In peace and in war we have done our part. We are doing it today and will continue to do so as long as the fame of Washington and Lincoln endure. We stand for patriotism, for respect for just laws, for the sanctity of the marriage tie, for the purity of our homes, the education of our children and the morality of the people. S. Banks Nelson, an Irish clergyman of this state, has stated that we govern every nation but our own. We also submit to government and the history of our own city of Providence for the last few years has shown that religious bigotry or race prejudice are not failings of the Irish race in Rhode Island.
All we ask is our share of that reward that goes to labor well performed. We ask to be treated justly. We do not claim office because we are Irish and, on the other hand, we insist that office shall not be denied us because of that fact. We have made mistakes and will make them, but they are not fatal. We stand on our record as American citizens and as such entitled to an equal share in its government. All we ask is that you sympathize with us in our struggle, that you teach your children some little knowledge of our history, that you learn to know us as we are and not as we are sometimes represented. Above all we ask you never to permit men or women, on the stage or elsewhere, to utter indecencies or obscenities in the name of our womanhood; for all must admit that our women, by their matchless purity and virtue, are the honor and glory of humanity.
CAPTAIN JOHN O’BRIEN OF MACHIAS, MAINE—REVOLUTIONARY HERO—A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
BY REV. ANDREW M. SHERMAN, LL. D., OF MORRISTOWN, NEW JERSEY.
Captain John O’Brien, the subject of this sketch, was the third eldest son of Morris O’Brien and Mary O’Brien, and was born in 1750, in Scarboro, on the Maine seacoast, about ten miles to the southwestward of Portland.
At the early period under present review, the region including Scarboro was greatly harassed by the Indians, whose depredations are said to have sometimes been instigated by the French, who were jealous of the English settlers in western Maine (then a part of the Province of Massachusetts), and hoped to thus drive out the English already there, and prevent others from coming into what was regarded as preëmpted territory.
In consequence of the frequent attacks of the Indians upon the English, at Scarboro, it sometimes became necessary, as a means of self-preservation, for the settlers to flee into the surrounding wilderness, and there carefully secrete themselves until the savages should depart from the vicinity; when they would return to their homes, which were sometimes found to have been despoiled and destroyed during their enforced absence.
While John O’Brien was an infant in his mother’s arms, an attack upon the English settlement at Scarboro, by the Indians, was threatened; and it was therefore resolved to flee for safety into the surrounding wilderness. Fearing that the crying of the infant would disclose to the savages the direction to be taken by the settlers in their flight, and also their chosen hiding-place, it was advised, and insisted that the mother leave her infant behind, in the settlement. Against this she earnestly protested, assuring her neighbors that she could keep the infant quiet. She was, therefore, allowed to take the infant along. Folding him affectionately to her breast, and soothing him as only a fond mother could, she succeeded in keeping the infant quiet, not only during their hasty flight but during their sojourn in the depths of the wilderness.
This incident is related by the descendants of Captain John O’Brien as a most impressive illustration of mother-love, which, indeed, it is. They congratulate themselves also upon the fact that an infant who, on reaching manhood, became so famous as he as a patriot and as a successful privateersman in connection with the Revolution; and so conspicuous, in later years, as a citizen and as a man of affairs, should have been thus providentially preserved in tender infancy from the hands of hostile Indians.
To the terrors of Indian depredations, experienced by the early settlers of Scarboro, were added those of extensive forest fires, which sometimes devastated the entire region about them, and threatened their extinction.