Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1875-04-21
SPEAKER BLAINE At CONCORD


The following are the remarks made by Speaker
Blaine at the exercises III Concord, Monday, in
the mammoth tent;
| / cannot accept the reasons given by the honor
ed chairman of the day for calling me out as the
first speaker. ii occurs to me it was from an en-
tirely different reason. He has served recently IN
| the House of Representatives, where he learned
that on call of States Maine always has the hrst
| call and owing to that habit L have the great
honor of being presented to you In listening to
the matchess eulogy of a matchless event IN his
tory was struck by one fact which the gSavlty
of the occasion forbade the eloquent orator from
alluding to. They have been searching these
hundred years past for reasons why the first blow
| for American liberty should have been struck at
Concord; but / think they have neglected the
real primal, instructive reasons that underlay the
whole The truth is that the people of Concord
| from the carly settlement of the town had been,
to use a somewhat slang phrase, spelling for
| fight" They had the Apostle Elliott among them
early to train the Indians, but they rehed great
deal more upon their muskets. When the colon
lists got into row with Sir Edmund Andres 1t was
| a company from Concord that drove him away.
When King Philip attempted his ravages, Ii was
Concord men that met him; and when the period
of the Revolution came, 1t was just ana inevitable
that the first conflict should come at Concord as 1t
was that King George should insist upon the
measures that should drive the colonsts to resist
ance. | have always therefore, had no trouble III
determining in my own mind from the lighting
generations of Concord people that have myself
known, that here was the precise place; and you
will read the annals of that great event that we
have been celebrating to-day, you will find that
one of the first things the people OF Concord did
was to refuse to allow the royal judges to sit and
further, that they humbled the tories. Lord, how
/ pity those tories! believe the name OF SIM
| gle tory that was humbled by the Concord people
has never been recorded in history. They never
could find out where they went but it is perfectly
easy to believe that under the weight OF the HUI
initiation inflicted through the Concord indigna-
ton every one resorted to the better fate of sui
eide. (Laughter.) We have been told by en-
inent English historian that there were fifteen
decisive battles in the world. He closed his his
tory at about 1854. think If he had written
little while later he would have found few more
decisive battles to add to the list In going over
those battles from Marathon to Waterloo, you get
in effect the history of all the great powers, an
cient and modern, that have risen and have fallen
the Persian, the Assyrian the Egyptian, the Rom
an and the Greek, of the ancents and of the mod
orn, the great changes that have come over the
face of Europe are also chronicled. But there is
one list of battles that has not yet been gathered by
the historian. We are all familiar with Marathon
we all know what Waterloo did; we know also
what was douc at Sedan we know what was done
in our own continent at Petersburg, in the Will
derness, at Vicksburg and Chattanooga; but that
list of battles, which may say may be classed
under those that force the issue, whether in the
moral or military world have never yet been clas-
| House of Representatives when he insisted upon
presenting petition for a slave. That forced
the issue and was the battle which decided the
right of petition in the country. A Pennsylvania
Representative Il speak Of it with some sensibity
since my honored friend alluded to myself some
what in that connecton) forced the great issue of
slavery in this country by moving a provso
| to simple territorial bill. And what
force the issue. 1t was small battle.
The men killed in the first skirmish and the whole
days transactions, bloody they were, would not
amount to the loss in picket skirmsh in the last
war; but yet, it gave birth to what To nation,
and nation so vast and so grand that if were to
stop to survey what has since transpired l should
want more than the week Judge lloar desired to
rid hi nself of the impression of the 18th of April
Why, we were but three millions of people then.
The House of Representatives, which | have had
the honor to serve in for some years, has to-day
more than two-thrds OF its numbers taken from
the country where the foot Of the white man up
to that day had never trodden, except the adven-
turous hunter more than two-thirds of the entire
House of Representatives come from land then UNI
dreamed of for settlement. The day that gun was
fired across that bridge there did not eyist tie
American continent 81 white settlers so miles
from the tide water of TIE Atlantic. 1t only
! a run OF people, stretching from Name to Geor-
gia but not penetrating the interior at all. But
all this has followed as directly as consequence
follows cause, from the blow that was struck that
day in the small fight at Concord Bridge.
Gentlemen, to even allude to that battle, or even
to gather up a single crumb from the table at
which we have fed so bounteousy to-day seems
to be work of supererogation, if not an impossi-
bility. All that remains to u.s. all that can remain
to us, is to see that one hundred years hence we
may be remembered as honorably and as indeli-
bly, as those whose deeds We this day celebrate.
1t might possibly have been matter Of doubt with
but for the late terrible experience of this
try, whether had within us the same heroic
blood that fought and fell that day. But, happily,
out Of the great griefs and the great misery and
suffering of our own time, we know that we, their
descendants, have not grown less strsng in arm
and less dauntless in heart than those that fought
for US then. ltremains for us to transmit to those
who come after record in the line of civil duty,
in the line of preserving that for which that gen
Grafton and our own have both fought, that shall
beque attn to our descendants to the rcmotest gen
erations the blessings which nothing bat public
virtue and personal courage can secure to any peo-
pie. loud applause)
DOT/TYC1L.