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FACTS AND FANCIES
FOR THE CURIOUS
FROM THE
HARVEST-FIELDS OF LITERATURE

A MELANGE OF EXCERPTA

COLLATED BY

CHARLES C. BOMBAUGH, A.M., M.D.

“Facts are to the mind the same thing as food to the body”

Burke

“So full of shapes is fancy

That it alone is high-fantastical”

Twelfth Night

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

Copyright, 1905

By J. B. Lippincott Company

Published October, 1905

Electrotyped and Printed by

J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

PREFACE

❦

The electrotype plates of a compilation which maintained remarkable popularity for more than thirty years, “Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest Fields of Literature,” having been destroyed in the fire which wrecked the extensive plant of the J. B. Lippincott Company in November, 1899, the publishers requested the compiler to prepare a companion volume on similar lines. Like its predecessor, at once grave and sportive, the present miscellany offers, as Butler says, “a running banquet that hath much variety, but little of a sort.” It is a handy book for the shady nook in summer, or the cosey fireside in winter; for the traveller in a parlor-car, or on an ocean-steamer; for the military post, or the wardroom of a war-ship; for the waiting-room of a doctor or a dentist; for the stray half-hour whenever or wherever it may chance. It is not for a class of readers, but for the multitude. Even the scholar, who will find little in its pages with which he is unfamiliar, will have ready reference to facts and fancies which are not always within convenient reach. Even the captains of industry, in moments of relaxation, may find in its manifold topics something more than what Autolycus calls “unconsidered trifles.” It makes no pretension to systematic completeness; it is at best, fragmentary, but as we are told in “Guesses at Truth,” a dinner of fragments is often the best dinner, and in the absence of a uniform web, patchwork may have a charm of its own.

Literature, as an English writer remarks, is “not a matter of paper and ink, but a human voice speaking to human beings; a voice, or rather a collection of voices, from generation to generation, speaking to men and women of the present time.” To echo these voices the excursionist must not only follow the trail over beaten tracks, but must ramble through devious by-ways. He must be classed with those who endeavor, as Lord Bacon puts it, “out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, records, fragments of stories, passages of books, and the like, to save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time.” The results of the literary activity of this wonder-working age and the marvels and miracles of the ever-widening field of science are, as Coleridge says, “not in everybody’s reach, and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more.”

For permission to select passages from copyrighted books, the grateful acknowledgments of the compiler are due to Messrs. Harper & Brothers and D. Appleton & Company, The Judge Company, publishers of Leslie’s Weekly, Prof. R. B. Anderson of Wisconsin, and Hon. Hampton L. Carson, of Philadelphia. Indebtedness is also acknowledged to writers and publishers whose copyrights have expired by limitation.

CONTENTS

❦

FACTS AND FANCIES

FOR THE CURIOUS

❦

AMERICANA

The Norse Adventures

“What parts of the American coasts that adventurous Icelander, Bjarne Herjulfson, saw cannot be determined with certainty,” says that learned antiquarian, Professor R. B. Anderson, “but from the circumstances of the voyage, the course of the winds, the direction of the currents, and the presumed distance between each sight of land, there is reason to believe that the first land that Bjarne saw in the year 986 was the present Nantucket; the second, Nova Scotia; and the third, Newfoundland. Thus he was the first European whose eyes beheld any part of the American continent.”

But Bjarne made no exploration of the shores, and could take back no definite report of them. What little he had to say, however, stimulated the curiosity of Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, and aroused a determination to go in quest of the unknown lands. He bought Bjarne’s ship and set sail, in the year 1000, with a crew of thirty-five men, far away to the southwest of Greenland. They landed in Helluland (Newfoundland), afterwards in Markland (Nova Scotia), and eventually found their way to the shores of Massachusetts Bay, or Buzzard’s Bay, or Narragansett Bay, the exact locality being disputed by local antiquarians. The likelihood seems to favor Fall River. Finding abundance of grapes, they called the place of their sojourn Vinland. They remained there two years, and on their return to Greenland, another expedition was fitted out by Leif’s brother Thorwald. But Leif is entitled to the credit of being the first pale-faced man who planted his feet on the American continent.

The Icelandic Sagas

The old Norse narrative writings are called “Sagas,” a word which, as John Fiske remarks, we are in the habit of using in English as equivalent to legendary or semi-mythical narratives. To cite a saga as authority for a statement seems, therefore, to some people as inadmissible as to cite a fairy-tale. In the class of Icelandic sagas to which that of Erik the Red belongs, we have quiet and sober narrative, not in the least like a fairy-tale, but often much like a ship’s log. Whatever such narrative may be, it is not folk-lore. These sagas are divisible into two well-marked classes. In the one class are the mythical or romantic sagas, composed of legendary materials; they belong essentially to the literature of folk-lore. In the other class are the historical sagas, with their biographies and annals. These writings give us history, and often very good history. They come down to us in a narrative form which stamps them as accurate and trustworthy chronicles.

Foreknowledge

Strenuous efforts have been made in the interest of the Portuguese descendants of Columbus to depreciate the importance of the Norse discoveries of America. Not only has the Americanist Society—whose members devote much of their time to the study of the pre-Columbian history of the Western Continent—traced in genuine sagas full particulars of the voyages and settlements of the Norsemen, from the first expedition in 986 to the last in 1347, but they have shown that Columbus, during a visit to Iceland in 1477, must have been informed of the Norse discoveries, and must have profited by the knowledge thus acquired.

Erikson and Columbus

If we are bound by circumstances to put Columbus in the forefront, we are not bound to ignore an early discovery for the reality of which there is so much authentic evidence. Sceptical comments come from critics who have not sufficient knowledge of Norse customs or of Norse literature, and are consequently not in a position to judge fairly the amount of credence to be put in Scandinavian tradition. Experience with oral tradition as exhibited among the Aryans of India might have suggested that the old Western mistrust of that method of transmitting information was founded in ignorance alone. For we now know that it is quite possible to hand down the longest statements through ages, without loss or change. But in the present case the written word has come in aid of oral tradition, and the oldest records of Leif Erikson’s discovery of Vinland are so near the period of the event that the chain of testimony may be regarded as practically complete. It is all but certain that Leif Erikson landed on the main continent, whereas it is not at all certain, but extremely problematical, whether Columbus ever saw, much less set foot on, the continent of America. The probability is that he did not get nearer than the Bahamas.

The result of modern investigation has been to reduce the glory of Columbus considerably, and to raise questions and doubts concerning him which, if they cannot be answered satisfactorily, must carry the depreciating movement farther. The prior discovery of the Northmen has been taken out of the realm of fable and established as an historical fact. On the other hand, the visit of the Northmen did not lead to permanent settlement. They may have colonized a little. They may have had relations with some of the American Indians, and even have taught the aborigines some of the Norse sagas. But they did not stay in the new land. After a longer or shorter period they sailed away, and left it finally, and no emigration from Iceland to Vinland was incited by the tales they told on their return home.

The incident was ended so far as they were concerned, and it was not reopened. Now, in the case of Columbus, it may be said that the first step was quickly followed up, and that there was no solution of continuity in the development of the new world. Certainty and perfectly clear demonstration is not to be had in the matter, but Columbus has the advantage of tradition, of familiarity, of the facility with which an at least apparent connection is established between the man and what came after him.

The Cabots

On the 24th of June, 1497, John Cabot, a Venetian merchant, living in England, with his young son Sebastian, first saw, from the deck of a British vessel, “the dismal cliffs of Labrador,” through the early morning mist. This was nearly fourteen months before Columbus, on his third voyage, came in sight of the mainland of South America. Thenceforth the continent of North America belonged to England by right of discovery. Sailing along the coast many leagues without the sight of a human being, but observing that the country was inhabited, he landed and planted a large cross with the standard of England, and by its side the Venetian banner of St. Mark,—the one in loyalty to his king, Henry VII., the other in affection for Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic. From that hour the fortunes of this continent were to be swayed by the Anglo-Saxon race. The name of Cabot’s vessel—the first to touch our American shores—was Matteo (Matthew).

The Name America

Amalric was the name which compacted the old ideal of heroism and leadership common to all Germanic tribes, the ideal that stands out most clearly in the character of Beowulf—the Amal of Sweden, Denmark, and Saxon England. It meant what the North European hero stories described,—“The man who ruled because he labored for the benefit of all.”

In Norman France this name was softened to Amaury. Thus, a certain theologian who was born in the twelfth century at Bène, near Chartres, is called indifferently Amalric of Bène or Amaury of Chartres. England in the thirteenth century could show no more commanding figure than Simon of Montfort l’Amaury, Earl of Leicester, to whom King Henry once said, “If I fear the thunder, I fear you, Sir Earl, more than all the thunder in the world.” A Norman Amalric was that Earl Simon, creator of a new force, and in its outcome a democratic one, too, in English politics. J. R. Green says, “It was the writ issued by Earl Simon that first summoned the merchant and trader to sit beside the knight of the shire, the baron, and the bishop in the parliament of the realm.” In Italy, after the Gothic invasion, the northern name suffered comparatively slight euphonic changes, which can be easily traced. As borne by a bishop of Como in 865 it became Amelrico or Amelrigo. But the juxtaposition of the two consonants “l” and “r” presented a difficulty in pronunciation which the Italians avoided: they changed “lr,” first, to double “r,” and then to a single “r.” Nevertheless, six hundred years after Bishop Amelrigo died, the Florentine merchant, explorer, and author—third son of Anastasio Vespucius, notary of Florence—usually retained the double “r” in his own signature, writing “Amerrigo Vespucci,” and, by the way, accenting his Gothic name on the penultimate (Ameri´go, not Ame´rigo).

The orthography of Amelric was still in this transitional stage in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. In Spain the name must have been rare, since it was often used alone to designate the Florentine during his residence in that country, the audit books in the archives of Seville containing entries in this form: “Ha de haber Amerigo.” There was, apparently, no other Amerigo or Amerrigo in the Spanish public service early in the sixteenth century.

We must look again toward the north for the scene of the next important change, and among the men of a northern race for its author. Martin Waldseemueller, a young German geographer at St. Dié, in the Vosgian Mountains, whose imagination had been stirred by reading, as news of the day, Amerigo’s account of his voyages to the New World, bestowed the name America upon the continental regions brought to light by the Florentine. It is not enough to say, with John Boyd Thacher (in his “Columbus,” Volume III.; compare also Thacher’s valuable “Continent of America”), that Waldseemueller “suggested” this designation. As editor of the Latin work, the “Cosmographiæ Introductio” (May 5, 1507), he stated most distinctly, with emphatic reiteration, his reasons for this name-giving; placed conspicuously in the margin the perfect geographical name, “America,” and at the end of the volume put Vespucci’s narrative. Further, on a large map of the world, separately published, he drew that fourth part of the earth “quarta orbis pars,” which was the “Introductio’s” novel feature, and marked it firmly “America.”

The contention of Professor von der Hagen (in his letter to Humboldt, published in 1835 in “Neues Jahrbuch der Berliner Gesellschaft für Deutsche Sprache,” Heft 1, pp. 13–17), that Waldseemueller was distinctly conscious of giving the new continent a name of Germanic origin, may appeal to enthusiastic Germanists, but the original text clearly opposes that conclusion. “Quia Americus invenit,” says the Introductio, “Americi terra sive America nuncupare licet.” But the case stands otherwise, when we ask why Europeans generally caught up the word, as a name appropriate to the new Terra Firma of vaguely intimated contours, but of defined and appalling difficulty—a vaster, untried field for the exercise of proved Amal ability. Its association with so many men before Vespucci certainly commended the name to northern taste.

We may be thankful that no one has succeeded in the various attempts that have been made to call our part of the world by the relatively very weak name Columbia, which signifies Land of the Dove. We may be thankful that “America” means so much more than “Europe”—in respect to which Meredith Townsend says, “The people of the ‘setting sun’—that seems to be the most probable explanation of the word Europe.” The “setting sun” is precisely the wrong thing. And if we wish to get somewhat nearer to the time of the name-giving of the Old World Continents, we shall find that Herodotus says, “Nor can I conjecture why, as the earth is one, it has received three names, Asia, Europe, and Libya—the names of women; ... nor can I learn who it was that established these artificial distinctions, or whence were derived these appellations.”

We scarcely need to point out the appropriateness of a name which exactly fits the Saxon, Teutonic, and Latin conditions here. It is also clear that we need not ask whether Amerigo Vespucci was worthy to have his name given to a hemisphere. His name, it has been shown plainly, was but the cup that held the essence.

What it Cost to Discover America

As John Fiske remarks, “It is not easy to give an accurate account of the cost of this most epoch-making voyage in all history. Conflicting statements by different authorities combine with the fluctuating values of different kinds of money to puzzle and mislead us.” Historians are inclined to accept the statement of Las Casas with regard to the amount of Queen Isabella’s contribution, whether it came from a pledge of the crown jewels, or from the Castile treasury, but the amount of the loan from Santangel, and of the levy upon the port of Palos, is open to question. The researches of Harrisse have been considered authoritative, but now comes the German investigator, Professor Ruge, whose estimates involve a large reduction from calculations heretofore made. He says,—

“The cost of the armament of the first fleet of Columbus, consisting of three small vessels, is given in all the documents as 1,140,000 maravedis. What this sum represents in our own money, however, is not so easy to determine, as the opinions upon the value of a maravedi vary greatly. The maravedi—the name is of Moorish origin—was a small coin used at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century. All prices were expressed in maravedis, even if they ran into the millions. It is, however, a fact well known that almost all coins which continue to bear one name decrease in value in the course of centuries. The Roman silver denarius sank finally to common copper coins, known in France as ‘dermer,’ in England as ‘d’ and in Germany as ‘pfennig.’ The original gulden-gold, as the name indicates—has long since become a silver piece which nowhere has the value of fifty cents. So, also, the value of the maravedi became less and less, until a century ago it was hardly equal to a pfennig (one-quarter of a cent). One may also reason backward that it was much more valuable four centuries ago.”

Ruge comes to the conclusion, after the examination of various decrees of Ferdinand, that the value of a maravedi was about 2.56 pfennig, or less than three-quarters of a cent in modern money. Therefore the contribution of 1,140,000 maravedis made by Queen Isabella was, he says, 29,184 marks, or about $7296, without taking into consideration the higher purchasing power of money in Columbus’s days. “The city of Palos also,” adds the article, “had to furnish out of its own means two small ships manned for twelve months. The cost to the State, therefore, of the journey of discovery was not more than 30,000 marks ($7500). Of this sum the admiral received an annual salary of 1280 marks ($320); the captains, Martin, Juan, and Anton Perez, each 768 marks ($192); the pilots, 542 to 614 marks each ($128 to $153), and a physician only 153 marks and 60 pfennigs ($38.50). The sailors received for the necessaries of life, etc., each month 1 ducat, valued at 375 maravedis, about 9 marks and 60 pfennigs ($2.45).”

The American Indians

With reference to the ancestors of the native tribes, and their probable origin, the following syllabus of Charles Hallock’s paper in the American Antiquarian is interesting:

The Indians, or Indigenes, of both North and South America, originated from a civilization of high degree which occupied the subequatorial belt some ten thousand years ago, while the glacial sheet was still on. Population spread northward as the ice receded. Routes of exodus diverging from the central point of departure are plainly marked by ruins and lithic records. The subsequent settlements in Arizona, Mexico, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and California indicate the successive stages of advance, as well as the persistent struggle to maintain the ancient civilization against reversion and the catastrophes of nature. The varying architecture of the valleys, cliffs, and mesas is an intelligible expression of the exigencies which stimulated the builders. The gradual distribution of population over the higher latitudes in after years was supplemented by accretions from Europe and Northern Asia centuries before the coming of Columbus. Wars and reprisals were the natural and inevitable results of a mixed and degenerated population with different dialects. The mounds which cover the midcontinental areas, isolated and in groups, tell the story thereof. The Korean immigration of the year 544, historically cited, which led to the founding of the Mexican empire in 1325, was but an incidental contribution to the growing population of North America. So also were the very much earlier migrations from Central America by water across the Gulf of Mexico to Florida and Arkansas.

The Landing of the Pilgrims

The actual authorities upon this subject are very few. But they have been carefully collated by Mr. Gay, in his “Bryant’s History of the United States,” and the story is there clearly told. Mr. Gay says that the Pilgrims probably did not land first at Plymouth, and certainly not on the 22d of December, a date erroneously perpetuated as Forefathers’ Day in celebration of the event. In summarizing the results of careful investigation G. W. Curtis says it was on the 21st of November, 1621, new style, that the “Mayflower” cast anchor in the bay which is now the harbor of Provincetown, Cape Cod. The Pilgrims went ashore, but found no water fit for drinking, and in a little shallop which the “Mayflower” had brought, a party began to explore the coast to find a proper place for a settlement, and on the 16th of December, N. S., they put off for a more extended search. On Saturday, the 19th, they reached Clark’s Island, in Plymouth Bay or Harbor, so called from Clark, the chief mate, who first stepped ashore, and on Sunday, the 20th, they rested and worshipped God. On Monday, the 21st, they crossed from the island to the mainland, somewhere probably in Duxbury or Kingston, which was the nearest point, and coasted along the shore, finding in some spots fields cleared for maize by the Indians, and copious streams. They decided that somewhere upon that shore it would be best to land and begin the settlement, but precisely where they did not determine, and sailed away again on the same day, the 21st, to rejoin the “Mayflower” at Cape Cod.

The next day, therefore, the 22d of December, the Plymouth shore and waters relapsed into the customary solitude, and the little band of Pilgrims were once more assembled upon the “Mayflower,” many miles away. It was not until the 25th of December that the famous ship left Cape Cod, and on the 26th she dropped anchor between Plymouth and Clark’s Island. Not before the 30th was Plymouth finally selected as the spot for settlement, and it was not until the 4th of January, 1621, that the Pilgrims generally went ashore, and began to build the common house. But it was not until the 31st of March that all the company left the ship.

The First Legislative Assembly

Jamestown, the first English settlement in the United States, was founded in 1607. The story of the early colonists during the first twelve years is a record of continuous misfortune; it is a story of oppressive government, of severe hardships, of famine, and Indian massacre. After languishing under such distressful conditions, the colony was reinforced with emigrants and supplies, the despotic governor, Argall, was displaced, and the mild and popular Sir George Yeardley was made captain-general. He arrived in April, 1619, and under the instructions he had received “for the better establishing of a commonwealth,” he issued a proclamation “that those cruel laws, by which the planters had so long been governed, were now abrogated, and that they were to be governed by those free laws which his majesty’s subjects lived under in England. That the planters might have a hand in the governing of themselves, it was granted that a general assembly should be held yearly, whereat were to be present the governor and council, with two burgesses from each plantation, freely to be elected by the inhabitants thereof, this assembly to have power to make and ordain whatsoever laws and orders should by them be thought good and profitable for their subsistence.”

In conformity with this “charter of rights and liberties,” summonses were sent out to hold elections of burgesses, and on July 30, 1619, delegates from each of the eleven plantations assembled at Jamestown. Under this administrative change, this inauguration of legislative power, salutary enactments were adopted, and the new representatives proved their capacity and their readiness to meet their responsibilities. It was the first legislative assembly in America, the beginning of self-government in the English colonies.

The Signing of the Declaration

“July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence having been read was agreed to as follows: [Here should appear the Declaration without any signatures or authentication, as is the case with one of the manuscript journals.]

“Ordered, That the Declaration be authenticated and printed. That the committee appointed to prepare the Declaration superintend and correct the press, etc.

“July 19. Resolved, That the Declaration passed on the 4th be fairly engrossed on parchment, with the title, etc., and that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress.

“Aug. 2. The Declaration agreed to on July 4, being engrossed and compared at the table, was signed by the members, agreeably to the resolution of July 19.

“Nov. 4. The Hon. Matthew Thornton, Esq., a delegate from New Hampshire, attended and produced his credentials.

“Ordered, That Mr. Thornton be directed, agreeably to the resolve passed July 19, to affix his signature to the engrossed copy of the Declaration, with the date of his subscription.

“Jan. 18, 1777. Ordered, That an authentic copy of the Declaration of Independence, with the names of the members of Congress subscribing the same, be sent to each of the United States, and they be desired to have the same put upon record.

“——, 1781. Whereas, It has been made to appear to this present Congress that the Hon. Thomas McKean was a member of Congress from Delaware in the year 1776, and that on July 4 of that year he was present and voted for the Declaration of Independence, but being absent with the army at the time of the general subscription of that instrument on Aug. 2: therefore,

“Resolved, That the said Hon. Thomas McKean be allowed to affix his signature to the aforesaid Declaration, he adding thereto the date of such subscription.”

The engrossed copy of the Declaration reads: “In Congress, July 4, 1776. The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America——” and after the Declaration follow the signatures. To make the record accurate and true to history, the signatures should have been preceded by some such recital as this: “The foregoing Declaration having been agreed to on July 4, by the delegates of the thirteen United Colonies, in Congress assembled, and the same having been engrossed, is now subscribed, agreeably to a resolution passed July 19, by the members of Congress present this 2d day of August, 1776.”

The Authorship of the Declaration

In the inscription prepared by Thomas Jefferson for his tomb, he preferred to be remembered as the “author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.” With regard to the first of these claims to originality two questions have been in controversy,—the first upon the substance of the document, and the second concerning its phraseology in connection with the Mecklenburg declaration of May, 1775. The latter, Mr. Jefferson declared he had not seen at the time, and as to the germ, it is obvious in the conclusions upon government of the leading thinkers of the age in Europe and America. The assumption that Jefferson unaided wrote the great state paper, unequalled as it is in eloquence and dignity, is based upon weak evidence, and it is noteworthy that he did not make a positive claim until after his eightieth year.

In the early days of the republic there were many who believed that he did not write it; but for reasons which have been set forth, as follows, the real author was unknown.

Six months before independence was declared, an anonymous pamphlet was published, entitled “Common Sense.” Its success was unprecedented. The copyright was assigned to the colonies by the author, and not until several editions were issued was it accredited to Thomas Paine. In a literary point of view it was one of the finest productions in the English language. But the author was not an aspirant for literary fame; his sole aim was the achievement of American independence.

Paine was the bosom friend of Franklin. They were both very secretive men, and Franklin, who had induced Paine to come to America, knew that he could trust him. Franklin was a member of the committee to draft a declaration. The task was assigned to Jefferson, and in a very few days it was completed.

Franklin handed to Jefferson a draft already prepared by Paine, and assured him that he could trust the writer never to lay claim to its authorship. What could Jefferson do but use it? It was far superior in style to anything he could produce. So with a few verbal changes be reported it, and it was adopted by the Congress, after striking out several passages more eloquent than any that remain, as, for instance, one about the slave trade.

The adoption of this declaration placed Jefferson in an embarrassing position. Not daring to say outright that he was its author, he studiously evaded that point whenever it became necessary to allude to the subject. But at last, when Franklin had been dead thirty-three years and Paine fourteen years, Jefferson ventured to claim what no one then disputed. It would never have done for him to name the real author, and who could be harmed, he doubtless thought, by taking the credit to himself? But the science of criticism, like the spectrum analysis which reveals the composition of the stars, points unerringly to Thomas Paine as the only man who could indite that greatest of literary masterpieces, the Declaration of American Independence.

Eminent Domain—National Sovereignty

It is well known to the students of our history that, though Maryland was fully represented in the Continental Congress and took an active part in all the deliberations of that body and answered every requisition which was made upon her for money and troops, sending more than 20,000 of her best sons to the army under Washington, whose courage and conduct on every battle-field of the Revolution elicited the warm commendation of their great commander, she did not sign, and for years resolutely refused to sign, the Articles of Confederation, and did not sign those articles until March 1, 1781, about eight months before the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, which marked the close of our revolutionary struggle.

In a vague and general way the reason of that refusal was also known. Intimations of it crop out occasionally in the pages of some of our annalists. But the full meaning and the subsequent and most important effect of that refusal and of that reason were not fully understood and realized until they were explained and unfolded by the investigations of two of the most accomplished scholars of our time. The late Herbert B. Adams, professor of history, Johns Hopkins University, in a paper read before the Maryland Historical Society April 9, 1877, entitled “Maryland’s Influence upon the Land Cessions to the United States,” and also published in the Johns Hopkins University studies, third series, No. 1, in January, 1885, and the late Professor John Fiske, of Harvard University, in his work entitled “The Critical Period of American History,” published in 1888, for the first time fully investigated and discussed this question of the public lands and the profound significance of the action of Maryland in the Continental Congress in regard to it.

Of the vastly important, but to his time little understood, effect of this action on the part of Maryland, Professor Adams says, page 67 of his paper: “The acquisition of a territorial commonwealth by these States was the foundation of a permanent union; it was the first solid arch upon which the framers of our Constitution could build. When we now consider the practical results arising from Maryland’s prudence in laying the keystone to the old confederation only after the land claims of the larger States had been placed through her influence upon a national basis, we may say with truth that it was a national commonwealth which Maryland founded.” And again, on page 30 of the same paper, Professor Adams observes: “The credit of suggesting and successfully urging in Congress that policy which has made this country a great national commonwealth, composed of free, convenient, and independent governments, bound together by ties of permanent territorial interests, the credit of originating this policy belongs to Maryland, and to her alone. Absolutely nothing had been effected by Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Delaware, before they ratified the articles, toward breaking down the selfish claims of the larger States and placing the confederation upon a national basis.... Maryland was left to fight out the battle alone, and with what success we shall shortly see.”

The history of the struggle which Maryland made, single-handed and alone in the Congress of the States, to compel the surrender of the Western lands to the United States by the States which claimed them, namely Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, North Carolina, and Georgia, is graphically told in this interesting paper, and reflects the highest credit on the courage, resolution, statesmanship, and patriotism of the General Assembly of Maryland and her representatives in the Congress. The struggle was a long and arduous one, but in the end Maryland won. Her position was that, without regard to the titles more or less doubtful and defective on which these claims were founded or pretended to be founded, and which, by the way, she utterly denied, the fact remained that when these lands were acquired from Great Britain, as one of the results of the war we were waging, they would be won by the common expenditure of the blood and treasure of the people of all the States, and that therefore they should become the common property and the inheritance of all the States, as a national domain to be governed and controlled by the national sovereignty, and to be parcelled out ultimately into “free, convenient, and independent States,” and to become members of the federal Union, on an equality with the other States, whenever their population and circumstances should justify. Maryland thus formulated the elemental idea of territorial acquisition and the purposes of that acquisition, namely, the creation out of such territory, the common property of all the States, of new and independent Commonwealths and coequal members of the federal Union, for that purpose, and that purpose only, and the idea of a national sovereignty as a logical consequence of such acquisition for that purpose.

The struggle was begun by Maryland by the passage, in her General Assembly, of instructions to her delegates in Congress on December 15, 1778,—instructions which were read and submitted to that Congress on May 21, 1779. A declaration of the same tenor and effect as the instructions had been previously adopted and transmitted to Congress by Maryland and laid before that body without debate on January 6, 1779. Virginia answered these instructions and declaration by a remonstrance from her House of Burgesses, in which she alluded, with something of arrogance, to these papers and protested against any attempt or design by the Congress to diminish any of her territory, and reasserted all her exorbitant and unfounded claims to the Western lands and her purpose to relinquish none of them. She had even gone so far as to organize Illinois and Kentucky into counties of Virginia.

The fight was now on. In the beginning Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Delaware had supported Maryland, and with her had protested against these pretensions of the larger States; but under influences which it is now difficult to account for they soon fell from her side and left her to make that fight alone. She encountered vehement opposition from the landed States, as they grew to be denominated.

“But of these protesting States,” says Professor John Fiske, in the work referred to, page 191, “it was only Maryland that fairly rose to the occasion and suggested an idea, which seemed startling at first, but from which mighty and unforeseen consequences were soon to follow.” A motion had been made in the Congress to the effect that the United States, in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right and power to ascertain and fix the western boundary of the States making claim to the Mississippi, and lay out the land beyond the boundary so ascertained into separate and independent States, from time to time, as the numbers and circumstances of the people may require. This motion was submitted by Maryland, and no State but Maryland voted for it.

Professor Fiske subsequently observes: “This acquisition of a common territory speedily led to results not at all contemplated in the theory of union upon which the Articles of Confederation were based. It led to ‘the exercise of national sovereignty in the sense of eminent domain,’ as shown in the ordinances of 1784 and 1787, and prepared men’s minds for the work of the Federal Convention. Great credit is due to Maryland for her resolute course in setting in motion this train of events. It aroused fierce indignation at the time, as to many people it looked unfriendly to the Union. Some hotheads were even heard to say that, if Maryland should persist any longer in her refusal to join the Confederation, she ought to be summarily divided up between the neighboring States and her name erased from the map. (Maryland had heard such threats before in her colonial period and had been unjustly stripped of large parts of her territory, as laid down in her charter, by both Virginia and Pennsylvania.) But the brave little State had earned a better fate than Poland. When we have come to trace out the result of her action we shall see that just as it was Massachusetts that took the decisive step in bringing on the Revolutionary War, when she threw the tea into the Boston harbor, so it was Maryland that, by leading the way toward the creation of a national domain, laid the corner-stone of our federal Union.”

Maryland, unawed by these threats, resolutely adhered to her determination, as announced by her repeatedly in the General Assembly of the State and through her representatives in the Congress, not to sign the Articles of Confederation until this great wrong should be righted, until these Western lands should be ceded to the United States for the common benefit of all the States. Her resolution was rewarded. Maryland finally won. The great States yielded, some cheerfully, some with reluctance, and surrendered their Western lands to the United States, New York leading the way, followed by Massachusetts, and finally by Virginia and the other States. Maryland, having accomplished her great purpose, instructed her two distinguished sons, then representatives in the Congress, John Hanson and Daniel Carroll, to sign the Articles of Confederation on her behalf, which they did on March 1, 1781, and thus the Articles of Confederation were completed. The satisfaction which this action of Maryland gave was very general, and Madison gives expression to it in a letter to Thomas Jefferson when subsequently the negotiations were begun between Maryland and Virginia which culminated ultimately in the Federal Convention, the formation of our Constitution, and the establishment of the government of the United States.

Gun Flints Wanted

On the 4th of July, 1776, the adoption of the Declaration of Independence was not the only event of the day during the session of the Continental Congress. Attention was given to other important matters, among them the passage of the following resolution:

“That the Board of War be empowered to employ such a number of persons as they shall find necessary to manufacture flints for the continent, and for this purpose to apply to the respective Assemblies, Conventions, and Councils or Committees of Safety of the United American States, or committees of inspection of the counties and towns thereunto belonging, for the names and places of abode of persons skilled in the manufacture aforesaid, and of the places in their respective States where the best flint-stones are to be obtained, with samples of the same.”

The flint-lock of the old-time muskets and pistols has long since been superseded by the detonating or percussion cap. It passed out of use when goose-quills gave way to metallic pens, sand boxes to blotters, and red wafers to mucilage or paste in convenient jars.

The Master Spirit of the Revolution

In his “Historical View of the American Revolution,” George W. Greene says: “When the colonists resolved upon resistance to British invasion, the first question that presented itself, in the effort to organize the independent militia of the different States for the general defence was, who should command this motley army? As long as each colony provided for its own men, it was difficult to infuse a spirit of unity into discordant elements. There could be no strength without union, and of union the only adequate representative was the Continental Congress. To induce the Congress to adopt the army in the name of the United Colonies was one of the objects toward which John Adams directed his attention. With the question of adoption came the question of commander-in-chief; and here personal ambition and sectional jealousies were manifest in various ways.”

Washington’s was, of course, the first name that occurred to Northern and Southern men alike; for it was the only name that had won a continental reputation. But some New England men thought that they would do better service under a New England commander, like General Ward, of Massachusetts; and some Southern men were not prepared to see Washington put so prominently forward. Then New England was divided against itself. While Ward had warm advocates, John Hancock had aspirations for the high place which were not always concealed from the keen eyes of his colleagues. Among Washington’s opponents were some “of his own household,” Pendleton of Virginia being the most persistent of them all. At last John Adams moved to adopt the army, and appoint a general; and a few days after, June 5—the interval having been actively used to win over the little band of dissenters—Washington was chosen by a unanimous vote.

In a memorable address, Edward Everett remarked: “The war was conducted by Washington under every possible disadvantage. He engaged in it without any personal experience in the handling of large bodies of men, and this was equally the case with all his subordinates. The Continental Congress, under whose authority the war was waged, was destitute of all the attributes of an efficient government. It had no power of taxation, and no right to compel the obedience of the individual. The country was nearly as destitute of the material of war as of the means of procuring it; it had no foundries, no arsenals, no forts, no navy, no means, no credit. The opposing power had all the prestige of an ancient monarchy, of the legitimate authority of disciplined and veteran armies, of a powerful navy, of the military possession of most of the large towns, and the machinery of government for peace and war. It had also the undoubted sympathy of a considerable portion of the people, especially of the wealthy class. That Washington, carrying on the war under these circumstances, met with frequent reverses, and that the progress of the Revolution as conducted by him seemed often languid and inert, is less wonderful than that he rose superior to such formidable obstacles, and was able, with unexhausted patience and matchless skill, to bring the contest eventually to an auspicious and honorable close.”

The Constitutional Convention

In his admirable memorial of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Constitution of the United States, Hampton L. Carson says: “During the years of bankruptcy, anarchy, and civil paralysis, which preceded the formation of a more lasting Union, Washington constantly urged the establishment of a stronger national government. He saw the folly, the weakness, and the insignificance of a government powerless to enforce its decrees, dependent upon the discretion of thirteen different Legislatures, swayed by conflicting interests, and therefore unable to provide for the public safety, or for the honorable payment of the national debt. He clearly saw the necessity for a government which could command the obedience of individuals by operating directly upon them, and not upon sovereign States. In his private as well as official correspondence during an early period of the war, in his last words to his officers at Newburgh, in his speech when resigning his commission at Annapolis, and after his return to Mount Vernon, in his letters to Hamilton, Jefferson, Mason, and Madison, he constantly and vigorously urged the idea of a stronger Union, and a surrender of a portion of the sovereignty of the States. When the Federal Convention was determined on, it was natural as well as appropriate that he should be selected as one of the delegates from Virginia, and, as a proof of the magnitude and solemnity of the duty to be performed, he was placed at the head of the State delegation. Upon his arrival in Philadelphia, in May, 1787, he called upon the venerable Franklin, then eighty-one years of age, and the great soldier and the great philosopher conferred together upon the evils which had befallen their beloved country and threatened it with dangers far greater than those of war. Upon the nomination of Robert Morris, Washington was unanimously chosen president of the Convention,—an honor for which he expressed his thanks in a few simple words, reminding his colleagues of the novelty of the scene of business in which he was to act, lamenting his want of better qualifications, and claiming indulgence towards the involuntary errors which his inexperience might occasion. In that body of fifty-five statesmen and jurists—such men as Hamilton, Madison, Dickinson, Rutledge, Morris, and Carroll—Washington did not shine as a debater. Of oratorical talents he had none, but the breadth and sagacity of his views, his calmness of judgment, his exalted character, and the vast grasp of his national sympathy, exerted a powerful influence upon the labors of the Convention. So far as the record shows, he seems to have broken silence but twice,—once when he disapproved of the exclusive origination of money-bills in the House of Representatives, a view which he abandoned for the sake of harmony, and again when he wished the ratio of representation reduced. The proceedings were held in secret, and not until after four months of arduous and continuous toil did the people know how great or how wonderful was the work of the men who builded better than they knew. When the Constitution was before the people for adoption, and the result was in doubt, Gouverneur Morris wrote to Washington as follows:

“I have observed that your name to the Constitution has been of infinite service. Indeed, I am convinced that if you had not attended the Convention, and the same paper had been handed out to the world, it would have met with a colder reception, with fewer and weaker advocates, and with more and more strenuous opponents. As it is, should the idea prevail that you will not accept the Presidency, it will prove fatal in many parts. The truth is that your great and decided superiority leads men willingly to put you in a place which will not add to your present dignity, nor raise you higher than you already stand.”

In the interval neither the voice nor the pen of Washington was idle. In many of his most interesting letters he constantly urged upon his countrymen the necessity of adopting the work of the Convention as the only remedy for the evils with which the country was afflicted. When the new government went into operation he was unanimously chosen as the first President, and was sworn into office in the city of New York, April 30, 1789. In 1792, though anxious to retire, he was again chosen to the executive chair by the unanimous vote of every electoral college; and for a third time, in 1796, was earnestly entreated to consent to a re-election, but firmly declined, thus establishing by the force of his example a custom which has remained unbroken, and which has become a part of the unwritten law of the Republic.

Division of Legislative Authority

The late Francis Lieber related the following story in a letter to a friend:

“An incident of more than usual interest occurred to-day, just after the class in constitutional law was dismissed, at the university. I had been lecturing upon the advantages of the bicameral system, had dismissed the class, and was about to leave the room, when a young man, whom I knew had taken instructions under Laboulaye, in Paris, approached me, and said that what I had urged in regard to the bicameral system reminded him of a story which he had heard Laboulaye relate. I was interested, of course, and, as the class gathered around, he proceeded with the following: Laboulaye said, in one of his lectures, that Jefferson, who had become so completely imbued with French ideas as even to admire the uni-cameral system of legislation, one day visited Washington at Mount Vernon, and, in the course of the conversation that ensued, the comparative excellence of the two systems came up for consideration. After considerable had been said on both sides, finally, at the tea-table, Washington, turning sharply to Jefferson, said,—

“‘You, sir, have just demonstrated the superior excellence of the bicameral system, by your own hand.’

“‘I! How is that?’ said Jefferson, not a little surprised.

“‘You have poured your tea from your cup out into the saucer to cool. We want the bicameral system to cool things. A measure originates in one house, and in heat is passed. The other house will serve as a wonderful cooler; and, by the time it is debated and modified by various amendments there, it is much more likely to become an equitable law. No, we can’t get along without the saucer in our system.’

“Jefferson, of course, saw that a point had been made against his argument; but whether he was frank enough to say so, the story-teller did not relate.”

Progress toward Position as a World Power

In the case of the North American colonies, connection with the main stream of history may be said to have taken place in the latter half of the eighteenth century, especially during the Seven Years’ War and the war of Independence. Consequently, the earlier history of North America would naturally be considered about the close of the reign of Louis XV. and immediately before the French Revolution. But, although an intimate relation between America and Europe was established during the period 1756–83, and although the outbreak of the French Revolution was partly due to this connection, it was severed after the Peace of Versailles to be renewed only occasionally during many years. For upwards of a century from that date the United States remained in a sense an isolated political entity, standing forth, indeed, as a primary example of a successful and progressive federated republic, and, as such, exerting a constant influence on the political thought of Europe, but not otherwise affecting the course of European affairs, and little affected by them in return. The United States seldom came into close political contact even with Great Britain during the greater part of the nineteenth century, and still more rarely with other Powers. It is only during the last generation that an extraordinary industrial and commercial development has brought the United States into immediate contact and rivalry with European nations; and it is still more recently that, through the acquisition of transmarine dependencies and the recognition of far-reaching interests abroad, the American people have practically abandoned the policy of isolation, and have definitely, because inevitably, taken their place among the great Powers of the world.

OUR NATIONAL AIRS

An Air of Twelve Nations

The air of the German national hymn, “Heil Dir im Sieger Kranz,” was appropriated by English loyalty to royalty for the stirring verses of “God save the King.” When Samuel F. Smith wrote his patriotic song, “My country, ’tis of thee,” in 1832, it was sung in Boston to the same tune under the name “America.” Following England’s example of appropriation and adverse possession, we have held on to our stolen air ever since, although it is a never-ending reminder of God save the King, meaning the king of Great Britain.

According to a French journal, the Charivari, Handel copied the tune from a St. Cyr melody, the authorship of which is claimed for Luille. The common account attributing it to Dr. Bull is so far discredited as to make it unworthy of notice. Besides Germany, England, and the United States, it figures among the patriotic or national airs of nine other nations. In Bavaria it is “Heil! unserm König, Heil!” In Switzerland it is “Rufst du, mein Vaterland.” It is in use to various sets of words in Brunswick, Hanover, Wurtemberg, Prussia, Saxony, Weimar, and Norway.

The Rhode Island State Society of the Cincinnati, composed of descendants of Continental officers of the Revolution, was so strongly impressed with the incongruity of singing Smith’s national song to the air of the British national anthem on the Fourth of July, the date of the annual reunion, that a prize was offered for an original substitute. In response to the circular inviting composers to compete, five hundred and seventeen compositions were sent in and considered. The committee awarded a gold medal to Mr. Arthur Edward Johnstone, of New York. While the aim of the Society was to provide a tune for its own use on its Fourth of July and other patriotic celebrations, it has no desire to monopolize the air which was selected, but freely offers this stirring and dignified strain to popular acceptance.

The statement that the air of the German national hymn was due to French inspiration is confirmed in the “Memoirs of Madame de Gregny,” in which we find the canticle that used to be sung by the young ladies of St. Cyr whenever Louis XIV. entered their chapel to hear morning mass. The first stanza was as follows:

Grand Dieu sauve le Roi!

Grand Dieu venge le Roi!

Vive le Roi!

Que toujours glorieux,

Louis victorieux,

Voye ses enemies

Toujours soumis.

The words were written by de Brenon, and the music, as stated, was by Luille, who was a distinguished composer. German sensitiveness over this French origin may find an offset in the allegation that neither the words nor the music of the Marseillaise hymn were composed by the Strasburg soldier Rouget de l’Isle. In the memoirs of Baron Bunsen it is authoritatively stated that the melody, which is found among the folk-songs of Germany, was written by a composer named Holzman, in 1776, when de l’Isle was a mere child.

Hail Columbia

The music of Hail Columbia was written as a march, and went at first by the name of “Washington’s March.” At a later period it was called “The President’s March,” and was played in 1789, when Washington went to New York to be inaugurated. A son of Professor Phyla, of Philadelphia, who was one of the performers, says it was his father’s composition. It had a martial ring that caught the ear of the multitude, and became very popular. Mr. Custis, the adopted son of Washington, says it was composed in 1789 by a German named Fayles, leader of the orchestra and musical composer for the old John Street Theatre in New York, where he (Custis) heard it played as a new piece on the occasion of General Washington’s first visit to the theatre. The two names, Phyla and Fayles, are most likely identical, and confused by mispronunciation, and the stories do not materially contradict each other.

After Joseph Hopkinson wrote the national ode for adaptation to the tune of the President’s March, it became known as Hail Columbia, and was first sung at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, in 1798.

The Star-Spangled Banner

The stirring and popular air, originally a convivial song, applied to Key’s immortal verses, is attributed, upon what appears to be good authority, to a famous English composer, Samuel Arnold, who was born in London in 1739. His compositions include forty-seven operas, which were popular in his day, though they have not outlived that period, four oratorios, and numerous sonatas, concertos, overtures, and minor pieces. At the request of George III. he superintended the publication of the works of Handel in thirty-six folio volumes. In 1783 he was made organist and composer of the Royal Chapel, and, ten years later, organist of Westminster Abbey, where he was buried when he died in 1802.

But this alleged authorship of the song and the music was disputed by the Anacreontic Society of London. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the jovial association known as “The Anacreontic” held its festive and musical meetings at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand, a house of entertainment frequented by such men as Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Dr. Percy. At one time, the president of the Anacreontic was Ralph Tomlinson, Esq., and it is claimed that he wrote the words of the song adopted by the club, while John Stafford Smith set them to music. The style of this merry club will be best exemplified by the first and last stanzas of the song:

“To Anacreon in Heaven, where he sat in full glee,

A few sons of Harmony sent a petition

That he their inspirer and patron would be,

When this answer arrived from the jolly old Grecian—

‘Voice, fiddle, and flute,

No longer be mute!

I’ll lend you my name and inspire you to boot;

And besides, I’ll instruct you like me to entwine

The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.’”

This sets Jove and the gods in an uproar. They fear that the petitioners will become too jovial. At length they relent. There are six stanzas, and the last is as follows:

“Ye sons of Anacreon, then join Hand in Hand,

Preserve unanimity, friendship, and love;

’Tis yours to support what’s so happily planned;

You’ve the sanction of gods and the fiat of Jove.

While thus we agree,

Our toast let it be,

May our club flourish happy, united, and free;

And long may the sons of Anacreon entwine

The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.”

The last two lines of each stanza were repeated in chorus. In this country, “To Anacreon in Heaven” was first adapted to a song written for the Adams campaign by Robert Treat Paine. It was entitled “Adams and Liberty,” and was first sung at the anniversary of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society in 1798.

After the rout at Bladensburg and the capture of Washington by the British forces, the invaders, under General Ross and Admiral Cockburn, proceeded up the Chesapeake to attack Baltimore. Its brave and heroic defenders were reinforced by volunteers from neighboring sections. Among the recruits from Pennsylvania who hastened to offer their services was a company from Dauphin County under the command of Captain Thomas Walker. When Francis Scott Key, while detained as a prisoner on the cartel ship in the Patapsco, saw “by the dawn’s early light” that “our flag was still there,” he was inspired to write his splendid verses, and on his release and return to Baltimore, one of the mess of Captain Walker’s company, who had been fortunate enough to obtain a rude copy, was so impressed with its inspiriting vigor that he read it aloud to his comrades three times. Its effect was electric, and at once the suggestion was made that a suitable air be found to which it could be sung. A young man named George J. Heisely, then from Harrisburg, though he had formerly lived in Frederick, and was well acquainted with Mr. Key, was so devoted to music that he always carried his flute and his note-book with him. Taking them out, he laid his flute on a camp barrel, and turned over the leaves of his note-book until he came to Anacreon in Heaven, when he was immediately struck with the adaptability of its measure. A strolling actor, a member of the company from Lancaster, named Ferdinand Durang, snatched the flute, and played the air, while Heisely held up the note-book. On the following evening Durang sang the Star-Spangled Banner for the first time on the stage of the Holliday Street Theatre.

The Red, White, and Blue

It is stated that “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” or the “Red, White, and Blue,” was written and composed in 1843 by David T. Shaw, a concert singer at the Chinese Museum, Philadelphia. The statement is also made that the authorship of the words and music was traced to Thomas A. Becket, an English actor then playing at the Chestnut Street Theatre. Whether the words were written by Shaw or for him, it is clear that the Columbia, Gem of the Ocean of Shaw is a “dodged” version of the English original “Britannia, the Pride of the Ocean,” which Shaw had the credit of writing. An English commentator says that “the word Britannia fits the metre, whereas Columbia is a lumbering word which cannot be pronounced in less than four syllables; that while an island may properly be styled a ‘gem of the ocean,’ the phrase would have been absurd when applied to the United States of that day, and is even more incorrect now when the vast mass of land comprised in its territory is only partly surrounded by three oceans; and there are two Columbias, the South American Columbia and British Columbia. The United States of America was never known by such a title.”

Yankee Doodle

American philologists have endeavored to trace the term Yankee to an Indian source. It is not Indian, however, but Dutch. If one might characterize the relations between New England and the New Netherlands in the early colonial period, he would say with Irving that “the Yankee despised the Dutchman and the Dutchman abominated the Yankee.” The Dutch verb “Yankee” means to snarl, wrangle, and the noun “Yanker,” howling cur, is perhaps the most expressive term of contempt in the whole language. Out of that acrimonious struggle between Connecticut and New Amsterdam came the nickname which has stuck to the descendants of the Puritans ever since.

The adoption of the air of Yankee Doodle has been credited to Dr. Shackburg, a wit, musician, and surgeon, in 1755, when the colonial troops united with the British regulars in the attack on the French outposts at Niagara and Frontenac. It was aimed in derision of the motley clothes, the antiquated equipments, and the lack of military training of the militia from the Eastern provinces, all in broad contrast with the neat and orderly appointments of the regulars. Be this as it may, the tune was well known in the time of Charles II., under the name “Lydia Fisher’s Jig.” Aside from the old doggerel verses, commencing “Father and I went down to camp,” there is no song; the tune in the United States is a march. It was well known in Holland, and was in common use there as a harvest-song among farm-laborers, at a remote period.

A late number of the Frankfurter Zeitung furnishes some interesting information in a paragraph which is translated as follows by the United States Consul at Mayence, Mr. Schumann:

“In the publication Hessenland (No. 2, 1905) Johann Lewalter gives expression to his opinion that Yankee Doodle was originally a country-dance of a district of the former province of Kur-Hesse, called the “Schwalm.” It is well known that the tune of Yankee Doodle was derived from a military march played by the Hessian troops during the war of the Revolution in America. In studying the dances of the Schwalm, Lewalter was struck by the similarity in form and rhythm of Yankee Doodle to the music of these dances. Recently, at the Kirmess of the village of Wasenberg, when Yankee Doodle was played, the young men and girls swung into a true Schwälmer dance, as though the music had been composed for it. During the war of 1776 the chief recruiting office for the enlistment of the Hessian hired soldiers was Ziegenhain, in Kur-Hesse. It, therefore, seems probable that the Hessian recruits from the Schwalm, who served in the pay of Great Britain in America during the Revolutionary War, and whose military band instruments consisted of bugles, drums, and fifes only, carried over with them the tune, known to them from childhood, and played it as a march.”

OUR HISTORIC CHARACTERS

Washington

Washington was a vestryman of both Truro and Fairfax parishes. The place of worship of the former was at Pohick, and of the latter at Alexandria. Mount Vernon was within Truro parish, and in the affairs of the church Washington took a lively interest. The old Pohick building became so dilapidated that in 1764 it was resolved to build a new church. The question as to location was discussed in the parish with considerable excitement, some contending for retention of the old site and others favoring a more central position. At a meeting for settling the question, George Mason (the famous author of the Bill of Rights of Virginia) made an ardent and eloquent plea to stand by the old landmarks consecrated by the ashes of their ancestors, and sacred to all the memories of life, marriage, birth, and death. In reply to this touching appeal Washington produced a survey of the parish, drawn by himself with his usual accuracy, on which every road was laid down, and the residence of every householder marked. Spreading his map before the audience, he showed that the new location which he advocated would be more conveniently reached by every member of the parish, while to many of them the old site was inaccessible. He expressed the hope that they would not allow their judgment to be guided by their feelings. When the vote was taken, a large majority favored removal to the proposed locality. Thereupon George Mason put on his hat and stalked out of the meeting, saying, in not smothered tones, “That’s what gentlemen get for engaging in debate with a damned surveyor.” But, notwithstanding this little tiff, the owners of Gunston Hall and of Mount Vernon had the highest respect and warmest affection for each other.

One of the greatest blessings which a man can possess—especially if he is a public man—is an imperturbable temper. It is a remarkable fact that those who have most signally manifested this virtue have been men who were constitutionally irritable. Such was the case with Washington, whose habitual composure, the result of strenuous self-discipline, was so great that it was supposed to be due to a cold and almost frigid temperament. By nature a violently passionate man, he triumphed so completely over his frailty as to be cheated of all credit for his coolness and exasperating trials.

His biographers record very few instances of violent outbreak of anger, even under excessive provocation. One of the few was in the well-known disobedience of orders by General Charles Lee, at the battle of Monmouth, and his ordering a retreat by which the day was nearly lost. It was a betrayal of confidence which was subsequently explained by the verdict of a court-martial convened to inquire into his misconduct. When Washington, who was hurrying forward to his support, met the retreating troops struggling and straggling in confusion, and realized the situation, he rode at Lee as if he meant to ride him down. He was like a raging lion. Demanding the meaning of the rout, he accompanied his questions with imprecations whose crushing force was terrible.

Another instance of justifiable wrath following the libellous attacks of Bache, Freeman, and the French Minister Genet, is noted as follows in McMaster’s “History of the People of the United States,” which we copy from that admirable book by permission of the publishers, D. Appleton & Company:

“For a while Washington met this abuse with cold disdain. ‘The publications,’ he wrote to Henry Lee, June 21, 1793, ‘in Freneau’s and Bache’s papers are outrages on common decency. But I have a consolation within that no earthly effort can deprive me of, and that is, that neither ambition nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore, however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable part of me, though, while I am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed.’ But as time went on, the slanders daily heaped upon him by the National Gazette and the General Advertiser irritated him to such a degree that every allusion to them provoked a testy answer or a show of rage. One of these outbursts took place at a cabinet meeting held early in August, and has been described with manifest delight by Jefferson. The matter discussed was the conduct of Genet, and, in the course of some remarks, Knox spoke of the recent libel on the President. In a moment the face of Washington put on an expression which it was seldom given his friends to see. Says Jefferson, ‘He got into one of those passions when he cannot command himself, ran on much on the personal abuse which had been bestowed on him, and defied any man on earth to produce one single act of his since he had been in the government which had not been done on the purest motives. He had never repented but once having slipped the moment of resigning his office, and that was every moment since; and, by heavens! he would rather be in his grave than in his present situation. He would rather be on his farm than be emperor of the world; and yet they were charging him with wanting to be a king.’”

This reference to a dictatorship recalls the incident which shook to its centre his evenly balanced and self-controlled nature. Discontent among officers and soldiers over arrearages of pay, the neglect of Congress to make provision for the claims of their suffering families, and increasing distrust of the efficiency of the government and of republican institutions, led to an organized movement for a constitutional monarchy, and to make Washington its king. A paper embodying the views of the malcontents was drawn up, and presented to the Chief by a highly esteemed officer,—Colonel Nicola. Washington’s scornful rebuke, dated Newburgh, May 22, 1782, expressed surprise and indignation. Said he, “No occurrences in the course of the war have given me more painful sensations than your information of the existence of such ideas in the army, ideas which I view with abhorrence and reprehend with severity. I am at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address, which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country. If I am not deceived in the knowledge of myself, you could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable. Let me conjure you, if you have any regard for your country, concern for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, and never communicate, from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of the like nature.”

While colonel of the Virginia troops in 1754, Washington was stationed at Alexandria. At an election for members of the Assembly Colonel Washington, in the heat of party excitement, used offensive language toward a Mr. Payne. Thereupon that gentleman struck him a heavy blow and knocked him down. Intelligence of the encounter aroused among his soldiers a spirit of vengeance, which was quieted by an address from him, showing his noble character. Next day, Mr. Payne received a note from Washington, requesting his attendance at the tavern in Alexandria. Mr. Payne anticipated a duel, but instead of pistols he found a table set with wine and glasses, and was met with a friendly smile by his antagonist. Colonel Washington felt that himself was the aggressor, and determined to make reparation. He offered Mr. Payne his hand, and said: “To err is human; to rectify error is right and proper. I believe I was wrong yesterday; you have already had some satisfaction, and if you deem that sufficient, here is my hand—let us be friends.” The amende honorable was promptly accepted.

Another case of offence, with prompt regret and reparation, occurred at Cambridge, in 1775, when the army was destitute of powder. Washington sent Colonel Glover to Marblehead for a supply of that article, which was said to be there. At night the colonel returned and found Washington in front of his head-quarters pacing up and down. The general, without returning his salute, asked, roughly, “Have you got the powder?” “No, sir.” Washington swore the terrible Saxon oath, with all its three specifications. “Why did you come back, sir, without it?” “Sir, there is not a kernel of powder in Marblehead.” Washington walked up and down a minute or two in great agitation, and then said, “Colonel Glover, here is my hand, if you will take it and forgive me. The greatness of our danger made me forget what is due to you and myself.”

In his “Memories of a Hundred Years,” Edward Everett Hale says, “It is with some hesitation that I add here what I am afraid is true, though I never heard it said aloud until the year 1901. It belongs with the discussion as to the third term for the Presidency. The statement now is that Washington did not permit his name to be used for a third election because he had become sure that he could not carry the State of Virginia in the election. He would undoubtedly have been chosen by the votes of the other States, but he would have felt badly the want of confidence implied in the failure of his own ‘country,’ as he used to call it in his earlier letters, to vote for him. It is quite certain, from the correspondence of the time, that as late as September of the year 1796, the year in which John Adams was chosen President, neither Adams nor Washington knew whether Washington meant to serve a third time.”

In delineating the characteristics of Washington, Edward Everett says, in his masterly way:

“If we claim for Washington solitary eminence among the great and good, the question will naturally be asked in what the peculiar and distinctive excellence of his character consisted; and to this fair question I am tasked to find an answer that does full justice to my own conceptions and feelings. It is easy to run over the heads of such a contemplation; to enumerate the sterling qualities which he possessed and the defects from which he was free; but when all is said in this way that can be said, with whatever justice of honest eulogy, and whatever sympathy of appreciation, we feel that there is a depth which we have not sounded, a latent power we have not measured, a mysterious beauty of character which you can no more describe in words than you can paint a blush with a patch of red paint, or the glance of a sunbeam from a ripple with a streak of white paint thrown upon the canvas; a moral fascination, so to express it, which we all feel, but cannot analyze nor trace to its elements. All the personal traditions of Washington assure us that there was a serene dignity in his presence which charmed while it awed the boldest who approached him.”

Franklin

Benjamin Franklin is probably the best specimen that history affords of what is called a self-made man. He certainly “never worshipped his maker,” according to a stinging epigram, but was throughout his life, though always self-respectful, never self-conceited. Perhaps the most notable result of his self-education was the ease with which he accosted all grades and classes of men on a level of equality. The printer’s boy became, in his old age, one of the most popular men in the French Court, not only among its statesmen, but among its frivolous nobles and their wives. He ever estimated men at their true worth or worthlessness; but as a diplomatist he was a marvel of sagacity. The same ease of manner which recommended him to a Pennsylvania farmer was preserved in a conference with a statesman or a king. He ever kept his end in view in all his complaisances, and that end was always patriotic. When he returned to his country he was among the most earnest to organize the liberty he had done so much to achieve; and he also showed his hostility to the system of negro slavery with which the United States was burdened. At the ripe age of eighty-four he died, leaving behind him a record of extraordinary faithfulness in the performance of all the duties of life. His sagacity, when his whole career is surveyed, was of the most exalted character, for it was uniformly devoted to the accomplishment of great public ends of policy or beneficence.

During a part of his reign, George III. was in the habit of keeping a note-book, in which he jotted down his observations of men and passing events. In the volume dated 1778, among the names to which the king attached illustrative quotations, was the name of Benjamin Franklin, with the following passage from Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar, ii. 1:

O let us have him; for his silver hairs

Will purchase us a good opinion,

And buy men’s voices to commend our deeds:

It shall be said his judgment ruled our hands;

Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear,

But all be buried in his gravity.

With regard to the charge frequently made against him of scepticism and infidel leanings, Franklin’s own refutation should suffice. In a letter written in 1784 to his friend William Strahan, in England, he said, referring to the successful outcome of the Revolutionary struggle,—

“I am too well acquainted with all the springs and levers of our machine not to see that our human means were unequal to our understanding, and that, if it had not been for the justice of our cause, and the consequent interposition of Providence, in which we had faith, we must have been ruined. If I had ever before been an atheist, I should now have been convinced of the being and government of a Deity. It is He that abases the proud and favors the humble. May we never forget His goodness to us, and may our future conduct manifest our gratitude!”

In a letter to Whitefield, written shortly before his death, he said,—

“I am now in my eighty-fifth year and very infirm. Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That He governs by His Providence. That He ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we can render Him is by doing good to His other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting his conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion.”

Add to such testimony the closing lines of his famous self-written epitaph: “The work itself shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by the Author.”

Hamilton

In discussing the qualities of the founders of our republic, Colonel T. W. Higginson draws a good portraiture of Alexander Hamilton.[^[1]] Washington being President, Adams and Jay having also been assigned to office, there naturally followed the two men who had contributed most in their different ways to the intellectual construction of the nation. Hamilton and Jefferson were brought together in the Cabinet,—the one as Secretary of the Treasury, the other as Secretary of State,—not because they agreed, but because they differed. Tried by all immediate and temporary tests, it is impossible to deny to Hamilton the position of leading intellect during the constitutional period; and his clear and cogent ability contrasts strongly with the peculiar mental action, always fresh and penetrating, but often lawless and confused, of his great rival. Hamilton was more coherent, more truthful, more combative, more generous, and more limited. His power was as an organizer and advocate of measures, and this is a less secure passport to fame than lies in the announcement of great principles. The difference between Hamilton and Jefferson on questions of finance and State rights was only the symbol of a deeper divergence. The contrast between them was not so much in acts as in theories; not in what they did, but in what they dreamed. Both had their visions, and held to them ardently, but the spirit of the nation was fortunately stronger than either; it made Hamilton support a republic against his will, and made Jefferson acquiesce, in spite of himself, in a tolerably vigorous national government.

[1]. From Harper’s Magazine. Copyright, 1884, by Harper & Brothers.

There is not a trace of evidence that Hamilton ever desired to bring about a monarchy in America. He no doubt believed the British constitution to be the most perfect model of government ever devised by man, but it is also true that he saw the spirit of the American people to be wholly republican; all his action was based on the opinion that “the political principle of this country would endure nothing but republican government.” He believed—very reasonably, so far as the teachings of experience went—that a republic was an enormous risk to run, and that this risk must be diminished by making the republic as much like a monarchy as possible. If he could have had his way, only holders of real estate would have had the right to vote for President and Senators, and these would have held office for life, or at least during good behavior; the President would have appointed all the governors of States, and they would have had a veto on all State legislation. All this he announced in Congress with the greatest frankness, and having thus indicated his ideal government, he accepted what he could get, and gave his great powers to carrying out a constitution about which he had serious misgivings. On the other hand, if Jefferson could have had his way, national organization would have been a shadow. He accepted the constitution as a necessary evil.

“Hamilton and I,” wrote Jefferson, “were pitted against each other every day in the Cabinet, like two fighting-cocks.” The first passage between them was the only one in which Hamilton had clearly the advantage of his less practised antagonist, making Jefferson, indeed, the instrument of his own defeat. The transfer of the capital to the banks of the Potomac was secured by the first of many compromises between the Northern and Southern States, after a debate in which the formidable slavery question showed itself often, as it had shown itself at the very formation of the constitution. The removal of the capital was clearly the price paid by Hamilton for Jefferson’s acquiescence in his first great financial measure. This measure was the national assumption of the State debts to an amount not to exceed twenty millions. It was met by vehement opposition, partly because it bore very unequally on the States, but mainly on the ground that the claims were in the hands of speculators, and were greatly depreciated. Yet it was an essential part of that great series of financial projects on which Hamilton’s fame must rest, even more than on his papers in the Federalist—though these secured the adoption of the Constitution. Three measures—the assumption of the State debts, the funding act, and the national bank—were what changed the bankruptcy of the new nation into solvency and credit. There may be question as to the good or bad precedents established by these enactments; but there can be no doubt as to their immediate success.

It is difficult to say what this accomplished man might have done as a leader of the Federal opposition to the Democratic administrations of Jefferson and Madison, had he not, in the maturity of his years, and in the full vigor of his faculties, been murdered by Aaron Burr. Nothing can better illustrate the folly of the practice of dueling than the fact that, by a weak compliance with its maxims, the most eminent of American statesmen died by the hand of the most infamous of American demagogues.

Jefferson

Among the voluminous writings of that great statesman, Thomas Jefferson, none is of more universal interest than his “Rules of Life,” as embodied in the following letter:

To Thomas Jefferson Smith:

This letter will, to you, be as one from the dead. The writer will be in the grave before you can weigh its counsels. Your affectionate and excellent father has requested that I would address to you something which might possibly have a favorable influence on the course of life you have to run; and I, too, as a namesake, feel an interest in that course. Few words will be necessary, with good dispositions on your part. Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will be under my regard. Farewell.

Monticello, February 21, 1825.

The Portrait of a good man by the most sublime of Poets, for your Imitation.[^[2]]

Lord, who’s the happy man that may to thy blest courts repair;

Not stranger like to visit them, but to inhabit there?

’Tis he whose every thought and deed by rules of virtue moves;

Whose generous tongue disdains to speak the thing his heart disproves.

Who never did a slander forge, his neighbor’s fame to wound;

Nor hearken to a false report by malice whispered round.

Who vice in all its pomp and power can treat with just neglect;

And piety, though clothed in rags, religiously respect.

Who to his plighted vows and trust has ever firmly stood;

And though he promise to his loss, he makes his promise good.

Whose soul in usury disdains his treasures to employ;

Whom no rewards can ever bribe the guiltless to destroy.

The man who, by this steady course, has happiness insured,

When earth’s foundations shake, shall stand by Providence secured.

[2]. Paraphrase of Psalm xv.

A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life.

1. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.

2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

3. Never spend your money before you have it.

4. Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.

6. We never repent of having eaten too little.

7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.

9. Take things always by their smooth handle.

10. When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.

Marshall

When John Marshall became Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court only six decisions had been rendered on Constitutional questions by that tribunal. Not only were the Federal Constitution and the laws enacted under it in their infancy, but an absolutely new question in political science was presented,—the question whether it was possible to carry out successfully a scheme contemplating the contemporaneous sovereignty of two governments, State and federal, distinct and separate in their action, yet commanding with equal authority the obedience of the same people. Viewed against this sombre background of an untried and difficult experiment, Marshall’s services assume heroic proportions. On account of the lack of precedent an opposite decision might in many cases have been given, which, as a matter of pure law, could have been well supported. Much depended, therefore, on the spirit in which the work should be approached. Marshall brought to the task a mind which had been trained in forensic strife with the ablest bar that Virginia has ever known. In the Virginia Legislature, in Congress, and in the Constitutional Convention of Virginia he had become familiar with the fundamental principles of government. The temper in which Marshall assumed the responsibilities of his judicial station was exemplified in his remarks during the trial of Aaron Burr: “That this Court dares not usurp power is most true. That this Court does not shrink from its duty is no less true. No man is desirous of placing himself in a disagreeable situation. No man is desirous of becoming the peculiar subject of calumny. No man, might he let the bitter cup pass from him without reproach, would drain it to the bottom. But if he has no choice in the case—if there be no alternative presented to him but a dereliction of duty or the opprobrium of those who are denominated the world—he merits the contempt as well as the indignation of his country; who can hesitate which to embrace?”

There is no doubt that under Marshall the United States Supreme Court acquired the energy, weight, and dignity which Jay had considered indispensable for the effectual exercise of its functions. During the thirty-four years that he presided over the court, twelve hundred and fifteen cases were decided, the reports of which will fill thirty volumes. In something more than one hundred cases no opinion was given, or, if given, was reported as “by the Court,” per curiam. Of the remainder, Marshall delivered the opinion of the court in five hundred and nineteen. Of the sixty-two decisions during his time, on questions of constitutional law, he wrote the opinion in thirty-six; in twenty-three of the latter, comprising most of his greatest efforts, there was no dissent.

Contemporaries and later students concur in the opinion that the original bias of Marshall’s mind was toward general principles and comprehensive views rather than to technical and recondite learning. His argumentation was, as Mr. Phelps has said, “that simple, direct, straightforward, honest reasoning that silences as a demonstration in Euclid silences, because it convinces.” His reasoning was, for the most part, simple, logical deduction, unaided by analogies, and unsupported by precedent or authority. Marshall’s type of mind presented a strong contrast to that of Justice Story, whose concurring opinion in the Dartmouth College case bristled with authorities: “When I examine a question,” said Story, “I go from headland to headland; from case to case. Marshall has a compass, puts out to sea, and goes directly to his result.”

Jackson

After the sedate, passionless, orderly administrations of Monroe and Adams, there was a popular demand for something piquant and amusing, and this quality was always found in Old Hickory. Friends and foes alike declare that Andrew Jackson was in many ways far above the imitators who have posed in his image. True, he was narrow, ignorant, violent, unreasonable; he punished his enemies and rewarded his friends. But he was, on the other hand,—and his worst opponents did not deny it,—chaste, honest, truthful, and sincere. For a time he was more bitterly hated than any one who ever occupied his high office, and we may be sure that these better qualities would have been discredited had it been possible. It was constantly reiterated that his frequent and favorite oath was “By the Eternal,” yet neither his nephew and secretary, Mr. Donelson, who was associated with him for thirty years, nor Judge Brackenridge, of Western Pennsylvania, who wrote most of his State papers, ever heard him use such an expression. With long, narrow, firmly set features, and a military stock encircling his neck, he had one advantage for the social life of Washington which seemed difficult of explanation by anything in his earlier career. He had at his command the most courteous and agreeable manners. Even before the election of Adams, Daniel Webster had written to his brother: “General Jackson’s manners are better than those of any of the candidates. He is grave, mild, and reserved. My wife is for him decidedly.” But whatever his personal attractions, he sacrificed his social leadership at Washington by his quixotic attempt to force the Cabinet ladies to admit into their circle the wife of Secretary Eaton, a woman whose antecedents as Peggy O’Neill, an innkeeper’s daughter, made her a persona non grata. For once, Jackson overestimated his powers. He had conquered Indian tribes, and checked the army of Great Britain, but the ladies of Washington society were too much for him. At the dinner-table, or in the ball-room, every lady ignored the presence of “Bellona,” as the newspapers called her.

The two acts with which the administration of President Jackson will be longest identified are his dealings with South Carolina in respect to nullification, and his long warfare with the United States Bank. The first brought the New England States back to him and the second took them away again. He perhaps won rather more applause than he merited by the one act, and more condemnation than was just for the other.

Among the amusing anecdotes of Jackson, it is related that when he was military commander in Florida during the administration of President Monroe, he tried at a drumhead court-martial and hanged two Englishmen who had incited, it is said, an insurrection among the Indians. President Monroe feared that Great Britain would make trouble about this, and summoned the general to Washington before the Cabinet. John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, who had instructed Jackson to govern with a firm hand in Florida, defended him, and read a long argument in which he quoted international law as expounded by Grotius, Vattel, and Puffendorff. Jackson listened in sullen silence, but in the evening, when asked at a dinner party whether he was not comforted by Mr. Adams’s citation of authorities, he exclaimed, “What do I care about those old musty chaps? Blast Grotius, blast Vattel, and blast the Puffenchap. This is a fight between Jim Monroe and me, and I propose to fight it out.”

Webster

Senator George F. Hoar, in describing the personal appearance of Daniel Webster in the prime of life, says, “He was physically the most splendid specimen of noble manhood my eyes ever beheld. He was a trifle over five feet nine inches high and weighed one hundred and fifty-four pounds. His head was finely poised upon his shoulders. His beautiful black eyes shone out through the caverns of his deep brows like lustrous jewels. His teeth were white and regular, and his smile when he was in gracious mood, especially when talking to women, had an irresistible charm.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson thus speaks of Mr. Webster’s appearance at the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument, in 1843: “His countenance, his figure, and his manners were all in so grand a style that he was, without effort, as superior to his most eminent rivals as they were to the humblest. He alone of all men did not disappoint the eye and the ear, but was a fit figure in the landscape. There was the monument, and there was Webster. He knew well that a little more or less of rhetoric signified nothing; he was only to say plain and equal things—grand things, if he had them; and if he had them not, only to abstain from saying unfit things—and the whole occasion was answered by his presence.”

The masterly address on that June anniversary closed with these sentences:

“And when both we and our children shall have been consigned to the house appointed for all living, may love of country and pride of country glow with equal fervor among those to whom our names and our blood shall have descended! And then, when honored and decrepit age shall lean against the base of this monument, and troops of ingenuous youth shall be gathered around it, and when the one shall speak to the other of its objects, the purposes of its construction, and the great and glorious events with which it is connected, there shall rise from every youthful breast the ejaculation, ‘Thank God, I also am an American.’”

In reviewing Mr. Webster’s “Speeches and Forensic Arguments,” Edwin P. Whipple says, “Believing that our national literature is to be found in the records of our greatest minds, and is not confined to the poems, novels, and essays which may be produced by Americans, we have been surprised that the name of Daniel Webster is not placed high among American authors. Men in every way inferior to him in mental power have obtained a wide reputation for writing works in every way inferior to those spoken by him. It cannot be that a generation like ours, continually boasting that it is not misled by forms, should think that thought changes its character when it is published from the mouth instead of the press. Still, it is true that a man who has acquired fame as an orator and statesman is rarely considered, even by his own partisans, in the light of an author. He is responsible for no ‘book.’ The records of what he has said and done, though perhaps constantly studied by contemporaries, are not generally regarded as part and parcel of the national literature. The fame of the man of action overshadows that of the author. We are so accustomed to consider him as a speaker, that we are somewhat blind to the great literary merit of his speeches. The celebrated argument in reply to Hayne, for instance, was intended by the statesman as a defence of his political position, as an exposition of constitutional law, and a vindication of what he deemed to be the true policy of the country. The acquisition of merely literary reputation had no part in the motives from which it sprung. Yet the speech, even to those who take little interest in subjects like the tariff, nullification, and the public lands, will ever be interesting from its profound knowledge, its clear arrangement, the mastery it exhibits of all the weapons of dialectics, the broad stamp of nationality it bears, and the wit, sarcasm, and splendid and impassioned eloquence which pervade and vivify, without interrupting, the close and rapid march of the argument.”

Considered merely as literary productions, Webster’s speeches take the highest rank among the best productions of the American intellect. They are thoroughly national in their spirit and tone, and are full of principles, arguments, and appeals, which come directly home to the hearts and understandings of the great body of the people. They contain the results of a long life of mental labor, employed in the service of the country. They give evidence of a complete familiarity with the spirit and workings of our institutions, and breathe the bracing air of a healthy and invigorating patriotism. They are replete with that true wisdom which is slowly gathered from the exercise of a strong and comprehensive intellect on the complicated concerns of daily life and duty. They display qualities of mind and style which would give them a high place in any literature, even if the subjects discussed were less interesting and important; and they show also a strength of personal character, superior to irresolution and fear, capable of bearing up against the most determined opposition, and uniting to boldness in thought intrepidity in action. In all the characteristics of great literary performances, they are fully equal to many works which have stood the test of age, and baffled the skill of criticism.

Lincoln at Gettysburg

At the consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, November 9, 1863, Hon. Edward Everett was the orator of the day, and President Lincoln made the dedicatory address. Concerning Mr. Lincoln’s appearance on that memorable occasion, Mr. Edward McPherson, Clerk of the National House of Representatives, in a newspaper report, said that Mr. Lincoln never showed more ungainliness of figure, “slouchiness” of dress, and angularity of gesture, all of which appeared in striking contrast with the elegance and grace of person, speech, and manner that characterized Mr. Everett. But although every one admired the rhetorical effects produced by Everett during his oration of ninety minutes’ length, they had not been “aroused to enthusiasm, nor melted to tenderness.” “But,” says Mr. McPherson, “as Mr. Lincoln proceeded no face ever more unmistakably mirrored a conviction than did Mr. Everett’s, that by these few but weighty sentences, all memory of what he had said was erased. It is part of the current mention of the times that Mr. Everett, in congratulating Mr. Lincoln at the close of the exercises, laughingly, but with a sense of its truth, remarked, ‘You have said all on this occasion that will be remembered by posterity.’”

Hon. James Speed, formerly Attorney-General, under Lincoln, says that Lincoln showed him a letter from Everett, eulogizing the Gettysburg speech in the very highest terms, and that a year or two after the death of Mr. Lincoln, there were present at his house in Washington, Senator Sumner, Governor Clifford, of Massachusetts, and others, and Mr. Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech became the subject of conversation. “Mr. Sumner said, and others concurred in what he said, that it was the most finished piece of oratory he had ever seen. Every word was appropriate—none could be omitted and none added and none changed.”

He also says,—

“I recollect that soon after its delivery, at my house in Louisville, Robert Dale Owen, who was present with others, took from his pocket a speech which he had cut from a newspaper, and read it aloud saying it would be translated into all languages in the world, being the very finest oration of the kind that had ever been delivered. He said there were utterances in it which would become familiar to all the people of the world as household words. I recollect further that Judge S. S. Nicholas, of Louisville, an accomplished man and a fine writer, upon first seeing the speech, spoke of it in terms of the highest praise, saying he did not believe a man of the education and culture of Mr. Lincoln could have written it. He believed, until corrected by me, that it had been written by another hand.”

One of the most remarkable tributes that has been paid was that of the London Quarterly Review, which said, substantially, that the oration surpassed every production of its class known in literature; that only the oration of Pericles over the victories of the Peloponnesian war could be compared to it, and that was put into his mouth by the historian Thucydides.

A greatly admired personal tribute to Lincoln is that of James Russell Lowell in the Harvard Commemoration Ode, July, 1865. It is especially noteworthy for its broad significance, its tender pathos, its discriminating appreciation, and its grand American sentiment, closing as follows:

Here was a type of the true elder race,

And one of Plutarch’s men talked with us face to face.

I praise him not; it were too late;

And some innative weakness there must be

In him who condescends to victory

Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait

Safe in himself as in a fate.

So always firmly he:

He knew to bide his time,

And can his fame abide,

Still patient in his simple faith sublime

Till the wise years decide.

Great Captains, with their guns and drums,

Disturb our judgment for the hour,

But at last silence comes;

These are all gone, and, standing like a tower,

Our children shall behold his fame.

The kindly earnest, brave, foreseeing man,

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,

New birth of our new soil, the first American.

Governor Andrew, in an address to the Legislature of Massachusetts, following the assassination of Lincoln, after describing him as the man who had added “martyrdom itself to his other and scarcely less emphatic claims to human veneration, gratitude and love,” continued thus: “I desire on this grave occasion to record my sincere testimony to the unaffected simplicity of his manly purpose, to the constancy with which he devoted himself to his duty, to the grand fidelity with which he subordinated himself to his country, to the clearness, robustness, and sagacity of his understanding, to his sincere love of truth, his undeviating progress in its faithful pursuit, and to the confidence which he could not fail to inspire in the singular integrity of his virtues, and the conspicuously judicial quality of his intellect.”

Grant at Appomattox

At the dedication of the Mausoleum erected at Riverside Park, New York, in memory of General Grant, Colonel Charles Marshall, who had been Chief of Staff to General Lee, the Confederate commander, was the orator. In the course of his address he said,—

“When General Grant first opened the correspondence with General Lee which led to the meeting at Appomattox, General Lee proposed to give a wide scope to the subject to be treated of between him and General Grant, and to discuss with the latter the terms of a general pacification.

“General Grant declined to consider anything except the surrender of General Lee’s army, assigning as a reason for his refusal his want of authority to deal with political matters, or any other than those pertaining to his position as the commander of the army. The day after the meeting at McLain’s house, at which the terms of surrender were agreed upon, another interview took place between Grant and Lee, upon the invitation of General Grant, and when General Lee returned from that meeting he repeated, in the presence of several of his staff, the substance of the conversation, in one part of which, you will see, as we all did, the feeling that controlled the actions of General Grant at that critical period.

“The conversation turned on the subject of a general peace, as to which General Grant had already declared the want of power to treat, but, in speaking of the means by which a general pacification might be effected, General Grant said to General Lee, with great emphasis and strong feeling: ‘General Lee, I want this war to end without the shedding of another drop of American blood’—not Northern blood, not Southern blood, but ‘American blood’—for in his eyes all the men around him, and those who might be then confronting each other on other fields over the wide area of war, were ‘Americans.’

“These words made a great impression upon all who heard them, as they did upon General Lee, who told us, with no little emotion, that he took occasion to express to General Grant his appreciation of the noble and generous sentiments uttered by him, and assured him that he would render all the assistance in his power to bring about the restoration of peace and good-will without shedding another drop of ‘American blood.’ This ‘American blood,’ sacred in the eyes of both these great American soldiers, flows in the veins of all of us, and let it be sacred in our eyes also, henceforth and forever, ready to be poured without stint as a libation upon the altar of our common country, never to be shed again in fratricidal war.

“It is in the light of this noble thought of General Grant that I have always considered the course pursued by him at the moment of his supreme triumph at Appomattox, and, seen in that light, nothing could be grander, nobler, more magnanimous, nor more patriotic than his conduct on that occasion.

“Look at the state of affairs on the morning of the 9th of April, 1865. The bleeding and half-starved remnant of that great army which for four years had baffled all the efforts of the Federal government to reach the Confederate capital, and had twice borne the flag of the Confederacy beyond the Potomac, confronted with undaunted resolution, but without hope save the hope of an honorable death on the battle-field, the overwhelming forces under General Grant.

“At the head of that remnant of a great army was a great soldier, whose name was a name of fear, whose name is recorded in a high place on the roll of great soldiers of history. That remnant of a great army of Northern Virginia, with its great commander at its head, after the long siege at Richmond and Petersburg, had been forced to retreat, and on the 9th of April, 1865, was brought to bay at Appomattox, surrounded by the host of its great enemy.

“There was no reasonable doubt that the destruction of that army would seal the fate of the Confederacy and put an end to further organized resistance to the Federal arms, and no doubt that if that remnant were driven to desperation by the exactness of terms of surrender against which its honor and its valor would revolt, that resistance would have been made, and that General Grant and his army might have been left in the possession of a solitude that they might have called peace, but which would have been the peace of Poland, the peace of Ireland. Under such circumstances, had General Grant been governed by the mere selfish desire of the rewards of military success, had he been content to gather the fruits that grew nearest the earth on the tree of victory, the fruits that Napoleon and all selfish conquerors of his time have gathered, the fruits that our Washington put away from him, what a triumph lay before him!

“What Roman triumph would have approached the triumph of General Grant had he led the remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia, with its great commander in chains, up Pennsylvania Avenue, thenceforth to be known as the ‘Way of Triumph!’

“But so simple, so patriotic was the mind of General Grant that the thought of self seems never to have affected his conduct.

“He was no more tempted at Appomattox to forego the true interests of his country for his own advantage than Washington was tempted when the time came for him to lay down his commission at Annapolis. I doubt if the self-abnegation of Washington at Annapolis was greater than that of Grant at Appomattox, and it is the glory of America that her institutions breed men who are equal to the greatest strain that can be put upon their courage and their patriotism.

“On that eventful morning of April 9, 1865, General Grant was called upon to decide the most momentous question that any American soldier or statesman has ever been required to decide. The great question was, How shall the war end? What shall be the relations between the victors and vanquished?

“Upon the decision of that question depended the future of American institutions. If the extreme rights of military success had been insisted upon, and had the vanquished been required to pass under the yoke of defeat and bitter humiliation, the war would have ended as a successful war of conquest—the Southern States would have been conquered States, and the Southern people would have been a conquered people, in whose hearts would have been sown all the enmity and ill-will of the conquered to the conquerors, to be transmitted from sire to son.

“With such an ending of the war there would have been United States without a united people. The power of the Union would then have reposed upon the strength of Grant’s battalions and the thunder of Grant’s artillery. Its bonds would have stood upon the security of its military power, and not upon the honor and good faith and good-will of its people. The federal government would have been compelled to adopt a coercive policy toward the disaffected people of the South, which would soon have established between the government and those States the relations between England and Ireland, and some Northern Gladstone would be demanding for the Southern people the natural right that the English Gladstone claimed for the Irish against their haughty conquerors.

“Does any man desire to exchange the present relations between the people of the Northern and Southern States for the relations of conqueror and conquered? Does any wish to have a union of the States without a union of the people?

“General Grant was called upon to decide this great question on the morning of April 9, 1865. The Southern military power was exhausted. He was in a position to exact the supreme rights of a conqueror, and the unconditional submission of his adversary, unless that adversary should elect to risk all on the event of a desperate battle, in which much ‘American blood’ would certainly be shed.

“The question was gravely considered in Confederate councils whether we should not accept the extreme risk, and cut our way through the hosts of General Grant, or perish in the attempt. This plan had many advocates, but General Lee was not one of them, as will be seen by his farewell order to his army.

“Under these circumstances General Lee and General Grant met to discuss the terms of surrender of General Lee’s army, and, at the request of General Lee, General Grant wrote the terms of surrender he proposed to offer to the Confederate general. They were liberal and honorable, alike to the victor and the vanquished, and General Lee at once accepted them.

“Any one who reads General Grant’s proposal cannot fail to see how careful he is to avoid any unnecessary humiliation to his adversary. As far as it was possible, General Grant took away the sting of defeat from the Confederate army. He triumphed, but he triumphed without exultation, and with a noble respect to his enemy.

“There was never a nobler knight than Grant of Appomattox—no knight more magnanimous or more generous. No statesman ever decided a vital question more wisely—more in the interest of his country and of all mankind—than General Grant decided the great question presented to him when he and General Lee met that morning of April 9, 1865, to consider the terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. The words of his magnanimous proposal to his enemy were carried by the Confederate soldiers to the furthest borders of the South. They reached ears and hearts that had never quailed at the sound of war. They disarmed and reconciled those who knew not fear, and the noble words of General Grant’s offer of peace brought peace without humiliation, peace with honor.”

Last Words

Iconoclasts overshadow with their doubts and questionings the alleged dying words of eminent men, but the following appear to be authentic. George Washington, “It is well.” John Adams, “Independence forever.” Benjamin Franklin, in severe suffering, “A dying man can do nothing easy.” Thomas Jefferson, “I resign my spirit to God, my daughter to my country.” John Quincy Adams, “It is the last of earth; I am content.” John C. Calhoun, “The South! the South! God knows what will become of her.” William H. Harrison, “I wish you to understand the true principles of government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.” Daniel Webster, “I still live.” James Buchanan, “O, Lord Almighty, as Thou wilt.” William McKinley, “It is God’s way. His will be done, not ours.” Henry Ward Beecher, “Now comes the great mystery.”

OUR WONDERLANDS

In repeated statements in the consular reports concerning the large extent of tourist travel in Switzerland, we are told that the “money-making asset” of that little republic, the greater portion of whose area is covered with mountains, is “scenery.” We go to Europe to see the accumulated treasures of centuries, to review the lessons of the past in historic localities, to observe social and industrial conditions, to enjoy musical and dramatic art, to study the development of the fine arts, to note the later acquisition of scientific research. But, as our consuls at Geneva and Lucerne and Berne and Zurich tell us, we go to Switzerland for “scenery.”

Switzerland is two hundred and ten miles in length. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in northern Arizona is two hundred and nineteen miles long, twelve to thirteen miles wide, and over a mile deep. If the main ranges of the Helvetian Alps, between the centre and the southern frontiers, running from the Bernese Oberland to the Grisons, could be lifted up and dumped into the colossal chasm of Arizona, there would still be left room in which to bury the Jura of the western border. Thousands of American tourists gaze with awe upon the panoramic displays from the view-points of the passes of the Simplon, the Furca, the St. Gotthard, and the Splügen, and from the ascent of the Rigi, Pilatus, Jungfrau, or Matterhorn. Many of our adventurous fellow-citizens contest the palm for hardihood and endurance with experienced Alpine climbers; but how few there are who are ambitious enough and venturesome enough to incur the hardships and to risk the dangers of scanning at close range, or from points of vantage, the towers, the temples, the terraces, the ramparts, the pyramids, the domes, the pillars, the buttresses, the buttes, the palisades, the white marble walls, the red sandstone steps, the green serpentine cliffs of the Grand Canyon.

Excursion parties go by way of the Williams branch of the Santa Fé to the rim of the Bright Angel trail because of its accessibility and hotel accommodation, and content themselves with descent of the zigzags to the deeply embedded river, or a drive of a few miles along the brink. But the earnest and determined explorers who follow the hazardous footsteps of the early pioneers, or of the later topographical engineers, are few and far between. There is nothing on earth that even remotely approaches this stupendous chasm in startling surprises, in grandeur and sublimity, yet our tourists ignore its indescribable wonders and go to the Alps for scenery that suffers by comparison.

When it comes to the question of orographic magnitude, our own physical geography gives a decisive answer. The great curve of the Alpine chain stretches from the shores of the Mediterranean to the plains of the Danube—a little more than six hundred miles in length. The narrowest width of the Rocky Mountains, from base to base, is three hundred miles, whereas, at their greatest width, between Cape Mendocino and Denver, the space enclosed by the two outer scarps of the plateau is nearly one thousand miles in breadth. If in measuring the area of the Rocky Mountains we include the long Coast Range, the Sierra Nevada and its northern continuation, the Cascade Range, according to the extent of surface they cover, we have a million square miles as the result, more than one-fourth of the territory of the republic.

With such immense differences in view, the vastly greater capabilities of the Rockies for scenic display are apparent. In the endless succession of views from the heights of Pike’s Peak, or Mt. Shasta, or Mt. Lowe, one can forget his most inspiring and exciting experiences in the Alps. Professor J. D. Whitney declares that no such views as those from Pike’s Peak, either for reach or magnificence, can be obtained in Switzerland. Even with the ever-increasing facilities of transcontinental travel, we but dimly realize the majestic proportions of the Rocky Mountain system, which, with its towering snow-capped peaks, its precipitous rock walls, its volcanic vestiges, its abysmal glens and canyons, and its splendid waterfalls, glorifies every landscape, and solves problems, as nowhere else, in chemical, physical, and dynamical geology.