and obligation, which, when violated, will convulse to its centre the delicate frame of your liberty." Thomas Danforth, the son of the eminent Dr. Samuel Danforth, was born in Boston, July 31, 1772; entered the Latin School in 1781; graduated at Harvard College in 1792, when he engaged in a conference on the comparative importance of the American, French, and Polish revolutions, upon mankind; married Elizabeth, daughter of Jarathmiel Blowers, of Somerset, Mass., March, 1800; was a physician; and died in Dorchester, July 12, 1817. Dr. Danforth delivered a discourse for the Massachusetts Humane Society, in 1808, which was published. WARREN DUTTON. JULY 4, 1805. FOR THE TOWN AUTHORITIES. WHILE Russell's Centinel remarks of Dutton's oration that it was a spirited and well-adapted production, the Independent Chronicle says, that, had Pitt deputed missionaries to this rescued nation, to debauch the public mind from the fair knowledge of political truth, they could not, in our feeble judgment, have used language more fitted for such purposes. But, as the governor (Strong) sat and heard these declamatory arts without evincing displeasure at their apparent disloyalty, we must resign our opinion to the more correct authority of the public. Mr. Dutton was born at Lebanon, Connecticut, and married Eliza, daughter of Judge Lowell; was a counsellor-at-law, and the first editor of the New England Palladium; a delegate to the State convention for revising the constitution, in 1820; a representative in the State Legislature, and of the State Senate. In 1800 Mr. Dutton gave the poem at the commencement at Yale College, on the Present State of Literature; and an address to the Suffolk Bar, in 1819. EBENEZER FRENCH. JULY 4, 1805. FOR THE YOUNG DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICANS, AT THE CHURCH OF REV. JOHN MURRAY. EBENEZER FRENCH was born in Boston, and was a practical printer. The oration at the head of this article, and another, delivered at Portland, in 1806, on our national independence, were published, and are in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Mr. French was in early life married to Mrs. Hannah Grice, the widow of Samuel "Bangs, of Boston, after having been previously engaged to her beautiful daughter. A rare incident here in romance,- the mother stole from the daughter the heart of her young lover! After the delivery of the oration in Boston, the young Republicans proceeded to Faneuil Hall, where, on partaking a rich repast, the following sentiment was advanced by Benjamin Austin, the great apostle of democracy, who was elected president of the Society of Republican Young Men at this time: "The young Republican orator of the day: May our young men never lose, by the subtlety of their enemies, those blessings transmitted to them by their Republican ancestors." Mr. Austin viewed the people and the constitution of the United States as the real sentinels and palladiums of American independence. Mr. French was an inspector of the customs in 1810, and in the next year he became a publisher of the Boston Patriot, in company with Isaac Munroe; where they continued until 1814, when they sold the paper to Mr. Ballard, and both removed to Baltimore, where they established a new journal, under the name of the Baltimore Patriot, a paper of wide political influence. FRANCIS DANA CHANNING. JULY 4, 1806. FOR THE TOWN AUTHORITIES. THIS oration was not printed. Mr. Channing was born at Newport, R. I., and brother of Rev. William Ellery Channing. He graduated JOSEPH GLEASON. · - PETER OXENBRIDGE THACHER. 323 at Harvard College in 1794, on which occasion he gave the salutatory oration in Latin. In 1801 he pronounced the Phi Beta Kappa oration, and married Susan Higginson, of Boston, November, 1806. He was a counsellor-at-law, a State representative, and Secretary of the Boston Social Law Library in 1810. He died at sea, when on his passage to Rio Janeiro, November 5, 1810. JOSEPH GLEASON. JULY 4, 1806. FOR THE DEMOCRATIC YOUNG MEN. JOSEPH GLEASON was born at Boston, and the son of a truckman, who was a ready speaker at Faneuil Hall caucuses. He married Mary Le Baron, daughter of Gov. Hunt, of Detroit; and was a compositor in the office of the Independent Chronicle, and only eighteen years of age, on the delivery of this oration, which was printed a second time. In the last war with Great Britain he was a captain in Col. Miller's regiment, and in 1816 an army commissary, and major of a brigade. He died at Mackinaw, in 1820. PETER OXENBRIDGE THACHER. JULY 4, 1807. FOR THE TOWN AUTHORITIES. WAS born at Malden, Dec. 22, 1776, and son of Rev. Peter, who pronounced an oration on the Boston Massacre in that year. He entered the Latin School in 1785, and graduated at Harvard College in 1796, on which occasion Mr. Thacher engaged in a forensic disputation — Whether reason unassisted by revelation would have led mankind to just notions even of the first principles of natural religion? He studied law under Governor Sullivan, and was three years a teacher in Exeter Academy. Mr. Thacher visited Savannah, Ga., Nov. 2, 1802, in company with his father, Rev. Peter Thacher, for the purpose of relief in pulmónary consumption, where they arrived Dec. 3 of that date, and his father expired on the 16th of that month. Mr. Thacher recorded an account of the voyage from Boston, and of the last hours of his father. One incident is related, for the reason that it illustrates the influence and shows the importance of early religious culture. On laying down for the last time, in the early part of the evening, a few hours before his death, he repeated the nursery prayer: "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; I pray the Lord my soul to take;' and, turning to his son, said, "My son, this little prayer I have not omitted to repeat, on going to bed, for forty years. This may be the last time; I charge you never to omit it." In 1805 Mr. Thacher pronounced the oration for the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He became a counsellor-at-law, and married Charlotte I., daughter of Thomas MacDonough, a British consul. He was Town Advocate for Boston in 1807, and was judge of the Municipal Court for Suffolk from 1823 to the year 1843. He was a member of the Literary Anthology Club, on its institution, in 1805; and a director of the Boston Athenæum, on its institution, in 1807. Judge Thacher was endowed with great integrity, and firm decision of character, and often stigmatized as a very severe judge; but he was not more rigid than just. He was peculiarly qualified for the period and station, and wisely effected more in the restraint of crime among us than any other man on the bench. He was compelled to deal with the worst passions of men, says the Law Reporter, but there is no act of his life which has left any stain on his character. The Criminal Cases of Judge Thacher, edited by Woodman, in 1845, is a standard text-book for the bar and the bench. Several of his charges were published, and a copy of them is in the library of the Historical Society. In 1833 the Trial of Ebenezer Clough, for Embracery, was published, with the arguments of Thacher on the case. ANDREW RITCHIE, JR. - CHARLES PINCKNEY SUMNER. 325 ANDREW RITCHIE, JR. JULY 4, 1808. FOR THE TOWN AUTHORITIES. ANDREW RITCHIE was born in Boston, and graduated at Harvard College in 1802, when he gave an oration on "Innovation." He read law with Rufus G. Amory, and married a daughter of Cornelius Durant, a West India planter. He married a second time, Sophia Harrison, a daughter of the Hon. H. G. Otis, and settled on his plantation in St. Croix. He was early a counsellor-at-law in Boston, of which town he was a representative in 1816. In 1805 Mr. Ritchie gave an oration on the Ancient and Modern Eloquence of Poetry; and in 1818 an address for the Massachusetts Peace Society. He was a tasteful and effective writer, and says, in the oration at the head of this article: "We are not required, like young Hannibal, to approach the altar and vow eternal hatred to a rival nation; but we will repair to the neighboring heights, at once the tombs and everlasting monuments of our heroes, and swear that, as they did, so would we, rather sacrifice our lives than our country." CHARLES PINCKNEY SUMNER. JULY 4, 1803. BEFORE THE YOUNG REPUBLICANS OF BOSTON. BORN at Milton, Jan 20, 1776; graduated at Harvard College, 1796. He was the only child of Maj. Job Sumner, of the continental army in the Revolution, whose ancestry may be traced to 1637. His father was a native of Milton. He entered Harvard College in 1774; but when, after the Battle of Lexington, the students were dispersed, and the college edifice converted into barracks, he joined the army, in which he continued until the peace. He was second in command of the American troops who took possession of New York, on its evacuation by the British, Nov. 25, 1783; and was also second in command, of the battalion of light infantry which rendered to Gen. Washington |