America First Part 8

FROM WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS

The appeal for a perpetual union and obedience to established law, the warning against the evils of partisan politics and against the dangers of entangling foreign alliances made by Washington in this immortal address were never more important than at the present time. They will become more important for each succeeding generation. Let those who would know America's mission make a careful study of this the greatest of state papers.

The unity of government which const.i.tutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that from different causes and from different quarters much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth, as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.

With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together. The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts, of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.

But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole.

The _North_, in an unrestrained intercourse with the _South_, protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The _South_, in the same intercourse, benefiting by the same agency of the _North_, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the _North_, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; and while it contributes in different ways to nourish and increase the general ma.s.s of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength to which itself is unequally adapted. The _East_, in a like intercourse with the _West_, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water will more and more find, a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad or manufactures at home. The _West_ derives from the _East_ supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the _secure_ enjoyment of indispensable _outlets_ for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as _one nation_. Any other tenure by which the _West_ can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.

While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united ma.s.s of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations, and what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.

These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.

To the efficacy and permanency of your union a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate subst.i.tute. They must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced.

Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay by the adoption of a const.i.tution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their const.i.tutions of government. But the const.i.tution which at any time exists till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and a.s.sociations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the const.i.tuted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community, and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans, digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or a.s.sociations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct. And can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that in the course of time and things the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it?

Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which enn.o.bles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?

In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and pa.s.sionate attachments for others should be excluded, and that in place of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur.

Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and b.l.o.o.d.y contests.

The nation prompted by ill will and resentment sometimes impels to war the government contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes partic.i.p.ates in the national propensity, and adopts through pa.s.sion what reason would reject. At other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility, instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has been the victim.

So, likewise, a pa.s.sionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a partic.i.p.ation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld; and it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity, gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak toward a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter. Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be _constantly_ awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial, else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests.

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little _political_ connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an att.i.tude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?

WASHINGTON

Address by John W. Daniel, lawyer, statesman, United States senator from Virginia, delivered in the hall of the House of Representatives, Washington, D. C., at the dedication of the Washington National Monument, February 21, 1885, Mr. Daniel being then a member of the House from Virginia. He was introduced by Senator George F. Edmunds, of Vermont, president pro tempore of the Senate, who occupied the speaker's chair, and presided at the dedicatory exercises.

MR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, SENATORS, REPRESENTATIVES, JUDGES, MR. CHAIRMAN, AND MY COUNTRYMEN:--Alone in its grandeur stands forth the character of Washington in history; alone like some peak that has no fellow in the mountain range of greatness.

"Washington," says Guizot, "Washington did the two greatest things which in politics it is permitted to man to attempt. He maintained by peace the independence of his country, which he had conquered by war. He founded a free government in the name of principles of order and by re-establishing their sway."

Washington did indeed do these things. But he did more. Out of disconnected fragments he molded a whole and made it a country. He achieved his country's independence by the sword. He maintained that independence by peace as by war. He finally established both his country and its freedom in an enduring frame of const.i.tutional government, fashioned to make Liberty and Union one and inseparable. These four things together const.i.tute the unexampled achievement of Washington.

The world has ratified the profound remark of Fisher Ames, that "he changed mankind's ideas of political greatness." It has approved the opinion of Edward Everett, that he was "the greatest of good men and the best of great men." It has felt for him, with Erskine, "an awful reverence." It has attested the declaration of Brougham, that "he was the greatest man of his own or of any age." It is matter of fact to-day, as when General Hamilton, announcing his death to the army, said, "The voice of praise would in vain endeavor to exalt a name unrivaled in the lists of true glory." America still proclaims him, as did Colonel Henry Lee, on the floor of the House of Representatives, the man "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." And from beyond the sea the voice of Alfieri, breathing the soul of all lands and peoples, still p.r.o.nounces the blessing, "Happy are you who have for the sublime and permanent basis of your glory the love of country demonstrated by deeds."

Ye who have unrolled the scrolls that tell the tale of the rise and fall of nations, before whose eyes has moved the panorama of man's struggles, achievements, and progression, find you anywhere the story of one whose life work is more than a fragment of that which in his life is set before you? Conquerors, who have stretched your scepters over boundless territories; founders of empire, who have held your dominions in reign of law; reformers, who have cried aloud in the wilderness of oppression; teachers, who have striven with reason to cast down false doctrine, heresy and schism; statesmen, whose brains have throbbed with mighty plans for the amelioration of human society; scar-crowned Vikings of the sea, ill.u.s.trious heroes of the land, who have borne the standards of siege and battle--come forth in bright array from your glorious fanes--and would ye be measured by the measure of his stature? Behold you not in him a more ill.u.s.trious and more venerable presence?

Statesman, Soldier, Patriot, Sage, Reformer of Creeds, Teacher of Truth and Justice, Achiever and Preserver of Liberty--the First of Men--Founder and Savior of his Country, Father of his People--this is he, solitary and unapproachable in his grandeur. Oh! felicitous Providence that gave to America OUR WASHINGTON!

High soars into the sky to-day--higher than the Pyramids or the dome of St. Paul's or St. Peter's--the loftiest and most imposing structure that man has ever reared--high soars into the sky to where

"Earth highest yearns to meet a star,"

the monument which "We the people of the United States" have erected to his memory. It is a fitting monument, more fitting than any statue. For his image could only display him in some one phase of his varied character--as the Commander, the Statesman, the Planter of Mount Vernon, or the Chief Magistrate of his Country. So art has fitly typified his exalted life in yon plain lofty shaft. Such is his greatness, that only by a symbol could it be represented. As Justice must be blind in order to be whole in contemplation, so History must be silent, that by this mighty sign she may unfold the amplitude of her story.

In 1657, while yet "a Cromwell filled the Stuarts' throne," there came to Virginia with a party of Carlists who had rebelled against him John Washington, of Yorkshire, England, who became a magistrate and member of the House of Burgesses, and distinguished himself in Indian warfare as the first colonel of his family on this side of the water. He was the nephew of that Sir Henry Washington who had led the forlorn hope of Prince Rupert at Bristol in 1643, and who, with a starving and mutinous garrison, had defended Worcester in 1649, answering all calls for surrender that he "awaited His Majesty's commands."

And his progenitors had for centuries, running back to the conquest, been men of mark and fair renown. Pride and modesty of individuality alike forbid the seeking from any source of a borrowed l.u.s.tre, and the Washingtons were never studious or pretentious of ancestral dignities.

But "we are quotations from our ancestors," says the philosopher of Concord--and who will say that in the loyalty to conscience and to principle, and to the right of self-determination of what is principle, that the Washingtons have ever shown, whether as loyalist or rebel, was not the germ of that deathless devotion to liberty and country which soon discarded all ancient forms in the mighty stroke for independence?

One hundred and fifty-three years ago, on the banks of the Potomac, in the county of Westmoreland, on a spot marked now only by a memorial stone, of the blood of the people whom I have faintly described, fourth in descent from the Colonel John Washington whom I have named, there was born a son to Augustine and Mary Washington. And not many miles above his birthplace is the dwelling where he lived, and near which he now lies buried.

Borne upon the bosom of that river which here mirrors Capitol dome and monumental shaft in its seaward flow, the river itself seems to reverse its current and bear us silently into the past. Scarce has the vista of the city faded from our gaze when we behold on the woodland height that swells above the waters--amidst walks and groves and gardens--the white porch of that old colonial plantation home which has become the shrine of many a pilgrimage. Contrasting it as there it stands to-day with the marble halls which we have left behind us, we realize the truth of Emerson: "The atmosphere of moral sentiment is a region of grandeur which reduces all material magnificence to toys, yet opens to every wretch that has reason the doors of the Universe."

The quaint old wooden mansion, with the stately but simple old-fashioned mahogany furniture, real and ungarnished; the swords and relics of campaigns and scenes familiar to every schoolboy now; the key of the Bastile hanging in the hall incased in gla.s.s, calling to mind Tom Paine's happy expression, "That the principles of the American Revolution opened the Bastile is not to be doubted, therefore the key comes to the right place;" the black velvet coat worn when the farewell address to the Army was made; the rooms all in nicety of preparation as if expectant of the coming host--we move among these memorials of days and men long vanished--we stand under the great trees and watch the solemn river, in its never-ceasing flow, we gaze upon the simple tomb whose silence is unbroken save by the low murmur of the waters or the wild bird's note, and we are enveloped in an atmosphere of moral grandeur which no pageantry of moving men nor splendid pile can generate. Nightly on the plain of Marathon--the Greeks have the tradition--there may yet be heard the neighing of chargers and the rushing shadows of spectral war. In the spell that broods over the sacred groves of Vernon, Patriotism, Honor, Courage, Justice, Virtue, Truth seem bodied forth, the only imperishable realities of man's being.

There emerges from the shades the figure of a youth over whose cradle had hovered no star of destiny, nor dandled a royal crown--an ingenious youth, and one who in his early days gave auguries of great powers. The boy whose strong arm could fling a stone across the Rappahannock; whose strong will could tame the most fiery horse; whose just spirit made him the umpire of his fellows; whose obedient heart bowed to a mother's yearning for her son and laid down the midshipman's warrant in the British Navy which answered his first ambitious dream; the student transcribing mathematical problems, accounts, and business forms, or listening to the soldiers and seamen of vessels in the river as they tell of "hair-breadth 'scapes by flood and field;" the early moralist in his thirteenth year compiling matured "Rules for behavior and conversation;" the surveyor of sixteen, exploring the wilderness for Lord Fairfax, sleeping on the ground, climbing mountains, swimming rivers, killing and cooking his own game, noting in his diary soils, minerals, and locations, and making maps which are models of nice and accurate draughtsmanship; the incipient soldier, studying tactics under Adjutant Muse, and taking lessons in broadsword fence from the old soldier of fortune, Jacob Van Braam; the major and adjutant-general of the Virginia frontier forces at nineteen:--we seem to see him yet as here he stood, a model of manly beauty in his youthful prime, a man in all that makes a man ere manhood's years have been fulfilled, standing on the threshold of a grand career, "hearing his days before him and the trumpet of his life."

The scene changes. Out into the world of stern adventure he pa.s.ses, taking as naturally to the field and the frontier as the eagle to the air. At the age of twenty-one he is riding from Williamsburg to the French post at Venango, in Western Pennsylvania, on a mission for Governor Dinwiddie, which requires "courage to cope with savages and sagacity to negotiate with white men"--on that mission which Edward Everett recognizes as "the first movement of a military nature which resulted in the establishment of American Independence." At twenty-two he has fleshed his maiden sword, has heard the bullets whistle, and found "something charming in the sound;" and soon he is colonel of the Virginia regiment in the unfortunate affair at Fort Necessity, and is compelled to retreat after losing a sixth of his command. He quits the service on a point of military etiquette and honor, but at twenty-three he reappears as volunteer aide by the side of Braddock in the ill-starred expedition against Fort Duquesne, and is the only mounted officer unscathed in the disaster, escaping with four bullets through his garments, and after having two horses shot under him.

The prophetic eye of Samuel Davies has now pointed him out as "that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I can but hope Providence has. .h.i.therto preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country;" and soon the prophecy is fulfilled. The same year he is in command of the Virginia frontier forces. Arduous conflicts of varied fortunes are ere long ended, and on the 25th of November, 1759, he marches into the reduced fortress of Fort Duquesne--where Pittsburgh now stands, and the t.i.tans of Industry wage the eternal war of Toil--marches in with the advanced guard of his troops, and plants the British flag over its smoking ruins.

That self-same year Wolfe, another young and brilliant soldier of Britain, has scaled and triumphed on the Heights of Abraham--his flame of valor quenched as it lit the blaze of victory; Canada surrenders; the Seven Years' War is done; the French power in America is broken, and the vast region west of the Alleghenies, from the lakes to the Ohio, embracing its valley and tributary streams, is under the scepter of King George. America has been made whole to the English-speaking race, to become in time the greater Britain.

Thus, building wiser than he knew, Washington had taken no small part in cherishing the seed of a nascent nation.