USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Conway > Celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of Conway, Massachusetts : at Conway, June 19th, 1867 : including a historical address by Rev. Charles B. Rice poem by Harvey Rice oration by William Howland and the other exercises of the occasion > Part 8
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province to treat of our local histories and traditions; neither would it be fitting the occasion of these festivities, that I should discuss the political questions of the day, upon the solution of which so much of the future of this country de- pends. Yet the great events which have taken, and still are taking place in our history, so far compel the attention and engross the thoughts of all, that it will not be deemed wholly inappropriate, that I should address you upon a theme, not entirely disconnected, in its application, from these questions, which are shaping the character of our institutions and gov- ernment, and the future of our history.
With such thoughts pressing upon the mind and regarding the nature of the occasion which calls us together, I know not how I can more fittingly occupy this brief hour than in speaking of THE INFLUENCE OF NEW ENGLAND IN THE DE- VELOPMENT OF OUR NATIONAL CHARACTER AND GREATNESS.
When I speak of New England I do not confine myself to this little corner of the United States, lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the Hudson River, nor alone of the peo- ple at any time inhabiting this portion of our common coun- try. The seed once planted here has long since germinated and grown into a stately tree, whose branches have extended over the whole country, and far beyond the territorial limits of New England ; which like that famed tree of the Indies, the marvellous accounts of which astonished our childhood, has sent down shoots from its branches, which have themselves taken root in other soils, forming new trunks and new centres of growth. I mean all the sons and descendants of New England, the Yankee, wherever he may be found, the cool, planning, calculating Yankee, the keen, shrewd, intelligent, enterprising, persistent, inevitable, irrepressible Yankee, ingen- ious in his schemes, fertile in invention and resource, unremit- ting and untiring in his efforts for the accomplishment of his projects, undismayed by temporary disaster or defeat, and with his invincible jack knife whittling out his fortune and his destiny. The Yankee! a word sometimes uttered with a sneer, but in which we glory, as expressive of certain traits,
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qualities and ideas, not confined by geographical limits, which the New Englander carries with him wherever he goes, and which have an influence and a power far beyond the mountains and the waters, which hem in the land of his ori- gin. The Yankee ! you can no more shut him up within ter- ritorial limits, than you can place an extinguisher over the sun to shut out his rays from the solar system. There is no part of the country, there is no part of the civilized world, which the Yankee has not penetrated, and he has every- where disseminated his Yankee ideas and Yankee notions, and had an influence direct or remote, as decided and posi- tive, as would have been given him by a more material foot-hold.
England, the mother country, has been more aggressive in her policy, has been more devoted to the acquisition of foreign possessions, and by her arms and diplomacy has made herself felt in the establishment of colonial governments and military and trading stations, in Asia, Africa, Europe and America, and in the islands of the sea, from the Pacific on the East, to the Pacific again upon the West, until, as has been truly said, she "has dotted over the whole surface of the globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat fol- lowing the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the 'martial airs of England." The Yankee, true descendant of the English, but largely modified by his position, training and circumstances, less aggressive but more progressive, relying less upon military conquests and colonial possessions, but more upon the dissemination of his peculiar and distinctive notions of free thought, free speech, and free institutions of whatever kind, is exercising upon the condition of mankind and governments, an influence more silent and imperceptible, but no less positive an : wide extended.
That the Yankee is not wholly free from that desire for extended territorial possessions, which characterizes his cous- ins over the water, we cannot deny, when we remember his acquisition of those barren, inhospitable, if not uninhabitable districts on the north of Mexico, and the more recent purchase
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of that desolate, God-forsaken land of fogs, snow and eternal winter, heretofore known as Russian America, but whose present sponsors have not yet found a name for its christening.
We heard something said a few years ago about "leaving New England out in the cold." Leave out New England ! Where will you find its limits? Go into the Middle States. You will find the Yankee first among their merchants, law- yers, divines, farmers and mechanics. He has emigrated to the West, and you will there, too, find him everywhere, in his ideas and institutions, in the schools and in the churches, the leaven which has been leavening the whole lump. . Follow the Mississippi to its mouth, and you have not reached the outer- most limits of the Yankee land. His intelligence, spirit and enterprise have there given him a leading position in trade, on the bench, at the bar and in the pulpit. Cross the Rocky Mountains and the Nevadas, and you will hear his nasal twang among the Sierras and upon the plains, in the cities and in the mines, and as elsewhere through this wide extended country, so here you will find him the smartest of the settlers in the green valleys, the thriftiest miner in the diggings, the 'cutest trader with the Indians, the most sagacious and suc- cessful of the merchants, the most learned and eloquent of the divines, the ablest of the lawyers and soundest of the judges, the most enterprising and versatile of the civil engineers and builders of railways, the ripest of the scholars, the wealthiest and most reliable of the bankers, and the most intelligent and ingenious of the artizans through all that golden land on the sunset side of the continent.
What then is the territory of New England, and how will you leave out the Yankee ? Blot New England, if you will, from the map of the United States, sink the six New England states a thousand fathoms deep, and you have not exterminated and you cannot exterminate the Yankee.
This is the New England of which I speak, and this is what I mean by the Yankee.
What is the origin of his peculiar traits and the causes which underlie his character ? Without discussing the influ- ence of the Saxon element in our ancestry, or dwelling upon the
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peculiar religious tenets of the puritans and others of the first settlers of New England, or the seventeenth century ideas of the days of the English Commonwealth, it seems to me that one leading principle, from whatever cause derived, may be traced running through the history of the Yankee race, which has been a controlling cause in moulding his peculiar charac- ter. His principle is a full and pervading belief in the doctrine of human equality, and to this with its results I desire espec- ially to call your attention. How this belief came to be so firmly implanted in the breasts of our progenitors, whence the influences which led them to differ so essentially in this par- ticular from the majority of their countrymen in the old world would be an interesting field for discussion ; but it is sufficient for my purpose to deal with it as a fact. From some cause or other, the early settlers of New England had a most positive idea of the" worth of their own individuality and manhood, an idea of equality, civil and religious, not then generally held, an equality, independent of rank, station or property. This was the idea which first drove the puritans from their homes . in England in the time of Mary, and subsequently brought them to the shores of our own Massachusetts, to found in this western world a commonwealth based upon this controlling principle of their lives, to build " a church without a bishop, a state without a king." This principle, no doubt springing largely from their religious belief, engrafted upon their inher- · ited national characteristics, found expression in that compact signed on board the May Flower, that first republican consti- tution known to history.
This then is the peculiar distinctive idea, which to my mind underlay, more than any other principle, the whole character of the early settlers of New England, the worth of man as man, and an entire freedom limited only by the requirements of good government, good morals and a due regard for the rights of others; that liberty, which Herbert Spencer so well defines as the enjoyment of every freedom, not inconsistent with every body else's freedom. Not that they had then or afterwards arrived at the full meaning and import of this principle. They had learned but half the lesson, that half
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which applied to themselves, but they had not yet learned toin- clude others, as the Quakers and the Baptists, who from time to time found their way to the new world to join them and their fortunes. They had however taken a long step in the right direction ; they had begun to work out the problem ; they had stated their equation correctly and a correct solution must in time follow. While at the present time much of the religious element of this puritan idea of equality has been lost sight of his descendants have incorporated in themselves, a no less, well defined, and, I believe, a much more intelligent idea of a true human equality, but an idea which has logically, necessa- rily grown out of the principles which our progenitors had first adopted; that the badge of a true manhood is of more worth than all the artificial distinctions of society. The Yan- kee believes, and always has believed, that he is as good as any other man, but, like his ancestors, he has not always learned the converse of the proposition, and arrived at the belief that any other man is as good as he, but he is fast coming to the full solution of the problem, and a better understanding of the principles of a true democracy.
A distinguished writer, some years since, undertook to define democracy. His definition was laughed at, at the time, partly perhaps because it was abstract in its terms, but more from the application made of it ; but it seems to me that it . does not inaptly express the idea of the true Yankee. "Democracy . is the superiority of man over his accidents." Yes, the Yan- kee, lives in the full belief that the man, in his true manhood is superior to all accidents of birth, fortune or position.
" The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a'that."
It is this belief then in a true native equality, independent of these accidents, that constitutes the true Yankee idea. It is a part of his being, the groundwork of his institutions, in- wrought in his nature, breathed into his lungs from the atmosphere of his native hills, his bone and muscle.
Let us trace for a little the effect of this idea upon the peo- ple of New England, and through them upon the country of which they form a part.
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The New Englander, and the descendants and sons of New England have, more than others, made provision for the edu- cation of the whole people. This result should naturally follow, for if the whole people stand upon a native equality, they should all enjoy equal advantages, educational as well as political and religious. Consequently, as a logical deduc- tion from this equality, the whole people are to have the op- portunities of an education, not the favored few only, but the great masses. Hence the people of New England have always been an educated people. I do not propose to claim for the schools of New England any superiority in themselves, over those of all other countries. We are forced to admit that the standard of education is not higher, in our schools, colleges and universities, but lower than in those of some other coun- tries. We have no schools which can compete with Eton, and Harrow and Rugby, nor universities which can com- pare with some of those in Germany, or with Oxford and Cambridge in England, but we have what they have not, a school for every child in New England, and wherever the Yankee goes, there the school springs up with the church in every village and settlement, and no family is so poor that its children may not share the advantages of the most favored.
The Yankee is therefore intelligent. Even his labor is to an extent an educated labor. Our artizans may not have the patience, possibly not the skill in some special departments . with those in the old world, but they possess a versatility, a power to adapt themselves to new circumstances, and a readi- ness to abandon old precedents for newer and better methods, which their foreign competitors have not. Their fingers and muscles may be less highly trained, but their brains are more active and fertile. In the old world you may find some minds more highly trained and educated, but the masses are untrained and uneducated. Here we have a whole people, who have learned to use their brains, and to put their brains into their work. This is one of the causes from which, and the means by which, the Yankee is giving importance to our country as a manufacturing country, and there is nothing, which, in a commercial point of view, makes a country greater in the eyes
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of the world, than a successful pursuit of manufactures and the arts. We have not yet reached the highest stage of development in this direction, but are advancing at a more rapid rate than any other people. When the Yankee begins any kind of manufacture, he is not satisfied to stop short of the highest degree of excellence. The importance and extent of our mineral and other resources furnish to the Yankee the most ample opportunity to apply his intelligence and ingenuity, by the application of which he is adding largely to the wealth of the country ; and, in all departments of manufacture and of labor, you will find him pursuing those branches, which require the greatest amount of brain work, and these are the branches which uniformly produce the most important and valuable results. So marked is this peculiarity of the natives of New England, that it has become a necessity in this coun- try, in all departments of labor and industry, to employ, for the coarser and heavier kinds of work, a comparatively igno- rant and uneducated class, not native to the soil ; to employ it for that work, which require the greatest expenditure of muscular power, and the smallest of brain power. This, too, is the work least remunerative, for the proposition is every where true, that the more brain entering into the work, the higher is the compensation, and the more valuable the result. Hence you pay to the architect, the civil engineer, the artist and the skilled mechanic in the higher grades of labor, a larger compensation than to the mere hewer of wood and drawer of water. Brain everywhere, in the markets of the world, commands a higher price than muscle, and the price is in nearly the same ratio, in which the labor rises above the level of brute toil. This argument, based on money values, is one that the Yankee well knows how to appreciate.
This general education of the people, by which the labor of New England is a more intelligent labor, is one of the greatest results of the New England principle of equality. The Yankee nation is pre-eminently a nation of inventors. No- where in the civilized world is there so large a proportion of the people, who have employed their minds in conceiving and working out some mechanical invention, by which some desired
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end is more speedily gained, and the labors of the hand light- ened. The improvements in agricultural implements, as the mowers and reapers, are indigenous, so to speak in this country. The sewing machine, which has revolutionized many depart- ments of industry, and lightened the labors of thousands of households, was the invention of a poor, hard working mechanic of our own state, and the numberless improvements in these machines, during the last twenty years, are, with scarcely an exception, of New England origin. The improvements in the manufacture of rubber goods, by which that material is con- verted to new uses without number, are, in like manner, almost, if not entirely, of New England invention. In the whole range of inventive discovery, from the Yankee clock to the highest achievements of inventive skill, the Yankee stands pre-eminent. "Yankee notion " is but a synonym for minor inventions and improvements, and ascending higher in the scale, the first practical application of the magnetic tele- graph, ending in its greatest triumph, the cable which binds the continents, that marriage ring of the old and new worlds, are among the grand achievements of New England education and inventive skill. Whenever or wherever an object can be accomplished by more direct methods, or the powers of nature can be made to supply the place of human muscle, the Yankee is the first to press into his service those powers, and make steam and iron do his work. Whatever is to be made the Yankee sets his wits to work and makes not only
" The thing itself, But the machine that makes it."
In the matter of public enterprise, tending to the develop- ment of the resources of the country, and the creation and dif- fusion of wealth, he has outstripped all competitors. His steamboats, surpassing in capacity and elegance those of other countries, ply their way over every navigable water. Although the country is still new, and, compared with older countries, without capital for extended public works, we have already more than 50,000 miles of railways, built at a cost of more than $1,500,000,000,-a length of railway more than
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that of all other countries together. These and kindred enter- prises are mainly the result of Yankee thrift, Yankee enter- prise, and Yankee education.
Thus, in all matters of manufacture, internal improvements and inventive skill, thrift and enterprise, which, in a material sense, are the foundations and corner stone of a nation's greatness, this country is without a parallel. The manufac- tures of which I have spoken, and which have been well styled the back bone of a nation's wealth and prosperity, and the inventions and improvements in this and other departments of human labor, which have enabled us, in a good degree, to compete with the cheap labor of the old world, find their most congenial soil and have reached their highest advancement among the sons of New England. Truly the Yankee " scouts the primeval curse. All the powers of nature are his servants. Steam performs his labor and the lightnings run on his errands."
A wide difference between the Yankee and the people of most other nations, and one of the results of the causes I have stated, is found in this, that, while others continue in the same condition in life in which they were born, he is ever aiming higher. He is neither content to remain in that condition in life from which he starts, nor that his children should fail to rise to a position higher than his own. Even the humblest and the poorest, if he possess the spirit of the true Yankee, is looking for a more comfortable home for himself, and a higher cultivation of the intellects and tastes of his children. Go into his house and you will find the food for these in the book, the periodical and the newspaper, the picture, the photo- graph or engraving, and, upon being let into his secret hopes and expectations, you will find some aspirations for a piano, and those modern conveniences and appliances, best known as the latest improvements.
He loves his home and the comforts of a home, yet he is not so attached to the place of his birth and nurture, that he is not always ready to leave it, and build him a new home, and to engage in new enterprises. Ile is nomadic, a wanderer in his tendencies, and readily adapts himself to the spot where he
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may for the time being make his resting place, and singular indeed will it be, if he do not add to the wealth and intelli- gence of the place which, for the time being, is his home, permanent or temporary. It has been said that if a Yankee should be cast ashore over night on an unexplored island, he would be found the next morning going about peddling maps of the island to its inhabitants.
I have thus far spoken of the influence of New England in matters of material prosperity, growing out of this leading principle of human equality, and the intelligence, education and thrift, which are, as I claim, its natural result. These same causes tend to a wider liberality in matters of religious faith. Hence in this country a larger toleration than any- where else exists. For, if all men are equal, they can neither be accountable to each other, nor to a hierarchy for their religious belief. It may be said that our ancestors were intolerant. They indeed had about them the taint of the intolerance of the old world ; but this their descendants have . largely out grown, necessarily outgrown, for how can account- ability to another be consistent with original freedom. Start- ing with this idea, and with a mind and heart enlarged by a generous culture, the Yankee is not, cannot be intolerant. Hence this country has been, and will ever be the anxiously sought, and fondly cherished home of those of all beliefs, the · victims of intolerance elsewhere.
But I pass on more rapidly to consider some of the elements of a political greatness, to which we may justly lay claim, based upon the same foundation. With this idea of equality, with the consequent intelligence and enterprise, the people are more loyal and the government is stronger than one in which those qualities do not exist. It has been contended by the political writers of other countries and indeed by some in our own, that only the governments of the few, a centralized gov- ernment, as a monarchy or an oligarchy, can be strong ; that it alone has the conserving power, which can give strength and stability ; that the army and navy must be directed and
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controlled by a central head which alone can give that unity, that can make the power and greatness of a nation . felt, at home and abroad ; that the people must be kept in subjection, by an awe of a higher power, overshadowed by the divinity, which doth hedge in royalty ; that, on the other hand, a pop- ular government must be weak, as containing in itself the elements, which work disintegration at home, and cramp its power and influence abroad.
Our history has shown the contrary, and the last few years have given an added lesson. They have shown that, with such a people as our institutions can rear, there may be a truer and a heartier loyalty, and a consequent greater strength in the government, than can be found in one more centralized ; that the people can raise from themselves armies, unparalleled in numbers, that they can furnish them with sub- sistence, ordnance, arms, ammunition, medical attendance and hospital supplies, with a generosity, a prodigality and lavish- ness of expenditure of men, means and money, such as the world has not before seen. These armies have made marches, and been transported by railways, in such numbers, at such distances and with such dispatch, that no centralized govern- ment can furnish a parallel. These armies too have accom- plished feats of engineering skill, in the spanning of rivers and opening of communications, such as have never been accom- plished by the armies of any other nation. Our manufacturers of arms and ordnance, our naval architects and builders have in four short years surpassed the achievements of all former times. In the whole science of warfare they have set exam- ples, which other governments are only too zealous to copy. This, too, under a government which they would call weak ; and how shall we account for it ? The government was not weak. The government was only the expression and the em- bodied voice of a people, loyal to an idea, and the armies were made up of a material not elsewhere found. The armies were but a part of the people, out of which the government itself sprung, and this, with the elements of a Yankee educa- tion, intelligence and ingenuity, all animated by a spirit of loy- alty to principles, which they believed at stake, distinguished
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them from other armies. Whatever was to be accomplished, not only in, but outside of the ordinary routine of a soldier's duty, there were always to be found men, even in the ranks, whose tact, shrewdness, intelligence and former training had fitted them to the work; for in those ranks were men of the most varied training, representing all departments of engineer- ing and mechanical skill. Whether it was to take possession of and conduct a printing office, or to construct or perform any work, it was only necessary to call for volunteers.
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