The American Union Speaker Part 12

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, A MAN OF GENIUS.

How many times have we been told that Was.h.i.+ngton was not a man of genius, but a person of excellent common sense, of admirable judgement, of rare virtues! He had no genius, it seems. O no! genius, we must suppose, is the peculiar and s.h.i.+ning attribute of some orator, whose tongue can spout patriotic speeches; or some versifier, whose muse can hail Columbia; but not of the man who supported States on his arm, and carried America in his brain. What is genius? Is it worth anything? Is splendid folly the measure of its inspiration? Is wisdom its base and summit?--that which it recedes from, or tends toward? And by what definition do you award the name to the creator of an epic, and deny it to the creator of a country? On what principle is it to be lavished on him who sculptures in peris.h.i.+ng marble the image of possible excellence, and withheld from him who built up in himself a transcendent character, indestructible as the obligations of duty, and beautiful as her rewards?

Indeed, if by genius of action, you mean will enlightened by intelligence, and intelligence energized by will,--if force and insight be its characteristics, and influence its test, and if great effects suppose a cause proportionally great, a vital, causative mind,--then was Was.h.i.+ngton most a.s.suredly a man of genius, and one whom no other American has equalled in the power of working morally and mentally on other minds. His genius was of a peculiar kind, the genius of character, of thought and the objects of thought solidified and concentrated into active faculty. He belongs to that rare cla.s.s of men,--rare as Homers and Miltons, rare as Platos and Newtons,--who have impressed their characters upon nations without pampering national vices. Such men have natures broad enough to include all the facts of a people's practical life, and deep enough to discern the spiritual laws which underlie, animate, and govern those facts.

E. P. Whipple.

LXXIII.

IRISH ALIENS AND ENGLISH VICTORIES.

I should be surprised, indeed, if; while you are doing us wrong, you did not profess your solicitude to do us justice. From the day on which Strongbow set his foot upon the sh.o.r.e of Ireland, Englishmen were never wanting in protestations of their deep anxiety to do us justice;--even Strafford, the deserter of the people's cause,--the renegade Wentworth who gave evidence in Ireland of the spirit of instinctive tyranny which predominated in his character,--even Strafford, while he trampled upon our rights, and trod upon the heart of the country, protested his solicitude to do justice to Ireland! What marvel is it, then, that gentlemen opposite should deal in such vehement protestations? There is, however, one man, of great abilities,--not a member of this House, but whose talents and whose boldness have placed him in the topmost place in his party,--who, disdaining all imposture, and thinking it the best course to appeal directly to the religious and national antipathies of the people of this country,--abandoning all reserve, and flinging off the slender veil by which his political a.s.sociates affect to cover, although they cannot hide, their motives,--distinctly and audaciously tells the Irish people that they are not ent.i.tled to the same privileges as Englishmen; and p.r.o.nounces them, in any particular which could enter his minute enumeration of the circ.u.mstances by which fellow-citizens.h.i.+p is created, in race, ident.i.ty, and religion to be aliens--to be aliens in race--to be aliens in country--to be aliens in religion! Aliens! Good G.o.d! was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, in the House of Lords,--and did he not start up and exclaim, "Hold! I have seen the aliens do their duty!"

The Duke of Wellington is not a man of an excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking that, when he heard his Roman Catholic countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase as offensive as the abundant vocabulary of his eloquent confederate could supply,--I cannot help thinking that he ought to have recollected the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. "The battles, sieges, fortunes, that he has pa.s.sed," to have come back upon him.

He ought to have remembered that, from the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpa.s.sing combat which has made his name imperishable,--from a.s.saye to Waterloo,--the Irish soldiers, with whom your armies are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. Whose were the arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera through the phalanxes that never reeled to the shock of war before? What desperate valor climbed the steeps and filled the moats at Badajos? All his victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory,--Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Albuera, Toulouse, and, last of all, the greatest--

Tell me--for you were there,--I appeal to the gallant soldier before me, from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast;--tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance,--while death fell in showers when the artillery of France was levelled with a precision of the most deadly science, when her legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset,--tell me if, for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the "aliens" blenched? And when, at length, the moment for the last and decided movement had arrived, and the valor which had so long been wisely checked was, at last, let loose,--when, with words familiar but immortal, the great captain commanded the great a.s.sault,--tell me if Catholic Ireland with less heroic valor than the natives of this your own glorious country precipitated herself upon the foe? The blood of England, Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in the same stream, and drenched the same field. When the chill morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together;--in the same deep pit their bodies were deposited; the green corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls from heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not be permitted to partic.i.p.ate; and shall we be told as a requital, that we are estranged from the n.o.ble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out?

R. L. Sheil.

LXXIV.

THE ILIAD AND THE BIBLE.

Of all the books with which, since the invention of writing, this world has been deluged, very few have produced any perceptible effect on the ma.s.s of human character. By far the greater part have been, even by their contemporaries, unnoticed and unknown. Not many a one has made its little mark upon that generation that produced it, though it sunk with that generation to utter forgetfulness. But, after the ceaseless toil of six thousand years, how few have been the works, the adamantine basis of whose reputation has stood unhurt amid the fluctuations of time, and whose impression can be traced through successive centuries, on the history of our species!

When, however, such a work appears, its effects are absolutely incalculable; and such a work, you are aware, is the Iliad of Homer. Who can estimate the results produced by the incomparable efforts of a single mind? Who can tell what Greece owes to this first-born of song? Her breathing marbles, her solemn temples, her unrivalled eloquence, and her matchless verse, all point us to that transcendent genius, who, by the very splendor of his own effulgence, woke the human intellect from the slumber of ages. It was Homer who gave laws to the artist; it was Homer who inspired the poet; it was Homer who thundered in the Senate; and, more than all, it was Homer who was sung by the people; and hence a nation was cast into the mould of one mighty mind, and the land of the Iliad became the region of taste, the birthplace of the arts.

But, considered simply as an intellectual production, who will compare the poems of Homer with the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments?

Where in the Iliad shall we find simplicity and pathos which shall vie with the narrative of Moses, or maxims of conduct to equal in wisdom the Proverbs of Solomon, or sublimity which does not fade away before the conceptions of Job, or David, or Isaiah, or St. John? But I cannot pursue this comparison. I feel that it is doing wrong to the mind which dictated the Iliad, and to those other mighty intellects on whom the light of the holy oracles never s.h.i.+ned.

If, then, so great results have flowed from this one effort of a single mind, what may we not expect from the combined efforts of several, at least his equals in power over the human heart? If that one genius, though groping in the thick darkness of absurd idolatry, wrought so glorious a transformation in the character of his countrymen, what may we not look for from the universal dissemination of those writings on whose authors was poured the full splendor of eternal truth? If una.s.sisted human nature, spell-bound by a childish mythology, have done so much, what may we not hope for from the supernatural efforts of preeminent genius, which spake as it was moved by the Holy Ghost?

Dr. Wayland.

LXXV.

ON ADMITTING CALIFORNIA TO THE UNION.

A year ago, California was a mere military dependency of our own. To-day, she is a State, more populous than the least, and richer than several of the greatest of our thirty States. This same California, thus rich and populous, is here asking admission into the Union, and finds us debating the dissolution of the Union itself. No wonder if we are perplexed with ever-changing embarra.s.sments! No wonder if we are appalled by ever-increasing responsibilities! No wonder if we are bewildered by the ever-augmenting magnitude and rapidity of national vicissitudes!

SHALL CALIFORNIA BE RECEIVED? For myself, upon my individual judgment and conscience, I answer--yes. Let California come in. Every new State, whether she come from the east or the west every new State, coming from whatever part of the continent she may, is always welcome. But, California, that comes from the clime where the west dies away into the rising east,--California, that bounds at once the empire and the continent,--California, the youthful queen of the Pacific, in her robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold, is doubly welcome.

The question now arises, shall this one great people, having a common origin, a common language, a common religion, common sentiments, interests, sympathies and hopes, remain one political state, one nation, one republic; or shall it be broken into two conflicting, and, probably, hostile nations or republics? Shall the American people, then, be divided? Before deciding on this question, let us consider our position, our power, and capabilities. The world contains no seat of empire so magnificent as this; which, embracing all the varying climates of the temperate zone, and traversed by wide expanding lakes and long branching rivers, offers supplies on the Atlantic sh.o.r.es to the overcrowded nations of Europe, and, on the Pacific coast, intercepts the commerce of the Indies. The nations thus situated, and enjoying forest, mineral, and agricultural resources unequaled, if endowed, also with moral energies adequate to the achievement of great enterprises, and flavored with a government adapted to their character and condition, must command the empire of the seas, which, alone, is real empire.

We think we may claim to have inherited physical and intellectual vigor, courage, invention, and enterprise; and the systems of education prevailing among us, open to all the stores of human science and art. The Old World and the Past were allotted by Providence to the pupilage of mankind. The New World and the Future seem to have been appointed for the maturity of mankind, with the development of self-government, operating in obedience to reason and judgment.

We may, then, reasonably hope for greatness, felicity, and renown, excelling any hitherto attained by any nation, if, standing firmly on the continent, we lose not our grasp on either ocean. Whether a destiny so magnificent would be only partially defeated, or whether it would be altogether lost by a relaxation of the grasp, surpa.s.ses our wisdom to determine, and happily it is not important to be determined. It is enough, if we agree, that expectations so grand, yet so reasonable and so just, ought not in any degree to be disappointed. And now, it seems to me, that the perpetual unity of the empire hangs on the decision of this day and this hour.

California is already a State,--a complete and fully appointed State. She never again can be less than that. She never again can be a province or a colony; nor can she be made to shrink or shrivel into the proportions of a federal dependent territory. California, then, henceforth and forever, must be, what she is now,--a State.

The question whether she shall be one of the United States of America, has depended on her and on us. Her election has been made. Our consent alone remains suspended; and that consent must be p.r.o.nounced now or never.

W. H. Seward.

LXXVI.

A HIGHWAY TO THE PACIFIC.

Mr. President, I go for a national highway from the Mississippi to the Pacific. And I go against all schemes of individuals or of companies, and especially those who come here and ask of the Congress of the United States to give themselves and their a.s.signs the means of making a road, and taxing the people for the use of it. If they should make it, they are to tax us for the use of it--tax the people eight or ten millions a year for using a road which their own money built. A fine scheme, that! But they would never build it, neither themselves nor their a.s.signs. It would all end in stock-jobbing. I repudiate the whole idea, sir. I go for a national highway--no stock-jobbing.

We find all the localities of the country precisely such as a national central road would require. The Bay of San Francisco, the finest in the world, is in the centre of the western coast of North America; it is central, and without a rival. It will accommodate the commerce of that coast, both north and south, up to the frozen regions, down to the torrid zone. It is central in that respect. The commerce of the broad Pacific Ocean will centre there. The commerce of Asia will centre there. Follow the same lat.i.tude across the country, and it strikes the centre of the valley of the Mississippi. It strikes the Mississippi near the confluence of all the great waters which concentrate in the valley of the Mississippi. It comes to the centre of the valley;--it comes to St. Louis. Follow the prolongation of that central line, and you find it cutting the heart of the great States between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean, Illinois, Indiana Ohio a part of Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania,--they are all traversed or touched by that great central line.

We own the country, from sea to sea, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and upon a breadth equal to the length of the Mississippi, and embracing the whole temperate zone. Three thousand milks across, and half that breadth, is the magnificent parallelogram of our domain. We can run a national central road through and through, the whole distance, under our flag and under our laws. Military reasons require us to make it; for troops and munitions must go there. Political reasons require us to make it; it will be a chain of union between the Atlantic and Pacific States. Commercial reasons demand it from us; and here I touch a boundless field, dazzling and bewildering the imagination from its vastness and importance. The trade of the Pacific Ocean, of this western coast of North America, and of eastern Asia, will all take its track; and not only for ourselves, but for posterity.

Sir, in no instance has the great Asiatic trade failed to carry the nation or the people which possessed it to the highest pinnacle of wealth and power, and with it, to the highest attainments of letters, art, and science. And so will it continue to be. An American road to India, through the heart of our country will revive upon its line all the wonders of which we have read, and eclipse them. The western wilderness, from the Pacific to the Mississippi, will spring into life under its touch. A long line of cities will grow up. Existing cities will take a new start. The state of the world calls for a new road to India, and it is our destiny to give it--the last and greatest. Let us act up to the greatness of the occasion, and show ourselves worthy of the extraordinary circ.u.mstances in which we are placed, by securing, while we can, an American road to India, central and national, for ourselves and our posterity, now and hereafter, for thousands of years to come.

T. H. Benton.

LXXVII.

ADDRESS TO POLISH EXILES AT LONDON.

It is eighty-one years since Poland first was quartered by a nefarious act of combined royalty, which the Swiss Tacitus, John Muller, well characterized by saying that "G.o.d permitted the act, to show the morality of kings;" and it is twenty-four years since down-trodden Poland made the greatest--not the last--manifestation of her imperishable vitality, which the cabinets of Europe were either too narrow-minded to understand, or too corrupt to appreciate. Eighty-one years of still unretributed crime, and twenty-four years of misery and exile! It is a long time to suffer, and not to despair.

And all along this time, you, proscribed patriots of Poland, were suffering, and did not despair. You stood up before the world, a living statue, with unquenchable life-flame of patriotism streaming through its petrified limbs; you stood up a protest of eternal right against the sway of imperious might; a "Mene Tekel Upharsin," written in letters of burning blood on the walls of overweening despotism. Time, misery, and sorrow have thinned the ranks of your scattered Israel; you have carried your dead to the grave, and those who survive went on to suffer and to hope. Wherever oppressed Freedom reared a banner, you rallied around;--the living statue changed to a fighting hero. Many of yours fell; and, when crime triumphed once more over virtue and right, you resumed the wandering exile's staff and did not despair. Many among you, who were young when they last saw the sun rise over Poland's mountains and plains, have your hair whitened and your strength broken with age, anguish, and misery; but the patriotic heart kept the freshness of its youth; it is young in love for Poland, young in aspirations for freedom, young in hope, and youthfully fresh in determination to break Poland's chains.

What a rich source of n.o.ble deeds patriotism must be, that has given you strength to suffer so much and never to despair! You have given a n.o.ble example to all of us,--your younger brother in the family of exiles. When the battle of Cannae was lost, and Hannibal was measuring by bushels the rings of the fallen Roman knights, the Senate of Rome voted thanks to Consul Terentius Varro for "not having despaired of the Commonwealth."

Proscribed patriots of Poland! I thank you that you have not despaired of resurrection and of liberty. The time draws nigh when the oppressed nations will call their aggressors to a last account; and the millions of freemen, in the fulness of their right, and their self-conscious strength, will cla.s.s judgment on arrogant conquerors, privileged murderers, and perjured kings. In that supreme trial, the oppressed nations will stand one for all, and all for one.

L. Kossuth.

LXXVIII.

KOSSUTH ON HIS CREDENTIALS.

Let ambitious fools,--let the pigmies who live on the scanty food of personal envy, when the very earth quakes beneath their feet; let even the honest prudence of ordinary household times, measuring eternity with that thimble with which they are wont to measure the bubbles of small party interest, and, taking the dreadful roaring of the ocean for a storm in a water-gla.s.s;--let those who believe the weather to be calm, because they have drawn a nightcap over their ears, and, burying their heads in pillows of domestic comfort, do not hear Satan sweeping in a hurricane over the earth; let envy, ambition, blindness, and the pettifogging wisdom of small times,--let all these artistically investigate the question of my official capacity, or the nature of my public authority; let them scrupulously discuss the immense problem whether I still possess, or possess no longer, the t.i.tle of my once-Governors.h.i.+p; let them ask for credentials, discuss the limits of my commission, as representative of Hungary. I pity all such frog and mouse fighting.

I claim no official capacity,--no public authority, no representation;--boast of no commission, of no written and sealed credentials. I am nothing but what my generous friend, the senator from Michigan, has justly styled me, "a private and banished man." But, in that capacity I have a n.o.bler credential for my mission than all the clerks of the world can write,--the credential that I am a "man;" the credential that I am a "patriot;" the credential that I love with all sacrificing devotion my oppressed fatherland and liberty; the credential that I hate tyrants, and have sworn everlasting hostility to them; the credential that I feel the strength to do good service to the cause of freedom; good service, as perhaps few men can do, because I have the iron will, in this my breast, to serve faithfully devotedly, indefatigably, that n.o.ble cause.

I have the credential that I trust to G.o.d in heaven, to justice on earth; that I offend no laws, but cling to the protection of the laws. I have the credential of my people's undeniable confidence and its unshaken faith; to my devotion, to my manliness, to my honesty, and to my patriotism; which faith I will honestly answer without ambition, without interest, as faithfully as ever, but more skillfully, because schooled by adversities.

And I have the credential of the justice of the cause I plead, and of the wonderful sympathy which, not my person, but that cause, has met, and meets, in two hemispheres. These are my credentials, and nothing else. To whom this is enough, he will help me, so far as the law permits and it is his good pleasure. To whom these credentials are not sufficient, let him look for a better accredited man.

LXXIX.

THE IDES OF MARCH.

To-day is the fourth anniversary of the Revolution in Hungary.