Various
Beadle's Dime National Speaker, Embodying Gems of Oratory and Wit, Particularly Adapted to American Schools and Firesides
THE SAME
Think, then, of the eminent statesmen whose talents have illustrated and qualities ennobled their age and country. I will not attempt to name them; but who is there among them all who, having the wisdom always to perceive, Lad, at the same time, the sense of duty to carry out, the best interests of the country? Consider, if you please, how Richelieu lived, and how Wolsey died; and tell me, then, if these were such as Washington. I will not equal him with the Scripture patriarchs. It would be wrong so to do. What of mere mortality could equal the firmness of Moses, as he came down from Sinai, his face all glowing from the presence of his God? What could equal the faith of Abraham, as he tracked his lonely pilgrimage through the plains of Shinar, seeking a land that he knew not of? These pictures have a far-off, haze-enveloped, oriental background. They are drawn with the pencil of inspiration, and colored with the hues of heaven. I could not say that they correctly represent Washington in any phase of his character. But I will say that, in duty and in faith, he approached them more nearly than any other hero-statesman of whom I have any knowledge. I would not deal in any exaggeration, but I desire to be just.
Washington may have had ambition, but it was not of that stamp that made the angels fall. He loved popularity, but not to gratify a vulgar vanity. His ambition was for his country's good. He took office to achieve a great end. When that was accomplished, he withdrew gladly to that retirement which was ever grateful to his heart, and which, in all circumstances and conditions in which he might be placed, always stretched out before him, in the future, as the calm and peaceful haven of his hopes. Had he been less a good man, he would not thus have desired retirement, for none but a good man could so love the calm delights of privacy and the pure joys of the domestic circle and the family fireside. Had he been not so much a great one, he would never have left his home.
Strange decree of fate! that in this Western world, but recently known to civilization, and only partially reclaimed from the savages; over which the dull oblivion of unnumbered centuries had not yet ceased to brood; without literature, without polite arts, without settled social organization, without position among nations – that in such a land, almost unknown and utterly uncared for, there should have arisen a man who was destined to equal, in the estimation of the virtuous and the good, all ancient glory and all modern fame.
The verdict of the French philosopher, Guizot, pronounced in view of his whole record, was, that "of all great men he was the most virtuous and the most fortunate – in this world God has no higher favors to bestow;" while the great English orator, jurist, and statesman, Lord Brougham, has declared that "until time shall be no more, will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington."
THE SAME
Had Washington never lived, what would have been the result of our revolutionary struggle? Had he died immediately after the close of the war, what would have been the fate of our governmental experiment? These are speculations which it will never be allowed us, in this life, to solve. As, in the one case, we can not say that the struggle would not ultimately have ended triumphantly, so, in the other, we do not know that our present form of government would not have been successfully established. For myself, I doubt the latter proposition fully as much as the former. Under another man, as first President, the fury of party strife would have been far greater, and sectional discord much stronger. Insurrectionary movements would have been more numerous and difficult of suppression, and foreign jealousy more bold and effective.
Though the ship of state may have ultimately made the port, it is certain that she would have encountered more adverse currents, and been tossed upon more tempestuous seas. The political tempest which was passing over the country at the time of his death, gives some faint idea of what might have been expected, without him, in the earlier and more unsettled state of our institutions. The immortal legacy which, in his "Farewell Address," he gave to the country on his final retirement, has already exhausted eulogy. The patriot heart has often kindled over it in the past, and will do so forever in the future. It will go down to the remotest posterity which shall inhabit this land of liberty, as an inestimable compend of whatever is true in wisdom, holy in patriotism, and far-seeing in statesmanship. Would that its doctrines were not only infused into every mind, but engraved upon every heart! Would that its lesson of "equal laws" involving equal burdens and equal benefits, equal duties and equal protection, and of strict regard for constitutional limitation in all cases, was made the basis of all our political action! Then, indeed, would party feuds and sectional animosities be allayed. A spirit of mutual respect and fraternal concord would fill the land with the fruits of peace, prosperity, and happiness. With all our fertile soil, salubrious climate, skillful industry, and enriching trade, this only is needed to usher in, amid shouts of triumph and songs of rejoicing, the political millennium of our land.
Now, though withdrawn from public position, his controlling sense of duty made Washington still anxious for his country, and ready to render any service which might appear incumbent on him. So, when it seemed that a war with France was inevitable, old man as he was, enshrined as he was in the hearts of his countrymen, with nothing more of fame to attain, and nothing more of glory to covet, from a pure sense of duty, he agreed to take charge of the armies of the nation, and to imperil life, reputation, every thing, for his country's good. The occasion for his services did not arise; but the certainty that it would not was scarcely manifest, when death came to summon him to the "mansions of eternal rest."
It is allowed to few men to carry on a revolution, and to see it successfully terminated in the independence of a nation. Fewer still, perhaps, are permitted to inaugurate a new government, and witness its firm establishment in the freedom of the people. Washington had the singular good fortune to do both, and to die at last at home and in the bosom of his family.
Hero! Patriot! Sage! If there be one title more pure, more lofty, more noble than all others, by that title I would name him. To whom shall we liken him, or with whom shall he be compared? There is the long list of military heroes, in ancient and modern times. Let them pass in solemn procession across the stage, each bearing the light of his past life, like the solemn procession of torch-bearers in the sacred mysteries of Eleusis. Gaze on them as they pass! Great, illustrious, resplendent! There are Alexander and Hannibal, Scylla and Cæsar, Charlemagne and Marlborough, Bonaparte and Wellington. Which one of them all that has not a record marked by some weakness, or marred by some crime? Love of glory, lust of dominion, or greed of gain, is written by the pen of history upon the escutcheon of all.
OUR GREAT INHERITANCE. – John J. Crittenden, 1860
We have the greatest country on the face of the earth. Let not our minds be so distracted by mere party strife and confusion that we shall see our government fall to pieces before our eyes, and sacrifice our country to our party instead of being ready at all times to sacrifice our party to our country. After we become the slave of party, we dare not, in the presence of any danger to the country, turn our backs to our parties, and say that we have a country that demands our services, and to it will we give them. Are we now unable to do this? Have we lost this spirit? has it gone from among us?
Providence has given this great country to us. Our wise and valiant forefathers gave us liberty and established a government for us. Let us take care of it – take care of the Constitution and the Union. That is all we require. We have before us the prospect of a glory unknown to other nations – a prospect in which our land will become the glory of the earth. Neither Rome nor any of the great empires of antiquity or of modern times can compare with what we shall be at no distant day. We are now thirty millions strong, yet we have been but eighty years in existence as a free nation. From the year 1776 down to the present time, God Almighty has blessed us above all other people and all other nations. Where shall we be thirty years hence, if such prosperity attend us? A great nation of one hundred million souls, with not enough then to develop all our resources. Every man free to think, free to speak, free to act, free to work. What must this mighty freedom produce with this mighty concurrence of hearts, of heads, of hands! What navies, what armies, what cities! Let us lift ourselves to the contemplation of what our children will be. Shall we not leave them a legacy as great as that our fathers left us? Let the contemplation of the mighty destinies involved in our Confederacy engage us until we absorb the genius of this Republic and its Constitution. Let it enter into all our motives of public action, that we may no longer be the tools and slaves of parties, of party platforms, and of party conventions.
EULOGIUM ON HENRY CLAY. – Lincoln, 1852
On the 4th day of July, 1776, the people of a few feeble and oppressed colonies of Great Britain, inhabiting a portion of the Atlantic coast of North America, publicly declared their National Independence, and made their appeal to the justice of their cause, and to the God of battles, for the maintenance of that declaration. That people were few in numbers, and without resources, save only their wise heads and stout hearts. Within the first year of that declared independence, and while its maintenance was yet problematic – while the bloody struggle between those resolute rebels and their haughty would-be masters, was still waging, of undistinguished parents, and in an obscure district of one of those colonies, Henry Clay was born. The infant nation and the infant child began the race together. For three-quarters of a century they have traveled hand in hand. They have been companions ever. The nation has passed its peril, and is free, prosperous, and powerful. The child has reached his manhood, his middle age, his old age, and is dead. In all that has concerned the nation the man ever sympathized, and now the nation mourns for the man.
But do we realize that Henry Clay is dead? Who can realize that never again that majestic form shall rise in the council-chamber of his country, to beat back the storms of anarchy which may threaten, or pour the oil of peace upon the troubled billows, as they rage and menace around? Who can realize that the workings of that mighty mind have ceased – that the throbbings of that gallant heart are stilled – that the mighty sweep of that graceful arm will be felt no more, and the magic of that eloquent tongue, which spake as spake no other tongue besides, is hushed – hushed forever? Who can realize that freedom's champion – the champion of a civilized world, and of all tongues and kindred and people, has indeed fallen? Alas! in those dark hours of peril and dread which our land has experienced, and which she may be called to experience again – to whom now may her people look up for that counsel and advice, which only wisdom and experience and patriotism can give, and which only the undoubting confidence of a nation will receive?
But Henry Clay is dead. His long and eventful life is closed. Our country is prosperous and powerful; but could it have been quite all it has been, and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay? Such a man the times have demanded, and such, in the Providence of God, was given us. But although his form is lifeless, his name will live and be loved and venerated in both hemispheres. For it is
"One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die."
OHIO. – Bancroft's Oration at Cleveland, Sept. 10th, 1860
Ohio rises before the world as the majestic witness to beneficent reality of the democratic principle. A commonwealth younger in years than he who addresses you, not long ago having no visible existence but in the emigrant wagons, now numbers almost as large a population as that of all England when it gave birth to Raleigh, and Bacon, and Shakspeare, and began, its continuous attempts at colonizing America. Each one of her inhabitants gladdens in the fruit of his own toil. She possesses wealth that must be computed by thousands of millions; and her frugal, industrious, and benevolent people, at once daring and prudent, unfettered in the use of their faculties, restless in enterprise, do not squander the accumulations of their industry in vain show, but ever go on to render the earth more productive, more beautiful, and more convenient to man; mastering for mechanical purposes the unwasting forces of nature; keeping exemplary good faith with their public creditors; building in half a century more churches than all England has raised since this continent was discovered; endowing and sustaining universities and other seminaries of learning. Conscious of the dynamic power of mind in action as the best of fortresses, Ohio keeps no standing army but that of her school-teachers, of whom she pays more than 20,000; she provides a library for every school-district; she counts among her citizens more than 300,000 men who can bear arms, and she has more than twice that number of children registered as students in her public schools. Here the purity of domestic morals is maintained by the virtue and dignity of woman.
In the heart of the temperate zone of this continent, in the land of the corn, of wheat, and the vine, the eldest daughter of the Ordinance of 1787, already the young mother of other commonwealths, that bid fair to vie with her in beauty, rises in her loveliness and glory, crowned with cities, and challenges the admiration of the world. Hither should come the political skeptic, who, in his despair, is ready to strand the ship of state; for here he may learn how to guide it safely on the waters. Should some modern Telemachus, heir to an island empire, touch these shores, here he may observe the vitality and strength of the principle of popular power; take from the book of experience the lesson that in public affairs great and happy results follow in proportion to faith in the efficacy of that principle, and learn to rebuke ill-advised counselors who pronounce the most momentous and most certain of political truths a delusion and a failure.
OLIVER HAZARD PERRY. – Ibid
This anniversary of the great action of Oliver Hazard Perry is set apart for inaugurating a monument to his fame. Who has not heard how gallantly, forty-seven years ago, the young hero, still weak from a wasting fever, led his squadron to battle? As if shielded by a higher power, he encountered death on his right hand, and death on his left, ever in advance, almost alone for two hours fighting his ship, till it became a wreck, so that but one of its guns could be used any longer, and more than four-fifths of his crew lay around him wounded or killed; then unharmed, standing as beseemed his spirit, he passed in a boat to the uninjured Niagara, unfurled his flag, bore down within pistol-shot of his enemy, poured into them broadsides starboard and broadsides port, and while the sun was still high above the horizon, left no office to be done but that of mercy to the vanquished. If the comparison does not seem fanciful, I will call his conduct during those eventful hours a complete lyric poem, perfect in all its parts. Though he was carried away and raised above himself by the power with which he was possessed, the passion of his inspiration was tempered by the serene self-possession of his faultless courage; his will had the winged rapidity of fiery thought, and yet observed with deliberateness the combinations of harmony and the proportions of measured order.
Nor may you omit due honors to the virtues of the unrecorded dead; not as mourners who require consolation, but with a clear perception of the glory of their end. The debt of nature all must pay. To die, if need be, in defense of the country is a common obligation; it is granted to few to exchange life for a victory so full of benefits to their fellow-men. These are the disinterested, unnamed martyrs, who, without hope, or fame, or gain, gave up their lives in testimony to the all pleading love of country, and left to our statesmen the lesson to demand of others nothing but what is right, and to submit to no wrong.
"We have met the enemy," were Perry's words as he reported the result of the battle. And who was that enemy? A nation speaking another tongue? A state abandoned to the caprices of despotism? A people inimical to human freedom? No! they were the nation from whom most of us sprung, using the same copious language, cherishing after their fashion the love of liberty, enjoying internally the freest government that the world had known before our own. But the external policy of their government has been less controlled by regard for right than their domestic administration; and a series of wanton aggression, upon us, useless to England, condemned by her own statesmen and judges as violations of the law of nature and the law of nations, forced into a conflict two peoples whose common sympathies should never have been disturbed. And is this aggressive system forever to be adventured by her rulers? How long is the overshadowing aristocratic element in her government to stand between the natural affections of kindred nations.
OUR DOMAIN. – Ibid
Even now a British minister, whose past career gave hope of a greater fairness, is renewing the old system of experiments on the possible contingency of the pusillanimity, the indifference, or the ignorance of some future American administration, and disputes our boundary in the Northwest, though the words of the treaty are too plain to be perverted, and though the United States claims no more than the British secretary of state, who offered the treaty, explained as its meaning before it was signed. British soldiers are now encamped on part of our territory which bears the name of Washington. With a moderation that should have commanded respect, the United States waived their better claim to Vancouver, and even to any part of it, thinking it conducive to peace to avoid two jurisdictions on different parts of the same island; and in return for this forbearance the British Minister, yielding perhaps to some selfish clamor of a trading company, as much against British interests as against American rights, reproduces on an American island the inconvenience of divided occupation, which it was the very purpose of the treaty to avoid.
If the hum of the American seaboard is in part the echo of sentiments from abroad, here the unmixed voice of America may be heard, as it pronounces that it is too late to wrest territory from the United States by prevarication, by menace, or by force. From the English dockyards it is a long voyage to San Juan; the only good land route across the continent lies south of Lake Superior; in a few years there will be three Ohios on the shores of the Pacific. It is England's interest as well as duty to give effect to the treaty as it was interpreted by her own minister to ours. Your voices on this memorable day give the instruction to our own Government to abide by the treaty faithfully, on the condition that Britain will do the same; but the treaty must bind neither party or both – must be executed in good faith or canceled. The men who honor the memory of Perry will always know how to defend the domain of their country.
Has any European statesman been miscounting the strength of this nation, by substituting a reminiscence of our feeble confederation for the present efficient and almost perfect organism of the body politic? Has any foreign ruler been so foolish as to listen with credulity to the tales of impending disunion? Every man of the people of Ohio, this great central highway of national travel, will, without one exception, tell the calumniator or the unbeliever that the voices of discontent among us are but the evanescent vapor of men's breath; that our little domestic strifes are no more than momentary disturbances on the surface, easily settled among ourselves; that the love of Union has wound its cords indissolubly round the whole American people.
So, then, our last word shall be for the Union. The Union will guard the fame of its defenders, and ever more protect our entire territory; it will keep alive for mankind, the beacon lights of popular liberty and power; it will dissuade nations in a state of unripeness from attempting to found republican governments before they spring up naturally by an inward law; and its mighty heart will throb with delight at every true advance in any part of the world, toward republican happiness and freedom.