Modern Eloquence Volume Iii Part 26

THE PURITAN AND THE CAVALIER

[Speech of Henry Watterson at the eighty-ninth anniversary banquet of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1894. Elihu Root, President of the Society, introduced Mr.

Watterson in the following words: "Gentlemen, we are forced to recognize the truth of the observation that all the people of New England are not Puritans; we must admit an occasional exception. It is equally true, I am told, that all the people of the South are not cavaliers; but there is one cavalier without fear and without reproach [applause], the splendid courage of whose convictions shows how close together the highest examples of different types can be among G.o.dlike men--a cavalier of the South, of southern blood and southern life, who carries in thought and in deed all the serious purpose and disinterested action that characterized the Pilgrim Fathers whom we commemorate. He comes from an impressionist State where the gra.s.s is blue [laughter], where the men are either all white or all black, and where, we are told, quite often the settlements are painted red. [Laughter.] He is a soldier, a statesman, a scholar, and, above all, a lover; and among all the world which loves a lover the descendants of those who, generation after generation, with tears and laughter, have sympathized with John Alden and Priscilla, cannot fail to open their hearts in sympathy to Henry Watterson and his star-eyed G.o.ddess. [Applause.]

I have the honor and great pleasure of introducing him to respond to the toast of 'The Puritan and the Cavalier.'"]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--Eight years ago, to-night, there stood where I am standing now a young Georgian, who, not without reason, recognized the "significance" of his presence here--"the first southerner to speak at this board"--a circ.u.mstance, let me add, not very creditable to any of us--and in words whose eloquence I cannot hope to recall, appealed from the New South to New England for a united country.

He was my disciple, my protege, my friend. He came to me from the southern schools, where he had perused the arts of oratory and letters, to get a few hints in journalism, as he said; needing so few, indeed, that, but a little later, I sent him to one of the foremost journalists of this foremost city, bearing a letter of introduction, which described him as "the greatest boy ever born in Dixie, or anywhere else."

He is gone now. But, short as his life was, its heaven-born mission was fulfilled; the dream of his childhood was realized; for he had been appointed by G.o.d to carry a message of peace on earth, good-will to men, and, this done, he vanished from the sight of mortal eyes, even as the dove from the ark.

I mean to take up the word where Grady left it off, but I shall continue the sentence with a somewhat larger confidence, and, perhaps, with a somewhat fuller meaning; because, notwithstanding the Puritan trappings, traditions, and a.s.sociations which surround me--visible ill.u.s.trations of the self-denying fort.i.tude of the Puritan character and the sombre simplicity of the Puritan taste and habit--I never felt less out of place in all my life.

To tell you the truth, I am afraid that I have gained access here on false pretences; for I am no Cavalier at all; just plain Scotch-Irish; one of those Scotch-Irish southerners who ate no fire in the green leaf and has eaten no dirt in the brown, and who, accepting, for the moment, the terms Puritan and Cavalier in the sense an effete sectionalism once sought to ascribe to them--descriptive labels at once cla.s.sifying and separating North and South--verbal redoubts along that mythical line called Mason and Dixon, over which there were supposed by the extremists of other days to be no bridges--I am much disposed to say, "A plague o'

both your houses!"

Each was good enough and bad enough in its way, whilst they lasted; each in its turn filled the English-speaking world with mourning; and each, if either could have resisted the infection of the soil and climate they found here, would be to-day striving at the sword's point to square life by the iron rule of Theocracy, or to round it by the dizzy whirl of a petticoat! It is very pretty to read about the Maypole in Virginia and very edifying and inspiring to celebrate the deeds of the Pilgrim Fathers. But there is not Cavalier blood enough left in the Old Dominion to produce a single crop of first families, whilst out in Nebraska and Iowa they claim that they have so stripped New England of her Puritan stock as to spare her hardly enough for farm hands. This I do know, from personal experience, that it is impossible for the stranger-guest, sitting beneath a bower of roses in the Palmetto Club at Charleston, or by a mimic log-heap in the Algonquin Club at Boston, to tell the a.s.sembled company apart, particularly after ten o'clock in the evening!

Why, in that great, final struggle between the Puritans and the Cavaliers--which we still hear sometimes casually mentioned--although it ended nearly thirty years ago, there had been such a mixing up of Puritan babies and Cavalier babies during the two or three generations preceding it, that the surviving grandmothers of the combatants could not, except for their uniforms, have picked out their own on any field of battle!

Turning to the Cyclopaedia of American Biography, I find that Webster had all the vices that are supposed to have signalized the Cavalier, and Calhoun all the virtues that are claimed for the Puritan. During twenty years three statesmen of Puritan origin were the chosen party leaders of Cavalier Mississippi: Robert J. Walker, born and reared in Pennsylvania; John A. Quitman, born and reared in New York, and Sargent S. Prentiss, born and reared in the good old State of Maine. That st.u.r.dy Puritan, John Slidell, never saw Louisiana until he was old enough to vote and to fight; native here--an alumnus of Columbia College--but sprung from New England ancestors. Albert Sidney Johnston, the most resplendent of modern Cavaliers--from tip to toe a type of the species--the very rose and expectancy of the young Confederacy--did not have a drop of Southern blood in his veins; Yankee on both sides of the house, though born in Kentucky a little while after his father and mother arrived there from Connecticut. The Amba.s.sador who serves our Government near the French Republic was a gallant Confederate soldier and is a representative southern statesman; but he owns the estate in Ma.s.sachusetts where his father was born, and where his father's fathers lived through many generations.

And the Cavaliers, who missed their stirrups, somehow, and got into Yankee saddles? The woods were full of them. If Custer was not a Cavalier, Rupert was a Puritan. And Sherwood and Wadsworth and Kearny, and McPherson and their dashing companions and followers! The one typical Puritan soldier of the war--mark you!--was a Southern, and not a Northern, soldier; Stonewall Jackson, of the Virginia line. And, if we should care to pursue the subject farther back, what about Ethan Allen and John Stark and Mad Anthony Wayne--Cavaliers each and every one?

Indeed, from Israel Putnam to "Buffalo Bill," it seems to me the Puritans have had rather the best of it in turning out Cavaliers. So the least said about the Puritan and the Cavalier--except as blessed memories or horrid examples--the better for historic accuracy.

If you wish to get at the bottom facts, I don't mind telling you--in confidence--that it was we Scotch-Irish who vanquished both of you--some of us in peace--others of us in war--supplying the missing link of adaptability--the needed ingredient of common sense--the conservative principle of creed and action, to which this generation of Americans owes its intellectual and moral emanc.i.p.ation from frivolity and pharisaism--its rescue from the Scarlet Woman and the mailed hand--and its crystallization into a national character and polity, ruling by force of brains and not by force of arms.

Gentlemen--Sir--I, too, have been to Boston. Strange as the admission may seem, it is true; and I live to tell the tale. I have been to Boston; and when I declare that I found there many things that suggested the Cavalier and did not suggest the Puritan, I shall not say I was sorry. But among other things, I found there a civilization perfect in its union of the art of living with the grace of life; an Americanism ideal in its simple strength. Grady told us, and told us truly, of that typical American who, in Dr. Talmage's mind's eye, was coming, but who, in Abraham Lincoln's actuality, had already come. In some recent studies into the career of that great man, I have encountered many startling confirmations of this judgment; and from that rugged trunk, drawing its sustenance from gnarled roots, interlocked with Cavalier sprays and Puritan branches deep beneath the soil, shall spring, is springing, a shapely tree--symmetric in all its parts--under whose sheltering boughs this nation shall have the new birth of freedom Lincoln promised it, and mankind the refuge which was sought by the forefathers when they fled from oppression. Thank G.o.d, the axe, the gibbet, and the stake have had their day. They have gone, let us hope, to keep company with the lost arts. It has been demonstrated that great wrongs may be redressed and great reforms be achieved without the shedding of one drop of human blood; that vengeance does not purify, but brutalizes; and that tolerance, which in private transactions is reckoned a virtue, becomes in public affairs a dogma of the most far-seeing statesmanship. Else how could this n.o.ble city have been redeemed from bondage? It was held like a castle of the Middle Ages by robber barons, who levied tribute right and left. Yet have the mounds and d.y.k.es of corruption been carried--from b.u.t.tress to bell-tower the walls of crime have fallen--without a shot out of a gun, and still no fires of Smithfield to light the pathway of the victor, no b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sizes to vindicate the justice of the cause; nor need of any.

So I appeal from the men in silken hose who danced to music made by slaves--and called it freedom--from the men in bell-crowned hats, who led Hester Prynne to her shame--and called it religion--to that Americanism which reaches forth its arms to smite wrong with reason and truth, secure in the power of both. I appeal from the patriarchs of New England to the poets of New England; from Endicott to Lowell; from Winthrop to Longfellow; from Norton to Holmes; and I appeal in the name and by the rights of that common citizenship--of that common origin--back both of the Puritan and the Cavalier--to which all of us owe our being. Let the dead past, consecrated by the blood of its martyrs, not by its savage hatreds--darkened alike by kingcraft and priestcraft--let the dead past bury its dead. Let the present and the future ring with the song of the singers. Blessed be the lessons they teach, the laws they make. Blessed be the eye to see, the light to reveal. Blessed be Tolerance, sitting ever on the right hand of G.o.d to guide the way with loving word, as blessed be all that brings us nearer the goal of true religion, true Republicanism and true patriotism, distrust of watchwords and labels, shams and heroes, belief in our country and ourselves. It was not Cotton Mather, but John Greenleaf Whittier, who cried:

"Dear G.o.d and Father of us all, Forgive our faith in cruel lies, Forgive the blindness that denies.

"Cast down our idols--overturn Our b.l.o.o.d.y altars--make us see Thyself in Thy humanity!"

[Applause and cheers.]

HEMAN LINCOLN WAYLAND

THE FORCE OF IDEAS

[Speech of Rev. Dr. Heman L. Wayland at the fourth annual dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1884. Dr. Wayland, as President of the Society, occupied the chair, and delivered the following address in welcoming the guests.]

FELLOW NEW ENGLANDERS--Or, in view of our habitual modesty and self-depreciation, I ought, perhaps, rather to say, Fellow Pharisees [laughter]--I congratulate you that we are able to show our guests a little real New England weather--weather that recalls the sleigh-rides, and crossing the bridges, and the singing-school. You are reminded of the observation of the British tar, who, after a long cruise in the Mediterranean, as he came into the eternal fog which surrounds the "tight little island," exclaimed, "This is weather as is weather; none of your blasted blue sky for me!" [Laughter.]

Let me also apologize to our guests for the extreme plainness and frugality of the entertainment. They will kindly make allowance, when they remember that this is washing-day. [Laughter.]

I am aware that the occasion is so large as to dwarf all merely personal considerations; but I cannot omit to return you my thanks for the unmerited kindness which has placed me in the position I occupy. I must add that the position is at once the more honorable and the more onerous, because I am called to follow a gentleman whose administration of the office has been so superlatively successful.

In making this allusion to my honored predecessor, I am reminded of an event in which we all feel a common pride. On the 25th of last June, amid the hills which overshadow Dartmouth College, our then president laid the corner-stone of "Rollins Chapel" for Christian worship, while on the same day, at the same place, on the grounds traversed in earlier years by Webster and Choate, another son of New England laid the corner-stone of the "Wilson Library Building." Thus does intelligent industry, large-hearted benevolence, and filial piety, plant upon the granite hills of New England the olive-groves of Academus and the palms of Judea. [Applause.]

But perhaps there may be here some intelligent stranger who asks me to define an expression which is now and then heard on these occasions: "What is this New England of which you speak so seldom and so reluctantly? Is it a place?" Yes, it is a place; not indeed only a place, but it is a place; and he cannot know New England who has not traversed it from Watch Hill to Mount Washington, from Champlain to Pa.s.samaquoddy. In no other wise can one realize how the sterile soil and the bleak winds and the short summer have been the rugged parents of that thrift, that industry, that economy, that regard for the small savings, which have made New England the banker of America. As the population grew beyond the capacity of the soil, her sons from her myriad harbors swarmed out upon the sea, an army of occupation, and annexed the Grand Banks, making them national banks before the days of Secretary Chase. [Laughter.] When the limits of agriculture were reached, they enslaved the streams, and clothed the continent. They gathered hides from Iowa and Texas, and sold them, in the shape of boots, in Dubuque and Galveston. Sterile New England underlaid the imperial Northwest with mortgages, and overlaid it with insurance. I chanced to be in Chicago two or three days after the great fire of 1871.

As I walked among the smoking ruins, if I saw a man with a cheerful air, I knew that he was a resident of Chicago; if I saw a man with a long face, I knew that he represented a Hartford insurance company.

[Laughter.] Really, the cheerful resignation with which the Chicago people endured the losses of New England did honor to human nature.

[Laughter.]

Perhaps it is well that New England is not yet more sterile, for it would have owned the whole of the country, and would have monopolized all the wealth, as it has confessedly got a corner on all the virtues.

And while the narrow limit of the season, called by courtesy "summer,"

has enforced promptness and rapidity of action, the long winters have given pause for reflection, have fostered the red school-house, have engendered reading and discussion, have made her sons and her daughters thoughtful beings.

The other day, in reading the life of a New England woman,[8] I met with a letter written when she was seventeen years old: "I have begun reading Dugald Stewart. How are my sources of enjoyment multiplied. By bringing into view the various systems of philosophers concerning the origin of our knowledge, he enlarges the mind, and extends the range of our ideas, ... while clearly distinguishing between proper objects of inquiry and those that must forever remain inexplicable to man in the present state of his faculties. Reasonings from induction are delightful." [Laughter.]

I think you will agree with me that only where there was a long winter, and long winter evenings, would such a letter be written by a girl in her teens.

The question has often been asked why there are so many poets in New England. A traveller pa.s.sing through Concord inquired, "How do all these people support themselves?" The answer was, "They all live by writing poems for 'The Atlantic Monthly.'" [Laughter.]

Now, any one who thinks of it must see that it is the weather which makes all these poets, or rather the weathers, for there are so many. As Mr. Choate said: "Cold to-day, hot to-morrow; mercury at eighty in the morning, with wind at southeast; and in three hours more a sea-turn, wind at east, a thick fog from the bottom of the ocean, and a fall of forty degrees; now, so dry as to kill all the beans in New Hampshire; then, a flood, carrying off the bridges on the Pen.o.bscot; snow in Portsmouth in July, and the next day a man and a yoke of oxen killed by lightning down in Rhode Island." [Laughter.]

The commonplace question: "How is the weather going to be?" gives a boundless play to the imagination, and makes a man a poet before he knows it. And then a poet must have grand subjects in nature. And what does a poet want that he does not find in New England? Wooded glens, mysterious ravines, inaccessible summits, hurrying rivers; the White Hills, keeping up, as Starr King said, "a perpetual peak against the sky"; the Old Man of the Mountains looking down the valley of the Pemigewa.s.set, and hearing from afar the Ammonoosuc as it breaks into a hundred cataracts; Katahdin, Kearsarge, setting its back up higher than ever since that little affair off Cherbourg; the everlasting ocean inviting to adventure, inspiring to its own wild freedom, and making a harbor in every front yard, so that the hardy mariner can have his smack at his own doorstep. [Laughter.] (Need I say I mean his fishing-smack?) What more can a poet desire?

And then life in New England, especially New England of the olden time, has been an epic poem. It was a struggle against obstacles and enemies, and a triumph over nature in behalf of human welfare.

What would a poet sing about, I wonder, who lived on the Kankakee Flats?

Of course, the epic poet must have a hero, and an enemy, and a war. The great enemy in those parts is shakes; so, as Virgil began, "I sing of arms and the man," the Kankakee poet would open:

"I sing the glories of cinchona and the man Who first invented calomel."

Yes, if the Pilgrims had landed upon the far Western prairies or the Southern savannas, they would never have made America; they would never have won a glory beyond that of Columbus, who only discovered America, whereas these men created it. [Applause.]

But not a place alone. New England is also a race; the race that plants colonies and makes nations; the race that carries everywhere a free press, a free pulpit, an open Bible, and that has almost learned to spell and pa.r.s.e its own language; the race which began the battle for civil and religious liberty in the time of Elizabeth, which fought the good fight at Edgehill, which, beside Concord Bridge, "fired the shot heard round the world," which made a continent secure for liberty at Appomattox. [Applause.]

And New England is not alone a place and a race; it is as well an idea, or a congeries of ideas, so closely joined as properly to be called but one; and this idea is not the idea of force, but the force of ideas.

But, gentlemen, I am in danger of forgetting that a marked characteristic of New Englanders is an unwillingness to talk, and especially to talk about themselves. And I know that you are eager to listen to the ill.u.s.trious men whom we have the honor to gather about our humble board this evening.

CAUSES OF UNPOPULARITY