USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Brighton > Oration delivered at the dedication of the soldiers' monument : in Evergreen Cemetery, Brighton, Mass., on Thursday afternoon, July 26, 1866 > Part 1
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AN
ORATION
DELIVERED AT THE
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DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS' MONUMENT,CO ! IN
Ebergreen Cemetery, Brighton, Alass.,
ON THURSDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 26, 1866,
BY
REV. FREDERIC AUGUSTUS WHITNEY.
With an Appendix,
CONTAINING THE OTHER EXERCISES, AND NOTICES OF THE DECEASED SOLDIERS.
BOSTON: S. CHISM, -FRANKLIN PRINTING HOUSE, No. 134 Washington Street, corner of Spring Lane. 1866.
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61503 '05 .3
HARVARD PLACE, BRIGHTON, December 5, 1865.
Rev. FREDERIC A. WHITNEY.
Dear Sir : At a meeting of the Soldiers' Monument Committee, held on Thurs- day evening, the 30th of November last, it was voted to extend to you an invitation to deliver the Oration at the dedication of the Monument.
I have the pleasure to communicate to yon the desire of the Committee, and hope it will be agreeable to you to accept the invitation.
The day of the dedication is not yet appointed; but it will not occur till late in the spring, or in the early part of summer.
With great respect, Most truly yours, AUGUSTUS MASON, Sec'y Mon. Com., Brighton.
GARDNER STREET, BRIGHTON, December 6, 1865.
DR. MASON.
Dear Sir : Your letter of the 5th instant, inviting me, on behalf of the Soldiers' Monument Committee, to deliver the Oration at the dedication of the Monument, was received last evening.
It gives me pleasure to accept the invitation with which you have thus hon- ored me. My warmest sympathies have been from the beginning with the glorious cause in behalf of which our devoted fellow-citizens, with their myriad comrades in arms, thus laid down their lives. You have done a good work in preparing this beautiful and massive Monument. Let us, at the fit season, gather gratefully and reverently about it, and testify by our words, though all unworthy, our admiration for their braver deeds.
With kind regards to the Committee, and to yourself personally, I remain,
Your obliged servant,
FREDERIC A. WHITNEY.
AUGUSTUS MASON, M.D.,
Sec'y of Mon. Com., Brighton.
HARVARD PLACE, BRIGHTON, August 1, 1866.
Rev. FREDERIC A. WHITNEY.
Dear Sir : At a meeting of the Monument Committee, held this evening, it was unanimously voted, That the thanks of the Committee be presented to the Rev. FREDERIC A. WHITNEY, for his very able and interesting Oration at the dedica- tion of the Brighton Soldiers' Monument, and that a copy of the same be requested for publication.
I take great pleasure in communicating this desire of the Committee, and respect- fully solicit a copy of the Oration at your earliest convenience.
Very truly yours, AUGUSTUS MASON, Sec'y Monument Committee.
GARDNER STREET, BRIGHTON, August 4, 1866. AUGUSTUS MASON, M.D., Sec'y of the Monument Committee.
Dear Sir : I comply cheerfully with the request of the Monument Committee to submit for publication a copy of the Oration which commemorated the occasion so interesting to us all.
And grateful for the friendly terms in which you have communicated the desire of your associates, I remain,
Yours cordially,
FREDERIC A. WHITNEY.
ORATION.
MR. PRESIDENT, FELLOW-CITIZENS, AND FRIENDS :
ON Wednesday, the 7th of August, 1850, now sixteen years past, we were first gathered in this beautiful cemetery to set apart these groves-then vocal, as to-day, with the music of birds, and bowed in their luxuriant summer foliage - as a garden of graves. In the address of consecration which I had the honor to pronounce on that occasion, this day was not foreseen. We anticipated the ordinary exi- gencies of the place which was thus dedicated by appropriate religious rites, and named so fitly EVER- GREEN CEMETERY, a name most appropriate here for its natural, more rich even and beautiful for its spiritual significance. Indeed, we could not but anticipate the natural conditions of mortality, under which, from all the dear relations of life, the bodies of our dead, our beloved, were to be brought here. Accordingly the address reminded us that
"Here shall the weary rest, And souls with woes oppressed No more shall weep;
S
And youth and age shall come, And beauty in her bloom, And manhood to the tomb, - Sweet be their sleep!"
But who of the great throng assembled for those consecration services anticipated the new, the noble consecration which this occasion brings ? Who of all -not the speaker certainly-could have dreamed that before eleven years were quite circled, a civil war, with no shadow of justification on the part of the aggressors, should be begun within the borders of our own United States, that, sustained four years on a scale of expenditure and of army equipment unpar- alleled in the history of nations, should cut down three hundred thousand and more of our best and bravest patriots ? Who could have thought that some even who sat here with us then in the bloom of boyhood, or in the rich promise of youth, were so soon to spring to arms.at their country's call, to give their lives for her life, to be buried on distant battle- fields, or to be borne back within these gates that swung wide open, as with patriotic welcome, to give resting place to their martyred forms ?
Pardon me a single reference more to that address of consecration. These words were spoken in it: "Within this circling grove where we are assembled to-day, it is contemplated that a chapel may be erected, in which the last services over our dead, grateful alike to Christian faith and to bereaved affection, may be discharged. Thus happily the spot
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on which we are gathered for these opening rites may be the same on which, through coming years, the stricken mourner, kindred and friends will bow in prayer, before the forms of the beloved go down to their kindred dust."
The public convenience of our citizens has not yet called for the erection of the chapel thus proposed in the opening of these grounds, to be erected in the centre of this grove, which bears, as from the begin- ning, the name of Chapel Grove, and which, when those words were spoken, was thickly covered with its native forest trees. But instead thereof, what a structure do our eyes this day behold here! Not the chapel consecrated to the successive discharge of the funeral services which Christian faith and affec- tion prompt, but the graceful shaft hewn out from the solid rock. Not the hallowed enclosure for the solemn chant and prayer and holy scripture of the burial, but the Monument, hallowed already-is it not ?- with sacred memories, holy forever as it shall be held, in the dedication we this day make of it to the patriot dead, not in the name of Mars the Pagan, but of God our Father, the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
We only thought to have prepared here the chapel where, as one by one our friends, and these our young soldiers with them, should die by the gentle hand of Providence in their homes, we might honor their burial, and lo, we are called thus to honor them
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slain in battle! Alas, we knew not what the years
had in store. Our "tenderness," alas, how "ill-in- formed!" We are reminded of that touching passage in the Iliad of Homer, where Andromache prepares so kindly for the hero-husband of her love :-
ยท "But fair Andromache
Nought yet had heard, nor knew by sure report
Hector's delay without the city gates.
She in a closet of her palace sat, A two-fold web weaving magnificent,
With sprinkled flowers, inwrought, of various hues, And to her maidens had commandment given Through all her house, that, compassing with fire An ample tripod, they should warm a bath For noble Ilector from the fight returned.
Tenderness ill-informed! She little knew That in the field, from such refreshment far, Pallas had slain him by Achilles' hand."
We relinquish willingly this central site from its original purpose, for the claims of our heroes. No longer as Chapel Grove shall it be known, but as Monument Grove. The Monument, which we dedi- cate here to-day, reflects the highest honor upon the architect who designed it, upon the Committee who have devised and planned, and upon those who have executed the work. In silent, massive grandeur it stands, as if calmly defying the changes of centuries. Not silent, for how truly eloquent is that shaft! It reads to us the whole history of these years of war. It is a speaking testimony to the noble principles on which so reluctantly the North accepted from the South the dread arbitrament of battle. It is our
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own free-will offering. Its symbols, hewn out by the sculptor's hand from its own granite face, how appropriate, how expressive ! Behold on its front the shield twined with our nation's flag, -the stars which the sculptor's chisel has set there, on which God grant! the holy stars in their heavenly pla- ces shall long look down, - the shield upon which, Spartan-like, not with which, our soldiers so many came back. The shield behold there, the sublime monogram shall I not call it, since we see twined within it so gracefully those two significant letters which shall tell forever, as they have told hitherto, of our States united. The shield, once more, behold there, that marks the arms of our dear old State, whose soldiers were the very first on the field when the battle-cry sounded, leaving their own blood, the first spilled in the mighty struggle, leaving, too, their own dead in the streets of Baltimore, as they rushed to the defence of the capital. O Massachusetts, ven- erable mother, hadst thou thought in the blood of so many of thy choicest sons, in this, we had deemed it, the noonday of Christian civilization, thus to verify that motto blazoned on thy shield, -
" Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem "?
Behold, likewise, carved so exquisitely from the rock, the cannon balls, which speak to the heart, louder even than their report to the ear, of the deadly contest.
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And, towering on high, behold still further the noble eagle, proud symbol of our country. It rests on the solid ball that crowns the summit of the gran- ite shaft. It was shaped by the cunning skill of man from the hard-wrought rock, and even, as was the Saviour's garment, without seam or joint. As a sleepless sentinel behold the eagle above the names, cut in the enduring stone, of our fallen heroes.
Reverently, as becomes our converse with the de- parted, gratefully and affectionately, as becomes the sentiments we all entertain for these martyred ones, let me speak here their engraven names, as they form that roll of honor: -
PATRICK BARRY,
ELIAS HASTINGS BENNETT, CHARLES BRYANT CUSHING, WILLIAM CHIAUNCY DAILEY, JOHN FLINT DAY, JOEL DAVENPORT DUDLEY,
JOIN WARREN FOWLE,
GEORGE FROST,
HENRY HASTINGS FULLER, JOIIN GOLDING,
HAZAEL LEANDER GROVER,
GEORGE HENRY HOWE, JR.,
SAMUEL DEVENS HARRIS NILES,
FRANCIS EDWIN PLUMMER,
ALBERT RICE, RICHARD DAVID RING,
WARREN DUTTON RUSSELL, ? Brothers. FRANCIS LOWELL RUSSELL, )
FRANCIS AUGUSTINE STARKEY,
EDWARD LEWIS STEVENS,
FRANKLIN WILLIAM THOMPSON,
JOSEPH WASHINGTON WARREN, ? GEORGE WASHINGTON WARREN, S Father and son.
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Twenty-three from out the whole number of some two hundred, natives or enlisted in our town,-why answer they not, comrades, to this roll-call, as, per- chance, ye have often heard them answer in martial array ?
For the inscription on the front of the Monument, which, in terms so chaste and appropriate, denotes its purpose, we are indebted to our fellow-townsman, Mr. Life Baldwin, of the Committee : -
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE
OF THE
PATRIOTIC AND BRAVE
Volunteers Brighton,
WHOSE LIVES WERE SACRIFICED
IN DEFENCE OF
LIBERTY AND THE UNION,
DURING THE GREAT REBELLION.
And, finally, we read, engraven on the reverse of the Monument, the opening lines of that fine ode of William Collins, England's imaginative poet of the seventeenth century, from whom, in life, with all his merits, fame turned aside, but to lay on his early grave a chaplet which the ages shall make greener and greener, --
"How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest !"
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The Monument, in its material and in its design, well meets the demands of the highest art. Dura- bility, simplicity, expression, these qualities, here so marked, it has been usual, from the time of Phidias and Praxiteles, the most illustrious sculptors of anti- quity, to require in whatever works are intended to perpetuate the memory of past heroes or the deeds of an heroic age.
Of the execution of the Monument, let me here speak the merited word of praise for the enterprising and gifted artisans of Quincy, where lie the inex- haustible granite beds from which it came, Messrs. Adam Vogel & Son, who, under the direction of the accomplished architect, Mr. George Frederic Mea- cham, have so admirably fulfilled his design.
No site could be more favorable than this which the good judgment of the Committee has selected. Most gratefully, I am sure, do we accept from their hands this completed work, as it has been transmit- ted by Mr. Bickford, Chairman alike of the Commit- tee, and of the Board of Selectmen the legitimate cus- todians of these sacred enclosures. With all its touch- ing symbols, with all the tender associations which, like mantling ivy, and as green and fresh, already twine themselves about it,-as the hearts of some of you, my friends, will bear me witness,-we accept, Sir, we will guard, we will treasure this Monument. If embedded, on its deep foundations, in the earth where the dust of our dead is gently mingling, it
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points, nevertheless, towards heaven that has re- ceived their spirits. For, --
" As water rises to its fountain head, However low you lay its transient bed, So must the spirit, from its earthly course, Mount to the Deity which is its source."
The Monument shall quicken our patriotism, it shall sanctify the sorrow of the bereaved, it shall make holier this consecrated place of graves, and inspire us with new hopes for our country, with a livelier faith for humanity, and with a surer confidence in the final triumphs of truth and justice and freedom.
For consider further, friends, and you, gentlemen of the Committee, how natural, as well as beautiful and becoming, is your work in raising here this Mon- ument. The best instincts of our nature prompt the grateful service which you have so happily rendered. How has the surface of the earth teemed with mon- uments in honor of the illustrious dead so long as man has dwelt thereon. Far back in the primeval ages, down through successive periods of barbarism or refinement, amidst dimly-traced historic records, as in the full sunlight of modern annals, we discern these memorial piles. Everywhere and always, grat- itude and affection have planted above the grave some stately mausoleum, some humble stone or sol- emn shaft, some rude structure it may be, or some exquisite specimen of the sculptor's art, to mark and honor the burial-spot.
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We read in the opening book of the ancient Scrip- ture that Jacob, as he journeyed to Bethel, buried Rachel his beloved wife on the way; and, in the words of that simple narrative written almost four thousand years ago, "Jacob set a pillar upon her grave; that is the pillar of Rachel's grave," we read, " unto this day." Some have turned to this incident in the Bible as the origin of funeral monuments. But whatever records may have reached our time respecting the earliest usages of the human race in this regard, the erection of some kind of monument is doubtless coeval with the inroads and progress of mortality.
The mighty Pyramids of Egypt still stand, an enduring testimony to this truth. The mind is well- nigh confused in contemplating the immense size, the wondrous combination of parts, the solemn chambers, the strange conformity of the lateral angles of these structures with the cardinal points, with the rays of certain beautiful stars, and with the position of the heavenly bodies. Ancient and mod- ern discoverers agree singularly in their descriptions of these stupendous specimens of art, more enduring they have proved than any other works of man. From the banks of the Euphrates, from along the western margin of the valley of the Nile above Cairo, come to us representations of group after group still standing, the pyramids of Gizeh, of Aboo Seer, of Sakkara, of Dashoor, and of the ruins of
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many which have fallen in these forty centuries and more of their history.
The entire area of this cemetery would be just covered by the square base of the great pyramid of Egypt, which, with its exquisitely hewn and nicely adjusted blocks of stone, towers to the majestic height of four hundred and fifty feet. Herodotus the father of history and Pliny among the ancients, have furnished authentic data; the former ascribing its erection to Cheops, king of the Egyptians, who for twenty years employed the compulsory service of his people, one hundred thousand men at a time, in periods of three months each. But even this huge monumental pile is quite eclipsed by the great pyr- amid in Mexico. This stands at Cholula, a place now in ruins, but, when the ancient Empire of Mex- ico was in its glory, the capital of an independent state, the sanctuary and chief seat of the gods. Cortez, in his victorious march to Mexico in 1519, avenged in dreadful slaughter the treachery and perfidy of her people, as detailed with so much interest in the glowing periods of Robertson, the English historian, and of our own Prescott. Will you credit my statement, friends, when I say that the base of this monumental pile covers an area of forty-five acres, and that its truncated summit, on which once stood a magnificent temple containing an image of the patron god, embraced, as we may rely
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on the measurement of M. de Humboldt, one entire acre !
And these were burial-places, and these the stupen- dous piles that of old honored kings and conquerors, the famous, but not always for illustrious deeds, the powerful, the mighty by some renown, yet not always the noble in soul. Oh, more worthy far of our honor than many of those who slept beneath the pyramids are the young and tried patriots whose unselfish devotion we here commemorate. Egypt, India, Persia, Babylon, all how rich in monumental structures ! Would that time permitted me to lead you in imagination through that wide field. So ancient time speaks out the instincts of the human heart in posting by the grave some enduring memo- rial. And how can we enumerate the various mon- uments which the ampler culture of modern time has produced ? In every shape and form they stand. Copied often from the splendid mausoleums and im- posing sepulchral shrines of Greece and Rome, they have become the graceful adornment of each modern nation. They are reared on hillside and valley; in humble burial-grounds and in solemn cathedrals; in the public thoroughfares and in sequestered glens; in the streets of London, as that in memory of the late Duke of York at the end of Waterloo Place, and that to Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square. The imposing Napoleon Column on the Place Vendome, Paris, must occur to many, commemorating, perhaps,
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his most remarkable victory, and in that his devoted soldiers, - his triumph over the united Austrian and Russian armies at Austerlitz, in 1805. It surpasses in height what was usually accounted one of the seven wonders of the world, Pompey's Pillar, near Alexandria, in Egypt. It is higher than the famous Column of Trajan at Rome, erected A. D. 115, that holds in a golden ball on its summit the ashes of the Roman emperor, and it rivals the celebrated tri- umphal column in honor of Constantine at Constanti- nople. So numerous, so various in design, - in con- ception so grand and affecting, these monuments of modern time in the Old World have found, perhaps, their richest and most imposing expression in the august collections of Westminster Abbey and amidst the shady retreats and natural charms of Pere la Chaise in France.
Nor has our own country been unmindful of the claims of her illustrious dead to similar honor, nor has affection been tardy with us in rearing monu- ments above the grave. The vast monumental earth mounds of the aborigines of our land were met here in an after age of civilization by the grace- ful shafts which rose here and there above the burial- places, or in memory of our fathers who fell in many a sanguinary conflict with the Indian tribes.
Such was the monument erected at Sudbury, Mass., nearly a century and a half since, by the filial piety of President Wadsworth of Harvard University,
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in memory of his father, the gallant " stout-hearted" Captain Samuel Wadsword of Milton, and his brave soldiers slain, captured, tortured by the Indians, in the Sudbury fight, on the 21st of April,- not 18th, as borne in the inscription, -1676. A new and more enduring monument erected here, by the town of Sudbury assisted by the State, in the same commem- oration, was dedicated on the 23d of November, 1852, in the able address of Governor Boutwell. Such is the monument erected likewise by our State at Haverhill, on the site of the house, and in mem- ory of that heroic woman, Hannah (Emerson), wife of Thomas Dustin, the mother of thirteen children, the youngest but a week old when killed by her captors. She suffered the cruelties of the Indians in her capture from her sick-bed, on the 15th of March, 1697. On the 31st of the same month, she escaped, -shall I detail the wondrous narrative ?- and, after a weary journey, reached her home, only through the awful alternative of slaying with her own hands and the hands of her nurse and a young English lad her fellow-prisoners, ten of the Indian family, her savage guard, as they slept with her in their wigwam, and bearing their scalps to Boston, as evidence before the General Assembly of the province, of her daring work. From the State she received a largess of fifty pounds, and bounties from various other sources, particularly from the Governor of Maryland. And let me not omit to
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name, as one of the most expressive of this class of monuments, that so beautifully wrought in marble, dedicated at the laying of its corner-stone by the matchless eloquence of Everett, which commemo- rates at Bloody Brook, in Deerfield, Mass., in the lovely valley of the Connecticut, the terrible slaugh- ter, by seven hundred Indians, of Captain Thomas Lothrop, of Salem, and his choice young men, "the flower of Essex County," on the 18th of September, 1675.
The saintly " Apostle Eliot," of Roxbury, who with such sweet patience and holy zeal toiled to instruct and christianize these wild children of the forest, has been well commemorated in the beautiful Corinthian column, forty-two feet in height, erected in Forest Hills Cemetery. The appropriateness of the symbols which mark this monument is in none more mani- fest than in the surrounding fence. The iron pales of this bulustrade, supported by Doric posts of stone patterned after the monument, are alternately crosses and arrows. And John Harvard, born in the Old World, but adopted son of the New, who first pro- vided generously for the cause of learning in these savage wilds by founding, in 1636, the college at Cambridge that counts among its first graduates one single Indian, is commemorated not alone in the magnificent university which two centuries have reared on his foundation. An appropriate granite obelisk, the offering of the alumni, stands likewise to
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his memory in the ancient burying-ground at Charles- town where he ministered, which was dedicated by Edward Everett, on the 26th of September, 1828, the one hundred and ninetieth anniversary of Harvard's death. So in various monumental designs have the Puritan fathers of New England been honored by their descendants, though at variance with their well- known principles, seeing that they sought not honor from men, but from God. The Cushman Monument, in memory of the eminent Puritans, ancestors of the Cushman family, erected at Plymouth in 1858, and the Forefathers' Monument, designed by Billings on a magnificent scale, of which the corner-stone was laid at Plymouth in 1859, and which, when completed, at its estimated cost of three hundred thousand dollars, will rank among the most elaborate in the world, may be likewise mentioned in this connection.
The Revolutionary period of our history was most fruitful in commemorative occasions. Memorials of the earliest contests are perpetuated at Concord and Lexington in this State, the first battle-ground of the Revolution, at West Cambridge, Acton, Danvers, Chelmsford, and at various other towns whose citi- zens fell in the opening struggle. I hardly realize that I speak to one entire generation in this large assembly who could never have seen the Warren Monument, raised on Bunker Hill to the memory of that first great martyr in our country's cause, Major- General Joseph Warren. Erected in 1794, it was
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taken down in 1825, that a nobler shaft in its place might grace those memorable heights. For the curi- ous of coming ages, however, is still preserved, within the present monument, an exact miniature model of that earlier shaft, most ingeniously wrought in mar- ble. And the eloquence of Webster yet lingers on the ear, as, at the laying of the corner-stone by Gen- eral La Fayette, June 17, 1825, and at the final dedi- cation, June 17, 1843, he pronounced, before the largest audiences ever gathered in our land, those inimitable orations, forever to be associated with the imposing obelisk that now towers to the height of two hundred and twenty-one feet on Bunker Hill, and commemorates with Warren all his heroic asso- ciates.
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