Ohio History Journal

ADDRESS OF REV. EDWARD EVERETT HALE.

 

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE ILLINOIS COUNTY,

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES: I certainly

shall detain you but a very few minutes. I am speaking

only because I am commissioned by the Governor of

Massachusetts. We think our State has spoken very well

here to-day already.

Massachusetts sends her hearty congratulations to you,

and, as Dr. Loring says, " Massachusetts does not forget

her children, her grandchildren, and the children of her

grandchildren." Indeed, they say, kindly or unkindly,

that Massachusetts does not forget any of her brethren

wherever they may be; and when they are such as she

looks upon so proudly here, why should she forget them?

Why should she forget them ?

There is a single contribution which the Governor

would ask me to make, I think, to those lessons for the

tuture that we have been speaking of, which have been

taught in all her history. It has been her fortune since

1620, when, unfortunately, there was no one else to speak

for the rights of men; it has been her fortune that, when

there has been any speaking for men, either in commemo-

ration of victory, or in prophesying fight, her speakers

should be among the first called forth, and it shall con-

tinue to be so in days to come.

It happened that it was Manasseh Cutler who was to be

the one who should call upon that Continental Congress

to do the duty which they had pushed aside for five or six

years. It happened that this diplomatist succeeded in

doing in four days what had not been done in four years

before.

What was the weight which Manasseh Cutler threw into

the scale? It was not wealth; it was not the armor of

the old time. It was simply the fact, known to all men,

that the men of New England would not emigrate into

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Address of Rev. Edward Everett Hale.   95

any region where labor and its honest recompense is dis-

honorable.

The New England men will not go where it is not hon-

orable to do an honest day's work, and for that honest day's

work to claim an honest recompense. They never have

done it, and they never will do it; and it was that potent

fact, known to all men, that Manasseh Cutler had to urge

in his private conversation and in his diplomatic work.

When he said, " I am going away from New York, and my

constituents are not going to do this thing," he meant

exactly what he said. They were not going to any place

where labor was dishonorable, and where workmen were

not recognized as freemen.

If they had not taken his promises they would not have

come here; they would have gone to the Holland Com-

pany's lands in New York, or where Massachusetts was

begging them to go -into the valley of the Penobscot or

Kennebec; they would not go where labor was not hon-

orable.

That has been the principle of the men from Massachu-

setts from 1620 to this moment, and it will be taught to

their children for all time. It becomes us to say this.

I have been approached again and again and again by

gentlemen in Louisiana and Texas who said, "What can

we do to induce your hearty New Englanders to come

down into Louisiana and Texas?" and I always answer,

with a little laugh, "You would like some of our good

capital." "Yes," they say, "but we would like your men,

the good old New England stock, on our savannas and

prairies." The answer is, "The men of New England

are not coming to the most beautiful savannas, the most

fertile prairies, if thereby any taint upon honest industry

rests upon them-if there is anything disgraceful in

honest work; and the capital of New England will never

be invested where there is no honest security given-

whether it be by the blackest slave or the whitest laborer

who chooses to employ that slave on his plantation."

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96    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

"Men are born equal;" these were the words of Jeffer-

son; these were the words which were put into the Bill of

Rights of Massachusetts. That has been taught all the

way through by all her children, all her representatives,

all her acts.

Foreign writers do not understand it. I have hardly

known a writer in England, or, indeed, on the Continent,

who seems to understand it. They think we owe this

wealth and prosperity to the rich river bottoms of Ohio,

and that when these are exhausted the resources of wealth

are exhausted. Or they say that it is due to the mines of

the country. Tell me of what use were the mines, or of

what use the river bottoms, as long as those long-headed

people, of whom Professor Putnam told us, were here?

How many people did the Shawnees feed when they had

possession of these river bottoms? Did not this same

natural gas, of which they speak, flow under us then?

Were not the same coal fields here?

It is not your silver; it is not your gold; it is not your

coal, or your iron, or your lead; it is not your gas that

makes our wealth. It is the men who control these ele-

ments of nature and call them into being, and it is the

women who go with the men to make the homes for them.

That is the lesson which America is teaching to the

whole world; and out of that we will come to learn that

lesson of political teaching that is not understood except

as a certain theory about the government,-that there are

certain natural advantages which it seems that God

Almighty has seen fit to give to this part of the world.

Abraham Lincoln used an expression in his first message

which was laughed at by many public writers and noticed

much in Europe. It was not so much noticed here, be-

cause we knew it was true. They looked at it as a piece

of bombast-a piece of gross exaggeration. Mr. Lincoln

said there was many a regiment which he sent to the front

in 1861 from which he could have chosen every member

of his cabinet, every officer he needed in the administra-



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Address of Rev. Edward Everett Hale.    97

tion of the country, and the country would have been well

served. He could have picked out these men from every

regiment. We know it was true.

The same thing might be repeated,-it is not a mere

matter of pleasantry; it is simply a square fact, and I un-

dertake to repeat this statement now, and here.

Suppose, in the great crisis of next fall, the country, in

determining between two citizens of Ohio as to who shall

be the next President, should choose Senator Thurman,

or suppose they should choose Senator John Sherman.

Sitting here, either of them might look around upon this

audience which I am addressing-might take out his note

book and jot down every one of his Cabinet, every Judge

of the Supreme Court, every commissioner, every mem-

ber of his diplomatic corps to represent him abroad-and

you know he would be well served.

A country that is served like that in what we are pleased

to call the higher walk of its administration, which is

served that way in every walk, which is served the best

way in every demand-is the one which will find its

workers when these great resources are to be developed.

Whenever it needs anybody, the right person comes to the

front.

How does that happen? Because of your matchless

system of schools; because of your Declaration of Inde-

pendence; because of the Ordinance of 1787; because

every boy or girl, though born in a log cabin, though left

an orphan in babyhood, shall grow up to whatever place

his spirit, his ambition, his desires may lead him. That is

the secret of the wealth of America, and that secret is not

to be found in mere physical advantages.

How did these people come here to found this great

empire, and what made the empire prosper ? Was it the

encouragement received? Look at your literature and

newspapers of that time, and you will find that through

the Eastern coast the enterprise was ridiculed.  I can

show you caricatures of the people coming back from

 

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98    Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly.

Ohio-poor, and where statements were made against their

going to this wilderness.

Robert Livingston, after he had bought Louisiana, said:

"I know we have paid a terrible price, but I can have the

price back; I have told then that there will no man cross

the Mississippi in the next century." So much for the

wisdom of a wise man.

But the rank and file-the men who were your grand-

fathers, and the women who were your grandmothers-

these crossed the Alleghenies, and they made the new

America. Always, since this country has come into being,

the people have been in advance. It was the people who

raised up and sustained John Quincy Adams, when the

statesmen would have put him out of the Senate of the

United States. It was the people who took the matter in

their own hands and reconstructed the Union so it will

stand forever as it is; and it is for you and me, in our con-

gratulations of to-day, solemnly to pledge ourselves, before

the altar which we call holiest, that this people shall be

recognized always; that the rights promised shall be kept;

that the people shall stand as the rulers of this great

nation-given the absolute supremacy, under the law of

God, through a government "of the people, for the peo-

ple, by the people."

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