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walls of Havana. We have seen the same distinguished man assigned an insignificant part in the government of Cuba after that island came under the care of the United States. Our forefathers, however, saw a better sight. They saw John Adams, of Massachusetts, urge George Washington, of Virginia, as commander-in-chief of the American army, and saw a throng of New England people shout applause, as the great son of Virginia accepted his sword under the Cambridge elm, on the soil of Massachusetts. They saw such great Northern soldiers as Anthony Wayne and Nathaniel Greene follow the Virginian to victory under the same banner as Marion, Sumter, and Pickens of South Carolina; "Light Horse Harry" Lee, Hugh Mercer, Andrew Lewis, and Daniel Morgan, of Virginia; Francis Nash and William R. Davie, of North Carolina; Joseph Habersham, of Georgia; John Sevier and Isaac Shelby, heroes of the frontier.

"Give us back the ties of Yorktown!
Perish all the modern hates!
Let us stand together, brothers,
In defiance of the Fates;

For the safety of the Union

Is the safety of the States! " *

III

"There Is Glory Enough for Us All”

In drafting the constitution, also, men of the North and of the South stood shoulder to shoulder. Just as they

*James Barron Hope, Yorktown Centennial poem.

risked their "lives," their "fortunes," and their "sacred honor" together, so they sent their greatest men to consult together as to the kind of government they should form for themselves and their posterity.

Of the details of the constitution of 1787, we shall speak more fully in a later section of this chapter. Here we may pause for a few remarks by way of introduction. A Southern state, Virginia, led the way in calling for a convention to frame a constitution for the thirteen free and independent states. It was Madison and Washington, of Virginia, who saw more clearly than almost any other men north or south that the young nation just cut loose from England needed a strong government to keep it from falling to pieces at home and from being despised abroad. Along with these patriots, we should mention Alexander Hamilton, the brilliant statesman of New York, and both Madison and Hamilton are often spoken of as "the fathers of the constitution." Another great man of that era was John Jay, afterwards chief-justice. When we think of the constitution, we cannot fail to think of Washington, whose personal influence alone induced many men to vote for the great paper that was ready in September, 1787, to be submitted to Congress and to the several states for adoption. In all these details, we see clearly that the great men of all sections worked hand in hand for the general welfare. Neither section can claim all the glory; the "honors are even.”

In the foregoing sentences, we have seen in generous emulation men from both sides of the Potomac. Again, in the convention that drafted the constitution, we find, besides several already mentioned, Rufus King, of Massachu

setts; Benjamin Franklin, James Wilson, Robert Morris, and Gouverneur Morris, of Pennsylvania; John Dickinson, of Delaware; and Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, standing shoulder to shoulder with Daniel Carroll, of Maryland; Edmund Randolph and George Mason, of Virginia; Hugh Williamson and William R. Davie, of North Carolina; Abraham Baldwin and William Few, of Georgia; John Rutledge, Charles and Cotesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina.

IV

Roanoke Island, St. Augustine, and Jamestown

A great poet tells us, "The poetry of earth is never dead." This means that the poetical in life, in the universe, appeals incessantly to humanity, and that, as long as man has sorrows to bemoan and joys to cheer him, the poet will be needed to inspire and console him.

Not all poetry is written in words, and clothed in rhythmical language. If there are, as Shakespeare says, “sermons in stones," there are also poems in places, in great events, and in the great ideas that thrill mankind. There is something thrilling, something too deep for utterance, welling up within us as we look at the "old gateway" and the "ivy-mantled tower," coming down to us as relics of antiquity. He who has no such poetry in his soul, though he may not be quite "fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils," lacks that imagination which give to life and to travel "the glory and the freshness of a dream."

With romance and poetry, our Southern past is glorious.

Carolina has her Roanoke Island, associated with the name of Walter Raleigh, whose whole career is wrapped in romantic glamour. It is the glory of the South that this great chevalier and soldier stands in the forefront of her history.

Of Roanoke Island you have read in your histories. Here was made the first English settlement in the New World; and "the lost colony of Roanoke" is the most pathetic_romance in our history. The word Croatan carved upon that tree will be the sad enigma of the centuries; and myriads of children yet unborn will wonder whether the settlers were murdered by the savages, died of starvation, or perchance were adopted into some tribe of Indians.

Another sacred shrine is St. Augustine, Florida. All Americans love to visit the old town and look at its ancient gateway. It was on this spot that the white man made his first permanent settlement in America, and, though the relations between the Spaniards, whose ancestors planted this town, and the race to which we belong have not always been pleasant, we feel a solemn thrill as we think of the time when the great white race to which we both belong first planted a home on this mighty continent.

Still dearer to us of English blood are the ruins of Jamestown. The feelings that stir our hearts as we stand under the shadow of the old tower are too deep for utterance, and we almost beg to be left alone with our awe and our solemn meditation.

Whence those deep feelings, those unutterable emotions? It is the reverence for antiquity, the lofty sentiment that raises us above the brute creation. Misers are not without it; hard-hearted lovers of the "almighty dollar" cannot re

sist it; and hundreds, if not thousands, of the richest in our land visit that spot every year, tread reverently its sacred sward, read the inscriptions upon its old tombstones, and hear in imagination the echoes of the old bell that used to call the fathers of America to the house of worship.

Dear to every American should be that now deserted island. Proud should Virginians be that they are custodians of that shrine with its sacred memories; for it was on that spot, on the 13th of May, 1607, that the first permanent English settlement in America was made. There the first English home in America was established; there Reverend Robert Hunt, the first English minister in America, read the new liturgy of the reformed Church of England, and under a spreading canvas, with the green sward of nature as his carpet, "sang the Lord's song in a strange land." Its tower no longer rings with the reverberating peals of holy bells, calling to meditation and to prayer. Only the dead are there. All is in ruins. Yet we feel, as we stand in those sacred precincts, that the poet* was right when he said,

“Yes, give me a land that has legends and lays.” What other section has a Pocahontas?

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Others here and there have a kind Indian woman shielding the whites from treachery and cruelty; but Pocahontas, "the Princess of the Forest," the daughter of kings, the mother of statesmen that have been and that are to be—she will ever stand alone, unique, on the canvas of history, inspiring the artist's brush, the historian's pen, and the poet's lyre.

*Father Ryan.

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