Yes, the Lord took care of us then. Will we heed His decrees and preserve unimpaired what He permitted us to win? Liberty, my countrymen, is responsibility; responsibility is duty; duty is God's order, and when faithfully obeyed will preserve liberty. We need have no fears of the future if we will perform every obligation of duty and of citizenship. If we lose the smallest share of our freedom, we have no one to blame but ourselves. This country is ours-ours to govern, ours to guide, ours to enjoy. We are both sovereign and subject. All are now free, subject We pay no homage to an earthly throne; only to God we bend the knee. The soldier I did his work and did it well. The present and the future are with the citizen, whose judgment in our free country is henceforth to ourselves alone. supreme. TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE By WENDELL PHILLIPS, Lawyer, Orator. Born in Boston, Mass., 1811; died in Boston, 1884. From a lecture delivered in New York and Boston, December, 1861. Reprinted, by permission of the publishers, from "Speeches, Lectures, and Letters of Wendell Phillips," published by Lee & Shepard, Boston. If I were to tell you the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips of Frenchmen, who find no language rich enough to paint the great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from your hearts,—you, who think no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the Father of his country. But I am to tell you the story of a negro, Toussaint L'Ouverture, who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it from the reluctant testimony of his enemies, men who despised him because he was a negro and a slave, hated him because he had beaten them in battle. Cromwell manufactured his own army. Napoleon, at the age of twenty-seven, was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. Cromwell never saw an army till he was forty; this man never saw a soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army-out of what? Englishmen, -the best blood in Europe. Out of the middle class of Englishmen, -the best blood of the island. And with it he conquered what? Englishmen, their equals. This man manufactured his army out of what? Out of what you call the despicable race of negroes, debased, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, one hundred thousand of them imported into the island within four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this mixed and, as you say, despicable mass he forged a thunderbolt, and hurled it at what? At the proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him home conquered; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the French, and put them under his feet; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, and they skulked home to Jamaica. Now, if Cromwell was a general, at least this man was a soldier. Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back with me to the commencement of the century, and select what statesman you please. Let him be either American or European; let him have a brain the result of six generations of culture; let him have the tipest training of university routine; let him add to it the better education of practical life; crown his temples with the silver locks of seventy years, and show me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this negro,―rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust a state to the blood of its sons, anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his station by the side of Roger Williams, before any Englishman or American had won the right: and yet this is the record which the history of rival States makes up for this inspired black of St. Domingo. Some doubt the courage of the negro. Go to Hayti, and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask them what they think of the negro's sword. I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave-trade in the humblest village of his dominions. You think me a fanatic, for you read history, not with your eyes but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, TOUSSAINT L'OUVERture. PHEIDIPPIDES By ROBERT BROWNING, Poet. Born in Camberwell, England, 1812; died in Venice, Italy, 1889. When Athens was threatened by the invading Persians, she sent a fleet messenger to Sparta to demand aid against a foreign foe. The runner, Pheidippides, so says the legend, ran from Athens to Sparta and back again, a distance of three hundred miles, in two days and two nights. He returned to Athens with these words: First I salute this soil of the blessed, river and rock! Gods of my birthplace, dæmons and heroes, honor to all! . . Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return! Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens and you, "Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid! Persia has come, we are here, where is She? "' mand I obeyed, Your com Ran and raced: like stubble, some field, which a fire runs through, Was the space between city and city: two days, two nights did I burn Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up peaks. Into their midst I broke: breath served but for Persia has come! Persia bids Athens proffer slaves'-tribute, water and earth; Razed to the ground is Eretria-but Athens, shall Athens sink, Drop into dust and die-the flower of Hellas utterly die, Die, with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid, the stander-by? Answer me quick, what help ? Lo, their answer at last! "Has Persia come,-does Athens ask aid, -may Sparta befriend?.. Ponder that precept of old, No warfare, whatever the odds In your favor, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is unable to take Full-circle her state in the sky!' Already she rounds to it fast: Athens must wait, patient as we- -who judgment suspend."' Athens,—except for that sparkle, —thy name, I had mouldered to ash! That sent a blaze through my blood; off, off and away was I back, Not one word to waste, one look to lose on the false and the vile! 66 Yet O Gods of my land! I cried, as each hillock and plain, Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rushing past them again, "Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honors we paid you erewhile?'' Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge; Gully and gap, I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a bar Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the way. . . . ... There, in the cool of a cleft, sat he—majestical Pan! hoof: All the great God was good in the eyes grave-kindly the curl 66 Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a mortal's awe, 66 6 Go, bid Athens take heart, laugh Persia to scorn, have faith In the temples and tombs! Go, say to Athens, The GoatGod saith: When Persia-so much as strews not the soil-is cast in the sea, Then praise Pan who fought in the ranks with your most and least, Goat-thigh to greaved-thigh, made one cause with the free and the bold! But enough! He was gone. If I ran hitherto Be sure that, the rest of my journey, I ran no longer, but flew. Here am I back. Praise Pan, we stand no more on the razor's edge! Pan for Athens, Pan for me! I too have a guerdon rare! |