Chapter 4

To the question, "What have the People ever gained but by Revolution?" I answer, boldly, If by revolution be understood the law of the sword, Liberty has lost far more than she ever gained by it. The sword was the destroyer of the Lycian Confederacy and the Achæan League. The sword alternately enslaved and disenthralled Thebes and Athens, Sparta, Syracuse, and Corinth. The sword of Rome conquered every other free State, and finished the murder of Liberty in the ancient world, by destroying herself. What but the sword, in modern times, annihilated the Republics of Italy, the Hanseatic Towns, and the primitive independence of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland? What but the sword partitioned Poland, assassinated the rising liberty of Spain, banished the Huguenots from France, and made Cromwell the master, not the servant, of the People? And what but the sword of Republican France destroyed the independence of half of Europe, deluged the continent with tears, devoured its millions upon millions, and closed the long catalogue of guilt, by founding and defending to the last, the most powerful, selfish, and insatiable of military despotisms?

The sword, indeed, delivered Greece from the Persian invader, expelled the Tarquins from Rome, emancipated Switzerland and Holland, restored the Prince to his throne, and brought Charles to the scaffold. And the sword redeemed the pledge of the Congress of '76 when they plighted to each other "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." And yet, what would the redemption of that pledge have availed towards the establishment of our present government, if the spirit of American institutions had not been both the birthright and the birth-blessing of the Colonies? The Indians, the French, the Spaniards, and even England herself, warred in vain against a people, born and bred in the household, at the domestic altar of Liberty herself They had never been slaves, for they were born free. The sword was a herald to proclaim their freedom, but it neither created nor preserved it. A century and a half had already beheld them free in infancy, free in youth, free in early manhood. Theirs was already the spirit of American institutions; the spirit of Christian freedom of a temperate, regulated freedom, of a rational civil obedience. For such a people the sword, the law of violence, did and could do nothing but sever the bonds which bound her colonial wards to their unnatural guardian. They redeemed their pledge, sword in hand; but the sword left them as it found them, unchanged in character, freemen in thought and in deed, instinct with the immortal spirit of American institutions. T. S Grimké.

VI.

DUTY OF LITERARY MEN TO THEIR COUNTRY.

We cannot honor our country with too deep a reverence; we cannot love her with an affection too pure and fervent; we cannot serve her with an energy of purpose or a faithfulness of zeal too steadfast and ardent. And what is our country? It is not the East, with her hills and her valleys, with her countless sails and the rocky ramparts of her shores. It is not the North, with her thousand villages, and her harvest-home, with her frontiers of the lake and the ocean. It is not the West, with her forrest-sea and her inland-isles, with her luxuriant expanses, clothed in the verdant corn, with her beautiful Ohio and her majestic Missouri. Nor is it yet the South, opulent in the mimic snow of the cotton, in the rich plantations of the rustling cane, and in the golden robes of the rice-field. What are these but the sister families of one greater, better, holier family,--our country?

I come not here to speak the dialect, or to give the counsels of the patriot-statesman. But I come, a patriot scholar, to vindicate the rights and to plead for the interests of American Literature. And be assured, that we cannot, as patriot-scholars, think too highly of that country, or sacrifice too much for her. And let us never forget, let us rather remember with a religious awe,--that the union of these States is indispensable to our literature, as it is to our national independence and civil liberties,--to our prosperity, happiness, and improvement.

If, indeed, we desire to behold a literature like that which has sculptured with so much energy of expression, which has painted so faithfully and vividly, the crimes, the vices, the follies of ancient and modern Europe;--if we desire that our land should furnish for the orator and the novelist, for the painter and the poet, age after age, the wild and romantic scenery of war; the glittering march of armies, and the revelry of the camp; the shrieks and blasphemies, and all the horrors of the battle-field; the desolation of the harvest, and the burning cottage; the storm, the sack, and the ruin of cities;--if we desire to unchain the furious passions of jealousy and selfishness, of hatred, revenge, and ambition, those lions that now sleep harmless in their den;--if we desire that the lake, the river, the ocean, should blush with the blood of brothers; that the winds should waft from the land to the sea, from the sea to the land, the roar and the smoke of battle, that the very mountain-tops should become altars for the sacrifice of brothers;--if we desire that these, and such as these,--the elements, to an incredible extent, of the literature of the Old World,--should be the elements of our literature; then, but then only, let us hurl from its pedestal the majestic statue of our Union, and scatter its fragments over all our land.

But, if we covet for our country the noblest, purest, loveliest literature the world has ever seen,--such a literature as shall honor God, and bless mankind,--a literature, whose smiles might play upon an angel's face, whose tears "would not stain an angel's cheek,"--then let us cling to the Union of these State's with a patriot's love, with a scholar's enthusiasm, with a Christian's hope.

In her heavenly character, as a holocaust self-sacrificed to God; at the height of her glory, as the ornament of a free, educated, peaceful Christian people, American Literature will find that THE INTELLECTUAL SPIRIT IS HER VERY TREE OF LIFE, AND THE UNION HER GARDEN OF PARADISE. T. S. Grimké.

VII.

AMERICA'S OBLIGATIONS TO ENGLAND.

The honorable member has asked--"And now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence and protected by our arms,--will they grudge to attribute their mite?" They planted by your care! No; your oppressions planted them in America! They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable; and, among others, to the cruelties of a savage foe the most subtle, and I will take upon me to say the most formidable, of any people upon the face of the earth; and yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty our American brethren met all the hardships with pleasure, compared with those they steered in their own country from the hands of those that should have been their friends.

They nourished by your indulgence! They grew by your neglect of them! As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them, in one department and another, who were, perhaps, the deputies of deputies to some members of this House, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them;--men whose behavior, on many occasions, has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice,--some who, to my knowledge, were glad by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a court of justice in their own.

They protected by your arms! They have nobly taken up arms in your defence;--have exerted a valor, amid their constant and laborious industry, for the defence of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And, believe me,--remember I this day told you so,--that same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first will accompany them still; but prudence forbids me to explain myself further.

Heaven knows I do not at this time speak from motives of party heat. What I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart. However superior to me, in general knowledge and experience, the respectable body of this House may be, yet I claim to know more of America than most of you, having seen that country and been conversant with its affairs. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has; but they are a people jealous of their liberties, and who, if those liberties should ever be violated, will vindicate them to the last drop of their blood. Isaac Barré.

VIII.

WEBSTER'S PLEA FOR DARTMOUTH COLLEGE.

The Supreme Court of the United States held its session that winter in a mean apartment of moderate size--the Capitol not having been built after its destruction in 1814. The audience, when the case came on, was therefore small, consisting chiefly of legal men, the élite of the profession throughout the country. Mr. Webster entered upon his argument in the calm tone of easy and dignified conversation. His matter was so completely at his command that he scarcely looked at his brief, but went on for more than four hours with a statement so luminous, and a chain of reasoning so easy to be understood, and yet approaching so nearly to absolute demonstration, that he seemed to carry with him every man of his audience without the slightest effort or weariness on either side. It was hardly eloquence, in the strict sense of the term; it was pure reason. Now and then, for a sentence or two, his eye flashed and his voice swelled into a bolder note, as he uttered some emphatic thought; but he instantly fell back into the tone of earnest conversation, which ran throughout the great body of his speech.

The argument ended. Mr. Webster stood for some moments silent before the court, while every eye was fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing the chief justice, Marshall, he proceeded thus:--

"This, Sir, is my case! It is the case, not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every college in our land. It is more. It is the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout the country,--of all those great charities founded by the piety of our ancestors to alleviate human misery; and scatter blessings along the pathway of life. It is more! It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has property of which he may be stripped; for the question is simply this: Shall our State legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own, to turn it from its original use, and apply it to such ends or purposes as they, in their discretion, shall see fit?

"Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But if you do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish one after another, all those great lights of science which, for more than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land!

"It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet, there are those who love it----."

Here the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down, broke forth. His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion; his eyes were filled with tears, his voice choked, and he seemed struggling to the utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling. I will not attempt to give you the few broken words of tenderness in which he went on to speak of his attachment to the college. The whole seemed to be mingled throughout with the recollections of father, mother, brother, and all the trials and privations through which he had made his way into life. Every one saw that it was wholly unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, which sought relief in words and tears.

The court-room during these two or three minutes presented an extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall and gaunt figure, bent over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his cheek expanded with emotion, and eyes suffused with tears. Mr. Justice Washington at his side,--with his small and emaciated frame, and countenance more like marble than I ever saw on any other human being,--leaning forward with an eager, troubled look; and the remainder of the court, at the two extremities, pressing, as it were, toward a single point, while the audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath the bench to catch each look and every movement of the speaker's face. If a painter could give us the scene on canvas,--those forms and countenances, and Daniel Webster as he then stood in the midst,--it would be one of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence. One thing it taught me, that the pathetic depends not merely on the words uttered, but still more on the estimate we put upon him who utters them. There was not one among the strong-minded men of that assembly who could think it unmanly to weep, when he saw standing before him the man who had made such an argument, melted into the tenderness of a child.

Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and fixing his keen eye on the Chief Justice, said in that deep tone with which he sometimes thrilled the heart of an audience,--

"Sir, I know not how others feel, (glancing at the opponents of the college before him,) but, for myself when I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like Caesar in the senate-house, by those who are reiterating stab upon stab, I would not, for my right hand, have her turn to me, and say Et tu quoque, mi fili! And thou, too, my son!"

He sat down. There was a deathlike stillness throughout the room for some moments; every one seemed to be slowly recovering himself and coming gradually back to his ordinary range of thought and feeling. C. A. Goodrich.

IX.

THE FOUNDERS OF BOSTON.

On this occasion, it is proper to speak of the founders of Our city, and of their glory. Now in its true acceptation, the term glory expresses the splendor which emanates from virtue, in the act of producing general and permanent good. Right conceptions, then, of the glory of our ancestors, are to be obtained only by analyzing their virtues. These virtues, indeed, are not seen charactered in breathing bronze, or in living marble. Our ancestors have left no Corinthian temples on our hills, no Gothic cathedrals on our plains, no proud pyramid, no storied obelisk, in our cities. But mind is there. Sagacious enterprise is there. An active, vigorous, intelligent, moral population throng our cities, and predominate in our fields;--men, patient of labor, submissive to law, respectful to authority, regardful of right, faithful to liberty. These are the monuments of our ancestors. They stand immutable and immortal, in the social, moral, and intellectual condition of their descendants. They exist in the spirit which their precepts instilled, and their example implanted.

It was to this spot, during twelve successive years, that the real body of those just settlers emigrated. In this place, they either fixed permanently their abode, or took their departure from it, for the coast or the interior. Whatever honor devolves on this metropolis, from the events connected with its first settlement, is not solitary or exclusive; it is shared with Massachusetts; with New England; in some sense, with the whole United States. For what part of this wide empire, be it sea or shore, lake or river, mountain or valley, have the descendants of the first settlers of New England not traversed; what depth of forest not penetrated? what danger of nature or man not defied? Where is the cultivated field, in redeeming which from the wilderness, their vigor has not been displayed? Where, amid unsubdued nature, by the side of the first log-hut of the settler, does the school-house stand, and the church-spire rise, unless the sons of New England are there? Where does improvement advance, under the active energy of willing hearts and ready hands, prostrating the moss-covered monarch of the wood, and from their ashes, amid their charred roots, bidding the green sward and the waving harvest to unspring, and the spirit of the fathers of New England is not seen, hovering and shedding around the benign influences of sound, social, moral, and religious institutions, stronger and more enduring than knotted oak or tempered steel? The swelling tide of their descendants has spread upon our coasts, ascended our rivers, taken possession of our plains. Already it encircles our lakes. At this hour, the rushing noise of the advancing wave startles the wild beast in his lair among the prairies of the West. Soon it shall be seen climbing the Rocky Mountains, and, as it dashes over their cliffs, shall be hailed by the dwellers on the Pacific, as the harbinger of the coming blessings of safety, liberty, and truth. Pres. Quincy.

X.

THE AMERICAN SAILOR.

Look to your history--that part of it which the world knows by heart,--and you will find on its brightest page the glorious achievements of the American sailor. Whatever his country has done to disgrace him, and break his spirit, he has never disgraced her;--he has always been ready to serve her; he always has served her faithfully and effectually. He has often been weighed in the balance, and never found wanting. The only fault ever found with him is, that he sometimes fights ahead of his orders. The world has no match for him, man for man; and he asks no odds, and he cares for no odds, when the cause of humanity or the glory of his country calls him to fight.

Who, in the darkest days of our Revolution, carried your flag into the very chops of the British Channel, bearded the lion in his den, and woke the echoes of old Albion's hills by the thunders of his cannon, and the shouts of his triumph? It was the American sailor. And the names of John Paul Jones, and the Bon Homme Richard, will go down the annals of time forever. Who struck the first blow that humbled the Barbary flag--which, for a hundred years, had been the terror of Christendom,--drove it from the Mediterranean, and put an end to the infamous tribute it had been accustomed to extort? It was the American sailor, and the name of Decatur and his gallant companions will be as lasting as monumental brass.

In the year 1812, when your arms on shore were covered by disaster,--when Winchester had been defeated, when the army of the Northwest had surrendered, and when the feeling of despondency hung like a cloud over the land,--who first relit the fires of national glory, and made the welkin ring with the shouts of victory? It was the American sailor. And the names of Hull and the Constitution will be remembered as long as we have left anything worth remembering.

The wand of British invincibility was broken when the flag of the Guerrière came down. That one event was worth more to the Republic than all the money which has ever been expended for the navy. Since that day the navy has had no stain upon its escutcheon, but has been cherished as your pride and glory. And the American sailor has established a reputation throughout the world,--in peace and in war, in storm and in battle,--for heroism and prowess unsurpassed. He shrinks from no danger, he dreads no foe, he yields to no superior. No shoals are too dangerous, no seas too boisterous, no climate too rigorous for him. The burning sun of the tropic cannot make him effeminate, nor can the eternal winter of the polar seas paralyze his energies. R. F. Stockton.

XI.

MORALITY, THE FOUNDATION OF NATIONAL GREATNESS.

When we look forward to the probable growth of this country; when we think of the millions of human beings who are to spread over our present territory; of the career of improvement and glory open to this new people; of the impulse which free institutions, if prosperous, may be expected to give to philosophy, religion, science, literature, and arts; of the vast field in which the experiment is to be made, of what the unfettered powers of man may achieve; of the bright page of history which our fathers have filled, and of the advantages under which their toils and virtues have placed us for carrying on their work;--when we think of all this, can we help, for a moment, surrendering ourselves to bright visions of our country's glory before which all the glories of the past are to fade away?

Is it presumption to say that, if just to ourselves and all nations, we shall be felt through this whole continent, that we shall spread our language, institutions, and civilization, through a wider space than any nation has yet filled with a like beneficent influence? And are we prepared to barter these hopes, this sublime moral empire, for conquests by force? Are we prepared to sink to the level of unprincipled nations, to content ourselves with a vulgar, guilty greatness, to adopt in our youth maxims and ends which must brand our future with sordidness, aggression, and shame? This country cannot, without peculiar infamy, run the common race of national rapacity. Our origin, institutions, and position are peculiar, and all favor an upright honorable course.

Why cannot we rise to noble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel, that our work as a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a noble form of human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember, that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders; and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us, will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this new world? I am not prophet enough to read our fate. I believe, indeed, that we are to make our futurity for ourselves. I believe, that a nation's destiny lies in its character, in the principles which govern its policy, and bear rule in the hearts of its citizens. I take my stand on God's moral and eternal law. A nation, renouncing and defying this, cannot be free, cannot be great. W. E. Channing.

XII.

INTEMPERANCE.

Among the evils of intemperance, much importance is given to the poverty of which it is the cause. But this evil, great as it is, is yet light, in comparison with the essential evil of intemperance. What matters it, that a man be poor, if he carry into his poverty the spirit, energy, reason, and virtues of a man? What matters it, that a man must, for a few years, live on bread and water? How many of the richest are reduced, by disease, to a worse condition than this? Honest, virtuous, noble-minded poverty, is comparatively a light evil. The ancient philosopher chose it, as a condition of virtue. It has been the lot of many a Christian.

The poverty of the intemperate man owes its great misery to its cause. He who makes himself a beggar, by having made himself a brute, is miserable indeed. He who has no solace, who has only agonizing recollections and harrowing remorse, as he looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his ragged children, has indeed to bear a crushing weight of woe. That he suffers, is a light thing. That he has brought on himself this suffering by the voluntary extinction of his reason, that is the terrible thought, the intolerable curse.