Public Speaking: Principles and Practice Part 20

BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

Andre's story is the one overmastering romance of the Revolution.

American and English literature is full of eloquence and poetry in tribute to his memory and sympathy for his fate. After the lapse of a hundred years, there is no abatement of absorbing interest. What had this young man done to merit immortality? The mission whose tragic issue lifted him out of the oblivion of other minor British officers, in its inception was free from peril or daring, and its objects and purposes were utterly infamous.

Had he succeeded by the desecration of the honorable uses of pa.s.ses and flags of truce, his name would have been held in everlasting execration. In his failure the infant Republic escaped the dagger with which he was feeling for its heart, and the crime was drowned in tears for his untimely end. His youth and beauty, the brightness of his life, the calm courage in the gloom of his death, his early love and disappointment, surrounded him with a halo of poetry and pity which have secured for him what he most sought and could never have won in battles and sieges,--a fame and recognition which have outlived that of all the generals under whom he served.

Are kings only grateful, and do not republics forget? Is fame a travesty, and the judgment of mankind a farce? America had a parallel case in Captain Nathan Hale. Of the same age as Andre, he, after graduation at Yale College with high honors, enlisted in the patriot cause at the beginning of the contest, and secured the love and confidence of all about him. When none else would go upon a most important and perilous mission, he volunteered, and was captured by the British.

While Andre received every kindness, courtesy, and attention, and was fed from Was.h.i.+ngton's table, Hale was thrust into a noisome dungeon in the sugarhouse. While Andre was tried by a board of officers and had ample time and every facility for defense, Hale was summarily ordered to execution the next morning. While Andre's last wishes and bequests were sacredly followed, the infamous Cunningham tore from Hale his cherished Bible and destroyed before his eyes his last letter to his mother and sister, and asked him what he had to say. "All I have to say," was his reply, "is, I regret I have but one life to lose for my country."

The dying declarations of Andre and Hale express the animating spirit of their several armies, and teach why, with all her power, England could not conquer America. "I call upon you to witness that I die like a brave man," said Andre, and he spoke from British and Hessian surroundings, seeking only glory and pay. "I regret I have but one life to lose for my country," said Hale; and, with him and his comrades, self was forgotten in that absorbing, pa.s.sionate patriotism which pledges fortune, honor, and life to the sacred cause.

THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON

BY THEODORE PARKER

One raw morning in spring--it will be eighty years the nineteenth day of this month--Hanc.o.c.k and Adams, the Moses and Aaron of that Great Deliverance, were both at Lexington; they also had "obstructed an officer" with brave words. British soldiers, a thousand strong, came to seize them and carry them over sea for trial, and so nip the bud of Freedom auspiciously opening in that early spring. The town militia came together before daylight, "for training." A great, tall man, with a large head and a high, wide brow, their captain,--one who had "seen service,"--marshaled them into line, numbering but seventy, and bade "every man load his piece with powder and ball." "I will order the first man shot that runs away," said he, when some faltered. "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they want to have a war, let it begin here."

Gentlemen, you know what followed; those farmers and mechanics "fired the shot heard round the world." A little monument covers the bones of such as before had pledged their fortune and their sacred honor to the Freedom of America, and that day gave it also their lives. I was born in that little town, and bred up amid the memories of that day. When a boy, my mother lifted me up, on Sunday, in her religious, patriotic arms, and held me while I read the first monumental line I ever saw-- "Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind."

Since then I have studied the memorial marbles of Greece and Rome, in many an ancient town; nay, on Egyptian obelisks, have read what was written before the Eternal roused up Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt, but no chiseled stone has ever stirred me to such emotion as these rustic names of men who fell "In the Sacred Cause of G.o.d and their Country."

Gentlemen, the Spirit of Liberty, the Love of Justice, was early fanned into a flame in my boyish heart. The monument covers the bones of my own kinsfolk; it was their blood which reddened the long, green gra.s.s at Lexington. It was my own name which stands chiseled on that stone; the tall Captain who marshaled his fellow farmers and mechanics into stern array, and spoke such brave and dangerous words as opened the war of American Independence,--the last to leave the field,--was my father's father. I learned to read out of his Bible, and with a musket he that day captured from the foe, I learned also another religious lesson, that "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to G.o.d." I keep them both "Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind," to use them both "In the Sacred Cause of G.o.d and my Country."

THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE

Reprinted with the permission of Henry W. Grady, Jr.

BY HENRY W. GRADY

I went to Was.h.i.+ngton the other day, and I stood on the Capitol Hill; my heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of my country's Capitol, and the mist gathered in my eyes as I thought of its tremendous significance, and the armies and the treasury, and the judges and the President, and the Congress and the courts, and all that was gathered there. And I felt that the sun in all its course could not look down on a better sight than that majestic home of a republic that had taught the world its best lessons of liberty. And I felt that if honor and wisdom and justice abided therein, the world would at last owe that great house in which the ark of the covenant of my country is lodged, its final uplifting and its regeneration.

Two days afterward, I went to visit a friend in the country, a modest man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple, unpretentious house, set about with big trees, encircled in meadow and field rich with the promise of harvest.

Inside was quiet, cleanliness, thrift, and comfort. Outside, there stood my friend, the master, a simple, upright man, with no mortgage on his roof, no lien on his growing crops, master of his own land and master of himself. There was his old father, an aged, trembling man, but happy in the heart and home of his son.

They started to their home, and as they reached the door the old mother came with the sunset falling fair on her face, and lighting up her deep, patient eyes, while her lips, trembling with the rich music of her heart, bade her husband and son welcome to their home. Beyond was the housewife, busy with her household cares, clean of heart and conscience, the buckler and helpmeet of her husband. Down the lane came the children, trooping home after the cows, seeking as truant birds do the quiet of their home nest.

And I saw the night come down on that house, falling gently as the wings of the unseen dove. And the old man--while a startled bird called from the forest, and the trees were shrill with the cricket's cry, and the stars were swarming in the sky--got the family around him, and, taking the old Bible from the table, called them to their knees, the little baby hiding in the folds of its mother's dress, while he closed the record of that simple day by calling down G.o.d's benediction on that family and on that home. And while I gazed, the vision of that marble Capitol faded. Forgotten were its treasures and its majesty, and I said, "Oh, surely here in the homes of the people are lodged at last the strength and the responsibility of this government, the hope and the promise of this republic."

GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT

BY CANON G. W. FARRAR

When Abraham Lincoln sat, book in hand, day after day, under the tree, moving round it as the shadow crossed, absorbed in mastering his task; when James Garfield rang the bell at Hiram Inst.i.tute on the very stroke of the hour and swept the schoolroom as faithfully as he mastered his Greek lesson; when Ulysses Grant, sent with his team to meet some men who came to load his cart with logs, and, finding no men, loaded the cart with his own boy's strength, they showed in the conscientious performance of duty the qualities which were to raise them to become kings of men. When John Adams was told that his son, John Quincy Adams, had been elected President of the United States, he said, "He has always been laborious, child and man, from infancy."

But the youth was not destined to die in the deep valley of obscurity and toil, in which it is the lot--and perhaps the happy lot--of most of us to spend our little lives. The hour came; the man was needed. In 1861 there broke out that most terrible war of modern days. Grant received a commission as Colonel of Volunteers, and in four years the struggling toiler had been raised to the chief command of a vaster army than has ever been handled by any mortal man. Who could have imagined that four years would make that enormous difference? But it is often so. The great men needed for some tremendous crisis have stepped often, as it were, out of a door in the wall which no man had noticed; and, unannounced, unheralded, without prestige, have made their way silently and single-handed to the front. And there was no luck in it. It was a work of inflexible faithfulness, of indomitable resolution, of sleepless energy, and iron purpose and tenacity. In the campaigns at Fort Donelson; in the desperate battle at s.h.i.+loh; in the siege of Corinth; in battle after battle, in seige after seige; whatever Grant had to do, he did it with his might. Other generals might fail--he would not fail. He showed what a man could do whose will was strong. He undertook, as General Sherman said of him, what no one else would have ventured and his very soldiers began to reflect something of his indomitable determination.

His sayings revealed the man. "I have nothing to do with opinions," he said at the outset," and shall only deal with armed rebellion." "In riding over the field," he said at s.h.i.+loh, "I saw that either side was ready to give way, if the other showed a bold front. I took the opportunity, and ordered an advance along the whole line." "No terms,"

he wrote to General Buckner at Fort Donelson (and it is pleasant to know that General Buckner stood as a warm friend beside his dying bed); "no terms other than unconditional surrender can be accepted." "My headquarters," he wrote from Vicksburg, "will be on the field." With a military genius which embraced the vastest plans while attending to the smallest details, he defeated, one after another, every great general of the Confederates except Stonewall Jackson. The Southerners felt that he held them as in the grasp of a vise; that this man could neither be arrested nor avoided. For all this he has been severely blamed. He ought not to be blamed. He has been called a butcher, which is grossly unjust. He loved peace; he hated bloodshed; his heart was generous and kind. His orders were to save lives, to save treasure, but at all costs to save his country--and he did save his country.

After the surrender at Appomattox Court House, the war was over. He had put his hand to the plow and had looked not back. He had made blow after blow, each following where the last had struck; he had wielded like a hammer the gigantic forces at his disposal, and had smitten opposition into the dust. It was a mighty work, and he had done it well. Surely history has shown that for the future destinies of a mighty nation it was a necessary and blessed work!

AMERICAN COURAGE

From the copyrighted print in "A Modern Reader and Speaker," by George Riddle, with the permission of Duffield and Company, New York, publishers.

BY SHERMAN h.o.a.r

I fear we undervalue the devotion to country which comes from a contemplation of what has been done and suffered in her name. I feel that we teach those who are to make or mar the future of this nation too much of what has been done elsewhere, and too little of what has been done here. Courage is the characteristic of no one land or time.

The world's history is full of it and the lessons it teaches. American courage, however, is of this nation; it is ours, and if the finest national spirit is worth the creating; if patriotism is still a quality to be engendered in our youth; if love of country is still to be a strong power for good, those acts of devotion and of heroic personal sacrifice with which our history is filled, are worthy of earnest study, of continued contemplation, and of perpetual consideration.

"Let him who will, sing deeds done well across the sea, Here, lovely Land, men bravely live and die for Thee."

The particular example I desire to speak about is of that splendid quality of courage which dares everything not for self or country, but for an enemy. It is of that kind which is called into existence not by dreams of glory, or by love of land, but by the highest human desire; the desire to mitigate suffering in those who are against us.

In the afternoon of the day after the battle of Fredericksburg, General Kershaw of the Confederate army was sitting in his quarters when suddenly a young South Carolinian named Kirkland entered, and, after the usual salutations, said: "General, I can't stand this." The general, thinking the statement a little abrupt, asked what it was he could not stand, and Kirkland replied: "Those poor fellows out yonder have been crying for water all day, and I have come to you to ask if I may go and give them some." The "poor fellows" were Union soldiers who lay wounded between the Union and Confederate lines. To go to them, Kirkland must go beyond the protection of the breastworks and expose himself to a fire from the Union sharpshooters, who, so far during that day, had made the raising above the Confederate works of so much as a head an act of extreme danger. General Kershaw at first refused to allow Kirkland to go on his errand, but at last, as the lad persisted in his request, declined to forbid him, leaving the responsibility for action with the boy himself. Kirkland, in perfect delight, rushed from the general's quarters to the front, where he gathered all the canteens he could carry, filled them with water, and going over the breastworks, started to give relief to his wounded enemies. No sooner was he in the open field than our sharpshooters, supposing he was going to plunder their comrades, began to fire at him. For some minutes he went about doing good under circ.u.mstances of most imminent personal danger. Soon, however, those to whom he was taking the water recognized the character of his undertaking. All over the field men sat up and called to him, and those too hurt to raise themselves, held up their hands and beckoned to him. Soon our sharpshooters, who luckily had not hit him, saw that he was indeed an Angel of Mercy, and stopped their fire, and two armies looked with admiration at the young man's pluck and loving- kindness. With a beautiful tenderness, Kirkland went about his work, giving of the water to all, and here and there placing a knapsack pillow under some poor wounded fellow's head, or putting in a more comfortable position some shattered leg or arm. Then he went back to his own lines and the fighting went on. Tell me of a more exalted example of personal courage and self-denial than that of that Confederate soldier, or one which more clearly deserves the name of Christian fort.i.tude. In that terrible War of the Rebellion, Kirkland gave up his life for a mistaken cause in the battle of Chickamauga, but I cannot help thanking G.o.d that, in our reunited country, we are joint heirs with the men from the South in the glory and inspiration that come from such heroic deeds as his.

THE MINUTEMEN OF THE REVOLUTION

Reprinted, with permission, from "The Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis," Vol. III. Copyright, 1894, by Harper and Brothers.

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

The Minuteman of the Revolution! And who was he? He was the old, the middle-aged, and the young. He was the husband and the father, who left his plow in the furrow and his hammer on the bench, and marched to die or be free. He was the son and lover, the plain, shy youth of the singing school and the village choir, whose heart beat to arms for his country, and who felt, though he could not say with the old English cavalier:--

"I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more."

He was the man who was willing to pour out his life's blood for a principle. Intrenched in his own honesty, the king's gold could not buy him; enthroned in the love of his fellow citizens, the king's writ could not take him; and when, on the morning of Lexington, the king's troops marched to seize him, his sublime faith saw, beyond the clouds of the moment, the rising sun of the America we behold, and, careless of himself, mindful only of his country, he exultingly exclaimed, "Oh, what a glorious morning!" And then, amid the flas.h.i.+ng hills, the ringing woods, the flaming roads, he smote with terror the haughty British column, and sent it shrinking, bleeding, wavering, and reeling through the streets of the village, panic-stricken and broken.

Him we gratefully recall to-day; him we commit in his immortal youth to the reverence of our children. And here amid these peaceful fields,-- here in the heart of Middles.e.x County, of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, stand fast, Son of Liberty, as the minuteman stood at the old North Bridge. But should we or our descendants, false to justice or humanity, betray in any way their cause, spring into life as a hundred years ago, take one more step, descend, and lead us, as G.o.d led you in saving America, to save the hopes of man.

No hostile fleet for many a year has vexed the waters of our coast; nor is any army but our own likely to tread our soil. Not such are our enemies to-day. They do not come, proudly stepping to the drumbeat, their bayonets flas.h.i.+ng in the morning sun. But wherever party spirit shall strain the ancient guarantees of freedom; or bigotry and ignorance shall lay their fatal hands on education; or the arrogance of caste shall strike at equal rights; or corruption shall poison the very springs of national life,--there, Minuteman of Liberty, are your Lexington Green and Concord Bridge. And as you love your country and your kind, and would have your children rise up and call you blessed, spare not the enemy. Over the hills, out of the earth, down from the clouds, pour in resistless might. Fire from every rock and tree, from door and window, from hearthstone and chamber. Hang upon his flank from morn to sunset, and so, through a land blazing with indignation, hurl the hordes of ignorance and corruption and injustice back--back in utter defeat and ruin.

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE

Reprinted with permission from "The Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis," Vol. III. Copyright 1894, by Harper and Brothers.

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

On Tuesday, April 18, 1775, Gage, the royal governor, who had decided to send a force to Concord to destroy the stores, picketed the roads from Boston into Middles.e.x, to prevent any report of the intended march from spreading into the country. But the very air was electric. In the tension of the popular mind, every sound and sight was significant. In the afternoon, one of the governor's grooms strolled into a stable where John Ballard was cleaning a horse. John Ballard was a son of liberty; and when the groom idly remarked in nervous English "about what would occur to-morrow," John's heart leaped and his hand shook, and, asking the groom to finish cleaning the horse, he ran to a friend, who carried the news straight to Paul Revere.