USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > An address delivered May 30, 1873, at the dedication of the Memorial Hall, Andover, Massachusetts > Part 1
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Gc 974.402 An2br 1781141
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
U
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01104 4176
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https://archive.org/details/addressdelivered00broo_0
AN
ADDRESS
DELIVERED MAY 30, 1873, at
AT THE DEDICATION
OF THE
MEMORIAL HALL,
ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS,
BY
REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS.
THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY CHICAGO
ANDOVER : PUBLISHED BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE MEMORIAL HALL. 1873.
1781141
Andonet 1
Memorial .Hall.
DEDICATORY ADDRESS
BY
REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS,
MAY 30, 1873.
4
THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY CHICAGO
i
1:
Brooks, Phillips, bp., 1835-1893.
F
84403 .13
An address delivered May 30, 1873, at the dedication of the Memorial hall, Andover, Massachusetts, by Rev. Phillips Brooks. Andover, Trustees of the Memorial hall; [Lawrence, Mass., Geo. S. Merrill & Crocker, printers, 1873.
33 p. 24zem.
CHELP CARD
1. Andover. Mass. Memorial hall. 2. Andover, Mass,-Hist .- Civil war.
1-11214
Library of Congress
F74.AGBS [a31c1]
.) 5121
GEO. S. MERRILL & CROCKER, PRINTERS, LAWRENCE, MASS.
5121
ADDRESS.
THIE employment to which this Decoration Day is dedicated and in which many of you have been occupied this morning, is the noblest in which a free and grateful people can engage. The graves of the Soldiers all over the land have once more burst into flower with the honor and affection of devoted hearts. Once more the stately obelisks and the little hillocks that are fast sinking back to the common level of the mother earth, have be- come the flower-decked monuments of the truths and principles for which they died whose bodies lie below them. It is not the least of the debts that we owe to our Union soldiers that their very graves are vocal-that though dead they speak to us still. The soldiers who survived the war have passed into other occupations. It is the lives that stopped at loyalty and freedom that have left the strongest em- phasis upon those sacred words. The men who from the bloody shore of the Rebellion embarked
The'1 22 May 33
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into the other life have left their foot-prints inef- faceable upon the margin where they planted them, and made it recognizable and dear forever.
The voluntary and continual commemoration of the soldiers who died in the war shows how entirely their lives and deaths belonged to the very substance of their land's history. Your friend dies by an accident, and you remember him and decorate his grave, but the country does not come, year after year, to honor him with flowers. Or, if his charac- ter was so sublime and singular that all men gather at his tomb, that honor cannot be perpetual. Other men come who never knew him, and, by and by, his grave is left undecked, to sink back into the level sod. It is the Covenanters' tombstones to which Old Mortality does his pious duty. It is the soldiers of Freedom and the Union on whose graves the freemen of the Union strew their memo- rial tributes. The friends who knew them may all pass away. The mere enthusiasm of the great victory grows calm. The excited party feeling all evaporates. The sectional dislike is all forgotten. But so long as the character of the people remains unchanged, those graves must still be monuments. It is because in them, in what they were and what they did, the best of our national character shone out, that these soldiers have won a dearness and a permanent memory that do not belong merely to their personality. The nation honors in them its
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truest representatives. The real life of the land sees in them the ideal life which is the true outcome of its institutions. They were the flower of its principles, and so it sprinkles its memorial flowers on their graves.
I have been led to these thoughts as I have con- sidered the somewhat double purpose of the Build- ing for whose dedication we have come together here to-day. We are going to set apart forever a Hall which shall be a Memorial Hall of the Soldiers of Andover who died for their country, and also a means of culture and education for the Town to which they belonged. The Hall is to be consecra- ted at once to their memory and to the Town's best uses. It is to be a Memorial Hall and a Library Hall at once. And surely that is good. If these Andover soldiers were indeed the best fruits of our institutions, the best specimens of our character, then all that can educate that character is the best memorial of them. If nobleness of thought, intelli- gent devotion to their country, chivalrous emula- tion of the knightly lives of other days burned in those young men's bosoms, then let us feel that we honor their memory by every effort to keep alight these sacred fires in the breasts of others who are to live where they lived, and in peace, if not in war, are to be called to duties no less honorable, though less conspicuous than theirs.
We are to consecrate to the memory of the
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Union soldiers a Library Hall. Is there any un- fitness there ? At the foot of the tablet that records their names, quiet students will bend over the pages of peaceful books. But we learned something about all that during the war. We learned that even the culture of books, if it were true and healthy, made men fit for the only sort of soldiership we want- the soldiership for Principles and Truth. Our col- lege students flocked out to the war. This Hill of Study sent its students to the field. In the old days, the poet ÆEschylus fought for his country's deliverance at Marathon. Sir Philip Sidney, the chevalier alike of books and arms, died his heroic death under the walls of Dutch Zutphen, for whose relief from the Spaniard he was magnanimously struggling. In these last days the German univer- sities have poured their students and professors into the field for Fatherland. Everywhere, always, good culture and the championship of principles belong together ; and so to the education of the people we may well consecrate this memorial of the people's representative soldiers.
It is not for me now to give in much detail the history of this Memorial Hall. It is the Town's gift to itself, in memory of its soldiers, and in the desire of perpetuating as well as commemorating their patriotism and virtue. Nor does it take from its public character that it is principally due to the munificence of one Andover man, that the Hall
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stands complete in Andover to-day. If a stranger had built it for the town, it would have been far different. But it was to a fellow-citizen of yours, my friends, to one whose character and history you rejoice to identify with your institutions, to one whose long life here has enriched your community even more by his personal influence than by his enterprise and the liberal bestowal of his wealth, it was to him, who, though not born here, has united his life closely with yours for many useful years, it was to him that the good idea first suggested itself, in foreign lands, the fruit of which we see complete to-day. I am sure that this must be a day of pro- found satisfaction to Mr. JOHN SMITH, whose liberal heart first devised the liberal thing which has now come to its consummation. I am sure that the Town's gratitude to him is only the ratification, as it were, of his own pleasure in this good work done. A life of honest, manly toil, of wide and thoughtful liberality, of true devotion to religion and the good of man, must find, although it does not seek and even would disclaim, its own monument in the mon- ument it rears to others. To him, and to those others, closely united to him in blood and business, who led the town in this good enterprise, this honor must be given, that there was in them the character which could appreciate the character of the men who fought our battles. It is an honor to desire to honor the truly great ; and no man must stand here
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and be your orator to-day, without acknowledging in the Town's behalf the Town's indebtedness to him whose patriotic heart conceived, and whose liberal hand has executed this memorial to those whom we delight to honor. Long may he live to see its use- fulness ; long and happily may the gratitude of his townsmen surround his life; and years after we all are gone, may this Hall stand as a memorial not merely that there were Andover men who gave themselves for their country when she needed them, but that there were other Andover men who had it in their hearts to appreciate and honor that glorious devotion !
I suppose that we all belong to Andover and are proud of her to-day. We feel this day to be, in some sense, the consummate day of all her life. We want to talk of her together. We want to trace through all her history that union of active patriot- ism with the desire for educated character which is set forth in the double purposes of this occasion. Let us try to do this. The more we look into the history of Andover the more we feel how thoroughly it is a characteristic New England town. If I wanted to give a foreigner some clear idea of what that excellent institution, a New England town, really is, in its history and its character, in its enterprise and its sobriety, in its godliness and its manliness, I should be sure that I could do it if I could make him perfectly familiar with the past and the present
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of Andover. From the time when the first settlers came from Newtown, in 1634, and built their first cabins at Cochichewick, where the brook still falls from the Great Pond into the Merrimack, when Mr. Woodbridge bought the land of Cutshamache, the Sagamore, for six pounds and a coat, from that day down to this, when Andover adds another to the memorials of the Soldiers that are springing up all over the land, there has not been one experience of New England in which she has not borne her part, or one good characteristic of New England which she has not illustrated at its best. Her settlers lived here in the wilderness. Their infant town was at- tacked by the Indians. Their meeting-house was burnt, their cattle stolen and their people killed. They built their blockhouses on the banks of the Merrimack and in the fields of the Shawshin. An- dover caught the fanaticism which burst out on the darker side of the religion of the land, and three of the people of Andover were hung or pressed to death for witchcraft. It developed under the hard and healthy ecclesiastical system, and learned the severe but vigorous theology of the 17th century. It shared in the religious movements of later times. It met the first need and the first difficulties of pop- ular education. In 1701, it built its first school- house "at the parting of the ways by Joseph Wil- son's." It had all the culture of the town-meeting and the training field. It had its typical ministers
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and esquires. It was heart and soul in the war of Independence. It caught the new impulse of man- ufactures, which has altered New England in this last century. It opened its gates to the tide of foreign immigration. It has felt all the great moral movements,-the temperance movement, the anti- slavery movement,-which have had so much to do with the education of New England; and in these later years it has felt the stir of outraged loyalty, and was not wanting when the Republic called upon her sons to conquer the rebellion that assailed her life. Everywhere the true New England town ! And where in all the countries through which one roams does he find any better or healthier type of life or society ? A healthy soberness pervades its thought and action. Its men and women live out long lives full of calm useful days. Full many here have rounded their complete century. It is a solid granite base of character for any history to build upon.
Nor can one know the old town well, and not feel how even its scenery has the same typical sort of value which belongs to all its life. All that is most characteristic in our New England landscape finds its representation here. Its rugged granite breaks with hard lines through the stubborn soil. Its sweep of hill and valley fills the eye with various beauty. Its lakes catch the sunlight upon generous bosoms. Its rivers are New England rivers, ready
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for work, and yet not destitute of beauty. If every- where our New England scenery suggests to the imagination that is sensitive to such impressions some true resemblance to the nature of the people who grow up among its .pictures, nowhere are such suggestions clearer than in this town, which is so thoroughly part and parcel of New England. Her sons have carried out her pictures in their memory, and in the camps of Virginia and on the shores of the great Gulf their native courage has been kindled to new life by the remembrance of the hills and pastures of their native town.
A town with such a character must be intelli- gently interested in every critical period of the coun- try's history, and so our town has been. Let us look for a moment at the Andover of the Revolu- tion. It will be good to see that the men to whom we dedicate our memorial to-day are the true sons of the patriots of 1776. As we read the history of the good town in the last century, it seems indeed as if we read, on yellowed paper and in old fashion- ed type, the perfectly familiar story of ten years ago. Suppose yourself an Andover stripling, wide-awake and interested in all that was going on, clad in your prim child's square-cut coat and small-clothes, one hundred years ago,-what would you have seen and heard? Here it is December, 1774. The town is meeting. The boys are hanging round the door and telling each other how it has just been voted
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that one quarter part of all the training soldiers should enlist. You are wishing that you were old enough to carry a gun. You are drilling with staves and wooden swords in mimic muster with the other boys along the road. Next April comes, and two companies under Capt. Farnum and Capt. Ames, with Col. Frye to lead them, have gone down to Cambridge. In June the battle comes at Bun- ker's Hill, and the Andover company has had its fifty men engaged. The news comes up to Andover. Three of our men are killed and seven wounded. It is the Lord's day, but the meeting- house is closed. You have seen Parson French with gun and surgical instruments start off in a hurry for the little army. Long since the town has voted that no person shall vend tea of foreign impor- tation. They have appointed their committee to observe that the Resolves of the grand American and Provincial Congresses be strictly adhered to. Already, in May, 1775, you meet the watchmen in the streets, who stop each passer after nine o'clock and make him tell his business. Next year, in June, '76, the town has voted this, "that, should the honorable Congress, for the safety of the Colo- nies, declare them independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain, we will solemnly engage with our lives and fortunes to support them in the measure." A town up to the mark surely, with one foot boldly beyond the mark indeed! In October, our town
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is giving in its allegiance to the new State gov- ernment. In November, it is voting its supplies to the families of the soldiers who are in the field. In one year more it is instructing its representatives to stand by the new confederation. It has its word to say about the currency, about the taxes. It rec- ommends out of its town-meeting a plan of national office-giving and office-holding which might well have been a Civil Service Bill for all our history, and done us good. Finally, in 1788, it debated and divided about the ratification of the Federal Constitution; but, when the convention in Boston voted in its favor, the town accepted it most loyally. Meanwhile, its soldiers were in the field; 98 men were in constant service during the war. The town's militia in 1777 numbered 670 men. Twenty belonging to this, which then was the South Parish, died in the Revo- lution. All these things, with their picturesque de- tails, the Andover boy of the time knows by heart, and is proud of his town, standing firm and loyal and self-sacrificing among the towns that first fought for independence and then built up the new nation.
Ah, how alike all history seems! How old, and yet eternally how new, these elementary emotions are! How the first instincts that make men fight for freedom, and good government, and truth, last on from age to age! Old and yet ever young, like the eternal skies, the ever self-renewing trees, the gray and child-like sea! In 1776 and 1861 these Andover
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men are the same men still. The very names of this last war are the names of that old struggle. What were the Captains called of the four militia compa- nies of 1777? Johnson, and Lovejoy, and Abbot, and Holt. And were not these same names-John- son, and Lovejoy, and Abbot, and Holt-high on the muster-rolls of 1862? It was the same town still, as our whole history is one in its continual fidelity to these principles which have forever and ever "the dew of their youth."
Such was Andover in the military history of the Revolution,-a good strong soldier town. The bat- tles of the country were not fought without her. And yet one is very glad to know that even then the thought of scholarship and education was at work here, not stifled by, no doubt really giving life to, the loyalty and military spirit of the time. It was here that the College Library found refuge from the dangers of the war. It was here, in the very thick- est of the Revolutionary struggle, in 1777, that the Phillips Academy took birth, with a constitution all the more remarkable because it had no precedents to follow, no pattern to model itself upon. Some of the best thinkers in the hard new work of forming the National and State governments came from these hills. Yes, this same union of loyalty and education which is typified in our new Hall to-day, shines forth out of the last century's history. The Soldier and the Scholar came forth together from the
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culture of our town. A powder-mill and a paper- mill were its two first industries, and the same gentle Shawshin turned the wheels of both.
It was just here, at the close of the old and the beginning of the new period of our history, that the. visit of the great master of the work that had been done makes a day memorable in the history of An- dover. Hardly can we dedicate our Hall to-day without remembering how, on the morning of Thurs- day, the 5th of November, 1789, General Washington passed by the place where it now stands, on his way from the house of Deacon Abbot, not far beyond it, where he had breakfasted. The veterans and chil- dren must have crowded on the little mound to see the father of his new-born country pass; and the town tradition has not yet ceased to tell of the kiss that he left on the lips of one of the town's daughters, which was kept there, sacred and unmolested, for a week. The same morning, on the common opposite the Mansion House upon the hill, he sat upon his horse and heard the grateful greetings of the crowd, and then passed off by the old Wilmington road to Lexington. It was a noble gift of Provi- dence that in one man should be comprised and pictured, for the dullest eyes to see, the majesty and meaning of the struggle that gave our nation birth.
It would be interesting, but far too long, to trace how the experiences of the country, from the war of Independence down to the struggle for the Union,
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were all felt in this most American town. The strongest of them all, the growing love for freedom, the growing dread and hate of slavery, found many hearts that entered into it deeply. The honored friend of Andover, to whom it mainly owes its new Memorial Hall, was one of the anti-slavery pioneers. It is interesting to know that one of the choicest natural beauties of the town takes its name from a slave who was liberated because his master, Jona- than Jackson, of Newburyport, felt the "impropriety of holding any person in constant bondage, more es- pecially at the time when his country was warmly contending for the liberty every man ought to enjoy." It gives a sort of commemorative lustre to the silvery beauty of "Pomp's Pond."
Thus I have tried to sketch, in haste, the truly American character of Andover. Everywhere and always, first and last, she has been the manly, straight- forward, sober, patriotic New England town. But as we read her history, it seems as if all thus far were but preparatory for the deeper experience that came, -ah! is it possible ?- twelve years ago. Shall I try to recount the history of Andover during the Rebel- lion? Shall I try to tell the story of the brave men bred here, who fought and died in the war for the Union, and whose names are written forever on the white tablets of yonder Hall? There is no rhetoric that can approach the plain recital of the well-remem- bered facts; and all of us have reason to be thankful
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that in our midst a gentleman has come who has given such lavish time and labor to the noble work of col- lecting and recording all that can be known of the behavior of Andover, and Andover men, during the war. I cannot omit to honor the industry, and to thank the courtesy of my friend, Mr. Samuel Ray- mond, who, led by the sacred impulse of honor to a pure and noble son who died in the glorious sufferings of a Southern prison, has prepared for this town such a record as hardly any town can possess of its heroes, and their deeds and deaths. You may not need it, but your children will. Fresh in your memories still are all those days with all their stirring scenes, all their inspiring thoughts. Do you remember ?- Surely you have not forgotten .- On the 18th of April, 1861, only a few days after the first gun at Sumter, the people gathered for solemn consideration. Then came the great town-meeting only two days later. Its speeches, out of lips that are still speaking here among us, rang with unhesitating loyalty. Little we knew the whole of what was coming; but, come what might, these men were ready for it. The women were eager with their work. The men were drilling instantly. This church heard the bold, hope- ful sermon that was preached to them. The Flag waved everywhere; over the church and dwelling, over the consecrated halls of the Seminary, and above the traffic of the stores. In June, the Andover com- pany went out. The elders of the town sent them
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forth with a blessing that was full of lofty hope. Its soldiers were men who knew what it all meant, and rejoiced in their task. They took their "thinking bayonets " with earnest, faithful hands. Soon they were in the field, as Company H of the 14th Regi- ment of Massachusetts Volunteers. They were the first, but other levies followed quick. I have read down the record, and know that this town of New England was always up to the duty of the hour. No call of the great war Governor, echoing the sum- mons of the noble President, ever found her listless or discouraged. In all, she put nearly five hundred men into the field. Twenty commissioned officers came from her citizens. Over and above all the State aid, she gave more than 30,000 dollars for her soldiers and her soldiers' families, whom she never forgot. Her men fought in some forty regiments. At all the great battles of the Army of the Potomac,-at Ball's Bluff, at Cedar Mountain, at Antietam, at South Mountain, at Fredericksburg, at Spottsylvania, at Chancellorsville, at Gettysburg, in the Wilderness, -the men of Andover were in the ranks, and did their duty well. In the horrible prisons of Danville, and Salisbury, and Andersonville, boys whom Andover had nursed, breathed out their starved and tortured lives. How the old Andover names stand out down the long list! Abbot, and Barnard, and Farnham, and Frye; Foster, and Holt, and Lovejoy; Marland, and Stevens, and Merrill. They came from all pro-
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fessions, from every work and class of life; farmers, mechanics and students, all together, all with one common indignation, all with one strong determina- tion that the country should be saved.
Do you remember the May morning in 1864, when the news came of the battle at Spottsylvania, where the First Regiment of Heavy Artillery, in which so many of the men of Andover were serving, was engaged ? The people gathered in town-meeting. They sent their letter of thanksgiving to their sol- diers. They sent their representatives to help the wounded. They welcomed them as they came creep- ing back, and cared for them. They wrote upon their record for that battle, eight killed and forty wound- ed, and were proud of their champions and heroes.
Do you remember that July morning of the same year, when the three years' volunteers came home? The people met them at the depot, and escorted them in triumph through the streets. Up the familiar road, over the ground where Washington had passed almost a century before, you carried these new de- fenders of their country to the town hall. You fed them and made speeches to them, and not alone in these two traditional American ways,-for Andover is still the typical American town,-but by every method of personal kindness and enthusiasm you made them know that they were welcome, and that you were proud of all that they had done.
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