Bureau County, Illinois - Chapter 20, 1885

DEBATING SOCIETIES - SOME IMMORTAL SPECIMENS - OLD TIME CHURCH SEVERITY - How MATTERS ARE MODIFIED AND BETTERED - FOREFATHERS' DAY, TOASTS, POEMS, AND ADDRESSES - Uiscvs«ioNs ABOCT IT IN THE PAPERS - REVIEWING OF HISTORY

My thoughts steal back to that sweet village still; Its flowers and peaceful shades before me rise; The play-place and the prospect from the hill, Its summer verdure and autumnal dyes; The present brings its storm; but while there lost, I shelter me in the delightful past.

T I "VHE story of the average county in its JL days of pioneer farm-making, houseraising and tree-planting, alternated by coonhunting and August elections, spread-eagle orators and " a little for the stomach's sake," is not, as rule, very largely connected with literature, mind growth, or intellectual culture in any of the branches of education that come of real education in the walks of life of a literary, religious, social or political people. Generally there is too much of the grim realities for much time to be given to the artificial or the polish that comes of the higher culture that attends upon ease and leisure. Yet, even fifty or more years ago in perhaps every then organized county in Illinois, there was the incipient debating society in about every schoolhouse in the land, and the comparative beauties of "Art" or "Nature," or the "Penitentiary" or the "Hangman's rope," or ' ' Pursuit or Possession ? ' ' were fanning the latent fires of the young Oiceros and Demosthenes of the whole country. This intellectual fruit was then, as it is now, a winter's growth entirely, and nourished during the three months' winter school. The commanding intellectual figure usually was the teacher, who was working for $10 or $12 a month and "board round;" the

"round" was mostly where was the fattest table and the biggest houseful of fine healthy girls - the neighborhood belles. Many of the swains who radiated about this spot, no doubt, often envied the teacher, and in their hearts were ready to teach the school for nothing, that is, nothing more than the " board round " at this one particular house. These were the primitive literary clubs of the average county, commencing nearly always in the chief town of the county and from here extending to farthest outlying school district. As remarked above there was an average in these things among the counties in the early days of their existence, and in them the performances, the questions discussed and the speeches were much alike. They were then and so are they now, excellent training schools for the the young as well as the full grown. In the rural districts, especially, their effects were the very best They brought the people together, improved their social intercourse, and exchanged thoughts and ideas and tended to polish and improve those who were blessed with but few facilities to this end. They were sometimes amusing, often interesting, and always profitable. What grown man is there in the land who cannot recall his blushing, first effort in th'e debating society? The writer well remembers the little old log schoolhouse, where, during the days of the week he was trying hard to get at the intricacies of "tiggers," and on Friday evenings he attended his first debating society. The older men would be appointed, and then they would choose one at a time alternately until every one present would be elected debater, and they would speak in the order chosen. The head leaders would be the real lions of the evening, and as it tapered off in succession toward the tail of the intellectual w,hip, the speeches would be correspondingly shortened about in the ratio that the embarrassment increased. On one of these occasions, the writer being very young and among the very last chosen, in fact, was only named for forms sake at all, he commenced, and by a sudden inspiration as it were - the subject is forgotten, and it was evidently not germane to the incident, nor necessary to the story now - he broke forth : ' ' Where was Henry Clay? At the head of the army with a big gun killing Indians; that's where he was. And what would have become of all this country if it had not been for James Francis Marion, as he sat eating roasted sweet potatoes on a holler log, when the King of England called to see him before breakfast, and he wanted something to wash the cob-webs out of his throat. No, sir! Think of all the people of this country being scalped, killed and carried into captivity by the Indians. Was not all these things worth fighting for? No, sir! Tippecanoe and Tyler, too, and so say I forever! " And the tyro sat down covered with glory. From that on during the winter he was always the very first choice, and as he could discuss any subject in the world equally well, he was quite a hero. We presume the reader has heard of another immortal effort when a society was discussing the subject of "Art or Nature," and the orator rose upon his tip toes and exclaimed: "Mr. President, I say nature is the most beautifuller. What, Mr. President, is beautifuller than to see anateral steamboat flying and puffin' up a nateral river, or a nateral canal at sea, when the houses rock and bob like nateral corks when you are gitting a big bite from a little sun fish." This settled it and "Nature "won the day, of course.

was not enough people in and about Princeton to call it a town yet, but there was enough people of that kind who aspired to the highest walks in the mental fields, who set about the organization of a literary society. They met together and by a vote determined to incorporate the " Putnam County Lyceum. " And this was done. The names of the officers chosen are a sufficient assurance of the force and ability there was in the society. These were: Cyrus Bryant, President; Justin H. Olds, Secretary and Librarian; R. T. Templeton, Treasurer; Arthur Bryant and Degrass Salisbury, Trustees. When Bureau County was created a meeting of this society was called, and on motion of Judge Templeton it was unanimously resolved to change the name from " Putnam County Lyceum " to that of " Bureau County Lyceum." This action of the Lyceum was duly spread upon the records of the County Court. Although this society was a creature of the early pioneer days, the names on its rolls, while the list is much smaller than has been some of the more modern literary bodies in the county, yet it possessed men of as thorough culture and as great natural abilities as can now be gathered in the county or anywhere else for that matter. We award much of the spread of improvement that has always distinguished this county to the early work of the lyceum. Its influence could not but be felt, and to this day its effects are easily traced on every hand. The philosophical conclusion was long since reached that one great man can not exist alone in a county. He will cause at least one great man to rise up 'about him. If this basis of the idea is the true one, then we can see how one, two or three superior men fixing their lot in a community of pioneers will cast their good influences all over the county. Such a community may be started on that higher plane of civilized life, that is by others only reached after years of growth and slow self-preparation. It is true, then, that often it depends upon one or two families or individuals in the moral and intellectual bias that is to distinguish a young community. In the formation of the first society in nearly every county in central and northern Illinois there was the first meeting of those particular representatives of the New England States and the Southern States of Virginia and Kentucky - the two blades of the scissors that when riveted together cut out the patterns for the irrepressible conflict. New England blood dominated; no finer types of the two sections were ever presented than was the career of Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, nor can we just now recall a finer illustration of the observation noted above of the influence that the developments of a man of large talents will have upon his surroundings; or the assertion that one great man in a developing or new community will inevitable produce another great man.

Stephen A. Douglas was a New England - er. As a politician he was a superb - a truly great man. It is perhaps too soon after the close of his active life to discuss the question of his statesmanship, or to inquire without prejudice, as to whether he was a statesman at all or not. But the career of this Yankee schoolmaster in his adopted State is an eventful one, and presents, to him who can lay aside all prejudices or bias of judgment, a study of profound interest. The flood of eloquence or literature yet written or spoken about either Douglas or Lincoln is mere sentiment, exalted beyond the realms of just judgments, and wholly beyond the cold facts of criticism or history. The period of extravagant and affectionate panegyric will in its proper time subside, and the iconoclast will come; he will inflict no injury even if he does topple over certain imaginary and false idols - or certain extravagant estimates, or fulsome and hysterical eulogies. The gentle hand of affection, the inspired brain, the eloquent tongue, and the gifted pen of admiration and love for the dear and illustrious dead, are to be ever respected. They are the beautiful and the good in our common nature - the play of our highest and holiest impulses. But the whole truth is not to be forever hid under a bushel - real history will in the end be written. The names of Douglas and Lincoln are not here brought forward to assert that their histories will in the end be revised and wholly re- written and the verdict of their cotemporaries reversed and remanded to the great jury of the people, but rather to enforce the idea of the strong and lasting influence of one superior mind acting upon its surroundings. This leads us into the fields of investigation, where cause and effect acting and re-acting upon the human mind are to be considered - causes and effects so obtruse and subtle in both their immediate and remote consequences as to surround the path of investigation with the greatest difficulties. It is only a part of the whole truth, that men are the architects of their own fortune. Circumstances and surroundings are a part of the strongest factors in the make-up of the individual and a community. And a large community is as fixed in its environments as are the primeval rocks in the deep bosom of the earth.

"With the commemcement of the early literary life of the young county, as noted above, we would expect to find in its progress and development much of interest and profit for present investigation. And, indeed, so we do. In the imperfect files of the county newspapers, in the chance poem, the addresses and the organizations founded at various times, we are enabled to see and know much of the mental activity of the times that distinguished the people of the county from its earliest settlement. But the sermons, the political addresses and discussions through the prints that we have mostly found by accident here and there, furnishes us the open window through which we have the best view of the intellectual concerns of the people. We are free to say that there are but few counties in the State that in this respect are not almost wholly barren of useful material for the historian, while here is much that is intensely interesting.

Already we have given many extracts from addresses and poems, commencing with a poem by Arthur Bryant, written in 1831, when on his way " to the distant West. " And also we have given many narratives of the first settlers, sometimes as they had written them out themselves, and frequently as they related them to the writer, always preserving as nearly as possible their own arrangement of the narrative, and as fully as possible their exact words. We regard these by far as the best part of our history. So far, after the most diligent search, we have found no diary from any of the first or even the most recent settlers. This we greatly regret, as it would have enabled us to round out and nearly complete this part of our allotted work.

In this account of the intellectual life of the community, we do not pretend to follow the chronological order of events, because the history of the mental influences, or the history of the literature of a people is not thus constructed.

The actions of men are governed less by dogma, text-books and rubrics than by the the opinions and habits of their cotemporaries, by the general spirit of the age, and by the character of those classes who are in the ascendant. This is the origin of that difference so prevalent in the world of religious theory and religious practice, of which theologians so greatly complain as a stumbling block and an evil.

The religious doctrines of a people as we find them in their creeds are but little criterion of that particular civilization, while their religious practices are an unfailing source of information, and these always tell the true story of a people, and form the best data by which the spirit of any age may be measured. Locke in his Letters on Toleration, observes that often the clergy are naturally more eager against error than against vice.

In the published proceedings of the fiftieth anniversary of the Congregational Church, held in Princeton, March 28, 1881, from^the address " by Rev. F. Bascom, D. D., a former pastor of the Church," we extract the following: "Under Mr. Farnham's administration we should expect the church would be commendably faithful in discipline. And thus we find it. The first case recorded is that of a female member, called to account for speaking evil of a sister in the church. She was required to sign a confession to be read to the congregation on the Sabbath. She consented to sign a confession, but only on condition it should not be read in public. She was therefore excommunicated by a unanimous vote." In an "explanatory note" at the end of the published pamplet, says:

" In justice to the lady referred to in the address of Dr. Bascom, fourteenth page of this pampJet, it ought to be stated that she was afterward restored, by a vote of the church, to her good and regular standing."

This little incident tells of the stern and severe discipline that obtained among the early settlers. It was not enough to confess and humiliate the soul into the dust, but the burning words of shame must be read in public, and the culprit must be there to receive the deepest possible scourging. The text merely tells that " in justice " to her, she was afterward restored by a vote of the same church that had excommunicated her - cut her off from the anticipations of heaven and from the communion and joys of the society of the saints on ear,th, without a word of information upon the point in dispute and that led to her being cast out, to wit: Whether she came over and consented to a public reading of her confession, or whether the church eventually waived this and restored her her good name and church blessings. But evidently the reference to this case by the speaker in his anniversary address, is made in the way of mere business recital of the strong and interesting facts in the church's history, that leaves no doubt as to the importance that the the church rulers attached to the disciplinary proceedings. And as well does the refusal of the woman to have her confession read in public, indicate the degree of her abhorence of such a proceeding. Her whole nature rebelled, and with a heavy heart, no doubt, she listened to the awful words of excommunication. She did not blame her church; her training and education had taught her that it could do no wrong; that its decisions were infallible, next to God, and that when it cut her off, cast her out, and gave her over to Satan and his satraps, that her cup of affliction was full to overflowing. Yet she braved all and endured all, rather than gratify the, to her, unequaled torture that would come of a public reading of her confession. Then, too, we are not told how long it was before she was restored to the church. Hence, again, on this point, we are left to conjecture. But whether it was days or years, she was eventually restored, and we respect her only the more - as well as the church the more, if the latter gave way at last and revoked its former severe and unjust act. This reversal of a former " unanimous vote " of the church - the act of excommunicating a woman, not for any actual sin, because the refusal to permit the public reading of her confession, was not of itself a sin, but simply a refusal to bow to a process of discipline and degrade herself and polute her freedom of soul, and when the church corrected its cruel decision it gave evidence that it was advancing along the line of civilization, and this evidence is furnished in its practice and not in its rubric.

To-day there would be no such severity in this same church. There are perhaps not twenty members thereof that are conscious of the fact that the church law ever required the authorities to take cognizance of and punish the tattling females of the order. Is the church any the worse for this relaxing of its practices? A change that comes from the general change in men's minds and'not from any change in the written discipline of the church itself. Is it not now as " commendably faithful in its discipline " as it was fifty or a hundred years ago, when it was ready to drown the good old Quaker for the high crime of not taking off his hat when he passed a minister on the street? With the general change in the community in the surroundings has come the inevitable change in the church and a general softening of its severities. Has it sacrificed any of its power for good by the change ?

There are many reasons why the movements and doings of this particular church - the Congregational Church of Princeton - are of interest and are historical in character. It is the oldest church organization in the county. Was organized fifty-four years ago in Massachusetts. It has had many of our leading and best representative people on its roll of membership. It has had able pastors, some of the most famous in Illinois, and has had a strong body of refined, cultured and elegant people for its congregations. It is purely an offshoot of Massachusetts. Men direct from Plymouth Rock and many of whose ancestors came over in the Mayflower, and nearly all of whom were of the purest Puritan stock. In its membership have been and is now many of those who were the representatives of the New England States, a class of men that predominated in all the early times, and that were the majority of the early settlers here. The fact that Owen Lovejoy and Richard Edwards were each for years its resident ministers, makes it a historical church. So strong has this people always been in this particular church that it has for some years had as an addenda to the congregation a society composed of the sons of daughters of New England, and annually they celebrated the landing of the Mayflower, Forefathers' Day, by assembling and honoring those noble men and women in songs, in poems, toasts and often elegant and brilliant responses.

Forefathers1 Day. - December 22, 1879, was a meeting of unusual interest. The responses to the toasts of the evening were made by, first, Arthur Bryant, Sr. , who responded to: " The Pilgrim Fathers. " It is one of the ablest pleas in behalf of the memory of the Pilgrim Fathers, that we remember to have come across in our reading. Those portions of it in which he replies to the calumniators, is as strong, dignified and eloquent as is one of Reverdy Johnson's best pleas before the Supreme Court on any of those occasions that his great mind made the court-room a grand intellectual arena - occasions where the future American historian will love to linger, and mark the place as a guiding fingerboard in the great highway of the mind's progress. Mr. Bryant said:

The landing of the Pilgrim Fathers on a desert coast, and their subsequent sufferings, in themselves considered, are of little consequence in the record of human life. Similar events have many times occurred. But when the character of the men - the objects they had in view, and the events resulting from the enterprise, are taken into account, it becomes of historical importance.

How truly was Mr. Bryant stating the unconscious facts as applied to himself and his fellow-pioneers, who were here the real architects of this part of Illinois - the hardy and heroic pioneers.

It was the first permanent settlement north of Virginia - the commencement of the colonization of New England, which nearly throughout its whole extent was settled by people of a character similar to that of the Plymouth colonists. After the first few years, the colony of Plymouth became nearly identical with the rest of New England, in character and interest, and the people may be spoken of collectively as the Puritan Forefathers. One of their first cares was to provide for education. Harvard College was founded within twenty years after -the settlement of Plymouth; and this and Yale College - the two oldest in New England - have ever had a reputation unrivaled in America. To this day, wherever New England influence is felt, the schoolhouse and church are found. In a severe climate, upon a stubborn soil - often amid destructive savage warfare - was reared a hardy and enterprising race of men, trained to self-government by the necessities of their situation. Their descendants, numbered by millions, are found in every State of the Union; their energies, virtues and love of freedom, have influenced, and for an indefinite period will continue to influence the destinies of the entire continent. * ' * I may, however, notice the obloquy so often cast upon the Puritans. To this day they are sneered at by people who know little or nothing about them, except perhaps, two or three of their prominent faults. In England they were the objects of unceasing ridicule and vituperation by the Cavaliers, both before and after the Civil war. Yet the historian, Hume - no friend of the Puritans - acknowledged that England owed to them whatever civil liberty she enjoyed in his time. It is only within fifty years past that justice has been done to the character of Cromwell. The New England Puritans have been unceasingly pelted with Salem witchcraft, persecution of the Quakers, and Connecticut Blue Laws, as though no other people ever hung a witch, or were guilty of religious intolerance. Two hundred years ago, belief in witchcraft was nearly or quite universal. The Salem delusion appears to have been an outburst of temporary frenzy, which soon died out, and did not extend to other parts of the country. But in England and Scotland, witches were occasionally burned.

The speaker then relates seeing a book printed many years ago, giving a history of the Salem witchcraft, and in it was an illustration representing the devil surrounded by his imps, on the roof of a house, beating a drum, while the people below looked up in astonishment. The speaker then frankly admits that the action in the persecutions of the Quakers can only be palliated by the consideration that religious toleration was not then understood or practiced by any Christian nation; that the faults of the Puritans were those of the age in which they lived.

It is pretty well established as truth that the Blue Laws of Connecticut, which have been quoted and ridiculed times without number, originated in the imagination of the forger, Samuel Andrew Peters. Peters was a clergyman of the Church of England, a native of Connecticut, and was so rank a Tory in the Revolution that he was compelled to leave the country. To revenge himself upon the Puritan patriots he wrote what he called the history of Connecticut; a book that has been designated as "the most unscrupulous and malicious of lying narratives." In this book are found the Blue Laws, and there is no other evidence that they ever had an existence. I will give a sample of Peters' regard for truth and probability. He says that at Bellows' Falls the Connecticut River forces its way through a narrow passage between two rocks, and that in the time of floods the water becomes so solid by pressure that it cannot be penetrated by a crowbar.

The Puritans were no doubt unreasonably rigid in their religious observances and their prohibition of innocent amusements. Their hostility to the loose morals and inconsistent practices of their persecutors of the English Church naturally made them approach to the opposite extreme. We who are descended from the Puritan Fathers confess to a little pride in the relationship. Pride of ancestry is natural to the human mind, and it appears more excusable when the principles and institutions of that ancestry have conferred distinguished benefits, not only on their descendants, but also with those with whom they are connected. I do not contend that a man should be more highly esteemed on account of his ancestors; on the contrary, I believe the standing in society of every one ought to be determined solely by his individual merit. There is undoubtedly something in good blood in the human race as well as in the brute creation; but this, if not sustained by a pure life, high aspirations and manly conduct, will degenerate and die out.

The next toast, " The Pilgrim Mothers," was responded to by Mra J. P. Richardson. The splendid diction, the exalted sentiments of this noble tribute to the Pilgrim Mothers, is worthy the careful perusal and study especially of every daughter and mother in our land. We read it carefully, and with the fair speaker say: " Brave, noble, heroic mothers - the good dames well content, handling the spindle and the flax."

" Years bright and dark have sped away, Since by New England's rocky shore The Mayflower moored in Plymouth Bay Amid the wintry tempest's roar.

" Few, worn and weak, that Pilgrim band; An unknown coast before them rose - A vast unmeasured forest land, Begirt with ice and clad with snows.

Then "Our neighbors, the Knickerbockers," was most handsomely responded to by S. G. Paddock. But as our purpose is to give the substance only here of the addresses that called out a warm newspaper discussion after the meeting, and the tenor of that controversy, we regret we cannot, therefore, give Mr. Paddock's address, as we are confident our readers would enjoy it greatly.

" The common schools of New England." Response by Prof. H. C. McDougal. Among many other highly complimentary things of the Puritans, he said :

Two hundred and nine years have come and gone since then, and to-day we can trace the march of the New England free schools and its influence clear across the continent. In the year 1670, the Commissioner for foreign plantations addressed to the Governors of the colonies several questions in regard to their condition; and in reply to one in respect to education, the Governor of Connecticut said: " One-fourth of the annual revenue of the colony is laid out in maintaining free common schools (?) for the education of our children." In reply to the same question, the Governor of Virginia said: "I thank God there are no free schools or printing presses, and I hope we not shall have these hundred years." ***** * * The product of the Virginia system ( ?) also spread over the country a little further south. I need not paint the contrast. The two systems have been boldly confronting each other the past nineteen years, and the world has learned that the free schools have been largely instrumental in making the North rich and strong, while an aristocracy resting upon substructure of ignorance has made the South poor and weak.

All that we are proudest of in our own State is the direct product of New England free school, for it was a child of that school, a graduate of Harvard College, who framed the ordinance of 1787, which consecrated this whole northwest territory forever to human freedom, free schools and free thought, etc.

" Our Western Home. " Response by Gen. I. H. Elliott. This was an eloquent eulogy to the Puritans. He contrasted the North and South, and of the Puritans he said:

They were not broken down aristocrats ; hey were not dissoluute members of powerful families; they belonged to the middle ranks of society; they were men of lofty virtue, iron wills; always consulting conscience, never policy; loving home and native land, they left both in search of freedom, and finding it, they cherished it with the zeal and devotion of martyrs. They hated civil and religious despotism; they sought a new home, not for plunder, not for conquest, but for liberty of conscience. The New Englander moved westward bearing with him his free-school system and printing press, and with these a Northern State better than a Southern State, and the north end of a Northern State better than the south end of the same State, etc., etc.

The festival closed with the toast, " Our country, its best impulses, thoughts and deeds flowed from the striking of Plymouth Rock" Response by Rev. Dr. Richard Edwards. The Doctor's introductory part of his address was very happy, indeed, and then he said:

In response to the sentiment to which I am called to speak, allow me to refer to two facts concerning the Pilgrims. The first is the sturdy seriousness of their devotion to freedom. As we to-day are situated, having our wants all supplied, in the midst of comforts and luxuries and comparative ease, we are in some danger of forgetting the costs of our liberties, and, through that forgetfulness, of losing the inestimable inheritance. I would not diminish one grain the enjoyment, the geniality, or even the innocent of this or any occasion. I rejoice in the ring of every laugh that has been heard here to-night. * * * It has been declared, and apparently with good reason, that the compact entered into on board that little ship was the first formal recognition of the principal that a government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. * * * * With no models, but with all precedent and prejudice the other way, the Pilgrims in 1620 framed a government based on the mutual consent of its subjects, making them all equal before the law. * * * In the public opinion of our time there is a general impression that these Pilgrims were men of stout hearts, sturdy virtue, and strong faith in God. All this they surely were. So far forth the public sentiment is correct. But certain qualifying assumptions are made in addition. It is thought that they were narrow-minded and intolerant, that they burnt witches, hung Quakers, expelled the Baptists, and in general indulged in many exhibitions of the unlovely spirit of persecution. What are the facts? Only two trials for witchcraft ever took place in Plymouth. While all Christiandom, Catholic and Protestant, was thoroughly committed by teaching and practice, to this delusion, while learned divines and eminent jurists were everywhere using their power, official and personal, for the condemning and executing of the unfortunate victims of malice who were charged with witchcraft, the Pilgrims kept their senses, and forgot not the dictates of a common humanity. Only two trials for this alleged offense ever occurred in the colony, and in both cases the accused were acquitted. And in one of them, that of Mrs. William Holmes, in 1660 the Court was not satisfied with an acquittal, but decreed that Dinah Sylvester, the prosecuting witness, for having brought a false and heinous charge against her neighbor, should be severely punished. Nor am I aware that in any case they punished men for a diversity of religious views. Immoral and seditious men like John Lyford, who had been sent over by the enemies of the colony for the very purpose of making trouble, were expelled from the settlement, as they richly deserved to be. Lyford tried to make it appear that his expulsion was due to his pretended conversion to Episcopacy. But his schemes and character were clearly exposed, and their justice and forbearance fully vindicated.

The comparatively tolerant spirit of the Pilgrims is shown by their treatment of non-church members, and members of other communions. Miles Standish was never a member of their or any other church, but for thirty-six years he was one of their chief officers and counsellors, both civil and military. Ascituate Episcopalian held a commission in their little army, and James Brown, a Baptist leader, was many times elected to an important office. When Roger

Williams fled from Salem, the Plymouth Governor, Winslow, offered him an asylum, and urged him to settle near at hand where they should "be loving neighbors." * * * *

Many of the mistakes on this point arise from the habit of confounding the two terms, Puritan and Pilgrim. The former term includes the settlers of Boston and Salem, of New Haven and Hartford, as well as many who remained behind in England and Holland; while the latter is applicable only to the men of Plymouth. If this were the anniversary of some achievement wrought by the whole body of Puritans, we should feel compelled to offer appology for many blameworthy acts performed by the objects of our eulogy. But this day is celebrated as that of the Pilgrim's landing, and their lives were so pure, their aims so honest, and their common sense so trustworthy, that we have little ! need of excusing or palliation.

Your sentiment, Mr. Chairman, refers to the striking of Plymouth Rock. We may, indeed, take the impact of that boat's prow against the little boulder, which is now enclosed in front of Pilgrim Hall, as the symbol and poetic cause of untold good. Like the stroke of the Prophet's rod upon the rock in the Arabian wilderness, it opened a stream which has ever since flowed forth for the cleansing and invigorating of mankind. As the waters of Horeb came forth to slack the thirst of the wanderers from Egyptian bondage, so the flood from Plymouth has brought life and freedom to millions of oppressed fugitives from the Old World - wanderers in search of a promised land of political enfranchisement. As the stream imparted fertility to the arid waste of the desolate plains, causing richness of vegetation and moist breezes to replace the hot winds and choking sands which had been so fatal to comfort and health, so this new flood has percolated the strata of corrupt and despotic usages, and by liberating the minds of men, has induced the growth of all that is lovely in human character and healthful in human societies. Political freedom and just Government have flourished upon its banks; a pure religion and a clean morality have been nourished by its gentle irrigation.

We have given enough to indicate that altogether Forefathers' Day was duly celebrated - the addresses were elegant, eloquent, and fitting memorials to the illustrious sires who came over in the Mayflower. Certainly it must have been the exceptional auditor who could have listened to all these tributes and songs of praise for the great dead, and have gone away and felt the slightest desire to carp at or criticise any of the sentiments or facts uttered upon the occasion. What if some slight historical inaccuracies were uttered, or in the warm gush of love and admiration of the hour - that must have been infectious - some sentiment of eulogistic praise was too highly colored ! Could this be cause to mar the happy flow, and turn the sweet viands of the feast to gall and vinegar ? Particularly in a community largely made up of the sons and daughters of New England, could it have been anticipated that these eloquent tributes could fall gratingly upon the ears of any one present. It does seem that no man in the world has had the cold and sour blood and brains to go through the world's graveyards and quarrel with the epitaphs graven upon the tombstones of the dead - indited as they always have been by the hand of love and affection, as it was moved by impulse, with never a thought of what will the carping critic say. There is not probably a graveyard with a dozen stones in it in the world, but that some curious inscription will arrest the attention and mayhap in ite wild raving to say something for the dear departed, both grammar and facts may be at fault, yet a pitying smile is here the extreme boundary line of the severest critic.

But it seems that the sentiments uttered OD Forefathers' Day were to be mercilessly impaled upon the pen of the critic, a pen dipped in wormwood, and determined to deface and pull down every evidence of a tribute or mark of affectionate memory of the sturdy old forefathers of New England.

We can, therefore, easily understand why it was that the community was deeply moved, and much comment and discussion, and a lively interest was started up by a newspaper discussion that was had in the Bureau County Tribune ia which the performances at the Forefathers' Day of December 22, 3879, were taken to task and their history sharply criticised by a correspondent of that paper. In that paper of January 9, 1880, appeared a short article over the signature of "Vox Populi" attacking Mr. McDougal's account of the schools. He says in his honors to New England he hud fallen into slight errors and proceeds to point out that the country is not indebted to Harvard College for the ordinance of 1787, but to Thomas Jefferson. The ordinance of 1787, he says, not only set apart every 16th section for schools, but it prohibited slavery in all the Northwest, and provided for the reclaiming of fugitive slaves escaped from other States," etc., etc. This critic attracted little attention and elicited no reply.

" On the evening of December 22, last, we stepped into the Congregational Church and heard part of the exercises in commemoration of the 259th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims upon Plymouth Rock. We were surprised and amazed at the glowing eulogies pronounced upon the Pilgrims and Puritans of 1620 and the Colonial colonies, of the same persons and their descendants of later years, upon that occasion.

" It was stated by one of the speakers, if we rightly understood him, that the Pilgrims and Puritans were men of correct religious habits and high moral standing; ' that we were indebted to the Pilgrims and Puritans for our form of government;' that they fled from the mother country to escape religious persecution ; ' that they were men of great independence of character;' ' that they de- termined to set up a different form of government in this country for themselves.' If we look at the history of the Pilgrims and the Puritan colonies impartially, and not through the mists and dogmas of the church, which now represent the same faith, we will see that most of the eulogies to the Pilgrims and Puritans upon such occasions, for bequeathing to us our free form of government, or the right to worship God according to the dictates of a man's own conscience is incongruous and nonsensical.

"The most inestimable principle that has ever been incorporated into our national government is that of a separation of Church and State and of complete religious freedom. We never inherited these principles from the Pilgrims or Puritans. Impartial history shows conclusively that they never believed in such doctrine but always, in the early colonies, rejected it, and enacted the most bitter and relentless laws for the purpose of persecuting the advocates of religious freedom and those who believed in a complete separation of Church and State.

" Rev. Dr. Edwards drew a distinction between the Pilgrims and Puritans, but the distinction is without a difference. It is claimed by the religious teachers, who are representatives of the Puritan faith, that they did not persecute others on account of their religious belief; that it is exceedingly doubtful if ever, in Colonial times, they even hanged a witch. We would refer all such to Bancroft's History, from which we learn that in the month of December, A. D. 1659, on Boston Commons, and within a stone's throw of Faneuil Hall and Old South Church, spoken of on the anniversary occasion referred to, these Pilgrims and Puritan fathers tried, by their Colonial law, Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson and Mary Dyer for the odious crime of being Quakers and dissenting from the Puritan Church and its form of religion; that Robinson and Stephenson were put to4death by hanging, and the historian Bancroft, says, ' Mary Dyer was reprieved, yet not until the rope had been fastened around her neck.' She was conveyed out of the colony, but soon returning she also was hanged for the same offense on Boston Commons.

" It is said in history that when the colonial court was deliberating as to the best manner of executing these three faultless persons, the advice of John Wilson, a noted Congregationalist minister, was asked. No sooner solicited than the reply was: ' Hang them or else, - ' drawing his finger athwart his throat, as if he would have said, 'dispatch them this way.' And these three Quakers were led forth to execution on Boston Commons, guilty of no crime but that of being Quakers and dissenting from Puritan worship. John Wilson, the minister above referred to, followed and insulted them at every step to the gallows, with such language as: ' Shall such jacks as you come in before authority with your hats on,' etc.

" Impartial history shows that the colonies for one-half a century, from 1620 onward, composed of the descendants of the Pilgrims, fused with the Puritans, all believing in the same religious creed and dogmas, were oligarchies in the strictest sense. A certain amount of property and a profession of their religious belief were prerequisites to the rights of citizenship. Judge Story says, that fivesixths of the people of the colony of Massachusetts were disfranchised, that they were denied even the right of petition. Had the political principles of the Puritans and Pilgrims been incorporated in our national government there would have been a whipping post for incorrigible Baptists, like Roger Williams, and Quakers, like William Penn.

in every village and hamlet. Let us look again to history with an impartial eye, we can deny, in the .light of the record, and truthfully too, that we are indebted to the Puritans or Pilgrims for our religious or political freedom, or for any part of our form of free government, as was claimed on the anniversary referred to. On the contrary, they believed in a complete union of church and State, and passed, in all the colonies, cruel laws for the persecution of Baptists, Quakers and others who would not adopt their theology and worship at their churches.

It might be shown from history how dissenters from their religion were fined for absenting themselves from congregational worship; how they were thrust into prison, and into stocks and cages; how they were prevented from disposing of their property by will, because they could not verify their last will and testament with an oath; how they were stripped to their waists, women as well as men, tied to the hind part of a cart and dragged through the most public streets from town to town, "and slashed" on their way until they were dragged beyond the limits of the Commonwealth; how they were driven out at the dead of night, amid snows and frosts, and were branded R, for rogue, and H, for heretic; how the Puritan colonial court ordered their ears cropped and their tongues bored through with red-hot irons; how they were hung for dissenting from the established colonial religion, and indignity heaped upon their dead bodies. It will be remembered that the great offense for which Boger Williams was sentenced to banishment by the Puritan colonial court, was for advocating complete religious liberty. He was driven from his home and family by the Puritans into the forest, inhabited only by savages, amid the snows of a New England winter. After wandering in the forests for weeks, he came to a place on the sea shore, which he called Providence. He was there soon surrounded by a few followers, to whom he preached the doctrine of a complete separation of church and State. Williams and John Clark obtained a charter of lands from the parliament of England, and Williams and Clark incorporated into the charter the principles of complete religious freedom, and separation of church and State in 1682. William Penn imitated the example of Williams and Clark, and the Puritan colonies were compelled "to fall in, as an advancing civilization was burning off their flinty faces of intolerance.

" It is said by Bancroft, the historian, ' that freedom of conscience and unlimited freedom of mind was, from the first, the trophy of Roger Williams and his Baptist friends.' True liberty of conscience was not understood or practiced in America until Williams and John Clark taught it amid the fires of Puritan prosecutions. Gov. Hopkins says, ' Roger Williams justly claims the honor of being the first legislator in the world that fully provided for and established a free, full and absolute liberty of conscience.' Judge Story says: 'To Roger Williams belongs the renown of establishing in this country, in in 1636, a code of laws in which we read for the first time since Christianity ascended the throne of Csesar, that conscience should be free, and men should not be punished for worshiping God in any way they pleased. '

" It is sometimes claimed by men in the churches of this day representing the Puritan faith and sometimes upon anniversaries, like those referred to, that the Pilgrims and Puritans fled from persecution in England; that they could not be guilty of such crime themselves in this country. History shows this to be a mistake. About the year 1644, persecutions of the Baptists and Quakers were so rife and disgraceful in the Puritan colonies, that King Charles II forbid such persecutions by the following mandamus: 'Governors of our plantations in New England: - If there be any of those people called Quakers, now condemned to suffer death, or other corporal punishment, or that are imprisoned, you are commanded to proceed no farther therein.' And Lord Brougham said: " Long after the mother country had relinquished her acts of persecution, the Puritan colonies of America continued to persecute Baptists and Quakers in the most intolerant manner.'

"The representatives of the Pilgrim and Puritan faith may continue their anniversaries, and pronounce their eulogies, and boast as proudly of their church ancestry as they please, but they can never blot out those dark pages of history, they can never purge the craggy hills of New England from the blood of innocent martyrs."

To these and still other attacks, Rev. Dr. Edwards wrote a reply and published it in the Tribune of February. By reference to Dr. Edwards' remarks, it will be noticed that, as if anticipating criticism, he had fortified himself by the clear distinction between the Puritans and Pilgrims. And " Independent" could only attack him by first denying that there was any difference between the two. Here is the Doctor's keen retort to "Independent:"

' ' EDS. TRIBUNE : - I have been a little surprised to find that the few remarks made by by myself and the addresses and poem delivered by others at the 259th anniversary of the landing of the Plymouth Pilgrims, have called forth in your paper so much criticism. These utterances seemed to me so much in the line of well-known and acknowledged history, that if they were criticised at all, it would be for the want of startling novelty.

" Allow me to say at the outset that I have never been engaged in a newspaper controversy, and will not allow myself to be so engaged now; but will only tresspass upon your space sufficient to establish two points.

"And the first is this: That the misdeeds of the Puritans of Boston and Salem, and other places named in the criticism of "Independent" are not at all relevant. All of this is entirely without bearing upon the subject. We were celebrating the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and not the landing of the Puritans in Boston. If we had been commemorating the settlement of Princeton it would certainly not have been relevant to recount the faults of the early pioneers of Galesburg and Chicago, and to charge them upon Princeton. That distinction I took pains to point out in my remarks. If any statements concerning Plymouth are denied they can easily be substantiated. I do not see that they are denied, even in this criticism.

"The second point on which I wish to dwell a moment is this : I am willing to go farther than the criticised remarks extend, and to say that the persecutions of the Puritans were less fierce, less malignant, less unreasonably intolerant than the persecutions which they themselves, and others like them, were suffering at about the same time in Europe. No one denies that the Puritans committed acts of intolerance. But our proposition is that they were no worse in this respect than their neighbors and, indeed, that they were somewhat better. Independent does not seem to think so. Let us look at the facts, at what the world was doing at or about the time of the Plymouth Colony.

"In the first place, the Pilgrims left England because of persecution by an intolerant church and a tyrannical government. They were subjected to fines and imprisonment.

They were stripped of their possessions, and left to starve and endure the inclemency of the weather unprotected. They were not even allowed to emigrate. When they tried to get away in small detachments, after sacrificing most of their property, they were hunted by the minions of a tyrannical court, and by a tierce mob. 'At one time at Boston, in Lincolnshire, a large party of them got safely at night on board ship. But the master was treacherous, and handed them over to the officers with whom he was in complicity. Their goods were rifled and ransacked, the men were searched to their shirts for money; even the women were compelled to submit to like indignities, and thus outraged, insulted and robbed, they were led back to the town as a spectacle and wonder to the gaping crowd.' The same company, with some others, made afterward another attempt When some of the men as a firm detachment, had gone on board a Dutch ship at a lonely place between Hull and Grimsby. the women and children, who were as yet on shore, were rushed upon by a fierce crowd, who were armed with ' bills, guns and other weapons.' The ship-master, seeing the danger, weighed anchor and departed, leaving tho defenseless multitude on shore to the mercy of their merciless foes. All this and a thousand other harms and indignities, which we have not time to relate, they suffered, for no other reason than because they quietly met at certain times for the worship of God in their own way. And all these sufferings were inflicted upon them according to law.

" When the magistrates of Salem were executing witches, what was going on in the Old World? No less a man than the learned and humane Sir Matthew Hale had, not long before, done the same thing, as Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer. Was it very unreasonable, in those days of slow

" ' England in 1659 had not put to death a heretic for forty-three years,' says Independent. This statement is highly creditable to the Puritans' tolerance, for the year 1659 forms the close of their power in England. According to that statement, borrowed from my critic, it seems that the Puritans, during the whole period of their domination in that country, had not executed a single heretic. But, after the restoration, the policy was soon changed. No sooner had the power of the great Cromwell passed away, than the penal statutes against dissenters began to be re-enacted. The ungrateful king, Charles II, who had been helped to his throne by the Presbyterians, and who had solemnly and publicly promised them not only immunity from penalties but also a share in the Government, violated these promises, and denounced penalties against them and all other non-comformists. 'It was made a crime to attend a dissenting place of worship. A single Justice of the Peace might convict without a jury, and might, for the third offense, pass sentence of transportation beyond the sea for seven years. With refined cruelty, it was provided that the offender should not be transported to New England, where he was likely to find sympathizing friends. If he returned to his own country before the expiration of his term of exile, he was liable to capital punishment. The jails were soon crowded with dissenters, and among the sufferers were some of whose genius and virtue any Christian society might well be proud.' Witness, John Bunyan and the saintly Baxter.

Charles II and his brother and successor, James II, to enforce compliance with the established religion in Scotland. The Covenanters - the Puritans of the North - were to be suppressed. Claverhouse was first sent out in 1677. Very faithfully he performed his work. I cite only a very few instances of the brutal severity that marked his career. John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his singular piety, known as the Christian Carrier. He was long remembered as one well versed in divine things, and as so utterly blameless in life and peaceable in disposition, that the tyrants could find no offense in him, except that he absented himself from the State Church. On the first, of May he was cutting turf, when he was seized by Claverhouse's dragoons, rapidly examined, convicted of non-conformity, and sentenced to death. It is said that even among the soldiers, it was not easy to find an executioner. The wife of the poor man was present. She led one child by the hand, and it was evident that she would soon have another to care for. The prisoner, raised above himself by the near prospect of death, prayed loud and fervently, as one inspired, till Claverhouse, in a fury shot him dead. The poor woman cried in her agony, ' Well, sir, well, the day of reckoning will come.'

" Two artisans, Peter Gillies and John Bryce, were tried in Ayrshire, for holding certain doctrines, although it was conceded that they had committed no overt act. In a few hours they were convicted, hanged, and thrown into a hole under the gallows.

"Three poor laborers, because they did not think it their duty to pray for non-elect persons, and could not pray for the King unless he was one of the elect, were shot down by a file of musketeers. Within an hour after their arrest the dogs were lapping up their blood. This was near Glasgow.

"A Covenanter, 9vercome by sickness,found shelter in the house of a respectable widow, and died there. The corpse was discovered by Claverhouse' s agents, the poor woman's house was pulled down, her furniture carried away, her young son was carried before Claverhouse himself, shot dead, and buried in the moor.

"On the same day with the last mentioned murder, Margaret Maclachlan an aged widow, and Margaret Wilson, a maiden of eighteen, suffered death for their religion, in Wigtonshire. They were tied to stakes on a spot which the Solway overflows twice a day. The older sufferer was placed nearer the advancing flood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify the younger into submission. The sight was dreadful, but the courage of the survivor was sustained by a spirit as lofty as any that ever martyr exhibited. When she was almost dead, her cruel tormentors took her out and resuscitated her. 'Will she take the abjuration?' said the presiding officer. 'Never,' said the brave girl. And she was thrown back into the water.

" These sickening details might be indefinitely extended. We might also refer to that inhospitable persecution of the Huguenots, French Puritans, which occurred in England under James II. Also to the dragonnades, under Louis XIV. in France, in which the same Huguenots were despoiled of their goods, harried in their houses, exposed to alow torture by fire, and to the cruelest and most indecent barbarities and insults. But I forbear. The enumeration thus far has been a painful task. But it was made necessary by the criticism of your correspondent. It shows clearly that the Puritan, though sometimes intolerant, was more sinned against than sinning. When the persecution of his time comes to be added into one sum, it will be found that his share of

" 1. The Pilgrims, whose anniversary we were celebrating, never persecuted anybody. Like their good and pious pastor, John Robinson, they recognized the fact that God had yet much new truth to reveal, and they placed no serious restriction upon the reasonable search for it.

' ' 2. Puritans, although in some cases intolerant and narrow-minded, were yet as a whole, far less guilty than the general average of the time in which they lived. Their vices were those of their era; their virtues were their own.

" I have no fear concerning the ultimate judgment of mankind on this matter. In past times the public mind has been abused by gross misrepresentations, and by forgeries, like the famous 'Blue Laws.' The enemies of the Puritans were very powerful and very unscrupulous. Many a slanderous tale told by disaffected parties, by criminals who had left New England for New England's good, was greedily listened to and published. But impartial history is doing them justice. They are coming forth from the ordeal of examination, not indeed faultless, but certainly not the monsters they have been represented to be.

There is now in course of publication by the Massachusetts Historical Society, the diary, if so it may be called, of Samuel Sewall, covering the time from 1671 to 1730, a period of fifty-nine years. Sewall was a Puritan of the Puritans, for thirty-six years a Justice, and for ten years the Chief Justice of the highest court in the province. He took part in the Salem witch trials, but afterward stood up before the whole congregation on the Sabbath, while the minister read aloud his written confession of the great guilt which he had incurred in that transaction. This diary exhibits the Puritan's milder virtues, the genial side of his nature, the sincerity of his piety, the purity and sweetness of his domestic relations. It was evidently not written for publication, but now, about a century and a half after the death of its author, it has been at last secured, and is to be given to the world. To all who really desire to know the actual character of the Puritan, this journal is commended.

"A Few Questions Addressed to Truthseekers. I want to ask a few questions, in view of the anonymous criticisms made upon the exercises of Forefathers' Day.

" Are ' grammar school histories,' ' pictorial histories,' or even 'cyclopedias,' the best authorities for determining nice points in historical research? Are not the statements in such works rather too general for such a purpose ?

"Is the fact that 'James and the Court' lumped together a mass of men under one name, a positive proof that there was no difference between the individuals of this mass ?

'' If the Plymouth Pilgrims were identical in all respects with the persecuting Puritans of Boston and Salem, etc., and were guilty of the same offenses, why cannot that fact be shown ?

" My declaration is, that the Pilgrims never persecuted anybody; if they did, show it. That would be a short way of settling the whole matter. But nobody does it, for the simple reason that it can't be done.

"Allow me to suggest that 'atheists and infidels' are made by bigotry, uncharitableness, and a willingness to blacken worthy reputations, quite as frequently as in any other way.

"And finally, 'with malice toward none, with charity for all,' and with increased respect for Pilgrim and Puritan, I must beg to take leave of the discussion until the critics come out over their own names; this, surely cannot be deemed unreasonable."

Following swiftly upon this reply of Mr. Edward's came all the critics, new and old, and the first one that we can lay our hands upon signs, "Truth Seeker." He starts out by defending his references to the encyclopedia as his authority for historical references, and he then proceeds to say:

"But, to be exceedingly charitable with the Doctor, I will permit the encyclopedia, from which I quoted, to be laid aside and not received in evidence, what then does the Doctor do with Evert A. Duyckinck, one of the most eminent] historians, who (Vol. IV, page 58) says: 'In 1619 the Puritans, a body of men who were averse as a matter of conscience to living under the religious rules of the English Church and had been residing for years in Holland, resolved to embark for America, where they could regulate matters of religion according to their sentiments.' Or with J. R. Green, M. A., Examiner in the School of Modern History, Oxford, in his History of the English people (page 497), says: 'The little company of the Pilgrim fathers ag aftertimes loved to call them, landed on the barren coast of Massachusetts, at a spot to which they gave the name of Plymouth, in memory of the last English port at which they touched. * * * From the moment of their establishment the eyes of the English Puritans were fixed on the little Puritan settlement in North America.'

" The Doctor says: 'My declaration is that the Pilgrims never persecuted anybody. If they did, show it.' I answer, is it a fact that the Pilgrims united themselves with the Massachusetts Bay, New Haven and Connecticut Colonies in the year 1643 ? Is it a fact that Jefferson Davis was the President of the Southern Confederacy ? If he was guilty of killing anybody why can not the instance be given ? He was guilty because he was a party to and with those who did the killing, and upon the same premises were the Pilgrims guilty by being a party to, and with those who did the persecuting.

" Is it not a fact in law that if the writer should harbor horse thieves, and enter in and be a party with them, though he never laid his hand upon a horse, and should be discovered, the law would presume him equally guilty with those who did the stealing and measure out to him the same punishment?

"But, should the foregoing argument not be strong enough to settle the matter, I will refer the Doctor to Samuel M. Schmucker, L.L. D., one of the smartest men in the Lutheran Church, who says in his history of all denominations (page 56), on Congregationalism, 'that its history is closely identified with the history of New England. It extended more and more widely as the country became more thickly settled. In 1638 Harvard University was founded at Cambridge. In 1646, common schools were established by law in Massachusetts. In 1658, the Cambridge Platform was adopted by an assemblage of Congregational ministers which set forth what is usually known as the Calvanistic system of theology. At that time the number of churches of this sect in Massachusetts was 39; in Connecticut, 4; in New Hampshire, 3. The Quakers first made their appearance in Massachusetts in 1656. There were two women, who had fled thither from Barbadoes, hoping to find religious toleration and freedom in the land of the Pilgrims. They were cruelly disappointed, were arrested and imprisoned for witchcraft, and afterward sent back to Barbadoes. Others arrived, three of whom were subsequently punished with death, though their only offense was their religious opinions.' Now, dear Doctor, I have given you instances from the highest authority, and you declared most emphatically, if I could do so, that should settle the whole matter."

Then follows a long, very long diatribe from Independent. Among other things he says: "These mistatements of history have become popular errors, which have been heralded by the press and proclaimed from the pulpit and political rostrum until they are in the mouth of every school boy and pedagogue, especially if he is of strict Puritan morals.

" "We would suppose on hearing the eloquent eulogies pronounced, and hearing the inspiring poem read above referred to, on the 259th anniversary of the landing of our forefathers, that it was questionable indeed whether our ears would ever have been saluted on the Sabbath day by the sound of a Protestant bell had it not been for the Pilgrims; that all our wide land, with her towns and cities, mountains, valleys and plains, had it not been for these forefathers, would have been either Catholic or infidel; that either no God would have been our creed, or an image would have been substituted for the true God. We would suppose that our institutions would have resembled those of Catholic Spain or infidel France. We would suppose in reading these eulogies and the reading of the poem that the pages of history were falsely written; that these forefathers never hung Quakers, or incorrigible Baptists, that they never cropped the ears of the heretic or bored the tongue of a dissenter with a red-hot iron; that the wail of grief and pain arising from the colonial whipping post was nothing but the gentle sighing of the wind through the New England pines. It is often said by the apologists for the colonial persecutions, and by men in their representative churches, that the errors of these forefathers were the errors of an illiberal age. This is also a mistake. These heinous persecutions of the Quakers and Baptists, to prison to death, the whipping post and exile, were traits of character peculiar to these Puritan forefathers, their form of religion and their anion of Church and State.

"In 1659, when the Quakers were executed at Boston, you might have traveled the length and breadth of old England without seeing a whipping post England had not put to death a heretic for forty-three years, and in common with other Christian countries, she was remonstrating against the intolerance of Puritans in this country.

" Massachusetts had already put to death a number of heretics, as they called them, and, doubtless, would have continued her bloody persecutions had not King Charles II absolutely prohibited it by the celebrated mandamus order, referred to in our former letter. These forefathers were imbued with a bigoted, illiberal and intolerant spirit towards those differing from them in religion. Many were whipped for even refusing to have their babies baptised at the Colonial Congregational Churches. We can gather up the key note of their malevolent religious dispositions from their leading statesmen, scholars and orators. Let them now speak for themselves.

"The noted Colonial preacher, Eev. Catton, says : ' It was toleration that made the world anti-Christian, and the world never took hurt by the punishment of heretics. The Lord keep us from being bewitched by the whore's cup of toleration lest while we seem to detest and reject her with open face of profession, we do not bring her in by a back door of toleration and so oome at last to drink deeply of the cup of the Lord's wrath.'

"It is said Harvard University was founded by the Pilgrims within twenty years after their advent upon these shores. President Oakes, of that University, and who was an eminent Congregational preacher, said: 'I ; look upon religious toleration as the first born of all abominations.' 'To authorize untruth,' said the eloquent and learned Colonial preacher, the Rev. Ward, ' by toleration of State is to build a sconce against the walls of heaven, to batter God out of His chair; to eay that a man ought to have liberty of conscience is impious ignorance.'

" 'God forbid,' said the learned and gray - headed Dudley, another noted divine of the Massachusetts Colony, ' our love for the truth should be grown so cold that we should tolerate error; for the security of the flock we pen up the wolf.' Gov. Endicott said, 'we will be as ready to take away the lives of heretics as they will be willing to lay them down.' When the court of Massachusetts was deliberating what they should do with several Quakers, President Chauncy of Harvard University, in his sermon on the Sabbathday, said: 'And suppose ye should catch six wolves in a trap and you cannot prove that they ever killed either sheep or lamb, and now you have them they will neither bark nor bite, yet they have the plain mark of wolves. Now I leave it to your consideration whether you will let them go alive. Yea or nay?'

" Here, then, are the sentiments of some who have always been called the best and greatest who ever bore the Puritan name. They taught intolerance in their schools and churches and in their State ; it pervaded the whole mass of the Colonial people. In the catechism, which was taught in every family, toleration of a false religion was enumerated as one of the sins forbidden in the second commandment, and this clause was retained in the catechism as late as 1768.

" In conclusion, let us ask the orator upon such anniversary occasions, and the poet who so sweetly sings of the virtue of these forefathers, how they can shut their eyes against the truth of history and eulogize such a race of men by authority of the same kind of testimony by which the Puritans branded the Quakers and Baptists as ranters, rogues, vagabonds and cursed heretics ? By such evidence the Catholics could have convicted Martin Luther of being a wolf of hell, as they claimed he was, or the Apostle Paul of being a madman, the Pentecostal Christians of being drunkards and Jesus of being a glutton and a deviL"

And then a number of other correspondents " shied their castors into the ring, " and the Doctor, not being able ever to get them to discuss the real point in all the controversy, on which he had made his position plain in his first address, namely, that the Puritans and Pilgrims were separate and distinct bodies of men, he evidently only looked on and smiled while they so valiantly did battle with the wind-mills of their own construction.

Among others is "Sucker" who comes with his cruise of oil, to pour, as he says, " on the troubled waters." His opening sentence is a pertinent quotation, " Men, except in bad novels, are not all good or all evil." He then proceeds: " What a hullabaloo has been kicked up because a few of our people, ' degenerate children of illustrious sires, held a little mutual admiration society on Forefather's day. What would you expect on such occasions? What is the usual bill of fare?" He then describes a little innocent eagle soaring that we all indulge in on the Fourth of

July, and wants to know, you know, who expects anybody on such occasions to tell the horrid truth about Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and all the good, old patriots, even up in Massachusetts, being horrid slave owners, etc. , etc. He quotes the good old maxim, " De mortuis nil nisi bonum." And then he says: "On the occasion referred to, I too j was ' a looker-on in Venice.' Knowing they deserved it, I was expecting to hear in praise of the Pilgrims from their descendants, and I did not care to ask whether it was in good taste to boast until we have ' added honor to ancestral fame. ' No one but a mule ' who (sic) is denied posterity, and who has no an- ! cestry particularly to boast of,' would find fault with people for being proud of their re- i lations, and if, in ' ascending the family line they should find it waxed at the other end, or even ending in stronger twine that vexed some worthy relation,' you would not expect them to mention that, and so I looked for unstinted praise of the Pilgrims. But I am sure the efforts, as I understood them, were hardly up to the average in eulogy."

In a good deal that "Sucker" has to say we can not but see, that under the guise of pouring oil on the waters, there is some playfulness and a free lance sent hurtling into the whole crowd. He refers to "the gallant Colonel " (Elliott) and while he calls his eulogy extravagant, etc. , yet he says he told the crowd he was a Sucker (born in Illinois) and that " the un traveled Yankee of to-day is an intolerable bigot, and this in face of the fact that it is not much traveling to come from Massachusetts to Princeton. " Then he does not spare Dr. Edwards as he says he " made a distinction without a difference, in begging us to remember that it was not the Pilgrims but the Puritans who were guilty of all these things - such as hanging Quakers and Baptists, and drowning witches, thereby confessing all the charges in the indictment, but pleading a misnomer.

"Now, if our Pilgrim descendants were satisfied with this, why should 'Independent,' 'Truth Seeker,' 'Fair Play,' and all the rest rush into print about it ? Or, why does some Pilgrim retort with Virginia, ' you're another,' * * * * 'Men of strong convictions, those who make their mark and compel reform, are generally extremists, their very zeal makes them intolerant of what they believe is wrong, their sins should not prevent us recognizing the ,good they do, nor need we, in recognizing it, claim they are immaculate. * * * I do not believe we are indebted to the Pilgrims for all we enjoy, nor do I believe they were such an intolerant, bigoted, fanatical set that they were incapable of any good, any more than I believe what Ingersoll would have us believe about Tom Paine.

"Let us give to each his meed of praise, honoring the memory of all for the good they did. To do this we need not blacken the memory of any. If they had gross faults and committed great errors, let us frankly own it, but let not their faults damn them or hide their better traits. Bury the faults, ' and if from the tomb the veil be removed, weep o'er it in silence, and close it again.' * * "