USA > Maryland > First discourse before the Maryland Historical Society : delivered on 20 June, 1844 > Part 1
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
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Gc 975.2 M365MA MAYER, CHARLES FREDERICK , 1795-1864. FIRST DISCOURSE BEFORE THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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5.63
FIRST DISCOURSE
BEFORE THE
Marnland historical Society,
Delivered on 20 June, 1844,
BY CHARLES F. MAYER, A. M.
563
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
FIRST DISCOURSE
1740331 BEFORE THE
Maryland historical Society,
Delivered on 20 June, 1844,
BY CHARLES F. MAYER, A. M.
PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY.
BALTIMORE: PRINTED BY JOHN D. TOY, Comer of Market and St. Paul streets.
1844.
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F857.5500
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DISCOURSE.
THE sceptred genius of Scott has won our hearts to the devoted task of his "Old. Mortality." A strange freak of Anti- quarian passion it might be termed by the utilitarian spirit that browses but for the present and within its narrow animal verge. But how tender,-though eccentric be his recluseness,-is the taste of that old votary of the tablets of the dead. It is his to retrace and revive the characters of the memorial which affec- tion has committed to the silent stone, and to recal from decay the recorded tribute of sorrow-to bring to life the virtue which graces the ruin of the mouldering frame, and at the sepulchre to light up the example that is to give lineaments for the future. Let a kindred zeal glow but within the limits of sect or party, still it is a virtuous zeal. Let it be the pride of honoured her- aldry and spotless lineage, the impulse is yet of noble birth and holds converse only with exalted sentiment. Let State pride urge its way among legends of trial and effort and the triumphs of energy-and open the tomb of the past, that, in radiant effu- sion, the memory of the good may brighten the empire of hu- manity. If that pride exult in successions of the wise and brave whose names enamel History and whose Historic urns are wreathed with their excellence-all this shall not be deemed idle-nor unworthy a self-sustaining,-self-dependent republi- canism. Such recurrences are to Life's consummations,-to the glories of experience-the accumulations of fact and monition and incentive for which Time itself was made and for which ages have rolled and which make up the pomp and freight of Destiny. Shall darkness bury the past-or is it not, rather,
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there that a starry distinctness should dwell, that from the space elapsed and all that fills it the future may be regulated-the present cultivated and best enjoyed. If, far as into the retirement of the past the mind can pierce, an unsullied ancestry in the fathers of the State are the standard-bearers of its History, may not its annals be revived and their pages be as images of dignity and credentials to an august fame?
The Love of Country is the love of what she has been, and achieved, and suffered in by-gone time-sympathy for her strug- gles-respect for her calm energy, her wise intrepidity-as much as it is joy in her prosperity, or as it glows in the prophe- cies for her of a riper and lustrous grandeur.
It is the contemplation of the past thiat digests into the treasure of morals and knowledge the events and labours of the world. The passing scenes and toils of mind and genius and patriotism, may fix attention and quicken admiration; but it is only when they move into the Historic distance, when the perspective con- denses them, and lends to the view the solemnity of Memory, that they attain the dignity of instruction. It is then they com- mand the deference, as to the altars of their trust, of the students of man and of the friends of their race. A spiritual realm encircles us-and to dwell on all parts of the horizon, and look back and forth, is the province and the nobility of humanity. But the drift of time may carry into too dim and baffling a distance the events and merits which make material for a Nation's honour-and the tissue of an immortal celebrity. On the waste of a mere tradi- tionary recurrence they may perish. The elemental facts and the very pith of fame may flit into chaos and be dissipated into misty legend never to be rallied into substantial combinations. It is for Patriotism, in its unassuming but not less affectionate form of Father-land Love, to garner the golden particles as time's current bears them away. It is for the intentness and the patience of that Love to question facts that appear for those that are lapsed into the blanks and voids between epochs-to make significant silence unfold its lore-and then to construct the entire arch be- tween the Eras, that, as memorial columns, the wreck of ages has left to us. This is a pious stewardship-an industry whose pro- duct gives crowns to States and precepts for their good-for guidance in peril and in glory-a conservative function that out- lives the eclat of partizan exploit or command-that bears its
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fruit of wisdom at all seasons of the fate of States, no matter how inclement or dreary,-nor what may be the cloud, or the threat, of the crisis. Such is the genius-these the celestial ensigns-of History.
It is not in periods of excitement-in scanning the scars, or in figuring the blast, of the hurricane-that the Historical interest of our American States is to be sought. The annals of our own Maryland yield nothing to the curiosity that explores for the vio- lence of conflict and the agitations of restless or intolerant ener- gies .- No brilliant tumult-not that riotous epic, called martial glory-fills our Chapters of the Past with their fretted scenes and feverish pictures. No exploits of Negotiation's pompous cunning-the serpentine diplomacy of the modern Era-give hue and contour to the unsophisticated days of Provincial Mary- land. We reanimate no trumpet note of victorious ambition. To our invocation wake up through our History's even tract only the lowly echoes of civic zeal and toil. At the helm of State stood sound judgment and watchful hearts for the public welfare, and, as a fair firmament above all, were the auguries of a final political grandeur and of the throng of a prosperous community :- and on the path of its polity fell the light of good education. This was a pacific progress. There were alternations between the Propri- etary and the Royal and the Protectoral governments; and there too, to vex the calm of the tedium, was the rebellious surge raised by Claiborne and Ingle, soon yielding, however, to certain brave specifics of the Government, which it were well for these days resolutely to adopt ;- and there was also the fuming broil between the Government and the factious Annapolitans, then the puritans of Providence. Else, however, the tenor of things was tranquil-and even Patriotism had not yet learned to be clamor- ous-for purity-or-for power. To the taste for the thrilling and the eventful-for the very romantic carnage of Cortes and Pizarro and the conquering and crushing tramp of other free- booters-this Peace is but a stagnant pool-a pale, and fruitless range of time. But what momentous trophies of latent power spring not from this dull, this fertile, Peace! The silent force of vegetation-expanding-but not enfeebling-till, by the gradual mystery, the exuberant bounty greets the eye and Nature per- fects her proffer to man-all this mystic manifestation is not more genial nor more exalts the mind to sublime speculation,
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than docs, through the nurture of Peace, the unfolding stature of a State, in the rich endowment of resources and the security of a fostering sway. How striking the accretions of her power-the growing lustre of the social spirit-the nerve that vibrates to the National good-the patriotic culture of all that shall make up the volume of her grandeur and the ample and vivid issues of her beneficence. The lesson and discipline of patient toil-of con- stancy that hopes, but acts, and falters not-are the most instruc- tive. They compose men to the temper that clothes them with fortitude-and instils perseverance. As success with its rewards supervenes, they charm into tuneful action aspirations and pre- sages and visions of healthful glory, to enkindle that pride of so- cial aggrandizement-the public spirit-which is the heart and the beam and the ornament of Patriotism.
I trust I shall not be thought to deal too much in abstractions. My speculation does not soar above the strict realities of my theme-however it "may invite a light from above to mark the features of my field-to identify History with Providence and with the wisdom of a Majesty whose Power rules in Peace em- balmed in Love. I know that to stroll only among metaphysical refinements is as uninteresting as in place of the communion of living intellects to hold converse with inexorable statuary. Such is not the inopportune, the stony, repast to which I would solicit your minds.
We celebrate now not only the enterprise of the Pilgrims of trial and storm whose hearts, buoyant under the impulse of an inspiration, brought them to these shores; but we celebrate too the opening of a temple of Maryland memorials and of Maryland fame. The creation of a Maryland Historical Society, long delayed, is among the Literary Honours of Baltimore, of the year eighteen hundred and forty-three.
In the uses of History we must vindicate the auspicious office of this Institution. We would show that we seek. not to gather events, past and current, into a cumbrous repository-a mere Mausoleum of legends for dust to mantle and for cobwebs to festoon. We would disclose in their seclusion and proclaim in all their excellence the treasures that invite research-and would mark the benefits of the maturing record of the times. We would make them a coinage of medals sacred to the honour of the Republic-and edifying with political virtue and wisdom-
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and infusing the only meritorious aristocracy, the pride of State. They should speak to us as the Scripture of experience-and with hopeful exhortation enliven the gloom of the hours, so fre- quent to the patriot, when the omens grow dark, or fecbly lumi- nous, for the perpetuity or the vigour of the self-governing faculty of man.»
These are generalizing times. Quaint idealties are spirited up by rovers on a wide sea under an independent flag, with barks gallantly labelled with, it may be, Carlyle or other spiritualists. Intellectual comets are above the horizon bewildering the thoughit and luring us to transcendent heights far out of sight of Earth's sober, suffering, data. Sparkling oddities, suspended in a me- teoric style, are crowned as marvels of genius. Thought is mined for in recondite phrases-and to reach the ore and attain the subterranean idea we sink our shafts and fail not in patience. And now that essential oil, of which so much writing now is redolent, the "Philosophy of History," is distilling from all forms and selections of fact in partial compounds made up for given theories. While all this illusory pageant of genius is passing before us, it becomes us to tell, even in abstract views, the grounds of our taste, reverent though it be, for the Antique or the retrospective, and the reasons of our trust that we labour not in vain. While to a higher sphere-the domain of eternity -- we assign perfection, we believe in the progressive destiny of our race. We deal with the facts of History to admonish us of our infirmities and our perils,-to dignify our conceptions of our pre- decessors-of our power and of our duties. We would teach the force of constant and upright toil for the public good, and, as an essential sentiment, would impress our individual identity with the State in her welfare and our own-we would inspire pride of country-the love of our State for what she has accomplished and has suffered, and to be her prophets for what she shall be in the resources which talent and industry will elicit from the public mind and bring into munificent uses from where they now lie in torpid masses. We do not belong to those retrogressive meta- physicians-some of whom elaborate the "Philosophy of Histo- ry,"-whose mental magnetism seems inverted-who court the darkness of feudal enclosures where the human race was subdued to contented stagnation -- who find that the lore which lay in the mines of convents and the wisdom which was latent and phleg-
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matic in the peculiar few of the monastery, shedding light but little beyond the disc of their studious lamps-that all this, or, rather, this little, was, and is, enough for man-man in his great amplitude of The People -- to have attained. With them as our expounders we must go back to the altars of the middle ages and there court the inert twilight-rather than glory in the revelations now, in Heaven's kindness, effulgent upon us from the great vault of science, or in the wreathed crown of modern Literature. The restlessness of this modern Era-the hazard of annoying clamors of the people in their extravagance or ferments-the aspirations of mind asserting the republicanism of intellectual rights and equal mental privileges: all this tends to ruffle the serenity of the age for these placid theorists. A peace which is but the fruitless, marble, silence of the tomb of enterprise and popular activity, is the peace that these nervous scholastics worship. Priests of a redeeming Philosophy, they would suppress the heroic energies of our moral nature to prevent contingent ex- cesses. We have another faith. We prefer the age of steam even with its explosions.
Philosophers in ancient days may have swelled proudly and · sighed most intelligently and profoundly for Freedom, as we know it and love it. A vision of popular rights may have some- times visited their musings, and the conscious thought may have elated their port in the Academic grove, and shed new interest on the classic scene around them. The thrifty murmur of the near Athenian crowd rose up to them at the moment as a grateful melody, and was in mellow concord with the breathing fragrance of the Academic gardens. But this was at best but a fleeting suggestion. It is not a twinkling light that contents us, nor "a few bright particular stars" who can fulfil our ideal of the great human destiny and satisfy the measure of this era's need. It is diffused intelligence-the popular perception and pursuit of the true and exalted means of happiness-the cultivated sense of individual dignity-individual worth and diligence-these the elements of social power, the safeguards and armaments of the Political sovereignty. Such is the illumination-such the univer- sal inculcation of knowledge and,-that great motive power,- self-respect-that are the aims and pride of these periods. In such results, we maintain, History tenders, in successions of ages and people, the stores it gathers-resolves events into maxims, and
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diverts from despondency to courage and to action the misgiving mind.
The special History of every State of our Union should be dear to every votary of the Confederation, who cherishes the beautiful dependencies of our Federal Structure and at the shrine of the Constitution contemplates the broad basis of the Union laid in the sovereignty of the individual States-at once sources of strength constituents of the collective power and censorial safeguards of the fabric. From such a study springs a faith in the enduring harmony of our confederation and a sanctity invests the bond, and confirms the moral cement, of the Union.
The History of the States-their power nerved in the dews of peace, the spirit in which History shows each moulded and consolidated-manifests a series of political phenomena-of un- paralleled political creations. Above all it shows among them, distinct in career and largely so in habitude, a happy congruity which attracted all into a congenial bond-a kindred coalition blending however no powers into a massy incorporation of supre- macy. Still however these states are the chords of one instru- ment each essential to the charm and influence of the general concord-but one heart beats through the Union and all for the Union-but one National glory adorns our existence and a com- bined interest animates us. These are the views for which the History of the States lifts the veil of its record sanctuary-and such views prompt the true litany of Patriotism. They fill us with love of the Union. They consecrate this fellowship of Sovereignties. Regarded as one of these Sovereign associates Maryland is seen in her most honoured aspect-and in that bear- ing her History most nobly illustrates her. Indeed so natural, so necessary, as by a law of affectionate conformity, was the Union, that it is difficult to view the States separately in any other rela- tion than that of their Federal destiny, their ordained dedication to an alliance of power and of effort. For this sacred conjunc- tion they were endued and fashioned into political efficiency-and to that consummation converged all their trials and improvement. Thus, in the maturity of time, commingling sovereignties interwove their independent wills-and a tissue of security came to sur- round this concourse of Republics, framed of conceded powers, whose cession reacts in vigour to each, abating no sovereign dig- nity of either. A collective grandeur is, in its preserved indivi-
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duality, the grandeur of each. It was reserved for our Land to fill the world's Record with an organization of the self-sufficient energy of man; and we of America, and of Maryland as a partner in this glory, peculiarly celebrate such an achievement of the social nature. To value the consummation, we must regard the dire discouragements-the rugged difficulties-that saddened the very attempt-And let us look at the condition of European domi- nation out of which, as an emanation of recruited humanity, sprang these communities-freshened by the spirit of Liberty in the breath of the wilderness and quickened in all intelligence of the right and the noble by the necessities of their early adven- ture. Rigorous exactions-the dominant ferocity of established Churches-the perversion of a Religion whose breath is love and whose halo is tolerance and balmy persuasion-these brought into an iron durance the active and aspiring mind and in spiritual chains bound down the energies of society. The truths of God were in eclipse. Darkness, fit drapery of human agonies-the black shadow of despotic prejudice-were over the Land-the axe and the faggot lay ready to minister the gorge of blood and torment for imperious vengeance.
The lovers of their rights-the worshippers of an unadulter- ated Gospel-who honoured no hierarchy in political armour and deified no human ministry-went forth on the gloomy deep. Desolate wayfarers under the tempest's frown and braving the dreary chances of their exile, they sought the bleak unfrequented shores of a new world, where the winds though harsh were free, and in their fiercest blast were symphonies of comfort when was remembered the voice of oppression that hunted them from their hearths. In separate groups, at wide intervals, often, of space, these associated sufferers successively encamped under their new skies on their wide domain. One star after another was lit up to throw its rays-glimmering in feebleness though at first they did-over the dark waste of waters-and reaching beyond the wave, there faintly to gild the captive world with intelligence of Freedom. Those lights studded a new altar of Liberty and burned around a new throne of wisdom-and in vestal duration they yet burn. . They blend their religious lustre as in the melting effulgence of the milky way of the Heavens-a constellation of Republics. Maryland let it, in the precincts of this Society, be remembered is one of those ancient lights. In their consecrated
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height no assailant, fevered with fanaticism or insane with sinister ambition, can reach them while fixed in their firmament of public virtue.
Could such a Union have been formed otherwise than by sepa- rated and independent communities thus imbued with the orderly principles of Government, and trained and tempered by privations and toil in an atmosphere of freedom. Could a Union fail to form itself among bodies so alike in the auspices and impulses, difficulties and aims, of their careers and their origin-alike endowed, animated and fated. By sympathies the most over- ruling they tended to cach other-appropriate to each other by all the tenets of their characters, and the urgent affinities of the Saxon habitudes.
If such was the destined junction of these spheres-after, as in a crystaline purity, they unobtrusively grew and solidified into power-if thus admirable was their adaptation for this league of chastencd Liberty-may we not interpret the result into a sanction of Heaven-and deeni our Union sealed with a Providential sacra- ment? What were the causes which, in these distinct communi- ties, each, until entwined in this National Bond, pursuing its own polity and obeying no authority but its own discretion, still so framed them all for this congruity? This is the great doctrinal question of American Patriotism. We have sought to answer it. May we not say that the causes which produced this fairly moulded union must avail and still reign to perpetuate it ? Shall they not keep alive the harmonious temper !- The necessities of self-preservation might urge a combination. But no such calculating cohesion nor selfish expediency could have accomplished so intimate a fellowship and, by a common vital action, have infused a National spirit and created a National tic and identity .- But we know the event: and in it we have our auspi- cious being. Let us in due sensibility for it-as a dispensation in whose kindness and lustre we share-with all the zeal that would keep in triumph the flag of our Federal glory, recur, as our op- portunities may invite, to the past days of each of our integral Republics, and of Maryland the nearest and dearest. Cherish the culture in this Society, of such a taste so devoutly intent on re- cords of Merit and of tenacious doctrines of Political Liberty. Let us but understand that these States, and our tested Maryland as one of them, were self-sustained, self-advanced-by their in-
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trinsic energy, their internal discipline-growing up around the standards of justice and of Religion-the last at times indeed clouded or casting an intolerant glare in place of its native be- nignant light. Let us bear in mind all this, and the History of Maryland will not seem a stale theme of Antiquarian caprice; and the dingy days of the Colony will wear a reverend aspect, and every point of the ancient picture will radiate its interest.
The distance now grows dim to which we must revert for the early traces of our State on the social annals. The footsteps of our Pilgrims are no longer to be found. The homes under their chosen skies are no more, to which they turned with gladdened eyes and full hearts as around them they surveyed a dominion of Peace and the luxuriance of Freedom. These homes have scarce left a memorial stone to be a monument to the departed joys of their hearths.
The same quiet river courses by the shores their active steps first touched-the same stars look down on the first fields of their hopes and trust and anxieties, the scenes of their enterprise and their benevolence. But a callousness to ancestral honour- to the sanctity of all that marks the living merit of the virtuous dead-this callousness almost studious to efface every obtrusive vestige of the Past has cared to preserve no structure, no token of the primitive day, to give to our hearts a palpable rallying point-to assure to us in some tranquil testimonial a message from the dead to tell of the labours from which they rest. The graves of but few of the pilgrims can now be recognized. They moulder undistinguished. The plough of a selfish thrift cuts its furrows over their resting places-no moral is there cultivated, nor proud remembrance charmed from the solemn soil. This heartless carelessness does little honour to Maryland. It should have been the patriotic pleasure of her Legislature to have held as a venerated trust, and to have kept entire with fond respect, the edifices which once were animated by our intrepid predeces- sors .- They should have maintained as an historical domain, sacred to the genius of Maryland Liberty and aggrandizement, the territory where heralds of high purpose first bowed in thanks to God for the mercy that guided and soothed them over the dark and fearful Sea, and expanded their souls to the hopes and quiet and dauntless freedom of the wilderness. There it was that they in gratitude to Heaven made those enduring vows of be-
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nignity which were embodied in the bland and parental policy of the early Government: It was the place of an altar such as adventurers never before raised in savage precincts, in the love of God and for the good of man. It was an altar where the banner of the Cross waved in the element of the Peace whose emblem it is. It was holy ground by every sanction, pious and patriotic. Would that Maryland had honoured her birth place- had dedicated it for contemplation and pilgrimage to the high and virtuous resolve that gave birth to Maryland!
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