Physical and even corporeal national characteristics, did not escape comparison in this normal contest. The American rather more active and more demonstrative than his ancestors, many of the officers of imposing figure, Scott and McNeil particularly, towering with gigantic stature above the rest, stood opposed in striking contrast to the short, thick, brawny, burly Briton, hard to overcome…. The Marquis of Tweedale, with his sturdy, short person, and stubborn courage, represented the British…. Even the names betokened at once consanguinity and hostility. Scott, McNeill, and McRee, in arms against Gordon, Hay, and Maconochie. And the harsh Scotch nomenclature, compared with the more euphonious savage Canada, Chippewa, Niagara, which latter modern English prosody has corrupted from the measure of Goldsmith's Traveller:—
"Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around,And Niagara stuns with thundering sound."
… Mankind impressed by numbers and bloodshed, regard the second more extensive battle near the falls of Niagara, on the 25th of the same month, between the same parties with British reinforcements, known as the battle of Bridgewater, as more important than its precursor…. The victory of Chippewa was the resurrection or birth of American arms, after their prostration by so long disuse, and when at length taken up again, by such continual and deplorable failures, that the martial and moral influence of the first decided victory opened and characterized an epoch in the annals and intercourse of the two kindred and rival nations, whose language is to be spoken, as their institutions are rapidly spreading, throughout most of mankind. Fought between only some three or four thousand men in both armies, at a place remote from either of their countries, the battle of Chippewa may not bear vulgar comparison with the great military engagements of modern Europe.
… The charm of British military invincibility was as effectually broken, by a single brigade, as that of naval supremacy was by a single frigate, as much as if a large army or fleet had been the agent.
* * * * *
=Henry M. Brackenridge,[38] 1786-.= (Manual, p. 505.)
From "Recollections of the West."
The house of M. Beauvais was a long, low building, with a porch or shed in front, and another in the rear; the chimney occupied the center, dividing the house into two parts, with each a fireplace. One of these served for dining-room, parlor, and principal bed-chamber; the other was the kitchen; and each had a small room taken off at the end for private chambers or cabinets. There was no loft or garret, a pair of stairs being a rare thing in the village. The furniture, excepting the beds and the looking-glass, was of the most common kind…. The yard was enclosed with cedar pickets, eight or ten inches in diameter, and six feet high, placed upright, sharpened at the top, in the manner of a stockade fort. In front the yard was narrow, but in the rear quite spacious, and containing the barn and stables, the negro quarters, and all the necessary offices of a farm-yard. Beyond this, there was a spacious garden enclosed with pickets….
The pursuits of the inhabitants were chiefly agricultural, although all were more or less engaged in traffic for peltries with the Indians, or in working the lead mines in the interior. Peltry and lead constituted almost the only circulating medium. All politics, or discussions of the affairs of government were entirely unknown; the commandant took care of all that sort of thing. But instead of them, the processions and ceremonies of the church, and the public balls, furnished ample matter for occupation and amusement. Their agriculture was carried on in a field of several thousand acres, enclosed at the common expense, and divided into lots…. Whatever they may have gained in some respects, I question very much whether the change of government has contributed to increase their happiness. About a quarter of a mile off, there was a village of Kickapoo Indians, who lived on the most friendly terms with the white people. The boys often intermingled with those of the white village, and practised shooting with the bow and arrow—an accomplishment which I acquired with the rest, together with a little smattering of the Indian language, which I forgot on leaving the place.
[Footnote 38: Distinguished in literature and as a political writer; a native of Pennsylvania.]
* * * * *
=Gulian C. Verplanck, 1786-1870.= (Manual, p. 487.)
From the "Literary and Historical Discourses."
The schoolmaster's occupation is laborious and ungrateful; its rewards are scanty and precarious. He may indeed be, and he ought to be animated by the consciousness of doing good, that best of all consolations, that noblest of all motives. But that too must be often clouded by doubt and uncertainty. Obscure and inglorious as his daily occupation may appear to learned pride or worldly ambition, yet to be truly successful and happy he must be animated by the spirit of the same great principles which inspired the most illustrious benefactors of mankind. If he bring to his task high talent and rich acquirement, he must be content to look into distant years for the proof that his labors have not been wasted, that the good seed which he daily scatters abroad does not fall on stony ground and wither away, or among thorns to be choked by the cares, the delusions, or the vices of the world. He must solace his toils with the same prophetic faith that enabled the greatest of modern philosophers,[39] amidst the neglect or contempt of his own times, to regard himself as sowing the seeds of truth for posterity and the care of Heaven. He must arm himself against disappointment and mortification with a portion of that same noble confidence which soothed the greatest of modern poets when weighed down by care and danger, by poverty, old age, and blindness, still
"—In prophetic dreams he sawThe youth unborn with pious aweImbibe each virtue from his sacred page."
He must know and he must love to teach his pupils not the meager elements of knowledge, but the secret and the use of their own intellectual strength, exciting and enabling them hereafter to raise for themselves the veil which covers the majestic form of Truth. He must feel deeply the reverence due to the youthful mind fraught with mighty though undeveloped energies and affections, and mysterious and eternal destinies. Thence he must have learned to reverence himself and his profession, and to look upon its otherwise ill-requited toils as their own exceeding great reward.
If such are the difficulties and the discouragements, such the duties, the motives, and the consolations of teachers who are worthy of that name and trust, how imperious then the obligation upon every enlightened citizen who knows and feels the value of such men to aid them, to cheer them, and to honor them.
But let us not be content with barren honor to buried merit. Let us prove our gratitude to the dead by faithfully endeavoring to elevate the station, to enlarge the usefulness, and to raise the character of the schoolmaster amongst us. Thus shall we best testify our gratitude to the teachers and guides of our own youth, thus best serve our country, and thus most effectually diffuse over our land light, and truth, and virtue.
[Footnote 39: Bacon.]
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=John W. Francis, 1789-1861.= (Manual, pp. 487, 532.)
From his "Reminiscences."
He who has passed a period of some three score years and upward, some faithful Knickerbocker for instance, native born, and ever a resident among us, whose tenacious memory enables him to meditate upon the thirty thousand inhabitants at the time of his birth, with the almost oppressive population of some seven hundred thousand which the city at present contains; who contrasts the cheap and humble dwellings of that earlier date, with the costly and magnificent edifices which now beautify the metropolis; who studies the sluggish state of the mechanic arts at the dawn of the Republic, and the mighty demonstrations of skill which our Fulton, and our Stevens, our Douglas, our Hoe, and our Morse, have produced; who remembers the few and humble water-craft conveyances of days past, and now beholds the majestic leviathans of the ocean which crowd our harbors; who contemplates the partial and trifling commercial transactions of the Confederacy, with the countless millions of commercial business which engross the people of the present day, in our Union; who estimates the offspring of the press, and the achievements of the telegraph, he who has been the spectator of all this, may be justly said to have lived the period of many generations, and to have stored within his reminiscences the progress of an era the most remarkable in the history of his species.
If he awakens his attention to a consideration of the progress of intellectual and ethical pursuits, if he advert to the prolific demonstrations which surround him for the advancement of knowledge, literary and scientific, moral and religious, the indomitable spirit of the times strikes him with more than logical conviction. The beneficence and humanity of his countrymen may be pointed out by contemplating her noble free schools, her vast hospitals and asylums for the alleviation of physical distress and mental infirmities; with the reflection that all these are the triumphs of a self-governed people, accomplished within the limited memory of an ordinary life. Should reading enlarge the scope of his knowledge, let him study the times of the old Dutch Governors, when the Ogdens erected the first church in the fort of New Amsterdam, in 1642, and then survey the vast panoramic view around him of the two hundred and fifty and more edifices, now consecrated to the solemnities of religious devotion. It imparts gratification to know that the old Bible which was used in that primary church of Van Twiller is still preserved by a descendant of the builder, a precious relic of the property of the older period, and of the devotional impulse of those early progenitors. To crown the whole, time in its course has recognized the supremacy of political and religious toleration, and established constitutional freedom on the basis of equal rights and even and exact justice to all men. That New York has given her full measure of toil, expenditure, and talent in furtherance of these vast results, by her patriots and statesmen, is proclaimed in grateful accents by the myriad voice of the nation at large.
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=William, Meade, 1789-1862.=
From the "Old Churches &c. of Virginia."
=123.= Character of the Early Virginia Clergy.
It has been made a matter of great complaint against the Legislature of Virginia, that it should not only have withdrawn the stipend of sixteen thousand weight of tobacco from the clergy, but also have seized upon the glebes. I do not mean to enter on the discussion of the legality of that act, or of the motives of those who petitioned for it. Doubtless there were many who sincerely thought that it was both legal and right, and that they were doing God and religion a service by it. I hesitate not, however, to express the opinion, in which I have been and am sustained by many of the best friends of the Church then and ever since, that nothing could have been more injurious to the cause of true religion in the Episcopal Church, or to its growth in any way, than the continuance of either stipend or glebes. Many clergymen of the most unworthy character would have been continued among us, and such a revival as we have seen have never taken place…. Not merely have the pious members of the Church taken this view of the subject, since the revival of it under other auspices, but many of those who preferred the Church at that day, for other reasons than her evangelical doctrine and worship, saw that It was best that she should be thrown upon her own resources. I had a conversation with Mr. Madison, soon after he ceased to be President of the United States, in which I became assured of this. He himself took an active part in promoting the act for the putting down the establishment of the Episcopal Church, while his relative was Bishop of it, and all his family connection attached to it….
It may be well here to state, what will more fully appear when we come to speak of the old glebes and churches in a subsequent number, that the character of the laymen of Virginia for morals and religion was in general greatly in advance of that of the clergy. The latter, for the most part, were the refuse or more indifferent of the English, Irish, and Scotch Episcopal churches, who could not find promotion and employment at home. The former were natives of the soil, and descendants of respectable ancestors, who migrated at an early period…. Some of the vestries, as their records painfully show, did what they could to displace unworthy ministers, though they often failed through defect of law. In order to avoid the danger of having evil ministers fastened upon them, as well as from the scarcity of ministers, they made much use of lay-readers as substitutes…. The reading of the service and sermons in private families, which contributed so much to the preservation of an attachment to the Church in the same, was doubtless promoted by this practice of lay-reading. Those whom Providence raised up to resuscitate the fallen Church of Virginia can testify to the fact that the families who descended from the above mentioned, have been their most effective supports…. And when, in the providence of God. they are called on to leave their ancient homes, and form new settlements in the distant South and West, none are more active and reliable in transplanting the Church of their Fathers.
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=Jared Sparks, 1794-1866.= (Manual, p. 490.)
From "The Life of General Stark."
The German troops with their battery were advantageously posted upon a rising ground, at a bend in the Wollamsac (a tributary of the Hoosac), on its north bank. The ground fell off to the north and west, a circumstance of which Stark skilfully took advantage. Peters' corps of Tories were entrenched on the other side of the stream, in lower ground, and nearly in front of the German Battery. The little river, that meanders through the scene of the action, is fordable in all places. Stark was encamped upon the same side of it as the Germans, but, owing to its serpentine course, it crossed his line of march twice on his way to their position. Their post was carefully reconnoitered at a mile's distance, and the plan of attack was arranged in the following manner. Colonel Nichols, with two hundred men, was detached to attack the rear of the enemy's left, and Colonel Herrick, with three hundred men, to fall upon the rear of their right, with orders to form a junction before they made the assault. Colonels Hubbard and Stickney were also ordered to advance with two hundred men on their right, and one hundred in front, to divert their attention from the real point of attack. The action commenced at three o'clock in the afternoon, on the rear of the enemy's left, when Colonel Nichols, with great precision, carried into effect the dispositions of the commander. His example was followed by every other portion of the little army. General Stark himself moved forward slowly in front, till he heard the sound of the guns from Colonel Nichols' party, when he rushed upon the Tories, and in a few moments the action became general. "It lasted," says Stark, in his official report, "two hours, and was the hottest I ever saw. It was like one continued clap of thunder." The Indians, alarmed at the prospect of being enclosed between the parties of Nichols and Herrick, fled at the commencement of the action, their main principle of battle array being to contrive or to escape, an ambush, or an attack in the rear. The Tories were soon driven over the river, and were thus thrown in confusion on the Germans, who were forced from their breast-work. Baum made a brave and resolute defence. The German dragoons, with the discipline of veterans, preserved their ranks unbroken, and, after their ammunition was expended, were led to the charge by their Colonel with the sword; but they were overpowered and obliged to give way, leaving their artillery and baggage on the field.
They were well enclosed in two breast-works, which, owing to the rain on the 15th, they had constructed at leisure. But notwithstanding this protection, with the advantage of two pieces of cannon, arms and ammunition in perfect order, and an auxiliary force of Indians, they were driven from their entrenchments by a band of militia just brought to the field, poorly armed, with few bayonets, without field-pieces, and with little discipline. The superiority of numbers on the part of the Americans, will, when these things are considered, hardly be thought to abate anything from the praise due to the conduct of the commander, or the spirit and courage of his men.
* * * * *
From the "Life of Count Pulaski."
(The Battle of Brandywine.)—On that occasion, Count Pulaski, as well as Lafayette, was destined to strike his first blow in defence of American liberty. Being a volunteer, and without command, he was stationed near General Washington till towards the close of the action, when he asked the command of the General's body guard,—about thirty horse, and advanced rapidly within pistol-shot of the enemy, and after reconnoitering their movements, returned and reported that they were endeavoring to cut off the line of retreat, and particularly the train of baggage. He was then authorized to collect as many of the scattered troops as came in his way, and employ them according to his discretion, which he did in a manner so prompt and bold, as to effect an important service in the retreat of the army; fully sustaining, by his conduct and courage, the reputation for which the world had given him credit. Four days after this event, he was appointed by Congress to the command of the cavalry, with the rank of brigadier general.
(Before Charleston in 1779.)—Scarcely waiting till the enemy had crossed the ferry, Pulaski sallied out with his legion and a few mounted volunteers, and made an assault upon the advanced parties. With the design of drawing the British into an ambuscade, he stationed his infantry on low ground behind a breast-work, and then rode forward a mile, with his cavalry in the face of a party of light-horse, with whom he came to close quarters, and kept up a sharp skirmish till he was compelled to retreat by the increasing numbers of the enemy. His coolness, courage, and disregard of personal danger, were conspicuous throughout the rencounter, and the example of this prompt and bold attack had great influence in raising the spirits of the people, and inspiring the confidence of the inexperienced troops then assembled in the city. The infantry, impatient to take part in the conflict, advanced to higher ground in front of the breast-work and thus the scheme of an ambuscade was defeated.
(His death at Savannah.)—The cavalry were stationed in the rear of the advanced columns, and in the confusion which appeared in front, and in the obscurity caused by the smoke, Pulaski was uncertain where he ought to act. To gain information on this point, he determined to ride forward in the heat of the conflict, and called to Captain Bentalou to accompany him. They had proceeded but a short distance, when they heard of the havoc that had been produced in the swamp among the French troops. Hoping to animate these troops by his presence, he rushed onward, and while riding swiftly to the place where they were stationed, he received a wound in the groin from a swivel-shot, and fell from his horse near the abattis. Captain Bentalou was likewise wounded by a musket-ball. Count Pulaski was left on the field till nearly all the troops had retreated, when some of his men returned, in the face of the enemy's guns, and took him to the camp. (His character.)—He possessed in a remarkable degree, the power of winning and controlling men, a power so rare that it may be considered not less the fruit of consummate art than the gift of nature. Energetic, vigilant, untiring in the pursuit of an object, fearless, fertile in resources, calm in danger, resolute and persevering under discouragements, he was always prepared for events, and capable of effecting his purposes with the best chance of success…. He embraced our cause as his own, harmonizing, as it did with his principles and all the noble impulses of his nature, the cause of liberty and of human rights; he lost his life in defending it; thus acquiring the highest of all claims to a nation's remembrance and gratitude.
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=William H. Prescott, 1796-1859.= (Manual, p. 494.)
From the "History of Ferdinand and Isabella."
Whatever be the amount of physical good or evil immediately resulting to Spain from her new discoveries, their moral consequences were inestimable. The ancient limits of human thought and action were overleaped; the veil which had covered the secrets of the deep for so many centuries was removed; another hemisphere was thrown open; and a boundless expansion promised to science, from the infinite varieties in which nature was exhibited in these unexplored regions. The success of the Spaniards kindled a generous emulation in their Portuguese rivals, who soon after accomplished their long-sought passage into the Indian seas, and thus completed the great circle of maritime discovery. It would seem as if Providence had postponed this grand event, until the possession of America, with its stores of precious metals, might supply such materials for a commerce with the east, as should bind together the most distant quarters of the globe. The impression made on the enlightened minds of that day is evinced by the tone of gratitude and exultation, in which they indulge, at being permitted to witness the consummation of these glorious events, which their fathers had so long, but in vain, desired to see.
The discoveries of Columbus occurred most opportunely for the Spanish nation, at the moment when it was released from its tumultuous struggle in which it had been engaged for so many years with the Moslems. The severe schooling of these wars had prepared it for entering on a bolder theater of action, whose stirring and romantic perils raised still higher the chivalrous spirit of the people. The operation of this spirit was shown in the alacrity with which private adventurers embarked in expeditions to the New World, under cover of the general license, during the last two years of this century. Their efforts, combined with those of Columbus, extended the range of discovery from its original limits; twenty-four degrees of north latitude, to probably more than fifteen south, comprehending some of the most important territories in the western hemisphere. Before the end of 1500, the principal groups of the West India islands had been visited, and the whole extent of the southern continent coasted from the Bay of Honduras to Cape St. Augustine. One adventurous mariner, indeed, named Lepe, penetrated several degrees south of this, to a point not reached by any other voyager for ten or twelve years after. A great part of the kingdom of Brazil was embraced in this extent, and two successive Castilian navigators landed and took formal possession of it for the crown of Castile, previous to its reputed discovery by the Portuguese Cabral; although the claims to it were relinquished by the Spanish Government, conformably to the famous line of demarkation established by the treaty of Tordesillas.
While the colonial empire of Spain was thus every day enlarging, the man to whom it was all due was never permitted to know the extent, or the value of it. He died in the conviction in which he lived, that the land he had reached was the long-sought Indies. But it was a country far richer than the Indies; and had he on quitting Cuba struck into a westerly, instead of southerly direction, it would have carried him into the very depths of the golden regions, whose existence he had so long and vainly predicted. As it was, he "only opened the gates," to use his own language, for others more fortunate than himself; and, before he quitted Hispaniola for the last time, the young adventurer arrived there, who was destined by the conquest of Mexico to realize all the magnificent visions, which had been derided only as visions, in the lifetime of Columbus.
* * * * *
From "The History of the Conquest of Mexico."
While these things were passing, Cortés observed one of Teuhtlile's attendants busy with a pencil, apparently delineating some object. On looking at his work, he found that it was a sketch, on canvas, of the Spaniards, their costumes, arms, and, in short, different objects of interest, giving to each its appropriate form and color. This was the celebrated picture-writing of the Aztecs, and as Teuhtlile informed him, this man was employed in portraying the various objects for the eye of Montezuma, who would thus gather a more vivid notion of their appearance than from any description by words. Cortés was pleased with the idea; and as he knew how much the effect would be heightened by converting still life into action, he ordered out the cavalry on the beach, the wet sands of which afforded a firm footing for the horses. The bold and rapid movements of the troops, as they went through their military exercises, the apparent ease with which they managed the fiery animals on which they were mounted, the glancing of their weapons, and the shrill cry of the trumpet, all filled the spectators with astonishment; but when they heard the thunders of the cannon, and witnessed the volumes of smoke and flame issuing from these terrible engines, and the rushing sound of the balls, as they dashed through the trees of the neighboring forest, shivering their branches into fragments, they were filled with consternation, from which the Aztec chief himself was not wholly free. Nothing of all this was lost on the painters, who faithfully recorded, after their fashion, every particular, not omitting the ships—"the water-houses," as they called them—of the strangers, which, with their dark hulls and snow-white sails reflected from the water, were swinging lazily at anchor on the calm bosom of the bay. All was depicted with a fidelity that excited in their turn the admiration of the Spaniards, who, doubtless unprepared for this exhibition of skill, greatly overestimated the merits of the execution.
* * * * *
From "The History of the Conquest of Peru."
These articles consisted of goblets, ewers, salvers, vases of every shape and size, ornaments and utensils for the temples and the royal palaces, tiles and plates for the decoration of the public edifices, curious imitations of different plants and animals. Among the plants, the most beautiful was the Indian corn, in which the golden ear was sheathed in its broad leaves of silver, from which hung a rich tassel of threads of the same precious metal. A fountain was also much admired, which sent up a sparkling jet of gold, while birds and animals of the same material played in the waters at its base. The delicacy of the workmanship of some of these, and the beauty and ingenuity of the design, attracted the admiration of better judges than the rude Conquerors of Peru.
Before breaking up these specimens of Indian art, it was determined to send a quantity, which should be deducted from the royal fifth, to the Emperor. It would serve as a sample of the ingenuity of the natives, and would show him the value of his conquests. A number of the most beautiful articles was selected, to the amount of a hundred thousand ducats, and Hernando Pizarro was appointed to be the bearer of them to Spain.
The doom of the Inca was proclaimed by sound of trumpet in the great square of Caxamalca; and, two hours after sunset, the Spanish soldiery assembled by torch-light in theplazato witness the execution of the sentence. It was on the twenty-ninth of August, 1533. Atahuallpa was led out chained hand and foot,—for he had been kept in irons ever since the great excitement had prevailed in the army respecting an assault. Father Vicente de Valverde was at his side, striving to administer consolation, and, if possible, to persuade him at this last hour to abjure his superstition and embrace the religion of his Conquerors. He was willing to save the soul of his victim from the terrible expiation in the next world, to which he had so cheerfully consigned his mortal part in this.
During Atahuallpa's confinement the friar had repeatedly expounded to him the Christian doctrines, and the Indian monarch discovered much acuteness in apprehending the discourse of his teacher. But it had not carried conviction to his mind, and though he listened with patience, he had shown no disposition to renounce the faith of his fathers. The Dominican made a last appeal to him in this solemn hour; and, when Atahuallpa was bound to the stake, with the fagots that were to kindle his funeral pile lying around him, Valverde, holding up the cross, besought him to embrace it, and be baptized, promising that by so doing the painful death to which he had been sentenced should be commuted for the milder form, of thegarrote,—a mode of punishment by strangulation, used for criminals in Spain.
The unhappy monarch asked if this were really so, and, on its being confirmed by Pizarro he consented to abjure his own religion, and receive baptism. The ceremony was performed by Father Valverde, and the new convert received the name of Juan de Atahuallpa,—the name of Juan being conferred in honor of John the Baptist, on whose day the event took place.
Atahuallpa expressed a desire that his remains might be transported to Quito, the place of his birth, to be preserved with those of his maternal ancestors. Then turning to Pizarro, as a last request, he implored him to take compassion on his young children, and receive them under his protection. Was there no other one in that dark company who stood grimly around him, to whom he could look for the projection of his offspring? Perhaps he thought there was no other so competent to afford it, and that the wishes so solemnly expressed in that hour might meet with respect even from his Conqueror. Then, recovering his stoical bearing, which for a moment had been shaken, he submitted himself calmly to his fate,—while the Spaniards, gathering around, muttered theircredosfor the salvation his soul. Thus by the death of a vile malefactor perished the last of the Incas.
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=George Bancroft, 1800-.= (Manual, pp. 487, 491, 531.)
From the "History of the United States."
The genial climate and transparent atmosphere delighted those who had come from the denser air of England. Every object in nature was new and wonderful. The loud and frequent thunder-storms were phenomena that had been rarely witnessed in the colder summers of the north; the forests, majestic in their growth, and free from underwood, deserved admiration for their unrivalled magnificence; the purling streams and the frequent rivers, flowing between alluvial banks, quickened the ever-pregnant soil into an unwearied fertility; the strangest and the most delicate flowers grew familiarly in the fields; the woods were replenished with sweet barks and odors; the gardens matured the fruits of Europe, of which the growth was invigorated and the flavor improved by the activity of the virgin mould. Especially the birds, with their gay plumage and varied melodies, inspired delight; every traveller expressed his pleasure in listening to the mocking-bird, which carolled a thousand several tunes, imitating and excelling the notes of all its rivals. The humming-bird, so brilliant in its plumage, and so delicate in its form, quick in motion, yet not fearing the presence of man, hunting about the flowers like the bee gathering honey, rebounding from the blossoms into which it dips its bill, and as soon returning "to renew its addresses to its delightful objects," was ever admired as the smallest and the most beautiful of the feathered race. The rattlesnake, with the terrors of its alarms and the power of its venom; the opossum, soon to become as celebrated for the care of its offspring as the fabled pelican: the noisy frog, booming from the shallows like the English bittern; the flying squirrel; the myriads of pigeons, darkening the air with the immensity of their flocks, and, as men believed, breaking with their weight the boughs of trees on which they alighted,—were all honored with frequent commemoration, and became the subjects of the strangest tales. The concurrent relation of all the Indians justified the belief that, within ten days journey towards the setting of the sun, there was a country where gold might be washed from the sand, and where the natives themselves had learned the use of the crucible; but definite and accurate as were the accounts, inquiry was always baffled; and the regions of gold remained for two centuries an undiscovered land.
Various were the employments by which the calmness of life was relieved. George Sandys, an idle man, who had been a great traveller, and who did not remain in America, a poet, whose verse was tolerated by Dryden and praised by Isaac Walton, beguiled the ennui of his seclusion by translating the whole of Ovid's Metamorphoses. To the man of leisure the chase furnished a perpetual resource. It was not long before the horse was multiplied in Virginia; and to improve that noble animal was early an object of pride, soon to be favored by legislation. Speed was especially valued, and "the planters pace" became a proverb….
* * * * *
In Asia, the victories of Olive at Plassy, of Coote at the Wandewash, and of Watson and Pococke on the Indian seas, had given England the undoubted ascendency in the East Indies, opening to her suddenly the promise of untold treasures and territorial acquisitions without end. In America, the Teutonic race, with its strong tendency to individuality and freedom, was become the master from the Gulf of Mexico to the Poles; and the English tongue, which but a century and a half before had for its entire world a part only of two narrow islands on the outer verge of Europe, was now to spread more widely than any that had ever given expression to human thought.
Go forth, then, language of Milton and Hampden, language of my country, take possession of the North American continent! Gladden the waste places with every tone that has been rightly struck on the English lyre, with every English word that has been spoken well for liberty and for man! Give an echo to the now silent and solitary mountains; gush out with the fountains that as yet sing their anthems all day long without response; fill the valleys with the voices of love in its purity, the pledges of friendship in its faithfulness; and as the morning sun drinks the dewdrops from the flowers all the way from the dreary Atlantic to the Peaceful Ocean, meet him with the joyous hum of the early industry of freemen! Utter boldly and spread widely through the world the thoughts of the coming apostles of the people's liberty, till the sound that cheers the desert shall thrill through the heart of humanity, and the lips of the messenger of the people's power, as he stands in beauty upon the mountains, shall proclaim the renovating tidings of equal freedom for the race!…
France, of all the states on the continent of Europe the most powerful by territorial unity, wealth, numbers, industry, and culture, seemed also by its place marked out for maritime ascendency. Set between many seas, it rested upon the Mediterranean, possessed harbors on the German Ocean, and embraced within its wide shores and jutting headlands, the bays and open, waters of the Atlantic; its people, infolding at one extreme the offspring of colonists from Greece, and at the other, the hardy children of the Northmen, were called, as it were, to the inheritance of life upon the sea. The nation, too, readily conceived or appropriated great ideas, and delighted in bold resolves. Its travellers had penetrated farthest into the fearful interior of unknown lands; its missionaries won most familiarly the confidence of the aboriginal hordes; its writers described with keener and wiser observation the forms of nature in her wildness, and the habits and languages of savage man; its soldiers,—and every lay Frenchman in America owed military service,—uniting beyond all others celerity with courage, knew best how to endure the hardships of forest life and to triumph in forest warfare. Its ocean chivalry had given a name and a colony to Carolina, and its merchants a people to Acadia. The French discovered the basin of the St. Lawrence; were the first to explore and possess the banks of the Mississippi, and planned an American empire that should unite the widest valleys and most copious inland waters of the world.
But new France was governed exclusively by the monarchy of its metropolis; and was shut against the intellectual daring of its philosophy, the liberality of its political economists, the movements of its industrial genius, its legal skill, and its infusion of Protestant freedom. Nothing representing the new activity of thought in modern France, went to America. Nothing had leave to go there but what was old and worn out.
The colonists from England brought over the forms of the government of the mother country, and the purpose of giving them a better development and a fairer career in the western world. The French emigrants took with them only what belonged to the past, and nothing that represented modern freedom. The English emigrants retained what they called English privileges, but left behind in the parent country English inequalities, the monarch, and nobility, and prelacy. French America was closed against even a gleam of intellectual independence; nor did it contain so much as one dissenter from the Roman Church; English America had English liberties in greater purity and with far more of the power of the people than England. Its inhabitants were self-organized bodies of freeholders, pressing upon the receding forests, winning their way farther and farther forward every year, and never going back. They had schools, so that in several of the colonies there was no one to be found beyond childhood, who could not read and write; they had the printing press scattering among them books, and pamphlets, and many newspapers; they had a ministry chiefly composed of men of their own election. In private life they were accustomed to take care of themselves; in public affairs they had local legislatures, and municipal self-direction. And now this continent from the Gulf of Mexico to where civilized life is stayed by barriers of frost, was become their dwelling-place and their heritage.
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From "The History of the United States."
But already the hope of New France was gone. Born and educated in camps, Montcalm had been carefully instructed, and was skilled in the language of Homer as well as in the art of war. Greatly laborious, just, disinterested, hopeful even to rashness, sagacious in council, swift in action, his mind was a well-spring of bold designs; his career in Canada a wonderful struggle against inexorable destiny. Sustaining hunger and cold, vigils and incessant toil, anxious for his soldiers, unmindful of himself, he set, even to the forest-trained red men, an example of self-denial and endurance, and in the midst of corruption made the public good his aim. Struck by a musket ball, as he fought opposite Monckton, he continued in the engagement, till, in attempting to rally a body of fugitive Canadians in a copse near St. John's gate, he was mortally wounded.
On hearing from the surgeon that death was certain, "I am glad of it," he cried; "how long shall I survive?" "Ten or twelve hours, perhaps less." "So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec." To the council of war he showed that in twelve hours all the troops near at hand might be concentrated and renew the attack before the English were intrenched. When De Ramsay, who commanded the garrison, asked his advice about defending the city, "To your keeping," he replied, "I commend the honor of France. As for me, I shall pass the night with God, and prepare myself for death," Having written a letter recommending the French prisoners to the generosity of the English, his last hours were given to the hope of endless life, and at five the next morning he expired.
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From "The History of the United States."
From the fullness of his own mind, without consulting one single book, Jefferson drafted the declaration, he submitted it separately to Franklin and to John Adams, accepted from each of them one or two unimportant verbal corrections, and on the twenty-eighth of June reported it to Congress, which now on the second of July immediately after the resolution of independence entered upon its consideration. During the remainder of that day and the next two, the language, the statements, and the principles of the paper were closely scanned.
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This immortal state paper, which for its composer was the aurora of enduring fame, was "the genuine effusion of the soul of the country at that time," the revelation of its mind, when, in its youth, its enthusiasm, its sublime confronting of danger, it rose to the highest creative powers of which man is capable. The bill of rights which it promulgates, is of rights that are older than human institutions, and spring from the eternal justice that is anterior to the state. Two political theories divided the world: one founded the commonwealth on the reason of state, the policy of expediency, the other on the immutable principles of morals; the new republic, as it took its place among the powers of the world, proclaimed its faith in the truth and reality and unchangeableness of freedom, virtue, and right. The heart of Jefferson in writing the declaration, and of Congress in adopting it, beat for all humanity; the assertion of right was made for the entire world of mankind, and all coming generations, without any exception whatever; for the proposition which admits of exceptions can never be self-evident. As it was put forth in the name of the ascendant people of that time, it was sure to make the circuit of the world, passing everywhere through the despotic countries of Europe; and the astonished nations as they read that all men are created equal, started out of their lethargy, like those who have been exiles from childhood, when they suddenly hear the dimly remembered accents of their mother tongue.
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The King of France, whilst he declared his wish to make no conquest whatever in the war, held out to the King of Spain, with the consent of the United States, the acquisition of Florida; but Florida had not power to allure Charles the Third, or his ministry, which was a truly Spanish ministry, and wished to pursue a truly Spanish policy. There was indeed one word which, if pronounced, would be a spell potent enough to alter their decision; a word that calls the blood into the cheek of a Spaniard as an insult to his pride, a brand of inferiority on his nation. That word was Gibraltar. Meantime, the King of Spain declared that he would not then, nor in the future, enter into the quarrel of France and England; that he wished to close his life in tranquility, and valued peace too highly to sacrifice it to the interests or opinions of another.
So the flags of France and the United States went together into the field against Great Britain, unsupported by any other government, yet with the good wishes of all the peoples of Europe. The benefit then conferred on the United States was priceless. In return, the revolution in America came opportunely for France…. For the blessing of that same France, America brought new life and hope; she superseded scepticism by a wise and prudent enthusiasm in action, and bade the nation that became her ally lift up its heart from the barrenness of doubt to the highest affirmation of God and liberty, to freedom and union with the good, the beautiful, and the true.
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=J.G.M. Ramsey,[40] about 1800-.=
From "The Annals of Tennessee."
The Etowah campaign was the last military service rendered by Sevier, and the only one for which he ever received compensation from the government. For nearly twenty years he had been constantly engaged in incessant and unremitted service. He was in thirty-five battles, some of them hardly contested, and decisive. He was never wounded, and in all his campaigns and battles was successful and the victor. He was careful of the lives of his soldiery; and, although he always led them to the victory, he lost, in all his engagements with the enemy, but fifty-six men. The secret of his invariable success was the impetuosity and vigor of his charge. Himself an accomplished horseman, a graceful rider, passionately fond of a spirited charger, always well mounted, at the head of his dragoons, he was at once in the midst of the fight. His rapid movement, always unexpected and sudden, disconcerted the enemy, and, at the first onset, decided the victory. He was the first to introduce the Indian war-whoop in his battles with the savages, the Tories, and the British. More harmless than the leaden missile, it was not less efficient, and was always the precursor and attendant of victory. The prisoners at King's Mountain said, "We could stand your fighting; but your cursed hallooing confused us. We thought the mountains had regiments, instead of companies." Sevier's enthusiasm was contagious; he imparted it to his men. He was the idol of the soldiery; and his orders were obeyed cheerfully, and executed with precision. In a military service of twenty years, one instance is not known of insubordination, on the part of the soldier, or of discipline by the commander.
Sevier's troops were generally his neighbors, and the members of his own family. Often no public provision was made for their pay, equipments, or subsistence. These were furnished by himself, being at once commander, commissary, and paymaster. The soldiery rendezvoused at his house, which often became a cantonment; his fields, ripe or unripe, were given up to his horsemen; powder and lead, provisions, clothing, even all he had, belonged to his men.
The Etowah campaign terminated the military services of General Sevier. Hereafter, we will have to record his not less important agency in the civil affairs of Tennessee.
[Footnote 40: A native of Tennessee. His Annals contain much valuable material.]
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=Charles Gayarré, 1805-.= (Manual, p. 490.)
From the "History of Louisiana."
His very physiognomy prognosticated what soul was encased within the spare but well-ribbed form which had that "lean and hungry look" described by England's greatest bard as bespeaking little sleep of nights, but much of ambition, self-reliance, and impatience of control. His lip and eye denoted the man of unyielding temper, and his very hair, slightly silvered, stood erect like quills round his wrinkled brow, as if they scorned to bend. Some sneered, it is true, at what they called a military tyro, at the impromptu general who had sprung out of the uncouth lawyer and the unlearned judge, who in arms had only the experience of a few months, acquired in a desultory war against wild Indians, and who was, not only without any previous training to his new profession, but also without the first rudiments of a liberal education, for he did not even know the orthography of his own native language. Such was the man who, with a handful of raw militia, was to stand in the way of the veteran troops of England, whose boast it was to have triumphed over one of the greatest captains known in history. But those who entertained such distrust had hardly come in contact with General Jackson, when they felt that they had to deal with a master-spirit. True, he was rough hewn from the rock, but rock he was, and of that kind of rock which Providence chooses to select as a fit material to use in its structures of human greatness. True, he had not the education of a lieutenant in a European army; but what lieutenant, educated or not, who had the will and the remarkable military adaptation so evident in General Jackson's intellectual and physical organization, ever remained a subaltern? Much less could General Jackson fail to rise to his proper place in a country where there was so much more elbow-room, and fewer artificial obstacles than in less favored lands. But, whatever those obstacles might have been, General Jackson would have overcome them all. His will was of such an extraordinary nature that, like Christian faith, it could almost have accomplished prodigies and removed mountains. It is impossible to study the life of General Jackson without being convinced that this is the most remarkable feature of his character. His will had, as it were, the force and the fixity of fate; that will carried him triumphantly through his military and civil career, and through the difficulties of private life. So intense and incessantly active this peculiar faculty was in him, that one would suppose that his mind was nothing but will—a will so lofty that it towered into sublimity. In him it supplied the place of genius—or, rather, it was almost genius. On many occasions, in the course of his long, eventful life, when his shattered constitution made his physicians despair of preserving him, he seemed to continue to live merely because it was his will; and when his unconquerable spirit departed from his enfeebled and worn-out body, those who knew him well might almost have been tempted to suppose that he had not been vanquished by death, but had at last consented to repose. This man, when he took the command at New Orleans, had made up his mind to beat the English; and, as that mind was so constituted that it was not susceptible of entertaining much doubt as to the results of any of its resolves, he went to work with an innate confidence which transfused itself into the population he had been sent to protect.
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=Brantz Mayer, 1809-.= (Manual, p. 490.)
From "Mexico, Aztec," &c.
At the end of the Aztec or Toltec cycle of fifty-two years,—for it is not accurately ascertained to which of the tribes the astronomical science of Tenochtitlan is to be attributed,—these primitive children of the New World believed that the world was in danger of instant destruction. Accordingly, its termination became one of their most serious and awful epochs, and they anxiously awaited the moment when the sun would be blotted out from the heavens, and the globe itself resolved once more into chaos. As the cycle ended in the winter, the season of the year, with its drearier sky and colder air, in the lofty regions of the valley, added to the gloom that fell upon the hearts of the people. On the last day of the fifty-two years, all the fires in temples and dwellings were extinguished, and the natives devoted themselves to fasting and prayer. They destroyed alike their valuable and worthless wares; rent their garments, put out their lights, and hid themselves for awhile in solitude….
At dark on the last dread evening,—as soon as the sun had set, as they imagined, forever,—a sad and solemn procession of priests and people marched forth from the city to a neighboring hill, to rekindle the "New Fire." This mournful march was called "the procession of the gods," and was supposed to be their final departure from their temples and altars.
As soon as the melancholy array reached the summit of the hill, it reposed in fearful anxiety until the Pleiades reached the zenith in the sky, whereupon the priests immediately began the sacrifice of a human victim, whose breast was covered with a wooden shield, which the chiefflamenkindled by friction. When the sufferer received the fatal stab from the sacrificial knife ofobsidian,the machine was set in motion on his bosom until the blaze had kindled. The anxious crowd stood round with fear and trembling. Silence reigned over nature and man. Not a word was uttered among the countless multitude that thronged the hill-sides and plains, whilst the priest performed his direful duty to the gods. At length, as the fire sparks gleamed faintly from the whirling instrument, low sobs and ejaculations were whispered among the eager masses. As the sparks kindled into a blaze, and the blaze into a flame, and the flaming shield and victim were cast together on a pile of combustibles which burst at once into the brightness of a conflagration, the air was rent with the joyous shouts of the relieved and panic-stricken Indians. Far and wide over the dusky crowds beamed the blaze like a star of promise. Myriads of upturned faces greeted it from hills, mountains, temples, terraces, teocallis, house-tops, and city walls; and the prostrate multitudes hailed the emblem of light, life, and fruition, as a blessed omen of the restored favor of their gods, and the preservation of their race for another cycle. At regular intervals, Indian couriers held aloft brands of resinous wood, by which they transmitted the "New Fire" from hand to hand, from village to village, and town to town, throughout the Aztec empire. Light was radiated from the imperial or ecclesiastical center of the realm. In every temple and dwelling it was rekindled from the sacred source; and when the sun rose again on the following morning, the solemn procession of priests, princes, and subjects, which had taken up its march from the capital on the preceding night with solemn steps, returned once more to the abandoned capital, and, restoring the gods to their altars, abandoned themselves to joy and festivity, in token of gratitude and relief from impending doom.
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=Albert James Pickett,[41] 1858-.= (Manual, p. 490.)
From "The History of Alabama."
During my youthful days, I was accustomed to be much with the Creek Indians, hundreds of whom came almost daily to the trading-house. For twenty years I frequently visited the Creek nation. Their green-corn dances, ball plays, war ceremonies, and manners and customs, are all fresh in my recollection. In my intercourse with them I was thrown into the company of many old white men called "Indian country men," who had for years conducted a commerce with them. Some of these men had come to the Creek nation before the Revolutionary War, and others, being tories, had fled to it during the war, and after it to escape from whig persecution. They were unquestionably the shrewdest and most interesting men with whom I ever conversed. Generally of Scotch descent, many of them were men of some education. All of them were married to Indian wives, and some of them had intelligent and handsome children…. I often conversed with the chiefs while they were seated in the shades of the spreading mulberry and walnut, upon the banks of the beautiful Tallapoosa. As they leisurely smoked their pipes, some of them related to me the traditions of their country. I occasionally saw Choctaw and Cherokee traders, and learned much from them. I had no particular object in view, at that time, except the gratification of a curiosity which led me, for my own satisfaction alone, to learn something of the early history of Alabama.
[Footnote 41: A native of North Carolina, who removed in early life toAlabama. His "History" abounds in interesting matter.]
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=Charles Wentworth Upham, 1802= (Manual, pp. 490, 532.)
From the "History of Witchcraft and Salem Village."
The Indians were carrying all before them. Philip was spreading conflagration, devastation, and slaughter around the borders, and striking sudden and deadly blows into the heart of the country. It was evident that he was consolidating the Indian power into irresistible strength…. From other scouting parties it became evident that this opinion was correct, and that the Indians were collecting stores and assembling their warriors somewhere, to fall upon the colonies at the first opening of spring. Further information made it certain that their place of gathering was in the Narragansett country, in the south-westerly part of the colony of Rhode Island. There was no alternative but, as a last effort, to strike the enemy at that point with the utmost available force…. It was between, one and two o'clock in the afternoon, and the short winter day was wearing away, Winslow saw the position at a glance, and, by the promptness of his decision, proved himself a great captain. He ordered an instant assault. The Massachusetts troops were in the van, the Plymouth, with the commander-in-chief, in the center, the Connecticut in the rear. The Indians had erected a block-house near the entrance, filled with sharpshooters, who also lined the palisades. The men rushed on, although it was into the Jaws of death, under an unerring fire. The block-house told them where the entrance was. The companies of Moseley and Davenport led the way. Moseley succeeded in passing through. Davenport fell beneath three fatal shots, just within the entrance. Isaac Johnson, captain of the Roxbury company, was killed while on the log. But death had no terrors to that army. The center and rear divisions pressed up to support the front, and fill the gaps, and all equally shared the glory of the hour. Enough survived the terrible passage to bring the Indians to a hand-to-hand fight within the fort. After a desperate straggle of nearly three hours, the savages were driven from their stronghold, and with the setting of that sun their power was broken. Philip's fortunes had received a decided overthrow, and the colonies were saved. In all military history there is not a more daring exploit. Never, on any field, has more heroic prowess been displayed.
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=John Lothrop Motley, 1814-.= (Manual, p. 532.)
From "The History of the United Netherlands."
Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, was now in his sixtieth year. He was the most successful and experienced general of Spain, or of Europe. No man had studied more deeply, or practiced more constantly, the military science. In the most important of all arts at that epoch he was the most consummate artist. In the only honorable profession of the age he was the most thorough and the most pedantic professor. Having proved in his boyhood at Fontarabia, and in his maturity at Mühlberg, that he could exhibit heroism and headlong courage when necessary, he could afford to look with contempt upon the witless gibes which his enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his expense…. "Recollect," said he to Don John of Austria, "that the first foes with whom one has to contend are one's own troops—with their clamors for an engagement at this moment, and their murmurs about results at another; with their 'I thought that the battle should be fought,' or, 'It was my opinion that the occasion ought not to be lost.'"
On the whole, the Duke of Alva was inferior to no general of his age. As a disciplinarian, he was foremost in Spain, perhaps in Europe. A spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood; and this was, perhaps, in the eye of humanity, his principal virtue…. Such were his qualities as a military commander. As a statesman, he had neither experience nor talent. As a man, his character was simple. He did not combine a great variety of vices; but those which he had were colossal, and he possessed no virtues. He was neither lustful nor intemperate; but his professed eulogists admitted his enormous avarice, while the world has agreed that such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of patient vindictiveness and universal blood-thirstiness, were never found in a savage beast of the forest, and but rarely in a human bosom.
* * * * *
From "The History of the United Netherlands."
The Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella entered the place in triumph, if triumph it could be called. It would be difficult to imagine a more desolate scene. The artillery of the first years of the seventeenth century was not the terrible enginery of destruction that it has become in the last third of the nineteenth, but a cannonade, continued so steadily and so long, had done its work. There were no churches, no houses, no redoubts, no bastions, no walls, nothing but a vague and confused mass of ruin. Spinola conducted his imperial guests along the edge of extinct volcanoes, amid upturned cemeteries, through quagmires, which once were moats, over huge mounds of sand, and vast shapeless masses of bricks and masonry, which had been forts. He endeavored to point out places where mines had been exploded, where ravelins had been stormed, where the assailants had been successful, and where they had been bloodily repulsed. But it was all loathsome, hideous rubbish. There were no human habitations, no hovels, no casemates. The inhabitants had burrowed at last in the earth, like the dumb creatures of the swamps and forests. In every direction the dykes had burst, and the sullen wash of the liberated waves, bearing hither and thither the floating wreck of fascines and machinery, of planks and building materials, sounded far and wide over what should have been dry land. The great ship channel, with the unconquered Half-moon upon one side and the incomplete batteries and platforms of Bucquoy on the other, still defiantly opened its passage to the sea, and the retiring fleets of the garrison were white in the offing. All around was the grey expanse of stormy ocean, without a cape or a headland to break its monotony, as the surges rolled mournfully in upon a desolation more dreary than their own. The atmosphere was murky and surcharged with rain, for the wild, equinoctial storm which had held Maurice spell-bound, had been raging over land and sea for many days. At every step the unburied skulls of brave soldiers who had died in the cause of freedom, grinned their welcome to the conquerors. Isabella wept at the sight. She had cause to weep. Upon that miserable sandbank more than a hundred thousand men had laid down their lives by her decree, in order that she and her husband might at last take possession of a most barren prize. This insignificant fragment of a sovereignty which her wicked old father had presented to her on his deathbed—a sovereignty which he had no more moral right or actual power to confer than if it had been in the planet Saturn—had at last been appropriated at the cost of all this misery. It was of no great value, although its acquisition had caused the expenditure of at least eight millions of florins, divided in nearly equal proportions between the two belligerents. It was in vain that great immunities were offered to those who would remain, or who would consent to settle in the foul Golgotha. The original population left the place in mass. No human creatures were left save the wife of a freebooter and her paramour, a journeyman blacksmith. This unsavory couple, to whom entrance into the purer atmosphere of Zeeland was denied, thenceforth shared with the carrion crows the amenities of Ostend.
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From the Preface to the "Rise of the Dutch Republic."
The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the leading events of modern times. Without the birth of this great commonwealth, the various historical phenomena of the sixteenth and following centuries must have either not existed, or have presented themselves under essential modifications…. From the handbreadth of territory called the province of Holland, rises a power which wages eighty years' warfare with the most potent empire upon earth, and which, during the progress of the struggle, becoming itself a mighty state, and binding about its own slender form a zone of the richest possessions of earth, from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire of Charles.
… To the Dutch Republic, even more than to Florence at an earlier day is the world indebted for practical instruction in that great science of political equilibrium which must always become more and more important as the various states of the civilized world are pressed more closely together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous monarch of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius placed the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson, and enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the various elements of opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis XIV. As the schemes of the Inquisition and the unparalleled tyranny of Philip, in one century led to the establishment of the Republic of the United Provinces, so, in the next, the revocation of the Nantes Edict and the invasion of Holland are avenged by the elevation of the Dutch Stadholder upon the throne of the stipendiary Stuarts.
To all who speak the English language, the history of the great agony through which the republic of Holland was ushered into life must have peculiar interest, for it is a portion of the records of the Anglo-Saxon race—essentially the same whether in Friesland, England, or Massachusetts.
… The great Western Republic, therefore—in whose … veins flows much of that ancient and kindred blood received from the nation once ruling a noble portion of its territory, and tracking its own political existence to the same parent spring of temperate human liberty—must look with affectionate interest upon the trials of the elder commonwealth.
… The lessons of history and the fate of free states can never be sufficiently pondered by those upon whom so large and heavy a responsibility for the maintenance of rational human freedom rests.
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=Alexander B. Meek,[42] 1814-1865.= (Manual, p. 523.)
From "Romantic Passages in Southwestern History."
Upon the colony they bestowed the name of Marengo, which is still preserved in the county. Other relics of their nomenclature, drawn similarly from battles in which some of them had been distinguished, are to be found in the villages of Linden and Arcola….
Who that would have looked upon Marshal Grouchy or General Lefebvre, as, dressed in their plain, rustic habiliments,—the straw hat, the homespun coat, the brogan shoes,—they drove the plough in the open field, or wielded the axe in the new-ground clearing, would, if unacquainted with their history, have dreamed that those farmer-looking men had sat in the councils of monarchs, and had headed mighty armies in the fields of the sternest strife the world has ever seen? "Do you know, sir," said a citizen to a traveller, who, in 1819, was passing the road from Arcola to Eaglesville,—"do you know, sir, who is that fine-looking man who has just ferried you across the creek?" "No. Who is he?" was the reply. "That," said the citizen, "is the officer who commanded Napoleon's advanced guard when he returned from Elba." This was Colonel Raoul, now a general in France.
[Footnote 42: One of the few writers of Alabama. The "Romantic passages" is a book of great interest.]
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But the mind of the young Indian, though grasping with singular readiness the knowledge thus imparted, was subject to stronger tastes and propensities; and he indulged in all the wild pursuits and amusements of the youth of his nation with an alacrity and spirit which won their approval and admiration. He became one of the most active, athletic, and swift-footed participants in their various games and dances, and was particularly expert and successful, as a hunter, in the use of the rifle and the bow. He was also noted, even in his youth, for his reckless daring as a rider, and his graceful feats of horsemanship, which the fine stables of his father enabled him to indulge. To use the words of an old Indian woman who knew him at this period, "The squaws would quit hoeing corn, and smile and gaze upon him as he rode by the corn-patch."
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=Abel Stevens,[43] 1815-.=
From "The History of Methodism."
They composed a class which, perhaps, will never be seen again. They were distinguished by native mental vigor, shrewdness, extraordinary knowledge of human nature, many of them by overwhelming natural eloquence, the effects of which on popular assemblies are scarcely paralleled in the history of ancient or modern oratory, and not a few by powers of satire and wit which made the gainsayer cower before them. To these intellectual attributes they added great excellences of the heart, a zeal which only burned more fervently where that of ordinary men would have grown faint, a courage that exulted in perils, a generosity which knew no bounds, and left most of them in want in their latter days, a forbearance and co-operation with each other which are seldom found in large bodies, an entire devotion to one work, and, withal, a simplicity of character which extended even to their manners and their apparel. They were likewise characterized by rare physical abilities. They were mostly robust. The feats of labor and endurance which they performed, in incessantly preaching in villages and cities, among slave huts and Indian wigwams, in journeyings seldom interrupted by stress of weather, in fording creeks, swimming rivers, sleeping in forests,—these, with the novel circumstances with which such a career frequently brought them into contact, afford examples of life and character which, in the hands of genius, might be the materials for a new department of romantic literature. They were men who labored as if the judgment fires were about to break out on the world, and time to end with their day. They were precisely the men whom the moral wants of the new world at the time demanded.
[Footnote 43: A prominent clergyman of the Methodist church. His History of Methodism is a work of great research and value. A native of Pennsylvania.]
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