Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1877-08-17


mnistration and jury service, by which, and
the official service imposed upon those es-
teemed the fttest, the people are put to
school in the principles of government and
kept in training for the duties of civil life,
and made mt one with the law which they
make and administer. They have left us, too,
the school house and the meeting house, and
foundations for religious teaching, for the
Grammar School and the University, well
AZ cleared fields. roads, bridges and mills,
and We have entered into their labors.
1t is II question which presses upon us,
whether the State in its subsequent develop
ment has proved itself worthy its origin, and
whether we of to-day deserve such ancestry
how far the spirit and the times of Il hundred
years ago have impressed themselves upon
the century, and made its history what it has
been. and the people what they are. In the
way of partial answer TO such qucstionings
it may be truthfully said, that the age has
not passed beyond the impulse which first
set in motion the State and its institutions
that the temper and spirit of the fathers are
yet truceable in the moral lineaments of their
posterity that the principles upon which
they founded the State lie under it to-day,
undisturbed in place upon the bedrock of
truth, untouched by decay.
Thus, upon all questions ofhuman liberty,
especially i'll the fierce conflicts which have
since been waged between the absolute right
and the expedient wrong, between the doc
trine of human equality and the wild fantasy
of property i'll man, Vermont has ever been
true to her early declaration, and fixed as
her mountains exhibiting even an aggres-
sive zeal for liberty and holy anger against
slavery, contemptuOus of all excuse or apollo
w for such invasion of human rights. Thus
it happened, that the teachings of the early
al, oIi In .. new
doctrine, but the awakened echo of the
voices of the fathers who had passed into ST.
lence, and their appeals fell upon willing
ears and sank into sympathiZing hearts. 1t
was this kinship to the spirit of the faith
ers, which impelled our people to the verge
of the compromises of the National consti-
tuition, or beyond it, in their legislation upon
the subject of fugitive slaves and made
hostility to slavery the dominant question of
politics, making and unnaking parties, and
moulding the policy, or debating the utter
ances of all parties. This spirit mingled
largely with the spirit of nationality which
inspired our people to the heroic devotion
displayed in the late civil war, and made 1t,
| in their esteem, Il war twice holy, since in its
issue was bound up well the liberty of the
slave, as the nations life.
So if we consider the part taken by YER
monters in the wars which have arisen since
| the Revolution, it may be claimed of them,
| that they have not disgraced the memories
| of the men who took Ticonderoga and con-
quered at Bennington. Thus Lake Cham
| plain and Plattsburgh cheered the rush the
| Vermont farmers to repel the British invasion
of1Sl4. Soin 1861, the gun fired on Sumter was
| heard in every hamlet in Vermont. The
| spirits of the Green Mountain Boys of 'the
| Grants" slumbering in the caves of their
| mountains, seemed to arouse to quickened
| life, and Allen, Warner and their compeers
once more to walk the earth. Every heart
was stirred with divine anger, and from
every valley. hillside and mountain top
echoed back the responsive cry, ''Since you
| will have it SO, SO be it,-and God defend
the right" And so Vermont sent forth to
| the fray some thirty-four thousand of her
sons, with her gift of blessing and armor of
| the spirit of the fathers, and they so fought
as to make the name of Vermont and the
| Vermont Brigade historic glory, and so
| died. to the number of five thousand III the
shock of battle, as only heroes know how to
| die. And so the nation was saved by the
| sacrificial blood of her sons, tho issues OF
the iratricidal strife happily solving, as we
| trust, the riddle of Samson, ''Out OF the eat
er came forth meat and ont Of the strong
came forth sweetness the riddle of all
time-good out of evil the wrath of man
praising God. Thus far. i'll spirit OF freedom
and self-sacritice, i'll patriotic devotion and
heroic courage, | note no degeneracy. We
are to bear in mind, that it is the times and
their necessities that search out the be-
fore undiscovered man for the times that
the opportunity creates the man for the OPP
portunity; ami the great occasion makes the
man great for the occasion, who, without
| such stress, would have seemed but common
clay, and have died without giving sign OF
the greatness that was potential in him. So
il is, that in the dull times of peace and the
hum-drum quiet Of easy life, the shades
of the great men of heroic past loom high,
and are enlarged to our vision 10y the misty
distance that lies between. This is well,
since it keeps alive reverence and aspiration,
and kindles divine emulation to be like
them. But AS there were brave men before
Agamemnon, so, as think, Vermont has had
heroes since Ethan Allen and Seth Warner I;
wise governors since Thomas Chittenden e.;
accomplished diplomatists since Ira Allen /:
able statesmen. Legislators and Jurists since
Nathaniel Chapman, if not as great as he.
Those improved means of intercourse
among men and reader intercommunication
of thought and knowledge the result of novel
inventions and new applications of science
which have marked the present century and
affected the civilization of the world, have
|
thereby become less provincial, more cosmo-
politan, less n peculiar people, than our faith
ers were. And yet, being largely all agricul-
tural people, with no very large towns or
cities, with few millionaires and few very
poor, and little chance to become rich by
speculations We have not been tempted to
stray very far from our fathers ways of in
dustry, economy, simplicity of living and
providence for the future. And, since we are
gathered here about the old hearth-stone,
We may be allowed, in the freedom and con-
tidence of the family circle, to felicitate our
selves Us Nermonters, not only for what our
fathers were. for their heroic lives and
historic deeds and the institutions they
created and transmitted to us, but that their
posterity have so faithfully guarded, pre-
erved and wisely improved them, and have
so well kept alive the spirit of those institu
tons and the temper of that heroic age :
that education is free and that We have free
dom i'll religion, both moving in wider and
deeper channels than aforetime of culture
and Christian charity that greater soft
ness of manners has not made us eifeminate :;
that We are III good degree temperate,
sober, self-restrained people, standing by
good order and obedience TO law, CONSERVE
tive and yet progressing. having n steadfast-
ness that may be counted on, and a will of
our own not having parted with practical
wisdom and common sense, nor yet Tar de-
parted from the religion of paying our debts.
From this little hive and nursery of men,
how many have gone forth to the broader
and more inviting fields of the expanding
West, to the great marts of commerce, and
| wherever the spirit ufadventure has impellcd,
| or of gain or ambition lured, carrying with
them the temper and training of their birth
place, and planting in other fields the seed
| tla,- in, hnrbnnl
mountain sides. And rs we have seen the
emblematic pine tree of our State come of
such planting towering oittimes above the
| indigenous trees of the land, with branches
| wide spreading and royal crown of leaves,
| singing to the winds the music of its ances
trail home, how proudly have we cheered such
vision, crying, Grace grace unto it. This
| seed Of Vermont sowing, wherever cast, has
bourgeoned into haryests to the enrichment
| of many States, and credit to seed and SOW
| er : and We rejoice to-day to welcome
the return Of many of the sons of Yer
mont, bringing to our festival golden sheayes
| of their culture and harvest.
| One hundred years hence, when Vermont
shall celebrate the second centennial year o
| her life ms State, when We who to-day com
| memurnte the virtues of our historic fathers
| shall have long passed into silence and shall
| then. pcrchance, by search of genealogical
| records he discovered rs the fathers of that
age alas, how few of us will have attained
| other historic Immortality, search
| among the musty papers Of the then Vermont
| Historical Society, to find record of the do
| ings of this first centennial year, shall with
draw from Oblivion these poor words which
now stir the air. may they, who shall then
gather to look upon the monuments which
We now rear N, memorials Of IL heroic age
MS they look buck over the field of Vermont
history for two hundred years. and compare
the past with the then present, find State and
people softened 10y culture, yet true to the
spirit OF the prinlcynl State and OF those who
founded it, IL people free, independent IN
tellgent, industrious, sober honest, conser
vntiyo of the good, aggressive towards the
wrong. virtuous, religious, happy people
whose God il the Lord.
The poem was then read by Prof j. W.
Churchill, of Andover, Mass a. follows