USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > An address delivered May 30, 1873, at the dedication of the Memorial Hall, Andover, Massachusetts > Part 2
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It is pleasant to recall such scenes. But it is not
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the soldiers who came back whose names are written on the tablets which we are just about to consecrate with prayer. Those are the names of the fifty-two men who died. Some in the prison, and some upon the field; some by the Gulf, some by the James and the Potomac, some in the prison-pen, some in the sick- room here at home. That is the roll of those who sealed their consecration with their death. Oh, the mysterious power of a death for a noble cause! The life is truly given. It passes out of the dying body into the cause, which lives anew. It is good that not a stack of battered arms, nor even tattered flags, are the memorials that consecrate your Hall. They would be good. Let them come there some day, perhaps. But a list of men's names is better. It signifies the total manhood that they gave. It was not only their deeds, their strength,-it was them- selves they consecrated; and a man is always more precious than his work. I beg you, brothers, let us remember not alone the deeds; let the men of the war be present with us always. Let us be glad we lived under the same sky, drank of the same streams, ate from the same fields with them. So shall we get the truest blessing of their lives.
"Earth will remember them with love and joy, And oh, far better, God will not forget. For he who settles Freedom's principles Writes the death warrant of all tyranny ; Who speaks the Truth stabs falsehood to the heart, And his mere word makes despots tremble more Than ever Brutus with his dagger could."
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How fast the men of the war have passed away ! Think of the great men who have gone. The mar- tyr-President went first; then the War-Minister, the devoted Governor, the far-seeing Statesman, the Victor of Chattanooga, the Victor of Gettys- burg, and only yesterday the Chief Justice, who was the Minister of Finance during those anxious years. How soon they went! When the great ship had hard- ly rounded into port ; while, standing on the shore of peace, we felt the solid earth still rocking under our feet with the remembered heaving of the sea, they who had watched and labored for her safety through the nights and storms out on mid-ocean, one by one, as if their work was done, began to pass to their reward, and to what other tasks we cannot know, awaiting them in other worlds. What have they left behind them, they and the humbler dead whom vo- tive monuments and tender hearts remember still in every town and hamlet of their land ? Not only what they did, not only even what they were, but new tasks like their own for us who stay behind them. They did not merely clear the field of treason. By the same labor they built up a new possibility of national character and life. They were like the men who, in these stony pastures of Andover, clear the rough field of stones and build the gray wall that is to surround and shelter it, out of the same material, at the same time. So these men left the new national life for us to guard and develop. Let
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us not allow their memory to die. Let no cynical skepticism scatter the enthusiasm with which we honor them. Let us freely idealize their characters. By purer social life, by finer aspirations, by more unselfishness, by heartier hatred of corruption, let us be worthy of them, and in our quiet duties build the true memorial to the characters of those who found their duty in the camp, the prison and the field, and where they found it did it even to the death. They saw that their country was like a prec- ious vase of rarest porcelain, priceless while it was whole, valueless if it was broken into fragments. What they died to keep whole, may we in our sev- eral places live to keep holy ! So may we be wor- thy of them.
" What, shall one of us Who struck the foremost man of all the world Contaminate our fingers with base bribes, And sell the mighty space of our large honors For so much trash as may be grasped at thus ? I'd rather be a dog and bay the moon, Than such a Roman !"
It is not war but peace that we desire. Alas for him who now or in the years to come shall see these votive tablets shine with nothing deeper than the blaze of military glory. It is the peace which they made possible, the lasting peace with all its bless- ings, that the sculptured names of these dead sol- diers are to preach forever.
There let them stand in our Memorial Hall ! Andover is still the true New England town. Still,
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with her honor for the dead, her teaching for the living, she stands up abreast of the best life of all the land. Upon her new Hall let the morning sun strike with its call to duty, and the evening gather with its benediction of repose. Let its shelves be filled with the noblest and purest literature, that shall speak the same infinite lessons that the tablets utter from its walls. Let the thoughtful and eager young men and women of many generations come to its quiet rooms for refreshment and instruction, and drink deep of its influence and go out stronger for the good work of life. Let the men of business, of the shop and the farm pass under its shadow and feel that there is something better in this world than success. Let the little children play about its steps and tell each other wondering stories about the brave men who died long ago, and for whom this building, now grown gray with age, was built in those long gone years that seem to the child like an eternity, We dedicate it to Truth, to Loyalty, to Conscience, to Courage, and to Culture. That men should be true to their best convictions, and do their simple duty, this is the blessing that gives all blessings with it, and is the fountain of all charity and progress.
" Not to scatter bread and gold, Goods and raiment bought and sold, But to hold fast his simple sense, And speak the speech of innocence, And with hand and body and blood
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To make his bosom-counsel good, For he that feeds men serveth few, He serves all who dares be true."
It is TRUTH that we want in every department of our life. In State and Church we need it, at home and on the street ; in the smallest fashions and in the most sacred mysteries; that men should say what they think, should act out what they believe, should be themselves continually, without conceal- ment and without pretense. When we have that, then we shall have at least a solid basis of reality on which to build all future progress. It is the ben- efit of great and solemn .crises that they give us some characters which manifest this simple Truth, that they make it to some extent the character of all the time. We lay our wreaths upon the graves of our Union soldiers because they were such men of Truth; and we pray that their memory and influ- ence may be strong among us so long as the nation lasts for which they lived and died.
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PRAYER OF DEDICATION .*
BY PROF. EDWARDS A. PARK, D. D.
O Thou God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, who declarest Thyself to be the God not of the dead but of the living, we come to Thee in the faith that Thou art our God, as Thou wert the God of our fathers, and that Thou art ready to bow Thy heavens, and bend to us a listening ear, while we call upon Thee in the name, and as the disciples, of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.
On this memorial day, it is meet that we praise Thy name, O Lord, for all Thy loving-kindness unto the men who first dedicated unto Thee our hills and valleys and streams ; who first labored on our fields that we might enter into the fruit of their labors. Thou didst bring the vine out of Egypt ; Thou didst cast out the heathen, and prepare room for the vine, and plant it; and our hills are covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs of it are like the goodly cedars. We thank Thee that Thou hast kept Thine eye ever wakeful upon the descen- dants of the men who planted this goodly town;
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and that so many of these descendants are carry- ing on elsewhere the work which their fathers began here. Keep Thou the covenant which Thou didst make with our pious ancestors, and bless their children and their children's children for a thou- sand generations.
It is of Thy goodness, O Lord, that we have been permitted on this day of our solemnity to hear the voice of one whose godly ancestors our fathers delighted to honor. We thank Thee for the story he hath told us of the young men who, when they heard of the perils of their country, marched forth from our hills and valleys, and did not count their lives dear unto them, if so be they might preserve the unity and the liberty of their native and their adopted land. We thank Thee, that of those who went forth from us, not knowing whither they went, there are some whom Thou didst shield in the hour of battle, and whom Thou hast allowed to mingle in the festivities of this after- noon, while the air has been resounding with the music of the cornet and the sackbut and the dulci- mer. May these young men so live that every eye which sees them may bless them, and every car which hears them may bear witness to them, that they are faithful to the principles for which they bared their bosoms to the shafts of the foe.
In the arms of our faith we bring before Thee the fathers and the mothers, the brothers and the
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sisters, the widows and the children of the soldiers whose graves we have been this day adorning with flowers, and also of those who died far away, and no man knoweth the place of their sepulchre. Let us engrave upon our minds a new lesson of patriotism and self-denial, as we remember the valor of the young men who fell in the carnage; the fortitude of those who hungered in the prison and no one gave them bread, who thirsted there and no one gave them a cup of cold water; the patience of those who returned unhurt indeed by the arrow that flieth at noonday, but overcome by the pesti- lence that walketh in darkness, and who, weary and heart-broken, breathed out their life among us, and devout men carried them to their burial.
We acknowledge Thy goodness, O Lord, in hav- ing put it into the heart of the men of this town to rear this edifice as a memorial of our departed friends. We thank Thee that in the rearing of it Thou didst give Thine angels charge over the arti- sans, that not one of them dashed his foot against a stone. We thank Thee for the zeal and the skill of those who have watched the building of this house from day to day, and have given their time and care to the adjusting of its treasures. We thank Thee for all the gifts and all the sacrifices which our townsmen have laid upon this altar.
In a special manner doth it become us, O Lord, to praise Thee for the kindly spirit which Thou
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hast given to our friends who came out of a far country,-the land of the Bible and the Covenant, -who came hither poor but have made many rich, who came having nothing, but have given us many things to enjoy,-many things whereof this house is a memorial, and whereof we are glad at this hour of our remembrance. We all unite our hearts in one voice of prayer for Thine aged servant to whose forethought we owe the beginning of this enter- prise for perpetuating the names of our fallen heroes. As he hath planted this tree, may he for a long time sit under the shadow of it and be re- freshed. As he hath relieved the poor and the sor- rowing, may his own heart be gladdened by the fruit of his charity. Let not his eye soon become dim, nor his natural force abated ; and when Thou callest him to meet his godly forefathers in the home of the redeemed, may he go crowned with the blessings of the great multitude, here and else- where, for whom he hath made the wilderness to blossom like the rose.
And now, O Thou all-seeing one, what wait we for but Thine aid as we consecrate this our treas- ure house to its various uses. In Thy presence we dedicate it to the memory of the warriors whose names, being cut in the rock within its walls, will be read by generations yet unborn. In Thy name we dedicate it to all the kindly sentiments which will arise in the bosoms of men as they read these
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cherished names of soldiers who withered away in the very flower of their life. In Thy pure name we dedicate it to the virtues of gratitude for the success of our armies, and of love for our common country. Under Thine all-seeing eye we set apart this building as sacred to the cause of good learn- ing and of wholesome intelligence ; to the mental, but still more to the moral culture of this town ; to the welfare of men, but more than all to the honor of Thy name, O Thou Majesty of heaven and earth. It is to Thee and to Thy glory that we offer all which our hands have made, knowing that from Thee have come the gold and the silver, the skill and the cunning work by which one stone hath been laid upon another, and the head-stone hath been brought forth with shoutings. Help us to remember that except the Lord keep this our treasure house, and this our village, the watchman waketh but in vain. Help us to remember that the day will come when the trumpet shall sound, and we, with all the dead whose names are engraved on the marble of this house, shall rise from our tombs, and shall behold the Lord in his glory. Therefore may we dedicate to Thee our bodies as tabernacles in which God is to reside, and our souls as the very temples of the Holy Ghost. So may all of us unite our hearts and our voices in saying, "Now unto the King Eternal, Immortal, and Invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever!" AMEN.
THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY CHICAGO
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APPENDIX.
The Memorial Hall in Andover owes its foundation to the liberality of Mr. John Smith, by whom, in July, 1870, an offer of twenty-five thousand dollars was made to the Town, on condition that an equal sum should be subscribed by others within six months. This condition was com- plied with. Mr. Peter Smith and Mr. John Dove, con- nected in business with Mr. John Smith, pledged them- selves to give twelve thousand dollars ; and the remainder was secured by the subscriptions of other citizens, supple- mented by the town's appropriation of $4,500, which had been raised in a previous year towards the erection of a Soldiers' monument. An additional gift of $5,000 from Mr. John Smith, and of $1,650 from a few other gentle- men, increased the fund subsequently to about $57,OCO.
The object of this Memorial Hall, as designated by the Founder, is-to use his own words-"TO COMMEMORATE AND KEEP IN REMEMBRANCE THE NAMES OF THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN DEFENDING OUR NATIONAL FLAG, AND SAVING MY ADOPTED COUNTRY TO GOD AND LIBERTY." The second story of the Hall is devoted specifically to this object, and the room is called the MEMORIAL ROOM. In it a marble tablet has been placed, bearing the names of the Andover soldiers who fell in the war of the Re-
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bellion. The lower story is occupied by a Library and Reading-room, which, in accordance with the wish of the founder, are to be maintained for the free use of the in- habitants of the town. Here there has been already de- posited a collection of carefully selected books, to the number of about 3,000 volumes, which have been mostly purchased with funds received from Mr. John Smith, and from Mr. John Byers, of New York. The sum of three thousand dollars for this purpose was presented by each of these gentlemen,-the latter designating his gift as an offering in memory of his deceased brother, Peter Smith Byers, of Andover.
The building erected for these purposes, in the centre of the business part of the town, is of two stories, with a French roof ; having a front toward the east of forty- four feet and eight inches, and a depth of fifty-eight feet ; the height from the bottom of the under-pinning to the top of the iron railing on the roof, is forty- six feet. The material is brick, with granite trimmings. The style of architecture in its main features is that known as Italian. The building committee were Rev. John L. Taylor, D. D., Mr. William G. Means, Mr. David Middleton, Rev. Charles Smith, and Mr. Samuel Ray- mond. The architect was J. F. Eaton, of Boston ; and the contractors for the building were Messrs. Abbott and Jenkins, of Andover. The whole cost of the building, in- cluding land, etc., was about $43,000. In accordance with the conditions prescribed by the founder, twenty thou- sand dollars of the amount contributed is reserved as a permanent fund for current expenses.
The management of the institution is placed in the hands of a board of seven trustees appointed by the town.
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The term of office of one member of this board expires every year, and the vacancy is filled by the election of a trustee for a full term of seven years, at the annual town- meeting in March.
The exercises of dedication were held on Memorial Day, Friday, May 30, 1873. The Address, by the Rev. Mr. Brooks, was given in the South Church, and the Dedi- catory Prayer was offered by Professor Park, in the open air, in front of the Hall.
The Library and Reading-room were opened for the use of the citizens a few days later. The interest which the new institution has called forth, now that its practical advantages have begun to be enjoyed, and the use which the Library and Reading-room are daily receiving, are such as to prove the wisdom of the endowment, and give promise that the expectations of the founders and friends .of the Hall will be fully realized.
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