The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1901-06-13
LIKE The CALL OF THE BUGLE
The Inspiring Educational Addresses Of Pres
dent Holt and Judge Clark.
HOLT'S TRIBUTE TO A HEROIC PEOPLE

room or public building impresses upon
the mind of childhood that other scene
thirty-five years earlier when the first
English settlement on this continent was
made upon our own shores at Roanoke Is
land Not amid the SHOWS on barren
coast, as at Plymouth Rock, but in the
middle of a semi -tropical summer. with
the great expresses, hung with moss, as
sentinels of the historic scene and the
Cdors of Araby, the Blest, waited from
the shores of this new land of plenty.
"In Massachusetts books every strik-
ing scene in King Phillips war and in
the Pequot war is not only recorded by
the pens of faeile writer's but the pain
ters brush and the engraver's tool have
faithfully preserved the features of each
locality and imagination has restored the
features, the arms and the dress of the
actors in each stirring scene.
What pen or pencil or engraving or
brush brings to the plastic mind of our
children the scenes of own Indian wars?
There is that expedition by Governor Lane
up the Roanoke in search of the gold
supposed to lie at it's source Between
Hamilton and Williamson he was suddenly
assailed by flights of arrows and driven
back. Had that happened on the head
waters of the Connecticut what vivid re-
productions we should have both by pen
and engraving. From above Hamilton to
the mouth of the river the aspect of the
Roanoke flowing through an unbroken for
est is the same today as it was on the
day of the defeat of that hardy expedi-
tion. The writer or painter who wishes
to portray that scene has today but to
visit some stretch of the lordly river as
it flows amid eternal silence through un-
broken forests to its mouth. He has to
but draw from nature. There are the
great trees and the same solemn silence
unbroken save by the rush of the wa
ters the deer on the banks, the startled
water fowl the wild flowers, the same
riotous magnificence of primeval nature.
Let him evoke from history and imagina-
tion the picture of the canoes filled with
Englishmen slowly toiling up the stream,
their habits rs they were. their arms.
their standards the savages half con-
cealed on shore, the sudden flight of ar
rows. This and more, faithfully written
or sketched on the spot and reproduced
by printing press and the engraving stone
would give the children of North Carolina
an interest in that event in the history
of their State and a conception of the
conditions then existing here, which they
have never had.
"Then there are the terrible scenes Of
massacre of our own great Indian wars
1711, the march of the South Carolina
troops hundreds of miles through the
trackless forest to our aid, and the storm
and sack of the Indian fort at Nahucke,
in 1713 which finally broke the Indian
phiI
such scenes, or fail TO feel an interest III
them, if presented to their minds by a
graphic pen or appropriate engravngs?
In Northern school books, so largely
used among us are stirring narratives of
the expedition to Louisburg and to Cana
da, but where is the book which contains
a reference. much less picturesque de-
scfiption or engraving Of the earlier ex-
pedition of 1740 to South America, or the
capture of Havana in 1762 in both of which
North Carolina had a share.
Massachusetts, books, Massachusetts
schools rooms, bear many an engraving
of the stirring times when patriots, dis
guised as Indians threw the tea into Bos-
ton harbor in 1873. But where are the
engravers or the writer's who have i'm
pressed upon the minds of our children
that scene when the brave men under
Waddell and Ashe unmasked, and brave
ly in broad daylight, in a few miles OF
this spot. in 1865, eight years before the
Boston tea party, forbade Great Britain
to- put her stamp act into execution in
this State or even to land her stamps?
I'm painting and in bronze, Massachu-
setts has preserved the memory of the
Attucks riot in Boston on the eve of the
revolution. On Boston common the great
memorial stands. But where is our stat
uaIy, or our painting or our engraving
of the battle of Alamance in 1771?
Where indeed is our painting of that
grand scene for which Massachusetts has
no parallel, the meeting which issued the
immortal declaration of independence at
Mecklenburg, 10th May ITS?
''They immortalized by pen and pencil
the defeat of the Americans al Bunker
Hill. Where and how have we placed be-
fore admiring eyes the first victory for
the American arms which was achieved
at Moore's Creek in February, 1916, that
striking scene when the planks of the
bridge being taken up, brave men crossed
on the stringers, amid the fires of battle,
as the Moslems tell us souls pass to par
adise over AL Straits arch spanning by
a single hair the flames of hell
''Pencil and brush and pen love to lin
ger on the grand scene when on July 4.
1776 the thirteen colonies declared that
they ought to be and were sovereign and
But has anyone even seen
a similar picture Of that meeting of the
Provincial Congress at Halifax April II,
1776, when the first resolution was pass
ed by any State instructing that other
Congress at Philadelphia to do what was
done nearly three months later Had we
impressed that by story, by statue, or by
stippIe plate upon the minds of our own
people, would scholar like Senator
Lodge have forgotten it or ignored it in
hA study of those times?
ABrave men lived before Agamemnon
al brave men and great men have lived
atv least they did live in those times.