USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Cohasset > Centennial anniversary of the town of Cohasset, May 7, 1870 > Part 3
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Grandest of all the scenes of nature is a winter storm upon a rocky coast. But grander far to see, as I saw once, as you have often seen, the will of man triumphant over the strife of the elements. The stranded vessel lies hopeless on the shoal. Her master is lashed to the bulwarks; the freezing sleet has numbed his limbs; every wave dashes over him. All the billows of despair have gone over his soul. Then a man of the sea leaps into his cockle-shell of a boat, sends a token to his children, who may be orphans at night, and guides his frail canoe among the rocks. Now the waves have swallowed him up, but strength and skill prevail ; he reaches the ship; he bears the almost life- less sailor in safety from the parting fragments of the wreck.
Time would fail me if I sought to recall all the marine disas- ters which this spot has witnessed. Let a few records suffice.
On February 12, 1793, the Danish ship Gertrude Maria, in a driving snow storm, struck on a ledge, and finally went to pieces on Brush Island, where the survivors of the wreck found poor shelter for the night. In the morning hardy sailors rescued them, with great hazard, losing one boat upon the rocks, and humane friends sheltered them at their homes. This was the reception of men, who, fearing that they were about to fall into the hands of savages, had cut the gilded buttons from their coats, lest they should tempt the barbarous people to crime.
The King of Denmark, learning the facts, sent medals of gold and silver to honor the gallantry and humanity of the people of Cohasset ; and when, years after, Mr. Hubbard, a citizen of Bos- ton, was carried into the harbor of St. Croix dangerously sick, the health laws were suspended ; the rigorous quarantine gave way in token of the hospitality which Capt. Clien and his men had received when wrecked at Cohasset near the port of Boston.
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Thus was America honored in distant lands ; the humanity of your fathers was repaid to a stranger, and the nations of the world were brought nearer to each other.
Rev. Mr. Shaw was among those who were conspicuous for their humanity. The names of Doane and Tower were not wanting on the Roll of Honor. The proceeds of one of the gold medals were most appropriately used to add to the com- munion plate of the first church-appropriately, for when the men of Cohasset rescued and fed and clothed and sheltered the poor wayfarers cast upon these shores, they bestowed their gifts on Him who is commemorated by the communion service :
" The Holy Supper is kept indeed In whatso we share with another's need."
In October, 1849, the British brig St. John, with immigrants from Galway, struck on the Sea Ledges, a little to the west of the Minot, and immediately went to pieces. More than a hun- dred of her passengers were drowned. Others were rescued by the humane exertions and heroic daring of the men of Cohasset ; and every house was open to welcome those who were thus snatched from the grave. I have already named the founders of your town. Let me name some of those who, in our own day, sustained its honor and the honor of humanity. Studley, Snow, Lawrence, Hardwick, Lothrop, Tower-these were prom- inent in their efforts to save. I have not been able to procure the names of all. Their modesty will thank me, as the modesty of all would have thanked me, if all the names had been with- held.
One affecting incident of the wreck must be familiar to you all. Mr. Lothrop watched a little package that floated in the surf, and grasping it, found, to his surprise, an infant girl. The mother had wrapped up her child with careful hands, and com- mitted her to the waves, as once a mother placed her loved child in a little ark upon the water's edge, and prayed that Heaven would save the infant's life. And this child, also, was received into princely hands. But a mother's care and the stranger's daring would have been vain, had it not been decreed by Him who holds the waters in the hollow of his hand that this child should live and not die.
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Another child was brought in this vessel by her aunt to meet the mother who had come to America before. When the mother sought her infant, she found her resting with her head upon the shoulder of her aunt, but the child and the woman alike were dead. The heart-broken mother only survived for three days.
In striking contrast with the heroism and kindness of your people, was the heartlessness of the captain of the St. John, who, with the crew, left his vessel in a boat only half filled, and who, in his cruel cowardice, neglected to inform the crew of a life-boat that his wrecked vessel was filled with perishing men and women.
Life is filled with just such contrasts. The same waters that witnessed the heroism of Capt. Williams and his officers going down at their posts, unwilling to desert the sinking flag, saw the captain of the Bombay leaving the ship whose sides he had crushed, hurrying away as fast as wind and steam could carry him, trembling all over with cruel fear, lest in the bottom of his vessel there might be some plank as rotten as his own heart.
On January 19, 1857, the brigantine New Empire was wrecked at Little White Head. The floating ice prevented all approach to the shore. Peter Follen, procuring two cylinders from the Humane House, placed them beneath his knees, and took a line to the ship, casting in his lot with the shipwrecked men that he might save them all.
Of course the standard jokes about wreckers are related of the inhabitants of these shores. Of one it is said especially, that when asked what his luck had been for the season, he an- swered : " I got a good deal of stuff and put it in the barn, but they do steal so the second time, that sometimes I almost wish there never would be another wreck."
A much better authenticated story, is that of the Swedish brig wrecked on Minot's Ledge, December, 1836 ; her two decks washing ashore upon Beach Island, three miles distant, her precious cargo strewn all along the shores upon the bottom of the sea. Ninety per cent. of that cargo was recovered; every bar of iron was delivered to the owners, the count answering the invoice ; while of forty bales of crash, consigned to one Boston merchant, forty save one were carried to him in the winter, and the remaining bale was restored in June.
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In 1798, the last slave ship that sailed from Boston was driven upon the bar at the mouth of your harbor, and so her criminal voyage came to a fortunate end.
Since the erection of Minot Light, these disasters are almost unknown in this spot. The whole country recollects the de- struction of the first light in April, 1851. A long storm had strewn the shores of New England with shipwrecked vessels. A former gale had shattered one of the iron pillars that upheld the structure. And when the morning light of April 18 broke through the storm, the anxious eyes that looked seaward could see no vestige of the lighthouse. Two inen perished in its downfall. The present structure is the pride of the coast. Had it been erected in ancient times, it would have added one to the wonders of the world. As it stands now, firm and erect amid the raging sea, it is not only a noble triumph of human skill, but the fittest emblem of a true man constant for the right against a gainsaying world. Such a symbol might have been borne upon the coat-of-arms of Peter Hobart in 1645, or, in 1829, upon the spotless shield of William Lloyd Garrison.
But it is not in scenes of war or of wreck that the true life of such a town is found. You love Cohasset, because here for generations an industrious, intelligent and contented people have found a happy home. Here, as among all your neighbors of the South Shore, hard work, "plain living, high thinking," with peace and freedom, have been the habitual life of the peo- ple. Your fathers turned early from the hard and scanty soil to reap their richest harvests on the sea. The exportation of lumber to the West Indies has ceased. No more fortunes can be made by selling fish at famine prices in the Atlantic and Mediterranean ports of France and the Peninsula. But still, like your fathers, you draw wealth from the ocean, and with it the more precious treasures of vigor, energy and enterprise. Nor is agriculture neglected even on these shores. Labor and skill make your rocky fields productive. Your pleasant beaches tempt and refresh the wearied fugitives from the cares and toils of the city. The growth of Cohasset in wealth has been used as an argument to stimulate your neighbors to demand railroad facilities. Well may they desire to share those facilities, when they read that your valuation has increased from 8306,000, in
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1840, to nearly $1,800,000 to-day. Your care of schools in- creases with your wealth, increasing the town appropriation in twenty-five years from $1,100 to $4,000. Three younger churches have grown up around this venerable mother. The last not only bears a pleasant name-" the Beechwood Church " -- but its origin carries us back to Puritan days, for it was founded after forty days of prayer by an earnest woman. And while this takes our thoughts back to old times, the first contri- bution for this church reminds us of a story that can never grow old. For the first gift set apart for its treasury was the smallest coin that ever issued from our mint.
And who and what are the men that are the product of your institutions ? You may well boast of Benjamin Pratt, who was born March 13, 1710-11, in a house on what is now called South Main Street-on a homestead which has now been in possession of the family for one hundred and eighty-five years. A gifted writer in prose and verse, an eloquent and successful lawyer, he was appointed to the high place of chief justice of New York, and died in 1763, too early to share in the contest for Independence, although he heard the argument of James Otis against Writs of Assistance, and declined a retainer on each side of that great argument. He had collected materials for a history of New England; and those who love to read her story have reason to lament that he did not complete his work. In his youth, a fall from a tree made Benjamin Pratt a cripple for life, and this was the reason that he gave up his chosen occupation as a black- smith and become a lawyer. Rare example of Yankee thrift. Accident ruins the young blacksmith. His parents send him to the greatest master of law, and fit their unfortunate boy to become chief justice of a great State.
In later days, Middlebury College was glad to receive a Co- hasset man as president, in the person of Rev. Dr. Bates. I have already spoken of the soldier who is your pride. 'If the grief were not too recent, and if his friends were not so near, I should speak of the skilled and loved physician who served this State faithfully for years, and whose hospitality made so many New Englanders at home in the heart of a Western city.
The true glory of this, as of other New England towns, is found, not in the conspicuous few, but in the honorable and use-
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ful lives of the many. And if a stranger desired to see a com- munity who live in the fear of God and the love of their fel- low-men ; who mind their own business, and yet make the cause of the poor and ignorant their business ; whose best men render every precious service to their town without money and , without price ; a community from which a dying man would be glad to select guardians for his orphan children ; a people who stand firm for the faith of their fathers, yet are ready to receive all the truths which lay undeveloped in the creed of those fathers ; " Catholic for all the truth of God : Protestant against every error of man ;" if a visitor sought such a community, I would take him to a village on the " South Shore " and tell him to seek no farther.
And as we admire your pleasant town to-day, decked as it is in holiday attire ; as we see all around us proofs of comfort and thrift and taste and progress, we know that we owe it all to the character of our people and to the virtues of their ancestors. As I enjoyed yesterday the beautiful suburbs of Boston, the trim lawns and blossoming shrubs and graceful mansions, an es- teemed friend said to me : " It is all the fruit of free schools." And true it is, that all the comfort and elegance of your homes is the direct product of New England institutions and of Pur- itan virtues. Faith and thought made our fathers exiles. They founded this new country in faith, and reared their children to careful and vigorous thought. They decreed that all the chil- dren should be taught-above all, that they should all be "" taught of the Lord."
They honored labor. Never was it a reproach in New Eng- land, even when slavery had a nominal existence here, that a man worked with his hands. Never was there a time when the rulers of our towns, and the majority of their representatives, were not .men who earned their living by the sweat of their brow.
They kept the day of the Lord strictly according to their light, giving, on their first Sabbath, such an example of devotion as the world had never seen. Who knows how much of the en- ergy and vigor of New England men is due to this their ances- tral habit ? Of all innovations that are called reform, the most accursed is that which would rob the working man of his day of
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rest. I speak not of theological origin or of divine sanction, but of common-sense and of human need. Men may differ hon- estly about ten hour laws and eight hour laws, but the worst enemy of labor is the man who, upon any pretence, would take from the sons of labor this precious inheritance.
Let us stand in the old ways; with free thought, with free schools, and, in Choate's words, " the Bible in the schools as long as there's a piece of Plymouth Rock left, big enough to make a gun-flint of;" with the Sabbath undesecrated; labor honored and protected; public faith kept. Then we will not fear that any local change in the preponderance of power, any hostile legislation, any sectional prejudices, will ever blight our prosperity. New England can never be left out in the cold while the fire of faith glows in her heart and the warm blood of patriotism courses in all her veins.
Men speak of the danger from foreign influence ; from the hosts of ignorant immigrants ; from superstition and from atheism. I look at our meeting-houses and school-houses, the fortifications of America ; I find the great heart of the people sound, and I defy all hostile powers. From unbelief and misbelief, from tyranny and anarchy, the faith of our fathers, as firm as in their day and with all the light of this day, will ever save us, even as the rocks .of Cohasset roll back the Atlantic waves.
The red cedar, that fastens itself in the granite, and forces it- self through the crevice of the rock, and sends its roots deep into the earth, and spreads its verdant boughs in spite of north wind and east wind-that is an emblem of New England pros- · perity. It is a symbol of native virtue, contending with circum- stances, triumphant over fate. He who planted that vigorous shoot on these rugged shores will sustain it. And while we are true to ourselves, as IIe was with the fathers, so He will be with us.
THE PRESIDENT. I will take this occasion to introduce to you a gentleman whom it gives us pleasure to have with us here to-day, as an honored representative of the State of Mississippi in the Senate of the United States, and a repre- sentative, also, of a once down-trodden race, the Hon. HIRAM REVELS, of Mississippi. (Loud applause.)
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ADDRESS OF SENATOR REVELS.
Mr. President and Friends,-I am in no condition to make a speech, as I have a very bad cold, and am very hoarse, as you perceive; but I cannot refrain from the effort to say a few words, at least, to an audience like this-a body of ladies and gentle- men to whom I and my race owe so much.
It may seem a little strange that I, an entire stranger to most of you, am in your midst. Should it seem so to any, I will assign a few reasons why I am here: I was invited to come, and very thankfully accepted the invitation. Again, I was aware, that if I came here to-day, I should see quite a number of the citizens of the old Bay State, whom I should not see if I did not come. And, in the next place, I desired to see them in order that I might say to them what I would I could say to every citizen of the State of Massachusetts, that I, and the entire colored people of the South, aye, the colored people of the United States, are fully aware of the extent of our indebt- edness to you for the happy condition we occupy to-day in this country. The colored people of the South, to an extent that would be very surprising to you, were you fully aware of it, have known, for years and years past, the sympathy that you have felt for them. For years past, they have known the efforts that you were making in their behalf, to break the fetters with which they were bound. For years and years they have known how you have been laboring and toiling for them, sympathizing with them, and doing everything in your power in order to secure their emancipation from degrading and ruinous slavery. The question may occur to the minds of some, How did they know that, when, according to the laws of most of the slave States, they were not allowed to be taught to read the word "Christ," not allowed to be taught to read the word "heaven," even? How could they have a knowledge of these things, when it was for the interest of their owners to keep from them the knowledge of what you were doing in their behalf, more than it was to keep them from learning to read the name of Christ ? I will enlighten your minds upon this point. There were not only in the southern States the field or plantation hands, consisting of men, women and children, but there were house servants. These, of course, came in contact with their
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owners constantly, and their quick and ready ears, whenever they heard a word in regard to slavery, or in regard to the people of Massachusetts,-Wendell Phillips, Garrison, Sumner, Wilson, and many others, whom I could name had I time,- whenever they heard a word in regard to what these men were doing against the institution of slavery, those quick ears would retain the words, and, prompted by joy, as soon as they got among their fellow-servants they would tell them what they had heard, and then the news spread and spread through the South, until the names of Phillips and Garrison, and the name of Massachusetts, became sacred names with the slave popula- tion. (Applause.)
Now, I wish to express to you, and they desire that I shall express to you, their thanks for what you have done in their behalf; for the labors and efforts which, as they are well aware, accomplished so much towards their liberation.
My friends, I have but very little more to say at this time. I wish to say for your encouragement, as I know that you wish those well for whom you have labored so long and so hard, that they are doing surprisingly well, everything considered. Schools are being established all over the South, and never did you see men and women, even grown men and women, more desirous of acquiring knowledge and becoming enlightened, than are the colored men and women of the South; and when it comes to the children and youth, they desire to become educated and enlightened, and the opportunities of becoming so are being extended, and they are drinking in knowledge as the thirsty earth drinks in the summer rain. I say this to you, my friends, for your encouragement, and it is my belief, that, if a fair opportunity is given to the colored people of the South, they will do well. They have a great desire to acquire property, and they are acquiring property very rapidly. Many of them desire to purchase land, and they have the means to purchase small amounts of land if they could get it; but their former owners are trying to hold on to their land. You know that one of those men owns as much land as six men should own. That is the way, you know, it has been there; but now the taxes are so heavy that, as they have no one to work the land for them, but are obliged to hire their labor, they will be compelled to sell their land, or a part of it. Occasion-
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ally a very large plantation or farm is sold, and then the way the freedmen do is this: One or two cannot buy that planta- tion, but as many as fifteen or twenty put their money together, and thus get enough to purchase the farm. Then they go to work on it together for a while; but there is this regular agree- ment, when they purchase it in the way I have described, that by-and-by it shall be divided equally among the twenty, if they desire it, and each one have his part separate from the others. I merely mention this fact to let you see how desirous they are of acquiring property. They are doing well, I know it will encourage you to hear it, dear friends.
Let me say, in conclusion, you are doubtless aware of this fact, that somehow the southern people, while they hated all New England, hated Massachusetts a little more than they did any other part of it. That was greatly in your favor ; and the more they hated you, the better the slaves, knowing why they did it, loved you.
Dear friends, I thank you for your attention. I am so hoarse that it troubles me to speak or think. I have this to say to you, my friends : I love you, my race loves you. The Lord bless you. I hope to meet you in heaven. (Applause.)
The choir then sang an anthem.
. The exercises concluded with prayer by Rev. C. B. SMITH, of Cohasset :-
Great and eternal God, our God, from everlasting to ever- lasting thou art God. With Thee there is no variableness or shadow of turning. Thy years are through all generations. We thank Thee that we are performing our brief part upon the stage of action at this time; that we have been relieved from the perils and the hardships which have been endured by those who have gone before us ; and while we enjoy the legacy con- ferred upon us by them, may we feel that still greater responsi- bilities devolve upon us, to leave to those who shall come after us better things than our fathers left for us.
And now, as we enter upon the duties of a new century, we call upon our souls and all within us to bless Thy great and glo-
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rious name, that we welcome here to-day the representative of a race long down-trodden and oppressed, but who to-day, with unmanacled limbs, stand upon the same platform of universal liberty with us, endued with all the rights and privileges of citizenship. And we pray that thy blessing may attend them in the acquisition of knowledge, and in making such progress as will enable them to acquit themselves with honor to them- selves and our whole nation.
Great God, let thy blessing be upon us; and, as we shall have passed from the stage before another occasion like this will have come to pass, oh may it be our lot to be acting in scenes more glorious and desirable ! When heart and flesh shall fail us, be Thou our portion and our God, and in the world to come may we be prepared to honor and praise and glorify thee. And to God, the only wise, Father, Son and Spirit, shall be the glory evermore. Amen.
The procession then re-formed, and marched to one of the depot buildings, which had been handsomely decorated for the occasion by Lamprell & Marble, of Boston, where a dinner had been provided by Thomas M. Smith, of Cohasset. The tables were laid for six hundred persons, and nearly every seat was occupied, the presence of ladies adding greatly to the interest and pleasure of the occasion. The company having been scated, the President of the Day again extended a cordial welcome to all, and requested Rev. J. R. HUSTED, of Cohasset, to ask the divine blessing.
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PRAYER BY REV. MR. HUSTED.
Our heavenly Father, source of all being and blessing, we thank thee for all the gifts of thy providence and grace, and espe- cially for the gift of thy Son, Jesus Christ, through whom all other blessings are derived to us. We thank Thee for this day, for these pleasant memories and associations, for the intellectual entertainment with which we have been favored, for the pleas- ant auspices under which we are convened to celebrate this
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centenary occasion, and for the food now spread before us for the refreshment of our natures. May Thy blessing rest upon us, and may we partake of thy gifts with grateful hearts, recog- nizing the Giver, and by cherishing the sentiments and purposes of patriots and Christians show that the example of our fathers . has not been lost upon us. Finally, when we, like them, shall be called upon to pass from earth, may we be received to enjoy the blessings of thine upper and better kingdom. All of which we ask in the name and for the sake of thy Son, our Saviour and Redeemer.
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