CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
[Speech of John S. Wise at the eleventh annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 20, 1890. The President, Willard Bartlett, occupied the chair. He called upon Mr. Wise to speak to the toast, "Captain John Smith, the Ruler of Virginia, and Admiral of New England," saying: "It was not without a purpose that your committee arranged the order of speaking this evening. I am sure that the gentlemen who have already addressed you will take it in good part, if I say we knew that, by putting one name at the end of the programme, we should be sure to hold the audience here till the doxology. Now a speaker who bears the name of the first ruler of Virginia I ever knew anything about, will address you upon Virginia's still earlier ruler, Captain John Smith.">[
Mr. Chairman:—It is one of the peculiarities of Americans, that they attempt to solve the unsolvable problem of successfully mixing gastronomy and oratory. In chemistry there are things known as incompatibles, which it is impossible to blend and at the same time preserve their original characteristics. It is impossible to have as good a dinner as we have had served to-night, and preserve the intellectual faculties of your guests so that they may be seen at their best. I am not unmindful that in the menu the courses grew shorter until they culminated in the pungent and brief episode of cheese, and so I take it that as to the oratory here on tap, you desire it to become gradually more brief and more pungent.
Now, the task of condensing into a five-minute speech two hundred and seventy years of the history of America, is something that has been assigned to me, and I propose to address myself to it without further delay. [Laughter]
John Smith was at one time President of Virginia, and afterward Admiral of New England, and ever since then, until lately, New England and Virginia have been trying to pull loose from each other, so as not to be under the same ruler. [Laughter and applause.] John Smith was a godsend to the American settlers, because he was a plain man in a company of titled nonentities, and after they had tried and failed in every effort to make or perpetuate an American colony, plain John Smith, a democrat, without a title, took the helm and made it a success. [Laughter.]
Then and there, and ever since, we laid aside the Reginald-Trebizond-Percys of nobility, and stuck to the plain John Smiths, honest citizens, of capacity and character. By his example we learned that "Kind hearts are more than coronets," and simple men of worth are infinitely better than titled vagabonds of Norman blood. [Applause.] It is almost three centuries since a tiny vessel, not larger than a modern fishing-smack, turned her head to the sunset across an unknown sea, for the land of conjecture. The ship's company, composed of passengers from England, that wonderful nest of human wanderers, that splendid source of the best civilization of the world, cast anchor by chance in a noble bay for which they had not sailed, and settled a colony; not with any particularly high or noble object, but really in pursuit of gold, and searching for a South Sea which they never found. The voyage had been projected without any other object than the accumulation of wealth, which wealth was to be carried back to the old country and enjoyed in that England which they loved, and to which their eyes ever turned backward with affection, reverence, and the hope of return. This band of younger sons and penniless nobility, attempted to make a settlement under the charter known as the London charter of Virginia; and while we find to-day men sneering at John Smith, the fact remains that he alone was enabled by his strong personality, by his sterling, individual worth, to resist the savages, to make the lazy work, to furnish food for the weak and sickly, to re-inspire those who had lost hope, and to firmly establish a settlement in Virginia. His reward was what? Sedition in his own camp, ingratitude among his own followers, misrepresentation to his patrons, disappointment, disease, and poverty to himself; a return to England and posthumous fame. But his bulldog fangs, the fangs of that English blood which once sunk in the throat of a savage land remain forever, were placed upon America, to mark it as another conquest and another triumph of Anglo-Saxon colonization. Three years of peace and quiet in England were not to his taste. His mother's spirit craved new adventures, and he sought them in sea voyages to the north. Although his task was a much less difficult one, and not quite so prominent as the task he had accomplished in Virginia, he prepared the way for the settlement at Plymouth Rock. To his title of President of Virginia was added the title of Admiral of New England, because this John Smith, without a pedigree, except such as was blazoned on his shield by his slaughter of three Turks, turned his attention from the land to the sea, sailed the colder waters of the north, located the colonies of New England, named your own Boston, and the result of his voyages and reports were the Plymouth charter and settlement. So it is that we have a common founder of the settlements of this country. Of all the gallants who embarked in the first adventure, all disappeared save John Smith, who bore the plainest and commonest name that human imagination can devise. He became the patron saint of American civilization, as much yours as ours, and as much ours as yours. [Laughter and applause.]
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: We had one founder; we came from one master-mind; one great spirit was the source of both our settlements; and this initial fact in our histories has seemed to inspire the American people through all the centuries with the sentiment that our union should be eternal in spite of all disturbing circumstances. [Applause.] When I said, in a light way, that old Virginia and Massachusetts had sought to rend themselves asunder, it was scarcely true. They have too much that is glorious in common to be aught but loving sisters. The men who are before me will not forget that the settlers of the London colony of Virginia, and settlers of the Plymouth colony of Massachusetts, have been at the front of every great movement which has agitated this nation from its birth. When it came to the question of whether we should dissolve the political ties that bound us to the British King, Massachusetts Bay and the colony of Virginia were the first to form their Committees of Safety, exchange their messages of mutual support, and strengthen the weak among their sister colonies. [Applause.] When it came to the time that tried men's souls in the Revolution, it was the men of Virginia and the men of Massachusetts Bay that furnished the largest quotas of revolutionary soldiers who achieved the independence of the American colonies.
When it came to the formation of a federal union, Virginia, with her Washington, gave the first President, and Massachusetts, with her Adams, stepped proudly to the front with the first Vice-President and second President. [Applause.] In later years, when differences came—which differences need not be discussed—every man here knows what part Virginia and Massachusetts bore. It was a part which, however much we may differ with each other, bespoke the origin of the two colonies, and told that true manhood was there to do and die for what it believed was right. When that struggle was ended, the first to clasp hands in mutual friendship and affection were Virginia and Massachusetts. If we were to blot from the history or geography of the Nation the deeds or territory of the ancient dominions of John Smith, President of Virginia and Admiral of New England, a beggarly record of area would be left, in spite of the glorious records of other sections in recent years.
The history of America is to me not only of deep and absorbing interest in its every detail, but it is a romance; it is a fascinating detail of wonderful development, the like of which cannot be found in the annals of civilization from the remotest time. We may go back to the time when the curtain rises on the most ancient civilization of the East, and there is nothing to compare with it. We may take up not only the real, but the romantic history of modern European progress, and there is nothing like American history for myself. Taking up the story of the Quaker invasion of Massachusetts as early as 1659, I find Lydia Wardell, daughter of Isaac Perkins, a freeman of the colony, whipped in Boston, because she had ceased to be a Puritan and had become a Quakeress. Turning then to the history of Virginia in 1663, I find Colonel Edmund Scarburgh riding at the head of the King's troops into the boundaries of Maryland, placing the broad arrows of the King on the houses of the Quakers, and punishing them soundly for non-conformity. Upon the question of who was right and who was wrong in these old feuds, there are doubtless men who, even to this day, have deep prejudices. Fancy how conflicting are the sentiments of a man in 1890, as to their merits, when he reflects, as I do, that Lydia Wardell was his grandmother, and Colonel Scarburgh his grandfather. [Applause and laughter.]
How absurd seems any comparison between the Puritan and Cavalier settlers of America. There they are, with all their faults, and all their virtues. Others may desire to contrast them. I do not. I stand ready to do battle against anybody who abuses either. Their conjoint blood has produced a Nation, the like of which no man living before our day had ever fancied. Nearly three centuries of intermingling and intermarrying, has made the traditions and the hopes of either the heritage and aspiration of us all. Common sufferings, common triumphs, common pride, make the whole glorious history the property of every American citizen, and it is provincial folly to glorify either faction at the expense of the other.