Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

sus

repeated proofs of that practical good sense, of that sound judgment which is perhaps the most rare and is certainly the most valuable quality of the human mind. Devoting himself to the duties of his station, and pursuing no object distinct from the public good, he was accustomed to contemplate at a distance those critical situations in which the United States might probably be placed, and to digest, before the occasion required action, the line of conduct which it would be proper to observe. Taught to distrust first impressions, he sought to acquire all the information which was attainable, and to hear, without prejudice, all the reasons which could be urged for or against a particular measure. His own judgment was pended until it became necessary to determine, and his decisions, thus maturely made, were seldom if ever to be shaken. His conduct therefore was systematic, and the great objects of his administration were steadily pursued. Respecting, as the first magistrate in a free government must ever do, the real and deliberate sentiments of the people, their gusts of passion passed over without ruffling the smooth surface of his mind. Trusting to the reflecting good sense of the nation for approbation and support, he had the magnanimity to pursue its real interests in opposition to its temporary prejudices; and, though far from being regardless of popular favor, he could never stoop to retain by deserving to lose it. In more instances than one, we find him committing his whole popularity to hazard, and pursuing steadily, in opposition to a torrent which would have overwhelmed a man of ordinary firmness, that course which had been dictated by a sense of duty. In speculation, he was a real republican, devoted to the constitution of his country, and to that system of equal political rights on which it is founded. But between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos. Real liberty, he thought, was to be preserved only by preserving the authority of the laws and maintaining the energy of government. Scarcely did society present two characters which, in his opinion, less resembled each other than a patriot and a demagogue.

"No man has ever appeared upon the theatre of public action whose integrity was more incorruptible, or whose principles were more perfectly free from the contamination of those selfish and unworthy passions which find their nourishment in the conflicts of party. Having no views which required concealment, his real and avowed motives were the same; and his whole correspondence does not furnish a single case from which even an enemy would infer that he was capable, under any circumstances, of stooping to the employ

ment of duplicity. No truth can be uttered with more confidence than that his ends were always upright, and his means always pure. He exhibits the rare example of a politician to whom wiles were absolutely unknown, and whose professions to foreign governments and to his own countrymen were always sincere. In him was fully exemplified the real distinction which forever exists between wisdom and cunning, and the importance as well as truth of the maxim that 'honesty is the best policy.'

"If Washington possessed ambition, that passion was, in his bosom, so regulated by principles, or controlled by circumstances, that it was neither vicious nor turbulent. Intrigue was never employed as the means of its gratification, nor was personal aggrandizement its object. The various high and important stations to which he was called by the public voice were unsought by himself; and in consenting to fill them, he seems rather to have yielded to a general conviction that the interests of his country would be thereby promoted, than to his particular inclination. Neither the extraordinary partiality of the American people, the extravagant praises which were bestowed upon him, nor the inveterate opposition and malignant calumnies which he experienced, had any visible influence upon his conduct. The cause is to be looked for in the texture of his mind. him, that innate and unassuming modesty which adulation would have offended, which the voluntary plaudits of millions could not betray into indiscretion, and which never obtruded upon others his claims to superior consideration, was happily blended with a high and correct sense of personal dignity, and with a just consciousness of that respect which is due to station. Without exertion, he could maintain the happy medium between that arrogance which wounds and that facility which allows the office to be degraded in the person who fills it.

In

"It is impossible to contemplate the great events which have occurred in the United States under the auspices of Washington, without ascribing them, in some measure, to him. If we ask the causes of the prosperous issue of a war, against the successful termination of which there were so many probabilities; of the good which was produced, and the ill which was avoided during an administration fated to contend with the strongest prejudices that a combination of circumstances and of passions could produce; of the constant favor of the great mass of his fellow citizens, and of the confidence which, to the last moment of his life, they reposed in him;-the answer, so far as these causes may be found in his character, will furnish a lesson well meriting the attention of those who

776

En

are candidates for political fame.
dowed by nature with a sound judgment
and an accurate discriminating mind, he
feared not that laborious attention which
made him perfectly master of those sub-
jects, in all their relations, on which he
was to decide; and this essential quality
was guided by an unvarying sense of
moral right, which would tolerate the em-
ployment only of those means that would
bear the most rigid examination, by a fair-
ness of intention which neither sought nor
required disguise, and by a purity of virtue
which was not only untainted, but unsus-
pected."

A great man is fortunate if he lives under poets' eyes. The poets after all are the popular and influential historians. How many men take their English history chiefly from Shakespeare -and their Julius Cæsar too! They might take it from a much worse place. It is dangerous to go behind. Shakespeare on the vital point. Cromwell is forever safe against the critics, with Milton's sonnet and Marvell's odes in the library. A little volume has just been published containing the noteworthy poems on Lincoln. Lincoln was fortunate indeed in living in the golden age of our poetry; and almost all of the great poets-Emerson, Lowell, Bryant, Whitman, Holmes-wrote some great word of him. Washington's age was not an age of poetry in America. The poetical tributes to him are chiefly later tributes. But it is a brilliant collection; and we wish that, in this centennial year, a Washington volume might be placed beside the Lincoln. one. Most noteworthy it is that the same hand which wrote the greatest poetic tribute to Lincoln gave us also the greatest poetic tribute to Washington. What better last words here than these few from the many noble lines in Lowell's "Under the Old Elm":

[blocks in formation]

That soul so softly radiant and so white The track it left seems less of fire than light,

Cold but to such as love distemperature?

* *

* *

The longer on this earth we live
And weigh the various qualities of men,
Seeing how most are fugitive,

Or fitful gifts, at best, of now and then,
Wind-wavered corpse-lights, daughters of
the fen,

The more we feel the high stern-featured
beauty

Of plain devotedness to duty,
Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal
praise,

But finding amplest recompense
For life's ungarlanded expense
In work done squarely and unwasted
days.

For this we honor him, that he could
know

How sweet the service and how free
Of her, God's eldest daughter here below,
And choose in meanest raiment which
was she.

Placid completeness, life without a fall
From faith ог highest aims, truth's
breachless wall,

Surely if any fame can bear the touch,
His will say, 'Here!' at the last trumpet's
call,

The unexpressive man whose life ex-
pressed so much."

[graphic][merged small]

W

HEN, in 1636, Roger Williams and his associates founded the settlement at Providence, the Narragansett tribe of Indians occupied nearly all the lands now composing the state of Rhode Island. Their number has been estimated by historians at thirty thousand.* Roger Williams stated that they could raise five thousand fighting men, and Hutchinson that they were the largest of all the tribes between Boston and the Hudson River. At this period the adjoining tribes, viz., the Wampanoags, the Nipmucs and the Nyantics, were subservient to the Narragansetts, while the Pequots, occupying lands on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound, with their principal homes and forts near the mouth of the river Thames, were their deadly enemies. Previously a fierce battle had occurred between the Pequots and the Narragansetts in which the latter were victorious. There is ground for belief that the hardest of the fight took place on the lands we are especially to consider.

In 1637, on May 26, the Pequots were attacked in their forts at daybreak by the white colonists, and about six hundred were killed. From this disaster they never recovered, and

*Brinley's History of Narragansett in Massachusetts Historical Society's Collections.

the few survivors affiliated with other tribes. Only two Englishmen had fallen in the encounter, and but sixteen were wounded.

*In October, 1636, news reached Providence that the Pequots were trying to induce the Narragansetts, as well as the Mohegans, who occupied lands north of the Pequot country, to unite in a general rising and sweep the English from the soil. Although Roger Williams had been banished from Massachusetts, he received letters from the authorities of that colony requesting his speediest endeavors to prevent the league. Alone, in a poor canoe, he hastened to the home of Canonicus, chief sachem of the Narragansetts, and his nephew, Miantonomi, where he found the Pequot ambassadors. For three days and nights his business compelled him to live and to lodge with them, in constant danger of assassination; but he succeeded in averting the conspiracy, and after the destruction of the Pequot tribe peace reigned for thirtyeight years. This achievement of Williams is regarded as the greatest triumph of diplomacy in relation to Indian affairs that ever occurred in New England and perhaps in North America.

The Narragansetts were in advance *Arnold's History of R. I., Vol. I, p. 90.

of other tribes as regarded civilization. Besides hunting and fishing, they carried on some rudimentary farming. Their lands for eight or ten miles from shore were cleared of wood and used for raising Indian corn, which was furnished to the white settlers in liberal quantities. They were more courteous than other tribes toward the whites, and their chief sachems lived in friendship with Williams, receiving satisfactory payment for the lands which he bought of them. After a residence of six years among them had given him an intimate acquaintance with their characteristics, he wrote:* "I could never discern that excess of scandalous sins among them which Europe aboundeth with.

Drunkenness and gluttony, they knew not what sins they be, and though they have not so much to restrain them as the English have, yet a man never hears of such crimes among them as robberies, murders, adulteries, etc."

Canonicus and Miantonomi considerably reduced their possessions by selling land, to Williams at Providence, in 1636; to Coddington, in 1638, the island of Rhode Island on which he settled at Portsmouth; to Richard Smith at Wickford in 1639; and to Gorton at Warwick in 1642. Roger Williams made the following statement in 1679: "Mr. Richard Smith, senior, . . . put up in the thickest of the barbarians the first English house among them. I humbly testify that about forty years (from this date)

Updike's History of the Narragansett Church, p. 13. † Updike's History of the Narragansett Church, p. 15.

he kept possession, coming and going himself, children, and servants, and had quiet possession of his houses, lands and meadow." This would carry Smith's settlement back to 1639.

By 1644,* eight years after the founding of Providence, the colonists had so gained the confidence and respect of the Narragansetts that the tribe, with the sanction of the chief sachems, placed itself under the guardianship of the whites. In 1650f the General Sessions at Newport passed an act restricting slavery in the colony to the term of ten years. It is stated with authority that during King Philip's war in 1676, "except in the single case of the conquered Pequot territory, they [the colonists] scrupulously paid for every rood of ground on which they settled and so far as possible they extended to the Indians the protection of the law."

In 1677, after East Greenwich had been conveyed and erected into a township, the Narragansett country was limited to Washington County. When the Indians had become much decimated, three tribes, viz., the Narragansetts, the Nyantics and the Nipmucs, united to form the Narragansett nation.

The brave Miantonomi, always friendly to the white people, left a son, Canonchet, who commanded the Indians at the Great Swamp Fight in 1675, and soon after paid the penalty with his life. Thus perished the last chief of the Narragansetts, and with Canonchet the nation was extinguished forever. Ninegret was the sachem of the Nyantics who, with his tribe, joined the remaining Narragansetts and afterwards occupied their tribal lands in Narragansett County.

The General Assembly of Rhode Island, in 1757, passed an acts exonerating the tribe of Indians in Charles

*R. I. Colonial Records, Vol. I, p. 134.

[graphic]

+ The same, p. 243.

The Beginnings of New England, by John Fiske,

[blocks in formation]

town from taxes which the town had by a vote assessed.

The Church of England sent as a missionary to Narragansett the Rev. James McSparran, who arrived on April 28, 1721, and assumed charge of St. Paul's parish. He proved a most worthy and acceptable minister for thirty-six years, and on December 6, 1757, was buried under the communion table of the church in which he had so zealously labored.* This church, built in 1707, was located south of Wickford, on an Indian trail leading from Connecticut to the salt water, and was afterward removed to Wickford where it now stands.

Mr. Updike, in his history of the Narragansett Church, gives the following extract from the parish records: "September 6th, Thursday, 1750. The bans of marriage being duly published at the church of Saint Paul's in Narragansett, no objections being made, John Anthony, an Indian man, was married to Sarah George, an Indian woman, the widow and Dowager Queen of George Augustus Ninegret, deceased, by Dr. McSparran."

George Augustus Ninegret had been acknowledged as sachem in 1735. The last principal sachem was familiarly called "King Tom Ninegret." His tribe sent him to England to be educated, where he acquired indolent and expensive habits. On his return he built a house for his residence on the post road, nearly a mile west of Cross's Mills, the post village of the town. That the frame of the house was prepared in Newport and taken across the water was probably due to the fact already noted, that the lands along the Narragansett coast had been

Updike's Narragansett Church, pp. 62 and 260.

cleared of timber in order to plant grain.

"King Tom's" expensive habits brought his people nearly to financial ruin. After his death, which occurred about 1770, his house was sold to pay his debts. Purchased by a resident of the town, it still remains in the family of a descendant, a prominent merchant of Providence, who occupies it as a summer residence.

In 1879 leading men of the tribe petitioned the legislature to end all tribal relations by removing the state's long existing guardianship and elevating the Indians to citizenship. The state had annually appropriated money for the tribe which was used for the support of the aged and infirm, and for the maintenance of an Indian school. The petition was referred to the legislature of the following year. When the sun went down on April 30, 1880, it set forever on the fair lands of the once powerful Narragansett tribe-lands dear to them which they had long tenaciously held, but now relinquished of their own free will, never to be restored to men of Indian blood. Who after the Anglo-Saxons will be the next race or people to occupy this noble domain, none can dare predict. The petition was granted, the act passed.*

The march of civilization has been rapid. Where the proud Indian hunted with his bow and arrow wild game on which to feed his wife and children, the whistle of the locomotive is now heard at short intervals. Fourteen trains in a day stop at Wood River Junction, passing near these lands on the north, and the Sea View electric railroad between Wickford

*Public Laws passed at the January Session, 1880, State of Rhode Island, Chapter 800.

« AnteriorContinuar »