 | Washington and his generals, or, Legends of the Revolution |  |
I.—THE GLORY OF THE LAND OF PENN.
Beautiful in her solitary grandeur—fair as a green island in a desert
waste, proud as a lonely column, reared in the wilderness—rises the land
of Penn, in the History of America.
Here, beneath the Elm of Shackamaxon, was first reared the holy altar
of Toleration.
Here, from the halls of the old State House, was first proclaimed, that
Bible of the Rights of Man—the Declaration of Independence.
Here, William Penn asserted the mild teachings of a Gospel, whose
every word was Love. Here, Franklin drew down the lightnings from the
sky, and bent the science of ages to the good of toiling man. Here, Jefferson
stood forth, the consecrated Prophet of Freedom, proclaiming, from
Independence Hall, the destiny of a Continent, the freedom of a People.
Here, that band of men, compared to whom the Senators of Rome dwindle
into parish demagogues,—the Continental Congress—held their solemn
deliberations, with the halter and the axe before their eyes.
New England we love for her Adams', her Hancocks, and her Warrens.
Her battlefields of Bunker Hill and Concord and Lexington, speak to us
with a voice that can never die. The South, too, ardent in her fiery blood,
luxuriant in flowers and fruits, we love for her Jefferson, her Lees, her immortal
Patrick Henry. Not a rood of her soil but is richer for the martyr
blood of heroes.
But while we love the North or the South for their Revolutionary glories,
we must confess that the land of Penn claims a glory higher and holier than
either. The glory of the Revolution is hers, but the mild light of science
irradiates her hills, the pure Gospel of William Penn shines forever over
the pages of her past.
While we point to Maryland for her Calvert and her Carroll, to Jersey
for her Witherspoon, to Delaware for her Kirkwood and M'Lane—while
we bow to the Revolutionary fame of New England and the South, we
must confess that the land of Penn has been miserably neglected by history.
It is a singular fact, that while all other States have their eulogists, their
historians, and their orators, to speak of their past glory, their present prosperity,
and their present fame, yet has Pennsylvania been neglected; she
made a matter of sparse and general narrative.
Our own fair land of Penn has no orator to celebrate her glories, to point
to her past; she has no Pierpont to hymn her illustrious dead; no Jared
Sparks to chronicle her Revolutionary granduer.
And yet the green field of Germantown, the twilight vale of the Brandywine,
the blood-nurtured soil of Paoli, all have their memories of the Past,
all are stored with their sacred treasure of whitened bones. From the far
North, old Wyoming sends forth her voice—from her hills of granduer and
her vallies of beauty, she sends her voice, and at the sound the Mighty Dead
of the land of Penn sweep by, a solemn pageant of the Past. The character
of the Pennsylvanian has been mockingly derided, by adventurers from
all parts of the Union. We have been told that our people—the Pennsylvanians—had
no enterprise, no energy, no striking and effective qualities.
Southern chivalry has taunted us with our want of daring ardor in the resentment
of insult; Northern speculation has derided our sluggishness in
falling into all the mad adventures of these gambling and money-making times.
To the North we make no reply. Let our mountains, with their stores
of exhaustless wealth, answer; let the meadows of Philadelphia, the rich
plains of old Berks, the green fields of Lancaster answer; let old Susquehannah,
with her people of iron nerve, and her mountain-shores of wealth
and cultivation, send forth her reply.
And to the South—what shall be our answer? They ask for our illustrious
dead! They point to the blood stained fields of Carolina. They ask,
where are your fields of battle? They point to Marion—to Sumpter—to
Lee—to all the host of heroes who blaze along the Southern sky—“Pennsylvanians,
where are your heroes of the Revolution?”
They need not ask their question more than once. For, at the sound,
from his laurelled grave in old Chester, springs to life again, the hero of
Pennsylvania's olden time, the undaunted General, the man of Paoli and of
Stony Point, whose charge was like the march of the hurricane, whose
night-assault scared the British as though a thunderbolt had fallen in their midst.
We need not repeat his name. The aged matron, sitting at the farm-house
door of old Chester, in the calm of summer twilight, speaks that
name to the listening group of grand-children, and the old Revolutioner,
trembling on the verge of the grave, his intellect faded, his mind broken,
and his memory gone, will start and tremble with a new life at the name,
and as he brushes the tear from the quivering eye-lid of age, will exclaim—
with a feeling of pride that a century cannot destroy—“I—I, too, was a
soldier with—mad Anthony Wayne!”
Bunker Hill has its monument, New England her historians, South Carolina
her orators—but the field of Germantown, and the meadows of Brandywine—where
are their monumental pillars, their historians, their orators?
And yet the freemen of our Land of Penn may stroll over the green lawn
the veteran of the Revolution discourse of the bloodshed of the 4th of October,
1777—and count the mounds that mark the resting place of the dead,
and feel his heart throb, and his pulse warm, although no monumental
pillar arises from the green lawn, no trophied column consecrates the repose
of the slain.
And when the taunt falls from the lips of the wanderer and adventurer,
when the South sneers and the north derides, then let the Pennsylvanian
remember that though the Land of Penn has no history, yet is her story
written on her battlefields of blood; that though she has no marble pillars,
or trophied columns, yet her monuments are enduring and undecaying—
they are there—breaking evermore into the sky—her monuments are her
own eternal mountains.
Her dead are scattered over the Continent;—Quebec and Saratoga,
Camden and Bunker Hill, to this hour retain their bones!
Nameless and unhonored, “Poor Men Heroes” of Pennsylvania
sleep the last slumber on every battlefield of the Revolution. Their history
would crowd ten volumes like this; it has never been written.
In every spear of grass that grows on our battlefields, in every wild
flower that blooms above the dead of the Revolution, you read the quiet
heroism of the children of the Land of Penn.
Be just to us, People of the North! Do not scorn our history, Chivalry
of the South!
While we gladly admit the brightness of your fame, do not utterly forget
the nameless and neglected
Heroes of the Land of Penn.
| Washington and his generals, or, Legends of the Revolution | |