There is much in the character and history of Massachusetts which should bind her in the strongest bonds to Kentucky. Your sentiment places them together: just where they ought to be. Kentucky is willing to occupy the place you have assigned her. Without respect now to subordinate differences in past events, both States stand knit together by the highest and strongest motives by which States can be impelled. I mean the motive and purpose common to each of maintaining and upholding, in every extremity and to the very last, the Union of these States and the Constitution. Massachusetts has proclaimed over and over again her resolution not to survive them. Nor will Kentucky survive them. She has embarked her whole destiny—all she has and all she hopes for—in the Union and the Constitution. Let come what may of public calamity, of faction, of sectional seduction or intimidation, or evil in any form the most dreadful to man, Kentucky, like Massachusetts, regards the overthrow of the Union as more frightful than all. Kentucky acknowledges no justification for a disruption of the Union that is not a justification for revolution itself. In that Union, and under that Constitution, Kentucky means to stand or fall. Kentucky stands by the Union in her living efforts; she means to hold fast to it in her expiring groans. With Massachusetts she means to perish, if perish she must, with hands clenched, in death, upon the Union.
If the occasion allowed it, I should like to say something of old Massachusetts. I should like to rekindle my own patriotism at her altars. Here—on this very spot—in this very hall—the sacred flame of revolutionary liberty first ascended. Here it has ever ascended. It has never been smothered—never dimmed. Perpetual—clear—holy! Behold its inspirations here in your midst! Where are the doctrines of the Union and the Constitution so incessantly inculcated as here? Where are those doctrines so enthusiastically adopted as here? The principles of the Union and the Constitution—for us another name for the principles of liberty which cannot survive their overthrow—will, in after ages, trace with delight their lineage through you. The blood of freedom is here pure. To be allied to it is to be ennobled. Massachusetts! Which of her multitude of virtues shall I commend? How can I discriminate? I will not attempt it. I take her as she is and all together—I give—Old Massachusetts! God bless her!
[GEORGE W. CUTTER]
George Washington Cutter, one of Kentucky's finest poets, was born in Massachusetts about 1809, but he early came to Covington, Kentucky, and entered upon the practice of his profession, the law. He commanded a company of Kentuckians in the Mexican War with great honor to himself and to them. He had been a constant contributor of verse to the periodicals of his time, but he did not publish his first book until after the war with Mexico. Buena Vista and Other Poems (Cincinnati, 1848) was his first collection, and it contained a preface signed from Covington, Kentucky, December, 1847. From this it will be seen that Cutter returned to Kentucky after the war, and that he was living in this State at the time of his book's appearance. Tradition has said that he wrote the title-poem, Buena Vista, a spirited war ballad, on the field of action immediately after the battle. His little volume contained thirty-seven poems, including The Song of Steam, which has been singled out by critics as his masterpiece, an ode to Henry Clay, his political idol, and his fine descriptive poem, The Creation of Woman. This, to the present writer, is the most exquisite thing Cutter did in verse. It is highly and consistently poetical, and it should be better appreciated than it has been. Cutter was married to Mrs. Frances Ann Drake, a famous Kentucky actress, but they were not happy and a separation by mutual agreement subsequently followed. Mrs. Cutter was the widow of Alexander Drake, of the well-known family of that name, and after parting with the poet she resumed her first husband's name, returned to the stage, and managed theatres in Kentucky and Ohio until her death in Oldham county, Kentucky, September 1, 1875. Cutter later removed to Indiana and was a member of the State legislature, after which service he removed to Washington City to accept a government position. In Washington Cutter continued his poetical output, life in the capital turning his attention to patriotic subjects. Poems, National and Patriotic (Philadelphia, 1857) proved the author to be, for the critics of his time, "the most intensely patriotic poet we have." This volume contained sixty-nine of what he regarded as his best poems. The Song of Steam and Other Poems also appeared in this same year of 1857, and it contained one of the poet's finest efforts, The Song of the Lightning. Cutter died at Washington, D. C., December 24, 1865.
Bibliography. The Poets and Poetry of the West, by W. T. Coggeshall (Columbus, 1860); Adams's Dictionary of American Authors (Boston, 1905).
THE SONG OF STEAM
[From Buena Vista and Other Poems (Cincinnati, 1848)]