ADDRESS AT FORT MEIGS
By W. J. CAMERON
The best proof a nation can give that it
is growing
up is a
lively interest in its history. From the
records of what they have
done, a people can form an estimate of
what they are, and from
that they may draw an augury of their
future. Not only does his-
tory recall the past, it also explains
the present. This pilgrimage, to
scenes immortalized in early
northwestern history, arranged by the
historical societies in Ohio, Indiana,
Michigan and Ontario, is more
than a pilgrimage of interest. Of
course, there is the element of
interest--these scenes are replete with
glamorous and thrilling
romance. We are standing on the site of
a famous fort named
for a gallant governor of Ohio. Great
men have passed this way
--Tecumseh, most masterful of Indian
statesmen; William Henry
Harrison, hero of what was then the
"Gateway to the West."
General Hull passed this way hopefully
north, and came this way
south again to he court-martialed after
his woeful disaster. One
hundred and twenty-seven years ago the
region hereabouts was
rich in names which still are borne by
men in the higher ranks of
the United States Army. Here passed the
Kentuckians to their
massacre at Monroe. Around this place
were enacted all degrees
of heroism and incompetence, loyalty and
treason, privation and
suffering and triumph--for the place
where we stand was once the
key to the northwest frontier. If it
were only the color and ex-
citement and interest of history we
seek, we should find plenty of
it here.
But there is something far more valuable
and rewarding
than that. There is here also the lesson
our Country is always
being taught and never quite learns,
that it is one thing to win
a national or social blessing, and
another thing to have and hold
it. Our fathers wrote the Declaration of
their Independence, but
it did not make them independent; they
had to fight for seven
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