The weekly Minnesotian. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1852-1858, 1855-01-13
From address delivered at Augusta, Maine, July
1910.
HeriOsm.
ls.. f... -e BY REV. SYLVESTER JUDD.

"There is that heroism which appeals strong
ly to our sensibilities, which captivates the i'm
| agination, and takes with the popular heart
But what is heriosm! What is it in its noblest
most divine most pure exercise? The kings OF
the earth would make their subjects believe it
is physical, military. daring. So they have
employed their bards to sing and historians to
record such exploits, and perpetuated the men,
ory thereof in marble and in oil. So if man
killed one man, it might indeed be murder
but when he had killed m lion, he was a
hero. ..t ati., ,H las.
"Peace. we are told, is unheroic; it is stag
nant tame, corrupting. "A subtitle poison in
the language of Mr.. Allison, 'debases the pub
deed, an enchanting prospect but beneath
that smiling surface are to be found the rank
est and most dangerous passions of the human
heart The commissions of war shake up and
renovate this state of things war is sort of
subsOil ploughing, it is the refner's fire and
fuller's soap. it is the thunderstorm that set
ties the dust, and clears the sultriness of a hot
day.
II am obliged to say there is more heriosm,
more gallant daring, more generosity and man
illness, in one year of peace, than in whole ages
of war. / mean that there is more strict, I'M
doubted, legitimate heroism in our steamship
and railroad enterprises, in our cotton-mills
and saw-mills, in our scythe-factorics and
rch-factories, in our securing the ocean for
whales, and excavating the earth for its ores,
and similar things, than in the battles of a CEN
fury. There was more heroism in John Jacob
Astor's attempt to found colony in Oregon
in.1SI2. thanh the war that broke it up; more
in.D6 Witt Chiffon, who about the same time
started tHeprOject of the Erie Canal, than in
the same war that broke that up; more in
49, S,{l4 srS, 10
Pacific, msre. jug with difficulties more
fortitude in peril, more coolness in the midst
of assault, than in Leonidas or Odin. mean
at least to say, that the greatest qualities Of
the human mind, which, it may be- war some
times develops, exist in full force in peace.
There is need of heroes at the present mo-
ment America has need of them, and the
kingdom of God has need of them heroes, not
of brute force, but of ideas not of waste and
ruin, but of Reconstruction not of carnage and
rapine, but of vrtuous action. The old race of
heroes is becoming extinct, and new one is
rising; old notions of strife and aggrandize-
ment are supplanted by new ones of peace and
prosperity outward excitement and passion
yield to inward enterprise and energy. We
want not heroes in epaulets, but in pepper-and-
salt not those of the sword, but of the plough,
the loom and the anvil. We want heroes ofthe
river and the fosest, of the field and the ocean,
OF the pulpit and the forum, of the ballot-box
and the senate-chamber. .1
Hang up the old musket and the kettle
drum. The lightnings of heaven are arming
for us and recruits from the impalpable air, on
the pathway of the telegraph, are ready to run
round the world in behalf of the great cause of
liberty and virtue. Steam, with all it's ponder
GUS agencies, comes up from the fountains of
water, and asks to be enlisted for God and the
right. The press, like the rising sun, waits to
lrradiate the whole earth with the brightness
OF our thought. the gladness of our love, the
wonders of our genius. 1919
., Hang up the musket and the kettle-drum.
rake the spade and the drill, and the noun
are filled up, and a way. a highway is made
for our Coda railway is made for our wives