hours of disaster and defeat. Alike in remembrance of Saratoga and Yorktown, and of the dreary winter of Valley Forge, at Trenton and Princeton, and at the spots immortalized in the bloody campaign of the Jerseys, at King's Mountain and Charleston, at Camden and Guilford Court House, and along the track of the steadily fighting, slowly retreating Greene through the Carolinas.

Above all, at the city from which went forth the Declaration that we were, and of right ought to be a free and independent nation, let us gather, and, by the sacred memories of the great departed, pledge ourselves to transmit untarnished the heritage they have left us.

The soldiers of the Revolution are gone, the statesmen who embodied their work in the Constitution of the United States have passed away. With them, too, sleep those who in the earlier days watched the development of this wondrous frame of government.

The mighty master of thought and speech,' by whose voice fifty years ago was dedicated the Monument at whose base we stand, and whose noble argument that the Constitution is not a compact, but a law, by its nature supreme and perpetual, won for him the proud name of the Expounder of the Constitution, rests with those whose work he so nobly vindicated, happy at least that his eyes were not permitted to behold the sad sight of States "discordant, belligerent, and drenched in fraternal blood."

The lips of him who twenty-five years ago commemorated this anniversary with that surpassing grace and eloquence all his own, and with that spirit of pure patriotism in which we may strive at least to imitate him, are silent now. Throughout the cruel years of war that clarion voice, sweet yet far resounding, summoned his countrymen to the struggle on which our Union depended; yet the last time that it waked the echoes of the ancient hall dedicated to liberty, even while the retiring storm yet thundered along the horizon, was, as he would have wished it should have been, in love and charity to the distressed people of the South.

But, although they have passed beyond the veil which separates the unseen world from mortal gaze, the lessons which they have left remain, adjuring us whatever may have been the perils, the discords, the sorrows of the past, to struggle always for that "more perfect Union" ordained by the Constitution. Here, at least, however poor and inadequate for an occasion that rises so vast and grand above us our words may be, none shall be uttered that are not in regard and love to all of our fellow-citizens, no feelings indulged except those of anxious desire for their prosperity and happiness. Beside those of New-England, we are gratified to-day by the presence of military organizations from New-York and Pennsylvania, from Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, as well as by that of distinguished citizens from these and other States of the Union. Their fathers were ancient friends of Massachusetts; it was the inspiration they gave which strengthened the hearts and nerved the arm of every man of New-England. In every proper and larger sense the soil upon which their sons stand to-day is theirs as much as ours; and, wherever there may have been estrangement, here at least we have met upon common ground. They unite with us in recognition of the great principles of civil and religious liberty, and in pious memory of those who vindicated them; they join with us in the wish to make of this regenerated Union a power grander and more august than its founders dared to hope.

Standing always in generous remembrance of every section of the Union, neither now nor hereafter will we distinguish between States or sections in our anxiety for the glory and happiness of all. To-day upon the verge of the centuries, as together we look back upon that which is gone in deep and heartfelt gratitude for the prosperity so largely enjoyed by us, so together will we look forward serenely and with confidence to that which is advancing. Together will we utter our solemn aspirations in the spirit of the motto of the city which now incloses within its limits the battle-field and the town for which it was fought: "As God was to our fathers, so may He be to us!"

AN ORATION

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF WASHINGTON'S TAKING COMMAND OF THE CONTINENTAL

ARMY, JULY 3, 1775.

By Prof. ANDREW P. PEABODY, D.D., LL.D., of Cambridge, Mass.

W

HEN it was proposed to give a place to this epoch in the series of centennials, my first thought was that Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, in so recent memory, and the already glowing work of preparation for the country's hundredth birthday, would so dwarf and chill our celebration here as to make it merely a heartless municipal parade. But the occasion has grown upon me. I see and feel that it holds the foremost place in the series. It has paramount claims, not on us or our State, but on our whole people. We might rightfully have made our arrangements, not for a local, but for a national festival. We commemorate the epoch but for which Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill would have left in our history hardly a trace, probably not a single name, and the centennial of our independence would remain for a generation not yet upon the stage to celebrate.

Cambridge was the first capital of our infant republic, the cradle of our nascent liberty, the hearth of our kindling patriotism. Before the 3d of July, 1775, there were tumults, conflicts, bold plans, rash enterprises; but there was no coördinating and controlling will, purpose, or authority. On and from that day the colonies were virtually one people. Before, they had nothing in common but their grievances. They were as yet British provinces, though wrenching the cords that held them, still undetached, and with no mode of action upon or with one another. By adopting the army and choosing its head they performed their first act, not of alliance, but of organic unity, and became a nation unawares, while they thought themselves still wronged and suppliant dependencies of the British crown. They thus decided the question between a worse than unsuccessful rebellion and revolution.

That the rebellion, as such, would have been an utter failure, is only too certain. The American party in England had on its side eloquence, indeed, and wisdom, but neither numerical force in Parliament, nor the power to mollify ministerial obstinacy, or to penetrate with a sense of right the crass stupidity on the throne. Boston was held by disciplined, thoroughly armed and well-fed troops, under officers of approved skill and prowess, strongly

entrenched and fortified at accessible points, and sustained by a formidable naval force. Hardly one in fifty of the colonial army had had any experience in war, and I doubt whether there was a single man among them, officer or private, who was a soldier by profession. They had come from the farm and the forge, with such arms and equipments as they could bring; they had no bureau of supply, no military chest, no organized commissariat, and their stock of ammunition was so slender that it was ordered by the Provincial Congress that no salute should be fired on the reception of the commander-in-chief. They were from four different provinces, under as many generals, with sectional jealousies which the common cause could hardly keep at bay; and harmonious counsels could be maintained or expected only and scarcely at moments of imminent peril. At Bunker Hill they had shown both their strength and their weakness, their unsurpassed courage and their poverty of resource. Superior in the conflict, overwhelming the enemy with the shame and disaster of a signal defeat, they had been compelled to yield the ground on which they had won imperishable glory, and to see the heights they had so bravely defended occupied by a hostile battery. They held Boston beleaguered by the prestige of that day, too feeble to press the siege, yet, as they had well proved, too strong to be dislodged and scattered, but by the disintegrating elements in their own unorganized body. These elements were already at work, and the secession of even a single regiment would have been the signal for speedy dissolution and submission to the royal government.

This precarious condition of affairs was beyond the remedial authority of the individual provinces. Massachusetts could choose a general for her own troops, but could not place the forces of New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island under his control. Still less could any efficient system of sustenance or armament have been arranged by separate legislatures. A central authority alone could carry forward the resistance so nobly begun. The Continental Congress would in vain have passed patriotic resolutions, protests against tyranny, votes of sympathy; in vain would they have aroused popular indignation and multiplied centres of resistance through the land. The one decisive act in the struggle, the seal of what had been achieved, the presage and pledge of all that should ensue in the coming years, was that the consummation of which we now celebrate.

Cambridge was for obvious geographical reasons the only place where the provincial troops could have their head-quarters,-lying near enough to the enemy to watch and check his movements, yet protected from sudden or insidious attack by the intervention of the then unbridged arm of the sea which separates it from Boston. There was, at the same time, an intrinsic fitness that the opening scenes of the great drama should be enacted here, where so many of the leaders in counsel and arms had learned to loathe oppression and to hold the cause of liberty sacred.

From its earliest days our university had always been on the side of freedom. Its first two presidents were far in advance of their times in their views of the right of the individual man to unrestricted liberty of thought, opinion, speech and action. Increase Mather, when president, took the lead in the opposition to the tyrannical acts of Andros and Randolph, sailed for England as the unofficial agent of the aggrieved colonists, was appointed to an official agency on the news of the revolution of 1688, bore an important part in the construction of the new provincial charter and in securing its acceptance, and nominated to the royal court the governor, council and principal officers under it. His successors were of a like spirit, and there is on

record no instance in which the college succumbed to usurpation, stooped to sycophancy, or maintained other than an erect position before the emissaries of the royal government. The culture of the students was in great part classical, and in the last century the classics were the text-books of all lovers of freedom. A sceptical criticism had not then cast doubt on any of the stories of ancient heroism, nor had a minute analysis laid bare the excesses and defects of the early republics, whose statesmen and warriors were deemed the peerless models of patriotic virtue, and whose orators thrilled the hearts of their New-England readers, as they had the Athenian demos, the senate in the capitol, or the dense masses of Roman citizens in the forum.

Almost all the Massachusetts clergy, perhaps the major part of those of New-England, had been educated here. The Tories among them were very few, and nearly the whole of their number were ardent patriots. The pulpit then sustained in affairs of public moment the part which is now borne by the daily press; its utterances during the eventful years of our life-struggle had no uncertain sound; and the champions, deeds of prowess and warlyrics of the Hebrew Scriptures gave the frequent key-note to sermon, prayer and sacred song.

Among the pioneers and guiding spirits of the Revolution, who were graduates of the college, when I have named the Adamses, Otises, Quincys, Warrens, Pickering, Hancock, Trumbull, Ward, Cushing, Bowdoin, Phillips, I have but given you specimens of the type and temper of those who for many years had gone from Cambridge to fill the foremost places of trust and influence throughout and beyond our Commonwealth. That they carried with them hence their liberal views of government and of the rights of man, we well know in the case of those of whose lives we have the record. Thus we find John Adams, just after graduating here, more than twenty years before the declaration of independence, writing to a friend his anticipations for America, not only of her freedom from European sway, but of her becoming the chief seat of empire for the world. Year after year, on the commencement platform in the old parish church, had successive ranks of earnest young men rehearsed to greedy ears the dream of liberty which they pledged faith and life to realize.

In the successive stages of the conflict of the colonies with the mother country, the college uniformly committed itself unequivocally on the patriotic side. When the restrictions on the colonial trade called forth warm expressions of resentment, the senior class unanimously resolved to take their degrees in what must then have been exceedingly rude apparel,-homespun and home-made cloth. When tea was proscribed by public sentiment, and some few students persisted in bringing it into commons, the faculty forbade its use, alleging that it was a source of grief and uneasiness to many of the students, and that banishing it was essential to harmony and peace within the college walls. After the day of Lexington and Concord all four of the then existing college buildings were given up for barracks, and the president's house for officers' quarters. When the commander-in-chief was expected, this house was designated for his use, with the reservation of a single room for President Langdon's own occupancy. Though the few remaining students were removed to Concord, the president, an ardent patriot, seems to have still resided here, or at least to have spent a large portion of his time near the troops; for we find frequent traces of his presence among them, and on the eve of the battle of Bunker Hill he officiated as their chaplain. In connection with the prevailing spirit of the university, it is worthy