I.Weak-winged is song,Nor aims at that clear-ethered heightWhither the brave deed climbs for light:We seem to do them wrong,Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearseWho in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,Our trivial song to honor those who comeWith ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire,Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire:Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,A gracious memory to buoy up and saveFrom Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common graveOf the unventurous throng.II.To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes backHer wisest Scholars, those who understoodThe deeper teaching of her mystic tome,And offered their fresh lives to make it good;No lore of Greece or Rome,No science peddling with the names of things,Or reading stars to find inglorious fates,Can lift our life with wingsFar from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits,And lengthen out our datesWith that clear fame whose memory singsIn manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates:Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all!Not such the trumpet-callOf thy diviner mood,That could thy sons enticeFrom happy homes and toils, the fruitful nestOf those half-virtues which the world calls best,Into War's tumult rude;But rather far that stern deviceThe sponsors chose that round thy cradle stoodIn the dim, unventured wood,TheVeritasthat lurks beneathThe letter's unprolific sheath,Life of whate'er makes life worth living,Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food,One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.III.Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oilAmid the dust of books to find her,Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.Many in sad faith sought for her,Many with crossed hands sighed for her;But these, our brothers, fought for her,At life's dear peril wrought for her,So loved her that they died for her,Tasting the raptured fleetnessOf her divine completeness:Their higher instinct knewThose love her best who to themselves are true,And what they dare to dream of dare to do;They followed her and found herWhere all may hope to find,Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her;Where faith made whole with deedBreathes its awakening breathInto the lifeless creed,They saw her plumed and mailed,With sweet, stern face unveiled,And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.IV.Our slender life runs rippling by, and glidesInto the silent hollow of the past;What is there that abidesTo make the next age better for the last?Is earth too poor to give usSomething to live for here that shall outlive us,—Some more substantial boonThan such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?The little that we seeFrom doubt is never free;The little that we doIs but half-nobly true;With our laborious hivingWhat men call treasure, and the gods call dross,Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,Only secure in every one's conniving,A long account of nothings paid with loss,Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,After our little hour of strut and rave,With all our pasteboard passions and desires,Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.Ah, there is something; hereUnfathomed by the cynic's sneer,Something that gives our feeble lightA high immunity from Night,Something that leaps life's narrow barsTo claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven;A seed of sunshine that doth leavenOur earthly dulness with the beams of stars,And glorify our clayWith light from fountains elder than the Day;A conscience more divine than we,A gladness fed with secret tears,A vexing, forward-reaching senseOf some more noble permanence;A light across the sea,Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,Still glimmering from the heights of undegenerate years.V.Whither leads the pathTo ampler fates that leads?Not down through flowery meads,To reap an aftermathOf youth's vainglorious weeds,But up the steep, amid the wrathAnd shock of deadly-hostile creeds,Where the world's best hope and stayBy battle's flashes gropes a desperate way,And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds.Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,Ere yet the sharp, decisive wordLights the black lips of cannon, and the swordDreams in its easeful sheath:But some day the live coal behind the thought,Whether from Baäl's stone obscene,Or from the shrine sereneOf God's pure altar brought,Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and penLearns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,And, helpless in the fiery passion caught,Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men:Some day the soft Ideal that we wooedConfronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,And cries reproachful, "Was it, then, my praise,And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,The victim of thy genius, not its mate!"Life may be given in many ways,And loyalty to Truth be sealedAs bravely in the closet as the field,So generous is Fate;But then to stand beside her,When craven churls deride her,To front a lie in arms and not to yield,—This shows, methinks, God's planAnd measure of a stalwart man,Limbed like the old heroic breeds,Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth,Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,Fed from within with all the strength he needs.VI.Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,Whom late the Nation he had led,With ashes on her head,Wept with the passion of an angry grief:Forgive me, if from present things I turnTo speak what in my heart will beat and burn,And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.Nature, they say, doth dote,And cannot make a manSave on some worn-out plan,Repeating us by rote:For him her Old-World mould aside she threw,And, choosing sweet clay from the breastOf the unexhausted West,With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.How beautiful to seeOnce more a shepherd of mankind indeed,Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,Not lured by any cheat of birth,But by his clear-grained human worth,And brave old wisdom of sincerity!They knew that outward grace is dust;They could not choose but trustIn that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,And supple-tempered willThat bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.Nothing of Europe here,Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,Ere any names of Serf and PeerCould Nature's equal scheme deface;Here was a type of the true elder race,And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.I praise him not; it were too late;And some innative weakness there must beIn him who condescends to victorySuch as the Present gives, and cannot wait,Safe in himself as in a fate.So always firmly he:He knew to bide his time,And can his fame abide,Still patient in his simple faith sublime,Till the wise years decide.Great captains, with their guns and drums,Disturb our judgment for the hour,But at last silence comes;These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,Our children shall behold his fame,The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,New birth of our new soil, the first American.VII.Long as man's hope insatiate can discernOr only guess some more inspiring goalOutside of Self, enduring as the pole,Along whose course the flying axles burnOf spirits bravely pitched, earth's manlier brood;Long as below we cannot findThe meed that stills the inexorable mind;So long this faith to some ideal Good,Under whatever mortal names it masks,Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal moodThat thanks the Fates for their severer tasks,Feeling its challenged pulses leap,While others skulk in subterfuges cheap,And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks,Shall win man's praise and woman's love,Shall be a wisdom that we set aboveAll other skills and gifts to culture dear,A virtue round whose forehead we enwreatheLaurels that with a living passion breatheWhen other crowns are cold and soon grow sere.What brings us thronging these high rites to pay,And seal these hours the noblest of our year,Save that our brothers found this better way?VIII.We sit here in the Promised LandThat flows with Freedom's honey and milk;But 't was they won it, sword in hand,Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.We welcome back our bravest and our best;—Ah, me! not all! some come not with the rest,Who went forth brave and bright as any here!I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,But the sad strings complain,And will not please the ear;I sweep them for a pæan, but they waneAgain and yet againInto a dirge, and die away in pain.In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps,Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:Fitlier may others greet the living,For me the past is unforgiving;I with uncovered headSalute the sacred dead,Who went, and who return not.—Say not so!'T is not the grapes of Canaan that repay,But the high faith that failed not by the way;Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;No ban of endless night exiles the brave;And to the saner mindWe rather seem the dead that stayed behind.Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!For never shall their aureoled presence lack:I see them muster in a gleaming row,With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;We find in our dull road their shining track;In every nobler moodWe feel the orient of their spirit glow,Part of our life's unalterable good,Of all our saintlier aspiration;They come transfigured back,Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,Beautiful evermore, and with the raysOf morn on their white Shields of Expectation!IX.Who now shall sneer?Who dare again to say we traceOur lines to a plebeian race?Roundhead and Cavalier!Dreams are those names erewhile in battle loud;Forceless as is the shadow of a cloud,They live but in the ear:That is best blood that hath most iron in 'tTo edge resolve with, pouring without stintFor what makes manhood dear.Tell us not of Plantagenets,Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawlDown from some victor in a border-brawl!How poor their outworn coronets,Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreathOur brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath,Through whose desert a rescued Nation setsHer heel on treason, and the trumpet hearsShout victory, tingling Europe's sullen earsWith vain resentments and more vain regrets!X.Not in anger, not in pride,Pure from passion's mixture rudeEver to base earth allied,But with far-heard gratitude,Still with heart and voice renewed,To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,The strain should close that consecrates our brave,Lift the heart and lift the head!Lofty be its mood and grave,Not without a martial ring,Not without a prouder treadAnd a peal of exultation:Little right has he to singThrough whose heart in such an hourBeats no march of conscious power,Sweeps no tumult of elation!'T is no Man we celebrate,By his country's victories great,A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,But the pith and marrow of a NationDrawing force from all her men,Highest, humblest, weakest, all,—Pulsing it again through them,Till the basest can no longer cower,Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall,Come back, then, noble pride, for 't is her dower!How could poet ever tower,If his passions, hopes, and fears,If his triumphs and his tears,Kept not measure with his people?Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves!Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple!Banners, advance with triumph, bend your staves!And from every mountain-peakLet beacon-fire to answering beacon speak,Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he,And so leap on in light from sea to sea,Till the glad news be sentAcross a kindling continent,Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:—"Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,She of the open soul and open door,With room about her hearth for all mankind!The helm from her bold front she doth unbind,Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,And bids her navies hold their thunders in:No challenge sends she to the elder world,That looked askance and hated; a light scornPlays on her mouth, as round her mighty kneesShe calls her children back, and waits the mornOf nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas."XI.Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!Thy God, in these distempered days,Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!Bow down in prayer and praise!O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hairO'er such sweet brows as never other wore,And letting thy set lips,Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,What words divine of lover or of poetCould tell our love and make thee know it,Among the Nations bright beyond compare?What were our lives without thee?What all our lives to save thee?We reck not what we gave thee;We will not dare to doubt thee,But ask whatever else, and we will dare!
I.
Weak-winged is song,Nor aims at that clear-ethered heightWhither the brave deed climbs for light:We seem to do them wrong,Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearseWho in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,Our trivial song to honor those who comeWith ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire,Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire:Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,A gracious memory to buoy up and saveFrom Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common graveOf the unventurous throng.
II.
To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes backHer wisest Scholars, those who understoodThe deeper teaching of her mystic tome,And offered their fresh lives to make it good;No lore of Greece or Rome,No science peddling with the names of things,Or reading stars to find inglorious fates,Can lift our life with wingsFar from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits,And lengthen out our datesWith that clear fame whose memory singsIn manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates:Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all!Not such the trumpet-callOf thy diviner mood,That could thy sons enticeFrom happy homes and toils, the fruitful nestOf those half-virtues which the world calls best,Into War's tumult rude;But rather far that stern deviceThe sponsors chose that round thy cradle stoodIn the dim, unventured wood,TheVeritasthat lurks beneathThe letter's unprolific sheath,Life of whate'er makes life worth living,Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food,One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.
III.
Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oilAmid the dust of books to find her,Content at last, for guerdon of their toil,With the cast mantle she hath left behind her.Many in sad faith sought for her,Many with crossed hands sighed for her;But these, our brothers, fought for her,At life's dear peril wrought for her,So loved her that they died for her,Tasting the raptured fleetnessOf her divine completeness:Their higher instinct knewThose love her best who to themselves are true,And what they dare to dream of dare to do;They followed her and found herWhere all may hope to find,Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind,But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round her;Where faith made whole with deedBreathes its awakening breathInto the lifeless creed,They saw her plumed and mailed,With sweet, stern face unveiled,And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them in death.
IV.
Our slender life runs rippling by, and glidesInto the silent hollow of the past;What is there that abidesTo make the next age better for the last?Is earth too poor to give usSomething to live for here that shall outlive us,—Some more substantial boonThan such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon?The little that we seeFrom doubt is never free;The little that we doIs but half-nobly true;With our laborious hivingWhat men call treasure, and the gods call dross,Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,Only secure in every one's conniving,A long account of nothings paid with loss,Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires,After our little hour of strut and rave,With all our pasteboard passions and desires,Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires,Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave.Ah, there is something; hereUnfathomed by the cynic's sneer,Something that gives our feeble lightA high immunity from Night,Something that leaps life's narrow barsTo claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven;A seed of sunshine that doth leavenOur earthly dulness with the beams of stars,And glorify our clayWith light from fountains elder than the Day;A conscience more divine than we,A gladness fed with secret tears,A vexing, forward-reaching senseOf some more noble permanence;A light across the sea,Which haunts the soul and will not let it be,Still glimmering from the heights of undegenerate years.
V.
Whither leads the pathTo ampler fates that leads?Not down through flowery meads,To reap an aftermathOf youth's vainglorious weeds,But up the steep, amid the wrathAnd shock of deadly-hostile creeds,Where the world's best hope and stayBy battle's flashes gropes a desperate way,And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds.Peace hath her not ignoble wreath,Ere yet the sharp, decisive wordLights the black lips of cannon, and the swordDreams in its easeful sheath:But some day the live coal behind the thought,Whether from Baäl's stone obscene,Or from the shrine sereneOf God's pure altar brought,Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and penLearns with what deadly purpose it was fraught,And, helpless in the fiery passion caught,Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men:Some day the soft Ideal that we wooedConfronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,And cries reproachful, "Was it, then, my praise,And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,The victim of thy genius, not its mate!"Life may be given in many ways,And loyalty to Truth be sealedAs bravely in the closet as the field,So generous is Fate;But then to stand beside her,When craven churls deride her,To front a lie in arms and not to yield,—This shows, methinks, God's planAnd measure of a stalwart man,Limbed like the old heroic breeds,Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth,Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,Fed from within with all the strength he needs.
VI.
Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,Whom late the Nation he had led,With ashes on her head,Wept with the passion of an angry grief:Forgive me, if from present things I turnTo speak what in my heart will beat and burn,And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn.Nature, they say, doth dote,And cannot make a manSave on some worn-out plan,Repeating us by rote:For him her Old-World mould aside she threw,And, choosing sweet clay from the breastOf the unexhausted West,With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.How beautiful to seeOnce more a shepherd of mankind indeed,Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,Not lured by any cheat of birth,But by his clear-grained human worth,And brave old wisdom of sincerity!They knew that outward grace is dust;They could not choose but trustIn that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,And supple-tempered willThat bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.Nothing of Europe here,Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,Ere any names of Serf and PeerCould Nature's equal scheme deface;Here was a type of the true elder race,And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.I praise him not; it were too late;And some innative weakness there must beIn him who condescends to victorySuch as the Present gives, and cannot wait,Safe in himself as in a fate.So always firmly he:He knew to bide his time,And can his fame abide,Still patient in his simple faith sublime,Till the wise years decide.Great captains, with their guns and drums,Disturb our judgment for the hour,But at last silence comes;These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,Our children shall behold his fame,The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,New birth of our new soil, the first American.
VII.
Long as man's hope insatiate can discernOr only guess some more inspiring goalOutside of Self, enduring as the pole,Along whose course the flying axles burnOf spirits bravely pitched, earth's manlier brood;Long as below we cannot findThe meed that stills the inexorable mind;So long this faith to some ideal Good,Under whatever mortal names it masks,Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal moodThat thanks the Fates for their severer tasks,Feeling its challenged pulses leap,While others skulk in subterfuges cheap,And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it asks,Shall win man's praise and woman's love,Shall be a wisdom that we set aboveAll other skills and gifts to culture dear,A virtue round whose forehead we enwreatheLaurels that with a living passion breatheWhen other crowns are cold and soon grow sere.What brings us thronging these high rites to pay,And seal these hours the noblest of our year,Save that our brothers found this better way?
VIII.
We sit here in the Promised LandThat flows with Freedom's honey and milk;But 't was they won it, sword in hand,Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.We welcome back our bravest and our best;—Ah, me! not all! some come not with the rest,Who went forth brave and bright as any here!I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,But the sad strings complain,And will not please the ear;I sweep them for a pæan, but they waneAgain and yet againInto a dirge, and die away in pain.In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps,Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:Fitlier may others greet the living,For me the past is unforgiving;I with uncovered headSalute the sacred dead,Who went, and who return not.—Say not so!'T is not the grapes of Canaan that repay,But the high faith that failed not by the way;Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;No ban of endless night exiles the brave;And to the saner mindWe rather seem the dead that stayed behind.Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!For never shall their aureoled presence lack:I see them muster in a gleaming row,With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;We find in our dull road their shining track;In every nobler moodWe feel the orient of their spirit glow,Part of our life's unalterable good,Of all our saintlier aspiration;They come transfigured back,Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,Beautiful evermore, and with the raysOf morn on their white Shields of Expectation!
IX.
Who now shall sneer?Who dare again to say we traceOur lines to a plebeian race?Roundhead and Cavalier!Dreams are those names erewhile in battle loud;Forceless as is the shadow of a cloud,They live but in the ear:That is best blood that hath most iron in 'tTo edge resolve with, pouring without stintFor what makes manhood dear.Tell us not of Plantagenets,Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods crawlDown from some victor in a border-brawl!How poor their outworn coronets,Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreathOur brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath,Through whose desert a rescued Nation setsHer heel on treason, and the trumpet hearsShout victory, tingling Europe's sullen earsWith vain resentments and more vain regrets!
X.
Not in anger, not in pride,Pure from passion's mixture rudeEver to base earth allied,But with far-heard gratitude,Still with heart and voice renewed,To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,The strain should close that consecrates our brave,Lift the heart and lift the head!Lofty be its mood and grave,Not without a martial ring,Not without a prouder treadAnd a peal of exultation:Little right has he to singThrough whose heart in such an hourBeats no march of conscious power,Sweeps no tumult of elation!'T is no Man we celebrate,By his country's victories great,A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,But the pith and marrow of a NationDrawing force from all her men,Highest, humblest, weakest, all,—Pulsing it again through them,Till the basest can no longer cower,Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall,Come back, then, noble pride, for 't is her dower!How could poet ever tower,If his passions, hopes, and fears,If his triumphs and his tears,Kept not measure with his people?Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves!Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple!Banners, advance with triumph, bend your staves!And from every mountain-peakLet beacon-fire to answering beacon speak,Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he,And so leap on in light from sea to sea,Till the glad news be sentAcross a kindling continent,Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:—"Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,She of the open soul and open door,With room about her hearth for all mankind!The helm from her bold front she doth unbind,Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,And bids her navies hold their thunders in:No challenge sends she to the elder world,That looked askance and hated; a light scornPlays on her mouth, as round her mighty kneesShe calls her children back, and waits the mornOf nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas."
XI.
Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!Thy God, in these distempered days,Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!Bow down in prayer and praise!O Beautiful! my Country! ours once more!Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hairO'er such sweet brows as never other wore,And letting thy set lips,Freed from wrath's pale eclipse,The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,What words divine of lover or of poetCould tell our love and make thee know it,Among the Nations bright beyond compare?What were our lives without thee?What all our lives to save thee?We reck not what we gave thee;We will not dare to doubt thee,But ask whatever else, and we will dare!
During the first few days of the war, in that strange epoch of thrill and shudder,—when there was mounting in hot haste, and warlike citizens looked to their revolvers, and peaceful citizens looked up eligible diseases for the family physician, ere examining surgeons yet were,—in the midst of that general sense of untried powers and uncertain destinies, who does not remember the sudden sense of relief which diffused itself over any given community, on the announcement that Brigadier-General Blank, of the Blank Division of State Militia, had arrived in town? Here was one at last who could speak with some authority. This man had slept three nights upon "the tented field," on occasion of a muster. He had once formeda battalion in line, or at least been present at that mystic process. He had been heard to quote from the first volume of Scott, and had been known to nod significantly, on an allusion to Hardee. Here was a man for opinions. Now we should know what the Rebels meant to do, and precisely how many were killed by the firing from Fort Sumter. We should ascertain the measures already taken for defence, and the actual number of military overcoats in possession of the State authorities.
Of course the local authorities waited upon him without delay. They found him at the head-quarters of Rifle Company X. An imperfectly developed rifleman, with coat unbuttoned and gun held anxiously, stood sentinel in the entry,—taking no notice of any one, and looking as if he would be profoundly grateful if no one would take notice of him. Presently the great man appeared. He wore around his martial breast a blue cloth cape, with a festive lining of white silk. His usually good-natured countenance was attuned to an aspect of profounder thought. Near him stood his only luggage, a large epaulet-box, of shape inexplicable to the unwarlike. Behind him appeared the members of his staff, wearing white cotton gloves, and maintaining attitudes of unwonted stiffness, as if, though conscious of not carrying a great many guns, they would at least contribute to their country's cause the needful quota of ramrods. The whole scene was enough to awe the stoutest heart, and the humbler and shorter among the selectmen or aldermen were observed to whisper inaudibly to each other, in the background, and to cough behind their hands solemnly, as at funerals.
At that day no one had yet dared to suggest that Brigadier-General Blank should accept any military rank lower than that to which his previous services had entitled him. Anything higher than that—a Major-Generalship, for instance—he would prefer to waive for the present, in order not to excite foolish jealousy among the West-Point men. But it was an act of unexpected condescension, when he finally consented to take command of a regiment; and it was doubtless this lowliness of spirit which created some slight embarrassments in his discharge of the duties of even that command. A man of larger attainments should not be remanded to duties so small. He it was, therefore, who, while drilling his battalion, and having given the preliminary order, "Right about," omitted the final order, "March," until most of the men were perched, Zouave-like, upon the high board-fence which bounded the camp. He it was who, in his school of instruction, being questioned by the juniors as to the proper "position of the soldier without arms," responded sternly, that a true soldier should always have his arms with him; and on being further asked in regard to the best way to "dress" a line of soldiers, answered with dignity, that others might prefer fancy colors, but give him the good old army-blue.
Mr. Pitt was of the opinion, that no man could be really useful to his country in a position below his powers. It was doubtless a similar conviction, combined with a sudden illness, so severe that he could not even admit his surgeon, which led our hero to send in a reluctant resignation, just before his regiment reached the seat of hostilities. He enlisted for the war, but he has never yet got to it. He has since, however, served his country as sutler of a camp of instruction,—where there is said to be no question as to his profits, though there may be as to his prices.
Remote as the "Old French War" seems now that epoch of conceited ignorance. The brilliant career of many militia-trained officers has more than atoned for the decline and fall of Blank; while the utter defencelessness of any community, under such military leadership, is a lesson thoroughly learned by the present generation. Yet that educational process has been too costly to be repeated. We must use it while it is fresh, or pay a yet higher price for its repetition. Every State in this Union, which does not adopt some effectivemilitia-system within the next two years, will probably slide back into the old indifference, to last until another war brings its terrible arousing.
For it is to be observed, that the very effect of a recent war is to make any such system appear for the time superfluous. A hundred returned veterans in every village, with an arsenal full of rifles in every State, might seem to supersede the necessity of all further preparation for many years to come. Why give the time and money to create an ineffective military force, when these heroes can at any time, within two days, improvise a good one? No doubt, after the close of the Revolution, the same thing was said. Yet even the Revolutionary veterans were not immortal,—though no doubt there were moments when they seemed so, to the Pension Agent; and ours will find their lease of life to be but little longer. What is to occur then? Twenty-five years hence, our whole present army will be beyond the age of active military service, and will have left to their children only their example, unless we establish, by their aid, some system of warlike training that shall be available for the future. It is one thing to have a military generation, and quite another thing to have a military people. Accidental experience has given us the one, but only permanent methods can guaranty the other.
In another way, also, the war will prove a drawback upon forming an effective militia system. We shall have, for some years to come, no class disposed to take a very hearty part in it. For a returned soldier to find pleasure in drilling is as if a wood-sawyer, at the close of his week's work, should bring his tools into his sitting-room, and saw for fun. On the other hand, those who have not served in the army will feel some natural sensitiveness about playing soldier in presence of veterans, and being satirized, perhaps, as a mere home-guard. Thus experience and inexperience will equally tend to deplete the classes available for this form of service.
These obstacles will be increased by the fact, that such duties, under any conceivable arrangement, must involve a sacrifice both in time and money. Reduce the period of annual service to its minimum, and it may still occur at such a time as to cost an employer his contract, or anemployéhis place. Our young men are to meet the problem of increased taxes, crowded occupations, and great competition. Who shall make the needful sacrifice? The returned soldiers? But they have given precious years of time already. The inexperienced? But they will naturally reason, that they have already borne the immediate financial burden of the war, and that the drilling should be done by those to whom it will cost no additional time to learn it. Thus all will regard their days as being too valuable to be used in preparing for a contingency which may never arise: one half standing aloof because they have been soldiers, and the other half because they have not.
A difficult problem seems, then, to lie before us: To find a class available for purposes of military training,—a class which shall claim exemption on grounds neither of experience nor of inexperience,—which shall be discouraged neither by the ennui of knowing too much, nor by the awkwardness of knowing too little,—and which, withal, can spare the time, without financial detriment to the community. Fortunately, the solution of the problem suggests itself, in part at least, almost as soon as the problem itself is stated. Train the school-boys.
Every person who has taken any interest in athletic exercises knows the enormous advantage in their acquisition which the mere fact of youth confers. In gymnastics, swimming, skating, base-ball, cricket, it is the same thing. As a mere matter of economy, one half the time at least is saved in teaching children as compared with full-grown men. But more than this, it is for them not only no loss in time, but, if it can be taken out of their regular school-hours, it is a positive advantage. There is probably but one conceivable position in which all the physiologists agree, and that is, that the average timenow given to study in our schools is at least one hour too long. Take this hour and devote it to military drill, and you benefit the whole rising generation doubly,—by what you take away, and by what you give.
We fortunately have the experience of Switzerland and England, to which we may appeal, in respect to this method of military instruction. Charles L. Flint, Esq., Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, in his report of an official visit to Europe in 1862, gives the following brief summary of the Swiss method.
"The amount and thoroughness of military instruction in the schools vary somewhat in the different cantons, though in all the cantonal schools military instruction is given. In Berne, for example, the cantonal schools rank somewhat like the grammar and higher-grade public schools in Boston or the large towns generally in Massachusetts. They are open to all boys upon examination. All the boys in these schools are organized with military corps, and officered from their own class, but provided by Government with special military instructors, and furnished with small muskets, rifles, or carbines, suitable to the strength and age of the boys; or, if organized into artillery corps, they are supplied with small side-arms and field-pieces, which they can wield without difficulty.
"For these arms arsenals are provided by the Government, and custodians are appointed to keep them safely and in good condition when not in actual use. The military instructors are officers of the federal military organization, educated men, who have seen service, and who areau faitin the theory and art of war. The time devoted to military studies and training in the manual exercises varies with the season and in the various cantons. During the summer about three half-days in the week is the average time. There is also an occasional general muster, when all turn out together and occupy a spacious parade-ground. Then the whole population of parents and friends, as well as the cantonal authorities, turn out for a holiday, to witness the nascent valor and heroism of the republic.
"It should be added, that all these cantonal cadets wear a simple and modest stripe for a uniform, and one or two bright buttons, which, cost almost nothing, but give the wearers a soldierly pride and love for this branch of their studies."
In England the experiment of military drill has thus far been limited to a few schools, but the result in those has been officially described as being admirable. The well-known sanitary reformer, Edwin Chadwick, in his "Report on Military Drill," addressed to the Royal Educational Commission, states the following propositions as proved.
"1st. That the military and naval drill is more effectively and permanently taught in the infantile and juvenile stages than in the adolescent or adult stages.
"2d. That at school it may be taught most economically, as not interfering with productive labor, and that thirty or forty boys may be taught the naval and military drill, at one penny farthing per week per head, as cheaply as one man, and the whole juvenile population may be drilled completely, in the juvenile stage, as economically as the small part of it now taught imperfectly on recruiting or in the adult stage; and that, for teaching the drill, the services of retired drill-sergeants and naval as well as military officers and pensioners may be had economically in every part of the country."
It seems that in these English schools the military training is not confined to the boys. "The girls go through the same exercises, with the exception that they do not use the musket, but supply its place with a cane." As to the age required, the "infantile and juvenile stages" appear to be dated back tolerably near the cradle. Mr. William Baker, drill-master at St. Olave's Grammar School, testifies as follows:—"From his own experience in drilling children, he would say that they might be taught to work and practise motions at fromfive to six years of age; that they may be taught the sword drill at eight years of age; that they may be taught the rifle drill at about ten years of age. He finds that they can handle a light rifle very well at that age. He expects that a prize, given for the best rifle drill, will be gained by a boy of that age against older boys. If there were a proper place, with space, he could practise them in firing at from thirteen to fourteen years of age."
The most favorable results are stated to follow, in regard to school discipline, among these English boys. Such, for instance, is the testimony of Mr. William Smith, Superintendent of the Surrey District School.
"'You have had experience of the effect of the military drill on the mental and bodily training of young children in this establishment?'
"'Yes; but the effect of the military drill was most shown by the effect of its discontinuance.'
"'In what way was it shown?'
"'In 1857, the drill-master was dismissed by the guardians, with a view of reducing the expenditure. The immediate effect of the discontinuance of the drill was to make the school quite another place. I am sure that within six months we lost about two hundred pounds, in the extra wear and tear of clothing, torn and damaged in mischievous acts and wild plays, in the breakage of utensils from mischief, and damage done to the different buildings, the breakage of windows, the pulling up of gratings, and the spoiling of walls. A spirit of insubordination prevailed amongst the boys during the whole of the time of the cessation of the drill. In the workshop they were insubordinate, and I was constantly called upon by the industrial teachers, the master shoemaker, and the master tailor, to coerce boys who were quite impudent, and who would not obey readily. The moral tone of the school seemed to have fled from the boys, and their whole behavior was altered, as displayed in the dormitories as well as in the yards.'
"'During this time were the religious services and exercises and the internal discipline of the school maintained as before?'
"'They were maintained as before; the business of the school was kept up as before, but the order was by no means as good. I was not only called in to correct the boys in the workshop, but in the school; and I was under the disagreeable necessity of reverting to corporal punishment, and of dismissing one incorrigible boy entirely. The chaplain joined with me and the schoolmasters in urging the restoration of the drill.'
"'The drill having been restored, has order been restored?'
"'Yes, excellent order.'
"The present chaplain of the school, the Rev. Charles G. Vignoles, who was present, expressed his entire concurrence in the description given of the disorganization produced by the discontinuance of the military drill, which was illustrated by entries in his own reports."
It is no exaggeration to say, that, by introducing such a system of drill into our schools, we can obtain for the whole boy population some of the most important advantages of the West-Point training,—the early habit of obedience and of command, together with the alphabet of military science.[G]The experiment has frequently been tried in privateschools, always with certain favorable results. It has had, however, this drawback,—that, as the drill has been thus far a special trait of certain particular seminaries, and hence a marketable quality, there has been rather a temptation to neglect other things for its sake,—an evil which will vanish when the practice becomes general. In public schools, no satisfactory experiment seems to have been made public, except in Brookline, Massachusetts,—always one of the foremost towns in the State as to all educational improvements. It appears that the local School Committee, in 1863, decided upon offering to all boys above ten years of age the opportunity to learn military drill. There was already a drill-master in the employ of the town, and a hall appropriated for the purpose. The greater part of the school-boys reported themselves for instruction. Three classes were formed, consisting respectively of large boys who knew something of drill, of large boys who knew nothing of it, and of small boys who were presumed ignorant. The first and third classes proved entirely successful. The second class proved a failure, apparently because it was chiefly made up of pupils from an adult evening school, which was itself not very successful. The total result of the experiment was so wholly satisfactory that the chairman of the town Military Committee urges its universal adoption. He considers it proved, that "a perfect knowledge of the duties of a soldier can be taught to the boys during their time of attendance at the public schools; thus obviating the necessity of this acquisition after the time of the pupil has become more valuable." He adds: "A proper system of military instruction in the schools of our Commonwealth would furnish us with the most perfect militia in the world; and I have very little doubt that the good sense of the people will soon arrange such a system in all the schools of the Commonwealth."
The general adoption of this method of instruction was officially recommended, in January, 1864, by a special committee of the Massachusetts Board of Education,—this committee consisting of Governor Andrew, Ex-Governor Washburn, and the Hon. Joseph White, Secretary of the Board. It was afterwards urged by the Rev. James F. Clarke, another member of the Board, in an elaborate report, giving many valuable facts from European authorities. It is not known, however, that any legislative action has yet been taken on the subject in any part of the country.
We do not need more military colleges. One is enough for the nation, and all public expenditure should be concentrated on that. But it is as easy for children to learn the drill as to learn swimming; and the knowledge should be as universal. For this purpose it should be made a required part of grammar-school training. Of course the instruction cannot ordinarily proceed from the teacher of the school. But it is the growing practice of our towns to employ instructors in special branches, who go from school to school, teaching music, penmanship, or calisthenics. It is only carrying this method one step farther, to employ some returned soldier to teach infantry drill. Let this be prescribed by legislative action, in each State, and it will soon become universal. A uniform ought not to be required; a little effort would at least secure buttoned jackets, which are quite needful for a goodalignement, and hence for good drill. This being attained, anything further is matter of taste, not of necessity. As to guns and equipments, they should of course be provided by the State or national authorities, probably by the former. There should be a State superintendent of drill, and a thorough application of his authority.
This is not the place to work out the details of the system; it is sufficient to indicate its general principles. Supposing all obstacles conquered, and this introduction of military drill into grammar-schools to be successful, it may be still objected that this does not give us a militia. Certainly not; but it gives us the materials for a militia, needing only to be put together. Given a hundred young men, of whom seventy-fivehave already been taught a uniform drill, and the saving of time in their final training will be prodigious. Any officer, with such recruits, can do in a week what could not be done in a month with men utterly untrained. Here also the English observations come in, to corroborate those often repeated, but less accurately, in our own army.
Mr. William Baker, drill-master at St. Olave's Grammar School, stated, that, "Whilst he was in the army, and having to drill recruits, he has occasionally met with individuals to each of whom, from his bearing and action, he has said at once, 'In what regiment have you been?' The answer was, 'In none; I was taught the drill at school.' He found the individuals almost ready drilled; they would be more complete for service in a quarter of the time of the previously undrilled.
"The first infantry drill-master [in the Richmond Military College] said he had had experience of boys from the Duke of York's and the Royal Hibernian Schools, and that they made excellent soldiers, and required little or no additional drill, and that they were promoted to be non-commissioned officers in large proportion.
"Mr. S. B. Orchard, drill-master, has been sergeant in the 3d Light Dragoons. Whilst in the army, has had to drill, as recruits, boys who had been in the Duke of York's School, at Chelsea, and at the Royal Hibernian School, where they had been taught the drill. He found that they took the drill in one third the time that it was usually taken by other recruits who had been previously undrilled, and took it better,—that is to say, the horse as well as the foot-drill,—although these boys from the Duke of York's and the Hibernian Schools had had no previous horse-drill."
It is obvious that boys thus trained will not look upon an occasional period of militia service with the bashfulness of raw recruits, nor yet with the ennui of veteran soldiers. The revival of their boyish pursuits will create some fresh interest; they will take pride in exhibiting the training of their respective schools, and will be pleased at finding the public utility of this part of their preparation. Instead of being a Primary School for military duty, the musters and encampments will have the dignity of a High School. Young men will find themselves forming a part of larger battalions than ever before,—placed under abler officers,—engaged in more complex evolutions. They will also have an opportunity to practise camp and garrison duty, which they have before learned in theory alone. Three or four consecutive days of such instruction will be of substantial service to those already well grounded in the rudiments, though they avail almost nothing to the ignorant.
Further than this the present essay hardly aspires to go, in treating of our future militia. It is enough to have indicated its proper material. The proper employment of that material involves separate questions. These have lately been discussed, with abundant citations and statistics, in a valuable pamphlet, entitled, "The Militia of the United States; What it is; What it should be," attributed to Colonel Henry Lee, Jr., of Boston, whose position on the staff of the Governor of Massachusetts, during the whole war, has enabled him to understand the strength and the weakness of the existing systems. His pamphlet also includes the whole of Mr. Clarke's report, above mentioned, and I am indebted for valuable information to both.
As to the form which future militia laws should take, the following appear among the points of most prominent importance, and may be briefly stated.
1. There should be no exemption from personal service, except on the ground of age or physical infirmity. The necessary limitation of number should be obtained by varying the prescribed ages in the different States, according to the proportion of young men in the population.[H]
2. Whether the appointment of officers be elective or gubernatorial, they should equally undergo a strict examination.[I]
3. The strictest military law should be enforced during the musters or encampments.[J]
4. There should be a national Inspector-General of Militia, appointed by the War Department, with Assistant-Inspectors-General for the different States,—all to be Regular-Army officers, if possible, thus securing uniformity of drill and discipline.[K]
The recent transformation of our array is almost as startling as the changes which followed the Revolution and the War of 1812. After the Revolution, there were retained in service "twenty-five privates to guard the stores at Fort Pitt, and fifty-five to guard the stores at West Point and other magazines, with an appropriate number of officers." After the War of 1812, the army was cut down from thirty-five thousand to six thousand. It behooves us, who have just seen a far grander host melt away almost as rapidly, to turn our eyes forward to the next national peril, and be prepared. The coming session of Congress should give us, partly by edict, partly by recommendation, a system that will put the mass of our young men inside instead of outside the class of trained militia; exchanging our town-meetings-in-uniform for an effective force, and all our Blanks for prizes.