rison as Major-General, and so to give him the command of the Kentucky troops. Before the actual declaration of war, when our people were suffering great abuse and outrage at the hands both of England and France, but especially of England, his messages teem with the most glowing and courageous patriotism. In 1810, in his message to the Legislature, he says: "As we have but little to hope from the justice of either of the belligerent powers, Great Britain or France, we should most earnestly prepare ourselves to have as little to fear from their anger. Prepared to do that justice which we ask, we should be prepared to enforce those rights which we claim." In 1809, he says in another message: "Our arms purchased our liberties, and by our arms must they be defended. It is the order of nature and of fate." He deplores with a patriot's earnestness that blindness and fury of party spirit which would accomplish its own purposes and ends, forgetting in the ardor of political strife the only object for which politicians and parties should seek, the true interest of the country. And it was also his sentiment, his real sentiment, for it always governed his conduct, that at the sacred call of duty all dangers dwindled into shadows. These were some of the incidents in this man's life, and these, and such as these, were the generous and noble sentiments which animated his heart. He died at a very advanced age on October 22, 1813. Let us remember that General Scott was a chief, even amongst the wondrous men of the Revolution-and that these men purchased all our blessings by the hardships they endured, by the bravery with which they encountered every danger, and by the blood which they spilt in our great cause. No living man can rightly claim so much gratitude from his countrymen, on the score of hard and perilous services rendered. He was a man to be remembered. The pens of Tacitus and Livy have made. immortal the names of many Romans for a tithe of his achievements. We can not command historians like these. Alexander himself, with the world at his feet, envied the fortunes of Achilles in having Homer for his poet. And yet these distinguished dead whose funeral rites we celebrate to-day, could ask no other history of their lives than that which Kentucky wrote when she decreed these honors to their memory. Could General Scott have foreseen this day, his brave old heart would have leapt with joy. Dangers have dwindled until not a shadow even is left. The exciting questions which roused every patriot heart, the zealous and ardent support of friends, the angry and active resistance of opponents, are gone and almost forgotten. How would it rejoice the heart of such a man to see the State whose perils were his own for so many years, reposing in that security he did so much to win for her! What joy to see his loveď country, in her pride and power, remembering with grateful heart his services-honoring, as she does here, his memory, and engraving with her mighty hand his name and fame upon a page of her own history-declaring to all the world this was my son, my brave, true-hearted son; let all my children cherish his memory; let their deeds be like his! And this, in truth, Kentucky says to-day. Since the world began, no people have ever risen to power or splendor who have not cherished and striven to perpetuate the memory of their great men. The Jews, God's peculiar people, carried with them the bones of their benefactor, Joseph, in their pilgrimage through the wilderness. And David invokes a blessing upon the men who rescued and buried the remains of the mighty King Saul. The Egyptian monuments to their mighty dead, with hieroglyphic inscriptions which may yet be deciphered, and reveal great names and mysteries to the world, are everywhere renowed. These were great people-and their examples are worthy to be noted-to the one the world is indebted for the Bible, to the other for the Alphabet. Funeral ceremonies have differed among different nations; but no nation, whether barbarous or civilized, has neglected some mark of respect for the dead, or of honor for the distinguished dead. The Greeks, of Athens, whose art and literature twenty centuries have not paralleled, gathered her chief men, and her soldiers, too, from the fields where they fell in her defense, and buried them with public funerals of great pomp. Nor while they continued to bestow honors only on true merit, did they ever want a soldier or a sage. And Rome-whose institutions were devised to inculcate chiefly the military virtues-to what a pitch of grandeur and power she attained by the honors she showered upon these virtues! Her founder she deified. Her victorious generals led chained Kings behind their cars as they drove in triumph through her streets. But when in her degeneracy she bestowed honors upon slaves, upon courtiers and servile flatterers, there came then a race of people, barbarians though they were, who still honored manhood, and they trod upon the neck of this once proud mistress of the world. And when Alaric died, the leader by whose skill and bravery these barbarians had trampled upon Rome, though no marble monument, with high-sounding inscription, marks his grave, yet in their rude way they honored him with a funeral ceremony whose memory will outlast the Pyramids. They made the captives he had taken in war turn from its course a river, and in the river's bed they laid their leader, and with him the spoils of nations; then turning back the river to its channel, with barbarous hands they slew these captives, that no enemy might know the last resting place of their chieftain, nor foot of foe or stranger tread o'er his head. when they were gone. It was their tribute to the only virtue they esteemed-manhood. And thus, too, was Attilla buried by his furious Huns. It was the custom of the Scythians to embalm their great dead, and carry them into every province of their dominion, that the very features and appearance of a mighty man should be fastened on the recollection of his country. These honors, so freely given by the barbarians to what they esteemed good and great, inspired, perhaps, the ambition of Attilla, who, from his rude palace in Hungary, ruled to the farthest confines of modern Russia, and exacted tribute from the degenerate Emperors of Rome and Constantinople. The French, too, always devoted to glory, have done especial honor to the memory of their great soldiers-and they have had their Bonaparte. Titles, and palaces, and monuments are freely given by England to her mighty men-and she has had her Wellington. Our forefathers honored freedom most, and gave highest tribute from their hearts to those who were greatest in her cause-and we have had our Washington. Let Kentucky make this Cemetery her Temple of Honor, though she worships only God, and let her see that none approach its pure shrine but by the way of Virtue, and she will never want for heroes in the day of battle, nor statesmen in the council chamber. And then our free institutions, which the old soldier now about to be interred endured so much to establish and maintain, shall extend their blessings to a thousand generations. Our posterity shall gather here, as we have done to-day, hundreds of years hence, to pay the last tribute to some mighty one, when every turf beneath their feet shall be a great man's sepulchre. LEXINGTON,—1775. No maddening thirst for blood had they, Their homespun breasts in that old day. * No seers were they, but simple men; Swift as the summons came they left The plough, mid-furrow, standing still, The half-ground corn-grist in the mill, The spade in earth, the axe in cleft. They went where duty seemed to call; Their death-shot shook the feudal tower, That fateful echo is not dumb: The nations, listening to its sound, Wait, from a century's vantage-ground, The holier triumphs yet to come The golden age of brotherhood, Unknown to other rivalries And gracious interchange of good. When closer strand shall lean to strand, -Whittier. |