of New England, and in the cotton-gins of the South. It shall be proclaimed by the Stars and Stripes in every sea of earth, as the American Union, one and indivisible; upon the great thoroughfares, wherever steam drives, and engines throb and shriek, its greatness and perpetuity shall be hailed with gladness. It shall be lisped in the earliest words, and ring in the merry voices of childhood, and swell to Heaven upon the song of maidens. It shall live in the stern resolve of manhood, and rise to the mercy-seat upon woman's gentle availing prayer. Holy men shall invoke its perpetuity at the altars of religion, and it shall be whispered in the last accents of expiring age. Thus shall survive and be perpetuated the American Union; and when it shall be proclaimed that time shall be no more, and the curtain shall fall, and the good shall be gathered to a more perfect union, still may the destiny of our dear land recognize the conception, that "Perfumes as of Eden flowed sweetly along, And a voice, as of angels, enchantingly sung, The Queen of the world, and the child of the skies." D. S. Dickinson. CCLXXXVI. SAMUEL ADAMS. Extract from an Address at the Centennial Celebration at Concord, April 19, B 1875. UT here and now I cannot speak of the New England townmeeting without recalling its great genius, the New Englander, in whom the Revolution seemed to be most fully embodied, and the lofty prayer of whose life was answered upon this spot and on this day. He was not eloquent like Otis, nor scholarly like Quincy, nor all-fascinating like Warren; yet bound heart to heart with these great men, his friends, the plainest, simplest, austerest among them, he gathered all their separate gifts, and, adding to them his own, fused the whole in the glow of that untiring energy, that unerring perception, that sublime will, which moved before the chosen people of the colonies a pillar of cloud by day, of fire by night. People of Massachusetts, your proud and grateful hearts outstrip my lips in pronouncing the name of Samuel Adams! Until 1768, Samuel Adams did not despair of a peaceful issue of the quarrel with Great Britain. But when in May of that year the British frigate Romney sailed into Boston harbor, and her shotted guns were trained upon the town, he saw that the question was changed. From that moment he knew that America must be free or slave, and the unceasing effort of his life, by day and night, with tongue and pen, was to nerve his fellow-colonists to strike when the hour should come. On that gray December evening, two years later, when he rose in the Old South, and in a clear, calm voice, said, "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country," and so gave the word for the march to the tea ships, he comprehended more clearly, perhaps, than any man in the colonies, the immense and far-reaching consequences of his words. He was ready to throw the tea overboard because he was ready to throw overboard the King and Parliament of England. During the ten years from the passage of the Stamp Act to the fight at Lexington and Concord, this poor man, in an obscure provincial town beyond the sea, was engaged with the British ministry in one of the mightiest contests that history records. Not a word in Parliament that he did not hear, not an act in the cabinet that he did not see. With brain and heart and conscience all alive, he opposed every hostile order in council with a British precedent, and arrayed against the government of Great Britain the battery of principles impregnable with the accumulated strength of centuries of British conviction. The cold Grenville, the brilliant Townsend, the obsequious North, the reckless Hillsborough, the crafty Dartmouth, all the ermined and coroneted chiefs of the proudest aristocracy in the world, derided, declaimed, denounced, laid unjust taxes, and sent troops to collect them; cheered loudly by a servile Parliament, the parasite of a headstrong King- and the plain Boston Puritan laid his finger on the vital point of the tremendous controversy, and held to it inexorably King, Lords, Commons, the people of England and the people of America. Intrenched in his own honesty, the King's gold could not buy him. Enshrined in the love of his fellow-citizens, the King's writ could not take him. And when on this morning the King's troops marched to seize him, his sublime faith saw beyond the clouds of the moment the rising sun of the America that we behold, and careless of himself, mindful only of his country, he exultingly exclaimed, “Oh! what a glorious morning!" Yet this man held no office but that of Clerk of the Assembly, to which he was yearly elected, and that of constant Moderator of the town meeting. That was his mighty weapon. The town meeting was the alarm bell with which he aroused the continent. It was the rapier with which he fenced with the ministry. It was the claymore with which he smote their counsels. It was the harp of a thousand strings that he swept into a burst of passionate defiance, or an electric call to arms, or a proud pæan of exulting triumph - defiance, challenge, and exultation all lifting the continent to independence. His indomitable will and command of the popular confidence played Boston against London, the provincial town meeting against the royal Parliament, Faneuil Hall against St. Stephen's. And as long as the American town meeting is known, its great genius will be revered, who with the town meeting overthrew an empire. So long as Faneuil Hall stands, Samuel Adams will not want his most fitting monument, and when Faneuil Hall falls, its name with his will be found written as with a sunbeam upon every faithful American heart. G. W. Curtis. CCLXXXVII. HEROISM OF THE MINUTE MEN AT LEXINGTON. Extract from an Address at the Centennial Celebration at Lexington, April 19, 1875. THE HE issue was made up. But it was solemnly resolved that we must not precipitate the war we must not strike the first blow. We were to endure threats, insults, and demonstrations of violence; but the British troops must fire the first shot. If a company was out in martial array for the purpose of defence, they must stand their ground, and retain their arms. If the regulars withdrew, well; if not, the militia must await the first volley. Now, what was this but a call for martydom? The first that fell must fall as martyrs. The battle would begin with the shot which took their lives. No call could be made demanding more fortitude, more nerve, than this. Many a man can rush into battle, maddened by the scene, who would find it hard to stand in his line, inactive, to await the volley, if it must come. But our people were thoroughly instructed in their cause. They had studied it, discussed it in the public meeting and through the press, carried it to the Throne of Grace, and tried it by every test they knew. They had made up their minds to the issue, and were prepared to accept its results. When the news came, at night, that the regulars were out and marching that way to destroy the stores at Concord, to arrest leading patriots, to disperse and disarm all assembled forces, they came together on this green in full ranks. They acted under the eye and counsel of Adams and Hancock, and of their own wise, venerated, patriotic pastor. The widow awaked her only son, the young bride summoned her husband, the motherless child her father. "The regulars are out, and something must be done!" Yes, something must be done. That something was to stand on the defensive, and meet death if it came, and then meet war with war. The men separated on the doubt as to the truth of the report, with orders to rally at the drum-beat and the alarm guns. The first messengers sent down the road had been captured, and the great force was moving steadily on. One scout, more fortunate, escaped, and spread the alarm that the regulars were close at hand. On the beat of the drum, some sixty came together on the green. Affecting and heroic as is the narrative, its details are too well known for me to delay upon them. They were ordered to load and stand in line. Strictly in accordance with the command of the Congress, Captain Parker ordered them not to fire unless fired upon, and not to disperse but by his command. They were an armed band of the people's militia, organized by the authority of the people's Congress, and bearing arms in the common defence by what they deemed their inalienable right, the surrender of which was the surrender of their liberty. The Provincial Congress had not yet established a general system suited to extended military operations. The organization had not got much beyond the town companies of minute-men, and the alarm-lists. No one could know, on this sudden call and close, impending crisis, exactly what was best to be done. Each band must act for itself. But had we begun the attack, however successfully, we should have disobeyed every wish, counteracted every plan, shocked the public sense, alienated the doubtful; and the cause would have been thrown back, if not defeated. Whatever might have been wisest, if there were time for deliberation, and heads authorized to plan the work for the whole day, one thing these few men felt was bravest, most becoming the Massachusetts freemen, and most in accordance with the policy of the people; and that was to stand their ground, with arms in their hands as a lawful militia, on their lawful training-field, prepared for whatever might befall them; ready, if need be, as Lexington had promised Boston, "to sacrifice life itself in the common cause; " feeling, in the words of the Middlesex Resolves, that "he can never die too soon who lays down his life in support of the laws and liberties of his country." R. H. Dana Jr. [Adapted.] |