74 SPEECH AT THE TRIAL OF DUNBAR.

down upon them. I see his murderer standing beside him.

The

Another vision opens to my view. I am standing in the green woods; tall trees are around me; the birds are sporting in the branches, and the autumn winds are rustling among the leaves. I see a little child struggling in the grasp of a strong man. grasp of that strong man is on the throat of the little child. I see his face darken, his eye-balls starting from their sockets. He is strangling him! Where is the arm of the Almighty, that it does not strike the murderer into utter annihilation? Where are His lightnings, that they do not smite him?

The form of the child sinks down upon the earth; his hands quiver for a moment, and all is still. Death is written upon his face; and the mother will hear the loved voice of her darling boy never again. I see the murderer beside him; I look upon his face; I have seen it once before; it is burned into my memory as with an iron brand. Who is this demon, whose hand is red with a double murder? whose soul is leprous with the blood of those young children?

The voice of those little ones, stifled though it be in blood, speaks; speaks to us through the evidence. We feel that truth hangs upon the accents, as they declare from the grave into which they were so cruelly thrust, "Reuben Dunbar is the man; Reuben Dunbar is the man."

And yet," said the counsel, "wait! wait! this great crime cannot always be concealed; the birds. of the air will proclaim it; Providence will one day work out the revelation, and give this mystery of crime to the world's knowledge."

LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS.

75

I tell you, this veil of concealment has been withdrawn. The birds of the air have proclaimed it. Providence has spoken, and does speak to us through this evidence; this great mystery of crime has been revealed. It is but once in a generation that crime like this, so full of all that is demoniacal and cruel, so full of cold blood and heartless depravity, occurs. You and I will never know its fellow. The tide of guilt will roll on, bearing upon its bosom a thousand crimes; but it will waft upon its dark billows no crime like this. Robbery and rapine will be there; perjury and plunder, fraud and kindred villanies, will be there; violence and blood will be there; but there will be no such atrocity as this. It will stand in the history of the times in which we live as a monument to mark the extreme boundary of human depravity; and men will rejoice that the law, humane even in its severest inflictions, has done what law could do to provide a fitting punishment.

35. THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS.

HE landing of the Fathers on Plymouth Rock, on

THE

the 21st of December, 1620, marks the beginning of a new order of ages by which the whole human family will be elevated. Then and there was the great beginning.

Throughout all time, from the dawn of history, men have swarmed to found new homes in distant lands. The Tyrians, skirting Northern Africa, built Carthage. Carthaginians dotted Spain, and even the distant coasts of Britain. Greeks gemmed Italy and

76

LANDING of the PILGRIMS.

Sicily with art-loving settlements. Rome carried her multitudinous colonies with her conquering eagles. Saxons, Danes, and Normans violently mingled with the original Britons, and in more modern times, Venice, Genoa, Portugal, Spain, France, and England, all sent forth emigrants to people foreign shores. But in all these expeditions, trade or war was the impelling motive. Too often commerce and conquest moved hand in hand, and the colony was incarnadined with blood.

On the day of this historic landing, the sun, for the first time in his course, looked down upon a different scene, begun and continued under different inspiration. Our Pilgrims were few and poor. And yet this small body of people, so obscure and outcast in condition, so slender in number and in means, so entirely unknown to the proud and great, so absolutely without name in contemporary records, whose departure from the Old World took little more than the breath of their bodies, are now illustrious beyond the lot of men. The Mayflower is immortal beyond the Grecian Argo, or the stately ship of any victorious admiral.

The highest greatness, surviving time and stone, is that which proceeds from the soul of man. Monarchs and cabinets, generals and admirals, with the pomp of courts and the circumstance of war, in the lapse of time disappear from sight; but the pioneers of truth, though poor and lowly, especially those whose example elevates human nature, and teaches the rights of man, so that "a government of the people, by the people, for the people, may not perish from the earth;" such a harbinger can never be forgotten, and their

FOURTH OF JULY.

77

renown spreads co-extensive with the cause they served so well.

Confront the Pilgrims with those great in rank and power, when the Mayflower, with her company, started forth on their adventurous voyage - the crowned sovereigns of Europe, whose names were mentioned always with awe, and whose countenances are handed down by art, so that at this day they are as visible as if they walked these streets. Now mark

the contrast. There was no artist for our forefathers, nor are their countenances now known to men; but far above that of any powerful contemporaries is their memory saved.

Pope, emperor, king, sultan, grand duke! what are they all by the side of the honorable company that landed on Plymouth Rock? Theirs, indeed, were the ensigns of the world of power; but our Pilgrims had in themselves that inborn virtue which was more than all else beside, and their landing was an epoch epoch not only never to be forgotten, but to grow in grandeur as the world appreciates the elements of the true greatness of mankind.

an

36. FOURTH OF JULY.

MAINE, from her farthest border, gives the first

exulting shout,

And from New Hampshire's granite heights, the echoing peal rings out;

The mountain farms of stanch Vermont prolong the thundering call,

And Massachusetts answers, "Bunker Hill!" a watchword for us all.

78

FOURTH OF JULY.

Rhode Island shakes her sea-wet locks, acclaiming with the free,

And staid Connecticut breaks forth in joyous harmony. The giant joy of proud New York, loud as an earthquake's roar,

Is heard from Hudson's crowded banks to Erie's crowded shore.

Still on the booming volley rolls o'er plains and flowery glades

To where the Mississippi's flood the turbid gulf invades ;

There, borne from many a mighty stream upon her mightier tide,

Come down the swelling, long huzzas from all that valley wide.

And wood-crowned Alleghany's call, from all her summits high,

Reverberates among the rocks that pierce the sunset

sky;

While on the shores and through the swales round the vast inland seas,

The stars and stripes, 'midst freemen's songs, are flashing to the breeze.

The woodsman, from the mother, takes his boy upon. his knee,

And tells him how their fathers fought and bled for

liberty.

The lonely hunter sits him down the forest spring

beside,

To think upon his country's worth, and feel his country's pride;