- these are our victories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression - this is our mission. And we shall not fail. God has sown in our soil the seed of his millennial harvest, and he will not lay the sickle to the ripening crop until his full and perfect day has come. Our history, Sir, has been a con- 5 stant and expanding miracle from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown all the way aye, even from the hour when, from the voiceless and trackless ocean, a new world rose to the sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that stupendous day, when the old world will come to marvel 10 and to learn, amid our gathered treasures, let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of a Republic compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love, loving from the lakes to the Gulf, the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every hill, serene and resplendent at the summit of 15 human achievement and earthly glory, blazing out the path, and making clear the way up which all the nations of the earth must come in God's appointed time!

THE PURITAN AND THE

CAVALIER1

HENRY WATTERSON

A RESPONSE TO THE TOAST, "THE PURITAN AND THE CAVALIER," AT THE DINNER OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY, NEW YORK CITY, SATURDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 22, 1897.

INTRODUCTION

Henry Watterson, journalist and orator, was born in Washington, District of Columbia, February 16, 1840. He was educated by private tutors. In 1861 he went to Nashville, Tennessee, and edited the Republican Banner. He served on staff duty in the Confederate army from 1861 to 1863, and later was Chief of Scouts in General Johnston's army. After the war he again edited the Banner. In 1867 he went to Louisville, Kentucky, and founded the Courier-Journal which he has made one of the foremost of American newspapers. As one of the leading Democrats of the country, Mr. Watterson successfully opposed the reactionary movement of the Southern extremists against the reconstructive amendments to the Constitution, supported Horace Greeley for the presidency, and was chief among the supporters of Samuel J. Tilden. He has represented Kentucky in succeeding national conventions and 'exercised a decisive influence in shaping the party policy. For years he has been an energetic and consistent free trader. At the Democratic National Convention of 1892 he declined the chairmanship of the Committee on Resolutions, which subsequently made a report unsatisfactory to the tariff reformers, and he led a fight in the convention, resulting in the

1 From The Compromises of Life. Copyright, 1903, by Fox, Duffield & Co.

adoption, by a two-thirds vote, of a minority report made by a single member of the committee. He has steadily refused office, but in 1876-1877 accepted a seat in Congress, declining a reëlection. He also declined, in 1896, an offer of the nomination for president on the National (gold) Democratic ticket.

Mr. Watterson has published Oddities of Southern Life and Character (1892); History of the Spanish-American War (1898); and Compromises of Life (1903). The latter book, from which the speech in this volume is taken, is a compilation of his lectures and speeches.

Through all of Mr. Watterson's writing and speaking one dominant theme will be found,— the national destiny and the homogeneity of the people. To Northern politicians he has set a good example in charity and tolerance. Like Grady, in both his editorial and platform utterances he has effectively represented the policy of conciliation between the North and South. The homogeneity of the American people, based on the text, "Blessed be tolerance," is humorously shown in the following speech. Upon the occasion of its delivery, Honorable Elihu Root, president of the New England Society, introduced Mr. Watterson in the following words:

"Gentlemen, we are forced to recognize the truth of the observation that all the people of New England are not Puritans; we must admit an occasional exception. It is equally true, I am told, that all the people of the South are not Cavaliers; but there is one Cavalier without fear and without reproach, the splendid courage of whose convictions shows how close together the highest examples of different types can be among godlike men,- a Cavalier of the South, of Southern blood and Southern life, who carries in thought and in deed all the serious purpose and disinterested action that characterized the Pilgrim fathers whom we commemorate. He comes from an impressionist state where the grass is blue, where the men are either all white or all black, and where, we are told, quite often the settlements are painted red. He is a soldier, a statesman, a scholar, and above all, a lover; and among all the world which loves a lover, the descendants of those who, generation after generation, with tears and laughter, have sympathized with John Alden and Priscilla, cannot fail to open their hearts in sympathy to Henry Watterson and his stareyed goddess."

5

1. Eleven years ago to-night, there stood where I am standing now a young Georgian, who, not without reason, recognized the "significance" of his presence here," the first Southerner to speak at this board" (a circumstance, let me add, not very creditable to any of us)- and who, in words whose eloquence I cannot hope to recall, appealed from the New South to New England for a united country. He was my disciple, my protégé, my friend. He came to me from the Southern schools, where he had perused the arts of oratory and letters, to get a few lessons in journalism, as he said; 10 needing so few, indeed, that, but a little later, I sent him to one of the foremost journalists of this foremost city, bearing a letter of introduction, which described him as "the greatest boy ever born in Dixie, or anywhere else." He is gone now. But, short as his life was, its heaven-born mission was ful- 15 filled; the dream of its childhood was realized; for he had been appointed by God to carry a message of peace on earth, good will to men, and, this done, he vanished from the sight of mortal eyes, even as the dove from the ark.

2. I mean to take up the word where Grady left it off; but 20 I shall continue the sentence with a somewhat larger confidence, and perhaps with a somewhat fuller meaning; because, notwithstanding the Puritan trappings, traditions, and associations which surround me visible illustrations of the self-denying fortitude of the Puritan character and the somber 25 simplicity of the Puritan taste and habit-I never felt less out of place in all my life.

3. To tell you the truth, I am afraid that I have gained access here on false pretenses; for I am no Cavalier at all; just plain Scotch-Irish; one of those Scotch-Irish Southerners 30 who ate no fire in the green leaf and has eaten no dirt in the brown, and who, accepting for the moment the terms Puritan and Cavalier in the sense an effete sectionalism once sought to ascribe to them, — descriptive labels at once classifying and