From the 25th of September, when the Half-Moon and the Clermont left their temporary berths in the Kill van Kill, in Staten Island, to October 9th, when they reached the city of Troy, the people of the city and the State of New York devoted themselves with remarkable singleness of purpose to the celebration of two historical incidents of world-wide importance: the discovery of the river by Henry Hudson in 1609 and the successful completion of the first steamboat voyage up the river to Albany in 1807. For months before, laymen and professional historians and history teachers had been busy preparing for the celebration, and the result of their work was to be seen in the parades and pageants. Circulars, instructions, maps, pictures, and even historical treatises, succeeded each other in almost endless succession. Of them all, the pamphlet issued by the State Department of Education, entitled “Hudson-Fulton Celebration, 1609-1807-1909,” and the printed circular issued by the New York City Department of Education, entitled “Hudson-Fulton Celebration—Suggestions for Exercises,” are especially recommended to teachers who are looking for suggestions as to plans for similar celebrations. Both can be had by application to the proper authorities.
The parades and pageants which marked the week’s celebration in New York City have been so thoroughly described in the newspapers and reviews that it would be useless to discuss them once again in this connection. From the point of view of the teacher, the naval parade of Saturday, September 25th, the historical parade of Tuesday, September 28th, and the school commemorative exercises of Wednesday, September 29th, and Saturday, October 2d, were the most important and the most significant. Though none of these was perfect in all its details, still all of them gave to the children of the city opportunities for visualizing conditions as they existed in the past such as no other method could have done. Pages and pages of description, for instance, could give the child no such idea of the difficulties of navigation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the brief view of the top-heavy, clumsy and poorly-constructed model of the Half-Moon did. More valuable still were the exercises, largely in the form of dramatization, in which the children of every grade, from the kindergarten to the last year of the high school, participated, both on Wednesday morning and on Saturday afternoon. Here the work was the result of the children’s own constructive imagination, aided and directed by skilled teachers and historians. Once again, as far as possible, the children were allowed to relive their lives under conditions which approximated those which surrounded their predecessors during the last three centuries.
As to the permanent results of the celebration, it may be said, first, that New York City and New York State are to-day richer than they would otherwise have been in historical monuments and commemorative tablets which are of constant educational value. Further, both the city and the State have been stirred to an extraordinary pitch of civic pride and civic activity and in both the children have participated largely. What the past has accomplished has been thoroughly emphasized; what the future demands has by no means been neglected. The lesson has thus been both historical and political. As a model for other cities this celebration will long stand preëminent. Though there were many errors and many shortcomings, other communities will, nevertheless, find in the exercises and in the pageants much to copy that was valuable. Though the time and energy expended were great, the results were commensurate.
A. M. W.