The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1879-06-02

| ter's of Judea, spreading through the centuries
| exhibits the great truth that the world suffers
its grandest changes not by genius but by the
more potent control of character. 1t was an
| earnestness that would take no denial, that
| consumed opposition in the intensity of its con-
victions, that knew nothing but right. AS
friend after friend gathered slowly, one by one,
| to his side, in that very meeting of dozen, il
was his compelling hand, his utter unwilling
ness to temper or qualify the utterance that f.
nally dedicated the first organized movement,
the Massachusetts, Anti-Slavery Society, to the
doctrine of immediate emancipation. He
seems to have understood-that boy without
experience-he seems to have understood by
instinct that righteousness is the only thing
that will finally compel submission; that one is
always majority with God. He seems to
have known it at the very outset taught of
| God, the herald and champion, God-endowed
| and God-sent to arouse nation
And then look at the unquailing courage
| with which he faced the successive obstacles
that confronted himl Modest, believing at
the outset that America could not be so cor
rupt as she seemed to exhibit herself he waits
at the door of the churches kneels to leading
clergymen, beseeches voice from the sanctu-
ary, consecrated protest from the pulpit
To his utter amaZement, confounded, he
learns, by probing it, that the Church can
give him no help, but, on the contrary, surges
into the movement in opposition. Serene,
this boy in his youth and conviction, aston
ished, perhaps, by the unexpected revelation,
simply turns his footsteps, and announces ga
Church, Christianity that keeps peace with
| the oppressor is no Christianity" and goes on
| his way to supplement the religious element
| which the Church had gotten into an alliance
| with sin by deeper religious faith, by
| grander Christian education Sets himself to
work, that solitary evangelist, to make Chris
tians of fifteen millions of people! 1 am not
exaggerating. You know, older men, who
can go back to thatperiod, know, that when
one, kindred to voice that you have heard
to-day, whose pathway Garrison's bloody feet
had made easier for his treading, in the few
years that proceeded his coalition, when he
uttered in a pulpit in Boston a few strong
words, injected in the course of Sermon his
venerable father of between seventy and eigh-
ty years was met the next morning and his
hand shaken by asympathizing friend. "Col-
onel, you have my sympathy" What said
the brusque old man, what is your pity?"
"Well, 1 hear your son went crazy at Kings
Chapel yesterday" Such was the utter in
difference Bloody steps had then smoothed
the pathway for years for other men to tread;
but insanity was the only kind-hearted ex-
cuse that partial friends could find for sympa-
thy with such madmanl
Well, if anything strikes one more promi-
nently than another in this career, to your as
tonishment, younger men, you may say-it is
the plain, sober, unmixed common sense, the
robust English element which underlay Crom-
well, which explains Hamden, which gives the
color that distinguishes 1640 in England from
1870 in France, Plain, robust, well-balanced
common sense. No erratic mistake; no en-
thusiasm that got beyond the feelings of
earth, rising unsupported in the air; no mis-
take of method; no miscalculation of time; no
unmeasured confidence of forces no miscal-
culation of opposition. Whoever mstook,
Garrison seldom mistook. Fewer mistakes
in that long agitation of fifty years can be
charged to his account than to any other
American Erratic as men supposed him.
Incorporate in utterance, mad in judgment,
an enthusiast gone crazy, the moment that you
sat down at his side, patient in explanation,
clear in statement, sound in judgment, meas
uring carefully every step, calculating every
assault, measuring the force too meet it, never
anticipating events, always patient, waiting
till the time ripened. Fit for great leader.
Gull if you please, from the statesmen who
obeyed him, whom he either whipped into sub
mission or summoned into existence, Gull from
among them the man whose career, fairly ex-
amined exhibits fewer miscalculations and
fewer mistakes than that career which is just
ended.
know what claim. AS Mr.. Weld has
said, 1 am speaking to-day to men that judge
by their ears, by the reports heard, by the
rumors that they have gathered. History, fifty
years hence, dispelling your prejudice, will do
Justice to the grand sweep of the orbit which ,as
my friend said, to day we are hardly in con-
dition to measure. As Coleridge AYERS, "The
true haters of tomorrow will give the right
name to the true haters of to-day, for even
such men the stream of time bears onward
do not fear that if my words are remembered
unsupported or extravagant. When history
touches the source of New England character
| and Northern life, when men begin to
| open up and examine the hidden springs that
| make the foundation and have effected the
| changes in American life within the last half
| century they will remember Parker, that
| Jupiter of the pulpit; they will remember the
grand potent unmeasured influence that
| came to us from the seelusion of Concord; they
will do justice to the mastery craftsmanship
which presided for part of his life over the
efforts of Webster, but they will recognize that
there was only one man north OF Mason and
Dixon's line who met squarely, with an abso-
lutte logic, the impregnable position of John C..
Calhoun, only one brave, far-sighted, keen,
logical intellect, that discerned that there
were two moral tools in the universe, right
and wrong; that when one was asserted,
intellectual subterfuge and evasion would be
sure to confront nothing but defeat
Here lie the brain and the heart; here lies
the godly-gifted, statesmanlike intellect, logi-
cal as Jonathan Edwards, brave as Luther,
who confronted the logic of South Carolina
with an assertion direct and broad enough to
make an issue and necessitate conflict of two
civilizations. 1t is true, as New Orleans COM
plains to-day in her journals, that that man
brought upon America everything that can be
| called the disaster of the last twenty years;
| and it is equally true that if you seek through
| the hidden causes and unheeded events for the
| hand that wrote emancipation" ON the statute
| book and ON the flag it lies still here to-day.
|
one other marked and, as it seems to me, un-
| precedented, element in this catalogue of quail
| tiles. His was the happiest life that ever
witnessed No need for pity. There need no
| tear fall over his life. No man gathered into
| his bosom q fuller Sheaf of blessing, delight
and joy. In his seventy years, there were not
| arrows enough in the whole quiver of the
| Church or State to wound him. AS Guizot
| once said from the heights of the tribune,
Gentlemen, YOU cannot get high enough to
| nj
from the serene level of his daily life, from the
| faith that never faltered, was able to say to
American hate, "You cannot reach up to the
| level that can affect my home mood my daily
existence" have seen him Intimately for a
| score of years, when raining on his head was
| the hate of the community, when in every pos
sible form of expression malignity let him
| know that it wished him all sorts of harm. L
| never saw him unhappy; never saw the hour
| that gloom poisoned his existence; never saw
| the moment that serene, overflowing, abound
| ing faith in the rectitude of his motive, in the
| certainty of his success, did not lift him above
| all possibility of being reached by any of the
| clamor about him. L stand here to affirm
| what 1 think every friend of his intimate life
| will say, this is the happiest life that God has
| granted in our day to any American standing
| in the foremost rank Of men of influence and
1 effort. He had perpetual flow of genial SYM
| pathy that could hold up the weak, champion
| the most dismal OF causes, cover with its re-
| gard the helpless, the wrecked by intemper-
| ance, Jne nunteu whose nedrt tremDleu at eY-
| cry lift of the latch, and you could have his
| heart melt and be poured out like water with
sympathy for such victim and yet there was
| enough left ever for the serenest gratitude to
God for life that no opposition could darken,
for a measure or strength and sympathy so in
exhaustible that although it never shut the
door, nor refused the lifting of the hand, nor
failed to empty out, more lavishly than pru-
dence would dictate, the means, never reached
the point where he himself in his daily mood
| was cloudy. God held over him in full sight
| unclouded the sunlight of his countenance.
Serene, brave, all-accomplished, marvellous
| man! 1 sit down to contemplate the makeup
of his qualities 1 remember he was mortal,
and yet, where shall we find one among those
waging earnest, unceasing effort to quell sin,
to reform error, to enlighten darkness, to bind
| up broken hearts, his equal?
Farewell for very little while, noblest OF
Christian menl Leader, brave, tireless un-
selfishl The ear that heard thee it blessed
thee; the eye that saw thee gave witness to
thee. More truly than it could be uttered
since the great patriarch wore it, the blessings
of him that was ready to perish was thine eter-
| nal great reward
Though the clouds rest for q moment to-day
on the great work that you set your heart to
accomplish, you knew, God in his love let you