The history of European emigration to America is, in one aspect, a tragedy; in another aspect, a romance. When we think of the hardships suffered, the ties sundered, the farewells spoken, the aching memories left behind, it is a colossal tragedy. When we think of the attractive conditions inviting ahead, the busy plans, the joyous hopes, the prophetic schemes and dreams of freedom, plenty, education, reunion with following friends and relatives, that have gilded the landscape awaiting them beyond the billows, it is a chronic romance. The collective experience in the exodus of the millions on millions of men, women, and children, who, under the goad of trials at home and the lure of blessings abroad, have forsaken Europe for America,—the laceration of affections torn from their familiar objects, the tears and wails of the separation, the dismal discomforts of the voyage, the perishing of thousands on the way, either drawn down the sepulchral mid-ocean or dashed on the rocks in sight of their haven, the long-drawn heart-break of exile, the tedious task of beginning life anew in a strange land,—and then the auspicious opening of the change, the rapid winning of an independence, the quick development of a home-feeling, the assuagement of old sorrows, the conquest of fresh joys and a fast-brightening prosperity broad enough to welcome all the sharers still pouring in endless streams across the sea,—the perception of all this makes the narrative of American immigration at once one of the most pathetic and one of the most inspiring episodes in the history of humanity. This tale—as a complete account of the emigrant ships, the emigrant trains, the emigrant wagons, the clearings and villages and cities of the receding West, would reveal it—stand unique and solitary in the crowd of its peculiarities among all the records of popular removals and colonial settlements since the dispersion of the Aryan race, mysterious mother of the Indo-European nations, from its primeval seat in the bosom of Asia. All this suffering, all this hope, all this seething toil, has had its mission, still has its purpose, and will have its reward when the predestined effects of it are fully wrought out. Its providential object is to expedite the work of reconciling the divided races, nations, parties, classes, and sects of mankind. The down-trodden poor had groaned for ages under the oppressions of their lot, victims of political tyranny, religious bigotry, social ostracism, and their own ignorance. The traditions and usages of power and caste which surrounded them were so old, so intense, so unqualified, that they seemed hopelessly doomed to remain forever as they were. Then the Western World was discovered. The American Republic threw its boundless unappropriated territory and its impartial chance in the struggle of life open to all comers, with the great prizes of popular education, liberty of thought and speech, and universal equality before the law. The multitudes who flocked in were rescued from a social state where the hostile favoritisms organized and rooted in a remote past pressed on them with the fatality of an atmosphere, and were transferred to a state which offered them every condition and inducement to emancipate themselves from clannish prejudices, superstitions, and disabilities, to flow freely together in the unlimited sympathies of manhood, and form a type of character and civilization as cosmopolitan as their two bases,—charity and science. The significance, therefore, of the colonizing movement from the Old World to the New is the breaking up of the fatal power of transmitted routine, exclusive prerogative and caste, and the securing for the people of a condition inviting them to blend and co-operate on pure grounds of universal humanity. In spite of fears and threats, over all drawbacks, the experiment is triumphantly going on. The prophets who foresee the end already behold all the tears it has cost glittering with rainbows.
America being thus wholly peopled with immigrants and the descendants of immigrants, our very nationality consisting in a fresh and free composite made of the tributes from the worn and routinary nations of the other hemisphere, the distinctive glory and design of this last historic experiment of civilization residing in the fact that it presents an unprecedented opportunity for the representatives of all races, climes, classes, and creeds to get rid of their narrow and irritating peculiarities, to throw off the enslaving heritage imposed on them by the hostile traditions and unjust customs of their past, no impartial observer can fail to see the unreasonableness of that bitter prejudice against foreigners which has been so common among those of American birth. This prejudice has had periodical outbreaks in our politics under the name of Native Americanism. In its unreflective sweep it is not only irrational and cruel, but also a gross violation of the true principles of our government, which deal with nothing less than the common interests and truths of universal humanity. And yet, in its real cause and meaning, properly discriminated, it is perfectly natural in its origin, and of the utmost importance in its purport. It is not against foreigners, their unlimited welcome here, their free sharing in the privilege of the ballot and the power of office, that the cry should be raised. That would be to exemplify the very bigotry in ourselves against which we protest in others. It is only against the importation to our shores, and the obstinate and aggravating perpetuation here, of the local vices, the bad blood, the clannish hates, the separate and inflaming antagonisms of all sorts, which have been the chief sources of the sufferings of these people in the lands from which they came to us. In its partisan sense the motto, America for those of American birth, is absurdly indefensible. But the indoctrination of every American citizen, no matter where born or of what parentage, with the spirit of universal humanity is our supreme duty. Freedom from proscription and prejudice, a fair course and equal favor for all, an open field for thought, truth, progress,—this expresses the true spirit of the Republic. It is only against what is opposed to this that we should level our example, our argument, and our persuasion. The invitation our flag advertises to all the world is, Come, share in the bounties of God, nature, and society on the basis of universal justice and good will, untrammelled by partial laws, unvexed by caste monopolies. Welcome to all; but, as they touch the strand, let them cast off and forget the distinguishing badges which would cause one portion to fear or hate, despise or tyrannize over, another portion. Not they who happened to be born here, but they who have the spirit of America, are true Americans.
The father and mother of Edwin Forrest were thoroughly Americanized, and taught him none of the special peculiarities of his Scottish or German ancestry. So far as his conscious training was concerned, in language, religion, social habits, he grew up the same as if his parentage had for repeated generations been American. This was so emphatically the case that all his life long he felt something of the Native American antipathy for foreigners, and cherished an exaggerated sympathy for many of the most pronounced American characteristics. Yet there never was any bigotry in his theoretical politics. His creed was always purely democratic; and so was the core of his soul. He was only superficially infected by the illogical prejudices around him. Whatever deviations he may have shown in occasional word or act, his own example, in his descent and in his character, yielded a striking illustration of the genuine relation which should exist between all the members of our nationality, from whatever land they may hail and whatever shibboleths may have been familiar to their lips. Namely, they should, as soon as possible, forget the quarrels of the past, and hold everything else subordinate to the supreme right of private liberty and the supreme duty of public loyalty, recognizing the true qualifications for American citizenship only in the virtues of American manhood, the American type of manhood being simply the common type liberalized and furthered by the free light and stimulus of republican institutions. Overlook it or violate it whoever may, such is the lesson of the facts before us. And it is a point of the extremest interest that, however much Forrest may sometimes have failed in his personal temper and prejudices to practise this lesson, the constantly emphasized and reiterated exemplification of it in his professional life constitutes his crowning glory and originality as an actor. He was distinctively the first and greatest democrat, as such, that ever trod the stage. The one signal attribute of his playing was the lifted assertion of the American idea, the superiority of man to his accidents. He placed on the forefront of every one of his celebrated characters in blazing relief the defiant freedom and sovereignty of the individual man.
Thus an understanding of the ground traversed in the present chapter is necessary for the appreciation of his position and rank in the history of the theatre. Boldly rejecting the mechanical traditions of the stage, shaking off the artificial trammels of the established schools of his profession, he looked directly into his own mind and heart and directly forth upon nature, and, summoning up the passionate energies of his soul, struck out a style of acting which was powerful in its personal sincerity and truth, original in its main features, and, above all, democratic and American in its originality.
But though the parents of Edwin did not try to neutralize the influence of purely American circumstances of neighborhood and schooling for their child, they could not help transmitting the organic individual heritage of their respective nationalities in his very generation and development. The generic features and qualities of every one are stamped in his constitution from the historic soil and social climate and organized life of the country of the parents through whom he derives his being from the aboriginal Source of Being. Certain peculiar modes of acting and reacting on nature and things—modes derived from peculiarities of ancestral experience, natural scenery, social institutions, and other conditions of existence—constitute those different styles of humanity called races or nations. These peculiarities of constitution, temper, taste, conduct, looks, characterize in varying degrees all the individuals belonging to a country, making them Englishmen, Spaniards, Russians, Turks, or Chinese. These characteristics, drawn from what a whole people have in common, are transmitted by parents to their progeny and inwrought in their organic being by a law as unchangeable as destiny,—nay, by a law which is destiny. The law may, in some cases, baffle our scrutiny by the complexity of the elements in the problem, or it may be qualified by fresh conditions, but it is always there, working in every point of plasma, every fibril of nerve, every vibration of force. The law of heredity is obscured or masked in several ways. First, the peculiarities of the two lines of transmitted ancestry, from father and from mother, may in their union neutralize each other, or supplement each other, or exaggerate each other, or combine to form new traits. Secondly, they may be modified by the reaction of the original personality of the new being, and also by the reaction of the new conditions in which he is placed. Still, the law is there, and works. It is at once the fixed fatality of nature and the free voice of God.
Edwin Forrest was fortunate in the national bequests of brain and blood or structural fitnesses and tendencies which he received from his fatherland and from his motherland. The distinctive national traits of the Scottish and of the German character, regarded on the favorable side, were signally exemplified in him. The traits of the former are courage, acuteness, thrift, tenacity, clannishness, and patriotism; of the latter, reasoning intelligence, poetic sentiment, honesty, personal freedom, capacity for systematic drill, and open sense of humanity. These two lines of prudential virtue and expansive sympathy were marked in his career. The attributes of weakness or vice that belonged to him were rather human than national. So the Caledonian and Teutonic currents that met in his American veins were an inheritance of goodness and strength.
Nor was he less fortunate in the bequeathal of strictly personal qualities from his individual parents. Those conditions of bodily and mental life, the offshoot of the conjoined being of father and mother, imprinted and inwoven and ever operative in all the globules of his blood and all the sources of his volition, were far above the average both in the physical power and in the moral rank they gave. His father was a tall, straight, sinewy man, who lived to his sixty-second year a life of hardship and care, without the aid of any particular knowledge of the laws of health. His mother was of an uncommonly strong, well-balanced, and healthy constitution, who bore seven children, worked hard, saw much trouble, but lived in equanimity to her seventy-fifth year. From the paternal side no special tendency to any disease is traceable; on the maternal side, only, through the grandfather, who was an inveterate imbiber of claret, that germ of the gout which ripened to such terrible mischief for him. In intellectual, moral, and religious endowments and habits, both parents were of a superior order, remarked by all who knew them for sound sense, sterling virtue, unwearied industry, devout spirit and carriage. The good, strong, consecrated stock, both national and personal, they gave their boy, alike by generative transmission, by example, and by precept, was of inexpressible service to him. He never forgot it or lost it. It stood him in good stead in a thousand trying hours. Amidst the constant and intense temptations of his exposed professional life, it gave him superb victories over the worst of those vices to which hundreds of his fellows succumbed in disgraceful discomfiture and untimely death. It is true he yielded to follies and sins,—as, under such exposures, who would not?—but his sense of honor and his memory of his mother kept him from doing anything which would destroy his self-respect and give him a bad conscience. This inestimable boon he owed to the moral fibre of his birth and early training.
The thoughtful reader will not deem that the writer is making too much of these preliminary matters. Besides their intrinsic interest and value, they are vitally necessary for the full understanding of much that is to follow. In the formation of the character and the shaping of the career of any man the circumstance of supremest power is the ancestral spirits which report themselves in him from the past, and the organific influences of blood and nerve brought to bear on him in the mystic world of the womb previous to his entrance into this breathing theatre of humanity. The ignorance and the squeamishness prevalent in regard to the subject of the best raising of children are the causes of indescribable evils ramifying in all directions. It has been tabooed from the province of public study and teaching, although no other matter presents such pressing and sacred claims on universal attention. It cannot always continue to be so neglected or forced into the dark. The young giant, Social Science, so rapidly growing, will soon insist on the thorough investigation of it, and on the accordant organization in practice of the truths which shall be elicited. When by analysis, generalization, experiment, and all sorts of methods and tests, men shall have ransacked every other subject, it may be hoped, they will begin to apply a little study to the one subject of really paramount importance,—the breeding of their own species. When the same scientific care and skill, based on accumulated and sifted knowledge, shall be devoted to this province as has already been exemplified with such surprising results in the improvement of the breeds of sheep, cows, horses, hens, and pigeons, still more amazing achievements may be confidently expected. The ranks of hopeless cripples, invalids, imbeciles, idlers, and criminals will cease to be recruited. The rate of births may perhaps be reduced to one-fourth of what it now is, with a commensurate elevation of the condition of society by the weeding out of the perishing and dangerous classes. And the rate of infant mortality may be reduced to one per cent. of its present murderous average. The regeneration of the world will be secured by the perfecting of its generation.
These ideas were familiar to Forrest. He often spoke of them, and wondered they were so slow to win the notice they deserved. For the hypocrisy or prudery which affected to regard them as indelicate and to be shunned in polite speech, he expressed contempt. In his soul the chord of ancestral lineage which bound his being with a vital line running through all foregone generations of men up to the Author of men, was, as he felt it, exceptionally intense and sacred. And surely the whole subject of our consanguinity in time and space is, to every right thinker, as full of poetic attraction and religious awe on one side as it is of scientific interest and social importance on the other.
Each of us has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents. In every receding generation the number doubles, from thirty-two to sixty-four, then to one hundred and twenty-eight, and so on; so that at the twentieth remove, omitting the factor of intermarriages, one has over a million ancestors! So many threads of nerve thrilling into him out of the dark past! So many invisible rivulets of blood tributary to the ocean of his heart, the collective experiences of all of them latently reported in his structure! His physiological mould and type, his mental biases and passional drifts, his longevity, and other prospective experiences and fate, are the resultant of these combined contributions modified by his own choice and new circumstances. What can be conceived more solemnly impressive, or to us morally more sublime and momentous, than this picture of an immortal personality, isolated in his own responsible thought amidst the universe, but surrounded by the mysterious ranks of his ancestry, all connected with him by spiritual ligaments which lengthen and multiply, but never break, as he tracks them, further and further, through the annals of time, through prehistoric ages, incapable of solution or pause till his faith apprehends the beginning of their tremulous lines in the creative fiat of God!