USA > Indiana > The Indiana centennial, 1916; a record of the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of Indiana's admission to statehood > Part 11
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grows stronger in his patriotism as he contemplates the won- derful things back of it. Back of it stands the sacred honor of a nation. Back of it are the families, the homes, and the institutions of a free people. It represents their best heart- throbs and holiest aspirations. Every one who salutes this emblem of national integrity, of national unity, and of per- sonal liberty should be profoundly impressed with the obliga- tions his salutation imposes upon him in the discharge of his citizenly duties. Here, then, on this memorable occasion, in discharge of a solemn duty, we pledge anew the faith of our State to American institutions and again and again swear eternal allegiance to the American Flag.
WHAT CONSTITUTES A STATE By Father John Cavanaugh
When I was honored with an invitation to preside over the Centennial Celebration in "Old Corydon" I was informed that the program would consist of an address by Congress- man Moores on "1816" and an address by Governor Ralston on "1916" and that I might have all the rest of the time. Now, I enjoy the distinction of having made the longest speech on record in the history of mankind. Last January, attending a banquet in New York, I delivered an address over the long distance wire to an audience in San Francisco. That speech was about 4,000 miles long. I have never ventured to make an address that would run through the entire cen- tury, and therefore, while one of my friends is to speak on "1816" and the other on "1916," I must respectfully decline to use all the intervening time.
Standing with uncovered head in this Bethlehem of In- diana's statehood I lift my voice in thanksgiving to Almighty God for the blessings He has showered on the State of In- diana during the century of its life. It is a commonwealth within the great Republic of America. Take the map of the United States; sweep your eye over that enormous empire stretching from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. It is larger than the world-wide empire of Caesar; it is wealthy beyond even the dreams of avarice. Upon that imperial domain great mountain ranges cleave the clouds; within their heav-
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ing turgid bosoms lies concealed more wealth than exists in all the world beside. The body of the empire is veined and arteried with great natural water-courses through which surges and beats the national life. Great cities sit secure upon her hilltops or nestle in her large and comfortable val- leys ; upon her broad prairies and among her rolling hills live multitudes of happy, prosperous people. Her citizenship is the most honored in the world; her power is felt wherever men exist. In manufacturing and commerce she is peerless and apart; in the gentler graces of life she has, though young, had honorable part. Her passion for education is a sublime example. Nowhere else are truth and honor held in greater veneration ; nowhere else in all the world do the fires of patri- otism burn so brightly on the altars of liberty. Her history is bespangled with exploits of valor in war and deeds of de- votion in peace. She has made practical the dream of uni- versal manhood suffrage; she has written in letters of light the story of her industrial genius. Like the eagle poised in incommunicable sunshine, she has a place apart through her commercial prosperity. She is the haven for the oppressed of every land; she is the hope of uncounted millions lying still unborn in the womb of time. She is the supreme republic of the world and her people cherish her with a patriotism that is almost idolatry. The student of history might well write it upon his tablets that the people of America are indeed heirs of all the ages in the foremost files of time.
Of all the forty-eight commonwealths in that noble sister- hood of States, none has shared more abundantly in the bless- ings of American prosperity and freedom than the State of Indiana. Her natural resources are as varied as they are in- exhaustible; her citizenship is unsurpassed in patriotism; her schools, once a by-word on the lips of scornful men, now rank among the most efficient in the land. Her roll of honor is long and brilliant, and comprises not alone statesmen and educators and warriors, but poets, romancers and historians as well. Her plains and fields have a richness as of the Nile. Her intelligent and beneficent laws are the outward witness to the high and refined civilization that flourishes within her borders. Her heroism in time of war has been brilliant as her patriotism in peace has always been alert and unwaver- ing. Her great factories have hummed a song of industry
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that is heard around the world, and from her happy homes three millions of people with reverent hearts send up a shout of thanksgiving today for the blessings of a hundred years and pray for a continuance of them through all the future time. For without doubt the favor of heaven is necessary for the well-being of the State we love. What constitutes a commonwealth ?
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
Material prosperity is unquestionably a boon to be de- sired, but its appeal is universal and constant and there is little danger that it will be neglected or destroyed. The use- ful may always be left to take care of itself. It is the beauti- ful, the good, the true, that must be tenderly nurtured and cherished. You may destroy the wealth of a nation, but if the heart of the people is sound and their principles high and true, the destiny of that nation is secure. The storms of the outer world may sweep over it in unholy violence, all the powers of Hell may be unchained against it, it may be men- aced by enemies from without and dangers within, but so long as the people maintain in their hearts and manifest in their lives the knowledge and love of Almighty God, so long will that people, immortal with divine immortality, strong with divine strength, heroic with the heroism that exalts and inspires, be a tower of strength for the defense of liberty. Wealth has its use in the world, and it is the duty of the civil powers to create and preserve conditions suitable for mate- rial prosperity. Great indeed is wealth, but the highways of history are strewn with the wrecks of nations in which wealth accumulated and men decayed. Great is power and influence in the councils of the world, but there are nations smarting under the lash of tyranny and fretting in the chains of bondage today that are fossil remains of great people, once the masters of the world. Culture is exquisite, culture is noble, culture is humanizing, but there are nations that sat in majesty as the schoolmasters of the world and are now steeped in ignorance, their brilliant lights extinguished, their ancient glory departed, their men of genius lost like wander- ing stars, or like the waves of the sea foaming out their own confusion. Rome had her wealth, and in the corruption de- picted on the walls of Pompeii you read the story of her
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ruin. Macedonia had power, but the sons of Macedonia today stand in admiration of the splendor of nations that were savage tribes in the forests of Europe when Philip reigned in Macedon and Alexander had made conquest of the world. Athens had culture, but the glory that was Athens has de- parted, or remains only to torment the schoolboy. These na- tions failed because corruption like a worm fed on their damask cheek. They failed because the heart of the people was made effeminate by indolence and indulgence and the morals of the people undermined by vice. And while this day we lift our voices in reverent thanksgiving for the past, we pray the God of nations to protect us against the dangers that lie in our path.
I appeal for the spiritual in the life of our commonwealth. I know there are those who believe that the refinements of comfort that go with wealth bring refinements of spirit as well, but the story of the most luxurious nations of the past utters eloquent denial. I know that there are those who be- lieve that mental culture has powers to save society, but they are those who are blind to the lessons of the past. A few years ago there stood before the world a man whose genius, had it been properly directed, might have shed light and strength upon the race of men; he was truly a lord of lan- guage; he played upon the resources of our English tongue as a great master charms forth undreamed of melodies from the heart of a grand organ. Within the memory of any man now living the thing called culture has never gone further than in Oscar Wilde, exquisite poet, eloquent orator, master of marvelous prose, arbiter of fashion, standard of literary taste, dictator of literary destinies-culture has never gone further within the memory of living man. He was the apostle of aestheticism, and while his eccentricities excited some derision, his genius, his exquisite refinement of speech and manner were such as to bear down the ridicule and win for him the admiration of men. He believed in salvation through the gospel of culture; he chanted in glorious language the dirges of dead religions; he summoned humanity to lift its face to the sun that was to usher in the great day of emancipation from ancient and outworn creeds. The day of emancipation never came, but in its stead came a day when that man of genius stood in prison stripes behind prison bars,
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lung there by an outraged world for unspeakable crimes against morality. The people who would save humanity through the gospel of culture; who would incite men to be sober and chaste, and who would lift them out of the gutter y giving them social ambitions and teaching them the habits of educated people, ought to bear in mind that neither amuse- nents nor social ambitions ever kept a man or woman from the grogshops or the brothel when they wanted to go there. You cannot fight liquor or lust in the soul with magic lan- erns, or even by clean clothes and nice table manners. Only one thing in all the world can do it, and that is religion, the cultivated conscience, a profound conviction that acts have consequences both in this world and in the next.
What, then, will make a people great, or, being so, will keep t great? I answer, the development of its spiritual powers, and that alone. The strongest power in the world is religion. The greatest energizing force in the world is religion. The mainspring of all lofty action in .every age of the world has been religion, which first fastened on the scattered families of men and wrought them into primitive social unity.
The great educator has been religion, which took hold of savage tribes, strong in the strength of the earth, and bent their stubborn necks to the yoke of obedience and restraint. The primary function of the church, of course, is to make men holy rather than cultured, but because in the accomplishment of her high mission she has felt constrained to invoke all che aids and instrumentalities by which men may be in- luenced by their betterment, the church is found in history to have been a school of music and poetry and eloquence and painting and architecture. A famous art critic has made a ist of the twelve greatest pictures, and every picture of these supreme twelve portrays a religious subject. The most beau- tiful structures ever reared by the genius of man are the cathedrals of Europe. The most exquisite music has been woven around religious words. And so the great educator from the beginning has been religion.
The great colonizer has been religion, which has done over the whole earth what it did in our own America-gathered up little groups of men, torn them away from their homes, planted them in fresh soil under alien skies where they might find the liberty denied them at home to worship God accord-
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ing to conscience, "to build their own altars, to light their own sacrificial fires, to utter in fuller freedom those peti- tions for help and strength and consolation that in a hun- dred tongues and in temples of a thousand shapes men every day send up to God." It is religion and the spiritual power generated by religion, that alone can perpetuate a state. Re- ligion must come to teach, first of all, the lesson of reverence -reverence for life, reverence for property rights, reverence for the home, reverence for all things sacred-and she must say to America: "As you have your symbol so have I mine. Your flag was but a bit of painted cloth until it was made to stand for great realities; for equality under the law, for the fullest measure of personal liberty, for a thousand deeds of heroism on a hundred battlefields. My symbol is the Cross. In pagan days it was a token of infamy, but one day on a little hill in old Judea there loomed against the sky a cross on which hung, naked and bleeding, the truest, noblest man that ever lived-nailed there because He loved his brothers and would do them good: and since that day the cross has been treasured as the holiest of symbols by all civilized men." Religion must come to the State and say: "I admire your zeal for schools and colleges and universities. I recognize and honor your passion for learning; but I warn you that nimble minds and athletic bodies never yet made a noble and enduring and God-fearing nation." I remind you that the heart of culture is culture of the heart, the soul of improve- ment is improvement of the soul, that great epochs, creative epochs, the outstanding epochs that have glorified humanity have all been epochs of strong religious faith, that faith which watches over the cradles of nations while unbelief doubts and argues above their graves.
Gentlemen, it is on this force you must rely for the solu- tion of a problem which threatens the interests of property and the very existence of the Republic. Religion must con- front Anarchy face to face and she must say to Anarchy : "The most sacred thing in all the world is authority. Author- ity is the golden ladder whose lowest round rests upon earth and whose top is bound to the great white throne of God." St. Paul speaks of the freedom wherewith Christ has made us free. Accept the law of God and you become a child of freedom; despise that law and you have become the slave
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of passion. Accept the laws of health and you live a happy, wholesome life; despise them and nature will scourge you with the whips of scorpions and plague and disease. Accept the laws of the commonwealth and you move among your fellows majestic and as an independent being; transgress those laws and you must shun the face of day and skulk in the darkness like a hunted, hated thing. Wherever you turn, whether to religion or philosophy or history, whether to na- ture without or conscience within, whether to the health of soul or body, this lesson is written in letters of fire all over the universe: Obey law or die.
Religion must confront socialism face to face and she must say: I am the church of the poor as well as the rich. The millionaire and mendicant kneel in equal humbleness here. The prince and the pauper alike approach my altar table with folded hands and downcast eyes. The rich and the poor you shall always have with you. You will always have Dives feasting in his banquet hall and Lazarus languishing at his gate. So long as men are born with unequal powers and labor with unequal energy and live lives with unequal wisdom you will always have the rich and poor. You cannot change these things. I have nothing but condemnation for the ef- forts of those long-haired men and short-haired women who would charm away as with a magic wand the weaknesses, the sins and the poverty of the world; and who dangle before the dazzled eyes of humanity the irridescent vision of a Utopia where the richest are poor and the poorest live in abundance. Robbery is poor business for an honest people. It is just as wrong to kick a man because he is up as to kick a man be- cause he is down.
Religion must say to the emigrant freshly landed on our shores : You are welcome to this land, where more than any- where else on earth the dignity of human nature is recognized and honored. You are welcome to this land where more than anywhere else on earth liberty is poured out in abundance on the lives of men. But remember, you are to leave at the threshold of America the inherited hatreds and the centuried wrongs that have come to you from tyrranies of kings and princes, and you must not wreak on America the vengeance born of ancient grudges and hatreds and quarrels in the coun- try you left behind you.
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And to America, religion must say : Broad as is thy im- perial bosom, sweeping from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, stately as are the great rivers sweeping from the mountains to the sea, there is not room in America for two flags, and neither the red flag of anarchy nor the yellow flag of treason must ever be permitted to pollute the breezes that kiss and caress the folds of Old Glory.
Standing, still with uncovered heads, our faces upturned to the God of our fathers, we lift up our voices once more in thanksgiving for the blessings of the past and in humble ap- peal for divine favor in the years to come. And as in retro- spect we look back in solemn pride upon the pioneers and the ancient heroic days and the glorious memories of the years that are sped; and as in anticipation looking forward through the mists of yearning we think upon the days to come, let us nerve our hearts with the resolution to live worthy of the traditions we inherit-traditions of honor, traditions of pa- triotism, traditions of high achievement, so that a hundred years from today another generation of Americans standing where we stand today may give thanks for us as we give thanks for the men of old, the men of gold, who in privation, in labor, with honor and integrity in the fear and love of God and for the glory of His name laid deep and broad in the wilderness the foundations of this great State.
INDIANA IN 1816
By Merrill Moores, Member of Congress from the Seventh District of Indiana
Today we are here in response to the call of the greatest of our poets, uttered years ago, but urgent today :
Le's go a-visitin' back to Grigsby's Station- Back where the latch-string 's a-hangin' from the door, And ever' neighbor round the place is dear as a relation- Back where we ust to be so happy and so pore.
Le's go a-visitin' back to Grigsby's Station- Back where there's nothin' aggervatin' any more. Shet away safe in the woods around the old location- Back where we ust to be so happy and so pore.
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What's in all this grand life and high situation, And nary pink nor holly-hock a-bloomin' at the door? Le's go a-visitin' back to Grigsby's Station -.-
Back where we ust to be so happy and so pore.
Today the people of Indiana go a-visitin' back to Grigsby's Station and the sovereign State sings with another, but not a greater, poet :
Dost thou look back on what hath been, As some divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began And on a simple village green :
Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And breasts the blows of circumstance, And grapples with his evil star:
Who makes by force his merit known, And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty state's decrees, And shape the whisper of the throne:
And moving up from high to higher, Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope The pillar of a people's hope, The center of a world's desire. -
In becoming modesty, forgetful of what our State ac- ยท complished in a brief century of life, laying aside all thought of what Indiana is today in the great sisterhood of States, let us reverently approach the cradle of her babyhood, that we may do fitting honor to the pioneers, to whose labors and sufferings our three million citizens are indebted for what Indiana is today.
Civilized Indiana was not conquered from the wilderness without bloodshed, in addition to toil and privation. The first European settlement within its borders was effected by men of Norman blood at Vincennes early in the eighteenth century and about two centuries ago. Eighty years before the con- stitutional convention met at Corydon, on Palm Sunday, 1736, as we are told, the commandant at Vincennes (a nephew of Louis Joliet, who, with Father Marquette, explored the Mississippi in 1673) was, in company with his general, D'Artaguette, and his faithful chaplain, Father Senat, mis- sionary priest at Vincennes, burned at the stake by hostile Chickasaws, who had raided the post.
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The story of Pontiac's conspiracy and war tells of fierce fighting in and across the Indiana Territory as long ago as 1763. A party of Indians, under an English captain named Henry Bird, guided by the renegade, Simon Girty, in 1780, crossed Indiana, and raided the Kentucky settlements along the Licking, killing and scalping every white hunter and trap- per encountered. One need only recall the massacres from Lochry's Creek in 1780 and Vincennes in 1785 to those at Pigeon Roost and around Vallonia in 1812; Clark's expedition in 1786 and Wilkinson's later, the successive defeats of Josiah Harmar and Arthur St. Clair, followed by Wayne's victory in 1794, and the final conquest of the hostile Indians in the battles of Tippecanoe and Fort Wayne, to realize the risk of fortune and liberty and life taken by the pioneers of Indiana.
In 1800 the census gave Indiana 5,506 people. In 1810 the population had grown to 24,000, divided between four counties, Harrison, 3,595; Knox, 7,945; Clark, 5,670, and Dearborn, 7,310.
In December, 1815, by a territorial census, the territory had grown so rapidly, since the cessation of hostilities with the Indians, that the population was only a hundred short of 68,000; and of the thirteen counties, Harrison was fifth with 6,975.
That the new State was growing with tremendous rapidity is shown by the fact that in the next four years the popula- tion more than doubled ; it increased 116 per cent and became 146,988.
The life of the Indiana pioneer cannot be better told than it has been in the verse of the greatest of our poets, from whom I quote again :
And musing thus today, the pioneer
Whose brawny arm hath grubbed a pathway here,
Stands raptly with his vision backward turned To where the log-heap of the past was burned, And sees again as in some shadowy dream, Or sniffing, with his antlers lifted high, The wild deer bending o'er the hidden stream, The gawky crane, as he comes trailing by And drops in shallow tides below to wade On tilting legs, thro' dusky depths of shade, While, just across, the glossy otter slips Like some wet shadow 'neath the ripples' tips As drifting from the thicket-hid bayou, The wild duck paddles past his rendezvous.
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In picturing the log cabin home of early times, the poet said :
And o'er the vision, like a mirage, falls The old log cabin with its dingy walls, And crippled chimney with the crutch-like prop Beneath a sagging shoulder at the top; The coon skin battened fast on either side; The wisps of leaf tobacco-cut and dried; The yellow strands of quartered apples hung In rich festoons that tangle in among The morning-glory vines that clamber o'er The little clapboard roof above the door; The old well sweep that drops a courtesy To every thirsty soul so graciously ; The stranger, as he drains the dripping gourd, Intuitively murmurs, "Thank the Lord."
The interior of the cabin was pictured with:
Bough-filled fireplace and the mantel wide,
Its fire-scorched ankles stretched on either side, Where, perched upon its shoulders, 'neath the joist The old clock hiccoughed, harsh and husky-voiced; Tomatoes, red and yellow, in a row Reserved not then for diet, but for show, Like rare and precious jewels in the rough, Whose worth was not appraised at half enough. The jars of jelly, with their dusty tops; The bunch of pennyroyal, the cordial drops; The flask of camphor and the vial of squills; The box of buttons, garden seeds and pills, And ending all the mantel's bric-a-brac, The old, time-honored family almanac.
We are fortunate today to have before our eyes the mas- sive building in which met the men who laid the strong foun- dations of our statehood, the Capitol Hotel, where many of them boarded during the brief session of the convention, the elm tree to whose grateful shade they adjourned their session on the hottest days, the houses where lived Governor Posey and other territorial officers, and others where some of the members are still remembered to have boarded. Many of the great men of 1816 are passing from our memory, but the solid masonry erected by the sturdiest of them all, Dennis Pennington, still stands, let us hope, as a perpetual monument to them and their work.
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