USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Abington > Celebration of the one hundred an fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of Abington, Massachusetts, June 10, 1862, including the oration, poem and other exercises > Part 3
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Great Britain. Their author was Joseph Greenleaf, Esq., then a citizen of Abington. (Appendix, D.)
For military ardor Abington has always been distin- guished. In the old French war which lasted seven years, and closed in 1763, and when the population of the town was only about 1,200, it appears that Abing- ton furnished about eighty men. In the Revolutionary war, Abington was prompt and ready with men and means for the defence of civil liberty, and stood forc- most among the towns of Plymonth County in the maintenance of American Independence. (Appendix, E.) In the war of 1812 she was nobly represented by her brave soldiers, some of whom are with us to-day, to share our gratitude and participate in this festival. (Appendix, F.) I need not tell you that hundreds of others of her noble sons have more recently responded to their country's call, buckled on their armor and marched to the tented field-rejoicing in the hope, that when they shall return in the gleam of their arms, the woes of oppression in this land will be extinguished forever, and that our country will thence- forth be, what our fathers meant it should be,
" The land of the Free, and the home of the Brave."
In conclusion, permit me to congratulate you, Mr. President, and you fellow-citizens of Abington, on the
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almost unparalleled growth of this town during the lapse of a century and a half. I have aimed to present for your consideration, some of the points of interest in the early history of the town, that by contrast of the present with the past, we might derive some whole- some lessons.
From the fact that your fathers, the primitive set- tlers, loft their carlier homes in the shore towns of Weymouth, Hingham, and Scituate, and pushed out boldly into the wilderness, you know that they were men of enterprise, relying on God and on their own right arms. When you contemplate their privations, the perils they encountered, the self-denial they prac- ticed and the hardships they endured, you know that they were men who had some great and worthy object in view. They labored in hope, sustained and cheered by a faith which gave substance to the things they hoped for.
As soon as the blue smoke began to curl upwards from their rude dwellings, in the clearings they had made in the forest, and while yet they were scarce provided with the necessaries of life for themselves and for their children, you see them animated with the same spirit which brought the band of the Mayflower over and cheerfully making heavy sacrifices for the establishment among them of a preached Gospel.
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They and their immediate descendants settled their ministers for life, and gave cach a handsome settle- ment, and each successive minister laid his plans for a life-long ministry of usefulness. As soon as they were able, they established the public school. They made liberal appropriations for its support, and because they exercised such prudent foresight and made such cheerful provision for the intellectual and spiritual benefit of all the inhabitants of the town, their children's children rise up and call them blessed. Full well they knew that civil and religious liberty must have their foundation in the virtue and intelli- gence of the people.
After all we have said, you know full well, fellow- citizens, that not to our fathers, but to our fathers' God, belong the honors of this day. For has He not said, them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed ?
Lift up your eyes now and look backward to the dim past; look over the century and a half whose anniversary we celebrate to-day. Lift up your eyes over all the towns in this county, and picture in imagination, if you can, their carly advantages for growth and progress compared with Abington, and then tell me where among them all has there been a beginning so feeble, a love of freedom and a hatred of
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oppression so marked and uniform, an expansion so rapid, a progress and prosperity so wonderful and so great ? (Appendix, G.) Look again, and tell me which of all these towns has been so earnestly and faithfully instructed in the knowledge and service of the Son of God, and so careful to maintain, in its simplicity and purity against every form of error, the religious faith of the Pilgrims ? Long may the smile of God rest on this town,-its prosperity continue, and its intel- ligence, patriotism, and piety, make it the glory of the County and an honor to the State.
Music by the South Abington Band followed, thus concluding the exercises of the forenoon.
At the close of the exercises in the grove, a pro- cession was formed in nearly the same order as before, and proceeded to dinner. A large tent had been erected near the entrance to the grove, where Messrs. Reed & Noyes had provided dinner for seven hun- dred and fifty persons. Many were unable to procure tickets to the dinner, the supply having been exhausted early in the morning.
The assembly having taken their places at the tables and quiet being restored, the President of the Day called upon the Chaplain, who invoked a blessing.
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After the refreshments had been partaken of, the President introduced the intellectual repast in the following remarks :-
Hallowed be the day, forever hallowed be the day, as each returning half century brings around the time that com- memorates the natal day of the town of Abington.
We are especially fortunate to-day in having with us the Governor of the Commonwealth, who, laying aside the cares of State, meets with us to honor the day. We welcome here also the members of the Executive Council, who visit us. We welcome home especially those sons and daughters of Abington who have been induced from any cause, whether of business or pleasure, to take up their residence abroad. I, also, have lived much away, and after all my wanderings have returned and settled in the old town, and from my heart can say, " with all thy faults I love thee still."
At the conclusion of his remarks, the President introduced Mr. SAMUEL N. Cox, the Toast-master,* who announced the regular sentiments t as follows :-
1. The President of the United States.
Responded to by the Weymouth Band. " Hail to the Chief."
* The Toast-master takes this method to acknowledge his indebtedness to several gentlemen, who kindly furnished sentiments for the occasion.
t It was greally regretted that some of the sentiments could not be responded to for want of time, but gentlemen who would have spoken, had time permitted, have very kindly furnished such remarks as they would otherwise have made.
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2. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
His Excellency Gov. ANDREW, being called upon, replied as follows :-
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :-
I apprehend the President of your gathering to-day will find hereafter that he has an account to settle with me which, although he is the Auditor of the Commonwealth, he will find it difficult to adjust.
I perceive that on your programme of performances upon this most interesting occasion, I am written down and under- lined for a speech. Now I always try to keep my engage- ments. And in this presence I will make no accusations against any body else ; but if it should turn out to be any disappointment to any ladies or gentlemen present that they should receive no speech from your humble servant, it will neither be their misfortune nor my fault. Though I attempt no speech, I am exceedingly happy, as the official repre- sentative of this grand old Commonwealth of ours, to make some humble response in the spirit of that sentiment, with which,-while you, men and women of Abington, are cele- brating to-day the history, the lives, the achievements, the virtues and conquests of your ancestors,-you have paused a moment to recollect the Commonwealth, the mother, the guardian, the guide, and the protector of us all.
You would not ask that any one not native to your soil, not to the manor born, should attempt to speak to you of them, of the venerable men from whom you sprung, nor to presume to relate their history. This very air whispers now in our cars of their lives and their aspirations. These groves are vocal now with echoing notes of their voices, their indus-
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try, their prayers, their hopes. One who has a right to speak for the fathers and the mothers of Abington, being himself one of their children, has woven together in artistic story to-day, presented in the form of graceful speech, the sub- stance and outline of their annals; and another of their sons will make music in poetie numbers as he too again rehearses the tale.
The Past sometimes is said to be ours, and sometimes only the Present. I think that the Future alone can be called our own. The Past is inexorable; its history is written; it stands in imperishable record. Its memory may be forgot- ten, but still it is there. No prayers or tears of ours can change its character or efface a line or blot. The Present passes, and escapes from our grasp even while we are trying to hold it. But the Future is before us and sure to us all. Of that no man can be defeated or defrauded ; it is ours by a promise as unerring and sure as the fiat of God. And, Mr. President, friends and fellow-citizens, as a part of the people of the Commonwealth of that Massachusetts you gratefully remember, so in our capacity as a part of the people of our Federal Union of States, we have a hand and voice in the creation of a greater Future, more brilliant, more noble, more blessed to humanity, and more true and just to God, than any Past known yet to mortals. Of what worth were it to remember how great and good were the fathers and mothers from whom we sprung, of what value to our souls, and to our happiness here or hereafter, were it to be unable to forget that they were brave and virtuous, that they were industrious, faithful and pious, devoted lovers of man and fearers of God, if we by any selfishness or cowardice of ours should permit ourselves to be untrue to their his- tory, to their faith and their doctrine ? The providence of
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Almighty God sends to every people its own blessing and its own trial. The brightest blessing and the surest one to men is a certain deliverance out of every trial-to every people who are worthy to be delivered.
You, Sir, have heard to-day reference to that which is frequently in your thoughts-the struggles of the carly fore- fathers, and of the men of later date, the men of the Revo- lution, and the men of that later war of independence, (some of whose illustrious representatives, with their whitened hairs, honor these festivities.) And you turn, sadly yet fondly, from those subjects and reminiscences, to contemplate the experiences of this very hour-at once a contrast and a correspondence. Those men fought, sometimes against savage foes, alien to their blood, sometimes against foreign foes, alien to the soil ; but the men of Massachusetts and of loyal America to-day fight against savage foes, and yet neither alien to their blood nor soil ! "Our most familiar friend " has lifted up his heel against us. Our enemies have come to be " those of our own household," therefore the bitterer the sorrow, the keener the anguish, the more trying and dread- ful the encounter ; but yet the sterner and more unconquer- able the solemn duty. And well have the men and the women of Massachusetts performed it. Well have they met and performed the solemn task of dreadful war. More than forty thousand of her sons-bravest and best-have been poured out from her teeming lap. Fighting to-day, they stand, wherever floats our country's starry banner, on land or sea, on lake or winding river, ploughing through perilous morasses, scaling mountain heights, or in the sharpest battle encountering the foe, steel to steel. There they stand, rep- resentatives of true New England character. Who without tears could read the gallant conduct of our Tenth Regiment,
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forming the other day at the battle of " Fair Oaks," in the place assigned them, and standing fast while out from the cover of the sheltering woods there came the stealthy and noiseless step of the subtle foe, to pour in upon their flank and rear his deadly fire ? And yet those Massachusetts boys from Berkshire hills and the Connecticut valley, who at last har- vest were putting the siekle to the grain,-who mowed the grass last summer on the Hoosack and the Housatonic, and shocked the corn in the valley of the Connecticut only last year-stood firm and brave before the dreadful carnage, closed up their thinning ranks, and dressed up to line as if upon parade. Their column thinned once more, they close up again. And four times did these brave boys re-form their ranks, and at last, with desperate courage, aided by the Seventh-gathered here mainly from your counties of P'ly- mouth and Bristol, they and the unsurpassed Fifteenth, of Worcester, charged home upon the enemy, carrying victory upon their banners, and death upon their bayonets.
From the battle of Bull Run, from Ball's Bluff, from the Peninsula, near Yorktown, from wherever a shot has been fired for Liberty and Union, to the banks of the Mississippi, even to Pea Ridge, in distant Arkansas, there have the sons of New England stood, and I, as an humble representative of the Commonwealth, have marched a silent mourner by the bier of a son of Massachusetts who fell at the head of the regiment he so gallantly led, the head of the foremost column on the bloody, but at last victorious field of Shiloh. Nowhere, but a Massachusetts boy, a son of the old Bay State, has stood in the attitude of a soldier with the heart of the freeman and patriot, to die, if need be, like a man.
Who shall see the end of all this? To what ken, but the prescience of Almighty God is it possible to know when,
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where, how, by what means, or with what precise result all this shall end. How many more of these fair flowers of the forest, of the field, of the town ; how many bright hopes of our young manhood, how many of the blossoms of our youth, the hopes of the fathers and the mothers-shall fall beneath this terrible shoek and curse of war ? To Him alone who counts the hairs of our heads and watches the sparrow's flight and fall, is it possible to answer that question. But to the faithful heart, to the believing soul, to the firm patriot, to the true sons of our fathers, the ultimate answer to that question is not insecure. He who blessed them in the past and rewarded their fidelity, shall bless us in the future, if while we are true to that flag-our country's ensign-we are true to the principles of our government, true to its union and to its LIBERTY ; faithful to every duty, as the onward provi- dence of events shall point it out. Faithful, firm, brave and serene, in the presence of danger, joyful in every triumph, serene in every disaster, let our people stand, and whatever duty shall be revealed day by day, let them be prepared to do. If there is any mistake of duty it is not in the mass of the American people. If there is any misunderstanding, it is not in the judgment, the conscience, or the heart of our people. They are freer to follow than their leaders are to lead. If there is any blunder in the politics, the policy, the philosophy or the faith of the country, it is in that relue- tanec, that hesitaney, upon the part of many men who, through their control of the press, and in their capacity as representative men, are thus in some sort leaders of the people.
One element, often left out of the estimate of public men, has been the disaster of public policy. Our people are cdu- cated in literature, religion, in morals, in business, in public
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affairs-educated not only in their own persons, but in the persons of their fathers before them. Intelligence is native to us, in our blood and in our bones; so that he who does not count into all his calculations touching public affairs this element, to wit, the instinctive sagacity and sense of the American people, commits a blunder greater than a crime, which not all the waters of the Mississippi can wash out. Now, Sirs, I stand here not to be a prophet; I am here only by your courtesy and sufferance. I am not bold enough to make myself stand in the category of leadership to any body, but as one of the humblest of the people, as one of the sons of a Massachusetts sire, born and nurtured, and educated in the midst of the affairs and duties of humble, common life, with sympathy-according to my capacity for intelligent sympathy-with men because they are human, as well as because they are neighbors or friends, I dare say that the people of Massachusetts will discover and will pursue with deliberate wisdom, but with the enthusiasm of faith, the policy of duty. They will follow the suggestions of wisdom, and justice, and truth, and humanity, and patriot- ism, and right, in their own breasts, and following in that they shall assist to re-gather the broken fragments of our Union. They shall go forward in the restoration of peace to our distracted country. They shall lead in building on the sure foundations of eternal right, with which all institu- tions must be compatible or never endure. And your chil- dren, and your children's children, down to the latest hour of future time, gathering here in this pleasant grove, or wheresoever they may be wont to assemble on their days of rejoicing-though centuries shall have rolled away-shall
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call you blessed, more blessed than the fathers which you commemorate to-day.
And now, Mr. President, may I dare to say that in what- ever work or duty which may be assigned to any one of us, we shall not be faithless. Shall we not pledge ourselves on this solemn anniversary as well as joyful festival, in the midst of the trying and severe tasks which surround us, to a pious and faithful devotedness, in the humble hope that as God was to our fathers, so shall he be to us and our children, because we will to follow after Him,-and that as he led Israel by the pillar of cloud by day and his pillar of fire by night, so we will follow after the signs of our time the lead- ings of that same Providence, whether we see those signs in the heavens above, or whether we read those intimations on the heart itself. But, Sirs, in scanning the horizon of human affairs in order to discern the signs of the times, let us not commit the fatal error of studying only the floating clouds to follow the blowing of the winds.
A friend and disciple of General Jackson, once told me that the patriotic old hero, although the idol of the people in his time, the most powerful of popular leaders in his capacity to concentrate the affection and trust of the people around his own person, was a conspicuous example of indif- ference to momentary clamor, and of confidence that the honest intelligence of the people would sustain him in doing right ; and that it might almost literally be said that when he wished to discover popular sentiment, he looked into his own heart. And knowing that he had a brave and honest heart of his own, he trusted to the sympathy and agreement of all brave and honest men.
And now, Mr. President, thanking you and your associ- ates, the people of Abington, the sons and daughters of this
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ancient and prosperous town, for the opportunity of partak- ing in the festivities of this anniversary, I give you as a sentiment,
The brave and honest heart.
At the close of the Governor's remarks the Presi- dent called for three cheers for Governor Andrew, which were given with a hearty good will.
The South Abington Band then played an appro- priate piece of music.
3. The Natural Productions of Abington .- Although they are somewhat limited, yet we are not destitute of native poets, upon whose resources we have not hesitated to call, and whose response has been most cordial.
JAMES WILSON WARD, Jr., Esq., of Guilford, Conn., being introduced to the assembly, delivered the fol- lowing Poem.
The Muses of old-so we have been told- Were very accomplished young ladies ; And they had for their beanx, every school-boy knows, All the poets on earth and in Hlades.
And the rhymesters e'en now are all raising a row, And bowing and seraping before them. Though over fourscore, old spinsters of yore, What a crowd of young fellows adore them.
I must own I can't yet bear a faded coquette, And I'm not such a tame-hearted kitten As to go and propose, where all the world knows, I am sure to get the mitten.
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So I'll call the grapes sour, and keep elear of the bower Where the tuneful nine are reposing ;
Though hewitching they be,-between you and me, They can just keep on with their dozing.
No heathenish Muse can ever infuse Inspiration sufficient to guide me ; But for fear I shall faint, I invoke every saint To come down and stand beside me.
The saint above all upon whom I would call, Is the patron saint of leather, Who has blessed this town with a fair renown And called its children together.
Then a song let us raise in Saint Crispin's praise For his kindly watchfulness o'er us,
Till the quivering ground echoes back the sound Of our wild tumultuous chorus.
Our shoemakers here wince not at a sneer, Whether coming from foe or neighbor. Though fools may deride, there's an honest pride And a dignity in labor.
When rebel lords with maudlin words Prate loudly of " greasy mechanics," Our craftsmen abide at their benches in pride And show us no Bull-Run panies.
Would that all were acquaint with that glorious saint, The saint of the awl and the hammer- An example sublime to the men of our time, Who fill the world with their clamor.
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Though nobly born, he did not scorn
At the shoemaker's bench to labor.
Where a great heart is shown, the bench is a throne, And the lowliest seat, Mount Tabor.
The shoe in his hand grew sacred and grand As proudly he wrought at the leather ; And I seem to read now, on his kingly brow- " Here Virtue and Skill meet together."
At humanity's call he labored for all, And all mankind were his brothers ; Like his blessed Lord he preached the good word, And lived all his life for others.
In the stillness at night, by a candle's light He plied his diligent hammer, And continued by day to preach and to pray In spite of opposing elamor.
When in death he bowed, a title more proud Than crown or knightly garter Can ever give, was his to receive- God's own thrice blessed martyr.
And the people of France, his fame to enhance, Built a temple of stately splendor, Where shoemakers came to honor the name Of their patron and defender.
That cathedral of yore stands majestic no more With its arches broad and ample ;
But that saint has a shrine in your heart and mine, And Abington is his temple.
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There comes from a source-trustworthy of course- This very authentic tradition, That the saint, worn out by the noise and the rout, Left Europe upon a mission.
Ile sought for rest in the land of the West, Far over the rolling waters;
And he found him a home 'neath the heaven's broad dome, With the pilgrim sons and daughters.
As he gazed around o'er the unbroken ground, Exploring the wilderness nation,
Hle beheld a grove, such as fairies love, And selected this location.
" Ah, here I'll abide," the old saint cried, " And here my craft I will nourish, All around this lake, a town I will make, And by my help it shall flourish."
Thus has Abington her swift course run All under Saint Crispin's protection ; May he long dwell here to bless and to cheer The town of his own election.
And the good saint to-day is not far away ; On the tops of these trees he is walking -- Stretching out his kind hands, there the old saint stands- And hark ! I can hear him talking.
In silence profound, let us list to the sound ; For 'tis an unheard of wonder That the saint should talk in his airy walk Over the pine trees yonder.
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" Old Abington, Old Abington, fondly beloved of yore, With joy I view this festive scene, and greet you all once more ; Your fathers were a goodly race, sturdy and fearless men, For honest hearts and willing hands were only nurtured then. Be children worthy of your sires ; be freemen brave and true ; Serve God; nphold the right ; be bold, and all your duty do. Be high-souled patriots in all the meaning of the word, And prove your title to that name, if need be with the sword. Thrice blessed are the patriot dead, who sleep beneath the sod, Proud martyrs to their native land, to liberty and God ! Old Abington, God bless your sons ! In glory may you stand, While you are true to God and man, and love your native land."
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