Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1885-02-21


UNION OF many into one
Had the Fine Arts, indeed, made such ad-
vances In our country forty years ago as we are
now proud TO recognize, it is not improbable
tnat different design might have been adopted;
put am 6y no means sure it would have been
a more effective and appropriate one. There
will always be ample opportunity for the dis
play OF decorative art in our land. The streets
ana squares OF this city and ofa our great cities
memorials of our distinguished statesmen and
soldiers, and such monuments are everywhere
sincerlty.is not the acknowledged pre-emi.
nence OF the Father of his Country, first without
second, more fifty and adequately represented
oy mat soaring shaft, rising high above trees
and spires and domes, and all the smoke aud
STIR OF earth.-as he ever rose above sectional
prelud1ces and party politics, and personal in
terests,-oVertopping and dominating all its
surroundings, cleaning and glistening out at
every vista as far as human sight can reach, ar
shoots triumphantly to the skies? Does not-does
not, repeat, that Colossal Unit remind all who
gaze at 1t, more forcibly than any arch or statue
could do, that there is one name in American
history above all other names, one character
more exalted than all other characters, one eX-
ample to be studied and reverenced beyond all
other examples, one bright particular star in
the clear upper sky of our armament, whose
guiding light and peerless lustre are for all men
ana for all ages, never to be lost sight Of never
to be unheeded? OF that name, OF that charac-
Ter, OF that example, of that glorious guiding
nght, our Ooellsk, standing on the very spot
selected by Washington himself for q monu-
ment to the American Revolution, and on the
site which marks our National meridian, will
De unique memorial and symbol forever.
FOR oh, my friends, let us not longer forget, or
even seem to forget, that we are here to COM
memorate, not the Monument, but the Man.
mat stupendouS pile has not been reared for
any vain purpose of challenging admiration for
Itself. 1t is not, need not say it is not, as a
specimen OF advanced art, for il makes no pre-
tension 10 hat;it is not as signal illustration
OF engineering skill and science, though that
may confidently be claimed for il lit is not,
certainly it is not, as the tallest existing struc-
WOTld--tOr
greatness of men by the height of their monu-
ments, and We know that this distinction may
yearS;-but IL is as q Memorial of the pre-emi-
nent figure in modern or in ancient history, the
world over,-of the man who has left the loftiest
example OF public and private virtues, and
whose exalted character challenges the admira-
ton and the homage of mankind lit is this
example, and this characterize is the Man, and
not the Monument,-that we are here to COM
memOrate
Assembled In these Legislative Halls of the
as a due respect for the Day OF our Lord will
allow, to signaliZe the long-delayed accomplish
ment OF so vast work, 1t is upon him in whose
honor it has been upreared, and upon the in
comparable and ineStimable services he has
rendered TO his country and to the world, that
our thoughts should be concentrated at this
hour. Yet what can | say, what can any man
say, of W Washington, which has not already been
rendered as familiar as household words, not
merely to those who hear me, but to all readers
of history and all lovers of Liberty throughout
the world? How could hope to CLEAN anything
lfO1Il h ueiu ibIlS ago 50 carefully ana lONlGglN
reaped by such men as John Marshall and Jared
Sparks, by Guizot and Edward Everett and
Washington Irving, as web as by our eminent
living historian, the venerable George Bancroft,
happily here with us to-day?
Others, many others, whom dare not at
tempt to name or number, have WED with each
other in describing career, of whose minuteSt
details no American is ever weary, and whose
variety and interest can never be exhausted.
Every stage and step of that career, every scene
of that great and glorious life, from the hour OF
his birth, one hundred and fifty-three years
ago;-"about ten In the morning Of We 18th day
mothers Bible,-in that primitive Virginia
farmhouse in the county of Westmoreland, of
which the remains of the "great brick chimney
of the kitchen have been identified only
within a few years past,-every scene, say, of
that grand and glorious life, from that ever
traced and illustrated by the most accom-
piished and brilliant pens and tongues Of our
land
His childhood, under the loving charge of that
venerated mother who delighted to say that
George had always been good son, who hap
ply lived not only to see him safely restored to
her after the exposures and perilS of the Revolu
tionary struggle ,but to see him, in her eighty
second year, unanimously elected to be the
had been the Saviour in War; his primary edu-
cation in that ''old-iield schoolhouse," with
Hobby, the sexton of the parish for his first
master; his early and romantic adventures as
and surveyor; his narrow escape from being a
midshpman in the British Navy, at fourteen
years of age, for which warrant had been OBJ
tanned and his luggage actually put on board a
man-ofwar anchored in the river just below
Mount, Vernon; his still narrower and hair
breadth escapes from Indian arrows and from
French bullets, and his survival - the only
mounted officer not killed-at the defeat of
Braddock, of whom he was an aide-de-camp;
together with that most remarkable prediction
OF the Virginia pastor, Samuel Davies, afterward
President of Princeton College, pointing him
out-in sermon, in 1855, on his return at the
age of twenty-three, from the disastrous field of
the MOnongahela-as 'that heroic youth Col
onel Washington, whom 1 cannot but hope
Providence has preserved in so signal a manner
orsome important service to his country;"-who
has forgotten, who can ever forget, these most
impressive incidents Of that opening career by
which he was indeed so prOvidentially pre-
served, prepared and trained up for the event
full and illustrious future which awaited him?
Still less can any American forget his taking
his seat, soon afterward, in the Virginia House
of Burgesses,-with the striking tribute to his
modesty which he won from the Speaker,-and
his subsequent election to the Continental Con-
gress at Philadelphia- where on the 18th of
June, 1870 at the suggestion of John Adams
and on the motion Of Thomas Johnson, after
mOusly appointed General and Commander
in-Chief of such Forces as are, shall be- raised
for the maintenance and preservation of Amer
lean Liberty. Nor can any of us require to be
reminded OF the heroic fortitude. the unswerv-
ing constancy and the unsparing selfdevotion,
eight years, that protracted contest, with all its
tolls and trials, its veXations and vicissitudes,
from the successful Siege OF Boston, his rst
movements on the Delaware which no less cele-
brated a soldier than Frederick the Great de-
clared 1.-THE most brilliant achievements of any
recorded in the annals of military action, m-and
SO along,-through all the successes and re-
verses and sutferings and trials of Monmouth
and Brandywine and Germantown and Valley
Forge,-to the siege of Yorktown, in 17Sf,
where, with the aid Of our generous and gallant
allies, under the lead Of Rochambeau and De
Grasse and Lafayette, he won at last that crown
ing victory on the soil of his beloved Virginia.
Nor need / recall to you the still nobler
triumphs witnessed during all this PERIOD
triumphs in which no one but he had any share.
-triumphs over himself: not merely in his
magnanimous appreciation of the exploits of
his subordlnates, even when uniustly and
maliciOuSly cOntrasted with disappOintments
and i alleged inaction of his own, but IL repell;
mutinous officers at Newburgh, in spurning
OvertureS to invest him with dictatorial and
even kingly power, and in finally surrendering
his sword and commission SO simply, SO sub
ceived them.
Or, turning sharply from this summary and
familiar sketch of his military career.-of
which, take 1t for all in ALL its long duration its
slender means its vast theatre, its glorious aims
and ends and results, there is no parallel in his.
tory,-turning sharply from all this, need l re-
call him, In this presence presiding with para
mount influence and authority over the Con.
ventioA which framed the Constitution of the
United states and then, with such cOnsummate
discretion, dignity and wisdom over the original
administration of that Constitution, when the
principles and presidents of our great Federal
system OF government were moulded, formed
and established?
1t was well said by John Milton, in one of his
powerful Defences of the People of England
"War has made many great, whom Peace makes
small" But OF Washington we may say, as
Milton said of Cromwell, that, while War made
that both War and Peace alike gave opportu-
nifty for the display of those comparable In