IV. Orators and Statesmen of the Revolution

In studying that unrivaled group of orators and statesmen who made our nation what it is, one is often reminded of the words of De Tocqueville, who, viewing them from an impersonal vantage ground—as one must ever study a varied group of men or a complex movement in history—loses sight of the individual and notes only the big, significant qualities that characterize them all alike:

I can conceive nothing more admirable or more powerful than a great orator debating great questions of state in a democratic assembly. As no particular class is ever represented there . . . it is always to the whole nation, and in the name of the whole nation, that the orator speaks. This expands his thoughts and heightens his power of language. As precedents have there but little weight, the mind must have recourse to general truths derived from human nature to resolve the particular question under discussion. Hence the political debates of a democratic people, however small it may be, have a degree of breadth which frequently renders them attractive to mankind. All men are interested by them because they treat of Man, who is everywhere the same.

No better estimate of the Revolutionary fathers has ever been made. These men have a national, not a sectional spirit. They appeal directly to the ideals of liberty and justice which glorify the souls of men wherever man is found. And that, in a word, is the secret of their power and influence.

The speech of Patrick Henry, in 1775, marks the end and climax of Revolutionary oratory. Fifteen years have passed since Otis defined the question at issue, stated the American argument, and voiced the American spirit. During these years the Colonies were buzzing like a beehive with legal argument and political oratory; but every argument had failed, every petition had been slighted, every solemn warning to England fell on ears as deaf as Pharaoh's to the voice of justice. As that fiery old patriot Samuel Adams declared:

"We have explored the temple of royalty, and found that the idol we have bowed down to has eyes that see not, ears that hear not our prayer, and a heart like the nether millstone."

Down in Virginia the House of Burgesses has been roughly dissolved by the royal governor. As the delegates gather again, in old St. John's Church, there is a feeling in the air that further argument is idle; that there is nothing left for a free man but to submit quietly to injustice or to reach for his weapons. At this critical moment Henry rises to speak. His first words imply that the day of speech is past; it is the time for action. Then, with the power of a master musician, he plays upon the emotions, rouses the fighting blood of his hearers, till all doubts are dissolved, prudence swept aside, and they grow eager, impatient of delay, like cavalry horses at the sound of the bugle. Hear this peroration, and for a moment put yourself back among the aroused delegates, for whom Henry's prophecy was startlingly verified in the tidings from Lexington and Concord:

"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace, but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"1

We have read this speech and heard it declaimed many times. We know that it is perfervid, illogical; that our reason ought to detect and criticize its weaknesses; yet we confess that we have never read or heard it without a tingling of the nerves, a tightening of the muscles for action. There is something irresistible in the appeal, which stamps it as a masterpiece of popular oratory.

No other American has been so bepraised; hardly another seems so vague as Washington, and this because we are content to receive our impressions at secondhand, from biographers who make of him "a frozen image," or else a model of superhuman excellencies. Washington was primarily a man, and the only way to know him now is to read his own record. We would begin with his Journal, especially that modest record of his heroic journey through the wilderness to the French forts on the upper Ohio, in 1753. Here we meet a youth going about a strong man's work with courage and profound sagacity, estimating the value of this western wilderness, showing the judgment of a soldier and a statesman in concluding that the distant French and Spanish possessions are a menace to liberty and to the expansion of the American people. In this youthful record we hear, faint but clear, the trumpet note of nationality that is to ring through all his later writings.

Aside from his personal quality, Washington was fitted to be a national leader largely because by travel and observation he knew his whole country,—the common spirit of New England, the Old Dominion and "the land beyond the mountains." And for North, South and West he advocated a national university, where youths from every section should meet one another and learn devotion to a common ideal. His journals, his letters, his message to the states after disbanding the Revolutionary army,—all these speak first of the man, and then of the patriot animated and dominated by the new national spirit. Hardly is the nation formed, when he sees it doubly divided, first by those who side with France or England in their European war, and second by the bitter struggle between Federalists and Anti-Federalists. Then he writes his "Farewell Address," still sounding the same note of nationality, pleading with the American people to be a nation after their own fashion, avoiding alike the "entangling alliances" with foreign nations and the dangers of partisan strife among themselves:

". . . Citizens by birth, or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits and political principles. You have, in a common cause, fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels and joint efforts, of common dangers, sufferings and successes. . . .

"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened and, at no distant period, a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. . . ."

From that pioneer band of statesmen who upheld Washington's hands as he formed and presided over a nation, we select only two, Hamilton and Jefferson, not because they were the best writers, but because they reflect two opposing tendencies, which had and still have an important influence on American life and letters. We shall never understand these two men, who represent permanent types of statesmen, unless we have some clear idea of the parties they were leading.

"Two of the magistrates and many of the deputies were of the opinion that the magistrates exercised too much power, and that the people's liberty was thereby in danger; other of the deputies (being about half) and all the rest of the magistrates were of a different judgment, and that authority was overmuch slighted, which, if not timely remedied, would endanger the Commonwealth and bring us to a mere democracy."

Ever since Winthrop's day the same parties have been in opposition in America. As no strict definition has ever been made, we endeavor simply to point out their chief characteristics. The first party, which a theorist might call "Maximarchist," aims to increase the functions and powers of government. It strives continually to regulate by legislation, multiplying the number and the complexity of laws, bringing under supervision many affairs that formerly were left to the will of the individual. Also it tends strongly toward centralization. As many different state legislatures are bound to run counter to one another, this party would leave all important matters to the central government, letting it control our business and railroads as well as the tariff, our divorces and old-age pensions no less than the post offices. It would strengthen the hands of President and Congress, till all our affairs are controlled by one strong, paternalistic government.

The other party, which might be called "Minimarchist," regards government as, at best, an unfortunate necessity, and would reduce lawmaking to its lowest and simplest terms. It holds that we already have too many laws, some of which are mere experiments, or else benefit one class at the expense of another. Its fundamental position is that a country is best governed which is least governed; that men should be left free as possible to manage their own affairs, without legislative interference. And because government, which is in theory a servant, has in past ages inclined to become a master and a tyrant, this party opposes all centralizing tendencies. It would leave legislation as largely as possible to local governments, which are more easily held in check, more sensitive to the will of the people.

These two parties became national and sharply defined after the Revolution, when thirteen independent states sought to unite under a common government. At that time America followed English political methods of the age; in consequence her various governments inclined to the privileged classes, manhood suffrage was almost unknown, and Winthrop's old fear of a "mere democracy" was still widely prevalent. Every state that entered the Union had its Federalists and Anti-Federalists,—its Monocrats and Mobocrats, as they called each other,—one party advocating a strongly centralized government, the other concerned for state and individual rights, seeking to curb the central government and make it answerable to the popular will. Hamilton and Jefferson are symbolical of these two parties, and of the mighty struggle that resulted in the compromise Constitution of 1787. The remarkable success of that Constitution is due largely to the fact that the same parties are still with us, though no longer strictly defined, and that the Constitution preserves a just balance between them.

When our Constitution was finally framed—after endless debates between two parties, one of which demanded more and the other less power for the central government—Hamilton was deeply disappointed. He had fought hard for a different instrument, yet with rare self-control he accepted a government which seemed to him weak and dangerously democratic, supported it loyally, and it was due largely to his efforts that the Constitution was ratified by his own state.

Recognizing Hamilton's service, knowing also his remarkable financial ability, Washington called him to be our first Secretary of the Treasury. We had then no settled currency, no national revenue, no responsibility for large debts incurred during the Revolution. Hamilton's first duty was to create out of this financial chaos a firm national credit, without which the new government must have speedily gone to pieces. How he accomplished this herculean task is a matter of history. Webster summed it up in his oratorical fashion by declaring, "He smote the rock of national resources and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth; he touched the dead corpse of public credit and it sprang upon its feet."

Hamilton's leadership slipped away from him during the presidency of John Adams, when he became involved in political intrigues, and after the rout of the Federalist party by Jefferson, in 1800, he retired to private life. Four years later he was shot in a duel by Aaron Burr—a terrible and needless sacrifice, for Hamilton disapproved of dueling and made no effort to defend himself.

At the present day Hamilton's literary fame rests largely on his essays known as The Federalist . They began to appear in 1787, when each state was divided on the question of ratifying the Constitution, when the whole country was agitated over problems of state and national rights involved in the new Union. As their name implies, they advocated a strong centralized government; but their chief object was to explain and defend the Constitution, as a just compromise between the radically different parties, and as a safe solution of the difficult problem involved in making one nation out of many independent states.

Concerning the matter of these essays we hesitate to offer an opinion. They crystallize the results of two centuries of experiment in the matter of free government, and properly belong to political science rather than to literature. Moreover, a fair judgment is rendered difficult by the fact that, even at the present day, one party regards Hamilton as the fountain of political wisdom, while the other sees chiefly the dangerous tendency of his principles and methods. As literature knows no partisanship and no interests save those of humanity, we forbear discussion of what is largely a political problem. We simply record two facts: that, at a critical moment in our history, The Federalist  essays exercised a powerful influence in establishing the Constitution; and that they have since been widely accepted as expressive of the fundamental principles of confederation,—principles which great legal minds, like Story and Marshall, expanded later into our constitutional law.

The style of these papers would alone make them remarkable. They have clearness, force, polish—all the good qualities of eighteenth-century prose—and are, both in style and matter, probably the highest examples of modern political writing. They imply, moreover, a splendid tribute to the intelligence of the age which first received and appreciated them. As Fiske says:

"The American people have never received a higher compliment than in having such a book addressed to them. That they deserved it was shown by the effect produced, and it is in this democratic appeal to the general intelligence that we get the pleasantest impression of Hamilton's power."

Unlike other Revolutionary leaders, Jefferson won recognition not by oratory or military success, but by his pen alone. In a tumultuous time he was the one man in America, of powerful, sympathetic imagination, who could express at any moment what the multitudes were thinking and feeling. That is why the eager young Patriots hailed his startling Summary View  of 1774; why the sagacious old leaders of the Continental Congress turned to him instinctively for their Declaration of Independence. Though occupied forty years with public affairs, his heart was most at home in the quiet country, cherishing the love of birds, the delights of nature, the simple joys of domestic life. All the while, whether in field or forum, he was not simply a man of fact, as practical and helpful as Franklin, but a man of vision, and of enthusiastic faith in his fellow men. He was both a doer of deeds and a dreamer of dreams, the quality of the latter showing that he was far ahead of his age, and even in advance of our own.

Now vision and dreams, love of nature and faith in man, were the heart and soul of the new romantic movement in literature. Jefferson belonged to it, was part of it, as truly as he belonged to the new political party. But while he dreamed for the future, he worked and wrote for the present. He aimed to educate men, to lead them up to the point where they must share his vision of a free and equal manhood. So his literary work is subordinate to his practical purpose. A romanticist who applied his high ideals to common men and to the problems of humanity; a builder at once of air castles and foundations; an idealist who was an educational reformer, a constructive statesman and the most successful of politicians; a revolutionary enthusiast, like Shelley, who instead of a chaotic Prometheus Unbound  left us the Democratic Party, the University of Virginia and the Declaration of Independence as his enduring monuments,—such was the genius we are trying to understand.

From the farm he rode to William and Mary College, where he worked faithfully at science and modern literature, as well as at the classics. Then for five years he studied the principles of law under a famous teacher. When at twenty-six he first appears in public life, as a delegate to the House of Burgesses, we are impressed by his splendid development. He is an athlete, a scholar, a trained lawyer, a practical farmer, an experimenter in natural science. And he knows Virginia society from top to bottom, from the planter's mansion to the slave's cabin, from the famous ballroom at Williamsburg to the smoky Indian wigwam hidden far away in the forest. Knowing men as they are, and dreaming of their future, he is a democrat, an idealist, a forerunner of the same mighty movement which produced romanticism in literature and the American and French Revolution in politics.

In reading even an outline of Jefferson's public service the chief thing to note is this: that whatever he does or attempts, he always looks far ahead of his contemporaries, and plants a crop that will mature after his death. For dreams, especially great dreams, take no heed of time; they partake of eternity. He saw that the great need of democracy is intelligence, and straightway laid a broad foundation for free popular education. Though a slave-owner, he recognized the evil of slavery and set bravely to work, first to suppress the slave traffic, then to find a just way of general emancipation. "I tremble for my country," he said, "when I think of the negro and know that God is just"; and again, with perfect faith in humanity, he declares, "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free." With a few enthusiastic young Virginians, he formed the historic Committee of Correspondence, which anticipated the Revolution and united the Colonies in preparation for it. As our ambassador to France, where he was consulted by leaders of the French Revolution, he was more interested in the common people than in courts or society; he grieved over their oppression, and renewed his vow to oppose every attempt at aristocracy and class privilege in government. So, as Secretary of State in Washington's cabinet, he set himself against Hamilton, and quietly began to organize a democratic party in opposition to what he believed to be the monarchial tendency of the Federalists. He was twice elected President; he came into office as a radical reformer, feared and hated by the old party as one who would plunge the country into anarchy; and he led the nation steadily onward in a career of unexampled prosperity. Then he retired to his Virginia home, "Monticello," where he quietly exercised a profound influence over a large party of his countrymen, whose confidence in his judgment was increased by the fact that he opposed as dangerous their desire to elect him for a third term to the presidency.

To the end he worked faithfully for his three supreme objects: for popular education, for civil and religious liberty, and for a democracy which should be in truth a government of the whole people. He cherished the ideal that America should follow her own ways, as a new nation of freemen, avoiding as a plague the barbarous strife of the world for riches, and the insane competition of European nations for military or commercial supremacy. For he had the conviction—which Ruskin adopted later—that the wealthiest nation is that which has, not the greatest fleets and factories, but the largest number of happy and intelligent people. He died, full of years and honors, on July 4, 1826. On the same day died John Adams. These two old patriots and signers of the Declaration, thinking of each other and stretching out their hands to each other across a united country, passed away together on the birthday of the nation they had helped to establish. And the last words of Adams, "Thomas Jefferson still lives," seem to us at once a tribute and a prophecy.

Two other works belong to the borderland between literature and history. The Autobiography , with its keen observation, its pictures of the men he had known and of the great events in which he had taken part, is extremely valuable to the historian, and many general readers find it more interesting than Franklin's better-known story of his life. The Notes on Virginia  is a series of essays written in response to questions of the secretary of the French legation, who was collecting information about America for his home government. These essays, with their descriptions of nature, their pictures of Indian and slave life, their discussion of political, religious and economic questions, are invaluable to the student of our early history. They outline a picture of the country as it was at the beginning of its national career, and, in their aim at least, carry a suggestion of Bryce's The American Commonwealth , of a century later.

Of Jefferson's numerous political works we recommend only two, his Instructions to the Virginia Delegates to the Congress of 1774 , and his first Inaugural Address . The former, which was republished as A Summary View of the Rights of America , exercised a powerful influence in uniting the Colonies for the Revolution. It was reprinted in England, and furnished Burke with the chief argument of his speeches in favor of America. At that time it was a revolutionary work, but the modern reader can hardly appreciate its boldness and radicalism. The king is told bluntly that the Colonies are asking for rights, not favors; that his duty is "simply to assist in working the great machine of government erected for the people's use and subject to their superintendence." England is informed that all men must and shall have "equal and impartial right"; that "the whole art of government consists in being honest," and a deal more of what to us seems commonplace but what was then heroism in rebellion:

2 From Lowell's "Masaccio." The Summary View of 1774 is sufficient answer to the common allegation that Jefferson's work for democracy here was inspired by the French Revolution. All the principles for which he worked in later life are clearly expressed in his earlier writings.") ?>

We are told by the wise that the Declaration is not original, and by the prudent that its political theories are unsound, especially its "self-evident" truth that "all men are created equal." But originality was the last quality that a great man would have desired in that fateful hour when the Continental Congress reached its decision. As Jefferson said long afterwards, he had no wish to be original but to be representative. It is true that some of its expressions, like "unalienable rights" and "consent of the governed," are taken from Locke's Essay on Government ; true that many of its statements are found in earlier records of the Virginia Assembly; true that all its principles were familiar as the Commandments, having been preached in the churches, argued in the legislatures, and published in every newspaper. After years of anxiety and hesitation, the crisis has at last arrived—"now's the day and now's the hour"—when the Colonies stand face to face with the most momentous decision in their history. Before they take the step that shall plunge the country into war, the delegates at Philadelphia must proclaim their principles; must speak the word that shall hearten the timid ones, convince the doubtful, and electrify the brave by a call to action. They turn instinctively to the young Virginian and say: "Write it for us. Tell England and the world what we think and feel, what multitudes of free American men have thought and felt these twenty weary years." And he did it. If ever statesman forgot himself and gathered the ideals, the arguments, the indignation and defiance of a people into a broadside and hurled them with the directness of a cannon ball against the enemy, that statesman was Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence . Its power lies in the fact that it is not new but old, old as man's dream of freedom; that it is not the weak voice of a man, but the shout of a nation girding itself for conflict. As old Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, declared in 1783, Jefferson "poured the soul of the whole continent" into his Declaration .

Criticisms against it are mostly based upon the assumption that it is a state paper. We prefer to think of it as a prose war song. Even mollified as it was by a cautious Congress, it is still vibrant with suppressed emotion. That Jefferson began it as a state document is evident from the noble, rhythmic prose of its opening sentence; but as he wrote rapidly, forgetting himself to speak for his country, he must have remembered the burning of Norfolk, the battle of Bunker Hill, and heard as an echo the shout of Washington's victories at Boston. Then the war song began to throb like a drum in his heart and to vibrate in his fingers. And we imagine—nay, we need not imagine, since contemporaries bear witness to the outburst of enthusiasm which followed—that the Declaration stirred these quiet Colonials as Scottish clansmen are stirred by "Scots, wha hae," that most magnificent of all battle songs. Very appropriately, it was first read aloud in Independence Square before an immense throng of people, and the reader was Captain John Hopkins, of the new American navy. As he rolled it out in his powerful seaman's voice, now with the swing of a deep-sea chantey, now with the ringing summons of Clear ship for action ! the words thrilled that vast audience like an electric shock. They knew, as we can never know, just what the Declaration was,—a  call to battle for the rights of man. And they were ready to answer.

We shall not, therefore, criticize the Declaration of Independence  as a work of political science, or analyze its prose style, or otherwise maltreat and misunderstand it. We see its faults, but we love it for its virtues; for its elemental and unchanging manliness; for its deep emotion, more convincing than argument; for its moral earnestness; for its bold, unproved assertion of the fundamental rights of humanity:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Terrible words to a king and a tyrant! Brave, faithful, inspiring words to men who toil and hope and are still oppressed! But are they true? The answer is found not in political economy but in the heart of man, which cherishes ideals as the only permanent realities. For a hundred years now that Declaration  has been read on the nation's birthday, in town halls, in city churches, on thousands of village greens; and wherever it is really heard, eyes glisten and hearts are lifted up from the noise of the day to its silent, solemn meaning, as one sees above the bursting skyrockets the steady light of the eternal stars. For

During that hundred years our nation has been steadily breaking the shackles of men and bidding the oppressed go free; and still the Declaration  goes before us, like the pillar of fire, to show the way. In its light all our political problems are seen to be one, and that is to realize a democracy which shall be in truth a brotherhood of men. The reform of yesterday, the work of to-day, the hope of to-morrow, are all builded on the dream of '76, that men shall be equal, free and happy. Our whole history, if it have any significance, means simply this: that we remember our high calling; that we obey a mighty impulse; that we press forward to realize the ideal to which our first representatives pledged "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."