the brave soldiers who fought the battles, or the gallant gen
erals who led them, the devoted philanthropists, or the ardent
statesmen, who, in season and out of season, labored for it,
the Martyr-President who proclaimed it, the true story of
Emancipation can never be fairly and fully told without the
"old man eloquent," who died beneath the roof of the Capitol
nearly thirty years ago, being recognized as one of the leading
figures of the narrative.

But, thanks be to God, who overrules every thing for good, that
great event, the greatest of our American Age, great enough,
alone and by itself, to give a name and a character to any Age,
has been accomplished ; and, by His blessing, we present our
country to the world this day without a slave, white or black,
upon its soil ! Thanks be to God, not only that our beloved
Union has been saved, but that it has been made both easier
to save, and better worth saving, hereafter, by the final solu
tion of a problem, before which all human wisdom had stood
aghast and confounded for so many generations ! Thanks be to
God, and to Him be all the praise and the glory, we can read
the great words of the Declaration, on this Centennial Armi-



CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876. 421

versary, without reservation or evasion : " We hold these truths
to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
The legend on that new colossal Pharos, at Long Island, may
now indeed be, " Liberty enlightening the World ! "

We come then, to-day, Fellow Citizens, with hearts full of
gratitude to God and man, to pass down our country and its
institutions, not wholly without scars and blemishes upon
their front, not without shadows on the past or clouds on
the future, but freed for ever from at least one great stain,
and firmly rooted in the love and loyalty of a United People,
to the generations which are to succeed us.

And what shall we say to those succeeding generations, as we
commit the sacred trust to their keeping and guardianship ?

If I could hope, without presumption, that any humble coun
sels of mine, on this hallowed Anniversary, could be remem
bered beyond the hour of their utterance, and reach the ears
of my countrymen in future days ; if I could borrow " the mas
terly pen " of Jefferson, and produce words which should par
take of the immortality of those which he wrote on this little
desk; if I could command the matchless tongue of John
Adams, when he poured out appeals and arguments which
moved men from their seats, and settled the destinies of a
Nation; if I could catch but a single spark of those electric
fires which Franklin wrested from the skies, and flash down a
phrase, a word, a thought, along the magic chords which stretch
across the ocean of the future, what could I, what would I,
say?

I could not omit, certainly, to reiterate the solemn obligations
which rest on every citizen of this Republic to cherish and en
force the great principles of our Colonial and Revolutionary
Fathers, the principles of Liberty and Law, one and in
separable, the principles of the Constitution and the Union.

I could not omit to urge on every man to remember that self-
government politically can only be successful, if it be accom
panied by self-government personally ; that there must be



422 CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876.

government somewhere ; and that, if the people are indeed to
be sovereigns, they must exercise their sovereignty over them
selves individually, as well as over themselves in the aggregate,
regulating their own lives, resisting their own temptations,
subduing their own passions, and voluntarily imposing upon
themselves some measure of that restraint and discipline, which,
under other systems, is supplied from the armories of arbitrary
power, the discipline of virtue, in the place of the discipline
of slavery.

I could not omit to caution them against the corrupting
influences of intemperance, extravagance, and luxury. I could
not omit to warn them against political intrigue, as well as against
personal licentiousness ; and to implore them to regard principle
and character, rather than mere party allegiance, in the choice
of men to rule over them.

I could not omit to call upon them to foster and further the
cause of universal Education ; to give a liberal support to our
Schools and Colleges ; to promote the advancement of Science
and of Art, in all their multiplied divisions and relations ; and
to encourage and sustain all those noble institutions of Charity,
which, in our own land above all others, have given the
crowning grace and glory to modern civilization.

I could not refrain from pressing upon them a just and gener
ous consideration for the interests and the rights of their fellow
men everywhere, and an earnest effort to promote Peace and
Good Will among the Nations of the earth.

I could not refrain from reminding them of the shame, the
unspeakable shame and ignominy, which would attach to those
who should show themselves unable to uphold the glorious
Fabric of Self-Government which had been founded for them
at such a cost by their Fathers ; " Videte, videte, ne, ut illis
pulcherrimum fuit tantam vobis imperil gloriam relinquere, sic
vobis turpissimum sit, illud quod accepistis, tueri et conservare
non posse ! "

And surely, most surely, I could not fail to invoke them to
imitate and emulate the examples of virtue and purity and
patriotism, which the great founders of our Colonies and of our
Nation had so abundantly left them.



CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876. 423

But could I stop there ? Could I hold out to them, as the
results of a long life of observation and experience, nothing but
the principles and examples of great men ?

Who and what are great men? " Woe to the country," said
Metternich to our own Ticknor, forty years ago, " whose con
dition and institutions no longer produce great men to manage
its affairs." The wily Austrian applied his remark to England
at that day ; but his woe if it be a woe would have a wider
range in our time, and leave hardly any land unreached. Cer
tainly we hear it now-a-days, at every turn, that never before
has there been so striking a disproportion between supply and
demand, as at this moment, the world over, in the commodity
of great men.

But who, and what, are great men ? " And now stand
forth," says an eminent Swiss historian, who had completed
a survey of the whole history of mankind, at the very moment
when, as he says, " a blaze of freedom is just bursting forth
beyond the ocean," " And now stand forth, ye gigantic
forms, shades of the first Chieftains, and Sons of Gods, who
glimmer among the rocky halls and mountain fortresses of
the ancient world ; and you, Conquerors of the world from
Babylon and from Macedonia ; ye Dynasties of Caesars, of
Huns, Arabs, Moguls, and Tartars ; ye Commanders of the
Faithful on the Tigris, and Commanders of the Faithful on
the Tiber ; you hoary Counsellors of Kings, and Peers of Sover
eigns ; Warriors on the car of triumph, covered with scars, and
crowned with laurels ; ye long rows of Consuls and Dictators,
famed for your lofty minds, your unshaken constancy, your
ungovernable spirit ; stand forth, and let us survey for a
while your assembly, like a Council of the Gods ! What were
ye ? The first among mortals ? Seldom can you claim that
title ! The best of men ? Still fewer of you have deserved
such praise ! Were ye the compellers, the instigators of the
human race, the prime movers of all their works ? Rather let
us say that you were the instruments, that you were the wheels,
by whose means the Invisible Being has conducted the incom
prehensible fabric of universal government across the ocean
of time ! "



424 CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876.

Instruments and wheels of the Invisible Governor of the
Universe ! This is indeed all which the greatest of men ever
have been, or ever can be. No flatteries of courtiers ; no
adulations of the multitude ; no audacity of self-reliance ; no
intoxications of success ; no evolutions or developments of sci
ence, can make more or other of them. This is " the sea-mark
of their utmost sail," - the goal of their farthest run, the
very round and top of their highest soaring.

Oh, if there could be, to-day, a deeper and more pervading
impression of this great truth throughout our land, and a more
prevailing conformity of our thoughts and words and acts to
the lessons which it involves, if we could lift ourselves to a
loftier sense of our relations to the Invisible, if, in surveying
our past history, we could catch larger and more exalted views
of our destinies and our responsibilities, if we could realize
that the want of good men may be a heavier woe to a land
than any want of what the world calls great men, our
Centennial Year would not only be signalized by splendid
ceremonials and magnificent commemorations and gorgeous
expositions, but it would go far towards fulfilling something of
the grandeur of that " Acceptable Year " which was announced
by higher than human lips, and would be the auspicious promise
and pledge of a glorious second century of Independence and
Freedom for our country !

For, if that second century of self-government is to go on
safely to its close, or is to go on safely and prosperously at all,
there must be some renewal of that old spirit of subordination
and obedience to Divine, as well as human, Laws, which has
been our security in the past. There must be faith in some
thing higher and better than ourselves. There must be a
reverent acknowledgment of an Unseen, but All-seeing, All-
controlling Ruler of the Universe. His Word, His Day, His
House, His Worship, must be sacred to our children, as they
have been to their fathers ; and His blessing must never fail to
be invoked upon our land and upon our liberties. The patriot
voice, which cried from the balcony of yonder Old State House,
when the Declaration had been originally proclaimed, u Stability
and perpetuit} to American Independence," did not fail to add,



CENTENNIAL ORATION, 4 JULY, 1876. 425

" God save our American States." I would prolong that
ancestral prayer. And the last phrase to pass my lips at this
hour, and to take its chance for remembrance or oblivion in
years to come, as the conclusion of this Centennial Oration,
and the sum, and summing up, of all I can say to the present
or the future, shall be : There is, there can be, no Indepen
dence of God : In Him, as a Nation, no less than in Him, as
individuals, " we live, and move, and have our being ! " GOD
SAVE OUR AMERICAN STATES I



PEABODY EDUCATION FUND.



ADDRESS AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE TRUSTEES, AT THE WHITE
SULPHUR SPRINGS, VIRGINIA, AUGUST 3, 1876.



GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE PEABODY
EDUCATION FUND :

AN Annual Meeting of this Board was clearly contemplated
by our illustrious founder, and was expressly recognized in the
original resolutions by which the organization and proceedings
of the Trustees were arranged, in March, 1867. We have,
therefore, never failed to hold one. But the times and places
of these Annual Meetings have hitherto been somewhat casually
and capriciously appointed.

One of them has been held in January ; two of them in
February ; one in June ; two in July ; and the last two in
October.

Four of them have been held in the City of New York. One
of them has been held in Baltimore ; one in Washington ; one
in Philadelphia ; and one in Boston.

Meantime there have been four Special Meetings of the
Board, besides that at Washington, at which it was first estab
lished, in February, 1867. Two of these Special Meetings
have been held at New York ; one of them at Richmond, Vir
ginia; and one of them at Newport, Rhode Island. Other
Special Meetings have been conditionally appointed, both for
Memphis and for Nashville, Tennessee ; but, owing to interven
ing circumstances, have been given up.

The Trustees have repeatedly evinced a disposition and a
purpose to fix the time and place of their Annual Meetings

[426]



PEABODY EDUCATION FUND. 427

definitely and positively. In 1869 they voted that Washington
and the third Thursday of January be the place arid time of our
Annual Meetings, until otherwise ordered. In 1870 this vote
was repealed, and the City of New York and the third Wednes
day of February were adopted as the place and time, except
when otherwise ordered. In 1872 it was voted that " the An
nual Meeting shall hereafter be held in the City of New York,
in the month of July in every year, the precise day to be fixed
by the Chairman and General Agent, after due consultation
with the Trustees individually." In 1873 the second Wednes
day in October was fixed for the day of the Annual Meeting ;
and, in 1874, the first Wednesday in October was substituted
for the second : New York, however, still being named as the
place.

As the result of all these various and varying votes, I think it
may fairly be inferred that New York has peculiarly commended
itself to the Board as the most eligible and appropriate place
for our Annual Meeting, and October as the most convenient
month ; and I cannot help feeling that it would be wise for us
to establish this place and this time by a by-law, which should
henceforth be changeable, if at all, only \yy a two-thirds, or even
a unanimous, vote.

Holding our charter from the State of New York, it seems fit
that our Annual Meeting should be held within the limits of
that State. Our Treasurer, too, with his books and vouchers
and the greater part of our securities, has had from the first,
and probably will continue to have to the last, an abode in the
great commercial metropolis of the Union ; and there only can
his accounts and books and evidences of property be conveni
ently examined. Meantime, both for our financial reports and
for those of our General Agent, it is extremely desirable that
the time of the Annual Meeting should be so regulated, that
these reports should cover as nearly as possible the exact term
of twelve months ; and that we should thus be able to form a
full and correct impression, year by year, of our work in the
past and of our ways and means for the future. The embar
rassments and uncertainties which have been experienced or
brought to my knowledge officially, now and heretofore, in view



428 PEABODY EDUCATION FUND.

of a midsummer meeting at an unusual place, have concurred
with the considerations I have already suggested, in inducing
me to urge upon the Board to adopt a rule, which shall be
beyond easy reversal, for holding our Annual Meetings regu
larly in the City of New York, and in the month of October.

At our meeting in 1873, a discretionary authority was given
to the Chairman to call the next Annual Meeting thereafter at
these White Sulphur Springs in Virginia ; but on consultation
with the Trustees, as the time approached, it was found best to
relinquish the idea. At our meeting, last October, the pro
posal to meet here was renewed in a more positive form ; and
we are here to-day in conformity with the express order of the
Board.

We have come at length to this celebrated Watering Place of
the Old Dominion, which was so dear to Mr. Peabody himself,
and where he spent not a few of the last and happiest weeks of
his life, in the months of August and September, 1869, after his
great plans of philanthropy and beneficence had all been ar
ranged, and when nothing remained for him but to enjoy so
far as his failing strength allowed him to enjoy any thing the
respect and gratitude and affectionate attentions of the troops
of Southern friends by whom he was here surrounded.

More than one of our number were witnesses to what occurred
here during those weeks. Our Secretary, Mr. Russell, was here.
Our second Vice-President, Governor Aiken, was here. Our
General Agent, Dr. Sears, was here, and received the last coun
sels and instructions, in regard to the prosecution of our work,
from lips which were so soon to be closed.

The associations of this place cannot fail, I am sure, to exer
cise a wholesome influence over our deliberations and doings,
and to impress upon us all a renewed sense of the importance
and responsibility of the trust which has been committed to us.
We may not forget that nearly one full third of the time pre
scribed by Mr. Peabody for the positive continuance of the
trust has already been completed. We may well rejoice that
so much has been accomplished in the cause of free schools in
the Southern States during these nine or ten years ; and I think
we shall all agree that we have a special cause for gratitude to



PEABODY EDUCATION FUND. 429

God, that the life and health of our General Agent have been
spared, and that our work, during the whole period, has thus
had the consistency and efficiency which could only have come
from a single directing mind, devotedly pursuing a policy which
had been carefully considered and deliberately adopted.

But while our General Agency has so happily remained un
changed, the Board itself, by whose appointment and with
whose authority every thing has been done, has enjoyed no
such exemption. In the little photograph group of the original
Trustees, taken in March, 1867, there were twelve standing
figures and five sitting figures, including that of our illustrious
founder himself. Of the sitting figures, but two are now figures
of the living ; of the standing figures, only six. At almost
every Annual Meeting, we have had sad reminders that the
tenure of our service was not dependent alone on Mr. Peabody s
appointment, and that but few of those who took part in the
organization of our work could expect to be in the way of
watching over it to its close.

Such a reminder comes to us most impressively to-day. In a
letter from our late esteemed and beloved associate, Governor
Clifford, written to me from Italy, last September, and a part of
which, it may be remembered, was read at the opening of our
last Annual Meeting, he said of Governor Graham, the tidings
of whose death had just reached him : " He was not one of
those who, when we last met, I had any forebodings might be
starred on our fast-diminishing roll of Mr. Peabody s original
appointments, before the Board assembled again. But it will
not be long before that roll will bear more of these sad and
impressive signs of our common mortality. Already the little
band of sixteen counts but one more among the living than it
does of those who have joined the venerated founder of the
trust in that spirit-land to which we are all rapidly hastening."

He little dreamed, when he was writing these words in a
foreign land, and while he was enjoying the raptures of a first
visit to the Alps, of which his letter was full, that a star against
his own name, in our very next Annual Report, would have
eliminated that " one more" from his reckoning ; and that his
own death would be the means of leaving Mr. Peabody s



430 PEABODY EDUCATION FUND.

original appointments just equally divided, as they are to-day,
between the living and the dead !

Returning home from this first visit to Europe, not many
months after that letter was written, re-invigorated in health,
as was thought by his friends and by himself, seemingly with
a new lease of life, as was hoped by all who knew him, he
was suddenly prostrated by a disease of the heart, and died at
his residence, in New Bedford, on the second of January last.

Born in Rhode Island, in 1809, and educated at the Uni
versity of that State, of which our General Agent was so long
the President, he became a citizen of Massachusetts in his
earliest manhood ; and was successively a Representative in
her Legislature, a member of her Senate and President of that
body, District-Attorney, Attorney-General, and, in 1853, Gov
ernor of the Commonwealth. In all these relations he acquired
high distinction, and acquitted himself in a manner to win uni
versal respect and confidence. He had no passion, however, for
public office, and assumed it only from a sense of duty. He
refused more candidacies than he ever accepted, and it is
no secret that he declined more than one offer of foreign ap
pointment during the very last year of his life. He had great
capacities for public usefulness, and would have adorned any
position in the gift of the people or the President, at home or
abroad. But he preferred the quieter and more independent
walks of life, and only abandoned his professional labors at last,
to preside over one of those great Railroad Corporations whose
business demands so much both of legal skill and of practical
tact.

It is, however, mainly in his connection with our own Board
that I would speak of him on this occasion. From only two of
our thirteen meetings, Annual and Special, has he been absent ;
the very first, at Washington, when he had hardly received
notice of his appointment ; and the very last, at New York,
while he was still on the other side of the ocean. No one has
taken a more active, earnest, intelligent, efficient part in all our
deliberations and in all our doings. No one has contributed
more to the harmony of our councils. No one has added more
to our social satisfactions and enjoyments.



PEABODY EDUCATION FUND. 431

His genial temperament, his generous impulses, his ready and
felicitous words, his always kind and conciliatory tone and man
ner, together with his wisdom and judgment, have rendered him
one of the most valuable and important members of our Board ;
and there is hardly any other loss which could be felt more
deeply than his, by those who have been associated with him
here.

For myself, certainly, accustomed as I have been, from the
first, to enjoy his friendly companionship in coming on to our
meetings, wherever they were held, and to rely, as I always
could and did, on his advice and co-operation in all that related
to our proceedings, I can hardly express too strongly the personal
sorrow I feel in being called on to announce his death. I leave
it to others to prepare and propose such formal Resolutions as
may secure for his name such a place on our records, as, I am
assured, his memory will always hold in our hearts.



COLONEL THOMAS ASPINWALL.

REMARKS AT A MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY,

OCTOBER 12, 1876.



WE have had a long vacation, Gentlemen. In the whole his
tory of our Society, running through more than eighty years, I
doubt whether there has ever been so long an interval between
our meetings. We met last on the llth of May ; and it is now
the 12th of October, five months and a day.

When Dr. Ellis made the motion for so long a suspension of
our customary proceedings, he certainly exhibited a wise fore
cast. The intense heat of the past summer was, indeed, enough of
itself to dissolve any good purposes of literary or historical labor.
But when we remember, also, the varied and distracting avoca
tions of not a few of us during this Centennial Year, we may
well be satisfied that we had been exempted in advance from
any positive obligations in this quarter. We return to those
obligations, I trust, with a refreshed sense of their interest and
importance, and with a renewed purpose to discharge them
punctually and faithfully.

But we may not forget this morning, Gentlemen, that during
our long vacation we have lost a distinguished and venerable
name from the roll of our living Resident Members.

Hardly three years have elapsed since, in speaking of the late
Colonel THOMAS ASPINWALL, in the new Town Hall of his
native place, I was able to say that, " until a few weeks past,
he had exhibited so little of old age, except its experience, its
wisdom, and its venerableness, that no one was ready to give
credit to the tale which he sometimes told of a birthday in
Brookline eighty-six or eighty-seven years ago."

[432]



COLONEL THOMAS ASPINWALL. 433

Later still, at our monthly meeting in June, 1873, our asso
ciate, Mr. Sibley, in referring to the aged graduates of Harvard
University, made a graceful allusion to the personal presence of
Colonel Aspinwall, a graduate of the year 1804.

But that was his very last appearance among us. He could
no longer contend against the infirmities of mind and body
which weighed upon him so heavily. He might still be seen,
even to the last week of his life, taking his occasional exercise,
and threading his way along our crowded sidewalks, with a
sturdy step and something of the old martial air, but recogniz
ing no one out of his own family, and remembering little or