USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The Vermont union of Boston and vicinity > Part 2
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At the upper end of the hall was the following motto in large letters : " MEMORIAM EXPELLAS FURCU, TAMEN USQUE RECURRET." A star ornamented each corner of the canvass. Beneath, upon another canvass, was the word " UNION ;" and below this a representation of the material interests of the East. Festoons of flags formed a neat background.
At the lower end of the hall was a radiant sun in gold presenting a brilliant appearance. Beneath was an artistic representation of the West, after the manner of others already mentioned. Flags were also placed upon the walls in festoons. From the centre of the ceiling, and ex- tending to all parts of the hall, were streamers of various colored gauzes. This completed the decorations, which, as before intimated, were neat and appropriate.
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THE FESTIVITIES.
At five o'clock precisely, the company entered the dining hall, headed by Gen. John S. Tyler, and took seats at the tables. On either side of the President (Gen. Tyler,) were seated, His Excellency Gov. Banks, Mayor Lincoln, Hon. Jacob Collamer of the U. S. Senate, Hon. Lawrence Brainard, Hon. Hampden Cutts, J. Gregory Smith, Esq., of St. Albans, George M. Browne, President of the Con- necticut Society, and Marshall P. Wilder, President of the New Hampshire Society.
Grace was asked by Rev. M. M. Dean of this city, after which an hour or two was occupied in doing ample justice to the excellent dinner which had been provided. This pleasant duty having been, with fit and proper deliberation, despatched, the President rose, and addressed the assembly as follows :
Speech of Gen. John S. Tyler.
Gentlemen of the Vermont Association: I shall not detain you by any extended remarks of my own, from the rich intellectual repast which you may reasonably expect from the distinguished gentlemen at your board, but I will simply offer a few introductory words, and then proceed to the discharge of the pleasant duties which my official posi- tion imposes upon me.
One hundred and thirty-five years ago this day, certain people undertook to go from Massachusetts into the wilder- ness, and finally fixed upon a place which they thought to be in Massachusetts, but which proved to be Fort Dum-
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mer, within the limits of our native State. Since that time, many events have taken place, which time would fail me, even if I had the disposition, fully to state; but the result has been, certain people have come from Vermont to Mas- sachusetts, and here we are! (Loud applause.) Gentle- men, I am exceedingly happy to see you, and exceedingly happy to see at our board distinguished gentlemen of our own State and of our adopted State.
I shall not attempt to trace the history of Vermont, scarcely even to glance at it, from those days when it was the " New Hampshire Grants." In the year 1760, or short- ly afterwards, New York set up her pretensions, and said her boundaries ran to the Connecticut. Upon that issue, certain events followed; and I believe that the royal order which came over from the reigning monarch of Great Britain, that this New York pretence should be sustained, called forth the first resistance on the part of Ethan Allen and his associates.
Gentlemen, I shall not attempt to trace the character and career of Allen; it is well known to you all as Ver- monters, and to many others, both learned and unlearned, in the world. He was certainly a remarkable man, and, probably, a very fine example of the Vermont and New England character as it exists in this Commonwealth and throughout our broadly-extended country. (Applause.) It was a peculiarity of Allen, to maintain the right at all hazards, and never to submit to anything that was wrong.
It is matter of history, that as early as 1776, Vermont sought to enter the Federal Union, and probably would
.
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then have been admitted, but that the policy of the Pro- vincial Congress of the United States at that time would not allow them to quarrel with the great State of New York, which wanted Vermont as part and parcel of herself. That fact probably delayed the admission of the State until she was admitted. In the interval, we all know that vari- ous attempts were made by the English emissaries, during the war of the Revolution, to bribe the Vermonters to join King George, and fight against their brethren of Massachu- setts and of the other associated States. It has been some- times remarked by those who sought to cast odium upon the cause of Republicanism, that Allen and certain of his associates were too much inclined to yield to that temptation, and traffic away the independence of the States, but I be- lieve that calumny has now been fully answered.
Gentlemen, I had the good luck to be born upon the farm where, if tradition is to be believed, Ethan Allen first affixed the " Beech Seal." (Laughter and applause). I did not discover the circumstance until very recently. (Re- newed laughter.) I was always proud of my birthplace, but permit me to say that this little circumstance makes me prouder still. I believe that the first sound drubbing which the people of New York received in their attempt to enforce their claim to the territory of Vermont, was in the town of Guilford, Windham county, and I think the incident which attended that little struggle, exhibits something of the Yankee, New England, and Vermont character It is well known that the great State of New York offered £150, by way of reward, for Ethan Allen, and the sum of £50 for
,
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certain of his associates. What did these men do in re- sponse ? Why, they did exactly what I think a keen Yan- kee would do in modern times ; - they advertised five pounds reward for the Attorney General of New York, - thus contrasting in figures the relative value of each. (Laughter and cheers.)
There is another little incident that I will notice, con- nected with the Shay Rebellion, soon after the termina- tion of the war of 1775. That rebellion extended to Ver- mont. We all know that Massachusetts had to call out a pretty strong force and send it into the interior to put down the rebels, and she succeeded, as I trust she ever will in a just cause. What did they do in Vermont ? Why, the constables, the civil arm, the police, as we should call them here in Boston, took the rebels by the collar and put them into jail, and that was the end of it. It is a marked instance of the respect for public order which is felt by that race of people from whom we have sprung.
Our State, gentlemen, has been called, politically speaking, " the Star that never sets." I believe the remark is a just one, but not in a narrow sense. It would be un- true to say that the politics of the State of Vermont have never changed. We certainly all remember more than once the ascendancy of different parties in that State ; but I think the State has been at all times eminently conserva- tive. The party which she has thought it proper to sustain has been the true, conservative, wholesome, honest party of the country. She has stood always for the right,
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and in that sense she may well be called, politically speak- ing, " the Star that never sets."
Gentlemen, I am happy to inform you that we have at our board several of our distinguished successors (permit me to say,) in the inhabitancy of the Green Mountain State. We are honored, also, by the presence of His Excellency the Governor of this State - (prolonged applause,) of His Honor the Mayor -- (renewed cheering,) the President of the Common Council, and distinguished gentlemen at the head of associations of like character, composed of the na- tives of sister States.
An invitation has been extended to a large number of eminent gentlemen in our native State, but the brief notice we were able to give, after this celebration was determined upon, hardly justified us in expecting the presence of many of those who were invited to attend. I have received re- plies from some of them, which in due time I shall read.
I had occasion, recently, to refer to a file of the Colum- bian Centinel for the year 1799, and I chanced upon a con- vivial song written for the celebration of the Fourth of July, that year, at Windsor, Vermont. It was my purpose, if possible, to have made arrangements to have it sung on this occasion ; but partly through my neglect, and partly through the neglect of the gentleman to whom I had en- trusted the matter, the arrangement was not made, and I propose, with your permission, to read some of the stanzas. You will all remember that the year 1799 was just after the passage of the famous Virginia Resolutions, and when the struggle was going on between the friends of the policy of
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Hamilton and Washington, and that of Jefferson. One party was called the Federalists, and the other, Democrats, Republicans, or Jacobins, - I forget what. (Laughter.) I make this statement because the word Federalist occurs often in the verses, and its signification, in order to be understood, must be taken in reference to the time in which it was written : -
" Come fill each brimming glass, boys, Red or White has equal joys; Come fill each brimming glass, boys, And toast your country's glory.
Does any hero to fear incline, And o'er Columbia's dangers whine ? Why, let him quaff this generous wine - Ile 'Il tell another story.
" Here's Washington, the brave, boys, Source of all Columbia's joys ; Here's Washington, the brave, boys, Come, rise, and toast him standing ; For he's the Hero, firm and brave, Who all our country's glory gave, And once again he shall us save, Our armies bold commanding.
" Here's to the gallant Tar, boys, Whose cannon's roar our foe annoys ; Here's to the gallant Tar, boys, His country's cause defending ; For warlike Truxton's noble name, Like Nelson's, shall extend his fame, And loud through all the earth proclaim His glory never ending.
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" Here's to our gallant land, boys, Land of liberty and joys ; Here's to our native land, boys, Your glasses raise for drinking ; And he that will not drink the toast, May he in France of freedom boast, There dangling on a lantern post, Or in the Loire be sinking.
" Here's to our Vermont fair, boys, Pledges bright of federal joys; Here's to our Vermont fair, boys, Fill high to love and beauty ; For, while we toast their glowing charms, Their virtue every bosom warms --- We'll die to guard them safe from harms - It is a federal duty.
" Here's to Vermont State, boys, And all her manly, rustic joys; Here's to Vermont State, boys, Columbia's brave defender ; For, while our pines ascend on high, And while our mountains mock the sky, Our Independence - Liberty - We never will surrender.
" Here's to the Sage of Quincy, boys, * Legal head of all our joys; Here's to the Sage of Quincy, boys,
* John Adams, then President of the United States.
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Who guards us while we're drinking; For, while we quaff the boozy wine, And sense and noisy mirth combine, With temperate head he sits sublime, And for our good is thinking.
" Now come, join hand in hand, boys, Mystic type of federal joys ; Now come, join hand in hand, boys, Like brother, brother greeting. For while one Union we pursue, 'Tis I, and he, and you, and you, Our pleasures all may yet renew, At our next federal meeting."
[The reading of the poem was received with laughter and repeated applause.]
Gen. Tyler continued : " Gentlemen, I will not detain you longer, but simply offer as a sentiment :
Our Native State - May we keep her memory as green as her hills. (Loud and prolonged applause.)
The President then stated that Z. K. Pangborn, Esq., would officiate as Toast Master, who announced the first regular toast, as follows :
Vermont - A model Commonwealth, distinguished for intel- ligence and freedom, love of liberty, and respect for law; with a patriotism as pure as her mountain breezes, and a prosperity secured, because hers is the thrift that does not follow fawning.
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Hon. Jacob Collamer rose to respond, and was received with enthusiastic cheering. He spoke as follows :
Speech of Hon. Jacob Collamer.
Mr. President and Gentlemen : It is a great gratifica- tion to me to have the opportunity of meeting so many of my brethren, not forgetting our Yankee cousins; for I think that those who are sons of sister States must certain- ly be cousins. (Laughter and applause.) But I cannot go on to make any remarks upon the topics on which I pro- pose to speak without making a little echo from memory to the stanzas which have just been read. I perceive they were the production of our former Chief Justice, Royall Tyler. (Applause.) Now, there are extant in the memory of Vermonters many of the productions of that man, and I will recite to you a couple of stanzas from a certain ballad known as " The Vermont Worthies."
We had at that time among our distinguished men of the State, one by the name of Gideon Olin, whose son is now the honored representative of the Troy District, N. Y., in the Congress of the United States. We had, also, Ira Allen, a brother of Ethan Allen, Surveyor General and State Treasurer, but exceedingly dilatory in making up his accounts. We had another distinguished man, Lewis R. Morris, and another man in particular, who ultimately became Governor of the State, Isaac Tichenor. These men were all together on a certain occasion to celebrate the election of Mr. Morris as Brigadier General, and this pro-
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duction was brought forward. I will give you a couple of stanzas :
" Here's to eagle-eyed Gideon, Who keeps his eye steady on The public amount ; And here's to our Treasurer, And eke our land measurer - May the Lord give him leisure To close his account.
" Here's to our noble Brigadier, By whom we're invited here To partake of his treat ; And here's to friend Tichenor, Who long has been itching for, And this year is hitching for The Governor's seat.
(Loud laughter and applause.)
I have always thought that the earliest fact worthy of attention in relation to the development of Vermont was this. You recollect that the Centurion said to Paul, " Are you a Roman citizen ?" "I am." " With a great sum ob- tained I this freedom," said the centurion. To which Paul replied, "I was free born, and never was in subjection to any man." So Vermont was " free born ; " she never was a colony. Other colonies, " with a great sum obtained this liberty ; " Vermont was free born ; she never was a colony, and she never was under a territorial government; she never was in a state of subjection to any government on earth.
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They took their grounds from New Hampshire, and + paid for them into the royal exchequer; and when it was decided, by act of Council, that they originally belonged to New York, Vermont cared very little about it; but when New York undertook to set up their title to the land, and compel our people to pay for it a second time, they insisted that they had paid for it once into the royal exchequer, and would not pay for it again. Then commenced the struggle of Ethan Allen and his associates, to which the President has alluded.
Early in its history did the love of independance de- velop itself, and it stamped a character upon the State which I believe has descended to the present generation, and now mark its character. But I regard Vermont as marked with physical features which give character to the people. They have done so the world over; and in men- tioning some of these features, I mention those very things which constitute objections to the State in the eyes of strangers and the people of other countries. For instance, while we are sitting here, with the rain falling freely out of doors, a large part of Vermont is covered with snow two feet deep, and I believe there is a fair chance of their hav- ing the usual " six weeks sleighing in the month of March. ' (Laughter.)
It is said, sir, that Vermont is a severe country in point of climate. Perhaps, in some measure, that is true. But the very severity of the climate makes the character of the people. Have freemen ever prospered and grown and de- veloped their manhood in the tropics. In a country where
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.a half acre of banana trees will feed a hundred men a year, the people always live in idleness; they are always barba- rians. There may be, to be sure, countries so extremely cold that men will suffer from that cause; but it is in the northern regions of the temperate zone that mankind is more fully developed. . Those habits that grow out of the necessity of man's condition, that care and prudence which is called out by the necessity of a preparation for the com- ing winter, mould his character and that of his children after him.
The very severity of the weather in winter shutting out men from their customary employments, causes them to flock around the hearthstone, to enjoy the comforts of that home which their own industry and forethought have pro- vided. There they cherish the moralities of home, there they foster those domestic virtues which mark them as a people. If you go amoug the fastnesses of Vermont, wher- ever you find smoke curling up blue from the chimney, you will find the people, with their children gathered around them, in the full enjoyment of those fruits which their own industry has won. They cannot find amusement in theatres, and other places of entertainment; they cannot gather in crowds. But they meet together in families about the hearthstone, and there they converse, and ex- change thoughts with each other. Nor are they shut out from all communion with their friends, for with their noble Morgan horses they can plough the way through the snow from house to house, or village to village. (Applause.) I can only say of winter, in the language of Cowper :
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" I crown you King of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyment, and homeborn happiness, And all the comforts which the lowly roof Of undisturbed retirement, and the joys Which long uninterrupted evening knows."
But it is said Vermont is a hilly and mountainous coun- try. This is indeed true. Have you never observed, that, in the history of the human race, a certain independence of character has always marked the people of the mountains ? Were the people of Switzerland ever subdued ? Were the people of the mountains of Wales ever subdued, until they sent the Queen there to be delivered of her first born son, and called him "Prince of Wales," when they were subdued by affection ? So it was with the people of the Highlands of Scotland. How has it been with the people of the mountains of Caucasia, the great home of our race ? To this day they are battling with the Northern Bear, who, with all his power, has not been able to subdue them.
The love of liberty has always burned bright among the mountains ; and there is something so striking in this that my mind has often been led to seek for the cause of this in the past, and the reason why it is likely to continue to be so in the future. Now, if a man was born upon the ocean and shut out, all his life, from the sight of land, having always the same visible, marked horizon, without any undu- lation, he would have no conception of indentity of place and locality. That man could never have anything like a home. Now the truth is, that the love of home constitutes
3
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one of the great elements of what is called patriotism. (Applause.)
In its incipient stage, it commences with the love of home. Such a man could have no home, and therefore no feeling of patriotism. So, too, with the man born and brought up on the broad pampas of South America, with nothing to mark his place of residence as distinct from any other place; he would much resemble the man born and reared on the ocean. But take a man born and brought up among the mountains, and he has a distinctly marked visible horizon. Every hill top is familiar to him. As he goes out of his house in the morning, every hill seems to give him a nod of recognition - " Good morning, sir. Move that man a mile away, and his horizon is changed ; he is away from home; and let him wander where he will in life, the clear conception of that, his early home, forever follows him.
Hence it is that the Swiss, though a people of great fidelity, so much so as to be trusted as the body guard of oreign kings and princes, when they hear one of the simple airs of their native hills, are seized with home-sickness, and not even the fear of death can restrain them from returning to their simple home among the Alps. The little Savoy- ard, who goes through our streets with his organ and mon- key has the same love for his native mountains ; and it is so with the Piedmontese, and the people of every other moun- tainous country; they have the same distinctly marked love of home. So it is with the people of Vermont. Let one of her sons come back to her from the sea, and the first
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little undulation of the Green Mountains thrills every drop of blood in his veins. (Loud applause.)
This is the element that makes the love of country. However strange it may seem to others, I think that every Vermonter can respond to the sentiment of Goldsmith :
" Dear are the homes to which our soul conforms, And dear the hills which lift us to the storms; And as the child, by scaring forms distressed, Clings close and closer to his mother's breast, So the loud tempest and its wintry roar, But bind us to our native mountains more."
(Loud and prolonged applause.) 1770923
The following letters, received by the President, General Tyler, were read with rapturous applause :
Letter from Gen. Clarke. BURLINGTON, VT., March 9, 1859.
My Dear Sir: Your very kind note, inviting me to the Festival of the Sons of Vermont in Boston, which is to oc- cur on the 15th inst., has been received, and I return my very cordial acknowledgements, which I will thank you to present to the Committee.
I should be most happy to join the Vermonters who have become denizens of Boston, on the festive occasion named. It will be, of course, a festive occasion purely, for there are, I believe, no disabled nor pauper Vermonters in Boston to call for a charitable organization in their behalf.
It is the only smart Vermonters (as every authentic in-
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stance goes to prove) that emigrate to Boston ; and a smart Vermonter was never known to be in need of help from any other of the human species. A Vermonter who goes to Boston to " seek his fortune," must do so under a con- sciousness of possessing that degree of " gumption " which has never failed to secure success anywhere. I suspect the fools of Vermont, as a general thing, stay at home. As- suredly, the record proves that none of them have ever looked upon Boston as an inviting field for weak-minded people. And whither they have gone I cannot conjecture ; there are but few left. Your polite invitation to me might have included nine-tenths of the parish in which I live, without subjecting you to any alarming likelihood of hav- ing to entertain a guest of whom you would find occasion to be ashamed.
I think, then, that I am right in assuming that your coming festivity has only a generally social aspect; that it is simply intended to measure the Vermont Yankees with those, for instance, of New Hampshire, (and if you will deduct the great Daniel, we won't object,) and to discover in the most friendly and magnanimous way, how the Green Mountain State stands in comparison with the New England contributors to the renowned " solidity," and " solidarity," of Boston. My own opinion is that the Fletchers, the Harveys, the Whitneys, the Tylers, -- but I can barely begin the list, -- whom Vermont has furnished to augment the legal and economical wealth of Boston, and ennoble its reputation, may safely challenge, (if challenges were becom-
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ing the pacific occasion,) the entire New England sister- hood.
I am sorry that my slavish engagements compel me to decline your complimentary invitation, and beg you to pre- sent, for me, this sentiment :
The Sons of Vermont in Boston - Their sterling qualities of mind and heart contribute to the prosperity of their adopted city, and to the credit of their native State. So their mother thinks.
With much respect, Very truly yours, B. W. C. CLARKE.
Letter from Captain Tucker,
BURLINGTON, March 10, 1859.
GEN. J. S. TYLER -MJ Dear Sir : The receipt of your esteemed favor of the 26th ultimo, inviting me to be present at the approaching Festival of the "Vermont Union," I have the honor to acknowledge.
The pleasure it would afford me, and the pride and gratification I should feel in meeting the " Green Mountain Boys " resident in your city, is only equalled by the regret I entertain at my inability to accept their very flattering invitation. Nothing, I assure you, but the " stern hand of vexatious " necessity would deprive me of the happiness, or persuade me to forego the pleasure of doing honor to my adopted State in the good old city of Boston. Much as I love her Green Hills, -and few of her own children love
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