THE HEROES OF THE REVOLUTION 1

EDWARD EVERETT

(1826)

EDWARD EVERETT (1794-1865) was born at Dorchester, Massachusetts. He was educated at Harvard College, and, later, studied in Italy. He began his career as a Unitarian clergyman, but after a short period became professor of Greek Literature at Harvard College. He was afterwards elected president of that institution. For a time he was editor of the North American Review. He served several terms in Congress, and was for three years governor of Massachusetts. During President Fillmore's administration he served as

Secretary of State, succeeding Daniel Webster. Later he was elected to the United States Senate, and after serving two sessions, retired on account of ill health.

Often as it has been repeated, it will bear repetition; it never ought to be omitted in the history of constitutional liberty; it ought especially to be repeated this day the various addresses, petitions, and appeals, the correspondence, the resolutions, the legislative and popular debates, from 1764 to the Declaration of Independence, present a maturity of political wisdom, a strength of argument, a gravity of style, a manly

1 From an oration delivered in Cambridge, July 4, 1826. Everett calls upon the country to pension in a worthy manner, the survivors of the war for national independence.

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eloquence, and a moral courage, of which unquestionably the modern world affords no other example. This meed of praise, substantially accorded at the time by Lord Chatham' in the British parliament, may well be repeated by us. For most of the venerated men to whom it is paid it is but a pious tribute to departed worth. The Lees 2 and the Henrys, Otis, Quincy," Warren, and Samuel Adams,' the men who spoke those words of thrilling power, which raised and directed the storm of resistance, and rang like the voice of fate across the Atlantic, are beyond the reach of our praise. To most of them it was granted to witness some of the fruits of their labors such fruits as revolution do not often bear. Others departed at an untimely hour, or nobly fell in the onset; too soon for this country, too soon for everything but their own undying fame.

But all are not gone; some still survive among us, to hail the jubilee of the independence they declared. Go back, fellow citizens, to that day when Jefferson

1 William Pitt, the elder, called the "Great Commoner." From the first he lifted up his voice in favor of justice to America.

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2 Henry Lee and Richard Henry Lee. Both were patriots of the Revolution. The former delivered the oration which referred to Washington as first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Richard Henry Lee presented in the Continental Congress the celebrated motion, adopted July 2, 1776: "These united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, etc."

3 Patrick Henry.

4 James Otis. See biographical note, page 13.

5 Josiah Quincy, the elder (1744-1775). He denounced the Stamp Act and other oppressive measures, but died before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

• General Joseph Warren. See biographical note, page 15. Samuel Adams. See biographical note, page 27.

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and Adams 1 composed the subcommittee who reported the Declaration of Independence. Think of the mingled sensations of that proud but anxious day, compared with the joy of this. What reward, what crown, what treasure, could the world and all its kingdoms afford, compared with the honor and happiness of having been united in that commission, and living to see its most wavering hopes turned into glorious reality! Venerable men, you have outlived the dark days which followed your more than heroic deed; you have outlived your own strenuous contention, who should stand first among the people whose liberty you had vindicated! You have lived to bear to each other the respect which the nation bears to you both; and each has been so happy as to exchange the honorable name of the leader of a party for that more honorable one, the father of his country. While this, our tribute of respect, on the jubilee of our independence 2 is paid to the gray hairs of the venerable survivor in our neighborhood, let it not less heartily be sped to him, whose hand traced the lines of that sacred charter, which, to the end of time, has made this day illustrious. And is an empty profession of respect all that we owe to the man who can show the original draft of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, in his own handwriting? Ought not a title deed like this to become the acquisition of the nation? Ought it not to be laid up in the public archives? Ought not the price

1 Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. The original of the Declaration of Independence is in Jefferson's handwriting, but the principal part in the debate was taken by John Adams.

2 This address was delivered just fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

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at which it is bought to be a provision for the ease and comfort of the old age of him who drew it? Ought not he who, at the age of thirty, declared the independence of his country, at the age of eighty to be secured by his country in the enjoyment of his own?

Nor would we, on the return of this eventful day, forget the men who, when the conflict of council was over, stood forward in that of arms. Yet let me not, by faintly endeavoring to sketch, do deep injustice to the story of their exploits. The efforts of a life would scarce suffice to draw this picture, in all its astonishing incidents, in all its mingled colors of sublimity and woe, of agony and triumph. But the age of commemoration is at hand. The voice of our fathers' blood begins to cry to us from beneath the soil which it moistened. Time is bringing forward, in their proper relief, the men and the deeds of that high-souled day. The generation of contemporary worthies is gone; the crowd of the unsignalized great and good disappears; and the leaders in war, as well as the Cabinet, are seen, in fancy's eye, to take their stations on the mount of remembrance. They come from the embattled cliffs of Abraham;1 they start from the heaving sods of Bunker Hill; 2 they gather from the blazing lines of Saratoga and Yorktown,1 from the blood-dyed waters

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1 In the battle of the Plains of Abraham, 1759; English and colonial troops fought side by side. The Plains are just outside the walls of Quebec.

2 Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. 3 Saratoga, October 19, 1777.

in the war.

Nominally a British victory.

The first great American success

4 Yorktown, October 19, 1781. Here Cornwallis surrendered with eight thousand men. This victory really ended the war.

of the Brandywine,' from the dreary snows of Valley Forge, and all the hard-fought fields of the war! With all their wounds and all their honors, they rise and plead with us for their brethren who survive, and command us, if indeed we cherish the memory of those who bled in our cause, to show our gratitude, not by sounding words, but by stretching out the strong arm of the country's prosperity, to help the veteran survivors gently down to their graves !

UNION 3

DANIEL WEBSTER

(1830)

MR. PRESIDENT, I have thus stated the reason of my dissent to the doctrines which have been advanced and maintained. I am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and important a subject. But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I cannot, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, without expressing once more my deep conviction that, since it respects

1 Brandywine, 1777, was one of the hardest engagements of the war of independence. Here Washington was defeated while endeavoring to prevent Sir William Howe from capturing Philadelphia. 2 Valley Forge, a little place on the Schuylkill River. Here Washington's army spent the winter of 1778 in great destitution.

3 From a speech delivered in the United States Senate, in 1830, during a debate in which sectionalism was one of the subjects discussed.