Our American Holidays
INDEPENDENCE DAY

Our American Holidays

INDEPENDENCE
DAY

ITS CELEBRATION, SPIRIT, AND SIGNIFICANCE
AS RELATED IN PROSE AND VERSE

EDITED BY
ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

NEW YORK
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
1912

Copyright, 1912, by
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
New York

Published, February, 1912

CONTENTS

PREFACE

This book is an anthology of American Independence: of the document that announced its birth; of the struggle that established it in life; and of the patriotism that was to it both sire and son. It aims to present a clear review of the origin, spirit and significance of Independence Day and of its celebration both by the now discredited methods of brutal, meaningless noise and indiscriminate carnage, which disgraced the larger part of the previous century, and by the recent methods of sane and safe, reverent and meaningful celebration.

The volume contains a selection of the best prose and verse that bears in any way on our nation’s birthday; and closes with many constructive suggestions for the celebration of our new, more beautiful and more patriotic Fourth.

NOTE

Thanks are due to Miss Jessie Welles, superintendent of circulation in the Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh, for the suggestion which originated “Our American Holidays.” And gratitude is also expressed to the Misses Tobey, to Miss Helen Miles and all the other librarians of the Bloomingdale Branch Library in New York who have generously given the editor such invaluable aid in the preparation of these volumes.

The Editor also wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Houghton, Mifflin & Company; The Century Co.; J. B. Lippincott & Co.; Bobbs-Merrill Co., and others who have very kindly granted permission to reprint selections from works bearing their copyright.

Robert Haven Schauffler.

INTRODUCTION

When, on the fourth day of each July, Americans keep the birthday of the nation we celebrate as our greatest secular holiday, the one which has the honor of being sanctioned by statute in every state of the Union.

From times as early as any living memory can reach, this anniversary has been observed in much the same fashion: by spread-eagle oratory, by unlimited and quite meaningless noise, and hospitals filled with the wounded and dying. It is curious that the festival should have gone on in this monotonous manner decade after decade until nearly the middle of its second century of life, and then suddenly should have encountered a revolution far more abrupt than the early, heroic one which it commemorates.

For our attitude toward the Fourth is undergoing swift revolution as regards our understanding both of the causes that underlay American independence, of the real spirit in which the Declaration was penned, and of the reasons why July fourth rather than some other day was fixed upon. Finally, the swiftest Fourth of July revolution of all is taking place in the way we celebrate it.

Until quite recently all historians have, consciously or unconsciously, been consistent in misrepresenting the War of Seventy-Six and the events leading thereto. And we owe no small debt of gratitude to writers like Mr. Owen Wister and Mr. Sydney George Fisher for telling us the truth. Mr. Wister writes[1] of the Revolution that while “As a war, its real military aspect is slowly emerging from the myth of uninterrupted patriotism and glory, universally taught to school children, its political hue is still thickly painted and varnished over by our writers.

“How many Americans know, for instance, that England was at first extremely lenient to us? fought us (until 1778) with one hand in a glove, and an olive branch in the other? had any wish rather than to crush us; had no wish save to argue us back into the fold, and enforce argument with an occasional victory not followed up?... For any American historian to speak the truth on these matters is a very recent phenomenon, their common design having been to leave out any facts which spoil the political picture of the Revolution they chose to paint for our edification: a ferocious, blood-shot tyrant on the one side, and on the other a compact band of ‘Fathers,’ down-trodden and martyred, yet with impeccable linen and bland legs. A wrong conception even of the Declaration of Independence as Jefferson’s original invention still prevails; Jefferson merely drafted the document, expressing ideas well established in the contemporary air. Let us suppose that some leader of our own time were to write: ‘Three dangers to-day threaten the United States, any one of which could be fatal: unscrupulous capital, destroying man’s liberty to compete; unscrupulous Labor, destroying man’s liberty to work; and undesirable Immigration, in which four years of naturalization are not going to counteract four hundred years of heredity. Unless the people check all of these, American liberty will become extinct.’ If some one were to write a new Declaration of Independence, containing such sentences, he could not claim originality for them; he would be merely stating ideas that are among us everywhere. This is what Jefferson did, writing his sentences loosely, because the ideas they expressed were so familiar as to render exact definitions needless.”

Mr. Wister deserves gratitude for giving us these unpalatable truths in such palatable form; but he should have far more gratitude for introducing to a wide body of readers his chief source of information, the historian Mr. Sydney George Fisher, one of whose most valuable chapters has fortunately been secured for reproduction in the body of this book. Mr. Fisher writes:[2]

“I cannot feel satisfied with any description of the Revolution which treats the desire for independence as a sudden thought, and not a long growth and development, or which assumes that every detail of the conduct of the British government was absurdly stupid, even from its own point of view, and that the loyalists were few in numbers and their arguments not worth considering....

“The historians seem to have assumed that we do not want to know about that controversy” (over Gen. Howe’s lenient methods), “or that it will be better for us not to know about it. They have assumed that it will be better for Americans to think that independence was a sudden and deplorable necessity and not a desire of long and ardent growth and cautiously planned intention. They have assumed that we want to think of England as having lost the colonies by failure to be conciliatory, and that the Revolution was a one-sided, smooth affair, without any of the difficulties or terrors of a rebellion or a great upheaval of settled opinion.”

There can be small doubt that when this true inner history of our independence becomes generally known it will do much to mitigate the blind, provincial spread-eagleism that still clings to even our safest and sanest celebrations of the Fourth and that has so ably thwarted every motion toward fraternal intimacy between the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race. The following[3] paragraph is fairly typical of the British attitude toward the celebration of our national birthday.

“Where a country or a government has been baffled in its efforts to attain or preserve a hated rule over another people, it must be content to see its failure made the subject of never-ending triumph and exultation. The joy attached to the sense of escape or emancipation tends to perpetuate itself by periodical celebrations, in which it is not likely that the motives of the other party, or the general justice of the case, will be very carefully considered or allowed for. We may doubt if it be morally expedient thus to keep alive the memory of facts which as certainly infer mortification to one party as they do glorification to another: but we must all admit that it is only natural, and in a measure to be expected.”

When we come to view the facts as they are, to realize of what shocking sportsmanship our own one-sided view of independence convicts us, we shall have removed one of the chief obstacles to Anglo-Saxon solidarity. But it will be necessary first to learn something about the day we celebrate. How many, for instance, even know that July fourth was fixed upon as a compromise date between two other rival claimants?

Walsh writes:[4]

“It may not be generally known that no less than three dates might reasonably compete for designation as the natal day of American Independence and for the honors of the anniversary of that event.

“On the second of July, 1776, was adopted the resolution of independence, the sufficient legislative act; and it was this day that Mr. Adams designated as the anniversary in the oft-quoted letter written on his desk at the time, prophesying its future celebration, by bells, bonfires, cannonades, etc. On the fourth of July occurred the Declaration of Independence. On the second of August following took place the ceremony of signature, which has furnished to the popular imagination the common pictorial and dramatic conceptions of the event.

“The history connecting these three dates may be intelligently told in a brief space. On the fifteenth of May, 1776, a convention in Virginia had instructed its delegates in the General Congress ‘to propose to that body to declare the United Colonies free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to or dependence on the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain, and that they give the assent of this Colony to such declaration, and to whatever measures may be thought proper and necessary by the Congress for forming foreign alliances and a confederation of the Colonies.’ The motion thus ordered was on the seventh of June made in Congress by Richard Henry Lee, as the oldest member of the Virginia delegation. It was to the effect that ‘these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.’ The resolution was slightly debated for two or three days, but from considerations of prudence or expediency the discussion was intermitted. As texts for the action of Congress there were the resolution referred to, and the more formal, or at least more lengthy, document which the committee of five—Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston—had been instructed on the eleventh of June to prepare. This document was draughted by Jefferson and presented under the title of ‘A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled.’

“On the first of July there was again called up in Congress the resolution proposed by Mr. Lee. On the second of July it passed. Two days later (the fourth of July) was adopted, after various amendments, the ‘Declaration’ from Mr. Jefferson’s pen. The document was authenticated, like the other papers of the Congress, by the signature of the president and the secretary, and, in addition, was signed by the members present, with the exception of Mr. Dickinson of Pennsylvania, who, as Mr. Jefferson has testified, ‘refused to sign it.’

“But it did not then bear the names of the members of Congress as they finally appeared on it. A number of these still opposed it, and had voted against it; it was passed unanimously only as regarded states. Thus, a majority of the Pennsylvania delegation had persistently opposed it, and it was only the absence of two of their delegates on the final vote that left a majority for this state in its favor. Some days after the Declaration had thus passed, and had been proclaimed at the head of the army, it was ordered by Congress that it be engrossed on parchment and signed by every member; and it was not until the second of August that these signatures were made, and the matter concluded by this peculiar and august ceremony of personal pledges in the autographs of the members. It is this copy or form of the Declaration which has, in fact, been preserved as the original: the first signed paper does not exist, and was probably destroyed as incomplete.

“If the natal day of American Independence is to be derived from the ceremony of these later signatures, and the real date of what has been preserved as the legal original of the Declaration, then it would be the second of August. If derived from the substantial, legal act of separation from the British Crown, which was contained rather in the resolution of Congress than in its Declaration of Independence, it would be the second of July. But common consent has determined to date the great anniversary from the apparently subordinate event of the passage of the Declaration, and thus celebrates the Fourth of July as the birthday of the nation.”

Finally, after making ourselves reasonably intelligent as to the origin, spirit and true significance of Independence Day it behooves us as true Americans to enter the splendid new movement which is endeavoring to make the Fourth over from a day of shallow jingoism and unmeaning brutality and carnage into a day of initiation into the meaning of true citizenship and a festival of deep and genuine and beautiful patriotism.

R. H. S.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

I
CELEBRATION

THE GREAT AMERICAN HOLIDAY

ANONYMOUS

Among all the holidays of the year, one stands out as preëminently American; one appeals especially to that sentiment of patriotism and national pride which glows in every loyal American heart. Independence Day—the Fourth of July—is observed in every State in the Union as our distinctive national holiday; and rightly so, for the event which it celebrates is by far the most important in American history—an event no less, indeed, than the birth of the nation.

Independence Day celebrates the signing, on the Fourth of July, 1776, of the paper which declared this country forever free from British rule. It had been under consideration for some time by the Continental Congress, assembled at Philadelphia, and final action was finally taken on July 4. From that time forward, the American colonists were no longer rebels in arms against their country, but a free people fighting for their independence.

That the Declaration of Independence was mainly the work of Thomas Jefferson has been established beyond reasonable doubt; and it stands to-day one of the most remarkable state papers in the history of the world.

At the time of the passage of the act, John Adams wrote to his wife a letter which has become historic. “I am apt to believe,” he wrote, “that this day will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.”

Bonfires and guns there have been without limit; and the deaths that have resulted from these celebrations would form no inconsiderable fraction of those lost during the Revolution. For years, the celebration of this great holiday has consisted mainly of meaningless noise; but there is a steadily growing sentiment in favor of a more worthy observance of the day, as a time when every loyal American should rejoice in the welfare of his country, and recall with pride the manner in which the Nation was established.

THE NATION’S BIRTHDAY

BY MARY E. VANDYNE

Ring out the joy bells! Once again,

With waving flags and rolling drums,

We greet the Nation’s Birthday, when,

In glorious majesty, it comes.

Ah, day of days! Alone it stands,

While, like a halo round it cast,

The radiant work of patriot hands,

Shines the bright record of the past.

Among the nations of the earth,

What land hath story like our own?

No thought of conquest marked her birth;

No greed of power was ever shown

By those who crossed the ocean wild,

That they might plant upon her sod

A home for Peace and Virtue mild,

And altars rear to Freedom’s God.

How grand the thought that bade them roam!

Those pilgrim bands, by Faith inspired—

That bade them leave their cherished home,

And, with the martyr’s spirit fired,

Guide their frail vessels o’er the main

Upon the glorious mission bound

On alien soil a grave to gain,

Or else a free born nation found.

What land has heroes like to ours?

Their names are as the lightning’s gleams,

When, on the darkling cloud that lowers,

In blinding majesty it streams.

Great Washington, the man of faith,

Who conquered doubt with patient might;

Warren and Putnam, true till death,

The “Swamp Fox,” eager for the fight.

See Major Molly’s woman hand

Drive home the murderous cannon ball;

How bravely Lydia Darrach planned,

For home and country risking all.

A glorious list, and without end;

Forgotten were both sex and age;

Their names in radiant luster blend,

And shine like stars on history’s page.

Like stars to light the firmament,

And show the world what men may do

Who, as God’s messengers, are sent

And to their mission still are true.

No end had they to seek or gain;

Their work was there before their sight;

There lay their duty, stern and plain,

To dare and suffer for the right.

The right that conquered, and whose power

Is shown in our broad land to-day;

Shown in this bright and prosperous hour,

When peace and plenty gild our way;

Shown in the glorious song that swells

The hearts of men from South to North,

And in its rapturous accents tell

The story of our glorious Fourth.

HOW THE FOURTH OF JULY SHOULD BE CELEBRATED

BY JULIA WARD HOWE

I have been invited to present some hints as to the proper observance of our great national holiday, the Fourth of July, and the false education implied by warlike celebrations in a nation whose corner stone is peace and whose freedom is a standing protest against old-world militarism.

The topic carries me back in thought to days of childhood, when, in my native city of New York, the endless crackling of torpedoes, the explosion of firecrackers and the booming of cannon, made the day one of joyous confusion and fatigue, culminating in a distant view of the city fireworks sent up from Castle Garden. It then seemed to be a day wholly devoted to boyish pleasure and mischief, sure to be followed by reports of hairbreadth escapes and injuries more or less serious, sometimes even fatal. The day was one of terror to parents, who, while deeming it unwise to interdict to their sons the enjoyment of gunpowder, dreaded to see them maimed or disfigured for life by some unlooked-for accident. It was not uncommon then, nor is it now, to read of some sudden death, some irretrievable blindness or other injury caused by the explosion of a toy cannon or the misadventure of some fireworks on “the Fourth,” as the day has come to be called.

These were tragical events truly, but they appear less real to me in remembrance than do the laughing faces of my young brothers who were allowed to arrange a small table for their greater convenience on the pavement of ancient Bond Street, a very quiet byway in those days. From this spot went forth a perpetual popping and fizzing, varied by the occasional thud of a double-headed firecracker. Shouts of merriment followed these explosions. The girls within doors enjoyed the fracas from the open windows, and in the evening our good elders brought forth a store of Roman candles, blue lights, and rockets. I remember a year, early in the thirties, in which good Gideon Lee, a democratic Mayor of New York, issued an edict prohibitive of all home fireworks. Just as we had settled ourselves in the determination to regard him thenceforth as our natural enemy, the old gentleman’s heart failed him, and, living next door to us, he called to say that he would make a few exceptions to the rule for the day, and that we should count among these.

Removing to Boston some ten years later, I found the night of the third of July rendered almost sleepless by the shrill gamut of gunpowder discharges. The ringing of bells and the booming of cannon destroyed the last chance of an early morning nap, and in self-defense most people left their beds and went forth to see what could be seen. This was sometimes a mock procession of the Antiques and Horribles, so called in parody of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery, so well known in and about Boston. Or, one might join the throng on the Common, where a brass band performed popular airs, American and Irish-American. I do indeed recall certain notable performances connected with the usual observance of the National Festival. I was a dweller in Boston when Charles Sumner, then chiefly known as a rising lawyer and incipient philanthropist, was appointed to deliver the Fourth of July oration, and chose for his theme the true grandeur of nations. This grandeur he found entirely in the conquests of peace as opposed to the popular worship of military renown. His audience, composed in part of men in soldier’s garb, were but little in sympathy with his views, and I remember the performance as having called forth more irritation than approbation.

These prophetic glimpses of good which seem far from the practical questions of the time do visit earnest souls in this way, like some ray of light from an undiscovered star. The same train of thought, at about the same time, took shape in Mr. Longfellow’s fine poem on the Arsenal in Springfield. It may be remembered that the poet was Mr. Sumner’s most intimate friend. While the two men held the same views regarding the great questions of the time, Mr. Longfellow’s bonhomie rendered him very inapt to give offense, while Sumner seemed destined to arouse violent opposition in those from whom he differed.

I remember another Fourth of July at which Edward Everett’s measured rhetoric and silver voice held the attention of a numerous assemblage. Mr. Everett was certainly master of the art of graceful oratory, and was always heard with appreciation, even by those who felt little satisfaction in his public career.

One of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s finest poems was written for the celebration of the Fourth in his own town of Concord. The two opening lines of this dwell always in my memory:

“Oh! tenderly the haughty Day

Fills his blue urn with fire.”

But, beautiful as they are, the solemn lesson of the poet exceeds them in interest.

“United States! the Ages plead,

Present and Past in under-song;

Go, put your creed into your deed,

Nor speak with double tongue.

“Be just at home, then write your scroll

Of honor o’er the sea,

And bid the broad Atlantic roll

A ferry of the Free.”

Here is a thought picture which we may love to dwell upon. Emerson, the descendant of the Puritans, himself a transfigured Puritan, reading these stanzas of his, whose fire is tempered by the weight of thought, in that old town of Concord, where, in his own phrase:

“—the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.”

A fiercer fight was then before us, whose issue is simply prefigured in the words: “Be just at home.” Surely, we might take this saying for a national motto, its reminder still needed, though the slave is freed from the whip and fetter. Of the day on which our Independence was declared John Adams said:

“It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be celebrated with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.”

These words show how comprehensive was the view which the old statesman took of a Nation’s holiday. He desired that all classes and all ages should participate in the joy expressed. The time which has elapsed since his memorable utterance has brought nothing to diminish this joy. It has however brought into being a new society for which “pomp and parade, bells, guns and bonfires” are less available for good than pleasures of a more elevated character. We now desire a celebration which shall speak less to the bodily sense and more to the inner sense. This is because the historic development of the race goes ever forward. John Adams would have had both sober and wild rejoicing over the birth of a new state, representing a new order of things. We stand face to face with the question: How shall we maintain our deliverance from old-world trammels? This freedom which was declared in 1776, what are its conditions, what its true uses?

History is full of paradoxes whose meaning does not lie upon the surface of what we see. Many of these recall the riddle of Samson: “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.” Even so, the things that make for peace often come out of contests full of violence and bloodshed, while the elements of anarchy ripen best in the submission enforced by autocratic despotism, the ominous quiet which is sure to be broken by some terrific social cataclysm. In the first instance, which alone concerns our theme, we must remember that the bloodshed came, not of the peaceable principles of eternal justice, but of the effort on the part of tyrants to gainsay and oppose these. It follows from this that in commemorating the events which have had most to do with the liberation of mankind from the yoke of despotism and superstition, we must keep in view these underlying truths which in themselves involve no violence, but the vindication of which may involve great sacrifices of devoted lives.

The fact that our heroes fought for freedom against almost hopeless odds should be brought to mind, and their names should be hallowed in perpetual remembrance. But, if we would crown their conquest, we must give more attention to the good for which they died than to the mere circumstance of their death. The ordinary procedure of mankind is quite the opposite of this. They are proud of the military success, careless of the civic and ethical gain. Even the Christian church accentuates too much the death of its Founder, is too little concerned with the truth for which he really gave his life. A Lent of prayer and fasting, with dramatic repetition of the betrayal and crucifixion of the Blessed One, may merely bring with it suggestions of devotion and gratitude. But far more important would be a Lent of study of the deep meaning of his words and works. It makes one sick at heart to think of the formal rehearsal of great events by those who have no understanding of their true significance, and can therefore claim but a small part in their real benefit.

The parallelisms too of history are very instructive. In the confusions and difficulties of our own time it is useful for us to learn that men in other times have had similar problems to solve, and have found their solutions. It is helpful for us to know that our pure and blameless Washington was, in his day, the subject of malignant slander and mischievous cabal. Our own best public men are liable to the grossest misinterpretations of their utterances and of their measures. Unworthy demagogues to-day will present very dangerous evils in a light attractive to the multitude. This has always been so. No man marches to victory over a bed of roses. The roses crown his perseverances, but the thorns lacerate his bleeding feet. But, with these sad recollections, we must keep in sight the immortal hope sung by the poets, reasoned out by the philosophers, and acted out by earth’s saints and heroes, the hope which is justified by the great progress of the ages, the elevation of the natural man into the dignity of the spiritual man.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who saw one of the great Italian festivals in which the poet Dante was especially commemorated, saw also the pressing need of wise counsel and brave action throughout the struggling country, and asks what will become of the new Italy if her young men shall “stand still strewing violets all the time?” We may ask too what will become of our new Republic if the hours of its highest festival continue to be occupied with fustian oratory, gunpowder enthusiasm, and the exercise of every poor and mean trade, the sale of toys, bad food, and worse liquor?

Now, I would by no means abridge the childish pleasure of the day, if I could do so. We must allow children the explosion of animal spirits, and they will delight, as some grown-up people will, in much that is irrational. But the day itself is too important to be made one of mere noise and parade. It should be made highly valuable for impressing upon the minds of the young the history of their national liberty, and its cause. Besides our own young people, we have with us the youth of many nations, whose parents have come to our shores, drawn by various hopes of gain and benefit. These children will form an important part of our future body politic, in whose government to-day, their parents are, too, easily able to participate.

The question will be, how to make the Fourth of July a true festival, a national solemnity, without forgetting the claims of the young to be amused, as well as to be instructed. In the first place, I should think that the day might fitly be made one of reunion, by different clubs and associations of culture and philanthropy. Those whose thoughts go deep enough to understand the true conditions of human freedom, might meet and compare their studies and experiences. Very fitly, after such a meeting, each individual of them might seek a group, to whose members he might present a popular statement of the philosophy of freedom. Mothers, who should be the true guardians of peace, might well come together to study all that promotes its maintenance. In gatherings of older children, prize essays might be presented and discussed. I can imagine civic banquets, of a serious and stately character, in which men and women might sit together and pledge each other, in the exhilaration of friendship and good feeling.

I would have processions, but I would have them less military in character, and more pacific in suggestion. Congregations of the various religious confessions might walk in order, headed by their ministers, who should all exchange the right hand of fellowship with each other. I would have no monster concerts, which cannot be fully enjoyed, but divers assemblages, at which music of the highest order should be presented. Letters of greeting should be exchanged between cities and states, and the device of the day should be, “In the Name of the Republic.” The history of the war which culminated in our national independence should be amply illustrated by graphic lectures, and possibly by living pictures. Mr. John Fiske has an admirable talent for bringing the past and its heroes as vividly before us as if he himself had seen them but the day before. If it were possible to multiply his valued personality, I would have many sketches given in various places, of the brave struggle of our forefathers and of those who were foremost in it.

“Going out of town to avoid the Fourth,” has been a phrase so common in my time that it ceases to awaken attention, and is taken as a matter of course. I cannot indeed wonder that people of refined tastes and sensitive nerves should seek to free themselves from the noise and crowd of the usual observance. The question is whether, with a wiser administration, the same people might not be led to gather, rather than to disperse for the celebration.

How would the following programme answer?

On the evening of the third of July, quiet gatherings in halls or churches, in which the true love of country should be explained and illustrated. How many a name, half or wholly forgotten, would then be recalled from oblivion, and with it the labor and sacrifice of some noble life, some example precious for the community!

The morning of the Fourth to be ushered in by martial music, and a military display sufficient to recall the services of the brave men who gave our fathers liberty. At ten o’clock orations in various public buildings, the ablest speakers of the commonwealth doing their best to impart the lesson of the day. At one a Spartan feast, wholesome and simple. No liquor to be served thereat, and none to be sold during the day. From twelve to half past four in the afternoon, I would have exercises for the children of the public schools, examination of classes in American history, prizes given for essays on historical and patriotic subjects. Later, a gathering in public gardens, and a tea, with fruit and flowers, served for the children of the city. In the evening, the singing of national anthems, tableaux vivants and fireworks, and in some form, a pastoral benediction.

To these exercises I would add the signing of a pledge of good citizenship. We take much pains, and not unwisely, to persuade men and women to sign a pledge of total abstinence from alcoholic liquors. But why should we not go further than this, and lead them to pledge themselves to some useful service in the community? This pledge might be either general or particular in its terms, but the act of signing it should imply a disinterested public service of some sort, a participation in some work useful for the health, beauty, or order of the city, without other reward than the badge or button which would represent the agreement entered into. I would have the history of other Republics brought forward on this day, and especially, the heroic struggles of our own time. Among these, I would certainly accord a place to the story of the great-hearted men to whom Italy owes her freedom. And I would if I could compel the attendance of our men and women of fashion upon lectures in which the true inwardness of European society should be exposed, and the danger shown of the follies and luxurious pomp which they delight in imitating, and which, however æsthetically adorned and disguised, are for us to lead in the pathway of moral and intellectual deterioration.

I would have the great political offenses of the century fitly shown, the crimes of Louis Napoleon, the rapacious wars of Germany, France and England, the wicked persecution of the Jews. Now that we are nearing the close of our nineteenth century, it becomes most important for us that its historic record should be truly rehearsed, its great saints and sinners characterized, its wonderful discoveries and inventions explained.

The very meager programme suggested here for our great day may appear to many Utopian and impossible. I shall be glad if it can serve to pave the way for kindred suggestions, to which individual minds may give a broader and more varied scope. Let us unite our efforts in behalf of a suitable and serious honoring of the day in such wise that every heart, old and young, shall have therein its especial joy, and every mind its especial lesson.

I had at one time a plan of my own, of setting apart one day in the year as a Mother’s Day. This festival was to be held in the interest of a world’s peace, and for quite a number of years it was so observed by groups of women in various parts of the country, while in England and even in far-off Smyrna friends met together, with song, prayer, and earnest discourse to emphasize the leading thought, which was that women, as the mothers of the race, knowing fully the cost of human life, should unite their efforts throughout the world to restrain the horrors of war, and to persuade men to keep the sacred bond of peace. It now occurs to me that we should make our Fourth of July a Mother’s, as well as a Father’s day. In the public programme of every town throughout our vast Commonwealth, women should have some word to say and some part to play. What we have already seen of their culture and ability is enough to assure us that their participation in such proceedings would intensify their good features and discourage their objectionable ones. And as in the forms of oratory with which we are familiar, much is made of what the world owes to America, we might suggest that our women speakers might especially bring forward the antithesis of this question, in another, viz., What America owes to the world.

II
SPIRIT AND SIGNIFICANCE

ENGLAND AND AMERICA

BY JAMES BRYCE

This is a memorable day to Englishmen as well as to Americans. It is to us a day both of regret and of rejoicing: of regret at the severance of the political connection which bound the two branches of our race together, and of regret even more for the unhappy errors which brought that severance about, and the unhappy strife by which the memory of it was embittered. But it is also a day of rejoicing, for it is the birthday of the eldest daughter of England—the day when a new nation, sprung from our own, first took its independent place in the world. And now with the progress of time, rejoicing has prevailed over regret, and we in England can at length join heartily with you in celebrating the beginning of your national life. All sense of bitterness has passed away, and been replaced by sympathy with all which this anniversary means to an American heart.

England and America now understand one another far better than they ever did before. In 1776 there was on one side a monarch and a small ruling caste, on the other side a people. Now our government can no longer misrepresent the nation, and across the ocean a people speaks to a people. We have both come, and that most notably within recent months, to perceive that all over the world the interests of America and of England are substantially the same.

The sense of our underlying unity over against the other races and forms of civilization has been a potent force in drawing us together. It is said that the Fourth of July is a day of happy augury for mankind. This is true because on that day America entered on a course and proclaimed principles of government which have been of profound significance for mankind. Many nations have had a career of conquest and of civilizing dominion: but to make an immense people prosperous, happy, and free is a nobler and grander achievement than the most brilliant conquests and the widest dominion.

THE BIRTHDAY OF THE NATION

(From address delivered July 4, 1851, at laying the cornerstone of the new wing of the Capitol.)

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

This is that day of the year which announced to mankind the great fact of American Independence! This fresh and brilliant morning blesses our vision with another beholding of the birthday of our Nation; and we see that Nation, of recent origin, now among the most considerable and powerful, and spreading from sea to sea over the continent.

On the fourth day of July, 1776, the representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, declared that these Colonies are, and ought to be, free and independent States. This declaration, made by most patriotic and resolute men, trusting in the justice of their cause and the protection of Heaven,—and yet not without deep solicitude and anxiety—has now stood for seventy-five years. It was sealed in blood. It has met dangers and overcome them. It has had detractors, and abashed them all. It has had enemies, and conquered them. It has had doubting friends, but it has cleared all doubts away; and now, to-day, raising its august form higher than the clouds, twenty millions of people contemplate it with hallowed love, and the world beholds it, and the consequences that have followed from it, with profound admiration.

This anniversary animates and gladdens all American hearts. On other days of the year we may be party men, indulging in controversies more or less important to the public good. We may have likes and dislikes, and we may maintain our political differences, often with warm, and sometimes with angry feelings. But to-day we are Americans all; nothing but Americans.

As the great luminary over our heads, dissipating fogs and mist, now cheers the whole atmosphere, so do the associations connected with this day disperse all sullen and cloudy weather in the minds and feelings of true Americans. Every man’s heart swells within him. Every man’s port and bearing becomes somewhat more proud and lofty as he remembers that seventy-five years have rolled away, and that the great inheritance of Liberty is still his,—his, undiminished and unimpaired; his, in all its original glory; his to enjoy; his to protect; his to transmit to future generations.

THE FOURTH OF JULY

BY CHARLES LEONARD MOORE

(From The Forum.)

Let be the herds and what the harvest brings;

Give to oblivion all that’s sold and bought,

The count of unrememberable things;—

Our better birthright is this day’s report!

Live our sires in us? Keep we their old skill

To know Occasion’s whisper and be great?

Can our proud blood in one contagious thrill

Put admiration in the eyes of Fate?

Wide is our realm, and twin seas feel our yoke,

Aye, and the oarless ocean of the North;—

Are we then mightier than that scattered folk,

That fringe of clingers by the sea-beach froth

Whose loins begat us? Let to-morrow show

If their stern arts hereditary grow.

LIFT UP YOUR HEARTS

ANONYMOUS

Sursum corda. We have in our own time seen the Republic survive an irrepressible conflict, sown in the blood and marrow of the social order. We have seen the Federal Union, not too strongly put together in the first place, come out of a great war of sections stronger than when it went into it, its faith renewed, its credit rehabilitated, and its flag saluted with love and homage by sixty millions of God-fearing men and women, thoroughly reconciled and homogeneous. We have seen the Federal Constitution outlast the strain, not merely of a Reconstructory ordeal and a Presidential impeachment, but a disputed count of the Electoral vote, a Congressional deadlock, and an extra constitutional tribunal, yet standing firm against the assaults of its enemies, while yielding itself with admirable flexibility to the needs of the country and the time. And finally we saw the gigantic fabric of the Federal Government transferred from the hands that held it a quarter of a century to other hands, without a protest, although so close was the poll in the final count that a single blanket might have covered both contestants for the Chief Magisterial office. With such a record behind us, who shall be afraid of the future?

The young manhood of the country may take this lesson from those of us who lived through times that did indeed try men’s souls—when, pressed down from day to day by awful responsibilities and suspense, each night brought a terror with every thought of the morrow, and when, look where we would, there were light and hope nowhere—that God reigns and wills, and that this fair land is and has always been in His own keeping.

The curse of slavery is gone. It was a joint heritage of woe, to be wiped out and expiated in blood and flame. The mirage of the Confederacy has vanished. It was essentially bucolic, a vision of Arcadie, the dream of a most attractive economic fallacy. The Constitution is no longer a rope of sand. The exact relation of the States to the Federal Government, left open to double construction by the authors of our organic being, because they could not agree among themselves, and union was the paramount object, has been clearly and definitely fixed by the three last amendments to the original chart, which constitute the real treaty of peace between the North and the South, and seal our bonds as a nation forever.

The Republic represents at last the letter and the spirit of the sublime Declaration. The fetters that bound her to the earth are burst asunder. The rags that degraded her beauty are cast aside. Like the enchanted princess in the legend, clad in spotless raiment and wearing a crown of living light, she steps in the perfection of her maturity upon the scene of this, the latest and proudest of her victories, to bid welcome to the world.

Need I pursue the theme? This vast assemblage speaks with a resonance and meaning which words can never reach. It speaks from the fields that are blessed by the never-failing waters of the Kennebec and from the farms that sprinkle the valley of the Connecticut with mimic principalities more potent and lasting than the real; it speaks in the whirr of the mills of Pennsylvania and in the ring of the wood-cutter’s axe from the forests of the lake peninsulas; it speaks from the great plantations of the South and West, teeming with staples that insure us wealth and power and stability, yea, from the mines and forests and quarries of Michigan and Wisconsin, of Alabama and Georgia, of Tennessee and Kentucky far away to the regions of silver and gold, that have linked the Colorado and the Rio Grande in close embrace, and annihilated time and space between the Atlantic and the Pacific; it speaks in one word, from the hearthstone in Iowa and Illinois, from the home in Mississippi and Arkansas, from the hearts of seventy millions of fearless, freeborn men and women, and that one word is “Union!”

There is no geography in American manhood. There are no sections to American fraternity. It needs but six weeks to change a Vermonter into a Texan, and there has never been a time, when, upon the battle-field, or the frontier, Puritan and Cavalier were not convertible terms, having in the beginning a common origin, and so diffused and diluted on American soil as no longer to possess a local habitation or a nativity, except in the National unit.

The men who planted the signals of American civilization upon that sacred Rock by Plymouth Bay were Englishmen, and so were the men who struck the coast a little lower down, calling their haven of rest after the great Republican commoner, and founding by Hampton Roads a race of heroes and statesmen, the mention of whose names brings a thrill to every heart. The South claims Lincoln, the immortal, for its own; the North has no right to reject Stonewall Jackson, the one typical Puritan soldier of the war, for its own! Nor will it! The time is coming, is almost here, when hanging above a mantel-board in fair New England—glorifying many a cottage in the sunny South—shall be seen bound together, in everlasting love and honor, two cross swords carried to battle respectively by the grandfather who wore the blue and the grandfather who wore the gray.

God bless our country’s flag! and God be with us now and ever. God in the roof-tree’s shade and God on the highway, God in the winds and waves, and God in our hearts!

ENGLAND AND THE FOURTH OF JULY

BY W. T. STEAD

(From The Independent.)

I wish with all my heart that we could adopt the Fourth of July as the Festival Day of the whole English-speaking race. If this suggestion should seem strange to Americans, it is not unfamiliar to many Englishmen. We consider that the triumph of the American revolt against George III was a vindication of the essentially English idea of democratic self-government, and we believe that we have benefited by it almost as much as the Americans. It taught us a lesson which made the British Colonial Empire a possibility, and if we are now involved in a suicidal war in South Africa, it is largely because our Government has forgotten the principles of George Washington, and has gone back to the principles of George III.

For some years past I have presided at a distinctly British celebration of the Fourth of July at my brother’s settlement in Southeast London, at Browning Hall, and I have always repudiated the idea that Americans should be allowed to monopolize the Fourth of July. It is one of the great days of the English-speaking race in the celebration of which all members of the English-speaking nations should participate.

SOME EARLY INDEPENDENCE DAY ADDRESSES

ADDRESS OF JOEL BARLOW (JULY 4, 1787)

(At Hartford, Conn.)

On the anniversary of so great an event as the birth of the empire in which we live, none will question the propriety of passing a few moments in contemplating the various objects suggested to the mind by the important occasion; and while the nourishment, the growth, and even the existence of our empire depend upon the united efforts of an extensive and divided people, the duties of this day ascend from amusement and congratulation to a serious patriotic employment.

We are assembled, not to boast, but to realize, not to inflate our national vanity by a pompous relation of past achievements in the council or the field, but, from a modest retrospect of the truly dignified part already acted by our countrymen, from an accurate view of our present situation, and from an anticipation of the scenes that remain to be unfolded, to discern and familiarize the duties that still await us as citizens, as soldiers, and as men.

Revolutions in other countries have been affected by accident. The faculties of human reason and the rights of human nature have been the sport of chance and the prey of ambition. When indignation has burst the bands of slavery, to the destruction of one tyrant, it was only to impose the manacles of another. This arose from the imperfection of that early stage of society, the foundations of empires being laid in ignorance, with a total inability of foreseeing the improvements of civilization, or of adapting government to a state of social refinement. On the western continent a new task, totally unknown to the legislators of other nations, was imposed upon the fathers of the American empire. Here was a people, lords of the soil on which they trod, commanding a prodigious length of coast, and an equal breadth of frontier, a people habituated to liberty, professing a mild and benevolent religion, and highly advanced in science and civilization. To conduct such a people in a revolution, the address must be made to reason, as well as the passions.

In what other age or nation has a people, at ease upon their own farms, secure and distant from the approach of fleets and armies, tide-waiters and stamp-masters, reasoned, before they had felt, and, from the dictates of duty and conscience, encountered dangers, distress, and poverty, for the sake of securing to posterity a government of independence and peace? Here was no Cromwell to inflame the people with bigotry and zeal; no Cæsar to reward his followers with the spoils of vanquished foes; and no territory to be acquired by conquest. Ambition, superstition, and avarice, those universal torches of war, never illumined an American field of battle. But the permanent principles of sober policy spread through the colonies, roused the people to assert their rights, and conducted the revolution. Those principles were noble, as they were new and unprecedented in the history of human nations. The majority of a great people, on a subject which they understand, will never act wrong.

Our duty calls us to act worthy of the age and the country that gave us birth. Every possible encouragement for great and generous exertions is presented before us. The natural resources are inconceivably various and great. The enterprising genius of the people promises a most rapid improvement in all the arts that embellish human nature. The blessings of a rational government will invite emigrations from the rest of the world and fill the empire with the worthiest and happiest of mankind; while the example of political wisdom and sagacity, here to be displayed, will excite emulation through the kingdoms of the earth, and meliorate the condition of the human race.

ADDRESS OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS (JULY 4, 1793)

(At Boston.)

Americans! let us pause for a moment to consider the situation of our country at that eventful day when our national existence commenced. In the full possession and enjoyment of all those prerogatives for which you then dared to adventure upon “all the varieties of untried being,” the calm and settled moderation of the mind is scarcely competent to conceive the tone of heroism to which the souls of freemen were exalted in that hour of perilous magnanimity.

Seventeen times has the sun, in the progress of his annual revolution, diffused his prolific radiance over the plains of independent America. Millions of hearts, which then palpitated with the rapturous glow of patriotism, have already been translated to brighter worlds; to the abodes of more than mortal freedom.

Other millions have arisen, to receive from their parents and benefactors an inestimable recompense of their achievements.

A large proportion of the audience, whose benevolence is at this moment listening to the speaker of the day, like him, were at that period too little advanced beyond the threshold of life to partake of the divine enthusiasm which inspired the American bosom; which prompted her voice to proclaim defiance to the thunders of Britain; which consecrated the banners of her armies; and finally erected the holy temple of American Liberty over the tomb of departed tyranny.

It is from those who have already passed the meridian of life; it is from you, ye venerable assertors of the rights of mankind, that we are to be informed what were the feelings which swayed within your breasts and impelled you to action; when, like the stripling of Israel, with scarcely a weapon to attack, and without a shield for your defense, you met and, undismayed, engaged with the gigantic greatness of the British power.

Untutored in the disgraceful science of human butchery; destitute of the fatal materials which the ingenuity of man has combined to sharpen the scythe of death; unsupported by the arm of any friendly alliance, and unfortified against the powerful assaults of an unrelenting enemy, you did not hesitate at that moment, when your coasts were infested by a formidable fleet, when your territories were invaded by a numerous and veteran army, to pronounce the sentence of eternal separation from Britain, and to throw the gauntlet at a power, the terror of whose recent triumphs was almost coextensive with the earth.

The interested and selfish propensities which, in times of prosperous tranquillity, have such powerful dominion over the heart, were all expelled, and in their stead the public virtues, the spirit of personal devotion to the common cause, a contempt of every danger, in comparison with the subserviency of the country, had assumed an unlimited control.

The passion for the public had absorbed all the rest, as the glorious luminary of heaven extinguishes, in a flood of refulgence, the twinkling splendor of every inferior planet. Those of you, my countrymen, who were actors in those interesting scenes will best know how feeble and impotent is the language of this description, to express the impassioned emotions of the soul with which you were then agitated.

Yet it were injustice to conclude from thence, or from the greater prevalence of private and personal motives in these days of calm serenity, that your sons have degenerated from the virtues of their fathers. Let it rather be a subject of pleasing reflection to you that the generous and disinterested energies which you were summoned to display, are permitted, by the bountiful indulgence of heaven, to remain latent in the bosoms of your children.

From the present prosperous appearance of our public affairs, we may admit a rational hope that our country will have no occasion to require of us those extraordinary and heroic exertions, which it was your fortune to exhibit.

But from the common versatility of all human destiny, should the prospect hereafter darken, and the clouds of public misfortune thicken to a tempest; should the voice of our country’s calamity ever call us to her relief, we swear, by the precious memory of the sages who toiled and of the heroes who bled in her defense, that we will prove ourselves not unworthy of the prize which they so dearly purchased; that we will act as the faithful disciples of those who so magnanimously taught us the instructive lesson of republican virtue.

EXTRACT FROM ADDRESS OF JOHN LATHROP (JULY 4, 1796)

(At Boston.)

In the war for independence America had but one object in view, for in independence are concentrated and condensed every blessing that makes life desirable, every right and privilege which can tend to the happiness, or secure the native dignity, of man. In the attainment of independence were all their passions, their desires, and their powers engaged. The intrepidity and magnanimity of their armies, the wisdom and inflexible firmness of their Congress, the ardency of their patriotism, their unrepining patience when assailed by dangers and perplexed with aggravated misfortune, have long and deservedly employed the pen of panegyric and the tongue of oratory.

Through the whole Revolutionary conflict a consistency and systematic regularity were preserved, equally honorable as extraordinary. The unity of design and classically correct arrangement of the series of incidents which completed the epic story of American independence, were so wonderful, so well wrought, that political Hypercriticism was abashed at the mighty production, and forced to join her sister, Envy, in applauding the glorious composition.

On the last page of Fate’s eventful volume, with the raptured ken of prophecy, I behold Columbia’s name recorded, her future honors and happiness inscribed. In the same important book, the approaching end of tyranny and the triumph of right and justice are written, in indelible characters. The struggle will soon be over; the tottering thrones of despots will quickly fall, and bury their proud incumbents in their massy ruins.

THE FOURTH OF JULY

BY CHARLES SPRAGUE

To the sages who spoke, to the heroes who bled,

To the day and the deed, strike the harp-strings of glory!

Let the song of the ransomed remember the dead,

And the tongue of the eloquent hallow the story!

O’er the bones of the bold

Be the story long told,

And on fame’s golden tablets their triumphs enrolled

Who on freedom’s green hills freedom’s banner unfurled,

And the beacon-fire raised that gave light to the world!

They are gone—mighty men!—and they sleep in their fame:

Shall we ever forget them? Oh, never! no, never!

Let our sons learn from us to embalm each great name,

And the anthem send down—“Independence forever!”

Wake, wake, heart and tongue!

Keep the theme ever young;

Let their deeds through the long line of ages be sung

Who on freedom’s green hills freedom’s banner unfurled,

And the beacon-fire raised that gave light to the world!

OUR NATIONAL ANNIVERSARY

BY A. H. RICE

We celebrate to-day no idle tradition—the deeds of no fabulous race; for we tread in the scarcely obliterated footsteps of an earnest and valiant generation of men, who dared to stake life, and fortune, and sacred honor, upon a declaration of rights, whose promulgation shook tyrants on their thrones, gave hope to fainting freedom, and reformed the political ethics of the world.

The greatest heroes of former days have sought renown in schemes of conquest, based on the love of dominion or the thirst for war; and such had been the worship of power in the minds of men, that adulation had ever followed in the wake of victory. How daring then the trial of an issue between a handful of oppressed and outlawed colonists, basing their cause, under God, upon an appeal to the justice of mankind and their own few valiant arms. And how immeasurably great was he, the fearless commander, who, after the fortunes and triumph of battle were over, scorned the thought of a regal throne in the hearts of his countrymen. Amidst the rejoicings of this day, let us mingle something of gratitude with our joy—something of reverence with our gratitude—and something of duty with our reverence.

Let us cultivate personal independence in the spirit of loyalty to the State, and may God grant that we may always be able to maintain the sovereignty of the State in the spirit of integrity to the Union.

Whatever shall be the fate of other governments, ours thus sustained, shall stand forever. As has been elsewhere said, nation after nation may rise and fall, kingdoms and empires crumble into ruin, but our own native land, gathering energy and strength from the lapse of time, shall go on and still go on its destined way to greatness and renown. And when thrones shall crumble into dust, when scepters and diadems shall have been forgotten, till heaven’s last thunder shall shake the world below, the flag of the Republic shall still wave on, and its Stars, its Stripes, and its Eagle, shall still float in pride, and strength, and glory,

“Whilst the earth bears a plant,

Or the sea rolls a wave.”

AMERICA’S NATAL DAY

BY JAMES GILLESPIE BLAINE

The United States is the only country with a known birthday. All the rest began, they know not when, and grew into power, they know not how. If there had been no Independence Day, England and America combined would not be so great as each actually is. There is no “Republican,” no “Democrat,” on the Fourth of July,—all are Americans. All feel that their country is greater than party.

CRISES OF NATIONS

BY DR. FOSS

There are brief crises in which the drift of individual and national history is determined, sometimes unexpectedly; critical moments on which great decisions hang; days which, like a mountain in a plain, lift themselves above the dead level of common days into everlasting eminence. Our Day of Independence was such a day; so was the day of Marathon, and the day of Waterloo. Napoleon admitted that the Austrians fought grandly on the field of Rivoli, and said, “They failed because they do not understand the value of minutes.” Humboldt refers the discovery of America to “a wonderful concatenation of trivial circumstances,” including a flight of parrots.

THE FOURTH OF JULY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY

BY PHILLIPS BROOKS (JULY 4, 1880)

To all true men the birthday of a nation must always be a sacred thing. For in our modern thought the nation is the making-place of man. Not by the traditions of its history, nor by the splendor of its corporate achievements, nor by the abstract excellence of its Constitution, but by its fitness to make men, to beget and educate human character, to contribute to the complete humanity the perfect man that is to be,—by this alone each nation must be judged to-day. The nations are the golden candlesticks which hold aloft the glory of the Lord. No candlestick can be so rich or venerable that men shall honor it if it hold no candle. “Show us your man,” land cried to land.

It is not for me to glorify to-night the country which I love with all my heart and soul. I may not ask your praise for anything admirable which the United States has been or done. But on my country’s birthday I may do something far more solemn and more worthy of the hour. I may ask for your prayers in her behalf: that on the manifold and wondrous chance which God is giving her,—on her freedom (for she is free, since the old stain of slavery was washed out in blood); on her unconstrained religious life; on her passion for education and her eager search for truth; on her zealous care for the poor man’s rights and opportunities; on her quiet homes where the future generations of men are growing; on her manufactories and her commerce; on her wide gates open to the east and to the west; on her strange meeting of the races out of which a new race is slowly being born; on her vast enterprise and her illimitable hopefulness,—on all these materials and machineries of manhood, on all that the life of my country must mean for humanity, I may ask you to pray that the blessing of God, the Father of man, and Christ, the Son of man, may rest forever.

III
BEFORE THE DAWN OF INDEPENDENCE

AMERICA RESENTS BRITISH DICTATION

BY HENRY B. CARRINGTON

(From The Patriotic Reader, J. B. Lippincott & Co., Phila.)

During the agitation of 1765, concerning the British Stamp Act, a convention of its opponents was assembled in New York City under the name of “The Stamp Act Congress.” Among the most conspicuous of the delegates from the Massachusetts Colony was James Otis. As early as 1761 he protested so earnestly against permitting the British officers of the customs to have “writs of assistance” in their enforcement of the British revenue laws, that John Adams, who listened to his argument, thus described it:

“Otis was a flame of fire! With a promptitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eye into futurity, and a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him. Every man of an immense audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take up arms against any ‘writs of assistance.’”

The all-absorbing sentiment of his life, the wealth of his diction, and the fire of his oratory have been embodied in a form which stands among the best of American classics. In the romance of “The Rebels,” Miss Lydia Maria Francis (afterwards Mrs. Child) introduces James Otis as a leading character. After the opening statement, that “there was hurrying to and fro through the streets of Boston on the night of the 14th of August, 1765,” his patriotic American woman shows such a right conception of the power and oratory of Otis, as well as of the actual tone and spirit of his times, that the fragments of her hero’s conversation during the story, gathered in the form of a speech, have often been mistaken for some actual appeal to the people of his period. The youth of America will do well to keep it fresh in mind, and thereby honor both its author and its subject.

SPEECH OF JAMES OTIS IN 1765

England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the steps of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. Arbitrary principles, like those against which we now contend, have cost one king of England his life, another his crown, and they may yet cost a third his most flourishing colonies.

We are two millions, one-fifth fighting-men. We are bold and vigorous, and we call no man master. To the nation from whom we are proud to derive our origin we ever were, and we ever will be, ready to yield unforced assistance; but it must not, and it never can be extorted.

Some have sneeringly asked, Are the Americans too poor to pay a few pounds on stamped paper? No! America, thanks to God and herself, is rich. But the right to take ten pounds implies the right to take a thousand; and what must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust? True, the specter is now small; but the shadow he casts before him is huge enough to darken all this fair land.

Others, in sentimental style, talk of the immense debt of gratitude which we owe to England. And what is the amount of this debt? Why, truly, it is the same that the young lion owes to the dam which has brought it forth on the solitude of the mountain, or left it amid the winds and storms of the desert.

We plunged into the wave, with the great charter of freedom in our teeth, because the fagot and torch were behind us. We have waked this new world from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path; towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics; and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than the increase of our wealth and population.

And do we owe all this to the kind succor of the mother-country? No; we owe it to the tyranny that drove us from her; to the pelting storms which invigorated our helpless infancy!

But perhaps others will say, We ask no money from your gratitude; we only demand that you should pay your own expenses. And who, I pray, is to judge of their necessity? Why, the king! (And, with all due reverence to his sacred majesty, he understands the real wants of his distant subjects as little as he does the language of the Choctaws.) Who is to judge concerning the frequency of these demands? The ministry. Who is to judge whether the money is properly expended? The cabinet behind the throne.

In every instance, those who take are to judge for those who pay. If this system is suffered to go into operation, we shall have reason to esteem it a great privilege that rain and dew do not depend upon Parliament; otherwise, they would soon be taxed and dried.

But, thanks to God! There is freedom enough left upon earth to resist such monstrous injustice. The flame of liberty is extinguished in Greece and Rome, but the light of its glowing embers is still bright and strong on the shores of America. Actuated by its sacred influence, we will resist unto death.

But we will not countenance anarchy and misrule. The wrongs that a desperate community have heaped upon their enemies shall be amply and speedily repaired. Still, it is lighted in these colonies which one breath of their king may kindle into such fury that the blood of all England cannot extinguish it.

INDEPENDENCE A SOLEMN DUTY

BY RICHARD HENRY LEE