Julian Hawthorne

“ As for thee, George Calvert, thee has delivered up thine immortal soul into the keeping of a man no different from what thee thyself is, so to escape the anxious seat; but the dead also are free of anxiety, and thy bondage is most like unto death. Thee calls thy colony folk free, because thee lets them believe what they list; but they do but follow what their fathers taught them, who got it from theirs; which is to be in bondage to the past. And here is friend Roger, who makes private conscience free; but what is private conscience but the private reasonings whereby a man convinceth himself? ”

“ It is easy to "believe in" our country now, when it extends from ocean to ocean, and is the home of seventy-five million human beings who lead the world in intelligence, wealth, and the sources of power. But our country two hundred years ago was a strip of sea-coast with Indians on one side and tyrants on the other, inhabited by a handful of exiles, who owned little but their faith in God and their love for the freedom of man. No lesser men than they could have believed in their country then; and they vindicated their belief by resisting to the last the mighty and despotic power of England. ”

“ The wharfs were empty and deserted; the streets were dull, the shops were closed; but the British Coffee House in King Street was gay once more; and King George in London, felt that he was having his revenge, though he was paying a round price for it. But Boston, having shown that she could do without tea, and without commerce, was now about to show that she could also do without George.
Nobody but Americans could govern America. The people were too intelligent, too active, too various-minded, too full of native quality and genius to be ruled from abroad. ”

“ The Alleghany hurried downward at the rate a man would walk; the Monongahela loitered, deep and glassy. Washington had acted as adjutant of a body of Virginia troops for the past two or three years, and he examined the place with the eyes of a soldier as well as of a surveyor. It seemed to him that a fort and a town could be well placed there; but in the pure frosty air of that ancient forest, untenanted save by wild beasts, there was no foreshadowing of the grimy smoke and roar, the flaring smelting-works, the crowded and eager population of the Pittsburgh that was to be. ”

“ Yes, and there have been those among ourselves, citizens of the land for which those yeomen fought and died, who also might take warning from those ominous echoes: for the battle waged by selfishness and corruption against human rights has not ceased to be waged on these shores, though the British left them a century ago. It seems, at times, as if victory inclined toward the evil rather than the good. But let us not be misled. The blood of the farmers who drove England out of America flows in our veins still; we are patient and tolerant to a fault, but not forever. ”

“ They are dear to us as ourselves, as how should they not be, since what, other than ourselves, are they? None the less is it true that what was worthiest and most unselfish in the impulse that drove them hither was a reflection of the same impulse that actuated the Puritans when America was not the most powerful of republics, but a wilderness. None of us all can escape from their greatness—from the debt we owe them: not because they were Englishmen, not because they made New England; but because they were men, inspired of God to make the earth free that was in bondage. ”

“ He pursued Berkeley, and the army of the latter, instead of fighting, marched over to him with a unanimity which left the governor almost without a companion in his chagrin. The whole of Virginia was now in Bacon's hand; he had no foes; he was called Deliverer; he had never met reverse; he was a man of intellect, judgment and honor, and he was in the prime of his youth; in such a country, beloved, and supported by such a people, what might he not have hoped to achieve? Men like him are rare; in a country just emerging into political consciousness, he was doubly precious. ”

“ How poor and vain in comparison with this stern and sincere eloquence seem the supple time-service and euphemism of vulgar politicians of whose cunning and fruitless spiderwebs the latter years have been so prolific. It is worth while to do right from high motives, and to care for no gain that is not gained worthily. The men of Massachusetts who lived a hundred years before Jefferson were Americans of a type as lofty as any that have lived since; the work that was given them to do was so done that time can take away nothing from it, nor add anything. The soul of liberty is in it. ”

“ Some sort of recognition of the American Idea, and of the American destiny, affords the only proper ground for American patriotism. We talk of the size of our country, of its wealth and prosperity, of its physical power, of its enlightenment; but if these things be all that we have to be proud of, we have little. They are in truth but outward signs of a far more precious possession within. We are the pioneers of the new Day, or we are nothing worth talking about. We are at the threshold of our career. ”

“ No one, even in the midst of Massachusetts, was safe during that first decade of the Eighteenth Century. A single Indian, in search of glory, would spend weeks in creeping southward from the far border; he would await his chance long and patiently; he would leap out, and strike, and vanish again, leaving that silent horror behind him. Such deeds, and the constant possibility of them, left their mark upon the whole population. They grew up familiar with violent death in its most terrible forms. ”

“ The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England, and its moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the nature of things and the character of the people. On one side the religious multitude, with their sad visages and dark attire, and, on the other, the group of despotic rulers, with the high churchman in the midst, and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently clad, flushed with wine, proud of unjust authority, and scoffing at the universal groan. ”

“ Montcalm knew what daring could accomplish, but even he had not dreamed of daring such as this. Wolfe, with a great soul kindled into flame by the resolve to achieve a feat almost beyond mortal limitations, dared it, and prevailed.
Till the hour of action, he kept his troops far up the stream. By the 13th, all preparations were made. Night came on, calm, like the heart of the hero who knows that the culminating moment of his destiny has arrived. At such a crisis, the mortal part of the man is transfigured by the towering spirit, and his eyes pierce through the veils of things. ”

“ The short winter day drew to a close; darkness fell, and the church, filled with that great throng of resolute New Englanders, was lighted only by a few wax candles, whose dim flare flickered on the stern and anxious countenances that packed the pews and crowded the aisles, and upon Adams, Young, Quincy, Hancock, and the other leaders, grouped round the pulpit. They were in the house of God: would He provide help for His people? A few hours more, and the cargo in yonder ship would lapse into the hands of the British admiral. ”

“ There was always great personal dignity in Washington, insomuch that nothing like comradeship, in the familiar sense, was ever possible to any one with him; he was totally devoid of the sense of humor, and was therefore debarred from one whole region of human sympathies which Franklin loved to dwell in. It is one of the marvels of history that a man with a mind of such moderate compass as Washington's should have gained the reputation, which he amply deserved, of being the foremost American of his age, and one of the leading figures in human annals. ”

“ Man is entering upon a new career of spiritual freedom: he is to enjoy a hitherto unprecedented condition of political, social and moral liberty—as distinguished from license, which in truth is slavery. The stage for this grand evolution was fixed in the Western Continent, and the pioneers who went thither were inspired with the desire to escape from the thralldom of the past, and to nourish their souls with that pure and exquisite freedom which can afford to ignore the ease of the body, and all temporal luxuries, for the sake of that elixir of immortality. ”

“ Permit us to be as free as yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union with you to be our greatest glory and our greatest happiness. But if you are determined that your ministers shall wantonly sport with the rights of mankind: if neither the voice of justice, the dictates of law, the principles of the constitution, or the suggestions of humanity, can restrain your hands from shedding human blood in such an impious cause, we must then tell you that we will never submit to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for any ministry or nation in the world. ”

“ The will of Parliament, properly signified, must forever keep the colonies dependent upon the sovereign kingdom of Great Britain. If any idea of renouncing allegiance has existed, it was but a momentary frenzy. In a good cause, the force of this country can crush America to atoms. But on this ground of the stamp act, I am one who will lift up my hands against it. I rejoice that America has resisted. In such a cause, your success would be hazardous. America, if she fell, would embrace the pillar of the state, and pull down the constitution along with her. ”

“ Some had come from Virginia, some from New England, and others from the island of Bermuda. They had their little assembly and their governor Stevens, their humble plantations, their modest trade, their beloved solitudes, and the plainest and least obtrusive laws imaginable. They paddled up and down their placid bayous and rivers in birch-bark canoes; they shot deer and 'possums for food and panthers for safety, they loved their wives and begat their children, they wore shirts and leggins of deerskin like the Indians, and they breathed the pure wholesomeness of the warm southern air. ”

“ America, certainly, at this critical epoch in her career, produced a remarkable band of statesmen and patriots, perfectly fitted to the parts they had to play. The two Adamses, Gadsden, Franklin, Otis, Patrick Henry, Livingstone of New York, John Hancock, the wealthy and splendid Boston merchant, Hawley of Connecticut, and Washington, meditating upon the liberties of his country in the retirement of Mount Vernon, and unconsciously preparing himself to lead her armies through the Revolution—there has never been a company of better men active at one time in any country. ”

“ But to fight men whose limbs were made in England—in the old home which the colonists still regarded as theirs, and had not ceased to love and honor, for all this quarrel about duties and laws of trade—that was another matter: it was almost like turning their weapons against themselves. And yet, if there were any value in human liberty, if the words which they had listened to from the lips of Adams and Warren and Hancock meant anything—now was the time to testify to their belief in them. ”

“ There was a touch of the fanatic in many of these countenances, as of men to whom God was a living presence in all their affairs and thoughts, who feared His displeasure more than the king's, who believed that they were His chosen ones, and who knew that His arm was mighty to defend. They were of kin to the men who stood so stubbornly and smote so sore at Marston Moor and Naseby, and afterward had not feared to drag the father of the present Charles to the block. Fiber more unbending than theirs was never wrought into the substance of our human nature; and oppression seemed but to harden it. ”

“ Nothing else remains of a happy and innocent community. Why were they killed? Had they harmed their killers? Was any military advantage gained by their death?—They had harmed no one, and nothing was gained, or pretended to be gained, by their murder: nothing except to establish the principle that, since two countries in Europe were at war, those emigrants of theirs who had voyaged hither in quest of peace and happiness should lie in wait to destroy one another. Human sympathies have, sometimes, strange ways of avouching themselves.
People become accustomed even to massacre. ”