Every country distinguished for great deeds has ever been proud of its ancestors; has ever gloried in the facts of its early history; has ever connected them with whatever was glorious in its later annals has ever made them the boast of its eloquence, the themes of its poetry, and the subjects of festal rejoicings. In the preservation of such feelings and such ideas, our annual Fourth of July celebrations instead of being useless, and worse than useless periods of noisy declamation, as some would contend, are, in fact, doing more to preserve our union than the strongest legislative acts. This may hold when every other cable in the vessel has parted. The bare thought that our glorious old Fourth of July could never more be celebrated in its true spirit (and it would be equally gone for each and every sundered fragment) is enough to check the wildest faction, and to stay the hand of the most reckless disunionist.
It was in view of such an effect, that one of our wisest statesmen, one the farthest removed from the demagogue, and himself a participator in our heroic struggle, is represented as so enthusiastically commending this annual festival to the perpetual observation of posterity, "Through the thick gloom of the present," he exclaims, "I see the brightness of the future as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, and illuminations. On its annual return, they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears of exultation of gratitude, and of joy." "And so that day shall be honored," continues his eloquent eulogist—"And so that day shall be honored, illustrious prophet and patriot! so that day shall be honored, and as often as it returns thy renown shall come along with it, and the glory of thy life, like the day of thy death, shall not fail from the remembrance of men!"
The highest reason, then, as well as the purest feeling, bid us not be ashamed of glorying in our forefathers. Scripture is in unison here with patriotism in commending the sacred sentiment. There is a religious element in the true love of race and country. "The God of our Fathers" becomes a prime article of the national as well as of the ecclesiastical creed, and without the feeling inspired by it, nationality may turn out to be a mere figment, which all political bandages will fail to sustain against the disorganizing influence of factious or sectional interests. It is not absurd, too, to cherish the belief that our ancestors were better men than ourselves, if we ourselves are truly made better by thus believing.
As we have remarked before, there may be mythical exaggeration attending such tradition, but if so, this very exaggeration must have had its ground in something really transcending what takes place in the ordinary course of a nation's life. Some late German scholars have been hunting out depreciating charges against the hero of Marathon, and, for this purpose, have subjected his very ashes to the most searching critical analysis. Truth, it may be said, is always sacred. We would not wish to undervalue the importance of the sentiment. But Miltiades the patriot is the real element that exerted so heroic an effect upon the subsequent Grecian history. Miltiades charged with political offenses lives only as the subject of antiquarian research, or a humiliating example of the common depravity appearing among the most lauded of mankind. And so, in our own case, what political utility can there be in discovering, even if it were so, that Washington was not so wise, or Warren so brave, or Putnam so adventurous, or Bunker Hill so heroically contested, as has been believed? Away with such skepticism, we say, and the mousing criticism by which it is sometimes attempted to be supported. Such beliefs have at all events become real for us by entering into the very soul of our history, and forming the staple of our national thought. To take them away would now be a baneful disorganizing of the national mind. Their influence has been felt in every subsequent event. Saratoga and Monmouth have reappeared in Chippewa, and New Orleans, and Buena Vista. May it not be hoped, too, that something of the men who convened in Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1776, or of that earlier band on whom Burke pronounced his splendid eulogy, may still live, even in the worst and poorest of our modern Congresses!
Again, this reverence for "the fathers" is the most healthfully conservative of all influences, because it presents the common sacred ground on which all political parties, all sectional divisions, and all religious denominations can heartily unite. Every such difference ought to give way, and, in general, does give way, in the presence of the healing spirit that comes to us from the remembrance of those old heroic times. The right thinking Episcopalian not only acquiesces, but rejoices cordially in the praises of the Pilgrim Fathers. He can glory even in their stern puritanism, without losing a particle of reverence or respect for his own cherished views. The Presbyterian glows with pride at the mention of the cavaliers of Virginia, and sees in their ancient loyalty the strength and consistency of their modern republicanism. The most rigid Churchman of either school—whether of Canterbury or Geneva—finds his soul refreshed by the thought of that more than martial heroism which distinguished the followers of Penn and the first colonists of Pennsylvania.
Our rapid editorial view has been suggested by the great festal period of the current month; but we can not close it without the expression of one thought which we deem of the highest importance. If the influences coming from this heroic age of our history are so very precious, we should be careful not to diminish their true conservative power, by associating them with every wretched imitation for which there may be claimed the same or a similar name. The memory of our revolution (to which we could show, if time permitted, there should be given a truer and a nobler epithet) is greatly lowered by being compared continually with every miserable Cuban expedition and Canadian invasion, or every European émeute, without any reference to the grounds on which they are attempted, or the characters and motives of those by whom they are commenced. We may indeed sympathize with every true effort to burst the hard bonds of irresponsible power; but we should carefully see to it that our own sacred deposit of glorious national reminiscences lose not all its reverence by being brought out for too common uses, or profaned by too frequent comparison with that which is really far below it, if not altogether of a different kind. When Washington and Greene and Franklin are thus placed side by side with Lopez, and Ledru-Rollin, and Louis Blanc, or a profane parallel is run between the Pilgrim colonists and modern Socialists and St. Simonians, there is only an inevitable degradation on the one side without any true corresponding elevation on the other. They are the enemies of our revolution, and of its true spirit, who are thus for making it subservient to all purposes that may be supposed to bear the least resemblance. Our fathers' struggle, be it ever remembered, was not for the subversion but the conservation of constitutional law, and, therefore, even its most turbulent and seemingly lawless acts acquire a dignity placing them above all vulgar reference, and all vulgar imitation. He is neither a patriot nor a philanthropist who would compare the destruction of the tea in the harbor of Boston with every abolition riot, or every resistance to our own solemnly enacted laws, or every lynching mob that chooses to caricature the forms of justice, or every French émeute, or revolutionary movement with its mock heroics—its burlesque travestie of institutions it can not comprehend, and of a liberty for which it so soon shows itself utterly unqualified. It is our mission to redeem and elevate mankind, by showing that the spirit of our heroic times lives constantly in the political institutions to which they gave birth, and that republican forms are perfectly consistent, not only with personal liberty, but with all those higher ideas that are connected with the conservation of law, of reverence, of loyalty, of rational submission to right authority—in a word, of true self-government, as the positive antithesis to that animal and counterfeit thing—the government of self. It is not the conservative who is staying the true progress of mankind. A licentious press, a corrupt and gambling spirit of faction in our political parties, and, above all, frequent exhibitions of vulgar demagoguism in our legislative bodies, may do more to strengthen and perpetuate the European monarchies, than all the ignorance of their subjects, and all the power of their armies.
Editor's Easy Chair.
An Easy Chair for July, and specially for such hot July, as we doubt not is just now ripening over our readers' heads, should be a cool chair, with a lining of leather, rather than the soft plushes which beguile the winter of its iciness. Just so, we should be on the look-out in these hap-hazard pages, that close our monthly labors, for what may be cooling in the way of talk; and should make our periods wear such shadows as will be grateful to our sun-beaten readers.
If by a touch of the pen, we could, for instance, build up a grove of leaf-covered trees, with some pebble-bottomed brook fretting below—idly, carelessly, impetuously—even as our pen goes fretting over this Paris feuille; and if we could steep our type in that summer fragrance which lends itself to the country groves of July; and if we could superadd—like so many fragmentary sparkles of verse—the songs of July birds—what a claimant of your thanks we should become?