Manual of Patriotism
THE FLAG CONSECRATES THE BIRTHDAY OF GEORGE WASHINGTON.
(February 22, 1732).
SELECTIONS ...Song, Ode for Washington's Birthday.
SELECTIONS ...Song, God Speed the Right.
The twenty-second of February-the day on which George Washington was born (1732) is a national holiday. When it comes on any one of the five school-days of the week, the children are freed from their books, and may stay at home or spend the time as they please. But in some schools the pupils are called together, their parents and friends invited in, and a patriotic exercise is given in which the character and career of Washington and the stormy yet glorious days of the American Revolution are made the subject of song, composition, and the “speaking of pieces.” This is better far than for children to be idle at home or roaming the streets,—and it is greatly to be wished that the custom of the few schools become the custom of all. But until that sensible plan is adopted, the next best thing seems to be to devote an hour or more of the previous day's session to the exercise. Now, it is clear to see that the pupils of any particular school will appreciate such an exercise just in proportion to their knowledge of the man and the times. If, then, the scholars are old enough and their historical study or reading has been wide enough, let the program be correspondingly stro.ng; if not, let the teacher take pains to explain and inform, infusing as much of the historical as possible under the guise of the romantic—so making appeal to the imagination and that sense of admiration for adventure and bravery innate in the minds of children. A long program is herewith given, with the thought of choice among the selections, if the time is very brief.
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Washington is the mightiest name of earth.—Abraham Lincoln.
One of the greatest captains of the age.—Benjamin Franklin.
Washington 1s to my mind the purest figure in history.— William Ewart Gladstone.
Of all great men he was the most virtuous and most fortunate.—Guizot.
Washington—the greatest man of our own or of any age.—Edward Everett.
He was invested with a glory that shed a lustre on all around him.—Archbishop John Carroll.
Washington—the ideal type of civic virtue to succeeding generations.—James Bryce.
The greatest man of modern times.—Sir Henry Grattan.
No nobler figure ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life.—John Richard Green.
In this world the seal is now put on his greatness.—Alexander Hamilton.
He had every title at command, but his first vicfory was over himself.—Gouverneur Morris.
The want of the age is an European Washington.— Lamartine.
First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.—Henry Lee.
I am not surprised at what George has done, for he was always a good boy.—Mary Washington, his mother.
A pure and high-minded gentleman, of dauntless courage and stainless honor, simple and stately of manner, kind and generous of heart.—Henry Cabot Lodge.
Here indeed is a character to admire and revere; a life without a stain, a fame without a flaw.—William Makepeace Thackeray.
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George Washington—the highest human personification of justice and benevolence.—William H. Seward.
He was great as he was good; he was great because he was good.—Edward Everett.
The universal consent of mankind accords to Washington the highest place among the great men of the race.—George F. Hoar.
Among a world of dreamers he was the only one whose vision in the slightest degree approached the great realities of the future.—Edward Everett Hale.
His example is complete; and it will teach wisdom and virtue to magistrates, citizens and men, not only in the present age but in future generations.—John Adams.
Washington—a fixed star in the firmament of great names, shining without twinkling or obscuration, with clear, steady, beneficent light.—Daniel Webster.
The fame of Washington stands apart from every other in history, shining with a truer lustre and more benignant glory.—Washington Irving.
His memory will be cherished by the wise and good oil every nation, and truth will transmit his character to posterity in all its genuine lustre.—John Jay.
When the storm of battle blows darkest and rages highest, the memory of Washington shall nerve every American arm and cheer every American breast.—Rufus Choate.
The anniversary of his birthday does not come round too often for us to devote some hour of it, whenever it returns, to meditation upon him and to gratitude for his spirit and his work.—Thomas Starr King.
The more clearly Washington's teaching and example are understood, more faithfully they are followed, the purer, the stronger, the more glorious the will this Republic become.—Carl Schurz.
Sincerely honoring him, we cannot become indifferent to those great principles of human freedom, consecrated by his life, and by the solemn act of his last will and testament.—Charles Sumner.
The filial love of Washington for his mother is an attribute of American manhood, a badge which invites our trust and confidence and an indispensable element of American greatness.—Grover Cleveland (adapted).
The majesty of that life—whether told in the pages of Marshall or Sparks, of Irving or Bancroft, or through the eloquent utterances of Webster, or Everett, or Winthrop, or the matchless poetry of Lowell, or the verse of Byron—never grows old.—Melville Fuller, Chief Justice United States Supreme Court.
Washington was the only man in the United States who possessed the confidence of all. There was no other man who was considered as anything more than a party leader. The whole of his character was in its mass perfect, in nothing bad, in a few points indifferent. And it may be truly said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance.—Thomas Jefferson.
If we look over the catalogue of the first magistrates of nations, whether they have been denominated Presidents, or Consuls, Kings or Princes, where shall we find one whose commanding talents and virtues, whose overruling good fortune, have so completely united all hearts and voices in his favor? who enjoyed the esteem and admiration of foreign nations, and fellow-citizens, with equal unanimity? Qualities so uncommon are no common blessing to the country that possesses them. By these great qualities, and their benign effects, has Providence marked out the head of this nation, with a hand so distinctly visible as to have been seen by all men, and mistaken by none.—John Adams.
In the war of the Revolution, when it was thought the cause was lost, men became inspired at the very mention of the name of George Washington. In 1812, when we succeeded once more against the mother country, men were looking for a hero, and there arose before them that rugged, grim, independent old hero, Andrew Jackson. In the last, and greatest of all wars, an independent and tender-hearted man was raised up by Providence to guide the helm of state: through that great crisis, and men confidingly placed the destinies of this great land in the hands of Abraham Lincoln. In the annals of our country, we find no man whose training had been so peaceful, whose heart was so gentle, whose nature was so tender, and yet who was >called upon to marshal the hosts of the masses of the people during four years of remorseless and bloody and unrelenting fratricidal war.—Horace Porter.
Nor must it be supposed that Washington owed his greatness to the peculiar crisis which called out his virtues. His more than Roman virtues, his consummate prudence, his powerful intellect, and his dauntless decision and dignity of character, Wauld have made him illustrious in any age. The crisis would have done nothing for him, had not his character stood ready to match it. Acquire his character, and fear not the recurrence of a crisis to show forth its glory.—William Wirt.
The name of Washington is intimately blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the prosperity, the liberty, the free institutions, and the renown of our country. That name was of power to rally a nation, in the hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities; that name shone, amid the storm of war, a beacon light to cheer and guide the country's friends; it flamed, too, like a meteor to repel her foes. That name, in the days of peace, was a loadstone, attracting to itself a whole people's confidence, a whole people's love, and the whole world's respect; that name, descending with all time, spreading over the whole earth, and uttered in all the languages belong—ing to the tribes and races of men, will forever be pronounced with affectionate gratitude by every one, in whose breast there shall arise an aspiration for human rights and human liberty.—Daniel Webster.
It is the peculiar good fortune of this country to have given birth to a citizen whose name everywhere produces a sentiment of regard for his country itself. In other countries, whenever and wherever this is spoken of to be praised, and with the highest praise, it is called the country of Washington. Half a century and more has now passed away since he came upon the stage and his fame first broke upon the world; for it broke like the blaze of day from the rising sun, almost as sudden and seemingiy as universal. The eventful period since that era has teemed with great men, who have crossed the scene and passed off. Some of them have arrested great attention. Still Washington retains his pre-eminent place in the minds of men, still his peerless name is cherished by them in the same freshness of delight as in the morn of its glory.—Asher Robbins.
Washington served us chiefly by his sublime moral qualities. To him belonged the proud distinction of being the leader in a revolution, without awakening one doubt or solicitude as to the spotless purity of his purpose. His was the glory of being the brightest manifestation of the spirit which reigned in this country, and in this way he became a source of energy, a bond of umon, the center of an enlightened people's confidence.
By an instinct which is unernng, we call Washington, with grateful reverence, The Father of His Country, but not its saviour. A people which wants a saviour, which does not possess an earnest and pledge of freedom in its own heart, is not yet ready to be free.—William E. Channing.
Jefferson said of Washington: “His integrity was the most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest, or consanguinity, or hatred being able to bias his decision. He was, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man.”
As the ocean washes every shore, and, with all-embracing arms, clasps every land, while on its heaving bosom it bears the products of various climes, so peace surrounds, protects and upholds all other blessings. Without it, commerce is vain, the ardor of industry is restrained, justice is arrested, happiness is blasted, virtue sickens and dies. And peace has its own peculiar victories, in comparison wij:h which Marathon and Bannockburn and Bunker Hill, fields sacred in the history of human freedom, shall lose their lustre. Our own Washington rises to a truly heavenly stature, not when we follow him over the ice of the Delaware to the capture of Trenton, not when we behold him victorious over Cornwallis at Yorktown, but when we regard him, in noble deference to justice, refusing the kingly crown which a faithless soldiery proffered, and, at a later day, upholding the peaceful neutrality of the country while he received unmoved the clamor of the people wickedly crying for war.—Charles Sumner.
I see in Washington a great soldier who fought a trying war to a successful end, impossible without him; a great statesman, who did more than all other men to lay the foundations of a republic which has endured in prosperity for more than a century. I find in him a marvellous judgment which was never at fault, a penetrating vision which beheld the future of America when it was dim to other eyes, a great intellectual force, a will of iron, an unyielding grasp of facts, and an unequalled strength of patriotic purpose. I see in him, too, a pure and high-minded gentleman of dauntless courage and stainless honor, simple and stately of manner, kind and generous of heart. Such he was in truth. The historian and the biographer may fail to do him justice, but the instinct of mankind will not fail. The real hero needs not books to give him worshipers. George Washington will always receive the love and reverence of men, because they see embodied ·in him the noblest possibilities of humanity.—Henry Cabot Lodge.
To us, citizens of America, it belongs, above all others, to show respect to the memory of Washington, by the p1"actical deference which we pay to those sober maxims of public policy which he has left us,a last testament of affection in his Farewell Address. Of all the exhortations which it contains, I scarce need say to you that none are so emphatically uttered, none so anxiously repeated, as those that enjoin the preservation of the union of these states. No one can read the Farewell Address without feeling that this was the thought, and this the care which lay nearest and heaviest upon that noble heart; and if, which Heaven forbid, the day shall ever arrive when his parting counsels on that head shall be forgotten, on that day, come it soon or come it late, it may as mournfully as truly be said that “Washington has lived in vain.” Then the vessels, as they ascend and descend the Potomac, may toll their bells with new significance as they pass Mount Vernon; they Will strike the requiem of constitutional liberty for us,-for all nations.—Edward Everett, Oration on Washington.
A great and venerated character like that of Washington, which commands the respect of an entire population, however divided on other questions, is not an isolated fact in history to be regarded with barren admiration; it is a dispensation of Providence for good.
It was well said by Mr. Jefferson, in 1792, writing to Washington to dissuade him from declining a renomination: “North and South will hang together while they have you to hang to.”
Washington in the flesh is taken from us; we shall never behold him as our Fathers did; but his memory remains, and I say, let us hang to his memory. Let us make a national festival and holiday of his birthday; and ever, as the 22d of February returns, let us remember that, while with these solemn and joyous rites of observance we celebrate the great anniversary, our fellow-citizens on the Hudson, on the Potomac, from the Southern plains to the Western lakes, are engaged in the same offices of gratitude and love.—Edward Everett, Oration on Washington.
We are met to celebrate the one hundred and tenth anmversary of the birthday of Washington.
Washington is the mightiest name on earth, long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation.
On that name a eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible. Let none attempt it.
In solemn awe pronounce the name, and, in its naked, deathless splendor, leave it shining on.—Abraham Lincoln.
If Washington had one passion more strong than any other, it was love of country. The purity and ardor of his patriotism were commensurate with the greatness of its object. Love of country in him was invested with the sacred obligations of a duty, and from !he faithful discharge of this duty he never swerved for a moment, either in thought or deed, throughout the whole period of his eventful career.—Jared Sparks.
It has been said Washington was not a great soldier; but certainly he created an army out of the roughest materials, outgeneralled all that Britain could send against him, and, in the midst of poverty and distress, organized victory. He was not brilliant and rapid. He was slow, defensive, and victorious. He made “an empty bag stand upright,” which, Franklin says, is “hard.” Some men command the world, or hold its admiration, by their ideas or by their intellect. Washington had neither original ideas nor a deeply-cultured mind. He commanded by his integrity, by his justice. He loved power by instinct, and strong government by reflective choice. Twice he was made Dictator, with absolute power, and never abused the awful and despotic trust. The monarchic soldiers and civilians would make him king. He trampled on their offer, and went back to his fields of corn and tobacco at Mount Vernon. The grandest act of his public life was to give up his power; the most magnanimous deed of his private life was to liberate his slaves. Cromwell is the greatest Anglo-Saxon who was ever a ruler on a large scale. In intellect he was immensely superior to Washington; in integrity, immeasurably below him. For one thousand years no king in Christendom has shown such greatness, or gives us so high a type of manly virtue. He never dissembled. He sought nothing for himself. In him there was no unsound spot, nothing little or mean in his character. The whole was clean and presentable. We think better of mankind because he lived, adorning the earth with a life so noble.—Theodore Parker.
In the production of Washington it does really appear as if Nature was endeavoring to improve upon herself, and that all the virtues of the ancient world were but so many studies preparatory to the patriot of the new. Individual instances, no doub:t, there were: splendid exemplifications of some single qualification. Caesar was merciful, Scipio was continent, Hannibal was patient; but it was reserved for Washington to blend them all in one, and, like the lovely masterpiece of the Grecian artist, to exhibit in one glow of associated beauty the pride of every model and the perfection of every master. As a general, he marshalled the peasant into a veteran and supplied by discipline the absence of experience. As a statesman he enlarged the policy of the cabinet into the most comprehensive system of general advantage; and such was the wisdom of his views and the philosophy of his counsels that to the soldier and the statesman he almost added the character of the sage. A conqueror, he was untainted with the crime of blood; a revolutionist, he was free from any stain of treason, for aggression commenced the contest, and a country called him to the command; liberty unsheathed his sword, necessity stained, victory returned it. If he had paused here history might doubt what station to assign him, whether at the head of her citizens or her soldiers, her heroes or her patriots. But the last glorious act crowned his career and banishes hesitation. Who, like Washington, after having freed a country, resigned her crown and retired to a cottage rather than reign in a capitol! Immortal man! He took from the battle its crime, and from the conquest its chains; he left the victorious the glory of his self-denial, and turned upon the vanquished only the retribution of his mercy. Happy, proud America! The lightnings of heaven yielded to your philosophy! The temptations of earth could not seduce your patriotism.—Charles Phillips.
ODE FOR WASHINGTON's BIRTHDAY.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.
From the Ninth or Choral Symphony.
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For the arm he stretched to save us, Be its morn for—ev er blest. Where the gold—en lil—ies, gleam—ing, Star the watchtow'rs of Que—bee. Through his arm the Lord hath freed her; Crown him on the tent — ed field!
See the pa—triot's task com—plet—ed; Hear the fa—ther's dy—ing voice! Doubtthe pa—triot whosesug-ges—tions Strive a na—tion to di-vide!" Hear thy coun—sel, heed thy warn—ing; Trust us, while we hon—or thee!
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By special arrangement with HOUGHTON, MiFFLlN & Co.
Just honor to Washington can only be rendered by observing his precepts and imitating his example. He has built his own monument. We, ancl. those who come after us, in successive generations, are its appointed, its privileged guardians. The widespread republic is the future monument to Washington. Maintain its independence. Uphold its constitution. Preserve its union. Defend its liberty. Let it stand before the world in all its original strength and beauty, securing peace, order, equality, and freedom to all within its boundaries; and shedding light, and hope, and joy upon the pathway of human liberty throughout the world; and Washington needs no other monument. Other structures may fully testify our veneration tor him: this, this alone, can adequately illustrate his services to mankind. Nor does he need even this. The republic may perish, the wide arch of our ranged Union may fall, star by star its glories may expire, stone by stone its columns and its capitol may moulder and crumble, all other names which adorn its annals may be forgotten, but as long as human hearts shall anywhere pant, or human tongues anywhere plead, for a true, rational, constitutional liberty, those hearts shall enshrine the memory, and those tongues prolong the fame, of GEORGE WASHINGTON.—Robert C. Winthrop.
American youth know that Washington captured Cornwallis, made a brilliant retreat after the battle of Long Island and worried and fretted the British armies into exhaustion during a seven years' war. They also know that he was President twice and declined to become President a third time. There are not many who know that the only time tears were seen in his eyes was at the close of the war, when his rmy, encamped upon the banks of the Hudson, was about to be disbanded. There were men in his army who were fearful that the ambitions and jealousies of some of those who had been of influence during the Revolution would attempt to gain great personal power. There were others who believed that there would be established in America a constitutional monarchy, modeled after that of Great Britain. The nation, as we now know it, was a government yet to be created.
So a company of officers—men having influence—having talked this matter over, agreed to go to Washington, ask him to accept the crown of empire and to promise him the support of the army in thus establishing a personal throne. When they approached Washington, he thought that as friends they had come to him for counsel. He was in a happy frame of mind that morning. The war had ended victoriously, and he had already been in consultation with Hamilton respecting the form of civil government which the now free colonies should undertake.
They offered him the crown in but a single sentence. A few years before, across the river, Washington, being seated at breakfast, had been approached by an officer, who told him that Benedict Arnold had fled after an attempt to betray West Point into the hands of the British. The news was appalling, for he had admired Arnold's splendid courage and loved the man. Yet so great was his self-command, so superb his capacity for controlling emotion, so thoroughly had he schooled himself to face adversity with calmness, that those about him only saw a look of sad sternness come to his countenance as he uttered the now historic words, “Whom can we trust?"
But when these officers proposed to him the empire, and tried to put the sceptre in his hand, Washington broke down. There was sorrow and there was anger in his countenance and in his manner. Tears came to his eyes, and, when he dismissed them with a sad gesture and only a brief word, these men realized that Washington had been shocked and grieved that it could have entered their hearts that he could for one moment have regarded an empire as possible, or could have fought through those seven years that he might himself attain the throne. In his action Washington not only revealed his moral g(eatness, but made it impossible that a monarchy could ever be established in the United States.
The fame of Washington stands apart from every other m history, shining with a truer lustre and a more benignant glory. With us his memory remains a national property, where all sympathies meet m umson. Under all dissensions and amid all storms of party, his precepts and examples speak to us from the grave with a paternal appeal; and his name—by all revered—forms a universal tie of brotherhood,—a watchword of our Union.—John Fiske.
No nobler figure ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life. Washington was grave and courteous in address; his manners were simple and unpretending; his silence and the serene calmness of his temper spoke of perfect self-mastery; but there was little in his outward bearing to reveal the grandeur of soul which lifts his figure, with all the simple majesty of an ancient statue, out of the smaller passions, the meaner impulses of the world around him. It was only as the weary fight went on that the colonists learned, little by little, the greatness of their leader, his clear judgment, his heroic endurance, his silence under difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger or defeat, the patience with which he waited, the quickness and hardness with which he struck, the lofty and serene sense of duty that never swerved from its task through resentment or jealousy, that never, through war or peace, felt the touch of a meaner ambition, that knew no aim save that of guarding the freedom of his fellow-countrymen, and no personal longing save that of returning to his own fireside when their freedom was secured.—Green's “Short History of the English People.”
Washington, from first to last, inspired every one with the idea that he could be trusted. No one ever suspected him for a moment, as Caesar, as Frederick, as Napoleon were with reason suspected,with a design to use the power committed to him for the furtherance of his own ambition. Here was a man who thought only of his duty, who resigned power with far more alacrity than he assumed it, and who paid the bond of patriotism in full.—Henry M. Towle.
Of all the great men in history, Washington was the most invariably judicious. Those who knew him well noticed that he had keen sensibilities and strong passions; but his power of self-command never failed him, and no act of his public life can be traced to personal caprice, ambition, or resentment. In the despondency of long-continued"failure, in the elation of sudden success, at times when his soldiers were deserting by hundreds, and when malignant plots were formed against his reputation, amid the constant quarrels, rivalries, and jealousies of his subordinates, in the dark hour of national ingratitude, and in the midst of the most universal and intoxicating flattery, he was always the same calm, wise, just, and single-minded man, pursuing the course which he believed to be right, without fear, or favor, or fanaticism; equally free from the passions that spring from interest and from the passions that spring from imagination. Washington never acted on the impulse of an absorbing or uncalculating enthusiasm, and he·valued very highly fortune, position, and reputation, but at the command of duty he was ready to risk and sacrifice them all. He was, in the highest sense of the words, a gentleman and a man of p.onor, and he carried into public life the severest standard of private morals.—William E. H. Lecky, from “The History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”
When the storm of battle blows darkest and rages highest, the memory of Washington shall nerve every American arm, and cheer every American heart.—Rufus Choate.
It was not character that fought the Trenton campaign and carried the revolution to victory; It was military genius. It was not character that read the future of America and created our foreign policy. It was statesmanship of the highest order. Without the great moral qualities that Washington possessed his career would not have been possible; but it would have been quite as impossible if the intellect had not equalled the character.
There is no need to argue the truism that Washington was a great man, for that is universally admitted. But it is very needful that his genius should be rightly understood, and the right understanding of it is by no means universal.
His character has been exalted af the expense of his intellect, and his goodness has been so much insisted upon both by admirers and critics that we are in danger of forgetting that he had a great mind as well as high moral worth.—Henry Cabot Lodge.
With the sure sagacity of a leader of men, Washington at once selected, for the highest and most responsible stations, the three chief Americans who represented the three forces in the nation which alone could command success in the institution of the government. Hamilton was the head, Jefferson was the heart, and John Jay was the conscience. Washington's just and serene ascendancy was the lambent flame in which these beneficent powers were fused, and nothing less than that ascendancy could have ridden the whirlwind and directed the storm that burst around him.—George William Curtis.
Washington's appointments, when President, were made with a view to destroy party and not to create it, his object being to gather all the talent of the country in support of the national government; and he bore many things which were personally disagreeable in an endeavor to do this.—Paul Leicester Ford.
Men are beginning to feel that Washington stands out, not only as the leading American, but as the leading man of the race. Of men not named in Sacred Scripture, more human beings this day know and honor the name of George Washington than that of any other of the sons of men.—Charles F. Deems.
An Englishman by race and lineage, Washington incarnated in his own person and character every best trait and attribute that have made the Anglo-Saxon name a glory to its children and a terror to its enemies throughout the world. But he was not so much an Englishman that, when the time came for him to be so, he was not even more an American; and in all that he was and did, a patriot so exalted, and a leader so wise and great, that what men called him when he came to be inaugurated as the first President of the United States the civilized world has not since then ceased to call him—the Father of his Country.—Right Rev. Henry C. Potter.
There is Franklin, with his first proposal of Continental umon. There is James Otis, with his great argument against Writs of Assistance, and Samuel Adams, with his inexorable demand for the removal of the British regiments from Boston. There is Quincy, and there is Warren, the protomartyr of Bunker Hill. There is Jefferson, with the Declaration of Independence fresh from his pen, and John Adams close at his side. There are Hamilton and Madison and Jay bringing forward the Constitution; but, towering above them all is Washington, the consummate commander, the incomparable President, the world-renowned pa:triot.—Robert C. Winthrop.
(This stirring poem was written when the author was only nineteen years old.)
W. E. HICKSON.
Maestoso.
GOD SPEED THE RIGHT.
German Air.
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