The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1885-06-19

often blindly, often narrowly, never in its ut
most amplitude and Splendor. The historic
Puritan was a man of the seventeenth cent
ury, not of the nineteenth. He saw through
glass darkly, but he saw. The acorn is not
| yet the oak, the wel-Spring is not yet the riv-
| er. But as the harvest is folded in the seed,
| so the largest freedom, political and religious
liberty, not liberation, not permission, not
endurance-but the right of absolute indiVid-
ual liberty subject only to the equal right of
others, is the ripened fruit of the Puritan
principle.
The history of colonial New England and Of
New England in the Union is the story of the
influence of the Puritan in America. That is
theme too alluring to neglect, too vast to be
attempted now. But even in passing | must
not urge claim too road. Even in the pride
of this hour and with the consent of your
approving conviction and sympathy, must
not proclaim that the Republic, like q
conquerlng goddess, sprang, from the head
fully armed, and that head was New
England. Yet the imperial commonwealth
| of which we are citizens, and every
sister State, will agree that in the two great
periods of our history, the Colonial epoch and
that of the National Union the influence of
New England has not been the least of all in
| fuenceS in the formation and achieving proc
esseS toward the great and common result.
The fondly-cherished tradition of Hadley may
be doubted and disproyed, but, like the legends
| of the old Mythology, it will live on glowing
and palpitating with essential truth. 1t may
be that we must surrender the story of the
villagers upon the connecticut SOrely DeSet by
| Indians at midday and about to yield; per-
| haps no actual. venerable form appears with
| flowing hair, like that white plume of con-
| Quering NaVaIre-and with martial miCn and
voice of command rallies the deSpairirg band,
cheering them on to victory, then vanishing
in air. The heroic legend nlay be a fable, but
none the less it is the Puritan who marches
in the van of our characteristic history; it is
the subtle and penetrating influence of New
England which has been fetin every part of
our National life, as the cool wind blowing
from her pine-clad mountains breatheS loft
Ter inspiration, Il health more vigorous, q
fresher impulse, upon her own green valleys
and happy fields.
See how she has diffused her population.
Like the old statues of the Danube and the
Nile, figures reclining upon reedy shore and
from eXhauStleSS urnS pouring water which
flows abroad in thousand streams of bene-
dicuon, so has New England sent forth her
children. Following the sun westward over
the Hudson and the Mohawk and the SusQue-
hanna, over the Alleghanies into the valley
OF the Mississippi, over the Sierra Nevada to
the Pacific Ocean, the endless procession from
New England has moved for a century, bear
ing everywhere Puritan principles, Puritan
enterprise and Puritan thrift. a hundred
years ago New England passed beyond the
calm Dutch Arcadia upon the Mohawk, and
striking into the primeYal forest of the
ancient Iroquois domain began the settlement
of central New York. little later. upon the
GeneSee, settlers from Maryland and Pennsyl-
vania met, but the pioneers from New En-
gland took the trmest hold and left the deepest
and most permanent impression. A hundred
years ago there was no white settlement in
Ohio. But in 1889 the seed of Ohio was carried
from Massachusetts, and from the loins of the
great Eastern commonwealth Sprang the first
great commonwealth of the West. Early in the
century score of settlements beyond the Al
leghanles bore the name OF Salem, the spot
where first in America the Puritans of Massa-
chusetts set foot; and in the dawn of
the revolution the hunters in the remote val
ley of the ElkhOrn, hearing the news of the
18th of April, called their camp Lexington,
and thus, In the response I Of their heroic sym
pathy, the Puritan of New England named the
| early capital of Kentucky. But happier still,
While yet the great region of the Northwest
lay in primeval wilderness awaiting the Great
i've touch that should lift it into amazing and
rejoicing life, it was the Puritan instinct that
fulfilled the aspiration of Jefferson, and by the
ordinance of 1877 conSecrated the Northwest
to freedom. So deeply upon American life
and institutions has the genius of New En-
gland impressed itself, that III the great civil
war the peculiar name OF the New Englander,
the Yankee, became the distinguishing title OF
the soldier of the Union; the National cause
was the Yankee cause; and a son of the West,
born in Kentucky and citizen of Illinois,
who had never seen New England, twice in his
life became the representative Yankee, and
with his hand, st&Ong with the will of the peo-
pie, the Puritan principle of liberty and equal
rights broke the chains of q race New En-
gland characteristics have become National
qualities. The blood of New England flows
with energizing, modifying, progressive pow
er in the veins of every State, and the I'M
daunted spirit of the Puritan sic semper tyr
annis, animates the continent from sea to
sea.
In the great drama of our history this was
the distinctive part of New England in the
separate colonies and in the later Union.
Under another Sky, in different time, and
amid changed conditions it was the service
of the same spirit that challenged the Vatican,
shook the crowned majesty of the Tudor and
the Stuart, and made straight in the desert a.
highway for Republican liberty-the spirit of
the Lincolnshire fugitive, of the exile in Hol-
land, of the Pilgrim of the May1lower and his
brethren of the Arbella; of the English
Puritan pXnan0pd HpVplOnp6 matIIrpd into
the American patriot. 1t is spirit to be rev.
erenced and cherished and perpetuated, if it
may be, in adequate and noble human form,
and so made permanently visible to men. We
know, indeed, that the builders of memorial
statues measure themselves; that they raise
in enduring marble and in bronze imperish-
able, relentless censors of the lives OF those
who build them, and that no man shall stand
unrebuked in the sculptured presence of de-
parted greatness. Butthe power that rebukes
inspires; and this statue shall be not only the
memorial of our reverence for the fathers, but
the pledge of the children's fidelity to the sub
Unity of their fathers principle and the
grandeur of their fathers aim.
Here in this seclusion, amid the sunshine
and the singing of birds, we raise the statue
of the Puritan that IN this changeless form
the long procession OF the generations which
shall follow us may see what manner of man
he was to the outward eye whom history and
tradition have so often houted and traGuced;
he who walked undismayed the solitary
heights of duty and of everlasting service to
mankind. Here let him stand, the soldier of q
free church calmly defying the hierarchy, the
builder of free state serenely confronting
the continent which he shall settle and sub
due. The unspeaking lips shall chide our I'M
worthiness, the lofty mien exalt our littleness,
the unblanching eye invigorate our weakness;
and the whole poised and firmly planted form
reveal the uncOnquerable moral energy-the
master force of American civilization. So
stood the sentinel on Sabbath morning guard
ing the plain house of prayer while wife and
child and neighbor worShiped within. So
unused the pilgrim in the rapt sunset hour on
the New England shore, his soul caught up
into the dazzling vision of the future, behold
ing the glory Of the nation that should be.
And so may that nation stand forever and
forever, the mighty guardian of human lib
erty, of God-like justice, of Christ-like