“The Society is fortunate in having secured for the principal speaker today a gentleman who knows perhaps more about the life and works of General Sullivan than does any other in the United States; a statesman whose record is widely known, and whose voice has been heard in discussion of historical and other matters in the New York capitol at Albany on many occasions. The son of a former governor of New York, he has always been identified with New York institutions and New York laws. Through his efforts the Legislature of that State recently appropriated $10,000 for the purpose of erecting a suitable memorial to General Sullivan, and, while the purposes of that resolution have not yet been fulfilled, it will be but a short time before a fitting tribute is paid by the State of New York to the memory of Major General Sullivan. And the credit for that tribute will be due in large part to the gentleman I now have the honor to introduce, Col. David C. Robinson, of Elmira, N. Y.”
Colonel Robinson spoke as follows:
“Mr. Chairman, Your Excellency the Governor, Members of the American Irish Historical Society, Ladies and Gentlemen: I should do less than justice to the emotions of the hour if I did not, at the outset, express my high appreciation of and my profound thanks for the honor done me in the invitation from your Society to voice our mutual sentiments upon so important an occasion as this. It is an honor to be invited as a spectator to take part in such a ceremony as this; it is a higher honor to be accounted worthy even by a few to say a word on such an occasion; it is honor most of all that I have your unanimous invitation to say that which I may be able to in memory of one of the noblest and purest characters on whom the sun of history has ever shone.
“It has been the habit of my life, my friends, to speak without a note; the professional training of many years has made it easier. I do remember many, very many things about Major General John Sullivan and his life; I do not remember all that I should mention, for the line is long, and I am, therefore, contrary to my usual custom, obliged to ask you to bear with me while I refresh my recollection from time to time with a memorandum of some of the most distinguished services with which this man’s life was filled, to the end that I may impress the lesson which speaks from this memorial, which speaks from the long-drawn procession of brave and good and kind deeds with which the life of the one whom we commemorate today is surrounded.
“And first, before I enter on that which I would say of this memorial and of him to whose memory it is dedicated, I want to congratulate this Society on that which it has even in the few years of its existence accomplished, and on the labors, increased in volume every year, by which it makes known the Irish chapter in American history.
“To trace that which we owe to the line of blood of which this man was one of the most illustrious examples, is a duty which belongs to every student of American history. Let us find, if we may, wherein lay that in which he so far exceeded most of his fellowmen. Let us make it a lesson not alone to say that this man was one of the greatest of American Irish or Irish Americans, but that he illustrated a trait of character which Americans and Irish American citizens all ought to follow, ought to teach their children to follow, ought to endeavor to perpetuate in the thoughts, the work, the labors of this land.
“Now we are met principally to do honor to the memory and the merits of a brave and good man; that is our purpose; but in our acts and words today, my friends, we do honor not only to him and to his memory, but we do honor to ourselves and our countrymen. He belongs to us and we appreciate it. The laurels which we lay on the graves of such as he, who periled life, limb, fortune, happiness and health that we might enjoy the blessings which are ours today, are laurels piled upon our own characters, our own qualities.
“From this beautiful tablet, so fittingly placed in honor of him, whose name in this hour fills all our hearts, the veil has just fallen in your sight. I do not envy that American who, at such a time as this, does not feel his heart swell with patriotic pride at the thought of what this graven monument means to us and ours.
“A thousand recollections sparkle in the chambers of memory as we recall the chivalry, the worth, the dauntless courage and self-denying loyalty of him whose heart, stilled in its own earthly tenement for more than a hundred years, yet lives and throbs and pulses in the hearts of every lover of his land and of human liberty the wide world around; and, although appreciating to the fullest extent all that your Mayor has so well said and the Chairman so ably suggested of the beauty of this memorial, I may be pardoned for saying that no work of art, no accomplishment of high design, no costly metal, no skilful chiseling, no beautiful moulding, can make a memorial worthy of such a man as was Major General John Sullivan.
“For when I think of what he was and what he did, when there rises to my sight the sacrifice and effort, the combat and the stern endurance, the privation and the grief, the sorrow and the pain, which marked his labor and his life throughout the years which spanned the rise of freedom, yea, the hope of men upon this continent, I feel sure that pen may not write, voice may not sound, nor can the chisel of art produce token worthy of his high deserving.