Makers of the American republic; a series of patriotic lectures

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MAKERS

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I. The Old Dominion; or, The Virginia Colonists 17

II. The Pilgrim Forefathers

I. The Old Dominion; Or, The Virginia Colonists

I.

OR, THE VIRGINIA COLONISTS.*

A GREAT Statesman of olden times, in speaking to his countrymen, gave them this advice : " Take ye tJiercfore good Jieed unto yourselves; " i.e., " Go to school to self." The advice is good counsel for the American Republic. We are to learn from ourselves ; we are to study our own history. This is not a narrow study nor an uninteresting study nor an unprofitable study. Our Republic has made history rapidly, and it has made it on lines altogether different from the other nations of the world. As a nation our Republic has sprung to the head of nations, and has led them toward a newer civilization and a more abundant liberty.

We have a large history, for we have grown phenomenally. No nation on the earth can match us for growth; we have grown like the wheat in

* Delivered in Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, at a Forefathers'-day service. 21 our harvest-fields. Humboldt informs us that a follower of Cortez sowed the first wheat in America. He found just three kernels in his supply of rice. They got into the rice accidentally. These three kernels he carefully planted. The dividends of this planting in 1895 were millions on millions of bushels. In the month of May, 1607, when the first American colony of Englishmen was planted at Jamestown, Va., there were only one hundred and two souls; now we number sixty-five millions. What is crowded into the history between then and now? The overrule of God ; the noble struggles and sacrifices of our civil fathers ; the planting of everlasting principles and the growth of the same into magnificent institutions ; the play of the forces and events which has made us what we are as a body politic — these things are crowded into our history, and to know them is to know where our strength lies and where our duty lies and where the source of our national perpetuity lies. Do we understand our own institutions? We cannot serve our country intelligently and effectively if we do not. Our national greatness will inevitably go down before a wide-spread national ignorance of these. As the great white dome of our federal capitol at Washington rests upon a circle of giant pillars, even so our national greatness rests upon the vast circle of our civil institutions. These are the pillars of our Republic, and we should so know them as to be able intelligently to guard them. I believe that there is something to be learned from each individual fact pertaining to us as a nation. For example, we are territorially one — solidly one. Our dominion is not fractional. With the exception of Alaska, it lies in one undivided body, animated practically by one blood, using one national language, and living under one law enacted at one center. And yet for all this practically the sun never sets on our territory. On the short summer night the light of the sunset does not cease to gleam on the shining spears of the seal-fishermen of Alton off Alaska before the sunshine commences to flash on the glinting axes of the woodmen in the forests of Maine. We differ from England in this : we are territorially one. The British empire is scattered about the world in no less than forty-one different parcels. Now I believe that the fact that we are one territorially teaches us that we should be and should ever remain one in government, and that every attempt to sever our national union should be treated as treason. The very configuration of our national territory declares, " The Union one and inseparable, now and forever."

My fellow-men, I beHeve that we need just such exercises as those to which this historical service calls us. We need something to incite us to the study of the history of our country. Our national history is a page from God's own book, and is full of divine lessons. We need to know what our nation incarnates ; we need to know what our institutions cost ; we need to know how the builders of our nation suffered and worked. Our institutions cost time and blood and brain. Our Republic incarnates scholarship and patriotism and reformations and revolutions, and the wise providences of that God who is the eternal Master Builder of states. Are these things so, then we have something in our Republic to prize, something to be proud of, something to be loyal to, something to perpetuate, something to pray for, and something for which we should send to God our whole-hearted and enthusiastic Te Deum.

I am here to-night to tell you one of the stories which pertains to the evolution of our nation. There are other stories pertaining to this evolution, such. as the story of the Pilgrims, the story of the Puritans, the story of the Hollanders, the story of the Scotch and their descendants, and the story of the Huguenots. To-night our story is to be the story of " Old Dominion, the Colony of Virginia."

This colony was the oldest of all the colonies. It was the first colony of the English on the new continent. It was unique; it was different from all the others ; it was the last colony from which republicanism had a right to expect anything ; but it turned out to be the colony that was foremost in the inauguration of the Republic. Without its lead and cooperation our Republic would never have had an existence. Viiginia and Massachusetts, standing shoulder to shoulder, did the planning and the leading and the fighting which ushered in the American Revolution. They pushed the Revolution through to a successful conclusion, and afterward they gathered and organized the results of the Revolution so as to make them permanent.

I have said that the Virginia Colony was the last colony from which republicanism had a right to expect any aid. I base this remark upon the popular and ancient name which that colony bore — "Old Dominion."

Do you know why it was called " Old Dominion " ? The answer is interesting. It received this name from the stand which it took and the part which it played during the days of the English Revolution and during the period of the English Commonwealth, inaugurated by Oliver Cromwell. As Virginia was largely Cavalier in those days, it was full of Royalists. It was intensely aristocratic. It was for the king and against the Parliament. When Cromwell beheaded Charles I., thousands of Cavalier Royalists poured into the colony of Virginia. The colony took action through its officials, civil and church, upon the execution of Charles I. It called his execution murder, and it denominated the Parliamentarians regicides. It was enacted that all in the colony who justified the king's death should be considered traitors, and treated as though they had handled the knife and had actually beheaded the king. Sir William Berkeley, a fiery Cavalier, was the governor of the colony at the time, and he led in this legislation. The sympathies of the colony went out to Charles II., the son of the executed king, and he was declared the legal successor of his father. Under the direction of Berkeley, Colonel Richard Lee, a rich planter and a Cavalier, went to visit Charles II. in his exile in France and to offer him Virginia as a kingdom. Lee besought him to cross the Atlantic and to set up his rule in the colony as king. This was the first dominion which Charles II. had offered him. It was his oldest dominion. Charles never forgot this. When he was crowned in England, on the day of his coronation he robed himself in Virginia silk to show his gratitude to Virginia. This lifted Virginia in the estimation of the British empire. When coins were minted under the reign of Charles II. they had stamped on them that the kingdom henceforth consisted of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Virginia. One of these coins may be seen to-day in the Massachusetts Historical Society's collection. This was considered a great honor for the little colony to rank it with such great countries as England and Scotland ; and so the colony was ever after spoken of as " Old Dominion." Charles had dominion here when he had dominion nowhere else.

What hope for a republic, we ask, can come from a colony such as this? Yet the Revolutionary leaders of Virginia, who formed an illustrious group and who gave America its illustrious and Revolutionary sayings, — the sayings that awoke the slumbering spirit of liberty far and near, — were men nearly all of whom were descendants of these bitter Royalists and Cromwell-hating Cavaliers. It was a descendant of this very Richard Lee who went to France to bring Charles II. to Virginia to rule as king, viz., Richard Henry Lee, who originated the Committee of Correspondence which brought the thirteen colonies together to strike unitedly for freedom, and who was the author of the " Address to the Colonies," and who, in the Continental Congress, moved America's Declaration of Independence in these words, which he ofTered as a motion : "Resolved, That these united colonies are and ought to be free and independent States, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved." This motion, made by Richard Henry Lee, a Virginian, was seconded by John Adams, a leader from Massachusetts, and having been debated for three full days, it was finally passed. Thus Richard Henry Lee was a leader and a great man in the new times of Virginia, just as his ancestor, Richard Lee, was a leader and a pushing man in the old times of Virginia.

The first point which I wish to make is this : Old Dominion served America and told in its higher and present making by the things which she fought out of existence and eternally buried and by the progress which she made upon her own self. She struck down and buried the ideals and the principles and the prejudices and the proposals of Richard Lee of the time of the Cromwellian Commonwealth, and she made way for and adopted the advanced ideals and the republican principles of Richard Henry Lee of the Revolutionary era.

The history of the Virginia Colony has not as yet been fully and worthily written. No American history has been adequately written except the history of New England. New England, whose ideal has been education, has through its oldest and best-equipped universities produced the scholars of America and has given the country its national poets, and these have rewarded her by writing her history and putting it into verse and song. There is no discount on the history of New England ; I am not derogating it ; I am only saying that she is fortunate in having the pioneer historians of America. The other colonies will some day have their historians, and then we shall have a new era in American history- writing. Virginia's day is coming; her history is full of remarkable scenes ; they only need to be well told or cast into the form of romance or allowed to flow from the pen of the poet in jeweled words. Give them a Longfellow and a Lowell and a Holmes and a Hawthorne to take them from their homely and traditional form and recast them and put into them the charm of wit and fancy and give them beauty of expression, and they will go thrilling through this nation with a power that will kindle anew the old spirit of liberty and bring into existence a strong, fresh love of country.

The colony of Virginia antedated the colony of Plymouth Rock some thirteen years. It sailed from London in three vessels on December 19, 1606. The names of the three vessels were the Discovery, the Good Speed, and the Susan Content. All London was moved at the sight of these three little ships sailing down the Thames. Prayers were offered in the churches for their welfare, and their praises were sung by the poets. Here are two verses from a glowing lyric of Drayton:

" You brave, heroic minds, Worthy your country's name, That honor still pursue ; Whilst loitering hinds Lurk here at home with shame.

Go and subdue.

" And cheerfully at sea Success you still entice

To get the pearls and gold.

And ours to hold Virginia, Earth's only paradise."

The voyagers reached a spot on the James River where they landed May 13, 1607. They called the spot Jamestown, after the then reigning king, James I. There were just one hundred and two in this noted company. In the sailing- lists we find them classed as " gentlemen, carpenters, laborers, gold-refiners, jewelers, and one perfumer." Unfortunately more than one half the company were " gentlemen " ; and the term " gentlemen " signified persons unused to manual labor. " Gentlemen, jewelers, gold- refiners, and one perfumer " were not the stuff to fight the great American wilderness. Why did they come to Virginia? Some had it warmly at heart to convert the Indians to Christianity ; some looked to the extension of the British empire ; but the great majority expected easily to pick up pearls and gold. They expected to dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, and ship gold.

These Jamestown people had a hard time of it. In the first place, their leaders were worthless and indolent ; and in the second place, the majority of them who came for gold were sadly disappointed and paralyzed with despair. Besides this they had chosen a swamp for a building-place, and they soon lost their health. The first years at Jamestown were years filled with mutiny, internal strife, treason, epidemic, exposure, fever, starvation, massacre, disastrous fire, famine, and death. There was only one masterful man among them.

and that was Captain John Smith, whose presence and effort kept the colony from absolute extinction. This man was only three years, all told, in America; but he made for himself an undying name. He returned to England.

The experience of Jamestown was more terrible than the experience of Plymouth, and came nearer being a failure. Was there a reason for this ? Yes. Were not the two colonies precisely alike ? No ; they both came from England, that is true ; but the Jamestown Colony lacked this, viz., the presence and the patience and the pacifying influence and the elevating power of a heroic Christian womanhood. The Pilgrims of the Mayflozver brought their wives and children with them ; they had the home in their colony. Woman makes the home, and the home makes the church and the state. If Plymouth Rock had been minus the home, the future of New England would have been changed. The men who came over in the Discovery, the Good Speed, and the Susan Content left the women and the children in England. There was not a single woman in the whole colony ; and that is the reason they acted as savages and quarreled and were decimated. What could we expect from a hundred and two old bachelors — a community of bachelors? It is as much as society can do to get along with one here and there in the community. A colony of bachelors never carried any cause on earth to a successful conclusion, and never will. God pronounced a bachelor in the midst of the glories of Paradise as unequipped for life. As it was, this colony of bachelors was saved by the hand of a woman.

Just here comes in the beautiful story of Pocahontas, who saved the life of Captain John Smith. Her father. King Powhatan, doomed him to death, but she gave him back to the colony that he might save it. Has Plymouth Rock the story of Priscilla Alden? Jamestown has the story of the Indian princess Pocahontas. She was beauty in bronze. Clad in doeskin trimmed with feathers, and with her feet sandaled with beaded moccasins and as beautiful as Trilby's, she came to the colony and went, an angel of God and a vision of love. Again and again, with her Indian maidens, she brought corn to the whites when they were starving; and again and again she warned the colony and saved it from massacre. Pocahontas became a Christian, and was publicly baptized by the Rev. Mr. Whitaker, the " apostle of Virginia." She married John Rolfe, with whom she went to England, where she was received by the royal court and greatly honored. Just as she was about to embark for home she fell ill and died, and was buried in the parish church of Gravesend, England. She left one son, who married a worthy Englishwoman and who became great in the colony. Like the Alden family in Massachusetts, the Pocahontas family in Virginia formed a sort of

American aristocracy. John Randolph, the famous orator of Virginia, was one of her descendants. Of her Captain John Smith wrote to Queen Anne : " Her services to Virginia were as great as those to myself, for she was the instrument under God of preserving the whole colony from destruction."

I relate the story of Pocahontas at this point, for it comes in here legitimately. I am now speaking of the power of woman in relation to the history of Virginia. She was the first woman in the colony, and her presence meant the very life of the colony. But she was not the only woman that exercised a power in Virginia. There were certain widows there whose names have become famous in history. It is marvelous how the widows gracefully figure in this history. In the battle of love the very greatest men of Virginia were finally captivated and captured by widows. I never heard or read anything like it. Jefferson, who wrote the American Declaration, was compelled to make another declaration — a declaration of the surrender of his personal independence, — and that by a dashing widow with a fortune. Madison, the father of the American Constitution, met Widow Todd, and she immediately set him at work writing another constitution besides the Constitution for the nation, viz., a constitution for home rule. George Washington captured Cornwallis ; but when he came face to face with Widow Custis, she captured him. This last incident has led one of our pulpiteers to exclaim in a powerful sermon on woman: "Great is the power of woman! George Washington governed America, but Martha governed George." There is a moral here, and it is for hard-hearted bachelors; it is this: beware of Virginia widows ; like Ruth of old, they glean everything that is in the field.

But my point is this : the Virginia Colony never succeeded until woman, with her tact and love and holy life, came upon the scene. Twelve years after the three ships, carrying only men, had landed at Jamestown, another ship landed there carrying only women. In the year 1619 those in England who were interested in the colony, recognizing its deficiency, induced one hundred of the handsomest daughters of the land to sail for Jamestown with the express purpose of entering wedlock and setting up homes in the colony. The scheme worked well, and in twenty-four hours after these beautiful daughters landed the parson of the colony had made a snug little fortune. The letters written home by these new-made brides brought another vessel over from England with sixty additional fair maids.

After the establishment of homes in the colony the colony took on a new life. Dissensions ceased, adventure gave way to solid, persistent work, the plantations gave large harvests, and the white angel of health hovered over the whole community.

There are two questions which I imagine thoughtful men ask me just here, and I will endeavor briefly to answer them.

The first is this : How did the colony of Virginia differ in its life and government from the colonies of New England?

That question is a useful question. We learn by contrasting things; there is a contrast right here, and a marked contrast. .In the New England colonies the people lived in towns, and this determined their government. The township is still the unit of government in New England. In Virginia the county was the unit of government. There were no towns of any account in Virginia. Up to the Revolutionary War even its capital was only a small village. In New England each township had its own meeting, and there all were equal and had an equal voice. This Professor John Fiske claims was the germ of our Republic. He traces American liberties and American equality and American popular institutions to the townmeeting. Virginia did not have town-meetings, for it had no towns; so Virginia did not contribute to the American nationality popular institutions, as New England did. All of our popular institutions came from New England ; but Virginia gave the American nationality men and measures instead of popular institutions. This will appear as we proceed. That is the contribution of Virginia to America — men and measures. Men to man institutions and lead, and measures for institutions to work out into a glorious consummation. If Virginia had no towns, what had it in their place ? It had large plantations. Those of you who carryin your minds the map of Virginia will remember how it is blessed with rivers. Four large, beautiful, navigable rivers flow parallel — the James River, the York River, the Rappahannock River, and the Potomac.

The great Virginia plantations fronted on these large rivers, and this allowed the ships of England to come to the plantations for the produce. As trade was direct with England, Virginia did not feel the need of towns. This also kept Virginia bound to England as Massachusetts and Connecticut were not. As the plantations were large, three or four were enough to make a county. As the county was the unit of government, the civil power was kept in the hands of the few who owned the plantations. In New England the people ruled ; in Virginia the few ruled. The few were responsible ; the few had to do all the thinking ; the few had to do all governmental work and rule. While this concentrated, it developed also ; that is, it developed the few and made them parliamentarians, diplomats, and skilled statesmen, able to plan and to draft and to lead. This was what the Virginian patriots did in the Revolutionary and pre- Revolutionary times, and this was what America needed. It was a Virginian who went into Massachusetts and took command, and he did that because In Massachusetts, with all its popular education and all its popular politics, there was not a man that could do what George Washington did. It was a Massachusetts man, Mr. Adams, who made the motion in Congress that put George Washington at the head of the New England army. Government by the few is not what we would choose to-day, but government by the few in Old Dominion made the men who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States and who led the continental army to the victory which gave us the American nation. ]\Icn and measures, that was the contribution of Old Dominion to the Republic.

The second question which you ask is : How did Virginia differ from New England in education and religion ?

We are still learning by contrast. The idol of New England was education ; it had its free public schools everywhere. Virginia did not take to education ; it did not wish schools for its black slaves nor for its white servants. General education had very little place in this colony before the Revolution ; you could count its free schools on your fingers. The few who were educated went to its one college, William and Mary, or they crossed the ocean and attended the universities of England.

As for religion, the church of New England was the Independent Church ; the church of Virginia was the Church of Eneland. There was no free discussion in the Church of England Hke the free discussion in the Independent Church ; but there were in it the truth of the Bible and holy doctrine and inspiring prayers ; there were in it that which brought God into life and that which created a conscience toward God and man. We must not forget that the Church of England carried in it the Puritans, and nurtured them until they blossomed and fruited. It also carried in it the Wesleys, until they blossomed and fruited. John Wesley and Charles Wesley both labored in the Church of England in the colony of Georgia. For Americans it was a good church to leave in order to become Puritans and Methodists.

Let us do justice here. The Virginia Colony brought that church with it. The Rev. Mr. Hunt was one of the one hundred and two who landed at Jamestown. The first structure put up was the canvas church. The services were regularly kept up ; everybody was required to attend church or pay a fine of so many pounds of tobacco. Tobacco was the currency of that day. Ministers were paid their salaries in tobacco ; whether they would or no they were compelled to be religious tobacconists. The markets were quoted in pounds of tobacco. My point is this : there were here and there in the Church of England as devout men and women as were found in the Puritan church. The individual got spiritual good from it ; but the church as administered was administered in the interest of the English throne, and was therefore a hindrance to the march of American freedom. It was a state church ; and it is logic that a state church must take its creed and its conduct from the state that owns it and pays its expenses. This is the history of the Church of England in Virginia during the Revolutionary times; it was for England and not for America. Madison says, " If the Church of England had been the estabHshed church in all of the colonies, the American Republic would have been an impossibility." In these early days it was exclusive. It bitterly persecuted. All who came into the colony were required to support it and swear allegiance to it. The Baptists were driven out of the colony, and so were the Presbyterians and so were the Congregationalists. Fines were imposed by its dictation, and so were tortures and imprisonments. It prescribed such things as ducking and boring the tongue with an awl. I do not think so much of that; for in those days such things were in the air. This intolerance actually was progress, if you put it side by side with the religious hate which scattered the ashes of Wycliffe on the Severn and which disinterred the body of Cromwell and insulted the dust of the hero who made England great. Did the Episcopalians persecute the Puritans in Virginia? The Puritans persecuted the Episcopalians in Massachusetts. There is nothing wrong with religion on this account ; no, the wrong is in the application and administration of religion. The Episcopal Church of America in the process of time freed itself from a wrong administration and divorced itself from the state. It gave a welcome to republican principles ; it ceased being English and became American. When it did that it was raised from the dead and became a power for liberty. There is a long distance from the church of the Rev. Mr. Hunt of Jamestown to the church of the Rev. Phillips Brooks of Boston ; and the distance is every step of it progress. That progress carried in it our national development from a monarchy to a republic.

Virginia had one other thing which differentiated it from the colonies of New England, and that \A'as the system of slavery. Within twelve months of the time the Mayfloiver landed at Plymouth Rock, a Dutch man-of-war entered the James River and landed there an ill-fated cargo of twenty negro slaves. That was a crime, which ended in our Civil War. Those two ships were two rival forces ; they carried in them principles which were in deadly antagonism. The Ci\-il \\'ar was simply the climax of the long battle between the two ships and their different thoughts and different principles and different civilizations. You know the result. It accorded with the overrule of a just and righteous God in the affairs of men. The Mayfloivcr won and the slave-ship went down. That also was progress for Virginia.

THE OLD DOMINIOAK 41

I should like to speak here, if time permitted, of the great rebellion which took place in Virginia led by Nathaniel Bacon, but I cannot. That rebellion took place in 1676, just one hundred years before the Revolution, and embodied in it to all intents and purposes the very same principles as the Revolution. Had it succeeded our independence would have come a century earlier. Thus in that far-off day Virginia was training her sons to keep step with the coming continental army, and was also sighting her guns to bear upon tyranny.

I have said that Virginia's contribution to America was men and measures. I must hasten to speak of some of these. And here I must exercise selection ; I must center our thoughts around the Revolution.

The first man with whom I begin is Patrick Henry. He was the leader of leaders. Speaking figuratively, he was the man who fired the first Revolutionary gun. He was the first to be called a traitor; he was the orator of the Revolution; he learned the principles of liberty from his Presbyterian ancestors, and taught them to the men of the Church of England. He gradually grew toward that famous saying of his which became the watchword of the Revolution, and which regiments carried on their banners and flags, and men in the ranks carried in letters that burned on their uniforms, viz., " Give me liberty or give me death." The framing of these words was impromptu, but the spirit back of them and in them, which gave them their power, was the growth of a Hfetime. He had made his famous speech against the clergy of the Church of England and won the case before the jury. He had made his famous speech against the infamous Stamp Act and had seen its repeal. Now he was ready for the famous saying itself. His speech in which he uttered the famous saying was made in the old St. John's Church, which still stands on Virginia soil. Feeling that the time for decision had come, this " man of the people," as he was called, arose and took the floor and addressed the convention. This was the close of his address : " Virginians, there is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged; their clinking maj^ be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable, and let it come. The war has actually begun ; the next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. What is it that gentlemen wish ? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God. I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death." As Patrick Henry uttered these words with both arms raised and his eyes on fire, it is said that a great thrill ran through the whole assembly. The people were ready to start from their seats and shout, " To ARMS!"