Chapter IV: Part 4

And when success perched upon our banners, when the bugle sounded the glad notes of final and triumphal victory, the disbanding of that army was even more marvellous than its organization. It disappeared, not as the flood of waters of the spring, which rend the earth, and leave havoc and destruction in their course; but rather, as was once eloquently said, like the snows of winter under a genial sun, leaving the face of Nature untouched, and the handiwork of man undisturbed; not injuring, but moistening and fructifying the earth. [Applause.] But the mission of the Citizen Soldier did not end there, it has not ended yet. We have no European enemy to dread, it is true; we have on our own continent no foeman worthy of our steel; for, unlike the lands of Europe, this land is not cursed by propinquity. But we must look straight in the face the fact that we have in our midst a discontented class, repudiated alike by employers and by honest laborers. They come here from the effete monarchies of the old world, rave about the horrors of tyrannous governments, and make no distinction between them and the blessings of a free and independent government. They have, but a little while ago, created scenes in which mob-law ruled the hour, riot held its sanguinary sway, and the earth of our streets tasted the blood of our citizens. When such scenes as these occur, we cannot wait for aid from the crews of vessels in the offing, we cannot look for succor to the army garrisons of distant forts; but in our great cities--those plague spots in the body politic--we want trained militia who can rally as rapidly as the long roll can be beaten. And I know that all property-owners feel safer, that all law-abiding citizens breathe freer, when they see a militia, particularly like that in our own State, go forth in the summer to be inured to the hardships of the march, to the discipline of tent-life in the field, exhibiting an _esprit de corps_, a discipline, a true touch of the elbow, which is beyond all praise. I love to take off my hat to their marching column; I love to salute its passing banners. They will always be the true bulwark of our defence. I know of no man, and no set of men, who more gladly or more eagerly make this statement than those who have been reared in the regular army; and I take particular pride in making this acknowledgment and paying this tribute in the presence of the senior and the most illustrious living commander of our Citizen Soldiery. [Allusion to General Sherman followed by great applause.]

* * * * *

THE MANY-SIDED PURITAN

[Speech of Horace Porter at the eighty-second annual dinner of the
New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1887.
Ex-Judge Horace Russell, the President of the Society, in
introducing General Porter, said: "James T. Brady used to say that
a good lawyer imbibed his law rather than read it. [Laughter.] If
that proposition holds true in other regards, the gentleman whom I
am to call to the next toast is one of the very best of New
Englanders--General Horace Porter [applause], who will speak to
'Puritan Influence.'"]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--While you were eating Forefathers' dinner here a year ago, I happened to be in Mexico, but on my return I found that the Puritan influence had extended to me, for I was taken for the distinguished head of this organization, and was in receipt of no end of letters addressed to General Horace Russell and Judge Horace Porter and Mr. Horace Russell and Porter, President of the New England Society, and all begging for a copy of Grady's[5] speech. Distant communities had got the names of the modern Horatii mixed. [Laughter.] In replying I had to acknowledge that my nativity barred me out from the moral realms of this puritanical society, and I could only coincide with Charles II when he said he always admired virtue, but he never could imitate it. [Laughter and applause.] When the Puritan influence spread across the ocean; when it was imported here as part of the cargo of the Mayflower, the crew of the craft, like sensible men, steered for the port of New York, but a reliable tradition informs us that the cook on board that vessel chopped his wood on deck and always stood with his broadaxe on the starboard side of the binnacle, and that this mass of ferruginous substance so attracted the needle that the ship brought up in Plymouth harbor. And the Puritans did not reach New York harbor for a couple of hundred years thereafter, and then in the persons of the members of the New England Society. It is seen that the same influences are still at work, for the fact that these Puritans have brought up in Delmonico's haven of rest is entirely owing to the attractions of the cook. [Laughter and applause.]

The old Puritan was not the most rollicking, the jolliest, or the most playful of men. He at times amused himself sadly; he was given to a mild disregard of the conventionalities. He had suppressed bear-baiting, not, it is believed, because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the audience. He found the Indians were the proprietors of the land, and he felt himself constrained to move against them with his gun with a view to increasing the number of absentee landlords. [Laughter and applause.] He found the Indians on one side and the witches on the other. He was surrounded with troubles. He had to keep the Indians under fire and the witches over it. These were some of the things that reconciled that good man to sudden death. He frequently wanted to set up a mark and swear at it, but his principles would not permit him. He never let the sun go down upon his wrath, but he, no doubt, often wished that he was in that region near the pole where the sun does not go down for six months at a time, and gives wrath a fair chance to materialize. He was a thoughtful man. He spent his days inventing snow-ploughs and his evenings in sipping hot rum and ruminating upon the probable strength of the future Prohibition vote. Those were times when the wives remonstrated with their husbands regarding the unfortunate and disappointing results of too much drink, particularly when it led the men to go out and shoot at Indians--and miss them. [Long continued laughter.] It is supposed that these men, like many others, generally began drinking on account of the bite of a snake, and usually had to quit on account of attacks from the same reptiles.

But, Mr. President, if you will allow me a few words of becoming gravity with which to retract any aspersions which I may have inadvertently cast upon the sacred person of the ancient Puritan, I assure you I will use those words with a due sense of the truth of the epigram--that "gravity is a stratagem invented to conceal the poverty of the mind." That rugged old Puritan, firm of purpose and stout of heart, had been fittingly trained by his life in the Old World, for the conspicuous part he was to enact in the New. He was acquainted with hardships, inured to trials, practised in self-abnegation. He had reformed religions, revolutionized society, and shaken the thrones of tyrants. He had learned that tyranny you may have anywhere--it is a weed which grows on any soil--but if you want freedom you must go forth and fight for it. [Long continued applause.]

At his very birth he had had breathed into his nostrils the breath of that true liberty which can turn blind submission into rational obedience, which, as Hall says, can "smother the voice of kings, dissipate the mists of superstition, and by its magic touch kindle the rays of genius, the enthusiasm of poetry, the flames of eloquence." [Applause.] He had the courage of his convictions, he counselled not with his fears. He neither looked to the past with regret nor to the future with apprehension. He might have been a zealot--he was never a hypocrite; he might have been eccentric--he was never ridiculous. He was a Hercules rather than an Adonis. In his warfare he fired hot shot; he did not send in flags of truce; he led forlorn hopes; he did not follow in the wake of charges. When he went forth with his sledge-hammer logic and his saw-mill philosophy, all who stood in the path of his righteous wrath went down before him, with nothing by which to recognize them except the pieces he had left of them. When he crossed the seas to plant his banners in the West, when he disembarked upon the bleak shores of America, the land which was one day to speak with the voice of a mighty prophet, then the infant just discovered in the bulrushes of the New World, he came with loins girded and all accoutred for the great work of founding a race which should create a permanent abiding place for liberty, and one day dominate the destinies of the world. [Prolonged applause.] Unlike the Spanish conqueror upon far southern coasts, the leader did not have to burn his ship to retain his followers, for when the Mayflower spread her sails for home, not a man of Plymouth Colony returned on board her.

The Puritan early saw that in the new land, liberty could not flourish when subject to the caprices of European Courts; he realized with Burke that there was "more wisdom and sagacity in American workshops than in the cabinets of princes." He wanted elbow-room; he was philosophic enough to recognize the truth of the adage that it is "better to sit on a pumpkin and have it all to yourself than to be crowded on a velvet cushion."

When the struggle for independence came, the Puritan influence played no small part in the contest. When a separate government had been formed he showed himself foremost in impressing upon it his principles of broad and comprehensive liberty. He dignified labor; he believed that as the banner of the young Republic was composed of and derived its chief beauty from its different colors, so should its broad folds cover and protect its citizens of different colors.

He was a grand character in history. We take off our hats to him. We salute his memory. In his person were combined the chivalry of Knighthood, the fervor of the Crusader, the wit of Gascony, and the courage of Navarre. [Prolonged applause.]

* * * * *

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

[Speech of Horace Porter at a dinner given by the Republican Club
in honor of the ninetieth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's
birthday, New York City, February 12, 1889. Mortimer C. Addams, the
newly elected President of the Club, occupied the chair. General
Porter was called upon for a response to the first toast, "Abraham
Lincoln--the fragrant memory of such a life will increase as the
generations succeed each other." General Porter was introduced by
the chairman, as one "whose long acquaintance with Abraham Lincoln,
intimate relationship, both official and personal, with our
illustrious chieftain, General Grant, and distinguished career as a
brave defender of his country in the time of her peril, have
eminently fitted him to tell the story of our great War
President."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--I am encumbered with diverse misgivings in being called upon to rise and cast the first firebrand into this peaceful assemblage, which has evidently been enjoying itself so much up to the present time. From the herculean task accomplished by the Republican party last fall we have come to think of its members as men of deeds and not of words, except the spellbinders. [Laughter.] I fear your committee is treating me like one of those toy balloons that are sent up previous to the main ascension, to test the currents of the air; but I hope that in this sort of ballooning I may not be interrupted by the remark that interrupted a Fourth of July orator in the West when he was tickling the American Eagle under both wings, delivering himself of no end of platitudes and soaring aloft into the brilliant realms of fancy when a man in the audience quietly remarked: "If he goes on throwing out his ballast, in that way, the Lord knows where he will land." [Laughter.] If I demonstrate to-night that dryness is a quality not only of the champagne but of the first speech as well, you may reflect on that remark as Abraham Lincoln did at City Point after he had been shaken up the night before in his boat in a storm in Chesapeake Bay. When he complained of the feeling of gastronomic uncertainty which we suffer on the water, a young staff officer rushed up to him with a bottle of champagne and said: "This is the cure for that sort of an ill." Said the President: "No, young man, I have seen too many fellows seasick ashore from drinking that very article." [Laughter.]

The story of the life of Abraham Lincoln savors more of romance than reality. It is more like a fable of the ancient days than a story of a plain American of the nineteenth century. The singular vicissitudes in the life of our martyred President surround him with an interest which attaches to few men in history. He sprang from that class which he always alluded to as the "plain people," and never attempted to disdain them. He believed that the government was made for the people, not the people for the government. He felt that true Republicanism is a torch--the more it is shaken in the hands of the people the brighter it will burn. He was transcendently fit to be the first successful standard-bearer of the progressive, aggressive, invincible Republican party. [Loud applause.] He might well have said to those who chanced to sneer at his humble origin what a marshal of France raised from the ranks said to the haughty nobles of Vienna boasting of their long line of descent, when they refused to associate with him: "I am an ancestor; you are only descendants!" [Laughter and cheers.] He was never guilty of any posing for effect, any attitudinizing in public, any mawkish sentimentality, any of that puppyism so often bred by power, that dogmatism which Johnson said was only puppyism grown to maturity. [Laughter.] He made no claim to knowledge he did not possess. He felt with Addison that pedantry and learning are like hypocrisy in religion--the form of knowledge without the power of it. He had nothing in common with those men of mental malformation who are educated beyond their intellects. [Laughter.]

The names of Washington and Lincoln are inseparably associated, and yet as the popular historian would have us believe one spent his entire life in chopping down acorn trees and the other splitting them up into rails. Washington could not tell a story. Lincoln always could. [Laughter.] And Lincoln's stories always possessed the true geometrical requisites, they were never too long, and never too broad. [Laughter.] He never forgot a point. A sentinel pacing near the watchfire while Lincoln was once telling some stories quietly remarked that "He had a mighty powerful memory, but an awful poor forgettery." [Laughter.]

The last time I ever heard him converse, he told one of the stories which best illustrated his peculiar talent for pointing a moral with an anecdote. Speaking of England's assistance to the South, and how she would one day find she had aided it but little and only injured herself, he said: "Yes, that reminds me of a barber in Sangamon County. He was about going to bed when a stranger came along and said he must have a shave. He said he had a few days' beard on his face, and he was going to a ball, and the barber must cut it off. The barber got up reluctantly, dressed, and put the stranger in a chair with a low back to it, and every time he bore down he came near dislocating his patient's neck. He began by lathering his face, including nose, eyes, and ears, strapped his razor on his boot, and then made a drive scraping down the right cheek, carrying away the beard and a pimple and two or three warts. The man in the chair said: 'You appear to make everything level as you go.' [Laughter.] The barber said: 'Yes, if this handle don't break, I will get away with what there is there.' The man's cheeks were so hollow that the barber could not get down into the valleys with the razor and an ingenious idea occurred to him to stick his finger in the man's mouth and press out the cheeks. Finally he cut clean through the cheek and into his own finger. He pulled the finger out of the man's mouth, and snapped the blood off it, looked at him, and said: 'There, you lantern-jawed cuss, you have made me cut my finger.'" [Laughter.] "Now," said Lincoln, "England will find she has got the South into a pretty bad scrape from trying to administer to her. In the end she will find she has only cut her own finger." [Applause.]

But his heart was not always attuned to mirth; its chords were often set to strains of sadness. Yet throughout all his trials he never lost the courage of his convictions. When he was surrounded on all sides by doubting Thomases, by unbelieving Saracens, by discontented Catilines, his faith was strongest. As the Danes destroyed the hearing of their war-horses in order that they might not be affrighted by the din of battle, so Lincoln turned a deaf ear to all that might have discouraged him, and exhibited an unwavering faith in the justice of the cause and the integrity of the Union. [Cries of "Bravo!" and cheers.]

It is said that for three hundred years after the battle of Thermopylæ every child in the public schools of Greece was required to recite from memory the names of the three hundred martyrs who fell in the defence of that Pass. It would be a crowning triumph in patriotic education if every school child in America could contemplate each day the grand character and utter the inspiring name of Abraham Lincoln. [Loud applause.]

He has passed from our view. We shall not meet him again until he stands forth to answer to his name at the roll-call when the great of earth are summoned in the morning of the last great reveille. Till then [apostrophizing Lincoln's portrait which hung above the President's head], till then, farewell, gentlest of all spirits, noblest of all hearts! The child's simplicity was mingled with the majestic grandeur of your nature. You have handed down unto a grateful people the richest legacy which man can leave to man--the memory of a good name, the inheritance of a great example! [Loud and enthusiastic applause.]

* * * * *

SIRES AND SONS

[Speech of Horace Porter at the eighty-sixth annual dinner of the
New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1891. J.
Pierpont Morgan, the President, occupied the chair, and called upon
General Porter to speak on "Sires and Sons."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--All my shortcomings upon this occasion must be attributed to the fact that I have just come from last night's New England dinner, in Brooklyn, which occurred largely this morning. They promised me when I accepted their invitation that I should get away early, and I did. I am apprehensive that the circumstance may give rise to statements which may reflect upon my advancing years, and that I may be pointed out as one who has dined with the early New Englanders.

I do not like the fact of Depew's coming into the room so late to-night and leaving so short an interval between his speech and mine. His conduct is of a piece with the conduct of so many married men nowadays who manifest such exceedingly bad taste and want of tact in dying only such a very short time before the remarriage of their wives.

I have acquired some useful experience in attending New England Society dinners in various cities. I dine with New Englanders in Boston; the rejoicing is marked, but not aggressive. I dine with them in New York; the hilarity and cheer of mind are increased in large degree. I dine with them in Philadelphia; the joy is unconfined and measured neither by metes nor bounds. Indeed, it has become patent to the most casual observer that the further the New Englander finds himself from New England the more hilarious is his rejoicing. Whenever we find a son of New England who has passed beyond the borders of his own section, who has stepped out into the damp cold fog of a benighted outside world and has brought up in another State, he seems to take more pride than ever in his descent--doubtless because he feels that it has been so great. [Laughter.]

The New England sire was a stern man on duty and determined to administer discipline totally regardless of previous acquaintance. He detested all revolutions in which he had taken no part. If he possessed too much piety, it was tempered by religion; while always seeking out new virtues, he never lost his grip on his vices. [Laughter.] He was always ambitious to acquire a reputation that would extend into the next world. But in his own individual case he manifested a decided preference for the doctrine of damnation without representation.

When he landed at Plymouth he boldly set about the appalling task of cultivating the alleged soil. His labors were largely lightened by the fact that there were no agricultural newspapers to direct his efforts. By a fiction of speech which could not have been conceived by a less ingenious mind, he founded a government based upon a common poverty and called it a commonwealth. He was prompt and eminently practical in his worldly methods. In the rigors of a New England winter when he found a witch suffering he brought her in to the fire; when he found an Indian suffering he went out and covered him with a shotgun. [Laughter.]

The discipline of the race, however, is chiefly due to the New England mother. She could be seen going to church of a Sabbath with the Bible under one arm and a small boy under the other, and her mind equally harassed by the tortures of maternity and eternity. When her offspring were found suffering from spring fever and the laziness which accompanies it, she braced them up with a heroic dose of brimstone and molasses. The brimstone given here was a reminder of the discipline hereafter; the molasses has doubtless been chiefly responsible for the tendency of the race to stick to everything, especially their opinions. [Laughter.]

The New Englanders always take the initiative in great national movements. At Lexington and Concord they marched out alone without waiting for the rest of the Colonies, to have their fling at the red-coats, and a number of the colonists on that occasion succeeded in interfering with British bullets. It was soon after observed that their afternoon excursion had attracted the attention of England. They acted in the spirit of the fly who bit the elephant on the tail. When the fly was asked whether he expected to kill him he said: "No, but I notice I made him look round." [Laughter.]

_Photogravure after a photograph_

In commemoration of the famous Revolutionary struggle of the farmers of Concord, Mass., April 19, 1775, this statue was erected. The sculptor was Daniel Chester French, a native of Concord. The statue was unveiled at the centennial celebration of the battle, 1875. It is of bronze, heroic size, and stands near the town of Concord, by the battlefield, on the side of the Concord River occupied by the Americans. The position is described by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his lines which are graven in the pedestal of the statue:

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world."]

Such are the inventive faculty and self-reliance of New Englanders that they always entertain a profound respect for impossibilities. It has been largely owing to their influence that we took the negro, who is a natural agriculturist, and made a soldier of him; took the Indian, who is a natural warrior, and made an agriculturist of him; took the American, who is a natural destructionist, and made a protectionist of him. They are always revolutionizing affairs. Recently a Boston company equipped with electricity the horse-cars, or rather the mule-cars, in the streets of Atlanta. When the first electric-motor cars were put into service an aged "contraband" looked at them from the street corner and said: "Dem Yankees is a powerful sma't people; furst dey come down h'yar and freed de niggers, now dey've done freed de mules." [Laughter.]

The New Englander is so constantly engaged in creating changes that in his eyes even variety appears monotonous. When a German subject finds himself oppressed by his Government he emigrates; when a French citizen is oppressed he makes the Government emigrate; when Americans find a portion of their Government trying to emigrate they arm themselves and spend four years in going after it and bringing it back. [Laughter and applause.]

You will find the sons of New England everywhere throughout the world, and they are always at the fore. I happened to be at a French banquet in Paris where several of us Americans spoke, employing that form of the French language which is so often used by Americans in France, and which is usually so successful in concealing one's ideas from the natives. There was a young Bostonian there who believed he had successfully mastered all the most difficult modern languages except that which is spoken by the brake-men on the elevated railroads. When he spoke French the only departure from the accent of the Parisian was that _nuance_ of difference arising from the mere accidental circumstance of one having learned his French in Paris and the other in Boston. The French give much praise to Molière for having changed the pronunciation of a great many French words; but his most successful efforts in that direction were far surpassed by the Boston young man. When he had finished his remarks a French gentleman sitting beside me inquired: "Where is he from?" I replied: "From New England." Said he: "I don't see anything English about him except his French." [Laughter.]

In speaking of the sons of New England sires, I know that one name is uppermost in all minds here to-night--the name of one who added new lustre to the fame of his distinguished ancestors. The members of your Society, like the Nation at large, found themselves within the shadow of a profound grief, and oppressed by a sense of sadness akin to the sorrow of a personal bereavement, as they stood with uncovered heads beside the bier of William T. Sherman; when the echo of his guns gave place to the tolling of cathedral bells; when the flag of his country, which had never been lowered in his presence, dropped to half-mast, as if conscious that his strong arm was no longer there to hold it to the peak; when he passed from the living here to join the other living, commonly called the dead. We shall never meet the great soldier again until he stands forth to answer to his name at roll-call on the morning of the last great reveille. At this board he was always a thrice welcome guest. The same blood coursed in his veins which flows in yours. All hearts warmed to him with the glow of an abiding affection. He was a many-sided man. He possessed all the characteristics of the successful soldier: bold in conception, vigorous in execution, and unshrinking under grave responsibilities. He was singularly self-reliant, demonstrating by all his acts that "much danger makes great hearts most resolute." He combined in his temperament the restlessness of a Hotspur with the patience of a Fabius. Under the magnetism of his presence his troops rushed to victory with all the dash of Cæsar's Tenth Legion. Opposing ranks went down before the fierceness of his onsets, never to rise again. He paused not till he saw the folds of his banners wave above the strongholds he had wrested from the foe.

While mankind will always appreciate the practical workings of the mind of the great strategist, they will also see in his marvellous career much which savors of romance as well as reality, appeals to the imagination and excites the fancy. They will picture him as a legendary knight moving at the head of conquering columns, whose marches were measured not by single miles, but by thousands; as a general who could make a Christmas gift to his President of a great seaboard city; as a chieftain whose field of military operations covered nearly half a continent; who had penetrated everglades and bayous; the inspiration of whose commands forged weaklings into giants; whose orders all spoke with the true bluntness of the soldier; who fought from valley's depth to mountain height, and marched from inland rivers to the sea. No one can rob him of his laurels; no man can lessen the measure of his fame. His friends will never cease to sing pæans in his honor, and even the wrath of his enemies may be counted in his praise. [Prolonged applause.]

* * * * *

THE ASSIMILATED DUTCHMAN

[Speech of Horace Porter at the fourth annual dinner of the
Poughkeepsie District Members of the Holland Society of New York,
October 3, 1893. The banquet was held in commemoration of the
relief of the siege of Leyden, 1574. J. William Beekman, the
President, introduced General Porter as follows: "Gentlemen, we
will now proceed to a toast that we shall all enjoy, I am sure,
after so much has been said about the Dutch. This toast is to be
responded to by a gentleman whom we all know. It is hardly
necessary to introduce him. But I will read the sentiment attached
to this toast: 'The American: Formed of the blendings of the best
strains of Europe, he cannot be worthy of his ancestry without
combining in himself the best qualities of them all.' And I call
upon General Horace Porter to respond."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--We speakers have naturally been a little embarrassed at the outset this evening, for just as we were about to break into speech, your President reminded us that the only one worthy of having a monument built to his memory was William the Silent. Well, it seemed to carry me back to those ancient days of Greece, when Pythagoras inaugurated his School of Silence, and called on Damocles to make the opening speech.

Your President has shown from the start this evening that he is determined to enforce discipline, totally regardless of previous acquaintance. He appears to have been in a Shakespearian mood to-night. He seemed to be looking at each one of these alleged speakers and saying of him: "Therefore, I'll watch him till he be dieted to my request and then I will set upon him." But he must remember that Shakespeare also said: "Dainty bits make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits."

I do not know how the rest of you feel, but after these delicious but somewhat plethoric dinners, I feel very much like Mr. Butterby, when his lavender-colored trousers were sent to him the night before his wedding, and he returned them to the tailor with a note saying, "Let them out two inches around the waist, which will leave a margin for emotion and the wedding breakfast." [Laughter.]

Now, we speakers to-night cannot expect to be received with any vast ebullition of boisterous enthusiasm here, for we understand that every member pays for his own wine. Besides, I am sure that you will not be likely to get any more ideas from me than you would get lather from a cake of hotel soap.

After having wrestled with about thirty dishes at this dinner, and after all this being called upon to speak, I feel a great sympathy with that woman in Ireland who had had something of a field-day on hand. She began by knocking down two somewhat unpopular agents of her absentee landlord, and was seen, later in the day, dancing a jig on the stomach of the prostrate form of the Presbyterian minister. One of her friends admired her prowess in this direction and invited her in, and gave her a good stiff glass of whiskey. Her friend said, "Shall I pour some water in your whiskey?" and the woman replied, "For God's sake, haven't I had trouble enough already to-day?" [Laughter.]

I am a little at a loss still to know how I got into this company to-night. I begin to feel like some of those United States Senators who, after they have reached Washington, look around and wonder how they got there. The nearest approach to being decorated with a sufficiently aristocratic epithet to make me worthy of admission to this Society was when I used to visit outside of my native State and be called a "Pennsylvania Dutchman." But history tells us that at the beginning of the Revolution there was a battle fought at Breed's Hill, and it was called the Battle of Bunker Hill, because it was not fought there; and I suppose I have been brought into this Dutch Society to-night because I am not a Dutchman. [Laughter.]

I have great admiration for these Dutchmen; they always get to the front. When they appear in New York they are always invited to seats on the roof; when they go into an orchestra, they are always given one of the big fiddles to play; and when they march in a procession, they are always sure to get a little ahead of the band. This Society differs materially from other so-called foreign societies. When we meet the English, we invariably refer to the common stock from which we sprang, but in the Dutch Society the stock is always preferred! and when a Dutchman dies, why, his funeral is like that funeral of Abel, who was killed by his brother Cain--no one is allowed to attend unless he belongs to a first family. [Laughter.]

Now, a Dutchman is only happy when he gets a "Van" attached to the front of his name, and a "dam" to the rear end of the city from which his ancestors came. I notice they are all very particular about the "dam." [Laughter.]

There was a lady--a New York young lady--who had been spending several years in England and had just returned. She had posed awhile as a professional beauty. Then she attempted to marry into the aristocracy, but the market for titles was a little dull that year and she came home. She had lived there long enough to become an Anglomaniac. She met a Dutchman in New York--I think he was a member of the Holland Society--and she said: "Everything seems so remarkably commonplace here, after getting back from England; I am sure you must admit that there is nothing so romantic here as in England." The Dutchman remarked: "Well, I don't know about that." She said: "I was stopping at a place in the country, with one of the members of the aristocracy, and there was a little piece of water--a sort of miniature lake, as it were--so sweet. The waters were confined by little rustic walls, so to speak, and that was called the 'Earl's Oath'; we have nothing so romantic in New York, I'm sure." Said the Dutchman: "Oh, yes, here we have McComb's Dam." [Laughter.]

But, Mr. President, I certainly am in earnest sympathy with the patriotic sentiment expressed in the toast which you have been pleased to assign to me to-night, saying, in effect, that the American is composed of the best strains of Europe, and the American cannot be worthy of his ancestors unless he aims to combine within himself the good qualities of all. America has gained much by being the conglomerate country that she is, made up of a commingling of the blood of other races. It is a well-known fact in the crossing of breeds that the best traits predominate in the result. We in this land, have gained much from the purity of those bloods; we have suffered little from the taint.

It is well in this material age, when we are dwelling so much upon posterity, not to be altogether oblivious to pedigree. It has been well said that he who does not respect his ancestors will never be likely to achieve anything for which his descendants will respect him. Man learns but very little in this world from precept; he learns something from experience; he learns much from example, and the "best teachers of humanity are the lives of worthy men."

We have a great many admirable so-called foreign societies in New York, and they are all doing good work--good work in collecting interesting historical data in regard to the ancestors who begat them; in regard to the lands from which they came--good work in the broad field of charity. But it is the Holland Society which seems to be a little closer to us than the others--more _our_ Society, even with those of us who have no Dutch blood in our veins. We feel that these old Dutch names are really more closely associated in our minds with the city of New York than with Holland itself.

The men from whom you sprang were well calculated to carry on the great work undertaken by them. In the first place, in that good old land they had educated the conscience. The conscience never lost its hold upon the man. He stood as firm in his convictions as the rock to its base. His religion was a religion of the soul, and not of the senses. He might have broken the tables of stone on which the laws were written; he never would have broken those laws themselves. He turned neither to the past with regret nor to the future with apprehension. He was a man inured to trials; practised in self-abnegation; educated in the severe school of adversity; and that little band which set out from Holland to take up its career in the New World was well calculated to undertake the work which Providence had marked out for them. Those men had had breathed into their nostrils at their very birth the true spirit of liberty. Somehow or other liberty seemed to be indigenous in that land. They imbibed that true spirit of liberty which does not mean unbridled license of the individual, but that spirit of liberty which can turn blind submission into rational obedience; that spirit of liberty which Hall says stifles the voices of kings, dissipates the mists of superstition, kindles the flames of art, and pours happiness into the laps of the people. Those men started out boldly upon the ocean; they paused not until they dipped the fringes of their banners in the waters of the western seas. They built up this great metropolis. They bore their full share in building up this great nation and in planting in it their pure principles. They builded even better than they knew.

In the past year I think our people have been more inclined than ever before to pause and contemplate how big with events is the history of this land. It was developed by people who believed not in the "divine right of kings," but in the divine right of human liberty. If we may judge the future progress of this land by its progress in the past, it does not require that one should be endowed with prophetic vision to predict that in the near future this young but giant Republic will dominate the policy of the world. America was not born amidst the mysteries of barbaric ages; and it is about the only nation which knows its own birthday. Woven of the stoutest fibres of other lands, nurtured by a commingling of the best blood of other races, America has now cast off the swaddling-clothes of infancy, and stands forth erect, clothed in robes of majesty and power, in which the God who made her intends that she shall henceforth tread the earth; and to-day she may be seen moving down the great highways of history, teaching by example; moving at the head of the procession of the world's events; marching in the van of civilized and christianized liberty, her manifest destiny to light the torch of liberty till it illumines the entire pathway of the world, and till human freedom and human rights become the common heritage of mankind. [Applause.]

* * * * *

TRIBUTE TO GENERAL GRANT

[Speech of Horace Porter at the banquet of the Army of the
Tennessee, upon the occasion of the inauguration of the Grant
Equestrian Statue in Chicago, October 8, 1891.]

MR. CHAIRMAN:--When a man from the armies of the East finds himself in the presence of men of the armies of the West, he feels that he cannot strike their gait. He can only look at them wistfully and say, in the words of Charles II, "I always admired virtue, but I never could imitate it." [Laughter.] If I do not in the course of my remarks succeed in seeing each one of you, it will be because the formation of the Army of the Tennessee to-night is like its formation in the field, when it won its matchless victories, the heavy columns in the centre. [An allusion to the large columns in the room.] [Laughter.]

Almost all the conspicuous characters in history have risen to prominence by gradual steps, but Ulysses S. Grant seemed to come before the people with a sudden bound. Almost the first sight they caught of him was in the flashes of his guns, and the blaze of his camp-fires, those wintry days and nights in front of Donelson. From that hour until the closing triumph at Appomattox he was the leader whose name was the harbinger of victory. From the final sheath of his sword until the tragedy on Mount McGregor he was the chief citizen of the republic and the great central figure of the world. [Applause.] The story of his life savors more of romance than reality. It is more like a fabled tale of ancient days than the history of an American citizen of the nineteenth century. As light and shade produce the most attractive effects in a picture, so the singular contrasts, the strange vicissitudes in his marvellous career, surround him with an interest which attaches to few characters in history. His rise from an obscure lieutenancy to the command of the veteran armies of the republic; his transition from a frontier post of the untrodden West to the Executive Mansion of the nation; his sitting at one time in his little store in Galena, not even known to the Congressman from his own district; at another time striding through the palaces of the Old World, with the descendants of a line of Kings rising and standing uncovered in his presence [Applause.]--these are some of the features of his extraordinary career which appeal to the imagination, excite men's wonder, and fascinate all who read the story of his life. [Applause.]

General Grant possessed in a striking degree all the characteristics of the successful soldier. His methods were all stamped with tenacity of purpose, with originality and ingenuity. He depended for his success more upon the powers of invention than of adaptation, and the fact that he has been compared, at different times, to nearly every great commander in history is perhaps the best proof that he was like none of them. He was possessed of a moral and physical courage which was equal to every emergency in which he was placed: calm amidst excitement, patient under trials, never unduly elated by victory or depressed by defeat. While he possessed a sensitive nature and a singularly tender heart, yet he never allowed his sentiments to interfere with the stern duties of the soldier. He knew better than to attempt to hew rocks with a razor. He realized that paper bullets cannot be fired in warfare. He felt that the hardest blows bring the quickest results; that more men die from disease in sickly camps than from shot and shell in battle.

His magnanimity to foes, his generosity to friends, will be talked of as long as manly qualities are honored. [Applause.]

You know after Vicksburg had succumbed to him he said in his order: "The garrison will march out to-morrow. Instruct your commands to be quiet and orderly as the prisoners pass by, and make no offensive remarks." After Lee's surrender at Appomattox, when our batteries began to fire triumphal salutes, he at once suppressed them, saying, in his order: "The war is over; the rebels are again our countrymen; the best way to celebrate the victory will be to abstain from all demonstrations in the field." [Applause.] After the war General Lee and his officers were indicted in the civil courts of Virginia by directions of a President who was endeavoring to make treason odious and succeeding in making nothing so odious as himself. [Applause.] General Lee appealed to his old antagonist for protection. He did not appeal to that heart in vain. General Grant at once took up the cudgels in his defence, threatened to resign his office if such officers were indicted while they continued to obey their paroles, and such was the logic of his argument and the force of his character that those indictments were soon after quashed. So that he penned no idle platitude; he fashioned no stilted epigrams; he spoke the earnest convictions of an honest heart when he said, "Let us have peace." [Applause.] He never tired of giving unstinted praise to worthy subordinates for the work they did. Like the chief artists who weave the Gobelin tapestries, he was content to stand behind the cloth and let those in front appear to be the chief contributors to the beauty of the fabric. [Applause.]

One of the most beautiful chapters in all history is that which records the generous relations existing between him and Sherman, that great soldier who for so many years was the honored head of this society, that great chieftain whom men will always love to picture as a legendary knight moving at the head of conquering columns, whose marches were measured not by single miles, but by thousands; whose field of military operations covered nearly half a continent; whose orders always spoke with the true bluntness of the soldier; who fought from valley's depths to mountain heights, and marched from inland rivers to the sea. [Applause.] Their rivalry manifested itself only in one respect--the endeavor of each to outdo the other in generosity. With hearts untouched by jealousy, with souls too great for rivalry, each stood ready to abandon the path of ambition when it became so narrow that two could not tread it abreast. [Applause.]

If there be one single word in all the wealth of the English language which best describes the predominating trait of General Grant's character, that word is "loyalty." [Applause.] Loyal to every great cause and work he was engaged in; loyal to his friends; loyal to his family; loyal to his country; loyal to his God. [Applause.] This produced a reciprocal effect in all who came in contact with him. It was one of the chief reasons why men became so loyally attached to him. It is true that this trait so dominated his whole character that it led him to make mistakes; it induced him to continue to stand by men who were no longer worthy of his confidence; but after all, it was a trait so grand, so noble, we do not stop to count the errors which resulted. [Applause.] It showed him to be a man who had the courage to be just, to stand between worthy men and their unworthy slanderers, and to let kindly sentiments have a voice in an age in which the heart played so small a part in public life. Many a public man has had hosts of followers because they fattened on the patronage dispensed at his hands; many a one has had troops of adherents because they were blind zealots in a cause he represented, but perhaps no man but General Grant had so many friends who loved him for his own sake; whose attachment strengthened only with time; whose affection knew neither variableness, nor shadow of turning; who stuck to him as closely as the toga to Nessus, whether he was Captain, General, President, or simply private citizen. [Great applause.]

General Grant was essentially created for great emergencies; it was the very magnitude of the task which called forth the powers which mastered it. In ordinary matters he was an ordinary man. In momentous affairs he towered as a giant. When he served in a company there was nothing in his acts to distinguish him from the fellow-officers; but when he wielded corps and armies the great qualities of the commander flashed forth and his master strokes of genius placed him at once in the front rank of the world's great captains. When he hauled wood from his little farm and sold it in the streets of St. Louis there was nothing in his business or financial capacity different from that of the small farmers about him; but when, as President of the Republic, he found it his duty to puncture the fallacy of the inflationists, to throttle by a veto the attempt of unwise legislators to tamper with the American credit, he penned a State paper so logical, so masterly, that it has ever since been the pride, wonder, and admiration of every lover of an honest currency. [Applause.] He was made for great things, not for little. He could collect for the nation $15,000,000 from Great Britain in settlement of the Alabama claims; he could not protect his own personal savings from the miscreants who robbed him in Wall Street.

But General Grant needs no eulogist. His name is indelibly engraved upon the hearts of his countrymen. His services attest his greatness. He did his duty and trusted to history for his meed of praise. The more history discusses him, the more brilliant becomes the lustre of his deeds. His record is like a torch; the more it is shaken, the brighter it burns. His name will stand imperishable when epitaphs have vanished utterly, and monuments and statues have crumbled into dust; but the people of this great city, everywhere renowned for their deeds of generosity, have covered themselves anew with glory in fashioning in enduring bronze, in rearing in monumental rock that magnificent tribute to his worth which was to-day unveiled in the presence of countless thousands. As I gazed upon its graceful lines and colossal proportions I was reminded of that child-like simplicity which was mingled with the majestic grandeur of his nature. The memories clustering about it will recall the heroic age of the Republic; it will point the path of loyalty to children yet unborn; its mute eloquence will plead for equal sacrifice, should war ever again threaten the Nation's life; generations yet to come will pause to read the inscription which it bears, and the voices of a grateful people will ascend from the consecrated spot on which it stands, as incense rises from holy places, invoking blessings upon the memory of him who had filled to the very full the largest measure of human greatness and covered the earth with his renown. [Applause.]