The intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1887-1891, 1890-06-07

splendid queens In our American capital
but We could hardly be brought to sup
port a queen on the other side of the
Atlantic, lovely and good az Victoria is.
The only use we have for Earls and
Lords and Dukes in this country is to
treat them we'll when they pass through
to their hunting grounds in the far
West, or when their fortunes have
failed, reinforce them by matrimonial
alliance. Imagine this Nation yet a
part Of English possessionsl The
trouble the mother country has to-day
with Ireland would be a paradisaic con
dition compared with the trouble she
would have with us. England and tho
United States makes excellent n~eighbors
but the two families are too large to
live in the same house. What a God
send that we should have parted, and
parted long ago! But | can think of no
othe{ way in which we could have pos
sfb1H abhieved American independence.
George the Third, the half crazy King,
would not let US go. Lord North, his
Prime Minister, would not have let us go.
General Lord CORVALLIS would o have
let US go, although after Yorktown he
was glad enough to have us let him go.
Lexington, and Bunker Hill, and Mon
mouth, and Trenton, and Valley Forge,
were proofs positive that they were not
willing to let us go. Any committee Of
Americans going across the ocean to see
what could have been done would have
found no better accommodations than
London tower. The only way 1t could
hav been done was by the sword, your
great grandfather's sword. Jefferson's
pen could write the Declaration of In
dependence, but only W~ashington's
sword could have achieved 1t, and the
other swords bathed in Heaven.
So now the sword has its uses, al
though 1t is a sheathed sword. There
is not an armory in Brooklyn, or New
York or Philadelphia, or Chicago, or
Charleston, or New Orleans, or any
American city that could be spared. We
ave in all our American cities a ruflan
population who, though they are small
in number, compared with the good pop
u~lation, would again and again make
rough and stormy times II, back of our
mayors and Common Councils and police,
there were not in the armories and
a%rsenals some keen steel which II
brought into play would make quick
work with the mobocracy. There are
in every great community u~nprincipled
men who like a row on a large scale and
they heat themselves with sour mash
and old rye and other decoctions, en-
riched with blue ~vitriol, potash, turpen-
tine, sugar of lead, sulphuric acid, log
wood, strychnine, night shade and other
nrnniOna innra1iantu and ta1ra 1on.-
whole glass with a resounding "Ahl" of
satisfaction. When they get that stuff
in them and the blue vitriol collides
with the potash and the t%urpentine with
the sulphuric acid the victims are ready
for any thing but order and decency and
good government. Again and again in
our American cities has the necessity of
Home Guards been demonstrated.
You remember how, when the soldiers
were all away to the war in 1s63-64, what
confiagrations were kindled in the
streets Of New York, and what negroes
were hung. Some Of you remember the
great riots in Philadelphia at fires, some
times kindled just for the opportunity
Of uproar and despoliation. In 1s49 a
hiss at a theater would have resulted
In New York City being demolished had
1t not been for the citizen soldiery. Be-
cause Of an insult which the American
actor, Edwin Forrest, had received in
England from the friends of Mr.. Ma
cready, the English, actor, when the
latter appeared in New York, in MAC
beth" the distinguished Englishman
was Kissed and mobbed, the walls of the
having been placarded with the an
nouncement: "Shall Americans or En-
glish rule in this city?" Streets were
filled with a crowd insane with passion.
The riot act was read, but it only evoked
louder yells and heavier volleys of
and the whole city was threat
with violence and assassination.
But the Seventh regiment, under GEN
eral Duryea, marched through Broad
way, preceded by mounted troops and at
the command: Fire, Guardsi Fire!' the
scattered, and New York was
saved. What would have become of
Chicago two or three years ago, when
the police lay dead in the streets, had
not h sharp command of military off,
GERS been given?
Arbitrament will take the place of
war between Nation and Nation and
national armies win disband as a conse-
quence, and the time will come-God
hasten it-when there will be no need
of an American army or navy, or a Rus
sian army or navy. But some time after
that cities will have to keep their ar
mories and arsenals and we'll drilled
militia, because until the %millennial
day there will be populations with whom
arbitrament will be as impossible as
treaty with a cavern Of hyenas or jungle
Of snakes. The sooner the sword can
go back to the scabbard to stay there
the better, but until the hilt clangs
against the case in that final Judgment,
let the sword be kept free from rust,
sharp all along the edge, and its point
like a needle, and the handle polished,
not only by the chamois of the regi-
mental servant, but by the hand of
brave and patriotic officers. always ready
to do their full duty. Such swords are
not bathed in impetuosity, or bathed in
cruelty, or bathed in oppression, or
bathed in outrage, but bathed in Heaven.
Before / speak Of the doom OF the
sword, let me also say that it has also
developed the grandest natures that the
world ever saw. 1t has developed cour-
age-that sublime energy of the soul
which defies the universe when it feels
itself to be in the right. 1t has devel-
oped a self-sacrifce which repudiates
the idea that our life Is worth more than
any thing else, when for q principle it
throws that life away. as much as to say,
1t is not necessary that ! live, but 1t Is
necessary that righteousness triumph.
There are tens OF thousands among the
Northern and Southern veterans Of our
civil war who are 95 per cent. larger and
mightier in soul than they would have
been had they not during the four years
of National agony turned their back on
home n fortune n at the front sacri-
fee all for q principle. 1t was the
sword which on the Northern side de-
veloped a Grant, q Mcclellan, a Hooker,
a Hancock. q Sherman, o Sheridan, and
Admirals Farragut and Porter, and oil
the Southern side a Lee, a Jackson, q
Hill, a Gordon, and the Johnstons, Al
bert Sydney and Joseph E., and Admiral
Semmes and many Federals and Confed-
crates whose graves in National ceme-
teries are marked unknown" yet who
were just as self-sacrifcing and brave as
any of their Major-Generals, and whose
resting places all up and down the An
d~roscoggin, the Hudson, the Potomac,
the Mississippi and the Alabama, have
recently been showed under with white
flowers, typical Of resurrection, and
strewn with red flowers, commemorative
CT the carnage through which they