"Imperialism" AND "The Tracks of Our Forefathers"

A PAPER READ BY

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS

Before the Lexington, Massachusetts, Historical Society

Tuesday, December 20, 1898

"In a word, many wise men thought it a time wherein those two miserable adjuncts, which Nerva was deified for uniting, imperium et libertas, were as well reconciled as is possible."—Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, B. 1. § 163

"I put my foot in the tracks of our forefathers, where I can neither wander nor stumble."—Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America

BOSTON

DANA ESTES & COMPANY

210 SUMMER STREET

1899

What the feast of the Passover was to the children of Israel, that the days between the nineteenth of December and the fourth of January—the Yuletide—are and will remain to the people of New England. The Passover began "in the first month on the fourteenth day of the month at even," and it lasted one week, "until the one and twentieth day of the month at even." It was the period of the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb, and the feast of unleavened bread; and of it as a commemoration it is written, "When your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians. Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years." And thus, by their yearly Passover, were the Jewish congregations of old put in mind what farewell they took of the land of Egypt.

So our own earliest records tell us that it was on the morning of Saturday, of what is now the nineteenth of December, that the little exploring party from the Mayflower, then lying at her anchor in Provincetown Harbor, after a day and night of much trouble and danger, sorely buffeted by wind and wave in rough New England's December seas, found themselves on an island in Plymouth Bay. It was a mild, "faire sunshining day. And this being the last day of the weeke, they prepared ther to keepe the Sabath. On Munday they sounded the harbor, and marched into the land, and found a place fitt for situation. So they returned to their shipp againe [at Provincetown] with this news. On the twenty-fifth of December they weyed anchor to goe to the place they had discovered, and came within two leagues of it, but were faine to bear up againe; but the twenty-sixth day, the winde came faire, and they arrived safe in this harbor. And after wards tooke better view of the place, and resolved wher to pitch their dwelling; and the fourth day [of January] begane to erecte the first house for commone use to receive them and their goods." Such, in the quaint language of Bradford, is the calendar of New England's Passover; and, beginning on the nineteenth of December, it ends on the fourth of January, covering as nearly as may be the Christmas holyday period.

Is there any better use to which the Passover anniversary can be put than to retrospection? "And when your children shall say unto you, What mean you by this service? ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses." So the old story is told again, being thus kept ever green in memory; and, in telling it, the experiences of the past are brought insensibly to bear on the conditions of the present. Thus, once a year, like the Israelites of old, we, as a people, may take our bearings and verify our course, as we plunge on out of the infinite past into the unknowable future. It is a useful practice; and we are here this first evening of our Passover period to observe it.

This, too, is an Historical Society,—that of Lexington, "a name," as, when arraigned before the tribunal of the French Terror, Danton said of his own, "tolerably known in the Revolution;" and I am invited to address you because I am President of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the most venerable organization of the sort in America, perhaps in the world. Thus, to-night, though we shall necessarily have to touch on topics of the day, and topics exciting the liveliest interest and most active discussion, we will in so doing look at them,—not as politicians or as partisans, nor from the commercial or religious side, but solely from the historical point of view. We shall judge of the present in its relations to the past. And, unquestionably, there is great satisfaction to be derived from so doing; the mere effort seems at once to take us into another atmosphere,—an atmosphere as foreign to unctuous cant as it is to what is vulgarly known as "electioneering taffy." This evening we pass away from the noisy and heated turmoil of partisan politics, with its appeals to prejudice, passion, and material interest, into the cool of a quiet academic discussion. It is like going out of some turbulent caucus, or exciting ward-room debate, and finding oneself suddenly confronted by the cold, clear light of the December moon, shining amid the silence of innumerable stars.

Addressing ourselves, therefore, to the subject in hand, the question at once suggests itself,—What year in recent times has been in a large way more noteworthy and impressive, when looked at from the purely historical point of view, than this year of which we are now observing the close? The first Passover of the Israelites ended a drama of more than four centuries' duration, for "the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years; and at the end of the four hundred and thirty years all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt." So the Passover we now celebrate commemorates the closing of another world drama of almost precisely the same length, and one of deepest significance, as well as unsurpassed historic interest. These world dramas are lengthy affairs; for, while we men are always in a hurry, the Almighty never is: on the contrary, as the Psalmist observed, so now, "a thousand years in his sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." The drama I have referred to as this week brought to its close, is that known in history as Spanish Domination in America. It began, as we all know, on the twenty-first of October, 1492; it has been continuous through six years over four centuries. It now passes into history; the verdict may be made up.

So far as I personally am concerned,—a matter needless to say of very trifling consequence,—this verdict was rendered a year ago. It was somewhat Rhadamanthine; but a twelve-month of further reflection has shown no cause in any respect to revise it. In referring to what was then plainly impending, in December, 1897, before the blowing up of the battleship Maine, before a conflict had become inevitable, I used this language in a paper read to the Massachusetts Historical Society: "When looking at the vicissitudes of human development, we are apt to assume a certain air of optimism, and take advancement as the law of being, as a thing of course, indisputable. We are charitable, too; and to deny to any given race or people some degree of use in the economy of Nature, or the plan of Creation, is usually regarded as indicative of narrowness of view. The fatal, final word "pessimist" is apt to be whispered in connection with the name of one who ventures to suggest a doubt of this phase of the doctrine known as Universalism. And yet, at this time when, before our eyes, it is breathing its last, I want some one to point out a single good thing in law, or science, or art, or literature,—material, moral or intellectual,—which has resulted to the race of man upon earth from Spanish domination in America. I have tried to think of one in vain. It certainly has not yielded an immortality, an idea, or a discovery; it has, in fact, been one long record of reaction and retrogression, than which few pages in the record of mankind have been more discouraging or less fruitful of good. What is now taking place in Cuba is historical. It is the dying out of a dominion, the influence of which will be seen and felt for centuries in the life of two continents; just as what is taking place in Turkey is the last fierce flickering up of Asiatic rule in Europe, on the very spot where twenty-four centuries ago Asiatic rule in Europe was thought to have been averted forever. The two, Ottoman rule in Europe, and Spanish rule in America, now stand at the bar of history; and, scanning the long four-century record of each, I have been unable to see what either has contributed to the accumulated possessions of the human race, or why both should not be classed among the many instances of the arrested civilization of a race, developing by degrees an irresistible tendency to retrogression."