Henry Mann

“ As a statesman Washington merited distinction fully equal to that gained in his military career. To him the United States were always a nation, and only as a nation could they exist. His influence was as potent in forming the Union as his military genius had been in achieving independence, and the veneration with which he was regarded abroad secured for the new nation a degree of respect in foreign cabinets, which was almost vital to its existence, and which no other American could have commanded. ”

“ Thirty-two years ago the very existence of the American Republic was in the balance. Today it is the most powerful of nations, with forty-five stars, representing that number of States, on its flag, and unequalled in population, wealth or resources by any other civilized land. The men of America are not herded away from industry to drill in camps and garrison, and wait for a war that may never come. They continue to be producers, but should the need arise they would be found as good soldiers as any in the world, and for fighting on American soil better than the best of Europe. ”

“ The English settlers might be driven back for a time; their cabins might be turned into ashes, and the tomahawk and scalping-knife leave dire evidence of savage vengeance and Gallic inhumanity. But the rally was as certain as the raid was sudden. A garrison might be massacred; a colony could not be exterminated, and the defeats of Braddock and Abercrombie only burned into English breasts the resolution to tear down forever on the American continent the flag which floated over the evidence of England's dishonor. ”

“ It is in this deeply implanted reverence for established institutions that the hope for the future of America rests. Before it the pestilential vapor of anarchy, borne across the Atlantic from the squirming and steaming masses of Europe, disappears like a plague before a purifying flame, and, whatever may be the outcome of the struggle, in its various forms, now going on between the upper and lower orders in the mother continent, in the United States the foundations of society are likely to remain firm and unsapped. ”

“ A Virginian cavalier, accustomed to the graces and politesse of a slave-owning aristocracy, saw fit to sneer at their humble abodes, and their lack of the finer accessories of civilization, forgetting that a cabin is more often than a palace the cradle of the purest patriotism, and that as true American hearts beat in those huts in the wilderness as in the courtly precincts of Richmond. ”

“ Other States either kept pace with or followed the example of Pennsylvania in making their criminal laws more reformatory and less vindictive, and while England affected to despise American civilization, America was leading England in the march of humanity.
The genius of the nation was progress—not the spirit of the huckster, anxious for present gain, but the enlarged view of the patriot, anxious for the future weal of his country and his race. ”

“ It is needless to say that no better soldiers ever bore rifle or sabre than the men of the Southern Confederacy. They were, like most of their northern antagonists, Americans of the same blood as those who carried the redoubts at Yorktown and stormed the hill of Chapultepec, and their courage in the Civil War fully maintained the prestige gained in battle against alien foes. In intelligence, or at least in education, however, the rank and file of the Confederate armies were inferior to the native Americans in the Union armies. ”

“ The overthrow of Tweed, and the great uprising of 1894 in New York, and of more recent date in Chicago, prove that the American people, once fully aroused, can crush, as with the hammer of Thor, any combination of public plunderers, however powerful. But why should these tremendous efforts be necessary? Why should not the latent energy which makes them possible be exerted in steady and uniform resistance to the restless enemies of pure and popular government?
The farming population, although largely overshadowed by manufacturing and commercial interests, is still the anchor of the Republic. ”

“ At length the colonists made good their entrance, and the battle continued at closer quarters, the Indians nerved to desperation by the presence of their wives and children, whose fate would be their own, and the colonists inspired to prodigies of valor by the thought that their defeat would certainly involve their own destruction, and perhaps that of New England. The invaders at length set fire to the wigwams. As the flames spread the women and children ran out, hampering their defenders with cries of terror and appeals for protection, and at length the Indians were overpowered. ”

“ The separation of families, many of them never reunited, was a crime against humanity; the conversion of an honest, industrious and thrifty peasantry into a host of penniless vagrants, scattered like Ishmaelites through hostile colonies, was a wrong as cruel as it was unnecessary. Colonized in South Carolina or Georgia, the Acadians could hardly have been a menace to the power of Great Britain, while the Huguenot element in those regions, understanding the Acadian tongue, would have kept watch and ward against possible disloyalty. ”

“ The settlers of New York, both Dutch and English, were, as a rule, attentive to religious duties; but they did not regard religion as the single aim of existence. They were merchants and traders and farmers, liberal for their age in their views of religious freedom, and devoting their best energies to building up their worldly fortunes. New Amsterdam was in no sense Puritan—it was a respectable, thriving, trading and bartering community, with flourishing farms in the outskirts, and a commerce stunted by jealous restrictions, but which gave promise of future development. ”

“ The Southern people cannot be justly blamed for their resolute resistance to negro domination. It was too much to expect that former masters should accept political inferiority to a race emancipated from slavery, but not emancipated from deplorable ignorance and debasement, and easily misled by unscrupulous whites. On the other hand, gratitude and prudence demanded, on the part of the North, that the negro should not only be a freeman, but also a citizen; that he should not only be liberated from slavery, but also protected against oppression. ”

“ This was the opinion of the shrewd observer Du Chatelet, who, after France had surrendered her American possessions to Great Britain, said that "they (the chambers of commerce) regard everything in colonial commerce which does not turn exclusively to the benefit of the kingdom as contrary to the end for which colonies were established, and as a theft from the state. To practice on these maxims is impossible. The wants of trade are stronger than the laws of trade. The north of America can alone furnish supplies to its south. ”

“ His example is as valuable to the American Republic of the present as his life-work was to the America of a century ago. As water never rises above its source, so a great nation should have a great founder, and the figure of Washington is sublime enough to be the oriflamme of a people's empire bounded only by the oceans which wash the land that he loved. ”

“ The War of 1812 has sometimes been called the second War of Independence, and its effect certainly was to establish for the United States a respectable position among independent powers. Even England's satellites in the confederacy against Napoleon could not but admire the courage of the American people in bearding the British lion, and the chief magistrate of Ghent voiced the feeling of Europe when he offered the sentiment, at a dinner to the American Commissioners—"May they succeed in making an honorable peace to secure the liberty and independence of their country." ”

“ These were the circumstances which made it apparent to Americans that the Federal Constitution had come not a day too soon, which welded the nation together like an armor-plate of steel against foes on every hand, and taught the need of union as it never could have been taught amid surroundings of prosperity and peace. ”

“ Intelligent people in the East are studying, not ridiculing the West.
The recuperative energy displayed by the Southern people has been even more wonderful and admirable than that exhibited by France after the German conquest. France was not denuded, as the South was denuded of all that represents wealth save a fertile soil and the resolution to rise from the ashes of the past. And the South has risen. I passed through North Carolina and Virginia just before the close of the war. Recently I visited the same States, and South Carolina and Georgia for the first time since the war. ”

“ What American schoolboy's heart does not thrill at the name of John Paul Jones, that redoubtable sailor, who carried the American flag into English seas, and made Britons feel in some degree the injuries their king was inflicting on America! ”

“ It is probable that none save Washington could have guided the nation through the perilous excitement aroused by the efforts of the French minister Genet to involve the United States in war with England and other powers. For a time many cool-headed and able men were carried away by the popular enthusiasm in favor of France, but Genet presumed too far, when he deliberately insulted and defied that national authority which the nation itself had created, and the American people rallied at length, irrespective of party, to the support of the President. ”

“ The slavery conflict has long been over, and the scars it left are disappearing. Other and momentous problems have arisen for settlement, but there is every reason for confidence that they will be settled at the ballot-box, and without appeal to rebellion, or thought or threat of secession. In the present generation, more than in any preceding, is the injunction of Washington exemplified, that the name of American should always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. ”

“ There were graves enough for a household, and likely a household was there. It maybe a father who had fled from Old England to seek in the wilderness a place where he might worship God according to the dictates of his heart; a Pilgrim wife and mother, whose gentle love mellowed and softened the harshness of frontier life, and sons and daughters, cut off before the growth of commerce tempted the survivors to the town, or the reports of new and fertile territories induced them to abandon the rugged but not ungrateful paternal fields. ”

“ Napoleon the Third—that crow in the eagle's nest—was cordially with Great Britain in all efforts to injure the American Union. He had long cherished the design to establish a vassal empire in Mexico, and in our Civil War he saw his opportunity. A Southern Confederacy would form a grand barrier between a Franco-Mexican dominion and the United States, and while the French emperor treated the government at Washington with diplomatic courtesy, he never ceased to exert his influence in favor of the South, so far as he could, without an actual rupture. ”

“ The clergy are not now the political monitors of the community, as when, at the time of the Revolution, the election sermon preached in Boston, and printed in pamphlet form, was spelled by the light of the pine-knot in the cabin on the Berkshire plantation, inspiring the rustic breast with holy zeal to deliver the Israel of the New World from the yoke of the English Sennacherib. ”

“ The great cities witness almost unceasing strife between what may be called the political-criminal element on the one side, and patriotism and intelligence on the other side. Knaves, using bigotry, ignorance and intimidation as their weapons, manage to control municipal affairs, except when expelled from office for periods more or less brief by some sudden spasm of public virtue and indignation, like the revolt in the city of New York against the Tweed Ring a quarter of a century ago, and the reform victory in that city two years ago. ”