DEDICATION OF CRAWFORD'S WASHINGTON.* MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:— I ESTEEM it a great privilege and honor to speak on behalf of Massachusetts on this most interesting occasion,- of Massachusetts, the eldest of the sister States of Virginia in this great family of republics. She knew and loved your peerless son at an early day, and years before those Revolutionary ties were formed, to which the toast alludes. While the lilies of France still floated over the bastions of Quebec; while the red cross of St. George waved from Maine to Georgia; while the bloom of youth was on his own cheek, he visited Boston, then the residence of the commander-in-chief of the royal forces. When the great appeal was made to the stern arbitrament of war, and the all-important question arose in the continental congress, who should lead the patriotic arms of America in the doubtful contest; Massachusetts, represented by one whom your own Jefferson pronounced the colossus of debate in the great argument of independence, one from whom many of you afterwards differed in political opinion, but whom you all honored as a true, warm-hearted patriot; Massachusetts, I say, represented in the continental congress by * On the 22d of February, 1858, the noble equestrian statue of Washington by Crawford was dedicated at Richmond with very imposing ceremonies, under the auspices of the legislature of Virginia. Mr. Everett was present on this highly interesting occasion as a "guest of the State;" and at the public entertainment in the evening, he was called upon to respond to the following toast: "Massachusetts and Virginia, — the Revolutionary ties that unite them still live in the hearts of the people." John Adams, gave her voice and her influence for the appointment of Washington. She had her own armies, her own generals in the field, in common with those of the other NewEngland States, the veterans of the seven years' war, Rogers' provincial rangers, Stark's comrades, men who had climbed the heights of Abraham and stormed the citadel of Louisburg, the men already of the 19th of April and soon of the 17th of June, led by Ward and Warren and Putnam and Prescott and Greene. But at the risk of touching the most sensitive nerve that thrills in the human bosom, the point of honor on the part of the soldier and the gentleman, Massachusetts gave her vote and all her influence for the "beloved" Colonel Washington. If to Virginia belongs the incommunicable glory of having given him to his country, may not Massachusetts, under the circumstances to which I have alluded, reflect with satisfaction that she contributed all her influence, and on that question and, for the reasons which I have stated, her decisive influence, to place that noble son at the head of the American armies? She remembers, too, with interest, that the newly elected commander assumed his high trust under the shadow of her ancient university at Cambridge; that, with his head-quarters established there, he held the royal army for near a twelve month beleaguered in Boston; and that he achieved his first great military success upon the heights that command her capital. Some foreign writers have denied the military talent of Washington. Massachusetts knows better. She witnesses the remains of the magnificent lines of circumvallation, twelve miles in circuit, in which, with raw recruits, inadequately supplied for the field, without ordnance, without munitions, he held the royal forces closely invested for near a twelve month. She beholds eternal monuments of his military skill in the heights of Dorchester, where, by a remarkable strategic combination, he earned a place, I appeal to the gallant chieftain by my side (General Persifer Smith), among the greatest masters of war. A late French writer has said, that Washington could not have led the French grand army of 1812, that prodigious array moving in thirteen parallel columns, each a host-led by tributary kings, and heroes of a hundred wars, and got them in safety into Russia. I do not know that any one has a right to assert this, or take for granted that he, who did great things with small means, would not have done proportionately greater things with ample means. At any rate, whatever superiority may be claimed for Napoleon, on the bare assumption that Washington could not have conducted his mighty force into Russia, some deduction must be made from that superiority for the historical fact, that Napoleon himself could not conduct it out of Russia. At all events, sir, Washington himself, into whose heroic. self-possession there entered not the slightest particle of arrogance or presumption, calmly contemplated the possibility that he might be brought into personal conflict with that dreaded Napoleon; and in that belief accepted the command of the American army in 1798. When, in the expectation of a war with our honored revolutionary ally, then distracted in her domestic counsels, Washington was appointed lieutenantgeneral, a title and a trust which America but in a single other instance has given to any one of her gallant sons, and he also a native of Virginia, he more than once declared that, if the enemy invaded us, he must not be permitted so much as to land on our shores. And in a letter to President Adams, written shortly after accepting his commission, he makes the significant remark, that "the French (with whom we have now to contend) have adopted the practice, with great and astonishing success, of appointing generals of juvenile years to command their armies." He had every reason to suppose at that time, and, doubtless, did suppose, that in the event of a French invasion, the armies of France would have been commanded by the hero of Arcole and Lodi, the youngest and most successful of these youthful generals to whom his letter alludes. Sir, the occasion which has brought us together is, in my judgment, of far greater importance and significance than any mere popular pageant. Virginia has been called, and justly, the mother of States and of statesmen; but this is an honor which she shares with her sister republics. From Maine to Georgia, every one of the old thirteen has sent her children to lay the foundation of new republics in the rising West; every one of the confederated States has its list of the wise, the honored, and the brave among its children. But to Virginia alone belongs the honor of giving birth to the one man, whose preöminence all acknowledge without envy, in whose fame all the other States are proud as fellow-countrymen to claim a share. -- I rejoice that in consecrating a monument to this pure and bright name you have found an American artist equal to its conception and execution. Oh that he could have witnessed this triumphant day! May its success carry consolation to the heart of his bereaved partner! He has left behind him a monument to his own taste and genius, not less than to his illustrious subject. And, sir, when I contemplate the career of this gifted artist, from its commencement to its close; when I trace him through the earlier productions of his chisel; the busts of living contemporaries; the lovely idolatries of ancient mythology, Orpheus, Ganymede, Hebe; his maturer creations, the statue of Beethoven, the group for the pediment of the southern wing of the extension of the capitol; the figures of Henry and Jefferson, which adorn the ascending platforms of your great monument; when I see him thus rising by steady progress to the summit of his art and his fame, in the more than imperial form and face of WASHINGTON; his true eye guiding his cunning hand from labor to labor, and from triumph to triumph, like Phidias of old, who "carved the gods and came to Jove," I can almost fancy that the delicate sense was overpowered, at last, by the transcendent glories of that matchless countenance; that the vision of the accomplished artist, beholding far more than the ordinary observer under the same outlines and lineaments; penetrating deeper into the mysteries of expression; rising higher, with rapt gaze, into the brightest heaven of thought and feeling and character, as they flow through the portals of sense; — a revolution successfully conducted; a constitution wisely framed; a government happily administered, raying out from each divine glance, I can almost fancy that the gifted sculp-. tor, like the gifted poet, "Saw, and, blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night." Sir, I believe in monuments, I believe in them even as works of art. To carve the speaking marble, to mould the breathing bronze, is one of the noblest efforts of genius and taste; but a patriotic monument is a far nobler work. It embodies patriotism, truth, and faith; it gives form and expression to the best feelings of our nature; and while the noble work which you have this day inaugurated shall brave the snows of winter and the heats of summer, that rigid arm shall point the unerring road to the welfare of the country more surely than any arm of living flesh; and a fiercer thunder than that of the elements shall clothe the neck of the monumental war-horse, and strike terror to the hearts of the enemies of the constitution and the union. |