Chapter 5

Though you have done much for the improvement of agricultural implements, your work is far from being completed. It is not a little surprising that we should, to this day, have no reliable rule by which to make a plough, and though the model has been improved, certainly it is yet not unlike, and so far as exact science is concerned, is on a par with that implement as used by the Romans, and as it appeared in ancient architecture; the form, proportion and angular relation of the parts, and the adjustment of the whole to the power to be applied, offer problems alike interesting to the mechanic, and useful to the cultivator. In your ploughing matches sufficient evidence was afforded of the fitness of the implements employed to turn deep and wide furrows; but should we be content with such result as is obtained by trying different models, and then copying one which is found to be good?

Maine was so richly endowed with harbors and forests of ship timber that it was naturally to be expected, as it has fallen out, that the pursuits of navigation would most occupy the attention of her people. But let not her sons look to the period when her forests have disappeared as that beyond which her prosperity may not continue. There are large tracts of land which when labor is no longer directed to lumber, will become, in the hands of the farmer, what the valley of the Kennebec now is. The land may not offer soil so deep as alluvial districts, nor be at first as productive as those on which a deep vegetable mould has accumulated, yet its productiveness may not be less permanent than those. In them the elements which support the farmer’s crop may be exhausted by cultivation or carried down into substrata of gravel or sand. In the remote West to which so many are pressing, the emigrant will encounter an arid climate in which irrigation is necessary to ensure a return for the labor of husbandry, and this involves an original expenditure which it will usually require large capital to bear. In this climate the sun, like a mighty pump, is daily raising the water which the currents of cold air from the mountains, or from the sea, precipitate in the form of genial showers during the period of your growing crops; and the granite of the mountains slowly, but steadily disintegrating, gives up its fertilizing property to be scattered by unseen hands over plain and over valley. With care and with skill in its use I can see no end to the productiveness of that portion of your land which is fit for cultivation.

Your crops, and your mode of tillage are different from that to which I am accustomed, and the result is that each supplies a different segment in the circle of man’s wants. I am glad that it is so, that it must necessarily be so. Glad, because it is an everlasting bond between us; one which, whilst it binds, renders both doubly prosperous. Blessed is our lot in this, that our fathers linked us together, and established free trade between us. In the diversity of climate, and of crops, there is an assurance that entire failure cannot occur. If disaster and blight should fall upon one section, it need not go to a foreign land in search of bread. Famine, gaunt famine, with its skeleton step, can never pass our borders whilst the free trade of the Union continues.

But difference in pursuits, in population, and domestic institutions, have been made the basis of hostile agitation, and urged as a cause of separation. To my mind the reverse would be the rational conclusion. Each exchanging, the surplus of that which it can best produce for the surplus of another which it most requires, the benefit must be mutual, and the advantage common. Here is a commercial, a selfish bond to hold us together. But I will stop here, because the current of my thought is carrying me beyond the limit of topics proper to the occasion, and I must offer as an apology the fact, that though myself a cultivator of the soil, my mind has for several years been given so much to political subjects, that in speaking without having previously arranged what to say, the thought inadvertently runs from the matter I wished to present, into collateral questions of governmental concern. Before turning back, however, into the original channel, permit me to say that the diversity of which I have been speaking, formed no small inducement to the union of the States, and that it has been through that union that we have attained to our present position, and stand to-day, all things considered, the happiest, and among the greatest in the family of nations.

In looking around upon the evidences you have brought of mechanical and agricultural improvement, I have viewed it not with the curiosity of a stranger, but with the interest of one who felt that he had a part in it, as an exhibition of the prosperity of his country. The whole confederacy is my country, and to the innermost fibres of my heart I love it all, and every part. I could not if I would, and would not if I could, dwarf myself to mere sectionality. My first allegiance is to the State of which I am a citizen, and to which by affection and association I am personally bound; but this does not obstruct the perception of your greatness, or admiration for much which I have found admirable among you.

Yankee is a word once applied to you as a term of reproach, but you have made it honorable and renowned. You have borne the flag of your country from the time when it was ridiculed as a piece of striped bunting, until it has come to be known and respected wherever the ray of civilization has reached; and your canvass-winged birds of commerce have borne civilization into regions, where it is not boasting to say, but for your prowess it would not have gone. You have a right to be proud of your achievements as well on the land as the sea. Well may you point as you do with satisfaction, to your school houses and your work-shops, and to the fruits they have borne on the forum and in the council chamber, and in the manufactures which have increased the comforts of our own people, and have encircled the globe to find exchangeable products required at home. Those are the greatest and most beneficent triumphs—the triumph of mind over matter. These are the monuments of greatness, which resist both time and circumstance.

I have spoken of diversity among the people of the United States; yet there is probably greater similitude than is to be found elsewhere over the same extent of country, and in the same number of people. In language, especially, our people are one; surely much more so than those of any other country. The diversity between the people of the different States, even those most remote from each other, is not as great as that between inhabitants of adjoining countries of England, or departments of France or Spain, where provinces have their separate dialects. And chief among the causes for this I would place the primary book, in which children of my day learned their letters, and took their first lessons in spelling and reading. I refer to the good old spelling book of Noah Webster, on which I doubt if there has been any improvement, and which had the singular advantage of being used over the whole country. To this unity of language and general similitude, is to be added a community of sentiment wherever the American is brought into contrast or opposition to any other people.

If shadows float over our disc and threaten an eclipse; if there be those who would not avert, but desire to precipitate catastrophe to the Union, these are not the sentiments of the American heart; they are rather the exceptions and should not disturb our confidence in that deep-seated sentiment of nationality which aided our fathers when they entered into the compact of union, and which has preserved it to us. You manifest that sentiment to-day in the courtesy which you have extended to me. In what other land could a countryman go so far from his home and receive among strangers the attention which could only be expected from friends? But it is not your kindness only, which has caused me here to feel at home; I have been brought in contact with men of my own pursuit, the tillers of the ground and the breeders of stock; and in my intercourse with this class of your citizens, I have been further confirmed in the high estimate heretofore placed upon that portion of our population. Happily for our country and its institutions, extensive territory and favorable climate, have attracted a large part of our population to agricultural pursuits. It is in the individuality, the sobriety, and self reliance of the rural population that I look for the highest development of those qualities essential to self-government, and the brightest illustration of patriotic devotion. They may not be the best informed, but learning and wisdom are by no means equivalent terms. Isolation and entire dependence upon himself; give independence of character and favor that self-inquiry which best enables man to comprehend and measure the motives of his fellow. Crowded together in cities originality is lost, mind becomes as it were acadamized; and though the intercourse is favorable to the acquisition of knowledge, it is most unfriendly to that individuality, independence, and purity, without which republican governments rapidly sink into decay. It was probably in this view that Mr. Jefferson said, great cities were sores upon the body politic. Needful for the purposes of commerce, required for the exchanges on which agricultural and manufacturing industry depend for their prosperity,—they are not evils which we could desire to see abated. My desire, however, is, that the rural districts shall not lose their relative importance or cease to control in public affairs. Misled and deceived they may be, interested in a public wrong they cannot be, and theirs is the sober thought upon which reliance must be placed for the correction of errors and delusions, which may temporarily prevail.

In societies like this the farmers have the opportunity of comparing opinions and results, and thus increasing the amount of their knowledge. The spirit of emulation which is excited must lead to improvement, by better directing energy in their pursuit. The publication of the results and the comparisons thus instituted with what is done in other States, encourages State pride and developes community feeling. Whatever tends to the cultivation of the idea of State sovereignty and community independence, strengthens the foundation on which rests our federal government—the fruition of that principle which led our fathers into the war of the revolution, where they purchased with their blood the rich inheritance transmitted to us.

Man once received the title of Domitor Equi, he being proud of the achievement of taming the horse, and then, so far as we can learn, gentler woman sat like Penelope handling the distaff. Subsequently there arose a race of Amazons, who, aspiring to the feats of man, lost the gentleness of woman; but in our happy land and day, rising above the one without running to the excess of the other, lovely woman, with all the gentle charms which graced a Penelope, musters her energy when occasion requires, and displays her prowess in commanding the horse. Among the interesting features of the exhibition I shall remember the equestrianism of the ladies. Though it was beautiful in every sense of the word, it was not regarded as mere sport, but the rather looked upon as part of that mental and physical training which makes a woman more than the mere ornament of the drawing-room—fits her usefully to act her appropriate part in the trying scenes to which the most favored may be subjected—to become the mother of heroes, and live in the admiration of posterity.

Fears had once been entertained and much opposition was formerly made to an extension of the area of the United States. A wiser policy, however, prevailed, and the introduction of new regions, increasing the variety of our productions, have magnified the advantages of free trade between the States, and made us almost independent of other countries for the supply of every object whether of necessity or of luxury. I would be glad to extend our boundary and make the circle of our products complete, so that, whilst we would encourage commerce with christendom we should be, commercially as we are politically, absolutely independent, whenever it should be proper or necessary to terminate intercourse with any or every other country. A statesman of former days wished that the Atlantic was a sea of fire, that it might be a barrier to shut out European contamination. Whatever fear was once justifiable, no apprehension now need to exist, that our people will imitate or seek to adopt the political theories of Europe. We have recently rejoiced in the success of the attempt to establish telegraphic communication with England; because in closer commercial ties we saw no danger of political influence. I was happy this evening to receive assurances that the success of that enterprise was at last complete. I have not been of those whose doubts were stronger than their hopes—thanks to a sanguine temperament. I have from the beginning anticipated success, and have heretofore said that if the present attempt riled I was sure that Yankee enterprise and skill could make a cable and lay it across the Atlantic. And we look forward to the result with hope, not doubting, that the closest commercial connexion with other countries can only bring to us benefits. We are not, and have not been, political propagandists, yet believing our form of government the best, we properly desire its extension and invite the world to scrutinize our example of representative liberty.

The stars on our flag, recording the number of the States united, have already been more than doubled; and I hopefully look forward to the day when the constellation shall become a galaxy covering the stripes, which record the original number of our political family, and shall shed over the nations of the earth the light of regeneration to mankind. It has sometimes been said to he our manifest destiny that we should possess the whole of this continent. Whether it shall ever all be part of the United States is doubtful, and may never be desirable; but that in some form or other, it should come under the protectorate or control of the United States, is a result which seems to me, in the remote future, certain. It waits as the consequence upon intellectual vigor, upon physical energy, upon the capacity to govern, and can only be defeated by a suicidal madness, of which it does not belong to the occasion to treat.

I would not be understood to advocate what is called fillibustering. Our country has never obtained territory except fairly, honorably and peaceably. We have conquered territory, but have asserted no title as the right of conquest, returning to Mexico all except the part she agreed to sell and for which we paid a liberal price. England having fillibustered around the world, has reproached us for aggrandizement, and we point to history and invite a comparison. There is no stain upon our escutcheon, no smoke upon our garments, and thus may they remain pure forever! The acquisitions of which I spoke, the protectorate which was contemplated, were such as the necessities of the future should demand, and the good of others as much as our own require, and this step by step, faster or slower, will, I believe, finally embrace the continent of America and its adjacent islands.

I am not among those who desire to incorporate into our Union, countries densely populated with a different race. Deserts, ’tis the province of our people to subdue. A mere handful of inhabitants, such as existed in Louisiana, are soon enveloped in the tide of immigration; of this character of acquisition I have no fear; but the mingling of races is a different thing. I have looked with interest and pleasure upon the crosses of your cattle and horses, and saw in it the evidence of improvement. Let your Messengers, your Morgans, your Drews, and your Eatons be mingled with each other and with new inportations; so with your Durhams, Devons, Ayreshires and your Jerseys. The limit to these experiments will be where experience shows deterioration. There is one cross which it is to be hoped you will avoid: ’tis that which your Puritan fathers would not adopt or even entertain. They kept pure the Caucasian blood which flowed in their veins, and therein is the cause of your present high civilization, your progress, your dignity and your strength. We are one, let us remain unmixed. In our neighbors of Southern and Central America we have a sufficient warning; and may it never be our ill-fortune to learn by experience the lessons taught by their example.

It is due to the hospitality and kind consideration with which I have been treated since I first came among you that I should not leave you under any doubt in relation to the accusations which have been busily circulated against me. And this, it is to be hoped, will not be mistaken for egotism, since the greatest interest I have in doing so is to justify you to yourselves. I know of no selfish purpose, unless a proper desire for esteem he such, which would lead me to attempt to undeceive you, so far as any of you may have been imposed upon. I certainly do not expect to change my residence from the State in which I was reared; and I long since avowed the intention never again to receive official trust from any other authority than that of the people of the State of which I am a citizen. It has been represented to you that you were showering attentions upon one who was hostile to your interests, and regardless of your rights. I am grateful to you for the constant evidence you have given that you discredited the statement, and I am therefore the more anxious that you should not remain in doubt. The public record contains all I have said and done, and in it nothing can be found to sustain the statement. Of this I am quite sure, because it has always been with me a principle to exercise public functions in the spirit of the Constitution and the purposes of the Union. If I know myself, I have never given a vote from a feeling of hostility to any portion of our common country; but have always kept in view the common obligation for the common welfare, and desired by maintaining the constitution in each and every particular, to perpetuate the blessings it was designed to secure, and to transmit the inheritance received from our fathers unmutilated and uncontaminated to remotest posterity. In some positions it has devolved upon me to study interests in Maine, with a view to secure for them proper provision, and I feel that I am justified in saying they were considered as became one who had sworn to protect the Constitution, and who had a function to perform in relation to a sovereign State of the Union. Heretofore I have been prompted merely by what I believed to be duty to you from me as an officer under the Constitution. Hereafter, though the principles on which I will act cannot vary, I should be less than a man if I did not feel deeper interest in whatever concerns you. I shall always bear with me most pleasurable recollections of my sojourn among you, and hope it may be my good fortune some day to meet some of you in Mississippi, and thus have it in my power to reciprocate, imperfectly it may be, the kindness which you bestowed upon me. I thank you for your polite attention, and cordially wish for you, one and all, present and future prosperity.

Speech at the Grand Ratification Meeting, Faneuil Hall,

_Monday evening, Oct. 11th, 1858._

Countrymen, Brethren, Democrats—Most happy am I to meet you, and to have received here renewed assurance—of that which I have so long believed—that the pulsation of the democratic heart is the same in every parallel of latitude, on every meridian of longitude throughout the United States. But it required not this to confirm me in a belief so long and so happily enjoyed.—Your own great statesman who has introduced me to this assembly has been too long associated with me, too nearly connected, we have labored too many hours, sometimes even until one day ran into another, in the cause of our country, for me to than to understand that a Massachusetts democrat has a heart comprehending the whole of our wide Union, and that its pulsations always beat for the liberty and happiness of its country. Neither could I be unaware such was the sentiment of the democracy of New England. For it was lay fortune lately to serve under a President drawn from the neighboring, State of New Hampshire, [applause,] and I know that he spoke the language of his heart, for I learned it in tour years of intimate connection with him, when he said he knew “no north, no south, no east, no west, but sacred maintenance of the common bond and true devotion to the common brotherhood.” Never, sir, in the past history of our country, never, I add, in its future destiny, however bright it may be, did or will a man of higher and purer patriotism, a man more devoted to the common weal of his country, hold the helm of our great ship of State, than that same New Englander, Franklin Pierce. [Applause.]

I have heard the resolutions read and approved by this meeting; heard the address of your candidate for Governor; and these added to the address of my old and intimate friend, Gen. Cushing, bear to me fresh testimony, which I shall be happy to carry away with me, that the democracy, in the language of your own glorious Webster, “still lives,” lives not as his great spirit did, when it hung ’twixt life and death, like a star upon the horizon’s verge, but lives like the germ that is shooting upward, like the sapling that is growing to a mighty tree, the branches of which will spread over the commonwealth, and may redeem and restore Massachusetts to her once glorious place in the Union.