 he arrived at Quebec on the 6th of May, 1777, as commander 
 of the great enterprise of the year. The plan of campaign 
 was large and simple. One expedition led by Burgoyne, 
 was to force its way trom Quebec to Albany, through the 
 valley of the Hudson, and another, under St. Leger, was to 
 push through the valley of the Mohawk, to the same point. 
 At Albany they were to join General Howe, who would ad- 
 vance up the river from the bay. By the success of these 
 combined operations, the British would command New 
 York, and New England would be absolutely eut off. This 
 last result alone would be a signal triumph. New England 
 was the nest of rebellion. There were the fields where 
 British power was first defied in arms. There were the 
 Green Mountains from which Ethan Allen and his boys 
 had streamed upon Ticonderoga. There was Boston bay 
 where the tea had been scattered, and Narragansett bay 
 where the Gaspe had been burned, and the harbors of Ma- 
 chias and of Newport, from which British ships had been 
 chased to sea. There were Fanueil Hall and the town 
 
11 
 
 meeting. There was Boston, whose port had been closed— 
 Boston with the street of the massacre—Boston, of which 
 King George had bitterly said that he would ‘as lief fight 
 the Bostonians as the French.” There were the pulpits 
 which preached what Samuel Adams called liberty, and 
 Samuel Johnson sedition. The very air of New England 
 was full of defiance. The wocds rustled it, the waters 
 murmured it, the stern heart of its rugged nature seemed 
 to beat in unison with the stout heart of man, and all 
 throbbed together with the invincible Anglo Saxon instinct 
 of liberty. To cut off New England from her sisters-— 
 to seize and hold the great New York valleys of Champlain 
 and the Hudson—was to pierce the heart of the rebellion, 
 and to paralyze America. Here, then, was to be the crucial 
 struggle. Here in New York once more the contest for 
 the Western continent was to be decided. Burgoyne had 
 airily said in London, that with an army of ten thousand 
 men he could promenade through America, and now the 
 brilliant gentleman was to make good his boast. 
 
 While he was crossing the ocean to begin his task, 
 and when every possible effort should have been made 
 by Congress to meet the ample and splendid preparations 
 for the British invasion, wretched intrigues displaced Gen- 
 eral Schuyler in the northern department, and it was not 
 until late in May that he was restored to the command. 
 The peril was at hand, but it was impossible to collect 
 men. By the end of June, the entire garrison of Ticon- 
 deroga and Fort Independence, the first great barrier 
 against the advance of Burgoyne, consisted of twenty-five 
 hundred continentals and nine hundred militia, barefooted 
 and ragged, without proper arms or sufficient blankets, 
 and lacking every adequate preparation for defense. But 
 more threatening than all, was Sugar-loaf Hill, rising 
 above Ticonderoga, and completely commanding the fort. 
 General Schuyler saw it, but even while he pointed out 
 the danger, and while General St. Clair, the Commandant 
 of the post, declared that from the want of troops nothing 
 could be done, the drums of Burgoyne’s army were joy- 
 fully beating in the summer dawn; the bugles rang, the 
 
12 
 
 cannon thundered, the rising June sun shone on the sear- 
 let coats of British grenadiers, on the bright helmets of 
 German dragoons, and on burnished artillery and polished 
 arms. ‘There were more than seven thousand trained and 
 veteran troops, besides Canadians and Indians. They 
 were admirably commanded and equipped, although the 
 means of land transport were fatally insufficient. But all 
 was hope and confidence. The battle flags were unfurled, 
 the word was given, and with every happy augury, the 
 royal standard of England proudly set forward for conquest: 
 On the 1st of July, the brilliant pageant of swept up Lake 
 Champlain, and the echoes of the mighty wilderness which 
 had answered the guns of Amherst and the drum-beat of 
 Montealm, saluted the frigates and the gunboats that, led 
 by a dusky swarm of Indians in bark canoes, stretched 
 between the eastern shore, along which Riedesel and the 
 Germans marched, and the main body advancing with 
 Phillips upon the west. The historic waters of Champlain 
 have never seen a spectacle more splendid than the ad- 
 vancing army of Burgoyne. But so with his glittering 
 Asian hordes, two thousand years before, the Persian king 
 advanced to Salamis. 
 
 At evening the British army was before Ticonderoga. 
 The trained eye of the Hnglish engineers instantly saw 
 the advantage of Sugar-loaf, the higher hill, and the ris- 
 ing sun of the 5th of July glared in the amazed eyes of the 
 Ticonderoga garrison, on the red coats entrenched upon 
 Sugar-loaf, with their batteries commanding every point 
 within the fort, and their glasses every movement. Sugar- 
 loaf had become Mount Defiance. St. Clair had no choice. 
 All day he assumed indifference, but quietly made every 
 preparation, and before dawn the next day he stole away. 
 The moon shone, but his flight was undetected, until the 
 flames of a fire foolishly set to a house suddenly flashed 
 over the landscape and revealed his retreat. He was in- 
 stantly pursued. His rear guard was overtaken, and by 
 the valor of its fierce but hopeless fight gave an undying 
 name to the wooded hills of Hubbardton. 
 
 Ticonderoga fell, and the morning of its fall was the 
 
13 
 
 high hour of Burgoyne’s career. Without a blow, by the 
 mere power of his presence, he had undone the electric 
 deed of Ethan Allen; he had captured the historic prize of 
 famous campaigns. The chief obstruction to his triumphal 
 American promenade had fallen. The bright promise of 
 the Invasion would be fulfilled, and Burgoyne would be 
 the lauded hero of the war. Doubtless his handsome lip 
 curled in amused disdain at the flying and frightened 
 militia, plough boys that might infest but could not impede 
 his further advance. His eager fancy could picture the 
 delight of London, the joy of the clubs, of Parliament, 
 of the King. He could almost hear the royal George 
 _bursting into the Queen’s room and shouting, “I have beat 
 all the Americans.” He could almost read the assurance 
 of the minister to the proud Earl, his father-in-law, that 
 the king designed for him the vacant Red Ribbon. But 
 his aspiring ambition surely anticipated a loftier reward— 
 a garter, a coronet, and at last, Westminster Abbey and 
 undying glory. 
 
 Ticonderoga fell, and with it, apparently, fell in 
 Europe all hope of the patriot cause ; and in America, 
 all confidence and happy expectation. The tories were 
 jubilant. The wavering Indians were instantly open 
 enemies. The militia sullenly went home. The solitary 
 settlers fled southward through the forests and over the 
 eastern hills. Hven Albany was appalled, and its pale citi- 
 zens seut their families away. Yet this panic stricken 
 valley of the upper Hudson was now the field on which, if 
 anywhere, the cause was to be saved. Five counties of the 
 State were in the hands of the enemy; three were in 
 anarchy. Schuyler was at Fort Edward with scarcely a 
 thousand men. The weary army of St. Clair, shrunken to 
 fifteen hundred continentals, all the militia having dropped 
 away, struggled for a week through the forest, and emerged 
 forlorn and exhausted at the fort. Other troops arrived, 
 but the peril was imminent. New York was threatened at 
 every point, and with less than five thousand ill-equipped 
 regulars and militia to oppose the victorious Burgoyne, who 
 was but a single long day’s march away, with only the forts 
 
14 
 
 and the boom and chain in the Highlands to stay Clinton’s 
 ascent from the bay, and only the little garrison at Fort 
 Stanwix to withstand St. Leger, General Schuyler and the 
 council of State implored aid from every quarter. <A loud 
 clamor, bred of old jealousy and fresh disappointment, 
 arose against Schuyler, the commander of the Department, 
 and St. Clair, the commander of the post. The excitement 
 and dismay were universal, and the just apprehension was 
 most grave. But when the storm was loudest it was pierced 
 by the calm voice of Washington, whose soul quailed before 
 no disaster: ‘‘ We should never despair ; our situation has 
 before been unpromising and has changed for the better ; 
 so I trust it will be again.” He sent Arnold to Schuyler, 
 as an accomplished officer, familiar with the country. He 
 urged the Eastern States to move to his succor. He ordered 
 all available boats from Albany to New Windsor and Fish- 
 kill, upon the Hudson, to be ready for any part of his own 
 army that he might wish to detach. While thus the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief cared for all, each cared for itself. The 
 stout-hearted George Clinton, and the Council of New 
 York were thoroughly aroused and alert. Vermont called 
 upon New Hampshire, and the White Mountains answered 
 to the Green by summoning Stark and Whipple, who, 
 gathering their men, hastened to the Hudson. 
 
 While this wild panic and alarm swept through the coun- 
 try, Burgoyne remained for a fortnight at the head of Lake 
 Champlain. . He, also, had his troubles. He was foreed to 
 garrison Ticonderoga from his’ serviceable troops. His 
 Indian allies began to annoy him. Provisions came in 
 slowly, and the first fatal weakness of the expedition was 
 already betrayed in the inadequate supply of wagons and 
 horses. But the neighboring tories joined him, and count- 
 ing upon the terror that his triumphant progress had in- 
 spired, he moved at the end of July from Lake Champlain 
 toward the Hudson. His march was through the wilderness 
 which Schuyler had desolated to the utmost, breaking up 
 the roads, choking with trees the navigable streams, de- 
 stroying forage, and driving away cattle. But Burgoyne 
 forced his way through, building forty bridges and Jaying a 
 
15 
 
 log-wood road for two miles across a morass. The confi- 
 dence of triumph cheered the way. So sure was victory, 
 that as if it had been a huge pleasure party, the wives of 
 officers accompanied the camp, and the Baroness Riedesel 
 came in a calash from Fort George to join her husband 
 with Burgoyne. but before that slowly toiling army, the 
 startled frontier country fled. Almost every patriot house 
 west of the Green Mountains and north of Manchester was 
 deserted. The Tories, proud of British protection, placed 
 signs in their hats and before their. doors, and upon the 
 horns of their cattle, wearing the Tory badge, as Gurth 
 wore the collar of Cedric the Saxon. To us the scene is 
 romantic picture. The scarlet host of Burgoyne flashes 
 through the forest with pealing music ; the soldiers smooth 
 the rough way with roystering songs; the trains and ar- 
 tillery toil slowly on; the red cloud of savages glimmers 
 on his skirts, driving before him farmers with wives and 
 children, faint and sick with cruel apprehension, flying 
 through a land of terror. To us, it is picture. But to 
 know what it truly was, let the happy farmer on these green 
 slopes and placid meadows, imagine a sudden flight to-night 
 with all he loves from all he owns, struggling up steep 
 hills, lost in tangled woods, crowding along ditficult roads, 
 at every step expecting the glistening tomahawk, the 
 bullet, and the mercies of a foreign soldiery. Not many 
 miles from this spot, the hapless Jane Mac Crea was killed 
 aS Burgoyne’s savages hurried her away. Her story rang 
 through the land like a woman’s cry of agony. ‘This, then, 
 was British chivalry! Burgoyne, indeed, had not meant 
 murder, but he had threatened it. The name of the innocent 
 girl became the rallying ery for armies, and to a thousand 
 indignant hearts, her blood cried from the ground for venge- 
 ance. We come with song and speech and proud commem- 
 oration to celebrate the triumph of this day. Let us not 
 forget the cost of that triumph, the infinite suffering that 
 this unchanging sky beheld ; the torture of men ; the heart- 
 break of women; the terror of little children, that paid for 
 the happiness which we enjoy. 
 
 Burgoyne reached the Hudson unattacked. As he ar- 
 
16 
 
 rived, although he had no tidings from below, he heard of 
 the successful advance in the valley of the Mohawk. St. 
 Leger had reached Fort Stanwix without the loss of a 
 man. It was necessary, therefore, for Burgoyne to hasten 
 to make his junction at Albany with Howe and St. Leger, 
 and on the 6th of August he sent word to Howe that 
 he hoped to be in Albany by the 22d. But, even as he 
 wrote, the blow fatal to his hopes was struek. On that 
 very day the patriots of Tryon County, men of German 
 blood, led by Nicholas Herkimer, were hastening to the 
 relief of Fort Stanwix, which St. Leger had beleaguered. 
 The tale has just been eloquently told to fifty thousand 
 children of the Mohawk valley gathered on the field 
 of Oriskany, and it will be told to their children’s chil- 
 dren so long as the grass of that. field shall grow, and 
 the waters of the Mohawk flow. In the hot summer 
 morning, Herkimer and his men marched under the peace- 
 ful trees into the deadly ambush, and in the depth of the 
 defile were suddenly enveloped in a storm of fire and death. 
 Ah! blood-red field of Oriskany! For five doubtful des- 
 perate hours, without lines, or fort, or artillery, hand to 
 hand, with knife and rifle, with tomahawk and spear, sway- 
 ing and struggling, slipping in blood and stumbling over 
 dead bedies, raged the most deadly battle of the war. Full 
 of heroic deeds, full of precious memories ; a sacrifice that 
 was not lost. The stars that shone at evening over the 
 field, saw the Indian and the white man stark and stiff, still 
 locked in the death grapple, still clenching the hair of the 
 foe, still holding the dripping knife in his breast. The 
 brave Herkimer, fatally wounded, called for his Bible and 
 tranquilly died. He did not relieve the fort, but it held 
 out until Benedict Arnold, sent by Schuyler, coming up 
 the valley, craftily persuaded St. Leger’s Indians that his 
 men were as the leaves of the forest for number. The sav- 
 ages fled; St. Leger’s force melted away ; the Mohawk ex- 
 pedition had wholly failed, and the right hand of Burgoyne 
 was Shattered. ie 
 
 Every day lost to the English general was now a disas- 
 ter, But his fatal improvidence forced him to inaction, 
 
Ly 
 
 He could not move without supplies of food and horses, 
 and an expedition to secure them would also serve as a di- 
 version to favor St. Leger. Three days after Oriskany, 
 and before he had heard of that battle, Burgoyne detached 
 the expedition to Bennington. New England was ready 
 for him there as New York had been at Stanwix. Parson 
 Allen from Pittsfield came in his chaise. Everybody else 
 came as he could, and when the British advance was an- 
 nounced, John Stark marched his militia just over the line of 
 New York, where the enemy was entrenched on the uplands 
 of the Walloomsiec, and skillfully surrounding them, the 
 Yankee farmers who had hurried away from their summer 
 work, swept up the hill with fiery and resistless fury, seized 
 the blazing guns, drove the veteran troops as if they were 
 wolves and wild cats threatening their farms, and after a 
 lull renewing the onset against fresh foes, the New England 
 militia won the famous battle of Bennington, and the left 
 hand of Burgoyne was shattered. 
 
 So soon was the splendid promise of Ticonderoga dark- 
 ened. The high and haughty tone was changed. ‘‘I yet 
 do not despond,”’ wrote Burgoyne on the 20th of August, 
 
 ‘and he had not yet heard of St. Leger’s fate. But 
 he had reason to fear. The glad light of Benning- 
 ton and Oriskany had pierced the gloom that weighed upon 
 the country. It was everywhere jubilant and everywhere 
 rising. The savages deserted the British camp. The har- 
 vest was gathered, and while New England and New York 
 had fallen fatally upon the flanks of Burgoyne, Washington 
 now sent Virginia to join New York and New England in 
 his front, detaching from his own army Morgan and his 
 men, the most famous rifle corps of the Revolution. But 
 while the prospect brightened, General Schuyler, by order 
 of Congress, was superseded by General Gates. Schuyler, 
 a most sagacious and diligent officer whom Washington 
 wholly trusted, was removed for the alleged want of 
 his most obvious quality, the faculty of comprehensive 
 organization. But the New England militia disliked him, 
 
 and even Samuel Adams was impatient of him; but Sam- 
 uel Adams was also impatient of Washington. Public irri- 
 3 
 
18 
 
 tation with the situation, and jealous intrigue in camp and 
 in Congtess procured Schuyler’s removal. He was wound- 
 ed to the heart, but his patriotism did not waver. He re- 
 mained in camp to be of what service he could, and he en- 
 treated Congress to order a speedy and searching inquiry 
 into his conduct. It was at last made, and left him abso- 
 lutely unstained. He was unanimously acquitted with the 
 highest honor, and Congress approved the verdict. General 
 Schuyler did not again enter upon active military service, 
 but he and Rufus King were the first senators that New 
 York sent to the Senate of the United States. Time has 
 restored his fame, and the history of his State records no 
 more patriotic name among her illustrious sons than that 
 which is commemorated by this village, the name of Philip 
 Schuyler. 
 
 Largely re-enforced, Gates, on the 12th of September, 
 advanced to Bemis’s Heights, which the young Kosciuszko 
 had fortified, and there he awaited Burgoyne’s approach. 
 Burgoyne’s orders had left him no discretion. He must 
 force his way to Albany. With soldierly loyalty, therefore, 
 he must assume that Howe was pushing up the Hudson, and _ 
 that his own delay might imperil Howe by permitting the 
 Americans to turn suddenly upon him. On the 11th of Sep- 
 tember he announced to his camp that he had sent the lake 
 fleet to Canada, that he had virtually abandoned his commu- 
 nications, and that his army must fight its way or perish. 
 On the 13th he crossed the Hudson, and then received his 
 first tidings from Howe, in a letter from him written long 
 before, and which did not even mention a junction. Bur-. 
 goyne had already felt himself deserted if not betrayed, 
 and he comprehended his critical situation. Howe was on 
 the Delaware and Carleton would give him no aid from 
 Canada. The country behind him was already swarming 
 with militia. He was encamped ina dense forest, with an 
 enemy hidden in the same forest before him, whose drum- 
 beat and morning gun he could hear, but whose numbers 
 and position he did not know. Yet while he could see noth- 
 ing, every movement of his own was noted by an eagle eye 
 in a tree top on the eastern side of the Hudson, and re- 
 
19 
 
 ported to Gates. And when at last Burgoyne marched 
 out in full array, with all the glittering pomp of war, 
 to find the foe in the forest, Gates instantly knew it. 
 Burgoyne boldly advanced, his communication with Canada 
 gone, the glory of Ticonderoga dimmed, the union with 
 Howe uncertain, disaster on the right hand and on the 
 left, the peerage and Westminster Abbey both fading 
 from hope, and he suddenly confronted breastworks, 
 artillery and an eager army. He must fight or fly, 
 nor did he hesitate. At eleven o’clock on the morning 
 of the 19th of September, he advanced in three columns 
 towards Gates’s lines on Bemis’s Heights. At one o’clock 
 the action began ; at four it was general and desperate ; at 
 five, Burgoyne’s army was in mortal peril ; at nightfall the 
 Germans had stayed the fatal blow, and the battle ended. 
 Both sides claimed the victory, and the British bivouacked 
 on the field. As on Bunker Hill, the first battle in Amer- 
 ica which Burgoyne had seen, if this were a British victory 
 another would destroy the British army. 
 
 Burgoyne huddled his dead into the ground, hastily en- 
 trenched and fortified a new position, soothed his discour- 
 aged army and meditated a fresh assault. But receiving 
 the good news of Howe’s success at the Brandywine, and 
 of the immediate advance of Clinton to break through 
 the highlands of the Hudson and fall upon the rear 
 of Gates, he decided to wait. He was encamped in the 
 wilderness without communications, but he sent word to 
 Clinton that he could hold out until the 12th of October. 
 Again through the forest he heard the morning and even- 
 ing gun and the shouting of the American camp, and 
 once the joyful firing of cannon that he could not un- 
 derstand, but which announced American victories in 
 his rear. The alarm of the British camp was constant. 
 The picket firing was incessant. Officers and men slept 
 in their clothes. Rations were reduced, and the hungry 
 army heard every night the howling of the wolves that 
 haunted the outskirts of the camp as if making ready for 
 their prey. At last, with provisions for sixteen days only, 
 and no news from Clinton, Burgoyne summoned his gen- 
 
20 
 
 erals for a final council. It was the evening of the 5th of 
 October, and, could he but have known it, Howe at German- 
 town, had again succeeded and Sir Henry Clinton was just 
 breaking his way through the Highlands, victorious and 
 desolating. On the very morning that Burgoyne fought 
 his fatal battle, the river forts had fallen, the boom and 
 chain were cleared away, the marauding British fleet sailed 
 into Newburgh bay, Clinton sent word gaily to Burgoyne, 
 ‘‘Here we are! nothing between us and Albany,” while 
 Putnam was hastening up along the eastern bank and 
 George Clinton along the western, rousing the country and 
 rallying the flying citizens from their alarm. Of all this 
 Burgoyne knew nothing. In his extremity, his own plan 
 was to leave boats, provisions and magazines, for three or 
 four days, and falling upon the left of the Americans, to 
 attempt to gain the rear. The German General Riedesel 
 advised falling back toward the lake. The English Fraser 
 was willing to fight. The English Phillips was silent. 
 Compelled to decide, Burgoyne at last determined, to re- 
 connoitre the Americans in force, and if he thought that 
 an attack would be unwise, then to retreat toward the lake. 
 
 On the morning of the 7th of October, at 10 o’clock, 
 fifteen hundred of the best troops in the world, led by four 
 of the most experienced and accomplished generals, with a 
 skirmishing van of Canadian rangers and Indians moved in 
 three columns toward the left of the American position 
 into a field of wheat. They began to cut forage. Startled 
 by the rattling picket fire, the American drums beat to 
 arms, and the British approach was announced at head- 
 quarters. Morgan and the Virginia sharp-shooters were 
 thrown out beyond the British right. Poor, with the New 
 York and New Hampshire men, moved steadily through 
 the woods toward the British left, which began the battle 
 with a vigorous cannonade. The Americans dashed for- 
 ward, opened to the right and left, flanked the enemy, 
 struck him with a blasting fire, then closed and grap- 
 pling hand to hand, the mad mass of combatants swayed 
 and staggered for half an hour, five times taking and re- 
 taking a single gun. At the first fire upon the left, 
 
21 
 
 the Virginia sharpshooters, shouting, and blazing with 
 deadly aim, rushed forward with such fury that the ap- 
 palled British right wavered and recoiled. While it yet stag- 
 gered under the blow of Virginia, New England swept up, 
 and with its flaming muskets broke the English line, which 
 wildly fled. It reformed and again advanced, while the 
 whole American force dashed against the British center, 
 held by the Germans, whose right and left had been 
 uncovered. The Germans bravely stood, and the British 
 General Fraser hurried to their aid. He seemed upon the 
 British side the inspiring genius of the day. With fatal aim 
 an American sharpshooter fired and Fraser fell. With 
 him sank the British heart. Three thousand New Yorkers, 
 led by Ten Broeck, came freshly up, and the whole Amer- 
 ican line, jubilant with certain victory, advancing, Bur- 
 goyne abandoned his guns and ordered a retreat to his 
 camp. It was but fifty-two minutes since the action began. 
 The British dismayed, bewildered, overwhelmed, were 
 scarcely within their redoubts, when Benedict Arnold, to 
 whom the jealous Gates, who did not come upon the field 
 during the day, had refused a command, outriding an aid 
 whom Gates had sent to recall him, came spurring up ;— 
 Benedict Arnold, whose name America does not love, whose 
 ruthless will had dragged the doomed Canadian Expedition 
 through the starving wilderness of Maine, who volunteering 
 to relieve Fort Stanwix had, by the mere terror of his com- 
 ing, blown St. Leger away, and who, on the 18th of Sep- 
 tember, had saved the American left,—Benedict Arnold, 
 whom battle stung to fury, now whirled from end to end of 
 the American line, hurled it against. the Great Redoubt, 
 driving the enemy at the point of the bayonet ; then fling- 
 ing himself to the extreme right, and finding there the Mas- 
 sachusetts brigade, swept it with him to the assault, and 
 Streaming over the breastworks, scattered the Brunswick- 
 ers who defended them, killed their Colonel, gained and 
 held the point which commanded the entire British posi- 
 tion, while at the same moment his horse was shot under 
 him, and he sank to the ground wounded in the leg that 
 had been wounded at Quebec. Here, upon the Hudson, 
 
22 
 
 where he tried to betray his country, here upon the spot 
 where, in the crucial hour of the Revolution, he illustrated 
 and led the American valor that made us free and great, 
 knowing well that no earlier service can atone for a later 
 crime, let us recall for one brief instant of infinite pity, the 
 name that has been justly execrated for a century. 
 
 Night fell, and the weary fighters slept. Before day 
 dawned, Burgoyne, exhausted and overwhelmed, drew off 
 the remainder of his army, and the Americans oceupied 
 his camp. All day the lines exchanged a sharp fire. At 
 evening, in adesolate autumn rain, having buried solemnly, 
 amid the flash and rattle of bombs and artillery, his gal- 
 lant friend, Fraser; leaving his sick and wounded to the 
 mercies of the foe, Burgoyne who, in the splendid hour of 
 his first advance had so proudly proclaimed ‘‘ this army 
 must not retreat,” turned to fly. He moved until nearly 
 day-break, then rested from the slow and toilsome march 
 until toward sunset, and on the evening of the 9th crossed 
 Fish Creek and bivouacked in the open air. A more vigor- 
 ous march—but it was impracticable—would have given 
 him the heights of Saratoga, and secured the passage of 
 the river. But everywhere he was too late. The American 
 sharpshooters hovered around him, cutting off supplies, 
 and preventing him from laying roads. There was, indeed, 
 one short hour of hope that Gates, mistaking the whole 
 British army for its flying rear-guard, would expose him- 
 self to a destructive ambush and assault. When the snare 
 was discovered, the last hope of Burgoyne vanished, and 
 unable to stir, he sat down grimly north of the creek, where 
 his army, wasted to thirty-four hundred effective men, was 
 swiftly and completely encircled by the Americans, who 
 commanded it at every point, and harassed it with shot 
 and shell. Gates, with the confidence of overpowering 
 numbers, purposely avoided battle. Burgoyne, deserted 
 by his allies, his army half gone, with less than five days’ 
 food, with no word from Clinton, with no chance of escape, 
 prepared honorably to surrender. 
 
 On the 14th of October, he proposed a cessation of arms 
 to arrange terms of capitulation. His agent, Lieutenant- 
 
23 
 
 Colonel Kingston, was received at the crossing of the creek 
 by Adjutant-General Wilkinson, and was conducted by 
 him, blindfold, to General Gates. Gates’ terms required 
 an unconditional surrender of the army as prisoners of war. 
 Burgoyne, anxious to save his army to the king for service 
 elsewhere, insisted that it should be returned to England, 
 under engagement not to serve again in North America 
 during the war. Gates had no wish to prolong the negotia- 
 tions. He had heard from Putnam that the English army 
 and fleet were triumphantly sweeping up the river, and 
 that he must expect “the worst,’ and he therefore hasten- 
 ed to accept the proposition of Burgoyne. But Washing- 
 ton, with his Fabian policy, scorned even by Samuel and 
 John Adams, had made ‘the worst”? impossible. Hang- 
 ing upon the army of Howe, engaging it, although unsuc- 
 cessfully, at the Brandywine and at Germantown, he had 
 perplexed, delayed and disconcerted the British general, 
 gaining the time which was the supreme necessity for suc- 
 _ cess against Burgoyne. By reason of Washington’s opera- 
 tious, Howe could not strengthen Clinton as they had 
 both expected, and Clinton could not move until his slow 
 re-enforcements from over the sea arrived. When they 
 came, he burst through the Highlands indeed, with fire 
 and pillage, and hastened to fall upon the rear of Gates. 
 But before he could reach him, while still forty miles away, 
 he heard the astounding news of Burgoyne’s surrender, 
 and he dropped down the river sullenly, back to New York, 
 he, too, baffled by the vigilance, the wariness, the supreme 
 self-command of Washington. 
 
 For a moment, when Burgoyne heard of Clinton’s sue- 
 cess, he thought to avoid surrender. But it was too late. 
 He could uot, honorably, recall his word. At nine o’clock 
 on the morning of this day, a hundred years ago, he signed 
 the convention. At eleven o’clock his troops marched 
 to this meadow, the site of old Fort Hardy, and with 
 tears coursing down bearded cheeks, with passionate 
 sobs and oaths of rage and defiance, the soldiers kissing 
 their guns with the tenderness of lovers, or with sudden 
 frenzy knocking off the butts of their muskets, and the 
 
24 
 
 drummers stamping on their drums, the King’s army laid 
 down their arms. No American eyes, except those of 
 Morgan Lewis and James Wilkinson, aids of General Gates, 
 beheld the surrender. As the British troops filed after- 
 wards between the American lines, they saw no sign of ex- 
 ultation, but they heard the drums and fifes playing 
 “Yankee Doodle.” A few minutes later, Burgoyne and 
 his suite rode to the headquarters of Gates. The English 
 General, as if for a court holiday, glittered in scarlet and 
 gold; Gates plainly clad in a blue overcoat, attended by 
 General Schuyler in citizen’s dress, who had come to con- 
 gratulate him, and by his proud and happy staff, received 
 his guest with urbane courtesy. They exchanged the com- 
 pliments of soldiers. “ The fortune of war, General Gates, 
 has made me your prisoner.” Gates gracefully replied, 
 ‘‘T shall always be ready to testify that it has not been 
 through any fault of your Excellency.” The Generals 
 entered the tent of Gates and dined together. With the 
 same courtly compliment the Hnglish General toasted 
 General Washington, the American General toasted the 
 King. Then, as the English army, without artillery or 
 arms, approached on their march to the sea, the two Gen- 
 erals stepped out in front of the tent, and standing to- 
 gether conspicuous upon this spot, in full view of the 
 Americans and of the British army, General Burgoyne 
 drew his sword, bowed, and presented it to General Gates. 
 General Gates bowed, received the sword, and returned 
 it to General Burgoyne. 
 
 Such was the simple ceremony that marked the turn- 
 ing point of the Revolution. All the defeats, indeed, all 
 the struggles, the battles, the sacrifices, the sufferings, 
 at all times and in every colony, were indispensible to 
 the great result. Concord, Lexington, Bunker Hill, Moul- 
 trie, Long Island, Trenton, Oviskany, Bennington, the 
 Brandywine, Germantown, Saratoga, Monmouth, CGam- 
 den, Cowpen, Guilford, Eutaw Springs, Yorktown,—what 
 American does not kindle as he calls the glorious bat- 
 tle roll of the revolution !—whether victories or defeats, 
 are all essential lights and shades in the immortal picture. 
 
25 
 
 But, as gratefully acknowledging the service of all the pa- 
 triots, we yet call Washington father, so mindful of the 
 value of every event, we may agree that the defeat of Bur- 
 goyne determined American independence. Thenceforth 
 it was but a question of time. The great doubt was solved. 
 Out of a rural militia an army could be trained to cope at 
 every point successfully with the most experienced and. 
 disciplined troops in the world. In the first bitter moment 
 of his defeat, Burgoyne generously wrote to a military 
 friend, ‘‘ A better armed, a better bodied, a more alert or 
 better prepared army in all essential points of military in- 
 stitution, I am afraid is not to be found on our side 
 of the question.” The campaign in New York also, where 
 _ the loyalists were strongest, had shown, what was after- 
 wards constantly proved, that the British crown, despite 
 the horrors of Cherry Valley and Wyoming, could not 
 count upon general or effective aid from the Tories nor 
 from the Indians. At last it was plain that if Britain 
 would conquer, she must overrun and crush the continent, 
 and that was impossible. The shrewdest men in England 
 and in Hurope saw it. Lord North himself, King George’s 
 chief minister, owned it, and grieved in his blind old age 
 that he had not followed his conviction. Edmund Burke 
 would have made peace on any terms. Charles Fox ex- 
 claimed that the ministers knew as little how to make 
 peace as war. The Duke of Richmond urged the impossi- 
 bility of conquest, and the historian Gibbon, who in Parlia- 
 ment had voted throughout the war as Dr. Johnson would 
 have done, agreed that America was lost. The king of 
 France ordered Franklin to be told that he should support 
 the cause of the United States. In April he sent a fleet to 
 America, and from that time to the end of the war, the 
 Hrench and the Americans battled together on sea and 
 land, until on this very day, the 17th of October, 1781, four 
 years after the disaster of Burgoyne, Cornwallis, on 
 the plains of Yorktown, proposed a surrender to the com- 
 bined armies of France and the United States. The terms 
 were settled upon our part jointly by an American and a 
 French officer, while Washington and La Fayette stood 
 4. 
 
26 
 
 side by side as the British laid down their arms. It was the 
 surrender of Burgoyne that determined the French alliance 
 and the French alliance secured the final triumph. 
 
 It is the story of a hundred years ago. It has been 
 ceaselessly told by sire to son, along this valley and threugh 
 this land. The later attempt of the same foe and the bright 
 day of victory at Plattsburg on the lake, renewed and con- 
 firmed the old hostility. Alienation of feeling between the 
 parent country and the child became traditional, and on 
 both sides of the sea a narrow prejudice survives, and still 
 sometimes seeks to kindle the embers of that wasted fire. 
 But here and now we stand upon the grave of old enmities. 
 Hostile breastwork and redoubt are softly hidden under 
 grass and grain; shot and shell and every deadly missile 
 are long since buried deep beneath our feet, and from 
 the mouldering dust of mingled foemen springs all the 
 varied verdure that makes this scene so fair. While 
 nature tenderly and swiftly repairs the ravages of war, 
 we suffer no hostility to linger in our hearts. Two 
 months ago the British Governor-General of Canada was 
 invited to meet the President of the United States, at 
 Bennington, in happy commemoration not of a British de- 
 feat but of a triumph of English liberty.. So, upon this 
 famous and decisive field, let every unworthy feeling perish ! 
 Here, to the England that we fought, let us now, grown 
 great and strong with a hundred years, hold out the hand 
 of fellowship and peace! Here, where the English Bur- 
 goyne, in the very moment of his bitter humiliation, gen- 
 erously pledged George Washington, let us, in our high 
 hour of triumph, of power, and of hope, pledge the Queen! 
 Here, in the grave of brave and unknown foemen, may 
 mutual jealousies and ‘doubts and animosities lie buried 
 forever! Henceforth, revering their common glorious 
 traditions, may England and America press always forward 
 side by side, in noble and inspiring rivalry to promote the 
 welfare of man! 
 
 Fellow-citizens, with the story of Burgoyne’s sur- 
 render—the revolutionary glory of the State of New 
 York—still fresh in our memories, amid these thousands 
 
27 
 
 of her sons and daughters, whose hearts glow with lofty 
 pride, I am glad that the hallowed spot on which we 
 stand compels us to remember not only the imperial 
 State, but the national commonwealth whose young hands 
 here together struck the blow, and on whose older head de- 
 scends the ample benediction of the victory. On yonder 
 height, a hundred years ago, Virginia lay encamped. Be- 
 yond, and further to the north, watched New Hampshire 
 and Vermont. Here, in the wooded uplands at the south, 
 stood New Jersey and New York, while across the river to 
 the east, Connecticut and Massachusetts, closed the tri- 
 umphant line. Here was the symbol of the Revolution, a 
 common cause, a common strife, a common triumph ; the 
 cause not of a class, but of human nature—the triumph not 
 ofa colony, but of United America. And we who stand here 
 proudly remembering—we who have seen Virginiaand New 
 York—the North and the South—more bitterly hostile than 
 the armies whose battles shook this ground—we who have 
 mutually proved in deadlier conflict the constancy and the 
 courage of all the States, which, proud to be peers, yet 
 own no master but their united selves—we renew our 
 heart’s imperishable devotion to the common American 
 faith, the common American pride, the common American 
 glory! Here Americans stood ani triumphed. ‘Here 
 Americans stand and bless their memory. And here, for a 
 thousand years, may grateful generations of Americans 
 come to rehearse the glorious story, and to rejoice in a 
 supreme and benignant American Nationality ! 
 
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