John Winthrop and Samuel Adams. REMARKS OF HON. JAMES A. GARFIELD, Delivered in the House of Representatives, Tuesday, The House having under consideration the following resolution IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, December 19, 1876. Resolved by the Senate, (the House of Representatives concurring,) 1. That the statues of John Winthrop and Samuel Adams are accepted in the name of the United States, and that the thanks of Congress are given to the State of Massachusetts for these memorials of two of her eminent citizens whose names are indissolubly associated with the foundation of the Republic. 2. That a copy of these resolutions, engrossed upon parchment and duly authenticated, be transmitted to the governor of the State of Massachusetts. Attest: GEO. C. GORHAM, Mr. GARFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I regret that illness has made it impossible for me to keep the promise which I made a few days since to offer some reflections appropriate to this very interesting occasion. But I cannot let the moment pass without expressing my great satisfaction with the fitting and instructive choice which the State of Massachusetts has made, and the manner in which her Representatives have discharged their duty in presenting these beautiful works of art to the Congress of the nation. As, from time to time, our venerable and beautiful Hall has been peopled with statues of the elect of the States, it has seemed to me that a third house was being organized within the walls of the Capitol-a house whose members have received their high credentials at the hands of history, and whose term of office will outlast the ages. Year by year, we see the circle of its immortal membership enlarging; year by year, we see the elect of their country, in eloquent silence, taking their places in this American Pantheon, bringing within its sacred circle the wealth of those immortal memories which made their lives illustrious; and, year by year, that august assembly is teaching a deeper and grander lesson to all who serve their brief hour in these more ephemeral Houses of Congress. And now, two places of great honor have just been most nobly filled. I can well understand that the State of Massachusetts, embarrassed by her wealth of historic glory, found it difficult to make the selec tion. And while the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. HOAR] was so fittingly honoring his State by portraying that happy embarrassment, I was reflecting that the sister-State of Virginia will encounter, if possible, a still greater difficulty when she comes to make the selection of her immortals. One name I venture to hope she will not select; a name too great for the glory of any one State. I trust she will allow us to claim Washington as belonging to all the States, for all time. If she shall pass over the great distance that separates Washington from all others, I can hardly imagine how she will make the choice from her crowded roll. But I have no doubt that she will be able to select two who will represent the great phases of her history as happily and worthily as Massachusetts is represented in the choice she has to-day announced. It is difficult to imagine a happier combination of great and beneficent forces than will be presented by the representative heroes of these two great States. Virginia and Massachusetts were the two focal centers from which sprang the life-forces of this Republic. They were, in many ways, complements of each other, each supplying what the other lacked, and both uniting to endow the Republic with its noblest and most enduring qualities. To-day, the House has listened with the deepest interest to the statement of those elements of priceless value contributed by the State of Massachusetts. We have been instructed by the clear and masterly analysis of the spirit and character of that Puritan civilization, so fully embodied in the lives of Winthrop and Adams. I will venture to add, that notwithstanding all the neglect and contempt with which England regarded her Puritans two hundred years ago, the tendency of thought in modern England is to do justice to that great force which created the Commonwealth, and finally made the British Islands aland of liberty and law. Even the great historian Hume was compelled reluctantly to declare that The precious spark of liberty had been kindled and was preserved by the Puritans alone; and it was to this sect that the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution. What higher praise can posterity bestow upon any people than to make such a confession? Having done so much to save liberty alive in the mother-country, the Puritans planted, upon the shores of this New World, that remarkable civilization whose growth is the greatness and glory of our Republic. Indeed, before Winthrop and his company landed at Salem, the Pilgrims were laying the foundations of civil liberty. While the Mayflower was passing Cape Cod and seeking an anchorage, in the midst of the storm, her brave passengers sat down in the little cabin and drafted and signed a covenant which contains the germ of American liberty. How familiar to the American habit of mind are these declarations of the Pilgrim covenant of 1620: That no act, imposition, law, or ordinance be made or imposed upon us at present or to come but such as has been or shall be enacted by the consent of the body of freemen or associates, or their representatives legally assembled. The New England town was the model, the primary cell, from which our Republic was evolved. The town meeting was the germ of all the parliamentary life and habits of Americans. John Winthrop brought with him the more formal organization of New England society; and, in his long and useful life, did more than perhaps any other to direct and strengthen its growth. Nothing, therefore, could be more fitting, than for Massachusetts to place in our Memorial Hall the statue of the first of the Puritans, representing him at the moment when he was stepping on shore from the ship that brought him from England, and bearing with him the charter of that first political society which laid the foundations of our country; and that near him should stand that Puritan embodiment of the logic of the Revolution, Samuel Adams. I am glad to see this decisive, though tardy, acknowledgment of his great and signal services to America. I doubt if any man equaled Samuel Adams in formulating and uttering the fierce, clear, and inexorable logic of the Revolution. With our present habits of thought, we can hardly realize how great were the obstacles to overcome. Not the least was the religious belief of the fathers-that allegiance to rulers was obedience to God. The thirteenth chapter of Romans was to many minds a barrier against revolution stronger than the battalions of George III: Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. And it was not until the people of that religious age were led to see that they might obey God and still establish liberty, in spite of kingly despotism, that they were willing to engage in war against one who called himself "king by the grace of God." The men who pointed out the pathway to freedom by the light of religion as well as of law, were the foremost promoters of American Independence. And of these, Adams was unquestionably chief. It must not be forgotten that while Samuel Adams was writing the great argument of liberty in Boston, almost at the same time, Patrick Henry was formulating the same doctrines in Virginia. It is one of the grandest facts of that grand time that the Čolonies were thus brought, by an almost universal consent, to tread the same pathway, and reach the same great conclusions. But most remarkable of all is the fact that, throughout all that period, filled as it was with the revolutionary spirit, the great men who guided the storm, exhibited the most wonderful power of self-restraint. If I were to-day to state the single quality that appears to me most admirable among the fathersof the Revolution, I should say it was this: that amidst all the passions of war, waged against a perfidious enemy from beyond the sea, aided by a savage enemy on our own shores, our fathers exhibited so wonderful a restraint, so great a care to observe the forms of law, to protect the rights of the minority, to preserve all those great rights that had come down to them from the common law, so that when they had achieved their independence they were still a law-abiding people. In that fiery meeting in the old South church, after the Boston massacre, when, as the gentleman from Massachusetts has said, three thousand voices almost lifted the roof from the church in demanding the removal of the regiments, it is noted by the historian that there was one, solitary, sturdy "nay" in the vast assemblage; and Samuel Adams scrupulously recorded the fact that there was one dissentient. It would have been a mortal offense against his notions of justice and good order, if that one dissentient had not had his place in the record. And, after the regiments had been removed, and after the demand had been acceded to that the soldiers who had fired upon citizens should be delivered over to the civil authorities to be dealt with according to law, Adams was the first to insist and demand that the best legal talent in the Colony should be put forward to defend those murderers; and John Adams and Josiah Quincy were detailed for the purpose of defending them. Men were detailed whose hearts and souls were on fire with the love of the popular cause; but the men of Massachusetts would have despised the two advocates, if they had not given their whole strength to the defense of the soldiers. Mr. Speaker, this great lesson of self-restraint is taught in the whole history of the Revolution; and it is this lesson that to-day, more perhaps, than any other we have seen, we ought to take most to heart. Let us seek liberty and peace, under the law; and, following the pathway of our fathers, preserve the great legacy they have committed to our keeping. Repeal of the Resumption Law. SPEECH OF HON. JAMES A. GARFIELD, OF OHIO, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Friday, November 16, 1877. :0: "Our own history has recorded for our instruction enough, and more than enough, of the demoralizing tendency, the injustice and the intolerable oppression on the virtuous and well disposed, of a degraded paper currency, authorized by law, or in any way countenanced by Government." |