America First Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration: WASHINGTON AT MOUNT VERNON]

Mount Vernon welcomes back the soldier of twenty-seven, who has become a name. Domestic felicity spreads its charms around him with the "agreeable partner" whom he has taken to his bosom, and he dreams of "more happiness than he has experienced in the wide and bustling world."

Already, ere his sword had found its scabbard, the people of Frederick county had made him their member of the House of Burgesses. And the quiet years roll by as the planter, merchant, and representative superintends his plantation, ships his crops, posts his books, keeps his diary, chases the fox for amus.e.m.e.nt, or rides over to Annapolis and leads the dance at the Maryland capital--alternating between these private pursuits and serving his people as member of the Legislature and justice of the county court.

But ere long this happy life is broken. The air is electric with the currents of revolution. England has launched forth on the fatal policy of taxing her colonies without their consent. The spirit of liberty and resistance is aroused. He is loth to part with the Mother Land, which he still calls "home." But she turns a deaf ear to reason. The first Colonial Congress is called. He is a delegate, and rides to Philadelphia with Henry and Pendleton. The blow at Lexington is struck. The people rush to arms. The sons of the Cavaliers spring to the side of the sons of the Pilgrims. "Unhappy it is," he says, "that a brother's sword has been sheathed in a brother's breast, and that the once happy plains of America are to be either drenched in blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But how can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?" He becomes Commander-in-Chief of the American forces. After seven years'

war he is the deliverer of his country. The old Confederation pa.s.ses away. The Const.i.tution is established. He is twice chosen President, and will not consent longer to serve.

Once again Mount Vernon's grateful shades receive him, and there--the world-crowned Hero now--he becomes again the simple citizen, wishing for his fellow men "to see the whole world in peace and its inhabitants one band of brothers, striving who could contribute most to the happiness of mankind"--without a wish for himself, but "to live and die an honest man on his farm." A speck of war spots the sky. John Adams, now president, calls him forth as lieutenant-general and commander-in-chief to lead America once more. But the cloud vanishes. Peace reigns. The lark sings at Heaven's gate in the fair morn of the new nation. Serene, contented, yet in the strength of manhood, though on the verge of threescore years and ten, he looks forth--the quiet farmer from his pleasant fields, the loving patriarch from the bowers of home--looks forth and sees the work of his hands established in a free and happy people. Suddenly comes the mortal stroke with severe cold. The agony is soon over. He feels his own dying pulse--the hand relaxes--he murmurs, "It is well;" and Washington is no more.

Washington, the friend of Liberty, is no more!

The solemn cry filled the universe. Amidst the tears of his people, the bowed heads of kings, and the lamentations of the nations, they laid him there to rest upon the banks of the river whose murmurs were his boyhood's music--that river which, rising in mountain fastnesses amongst the grandest works of nature and reflecting in its course the proudest works of man, is a symbol of his history, which in its ceaseless and ever-widening flow is a symbol of his eternal fame.

No sum could now be made of Washington's character that did not exhaust language of its tributes and repeat virtues by all her names. No sum could be made of his achievements that did not unfold the history of his country and its inst.i.tutions--the history of his age and its progress--the history of man and his destiny to be free. But whether character or achievement be regarded, the riches before us only expose the poverty of praise. So clear was he in his great office that no ideal of the Leader or the Ruler can be formed that does not shrink by the side of the reality. And so has he impressed himself upon the minds of men, that no man can justly aspire to be the chief of a great free people who does not adopt his principles and emulate his example. We look with amazement on such eccentric characters as Alexander, Caesar, Cromwell, Frederick, and Napoleon; but when the serene face of Washington rises before us mankind instinctively exclaims, "This is the Man for the nations to trust and reverence and for heroes and rulers to copy."

Disinterested patriot, he would receive no pay for his military services. Refusing gifts, he was glad to guide the benefaction of a grateful state to educate the children of his fallen braves in the inst.i.tution at Lexington which yet bears his name. Without any of the blemishes that mark the tyrant, he appealed so loftily to the virtuous elements in man that he almost created the qualities of which his country needed the exercise; and yet he was so magnanimous and forbearing to the weaknesses of others, that he often obliterated the vices of which he feared the consequence. But his virtue was more than this. It was of that daring, intrepid kind that, seizing principle with a giant's grasp, a.s.sumes responsibility at any hazard, suffers sacrifice without pretense of martyrdom, bears calumny without reply, imposes superior will and understanding on all around it, capitulates to no unworthy triumph, but must carry all things at the point of clear and blameless conscience. Scorning all manner of meanness and cowardice, his bursts of wrath at their exhibition heighten our admiration for those n.o.ble pa.s.sions which were kindled by the inspirations and exigencies of virtue.

Great in action as by the council board, the finest horseman and knightliest figure of his time, he seemed designed by nature to lead in those bold strokes which needs must come when the battle lies with a single man--those critical moments of the campaign or the strife when, if the mind hesitates or a nerve flinches, all is lost. We can never forget the pa.s.sage of the Delaware that black December night, amidst shrieking winds and great upheaving blocks of ice which would have petrified a leader of less hardy mold, and then the fell swoop at Trenton. We behold him as when at Monmouth he turns back the retreating lines, and galloping his white charger along the ranks until he falls, leaps on his Arabian bay, and shouts to his men: "Stand fast, my boys, the Southern troops are coming to support you!" And we hear Lafayette exclaim, "Never did I behold so superb a man!" We see him again at Princeton dashing through a storm of shot to rally the wavering troops; he reins his horse between the contending lines, and cries: "Will you leave your general to the foe?" then bolts into the thickest fray.

Colonel Fitzgerald, his aid, drops his reins and pulls his hat down over his eyes that he may not see his chieftain fall, when, through the smoke he reappears waving his hat, cheering on his men, and shouting: "Away, dear Colonel, and bring up the troops; the day is ours." "Coeur de Lion" might have doffed his plume to such a chief, for a great knight was he, who met his foes full tilt in the shock of battle and hurled them down with an arm whose sword flamed with righteous indignation.

As children pore over the pictures in their books where they can read the words annexed to them, so we linger with tingling blood by such inspiring scenes, while little do we reck of those dark hours when the aching head pondered the problems of a country's fate. And yet there is a greater theater in which Washington appears, although not so often has its curtain been uplifted.

For it was as a statesman that Washington was greatest. Not in the sense that Hamilton and Jefferson, Adams and Madison were statesmen; but in a larger sense. Men may marshal armies who cannot drill divisions. Men may marshal nations in storm and travail who have not the accomplishments of their cabinet ministers. Not so versed as they was he in the details of political science. And yet as he studied tactics when he antic.i.p.ated war, so he studied politics when he saw his civil role approaching, reading the history and examining the principles of ancient and modern confederacies, and making notes of their virtues, defects, and methods of operation.

His pen did not possess the facile play and cla.s.sic grace of their pens, but his vigorous eloquence had the clear ring of our mother tongue. I will not say that he was so astute, so quick, so inventive as the one or another of them--that his mind was characterized by the vivacity of wit, the rich colorings of fancy, or daring flights of imagination. But with him thought and action like well-trained coursers kept abreast in the chariot race, guided by an eye that never quailed, reined by a hand that never trembled. He had a more infallible discrimination of circ.u.mstances and men than any of his contemporaries. He weighed facts in a juster scale, with larger equity, and firmer equanimity. He best applied to them the lessons of experience. With greater ascendancy of character he held men to their appointed tasks; with more inspiring virtue he commanded more implicit confidence. He bore a truer divining-rod, and through a wilderness of contention he alone was the unerring Pathfinder of the People. There can, indeed, be no right conception of Washington that does not accord him a great and extraordinary genius. I will not say he could have produced a play of Shakespeare, or a poem of Milton, handled with Kant the tangled skein of metaphysics, probed the secrecies of mind and matter with Bacon, constructed a railroad or an engine like Stephenson, wooed the electric spark from heaven to earth with Franklin, or walked with Newton the pathways of the spheres. But if his genius were of a different order, it was of as rare and high an order. It dealt with man in the concrete, with his vast concerns of business stretching over a continent and projected into the ages, with his seething pa.s.sions; with his marvelous exertions of mind, body, and spirit to be free. He knew the materials he dealt with by intuitive perception of the heart of man, by experience and observation of his aspirations and his powers, by reflection upon his complex relations, rights, and duties as a social being. He knew just where, between men and states, to erect the monumental mark to divide just reverence for authority from just resistance to its abuse. A poet of social facts, he interpreted by his deeds the harmonies of justice.

First to perceive, and swift to point out, the defects in the Articles of Confederation, they became manifest to all long before victory crowned the warfare conducted under them. Charged by them with the public defense, Congress could not put a soldier in the field; and charged with defraying expenses, it could not levy a dollar of imposts or taxes. It could, indeed, borrow money with the a.s.sent of nine states of the thirteen, but what mockery of finance was that, when the borrower could not command any resource of payment.

The states had indeed put but a scepter of straw in the legislative hand of the Confederation--what wonder that it soon wore a crown of thorns!

The paper currency ere long dissolved to nothingness; for four days the army was without food, and whole regiments drifted from the ranks of our hard-pressed defenders. "I see," said Washington, "one head gradually changing into thirteen; I see one army gradually branching into thirteen, which, instead of looking up to Congress as the supreme controlling power, are considering themselves as dependent upon their respective states." While yet his sword could not slumber, his busy pen was warning the statesmen of the country that unless Congress were invested with adequate powers, or should a.s.sume them as matter of right, we should become but thirteen states, pursuing local interests, until annihilated in a general crash--the cause would be lost--and the fable of the bundle of sticks applied to us.

In rapid succession his notes of alarm and invocations for aid to Union followed each other to the leading men of the states, North and South.

Turning to his own state, and appealing to George Mason, "Where," he exclaimed, "where are our men of abilities? Why do they not come forth and save the country?" He compared the affairs of this great continent to the mechanism of a clock, of which each state was putting its own small part in order, but neglecting the great wheel, or spring, which was to put the whole in motion. He summoned Jefferson, Wythe, and Pendleton to his a.s.sistance, telling them that the present temper of the states was friendly to lasting union, that the moment should be improved and might never return, and that "after gloriously and successfully contending against the usurpation of Britain we may fall a prey to our own folly and disputes."

How keen the prophet's ken, that through the smoke of war discerned the coming evil; how diligent the patriot's hand, that amidst awful responsibilities reached futureward to avert it! By almost a miracle the weak Confederation, "a barrel without a hoop," was held together perforce of outside pressure; and soon America was free.

But not yet had beaten Britain concluded peace--not yet had dried the blood of Victory's field, ere "follies and disputes" confounded all things with their Babel tongues and intoxicated liberty gave loose to license. An unpaid army with unsheathed swords clamored around a poverty-stricken and helpless Congress. And grown at last impatient even with their chief, officers high in rank plotted insurrection and circulated an anonymous address, urging it "to appeal from the justice to the fears of government, and suspect the man who would advise to longer forbearance." Anarchy was about to erect the Arch of Triumph--poor, exhausted, bleeding, weeping America lay in agony upon her bed of laurels.

Not a moment did Washington hesitate. He convened his officers, and going before them he read them an address, which, for homethrust argument, magnanimous temper, and the eloquence of persuasion which leaves nothing to be added, is not exceeded by the n.o.blest utterances of Greek or Roman. A n.o.bler than Coriola.n.u.s was before them, who needed no mother's or wife's reproachful tears to turn the threatening steel from the gates of Rome. Pausing, as he read his speech, he put on his spectacles and said: "I have grown gray in your service, and now find myself growing blind." This unaffected touch of nature completed the master's spell. The late fomenters of insurrection gathered to their chief with words of veneration--the storm went by--and, says Curtis in his History of the Const.i.tution, "Had the Commander-in-Chief been other than Washington, the land would have been deluged with the blood of civil war."

But not yet was Washington's work accomplished. Peace dawned upon the weary land, and parting with his soldiers, he pleaded with them for union. "Happy, thrice happy, shall they be p.r.o.nounced," he said, "who have contributed anything in erecting this stupendous fabric of freedom and empire; who have a.s.sisted in protecting the rights of human nature, and establishing an asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions." But still the foundations of the stupendous fabric trembled, and no cement held its stones together. It was then, with that thickening peril, Washington rose to his highest stature. Without civil station to call forth his utterance, impelled by the intrepid impulse of a soul that could not see the hope of a nation perish without leaping into the stream to save it, he addressed the whole People of America in a circular to the governors of the states: "Convinced of the importance of the crisis, silence in me," he said, "would be a crime. I will, therefore, speak the language of freedom and sincerity." He set forth the need of union in a strain that touched the quick of sensibility; he held up the citizens of America as sole lords of a vast tract of continent; he portrayed the fair opportunity for political happiness with which Heaven had crowned them; he pointed out the blessings that would attend their collective wisdom; that mutual concessions and sacrifices must be made; and that supreme power must be lodged somewhere to regulate and govern the general concerns of the Confederate Republic, without which the Union would not be of long duration. And he urged that happiness would be ours if we seized the occasion and made it our own.

In this, one of the very greatest acts of Washington, was revealed the heart of the man, the spirit of the hero, the wisdom of the sage--I might almost say the sacred inspiration of the prophet.

But still the wing of the eagle drooped; the gathering storms baffled his sunward flight. Even with Washington in the van, the column wavered and halted--states straggling to the rear that had hitherto been foremost for permanent union, under an efficacious const.i.tution. And while three years rolled by amidst the jargon of sectional and local contentions, "the half-starved government," as Washington depicted it, "limped along on crutches, tottering at every step." And while monarchical Europe with saturnine face declared that the American hope of union was the wild and visionary notion of romance, and predicted that we would be to the end of time a disunited people, suspicious and distrustful of each other, divided and subdivided into petty commonwealths and princ.i.p.alities, lo! the very earth yawned under the feet of America, and in that very region whence had come forth a glorious band of orators, statesmen and soldiers to plead the cause and fight the battles of Independence--lo! the volcanic fires of rebellion burst forth upon the heads of the faithful, and the militia were leveling the guns of the Revolution, against the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of their brethren. "What, gracious G.o.d! is man?" Washington exclaimed: "It was but the other day that we were shedding our blood to obtain the const.i.tutions under which we live, and now we are unsheathing our swords to overturn them."

But see! there is a ray of hope. Maryland and Virginia had already entered into a commercial treaty for regulating the navigation of the rivers and great bay in which they had common interests, and Washington had been one of the commissioners in its negotiation. And now, at the suggestion of Maryland, Virginia had called on all the states to meet in convention at Annapolis, to adopt commercial regulations for the whole country. Could this foundation be laid, the eyes of the nation-builders foresaw that the permanent structure would ere long rise upon it. But when the day of meeting came no state north of New York or south of Virginia was represented; and in their helplessness those a.s.sembled could only recommend a const.i.tutional convention, to meet in Philadelphia in May, 1787, to provide for the exigencies of the situation.

And still thick clouds and darkness rested on the land, and there lowered upon its hopes a night as black as that upon the freezing Delaware; but through the gloom the dauntless leader was still marching on to the consummation of his colossal work, with a hope that never died; with a courage that never faltered; with a wisdom that never yielded that "all is vanity."

It was not permitted the Roman to despair of the republic, nor did he--our chieftain. "It will all come right at last," he said. It did.

And now let the historian, Bancroft, speak: "From this state of despair the country was lifted by Madison and Virginia." Again he says: "We come now to a week more glorious for Virginia beyond any in her annals, or in the history of any republic that had ever before existed."

It was that week in which Madison, "giving effect to his own long-cherished wishes, and still earlier wishes of Washington,"

addressing, as it were, the whole country, and marshaling all the states, warned them "that the crisis had arrived at which the people of America are to decide the solemn question, whether they would, by wise and magnanimous efforts reap the fruits of independence and of union, or whether by giving way to unmanly jealousies and prejudices, or to impartial and transitory interests, they would renounce the blessings prepared for them by the Revolution," and conjuring them "to concur in such further concessions and provisions as may be necessary to secure the objects for which that government was inst.i.tuted, and make the United States as happy in peace as they had been glorious in war."

In such manner, my countrymen, Virginia, adopting the words of Madison, and moved by the constant spirit of Washington, joined in convoking that Const.i.tutional Convention, in which he headed her delegation, and over which he presided, and whose deliberations resulted in the formation and adoption of that instrument which the premier of Great Britain p.r.o.nounces "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."

In such manner the state which gave birth to the Father of his Country, following his guiding genius to the Union, as it had followed his sword through the battles of Independence, placed herself at the head of the wavering column. In such manner America heard and hearkened to the voice of her chief; and now closing ranks, and moving with reanimated step, the thirteen commonwealths wheeled and faced to the front, on the line of the Union, under the sacred ensign of the Const.i.tution.

Thus at last was the crowning work of Washington accomplished. Out of the tempests of war, and the tumults of civil commotion, the ages bore their fruit, and the long yearning of humanity was answered. "Rome to America" is the eloquent inscription on one stone contributed to yon colossal shaft--taken from the ancient Temple of Peace that once stood hard by the palace of the Caesars. Uprisen from the sea of revolution, fabricated from the ruins of the battered Bastiles, and dismantled palaces of unhallowed power, stood forth now the Republic of republics, the Nation of nations, the Const.i.tution of const.i.tutions, to which all lands and times and tongues had contributed of their wisdom. And the priestess of Liberty was in her holy temple.

When Salamis had been fought and Greece again kept free, each of the victorious generals voted himself to be first in honor; but all agreed that Themistocles was second. When the most memorable struggle for the rights of human nature, of which time holds record, was thus happily concluded in the muniment of their preservation, whoever else was second, unanimous acclaim declared that Washington was first. Nor in that struggle alone does he stand foremost. In the name of the people of the United States, their president, their senators, their representatives, and their judges, do crown to-day with the grandest crown that veneration has ever lifted to the brow of glory, him, whom Virginia gave to America, whom America has given to the world and to the ages, and whom mankind with universal suffrage has proclaimed the foremost of the founders of empire in the first degree of greatness; whom Liberty herself has anointed as the first citizen in the great Republic of Humanity.

Encompa.s.sed by the inviolate seas stands to-day the American Republic which he founded--a freer Greater Britain--uplifted above the powers and princ.i.p.alities of the earth, even as his monument is uplifted over roof and dome and spire of the mult.i.tudinous city.

Long live the Republic of Washington! Respected by mankind, beloved of all its sons, long may it be the asylum of the poor and oppressed of all lands and religions--long may it be the citadel of that liberty which writes beneath the eagle's folded wings, "We will sell to no man, we will deny to no man, Right and Justice."

Long live the United States of America! Filled with the free, magnanimous spirit, crowned by the wisdom, blessed by the moderation, hovered over by the guardian angel of Washington's example; may they be ever worthy in all things to be defended by the blood of the brave who know the rights of man and shrink not from their a.s.sertion--may they be each a column, and altogether, under the Const.i.tution, a perpetual Temple of Peace, unshadowed by a Caesar's palace, at whose altar may freely commune all who seek the union of Liberty and Brotherhood.

Long live our Country! Oh, long through the undying ages may it stand, far removed in fact as in s.p.a.ce from the Old World's feuds and follies, alone in its grandeur and its glory, itself the immortal monument of him whom Providence commissioned to teach man the power of Truth, and to prove to the nations that their Redeemer liveth.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Lecture by Henry Watterson, journalist and orator, editor of the Louisville, Ky., _Courier Journal_ since 1868. This lecture was originally delivered before the Lincoln Club of Chicago, February 12, 1895, and subsequently repeated on many platforms as a lecture.

It has been heard in all parts of the country, but nowhere, with livelier demonstrations of approval than in the cities of the South "from Richmond and Charleston to New Orleans and Galveston."

The statesmen in knee breeches and powdered wigs who signed the Declaration of Independence and framed the Const.i.tution--the soldiers in blue-and-buff, top-boots and epaulets who led the armies of the Revolution--were what we are wont to describe as gentlemen. They were English gentlemen. They were not all, nor even generally, scions of the British aristocracy; but they came, for the most part, of good Anglo-Saxon and Scotch-Irish stock.

The shoe buckle and the ruffled shirt worked a spell peculiarly their own. They carried with them an air of polish and authority. Hamilton, though of obscure birth and small stature, is represented by those who knew him to have been dignity and grace personified; and old Ben Franklin, even in woolen hose, and none too courtier-like, was the delight of the great n.o.bles and fine ladies, in whose company he made himself as much at home as though he had been born a marquis.

The first half of the Republic's first half century of existence the public men of America, distinguished for many things, were chiefly and almost universally distinguished for repose of bearing and sobriety of behavior. It was not until the inst.i.tution of African slavery had got into politics as a vital force that Congress became a bear-garden, and that our law-makers, laying aside their manners with their small clothes, fell into the loose-fitting habiliments of modern fashion and the slovenly jargon of partisan controversy. The gentlemen who signed the Declaration and framed the Const.i.tution were succeeded by gentlemen--much like themselves--but these were succeeded by a race of party leaders much less decorous and much more self-confident; rugged, puissant; deeply moved in all that they said and did, and sometimes turbulent; so that finally, when the volcano burst forth flames that reached the heavens, great human bowlders appeared amid the glare on every side; none of them much to speak of according to rules regnant at St. James and Versailles; but vigorous, able men, full of their mission and of themselves, and pulling for dear life in opposite directions.

There were Seward and Sumner and Chase, Corwin and Ben Wade, Trumbull and Fessenden, Hale and Collamer and Grimes, and Wendell Phillips, and Horace Greeley, our latter-day Franklin. There were Toombs and Hammond, and Slidell and Wigfall, and the two little giants, Douglas and Stephens, and Yancey and Mason, and Jefferson Davis. With them soft words b.u.t.tered no parsnips, and they cared little how many pitchers might be broken by rude ones. The issue between them did not require a diagram to explain it. It was so simple a child might understand. It read, human slavery against human freedom, slave labor against free labor, and involved a conflict as inevitable as it was irrepressible.

Greek was meeting Greek at last; and the field of politics became almost as sulphurous and murky as an actual field of battle. Amid the noise and confusion, the clashing of intellects like sabers bright, and the booming of the big oratorical guns of the North and the South, now definitely arrayed, there came one day into the Northern camp one of the oddest figures imaginable; the figure of a man who, in spite of an appearance somewhat at outs with Hogarth's line of beauty, wore a serious aspect, if not an air of command, and, pausing to utter a single sentence that might be heard above the din, pa.s.sed on and for a moment disappeared.

The sentence was pregnant with meaning. The man bore a commission from G.o.d on high! He said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half free and half slave. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided." He was Abraham Lincoln.

How shall I describe him to you? Shall I do so as he appeared to me, when I first saw him immediately on his arrival in the national capital, the chosen president of the United States, his appearance quite as strange as the story of his life, which was then but half known and half told, or shall I use the words of another and a more graphic wordpainter?

In January, 1861, Colonel A. K. McClure, of Pennsylvania, journeyed to Springfield, Illinois, to meet and confer with the man he had done so much to elect, but whom he had never personally known. "I went directly from the depot to Lincoln's house," says Colonel McClure, "and rang the bell, which was answered by Lincoln, himself, opening the door. I doubt whether I wholly concealed my disappointment at meeting him. Tall, gaunt, ungainly, ill-clad, with a homeliness of manner that was unique in itself, I confess that my heart sank within me as I remembered that this was the man chosen by a great nation to become its ruler in the gravest period of its history. I remember his dress as if it were but yesterday--snuff-colored and slouchy pantaloons; open black vest, held by a few bra.s.s b.u.t.tons; straight or evening dress coat, with tightly fitting sleeves to exaggerate his long, bony arms, all supplemented by an awkwardness that was uncommon among men of intelligence. Such was the picture I met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. We sat down in his plainly furnished parlor and were uninterrupted during the nearly four hours I remained with him, and little by little, as his earnestness, sincerity, and candor were developed in conversation, I forgot all the grotesque qualities which so confounded me when I first greeted him.

Before half an hour had pa.s.sed I learned not only to respect, but, indeed, to reverence the man."

A graphic portrait, truly, and not unlike. I recall him, two months later, a little less uncouth, a little better dressed, but in singularity and in angularity much the same. All the world now takes an interest in every detail that concerned him, or that relates to the weird tragedy of his life and death.