PART II. COMMEMORATIVE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES. E I. CELEBRATION OF THE EARLIER EVENTS. XERCISES. commemorating the principal events preceding and leading to the adoption of the Declaration, have been held in various places, and at various times prior to the present year. These, although local in their character, have yet a national interest, and are given first under this head, as being first in chronological order. THE BOSTON TEA PARTY. The first of the Centennial celebrations which have preluded and heralded the Centennial year, was that of the Boston Tea Party, which occurred in Boston on the evening of December 16th, 1873, under the management of the ladies of Boston. The commemoration was social rather than popular in its character, being a veritable tea party, at which tea was served by the ladies, although a number of appropriate addresses were made. LEXINGTON AND CONCORD. The first commemoration of the battles of Lexington and Concord was the erection and dedication of a small monument at Lexington, in 1799, to mark the spot where the first blood was shed in the struggle for independence. The sixty-first anniversary of the fight at Concord was celebrated on April 19th, 1836, by the dedication of a monument at that place, with suitable exercises, of which the most memorable was the following hymn, by Ralph Waldo Emerson : By the rude bridge that spans the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream that seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made these heroes dare To die, or leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee. The fight of Lexington and Concord was commemorated with remarkable enthusiasm on its hundredth anniversary, April 19th, 1875. At the celebration at Concord upwards of 30,000 people were estimated to be present. Among the distinguished guests were President Grant, Vice President Wilson, Secretaries Fish, Belknap and Delano, and Postmaster-General Jewell, of the national cabinet, Speaker Blaine, General J. R. Hawley, the Governor and State officers of Massachusetts, and the governors of most of the New England states. A brilliant procession in five divisions paraded the streets. The exercises were held in a mammoth tent upon the Concord common, and consisted of an address by Ralph Waldo Emerson, a poem by James Russell Lowell, and an oration by George William Curtis. To these followed a series of toasts and impromptu addresses by Senator Boutwell, Governors Ingersoll of Connecticut, Peck of New Hampshire, and Dingley of Maine, and others. Mr. Lowell's poem was one of remarkable spirit and force. We give one or two of its most suggestive passages: Whiter than moonshine upon snow For, in the glory-guarded pass, She bowed to shrive Leonidas With his imperishable dead. Her, too, Morgarten saw, Where the Swiss lion flashed his icy paw; She followed Cromwell's quenchless star Where the grim Puritan tread Shook Marston, Naseby and Dunbar; Yea, on her feet are dearer dyes Yet fresh, nor looked on with untearful eyes. Our fathers found her in the woods, Where nature meditates and broods The seeds of unexampled things Which Time to consummation brings, Through life and death, and man's unstable moods; They met her here, not recognized, A sylvan huntress clothed in furs, To whose chaste wants her bow sufficed, Nor dreamed what destinies were hers; She taught them belike to create Their simpler forms of Church and State, She taught them to endue The past with other functions than it knew, And turn in channels strange the uncertain stream of Fate; Better than all, she fenced them in their need With iron-handed Duty's sternest creed, 'Gainst Self's lean wolf that ravens word and deed. Dear to both Englands; near him he Against the might of England fought, And here were men (co-equal with their fate) They dreamed not what a die was cast With that first answering shot: what then? There was their duty; they were men Long schooled the inward gospel to obey, Though leading to the lions' den; They felt the habit-hallowed world give way, Unhappy who was last: When Buttrick gave the word That awful idol of the hallowed Past, Strong in their love and in their lineage strong, Fell crashing; if they heard it not, Yet the earth heard, Nor ever hath forgot. As on from startled throne to throne, Where Superstition sate or conscious Wrong, A shudder ran of some dread birth unknown. Thrice-venerable spot! River more fearful than the Rubicon! O'er those red planks, to snatch her diadem, Man's Hope, star-girdled, sprang with them, And over ways untried the feet of Doom strode on. Think you these felt no charms In their gray homesteads and embowered farms? In household faces waiting at the door Their evening step should lighten up no more? In fields their boyish steps had known? In trees their fathers' hands had set And which with them had grown, Widening each year their leafy coronet? Felt they no pang of passionate regret For those unsolid goods that seem so much our own? These things are dear to every man that lives, And life prized more for what it lends than gives; Yea, many a tie, by iteration sweet, And yet the enduring half they chose, Whose choice decides a man life's slave or king,— The invisible things of God before the seen and known; With echoes gathering on from zone to zone, And where it lightened once, from age to age The celebration at Lexington, on the same day, was attended by even a greater number, it being estimated that between forty and fifty thousand people were present. The brilliant procession was three miles in length. The exercises, over which Hon. T. M. Stetson presided, consisted of the unveiling of the statues, dedicated on that day, by Hon. Charles Hudson, and an oration by Richard H. Dana, Jr. Speeches were also made by Governors Chamberlain, of South Carolina, and Gaston, of Massachusetts, Chief Justice Gray, Ex-Governor Chamberlain, of Maine, Elliot C. Cowdin, William F. Bartlett, Edward Everett Hale, and others. A letter was read from William E. Gladstone, the great liberal leader of England, in response to an invitation to attend the celebration, in which he uses the following suggestive language: As regards the fathers of the American constitution themselves, we [the English people] do now contemplate their great qualities and achievements with an admiration as pure as do the American citizens themselves, and can rejoice no less heartily that, in the councils of Providence, they were made the instruments of a purpose most beneficial to the world. The circumstances under which the United States began their national existence, and their unexampled rapidity of advance in wealth and population, enterprise and power, have imposed on their people an enormous responsibility. They will be tried, as we shall, at the bar of history, but on a greater scale. They will be compared with men, not only of other countries, but of other times. They cannot escape from the liabilities and burdens which their greatness imposes upon them. No one desires more fervently than I do that they may be enabled to realize the highest hopes and anticipations that belong to their great position in the family of men. The day of Lexington and Concord was also widely celebrated elsewhere, and especially throughout Massachusetts. To the literature of this commemoration John G. Whittier contributed a fine poem, of which the greater portion is given: |